An Anthology of Chinese Literature-Stephen Owen-1996 PDF

An Anthology of Chinese Literature
B E G I N N I N G S T O 1911
An Anthology of
Chinese Literature
BE GI NNI NGS TO 191 1
Edited and Translated by
Stephen Owen
W. W. NORTON
NEW YORK
& COMPANY
LONDON
PROPER 9 QFRSUNIV
DAlll
D P E L C n h
GAZJV
1996 by Stephen Owen and The Council for Cultural Planning and
Development of the Executive Yuan of the Republic of China
C o p y rig h t
jacket art: "The Nymph of the Lo River" by Wei Chiu-ting is reproduced with the
permission of the National Palace Museum, Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China.
Since this page cannot legibly accommodate all the copyright notices, pages 1165-66
constitute an extension of the copyright page.
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
fL .
First Edition
The text of this book is composed in Sabon

with the display set in Optima
Composition by Com Com
Manufacturing by Haddon Craftsmen
Book design by Joan Greenfield
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

An anthology of Chinese literature : beginnings to 1911 / edited and
translated by Stephen Owen,
p. cm.
Translations from Chinese.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-393-03823-8
1. Chinese literature~Translations into English.

Stephen.
P12658.E1A814
1996
895.V08dc20
I. Owen,
95-11409
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110
http://web.wwnorton.com
W. W. Norton & Company Ltd., 10 Coptic Street, London WC1A 1PU
Contents
Timeline
xxxv
Introduction
* ,
A Note on Translation
xxxix
xliii
Early China
EARLY C H IN A : IN TRO D U CTIO N
The Classic o f Poetry: Beginnings

Classic of Poetry C C L X X n We Have in H and
Classic of Poetry CC XC Mowing Grasses55
10
The Zhou Founding

Classic of Poetry CCXLV She Bore the Folk
Historical Records, Chronicles of Z hou
Classic of Poetry CCL Liu the Duke
Classic of Poetry C C X X X V II Spreading
The Zhuang-ziy Renouncing Kingship
Classic of Poetry C C X X X V I The Greater Brightness
Classic of Poetry CCLV Overbearing
Classic of Poetry CCLXII Yangzi and H an
Classic of Poetry CLXVIII Bringing Forth the Chariots
Classic of Poetry C LX X V II Sixth M onth
Human Sacrifice: Making Exchanges
Classic of Poetry C X X X I Yellow Bird
The Zuo Tradition, an entry for the 6th year of Duke Wen
(620 B.C.)
The Zuo Tradition, an entry for the 19th year of Duke X i
(640 B.C.)
from Mencius I A, 7
The Classic o f Poetry: "A irs"

Classic of Poetry I Fishhawk
Classic of Poetry IX The Han So Wide
10
11
,
"
n
12
14
15
16
18
18
20
22
23
24
26
26
27
27
28
30
30
31
Contents
Other Voices in the Tradition

Ruan Ji (a.d . 210-263), Songs of My Cares II
Meng Hao-ran (ca. 690-ca. 740), Written at Wan Mountain Pool
\
Correspondences
Classic of Poetry VI Peach Tree Soft and Tender
Classic of Poetry X Bluffs of the R u
Classic of Poetry X L I North W ind
Classic of Poetry X II Magpies Nest
Classic of Poetry X X P!ums Are Falling
Classic of Poetry X X III Dead Roe Deer
Classic of Poetry X X X First the Winds
Classic of Poetry X X X V Valley Winds

Classic of Poetry X C W ind and Rain
Classic of Poetry XLVI Thorr^Vine on the W all
Classic of Poetry LI Rainbow
Classic of Poetry L X III Fox
Classic of Poetry X C IV Creepers on the Moorland
Classic of Poetry CXL Willows by the Eastern Gate
Classic of Poetry C L X X X IV tcCrane Cries O ut
Classic of Poetry V <6Grasshoppers5Wings55
Classic of Poetry C L X V IItcGather the Fiddleheads
Classic of Poetry IV Trees with Bending Boughs
Classic of Poetry VII Rabbit Snare
Classic of Poetry LIX Bamboo Pole
Understanding and Misunderstanding: The Need to Explain
Classic of Poetry X L II Gentle Girl
Classic of Poetry L X I The River Is Broad
Classic of Poetry LX IV Quince
Classic of Poetry LX V Millet Lush
Classic of Poetry LX X V I Zhong-ziPlease
Classic of Poetry X X V I Boat of Cypress
Classic of Poetry X LV Boat of Cypress
Other Poems
Classic of Poetry X C V Zhen and W ei
Classic of Poetry C X X X V II MEastern Gates White Elms
Classic of Poetry C X I W ithin Ten Acres
Classic of Poetry X V II Dew on the W ay
Classic of Poetry X X X IV Dry Leaves on the Gourd
Classic of Poetry LVI KWe Had Our Delight
Classic of Poetry L X X X I I Went Along the Broad Road
Classic of Poetry L X X X II Rooster Crows
Classic of Poetry C X X X III No Clothes
Classic of Poetry C X III Huge R at
Classic of Poetry CVII Sandals of Straw
Contents
Courtship, Marriage, and Love
Classic of Poetry C X X X V III Barred Gate
Classic of Poetry X X IV AhHow Splendid
Classic of Poetry CLVIII Cutting the H aft
Classic of Poetry X X II The River Has Its Forkings15
Classic of Poetry XLV III In the Mulberries
Classic of Poetry LXVI M y Prince Has Taken the Field
Classic of Poetry L X X III HGreat Cart
Classic of Poetry L X X V II Shu Is on a Field H unt
Classic of Poetry L X X X V II Lift Your Kilts
Using the Poems and Early Interpretation

Analects XVII.9
Analects II.2
Analects 1.15
The Zuo Tradition, an entry for the 31st year of Duke Xiang
(542 B.C.)
The Zhuang-ziy Outer Things
Mencius II A, 2.xi, xvii
Mencius V A, 4.ii
Mencius V B
8.ii
Classic of Documents (Shu jing )Canon of Shun
The Zuo Tradition, an entry for the 25th Year of Duke Xiang
(548 B.C.)
Classic of ChangesAppended Discourses
Wang BiElucidation of the Images (Classic of Changes)
from the Zhuang-zi, The Way of Heaven
The Great Preface to the Classic o f Poetry
Selections from the Record of Music (Yue ji) (3 sections)

Tang Xian-zu, Peony Pavilion (1598)
from Scene VII: The Schoolroom for Women
from Scene IX: Getting the Garden in Order
Early Narrative
Two Sad Stories of Good Behavior
The Zuo Tradition, an entry for the 12th year of Duke Xuan
(597 B.C.)
The Zuo Tradition, an entry for the 22nd year of Duke X i
(638 B.C.)
An Exegetical Literature
Analects 11.10
The Zuo Tradition, an entry for the 14th year of Duke
Zhuang (680 B.C.)
53
53
54
54
54
55
55
56
56
57
58
58
58
59
59
60
61
61
62
63
63
63
63
64
64
67
71
71
71
74
n
77
78
78
79
79
79
Contents
The Zuo Tradition, an entry for the 3rd year of Duke Ding
(507 B.C.)
The Zuo Tradition, an entry for the 3rd year of Duke Xuan
(606 B.C.)
Heroes of the W ill
from the Schemes of the Warring States'(Zban-guo ce)
Swindles and Bad Exchanges: The Problems Surrounding Bian
He's Jade
Hes Jade
(or uBian H e
s Jade55) from the H an Fei-zi
Historical Records (Shi-ji)from the Biographies of Lian Bo
and Lin Xiang-ru
The Story of W u Zi-xu
Historical Records,
The Zuo Tradition,
(522 b.c .)
The Zuo Tradition,
(506 B.C.)
The Zuo Tradition,
(484 B.C.)
Biography of W u Zi-xu
an entry for the 20th year of Duke Zhao
80
81
82
83
84
84
87
88
97
an entry for the 4th year of Duke Ding

98
an entry for the 11th year of Duke Ai

Yuan Zhen (779-831), A Winter wWhite Linen Song
Wu Wen-ying (ca. 1200-1260)to Eight-Note Gan-zhou
Visiting
the Magic Cliff with Various Gentlemen of the Transport Office
Early Literary Prose: The Delight of W ords

The Wind (Western Han?)
O f Swords (Zhuang-zi)
from the Zhuang-zi, Heavens Motions (Tian-yun)
Jia Y iThe Poetic Exposition on the Owl
The Zhuang-zi
Discourse on Thinking of Things as Being on the Same Level
(Qi-wu lun)
Coda
Li Bo (701-762)The Old Airs IX
Early Political O rato ry

Classic of Documents, T ings VowM
The Zuo Tradition, an entry for the 26th year of Duke Zhao
(516 B.C.)
from the Schemes of the Warring States
Mei Sheng (d. 140 B.C.)Letter of Protest to the Prince of W u
from the Zhuang-zi, Attaining Life (Da-sbeng)
viii
80
99
99
100
101
102
102
104
108
110
113
113
122
122
124
124
125
128
130
133
Contents
Si-ma Q ia n (ca, 145-ca. 85 bx.)

Letter in Reply to Ren An
The Biography of Bo Yi and Shu Q i
The Prince of Wei
from Biographies of the Assassins
Nie Zheng
The
Chu-ci: "Lyrics
of Chu
135
136
142
145
152
155
"The Nine Songs"

The Sovereign of the East: The One (Dong-huang Tai-yi)
Lord in the Clouds (Yun-zhong jun)
^
The Lady of the Xiang River (Xiang jun)
The Senior Master of Lifespans (Da si-ming)
The Junior Master of Lifespans (Shao-si-ming)Lord Iris
The Lord of the East (Dong-jun)
The Yellow Rivers Earl (He-bo)
The H ill Wraith (Shan gui)
The Kingdom's Dead (Guo-shang)
Rites for Souls (Li bun)
156
156
156
157
158
158
159
160
160
161
162
The Li Sao
162
The C/)u-c/Tradition
176
Journeys Heavenly and Earthly

Far Roaming
Si-ma Xiang-ru (179-117 B.C.), The Great One
Ruan Ji (a .d . 210-263)Songs of M y Cares LXVIII
Sun Chuo (314-371)Wandering to the Tian-tai Mountains
176
176
182
184
185
The Encounter with the Goddess

Song Yu (attributed), The Poetic Exposition on
Gao-tang (opening)
The Goddess
Cao Zhi (192-232), The Goddess of the Luo
189

Pei Xing (825-880), Accounts of Marvels (Chuan-qi): Xiao Kuang
(opening section)
Wang Wei (ca. 699-761), Songs for the Goddess Shrine on
Fish Mountain
Song Welcoming the Goddess
Song Sending the Goddess on Her Way
Li He (790-816)String Music for the Gods
Wen Ting-yun (d. 866)Written on the Temple of Mount Xiao
Guan-xiu (832-912), Shrine by the River
Su Shi (1037-1101)Wu Mountain
189
190
194
198
198
199
199
199
199
200
200
201
Contents
Calling Back the Soul
204
Calling Back the Soul (Zhao hun)

Calling Back the Recluse (Zhao yin-shi)
204
211

Ruan Yu (d. 212)Seven Sorrows
Tao Qian (365-427), Pall Bearers Song II
Li Bo (701-762), Hard Ways to Shu
212
212
212
213
Interlude Between the "Lyrics of C hu " and Yue-fu: "The
Biography o f Lady Li
215
Ban Gu (a.d. 32-92)The Han History, from The Biographies

of the Imperial In-Laws55
215
The Chinese "Middle Ages"

THE CHINESE "M ID D LE A G ES": IN TRO D U CTIO N
221
227
Yue-fu
Heaven Above (Western Han yue-fu)
The One I Love (Western Han yue-fu)
South of the Walls We Fought (Western Han yue-fu)
East of Ping-ling (Eastern Han?)
Prelude
White Swans in Pairs (Eastern Han?)
Cocks Crow (Eastern Han?)
Meeting (Eastern Han?)
Chang-an Has Narrow Alleys (Eastern Han?)

Shen Yue (441-513), The Sensual Charms of the Three Wives
Song of White Hair (Eastern Han?)
Mulberries by the Path (Eastern Han?)
X in Yan-nian, Officer of the Guard (Eastern Han)
Chen Lin (d. 217)I Watered M y Horse at a Spring by the Wall
Yue-fu of the South

Zi-ye Songs
I
II
X II
XVI
X IX - X X
X X III-X X IV
X X X III
XXXVI
The Zi-ye Songs of the Four Seasons
ill
227
228
229
230
230
231
232
243
233
233
234
235
236
237
238
238
238
238
238
238
239
239
239
Contents
Spring Songs
VI
IX-X
Winter Songs
X III
Little Su, I Ride the Coach with Polished Sides
Yang Pan-er (also Du-qu Song)
Yue-fu of the Northern Dynasties

Qi-yu Songs (Northern Dynasties yue-fu), IIV
Song of the Prince of Lang-ya (Northern Dynasties yue-fu)
The Ballad of Mu-lan (Northern Dynasties* yue-fu3
4th-6th century)
Breaking the Branches of Willows (Northern Dynasties
yue-fu), I-III
Other Voices in the Tradition: The Later Lineages of Yue-fu
Li Bo, South of the Walls We Fought
Wang Shi-zhen (1526-1590), South of the Wall We Fought
Li Ye-si (1622-1680), South of the Walls We Fought
Li Bo, Yang Pan-er
Anonymous song lyric to Boddhisattva Barbarian
(9th-10th century)
The Beginnings of Classical Poetry (Shi)

Parting and Going Off
East Gate (Eastern Han? yue-û)
Anonymous Old Poem (attributed to Su Wu)
Anonymous O ld Poem (attributed to Su Wu)
Wang Can (177-217)Seven Sorrows I
Ruan Ji (210-263)Songs of My Cares III
239
239
239
239
,239
240
240
240
240
241
241
243
243
244
245
246
247
247
249
250
250
251
251
252
253
Longing on the Road

Nineteen Old Poems I
Q in Jia (2nd century), To His Wife (first of
three) (attributed)
254
Conning to the City

Nineteen Old Poems III
Nineteen Old Poems IV
255
255
255
Alone at Night
Nineteen Old Poems X IX
Wang Can, Seven Sorrows II
Ruan Ji, Songs of M y Cares I
Nineteen Old Poems X
Qin Guan (1049-1100), to Gods on the Magpie Bridge
253
253
256
256
256
256
257
257
Contents
The Message and Gift
Watering M y Horse by the Great Wall (Eastern Han?
yue-fu)
Nineteen Old Poems IX
The Stranger and the W om an
Prelude (Eastern Han? yue-fu)
Nineteen Old Poems II
Nineteen Old Poems V
Impermanence and Disillusion

Nineteen Old Poems X III
Nineteen Old Poems X IV
Nineteen Old Poems X V
258
258
258
258
259
259
259
260
260
260
261
The Return
'
Anonymous Old Poem
Cao Z hi (192-232), Sending O ff Mr. Ying (first of two)
261
262
Coda: Reencounter
Old Poem
262
The Poets
Cao Cao (155-220)The Bitter Cold
Wang Can (177-217)W ith the Army V
Liu Zhen (d. 217), Unclassified Poem
Cao Zhi, Unclassified Poem I
X u Gan (171-218)Chamber Thoughts III
Yan Shi-bo (5th century), Wang Rong (467-493), and
Chen Shu-bao (553-604), Three versions of Since You
Have Gone Away
261
262
262
263
264
265
265
266
266
Cao Zhi (192-232)

Presented to Cao Biao, Prince of Bai-ma
Song of a Brown Wren in W ild Fields (yue-fu)
Unclassified Poem II
267
267
270
270
Ruan Ji (210-263)
Songs of M y Cares X V I
Songs of M y Cares VI
Songs of M y Cares X X X III
270
271
271
271
Turning Away
Lu Ji (261-303)Calling to the Recluse
Zuo Si (ca. 253-ca. 307)Calling to the Recluse I
272
272
273
Feast
274
Classic of Poetry CX V Hawthorn on the M ountain
Classic of Poetry C X IV Cricket
274
275
Contents
Classic of Poetry C LX I Deer Cry
from Calling Back the Soul
Song of the Autumn W ind
Chen Lin (d. 217)[no title]
Dew on the Onion Grass (Han funeral song)
The Graveyard (Han funeral song)
West Gate (anonymous yue-fu, Eastern Han?)
Grand (anonymous yue-fu, Eastern Han?)
Cao Cao (155-220)Short Song
Cao Pi (187-226)Grand (yue-fu)
Cao Zhi (192-232), Public Banquet
Wang Xi-zhi (321-379)Preface to the ecOrchid
Pavilion Poems
Li Bo, Bring In the Wine
Du Fu (712-770), Having Fallen O ff M y Horse Drunk,
Various Gentlemen Come to Visit Me Bringing Wine
H an Y u (768-824), Drunk, to Zhang Shu of the
Imperial Library
Meng Jiao (751-814), Inviting Writers to Drink
Li He (790-816), Bring In the Wine
Bo Ju-yi (772-846)An Invitation for Mr. Liu
Feng Yan-si (903-960), to The Pleasures of Kicking
the Football
Yan Shu (991-1055), to Washing Creek Sands (Huan

xi sha)
to Reaching Golden Gates (Ye jin-men)
Zhou Bang-yan (1056-1121)to Fragrance Fills the Yard
(Man ting fang). Written on a summer day at Wu-xiang
Mountain in Li-shui
Su Shi (1037-1101)The Poetic Exposition on Red Cliff
A n ecd otes, Parables, and Profound Jokes

from the Zhuang-zi
from the H an Fei-zi (3rd century B.C.)
from Discourses of the Domains (Guo-yu) (3rd century B.C.)
from the Huai-nan-zi (2nd century B.C.)
from The Park of Stories (Shuo-yuan) (1st century B.C.)
from the Lie-zi (?-a.d. 300)
from The Forest of Jokes (Xiao-lin) (3rd century a.d.)
from The Forest of Tales (Yi-lin) (362)
from Sundry Accounts of the Western Capital (Xi-jing za-ji)
(3rd century)
Liu Yi-qing (403-444), from New Stories and Tales of the
Times (Shi-shuo xin-yu)
Tao Qian (365-427), An Account of Peach Blossom Spring
275
276
ill
278
278
278
279
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
287
288
289
289
290
290
290
291
292
295
295
299
300
301
301
302
305
305
306
307
309
xiii
Contents
The Poetry o f the Southern D ynasties
3 11
Tao Qian (Tao Yuan-ming, 365-427)

Confucius, Analects XI.26
Seasons Shift
Biography of Master Five Willows
Dwelling in Peace on the Double Ninth
Drinking Wine V
Returning to Dwell in Gardens and Fields I
Moving My Dwelling I
The Sixth M onth of 408: We Had a Fire
Begging
Reading the Classic o f Mountains and Seas I
312
312
313
314
315
316
316
317
317
318
-318
Xie Ling-yun (385 433)

'
Fu-chun Isle
Written on the Lake, Returning from the Chapel at Stone Cliff
Climbing an Upper Story by the Pool
Visiting the Southern Pavilion
319
319
320
321
322
Bao Zhao (ca. 414-466)

Hard Traveling IV
Hard Traveling II
Hard Traveling VI
Song of the Bright M oon
323
323
323
324
324
The Southern Courts

He X un (d. ca. 518)Performers on the Terrace of the
Bronze Sparrow
Xie Tiao (464-499), A Companion Piece for Xie Jin g
s
Terrace of the Bronze Sparrow55
Xiao Gang (503-551), Song of Yong-zhou
II North Isle
Source of Pain II
Song: Every Night
Roaming in the North Park by Night
Sending a Palace Lady Back by Night to the Rear Boat
O n a Lone Duck
New Swallows
The Reflection of a High Building in the Water
Liu Yan (Emperor W u of the Liang, 464-549), Zi-ye Song
Shen Yue (441-513)Going Out Early and Meeting an Old
Love, I Give This to Her in Her Carriage
Madam Shen (early 6th century). Song on Reflections in Water
W u Jun (469-520), Quatrains on Various Topics I
Wang Seng-ru (465-522)Spring Longings
Liu Xiao-chuo (481-539), O n a W oman Unwilling to
Come Forth
325
326
326
327
327
327
327
327
327
328
328
328
328
328
328
329
329
Contents
Y u X in (513-581)Respectfully Answering Drifting on
the River
Study in the Hills
A Companion Piece for Grand Master Yans Newly
Cleared Skies
The Image of the Southern Dynasties

Zhang Ji (ca. 767-ca. 830)A Ballad of the Yong-jia
Wen Ting-yun (ca. 812-866), A Song of Lord X ie
s Villa
Song for the Bank Where the Cock Crowed
Qian Qian-yi (1582-1664), In Jin-ling: A Second Series on
Watching a Chess Game (one of six) (1647)
Traditional Literary Th eo ry
329
330
330
330
331
332
333
334
335
Lu Ji (261-303)The Poetic Exposition on Literature (Wen fu)

Liu Xie (ca. 465-522), Weti-xin diao-long (The Literary
M ind Carves Dragons)
Its Source in the Way
Chapter 1
Spirit Thought: Chapter 26
Nature and Form
Chapter 27
Continuity and Variation: Chapter 29
Determination of Momentum
Chapter 30 (selection)
Hidden and Out-standing: Chapter 40
The Sensuous Colors of Physical Things
Chapter 46
The One W ho Knows the Tone: Chapter 48 (selection)
Cao Pi (187-226), A Discourse on Literature (Lun-wen)
336
343
344
346
349
351
353
354
355
358
359
The Tang Dynasty

THE TANG DYNASTY: IN TRO D U C TIO N
365
Tang Poetry: General Introduction

Occasions: "Sorry to Have Missed You"
Wang Wei (ca. 699-761), Answering the Poem Left by Mr. Su,
Nominally of the Bureau of Forestry, When He Stopped by
M y Villa at Lan-tian
Wei Ying-wu (737-ca. 792)Going to Visit Censor Wang on
M y Day O ff and N ot Finding H im Home
Qiu Wei (fl. 743) Walking in the Hills and Looking for the
Recluse, But Finding Him Not In
Jia Dao (779-845)Looking for the Recluse and N ot Finding
H im Home
Meng Hao-ran (ca. 689-740), Spending the Night in Reverend
Yes Mountain Chamber. I was expecting the senior Mr.
Ding but he did not come
371
371
371
372
372
373
373
Contents
Pei Di (fl. 720-750), I Chanced on Rain at Wang-kou and
Recalled M ount Zhong-nan: Thus I Offered the
Following Quatrain
Wang Wei, Answering Pei Di
Parting
Wang Wei, Sending M r. Yuan on His Way on a Mission
to An-xi
Parting
Meng Hao-ran, Parting from Mr. Xue at Guang-ling
Li Bo (701-762)Sending a Friend on His Way
A Song of Ming-gaoSending Off Mr. Cen, a Gentleman in
Retirement W ho Was Summoned to Court
374
374
374
375
375
375
376
376
Other Poem Types

Geng Wei (latter part of 8th century), O n the Set Topic: W ild
Goose on the Sands
Du Fu (712-770), Lone W ild Goose

D u M u (803-852), Early Migrating Geese
379
379
380
Character Types and Vignettes

Wang Jian (751-ca. 830)Palace Lyrics X C V
Y u H u (early 9th century), Song of the Southland
Li Bo, Lotus-Picking Song
Lyrics for the Girls of Yue I-V
Bo Ju-yi (772-846), Lotus-Picking Song
380
381
381
381
382
383
An Example of Verse Form

Wang Wei, Stopping by the Temple of Incense Massed
383
384
High Tang Poetry

W ang W ei (ca. 699-761)
378
385
385
PERSPECTIVE, M O TIO N , A N D ATTENTION
386
Written Crossing the Yellow River to Qing-he

Watching a Hunt
Sight-Seeing in the Moors Outside of Liang-zhou
386
386
387
THE IMAGE O F THE FARMER
387
Farming Homes by Wei River
387

Classic of Poetry XXXVI Hard Straits
Tao Qian, Returning to Dwell in Gardens and Fields III
Meng Hao-ran, Stopping by the Manor of an Old Friend
Gazing into the Wilds Under Newly Cleared Skies
To Pei D i
388
388
388
389
389
389
Contents
THE QUIET LIFE
390
When Living Quietly at Wang-chuan I Gave This to Pei Di

Villa on Zhong-nan Mountain
Answering Magistrate Zhang
390
390
390

The Fisherman (Chu-ci, author unknown, 3rd century B.C.?)
391
391
THE "W A N G STREAM CO LLECTIO N "
392
The Hollow by M eng

s Walls
Hua-zi H ill
Fine-Grained Apricot Wood Lodge
Jin Bamboo Ridge
Deer Fence
Magnolia Fence
Dogwood Strand
The Lane of Palace Ash Trees
Pavilion Overlooking the Lake
South Cottage
Lake Q i
Willow Waves
Rapids by the Luan Trees
Gold Dust Spring
White Stone Rapids
North Cottage
Lodge in the Bamboo
Magnolia Dell
Lacquer Tree Garden
Pepper Tree Garden
392
392
392
393
393
393
393
393
393
394
394
394
394
394
394
395
395
395
395
395
'
Meng Hao-ran (ca- 689-740)

Going from Luo-yang to Yue
Gazing from a Boat in the Early Morning
Early Cold on the River: Something on M y M ind
Other Voices in the Tradition .

Confucius, Analects XVIII.6
Li Bo (701-762)
395
396
396
396
397
397
397
LEGENDS A N D CHARACTERS OF THE YUE-FU
398
Parted by Great Distances

The Crows Cry by Night
398
399

Anonymous, Songs of the West
The Crows Cry by Night IV
Reproach
'
399
400
400
xvii
Contents
THE U N D YIN G
400
The Old Airs V

The Old Airs VII
A Song on Visiting Heavens Crone Mountain in a Dream:
O n Parting
Dialogue in the Mountains
400
401
POEMS ALMOST OF THIS W O R LD
403
Drinking Alone by Moonlight

Summer Day in the Mountains
Rising Drunk on a Spring Day, Telling M y Intent
Getting O ut What I Feel
A Lament for Old Mr. Ji, the Finest Brewer in Xuan-cheng
403
404
404
404
404
401
403
Han-shan: The Master of Cold Mountain

III
'
XVI
X X X II
C C X X X II
C C X X X III
404
405
405
405
406
406
The High Tang Quatrain

Zhang Xu, Peach Blossom Creek
Wang Han, Song of Liang-zhou
Wang Zhi-huan (688-742)Song of Liang-zhou
Parting
Climbing Stork Tower
406
406
407
407
408
408

Zhang Rong (444-497), Parting
408
408
Cui Guo-fu, Song of Xiang-yang

Midcurrent Song
A Little Chang-gan Song
Wang Chang-ling (ca. 690-ca. 756), Army Song
Song of the Spring Palace
Reproach in the Womens Chambers
Chu Guang-xi (707-760), The Roads of Luo-yangPresented
to the Director Lu Xiang (one of five)
Song of the Southland (one of four)
Jing-yun (monk), Painting of a Pine
Cen Shen (715-770)O n the Terrace of Cang Jies Invention of
Characters at the San-hui Temple
408
409
409
409
409
410
AN OUTING O N LAKE DONG-TING
411
410
410
410
411
Li Bo, Accompanied by My Kinsman Li Ye, Formerly Vice

Director of the Ministry of Justice, and by Jia Zhi, Formerly
Drafter in the Secretariat, I Go on an Excursion on Lake
Dong-ting (four of five poems)
411
Contents
Jia Zhi (718-772)O n First Arriving in Ba-lingJoining Li Bo
and Pei, We Go Boating on Lake Dong-ting (two of three)
Du Fu ( 712- 770)
412
413
Early Du Fu
Another Poem on M r. Zhengs Eastern Pavilion
A Mei-pi Lake Song
Boating on the Reservoir West of the City
413
414
414
416
Giving Account of Oneself

A Song of M y Cares When Going from the Capital
to Feng-xian
416
The Poetry of the Rebellion

The View in Spring
Lament for Chen-tao
Lament for Greenslope
Lament by the River
Jiang Village (two of three)
Bending River (first of two)
The Officer at Tong Pass
420
420
421
421
422
423
424
425
Qin-zhou and Cheng-du

Taking Down a Trellis
I Stand Alone
The River Flooded
River Village
Enjoying Rain on a Spring Night
417
c#
'
425
426
426
427
427
427
O n Painting
Painted Hawk
Ballad of the Painted Eagle
Song of a Painting
428
428
428
429
Kui-zhou and Du FiTs Final Years

The Diagram of Eight Formations
Ballad of an Old Cypress
Autumn Stirrings (eight poems).
Quatrain
Where Yangzi Meets the Han
End of Spring: O n M y Newly Rented Thatched Cottage
at Rang-xi III
Nights Midpoint
Sunlight Cast Back
431
432
432
434
439
439
Interlude: Xuan-zong and Yan g the Prized Consort

Bo Ju-yi (772846)Song of Lasting Pain
Chen Hong (early 9th.century). An Account to Go with the
Song of Lasting Pain
439
439
440
441
442
448
Contents
Du M u (803-852), O n Passing by Hua-qing Palace
(three quatrains)
Wang Jian (ca. 767-ca. 830)Gazing on Hua-qing Palace
at Daybreak
Li Shang-yin (ca. 813-ca. 858), Dragon Pool
Stirred by Something at M ount Li
Wang Jian (ca. 767-ca. 830)Ballad of the Former Palace
Passing by Lace-Crest Palace
Addendum: "The W hirl"
Yuan Zhen (779-831)The Girl W ho Danced the Whirl
Bo Ju-yi, The Girl W ho Danced the Whirl
Tang Literature o f the Frontier

Zhang Zheng-jian (mid-6th century), Crossing the
Barrier Mountains
Yu Shi-nan (early 7th century), I Watered M y Horse at a
Spring by the Wall: Imitating the Old Ballad
Lu Zhao-lin (ca. 635-689), Falling Snow
A Song
Luo Bin-wang (b. ca. 640), W ith the Army
A Ballad
452
453
454
454
454
455
455
455
457
459
460
460
461
461
The High Tang Frontier Poem

462
Wang Chang-ling (ca. 690-ca. 756)Out the Passes
462
Wang Wei, W ith the Army
A Ballad
462
Long-xi: A Ballad
463
Li Bo (701-762), The Old Airs X IV
463
M oon Over the Mountain Passes
464
The Turks Are Gone!
465
Wang Chang-ling, Variation on Hard Traveling
465
By the Passes
A Song (second of a set)
^ 466
Cen Shen (ca. 715-770)Song of White Snow: Sending Off
Assistant W u on His Return to the Capital
466
The Ballad of Running Horse RiverSending O ff the Army
on a Western Campaign
467
D u Fu, The Army Wagons
A Ballad
468
Mid- and Late Tang Frontier Poetry
Lu Lun (ca. 748-ca. 798), By the Passes
Wang Jian (ca. 767-ca. 830)W ith the Army
A Ballad
Zhang Ji (776-ca. 829)
Long-tou Ballad
Li He (790-816)Song for the Governor of W ild Goose Barrier
By the Passes: A Song
Guan Xiu (late 9th-early 10th century), By the Passes: Songs
(second of four)
Du Fu: The Formation of a Soldier
O ut to the Frontier (first series) IIX
469
470
470
470
471
471
472
472
473
Contents
Aftermath
Li Hua (ca. 715-ca. 774)A Lamentation at an
Ancient Battlefield
Coda
Lu Lun, Encountering a Wounded Soldier
M id- and Late Tang Poetry

Meng Jiao (751-814)
Tormented
Lying Sick
W hat Was in M y Heart on a Spring Day
Informal Composition
W hat Came to Me in a Mood
Plagiarizing Poems
r
Old M ans Bitterness
Something Touched Me One Night and I Try to Get It Out
Autumn Cares II
A Visit to the South Mountains
A Ballad of M ount Jing
Seeing O ff Reverend Dan X II
Answering a Friends Gift of Charcoal
I tried to climb Zhao-cheng tower . . .
475
475
477
477
478
478
479
479
480
480
480
481
481
481
482
482
482
482
483
483
Han Yu (768-824)
Autumn Thoughts (eighth of eleven)
Visiting the Temple of M ount HengThen Spending the Night
at the Buddhist Monastery: I Wrote This on the Gate Tower
Written Playfully to Zhang Ji
Mountain Stones
485
487
488
Li He (791-817)
Song of an Arrowhead from the Battlefield of Chang-ping
Little Su
s Tomb
Dream of Heaven
Song of a Young Nobleman at the End of Night
Release from Melancholy: Song (written under the flowers)
489
489
490
491
491
491

from History of the Eastern Han
Long Songs Following Short Songs
The King of Q in Drinking
Dont Go O ut the Gate!
Dont Plant Trees
Bo Ju-yi (772-846)
O n M y Portrait
What Came to M ind When Chanting M y Poems
484
484
492
492
493
493
495
496
496
496
497
xxi
Contents
Reciting Aloud, Alone in the Mountains
O n M y Laziness
Choosing a Dwelling Place in Luo-yang
Eating Bamboo Shoots
Winter Night
Salt Merchants Wife (in hatred of profiteers)
Du Mu (803-852)
Pouring Wine Alone
Written on the Kai-yuan Temple at Xuan-zhou
I Wrote This on the Tower . . .
Spring in the Southland
Three Poems Thinking on Past Travels
498
498
499
500
500
501
502
503
503
504
504
505

Liu Yu-xi, Quitting My Post at He-zhou and Visiting Jian-kang
505
505
Going Out on the Le-you Plain

Late Autumn in the Qi-an District
A Quatrain on the Pool Behind the District Office in Qi-an
Egrets
At the Yangzi and Han
Sent to Judge Han Chuo in Yang-zhou
The Yellow River at Bian-zhou Blocked by Ice
A Quatrain Written on the Road
506
506
507
507
507
507
508
508

Si-kong Tu, The Pavilion of Revising History
508
508
Yu Xuan-ji (mid-9th century)

Selling Tattered Peonies
Visiting the Southern Tower of Chong-zhen Temple
Seeing
Where the Recent Graduates of the Examination Have
Written Their Names
O n Yin-wu Pavilion
509
509
Li Shang-yin (813-858)
Left Untitled (second of two)
Left Untitled (one of four)
Again Passing the Shrine of the Goddess
Citadel of Sapphire Walls (first of three)
Midnight
Sunbeams Shoot
Frost and Moon
Chang E
Written During the Rain One Night and Sent Back North
The Sui Palace (2 versions)
510
511
511
512
513
514
514
514
515
515
516
510
510
Contents
Tang Tales (chuan-qi)
518
Two Tales of Keeping Faith

Shen Ji-ji (fl. ca. 800)
Ren
s Story
Li Jing-liang (fl. 794), Li Zhang-wu
s Story55
Two Tales of Faith Broken
Jiang Fang (fl. early 9th century), Huo Xiao-yu
s Story
Yuan Zhen (779-831)Ying-yings Story
518
518
526
531
531
540
The Song Dynasty

THE SONG DYNASTY: IN TRO D U CTIO N
Traditions of Song Lyric (Tang and Song Dynasties)

Bowing to the New M oon (late 8th century, attributed to Li
Duan or Geng Wei)
Anonymous (Dun-huang), to Bowing to the New M oon
(Bai xin yue) (before 850)
Anonymous (Dun-huang), to The Magpie Steps on the
Branch55 (Que ta zhi)
>
Anonymous (Dun-huang), to Washing Creek Sands
(Huan xi sha)
Treatment of a Motif: The Drunken Husband's Return
Anonymous (8th century?), to The Drunken Lord55 (Zui
gong-zi)
Anonymous (Dun-huang), to Fishermans Lyrics (Yu ge ci)
Wei Zhuang (834P-910), to Immortal in Heaven (Tian xian zi)
Xue Zhao-yun (early 10th century), to The Drunken Lord
(Zui gong-zi)
Yin E (early 10th century), to The Drunken Lord
(Zui gong-zi)
Anonymous (collected early 17th century), Hanging
Branch Song
Tang and Five Dynasties Lyrics

Huang-fu Song (early 9th century), to Dream of the
Southland M(Meng Jiang-nan)
Wen Ting-yun (d. 870), to Boddhisattva Barbarian
(Pu-sa man)
He Ning (898-955), to Mountain Flower (Shan-hua-zi)
Wei Zhuang (ca. 836-910), to Boddhisattva Barbarian
(Pu-sa man)
Ou-yang Jiong (896-971), to The South Country
(Nan xiang zi)
to Washing Creek Sands (Huan xi sha)
553
559
560
560
561
562
562
562
563
563
563
564
564
565
565
565
566
566
567
567
Contents
Li Yu (937-978), to Boddhisattva Barbarian (Pu-sa man)
to Pleasure in the Lovely W om an
(Yu mei-ren)
(attributed), to The Pleasures of Meeting
(Xiang-jicin huan)
568
568
The Party Songs of the Eleventh Century

Yan Shu (991-1055), to Breaking Through the Ranks
(Po zhen-zi)
Ou-yang X iu (1007-1072) (or Feng Yan-si), to Butterflies
Love Flowers (Die lian hua)
to KImmortal by the River
(Lin-jiang xian)
569
The Songs of Romance

Yan Ji-dao (mid-llth-early 12th century), to Butterflies
Love FlowersM (Die lian hua)
to Partridge Weather (Zhe-gu tian) (2 versions)
to The Springtime of Marble Halls (Yu-lou chun)
to Young Ruan Returns (Ruan lang gui)
Liu Yong (987-1053), to Turning Back After Seeing the
Flowers (Kan-hua hui)
to Joy at Midnight (Ye-ban le)
Zhou Bang-yan (1056-1121)to Gallant (Feng-liu-zi)
to ccSpring in the Mansion of Jade55 (Yu-lou chun)
569
569
570
570
570
571
572
572
573
573
574
575
576
577
Su Shi (1037-1101)
to Song for the River Tune (Shui-diao ge-fou)
to Immortal by the River (Lin-jiang xian)
to Settling W ind and Waves (Ding feng-bo)
to The Charms of Nian-nuM (Nian-nii jiao): Meditation on
the Past at Red Cliff
579
Li Qing-zhao(1084-ca. 1151)
Like a Dream (Ru meng ling)
to Note After Note (Sheng-sheng man)
to Southern Song (Nan-ge-zi)
to Free-Spirited Fisherman (Yu-jia ao)
580
580
581
581
582
The Early Southern Song

Lu You (1125-1210)to MPartridge Weather (Zhe-gu tian)
X in Qi-ji (1140-1207)to Clear and Even Music (Qing-ping
yue). An account on the Censer Mountain Road
to KWest River M o o n (X i jiang yue). Expressing what was
on my mind
to Ugly Slavew (Chou nu-er)
The Master Craftsmen
Jiang Kui (ca. 1155-1221), to Red Filling the River
(Man jiang hong)

to Fragrance from Somewhere Unseen (An xiang)
577
Sf7
578
578
583
583
584
584
584
585
585
586
Contents
Shi Da-zu (fl. 1200), to Scent of Lace (Ji luo xiang). On
spring rain
W u Wen-ying (ca. 1200-ca. 1260), to W ind Enters Pines
(Feng ru song)
to Night-Closing Flowers (Ye he hua). Going along the
Crane River on my way to the capital, I moored at Feng
Gate and was moved to write this
to Treading the Sedge (Ta suo xing)
587
588
589
589
Interlude: Li Qing-zhaors Epilogue to Records on Metal

and Stone
591
C lassical Prose
597
Memorial
Han Yu (768-824)Memorial Discussing the Buddhas Bone
598
Essay
Liu Zong-yuan (773-819)A Theory of Heaven
601
Letters
Bo Ju-yi (772-846)Letter to Yuan Zhen (Yuan Wei-zhi)
603
603
597
601
Prefaces
Anonymous (member of Hui-yuans circle)A Preface for the
Poems Written on an Excursion to Stonegate
Han Yu, A Preface on Sending Li Yuan Back to
Winding Valley
Ou-yang X iu (1007-1072)Preface on Sending X u Wu-tang
O ff on His Way Home South
605
Accounts of Visits (you-ji)

Liu Zong-yuan, An Account of the Small Hill West of Gu-mu
Pond {from the Eight Accounts of Yong-zhou
An Account of Little Rock Rampart Mountain (from the

Eight Accounts of Yong-zhou
Ou-yang Xiu, An Account of the Pavilion of the Drunken
Old M an
610
Funerary Genres
Cao Zhi (192-232), A Lament for Golden Gourd, Jin-hu
Tao Qian, A Sacrificial Prayer for the t)ead on M y Own Behalf
Parables
Liu Zong-yuan, Three Cautionary TalesThe Fawn
of Lin-jiang
The Story of the Fuban, or Pack Beetle
Informal Prose
Su Shi (1037-1101), Written 'After Seeing the Paintings of
W u Dao-zi
605
607
609
Contents
Fu Shan (1609-1684), Colophon on the Account of the Scarlet
Maple Tower
Place
619
620
The Master of Cold Mountain (Tang)
Su Shi, Account of a Visit to Lu Mountain (from The Forest
o f Records)
Account of Stone Bell Mountain
620
621
622
Thrills
Chao Bu-zhi (1053-1110), An Account of a Visit to North
Mountain at Xin-cheng
Cheng Min-zheng (ca. 1446-ca. 1500)Night Passage Over
Two Passes
624
People and Places

Wen Zheng-ming (1470-1559), Preface to the Joint
Collection of Poems on Seeking Plums on
Xuan-mu M ountain
Ou-yang X iu (1007-1072)An Account of the Pavilion on
M ount Xian
627
A City: Yang-zhou
Du M u, Getting Something O ff M y M ind
Presented to Someone on Parting
Yang-zhou (first of three)
Written on Chan-zhi Temple in Yang-zhou
Zhang H u (9th century), Roaming Free in Huai-nan
Jiang Kui (1155-1221), to Yang-zhou Andante
Su Shi, to M oon Over West River
on Level Mountain Hall

Wei X i (1624-1680)An Account of the Reconstruction of
Level Mountain Hall
The Ornam ents of "Literati" Culture
624
625
627
629
630
631
631
631
632
632
632
633
634
637
Connoisseurship
637
Ou-yang X iu3Seal Script in Stone (1045)
638
Su Shi, Shi Cang-shus Hall of Drunken Ink (1068)
640
O n the Paintings of Bamboo by Wen Tong in the
Collection of Chao Bu-zhi (first of three)
642
from An Account of Wen Tongs Paintings of the Slanted
Bamboo of Yun-dang Valley
642
O n the Painting of Tiered Bluffs and the Misty River in the
Collection of Wang Ding-guo (1088)
643
Wang An-shi (1021-1086)M y Brother Wang Chun-fu Brings Out a
Painting by the M onk Hui-chong and Engages Me to
Write a Poem on It
644
Contents
from Ou-yang Xiu, Remarks on Poetry (Shi-hua)

Su Shi, Some Time Ago in Chen Han-qing
s House
in Chang-an. _
Ordinary Things
Mei Yao-chen (1002-1060)A Companion Piece to Xie
Jing-chus Spending the Night in M y "Wifes Study,
Hearing Mice, and Being Greatly Troubled
In the Rain, Spending the Night in the Library of Messrs.
Xie, Xu, and Pei
At a Party Given by Fan Zhong-yan the Guests Spoke of
Eating River-Hog
or the Blowfish
Yang Wan-li (1127-1206)A Child Playing with Ice
Watching Ants
Su Shi, Thirteen Companion Pieces for Wen Tongs Garden
Pool in Yang-zhou55: Bridge Over the Lake
Yang Wan-li, June 10
1177, Traveling by Boat to Take Up
M y Post at Pi-ling . . .
Su Shi, East Slope
.Lu You (1125-1210)Snowy Night
Drawing Water from the Well and Making Tea
Zhou M i (1232-1298)Sunning Oneself (from
,
Qi-dong ye-yu)
Chao Duan-you (11th century), Spending the Night at an Inn
Outside the West Gate of Ji-zhou
Huang Ting-jian (1045-1105)August 17Sleeping in Daytime
646
647
649
649
650
650
651
651
652
652
652
653
653
654
656
656
Pastoral Scenes
He Z hu (10631120)A W alk in the Wilds
Kong Ping-zhong (d. after 1101)The Grain Is Ripe
Ou-yang Xiu, Ox
Fan Cheng-da (1126-1191)A Description of Walking in the
Meadows on Cold Food Festival (first of two)
Lu You, Visiting West-of-the-Mountain Village
Walking in the Wilds
Fan Cheng-da, Various Occasions of Interest in the Fields and
Gardens Through the Four Seasons
XV
XXXI
X X X III
XL
X LIV
T.TT
656
657
657
657
W it
660
Yang Wan-li, Strolling Along a Juniper Path in the Morning
(second of two)
657
658
658
659
659
659
659
659
659
660
660
xxvii
Contents
Lu You, O n the Three Peaks of Magic Stone Mountain
Plum Blossoms III (1202)
Yang Wan-li, For Play
Coda: Self-Consciousness
Lu You, Meeting a Gentle Rain on the Sword-Gate Pass
Road (1172)
In Moonlight
Su Shi (1037-1101)
Account of the Hall of Precious Artworks

to Fragrance Fills the Yard (Man-ting fang)
Account of the Terrace Passing Beyond
Getting Up at Night in a Boat (1079)
Visiting White Waters. Written for my son Su Mai (from The
Forest o f Notes)
Account of a Visit One Night to Cheng-tian Temple (from The
Forest o f Notes)
O n the Winter Festival I Visited Lone Mountain and the Two
Monks Hui-jin and Hui-si (1071)
Account of a Visit to Pine River (from The Forest o f Notes)
The Ocean Mirage at Deng-zhou (1085)
Companion Pieces to Chen Xiangs Peonies on a Winter Day
(1073) (first of four)
from Eight Poems on Eastern Slope (1081)
The Second Poetic Exposition on Red Cliff
to Down and O ut D runk (Zui luo-po), Written on Leaving
Jing-kou
Tong-chao Tower at Zheng-mai Station (1100)
Crossing the Sea, June 201100
Relationships
A Companion Piece to Su Ches teThoughts of Former Times at
Mian-chi
[Ou-yang Xiu], O n the Carved Stone Screen of W u Kuithe
Han-lin Academician (1056)
Ou-yang Xiu Asks Me to Write a Poem on a Stone Screen That
He Owns (1071)
An Account of the Pavilion for Setting the Cranes Free
Song Classical Poetry

Ou-yang Xiu (1007-1072)
O n the Pavilion of the Drunken O ld M an in Chu-zhou
A Companion Piece to Liu Chang
s Clear Heart Paper
Boating on West Lake: to Zhang Shan, Academician and Fiscal
Commissioner
White Egret
xx v iii
660
661
661
661
661
662
663
663
665
665
667
668
668
669
670
672
673
674
675
676
677
677
678
678
679
680
681
684
684
685
686
687
688
Contents
Mei Yao-chen (1002-1060)
A Lone Hawk Over the Buddha Tower of the Monastery of
Universal Purity
Writing of M y Sorrow
Listening to a Neighbor Singing at Night
O n March 26
1048I Had a Dream
Crescent M oon
688
688
690
690
690
691
W ang An-shi (1021-1086)

The Temple of Shooting Stars
Meditation on the Past at Jin-ling III
Climbing Bao-gong Pagoda
Wu-zhen Monastery
One Day Coming Home Ballad (on the death of his wife)
691
692
692
693
693
Huang Ting-jian (1045-1105)

Following the Rhymes of Huang Da-lins Sent to Su Che
To Huang Ji-fu
Asking for a Cat
693
694
694
695
Lu You (1125-12 10)

Small Garden
Gazing in the Evening North of M y Cottage

End of Spring (1197)
Lonely Cloud
Song of Draft Cursive
For M y Sons
'
695
Yang Wan-li (1127,-1206)

Yan Ji-sheng, Chancellor of Education, Invited His Junior
Colleagues to Visit the Pei Garden
During an Intercalary August After the Arrival of Autumn
It Was Hot in Evening and I Went to Be C oqI in the
Prefectural Garden (first of two)
One Day Before New Years Eve, While Returning by Boat
We Moored at Qu-wo Market, and I Spent the Night in
Zhi-ping Temple
Just Before the Mid-March 1164 Festival, I Heard That My
Father Was not Feeling W e ll. . . (first of two)
Two Companion Pieces for Li Tian-lin (first of two)
Ten Stanzas on the Autumn Rain (one of ten)
March 5, 1180. In early morning crossing on the Great Marsh
ferry (first of two)
Going to the Palace Library Early in the Morning with the
Crescent M oon Just Rising
A Child Crying for Food
691
695
696
696
697
697
698
698
698
699
699
700
700
700
701
701
702
Contents
Coda
Wang Yuan-liang, Songs of Hu-zhou (third of ninety-eight)
to Leaves of a Thousand Lotuses (Qiau-he ye)
Interlude: W en Tian-xiang (1236-1282) and the Fall of

the Song
from The Account of the Compass (Zhi-nan lu)
702
702
703
704
705
The Yuan and Ming Dynasties

THE YU AN AND M IN G DYNASTIES: IN TRO D U CTIO N
723
Yuan Vernacular Song

Guan Han-qing (late 13th-early 14th century), to A Spray of
Flowers (Not Giving In to Old Age)
Zhong Si-cheng (14th century), from a song sequence to A
Spray of Flowers (A Word About Ugly Studio)
X u Zai-si (14th century), to Dead Drunk in the East W ind
(Chen-zui dong-feng)
Bo Pu (1226-after 1306)to Victory Music (De sheng yue)
Qiao Ji (d. 1345), to Lii-yao-bian, O f Myself
Wang He-qing (late 13th century), to Heaven Drunk
(Zui'zhong Tian)Big Butterfly
to Helped Home Drunk (Zui fu gui)
Lan Chu-fang (14th century?), to Four Pieces of Jade
(Si-kuai yu)} Passion
Guan Han-qing, to A H alf (Yi-ban-er)
X u Zai-si, to M oon Palace (Chan-gong qu), Spring Passion
Zhang Ke-jiu (ca. 1280-after 1348)to Someone Leaning on
the Balustrade (Ping-lan ten), By the Lake
Guan Yun-shi (1286-1324), to Clear River (Qing-jiang yin)
Zhang Yang-hao (1270-1329)to Sheep on the Hillside
(Shan-po yang), Thoughts on the Past at Tong Pass
Anon., to Drunk in an Age of Peace (Zui tai-ping)
Ma Zhi-yuan (1260-1325)
to Heaven Pure Sand (Tian jing sha)Autumn Thoughts
to Shou-yang Melody (Shou-yang qu)9 Clearing Haze at a
Market in the Hills
to Shou-yang Melody (Shou-yang qu)A Sail Returns to the
Distant Shore
to KShou-yang Melody (Shou-yang qu)3 Evening Bells in a
Misty Temple
to Shou-yang Melody (Shou-yang qu)y Evening Sunshine in
a Fishing Village
728
729
731
734
735
735
736
736
736
737
737
738
738
738
739
4
*
739
740
740
740
740
741
Contents
to Shou-yang Melody (Shou-yang qu)Autumn Moonlight
on Lake Dong-ting
A Suite on Autumn Thoughts
I. to A Boat Going by Night (Ye xing cbuan)
II. to Tall Trees Far Away (Qiao-mu yao)
III. to Celebrating the Xuan-he Reign (Q ing Xuan-he)
IV. to The W ind That Brings Down Plum Blossoms
(Luo-mei-feng)
V. to W ind Enters Pines (Feng ru song)
VI. to Keep Stirring Things U p
(Bo-bu-duan)
VII. to Feast at the Pavilion of Parting (Li-ting yan sha)
Variety Plays: G uan Han-qing, Rescuing One o f the Girls

(fiu feng-chen)
741
741
741
742
742
742
742
742
743
744
from The Romance o f the Gods (Feng-shen yan-yi): Ne-zha

and His Father
Episode XII: Ne-zha Is Born into the W orld at Chen-tang Pass
Episode XIII: The High Immortal Unity Catches
Rock-in-the-Stream
Episode X IV The Reincarnation of Ne-zha from a*
Lotus Blossom
,
^
Late M ing Informal Prose

Li Zhi (1527-1602)O n the Child-Mind
^
Yuan Hong-dao (1568-1610), O n Chen Zheng-fus Collected
Works, Intuitive Grasp
Spider-Fighting
Letter to Li Zi-ran
Letter to Q iu Chang-ru
Tu Long (1542-1605), From the capital, to a Friend
Chen Ji-ru (1558-1639)A Colophon for The History
of Flowers
r
Zhang Dai (1597-1679)Night Theater on Gold Mountain
(The Dream Recollections of Tao-anw)
Mid-September on West Lake (The Dream Recollections
ofTao-an
Viewing the Snow from Heart of the Lake Pavilion

The
Dream Recollections of Tao-an
The Performance of Peng Tian-xi (The Dream Recollections

ofT'ao-ati )
Preface to Tracing West Lake in a Dream
Belatedness
Yuan Zhong-dao (1570-1623), A Preface to Poetry of the
Song and Yuan55
771
772
784
794
807
808
Bll
812
813
814
814
815
815
816
818
818
819
820
821
xxxi
Contents
Diary
Yuan Zhong-dao, from wAccount of M y Travels in Fei
Wang Xiu-chu, from Ten Days of Yang-zhou
Vernacular Stories: Feng Meng-long and Lang-xian

Feng Meng-long (1574-1646), Du Tenth Sinks the Jewel Box
in Anger (from Common Words to Warn the World,
translated by Robert Ashmore)
Lang-xian, Censor Xue Finds Immortality in the Guise of a
Fish (from Constant Words to Awaken the World
translated by Robert Ashmore)
Tang Xian-zu, Peony Pavilion: Selected Acts
823
824
826
834
835
856
880
An Introductory Comment on Peony Pavilion

Waking Suddenly from Dream (X)
Looking Over the Portrait (XXVI)
Secret Union (XXVIII)
881
882
892
896
The Qing Dynasty

THE Q IN G DYNASTY: IN TRO D U CTIO N
909
Li Yu, Silent Operas (Wu-sheng xi): "A n Actress Scorns

W ealth and Honor to Preserve Her Chastity" (translated by
Patrick Hanan)
ns
Kong Shang-ren, Peach Blossom Fan: Selected Acts
942
Prologue (I)October 1684

Teaching the Song (II)April 1643
Refusing the Trousseau (VII), May 1643
Sending the Fan (XXIII), January 1645
from Accepting the W ay (XL), September 1645
943
946
953
960
968
H ong Sheng (1605-1704), The Palace o f Lasting Life:
Selected Acts
Prologue and Argument (I)
Declaration of Love (II)
Bribe (III)
Outing on a Spring Holiday (V)
Omen (X)
The Music (XI)
Melody-Theft (XIV)
Bringing Her Fruit (XV)
The Circle for Dance (XVI)
973
975
976
983
988
995
1002
1008
1014
1020
Contents
Peeking at the Bathers (XXI)
Secret Pledge (XXII)
Jade Burial (XXV)
Gift of a Meal (XXVI)
Denouncing the Rebel (XXVIII)
Bells (X XIX )
Stocking-Viewing (XXXVI)
The Corpse Released (XXXVII)
Ballad (X X X V m )
The Immortars Recollections (XL)
Reunion (L)
1028
1033
1041
1048
1054
io 59
1063
1067
1087
1091
Pu Song-ling (1640-1715), Liao-zhai's Record o f Wonders

Lian-xiang
Xiao-cui
Blue M aid
110 3
1113
1120
ms
Qing Classical Poetry and Song Lyric

Cu Yan-wu (1613-1682)
1129
Autumn Hills (first of two)
Wu Wei-ye (1609-1671)
1130
Escaping the Fighting (fifth of six)

'
Escaping the Fighting (last of six)
A Lament for M y Daughter (first of three)
West Fields (first of four)
Mooring in the Evening
from Thoughts Stirred on Meeting the Gardener of the Royal
Academy in Nanjing
Wang Shi-zhen (1634-1711}
1103
Crossing the Ancient Barrier Pass in the Rain (1672)

On the Ba River Bridge: Sent Home to M y Wife (second
of two)
Farm Home by Cu-lai Mountain
O n the Qing-yang Road
What I Saw on the Northern Outskirts of Zhen-zhou
At Daybreak I Crossed the Ping-jiang River and Climbed on
Foot to the Summit of Crossing-Above-Clouds Mountain
Nara Singde (1655-1685)

to Like a Dream (Ru meng ling)
to KClear and Even Music (Qing-ping yue)
to Seeking Fragrant Plants (Xun fang-cao), Account of a
Dream in Xiao Temple
to (tGolden Threads55 (Jin4ii qu)3 Thoughts on the Anniversary
of M y Wifes Death
mo
1131
1131
1132
1133
1133
1 134
1135
1135
1135
1136
1136
1136
1136
1137
1137
1137
1138
1138
xxxiii
Contents
to ltButterflies Love Flowers (Die lian hua)3 On the Frontier
1139
1139
Zhao Yi (1727-1814)
Poems on My Dwelling in the Rear Park (second of nine)
Poems on M y Dwelling in the Rear Park (third of nine)
Returning on Yang Lake
Local Song
In Bed
Livelihood
O n Poetry (two of five)
1140
1140
1140
1141
1141
1142
1143
1143
Huang Jing-ren (1749-1783)

Written at Night at an Inn in the Hills (second and third
of three)
1144
[title lo s t]
'
Visiting Ju-fa-yuan Temple with Wang Qiu-cheng and

Zhang He-chai
A Companion Piece to a Poem by Qian Bai-quan
Dreaming of a Friend One Night
Offhand Compositions
New Years Eve 1774
1144
1144
1145
1145
1145
1146
Gong Zi-zhen (1792-1841)

Poems of the Year ]i-hai, 1839
V
LXXXVI
CXXV
CLXX
Another Repentance
From Spring to Autumn of 1827 Some Things Came to Me
Which I Wrote Down Haphazardly (last of fifteen)
1146
1147
1147
1147
1147
1148
1148
Huang Zun-xian (1848-1905)

O n Reaching Hong Kong
Various Responses on an Ocean Voyage (one of fourteen)
1149
1149
1150
Q iu Jin (1879-1907)
Mr. Ishii of Japan Seeks a Matching Verse (using his rhymes)
O n the Yellow Sea: A M an from Japan Sought Some Verses
and Also Showed Me a M ap of the Russo-Japanese W ar
1150
1150
1151
W ang Guo-wei (1877-1927)

to Putting on Lipstick (Dian jiang chun)
1151
1152
1152
Selected Further Readings
1153
1148
Acknowledgments
1165
Index
1167
Timeline
H IST O R Y
LITERATU RE
Founding of the Zhou Dynasty 1020 b.c . West

ern Zhou
the Temple Hymns of the Classic of Poetry

(Shi-jing) and the earliest sections of the
Classic of Documents (Shu~jing)
Zhou capital moved east, beginning of the

Eastern Zhou and the period of The Springs
and Autumns o f Lu (Chun-qiu) 770
b .c
Classic of Poetry reaches its final form ca.

600 b .c .
Confucius ca. 552-479 B.C.
Beginning of the Warring States period 403 b .c .
Period of the "Hundred Schools" of Chinese
thought
Qin unification 221

Fall of Q in 206 b .c .
b .c
Beginning of Western Han
Reign of Emperor Wu of Han 140-86 b .c .

Establishment of the Music Bureau (yue-fu) 120
The Zuo Tradition

Zhuang Zhou and the early chapters of the
Zhuang-zi
Qu Yuan (ca. 340-299 B.C.) and the
traditional date of the HLyrics of Chu
(Chu-ci)
Schemes of the Warring States (Zhan-guo ce)
Mao Commentary to the Classic of Poetry
Jia Yi (200-168 B.C.), poetic expositions and
essays
Mei Sheng (d. 140 b.c .)
? poetic expositions attributed to Song Yu
poetic expositions (fu) of Si-ma Xian-ru (179
117B.C.)
B.C.
Chinese expansion into CentraAsia

Usurpation of Wang Mang 8
b .c .
Restoration of Han and beginning of the Eastern

Han a .d . 25
Buddhism introduced into China 1st century
Jian-an reign (196-220). Power in North China
in the hands of Cao Cao
Formal end of the Han and beginning of the
Three Kingdoms (220-265)
Jin Dynasty reunifies China 280

North China falls to non-Chinese invaders 316;
the Jin court is reestablished south of the
Yangzi. Beginning of the Southern Dynasties
317-589
Historical Records of Si-ma Qian (ca. 15487

B.C.)
final form of the wGreat Preface to the

Classic of Poetry
Ban Gu (a.d. 32-92), The Han History
period of anonymous yue-fu and old poems ?
Wang Can (177-217), poet
Cao Cao (155-220)ruler and poet

Cao Zhi (192-232), poet and Cao Cao's son
Ruan Ji (210-263), poet and recluse
Lu Ji (261-303). The Poetic Exposition on
Literature
Wang Xi-zhi, Preface to the t(Orchid Pavilion
Poems 353
Timeline
Rise of the influence of Buddhism and major
projects of sutra translation
Sui conquers Chen and reunifies China 589

Tang Dynasty founded 618
Reign ofXuan-zong (712-756), the "High Tang"
Tang wars in Central Asia
An Lu-shan Rebellion 755
The "Mid-Tang"
The "Late Tang"
Fall of the Tang 906; beginning of the "Five

Dynasties"
Song Dynasty reunifies China 960
Initial development of Neo-Confucianism

Enactment of Wang An-shi's "New Laws"
policy 1069
Commercial and state-sponsored printing
Jin invaders capture the two Song emperors and

the Song is reestablished in the South 1127
Zhu Xi (1130-1200), Neo-Confucian
philosopher and commentator on the
Classics
Hang-zhou, the Southern Song capital,
flourishes with major development of
commercial printing
Tao Qian (365-427), poet and recluse

Xie Lingyun (385-433), landscape poet
Bao Zhao (ca. 414-466), poet
Liu Xie (ca. 465-522)critic and author of
Wett-xin diao-long
the poetry of the Southern courts
Yu Xin (513-581), poet
Meng Hao-ran (ca. 689-740)poet

Wang Wei (ca. 699-761), poet
Li Bo (701-762), poet
Du Fu (712770)poet
Tang tales (chuan-qi)
Meng Jiao (751-814)poet
Li He (791-817), poet
Liu Zong-yuan (773-819), essayist
Han Yu (768-824), poet and essayist
Yuan Zhen (779-831), poet and author of
Ying-ying
s Story
Bo Ju-yi (772-846) poet, Song of Lasting
Pain
Du Mu (803-852), poet
Li Shang-yin (813-858), poet
Yu Xuan-ji, poet
Wen Ting-yun (d. 870)poet and early
lyricist
Wei Zhuang (ca. 836-910), poet and lyricist
Li Yu (937-978), last emperor of the
Southern Tang, lyricist
Liu Yong (987-1053), popular lyricist
Yan Shu (991-1055), lyricist
Mei Yao-chen (1002-1060)poet
Ou-yang Xiu (1007-1072)
poet, lyricist, and
essayist
Wang An-shi (1021-1086), poet and
statesman
Su Shi (10371101)
poet, lyricist, essayist,
painter, calligrapher
Yan Ji-dao, lyricist
Huang Ting-jian (1045-1105), poet
Zhou Bang-yan (1056-1121), lyricist
Li Qing-zhao (1084-ca. 1151), lyricist,
Epilogue to Records on Metal and Stone
Fan Cheng-da (1126-1191), poet
Yang Wan-li (1127-1206), poet
Xin Qi-ji (1140-1207), lyricist
Lu You (1125-1210), poet and lyricist
Jiang Kui (1155-1221), lyricist
Wu Wen-ying (ca. 1200-ca. 1260), lyricist
Timeline
Fall of the Southern Song; the Yuan reunifies
China 1279
Fall of the Yuan; founding of the Ming 1368

Archaists, advocating imitation of earlier
models, dominate classical literature,
provoking reaction and growing interest in
vernacular literature
Fall of the Ming; founding of the Qing 1644
Compilation of the Complete Tang Poetry 1705
Wen Tian-xiang (1236-1282), The Account

of the Compass
Yuan vernacular song
Guan Han-qing
s variety play, Rescuing One
of the Girls
Li Zhi (1527-1602), philosopher
Yuan Hong-dao (1568-1610), poet and
essayist
Tang Xian-zu (1550-1617)Peony Pavilion
The Romance of the Gods (16th century)
Ten Days of Yang-zhou (1645) by Wang
Xiu-chu
Feng Meng-long (1574-1646), story writer
and collector of vernacular literature
Lang-xian, story writer, Censor Xue Finds
Immortality in the Guise of a Fish
Wu Wei-ye (1609-1671), poet
Zhang Dai (1597-1679)essayist
Li Yu (1611-1680), An Actress Scorns
Wealth and Honor . . .
1
Gu Yan-wu (1613-1682), poet and scholar
Wang Shi-zhen (1634-1711), poet
Nara Singde (1655-1685), lyricist
Pu Song-ling* (1640-1715), Liao-zhais
Record of Wonders
final vefsion of The Palace of Lasting Life
(1688) by Hong Sheng
Peach Blossom Fan (1699) by Kong Shangren
Wu Jing-zi (1701-1754)
novelist, author of
The Scholars (published 1803)
Cao Xue-qin (1715-1763), novelist, author
of Story of the Stone
Zhao Yi (1727-1814)poet
Opium War begins 1840

Tai-ping tian-guo Rebellion 1850-60s
Boxer Rebellion begins 1899
Fall of the Qing; establishment of the Republic

1911
Huang Jing-ren (1749-1783)poet

Gong Zi-zhen (1792-1841), poet
first publication of Story o f the Stone (1791)
Huang Zun-xian (1848-1905), poet and
diplomat
Qiu Jin (1879-1907), poet and revolutionary
Wang Guo-wei (1877-1927), poet, scholar,
and Qing loyalist
May 4 movement (1919) advocating the use
of the vernacular in all writing
Introduction
The Chinese literary tradition extends continuously from early in the first millennium
b .c . to the present. It was until very recently the basis of all Chinese reading, and a
literate adolescent could read all but the earliest works in this tradition with little
difficulty, if not always with perfect accuracy. The tradition's growing body of
worksthe classics, philosophy, history, and literature unified Chinese civiliza
tion through its long history and across regional divisions of language.
As was true of ancient civilizations in general, what we now call literature was
initially inseparable from history and thought. The stories of legendary heroes were
neither history nor fiction in the modern sense, but the beginning of both: the
"philosopher's" fantastic speculations admitted no clear differentiation between ver
bal invention and thought; and the lyric poem was considered the embodiment of
moral and historical truths.
A sense of "literature" as a category of writing distinct from thought did even
tually begin to take shape, although it was not always "literature" in the same way
we use the term in the twentieth century. Like our own concept, the scope and de
finition of Chinese literature changed over the centuries. Poetry and non-fiction (in
cluding essays, letters, and even political documents) were considered serious lit
erature; novels and prose fiction were not fully accepted as true literature until the
last century in China nor in England and Europe, for that matter. Drama, though
immensely popular and sophisticated, acquired only marginal legitimacy in China.
Yet these works, both "high literature" and the popular genres of fiction and drama,
were perhaps the most beloved component of the textual unity of Chinese civiliza
tion. A nineteenth-century merchant, a Buddhist monk, and a Confucian official may
have held profoundly different values; the nature and depth of their educations may
have differed greatly; but all three would probably have known, loved, and memo
rized a few of the same poems by Li Bo. They would have memorized the poems
as children and recited them throughout their lives when the occasion seemed ap
propriate.
Although the literary tradition was a unifying force, it was far from monolithic.
Broadly defined, Chinese literature offered its people a wide range of human possi
bilities and responses. Literature could confirm social values, twist them, or subvert
them altogether. The eighth-century poet Du Fu provided a Confucian voice of prin
cipled response to dynastic upheaval and social suffering. When Wen Tian-xiang,
the captured hero of the Song resistance to the Mongol invasion, awaited his exe
cution in Da-du, modern Beijing, he passed his time in prison composing poems
made up of memorized lines of Du Fu rearranged. Later, when the Manchus con
quered China in the mid-seventeenth century, Du Fu's poetry provided a model for
how to give an account of the human suffering that was caused. Likewise, if a per
xxxix
Introduction
son felt expansive, there were the poems of Li Bo; if a person hungered for the sim
ple life, there was the poetry of Tao Qian and Wang Wei; if a person was in love,
there was the poetry of Li Shang-yin or Tang Xian-zu's play, Peony Pavilion. Popu
lar literature in vernacular Chinese, especially prose fiction, also could represent the
impulses that the civilization repressed. A person might believe that a son owed ab
solute obedience to his father, but that same person as a reader could enjoy read
ing in The Romance of the Gods how the divine child Ne-zha chased down his fa
ther with murderous intent.
Readers of another age and culture often have the impulse to identify some uni
tary "Chineseness" in this literature~perhaps isolating the image of an old fisher
man in the misty mountains uttering words of Daoist wisdom. This imaginary China
is constructed out of the motives and history of outside cultures; it is important to
see this simplified image as such, and to recognize the immense diversity of tradi
tional China throughout its long history.
One of the most distorting elements of the conventional Western image of tra
ditional China is the belief in its changelessness. There were indeed continuities in
the culture and no sense of profound alienation from the past until the twentieth cen
tury, but in both fact and self-image, traditional China was intensely "historical, each
historical period characterized by its distinctive personality. Indeed, the reader's
a w a re n e ss o f th e p erio d o f w h ic h he o r she w a s rea d in g w a s an im p o rtan t part o f
the reading experience. Viewed from a large perspective, these works were part of
a ongoing creation of a myth of Chinese cultural history.
There is a vast body of premodern Chinese literature, as befits a very large and
old country that also had extensive commercial printing many centuries before Eu
rope. Even an anthology such as the present one cannot hope to encompass its im
pressive size; but it can accomplish the critically important task of recreating the fam
ily of texts and voices that make up a "tradition" rather than simply collecting some
of the more famous texts and arranging them in chronological order.
Vernacular and Classical
Written vernacular Chinese first appeared in Buddhist stories for performance be
fore illiterate audiences who could not have understood classical Chinese. The real
birth of vernacular literature, however, occurred in the thirteenth century, when com
mercial publishers sought to capitalize on the popularity of storytelling and theater
in the great cities. Publications of drama and fiction tried to catch the lively cadences
of the spoken language with linguistic usages that were strictly excluded from clas
sical Chinese. Thereafter classical Chinese was used for poetry, essays, and some
prose fiction, while vernacular was used for fiction, drama, and popular song.
The inevitable changes in language that occurred across millennia tended to
enter Chinese written literature by accretion. The literary form of Chinese known as
"classical" Chinese took its basic shape in the last three centuries B.C., and contin
ued to evolve until the present century through new usages, syntax, and forms of ar
gument. Although the influence of the evolving spoken language made itself felt in
subtle ways, "classical" Chinese grew increasingly distant from it. As early as the
Introduction
eighth century a.d . there appeared a written "vernacular" literature, incorporating
many elements of the spoken language.
The relation between "classical" and "vernacular" literature was roughly anal
ogous to the way in which Americans use written English for essays and American
for novels and plays. On the one hand, if an American, in writing an essay, uses
"gotta" to express necessity, readers will unconsciously wince. If, on the other hand,
a character says "must" in a play or a movie, the character is probably well edu
cated and English. Americans subconsciously think of an immense linguistic range
of literary and vernacular usage as one language, with different levels or "registers"
appropriate to different genres and situations. This was roughly the sense of the Chi
nese language before the twentieth century.
The Present Selection
This anthology is organized to represent the literary tradition, not as a static arrange
ment of "monuments" in chronological order but as a family of texts that achieve
their identity and distinctness in relation to one another. As in any interesting fam
ily, not all the voices sing in harmony. The anthology is neither a conservative no
tion of "canon" (though it contains a fairly comprehensive representation of that
canon), nor an attempt to construct a counter-canon of texts suppressed and over
looked (though they are present as well). Texts have been chosen because they re
spond to one another, either addressing similar issues or responding to other par
ticular texts. The tradition is a whole, and no anthology can be that whole; but an
anthology can show how the tradition works. Commentary is included both to pro
vide background information and to help non-Chinese readers notice what a pre
modern Chinese reader might have noticed instinctively.
The arrangement of the sections is primarily chronological, though these are in
terspersed with sections that cut across history to show differences and continuities
from a larger perspective. Within the chronological sections I will sometimes offer
a text from a thousand years in the future or from a thousand years in the past.
Chronological history is the basis of a tradition; but literature, where there are no
linguistic barriers, cuts across chronological history with ease. This is sometimes hard
to recognize for the reader of English, in whose tradition texts quickly show their
age. But in classical Chinese, a poem from a thousand years in the past might not
be e sse n tia lly d ifferen t from a po em w ritten yesterd a y; this is not to d e n y historical
change, but, to return to the metaphor of a family, it is like having many generations
living in the same house.
The anthologist who would create a version of a tradition faces one insur
mountable limitation: long works. Chinese vernacular works are often very long in
deed. Traditional novels frequently run to a hundred chapters, taking up four to five
volumes in English translation. Forty or fifty acts are common in the huge plays called
"dramatic romances, and they can fill a substantial volume in English. With nu
merous characters and intricate plots, these works do not easily lend themselves to
excerpts. I have included a few acts from two of the most famous dramatic romances
and a more extensive selection (about two fifths of the whole) from a third. To give
Introduction
the reader a sense of the vernacular novel,
have included three chapters which form
a coherent episide in The Romance of the Gods. The major premodern novels have
been translated, and they should be read outside of this anthology.
During the last fifty years there has been an immense amount of translation from
the Chinese, with the inevitable result that any anthology which seeks to present
many of the most famous works will inevitably repeat material translated elsewhere.
I have tried to incorporate works that have long been considered important, together
with some less well known ones. But my criterion of choice has been those texts
which, working together, tell a story that embodies the concerns of the tradition and
shows its coherence.
Translation is, for the scholar, a troubling art; it is literary history gone gambling.
Knowledge and skill are essential, but only a small part of an enterprise where luck
rules. Great fortunes are parlayed into nothing and small wagers become great. Im
portant texts come out flat, whereas minor pieces succeed splendidly. Everything
hangs on the moment, the translator's disposition, and the circumstantial sources
and resources of the language.
If there is a single principle behind these translations, it is translating texts
against one another: trying to create a complex family of differences that does not
correspond to, but attempts to reinvent some of the differences perceived by a good
reader of Chinese. Translators of Chinese often create their own vision of "Chinese"
literature as a whole, either articulated against English literature or as a possibility
within it. This elusive "Chineseness" was the one quality that was utterly beyond
the grasp of the traditional Chinese reader. In their own literature, they perceived
only differences in period, genre, style, and above all in the personalities of writers.
As a translator, I have the conviction that the "Chineseness" of these works will show
itself: my task is to find idioms that will catch the families of differences.
In his famous essay on translation, Friedrich Schleiermacher articulated the basic
antithesis between adapting the material to the conventions of the host language and
preserving the difference of the original, the antithesis that James J. Y. Liu was later
to call "naturalization" and "barbarization." Both extremes are, of course, bad trans
lation; and most translators work between them, choosing to "naturalize" some el
ements while respecting the difference of others. This translator is convinced that
the differences of the Chinese literary tradition are profound enough that we do not
need to exaggerate them. If I tend moderately to the "naturalization" camp, it is to
offer an occasional insight into why these works were compelling in their own
world, not why they have an exotic appeal to outsiders.
I have tried to avoid archaizing, but have at the same time endeavored to use the
levels of English style to mark the strong differences in period and register in the Chi
nese. I translate classical Chinese into English and vernacular into American. The lat
ter is a dangerous enterprise, and the discomfort that some American readers may feel
on encountering Americanisms may echo in some small way the discomfort that some
classically educated readers in the Ming and Qing felt on encountering the vernacu
lar. As in the Ming and Qing, Americans permit their contemporary language in fic
tion and drama, but object when vernacular usage slips into our own formal genres.
Readers who are already familiar with the conventions used in translating clas
sical Chinese literature may be surprised or puzzled, perhaps even annoyed, by some
of the conventions adopted here. Rather than rejecting such unfamiliarity, the reader
should reflect on the number of peculiar translation terms that the habit of recent
translators has made seem natural. To solve the numerous problems of translation
from the Chinese, Western scholars and translators have created their own special
dialect of English. While some of the strangeness of this language Is unavoidable,
much of it is the deadwood of habit that contributes unnecessarily to the sense of
the categorical strangeness of traditional Chinese literature.
I have tried, as they used to say, to "English" these texts; that is, to say some
thing as one would say it in English. When precision is implicit in the Chinese, I
have tried to be precise. For example, the Chinese wan, "ten thousand, is often used
when the English speaker would say "thousands" or "millions, and that is the exact
translation. In other cases, wan is used as a precise counter, and in those cases, "ten
thousand" is the exact translation.
What follows are some of the conventions adopted in this volume, both in large
matters of form and small matters of word choice.
Form
In translating poetry, I have generally tried to find very flexible English forms that do
not seem too artificial: forms that can recreate a set of d iffe re n c e s to echo the basic
formal differences of Chinese poetry. I have been usually, but not universally, con
sistent in the following policies. Chinese lines of four and five syllables are trans
lated as single English lines. Lines of Chu-ci and fu, in the original Chinese often
broken into hemistiches by lightly accented syllables, are left as single lines in En
glish with additional blank spaces in between the hemistiches. Lines of seven syl
lables are translated as a pair of lines with the second line indented, since the sevensyllable line began as a song line and was generally freer and looser than the
five-syllable line.
In stanzaic poems, I have left an additional space between stanzas. In poems
based on couplets, I have left additional space between couplets to set off the cou
plet as a unit. In poems before the fifth century, in quatrains, and in stanzaic poems,
I have not left the additional space between couplets. In general, if the couplets in
themselves seem to bear little formal weight, I have sometimes taken the liberty not
to represent them with the extra space.
I have generally capitalized the first word in a rhyming unit and left the subse
quent lines uncapitalized (however, in opening couplets where both lines rhyme, I
have left the second line uncapitalized). This further sets off the couplet as the basic
semantic unit in poetry, the equivalent of the sentence; and in song lyric this prac
tice also sets off the semantic units articulated by rhyme, which serves as a punctu
ation. Here again, in poems that seem to overflow the couplet, I have sometimes
taken th e lib e rty to suggest this b y p u n c tu a tio n an d lo w er-case letters at th e b e g in
nings of couplets.
There is no way to be perfectly consistent without making the chosen English
forms appear artificial. I have preferred inconsistency to obstrusiveness of form. There
is also no way to echo the forms of Chinese poetry and still produce translations that
are accurate and readable. Our purpose is rather to call attention to groupings such
as stanzas, couplets, and the rhyme units of song lyric, and to create a recognizable
structure of differences.
I have tried to keep footnotes to a minimum, though in some cases they were
u n a v o id a b le . I h a v e attem pted to g ive as m u ch o f the essential b ack g ro u n d as pos
sib le in m y o w n c o m m e n ts b efore an d after th e poem s.
The calendar
Traditional China used a lunar calendar in which the months of thirty days were num
bered from one to twelve, with discrepancies remedied by the addition of înter
calary months." The full moon was always to come mid-month, on the fifteenth. The
first three months were spring, the second three were summer, and so on. The be
ginning of the year came at different times on the Western calendar, but it was gen
erally some time in late January or in February. In the translations it is sometimes
necessary to use the Chinese numbered months, but where possible I have followed
the convention of translating the First Month as March, the Second Month as April,
and so on. Although this is inexact, it corresponds roughly to our sense of the sea
sons. The reader who, for some reason, wants to know the exact Chinese date can
convert immediately based on this system. I have not attempted to convert dates to
their exact counterparts in European dating; thus December 22,1076, is the twentysecond of the tenth month. The eleventh month, "January/' would be given as 1077.
1 have converted reign dates and cyclical dates into their corresponding Western
years.
Measures
I have kept a cun (varying through history from 2.25 to 3.2 centimeters) as an "inch";
a chi (10 cun) as a "foot"; and a zhang (10 chi) as a "yard." The zhang, from 2.25
to 3.3 meters, is the measure most seriously at odds with the English translation, and
in cases where the measure jars with common sense (and with the poetic measure
ren)f I have sometimes converted into true English feet and yards.
Through history the Chinese li varied from 405 to 576 meters, or very roughly
a third of a mile. I have used the translation "mile" and sometimes "league." In travel
accounts this can sometimes give the impression that the travelers are making ex
traordinarily good time.
The standard large number is wan, "ten thousand. When some exactitude is
called for, I translate it as "ten thousand" or "myriad"; however, when it is used
loosely, as it often is, I use the natural English counterpart of "thousands" or wmillions," depending on context.
Musical instruments
The qin: very few modern readers have heard a zither played; somewhat more may
have seen one (but probably still more have seen a qin or koto). The qin is nothing
like a lute, which has become the conventional translation. I have chosen to trans
late the q in as "harp" and the s e as "great harp." The k o n g -h o u , which in its verti
cal version is indeed a harp, will also have to be a harp. The choice of "harpis an
imperfect translation (especially if one thinks of a modern concert harp played by a
w o m a n in long w h ite robes), but its a n tiq u ity an d range o f asso cia tio n s seem p refer
a b le . T h e p ro b le m w ith translating a q in as "h a r p is th at th e q in has bridges.
The p/-pa in some ways more resembles a lute, but it was a popular instrument
rather than one with the cachet of elegance that the lute possesses. The playing tech
nique and timbre most closely approximate the Western mandolin, so I have trans
lated it thus.
Hu
The word Hu was used as a general term for the peoples of Central Asia, including
Indo-lranian peoples as well as Turks, and the people of the city states as well as
nomads. Hu refers to ethnicity
however imperfectly, rather than to a level of civi
lization, and "barbarian" is both inaccurate and often metrically offensive. Since in
many periods the Hu were Turkic peoples, Hu will usually be translated as "Turks."
I have great affection for the Turks; when they come out badly in a Chinese poem,
it represents Chinese prejudices rather than my own.
A lcoholic beverages
Jiu is conventionally translated as "wine." Although true wine, once it was imported
through Central Asia, was classified as jiu, most Chinese jiu was actually beer, made
from grain rather than fruit Sometimes
use "wine," but often I translate jiu as "beer.
The choice of wine as the translation of jiu is pure snobbery, to project the image
of the Mandarin as "cultivated." The process of making jiu ~as well as Western wine
and beer, though we do not see this in commercial production involves lees and
dregs. Thus the clarity or "thickness" of jiu is often referred to.
Buildings
There are several aspects of a traditional Chinese dwelling place that a reader needs
to keep in mind. Upper-class dwellings were generally compounds surrounded by
walls. The grander the family, the larger the compound and the more internal divi
sions it had. One entered a section of the compound through gates. Thus "layers"
or "tiersof gates suggested a wealthy household. The emperor's palace was spo
ken of as having a "thousand gates" and "nine tiers." Inside a gate was a "courtyard"
or "yard. There were verandahs around the house and balconies on the upper sto
ries. The term for a door to a chamber is different from the word for gate, but "to go
out" is usually to go out the gate rather than to go out the door. Windows were cov
ered with gauze or paper in the winter and often had elaborate grillwork. Since build
ings were open, swallows would often fly in and make their nests in the rafters.
A "terrace," in the language of conventional translation from the Chinese, is not
a patio. Chinese buildings were sometimes constructed on raised platforms of earth,
faced with brick or stone. These are "terraces,
A lou is, roughly, a building of more than one story that is usually wider than it
is tall. Lou were also built on top of city walls and over gates for defensive purposes.
When positioned there, a lou is a "tower"; when on the ground, a lou is sometimes
a "mansion," sometimes a "building," sometimes a "[room
upstairs, depending on
context
A ge gets translated as "tower, though it is generally (but not always) a build
ing of more than one story that is more narrow than it is high.
Houses were supposed to face south, with the women's quarters in the back of
the house on the north side.
Hair
Chinese women generally wore their hair in elaborate coiffures piled on the head.
Such coiffures used long pins decorated with the shapes of insects or flowers, al
though sometimes the hair was decorated with real sprays of flowers. Brows were
often shaved, then painted on high on the forehead.
Men also wore their hair long (the late imperial queue was a Manchu fashion
imposed on Chinese by the Qing conquest). Informally, one might wear a headband
or a turban, but officials wore caps, with their hair held in place by hatpins; thus, to
"pull out one's hatpins" was to give up office. Letting one's hair down had approx
imately the same associations in Chinese as it has in English.
Flora and fauna
As the natural history of North America differs from that of Europe, so that of China
differs from either. An American writing in English is in a rather bizarre situation.
Much of our received //terary language of flora and fauna is English and European
things and creatures with rich literary associations that the American has never or
hardly ever seen. It is well known that nightingales, non-natives of North America,
sing primarily in anthologies~"bird thou never wert." To take this already Europeanspecific language to translate Chinese flora and fauna is a double hardship for Amer
ican readers. In addition, we have become, by and large, city dwellers
and we know
brand names with more precision than plant names, not having the variations of
species and their signifiers available to us. 1suspect that the majority of American
readers can more readily distinguish a Coke from a Pepsi than a duckweed from a
waterlily. Chinese literature is, not surprisingly, filled with the flora and fauna and
minerals that w riters encountered every day. It is ironic that some of the most ex
otic features of translation from the Chinese are the most everyday growing things.
The reader of translation will never reach the rich associations of the language of
flowers in Chinese; but let me quote a passage from the English literary tradition
(Shakespeare's The Winter's-Tale) that m ight rem in d the English read er h o w effec
tive the n am es o f flo w e rs c a n be:
O Proserpina
For the flowers now that, frighted, thou letst fall
From D is
s wagon; daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,
xlvii
But sweeter than the lids of Junos eyes
Or CythereaJs breath; pale primroses
That die unmarried, ere they can behold
Bright Phoebus in his strength a malady
Most incident to maids; bold oxlips and
The crown imperial; lilies of all kinds,
The flower-de-luce being one. O , these I lack
To make you garlands of, and my sweet friend,
To strew him oer and o'er.
T h e tran slato r c a n n o t d o that. 1 h a v e , h o w e v e r, c h o se n th e fo llo w in g sy n o n ym s to
avoid some of the most painful m om ents of Chinese translation idiom
Wu-tong:The wu-tong is a relatively common tree in China, but is not native

to North America. It is slowly becoming naturalized as the "tung" tree. Per
haps I should have left it as such in the translations. The beech does not, so
far as I know, grow in China. The two trees are rather different, but both
are wide-spreading and beautiful. Admittedly, the wu-tong does its wides p re a d in g c o n s id e r a b ly h ig h e r u p th a n th e b e e c h ; b u t w h e n y o u see a b e e c h
in these translations, it is a wu-tong.
Let:
du-ruo be mint
jie-ju be wintergreen
h u i be lavender or sage
du-heng be asarum
z h i trees be hawthorns
zh i be white angelica
quan be the iris
bi-li be ivy
Ian be orchid
Early China
EARLY CHINA: PERIOD INTRODUCTION Through most of

the second millennium b_cv North China, along the Yellow
River, was ruled by a dynasty known as the Shang or Yin. The

Shang seems to have been a collection of city states under the
nominal rule of a high king, who probably exerted very little
direct authority over the farther reaches of the kingdom. The
Shang had writing

which survives incised on tortoise shells and
bones used for divination, if writing was used for other pur
poses, it was on softer materials that have long since disap
peared. What Shang literature might have been like we can only
guess: later ages invented songs and speeches that they attrib
uted to the Shang, but such pieces belong to the historical
imagination of those later ages rather than to the Shang itself.
The last century of the second millennium b.c. saw the rise
of a new domain, the Zhou, to the west of the Shang heartland.

In 1020 b .c . (though different dates have been prop osed), the
Zhou threw off its subordination to the Shang monarch and con
quered the Shang. A small kingdom suddenly found itself in
possession of large territories, and to administer those territo

ries, members of the royal house were sent out to preside over
feudal domains throughout North China. The Zhou feudal sys
tem, conceived as a family working together, was to have last
ing consequences.
During the early centuries of Zhou rule, writing was used
for divination, for commemorative inscriptions on bronze ritual vessels, and prob
ably for basic recordkeeping. It is unlikely that writing was ever used for longer texts
that we might recognize as "literature," even in the broadest definition of the term.
As in Greece and India, the earliest extant literature of China was originally oral and
passed down that way from one generation to the next.
There were two groups of works that were handed down orally and circulated
through the Zhou feudal domains. Neither group was stable: while conserving very
early material, both kinds of works were added to and varied over the centuries. The
first of these consisted of sayings and speeches that supposedly came from the early
kings, offering guidance in the principles on which the Zhou polity was founded;
this became the Classic o f Documents (Shu-jing). The second was a body of over
three hundred poems that became the Classic o f Poetry (Shi-jing). The Classic o f Po
etry contained ritual hymns and ballads that were supposed to date back to the be
ginning of the dynasty, along with more "recent" poems from the eighth and sev
enth centuries b .c . Because the Classic of Poetry grew and changed in the course of
oral transmission over these centuries, it is impossible to date the oldest pieces with
any certainty. Most of the works that can be dated by internal historical references
c o m e from b efore 600 B.C., th e date th at sch o lars often g iv e for th e c o lle c tio n b e
c o m in g m o re o r
ess fixed. B u t th ere are a fe w poem s that seem to d ate from the late
?ixth c e n tu ry B.C., w h ic h suggests th at th e c o lle c tio n c o n tin u e d to g ro w and e v o lv e .
During the Jong period in which the Classic o f Poetry was taking shape, the Zhou
Anthology o f Chinese Literature

monarchy was progressively losing power and authority. There was a brief period
of restoration of the royal power under the reign of King Xuan (827782 B.C.)but
d u rin g th e reign o f his su ccesso r,
non-Chinese in vad ers
sack ed th e royal ca p ita l and
forced the king to move east to a new capital near modern Luo-yang. Thus the first
period of Zhou rule was known as the Western Zhou, and the second period as the
Eastern Zhou. In the east, the area directly under royal control was very small, and
the Zhou king, though he retained ritual importance, was politically at the mercy of
the powerful feudal domains that surrounded him.

To the east of the new royal capital was the Duchy of Lu, a minor political power,
but a domain of great cultural importance. The rulers of Lu traced their ancestry back
to the Duke of Zhou, the virtuous younger brother of King Wu, who founded the
Zhou. Lu was the domain that prided itself on the preservation and observation of
proper Zhou customs. All the domains probably kept annals, but the court annals
of Lu during this period survive; these are the Chun-qiu, The Springs and Autumns
[ofiu], sometimes translated as The Spring and Autumn Annals. These annals cover
the years 720-481 B.C., and they give their name to the larger period of the eighth
through the fifth centuries b.c. The annals are terse statements of what of importance
happened during a given year; the second entry for 720 b.c. is characteristic: "The
third month. The Duke [of Lu] and Yi-fu of Zhu took a blood oath at Mie." Since
The Springs and Autumns were supposed to have been edited by Confucius (ca.
552-479 b.c.)/ Confucian scholars took their terseness as being replete with subtle
moral judgments through the particular words chosen.
The period of The Springs and Autumns was a violent, yet aristocratic age. There
was constant warfare throughout the domains as rulers of the larger domains strug
gledthrough violence and diplomacyto become Baf Overlord, and compel the
smaller domains to obey them. Yet warfare was still ceremonious and conducted
on a relatively small scale. This same period saw the rise of new powers on the mar
gins of the Zhou heartland. There was Qin in the West, the region from which the
Zhou had originally come; Qin gradually drove back the non-Chinese tribes that had
occupied the area and established itself as an important power. To the south, along
the middle reaches of the Yangzi River, was the Kingdom of Chu, initially the most
powerful of the peripheral domains, fn the southeast, where the Yangzi joined the
sea, were Wu and Yue. In varying degrees these new states felt little allegiance to
the Zhou kings and Zhou traditions.
Confucius was born in the Duchy of Lu toward the end of this period. Confu
cius was intensely committed to his own vision of an idealized Zhou past, a world
in which the old customs were followed, and through those customs, people treated
one another with a natural grace. Confucius taught that the institution of those Zhou
values within the present could restore harmony to society and the polity. From this
particularly historical vision came Confucius' more profound legacy to the culture:
the belief that the natural being and the social being in man could be reconciled.
As a teacher, Confucius was immensely persuasive and gathered a large fol
lowing of disciples, who became the founders of the Confucian "school. In his de
sire to politically institute his principles, however, he had no success. He traveled
from c o u rt to co u rt, o n ly to d is c o v e r th at the im p eratives o f p ra ctic a l p o litics o u t
w e ig h e d all o th er va lu e s. A fte r his d eath , the sayings attributed to h im m u ltip lied ,
Early China
but the Confucian school carried on his teachings and preserved a small corpus of
authentic sayings, which were at last written down (? third century b .c .) in a work
known as the Lun-yu, commonly translated in English as the Analects.
Not only did Confucius7teaching have no practical political consequences, but
for almost three centuries after his death, warfare simply became more pervasive
and efficient and residual Zhou customs more irrelevant. The period from 403 b.c.
until the unification of China under the Qin in 221 b.c. is known as the Warring
States. Earlier, during the Springs and Autumns period, the ministers and generals
of the domains were largely drawn from aristocratic families, often tied by descent
to the ruling house; far from tempering political behavior by family solidarity, this
often led to internecine feuding that sometimes crippled domains for generations.
As we move toward the Warring States, however, the rulers of the domains found
that by professionalizing their military and bureaucracy they could achieve greater
security and authority. In delegating authority to talented men from other domains
or from the lower gentry, the ruler held their personal allegiance. But although such
increasingly meritocratic governments gained in stability and efficiency, this new
government elite felt none of the restraints of traditional custom, and its decisions
were usually governed by expediency.
Rulers and ministers each seeking advantage for his own domain fostered a cul
ture of expert advisers and contending political philosophies, the so-called hundred
schools. This violent era of competition between the domains was one of the most
intellectually creative in China's history. The philosopher Mo-zi, who probably
live d in the late fifth c e n tu ry
b .c
., a d v o c a te d a ra d ic a l u tilitarian ism and th e re je c
tion o f all trad itio n s that d id not serve the c o m m o n good. H is d o c trin e o f "u n iv e r
sal lo v e " w a s n o th ing m ystic a l; rather, it w a s an im partial b e n e v o le n c e w h ic h , w h e n
universally practiced, would work toward the general good. One unfortunately
shortsighted doctrine of Mo-zi was that the improvement of techniques of defensive
warfare would contribute to general peace and stability. After the master's death,
the members of Mo-zi's well-organized school became technical experts in military
fortification. What Mo-zr could not foresee was the stimulus this provided for the
development of offensive warfare and siegecraft.
Certainly the most successful of these political experts was Shang Yang, who was
m a d e m in ister o f the w e stern d o m a in o f Q in in the m id d le o f th e fourth c e n tu ry
b .c .
Shang Yang was the parent of the political philosophy that would be known as Le
galism, which became state policy in Qin. Shang Yang advocated a code of strict
laws, applied universally and impartially. There was a system of consistent rewards
and, above all, severe punishments. The resources of the state were mobilized to
encourage agricultural production and to supply and train Qin's army. Whatever was
useless or an impediment to the smooth functioning of the state mechanism was to
be eliminated. Qin flourished under this system of total state control, and its armies
were soon the dread of all the other domains.
Legalism found its most eloquent exponent in the writings of Han Fei (ca. 280-ca.
233 b.c.), who advised Qin as it grew toward empire. By Han Fei's time, Legalism
had become intertwined with one strain of Daoism, represented by the Lao-zi, a
rhymed philosophical text attributed to the shadowy philosopher Lao-zi advocating
passivity and simplicity. The Lao-zi held that people were happiest when they were

ignorant; the Legalists agreed and saw the state as a means to keep them so. The
ruler at the center of the Legalist state apparatus was cast in the role of Daoist sage,
g o ve rn in g through non-action, his p o w e r co m in g through the im personal la w s rather
than the enforcement of royal will.

One Daoist thinker, however, took Daoist concerns in a very different direction.
This was Zhuang Zhou, writing in the middle of the third century b.c. Unlike most
of his contemporaries, Zhuang Zhou was a philosopher of the individual mind rather
than society, and he stressed the relativity of perception and values. The historical
Zhuang Zhou is believed to be the author of the early chapters of the book that bears
his name, the Zhuang-zi, and those chapters contain some of the most daring and
imaginative writing in early China.
T h e fourth an d third ce n tu rie s
b .c .
s a w a proliferatio n o f p h ilo s o p h ic a l sch o o ls
and types of expertise, all competing for the patronage of princes and the devotion
of disciples. There were agrarian primitivists, philosophical solipsists, witty logicians,
along with itinerant masters of pragmatic diplomacy and military science. Faced with
this rich array of competitors, the Confucian school found someone in the late fourth
century b.c. who could speak for Confucian values in a new way, adequate to the
intellectually sophisticated climate of the times. This was Meng-zi, commonly re
ferred to in English as Mencius. Fiercely anti-utilitarian, Mencius declared the es
sential goodness of human nature, a goodness that could be damaged or perverted
by circumstance. Addressing rulers who sought success, Mencius told them that prag
matic success could come only from a moral perfection that was indifferent to such
success. Mencius was followed in the next generation by another Confucian philoso
pher, Xun-zi, who took the contrary position that human nature was essentially bad,
or more precisely, that it was driven by appetites that could be governed only by a
Confucian moral education and the restraining force of ceremony.
In this age of new philosophies indifferent to the past, the Confucian school con
served older traditions such as the rituals of Zhou, the Classic o f Poetry, the Classic
o f Documents, and The Springs and Autumns. Out of the Confucian school came
The Zuo Tradition, the earliest historical work of China. The date of The Zuo Tra
dition has been much disputed; the late fourth century b .c . seems likely, though it
may well have been earlier. The Zuo Tradition is given as a commentary on The
Springs and Autumns, offering narrative accounts that flesh out the terse entries in
the annals.
W e cannot know exactly when writing came to be used in extended composi
tions such as the essays of the philosophers or The Zuo Tradition. It seems likely that
there was a gradual expansion of written composition throughout the course of the
Warring States. The tightly controlled Legalist state of Qin depended on writing for
the dissemination of its laws and the accurate gathering of information. The Chinese
characters used in this period were unlike those that came into use in the Han Dy
nasty, which can still be read by any reader of Chinese. Early script was cumber
some, unstandardized, and open to numerous ambiguities (though we may be sure
that Qin found ways to avoid any ambiguity). Books were written on thin bamboo
strips, bound together with string into bundles. A broken or rotten string could eas
ily leave the book owner with a large, jumbled pile of bamboo strips, each containing
a sentence or two. Some of the difficulties in reading early works are attributed to
Early China
bungled attempts to reassemble such books. The sheer bulk and weight of these
books presented practical difficulties with profound consequences. A work that now
fills o n e m o d e rn printed v o lu m e c o u ld e a s ily h a v e req u ired o n e o r m o re w a g o n s to
transport. In the Warring States, relatively few people "read," though works might
still be widely disseminated. Those who did read memorized and repeated what they
had memorized though human memory being what it is, variations and para
phrase crept in. In many of the early texts we now have, Han and later scholars have
reconciled different versions; but in many other cases, we find retellings of the same
story or passage, each different to a large or small degree, but including enough of
the same wording that we can recognize them as variations of the same piece. Al
though the Warring States had written texts, it was still a world in which literature,
broadly conceived, was primarily disseminated orally. The variations that accom
pany oral transmission might be included in a new written version, or more precisely,
a version that was "written down."
Early writing often imitated the forms of speech. There were narrations and im
personal discursive treatises in early Chinese literature, but there was a particular
p leasure in d ialo g u e, an d e s p e c ia lly in oratory. M o d e rn a u d ie n ce s h a v e in large m ea
sure lost the taste fo r o rato ry, an d its pleasures are d im in ish e d in w ritin g (and fur
ther diminished in translation). But the written texts of early China were often crafted
to recall the pleasures of a good speech, with the play of sounds and rhymes, rhyth
mic parallel phrases, and an intricate structure of analogies drawn to support an ar
gument. Arising out of oratory came one of the most popular entertainment forms
of the Han elite, thepoetic exposition" (fu), long rhymed descriptions with rich vo
cabulary that were declaimed in courts.
Early in the third century b.cv the Kingdom of Chu extended from the borders of
Sichuan down the full length of the Yangzi River. A major military and political
power, Chu alone was a match for the growing power of Qin. Chu culture, partic
ularly of its elite, had been influenced by long contact with the central Zhou do
mains, butChu's ruling family was indigenous, and it remained a hybrid culture with
distinct traits. During Chu;s long political struggle with Qin, the aristocrat Qu Yuan
(ca. 340-278 b.c.) represented the party opposed to any compromise with Qin. Even
tually he was sent into exile by the king and, according to legend, drowned himself
in despair in the Mi-luo River. To Qu Yuan was attributed a body of verse unlike
anything else in ancient China. These works, along with later works in the same tra
dition, are known as the "Lyrics of Chu(Chu-ci). The earliest works in the collec
tion were probably preserved orally in the lower Yangzi River region, where they
came to the attention of the Han elite around the middle of the second century b .c .
The question of which, if any, of these pieces are actually by Qu Yuan remains
a matter of scholarly debate, but some seem to represent authentic traditions of Chu
shamanism. "The Nine Songs" are mostly hymns to the Chu gods. The collection
also contains two "soul-callings, in which the shaman tries to persuade the wan
dering soul of someone dead or dying to return to its body. Most of the pieces mix
shamanistic elements with moral and political motifs. The most famous work is the
Li Sao, a long monologue in which the speaker is rejected by the king and rides with
a cavalcade of deities through the heavens, protesting his virtue and seeking a mate.
The meters, the language, the images, and the fierce intensity of the "Lyrics of

Chuare unlike anything from North China of the time, and they exerted a power
ful influence on later writing. The shamanistic account of the flight through the heav
ens became the model for representing religious experience in Huang-Lao Daoism,
prevalent in the Han Dynasty and concerned with techniques of spiritual mastery
and attaining immorality. The impassioned poetry of longing for union with a god
dess became the basis of a poetry of desire, whether erotic, spiritual, or allegorical.
The ritual persuasion of the soul in the "soul-callingsbecame a model for moral
persuasions, calling the errant spirit back to good behavior by threatening and al
luring description.
T h e third c e n tu ry
b .c .
s a w th e stead y rise o f the w e ll- d is c ip lin e d an d am b itio u s
domain of Qin. The political alliances of other domains shifted back and forth, try
ing either to check Qin's expansion or placate it Nothing, however, could stop the
steady advance of Qin's armies eastward. In 249 b_cv Qin unseated the last Zhou
king, Hui, who ruled as a petty local chieftain over his tiny domain, and put an end
once and for all to the Zhou Dynasty. Finally, in 221 b.c., the unification of China
was completed, and the Qin ruler assumed the new title of huartg-di, "Emperor,
calling himself the "First Emperor of Q in , Qin Shi-huang.

Qrn took draconian measures to destroy not only all opposition but all diversity
and regionalism as well. The script, weights and measures, and even the width of
wheeled vehicles were standardized (regional differences in the distance between
w h e e ls created ruts o f different w id th s, w h ic h w e re a m ajo r o b stacle to travel through
the country). These policies still seem reasonable for political unification, but others,
such as the attempt to stamp out all political schools other than Legalism and to burn
their books, are still remembered with horror. The Qin state apparatus was an effi
cient tool of imperial will, and without any checks, the imperial will passed from
bold decisiveness to megalomania. Large-scale transfers of population and massive
conscriptions of forced labor to build palaces and frontier fortifications helped cre
ate the social unrest that led to Qin's downfall after less than two decades of rule.
The death of the First Emperor in 210 b.c. and the weakness of his young heir
led to widespread outbreaks of rebellion; the overextended Qin armies, previously

invincible, fell apart in the attempt to put down uprisings on so many sides. The lead
ers of two rebel confederations, Xiang Yu and Liu Bang, competed for dominance.
Although Xiang Yu long appeared the stronger of the two, in 202 b.c. he was sur
rounded by Liu Bang's forces and committed suicide.
The Han Dynasty is usually dated from 206 b.c. when Liu Bang took the title of
"Prince of Han.On defeating Xiang Yu, Liu Bang found himself in the ruins of the
Qin administrative structure with a fragile alliance of regional warlord armies. Po
litically astute, Liu Bang seems to have understood that no one could hold the em
pire as tightly as Qin had tried to in pursuit of its Legalist dreams of absolute state
control. He kept part of his new empire under direct imperial control, appointing
generals and family members as feudal lords of the farther regions. As conflicts be
tween the central government and these feudal domains arose in subsequent reigns,
the Han emperors conquered, divided, and whittled away at the feudal domains until
the long reign of Emperor W u (140-87 b.c.), when the Chinese heartland was se
curely centralized under imperial control and Chinese armies were off winning
glory against the Xiong-nu Kingdom in Central Asia.
Early China
It was during the reign of Emperor W u that Si-ma Qian (ca. 145-ca. 85 b.c.) set
out to finish his father's task of compiling the history of China from the earliest times
down to the present. His court office gave him access to the imperial library, which
he supplemented by his own researches. Si-ma Qian's Historical Records preserve
stories that we might best consider "historical romance." Such stories are driven by
the pleasures of narrative and character rather than by verifiable facts. It is impossi
ble to say whether this was in the character of Si-ma Qian's sources or was due to
his own inclinations as a writer: probably it was a combination of the two. Si-ma
Qian duly reports the legends of high antiquity and gives a detailed account of the
political struggles closer to his own time, but he is at his most lively from the fifth
century b .c . to the consolidation of the Han early in the second century b .c .
We have much writing that survives from ancient China, but probably nothing
comes to us directly as an author wrote it. The earliest material passed through cen
turies of oral transmission before it was written down. The later material may have
been composed in writing, but it passed through many centuries of recopying, with
all the errors and misunderstandings that occurred in the process. Well into the West
ern Han there was little sense of the integrity of a text; sections could be added or
deleted, and passages could be rephrased. The long process that occurred through
the Han of reconciling the variant texts of the Confucian Classics led to the notion
of a stable text that could not be altered; this, in turn, produced a notion of the sta
ble literary text with which we are familiar.
In the Western Han, silk was used for writing, but it was a more expensive
medium than bamboo strips. A form of paper was used in the first century a . d ., but
d id not c o m e into w id e - s c a le use until several cen tu ries later. T h e dates are u n ce r
tain, but b e tw e e n th e first c e n tu ry b.c. an d the en d o f th e seco n d c e n tu ry a.d . the
scroll replaced the bundle of bamboo strips as the primary medium of writing. A
scroll was easier to produce and use, and it was more durable. During the same pe
riod, script became increasingly standardized and easy to write. With the age of the
scroll and the standardized script, we can begin to think of reading as the rule rather
than the exception. It was still not the age of the printed book: scrolls were timeconsuming to produce and treasured proportionately. But through the course of the
Han, the written word became much more widely available and could be transported
from one side of China to another with relative ease. A book in bundles of bamboo
strips that would have required a wagon to carry it over rivers and bad roads could
now be replaced by a light satchel of scrolls.

This small technological advance had immense consequences. Learning was no
lon g er c o n fin e d to centers w h e re th ere w e re im m o v a b le m asses o f books an d m as
ters w h o co n tro lle d access to th em . Stories c o u ld b e c o n v e n ie n tly w ritten d o w n and
carefully copied rather than retold, with each retelling differing slightly from the last.
Different versions of a text could be easily brought together, set side by side, and
the versions compared. And this could be done by anyone who could purchase the
scrolls or have them made. Though an oral literature of song and story continued in
China, the scroll brings us into the age of the book and literature proper.
i
^
The Classic of Poetry:

Beginnings
The Classic of Poetry (Shi-jing) is a collection of just over three hundred

poems from the Zhou Dynasty (1020-249 b .c .). Although the collection
reached something like its present form around 600 b .c v the oldest
pieces may date from as early as the tenth century b .c . Found in a sec
tion entitled the "Temple Hymns of Zhou," these early works are sim
ple hymns used in dynastic rituals to address the deified spirits of the founders of
the Zhou Dynasty, Kings Wen and Wu.
In these hymns, words can be a necessary part of ritual. As in modern rituals such
as weddings or court proceedings, formally declaring something in words is neces
sary to make it so. Suppose a group of men lead cattle and sheep into a large hall.
There they kill the animals, cook them over a fire, and eat the meat In silence. That
is a meal. But if, as they lead the animals into the hall, they sing the following verse
from the "Temple Hymns of Zhou," the same action becomes a ritual, and the spirit
of King Wen eats the smoke that rises from the burning sacrifice.
Classic o f Poetry CCLXXII We Have in Hand

We have in hand our offerings:
these are sheep, these the cattle,
may Heaven favor them.
This act is patterned on King Wens rules,
which daily bring peace to all the land.
Exalted be King Wen!
he favors us by feeding on them.
May we, early and by night,
stand in dread of Heavens might,
and in this way preserve it.
It is often necessary to name something in order for that thing to have its proper func
tion in a system of ritual. This becomes a significant role of early poetry: To declare
the names of things and actions, and to describe the orderly system of their relation,
thus guaranteeing the continuity of ritual and social processes. The following is one
of the agrarian hymns from the "Temple Hymns of Z hou,
Early China
Classic o f Poetry CCXC Mowing Grasses

Mowing grasses, felling trees,
we till the churning soil.
A thousand pairs do weeding
off to paddies, off to dikes.
Here the squire, here the firstborn,

here the nextborn, here the clan,
here the yeomen, here the hands,
hungry for their field-fare.
Comely are the wives,
sturdy are the men.
Sharp-tipped are the plowshares,
that turn the sod on southern tracts.
We scatter all the many grains,
the life is stored within the seed.
Then the bounty of the shoots,
and fullness in the single stalk.
Full indeed are all the sprouts,
row by row the weeders go.
In lines we come to harvest it,
and we have the grains in piles,
in myriads and millions.
Beer we make and the sweet ale,
to bestow on Foremothers and Forefathers
and by this join the many rites.
Musky is the grain-smell,
the splendor of our homeland.
Pungent is its fragrance,
well-being for our elderly.
Not just this which is before us
not just for now what is here now,
from early times it was as this.
The Zhou Founding

The Classic of Poetry has four large sections: the "Hymns" (Song), the "Great Odes"
(Da-ya), the "Lesser Odes" (Xiao-ya), and the "Airs" (Feng). The next four poems are
from the "Great Odes" and recount crucial episodes in the founding of the Zhou
Dynasty. The first, "She Bore the Folk," tells the story of the miraculous birth of Lord
M illet (Hou Ji), who created agriculture and whom the Zhou royal house revered as
their ancestor. The legend as presented in "She Bore the Folk" is fragmentary, leav
ing later historians and commentators to fill in the missing details. An example of
this is given in the later prose account of Hou Ji by the historian Si-ma Qian. "Liu
11

the Duke" tells of the migration of the Zhou people into the land of Bin. In Bin, the
Zhou people were eventually attacked by the Rong and Di tribes and migrated fur
ther to the territory around Mount Qi, where the people took the name of Zhou. The
settlement of the "plain of Zhou" is told in "Spreading" Finally, in "The Greater
Brightness, we have an account of how Zhou, gathering Power (De) by good works
and advantageous marriages, at last received the Charge of Heaven to overthrow
the Yin-Shang Dynasty and rule in its stead.
Although critics have often grouped these four and one other poem together as
a set, they are essentially different poetic types. "Liu the Duke" and "Spreading" are
narrative accounts of Zhou migration and settlement. "She Bore the Folk" is not so
much a narrative as a ritual song that explains the origin of the harvest ceremony.
"The Greater Brightness" is an unabashed piece of royal Zhou propaganda.
Despite millennia of scholarship and great progress in linguistics and philology
during the past four centuries, much remains uncertain in the language of the Clas
sic o f Poetry, especially in the most arthaic poems of the "Great Odes" and the "Tem
ple Hymns of Zhou." There are many words in these poems that we understand only
roughly, which leaves the translator to rely more heavily on the interpretation of the
Zhou world from which the poems come. At one extreme are scholars, primarily
Chinese, who see the Zhou as the model for later, imperial China, with Confucian
values and a government consisting of a bureaucratic structure of offices. At the other
extreme are those Western, Japanese, and some Chinese scholars who see the Zhou
as a more "prim itive" society, one held together by religion, heroic virtues, and fam
ily ties.
Classic o f Poetry CCXLV She Bore the Folk

She who first bore the folk
Jiang it was, First Parent.
How was it she bore the folk?
she knew the rite and sacrifice.
To rid herself of sonlessness
she trod the gods toeprint
and she was glad.
She was made great, on her luck settled,
the seed stirred, it was quick.
She gave birth, she gave suck,
and this was Lord Millet.
When her months had come to term,
her firstborn sprang up.
Not splitting, not rending,
working no hurtno harm.
He showed his godhead glorious,
the high god was greatly soothed.
He took great joy in those rites
and easily she bore her son.
12
She set him in a narrow lane

but sheep and cattle warded him
She set him in the wooded plain,
he met with those who logged the plain.
She set him on cold ice,
birds sheltered him with wings.
Then the birds left him
and Lord Millet wailed.
This was long and this was loud;
his voice was a mighty one.
And then he crept and crawled,
he stood upright, he stood straight.
He sought to feed his mouth,
and planted there the great beans.
The great beans leaves were fluttering,
the rows of grain were bristling.
Hemp and barley dense and dark,
the melons, plump and round.
Lord Millet in his farming
had a way to help things grow
He rid the land of thick grass
he planted there a glorious growth.
It was in squares, it was leafy,
it was planted, it grew tall.
It came forth, it formed ears,
it was hard, it was good.
Its tassels bent, it was full,
he had his household there in Tai.
He passed us down these wondrous grains:
our black millets, of one and two kernels,
Millets whose leaves sprout red or white,
he spread the whole land with black millet,
And reaped it and counted the acres,
spread it with millet sprouting red or white,
hefted on shoulders, loaded on backs,
he took it home and began this rite.
And how goes this rite we have?
at times we hull, at times we scoop,
at times we winnow, at times we stomp,
we hear it slosh as we wash it,
we hear it puff as we steam it.
Then we reckon, then we consider,
take artemisia, offer fat.
We take a ram for the flaying,

then we roast it, then we sear it,
to rouse up the following year.
We heap the wooden trenchers full,
wooden trenchers, earthenware platters.
And as the scent first rises
the high god is peaceful and glad.
This great odor is good indeed,
for Lord Millet began the rite,
and hopefully free from failing or fault,
it has lasted until now.
The following is the much later account of Lord M illet in the "Chronicles of Zhou,"
from the Historical Records of Si-ma Qian (ca. 145-ca. 85 b .c .). The Historical
Records is the most important historical work treating ancient and early Han China.
Si-ma Qian's version is essentially a prose summary providing answers to large
questions left by the poem. Note how Si-ma Qian integrates Lord M illet into the leg
endary political structure of the times of the Sage-Kings; particularly significant is
Lord M illet's transformation from demigod to political appointee. As the empire was
to be brought to political unity in the Western Han, one of the functions of the Han
historian was to bring the diverse fragments of myth, legend, and early history into
a single unified story.
Historical Records, Chronicles of Zhou

Lord Millet (Hou Ji) of Zhou had the given name Qi, the Castoff His
mother was the daughter of the ruler of Tai and was named Jiang Yuan
[first parent*5]. Jiang was the principal consort of Emperor Gao. Jiang
Yuan went forth into the wilderness and saw the print of a huge man. Her
heart was filled with delight and she wanted to step in it. When she stepped
in it, her body stirred like one pregnant. After her term, she bore a son. She
thought of him as ill-omened and cast him away into a narrow lane, but the
horses and cattle that passed by stood out of his way and did not step on
him. She moved him and put him in the forest, but he encountered many
people in the forest. She carried him elsewhere and cast him on the ice of a
ditch, but birds in flight came to cover him with their wings. Then Jiang Yuan
thought of him as a god, took him back, and raised him. Since she had first
wished to cast him off, she named him Qi, the Castoff.
.
When Qi was still a boy, he had fully developed aims like those of an
older person. In his games he was fond of planting hemp and beans, and his
hemp and beans grew very well. When he grew up, he liked farming and
working the soil; he could observe what crop the land was most suited to,
and he planted and reaped the most suitable grains there. All the folk fol
lowed his example. Emperor Yao heard about him and raised Q i to be the
Early China
Master of Farming. He achieved much, and all the world had benefit from
him.
Classic o f Poetry CCL Liu the Duke

Duke Liu the Steadfast
neither bided nor enjoyed:
now marking plots and boundary lines,
now gathering, now storing
now wrapping up the meal,
*in pouches and in sacks;
and glorious by all amassed,
he brought forth bows and bolts,
shield and pike, ax and hatchet,
and then began the march.
went and paused upon that plain:
teeming it was and bountiful,
yielding it was, word was spread,
nor were there long cries of woe
he climbed and was upon the hill,
again came down upon the plain.
What was wrapped around him then?
it was jade and jasper
studding the sheath of the Dirk.1
went off to the hundred springs,
and scanned this vast plain.
Then he climbed the southern hill-spine
beheld there the great citadel.
In the wilds around the citadel
there he stayed ever,
there he dwelt ever
there he spoke ever,
there he talked with others ever.
settled in the citadel
with grave and reverent motion
proffered mat and proffered armrest;
he mounted the mat, he then reposed.
He had his bands next go
and seize a pig within the pen.
1_The "D irk" seems to have been one of the insignias of chieftainship.
15
He had wine poured in jugs of gourd

they fed him, they gave him drink,
they made him lord, founder of the line.
made his land vast and made it long,
he marked the shadows, then the hill lines,
he surveyed shadowed and sunlit slopes.
He observed where the springs flowed,
and his army went in three files.
He measured the bogs and plains,
he assessed the fields for his stores.
He measured slopes that stood to the evening sun,
his abode in Bin was verily grand.
built the lodgings in Bin,
made a fording place to cross the Wei,
there took whetstones and hammerstones.
Foundations built, he marked off fields,
then we grew many, then we thrived.
On both sides of the Huang Creek,
and upstream to the Guo Creek.
We settled there and we grew teeming,
all the way to the bend of the Rui.
Insofar as these poems are narratives, it is worth noting what constitutes a satisfying
conclusion. Rather than the completion of a conquest or the achievement of a deed,
these poems often end with spreading, extension, and continuity. That is, the nar
ratives avoid conclusion; they point instead to continuation.
Classic o f Poetry CCXXXVII Spreading

Melons spreading, large and small,
when first the folk were born.
From Du he fared to Qi,
our duke of oldDan-fu.
They fashioned dwellings in pits and cliffs;
they did not yet have houses.
Our duke of old, Dan-fu,
that morning sped his horse.
He followed the edge of the western river
and came to beneath Mount Qi.
Then he joined the woman Jiang,
they came and shared a roof.
16
The plain of Zhou was fat and fair,

where thistle and buttercup tasted like honey.
There he started, there he reckoned,
there he pierced our tortoise shells.
Stop
it was, and Stand
in this place they built houses.

Then he rested, then he stopped,
then he went left, then he went right,
then he marked borders, then he marked bounds,
then extended, set out fields.
From west he fared to east
and everywhere he took charge.
He called to his Master Builder,
he called to his Master of Workmen.
He had them set up houses
and the plumblines hung straight.
They lashed planks and raised it,
made the Ancestral Temple well aligned.
One after another they took earth in hods,
in countless loads they measured it.
W ith thud upon thud they rammed it hard,
and with scraping sounds they pared it flat.
A hundred wall segments rose together,
and drowned out the sounds of the drums.
Then they set up the outermost gate,
and the outermost gate loomed high.
Then they set up the central gate,
and the central gate was stately.
Then they set up the Altar to Earth,
where his war hosts set forth.
Yet he did not abate his ire,
nor did his repute subside.
The oaks were uprooted,
and roads were cleared through.
The Kun-yi tribes flew in panic,
how we harried them to gasping!
Yu and Rui gave warrants for peace,
King Wen laid their beasts on his altars.
He had all those both far and near,
he had those before and behind him
He had those who would rush to his bidding,
he had those who would fend off slights.

The description of building the rammed-earth walls of the Zhou capital in y/Spreadingis one of the more remarkable moments in early literature, distinguishing the
Chinese tradition from others. The monumental labor that went into constructing the
Pyramids, the walls of Babylon, the architectural monuments of Greece and Rome,
or the castles of the Middle Ages were generally not subjects of the literature of those
w o rld s, an d the difficulties in v o lv e d are o n ly to u ch ed on fragm entarily in do cu m en ts.
But this poem, one of the most important public poetic texts of the Zhou Kingdom,
is a celebration of collective endeavor.
Even though the final stanzas of "Spreading" are gleefully violent, Dan-fu was
transformed into the exemplary pacifist The following parable, telling of Dan-fu's
migration from Bin, comes from some time between the fourth and second century
b .c . It is taken from:
The Zhuang-zi, ''Renouncing Kingship55

Dan-fu the great King was dwelling in Bin when the Di tribes attacked. He
offered them tribute of skins and cloth, but they wouldnt accept it; then he
offered tribute of dogs and horses, but they wouldnt accept it; he offered
them pearls and jade, but they still wouldnt accept: for what they wanted
was his land. Then Dan-fu the great king said: I could not bear to dwell
among elder brothers whose younger brothers I had sent to death, or to dwell
among fathers whose sons I had sent to death. You my people endeavor to
continue living here~whats the difference between being my subject and
being a subject of the Di? Besides, I have heard it said that one should not
harm those one would nurture by the very means of their nurture. And then
he left, leaning on his staff. His people all followed him in a long line, and
a new state was established below Mount Qi.
"The Greater Brightness" begins with an account of the royal Zhou marriages that
produced Kings W en and W u, who, following Heaven's plan, overthrew the Yin-
Shang Dynasty. The word "Power" (De) is one of the most important terms in Zhou
political thought and later in Confucian ethics. De literally means "attainment," a
kind of charisma (and perhaps even sexual potency and fertility) amassed by doing
good and proper works. With enough Power, the people stay loyal and enemies sub
mit. In its later Confucian transformation, De became "virtue.
Classic o f Poetry CCXXXVI The Greater Brightness

The brightness is below,
fierce splendor is on high.
Hard to trust in Heaven,
the kingship is not easy.
Y in
s heir stood in Heavens place,
yet it made him lose his lands around.
From Zhi the second daughter, Ren,
went from the land of Yin and Shang.
18
She came to marry into Zhou,

in its great city, foreign bride.
Together then with Ji the King
they did that work of Power.
And Great Ren became with child
and gave birth to our King Wen.
This King Wen of ours,
his prudent heart was well ordered.
He shone in serving the high god,
and thus enjoyed much fortune.
Unswerving in the Power he had,
he held all the domains around.
Heaven scanned the land below,
its charge was laid upon him.
In the first doing of King Wen
Heaven made a mate for him.
It was on the X ia
s north shore,
there on the banks of the Wei,
King Wen found the woman fair,
daughter of a mighty land.
This daughter of a mighty land
was seen like Heavens little sister.
He fixed by good custom a lucky time,
himself he welcomed her at the Wei.
He fashioned boats into a bridge,
with light great and glorious.
There was a charge from Heaven,
a charge for Wen the King,
In Zhou, in its great city,
this next queen, who was of Shen.
This eldest daughter did the work,
and steadfast, bore King Wu.
I who preserve you, charge you
to join and smite the great Shang.
There, the hosts of Yin and Shang,
their standards like a forest.
An oath was made on the Pasture Ground,
It is we who are in the ascendant.
The high god looks upon you,
be there no treachery in your hearts.
The Pasture Ground stretched on and on,
with sandalwood chariots glorious.
The teams of bays well muscled,
War Chief was our Shang-fu.

He was the falcon taking wing,
he showed the way for W u the King.
They fell on great Shang and smote them,
the morning they gathered was clear and bright.
A number of the poems in the Classic o f Poetry can best be described as the "pro
paganda of Z h o u , celebrating the dynasty's foundation by right of receiving
Heaven's Charge. The following poem, "O verbearing, is presented as the address
of King W en to the last ruler of the Yin-Shang Dynasty. Virtually all Chinese critics
have taken this to be a covert denunciation of King Li of Zhou (ruled 878-842 b .c .),
who is assumed to be the high god referred to in the poem. However, there is noth
ing in the poem to support such an interpretation, which would have first appeared
more than six hundred years after the putative date of composition.
Classic o f Poetry CCLV Overbearing

Overbearing is the high god,
he gives his rules to folk below.
Perilous, the high gods power,
many the rules within his Charge.
Heaven bore the teeming folk,
his Charge cannot be trusted.
All men begin well,
but few can keep it to the end.
King Wen said, Woe!
Woe upon you, Yin and Shang!
You have been the harsh oppressor,
you have been grasping and crushing.
You have been in the places of power,
you have held the functions.
Heaven sent recklessness down in you,
and you rise by acts of force.
King Wen said, Woe!
Cling to right and seemliness
much hate comes back from harshness.
Loose words are given as answers,
plunder and pillage are in the center.
They rise up, they speak curses,
Without ceasing, without close.
King Wen said, Woe!
You have roared in the heartland,
you draw wrath as your Power.
Early China
You shed no light from your Power,

so none stand at your back or side.
Your Power sheds no light,
so none will stand with you and serve.
King Wen said, Woe!
Heaven does not swill you with wine,
you chase and choose things not right.
You have overstepped in your behavior,
unable to tell darkness from the light.
You howl and you shout,
and would have daylight be as night.
King Wen saidWoe!
You are like locusts, like grasshoppers,
like froth, like the soup that simmers.
Things great and small draw to destruction,
you men still follow this way.
You have domineered in the heartland,
and it spreads all the way to Gui-fang.
King Wen said, Woe!
Not the high god who is not good
Yin does not act as it did of old.
And though it has no wise old men
still it has its sanctions and codes.
Never have you heeded these,
and the Great Charge is overthrown.
King Wen said, Woe!
There is a saying among men:
When a tree falls and is torn from earth,
there is yet no harm to boughs and leaves
the roots meet ruin first.
Yins mirror lies not far away,
it is there in the reigns of the lords of Xia.
As with the ritual hymns, the poetry of royal Zhou often gave actions legitimacy and
meaning by representing them in a way that reflected Zhou political ideology. Ex
ultation in warfare and conquest was subordinated to a celebration of bringing order
and peace to the land and to the king's heart. As Heaven delegated authority to the
Zhou royal house, so the Zhou kings might delegate legitimate authority to their feu
dal lords, whose conquests were thus sanctioned. There is a group of narratives of
military campaigns believed to date from the time of King Xuan (ruled 827-782
B.C.),
21

whose reign saw a resurgence of Zhou royal power. The following ballad, telling of
a campaign against the tribes of Huai River region, seems to have been written to
celebrate the casting of a ceremonial vessel for the Duke of Shao, who is reminded
of his ancestor and his family's historical allegiance to the house of Zhou.
Classic o f Poetry CCLXII Yangzi and Han

Yangzi and Han go rolling on
our warriors go flooding.
We do not rest, do not roam free,
we go to assail the Huai tribes.
We have brought our chariots forth,
we have lifted our falcon standards.
We do not rest, we take no ease,
we go to bring hurt to the Huai tribes.
Yangzi and Han sweep in torrents,
our warriors seethe and surge.
We bring order to the lands around
and declare the deed done to the king.
The lands all around are made peaceful,
the kings domain nigh settled.
Now there is no conflict,
and the kings heart may be at ease.
It was by the shores of Yangzi and Han,
the king gave a charge to Hu of Shao
Open the lands that lie around,
tax the lands within our bounds.
Neither injure nor oppress
to the farthest reach of the kings domain.
Go make boundaries, mark out fields
all the way to the southern seas
The king gave a charge to Hu of Shao,
Go everywhere, go make this known.
When Wen and W u received the Charge
a Duke of Shao was their support.
Say not: I am but a child
you, Duke of Shao, are successor.
You persevered in these great works,
whereby I grant you blessings.
On you I bestow the gui ladle,
one urn of black millet beer with spice.
W ith these inform your cultured Forebears
that I confer on you earth and field.
Here in Zhou you receive a charge
that derives from the charge to Ancestor Shao_
22
Early China
Hu bowed and touched his head to the ground:

Live thousands of years, Heavens Son!
Hu bowed and touched his head to Earth,
he answered acclaiming the kings goodness.
He made the holy vessel of Shaos Duke
thousands of years to Heavens Son.
The Son of Heaven sheds shining light,
his fine renown will never end.
He spreads his Power gained by cultured works,
attunes the domains all around.
The preceding poems come from the section in the Classic o f Poetry known as the
"Great des(Da-ya), which by and large represents the public poetry of the dy
nasty. The section known as the "Lesser Odes" (Xiao-ya) also contains poems on
military campaigns, but the way in which these poems treat such campaigns shows
interesting differences from the highly political representation of military action in
the "Great Odes.The speaker here is no longer focused on the king; he speaks for
the officers and soldiers of the Zhou.
Among their adversaries, the non-Chinese Xian-yun were one of the Zhou's
greatest threats. "Bringing Forth the Chariots" treats a royal expedition whose pur
pose is both to harry the Xian-yun and to build fortifications in the North, which
would be the precursor of the Great W all.
Classic o f Poetry CLXVIII Bringing Forth the Chariots

We bring our chariots forth,
down upon the meadows.
From the Son of Heavens place
we have been bidden to come.
The drivers have been summoned,
we have bidden them to load.
The kings work has great troubles,
they press upon us hard.
We bring our chariots forth,
upon the plain beyond the walls.
Raise high the Snake-and-Tortoise,
set the oxtail standards.
The Eagle and Snake-and-Tortoise~
see how they flap in the wind.
Our worried hearts are restless,
the drivers are harried and drawn.
The king commanded Nan-zhong
Go, build walls in Fang.
The chariots go surging forth,
the Snake-and-Tortoise and Dragon shine.
23
The Son of Heaven commanded us,

Gobuild walls in the northland.
Nan-zhong strikes terror,
slayer of the Xian-yun.
Long ago we marched away,
with millet in full flower.
Back we come today,
snow is falling in the mire.
The kings work has great troubles,
no chance to sprawl or sit.
O f course we long to go home,
but we dread what is written.2
Insects abuzz in the grasses,
katydids hopping about.
Before we saw our lord
our worried hearts knew no ease.
Now that we have seen our lord,
our hearts begin to calm.
he who smites the Western Rong.
More slowly pass the days of spring,
heath and tree grow full and green.
Starlings sing in choruses,
tarragon is picked in throngs.
W ith some held for question and captured bands,
we now turn back and go home.
the Xian-yun are brought low.
Ancient Zhou warfare was a ceremonial activity, concluded in autumn (the seventh
to ninth months). The Xian-yun raiders seem to have violated custom, striking in late
summer, in the sixth month. The following poem, from the "Lesser O d e s, celebrates
another campaign.
Classic o f Poetry CLXXVII Sixth Month

In the sixth month, all was in tumult,
war chariots were made ready.
The four-stallion teams were brawny,
our kits and. outfits were loaded.
The Xian-yun came to raze widely,
2For all the soldiers' glee in Nan-zhong's military prowess, they are kept in the expedition by con
scription lists that w ill result in punishment for deserters.
by this we were hardpressed.

The king sent forth his hosts,
to bring order to the kings domain.
Matched beasts, four black steeds,
well trained to the standard.
Now in this sixth month
our outfitting was done.
And when our outfitting was done,
we went our thirty leagues.
The king sent forth his hosts
to serve the Son of Heaven.
Four stallions, tall and broad,
stout and with great skulls.
They went to smite the Xian-yun
and show forth glorious deeds.
W ith strictness and with order,
we share this work of war.
We share this work of war
to settle the kings domain.
The Xian-yun did not reckon
they stayed drawn up in Jiao and Hu.
They raided Hao and Fang
and reached the Jing
s north shore.
Our woven designs, our bird devices,
our swallow-tail pennons gleaming.
Then ten of our great war wagons
went forth first to begin the advance.
Steady were the war chariots,
as if bearing down and looming high.
Four stallions moving in line,
moving in line well trained.
We went and smote the Xian-yun,
all the way to Great Plain.
Ji-fu, warlike and courteous,
was the model for all the lands.
Ji-fu feasts and makes merry,
much bounty he has received.
Back we came from Hao
our journey far and long.
With drink he serves all the friends,
turtle roast and ground carp.
Who else was there present?
Nan-zhongloyal to parent and friend
Human Sacrifice: Making Exchanges

In the ceremonial and dynastic poems of the Classic of Poetry, naming a thing or
action guaranteed its function within a structure of ritual exchange and order. The
words for the rite stated what was received, what was given, the intentions or state
of mind of those making the offering, and the correctness and continuity of the pro
cedures. On the political level, poems work in a similar way, authorizing the dele
gation of power and asserting the correctness and continuity of the system.
Words can also declare more problematic exchanges and substitutions. This is
not a world of obvious ritual and political order but one of mysterious series of cor
respondences revealed in words. In the following poem, every time the yellow bird
perches on the branch of a different plant, a different member of the Zi-ju clan is
named to accompany his lord in death. No causal relation is asserted, but some cor
respondence is implicit. In this poem, Heaven, who "slays our best m en/ is as dan
gerous as in the preceding poems, but it is less comprehensible. And the speaker in
v a in proposes a m o re o p e n e x ch a n g e , a ranso m . The date is 620 b.c.
Classic o f Poetry CXXXI Yellow Bird

Jiao cries the yellow bird,
it stops upon the briar.
Who goes with Lord Mu?
Yan-xi of the Zi-ju.
And this man Yan-xi
was the finest of a hundred,
but standing by the pit
he trembled in his dread.
You Gray One, Heaven,
you slay our best men.
If this one could be ransomed,
for his lifea hundred.
Jiao cries the yellow bird,
it stops upon the mulberry.

Zhong-hang of the Zi-ju.
And this man Zhong-hang
could hold against a hundred,
for his life, a hundred.
Jiao cries the yellow bird
it stops upon the thorn.
Early China

,
Qian-hu of the Zi-ju.
And this man Qian-hu

could ward against a hundred

for his life, a hundred.
Although the folk of Qin here lament the death of the three members of the Zi-ju
clan, they accept it as a ritual necessity, something demanded by the "Gray One,
H eaven , As such, this song is a remarkable document from an archaic world in
which retainers were killed and buried with their lord.

The following account of the composition of Yellow Bird" comes from The Zuo
T ra d itio n , th e a n n a lis tic history co m p o se d in th e late fifth o r fourth c e n tu ry b.c. In
this sightly later period it is not mysterious Heaven that is responsible, but human
ethical decision.
The Zuo Tradition, an entry for the 6th year of Duke Wen
(6 2 0 b.c.)
Q in
s earl Ren-hao [Duke Mu] died. Three men of the Zi-ju clan~Yan-xi,
Zhong-hang, and Qian-hu~were sent to die with their lord. All three were
the best men of Qin. Men of the domain mourned for them and composed
Yellow Bird on their behalf. A good man said, It was most fitting that
M u of Qin did not become master of the covenant. When he died, he for
sook his folk. When former kings passed from the worldthey left a legacy
of rules; they would hardly have stolen away its worthiest men.
Êventually substitutions could be made: clay figurines of men were exchanged for
-real liegemen accompanying their lord to the grave. Or a man bent on revenge,
blocked from fulfilling his goal, could be satisfied by stabbing his victim's cloak, say
ing, "Thus I kill you and take revenge. Words become essential when such substi
tutions and exchanges take place; they may declare one thing as equivalent to an
other or protest improper exchanges.
The Zuo Tradition an entry for the 19th year of Duke Xi

(640 B.C.)
That summer the Duke of Song bade Duke Wen of Zhu to use the Lord of
Zeng for sacrifice on the banks of the river Sui. He hoped in this way to win
the adherence of the eastern tribesmen. His War Chief Zi-yu said, In olden
times the six domestic animals were not substituted for one another in sac
rificial use; for small events they did not use large sacrificial animals much
less would they dare use a man! Sacrifices are made for men. The people are
hosts for the god. And if you use a man in a sacrifice, who will eat it? Duke
Huan of Q i preserved three domains from ruin and in that way won the ad
herence of the great nobility. Even so there are men of virtue who say that
even his Power was slight. Now in one gathering you have treated brutally
the lords of two domains; and beyond that, you have used one for sacrifice
to a vile demon, the god of the river Sui. If you want to be overlord now
you will have a hard time of it. You will be lucky if you die!
In the story above, the human being may be treated like an animal, a "thingin the
exchange system. Reversing the process, one might look on an animal with the sym
pathy usually reserved for fellow humans. The first case disqualified the man who
conducted such sacrifice from becoming overlord of the domains; the second case
w o u ld , w e assum e, en su re his q u alific a tio n s.
Some three centuries after the date of The Zuo Tradition's account of the Duke
of Song's human sacrifice, we have a famous transformation of this question of sac-
rificial exchange in the Mencius, the dialogues and sayings of the Confucian philoso
pher Meng-zi (latinized,
Mendus)_ The great importance attached to sympathy in
this dialogue is a measure of the changes in Confucian values from archaic ritual
ism to a humanistic ethics of moral feelings. Like the young men of the Zi-ju clan,
standing beside the gravepit of Lord Mu, here the victim also tremblesand in this
case is ransomed.
from Mencius IA 7 (4th century B.C.)

King Xuan of Q i said, May someone like myself really be the protector of
the people?
Mencius answered, You may.
The king, H o w do you know that I m ay?
MenciusI heard from H u He that once when Your Majesty was seated
in the great hall, someone was pulling a bullock along across the other end
of the hall. When Your Majesty saw it, you asked, 'Where is that bullock
going? And the answer was that it was being taken to be a blood sacrifice
to anoint a newly cast bell. And Your Majesty said, Let it go free. I cannot
bear the look of terror in it~like someone going innocent to the execution
ground.To this came the reply, Then shall we waive the blood sacrifice to
anoint the bell?J And Your Majesty saidHow can we waive the sacrifice?
Use a sheep in its place. I am not certain whether this happened.
The king, It did.
Mencius, A heart such as this is enough to bring the high kingship. All
the common folk may have thought Your Majesty was being stingy, but I
know quite well that it was because Your Majesty could not bear the sight.
The king, This is so. And truly it was as you said with the common
folk but however small the realm of Q i be, I am not going to be stingy
Early China
about one bullock.3 It was because I could not bear the look of terror in it,
like someone going innocent to the execution ground. It was for that rea
son I had a sheep used in its place.
Mencius, MYour Majesty should not think it strange that the common
folk considered this as stinginess on your part. Since you used a small thing
in place of a large one, how could they understand? If Your Majesty was
touched by sadness at something going innocent to the execution ground,
on what grounds could a distinction be made between a bullock and a
sheep?
The king laughed. What really was in my mind then? It is not that I am
stingy with possessions, and yet I did have a sheep used in its place. Its quite
right that the common folk claim I was being stingy.
Mencius, There is no cause to feel hurt. This was, in fact, the way of a
man who feels sympathy. You saw the bullock*you did not see the sheep.
A good man feels the following way about animals: when he has seen them
alive, he cannot bear to see their death; when he has heard the sounds they
make, he cannot bear to eat their flesh. This is the reason a good man stays
far from the kitchen.59
The king was delighted. The Classic of Poetry (CXCVIII) has the lines
The heart may be anothers
but I can take its measure.
This applies to you, sir. I was the one who did it, but when I turned to fol
low the process, I couldnt grasp what was in my own heart. But now that
you have put it into words, there are the stirrings of such a feeling in my
heart. _ _
3"Stinginess" is the contextual translation of ai, to "begrudge," to "cling to something/' a word for
"love."
The Classic of Poetry: "Airs"
To different ages and different readers the Classic of Poetry has repre
sented what they felt a "classic of poetry" should be. For some Confu
cian interpreters, the collection was the embodiment of the fate of the
Zhou polity, manifested through the mouths of its people. In this view,
the poems were judiciously chosen and arranged by Confucius to show
ethical values at work in political and social history. To other Confucian inter
preters, it represented the full range of natural human feeling and some permanent
perfection of feeling's expression.
The poems in this section are drawn primarily from the first part of the Classic
of Poetry, known as the "Airs" (Feng) or the "Airs of the Domains" (Guo-feng). The
"Airs" constitute more than half of the over three hundred poems that make up the
Classic o f P o e try ,
a n d th e y are p ro b a b ly am o n g th e latest po em s to be ad d e d to th e
repertoire, which seems to have reached something like its present form around
600 b.c.
The "Airsare grouped under fifteen regions, which represent many but not all
of the feudal domains of the early Zhou monarchy. In some premodern and some
modern interpretations influenced by anthropology, the wAirshave been taken to

represent folk poetry as the authentic voice of the common people, collected and
transformed by musicians of the regional courts. More recently the argument has
been made that the wAirsdo not and never did represent true folk poetry, but the
poetry of the Zhou feudal courts. Both points of view are correct. Some of the "Airs"
were clearly composed for court occasions, such as diplomatic weddings, while oth
ers make straightforward sense only when accepting their provenance in the peas
antry. It is best then to see the "Airs" as representing regional song traditions, with
lyrics drawn from diverse sources and transformed by the song traditions of the Zhou
feudal courts.
Classic o f Poetry I
Fishhawk
The fishhawks sing gwan gwan

on sandbars of the stream.
Gentle maiden, pure and fair3
fit pair for a prince.
Watercress grows here and there,
right and left we gather it.
Gentle maidenpure and fair,
wanted waking and asleep.
Early China
Wanting, sought her, had her not,

waking, sleeping, thought of her,
on and on he thought of her,
he tossed from one side to another.
right and left we pull it.
Gentle maiden, pure and fair,
with harps we bring her company.
right and left we pick it out.
with bells and drums do her delight.
Confucius (ca. 552-479 b .c .) made special comment on "Fishhawk" in his collected
sayings, the Analects (111.20): "He said, 'Fishhawk' is delight without wantonness,
sadness without hurtful p a in .
Throughout most of the imperial period, Confucius was credited with having
edited the Classic of Poetry. Since Confucius' arrangement of the anthology was sup
posed to have been purposeful, "Fishhawk," as the first poem in the collection, was
made to bear a special interpretive weight. According to the traditional Confucian
interpretation known as the "M ao commentary/' the poem represented the "virtuous attainment" of the Queen Consort of King Wen of Zhou, who "delighted that
pure and fair maidens had been found to be mated with the prince [i.e., King W en
.
Thus it has been read as a poem expressing an absence of jealousy, which in turn
showed the perfect harmony of the royal household. In this way the poem was sup
posed to initiate King W en's process of civilizing the land, beginning with the most
intimate and close of relationships, then gradually extending his influence outward.
Classic o f Poetry IX The Han So Wide

Tall are trees in the south country,
they give no shade to rest in.
By the Han the girls roam free,
but no man can pursue them.
So wide, the Han,
I cant wade over
the river too long
to go by raft.
Heaps of kindling pile high
cut away the gorse.
If only she would be my bride,
Id offer fodder for her horse.
So wide, the Han,
I cant wade over;
31
the river too long

to go by raft.
Heaps of kindling pile high;
cut away the dodder.
If only she would be my bride,
her colts would not lack fodder.
So wide, the Han,
I cant wade over;
the river too long
to go by raft.
O fte n the asso cia tio n b e tw e e n disp arate im ages h ere the c le a rin g o f brush an d the
gathering of kindling are linked by fortuitous rhymes with the man's wish to marry
a certain woman.
Several early interpretations of this poem link the first stanza with the story of
the two goddesses of the Han River who were encountered by one Zheng Jiao-fu.
Fragments of this legend, in differing versions, appear in a variety of early sources.
In some versions, the nymphs wore egg-sized pearls hanging from their sashes. Jiaofu asked them for their pendants as a sign of promising their love for him. They un
tied the pendants and gave them to him. But after taking several steps to pick up the
pendants, Jiao-fu found that they had disappeared; on turning around, he found that
the goddesses too had disappeared. This is just one of many legends in which a mor
tal man encounters a goddess who, either with or without having sexual relations
with him, finally proves elusive. If we take this poem as referring to the same river
nymphs that Zheng Jiao-fu met, we should probably translate the third line as:
"There are maidens swimming in the Han." The phrase you-nu can mean either "girls
that swim" or "girls roaming free." "Girls roaming free" came to have strong asso
ciations of promiscuity, in contrast to chu-nu, "girls who stay home," later a term
for virgins.
Through the course of the Eastern Han during the first and second centuries a . d .,
the so-called Mao commentary to the Classic of Poetry became dominant. The Mao
commentary sought to explain all the Poems as part of the moral history of the Zhou
Dynasty, and there was therefore no room in the commentary for recollections of sex
ual encounters with river nymphs, even though the poem makes the quest hopeless.
In the Mao explanation of this poem, the elusiveness of the maidens around the
Han River is due to King W en's ethical transformation of customs in the domains
under his rule. The coy goddesses are transformed into prudent young ladies: "Thus
far reached the breadth of Zhou's virtue. The true way of King W en extended over
the southern kingdoms, and such lovely civilizing force moved through the regions
of the Yangzi and Han. No one thought of transgressing proper customs; if you sought
such, you could not find them" (Mao, "Lesser Preface" to "The Han So W id e").1
'The Mao "Great Preface" treats the theory of poetry in general; the "Lesser Prefaces" offer inter
pretations of all the individual poems in the Classic of Poetry.
Early China

Jiao-fu's amorous nymphs o f the Han River appeared often in later poetry, as in this very
cryptic poem by the third-century poet Ruan ji, in w hich the legend, shifting from Jiao-fu to
a forsaken wom an, suggests general betrayal and loss. The "dangerous beauty" mentioned
in Ruan Ji's poem is literally "one to make a city fa ll," as in the verses Li Yan-nian sings (see
p. 215) about his sister to Emperor W u of the Han:
She glances once, a city falls;

a kingdom falls when she glances again.
The honey-tongued orator Song Yu ascribed to his lovely neighbor the ab ility to "beguile
[the city ofi Xia-cai.
Ruan Ji
(a .d .
210-263)Songs of M y Cares II
Two maidens roamed by rivers shore,

they freely moved, borne by the breeze.
Jiao-fu put their pendants in his robes;
they were tender, young and sweet of scent.
By passion his heart was swept away~
he would never forget in a thousand years.
Such dangerous beauty beguiled Xia-cai
fair features knotted his heart within.
Strong feelings, roused, brought troubled thoughts,
in orchid rooms were planted oblivions blooms.
For whom now is her oiling and washing done?
wish for rain reproaches the morning sun.
How can a bond strong as metal and stone
change in only a day to partings pain?
'
Ruan jr s strangely intense poem in turn makes a fine contrast w ith a famous poem by the
Tang w riter Meng Hao-ran, who, early in the eighth century, visited the supposed site o f Jiaofu ;s encounter.
Meng Hao-ran (ca. 690-ca. 740), W ritten at W an M ountain Pool

I sat on a boulder, let my fishing line hang,
the water was clear, my mind also calm.
Fish swam along under trees by the pool,

and gibbons hung among vines on the isles.
Once roaming girls untied their pendants,
on this very mountain, so legend says.
He pursued them, he didnt get them
moving in moonlight, I turn back with a rowing song.
Correspondences
Correspondences are an essentia) part of the Classic of Poetry. The most obvious
correspondences are the connections between words created by rhyme, but the ar
bitrary linkages of sound often led to the assumption of deeper linkages. Many
poems in the Classic are constructed of stanzas that have one set of alternations in
the natural world in the first part of each stanza, with a parallel series of alternations
in the human world occupying the last part of each stanza.
Traditional Chinese poetic theory made a clear distinction between cases in
which there was an overt analogy between the natural image and the human con
dition, and those cases in which the natural image was more mysteriously associ
ated with the human situation. The former was called "comparison" (bi), and the
latter was called a "stirring" or an "affective image" (xing). in other poems, the al
ternations involve some human activity in the first part of the stanza and a feeling
or thought in the second part of the stanza. But whether the first part of the stanza
is a natural image or a human activity, the pattern always suggests a correspondence
between seemingly unrelated things.
Classic o f Poetry VI Peach Tree Soft and Tender

Peach tree soft and tender,
how your blossoms glow!
The bride is going to her home
she well befits this house.
plump, the ripening fruit.
The bride is going to her home,
she well befits this house.
its leaves spread thick and full.
she well befits these folk.
Classic of Poetry X Bluffs of the Ru

All along the bluffs of the Ru
I hack the boughs and branches.
Until the time I see my prince,
I crave him like dawn hunger.
All along the bluffs of the Ru,
I hack the branches and boughs.
Once I have seen my prince
he will not forsake me afar.
Early China
Tail of bream, flushed with red

the royal house seems aflame;
but even though it seems aflame,
my father and mother are close by.
Sometimes, as in the poem above and in the one that follows, the last stanza shifts
to a more cryptic image, which has an uncertain relation to the theme established
in the opening stanzas.
Classic o f Poetry XLI North Wind55

Chilly is the north wind
heavy falls the snow;
if you care and love me,
take my hand, well go.
Dont be shy, don
t be slow
we must leave now!
Icy is the north wind,
thickly falls the snow;
take my handcome away.
Dont be shy, dont be slow
we must leave now!
No red but the fox
no black but the crow
take my hand, share my cart.
Dont be shy, dont be slow
we must leave now!
Classic o f Poetry XII Magpies Nest

O the magpie has its nest,
but the dove does take it as her own.
a hundred coaches greet her.
but tis the dove that holds it.
the hundred coaches join her.

b u t9tis the dove that fills it.
35

a hundred coaches in her train.
The bird translated as a dove is a jiu , a term used for several distinct kinds of birds.
Commentators believe that this jiu was a species that left its eggs in the nests of other
birds, who unknowingly hatched and fostered them. This, however, is hard to rec
oncile with the dove itself occupying the magpie's nest, and the strange analogy to
a bride going to her new home.
Classic o f Poetry X X Plums Are Falling

Plums are falling,
seven are the fruits
many men want me,
let me have a fine one.
Plums are falling,
three are the fruits;
many men want me,
let me have a steady one.
Plums are falling
catch them in the basket
many men want me,
let me be bride of one.
Classic o f Poetry XXIII Dead Roe Deer

A roe deer dead in the meadow,
all wrapped in white rushes.
The maidens heart was filled with spring
a -gentleman led her astray.
Undergrowth in forest,
dead deer in the meadow,
all wound with white rushes,
a maiden white as marble.
Softly now, and gently, gently,
do not touch my apron, sir,
and dont set the cur to barking.
Classic o f Poetry X X X First the Winds"

First the wind, then the storm,
you look on me and laugh,
Scorn and gibes and mockery,
till my heart aches inside.
36
First the wind, then blowing dust,

would you be kind and come?
For if you do not visit me,
longing lasts on and on.
First the wind, then dark skies,
dark skies come at any time.
I lie awake and cannot sleep,
I am frantic from yearning.
So dark now are the shadows,
and the thunder roars.
I lie awake and cannot sleep,
my heart is filled with yearning.
Classic o f Poetry X X X V Valley Winds

Valley winds are howling
bringing darkness, bringing rain.
I did my best to share your heart
unfairthis rage of yours!
Pull up turnips, pull up radish,
not just for the bottom half.
In no way did I fail my good name
I was with you until death.
Slowly then I walk my road
I fault you in my heart.
You did not go so far with me,
just rushed me to the door.
Who says bitterroot is harsh?
it tastes as sweet as cane.
But peace to you and your new bride,
be as kin, be as brothers.
The Jing is muddied by the Wei,
but then it settles, crystal clear.
Peace to you and your new bride,
you take me as a paltry thing.
But stay away from my fish-weir
and dont upset my gill-net.
I am someone you cannot stand
why should I care for what will come?
When you come to where its deep,
cross by raft, cross by boat
and when you come to the shallows
wade across or swim.
What we had, what we lacked

I did my best to get it.
When great ills came to others,
on hands and knees I helped them.
A man who could not care for me
but took me as his foe;
you spurned my honor
as goods that cant be sold.
Once it was fear I felt, and dread,
tumbling together with you;
but then I gave birth and suck,
and now you think of me like venom.
Fine dried foods I have
that still may last through winter.
But peace to you and your new bride
you had me to last through the hard times.
Seething you were and storming,
you gave me the harshest tasks.
You gave no heed to earlier times,
when once you came and loved me.
In "North Wind" (XLI), given earlier (p. 35), we can see the image of the storm as a
background of trouble, against which the lovers or friends should go off together. In
the two preceding poems we can see the image of the storm as a counterpart of the
troubles between lovers or spouses. But what can we do with the image as it ap
pears in the following poem, "Wind and Rain
Classic o f Poetry XC Wind and Rain:

Chill and dreary, wind and rain,
the roosters crow together.
Now that I have seen my prince,
how else but hearts sweet ease?
Gust and spatter, wind and rain,
the roosters5cries are shrill.
Now that I have seen my prince,
else but hearts relief?
sky, wind and rain,

^ thei(i^(pj:ers keep on crowing.
.] ! ^ NoV^hat I have seen my prince,

\ .\^
ols^ but hearts delight?
/
)/
Classic o f Poetry XLVI Thorn-Vine on the Wall

Thorn-vine on the wall
cannot be brushed aside.
What went on behind the screen
are words not to be told;
it might still be told,
but the words are ugly ones.
cannot be pulled away.
are words not to be made full known
it might be made full known,
but the words would last long.
cannot be cleared in sheaves.
are words not to be repeated;
it might be repeated,
but the words defile.
Classic o f Poetry LI Rainbow

There is a rainbow in the east,
but no one dares to notice.
A girl goes to be a bride,
far from brothers, mother, father.
There is dawn mist in the west,
it will rain the morning long.
A girl goes to be a bride,
Such a girl, behaving so!
the ruin of her wedding;
not to be trusted at all
she defied what was bidden.
Classic of Poetry LXIII Fox

Fox on the prowl, on the prowl,
there on the weir of the Qi.
Troubled is this heart
that person has no skirt.

there where the Qi runs shallow.
Troubled is this heart~
That person has no sash.
there by the edge of the Qi.
Troubled is this heart~
That person wears nothing at all.
Classic o f Poetry XCIV Creepers on the Moorland

Creepers on the moorland,
dripping with the dew.
There was a lovely woman
with clear and sparkling eyes.
It was by chance we met,
I had what I desired.
Creepers on the moorland,
soaking in the dew.
There was a lovely woman
eyes sparkling and clear.
It was by chance we met,
together went for cover.
In the poem above and in the one that follows, the natural image may be as much
the setting of the situation in the second part of the stanza as a counterpart of human
feeling.
Classic o f Poetry CXL Willows by the Eastern Gate

Willows by the Eastern Gate,
their leaves so thick and close.
Dusk had been the time set,
and now the morning star glows bright.
Willows by the Eastern Gate,
their leaves so dense and full.
Dusk had been the time set,
and now the morning star shines pale.
Classic o f Poetry CLXXXIV Crane Cries Out

The crane cries out in deepest marsh,
its voice is heard upon the moor.
The fish dive down to depths of pools
Early China
or remain beside the isles.

How the garden brings delight!
planted all with sandalwood,
whose leaves are shed beneath it.
The stones of other mountains
can be taken for our whetstones.
The crane cries out in deepest marsh
its voice is heard in the skies.
The fish remain beside the isles
or dive to the depths of pools.
How the garden brings delight!
planted all with sandalwood,
and scrub brush grows beneath it.
The stones of other mountains
we can use to work our jade.
Classic of Poetry V GrasshoppersWings

Grasshoppers* wings
are teeming, teeming
fit that your offspring
be thus abounding.
Grasshoppers wings
are swarming, swarming;
go on never-ending.
Grasshoppers wings,
are thronging, thronging
be fruitful and grow rife.
Many of the Classic of Poetry poems tell of the military campaigns of the Zhou, par
ticularly against the less settled peoples who raided Zhou territory. Among these no
madic invaders, the Xian-yun mentioned in this next poem were the most trouble
some.
Classic o f Poetry CLXVII Gather the Fiddleheads

Gather them, gather them, fiddlehead ferns,
fiddleheads now start to grow.
We want to go home, to go home
for the year soon comes to a close.
We have no house, we have no home
41
all because of the Xian-yun.

No chance to sprawl, no chance to sit,
all because of the Xian-yun.
fiddleheads now turn tender.
We want to go hometo go home,
our hearts are filled with care.
Careworn hearts are seething,
we hunger and we thirst.
Our expedition is not done,
and no one brings us word from home.
fiddleheads now are firm.
We want to go hometo go home,
the year is in winters first month.
No man is slack in the kings work,
no chance to sprawl and rest.
Our careworn hearts are tormented,
off we went and came not back.
What is this that blooms so fair?_
it is the wild plum flowering.
What is the great rig there?
it is the chariot of our prince.
His war chariot now is hitched,
his four stallions are sturdy.
We dare not bide in one set place,
each month we have three clashes.
Hitched are the four stallions,
his four stallions stalwart.
This is ridden by our prince,
on both sides screened by common troops.
His four stallions move evenly,
ivory bow-tips, shark-skin quivers.
We must be watchful every day,
we are hardpressed by the Xian-yun.
Long ago we marched away
with willows budding in a haze.
Back we come today,
in falling snow, sifting down.
Slowly we walk the way,
we hunger and we thirst.
Our hearts are wounded with pain,
no man knows how much we mourn.
4?
Early China
In many cases the connection between the opening image and the human sentiment
seems arbitrary, perhaps an accident of rhyme or play on an image that may have
been associated with a tune or tune type.
Classic o f Poetry IV Trees with Bending Boughs

In the south are trees with bending boughs,
and ivy binds them all about.
Mirth and joy be to our prince,
and may fair fortune fall on him.
and ivy runs wild over them.
'and may fair fortune prosper him.
V

and ivy twines around them.
and may fair fortune bide with him.
Classic o f Poetry VII Rabbit Snare

The rabbit snare has mesh so fine,
with a thump we knock its pegs in*.
A staunch and fearless warrior,
our lord dukes shield and bastion.
we stretch it in the wagon track.
well paired with our lord the duke.
we set it in the forest.
heart and gut of our lord duke.
Classic of Poetry LIX Bamboo Pole

There is flex and play in bamboo poles,
you can fish with them in the Qi.
How can I help longing for you?
You are far, I cannot reach you.
Quan fountainhead is on the left,
the river Q i lies to the right.
A girl goes off to be a bride
43
The river Q i lies to the right,

Quan fountainhead is on the left.
The gleam of her beguiling smile,
her pendants in rich panoply.
The river Q i keeps flowing on,
oars of cypress, boat of pine.
I hitch my team, go roaming
to ease my troubled mind.
Understanding and Misunderstanding:

The Need to Explain
By the sixth century B.C., passages from the Classic of Poetry were being cited, ap
plied to contemporary situations, and given figurative explanations. Acts of inter
pretation accompanying the poems became a constant feature of the Chinese tra
dition; and when the Classic of Poetry changed from a primarily oral repertoire to
a written text, the text rarely appeared without a commentary.
Rather than taking this need to explain what the poems "really" mean as mere
Traditionalist (Confucian) scholasticism, we might note how often the question of
possible misunderstanding arises within the Classic of Poetry itself and how often
the poems incorporate acts of explanation. This often takes the form: "It is not X; it
is Y."
Classic o f Poetry XLII Gentle Girl

A gentle girl and fair
awaits by the crook of the wall;
in shadows I dont see her;
I pace and scratch my hair.
A gentle girl and comely
gave me a scarlet pipe
scarlet pipe that gleams
in your beauty I find delight.
Then she brought me a reed from the pastures,
it was truly beautiful and rare.
Reedthe beauty is not yours
you are but beautys gift.
Classic o f Poetry LXI The River Is Broad

Who claims that the river is wide?
A single reed can cross it.
Who claims that Song is far away?
I rise on my toes and gaze at it.
44
Early China
Who claims that the river is wide?

It wont hold even a dinghy.
W ho claims that Song is far away?
I can be there ere morning is done.
Classic o f Poetry LXIV Quince

She cast a quince to me
a costly garnet I returned

it was no equal return,
but by this love will last.
She cast a peach to me,
costly opal I returned;

She cast a plum to me,
a costly ruby I returned;
Interpretation is the ability to know what things and gestures "really" mean beneath
surface appearances. In the following poem, "Millet Lush," the speaker imagines him
self being observed by others. Those who know him understand the feelings that lead
him to pace back and forth, while others see only the surface, a man loitering, and
question his motives.
Classic o f Poetry LXV Millet Lush

There the millet is lush,
There the grain is sprouting.
I walk with slow, slow steps,
My heart is shaken within.
Those who know me
Would say my heart is grieved;

Those who know me not
Would ask what I seek here.
G ray and everlasting Heaven
What man is this?

There the millet is lush
There the grain comes to ear.
I walk with slow, slow steps,
My heart as if drunk within.
Those who know me
45
Would say my heart is grieved;

W ould ask what I seek here.
Gray and everlasting Heaven
What man is this?
There the millet is lush,
There the grain forms its seed.
I walk with slow, slow steps
My heart as if choked within.
Those who know me
Would say my heart is grieved
Would ask what I seek here.
Gray and everlasting Heaven
What man is this?
The speaker in the next poem repeatedly forbids her lover to come any closer and
then, afraid that he might misunderstand, has to explain herself.
Classic o f Poetry L X X V IccZhong-zi, Please

Zhong-zi, please
dont cross my village wall,
dont break the willows planted there.
Its not that I care so much for them,
but I dread my father and mother;
Zhong-zi may be in my thoughts,
but what my father and mother said_
that too may be held in dread.
Zhong-zi, please
dont cross my fence
dont break the mulberries planted there.
Its not that I care so much for them,
but I dread my brothers
but what my brothers said
Zhong-zi, please
dont cross into my garden,
dont break the sandalwood planted there.
It's not that I care so much for them,
but I dread others will talk much;
but when people talk too much
Early China
Classic o f Poetry XXVI Boat of Cypress

That boat of cypress drifts along,
it drifts upon the stream.
Restless am II cannot sleep,
as though in torment and troubled.
Nor am I lacking wine
to ease my mind and let me roam.
This heart of mine is no mirror,
it cannot take in all.
Yes, I do have brothers,
but brothers will not be my stay.
I went and told them of my grief
and met only with their rage.
This heart of mine is no stone;

you cannot turn it where you will.
This heart of mine is no mat;
I cannot roll it up within.
I have behaved with dignity,
in this no man can fault me.
My heart is uneasy and restless,
I am reproached by little men.
Many are the woes Isve met,
and taken slights more than a few.
I think on it in the quiet,
and waking pound my breast.
Oh Sun! and you Moon!
Why do you each grow dim in turn?
These troubles of the heart
are like unwashed clothes.
I think on it in the quiet,
I cannot spread wings to fly away.
The version of "Boat of Cypress" below has the same title and the same opening
image, but developed in a very different way.
Classic o f Poetry XLV Boat of Cypress

it drifts along midstream.
The boy with hanging locks of hair
is really right for me.
I swear I
ll have no other till I die.
Oh mother! oh Sky!
W ont you put faith in me?
47
Anthology of Chinese Literature

it drifts by rivers edge
The boy with hanging locks of hair
is really the mate for me.
I swear no switching till I die.
Oh mother! oh Sky!
W on
t you put faith in me?
Other Poems
Among the poems in the Classic of Poetry we seem to have fragments of lyrics for
old festivals. The following piece is from the Poems of the domain of Zheng, whose
music and perhaps lyrics were associated with dangerous wantonness. As in other
poems in the Classic, the gift of a flower or fruit is an essential part of the courtship
exchange.
Classic o f Poetry XCV Zhen and Wei

O Zhen and Wei together,
swollen now they flow.
Men and maids together,
chrysanthemums in hand.
The maid says, Have you looked?
The man says, I have gone.
Lets go then look across the Wei,
it is truly a place for our pleasure
Man and maid together
each frolicked with the other
and gave as gift the peony.
1
"
O Zhen and Wei together,

flowing deep and clear.
Men and maids together,
teeming everywhere.
The maid says, Have you looked?
The man says I have gone.

LetY go then look across the Wei,
it is truly a place for our pleasure.
Man and maid together
each will frolic with the other
and give as gift the peony.
Among these poems we find hints of ancient rites: the daughter of Zi-zhong, cho
sen as the sacred dancer, is followed by crowds as she gives out handfuls of pepper
plants, used to make offerings to the gods.
Early China
Classic o f Poetry CXXXVTItcEastern G ates White Elms

Eastern Gates white elms,
thorn-oaks of Wan Hill.
The daughter of Zi-zhong
goes dancing under them.
On a fine morning we choose her
on the meadow to the south.
She does not spin her hemp today
she dances in the marketplace.
On a fine morning we go our way,
we wend away in crowds.
We see you as the Lavender,
who gives us pepper in handfuls.
Short lyrics like "Within Ten Acresbelow, which seems to have been a mulberrypicking song (mulberry leaves were used to feed silkworms), strongly suggest that at
least some of the "Airswere of peasant origin. Pieces with lyrics as simple as this
may have been included only for the sake of their music, now long lost.
Classic o f Poetry CXI Within Ten Acres

W ithin ten acres of groves,
slowly the mulberry pickers go,
shall you and I go back together?
Beyond ten acres of groves
merrily mulberry pickers go,
and why dont we go off together?
In some cases the basic situation of the poem is far from clear, as in "Dew on the
Way," which seems to involve litigation of some sort.
Classic o f Poetry XVII Dew on the Way

The dews are soaking the way;
of course I would go in the dark before dawn,
but I dread so much dew on the way.
Who will say that the wren lacks beak?
how did it peck through my roof?
And who will say that you lack kin?
how did you bring me so quickly to court?
But though you brought me quickly to court,
your house and kin are not enough.
49
Who will say that a rat lacks teeth?

how did it pierce my wall?
And who will say that you lack kin?
how did you charge me so quickly?
But though you charge me quickly,
you still will not have your way.
Classic o f Poetry XXXIV Dry Leaves on the Gourd

Leaves are dry on the gourd now,
the crossing is deep on the Ji.
If deep, lash them to your waist,
if shallow, hang them at your back.
Floodwaters come, the Ji is full,
the hen pheasant sings wei-weL
The Ji is full, it wont wet your axles,

the hen cries after the cock.
W ild geese cry out,
at dawn the sun grows bright.
If the well-born man would take a bride,
let him come before the banks ice up.
The boatman waves and waves;
others cross over, not I;
others cross overnot I;
I am waiting for my friend.
Classic o f Poetry LVI ccWe Had Our Delight55

In the valley we had our delight,
a big man free and easy.
I sleep alone and waking speak,
vow never to forget him.
Upon the slopes we had our delight,
a big man winning and merry.
I sleep alone and waking sing,
vow never to betray him.
On the highlands we had our delight
a big man and a shrewd one.
I sleep alone, then wake all night,
vow never to make it known.
The poem above is a fine example of the problems of interpretation in the Classic
of Poetry. The phrase translated as "we had our delight" is kao-pan. The great Con-
Early China
fucian philosopher and commentator Zhu Xi (1130-1200) took kao-pan to mean
"ambling about,the behavior of a hermit Other commentators think that the phrase
means "to beat on an earthenware vessel"supposedly as an expression of good

cheer. I have followed the oldest interpretation of this phrase as /yachieve perfect
joy," although here the "joyis supposed to be that of someone escaping the misgovernment of Duke Zhuang of Wei and finding happiness in a mountain valley. As
the remainder of each stanza suggests that the situation is sexual rather than politi
cal, I have chosen the interpretation adopted by many modern commentators.
Classic o f Poetry LX X X I I Went Along the Broad Road

I went along the broad road
and took you by the sleeve~
do not hate me,

never spurn old friends.
I went along the broad road
and took you by the hand
do not scorn me,

never spurn a love.
Many of the "Airs" have a moving simplicity that is as clear now, even in transla
tion, as it was two and a half millennia ago.
Classic o f Poetry LXXXII wRooster Crows

The woman said, The rooster crows.
The man said, Still the dark before dawn.
Get you up, man look at the night!
the morning star is sparkling;

go roving and go roaming,
shoot the wild goose and the teal.

When your arrows hit them,
I will dress them just for you
when theyre dressed, well drink the wine,
and I will grow old with you.
There will be harps to attend us,
and all will be easy and good.
If I know that you will come,
Ill make a gift of many jewels;
if I know you will accept,
Pll show my care with many jewels;
if I know you will love me,
Ill answer you with many jewels.
51
Classic o f Poetry CXXXIII No Clothes

How can you say, I have no clothes?
I will share my greatcoat with you.
The king is raising his army,
we will make ready pike and spear,
and I will share all foes with you.
I will share my shift with you.

we will make ready halberd and pike,
and I will set out with you.
I will share my war-kilt with you.
we will make ready buffcoat and dirk,
and I will march with you.
In addition to expressions of love and friendship, the "Airs
also contain satire, both
personal and political. Misrule has always interested Chinese commentators far
more than peace and prosperity. The Mao commentary forced many a love poem
to serve as a veiled attack on rulers by those ruled. The political satire of "Huge Rat"
is clear, and the poem has always been a favorite of those who wished to believe
in the Classic of Poetry as a means to express social discontent.
Classic o f Poetry CXIII Huge Rat

Huge rat, huge rat,
eat my millet no more,

for three years Pve fed you,
yet you pay me no heed.
I swear that I will leave you

and go to a happier land.
A happy land, a happy land,
and there I will find my place.
Huge rathuge rat,
eat my wheat no more,

for three years I
ve fed you
and you show no gratitude.
and go to a happier realm.
A happy realm, a happy realm,

there I will find what I deserve.
Early China
Huge rat, huge rat,

eat my sprouts no more,
for three years I have fed you,
and you wont reward my toil.
and go to happy meadows.
Happy meadows, happy meadows
where none need wail and cry.
Classic o f Poetry CVII Sandals of Straw55 .

So tightly wound, sandals of straw
can serve to walk through frost.
Slender and fine, the maidens hands
can serve to stitch his clothes,
Can make the sash, can make the hem,
and a fine man will wear them.
And that fine man, so richly clad,
whirls around and leaves her,
hung with combs of ivory.
This is a man of ungenerous heart,
thus he gets the needles barb.
Courtship, Marriage, and Love

Courtship, marriage, and the longings of separated lovers figure prominently in the
"Airs," and these remain among the most appealing poems of the collection. The
lyrics are put into the mouths of both common folk and the aristocracy, women as
well as men.
Classic o f Poetry CXXXVIII Barred Gate

Behind barred gates
a man may find peace.
And where a spring gushes,
hunger may be healed.
When eating fish, who needs
bream of the river?
When taking wife, who needs
a Jiang princess of Qi?
Eating fish, who needs
carp from the river?
Taking wife, who needs
the royal daughter of Song?
53

"Barred Gate" has the tone of folk wisdom. But the folk metaphor of fishing for
courtship also appears in the following poem, which seems to be a celebration of a
marriage between a Zhou princess, surnamed Ji, and a count of the ruling house of
the domain Qi. "Barred Gate" could be read as a poor man's answer to "Ah, How
Splendid."
Classic o f Poetry XXIV AhHow Splendid

Ah, how splendid
the flowers of the cherry.

What but reverence and awe
for the coach of a royal Ji?
Ah, how splendid
flowers of peach and plum.
King Pings grandchild
and the son of the Count of Qi.
How then is fishing done?
the line is made of silk.
The son of the Count of Qi
and the grandchild of King Ping.
Classic o f Poetry CLVIII Cutting the Haft

How do you cut a haft?
you have to use the ax.
H ow do you get a wife?
you have to use a go-between.

In cutting a haft, cutting a haft
the model is not far.
And now I see her face to face,
plates and tureens in rows.
Classic o f Poetry XXII The River Has Its Forkings

The river has its forkings,
the bride goes to her home.
She will not take me with her,
she will not take me with her,
and later she will rue it.
The river has its holms,
She will not let me join her,
she will not let me join her,
and later shell be sick with grief.
Early China
The river has its feeders,

She will not stop to visit me,
she will not stop to visit me,
and now I sing here wailing.
In the following piece, the singer boasts of illicit liaisons in the mulberries" with
the daughters of the greatest houses of North China.
Classic o f Poetry XLVIII In the Mulberries

Where did I pick the sweet pear?
it was right across the Mei,

W ho was the woman I longed for?
the noble Jiangs daughter fair.

In the mulberries she promised to meet,
she called me to her high bower,
and went off with me on the river Ji.

And where did I pick the wheat?
it was there, north of the Mei.
W ho was the woman I longed for?
fair daughter of the noble Yi.


And where did I pick the radish?_
it was there, east of the Mei.

Who was the woman I longed for?
the noble Yongs fair daughter.
Classic o f Poetry LXVI My Prince Has Taken the Field

My prince has taken the field
he sets no time of return.
When at last will he come?
The chickens roost in hen-house,
and at the evening of the day,
cattle and sheep come down.
My prince has taken the field,
how can I not long for him?
55

no term of days, no term of months,
When at last will we meet?
The chickens roost in coops,
and the evening of the day,

sheep and cattle come down to the herd.
how can I not hunger for him?
Classic o f Poetry LXXIII Great Cart

The great cart goes rumbling along,
a flannel coat as green as grass.
Well you know I long for you,

but fear you will not dare.
The great cart pitches and sways,
a flannel coat like rust red barleycorn.
Well you know I long for you,

but fear you wont run off.
Alive, we live in different rooms,
but dead, well share a single tomb.
If you say I cant keep faith,
it will shine as bright as the sun.
Classic o f Poetry LXXVII Shu Is on a Field Hunt

Shu is on a field hunt3
no one is in the streets.
Is no one really in the streets?
no one there is like Shu,

a gentle, handsome man.
Shu is on the winter chase
no one drinks in the streets.
Does no one really drink in the streets?
a good and handsome man.
Shu has gone to the wilds,
in the streets no one drives horses.
Does no one really drive horses?

a soldierly, handsome man.
Early China
Classic o f Poetry LXXXVII Lift Your Kilts

If you love me dearly,
lift your kilts and cross the Zhen.
And if you do not love me,
there are other men,
O rashest of all rash young men.
And if you love me dearly,
lift your kilts and cross the Wei.
And if you do not love me,
there are other squires,
O rashest of all rash young men.
Using the Poems and

Early Interpretation
A literary tradition begins not only with important early literary texts but
also with a system whereby those texts are received, understood, and used
within the society. Early commentaries on language, writing, and most
particularly the Classic of Poefry voiced concerns that would remain in

poetry and other forms of writing throughout the Chinese tradition.
The Classic of Poetry was seen as an educational text, providing knowledge
and models for speaking. In the Analects, comments on the Classic of Poetry attributed to Confucius were among the most influential and often quoted.
Analects XVII.9
The Master said, My young ones, why not work at learning the Poems}
By the Poems you can stir (xing)3 by them you can observe, by them you can
have fellowship, by them you can express reproach. Close to home they let
you serve your father; farther awaythey let you serve your lord. And you
recognize many names of birds, beasts, plants, and trees.
This passage suggests the importance of the poems from the Classic in public dis
course. The term "stir" (xing) probably refers to using quotations from the Poems in
political oratory to "stir" the listener's sympathies or to clinch an argument.
bserve" was taken by traditional commentators in the sense of "observe the flourish
ing and decline of customs"; i.e., finding in the Poe/775 a mirror reflecting social and
moral history.
Analects II.2
The Master said, The Poems are three hundred, yet one phrase covers them:
fino straying.
"No straying" (or "In thought no straying") is itself a phrase from the Poems, de
scribing the horses in a well-trained chariot team. In the Mao commentary on the
Classic of Poetry, the meaningless particle si is interpreted as "thought, leading to
the popular interpretation "in thought no straying." Confucius' application of the
phrase to the Classic of Poetry as a whole was understood to mean that every poem
was ethically correct. This, in turn, was taken as the basis for moral interpretations
of all the poems in the Classic.
Early China
Analects 1.15
Zi-gong said"What do you think of someone who is poor but does not fawn
or one who is wealthy but not haughty?MThe Mas.ter said, Its all right,
but better still to be poor yet happy, or wealthy yet loving proper behav
ior.MZi-gong said, When the Poems say,
As if cut in bone or ivory,
as if carved and polished,
is this what you mean? Then the Master said, ccZi-gong, now at last I can
speak of the Poems with you. I told you one thing, and you knew what fol
lowed from it.
The ability to "apply the Poems to the situation at hand was an important part of
the genera) education of the elite in the period of The Springs and Autumns of Lu
(770403 B.C.). The Zuo Tradition, an historical work running roughly parallel to
The Springs and Autumns of Lu, contains many examples of the use of the Poems
in oratory and judgment. Often, such use is quite straightforward; at other times, as
in the following passage, figurative applications are made in much the same way as
metaphors in folk rhymes. Usually the citation of the Poems is followed by a brief
explanation.
The Zuo Tradition, an entry for the 3 1st year of Duke Xiang
(542 b.c.)
It was the twelfth month. Bei-gong Wen-zi was serving as Adviser to Duke
Xiang of Wei on a journey to Chu. It was in consequence of the oath at Song,
As they passed the city of Zheng, Yin Duan lodged them in North Forest to
offer consolation for the hardships of their journey. He treated them with
the ceremonies for receiving foreign visitors and spoke gracious words to
them. Then Bei-gong Wen-zi entered the city of Zheng as foreign ambas
sador, with Zi-yu serving as his herald. Feng Jian-zi and Zi-tai-shu met him
as a guest. When matters were concluded, he went forth again and said to
the Count of Wei, ccCeremony is preserved in Zheng, and it will bring them
several generations of good fortune. I am sure that they will be free from as
sault by the great domains. As the Poem says
W ho can take hold of something hot?
does he not first wet his hands?

The relation of ceremony to governing is that of water to something hot
Wars were fought over smalI slights endured in the interaction between princes. The
state of Zheng treated the Duke of Wei and his entourage with all courtesy and proper

ceremony. The couplet from the Poem provides a metaphor of insulation that gives
Bei-gong Wen-zi an intuition about the true nature of ceremony (li) as something
that insulates from the conflicts that arise in human relations. In the violent world
of the period of The Springs and Autumns ofLu, ceremony was indeed the only thing
that could keep brutality and raw will under restraint. The Classic of Poetry was it
self a complement to ceremony, sometimes part of it, but also a means to comment
with authority on the quality of behavior, its adherence to ceremony or the failure
to do so.
Yet it was early recognized that the Poems could also be quoted out of context
to prove any point. In a wonderful passage in The Zuo Tradition, someone was crit
icized for marrying a wife of the same surname, which was taboo. He replied, "As
in taking a passage out of context when reciting the Poems, I took only the part I
wanted." This brings up the question: which is master, the poem or the interpreter?
The pious moralizing of the Traditionalists and their "application" of the Poems
to ethical cases also did not escape parody by the Daoist writers who composed the
later ch ap ters o f th e Z h u a n g - z i from th e third o r seco n d c e n tu ry b.c. T h e verses
quoted in the following anecdote are not found in the current version of the Clas
sic o f Poetry, and it seems likely that they were invented for the situation.
The Zhuang-zi Outer Things55

Traditionalists break into tombs using the Poems and Ceremony.
The chief Traditionalist deigned to convey these wordsIt beginneth to
grow light in the east. Hows it going?
The subordinate Traditionalist responded, I havent got the skirt and
jacket off yet, but theres a pearl in his mouth.
The high Traditionalist: Verily it is even as the Poems say:
Green, green groweth grain

upon the slopes of the mound.
The man ungenerous alive,
in death his mouth will hold no pearl.
Ill grab the whiskers and pull down on the beardyou take a metal bar,
break through his cheeksand slowly part his jaws, but dont damage the
pearl in his mouth.
The other side of "application" is interpretation, and traditional Chinese literary in

terpretation grew out of interpretation of the Classic o f Poetry, which in turn grew
out of a larger sense of how language worked. In the following passage, Mencius
speaks as a moralist, but note the assumptions about how language is understood;
it is not necessarily what a speaker or writer intends to say, but what he cannot help
revealing through his words. Gong-sun Chou is questioning the great Traditionalist
(Confucian) philosopher Mencius on what he considers to be his most important
skills.
Early China
Mencius II A, 2.xi, xvii

G o n g -sun C hou
What, sir, are your strongest points?
M encius : I understand language and have mastered the fostering of that
boundless and surging vital force.

Gong-sun C h o u
W h a t do you mean by understanding language
M encius
When someones words are one-sided, I understand how his mind
is clouded When someones words are loose and extravagant, I under

stand the pitfalls into which that person has fallen. When someones
words are warped, I understand wherein the person has strayed. When
someones words are evasive, I understand how the person has been
pushed to his limit.
In Mencius, we also find the earliest examples of dispute over the interpretation of
the Poems. In the following passage, a thorny ethical problem is posed: When SageKing Yao abdicated the throne to Sage-King Shun, was Yao then Shun's subject? And
furthermore, was Shun's own father then Shun's subject (an unthinkable situation
in which the political and family hierarchies are at odds)? Hereditary monarchy en
sured that such a situation would never arise; but among the Sage-Kings of earliest
antiquity, a ruler would voluntarily cede the throne to a worthy younger man. Men
cius has made an exception to the king's dominion in these cases, but Xian-qiu Meng
cites the Classic of Poetry as an authority to prove that there are no exceptions. Men
cius attacks Xian-qiu Meng's interpretation (but does not question the authority of
the ifllassic of Poetry to decide such issues). The poem in question, Mencius says,
arises from a particular situation in which an officer is caught between conflicting
claims of duty to the king and duty to his parents. The "king's business" is the duty
of all, but he feels as if he alone were charged with completing it However ques
tionable the particular interpretation may be, the way in which Mencius makes it is
significant. The universal meaning of the Classic o f Poetry can only be discovered
through the particular circumstances of an individual poem.
Mencius V A, 4.ii
Xian-qiu Meng saidI have accepted your declaration that the Sage-King
Shun did not consider Yao [who abdicated the throne in favor of Shun] to
be his subject. Yet there is a poem in the Classic o f Poetry:
Of all that is under Heaven,

No place is not the kings land
And to the farthest shores of all the land
No man is not the kings subject.
I would like to ask how it could be, when Shun became Emperor, that his
father, the Blind Old M anwould not be considered his subject?

61
Mencius replied, The poem is not talking about that. Ratherthe poem
concerns the inability to care for ones parents when laboring in the kings
business. It says, Everything is the kings business [and should be a re
sponsibility shared by all], yet I alone labor here virtuously.In explaining
the Poems of the Classic of Poetry, one must not permit the literary pat
terning to adversely affect the understanding of the statement; and one must
not permit our understanding of the statement to adversely affect our un
derstanding of what was on the writers mind. We use our understanding
to trace it back to what was in the writers mindthis is how to grasp it.
Mencius' concept of understanding the Poems is not a grasp of the "meaning" in an
abstract sense, but rather a knowledge of what was in the mind of the writer in a
particular situation. Literary understanding was a form of personal understanding,
which included ethical and conceptual issues, but went beyond them. Reading
might thus offer a community of friends that could extend beyond one's local re
gion and time. In the following passage, I have translated the term shi as ^gentle-
man
originally the shi were the knightly class who by Mencius' time had become
the educated gentry of the Warring States.
Mencius V B, 8.ii
Mencius said to Wan-zhang, A good gentleman in one small community
will befriend the other good gentlemen of that community. he good gen
tleman of a single domain will befriend the other good gentlemen of that
domain. The good gentleman of the whole world will befriend the other good
gentlemen of the whole world. But if befriending the good gentleman of the
whole world is not enough, then one may go on further to consider the an
cients. Yet is it acceptable to recite their poems and read their books, yet not
know what kind of persons they were? Therefore one considers the age in
which they lived. This is going on further to make friends.
The following passage from the Classic of Documents is not from the oldest sections
of that work, which date back to the early first millennium. The section of the Clas
sic o f Documents from which this statement is taken probably dates from the period
of The Springs and Autumns ofLu or from the Warring States; but because, up until
the modern period, it was believed to have been from the original Classic, it carried
immense authority and was accepted as the canonical definition of poetry. This de
finition is pseudo-etymological, based o n splitting th e character for "poetry," s h i ,
into its two components. The first of these is yan to "speak" or "articulate." The
second element was erroneously interpreted as zhi "what is on the mind intently,"
later often with the political sense of "aims" or "ambitions. The second definition
takes the word yong a word for "song
or "singing," and divides it into yan ,
here translated as "language, and yong to "prolong. Although this primarily
refers to drawing out the syllables in singing, Confucian interpreters expanded the
interpretation to a broader sense of extension, in which poetry, as repeatable words,
could carry discourse to far places and future times.
Early China
Classic o f Documents (Shu jing) Canon of Shun

The Poem articulates what is on the mind intently; song makes language last
long.
there were many variations of this explanation, including the following passage from
The Zuo Tradition, falsely attributed to Confucius, in which the idea of language's
extension, "going far," is applied to the quality of wen , which means "patterning,"the well-written word/' and later "literature."
The Zuo Tradition, an entry for the 25th year of Duke Xiang
(548 b.c.)
Confucius said, There is a record that says: the language is to be adequate
to what is intently on the persons m indand the patterning (wen) is to be
adequate to the language. If a person does not use language, who will know
what is on his mind? If the language lacks patterning, it will not go far.
The question of the adequacy of language to thought and of the adequacy of the
written language to spoken language was a major concern in early thought, and one
that came to play an important role in the theory of poetry. The following passage,
frorfi "Appended Discourses, a philosophical treatise attached to the Classic of
Changes, an ancient divination tract, became the most famous statement on this
question. The attribution to Confucius is false.
Classic o f Changes ctAppended Discourses M

Confucius said, What is written does not give the fullness of what is said
what is said does not give the fullness of the concept in the mind.
If this is so
then does it mean that the concepts in the minds of the Sages
cannot be perceived?
He said, C(The Sages established the Images [of the Classic o f Changes]
to give the fullness of the concepts in their minds, and they set up the hexa
grams to give the fullness of what is true and false in a situation; to these
they appended statements to give the fullness of what was said.
The idea of "image" (xiang) became an important term mediating between concept
and language. This is developed in a treatise on the "Images" of the Classic of
Changes by the philosopher Wang B( (a.d. 226-249).
Wang Bi, ctElucidation of the Imagesw (Classic o f Changes)

The Image is what brings out conceptlanguage is what clarifies the Image.
Nothing can equal Image in giving the fullness of concept; nothing can equal
language in giving the fullness of Image. Language was born of the Image,
63
thus we seek in language in order to observe the Image. Image was born of
concept, thus we seek in Image in order to observe the concept. Concept is
fully given in image; Image is overt in language.
The claim that human thoughts and feelings could somehow be written in language,
however problematic that process might be, was challenged in the Zhuang-zi, in
the famous parable of Wheelwright Pian.
from the Zbuang-ziy The Way of Heaven55

Duke Huan was reading in his hall. Wheelwright Pian5who was cutting a*
wheel just outside the hall, put aside his hammer and chisel and went in.
There he asked Duke Huan, ctWhat do those books you are reading say?
The duke answered, These are the words of the Sages. The wheelwright
said, Are the Sages still around? And the duke answered, Theyre dead.
Then the wheelwright said, MWell, what youre reading then is no more than
the dregs of the ancients. The dukeWhen Ia prince, read, how is it that
a wheelwright dares come and dispute with me? If you have an explanation
fine. If you dont have an explanation, you die! Then Wheelwright Pian
said, I tend to look at it in terms of my own work: when you cut a wheel
if you go too slowly, it slides and doesnt stick fast; if you go too quickly, it
jumps and doesnt go in. Neither too slowly nor too quickly~you achieve
it in your hands, and those respond to the mind. I cant put it into words,
but there is some fixed principle there. I cant teach it to my son, and my
son can't get instruction in it from me. Ive gone on this way for seventy years
and have grown old in cutting wheels. The ancients have died, and along
vîth them, that which cannot be transmitted. Therefore what you are read
ing is nothing more than "the dregs of the ancients.
The Great Preface to the Classic o f Poetry

The "Great Preface" to the Classic of Poetry was the most authoritative statement on
the nature and function of poetry in traditional China. Not only was it the beginning
of every student's study of the Classic of Poetry from the Eastern Han through the
Song, its concerns and terminology became an essential part of writing about po
etry and learning about poetry. This was the one text on the nature of poetry known
to everyone from the end of the Han on.
It is uncertain exactly when the "Great Preface" reached its present form, but we
c an b e re a so n a b ly sure th at it w a s no later than th e first c e n tu ry
a .d .
M a n y readers
accepted the "Great Preface" as the work of Confucius' disciple Zi-xia, and thus saw
in it an unbroken tradition of teaching about the Classic of Poetrythat could be traced
back to Confucius himself. A more learned and skeptical tradition took the "Great
Preface" as the work of one Wei Hong, a scholar of the first century a.d. It is prob
ably anachronistic to apply the concept of "composition" (except in its root sense
of "putting together") to the "Great Preface." Rather, the "Great Preface" is a loose
synthesis of shared "truths" about the Classic of Poetry, truths that were the com-
Early China
mon possession of the Traditionalists (whom we now call "Cortfucians") in the War
ring States and Western Han periods. In their oral transmission, these truths were
continually being reformulated; we may consider the moment when they were writ
ten down as the "Great Preface" to be the stage in their transmission when refor
mulation changed into exegesis.
The "Great Preface" is given in its original context, joined to the first poem of
the Classic of Poetry, "Fishhawk" (see p. 30), traditionally understood as celebrat
ing the virtue of the Queen Consort of King Wen of the Zhou Dynasty.
Fishhawk
is the virtue of the Queen Consort and the beginning of the
Airs [Feng^ the first large section of the Classic o f Poetry], It is the means
by which the world is influenced (feng) and by which the relations between
husband and wife are made correct. Thus it is used in smaller communities,
and it is used in larger domains. Airs (Feng) are Influence (feng)it is
to teach. By influence it stirs them; by teaching it transforms them.

The text plays on the multiple meanings of the word feng, which primarily means
"wind." It is a kind of poetry ("Airs"); it means "customs"; and it also means "to in
fluence/7often using the metaphor of the wind bending the grasses. For the Confu
cian tradition, the purpose of the "Airswas to influence behavior.
The poem is that to which what is intently on the mind (zhi) goes. In the
mind, it is being intent (zhi); coming out in language, it is a poem.
The affections are stirred within and take on form in words. If words
alone are inadequate, we speak it out in sighs. If sighing is inadequate, we
sing it. If singing is inadequate, unconsciously our hands dance it and our
feet tap it.
This is the early psychological theory of poetry. It begins with an intense concern,
understood as an accumulation of "vital breath
(qi). A modest accumulation comes
out as a sigh; a larger accumulation comes out in words as a song. And if the accu
mulation is too great to get out, it drives the body to dancing.
Feelings emerge in soundswhen those sounds have patterning, they are

called tones, The tones of a well-managed age are at rest and happy: its
government is balanced. The tones of an age of turmoil are bitter and full
of angerits government is perverse. The tones of a ruined state are filled
with lament and broodingits people are in difficulty.
Personal concerns are understood in a social and political context, and that context
can be seen in poetic expression. Since the poems of the Classic of Poetry were per
formed to music, the "tones" that reveal social and political context are contained
in both the words and the music. When this was applied to poetry later in the tra
dition, "tone" was understood as the mood of the poem and its style.
65
Thus to correctly present achievements and failures, to move Heaven and

Earth, to stir the gods and spirits, there is nothing more appropriate than
poetry. By it the former kings managed the relations between husbands and
wives, perfected the respect due to parents and superiors, gave depth to
human relations, beautifully taught and transformed the people, and
changed local customs.
Thus there are six principles in the poems: (1) Airs (Feng); (2) exposition (fu); (3) comparison (bi); (4)<affective image (xing); (5) Odes (Ya);
(6) Hymns (song).
The "six principles" include the three main divisions of the Classic o f Poetry and
three modes of expression. "Exposition" (fu) describes those poems that simply tell
what happened. "Comparison" (bi) describes poems that use simile. "Affective
image" (xing) has been discussed earlier; this is an image that is supposed to stir the
emotions.
By fengythose above transform those below; also by fengthose below crit

icize those above. When an admonition is given that is governed by pat
terning, the one who speaks it has no culpability, yet it remains adequate to
warn those w ho hear it. In this we have feng.
The poetry of the Feng is supposed to go in two directions within the social hierar
chy. Superiors use it to make people instinctively feel the models of good behavior.
But when the superiors are not governing well, those below them use poems to show
their rulers the consequences of misrule. As long as the criticism is "patterned, that
is, presented through poetry, the person who composes or uses such a poem can
not be punished. In part, this license to use poetry for political criticism is because
poetry is supposed to emerge involuntarily from feeling.
When the Way of the Kings declined, rites and moral principles were aban
doned; the power of government to teach failed; the government of the do
mains changed; the customs of the family were altered. And at this point the
changed Feng (Airsand the changed Ya (Odeswere written. The his
torians of the domains understood clearly the marks of success and failure;
they were pained by the abandonment of proper human relations and
lamented the severity of punishments and governance. They sang their feel
ings to criticize (feng) those above, understanding the changes that had
taken place and thinking about former customs. Thus the changed Feng
emerge from the affections, but they go no further than rites and moral prin
ciples. That they should emerge from the affections is human nature; that
they go no further than rites and moral principles is the beneficent influence
of the former kings.
The "changed" poems come from a period of general social decline. This passage
attempts to resolve a serious problem: If poetry is supposed to express the social and
Early China
political temper of the age, and if the social and political temper of the age is corrupt, how can such poems present good ethical models? The problem is resolved
by assuming that the poems were composed by good people in bad times, people
who were distressed about the conditions of their age.
Thus the affairs of a single state, rooted in the experience of a single person,
are called Feng. To speak of the affairs of the whole world and to describe
customs (feng) common to all places is called Ya. Ya means proper
(zheng). These show the source of either flourishing or ruin in the royal gov
ernment. Government has its greater and lesser aspects: thus we have a
Greater Ya and a Lesser Ya. The Hymns give the outward shapes of
praising full virtue, and they inform the spirits about the accomplishment
of great deeds. These are called the Four Beginnings and are the ultimate
perfection of the Poems.
*Here the Preface distinguishes the "Airs" (Feng) from the "Odes" (Ya). The "Airs
are
supposed to be the voice of a particular person in a particular place or situation. By
Contrast, the wOdes
are supposed to speak more generally and apply to the whole
kingdom.
Selections from the Record of Music (Yue ji)

The Classic of Rites (Li ji) has only the most tenuous claim to the status of a Confu
cian Classic. It is a Western Han miscellany of largely Confucian texts from the War
ring States and Han. Among its "chapters" is a treatise on the origin, function, and
relation between music and rites: the Yue ji or "Record of Music/' Much of the ma
terial in this work appears, only slightly recast, in the "Treatise on Music/' Yue shu,
in the Historical Records (Shi ji) of Si-ma Qian. In both of these texts we find again
some of the material that went into the making of the "Great Preface,' along with a
fuller elaboration of the psychology on which the "Great Preface" is based.
The "Record of Musicand the "Great Preface" share a concern for reconciling
the spontaneous expression of feeling and its normative regulation. As the "changed
feng/'composed by the "historians of the domains," are generated spontaneously,
but stop at decent norms, so here "rites" are the natural expression of human feel
ing that finds a normative and limiting form. Out of this arises the beautiful distinc
tion between the roles of music and rites in ceremony: rites assert the distinction of
roles in human relations, while music overcomes these distinctions and unifies the
participants.
All tones that arise are generated from the human mind. When the
human mind is moved, some external thing has caused it. Stirred by exter^nal things into movement, it takes on form in sound. When these sounds re
spond to one another, changes ariseand when these changes constitute a
pattern, they are called tones. When such tones are set side by side and
67
played on musical instruments, with shield and battleax for military dances
or with feathered pennons for civil dances, it is called music
Music originates from tone. Its root lies in the human minds being
stirred by external things. Thus when a mind that is miserable is stirred, its
sound is vexed and anxious. When a mind that is happy is stirred, its sound
is relaxed and leisurely. When a mind that is delighted is stirred, its sound
pours out and scatters. When a wrathful mind is stirred, its sound is crude
and harsh. When a respectful mind is stirred, its sound is upright and pure.
When a doting mind is stirred, its sound is agreeable and yielding. These six
conditions are not innate: they are set in motion only after being stirred by
external things. Thus the former kings exercised caution in what might
cause stirring. For this reason we have rites to guide what is intently on the
mind; we have music to bring those sounds into harmony; we have govern
ment to unify actionand we have punishment to prevent transgression.
Rites, music, government, and punishment are ultimately one and the same~
a means to unify the peoples minds and correctly execute the Way.
All tones are generated from the human mind. The affections are moved
within and take on form in sound. When these sounds have patterning, they
are called tones. The tones of a well-managed age are at rest and happy:
its government is balanced. The tones of an age of turmoil are bitter and full
of angerits government is perverse. The tones of a ruined state are filled
with lament and brooding: its people are in difficulty. The way of sounds
and tones communicates with [the quality of] governance.
[This section omits elaborating the correspondences between the five notes and gov
ernment offices, as well as the social problems implicit in musical disorder.]
All tones are generated from the human mind. Music is that which com
municates [tong, carries through] human relations and natural principles.
The birds and beasts understand sounds but do not understand tones. The
common people understand tones but do not understand music. Only the
superior person is capable of understanding music. Thus one examines
sounds to understand tone; one examines tone to understand music; one ex
amines music to understand government, and then the proper execution of
the Way is complete. Thus one who does not understand sounds can share
no discourse on tonesone who does not understand tones can share no dis
course on music. When someone understands music, that person is almost
at the point of understanding rites. And when rites and music are both at
tained (de)it is called De [virtue/(attainment
7Kpower]for De is an
attaining (de).
The true glory of music is not the extreme of tone; the rites of the Great
Banquet are not the ultimate in flavor. The great harp used in performing
Pure Temple [one of the Hymns in the Classic o f Poetry] has red strings
and few sounding holes. One sings, and three join in harmony: there are
tones which are omitted. In the rite of the Great Banquet, one values water
Early China
and platters of raw meat and fishthe great broth is not seasoned: there are
flavors which are omitted. We can see from this that when the former kings
set the prescriptions for music and rites, they did not take the desires of
mouth, belly, ears, and eyes to their extremes, in order thereby to teach peo
ple to weigh likes and dislikes in the balance and lead the people back to
what is proper.
Here the aesthetics of omission, so important in later Chinese literary thought, is given
its earliest expression in an ethical context. The perfect music holds back from be
coming an overwhelming force; the sense that something is omitted draws others in
and brings response. The phrase "one sings, and three join in harmony" will come
to be commonly used for precisely such aesthetic restraint that engages others.
However, in its original context here in the "Record of Music," that restraint has an
ethical rather than an aesthetic force: omission is the embodiment of the principle
of proper limits in sensuous satisfaction.
A human being is born calm: this is his innate nature endowed by

Heaven. To be stirred by external things and set in motion is desire occur
ring within that innate nature. Only after things encounter conscious knowl
edge do likes and dislikes take shape. When likes and dislikes have no proper
measure within, and when knowing is enticed from without, the person be
comes incapable of self-reflection, and the Heaven-granted principle of ones
being perishes. When external things stir a person endlessly and when that
persons likes and dislikes are without proper measure, then when external
things come before a person, the person is transformed by those things. When
a person is transformed by things, it destroys the Heaven-granted principle
of ones being and lets a person follow all human desires to their limit. Out
of this comes the refractory and deceitful mind; out of this come occurrences
of wallowing excess and turmoil. Then the powerful coerce the weakthe
many oppress the few; the smart deceive the stupid; the brave make the timid
suffer; the sick are not cared for; old and young and orphans have no place~
this is the Way of supreme turbulence.
For this reason the former kings set the prescriptions of rites and music
and established proper measures for the people. By weeping in mourning
clothes of hemp, they gave proper measure to funerals. By bell and drum,
shield and battleax [for military dances], they gave harmony to expressions
of happiness. By the cap and hairpin of the marriage ceremony, they dis
tinguished male and female. By festive games and banquets, they formed the
correct associations between men. Rites gave the proper measure to the peo
pled minds; music made harmony in human soundsgovernment carried
things out; punishments prevented transgression. When these four were
fully achieved and not refractory, the royal Way was complete.
Music unifies; rites set things apart. In unifying there is a mutual draw
ing closein setting things apart there is mutual respect. If music over
whelms, there is a dissolving; if rites overwhelm, there is division. To bring
69
the affections into accord and to adorn their outward appearance is the func
tion of music and rites. When rites and ceremonies are established, then noble
and commoner find their own levels; when music unifies them, then those
above and those below are joined in harmony. When likes and dislikes have
this manifest form, then the good person and the unworthy person can be
distinguished. By punishments one prevents oppression; by rewards one
raises up the good; if these are the case, then government is balanced. By fel
low feeling one shows love; by moral principles one corrects them, and in
this way the management of the people proceeds.
Han Confucianism sought to hold opposing forces in balance. Rites define functions
in social relations and thus are a system of distinctions (e.gv social superior and in
ferior is not a distinction of innate "quality" but a sanctioned social convention). As
a system of role distinctions, however, rites always threaten to pull people apart and
set them in opposition to one another. That dangerous centrifugal force in rites is
countered by music, which is shared by all participants in a ceremony; it is music
that makes them feel like a unified body, part of a single enterprise. However, that
impulse to unity threatens to destroy distinctions, and thus it is counterbalanced by
rites.
Music comes from within; rites are formed without. Since music comes
from within, it belongs to genuine affections; since rites are formed with
out, they have patterning.
The supreme music must be easythe supreme rites must be simple.
When music is perfect, there is no rancorwhen rites are perfect, there is no
contention. To bow and yield yet govern the world is the true meaning of
rites and music. There is no oppression of the peoplethe great nobility sub
mitarmor is not wornthe five punishments are not used; no calamity be
falls the masses; the Son of Heaven feels no wrath~when things are thus,
music has been perfected. Within the four seas fathers and sons are joined
in affection, the precedence between elder and younger is kept clear, and re
spect is shown to the Son of Heaven~when things are like this, rites are in
practice.
The supreme music shares the harmony of Heaven and Earth. The
supreme rites share the proper measure of Heaven and Earth. In the har
mony of the former, none of the hundred things fail; in the proper measure
of the latter, the sacrifices are offered to Heaven and Earth. In their mani
fest aspect they are rites and music; in their unseen aspect they are spiritual
beings. When things are like this, then all within four seas are brought to
gether in respect and love. Though acts differ in the performance of a rite,
these acts share the quality of respect. Though music has different patterns,
these are brought together in the quality of love. Since the affections involved
in music and rites remain the same, wise kings have followed them. Thus,
when act anid occasion are matched, fame and accomplishment are joined.
Early China
This rapturous Confucian vision of society, functioning in harmony with human na
ture and universal nature through music and rites, is not directly related to litera
ture. However, the vision provides an essential background for literature, recurring
throughout the history of Chinese literary thought in the union of genuine feeling
and form.

Tang Xian-zu, Peony Pavilion (1598)
The Classic of Poetry was continually reinterpreted throughout the imperial period. Such rein
terpretations touched not only the explanation of individual poems but also the significance
of the Classic as a whole. Despite the subtleties of such high scholarship, the Classic of Po
etry also remained a school text with the Mao commentary or the twelfth-century Zhu Xi
i commentary, w hich laid even greater stress on the Poems as expressions o f natural feeling,
' accepting many of the love lyrics as such rather than as political allegories. The painful con-
tradiction between the Confucian teacher's imposition of external authority and the mes
sages of this particular interpretation of the Classic, often involving love and natural feeling,
made the Classic of Poetry a target for humorous treatment in vernacular literature.
Probably its most famous appearance in the vernacular is found in tw o scenes from Tang
Xian-zi/s play Peony Pavilion (Mu-dan ting) of 1598. The parents of Du Li-niang, the hero
ine, are thinking ahead to her marriage and have hired a tutor to instruct her in the Classic
o f Poetry. The results are unanticipated: Du Li-niang's study o f the first poem, "Fishhawk,"
"stirs" [xing, a term that can also convey sexual arousal) her and leads her out of the school
room into the garden. A text that was intended as a lesson in obedient wifely virtue leads to
rebellious erotic fantasy, initiating the action in the rest o f the play. In these scenes the habits
of Chinese scholasticism, embodied in tutor Chen, come into con flict w ith a more profound,
though innocent desire to grasp the larger significance of canonical texts.
Like Shakespeare, Chinese dramatists love to exploit the com ic possibilities o f puns and
quibbles. Except when accidents o f language offer a lucky counterpart, the translator is help
less here. The maid Spring Scent's hilarious misreadings o f "Fishhawk" depend on just such
wordplay.
FROM SCENE VII

THE SCHOOLROOM FOR W OM EN
Enter the tutor C h e n Z u i- lia n g , reciting a poem.

C hen
In recitation^ aftermath I polish and change

lines I wrote last spring,
breakfast over, my thoughts turn fondly
to noontime tea.
An ant has climbed up on my desk
and skirts the inkstone
s water,
a bee comes through the window grate,
sipping nectar from blooms in the vase.
I
ve set up my school in Prefect Dus official residence; and since Miss Dus fam
ily has a tradition of studying the Mao tradition of the Classic of Poetry, Ive

been exceptionally favored by Madam D u
s hospitality. Now that my morning
meal is overI can take a casual look over the Mao commentary again while I
m
still alone.
[Recites]:
o n sandbars o f the stream.

The meaning of Fit is fit. The meaning of Pair is pair. [Looks up] The
morning grows on, and I still dont see my pupil coming into the classroom. Shes
so dreadfully spoiled. FII hit the gong a few times. [Hits the gong] Spring Scent,
ask y o ur y o u n g mistress to com e to class.
Enter D u Li-niang, carrying books.
Du [sings]:
Just now finished dressing in simple attire,
slowly I walk to the classroom door,
with serene indifference I come before
these clean desks and bright windows.
S p rin g S c e n t
[continuing the song]
The plaque reads:

"Virtuous Literary Grace,
For Long Time Our Familys Place
n o w th a t really p uts a person off!
But eventually
I can successfully
teach our parrot Polly
to call fo r tea. [5ees C h en ]
Du
Good morning, sir.
S p rin g S c e n t D o n t be m a d a t us, sir!
C h e n As soo n as the rooster crow s, all y o u n g ladies s ho uld w a sh u p , rinse their
m o u th s , c o m b their h a ir a n d d o it u p , th en greet their parents. A fter the sun has
risen, each s h o u ld go a b o u t w h a t she is supposed to be d o in g . A s girl students,
w h a t y o u are supposed to be d o in g is study, so y o u absolutely m u st get u p ear
lier.
Du
I wont do it again.
S p rin g S c e n t I und erstan d perfectly. T o n ig h t w e w o n t go to sleep, a n d at m id n ig h t
we will come and ask you to give us our lesson.

Chen
Did you go over yesterdays poem from the Classic of Poetry thoroughly?
D u
I
ve been over it thoroughly, and now I wait for you to explain it.
C h e n R ecite it.
Du [reciting]
on sandbars of the stream.
Chen Here is the explanation. The fishhawks sing gwan gw an : the fishhawk is a
bird, and agwan gwan33is the sound it makes.

S p rin g S c e n t W h a f s th a t s o u n d like?
Early China
Chen
makes the sound o f a pigeon,1and S p rin g S c e n t mockingly imitates him.
C h e n By its nature this b ird delights in quiet a n d keeping a w ay fr o m strangers, hence
it is on sandbars of the stream.

S p rin g S c e n t N o w m aybe it w as yesterday, b u t if n o t, it m u st have been the day-
beforeor maybe it was last yearbut a mottled pigeon got shut up in the of
ficial residence. When Miss Du set it free, it flew off to the house of Assistant
Magistrate He.2
Chen
Utter nonsense! This is a xing, an aaffective image,Ma stirring.
S p rin g S c e n t W h a t is this
xing,
stirring?
Chen A xing or stirring means to start up. It starts up what follows. Now this
gentle m a id e n p u re a n d fa ir is a g o o d g irl w h o is q u ie t a n d keeps a w ay fro m
strangers, w a itin g fo r her prince to com e eagerly to fo rm a c o uple w ith her.
S p rin g S c e n t W h y is he so eager to couple w ith her?
C h e n Y o u re getting far to o sassy!
D u
Teacher, I can understand the poems line by line with the aid of the commen
tary, but I want you to expound on the broader significance of the Classic of Po
etry.
C h e n [s/n^s]
Of the Classics the Poems are the flower in full bloom,

w ith m u c h grace a n d refinem ent fo r w o m e n .
It gives us proof
how Jiang the First Parent
birthed bawling babe,

how the Consorts virtue perfected
kept her from jealousy.
In addition there is:
the poem that sings how The Rooster Crows
the p o e m th a t lam ents fo r the s w a llo w s w in g s ,.

the p o e m o f w eeping by the rivers banks,
the poem that broods The Han So Wide
poem s w ashed clean o f all p o w d e r a n d p a in t.
It has Airs that influence,

it has the power to transform,
it is suited for the chamber,
it is suited for the home.

Classic^
'
D u Is there th a t m u c h in the
Chen
The Poems are three hundred, yet one phrase covers them .
1 [Continues
singing]
Not so muchjust
two words: KNo straying
and this, young people, I impart to you.
Lesson over.
'The ju-jiu is the fishhawk. The second syllable alone, however, is the much more common word
for "p ige on ,
2Here is a series of untranslatable puns. Gwan gwan, the fishhawk's cry, can also mean "shut in,
shut in," precisely the proper condition for a virtuous young lady who "delights in quiet and keep
ing away from strangers." "On sandbars of the stream/' zai he zhi zhouf can be misunderstood as
"atw (zai) He (he) "the assistant magistrate's (zhi-zhou) [house].
73

FROM SCENE IX
GETTING THE GARDEN IN ORDER
Enter S p rin g
S p rin g S c e n t
S c e n t.
[sings]
Little Spring Scent belongs

to the highest sort of menial,
leading a coddled life in painted chambers.
I wait on my mistress pleasure,
dabble with powder and rouge,
fastening kingfisher feathers,
holding flowers in fingers,
ever beside her make-up stand.

A companion to make her brocade bed,
a companion to light the incense by night.
Just a slip of a girl, the worst I must take
is a taste of Madams cane.
[Speaks in rhythmic doggerel] Im a serving maid, face like a flower, just in my
early teens; springtimes heres I
m as cute as can be, and someone who knows
whats what. And now at last Ym waiting for someone to stir my passions, to go
with me everywhere, and at every footstep give me the eye.
I go with my young mistress day and night. Though she could be known as
the fairest in the land, she watches out for the family reputation instead. Those
cute and bashful tender cheeks assume a mature and grave look. Since her father
engaged a tutor to give her lessons, she has been reading the Classic o f Poetry;
but when she got to the part of the first stanza that goes Kgentle maiden pure and
fair, fit pair for a prince, she grew pensive and put down the book, sighing, In
this the loving feelings of the Sage are fully revealed. How clear it is that those
in the past had the same sentiments that we do today!
So then I suggested, Miss
this studying is getting y o u down. What d o n 5t yo u
take
your mind off of it?n She
pondered this a while, then rose hesitantly and asked me, And just how do you
suggest I take m y m in d o ff o f it? I answ ered, I
m n o t th in k in g o f a n y th in g p a r
tic u la r ~ w h y d o n t w e g o fo r a w a lk in the garden a t the rear o f the house? T hen
she said, Stupid maid! What if my father hears about it! So I replied, Your
father will be out in the countryside for several days.
She lowered her head and didnt say anything for the longest time. Then she
got out the almanac and looked through it to choose a day. Tomorrow is no
good, and the next day won't do either, but two days from now would be a lucky
time, one favored by the God of Short Outings. Go tell the garden boy to sweep
the path clear under the flowering trees beforehand. I agreed at the moment, but
now I
m afraid that Madam her mother will find out~but thats as it will be. So
I might as well go give the garden boy his assignment. Hey! There^ our teacher,
Mr. Chen, coming around the corridor over there. As the lines go [recites]:
Springtimes splendor is everywhere
calling to be enjoyed,
but tell it to a silly old man
and he wont understand at all.
Chen
[enters, singing]:
An old bookworm
for a while has on loan
Early China
Ma RongJs crimson screen
that is,
a teaching job;
and in the warmth of the sun
the hooked-up curtains flutter.
Hey!
Around the corridor over there
is a little serving girl
who seems to be talking, but no words come
Pll go closer to see who it is.
Its Spring Scent! Now tell me [Continues singing]
where will I find the good Master,
and where will I find his Lady,
and why has my pupil not come with her books?
S p rin g S c e n t Well, if it isnt our teacher, Mr. Chen! These past few days my young
mistress has had no time to come to class.
C h e n W h y ?
S p rin g S c e n t Listen a n d I ll tell yo u.
The springtime in such glory is

just too much for our know-it-all princess,
and what she does now involves a mood.
C h e n And
what is this mood
S p rin g S c e n t Y ou still dont know, but her father is really going to put the blame
on you.
C h e n For what?
S p rin g S c e n t Im
talking about that lecture you gave her on the Mao commentary
to the Classic of Poetry, Well, you've gone and M ao

ed her up all too well. Ah,
my poor young mistress!
[Szwgs]
All because of that poem
she was lectured into passion.
did was lecture on The fishhawks sing gwan gwan.31
S p rin g S c e n t And precisely because of this my mistress is saying, The fishhawks
may have been shut in but they still have their stirringson sandbars of the
stream.3 Is it possible a person can be less well off than a bird?
C h e n All I
[Continues, singing]
To read you must bury your head in a book,
but to taste the world around you,
you lift your head and look.
A nd now
I have instructions th a t the
d ay after to m o rr o w w e are to go o n an o u t
in g in the flo w e r garden b e h in d the house.
3Again the pun on gwan and to be "shut in." The xing is not only the "stirring," the term of technical poetics from the Mao commentary, but also an "arousal" and a less sexual "excitem ent.

Chen: Why are you going on an outing?
S p rin g S c e n t
'
Isinging]
She obviously feels stung by spring,

and because spring is in such haste to go,
she wants to lose her spring melancholy
in the flower garden.
C h e n This really shouldnt
be.
[Sings]
I f the y o u n g la d y goes w a lk in g ,
people could watch her wherever she goes,

so her steps should be shielded from sight.
Spring Scent, Heaven is my witness but in all my sixty years, I never have expe
rienced the sting of spring, and I never have gone on an outing in a park in flower.
S p rin g S c e n t Why?
C h e n Y o u m a y n o t k n o w , b u t M e n c iu s said it w ell: th a t the th ousand s o f w o rd s o f
the Sage come down to recovering a heart that has been allowed to run free.4
[ s]
Just keep a normal heart~
why should she feel the sting of spring?
why must she go on a spring outing?
if she goes on an outing as spring goes away,
how will she set her heart at ease?5
Since the young mistress will not be coming to class, I might as well take a few
days off myself. Now Spring Scent, [s*Vigs]
go to the classroom regularly,
and always go to the window,
for I worry that swallow droppings will stain
the harp and books.
"Stirred" by the Classic of Poetry, Du Li-niang does indeed go on her spring outing into the
garden, after which she has an erotic dream of the beloved she has not yet met, Liu Mengmei. Carried away by unfulfilled passion, she asks to be buried under a plum tree in the gar
den
then dies.
4There is a twist here in the use of a "heart allowed to run free" (fang-xin). Mencius wanted peo
ple to recover the childlike innocence with which they were born and from which their hearts
had "gone astray"; later the phrase came to have a stronger sense of wantonness, acting without
restraint. And by Tang Xian-zu's time it had already acquired its conventional vernacular sense
of "feeling relaxed/' "not being anxious," "to set one's heart at ease,
5Again, the coUoquia) construction here caJls to the fore the vernacular meaning of fang-xin, "set
one's heart at ease"; however, in the background is the classical sense, wlet one's heart run fre e ,
which in this context is opposed to the vernacular.
Early Narrative
Chinese historical writing began in the court annals of the various feudal domains of the Zhou Kingdom. The most famous of these court annals is The Springs and Autumns [of Lu] (Chun-qiu), kept by the domain
of Lu from 722 to 481 b.c. ("springs and autumns" was a generic term for
ânnals"). These annals give terse entries on the most significant events
of the year and can scarcely be considered "narrative. Because Confucius himself
was believed to have been their author, Traditionalists of the late Warring States and
H a n d e v e lo p e d a d o c trin e o f p erfe ct expression, b y w h ic h th e p recise p h rasin g of
the entries was a subtle reflection of Confucius' judgments on events. As an exam

ple we may take the famous entry from the sixteenth year of Duke Xi (644 b.c.):
"Spring, the king's first month, at the very beginning of the month there fell stones
Imeteors] in Song, five of them; that month six albatrosses flew in reverse, passing
the capital of Song." The Cong-yang Tradition, a Western Han Traditionalist com
mentary on The Springs and Autumns o fL u , explains Confucius' positioning of the
numbers as follows: in the case of the meteors, the thing enumerated comes first be
cause the meteors were seen first and their number discovered only later; in the case
of the albatrosses, first the number of birds was recognized, then the fact that they
were albatrosses.
Extended historical writing is first found in The Zuo Tradition (Zuo zhuan) and
th^ Discourses o f the Domains (Guo-yul both probably from the iate fourth century
b.c_, but based on earlier materials. The Zuo Tradition has been traditionally treated
as a commentary on The Springs and Autumns ofLu, providing a fuller account of

events recorded in the annals
along with other, unrecorded events. The Zuo Tra
dition was much admired in the Chinese prose tradition for its terse exposition of
events. Its narrative style is quirky and elliptical: rather than pure narrative, most of
the accounts in The Zuo Tradition are either frames for speeches in which ethical
values are expounded, or exemplary anecdote^ in which the details of the story are
shaped by the ethical point to be made.
Two Sad Stories of Good Behavior

The first of the two following passages from The Zuo Tradition comes from a set of
anecdotes on the flight of the Jin army after its defeat by Chu at the Battle of Bi. Zhao
Zhan, a commander of the Jin army, is escaping on foot when his subordinate Feng
passes by, driving in a chariot together with his two sons. Four riders would slow
the chariot and leave them vulnerable to the enemy. Feng is presented with an ethical dilemma.
The Zuo Tradition, an entry for the 12th year of Duke Xuan
(597 b.c,)
Zhao Zhan gave his two best horses to save his older brother and his uncle,
and he was going back driving his other horses. He ran into enemy soldiers
and could not get away, so he abandoned his chariot and ran off info the
woods.
Feng, the Grand Master, was driving his chariot with his two sons. He
told his sons not to turn and look back. But they did look back and said,
<(Zhao Zhan is there behind us. Feng was enraged with them. He made
them get down from the chariot and, pointing to a tree, said, I will find
your bodies here. Feng then handed the mounting strap to Zhao Zhan and
took him away from danger. The next day he went to where he had indi
cated his sons bodies would be, and he found them both dead at the foot
of the tree.
The Zuo Tradition^ an entry for the 22nd year of Duke Xi

(638 b.c .)
Chu was attacking Song to relieve Zheng. The Duke of Song was about to
go into battle when Gu, his Grand War Chief, objected: Heaven deserted
the house of Shang long ago- My lord wants to raise it up again. This will
not be forgiven. The Duke refused to pay him heed.
It was in winter, the eleventh month, on the day ji-si, which was the first
day of the month. The men of Song had formed their battle linesand the
men of Chu had not yet crossed the river. The War Chief said: They are
many and we are few. Let me strike them now before they are done with
the crossing. But the Duke said, No. When they had crossed but had not
yet drawn up their battle linesagain the War Chief pleaded, and the Duke
said, Not yet. He struck them only after they had fully drawn up their bat
tle lines, and the hosts of Song were routed. The Duke was wounded in the
thigh, and the palace guards were slain.
All the people of the land found fault with the Duke for this, but he said
A nobleman does not wound someone twice, nor does he take captive some
one with gray hair. When armies were used in olden days, they did not cut
off the enemy in a narrow place. Though I may be only the remnant of a
fallen dynasty, I will not smite an enemy who has not yet drawn up his bat
tle line.
Zi-yu, the War Chief, said: My Lord does not understand battle. If a
more powerful foe is caught in a narrow place with his battle lines not drawn
up, this is Heaven acting on our side. How is it wrong then to cut him off
and smite him? Even if we did this, we would have cause for fear. This more
powerful force we met today were all our foes. If we caught them
we should
have taken them captive, even if they had been venerable and elderly men
what does it have to do with gray hair? Understanding shame5 and train
ing for battle is thisto try to kill our foes. If you wound someone but do
Early China
not kill him, why not wound him again? If you spare him a second wound,
it is as if you had not wounded him at all. If you spare those with gray hair
it is like surrendering to them. Our armies use the sharpest things; our metal
drums raise the spirit by their sounds. Use it when and where it is sharpest
it is well done to cut foes off in a narrow place. The sounds swell to steady
resolveit is well to smite them in their disarray.M
The domain of Song, where the descendants of the Shdng royal house had been en
feoffed by the Zhou, had a reputation for folly and mad impracticality. Stories of the
"man of Song" had something of the quality of an ancient Chinese ethnic joke. The
most famous is the following parable from the Mencius: "There once was a man of
Song who was upset that his sprouts were not growing tall, so he pulled on them.
He went home in a weary daze and told his family, Tm really worn out t o d a y I ' v e
been helping the sprouts grow/ His sons hurried to take a look, and the sprouts were
all dried o u t.
An Exegetical Literature
Qne of the most striking characteristics of early Chinese literature is how often it
comes back to acts of explanation and interpretation: people explaining their ac
tions, attitudes, and decisions, or "experts" explaining such matters to princes. Early
Chinese literature was, after all, composed by those who made their living by their
ability to explain the causes and consequences of phenomena, especially in a po-
lifical context. Thus Confucius enjoined his disciples to look behind appearances.
Analects II. 10
The Master said, Look to how it is. Consider from what it comes. Exam
ine in what a person would be at rest. How can a person remain hidden?
how can someone remain hidden?
In the following passage, the great domain of Chu has defeated the minor domain
of Cai at Shen and taken its count into captivity. ^The Count of Cai bore a grudge
against the Lord of Xi; in order to have revenge, he praises the beauty of Lady Gui
of Xi to the ruler of Chu so that the ruler w ill seize her for his own.
The Zuo Tradition, an entry for the 14th year of Duke Zhuang
(6 8 0 b .c .)
On account of what happened at Shen, Count Ai of Cai commended the

Lady Gui of X i in speech to the Master of Chu. The Master of Chu went to
X iand bringing food for a feast, he entered that place and destroyed it. He
brought back the Lady Gui of X i with him and begat on her Du-ao and
Cheng-wang. She never spoke. The Master of Chu asked her of this, and she
79
answered, I am but a single wife, yet I have served two husbands. Even
though I have not been able to die, how can I continue to speak?
Because the Count of Cai had brought destruction on Xi, the Master of
Chu then attacked Cai. It was autumn, the seventh month, when Chu en
tered the city of Cai.
The Lady of Xi was much praised for her silence; yet she has to speak up in order
to explain why she is keeping silent. Without words, the silence would not be un
derstood.
Most of the entries in The Zuo Tradition are exemplary in that there is an ethi
cal conclusion to be drawn from the event narrated. In the following example, there
is something faintly comic in the lesson that the moralist is obliged to draw.
The Zuo Tradition, an entry for the 3rd year of Duke Ding
(507 b.c .)
In spring, the second month, the third year, on the day xin-mao, the Mas
ter of Zhu was on the terrace over the gates, and he looked down into the
courtyard. The gatekeeper was washing down the courtyard with a jug of
water. The Master of Zhu saw him and was enraged. The gatekeeper said,
Yi Shi-gu pissed here The Master of Zhu commanded that the man be
seized; and when he was not taken, it fed his rage. He cast himself upon a
bunk and fell into the embers of a brazier. He burned, then died. He was
buried with five chariots, and five men went with him to the grave. Duke
Zhuang of Zhu came to this on account of his hot temper and love of clean
liness.
The Zuo Tradition was much admired by the Chinese for its economy of style, a sharp
terseness by which great things occur in a few words. In the following account, no
one is sure who cut the orchids or why. That year in the entry in the annals of Lu,
Duke Mu of Zheng, whose name was "O rchid," died. As he himself knew, his death
corresponded with the cutting of the orchids. The Zuo Tradition tries to explain this
occurrence; the explanation leads to an examination of how he received his name
and how he eventually came to the throne of Zheng. The account begins with O r
chid's birth to a lowborn concubine and how the other sons of Duke W en, with bet
ter claim to the Zheng throne, were either killed or banished.
The Zuo Tradition^ an entry for the 3rd year of Duke Xuan
(6 0 6 b .c .)
In that winter Duke M u of Zheng [Orchid] died.

At the beginning, Duke Wen of Zheng had a lowborn handmaiden, who
was of the house of Ji from Yan. She dreamed that a messenger from Heaven
gave her an orchid. He said, I am Uncle Minnow; I am your forebear. This
Early China
will be your son. And because [the] orchid has the sweetest smell in all the
land, people will wear it in their sashes and be fond of it.
After that Duke Wen saw her. He gave her an orchid and bedded her.
She sent him word, I am not a person of high birth. I have been lucky to
have a son, and it will not be believed that he is yours. May I take the or
chid as proof? And the Duke said, Yes. She bore Duke M u, and she
named him Orchid.
Duke Wen had committed incest with Gui of Chen, who had been the
consort of the former Master of Zheng. She bore Zi-hua and Zi-zang. Zizang did a wrong and left the land. The Duke tricked Zi-hua and had him
slain at South Hamlet. Then he set thugs to slay Zi-zang in the region be
tween Chen and Song.
He then took a wife from the house of Jiang. She bore him Gong-zi Shi.
Gong-zi Shi went to the court of Chu. Someone in Chu gave him poisoned
wine, and he died when he reached Ye.
The Duke next took a wife from the Su. She bore him Zi-xia and Zi-yumi. Yu-mi died young. Xie Jia hated Zi-xia. Duke Wen also hated him, and
therefore would not make him the heir. The Duke banished all his princes
and Prince Orchid fled to Jin. And Orchid later went with Duke Wen of Jin
when he invaded Zheng.
Shi Gui said, I have heard that when the house of Tsi [the Jin] and the
Ji are mated, their offspring will always be teeming. The Ji are people of good
luck. One of them was the foremost wife of Hou Ji. Prince Orchid is of the
Ji on the distaff side. Heaven may well be opening the way for him he will
surely be the rulerand his offspring will surely be teeming. If we are the
first to bring him into the domain, we may keep his favor.55With Kong Jiangchu and Hou Xuan-duo he brought him into the domain and took an oath
with him in the great palace and set him on the throne. By this peace was
made with Jin.
Duke M u became ill. He said, When the orchid dies, will I not die? For
by this was I born.
They cut down the orchid and he died.
Heroes of the Will

Extended narrative for the most part developed around certain individuals who cap
tured an interest that went beyond exemplary lessons to be learned from their be
havior. W e have accounts of spokesmen for ethical values or political expediency.
Yet there were also stories of men embodying less approved values: heroes driven
by fated misfortunes, irrational loyalties, or the hunger for revenge. In these stories,
more than in others, we often note a fascination with balances and imbalances, acts
of generosity repaid and hurts revenged.
The following story of Yu-rang is taken from the Schemes of the Warring States
(Zhan-guo ce), a compilation of historical anecdotes and framed political speeches
from the early Western Han. The same story occurs also in the "Biographies of the
Assassins" in the Historical Records of Si-ma Qian.
81
from the Schemes of the Warring States (Zhan-guo ce)

Yu-ranggrandson of Bi Yang of Jin, first entered the service of the houses
of the Fan and the Zhong-hang, but he was unhappy there. He quit and
went to the Earl of Zhi of Jin, who treated him with great favor. When the
three branches of Jin divided up the realm of the house of the Earl of Zhi
it was Lord Xiang of Zhao who felt the greatest ill will toward the Earl of
Zhi and took his skull as his drinking vessel. Yu-rang had fled into hiding
in the hills and said, A liegeman dies for the man who appreciates him; a
woman makes herself beautiful for the man who is pleased with her. May
I then take vengeance on this enemy of the house of the Earl of Z h i! He
changed his name and made himself a branded criminal. Thus he got into
the palace as a plasterer of the latrines, with the purpose of assassinating
Lord Xiang.
Lord Xiang was on his way to the latrine and had a trembling of the
heart. He had the plasterer seized and questioned, and it turned out to be
Yu-rang, who had put a sharp edge on his trowel. Yu-rang said, I wanted
to take revenge on the enemy of the Earl of Z hi.His entourage wanted to
put Yu-rang to deathbut Lord Xiang of Zhao said, This is a liegeman of
principle. I will merely keep him away from me. The Earl of Zhi is dead and
has no offspring, yet one who served him will go so far as to seek revenge
on his enemies. This is one of the most worthy men in the world.5* And in
the end he had Yu-rang set free.
Yu-rang next put lacquer on his body to cover it with soreshe got rid
of his whiskers and eyebrows and mutilated himself to alter his appearance.
He then went begging. Even his wife did not recognize him. But she said,
Since this man doesnt look at all like my husband, why does his voice
sound so much like that of my husband? After this he swallowed ashes to
make himself hoarse and changed the sound of his voice.
A friend said to him, The course you are following is one of great hard
ship, yet one that does not do the deed. If you would be spoken of as a man
of powerful will, then it will be so; but you will not be spoken of as a re
sourceful man. If you used your talents in the skillful service of Lord Xiang,
he would certainly draw you close to him and make you his favorite. If you
could get close to him, then you could do whatever you wanted. This would
be very easy, and the deed could be done. Yu-rang then laughed and an
swered him, This would be to take revenge on the second man who ap
preciated me for the sake of the first man who appreciated me. This would
be to turn outlaw against a new lord for the sake of a former lord. Nothing
could more violate the principle of the bond between a lord and one who
serves him. What I intend in doing as I do is to make clear the bond between
a lord and one who serves him ~ it is not to take the easy way. To give a
pledge of fealty and serve a man while seeking to assassinate him is to serve
ones lord witK duplicity in the heart. This hard thing that I do now may
even put to shame all those in the world who in later times serve their lords
with duplicity in their hearts.
Early China
After some while, Lord Xiang was to go forth, and Yu-rang hid under a
bridge across which he would have to pass. But when Lord Xiang reached
the bridge, his horse reared, whereupon Lord Xiang said, Yu-rang must be
here.,5He ordered someone to question the man, and it was indeed Yu-rang.
Thereupon Lord Xiang of Zhao faced Yu-rang and said, Did you not once
serve the houses of Fan and Zhong-hang? Yet when the Earl of Zhi destroyed
those houses, you did not take revenge on him, but rather pledged him your
fealty. The Earl of Zhi is dead now
so why only in this case are you so deeply
determined to take revenge on his enemy? Yu-rang saidI served the
houses of Fan and Zhong-hangyet they treated me as an ordinary man. So
in return I behaved toward them like an ordinary man. The Earl of Zhi
treated me like one of the liegemen of the domain. So in return I behave like
a liegeman of the domain.
Lord Xiang gave a great sigh and shed tears, saying, Oh Yu-rang! You
have already become famous for what you have done on the Earl of Zhis
account. And I forgave you thenthat too was enough. You make plans on
your own behalf now, and I may not forgive you And he ordered his men
to form a ring around him.
Then Yu-rang said, I have heard it said that a wise ruler does not force
a man to conceal his principles and I have heard that one who serves with
loyalty, Co make his fame complete, does not cling to life. Before you were
lenient and forgave me, and for this the whole world praises your virtue. I
do indeed accept the punishment that must follow from what has happened
today. Still, if I could ask for your coat and stab it, I would feel no resent
ment in my death. I cannot expect this, but I reveal what is within me
Thereupon Lord Xiang saw that Yu-rang did indeed have principles, and
he ordered one who served him to take his coat and give it to Yu-rang. Yurang drew out his sword, leapt around several times, shouted to Heaven, and
stabbed the coat, saying, By this I take vengeance for the Earl of Z hi. Then
he fell on his sword and died. On the day he died the liegemen of Zhao heard
of it, and they all wept.
Swindles and Bad Exchanges: The Problems

Surrounding Bian He's Jade
There may be problems with exchanges. First of all, the worth of something offered
must be recognized and the giver acknowledged. But beyond that, swindles are pos
sible, particularly during the world of stratagem and deception of the Warring States,
in which cleverness was the only match for raw power. Such exchanges are often
matters of life and death, or body parts sacrificed.
The Han Fei-zi are the essays of the Legalist philosopher Han Fei (ca. 280-ca.
233
b .c .).
Hes Jade (or Bian Hes Jade55), from the Han Fei-zi
There was a man of Chu, of the family He, who found a piece of jade in the
rough out in the mountains of Chu. He presented it to King Li, who had his
jade expert examine it. The jade expert said, This is ordinary stone. The
king thought that Bian He was trying to deceive him and had his left foot
cut off as a punishment. When King Li passed away and King Wu took the
throne, Bian He again took his jade and presented it to King W u. King Wu
had his jade expert examine it, and again it was pronounced to be ordinary
stone. This king too thought Bian He was trying to deceive him and had his
right foot cut off. When King Wu passed away and King Wen ascended the
throne, Bian He took his jade in his arms and wept at the base of Chu Moun
tain. For three days and three nights he wept until he had no more tears left
until blood fell from his eyes. The king heard of this and sent someone to
find out the cause. The envoy said, There are many people in the world
whose feet have been cut off. Why are you weeping about it so sadly? And
Bian He answered, I
m not sad about having my feet cut off; Im sad be
cause this precious piece of jade has been judged a mere stone and because
a most honorable gentleman has been called a fraudthis is what makes
me sad. The king then had his own jade expert work on the stone, and he
found the gem within. Consequently the king commanded that it be called
Bian Hes Disk.
Bian He's jade is made into a disk, a bi, an object of power that was much prized
by the great nobility. As the disk made from Bian He's jade changes hands, we have
again problems of exchange value, fraud, and the threat of violence.
Historical Records (Shi-ji) from the HBiographies of Lian Bo

and Lin Xiang-ru55
Lian Bo was Zhaos finest general. In the sixteenth year of King Hui-wen of
Zhao, Lian Bo served as Zhaos general in the attack on Qi, inflicting great
ruin upon them and taking Yang-jin. He was granted the post of high min
ister and was known for his boldness among the great nobility. Lin Xiangru was also from Zhao and was the retainer of Miao Xian, commander of
the eunuchs.
It was in the days of King Hui-wen that Zhao got the jade disk of Bian
He of Chu. King Zhao of Qin heard of this and sent a man with a letter for
the King of Zhao, conveying his wish to exchange fifteen walled cities for
the jade disk. Upon hearing this, the King of Zhao took counsel with his
grand general Lian Bo and with his other great officers. When they consid
ered presenting the jade to Qin, they feared that they would not get Q in
s
cities in return, that they would be cheated and left empty-handed. And yet
when they considered refusing to present the jade, there was the danger that
Q ins troops would come upon them. Their course of action was not yet set-
Early China
tiednor were they successful in finding someone who could be sent to Qin
with their answer.
Miao Xian, the commander of the eunuchs, said, My retainer, Lin
Xiang-rucould be sent.
The king asked, Why do you think he could do it?55
And Miao Xian replied, I was once held guilty for a misdeed and
planned to flee to Yan, but my retainer Lin Xiang-ru stopped me, saying,
6Why do you think you can have confidence in the King of Yan?I said to
him that I had gone with Your Majesty to a meeting with the King of Yan
at the frontier and that the King of Yan had clasped my hand and said, I
wish to be your friend.5That was why I had confidence in him and thus in
tended to go there. But Lin Xiang-ru told me, Zhao is the stronger, Yan is
the weaker, and you enjoyed the favor of the King of Zhao. That is why the
King of Yan wanted a bond of friendship with you. If you now flee Zhao
to Yan, Yan will be in fear of Zhao. The situation will be such that they will
not dare let you stay; they will tie you up and send you back to Zhao. The
best thing for you to do would be to bare the upper part of your body and
bend down to the block and headsmans ax, asking for punishment for your
misdeeds. If you do that, you might be lucky enough to be set free.I fol
lowed that course of action he proposed, and Your Majesty was kind enough
to pardon me. I think that this man is a bold fighter, and one with wise coun
sels. It would be fitting to let him be sent/5
Thereupon the king summoned Lin Xiang-ru to an audience and asked
himQin wishes to exchange fifteen walled cities for my jade disk. Do I
make him a present of it or not?
Lin Xiang-ru said, Qin is the stronger and Zhao the weakeryou have
no choice but to agree.
The king said, What can we do if they take my jade disk and dont pre
sent me with the cities in return?
Lin Xiang-ru answered, If Qin offers cities for the disk and Zhao does
not agree, the fault lies with Zhao. If Zhao presents the jade and Qin does
not present cities to Zhao in return, the fault lies with Qin. If we weigh these
two stratagems in the balance, it is better to agree and make Qin bear the
fault.M
The king then said, Whom can I send?
"
And Lin Xiang-ru answered, Your Majesty obviously has no one else.
Let me take the disk and go as your envoy. If the cities come to Zhao, the
disk will stay in Qin. If the cities dont come to us, then I would bring the
disk whole back to Zhao/5Thereupon the King of Zhao sent Lin Xiang'ru
to bear the disk westward into Qin.
The King of Qin was sitting on Zhang Terrace when he received Lin
Xiang-ru. Xiang-ru held the disk before him in his hands and proffered it
to the King of Qin. The King of Qin was greatly pleased and handed it
around to show to his beautiful women and courtiers, at which all his
courtiers shouted their congratulations.
85
Observing that the King of Qin had no intention of compensating Zhao

with the cities, Lin Xiang-ru then came forward and said, There is a flaw
in the jade disk, let me show Your Majesty. When the king handed him
the disk, Lin Xiang-ru held it firmly and drew away, keeping his back to a
column, the hair bristling against his cap in his rage. And he addressed the
King of Qin, When Your Majesty wanted to get the jade disk and sent an
envoy with a letter to the King of Zhao, the King of Zhao summoned every
one of his officers to discuss the matter. They all said, Qin is grasping. Be
cause it is the stronger, it wants to get our jade disk with empty promises,
and we fear we will not get those cities in compensation.
They had proposed
not to present Qin with the jade disk. But it was my opinion that if com
moners do not cheat one another in their dealings, the great domains are
even less likely to do so. Moreover, it would not be fitting to oppose mighty
Qin's power for a single disk of jade. Thereupon the King of Zhao fasted
for five days, and sent me as the envoy to proffer the disk and to deliver his
letter in your court. Why did he do this? To give due show of respect for the
awe that we have for your great domain. Now I have arrived. Your Majesty
receives me in an ordinary lodge and is extremely haughty in the forms of
behavior with which you treat me. You get the jade disk and pass it around
among your women to mock and insult me. Now that I see that Your
Majesty has no intention of giving the cities in compensation to the King of
Zhao, I have taken back the jade disk. I am sure that Your Majesty wants
to have your people fall upon me now; but if you do, I will smash both my
head and the jade disk on the column. Lin Xiang-ru held the disk firmly in
hand, with his eyes on the column, ready to strike it.
The King of Qin, fearing that Lin Xiang-ru would break the disk, made
excuses and entreated him. He summoned the man in charge to spread out
a map, and with his fingers he pointed to the line beyond which the fifteen
great cities would be Zhaos. But Lin Xiang-ru had the measure of the King
of Qin, that he merely was pretending to present Zhao with the cities and
that Zhao would never have them. He then addressed the King of Qin, He
s
jade disk is a treasure known everywhere in the world. In his fear the King
of Zhao did not dare to refuse to offer it. But when the King of Zhao sent
it, he fasted for five days. It is fitting now that Your Majesty as well fast for
five days and that you have a ceremony for officers of all ranks in your court.
Then I will offer up the jade disk
The King of Qin took the measure of the situation and knew that he
would never be able to take the jade away by force. So he agreed to fast five
days and gave Lin Xiang-ru apartments in the Guang-cheng Lodge. For his
part Lin Xiang-ru had the measure of the King of Qin, that even though he
was fasting, the king had determined to break the agreement and not to offer
the cities in compensation. He then had one of the men who had come with
him put on shabby clothes and conceal the jade disk in the folds. The man
was to flee by the shortest route and bring the jade disk back to Zhao.
After the King of Qin had fasted for five days, he had the ceremony for
officers of all ranks in his court, then had the envoy of Zhao, Lin Xiang-ru,
Early China
led in. When Lin Xiang-ru arrived, he addressed the King of Q in O f the
more than twenty lords of Qin from the time of Duke Miao there has never
been one who has been steadfast in his oaths. Since I was truly afraid of being
cheated by Your Majesty and thus failing Zhao, I ordered a man to take the
jade disk back, and he should be in Zhao shortly. Qin is the stronger and
Zhao the weaker. Your Majesty sent a single envoy to Zhao, and Zhao sent
one back at once proffering the jade disk. Given QinJs superior strength, if
it had first cut away fifteen of its cities and presented them to Zhao, Zhao
could not possibly have kept the jade and, by its actions, shown itself guilty
before Your Majesty. I understand that I must be executed for the crime of
deceiving Your Majesty, so carry me off to the cauldron of boiling water.
All I ask is that Your Majesty and his officers give this some discussion.
The King of Qin and his officers looked at one another in seething rage.
Some among the courtiers wanted to drag Lin Xiang-ru away, when the king
said, If we kill Lin Xiang-ru now, well never be able to get the jade disk
and we will break the goodwill that exists between Qin and Zhao. The best
course is to treat him very well and send him back to Zhao. For how could
the King of Zhao work a deception on Qin for the sake of a single jade disk?
In the end he invited Lin Xiang-ru to a feast and sent him back after hav
ing treated him with all the courtesies.
Once Lin Xiang-ru had returned, the King of Zhao considered him a most
worthy grand master who had kept him from humiliation before the great
nobility. He appointed Lin Xiang-ru as High Grand Master. And Qin never
presented Zhao with its cities, nor did Zhao ever present the jade disk to
Qin.
The Story of Wu Zi-xu

There are basic differences between narrative in The Zuo Tradition and in the West
ern Han Historical Records of Si-ma Qian. The Zuo Tradition is an intricately struc
tured total history of the domains, which remains true to its origins in the chronicle.
Necessary pieces of information and related events appear in small pieces scattered
over a span of years, each given under the year when it occurred. No single linear
narrative can arise out of the totality of historical narrative, and thus the W u Zi-xu
narrative is submerged within the more intricate account of the rise of W u and its
defeat of Chu, then the rise of Yue and its ultimate conquest of W u. These narratives
are, in turn, bound by many threads to events in the other domains. In contrast, the
narrative account of a particular person in the Historical Records is a relatively com
plete whole. Si-ma Qian usually worked with earlier historical materials, but he re
vised them and shaped them into a unity. The same information may be given in
different parts of the Historical Records, but in each context Si-ma Qian refashioned
the material according the needs of the story at hand. Before the Historical Records,
the anecdote was the most fully developed narrative form; Si-ma Qian used biog
aPhy, particularly the life of someone driven by a single purpose, to create a larger
narrative unity.
87

The W u Zi-xu story is a good example of how stories worked in early Chma. Sto
ries were retold again and again, sometimes verbatim, sometimes differing in phras
ing according to the idiom and period of the writer. Sometimes passages dropped
out, but more often the process was one of elaboration, with old incidents expanded
in greater detail and new incidents added. As can be seen in the comparison be
tween the versions of the Wu Zi-xu story in the Historical Records and the earlier
Zuo Tradition, the elaborations were often irresistibly "good stories," some of whose
sources we can find in other early texts. The process was by no means completed
with the version in the Historical Records. It was further elaborated in two Eastern
Han works, Springs and Autumns of Wu and Yue (Wu Yue Chun-qiu) and the Yuejue shu. The story found a vernacular version centuries later in the Tang, known as
the Wu Zi-xu Transformation Text (Wu Zi-xu bian-wenl and it continued to be re
worked in plays and stories in the later imperial period.
For the sake of clarity we w ill give first the full version of the W u Zi-xu story from
the Historical Records, followed by the earlier accounts of incidents in Wu Zi-xu's

life from The Zuo Tradition. Note how in the Historical Records, Si-ma Qian fol
lowed The Zuo Tradition very closely in some places and deviated in others. Since
the narrative has many characters, a list of the major groups is given below
Chu Royal Family

K in g P in g w h o has W u Zi-xu's father a n d brother killed
P r in c e J ia n heir apparent, driven in to exile by K in g P ing
K in g Z h a o an other son o f K in g P ing, a n d his successor
S h e n g son o f Prince J ia n , rescued by W u Z i-x u
The Wu Family
W u S he the father, loyal adviser to K in g P ing
W u S h a n g W u Shes eldest son
W u Z i- x u (W u Y u n ): W u Shes younger son
Wu Royal Family
K in g L ia o ruler w h e n W u Z i-xu first cam e to W u
K in g H e-lU form erly Prince G u a n g , co nq ue ro r o f C h u , dead o f a
wound in battle with Yue
K in g F u- cha He-liis son, defeated by Y u e
Yue Royal Family

K i n g G o u -j ia n
Other Important Characters

Fei W u - ji c o rru p t adviser to K in g P ing o f C h u
Bo Pi: adviser to Kings He-lii and Fu-cha of Wu, bribed by Yue

B ao - x u o f S h e n lo y a l m inister o f K in g Z h a o o f C h u , w h o
persuades Qin to come to the aid of Chu
Historical Records, aBiography of Wu Zi-xu

W u Zi-xu, or W u Yun, was a native of Chu. His father was called W u She;
his elder brother was called Wu Shang. An ancestor, called W u Juwas fa
mous for having served King Zhuang of Chu with his forthright counsels,
and thus his descendants had a good name in Chu.
Early China
King Ping of Chu had a crown prince called Jian; the king commissioned
W u She as his chief tutor and Fei Wu-ji as his secondary tutor. Yet Fei Wuji was not faithful to Prince Jian. King Ping sent Fei Wu-ji on a mission to
Qin to get a bride for the prince. The daughter of Qin was lovely, and Fei
Wu-ji hurried back to tell King PingThis daughter of Qin is exceedingly
beautiful Your Majesty might take her himself and get another wife for
the prince.
Thereupon the king did indeed take the daughter of Qin for him
self and doted on her exceedingly, from which union was born a son, Zhen.
He got another wife for the crown prince.
Having used the daughter of Qin to win the favor of King Ping, Fei Wuji left the service of the crown prince to serve King Ping himself. But he feared
the day when the king would die and the crown prince succeed to the throne
and he feared that then he would be killed. For this reason, he spoke ill of
Prince Jian. Jians mother was the daughter of the house of Cai and enjoyed
no favor from King Ping. Bit by bit King Ping grew increasingly distant from
Jian, and he sent Jian to hold Cheng-fu and watch over the troops on the
frontier.
After a short while, Fei Wu-ji once again spoke of the crown princes fail
ings to the king day and night. Because of the affair of the daughter of Qin,
the prince cannot avoid bitterness. Your Majesty might want to take a few
precautions for your own sake. Since the prince occupies Cheng-fu, has com
mand of troops, and has dealings with the great nobility outside the king
dom, he may well want to move on the capital and create a rebellion. Then
King Ping called his chief tutor, W u She, to question him thoroughly about
this. W u She knew that Fei Wu-ji had spoken ill of the prince to King Ping,
so he saidHow can Your Majesty become estranged from your own flesh
and blood because of some maligning villain of a petty court official? To
which Fei Wu-ji said: If Your Majesty doesnt stop it nowthe matter will
be accomplished, and Your Majesty will be seized. Thereupon the king flew
into a rage, imprisoned W u She, and sent the Commander of Cheng-fu, Fen
Yang, on a mission to kill the prince. But before he reached the prince, Fen
Yang sent someone ahead to tell him Your Highness should leave as
quickly as possibleotherwise I will execute you. Prince Jian escaped and
fled to Song.
Then Fei Wu-ji said to King PingWu She has two sons, both worthy
men. If you don5t execute them, they may bring troubles to Chu. With their
father as a hostageyou may call them to court. Otherwise they may bring
great evil upon Chu_ The king sent an envoy to tell W u SheIf you get
your two sons to come, you will liveif you cannotyou will die. W u She
repliedW u Shang is kindly by nature; and if I call, he will certainly come.
But W u Zi-xu is by nature hard and untamed; he can put up with the shame,
and he is capable of creating great problems. When he sees that he and his
brother will both be seized if they come, his inclination will certainly be not
to come. But the king would not listen, and sent someone to call the two
brothers to courtCome, and I will let your father live. Fail to come and I
will kill W u She immediately.
Wu Shang was ready to go, but Wu Zi-xu said: When Chu calls both
brothers to court, it is not because he intends to let our father live. He will
fear that if we get free, we will work great harm in later times. Thats why
he is calling us to court with false assurances, using our father as a hostage.
When we get there, we and our father will all die together. What will that
do for our father's death? By going we will make it impossible to be revenged
on our enemy. The best course would be to flee to some other domain and
make use of their force to wipe away this shame that has been put on our
father. It will do no good for all of us to be wiped out Wu Shang answered
I know that going will not save our father from his doom. But still I could
hot endure to have failed to go when our father has called us to save his life;
if afterward I could not wipe away the shame done to him, I would end up
being laughed at by the whole world. And he told W u Zi-xu: Get away
yourself! You will be able to revenge us on our enemies. I am going to go
die_ When Wu Shang had gone to submit to arrest, the envoy tried to seize
W u Zi-xu. W u Zi-xu bent his bow, notched an arrow, and pointed it at the
envoy, who did not dare come any closer. Then W u Zi-xu escaped. And hear
ing that Prince Jian was in Song, he went off to serve him.
Wu She heard that Wu Zi-xu had escaped, and he said, The lord and
court officials of the Kingdom of Chu now may well suffer war. When Wu
Shang reached the capital, the king killed both W u She and W u Shang.
When Wu Zi-xu came to Song, the civil strife caused by the Hua clan
broke out. Then together with Prince Jian he fled to Zheng. The people of
Zheng were on very good terms with them. Prince Jian next went on to Jin.
Lord Qing of Jin said: Your Highness is on such good terms with Zheng
that Zheng trusts Your Highness. If you would act for me from within the
capital when I attack it from the outside, Zheng will surely be wiped out.
When Zheng is wiped out, I will give Your Highness a fief
The prince then
went back to Zheng. Before that action came to pass, it happened that the
prince, for his own reasons, was going to kill one of his entourage. The man
knew of the plot and told the Lord of Zheng. Lord Ding and his minister
Zi-chan then executed Prince Jian. Jian had a son named Sheng. Wu Zi-xu
was afraid, so he fled together with Sheng to Wu. When he reached the Zhao
Barrier [between Chu and Wu], th e y were g o in g to a rre s t him. Then W u Zixu
w e n t r u n n in g o ff o n fo o t
alone
w ith
Sheng,
a n d th e y
almost didnt
get
away. The pursuers were right behind them. They reached the river, on which
th e re w a s a s in g le fis h e r m a n i n a b o a t . U n d e r s t a n d in g t h a t W u Z i- x u w a s
hardpressed, the fisherman took him across. Once Wu Zi-xu was across, he
took off his sword, saying: This sword is worth a hundred in gold I am
giving it to you. The fisherman said: There is a law in the Kingdom of
Chu that whoever takes W u Zi-xu will be rewarded with fifty thousand mea
sures of rice and the jade badge of a court noble. Whats a sword worth just
a hundred in gold to that!15And he would not accept the sword. Before he
reached the capital of W u, W u Zi-xu got sick and had to stop halfway along
his journey to beg for food. When he reached the capital of W u, King Liao
Early China
was ruling, and Guang, a prince of the blood, was general. Then, through
Guang, Wu Zi-xu sought a meeting with the King of Wu.
A long time later King Ping of Chu flew into a great rage because two
women attacked one another in an argument over some mulberry trees,
one from the Chu frontier town of Zhong-li, and the other from a Wu fron
tier town under the Bei-liang clan, both of which towns made silk. It
reached the point where both kingdoms were raising troops to attack one
another. Wu sent prince of the blood Guang to attack Chu, and he returned
after taking possession Zhong-li and Ju-chao. Wu Zi-xu made an argument
to King Liao of W u: Chu can be smashed. I would have you send Guang
back again.w But Guang told the king W u Zi-xu
s father and elder
brother were slain by Chu, and his urging Your Majesty to attack Chu is
only his desire to be revenged on his own foes. No attack on Chu can smash
it yet. W u Zi-xu understood that the prince Guang had aims that he was
keeping to himself, that he wanted to kill the king and take the throne him
self, and therefore could not be swayed to actions outside the kingdom.
W u then recommended Zhuan Zhu to the prince Guang, and withdraw
ing from court, went to farm in the wilderness with Prince Jians son
Sheng.
After five years King Ping of Chu passed away. Earlier, the daughter of
Qin, whom King Ping had snatched away from Prince Jian, had given birth
to Zhen; and when King Ping passed away, Zhen ultimately succeeded him
as heir to the throne, known as King Zhao. -King Liao of Wu took advan
tage of the mourning for the king and sent two princes of the blood with
troops to make raids into Chu. Chu sent out troops to cut off the rear of the
W u troops, and the Wu troops were unable to get back. The Kingdom of
W u was left bare; then prince of the blood Guang ordered Zhuan Zhu to
rush in and stab the king, after which he himself took the throne as He-lii,
King of Wu. Once He-lii ascended the throne and his ambitions were ful
filled, he then called Wu Zi-xu to serve him in relations with other states;
and he took counsel with him on matters of the domain.
Chu had executed two great officers of the court, Wan of X i and Bo
Zhou-li. Bo Zhou-lis grandson, Bo Pi, escaped and fled to W u and Wu went
so far as to make him a Counselor. Previously the two princes and their
troops, whom King Liao had sent to attack Chu, had their retreat cut off
and could not get back. Hearing later that He-lii had killed King Liao and
set himself on the throne, they surrendered with their troops to Chu, who
gave them fiefs in Shu. Three years after He-lii took the throne, he raised an
army and, together with Wu Zi-xu and Bo Pi, attacked Chu, took Shu, and
seized the two former W u generals who had changed sides. Thereafter he
wanted to reach Ying, the Chu capital, but his general, Sun Wu, saidNot
yetthe men are worn out. Wait a while.Then he returned.
In the fourth year of his reign, W u again attacked Chuand took Lu and
Qian. In the fifth year of his reign he attacked Yue and defeated it. In the
sixth year, King Zhao of Chu sent the prince of the blood Nang Wa with
91
troops to attack Wu. W u sent W u Zi-xu to meet him, and he smashed the
Chu army at Yu-zhang and took Chu
s city Ju-chao.
In the ninth year of his reign, He-lii, King of W u, spoke to Wu Zi-xu and
Sun Wu: Before, you said I could not enter the Chu capital Ying. How is
it now? Both men answered: Chu
s general Nang Wa is a grasping man,
and the domains of Tang and Cai both hold a grudge against him. If Your
Majesty must make a major attack, it will work only if you first get Tang
and Cai.55He-lii listened to them. He raised his entire army and together with
Tang and Cai attacked Chu, forming his ranks facing the Chu forces that
were drawn up on the other side of the Han River. The king's younger
brother Fu-gai asked to be sent after them, but the king would not agree.
Then, with the five thousand men attached to him, Fu-gai struck the Chu
general Nang Wa, who was defeated and ran away, fleeing to the state of
Zheng. Thereupon Wu took advantage of its victory and advanced; and after
five battles, it finally reached Ying. It was the day ji-mao when King Zhao
o f Chu fle d the c it y it was one day later, geng-chenw h e n th e K i n g of Wu
entered Ying.
.
King Zhao escaped the city into the Yun-meng hunting preserve. There
outlaws attacked the king, who was hurrying toward Yun. Huai, who was
the younger brother of the lord of Yun, saidW ould it not be fair that
since King Ping o f Chu killed my father, I may kill his so n ?n The Lord of
Yun was afraid that his brother would kill the king and joined the king in
flight to Sui. Troops of W u surrounded Sui and told the people of Sui: It
was Chu that wiped out all the heirs of the house of Zhou along the river
H an
The people of Sui wanted to kill the king, but the prince-royal Qi
sheltered him and was going to act the part of the king himself. The peo
ple of Sui made divination as to whether or not they should deliver the king
to W u. The result was unlucky. So they refused W u and did not deliver the
king.
In the beginning, W u Zi-xu had been associated with Bao-xu of Shen.
When W u Zi-xu was escaping, he told Bao-xuI will be the rain of Chu.M
To which Bao-xu replied: And I will preserve it. When the troops of W u
entered Ying, W u Zi-xu went looking for King Zhao; and since he couldnt
find him, he dug up the tomb of King Ping of Chu, took out the corpse, and
flogged it, stopping only after he had given it three hundred lashes. Bao-xu
of Shen escaped into the mountains and sent someone to say to Wu Zi-xu
Dont you think you have gone too far in your revenge? It is my under
standing that masses of men may overcome Heaven, but that Heaven is cer
tainly capable of smashing those men. You once were a liegeman of King
Pingyou yourself served him, facing north to the thronenow you have
reached the point of dishonoring a dead man. Dont you see that this is an
extreme failure to follow Heavens right way ?
W u Zi-xu replied: Give my
respects to Bao-xu of Shen, The day draws toward nightfall; my road is long.
I go against the tide, yet I will do this in spite of all.
At thisBao-xu of Shen hurried to Qin to tell them about the crisis, seek
ing succor from Qin. But Qin would not agree to help. Bao-xu stood in the
Early 'China
courtyard of Qin and wept by day and by night. For seven days and seven
nights the sound never ceased. Then Lord Ai of Qin took pity on him and
said: Even though Chu was wanting in the right way, it has liegemen like
this! Can we do otherwise than save it? Then he sent five hundred chari
ots to save Chu and strike Wu. In the sixth month of that year they defeated
W us troops at Ji. It happened that He-lii had remained a long time in Chu
seeking King Zhao meanwhile He-lii
s younger brother Fu-gai surrepti
tiously made his way back to W u and set himself on the throne as king.
When He-lii heard of it, he let go of Chu and made his way back to strike
his brother Fu-gai. Fu-gai was defeated and ran, eventually fleeing to Chu.
When King Zhao saw the internal strife in W u, he reentered Ying. He gave
Fu-gai a fief at Tang-xi, which became the Tang-xi clan. Chu again joined
W u in battle and defeated itwhereupon the King of W u made his way
home.
Two years afterwards, He-lii sent the Crown Prince Fu-cha with troops
to attack Chu. They took Pan. Chu feared that W u would come again in
force and left Ying, shifting the capital to Ruo. It was in those days that Wu,
using the counsels of W u Zi-xu and Sun W u, broke through its western bor
ders with Chu, held Qi and Jin to make the north feel awe of their might,
and to the south made the people of Yue yield.
Four years after that, Confucius was the minister in Lu.
Five years later they attacked Yue. The Yue king Gou-jian met them, de
feating Wu at Gu-Siu They wounded He-lu5s finger, and the army withdrew.
He-lii, on the point of death from a sickness from that woundtold the
Crown Prince Fu-chaW ill you forget that Gou-jian killed your father?
Fu-cha replied: I will never forget. That evening He-lii died. When Fu-cha
ascended the throne, he made Bo Pi the Grand Steward, and had the troops
practice archery. After two years he attacked Yue, and defeated Yue at Fu~
jiao. Then Gou-jian, King of Yue, took temporary refuge on Kuai-ji with
his remaining five thousand troops. He sent Counselor Zhong with rich gifts
for Grand Steward Bo Pi, begging for an accommodation, and seeking to
make his state a vassal of W u. The King of W u was about to agree, but W u
Zi-xu protestedThe King of Yue is the kind of man who is able to take
suffering. If Your Majesty does not wipe him out now, you will certainly
rue it later. But the King of Wu would not listen to liim, and employed the
Grand Steward Bo Pi to make peace with Yue.
Five years later, the King of W u heard that Lord Jing of Qi had died and
that the great officers of the state were struggling for the favor of the new
lord, who was then young. He then raised his army to go north to attack
Qi. W u Zi-xu protested, saying: When Gou-jian eatshe pays no attention
to how the food tastes; he laments those who die and pays attention when
people are sickit would seem that he has plans to make use of them. So
long as this man does not die, he will certainly bring affliction upon Wu. At
present Yue5s existence in relation to W u is like a person having an illness
in the heart or stomach. Cant Your Majesty see what a mistake it is to ex
pend your efforts in Q i without first considering Yue? The King of W a did
93
not listen to him. He attacked Qi and inflicted a great defeat on the Qi army
at Ai-ling. Then he put the rulers of Zou and Lu in awe of his might and re
turned. And he paid increasingly less attention to Wu Zi-xu
s counsels.
Four years after that, the King of W u was about to go north to attack
Qi, and King Gou-jian of Yue, following the counsels of Zi-gong, led his
hosts to help Wu. Again he made presents of rich treasures to the Grand
Steward Bo Pi. Bo Pi, having received the gifts of Yue, developed for Yue
immense faith and fondness, and day and night spoke on its behalf to the
King of Wu. The King of W u had faith in Bo Pis plans and followed them.
Wu Zi-xu protested againYue is an illness in the heart or stomach. In your
present greed for Qi, you are giving faith to baseless statements and decep
tions. If you smash Qi, it will be as a stony fieldyou will have no use from
it. The Pan-geng Declaration in the [Classic of\ Documents says: 'Whoso
ever overturns my will or transgresses or wants due reverence, his nose shall
be hacked off and I will destroy him utterly, and I shall cause him to have
no spawn remaining, neither shall I let him shift his sprouts to this my new
city/ This was how the Shang rose. I would have Your Majesty let go of Qi
and consider Yue first. If you do not do so, the regrets you will have later
will do you no good. Yet the King of Wu did not heed him, but sent Wu
Zi-xu as an envoy to Qi. When W u Zi-xu was on the point of going, he told
his son: I have protested to the king on a number of occasions, but the king
does not follow my advice. I now will see the destruction of W u. It will do
no good if you and Wu are destroyed together. Then he put his son under
the protection of Bao M u of Qi and returned to report to Wu.
Since the Grand Steward Bo Pi had a grudge against Wu Zi'xu, he spoke
ill of him: W u Zi-xu is a hard and violent man, short on lovemistrustful,
a spoilerand I fear his resentments will bring deep troubles upon us. When
before Your Majesty wanted to attack Qi, it was W u Zi-xu5s opinion that
you should not; yet in the end Your Majesty did indeed attack Qi and won
for yourself great glory. W u Zi-xu feels humiliated that his counsels were
not adoptedhe feels a perverse resentment at your success. And now that
Your Majesty will again attack Qi, Wu Zi-xu shows single-minded stub
bornness in his unbending protests to wreck the undertaking. He will think
W u
s defeat a happy outcome because it will show the triumph of his own
counsels. Now Your Majesty is himself going, having brought together all
the military force in the kingdom to attack Qi. Wu Zi-xu's counsels not being
adopted, he withdraws, refusing to go on the pretext of illness. Your Majesty
absolutely must take precautions, for in this situation it would not be diffi
cult to cause troubles. Moreover, I sent a man to spy on him when he was
on his mission to Q ihe even went so far as to put his son under the pro
tection of the Bao clan. This is the sort of liegeman he is: failing to have his
way within the kingdom, he will rely on foreign nobility; considering him
self the counselor of the former king and finding his counsels not now
adopted, he is always in a state of seething resentment. I would have Your
Majesty do something about it as soon as possible.55
Early China
The King of W u saidEven apart from what you have told me, I would
have doubted him. Then he sent an envoy to present Wu Zi-xu with the
sword Zhu-lou, saying: By this you die. W u Zi-xu raised his head toward
Heaven and sighedThat malicious officer Bo Pi is creating havocand Your
Majesty executes me instead. I made your father overlord. Before you took
the throne, all the princes of the blood were contending for the succession;
I was ready to support your cause to the death with the former king, and
even so you came close to not succeeding to the throne. And when you did
take the throne, you wanted to divide the Kingdom of W u with me, but I
refused it as not being something I expected. However, now you give heed
to the words of a lying courtier and kill an honorable man. Then he in
formed his retainers: Plant my tomb with catalpas, that they may be had
for making coffins for W u. Dig out my eyeballs and hang them above the
eastern gate of the capital of Wu, so that I can watch Yues thugs when they
enter the great city and wipe out "Wu He then cut his throat and died. When
the King of Wu heard this, he fell into a great rage; he got hold of Wu Zixu?s corpse, and stuffing it into a leather wineskin, had it set afloat on the
Yangzi River. But the people of W u felt for him and erected a temple beside
the river, which consequently was named Mount Xu.
Having executed Wu Zi-xu, the King of W u proceeded to attack Qi. The
Bao clan of Qi killed their ruler Lord Dao and set Yang-sheng on the throne.
The King of Wu wanted to chastise this crime, but had to withdraw with
out having achieved the victory. Two years later, the King of W u called the
rulers of Lu and Wei to meet with him at Tuo Meadow. The next year he
followed this with a great meeting of the high nobility at Yellow Pool, where
he claimed leadership over all the house of Zhou. But then the king of Yue,
Gou-jian, made a surprise attack, killing the Crown Prince of W u and smash
ing W us troops. As soon as the King of Wu heard this, he went back and
sent an envoy with rich gifts to treat for peace with Yue. Nine years later,
King Gou-jian of Yue wiped out Wu and killed Fu-cha, and further executed
the Grand Steward Bo Pi for not having been loyal to his ruler and for tak
ing rich presents from outside the domain, and for forming a faction for the
King of Yue himself.
Sheng, the son of the Chu crown prince Jian, with whom Wu Zi-xu had first
escaped, remained in W u. During the time of King Fu-chaKing Hui of Chu
wanted to call Sheng back to Chu, but Lord She protested: Sheng loves dar
ing and is secretly seeking knights who will die for him. Dont you imagine
he has some private designs? King Hui did not heed him and sent for
Sheng, making him live in the frontier city of Yan, where he was called Lord
Bo. Three years after Lord Bos return to Chu, Wu executed W u Zi-xu.
Once Sheng, Lord Bo, had returned to Chu, he had a store of resentment
against the domain of Zheng for having killed his father. And he secretlynourished knights willing to die for him in his quest to pay back Zheng. Five
years after his return to Chu, he asked permission to attack Zheng; the Chu
95
Vizier Zi-xi allowed it. But before the troops set out, Jin attacked Zheng,
and Zheng requested aid from Chu. Chu sent Zi-xi to go to their defense,
and after taking a blood oath with them, he returned. Sheng, Lord Bo, was
enraged and said: I am not Zhengs foeI am Zi-xis! Sheng was sharp
ening his sword, and someone asked him what he was doing. Sheng replied:
I am going to kill Zi-xi. When Zi-xi heard of this, he laughed and said,
Sheng is just a hatchlingwhat can he do?
Four years later, Sheng, Lord Bo, and Shi Q i assassinated the Chu Vizier
Zi-xi and Commander Zi-qi in the court. Shi Qi then said, We have to kill
the king too, whereupon they abducted the king and took him to the High
Storehouse. Qu Guone of Shi Q is followers, carried King Hui of Chu as
they fled quickly to the palace of the Lady Zhao. On hearing that Lord Bo
had rebelled, Lord She led people from his own fief to attack Lord Bo. Lord
Bo
s followers were defeated, and he escaped into the mountains, where he
killed himself. Then, when they made Shi Q i a prisoner, they asked him
where Lord Bo
s corpse wassaying they would boil him if he didnt tell
them. To this, Shi Qi repliedSucceed and you are the Grand Minister; fail
and you are boiledeach position has its own demands. He never was will
ing to tell where the corpse was. Then they boiled Shi Qi, and after search
ing for King Hui, they put him back on the throne.
The Lord Historians comment:
The venom of rancor and resentment is a powerful thing in man. If even
a king dare not incite it in his subjects, the case is even more serious among
men of equal rank. Had W u Zi-xu died together with W u She, it would have
been no different from the death of an ant. It is moving indeed that in re
nouncing that lesser act of virtue he wiped away a greater humiliation, and
his name lasts on to later generations. When Wu Zi-xu was in desperate
straits beside the river or begging for food on his journey, do you suppose
that in his aims he forgot the capital Ying even for an instant? To endure
quietly, to reach the deed and the glory of it only a man of fierce will can
achieve this. And if Lord Bo had not set himself up as the ruler, neither his
deeds nor his designs would have been worth the telling.
The Zuo Tradition account of W u Zi-xu's career follows. The Zuo Tradition takes
for granted that its readers already know the characters and the general background.
In the Historical Records, one of Si-ma Qian's tasks was to provide enough infor
mation for the narrative to stand on its own. In the first Zuo Tradition passage, we
have Fei Wu-ji, the self-serving villain, who has sought to curry favor with the King
of Chu by urging him to take the bride who had been brought from Qin for Crown
Prince Jian. The king takes her for himself and has Crown Prince Jian sent off to
the border fortress of Fang. Wu She, Wu Zi-xu's father, is the honest Courtier, who
raises objections to the king's high-handed behavior and thus wins the enmity of Fei
Wu-ji.
Early China
The Zuo Tradition^ an entry for the 20th year of Duke Zhao
(522 b.c.)
Fei Wu-ji said to the Ruler of Chu: Crown Prince Jian and Wu She are going
to lead the area beyond Fang City to rise in rebellion, and they will set them
selves on a par with Song and Zheng. Qi and Jin will make league to help
them, whereby they will work harm on Chu. The deed draws to fullness
now. The king believed him. He questioned W u She. W u She answered:
Your Majestys first misdeed was great enough [referring to the kings hav
ing taken the crown princes bride]; why believe maligning words? The king
arrested Wu She and ordered the Commander of Cheng-fu, Fen Yang, to
kill the crown prince. Fen Yang ordered someone to precede him and send
the crown prince away before he could arrive. The crown prince fled to Song.
The king then summoned Fen Yangand Fen Yang had himself arrested by
men of Cheng-fu and taken to the king. The king saidWords came forth
from my mouth, they entered your ears. Who told Prince Jian?
Fen Yang
answered: I did. It was my lords commandServe Jian as you serve me.
I lack guile. I could not wrongly keep double faith. I have kept your first
command throughout, and could not bear the later one. Therefore I sent him
away. I have regretted thisstill it avails nothing. The king said: And how
is it that you dare come to me? He answered: I was given an order and
failed to carry out the command. To be summoned and not to come would
h a v e b e e n a s e c o n d tr e a s o n . T h e re w o u l d h a v e b e e n n o w h e r e t o e sc a p e
The king said: Go back and continue to govern as before.

Fei Wu-ji said: Wu Shes sons have talents. If they were in W u, they
would surely bring grief to the Kingdom of Chu. Why not summon them by
an offer to free their father? They have kindness and will surely come.
Otherwise they will bring great evil upon Chu.MThe king sent someone to
call them to court, sayingCome and I will set your father free. Wu Shang,
Lord of Tang, said to his younger brother Wu Zi-xu: You go off to Wu. I
will go back and die. My knowledge does not equal yours. I am able to die;
you are able to take revenge. Hearing this command that would free our
father, one cannot fail to hurry to answer it. Yet when kin are slain, one also
cannot fail to take revenge. To hurry to ones death in order to free ones
father is to act well as a sonto take the measure of the deed and carry it
through is kindliness; to choose such a burden and leave is knowledge; to
know one will die and not to flinch is courage. Our father must not be for
saken, yet our name must not perish. Do your utmost! It is best to let me go
my way,
Wu Shang went back. When W u She heard that W u Zi-xu had not come
with him, he saidThe Lord of Chu and his Grand Master will not be able
to eat their dinners on time now.
Chu had them both killed.
W u Zi-xu went to W u and there spoke to Zhou-yu, King Liao, of the
advantage of an attack on Chu. But the prince Guang [later King He-lii] said
97

T h is man's k i n were s la in , a n d h e wants to pay b a c k h is fo e s . We may not
follow his advice.
W u Zi-xu said: That man would seem to have aims all his own. For the
while I will seek fighting men for himand I myself will bide my time. It
was then he had the prince meet Zhuan She-zhuwhile he himself farmed
in the wilderness.
The Zuo Tradition^ an entry for the 4th year of Duke Ding
(506 B.C .) (within the longer account of the defeat of Chu)
At first W u Zi-xu had been a friend of Bao-xu of Shen. When he was es
caping, he told Bao-xu of Shen: I will be the ruin of Chu. To which Baoxu of Shen replied: Do your utmost! For if you are able to be its ruin, I will
surely be able to make it rise up again.55When King Zhao was in Sui [hav
ing fled the W u army that had taken his capital], Bao-xu of Shen went to
Qin to seek an army, sayingWu is a great boar, a long serpent that will
devour the larger domains one by one. The evil has begun in Chu. My ruler
has failed to guard his ancestral altars and is now at large in the wilderness.
He has sent me to give you these words of his distressThe power of these
savages knows no satiety; if they become your neighbors, it will be a great
evil for your borders. Now, while W u has not yet completed its conquest,
come you and take your portion of us. If Chu then is to perish, it will be
your land. But ifby your holy force, you show us grace, so will we serve
you for generations.
The Duke of Qin commanded him to withdraw, sayingI have heard

the command. You go to the guest lodge for the while. I will make plans
and inform you of them.
But Bao-xu of Shen answered: My ruler is at large in the wilderness and

has found no place of refuge. How can Ihis liegeman, take my ease? He
stood there, resting against the courtyard wall and weeping. The sound did
not cease by day or night. For seven days not a spoonful did he drink with
his mouth. At last Duke Ai of Qin recited for him the Poem No Clothes,
at which he touched his head to the ground nine times and sat down. The
armies of Qin then went forth.
By reciting "N o Clothes/7 Duke Ai of Qin let Bao-xu know that he had agreed to
take the field against Wu.

I will share my greatcoat with you.
we will make ready pike and spear,
and I will share all foes with you.
Early China
After Wu Zi-xu had completed his revenge against Chu, he remained as an adviser
to W u. When he protested against the policy of conciliating the neighboring king
dom of Yue and interfering in the intricate politics of the northern domains, he lost
the favor of the new king, Fu-cha, and was ordered to commit suicide.
The Zuo Tradition, an entry for the 11th year of Duke Ai

(484 b.c.)
W u was about to attack Qi, and the Ruler of Yue led his hosts to pay his
respects to the court of Wu. The king and his warriors all were given pre
sents. The men of W u were all delighted. Only W u Zi-xu was afraid and
said, They fatten W u up for the slaughter. And he presented his protest
Yue
s relation to us is that of an illness of the stomach or heart. Our lands
would form a single whole, and they want to take ours from us. By such
meekness and yielding they further their desire. If you achieve your aims in
Qi, it is like getting a stony field~you will have no use from it. If you dont
turn Yue into a lake, it is Wu that will be drowned. One never has a doctor
get rid of a disease and tell him, You have to leave some of it.5The Pangeng Declaration in the Documents says'Whosoever overturns my will or
transgresses or wants due reverence, his nose shall be hacked off and I will
destroy him utterly, and I shall cause him to have no spawn remaining, nei
ther shall I let him shift his sprouts to this my new city.In such a way the
Shang rose. My lord now does otherwise, and in your search for greatness
you will also find great troubles.
The king.refused to heed Wu. He sent him as an envoy to Qi, where W u
entrusted his son to the Bao clan, and from that son came the house of Wangsun. When he returned from his mission, the king heard of this and presented
him with the sword Zhu-lou by which to die.
When he was ready to die, W u Zi-xu said: Plant my tomb with catalpa
trees, that they may serve for coffin timbers. Wu is lost! In three years it will
begin to weaken. What comes to fullness must go to ruin. It is Heavens
way.

The story o f W u Zi-xu is only one strand in the com plicated saga o f the struggle between
southeastern domains o f W u and Yue* This saga continued to grow throughout the entire
history of Chinese literature. After the account given in the Historical Records, tw o new fig
ures rose to central importance. First there was Fan L\f the wise adviser o f G ou-jian, King of
Vue. In many ways, Fan Li is the successful double of W u Zi-xu: as Fu-cha o f W u ignores
W u Zi-xu's warnings, King G ou-jian o f Yue heeds Fan Li's advice and has his revenge on
W u. It was Fan Li w ho devised the famous stratagem o f ruining W u by sending to its king
the most beautiful woman in the w o rld Xi Shi. The vision o f the King o f W u's doomed
carousing w ith Xi Shi, heedless of the forces of Yue gathering against him , was a favorite of
Tang poets o f the eighth and ninth centuries.
99

Among the many legends o f G ou-jian's revenge, one story tells that he forced himself to
suffer bitter hardships and deprived himself of sleep so as never to forget, even for a single
moment, his hatred and his earlier hum iliation by the army o f W u. In the heat o f summer
he w o uld take hold of something burning hot, and in the cold o f w inter he w o uld hold ice
in his arms.
Yuan Zhen (779-831)A Winter W hite Linen Song

Night stretches on in the palace of Wu,
the water-clock drips slowly,
curtains and draperies hang on all sides,
the lanterns flames shed warmth.
It is Xi Shi herself who is dancing,

the king himself plays the pipes,
her snow white linens billow,
plumes of cranes scattering,
the beat speeds up, strings strum swiftly,
the dancers waist grows weary.
The dancers waist grows weary,
the king ceases drinking
and covers over X i Shi
with a phoenix flower brocade.
Her body is the bed where he rests,
her arm will serve as his pillow;
jade pendants clink, men come to dawn court

but the king is sleeping late.
When he wakes at last, gatekeepers tell him
No problems here at all!
for after the death of Wu Zi-xu,
speaking out is shunned.
The courtiers closest to the king
divine the kings will well,
and they all laugh how the King of Yue
must surely quake in fear,
who was holding ice in his arms each night,
unable to sleep from the cold.
After encompassing the destruction o f W u, Fan Li, know ing that he w ould inevitably lose
his ow n king's favor as W u Zi-xu had lost the favor o f Fu-cha, w ithdrew from his position
as chief counselor and set off to sea (or onto the Five Lakes o f the low er Yangzi). In making
this decision he became, later in the tradition, a model for tim ely w ithdraw al from public
office (a mode of happy flig ht from public life made happier still by a romantic version of
the story in which he sets off with the beautiful Xi Shi as his lover). When Fan Li, anticipat
ing his ruler's disfavor, set off to sea, he took a rather unusual pseudonym a reference to
someone else w ho had lost his ruler's favor and also ended up in the river. Fan Li called
himself "Master Leather W ineskin" the very object King Fu-cha had used to dispose o f the
body o f W u Z i-xu. Thus, in the end, W u Zi-xu and Fan Li, different types w ith different fates,
become one.
1 00
Early China
W hen you visit the places where these events were supposed to have occurred, all that
happened in the past can seem strangely unreal, as it seemed when the thirteenth-century
lyricist W u W en-ying visited the Magic Cliff, w hich supposedly had once fallen as a meteor.
This c liff was believed to have been the site o f Fu-cha's palace. First there is empty space;
into it a great stone falls, w hich becomes a cliff, and on that c liff trees and the palaces of
W u appear and then dissolve again, as the course of W u's rise and fall is played out. It was
all a drunken dream, a conjuror's illu s io n ~ w h ic h is the perspective o f the too sober Fan Li,
"weary wanderer on the Five Lakes, This too is the perspective o f the later lyricist, w ho gazes
on the site so long after the events for w hich it had become famous.
W u Wen-ying (ca. 1200-1260)to Eight-Note Gan-zhou,MVisiting

s the Magic C liff with Various Gentlemen of the Transport Office1
Empty skies recede far into mists all around
and when was it
that a streaming star came plummeting
down from blue skies?
Then phantoms were conjured up:
trees in clouds upon gray slopes,
the gilded chambers of that famous maid,
a broken overlords walled palaces.
On Arrow Path a stinging wind shoots into the eyes,
and oily waters stained by the stench of flowers.
At times come afterechoes of her lovebird slippers
autumns sounds, leaves in' the corridors.
,
In his palace the King of W u lay in a drunken stupor,
all hangs on that weary wanderer on the Five Lakes
fishing alone, O so sober.
Ask the gray Heavensthey will not speak,
and my white-flecked hair cannot bear the green of hills.
The skies are drowned within these waters,
and from a high balcony,
I follow a chaos of crows in setting sunlight
that descend on the beaches of fishermen.
Again and again I call for wine,
then go off up the Harpers Mound
'
where autumn is level with the clouds.
1In the song lyric the title of the melody is given first, indicated by "to . This is followed by the
topic occasion on which the lyric is composed.
Early Literary Prose: The

Delight of Words
In early Chinese prose it is impossible to draw a clear division between

thought, rhetoric, and literature. Exemplary anecdotes and parables,
even stirring speeches, seem to have had great entertainment value; and
the audience's appreciation of the pleasure of the telling seems to have
been inseparable from their appreciation of the lesson. Many early prose
texts are staged as scenes of instruction, dialogues in which one figure poses a ques
tion, and another, wiser figure responds with the main body of the discourse, leading to the general enlightenment of the questioner. In the discourses that are framed
by such dialogues, we may distinguish three loosely constituted genres or types of
writing: the argument or essay, the parable or exemplary story, and the description.
The description was usually rhythmic and rhymed, either in whole or in part. When
rhymed description predominates in such dialogues, we have a form that is close or
identical to what were called y/poetic expositions" (fu) from the Han on.
Such descriptions seem to have been an important form of literary entertainment
during the late Warring States and early Western Han. Characteristically, the speaker
will make a series of distinctionssometimes a simple antithesis and sometimes a
series of gradationsthen he will amplify each component to make his point. The
first piece below is an example of a descriptive mode that is close to pure enter
tainment, a poetic exposition on the wind. It is attributed to the legendary pre-Qin
rhetorician Song Yu, who is the speaker in the frame, but it is probably a Western
Han work. The second piece, set in a more intricate narrative, is one of the later
chapters of the Daoist classic, the Zhuang-zi, in which a fictional Zhuang-zi appears
in the guise of a Warring States orator to bring the King of Zhao to his senses. There
the frame narrative is far more complex than the description of the allegorical swords
embedded within it.
The Wind (Western Han?)

King Xiang of Chu was roaming through his palace compound at Orchid
Terrace with Song Yu and Jing Zuo in attendance. A wind came along
rustling, whereupon the king spread wide the folds of his gown, and said,
What a fine refreshing wind this is! Now here is something that I share
equally with the common peopleis it not?
To this, Song Yu answered, This wind belongs to the king alone~or
dinary people could certainly never share it with Your Majesty!
The king, But wind is the breath of Heaven and Earth, which spreads
evenly everywhere. It touches things without making distinctions between
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nobleman and commoner, between high estate and low. Do you have
some explanation for your singular opinion that this wind is royally
mine?
And Song Yu answered, I was told by my teacher that as crooks in a
hawthorn bring nesting birds, so empty crevices will bring the wind. But the
breath of a wind will differ according to where it lodges.
The king then asked, And how is the wind first born? To which Song
Yu replied
The wind is born in earth,
first rising in tips of green rushes.
It seeps oozing down into valleys,
it swells with rage in mouths of caverns.
It bends round the folds of Mount Tai
and dances beneath cypress and pines.
Blustering and whooshing,
it puffs in gales, flares in fury,
with booming sounds of thunder,
gusting and whirling, dashing together.
It kicks the stones, assails the trees,
flogs the forests and fields.
And when it is ready to subside,
it disperses flailing in all directions,
rams into holes, shakes doorbolts.
Then, glistening and sparkling,
it all dissipates, shifting on.
When you have such male wind, pure and cool,
it swirls aloft, rising then sinking,
and mounts up over the highest walls
and enters the palaces deepest parts.
Touching flowers and leaves, shaking loose scent,
it lingers about among pepper and cinnamon,
then soaring in flight over ruffled waters,
it is ready to strike the lotus blossoms.
,
It courses through clover,
runs upon rosemary,
flattens the rue,
and spreads sprouting willows.
Whirling, dashing, bounding up over,
its rustling strips all aromatics.
Thereafter it tarries in courtyards a while,
then northward climbs to the marble hall,
and striding through gauze draperies,
it passes into the womens chambers.
By this we recognize it as the kings wind.
10^
And when this kind of wind strikes a person,

his manner shows shivers of apprehension,
and its chill will bring a sigh.
Icy and cool,
healing ills, dispelling grogginess
it brings clarity to ear and eye,
calms the body and gives a man ease.
And this is what I mean by the kings male wind.
The king then saidHow well you explain things! And might I now hear
of the wind of ordinary people? Whereupon Song Yu said, The wind of
ordinary people:
rises rapidly within the back alleys,
in puffs of dust suddenly surging,
a troubled and turbulent whirling,
ramming holes and slipping through gates
stirring grit grains,
blowing dead ashes,
kicking up refuse and filth,
lifting garbage and trash,
pushing through edges of jug-shard windows,
it gets into their rooms.
And when this kind of wind strikes a person,
his manner shows discomfort and revulsion,
driving in mugginess, bringing rheums.
Peoples hearts grow depressed
it brings sickness, produces fevers;
it strikes the lips and makes them crack,
it gets into eyes which grow bleary and red,
coughing and sneezing,
with no relief in life or in death.
This is what I mean by the common folks womanly wind.
Of Swords (Zhuang-zi)
A long time ago King Wen of Zhao took great pleasure in swordplay, and
over three thousand men thronged his gates to receive his patronage as
swordsmen. In his presence they would hack at each other day and night,
and every year more than a hundred died of their wounds. But the king loved
it dearly and never tired of it. It went on like this for three years, and as
the kingdoms fortunes slid into decline, the nobility debated what to do
about it.
Crown Prince Kui was appalled by the situationand summoned his
entourage: I will offer a reward of a thousand pieces of gold to anyone
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who can dissuade the king from this mania of his and put a stop to these
swordsmen.
Members of his entourage said, HZhuang-zi can certainly do it.
The crown prince then sent a messenger with a thousand pieces of gold
to offer to Zhuang-zi. But Zhuang-zi refused to accept the gold and went
back with the messenger to see the crown prince. What is it that the Crown
Prince wants of me, presenting me a thousand pieces of gold?
The crown prince said, I have heard of your sagely understanding, and
out of respect I offered you a thousand pieces of gold so that you could dis
tribute it to your followers. Since you have refused to accept it, what more
can I say?
Zhuang-zi saidI have heard of the purpose for which you want to em
ploy mewhich is to put an end to the kings amusements. Now let us sup
pose, on the one hand, that I try to persuade the king and in doing so, of
fend him, thus not satisfying you; in that case31will be executed. What would
I do with gold then? On the other hand, let us suppose that I persuade the
king and do satisfy you. In that case, I couid have anything I wanted in the
Kingdom of Zhao.
The crown prince said, True. However, our king will see only swords
men.s>
Zhuang-ziUnderstood. But I am rather good with the sword.
The crown prince: Be that as it may, the swordsmen that our king sees
all have messy hair with bristling locks and slouched caps, plain, rough capstrings, robes hitched up in the back, bulging eyes, and stumbling speech.
This is the sort the king prefers. Since you will no doubt visit the king wear
ing your scholars clothes, the whole thing will inevitably be a complete fail
ure/5
Zhuang-ziWould you please have a swordsmans clothes prepared for
me?
Three days later, after the swordsman's clothes had been prepared, he
met with the crown prince, and the crown prince presented him to the king,
who waited for him with a bare blade drawn. Zhuang-zi entered the gate of
the great hall without hurryingand when he saw the king, he did not bow.
The king, Now that you have had the Crown Prince put you forward,
what do you expect to do for me?
I
ve heard that the king enjoys swordplay, so I ve come to see the king
by way of swordplay
The king said, How can that sword of yours defend you?
If I had an opponent every ten paces, I could go a thousand leagues with
out pausing.
The king liked that very much. Then theres no match for you in the
whole w orld.M
Zhuang-zi said, In swordplay one

displays himself as vacant,
initiates by advantage,
105
is the second to swing the blow,

is the first to strike home.
And I wish to have the chance to put this to the test.
The king said, Stop now. Go to your lodgings and await my bidding.
I ll invite you when I have arranged a contest to the death.55
Then the king tried his swordsmen against one another for seven days,
during which over sixty died of their wounds. O f these he got five or six men,
whom he had bring their swords into the great hall. Then he summoned
Zhuang-zi.
Today Im going to have my men match swords.
Zhuang-zi<(I5ve been looking forward to this for a long time.55
The king: Which would you use as your weapon, the long or the short?55
For my own use, anything is fine. However, I have three swords that
may be used only by a king. Let me tell you about these first, and then we
will have the trial.
The king said, Tell me about these three swords
There is an Emperors sword, a sword of the great nobility, and the
sword of an ordinary m a n .
The king said, What is the Emperors sword like?
Zhuang-zi said, The sword of an Emperor
has as its point Yan Valley and Mount Stonewall,
has as its blade Tai Mountain in Qi,
has its blunt edge in the kingdoms of Jin and Wei,
has as its guard the kingdoms Zhou and Song
has as its hilt the kingdoms Han and Wei
its wrappings are the barbarians that surround us,
its sheath is the four seasons,
it is wound about by the Sea of Bo,
Mount Heng is the sash from which it hangs,
it is governed by the five phases,
it makes judgments of punishment or virtue;
it is brought forth through Dark and Light,
it is held through spring and summer,
and is used in autumn and winter.
This sword, when held straight, has nothing before it,
pointed up, has nothing above it,
pressed downward, has nothing below it,
and swung, has nothing around it.
It slashes the clouds that drift above,
it cuts to Earths axis below.
Use this sword but once,
and the nobility will all be brought in line,
and the whole world will yield
for this is the sword of an Emperor
Early China
As if in a daze, King Wen was completely absorbed. He said, What is

the sword of the great nobility like?
Zhuang-zi said, The sword of the great nobility:
has as its point shrewd and valiant gentlemen,
has as its blade honest and unassuming gentlemen,
has its blunt edge in good and worthy gentlemen,
has as its guard loyal and wise gentlemen,
has as its hilt daring and outstanding gentlemen.
And this sword too, when held straight, has nothing before it,
pointed up, has nothing above it,
pressed downward, has nothing below it
and swung, has nothing around it.
It takes model from the roundness of Heaven above,
whereby it moves with sun, moon, and stars.
It takes model from the squareness of Earth below,
whereby it moves with the four seasons.
From the center it knows the peoples will
by which it brings peace to lands all around.
Use this sword but once,
and it is like a rumbling quake of thunder.
W ithin the boundaries all around,
there is no man but yields to it
and obeys the bidding of their lord.
This is a sword of the great n o bility.
The king then asked, And what is the sword of the ordinary man like?
Zhuang-zi said, The sword of the ordinary man belongs to one with
messy hair, with bristling locks and slouched cap, plain, rough cap-strings5
robes hitched up in the back, bulging eyes, and stumbling speech, men who
hack at each other in front of you. A high hack will chop off a neckand a
low one cuts liver or lungs. This is the sword of the ordinary man, and it is
no different from cockfighting, with a life cut off in a single morning. It has
no use at all in the workings of a kingdom. We have here a king, to whom
belongs the position of an Emperor, and yet who is in love with the sword
of the ordinary man. And for this kings sake I have taken the liberty of dis
paraging it.
The king then drew him up into the hall where the Master of the Kitchens
was having food set out. The king kept circling the table, until Zhuang-zi
said, Sit calmly and settle your spirit. I have finished my expostulation bn
swords. Thereafter the king did not leave his palace for three monthsand
his swordsmen all perished on their own swordpoints in their places.
One of the favorite setpieces for rhymed description was the Way itself. The Way
(Dao) was a general term used by many schools of philosophy in ancient China to
107

describe the "course things do (or should) follow." One school, the Daoists, of
whom Zhuang-zi was one, took their name from the Way. Their version of the Way
was a radical sense of natural process, indifferent to human perspectives and dis
tinctions. In the Zhuang-zi and elsewhere, the speaker will frequently
apse into rhap
sodic depictions of the Way's transformations. Such passages, often in four-charac
ter lines, bear remarkable similarity to the Daoist work known as the Lao-zi. The
following passage sets the description of the Way in a dialogue frame.
from Heavens Motions (Zhuang-zi)

Cheng of Northgate once asked the Yellow Emperor, My Lord, when you
performed Heavens Pool music in the wilderness on Mount Dong-ting, I
was at first terrified by what I heard; then as I heard more, I felt a sense of
apathy; finally, in the last part, I was all in confusion, swept along in a state
of blanknessstupefied.
The Yellow Emperor answered'"That's just about how it was. First I
played mankind in it, strummed it with Heaven, carried it forward with cer
emony and right action, and gave it a basis in absolute clarity.1
Four seasons alternated in rising,
all things were born in their sequences
first a splendor and then a fading,
peace and war, each in its place;
something clear, then something murky,
shadow and light in harmony blend.
Insects first stir from hibernation
it was I who shook them with my thunders:
its ending has no tail,
no head to its beginning,
only a dying and being born,
a falling flat and rising up.
The only constant is endlessness,
but no single thing can one trust to endure.
And it was for this reason that you felt terror in it. Next I played it with the
harmonies of Shadow and Light, and I set it ablaze with the shining of sun
and moon, and the sounds:
could be short or could be long,
could be soft, could be strong,
always changing but equal and one.
If in a valley, they fill the valley;
if in a pit, they fill the pit.
Stuffing gaps they keep their spirit
1There is a section of thirty-seven characters here that most commentators suspect was an early com
mentary that got incorporated into the text. I have therefore omitted it.
108
Early China
and take their own measure from other things

these sounds sweep everywhere and disperse
and their name is the High and Manifest.
Because of thisdemons and divinities keep to their hidden places, and
sunmoon, and stars move in their courses. I made the sounds stop at the
boundary of the limited, but set them rolling on without stopping. You tried
to think about them, but you couldnt know them. You tried to look for
them, but you weren5t able to see them. You chased after them, but you
weren't able to catch them. Then you found yourself standing in a daze, on
a path with emptiness all around. You leaned against a dead tree and
moaned, My eyes have been worn out by what I am trying to see. My
strength flags in face of what I am trying to catch. I cant reach it and thats
it. Your form then became all empty within, to the point where it just slid
along. And when you just slid along, you attained the condition of apathy.
Then I played it again, this time with sounds in which there was no ap
athy, and I blended it with what is ordained by the way things are. As if:
chaotically chasing, clumps appearing,
a forest of music without form,
strewing, spreading and never bogged down
hidden, dusky and lacking sound:
set into motion with no direction,
coming to lodge in sequestered blackness
there were some who called it death,
and some who called it life,
some called it the fruit,
some called it the flowering
it rolls on into dispersion,
dominated by no constant sound.
The ordinary people of the age were uncertain about it and sought ex
planation of the Sage~for the Sage has achieved perfection in the disposi
tions of things and acts in accordance with what is ordained. When Heavens
initial motive impulses are not yet set in operation, yet all the internal or
gans are complete, this is called Heavens music, in which the heart takes a
wordless delight. Thus You-biao made an ode for it:
You listen to it but dont hear its sound,
you look at it but dont see its form;
it fills all Heaven and Earth,
and wraps around all six directions.
You were trying to listen to it, but you couldnt make contact. Thats why
you felt uncertain.
That music began in terror, and from terror you felt dread. Then I
followed it up with apathy, and from apathy you went along with it. I
brought it to a close with confusion, and from confusion, you became fool109
ish. In foolishness it was the Way. The Way can carry you and you can be
together with it.
Works like the Zhuang-zi and Plato's Dialogues suggest that both philosophy and
literature gain when the two are fused together. However, such exalted moments
do not last. The sophisticated and elusive thought of Zhuang-zi was popularized and
became a body of commonplaces on the flux of the world, the wheel of fortune, and
the need for dispassion in face of life and death. What was lost in philosophical com
plexity was balanced by the way in which such values became intensely personal
and applied to the circumstances of people's lives.
The writer Jia Yi (200-168 b .c .), having lost imperial favor and been exiled to
the miasmal region of Chang-sha, transformed the complexities of Daoist thought
into what might be called the "consolation of Daoism/'
Jia Yi, The Poetic Exposition on the Owl

I, Jia Yi, was mentor to Chang-sha
s prince. In the third year an owl flew
into my lodgings and alighted on the edge of my seat. It was a Fu owl, like
the common hoot owl, and a bird of ill omen. Since I have been banished
to this low-lying and humid land of Chang-sha, I mourned my lottaking
this to mean that I did not have long to live. I then wrote a poetic exposi
tion to make myself feel better.
Chan-yan is the year,
the fourth month, summers first,
The sun set on the day geng-zi
when an owl perched in my lodging.
It settled on my seats edge,
its visage unperturbed,
When weird creature comes to roost,
I wonder at the cause.
I spread a book and read the signs,
the omens told my fate
A wild bird enters the house
the owner soon will leave.
O f this owl I would ask,

On leavingwhere will I go?
Do you tell me words of luck
or ill words of my doom?
W ill my span end soon or late?
speak to me the time.
A breath then passed the owls beak
it raised its head, spread its wings.
Its mouth incapable of words,
let me give its hearts reply:
110
Al] things of this world move in change

with never a moments pause or rest;
They flow past swirling and away,
sometimes forge forward and return,
Form and force in endless revolutions,
moving through change as if shedding husks.
Deep mystery is here that has no end_
how can I win the full telling?
Close on misfortune fair fortune presses,
under fair fortune misfortune lurks.
Worries and joys throng the gateway,
luck and mischance have common zones.
There once was W u, great and strong,
whereby its king Fu-cha was ruined.
He drove Yue to refuge at Kuai-ji,
yet Gou-jian was overlord in his time.
Li Si roamed to Qin, fulfilled his aims,
he was put to death in the end.
Fu Yue was roped in a prison gang,
but then was adviser to Wu-dingthe king.
Misfortune stands with fair fortune
no different from strands that braid a cord.
What is ordained cannot be explained,
who can know how a thing will end?
Water, impelled, grows turbulent,
the arrow, impelled, goes far.
All things of the world bump and jostle
as they sweep along spinning around.
Cloud vapors steam, the rain descends,
teeming tendrils intertwining.
The Potters Wheel is shaping things
in a boundless expanse with no margin.
None may outguess Heavens plots,
none may outguess schemes of the Way.
Your end is ordained, either soon or delayed,
and its moment none can tell.2
For Heaven and Earth are the forge,
and the Fashioner is the smith;
Shadow and Light is his coal,
and the things of the world are his bronze.
2These two distiches do not rhyme, which indicates lines dropped out.
Merging and scattering, melting then solid

where in this is enduring rule?
A thousand changes, mutations in myriads,
in which never has been an end.
All of a sudden it is a man
why is that worth clinging to?
Then he is changed to some other thing
and why is that an affliction?
Small wisdom favors the self,
demeaning othershonoring Me.
The Perfected Man has larger views,
that nothing there is that is not right.
Grasping men spend themselves for goods;
brash warriors spend themselves for glory.
The man overweening will die for power,
and the common man covets his life.
The sort who are thus lured and pushed
may go scampering east and scampering west.
But the Great Man does not bend,
a million changes he takes as the same.
The fool is tied to common custom,
hemmed like a prisoner in chains.
The M an Arrived leaves things behind,
is alone together with the Way.
The average man is filled with misgivings
his loves and hates collect in millions.
The Genuine Man is indifferent and calm,
is alone in reposing with the Way.
He lets wisdom goforsakes bodys form,
rises above things, loses the self.
In the chaos of empty and boundless space
he soars around along with the Way.
If currents bear him, he passes on;
if he comes to an islet, he halts.
He lets his body free, accepts the ordained,
shows no special favor to self.
Such living is like drifting along,
such dying is like ceasing.
Serene like the stillness of deep waters,
afloat like an uiynoored boat.
Early China
He does not treasure what pertains to himself,

he nurtures emptiness as he floats.
No cares bind the man who has it within,
he knows the ordained and does not worry.
Trivial problems, picayune troubles
are not worth bringing anxieties.
The Zhuang-zi
In its present form, the Zhuang-zi is a large miscellany of pre-Qin and Western Han
texts from various sources. This is not at all unusual in the works that survive from
the Western Han and earlier. W hat is remarkable about the Zhuang-zi is that it brings
together such good texts. Even many of the pieces in the later chapters are superior
to the best of their kind preserved elsewhere. And the later chapters pale in com
parison with the first, so-called Inner Chapters, which contained prose writing un
matched by anything else in early China. The term Zhuang-zi, which means "Mas
ter Zhuang, can refer either to the Daoist philosopher Zhuang Zhou, or to this book
that circulates under his name.
The "Discourse on Thinking of Things as Being on the Same Level" (Qi~wu lun),
translated in its entirety below, is the second chapter of the Zhuang-zi and combines
all three types of prose discourse set in a dialogue form (and in dialogues-within-dialogue). The untranslatable (somewhat incomprehensible) sections of argument
draw on the mode of reasoning of Logicians such as Hui-zi and Gong-sun Long-zi,
trying to prove paradoxes such as "A white horse is not a horse." The Zhuang-zi takes
that mode of argument, treats it seriously to some degree, but carries it to the very
edge of parody.
The Zhuang-zi can be very difficult. It is filled with fanciful characters, zany sages
and allegorical interlocutors, who are sometimes passionately intense and sometimes
joking. It often turns back on itself, making fun of an argument it has just developed.
In many ways its philosophical message is as much in what it "does" as in what it
says.
Discourse on Thinking of Things as Being on the Same Level

(Qi-wu lun)
Nan-guo Zi-qi was sitting propped up on an armrest. He looked up at the
sky and heaved a small sigh, slumping over as if he had lost the other half
of himself. Yan-cheng Zi-you, who was standing in waiting in front of him,
said"Whats this! Can the outer form really be made like deadwood and
can the mind really be made like cold ashes? Whatever this thing is propped
up on the armrest, it is not what was propped there previously.
Then Zi-qi said, Ah Zi-youisn
t it wonderful that you should ask this!
Did you realize that just now I had lost the me? You have heard the flutes
of men, but you have never heard of Earths flutes. Or you have heard
Earths flutes, but you have never heard the flutes of Heaven
113
Zi-you said, Could I get to hear this lore?

Zi-qi said, When the greatest of clods, which is the Eatthexhales its
breath, the name that we give it is wind. But this is only when it is not in
action. Once it acts, all the thousands of fissures bellow forth in their fury~
havent you heard them howling? In forests on rugged crags there are great
trees whose trunks are a hundred armspans around; and they have holes and
fissures like snouts and like mouths and like ears and like basins and like
sockets and like mortars and like sinkholes and like oozes. There are splashings arid whizzings and rantings and slurpings and screechings and wailings
and dronings and keenings. The ones that get there first sing out, 'Heyyy
. . . and the ones that follow sing back,f . . . yaaah/ The little drafts blend
in their small voices; the mighty blasts blend in their loud ones. And when
the fierce gales have passed bya ll the fissures are left emptied havent you
seen them still swaying and creaking?

Zi-you said, Earths flutes, then, are nothing more than the multitudes
of fissures; the flutes of men are nothing more than bamboo pipes placed
side by side. But if you wouldI would like to hear of the flutes of Heaven
And Zi-qi said, They blow forth the thousands that are not the same
and cause them to cease by themselves; each and every one chooses for it
self, but who is it that excites them to do so?
Great knowing is slow and capacious,
small knowing is sly and capricious.
Great words blaze with distinction,
small words amaze making distinctions.
In their sleeping, souls cross; in their waking outer forms come apart.
When we touch another, we set to contrive,
every day minds struggle and strive.
Those curtained off, those stashed away, those closely hoarded.
Small fears are anxious and skittish;
great fears unfold sluggishly.3
They shoot forth as when a crossbow trigger pulls the pin this is what is
meant by close attention to claims of soand not so.They stay put as if
oath-boundthis is what is meant by winning through holding fast. Their
deadliness is like autumn and winterthis says that they dwindle day by day.
fhey are drowned in the means of their own doingone cannot make them
Return to the beginning. They are enclosed as if sealed up~this says that they
senile in their aging. Hearts that draw nigh to dying, and none can
^ ake them return to the light.
1
^
sluggishly," man-man, something spreading like creepers or waters. This can be taken in
Ve sense, suggesting the paradoxical calm of "great fears"; or it can be another negative conbeclouded mind .swept helplessly along.
Early China
Happiness and rage, sorrow and joy, worries, sighs, and changes, times
of sluggishness, jitters, recklessness, moments of openness, posturings
these are the music that comes from our empty spaces, mushrooms forming
of ground mist. By day and by night one follows after another here before
us, and no one knows from where they sprout. Thats all of it! From dawn
to dusk these are what we get but that from which they are born?
W ithout these there is no me, and without me there is nothing for them
to take hold of. Now were really close, and yet we dont know what drives
them on. It is as if there were someone truly in charge, but I cannot catch
the least trace of him. I have faith that he can indeed act, yet I never see his
outer form. He has a given nature but no outer formjust a hundred bones,
nine bodily fissures, six organs within I have a full set right here. Which
of those am T most akin to? Are you fond of them all equally, or is there
some particular one you favor? And if its this way, are they all able to act
as loyal servants and handmaidens? Da such loyal servants and handmaid
ens have the capacity to govern themselves? O r perhaps they take turn act
ing as lord over the others? O r is there a true lord present there? Even if we
try to grasp his given nature and fail, it adds nothing and takes nothing away
from the truth of him. He is received once when we take on physical form,
and we do not lose him until the end.
Is it not a sad thing how we cut into things and grind against them, how
we are cut and ground in return, going on to the end as if at a gallop that
no one can stop? Can we help grief at toiling and toiling our whole lives
through and never seeing anything achieved from it, how we labor so wearily
to the point of exhaustion without ever knowing where we are going at last?
A man claims that he will not die~what good does it do? His physical form
undergoes change, and his mind goes along with it. WouIdnJt you call that
the saddest thing of all? The lives of men are blind in just this way. Am I the
only blind manare there others who are not blind? Each follows his own
mind as it has reached its complete form and takes it as his guide. Is there a
single person who lacks such a guide? Why must this guide belong only to
the wise man, whose completely formed mind chooses for itself? A simple
ton has one along with him too. To have a sense of soand not so before
it has taken complete form within the mind is like Hui Shis paradox of
going off to Yue today and getting there some time ago. This is to treat
what-is-not as what is. And if you treat what-is-not as what is, even the holy
Sage Yu cannot understand. What can I make of it all by myself?
To say something is not just blowing forth breath. In saying there is
something said, but what is said is never quite determined. So is there really
something said or has there never been anything said? I hope we can take
this as different from the sounds made by baby birds, but can we argue a
distinction or not? How can the Way be hidden so that there is truth and
falsity? How can something said be hidden so that it may be so or not so?
How can the Way lead off and then not be here? How can words be here,
but not be possible? The Way becomes hidden by being constituted on a
small scalesomething said is hidden by flowery flourishes. This is how we
115
come to have the tfso

s
and 'not so
s
o f the Traditionalists and the Mohists
4
each claiming that what others say is (not sois indeed so
each claiming
that what others say is so is indeed not so.5If you want to claim that what
others say is not sois indeed 6soand that what other say is so5is indeed
not so
the best thing to do is shed light on it.
Every single thing is a that other
every single thing is a this.From
the vantage point of the that other
it does not appear; from the vantage
point of knowing, it can be known. This is why we say that 'that other5grows
out of 'this/ and cthissis also contingent on 'that other5~which is the propo
sition that (that otherand this are born in tandem.
However, no sooner is there a being born than there is a dyingand no
ooner is there a dying than there is a being born. No sooner is there a pos:sible5than there is a not possible
no sooner is there a not possible than
there is a possible.A contingent csois a contingent cnot so; a contingent
not sois a contingent so. And this being so, the Sage does not go this way
but instead reveals it in the light of Heavenwhich is also a contingent so.
This is also that other
*that otheris also this. That other is a unity
comprehending soand not so
*this here5is also a unity comprehending
^ soand not so. Is there really a that other and this
or is there no that
other and this
When that other and this can no longer find their com' plement, we call it the Pivot of the W ay/5 And only when the pivot finds
the very center of the ring can it respond and never be used up. The esoY
are one of the things never used upthe 'not so
s are another of the things
never used up. Which is why I said that the best thing is to shed light on it.
To use a finger pointing out to convey the lesson that pointing out is
not pointing out is not as good as using a non-pointing out to convey the
lesson that a pointing out is not pointing out. Or to use a horse to convey
the lesson that a horse is not a horse is not as good as using a non-horse to
convey the lesson that a horse is not a horse.6 Heaven-and-Earth are a sin
gle case of pointing out. And the thousands and thousands of things are a
single horse.
Is that possible!? It's possible. Is that not possible? Its not possible. It
goes along the Way and achieves its completed form. As a thing is called,
4Followers of the utilitarian philosopher Mo-zi.
5This fiendish passage is accessible neither to philosophy nor philology. It is a parodic and playful
twisting of the already playful style of the Logicians, w illfully using the form of logical argument to
tie the reader into knots. The Mohists and the Logicians had taken some care with using terms.
Zhuang-zi purposely confuses two uses of the word shi. The first use is the antonym of fei and is
usually translated as "so" against fei as "not so." The second usage, translated as "this," is the antonym
of bi, "that." Bi has another antonym, ci, which is "this" or "this here." Zhuang-zi not only mixes
the two pairs of usages together so that sentences are impossible to put together; he playfully drops
in conventional phrases of prose argumentation, such as shi yi, translated as "This being so."
6These refer to the logical paradoxes set by Gong-sun Long. The play in this passage depends
on the word zhi, which means both "finger" and rtto point out." Contemporary philosophers had
extended the meaning "point out" to a term for a single concept. Thus, in the following sen
tence, "Heaven-and-Earth" ("the world") are both "a single case of pointing out" (a concept) and
"one finger.w
Early China
thats how it is. How is it as it is? It is how it is in being how it is. How is
it not as it is? It is not as it is in being not as it is. In a thing there is some
thing by which it is really how it is; in a thing there is something which is
really possible. No thing is not how it is; no thing is not possible.
Thentaking as so
all straws and columns, pock-faced women and fair
X i Shisweird phantoms and eldritch apparitions the Way makes them
equivalent as one. Distinguishing them is their complete formation; the com
pletion of their formation is their destruction. But any thing in which there
is no completion of formation and destruction is again made equivalent as
one. But only someone who has reached perfection knows that they are
equivalent as one. Taking as so is not practicedbut rather he gives them
a place in the general. Such generality is itself practiced, but its practice is
making equivalent~and making equivalent is grasping it. And when you
come to grasping it, youre almost there. Contingent sosare done. When
they are done and you dont know how it is, it is called the Way. Even when
you bring trouble to the spirit, it can be taken as onebut it doesnt know
that its all the same. And this is called three at daybreak.
What is meant by three at daybreak
A monkey keeper was once dis
tributing nuts and said, Three at daybreakfour at sunset/ The monkeys
were all enraged. Then he said, All rightfour at daybreak; three at sun
set.55And all the monkeys were delighted. There was no difference in either
name or fact, yet joy and rage were put into practicewhich is another con
tingent so.
'
This being so, the Sage brings harmony by his sosand not so
s
w hile
he himself rests in the equipoise of Heaven- And this is called the Two Pro
cedures.
Among men of olden times knowledge got to something, but what did
it get to? There were some who thought that there had not yet begun to be
things~which did indeed get there, completely, able to go no further. The
next thought that there were indeed things, but that there had not yet begun
to be divisions among them. The next thought that there were divisions
among thembut that there had not yet begun to be sos and not sos The
appearance of so
s and not so
s was how the Way attenuated. How the
Way attenuated was clinging love completely taking form. But then were
there really these events of completion of form and attenuation, or were there
no completions of form and attenuation?
There is something taking complete form and attenuatingZhao Wen
playing on his harp.
There is nothing taking complete form and attenuatingZhao "Wen not
playing on his harp.
Zhao Wen playing on his harp, Music Master Kuang supported by his
staff, the sophist Hui-zi leaning braced on his armrest of beechwood~three
masters whose knowledge was so close! It swelled to fullness in all of them,
and they carried it to the end of their years. Yet in their passion for it, they
took it as different from what was other; in their passion for it, they wanted
to shed light on it. What was other was not placed in the light when they
117
o f Chinese Literature
light on something, and thus they ended up in obscurities of hardand

/'Zhao Wens son also ended with his fathers harp stringsyet to the end
)iis life he brought nothing to complete form. In a case like this, can we
it reaching complete form
If so, even I have reached complete form,
a case like thisare we not able to call it 'reaching complete form5_
is nothing that has reached complete form in things and myself? For
reason the Sage takes measures against the glare of slick bewilderments.
does not practice 'taking things as sobut gives them a place in the gen
eral. What this is called is shedding light
I have something to say here, but do not know whether it belongs to

tbe category of being so or does not belong to the category of 'being so.
If belonging to a category and not belonging to a category can be joined to
gether and taken as a category, then there is nothing at all to differentiate
one from any other. But would you please let me get on with saying it:
There is what has begun.
There is what has not yet begun to be there is what has begun.
There is what has not yet begun to be there is what has not yet begun
to be athere is what has begun.
There is a there is.

There is a there is not.
There is a not yet begun to be a there is not
There is a not yet begun to be a not yet begun to be a there is not.
All of a sudden there is a there is not! But I dont know whether 'there
is a there is notis actually a there isor a there is not.
For my part now, there is something I meant. But I dont know whether
in what I meant51 really meant something or meant nothing.
In all the world there is nothing as large as the wisp of an autumn hair,
yet Great Mountain is taken as small. No one lives to such old age as a child
dead in infancy, yet Grandfather Peng passed away before his time. Heaven
and Earth were born together with me, and the thousands of things are taken
as one with me. Since we have been taken as one, can we further have the
saying of it? But then I have already claimed oneness! so can there not be
the saying of it? The oneness and the saying of it are two. The two and their
oneness are three. Going on from this point, even a person who is clever at
arithmetic will not be able to grasp it, much less average persons!
So if we proceed from there is notto there is
we reach three, and
just imagine proceeding from one 'there isto aaotherl Or there is not the
proceeding itself~contingent csos cease.
The Way had not yet begun to have boundaries. Saying things had not
yet begun to have stable standards. Take this as soand there are demar
cations. Let me say something about these demarcations. Now there is left.
There is right. There is consideration. There is taking a position. There is
7This refers to the discussion of attributives by Gong-sun Long.
118
Early China
making distinctions. There is showing by argument. There is contention.

There is conflict. These are called the Eight Attained Powers.
On the other side of the six bounds that enclose the cosmos, the Sage
is simply there and makes no consideration. Within those six bounds the Sage
may consider but takes no position. In the accounts of those former kings
who through the ages managed their generations, the Sage took positions
but did not show by argumentation. In making distinctions, there is what is
not distinguished; in showing by argumentthere is what is not shown byargument. W hats this!you say. What the Sage keeps within himself, or
dinary men split up in argumentation to make a show to one another. This
is why I say that in argumentation there is always something not revealed.
The greatest Way is not affirmed;
The greatest argument is not said;
The greatest fellow feeling does not show fellow feeling
The greatest reserve shows no reserve;
The greatest boldness is not hot-tempered.
A Way is made visible, but not the Way;
Things said make arguments, but do not get there;
Fellow feeling becomes a standard, but not complete;
Reserve becomes all pure, but wins no trust;
Boldness grows hot-temperedbut not complete.
These five, in their rounded form, are almost at the method.
Knowing to stop at what is not known is to have reached it. And who
knows the argument that does not say or the Way that is not-Way [or not
spoken
]. If there were someone able to know it, such a person would be

called Heavens Storehouse. To pour into it but not fill itto pour out from
it but not empty it, and not to know from where it comes such is called
the Veiled Ray.
Thus long ago Yao asked of Shun, I want to strike the chiefs of the
Zong, the Kuai, and the Xu-ao. Why is it that I feel no contentment upon
this throne?Shun answered him, Those three chiefs are like creatures liv
ing in the sagebrush and prairie grass. How can such lack of contentment
be? Long ago ten suns came out together and all the thousands of things were
revealed in their light. Just think of Attained Power close to that of the sun!
Chomp-Gap asked Wang Ni, Do you know what there is that ail things
would agree is so?
And he replied, How would I know?
Do you then know what you dont know?
He replied, How would I know?
Well then, is there nothing things know ?
He replied, How would I know? Nevertheless, I will try to say some

thing about it. How could I know that what I call knowing is not, in fact,
119
not knowing? And how could I know that what I call not knowing is not,
in fact, knowing?
Or let me put some questions to you. When folk bed down where it is
wet, their midsections ache and they lose feeling in half their bodies. But is
the same thing true of a minnow? When folk stay in trees, they tremble and
shake from terror. But is the same thing true of a monkey? Which of these
three knows the rightplace to dwell? Folk eat beasts that feed on hay and
grains; the deerfeat the wild grasses; the centipede has a taste for serpents;
crows and owls hanker for rats. Which of the four knows the right way
things should taste?
An ape will take a gibbon as mate; the roebuck mingles with the deer;
minnows swirn with the fish. The Furry Girl and Damsel Fair have been
thought beautiful by menbut if a fish were to see them, it would dive deep
under; if a bird were to see them, it would fly high away; if a deer were to
see them, it would straightway bolt. Which of the four knows the right ver
sion of the worlds most desirable beauty? From where I look3the standards
of fellow feeling and virtue, along with the paths of so and not so
are a
hopelessly confused mess. How could I be able to know how to argue the
case between them ?
Chomp-Gap answered, If you know nothing of gain and loss, does the
man who has achieved perfection truly also know nothing of gain and loss?
Wang N i saidThe man who has attained perfection is spirit! The great
bogs may burn, but he can feel no heat. The Yellow River and the Han may
ice over, but he can feel no cold. Claps of thunder rend the mountains and
gales whip the seas, but he can feel no alarm. Someone like this rides upon
vapors of cloud and has the sun and moon as his mounts. Facing life and
death there is no change in himstill less are there questions of gain and
loss!;
Master Mynah posed the question to Master Tallbeech, From the Mas
ter I have heard that the Sage does not commit himself to common obliga
tions, that he does not move to grasp gain, does not evade loss, does not
seek joy, does not conform to the Way. In claiming nothing he claims some
thingin claiming something he claims nothingand he roams out beyond
the foul dust. The Master took these as preposterous words, yet I think of
them as moving along the most subtle Way. What is your opinion, sir?
Master Tallbeech replied, This would baffle even the Yellow Emperor!
As for Confucius, how could he have the capacity to understand it! As for
yourself, you are forming your designs far too earlyseeing an egg and look
ing for the rooster, seeing bird-shot and looking for roast squab. I will say
it to you in an outlandish way, and you will listen to me outlandishly. How
to stand by sun and moon, take the universe in arms,
Do what fits perfectly as lips,
Forsake all glib confusion,
view those held in honor as slaves.
Early China
The throngs of men toil and toil,

The Sage is a simpleton,
.
He shares thousands of years that make one spring.
All the things of the world are thus,
And by this he garners them.
How do I know that my joy in living is not befuddlement? How do I
know that my hatred of dying is not as a child who has lost his home and
does not know the way back? The Damsel Fair was the child of a borderer
of Aiand when she was taken by the house of Jin, she shed so many tears
that she soaked her bodice. But then she came to the place of the king and
shared the kings bed, ate livestock fed on hay and grain, and afterward felt
embarrassed at her tears. How do I know that the dead do not feel embar
rassed at how they used to pray so for life?
One who drinks wine in dream may weep in the dawn. One who weeps
in dream may go off on a hunt with the coming of dawn. But while they are
still dreaming, they know not that they dream. In their dreams they may even
read the meaning of dreams-within-dreams. But only after waking do they
know it was a dream. So there may be a still greater awakening, after which
we will know that this was the greatest dream. And yet simpletons take it
that they are now awake~they know it with such cocksureness. Is he a lord?
Is he a herdsman? Such bjullheadedness! Yes, even Confucius and you are
both dreaming. And when I claim that you are dreaming, that too is a
dream.
These things that have been said, their name is the Ultra-Outlandish.
If in ten thousand generations we were to happen just once on a great Sage
who knew how to explain them, we might take that as running into him all
the time.
Let us take the case that you and I argue a point. You best me; I don
t
best you; but does this really mean that what you said is so and what I said
not so? Or I best youyou don
t best me; but does this really mean that what
I said is so and what you said not so? Is one position so and the other not
so? Are they both so; are they both not so? If both you and I are unable to
come to joint knowledge, others will be truly left in darkness. Who can I
have decide whats right? Shall I have someone who agrees with you decide
whats right? He already agrees with you, so how can he decide whats right?
Shall I have someone who agrees with me decide whats right? He already
agrees with me, so how can he decide whats right? Shall I have someone
who has differences with both you and me decide whats right? He already
has those differences with you and me, so how can he decide whats right?
Shall I have someone who agrees with both you and me decide whats right?
He already agrees with both you and meso how can he decide what's right?
And since this is the casethen none of us~you and I and othersare able
to come to joint knowledge. But then do we depend on something else al
together?
The interdependence of these voices, as they undergo change, is like

their not being interdependent. Make them blend by using Heavens D i
viding Linego along with them so that they spill over their bounds, and in
this way you will live your years to their fullness. Forget the years, forget
right, jolt into the Unceasing, and thus you will find a place for it in the
Unceasing.
What do I mean by make them blend by using Heavens Dividing
Line
Answersay soto what is not so; take what is not the case as the
case. For if so is really sothen there can be no argument about so being dif
ferent from not so. And if the case is really the case, then there can be no
argument about the case being different from not being the case.
Phantom asked Shadow, You were moving before; now you5ve stopped.
You were sitting beforenow youre getting up. Cant you stick to any
thing ?w
Shadow answered, tI wonder if this is the way it is because there is
something I depend on? And I wonder if it is the way it is for what I de
pend on because there is something it depends on? I wonder if I depend
on a snakeskin that has been shed or the husk of a cicadas wings? How
can I tell why it is the way it is? And how can I tell why it is not another
way?
Once upon a time Zhuang Zhou was dreaming that he was a butterfly,
a butterfly utterly absorbed and content in being what it was. But did he
take this as a lesson about satisfaction? How could he? He didnt know
he was Zhuang Zhou. All of a sudden he woke up. Then he was Zhuang
Zhou, sprawled on his bed. But he didnt know whether he was Zhuang
Zhou who had dreamed of being a butterfly, or a butterfly now dreaming
of being Zhuang Zhou. And there surely must be some dividing line be
tween a butterfly and a Zhuang Zhou! This is what we mean by things in
change.
Coda
Li Bo (701-762), The Old Airs IX
Zhuang Zhou dreamed of a butterfly,
and that butterfly was Zhuang Zhou.
A single shape keeps changing,
a million things go on and on.
I know now the sea around Peng-lai
will again be clear and shallow streams.
The man who raised melons by Green Gate
was in olden days Count of Dong-ling.
Early China
Since this is the way of honor and wealth,

what do we seek in this scrambling?
Peng-lai was a mythical isle of the Undying far off in the Eastern Ocean (the Pacific
Ocean). One common figure for the passage of eons was land and ocean changing
place, so that the deep seas around Peng-lai dry up to trickling streams. The Qin
Count of Dong-ling, who turned to raising melons after the fall of his dynasty, was
a favorite example of drastic changes of fortune.
In early China, as in ancient Greece, persuasive oratory played an im

portant role in political decisions. We know that Greek orators would
write out their speeches and memorize them for delivery; afterwards such
speeches would circulate in written form. We know far less about the
practice of early Chinese oratory, and there was nothing like the insti
tutionalization of Greek and Latin rhetoric, although some scholars have suspected
that one text, the Schemes of the Warring States, was a manual of examples for rhetor
ical training. Most extant speeches from pre-Qin China are the speeches that might
have been given or should have been given on a particular occasion' much like the
invented speeches found in the works of the Greek and Latin historians.
The following examples are such political persuasions, either real or imaginary.
Although the real persuasions served immediate political ends, their preservation (or
their invention) satisfied a variety of interests quite independent of any documen
tary light they might shed on a particular political event. They served as the articu
lation of ethical positions and as models of how to present a political case. But be
yond that, such writing had a certain value as entertainment. ("Entertainment" here
should be taken in a large sense as a fascination with the way words were used and
the beauty of an argument.)
The first case is a primitive argument, put in the mouth of Tang, the founder of
the Shang Dynasty, publicly declaring his decision to overthrow Jie, the evil last ruler
of the Xia Dynasty. The purported date is 1750 b .c . but the document is, in facta
much later creation, perhaps from as late as the fifth century b .c . It is what Tang
"should have saidon the occasion. "Tang's Vow" seems to consciously model it
self on the archaic authority of the genuine Zhou declarations in the Classic of Doc
uments, but it aims to add even greater terseness, as would befit a text supposed to
be far older than those of the Zhou founding. Economically, Tang lays the respon
sibility for his revolt with Heaven, enumerates the charges against Xia, promises re
wards, and at last threatens to kill the entire families of those who remain unpersuaded by his other arguments.
Classic o f Documents Tangs Vow

The king said
Be this known to you, hosts of the folk, and heed ye all these my words.
I am no young boy that dares stir up troubles. He who holds Xia has done
many wrongs. Heaven has charged me to put him to death.
You, my hosts, now you say, Our overlord shows no mercy on ushis
hosts, He makes us to lay aside our tillage and march to smite X ia ,
Early China
I hear your words, O my hosts. But the house of Xia has done wrongs.
I dread the high god and dare not fail to put them right.
,
You now may say, CWhat were these wrongs done by Xia?w
X ia
s king has worn out the strength of his hosts; he worked harm on
the city of Xia the hosts grow slack and there is discord among them. They
say, When will this sun sink away? You and I will all perish. Such is what
Xia has attained for itself. I must now go against him.
I would have you stand by my side
I who am the one man, to bring upon
him Heavens punishment. I will greatly reward you. Do not ye disbelieve
me. I do not eat my words. If you do not follow the words of this vow, I
In the following example from The Zuo Tradition, we have the dignity of appeal to
the Zhou tradition in a letter to the great nobility from Prince Zhao, the pretender
to the Zhou throne. The situation was as follows: There had been a struggle for the
succession to the Zhou throne, and one of the two pretenders, Zhao, had been dri
ven from the capital by a claimant supported by Jin, then the most powerful of the
domains. Zhao fled to the Kingdom of Chu, which was frequently all too happy to
do Jin an ill turn. From Chu, Zhao sent this appeal to the nobility of the domains.
Zhao begins by a summary of Zhou history in which the remarkably violent history
of the royal house is described as a series of cases in which the brothers and uncles
(the great nobility) protected the Zhou throne.1
The Zuo Tradition an entry for the 26th year of Duke Zhao
(516 B.C .)
O f old King Wu conquered Yin,
King Cheng brought peace to the four quarters,
King Kang gave the people repose
and all of them set their full brothers in fiefs
to be a hedge and a screen for Zhou.
This they said as well
We do not keep the great accomplishments of Kings Wen and W u for
ourselves alone;
and should our descendants stray toward ruin
or be overthrown and drowned in troubles,
then the nobility will bestir themselves and save them.
When it came to King Y i
the king had a disease in his person
not one among the nobility failed to rush to sacrifice in prayer for
the kings person.
'Xhe wproseof this and some other selections in this section has been translated like verse to show
e rhythmical organization.
When it came to King Li

the kings heart was wayward and cruel;
the myriads of the folk could not bear it.
They then lodged the king in Zhe,
and the nobility gave up their own places
to attend to the kings government.
King Xuan possessed resolve,
and they yielded back their offices.
When it came to King You:
Heaven had no pity on Zhou,
the king was blind and unfit,
by misdeeds he lost his position.
King Hui usurped the Charge;2
the nobility replaced him
and set in his stead the kings true successor,
whereby the capital was shifted to Ge-ru.
This, then, is how the brothers showed themselves able to exert
themselves for the kings house.
When it came to King Hui:
Heaven gave no peace to Zhou,
it gave birth to Tuis destructive mind,
which extended to Shu-dai.
Kings Hui and Xiang fled the troubles
and left the kings city.
Then there were Jin and Zheng
both purged the unrighteous,
thus soothing and settling the kings house.
This, then, is how the brothers showed themselves able to follow the
Charge of the early kings.
It was in the sixth year of King Ding
an apparition descended among the men of Qin;
it said:
Zhou will have a mustached king
who will be able to carry out his office,
and the nobility will submit to him.
For two generations they will fulfill their offices.
In the kings house there will be an intruder in the kings place,
the nobility will make no plan against him,
and they will suffer the blows of his misrule.
2The Heaven,s Charge, the authority to rule granted by Heaven. Also the commands of early kings
to their descendants.
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When it came to King Ling:

he was bom with a mustache.
The king was godlike and sagely;
he was not hated by the nobility.
King Ling and King Jing
were thus able to finish their generations.
But now the kings house is in disarray
Qi of Shan and the Liu Di
have thrown the world into turmoil
their despotic actions are unrighteous.
O f our former kings they say:
What constant principles are there?
There is only what my own heart commands !M
Who dare reproach them?
They lead bands of merciless men
to wreak havoc on the kings house.
Their desires and encroachments are never sated,
there is no measure to what they seek.
Accustomed to outraging gods and demons,
wantonly casting aside punishments and laws,
betrayers of oaths taken with equals,
insolent in their behavior,
they have made a mockery of the early kings.
Jin has acted against the Way
supported them, assisted them,
intending to give them free rein in their unrestrained designs.
Iunfortunate one,
have been shaken, driven afar,
hiding away in Jing-Man
with nowhere to go.
If a few of you, my brothers, my nephews, my uncles,
will acquiesce to the laws of Heaven
and give no aid to the wicked,
thereby following the Charge of the early kings
and avoiding hastening Heaven's retribution,
by pardoning and making provision for this unfortunate one,
then I will have my wish.
I will dare set forth fully what is in my mind,
which are the constant principles of the early kings;
and may the nobility seriously consider these in their plans.
The Charge of the olden kings states:
Should the queen lack legitimate heir,
then select the eldest for the throne.
127
If equal in years, choose by virtue;

if equal in virtue, choose by lots.
The king may not set a favorite on the throne,
the great lords may not have personal favorites.
This is the ancient rule.
Queen M u and Crown Prince Shou died young.
Sân and Liu aided a favorite and put a younger on the throne,
thereby infringing on the early kings.
Would that my relations, both elder and younger, consider this in
their provisions.
The passage that follows the letter in The Zuo Tradition, put in the mouth of a Jin
minister (the faction opposing Prince Zhao), is a chilling reminder of the realities of
political power and of the world in which the letter circulated. The "might of Jin,"
not long-dead feudal obligations, is what drives political actions.
M in Ma-fu heard these word of Zhao and said, He is practicing cere
monies by the written word. Zhao has transgressed the mandate of King Jing
and has taken himself far from the might of Jin to accomplish his own per
sonal ambitions, and this is want of ceremony in the extreme! What good
will these writings do?
The following passage is one of the most famous examples of a fully developed or
namental persuasion from the pre-Qin period. The speech with its occasion is in
cluded in Schemes of the Warring States (Zhan-guo ce). One might note that, in spite
of both the hypnotic repetition of pattern that lends Zhuang Xin's speech its force
and the promise of the exordium, the speech is not a persuasion at all. Instead of
telling King Xiang of Chu how he can save the situation, Zhuang Xin offers an elab
orate "I told you so."
from the Schemes o f the Warring States

Zhuang Xin said to King Xiang of Chu, Youmy lord, keep the company
of the Count of Zhou on your right side and the Count of Xia on your left.
Your carriage is attended by the Lord of Yan-ling and the Lord of Shouling. You do nothing but indulge yourself in wanton excess and vain amuse
ments, paying no attention to governing the kingdom, and our great city of
Ying is surely in peril.
King Xiang replied, Have you grown doddering in your old age? Do
you make baleful auguries for the Kingdom of Chu?
Zhuang Xin said, Truly it is that I see what must come. I would not
dare make baleful auguries for the kingdom. Yet the favor my Lord shows
these four men has never weakened, and the Kingdom of Chu must fall. I
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ask your permission to take myself to safety in Zhao, where I will stay to
observe it.
Zhuang Xin went away to Zhao; and after he had stayed there four
months, Qin did indeed lay hold of the regions of Yan, Ying, W u Shangcai, and Chen. King Xiang fled into hiding at Cheng-yang. He then sent
someone with a mounted escort to Zhao with a summons for Zhuang Xin.
Zhuang Xin agreedand when he arrived, King Xiang said, I did not do as
you said, and now matters have come to this. What is to be done?
Zhuang Xin repliedThe common folk have a sayingIt is not too late
to look for your dogs after seeing the hare nor too late to fix the pen after
the sheep get away.51have heard that long ago Kings Tang and W u became
glorious with territories of only a hundred leagues, while Kings Jie and
Chow perished though they had the whole world. Though the Kingdom of
Chu has become smaller, if you average out the larger and smaller parts, it
is still several thousand leaguesfar more than just a hundred leagues.
Has the king ever seen a dragonfly? W ith its six legs and four wings, it
flies hovering between earth and sky. It drops down to snatch gnats to eat
and rises up to catch the sweet dew to drink. It believes that no harm will
come to it and has no quarrel with man. Little does it know that a boy, just
over three feet tall, is at that very moment taking a sticky line with sweet
bait, which will catch it twenty feet up, and it will come down to be food
for the ants.
But the dragonfly is a small case; let us follow it with that of the brown
sparrow. Bobbing down, it pecks the white grains; and turning up, it perches
in leafy trees, whirring its small wings. It believes that no harm will come
to it and has no quarrel with man. Little does it know that the young no
bleman, holding his slingshot under his left arm and in his right hand hold
ing the pellets, will hit it fifty feet up, its neck as his target. By day it roamed
through the leafy trees, and that evening it will be flavored with salt and vine
gar. In the space of an instant it topples into the young noblemans hand.
But the sparrow is a small case; let us follow it with that of the golden
swan. It roams about the rivers and lakes and lingers in the great ponds.
Ducking its head down, it gobbles up eels and carp; then raising it up, it nib
bles water chestnuts and cress. It spreads its great wings and rises on the clear
wind, wheeling about as it soars on high. It believes that no harm will come
to it and has no quarrel with man. Little does it know that at that very mo
ment the fowler is preparing his bow and arrowheads and arranging the
arrows string to hit it hundreds of feet up. Those stone weights will drag
on the thin line and bring it plummeting down, jerked out of the clear wind.
By day it roamed over the rivers, and that evening it flavors the stewpot.
But the golden swan is a small caselet us follow it with what happened
to Count Ling of Cai. He roamed south to Highslope and to the north
climbed Mount Wu. He drank of the current of Ru Creek and ate fish from
the waves of the Xiang. He had his left arm around a tender young concu
bine and hugged a favorite with his righthe went galloping with them in
Gao-cai and did not concern himself with the matters of his domain. Little
129
did he know that at that very moment Zi-fa was receiving a charge from
King Xuan to have him bound with red line and brought before the king.
But what happened to Count Ling of Cai is a small case; let us follow
it with what happened to Your Majesty. You kept the company of the
Count of Zhou on your right side and the Count of Xia on your left. Your
carriage was attended by the Lord of Yan-ling and the Lord of Shou-ling.
Dining on the grain that was income of the fiefs and carrying gold of the
treasury, you went galloping with them in Yun-meng preserve, not con
cerning yourself with the matters of the world and your kingdom. Little did
you know that at that very moment the Count of Rang was receiving a charge
from the King of Qin to bottle up all within M in Pass and cast yourself out
beyond M in Pass.
When King Xiang heard this, the color drained from his face and his body
shuddered. Thereupon he took the insignia that he carried and passed it to
Zhuang Xin, making him the Lord of Yang-ling and giving him the territory north of the Huai.
Although written persuasions like Prince Zhao's letter are attributed to early peri
ods, the Western Han saw the transformation of political oratory into a primarily writ
ten form. Such persuasions built upon the style of orations attributed to the Warring
States period, but writing permitted far more allusiveness and intricacy of argu
mentation. With the written persuasions of the Han we leave the realm of the fic
tional or recreated speech and find texts that we can say with some confidence
played a role in real political events.
In the following letter, much like a memorial to the throne, Mei Sheng (who died
in 140 b .c .) plays the wise sage in a scene of instruction. But beneath the Daoist prin
ciples of royal Non-Action and homey metaphors such as the precariousness of a
pile of eggs, there was much at stake in Mei Sheng's letter. Mei Sheng's patron, the
Han prince of Wu7Liu Pi, led the rebellion of seven feudal domains against the Han
emperor Jing, a rebellion that eventually cost Liu Pi his life. The position that Mei
takes here is literally a matter of life and death, not simply for his patron but for him
self as well. To side openly and loyally with the emperor would assure him of trou
ble from his patron; however, if the rebellion were to failas it didany hint of sup
port for the prince would be high treason.
The letter is an intricate piece of political rhetoric for an intricate political situ
ation, with a complicated deployment of historical examples and nested analogies.
Mei Sheng (d. 140
B .C .),
Letter of Protest to the Prince of Wu
I have heard that

whosoever attains the perfection of a thing will flourish,
whosoever falls short of perfection will perish.
Shun had not the land in which to set an awl
but came eventually to possess all the world.
1.^0
Early China
Yu had not a cluster of ten households

but eventually became king of the great nobility.
The territories of Tang and Wu
went no more than a hundred leagues.
He who
causes no eclipse in the light of the Three Luminaries above,
and harms not the hearts of the masses of people below~
such a person possesses the skills of kingship.
The Way of father and son is our nature endowed by Heaven
If a faithful retainer remonstrates straightforwardly,
not avoiding grave punishment,
then no counsel will be overlooked in your affairs,
and the deed will continue for thousands of generations.
IMei Sheng, wish to open my heart and demonstrate my simple faith,
and I wish only that my Prince pay some slight heed and attend to my
words with a sympathetic heart.
Take a single thread as bearer of a burden
tie it to a weight of a hundred pounds;
suspend it above from a limitless height
let it hang down below into an unfathomable abyss
even a very foolish man
knows enough to be anxious that it will break.
A horse will rear up, if you prod and alarm i t ; what is tied will snapif you weigh it down further.
And falling into the deep abyss,
it will be hard to get it out again;
though between getting it out and not getting it out
there may lie not even a hairs breadth.
If you can heed this faithful retainers words,
you will get out every time.
But if you must act as you wish, it will be:
more precarious than a pile of eggs,
harder than climbing to Heaven.
If you change what you wish, it will be
easier than turning over the hand,
more secure than Tai Mountain.
You now wish:
to reach the limit of the greatest old age ordained by Heaven,
to fulfill the extremes of pleasures unending,
to know an emperors power, lord of ten thousand chariots.
Not
taking a course of such ease as in turning over a hand, or
residing in the security of Tai Mountain,
131
but instead wanting

to ride the precariousness of a pile of eggs, and
rushing into the hardships of climbing to Heaven
this is what so greatly bewilders your retainer.
In human nature there are some
who fear their shadows and hate their footprints.
As they turn their backs and run,
their footprints grow steadily more,
their shadow becomes steadily swifter.
Best to go to some shady spot and stop
there shadow vanishes, footprints cease.
If you want others not to hear something,
best not to speak
If you want others not to know,
best not to act.
If you want hot water to cool off,
and one man fans the flames
while a hundred men ladle it,
it would be better to stop the fuel and end the fire!
Not stopping one thing,
'
while trying to fix it with another,
may be compared to taking an armload of kindling to put out a fire.
Yang Yi-ji was the expert archer of Chu.
He went a hundred paces from a willow leaf,
in a hundred shots hit it a hundred times.
Considering the size of a willow leaf,
to hit it a hundred times
can be considered expert archery indeed.
Nevertheless, the point where he stopped
was still but a hundred paces.
Compared to your retainer Sheng, he didnt know even how to hold
bow and arrows!
When fair fortune appears, it has some base;
when misfortune appears, it has some womb.
Preserve the base,
stop off the womb,
and how shall misfortune come?
The water that drips on Tai Mountain pierces stone;
the well-rope on a single stock breaks the roller.
Yet
water is no drill for stone,
rope is no saw for wood
it is the gradual abrasion that makes it so.
132
Early China
If you weigh something grain by grain

you will always miss at the pound;
if you measure something inch by inch,
you will always err at the yard.
If you weigh by the pound, gauge by the yard,
you will go straight and seldom fail.
The tree of ten armspans in girth first grew as a shoot:
your foot could scrape and break it3
your hand could yank and pull it up
this depended on its not being fully grown,
you acted before it took full form.
Grind and grate, rub and scrape
you see no harm from it
but sometime it will get through
seed and plant, nourish and tend
you see no gain from it,
but sometime it will be large.
Seed attainments, accumulate merits
you see no good from it,
but sometime it will be illustrious;
forsake Virtuous Attainment, reject the Pattern
you see no ill from it,
but sometime it will bring ruin.
I wish that my Prince would give mature consideration to his plans
and practice this himself.
This is the Way that does not change in a hundred generations.
Political oratory begged for parody, yet there is remarkably little parody in the ex
tant texts of early China. One of the rare cases is in the "Attaining Life" (Da-sheng)
chapter of the Zhuang-zi.
Zhuang-zi KAttaining Life (Da-sheng)

The Master of the Sacrifice, in his black ceremonial hat, looked down into
the pigsty and persuaded the pig as follows:
Why should you hate death?
I will
fatten you for three months,
make you abstain ten days,
make you fast for three days,
spread out white rushes, then
put your rump and shoulders on the finely carved platter
you would go along with that, wouldnt you?
If I were making pig-plans, I would say,

better to be fed with the dregs
and be locked inside a pigsty.
If I were making plans for myselfthen
if in life I could have the honor of carriage and crown, and
in death got to ride a fine hearse in a bunch of ornaments,
then I would do it!
Making pig-plans, I would avoid it;
planning for myself, I would choose it
what is this that distinguishes me from the pig?
Like the works of Greek and Latin historians, Si-ma Qian's Historical
Records (Shi-ji) is read as much for the pleasure of the narrative as for
Si-ma Qian
(ca. 145-ca. 85 b .c .)
historical information. The Historical Records (or, more properly, Records

o f the Historian) was begun by Si-ma Qian's father, Si-ma Tan, who held
the post of Tai-shi under the great emperor Wu of the Han. Although we
now translate this post as "Lord H istorian, it was just as much "Lord Astronomer":
the Tai-shi was charged with keeping account both of astronomical phenomena and
the daily life of the court. As Tai-shi, Si-ma Tan had access to the documents in the
imperial library and began to compile a history of China up to his own time. This
en terp rise w a s a p ersonal p ro je c t an d had noth ing to d o w ith th e du ties o f his of
fice. Upon Si-ma Tan's death, Si-ma Qian inherited both his father's post and his
project. When completed, the Historical Records not only set the model for later
historical writing but changed the word shi from a post~something like âs
tronomer/' "scribe," or "court diarist" to the standard term for "history."
The form of the Historical Records is not continuous narrative. It includes an
nals of the imperial houses and of the royal houses of the feudal domains, chrono
logical tables, and treatises on topics such as ceremony, the calendar, and music.
But the greater part of the work is composed of biographies, some of single indi
viduals and some in comparative pairings, as in Plutarch. At the end of each, Si-ma
Qian offers his own comments as Lord Historian/'

The depth of Si-ma Qian's personal engagement with the historical figures about
whom he writes has always been an important source of the work's appeal. Both
the project of the history and the experiences of characters in history acquired a spe
cial significance to Si-ma Qian when, after enraging Emperor W u by his defense of
the failed frontier general Li Ling, he was sentenced to castration. The humiliation
of this sentence was supposed to lead a person to honorable suicide or a request for
execution in lieu of punishment. Si-ma Qian's decision to accept castration in order

to finish his history made the work intensely personal to him. He gave an account
of his experience and explained his decision in a famous letter to an acquaintance,
Ren An, a letter that is not in the Historical Records. The version translated below
is contained in Si-ma Qian's biography in Ban Gu's Han History, completed almost
two centuries later: while varying Si-ma Qian's model, it essentially accepted his
sense of how history should be written.
Letter in Reply to Ren An

The Lord Historian, your obedient servant Si-ma Qian to Ren An
Some time ago you were so kind as to grace me with a letter, instruct
ing me to observe caution in my associations and to devote myself to rec
ommending worthy gentlemen. Your manner then was earnest and forth
right, as if anticipating that I would not do as you directed, but would
rather be swayed by what ordinary people said. I would never dare to act
in such a way. I may be an old horse that has outlived its usefulness, but I
always harkened to the influences from my seniors. When I consider how
my body has been mutilated, how fault has been found in whatever I have
done, and how my desire to be of benefit has brought ruin to me instead,
my heart bursts and I have no one to tell.
There is a sayingFor whom do you act, and who will pay attention to
you? When Zhong-zi Qi died, Bo Ya never played his harp again. Why was
that? A man does something for the sake of someone who understands him,
as a woman adorns herself for someone who is attracted to her. Some like
me, whose flesh is now missing a part, can never be thought to flourish, even
if I had qualities within me like S ui
s pearl or Bian Hes jade, or even if my
actions were like those of Xu You or Bo Yi. In fact, all they could do is,win
me ridicule and humiliation.
I should have answered your letter immediatelybut at the time I was
coming back from the east with His Majesty and I was also beset by minor
problems. Few were the days when we could meet, and I was always in such
a hurry that there was never even a moment when I could tell you every
thing that was on my mind.
Now you yourself stand accused of the gravest crimes. As the weeks and
months pass, the last month of winter draws nearand I am again con
strained to accompany His Majesty to Yong. I fear that ultimately there will
be no escaping your swift death. Were I never to have the opportunity to re
veal all that torments me and make things clear to you, then in death your
soul would harbor an unceasing resentment against me. Let me then tell you
my thoughts, and please do not take it amiss that I have been negligent in
replying.
I have learned that cultivating ones person is the treasurehouse of wis
dom, that a love of offering things is the beginning of feeling for others, that
taking and giving is the counterpart of a sense of right, that feeling shame
determines courage, and that making ones name known is the ultimate end
of action. Only after having all five of these may a man give himself to pub
lic life and be ranked among the best. There is no misfortune so miserable
as desire for advantage, no grief so painful as a wound that festers within,
no action more loathsome than one that brings dishonor upon ones ances
tors, and no degradation greater than castration. Those who live on after
castration are comparable to no one else. Nor is this true only of the pre
sent age~it has been this way from long ago in the past. In olden times when
Duke Ling of Wei shared his carriage with the eunuch Yong-quConfucius
Early China
left for ChenShang Yang arranged an audience through Eunuch Jing, and
Zhao Langs heart sankwhen the eunuch Zhao Tan joined the Emperor in
his coach, Yuan Si turned pale. This has been considered shameful ever since
antiquity. When a man of even middling qualities has business to conduct
with a eunuchhe always feels ill at easenot to mention a gentleman of
strong spirit! The court may need capable men these days, but would you
have a person who has been gelded recommend the outstanding gentlemen
of the world for service!
It has been more than twenty years since I took over my fathers pro
fession, and though unworthy, I have had the opportunity to serve the
throne. When I think it over, on the most important level I have not been
able to contribute my loyalty or show my good faith, winning esteem for re
markable plans and the power of my talents, thus forming a natural bond
with my wise lord. On the next level I have not been able to catch matters
that have been overlooked, summoning worthy men to court and recom
mending those with abilities, bringing to the public eye those who live hid
den in caves in the cliffs. On a still lower level I have not been able to take
a place in the ranks and in assaults on cities or in battles in the open, to win
glory by beheading generals and seizing the enemys colors. Finally, on the
lowest level, I have not been able to accumulate a stock of merit through
continuous service, getting high office and a good salary, thus bringing
honor and favor to family and friends. Having been successful in none of
these, it is obvious that I have merely followed expedience and tried to
please others, achieving nothing that deserves either praise or blame.
Previously, among the ranks of minor grandees, I took part in lesser de
liberations of the outer court. On those occasions I brought in no grand
plans, nor did I give matters their fullest consideration* Nowas a castrated
servant who sweeps up, as the lowest of the low, if I were to try to lift my
head, arch my brows, and hold forth with judgments, wouldnt that be
showing contempt for the court and offering insult to those gentlemen now
in power? What more is there for somebody like me to say!
It is not easy to explain the sequence of events clearly. When I was young
I had an ungovernable disposition, and as I grew older I won no esteem from
the people of my locale. I was fortunate that, on account of my father, His
Majesty allowed me to offer him my meager skills and to frequent the royal
apartments. I felt that I could never gaze on Heaven with a bowl covering
my head, so I cut off contact with my friends and gave up all thought of the
family property; day and night I tried to exercise my miserable talents to their
utmost, striving single-mindedly to carry out my office and thus to please
His Majesty and win his affection. Yet one thing happened that was a great
mistake and had a very different effect.
Li Ling and I had both been in residence in the palace, but we were never
good friends. Our interests led us in different directions, so we never even
shared a cup of beer or had a direct and earnest relation. Nevertheless, I ob
served that he was a remarkable person, showing a sons proper devotion
to his parents, true to his word with other gentlemen, scrupulous in mat
137
ters of property, possessed of a sense of right in matters of giving and tak

ingin questions of status he would yield place, and he behaved deferen
tially, demonstrating respect and temperance. Always he longed to put his
life on the line in responding to some crisis of the empire. He had always
harbored these virtues, and to my mind he possessed the qualities of one of
the great men of the state. When a subject would brave death thousands of
times without thinking to save his own lifegoing forth to meet threats to
the commonwealth, it is remarkable indeed. It truly pained me personally
that those courtiers who keep themselves and their families out of harms
way plotted to do him mischief when one thing went wrong out of all that
he had done.
The foot soldiers that Li Ling took with him were less than five thou
sand, and they marched deep into the lands of the nomads; on foot they
crossed the khans own preserve to dangle bait in the tigers mouth; they
brazenly flaunted a stronger force of barbarians and stood face to face
against an army of millions. For more than ten days they did continuous battle with the khan and killed more than their own number. When the tribes
men tried to rescue the dead and carry back the wounded, they couldnt take
care of themselves, and their chieftains, dressed in wool and furswere all
quaking in terror. Then the Good Princes of the Right and Left were called
up and anyone among the folk who could draw a bow; the whole nation
surrounded them and attacked. They fought on the move across a thousand
leagues, until their arrows were used up and they had nowhere to go. The
relief column did not come; dead and wounded troops lay in heaps. Never
theless, Li Ling gave a shout to cheer up his army, and not a soldier failed
to rise; he was weepingswallowing the tears running down his bloodied
face. They drew their empty crossbows and faced down naked blades; fac
ing norththey fought with the enemy to the death.
Before Li Ling was destroyed, a messenger brought word of him and all
the great lords, princes, and counts of Han lifted their goblets in a toast to
his health. Several days afterward, the letter bearing news of Li Lings de
feat became known, and on this account His Majesty found no savor in his
meals and took no pleasure in holding court. The great officers of the court
were worried and fearful, not knowing what to do.
Without giving due consideration to my lowly positionI saw that His
Majesty was despondent and distressed, and I truly wanted to offer him my
sincere thoughts on the matter. I held that Li Ling always gave up fine food
and shared meager fare with his attendant gentlemen, that he was able to
get men to die for him to a degree that was unsurpassed even by the famous
generals of antiquity. Though he was defeatedif one but considered his in
tentions, they should make up for it and repay what he owes the Han. Noth
ing could be done about what had happened, but those he had defeated were
an accomplishment sufficient to make him famous in the empire. I had it in
mind to make this case, but had not yet had the means. Then it happened
that I was summoned and questioned; and I spoke highly of Li Lings ac
138
Early China
complishments in this way, wanting to set His Majesty's mind to rest and
stop malicious comments.
I was not able to be entirely persuasive. Our wise ruler did not fully un
derstand, thinking that I was trying to injure the Ni-shi general, Li Guangliand acting as a personal advocate of Li Ling. I was subsequently sent to
prison. And never was I able to demonstrate the depth of my loyalty. In the
end I was convicted of having tried to deceive the Emperor. My family was
poor, and I didnt have the means to buy my way out. None of my friends
came to my rescue. My colleagues, kinand close friends did not say a sin
gle word on my behalf. The body is not a thing of wood or stoneand alone
in the company of jailers, in the hidden depths of a dungeon, to whom could
I complain? This you can see for yourself nowRen An~was what happened
to me any different? Since Li Ling surrendered alive, he ruined the good name
of his family. Yet I too, in my turn, came to the silken chambers, where the
knife is used, and I am the laughingstock of the world. Oh, the misery of it!
The matter is not easy to explain in a few words to ordinary people. My
fathers accomplishments were not such as would bring the imperial seal of
investiture among the nobility; writers of history and astronomical calcula
tions are close in status to diviners and soothsayers. His Majesty finds
amusement in such, and we are kept by him on a par with singers and ac
robats, thus held in contempt by the common opinion. Suppose that I had
bowed to the law and accepted execution; it would have been like the loss
of a single hair from a herd of cattle, a death no different from that of an
ant or a cricket. And the world would never have granted that I might be
compared to those who could die for principle. They would have consid
ered it nothing more than a person finally accepting death because he could
think of no way out of the gravity of his crimesomeone with no other
choice. Why is this? It would have been the consequence of the position in
which I had so long established myself.
Human beings truly have but one death. There are deaths that seem heav
ier than Mount Tai, but to some death seems lighter than a piece of swansdown. The difference lies in what is done by dying. Uppermost is not to bring
dishonor upon ones forebears; next is not to bring dishonor upon oneself;
next is not to dishonor the right or appearancesnext is not to dishonor ones
own words; next is to bear the dishonor of bending in submissionnext is
to bear the dishonor of changing into the uniform of a prisoner; next is to
bear the dishonor of being flogged, tied with a rope to the pillorynext is to
bear the dishonor of having ones head shaved and bound in metal chains
next is to bear the dishonor of having ones flesh cut and ones limbs am
putated; but the worst of all is castrationthat is the ultimate.
Tradition says: Physical punishments are not applied to grandees.
This means that a gentleman has no choice but to be severe in guarding his
honor. The fierce tiger dwells in the depths of the mountains, and all crea
tures there quake in fear of him but when he falls into a pit, he wags his tail
for food_ this follows gradually from constraining his fearsome power.
139
Thus if you mark out the form of a prison cell on the ground, a gentleman
will not enter it; and if you cut a piece of wood to represent the warden, he
will not speak to it in his own defense; he has made of his mind to show
who he is [by suicide]. But let him cross his hands and feet to receive the
manacles and rope, let him expose his flesh to receive the blows of the rod,
hide him away in an enclosed cell and in a situation like this he will knock
his head to the ground when he sees the warden and he will breathe hard in
terror when he catches sight of the guards. Why is this? It is the natural out
come of constraining fearsome power. And brought to such a state, anyone
who says that there is no dishonor is putting up a false front and deserves
. no esteem.
Yet King Wen, the Earl of the West, may have been an earl, but he was
held in the prison at You-li; Li Si was a minister, yet he endured each of the
five punishments; Han Xin of Huai-yin was a prince, yet he endured the
stocks in Chen; of Peng Yue and Zhang Ao
who sat on the throne and called
themselves rulers, one went bound to prison, and the other, to deathJianghou Zhou-bo executed all the members of the Lu clan and his power was
greater than that of the five earls, yet he was imprisoned in a dungeon await
ing deathWei Q i was a great general, yet he wore the prisoners uniform
and was bound head, hands, and feet; Ji Bu became a slave of the Zhu clan;
Guan-fu bore dishonor in the guest chambers.
All these men had reached the positions of princecount, general, or min
ister, and their fame was known far and widebut when they were accused
and brought before the law, they could not summon the resolution to kill
themselves. When one is lying in the dirt, it is the same thing, both in an
cient times and in the presenthow could one think they were not dishon
ored! judging from these examples, courage and fearfulness depend on the
situation; resolution and weakness are circumstantial. Reflect on itthere^
nothing strange about it! For if a man cannot commit suicide before he is
brought to the lawhe is already slowly slipping down to the whips and rods.
And if he wants to assert his honor then, it is already far out of reach. Cer
tainly this is the reason why the ancients thought it a grave matter to apply
physical punishments to grandees.
By their very nature all human beings are greedy for life and hate death,
care about their parents, are concerned for their wives and children. But it
is otherwise for those who are stirred up by their sense of right, and in fact
they cannot help themselves. I had the misfortune to lose both my parents
early in lifeand not having brothers to be my close family, I was all alone.
And you can see how much I took wife and children into consideration! Yet
a man of courage does not necessarily die for honorand when fearful man
aspires to the right, he will strive in any way he can. I may have been fear
ful and weak in choosing life at any cost, but I also recognize quite well the
proper measure in how to act. How then could I come to the dishonor of
letting myself sink into prison bonds? If even a captive slave girl can take
her own life, certainly someone like me could do the same when all was lost.
The reason I bore through it in silence and chose to live at any cost, the rea
140
Early China
son I did not refuse to be covered in muck was because I could not stand to
leave something of personal importance to me unfinished, because I despised
perishing without letting the glory of my writings be shown to posterity.
The number of rich and noble men in ancient times whose names have
been utterly wiped away is beyond reckoningthe only ones who are known
are the exceptional, those outside the norm. King Wen of Zhou, when Earl
of the West, was in captivity and elaborated the Classic o f Changes Con
fucius was in a desperate situation and wrote The Springs and Autumns of
LuQu Yuan was banished, and only then composed the Li Sao; Zuo Qiuming lost his sight, and he wrote The Discourses o f the DomainsSun-zi had
his feet amputated, and then his Techniques of War was drawn up; Lu Buwei was demoted to Shu, from which has been preserved the Synopticon of
Lu Han Fei was imprisoned by Qin and wrote Troubles of Persuasion
and Solitary Outrage. The three hundred Poems were for the most part
written as the expression of outrage by good men and sages. All of these men
had something eating away at their hearts; they could not carry through their
ideas of the Way, so they gave an account of what had happened before while
thinking of those to come. In cases like Zuo Qiu-mings sightlessness or Sunzis amputated feet, these men could never be employed; they withdrew and
put their deliberations into writing in order to give full expression to their
outrage, intending to reveal themselves purely through writing that would

last into the future.
Being, perhaps, too bold, I have recently given myself over to writing that
lacks ability. I have compiled neglected knowledge of former times from all
over the world; I have examined these for veracity and have given an ac
count of the principles behind success and defeat, rise and fall. In all there
are one hundred and thirty chapters. In it I also wanted to fully explore the
interaction between Heaven and Man, and to show the continuity of trans
formations of past and present. It will become an independent discourse that
is entirely my own. The draft version was not yet completed when this mis
fortune happened to me; I could not bear that it not be completed, so I sub
mitted to the most extreme punishment without showing my ire. When I
have actually completed this book, I will have it stored away on some fa
mous mountain, left for someone who will carry it through all the cities.
Then I will have made up for the blame that I earlier incurred by submit
ting to dishonor. I could die thousands of deaths without feeling regret. This,
however, may be said only to a wise manyou cant explain it to an ordi
nary person.
It is not easy to live enduring contempt, and the inferior sort of people
usually put a malicious interpretation on things. It was by the spoken word
that I met this misfortuneand if I am also exposed to the ridicule of the
people of my native region, dishonoring my ancestors, how could I ever again
face the tomb mound of my parents? The blot on our name would grow
worse and worse, even after a hundred generations. Thus every day I feel a
pang in the heart again and again. When Im in the house, I am distracted,
as though I am not there; when I
m outside, I dont know where I
m going.
141
My thoughts keep returning to this shame, and I always break into a sweat
that soaks my clothes. I am fit to serve only in the womens quarters, and I
would rather take myself off to hide deep away in the caves of the cliffs. But
I keep on following the ordinary world, rising and sinking, moving with the
times, keeping in communication with fools.
Now you, Ren An, instructed me to recommend worthy men~would
not that be the wrong thing to do, considering my private aims? Even if I
wanted to give myself refinement and explain myself with gracious words,
it would do no good, because ordinary people would not credit me and I
would only earn more humiliation. Only when I am dead will the final judg
ment be made.
Writing cannot say all that is in a persons mind, thus I give you only the
rough account of my thoughts.
Even by the standards of earlier historical writings, Si-ma Qian was an idiosyncratic
historian. Nowhere is this more clear than in the first of his "Biographies/' on the
ancient hermits Bo Yi and Shu Qi. These are the earliest figures treated in the bi
ographies, and Si-ma Qian begins by trying to separate figures of history from fig
ures of legend. Yet very quickly the issue turns to questions of yielding power, right,
starvation, and the fairness of Heaven. In the background we can hear the resonance
of Si-ma Qian's sense of his own wrongs. The historian opens by affirming his faith
in the Confucian Classics, and closes with a flurry of quotations, trying to make sense
of the suffering that good men have had to endure.
The Biography of Bo Yi and Shu Qi

Texts by men of learning range most widely in what they include, yet we
look into the Six Classics for what is reliable. Although works were omit
ted from the Poems and Documents, still we can read writings from the times
of Shun and Yu.
Sage-King Yao planned to cede the throne and yielded his place to Shun.
Between Shuns accession and that of Yu, governors and prefects all rec
ommended men. Shun tested them in posts and let them perform their of
fices over several decadesonly after there was ample evidence of merit and
ability did he hand over the reins of government. This testifies to the fact
that the empire is a weighty vessel, and the kingship is the supreme office.
Thus it is no easy thing to pass the empire from one person to another.
And yet tellers of tales say that Yao offered up the empire to Xu You,
but Xu You would not take it and fled out of shame into hiding. Bian Sui
and W u Guang did the same in the time of Xia. But how did these men be
come widely known?
This is my opinion as Lord HistorianI personally climbed Mount Ji, on
whose summit was reputed to be the grave of Xu You. When Confucius
named the gentle, the good, and the sagely men of antiquity, he went into
some detail in cases like Wu Tai-bo and Bo Yi, Now from what I have heard,
Xu You and Wu Guang were supposed to have had the highest sense of
1A0
Early China
right~why is it, then, that they are not even mentioned in passing in Con
fucius5writing?
Confucius said: Bo Yi and Shu Qi did not brood on old hatreds, and
thus they felt little bitterness of spirit He also said: They sought feeling
for their fellow man and achieved itso how could they have known bit
terness of spirit? I myself am moved by Bo Y is sense of purpose, and when
I look at his poem that has come down to us, I find it remarkable. This is
the story about them.
Bo Yi and Shu Qi were two sons of the Lord of Gu-zhu. Their father wanted
Shu Qi to take his place, but when their father died, Shu Qi yielded to Bo
Yi. Bo Yi said: Those were our fathers orders
and he fled into hiding.
But Shu Qi also refused to become Lord of Gu-zhu and fled into hiding. Then
the people of the domain made the middle son lord.
Then Bo Yi and Shu Qi heard that the Earl of the West [King Wen of the
Zhou] took good care of the elderly, and they considered going to put them
selves under his protection. But when they arrived, the Earl of the West had
died; and King Wu had taken his fathers Spirit Tablet, given his father the
title King Wen,Mand gone east to attack King Zhow of the Shang. Bo Yi
and Shu Qi stopped King W u
s horse and criticized him: Can this be con
sidered the right way for a son to behavetaking up arms even before your
fathers funeral rites have been completed? And can a subject murdering his
ruler be considered feeling for ones fellow man? The kings party wanted
to put them to the sword, but his Counselor Tai-gong said: These men have
a sense of right. And he helped them up and sent them away.
When King Wu had settled the lawlessness of the Shang, all the world
gave their allegiance to the Zhou; yet Bo Yi and Shu Qi thought that to be
something shameful, and out of their sense of right they refused to eat the
grain of Zhou. They lived as hermits on Shou-yang Mountain and picked
bracken ferns to eat. As they were dying of hunger, they composed a song,
whose words go
We climbed West Hill,
we picked its bracken.
Brute force for brute force
he knew not it was wrong.
Shen-nong, Yu, and Xia
gone in a flash,
where can we turn?
Ah, let us depart now,
our lifespans are done.
And then they died of hunger on Shou-yang Mountain.
Considered in this light, did they or did they not feel bitterness of spirit?
There are those who say: The Way of Heaven shows no personal fa
vorites and always provides for good men. Can we or can we not consider
people like Bo Yi and Shu Qi good men? To have such a history of kindness
143
to ones fellow men and to be so pure in actions, yet to die from hunger! O f
his seventy disciples, Confucius singled out Yan Hui for praise for his* love
of learning. Yet Yan Hui lived in dire poverty and never ate his fill even of
grain mash or bran. And he died before his time. How is it then that Heaven
repays good men with its gifts?
Zhi the Outlaw killed innocent men every day and fed on their flesh. A
brutal, savage man, he committed every kind of outrage and gathered a band
of several thousand men who wreaked havoc all over the world. In the end
he died at a ripe old age. From what virtue did this follow?
These are particularly clear and obvious cases. And if we come down to
more recent times, conduct beyond the rules of morality and willful trans
gressions have brought lifetimes of carefree pleasures and great wealth
passed on for endless generations. Others take care where they tread, speak
up only when it is timely, take no dark byways, and are stirred only for jus
tice and the common good; yet the number of such people who have met
with disaster is beyond reckoning. I cannot understand this at all. Is this what
is meant by the Way of Heaven
Confucius saidMen who follow different ways cannot make judgments

for one another. Each person follows his own aims in life. He further said:
If wealth and noble station could be properly sought, I would seek them,
even if it meant being the kings meanest servant; but since they cannot be
sought, I will follow what I love.MAnd: Only in the cold of the year can
you know that pine and cypress are the last to turn brow n.W hen all the
world is foul and corrupt, the pure man appears most clearly. Obviously
what is considered so important by some is despised by others.
The man of virtue is pained by the thought of dying without his name
being known. [Analects]
Jia Yi wrote:
Grasping men spend themselves for goods;
brash warriors spend themselves for glory.
The man overweening will die for power,
and the common man covets his life.
Things of equal light reveal one another; things of the same kind seek
one another. [Classic o f Changes]
Clouds follow the dragonwinds follow the tigerthe Sage arises and
all things are perspicuous [Classic of Changes]
Although Bo Yi and Shu Qi were virtuous men, it was through Confu
cius that their names became more widely known. Though Yan Hui was de
voted to learning, like the fly on the tail of a fine steed, his actions became
more widely famed. It is most sad that men who live in caves in the cliffs
may have an equal sense of appropriateness in their decisions, yet their good
names are obliterated and never known. How can folk of the villages who
wish to perfect their behavior and establish their names be known to later
generations unless through some gentleman who rises high in the world?
144
Early China
In Si-ma Qian's accounts of the Han, we see fine judgments of character within a
complex political world. But in many of the narratives of the Warring States and the
founding of the Han, we find something that might best be called historical romance.
This is a world of stratagems, heroism, and sometimes betrayal; the currency of honor
is, more often than not, death. The Prince of W ei is the perfect Warring States lord,
using his wealth and the power of deference to gather loyal retainers to employ in
his own commitments of honor. Hidden among the common folk everywhere are
worthy men, capable of deeds of strength or sage advice. The discerning lord knows
how to find them and win them over. Such barely visible heroes are necessary to
counter a great danger. The Kingdom of Qin is the rising military power of the day,
threatening the smaller states of North China, such as W e and Zhao.
The Prince of Wei

Wu-jithe Prince of Wei, was the youngest son of King Zhao of Wei and
the half brother of King An-li [r. 278-243 B.C.]. When King Zhao died, King
An-li took the throne and enfeoffed the prince as Lord of Lin-ling.
That was the time when Fan Suiout of his bitterness against Wei Q i
had fled Wei to become a royal adviser in Qin. Qin troops surrounded Daliang and smashed Wei's army at the foot of Mount Hua-yang, sending "Weis
general Mang Mao into flight. The King of Wei and the prince were deeply
troubled because of this.
The prince was the sort of person who showed kindness to others and
treated gentlemen with deference. No matter whether the person was virtu
ous or unworthy, he treated all with humility and received them with cour
tesy, taking care not to behave haughtily because of his wealth and noble
rank. As a result gentlemen from several thousand leagues around flocked
to his serviceuntil he had three thousand retainers eating at his table. At
this time, because of the princes virtue and the number of his retainers, the
high nobility of the domains did not dare use their troops in designs against
Wei for more than ten years.
Once the prince was playing chess with the King of Wei when beacon
fires were lit from the northern reaches of the kingdom. They were told that
raiders had come from Zhao and crossed the border. The King of Wei quit
the game and was going to summon his chief officers for consultation, but
the prince stopped him, saying, Its just the King of Zhao out on a hunt
he
s not raiding us They returned to their game of chess, but the king was
apprehensive and his mind wasnt on the game. After a short while word
was again brought from the northThe King of Zhao is just hunting; he
s
not on a raid. The King of Wei was amazed and asked, How did you
know?
The prince replied, One of my retainers has in-depth access to the
King of Zhaos secrets. Whatever the King of Zhao does, my retainer reports
it to me. This is how I knew. After that the King of Wei stood in awe of
the prince5s virtue and his abilities, and he dared not entrust the prince with
political power in the kingdom.
In Wei there was a man named Hou Ying, who kept out of the public
eye. Seventy years old, his household was poor, and he served as the gate
keeper of the Yi Gate in Da-liang. The prince heard of him and went to visit
him, with the intention of giving him a generous gift. Hou Ying refused to
accept it, saying, For several decades now I have cultivated my virtue arid
acted blamelessly; I could never accept a present from you simply because
of the hardships of my life as a gatekeeper.
The prince then held a great party with beer for his guests and retainers.
When everyone was seated, the prince set off with his chariots and riders,
leaving the place of honor at his left empty. He personally made an invita
tion to Hou Ying at Yi Gate. Hou Ying straightened his tattered cap and
robes, then got right up on the princes chariot and took the position of the
social superior. He didnt defer to the prince because he wanted to observe
him. The prince took the reins in his own hand and became increasingly re
spectful. Then Hou Ying said to the prince, I have a retainer in the butcher
shops of the marketplace~I would like you and your entourage to make a
detour to visit him.55The prince then turned his chariot into the marketplace,
where Hou Ying got down and met with his retainer Zhu Hai. Watching
out of the corner of his eye, he stood there a long time on purposetalking
to his retainer, and he secretly observed the prince. The prince's expression
was even more calm. Meanwhile, Weis generals, counselors, members of
the royal family, and the princes retainers filled his hall, waiting for the
prince before beginning to drink. The people in the marketplace were all
watching the prince holding the reins. And the attendant riders were all curs
ing Hou Ying under their breaths. Once Hou Ying saw that the princes ex
pression would never change, he took leave of his retainer and went back
to the chariot.
When they reached his home, the prince led Hou Ying to the seat of
honor, commending to him each of his guests in turn. The guests were all
amazed. Then, growing merry from drink, the prince rose to offer a toast
to Hou Ying. But then Hou Ying told the prince, I
ve already done enough
on your behalf today. I am but the person who bars Yi Gate, yet you came
with chariots and horsemen to invite me personally into this great gather
ing of people. One should not overdo things, and today you have really over
done it. Nevertheless, I wanted to complete your reputation, so on purpose
I made your chariots and riders stand there so long in the marketplace; I
stopped by to visit my retainer in order to observe you, and you became even
more respectful. The people of the marketplace all think of me as someone
of no importance, and yet you found it within you to treat me with defer
ence as an elder. At this the party ended, and thereafter Hou Ying became
the most honored of the retainers.
Hou Ying told the prince, The butcher I stopped by to visit is Zhu Hai.
He is a worthy man, but no one has been able to recognize his worth, so he
lives out of the public eye among the butchers
The prince went to pay his
respects a number of times, but Zhu Hai purposefully did not return the
greeting. And the prince thought it very strange.
Early China
In the twentieth year of King An-lis reign, King Zhaw of Qin had
smashed the army of Zhao at Chang-ping and sent his troops on to surround
the Zhao capital at Han-dan. The princes sister was the wife of the Lord of
Ping-yuan, who was the younger brother of King Hui-wen of Zhao. The
Lord of Ping-yuan sent a number of letters to the King of Wei and the
prince, asking that Wei save them. The King of Wei sent his general Jin Bi
with a hundred thousand troops to save Zhao; but the King of Qin sent an
envoy to tell the King of Wei, I am attacking Zhao, and it will fall any day
now; but if any of the great nobility dare to try to save it, I will move my
troops to strike them first, once I have seized Zhao. The King of Wei grew
frightened and sent someone to stop Jin Bi and hold his army in a fortified
camp at Ye. He was to say publicly that he was going to save Zhao, but in
fact he was to keep his options open while observing the situation.
One after another the caps and carriages of envoys from the Lord of Pingyuan came through Wei and they reproved the princeThe reason why I
Sheng, Lord of Ping-yuan, allied myself with you through marriage was be
cause of your noble sense of right, which makes you rush to someone in dire
need. Han-dan may fall to Qin any day now and no rescue has come from
Wei~where now is your willingness to rush to help someone in dire need!
But even if you care nothing about me and would abandon me to Qin, have
you no pity at all for your sister?
The prince was very upset by this and often pleaded with the King of
Wei; and the political strategists among his retainers plied the king with thou
sands of persuasive reasons. But the King of Wei stood in dread of Qin and
he never heeded the prince.
Taking the measure of the situation, the prince realized that he would
never win over the kingand he decided that he could not stay alive himself
while letting Zhao perish. He then called on his retainers, and gathered and
mustered more than a hundred chariots and horsemen, intending to go
against Q in
s army with his retainers and to die together with Zhao.
He went past Yi Gate and met with Hou Ying, explaining to him the en
tire situation that led him to plan to die before Q ins army. As he said his
farewell and went on his way, Hou Ying said, Do the best you can! Im old
and cant go with you. After going several leagues, the prince felt uneasy
and said to himself, I have treated Hou Ying perfectly in every way! Every
one in the world knows about it. Now I
m going off to die, yet Hou Ying
never offered the least piece of advice to see me off. Could I have possibly
failed him in some way? He turned his chariot around and went back to
ask Hou Ying, who laughed and said, I knew quite well that you would be
back.55He continued, You delight in gentlemen-retainers, and your repu
tation is known all over the world. Now there is a crisis, and having no other
recourse, you plan to go against Q ins army. I would compare this to toss
ing meat to a ravenous tiger. What will you accomplish by that? How will
you make use of your retainers? Still, you have treated me generously, so
that when you left, I didnt see you off, knowing by this that you would feel
wronged and come back.
The prince bowed to him several times and next asked him what to do.
Hou Ying then made the others withdraw and spoke quietly to the prince:
I have heard that the tally authorizing Jin Bi to use his troops is always in
the kings bedchamber. Lady Ru enjoys his favors most often; and since she
passes in and out of the kings bedchamberit is within her power to steal
it. I have heard that Lady R u
s father was murdered, and this has occupied
her thoughts for three years. She has sought to get revenge on her fathers
killer from the king on down, but she has never gotten satisfaction. When
Lady Ru pleads weeping before yousend a retainer to cut off her enemys
head and respectfully present it to her. In her readiness to die for you Lady
Ru would refuse you nothing, but she will not be able to think of any means.
Indeed, all you have to do is open your mouth once and ask this of herand
Lady Ru will surely agree. Then you will get the tally to seize Jin Bis army,
go north to save Zhao, and make Qin retreat back to the west. This will be
a campaign worthy of the Five Overlords.
The prince followed his plan and made the request of Lady Ru. And the
outcome was that Lady Ru stole the tally for Jin B i
s troops and gave it to
the prince.
When the prince set out, Hou Ying said, When a general is away from
the capital, there are cases when he will not accept his rulers orders if it
seems in the best interest of the kingdom. Once you match the tallies, if Jin
Bi does not give you the troops and makes further inquiries, you will be in
a very dangerous situation.1 My retainerthe butcher Zhu Haishould go
together with you; he is a man of strength and force. If Jin Bi obeys, that
would be best; but if he doesnt obey, have Zhu Hai strike him.
At this the prince began to weep, and Hou Ying saidAre you dread
ing deathwhy are you weeping? The prince replied, Jin Bi is a stout
hearted old general from way back. When I go there, I
m afraid he wont
obey me and Ill have to kill him. Thats the only reason Im weeping. O f
course I dont dread dying.
Next the prince went to make his request of Zhu Hai. Zhu Hai laughed
and said, I am just a butcher who wields a knife in the marketplace, yet
you have personally paid your respects to me on a number of occasions. The
reason why I didnt respond was that such a small courtesy would have been
of no use. Now you are in a crisis, and this is the season for me to put my
life at your disposal.MHe then went off together with the prince. The prince
visited Hou Ying to take his leave, and Hou Ying said, It would be right
that I go with you, but I am too old. Reckon up the number of days you will
be traveling, and on the day when you are to reach Jin Bis army, I will face
north and cut my throat as my farewell to you, my prince. Then the prince
set off.
1Authority was delegated by means of a broken tally, of which the ruler kept half. By bringing the
ruler's half of the tally and matching it up with the general's half, the bearer demonstrated that he
was acting on the authority of the ruler.
Early China
When he reached Ye, he pretended that the King of Wei had ordered him
to take Jin B i
s place. Jin Bi matched the tallies, but doubted him; raising his
hand, he looked at the prince and said, Here I am surrounded by a host of

a hundred thousand, camped on the frontier, bearing a grave responsibility
to the kingdom. How is it that you can come in a single chariot to take my
place? He was not going to obey. Zhu Hai drew an iron club weighing
twenty-five pounds out of his sleeve and bludgeoned Jin Bi to death. The
prince then took command of Jin Bis army. He had his officers convey these
commands to the armyIf a father and son are both in the army, let the fa
ther go home; if brothers are both in the army, let the elder go home; if there
is an only son with no brothers, let him go home to take care of his par
ents.5J From this he got eighty thousand select troops and advanced to strike
the army of Qin. The Qin army broke its siege and left. Thus he rescued Handan and saved Zhao.
The King of Zhao and the Lord of Ping-yuan personally welcomed the
prince at the edge of the city. The Lord of Ping-yuan carried a quiver of ar
rows as a sign of respect, and he led the way for the prince. The King of
Zhao bowed to him repeatedly, saying, None of the virtuous and worthy
men since ancient times is your equal And at this time the Lord of Pingyuan did not dare compare him with anyone.
The prince had said his farewell to Hou Yingand when he had reached
the army, Hou Ying at last faced north and cut his own throat.
The King of Wei was enraged that the prince had stolen his tally for the
army, then bluffed Jin Bi and killed him. And for his own part the prince
too knew this. Having forced Qin to withdraw and having saved Zhao, he
had the generals take the army back to Wei, while he and his retainers
stayed in Zhao.
King Xiao-cheng of Zhao was indebted to the prince for having seized
Jin Bis troops by a bluff and saved Zhao, so he planned with the Lord of
Ping-yuan to give the prince five cities as a fief. When the prince heard of
this, he felt very proud of himself and his face showed his sense of his own
achievements. One of the princes retainers counseled him, There are some
things that should not be forgotten and some things that you should always
forget. If you are in debt to someone else, you should not forget it; but if
someone else is in debt to you, I would encourage you to forget it. To have
pretended to be acting under the King of Weis order and seized Jin Bis
troops in order to save Zhao was indeed a great achievement to Zhao, but
to Wei it was not being a loyal subject. You are in fact very proud of your
self and think it was a great achievement, but in my own opinion you should
n't have taken this course.
At this the prince immediately rebuked himself, and it seemed as if he

couldnt stand himself. The King of Zhao had the stairs swept and welcomed
him personally; and carrying out the ceremony of a host, he led the prince
to the western stairs. But the prince backed away and declined the honor,
going up by the eastern stairs. He spoke of his own transgressions, having
been disloyal to Wei and having accomplished nothing important for Zhao.
The King of Zhao accompanied him drinking until sundown, but he couldnt
bring himself to present the five cities because of the princes modesty. In
the end the prince stayed in Zhao. The King of Zhao gave him Hao as a trib
utary city, and even the King of Wei restored to him his fief of Xin-ling. But
the prince stayed in Zhao.
The prince heard that in Zhao there was a recluse, one Master Mao, who
hid himself among gamblers, and another, Master Xue, who hid himself
among tavern keepers. The prince wanted to meet both of thembut they
both concealed themselves and were unwilling to meet him. When the prince
found out where they were, he went secretly on foot to keep them company,
and he enjoyed it greatly. The Lord of Ping-yuan heard about this and told
his wife, I first heard of your brother the prince as someone without peer
in all the world. Now I heard about him recklessly keeping company with
gamblers and tavern keepers. The prince is a reckless man.
The lady informed the prince about this. The prince then took his leave
of her, saying, I first heard of the Lord of Ping-yuan as a worthy man, and
for that reason I betrayed the King of Wei to save Zhaoto satisfy the Lord
of Ping-yuan. Those with whom the Lord of Ping-yuan keeps company are
only the arrogant and overbearinghe does not seek out gentlemen. When
I Wu-ji, was back in Da-liangI heard constantly of the worthiness of these
two menand when I came to Zhao, I was afraid that I wouldnt get the
chance to meet them. I was even afraid that they might not want me to keep
them company. If now the Lord of Ping-yuan considers this a cause for em
barrassment, then he is not worth keeping company.55At this he started pack
ing to depart.
The lady repeated everything that he had said to the Lord of Ping-yuan.
And the Lord of Ping-yuan removed his cap and apologized, insisting that
the prince stay. When the Lord of Ping-yuan's followers heard of thishalf
of them left the Lord of Ping-yuan for the prince; and again gentlemen from
all the world over flocked to the prince, until the prince had taken all the
Lord of Ping-yuan's retainers.
The prince stayed in Zhao for ten years without returning. When the Qin
ruler heard that the prince was in Zhao, he constantly sent troops eastward
to raid Wei. The King of Wei was deeply troubled by this and sent envoys
to go ask help from the prince. But the prince was afraid that the king was
angry with him, and he gave this warning to his followersWhoever dares
come as an envoy of the King of Wei dies! His retainers then all abandoned
Wei and went to Zhao, and none of them dared urge the prince to return.
Then both Masters Mao and Xue went to meet the prince and said, The
reason why you are treated with importance in Zhao and your fame is
known among the great nobility is due only to the existence of Wei. Qin now
attacks Wei. If you do not take pity on Wei in its hour of dire distress and
then Qin should smash Da-liang and level the ancestral temples of its for
mer kings, how will you have the face to stand up in the world? Before they
Early China
finished speaking, the expression on the princes face suddenly changed; he

told his drivers to prepare his train to go home and rescue Wei.
The King of Wei met the prince, and they came together in tears. And
the king gave the prince the seal of the supreme general of his armies. The
prince then took command. In the thirtieth year of King An-li of Wei, the
prince sent envoys to all the high lords of the domains. When the high lords
heard that the prince was the general, each sent generals with troops to res
cue Wei. The prince led the troops of the Five Domains to crush the Qin
army at He-wai, putting their general Meng Ao to flight and following up
on their victory by pursuing the Qin army to Han-gu Pass, where they so
subdued the troops of Qin that they did not dare come forth.
At this time the princes power shook the whole world, and retainers of
the high lords of the domains submitted their techniques of warfare to him.
The prince put each down under its appropriate name, in what is commonly
called today The Military Techniques of the Prince of WeL
The King of Qin was greatly troubled by this and had ten thousand mea
sures of silver transported to Wei to win over a retainer of Jin Bi. He or
dered him to speak ill of the prince to the King of Wei, saying, The prince
fled the kingdom and lived for ten years in a foreign country. Now he is a
general of Wei, and the generals of the high lords of the domains are all sub
ordinate to him. The high lords have heard only of the Prince of Wei; they
have not heard of the King of Wei. And if the prince should take advantage
of the moment to establish himself as king and ruler, the high lords would
stand in dread of the princes power and would join to support his taking
the throne.
On numerous occasions Qin made devious use of W ei
s intelligence net
work by sending false congratulations to the prince regarding whether he
had taken the throne as King of Wei. Hearing such slander every day, the
King of Wei could not help believing it, and finally he sent someone to re
place the prince as general.
Knowing that he had been removed from office because of repeated
slander, the prince refused to go to court on the pretext of illness. He spent
the whole night long drinking with his retainers, drinking strong brew, and
consorting with many women. For four years he drank and made merry day
and night, until at last he died of the effects of drinking. King An-li of Wei
died that same year.
When Qin heard that the prince was dead, Meng Ao was sent to attack
Wei. He took twenty cities and established them as the Eastern Province.
After that, Qin nibbled away at Wei, and eighteen years later took the King
of Wei captive and sacked Da-liang.
When Gao-zu, the founder of our dynasty, first lived as a humble man,
he frequently heard of the virtues of the prince. Later when he became Son
of Heavenhe would always offer up prayers to the prince whenever he
passed Da-liang. In his twelfth year [195 B.C.], returning from attacking
against Jing Bu3 he established five families to take charge of maintaining
the princes tomb so that offerings would be made to the prince in every sea
son forevermore.
The Lord HistorianI have passed by the ruins of Da-liang and have looked
for the place known as the Yi Gate. The Yi Gate was the eastern gate of the
city. Among the princes of this world there were others who delighted in
gentlemen-retainers. Still there was good reason why the Lord of Xin-ling
made contact with those who lived, removed from the public eye, in the caves
of cliffs, and felt no shame in forming relationships with those socially be
neath him. It was not for nothing that his fame crowned the high lords of
the domains. Whenever our Founder passed by there, he ordered that of
ferings be made without end.
When Duke Mu of Qin went to his grave in 620 b .c . (see "Yellow Bird/' p. 26), the
retainers who accompanied him in death were his subjects, men of good family. W ar
ring States retainers of the fourth and third centuries were "bought" by support, by
outright gifts, and, as shown in the case of the Prince of W ei, by gestures of esteem.
These men were often found in the lower strata of society gatekeepers, butchers,
or wandering men-at-arms. But once chosen, they were bound by a code of honor
to die for their lords. Central here was the question of "nam e" or reputation that fol
lowed from their self-sacrifice. The story of Nie Zheng is a variation on this ques
tion, the story of the assassin-retainer who made his "name" by his determination
to make his death anonymous.
from <eBiographies of the AssassinsNie Zheng

Nie Zheng came from the Deepwell section of the city of Zhi. He killed some
one, and to escape his enemies revenge, he went to Q i with his mother and
sister. There he worked as a butcher.
Some time later Yan Zhong-zi of Pu-yang was in the service of Count Ai
of Han, and he had a quarrel with Xia Lei, the Minister of Han. Fearing
that he would be executed, Yan Zhong-zi fled and traveled about looking
for someone who could get revenge on Xia Lei. When he reached Qi, some
of the local people said that Nie Zheng was a man of courage and daring,
who lived out of the public eye among butchers in order to escape his ene
mies.
Yan Zhong-zi went to his gate to pay his respects but was repeatedly
turned away. After that he had beer prepared and went to offer a congrat
ulatory toast to Nie Zhengs mother. When everyone was feeling the effects
of the beer, Yan Zhong-zi presented a hundredweight of gold to Nie Zheng's
mother to wish her a long life. Nie Zheng was alarmed at such generosity
and was determined to refuse it. Yan Zhong-zi pressed it on him with just
as much determination, but Nie Zheng refused, saying, I am lucky to still
have my aged mother. Our household may be poor, but I make my living
here as a dog butcher so that I can provide her delicacies to eat every day.
She is well provided for, and I dare not accept your gift.
Early China
Yan Zhong-zi had the others withdraw and then said to Nie Zheng, I
have an enemy and have roamed through many of the great domains. When
I came to Q ihowever, I heard of your high sense of right, sir, and this is
why I presented the hundredweight of goldto use for ordinary expenses
in taking care of your aged mother and in that way to get on good terms
with you. I wouldnt dare expect anything from you for it. Nie Zheng
replied, The only reason I have curtailed my ambitions and accepted the
indignity of working as a butcher in the marketplace has been to take care
of my aged mother. So long as my mother is alive, I do not dare commit my
self to anyone. Yan Zhong-zi insisted that Nie Zheng give way, but in the
end Nie Zheng refused to accept the gift. Nevertheless, Yan Zhong-zi played
out his proper role as a guest and then left.
Some time later Nie Zhengs mother died. After she was buried and the
period of mourning completed, Nie Zheng said, To think that I am but a
man of the marketplace, one who wields the knife as a butcher, while Yan
Zhong-zi is an adviser of the high nobility, and yet he did not think it too
much to turn his carriage and riders to meet me! The way I treated him was
ungenerous in the extreme. I had done nothing important to deserve it, yet
he offered a hundredweight in gold for my mothers sake. Even though I
didnt accept it, in doing this he was simply showing how deeply he under
stood me. How can I just do nothing when a good and worthy man has been
stirred to glaring rage and then personally shows his confidence in a poor
and humble man? When he pressed me earlier, I acted as I did only because
of my mother. Now that my mother has lived out her natural span, I will
be of use to this man who so well understands me.
He next went west to Pu-yang, and meeting Yan Zhong-zi said, The
only reason that I could not commit myself to you earlier was because my
mother was still alive. Now unfortunately her years are over. Who is it that
you want me to take revenge on? Please let me carry this matter through.
Yan Zhong-zi told him the whole storyMy enemy is Xia Lei, the Minis
ter of Han. Xia Lei is also the uncle of the ruler of Han. His kindred are very
numerous, and whenever he stays outside his compound, he is extremely well
guarded. I tried to get people to assassinate him, but none was ever suc
cessful. Now I am lucky that you have not rejected me, so let me increase
the number of carriages, mountsand strong warriors to assist you. Nie
Zheng replied, The distance between Han and Wei is not very great. If
youre going to kill a minister and that minister is also a relation of the ruler
of a domain, the situation is such that you should not use many people. If
you use many people, something will inevitably go wrongif something goes
wrong, word will inevitably leak outand if word leaks out, the entire do
main of Han will be your enemy. Then you really would be in danger!
Thus
Nie Zheng refused carriages, horses, and men. He then said farewell and set
out alone.
Sword in hand, he came to Han. Xia Lei, the Minister of Han, was seated
in his office, and there was a great throng of men with weapons and pikes
standing guard around him. Nie Zheng went directly in, climbed the stairs,
and stabbed Xia Lei to death. His entourage was in great confusion. Nie
Zheng gave a loud shout and killed several dozen men. Then he cut the skin
off his face, gouged out his eyes, cut himself open and pulled out his entrails
and died.
The ruler of Han took Nie Zhengs corpse and had it exposed in the mar
ketplace, trying to find out who the man was but no one knew. He then
offered a reward of a thousand silver pieces to anyone who could tell him
who killed the minister Xia Lei. But after a long time no one came forward
with this knowledge.
Nie Zhengs sister Rong heard that someone had assassinated the M in
ister of Han, but that the criminal could not be ascertained because no one
in the kingdom knew his namethus they had exposed his corpse and of
fered a reward of a thousand pieces of silver. At this she let out a moan.
Could this be my younger brother? Alas, Yan Zhong-zi understood my
brother all too well! She went to the capital of Han and to its marketplace,
and the dead man was indeed Nie Zheng. She collapsed on the corpse,
weeping with the utmost grief. And she said, This man was known as Nie
Zheng, from the Deepwell quarter of the city of Z hi. The crowds of peo
ple walking through the marketplace all said, This man assaulted the min
ister of our domainand the king has posted a reward of a thousand pieces
of silver for his name haven't you heard? How can you dare come here
and recognize him?
Rong answered them, I have heard. Neverthelessthe reason why Nie
Zheng endured disgrace and abandoned himself to the commerce of the mar
ketplace was so that our aged mother would come to no harm and because
I was not yet married. Once our mother had passed away and I had mar
ried, Yan Zhong-zi selected my brother to be his friend, even in his degraded
position. He was so kind and generous that my brother had no choice. A
gentleman will indeed die for someone who understands him. And now, be
cause I was still alive, he has gone further, mutilating himself so there will
be no traces to follow. How could I stand in dread of paying with my own
life, and by doing so wipe away forever my worthy brothers name? This
amazed the people in the marketplace of Han. Then she called out to Heaven
several times, until, with a piteous moan, she died at Nie Zheng5s side.
When this story was heard in Jin, Chu, Qi, and Wei, everyone said, It
is not just that Nie Zheng showed abilityhis sister too was a woman of
fierce principles. Suppose that Nie Zheng had truly known that his sister
lacked the determination to simply endure the situation and that she would
surely cross a thousand leagues of perils, unmindful of the troubles that
would come from recognizing the exposed corpse, just to proclaim his name.
Had he known that, he would not necessarily have committed himself to Yan
Zhong-zi.
But Yan Zhong-zi may indeed also be known as someone capable of ac

quiring gentlemen by his ability to understand a persons worth.
The Chu-ci: "Lyrics of C h u " >
The C/?u-d or "Lyrics of Chuis, first of all, an anthology of rhymed, met-
rical works that represent a tradition of "poetry" quite distinct from that
of the Classic of Poetry. This tradition originated fn the pre-Qin Kingdom
%
V
of Chu, a powerful state that grew up on the southern margins of the Zhou /
cultural region. As Chu collapsed in the third century b .c . before the east
ward advance of Qin's armies, the capital of Chu and its cultural heritage moved
east to the city of Shou-chun. It was Shou-chun and the surrounding area of Huai-
nan and Wu that became the centers of Chu-ci learning early in the Western Han;
from there it was taken to the Han capital and became a scholarly and literary en
terprise. Thus the anthology called C/itv-c/consists of late Warring States works from
Chu, early Western Han works written in a living tradition of the "Lyrics of C h u ,
and scholarly continuations of that tradition later in both the Western and the East
ern Han.
No one fully u n d e rs ta n d s the nature and provenance of the earliest and most Im
portant works in the "Lyrics of Chu .Traditionally, these earlier texts in the anthol
ogy have been interpreted as the compositions of one Qu Yuan (ca. 340-278 b.c_),
an anti-Qin aristocrat who lost the favor of the Chu kings Huai and Qing-xiang, was
sent into exile, and eventually committed suicide by drowning himself in the Miluo River. The early works in the ''Lyrics ofChuuare taken to represent various stages
in Qui Yuan's life and career, in which he allegorically laments his misfortunes, de
clares his virtue, attacks those who have defamed him, and goes on a cosmic quest
for a worthy lord.
The debate about whether Qu Yuan wrote any or all of the works traditionally
attributed to him continues and is not likely ever to be resolved. But most of the po
etic phases in this bizarre political narrative correspond to stages in the relation of
the shaman-lover to the goddess or god. The lover laments being spurned by the
god or goddess, declares his beauty and worth, then goes through the heavens on
a spirit quest. This shamanistic spirit quest, involving a circuit of the heavens with
a vast cavalcade of gods and dragon-drawn chariots, early came to overlap with and
serve as a representation of the Daoist adept's search for spiritual and physical wtranscendence." Furthermore, this narrative of "transcendence" overlapped with Han
Daoist notions of the emperor as god-king, ruling the world by non-action. In short,
there is an intricate politico-religious structure of myth behind several of the most
important works in the "Lyrics of Chu," and this same structure informs a large body
of prose and poetic expositions (fu) from the late Warring States and Western Han.
We can see parts of it, but we do not understand it fully.
The first two works translated below are from the early stratum of the "Lyrics of
Chu." "The Nine Songs" are, in fact, eleven: nine are to deities from various parts

of China, one is for soldiers of the kingdom who have died in battle, and one is a
short coda on the ritual itself. These are clearly liturgical works in a shamanistic tra
dition. Ten of the eleven are translated below. The Li Sao/ which follows at p. 162,
is a long first-person monologue (divided into ninety-two four-line stanzas and a
coda) that has been traditionally read as the authentic voice of Qu Yuan. Whether
it is indeed by Qu Yuan or not, we do know that in performance it would be the
drama of Qu Yuan.1
Ling, usually translated as "the holy one[s]," sometimes refers to the deity in ques
tion and at other times to the sacred performers, who in some cases assume the role
of the deity.
"The Nine Songs"

The Sovereign of the East: The One (Dong-buang Tai-yi)
On a day of good luck, at the well-favored hour
with due awe we delight the Sovereign on High.
Stroking our long swords, jade are the hilt-guards,
with clinking of pendants, onyx and agate.
On yao-fiber mats jades weight the corners,
we hold in their bunches carnelian blooms,
joints wrapped in sage on orchid-strewn cloths,
proffer cinammon wine and peppered beers.
Raise up the drumstick, strike now the drums,
the beat sparse and slow, steady the song
play pipes and the zithers, let the paean swell
the holy ones sway, gorgeous their gowns,
the scent spreads around us, it fills the whole hall,
a tumult of all notes, played swiftly together,
and our Lord is much pleased, hale in his joy.
Lord in the Clouds (Yun-zhong jun)

In orchid baths bathed, hair washed in blooms scent,
our robes are resplendent, with lavender flowers.
The holy one writhes, he lingers within her,
she glows with a nimbus, his light is unbounded.
He shall be here transfixed in the Temple of Life,
He whose rays are the equal of sun and the moon;
in his dragon-drawn cart, the garb of the god,
he soars in his circles around and around.
!O f the various verse forms in the "Lyrics of Chu," two of the most common break a line into
hemistiches, divided by either the sound syllable x i or a lightly stressed syllable. In the translation
I have represented this meter by leaving extra spaces at the break in the line. This roughly follows
the long line of accentual verse in Old and Middle English, which was also divided sharply into
hemistiches.
The holy one glistens, for he has come down

he lifts up in a gust, afar into clouds.
He scans all the heartland and far off beyond,
across seas on each side; where does he end?
We yearn for our Lord and heave a great sigh,
hearts greatly troubled, and fretful within.
The Lady of the Xiang River (Xiang jun)

The Lady will not go, still does she linger,
who is it stays her on the isle midstream?
Lovely gaze, heavy-lidded, her mouth shows a smile;
streaming swiftly I ride my cassia boat
and charge Yuan and Xiang to be without waves,
and command Rivers waters to steady their flow.
I gaze toward my Lady,
I blow on my panpipes,
she will not come

for whom do I yearn?
I yoke flying dragons and journey on north

then bending my way around Lake Dong-ting.
Hanging moss is my sail, screens of sweet clover,
the oars are of iris, orchids, my flags.
Gaze to Cens sunlit banks, to far northern shores,
and across the great river I send my soul flying.
I send my soul flying, still it cant reach her;
the woman so lovely for me heaves a sigh;
my tears now flow freely, trickling down,
and I long for the Lady, I am torm ented..
The paddles were cassia, of magnolia, the sweeps,
I cut through the ice and raised spray of snow.
It was picking hanging moss in the middle of waters;
it was plucking the lotus from tips of the trees.
When hearts are not one, the go-between struggles;
her love was not strong, it lightly was broken.
Over stone shallows the current runs swift,
my dragons were flying, beating their wings.
Her friendship was faithless, reproach long remains
untrue to her pledge, she told me she had no time.
I galloped that dawn on the plain by the river,
stayed my pace in the twilight by northern isles,
where birds took their lodging high on the roof
and the waters were circling the base of the hall.
I threw a ring broken down into the river,
my pendants I left at the mouth of the Li.
I plucked lavender on flowering isles

to give as gift to the woman below.
This moment may never be ours again,
let us wander off freely and be at our ease.
The Senior Master of Lifespans (Da si-ming)

Open them wide, the gates of the heavens,
in a mass I come riding dark purple clouds,
and charge the whirlwinds to speed on ahead,
commanding a downpour to moisten the dust.
My Lord sweeps in circles, then He descends,

It is I who go with you past Mount Kong-sang.
Earths nine domains are teeming with men
and their spans, long or short depend upon m e .
High off we fly, steadily soaring,
riding pure vapors, He drives Shadow and Light;
then I and my Lord, dashing swiftly ahead,
lead on the High God down to Nine Hills.
Our robes are of cloud, they flap in the wind,
our pendants of jade sparkle and flash.
Sometimes the Shadow sometimes the Light;
of the many, none know that which I do.
I snapped off a hemp bud and blossoms of yao-grass
to give as a gift to Him Who Dwells Apart;
old age steals upon me and now has arrived;
His affection withdraws, He grows more remote.
He rides his dragon-car, its wheels are rumbling,
and racing high off He dashes to Sky,
I plait cassia twigs, long stand fixed and gazing,
for increase of longing thus troubles a man.
What is it then that so troubles a man?
I wish that now be forever, and never wane.
Fixed is mans fate, it is as it must be;
how may it happen that the sundered rejoin?
The Junior Master of Lifespans (Shao-si-ming) Lord Iris

Orchids of autumn, the deer-weed,
they grow in their rows at the foot of the hall,
green are their leaves, pale their stalks,
their scent spreads around, hanging upon us.
To men have been given children so fair,
why should Lord Iris be troubled so?
Orchids of autumn, lushly they grow,

green are their leaves, purple their stems.
The hall is filled with fair women
at once with me only His eyes meet and fix.
He comes without speaking, without farewell, goes;
He rides on the whirlwind, bears banners of cloud.
No grief is so great as parting while living;
no joy so strong as love newly found.
His robe is of lotus, sash wound with sweet clover,
He comes in a flash, as suddenly leaves;
He lodges this night in the fields of the god
for whom waits our Lord at the brink of clouds?
W ith you I will roam to the rivers nine channels,
when blasts of wind rise, heaving the waves;
I will wash my hair with you in the Pools of Xian,
we will let your hair dry in the Sun Gorge clefts.
I gaze for the Fairest, she does not come;
I face the wind dazed, loud I sing forth.
With peacock-plume canopies, kingfisher streamers,
He mounts nine-banked Sky and strokes comets tail
high he lifts long sword, weak and youngs bulwark
Lord Iris alone is fit to rule all the folk.
The Lord of the East (Dong-jun)

I glow coming forth in the eastlands,
I shine on my porch by the tree Fu-sang,
then slapping my steeds to a steady gallop,
the night is lit up, and the day breaks.
My dragon team hitched, I ride on the thunder,
bearing banners of cipud streaming behind.
But I heave a great sigh on the point of ascending;
there the heart falters I look back with care:
for the sounds and beauty so give a man joy
those who watch are transfixed and forget to go.
Harps tightly strung, the drums alternating,
bells being rung, chime frames shaking,
fifes sing out, pipes are blown;
those who act holy ones, wholesome and comely,
hover here winging, suddenly mount,
reciting the lyrics joining in dance.
Catching the pitch, matching the rhythms,
the holy ones come, they cover the sun.
In gown of green cloud and white rainbow mantle,

I raise the long arrow, I shoot Heavens Wolf,
with yew-bow in hand I now sink back under,
and seize the North Dipper to pour cinnamon wine,
then clutching my reins, I rush soaring high,
off far through darkness voyaging east
The Yellow Rivers Earl (He-bo)

W ith you I will roam to the rivers nine channels,
when blasts of wind rise driving waves across stream,
we will ride my coach of waters, its canopy, lotus,
hitched to paired dragons, by basilisks flanked.
I climbed Mount Kun-lun I gazed all around,
the heart flew aloft, it went sweeping off free.
Soon the sun was to set, I transfixed, forgot going,
and then to the far shore I looked back with care.
My roofs are of fish scales, halls of the dragon,
turrets of purple cowries, palaces of carmine
why is the holy one here, down in the water?
We will ride on white turtles, goldfish attend us,
with you I will roam by the rivers isles,
where the current is rushing, there well go down.
You clasp your hands journeying eastward;
you go with the Fairest to the southern shores
where the swell of the waves is coming to meet us
and the schools of fishes, will send off my bride.
The Hill Wraith (Shan gui)

It seemed there was someone in the cleft of the hills,
her mantle was hanging moss, she was girded with ivy,
her eyes glanced upon me, her mouth formed a smile:
You who yearn for me, who am so comely
I ride the red leopard, striped lynxes attend me,
with magnolia-wood wagon, my flags, plaited cassia,
my cloak is stone-orchid, my sash is asarum,
I snap the sweet fragrance, gift for him that I love.
She dwells in bamboos darkness, she never sees sky
the way was steep and hard, late she came and alone.
Early China
Alone she stands forth, high on the hill

with clouds5rolling billows there down below her;
it grows dim and blacker, daylight turns dark,
and in gustings of east wind the goddess rains.
I remain for the holy one transfixed, forget going,
the year has grown late, who will clothe me in flowers?
I picked three-bloom asphodel out in the hills,
on slopes rough and rocky, through tangles of vines;
reproaching the Lady, I in grief forget going,
for though she may love me, she does not find time.
In the hills there is someone, sweet smell of lavender,
she drinks from the stone-springs in shadow of pines.
and though she may love me, she holds back unsure.
The sky shakes in thunder, with darkness comes rain,
the apes are all wailing, in the night monkeys moan
the whistling of winds that howl through the trees;
I long for the Lady, fruitless torment I find.
The Kingdoms Dead (Guo-shang)

Our great-shields we grasped, donned jerkins of leather,
wheelhub scraped wheelhub, short-swords met.
Banners blocked sunlight, foemen like clouds,
bolts crossed and fell, warriors pressed forward.
They break through our ranks they crush down our line,
the left horse has fallen, the right horse takes wounds.
We dig in both wheels and tie the team to them,
grasp the jade drumstick, strike the great drum,
Fate is against us, the spirits are angry,
all lie dead on the field, left behind in the meadows.
We marched out but not back, we went forth but not home
the plains stretch on far, the journey, a long one.
Long-swords at waists, bows under arms,
heads cut from bodies, hearts never yielding,
brave we were truly, stout fighters too,
hard to the last, not to be conquered,
our bodies are dead, our souls are now gods
among ghosts, the stalwart, heroes among the wraiths.
161
Rites for Souls (Li hun)

The rites are done now, drums beat together,
the wands are passed on new dancers take our place.
Fairest maidenssongs, slowly sung and softly,
in spring the orchids come, chrysanthemums in fall,
forever and unceasing from the first and on forever.
The Li Sao
One of the most difficult aspects of the "Lyrics of Chu" is its use of flowers and aromatics, few of which have counterparts in English. These were clearly part of the
ceremony and could stand for qualities of the deity, who is, on one occasion, ad
dressed by a flower name. In the Li Sao, such sacred attributes merge with moral at
tributes. I have used English flowers and aromatics, which have their own associa
tions, to substitute for some of the more exotic flora.
1
O f the god-king Gao-yang I am the far offspring,2
my late honored sire bore the name of Bo-yong.
The she-ti stars aimed to the years first m onth
3
gen g-yin was the day that I came down.
2
He scanned and he delved into my first measure,
from the portents my sire gave these noble names:
The name that he gave me was Upright Standard;
and my title of honor was Godly Poise.4
3
Such bounty I had of beauty within,
and to this was added fair countenance.
I wore mantles of river rush and remote angelica,
strung autumn orchids to hang from my sash.
4
They fled swiftly from me, I could not catch them
I feared the years passing would keep me no company.
At dawn I would pluck magnolia on bluffs,
in the twilight on isles I culled undying herbs.
2Gao-yang was one of the mythic emperors of high antiquity, from whom the Chu royal house (and
several other royal houses} claimed ancestry. Though not the ruling family, Qu Yuan's clan, the Qu,
was one of the three royal clans of Chu and descended from Gao-yang.
3The she-ti stars were a constellation by whose position early astronomers determined the begin
ning of the year.
4To choose the name, the father reads his "measure": whether that comes from the astronomical
conjunctions of his birth or his physiognomy is impossible to say. These "auspicious names" are
not the names usually associated with Qu Yuan.
162
Early China
5
Days and months sped past, they did not long linger,
springtimes and autumns altered in turn.
I thought on things growing, on the fall of their leaves,
and feared for the Fairest, her drawing toward dark.5
6
Cling to your prime, forsake what is rotting
why not change from this measure of yours?
Mount a fine steed, go off at a gallop
I will now take the lead, ride ahead on the road.
7
The Three Kings of old were pure and unblemished,6
all things of sweet scent indeed were theirs.
Shen5s pepper was there, together with cassia,
white angelica, sweet clover were not strung alone.
8
Such shining grandeur had Kings Yao and Shun;7
they went the true way, they held to the path.
But sloven and scruffy were Kings Jie and Zhow
8
they walked at hazard on twisted trails.
9
Those men of faction had ill-gotten pleasures,
their paths went in shadow, narrow, unsafe.
Not for myself came this dread of doom
I feared my kings chariot soon would be tipped.
10
In haste I went dashing in front and behind,

till I came to the tracks of our kings before.
Lord Iris did not fathom my nature within,9
he believed ill words, he glowered in rage.
5The "fairest" is taken to be a figure for the Chu king as a beautiful woman. Thus.his later quest for
a mate is taken as a search fo ra prince who w ill appreciate his worth and employ him.
6The "Three Kings" are probably the early kings of Chu, though there is some disagreement on this
point.
7Yao and Shun were the two Sage-Kings of antiquity revered in Traditionalist circles in North China.
In Chu traditions, either by variant legend or by some strange syncretism, they play an important
quasi-religious role. Shun, or Zhong-hua, supposedly buried at Cang-wu in southern Chu (stanza
47), w ill be the figure the speaker goes to visit to "state his caseabout the moral consequences of
princely behavior. Yao's two daughters married Shun; on Shun's death, they became the river god
desses of the Xiang.
8jie was the last ruler of the Xia Dynasty and Zhow (actually Zhou, the spelling having been changed
to differentiate him from the dynasty that supplanted him) was the last ruler of the Yin-Shang. Both
are taken as exemplary bad rulers.
9/,Lord lris is a kenning (compound) for the king, now figured as a male deity.
163
11
I knew well my bluntness had brought me these woes,
yet I bore through them, I could not forswear.
I pointed to Heaven to serve as my warrant,
it was all for the cause of the Holy One.
12
To me at first firm word had been given,
she regretted it later, felt otherwise.
I made no grievance at this break between us
but was hurt that the Holy One so often changed.
13
I watered my orchids in
and planted sweet clover
I made plots for peonies
mixed with asarum and
all their nine tracts,

in one hundred rods;
and for the wintergreen,
sweet angelica.
14
I wished stalks and leaves would stand high and flourish,
I looked toward the season when I might reap.
If they withered and dried, it would cause me no hurt
I would grieve if such sweetness went rotting in weeds.
15
Throngs thrust themselves forward in craving and want,
they never are sated in things that they seek.
They show mercy to self, by this measure others,
in them the heart stirs to malice and spite.
16
Such a headlong horse race, each hot in pursuit,
is not a thing that thrills my own heart.
Old age comes on steadily, soon will be here,
I fear my fair name will not be fixed firmly.
17
At dawn I drank dew that dropped on magnolia,
in twilight ate blooms from chrysanthemums shed.
If my nature be truly comely, washed utterly pure,
what hurt can I have in long wanness from hunger?
18
I plucked tendrils of trees to knot white angelica,
pierced fallen pistils of flowering ivy.
I reached high to cassia for stringing sweet clover,
and corded the coilings of the rope-vine.
Early China
19
Yes, I took as my rule those fair men before me,
it was not the garb worn in the ways of our age.
Though it did not agree with men of these days,
I would rest in the pattern left by Peng and by Xian.1
20
Long did I sigh and wipe away tears,
sad that mens lives lay in such peril.
Though love of the fair was the halter that guided me,
at dawn I was damned and by twilight, undone.
21
Yes, I was undone for sash hung with sweet clover,

then I added to it the angelica and orchid.
Still my heart will find goodness in these
though I die many times, I will never regret.
22
I reproach the Holy Ones unbridled rashness,
never discerning what lies in mens hearts.
Women-throngs envied my delicate brows,
they made scurrilous songs, they said I loved lewdness.
23
O f these times the firm folkways to be skillful in guile;
facing compass and square, they would alter the borehole.
They forswear the straight line, go chasing the crooked
rivals for false faces, such is their measure.
24
A woe wells within me, to be so hapless,
alone at an impasse in times such as these.
Best to die promptly, to vanish away,
for I cannot bear to show myself thus.
25
J
The great bird of prey does not go in flocks,
so it has been from times long ago.
The square and the circle can never be matched,
what man can find peace on a way not his own?
^Shaman Peng and Shaman Xian were two quasi-divine shaman ancestors. Traditional commen
taries always took this as a single name, Peng Xian, both here and in The Ending Song (see p. 175).
Peng Xian was supposed to have been a worthy adviser of a Shang king who committed suicide by
drowning, hence Qu Yuan's decision to follow him in The Ending Song.
26
Bending one
s heart, quelling ones will,
abiding faults found, submitting to shame,
embracing pure white, death for the right~
these indeed were esteemed by wise men before us.
27
I regretted my course was not well discerned,
long I stood staring, about to go back.
I turned my coach round along the same path
it was not yet too far I had strayed in my going.
28
I let horses walk through meadows of orchids,
to a hill of pepper trees I raced, there rested the while.
I drew close, did not reach him I met with fault-finding,
I withdrew to restore that garb I first wore.
29
Waterlilies I fashioned to serve as my robe,
I gathered the lotus to serve as my skirt.
Let it be over then no man knows me,
my nature in truth has a scent sweet and steadfast.
30
High was my hat, above me it loomed
well strung, the pendants that swung from my sash.
Sweet scent and stench were all intermingled,
this gleaming flesh only suffered no dwindling.
31
All at once I looked back, and I let my eyes roam,
I would go off to view the wild lands around.
Pendants in bunches, I was richly adorned,
their sweet fragrance spread, ever more striking.
32
Each man has a thing in which he finds joy
I alone love the fair, in that I abide.
Though my limbs be cut from me, I still will not change,
for how could my heart be made to cower?
33
Then came the Sister, tender and distressed,2
mild of manner she upbraided me thus,
2//The Sister" is nu-xu, clearly a title rather than a proper name; however, the actual role or rela
tionship implied by the phrase is uncertain. Early commentators took this as Qu Yuan's sister, and
there is some evidence that nii-xu was a popular term for "sister"though whether a literal or a fig
urative sister is again uncertain. It may also mean "w e n ch .
Early China
she said: Gun was unyielding, he fled into hiding,

at last died untimely on moors of Mount Yu.3
34
Why such wide culling, such love of the fair,
in you alone bounty of beautiful raiment?
Haystacks of stinkweed are heaped in their rooms;
you alone stand aloof and refuse such attire.
35
No swaying the throngs person by person;
None says: Comediscern this my nature within!
Now men rise together, each favors his friends,
why do you stand alone_
why not listen to me?
36
I trust sages before us for moderate judgment,
my heart swelled in torment, it had come now to this.
I crossed Xiang and Yuan, faring on southward,
reached Zhong-huaKing Shun, to state him my case:
37
King Q i had Nine Stanzas and the Nine Songs
extreme in wild pleasures, he did as he pleased.
He was heedless of troubles, made no plans for the morrow,
whereby the five sons brought strife to his house.4
38
Yi recklessly ventured, he was lavish in hunts,
he also loved shooting the great foxes.
Such turbulent wickedness rarely ends well:
and Han Zhuo was lusting to seize his bride.5
39
Guo Ao garbed himself in the stiffened leather;
he followed his wants, he failed to forbear.
He lost himself daily in wild pleasures,
whereby his own head was toppled and fell.6
3Gun was a son of Gao Yang, who was charged by Sage-King Yao with controlling the great flood.
When he failed, he was put to death and his body left on Mount Yu. According to one tradition, he
was transformed into a bear.
4King Qi was the son of Great Yu, who was in turn the son of Gun and the founder of the Xia Dy
nasty. He brought back "The Nine Songs" from Heaven.
5Yi the Archer seized the kingship after King Qi's death, but was subsequently killed by his retainer
Han Zhuo.
6Guo Ao was a son of Han Zhuo and Yi the Archer's stolen bride. He was killed by Shao Gang, who
restored the Xia Dynasty.
40
X ias Jie was steadfast in his misdeeds,
in pursuit of these he met with his doom.
Shangs Zhowthe Lord Xin, minced men to stew,
whereby Yinss great lineage could not last long.7
41
Yu the Mighty was stern, respectful and godly;8
the right way was Zhous norm, it thus did not err.
They raised men of worth, rewarded the able,
they kept the straight line, they did not veer.
42
Sovereign Heaven is slanted in favor of none;
it discerns a mans virtues, puts helpers beside him.
When wisdom and sense do deeds that are splendid
they may then act their will in this land down below.
43
I scanned times before us, looked to times yet to come,
read the measures of men, and the ends of their plans
who found wanting in virtue may be put to use?
who found wanting in good may be still retained?
44
By the brink stands my body, I am in deaths peril,
I discern my first nature and still regret not.
Not judging the drillhole, they squared the peg
indeedfair men of old came to mince in a stew.
45
Sighs come from me often, the heart swells within,
sad that I and these times never will be matched.
I plucked sage and lotus to wipe away tears,
that soak my gowns folds in their streaming.
46
I knelt with robes open, thus stated my case,
having grasped so clearly what is central and right.
I teamed jade white dragons, rode the Bird that Hides Sky,
waiting on winds to fleetly fare upward.
7Jie was the last ruler of the Xia and notorious for his misrule. Zhow was the bad last ruler of the
Yin-Shang (see note to stanza 8).
8Great Yu, Gun's son, was the founder of the Xia.
Early China
47
At dawn I loosed wheel-block there by Cang-wu,
and by twilight I reached the Gardens of Air.9
I wished to bide a while by the windows of gods,
but swift was the sun and it soon would be dusk.
48
I bade sun-driver Xi-he to pause in her pace,
to stand off from Yan-zi and not to draw nigh.1
On and on stretched my road long it was and far,
I would go high and go low in this search that I made.
49
I watered my horses in the Pools of Xian,
and twisted the reins on the tree Fu-sang,
snapped a branch of the Ruo Tree to block out the sun,
I roamed freely the while and lingered there.2
50
Ahead went Wang Shu to speed on before me,
behind came Fei Lian he dashed in my train.3
Phoenix went first and warned of my coming,
Thunder Master told me that all was not set.
51
I bade my phoenixes mount up in flight,
to continue their going both by day and by night.
Then the whirlwinds massed, drawing together,
they marshaled cloud-rainbows came to withstand me.
52
A bewildering tumult, first apart, then agreeing,
and they streamed flashing colors high and then low.
I bade the God
s gatekeeper open the bar;
he stood blocking gateway and stared at me.
9Cang-wu was the mountain where Shun (Zhong-hua) lay buried. The "Gardens of A ir , Xuan-pu
or "Suspended Gardens,' was a section of the Kun-Iun Range and an abode of the Undying. The
name is also rendered with a homophone as "The Gardens of Mystery."
'Xi-he is the goddess who drives the chariot of the sun across the sky. Mount Yan-zi was suppos
edly located in the farthest extreme of the West, the point where the sun goes down. Thus the poet
is ordering the sun not to set.
2The sun rises from Sunrise Gorge, and in its rising is bathed in the Pools of Xian, coming out at last
at the base of the Fu-sang Tree. The Ruo Tree is at the opposite extreme of the world, the point where
the sun goes in.
3Wang Shu was the driver of the moon; Fei Lian the god of winds.
53
The moment grew dimmer, light soon would be done,
I tied signs in orchids, standing there long.
An age foul and murky cannot tell things apart;
it loves to block beauty from malice and spite.
54
At dawn I set to fare across the White Waters,
I climbed Mount Lang-feng, there tethered my horses.4
All at once I looked back, my tears were streaming,
sad that the high hill lacked any woman.
55
At once I went roaming to the Palace of Spring,5
I broke sprays of garnet to add to my pendants.
Before the blooms glory had fallen away,
I would seek a woman below to whom I might give them.6
56
Feng Long I bade to go riding the clouds,
to seek out Fu-fei down where she dwells.7
I took pendant-sash, I tied there a message,
and bade Lady Mumbler act as my envoy.
57
A bewildering tumult, first apart, then agreeing,
she suddenly balked, she could not be swayed.
She went twilights to lodge at Farthest-of-Rocks,
and at dawn bathed her hair in Wei-ban Stream.8
58
She presumed on her beauty, she was scornful and proud,
in wild pleasures daily she wantonly strayed.
Though beautiful truly, she lacked right behavior
I let her go then, I sought for another.
4Both White Waters and Mount Lang-feng are sections of the Kun-lun Range.
5The Palace of Spring belonged to the Emperor of the East, and thus was on the other side of the
world from Kun-lun.
6//Woman below" may suggest a woman who dwells on Earth, as opposed to the woman of Heaven
whom he could not reach. However, the phrase, as used in "The Nine Songs," suggests a water god
dess, as Fu-fei indeed was.
7Feng Long was the god of the clouds, or perhaps of thunder. Fu-fei was the goddess of the river
Luo.
8The goddess has apparently wandered to the Far West (in the river?}. The Farthest Rock was sup
posed to be in the extreme West, the spot from which the Ruo waters had their source. Wei-ban
Stream came off Mount Yan-zi, where the sun sets (see stanza 48).
Early China
59
I let my gaze sweep over all the worlds ends,
I roamed throughout Sky, then I came down.
I viewed the surging crest of a terrace of onyx,
there saw a rare woman, the You_Song
s daughter.9
60
I bade the venom-owl make match between us,
and the venom-owl told me she was not fair.
Early summers dove-cock went away singing,
and I still loathe its petty wiles.
61
My heart then faltered, doubts overcame me,
I wanted to go myself; it was not allowed.
Already the phoenix had given my troth gifts,
still I feared that Gao Xin had come before me.1
62
I wanted to alight far away, there was no place to halt
so I drifted the while and roamed at my ease.
If still not yet married to Shao-kang the Prince,
there remained the two Yao girls of the clan You-Yu.2
63
My envoy was feeble, my matchmaker bumbling;
I feared words to charm them would not hold fast.
An age foul and murky, it spites a mans worth,
it loves to block beauty, it acclaims what is ill.
64
Remote and far are the chambers of women
and the wise king also is not yet aware.

I keep feelings within me do not bring them forth,
yet how can I bear that it be thus forever?
65
I sought stalks of milfoil, and slips to cast lots,
and bade Holy Fen to divine the thing for me.
I said:
Two lovely beings must surely be matched;
whose fairness is steadfast that I may adore her?
9The You-Song (the chieftain clan of the Song tribe) once provided a wife, Jian-di, for Di-gao, from
which union came Jie, who was ancestor of the royal house of Shang.
^ a o Xin or Di-gao was the legendary emperor who married Jian-di, the "daughter of the You-Song."
2When Guo-ao still held the Xia throne, Shao-kang, the rightful prince, fled to the You-Yu, the chief
tain clan of Yu, whose ruler gave him his two daughters in marriage.
66
KConsider the wide sweep of these Nine Domains
can it be only here that a woman be found?
He said
Undertake to fare far be not full of doubts
none who seeks beauty would let you slip by.
67
Is there any place lacking in plants of sweet fragrance?
why must you cherish your former abode?
This age is a dark one, eyes are dazzled and blinded,
no man can discern our good or our bad.
68
What men love and loathe is never the same
only these men of faction alone stand apart.
Each person wears mugwort, stuffed in their waists,
they declare that the orchid may never be strung.
69
If in judgment of plants they still cannot grasp it,
can they ever be right on the beauty of gems?
They seek shit and mire to stuff their sachets,
and say that Shens pepper lacks any sweet smell.
70
I wished to follow Holy Fens lot of good fortune,
yet still my heart faltered, doubts overcame me.
The Shaman Xian would descend in the twilight,3
I clasped pepper and rice to beseech him.
71
The gods blotted sky, their full hosts descending,
spirit vassals of Many Doubts joined to go greet them.4
In a light-burst the Sovereign sent forth his spirit,
giving me word of a lucky outcome.
72
He said
Undertake to fare high and then to fare low,
find one who agrees with the yardstick and square.
Yu the Mighty was stern he sought one who matched him
he held to Gao Yao as one able to suit him.5
3For Shaman Xian, see the note to stanza ^9.
4Many Doubts (literally, "Nine Doubts," the number nine being used commonly for a vague "many")
was the range in the Far South where Shun was supposedly buried.
sFor Yu, see the note to stanza 41. Gao Yao served as minister of Great Yu in the beginning of the
Xia,
172
Early China
73
If ones nature within loves what is fair,
what need to make use of matchmaker or envoy?
Yue held an earth-ram upon Fus cliff
Wu-diug employed him and did not doubt.6
74
Once there was Lii Wang who swung a butchers knife,
yet he met Zhous King Wen and he was raised up.7
And there was Ning Qi, a singer of songs;
Huan of Qi heard him he served as the helper.8
75
Yet act now before the year grows too late,
now while the season has not yet passed.
I fear only cries early from summers nightjar,
making all plants lose their sweet scent.
76
My pendants of garnet, how they dangle down from me
yet the throngs would dim them, cover them up.
These men of faction are wanting in faith,
I fear their malice, that they will break them.
77
The times are in tumult, ever transforming
how then may a man linger here long?
Orchid, angelica change they become sweet no more;
iris, sweet clover alter, they turn into straw.
78
These plants that smelled sweet in days gone by
have now become nothing but stinking weeds.
Can there be any reason other than this?
the harm that is worked by no love for the fair.
79
I once thought that orchid could be steadfast
it bore me no fruit, it was all show.
Forsaking its beauty, it followed the common
it wrongly is ranked in the hosts of sweet scent.
6The Shang king Wu-Ding dreamed of someone suited to be his minister, and found him as a con
vict or corvee laborer named Yue, making rammed-earth ramparts on Fu Cliff, hence called Fu Yue.
7Lii Wang originally worked as a butcher, then became a fisherman; in his old age he was discov
ered by King Wen of the Zhou and made his minister.
8Ning Q i was originally a petty merchant who would sing as he rapped the horns of his buffalo.
Duke Huan of Qi heard him and made him an aide.
80
Pepper is master of fawning, it is swaggering, reckless,
only mock-pepper stuffs sachets hung from waists.
It pressed hard to advance, it struggled for favor,
what sweet scent remains that is able to spread?
81
Truly, ways of these times are willful and loose,
who now is able to avoid being changed?
Look on orchid and pepper, see them like this
will less be true of river rush and wintergreen?
82
Only these my own pendants are still to be prized;
forsaken is loveliness, and I come to this.
Yet their sweet scent spreads, it is not diminished,
an aroma that even now has still not abated.
83
In their blendings balance I take my delight,
I will drift and will roam, seeking the woman.
And while such adornment is still in its glory,
I will range widely looking, both high and low.
84
Since Holy Fen told me my fortunate lot
I will choose a luck-day, and I will set out.
I snap sprays of garnet to serve as my viands,
fine garnet meal will serve as my fare.
85
For me have been hitched those dragons that fly,
mixed onyx and ivory serve as my coach.
How can a mind set apart be ever like others?
I will go away far, keep myself removed.
86
I bent my way round at Kun-lun Mountain,
long and far was the road, there I ranged widely.
I raised my cloud-rainbows, dimming and darkening,
jade phoenix chimes rang with a jingling voice.
87
At dawn I loosed the wheel-block at Ford-of-the-Sky,9
by twilight I came to the ends of the west.
Phoenix spread its wings, and bore up my banners,
high aloft it soared, its wingbeats were steady.
9The Ford of Sky is an asterism, the narrowest point in the M ilky Way.
Early China
88
All at once I was faring across Drifting Sands,1

I went down the Red Waters, there took my ease.2
I signaled the dragons to make me a bridge,
I called to Wests Sovereign to take me across.
89
Long and far was the road, it was filled with perils,
I passed word to my hosts: drive straight and attend me.
I made way to Mount Bu-zhou there turned to the left,3
toward the Sea of the West, my appointed goal.
90
Then I massed all my chariots, a thousand strong,
jade hubs lined even, we galloped together.
I hitched my eight dragons, heaving and coiling,
and bore my cloud banners streaming behind.
91
I then quelled my will and paused in my pace;
the gods galloped high far to the distance,
they were playing Nine Songs and dancing the Shao
4
making use of this day to take their delight.
92
I was mounting aloft to such dazzling splendor
all at once I glanced down to my homeland of old.
My driver grew sad, my horses felt care,
they flexed looking backward and would not go on.
The Ending Song

It is done now forever!
in all the kingdom there is no man, no man who knows me,
then why should I care for that city, my home?
Since no one can join me in making good rule,
I will go off to seek where Peng and Xian dwell.
1The Drifting Sands is a general term for,the imagined terrors of the northwestern deserts.
2The Red Waters were a river that flowed off the Kun-lun Range.
3Mount Bu-zhou is a mythical mountain in the Far West.
4Ancient ceremonial music and dance. These "Nine Songs" are legendary and not the shamanistic
hymns given earlier.
The C/71/-C/Tradition
Journeys Heavenly and Earthly

David Hawkes, a distinguished scholar of the "Lyrics of Chu," distin
guishes two basic components in works following the tradition of "The
Nine Songs" and the Li Sao. One of these he calls "tristia," in which
the poet complains of his unhappiness, how he has been wronged or misjudged.
The second component Hawkes calls "itineraria," the wanderings, in which the
poet makes the circuit of the universe (though in "The Nine Songs, the circuit
seems more restricted to the Xiao-Xiang River region). In many ways, all Chinese
travel literature and landscape writing can be traced to the heavenly wanderings
of the Li Sao. But the same model is no less true of spiritual journeys than of f3hysical ones. The shaman's spirit journey through the heavens was closely related to
the spirit journeys that attracted various kinds of Daoist adepts. "Far Roaming," in
cluded in the "Lyrics of Chu/' is a Han Daoist transformation of the Li Sao,s heav
enly journey.
"Far Roaming" includes many of the deities and fantastic locales of the Li Sao,
but its poetic space is also populated by famous adepts who, by various techniques
of breath control, diet, and alchemy, had undergone a metamorphosis and joined
the Undying, also referred to as the Genuine Men and the feathered men. Such fig
ures include the Master of Red Pine, the historical Han Zhong (who sought the West
ern Isles of the Undying for the First Emperor of Qin), and Qiao the Prince (Wangzi Qiao). In addition to the adepts themselves, the poem makes extensive use of the
jargon of Daoist Huang-Lao's techniques of metamorphosis.
Far Roaming
I deplored the worlds ways, they hampered and hemmed me,
I wished to rise lightly, go roaming afar.
Yet this flesh was crude stuff, I had not the means,
what carriage would bear me floating up and away?
I was drowning in filth, soiled by things rotting,
locked lonely in torment with no one to tell.
In the night I tossed restless, I did not sleep,
a fretfulness of soul that lasted to dawn.
O f Earth and Heaven I thought on the endlessness,
I mourned for mans life and its lasting travail.
Early China
I never would reach to those who are gone,

I never would learn of those who will come.
W ith faltering pace, thoughts turned to things far,
in anguish and woe my cares long continued.
Turbulent fancies, reckless and rash,
the heart in its gloom enlarged sorrows store.
Spirit fled in a flash, it did not turn back;
outer form like dead wood remained there alone.
I reflected within upon the best conduct,
I sought out the source from which comes Right Breath.
In a void that is still there was placid delight,
then calm in not-acting, I found myself there.
I had heard of Red Pine, pure of all dirt,
I wished for the influence of the model he left.
I prized fine Attainments of the Genuine Men,
I esteemed the Undying reached in ages gone by.
They went off with Change, no longer were seen,
their names glory is known, each day spreading more.
A marvel, how Fu Yue found his lodging in stars;1
and I envied Han Zhong, who attained to the One.
Outer forms grew inert, they receded still farther,
they departed mens throngs held aloof and withdrawn.
Through Breaths transformations they rose to the heights,
fleet spirits racing wraithlike and eerie.
Now and then in a blur we can see them afar,
incandescent essences flitting to and fro.
They broke from dust billowing, struck upon wonder,
never turned back to those cities once home.
Shunning all ills, they felt terror no more,
in their ages none knew where they had gone.
I feared Heavens seasons changing succession,
Holy Lights all ablaze and voyaging west.
Faint frosts descend, sinking down under,
alas, the sweet plants leaf-stripped too soon.
I stroll carefree the while, go rambling freely,
I had spent long years with nothing achieved.
Who could share my delight in the sweetness remaining?
I faced the dawn winds and let feelings spread free.
Yue, who in the Li Sao was discovered in a labor gang by the Shang king Wu-ding and made
his minister, was supposed to have mastered the Way and taken a place among the stars.
177
Remote was Gao-yang, too faint in the distance

2
from whom would I take my model?
Reprise
Springs and autumns are fleeting, they do not abide,
how could I long linger in the place I once dwelled?
I could not catch the Yellow Emperor and cling to him,
but Qiao the Prince I would follow to frisk and be merry.
I dined on Six Breaths, I drank magic dew
in my mouth I swished sun-glow, I chewed dawns rosy clouds.
I preserved the pristineness of the light of the soul,
essential Breaths entered, the crude and foul fled.
I
I
I
I
blew with the south wind I roamed along with it,

came to South Chao, it was there that I rested.
met Qiao the Prince and greeted him gravely,
queried him on balancing Universal Breath.
He said,
The Way can be accepted;
it cannot be passed on.
So small, nothing within it
so large, has no limit.
Spare your soul bewilderment
it comes in its own course.
Universal Breath augments spirit,
at midnight keep it with you.
Be empty to attend on it,
prior to not-acting.
All categories thus complete,
this is Attainments Gateway.
What I heard was much treasured, I then set to go,
and all at once I was on my way.
Nigh to the feathered men on Cinnabar Hill,
I lingered in that olden land of the Undying.
At dawn I washed my hair in Sun Gorges clefts
at twilight, dried my body beneath its nine suns.
I sucked subtle distillates from the cascades,
clasped to bosom the sparklings of diamonds.
Jade complexion grew ruddy, my face began to glow,
with essence strained pure, I first felt my vigor.
All flesh-firmness melted, I began to grow pliant
the spirit grew slender, moved with wanton abandon.
2Gao-yang was the mythical king to whom the speaker of the Li Sao traced his ancestry.
178
Early China
I admired the blazing Attainment of southern lands,

found fair winter flowering of cassia trees.
Hills bleak and barren with no beasts there;
moors silent and gloomy, without men.
I bore up my several souls, I climbed to rose wisps,
and by floating clouds hidden I fared on above.
I charged Heavens gatekeeper to open the bar
he pushed back the gates and stared at me.
I called on Feng Long, made him guide the way,3
I asked where was lodged the gods palace of stars.
At Tiered Rays I alighted, I went in the Gods precincts,
pushed on to Xun-shi
4 viewed the Clear Citadel.
At dawn I loosed wheel-block in the Sacred Yard
and by twilight I hung above Yu-wei-lii Hill.
Then I massed all my chariots, a thousand strong,
in majestic tumult we galloped together.
I hitched my eight dragons, heaving and coiling,
and bore my cloud banners streaming behind.
Upright bright pennons, bearing cock-rainbows
mixed of all colors, dazzling, flashing.
Up sprung the yoke team, low, then aloft,
the trace dragons coiled, they burst headlong forward.
A jumble of riders, mixed in confusion,
a motley surging cavalcade, moving together.
I myself seized the reins, I held the whip straight,
for we soon were to pass the place of Gou Mang.5
We traversed Tai-hao then bent to the right
6
Ahead went Fei Lian to open the path.7
In glow of the sunlight before the full rays,
we crossed Heavens Pool and forged straight ahead.
,1
The Wind-Earl sped for me, taking the van,

purged billowing dust it was clear and cool.
Phoenix spread wings and bore up my banners,
I met with Ru-shou where the West's Sovereign dwells.8
3Feng Long, the god of clouds or thunder, was employed by the speaker of the Li Sao to make a
match with Fu-fei.
4Xun-shi was a star near the Dipper; it figures often in heavenly flights.
5Gou Mang was the tutelary god of the East.
6Tai-hao was the Emperor of the East.
7Fei Lian was a wind god, who also appears in the heavenly flight in the Li Sao.
8Ru-shou was one of the tutelary gods of the West.
179
I snatched up a comet to serve as my standard,

I raised Dippers handle to serve as my sign.
Chaotic, pellmell, we rose and dipped down,
we swam flowing waves of fog-tendrils windstruck.
But the moment grew dimmer, all darkened in shadow,
I called on Black Tortoise to dash in my train.9
Behind went Wen Chang, in charge of the columns,1
all the gods stood in order, the wheelhubs were even.
The road kept on going, it was long and far,
I slowed, pausing in pace and crossed up on high.
To my left the Rain Master I made wait upon me,
to my right was Lord Thunder, who served as my guard.
I wished to cross from the world and forget to return,
my fancies ran wild, were reckless and rash.
I felt merry within, and I found myself fair,
I sought pleasure the while, and wanton delight.
I fared through blue clouds, I swam swirling currents,
all at once I glanced down to my homeland of old.
My driver felt care, my heart grew sad,
the outer horses looked back and would not go on.
I longed for those I had known, I imagined their forms,
I heaved a great sigh and wiped away tears.
Adrift for amusement I rose to far places,
and then quelled my will and gave myself ease.
Toward the Blazing God I galloped straight forward,
ready to journey to Southern Doubts Mountains.
I viewed seething blurs beyond the worlds bounds,
I streamed through the swirling wending my way.
Zhu Rong gave the warning, he cleared out my path,
I passed word to Phoenix, encountered Fu-fei.
They performed Pool of X ian
played Receiving Cloud
the two maidens attended

the Nine Shao
were sung
I had Xiangs Goddess strike the great harp,
I bade the Sea Lord to have Ping Yi dance.
Purple krakens and hydras came forward together,
forms wriggling, writhing, they slithered along.
Iris Rainbow, fair and frail, increasing her spirals,
phoenixes burst into flight, flew soaring in circles.
9BIack Tortoise, Xuan-wu, occupied the northern position in the Zodiac.
^ e n Chang was a constellation of six stars, later taken as being in charge of government offices.
Early China
A deluge of music that spread without limit,

then I went on my way and tarried a while.
Slow the pace, but together, we galloped ahead
to the far and last limit, to the Gateway of Cold.
I overtook fleet wind at the Pure Source of Waters,
I had Zhuan Xu follow across the tiered ice.2
By a bypath I passed the Black God of Dark,
I rode Sky
s Interstices, turned to look back.
I called to the Demiurge had him appear,
and he took the lead for me upon the flat road.
I went back and forth through the worlds four bounds,
and flowed all around the Six Enclosures.
Rising I reached the Lightning Crack,
then plunging I gazed on the Great Chasm.
Vertiginous depths below me where no land was,
a cavernous emptiness above where was no sky.
It flashed and flared where I looked, but I saw nothing,
a blurred rumble when I listened, but I heard nothing.
I passed beyond non-acting, I reached to the Clear,
the Very Beginning became my neighbor.
The first-century writer Si-ma Xiang-m's poetic exposition on "The Great ne
rep
resents the politicization of the heavenly journey, as Emperor Wu of Han is described
as the shaman adept who flies through the cosmos and finally passes "beyond." Em
peror Wu was a patron of elaborate shamanistic performances and had no doubt
heard many trance reports of the upper universe. In the Li Sao, the speaker was grad
ually transformed from the concerned liegeman into a figure of domineering power
who commands a turbulent cavalcade of divinities. It is that figure of power who
becomes the point of departure for Si-ma Xiang-ru's panegyric.
The most interesting question raised is whether the figure described in "The Great
One is a figure of panegyric or of hyperbolic satire. Certainly within the tradition
this vision of Emperor Wu has been interpreted as satire to warn the emperor against
the evils of excessive interest in the cult of the Undying. Whether the poetic expo
sition is to be taken as panegyric or satire is a question of the putative intention of
the author and of how one judges the values implicit in the textvalues of kingship
that are far removed from the Confucian vision of emperor as Chief Administrator
and Liaison Officer with Heaven. The ruler in "The Great neis a peculiar mix
ture of Chu shamanism, Huang-Lao Daoism, and Legalist absolutism. No doubt in
the original performance of a poetic exposition like "The Great O n e , the emperor
could beam with delight at the panegyric he heard, while the Confucian officers of
the court could smile no less at what they heard as a savage satire on the excesses
of the Huang-Lao Daoist quest for imperial transcendence.
2Zhuan Xu was the Emperor of the North.
181
Si-ma Xiang-ru ( 17 9 -117
B .C .),
The Great One
There was a Great One in this age,

he was here in the very heart of the land.
His dwelling filled thousands of miles,
but too paltry to hold him even a while.
Oppressed by this age's ways, crimping and curbing,
he rose lightly aloft and traveled afar.
He bore crimson banners, his device, the pale rainbow,
he carried cloud vapors floating above him.
He raised a tall shaft of golden vapors,
bound round with glowing hung as bright bangles.
The star Xun-shi dangled, strung as a tassle
3
behind comets trailed, floating as streamers.
Pulsing and fluttering, cascading upward,
throbbing and quivering, those waving undulations.
He snatched the Skys Pike-star to serve as his pennant,
wound fractured rainbows to serve as haft-wrappings.
The red grew remote, all was murky and purple,
wind blasts gushed forth, clouds went floating.
He drove an ivory car with winged dragons,
heaving and slithering,
teamed scarlet serpents and blue basilisks,
wriggling and writhing.
Upward and downward flexed straining straightened necks,
they bounded flaunting,
sinuously spiralling humped bristling loping legs bent under,
and arced away swaying.
Rearing and bucking head-tossing they balked,
and faltered unbudging,
then broke loose unbridled amok they reared rampant
in towering tangles.
Jerking forward and back, eyes rolling tongues lolling,
slackening, they slithered,.
then twined together cascading upward they boldly bolted
gripping and grappling.
Wound coiling togetherroaring and bellowingthey alighted
and cleaved to the path,
then soared aloft buzzing and bounding burst upward
dashing ahead in a frenzy.
W ith a whoosh and a sizzling crackle
in flares they arrived, like lightning bolts passing,
3Cf. note 4, p. 179.
182
Early China
in a flash all fogs were gone,

bursting open, clouds dissolved.
Sheared obliquely past Shao-yang, climbed to High Dark,
it was the Hallowed Man that He was then seeking.
Bending round patches of dark, He wheeled to the right,
fared straight across the Cascade and directly on eastward.
He mustered all Spirits Assembled he selected among them,
He enlisted a god-band at the star Quivering Rays.
He bade the Five Emperors lead ahead on the way,
sent the Supreme One back, had Ling-yang follow attending.
To his left, the Dark Spirit, to his rightQian-lei, Demiurge,
ahead was the sacred bird Chang-li, behind, Summer-burgeoning.
Zheng Bo-qiao was his liegeman, Xian-men served him,
and He summoned Qi-bo to be his Lord Druggist.
The Souths Lord, Zhu-rong, warned to empty his path,
clearing murky miasmas, only then He fared onward.
I have massed all my chariots ten thousand strong,
I marshal cloud-canopies, lift floriate banners.
I bid Gou Mang, Easts Prince, to lead the procession,
I am soon to set off for the Mountain Nan-xi.
I fare past Sage-King Yao on the Exalted Hill,
go on by Sage-King Shun in the Many Doubts Range.
My hosts, a deep deluge, all intermingled,
a bustling clamorous tumult, we gallop side by side.
A frenzied turbulence tangled, bumping and dragging,
a surging and boundless swill, cascading spills forward.
Rallied ranks and rows swarming, teeming the throngs,
then spewing strewn multitudes, all scrambled about.
My path entered Thunder-house, deepset its rumblings,
then out into Wraith Gorge, of sheer looming crags.
I beheld the worlds Eight Stays, viewed all in the Encircling Seas,
I crossed back over Nine Channels, I passed the Five Rivers.
I dealt with the Blazing Fires, I floated on Ruos waters,
I sailed past the Floating Isles, I fared on Flowing Sands.
At Cong-ji I rested, sported at the source of all waters,
bade Holy Crone play the harp, had Ping-yi dance for me.
But the moment grew dim and shadowed, dusky and turbulent,
I called Ping-yi to slay Wind-Earl, and flog the Rain Master.
I gazed west to Kun-lun, it was murky and vague,
and galloped straight thither across San-wei Mountain.
I pushed Gates of Sky open, I went in the Gods palace,
I seized his Jade Maidens and took them back with me.
We climbed Lang-feng Mountain, gathered there afar,
183
then as birds soared aloft and stopped all together.

We tarried sweeping around Shadow Mountain, in spiralling curves,
for today I would behold the Wests Queen Mother.
Her hoary white head bears ornaments, she dwells in a cave,
blessed to have the bird Three-Foot to be her messenger.
As she does so I must live forever and never die,
even ten thousand ages would not be enough to give joy.
I turned my carriage and went back,
my way went right over Mount Bu-zhou,
and we joined for a feast in the Hidden City.
We sucked primal liquids we dined on dawn clouds,
we chewed caps of asphodel, nibbled jasper blooms.
Facing up I fared forward, I set forth on high,
my hosts through huge space wended above.
We pierced through the flashes of light down below,
we waded through Rain Masters streaming downpour.
I sped the lead carriage in a lengthy dive,
I left fogs behind me, I raced off afar.
I was pressed by this realm, by its narrow constraints,
drew away with slowing pace from the margins of North.
I left my massed riders at the Purple Towers,
I lurched ahead speeding to Gates of the Cold.
Below were sheer heights, all earth was gone,
above was huge hollowness and no heavens.
Vision blurred and was dazzled, sight was lost,
listening was indistinct hearing was lost.
And I rode on that Blankness I passed far above,
beyond lack of others I endured Alone.
The heavenly journey became important in the tradition of classical poetry (shi),
though as a shorter form it tended to treat the motif less fully, and eventually more
formulaically.
Ruan Ji
(a .d .
210 -26 3)Songs of My Cares LXVIII
I looked out north on the Gorge of Dry Dark,

then westward I went to visit Shao-ren.
I peered round to Sky
s Ford in the distance
a rashness uncurbed was my hearts delight.
A shimmering wisp was Life and Deaths gate,
roam there once and you will not seek it again.
Then I happened to meet with the dawn-wind hawk
and rode it in flight to the southern groves.
In the Pole-Stars incandescent floods
184
Early China
I sped instantly, indulging my most wanton will.

I repose at a feast in the Pure Citadel
who now can stop me from leaving the world?
The heavenly journey is closely related to the development of Chinese landscape

literature. Visits to the great mountains of China, with their Buddhist monasteries
and Daoist covens, represented a process of physical struggle and spiritual attain
ment that found the most natural form of representation in the tradition of the heav
enly journey. In the following poetic exposition by Sun Chuo, the archaic formulaic
phrases and the litany of deities and fantastic places are gone, yet the spirit journey
upward into light remains.
Sun Chuo (3 14 -3 7 1)Wandering to the Tian-tai Mountains

The Tian-tai Mountains may well be the most divine and outstanding of the
great mountains. What the isles Fang-zhang and Peng-lai are to those who
fare upon the sea,4 the Si-ming Cluster and Tian-tai are to those who move
upon dry land. And all are places where the arcane sages wandered and were
transformed, lair and lodging for holy beings and the Undying.
Their configurations that loom to high limits, their fine and fortunate
lovelinessbear all the costly bounty of mountains and seas, include all the
most breathtaking beauties of mortal men and gods.
The cause for such mountains not being ranked among the Five Great
Peaks and for omission of their mention in surviving classics must surely be
that they are situated in such a dark recess of the world, and that the road
thither is so long and so hard to find. Some cast their reflections inverted
into the dark deeps; others ensconce their peaks among a thousand other
crests.
One begins by passing along goblin paths, until at last one strides through
a realm without men. Not many men alive in an age can scale themand no
prince has a way to perform sacrifices there. Thus notice of them is absent
in common texts, and their name is remarked only in accounts of things rare.
Even soshould we think it for nothing that there is such an abundance of
pictures and illustrations of them?
Unless a man gives up the world and practices the right Way, quitting
common grains and feeding on asphodel, he cannot lift off in lightness and
lodge there. Unless a man gives himself over to things remote and delves into
dark mysteries, unless he is someone utterly sincere and in contact with the
godshe can never envision that remote place and hold it fast.
It was for this reason that I sent my spirit rushing and worked my
thoughts, sang by day and stayed waking by night. And in the interval of a
nod, it was as if I had gone up the mountain more than once. Now I will
4Fang-zhang and Peng-lai were two of the three isles of the Undying, said to be located in the East
ern Ocean.
untie these bands of an officers cap to lodge forever on these crests. I can
not resist the full force of such visions and spontaneous chanting, so let me
here make a show of fine phrases to disperse these concerns.
Utter Void, hollow magnitudes, lacking all limit,
there worked elusive presence: What Is Naturally So.
It liquefied and formed the streams and channels;
it hardened and formed the mountains and knolls.
Ah, crests of Tian-tai are rare things upraised,
in truth braced and bolstered by light of the gods.
It shadows the Herder star with glowing peaks,
lodged in Yue the Holy for well-set foundation.
Its roots knit more widely than Mounts Hua or Dai,
it points upward higher than Many Doubts Range.
It fulfills Tangs Canons phrase: Peer of the Heavens
it equals Zhous Poems words looming to limits.
Remote are these tracts, far flung,
secret recesses well sequestered.
Stuck within sensesshortsighted wisdom goes not thither;
since paths run out, those who would go never can know it.
I scorn such summer bugs, who doubt there is ice,
I hold light wings straight, I long to mount upward.
No true pattern is hidden or fails to be shown
two wonders divulged show me the signs:
there is Redwall, russet-cloud rising, set as my marker
5
there is the Cascade, stream in flight defining the way.
Spying these witnesses of holy things, I then fared ahead,
and all of a sudden I was off on my way.
I sought men with feathers on cinnabar hills,
I searched the never dying in the hallowed yards.
If only I might climb to Tian-tais crest,
what craving then would be left for Tiered Walls Mountain.6
Unbound from common yearnings of earthly tracts,
I set free noble passions for passing beyond.
I donned a wool tunic, somber and dark,
and brandished staff of metal, clinking along.
I pushed through thickets, dense and concealing,
I scaled sheer escarpments looming above me.
I waded the You Creek, went straight on ahead,
left five borders behind me and fared swiftly forward.
5One of Tian-tai's peaks.
6Tiered Walls was the highest peak of the fabled Kun-Iun Range in the Far West.
Early China
I strode over arch of a Sky-Hung Walkway,7

looked down ten thousand yards lost in its blackness;
I trod upon mosses of slippery rock,
clung to the Azure Screen that stands like a wall.
I clutched the long vines from low-bending boughs
grasped stems hung in air from the wild grape vines.
Though this one time I risk the rim of the hall,5,8
I will be here forever in life everlasting.
The hearts faith must match the Mystery Hidden,
then one paces steep perils and paths grow more smooth.
I succeeded surmounting its nine sharp bends,
and the trail wound away, long and on through.
I let eyes and ears roam in those luminous magnitudes,
I let slow steps saunter wherever they would.
I smoothed back frail grasses, lush and so green,
took shade by tall pines spread grandly above.
I viewed luan birds soaring, bending their wings,
heard phoenixes sing with melodious tones.
I crossed Holy Creek and washed myself there,
drew far from the fancies that troubled my heart.
The last dust was purged in those swirling currents,9
I dispelled the Five Coverings that move with us blinding.1
I pursued the lost tracks of Fu X i and Shen Nong,2
walked in the obscure footprints of Lao-zi and Lao-lai-zi.3
I scaled heights and descended, spending two nights,
and at last reached the great citadel of the Undying.
Paired towers, thrust in clouds, lined the road,
heaven-touching jasper terraces hung there suspended.
Vermilion turrets appeared in fragments through the forests,
halls of jade, revealed and blocked in hills lofty folds.
Involute bands of scarlet cloud hovered in lattices,
shimmering beams of the brilliant sun passed in the grillwork.
Eight cassias rise somber and dense, last through the frost,
five-budded asphodels, bursting with spore, spread open with dawn.
Gentle breeze hoarded scent in sunlit forests.
H'his is the famous stone bridge of Mount Tian-tai.
8A figure for peril.
9Although the dust here might be easily taken as merely worldly contamination, the Li Shan com
mentary identifies it as the "six forms of dust" that bring impurity to the soul: the five senses as well
as the activities of mind.
'The "Five Coverings" are five vices lust, wrath, sloth, levity, and uncertaintythat hinder Bud
dhist spiritual progress.
2Two sages of remote antiquity.
3Two of the early sages of Daoism.
sweet fountains spurted trickles in shadowy channels.

The boughless Jian Tree lost its shadow a thousand yards high
4
the tree of chalcedony twinkled and sparkled dangling pearls.
Qiao the Prince harnessed his crane and dashed to the heavens
5
A Buddhist arhat, with flying staff, strutted through void.
Spirit-changes were racing, with lightning swiftness,
all at once leaving Presence and entering Absence.
Then when I finished my gaze all around,
my body grew tranquil, my heart was serene.
Whatever hurts horses had been left behind/
all worldly problems here were forsaken.
Always the blade fell into empty spaces,
the ox in my eyes was never entire.7
I focused my thoughts on the hidden cliffs,
sang out clearly beside the long stream.
Now Xi-he brought the sun just overhead,
and drifting vapors lifted on high.
Dharma drums boomed, their echoes resounded,
crowds of scents wafted, their smoke ascending.
Then I encountered august Heaven,
and next there gathered the Undying Hosts.
Oils of purple-black jade were ladled out,
I imbibed the fountains of the Flower Pool.
Beyond-Image doctrines dissolved my ignorance
8
the texts on Non-Birth opened my heart.9
I realize that abandoning Presence is not yet complete,
grasp that the journey to Absence has its gaps.
I efface the emptiness of appearances, merge all traces,
suddenly reach Presence and grasp the mystery.
I expound how these two names have a common source,
melt the Three Flags in the unity of Absence.1
Indulging in the joys of talk the whole day through
equals perfect silence of not speaking.
I blur the thousands of images by dark observation,
my body, insensate, identical with What Is Naturally So.
4A mythical tree at the Earth's center on which the high gods rise and descend.
5Qiao the Prince was an adept who became one of the Undying.
6From a parable in the Zhuang-zi in which a boy herding horses was asked by the Yellow Emperor
about ruling the world; he responded that one need only get rid of what hurts the horses.
7Echoing the parable of Butcher Ding in the Zhuang-zi. Butcher Ding never needed to sharpen his
knife because his skill was such that the blade moved only through the "empty spaces,
8Neo-Daoist doctrine.
9The Buddhist principle of transcending the cycles of rebirth.
^ h e "Three Flags" was Buddhist jargon for three aspects of spiritual experience: appearance, empti
ness, and contemplation. Their dissolution into Neo-Daoist Absence suggests not so much the vic
tory of Neo-Daoism as the syncretism that pervades the entire poetic exposition.
Early China
The Encounter with the Goddess

Also out of the "Lyrics of Chu" grew poetic expositions on encounters with the god
dess. The two earliest of these, "The Poetic Exposition on Gao-tang" and "The God
dess/7are attributed to Song Yu, who was supposed to have been a follower of Qu
Yuan (he appears elsewhere as an eloquent orator in the Northern manner). These
two poetic expositions are certainly not by Song Yu; rather, they seem to be Han
works attributed to Song Yu because he is the speaker in the frame. Song Yu was a
very popular figure in the frame stories in which poetic expositions were set.
The prose frame of "The Poetic Exposition on Gao-tang" gives the most famous
version of the encounter with the goddess, who comes as an apparition to the King
of Chu and spends the night with him. On leaving, she claims to be the "clouds and
rain," which gradually became a poetic term for sexual intercourse. The main body
of the poetic exposition, a description of Gao-tang, is omitted below.
Song Yu (attributed), The Poetic Exposition on Gao-tang

(opening)
Once upon a time King Xiang of Chu visited the high terrace at Yun-meng
with Song Yu, when he gazed off toward the lodge of Gao-tang. Above
it was a mass of cloudy vapors, first rising up towering, then suddenlychanging its aspect, so that in a moment there were endless transfor
mations.
And the king asked Song Yu, What vapor is that? Whereupon Song
Yu replied, That is what they call the clouds of dawn. And again the
king: What is meant by the clouds of dawn
?
Song Yu: Once upon a time one of the kings before you visited Gaotang. He grew weary and lay down to rest during the daytime. He dreamed
then of a woman, who said to him, (I am the Maiden of Wu Mountain and
am a sojourner here at Gao-tang. When I heard that my lord was visiting
Gao-tang, I wanted to share a bed with you.Then the king enjoyed her.
And when she left, she said on parting, I am found on Wu Mountains sun
lit slope, on the steeps of the high hill. In the early morning I am the clouds
of dawn; in the evening I am the passing rain. So it is every morning and
every evening beneath the Terrace of Light. He watched for her in the early
morning, and it was as she had said. And he then built her a temple and
named it 'Clouds of Dawn.
The king then saidWhen these clouds of dawn first come out, what
do they look like? And Song Yu replied:
When they first come out,
they billow out like the perpendicular pine
when they come somewhat closer,
they glow like a comely maiden,
who lifts her sleeves to screen away sun
and gazes off toward the one she loves.
Then suddenly their aspect changes,

they are headlong as a four-horse team,
with feathered pennons raised.
Nipping like the wind,
chill like the rain
then the wind stopsthe rain clears,
and the clouds are nowhere to be found.
Although the king's encounter with the goddess was fleeting and only in dream, it
was at least consummated. "The Goddess" below represents a variation on the more
common conclusion in which something blocks consummation.
The Goddess
King Xiang of Chu and Song Yu were roaming along the shores of Yun-meng
Marsh, and the king ordered Song Yu to compose a poetic exposition about
what had happened at Gao-tang. That night, while Song Yu was asleep, he
dreamed that he himself met the goddess, whose appearance was very lovely.
Song Yu marveled at her, and the next day he told the kingwho then asked
What was your dream like? Song Yu answered:
The time was past twilight,
my spirit went into trance
and it seemed there was some cause for delight.
All excited I was and astir,
but I did not yet know what it meant.
Then colors appeared as a blur in my eyes,
at once I seemed to make something out.
I saw a single woman there,
a vision wondrous and rare.
As I slept she was in my dream
but on waking I saw her not.
Dazed I wasI felt no joy,
I was wretched, thwarted in will.
Then I calmed my heart and steadied my breath,
and saw once again what I had dreamed.
The king saidWhat did she look like? And Song Yu replied:
She was in full bloom, she was beautiful,
all things good were there within her.
Splendid she was and lovely,
impossible to fathom it all.
She was such as never had been in the past,
and never yet seen in this present age.
Her gestures were jewels, her postures gems,
that far surpass all adequate praise.
Early China
When she first was coming

there was a glow, like the sun just appearing
and shining on roofs and beams.
And when she had drawn somewhat closer
she glistened, like the bright moon
unfurling its rays.
Then in an instants interval
her fair, overwhelming visage appeared,
so glorious, like flowers in all their splendor,
so gentle, like jades polished sheen.
From her sped all a rainbows colors together,
I cannot completely describe them.
And if you stared at her too closely,
the eyes would be dazzled and blinded.
Such was her raiments splendor
meshes and lace and fabrics of every hue,
and opulence of patterns,
superb garments with finely worked colors,
shining in all directions.
She donned an embroidered gown,
wore vest and skirt,
whose thick cloth was not too short,
whose fine cloth was not too long.
W ith a stately grace she paced,
and the great hall was all aglow.
She suddenly changed her bearing,
stunning like the dragon that soars on cloud.
Sumptuous were the garments she wore,
her filmy attire was becoming.
Her hair was washed in orchid lotions,
she gave off the scent of pollia.
Pleasant and gentle of temper,
fitting to serve by ones side.
Meek and mild, her manner
amiable in the heart.
<
The king said, She was certainly magnificent. Why dont you compose a
poetic exposition for me on the topic? And Song Yu said:
Such beguiling beauty has the Goddess
she embodies rich adornments of Darkness and Light.
Clothed in filagree finery to be adored,
she resembles the kingfisher wide-spreading its wings.
A semblance without peer,
a beauty without bound.
Mao Qiang would hide behind her sleeves,
unequal to such standards;
X i Shi would cover her face,

by comparison lacking allure.
When close to her, so bewitching
that afar one is gazing ever.
The form of her frame is full of wonder,
she is fit to be mate for a lord.
When I stared at her, she filled my eyes
who is there to surpass her?
She gave my heart singular pleasure
and my joy in her knew no measure.
Encounters are seldom, her grace rarely given
I cannot recount it all.
No other man has beheld her
but my king may survey her appearance.
Her appearance was so imposing,
how can I speak it thoroughly?
Her face plump and full, firm it was and fair,
alabaster features enfolding a kindly glow.
Her eye-pupils glinting, sharp and radiant,
beaming and so beautiful, fair to look upon.
The brows delicate arching were moths ascending,
red lips glistening like cinnabar.
Her pale-fleshed torso was thick and firm,
her will was easy and generous, her body was relaxed.
Voluptuous charms achieved in stillness and seclusion,
now she moved in undulations within the human world.
A high hall was fitting to give room to her intent,
there she let herself go winging, open she was and free.
She stirred a fog of gauze in her stately paces,
the sound as she brushed the pavements was swish, swish
She looked toward my curtains, there let gaze linger,
like rolling of ripples rising to waves.
She lifted long sleeves, adjusted gowns folds,
and stood there wavering, not at her ease.
Then rapt and still, familiar and gentle,
her minds state serene, untroubled utterly.
Sometimes free and easy, then she barely moved
no full fathoming of her intent.
Her mood seemed intimate, but then was remote;
it seemed she was coining, but then she turned round.
She lifted my bedcurtain, entreated to serve me,
she wished to show fullness of hearts steadfast love.
W hat she felt was bright and pure, clear and unsullied,
but then in the end she found fault with me.
I delivered fine phrases, I tried to respond,
Early China
they had a sweet fragrance as of orchids.

Our spirits intertwined, passed back and forth,
our hearts were in bliss with pleasure and joy.
My soul reached through to her, but no tie was formed,
the psyche left lonely, with no ground to rest.
The assent that was in her was fated not to be;
a moan then rose from me, I sighed out in sorrow.
Faintly angered she colored, then mastered herself,
for never might any trespass upon her.
Then
her pendants and ornaments swaying,
jade phoenixes ringing,
she straightened her clothes
and composed her face.
t
She looked round to her tutor,
to duenna gave orders;
and our passion unconsummated,
she took leave to go.
She drew body away,
I could not approach her.
Then as if withdrawingbut not yet gone,
midway it seemed that she turned her head,
and barely glancing from eyes corner
a flash of spirit was conveyed;
and the wills bent broke through
I cannot manage the full recollection.
Before our loves were sundered,
my heart and soul collapsed in dread.
There was no chance to say the proper goodbyes,
and my words were left incomplete.
I wished her to grant me but a moment,
but the Goddess pleaded haste.
The heart twisted, the spirit knew pain,
I fell and had no support.
Then suddenly all turned black,
and I knew not where I was.
What I feel in the secrecy of the heart~
to whom could I speak it?
I shed tears in my wretchedness
and kept seeking her until the dawn.
Cao Zhi's "The Goddess of the Luois the most famous of a number of poetic ex
positions on encounters with the goddess written early in the third century. The par
ticular goddess is Fu-fei, rather than the goddess of W u Mountain.
193
Cao Zhi (192-232), The Goddess of the Luo

In the third year of the Huang-chu Reign, a .d . 222I had gone to the capi
tal to attend court, and on my return I forded the Luo River. There is an an
cient legend that the goddess of this river is named Fu-fei. Touched by Song
Yus response to what occurred between the King of Chu and the goddess,
I myself composed the following poetic exposition.
I was on my return from the capital
back to my eastern domain,
Yi Tower Peak lay behind me
as I passed over Huan-yuan H ill,
then made my. way through Tong Valley,
and crossed up over Mount Jing.
The sun was bending down to the west
my carriage slowed, the horses balked.
I unhitched my team by spikenard flats
and set them to graze on asphodel fields.
I rambled at ease in the Grove of Sunshine,
and my gaze swept over the River Luo.
At that moment,
my soul shuddered, my spirit was startled,
in an instant all thoughts were dispersed
looking down I could make out nothing
but I raised my head and beheld a marvel.
I spied a lovely woman there
at the side of the steep slope.
I then seized my driver and asked him Did you catch sight of her? Who
was she, to be so beguiling? And my driver answered me: They say that
the goddess of the Luo goes by the name of Fu-fei. It must have been her
that you saw. I would like to hear what she looked like.
Whereupon I told
him:
Her form
swept along lightly like startled swan,
was sinuous as the swimming dragon,
shimmering like sheen on falls chrysanthemums,
splendid like pines that swell in the spring.
She was a blur as when pale clouds form a film on the moon,
she floated through air as when winds send snow swirling.
When I gazed on her from afar,
she shone like the sun. through morning clouds mounting;
when nearer I viewed her.
194
she glowed like a lotus coming out of clear waves.

She achieved the mean between slender and stout,
between tall and short she met the right measure.
Her shoulders seemed hewn to perfection,
her waist was tight as if bound with white silk.
When she stretched her neck, the throat was fair,
and her radiant flesh was displayed,
unassisted by aromatic lotions
and with no powder lending it aid.
Her hair coiled high in lofty clouds,
and long brows formed delicate arches.
Scarlet lips on the outside luminous,
with shining teeth gleaming within.
Her bright eyes cast wondrous glances,
dimples stood close by her cheekbones.
A rare bearing, alluring, aloof,
her manner was poised, her body calm.
W ith tender feeling and lovely expression,
her speech was enthralling.
Her singular garb was unique in these times,
her figure well fitted what we find pictured.
She wore a gown of shimmering gauze,
in her ears were gems cut cunningly;
her head was adorned with feathers and jade,
and strung pearls made her body sparkle.
She wore patterned slippers for roaming far,
she trailed light sleeves of misty mesh.
Through a filmy aromatic haze of orchids
she paced, then paused on the fold of the hill.
All at once she broke loose, moving wild and free,
she skipped and cavorted here and there,
she leaned on bright streamers to her left,
to her right she was shadowed by cassia flags.
She bared bright wrists on those sacred shores,
and from seething shallows picked purple asphodel.
Thus my heart took delight in unblemished beauty;
the mind, swept away, could feel no cheer.
Lacking go-between to let our loves meet,
I trusted soft glance-waves to carry my words.
I wished my true feelings would be conveyed,
I untied my jade pendants to win her.
She possessed such beauty, she was truly fair,
familiar with custom, she knew the Poems
she raised jasper bangles to answer me,

and made signs to the deeps where we should meet.
For her I felt a single-minded passion,
but feared that this spright might beguile me.
Troth to Jiao-fu broken touched on my heart,2
I paused, deeply troubled, and doubted.
I composed my face and calmed my will,
I pled customs restraints and mastered myself.
Then the Luo Spirit too was much touched;
she lingered long in her hesitation.
The goddess nimbus came and went,
sometimes in shadow, sometimes bright.
Like a crane her light body stood poised and tall,
as if ready for flight, not yet taking wing.
She walked in billowing scents of pepper tree paths,
stepped through swirling odors of spikenard clumps.
Then came a long moan of eternal desire,
a voice that was sharp, and pained, and lingering on.
The hosts of spirits massed in their multitudes,
calling and whistling each to companions.
Some went frisking in the clear currents,
and some soared off by the goddess isles,
some went down to pick the bright pearls,
some went gathering kingfisher plumes
W ith the Xiang River Maidens they headed south,
or held hands with those girls who roam the Hans shores.
She sighed that the Pao-gua Star lacked a mate,
she sang how the Herder lived alone.
Her light blouse rose, it fluttered in breeze,
her long sleeves hid her, standing there long.
Her body, more fleet than ducks in their flight,
flitted past in a puff, like the goddess she was.
Her delicate footsteps swept over the waves,
and dust rose from her stockings of gauze.
To her motions there was no set pattern
as if apprehensive, then as if at her ease.
And her movements were hard to predict
she would seem to go off, then seem to turn back.
When she turned her gaze sidelong, the spirit flowed,
and light soaked those features so like jade.
She held back her wordsshe would not speak,
but her breath was like the aroma of orchids.
2Zheng Jiao-fu encountered two nymphs by the river Han, who gave him their pendants as tokens
of their troth, then vanished along with their pendants, leaving Jiao-fu in despair.
There was in her glorious face such gentleness

that it made me forget all about eating.
Then Ping-yi gathered back his winds,
the Queen of the Waters stilled the waves.
Ping-I made the drums sound out,
while N ii Wa sang her clear, sharp song.
Goldfish vaulted, warned of carriages coming,
phoenix bells chimed as they all left together.
W ith six dragons matched, their heads held even
cloud-coaches went off, swaying along.
Great whales surged up on each side of the wheels,
and the waterfowl soared around in escort.
They went off beyond by the northern shoals,
then passed down by the hills to the south.
It was there that she bent her pale neck round
and sent back flashing glances.
Her ruby lips stirred, and slowly she spoke,
explaining the laws for mating with gods,
and regretting how men and gods stood apart,
grieved that no match could be made in my prime.
Then she lifted gauze sleeves and wiped away tears
that flowed in streams on the folds of her gown.
It is sad that our union is now lost forever,
once gone, we must dwell in realms set apart.
I have no way to show all the love in my heart,
but I give you bright earrings from southern lands.
Though I will dwell concealed in the shadow world,
my heart will forever be yours, my prince
At once I could no longer grasp where she was;
I grieved that the goddess had vanished, her light hidden
And I went back down the heights of the hill;
my feet left that place, but my spirit stayed.
My love remained with the vision of her form,
I looked back and gazed, my heart filled with pain.
I wished that the Holy One take form again;
I guided my skiff up against the current,
I sailed the long river, forgot to turn back,
my thoughts keeping on with growing yearning.
That night I was restless, I could not sleep,
the heavy frosts soaked me, and then dawn broke.
I ordered my driver to hitch up the carriage,
I set off to go back on that eastward road.
Then I pull up the reins and set by my whip,
I hung there in sorrowI could not go on.

A popular story grew up around Cao Z hi's "The Goddess o f the L u o , interpreting the piece
as a figurative description o f Cao Zhi's relation to a wom an he loved, a woman w ho was
married to his brother Cao Pi and became Empress Zhen. After her death, Cao Zhi was sup
posed to have encountered her spirit by the Luo. The story is, unfortunately, apocryphal. But
in the Tang collection of classical stories entitled "Accounts of Marvels" (Chuan-qi), we have
an authentication o f the legend by none other than the spirit o f Empress Zhen herself.
Pei Xing (825880)Accounts of Marvels (Chuan-qi): Xiao Kuang

(opening section)
During the Tai-he Reign (827-835), Xiao Kuang, a private citizen, was traveling
east from Luo-yang and had reached Xiao-yi Lodge, where he rested for the night
in the Double Beauty Pavilion. The moon was bright and the breeze was cool, when
Xiao Kuang, who was a skilled harpist, took out his harp and was playing it. At
around midnight the melody grew intensely plaintive; he suddenly heard someone
heaving a great sigh over the waters of the Luo. The person gradually drew closer,
and it turned out to be a beautiful woman. Xiao Kuang then put down his harp and
bowed to her
asking, Who might you be? And she answered, I am the goddess
of the banks of the Luo. Dont you recall that Cao Zhithe Prince of Chen, wjote
a poetic exposition about me long ago? Xiao Kuang replied, I do indeed. Then
Kuang went on to ask, I have heard from some that the goddess of the Luo was
in fact the Empress Zhen, who had passed awayand that Cao Zhi encountered her
soul on the shores of the Luo. As a consequence he wrote *Stirred by Lady Zhen.
Later he realized the impropriety of the matter and changed it to The Goddess of
the Luo,figuring his real intentions in the guise of Fu-fei. Is that what happened?
She replied, I am that very Empress Zhen. Because I was so taken by Cao Zhis
talent and manner, Cao Pi, the Emperor Wen, was enraged; I was locked away and
died. Afterward my soul met the prince, Cao Zhi, by the River Luo and gave an
account of the wrongs I had endured. He was touched and wrote about it. But he
realized that the matter was indecorous and changed the title. What you said was
not at all inaccurate.
All at once a serving girl appeared carrying a mat and prepared wine and hors
doeuvres. Then the goddess said to Xiao Kuang, When I recently married Mr.
Yuan, I found I had a natural fondness for harp playing. Whenever someone played
things like Sad Winds5or Streams Flowing in the Three Gorges/ I would always
stay on through the whole evening. I happened to hear the clarity and grace of your
harp playing and would like to listen to more. Xiao Kuang then played the toc
cata The Parted Crane and Sad Winds. The Goddess heaved a long sigh. You
are truly the equal of Cai Yong. And she went on to ask Xiao Kuang about The
Goddess o f the L u o X ia o K u a n g replied, It h a d such genuine sm oothness a n d
clarity of description that the Liang prince Zhao-ming anthologized it with the most
choice literary works. Then the goddess gave a faint smile. Dont you think he
went somewhat wide of the mark when he described my movements as swept along
lightly like startled swan, sinuous as the swimming dragon
After Fu-fei offers her critique of Cao Zhi's poetic license, the tale continues as Xiao Kuang
takes the opportunity to ask the goddess all manner o f questions regarding dragon lore and
Early China
eventually consummates the sexual encounter that had eluded Cao Z hi six centuries previ
ously.
The motifs and concerns o f the "Lyrics o f Chu" found their w ay into every aspect o f C hi
nese literature. Even the ancient w o rld o f gods and goddesses, relegated largely to folk reli
gion, did not disappear entirely from elite literature. The Tang poet W ang W ei, serving in a
provincial post in the East (a post he could w ell have considered "exile" like that of Q u Yuan),
wrote the fo llow ing tw o poems for a shamanistic service on Fish M ountain.
W ang Wei (ca. 699-761), Songs for the Goddess Shrine on Fish
M ountain
Song Welcoming the Goddess

Beat the drums booming
at the foot of Fish Mountain
blow the panpipes
and gaze to far shores.
Shaman girls enter
dancing in frenzy.
Onyx mats spread,
clear liquors infused.
A chill in the wind, rain by night
will the goddess come, will she not?
it makes my heart suffer pang upon pang.
Song Sending the Goddess on Her Way

In a mass they come forward bowing, before the hall,
eyes gaze with yearning toward the alabaster mat.
She came but did not speak, her will was not made known,
she was the twilight rain, she made bare hills forlorn.
In the shrill pipes there is sadness,
and longing in swiftly strummed strings,
the holy ones carriage is ready to turn.
At once the clouds draw back, the rain ceases,
and the hills so green, the waters splashing on.
In W ang W ei's poems, a trace of the ancient awe in face o f divin ity remains. By the ninth
century, however, popular religion had been transformed into something like a "G othic" taste
for ruined temples, stormy nights, and dragons w ith gleaming eyes. Although his own in
terest in divin ity is far more complex, the poet U He was an im portant figure in creating this
taste for the "poetic" shamanka (a woman shaman).
Li He (790816)String Music for the Gods

The shaman woman pours wine,
clouds fill the skies;
from jade braziers burning coals
scented smoke pulses.
Gods of the seas and hill wraiths
come to their places to feast

the paper money crackling
sounds in the swirling gusts.
Passionwood mandolin inlaid

with golden dancing phoenix;
she knits her brows and mutters,
with each mutter, sweeps the strings.
She calls to stars and summons wraiths
to taste from cup and plate,
when mountain goblins are feeding,
men shudder and feel the cold.
Then over Zhong-nan the sun draws low
into a level trough,
and the gods are hanging forever between
being here and not.
With the gods rage or the god's delight
the mediums face shifts,
then she sends the gods, riding in thousands,
back to the green hills.
Wen Ting-yun (d. 866)W ritten on the Temple of M ount Xiao

An ancient path darkened by shadows of trees,
weed-grown shrine east of the h|lls shadow.
Pines and firs, a whole courtyard of rain,
awnings and streamers, winds fill the hall.
Evening sands soaked from worshippers libations,
a horse whinnies, the shrine empty in spring.
Thunder and lightning cease deep in night,
and the dragon goes into the ancient tarn.
Guan-xiu (832-912)Shrine by the River

The pines are dark and gloomy,
the turbulent river churns,
an ancient shrine by the river,
empty, its gates shut tight.
I am certain the holy being grew drunk
on the village festival wine
and the white tortoise gnawed apart
the roots of the calamus.
Tattered blossoms cold and red,
still drip with last nights rain
the shell of the earthen dragon is soaked,
demon eyes glint scarlet.
Sooner or later a sign from Heaven
will come from the sapphire sky
Early China
last night in the village up ahead
the peals of thunder passed.
Later in the tradition, the goddess often disappears into the landscape and particularly into
her ow n W u (Shamanka) M ountain, by the Yangzi River gorges. The young Su Shi (Su Dongpo), traveling down the Yangzi for the first tim e from his native Sichuan, passed the place
as a sightseer in the m iddle o f the eleventh century. By now the goddess no longer appears.
D iv in ity survives only as an eerie landscape, located on the other side o f the river, reported
by someone else w ho visited the spot many years ago.
Su Shi (1037-1101), W u M ountain

Where the Ju-tangs winding course is done,
there the Wu Gorges rise looming.
Peak linked to peak, quite astonishing
how stone-hues change to blue-gray.
Heavens workman used godly craft
to gradually make something grand and rare.
Its dips and sharp rises lead me in deeper,
and the mind cannot grasp this intricate frame.
When viewed sidelong passing, no pause to glance,
so I went on foot to those hidden clefts.
The gray slopes suddenly hemmed me in,
a sheer cliff wall where I shivered in awe.
Above I viewed its eight or nine crests,
in spry splendor mounting past flooding vapors.
Skys vault stood high in a deluge of light,
the river seethed surging and leaping below.
Alone above others, standing fast, not yielding,
drawn up straight, an undaunted audacity.
Climbing along, I saw the goddesss lodge,
I took a place on the rock to sit and rest.
Across rivers waves were craggy heights,
I asked the temple guide about each one.
In the distance I saw the Goddess Rock
of such grace and charm, aptly named indeed.
Head lowered, she shows skewed coils of hair,
and sports a long shift of trailing red cloud.
A mans heart changes with what it meets,
from afar I was aware of deep meaning here.
201

An old rustic laughed out at my side:
When young I made it there often.
I would go up as the gibbons went
or sometimes try the ascent with ropes.
Stone dolmens rest on that lonely peak,
jutting up, not of the usual kind.
Men these days delight in marvels of gods
and tell stories to amaze young children.
Chu
s poems too are groundless traditions
how can there be gods or the Undying?
I then asked of bamboo that swept her altar,

and he said, Its still there today.
Azure leaves hang down in a tangle,
the swaying dance of green phoenix tails.
When a breeze comes they wave up and down,
as if driven on by some godlike thing.
On the highest crest are three slabs of stone,
with the sworls and curves of old characters.
This old man could, of course, not read them,
I saw them by chance, I cant recall.
I went on in my search to the peaks other side
to gather and chop yellow poplars.
Yellow poplars grow upon the rocks,
gaunt and hard, with patterns like lace.
My greedy heart went without looking back,
through mountain gorges with thousand-yard drops
High on the hill wolves and tigers were gone,
deep in I went, untroubled and without dread.
A dim murkiness, hidden plants and trees,
clouds moist and glossy, billowed around.
Huge springs came from fissures within the rock,
they were slick and sweet like liquid marrow.
All that morning through I bathed and rinsed,
a sharp chill cleared both skin and mind.
I washed my clothes, hung them from branch tips,
found a beak of stone to sharpen my ax.
I stayed still the sun grew late in the clouds,
and my thoughts turned with longing for the city.
202
It
s been ten years now since I went there,
frail and old, the strength of muscles spent.
O f the trees I cut down at that time
the shoots from their stumps are already like arms.
I was dismayed by this old mans tale
and sighed about it the whole day through.
The gods and Undying do exist,
but its hard to forget the promptings of gain.
Why did you love your poverty so?
cast it away like shedding a slipper.
Too badfor had you never returned,
forgoing food, you would surely never have died.
Calling Back the Soul
The Lyrics of Chu" have two formal soul-callings, "Calling Back the
Soul" (Zhao hun) and "The Great Calling" (Da-zhao). Both are literary
ve rsio n s o f a relig iou s ritual in w h ic h the sh a m a n c a lls b a c k the soul of
someone dead, dying, or otherwise not in full possession of the senses

(comatose, soul-wandering). The shaman first describes the terrors that
lie in wait for the soul in all directions, then the pleasures that the soul can enjoy if
only it comes back to the palace or great house at the center. Of the two soul-call
ings, "Calling Back the Soul" seems closer to the religious ceremony, making refer
ence to particular aspects of the shamanistic rite.
As literary traditions develop, we often find a process of division into parts and
elaboration of the separate parts. In the soul-calling, the major division is between
the description of terrors, intended to frighten the soul into returning, and the de
urethe soul back. "Calling Back the Recluse" (Zhao
scription of delights, intended to
yin-shi) (p. 211), a Han work included in the "Lyrics of Chu," is a transformation of
the segment of soul-calling describing terrors, with the violent landscape taking the
place of the demon-inhabited cosmos of "Calling Back the Soul."1
KCalling Back the Soul (Zhao hun)

[The opening is apparently the fragment of a frame story.]
The god then gave word to Yang the Shaman, saying, There is a man
down below. I want to help him. His several souls are dispersing. Go cast
the lots for him.
Yang the Shaman answered, . . . Holder of Dreams . . . high god . . .
hard to follow the traces. But if I must cast the lots, I fear that it is too late,
for he is decaying and it will no longer be of any use.
Then Yang the Shaman went down and called:
^ h e description of delights has a far richer history. "Seven Stimuli," a work by the Western Han
writer Mei Sheng, is a good example of how, very early, the ritual function of soul-calling inter
sected with the Northern orator's sense of mission in moral persuasion. Here an orator tries to rouse
a sick and dissipated prince from his malaise by describing a series of delights. Calling the soul back
to physical health merges with recalling the prince to moral and spiritual health, and thus bringing
good government to the polity. The verbal display of sensual delights is set in contrast to the dis
play of moral pleasures. This became part of the justification of the poetic exposition (fu), but it was
a problematic justification.
204
Soul! Turn back!

You have left your wonted frame
why go to the four directions?
You forsake your places of delight
and will come upon cursed things.
Soul! Turn back!
No lodging for you in the east:
Giants a thousand cubits tall
seek only souls to eat.
Ten suns emerge in sequence,
melting metalsfusing stone.
All there find this usual,
but souls that go there soon dissolve.
Turn back! Turn back!
No lodging for you there.
Soul! Turn back!
No place to rest in the south.
Tattooed brows and blackened fangs
use meat of men in offerings,
and season their stew with the bones.
Cobras form jungle-tangles,
and giant foxes range a thousand miles.
Nine-headed stag-pythons
pass back and forth in a flash,
and swallow men to feed their minds.
Soul! Turn back!
No leisurely lingering there.
Soul! Turn back!
There is harm for you in the west,
where the sand flows for a thousand miles,
You whirl into the Thunder Pit,
you are ground to powder and may not rest
If luck lets you e s c a p e , ,
beyond are boundless barrens.
W ith red ants like elephants
and black wasps like gourds.
Not one of the five grains grows,
clumps of straw-grass is the food.
The soil there grills a man,
he seeks water with none to be found.
He roams aimlessly with no shelter
in vast spaces that have no limit.
Soul! Turn back!

I fear you will bring yourself ruin.
Soul! Turn back!
No place to rest in the north.
Piling floes of ice loom high,
and the snows fly a thousand leagues.
Soul! Turn back!
You cannot stay there long.
Soul! Turn back!
Do not climb to the heavens.
By its nine-fold gates, leopards and tigers
rend men from Earth below.
Each one has nine heads
and tears up nine thousand trees.
And wolves turn their eyes upon you,
prowling around you in packs.
They string men up for sport,
then cast them into the deepest pit.
And only when the god ordains
can he close eyes in darkness at last.
Soul! Turn back!
Should you go, I fear your peril.
Soul! Turn back!
Go not down to the Unseen City.
The Ground-Earl has nine tails,
and his horns are razor-sharp.
His back is humped, his talons bloody,
he goes bounding after men.
Three are his eyes, a tigers head,
and his body like a bull.
All of these find men savory,
Turn back! Turn back!
I fear you bring upon yourself doom.
Soul! Turn back!
Enter in through these soul-gates.
The Spell Master summons you,
goes before you walking backwards.
A basket from Qin, thread from Qi
laced over with Zhengs satins.
All summoning implements are on hand
and now I keen and wail:
Soul! Turn back!
Come home where you used to dwell.
206
In Heaven, Earth, and the four directions

many are the evils and perils.
I will set forth semblances of your chambers,
secure, peaceful, and calm.
A high hall, closets deepset within,
rimmed with high-tiered balconies.
Banked terraces dense with belvederes
look down from the high hill.
Grillwork entries, interlaced vermilion,
with continuous angular friezes carved.
For winter here are deepset salons,
in summer the chambers are chill.
Gullies with streams run straight and bend back,
their currents babbling.
Sunlit breezes bend sweet clover
and send waves through the clumps of orchid.
Through the great hall into the back rooms
go vermilion awnings and mats.
Rooms faced with stone, kingfisher wings
hung from hooks of carnelian.
Quilts of kingfisher feathers and pearls,
each glowing with equal light.
W all covers made of rush and crepe,
gauze canopies extended.
Red and motley plaits, silks patterned and plain,
knotted to agate half-rings.
To be seen within the chambers
are many cherished marvels.
Bright candles, tallow scented with orchid,
of sparkling faces a full array.
In two rows of eight they wait at your bed,
taking turns for your evenings.
Chaste daughters of the nobility
much surpassing the compioners.
Piled hair and hanging tresses, styles not alike
fill full your grounds.
Well matched in figure and features,
they are truly the best of this age.
Gentle of face, firm of intent,
and, ah, they possess desire.
Comely features and tall statures
are found all through the harem.
Mothlike brows and liquid eyes

from which dark pupils flash.
Smooth faces, skins glossy tracery,
from which glances of love are given.
Behind tall drapes in pavilions apart
they await upon my lords leisure.
'
Kingfisher curtains and draperies

adorn the high halls.
Red walls and ochre boards
and beams faced with black jade.
Above you see the graven timbers,
with paintings of dragons and serpents.
Sitting in hall or leaning on rail
you look over curving basins.
There the lotuses begin to come out
mingled with waterlilies.
Watermallows with purple stalks
make patterns along with the waves.
Guards dressed in rare-patterned leopard skins
attend on the sloping shore.
When the great coach at last arrives,
both foot and horse stand in their ranks.
At the entry are planted orchid clumps,
trees like jewels form your hedge.
Soul! Turn back!
Why do you keep so far?
The household comes to show you reverence
with foods of many kinds.
Rice, millet, wheat, barley
combined with yellow millet.
The very bitter, the salty, the sour
the hot and the sweet are used,
The leg tendons of the fat ox
cooked tender and smelling sweet.
Mixing the bitter and the sour,
they serve the broth of Wu.
Braised terrapin, lambs roasted whole,
there is sauce of sweet potato.
Sour-boiled goose, braised duck,
simmered swan and fishhawk.
Seared fowl, chowdered turtle
fiery, but not mouth-burning.
Doughballs and honey buns,
sweetcakes as well.
208
Precious brews, quaffed like mead,

brim feather-patterned flagons,
the pressed mash drunk chilled as ice,
and the clarified wine, cool.
Well-wrought ladles have been set
and there is the precious brew.
Turn back to your old chambers
where you are honored and free from offense.
Before those morsels make the rounds,
girl musicians move to their lines.
They ring the bells and roll the drums,
performing the recent songs:
Wading the River, Pick Caltrops
then breaking into O Brightness.w

And as the beauties grow more drunk,
their rosy faces flush.
Eyes teasing gleam, the half-lidded gaze,
glances come wave upon wave.
Patterned cloaks, fine-woven gowns,
flashy but yet not garish.
Long tresses and trailing locks,
sensual, bright, and alluring.
In two rows of eight, in unison,
they begin the dances of Zheng.
Then, sleeves crossed like staves before them,
slowing the beat they withdraw.
With pipesand psalteries wild concert,
they hammer booming drums
Till the whole court of the great house shakes
and the Frenzied Chu begins.2
The lays of W ulyrics of Cai,
and they play the Great Lii.
Men and women are sitting together,
mixed and not kept apart.
Sashes and ribbons are cast down,
the places all in confusion.
Seductive diversions of Zheng and Wei
are performed mixed in among them.
But the coda of the Frenzied Chu
is the finest of them all.
Smoky-jade markers and ivory pieces
they play the game of Six Whites.
2The "Frenzied Chuis a dance.
Dividing in teams, they attack together,

and press one another hard.
The throw succeeds, the score is doubled,
one shouts: Five white!
Horn buckles of Jin-craft,
aglow like bright suns.
Bells are rung, chime frames shake
they sweep the catalpa-wood harps.
Joys of the wine are not set aside
as they pass through days and nights.
When bright lamps burning orchid oil
are set in their splendid frames.
Verses are made to speak longing,
with phrases finely wrought.
And in the heights of their passion,
joined hearts recite.
Drinking we reach the crest of pleasure
to give the ancestors joy.
Soulturn back!
Return here where you once dwelled.
The Ending Song

The entering year, the onset of spring,
it was then that we made our way south.
The green leaves of duckweed lay even,
and the white iris grew.
Our course cut across the Lu River,
tall jungles lay to the left.
By the pools edging the floodplain
our gaze swept wide and far.
Jet black steeds were yoked in teams,
a thousand chariots held the line.
The hunters5torches stretched off
and the black smoke rose.
Those on foot reached to where we charged,
and the hunt leader galloped ahead.
We curbed their stampede to an easy gait,
then bent the chariots round to the right.
W ith the king I dashed through the fens,
we raced to see who would be the first.
The king himself made the shot,
the black buffalo was slain.
Red dawnlight follows the night,
the time does not let us linger.
Early China
Marsh orchids blanket the trail,

the path here fades away.
The river rolls in swollen floods,
above there are maples.
The eyes reach a full thousand leagues
wounding the heart in spring.
O soul! Turn back!
Have pity on the Southland.
"Calling Back the Recluse" (Zhao yin-shi) is attributed to a courtier of the Han prince
of Huai-nan. Huai-nan was well to the east of the original Chu homeland, but it was
the site of the last Chu capital at Shou-chun. The Han principality of Huai-nan in
cluded much of the region of Wu as well. It was in this large region that the "Lyrics
of Chu" seem to have been preserved, and other works of the area show strong traces
of old Chu
earning, such as the essay collection compiled in the Huai-nan court,
the Huai-nan-zi.
Calling Back the Recluse (Zhao yin-shi)

Dense groves of cassia in hills5,hidden places,
writhing shapes rising, boughs locked together,
where hill vapors loom with rocks jutting high,
where chasms drop deep and waters raise waves.
Packs of apes shriek, leopards and tigers roar,
there he snapped cassia branches and lingered a while.
A royal prince wandered, he did not come home
in spring the plants grew thick and so green
and then with years ending, he grew dejected,
the cicadas were singing their mournful cries.
Jagged and craggy, clefts of the hills
there the heart lingered, dazed with dread,
its murky recesses sent shivers of fright,
caves of leopards and tigers,
in deep forest thickets a man climbs from fear.
Steep is its sheerness, rocky and rugged,
looming and lofty, strewn with great stones,
tree limbs locked together,
woods dense with leaves and twigs
green sedge grows between the trees,
and high grass rattles, whipped by winds.
The white deer and the hart,
sometimes bounding, sometimes still,
there poised on the heights, on the towering cliff,
in the gloomy chill and the soggy air.
211
Apes and baboons, black bears and brown,

each yearns for its own and feels the grief.
He snaps cassia branches and lingers a while,
leopards and tigers battle, bears bellow,
then beasts and birds shudder, they do forget kin.
Come home now my prince~
in the hills one may not linger so long.
'
As the shaman sets out to summon the soul, the orator uses words to rouse the prince
to Good Behavior, to call him home to do his duty. In "Calling Back the Soul," the
shaman speaker concluded the main portion of his verse with a description of a feast
and orgy, whose express purpose was to give pleasure to the spirits of the ancestors.
Offerings of meat and wine were an important component of rituals for the dead
(though not orgies as in "Calling Back the Soul"). Yet the dead rarely gave their opin
ion of the practice. During the third and fourth centuries, however, poets were able
to imagine the soul trying to make its way back. The soul may survive the bod/s
dissolution, but it needs the body to eat and drink in the usual way.

Ruan Yu (d. 212), Seven Sorrows
Hard to meet youth a second time,
honor and riches will not come again.
Lifes best moments are suddenly past
and body is nothing but soil and ash.
The Deep Springs chambers are somber and dark,
forever in mansions of endless night.
Body is gone, the breaths force spent,
and the soul has nothing to which to return.
Fine foods are served, yet you cannot dine,
and the best wines fill the flagons.
Come forth from the tomb, gaze on your home,
and see nothing but weeds and brambles.
Tao Qian (365-427), Pall Bearers Song II

I used to have no wine to drink,
today it spills uselessly over the cup.
A spring brew with its floating lees
when can I ever taste it again?
Before me a table is filled with fine foods,
kin and old friends weep by my side.
I try to speak, but my mouth makes no sound,
I try to see, there's no light in my eyes.
I used to bed in a high-roofed hall,
now I spend nights in a land of wild grass.
212
Early China
One morning at dawn I went out my gate,

and I truly have not yet made it back.
The negative half of the soul-callingthe warning about the perils of going far~does reap
pear occasionally in later literature, though with a hyperbole that may be tongue-in-cheek.
The fo llow ing is perhaps the most famous negative summons in the tradition, in w hich Li
Bo, a native of Shu, part of modern Sichuan, warns an imaginary traveler from Chang-an not
to undertake the hardships o f the
journey through the mountains.
Li Bo (701-762)Hard Ways to Shu

Aiyaiyai!! High!! My, my!! Steep?!! Yep. Yipes!!
The way to Shu is hard,
harder than climbing blue sky.
Dzhom-dzhung and Ngiu-bhio
in the farmurky past founded this land;3
for forty-eight thousand years after them
hearth smoke of men did not stretch through
the passes into Qin.
Over Mount Tai-bo directly west
there is a way for birds
whereby they can cut straight across

Mount E-meis crest.
'
There once was a landslide, an avalanche,

and warriors died in their prime,4
and only after that time
did ladders to sky and plankways on stone

link it through, one to the other.
Above there is the high ensign
where the team of six dragons bends the sun,
and below is the stream
that winds around
with dashing waves surging back crashing.
Even in flight the brown crane
cannot pass,
apes and monkeys want to cross

and sadly strain,
dragging themselves along.
At Blue Silt it looped and twisted,
each hundred steps had nine sharp turns

that curved around ridges and peaks.
You will pat the Plow-Star, pass by the Well,
look up and gasp,
3The legendary founders of the Kingdom of Shu are here given in their Tang pronunciation.
4This refers to a story of how King Hui of Qin once offered his five daughters in marriage to an
ancient King of Shu. The Shu king sent five stalwart men to get them. On their return, one of the
men saw a huge snake whose tail was sticking out of its hole. He grabbed the tail and was joined
by his four companions; together they pulled so hard that the mountain collapsed, killing both
them and the five daughters of Qin.
213

with your hand stroke your breast,
sit and sigh in pain.
I ask: from your westbound wanderings

when you will return?
for I am dismayed by paths so craggy
they cant be scaled.
You will hear and see only sorrowing birds
that wail in leafless trees,
the cock flies on, and the hen follows,
winding their way through woods.
You will also hear the nightjar
crying to the night moon
and casting a gloom in deserted hills.5
harder than climbing blue sky,
causing wrinkles to form in youthful features
of any who hear this song.
Peak joined to peak, short of Heaven
just less than a foot,
barren pines hang upside down,
clinging to sheer cliff face.
Torrents burst over bluffs in cascades
in bellowing duels
boulders roll smashing down slopes
thunder in thousands of canyons.
Since here there is such peril
you who have come so far on this way, why
have you come at all?
Sword Tower looms high, juts into sky,
one man holds the gate
and thousands cannot break through.
And the one who holds it may prove no friend,
may change into wolf or jackal.
At dawn we dodge fierce tigers,
at dusk we dodge long snakes.
They sharpen fangs to suck out blood
and kill men like scything down hemp.
Men may speak of the joys in Brocade Town,6
but best to turn home as soon as you can.
harder than climbing blue sky,
I sway gazing off toward the west
and give a mighty sigh.
5The nightjar was supposed to have been a metamorphosis of the ancient Shu ruler Wang-di.
6Brocade Town is Cheng-du, the capital of Shu.
214
Interlude Between the

Lyrics of Chu and Yue-fu:
The Biography of Lady Li"
The following short biography, an excellent example of the historian's

art, focuses on the question of desire, seeing, and illusion. The Confucian historian Ban Gu distrusts surface appearances and here purports to
show us the truth beneath them, although one need only consider how
unlikely it would be for the historian to have knowledge of the dialogue
between the dying Lady Li and her sister to realize that the imaginative construction
of an ethical example is at work here rather than reporting known facts. The rela
tion between appearances, desire, and political power particularly troubles the
moralist. It is also a situation in which poetry of varying soils plays an essential role,
With each form of poetry involving the question of illusion. We have here one of the
earliest examples of the five-syllable poetic line in its characteristic form, in the lyrics
of the court singer Li Yan-nian; we have the irregular extempore verse of Emperor
Wu, which is later set to music by the Music Office (Yue-fu); and we have the em
peror's elegy, a composite piece joining the Chu-c/tradition of the lost goddess and
a more personal lament.
Ban Gu ( a . d . 32-9 2) The Han History from The Biographies

of the Imperial In-Laws
Emperor Wu*s Lady Li originally entered the court as a singing girl. In the
beginning the Ladys brother Li Yan-nian had an innate understanding of
music and was skilled in both singing and dance. Emperor Wu was quite
fond of him. Whenever he did his variations on popular songs, the audience
never failed to be stirred. Once, when attending on the Emperor, Li Yannian rose to dance and sang:
In the north country is a lady fair,
she stands alone beyond compare.
She glances oncea city falls;
a kingdom falls when she glances again.
Surely you know that a lady so fair,
she for whom cities and kingdoms fall,
will never be found again.
The Emperor heaved a great sigh: Wonderful! But could there really be such
a woman in our own time? Princess Ping-yang thereupon said that Li Yannian had a younger sister; and when the Emperor summoned her to an au
dience, she was indeed a remarkable beauty who was skilled in the dance.
From that encounter she received the Emperors favors and bore him a son,
who became Prince Ai of Cheng-yi. Lady Li died an untimely death while

still in her youth. The Emperor was deeply saddened and had her likeness
painted in Sweet Springs Palace. Four years after the Empress Wei-si was re
moved, Emperor Wu himself passed on. The Grand Marshal Huo Guang
then acted in accord with the Emperor
s long-standing wishes and made sac
rificial offerings to Lady Li jointly with those to the Emperor, giving her the
title Emperor W u
s Empress.
Earlier, when Lady L i
s sickness had become grave, the Emperor him
self had come to see how she was. The Lady covered herself with her blan
ket and refused to let him see her, saying, I have been lying sick for a long
time, and my looks have been marred; I cant see you this way. But I ask to
that you take care of the prince, my son, and my brothers The Emperor
replied, My Lady, you are seriously ill, and it may be that you never get
up again. W ouldnt it ease your mind to let me see you this one time and
charge me with the care of the prince and your brothers? The Lady said
A woman does not let her ruler see her when she is not properly adorned.
I would not dare see Your Majesty as disheveled as I am now. The Em
peror replied, If you will just let me see you once, I will grant you a thou
sand pieces of gold and give your brothers high posts.55 The Lady said,
High posts depend on the Emperorthey do not depend on letting you see
me once. The Emperor again said that he absolutely must see her, but the
Lady turned away from him, sobbing, and said no more. At this the Em
peror was put out of countenance and rose to leave.
Then the Ladys sister reproached her, saying, Werent you willing to
let him see you just once in order to charge him with the care of your broth
ers? Why did you so anger the Emperor like this? The Lady repliedThe
reason that I was unwilling to let the Emperor see me was precisely because
I wanted him to feel a stronger responsibility to take care of my brothers.
From a lowly position I won the Emperor5s love and favor because of the
beauty of my appearance. If one serves another through physical attraction,
then love slackens when those attractions fade. The reason why the Emperor
pays me such regard and feels such attachment to me is because of the way
I used to look. If he now were to see the ruin of my beauty, that my face is
not as it was before, he would inevitably recoil from such ugliness and re
ject me. Would he then still have been willing to give future thought to my
brothers and show pity on them?
When the Lady died, the Emperor had her interred with rites befitting
an Empress. Afterwards the Emperor made the Ladys elder brother, Li
Guang-li, the Er-shi general and enfeoffed him as the Duke of Hai-xi. Li Yannian was made Director of Imperial Music.
The Emperor could not stop longing for Lady Li. A wizard of Qi, known
as the Young Old Man, said that he would be able to bring back her spirit.
When it was night, he hung up lamps and candles and erected a curtained
enclosure, where he set out meat and wine. Then he made the Emperor take
his place within another curtained enclosure. Gazing from the distance he
saw a lovely woman, whose appearance was like that of Lady Li, walking
216
Early China
around the place set for her within the curtains. But he could not go to take
a closer look. The Emperor then felt longing and sadness even more strongly,
and wrote this poem:
Is it her
or is it not?
I stand and gaze at her,
yet she glides alongso slow
in her coming.
He ordered the musicians of the Music Bureau to make a song of it, set to
the accompaniment of strings. His Majesty also wrote a poetic exposition
to lament the Lady Li. These are its words:
Lithe and lovely, of features fair,
lifespan sundered, it did not last.
A spirit-lodge well fitted, long did I wait
she vanished, not returning to her home of before.
Despair wells within me, she rots with the weeds,
she dwells in dark places, and I feel the pain.
I untied coach and horse from the hills pepper tree
all at once, long night, no light of the sun.
Bleak air of autumn, somber and chill,
cassia boughs shed and then waste away.
My soulforsaken, yearns for one far,
the spirit roams drifting beyond all the bounds.
Long time and forever she stays sunk in shadow,
I regret her full flowering reached not its zenith.
I brood that forever she will not return;
I conceive a faint presence roaming afar.
Enclosed stamens unfurl, awaiting the wind,
then fragrances hoarded grow ever more clear.
Bright being in motion, graceful and yielding,
wind-whirled swirling, it grew overpowering.
Festive and wanton, brushing the columns,
her gaze swept around,
she lifted her brows.
Stirred and aroused, my heart did pursue her
she hid her flushed face, it does not appear.
We shared intimate pleasures, now we are parted
I wake up from dreams, I am lost in a daze.
All at once she was Changed and does not turn back,
her soul was set free, her breath rose away.
Such a baffling blur is her hallowed spirit,
I linger lamenting, I falter in distress.
Her course carries her each day further from me,
and I was bewildered as she took her leave.
Going beyond in a journey westward,
moving swiftly, now unseen.

At last I am left forlorn
in a stillness without sound.
My longing is like the rolling waves,
and sorrow is here in my heart.
The Closing Piece

From splendid beauty full of light,
the crimson petals fall.
How can those paltry and envious women
weigh in the balance with you?
In the very height of your season
you were stricken before your years.
Your child and brothers sob,
tears bubble in their despair.
Overcome with sorrow
wailing cannot be stopped.
Echoes left unanswered_
it is all over now!
Gaunt from grief I moan
and sigh for your young son.
So wretched I cannot speak
trust him on whom you relied.
Kind hearts need make no vows,
still less are pacts made with kin.
Since you have gone and will not come,
I add to this my troth.
You have gone from the world of light
you have entered into dark.
You did descend to the spirit-lodge
but will not come back to your former grounds.
0 the sadness of it!
1 envision your soul.
Afterwards, Li Yan-nians younger brother Li Ji was implicated in licentious

acts in the imperial harem. Li Guang-li surrendered to the Xiong-nu. The
entire family was exterminated.
The Chinese "Middle Ages"
ih
THE CHINESE "MIDDLE AGES": PERIOD INTRODUCTION
The great Chinese empire of late antiquity, the Han, reached

its height during the long reign of Emperor Wu (140-87 B.C.).
The central government had effectively broken the power of the
Han feudal lords, and Han armies were waging successful cam
paigns in Central Asia against the Xiong-nu kingdom. In the
reigns that followed Emperor Wu, however, imperial power
gradually weakened, leading finally to the usurpation of the
throne by Wang Mang, who ruled over the brief Xin ("Mew")
Dynasty (a.d. 9-23). Wang Mang tried to push through an am
bitious program of political and cultural reforms, but in doing
o, he stirred opposition from powerful interests all over the em

pire. The most serious problem for Wang Mang, however, arose
from the shift of the course of the Yellow River. The ensuing
floods and agricultural dislocation in what was then China's
major population center led to large-scale famine. The gov
ernment was unable to cope with the extent of the disaster, and
a huge peasant revolt was initiated by the Red Eyebrows, socalled because the rebels painted red on their foreheads to dis
tinguish themselves from imperial troops. Several of Wang
Mang's armies were defeated, and as the Red Eyebrows spread,
regional armies were raised to oppose Wang Mang's armies and
the government. From one such army came Liu Xiu, a minor
descendant of the Han imperial house, who, after Wang Mang's
armies were defeated, was declared the emperor Guang-wu of
the restored H a n D yn a s ty in a .d . 25. Liu X iu w a s far from the
only claimant to the throne, and the next decade saw a series
of civil wars from which Liu Xiu emerged victorious.
In the course of Emperor Guang-wu's rise, the Red Eye
brows had occupied and devastated the capital, Chang-an. The
new emperor subsequently moved the capital east to Luo-yang,
and thus the restored dynasty came to be known as the Eastern
Han. Although the Eastern Han survived for almost two cen
turies, it never recovered the power of the first half of the dy
nasty, subsequently known as the Western Han. In the capital,
powerful families formed factions that competed for central
government positions, and in the provinces regional autonomy

grew.
Aware of the greater military and political power of their
Western Han predecessors, Eastern Han rulers and intellectu
als sought to distinguish their own period by its observance of Confucian values. Dur
ing the course of the Western Han, Confucianism had come to play an increasingly
important role as the ideological basis of the state; by the Wang Mang regime and
the Eastern Han, Confucianism and the imperial system had become inseparable.
For reasons of state or personal belief, later emperors might offer lavish patronage to
991

Daoism or Buddhism, but the state itself could not be conceived apart from Confu
cianism (although in the thirteenth century the Mongols briefly attempted to do so).
Although there was nothing in the Han like a true Confucian orthodoxy, the in
creasing importance of the Confucian Classics to political life intensified the need
to reconcile variant texts and interpretations. Schools of classical scholarship were
roughly divided between "New Text" and "Old Text." The "New Text" schools were
so called because they supposedly represented oral transmission of texts and con>
mentaries on the Confucian Classics, which, after the burning of the books in the
Qin, were written down in the reformed script after the establishment of the Han.
The "Old Text" school primarily represented written texts recovered after the Ham
The difference between the "New Text" and "Old Text" schools was, however, more
profound than simply textual lineages of the Confucian Classics. The "New Text"
schools represented an older style of Confucian learning, based on personal trans
mission of texts and interpretation by a master whose authority would be traced in
unbroken succession back to the disciples of Confucius. Though the "New Text" clas
sics and their interpretations were written down, they remained very much schools
in which students studied one particular classic under the master and simply repeated
the authoritative interpretation of the master.
The "Old Text" schools included scholastic lineages such as that of the Mao Clas
sic of Poetry, yet the very idea of the "Old Text" classics was based on a break in
the personal transmission of the Confucian Classics and the ability of later scholars
to offer interpretations from written texts. Wang Mang was a strong supporter of the
"Old Text, and although "New Text" scholarship enjoyed a brief revival in the early
Eastern Han, the "Old Text" schools gradually emerged triumphant. Their success
was due in no small part to their dissemination among private scholars, who felt con
fident in working with written texts and drawing their own conclusions rather than
relying on the authority of a master. Out of this tradition, comparison and determi
nation of authoritative versions of the texts of the Confucian Classics continued
through th e Eastern H a n ; and in
a .d .
175, u n d e r state sponsorship, texts o f th e so-
called Five Classics were carved in stone and set up outside the Imperial Academy
in Luo-yang so that students would have authoritative versions of the classics from
which to study.1
In the Western Han, poetic expositions (fu) had been one of the primary forms
of court literary entertainment. These poetic expositions were long, rhymed de
scriptions that made use of a rich vocabulary; those declaimed in court were usu
ally direct or indirect panegyrics of imperial power, though often including en
couragement to restraint. Emperor Wurs court poet Si-ma Xiang-ru (179-117 b.c.)
praised the emperor as "The Great One" (see p. 182), an adept Daoist who mar
shaled the forces of the cosmos and rode to transcendence. Si-ma Xiang-ru also wrote
a famous poetic exposition describing the imperial hunting park, naming the flora
and fauna from all over the empire that had been gathered there. In his younger days,
the writer and intellectual Yang Xiong (53 b .c .a.d. 18) had similarly praised the hunts
and ceremonies of Emperor Wu's successors, but in the writing of his later years,
1_These were the Classic of Poetry, the Classic o f Documents, the Classic of Changes, the Yili (one
of the ritual books), and The Springs and Autumns [of Lu].
The Chinese Middle Ages

readers witness some of the changes in public values that were occurring as the East
ern Han approached. Yang Xiong renounced the poetic expositions of his youth on
the grounds that they encouraged imperial extravagance and failed in what he saw
as their primary purpose, which was to offer moral guidance to the emperor. Fol
lowing in the tradition of Yang Xiong, the public literature of the Eastern Han often
tended to Confucian moralizing.
As a genre, poetic exposition continued to be important throughout the Eastern
Han, and it came to be used informally as a demonstration of education and talent
by young men seeking appointment in the central government. Such use of literary
composition in the appointment process outlasted the Eastern Han; eventually, it be
came fully institutionalized in the examination system of the seventh century.
State Confucianism was only a thin layer of elite ideology, beneath which lay a
complex world of popular religion and cults of esoteric knowledge. Confucianism
itself came to be permeated by such beliefs from the Western Han on. Han rulers
placed particular faith in prognostication by omens, and though the Confucian Clas
sics themselves offered little support for such practices, there was an extensive body
of Confucian apocrypha promising the esoteric knowledge for which many Han in
tellectuals hungered. Huang-Lao Daoism went much further than esoteric Confu
cianism, offering techniques of yoga and alchemy by which the adept could refine
his physical being and attain immortality. Huang-Lao Daoism gradually developed
a large following among the populace, and it was spread in cults headed by charis
matic leaders with messianic pretensions. In a .d . 184, the weakened Han state was
shaken by two almost simultaneous cult uprisings in different parts of the country:
the Yellow Turbans and the "Five Pecks of Rice." These military-religious commu
nities defeated imperial armies and established local kingdoms in the disintegrating
empire.
*
In addition to the uprisings of the Daoist cults, the last decades of the second
century saw local generals with independent armies establishing themselves as re
gional powers. One general, Dong Zhuo, took advantage of factional fighting in the
capital in 189 and seized the emperor Xian; he then plundered and burned Luo-yang,
driving its inhabitants west to reestablish the capital in Chang-an. A year later, Dong
Zhuo was himself killed by his officers, Chang-an was sacked, and the empire col
lapsed into total anarchy. Emperor Xian, providing the weak aura of Han legitimacy,
passed from one warlord to another until he came into the hands of Cao Cao
(155220), who was gradually establishing his position as the preeminent military
leader in North China.
By the early third century, the weaker warlords had fallen by the wayside and
the former empire was divided into the "Three Kingdoms" that give their name to
the period. In the West was the Shu-Han Kingdom, ruled by a remote descendant
of the Han imperial house; in the South along the Yangzi River was the Kingdom of
Wu, whose river fleet protected it against invasion; and in the North was Cao Cao,
proclaimed "King of W e i, but not emperor. In holding Emperor Xian as his puppet,
Cao Cao kept alive the fiction of the Han Dynasty; but on Cao Cao's death in 220,
his son, Cao Pi, deposed the emperor and proclaimed himself emperor of the new
W ei Dynasty.
The heirs of Cao Pi proved to be far less able than either Cao Cao or Cao Pi, and

the W ei soon came under the domination of the powerful Si-ma family. The Wei
was still nominally in existence when Northern armies incorporated the Shu-Han
Kingdom in 263, but in 265 the Si-ma family deposed the Caos, just as the Caos had
deposed the Han emperor less than half a century earlier. With this began the Jin
Dynasty, which in 280 at last conquered the Kingdom of Wu and briefly reunified
China.
The gradual dissolution of Han power in the second half of the second century
and the constant warfare of the Three Kingdoms proved to be one of the most fer
tile and transformative periods in Chinese literature. The long reign of the ill-fated
Emperor Xian, from 196 to 220, was known as the Jian-an, and it gave its name to
the literature of the period. Older forms such as poetic exposition continued to be
written, but their range expanded to include topics from everyday life. At the same
time, popular song and a new form of classical poetry in the five-syllable line were
adopted by well-known literary men. Unlike the poetic exposition, classical poetry
was a genre that invited accounts of personal experience and expression of private
feeling: the poetry of the Jian-an gave voice to the instability and uncertainty of life
during the period. Cao Cao, himself an accomplished poet, was the great patron of
contemporary writers, who gathered to the relative security of his court. His son and
heir, Cao Pi, was not only a distinguished writer but also composed the first treatise
on literature. A younger son of Cao Cao, Cao Zhi, became the most famous writer
of his day, provoking the jealousy of his older brother.
The intelJectuaJ temper of the times had changed profoundly from the public se
riousness of the first part of the Eastern Han; there was a strong reaction against the
commitment to public life demanded by Confucian ethics. Thinkers such as Wang
Bi (226-249) wrote commentaries on Confucian and Daoist Classics, focusing on
metaphysical issues without regard to their social, ethical, or political implications.
Writers and /ntellectaals were increasingly drawn to the values of private life and
did their best to avoid serving in the government. Those who did serve were often
caught in the constant factional struggles and many were executed. Already in the
mid-third century we see a fascination with eccentricity, accompanied by extrava
gant gestures rejecting the norms of social behavior. Many such intellectuals were
d ra w n to a lc h e m y a n d the
Daoist q u e st fo r
phys/cal fm m o rta .
The messianic Daoists of the late second century were finally defeated militar
ily, but in their place a Daoist "church" took shape with an organized religious hi
erarchy, a body of esoteric scriptures, and a large popular following to support it.
In contrast to the atheistic philosophical Daoism of the pre-Qin period, the Daoist
church worshipped a large pantheon of deities organized in celestial bureaucracies
not unlike the imperial government.
Buddhism made its initial appearance in China in the first century a . d ,, and by
the third century a growing number of missionaries from Central Asia were winning
converts everywhere. In the turmoil of the times, Buddhist doctrines of personal sal
vation and release from the inevitable suffering of life held great appeal. Sutras, the
Buddhist scriptures, offered a taste of the complexities of Indian philosophy, and
large-scale translation projects demanded a new kind of reflection on the Chinese
language. With Buddhism came a highly developed church and monastic structure
that provided a model for religious Dapism, Buddhism's chief religious competitor.
994

After only thirty-seven years of ruling over a unified China, the Jin capital in Luoyang fell in 316 to non-Chinese invaders from the North. As "barbarian" armies es
tablished their hold over North China, many great families fled with their retainers
and possessions south of the Yangzi River, where, in 317, a Jin prince, Si-ma Rui,
proclaimed himself the Jin emperor. Following the model of the Zhou and Han when
the capital moved east rather than south after dynastic crisis, this came to be known
as the "Eastern Jin.For more than two and a half centuries, a succession of Chinese
dynasties ruled the Yangzi River region in a period known as the "Southern Dynas
ties/' During this same period, North China was under the sway of various non-Chi
nese kingdoms. Thus the period from 317 until the reunification of China under the
Sui in 589 is known as the "Northern and Southern Dynasties,
When viewed by most objective standards, the Southern Dynasties were small,
regional regimes. By far the greater part of the Chinese population still lived in the
North. The Northern Dynasties patronized Buddhism and Confucian scholarship,
and their legacy in religious art can still be seen. But in literature they were pro
portionally insignificant, and the role of literature in defining Chinese cultural con
tinuity was such that subsequent ages thought of the Southern Dynasties as the main
lineage linking the Western Jin with the great medieval empires of Sui and Tang.
The intellectual concerns of the Wei and Western Jin continued to grow during
the Southern Dynasties. Although the state was still understood in Confucian terms,
personal happiness and the experience of the individual or a group of like-minded
friends were considered of greater importance than service to the state. Tao Qian
(365-427) voluntarily renounced his administrative post because he felt that its de
mands violated his nature, and his poetry celebrated his decision to return to work
his own fields in the farming community that was his home. For others, a stylish ec
centricity marked the individual's refusal to conform to social customs. Buddhism
spread and flourished in both the North and South, and its m o n astic communities
provided the means to renounce the secular world altogether. In the South, temples
and monasteries were established deep in the mountains, and among monks and
laity alike there developed a new appreciation of landscape and natural beauty.
When earlier poets had traveled, it was a means to get from one place to another.
In the fifth century, we begin to find poets undertaking travel for its own sake, wan
dering through the mountains to appreciate the beauty of nature.
Not only was the overall population of the South much smaller than that of the
North, the emigre ruling house and great families constituted only a small minority
of the Southern population. These emigre families comprised an aristocracy. Edicts
to preserve the purity of Northern bloodlines were soon ignored, but the culture of
the South had become aristocratic. By the late fifth century aristocratic society drew
inward, with literary composition increasingly restricted to the courts of the emperor
and imperial princes in the capital, Jian-kang (modern Nanjing). Poems were writ
ten on the occasion of imperial and princely outings, and topics for composition
would often be set as a pastime. Literary issues were debated, in which literary and
political factionalism were closely intertwined. Old song lyrics were carefully con
served, anthologies of older and contemporary literature compiled, and literary his
tory undertaken.
Such a fragile world could not last long, and in 549 the rebel Hou Jing took Jian225

kang and sacked it. The ruling Liang Dynasty eventually put down the rebellion and
recovered the city, but it never fully recovered its political or military power. In the
decades that followed, a new dynasty was installed, the Chen, but the Southern rulers
became puppets of the militarily powerful North. The 580s saw the rise of a pow
erful new Northern state, the Sui, which first unified the divided kingdoms of the
North and then, in 589, conquered the Chen and reunified the empire.
The Sui instituted a number of institutional and economic reforms that would be
the basis of government for the following centuries, but the Sui itself did not endure
long. The astute first Sui ruler built a sound political structure that was badly mis
managed and overextended by his successor, Emperor Yang. Indeed, Emperor Yang
moved the Sui capital from Chang-an to one of the great Southern cities, Yang-zhou,
and fell under the spell of the pleasure-loving court culture of the South. Outbreaks
of rebellion occurred all over the country. After less than thirty years, the Sui was
replaced by a new dynasty, the Tang, which would rule China for the next three cen
turies.
Yue-fu1
In 120 b .c ., a special bureau was established in the Han government to

provide music and songs for state rituals and imperial entertainments. This
bureau was known as the Yue-fu, or "Music Office, and the same term
came to be applied to the lyrics of the songs themselves. The bureau used
not only music and lyrics composed at court and in the office itself but
also lyrics that seemed to have been folk poems. Such use of popular
songs in the court was reminiscent of the "Airs" of the Classic of Poetry,
in which lyrics that originated among the common people found currency
in the regional courts of the Zhou princes. A handful of Western Han
lyrics still survive that probably came from the original institution, the Han
jr
"Music Bureau/' Among these are pieces that seem to have originated in
folk poetry, including the two following pieces: a lover's oath of eternal
TV 4
fidelity and a poem breaking off with an unfaithful
over.
Heaven A bove (Western Han yue-fu)

By Heaven above,
I will be your true love,
let it be forever and never wane.
When hills no longer rise,
when the rivers water dries,
when winter thunder rolls,
and snow in summer falls,
when sky and earth fuse,
Ill stop loving you.
The One I Love (Western Han
yue-fu)
The one I love

is south of the sea.
What gift can I send him?
^ h e category of yue-fu, as it has been used for the past millennium, represents a complex histori
cal aggregation of types of poems. What makes a poem a yue-fu is its title. Although it often sug
gests the theme of the poem, the title is essential ly considered the title of a melody, even if the melody
is long lost. The term yue-fu includes all anonymous poems from before the seventh century w rit
ten to yue-fu titles. Many of these are folk poems. The category also includes all poems by known
writers which use that body of yue-fu titles, as well as poems by known writers to titles that can be
recognized as variations on the original set of pre-seventh-century titles.
a hair-clasp of tortoise shell,

set with paired pearls,
and wound all about with jade.
Then I heard that his heart had changed,
I broke it and burned it in a pile,
broke and burned it,
threw the ash to the wind.
From this day on,
no more longing, no more love,
my love for him is done.
When roosters crow and the dogs all bark,
my brother, his wife will know,
tra-la-la,
the autumn winds howl, the pheasants shrill,
soon the east will grow bright
and all will be known.
Some of these Western Han yue-fu recall earlier ritual songs, such as the following
lyric speaking for soldiers who died for an unknown cause in an unknown battle.
This Han song should be compared with the Chu ritual song, "The Kingdom's Dead
(see p. 161), which also allows those dead in distant battle to speak. Although it does
not echo or derive from "The Kingdom's Dead," "South of the Walls We Fought"
serves the same function of allowing the community to acknowledge the bravery
and loyalty of the dead.
South of the Walls We Fought (Western Han yue-fu)

South of the walls we fought,
north of the ramparts we fell,
fell in the meadows, left unburied,
food for the ravens.
Speak to the ravens for us, say:
we were brave men, far from home,
we fell in the meadows, left unburied,
how can our carrion flee you?
Where the waters run deep and clear,
the reeds and the rushes are dark
the horsemen all died in battle,
their tired mounts linger and neigh.
On the bridge a guardhouse is built
how can we cross south?
228
how can we cross north?

If the grain is not taken in harvest,
how shall our lord eat?
we want to be loyal liegemen,
but how can this be done?
We think on you, good liegemen,
good liegemen should be in our thoughts:
at dawn you went forth to battle,
and at evening did not return.
The original "Music Office" was closed in 6 B.C., but the term yue-fu continued to
be applied to anonymous poems that seem initially to have been folksongs. We have
a considerable body of such poems, probably dating from the Eastern Han in the
first and second centuries a.d. Some such songs, like "East of Ping-ling
below, deal
with the kinds of situations in the lives of the common people that almost never ap
pear in "high" literature.
East of Ping-ling (Eastern Han?)

East of Ping-ling, the royal tomb,
beech tree, cypress, and pine,
there is someoneI cant say w ho~
has kidnapped our good lord,
they kidnapped our good lord
right from his own great hall,
the ransom is set at a million coins
and a pair of the swiftest steeds.
A pair of the swiftest steeds
is going to be hard indeed:
I look back and see the wardens coming,
my heart quails and grows cold,
my heart grows cold within,
the blood drains dry,
I go home and tell the kin
that the brown calf must be sold.
\
t\later Chinese song traditions, songs were often performed in sets, with the differ
ent sections thematically playing off one another. In a few of these Eastern Han yuefu, such as "Prelude: White Swans in Pairs," we have an indication of how such song
sets might have been structured. The opening segment often deals with an animal,
bird, or plant; then a central segment deals with a human situation that is parallel
with or contrasts to the opening segment; finally, there is a conventional coda in
which the singer wishes his audience long life and blessings.
Prelude: White Swans in Pairs (Eastern Han?)

In pairs white swans came flying,
came flying from the northwest,
five by five and ten by ten,
all in lines uneven.
Suddenly one was struck sick
and could not fly with the rest.
Every five leagues he looked back once,
every six leagues he lingered.
I would take you in my beak,
but my beak is shut and wont open;
I would bear you on my back,
but my feathers are broken and fallen.
Great joy comes with first meeting,
then grief, when parted in life.
He faltered and looked round to the flock,
and unawares tears were falling.
As my thoughts fix on parting with you,
the breath in me chokes, I cannot speak.
Let each take care for himself, herself,
the road is far, return will be hard.
And I will stay in my chamber alone,
our gates kept closed and doubly barred.
If you live, we will meet again;
if you die, we will join down below.
Live this day with delight on delight,
Long life to you, ten thousand years.
Many of the anonymous Han yue-fu were probably composed by professional
singers, and they show characteristics of oral composition, such as formulae and
shared lines. In their original form, these anonymous yue-fu were probably not fixed
"texts," but were instead continually changed in each performance until at last
someone wrote one version down and the words became fixed. By a remarkable
accident of preservation, we have the following three versions of the sam e song from
the Eastern Han. As is often the case in English or Scottish ballads, these songs leave
much unsaid. Each version hints at something not stated directly: one brother wrong
ing another; the young wife not attending to domestic tasks but instead entertaining
someone.
Cocks Crow (Eastern Han?)

Cocks crow in the treetops,
dogs bark deep behind walls
where is the wanderer heading,
now that the world is at peace?

Nothing slips past the law,
the wicked meet justice, the helpless get care
Golden is your gate,
and emerald is your hall,
where flasks of wine are set in pairs,
and Han-dan singers there perform.
Roof tiles of lapis lazuli
appear on roofs of lesser clans.
Behind the rooms a square pool lies,
and in that pool are ducks in pairs,
seventy ducks and two,
all in order, formed in lines,
and when they sing, their sad cries
are heard on the eastern porch of our hall.
Brothers there are, four or five,
all are attendants on the king,
when they come home one day in five,
the roadsides fill with onlookers.
Gold winds round their horsesheads,
gleaming and sparkling fine.
A peach tree grew by an open well
a pear tree grew by its side
worms chewed away the peachs roots,
but the pear tree fell in its stead.
A tree will offer itself for another,
but brother forgets brother.
Meeting (Eastern Han?)

We met upon the narrow lanes,
on roads so narrow no coach could pass,
I knew not what young man it was,
wheel to wheel, asked of your home.
Easy is your home to know,
easy to know, hard to forget.
Golden is your gate,
white jade is the hall,
and in the hall are flasks of wine,
and Han-dan singers there perform,
with cinnamon trees in the courtyard
where sparkling lanterns brightly shine.
Brothers there are, two or three,
the second, attendant to the king,
when he comes home one day in five,

the whole roadway fills with light,
gold winds round his horses head,
and roadsides fill with onlookers.
He enters his gates, he looks around
and sees only ducks in pairs,
seventy ducks and two,
all in order, formed in lines.
and he hears the sound of melodious cries,
cranes sing on porches east and west.
The eldest wife weaves the silken mesh,
the middle wife weaves the yellow floss,
the youngest wife does nothing at all,
harp in her arm, she mounts the hall.
Sit calmly, my lord, and listen a while,
for the play of the strings is not yet done.
Chang-an Has Narrow Alleys (Eastern Han?)

Chang-an has narrow alleys,
alleys so narrow no coach can pass.
I chanced on two young men,
wheel to wheel, I asked of your home.
Your home is beside New Market
easy to know, hard to forget.
The eldest son brings in two thousand pecks,
the middle son, constable of the king.
The youngest son has no post at all,
in cap and gown he serves in Luo-yang.
When the three sons together enter the room,
all through the room a light appears.
The eldest wife weaves silks and linens,
the middle wife weaves the yellow floss,
the youngest wife does nothing at all
harp in her arm, she mounts the hall.
Be still, ray lord, and listen a while,
for the play of the strings is not quite done.

Later poets often took some striking line o r passage from earlier poetry and elaborated
it in a separate poem. In the closing passage of the preceding tw o versions, we do not
know the full situation, but we do know that there are three brothers and three wives.
Two of the wives are doing w hat wives should do: they are weaving. The third is doing
The Chinese aMiddle Ages

something else~entertaining someone she addresses with respect (in the final version
we are told that the youngest brother, her husband, is off in Luo-yang). Poets of the
fifth and sixth centuries could not resist the erotic implications, and they often com
posed short poems to tw o new yue-fu titles, "The Sensual Charms o f the Three Wives"
and 'The M iddle W ife Weaves the Yellow Floss," echoing the endings o f the songs above.
Shen Yue (4 4 1-5 13)The Sensual Charms of the Three Wives

The eldest wife wipes off boxes of jade,
the middle wife knots beaded curtains,
but the youngest wife does nothing at all
she fixes her brows in the mirror.
Lie quietly, love, just for a while~
later tonight well do private things.
When enthusiasts began to collect folksongs and ballads in England and Europe in
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, they would often "improve" them, revis
ing passages and leaving out segments that seemed "garbled" or "corrupt/' In more
recent times, scholars have recognized that such incongruous elements are a nat
ural part of folksong traditions, which do not follow the same rules as the literature
of the elite. We have a fine example of this in two versions of the Eastern Han(?)
"Song of White Hair." One version is included in the "Treatise on Music/' part of
an official history compiled in the late fifth century; this treatise preserves many of
the best Han yue-fu and seems to represent the transcription of singers' repertoires.
The second version comes from roughly the same period and is found in an early
sixth-century anthology, Recent Songs from a Terrace of Jade (Yu-tai xin-yong),

which included many yue-fu. Like the European folksong collectors of the eighteenth
and early nineteenth centuries, the editor of Recent Songs from a Terrace of Jade
seems to have "fixed" some of the yue-fu. In his version of "Song of White Hair,"
the editor regularizes the stanzas and omits passages that seem incongruous, creat
ing a coherent lyric of a woman breaking off with a faithless man. The sections in
the original version that are omitted in the "literary" version are given in italics below.
Song of White Hair (Eastern Han?)

As bright as the snow on mountaintop,
as clear as the moon between clouds,
I have heard that you love another,
I have made up my mind to break it off.
We have both lived our lives in this city,

but when have we met with a flask o f wine?
We meet today with a flask of wine,
then tomorrow at dawnby the royal moat,
well linger there by the royal moat,
where the water flows off east and west.
There
s a woodcutter east of the city,
there's a woodcutter west of the city too;
both woodcutters heave together~
with no friends for whom can I show offf
Sad and dreary, sad and dreary,
when a woman marries, she should not cry,
I wanted a man with a faithful heart,
till white hair came, never to part.
The bamboo pole bends with the strike,
The fishs tail flips violently.
In a man value true feeling;
money is no use at all.
A horse is chomping at the hay

and on the river great gentry play.
Live this day with delight on delight
Long life to you, ten thousand years.
The following two songs treat roughly the same theme~a man approaches a beau
tiful young woman and his advances are rebuffed in very different ways. The sec
ond of these songs is attributed to an otherwise unknown figure, Xin Yan-nian, prob
ably a professional singer of the Eastern Han. The motif bears interesting comparison
to the poetic exposition "The Goddess" (see p. 190), in which the poet meets the
goddess and is rejected just before they consummate their love.
Mulberries by the Path (Eastern Han?)

Sunrise in southeast
shines on the halls of our house of Qin,
and the house of Qin has a lovely girl
whose name, they say, is Luo-fu.
Luo-fu is skilled with silkworms
she picks mulberry leaves south of the wall.
The straps of her basket are of blue silk
its handle, a branch of cinnamon;
Her hair has a trailing ponytail,
in her ears are bright moon pearls.
Her skirt below is saffron damask,
of purple damask, her vest above.
When passers-by see Luo-fu, they
drop their loads and stroke their beards;
when young men see Luo-fu,
their hats fall off and their headbands show.
Men at the plow forget the share;
men with the hoe forget the hoe,
234
The Chinese Middle Ages3'
when they go home theres always a fight,

all because of seeing Luo-fu.
From the south the lord governor came,
and he halted his five-horse team
the lord governors sent a runner
to find out who that maiden is:
The house of Qiri has a lovely girl
whose name, we shall say, is L uo fu.
And just how old is this Luo-fu?
Not yet up to twenty,
and just beyond fifteen.
The governor invites Luo-fu:
Now will you ride with me?
Luo-fu came forward and said these words:
The lord governors a foolish man
the lord governor has his own wife;
I Luo-fu, have my man.
In the east are a thousand riders and more,
and my husband is head of them all.
How can you tell who my husband is?
he rides a white horse, a black colt behind,
the horses tail is wound in blue silk,
and gold is the halter on its head,
at his waist is a wound-pommel sword,
worth perhaps a million or more.
At fifteen he was a county runner,
by twenty, a great lord at court,
by thirty, in the Emperors entourage,
by forty, the master of a city.
His skin is smooth, his skin is white,
his beard is wispy and long,
he walks with slow pace through the courts,
with stately steps he goes through the hall.
There are thousands that dine at his board,
and all of them say how grand he is!
Xin Yan-nian, Officer of the Guard (Eastern Han)

A bondsman of the house of Huo5
Feng by name, Feng Zi-du,
hid behind the Lord Generals power
and trifled with the Turkish tavern girl.
Fifteen was the Turkish maid,
alone at the bar one day in spring,
a long-hung skirt, twined-ribbon sash,
235
'
billowing sleeves, acacia vest.

On her head she wore Lan-tian jade,
in her ears she wore pearls from Rome
her hair in two buns was so lovely
there was nothing like them in the world:
one bun was worth five million in gold,
and the two together, more than ten.
I never expected this dashing guard
to stop by our tavern so gallantly,
his silver saddle sparkling,
his blue-covered coach waiting empty.
And he comes to me wanting clear wine:
I brought him a rope-handled jug.
And he comes to me wanting fine things to eat;
a golden plate with carp fillet.
And he gives me a green bronze mirror
and grabs hold of my skirts of red gauze.
I dont care if my red gauze gets torn,
such cheap treatment is what I expect:
a man always wants a new woman,
but a woman values the man she has
in human life there are new things and old
the highborn do not mix with the low.
No thank you, officer of the guard,
private love isnt worth it.
By the end of the Eastern Han, in the last part of the second century a . d ., literary
men began to write poems in the spirit of the anonymous yue-fu, and these too came
to be known as yue-fu. Yue-fu became important as a kind of poetry in which a poet
could speak not in his own voice but as a character type: the abandoned woman,
the frontier soldier, the young nobleman. The settings of literary yue-fu are imagi
nary scenes, such as Chen Lin imagining the following exchange between a con
script laborer on the frontier and his wife.
Chen Lin (d. 2 17 )I Watered M y Horse at a Spring by the Wall

I watered my horse at a spring by the Wall
with water so cold my horse hurt in its bones.
They went to the boss-man beside the Great Wall,
saying
Dont keep us Tai-yuan lads long past our time.
Lets keep the state work on schedule, boys
so lift your mallets to the rhythm of the sound.
Better for a man to die fighting
than bear pounding earth to build the Great W all.
236
The Chinese Middle Ages33
And the Great Wall keeps stretching on and on

on and on three thousand miles.
Theres many a stout lad on the frontier,
and many a wife alone at home.
I wrote a letter to my wife:
Better find another man,
- dont you wait for me;
be good to your new mans family,
just now and then remember me.
A letter came back to the frontier land,
said, Whats this foolishness you
re telling me?
Since Ive got troubles, why should I
try to hold down a woman no blood-kin of mine?
If you have a boy, dont raise him,
if you have a girlfeed her well.
If you could only see how it is by the Wall
with the bones of dead men stacked in a pile . . .
They dressed my hair as a woman
and I went to be your wife
now my heart knots with misery;
I see well how you suffer on the frontier,
and I dont think Ill be long for life.
After the Han, yue-fu became a very broad category of poetry, encompassing all
anonymous popular songs as well as literary works done in what different ages saw
as the "spirit" of the original yue-fu.
Yue-fu of the South

A type of anonymous popular song very different from the old Han yue-fu flourished
south of the Yangzi River from the third through the fifth centuries. These were mostly
quatrains, with many different lyrics made to a single title that probably represented
a song or melody type. Some of the song types seem to have been sung only by
women, while others allowed either a male or a female voice. These short lyrics are
mostly love songs, some movingly direct in their simplicity and others witty and mis
chievous. They make heavy use of a small group of puns, including: lian, "lotus" or
"passion"; si, "silk," "thread," or "longing"; ou, "lotus root" and "mate"; and pi, "bolt"
[of cloth] and "match." These popular songs came to have a great influence on the
formation of the literary quatrain.
Such songs became very popular with the aristocrats of the Southern court, and
in the early sixth century, choruses of women were imported into the palace and
trained to perform them. The largest and most famous group of these quatrains are
known as the "Zi-ye Songs,Zi-ye being a term for "midnight," and supposedly the
name of a famous courtesan of the mid-fourth century. Most of the Zi-ye Songs are
1X7
in a woman's voice, but the first two seem to form a dialogue between a man and
a woman.
Zi-ye Songs
MI
I went out the gates at sunset,

and glimpsed you passing by.
Enchanting features, tresses fetching,
a sweet scent filled all the road
The sweet scent was made by perfume,
enchanting features I cannot claim.
But Heaven wont thwart a persons desire,
and on purpose it let me see you
X II
At dawn I long to go out the gates,
at dusk I long to go back to the isles.
Ill laugh and chat with anyone,
but my heart in secret thinks of you.
XVI
My love was taken by another,
he betrayed me more than one time.
I opened the door, didnt set the bar,
which is to say: Close no more.
No. XVI is a punning quatrain. The open door ("Close no more") is wu fu xiangguan,
both "not locked any more" and T il have nothing to do with you any more. Of
course, the open door also suggests the woman's availability for a new lover.
X IX
When my love is sad, Im also down;
when my man laughs, Im happy too.
Have you never seen two trees entwined:
from different roots shared branches rise?
XX
I was moved by how loving you were at first,
now I sigh how distant and cold youve grown.
Pound out gold leaf on a tortoise shell
all glitter outside, nothing deep within.
X X III
Who can feel longing and not sing out?
Who can be starving and not eat?
The sun grows dark, I lean by the door,
so upset that I cant help thinking of you.
238
The Chinese aMiddle Ages'*

X X IV
I held my dress, not tying the sash,

I painted my brows and went to the window.
My gauze skirt is easily whirled by the breeze
if it opens a bitjust blame the spring wind.
X X X III
The night lasted on, I could not sleep,
and the moonlight shone so bright.
I thought I heard my true love call,
and I wasted an answering Yes! to the sky.
XXXVI
I am that star at the Dippers end

that never shifts in a thousand years.
My lovers heart is like the sun,
in the east at dawn, at dusk turning west.
The Zi-ye Songs of the Four Seasons

Spring Songs
VI
The cuckoo is singing in the bamboo,

plum blossoms fall, filling the road.
Girls seeking pleasure roam in spring moonlight,
their gauze skirts trail through fragrant grass.
IX
Skirt of gauze, tight red sleeves,

hairpin of jade and full-moon earrings.
Roaming for pleasure, I walk the spring dew,
wanton and seeking a like-hearted man.
X
Flowers so lovely in the spring groves,
the mood so sad of birds in spring.
Then the spring breeze, so full of desire,
blows open wide my skirts of gauze.
Winter Songs
X III
Where will we tie our true-love-knot?
>
under the cypress of Western Mound.
Windswept and bare, no shelter there,
and the hard frosts will freeze me to death.
There seems to have already been a culture of romance in which extempore qua
trains were exchanged, using simple rhymes, stock images, and repeated lines. Lines
from this strange, dark quatrain reappear in another quatrain from the same period,
dubiously attributed to the famous courtesan "Little Su.
I ride the coach with polished sides,

my love rides a dark mottled horse.
under pine and cypress of Western Mound.
Such anonymous quatrain lyrics often show an erotic directness that is rare in early
Chinese poetry. No one knows what the tune title Yan Pan-er means; the same lyric
is also included with a group of lyrics to another melody, Du-quf which may mean
"solo song."
Yang Pan-er (also Du-qu Song)

I happened to go out before White Gate
where the willows can hide the crows.
My love is the aloeswood incense,
and I am the brazier where it burns.
"White Gate" was one of the gates of the Southern capital Jian-kang. Crows are not
the only things that can be hidden by the dense and low-hanging fronds of willow
trees. Judging by the smoking metaphor in the second couplet, the singer here had
better luck than the lover who waited by the willows in the Classic of Poetry CXL
(see p. 40).
Yue-fu of the Northern Dynasties

From the same period as the Southern yue-fu we also have a small gathering of very
different songs, from the non-Chinese regimes in North China of the fourth to sixth
centuries. These have a stylized masculinity that ever afterward became associated
with "Northern" modes. In contrast to the soft world of the South, the Northern songs
are haunted by death and violence. While it seems probable that many of these songs
were indeed originally from the North, they were for the most part preserved in
Southern sources and collections, and represented, either by selection or modifica
tion, a southerner's idea of what typical "Northern" poetry should sound like.
Qi-yu Songs (Northern Dynasties yue-fu)

I
A man should act with daring,
many friends he does not need.
The hawk goes flying through the sky
wrens surge away on either side.
IV
A man is a pathetic bug:
once out his gate, he fears his death
a corpse that rots in a narrow ravine,
white bones that none will gather and bury.
Song of the Prince of Lang-ya (Northern Dynasties yue-fu)

I just bought a five-foot sword,
from the central pillar I hang it.
I stroke it three times a day
better by far than a maid of fifteen.
In the fourth to sixth centuries, the long anonymous yue-fu narrative ballads of the
Eastern Han were no longer written in the Southern Dynasties, but they did survive
in the North. Below is the famous Northern ballad of a girl, Hua Mu-Ian, taking the
place of her father in military service. The rulers of the Northern Dynasties were nonChinese. Note that the ruler is not only referred to by the Chinese title of Emperor
but by the non-Chinese title of Khan.
The Ballad of Mu-lan (Northern Dynasties yue-fu,

4th- 6th century)
Tsktsk, and tsk tsk
Mu-lan weaves by her window.
We cannot hear the shuttles sound,
we only hear the girls sighs.
Now tell me, girl, who's on your mind,
and tell me, girl, whos in your heart?
Theres no one on my mind at all,
and no one in my heart.
Last night I saw conscription lists,
the Khan is calling troops everywhere.
The armys rolls were in twelve scrolls,
and every scroll had Fathers name.
My father has no older son,
Mu-lan has no big brother.
I wish to go buy horse and gear
and march to the wars for Father.
In the east mart she bought a fine steed,
in the west mart bought blanket and saddle.
In the north mart she bought a long whip,

in the south mart bought bit and bridle.
. At dawn she took her parents* leave,
by the Yellow River she camped at dusk.
She did not hear her parents calls,
she heard only the sounds of the waters
of the Yellow River rolling.
In the morning she left the river,
she came to Black Mountain at dusk.
She did not hear her parents calls,
she heard only the sad whinnying
from Turkish horsemen on Mount Yan.
She went thousands of miles to battle,
she flew across fortified passes.
The north wind carried the sounds of the watch,
and cold light shone on her armor.
After many a battle the general died,
after ten years the stout troops went home.
She came back and saw the Emperor,
the Emperor sat in his Hall of Light.
Her deeds raised her rank by twelve degrees,
and he gave her a hundred thousand and more.
The Khan then asked her what she wished
I
ve no use to be Grand Secretary.
Just loan me a camel with far-running feet
to carry this lad on its back to home.
When her parents heard that their daughter had come,
they came out of town, leaning each on the other.
When her sister heard that big sister had come
at the window she made herself up with rouge.
When young brother heard that his sister had come,
he sharpened his knife and got pigs and sheep.
Then she opened the door to her room in the east,
and she sat on her bed in her room in the west.
She took off her buffcoat for battle,
and put on the skirt she used to wear.
At the window she combed her wispy locks,
in the mirror she put on rouge.
Then she went out the gate to see her companions,
and all her companions were struck with surprise.
We marched together for twelve long years,
and you never knew that Mu-lan was a girl.
242
The Chinese Middle Ages'"
The male hares legs have a nervous spring,

the eyes of the girl hare wander
but when two hares run side by side,
who can tell if Im boy or girl?
As in many other song traditions, lines and segments reappear in different places,
often in very different contexts. The opening of "The Ballad of Mu-lanreturns in a
group of Northern Dynasties quatrains, in the voice of a more conventional yue-fu
heroine who is thinking about getting married.
Breaking the Branches of Willows (Northern Dynasties yue-fu)

I
A date tree grows before my gate,
year after year it never gets old.
If Mother does not have me married,
how will she get a grandson to hold?
n
Tsk, tsk, and woe is me,
the girl weaves at the window.
We cannot hear the shuttles sound
we only hear the girls sighs.
in
Now tell me, girl, whats on your mind,
and tell me, girl, whats in your heart?
Mother promised to have me married,
and this year again there
s no good news
Other Voices in the Tradition:

The Later Lineages of Yue-fu
Once a yue-fu such as "South of the Walls We Fought" (p. 228) was established, later poets
might compose their ow n versions under the same title. Such poets frequently thought of
themselves as continuing or recreating the mood o f the original version, but more often than
not, these later versions only remind us o f the profound differences separating later imper
ial China from the more stark and simple w orld of the anonymous Han yue-fu.
O f the great Tang poets, Li Bo (701-762) was the most fascinated by the w o rld o f the old
yue~fuf yet the contrast between his version of "South of the Walls We Fought" and the Han
ballad is striking: naming the trouble spots on the Tang frontier and beyond replaces the
nameless battleground of the old ballad; and a political message against w ar takes the place
o f the ritual acknowledgment o f the service of the dead soldiers. Note, however, that the
Tang's Central Asian enemies are anachronistically called the Xiong-nu, the great Central
Asian kingdom that fought the Han.
Li Bo, South of the Walls We Fought

We fought last year at the Sang-gan5s source,
this year we fight on the Cong River road.
We washed weapons in the surf of Tiao-zhi,
grazed horses on grass in Sky Mountains snow.2
Thousands of miles ever marching and fighting:
until all the Grand Army grows frail and old.
The Xiong-nu treat slaughter as farmers treat plowing;
since bygone days only white bones are seen
in their fields of yellow sand.
The House of Qin built the wall
to guard against the Turk;
for the House of Han the beacon fires
were blazing still.
Beacon fires blaze without ceasing
the marching and battle never end.
They died in fighting on the steppes,
their vanquished horses neigh,
mourning to the sky.
Kites and ravens peck mens guts,
fly with them dangling from their beaks
and hang them high
on boughs of barren trees.
The troops lie mud-smeared in grasses,
and the general acted all in vain.
Now I truly see that weapons
are evils tools:
the Sage will use them only
when he cannot do otherwise.
During the Song Dynasty (960-1279), poetry became increasingly rarefied or reflective, char
acteristic of the sophisticated self-conscious w orld that was the Song. But in the fourteenth
century, many poets began to look back to the Tang and earlier ages as offering poetic m od
els o f directness and sim plicity o f feeling that seemed to have answers to the various dis
satisfactions poets felt w ith their ow n "m odern" w orld. In the Archaist movement o f the Ming,
during the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, we can particularly see a longing for the
roughness and direct force of Han poetry. M ing Archaist poets often imitated the Han bal
lads, their imitations much admired in their ow n tim e but reviled by critics and poets from
the seventeenth century on for being too derivative. The fo llow ing version o f South o f the
W alls W e Fought" shows something o f the M ing desire to recapture the original vita lity of
the Han song. In place o f the austerity o f the Han ballad, however, a "G othic" excess is now
evident.
2The Sang-gan was a river in northern He-bei where the Tang fought the Khitan. The Cong River
was in the Pamirs, where the Tang fought the Tibetans. Tiao-zhi was off in Afghanistan, while Sky
Mountain was in Xin-jiang. Together, these locations suggest the campaigns in the North and
Northwest.
244
The Chinese nMiddle Ages
W ang Shi-zhen (1526-1590), South of the W all We Fought

South of the wall we fought,
by the ramparts south of the wall,
north of the wall black clouds pressed low.
Troops lay in ambush to our east,
while to the west
scattered horsemen harried us.
They gave us no rest.
The brown dust circled us all around.
The sun turned blue-black,
the sky was a blur.
Gongs and drums sounded,
shouting and clamor.
Turkish riders drew back,
then charged swift as a gale.
The trees seemed like weeds,
the grass was sere.
Who is that crying out?
a father gathering up his son.
A wife asks of her husband,
pikes and armor in piles,
blood covers skulls.
Every household calls back a soul,
every company mourns its own.
Go tell the Lord General,
if the Lord General does not know.
In our lives we were troops of the borders;
why should we grieve to have graves on the steppes?
The food in the pot,
was not cooked at noon.
Too bad! the hasty alarm came,
then we parted for good,
and never were able to finish our meals.
Over the steppes wind whistles
and with it run our'souls.
Cant they glimpse our Lord General,
who sits in the fort with an ivory staff
beneath a great banner?
In his lifetime hell surely be made a great noble;
and when dead, in his ancestral temple
he will eat his fill.
In these versions, w e can see something o f the operation o f the poetic tradition, how earlier
poetry was continually reworked for new circumstances. During the sixteenth century, when
W ang Shi-zhen wrote the version o f "South o f the W alls W e Fought" above, the M ing had
been having m ajor frontier wars w ith the Mongols. Sim ilarly, the follow ing version by Li Yesi offers a grotesque vision o f violence and ravaged cities that w o uld be hard to dissociate

from the horrors o f the Q ing invasion, through w hich Li Ye-si lived. The utter collapse of the
M ing armies before the invading Manchus (Qing) and the subsequent destruction o f poorly
defended cities could easily be seen as the inversion o f the heroic Han ballad, where sol
diers fought to the death and the com m unity acknowledged their service. Far more than
W ang Shi-zherVs version, Li Ye-si's version is meant to be read ironically against the origi
nal Han ballad: the troops flee rather than die, and the speaker addresses "carrion wrens"
rather than ravens.
Li Ye-si (1622-1680)South of the Walls We Fought

South of the walls we fought,
east of the walls we fled
and though grain grows ripe in the wild,
it will not save our lord.
Whose skeletons are those
strewn scattered in the streets?
Yellow maggots gorge by day,
lairs of foxes appear by night,
right by mattress and pillow.
Yellow maggots are teeming,
blood red rivers streaming;
the old woman shuts the gate and cries,
a young child leans on the door and dies.
I went back home,
all the neighbors were gone,
the kitchen was destroyed.
I took a basket, went out the gate,
arrows were shot at me
I had wanted to die of starvation,
it seems I wont get my wish.
I turn my head and see wrens,
and say to the wrens~dont fly away!
Dawns gaunt flesh will be evenings carrion,
and that will appease your hunger.
The yue-fu romantic quatrains o f the South also captured the imagination o f later writers.
W hile the original anonymous Yang Pan-er w ent as follows:
I happened to go out before White Gate

where the willows can hide the crows.
My love is the aloeswood incense,
and I am the brazier where it burns
the fo llo w in g transformation by the Tang w riter Li Bo makes the effective sim plicity o f the
earlier anonymous yue-fu elaborate. As was characteristic o f Tang myths, Li Bo renders the
scene o f singing the song itself as part of the song.
The Chinese Middle Ages'*
Li Bo, Yang Pan-er

You were singing Yang Pan-er3
I urged you to drink more Xin-feng beer.
What is it matters most to me?
the crows that cry in White Gates willows.
The crows cry hidden in willow flowers,
you grow drunk and stay at my home.
In a mountain-shaped brazier
the aloeswood incense burns,
two columns of smoke form a single vapor
passing the purple wisps of cloud.
As literary men wrote their ow n versions o f the old Han and Southern fo lk poems, many o f
the basic motifs o f those poems also took on a different kind of continuity, reappearing in
later lyrics o f anonymous singers.
W e often find remarkable continuities in the Chinese song tradition, w ith motifs appear
ing first in the Classic o f Poetry, then in yue-fu, and again in later song up to the twentieth
century. Rather than seeing such continuities as the direct influence o f earlier lyrics on later
ones, it is best to think o f some of these enduring motifs as recurrent expressions o f constant
social functions. For example, given the general fickleness o f the human heart, lovers must
swear oaths, as in "Heaven A b o v e , the Western Han song quoted at the beginning o f this
section:
By Heaven above,
I will be your true love,
let it be forever and never wane.
When hills no longer rise,
when the rivers water dries,
when winter thunder rolls,
and snow in summer falls,
when sky and earth fuse,
Ill stop loving you.
Such lovers' vows appear in later popular songs declaring conditions for separation re
markably sim ilar to those in the old Han yue-fu. One o f the anonymous song lyrics found
in the Tang manuscripts recovered in the Dun-huang caves early in the twentieth century
follows.
Anonymous Song Lyric to KBoddhisattva Barbarian

:
(9th-10th century)
On our pillows we made a thousand vows:
if you want to end things,
youll have to wait
till the green hills fall;

till steel weights float on the water,
youll have to wait
till the Yellow River
dries to its bed;
till the stars Shen and Chen
in broad daylight appear,
till the Northern Dipper moves round to the south
If you want to end things, it wont be all right
till the sun shines brightly
at midnight.
The Beginnings of Classical

Poetry (Shi)
Sad songs can take the place of tears, far gazing can take the place
of return.
Sad Song (Eastern Han yue-fu)
Although traditional critics have always traced the Chinese poetic tradi
tion back to the Classic of Poetry and the "Lyrics of Chu," the real be
ginning of the classical tradition, unbroken for two millennia, is best un
derstood as beginning in the Eastern Han, when a new personal lyric
poetry grew up alongside the yue-fu. This new "classical poetry" (shi)
was written in lines of five syllables, the most popular meter for yue-fu,
and was very different in tone from the stiff, archaic poetry in four-
syllable lines that was still written in the Han, in imitation of the Classic
of Poetry.
ih
The earliest classical poems are anonymous, the so-called Old Poems (gu-shi).
The most famous of these anonymous lyrics, probably dating from the second cen
tury a.d., are the wNineteen Old Poems, Another group of anonymous parting
poems was circulated as the works of Li Ling and Su Wu, two famous figures of the
Western Han (though the poems actually date from the second and third century
a .d .).
In addition to these two groups, there are various other early anonymous "old
poems" scattered through early sources.

Although we find a few clumsy attempts at classical poetry in the five-syllable
line earlier, it was at the end of the second century a .d . that well-known literary men
adopted the new form of classical poetry, just as they began to write yue-fu in the
same period.
Yue-fu and classical poetry came to be seen as quite d is tin c t in later centuries,
but during this early period they are very close and sometimes indistinguishable. The
two forms shared a set of common themes and situations which, taken together, em
bodied the basic concerns of the period, as the Han Dynasty collapsed and warring
armies tore the country apart. In yue-fu, the speaker often assumed the voice of an
other person in an imagined situation; classical poetry, by contrast, developed into
a first-person lyric, with the poet speaking for himself or herself in the historical pre
sent. Although this distinction is by no means consistent in the early period, it guided
the evolution of the two forms in separate directions. Yue-fu may have been per
formed by professional singers, probably illiterate; early classical poetry, even in the
anonymous "Old Poems, shows at least a rudimentary education

and while both
forms were no doubt enjoyed by the educated elite, classical poetry came from them.
In the following selection we first treat yue-fu, the anonymous "Old Poems," and
early classical poetry by known writers together, showing how they share and make
different use of a body of common themes. Then we look at some of the known poets
writing in the third century.
The thematic headings are arranged to tell a simple hypothetical story: parting,
longing on the road (either on the part of the traveler or the person who remained
behind), coming to the city, being alone at night, the message or gift sent to the
beloved, the stranger encountering a woman, feasting, impermanence and disillu
sion, 4 nd finally the return. Beneath the story that these themes tell, we can see the
overriding concerns of the poets of the period: separation, relationships torn apart
and new relationships formed. This is very much a poetry of dislocation, a poetry
about outsiders who have left their communities and gone to the city, into service,
or into the army.
As we look at some of the phases of this "story," we should also keep in mind
the literary historical changes that were occurring. For example, in the first section,
oh "Parting and Going Off," we see a yue-fu version in which the man leaves his
family to perform some unnamed act of violent desperation. There are "old poems"
on the parting of friends, with consolation offered. On a more sophisticated level,
there is the "application" of the conventions of parting to a specific historical expe
rience: in a.d . 192, after rebel factions devastated the capital Chang-an, Wang Can
takes leave of friends and kin, and on the road he sees another, terrible example of
abandonment and breaking of the bonds of kinship. Finally, from the middle of the
third century, Ruan Ji invokes the motif as a general principle~perhaps as part of a
decision to quit the social world for the private life of a recluse.
Parting and Going Off

East Gate (Eastern Han? yu e-fu )
He went out East Gate,
no hope to return
he came in the gate,
he was shaken with grief.
No food in the kettle;
no clothes on the rack.
He drew his sword,
he went out the gate,
his children wept and wife pulled at his clothes.
Other wives want wealth and honor,
I gladly share gruel with you,
share gruel with you:
By broad Heaven above
by our babies here below
this is wrong!
Get out of my way! I go!

Ive waited far too long!
Already my hair hangs white,

I cannot stay here forever!
The following two parting poems are preserved in the corpus spuriously attributed
to Li Ling and Su Wu. The first is spoken in a woman's voice, saying goodbye to a
man leaving for the wars.

When I bound my hair and became your wife
there were no doubts in the love we shared.
Our pleasure is just for this evening now,
joy must be had while the time is here.
A traveler thinks on the long road ahead
you rise and check the time of night.
The stars Shen and Chen have already set,
and you go, taking leave from this moment on.
You are marching off to the battlefield,
we do not know when we'll meet again.
Holding your hand, I give a great sigh,
wet with tears for this parting in life.
Try hard to take care of your years of youth,
and forget not the times of our pleasure.
If you live, you will come back again,
if you die, I will think of you forever.

Flesh and blood join as branch to leaf;
companions as well depend on each other.
And if on this earth all men are brothers,
no man is a traveler alone on the road.
We two were trees linked limb to limb
you and I were like one body
we were once those ducks that mate for life,
now split like the stars Shen and Chen;
once always found at each other's side,
now far as Qin from Turkestan.
When we thought how each must go his way,
our love was renewed with each passing day.
The deer cry out, they think on wild grasses
which may serve as a figure for honored guests,
and here I have a flask of wine
to offer you, soon to be far away.
I want you to stay and pour it out,

solace for a lifetime's closeness.
"The deer cry out, they think on wild grasses" is a slightly altered quotation from
one of the most famous poems in the Classic of Poetry, "Deer Cry" (CLXI) (see p.
275). This piece continued to be performed at banquets to welcome guests. The level
o f lite rary e d u c a tio n in th e p o e m is suggested less b y th e a c t o f citin g th e C la s s ic o f
Poetry than by the stock exegeticai response in the following line. This line is the
"right answer, the standard interpretation, as if "Deer Cry" had been an identifica
tion question on an elementary quiz on the Classic of Poetry. Such naYve use of the
Classic of Poetry may be contrasted with the more sophisticated reference in Wang
Can's poem below.
"Seven Sorrows" can be dated with some precision to the year 192 or soon there
after. In 190, Dong Zhuo had sacked Luo-yang, the "Eastern Capital," abducted the
Han emperor Xian, and carried him to Chang-an, the "Western Capital." In 192, fight
ing broke out between Dong Zhuo's subordinate generals in Chang-an. Wang Can
decided to seek refuge with Liu Biao, the governor ofjing-zhou (Jing-man), who had
been a student of Wang Can's grandfather.
Wang Can (177- 2 17 )Seven Sorrows I

In Chang-an the fighting was out of control,
jackals and tigers contrived our doom.
I abandoned the heartland, I went away,
to take myself far to the land of Jing-man.
In sorrow my kinsmen stood facing me,
my friends came after me, clinging.
I went out the gates, no one was seen,
only white bones hiding the meadows.
On the road was a starving woman
who abandoned her baby in the grass.
She heard it wail, she looked around,
she wiped away tears but did not turn back.
I know not where I myself will die
I cannot keep us both alive.s>
I whipped on my horse and left her there,
such words I could not bear to hear.
To the south I climbed the slope of Ba Mound
and turned my head to gaze on Chang-an.
And I understood why someone wrote Falling Stream .
I gasped and felt that pain within.
Ba Mound was the tomb of the Western Han emperor Wen, who presided over an
age of prosperity and good government that stood in sharp contrast to the war-torn
Chang-an of a.d. 192. "Falling Stream" was the title of a poem in the Classic of Po
etry 053) recalling another capital. It begins:
The Chinese aMiddle Ages
Biting chill, that falling stream

that soaks the clumps of asphodel.
0 how I lie awake and sigh,
thinking of Zhous capital.

Poets of the end of the second century and the first decades of the third century gave
accounts of the collapse of Han civilization its cities in ruins, human relationships
torn apart, unburied bones throughout the countryside. The reason that these large
historical upheavals were represented in Chinese literature was perhaps the expec
tation, articulated in the "Great Preface, that the poet would be the voice of the
age.
In the following somewhat later poem by Ruan Ji, the parting is not from any
one in particular, but from the entire social world and the very possibility of having
a family. Yet the next-to-last couplet recalls the words of the mother to her aban
doned baby in Wang Can's "Seven Sorrows."
Ruan Ji (210-263), Songs of My Cares III

A path will form beneath fair trees,
in eastern gardens, peach and plum.
Autumn winds blow bean leaves flying,
from now begins wasting and the fall.
The glory of flowers comes to ta tte rs ,
briar and brush grow in the hall.
1 forsook it all, I galloped away,
went off up the foot of Western Hill.
I cannot protect myself alone
much less take care of wife and child.
Frost blankets the grass of the meadows,
and the year too has reached its end.
Longing on the Road

Nineteen Old Poems I
Keep on going, on and on,
parted from you while alive.
Ten thousand miles apart and more,
each of us at a corner of sky.
The road between is blocked and long,
will we ever meet face to face again?
A Turkish horse leans to the north wind,
a Yue bird nests in the southernmost bough.1
Every day we grow farther apart,
1Yue was the southeastern part of China.
every day my sash hangs looser.

Drifting clouds block the bright sun,
and the traveler does not look to return.
To think of you makes a person old,
and the time of year is suddenly late.
Let it go now, say no more!
just eat well and take care.
The point of the fourth couplet is that each creature longs to be where it belongs:
the horse from the North faces north, while the Yue bird chooses to nest on the south
ernmost bough of a tree. The poem does not indicate the genders of those people
parted from, nor is it clear whether the poem is spoken from the viewpoint of the
traveler or of the person left behind. In one common alternative interpretation, the
last lin e is
understood
as the
speaker rejectin g
long ing: h e o r she d ecla res, "1 w ill
eat well and take care of myself."
The following poem is early, but more literary than the "Nineteen Old Poems.
It uses the conventional images and phrases of the "old poems, but it is also much
more specific in the situation it describes.
Qin Jia (2nd century), To His Wife (first of three) (attributed)

Liken mans life to morning dew
our time in the world is much trouble and pain:
worries and hardships come always too soon,
joyous reunions are always so late.
I brood on my present mission,
each day I go still farther from you.
I sent a carriage to take you home
alone you went and alone will return.
When I read your letter, I was sad,
at meals, unable to eat.
I sit alone in the empty room,
with no one there to cheer me,
and through long nights unable to sleep,
I toss and turn on the pillow.
Sorrow comes like tracing a ring
the heart is no mat to be rolled away.
'
The poem ends with a recollection of Classic of Poetry XXVI "Boat of Cypress" (see
P. 47):
. . . This heart of mine is no stone;

you cannot turn it where you will.
254

This heart of mine is no mat;
I cannot roll it up within . . .
Coming to the City

Coming to the city is less a phase in its own right than the condition of the feast in
which new relationships of closeness are briefly formed in face of danger and death.
These relationships are collective rather than individual, and the voice is quite dif
ferent from the voice that spoke of well-established individual relationships in part
ing. For a fuller treatment of this theme, see the section on "Feast" (pp. 274-294)
Nineteen Old Poems III

Cypress on grave mound, green so green,
and in the ravine, rocks heaped in piles.
M an is born between earth and sky
he goes swift as a wayfarer traveling far.
So take your joy in beakers of ale,
pour it full, not stingily;
Drive the cart harder, lash on the nag,
in Luo-yang and Wan good times are had.
Luo-yang is a city teeming full,
where fine hats and sashes seek out their own.
Narrow lanes line the thoroughfares
with many great houses of princes and earls.
Two palaces face each other afar,
paired towers, a hundred feet high and more.
So feast to the end, give the heart glee,
'
why let grim woes beset you?
Nineteen Old Poems IV

A good feast brings us together today,
of such revels and mirth it is hard to tell all.
The harp is struck, the notes rise free
new tunes so fine they touch the gods.
Those with virtue sing high words,
those skilled in song will hear whats true.
All of one heart, we share the same wish,
but the thought is withheld, not fully shown.
Man is born into only one time,
a sudden thing, dust whirled in the wind.
So why not whip your fine steed on,
seize a stronghold before some other?
Dont stay a common man and poor,
ever in hardship, always beaten down.
Alone at Night
Nineteen Old Poems XIX
Moonlight glowing so bright
shines on my bed curtains of lace.
From worry and sadness I cannot sleep,
I pull on my clothesrise and pace.
Though travels are said to have their joys,
better by far to turn home soon.
I go out the door and walk alone,
to whom can I tell these dark thoughts?
I crane my neck, go back in the room
and tears that fall are soaking my gown.
We may recall that Wang Can was the poet who, in the first of his "Seven Sorrows,"
was fleeing Chang-an in 192. The following poem was written after he escaped south
to refuge in Jing-man; but even there he was unhappy, unable to sleep, "alone at night."
Wang CanSeven Sorrows II

Jing-man is not my home,
so why do I linger here so long?
In a double boat I went upriver
until sunset saddened my heart.
The last light hung on the ridges of hills,
in the folds of cliffs the shadows increased.
Foxes went scurrying to their lairs,
birds flew circling native groves.
Rolling waves stirred clear echoes,
and monkeys howled from high on shore.
A sudden breeze ruffled my skirt and sleeves,
and silver dew soaked the folds of my gown.
Alone that night I could not sleep,
then lifting my robe, I stroked the harp.
Its silk and beechwood stir passions
and make me bring forth sad melody.
This wayfaring will never end,
the sting of care is hard to endure.
Ruan Ji, Songs of My Cares I

In the night I could not sleep,
restless I rose and plucked the harp.
Thin curtains mirrored the bright moon,
cool breeze blew into gown-folds.
A lone swan screeched out on the moors,
'
The Chinese aMiddle Ages33
in the north woods birds flew singing.

I wavered then, what would I see?_
troubled thoughts injure a heart all alone.
The motif of longing at night appears also in the following piece from the "Nineteen
Old Poems" on the Oxherd and Weaver stars, doomed by the gods to be lodged
apart in the heavens because of their love affair. They are allowed to meet only once
a year, on the seventh eve of the seventh month, when they cross the River of
Starsthe Milky Way~on a bridge formed by magpies.
Nineteen Old Poems X

Faraway lies that star, the Oxherd;
she sparkles, the Maid in the River of Stars.
She stretches her pale and delicate hand,
clacking, she whiles away time with the shuttle.
A day is spent and her weaving not done
as her tears fall down like the rain.
The River of Stars is shallow and clear,
nor are they so very far apart.
But across that bright and brimming stream,
she gazes with longing and cannot speak.
The story of the Oxherd and the Weaver and their meeting on the Seventh Eve, cross
ing a bridge of magpies, was a favorite theme of poets over the ages. It was usually
treated in terms of frustrated longing (as in the tenth of the "Nineteen Old Poems")
or the brevity of the lovers' meeting. The eleventh-century Song lyricist Qin Guan,
however, later writing lyrics to the melody "Gods on the Magpie Bridge, gave the
theme a memorable twist.
Qin Guan10 4 9 -110 0 )to Gods on the Magpie Bridge

Fine wisps of cloud sport their craft,
shooting stars bear word of the lovers pain,
and now far off in the River of Stars
they are making the crossing unseen.
To meet just once in falls metal wind
and in the jade white dew
turns out to be better by far
than the countless meetings of mortals.
Their tender feelings seem like water,
this sweet moment is as in dream
how can they bear to turn their heads
to the path leading back over Magpie Bridge?
But so long as both of them love
and so long as their love lasts on,
it does not need to be done

every night and every morning at dawn.
The Message and Gift

Watering M y Horse by the Great Wall (Eastern Han? yu e-fu )
Green, green the grass by the river,
thoughts on far travels go on and on
I cant bear to think on his travels,
I saw him last night in my dreams,
in dream I saw him right by my side
when I woke he was off in another land,
in another land and a different place,
I tossed and turned and saw him no more.
The mulberry, bare, knows Heavens wind,
the oceans waters know Heavens cold.
Whoever comes shows love for his own,
and no one wants to comfort me.
A stranger came from a far-off land,
and gave me a paired-carp letter case;
I called for the boy to cook the carp
and in it I found the letter.
I read the letter on my knees,
and what did the letter say?
It began, Take care of yourself
and ended, I love you forever.
Nineteen Old Poems IX

There is a rare tree in my yard,
green are its leaves, rich in flowers.
I pulled its boughs to pluck a bloom
to send to the one I love.
Sweet scent filled my gown and sleeves,
the way is too far to send it.
What value has the thing itself?
it only recalls how long since he left.
The Stranger and the Woman

This phase of our hypothetical narrative may be seen as related to "Mulberries by the
Path" (p. 234) and "Officer of the Guard" (p. 235), both translated in the yue-fu section.
The difference is that in these versions the perspective is, at least in part, the man's.
The yue-fu "Prelude" is a typically fragmentary narrative of a woman showing kind-
ness to the stranger and her husband coming in and viewing them with suspicion.
258
The Chinese t(Middle Ages3*
Prelude (Eastern Han? yue-fu)

Swallows go winging before the hall
gone with the winter, in summer back.
Once there were brothers, two or three,
who were drifters in faraway lands.
There was no one to patch my worn-out clothes,
there was no one to sew me new ones,
but then I found this good lady,
who took them and sewed them for me.
And her husband comes in through the gate,
he looks at them sideways and glares northwest.
My husband, do not glare so:
when the waters clear, stones can be seen.
Stones jut up all along the stream
it is best to go home and not travel afar.
Nineteen Old Poems II

Green, green is the grass by the river,
in garden the willows are all dense and full.
High in the tower a woman so lovely,
she glows in the window, white and so pure.
Rouge on her cheeks, bright in her beauty,
and she puts out a pale and delicate hand.
Once long ago I sang in the bar room,
now Im the wife of a traveling man.
He travels for pleasure and never comes home now,
A lonely bed cant be kept empty for long.
Nineteen Old Poems V

To the northwest stands a tower high
whose top is level with drifting clouds,
its windows are meshed with latticework,
with eaves all around, three flights of stairs.
From above came song and the sound of a harp
whose echoes were sad as they could be.
And who could sing a song like that?
it must be someone like Q i Liangs bride.2
The minor tones came out clear with the wind,
2After her husband was killed in battle, Qi Liang's wife wept for ten days, then committed suicide.
The association here is primarily musical: "Q i Liang's Wife's Lament," fancifully attributed to her,
was a standard piece in the harp repertoire.
259
and then they faltered, mid-melody

once she strummedthen sighed again,
impassioned and filled with melancholy.
I dont care that the singer feels pain,
what hurts is that few understand the sound.
I wish we could be two golden swans
to fly with great wingbeats high and away.
Impermanence and Disillusion

The speaker rides out the city gates, looks at the tombs outside the city, and reflects
on the brevity of life. He may decide that the best thing to do is enjoy himself in the
present, or he may be left in despair.
Nineteen Old Poems XIII

I drove my wagon out Upper East Gate
and gazed at far tombs north of the walls.
Winds whistled in silver poplars,
cypress and pine lined the wide lanes.
Beneath them lay men long dead,
fading far off into endless night.
They sleep under Yellow Springs sunken from sight,
and never will wake in a thousand years.
Shadow and Light move in endless floods,
our destined years are like mornings dew.
M ans life is as brief as a sojourner,
old age lacks the firmness of metal or stone.
They have brought men here for thousands of years,
a span unmatched by good man or Sage.
With pills and diets men seek the Undying,
and are usually duped by elixirs.
The better way is to drink fine ale
and dress yourself in satin and silk.
Nineteen Old Poems XIV

Each day those gone are farther withdrawn,
each day newcomers grow more like kin.
I went out the gate, stared straight ahead,
and all I saw were barrows and tombs.
The ancient graves have been plowed to fields,
their cypress and pines smashed to kindling.
Mournful winds fill silver poplars,
260
in their moaning a woe that destroys a man.

I long to turn back to my native town,
I wish to return, but there is no way.
Nineteen Old Poems XV

Lifes years do not reach a hundred,
but we always have cares for a thousand.
The daylight so short, the night so long
why not go roamingcandle in hand?
Joy must be seized at its moment
why should you wait for times to come?
The fool who cannot bear to spend
wins only mocking in later days.
Qiao the Prince, a man Undying~
it is hard to match his term of years.
The Return
Anonymous Old Poem
At fifteen I went with the armies,
now at eighty at last I come home.
On the road I met one from my village,
Who remains of my family now?
You can see your house far over there,
in the cypress and pines and rolling tombs.
Hares come in through the dog-holes,
and pheasants fly up from the beams.
W ild grains grow in the courtyard
greens take root by the well.
I boiled the grain for my gruel,
and picked the greens for a soup.
When soup and gruel were both ready,
there was no one to give them to.
Then I went out the gate and gazed east,
and the tears fellsoaking my robes.
One of the most durable openings of yue-fu and the "old poems
was going out the
gates of Luo-yang, the Eastern Han capital, as in "Nineteen Old Poems" XIII. From
the eastern gates could be seen the great cemetery in the Bei-mang Hills. In what
seems to be a poem on returning to the city, an ironic reversal occurs: Cao Zhi (or
Mr. Ying, as referred to in the title) climbs Bei-mang and looks back on Luo-yang it
self, in ruins, sacked by Dong Zhuo in 190 and now virtually deserted.
Cao Zhi (19 2-232)Sending Off Mr. Ying (first of two)

On foot I climbed up Bei-mang
s slopes
and gazed afar on Luo-yangs hills.
Luo-yang, so silent and forlorn
its halls and palaces all burned away.
Each wall has collapsed and crumbled,
briars and brambles stretch to sky.
I saw no old folks from times before,
in my eyes were only new young men.
I walked at an angle, there was no path,
fields had run wild, tilled no more.
Long had the traveler not returned,
he can no longer tell the boundary paths.
And the moors, so barren and bleak,
no hearthfires seen for a thousand miles.
When I think on this place I used to live,
breath chokes within, I cannot speak.
Coda: Reencounter
Old Poem
I climbed the hill to pick deerweed,
going down I met my husband of old.
I knelt down and asked my husband,
And how do you find your new bride?
Though good do I find my new bride,
she
s not so fine as my wife of old.
In fairness of feature both are alike,
but in skill of hands you are not the same.
When the new bride entered the gate in front,
the old wife left by the door at the side.
The new bride weaves the golden silk,
the old wife wove the plain.
O f golden silk, four yards a day,
to more than five yards of the plain.
Then put the plain silk by the gold,
the new bride cannot match the old
The Poets
Although we do have poems and songs by literary men from earlier in the Eastern
Han, the period when we begin to find yue-fu and "old poems
written extensively
by known authors was during the Jian-an (196219), the last, and purely nominal
262
The Chinese Middle AgesM

Han reign period, when both the emperor and North China were in the hands of the
warlord Cao Cao (155-220), the "Lord Protector."
Cao Cao gathered to himself many of the itinerant intellectuals and writers of
the day. The most famous of these intellectuals constituted the so-called Seven Mas
ters of the Jian-an. Cao Cao himself left a small but remarkable collection of yue-fu.
Cao Cao's son and heir, Cao Pi (187-226), who declared the establishment of the
Wei Dynasty, left a somewhat larger collection of both poetry and yue-fu. The most
distinguished poet and writer of the period, however, was one of Cao Cao's younger
sons, Cao Zhi (192-232).
The poets of this period tended to take the forms of treatment of the yue-fu and
"old poems
and apply them more specifically to their present circumstances. Thus,
in the following yue-fu, Cao Cao applies the poem on the hardships of travel to a
military campaign in which he was engaged.
Cao Cao (155-220)The Bitter Cold

Northward we climbed the Tai-hang Range,
the way was hard-going and steep
the slopes wound round like sheepguts
and on them our wagon wheels broke.
Trees were bare and bieak
where the voice of the north wind moaned.
Bears crouched right before us,
tigers roared on both sides of the road.
Few folk dwell in these valleys,
where the snow comes down so thick.
I craned my neck and heaved a sigh,
many the cares on far campaigns.
My heart was then so full of woe
I wished at once to turn back east.
But the rivers were deep, the bridges broken,
mid-journey I faltered, unsure.
In confusion I lost my former path,
and at sundown had no place to rest.
On and on, going farther each day,
men and horses both starving.
W ith sacks on our backs we gather kindling,
and chop at ice to make our gruel.
Sad is that poem Eastern Mountains
it makes my heart always grieve.
When Cao Cao shows his learning, there is often political propaganda involved.
"Eastern Mountains" was a poem in the Classic of Poetry, attributed to the Duke of
Zhou, on a campaign in the East. The Duke of Zhou had been the unde and "Pro
tector" of the Zhou king; the potential historical analogy, wrapping himself in the
respectable mantle of the Duke of Zhou, must have been irresistible for Cao Cao,
who held the young Han emperor a virtual captive. The first stanza of "Eastern Moun
tains'' (CLVI) follows:
We marched to those eastern mountains,

streaming on and never turning.
And now we come back from the east,
in the pall of driving rain.
We are returning from the east,
our hearts are grieving for the west.
Prepare those wraps and gowns,
make us serve no more with the soldiers gag.
Now caterpillars are creeping and crawling,
teeming in mulberry fields.
I sleep alone all curled up
right here under the chariot.
We can also see such political use of the Classic of Poetry in the following poem by
Wang Can, describing his journey to Cao Cao's domain ("the borders of Qiao") as
leaving a land in ruins and coming to the "happy land" described in "Huge Rat"
(CXII1; see p. 52). Wang Can wrote this poem after leaving Jing-man (see "Seven Sorrows" II, p. 256).
Wang Can (17 7 -2 17 )With the Army V

I kept faring down roads choked with weeds,
with a trudging pace, my heart in sorrow.
When I looked around, no hearth fires seen
all that I saw were forests and mounds.
City walls grew with brush and briars,
footpaths were lost, no way to get through.
Canes and cattails to the broad bogs end,
reeds and rushes lined the long stream.
A cool breeze blew up at sundown
and swept my boat gliding swiftly along.
Wintry cicadas sang out in the trees,
and the swan ranged, brushing the sky.
The travelers sorrows were many
I could not stop my falling tears.
Then at dawn I crossed the borders to Qiao,
where cares melted, I felt easy and free.
Roosters were crowing on every side,
millet swelled the level fields.
Inns and lodgings filled the hamlets,
men and women thronged the crossroads.
Unless in domains ruled by a Sage
The Chinese KMiddle AgesM
who could enjoy such blessings?

The Poet once praised a happy land
though a stranger here, I still wish to stay.
One of the most common motifs in yue-fu and old poems was to see a bird and long
to fly away with it, or if a woman were involved, to become a bird and fly away to
her or with her (see "Nineteen Old Poems
V). Again, one might recall the last stanza
of "Boat of Cypress" (XXVI) in the Classic of Poetry:
0 Sun! and you Moon!

Why do you each grow dim in turn?
These troubles of the heart
are like unwashed clothes.
1 think on it in the quiet,
I cannot spread wings to fly away.
In the Jian-an, this visionary desire to escape can be attached to so mundane a mis
ery as too much work in the office. Like Wang Can, Liu Zhen was one of the "Seven
Masters of the Jian-an_"
Liu Zhen (d_ 2 17 )Unclassified Poem

The work in my office keeps piling up,
with documents scattered everywhere.
My writing brush speeds, no chance to eat,
into late afternoon I have no rest.
I am lost among records and registers,
my head whirling in confusion.
I get away, go west of the walls,
climb the heights and let my gaze roam.
There, a square pool with silvery water,
and in it are ducks and wild geese.
O to have such fleet feathers
and to bob in the waves along with you.
In Cao Zhi's famous "Unclassified Poem/' the passing bird is not the means of vi
sionary escape but a potential message bearer, albeit a failed one.
Cao Zhi, Unclassified Poem I

High on the terrace are sad strong winds,
the dawn sun shines on northern woods.
The man is thousands of miles away,
past lakes and rivers, deep and far.
How can my double boat reach him?
this separation is hard to bear.
Antbologyôf Chinese Literature
A lone goose came flying on its way south

and passing my yard, gave a long sad call.
My thoughts took wing, I yearned for him far,
and wished by this bird to send him word.
But its shape and shadow were suddenly gone
its swift wingbeats wound my heart.
Things that flywild geese or clouds might serve as messengers to carry word to
those far away. In the poem below, note that C h in e s e bronze mirrors required con
stant polishing to keep giving a reflection. Xu Gan was another of the "Seven Mas
ters of the Jian-an_
Xu Gan ( 17 1- 2 18 Chamber Thoughts III

Clouds go drifting in billowing floods,
and by them I wished to send these words.
They tossed in the wind, wouldn't take my words
and I faltered here helpless in longing.
All others who part will meet again;
you alone give no date for return.
Since you have gone away,
my bright mirror darkens, unpolished.
Like flowing waters I long for you
there is never a time that they end.
The closing simile of Xu Gan's poem, with its memorable simplicity, offers a good
illustration of how the poetic tradition worked. "Since You Have Gone Awaybe
came a yue-fu title in the fifth and sixth centuries, with dozens of attempts to rewrite
the last four lines of Xu Gan's poem as a quatrain. The first line is always "Since you
have gone away; the second line speaks of something neglected; the third and fourth
lines offer a simile of longing:
Yan Shi-bo (5th century)

the scented curtains hang unraised.
Like whirling snow I long for you,
turbulent sifting, no edge or end.
Wang Rong (467-493)

in the golden brazier no incense burns.
Like the bright candle I long for you,
at midnight burning down uselessly.
266
Chen Shu-bao (553-604)

cobwebs darken my curtains of lace.
Like the setting sun I long for you
that even a moment does not turn back.
Cao Zhi (192-232)

The turn of the third century was a remarkably violent and dangerous period in Chi
nese history. Power was not secure. Cao Cao's son and successor, Cao Pi, Emperor
Wen of the Wei Dynasty, was naturally uneasy about collusion between the other
Cao princes, among whom was his half brother Cao Zhi, considered then and now
to be the greatest literary talent of the age. After summoning the princes to his cap
ital in 223, Cao Pi is believed to have arranged the murder of one of his brothers,
the Prince of Ren-cheng. Fearful of plots, Cao Pi objected to his brothers' spending
time together outside the watchful eyes of the palace. As a result, when his broth
ers Cao Zhi and Cao Biao planned to journey back to their domains together, Cao
Pi forbade them to lodge in the same place overnight. The prohibition enraged Cao
Zhi and stirred him to muster his considerable poetic talent in one of the finest sets
of poems of the period. Here Cao Zhi portrays himself in a role with great cultural
resonance, as the wronged liegeman like Qu Yuan, faring on an endless journey,
tormented by the malice of ill-wishers.
Presented to Cao Biao, Prince of Bai-ma

In July of 223the fourth year of the Huang-chu Reign, the Prince of Baima, the Prince of Ren-cheng, and myself all went to court in the capital for
the seasonal gathering of the great nobility. After we reached Luo-yang, the
Prince of Ren-cheng departed this life. When it came to September, I was
planning to go back to my own domain in the company of the Prince of Baima; but subsequently an official in charge of such matters thought that it
would be best if we two princes, returning to our fiefs, should spend our
nights at separate locations. The thought continues to provoke resentment
in me. Since our final parting will be in a few days, I wanted to show how
I feel in these poems, to take my leave of the prince. I completed them in a
state of outrage.
I
We greeted the Emperor in Cheng-ming Lodge,

and were soon to turn back to our old frontiers.
We set forth in dawns cool from the royal city,
and by sundown had passed Mount Shou-yang.
The Yi and the Luo were deep and broad,
we wished to ford, but there was no bridge.
Then sailing by boat we traversed huge waves,
9^7
resenting how long was our road to the east.

I looked back with longing to palace towers;
stretching to see them, my heart ached within.
II
Great Valley, so barren and vast,
the trees on the hills, dense and gray.
Torrents of rain turned the road to mud,
the runoff was flooding all around.
Where the roads joined, the tracks broke off;
I changed my course and climbed a high hill.
A long slope stretched to the cloud-covered sun,
my horses were black and smeared brown.
III
Though black and smeared brown, they could still go on,
but my thoughts were a knotted tangle within.
A knotted tangle from what concern?
that dear kin and I must lodge apart.
At first we had planned to go side by side,
midway it changed, we could not be together.
Owls were hooting on my carriage yoke,
wolves and wild dogs stood in the road.
Blue flies mar both black and white,
those who speak ill estrange kin.
I want to turn back, but there is no path;
I pull back on the reins and stand wavering.
IV
I waver, yet why do I linger here?
this longing I feel knows no bounds.
Autumn winds bring a faint chill,
cold-weather cicadas cry out by my side.
The moors, so bleak and gloomy,
as the sun is abruptly hid in the west.
Returning birds head to tall trees,
their wingbeats are urgent and swift.
A lone beast goes running, seeking the herd,
plants in its mouth, no chance to eat.
Being touched by these things wounds my cares,
I touch my chest and heave a long sigh.
V
I heave a long sigh, but what can I do?
Heavens charge runs afoul of me.
Can I help longing for my full brother,
268
now gone for good, body never to return?

His lonely soul hovers about his old realm,
his sarcophagus rests in the capital.
Those who survive will go suddenly too
perish utterly, their bodies decay.
M ans life finds lodging in but one age,
and he goes as the morning dew that dries.
My years sink westward among the stars,
shadow and echo cannot be pursued.
I look on myself, neither metal nor stone,
and I gasp at the sorrow this brings to the heart.
VI
Sorrow in heart shakes my spirit,
let it go then, describe it no more!
A true mans aims include all the world,
a thousand miles is as a near neighbor.
If only this love neither fail nor flag
though far away, fate brings us closer.
Why need we share bed curtains and quilt,
and only then state the strength of our c ar e? '
If troubled thoughts become a fever,
it is naught but the passions of boys and girls.
But such turmoil of love for my flesh and blood
can I help harboring bitterness?
VII
What broodings come in my bitterness?

that Heavens charge truly wins distrust.
It is vain to go seek the Undying,
Red Pine the Undying misled me long.
The last change can come in an instant,
who can seize for himself a centurys span?
Now as we part, so long ere we meet,
when again will we thus clasp hands?
Prince, take fond care of your precious self,
may we both enjoy times of frail white hair.
I cease my tears and take the long road,
grasping my brush, I say farewell here.
As earlier in Han poetry, the situation that brought forth poetry more quickly than
any other was a threatened relationship: being kept apart from one's kin and friends,
being unable to return to one's roots, or, as in the poem that follows, lacking the
power to act to help another. Worried that he has the actual power to protect his
friends, Cao Zhi invents a parable of protection and gratitude.
Song of a Brown Wren in Wild Fields
(yue-fu)
High in the trees are sad strong winds,

the oceans waters lift up their waves.
If you have no sharp sword in hand,
what point in making many friends?
Didnt you see the wren in the fields
that saw the hawk and flew in the net?
The fowler rejoiced in catching a wren,
but a young man saw it and felt sad.
He drew his sword and cut the net,
and the brown wren was able to fly away.
It flew and flew till it touched the sky,
then came again down to thank the young man.
Unclassified Poem II
Tumbleweed rolling, severed from root,
tossed tumbling along with the steady wind.
I did not expect to rise in whirling gusts,
that blew me off high into the clouds.
Going higher and higher, reaching no bound,
Heavens roads never run out
O f such kind too is the traveler
who risks his life on the far campaign.
His woolen tunic leaves limbs exposed,
greens and beans never fill him.
Keep going then, say no more!
brooding troubles make a man old.
Ruan Ji (210-263)
Ruan Ji was an important intellectual figure of the third century and one of the "Seven
Sages of the Bamboo Grove." Like many other intellectuals of the period, he was
deeply involved in politics; and like most of them, he tried his best to avoid its dan-'
gerous entanglements. His poems, all entitled "Songs of My Cares, are often read
as containing veiled protests against the Si-ma clan's usurpation of power from the
Caos, the ruling house of the Wei, followed by the eventual overthrow of the Wei
and the establishment of the Jin Dynasty.
In the first poem, the earlier Warring States Kingdom of Wei, whose capital was
Da-liang, seems to be a figure for the Wei Dynasty of the third century. The refer
ence to the Fire of the Quail (a constellation) facing south refers to a prophecy in
The Zuo Tradition foretelling Jin's overthrow of the state of Guo. Again the pre-Qin
domain of Jin may be used as a figure for the Jin Dynasty of the Si-ma clan that sup
planted the Wei.
Songs of My Cares XVI

I was walking about beside Peng Pond
when I turned my head and gazed on Da-liang.
The green waters raised their mighty waves
the broad moor stretched off boundless.
In every direction beasts swiftly ran,
birds soared in flight each following others.
Twas the season when Fire of the Quail faced south
when sun and moon stood straight apart.
North winds were harsh, bitter and cold,
and the shadowy air shed faint frost.
Ion a journey and lacking companion,
in an instant felt pain within.
Lesser men reckon the due for their deeds,
the better man stays ever with the Way.
No regrets that he ends up wasted and gaunt,
and this is the burden of my song.
From this period we begin to find an increasing number of poems celebrating the
exemplary figures of the simple life, such as the Qin Count of Dong-ling, who after
the fall of the Qin lived happily as a well-known melon farmer.
Songs of My Cares VI
I have heard of Count Dong-lings melons
close outside Chang-an
s Green Gate.
Patch by patch, they stretch to the paths,
baby melons and mothers, all joined together.
Their many hues glow in the morning sun,
drawing fine visitors from all around.
An oil-fed fire burns itself out,
much property brings its owner harm.
One may spend a life in commoners clothes,
put no trust in stipends and popularity.
Songs of My Cares XXXIII

One more day, then one more evening,
one more eveningone more dawn.
Complexion changed from what it was,
by itself the spirit wastes away.
I hold fire and boiling water in my breast,
all things in change are calling to me.
Thousands of problems that have no end
271
more than deftest schemes can comprehend.

I fear only that in. an instant
my soul will be whirled away by wind.
All my life I have walked upon thin ice,
and none understand how this heart seethes.
Turning Away
The poets of the generation after Ruan Ji, the poets of the Western Jin (265-316),
continued to use the same themes as the preceding century, polishing them and re
casting them in ever more elegant diction until the last vestiges of the popular ori
gins of yue-fu and classical poetry had disappeared. But already in the poetry of Ruan
Ji a group of new concerns had become increasingly prominent: the desire to sever
relationships rather than to rebuild them, the rejection of the social life, and a turn
ing away from the city to the safety of unpopulated landscapes whose beauties could
take the place of the trappings of wealth and honor. This new poetry of the private
life and the natural landscape was the beginning of interests that would come to dom
inate literature over the next few centuries. In the following Western Jin poems, na
ture explicitly replaces a rich mansion, with its fine decorations and entertainments,
which had been the site of sensual delights in "Calling Back the Soul" (p. 204).
Lu Ji (261303)Calling to the Recluse

At daybreak I felt uneasy at heart,
I dusted my clothes and paused a while
and pausing there, wondered where to go
to the recluse who lives in his deep ravine.
At dawn he picks cress in the southern stream,
at twilight he rests by the foot of West Hill.
Light branches like structures stretching to clouds,
dense foliage forms his green feather screens.
The Frenzied Chu
halts in orchid-filled groves
3
and swirling fragrance meets stately trees.
Such tinkling comes from mountain rills,
falls scour jade stones and make them ring.
Magic waves bear away tones of lament,4
through layered bends toppling echoes depart.
There is nothing false in this perfect joy,
why strive to mar the simple and pure?
If honor and wealth are hard to devise,
let me unhitch my team and do what I will.
3The "Frenzied Chu" was the dance performed in "Calling Back the Soul."
4The "tones of
ament" are those of a fallen state in the "Great Preface" to the Classic o f Poetry.
272
Zuo Si (ca. 253-ca. 307) Calling to the Recluse I

I leaned on my staff and called to the recluse
whose weed-grown path is blocked now as ever.
No structures are built in the caves on cliffs,
yet a harp is playing among the hills.
A white cloud halts on the shadowed ridge,
red petals gleam in sunlit groves.
Stony streams scour their agates and jades,
fine fins rise to the surface and sink.
There is no need here for harps or flutes,
hills and streams make their own clear notes.
And why depend on whistling or song,
when tree clumps hum so movingly?
Dried grains are mixed with falls chrysanthemums,
hidden orchids inserted in folds of gowns.
As I pace here, pausing, my feet grow weary_
I would cast down the pins of my officers cap.
Feast
The feast played an important and ever-changing role in traditional Chi

nese culture, as it does in other cultures; poems and songs, in turn,
played an essential role in the feast. The feast and its songs were part of
the harvest ritual, as in "She Bore the Folkfrom the Classic of Poetry
(p. 12). In the harvest feast, the community comes together to consume
what has been accumulated and to share it with ancestors. The time of
the feast is one of relaxation: community restraints are eased, and it is
t L
therefore a dangerous moment The words of a feast song are intended
^ km
to help the participants into the world of the feast and through its per
ils. Judging by the content of feast songs in traditional China and else
where, pleasure is surprisingly difficult: human beings have to be prod
ded to it, taunted, cajoled. Once they are persuaded to indulge, there is
the danger of dissolution and excess, and the poem must play the op
posite role of urging restraint. Side by side in the Classic of Poetry we have those
two contrasting voices, one mocking restraint, the other urging it.
Classic o f Poetry CXV Hawthorn on the Mountain

Hawthorn on the mountain,
elm tree in the marsh:
Gown and robe have you,
but never donned, never worn
cart and horses have you,
never driven, never ridden;
when you wither up and die,
they will delight another man.
Gao tree on the mountain,
niu tree in the marsh
court and chamber have you,
but never swept or sprinkled down;
bell and drum have you,
never beaten, never struck;
when you wither up and die,
another man will hold them.
Lacquer tree on mountain,
chestnut tree in marsh:
food and drink have you,
274
so why not have the zither played

to take your joy,
draw out your days,
for when you wither up and die,
another man will take your home.
Classic o f Poetry CXIV Cricket

Cricket in the hall
the year draws to its end.
If we dont take our joy now
the days and months will pass us by.
Yet let not pleasure go too far,
just think upon your stations;
delight should not get out of hand,
the well-born man is circumspect.
Cricket in the hall,
the year is on its way.
If we dont take our joy now,
the days and months will leave us.
just think what lies beyond this moment
the well-born man is prudent.
Cricket in the hall,
the chariot lies idle.
If we dont take our joy now
the days and months will flee us.
just think upon your cares;
the well-born man is steady.
"Deer Cry" became the representative feast poem, celebrating the ceremonial wel
come of one's guests.
Classic o f Poetry CLXI KDeer Cry55

Yoo, yoo cry the deer,
eating shoots in the meadow:
Worthy guests are here with me,
play the harp and blow the pipes.
Blow the pipes, trill their reeds,
baskets offered are received.
275
Men who like me well

show me the ways of Zhou.

eating the cress in the meadow
Worthy guests are here with me,
their virtues fame is bright.
They do not look on men with spite,
they are the model for a prince.
And thus I have this fine wine
for worthy guests to feast and revel.
Yoo, yoo cry the deerv
eating the greens in the meadow:
Worthy guests are here with me
play the harp and psaltery.
Play the harp and psaltery,
bathed in common pleasure.
Thus I have this fine wine,
to feast and delight my worthy guests hearts.
Death is often not far from the poetry of the feast. The Classic of Poetry taunts the
listener to feast now, otherwise another man will enjoy what he has gathered after
he is dead. But perhaps, even dead, he can still enjoy a party. In "Calling Back the
Soul," one of the great feasts of Chinese literature is described it is an orgy, whose
explicitly stated purpose is to give pleasure to the ancestors or the soul of the dead.
from Calling Back the Soul

Before those morsels make the rounds,
girl musicians move to their lines.
They ring the bells and roll the drums,
performing the recent songs:
Wading the River, Pick Caltrops
then breaking into O Brightness.

And as the beauties grow more drunk,
their rosy faces flush.
Eyes teasing gleam, the half-lidded gaze,
glances come wave upon wave.
Patterned cloaks, fine-woven gowns,
flashy but yet not garish.
Long tresses and trailing locks,
sensualbright, and alluring.
In two rows of eight, in unison
they begin the dances of Zheng.
Then, sleeves crossed like staves before them,
slowing the beat they withdraw.
276
W ith pipes and psalterieswild concert,

they hammer booming drums
Till the whole court of the great house shakes
and the Frenzied Chu begins.
The lays of Wu, lyrics of Cai,
and they play the Great Lii.
Men and women are sitting together,
mixed and not kept apart.
Sashes and ribbons are cast down,
the places all in confusion.
Seductive diversions of Zheng and Wei
are performed mixed in among them.
But the coda of the Frenzied Chu
is the finest of them all.

Horn buckles of Jin-craft,
aglow like bright suns.
Bells are rung, chime frames shake,
they sweep the catalpa-wood harps.
Joys of the wine are not set aside
as they pass through days and nights.
When bright lamps burning orchid oil
are set in their splendid frames.
Verses are made to speak longing,
with phrases finely wrought.
And in the heights of their passion,
joined hearts recite.
Drinking we reach the crest of pleasure
to give the ancestors joy.
Soul, turn back!
Return here where you once dwelled.. . .
As the ceremony for the dead turns at last to pleasure, even to ecstasy, so a moment
of celebration may turn suddenly somber. The sudden motion from one extreme feel
ing to another became a commonplace in the tradition, as in the line: "at pleasure's
height, many a sad thought comes." The source of the line is a feast song attributed
to Emperor Wu of the Han.
Song of the Autumn Wind

Autumn winds rise, white clouds fly
plants turn brown and fall, wild geese go south,
the orchid has its bloom, chrysanthemum its scent,
my thoughts are on the fairest, her I cant forget.
I sail in a great galley across the River Fen,
277
Ânthology o f Chinese Literature
we breast the midstream current, raising white waves;

drums and fifes sing out, a rowing song begins,
at pleasures height, many a sad thought comes
how long does youths prime last? no hope against old age.
In the middle of the feast, dark thoughts come. The feaster may rise, leave the party
in the great house, and like the wandering soul to be called back, go wandering off
through the darkness. Chen Lin was another of the "Seven Masters of the Jian-an."
Chen Lin (d. 2 17 ) [no title]

It was a fine feast, joy suddenly left,
and Ia stranger, could not keep my cheer;
dark thoughts came from deep within,
a sadness stirred by songs clear notes.
I set down my cup and left the happy board,
went aimlessly walking among tall trees,
where the wind whistled down mountain valleys,
and tracks through sky darkened with cloud.
Lost in sad thought I forgot to turn home
and tears fell with sighs and soaked my robes.
The two following lyrics were originally Han funeral songs. It is said that in the East
ern Han, they came to be commonly performed at feasts.
Dew on the Onion Grass (Han funeral song)

On onion grass the dew
dries quickly in the sun,
dries in the sun but tomorrow
it will settle again at dawn
when a person dies he is gone
never to return.
The Graveyard (Han funeral song)

Whose yard is itthe graveyard?
where they muster souls of good men and fools,
and the Wraith Master drives them without respite,
mans doom doesnt waver a moment.
The feast song often takes the voice of persuasion; it rejects sadness as waste and
calls the listener to pleasure, bidding him light a candle and continue merriment
through the night:
278
West Gate (anonymous yue-fu Eastern Han?)

Out West Gate
I walked in thought
if we dont take pleasure today,
what day are we waiting for?
the taking of our pleasure
must come at its due time:
why should we stay in dark brooding
awaiting the moment to come again?
Drink the strong wine,
broil the fat ox,
call to the one your heart loves
and in this way be sorrow-free.
M ans life does not reach a hundred
but we always have cares for a thousand
the daylight so short, the night so long~
why not go roaming, candle in hand?
I am not the undying Qiao the Prince
nor can I match his count of years.
I am not the undying Qiao the Prince
nor can I match his count of years.
A mans life is not of metal or stone,
how can one expect to live a full span?
The miser who cannot bear to spend
wins only mocking in later days.
The feast had another essential function. During the Warring States period, the
princes of the domains would gather retainers and maintain them. These were called
si-shi "'knights ready to die." As they were feasted by the prince, so they were sup
posed to be ready to sacrifice themselves for him.
he dissolution of Han society in
the second century a.d. and the rise of warlordism has left us lyrics that seem to rep
resent the return of such a world, in w hich a lord welcom es retainers as if to say,
Drink, take your pleasure now, dark days lie ahead.
Grand (anonymous yue-fu} Eastern Han?)

Hard times wait in days to come,
mouth will be parched, lips will be dry,
today we should take our pleasure,
And everyone should be merry.
I passed through all those fabled hills,
and roamed through fields of asphodel,
there the undying Qiao the Prince
gave me a philter in a pill.
279
Im sorry these sleeves are so short

that hands drawn in still feel the cold;
and shamed that there is no Ling-che
to pay his debt to Xuan of Zhao.1
The moon is setting, Orion rises,
the Northern Dipper hangs aslant:
kin and comrades at my gate,
hungry, but never getting to eat.
'
Days of pleasure left are few,

days of pain are many:
how can we forget our sorrow?
with zithers and drinking songs.
Eight lords came to Huai-nan5s Prince:2
the true Way brings no bother,
just hitch six dragons to your coach
and frolic at the edge of clouds.
Cao Cao was the greatest of the warlords, and "Short Song" is one of the most fa
mous feast songs in the tradition. Cao Cao takes the conventions of a banquet song
like "Grand, and bends it to his political purposes. The second stanza is built on
two quotations from the Classic of Poetry, the first (according to the standard inter
pretation) expressing admiration for students (perhaps the itinerant intellectuals of
the period), and the second, "Deer Cry, being the standard Poem for welcoming
guests.
Cao Cao (155-220), Short Song

The wine before me as I sing
how long can a mans life last?
I liken it to mornings dew,
and the days now past are too many.
The feeling is strong in me,
brooding thoughts I cant ignore.
How can I banish melancholy?
by Du Kangs gift of wine.
Blueblue are your gowns folds,
ever you are in my heart
and only because of you,

my concerns keep on till now.
]The third stanza refers to a story in The Zuo Tradition in which Lord Xuan of Zhao fed the starving
Ling-che. W hile serving as a guard, Ling-che later thwarted an assassination attempt against Lord
Xuan.
2The Han prince of Huai-nan, Liu An, was said to have taken a drug of immortality and ascended
to Heaven in broad daylight, along with his eight chief retainers.
280

eating the shoots in the meadow:
Worthy guests are here with me
so play the harp and blow the pipes.
Bright and full is the moon
when will its passage cease?
cares come from deep within,
nor can they be halted.
You crossed the paths and lanes,
taking the trouble to visit me,
now feasting and chatting after hard times,
your hearts consider old kindness done.
The moon is bright, the stars are few,
and magpies come flying south,
three times around they circle the tree,
where is the branch on which to roost?
The mountain does not mind its height,
the ocean does not mind its depth.
The Duke of Zhou broke off his meals,
and all the world turned to him in their hearts.
The Duke of Zhou, who served as regent for the Zhou king, was so zealous in tak
ing care of the business of the kingdom that he would spit out his food in the mid
dle of a meal to attend to a problem. Cao Cao, perhaps comparing his own posses
sion of the puppet Han emperor to the Duke of Zhou's regency, also claims the Duke
of Zhou's zeal in welcoming his guests, or potential retainers.
Since the height of pleasure often seems to be also the edge of death and de
struction, the voice in the feast poem may turn suddenly to caution a wary restraint:
"Hold it at fullness, without spilling over." Cao Pi was Cao Cao's son and succes
sor.
Cao Pi (187-226)Grand (yue-fu)

This morning let there be joy upon joy,
drink till we
re tipsy, never feel drunk,
from passionate strings stir recent tunes,
and from long flutes a clear breath comes
songs sung to strings can touch mans heart,
all at the party may feel the delight.
All is hushed in the high halls,
and cool winds enter my chamber.
Hold it at fullness, without spilling over,
one with virtue can bring things to happy ends;
yet a good mans heart is full of worries,
O Q1
his cares are not just one alone;

he comes decently down from his plain rooms,
bolting his food so as to miss naught.
The guests are full now and go home,
yet the hosts cares never are done.
Two birds, wing to wing, soar through upper air,
no fowler can take them in his toils:
calm and indifferent, they find Natures state,
what are glory and splendor to them?
The sudden shifts of mood and topic in Cao Pi's song are the last of the old ballad
tradition. During the same period, a new and more formal banquet poetry was com-
mg into being. The "prince" in the first line of the following poem is probably Cao
Zhi's half brother, Cao Pi himself.
Cao Zhi (192-232), Public Banquet

The prince honors dearly loved guests,
and he tires not to the partys end.
We roam West Park on clear, cool nights,
canopied coaches one after another.
W ith clear rays the bright moon washes all pure,
the constellations lie scattered.
Falls orchids blanket the long slopes,
red blooming covers green pools.
The sunken fish leaps in limpid waves
and in high boughs the fine birds sing.
Numinous gusts catch our russet hubs,
light carriages move along with wind,
Whirled along, our spirits are free~
may it stay this way forever!
Poetry continued to be composed for state banquets throughout the imperial period,
but these excited no more enthusiasm than public banquets anywhere. During the
third century, the intellectual and literary interests of the elite increasingly turned to
private life and the free associations of friends. In May 353 was held what was per
haps the most famous of all parties: the gathering at the Orchid Pavilion. Wang Xi-
zhif the greatest calligrapher of the day, wrote the preface to a collection of poems
written by those present at the party. The poems are no longer frequently read, but
the Preface remains the classic statement on parties. The pleasure of the moment,
and the impermanence of both the pleasure and those who enjoyed it, remained the
dominant themes. But in Wang Xi-zhivs hands these motifs were utterly transformed:

the pleasures enjoyed were tranquil ones and the recognition of their impermanence
stirred melancholy reflection rather than despa/r.
Wang Xi-zhi (321-379 ), Preface to the Orchid Pavilion

Poems
In the year 353the ninth year of the Yong-he Reign, early in the last month
of spring, there was a gathering at the Orchid Pavilion on the northern
slopes of the Kuai-ji Mountains; our purpose, to carry out the spring cere
monies of purification. Many a good man came, the young and old alike.
The place was one of mighty mountains and towering ridges covered with
lush forests and tall bamboo, where a clear stream with swirling eddies cast
back a sparkling light upon both shores. From this we cut a winding chan
nel in which to float our winecups, and around this everyone took their ap
pointed seats. True, we did not have the harps and flutes of a great feast,
but a cup of wine and a song served well enough to free our most hidden
feelings.
The sky that day was luminous, and the air was cleargentle breezes blew
softly around us. Above us we looked on the immensity of the universethen,
lowering our eyes, we saw natures infinite variety. And as we let our eyes
roam and our hearts speed from thought to thought, we could experience
the greatest delights of ear and eye this was true happiness.
The times that human beings may be together occur within the fleeting
glance of a lifetime: some find them in emotions spoken openly, face to face,
in a single room others invest their feelings in something external as they
roam free, beyond the bodys world. Our inclinations and aversions have a
million different forms; the active man and the contemplative man are un
likebut still, when joy comes with a chance encounter, there is a brief mo
ment of satisfaction, a cheerful self-containment with never a thought of old
age coming on. Then, as we weary of the direction in which we are going,
our mood shifts with lifes events, and depression inevitably follows. In the
blink of an eye the joy that has been becomes an experience past~yet still
we cannot help having our feelings stirred by it. Even more there are our
lives, whether long or short, changing and transforming, but ultimately
bound to an end. As was said long ago, Life and death are the greatest con
cerns.55No escaping the pain in this.
Each time I examine the causes that brought emotion to men in the past,
it is as though I have found there the mirror image of my own feelings. Never
have I looked upon such writings without a brooding sigh, nor can I find
words adequate to explain to myself why. But this I have learned: the belief
that life and death are the same is a grand deceptionto say that Ancestor
Pengs centuries are no more than the lifespan of an infant who died un
timely~this is delusiona forced conceit. Those in later times will look on
today as we today look on the pastthere is the sadness! For this reason I
have written out the list of those present at that time and copied their com
positions. Though ages change and experiences differ, all may share what
stirs deep feelings. And those who read this in later times will also be moved
by what is in this writing.
More than any other Tang poet, Li Bo was fascinated by the world of the old yuefu, and he recreated the tone of the yue-fu feast poem in his own characteristically
extravagant way. (The "Prince of Chen" is Cao Zhi.)
Li Bo, Bring In the Wine

Look there!
The waters of the Yellow River
coming down from Heaven,
rush in their flow to the sea,
never turn back again.
Look there!
Bright in the mirrors of mighty halls
a grieving for white hair,
this morning blue-black strands of silk,
and now with evening turned to snow.
For satisfaction in this life
taste pleasure to the limit,
And never let a goblet of gold
face the bright moon empty.
Heaven bred in me talents,
and they must be put to use.
I toss away a thousand in gold,
it comes right back to me.
So boil a sheep,
butcher an ox,
make merry for a while
And when you sit yourselves to drinkalways
down three hundred cups.
Hey, Master Gen
He, Dan-qiu,
Bring in the wine!
Keep the cups coming!
And I Ill sing you a song,
Lend me your ears and take heed
The bells and drums, the tasty morsels,
these are not what I love~
All I want is to stay dead drunk
and never sober up.
Sages and worthies of ancient days
lie silent now forever,
And only the greatest drinkers

have a fame that lingers on!
Once long ago'
the Prince of Chen
held a party in Ping-le Lodge.
A gallon of wine cost ten thousand cash,
all the joy and laughter they pleased.
So you, my host,
How can you tell me youre short on cash?
Go right out!
Buy us some wine!
And Ill do the pouring for you!
Then take my dappled horse,
take my furs worth a fortune,
Just call for the boy to get them,
and trade them for lovely wine,
And here together well melt the sorrows
of all eternity!
The paradox of the poetry of feasting and drinking is the "decision to act sponta
neously/' a self-conscious anticipation of unself-consciousness. The drinker con
templates his own unruly behavior and is proud of it; he not only drinks but also
contemplates himself drinking. To some degree this lies beneath the tongue-incheek hyperbole of Li Bo's "Bring In the Wine." The interplay between forgetting
oneself and knowing better attains a characteristic depth in the work of the famous
eighth-century poet Du Fu. Du Fu has gone with some friends to White Emperor Cas
tle on a hill east of Kui-zhou on the Yangzi River, where Du Fu was staying at the
time. There he gets drunk and decides to show off his horsemanship.
Du Fu (712- 770)Having Fallen Off my Horse Drunk, Various

Gentlemen Come to Visit Me Bringing Wine
I, Du Fu, have all my life
been a guest of men of rank;
I set down my wine, sang drunkenly,
and brandished a gilded spear.
I went off riding, at once recalling
how I used to be when young
those hooves set free kicked stones falling
down into Ju-tang Gorge.
White Emperor Castles gates lie high,
up beyond river and cloud,
I hunkered over, sped straight downslope,
some eight thousand feet.
Lightning bolts arced past white battlements

my purple reins trailing;
then to the east I reached the plateau,
that came from the Heaven-formed cliff.
River villages, wilderness lodges
all showed themselves to my eyes,
riding whip dangling and bit hanging loose
I sped over purple lanes.
In an instant this white-haired old man
shocked people in the thousands,
but I trusted in my youthful skills
to ride a horse and shoot.
How could I know of such spirit set free
in those hooves that chased the wind?
its bloody sweat and headlong gallop
like spurting flecks of jade.
Unexpectedly it stumbled at last,
and I ended up hurt~
when you do what you want in human life,
humiliation follows.
Then I was utterly miserable,
confined to pillow and sheets;
and worse still, ages frailties
added to my vexation.
When friends came by to ask of me,
I hid the chagrin in my face;
I forced myself up on my cane,
leaning upon my servant.
As soon as we spoke, we broke at once
into open-mouthed laughter,
and hand in hand cleared a new spot
by the bend of the clear creek.
Meat and wine came heaped like mountains
yet another time,
the plaintive strings at the start of the feast
stirred the brash music of flutes.
We gestured all to the sun in the west,
it is unforgiving to man,
we shouted and hooted, tipped upside down
the green wine in the cup.
What need you come express concern

for my galloping on my horse?
have you not seen
how X i Kang took such care of his life
and at last was executed?3
Han Yu's poetry sometimes shows a prosaic garrulousness, evident in the following
poem; his verse ramblings do give the sense of someone who is, as the title informs
us, "drunk.
Among a group of friends, Han Yu's interpretation of the feast serves to
create a small elite society. In this case, drinking is not to banish sorrow but to free
poetic inspiration. The style of each of the poets present at the party is described
with an impressionistic image.
Han Yu (768-824), Drunk, to Zhang Shu of the

Imperial Library
Others always insist that I drink
I act like I do not hear
yet coming to your house today,
I call for wine and urge it on you.
The reason~these guests at your table,
and I as wellcan write with skill.
Your own poetry is filled with charms:
clouds billowing through spring skies.
Meng Jiao always shocks the common
Heavens bloom emitting outlandish bouquet.
Zhang Ji works at antique clarity:
crane on a coach, shunning common flocks.
A-mai doesnt know his characters,4
but has outstanding grasp of archaic script:
we let him copy each poem we make
and he too serves to augment my troops.
These are the reasons I wished to get wine,
awaiting its glow in order to write.
The wines flavor is biting,
the wines force swells in the blood.
Our mood grows gradually loose and free
banter and laughter abounding.
3Xi Kang (223-262) was a third-century recluse interested in various techniques for prolonging life.
The most elementary precaution was to stay out o f the troubled politics of the era. He unfortunately
failed in this, running afoul of the powerful Si-ma family, and was finally executed.
4A-mai is a child's name, and the passage on A-mai's calligraphic skill is probably a joke on a child's
handwriting.
Herein the true sense of wine is fulfilled

all else but this is mere muddle.
All wealthy young men of Chang-an
have rich-smelling meat and garlic served;
but they dont grasp literate drinking,
skilled only in getting red-skirted courtesans drunk.
Although they may find a moments pleasure,
theyre a bit like a crowd of mosquitoes.
I and these various others today
have nothing rank in our sweetness.
Our daring diction daunts demonscourage;
magnificent phrases consort with Canons.
These most perfect jewels are not engraved;
they are spirit-work, spurning all tending.
We are entering now an age of great peace
men of talent aid a ruler like Shun or Yao.
Our sort are lucky to have no concerns
may we go on like this from dawn to dusk!
'
Han Yu's friend and contemporary Meng Jiao offers a more desperate vision of poets
drinking. Destruction hangs over them, and their fate is to lose themselves in the
celebration of the moment.
Meng Jiao (751-8 14 )Inviting Writers to Drink

Cao Zhi and Liu Zhen could not shun death
none dare turn their backs on springs glory.
So let no poet turn down the wine
for a poets fate belongs to the flowers.
Han Yu was sent into exile;
Li Bo was prideful by nature.
All time seems suddenly much the same:
in a brief span everyone comes to sighs.
Who says that Heavens Way is straight?
it alone skews the shapes of Earth.
The Southerner grieves, being always ill;
the Northerner, joyless at leaving home.
Plum blossom songs pour already through flutes,
and the willowscolors cannot yet hide crows.
So I urge you to cease your songs of the snow,
and in turn drink sadly the rose-cloud wine.
When we sober upwe cannot pass over
this ocean of sorrow, vast without shore.

Li He much admired the work of Li Bo, but carried that poet's extravagance to a
level of strangeness Li Bo would never have imagined. Here, as elsewhere in Li He's
poetry, the feast becomes almost demonic.
Li He (790-816)Bring In the Wine

In goblets of lapis lazuli,
an amber dark and strong,
from small casks the wine dribbles down
in pearls of red.
Stew a dragonroast a phoenix,
let tears of marble fat be shed;
mesh curtains and broidered arras
enfold an aromatic breeze.
Blow dragon fifes,
strike lizard-skin drums,
gleaming teeth sing,
frail waists dance.
Now most of all in the green of spring
with the sun about to set,
and a tumult of peach blossoms falling,
rainstorms of red.
I urge you to spend this whole day through
reeling drunk,
for wine will never reach the soil
of the grave of Liu Ling.5
At another extreme, this quiet quatrain by Bo Ju-yi sets up a warm world of light and
color inside, contrasted with the cold darkness outside. The scene "invites" even be
fore the explicit invitation is given.
Bo Ju-yi (772-846)An Invitation for Mr. Liu

Green lees of beer newly brewed,
red coals, a braziers small fire.
Late in the day the sky looks like snow
would you come drink a cup with me or not?
The tradition of the feast poem continued in the short song lyrics of the tenth and
eleventh centuries. These songs were written for professional singing girls to sing at
5Liu Ling was a third-century eccentric known as a great drinker.

parties. The song title in the following lyric has nothing to do with the theme of the
lyric.
Feng Yan-si (903-960)to The Pleasures of Kicking

the Football
The wine was gone, and the songs
were ending, but we
still werent ready to gostrolling together
beside the small bridge and clear waters.
You could see the plum blossoms swaying
in ripples, white
in the heart of the water
and the wind blew her dress
clinging cold against her body
But lets not go back just yet, we have to
stay with the songs to the end,
and the pleasures of the evening
Yan Shu (9 9 1-1055), to Washing Creek SandsM(Huan x i ska)

Only a moment, this seasons splendor,
this body, a bounded thing;
to part now as if it didnt matter
easily breaks the heart;
so dont be hasty, refusing
the partys wine, the banquets song.
Mountains and rivers fill our eyes, but care
is wasted on things too far;
besides which, this grief at spring passing,
at wind and the rain bringing down flowers;
it is better by far to take as your love
the person before your eyes.
to Reaching Golden Gates (Ye jin-men)

The autumn dew descends,
dripping away all the red tears
of orchids from the South.
Experiences past and bygone loves
bring a mood that has no bounds
when I think on itit seems a dream.
The face is older than last year,
but the wind and moon are no different at all.
290
The Chinese etMiddle Ages"
At my table are welcome guests,

spiced wine is in the cups,
so dont refuse to spend the evening drunk.
From earliest times, poets realized that utter abandonment to the pleasures of the
party was hard to achieve. Eventually a note of retrospective melancholy appears
in the poetry of the feast. The poet is too old and has been through it all before. He
sets his cushion and pillow beside the mats laid out for the performance of the
singing girls, anticipating that he will drink a little and then fall asleep but still he
goes.
Zhou Bang-yan (10 5 6 -112 1)to Fragrance Fills the Yard

(Man ting fang). Written on a summer day at Wu-xiang
Mountain in Li-shui
Breezes age oriole nestlings,
rains fatten the plums,
at noon the fine trees shade grows cool and round.
The land lies low, hills are near,
braziers smoke spent on mildewed clothes.
The person calm, hawks exult,
and past the small bridge
a fresh green trickles on.
Long I lean on the balustrade
yellow reeds and bitter bamboo
make me think to set sail on that boat of Jiu-jiang.
Every year like the swallows
on the springtime festival,
drifting wind-tossed over deserts,
come to lodge in these long rafters.
Do not long for what is beyond you
have a cup of wine always brought.
Weary traveler in the Southland,
looking battered and worn,
who cannot bear to listen
to shrill flutes and strings swiftly played.
Beside the mats for the singers
I first set cushions and pillows,
a space to sleep when I get drunk.
We come at last to a small party that equals in fame the gathering at Orchid Pavil
ion described by Wang Xi-zhi. A group of friends are eating and drinking in a boat
on the Yangzi River. They are carried beneath Red Cliff, from which the great Cao

Cao had planned to launch a fleet to invade the Southern Kingdom of Wu. The ad
miral of the Wu fleet, Zhou Yu, launched an attack with fireboats and burned Cao
Cao's entire fleet. It was before this great battle that Cao Cao was supposed to have
composed his "Short Song," quoted earlier (p. 280):

The feeling is strong in me,
by Du Kangs gift of wine.. . .
Su Shi (10 3 7 -110 1) The Poetic Exposition on Red Cliff

It was the autumn of 1082
the night after the full moon in September, when
ISu Shi, together with some companions, let our boat drift, and we were
carried beneath Red Cliff. A cool breeze came gently along, but it raised no
waves in the water. I lifted my wine and toasted my companions, reciting
the piece from the Classic of Poetry on the bright moon and singing the
stanza on the womans grace:
The moon comes forthglowing bright,
comely woman, full of light,
Her motions slowof gentle grace
hearts torment, hearts pain.
After a while the moon did indeed come forth over the mountains to the
east and hung there in between the Dipper and constellation of the Ox. A
silver dew stretched across the river until the light on the water reached off
to the very sky. We let this tiny boat, like a single reed, go where it would;
and it made its way across thousands of acres of bewildering radiance. We
were swept along in a powerful surge, as if riding the winds through empty
air. And not knowing where we would come to rest, we were whirled on as
if we stood utterly apart and had left the world far behind, growing wings
nd rising up to join those immortal beings.
By then I had been drinking to the point of sheer delight. I tapped out a
rhythm on the side of the boat and sang about it. The song went:
Oars made of cassia, magnolia sweeps,
beat formless brightness, glide through flowing light,
far off and faint, she for whom I care,
I am gazing toward a lady fair there at the edge of sky.
One of my companions played the flute, accompanying me as I sang. The
notes were resonant and low, as if expressing some deep wound, as if yearn-
ingas if sobbing, as if declaring some discontent. The afterechoes trailed

away, attenuating like a thread but not breaking off. Such notes made the
dragons dance as they lay sunken in their dark lairs, and caused women who
had lost their husbands to weep in their lonely boats.
I
too grew melancholy. I straightened my clothes and sat upright. And I
asked my companion, Why did you play it like that? My companion an
swered:
The moon is bright, the stars are few,
and magpies come flying south.
Isnt that Cao Cao
s poem? Here facing Xia-kou to the west and Wu-chang
to the east, where the mountains and the river wind around each ot
her with the dense green of the forestsisnt this the place where Cao Cao
was set upon by young Zhou Yu? Once Cao Cao had smashed Jing-zhou,
he came down to Jiang-linggoing east with the current. The prows and
sterns of his galleys stretched a thousand leagues, his flags and banners
blotted out the very skyhe poured himself some wine and stood over
the river, hefted his spear and composed that poem he was indeed
the boldest spirit of that whole age, and yet where is he now? Consider
yourself and I by comparison, fisherman and woodsman on the great
river and its islands, consorting with fish and friends of the deer. We go
riding a boat as small as a leaf and raise goblets of wine to toast one an
other. We are but mayflies lodging between Heaven and Earth, single
grains adrift, far out on the dark blue sea. We grieve that our lives last
only a moment, and we covet the endlessness of the great river. We
would throw an arm around those immortal beings in their flight and go
off to roam with them; we would embrace the bright moonlight and have
it done with forever. And since I knew that I could not have these things
immediately, I gave the lingering echoes of that desire a place in my sad
melody.
I
repliedAnd do you, my friend, indeed understand the water and the
moonlight? As Confucius said as he stood by the river, cIt passes on just
like this
and yet it has never gone away. There is in all things a fullness
and a waning to nothing, just as with that other thingthe moonand yet
it has never increased and never vanished altogether. If you think of it from
the point of view of changingthen Heaven and Earth have never been able
to stay as they are even for the blink of an eye. But if you think of it from
the point of view of not changing, then neither the self nor other things
ever come to an end. So then what is there to covet? Between Heaven and
Earth each thing has its own master. If something is not mine, then I can
not take it as mine, even if it is only a hair. There is only the cool breeze
along with the bright moon among the mountains. The ears catch one of
theseand it is soundthe eyes encounter the other, and it forms colors.
Nothing prevents us from taking these as our own. We can do whatever
we want with them and they will never be used up. This is the inexhaustible
treasure trove of the Fashioner-of-Things, and it serves the needs of both

you and I a lik e .
My companion laughed in amusement, and washing out his cup, he
poured himself another. The snacks and fruits had been finished, with plates
and cups scattered all around. We all leaned against one another in that boat,
unaware that the east was brightening with day.
Anecdotes, Parables, and

Profound Jokes
The strength of early Chinese narrative lay not in epic scope and long,
intricate plots, but in short narrative forms: the anecdote, the parable, and
even the profound joke. There is a wealth of such stories, and they re
main, even today, the most widely known legacy of the literary past. Al
though we cite here "original" sources (many of the stories appear in var
ious early sources and in several variations), such stories were always
retold. Some are still being retold and used in modern proverbs.
The philosophers of the Warring States commonly used anecdotes
and parables to illustrate their points, and two of the Daoist Classics, the
Zhuang-zi and the Lie-zi, are made up largely of such parables. From one
point of view, the anecdote or parable is merely the means to illustrate
a philosophical point and make it memorable; but frequently the story
becomes greater than any simple lesson that can be summarized from it.
In modern Chinese writing and speech, an immediate situation often will be ex
plained by a reference to some particular story from the vast repertoire that has grown
up over the millennia.
In the Western Han, current stories and those from antiquity began to be gath
ered into anecdote books. These were not considered "fiction" in anything like the
modern Western sense of the term. Later in the Han we begin to find specialized
types of anecdote books, such as ghost stories and joke collections. Though many
of the earlier collections have been lost, the best anecdotes were reprinted time and
again in later collections. The selection in this section contains works up to the sixth
century, but the tradition of anecdote and joke collections continued to the twenti
eth century.
from the Zhuang-zi

The third-century b .c . writer Zhuang Zhou (or Zhuang-zi) was the master of the al
legorical parable, familiar in Western literature but relatively rare in Chinese after
the Zhuang-zi. The following is an allegory of the origin of the universe, which began
out of utter undifferentiation ("All-Mixed-Together"). In an instant ("All-of-a-Sudden"
suddenly divided) there were the apertures of the senses for seeing, smelling, hear
ing, and tasting. The senses recognized difference, which was the symbolic death
of the primordial state of undifferentiation.
The Emperor of the Southern Ocean was All-of-a; the Emperor of the
Northern Ocean was Sudden. The Emperor in the middle was All-
Mixed-Together. All-of-a and Sudden got together in the territory of AllMixed-Together, who treated them very well. All-of-a and Sudden took
counsel together on how they might repay All-Mixed-Together for his gen
erosity: Every person has seven openings by which they see, listen, eat, and
breathe. Only All-Mixed-Together doesnt have any. Let5s drill some. Every
day they drilled a new opening, and on the seventh day All-Mixed-Together
died.
The first seven of the Zhuang-zi's thirty-three chapters are believed to have been
composed by Zhuang-zi himself. The remaining twenty-six chapters loosely repre
sent what might be called the "school of Zhuang-zi
(though there is some material
from other philosophical schools). The anecdotes in these chapters, probably dat
ing from the late Warring States and Western Han, often make Zhuang-zi himself
the central figure.
The parable can say more than a simple statement. In the following anecdote,
Zhuang-zi's old friend and rival Hui-zi is afraid that Zhuang-zi wants to take his po
sition. If Zhuang-zi had simply said, "I don't want your position/' the claim might
be suspect. Through the parable of the mythical yuan-ju bird and the owl, Zhuangzi can successfully evoke a perspective that credibly embodies his contempt for the
mundane honor whose value Hui-zi takes for granted.

When Hui-zi was Minister of Liang, Zhuang-zi set out to go see him. Some
one told Hui-zi, Zhuang-zi is coming to replace you as minister. At that Huizi grew frightened and searched for him throughout the kingdom for three days
and nights.
When Zhuang-zi saw him, he said, In the South is a bird name the yuanjuhave you heard of it? Now the yuan-ju set out from the Southern Ocean
and was flying to the Northern Ocean. It would roost only on the great beech
tree; it would eat only the choicest of foods; and it would drink only from springs
of sweet water. It happened that an owl had gotten a rotting mouse; and as
the yuan-ju passed it overhead, the owl looked up, kept an eye on it, and said,
lBeat it!
Now that you have the kingdom of Liang, are you telling me to Beat
it
?
...
Hui-zi belonged to a philosophical school that is properly known as the "School of
Names" and is sometimes translated as "Logicians." Through witty dialectic, the Lo
gicians addressed elementary questions of logic and epistemology, much as the preSocratics did in Greece. The pre-Socratics, however, did not have to contend with
the anarchic relativism of a Zhuang-zi, who, for his own philosophical reasons, was
willing to make every argument absurd and expose the linguistic basis of questions.
In the following anecdote, Zhuang-zi takes the interrogative of Hui-zi's question, "on
what grounds" (
how)and mischievously interprets it as a literal "where, bring
ing him to his own, no less profound epistemological answer to the question of his
knowledgehe knows in "being here/7
Zhuang-zi and Hui-zi were strolling on a bridge over the Hao River.
Zhuang-zi said, The minnows are out swimming around. This is a fishs
delight.
Hui-zi replied, Youre no fish_ on what grounds do you know what a
fishs delight is?
Zhuang-zi answered, Youre not me, so how do you know that I dont
know what a fishs delight is?
Hui-zi: Im not you, so I clearly dont know what you know. By the
same token you
re clearly no fish, so the case is made that you dont know
what a fishs delight is!
Zhuang-zi, Lets go back to the beginning. W hat you said was:
O n what grounds do you know what a fishs delight is?
You already knew
that I knew it in asking the question. It know it right here by the Hao
River. . . .
We can never precisely define the boundary where a parable or philosophical anec
dote passes over into the profound joke, but as in the Jewish tradition, China val
ued the profound joke as an insight into the limits and motives of human under
standing. When Duke Huan of Qi does not respond to his medical mumbo-jumbo,
Huang-zi Gao-ao tries another way to cure the duke of his anxiety.
Duke Huan was hunting in the marshes with Guan Zhong, driving his
chariot. There he saw a demon. The Duke clasped Guan Zhongs hand
KZhong, what did you see? Guan Zhong answered, I saw nothing. When
the Duke returned, he grew sick and fell into a coma. For several days he
didnt come out of it.
One of the Q i gentryHuang-zi Gao-ao, said, My Lord Duke, you are
causing this harm to yourself. How could a demon hurt you? In the con
catenation of vital humorsan unrecovered dispersal thereof leads to an in
adequacy thereof; when they ascend without a consequent descent, they
make a person prone to wrathfulness; when they descend without a conse
quent ascent, they make a person prone to forgetfulnessand when they nei
ther ascend nor descend, but occupy the heart in the middle, they produce
illness,
Duke Huan said, All rightbut do demons exist? Gao-ao replied,
They do. The hearth has the Li, and the stove has the Ji. And in the shitpile just inside the door lives the Lei-ting. At the foot of the northeast cor
ner hop the Pei-a and the Hua-long. At the foot of the northwest corner live
the Yi-yang. Waters have the Wang-xiang; the hills have the Shenthe moun
tains have the Kui; the prairie has the Fang-huangand the marshes have
the Wei-tuo.
The Duke said, Pray tell, what is the appearance of the Wei-tuo?
Huang-zi Gao-ao replied, The Wei-tuo, now, is as big around as a
wheelhub and as tall as a chariot shaft is long; it wear purple clothes and
has a crimson hat. As a creature, it
s hideous. When it hears the sound of
297
thunder or a chariot, it lifts its head and stands upright. And whoever sees
one is about to become the Overlord of the Domains.
Duke Huan broke into a broad grin. This was what I saw.
Thereupon he straightened his clothes and set his cap on straight, took
his seat, and before the day was over his sickness had gone away without
him even noticing. . . .
r
Warring States orators delighted in the use of serial analogies for a human situation.
The Zhuang-zi could twist such serial analogies to its own purposes: if we humans
can see a hierarchy of awareness below us, each level unaware of what lies above
it, then might not we also be unaware of what lies above us? The motif of predation
lends an immediacy to the question.
Zhuang Zhou was roaming through the hunting part of Diao-ling when
he spied strange magpie coming from the south, with a wingspan of seven
feet and eyes a full inch in diameter. It touched Zhuang Zhous forehead
and then alighted in a chestnut grove. Zhuang Zhou said, What bird is this?
Its wings are huge, but it doesnt go very far; and its eyes are large, but it
doesnt notice things. He hitched up his gown, scampered overtook his
crossbow in handand aimed at it.
Then he caught sight of a cicada that had just found some welcome shade
and had completely forgotten itself. A mantis was hanging on to a conceal
ing leaf ready to pounce on it; and seeing the prey it had found, it had for
gotten its own person. The strange magpie had come up behind it and was
taking advantage of the opportunity; seeing this opportunity, it had forgot
ten its true situation.
At this Zhuang Zhou shivered in fear. Oh, how creatures do enmesh
each other in troubles, and each calls upon itself something of its own kind.
He threw down his crossbow and ran awayand the gamekeeper came chas
ing after him, yelling.
When Zhuang Zhou got back home, he was disspirited for several days.
Lin Ju came and asked, Why have you been so dispirited recently, Mas
ter?55Zhuang Zhou replied, I take care of my person yet forgot myself. I
looked upon muddy water and mistook it for a clear, deep pool. From my
master I learned, Follow the customs of the country. Recently I was roaming in Diao-ling and forgot myself. A strange magpie touched my forehead,
then roamed into a cypress grove and forgot its true situation. The keeper
of the cypress grove thought I was violating it. This is the reason I am dis
spirited.w . . .
Ultimately, in the Zhuang-zi, wisdom is not to be found either in the social hierar
chy or in the contentious claims of knowledge by contemporary philosophers. Wis
dom often comes from simple people who are sages without knowing it. Such anec
dotes stage the simple yet profound answer to a difficult question.
298
The Yellow Emperor was going to meet the Supreme Lump on Ju-ci
Mountain. Square-Bright drove the chariot. Chang Yu rode by his side.
Zhang Ruo and Xu Peng preceded the horses
while Kun-hun and the Trick
ster followed the chariot. These seven sages all became lost and there was
no one from who to ask the road. Then they came upon a boy herding horses
and asked him where the road was.
Do you know where Tu-ci Mountain is?
fiSure.M
Do you know where the Supreme Lump can be found?
Sure.
And the Yellow Emperor said, c<Remarkable young fellow, aren't you!
Not only do you know where Ju-ci Mountain is, you even know where the
Supreme Lump is to be found! Pray tell me about running the world.
The boy saidRunning the world is nothing more than doing this right
here~theres no work to it! When I was younger, I myself went roaming
within the Six Ends of the Earth, but it happened that my eyes started to go
bad. An elder told me to go ride the chariot of the sun and roam the moors
of Xiang-cheng. Now my disease has gotten a little better, and I will again
roam out beyond the Six Ends of the Earth. But running the world thats
nothing more than doing this right heretheres no work to it for me.
Then the Yellow Emperor said, Running the world is indeed no work
for you, my boy. Nevertheless, pray tell me about running the world.
The boy tried to refuse, but the Yellow Emperor kept asking. Then the
boy said, How is running the world any different from herding horses? That
too is nothing more than getting rid of anything that hurts the horses.
The Yellow Emperor bowed again and again, then touched his head to
the ground. And calling the boy Heavenly Teacherhe withdrew.
from the Han Fei-zi (3rd century B.C.)

The Zhuang-zi may have staged profundity in simple statements, but the philoso
phers of ancient China were not unaware of the difference between the level of
awareness behind a statement and the depths that an interpreter could find in the
statement. The Han Fei-zi here offers us another profound joke.
Someone in Ying [the capital of Chu] was sending a letter to the minis
ter of the state of Yan. He was writing at night, and there was not enough
light, so he said to the person holding the candle for himRaise the can
dle!55And by mistake he wrote down in the letter, Raise the candle. Now
Raise the candle was not something he had intended to write in the
letter.
The minister of the state of Yan received the letter and was pleased by
it Raise the candle.5This means to honor brilliance. And honoring bril
liance means to promote good and worthy men and employ them The M in
299
ister of Yan told this to the king, and the king was greatly pleased. Thus the
domain came to be well governed.
Good government is good government, but that was not the intent of the
letter. Scholars of recent times much resemble this example.
The right to speak was itself an important motif in the tradition. The "Great Preface"
to the Classic of Poetry insisted that those who protested in verse could not be held
culpable. "Free speech" was an issue in ancient China, and the short paragraph at
the end of the following anecdote tersely sums up the consequences of its suppres
sion.
from Discourses o f the Domains (Guo-yu) (3rd century B.C.)

King Li of Zhou was a tyrant, and the people of the land spoke ill of the
king. The Duke of Shao told this to the king, The folk cannot endure your
rule. The king flew into a rage and got a shaman of Wei to go observe who
was speaking ill of him. When he informed on someone, the king had that
person killed. The people of the land dared say nothing, and on the road,
they merely looked at one another with their eyes.
The king was delighted and informed the Duke of Shao5 I have been
able to get rid of criticismindeed, they dare not even speak!w
The Duke of Shao said, You have only blocked it. Stopping up the
mouths of the folk is worse than stopping up a river. A river, dammed, breaks
through and always causes great harm to people. So it is too with the folk.
This is why those who control rivers make breaches to direct the flow, and
those who would govern the folk give them latitude to speak. Thus when
the Son of Heaven attends to business of state, he has his dukes, ministers,
and everyone down to his gentlemen bring him poems that they have heard:
blind music master brings him songs
chroniclers bring documents;
the music tutors, conduct rules;
the sightless singers, expositions
dim-eyed chanters, recitations
the common players, remonstrations;
peasants5words come indirectly;
the kings friends offer actions norms;
the royal kin amend and watch.
Music master and chronicler instruct him
elders and wise old men correct him.
And only then does the king deliberate a matter. This is how the kings busi
ness is carried through without going awry.
The mouths of the folk are like the mountains and rivers of the land
from which goods and useful things come forth. They are like the plain and
marsh and bottomland and floodplain, from which our food and clothing
300
is produced. The words spread by the mouth are where our virtues and fail
ings are revealed. By practicing the virtues and guarding against failings we
amass goods and useful things, food and clothing. When the folk worry
about something in their minds, they express it in their mouths; what takes
shape comes out~how can it be right to dam that up! If you dam up their
mouths, how many of them will be with you?
The king refused to listen to him. Thus none of the people in the land
dared say anything. After three years the king was driven into exile in Zhi.
In the following anecdote, the Daoist principles of the relativity of values and the
alterations of fortune reemerge in something that seems like folk wisdom.
from the Huai-nan-zi (2nd century B.C.)

There was a man who lived near the frontier who was well versed in the
workings of fate. For no reason his horse ran away into the land of the no
mads. Everyone else commiserated with him, but his father said, How do
you know this wont unexpectedly turn out to be good luck?
After several months his horse returned with fine nomad horses. Every
one else congratulated him, but his father said, How do you know this
w on
t unexpectedly turn out to be bad luck? The family was rich in fine
horses, and the mans son liked to ride. He fell and broke his hipboneand
everyone commiserated with him; but his father said, How do you know
this wont unexpectedly turn out to be good luck?
After a year, the nomads made a great raid into the border. The young
men in their prime took their bows and went to do battle. O f those who lived
near the frontier, nine out of ten died. But this father kept his son only be
cause he was lame.
Thus good fortune turning into misfortune and misfortune turning into
good fortune is a transformation without end, and the depths of it cannot
be penetrated.
The story of the King of Chu losing his bow appears in several variations. Here it is
linked to the large body of apocryphal sayings attributed to Confucius.
from The Park o f Stories (Shuo-yuan) (1st century B.C.)

The King Gong of Chu was out hunting and lost his bow. His entourage
wanted to go look for it, but King Gong said, Stop. Someone of Chu lost
a bow; someone of Chu will find it. Why should we look for it further?
When Confucius heard of this, he said, Its too bad he didnt think in
broader terms. He might have simply said, *A person lost a bow; a person
will find it. Why did it have to be only Chu? This is what Confucius meant
by the larger community.
301

The Lie-zi is a collection of Daoist and other texts that may have reached its present
form as late as a . d . 300. Most of its stories, however, probably come from the late
Warring States and Western Han. One of the most famous of these is the parable of
the gulls, making a distinction between unself-conscious action and acting with a
"motive" or purpose.
from the Lie-zi
(? a . d .
300)
Among those who live by the seashore there was once a man who loved sea
gulls. Every morning by the shore he would roam around with the gulls, and
the gulls that would come to him were never less than hundreds.
His father said, Ive heard tell that the gulls always go roaming with
you. Bring some to you so that I can enjoy it
The next day the man went to the seashore, but the gulls danced above
him and would not come down.
Thus they say that the perfection of language is getting rid of language
and the perfection of action is actions absence. What is known to average
cunning is shallow indeed.. . .
The following parable tells of a hoax that reveals much about the nature of human
feeling.
There was a native of Yan who grew up in Chu; and when he reached
old age, he returned to his native land. As he was passing the capital of Jin,
his traveling companions put one over on him and, pointing to the city, they
said, These are the city walls of the capital of of Y an.
1
The mans expression changed and the emotion showed on his face.
Then the traveling companions pointed out a shrine and said, This is
the local shrine of your own neighborhood. And the man gave a deep sigh.
Then they pointed out a house and said, And this was the dwelling place
of your ancestors. At this tears began to well up in the man5s eyes.
They next pointed out a mound and said, Here are the graves of your
ancestors And the man could not stop himself from weeping out loud.
His companions doubled over with laughter and said, We were fool
ing you beforethis is just the capital of Jin!
The old man was terribly embarrassed. But when he reached Yan and
saw the real city walls and shrine, and when he saw the real home and tombs
of his ancestors, his feeling of sadness was much diminished.. . .
The story of Venerable Slow-Wit, sometimes called "the foolish old man who moved
mountains/' was a favorite of Mao Ze-dong^s.
'Yan was a state in far Northeast China; Chu was in South-Central China along the Yangzi River.
The state of Jin lay in between.
302
The Chinese Middle Ages'3
The two ranges known as Tai-hang and the King's Roof cover seven hun
dred square leagues and stand hundreds of thousands of yards high. Origi
nally they were located between the southern part of Ji-zhou and the north
of He-yang.
The Venerable Slow-Wit of North Mountain was nearly ninety and his
dwelling faced these ranges. He was offended at how they blocked the way
north and made comings and goings tortuous, so he assembled his house
hold and discussed the matter with themWhy dont you and I try our best
to level those steep slopes so that we could go straight through to southern
Yu-zhou and all the way to Han-yin. The various people assembled all
promised to do so.
His wife, confessing her doubts, saidW ith your strength you could
never remove even Kui-fu H illhow are you going to handle Tai-hang and
the Kings Roof? And where will you put the earth and rocks?
Everyone said, Well throw them at the edge of the Bo Seanorth of the
Shadowland.
Then he led his son and grandson~together, three men to do the carry
ing~and they broke rock and laid open the soil, transporting it in baskets
to the edge of the Bo Sea. A neighbor, the widow Jing-chenghad an orphan
sonand no sooner had he lost his baby teeth than he leapt up to go off and
help them. After the seasons had changed several times they came back for
the first time.
Old M r. Know-It-All of the River Bend laughed and wanted him to stop
Youre really not very clever at all! The strength left to you in these final
years of your life cannot destroy even a sprout on the mountains. How are
you going to manage the dirt and rock?
The Venerable Slow-Wit of North Mountain gave a long sigh. Your
mind is so rigid and obtuse, theres no getting through, to it. You
re worse
off than the widow and her young child. Though I will die, I have a son who
will live on after me. My son has borne me a grandson, and my grandson
will also have a sonhis sons will have sons, and their sons will bear them
grandsons, until there are sons and grandsons without end. Yet the moun
tains are not going to get any bigger. Why worry that we wont level them?
Old Mr. Know-It-All of the River Bend could find nothing to say.
The Spirit called the Serpent-Handier heard of this and was frightened
that that Slow-Wit would never give up. He reported it to the high god; and
the high god, touched by Slow-Wits sincerity of purpose, charged the two
sons of Kua-e to take the mountain ranges on their backs. One they set down
in Shu-dong, and the other they set down in Yong-nan. And from that day
on there have been no obstacles blocking the way between the southern part
of Ji-zhou and Han-yin.
Both the Zhuang-zi and the Lie-zi contain stories about the perfect mastery of some
art. Although there is nothing specifically Daoist about these particular arts, mastery
itself and its utter absorption in action seemed close to the condition of the Daoist
303
sage. The following anecdote from the Lie-zi gave the tradition its most famous im
ages of the power of music.
Xue Tan studied singing from Qin Qing; but before he had fully mas
tered Qin Q ing
s art, he convinced himself that he had learned it all and thus
took leave of his master.
Qin Qing would not stop him. He held a parting feast at the road out
side the city and sang a sad song, beating out the rhythm. His voice shook
the trees in the wood, and the echoes halted the clouds in their motion. Xue
Tan then apologized and asked to come back. And for the rest of his life he
did not dare speak of going away.
Qin Qing looked around and said to a friend, Once upon a time the
Fair Maid of Han was going east to Qi when she ran short of food. Passing
the Yong Gate of Qi, she sold a song for a meal. Once she left, the aftere
choes drifted around the beams and rafters for three days without ceasing
and those around thought that she had not gone.
She passed an inn, and the innkeeper abused her. Thereupon the Fair
M aid of Han sang mourning and weeping in long-drawn-out notes.
Throughout the whole neighborhood everyone, from the young children to
the old people, felt miserablethey faced one another with tears streaming
down their faces, and for three days they did not eat. Then immediately they
went to find her. The Fair Maid returned, and this second time she sang a
lengthy song with drawn-out notes. Throughout the neighborhood every
one, from the young children to the old people, leapt for joy and danced to
the clapping of hands, unable to restrain themselves and forgetful of their
previous sorrows. Then they sent her off with generous gifts. It is for this
reason that to this day the people of Yong Gate are skilled at song and
lament, imitating the lingering notes of the Fair M aid . . .
The story below is found in various sources and is not specifically Daoist.
Duke Jing of Qi paid a visit to Ox Mountain. To the north he looked

out over his capital city and tears streamed from his eyes. Isnt this city
lovely~so rich and full of life! How can I bear to be swept away from this
city by death? If one never had to die, could I ever leave this place and go
elsewhere?
Shi Kong and Liang-qiu Ju followed his example, and their eyes filled
with tears. We depend on what our lord grants us. We have coarse grain
and poor meat to eatwe have old nags and rickety wagons to ride. And if
even we dont want to die, imagine how our lord must feel!
Yan-zi was laughing by himself over at the side.
The Duke rubbed away his tears and looked over to Yan-ziI
m feel
ing melancholy on my outing today. Kong and Ju are both joining me in
weeping. Why are you laughing by yourself over there?
304
The Chinese tcMiddle Ages3'
Yan-zi replied, If a good and worthy man could keep this land forever,
then the former Dukes Tai and Huan would have kept it forever. If a brave
man could keep this land forever, then the former Dukes Zhuang and Ling
would have kept it forever. And had these various lords kept the land for
ever, you, my lord
would be wearing a straw coat and a bamboo hat, stand
ing in the grainfield. You would be concerned only about your work, with
no time to brood on dying. Moreover, my lord, how did you reach your pre
sent position? Each in his turn occupied the place you hold by anothers de
parture, until it came to you. Yet you are the only one weeping about it~
this shows a lack of feeling for others. I saw a prince who lacked feeling for
othersI saw fawning, ingratiating courtiers. And seeing the both of these
was the reason I was laughing to myself.
Duke Jing was embarrassed and drank down a goblet as a sign that he
had been bested. Then he made his two courtiers drink down two goblets
each for the same reason.
from The Forest o f Jokes (Xiao-lin) (3rd century)

The original Forest of Jokes (Xiao-lin) was compiled by Han-dan Chun early in the
third century and began a lengthy tradition of joke books. Although The Forest of
Jokes itself has been long lost, a few of its anecdotes have survived in later collec
tions. The following "joke, with its play on value and illusion, is directly in the tradition of Daoist parables.
A man of Chu was carrying a mountain stork when a traveler on the road
asked himWhat bird is that? The man carrying the bird fooled him and
said, It
s a phoenix! The traveler said, Ive long heard of the existence
of phoenixes, and now I can see a real one. W ill you sell it?
O f course
Then he offered a thousand taels of silver, but the man wouldnt accept
it. He doubled the price, and the man gave him the bird. He was going to
present the bird to the King of Chu, but during the course of the night the
bird died. The traveler didnt give a thought to the loss of his silver, but only
regretted not being able to present the bird to the king.
When people in the kingdom told the story, they all thought that it had
been a real phoenix and valuable, thus appropriate to present to the king.
The king, moved by how the man had wanted to present the bird to him,
called him to court and rewarded him richly, ten times what it had cost him
to buy the phoenix.
from The Forest o f Tales (Yi-lin) (362)

The Forest o f Tales was a compilation of anecdotes made by Pei Qi in a.d. 362. As
is often the case in the early anecdote collections, the original book has been lost,
but many of the stories survive by having been copied into other works.
305

The "profound joke" below belongs to a family of stories about the fabulously
wealthy Shi Chong (249-300). The humor is sustained by an interest in the "natural/'
which was shared by serious writers of the fourth century. The fact that Liu Shi can
not finally
reveals the existence of an inner sense of what "feels natural," a sense
that proves stronger than the body's urgings and the mind's conscious intentions.
Liu Shi went to see Shi Chong and had to go to the toilet. He saw a large
framed enclosure surrounded by crimson gauze hangings, with exquisite
mats and pillows, and two servant girls holding holding brocade sachet bags.
Liu Shi immediately turned around and ran back, telling Shi Chong, I
just went into your bedroom by mistake, Shi Chong replied, hats just
the toilet!
When Liu Shi went back again, the brocade bags that the toilet atten
dants had been previously holding were in fact to be used to wipe oneself.
After the longest time he couldnt go. He then said to Shi Chong, A poor
gentleman like myself cant use a toilet like this.
He then went to someone elses toilet.
from Sundry Accounts o f the Western Capital (Xi-jing za-ji)

(3rd century)
The following anecdote is the earliest version of the story of Lady Wang, more com
monly known as Wang Zhao-jun, sent off by mistake to become the bride of the Khan
of the Xiong-nu. Wang Zhao-jun was a favorite topic of later poets and her story was
the subject of a famous fourteenth-century Yuan variety play, Autumn in the Palace
of Han.
Since there were many women in the harem of Emperor Yuan [r. 4833
B.C.], he didnt have a chance to see them regularly. So he had painters do
their portraits, and on consulting the portraits he would summon women

to his bed. The court ladies all bribed the painters, some giving as much as
a hundred thousand taels, and at the very least offering no less than fifty
thousand. Lady Wang alone refused to pay a bribe, and as a result she did
not get to see the Emperor.
The Xiong-nu came to court seeking a beautiful woman to be the Khans
bride. Thereupon His Majesty consulted the portraits and chose Wang
Zhao-jun to go. When she was leaving, he summoned her to an audience.
Her features were the loveliest in all the harem; she was quick in her replies
and graceful in her bearing. The Emperor regretted it, but her name had al
ready been decided on. The Emperor had repeatedly commended her to the
foreigners, so he couldn't make an exchange.
He then made a thorough investigation of what had happened, and the
painters were all beheaded in the marketplace, and the vast fortunes of their
households were all confiscated.
Among the painters was Mao Yan-shou of Du-lingin drawing the
human form, he always captured the true image of beauty, ugliness, youth,
306
and age. Chen Chang of An-ling and Liu Bai and Gong Kuan of Xin-feng
were all skilled in catching the moving forms of cattle, horses, and birds in
flightbut in the beauty of the human form they were not equal to Mao Yanshou. Yang Wang of Xia-du was a skilled painter, particularly in the use of
color; Fan Yu was also good at using colors. On the same day they were all
beheaded in the marketplace. Thereafter, painters were rather scarce in the
capital.
Of all the collections of anecdotes in the tradition, none had the enduring popular
ity of Liu Yi-qing's New Stories and Tales of the Times. This contained a gallery of
wits, fools, eccentrics, and sages primarily from the third and fourth centuries.
Liu Yi-qing (403-444), from New Stories and Tales o f the

Times (Shi-shuo xin-yu)
Cao Pi, Emperor Wen, once commanded Cao Zhi, the Prince of Dong-a, to
compose a poem as he took seven steps; if he failed to complete it, he would
be executed. Immediately he composed the following poem
Beans boiled to make a soup,
peas pureed to make the base.
Beanstalks blaze beneath the pot,
while in the pot the bean sheds tears:
We both were born from the same roots
how quick you are to burn me!
The Emperor flushed deeply with embarrassment. (IV.66)
Emperor W u of the Wei [Cao Cao] was about meet the envoy from the
Xiong-nu. Thinking that his own stature was unimposing and incapable of
overawing visitors from faraway lands, he had Cui Jigui take his seat, while
he himself stood, sword in hand, at the head of the dais.
When the interview was completed, he had someone askWhat did you
think of the King of Wei? The envoy answered, The King of Wei really
does have an extrardinarily polished appearance, but the man holding the
sword by the dais~now that was a warrior-hero!
When the King of Wei heard this, he speedily dispatched someone to kill
the envoy. . . (XIV. 1)
The Reverend Zhi-dun loved cranes. He was living on Mount Yang in
eastern Shan when someone sent him a pair of cranes as a gift. After a short
time their wings had grown and they were ready to fly away. Zhi-dun didnt want this to happen, so he clipped their wing feathers. The cranes leapt
up beating their wings, but they were no longer able to fly. Then they looked
around at their wings and hung their heads, looking as though they were in
despair.
307
Zhi-dun said, Since they are built to cross above the highest clouds, how
can they be willing to serve as familiar playthings for mens senses? He
cared for them so that their wing feathers were full grown, then he let them
fly away. . . (11.76)
Huan Chong, the Horse and Chariot General, did not like to wear new
clothes. After he had bathed, his wife brought new clothes for him on pur
pose. The general flew into a great rage and had them taken away quickly.
His wife had them taken back to him with the message: How can clothes
ever get to be old if theyve never already been new? Lord Huan laughed
heartily and put them on. . . (XIX.24)
Liu Ling felt awful after drinking too much and was very thirsty, so he
told his wife to find him some beer. His wife got rid of the beer and broke
the vesselsthen, tears streaming down her face, tried to reason with him:
Youre drinking too much. This is no way to guard your health. You re
ally should stop!
Liu Ling replied, Fine! But I cant restrain myself on my own. The only
thing I can do is pray to the gods and spirits and make a vow to stop. So
prepare meat and beer for the ceremony.55His wife said, I
ll do as you say.
She brought meat and beer before the gods image and asked Liu Ling
to make his vow. Liu Ling kneeled down and prayed
Liu Ling did Heaven bear
to have a name for drinking beer,
he downs a gallon at a time,
then five pints his head to clear
anything my wife might say
be careful not to hear!
Then he took the beer
had the meat brought to himand ended up collapsed
in a stupor.. . . (XXIII. 3)
Liu Ling would constantly go on binges and act any way he pleased.
Sometimes he would take off his clothes and be naked in the middle of the
room. People who saw him criticized him. Liu Ling said, I think of
Heaven and Earth as roof and rafters; I think of my house and rooms
as my gown and underdrawers. What are you all doing, getting into my
underdrawers?M. . . (XXIII.6)
Bi Zhuo said, A crab claw in one hand and a cup of beer in the other
to dogpaddle in a pool of beer is enough for me in this life! . . . (XXIII.21)
Wang Hui-zhi was living in Shan-yang. There was a great snow, and he
woke from his sleep at night; he opened up the doors of the rooms, poured
himself beer, and everwhere he looked around him was glistening white.
Then he stood and hung a mment in thoughtreciting Calling to the
308
Recluse, Suddenly Dai Kui came to mind. At the time, Dai was at Shan
Creek.
Right then and there he got in a small boat and set off for Dais house
in the darkness. He reached it after traveling throughout the night, but once
he reached the gate, he went no further, but turned back.
Someone asked him whyand he said, I set out originally riding my
whim; the whim was gone and I turned back. There was no need to see Dai
. (XXIII.47)
X i X i, also known as X i Gong-mu, served as governor of Yang-zhou.
He was X i Kangs elder brother. When Ruan Ji was in mourning, X i X i went
to offer his condolences. Ruan Ji was able to show the whites of his eyes as
well as the pupils; and when he met a conventional, run-of-the-mill gentle
man, he would look at him with the whites of his eyes. When X i X i came,
Ruan Ji did not lament but showed the whites of his eyes. X i Xi felt uneasy
and withdrew. When X i Kang heard of this, he went to Ruan Ji with his harp
and some beerand they subsequently became good friends.. . . (XXIV.4_
Commentary)
Tao Qian's "Account of Peach Blossom Spring" remains one of the most beloved
stories in the Chinese tradition. By Tao Qian's time, the tension between the state
and the individual had developed fully. The "Account" offered the image of a third
and idyllic possibility, that of a small farming community cut off from history and
the larger state.
Tao Qian (365-427), An Account of Peach Blossom Spring

During the Tai-yuan Reign of the Jin (376-396)there was a native of Wuling who made his living catching fish. Following a creek, he lost track of
the distance he had traveled when all of a sudden he came upon forests of
blossoming peach trees on both shores. For several hundred paces there were
no other trees mixed in. The flowers were fresh and lovely, and the falling
petals drifted everywhere in profusion. The fisherman found this quite re
markable and proceeded on ahead to find the end of this forest. The forest
ended at a spring, and here he found a mountain. There was a small open
ing in the mountainand it vaguely seemed as if there were light in it. He
then left his boat and went in through the opening. At first it was very nar
row, just wide enough for a person to get through. Going on further a few
dozen paces, it spread out into a clear, open space.
The land was broad and level, and there were cottages neatly arranged.
There were good fields and lovely pools, with mulberry, bamboo, and other
such things. Field paths crisscrossed, and dogs and chickens could be heard.
Theregoing back and forth to their work planting, were men and women
whose clothes were in every way just like people elsewhere. Graybeards and
children with their hair hanging free all looked contented and perfectly
happy.
309
When they saw the fisherman, they were shocked. They asked where he
had come from, and he answered all their questions. Then they invited him
to return with them to their homes, where they served him beer and killed
chickens for a meal. When it was known in the village that such a person
was there, everyone came to ask him questions.
O f themselves they said that their ancestors had fled the upheavals dur
ing the Qin and had come to this region bringing their wives, children, and
fellow townsmen. They had never left it since that time and thus had been
cut off from people outside. When asked what age it was, they didnt know
of even the existence of the Han, much less the Wei or Jin. The fisherman
told them what he had learned item by item, and they all sighed, shaking
their heads in dismay. Each person invited him to their homes, and they all
offered beer and food.
After staying there several days, he took his leave. At this people said to
him heres no point in telling people outside about us.
Once he left, he found his boat; and then as he retraced the route by
which he had come, he took note of each spot. On reaching the regional cap
ital, he went to the governor and told him the story as I have reported. The
governor immediately sent people to follow the way he had gone and to look
for the spots he had noticed. But they lost their way and could no longer
find the route.
Liu Zi-ji of Nan-yang was a gentleman of high ideals. When he heard of
this, he was delighted and planned to go there. Before he could realize it, he
grew sick and passed away. After that no one tried to find the way there.
310
The Poetry of the Southern

Dynasties
In 317, after the reigning Jin emperor was seized by non-Chinese invaders
from the North, the Prince of Lang-ya, Si-ma Rui, declared the reestab
lishment of the Jin Dynasty in the South and in the following year took
the throne as Emperor Yuan. This period is known as the Eastern Jin; it
was followed by a succession of other short-lived dynastiesthe Song

(or Liu-Song, to distinguish it from the more famous Song), the Qi, the
Liang, and the Chen. The new capital was established at Jian-ye, later
called Jian-kang, in still later times Jin-Iing (finally becoming modern Nan
jing). This period, which lasted until 589, when the Sui finally extin
guished the puppet Chen regime, is known collectively as the Southern
Dynasties.
To this region, often called Jiang-nan, "South of the Yangzi" or the
Southland, came many refugees from the North, transferring their own
version of Northern culture into the South. They spoke a different dialect from the
local inhabitants, a dialect referred to with some pride as "the idiom of Jin , The great
emigre families constituted an aristocracy; and even though, with the passage of cen
turies, this Northern elite mixed with local families, they still prided themselves on
their distinction and their role as the true inheritors of Chinese culture. Safe behind
their river defenses, they looked with politic disdain on the Northern Dynasties and
their non-Chinese overlords.
The old yue~fu and virtually all the extant literature of the Han and Wei were
preserved in the South. To a large degree, our own view of earlier literature has
been shaped by their anthologies and their view of literary history. If earlier Chi
nese literature had as its highest values the perfect integration of the individual,
society, and the polity, the literature of the Southern Dynasties touches on frag
mentation and isolation in many forms. China was divided; Southern society was
divided, between northerner and indigenous southerner; and despite the claims of
the Northern aristocracy, the continuity of cultural history was suspect. W e have
two great poets of isolation, Tao Qian and Xie Ling-yun, both of whom celebrate
solitude an d in different w a y s show a longing for reconstituting bonds w ith others ~
Tao Qian praising the anonymous community of farmers, and Xie Ling-yun seek
ing the true friend who could share his appreciation of the magnificent landscapes
of the South.
Toward the end of the fifth century, a new version of fragmentation occurs: the
literary coterie or salon, whose members took pride in being a literary elite. These
"small societies" were miniature versions of the aristocratic society of the South. Each
under the patronage of imperial princes, literary salons were often linked to the po
litical factions that surrounded the princes.
311
Tao Qian (Tao Yuan-ming, 365-427)

Tao Qian, now the most famous poet of China before the Tang, was the child of a
minor gentry family that may possibly have had ties to a more illustrious branch of
the Tao clan. Tao Qian himself held and resigned several minor posts before his final
decision to give up public life and "return to his gardens and fields." More than any
thing else, that act of decision was the topic of Tao Qian's poetry~retelling the de
cision, justifying the decision, proclaiming his contentment with his decision, prais
ing exemplary figures in the past who were models for such a decision. Although
the work of some earlier poets had pointed in similar directions, Tao Qian created
a poetry of the individual and glorified the individual's claims against the claims of
public life. Within the Chinese tradition, however, public life held such authority
over the individual that Tao Qian's poetry has often been read as an implicit con
demnation of the failure of the Eastern Jin government (i.e., his choice of the private
life was a sign of his political disillusionment, and he would have served had the
political situation been better). Yet Tao Qian rarely speaks about good government
or bad; his target is the oppression inherent in living a public life. Tao Qian asked,
as few had before him, what it meant to be happy, and how a person could choose
the happy life.
In contrast to the artfully allusive poetry of his contemporaries, Tac/s poetry seems
unadorned; the impression of simplicity, however, can be misleading. Beneath the
surface, Tao Qian took serious early works that others treated as mere ornaments of
erudition. We start with a famous passage from the Analects (the first part of XI.26),
which talks of what it means to be happy and to satisfy one's aims in life. Com
mentators differ as to why, by the end of the passage, Confucius is "with Zeng Xi,"
but it has something to do with Zeng XVs capacity to envisage his own happiness.
Confucius, Analects XI.26

Zi-lu, Ran You, Gong-xi Hua, and Zeng X i were sitting in attendance
on the Master. The Master said, Dont take into account that I am
a few days older than you. Each of you is always saying, I am not
understood If it happened that you were understood, how would
you have things be?
W ithout giving it a second thought, Zi-lu answered, Take a domain

that could muster only a thousand chariots, a domain wedged in
between the great domains, and further a domain that had suffered
the passage of armies so that it was reduced to starvation. If I had
such a domain in my charge, in about three years I could make them
have courageand moreover understand proper behavior.M
The Master grinned at him.
Ran You, how would you have it be?
Ran You answered, Take an area sixty or seventy miles square
perhaps fifty or sixtyif I had charge of it, in about three years I
could make it have enough people in it. But when it comes to music
and rites, I would have to await a superior man.
t
312
The Chinese tcM iddle A ges'
Gong_xi Hua, how would it be for you?

He answered, I am not saying that I am capable of this, but I would
like to try to learn itI would like to be a minor assistant in a black
gown and ceremonial hat in the ceremonies at the ancestral temple
and in the great meeting of lords.
Zeng X i, how would it be for you?
Zeng Xi, who had been playing his harplet the lingering notes trail
away, then put his harp aside and rose, saying, It would be
different from the preferences of these other three.
The Master said, No matter. Each person has told us his lifes aims.
Zeng X i then said, It would be the end of spring when the spring
clothes had been readiedwith five or six young men and six or
seven young boys I would bathe in the River Yi and feel the breeze
on the Rain Altars, and then we would go home singing.
The Master let out a sigh, I am with Zeng X i.n
In the following poem, Tao Qian does not simply allude to the Analects passage;
the entire poem is built around it, as Tao rediscovers the perfect happiness it de
scribes, and then realizes his own isolation and distance from the past.
Seasons Shift
Seasons Shift
is about roaming at the end of spring. When my spring
clothes had been readied and there was a gentle look to the sceneryI roamed
alone, joined only by my shadow. Distress and delight met in my heart.
I
Ever onward seasons shift,
now gentle grace of this fine dawn.
Attired in my springtime clothes,
I come to the eastern meadows.
From hills is washed a lingering haze,
and Skys vault veiled by faint wisps.
A breeze is here from the south
and sits brooding over new shoots.
II
Broad waters of the level marsh
there I rinsethere I bathe.
A scene remote, muted and faint,
I feel delight and peer about.
Theres something people often say:
to content the heart is enough.
I toss the dregs from my cup
and cheerfully tipsy, find joy.
III
My eyes run out to midstream,
I remotely fancy the clear river Yi.
Young men and boys, alike in study
calmly chanting along the way home.
I wish such serenity as my own,
waking and sleeping I beckon to them.
Yet troubled that ours are different times,
so remote I cannot reach them.
IV
On this morning and this eve,
I rest here in my cottage.
Flowers and herbs divided by rows,
trees and bamboo giving shade.
The clear-toned harp across my couch,
a half-full jug of thick wine.
No reaching Yao or Yellow Emperor,
distressing solitude lies in me.
Measuring himself against Zeng Xi, Tao cannot quite reach such satisfaction. But
describing himself as a fictive other, he can attain the perfection of anonymous joy.
"Master Five Willows" is Tao Qian's image of himself.
Biography of Master Five Willows

We dont know what age the master lived in3 and we arent certain of his
real name. Beside his cottage were five willow trees, so he took his name
from them. He lived in perfect peace, a man of few wordswith no desire
for glory or gain. He liked to read but didnt try too hard to understand.
Yet whenever there was something that caught his fancy, he would be so
happy he would forget to eat. He had a wine-loving nature, but his house
hold was so poor he couldnt always get hold of wine. His friends, know
ing how he was, would invite him to drink. And whenever he drank, he fin
ished what he had right away, hoping to get very drunk. When drunk, he
would withdraw, not really caring whether he went or stayed. His dwelling
was a shambles, providing no protection against wind or sun. His coarse
clothes were full of holes and patches; his plate and pitcher always empty;
he was at peace. He often composed literary works for his own amusement,
and these gave a good indication of his aims. He forgot all about gain or
loss, and in this way lived out his life.
The summation: Qian-lou's wife once said, Feel no anxiety about loss or
low stationdont be too eager for wealth and honor. When we reflect on
The Chinese KM iddle AgesSi
her words, we suspect that Five Willows may have been such a manswig
ging wine and writing poems to satisfy his inclinations. Was he a person of
the age of Lord No-Cares? Was he a person of the age of Ge-tian?1
The following poem requires some knowledge of the double ninth festival (the ninth
day of the ninth month). "Nine" (jiu) was homophonous with "long tim e, the "long"
of the second line, which is why everyone "loves its name/7To promote longevity,
chrysanthemums were taken in an infusion with wine; but Tao, lacking wine, eats
his chrysanthemums dry.
Dwelling in Peace on the Double Ninth

I was dwelling in peace and loved the name double ninth. Falls chrysan
themums filled the garden, yet I had no means to take strong brew in hand.
So I swallowed the flowers of the ninth by themselves, and expressed what
I felt in words.
Our span is short, desires are many,
so mankind delights in living long.
W ith star signs the day and month arrive,
and all, by customlove todays name.
The dews are cool, sultry winds cease,
the air is crisp, the heavens bodies bright.
No shadows remain from departed swallows
but sounds aplenty from wild geese coming.
Wine has the power to drive off cares,
chrysanthemums curb declining years.
How can a man in a cottage of thatch
do nothing but watch seasons sink toward an end?
My dusty cup shames the empty jar,
these cold-weather flowers blossom in vain.
I pull my gown close, sing calmly alone,
then, lost in my musingsdeep feelings rise.
The quiet life has indeed many joys,
there is something achieved in just lingering on.
lwNo-Careswand Ge-tian were mythical rulers from the dawn of antiquity~a time when all the world
had peace and plenty.
Drinking W ineV
I built a cottage right in the realm of men,
yet there was no noise from wagon and horse.
I ask you, how can that be so?
when mind is far, its place becomes remote.
I picked a chrysanthemum by the eastern hedge,
off in the distance gazed on south mountain.
Mountain vapors glow lovely in twilight sun,
where birds in flight join in return.
There is some true significance here:
I want to expound it but have lost the words.
Returning to Dwell in Gardens and Fields I

My youth felt no comfort in common things,
by my nature I clung to the mountains and hills.
I erred and fell in the snares of dust
and was away thirteen years in all.
The caged bird yearns for its former woods,
fish in a pool yearns for long-ago deeps.
Clearing scrub at the edge of the southern moors
I stay plain by returning to gardens and fields.
My holdings are just more than ten acres
a thatched cottage of eight or nine rooms.
Elms and willows shade eaves at the back,
peach and plum spread in front of the hall.
The far towns of men are hidden from sight,
a faint blur of smoke comes from village hearths.
A dog is barking deep in the lanes,
a rooster cries out atop a mulberry.
No dust pollutes my doors or yard,
empty space offering ample peace.
For long time I was kept inside a coop,

now again I return to the natural way.
The Chinese M iddle Agesn
Moving My Dwelling I
Long I
ve wanted to dwell in south village,
and not just because its a lucky site.
I heard there were many simple-hearted men,
and would enjoy passing mornings and evenings with them.
I had this in mind for many a year,
and this is the task I follow today.
No need that my ramshackle cottage be grand,
I find it enough that it cover my bed.
Neighbors will come from time to time,
well have spirited talks of days gone by.
In rare writings well find a shared delight,
between us well work out problems of meaning.
The Sixth Month of 408: We Had a Fire

My thatch cottage was set in a narrow lane,
that willingly kept splendid coaches away.
It was high summer, steady winds blew hard,
in a moment my grove and house burned down.
Not a building was left on my property,
so we sheltered in a boat before the gate.
Far and wide, this eve of new autumn,
spreading high abovethe moon almost full.
Vegetables and melons again begin to grow
the birds, frightened off, have not yet returned.
In nights midst I stand, I brood on far things,
one glance covers the nine-tiered skies.
Since youth I have clung to lone steadfastness,
all at once it has been more than forty years.
My body and deeds pass on with Change,
yet the seat of my spirit is ever at peace.
In its own right my being is pure and firm
indeed there is no jade so hard.
I envision those times of Dong-hu2

when spare grain was left overnight in the field.
They patted full bellies and longed for nothing,
got up at dawn and at dusk went to sleep.
But since I wasnt born in those times,
Fll just go on watering my garden.
Begging
Famine came, it drove me off
I did not know where to go.
I finally came to this village,
knocked at a gate, fumbled with words,
The owner guessed what I had in mind;
he gaveI had not come for nothing.
We joked and chatted through evening;
when a pitcher came, we emptied our cups.
Heart's ease in joys of newfound friends,
as we sang and recited poems.
I was touched by such kindness the washerwoman showed,
and am shamed that I lack the gifts of Han Xin.3
So much within me, I know not how to thank you,
I must pay you back from the world beyond.
Reading the Classic o f Mountains and Seas I

Summers first month, all plants grow tall
around my cottage, trees dense and full.
There flocks of birds rejoice to find lodging,
and I too cling with love to my cottage.
With the plowing done and the sowing,
now and then I can read my books.
These narrow lanes keep out deep ruts,
and tend to turn away old friendscarts.
In pleasure I pour out the wine of spring
and pick from the gardens vegetables.
2Like "No-caresand Ge-tian earlier, Dong-hu was a ruler of mythical antiquity in a world of plenty,
free of conflict.
3Han Xin was one of the great generals in the founding of the Han. Once he was in desperate straits
and a washerwoman fed him, refusing reward. Tao is saying that, unlike Han Xin, he w ill not rise
to high position.
'
The Chinese (tM iddle Ages'*
A light rain is moving in from the east,

a nice breeze comes along with it.
I browse in the tales of the King of Zhou
look through the charts of the Mountains and Seas.4
In an instant I have covered the universe
if this is not joy, what is?
Xie Ling-yun (385-433)

The beauty of mountains and streams has been commented on by all since an
cient times. High peaks that enter into the clouds; clear currents that reveal their
beds; stone cliffs on both shores glinting with all the colors of the rainbow. They
are furnished with green forests and azure bamboo all the year long. As the early
morning fog is about to lift, a tumult of birds and gibbons cry out; and as the
evening sun is about to sink away, sunken fins seem to vie with one another in
vaulting from the waters. This is, in truth, the great city of the Undying within
this World of Earthly Desires. And yet since the time of Xie Ling-yun there has
never again been anyone able fully to be a part of these wonders.
~ Tao Hong-jing (452-536), wLetter in Answer to Xie of the Secretariat
Xie Ling-yun is perhaps the least read major poet of traditional China. He was an
aristocrat, born into one of the greatest families of the period, and had a tempestu
ous political career that culminated in his execution. Xie Ling-yin is remembered,
however, as the first great landscape poet of China. His densely crafted couplets and
difficult diction were greatly admired in his age and throughout the following cen
tury. Unlike most earlier poets, who used elements of landscape as figures for human
concerns, Xie Ling-yun saw in the landscape the wondrous embodiment of nature's
forms, the experience of which would lead the contemplative viewer to a kind of
enlightenment.
Fu-chun Isle
By night we passed over Fishermans Deeps
and by dawn reached the outskirts of Fu-chun.
Steady Mountain far and faint in clouds and fog;
at Crimson Pavilion there was no tarrying.
Countering currents, I bashed through swift dashings;
close by the bank I was blocked by what was strewn.
In truth I was lacking Bo-hun
s endowments;
and in peril I passed through Lii-liang
s canyon.
4The Tales o f King Mu (the "King of Zhou") recount his wanderings through the fabled lands be
yond the Chinese heartland. The Classic o f Mountains and Seas is a fantastic geography.
^19
To pooling it comethbest to be inured;

mountains joinedvalue halting and lodging.
Lifelong affinity with designs for withdrawal,
floundering, fumbling, burdened by weaknesses.
Long evincing appeals for preferment,
but now fulfilling a pledge for far wandering.
The perennial heart progressively unfolds,
of a million problems each falls away.
Now my concerns are unfurled in the light,
all things beyond me pointlessly stretch and shrink back.
As a poet, Xie Ling-yun was immensely erudite and a dense stylist, which makes his
work difficult to appreciate in translation. The fourth couplet above alludes to two
Daoist parables of remaining calm in a dangerous situation. In the first, to instruct
Lie Yu-kou to keep a steady mind while shooting a bow, Bo-hun Mao-ren walked
backward to the edge of a high cliff until his heels were over the edge. In the sec
ond, Lu-liang C a n y o n was a violent stretch of water where Confucius once saw a
man floundering
thinking the man was in danger, Confucius sent one of his disci
ples to rescue him. It turned out, however, that the man was a swimmer who had
learned to be at home in such violent flux. After alluding to these two stories of the
mind's conquest of fear, Xie looks into the landscape and sees forms that seem to
be the very embodiments of phrases in the Classic of Changes: vyto pooling it cometh"
and "mountains joined. In both cases he quotes the advice offered in the Classic
of Changes and applies it to his own case.
Written on the Lake, Returning from the Chapel at Stone Cliff

Dawnlight to dusk transmuted the atmosphere,
streams and hills infused with a luminous glow:
Such luminous glow can so beguile a man
that the traveler, rapt, neglects to go.
The sun was still low when I left the valley,
its light now grows faint as I board my boat.
These wooded canyons gather hues of the dark,
as white clouds and red draw back twilight haze.
Caltrop and lotus alternate shining verdure,
cattails and reeds rest each on the other.
Pushing back brush, I rush down the southbound trail,
and cheerfully lie by my eastern portal.
The Chinese KM iddle Agesy>
When mans cares calm, the worlds things grow light,

with the will content, the patterns dont go amiss.
These words I send to those nurturing life
just try using this Way to search for it.
Climbing an Upper Story by the Pool

A dragon, submerged, enhances sequestered charms,
the swan in flight sends its voice echoing far.
Chagrined by one reaching the drifting cloud-wisps,
shamed by the other, settled in streams deepest chasm.
My wisdom too awkward to rise by virtue;
my strength that cannot bear retiring to plow.
Now to sea
s very edge in pursuit of income,
I lie lêre ailing, facing barren woods.
Quilt and pillow have blinded me to seasons,
now lifting the curtain, I briefly peer out.
I turn my ear to hearken to waves,
lift eyes to catch sight of towering cliffs.
In this new scene are altered the lingering winds,
fresh sunlight transfigures the shadows that were.
Pond and pool grow with grasses of spring,
garden willows vary the birds that there sing.
Such bounty brings pain at the songs of Bin,
lush growth touches thoughts of Chu
s lays.
Dwelling solitary easily comes to last long,
apart from others, hard to steady the heart.
Holding fast to standards is not only of old
Being free from distress is confirmed right now.
Appearing in the middle of a stylistically very elaborate poem, the line "Pond and
pool grow with grasses of spring" (in the eighth couplet above) caught the imagi
nation of many traditional critics as being particularly beautiful. In an early anec
dote, Xie Ling-yun claimed to have received the couplet in a dream and that it was
not truly his own. Whatever its provenance, this couplet became a touchstone of
poetic perfection. Immediately following such a "natural" couplet, the very words
Xie finds to describe the natural scene recall to him the earlier poems in which the
same words were used.
Visiting the Southern Pavilion

Seasons close, evening skies clear to translucence,
clouds go their ways as the sun hurries west.
Dense woodlands, infused with a lingering cool,
while a far summit shadows half of Sols disk.
Long unwell and deluged by sufferings,
from the lodge I stare to where meadow paths fork.
Marsh orchids gradually blanket the trails,
lotuses start to come forth in the pools.
Green springtime was sweetnot wearisome yet;
crimson brightness moved inthis already observed.
Cheerless, I sigh, stirred by all things around;
Star-flecked they hang, these whitened hairs.
Medications and nourishment, desires stop there;
ailments and frailties are suddenly upon me.
To pass away Fll wait for the autumn floods,
let my shadow pause, reclining on former bluffs.
For whom can I clarify hopes and dreams?
a mind that appreciates will know on its own.
More than any poet before him, Xie Ling-yun used phrases from the classics and older
literature to give depth to his work, a depth that is impossible to catch in translation.
In the poem above, images and phrases from "Calling Back the Soul" give a ghostly
resonance to the scene described. The poet, long sick, rises and looks out the win
dow:
Long unwell and deluged by sufferings,

from the lodge I stare to where meadow paths fork . . .
What he claims to see echoes the strange scene at the end of "Calling Back the Soul"
(see p. 210), where the speaker is riding in the dark marshes on a hunt with the king,
and they lose the trail:
W ith the king I dashed through the fens,

racing to see who would be first.
The king himself made the shot
the black buffalo was slain.
Red dawnlight follows the night,
the time does not let us linger.
The Chinese M iddle Ages
Marsh orchids blanket the trail,

the path here fades away.
Bao Zhao (ca. 414-466)

Bao Zhao was a somewhat younger poet than Xie Ling-yun, and in his own land
scape poetry he could not escape Xie's immense influence. Bao Zhao, however, was
fascinated by yue-fu and song_ by its images of passion, heroism, and powerful feel
ing in an age in which poetry was becoming increasingly controlled and restrained.
Bao Zhao's most famous work is a series of verses set to a song, "Hard Traveling";
in place of the dense description and philosophical description of landscape poetry,
these pieces utilize dramatic intensity.
Hard Traveling IV
Spill water out on level ground
it flows off east
or west or north or south.
A mans life too has its destiny
how can I walk and sigh,
then sit here in despair?
So pour the ale and take your ease,
lift ydur cup and cease to sing
Hard Traveling
My heart is not of wood or stone
how can I help being moved?
I waver, swallow back my voice,
and dare not speak a sound.
Hard Traveling II
A Luo-yang craftsman of renown
cast an incense burner of gold,
with thousands of cuts and incisions,
on top he carved Q in
s royal daughter
whose hand the immortal lover held.
To sustain your pleasures on cool nights
it was set within bedcurtains
next to bright candles.
On the outside it showed russet glitter,
the scales of a dragon
inside was held the lavender smoke,
fragrance of musk.
But now your heart has changed overnight,
long Ill sigh facing this

all the years of my life.
Hard Traveling VI
I face the table, I cannot eat,
I draw my sword, I strike the post
and heave a long sigh.
How long can mans life last in this world?
can I hobble around with drooping wings?
I gave it up, quit office, left,
returned to my home, rested in ease.
At dawn I went forth taking leave of kin,
at twilight turned back to be by kins side.
I enjoy my son who plays by the bed
and watch my wife as she weaves at the loom.
Good men and sages since ancient times
have all been humble and poor,
which is even more for those like me
upright and alone.
Singing and the scene of singing had always been an important topic in early po
etry, but Bao Zhao was particularly interested in dramatizing the occasion of song,
as in the following piece in which the "Song of the Bright Moon
appears within the
poem of the same name. Lady Wei and Zhao Fei-yan are mentioned as types of beautiful women.
Song of the Bright Moon

The bright moon comes forth from eastern hills,
outside the grillwork windows it shines.
Inside the windows, many lovely women,
dressed all in lace, entrancing and fair.
Seeing to make-up, they sit within curtains,
or in the doorways they play clear strings.
Their tresses more beguile us than Lady Wei,
their bodies surpass Zhao Fei-yan by far.
Now let me sing a song for you,
the song I
ll make is called Bright M oon.
As the wine takes effect, the face relaxes
the voice is gentle, the heart made known.
A thousand gold pieces dont matter
what counts is the strength of feeling.
The Chinese M iddle AgesM
The Southern Courts

Although Tao Qian and Xie Ling-yun were greater poets than any in the late fifth
and sixth centuries, the changes that took place in poetry during that time were to
have an impact on the development of Chinese poetry far deeper than that of the
major poets. This is the period that saw the perfection of the poetic language inherited
by the Tang. There was the gradual development of tonal balancing within the cou
plet, which shifted finally into regulated verse in the seventh century. This was ac
companied by a fascination with poetry as a craft, with the style and art of the cou
plet. Poets judged each other's works, and errors of many kinds might open a poet
to criticism. There was also a greater sense of the history of poetry than ever before.
Lines of earlier poets or themes from the old yue-fu provided topics for endless vari
ation. Moreover, the quatrain folksongs of the South became popular in the South
ern courts and provided the inspiration for a new literary quatrain. Poets would send
quatrains to one another and answer ones they had received. Taken together, such
quatrain sets became an early version of a form of group composition that would
mature in the Tang as "linked verse." Quatrains that had no response were called,
among other things, "cut-off |ines
(Jue- which later became the term for the qua
train as a distinct verse form.
Many poets of this period were connected with the literary salons presided over
by imperial princes of the Xiao family, which ruled both the Qi and the Liang dy
nasties. There was much composition to set topics: a prince might demand a poem
on the occasion of an outing or party, or might test a poet's ingenuity by proposing
some object as the topic of a poem.
The theme of the following poem became a favorite yue-fu topic in this period
and later. The great warlord Cao Cao (155-220) decreed that after his death, his
palace ladies should be lodged in the palace known as "The Terrace of the Bronze
Sparrow": "My consorts and concubines are all to remain on the Terrace of the
Bronze Sparrow, and on that terrace set a six-foot couch surrounded by lace hang
ings. In the morning and late afternoon let them set out wine, meat, and grain and
such things. At dawn on the fifteenth of every month they are to perform before the
screen, and then from time to time climb the terrace and gaze toward my tomb in
Western Mound" ("Tales of Old Ye). The curtained enclosure (the "soul-screen")
around the couch was the space where Cao Cao's spirit might reenter the world of
the living.
The play of sounds in He Xun's version of the "Terrace of the Bronze Sparrow"
shows a controlled mastery of presentation that few earlier poets could have
achieved. The poem opens with the sound of the wind in the trees, in which begins
the music of instruments, then song, and it ends with the sound of the wind in the
cypress and pine trees planted on the tomb. He Xun also enjoyed the rich irony of
the performers offering wine to the empty spirit enclosure while singing Cao Cao's
own banquet song:


The feeling is strong in me
by Du Kangs gift of wine.
He Xun (d. ca. 518 ), Performers on the Terrace of the

Bronze Sparrow
Leaves fall from trees in the autumn wind,
through its rustling, clear notes of flutes and harps.
They gaze toward his tomb and sing Facing the W ine
in an empty city they dance at the soul-screen.

In the lonely stillness beneath the broad roof,
the curtains are light and flap in the wind.
Song donethey look at each other and rise: 4
the sun sets with the sounds of cypress and pine.
Another poet of the same period, Xie Tiao, gives a different treatment of the theme,
with Cao Cao's palace women expressing a more decorous grief.
Xie Tiao (464-499), A Companion Piece for Xie Jin g s

wTerrace of the Bronze Sparrow
Lace curtains flap on the open frame,
the goblet of wine as it used to be.
The trees grow so thick on Western Mound,
how can he hear the songs sung to flutes?
Tearmarks stain the gowns3sweet folds;
their tender feelings return in vain.
Desolate still is his throne of jade,
even more, our bodies of such small worth.
One of the most interesting poets of this period was the imperial prince Xiao Gang,
who later became Emperor Jian-wen of the Liang. Xiao Gang was not a very good
ruler, a mere figurehead in the collapsing Southern state, but he was a fine poet and
an influential patron. His was a poetry of beautiful, enigmatic patterns, often draw
ing the eye closely to some detail. Sadly, his attention to sensuous surfaces, to dis
torting perspectives and illusions in reflection, made his work seem to later Confu
cian judges of literary value both trivial and morally suspect.
The Chinese aM iddle Ages31
Xiao Gang (503- 5 5 1)Song of Yong-zhou: II North Isle

Shores shaded by hanging willow fronds,
smooth stream with white parapets within.
Glad to meet others beside these walls,
girls often encountered in boats rushing by.
Sapphire waters splash their long sleeves
and drifting mosses dye the light paddles.
Source of Pain II
In lonely stillness, echoes from twilight eaves,
dark and somber, the colors with curtains drawn.
There is only the moss on the drain tiles,
like seeing the lacework of spiders.
Song: Every Night

The Dipper stretches across the sky,
the heart every night feels its pain alone.
From the side on my pillow fall moonbeams
in lamplight half of the bed is in shadow.
Roaming in the North Park by Night

Star sparkles break through trees on the ridge,
moonglow is shadowed by wall tower.
When blooms open in darknesswe cannot tell,
but the bright waves stir, showing currents.
Sending a Palace Lady Back by Night to the Rear Boat

Rows of brocade curtains shelter her barge,
magnolia oars drift, brushing the waves.
Her departing candle still patterns the waters
her lingering scent still fills my boat.
On a Lone Duck
It dives in shallows for beakfuls of moss,
heads to sandy isles to preen its feathers.
It was ready to fly off all by itself
then found its reflection and lingered.
New Swallows
In response to the season new birds return,
all fly to the chambers where music plays.
Into the curtains, ringing bangles alarm them,
through windows theyre blocked by the dancers gowns.
The Reflection of a High Building in the Water
At the waters bottom a tracery screen appears,

among the duckweed an inverted vault afloat.
When breezes comes, the colors are unruined;
the waves pass on, the reflection remains.
The courtly quatrain, particularly treating motifs of women and love, became a pop
ular form in the early sixth century. The poet would quickly sketch a scene of de
sire, longing in absence, or charm, with feeling revealed by some gesture or piece
of evidence.
Liu Yan (Emperor Wu of the Liang, 464-549)Zi-ye Song

In her yearning it seems she wants to come closer,
but she
s bashful and will not advance.
From lipsred emerges a song of passion,
white fingers stroke the charming strings.
Shen Yue (4 4 1-5 13)Going Out Early and Meeting an Old

Love, I Give This to Her in Her Carriage
Traces of rouge yet darken your skin,
and a dusting of powder remains there still.
Where was it you stayed last night
that this morning you make your way home in the dew?
Madam Shen (early 6th century), Song on Reflections in Water

Her light tresses mimic the drifting clouds,
her twin brows copy the crescent moon.
Where waters clearshe straightens skewed hairpins;
where duckweed opens, she smooths tousled hair.
Wu Jun (469- 520)Quatrains on Various Topics I

Days cicadas had already brought yearnings pain,
then nights dew once again soaked her robes.
Beforeof course, there was partings heartache,
and now this evening, the fireflies.
The Chinese M iddle Ages31
Wang Seng-ru (465- 522)Spring Longings

The snows are over, branches turn green,
ice opens, the water is blue.
And again I hear the orioles longing
that leads me to write these songs of love.
Liu Xiao-chuo (481-539)On a Woman Unwilling to

Come Forth
Where the curtain opens, I see hairpins shadow,
when the hangings stirI hear bracelets sound.
She hesitates and will not come forth,
always shy of the candles light.
Southern poets of the sixth century developed a sense of poetic craftsmanship that
remained at the heart of later Tang poetry, though Tang poets tended to be less heavyhanded with the craft of the parallel couplet. Poets of the Southern courts would often
go on excursions with princes or emperors and would be asked to write poems on
the same topics or using the same rhymes as imperial poems. The first of the fol
lowing poems by Yu Xin is written as he accompanies a Liang prince, Xiao Yi, on
an excursion on the Yangzi River.
Yu Xin (5 13-5 8 1), Respectfully Answering Drifting on

the River
The spring river comes down past White Emperor Castle,
and our painted barges head toward Brown Ox Gorge.
Brocade rigging bends around shoals of gravel,
magnolia oars avoid sandbars of reeds.
Drenched petals drift along with the waters,
empty nests go with currents, chasing their trees.
Boat-building scaffolds came down to Jian-ping
then war galleys came floating to Jing-men.
Many tall trees by shrines on the shore,
enough far towers on castles in hills.
As the sun goes down, winds calm on the river,
the dragon sings out and turns back upstream.
When the Jin set out to conquer the Three Kingdoms' state of Wu, the genera
Wang
Jun had a river fleet constructed upstream in Sichuan. The Wu governor of Jian-ping
found pieces of the scaffolding for boat construction floating downstream and knew
that an attack was impending. Although Yu Xin celebrates the excursion with po
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etic grace, these historical echoes recall the serious threat that the Liang Dynasty
faced from the North.
Study in the Hills

I sought in vast stillness calm chambers,
I went through dense foliage to my study in the hills.
Oozing and trickling, waters moistened the road,
arching in domes, stones reclined on the stairs.
A log in the shallows, not budging at all,
roots coiling round, only half buried.
Round beads plummet from evening chrysanthemums,
slender fires fall from the hollow ash tree.
yet only the gloom of the wind-blown clouds
makes me feel still more how hearts cares have erred.
A Companion Piece for Grand Master Yan5s

Newly Cleared Skies35
Vapors over water consume evenings light,
rays thrown back shine on the rivers high banks.
Sopping petals blow away, but not far,
shadowy clouds draw in and still lower.
Swallows dry up and again turn to stone,
the dragon falls apart and once more is mud.5
A sweet-smelling spring pours a chilly torrent,
a small skiff fishes in a brook of lotuses.
If only the mind could take all things as equal
why feel distress that things are not equal at all?
The Image of the Southern Dynasties

As important as the Southern Dynasties were in their own right in the history of Chi
nese literature, they were no less important as a world evoked in the poetic imagi
nation of later centuries: witty recluses, zany aristocrats, pleasure-loving and deca
dent emperors. This image of the Southern Dynasties was by and large a creation of
ninth-century poets, who perhaps found in the South of the third to sixth centuries
an alluring counterpart to the Tang's own slow dissolution.
The following rather straightforward ballad recounts the beginning of the South
ern Dynasties with the Jin Dynasty's loss of the North in the Yong-jia reign (307-312).
sThere is a legend of stone swallows that turned into birds when it rained, then became stone again
when they dried out. Dragons were formed of mud and clay in sacrifices for rain.
___
330
The Chinese Middle Ages'*
Zhang Ji (ca. 767-ca. 830)A Ballad of the Yong-jia

Then the blond-headed Xian-pi
entered Luo-yang,
and Turks with pikes in hand
climbed the Hall of Light.
The house of Jins Son of Heaven
surrendered as a prisoner,
as his lords and nobles fled swiftly
just like cattle and sheep.
On the purple lanes pennons and banners
bumped one another in darkness,
chickens and dogs of every household
climbed to the roofs in alarm.
Married women went out their gates
along with rebel soldiers;
when their husbands died before their eyes,
they did not dare to weep.
Great nobles of the nine domains
each looked to his own lands,
and not a one led soldiers
to go protect their prince.
O f Northerners who fled the Turks
most were found in the South
and to this day the Southerners
speak the idiom of Jin.
Zhang Ji's rather plain narrative may be contrasted with the following dramatic
scene by Wen Ting-yun, written perhaps half a century later. The poem is set five
centuries earlier, in the year 383; the scene is the villa of Xie An, the great states
man of the Eastern Jin, who has sent off his nephew Xie Xuan and his younger brother
Xie Shi to meet the invasion of the Northern warlord Fu Jian, who was making a bid
to reunify China. As if unconcerned, Xie An is playing a game of "chess, or go, with
the great courtiers of the Eastern Jin all gathered around him waiting for him to make
his move. The chess game is the microcosm in which Xie An is mysteriously en
compassing the defeat of Fu Jian at the Battle of the Fei River (by the river Huai). The
poem builds on the anecdote given in Liu Yi-qing's New Stories and Tales of the
Times (Shi-shuo xin-yu), VI.35:
Lord Xie was playing go with someone when all at once a messenger came from
Xie Xuan, who was at the river Huai. After he finished reading the letter, he
kept perfectly silent and slowly turned back to the gameboard. One of his visi
tors asked him whether the event on the Huai had gone well or illand he an
331
sweredThe young people have completely smashed that thug. His counte
nance and behavior were no different from usual.
Wen Ting-yun (ca. 812-866), A Song of Lord X ies Villa

To the south of Redbird Pontoon Bridge
there winds a fragrant path,
to Master Xies eastern villa
stretching to springs green sky.
Doves sleep high in the willows
sunlight suffused everywhere,
breeze gusts through grillwork kiosks
where are guests from the Royal Court.
On the squares of grained catalpa wood
petals are randomly strewn
before his plans have fully formed,
stars are filling the pool.
None of the guests made the least noise,
beech and bamboo were hushed,
lords of golden cicadas and scepters of jade
ail rested their chins on hands.
He faces the board, he knits his brows,
he sees a thousand miles,
and the capital has already seized
the long serpents tail.
The Southlands royal aura
twines through his open lapels
and he never let Fu Jian
cross the river Huai.
The poetic expositions of the Han included monumental works on the great Han
imperial hunts. The following song begins with a stylish and diminutive imperial hunt
in the Southern Dynasties, going out before the dawn, riding horses decked with jew
els. The song gradually turns into a vision of the Southland's decadence, showing
the Last Ruler of the last of Southern Dynasties, the Chen, hiding with his empresses
in the palace well to escape the conquering troops of the Sui. In the tradition of sen
suous love songs of the Southern Dynasties such as those given above, the Last Ruler
of the Chen composed a song entitled "In the Rear Court Flowers on Trees of Jade."
The "Great Preface" to the Classic of Poetry asserted that one could tell the condi
tion of a government by the quality of the poetry and music of the period. It is said
that when his courtiers heard this song by the Last Ruler, they wept, knowing that
the dynasty would not last long. At the end of Wen Ting-yun's poem, we find that
the white flowers celebrated in the song endure, but on wild trees that grow over
the remains of the Southern Dynasties' parks and palaces.
332
The Chinese M iddle Ages33
Song for the Bank Where the Cock Crowed

When the Southern Dynasties Emperor
went off to shoot pheasants
the silvery sky-river sparkled
with scatterings of stars.
In bronze water-clocks the dripping ceased,
as first they woke from dreams
dust rose high from the jeweled horses,
no one knew at all.
Fish leapt east of the lotuses,
rippling palace pools,
a drizzling haze in royal willows
where roosting birds hung suspended.
Red rouge through thousands of doors,
there was spring within the mirrors,
a single sound from sapphire trees
and all the world turned dawn.
Their coiling, crouching power wore out
after three hundred years,
the Southlands warlike aura
turned to melancholy mist.
Comet tails brushed the Earth,
waves rolled over the sea;
battle drums crossed the river,
dust flooded the skies.
Embroidered dragon and painted pheasant
stuffed the palace well,
and winds were driving the wildfires
that burned the nine royal tripods.
Their great halls made nests for swallows,
the pavements grew with weeds,
on the twelve statues of metal
frost was glittering.
A continuous carpet of green grows over
foundations of Palace City,
the warm colors of springtime sky3
ancient slopes where plants run wild.
Who would have thought that the melody,
In the Rear Court Flowers on Trees of Jade,55
would linger on in the crabapples
and their branches like the snow.
The Southern Dynasties capital at Jian-kang, also referred to as Jin-ling, later became
Nanjing, the "Southern Capital" of the Ming. In 1644, when Qing armies took the
333

North, Ming loyalists tried to establish a successor Ming reign in the South, in Nan
jing. This last short "Southern Dynasty" remembered its predecessors in the old city.
Qian Qian-yi, one of the most famous writers of the day, served and betrayed the
Southern Ming; watching a game of chess, he could probably not help recalling Xie
An's famous chess game thirteen centuries before.
Qian Qian-yi (1582-166 4)In Jin-ling: A Second Series on

Watching a Chess Game (one of six) (1647)
Still and somber, a bare chessboard,
echoes in vast silence,
autumn grows old by the Qin-Huai,
whose cold high waters moan.
White-haired in the candlelight
and sensing the chill of night,
in the last pieces of the game
I see the Southern Dynasties.
Traditional Literary Theory
in traditional China, as in many civilizations, various kinds of critical and

theoretical writing about literature developed side by side with the ac
tual texts. These writings are valuable to us because they give some in
dication of how literature was conceived and how it was read. They tell
us what both readers and writers thought was important in their litera
ture and some of the assumptions they shared.
Comments on literature in the pre-Qin period and in the Han con
cerned primarily the ethical force of literature and its consequences for
social and political behavior. As in other civilizations, there was a strong
sense of literature's power to shape values and hence to influence be
havior, either for the better or the worse. On the one hand, the Confu
cian Classics and literary works that followed in the tradition of the clas
sics were seen as the only way to preserve and teach basic cultural
values. On the other hand, we often find a sense of danger about certain works of
literature, an anxiety that they somehow might stir immoderate desires and threaten
the social order. Thus the earliest critics often served as apologists for literature, de
fending its potential usefulness and encouraging forms of writing that supported po
litical and social values.
After the fall of the Han Dynasty, a wide variety of new concerns began to ap
pear in writing about literature. Literature was not yet conceived as an autonomous
art, entirely separate from social and political life; nevertheless, these new concerns
broadened the sense of literature. The earliest extant essay devoted exclusively to
the discussion of literature was written by Cao Pi (187-226), emperor of the Wei
Dynasty, son of the great warlord Cao Cao, and elder half brother of Cao Zhi, the
most admired writer of the period. In this work, the "Discourse on Literature" (Lun
wen), we find rudimentary formulations of many of the perennial interests of later
critics: the relation between personality and style, literary talent as a unique gift that
cannot be passed on like a skill or craft, and literary achievement as a means to at
tain cultural immortality.

In literary theory, as in literature itself, we sometimes encounter a work of such
originality that it could not have been anticipated from what preceded it. The Po
etic Exposition on Literature" (Wen fu) by Lu Ji (261-303) is just such a work. Not
only had nothing like it ever been written about literature, Lu Ji himself never wrote
anything else quite like it. Cao Pi's "Discourse on Literature" was a personal, even
idiosyncratic organization of literary issues; unique as it was, however, it was still
comprehensible as a transformation of certain old questions about writing. Lu Ji ad
dressed a whole new range of questions about the act of writing, and he strained
the language of his day to find words to describe the process. Modern critics have
335

often observed that "The Poetic Exposition on Literature" does what it describes: that
it is a poetic treatment of poetry. This aspect of the work contributes to both its dif
ficulty and its appeal.
Lu Ji largely ignores earlier concerns about literature its ethical purpose, its re
flection of the social and political circumstances of its time, and its embodiment of
the author's personality. Instead, "The Poetic Exposition on Literature" is based on
the Neo-Daoist theory of mind and a "spirit-wandering" that is the rough counter
part of a Western theory of the imagination. After a prose preface in which he speaks
of the problem of representing in words a process as elusive as writing, Lu Ji gives
an orderly description of how composition takes place. First, the writer prepares him
self by nurturing the imaginative capacity and by internalizing the works of past writ
ers; the mind then wanders through the microcosm of the self, encountering things
that will be the "material" of the literary work. Lu Ji next turns to the problems of
expressing interior experience in words, giving it order and controlling its turbulent
complexity. Finally, the "Poetic Exposition" treats various problems of writing, con
cluding with a description of imaginative "dryness, when inspiration fails.
Lu Ji (261-303)The Poetic Exposition on Literature (Wen fu)

Whenever I consider what has been written by persons of talent, I find that
I can somehow grasp their strenuous efforts, how they used their minds.
Many indeed are the variations in the ways they brought forth their words
and phrases, yet we can still understand and explain what is beautiful and
valuable in them.
.
Whenever I myself compose a literary work, I can see quite well their
states of mind. Yet I constantly fear failure because my own conceptions are
unequal to the things of the world, or because my writing is unequal to my
conceptions. I suppose it is not that understanding is difficult, but rather that
the difficulty lies in being able to do it well.
For this reason I have written The Poetic Exposition on Literature
: first
to pass on the splendid complexity of craft that we find in earlier writers,
and second, to consider how success and failure come about in writing. I
hope that someday this will be recognized as having treated all the fine points
of the subject in detail.
'
When it comes to taking an ax in hand to chop an ax handle, the model
is not far from you; however, it is hard indeed for language to follow the
variations of motion in that hand. What can be put into words is all here.
He stands in the very center and scans the darkness,
Fosters feelings and aims in classics of old.
He moves with four seasons and sighs at their passing,
Views all the worlds things, broods on their fullness;
He grieves for leaves falling in harsh autumn,
He delights in sweet springs supple branches;
His mind shivers as he takes frost to heart
His aims are remote, they look down upon clouds.
He sings glorious achievements, inherited by our age,
The Chinese M iddle Ages1'
Chants of pure fragrance, left from those before;

He roams in the groves and treasuries of literary works,
And admires the perfect balance in their well-wrought craft.
W ith strong feeling he puts book aside and takes his writing brush
To make it appear in literature.
This is how it begins
retraction of vision, inversion of listening,
absorbed in thought and seeking all around,
essence galloping to the worlds eight ends,
the mind roaming thousands of yards, high and low.
And when it is attained:
light gathers about moods and they grow in brightness,
things become luminous and draw each other forward;
He then quaffs the word-hoard's spray of droplets,
And rolls in his mouth the sweet moisture of classics;
He drifts between Heaven and the abyssat rest in the current,
He bathes in falling streams, immersed in their waters.
Then, phrases from depths emerge struggling
as when swimming fishhooks in their mouths,
emerge from the bottom of deepest pools
and drifting intricacies of craft flutter down
as when winging birds, caught by Stringed shafts,
plummet from the high-tiered clouds.
He reaps what was unwritten by a hundred generations,
And picks rhymes neglected for a thousand years;
For it falls away~dawns glorious bloom, unfurled already
There opens instead the unblown bud of evening.
He sees past and present in a single instant,
Touches all this world in the blink of an eye.
Only then
he selects ideas, sets out their kinds,
tests his phrases, puts them in ranks,
he strikes open all that contains the light,
he plucks everything that holds sound within.
He may trust to branches to shake the leaves,
Or trace waves upstream to find their source;
He may track what is hidden and reach the apparent,
Or seek the simple and obtain the difficult.
The tiger shows its stripes, beasts are thrown to confusion,
The dragon appears, birds fly off in waves.
It may be steady and sure, and simply enacted,
Or tortuously hard, no ease in it.
He empties his unblurred mind, he concentrates thought,
Unites all concerns and brings forth words.
Earth and Heaven he cages within fixed shape;
337
All things he crushes beneath brush tip.

At first it hesitates upon his dry lips,
But finally flows freely through the moist pen.
Natures laws bear the substance, they are a trees trunk
Patterns hang as the branches, a lavish lacework.
Truly mood and manner never fail to match:
Each variation is there upon the face.
When thought moves in joy, there will surely be laughter
When we tell of lament, sighs have already come.
He may have grasped the tablet and dashed it off lightly,
Or held brush in lips, mind far in the distance.
Yet in this event there is truly a joy,
Held in firm honor by good man and Sage:
This trial of void and nothing to demand of it being,
A knock upon silence, seeking its sound.
He contains far expanses on writings silk sheet,
He emits boundless torrents from the speck that is mind.
Language gives breadth, it is ever-expanding
Thought pursues, growing deeper and deeper.
It spreads the rich scent of drooping blossoms,
Brings the dense darkness of green twigs:
Sparkling breeze flies, whirling gusts start
Swelling clouds rise from writing brush groves.
There are tens of thousands of different forms,
The things of the world have no single measure:
Jumbled and jostling, they go fleeting past,
And shapes they have are hard to describe.
Diction shows talents in contests of craft;
Concept controls, it serves as the craftsman.
And there he strives between being and nothing,
In the deep or the shallows, not giving up.
Though he strays from the ruled circle and square,
He hopes to reach limits of features and shape.
Thus to make a brave display for eyes, prize extravagance;
But for the minds content, honor the apposite.
That the words run out is no impediment:
Discourse attains its ends only in broadening.
Poems follow from feeling, they are sensuous, fine;
Poetic expositions give forms of things, clear and bright;
Stele inscriptions unfurl patterns to match substance
Lamentations swell with pent-up sorrow;
Inscriptions are broad and concise, warm and gentle;
Admonitions repress, being forceful and sharp;
Odes move with grand ease, being opulent;
338
Essays treat essence, expansive and lucid;

Statements to the throne are even, incisive, dignified, calm
Persuasions are flashy, deluding, entrancing.
Though fine distinctions are made in these,
They forbid deviation, restrain rash impulse.
Ask that words attain their ends, that principle come forth
Have nothing to do with long-winded excess.
In things there are many stances,
In forms there are frequent shiftings.
When shaping conceptions, value deft craft,
In delivering words, honor allure.
When it comes to the alternation of sounds,
They are like the five colors, each sets off the other
Though there is no law in their passing or halting
A rocky path, one that we cannot make easy
Still, if one grasps variation and knows succession,
It is like opening channels to draw in a stream.
If you miss your chancedraw together too slowly,
Your beginnings will always be following ends.
Errors in orientation of Earth and of Heaven
Bring mere muddiness and no vividness.
Sometimes you may transgress against previous sections,
Or trespass ahead to some later part.
Sometimes diction is faulty, yet principle right,
Or language is smooth, but the idea is blocked.
Avoid both failings and beauty is doubled;
If the two occur jointly, twice then the harm.
Judge relative merit by tiniest measures
Choose to keep or discard by the breadth of a hair:
If what has been trimmed to most accurate measures
Follows truly straight lines, then it must be just right.
Perhaps pattern is lush and the principle rich,
But in terms of concept, it has no point.
It reaches its limit, no further significance;
It is used up entirely, it cannot increase.
Set a pregnant phrase in some essential spot,
And it will be a riding crop for the whole piece:
Though the worcJ-hoarcJ may follow the rules,
One must have this to strive for great merit.
The achievement large, the obstacles few,
Choose what is enough and do not change it.
Perhaps complex thoughts cohere, patterned finely,
They have lucid loveliness, splendidly bright,
They shimmer like brocades of many colors,
339
Move deeply, like a concert of strings.

But suppose you find what you aimed at lacks distinction
Your work matches unwittingly some piece long ago.
Though the shuttle and loom were in my own feelings,
I must dread lest others have gone here before;
If it injures integrity, transgresses right,
Though I begrudge the doing, I must cast it away.
Perhaps blossom comes forth, a grain spike stands straight,
Removed from the crowd, detached from the sense:
A shape is here that no shadow can follow
A sound to which no echo can join.

It stands there looming, inert and alone,
Not woven together with constant tones.
M ind in desolate zones where nothing answers;
Ideas circle aimlessly, unable to leave.
The mountains shimmer when jade lies in stone,
Streams have charm when their waters bear pearls;
Thornbush and underbrush need not be cut~
They too can have splendor when kingfishers roost.
If we link the art song to a popular tune,
We may enhance what made it rare.
Suppose words are put in rhymes too short;
They come to dead ends, the heart stirred all alone.
They look down to bleak stillness, lacking companion;
They look up to vast spaces and continue nothing.
Compare this to a string of limited range, strung alone~
W ithin it lies clear song, but nothing responds.
Suppose you trust your lines to dreary tones:
Words with aimless languor and wanting in splendor;
Forms compounded of lovely and ugly mixed,
Good substance encumbered by blemishes.
Like pipes in the hall too shrilly played
Though there is response, it lacks harmony.
Suppose you neglect natures laws, keep what is strange,
Pointless quest for the empty, pursuit of the subtle:
The words will want feeling, be short on love,
Your lines will drift randomly to no end.
As when strings are too thin and the bridges too tight,
There may be harmony, but no strong'feeling.
But suppose you let yourself rush into choral unisons
Lost in beauty bewitching, an orgy of sound
You please the eye pointlessly, match common tastes,
The sound may be loud, but the tune will be low.

Be aware of songs like Fang4u and Sang-jian
Though strong feeling is there, it may lack dignity.
Suppose chaste indifference and graceful restraint,
Always pruning complexities, excising excess:
It will lack that flavor withheld of ritual broth.
Like the too pristine tones of a temple harp.
Though several join in with the one who sings,
Dignity you may have, but still lack allure.
In the degree it is cut, terse or elaborate.
In its forms, either sinking or ascending
One enters variations by what then seems proper,
Fine turns will convey the most subtle moods.
Sometimes language is artless, but the lesson is artful;
Sometimes principle is plain, and the diction light
Sometimes pursuit of the old yields something new;
Sometimes moving with murkiness restores clarity
Sometimes glancing overviews give requisite insight;
Sometimes essence comes after toilsome honing.
Like the dancer who flings her sleeves to the rhythm,
Or a singer, sending voice in response to the strings.
This Wheelwright Pian could not put into words
Nor can glittering discourse catch the quintessence.
The overall laws of phrasing and writings rules
Are things to which my heart has submitted:
I have a fine sense of this ages consistent flaws,
And recognize what is pure in good men before
Though something comes from deep in the craftsmans mind,
It may still be mocked in the eyes of fools.
Such agate flourishes and filigree of jade
Are as common as wild beans on the central plain
Never exhausted, like the Great Bellows,1
All nurtured together with Heaven and Earth.
Yet however abundant they are in these times,
I sigh that they do not fill my own open hands.
I am cursed by small capacity, too often empty,
It is hard to continue the pasts apt words.
So I limp along in rhymes too short,
Bring forth commonplace tones to conclude my songs,
And some regret always remains at the end
Never is my heart full, never am I satisfied.
1_The "Great Bellows" is a Daoist figure for the generative processes of the universe.
341
I fear this vessel will be tested, lying in dust,

It will surely be mocked by the ringing jade.
At the conjunction of stirring and response,
At the boundary between blockage and passage,
What comes there can never be halted,
What goes off cannot be stopped.
When it hides, it resembles the shadow vanishing,
When it moves, it resembles the echoes that rise.
When Heavens impulses move swiftly along the best course,
What confusion exists that cannot reach order?
Then winds of thought rise within the breast,
Word-streams go flowing through lips and teeth,
Bubbling forth in tumultuous succession,
Something only silk and writing brush can catch.
The writing gleams and overflows eyes;
The tones splash onfilling the ears.
But when the emotions are stalled and hampered,
M ind strains toward something, but spirit is unmoved,
I am left as inert as a bare, leafless tree,
Or a gaping void like a dried-up stream.
I draw the soul to search secret recesses,
Gather vital forces to seek from myself;
Natures laws are hidden and sink away farther,
Thought strives to emerge, as if tugged along.
Sometimes I wear out my heart, and much is regretted
Sometimes I follow thoughtsbent with few failings.
Although this thing does lie in the self,
It is not in the scope of my concentrated force.
I may ponder hearts void and turn against self,
That I do not know how to open this blockage.
Coda
The functioning of literature lies in its being
The means for all principles of nature.
It spreads thousands of miles and nothing can bar it;
It passes millions of years, is a ford across.
Ahead it grants models to ages coming,
Retrospectively contemplates images of old.
It succors the old kingsWay, on the verge of collapse
It makes reputation known, does not let it be lost.
No path lies so far it cannot be included;
No principle so subtle it cannot be woven in.
Peer of clouds and rain with its nurturing moisture,
Divinitys semblance in its transformations.
When it covers metal and stone, virtue is spread;

Through strings and flutes flowing, it is daily made new.
Liu Xie (ca. 465-522), Wen-xin diao-long (The Literary Mind

Carves Dragons55)
The courts and princely salons of the Southern Dynasties around the turn of the sixth
century saw what was probably the most glorious age of Chinese literary theory and
criticism. In those courts and salons, writers and courtiers debated fine points of style
and basic principles of literature, compiled anthologies, defined genres, and reached
the judgments on earlier writers that would become the basis of later accounts of
the literary history. Here Zhong Rong (ca. 468-518) wrote his Grades of the Poets
(Shipin), offering terse evaluations of major poets and tracing lineages of influence.
In the conservative court of the Liang crown prince Zhao-ming (501531), The An
thology (Wen xuan) was compiled, which was to be the core of Tang and later un
derstanding of literature before the turn of the sixth century. Soon afterward, in the
court of Xiao Gang (503-551), the Liang emperor Jian-wen, Xu Ling (507-ca. 582)
compiled an anthology of love poetry and the witty poetry of the court, New Songs
of the Jade Terrace (Yu-tai xin-yong), whose preface defended a literature of senti
ment and play.
In this world of literary discussion and debate appeared a remarkable and anom
alous work, written by Liu Xie (ca. 465-522), a lay scholar who had left the Bud
dhist monastery school to enter the salons of the princely courts. This was the Wenxin diao-long, which may roughly be translated as "The Literary Mind Carves
Dragons," a systematic treatise on how literature was conceived around the turn of
the sixth century.
The Wen-xin diao-long consists of forty-nine regular chapters, and a conclud
ing Afterword in which Liu Xie gives his motives for the composition of the book
and its structure. After four opening chapters on the Way, the Sage, the Classics, and
the Confucian Apocrypha, Liu treats the major genres. The second half of the work,
beginning with Chapter 26, contains a remarkable series of chapters on basic con
cepts of literary theory.
The Wen-xin diao-long is a difficult work to read in translation (as it is in the
original). It makes frequent reference to writers and works with which the English
reader is not familiar, and it is written in the florid, elliptical style that was popular
in the period. In choosing the following excerpts, I have omitted sections of chap
ters that would require heavy annotation or would for other reasons be of less in
terest to most English readers. At the end of each chapter is a "supporting verse
(zan),
which summarizes the points made. I have omitted some of these.
The first chapter sets out to establish the range of the concept of wen. Wen has
a wide range of meanings and associations: it is "literature," "prose" as opposed to
poetry (though not used in this way in Wen-xin diao-long), "rhymed writing" as op
posed to unrhymed writing, "cultivation, the "civil" aspect of the government as
opposed to the military, "decoration, the "written word," and often when applied
to literary style, "ornamentation. Finally, in the context of this chapter, wen is used
343

in the broadest sense of all, as "pattern, Liu Xie sets out to show that wen (pattern)
came into being in the very beginning of the universe once there was a distinction,
and hence a relation, between Heaven and Earth. From that primordial "pattern,
all other patterns followed: the "pattern of Heaven" (Tian-wen, "astronomy") and
the "pattern of Earth" (D/'-wen, "topography") The wen of human beings is pattern
revealed in their nature, which is to be the vessel of mind. This human version of
wen is literaturewriting that has pattern and that embodies the patterned world
contemplated by mind.
Its Source in the WayChapter 1

As an inner power in things, pattern (wen) is very great indeed^ and it was
born together with Heaven and Earth. How is this? All colors are combined
from two primary colorsthe purple that is Heaven and the brown that is
Earth. All forms are distinguished through two primary formsEarth's
squareness and Heavens circularity. The sun and moon are disks of jade that
follow one another in succession, showing to those below images that cleave
to Heaven. Rivers and mountains are a glittering finery, unfolding shapes
that show the order of the Earth. These are the pattern of the Way.
In considering the radiance given off above and reflecting on the loveli
ness that inheres below, the positions of high and low were determined, and
the Two Standards were generated [Yang and Yin, Heaven and Earth]. Only
human beings, who are endowed with the divine spark of consciousness,
rank as a third with this pair. Together they are called the Triad [Heaven,
Earth, and human beings].
Human beings are the flower of the elements: in fact, they are the mind
of Heaven and Earth. When mind came into being, language was established
and with the establishment of language, pattern became manifest. This is the
natural course of things, the Way.
If we then go on to consider things in all their myriad kinds, we find that
each plant and animal has its own pattern. Dragon and phoenix portend
good fortune by their intricate and colorful designs; the visual appearance
of a tiger is determined by its stripes, and that of a leopard in its spots. The
sculpted forms and colors of the clouds possess a subtlety that goes beyond
the painters craftthe involute splendor of trees and plants does not need
the marvels of any embroiderer. These are in no way merely external adorn
mentsthey come from Nature. And when we consider the echoes that form
in the fissures of the forest, these are tuned together like harps and organs
the tones stirred by streams running over stones make a harmony like chimes
and bells. When shape is establisheda coherent unit stands out as complete;
when sound emerges, a pattern is generated. Since these things that lack the
power of comprehension may still possess such splendid colors, how can this
human vessel of mind lack a pattern appropriate to it?
In the following paragraph, wen, as the "written word," is traced back to the Clas
sic of Changes, a divination manual of great antiquity whose layers of commentary
gradually transformed it into a Confucian Classic with important philosophical sig
The Chinese uM iddle Ages

nificance. At the heart of the Classic o f Changes are sixty-four hexagrams, each made
up of a set of six broken and unbroken lines (the number of possibilities of varia
tions being 26; that is, sixty-four). Each hexagram was believed to embody a distinct
phase of change and was produced by the interaction of two constituent trigrams,
sets of three broken and unbroken lines (of which there were eight, 23). These pat
terns of broken and unbroken lines are seen as the primordial "writing, wen.
From the mythical sage Fu Xi, who first drew the trigrams, down to Confucius,
who was credited with the composition of the cosmological tracts known as the
"W ings, the evolution of the Classic of Changes is given here as the earliest history
of wen, the markings of pattern. As Liu Xie notes, one of the "Wingsis even titled
Wen-yan, "Patterned Words."
The origins of human pattern began in the Primordial (Tai-ji). The Im

ages of the Classic o f Changes were first to bring to light hidden spiritual
presences. Fu X i marked out the initial stages, and Confucius added the
Wings to bring the work to a conclusion. Only for the two positions of
Qian and Kun did Confucius make the Patterned Words. For is not pat
tern in words the mind of Heaven and EarthAnd then it came to pass
that the Yellow River Diagram became marked with the eight trigram s
2
and the Luo River Writing contained the Nine Divisions.3 No human
being was responsible for these, which are the fruit of jade tablets inlaid with
goldthe flower of green strips with red writing: they came from the basic
principle of spirit.
When the tracks of birds
took the place of knotted cords, the written
word first appeared in its glory.. . _4
[In an omitted section that follows, Liu Xie treats the legendary evolution of writing
from primordial simplicity to its full development in the classics, noting the moment
at which basic genres first appeared.]
Thus we know that the Way bequeathed its pattern through the Sages,
and that by their writing [or patterns] the Sages made the Way manifest.
It extends everywhere with no obstruction, and it is put to use every day and
never found wanting. The Classic o f Changes saysThat which stirs all the
world into motion is preserved in these statements.MThat by which a state
ment can stir all the world into motion is the pattern of the Way.
2There was a legend that the trigrams, the core elements of the hexagrams of the Classic of Changes,
first appeared in a diagram carried by a dragon that emerged from the Yellow River.
3Another legend had it that when Yu was controlling the great flood, a sacred tortoise appeared in
the Luo River, which carried the "Nine Divisions" nine sets of enumerated categories that com
prehended the operations of nature and the state. They appear in the "Great Plan" (Hong-fan) chap
ter of the Classic o f Documents.
4Cang Jie, the "recorder" of the Yellow Emperor, came up with the idea for written characters by
observing the tracks of birds; earlier, knotted cords had been used for keeping records.
Supporting Verse
The mind of the Way is subtle,
Spirits principle gives the teaching.
Glorious is that Primal Sage,
In whom fellow feeling and filial piety shine.
The diagram on the Yellow River dragon offered a form;
The writing on the tortoise showed its features.
Here the pattern of Heaven can be observed,
For all the people to emulate.
"Spirit Thought" is the first of the chapters on concepts of literary theory that make
up the second half of Wen-xin diao-long. "Spirit Thought" is the capacity and state
of mind that Lu Ji treated in the opening of "The Poetic Exposition on Literature,"
the counterpart of the Western theory of imagination. Liu Xie treats the nurturing of
this capacity in terms of meditation practices.
Spirit ThoughtChapter 26
Long ago someone said that a person's body might be on the rivers and lakes,
yet his mind could remain by the palace towers of Wei. This is what is meant
by spirit thoiight. And spirit does indeed go far in the thought that occurs
in writing. When we silently concentrate, thought may reach a thousand
years into the pastand when the face stirs quietly, the eyes can see thou
sands of miles. When we sing, the sounds of pearls and jade come forth; right
before our eyelashes the colors of clouds in the wind unfurl. This is some
thing achieved by the basic principle of thought.
When that basic principle of thought is at its keenest, the spirit wanders
together with things. Spirit resides within the breast. Our aims and our vital
forces control the gate to let it out. The things of the world come in through
our ears and eyes, and language has charge of the hinge. When that hinge
permits passage, nothing can hide its face; but when the bolt to that gate is
closed, spirit is concealed within.
In the shaping of literary thought, the most important thing is emptiness
and stillness within. Cleanse your inner organs and wash the spirit pure. Ac
cumulate learning in order to build a treasuryconsider the principles of
things in order to enrich your talent; explore and experience things to know
all that appears; then guide it along to spin your words out. Only when you
do this can the butcher, who cuts things apart mysteriously, set a pattern
that follows the rules of soundand the uniquely discerning carpenter wield
his ax with his eye to the conceptual image.5This is the most important tech
nique in guiding the course of wen and the foundation of planning a work.
5This sentence refers to two parables in the Zhuang-zi of craftsmen who work by intuition. The first
of these, the story of Butcher Ding, is found in the chapter Yang-sheng, "Nurturing Life." Butcher
Ding explains to Lord Wen-hui, who has expressed admiration of Ding's skills in cutting up an ox,
that he does it by the unconscious operations of spirit, by moving through the empty interstices in
the body of the ox. Other cooks, who actually cut with their knives, have to change knives often;
Once spirit thought is set into motion, thousands of courses that might
be taken compete for attention; at this point the rules and regulations are
still unrealized structures, and the cutting and carving as yet are unformed.
If you climb a mountain, your feelings are filled by the mountain; if you gaze
at the sea, your ideas are swelled to overflowing by the sea. According to
the degree of talent that resides within, you may speed along with the wind
and clouds.
Whenever someone takes his writing brush in hand, his vital force is twice
what it is when the words have come. When a work is completed, we find
that it went no farther than half of that with which the mind began. Why is
this? Marvels come easily when our ideas soar through the empty sky; but
it is hard to attain the mastery of the craft that can give them realized ex
pression in words. The idea is received from the process of thought, and lan
guage in turn is received from the idea. These may be so close that there is
no boundary between them, or they may be so far apart that they seem a
thousand leagues from one another. Sometimes the principle is to be found
within the mind itself, and yet one seeks it far beyond this world; sometimes
a truth is close by, but thought goes off beyond mountains and rivers in pur
suit of it. Thereforeif you can master your own mind and foster its skills,
you will not need to meditate laboriously. If you can retain the design within
and keep control, you need not strain your emotions.. . .
[A section is omitted in which Liu Xie contrasts examples of those who composed
quickly and those who composed laboriously.]
When the mind of a person with agile wits combines all the essential tech
niques, his very quickness preempts reflectionmaking instant decisions in
response to the demands of the moment. The state of mind of someone who
broods deeply is filled with forking paths: he sees clearly only after uncer
tainties and makes his decisions only after thoughtful reflection. When one
is quick of mind in response to the demands of the moment, the accom
plishment is brought about swiftly; when reflection is full of uncertainties,
it takes a much longer time to achieve ones goals.
Although ease and difficulty in composition differ, both depend on a
broad perfection of ones capacities. If learning is shallow, the person who
is slow to compose is slow to no purpose. If talents are diffuse, quickness
will do no good. As far as I know, neither of these types has ever achieved
much. As you prepare to write and compose your thoughts, there are two
dangers: if the principle is blocked from appearing, you have poverty of con
tent; and if the language gets bogged down, you have confusion. In cases
like this wide experience is the provision that can feed poverty of content,
but Ding has used his knife for nineteen years without ever needing to sharpen it. The uniquely
discerning carpenter" is Carpenter Shi, referred to in the Zhuang-zi. Carpenter Shi was famous for
being able to swing his ax and remove a speck of plaster from his friend's nose.
while continuity is the remedy for confusion. Wide experience together with
continuity aids the force of mind.
The varieties of states of mind are remarkable and variousthe variations
of form shift just as often. Plain and simple diction may be made pregnant
by some clever ideafresh concepts can make commonplace matters spring
to life. Compare hempen cloth to threads of hemp~though some might say
the threads themselves are of little value, when the shuttle and loom put their
accomplishments before us, the cloth is prized for its shimmering splendor.
But when it comes to those tenuous implications beyond the reach of
thought, the fine variations in sentiment beyond the textthese are things
that language cannot pursue and the point where my writing brush knows
well to halt. That subtlety can be brought to light only by reaching ultimate
essencethat order can be comprehended only by reaching the ultimate in
variation. Yi Yin could not tell of the art of cooking;6 Wheelwright Pian
could not speak of the ax. These are the real fine points.
Supporting Verse
Spirit gets through by images,
Engendering variations of feeling.
Things are sought by outer appearance,
But minds response is to basic principle.
Craftsmanship is given to the rules of sound,
Coming to life in comparisons and affective images
Drawing ones thoughts together, take charge,
And behind hanging tent-flaps ensure victory.7
The chapter on "Nature and Formbegins by taking up an issue that has no near
counterpart in Western literary criticism: how the particular internal "nature" of some
type of thing becomes manifest in a normative form; for example, the predatory na
ture of a hawk might be said to be physically realized in the hawk's form. (Such an
interpretation, moving from the inside out, sharply contrasts with modem Western
thought, which would rather see the "nature" of a thing taking shape as a conse
quence of some physical limitation or capability.) The terms Liu Xie uses are broad
ones, and by using such terms he subsumes literary phenomena under more gen
eral principles. The most important literary applications of the word ti, translated as
"form, are genres and styles, and each genre has some inherent nature that gives it
its form. In the same way, a particular literary style follows from the individual na
ture of the writer. The argument is important for Liu Xie because he wants to show
that the norms of literature are not arbitrary or merely historical, but rather have their
basis in nature. The chapter concludes by addressing the potential conflict between
6Yi Yin, who was to become the minister of King Tang of the Shang Dynasty, was originally a cook,
and by legend is said to have been unable to explain the secrets of his art.
7The reference here is to General Zhang Liang, who won great victories by staying in his tent and
planning.
The Chinese Middle Ages1'

following one's particular nature and the study of all normative styles, recom
mending that a novice writer first master all the normative styles.
Nature and FormChapter 27

When feelings are stirredlanguage gives them an outer shape; and when the
inherent principle emerges, pattern is clear. By following a course from what
is hidden, we reach something manifest. What appears on the outside cor
responds to what lies within.
But the degree of talent ranges from brilliance to mediocrity; the degree
of vital force, from the firm to the yielding; the degree of learning, from the
profound to the shallow; and the degree of practiced skill, from deftness to
awkwardness. All of these are melted together in the crucible by a persons
nature and his dispositionand they are fused together according to how that
person has himself been shaped and influenced. For this reason there is a
marvelous variety of shapes in the realm of the writing brush and a diverse
spectrum of waves in the garden of letters.
No one can go beyond the measure of talent that is displayed in the bril
liance or mediocrity of his grasp of principles or in his use of language. No
one can alter the quality of vital force, whether firm or yielding, in his man
ner. It is unheard of that someone goes contrary to the extent of learning
shown in the depth or shallowness of his knowledge of facts and truths. Few
can reverse the habits that yield deftness or awkwardness in form. Each per
son takes as his master the way his own mind has been formed, and these
are as different as faces.
If we may generalize about the different courses that may be followed,
we find that the full range consists of eight styles [normative forms]: dianya, the authoritative and dignified; yuan-ao, the abstrusejing-yue, the terse;
xian-futhe perspicuous; fan~ru3 the fulsome; zhuang~li, the vigorous and
lovely; xin-qithe novel and unusual; qing-mithe light and delicate.
The authoritative and dignified style takes its model from the Classics
and keeps the company of the Confucian school. The abstruse style hides
all sensuous flashiness, has its own decorum, and is concerned with occult
doctrines. The terse style weighs each word and line, making judgments by
the finest measures. In the perspicuous style, the ideas are spread out before
us and satisfy us by their adherence to natural principle. The fulsome style
is dazzling, yet has broad implications, and the ramifications are brilliant
and scintillating. The vigorous and lovely style offers noble arguments and
grand judgments with a rare splendor. The novel and unusual style rejects
the old and apes the modernit shows a skewed delight in the bizarre. The
light and delicate style uses flimsy embellishments that lack solid basis; it
has an airy vagueness that appeals to the common taste. We can see that the
dignified style is set in opposition to the unusualthe arcane style differs from
the perspicuous; the fulsome and terse are at odds; the vigorous and light
styles contrast. These are the roots and leaves of literature, and the garden
of letters contains them all.
349
These eight forms often vary from one to the other, but success in each
is accomplished by learning. The power of talent resides within and begins
as vital force in the blood. Vital force makes a persons aims concrete, and
those aims determine the language. The glory that emerges from this process
is always that of the writers nature and his feelings.. . .
[Here is omitted a list of famous writers, with comments on how the particular per
sonality of each was revealed in his style.]
If we investigate each of these writers according to his kind, we see that

inside and outside always correspond. This can only be their permanent en
dowment from Nature, the general case of the workings of vital force and
talent.
Talent may be endowed by Heaven, but in learning we must pay par
ticular heed to early trainingas in carving hardwood or dyeing silk, success
depends on the first transformation. When the shape of a vessel has already
been formed or the color has been set, it is impossible to alter or undo it.
Therefore, when a child learns to carve, he should learn the dignified, nor
mative patterns first. Beginning from the roots, we reach the leaves, and the
cycles of thought achieve a perfect circle. Although the eight styles differ,
there is a way of joining them that encompasses all. Once you attain the cen
ter of the ring, all the spokes will meet there to make a wheel. Therefore it
is fitting that a person study the normative styles in order to fix his habits;
then, according to his individual nature, he may refine his talents. The com
pass of writing points along this path.
Supporting Verse
Talents with individual natures have distinct realms,
The forms of literature are wondrously rich.
The words used are skin and sinew,
Aims are the solid bone and marrow.
Patterned ritual robes have dignity and beauty;
Vermilion and purple are a corrupting artfulness;8
Yet practice may firmly set what is genuine,
And from that true accomplishment gradually follows.
IfwNature and Form" addressed the way in which a particular internal nature cor
responded to some normative external form, "Continuity and Variation" addresses
the question of literary norms and the particular. Were literature constituted only of
normative forms, it would be dull and unchanging. Liu Xie draws the terms "conti
nuity" and "variation" from the Classic of Changes in order to explain how a single
form can admit infinite variation. Note that in the preceding chapter, "form" (ti) was
&Analects XVII.18: "He said, M hate how the color purple robs the vermilion [of its beauty]; I hate
how the music of Zheng confuses the Ya music ; hate how a facile tongue topples states and fam
ilie s /"
350

used in the sense of a type of style; in the beginning of this chapter, "form" is used
its other meaning as "genre."
Continuity and VariationChapter 29

Although there are unchanging norms in the forms in which literature ap
pears, there is no limit to their variation. What do I mean by this? In poems,
poetic expositions, letters, and memoirs, the name depends on the basic prin
ciple of the form. These are examples of unchanging norms in literary forms.
But the particular phrasing and the vital force can last only by continuities
and variations, and these are limitless.
Since there are unchanging norms in the name and basic principle in
volved, each form is necessarily endowed with some prior content. But since
the continuities and variations are limitless, they must always be infused with
fresh articulation. In this way we can hurry along an endless road, yet drink
from an inexhaustible source. In seeking to drink from the inexhaustible
source, the person whose well-rope is too short will suffer thirst; in hurry
ing along an endless road, the person whose feet tire will have to halt. In
cases such as this it is not that the possibilities in literature have been used
up, but rather that the technique of continuity and variation is weak. Liter
ature may be considered by analogy to plants and trees. Trunk and root
cleave to the soil and share a common nature, yet the qualities of fragrance
and flavor will differ according to the exposure to sunlight.. . .
A section follows on how works of literature have developed from the plain to the
ornamental, while keeping in mind earlier works and the norms they represent. Liu
Xie contrasts this with recent literary works, which seem to him to have lost sight of
the authoritative first texts and thus have gone beyond the bounds of legitimate vari
ation. Liu goes on to contrast a notion of variation that always returns to the source
with variation that forgets the source and builds only upon the immediately preceding
variation. This is expressed through the metaphor of dyeing, in which a shade can
be produced by the secondary dyeing of a primary color, but any further dyeing will
simply yield muddiness. The Han writers Yang Xiong and Liu Xin are cited as ex
amples of those whose work was based on the Confucian Classics; the writers who
follow them fail because they build on Yang and Liu rather than returning to the
source.
The color blue comes from the indigo; maroon comes from madder red:
though these colors have gone beyond their original color, they cannot be
further transformed. Huan Tan once said, I have seen beautiful works
brought forth recentlybut no matter how lovely they are, I get nothing from
them. But whenever I read the words of Yang Xiong and Liu Xin, I always
find something immediately. This exemplifies what I mean. To get a refined
blue and a purified maroon, one must return to the indigo and madder red.
We must come back to a reverence for the Classics in order to correct what
is false and confound shallowness. We can discuss continuity and variation
.351
only with someone who has given careful thought to the relation between
substance and patterning and who can apply the proper standard when con
sidering questions of dignified elevation and colloquial ease.
Grand description of the sounds and visual appearances of things reached
its height early in the Han. Afterwards, writers followed them as if on a ring.
Although they sometimes soared high above the tracks of their predecessors,
Mei
they ultimately remained within the same scope. In the Seven Stim uli
Sheng wrote:
My gaze passes far to the Eastern Sea,
Stretching on continuously to the gray heavens.
In his poetic exposition on Shang-Hn Park, Si-ma Xiang-ru wrote:
I look on limitlessness,
Examiner of the unbounded,
Where the sun emerges from its pool in the east,
And the moon appears over slopes in the west.
Ma Rong, in his panegyric on Guang-cheng Palace, wrote:
Heaven and Earth, a continuous expanse.
No limit, no boundary at all:
A mighty gleaming emerges in the east,
And the moon appears over slopes in the west.
Yang Xiong, in his poetic exposition on the Stockade Hunt, wrote:
Emerging, sinkingsun and the moon,
And Heaven, remote from the Earth.
Finally, in the poetic exposition on the Western Capital, Zhang Heng wrote:
Then sun and moon emerge and sink back in
Images of the Fu-sang Tree [in the Far East] and Meng-si Pool [in the
farthest West].
Yet all five of these writers are the same in describing an immensity. There
are many similar examples, for writers always follow one another. Some
times following, sometimes breaking with precedent in the intricate com
bination of the two lies the law of continuity and variation.
To grasp the general unity of the literary tradition, one should give broad
consideration to overall form: first by wide reading to study its essentials,
then by a synthesis of general principles in order to integrate the work. Only
then can the writer blaze trails and have the bolt to his gates firmly fixed.
He will achieve continuity by trusting to his feelings and will move through
variations by depending on vital force. The work thus produced will be
brightly colored like the upraised arch of the rainbow and will shake its
wings like the redbird. This will be writing that breaks free of confinement.
But if the writer is cramped by some merely partial comprehension and is
overproud of some single achievement, then he will be galloping in circles
352
within a small yardit will not be the unfettered paces that go on for thou
sands of miles.
Supporting Verse
The rule of literature is to move in full cycle,
Its legacy is found in daily renewal
By variation it can last long
By continuity nothing is wanting.
To seize the right time brings fruition,
To take the occasion means no anxiety.
Looking to the present, construct the marvelous;
Keep the past in mind to make its laws secure.
The term translated as "momentum" in the following chapter is shi, whose primary
meaning is "power. The meaning is, however, much broader than English "power":
events have shi, a directed momentum in their unfolding that is related to, but more
vigorous than, the English "tendency. As a force that can be directed, shi was an
important concept in military theory. Later, the term was adapted to describe a sense
of direction and kinetic force in calligraphic brushstrokes. Related to this use of the
term in aesthetic vocabulary is its application to visual forms of nature: the way in
which a mountain may seem to "thrust upward" or "loom" would be an example
of shi. Liu Xie adapts the term to literature in a peculiar way: "momentum" is the
quality of the text's unfolding, following from the nature of the writer and the nor
mative style that suits that writer.
Determination of Momentum Chapter 30 (selection)

The moods of the heart are different, and there are distinct techniques for
variation in literature; but the form is always determined by the writers state
of mind; then, according to that form, a momentum is given. Momentum
develops by following the path of least resistance. It is the tendency of Na
ture, like the straight path of a crossbow bolt released by the trigger or the
circling movement of swift eddies at the bend of a mountain stream. What
is round [as Heaven is round] gives the pattern of a form, and, accordingly,
its momentum is to rotate. What is square [as Earth is square] takes that
shape as its basis, and its momentum is to be at rest. This is exactly how
form and momentum function in a literary work.
"Hidden and Out-standing" describes two antithetical virtues of a literary work: the
quality of "hidden" carries a sense of concealed significance, while the "out-standingis an immediately striking quality in the text. "Out-standing" is xiu, originally
a tall ear of grain, and it was early extended to a particular kind of excellence; thus
it is like English "outstanding, though recalling the root sense that it "stands out"
and catches the reader's attention immediately. Modern aesthetic values inevitably
favor a sense of depth and concealed significance, and we are apt to dismiss the
out-standingas merely showy. Nevertheless, in Liu Xie's scheme these are given

as equal and different values, though it becomes apparent that Liu too favors the hid
den.
Hidden and Outstanding: Chapter 40

When mind stirs into motion, its ways reach very far; and the variations
of feeling in literature go deep. When the source is profound, streams grow
and branch out from it; and when the root thrives, the ears of grain stand
tall. Thus in the splendor of literature there are hidden aspects and aspects
that stand out. The hidden is comprised of layers of significance that lie
beyond the text; the out-standing is that which comes out as singular within
the work. The hidden achieves perfection by complex, multiple concepts.
The out-standing displays its art in preeminent superiority. These are the
finest achievements in old literary works, the ideal conjunction of talent and
feeling.
When the hidden is a form in its own right, the most important signifi
cance lies beyond the text; elusive echoes come through from every direc
tion, and concealed flashes of allure emerge from deep below. This may be
compared to the way in which the lines and images of a hexagram in the
Classic of Changes transform into another hexagram, or to the way in which
rivers may contain pearls and jade. Thus when the individual lines are trans
formed in the body of a hexagram, they change into the Four Images [the
four component digrams]. In the same way pearls or jade under the water
will form round or square ripples.
The finest pieces constitute less than a tenth of a writers collected works;
and within a work lines that stand out are scarcely two in a hundred. A writer
happens on both fine works and out-standing lines by a peculiar conjunc
tion of thought; they cannot be sought by studious endeavor.
Sometimes mere obscurity is mistaken for depthalthough it may have
some quality of mystery, it is not the hidden. Or intricate craftsmanship may
aspire to some particular grace of art; though it is lovely, it is not the out
standing. Only Nature can compound such subtletylike the glory of plants
and trees in their flowering. A beauty obtained by added colors is like plain
silk dyed red or green. Silk dyed red or green may be deeply colored, rich
and fresh; the flowers that glow on the trees have soft colorsbut splendid
ones. This is the way an out-standing line shines in the garden of letters.
["Hidden and Out-standing" is a fragmentary chapter that breaks off soon after this
(although a "Supporting Verse" is preserved).
"The Sensuous Colors of Physical Things" treats one of the most important con
cerns in Chinese literary thought: the relation between the writer and the natural
world. The chapter begins with a beautiful evocation of seasonal change and how
human beings are part of nature rather than being merely observers of nature. The
chapter then moves to a more active relation to nature, in which the writer "moves
with" things in his imagination (much as in Lu JKs "Poetic Exposition on Literature").
Finally, the chapter turns to questions of representation, using the Classic of Poetry
354

as the model. The descriptive compounds of the Classic of Poetry seemed to pos
sess a perfection that captured the true "quality" of a thing. Liu Xie goes on to trace
the evolution of literary descriptions of nature, in the C/ju-c/and poetic expositions,
coming at last to more recent poetry, in which the craft of the descriptive couplet
played a particularly important role.
The Sensuous Colors of Physical Things: Chapter 46

Springs and autumns follow in succession, with the gloom of dark Yin and
the cheering brightness of Yang. And as the sensuous colors of physical
things are stirred into movement, so the mind too is shaken. When the Yang
force sprouts in the twelfth month, black ants scurry to their holes; and when
the Yin begins to coalesce in the eighth monththe mantis feasts. Touching
the responses of even the humblest insects, the four seasons stir things into
movement deeply. Tablets of jade suggest things to the kindly mindand the
splendor of flowers draws clear vital force to its peak. All the sensuous col
ors of physical things call to one another; and how amid all this may man
find stillness?
When spring appears with the incoming year, feelings of delight and ease
infuse us; in the billowing lushness of early summer, the mind too becomes
burdened. And when autumn skies are high and the air is clearour minds,
sunken in the darkness of Yin, become intent upon far thingsthen frost and
snow spread over limitless space, and our concerns deepen, serious and
stern. The year has its physical things, and these things have their appear
ances; by these things our feelings are changed, and from our feelings comes
language. The fall of a single leaf may correspond to something we know
[that autumn is coming];9 in the voices of insects we find something capa
ble of stirring our thoughts. We are even more strongly affected by cool
breezes and a bright moon together on the same night, or by radiant sun
light and spring groves in the same morning.
When poets [of the Classic of Poetry] were stirred by physical things, the
associations were endless.1 They remained drifting through all the images
of the world, as far as they could go, and brooded thoughtfully on each small
aspect of what they saw and heard. They sketched vital force and delineated
outward appearance, as they themselves were rolled round and round in the
course of things; they applied bright colors and matched sounds, lingering
on about things with their minds.
Thus the phrase glowing catches the quality of freshness in peach blos
soms; waving lightly gives the fullness of the manner of willows; <cshim
mering55is the way the sun looks when it just comes out; billowing imi
tates the quality of snow fallingjie-jie catches the voice of the oriole; yao-yao
9This echoes a famous line from the Huai-nan-zi: "We see one leaf fall and know that the year is
coming toward its end."
1Because Liu Xie goes on to cite descriptive phrases from the Classic of Poetry, the primary refer
ence here is probably to those poets; however, the statement is meant to apply to all who write po
etry.
355
emulates the tones of insects in the grasses. A Kgleaming sun or faint stars
each gives, in a single phrase, the natural principle in its entirety. O f vary
ing lengths and lush and moist say in two characters everything that can
be said about shape. All of these use little to comprehend much, with noth
ing omitted of circumstance or appearance. Even if one gave these lines a
thousand more years of consideration, one could not change or alter any
thing in them.
When the Li Sao appeared in its turn, a more extensive treatment was
given to things encountered. It is hard to fully represent the appearances of
things, and thus different descriptions were piled one on top of another. At
that point, descriptive phrases for qualities such as towering heights and
vegetative lushnesswere gathered in great numbers. By the time we get
to Si-ma Xiang-ru and those around him the scope of mountains and wa
ters was displayed with bizarre momentum and outlandish sounds, and
characters were strung together like fish. This is what Yang Xiong meant
when he said that the poets of the Classic of Poetry were terse in their lan
guage, using beauty to give a normative standard, while the rhetoricians were
lush in their lines, using beauty to seduce us.
When they wrote on the wild plum blossoms in the Odes [of the Classic
o f Poetry]^ it was some yellow, some white.5>When the Chu-ci tells of the
autumn orchid, its dark green leaves and purple stalks. Whenever de
scribing colors, it is important to note what is seen in seasonif green and
yellow appear too often, then it is an excess not worth prizing.
More recently value has been placed on resemblance to the external
shapes of things. Writers look to the circumstantial quality in scene and at
mosphere, and they sculpt the appearances of the vegetation. The depth and
extent of their aims are revealed when they recite the work. They consider
describing the forms of things to be the fine point of writing, and close ad
herence to the original to be the greatest accomplishment. Their artful lan
guage catches the manner of things like a seal impressed in pasteminutely
delineating even the finest details, with no need of further embellishment.
Thus by looking at the language, we see the appearance; and through words,
we know the moment.
Things have constant appearances, but thought has no predetermined
rule. Sometimes we reach the heights spontaneously and quite by chance;
sometimes the more intensely we think, the more it eludes us. Moreover, the
standard established by the Classic o f Poetry and Li Sao has occupied all
the essential ground, so that even the most gifted writers of these later ages
tremble to compete with them. All our modern writers follow their methods to borrow their artfulness, and we meet their momentum to achieve
something remarkable. If a writer has mastered the skill of responding to
what is essential, the work will become completely fresh, though old.
The four seasons move on in their lush cycles; but stillness of heart is im
portant for them to enter into a writers meditations. However opulent and
dense the sensuous colors of physical things may be, their expression in lan-
The Chinese M iddle Ages'3
guage demands succinctness. This will produce a flavor in the writing that
floats above the worldit will make the circumstance glow and be always
new. Since ancient times writers have followed in each others footsteps from
age to age; but all have produced variation, each in different ways. The great
est achievement lies in the capacity both to follow and to change radically.
The ability to leave something of the mood lingering on after having finished
presenting the sensuous colors of physical things is an attribute that shows
the attainment of perfect understanding.
Mountain forests and the marshy banks of rivers are indeed the myste
rious treasuries of literary thought. Yet if the words are too brief, the de
scription will lack somethingand if too detailed, it will be too lush. Yet the
reason Qu Yuan was able to run the full gamut of a poet's moods was, I am
sure, the assistance of those rivers and mountains.
Supporting Verse
The mountains in folds with rivers winding
Mixed trees where the clouds merge
When the eyes have roamed over them,
The mind expresses them.
The days of spring pass slowly
The winds of autumn howl.
Our affections go out as a gift,
And stirring comes back like an answer.
"The One Who Knows the Tone" is Liu Xie's treatment of the good critic and reader.
It begins by raising the distinction between those who can judge a work on its own
merits and those who are attracted merely by the aura of antiquity. It goes on to ad
dress the very difficult question of immediate appreciation, which follows from the
critic's particular disposition as opposed to a more educated and catholic taste. The
title is based on a famous anecdote told in the Daoist work Lie-zi:
Bo-ya was a master of playing the harp, and Zhong Zi-qi was a master of lis
tening. When Bo-ya played his harp, his mind might be intent upon climbing a
high mountain, and Zhong Zi-qi would say, Masterful! Uprearing, towering
like Mount Tai. Then Bo-ya
s mind might be intent upon the flowing water,
and Zhong Zi-qi would say, Masterful! Onrushing and roiling like the Yangzi
and Yellow River. Whatever was in Bo-yas mind, Zhong Zi-qi knew it. Bo-ya
wandered to the dark north slope of Mount Tai and suddenly encountered a ter
rible rainstorm. Stopping beneath the cliff, his heart full of melancholy, he took
up his harp and played it, first a melody of the downpour, then the tone of the
mountain itself collapsing. And at every melody he played, Zhong Zi-qi followed
the excitement to the utmost. Then Bo-ya put down his harp and said with a
sigh of admiration, Masterfulmasterful indeedthe way you listen. The im
ages you see in your mind are just the same as the ones in mine* How can I keep
any sound concealed from you?
The One Who Knows the Tone: Chapter 48 (Selection)

Hard it is to know the tone, for the tone is truly hard to know; and such
knowledge is truly hard to come upon to come upon someone who knows
the tone may occur once, perhaps, in a thousand years. Since ancient times
those who have known the tone have often held their contemporaries in con
tempt and cared most for those of the past. This is what is meant by not
driving the horses that are brought to you every day, but instead longing for
those whose reputation is known from afar.'3 Long ago when the <(Dis
courses5* of Han Fei first appeared, the First Emperor of Qin expressed re
gret that he was not a contemporary; Han Wu-di did the same when the
etMaster Emptiness of Si-ma Xiang-ru was just completed. When the writ
ers were discovered to be, in fact, contemporaries, Han Fei was imprisoned
and Si-ma Xiang-ru treated with contempt. This is a clear example of how
contemporaries are treated with disdain..
Works of literature are diversetheir content and patterning combine in
many ways. What we recognize usually involves bias; in no one is judgment
as perfect and comprehensive as it should be. When they hear a voice sing
out, impulsive people will tap out the rhythm. Those who feel more strongly
than they outwardly show will be transported when they perceive a confi
dential manner. The hearts of frivolously clever people will leap in delight
when they see some intricate fine point. Those who love strangeness will lis
ten in amazement when they hear something bizarre. People recite admir
ingly whatever corresponds to the way they themselves are, and in the same
way they will reject whatever differs from themselves. Each sticks to his own
biased understanding, but would use it to judge the thousands of forms of
variation. This is what is meant by the sayingnot seeing the western wall
because you are looking east.
You can understand sound only after playing thousands of tunes; you
can recognize the quality of a sword only after examining a thousand. To
achieve the sense that comes from comprehensive understandingfirst en
deavor to observe widely. Look at the highest mountain to understand the
proportions of a little knoll; consider the waves of the sea to know the mean
ing of a ditch. Only after freeing oneself from a purely private sense of what
is and what is not valuable, only after escaping prejudice in ones likes and
dislikescan one have a balanced view of the principles involved. Only then
can one see the words clearly, as in a mirror.
To judge the presentation of emotions in a literary work, put these six
points before you for consideration: (1) the form; (2) the arrangement of
words(3) continuity and variation; (4) the degree to which it is normative
or unusual; (5) the events and principles contained in it; and (6) the euphonic
aspect. By this technique the relative values will be obvious.
In composing a literary work, the emotions are stirred and then words
emerge; but in readingwe open the text and then move into the emotions
of the writer, we go against the current to find the source. Although this may
be hidden at first, it will eventually become apparent. No one can see the
The Chinese flM iddle Agesu
actual faces of those who lived in remote ages, but by viewing their writing,
one may immediately see their hearts.
A fully realized literary work is never too deep; rather, we should worry
that our own capacity to grasp it is too shallow. Someones mind was once
fixed intently upon the mountains and rivers, and a harp was able to ex
press those feelings. This is even more true when things are given shape by
the tip of a writing brush; then it is impossible that the basic principles of
things remain hidden. The way in which the mind apprehends basic princi
ples is like the way in which our eyes apprehend shapes. If the eyes are
undimmed, then we can make out every shape. And if the mind is alert, every
principle reaches i t . . . .
Only those who can grasp what lies deep and who can see into the pro
found will feel the thrill of inner joy in reading. This is much like the way
ordinary people will bask in the warmth of a terrace in spring, or the way
in which music and food will stay a passing traveler. I have heard that the
scent of the marsh orchidthe most fragrant plant in the land, becomes even
sweeter when it is worn. Writing also is a glory of the land, and it becomes
most beautiful when appreciated. I hope that a superior person who knows
the tone will consider this.
Supporting Verse
A great bell of thousands of pounds
Must be tuned by music masters.
When excellent works fill a bookchest,
Only subtle discernment can correct them.
The drifting music of Zheng seduces,
Dont be misled by listening to it.
Only by these regulations
Can one avoid erring on the path.
Cao Pi (187-226), A Discourse on Literature (Lun-wen)

"A Discourse on Literature" by Cao Pi is usually considered the first essay devoted
exclusively to the discussion of literature. Although it may seem somewhat disor
ganized and simplistic, it raises important questionsabout literature and reputa
tion, about talent or skill as a unique attainment, and about literature as a means for
cultural immortality.
One of the difficulties of reading Chinese literary criticism in translation is that
it assumes the reader is familiar with a range of authors and works. Cao Pi's "Discourse" makes fewer demands than many later critical texts: Fu Yi, Ban Gu, Zhang
Heng, and Cai Yong were the giants of the Eastern Han, the major writers of the two
centuries preceding Cao Pi. Cao's main concern, however, is those writers of a gen
eration older than himself, the "Seven Masters of the Jian-an, All had been friends
of Cao Pi, and all were dead. Cao Pi tries to assume the role of critic and even-han d ed
judge, beginning by addressing the question of vanity and envy.
Literary men have always insulted one another. Fu Yi [d. 90] and Ban
Gu [32-92] were virtually brothers, but Ban Gu made fun of Fu Yi in a let
ter to his elder brother Ban Zhao, Fu Yi got to be Imperial Librarian be
cause he had a facilityin writing~that is, whenever he put his writing brush
to paper, he couldnt stop himself.
Everyone is good at putting himself forward; but since literature is not
restricted to one particular norm, few people can be good at everything.
Therefore each person makes light of those things in which he is weakest by
the criteria of his strengths. As the saying in the villages has it, A worn-out
broom is worth a thousand pieces of gold, so long as it belongs to me. This
is a failure due to lack of self-awareness.
The great literary men of the day are Kong Rong, Chen Lin, Wang Can,
Xu Gan, Ruan Yu, Ying Chang, and Liu Zhen. These seven masters have a
full store of learning and their language does not simply borrow the colors
of their predecessors. Yet they have found it hard to gallop head to head on
their mighty steeds a thousand leaguesthus to pay one another the respect
due.
A superior person looks to himself when taking the measure of others
and in this way avoids such entanglements of envy. Thus I have written this
discourse on literature.
Wang Can excels in poetic expositions. Even though Xu Gan sometimes
shows a certain languor of energy, he remains Wang Cans match. Even the
great Han writers such as Zhang Heng and Cai Yong have not done better
than works like Wang Cans Beginning of the Journey, Climbing High
in a B uilding
The Locust Tree
or Thoughts on Travel, or works like
Xu Gans wThe Black Gibbon
The Syphon, The Circular Fan
or The
Orange Tree. Their other writings are not on a par with these. In memo
rials, letters, and records, Chen Lin and Ruan Yu are preeminent.
Ying Changs style is agreeable but lacks vigor. Liu Zhens style is
vigorous, but entirely on the surface with nothing held in reserve. Kong
Rongs mastery of form and the quality of energy in his work is lofty and
subtle, with something about it that surpasses everyone else. But he cannot
sustain an argument, and the presentation of natural principle in his work
is weaker than his command of dictionto the point that he sometimes in
cludes playful spoofing. But at his best he rivals the Han writers Yang Xiong
and Ban Gu.
Most people value what is far from them and treat what is close at hand
with contempt. They respect reputation but disregard real substance. They
also suffer all the hazards of a failure of self-awareness in claiming to be men
of great worth.
On a basic level all literature is the same, but it acquires differences as it
unfolds in its various branches. Generally speaking, memorials to the throne
and disquisitions should have dignityletters and discourses should be based
on natural principles; inscriptions and eulogies should respect the facts;
poems and poetic expositions should be beautiful. Each of these four cate
The Chinese M iddle AgesM
gories is different, and a writers abilities will lead him to favor some over
others. Only a comprehensive talent can master all these forms.
Qi, Kvital force or breath
is the most important factor in literature.

Q i has its own norms, either clear or murky. And it is not something that
can be brought about by force. As breath
we may compare it to flute
music. Two performers may be equal in knowing the melody and following
the rules of the rhythm; but when there is an inequality in drawing on a re
serve of qi or breath, we can tell a skillful player from a clumsy one. A fa
ther cannot pass this on to his son, and an elder brother cannot pass it on
to his younger brother.
Literary works are the greatest accomplishment in the workings of a
state, a splendor that never decays. Glory and pleasure go no further than
this mortal body. To extend both of these to all timenothing can compare
with the unending permanence of a work of literature.
It was for this reason that writers of ancient times gave their lives to the
ink and the brush and revealed what they thought in their writings. W ith
out recourse to a good historian or dependence on a powerful patron, their
reputations have been passed on to posterity on their own force.
When King Wen of Zhou was in prison, he wrote additions to the Clas
sic of Changes; even in his glory the Duke o f Zhou made the prescriptions
that are the Rites. The former did not forsake writing even in hardshipthe
latter was not distracted by health and pleasure. We can see from this that
the ancients cared nothing for those great jade disks that were marks of
wealth, but instead treasured the moment, fearful lest time pass them by.
Yet people tend not to exert themselves in this way. In poverty and low
position, they fear hunger and cold; when they are rich and honored, they
let themselves drift in the distractions of pleasure. They occupy themselves
with immediate demands and neglect an accomplishment that will last a
thousand years. The days and months pass overhead; here below the face
and body waste away. We will pass suddenly into change with all the things
of this world~and this causes great pain to a man with high aspirations.
Kong Rong and the others have all passed away, and only the discourses
composed by Xu Gan represent a. truly individual accomplishment.
The Tang Dynasty
THE TANG DYNASTY: PERIOD INTRODUCTION When the

Tang came to power in 618 by defeating the Sui Dynasty, no
one would have guessed that this was not simply another short
lived, bloodthirsty Northern dynasty. We now know that the
real political credit for the founding of the dynasty must go to
Li Yuan, posthumously known by his imperial title Gao-zu. In
626, Li Yuan's son Li Shi-min, later known by his imperial title
Tai-zong, seized power in a palace coup, killing his brother, the
heir apparent, and forcing the abdication of his father. Histor
ical truth is, however, often less important than images, andTaizong was a master of political and cultural images. Tai-zong
had the historical record rewritten, portraying himself as a fil
ial son and the central figure in the founding of the dynasty. Tai-zong then set out
to play the role of the perfect Confucian ruler responsible, self-critical, and atten
tive to the counsel of his Confucian advisers. This image outlived Tai-zong's long
reign and played its role in stabilizing the dynasty with an aura of virtuous legiti
macy. Rather than the victor in a risky palace coup, Tai-zong appeared as the true
recipient of the Mandate of Heaven.
After Tai-zong's death in 649, his successor Gao-zong soon fell under the spell
of the beautiful Wu Zhao, who had previously been a minor concubine in Tai-zong's
harem. Victorious in a series of court and harem intrigues, Wu Zhao had Gao-zong's
reigning empress deposed and in 655 succeeded to her place. For the next half cen
tury, Empress Wu effectively ruled China, first as the power behind the throne and
then as sole ruler after Gao-zong's death. Politically astute and ruthless when nec
essary, Empress Wu was Tai-zong's true successor. After Gao-zong's death, one of
Empress Wu's sons took the throne as Zhong-zong; like his father before him, Zhongzong was under the sway of his own wife, whose family represented a powerful po
litical force and were opponents of Empress Wu. After reigning only six weeks,
Zhong-zong was taken physically from his throne by the imperial guard and deposed
by his mother, who then put another of her sons on the throne in his place. Six years
later, in 690, she deposed this second son and declared her own dynasty. As one
might expect, Confucian moralists in later times did not at ail approve of Empress
Wu, yet she was a remarkably able ruler, who consolidated the Tang's military and
political power.
The success of the Tang was in no small measure due to the institutional and
military structures inherited from the Sui. One particular Sui institution that was to
become of great importance to the Tang and subsequent dynasties was the civil ser
vice examination. This began with lower degrees and led ultimately to the metro
politan examination for the jin-shi ("presented scholars"). The first half of the Tang
was aristocratic, with great families wielding considerable power and maintaining
that power by placing their members in the bureaucratic structure. Rulers like Taizong and even Empress Wu could not govern autocratically: the influence of the
great families permeated the political structure. The examination system, meritocratic
in spirit if not always in practice, brought outsiders, usually members of lower gen
try families, into the government. No doubt to counter the influence of the great fam

ilies, Empress Wu saw to it that some remarkably talented men of undistinguished
backgrounds rose to high positions in the government. After her reign, the metro
politan examination remained the most prestigious and legitimate route for upward
social mobility throughout the dynasty.
The examination for the jin-shi was conceived as a "literary" examination, based
on the composition of essays and poetic expositions to set topics. The form of such
composition was highly stylized it should not be thought of as testing a capacity
to write imaginative literaturebut it differed from a competing and less prestigious
examination based on memorizing the Confucian Classics. The requirements for the
metropolitan jin-shi examination changed throughout the course of the dynasty, but
it is said that it was in Empress Wu's reign that the composition of classical poetry
was first included. Many scholars have linked the flourishing of classical poetry in
the eighth century to the introduction of poetry as a required part of the jin-shi ex
amination. Examination poems themselves were stilted and have little literary merit,
yet it may be true that a required mastery of the form contributed to the spreading
interest and competence in poetry during the eighth century.
In 705, Empress Wu was overthrown in a palace coup, and she died later the
same year. The two sons she had deposed each ruled briefly in turn in a court still
dominated by women, but the new empresses and princesses were not the political
equals of Empress Wu. In 712, a new Tang prince established himself firmly on the
throne: this was Xuan-zong, who was to hold the throne for more than forty years.
The reign ofXuan-zong has long been considered the high point of Tang culture and
political and military power; in literature, this period is known as the "High Tang.
The Tang expansion into Central Asia had actually occurred in the seventh cen
tury, but Xuan-zong continued the activist policies of his predecessors, expanding
the frontier and warding off threats from surrounding states. The Tang capital at
Chang-an was the terminus of the legendary Silk Road, along which goods and learn
ing passed between China and the "West
(including India, the newly Islamic Mid
dle East, and Byzantium). Chinese garrisons occupied many of the great oasis cities
of Central Asia, and Chang-an hosted a community of Central Asian merchants, ar
tisans, and scholars. Tang literature and the visual arts show a fascination with the
exotic West. Ceramics depict westerners with exaggeratedly large noses and beards.
The poet Cen Shen, while on garrison duty in Central Asia, watched a whirling, ec
static Central Asian or Middle Eastern dancing girl and concluded that Chinese
dances simply could not compare. Imperfect attempts have been made to recon
struct Tang music, but of one thing we can be certain: the titles of popular melodies
suggest a widespread fascination with non-Chinese music. It is probably a mistake
to call Tang China a truly cosmopolitan culture; except for Buddhism
all cultural
imports remained exotic. But more than any other period in China until the late nine
teenth century, Tang China was eager to experience foreign culture.
Though trade flowed over the Silk Road, the Tang frontiers were by no means
quiet. In the Northeast, there was constant skirmishing and small-scale warfare with
changing tribal configurations. Holding the Southern frontier swallowed several
Chinese armies in the jungles of Southeast Asia. Maintaining the Central Asian cor
ridor required repeated campaigns against recalcitrant city states and the Turkish
kingdoms. In 751, the Tang general Gao Xian~zhi (a Korean) met an Arab force at
The Tang Dynasty

the Talas River in the western part of the corridor and was defeated. Although the
battle was a minor one, it paved the way for the Islamicization of the region once
Tang troops were withdrawn to fight in China proper less than a decade later.
The major military power that Tang China faced was Tibet in the west. Not yet
fully converted to Buddhism, much less to Lamaism, Tibet was a fierce and canny
political opponent. In Central Asia, Tang expansionist policies came into conflict
with Tibetan expansionist policies, far more than with the Arabs. Treaties were
made and broken, and Chinese princesses were sent off to the rude capital of Lhasa
following the standard Chinese policy of peace by marriage. In the period of China's
greatest weakness after the An Lu-shan Rebellion, Tibetan armies briefly occupied
Chang-an, and the border with Tibet was drawn only a short distance from the cap
ital, deep within what is now considered Chinese territory.
The Tang royal house bore the surname Li, and Tang rulers fancifully traced their
lineage back to the supposed founder of Daoism, Lao-zi, also surnamed Li. Daoism
had a fully developed religious apparatus as early as the fifth century, but apart from
imperial patronage of individual Daoist adepts, it had not been a state religion. Dur
ing the seventh century, the Tang established Daoist temples in all the prefectural
capitals and sponsored the compilation of the Daoist scriptures. The state also spon
sored the foundation of Buddhist temples and monasteries and new translation pro
jects for the Buddhist sutras. Whatever personal devotion emperors and empresses
may have felt toward Buddhism and Daoism, the state establishment of these two
religions was primarily a political attempt to exercise some control over them.
In the two centuries preceding Xuan-zong's reign, the composition of classical
poetry had become in large measure centered on the court and court occasions. Per
haps spurred on by the requirement to compose poems in the jin-shi examination,
in the first half of the eighth century the range of poetic practice spread widely. More
people were writing poems on a wider range of topics and social occasions than
ever before. Composing poetry seems to have become an expected activity at ban
quets and partings, or when visiting friends and famous sites. Members of the bu
reaucracy traveled a good deal~on missions or to serve in provincial offices. When
traveling, officials would often write poems on the whitewashed walls of the gov
ernment post stations where they spent the night; other official travelers, staying at
the same post station later, might write their own poems on the walls answering the
work of earlier travelers. The bare walls of public and private places seem to have
invited literary decoration. Scrolls were, of course, the primary means by which texts
were disseminated, but popular poems also spread quickly by word of mouth and
were often sung by entertainers.
Quite apart from the formal composition required on the jin-shi examination,
poetic skill became a means for social advancement. Poems were presented to in
fluential patrons and could win a provincial invitations to join social circles from
which he might otherwise be excluded. The bolder and more unconventional tal
ents were often ill-suited to theWnds of formal composition required on the jin-shi
examination, and some of the best known poets of the High Tang either never at
tempted the examination or attempted it and failed; their reputation, however, could
often secure them lesser posts through the patronage of powerful officials.
Late in his life, Xuan-zong became enamored of Yang Yu-huan, originally a minor

concubine of one of his sons. Like Empress Wu before her, Yang Yu-huan rose
quickly through the ranks of the harem and was eventually given the title "Prized
Consort," gui-fei, which is how she came to be known in later ages, as Yang Guifei. Unlike Empress Wu, who held on to power personally, Yang Yu-huan used the
emperor's favor to win positions for members of her family, including a distant unde,
the unscrupulous Yang Guo-zhong, who rose to the position of Chief Minister. Yang
Guo-zhong became embroiled in a personal feud with a frontier officer who had
also risen rapidly by the whims of imperial favor: this was An Lu-shan, made com
mander of all the Tang armies in the Northeast. Afraid that Yang Guo-zhong would
eventually succeed in persuading Xuan-zong to strip him of his powers, in 755, An
Lu-shan led the northeastern armies in a rebellion, at first under the pretext of pun
ishing Yang Guo-zhong, and then as a rebellion against the dynasty itself.
The eastern capital, Luo-yang, fell quickly, and a hastily organized imperial
army was routed. Ge-shu Han, commander of the Tang northwestern armies, as
sembled another force behind the impregnable fortifications of Tong Pass, which
blocked the road between Luo-yang and Chang-an. Yang Guo-zhong grew fearful
of Ge-shu Han's power and instigated a political campaign to get the general to con
front An Lu-shan's army in open battle. Forced at last by court orders to leave his
fortifications with his ill-prepared army, Ge-shu Han was disastrously defeated and
the rebel armies advanced on Chang-an. Xuan-zong was compelled to flee the cap
ital in haste. At Ma-wei post station, the imperial guard refused to go on unless Yang
Guo-zhong and Yang Yu-huan were executed. Reluctantly complying with the
army's demands, Xuan-zong proceeded on to Cheng-du, the major city in the West.
His son, the heir apparent, remained behind to organize the resistance and soon pro
claimed himself emperor. Xuan-zong abdicated. Gathering together the remains of
the defeated Tang armies, stripping the Central Asian garrisons, and calling in Uighur
allies, the new emperor and loyalist forces retook the capitals. An Lu-shan himself
was assassinated in 757, but his son and lieutenants carried on active warfare with
imperial forces for many years to follow.
The aftermath of the An Lu-shan Rebellion left the Tang weakened and ex
hausted. Central Asia was lost and the northeastern provinces remained in the hands
first of rebels and later of independent warlords who had made an uneasy peace
with the dynasty. Many provinces had been militarized during the rebellion, and
their commanders were unwilling to give up power. When such commanders died,
the local armies would force the helpless court to appoint successors of their own
choosing, often the former commander's son, thus creating hereditary local regimes.
The loss of tax revenues and unreliability of supposedly loyalist armies made it very
difficult for the court to reassert central control. Only once again in the dynasty's
history was central government control reasserted; this was during the reign of Xianzong, who took the throne in 805.
Xiarvzong's reign and the decades leading up to it are known as the /7MidTang.The Mid-Tang was one of the most intellectually lively in Chinese history.
Out of the sense of cultural crisis that followed in the wake of the An Lu-shan Re
bellion, there came many calls to return to Confucian values. The most important
figure in this movement to "restore antiquity" was Han Yu (768-824). Tang Confu
cian learning had previously been primarily scholastic, requiring the rote memo-
The Tang Dynasty

rization of the Confucian Classics and learning their authorized commentaries. Han
Yu advocated the persona
assimilation of Confucian values through the classics,
making them part of one's life. He also championed what came to be called "old
style prose, breaking free of the stylized formality of much Tang prose to a kind of
writing more suited to argumentation and the expression of ideas. In these and other
principles, Han Yu was later seen as the precursor to the Neo-Confucianism of the
Song Dynasty.
The new popularity of "old style prosein the Mid-Tang is believed to have en
couraged the development of longer and more complex prose narrative. Still short
by Western standards, the classical language tales of the Mid-Tang built on the mo
tifs of earlier short fiction with tales of encounters with ghosts, amorous fox-women,
and other supernatural beings. In the Mid-Tang, however, we also find stories of
purely human romances set in the demimonde, the world of courtesans and kept
women. In this gray area between prostitution and legally binding marriage, women
often enjoyed relative financial independence and a liberty in choice of partners.
The existence of mutual choice in relations between the sexes made possible a true
culture of romance, for which we begin to find evidence in the late eighth and ninth
centuries.
Although many women of the Tang elite were literate, a fully developed women's
literary culture did not take shape in China until the sixteenth and seventeenth cen
turies. Tang women, however, enjoyed far greater autonomy than did women in the
dynasties that followed. During the reign of Empress Wu and the short reigns that
followed before Xuan-zong took the throne, the women of the court played an im
portant role in cultural life. Although very little of her work survives today, Shangguan Wan-er was probably the most influential literary figure of the first decade of
the eighth century~something possible in the Tang as it could not have been for
the rest of the history of imperial China. After her entire family was executed in a
palace purge, Shang-guan Wan-er, her face tattooed with the mark of a criminal,
was taken into Empress Wu's service, where she rose to become the empress's pri
vate secretary. When the empress was deposed, Shang-guan Wan-er in middle age
was made a consort of the empress's restored son Zhong-zong. In that role she be
came the arbitrix of court taste, presiding over poetry competitions and the mixedsex outings of the court.
The role of women in this period was unique, but even in Xuan-zong's court the
favored Yang Yu-huan and the women of the harem enjoyed a degree of liberty un
heard of in later dynasties. As a true culture of romance developed toward the end
of the eighth century and into the ninth, poetry played as much of a role as stories.
Courtesans such as Xue Tao (768-831) developed reputations as poets, and their
acquaintance was sought by famous male poets. For the first time, women became
heroines in stories rather than simply exemplars of virtue. As often happens in a cul
ture of romance, such stories of suffering or daring in love and boldness in action
seem to have escaped fiction and entered the realm of social behavior. In the ninth
century, we have anecdotes of young Chang-an women of merchant families falling
in love with poets simply by hearing their poems recited. The historical truth of such
anecdotes is hard to determine, and, if true, such behavior was certainly the ex
ception rather than the rule. What is significant, however, is the genera
belief, on
K9

the part of both men and women, that such things could happen. And once a cul
ture of romantic love and free choice came into being as an imaginative possibility,
it never disappearedeven though the social realities were arranged marriages and
sexual availability gained by financial and social power.
The Tang did not fall in a single dramatic event but attenuated through the
course of the ninth century. Local rebellions in the middle of the century deprived
the central government of important sources of tax revenue; and in 880 one such
rebellion, led by Huang Chao, took Chang-an and sacked the city. From then until
the end of the dynasty in 906, the Tang exercised direct control over only a small
area around the capital. The last boy emperor of the Tang ended up the puppet of
a local warlord, who finally deposed him. The period of regional regimes that fol
lowed until the founding of the Song Dynasty in 960 is known as the "Five Dynas
ties/'
Tang Poetry: General

Introduction
Occasions: "Sorry to Have Missed You
A large proportion of extant Tang poetry is "occasional, consisting of poems once
used in a particular social exchange. During the Tang, a poem was often as much
a social act as a literary work of art, and the capacity to compose verse with rea
sonable grace in a wide variety of social situations was an important accomplish
ment for an educated person. Some of the best of these acts were preserved and
passed on, becoming "literature" in the more conventional sense. Yet even as liter
ary texts, such poems always recall the everyday world from which they came, and
remind us that although a poem may have been read by a million readers over the
course of a millennium, it was originally written for one person.
To offer an example: If someone visited a friend and found that the friend was
not home, or if a friend had paid a visit while the poet was away, a poem might be
written to say, "Sorry to have missed you/7Such was the case one day toward the
middle of the eighth century, when a certain Mr. Su, who held an honorary post in
the Bureau of Forestry, stopped by the villa of the poet Wang Wei. Wang Wei was
not at home, so Su left a poem noting his visit. In such a circumstance, it was only
polite that Wang Wei write back~an answering poemthanking Su for his visit.
Mr. Su, dead now for over a thousand years, survives as a flicker in the collective
memory of mankind because he once wrote a poem, now lost, to which the famous
Wang Wei wrote an answer. The poem's opening, setting the scene for Mr. Su's ap
proach to Wang Wei's villa, is, at the most generous, uninspired. But the moment
Wang Wei imagines Mr. Su's discovery of his absence, Wang Wei's genius for evok
ing a scene in a few images becomes apparent. Su turns his attention outward to
ward the empty landscape around the house, following the evidence of human pres
ence ever further into the distance, until, hidden behind far clouds, sounds penetrate
the silence.
Wang Wei (ca. 699-761), Answering the Poem Left by Mr. Su,
Nominally of the Bureau of Forestry, When He Stopped by My
Villa at Lan-tian
Humbly I dwell by the valleys mouth,
where tall trees ring an unkempt village.
In kindness you turned down my stony path;
no one answered the gate of my home in the hills.
371
A fishing boat, stuck to the frozen shore,

hunters fires burned on the cold moor.
All there was, out beyond the white clouds
a bells infrequent tolling that broke
through gibbons night cries.
Wang Wei was probably responding to a poem much like the one written some
decades later by Wei Ying-wu (737-ca. 792). Tang officials were usually given one
day off in ten.
Wei Ying-wu Going to Visit Censor Wang on M y Day Off and

Not Finding Him Home
Nine days of hustle and bustle,
now one day of ease,
I looked for you, I found you not
and turned back home in vain.
Yet I was amazed how thoughts for poems
so chilled a man to the bone,
where your gate stood facing cold torrents
and snow was filling the hills.
When the visitor found his host not home, he looked to the scene around the
dwelling, his attention heightened by the absence of the other person. In "looking
for" the other person in the scene, the poet sees the landscape or dwelling more per
fectly. He may find that the surroundings embody the way of life and the character
of the absent person, and thus he may even be said to have "met" the person through
the scene. This is the message of the following famous poem by Qiu Wei, composed
around the middle of the eighth century.
Qiu Wei (fl. 743)Walking in the Hills and Looking for the
Recluse, But Finding Him Not In
On the very summit his thatched-roof hut
led me uphill for thirty leagues.
I knocked at his gate, no servant there;
I peered in the window, just a table.
If hes not off covering his rickety cart,
he is surely fishing in autumn waters.
My timing was off, we did not meet,
but I paused in undemonstrated esteem.
Plants whose colors show recent rains,
through your windows pines heard late in day.
The Tang Dynasty
Utter privacy here agrees with me,

the place, by itself, cleanses ear and eye.
Though we did not play the guest and host,
I have grasped well the meaning of purity.
The mood departed, I went downhill
there was no longer need to wait for you.
Sometimes such a scene of absence around the dwelling can be dramatized, as in

the following famous quatrain by Jia Dao:
Jia Dao (779-845)Looking for the Recluse and Not Finding

Him Home
I asked his servant under the pines,
he said: The master has gone to pick herbs.
He is somewhere out there in the hills,
but the clouds are so deep I know not where.
The situation could also be turned around. If a visitor was expected and did not come,
the disappointed host might send him a poem, telling him what a lovely evening
scene he missed:
Meng Hao-ran (ca. 689- 740)Spending the Night in Reverend

Y es Mountain Chamber. I was expecting the senior Mr. Ding,
but he did not come
When evening sun passed over western peaks,
all the valleys grew suddenly dark.
The moon through pines brought in nights cool,
and a breeze on the stream filled listening ears.
The woodsmen have almost all gone home,
and birds now settle on misty roosts.
The man made a promise to come for the night,
my harp waits alone on the vine-hung path.
Much of the poetry we have from the Tang is only a fragment of a world full of human
exchanges both grand and simple. When sets of exchange poems survive, we can
see how much the weight of the words in a poem can depend on knowing what the
poet is responding to. Wang Wei's poem below is often read in isolation, but it be
comes richer when read in conjunction with Pei Di's initial work.
373
Pei Di (fl. 720-750)I Chanced on Rain at Wang-kou and

Recalled Mount Zhong-nan: Thus I Offered the Following
Quatrain
Rains dense and steady darken deserted bends,
from level sands drifting glitter is gone.
Wang Rivers waters keep going on,
but where now is Mount Zhong-nan?
Wang Wei, Answering Pei Di

Murky and flooding, cold currents broaden,
a vague gray, darkened by autumn rains.
You ask me of Zhong-nan Mountain
I know in my heart it
s beyond the white clouds.
This pair of quatrains between Wang Wei and his friend Pei Di plays on how the
clouds and mist of a rainstorm hide Mount Zhong-nan, whose towering presence
would otherwise dominate the scene. Wang Wei looks to where the mountain
should be, imagines it there, perhaps even believes~because be knows it must be
therethat he can vaguely make out its outline. Yet behind the simple exchange
lies the Buddhist conviction of the illusion of the senses and the insubstantiality of
the perceptible world.
Parting
Poems were also composed at parties, on group excursions, and when visiting
friends. The whitewashed walls of pavilions, government post stations, and the cells
of monks provided adequate surfaces on which to leave poems as graffiti; and find
ing a poem on a wall left by an acquaintance would often occasion a companion
piece. On journeys, travelers would frequently compose poems to record places vis
ited, and such poems were then sent back as letters to friends at home. The various
stages and events of a journey were fixed poetic types: setting out early, meeting
someone on the road, lodging for the night. A popular poetic occasion was the/xmed
itation on the past" (huai-gu), composed when visiting some ancient site. The most
common social use of poetry was as a letter, the level of formality differing accord
ing to the social status of the recipient. Verse letters could range from simple qua
trains to long formal poems of hundreds of lines. Such poems were often answered
by the recipient, sometimes using the same rhymes. By the ninth century, we find
entire collections of these exchange poems.
Parting was one of the most important social situations for which poetry was com
posed. Although partings often occurred under less formal conditions, in one stan
dard pattern, the traveler's friends accompanied him on the first stage of a journey,
then held a banquet (sometimes staying overnight), after which came the parting
proper. Each of these phasesthe send-off (song), the parting banquet (jian), and
the parting (b ie ) ~ might b e accompanied b y the co m p o sitio n o f poems. Parting w a s
374
The Tang Dynasty

an occasion that encompassed true private distress at separation from friends and a
public ritual (originally associated with the religious ritual of the sacrifice to the god
of the roads). A large number of Tang parting poems have survived, many of them
graceful but uninspired verses produced on demand by using the wide range of po
etic cliches available to every poetaster. This corpus of Tang parting poems also con
tains some of the most famous poems in the language.
The following quatrain by Wang Wei was set to music (often called "The Song
of Yang Pass'7) and became a standard lyric to be sung at any partinga popular rit
ual much like the singing of "Auld Lang Syne" on New Year's Eve. The speaker urges
the traveler, setting off on a mission far into Central Asia (where the An-xi Military
District and Yang Pass were located), to drink now and take his pleasure in the pres
ent moment, strengthening the persuasion with an ominous vision of the future.
Wang Wei, Sending Mr. Yuan on His Way on a Mission to

An-xi
By the walls of Wei City the rain at dawn
dampens the light dust,
all green around the guest lodge
the colors of willows revive.
I urge you now to finish
just one more cup of wine:
once you go west out Yang Pass
there will be no old friends.
Parting
I get off my horseoffer you wine
and ask you where you are going.
You say that nothing turned out as you wished,
you go home to rest by South Mountain.
Go off then, I will ask nothing more~
white clouds there that never end.
Meng Hao-ran, Parting from Mr. Xue at Guang-ling

There are some men, their aims unfulfilled,
roaming restless through lands of W u and Chu.
Our chance meeting in Guang-ling done now,
you return by boat on Lake Peng-li.
A mast appears among river trees,
waves rise to mountains over the sea.
Tomorrow your wind-blown sail will be far
where again shall I share your company?
375
Li Bo (701-762), Sending a Friend on His Way

Green hills stretch past the north ramparts,
white waters circle the eastern wall.
Once we have parted in this spot
the tumbleweed goes on thousands of miles.
Drifting cloudsthe travelers thoughts;
sinking sunan old friends mood.
We wave, going off from here,
and our horses whinny on parting.
Most parting occasions could be treated in a variety of styles and forms. One can
scarcely imagine a greater contrast than the dignified austerity of Wang Wei's /;Partingabove (p. 375) and Li Bo's extravagant parting song below, to one Mr. Cen,
about to return to his home at Ming-gao, A rather ordinary place in He-nan is trans
formed into a fantastic, even demonic landscape, calling to mind the setting of "The
Hill Wraith" in "The Nine Songs" (see p. 160).
A Song of Ming-gao: Sending Off Mr. Cen, a Gentleman in

Retirement Who Was Summoned to Court
It seems there is someone, he longs for Ming-gao,
his way blocked by snowdrifts, heart harrieddistraught.
The huge river is frigid and may not be directly crossed,
this ice-dragon
s scales leave no room for his scull.
Remote lie those towering crests
on the hills of the Undying,
where you hear the raucous din
of Heavens flutes.
Their frosty slopes are satin white in rising tiers,
as if steady winds were fanning the sea
and heaving huge waves from the dark deeps.
Jet black gibbons, dark green bears,
wait on sheer summits with lolling tongues,
roaring boughs, shuddering rocks,
make the gall flinch and tremble the soul,
the packs cry out, to each other howl.
Perilous precipices where paths end,
snagging the stars on the high cliffs crags.
We send you homeward along your way,
which stirs this new work on Ming-gao.
The drums mix with pipes, strings are plucked,
as we drink to you in the Qing-ling Pool pavilion.
Yet you do not go~why do you wait,
376
The Tang Dynasty
like a yellow crane turning with backward gaze?

You outshone all talents in the gardens of Liang,
and you raised the Great Odes to the east in Luo.
Your wagon is readied, you cross rough roads,
seeking lodging sequestered upon lofty bluffs.
Sprawled on white stones, in pale moonlight seated,
on your harp, W ind in Pines
thousands of valleys hushed.
I will gaze and not see you my heart swells in turmoil,
in vinesmurky darkness, the sleet pelting down.
Waters cut through caves and are clear down below,
the waves sound faintlyare heard up above.
Tigers wail in valleys, they bring on the wind,
streams conceal dragons, exhaling clouds.
Cranes in the darkness give forth their shrill cries,
and starveling squirrels chitter and screech.
In the still isolation you dwell there apart,
empty hills grow forlorn, and it saddens a man.
Chickens gather in flocks, they fight over food,
alone flies the phoenix, none by its side.
The lizard taunts the dragon,
fish-eyes are confused with jewels,
Mo-mu the Crone wears brocade,
the lovely X i Shi bears kindling.
Were one to force Chao-fu and Xu You
to be fettered by coach and crown
would it be any different from Kui and Long
limping in dusty wind?
For what pain did one man weep and rescue Chu?
For what pride did another brag, making Qin withdraw?
I truly cannot ape those two,
buying fame, showing off honor,
to win glory in their' age;
I resolve to forsake Earth and Heaven,
to leave this body behind:
when a white gull comes to you flying,
I will join you forever as friend.
After having conjured up Ming-gao as a Gothic landscape where Cen will live as a
recluse, Li Bo turns in the final section of his poem to heap scorn on the public world
where values are upside down ("The lizard taunts the dragon"). Mo-mu the Crone
was the notoriously ugly wife of the Yellow Emperor, while Xi Shi was the legendary
beauty whom Gou-jian, the King of Yue, sent to infatuate the King of Wu and bring
about his ruin. In this world of inverted values, the ugly woman finds favor while
the beauty is neglected. Chao-fu and Xu You were two ancient recluses who refused

the offer of rule or high position; Kui and Long were both wise advisers. To force
Chao-fu and Xu You to serve the state would be counter to their nature, just as to
leave Kui and Long in obscurity would be to waste their abilities.
When the army of Wu sacked the capital of Chu, Bao-xu of Shen went to Qin
and wept in the courtyard until the Duke of Qin sent armies to rescue Chu. With
immense self-confidence in his abilities as an orator, Lu Zhong-lian persuaded the
armies of Qin to withdraw from the state of Zhao, even after they had utterly crushed
Zhao's army. Li Bo, while tacitly claiming the same abilities as these two famous
figures of antiquity, claims that he, like Mr. Cen, has no inclination for such fame
and would rather go join Cen at Ming-gao.
Other Poem Types

Not all Tang poetry was tied to social occasion. There was a pure lyric form based
sim p ly o n w ritin g o n e 's feeling s, often c a lle d y o n g -h u a i ("sin g in g o f w h a t is o n m y
mind"). These were sometimes associated with a type of poem popular in the late
second and third centuries that made use of emotional directness and presumed po
litical engagement, and went under several generic names, the most common of
which was the "old manner" (gu-feng).
The various cults of religious Daoism also occupied a very important place in
the Tang, and were patronized both by the court and by a wide range of intellectu
als. The cult of the Undying (xian, sometimes translated as "immortals"), and the
colorful Daoist pantheon, attracted many poets, whether as a matter of faith or for
the sheer delight in the fantastic. Daoist motifs appear throughout Tang poetry, both
for their own sake and as conventional metaphors for the imperial court (Heaven)
and erotic intrigues (described in terms of encountering a goddess). More purely
Daoist-inspired poetry delighted in endless descriptions of flights through the heav
ens and accounts of the wonders seen there. One such lyric type associated with
Daoist ritual was called "Lyrics for Walking the Sky" (Bu-xu c/j; these lyrics are found
in large numbers.
In a more seriously Confucian vein, a poet might write "poems on history"
(yong-shi shi), evoking some moment in the past, often making moral judgment.
There were narrative ballads treating themes of history or legend, and terse, epi
grammatic quatrains summing up large events in a few words. In the ninth century
we even have large sets of such quatrains, chronologically arranged, covering the
famous events of history in the Tang.
Finally, there were "poems on things" (yong-wu). By the Tang, each animal and
plant had developed a complex body of literary
ore that was collected in large ref
erence works called lei-shu (commonly translated as "encyclopedias"). Man-made
subjects and a wide variety of other natural "things" and relationships were also in
cluded. The encyclopedias would often give something of the natural history of the
chosen subject; its appearance in accounts of human history; famous anecdotes in
which it appeared; and related poems, poetic exposition, and prose pieces about it.
These served as models for treatment by later poets, who might be called on to write
on a particular subject in an examination, at a party, or simply for pleasure.
The Tang Dynasty
The following poem is an example of a standard treatment of the wild goose, the
kind of verse that a well-trained literary person was expected to produce as a social
skill. Geng Wei is writing to an assigned topic (probably given him at a party), and
he carefully brings in some of the expected motifs such as the bows of nomad
hunters in the North, and Heng-yang, the Southern terminus of the goose migration.
He must also bring in the further restriction of the topic, "on the sands,which he
does in the sixth and seventh lines.
Geng Wei (latter part of 8th century). On the Set Topic: Wild
Goose on the Sands
Still a long road to travel to Heng-yang,
wings weakened, distress in its voice.
I wonder when it will return to the borders
the bowstrings twang has so troubled its heart.
Nights shadows, companions are far ahead;
falls chill, the lake behind it is deep.
What thoughts as it stands alone on the beach?
only worries that frost and sleet will come.
Du Fu's version is, by contrast, strange and very personal, implicitly identifying his
own isolation with that of the wild goose. The second and third couplets are both
highly ambiguous: one may read the subject as the lone goose and the object sought
as the lost flock, or the subject as the poet and the lost object of vision as the lone
goose that has flown on its way.
Du Fu (712-770 )Lone Wild Goose

Lone goose, not drinking or pecking for food,
it cries out in flightvoice yearns for the flock.
Who pities that single silhouette,
lost in ten thousand folds of cloud?
Gaze as far as possible, as if still seen,
sad cries many, as though heard once more.
The crows on the moors pay it no heed,
cawing and squawking in chaotic multitudes.
Du Fu and Geng Wei picture a particular situation. Du Mu, the ninth-century poet,
envisions scenes in places and times he cannot see: the frontier (Golden River), the
Han palace, and the lush landscape of plenty in the South by the Xiao and Xiang
rivers.
Du Mu (803-852), Early Migrating Geese

Mid-autumn by Golden River,
a nomads bowstring stretched full,
they fly up alarmed among the clouds,
strewing sad cries all around.
On the palms of immortals the moon is bright,
a lonely shadow crosses;
at Chang-men Palace the lamps grow dark
as a few sounds arrive.
They surely realize Turkish horsemen
are still up north in droves
must they follow the wind of spring,
each single one returning?
Weary not of the Xiao and Xiang
because so few men dwell there
sesame seeds fill the waters,
and the shores are rich in moss.
Du Mu uses many of the standard elements appropriate for writing on wild geese,
but he transforms them by his imagination. As in Geng Wei's poem, he mentions
the birds beginning their migration by fleeing the nomad archers north of China. Du
Mu, however, begins with a bow stretched full, and the sudden upward flight of the
geese that follows parallels the bowshot that is left unmentioned. Once in flight, these
geese become insubstantial, only shadows and sounds. The second couplet, which
takes place as the wild geese fly over Chang-an by night, refers first to the statue of
a bronze immortal, erected by Emperor Wu of the Han, whose open hands held a
pan to catch the autumn dew from which an elixir of immortality might be made.
Over the solid figure of permanence a shadow briefly passes in the moonlight, the
shadow of a lone goose separated from the flock. The parallel line refers to the palace
to which Empress Chen was banished after she lost Emperor Wu's favor. There in
the growing darkness she hears the cries of the passing geese, which remind her of
the coming autumn (aging) and her isolation. Turning away from these motifs of mor
tality, in the second half Du Mu seems to invite the geese to break the seasonal cycle
and stay forever in the warm and bountiful South.
Character Types and Vignettes

Tang poetry was by no means all social verse or first-person lyric; there was also a
large body of poetry describing popular character types. The best of such poems give
a quickly drawn scene that embodies a character type or catches some action or
gesture that reveals emotion, such as the frontier soldier looking at the moon and
thinking of home. These conventional character types were often linked with regions,
and so although Tang soldiers served on all the Tang's frontiers, the poetic soldier
is usually in the North or Northwest. The swaggering young nobleman and the
The Tang Dynasty
"knight errant" (an imperfect translation for you-xia, a violence-prone righter of

wrongs) tend to be associated with the capital. The court lady who has lost the em
peror's favor is linked not so much to the capital as to the inner court compounds
of the palace. The lower reaches of the Yangzi River had their beautiful young peas
ant girls and carefree fishermen, while the full length of the great river belonged to
the merchants. Other figures, such as the woman in isolation (her husband being
away either on military campaign or because he was a heartless rogue) and the im
mortal, were tied to no particular geographical location. All these are only the most
common character types; numerous other figures appear with less frequency, as well
as many variations on the more standard types.
Often these figures turn up in briskly staged incidents that can best be called vi
gnettes, which are perhaps the beginnings of the sense of scene found later in Chi
nese drama. The following are two unrelated cases of coin tossing, the first by a bored
palace lady and the second by a peasant girl.
W angjian (751-ca. 830)Palace Lyrics XCV

Her sleep has been fitful since spring began,
she does not comb her hair,
too lazy to go with her lord and ruler
on trips to the northern parks.
For a while she goes and sits on the stairs
patterned with flowers of jade,
and flipping a coinmanages to win
two or three tosses.
Yu Hu (early 9th century), Song of the Southland

She had happened to go by the river
to gather white duckweed,
then went along with her girlfriends
to pray to the river god.
In the crowd she did not dare
to speak out openly,
but furtively tossed a silver coin
to find the fortune of someone far.
A favorite figure of male fantasy was the beautiful peasant girl of Wu or Yue pick
ing lotuses. The following are characteristic versions of the type by Li Bo.
Li Bo, Lotus-Picking Song

By the side of Ruo-ye Creek
a girl picking lotus,
her laughter screened by lotus flowers,
she is talking with someone.
The sunlight shines on fresh make-up,

bright beneath the water,
and breeze billows her scented sleeves,
lifted into the air.
Who are the young men on the shore
out looking for pleasure?
in groups of three or five
through hanging willows seen.
A dark-maned roan whinnies and goes
off into falling flowers;
catching sight of this, someone falters,
a heart breaking for naught.
Lyrics for the Girls of Yue

I
A young W u girl from Chang-an,
brows fair as the moon and eyes like stars.
Her feet seem like frost in her sandals,
for she does not wear the crow-black hose.
II
Wu youths all have light complexions,
and they love to play at boating games.
They give someone the eye, throw their hearts away,
snap sprays of blooms to tease travelers.
III
A girl picking lotus on Ruo-ye Creek
sees the traveler return with a boating song.
She goes laughing off into lotus flowers
and feigning shyness, she wont come out.
IV
A Dong-yang girl with pale white feet;
a Kuai-ji lad in a pale white barge.
They see each other ere the moon goes down
it just happens that hearts get broken.
V
Mirror Lakes waters are like the moon,
on Ruo-ye Creek the girls like snow.
Fresh make-up bobs in fresh waves
two scenes of brightness, both marvels.
The Tang Dynasty
Bo Ju-yi (772-846)Lotus-Picking Song

Leaves of water chestnuts curl in waves
the lotus tossed by a breeze,
to a spot deep in the lotus blooms
the small skiff makes its way.
Meeting her love, she is ready to speak,
then lowers her head with a smile,
and her hair-pick of dark green jade
falls right into the water.
An Example of Verse Form

Chinese poetic meter was primarily "syllabic, based on the number of syllables in
a line. Lines of five or seven syllables were the most common, with lines of three,
four, and six syllables appearing less frequently. Neither quantitative meters (based
on variations in syllable length) nor qualitative meters (based on variation in sylla
ble stress) were possible in classical Chinese, in which words have only one or two
syllables.
In addition to the number of syllables, the patterning of tones in the language
came to form an important part of metrics during the Tang. Recent scholarship has
suggested that an awareness of the possibility of tonal patterning came from the at
tempt to translate Buddhist religious verse and the elaborate quantitative meters of
Sanskrit during the Southern Dynasties. Somewhat less than half of the syllables in
medieval Chinese were in the "level tone" (ping-sheng), with the other three tones
grouped together as "deflected tones" (ze-sheng). In the late fifth century, poets began
the practice of alternating level and deflected tones between key positions within a
line and between corresponding positions in the two lines of a couplet. This metri
cal practice gradually led to verse forms that were called, in the Tang, the "recent
style" (jin-ti).
Tang poems were divided between those in the "recent styleand those in the
"old style, "Recent stylepoems required tonal balancing, the use of parallel cou
plets in all but the first and final couplets of the verse, and a rhyme in a level tone.
"Old stylepoems did not require tonal balancing or parallel couplets and could
rhyme in a deflected tone. Quatrains (jue-ju) might be in the "recent styleor in the
"old style." The following is a regulated verse (lu-shi) in five-syllable lines by Wang
Wei, entitled "Stopping By the Temple of Incense Massed." First we will give an En
glish translation, then a word-for-word gloss of the Chinese. Note that the Chinese
poetic language rarely uses tense markers, pronouns, or prepositions. There is, more
over, no distinction between singular and plural. The translator supplies these by
cotext.
Stopping By the Temple of Incense Massed

I knew not of the Temple of Incense Massed,
I went several miles into cloudy peaks.
Ancient trees, trails with no one there,
deep in hills, a bell from I knew not where.
A streams sounds choked on steep-pitched stones,
and hues of sunlight were chilled by green pines.
Towards dusk at the bend of a deserted pool
in meditation's calm I mastered passions dragon.
not
know
Incense
Heap-Up
Temple
several
li (miles)
enter
cloud(y)
peak(s)

I went several miles into cloudy peaks.
/fn
m ir
ancient
tree(s)
is-no
person
path
deep
mountain
what
place
bell?
Ancient trees, trails with no one there,

deep in hills, a bell from I knew not where.
stream
sound
choke
sheer
stone(s)
sun
color
cold (by)
green
pine(s)
A streams sounds choked on steep-pitched stones,

and hues of sunlight were chilled by green pines.
towards-dusk
empty/deserted
pool
bend
stillness
Chan
control
poison
dragon
Towards dusk at the bend of a deserted pool,

in meditation's calm I mastered passions dragon.
High Tang Poetry
The forty-odd years from the Tang emperor Xuan-zong's enthronement (712) to his
abdication after fleeing the capital ahead of An Lu-shan's rebel army (755) is known
as the "High Tang, This period has been, correctly or incorrectly, considered the
apogee of Tang culture and military power. In the popular imagination it came to
be regarded as the high point of classical poetry (shi), before which all was antici
pation, and after which all was falling off or distant echo.
A period such as the High Tang becomes interesting not by a single character
istic but by a variety of very different concerns occurring together. The poets of the
High Tang present us with remarkable variety, becoming much like characters in a
novel, setting each other off. Here we will concentrate on the three most famous:
Wang Wei, Meng Hao-ran, and Li Bo. Du Fu deserves separate consideration.
Wang Wei (ca. 699-761)

Many people have tried to define the genius of Wang Wei's poetry. He was a poet
who often used the simplest language fora vision of the world that was uniquely his
own. Consider a single line from "Written on Climbing the Small Terrace of Pei Di:
The setting sun goes down beside a bird.
It is a line that could not have been written before Wang Wei: no earlier poet
would have defined the motion of a large, regular, and slow thing like the sun in re
lation to so small and volatile a creature as a bird. Wang Wei is, moreover, con
cerned with perspective and the illusions of the senses, related to his Buddhist con
victions that the world of human experience is only sensuous illusion. We know that
the sun is not "beside" the bird, but only seems so from a particular distant per
spective, a "point of view" that can shift as quickly as the bird. Yet in the line the
only thing that moves is the sun.
Wang Wei came from one of the most distinguished families of the period, and
from early in his life he moved with ease in the highest circles of Tang society. The
simplicity and restraintof his voice as a poet should be understood against that back
ground, as a personal choice. Although he could write the highly stylized social po
etry that was common in upper-class gatherings, Wang Wei was profoundly drawn
to various forms of a private, contemplative life: Buddhism, landscape, and the po
etry of Tao Qian.
385

PERSPECTIVE, MOTION, AND ATTENTION
In addition to being a poet, Wang Wei was an important Tang landscape painter
(though all the original versions of his paintings have been long lost). In an oftenquoted couplet, Wang wrote:
Born in this ageI mistakenly turned out a writer;
in a past life I was surely a painter.
Critics have often remarked that Wang's poetry shows something of the painter's at
tention to space, shapes, and the pattern of relationships formed by objects in space.
To this gift may be added the Buddhist devotee's sense that the world of the senses
is illusion, as are the emotions we feel through attachment to this world of the senses.
Wang Wei's visual patterns often imply both motion and attention, with a play be
tween engagement and detachment from those patterns. Through a series of scenes
he can show how, on a journey, the eyes can be fixed on a destination; but once
the destination is discerned, the traveler's attention suddenly turns to places
eft and
lost.
Written Crossing the Yellow River to Qing-he

The boat set sail upon the great river
whose swollen waters stretched to sky
s edge.
Sky and waves split apart suddenly~
the district capitals thousands of homes.
Moving on, I can see the town market
and vaguely make out mulberry and hemp.
I turn to gaze back toward my homeland
only vast floods that stretch to the clouds.
Watching a Hunt
The wind blows hard, the hornbow sings,
the general hunts by W ei
s old walls.
The plants stripped barethe hawks eye keen
where the snow is gonehorse hooves move light.
All at once they are past Xin-feng Market,
then back once more to Thin-Willow Camp.
I turn to look where the eagle was shot:
a thousand miles of twilight clouds hang flat.
When Wang Wei treats scenes of violent force, as in the poem above, he transforms
them into a tightly controlled pattern. In the poem that follows, Wang Wei comes
upon a village festival near Liang-zhou, a northwestern border region where a few
386
The Tang Dynasty
Chinese farming families were trying to eke out a living. The "straw dogs" he men
tions were part of the ritual to the field gods; they were treated with great reverence
during the ceremony, but after the rites were finished, they were thrown on the
ground and trampled. As the ancient Daoist classic, the Lao-zi, observed:
Heaven and Earth are not kind:
for them all things are straw dogs.
Sight-Seeing in the Moors Outside of Liang-zhou

Old men of the prairie, two or three homes
a frontier village, few neighbors around.
A swaying dance for the local festival,
pipes and drums worship the god of fields.
Ale is sprinkled, wetting straw dogs,
they burn incense, bow to the wooden idol.
The shamanka dances in frenzy,1
dust shows on her stockings of gauze.
THE IMAGE OF THE FARMER
The observer may be fascinated by what he sees, but so long as he remains an ob

server, he can never fully enter the world on which he looks. This is evident in some
of the poems in which Wang treats the life of farming~an idyllic world to which
he was greatly drawn.
Farming Homes by Wei River

The setting light falls on a hamlet,
through narrow lanes cattle and sheep return.
An old man, concerned for the herdboy,
leans on his staff and waits by the door of a shack.
A pheasant cries out, wheat sprouts rise high,
the silkworms sleep, the mulberry leaves now few.
Fieldhands come, hoes over shoulders;
when they meettheir talk is friendly and warm.
At this moment I yearn for freedom and ease,
and, downcast, I sing Hard Straits!
woman shaman.
387

The last line in the poem above alludes to the Classic of Poetry XXXVI. According to the
Mao interpretation, this was written when the Count o f Li was in W ei and his liegemen were
trying to encourage him to return home.
Classic of Poetry X X X V I KHard Straits

Hard straits, hard straits,
why not now go back?

Only on our lords behalf
are we here upon the road.
Hard straits, hard straits,
why not now go back?
Only for a man, our lord,

are we here within the muck.
The reason Wang W ei sings "Hard Straits" is not for the fu ll context given in the orthodox
Mao interpretation, but only for the line, "W h y not now go back?" This line had been used
three centuries earlier by Tao Q ian in his famous rhapsody, "R e tu rn , in w hich he declared
his decision to give up service to the government and return to his farm. The "Farming
Homes that W ang W ei describes from the view point o f an outsider make up the w orld to
w hich Tao Q ian actually returned to dw ell. Thus, in the second ofTao's "Returning to Dw ell
in Gardens and F ie ld s, we can find several o f the images later developed in W ang W ei's
poem.
Tao Qian, Returning to Dwell in Gardens and Fields III

In the outlands few things trouble a man,
and narrow lanes do lessen coach wheels.
close the d o o r o f m y shack,
a bare room from worldly fancies removed.
In d aylight I
Now and then in the village bends,

men come and go, pushing back brush.
When they see each other, their talk is pure
of all but how tall hemp and mulberry grow.
Each day the mulberry and hemp grow taller,
each day my land extends more widely.
Yet I always fear that the frost will come
and they will fall to ruin with common weeds.
There cannot be very much to say about the state of the mulberry and hemp, but the idea
of talking about the mulberry and h e m p ~ th e idea o f a w o rld whose only concerns were
simple, practical, and im m ediate~w as a topic o f endless interest and appeal to poets of rural
life. W e find it also in W ang W ei's older contemporary, Meng Hao-ran. Although Meng Hao-
The Tang Dynasty

ran was not o f the same social status as Wang W ei, Meng's friend was probably a gentle
man farmer rather than a poor peasant.
Meng Hao-ran, Stopping by the M anor of an O ld Friend

My old friend cooked chicken and millet,
and invited me to his farm.
Green trees converge on the villages edge,
blue hills slant outside the stockades.
He lays out our feast facing his garden,
we chat, wine in hand, of mulberry and hemp.
Lets wait till the Double Ninth comes
and Ill come back for chrysanthemums.
Gazing into the Wilds Under Newly Cleared Skies

Newly cleared skies, the meadows vast,
no speck of dust as far as eyes can see.
Town gates stand by the crossing,
village trees reach to a stream valleys mouth.
Beyond the fields, silver waters bright,
behind hills a sapphire peak appears.
N o ones at ease in the farming months
all the household is working the southern acres.
To Pei Di
The scene is lovely at the evening of day,
as here with you I write new poems.
Serene we gaze into distant skies,
our chins resting upon our canes.
Spring breeze is stirring all the plants,
and the orchids grow in my hedge.
A hazy sun warms the chambers,
as a field hand comes to give word:
Joyously spring returns to the marsh,
the waters rise churning up the banks.
Though peach and plum have not yet bloomed,
buds and sprouts now fill their boughs.
Ready your staff, sir, to turn hom e~

be advised that the time for farmwork is soon.
389

THE QUIET LIFE
Wang Wei is best known for celebrating the joys of private life, removed from the
struggles and responsibilities of the government office.
When Living Quietly at Wang-chuan I Gave This to Pei Di

Cold mountains grow ever more azure-gray,
falls floods churn more loudly each passing day.
And I rest on my staff outside this rough gate
breeze on my face, I listen to twilight cicadas.
The ford holds the remnants of setting sun;
from a hamlet rises a lone column of smoke.
Now once again I meet Jie Yu, the drunk
that reckless singer before the five willows.1
Villa on Zhong-nan Mountain

In my middle years I came to much love the Way
and late made my home by South Mountains edge.
When the mood comes upon me, I go off alone,
and have glorious moments all to myself.
I walk to the point where a stream ends,
and sitting, watch when the clouds rise.
By chance I meet old men in the woods;
we laugh and chat, no fixed time to turn home.
Answering Magistrate Zhang

Now late in life I love only stillness,
the worlds concerns touch not my heart.
I look within and find no great plans,
know only to return to the woods of my home.
There wind through pines blows my sash untied,
moon of the hills shines on playing a harp.
ie Yu was the ancient "madman of Chu," who once sang to Confucius of the phoenix and the de
cline of virtue. The "five willow s" refers to "Master Five W illows," Tao Qian's nameless recluse who
was a figure for himself.
The Tang Dynasty

You ask the pattern of failure and success?
the fishermans song reaches deep past the shore.

The fisherman was an important figure in the tradition, a figure o f rustic freedom and some
one w ho both rides w ith the times and bides his time. The "fisherman's song" mentioned in
the last line above recalls the famous song sung by the legendary fisherman w ho met the
distraught exile Q u Yuan and offered him wise advice. The w ork is from the "Lyrics o f Chu"
and the Historical Records:
The Fisherman {Chu-ci, author unknown, 3rd century B.C.?)

Qu Yuan had been cast out, and he roamed by the rivers deep pools, reciting
verses as he went by the marshy banks. His countenance looked wretched and
drawn; his shape was shriveled and gaunt. A fisherman saw him and asked, Are
you not the Thane of the Three Clans?for what cause have you been brought to
this?
Qu Yuan then said,
The whole of this age is filthy,

and I alone am clean.
The crowds of men are all drunk,
and I alone am sober.
For this I have been cast out.
Then the fisherman said,

A Sage does not get bogged down in things,
he is able to shift and get by with his age.
Iall the men in this age are filthy,
why not stir their mud and ride the wave?
If the crowds of men are all drunk,
why not feed on the mash and sip the foam?
What purpose in somber broodings to rise above them
that you caused yourself to be cast out?
Qu Yuan answered, This I have heard: whoever has recently washed his hair must
dust off his cap, and whoever has just bathed must shake out his clothes. How can
I permit such untainted purity as mine to receive defilement from worldly things?
Far better to journey to the currents of the Xiang and there to be interred in the bel
lies of the fish. How can I permit such radiant whiteness to endure being covered by
the foul dust of the ways of this age?
The fisherman smirked and went his way, rhythmically dipping his paddle. And
as he wenthe sang:
When Cang-lang
s water is clean,
I can use it to wash a sheet;
when Cang-langs water is dirty,
^91

I can use it to wash my feet.
Then he was gone and said nothing more.
Note that what the fisherman actually w ould wash when Cang-Iang's waters were clean were
the strings that held his hat on. Like a "sheet," these w ould come up dirtier than they went
in if the water were less than perfectly clean. I have substituted the sheet both to carry the
point and to catch the sense o f a jingle.
THE "WANG STREAM COLLECTION"
Perhaps Wang Wei's most famous single work is the "Wang Stream Collection,"
twenty quatrains on various spots on his Wang Stream estate. Wang Wei's close
friend Pei Di wrote another twenty quatrains on the same sites. Wang's quatrains
are difficult to translate, not because they present linguistic problems, but because
they are so flat and plain. Even in their extreme simplicity, Wang Wei's endless fas
cination with seeing and the relativity of perception is evident.
This set of poems is associated with a painting Wang Wei did of his estate that
contained the sites mentioned. The painting now survives only in many dubious
copies.
The Hollow by Mengs Walls

New home in a breach in Mengs walls
where of ancient trees remain dying willows.
W ho will be those who are yet to come?
pointless grief at the holding by men before.
Hua-zi Hill
The birds in flight go off without ceasing,
once again autumns hues come to joined hills.
I go up and go down Hua-zi Hill,
when will this downcast mood reach its end?

I cut fine-grained apricot for its beams,
and sweet-smelling rushes were tied for the roof.
I did not expect that the raftersclouds
would go off to make rain in the mortal world.2
2The clouds and rain here recall, enigmatically, the goddess of Wu Mountain, who had a sexual en
counter with the King of Chu in a dream.
The Tang Dynasty
Jin Bamboo Ridge

Lissome stalks shine in deserted bends
and roll, green and sapphire, in the ripples.
Enter unseen on the Shang Mountain road,
and even the woodsmen do not know.
Deer Fence
No one is seen in deserted hills,
only the echoes of speech are heard.
Sunlight cast back comes deep in the woods
and shines once again upon the green moss.3
Magnolia Fence
Autumn hills draw in the last sunlight,
birds in flight follow companions ahead.
The glittering azure is often quite clear,
and nowhere is evenings haze to be found.
Dogwood Strand
When they form their berries red and green,
it seems like the flowers blooming again.
If we have a guest linger here in the hills,
I will set before him this dogwood cup.
The Lane of Palace Ash Trees

A slanting path, shaded by palace ash,
in hidden shadows is much green moss.
The gatekeeper sweeps only for visitors,
wary a mountairf monk may come.
Pavilion Overlooking the Lake

A light scull greets my worthy guest
! who comes from afar across the lake.
We will sit facing wine by the balcony
with lotuses blooming on every side.
3"Sunlight cast back" refers to the late afternoon sunlight which, being low in the skies, comes in
under overhead obstructions and seems to cast its rays back toward the east.
393
South Cottage
A light boat goes off to south cottage
north cottage, hard to reach over vast floods.
O n the far bank look at mens houses
we cant tell them apart so far away.
Lake Qi
Playing the pipes we pass to far shores,
I bid you a twilight farewell.
Upon the lake turn your head just once~
hills green is rolling the white clouds up.
Willow Waves4
Lacy trees, touching in separate rows,
reflect in clear ripples upside down.
Do not copy those by the royal moat
that suffer from parting in the spring breeze.
Rapids by the Luan Trees

The moaning of wind in autumn rain,
swift waters trickling over the stones.
Leaping waves strike one another
a white egret flies up in alarm, then comes down.
Gold Dust Spring

You drink each day from Gold Dust Spring,
with a little youll live a thousand years.
A blue phoenix coach soars with striped dragons,
feathered ensigns go to Jade Emperors court.
White Stone Rapids

White Stone Rapids are shallow and clear,
green reeds almost ready to gather in hand.
There are homes on both sides of the water
and gossamer washed in bright moonlight.
4W ilIow branches were commonly snapped when parting from a friend, "w illo w " (liu) being homophonous with "stay" (liu). Since officers in Chang-an were constantly being sent off in military
service or to civil posts in the provinces, the willows by the royal moat tended to have more
snapped branches than most.
394
The Tang Dynasty
North Cottage
North cottage, north of lake waters,
mixed trees half hide its red railii^gs.
South rivers waters wind far away
appear and vanish at green forests edge.
Lodge in the Bamboo

I sit alone in bamboo that hides me,
plucking the harp and whistling long.
It is deep in the woods and no one knows
the bright moon comes to shine on me.
Magnolia Dell
On the tips of trees are lotus blossoms,
red calyces come out in the mountains.
Silent gate by a torrent, no one there:
in tangled masses they blossom and fall.
Lacquer Tree Garden

That man of old was no disdainful clerk,5
he just lacked the mission to run the world.
He happened to lodge in a minor post
several trees swayed there dancing.
Pepper Tree Garden

A cinnamon beaker greets the gods child,
the asarum, a gift fpr the fairest of all.
O n onyx mats peppered libations of beer
to bring down the Lord in the Clouds.6
Meng Hao-ran (ca. 689-740)

Display of scorn for the compromises that must be made in public life was one of
the most attractive poetic gestures for eighth-century poets and readers alike. The
Tang elite admired free spirits, and Meng Hao-ran made a name for himself as a free
spirit. Meng was a provincial who went to the capital of Chang-an in hopes of gain
ing a post in the central government; although he did eventually serve briefly on the
5The "disdainful clerk" was Zhuang-zi, who once held the post of clerk of "Lacquer Tree Garden."
6The "Lord in the Clouds" and other images in this quatrain are drawn from "The Nine Songs" of
the "Lyrics of Chu."
395

staff of a provincial governor, he did not succeed in his political ambitions. Never
theless, he won the admiration of a wide range of writers and intellectuals.
Going from Luo-yang to Yue

Restless and troubled for thirty years now,
with nothing achieved by book or by sword.
I go looking for landscapes in W u and Yue,
dusty winds in the capitals weary me.
This small boat will sail the lakes and seas,
with long bows I leave both lords and grandees.
I will find brief joy in that thing in the cup,7
and think no more of my name in the world.

We set our sails and gazed southeast
to the blue hills and river lands far.
Prows push ahead in the struggle for gain,
back and forth, meeting winds and high water.
Then ask me where am I headed now?
to visit Tian-tai and its Bridge of Stone.
I look now on mornings colored clouds
and they seem the crest of Redwall Mountain.
Early Cold on the River: Something on My Mind

Trees shed their leaves, the geese cross south,
and the north winds bring cold to the river.
M y home is where the Xiangs waters bend,
I am blocked from it far by C hu
s cloudsedge.
Tears for home have been spent in travels,
I watch a lone sail at the margin of sky.
Having missed the fordif you should ask
level lake and vast floods in the evening.
7"That thing in the cup" is a kenning for ale.
396
The Tang Dynasty

The visual image given in the final couplet of the preceding poem has a special resonance,
echoing one of the most famous passages in the Analects (XVIII.6). Confucius, on his way
back to his native state o f Lu, seems to have been looking for nothing more than a way across
the local river. He did not anticipate that the question w ould be posed to a pair o f zany Daoist
plowm en, w ho tended to understand things figuratively rather than literally.
Confucius, Analects X V III. 6

Chang-ju and Jie-ni were plowing as a team. Confucius passed by and sent Zilu to ask about the ford from them.
Chang-ju said, Who is that holding the wagon?
Zi-lu replied, That is Confucius
The Confucius of Lu?
The very one

KHe already knows of the ford!
Then Zi-lu asked Jie-ni, and Jie-ni said, (tWho are you?
He answered, I am Zhong You, called Zi-lu.
Are you the follower of Confucius?

He replied, That is so.
A vast, surging floodthe whole world is thus. And who can change it
thereby? It would be better for you to follow those who flee the world
altogether than to follow someone who flees this person and that. And he
continued plowing without pause.
Zi-lu went and told the Master, who sighed and said, We cannot join the
flocks of birds or the packs of beasts. What can I be a part of except to be a
man among other men? If the Way were already in the world, I would not
seek to change things.M
Li Bo (701-762)
Li Bo was a native of Sichuan, a region renowned for its swashbuckling knights er
rant, its writers, and its eccentrics. His family background was uncertain: some have
suggested that he was of Turkish descent. As a young man he became involved with
Daoist adepts, and through the patronage of the Daoist Wu Yun, he was introduced
to the court of Xuan-zong, where he enjoyed a brief period of imperial favor, serv
ing as an imperially appointed Han-lin Academician. His unconventional (by some
accounts, rude) behavior provoked hostility and eventually led to his dismissal, after
which he wandered through the East and Southeast, living off his reputation and com
plaining about his loss of court favor. After the outbreak of the An Lu-shan Rebel
lion, he joined the Prince of Yun, who was attempting to establish an independent
regime in the Southeast. When the An Lu-shan Rebellion was put down and the cen
tral government reasserted its authority, Li Bo was arrested for treason. Eventually
he was pardoned and died a few years later, without ever regaining the imperial favor
he both sought and scorned.
397

LEGENDS AND CHARACTERS OF THE YUE-FU
Li Bo was, above all, a poet of fantasy. An attractive image from the world of the
Chu-ci or from the yue-fu, the noblest recluse or the bravest soldierLi Bo could
imagine all these and himself living in such roles. In the following yue-fu, an es
sentially "poetic" recreation of the world of ancient myth has replaced the religious
vision of the Xiang River goddesses that we have in "The Nine Songs."
This song is based on the legends that grew up around the Xiang goddesses, who
were supposed to have been the daughters of the Sage-King Yao and wives of his
successor Shun. Shun, who was said to have had double pupils in each eye, died
roaming in the Far South and was buried at Cang-wu in the Nine Doubts mountain
range. Upon hearing of his death, his two wives drowned themselves and became
goddesses of the Xiang River. The tears they shed when they learned of Shun's death
fell on bamboo and stained them, producing the spotted bamboo of the Xiang re
gion.
Parted by Great Distances

Parted by great distances:
so it was long ago with two women,
Yaos daughters, E-huang and Nii-ying.
It happened south of Lake Dong-ting,
on the shores of the rivers Xiao and Xiang.
The great lakes waters are deep,
a thousand miles straight down
could anyone say this separation
was anything but pain?
The sun was veiled and somber,
clouds hung shadowy black,
apes were screeching in the mists,
wraiths wailed through rain.
Even were I to tell you all,
theres nothing I could mend.
I fear the gods heavens will never shine
and show my steadfast honor
thunder booms,
roaring in fury.
Yao and Shun held it,
yet abdicated to Yu
ruler lost subject,
dragon turned to fish;
power went to subject,
the rat became a tiger.
Others say
Yao was kept close in prison,
398
The Tang Dynasty
Shun died out in the wilds,

Yet the Nine Doubts Range
is an unbroken line of peaks
and each looks much alike
we will never know where to find the lonely tomb
of the king with two pupils in each eye.
The regal daughters are weeping
off within green clouds;
they went along with the wind and waves
and never returned.
It moves me to tears,
I gaze afar
and see deepset hills
at Cang-wu.
The mountain at Cang-wu may fall,
and the Xiang may stop its flow,
only then will the stains disappear
of their tears upcTn bamboo.
Li Bo was often drawn to the stock figures of yue-fu, and would elaborate scenes
out of the old yue-fu titles, as in the poem below.
The Crows Cry by Night

Beside the walls in yellow clouds
the crows are ready to roost,
back they fly with a Caw, cawcaw
and cry out on the boughs.
Weaving brocade upon her loom,
a girl from the rivers of Qin
speaks beyond a window of gauze
green like sapphire mist.
Thendowncast, she stops her shuttle,
recalling the man far away,
and stays in her chamber all alone
where her tears fall like the rain.

We may compare one of the Southern Dynasties yue-fu quatrains on this subject to get a
sense o f the difference between the lively folk version and the more sentimental Tang liter
ary treatment.
399
Anonymous, Songs of the W est

The Crows Cry by Night IV
Hateful old crow!
Sheer ballyhoo that it tells the dawn.
It sang out for nothing at midnight,
and my love went off in the dark.
Reproach
The fair woman raises the beaded drapes,
then sits far back and knits her brows.
You see only damp traces of her tears,
cannot know the man who bears her reproach.
THE UNDYING
Li Bo was very much part of an eighth-century "counterculture," consorting with wiz

ards like Si-ma Cheng-zhen and experimenting with various elixirs and drugs. He
became a Daoist initiate, and one cannot separate his belief from his poetic image
of the world beyond ours. Stories of encounters with immortals and flights through
the heavens appear again and again in his poetry.
The Old Airs V

How gray and green stands Mount Tai-bo
with stars lined in dark ranks above.
Short of heaven but three hundred miles,
remote and disjoined from the world of men.
Up there an old man with blue-black hair,
mantled in cloud, lies in snow of pines.
He does not laugh, he does not speak,
in darkness he roosts in cave on cliff.
I have come to meet this Genuine One
long I kneel to ask for a spell.
He then shows teeth sparkling like jade
and gives the prescription for refining herbs.
It is written on bone to pass on his words,
his body shoots up, flares out like lightning.
I look after him but cannot reach him,
my passions, swelling in me, burn.
I will work on the nugget of cinnabar
and leave forever the men of this world.
400
The Tang Dynasty
The Old Airs VII

There was once one Undying on a crane
who flew and flew up over Purest Ether.
He raised his voice within sapphire clouds
and said that his name was An-qi.
Then couple by couple, came lads like white jade
blowing lavender phoenix pipes in pairs.
Fleeting outlines at once no longer seen,
whirling gusts send their sounds back from sky.
I look up, from afar gaze after them,
tossed through the air like shooting stars.
I would dine on that herb called Goldenray,
and live a long lifematching Heavens span.
A Song on Visiting Heavens Crone Mountain in a Dream:

On Parting
Seafarers speak of that isle of Ying
but in blurred expanses of breakers and mist
it is hard indeed to find.
Yue men tell of Heavens Crone,
appearing, then gone, it may be seen
in the clouds and colored wisps.
Heavens Crone reaches to sky
and sideways runs to the sky,
its force stands over the Five Great Peaks
it casts Redwall in the shade.
Mount Tian-tai is forty and eight
thousand yards high,
yet facing this it seems to tip,
sagging southeastwardly.
And Iwishing to reach that place,
once dreamed of Wu and Yue,
I spent a whole night flying across
the moon in Mirror Lake.
The lake moon caught my reflection,
and went with me on to Shan Creek.
The place where Lord Xie spent the night
is still to be found there now,
where green waters are ruffled in ripples,
and the gibbons wail is clear.
401
I put on the clogs of Lord Xie,8

and scaled that ladder into blue clouds.
Halfway up cliffside I saw sun in sea,
and heard in the air the Heaven-Cock crow.
A thousand peaks and ten thousand turns,
my path was uncertain
I was lost among flowers and rested on rock,
when suddenly all grew black.
Bears roared and dragons groaned,
making the cliff-streams quake,
the deep forests were shivering, tiered ridges shook,
clouds hung blue, portending rain,
troubled waters rolled, giving off mists.
Thunder-rumbling in Lightning Cracks,
hill ridges split and fell;
then the stone doors of Caves to Heaven
swung open with a crash.
A billowing vast blue blackness
whose bottom could not be seen,
where sun and moon were gleaming
on terraces silver and gold.
Their coats were of rainbow, winds were their steeds,
the lords of the clouds came down in their hosts.
Tigers struck harps, phoenixes drew coaches in circles,
those who are the Undying stood in ranks like hemp.
All at once my soul was struck, and my spirit shuddered,
I leapt up in dazed alarm, and gave a long sigh.
I was aware only of this moments pillow and mat,
I had lost those mists and bright wisps that had been here just
before.
All pleasures in our mortal world
are also just like this,
whatever has happened since ancient times
is the water flowing east.
When I leave you nowyou go, when will you ever return?
just set a white deer out to graze
upon green mountainsides,
and when I must go. 111 ride it
to visit mountains of fame.
8The wclogs of Lord XieH are the mountain-climbing shoes that Xie Ling-yun supposedly invented.
402
The Tang Dynasty
How can I pucker my brows and break my waist

serving power and prestige?
it makes me incapable
of relaxing heart or face.
Dialogue in the Mountains

You ask me why it is
I lodge in sapphire hills;
I laugh and do not answer
the heart is at peace.
Peach blossoms and flowing water
go offfading away afar,
and there is another world
that is not of mortal men.
POEMS ALMOST OF THIS WORLD
Even when speaking from the world "of mortal m e n , there is often a strong element
of imaginative transformation in Li Bc/s poetry. He was a performer, whose gestures
and claims were larger than life. Great civilizations are built on the immense restraint
of individuals, and individuals consequently tend to be drawn to artistic figures of
unrestraint, able to break free of convention. The great popularity of Li Bo's poetry
was in no small measure due to such an image of himself displayed in his poems.
Drinking Alone by Moonlight

Here among flowers one flask of wine,
with no close friends, I pour it alone.
I lift cup to bright moon, beg its company
then facing my shadow, we become three.
The moon has never known how to drink;
my shadow does nothing but follow me.
But with moon and shadow as companions the while,
this joy I find must catch spring while its here.
I sing, and the moon just lingers on;
I dance, and my shadow flails wildly.
When still sober we share friendship and pleasure,
then, utterly drunk, each goes his own way~
Let us join to roam beyond human cares
and plan to meet far in the river of stars.
403
Summer Day in the Mountains

Lazily waving a white feather fan,
stripped naked here in the greenwood,
I take off my headband, hang it on rockface,
my bare head ruffled by wind through pines.
Rising Drunk on a Spring Day, Telling M y Intent

We are lodged in this world as in a great dream,
then why cause our lives so much stress?
This is my reason to spend the day drunk
and collapse, sprawled against the front pillar.
When I wake, I peer out in the yard
where a bird is singing among the flowers.
Now tell me, what season is this?
the spring breeze speaks with orioles warbling.
I am so touched that I almost sigh
I turn to the wine, pour myself more,
Then sing wildly, waiting for the moon,
when the tune is done, I no longer care.
Getting Out What I Feel

I face my wine, unaware of darkness growing,
the falling flowers cover my clothes.
Drunk, I rise, tread moonlight in creek
the birds turn back, men too grow fewer.
A Lament for Old Mr. Ji5 the Finest Brewer in Xuan-cheng

Old Mr. Ji in the Yellow Springs9
again must be brewing his ripe spring beer.
Day never breaks on the Terrace of Night,
and who will buy his beer down there?
Han-shan: The Master of Cold Mountain

The Tang poets included a large number of Buddhist monks. Most poet-monks
worked entirely within the secular poetic tradition, though sometimes making ref
erence to Buddhist terms or adopting a mode of reclusive or landscape poetry that
vaguely suggested Buddhist values. In addition to these works, there is also a large
9The Yellow Springs is a term for the underworld.
The Tang Dynasty

body of doctrinal versification of little literary merit that is conserved in the corpus
of Buddhist religious writing.
The closest thing to true "religious poetry" in the Tang was a corpus of poems
attributed to one Han-shan ("Cold Mountain"), and a smaller group of poems at
tributed to his companion, Shi-de. Tradition once placed Han-shan in the seventh
century, but modern scholarship has shown that the poems in this corpus were writ
ten in at least two different centuries, and it is quite possible that a series of monks
were composing "Han-shan" poems through the entire course of the Tang. Who
ever is responsible for them, the best poems in this corpus give a vision of "Cold
Mountain" as a place that is also a state of mind, unlike anything in the secular po
etic tradition. The word for "road" (dao) in the first line of the poem below is also
the term for the "Way" (Dao), thus the line also refers to "Cold Mountain's Way," a
spiritual route that is more than physical.
m
Its fun to be on Cold Mountain Road,
yet it has no tracks of horses and carts.
Valley joins valley, bends past recall,
bluff upon bluff, too many to count.
A thousand different plants with tears of dew,
but pines all the same, moaning in wind.
When you lose the path at a moment like this,
shape asks shadowWhich way to go?
XVI
Someone asked me the way to Cold Mountain
to Cold Mountain no road goes through.
The ice does not melt on summers days,
when sun comes out, the fog there glows.
How did someone like me get there?
my heart is not at all like yours.
If your heart were just like mine,
then you could get there right away.
X X X II
I go climbing up the Cold Mountain road,
and Cold Mountains paths do not end.
Boulders lie heaped in the long ravines
broad torrents, and plants in the misty spray.
Moss, wet and slippery, not due to rain;
the pines make sounds without using wind.
Whoever is able to pass the worlds toils
may sit here with me inside the white clouds.
405

CCXXXII
M ans life in this dust-clouded world
is just like a bug in a bowl.
He spends all day going round and round,
but he doesnt leave that bowl.
The gods and Undying he cannot reach,
unnumbered illusions afflict him.
Years and months are like water that flows,
and then, in an instant, he
s old.
C CXXXIII
When Han-shan utters these words,
he may also seem like a crazy man.
When Fve something to say, I say it right out,
which is plenty to make others hate me.
If the heart is straightthe words are straight,
a straight heart has no other side.
When we die and cross the river N ai
1
who will be still spouting drivel?
So dark it will be on those paths down below
trapped in the toils of our karma/
The High Tang Quatrain
The quatrain or jue-ju was one of the most popular forms of verse; well over ten
thousand survive from the Tang. Quatrains could be dense and finely wrought, or
they could be freely composed, extempore. Quatrains, particularly those in the
seven-syllable line, were often sung by professional singing girls and performers. The
brevity of the form placed particular weight on the last line, which might be a beau
tifully suggestive image, subtle understatement, or a witty punch line.
The High Tang was one of those periods, like the Elizabethan era in England,
when the language and a shared poetic practice permitted otherwise unknown or
undistinguished writers to produce great poems, poems that are still widely known.
In the High Tang such poems were often quatrains, the swift and perfect gift of a
moment's inspiration.
Zhang Xu, Peach Blossom Creek

Half-hidden, a bridge soars up
beyond the mists of the moors,
on the west edge of the stone jetty
I ask the fishing boat.
1_The river Nai, which must be crossed by the souls of the dead, flows with blood out of Hell.
The Tang Dynasty
Blossoms of peach all day long

follow the flowing water,
but at what spot is found that cave
upon the blue creek?
The cave would lead to "Peach Blossom Spring, the idyllic farming community deep
in the mountains that was described by Tao Qian. The Tang imagination had trans
formed it into a true otherworldly realm, whose inhabitants had been made immortal.
Wang Han, Song of Liang-zhou

Sweet wine of the grape,
cup of phosphorescent jade,
at the point of drinking, mandolins play
on horseback, urging us on.
If I lie down drunk in the desert,
do not laugh at me!
men marched to battle since times long ago,
and how many ever returned?
The tone or mood of a poem was of great interest to traditional critics. In this case,
the bravado of the drinking is a foil for the soldier's sense of desperation. The Qing
critic Shen De-qian (1673-1769) comments, "Though he [Wang Han] uses the
terms of reckless drinking, the sadness is at its extreme/7"Song of Liang-zhou" was
a popular song evoking moments of a soldier's life on the frontier, and various poets
wrote lyrics for it.
Wang Zhi-huan (688- 742)Song of Liang-zhou

The yellow sands stretch off and up,
up into white clouds,
the walls of a lonely fortress
on a mountain ten thousand feet high.
Why is that Tibetan flute
playing Willowswith such bitter pain?
the winds of spring have never passed
Jade Gate Barrier.
"Breaking Willows" was another popular song, one that often spoke of the pain of
parting and separation. The reason why a soldier in an isolated Chinese garrison
would be playing it so mournfully is obvious; but the speaker feigns ignorance, re
minding the listener that since there are no willows here, there should be no cause
for pain at the sight of spring willows, whose branches were customarily snapped
by people saying goodbye to one another.
407
Parting
The willows, trees of the eastern gate,
stand green as they line the royal moat.
They have recently suffered branches snapped
I suppose because partings were many.
Climbing Stork Tower

The bright sun rests on the hills and is gone,
the Yellow River flows into the sea.
If you want to see a full thousand miles,
climb just one more story of this tower.

Later ages w ould remember on ly W ang Zhi-huan^ famous quatrain above, and not the qua
train by the Southern Dynasties poet Zhang Rong (444-497) that set the model for it.
Parting
The bright clouds on the hills are gone,
the cool breeze ceases beneath the pines.
If you want to recognize partings sorrow,
see the bright moon over the lonely terrace.
Tang poets often took images and patterns from poems of their predecessors and re
worked them time and again. Sometimes, as was the case with Wang Zhi-huan's
quatrain, a Tang poet would produce a version so perfect that it would become a
classic and the earlier versions would be largely forgotten.
Quatrains sometimes celebrated specific cities and regions, each with its own
reputation. The simple "Song of Xiang-yangthat follows is presented as a courte
san's song.
Cui Guo-fu, Song of Xiang-yang

Xiang-yang is a young mans place,
they come and go through the city.
All the fun-loving men of the town
know my skill on the harp of Qin.
The Tang Dynasty
Midcurrent Song
When I came back, the sun still was high,
I wished to go on to the flowering isles.
But at the crossing the current was hard,
and my boat whirled around, out of control.
A Little Chang-gan Song

The moon grew dark in the wind
that came with the rising waters,
and I was out looking for you, ^
but couldnt find my way
then a song of picking water chestnuts
was sung again and again,
and I knew you were here,
'
somewhere on the pond.
Wang Chang-ling (ca. 690-ca. 756)Army Song

A dust storm over the Gobi,
darkening the sunlight,
red banners half-furled
come forth from the generals gate.
The forward columns fought by night
north of the river Tiao
word has come that theyve captured
the Tu-yu-hun alive.2
In the song below, the Han emperor Wu is meeting his future empress Wei for the
first time. She was originally a singer and dancer in the palace of Princess Ping-yang.
Song of the Spring Palace

Last night the breeze brought to bloom
the peach by the open well,
in front of Wei-yang Palace
the moons orb stands high.
A dancer of Princess Ping-yang
has recently found favor
2The Tang loved the exotic names of Central Asia as people everywhere have loved sonorously ex
otic names. The Tu-yu-hun was actually the name of a Central Asian people, but here it clearly stands
for the chief.
against springs chill beyond the drapes

he gives her a coat of brocade.
Reproach in the Womens Chambers

The young wife in her chambers
had never known of sorrow,
on a spring day with her make-up on
she climbed the blue upper story.
She suddenly saw beside the lane
the colors of the willow,
and regretted having sent her husband
to seek glory in the army.
Chu Guang-xi (707760)The Roads of Luo-yang: Presented to

the Director Lii Xiang (one of five)
The spring ice melts on the river Luo,
in Luo-yangs walls spring trees turn green.
Just look on the great roads at daybreak,
how around horses hooves the fallen flowers swirl.
Song of the Southland (one of four)

When on the long river the sun goes down,
he invites her to come to the crossing.
Fallen flowers, as if with a will of their own
go back and forth chasing the wakes of boats.
The following is an excellent example of an extempore, epigrammatic style~a pro
found joke in verse that is close to doggerel. Jing-yun carries the conventional praise
of a painting's verisimilitude a step too far.
Jing-yun (monk)Painting of a Pine

That painted pine looks exactly
like a real pine tree
now wait a moment and let me think
whether I can recall
It was up upon Mount Tian-tai
that I saw it once before
to the south side of the Stone Bridge,
the third trunk over.
Cang Jie was the legendary inventor of Chinese characters. The idea for the char
acters supposedly came to Cang Jie's mind after seeing the tracks of birds.
The Tang Dynasty
Cen Shen (715-770), On the Terrace of Cang Jie?s Invention of

Characters at the San-hui Temple
A wilderness templeits grass-grown terrace at dusk,
the weather cold, its ancient trees groan.
On deserted stairs there are tracks of birds
still like that time when he first invented writing.
AN OUTING ON LAKE DONG-TING
In the autumn of 759, a.group of old friends, then exiles, who had known one an
other in the capital in better days, met in the South by Lake Dong-ting. One of these
friends was the poet Li Bo; another was Jia Zhi. They all went out on a boating ex
cursion onto Lake Dong-ting in the evening, and there Li Bo wrote a series of five
of his most famous quatrains celebrating the beauty of moment. Three quatrains by
Jia Zhi on the occasion also survive and show how the powerof a shared style could
enable a minor literary talent to write almost as the equal of one of the two greatest
poets of the dynasty. Li Bo's poems show his inclination to transform earthly scenes
into scenes of fantasy; Jia Zhi's poems are written in the more characteristic qua
train style of the age but are every bit as memorable. Both poets called to mind echoes
of exile and death beyond the edges of the vast lake, places like Chang-sha, where
the Han intellectual Jia Yi was banished, and the Xiang River region, where the Lady
of the Xiang and her sister must still be weeping for their husband, the Sage-King
Shun.
Li Bo, Accompanied by My Kinsman Li Ye, Formerly

Vice Director of the Ministry of Justice, and by Jia Zhi,
Formerly Drafter in the Secretariat, I Go on an Excursion on
Lake Dong-ting (four of five poems)
I
West I gaze from Lake Dong-ting
where the river divides in Chu,
waters stretch southward to the sky,
with not a cloud to be seen.
The sun is setting in Chang-sha,
autumns colors are far,
and Iunaware of the place where she weeps
the Lady of the Xiang.
n
South on the lake the autumn waters
are without mist this night~
would that we could ride these currents
straight up into sky!
Come for the while to Lake Dong-ting,
stock up on moonbeams,
411
then take your boat and buy some wine

beside the white clouds.
IV
To the west of Lake Dong-ting
is the glow of the autumn moon,
north of the rivers Xiao and Xiang
the sw^ns are flying early.
Drunken travelers fill the boat
all singing "White Linen,M
unaware that the frost and dew
gets into their autumn clothes.
V
To Xiao abd Xiang the royal daughters
went and did not return,
all that remains are the autumn grasses
edging Lake Dong-ting.
The bright lake, swept calm and clear,
opens its mirror of jade,
and there in bright colors painted
is the Mountain of the Lady.3
Jia Zhi (718-772)On First Arriving in Ba-ling, Joining Li Bo

and Pei, We Go Boating on Lake Dong-ting (two of three)
I
These men that Fve met on the river
are all companions of old,
ever gazing on the hills of the Xiang
brings unbearable melancholy.
The bright moon, the autumn wind,
the waters of Lake Dong-ting,
a lone swanthe falling leaves, a tiny skiff.
II
A chaotic tumult of maple tree shores,
the falling leaves so many,
the autumn floods on Lake Dong-ting
late in the day bring waves.
In a light boat we go with our whim,
no care whether near or far,
among white clouds in bright moonlight
weep the Maidens of the Xiang.
3The Mountain of the Lady, Jun-shan, is in the middle of the lake, so named because it was sup
posedly visited by the goddesses, the wives of Shun.
412
Du Fu (712-770)
Ever since the importance of Du Fu's poetry first came to be recognized early in the
ninth century, readers of many different periods and types have considered Du Fu
to be the greatest poet of the Chinese tradition. Such genera
though not universal)

consensus can partially be explained by the immense variety of Du Fu's work,
which sustained quite different tastes and historical changes in fashion. In part, that
consensus was also a consequence of the inertia of "canon"; like Shakespeare in the
English tradition, Du Fu's poetry came to be so deeply bound up with the constitu
tion of literary value that generation after generation of poets and critics rediscov
ered themselves and their interests in some aspect of the poet's work. Consequently,
when challenges were posed to the tradition of classical poetry as a whole~as oc
curred in the late Ming_ Du Fu bore the brunt of the critique.
Chinese critics from the Song Dynasty on often referred to Du Fu as the "poethistorian
and indeed, if a reader is interested in the particular details of the period

of the An Lu-shan Rebellion, he or she will find in Du Fu comments on current events
and powerful images of the historical moment eliciting an immediacy that always
eluded the h isto ria n proper. The Confucian interpretation of the Classic of Poetry as
bearing witness to the history of the Zhou Dynasty lent authority to such a use of
poetry; Du Fu saw himself in the role of the engaged witness of a general political
and social situation that reveals itself in particulars. In a larger sense, Du Fu was the
historian of himself, creating in his responses to particular situations a coherent life
story.
It was perhaps this sense of the poet's life that made Du Fu one of the first to
have his poems arranged chronologically in early editions, a practice that contin
ued in most later editions of his work. For this reason, Du Fu's poems have been tra
ditionally read in the context of the stages of his life. Though much in his poetry
transcends a purely biographical reading, this remains a convenient way to first ap
proach it.
Early Du Fu
Du Fu's earliest extant poems date from his maturity as an aspirant for office in
Chang-an. He was already someone more than merely competent in the various
kinds of writing that were popular in the 740s and early 750s, though his work did
not yet give evidence of the depth and complexity that was to come. Some of his
early occasional poems show him to be one of the most remarkable stylists of the
period. Du Fu was the grandson of Du Shen-yan, a major figure in the court poetry
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of the turn of the eighth century, and it seems that Du Fu took particular pride in his
mastery of that densely descriptive style.
Another Poem on Mr, Zheng's Eastern Pavilion

This splendid pavilion enters azure mists,
where comes autumn suns clear glow in disarray.
Fallen boulders slant upon mountain trees,
and clear ripples trail sheets of algae.
Lavender scales vault, colliding with shore,
a blue-gray hawk returns to guard the nest.
Towards evening I seek the road I must take,
with tattered clouds flying past horses flank.
Du Fu's early poems are not all as stylishly elegant as "Another Poem on Mr. Zheng's
Eastern Pavilion, In the same period, he also wrote in the bolder and freer style of
the 740s, with an extravagance reminiscent of Li Bo. Mei-pi Lake, at the edge of South
Mountains southwest of the capital, was a popular place for excursions.
A Mei-pi Lake Song

The brothers Cen have a passion for wonders
and took me to visit Mei-pi far away.
Earth and sky grew ashen and somber~
their color suddenly changed,
then thousands of acres of mighty waves,
a hoard of amethyst.
And into amethyst vistas spread
our boat set sail:
the experience strange, elation crested,
anxious thoughts then came,
of Behemoth rising and Leviathan,
ship-swallower~these are known no more,
but, alas, who will be by my side
in cruel winds and white water?
My hosts brocaded sails
unfurl on my behalf,
and the boatmans joy is great
that murky fog is gone.
Ducks scatter in confusion,
a rowing song begins,
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The Tang Dynasty
while murmurings of far music come

through the formless azure air.
Depths unmeasured
by plumbline or pole,
leaves of water chestnut, blossoms of lotus
drift as if freshly scrubbed.
And now in the very midst of the waters,
clear as some arm of the sea,
sinking infinite beneath us,
the black form of South Mountain.
South of midslope all the hill
lies here submerged,
a shimmering reflection stirred
in a plain of vast waters.
Upon its darkness our skiff rams
the cliff temple, Edge of Clouds,
till the moon comes out on the face of the waters
through the pass at Indigo Fields.
It is at this moment a jet black dragon
puffs a pearl from its jaws;
the god of waters strikes his drum,
the herds of dragons scurry.
Dancing and singing the spirits come forth,
the Hans Maidens, the Ladies of Xiang,
tasseled poles golden, kingfisher banners,
a radiance hovering in the half-real.
They are close by meyet I worry only
that their thunder and rain will come
and through the vast space the gods intent
is not understood.
Youth and your prime do not endure,
no escape from old age,
yet still there has ever been
much sorrow, great joy too.
"Mei-pi Lake Song" was written in a song style using a seven-syllable line. Each of
the main formal genres of poetry had its own distinct personality. The following poem
from about the same period also treats an excursion on Lake Mei-pi, but this poem
is a regulated verse in the seven-syllable line. In the Gothic excess of the preceding
poem, visions of gods and goddesses appear dancing as wisps of dark cloud stream
past the moon; the images of the regulated verse are, in contrast, almost precious,
as the reflections of dancers' fans appear in the bubbles made by fish.
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Boating on the Reservoir West of the City

Dark blue brows and gleaming teeth
are on this towered barge,
the transverse flutes and short fifes
lend sadness to far-off skies.
In the breeze of spring we let ivory masts
move along where they will;
through the drawn-out day we calmly watch
the brocade cables pulled.
Fish puff tiny waves
rippling the dancersfans,
swallows strut through windborne petals
falling on mats for dancing.
Had we not these smaller boats,
so skillful in plying their oars,
how could we have brought these hundred jugs
of ale that flows like a fountain?
Giving Account of Oneself

If one meaning of "lyric" is that the poet writes about himself, Chinese poetry had,
by the Tang, become a distinctly lyric poetry. Nevertheless, no poet before Du Fu,
with the possible exception of Tao Qian, had ever made such elaborate efforts to
give an account of himself. "A Song of My Cares .. .is the long poem Du Fu wrote
on leaving the capital to visit his family just before the rebellion of the frontier gen
eral An Lu-shan. There was a general sense of foreboding and unease about the po
litical situation at the time. Du Fu successfully weaves together self-analysis, politica
comment, and an account of public and private tragedy.
One reason for the appeal of Du Fu's poetry, and a reason his work often fails
in translation, is his mastery of the full range of the literary language, its nuances
and registers. Du Fu can be the most colloquial of High Tang poets, and also the
most erudite. Much of his work is studded with allusions and phrases with a cultural
resonance that eludes translation. The most obvious references require notes, and
translation must sacrifice the more subtle choices of words. To mention just two cases
here: when, in the fourth line, Du Fu says that he "secretly likened himself" to Hou
Ji and Xie, he deliberately echoes Confucius' comparison of himself to an ancient
sage in the Analects, and Du Fu's assumption of the authoritative voice of Confu
cius remains an undercurrent throughout the poem. Furthermore, not only were Hou
Ji and Xie good ministers of their respective rulers, each was the ancestor of a dy-
nasty. (This is ironically echoed later in the poem in the death of Du Fu's son from
hunger.) The second case occurs in the following couplet, when Du Fu says that he
has become "too large to be useful." Every contemporary reader would recognize
this phrase as the attribute of Hui-zi's gourd in the Zhuang-zi. The philosopher Huizi once complained to Zhuang-zi that he had grown a gourd that was y,too large to
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The Tang Dynasty

be useful, too heavy to carry liquid and too clumsy to handle, so that he finally
smashed it. Zhuang-zi chided him, saying that he simply did not know how to put
things to their proper use, that he could have made it into a boat and sailed away
in it (a possibility that Du Fu picks up on later when he speaks of his "goal to live
on the rivers and lakes"). Thus Du Fu mocks himself as being of little practical use
to the state, but at the same time quietly asserts the magnitude of his capacities, if
only their use were known.
A Song of My Cares When Going from the Capital to Feng-xian

A man of Du-ling in commoners clothes,
the older he grows, the more foolish his fancies.
So naive in all that he swore to become!
he secretly likened himself to Hou Ji and Xie.1
He proved at last too large to be useful,
white-haired now, and willing to bear privation.
When the coffin closes, all will be settled;
yet these goals ever look for fulfillment.
I worry for our folk to the end of my years,
I sigh, and my guts are in turmoil within.
I earn sneers from old men, once fellow students,
yet I sing out loudly, and with fierce intensity.
I do have aims to live on rivers and lakes,
there to see off my days, aloof and serene.
'
But Fve lived in an age of a Yao or a Shun2

and could not bear to withdraw forever.
Yet now the Halls of State are fully complete,
in the buildings structure, no gaps at all.3
Like sunflower and pulse, I bend to the sun
truly hard to rob a thing of its nature.
Then I look around on this ant-breed of men,
who can only go seeking their own little holes.
^ h e significance of the particular two ancient sages to whom Du Fu compares himself is ambigu
ous. On the one hand, Hou Ji and Xie were important ministers, Hou Ji serving the Sage-King Yao
as Master of Farming, and Xie serving Yu as the supervisor of education. But Hou Ji was also the
ancestor of the Zhou royal house, while Xie was the ancestor of the Shang.
2lt was conventional politeness to speak of the reigning emperor, in this case Xuan-zong, as a sageking, like Yao or Shun in high antiquity.
3That is, there are enough talented men to fill the necessary posts in the government and he, Du Fu,
is not needed.
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Why should they aspire to be Leviathan

planning rashly to sprawl in the deeps of the sea?4
Hereby I am aware of the pattern of life,
and am ashamed to alone strive for favor.
I have gone on thus stubbornly until now ~
I could not bear to just sink to the dust.
But at last I
m chagrined before Chao-fu, Xu Y ou/
men unable to alter their firm resolve.
I drink deeply to banish these thoughts for the while,
then burst into such an unhappy song.
It was years end, all plants were dying,
and the high hills had cracked in sharp winds.
The royal avenues lay sunken in shadow
as the traveler set forth at midnight.
The frosts were harsh, my coats belt snapped,
my fingers were stiffI could not tie it back.
At the break of dawn I passed Mount Li,
the imperial couch on its towering crest.6
Ill-omened auroras stuffed a cold sky,
and I tramped along slippery valley slopes.
Vapors surged swelling from Jasper Pool

where the royal guardsmen rub and clack.
There lord and courtiers linger in pleasures,
music stirs, thunders through empty space.
All granted baths there have long hat ribbons
7
no short tunics join in their feasts.
Yet silk bolts apportioned in the royal court
came first from the homes of poor women.
Whips were used on their menfolk,
and taxes were gathered to present to the palace.
His Majestys kindness in baskets for courtiers
is, in fact, to bring life to the principalities.
4ln this context, Leviathan, the monstrously large sea creature, seems to be a figure for grand vision
and high ambitions.
5Chao-fu (flNlest-father) and Xu You were exemplary recluses who refused the reins of government
when they were offered.
6This was Hua-qing Palace, the pleasure resort of Xuan-zong and Yang the Prized Consort.
7The primary attraction of Hua-qing Palace was its hot springs. Those with "long hat ribbonsare,
of course, the great officers of the court.
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The Tang Dynasty
If the courtiers scorn this ultimate rule,

it is not that Our Lord throws these things away.
Many officers now are filling the court,
it is fitting that kindly men tremble in fear.
Moreover, I
ve heard golden plate of the Household
is now all in the homes of the Marriage Kin.8
In the midst of great halls goddesses dance,
diaphanous film flares from marble flesh.
There are cloaks of sable to warm the guests,
as sad notes of flutes follow harps clear tones.
Guests are urged to taste camel-hoof soup,
frosty oranges weigh on the sweet tangerines.
'
Crimson gates reek with meat and wine,

while on the streets, bones of the frozen dead.
Grimness and grandeur, a mere foot apart,
so upsetting I cannot continue to tell.
My northbound cart came where the Jing meets the Wei,
at the official crossing I again changed my track.
Masses of waters came down from the west
looming high as far as the eye could see.
It seemed as if Kong-tong Mountain had come,
I feared it would knock and break pillars of sky.
We were lucky the bridge had not yet collapsed,
yet the sounds of its crossbeams creaked and groaned.
Travelers reached hands to help each other over,
if the river grew broader, we could not cross.
I had lodged my wife off in a different county,
ten mouths to protect from the winds and snow.
Who could go long without looking to them?
I hoped now to share their hunger and thirst.
When I came in the gate I heard crying out:
my young son had just died of hunger.
I could not suppress a wail of my own
when the whole lane was sobbing.
8The reference here is to the Yangs, the kin of the Prized Consort, who took every opportunity to
enrich themselves while the consort enjoyed Xuan-zong's favor.
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What troubles me is in being a father

my not getting food caused this infants death.
I could not have known that before the harvest
such calamity would come to our poverty.
All my life I have been exempt from taxes,
and my name is not registered for conscription.
Considering what bitter things happened to me,
ordinary people must be truly in dire straits.
I brood silent on those who lost livelihoods
then think of our troops on far campaigns.
Reasons to be troubled are as great as South Mountain,
a chaos that no one can gasp.
The Poetry of the Rebellion

In 755, the northeastern frontier command under An Lu-shan rebelled against the
central government and moved into the interior, first taking the Eastern capital, Luoyang, and then, after crushing the imperial army sent against them, occupying
Chang-an itself. Du Fu found himself behind enemy lines in the capital, comment
ing on the battles that loyalist troops were losing to An Lu-shan's armies and remi
niscing about the splendors of the capital during Xuan-zong's reign splendors that
seem to have vanished so quickly.
The View in Spring

A kingdom smashed, its hills and rivers still here,
spring in the city, plants and trees grow deep.
Moved by the moment, flowers splash with tears
alarmed at parting, birds startle the heart.
Wars beacon fires have gone on three months,
letters from home are worth thousands in gold.
Fingers run through white hair until it thins,
cap-pins will almost no longer hold.9
While Du Fu was behind rebel lines in Chang-an, the well-meaning but militarily
naTve minister Fang Guan was given charge of a large loyalist force sent against the
rebels. This army was divided into three divisions, and the central division first met
An Lu-shan's troops at Chen-tao Marsh. Fang Guan, a Confucian with great faith in
early texts, followed an ancient Zhou practice of putting the troops in oxcarts flanked
by horses. The rebels used fire to panic the oxen, and the imperial troops were slaugh9The cap that Du Fu would have pinned in his thinning hair was that of an official.
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The Tang Dynasty

tered. Soon afterward, a similarly disastrous defeat was inflicted on the southern di
vision of the army at Greenslope.
Lament for Chen-tao

In winters first month, from ten provinces
sons of good families
their blood became the water that stood
in the marshes of Chen-tao.
The moors were wide, the sky was clear,
of battle there was no sound:
forty thousand imperial troops
had died on the very same day.
Bands of Turks were coming back
wiping their arrows clean,
still singing their nomad songs
they drank in the capital market.
Citizens of the capital turned
to face the north and weep,
day and night they keep looking
for loyalist armies to come.
Lament for Greenslope

Our army was at Greenslope
right by the eastern gate,
weather was cold, they watered their horses
in pits of Mount Tai-bo.
The blond-haired tribes of X i folk

move farther west each day,
several horsemen bent their bows
and dared to dash forth to attack.
Mountains snowy, the river frozen,
bleak winds of evening howl;
the blue is smoke from the beacon fires,
the white is their bones.
If only I could send a letter
and let it reach our troops
hold on and wait until next year,
dont act rashly!
Du Fu did not hesitate to offer strategic advice to the imperial armies (which were
much in need of good advice). About the same time, he visited the desolate Bend421

ing River Park and its pleasure palaces in the southeastern corner of Chang-an, and
there he recalled the splendid outings of Xuan-zong and Yang the Prized Consort.
At the time, Yang the Prized Consort, bearing popular blame for the rebellion, had
already been killed by the emperor's guard at Ma-wei Post Station, while Xuan-zong
continued his flight to the west, passing Sword-Tower Pass. Once safe in Cheng-du,
the capital of the Western region of Shu, Xuan-zong acquiesced in his abdication
in favor of his son, who became the new emperor Su-zong.
Lament by the River

An old man, a countryman from Shao-ling
sobs swallowing back the sound,
he walks hidden on a day in spring
by a bend of the Bending River.
By the river the palace galleries
locked in by a thousand gates,
thin willow branches and fresh reeds
for whom do they show their green?
I think back when rainbow banners
came down to this Southern Park,
and the thousands of things within the park
all took on a bright complexion.
That woman, who was first of all
in the Zhao-yang Galleries,
went with her lord in the same palanquin
and attended by his side.
The handmaidens who rode in front
all bore arrows and bows
on white horses that chomped and foamed
on bits of yellow gold.
They bent back and, facing sky,
shot arrows into clouds;
a single shaft brought plummeting
a pair of wings in flight.
Those bright eyes and sparkling teeth~
where are they today?
Blood has stained her roaming soul,
she cannot make it home.
From here where the dear Wei flows on east,
to the depths of Sword-Tower Pass;
between those who went and those who stayed,
there is no exchange of news.
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If any man has feelings,

tears will soak his breast,
the river waters and river flowers
will never come to an end.
Turkish horsemen in gathering dusk,
dust is filling the city,
I am on my way to south of the city
but turn and gaze to the north.
Du Fu escaped the rebel-held capital and made his way to the temporary capital at
Feng-xiang,. where the new emperor Su-zong fulfilled Du Fu's lifelong ambition by
giving him a post close to the throne. After a short period of service, Su-zong granted
the poet permission to visit his family, whom he had earlier removed to a place of
safety in the North. The following poems give an account of Du Fu's arrival at Jiang
Village where his family was lodged.
Jiang Village (two of three)

I
From west of the towering ochre clouds
the suns rays descend to the plain.
In the brushwood gate birds raise a racket:
from a thousand miles the traveler comes home.
Wife and children are amazed I survived
when surprise settles, they wipe away tears.
I was swept along in the turmoil of the times,
by chance I managed to get back alive.
Our neighbors are filling the wall,
deeply movedtheyre sobbing too.
Toward nights end I take another candle
and face you, as if still in a dream.
Ill
The flock of chickens squawked frantically:
when guests arrive, the chickens fight.
I drove the chickens up in the trees,
then heard the knock on my brushwood gate.
There were four or five elders
come to ask of my long travels far.
Each had brought something in hand
from jugs we poured brew thick and clear.
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A nthology o f Chinese Literature
tcPlease dont refuse our weak beer

theres no one to plow the millet fields.
Since armed struggle has not yet ended,
our boys are all on campaign in the east.
Old gentlemen, let me sing for you
in such hardship your kindness shames me.
The song ended, I looked to Heaven and sighed,
and everyone present shed streaming tears.
Shortly thereafter imperial forces retook Chang-an, and Du Fu returned to the cap
ital to resume a post at court. The following poem, suggesting something of the poet's
later style, is usually ascribed to the period shortly after the recapture of Chang-an.
Bending River (first of two)

When a single petal falls away,
it is springs diminishment
a breeze that tosses thousands of flecks
quite makes a man dejected.
I watch them the while, till almost gone,
blossoms passing my eyes,
weary not, though the harm be great,
of ale that enters lips.
At rivers side small manors
are roosts for kingfishers,
high tomb barrows by the park
give unicorns5repose.
Careful research on the pattern of things
sends men to seek delight~
what use to let hopes of tenuous glory
fetter this body of mine?
When An Lu-shan's rebel armies were advancing quickly from the Eastern capital
Luo-yang westward toward Chang-an, the experienced frontier general Ge-shu Han
was given the charge to block their advance. He initially deployed his troops be
hind the well-fortified defenses at Tong Pass; but later, succumbing to pressure from
the court for more decisive military action, he abandoned the pass to meet An Lushan's armies in the open. Loyalist forces were crushed in the Battle of Peach Grove
and the way was opened for the rebel advance on Chang-an. In the following poem,
Du Fu is making his way through the pass after An Lu-shan's forces have been driven back to the east. Du Fu meets an officer in charge of rebuilding the fortifications: the ensuing dialogue is a fine example of Confucian judgment regarding the
relative merits of technology and personnel.
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These straightforward narrative poems dramatizing contemporary social, polit
ical, and military issues were considered the finest embodiments of the Confucian
sense of poetry's true function. Early in the ninth century, such poems by Du Fu in
spired Bo Ju-yi and others in creating the "New Yue-fu,treating political issues of
their own day. Later, when the Ming was falling to advancing Manchu armies in the
1640s, many hundreds of suc?h poems were written, leaving us accounts of small
but telling incidents of the time.
The Officer at Tong Pass

Such bustling hubbub, as our troops
pound earthen walls on Tong Pass Road.
No iron can match the main wall,
with lesser walls rising thousands of yards.
I ask the Tong Pass officer,
When repaired, can it then repel the Turk?
He invites me to get off my horse and walk
as he points out the mountains folds to me.
tRamparts stretch all the way to the clouds,
a bird in flight could not pass through.
If the Turks come, just hold this fast,
the Western Capital need worry no more.
Just look, sir, at those strategic points!_
so narrow they let just one cart through.
In danger just snatch a long pike,
one man could hold it forever.
How sad, though, the Peach Grove battle,
when a million men were fed to the fish.
Do instruct the general guarding the pass
not to follow the model of Ge-shu Han.
Qin-zhou and Cheng-du

Despite his immense confidence in his own political judgment, Du Fu was not a
skilled survivor in court politics. His spirited defense of the good but incompetent
minister Fang Guan led to his dismissal from court in the form of a transfer to the
post of personnel administrator in Hua-zhou. Du Fu soon gave up this minor post
in disgust and set off with his family to Qin-zhou in the Northwest, where he had
relatives. After a short stay he moved on again, crossing the mountains to take up
residence in Cheng-du, the greatest city in Western China.
Connoisseurs of Du Fu's poetry have developed a strong sense of the changes
in style and voice in the various periods of his life. There is a grim simplicity to the
425

Qin-zhou poems that matches the bleakness of the northwestern landscape. In ear
lier poetry, Du Fu had touched on moments of his domestic life, something rarely
seen in earlier Tang poetry. In the poems from Qin-zhou, for the first time, we see
Du Fu beginning to treat the small matters of everyday life, and finding in those small
things deep significance. Thus, in the following poem, China's greatest poet cleans
up the debris of his vegetable garden.
Taking Down a Trellis

These sticks, tied together, are falling apart,
the gourd leaves grow fewer and shriveled.
I enjoyed good luck that its white flowers formed,
it can hardly refuse to shed its green vines.
Autumn insects voices do not leave it,
and what will the birds think at twilight?
But the cold is coming, all now grows bleak
mans life too always begins well.
The last line of the preceding poem not only links the fate of the trellis with human
fate, it does so in the grandest terms, the fate of dynasties, echoing the denunciation
of the Shang in the poem "Overbearing" from the Classic of Poetry (CCLV) (see p.
20 ):
Overbearing is the high god,

he gives his rules to folk below.
Perilous, the high gods power,
many the rules within his Charge.
Heaven bore the teeming folk,
his Charge cannot be trusted.
All men begin well,
but few can keep it to the end.. . .
The unstated conclusion of Du Fu's poem is an inglorious end for the rickety trel
lis~and the course of human affairs.
I Stand Alone
A single bird of prey beyond the sky,
a pair of white gulls between riverbanks.
Hovering wind-tossed, ready to strike
the pair, at their easeroaming to and fro.
And the dew is also full on the grasses,
spiders5filaments still not drawn in.
Instigations in nature approach mens affairs
I stand alone in thousands of sources of worry.
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The Tang Dynasty

Readers of Du Fu's poetry have often shown particular fondness for the work he wrote
while living in Cheng-du, the capital of Sichuan, also known as "Brocade City,"
where the site of his thatched hut early became a major tourist attraction. Du Fu's
poetry gives the impression that he was happier in Cheng-du than at any other time
in his life. The poetry of this period is light, often finely observed, often with a rare
whimsy just beneath the surface.
The River Flooded

The river flooded outside my scrapwood gate,
my boy brought the news, how fast the current was.
As I got out of bed, it rose a few feet
I leaned on my cane as it sank isles midstream.
Gently shaken, swallows fly into the wind,
aifd gulls, lightly rocking, go following waves.
The fisherman twirls his small paddle,
and turns the prow round so easily.
River Village
A bend in the clear river flows
embracing the village,
in the river village all summer long
everything is still.
Coming and going as they please,
swallows in the rafters,
getting friendly, coming closer,
gulls upon the water.
My aging wife marks lines on paper
to serve as our chessboard,
my young son hammers a needle
to be his fishing hook.
Often ill, my requirements
are merely medicines,
for myself beyond things like that
what more have I to seek?
Enjoying Rain on a Spring Night

A good rain knows its season,
it brings things to life right in spring.
It enters the night, unseen with the breeze;
it moistens things gently and without sound.
427
Over paths through moors are clouds all black

a boat on the river, a single fire bright.
At daybreak look where the red is soaked,
the blossoms are heavy in Brocade City.
On Painting
Although earlier poets had sometimes written on painting, Du Fu was the first poet
to do so extensively. These poems include some of Du Fu's finest work and often
served as a means for the poet to reflect on the nature of art in a larger sense. In
sharp contrast to writers on painting in later dynasties, Tang connoisseurs often de
lighted in the trompe cToeil in a particular mode. The best paintings seemed ready
to come alive, yet in that illusion there arose an immense tension between the liv
ing world of movement or change and the stasis of the painting. To the extent that
the poet "captured" the object painted, that object was imprisoned in the flat sur
face of the work of art. Du Fu was fascinated by this paradox, especially in paint
ings of birds of prey. In the finest of such paintings the painted bird will strain to
break free.
Painted Hawk
Wind-blown frost rises from plain white silk,
a gray falconpaintworks wonder.
Body strains, its thoughts on the cunning hare,
its eyes turn sidelong like a Turk in despair.
You could pinch the rays glinting on tie-ring,
its stance, to be called to the columns rail.
When will it strike the common birds?
bloody feathers strewing the weed-covered plain.
Ballad of the Painted Eagle

High in the hall I saw a live bird,
vibrant, its bones of autumn stirred,
and at first I marveled how without the jesses
they got it to stand there looming.
Then I understood, it was a painters marvel,
a skill that scraped a hole in Creation,
and drew this stance of godlike grandeur
to serve as a creature in your eyes.
Magpies and crows fill the low-bending boughs,
they soar aloft, fearing its coming forth.
428
The Tang Dynasty
It tilts its skull and looks at blue clouds,

never to hide from the common bird.
Its long wings are like knives or swords
that might carry it over the realm of men.
Between Earth and Sky is a vast, empty height,
and a moment of gloom in the powder and ink.
It yearns for far places, cloudy sandsedge,
it has the flesh of haze and fog.
Why now do my thoughts feel such pain,
as I walk, looking backfeelings twisted within?
"Song of a Painting" is perhaps Du Fu's most famous poem on art. It was written on
meeting Cao Ba, who had earlier been one of Xuan-zong's favorite court painters
and bore the title of "General" for a largely honorary post he held in one of the im
perial guard units. When the poem was written, Du Fu had encountered Cao Ba wan
dering in the West after the rebellion. Cao Ba was the descendant of the great war
lord and sometime poet of the end of the Han, Cao Cao. Du Fu traces Cao Ba's
beginnings, his moments of glory in the court, and his present fate. Everywhere the
poem is concerned with transmission and lineage lineage from ancestor to de
scendant or from teacher to disciple, and transmission of likeness from living per
son or creature to painting.
Song of a Painting
Descended from Wei5s Warrior King, you, General,
now belong to the common folk,
to a house pure in its poverty.1
Then heroes wrested the land apart, held fast~
all that now is gone
but the brilliance of his arts and his grand manner
survive in you still.
You studied calligraphy, beginning your studies
with Lady Wei of the Jin
your only regret was never surpassing
the master Wang Xi-zhi.2
In painting you took no note
of old age coming on;
"Wei's Warrior King" is Cao Cao. When his son, Cao Pi, abolished the Han and declared the es
tablishment of the Wei Dynasty, he declared his father posthumously as its first emperor. As both a
poet and a general, Cao Cao combined the virtues of wen (civil or literary and artistic talents) and
wu (martial talents).
2Both Lady Wei and Wang Xi-zhi were great calligraphers of the Jin Dynasty. Wang Xi-zhi was gen
erally considered the greatest of all calligraphers.
wealth and rank seemed to you

no more than drifting clouds.
In the Kai-yuan Reign you were always
summoned to audience;
and in royal favor often you mounted
the Hall of Southern Scents.
In Over-the-Mists the portraits of founders
had little color left;3
but where you, General, touched with your brush
their living faces appeared
There on the good ministers head
was the cap called Promote the Best
and there at the waists of fierce generals
were the arrows called Great Fletch.
The hairs bristled on Lord Bao and Lord E
and swaggering forms of heroes came
drunk from the battle.
O f his Late Majestys horses-of-Heaven
there was Flowers of Jade, a dapple;
painters massed like hills around it;
no likeness was its match.
On that day they led it forth
to the foot of the Crimson Stairs
it circled and stood by the palace gates;
steady winds blew from it.
Royal command bade you, General,
spread the white silk
brooding art-thoughts struggled there,
between plan and execution.
It emerged in an instant~true dragon horse
from Heavens nine tiers,
wiping aside once and for all,
common horses of all time.
This Flowers of Jade was hung there,
above the royal dais
the one by the dais, the one in the yard
each loftily faced the other.
His Majesty smiled: he gave you gold,
as grooms and stableboys
all stood there in despair.
3ln the gallery entitled "Over-the-Mists" were the portraits of those generals and political advisers
who had achieved outstanding merit in the service of the dynasty.
The Tang Dynasty
Among your disciples Han Gan

was early the worthy follow er
4
good also at painting horses,
catching their strangest forms;
but Han Gan paints only the flesh;
he does not paint the bone,
and will let the fire of the boldest steed
melt away and be lost.
In your mastery of painting, General,
some divinity lies;
whenever you met a fine scholar,
you would paint his portrait true.
Yet now you drift along
on the edge of a war-torn land,
often sketching the faces of ordinary
travelers on the road
At journeys end you often meet
contempt from the common eye~5
in all the world there has never been
one fallen so low as you.
Just look from ancient times till now
at the greatest names of all,
how all their days hardships and troubles
entangled them.
Kui-zhou and Du Fu's Final Years

In 765, Du Fu left Cheng-du and began a journey down the Yangzi River, lodging
briefly in various places. In late spring of 766 he settled in Kui-zhou, at the head of
the Wu Gorges, where he stayed until early in 768.
Du Fu had many heroes, but none captured his imagination so strongly as Zhuge Liang (181 -234). Zhu-ge Liang was the minister of Liu Bei, who tried to found a
Han revival state in the West when the Eastern Han collapsed. Zhu-ge Liang had
been the architect of that kingdom. He was a politician of immense talent and en
ergy, but the political situation was such that no matter how great his talents, all he
could do was keep the Shu-Han Kingdom on an equal footing with Cao Cao in the
North and Sun Quan's Kingdom of Wu in the South. For Du Fu, Zhu-ge Liang be
came the very embodiment of bu yu shi, "being born at the wrong tim e. Near Kuizhou, where Du Fu was living, there was a formation of dolmens which appeared
as the Yangzi River sank. This was supposed to have been Zhu-ge Liang's symbolic
4Despite Du Fu's praise of Cao Ba over Han Gan, Han Gan is generally considered the greatest of
the Tang painters of horses.
5LiteraIly, "showing the whites of the eye." There is a story about Ruan Ji that when he encountered
someone for whom he had contempt, he would show only the whites of his eyes.

representation of the military formations his army should assume in the conquest of
Wu. Du Fu's dense quatrain in the "Eight Formations" embodies the elliptical best
of the Chinese historical poem.
The Diagram of Eight Formations

His deeds overshadowed a land split in three
his fame was achieved in these Eight Formations.
The river flows on, the rocks do not budge,
pain surviving from failure to swallow Wu.
Du Fu's "Ballad of an Old Cypress" is the most famous poetic treatment of an old
metaphor of timber as talent or capacity (in fact the two words, both ca/, are essen
tially the same word written with two different graphs: a person's potential for ser
vice to society is the quality of his "timber"). In this case, the metaphor cannot be
separated from the commemorative trees planted in front of the shrines to Zhu-ge
Liang in both Kui-zhou and Cheng-du (where the shrine was dedicated both to Zhuge Liang, the "Warrior Count/' and to his prince, Liu Bei). The real commemorative
tree before Du Fu's eyes (in Kui-zhou), the remembered tree in Cheng-du, and the
allegorical tree that signifies talent all are fused together in this poem.
Ballad of an Old Cypress

In front of the shrine of Zhu-ge Liang
there was an aging cypress,
it boughs were like green bronze,
its roots were like the stone.
Its frosted bark was streaked by rains
forty armspans round,
dark arch of mascara touching sky
two thousand feet above.
Already the minister and his lord
have met their moment,
yet still is this tree
cherished by men.
When clouds come, its vapors touch
the full length of W u Gorges;
as the moon appears, its chill reaches
the white of the Mountains of Snow.
I think back now where the road wound
east of Brocade Pavilion/
6ln Cheng-du.
432
The Tang Dynasty
where the Ruler of Shu and his Warrior Count

share a common shrine.
Trunk and branches loomed high there,
ancient upon the meadows,
with paintings dark and hidden away
through the empty doors and windows.
Spreading wide, roots coiled and clasped
but though it found firm place,
high and alone in the black of sky
there are many violent storms.
Surely that which holds it up
is the might of some bright god;
its upright straightness is finally due
to the deed of the Fashioner.
If some great mansion should collapse
and they needed rafters and beams,
ten thousand oxen would turn their heads
at its weight, which is a mountains.
Even before it shows its grain,
all the world is amazed
it would not object to being cut,
but who would be able to send it?
Its bitter core cannot keep out
intrusions of termites,
yet its fragrant leaves have ever given
nights lodging to the phoenix.
Let neither sighnot the man of grand aims
nor the man who lives hidden away~
it has always been true that the greatest timber
is hardest to put to use.
Du Fu's years in Kui-zhou were poetically his most productive. Few of the
Kui-zhou poems have the lightness of the Cheng-du ones, but they have a density
and power of vision that sets them apart. The following sequence from the
Kui-zhou years has as good a claim as any to being the most famous group of
poems in the Chinese language. The modern scholar Ye Jia-ying gathered together
all the best-known premodern commentaries on them and added her own
judgments to produce a Chinese book of 449 pages on the 64 lines of these eight
poems.
A few points of geography are helpful in reading the sequence. The poems move
back and forth between a "hereand a "there": Kui-zhou and a Chang-an of the
past and of Du Fu's imagination. Kui-zhou was on the north bank of the Yangzi
River, about halfway between Cheng-du and Lake Dong-ting. On a hill to the east
of Kui-zhou stood White Emperor Castle, built in the Han by the Sichuanese sep
aratist Gong-sun Shu and named after the god of the West, who is also the god of
433

autumn. Kui-zhou stands at the head of the Three Gorges to the east, the first of
which is Ju-tang Gorge and the second Wu Gorge, flanked to the north by Wu
Mountain.
Du Fu's Chang-an of memory consists primarily of its palace compound and
the places for excursions in and around the city. The world of the court was con
ventionally described in terms of the palaces of the gods in Heaven, so that the heav
enly world above and the earthly world of the past to the north blur together
through the course of the sequence. To heighten this effect, Tang Chang-an also is
described in terms of Chang-an during the reign of the Han emperor Wu. To the
south of Chang-an is the range known as South Mountains (or Zhong~nan)f a land
mark that lasts through the change of dynasties. In the southeastern part of the city
is Bending River Park. Near the city was also Kun-ming Pool, built by the Han em
peror Wu for a naval display. On one side of the pool was a statue of the Weaving
Maid, normally seen from Earth as a star, and a stone sea monster with mechani
cal fins that moved in the wind. Moving further out from the city toward the south
west, one follows Yu-su Brook past Purple Tower, one of the peaks of South Moun
tain, to Lake Mei-pi.
Autumn Stirrings (eight poems)

I
Jade white dew scars and harms
forests of maple trees,
on W u Mountain and in the W u Gorges
the atmosphere bleak and dreary.
Between rivers margins the waves
churn level with sky,
wind-driven clouds over passes
cast shadows touching earth.
Chrysanthemum clumps twice bring forth
tears of another day,
and a lonely boat once fastened
a heart of its homeland.
Everywhere clothes for cold weather
hasten ruler and blade,
walls of White Emperor Castle high,
pounding blocks urgent in dusk.
II
On Kui-zhou
s lonely walls
setting sunlight slants,
then always I trust the North Dipper
to lead my gaze to the capital.
434
The Tang Dynasty
Listening to gibbons I really shed

tears at their third cry
7
accepting my mission I pointlessly follow
the October raft.8
The muraled ministrys censer evades9
the pillow where I lie
hill towerswhite-plastered battlements
mute the sad fifes.
Just look there on the stones,
in wisteria the moon
in front of sandbars has cast its light
on flowers of the reeds.
Ill
A thousand homes of the mountain town
are serene in the glow of dawn;
day by day in my river tower
I sit in an azure haze.
Out two nights, the fishermen
once again drift along;
in clear fall skies the swallows
keep flying on as ever.
Kuang Hengs advice on policy
deed and name both slight.
7An old rhyme said that a traveler in the gorges would shed tears when the gibbons cried out three
times.
,
8"There is an old story that the M ilky Way, 'Heaven's River/ connects with the ocean. In recent times
there was a man who lived on a small island in the ocean, and every year in October, without fail, a
raft would float past. The man conceived an unusual intention: he set up a high tower on the raft in
which he laid up a large store of provisions, and then he went off riding the raft. For more than ten days
he could still see the sun, moon, stars, and planets; but after that everything became murky and hazy,
so much so that he could not even tell day from night. After over ten more days he suddenly came to
a place that had the form of a city, whose buildings were constructed very regularly. From afar he could
look into the palace, in which there were many weaving girls. Then he saw a man leading oxen to the
bank to water them. The oxherd was startled and asked, 'How did you get here?' The man told how
he had planned the trip, and also asked what place this was. He was told in reply, 'When you get around
to Shu, if you go seek out Yan Jun Ping, you w ill find out/ He never disembarked onto the shore, but
went on back as he had been told. Later he got to Shu and asked Jun Ping about it, who said that in
such-and-such a year, in such-and-such a month, on such-and-such a day there had been a wander
ing star that had trespassed into the constellation of the Oxherd. When they reckoned the year and
month, it had been precisely when this man had reached Heaven's R iver."(Z hang Hua, Bo-wu zhi).
9The "muraled ministry" is where the commemorative portraits of officers, civil and military who
had done exceptional service to the dynasty were located.
Liu Xiang passing on Classics

hearts goal gone awry.1
Those young men, once friends in student days,
are most not of low degree;
by Five Barrows their horses are plump
and the mantles they wear are light.2
IV
I have been told that Chang-an
looks like a chessboard,
a hundred years, a lifetimes troubles,
grief beyond enduring.
Mansions of counts and princes
all have new masters,
the civil and army uniforms
differ from olden times.
Straight north past fortified mountains
kettledrums are thundering
from wagon and horse on western campaign
winged dispatches rush.
Fish and dragons grow silent now,
autumn rivers grow cold,
the life I used to have at home
is the longing in my heart.
V
Palace towers of Peng-lai3
stand facing South Mountain,
a golden stalk that catches dew4
is high in the Milky Way.
7Du Fu is here comparing his aims and contrasting his fate with two eminent Han intellectuals. Kuang
Heng was a famous Han statesman who rose to high position precisely because of the policy posi
tions he presented to the throne. In the same way, Liu Xiang was an important and successful scholar
of the classics.
2Five Barrows, named for the tumuli of five Han emperors, had become in the Tang a fashionable
residential area just outside Chang-an. The rest of the stanza alludes pointedly to a famous passage
in the Analects (V.25) in which Zi-lu, responding to a request from Confucius that he state his wishes,
said: "I wish for horse and carriage, and to be mantled in light furs, then to share them with my
friends; and even if they were to ruin them, I would not be distressed."
3Peng-Iai Palace, named after the island in the Western Ocean inhabited by the gods, was part of
the Han palace compound. Tang palaces were commonly referred to by Han names.
4The "stalk" is the bronze column erected by the Han emperor Wu, on which a statue of an immortal held a pan to catch dew from which an elixir of immortality could be made.
4 K
The Tang Dynasty
Gazing west to Onyx Pool

the Queen Mother is descending,5
from the east come purple vapors
and fill Han Pass.6
Pheasant tails shift in clouds,
palace fans reveal
sunlight circling dragon scales,
I see the Emperors face.
By the gray river I lay once and woke,
alarmed that the year had grown late~
how often did Iby the gatesblue rings,
take my place in dawn courts ranks?7
VI
From the mouth of the Ju-tang Gorge
to the Bending Rivers side,
thousands of miles of wind-blown fog
touch pale autumn.8
Through the walled passage to Calyx Manor
the royal aura passed,
and into tiny Lotus Park
the frontiers sorrows entered.9
Beaded hangings and sculpted pillars
surrounded brown swans,
from brocade cables and ivory mast
rose a white gull.
The head turns with pity and love
for those places of song and the dance:
5Emperor Wu of the Han was once visited by the goddess known as the Queen Mother of the West. During
her visit she gave him various magic herbs and told him all about the world of the gods. /rThat night, when the
water-clock had reached the third mark, there were no clouds in the sky, but there was a rumbling like thun
der, and at last the sky turned lavender. In a short while the Queen Mother arrived, riding a lavender coach,
with jade Maidens attending on either side; she wore seven kinds of hair ornaments and black obsidian,
phoenix-patterned boots, green vapors like clouds, and there were two bluebirds, as large as ravens, attending
at the Queen Mother's side. When she descended from her coach, His Majesty greeted her bowing, and in
vited the Queen Mother to sit, asking for the herbs that conferred immortality."The Tales of Emperor Wu.
6Lao-zi, the Daoisi sage and supposed ancestor of the Tang royal house, went through Han Pass off
westward to become immortal. The attendant of the pass, seeing a purple vapor coming from the
east, knew it was the sage coming and hurried out to greet him.
7The reference here is to the palace gates, which were painted with a pattern of blue chainlinks.
Beneath these gates the court officials assembled for the dawn audience with the emperor.
8I.e., the distance from Kui-zhou to Chang-an.
9CaIyx Manor was part of the Xing-qing Palace complex in the eastern part of the city. Between
there and Lotus Park by Bending River directly to the south was a walled passageway through which
the emperor could pass privately.
Qin since ancient times has been

land of emperors.
VII
The waters of Kun-ming Pool
are a deed of the days of Han
pennons and banners of Emperor Wu
are right before my eyes.
Loom threads of the Weaving Girl
lie empty in nights moon,
stone Leviathans fins and scales
stir the autumn wind.
Waves toss a kumi seed
sunk in black of cloud,
dew is chill on the lotus pod
from which tumbles powdery red.
Fortified passes stretch to the skies,
a way only for birds,
lakes and rivers fill the earth,
and one old man, fishing.
VIII
At Kun-wu H ill the Yu-su Brook
winds around and away,
where the shadow of Purple Towers crest
falls into Lake Mei-pi.
Sweet-smelling rice, pecked the last,
for parrots, the grains
sapphire beech trees, perch of old,
the phoenixs branches.
Fair maidens gathered kingfisher plumes,
paying their calls in spring,
sharing a boat, Undying companions
moved further on that evening.
My colored brush in times gone by
ventured against the atmosphere,1
now white-haired, I sing and stare,
head hanging in bitterness.
Ônce the poet Jiang Yan dreamed that the earlier poet Guo Pu appeared to him and asked for the
return of his colored brush, which he claimed to have left with Jiang for many years. When Jiang
Yan woke up, he found that his poetic talent had completely left him.
438
Quatrain
Birds are still whiter against rivers sapphire,
blooms in hills green seem about to catch flame.
And as I watch, this spring too is passing,
and when will be the time that I turn home?
Where Yangzi Meets the Han

Wandererhomesick, where Yangzi meets Han,
Confucian hackbetween Earth and Sky.
Wisp of cloud, the sky shares such distance,
endless night, the moon same as I in solitude.
Setting sun, the mind still has vigor;
autumn wind, sickness almost cured.
From ancient times they have kept old horses;
they need not take to the distant road.
End of Spring: On My Newly Rented Thatched Cottage at

Rang-xi III
Clouds brightly colored, now shadowed, now white,
trees of brocade, green with the dawn.
Myself and this age: a pair of tangled tresses;
Earth and Heaven: a single thatched pavilion.
W ith sad songssometimes self-pity;
drunken dancerfor whom should I care to be sober?
In fine rain I stand with my hoe on my shoulder
as river gibbons hum on the azure cliffs;
Nights Midpoint
West tower, more than a hundred yards high,
in nights midpoint I pace lights tracery.
Shooting stars white as they pass the waters,
setting moonlight, a shapeless stirring on sand.
In the well-chosen tree I know is the hidden bird,
and beneath the waves I imagine the mighty fish.
Friends and kin fill all Earth and Heaven,
yet in wars violence word rarely comes.
Sunlight Cast Back

To the north of the Chu kings palace
just now is twilights dusk
2
west of White Emperor City
streaks of raindrops pass.
The sunlight cast back enters the river
rolls over cliffs of stone,
returning clouds engulf the trees,
hill villages disappear.
Asthmatic in my years of decline,
I can only rest aloof,
at remote frontiers mourning the times,
I long ago shut tight my gate.
I cannot linger long
in the troubles of jackals and wolves~
truly there is in the Southland
a soul never called back.
2This refers to the ancient palace built by the King of Chu in honor of his meeting with the goddess
of Wu Mountain.
440
Interlude: Xuan-zong and Yang

the Prized Consort
In the Chinese literary tradition, as in the European, the conflict between love and
duty has been a favorite motif. The conflict seems to have been best represented in
a ruler who has both the greatest obligations and the greatest power to follow his
private desires. In Virgil's epic the Aeneid, the hero Aeneas, in love with the
Carthaginian queen Dido, dutifully follows the command of the gods to abandon
her and set off to Italy; more commonly, however, both in European and Chinese
literature, love proves a stronger force than duty. Chinese readers were fascinated
with emperors who were so infatuated with one woman that she came to matter more
than all the empire, although such infatuation inevitably brought ruin to the empire
and to the lovers. O f all imperial passions none was so famous as that of the Tang
emperor Xuan-zong for Yang Yu-huan, the "Prized Consort."
The true extent of the historical responsibility of Lady Yang, the Prized Consort,
and her kin in preparing the way for the An Lu-shan Rebellion in 755 is unclear;
what is certain is that she and her family were held responsible for Xuan-zong's
downfall in the popular imagination. She was the subject of gossip during her life
time and the stuff of legend after her death.
In /yLament by the River," written after the fall of Chang-an to the forces of An
Lu-sang, the poet Du Fu recalls Lady Yang visiting the Bending River Park in her glory,
then contrasts that with her death:
That woman, who was first of all

in the Zhao-yang Galleries,
went with her lord in the same palanquin
and attended by his side.
The Handmaidens who rode in front

all bore bows and arrows,
on white horses that chomped and foamed
on bits of yellow gold.
They bent back and faced the sky,
shot arrows into clouds,
A single shaft brought plummeting
a pair of wings in flight.
Those bright eyes and sparkling teeth
where are they today?
blood had stained her roaming soul,
and she cannot get to return.
441

During the half century following the An Lu-shan Rebellion and the execution
P riz e d Consort, h e r legend to o k shape, embellished time an d ag ain in
prose anecdotes and in poems. Such accounts sometimes drew stern lessons about
the consequences of failure to pay attention to business, and sometimes lamented
the sadness of broken love. The story reached its first full expression in Bo Ju-yi's
(772-846) long ballad "Song of Lasting Pain," and in Chen Hong's prose account
written to accompany it. Comparison between these two versions of the story gives
a good sense of the very different forces at work in shaping poetic narrative and prose
narrative.
of Y a n g the
Bo Ju-yi (772-846)Song of Lasting Pain

Hans sovereign prized the beauty of flesh,
he longed for such as ruins domains;
for many years he ruled the Earth
and sought for one in vain.
A daughter there was of the house of Yang,
just grown to maturity,
raised deep in the womens quarters
where no man knew of her.
When Heaven begets beauteous things,
it is loath to let them be wasted,
so one morning this maiden was chosen
to be by the rulers side.
When she turned around with smiling glance,
she exuded every charm
*
in the harem all who wore powder and paint
of beauty then seemed barren.
In springtimes chill he let her bathe
in Hua-qing Palaces pools
whose warm springsglistening waters
washed flecks of dried lotions away.
Those in attendance helped her rise,
in helplessness so charming
this was the moment when first she enjoyed
the flood of royal favor.
Tresses like cloud, face like a flower,
gold pins that swayed to her steps;
it was warm in the lotus-embroidered tents
where they passed the nights of spring.
And the nights of spring seemed all too short,
the sun would too soon rise
from this point on our lord and king
avoided daybreak court.
442
She waited his pleasure at banquets,

with never a moments peace,
their springs were spent in outings of spring,
he was sole lord of her nights.
In the harems there were beauties,
three thousand there were in all
but the love that was due to three thousand
was spent on one body alone.
Her make-up completed in chambers of gold,
she attended upon his nights,
when in marble mansions feasts were done,
their drunkenness matched the spring.
Her sisters and her brothers all
were ennobled and granted great fiefs;
a glory that any would envyrose from her house.
This caused the hearts of parents
all the world through
to care no longer for having sons,
but to care to have a daughter.
The high places of Mount Li
s palace
rose up into blue clouds,
where the music of gods was whirled in winds
and everywhere was heard.
Songs so slow and stately dances,
notes sustained on flutes and harps,
and all day long our lord and king
could never look his fill.
Then kettledrums from Yu-yang came
making the whole earth tremble
and shook apart those melodies,
Coats of Feathers, Rainbow Skirts.1
From nine tiers of palace towers
dust and smoke were rising
a thousand coaches, ten thousand riders
moving away southwest.
Swaying plumes of the royal banners
were moving ahead, then stopped
west of the gates of the capital,
just over a hundred miles.
1A famous musical suite and dance associated with Yang the Prized Consort.
The six-fold army would not set forth,

nothing could be done,
and the fragile arch of her lovely brows
there perished before the horses.
Her flowered hairpins fell to earth,
and no one picked them up,
the kingfisher wing, the sparrow of gold,
the jade pick for the hair.
Our lord and ruler covered his face,
unable to protect her
he looked around, and blood and tears
were flowing there together.
Brown dust spread in billows,
howling was the wind,
plank walkways wound into the clouds
as he climbed by Sword Tower Peak.
And at the foot of Mount E-mei
travelers were few,
the royal banners shed no light,
the beams of sun were pale.
Shus rivers5sapphire waters,
the green of hills in Shu
the state of His Royal Majestys heart
every morningevery night.
From an exiles palace he saw the moon,
hues that give heart pain
in the rain of night he heard the bells,
sounds that broke him within.
Heaven revolved, the days spun round
the dragon-carriage turned home,
but reaching that spot he faltered
and could not leave it behind.
Beneath the slopes of Ma-wei,
there in the mud and mire,
he could not see where those features,
white as marble, died for naught.
Ruler and ministers looked at each other,
all soaked their clothes with tears,
then facing east toward the capital gates,
he let his horse take him home.
When he was home, his pools and parks
were all as they had been before,
444
there were lotuses in Tai-ye Pool,

and willows at Wei-ang.
But the lotuses looked like her face,
and the willows seemed like her brows,
before such scenes how could he stop
his tears from streaming down?
On days when plums and peaches
opened in breeze of spring
and in the season of autumn rain
when beeches shed their leaves.
In the western palace and southern compound
were many autumn plants
whose fallen leaves filled pavements,
red, not swept away.
Performers of the Pear Garden,
their hair newly touched with white;
eunuch attendants of pepper-walled harems,
their blue-black brows showed age.
As glowworms flew through twilight courts,
he would sink into silent thought,
the wick of his lonely lamp burned low
and still he could not sleep.
In the slow, slow beat of bells and drums
his long nights would begin,
till the stream of stars was sparkling
in skies approaching dawn.
The lovebird tiles were chill,
heavy with flakes of frost,
the kingfisher quilts were cold
without someone to share.
On forever, living and dead
were parted through the years,
and never once did her wandering soul
find way into his dreams.
In Lin-qiong there was a wizard,
guest in the gods great citadel,
who by the perfection of essence
could bring the souls of the dead.
He was touched by our rulers
restless, tossing love,
and thus he gave the magician a task
of making an earnest quest.
He rode on vapors through the void,

he sped like lightning along,
up into Heaven, down into Earth,
seeking her everywhere.
But from the sapphire star-web above
to the yellow springs below,
both were infinitely vast,
in neither did he find her.
He came to learn that on the seas
were mountains of the Undying,
those mountains lie in Emptiness
remote and ethereal.
Sparkling grillwork of halls and towers
where rainbow-clouds arose
and in them the Undying were teeming,
beings lovely and lissome.
Among there was a certain one
who had the name Tai-zhen,
whose snowy flesh and flowerlike face
seemed much like her he sought.
At the western cloister of golden tower
he knocked at a door of jade,
and had the servant Little Jade
take word to the M aid Shuang-cheng.
When she heard the news of a messenger
from the Son of Heaven of Han,
within the nine-flower hangings
her dreaming soul woke with alarm.
She threw on robes, pushed pillow away,
rose and paced about;
pearled dividers and silver screens
opened down winding halls.
Her cloudlike tresses were half askew,
she had freshly woken from sleep,
and her hat of flowers was not set straight
as she came into the room.
W ind blew upon the goddesss sleeves,
billowing as they rose,
and it still resembled her dancing
Coats of Feathers, Rainbow Skirts
Her marble features were sad and still,
her tears were streaming down,
446
she was a branchful of blooming pear,

bearing the rain of spring.
Biting back feeling, she fixed her gaze,
sent thanks to the ruler and lord:
once voice and visage are torn apart,
vast emptiness lies between.
Broken forever, the love that was shared
in the Court of Shining Light,
now days and the months pass but slowly
in the Palace of Peng-lai.
When she turned her head to gaze back down
to the realm of mortal men,
Chang-an she did not see,
she saw only dust and fog.
,
She could only use things once shared
to convey her depth of love
an inlaid box and hairpin of gold
he should carry back with him.
Of the hairpin I will keep a leg,
of the box I keep a panel;
the gold of the hairpin is sundered,
the boxs inlay divided.
If only your heart can be as firm
as the inlay or the gold,
in Heaven or among mortal men
we will someday meet again.
Time came to go, and with passionate care,
she sent a few more words,
and in those words there was a vow
known to their hearts alone.
On the seventh day of the seventh month
in the Palace of Lasting Life,
it was midnight, no one else was there
as they whispered privately:
if in Heaven, may we become
those birds that fly on shared wing
or on Earth, then may we become
branches that twine together.
Heaven lasts, the Earth endures
yet a time will come when theyre gone,
yet this pain of ours will continue
and never finally end.
Chen Hong (early 9th century), An Account to Go with the

Song of Lasting Pain
During the Kai-yuan Reign, the omens of the Stair Stars showed a world at
peace, and there were no problems throughout all the land within the four
circling seas. Xuan-zong, having been long on the throne
grew weary of hav
ing to dine late and dress while it was still dark for the dawn audienceand
he began to turn over all questions of government, both large and small, to
the Assistant Director of the Right, Li Lin-fuwhile the Emperor himself
tended either to stay deep in the palace or go out to banquets, finding his
pleasure in all the sensual delights of ear and eye. Previously the Empress
Yuan-xian and the Consort Wu-hui had both enjoyed His Majestys favor,
but each in turn had departed this world; and even though there were in the
palace over a thousand daughters of good families, none of them really
caught his fancy. His Majesty was fretful and displeased.
In those days every year in December the imperial entourage would jour
ney to Hua-qing Palace. The titled women, both from the inner palace and
from without, would follow him like luminous shadows. And he would grant
them baths in the warm waters there, in the very waves that had bathed the
imperial sun. Holy fluids in a springlike breeze went rippling through those
places. It was then that His Majestys heart was smittenfor he had truly
come upon the one woman, and all the fair flesh that surrounded him
seemed to him like dirt. He summoned Gao Li-shi to make a secret search
for this woman in the palaces of the princesand there, in the establishment
of the Prince of Shou, he found the daughter of Yang Xuan-yan. She had al
ready become a mature woman. Her hair and tresses were glossy and well
arranged; neither slender nor plump, she was exactly of the middle measure;
and there was a sensuous allure in her every motion, just like the Lady Li of
Emperor W u of the Han. He ordered a special channel of the warm springs
cut for her and commanded that it be offered to her gleaming fineness. When
she came out of the water, her body seemed frail and her force spent, as if
she could not even bear the weight of lace and gauze; yet she shed such ra
diance that it shone on all around her. His Majesty was most pleased. On
the day he had her brought to meet him, he ordered the melody Coats of
Feathers, Rainbow Skirts
played to precede her. And on the eve when their
love was consummatedhe gave heras proofs of his love, a golden hairpin
and an inlaid box. He also commanded that she wear golden earrings and
a hair-pick that swayed to her pace. The following year he had her officially
listed as Gui-fei, Prized Consort, entitled to half the provision as an empress.
From this point on she assumed a seductively coy manner and spoke wit
tily, suiting herself to His Majestys wishes by thousands of fetching ways.
And His Majesty came to dote on her ever more deeply.
At this time the Emperor made a tour of his nine domains and offered
the gold-sealed tablets in ceremonies on the Five Sacred Peaks. On Mount
Li during snowy nights and in Shang-yang Palace on spring mornings she
would ride in the same palanquin as the Emperor and spend the night in the
448
The Tang Dynasty
same apartments; she was the main figure of feasts and had his bedcham
bers all to herself when he retired. There were three Great Ladies, nine
Royal Spouses, twenty-seven Brides of the Age, eighty-one Imperial Wives,
Handmaidens of the Rear Palace, Women Performers of the Music Bu
reau and on none of these was the Son of Heaven the least inclined to look.
And from that time on, no one from the Six Palaces was ever again brought
forward to the royal bed. This was not only because of her sensual allure
and great physical charms, but also because she was clever and smart, art
ful at flattery and making herself agreeable, anticipating His Majestys
wishes so much so that it cannot be described. Her father, her uncle, and
her brothers were all given high honorary offices and were raised to ranks
of Nobility Equal to the Royal House. Her sisters were enfeoffed as Ladies
of Domains. Their wealth matched that of the royal house; and their car
riages, clothes, and mansions were on a par with the Emperors aunt
Princess
Tai-chang. Yet in power and the benefits of imperial favor, they surpassed
her. They went in and out of the royal palace unquestioned, and the senior
officers of the capital would turn their eyes away from them. There were
doggerel rhymes in those days that went:
If you have a girl, dont feel sad;
if you have a boy, dont feel glad.
and:
The boy wont be a noble,
but the daughter may be queen
so look on your daughters now
as the glory of the clan.
To such a degree were they envied by people.
At the end of the Tian-bao Reign, her uncle Yang Guo-zhong stole the
position of Chancellor and abused the power he held. When An Lu-shan led
his troops in an attack on the imperial palace, he used punishing Yang Guozhong as his pretext. Tong Pass was left undefended, and the Kingfisher Para
phernalia of the imperial entourage had to set out southward. After leaving
Xian-yang, their path came to Ma-wei Pavilion. There the Grand Army hes
itated, holding their pikes in battle positions and refusing to go forward. At
tendant officers, gentlemen of the court, and underlings bowed down be
fore His Majestys horse and asked that this current Chao Cuo be executed
to appease the world.2 Yang Guo-zhong then received the yak-hair hat rib
bons and the pan of water, by which a great officer of the court presents
himself to the Emperor for punishment, and he died there by the edge of the
road. Yet the will of those who were with the Emperor was still not satis2Yang Guo-zhong is referred to as Chao Cuo, a Western Han censor who advised the emperor Jing
to reduce the territories of the imperial princes, which was the excuse for the Rebellion of the Seven
Domains. Yang Guo-zhong is similarly being accused of having provoked An Lu-shan to rebellion.
449
fied. When His Majesty asked what the problem was, those who dared
speak out asked that the Prized Consort also be sacrificed to allay the wrath
of the world. His Majesty knew that it could not be avoided, and yet he could
not bear to see her dieso he turned his sleeve to cover his face as the en
voys dragged her off. She struggled and threw herself back and forth in panic,
but at last she came to death under the strangling cord.
Afterward, Xuan-zong came to Cheng-du on his Imperial Tour, and Suzong accepted the succession at Ling-wu. In the following year the Monster
himself [An Lu-shan] forfeited his head, and the imperial carriage returned
to the capital. Xuan-zong was honored as His Former Majesty and given a
separate establishment in the Southern Palace, then transferred to the west
ern sector of the Imperial Compound. As time and events passed, all joy had
gone from him and only sadness came. Every day of spring or night of win
ter, when the lotuses in the ponds opened in summer or when the palace ash
trees shed their leaves in autumn, the performers of the Pear Garden Acad
emy would produce notes on their jade flageolets; and if he heard one note
of Coats of Feathers, Rainbow Skirts
His Majestys face would lose its
cheer, and all those around him would sob and sigh. For three years there
was this one thing on his mind, and his longing never subsided. His soul
sought her out in dream, but she was so far away he could not reach her.
It happened then that a wizard came from Shu; and knowing that His
Majesty was brooding so much on Yang the Prized Consort, he said that he
possessed the skills of Li the Young Lord, the wizard who had summoned
the soul of Lady Li for Emperor W u of the Han. Xuan-zong was very
pleased, and ordered him to bring her spirit. The wizard then used all his
skills to find her, but could not. He was also able to send his spirit on jour
neys by riding vapors; he went up into the precincts of Heaven and sank
down into the vaults of the Earth looking for herbut he did not meet her.
And then again he went to the margins and the encircling wastelands, high
and low, to the easternmost extreme of Heaven and the Ocean, where he
strode across Fang-hu.
He saw there the highest of the mountains of the Undying, with many
mansions and towers; at the end of the western verandah there was a deep
est doorway facing eastthe gate was shut, and there was written he Gar
den of Tai-zhen, Jade Consort. The wizard pulled out a hatpin and rapped
on the doorat which a young maiden with her hair done up in a double
coil came out to answer the door. The wizard was so flustered he couldnt
manage to get a word outso the maiden went back in. In a moment an
other servant girl in a green dress came out and asked where he was from.
The wizard then identified himself as an envoy of the Tang Son of Heaven
and conveyed the command he had been given. The servant said, The Jade
Consort has just gone to bedplease wait a while for her. Thereupon he
was swallowed up in a sea of clouds with the dawn sun breaking through
them as down a tunnel to the heavens; then the jasper door closed again and
all was still and without a sound.
450
The Tang Dynasty
The wizard held his breath and did not move his feet, waiting at the gate
with folded hands. After a long time, the servant invited him to come in and
said, The Jade Consort is coming out. Then he saw a person with a bon
net of golden lotuses, wearing lavender chiffon, with pendants of red jade
hanging from her sash and phoenix slippers, and seven or eight persons in at
tendance on her. She greeted the wizard and asked, Is the Emperor well?
Then she asked what had happened since the fourteenth year of the Tiarx-bao
Reign. When he finished speaking, she grew wistful and gestured to her ser
vant to get a golden hairpin and inlaid boxeach of which she broke in parts.
She gave one part of each to the envoy, saying, Express my gratitude to the
Emperor and present him these objects as mementos of our former love.
The wizard received her words and these objects of suretyhe was ready
to go, but one could see in his face that something was troubling him. The
Jade Consort insisted that he tell her what was the matter. Then he knelt down
before her and said, Please tell me something that happened back then,
something of which no one else knew, so that I can offer to His Majesty as
proof. Otherwise I am afraid that with the inlaid box and the golden hairpin
I will be accused of the same kind of trickery that Xin Yuan-ping practiced
on Emperor Wen of the Han.55The Jade Consort drew back lost in thought,
as if there were something she were recalling with fondness. Then very slowly
she said, Back in the tenth year of the Tian-bao Reign, I was attending on
His Majesty, who had gone to the palace on Mount Li to escape the heat. It
was autumn, in the seventh month, the evening when the Oxherd and the
Weaver Star meet. It was the custom of the people of Qin on that night to
spread out embroidery and brocade, to put out food and drink, to set up flow
ers and melons, and to burn incense in the yardthey call this begging for
deftness. Those of the inner palace hold this custom in particularly high re
gard. It was almost midnight; and the guards and attendants in the eastern
and western cloisters had been dismissed. I was waiting on His Majesty alone.
His Majesty stood there, leaning on his shoulder, then looked up at the heav
ens and was touched by the legend of the OxKerd and Weaver Star. We then
made a secret vow to one another, a wish that we could be husband and wife
in every lifetime. When we stopped speaking, we held hands, and each of us
was sobbing. Only the Emperor knows of this.
Then she said sadly, Because of this one thought so much in my mind
I will be able to live on here no longer. I will descend again to the world
below and our future destiny will take shape. Whether in Heaven or in the
world of mortal men, it is certain that we will meet again and form our bond
of love as before. Then she said, His Former Majesty will not be long in
the world of men. I hope that he will find some peace of mind and not cause
himself suffering.
The envoy returned and presented this to His Former Majesty, and the
Emperors heart was shaken and much afflicted with grief. For days on end
he could find no cheer. In the summer of that year, in the fourth month, His
Majesty passed on.
,
451
In winter of the first year of the Yuan-he Reign, the twelfth month (Feb
ruary 807)Bo Ju-yi of Tai-yuan left his position as Diarist in the Imperial Li
brary to be the sheriff of Chou County. IChen Hong, and Wang Zhi-fu of
Lang-ya had our homes in this townand on our days off we would go to
gether visiting sites of the Undying and Buddhist temples. Our discussion
touched on this story, and we were all moved to sighs. Zhi-fu lifted his winecup
to Bo Ju-yi and said, Unless such an event finds an extraordinary talent who
can adorn it with colors, even something so rare will fade away with time and
no longer be known in the world. Bo Ju-yi is deeply familiar with poetry and
has strong sentiments. Why doesnt he write a song on the topic.MAt this Bo
Ju-yi made the Song of Lasting Pain It is my supposition that he was not
only moved by the event, but he also wanted to offer warning about such creatures that can so enthrall a man, to block the phases by which troubles come,
and to leave this for the future. When the song was finished, he had me write
a prose account for it. O f those things not known to the general public, Inot
being a survivor of the Kai-yuan, have no way to know. For those things
known to the general public, the c<Annals of the Reign of Xuan-zongware ex
tant. This is merely an account for the Song of Lasting Pain.
One of the most popular ways to treat the story of Xuan-zong and Lady Yang in the
Tang was in poetry about Hua-qing Palace, the imperial pleasure palace built be
side the thermal springs on Mount Li, east of Chang-an. Since Mount Li was within
sight of one of the most traveled roads in the empire, poets often had occasion to
"pass by Hua-qing Palace" and there recall Xuan-zong's wild revels with Lady Yang,
the Prized Consort. In the following famous set of quatrains by Du Mu, the first poem
alludes to another of the favorite stories of Lady Yang, that when she longed for the
lychees of her native region, Xuan-zong had post riders bring them to her by relays
so that they would arrive fresh. This was considered a gross abuse of imperial pre
rogatives to suit a woman's private whim.
The second poem refers to investigators sent by Xuan-zong to An Lu-shan's
Northeastern Command at Yu-yang to discover if, as rumors suggested, An Lu-shan
was plotting rebellion. The investigators were bribed by An Lu-shan and reported
back that all was well. The third alludes to the story that An Lu-shan, who was im
mensely fat, was skilled at the popular Central Asian dance the Whirl (hu-xuan),
probably something like a dervish dance. He used to dance the Whirl to entertain
the emperor and Lady Yang, and when he did so, all the palace maidens would clap
their hands to the rhythm.
Du Mu, On Passing by Hua-qing Palace (three quatrains)

I
Turn and look back from Chang-an
to embroideries heaped in piles;
on the hills high crest are a thousand gates
standing open in rows.
452
The Tang Dynasty
Through red dust a man goes riding;

the Consort smiles;
and no one else there knows
that her lychees are on the way.
II
Through the green trees of Xin-feng
the brown dust is rising
several men riding from Yu-yang,
the investigators return.
That one melody, Rainbow Skirts
up over a thousand peaks

she danced the heartland to pieces,
and only then came down.
III
Piping and singing from thousands of lands,
they were drunk on an age of peace,
great halls resting by Heaven,
where moonlight shone so clear.
W ild rhythms struck in the clouds
An Lu-shan was dancing
and the wind crossed ridge after ridge,
bringing down the sounds of laughter.
Wang Jian (ca. 767-ca. 830)Gazing on Hua-qing Palace at

Daybreak
At daybreak those mansions and towers
are yet more fresh and bright,
when the sun comes forth over balconies
see deer go moving by.
Our Warrior Emperor knows himself
that his body will never die;
he watches them build a jade palace
and names it Lasting Life.
The following poem describes an imperial banquet at Dragon Pool in which the
ladies of the court and the imperial princes are being feasted by Xuan-zong. Screens
were used to separate court ladies from men. The mention of drums in the second
line alludes to Xuan-zong's well-known predilection for percussion instruments.
He summoned Gao Li-shi to make a secret search for this woman in the palaces
of the princes; and there, in the establishment of the Prince of Shou, he found
the daughter of Yang Xuan-yan.
Chen Hong, An Account to Go with the Song of Lasting Pain
453
Li Shang-yin (ca. 813-ca. 858)Dragon Pool

At Dragon Pool he offers wine,
and mica screens are spread,
the rams-hide drums play loudly,
all other musicians cease.
At midnight they come back from feasting,
the water-clock drips on
the Prince of Xue is reeling drunk,
the Prince of Shou is sober.
The quatrain above is an excellent example of the epigrammatic historical poem,

of which Li Shang-yin was a master. Without knowing the full context, one can
scarcely imagine a more dull piece of poetry. If one knows the context, however,
the last line is chillingthe Prince of Shou is compelled to attend a party at which
his father is accompanied by Lady Yang, the prince's own former concubine. The
following poem is also by Li Shang-yin.
Stirred by Something at Mount Li

Cascades fly from Mount L i
s cliffs,
warm scent flows in the stream,
nine dragons here stand guard
on jade calyx of the lotus.
Always at daybreak His Majesty goes
to the Palace of Lasting Life
refusing to join the golden coach
there is only the Prince of Shou.
But the favorite poetic image of Hua-qing Palace was as a site of absence, empty
now of the glory and exciting events that once occurred there.
Wang Jian (ca. 767-ca. 830)Ballad of the Former Palace

Silent and emptyformer palace of pleasure,
palace flowers in stillness turn to red.
White-haired now, the palace maids still there
sit peacefully telling tales of Xuan-zong.
The connection of the abandoned palace in Luo-yang with Xuan-zong is uncertain,

but it remains a wonderful example (again by Wang Jian) of the topic.
4 54
The Tang Dynasty
Passing by Lace-Crest Palace

Its jade mansions lean at a tilt,
the plaster walls are bare,
green hills in layer on layer
surround the palace of old.
The Warrior Emperor went away,
the gossamer sleeves are gone,
the wildflowers and butterflies
hold sway over winds of spring.
The story of Xuan-zong and Lady Yang, the Prized Consort, went on to enter
the standard repertory of Chinese literature in both classical poetry and vernacular
literature, including drama and fiction. It was in drama that the most famous later
versions of the story appeared: in the variety play (za-ju) Rain on the Beech Tree
(Wu-tong yu), by Bai Pu (1227-1306), and in the long dramatic romance
entitled The Palace of Lasting Life (Chang-sheng dian), by Hong Sheng (1605-1704).
Addendum: "The Whirl"

During the Tang, music imported from Central Asia became extremely popular. With
the music came whirling Central Asian dances that must have resembled something
like the dances of the Turkish dervishes. An Lu-shan (as we have just seen) was adept
at the Whirl, and in the hands of moralizing poets of the early ninth century, its dizzy
ing fascination became a figure for dangerous beguilement.
The topical occasion behind the following song was a dancer presented as part
of the tribute from the Central Asian kingdom of Sogdiana toward the end of the Tianbao. The term Hu, which is by convention here translated as "Turks/ was loosely
applied to the peoples of the Northern and northwestern frontiers, usually nomadic
people, but sometimes, as below, to the city states of Central Asia. Some of these
peoples were Turkish, but the Sogdians~and An Lu-shan was of Sogdian descent~
were an Indo-lranian people.
Yuan Zhen (779-831)The Girl Who Danced the Whirl

The Tian-bao was in its final years,
the Turks were planning strife,
the Turks on purpose sent a girl
skilled in dancing the Whirl.
She so whirled our enlightened prince
that he did not know he was lost
when a beguiling Turk came suddenly
to the Palace of Lasting Life.
455
The real truth of the Whirl

was grasped by none in that age,
but what the Whirl looked like
I can here pass on.
A tumbleweed snapped from frosty roots
swift round in the gusting wind,
or a red plate swung from a pole,
the dazzling fire-orb.
Paired pearls of outflung earrings,
aping the dragon stars,
light scarves of rainbow glow,
commanding lightning bolts.
The sunken Behemoth unseen sucks
sea's waves backward,
the turning winds dance wildly
sleeting in the sky.
Of ten thousand transitions, who
can tell beginnings and ends?
who of the seated audience is able
to tell the front from the back?
Those who watched among palace ladies
to one another said:
the way to receive our rulers love
lies in the changing circles.
Right and wrong, good and ill
hung on the rulers word
east and west, south and north
depended on his glance.
Lithe and soft body of the senses,
wearing pendants and sash,
circling around the finger,
the same as bracelet or ring.
When fawning courtiers heard this,
their own hearts first were turned,
befuddling the rulers heart,
and the rulers eyes were dazzled.
If my ruler says that its crooked,
then its bent as a fishhook;
if my ruler says that it
s direct
its as straight as an arrow.
An artfulness went with the clear shadow,
going everywhere,
for finesse they mimicked spring orioles,
a hundred kinds of warbling.
They toppled Heaven and upturned Earth
using the rulers force
456
The Tang Dynasty
yet blocked it from sight and covered all

1
fearing the lord would see.
When the Kingfisher Coach journeyed southward
to the Myriad League Bridge,3
then Xuan-zong first realized
how Heaven and Earth had turned round.
I send these words to those who bewhirl the eyes
and those who bewhirl the heart,
whoever hold household or realm
should join in reproof.
Bo Ju-yi, The Girl Who Danced the Whirl

Whirling girl,
whirling girl,
heart answers strings,
hands answer drum,
when strings and drums sound together,
both of her sleeves lift high,
and she drifts in twirls like circling snow,
and dances the spinning tumbleweed.
She whirls to the left, spins to the right,
never growing weary,
thousands of rings and revolutions
seeming never to end.
No class of thing in this mortal world
can be compared to her:
sluggish, the wheels of a speeding coach,
and hurricanes are slow.
When the tune is done, she makes her bows,
thanking the emperor,
and for her sake the emperor
faintly shows his teeth.
Whirling girl
from Sogdiana
for nothing youve had to come east
these ten thousand leagues and more.
For the Central Plain has its own
people who know the W hirl
and contesting finesse and skill,
you are no match for them.
3Myriad League Bridge was in Cheng-du, the major city of Sichuan, to which Xuan-zong fled after
the fall of Chang-an.
In the final years of the Tian-bao Reign,

when the times were about to change,
everyone, lady and courtier alike,
was learning to turn in circles.
W ithin the court was Lady Tai-zhen,
outside was An Lu-shan,
and these two were known most of all
for ability to whirl.
In the Garden of Pear Blossoms
one gained a Consorts rank
and beneath the Screen of the Golden Cock
the other was raised as a son.
When An Lu-shan did the Whirl,
he bewildered the rulers eyes;
even when troops crossed the Yellow River,
it was doubted that he had rebelled.
When Yang the Prized Consort did the Whirl,
she befuddled the rulers heart;
when she was left dead at Ma-wei Station,
he yearned for her ever more.
From that time on the Axis of Earth
and the Stays of Heaven revolved,
and for the past fifty years
they have not been brought in control.
So whirling girl,
dont dance in vain,
but sing this song again and again
that our lord may see the light.
Tang Literature of the Frontier
In the seventh century, and particularly in the first half of the eighth century, Tang
armies operated deep in Central Asia. The frontier poetry of the first half of the eighth
century, the "High Tang, is often taken as the direct response of intellectuals to those
Central Asian wars and was sometimes proudly expansionist and sometimes strongly
anti-war in sentiment. The conventional use of the figures and images of the great
Central Asian wars of the Han Dynasty might be seen as either glorifying Tang
achievements or criticizing them.
Although High Tang frontier poetry must, to some degree, be understood in light
of contemporary military history, it also offers an excellent example of the complex
relation between literary tradition and the historical world. The stock images of fron
tier poetry were formed in the yue-fu of the Southern Dynasties and were the cre
ation of poets who never had and never would come anywhere close to the imagi
nary world they described: the bleak landscapes of the steppes, the sufferings and
glory of soldiers on campaign. If such poetry touched the historical circumstance of
those poets, it would have been in a more subtle way, as nostalgic gestures of their
tenuous claim to be the legitimate heirs of the Han and its successful wars against
the Central Asian peoples who were the ancestors of those presently occupying North
China. These well-established conventions of frontier poetry were received by the
Tang poets of the seventh century as one component of the larger tradition of court
poetry inherited from the Southern Dynasties.
In the seventh century, however, Tang armies were moving through the very re
gions that were part of the literary landscape of frontier poetry, and it may be that
seventh-century poets wrote their own frontier poems conscious of contemporary
military realities. Then, with the emperor Xuan-zong's expansionist policies in the
first half of the eighth century, the Central Asian wars increased in distance and in
tensity, with a few poets actually serving in the frontier armies on the civilian staffs
of generals. Many more poets ventured to the safe territories on the margins of the
frontier. While there are some differences in High Tang frontier poetry, the frontier
world such poets found was remarkably similar to the poetic images of the region
that they had learned of from their reading.
As in the relationship between images of war given in cinema and the realities
of war in modern times, there is a complicated interplay between the experience of
art and experience in the world outside of art. The images of art are assimilated long
before one experiences the "real thing, and they shape the understanding of "real"
experience. Not only do such representations in art shape our understanding, they
often influence behavior itself. It is said that Alexander crossed into Asia Minor under
the spell of the Iliad, and we may wonder how much Xuan-zong's expansionist
dreams were shaped by powerful literary images of Han military glory.

Frontier poetry finally proved more lasting than imperial control of Central Asia,
and as it had been written before the Tang Central Asian conquests, so it also con
tinued to be written long after Tang armies had fallen back into China proper. As a
poetic theme, frontier poetry can serve as a common ground to show the differences
in Tang poetry~both the differences between individual poets and the literary his
torical changes that took place during the three hundred years of the dynasty.
Although frontier poetry was created by poets of the Southern Dynasties, their
works are generally very poor when compared to Tang frontier poems. The follow
ing example by the mid-sixth-century poet Zhang Zheng-jian has the stiff mechanical parallensm that often characterizes the poetry of the period. "Crossing the Bar
rier Mountains" was a yue-fu title.
Zhang Zheng-jian (mid-6th century), Crossing the Barrier

Mountains
Barrier mountains, crossed in dawns moon,
these swordsmen are going on far campaign.
From Yun-zhong go forth the turning columns,
past horizon deployed are daring formations.
Wheels smashed halt the departing standards,
trees upturned block hanging banners.
Sands rise, darkening Zigzag Slope,
clouds gather, shedding light on Elm Creek.
Horses weary, they sometimes graze on grass,
men exhausted, often looking for the fort.
On cold steppes the Turkish pipe sounds harsh,
in empty forests the Han drums resound.
And when they hear the sobbing waters,
all are stricken by the heartbreaking sound.
Poets of the Early Tang (seventh century) improved on their Southern Dynasties pre
decessors, but still their individually brilliant couplets rarely come together to form
a coherent whole. The original version of the following ballad, on p. 236, shows
how different is Yu Shi-nan's "imitation.The Lou-Ian was another Central Asian
kingdom and people.
Yu Shi-nan (early 7th century), I Watered My Horse at a Spring

by the Wall: Imitating the Old Ballad
We galloped our horses across rivers edge,
the current was deep, the crossing was hard.
We met the Envoy ahead in his silk-hung rig:
The Lord Protector is now in Lou-lan!
The Tang Dynasty
The light horse keep their mounts bridled,

while decoy troops uncinch their saddles.
Hot springs send down steep mountain streams,
plank walkways connect the sheer ridges..
They have taken land, deeds still unrewarded;
if they lose a fort, the Jaw shows no mercy.
There is moonlight, but the passes still are dark
all through spring the Long region stays cold.
The sky overcast, there are no more shadows;
ice covers the river, hard currents unheard.
In my thoughts is my Lord; I cannot meet him,
yet by this I may repay him for a single meal.1
Lu Zhao-lin (ca. 635- 689)Falling Snow: A Song

At autumn's end nomad horsemen break through,
flat clouds over passes for thousands of leagues.
Snows darken like the sands of Turkistan,
and the ice is as bright as the moon of Han.
At Tall Turret Pass the turrets are silver,
on the Great W all walls are formed of jade.
Their standards and banners have all fallen
and the Son of Heaven does not know their names.
Luo Bin-wang (b. ca. 640)With the Army: A Ballad

What matters in their lives: to be seen with respect;
from the Grand Army a bold aura surges.
Sunlight on steppes divides the pikes glint;
Heavens stars match with sword patterns.2
Bows drawn full embrace the moon of Han
horseshooves trample the Turkish sand.
They do not seek to reenter the passes alive;
it is right that they die to repay their lord.
I_The "single meal" is an allusion to the Han Xin, one of the important generals in the founding of
the Han. When still young and obscure, he was fleeing for his life, and an old washerwoman shel
tered and fed him. The story became a common allusion for owing a debt of gratitude. In poetry
and prose, Tang soldiers always seek to repay the emperor for the favor he has shown them.
2Brave soldiers produced a spirit-aura, qi, that was said to be visible over a valiant army. Swords
were often forged with star patterns in the metal.
The High Tang Frontier Poem

The memory of the great Han generals appears frequently in High Tang frontier po
etry, either as flattering comparison with Tang generals or, by contrast, as wishes
that the Tang had such generals. The most famous of the Han commanders was Li
Guang, the "Flying General,
though "Light Horse" Huo Qu-bing and "Light Wagon"
Li Cai are also commonly invoked. While boundaries of all kinds did not usually
play a major role in the traditional Chinese cultural imagination, the major excep
tion was on the Northern and northwestern frontier, where there was the awareness
of a clear division between "us" and "them. Frontier poetry often speaks of the cross
ings and incursions such divisions create.
Wang Chang-ling (ca. 690-ca. 756)Out the Passes

Bright moon of the days of Qin,
passes of the Han,
on they marched for thousands of miles,
the men did not return.
If only that Flying General
of Dragon Fort were here,
he would not let the Turkish horses
make the crossing of Shadow Mountain.
Many frontier poems often seem to consist of strings of sensuous images, conclud
ing with a gesture either of loyalty to the emperor or of complaint about the hard
ships and futility of military campaigns. In the best of such poems, however, the im
ages work together to build a world or tell an implicit story.
In the following poem by Wang Wei, notice the way in which images are
arranged in sequence to create a day of battle: first the single sound of the bugle
rousing the sleeping troops, followed by the hubbub of the army rising and break
ing camp. The second couplet mixes the sound of fifes played during the march with
the neighing of horses as the column squeezes together crossing a river into nomad
country (you may also imagine splashing, the noise of the movement). Up to this
point the poem is dominated by sounds. Then, in the third couplet, a visual scene
is presentedand the visual scene becomes dominant as the poet draws away from
being among the troops to the position of a remote observer. There is the darkening
scene of twilight, and in the desertscape a great cloud of dust that hides the Chinese
and nomads in combat The fact is known by sounds; the visual scene, with its il
lusory calm, is given only to conceal the more violent events that are presented in
sound. The final couplet is a declaration of victory and promise of return.
Wang Wei, With the Army: A Ballad

A bugle blown sets marchers in motion
with a loud din the marchers rise.
The Tang Dynasty
Fifes wail, a tumult of neighing horses,

as they struggle to cross Golden River.
At sundown on the great deserts edge,
the sounds of battle within haze and dust.
We have bound the necks of their foremost chiefs

and go back to present them to the Emperor.
Armies usually received news of nomad raids by a system of beacon fires on watchtowers. In the following poem, also by Wang Wei, the full reason for the courier's
urgency is withheld until the last line, in a beautiful image of snow whirling in the
passes so that those watching for a signal could not tell whether they were seeing
smoke or snow.
Long-xiA Ballad
Every ten miles a horse is set galloping,
every five miles the whip is raised.
A dispatch has reached the Lord Protector:
the Xiong-nu are besieging Wine-Spring!3
Snow now blows in the barrier mountainsbeacon fires are cut off, no smoke.
Li Bo (701-762)The Old Airs XIV

Sandstorms fill Turkish passes,
where bleak winds forever howl.
When trees shed leaves and plants turn brown,
they climb heights to watch for raiders.
Weed-grown forts lie abandoned in deserts,
of frontier towns no wall remains.
White bones last through a thousand frosts,
jumbled heaps covered by clumps of brush.
Who was it, then, worked such brutality?
Heavens darlings show venom of violence.
3The Xiong-nu were the great Central Asian nation that warred with the Western Han, and the siege
of the garrison at Wine-Spring refers to events that occurred in the Han. The aesthetic distance of
Han settings was preferred by many poets, even when they were intended to refer to military events
in the Tang.
His Majesty stirs to a terrible wrath,

he makes trial of his troops to serve wars drums.
Springs gentle light turns to deadly weather,
soldiers are mustered, heartlands turmoil.
Three hundred and sixty thousand men
all weeping tears that fall like rain.
And they worry that going to serve on campaign
they will not be able to care for their farms.
If you never have seen the lads on the march
you cant grasp the harshness of barrier mountains.
Li M u, the general, is with us no more
on the frontier men feed jackals and tigers.
Rather than one of the famous Han generals, Li Bo here invokes the example of Li
Mu, the great general of the old Warring States Kingdom of Zhao, who defeated the
Xiong-nu so thoroughly that they did not dare raid China for more than a decade
thereafter. The Xiong-nu were famous for claiming to be "Heaven's darlings."
Moon Over the Mountain Passes

The bright moon comes out from Sky Mountain
in a vast spreading ocean of clouds.
A steady wind stretches for thousands of miles
and blows straight through the Jade Gate Pass.
Han troops moved down the Bo-deng Road
the Turks kept watch by Kokonors bays.
Places always of marching and battle
from which no one is ever seen to return.
Garrisons gaze on the frontiers features,
many faces show suffering, longing for home.
And in high chambers on this same night
the sighs, I am sure, are not yet still.
Regret for the suffering and death caused by the Centra

Asian wars was not the only
response of poets. Li Bo could just as easily compose the following bloodthirsty and
jingoistic yue-fu. The last line is a quotation from a short song by the founder of the
Han Dynasty.
464
The Tang Dynasty
The Turks Are Gone!

Harsh winds blow the frost,
grass shrivels by Kokonor
now compound bows are strong and hard,
the Turkish horses exult.
Warriors of the House of Han
three hundred thousand strong,
whose general also commands
Light Horse Huo Qu-bing.
The blade Shooting Star and white-fletched shafts

are hanging at his waist,
swords pattern of autumn lotus shoots
beams of light from within the sheath.
Imperial soldiers shine in snow
descending from Jade Gate Pass,
nomad arrows come like the sands
and stick in coats of mail.
Cloud and dragon
tiger and wind
our formations interchange;

the Morning Star lies in moon's halo:
a sign that the foe can be crushed.
The foe can be crushed,
the Nomad Star put out
we tread on Turkish entrails,
we wade through Turkish blood.
We hang up Turks in the blue sky,
we bury Turks by Purple Pass.
The Turks are gone!
The Han is glorious!
May His Majesty live three thousand years
and sing how the great wind
sweeps the clouds along
How will I find fierce warriors to guard my land all around?
Wang Chang-ling, Variation on Hard Traveling

Towards evening the piping grew mournful,
windborne it blended with neighing steeds.
The vanguard takes banners and standards,
battle clouds circle a thousand miles.
The Khan comes down from the Mountain of Shadow;
winds howl over empty gravel and sand.
465
In one battle you can get made a nobleman

no more yearning now for the womens rooms!
By the Passes: A Song (second of a set)

I let my horse drink, then crossed autumn waters;
the waters were cold, the wind like a knife.
A horizon of sand where the sun had not set
in the growing darkness I could see Lin-tao.
Battles fought by the W all in olden days

they always say how their spirits were high.
But brown dust fills both present and past
and white bones lie scattered in sagebrush.
Unlike any of the preceding poets, Cen Shen actually served with the Tang armies
in Central Asia. But rather than "realism, we find in his frontier songs the "Gothic
extravagance fashionable in poetry of the 740s and early 750s.
Cen Shen (ca. 715-77 0 )Song of White Snow: Sending Off

Assistant Wu on His Return to the Capital
The north wind rolls up the earth
white grasses snap.
In the Turkish skies of October
the snow is flying.
All at once it seems in a single night
that breeze of spring has come:
On thousands of trees, on millions of trees
blossoms of pear appear.
They come scattering through beaded curtains,
melt soaking the lacework drapes,
Our fox furs give us no warmth,
our quilts of brocade are too thin.
The general finds he cannot pull
his compound bow of horn,
the Lord Protectors coat of mail
grows too cold to put on.
Over the Gobis vast reaches
a hundred yard thickness of ice,
And somber masses of solid cloud
cast gloom across thousands of leagues.
The Tang Dynasty
In the central divisions we set out wine

to toast our homebound friend,
W ith the Turkish fiddle and mandolin
and the nomad flute.
A whirling blizzard of evening snow

descends on the headquartersgate,
And winds clutch the red banners,
which freeze and no longer flap.
At the eastern gate of Bugur
we send you on your way,
And as you go the snow will fill
the Heaven Mountain Road.
As the mountain bends, so the road turns,
and we will no longer see you,
leaving only the marks in the snow
to show where your horse has passed.
The Ballad of Running Horse River: Sending Off the Army on a

Western Campaign
Have you not seen
Running Horse River
beside a sea of snow,
a vast expanse of level sands
stretching yellow to the sky?
At Bugur in November
the winds are roaring by night,
with a whole river of shattered stones
as large as dippers,
and along with the wind that fills the earth
the stones run tumultuously.
When the Xiong-nu grasses turn brown,

the horses are at their sleekest,
west of Golden Mountain we see
smoke and dust flying:
the House of Hans Grand General
is taking the army west.
The generals coat of mail
is not removed by night,
as the army moves on at midnight,
pikes bump each other,
the edge of the wind is like a knife,
faces are as if sliced.
467
The coats of horses are streaked with snow,

steam rises from their sweat,
dappled spots like linked coins
instantly turn to ice,
drafting indictments back in camp,
the inkstone
s water freezes.
When nomad horsemen hear of him,
their hearts will surely quail,
my opinion is they will never dare
cross their swords with ours
at the western gate of Ju-shi we
await news of the victory.
Cen Shen stands waiting for news of a glorious Tang victory; but back in Chang-an,
Du Fu had a very different perspective on the massive conscriptions necessary to
keep the frontier armies at full strength.
Du Fu, The Army Wagons: A Ballad

The wagons went by rumbling,
horses snorted and neighed,
men on the move, bows and arrows
on each man hung at the waist.
Poppas and mammas, children and wives
ran along saying goodbyes,
and the dust was such you could not see
the bridge at Xian-yang.
Tugging their coats, stamping their feet,
weeping and blocking the road,
the sound of weeping rose up straight
and beset high wisps of cloud.
Someone passing by that road
asked of the men on the move,
and one of them just said,
Theyre calling men up often.
Some from the age of fifteen
are up north guarding the river,
then on until age forty
they serve west on army farms.
When I left, the village headman
gave a turban for my head;
when I get home, my hair will be white
then back to patrol the frontier again.
468
The Tang Dynasty
he blood that has flowed at frontier posts

would make waters of a sea,
yet our Warlike Sovereigns will to expand
is not yet satisfied.
Havent you heard:
.
in two hundred districts east of the hills
that belong to the House of H a n , .
thousands and thousands of hamlets and towns
grow with thorns and briars.
Even with a sturdy wife
who can hold the hoe and plow,
grain grows over the field banks,
you can5t tell east from west.
But then it is worse for troops of Qin,
they have suffered the crudest battles,
driven to it, treated no different
from dogs or barnyard fowl.
You sir, well may ask
does a conscript dare complain?
Now take the winter this year
they wont stop taking troops from Guan-xi,
The county officials will press for tax,
but from where will the grain tax come?
I have learned that bearing males is bad,
but bearing girls is good.
If you bear a girl you can still manage
to marry her to a neighbor
if you bear a male he
ll end up buried
out in the prairie grass.
Havent you seen
on Kokonor
s shores
white bones from ancient days
that no one gathers?
The new ghosts there are tormented with rage
the older ghosts just weep;
when the sky grows shadowed and rains pour down,
you hear their voices wailing.
Mid- and Late Tang Frontier Poetry

The withdrawal of Tang armies from most of Central Asia after the middle of the
eighth century did not prevent the composition of vivid frontier quatrains.
469
Lu Lun (ca. 748-ca. 798), By the Passes

The moon was blackthe geese flew high,
the Khan was fleeing by night.
We wanted to send light horse in pursuit:
a blizzard covered our bows and swords.
Wang Jian (ca. 767-ca. 830)With the Army: A Ballad

The House of Han pursues the Khan,
the sun sets by bends of Cross Rivers.
Drifting clouds rise beside the road,
the troopers spend nights under wagons.
A stockade surrounded by bugles and drums,
tents follow the contours of hill valleys.
Horses backs hung with wine jugs;
knifepoints portion out jowl meat.
When they first set out from the high halls,
fathers and mothers prepared their baggage.
They turn their heads and see not their homes,
the blowing winds have shredded their clothes.
Blade scars appear on limbs and joints,
, they help each other pull arrowheads.
I have heard tell that in western Liang-zhou
in every household the women weep.
There are a few pieces that give a more direct representation of the historical situa
tion on the Tang frontier. Wang Jian has the folk of Liang-zhou lamenting constant
warfare; below, Zhang Ji acknowledges the loss of the major frontier prefecture of
Liang-zhou to the Tibetans, represented here as Hu (conventionally translated as
"Turks").
Zhang Ji (776-ca. 829)Long-tou Ballad

The road to Long-tou is cut off,
and no man travels there,
by night the Turkish horsemen
entered Liang-zhous walls.
Everywhere the Chinese troops
died fighting hand to hand,
in one morning we lost the whole
region of Long-xi.
470
The Tang Dynasty
They drove us, folk of the borders,

off among the Turks,
and let their sheep and cattle graze
upon our millet and grain.
.
Children who only last year

were raised to be Chinese
now dress themselves in cloaks of felt
and learn the speech of Turks.
Who can employ another Li Cai,

the Light Wagon General,
to once again take Liang-zhou
into the House of Han?
For the Mid-Tang poet Li He, the conventions of frontier poetry were purely mate
rial on which his unique poetic imagination could work.
Li He (790-816)Song for the Governor of Wild Goose Barrier

Black clouds weigh down on the walls,
the walls seem about to collapse;
light glinting from armor faces the sun,
golden scales appear.
Trumpet sounds fill the heavens
within the colors of fall,
borderland soil is tinted rouge
that hardens to nights purple.
Our crimson banners stand half-furled
beside the river Yi;
the frost is heavy, drums are cold,
their sounds do not rally.
We will pay back the honor shown by. our lord
upon the Terrace of Gold
and we take in hand the jade dragon-swords
and die now for our lord.
By the Passes: A Song

The Turkish horn draws the north wind,
Ji Gate is whiter than water.
Sky swallows the road to Kokonor
a thousand miles of moon on the Wall.
471
Dewfall, banners in misty drizzle,

cold metal sings the hours of the night.
Tibetan armor, interlocked snake-scales,
horses neigh in the white of Green Tomb.4
In autumns stillness see the Nomad Star,
the sagebrush somber, the sands stretch far.
North of the tents the sky must end,
flowing out from the passes the rivers sound comes.
By the time of Guan Xiu, not only were all the frontier conquests lost, but the cen
tral government (if the Tang still survived when the following poem was written) no
longer controlled much of China. Yet the tradition of frontier poetry remained, here
as a Gothic fantasy of pulverized bones of dead soldiers blowing into the eyes of
the next wave of Chinese armies.
Guan Xiu (late 9th- early 10th century), By the PassesSongs

(second of four)
Bones from battles are trampled to dust
that flies into eyes of men on the march.
Brown clouds suddenly turn to black
as the ghosts of battle form weeping ranks.
Shadowy winds roar over the desert
and the fire signals do not show forth.
Who will stand before the Son of Heaven
and sing out this song of the border forts?
Du Fu: The Formation of a Soldier

The frontier soldier of the yue-fu tradition was a conventional literary type with a
limited range of expected responses to the hardships of frontier warfare. In the fol
lowing series, Du Fu uses and complicates those conventional responses to create
something like the psychological formation of a soldier, beginning as a youthful civil
ian who weeps at leaving home and then passing through various phases of bravado,
disillusionment, and professional determination until at last he speaks as a mature,
self-assured man, who understands the necessity of guarding the frontiers and will
willingly sacrifice himself in the service of the empire.
4The Green Tomb was the burial place of Wang Zhao-jun, the Chinese court lady married off to a
Khan. Her tomb was supposed to stay green throughout the year.
472
The Tang Dynasty
Out to the Frontier (first series)

I
Cheerless, they leave their hometowns
and go far, far away to Cross Rivers.
The officers have their strict schedules;
deserters are meshed in trouble.
Our lord is already rich in lands,

yet how wide he extends the frontiers!
Forsaking forever their parents love,
voices choked back, they march, shouldering pikes.
II
Farther each day from the gates they left,
they wont take the gibes of their comrades.
Their love for kin is of course unbroken,
but a man can die here at any time.
They gallop their horses, bridles removed,
in their hands they twirl blue silk reins.
Headlong down hills of a thousand yards,
they crouch low and try to lift banners high.
III
In the waters that flow on Long-tou
the sounds of unseen sobbing.
I gaze far away to the streams of Qin
and my heart is ready to break.
~Song of Long-tou (anonymous yue-fu)
I sharpened my sword in those sobbing waters,

the water turned red, the blade cut my hand.
I had tried to ignore those heartbreaking sounds,
but the hearts thoughts have long been in turmoil.
When a true man swears to serve the realm,
what place is left for anguish or rage?
Deeds of fame are pictured in the Royal Gallery
and bones left from battle turn swiftly to dust.
IV
To take troops to the front there is someone in charge,
for holding far forts there are only ourselves.
To life or to death we go forward,

sergeants need not take the trouble to shout.
On the road I once met a person I knew,
I sent a letter with him home to my kin.
It's a sad thing that we are kept apart
and will never share our hardships again.
V
Into the distancemore than ten thousand leagues
we were led till we reached the Grand Army.
In the army some suffer and others delight~
Im sure the Commander has not heard all.
Past the river I saw Turkish riders,
in an instant, a band of hundreds.
For the first time now Ive become a slave
when will I do those deeds of glory?
VI
When you pull a bow, make sure its a strong one,
make sure that the arrows you use are long ones.
To shoot a man, first shoot the horse,
to capture the foe, first capture their chief.
Yet there are limits to killing men,
and a realm is secured by natural bounds.
If only we can check their raids
it is not how many we wound and kill.
VII
We galloped onthe sky looked like snow,
the army marched off into high mountains.
The paths were steepwe clung to cold rock,
fingers fell off into piles of ice.
Already gone far from Chinas moon,
when shall we return from building the Wall?
Drifting clouds journey on southward at dusk;
we watch them, we cannot go along.
vni
The Khan has sacked one of our forts,

wind-blown dust darkens a hundred miles.
The Tang Dynasty
Manly swords swing just a few times,

and their army flees before us.
We return, taking captive their best-known chiefs,

necks bound, presented to the Commanders gate.
And I hidejust one of the company
by itself one victory doesnt matter.
IX
I have been with the army more than ten years,
you may guess that I
ve done some small deeds.
Most men prize any chance for advantage;
I might speak, but feel shame to be like them.
There is fighting now in the heartland,
and worse still, with the frontier tribes.
A true mans concerned with all the world
how can I refuse to hold fast in hardship?
Aftermath
The following is a piece of lyric prose that evokes the gloom of an ancient battle
field to argue against further Tang military expansion in Central Asia.
Li Hua (ca. 715-ca. 774)A Lamentation at an Ancient

Battlefield
In the vast sweep of boundless and level sands there was no one visible far
into the distance. Here the Yellow River winds around
and ranges of moun
tains form tangled clusters. It is indeed somber and cheerless scenery, with
the winds whistling and the skies overcast. Tumbleweeds break from their
roots, and the grasses are sere in the shivering chill of a frosty dawn. Birds
in their flight will not come down, and beasts, lost from their packs, dash
through.
The man in charge of the government way station here told me
This is an ancient battlefield, where a Grand Army lies covered forever.
Ghosts of the dead weep everywherewhen the skies darken you can hear
them.
What a heartrending sight! Was it Qin? Was it Han? Or was it some more
recent age? I have heard how the ancient domains of Qi and Wei sent out
garrisons and how mercenaries were hired from Jing and Han. Forced
marches across thousands of miles, years on end spent exposed to the dew.
In the sandy grasses they pastured their horses in the early morning; and
when the river iced over, they crossed by night. The land is immense, its skies
stretch on and on, and they did not know the road home. They sacrificed
their lives on the point and the sharp blade, with no one to whom they could
protest what they felt within them.
Since the times of the Qin and Han, many have been our troubles with
the nomads all around us. The heartland has squandered its strength here,
with no generation free of it. It is claimed that in olden days neither Chinese
nor barbarian defied the kings armies. But the peaceful influence of culture
has failed to spread, and instead military officials applied their own irregu
lar solutions. The irregularity of military solutions is distinct from fellow feel
ing and right. And in this the Royal Way went wide of the mark and no
longer worked.
I can imagine how it was back then, when the north wind blasted the
sands and the Turkish soldiers watched closely for the advantage. The Grand
Marshal scorned the foe and took the assault at the headquarters gate. On
the steppes the flags and banners stood upright; the river turned back buffcoat and armor. The orders were heavyhearts were skittishauthority was
honored; life was held cheap. Sharp arrowheads pierced bone; winds blasted
sand into faces. Defender and attacker grappled; the rumbling shook moun
tains and streams. The uproar split the great rivers; the onslaught bore down
like lightning and thunder.
But then all became locked in darkest shadow, and it was biting cold at
the corner of the sea. Their calves sank into the drifts of snow and hard ice
formed on their beards. Even birds of prey kept to their nests, and warhorses
faltered. Cotton and silk provided no warmth; fingers fell off and skin cracked.
At a time of such bitter coldHeaven lent strength to the Turk. Their
murderous spirit was overwhelming, whereby they struck and slaughtered.
Coming in a straight columnthey cut the baggage train in half; then ranged
in a line, they fell upon the troops. The Commandant has just surrendered
the general has perished, buried under a heap. Corpses pack the slopes of
great gulches; blood fills the watering holes of the Great W all. One cannot
bear to tell of it, how they all became bleached skeletons, with no distinc
tion of rank or degree.
The drumbeats dwindled their strength was gone,
the shafts gave out, bowstrings broke.
Silver blades crossed, jeweled dirks snapped,
two armies crushed together, life or death decided.
W ill it be surrender?
to end ones days among nomads?
W ill it be to fight on?
and leave bare bones in the gravel and sand?
The birds make no sound, the mountains are still,
the night stretches on, the winds howl.
Souls coalesce in skies dark and murky,
wraiths and spirits cluster, clouds hang as shrouds.
Sunbeams are cold, the grass grows as stubble,
the moon's color bitter, the frost is white.
The Tang Dynasty
It pains the heart and grieves the eye that it is like this.
I have heard that Li M u took troops of Zhao and utterly smashed the
Turks of the forest, opening a thousand miles of territory, sending the Xiongnu into flight. But Han conquered all the world, expending its wealth and
injuring its strengthit was a question of the men employed and not a ques
tion of numbers. The Zhou pursued the Xian-yun northward all the way to
Tai-yuan. Then, having fortified the northlandsthey returned with their
army intact. They drank to their victories in the ancestral temple and judged
rewards in a gentle peace and ease; then all was dignified and gracious in
the relation between prince and officers. Qin raised the Great Wall, closing
the land off all the way to the sea. They were poisonous to living thingsand
the color of clotted blood stretched ten thousand miles. The Han struck the
Xiong-nu; and though they took the Mountain of Shadow, skeletons lay in
piles all over the steppes and the great deeds done did not make up for the
harm.
O f the teeming folk bred by the Gray One, Heavennone lacks a father
and mother to provide for and support, fearing lest they not live to great old
age. No one lacks brothers, who are like hands and feet. No one lacks wife
or husband, who are like guest and like friend. Yet living, what kind of love
did these men enjoy; and for what grave charge were they slain? And their
families never knew whether they perished or survived. Or perhaps some
one gave them word, but they did not know whether to doubt it or believe
their hearts were left deeply troubled, and, both sleeping and waking, they
saw their loved ones. They would pour a libation and gaze weeping off to
ward the horizon. Heaven and Earth were sad on their account, and the
plants and trees were forlorn. For if the lament and sacrifices could not reach
them, on what could the dead rely? There had to be years of misfortune in
consequence, with the people sundered and in flight.
Alas! Was it the times or was it ordained? Yet from earliest times it has
been like this. What can be done? Imperial virtue must spread to the bar
barians all around.
Coda
Lu LunEncountering a Wounded Soldier
When he travels he often suffers from wounds,
when he stops he has no provisions,
he makes his way home over thousands of miles
and has not reached there yet.
With unkempt hair he groans in pain
beneath an ancient fort
he cannot bear when autumns air
touches the scars of the blade.
Mid- and Late Tang Poetry
Readers and critics after the Tang reserved their highest praise for the poetry of the
High Tang during the first half and middle of the eighth century. In making this judg
ment they were, in fact, following the opinion of poets and critics of the Mid- and
Late Tang, from the last decade of the eighth century through the ninth century. Some
critics called this entire period the "Late Tang, but the obvious differences between
the poetry of the first part of the period and later has led most critics to divide the
period into Mid-Tang and Late.
Though many Mid- and Late Tang poets felt that they had fallen from the glory
of the age of Li Bo and Du Fu, theirs was an age of immense energy and variety, an
age of unusual poetic personalities and self-conscious poetic experiment. Both they
themselves and their readers in later periods may have felt that Mid- and Late Tang
poetry did not equal that of Du Fu, but the canonical stature of Du Fu was, in no
small part, the product of their own literary judgment: they recognized the value of
his work as none of hfs contemporaries could.
The most salient characteristic of the Mid-Tang is its self-consciousness. Unlike
their High Tang predecessors, Mid-Tang writers asked large questions about poetry's
value, its cultural role, and its craft. We begin to find literary groups with explicitly ar
ticulated principles. In the High Tang, poetry was largely accepted as part of social
life; Mid-Tang writers asked what poetry "should be
and shaped their writing to ful
fill the answers they found to that question. There is no simple unity among Mid-Tang
poets: they are "more
everything more relaxed and genial, more angry, more dar
ing in their images, more didactic and ethically engaged. No small part of the attrac
tion of High Tang poetry had been a basic confidence that they understood how the
world worked and that they could represent that world in words. That confidence is
gone in the Mid-Tang
poets continually invent interpretations and explanations for
phenomena, and their words no longer seem so securely tied to the things of the world.
During the Song Dynasty and afterward, a deep hostility developed toward Midand Late Tang poetry. From allusions and imitations we know it continued to be widely
read, but critics would either declare its inferiority to the High Tang or say that it should
not be read at all, lest it corrupt the judgment. Perhaps one reason for such hostility
was that in their self-consciousness, their experimentation, and their intellectual rest
lessness, Mid-Tang writers anticipated the elite literary culture of the next millennium,
a culture that would always aspire, unsuccessfully, to return to the High Tang.
Meng Jiao (751-814)

The oldest poet of the Mid-Tang was Meng Jiao, a troubled southeastern intellec
tual who was already.approaching middle age when he went to Chang-an in the
The Tang Dynasty

early 790s to take the jin-shi examination and won the admiration of the younger
Han Yu, around whom a group of marginal intellectuals was already forming. Meng
Jiao's poetry has a forcefulness and harshness that was generally uncharacteristic of
the Chinese poetic tradition. The fierce intensity of his best work also limited his
scope.
*
Tormented
The bad poets all win public office,
good poets uselessly cling to the hills.
Cling to the hills, shivering cold,
their faces grieve the whole day through.
Good poets, moreoverspite one another
swords and pikes grow out of their teeth.
Good men of the past are long dead,
yet we still are chewing over them.1
W ith this last tip of my life
pure and austere, I cultivated peace.
I sought peace but found no peace
the packs mock me, glaring, roaring.
Lying Sick
Sickness in poverty, true disgrace,
on an old bed with no fresh cloak.
Springs beauty burns the flesh,
the throat hurts with the seasons dishes.
Sick of lying in bed, mind in a blur,
I force out words, but the voice is feeble.
Polite to my guests, I manage to cope:
there are tears within, but they dare not flow.
But in the utter hush of the heart
dawns sorrows last to twilights sorrows.
1"Chewing over" was the standard term for studious rumination, but in this context the dead
metaphor comes grotesquely to life.
479
What Was in My Heart on a Spring Day

The rains drip the sprouts out,
growing taller day by day,
and the breezes blow willow strands hanging,
whose each branch is twined with another,
only the face of a joyless man
passes spring as if not caring;
for the while he may take a cupful of wine~
then frenzied songs and frenzied laughter come
Informal Composition
Come not too close to the sharp sword,
to a lovely woman come not too near.
Too near, the sharp sword wounds a hand;
too near, the woman will wound a life.
Road
s perils are not in its distance:
just ten paces can crack a wheel.
Loves troubles are not in numbers:
just one evening scars the soul.
What Came to Me in a Mood

The plant does not die if you pull up the stalk;
remove its roots, and the willow still prospers;
Only the man who has failed in his hopes
walks without strength, as if in a daze.
Before, we were branch twined with branch;
now I am notes from a broken string.
As a branch twined with others, I mattered;
but as broken string now, only sneers.
I would go on ahead in my lonely boat,
but the Gorges waters are unsteady
I would drive my wagon and horse along,
but the Tai-hangs trails loom perilous.
All things have their root in a single force
then why do they tear one another down?
The Tang Dynasty
Plagiarizing Poems
A starving hound gnaws a dry bone
and gulps down only his ravenous drool.
Recent writing and ancient writing~
he finds each one his favorite.
Or its like a toddler eating,

mouth slobbering over a candied peach
there is only that tiny spot of taste;
unnoticed, the daylights fleet passage.
An old man sits alone on a cot,
he silently looks over something passed down.
But at last he should give up writing,
compose yet another Roaming Free.2
Formerly writing was something chaste;
even then it did not make a good man worthy.
Old Mans Bitterness

I have no child to take down my writings
what an old man chants mostly falls away lost.
Sometimes I blurt them into my bed,
but my pillow and mat dont understand.
Battles of ants on the tiniest scale,
yet in sickness I hear them so clearly.
To tell no difference between large and small
is the true nature of things, Heavens gift.
Something Touched Me One Night and I Try to Get It Out

I studied at night, by dawn was not done,
droned words so bitter that gods and ghosts grieved.
Why is it then that I have no peace?
my heart and my body are enemies.
Shame in death is a moments pain
shame in living is long humiliation.
On the pure cassia, no straight boughs
I think on past travels upon the green rivers.
2//Roaming Free" (Xiao-yao you) is the title of the first chapter of the Zhuang-zi.
481
Autumn Cares II
The autumn moons complexion is ice,
aged wanderer, w ills energy thinned.
Chill dews drip his dreams to pieces,
biting winds comb the bones cold.
On his mat the seal-print of sickness,
while in his gut turn sorrows coils.
Suspicions, though based on nothing
listening to emptinessthings without source.
A beech tree looming and bare,
sound and echo like sad notes plucked.3
A Visit to the South Mountains

The South Mountains block up earth and sky,
on its rocks are born sun and moon.
The high crests keep sunlight into the night,
deep valleys dont brighten in daytime.
In mountains men are by nature straight,
though paths are steep, the mind is even.
Steady winds drive through cypress and pine,
their sounds brush pure thousands of ravines.
Reaching this place I repent my learning,
each dawn drawn nearer to groundless renown.
A Ballad of Mount Jing

Swarms of flies cluster around my sick horse,
its blood flows so freely it cannot move.
On the road behind nights hues are rising,
in the mountains ahead I hear tigers roar.
At a moment like this the travelers heart
is a flag in the wind a hundred feet high.
Seeing Off Reverend Dan XII

A poet suffers making poems
better go flying away in the sky.
A lifetimes breath of pointless clucking
not making protests or lampooning wrong.
3The "beech" (wu-tong) provided resonant wood for harps. Here the real tree sounds like music.
482
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Broken loose and sere, cold twigs dangle,

cast aside, no more than a drop of spit.
Pace after pace, always begging
for patch after patch of clothes.
All who relied on poems for livelihood
from ancient times have rarely been fat.
Starving from poems, old without rancor,

I have troubled the monk to shed streaming tears.
Answering a Friends Gift of Charcoal

In a plain cottage among green hills
there is a kindly man,
he gave me charcoal, its value greater
than two black silver rings.
By the place I sat it drove away
a thousand layers of cold,
and in my stove it burned forth
a whole scene of spring.
The sun played on red clouds blows,
the light unsteady,
warmed a body bent and twisted
into a straight body.
I tried to climb Zhao-cheng towerbut wasnt able to make it all

the way up. I expressed my disappointment in the garden of my
nephew, the monk Wu-kong
I wanted to climb that thousand-step tower
to ask Heaven a couple of things;
I hadnt gone more than twenty steps
when heart and eyes reeled like waves in the wind.
Each handhold clutched my panicked soul,
each footstep tread my spirit plummeting;
then the flow reversed back into former hands
as I clung to the sidesready still to slip swiftly away.
Old now and sick, I feel only self-pity:
wood with thousands of scars from ancient worms.
I can hardly flaunt an old mans strength:
one duckweed stalk on an autumn sea.
Alone and aged, where can I turn?
in daylight my eyes see a world of dusk.
483
Now always afraid I will lose my footing

and descend into the marketplace.
For my kin I form my ties with a monk;
this bamboo cane is a childs helping hand.
My frankness, a fruitless intensity;
and my aspirations abide to no end.
Words from the earth and this speck of mans heart~
how could high Heaven even hear them?
Han Yu (768-824)
Han Yu is generally considered the greatest master of classical prose in the Tang.
He was an important Confucian intellectual and served as the sponsor of many lit
erary figures of the turn of the ninth century. Although he was Meng Jiao's strongest
supporter, Han Yu was himself a very different poet. Han Yu wrote in many modes,
often with a discursiveness and experimental daring. The following selection does
not represent the full range of his work, but demonstrates several of his distinct styles:
the enigmatically simple domestic scene of "Autumn Thoughts"; the tongue-incheek encounter with a local divinity in "Visiting the Temple of Mount Heng ..
and an imaginative myth of Li Bo and Du Fu in "Written Playfully to Zhang Ji."
Autumn Thoughts (eighth of eleven)

Blown tumbling, leaves that fall to the ground,
before my porch they run with the wind.
There seems some intent in the sounds they make,
toppling over, chasing swiftly each other.
Then twilight came to my empty hall,
I sat there silent, not speaking.
The boy came in from the outside
and lit the lamp in front of me.
He asked how I was, I did not reply
he brought me food, I would not eat.
He drew back and sat by the western wall,
read out poems, completing a few.
, Their writers were not men of today,
already a thousand years have gone by.
But something touched me in their words,
that made me again feel discouraged.
I looked around, saying, You, boy,
put the books down and go to bed.
484
The Tang Dynasty
Theres something on my mind just now,

a task to be done that never ends.
Mount Heng was the southernmost of the "Five Great Peaks." Han Yu was passing
it on the way to a new provincial posting, after exile in the Far South.
Visiting the Temple of Mount Herig, Then Spending the Night

at the Buddhist Monastery: I Wrote This on the Gate Tower
The ritual ranks of the Five Great Peaks
are all as the Lords of State,
they ring and ward the four directions,
Mount Song stands in the center.
Toward fiery points the land runs wild,
there demons and phantoms abound,
so Heaven lent this peak the might of a god
and made its manliness dominant.
Surges of cloud and oozing fogs
hid its waist halfway up;
and though a summit it must have had,
none could get all the way through.
I came here just at the time
of the season of autumn rains,
it was shut up in shadowy vapors,
there was no clear breeze.
If to silent prayers from my secret heart
an answer is here given
it must be because one upright and true
is able to touch and sway.
In an instant all was swept clear,
the throngs of peaks emerged!
I looked up and saw them towering there,
buttresses of blue sky.
Purple Awning fanning out
till it touched Pillar-of-Heaven,
and Stone Granary in hurtling vaults
piling on Firegod Peak.
My soul was darkly stirred,
I got down from my horse and bowed,
and along a path of cypress and pine
I rushed to the house of the god.
Its white plaster walls and crimson posts

cast flashes of color,
paintings depicting demons
filled it with reds and greens.
I climbed those stairs hunched over
to offer dried meats and wine,
I wished by such trifling things
to show what I felt inside.
The priest in charge was an old man
who knew the will of the god,
with bulging eyes he scanned the signs
his body bent in a ball.
He took the talismans in his hand
and showed me how to toss them
said, This is most lucky of all,
no other cast can compare!
Banished from sight in barbarian jungles,
lucky not to be dead
my food and clothing just barely enough,
willing to meet my end.
To be prince, lord, minister, general,
all hope has long ago fled~
though the god might wish my good fortune,
it is something not easily done.
I lodged in a Buddhist temple that night
and climbed its high tower,
the light of stars and moon was veiled,
pale glow behind the clouds.
When gibbons shrieked and the bell stirred
I did not know it was dawn,
till, gradually growing, the wintry sun
appeared off in the east.
In the following poem, "the marks of their chisel and ax" refers to the literary works
fashioned by Li Bo and Du Fu, but in this metaphor (which later became a cliche)
their literary creation is compared to the legendary deeds of the Sage-King Yu, who
drained away the great flood by cutting the waterways of China. Han Yu's Sage-King
Yu is not the usual, very human character of the Confucian tradition, but a figure of
titanic proportions.
Written Playfully to Zhang Ji

Li Bo
s and Du Fu5s writings endure,
a blazing halo ten thousand yards high.
I dont understand that pack of fools
why did they malign them so willfully?
Such are ants that would shake a mighty tree,
absurdly blind to their own capacity.
While I who was born thus after them,
only crane my neck and gaze from afar.
I often see them by night in dreams,

in daylight they fade when I think of them.
We see only the marks of their chisel and ax,
cant view the voyage that tamed the flood.
I imagine the moment such hands were used
a huge blade raised, scraping sky.
Cliff and bank sheared, crashing open,
Earth and Sky shuddered with thundering roar.
And yet always these same two men
were in private life distressed and in need.
The god wished them to keep on chanting poems,
on purpose he made them stand, then fall flat.
He clipped their wings, put them into a cage,
forced them ta see all the common birds soar.
Through their lifetimes millions of poems were left
in golden script on carnelian slabs.
Then the god in charge bade the Six Angels
come down in lightning to gather them;
some slipped and fell to our human world
but a wisp of hair compared to Mount Tai.
My wish is to grow a pair of wings
to hunt them down past the worlds confines.
This honest soul suddenly contacts them
and a hundred marvels enter my chest.
W ith a flip of the hand I snatch the whales tooth,
pour Heavens nectars, lifting a gourd.
My body mounts, striding space unbounded,

not stuck in the course of the Weavers star.
I look back and say to my friend on the Earth:
Dont work so hard at planning things out!
I will lend you a sash of flying red cloud;
you can join me up here, winging high and low.
Mountain Stones
Mountain stones ragged and broken,
tiny the trail I walked,
it was dusk when I reached the temple,
the bats were flying forth.
I mounted the hall, then sat on the stairs
in droplets of recent rain,
the banana leaves had grown large,
the gardenias had grown plump.
The monk said that old walls here
had fine paintings of Buddha;
he took a torch to show them to me,
but what I saw was scant.
He spread my pallet and brushed the mat,
served me rice and broth,
yet this rough fare was plenty
to satisfy my hunger.
I lay in stillness deep that night,
the insects sounds all ceased;
a clear moon came up over the ridge,
its light came in my door.
I went off alone at daybreak
through places without a trail,
in and out, high then low,
all through the drizzling mists.
The hills were red, streams sapphire,
swarming with sparkling color,
at times I caught sight of oaks and pines,
each one ten armspans around.
In the current I went barefoot,
stepping on stones of streams,
with sounds of the rushing waters,
and the winds blowing my clothes.
The Tang Dynasty
Moments like this in our lives

bring a joy in themselves
why must we stay fettered and tied,
put in the harness by others?
But then with a sigh I think of those lads,
the two or three of my circle
how could I manage to stay till old age
and never return again?
Li He (791-817)
In his brief life, Li He produced some of the most remarkable poetry in the Chinese
tradition. A remote member of the T^tng royal house, Li He was sponsored by Han
Yu in the district examinations, but was prevented from taking the metropolitan ex
amination, which opened the way to a career in the Tang government. An enemy
objected that if he were accepted as a candidate jin-shi ("presented scholar"), the
title would violate the taboo against a son having the same name as his father (Li
He's father's name had a homophonous character). He later gained a minor post by
hereditary privilege, but had an undistinguished and short career. He died in his mid
twenties of unknown causes.
Li He's work is best known for its brilliant images, morbidity, and fascination
with the supernatural, so much so that in later times he was known as the "demonic
talent" (gui-cai). The Mid-Tang in general showed an interest in "otherness/' but for
Li He, it was a preoccupation, as it had been for his great precursor Li Bo. Li He was
most drawn to what was beyond the immediate and everyday world: to the world
of wraiths and the Undying, to dramatic moments in history and legend, and to the
sensuous world of the women's chamber.
When he does treat his own experience, he transforms it poetically into
something rare and strange, as when he picks up an arrowhead on an ancient bat
tlefield.
Song of an Arrowhead from the Battlefield of Chang-ping

Char of lacquer, powder of bone,
pebble of cinnabar:
in the chill gloom the ancient blood
blooms flowers in the bronze.
The white feathers and gilt shaft
have gone in the rains,
and all that remains is this
three-spined, broken wolfs fang.
I went searching over that level plain,
driving my two-horse team,
through the stony fields east of the station
by the foot of a weed-grown slope;
489
Daylight shortened, the wind was steady,

stars hung in its moaning,
black banners of cloud were draped soaking
in empty night sky.
To my right and left their wraiths
cried out, starving, lean
I poured a jug of cream in libation,
took a lamb to roast.
Insects settled, the geese flew sick,
the sprouts of reeds turned red,
and spiraling gusts sent the traveler on his way,
blowing their shadowy fires.
Seeker of the past, tears streaming,
I reaped this snapped barb,
whose broken point and red-brown cracks
once cut through flesh.
On a southern lane in the capitals eastern ward
a boy on horseback
tried to get me to trade the metal
for an offering basket.
The following poem, whose title suggests an ordinary "meditation on the past," turns
out to be a ghostly apparition, an act of imagination by a poet who, so far as we
know, had never been near the southern tomb of the Southern Dynasties courtesan
"Little Su," Su Xiao-xiao. This act of imagination was inspired by a short, enigmatic
quatrain attributed to Little Su herself:
I ride the coach with polished sides

my love rides a dark mottled horse.
under pine and cypress of Western Mound.
It was the last line, suggesting union only in death, that caught Li He's imagination.
Little Sus Tomb

Dew on the hidden orchid
is like an eye with tears.
Nothing that ties a true-love-knot,
flowers in mist, cant bear to cut.
The grass like the riding cushion,
the pines like the carriage roof.
The wind is her skirt,
the waters her pendants.
The coach with polished sides
awaits in the twilight.
The Tang Dynasty
Cold azure candlelight

struggling to shine.
Beneath Western Mound
wind blows the rain.
As he envisages the return of spirits, Li He can also evoke the world of the gods.
Dream of Heaven
Aged Hare, the wintry Toad4
weep colors of the sky,
its mansions of cloud half revealed,
their walls a slanting white.
^
Wheels of jade crush the dew,
moist globes of light,
phoenix pendants meet
on paths of cassia scent.
Brown dust or clear waters
'
beneath the Three Mountains,5
a thousand years change in succession
like horses at a gallop.
They gaze afar to this heartland,
nine specks of mist,6
the clear depth of the ocean
spilled from a cup.
Song of a Young Nobleman at the End of Night

Coiling smoke of sandalwood,
crows cry out, scene of nights end.
A winding basin, lotus waves,
encircling his waist, white jade cold.
Release from Melancholy: Song (written under the flowers)

Autumn winds blow over the earth,
all the plants grow dry,
in blossoming faces and sapphire shadows
there rises evenings chill.
4The Toad and Hare are inhabitants of the moon, from which the dew was supposed to fall (per
haps explaining the ^weeping" in the second hemstich of the first line).
5The Three Mountains are the isles of the Undying in the Western Ocean, which, once eons have
made
and and sea change places, w ill be surrounded by dust.
6//Nine specks of mist" may refer to the nine regions into which China was once divided, or per
haps to the nine continents said to be found in the world's ocean.
491
And Inow at twenty years,

frustrated in my aims,
all my heart drops away in melancholy
like an orchid brown and sere.
My clothes are knotted like quails in flight,
my horse is like a dog;
where the road divides, I strike my sword,
it gives a roar of bronze.
By the tavern sign I dismount from my horse
and take off my autumn jacket,
trying to pawn it for a jug
of the finest Yi-yang wine.
I shout at Heaven in my jug,
but clouds dont roll away,
thousands of miles of daylight, idle
and chill, where eyes lose their way.
The tavern keeper urges me
to care for mind and bones,
and not let the worlds petty things
weigh down and stifle me.

The reference in the preceding poem to "Heaven in my jug probably refers to one o f the
favorite stories o f the exiled gods and Undying w ho w alk among us. The story occurs in the
fifth-century History o f the Eastern Han:
Fei Chang-fang of Ru-nan was once the officer in charge of the market; and in the mar
ket there was an old man who sold herbs. He had one jug hung up in front of his shop,
and when it was time for the market to close up, he suddenly jumped into the jug. No
one else at the market saw him, but Fei Chang-fang, watching from high in a building,
caught sight of him. He thought this very strange, and consequently went to pay re
spects to the old man, offering him wine and dried meat. The old man realized that Fei
Chang-fang had divined that he was a god, and so he said to him, You can come again
tomorrow. The next morning Chang-fang went again to see the old man, and the old
man took him into the jug together with him. There he saw jade halls well framed and
lovely, with fine wines and delicacies overflowing within. When they both had finished
drinking, they came out. The old man made him agree not to tell anyone else. After
ward he waited for Chang-fang high in a building and said to him, I am a god, one
of the Undying. I am being punished for a fault. Today the sentence is completed and
I must go~do you think you are able to go along? At the foot of the building there is
a little wine which I give to you for our parting. When Chang-fang sent someone to
get it, the person w as n o t able to lift it. T hen he ordered ten m e n to try to lift it w ith
a pole, but they still couldnt get it off the ground. When the old man heard of this, he
laughed and went down from the building, picked it up with one finger and went back
492
The Tang Dynasty

up. If you looked at the vessel, it seemed a bit over a quart, yet the two men drank
from it for the entire day without finishing it.
Long Songs Following Short Songs

Long songs wrecked my clothes
short songs snapped white hair.
The King of Qin may not be seen
dawn to dusk fevers rage within.
When thirsty, drink wine in the jug,
when hungry, pull up grain on the slope.
A dreary chill at the close of June,
a thousand miles at the same time green.
How clear they stand, the peaks by night,
bright moon falls to the base of stones.
It lingers, I chase it along the rocks,
then it shines forth beyond the lofty peak.
I cant get to roam along with it,
my locks turn white ere the song is done.
In the end of this slightly mad poem, Li He goes chasing after the moon to be his
companion, but the moon escapes him and leaves him in solitude. The lines play
off Li Bo in "Drinking Alone by Moonlight," where the poet succeeds in gaining the
moon as a companion.
I sing, and the moon just lingers on

I dance, and my shadow flails wildly.
When still sober we share friendship and pleasure
then utterly drunk, each goes his own way~
Let us join to roam beyond human cares
and plan to meet far in the river of stars.
Some interpreters take the King of Qin who "may not be seen" as an expression of
the poet's frustration at not receiving recognition from the emperor. But there is an
other "King of Qin," the First Emperor, whose megalomaniacal ambition and hunger
for immortality made him a fascinating exemplar of excess~~or perhaps only a
drunken dream of excess.
The King of Qin Drinking

The King of Qin rode his tiger
and roamed to the ends of Earth,
the skies were lit by rays from his sword,
Heaven turned sapphire.
493
In her chariot Xi-he rapped the sun,7

there was the sound of glass.
Ashes of kalpas had all blown away
8
past and present were even.
Dragon-head ewers streamed with wine,
he invited the Wine-Star to come.
Mandolins with gilt bridges
twanged away in the night,
The raindrops of Lake Dong-ting
came as the reed organs played.
Feeling the wine, he yelled at the moon,
made it run back in its course.
Through streaks of silvery clouds
his marble halls grew bright.
The herald at the palace gate
called out the first hour of night.
In the flowered high rooms Jade Phoenix
had a voice both feral and sweet.
Mermens gossamerstriped in red,
with a faint and delicate scent.
Yellow maidens stumbled in dancing,
the goblets thousand-year health.
Candelabra in shapes of immortals,
where the waxy smoke rose light.
The clear harps notes, his drunken eyes,
tears like a deep, clear spring.
The idea of cruel gods was exceedingly rare in the Chinese tradition. The Daoist
philosopher Lao-zi spoke of Heaven and Earth's ruthless indifference, but active cru
elty was something altogether different. In the Mid-Tang, however, we find the pos
sibility raised by several members of the Han Yu circle. As Han Yu himself specu
lated about the hard lives of Li Bo and Du Fun in "Written Playfully to Zhang ji
(p.
487):
The god wished them to keep on chanting poems,

on purpose he made them stand, then fall flat.
He clipped their wings, put them into a cage,
forced them to see all the common birds soar.
In "Don't Go Out the Gate!", one of Li He's most bizarre works, the poet ostensibly
seeks to exonerate the god of intentional malice. Li He describes here the demonic world
of "Calling Back the Soul," filled with monstrous beasts hungry to eat the speaker. Of
the several traditional interpretations of "Calling Back the Soul/ one imagines it writ
7Xi-he was the goddess who drove the sun chariot.
8Kalpas were Buddhist eons of something over 4 mniion years, after which the Earth was burned
clear and a new world begun.
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ten to call back the distraught soul of Qu Yuan, wandering in exile. Qu Yuan (or the
poet as a Qu Yuan figure) is the one "who wears orchids strung from sash."
The final line refers to the traditional story about Qu Yuan's composition of a work
called the "Heaven-Questions(Tian-wen), a collection of rhymed questions on fig
ures of ancient myth and legend. Qu Yuan was supposed to have composed these when
he saw paintings illustrating the legends on a wall. The second-century commentator
Wang Yi adds that the work was entitled "Heaven-Questions" rather than the more nat
ural "Questions to Heaven" because Heaven is too exalted to be questioned.
Dont Go Out the Gate!

Heaven beclouds and bewilders
Earth keeps its secrets close.
Bear-ogres eat mens souls,
snow and frost snap mens bones.
Dogs are unleashed, their mouths loll open,
sniffing after prey,
those who lick palms find him just right,9
the one who wears orchids strung from sash.
The god sends a carriage to ride,
afflictions then vanish,
stars of Heaven fleck his sword,
the carriage-yoke is gold.
Though I set my horse cantering,
I cannot make it back,
waves on Lake Li-yang
are large as mountains.
Venomous dragons stare at me,
shaking metal coijs,
griffin and chimera spit
ravenous drool.
Bao Jiao spent a whole lifetime
sleeping in the grass;
Yan Hui at twenty-nine
had locks streaked with white.
It was not that Yan Hui had grown infirm,
nor did Bao Jiao disobey Heaven.1
9Figures of eating and being eaten run throughout this poem. "Palm-licking" refers to a legend that
bears, hungry in their winter hibernation, sustain themselves by licking their own palms (bear7s paws
were considered a delicacy in ancient China).
^ a o Jiao was a hermit who refused to eat anything but what he himself had grown; on discovering
that he had eaten dates that he himself had not planted, he spat them out and died. Yan Hui was
Confucius' favorite disciple, famous for his grace in great poverty. His hair turned white while he
was still in his twenties and he died at an unusually young age.
495
Heaven dreaded lest they be chewed and gnawed,

and for that reason made it so.
It's so perfectly clear, but still I fear
you dont believe
just look at him yelling at the wall,
writing out KQuestions to Heaven.
Dont Plant Trees

Dont plant trees in the garden,
trees are four seasons of sorrow.
I sleep alone, moon in south window,
this autumn like autumns past.
Boju-yi (772-846)
The diverse group of writers around Han Yu represent only one aspect of Mid-Tang
poetry. Another face of the period appears in the works of Bo Ju-yi and his circle of
literary friends. Like Han Yu himself, and unlike the more limited range of Meng Jiao
and Li He, Bo Ju-yi wrote in a variety of styles. He always considered his most wserious" works to be his "New Yue-fu/, narrative poems dramatizing what he saw as
social and political abuses. Here Bo felt that he was fulfilling the true vocation of
the Confucian poet, which was to reflect how government functioned in the lives
o f th e p e o p le . B o Ju -y i's m ost fa m o u s p o e m s, h o w e v e r, w e re tw o long n a rra tiv e b a l
la d s, " T h e M a n d o lin B a lla d " (Pi-pa xing) and the "S o n g o f Lastin g P a in " (Chang-hen
ge)f the latter treating the love between Xuan-zong and Yang the Prized Consort with
a sympathy inconsistent with the stern reproof that a Confucian standpoint would
have demanded of such a disastrous affection.
it was not Bo Ju-yi's narrative poems but his occasional poetry that exerted the
deepest influence on the poets of the Song and later dynasties. Bo was a prolific and
often very witty writer, who celebrated the details of his daily life in poetry and con
tinually exchanged verses with his numerous friends. He assumed a carefully stud
ied pose of casualness and an easygoing disposition, yet at the same time repeat
edly insisted that he was indifferent to how he appeared to others. Bo was
nevertheless an intensely self-conscious poet, ever watching himself, as in the fol

lowing poem, in w hich he views his own portrait.
On My Portrait
I didnt even know my own face,
then Li Fang painted my portrait true.
Observe with dispassion the spirit and frame~
this has to be some mountain man!
Wood of willow and cane soon decay;
the heart of a deer is hard to tame
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Why then in the palaces red plazas

have I waited five years on His Majesty?
And worse, my too stiff and inflexible nature,
cannot join the world and wallow in its dirt.
These features not only foretell no honors,
I fear in them cause that will bring my ruin.
Best resign and depart, the sooner the better,
withdraw this body fit for clouds and streams.
What Came to Mind When Chanting My Poems

Lazy and sickly, with much free time
when free time comes, what is it I do?
I cant put away my inkstone or brush,
and sometimes write a poem or two.
Poems finished are bland, lacking tang,
and often much mocked by the public.
They first complain that my rhymes are off,
they then deplore maladroit phrasing.
I sometimes read them out to myself;
when I finishI feel a longing:
The poets Tao Qian and Wei Ying-wu2were born in ages other than mine;
Except for them, whom do I love?
there is only Yuan Wei-zhi;3
He has gone off to Jiang-ling in exile
for three years to serve as subaltern.
Two thousand leagues apart we are
so far off he knows not when a poem is done.
Bumbling naivete, spontaneity, and a zany disregard for polite self-control, both in
verse and in behavior, were part of a self-image that attracted many Tang intellec
tuals. Public life (and Bo had a successful official career) required great self-restraint
to conform to the norms of polite behavior; but for his private life, Bo could invent
quite a different persona.
2Wei Ying-wu (737-ca. 792) was the most famous poet of the generation immediately preceding
Bo's own.
3Yuan Wei-zhi is better known as Yuan Zhen (779831). He was Bo's best friend, an important poet
in his own right, and the author of the prose tale "Ying-ying's Story."
Reciting Aloud, Alone in the Mountains

Each person has some one addiction,
my addiction is to writing:
All worldly attachments have melted away,
I am left with this sole affliction.
Whenever I chance on a lovely scene,
or face some dear friend or family,
I sing out a poem in a loud voice,
in a daze as if touched by some god.
Since I sojourned here by the river,
I spend half my time in the hills.
There are times when a new poem is finished,
and I go up along the east cliff road,
I lean against scarps of white stone,
bend and snap twigs of green cassia.
Mad chanting alarms the wooded ravines,
birds and gibbons turn all eyes on me.
I
m afraid Fll be mocked by the times,
so I come to this place where no man is.
On M y Laziness
I have a post but
Im too lazy to take the appointment;
I have fields, Fm too lazy to farm them.
Holes in the roof~ Im too lazy to patch them;
rips in my gowntoo lazy to mend them.
Wine I have, but Pm too lazy to pour it,
so it
s just like having my cup ever empty.
I
m too lazy to pluck the strings of my harp
the same as that famous Harp Without Strings.
My family tells me the rice is all gone
I
d like a bowl, but am too lazy to hull some.
I do get letters from friends and kin,
want to read them, but
Im too lazy to break the seals.
Some people say that old X i Kang
spent his whole life in laziness:
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But he did play the harp and work the forge4

next to mehe
scarcely counts as lazy at all.
Choosing a Dwelling Place in Luo-yang

Back from three years in charge of a province,
what I gained was not silk and not gold
Two rocks from India Mountain there,
and a single crane from Hua-ting:
The one I feed with rice and grain
the others I wrap in fine mats.
I know quite well its a waste of trouble,
I cant help that I care for them.
I brought them from Hang-zhous outskirts afar,
we arrived together in Luo-yangss streets.
The burden set down, I brushed roots-of-cloud
I opened the cage and it spread frosty wings.
Things pure of feature may not mix with others,
high natures deserve what suits them.
So I went to a ward that was free of dust
and sought lodgings that had some waters.
To the southeast I found a quiet place,
its trees were aged, its cold spring green.
Beside a pool, much shade from bamboo,
few tracks of men in front of the gates.
I dont ask the pay of a palace cadet,
I unhitched my two horses and sold them.
I
m not watching out for myself alone
my rocks and crane must have a haven.
When serving in a provincial post, instead of bewailing his lot as an exile, Bo cele
brated the small advantages offered by the locale. Not only did the Mid-Tang poet
notice the small details of life, he could also be so crass as to take the price of goods
into consideration. The Mid-Tang poet often played with levels of language and with
allusions, as in the fifth couplet of the poem below, in which there is a luridly wpoetic" description of bamboo shoots. The couplet that follows is a tongue-in-cheek
4Xi Kang (223-262) was an eccentric writer and thinker. A famous harpist, it was said that he played
the instrument on the way to his execution, trapped at last by the political intrigues he had tried so
hard to avoid. "W orking the forgerefers to his alchemical experiments.
499
reference to the Analects (VI1.13), which tell us that when Confucius heard a per
formance of the ancient ceremonial Shao music, "for three months [a whole sea
son] he did not experience the taste of meat." The vegetarian gourmet inserts him
self in the place of the Sage's lingering sense of awe.
Eating Bamboo Shoots

This province is truly a land of bamboo,
in spring the sprouts fill hills and valleys.
Men of the hills snap them in armfuls,
and bring them to market as soon as they can.
Things are cheapest when plentiful,
for a pair of coppers a whole bunch can be had.
Just put them into the cooking pot,
and they will be done along with the rice
Their purple sheaths, shreds of ancient brocade,
their pale flesh, broken chunks of newfound jade.
Every day I eat them more than I need,
through their whole season I yearn not for meat.
I was long resident in Chang-an and Luo-yang,
and never had my fill of the taste of these.
Eat while you can, dont hesitate,
soon south winds will blow them into bamboo.
There are, however, moments when Bo's geniality breaks down, as in the powerful
"Winter Night" that follows.
Winter Night
I dwell in poverty, kin and friends scattered,
my body unwell, contacts and roaming ceased.
Not a single person before my eyes,
I lie alone, closed in this forest cottage.
Sinking and cold, the lamp fire darkens,
tattered and flapping, my torn curtains.
Then theres a rustling before my windows,
and I hear once again the new snow fall.
As my years increase, I sleep gradually less,
at midnight I rise and sit up straight.
Had my heart not learned meditations oblivion,
how could I endure such silent gloom?
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Insensate, this body is lodged in the world;

the heart rides the flood, yielding to Change.
It has been like this four years now,
one thousand and three hundred nights.
In his wNew Yue-fu^ Bo Ju-yi addressed questions of political and social policy as
well as imperial behavior. Such verse invoked the ancient principle in the interpre
tation of the Classic of Poetry that poetry should be a means to make popular griev
ances known to the ruler. In these poems, of course, "popular opinion" is defined
as Bo's own political opinions and those common to his class. The following poem
is less interesting as poetry than as an example of "New Yue-fuf/and of the hostility
of Confucian officialdom, of which Bo was a representative, to signs of wealth in a
nascent bourgeoisie.
The imperial monopoly on salt and iron required an intermediary merchant
class which lived by its profits rather than by the salary that a government official
received. Unlike the peasantry, these merchants were not registered in the popula
tion of their local districts and thus were not under the control of local officials; they
were "attached" instead to the emperor himself. Sang Hong-yang (152-80 B.C.), men
tioned in the closing of the poem, was a Western Han manager of the salt and iron
monopoly who curbed the merchants and ensured that the profits went into the im
perial treasury. In Boju-yi's time the imperial government had serious problems col
lecting enough taxes to keep it on a sound fiscal footing; thus he sees the loss of po
tential revenue to the state as an outrage. It is interesting to note that Bo Ju-yi's ire
is directed not at the salt merchant himself but at the salt merchant's wife.
Salt Merchants Wife (in hatred of profiteers)

The salt merchants wife
has silk and gold aplenty,
but she does not work at farming,
nor does she spin the silk.
From north to south to east to west
she never leaves her home,
wind and waters, her native land,
her lodging is the boat.
Once she came from Yang-zhou,
a humble family's child,
she married herself a merchant,
a great one from Jiang-xi.
Her glinting hair-coils have grown rich,
there golden pins abound,
her gleaming wrists have gotten plump,
her silver bracelets tight.
On one side she shouts to her servants,
on the other, yells at her maids,
501
and I ask you, how does it happen

that you come to live like this?
Her husband has been a salt merchant
for fifteen years now,
attached to no county or province,
attached to the Emperor.
Every year when salt profits
are to enter official hands,
the lesser part goes to officials,
the greater part goes to himself.
Official profits are meager,
private profits are rich,
the Secretary of Iron and Salt
is far and does not know.
Better still, here on the river,
where fish and rice are cheap,
with pink fillets and oranges
and meals of fragrant rice.
Having eaten her fill, in thick make-up
she leans by the cabin aft,
both of her rosy cheeks
are buds about to bloom.
This salt merchants wife
was lucky to marry a merchant:
All day long fine food to eat,
all year long good clothes.
But good clothes and fine food
have to come from somewhere,
and she would be struck with shame
before some Sang Hong-yang.
But Sang Hong-yang
died many years ago
this happened not in the Han alone
it happens also now.
Du Mu (803-852)
Although he lived less than a decade beyond Bo Ju-yi, Du Mu is considered a Late

Tang rather than a Mid-Tang poet. His work has a wide range, but he is best known
as a master of the quatrain. He had a moderately successful public career, yet also
created an image of himself as a sensualist, enjoying the pleasures of wine, women,
and misty landscapes.
The beautiful scenes of poetry were indeed seductive and could seem somehow
more true than the increasingly hopeless political world that touched the lives of all
who served in the government; therefore, ninth-century poets often granted poetry
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an importance and an independence as an art far beyond what we find in eighthcentury poetry. As Du Mu once wrote (alluding to the Lao-zi):
In this world adrift, except in poems
all names are forced on things.
Poetic language becomes the only true language in a world of conventional lies.
Late Tang poets sometimes came close to their Western counterparts in making
poetry an autonomous realm of words that obeyed different rules from the things of
the world. When the High Tang poet Wang Wei wrote, "The setting sun goes down
beside a bird, he took a scene that could be seen, and recast it in words that called
attention to human perspective. When Du Mu writes in the poem below, "for all
time a single bird in flight," it is a scene that can exist only in words, not in the world.
Such a quality of permanence may seem appropriate to that single point of the bird
moving in the empty sky and focusing attention, but it is an image created of words
rather than an empirical possibility.
Pouring Wine Alone

A long stretch of sky, vast sapphire,
for all time a single bird in flight.
All my life, ease with drinking companions,
but how much ease is there, drunk and sad?
Deep lies the mist round Sui
s temples,
where blood red leaves darkly shine.
Jug hanging from waist, I go roaming alone
to an autumn hair Mount Tai is small.
The ability to see great Mount Tai as small in comparison with a hair or filament in
the autumn air was a proverbial expression of the relativity of value.
Du Mu loved traveling through the misty landscapes of the Southeast with their
memories of the Southern Dynasties, "the fallen kingdom, like wild swan gone/' One
of his favorite places was Xuan-zhou, associated with the poet Xie Tiao (464499).
Written on the Kai-yuan Temple at Xuan-zhou

Xie Tiaos mansion from Southern Dynasties,
most deepset of places in eastern Wu.
The fallen kingdom, like wild swan gone,
left this temple in misty hollow concealed.
The great hall soars up ninety feet,
by a porch of four hundred pillars ringed.
Between the highest heights and lowest depths,
winds turn through the pines and cassia.
Green mosses shine by its crimson towers,

white birds talk to each other in pairs.
The brooks sound enters the dreams of monks,
And the moonlight glows on its stucco walls.
The scene surveyed, whether dawn or dusk,
lean on its railings, past and present too.
I linger here with my flagon of wine
and watch spring rain in the hills ahead.
I Wrote This on the Tower by the Water at the Kai-yuan

Temple in Xuan-zhou; on the lower side of the temple
compound was Wan Creek, which had people living on both
sides of it
Fine artifacts of the Six Dynasties
the grasses stretch to the sky
in Heavens translucence, in calm of clouds
present and past the same.
Birds go off and birds come back
in colors of the mountain
people sing and people weep
within the sound of waters.
Deep autumn now, all curtains down,
rain on a thousand homes;
setting sun, a great house on a terrace
and a single flute in the wind.
Disheartened that there is no way

to see Fan Li now ~5
misty trees here and there
to the east of Five Lakes.
Spring in the Southland

For a thousand miles orioles sing,
the green sets off the red;
river hamlets and mountain towns
with wind on tavern signs.
The Southern Dynastiestemples,
four hundred and eighty in all,
5Fan Li was the adviser of King Gou-jian of Yue, who, after helping the king in the conquest of Wu,
retired to spend the rest of his life sailing the Five Lakes.
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are how many high halls and terraces

in the misty rain?
Three Poems Thinking on Past Travels

I
r
For ten years I was a drifter,
outside the norms and rules,
I presented myself my own winecup,
then toasted myself in return.
On autumns hillsin rain of spring,
I recited there serenely,
and all across the South I leaned
from every temple's balcony.
II
It was outside Cloud Gate Temple
I chanced on a terrible storm,
the woods were black, the mountains high,
and the raindrops strangely long.
I served once at Meadow Altar,
close attendant of the throne,
and clearly recall the clustered ranks
of the pikes of the royal guard.
m
Here Li Bo wrote a poem
on the temple West-of-the-Water,
with ancient trees and winding cliffs
and the wind in hall and tower.
I was half sober, half drunk too
as I wandered there three days,
among flowers, red ones and the white,
that bloomed in the mountain rain.

An uninteresting and unremembered quatrain by Liu Yu-xi (772-842) is probably where Du
Mu "got" the last line o f the first quatrain in the set above. Even through the haze o f trans
lation, the comparison shows the difference between poetry and verse.
Liu Yu-xi, Quitting M y Post at He-zhou and Visiting Jian-kang

Autumns waters, clear and lacking force,
cold mountains bring many thoughts at dusk.
No demands to my post, I dont estimate itineraries,
I climb all the temples of the Southern Dynasties.

It was perhaps Du Mu's capacity to evoke a poetic scene that gave unusual force to
his remembrance of the human history that lies behind the natural world, as in the
following famous poem on the Han tombs near Chang-an.
Going Out on the Le-you Plain

Under vast skies, limpid and clear,
a single bird vanishes;
decay and downfall since time began
all have occurred right here.
Look at the case of the House of Han,
achievements beyond compare
its five great tomb mounds, bare of trees,
where rise the autumn winds.
Late Autumn in the Qi-an District

When winds came to willow-lined shores
holes grew in the reflections;
the home of the lord governor
resembles a rustics dwelling.
Features of clouds and poise of water
are still to be enjoyed,
I chant my hopes, sing my moods,
I am content with myself.
Rain sheds dark round the dying lamp
soon put the chessboard away;
I sober from wine on my lonely pillow
as the wild geese first come past.
What moves me most, how at Red Cliff,6
where heroes fought to cross,
theres only an old man in a raincoat,
sitting there and fishing.
Above all, Du Mu was a master of the quatrain of many moods: playful, sensuous,
celebratory. There are several addenda to his collected poems, in which most of the
poems are quatrains; some are surely by the poet, but many were apparently works
found by his later admirers, quatrains so fine it seemed to someone the poet must
6Red Cliff was the site of a famous river battle during the Three Kingdoms, when the forces of Wu
burned the flotilla that Cao Cao had assembled.
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have been by Du Mu. The following half dozen examples are, however, reliably Du
Mu's.
A Quatrain on the Pool Behind the District Office in Qi-an

Water chestnuts pierce floating algae,
a pool of green brocade,
a thousand trills from summer warblers
playing among the roses.
All the day with no one here,
I am watching the light rain,
and two ducks, mated, face to face
bathing their clothes of red.
Egrets
Garments of snow, tresses of snow,
beaks of green jade,
the flock snatches at fish
in a brooks reflections.
Then startled they fly off afar
and shine against sapphire hills:
an entire tree of pear blossoms
shed in the evening breeze.
At the Yangzi and Han

They roll on and on, rippling and surging,
where white gulls fly,
deep in the spring, they are clear and green,
so. green they could dye my clothes.
Going off south, then coming back north,
a man simply grows old;
but here the evening sun always sends
the fishing boat on its way home.
Sent to Judge Han Chuo in Yang-zhou

Its green hills lie in shadows
and its waters stretch afar,
in the Southland autumn is ending,
the plants and trees grow sere.
Yang-zhou has twenty-four bridges,
and on nights when the moon is bright,
at what spot is a girl, white as marble,

being bidden to play on the flute?
The Yellow River at Bian-zhou Blocked by Ice

When a thousand miles of long river
first freeze over,
from jade chimes and agate pendants come
the irregular echoes.
Our life adrift resembles exactly
the waters beneath this ice
flowing on eastward by night and day
and no one can tell.
A Quatrain Written on the Road

White strands of hair in my mirror
Im used to their troubling me
and the stains of filth on my garments
get harder to wipe away.
It saddens me that this hand that held
a fishing pole on the lakes
now instead shades my eyes from sun in the west
as I head on toward Chang-an.

W hen Tang poets particularly admired a poem or passage, they w o uld often rewrite it in
their ow n way. Du Mu's hand, w hich served him both as recluse and as officeseeker, re
turns some decades later in a poem by Si-kong Tu (837-908) to serve both the hunter, w ho
takes life, and the Buddha, w ho abhors it.
Si-kong Tu, The Pavilion of Revising History

Above my turban of black silk
there is blue Heaven,
constrained to keep writing back to friends
now for forty years.
Who would have thought that this hand
that a lifetime held the hawk,
would turn up the lamp and itself deliver
coins before the Buddha?
The Tang Dynasty
Yu Xuan-ji (mid-9th century)

Yu Xuan-ji was the most distinctive woman poet of the Tang. After having been the
concubine of one Li Yi^she became a Daoist nun, a social role that allowed a woman
a certain amount of independence. Yu Xuan-ji maintained extensive literary friend
ships with male writers in Chang-an, but in her early twenties she was accused of
murdering her maid and executed.
During the Tang, a woman was considered to be in the prime of her beauty in
her mid-teens. Following the conventional identification of a woman with a flower,
someone in her early twenties was already fading. In her most famous poem, "Selling Tattered Peonies," Yu Xuan-ji figuratively "sells herself."
Selling Tattered Peonies

Facing the wind, my sighs are stirred
at the flurry of falling flowers,
unnoticed, their sweetness melts away,
one more spring goes by.
Im sure it
s because the price is high
that no one wants them,
and due to their overpowering scent
butterflies wont draw nigh.
Blooms of red that are fit to grow
in the palace compound alone
how can those azure leaves endure
to be stained by dust of the road?
A day will come when their roots are moved
to the park of the Emperor,
and then my prince will have bitter regret
that he has no way to buy.
In premodern China, women writers usually wrote in a voice unmarked by gender,

or they assumed the conventional "woman's" voice constructed by the male tradi
tion. Only rarely do we find someone speaking as a woman against the limitations
of gender roles.
After passing the government examination to qualify for public office, the new
graduates would hold a party at one of the Buddhist or Daoist temples in the capi
tal. In the following poem, Yu Xuan-ji sees the evidence of such a gathering in the
names written out in fine calligraphy (''silver hooks"). The composition of poems
was part of the examination, but no matter how poetically talented, women were
excluded.
509
Visiting the Southern Tower of Chong-zhen Temple: Seeing

Where the Recent Graduates of the Examination Have Written
Their Names
Cloud-covered hilltops fill my eyes,
I revel in springtime light,
here clearly ranged are the silver hooks
that grew at their fingertips.
I have bitter regret that skirts of lace
hide the lines of my poems,
and lifting my head in vain I covet
the publicly posted name.
On Yin-wu Pavilion
Flowers of springtime, autumns moon
find their way into my poems,
in broad daylight and clear, cool nights
an immortal with no duties.
I merely roll up the beaded curtains,
I never pull them down,
and there I always move a couch,
where I lie, facing the hills.
Li Shang-yin (813858)
Li Shang-yin, now considered the greatest of the Late Tang poets, was very much
caught up in the factional politics of the mid-ninth century, and his political career
was complicated by close relations with both of the feuding factions.
Li Shang-yin's poetry has a wide range, but he is best known today for his poetry
on historical moments and for his hermetics, which often uses language so dense and
allusive that we can only guess at the putative referents. In the Chinese poetic tradition
such a cryptic style, while suggesting the poet's talent and erudition, usually implied
some secret "message." Whether there really was some historical or biographical cir
cumstance behind these poems, we will never know; but we do know that in writing
them and circulating them, Li Shang-yin was aware readers would suspect as much.
These hermetic poems employ the imagery of passion and the immortals. Such im
ages were appropriate for three quite distinct kinds of "hidden message": biting politi
cal satire, sincere petitions for political favor, and illicit love affairs. Different interpreters
of Li Shang-yin's poetry have appealed to each of these in turn; those who would have
the poems refer to an illicit love affair have suggested one involving connections to the
imperial household and/or the Daoist religious establishment. In addition to being
more appealing to most modern readers, the interpretation of at least some of these
poems as treating illicit love is probably correct (while some other hermetic poems must
be interpreted politically). At the very least, we can say that these poems contributed
phrases and lines to the standard repertoire of the Chinese love lyric in later centuries.
The Tang Dynasty

There were two women named Mourn-No-More (Mo-chou), and Li Shang-yin
seems to have fused them. One Mourn-No-More was an unhappy wife in the Lu
household in Luo-yang, while the other was a Southern Dynasties singer of Stone
City, a romantic character of yuerfu quatrains. Poets were, of course, delighted with
the possibilities of her name, and Li Shang-yin referred to her many times. The Small
Damosel of Blue Creek was a minor local goddess, who, as goddesses often did,
chose mortal lovers. Li Shang-yin has in mind a cult song about her, surviving from
the Southern Dynasties:
Her gate opens on silver water

at the side, near the bridge.
There dwells the Small Damosel
all alone without a lover.
Left Untitled (second of two)

Layers of draperies hang into depths
of the hall of Mourn-No-More;
once she lies down, the clear night
stretches on moment by moment.
The goddesss life as a mortal
was essentially but a dream
where the Small Damosel is dwelling
no lover ever was.
To wind and waves one does not entrust
the water chestnuts frail stalks,
in moonlight and dew who was it caused
cinnamon leaf to smell so sweet?
Well you may say that loves passion
does us no good at all
it does not keep us from despair
at this clarity in madness.
Titles of Tang poems always alert the reader to the topic or the occasion. A poem
"Left Untitled" tells the reader that the poet is purposely withholding that informa
tion (there is a different term for a poem whose title has been lost).
Left Untitled (one of four)

That she would come was empty words;
gone, no trace at all;
the moon bends past the upstairs room,

a bell tolls nights last hour.
In dreams we are parting far away,
weeping wont call you back
a letter rushed to completion,
the ink not yet ground dark,7
Candlelight half envelops
kingfishers of gold;
odor of musk faintly crosses
embroidered lotuses.
Young Liu already frets
that Peng Mountain lies far,
but further beyond Peng Mountain
are ten thousand slopes more.8
In the following poem, E-lu-hua was a goddess who visited the home of one Yang
Quan six times in November of the year 359. Only Li Shang-yin knows why he chose
this relatively insignificant divinity, whose limited span of infatuation with a mortal
is noted with such detail in the source text. Du Lan-xiang was discovered as an aban
doned baby and raised by a fisherman. When she was in her teens, Blue Lads from
Heaven came down to take her away. On leaving, she explained to her adopted fa
ther, the fisherman, that she was a goddess who had been banished to Earth for some
transgression and that she was now to return. These obscure references suggest lit
tle more than a short affair with a mortal man, a few unexpected visits, followed by
a return to a place where the woman will be out of reach.
Again Passing the Shrine of the Goddess

Her doorway set in white stone cliff
with sapphire mosses moist;
banished below from the high pure realms,
chance to return delayed.
All spring long the dream-rains
blow constantly over the tiles,
entire days when no god-breeze
fills her banners.
7Chinese ink came in the form o f a stick, which was ground with water on an inkstone to reach the
proper thickness.
8Young Liu is a playful reference to Emperor Wu of the Han (surnamed Liu) and his role as the lover
of the goddess Queen Mother of the West. Peng Mountain was one of the three islands in the East
ern Ocean inhabited by the Undying. The figure here suggests that the beloved is out of reach.
512
The Tang Dynasty
In the comings of E-lii-hua

there is never a certain place
Du Lan-xiang goes away,
not staying very long/
Here she may meet the Jade Gentleman
and be listed among the Undying
9
recalling when on Heavens Stairs1
you asked of purple asphodel.
As with many of Li Shang-yin's poems, commentators speculate on what situation

in the mortal world the following poem might refer to~if any. The scene seems to
be set in a city in Heaven, echoing a legend of a city fashioned of sapphire-colored
clouds in the sky. Lang-feng Park and Maiden's Bed Hill, both mentioned in the sec
ond couplet, are places where the gods live. The third couplet seems to describe the
whole world below, seen from the perspective of Heaven, watching the stars as they
set and pass below the bottom of the Western Sea. The setting of the stars leads to
daybreak in the last couplet, whose "pearl" is the sun, perhaps reduced in dimen
sions by the distance from which it is supposedly seen. The final line probably refers
to a story about Zhao "Hying Swallow," the favorite of the Han emperor Cheng. "Flying Swallow's" body was supposed to have been so light that she flew when she
danced and was in danger of being caught by the wind. The emperor was afraid she
might be blown away, so he had a huge bowl of crystal made, to be held over her
by palace ladies, and in this she performed her flying dance.
Citadel of Sapphire Walls (first of three)

Citadel of sapphire walls, twelve turns
of its balustrades,
horn of narwhal wards off dust
fire opal wards off cold.
When letters come from Lang-feng Park,
they are mostly sent by crane;
not a tree grows on Maidens Bed Hill
that has no phoenix perching.
When stars sink to the oceans floor,
at these windows they may be seen,
and as rain passes the rivers source,
you can watch it over the table.
9The Jade Gentleman (Yu-lang) was the deity entrusted with keeping the registry of those included
among the inhabitants of Heaven.
^'Heaven's Stairs" was a constellation, and the purple asphodel was a plant that granted the eater
immortality.
513
If only that pearl of daybreak

could stay both bright and still,
I would spend my whole life facing
a bowl of crystal.
Even in less cryptic poems, Li Shang-yin often manages to evoke a mood of strangeness:
Midnight
It is nights third hourits third division
thousands of households asleep
the dew is about to turn to frost,
and the moon plummets in mist.
Squabbling mice emerge in the hall,
bats come flying forth,
as now and then the jade harp stirs
strings resting by the window.
Sunbeams Shoot
Sunbeams shoot through a gauze window screen,
wind gusts rattle the door
sweet-smelling silks cover her hands,
springs work gone awry.
'
An encircling porch joins on all sides,
wistful stillness enclosed,
where a sapphire green parrot faces
the red roses.
In the two following quatrains, the Blue Woman is the goddess of frost, while the
Pale Maid is Chang E, the goddess of the moon. In the first, these goddesses are sim
ply personifications of frost and moonlight. The second quatrain, with its ghostly play
of light and the implication of a lonely woman staying awake at night, refers to the
myth that Vi had requested the elixir of immortality from the Queen Mother of the
West, but before he could swallow it, his wife Chang E stole it and fled to the moon,
where she became an immortal spirit.
Frost and Moon

When first I heard the migrating geese,
cicadas were already gone,
south of the hundred-foot tower
the waters stretched to the sky.
The Blue Woman, the Pale Maid
both put up with the cold,
514
The Tang Dynasty
in moonlight and in the frost they hold

a contest of beauty and grace.
ChangE
Upon the screen of mica
a candles reflection deep,
the long star-river steadily sets,
the dawn stars sink away.
Chang E must surely repent
the theft of that magic herb
in the sapphire sea, the blue heavens,
her heart night after night,
'
Li Shang-yin also wrote well in more conventional modes.
You asked when I was coming back

no date fixed yet
in Ba
s hills the rain by night
spills over autumn ponds.
When will we trim the candles wick
together beside west window,
and speak back about this moment
of night rain in hills of Ba?
The pleasure of Li Shang-yin's poems on history will inevitably be a difficult one

for Western readers, since these poems depend upon the immense store of his
torical lore and stories that were shared by all educated Tang readers. Like other
Late Tang poets, Li Shang-yin was fascinated by those pleasure-loving emperors
whose extravagant self-indulgence seemed to have resulted in the destruction of
their dynasties. Two such emperors appear in "The Sui Palace, The earlier is the
"last ruler of C hen, whose sensual song "In the Rear Court Flowers on Trees of
Jaderevealed that he was unfit for serious responsibility, and when his courtiers
heard it, they wept, knowing that the state would not last long. Indeed, in 589, the
Chen Dynasty was overthrown by the Sui, which reunified China. The Sui, how
ever, proved to be itself a very short-lived dynasty. After a vigorous reign by the
dynasty's founder, his son, Emperor Yang, became intoxicated by the allure of the
same sensual life of the South that had ruined the Chen. Against the vigorous
protests of his advisers, he abandoned Chang-an with its palace at Lavender
Springs, and moved his primary residence to Yang-zhou, which he renamed Jiangdu, the "River Capital." It was believed that Yang-zhou, earlier in ruins, had been
the site on which Bao Zhao composed his famous poetic exposition "The City of
515

Weeds" (Wu-cheng fu), tracing the course of the city's early passage from splen
dor to ruin.
Stories of Emperor Yang's extravagant projects in Yang-zhou soon became leg
endary. One was the construction of a great canal to the north, which Emperor Yang
had lined with willows, a project that remained one of the most visible legacies of
the Sui Dynastythe "willows of the Sui embankments." To travel up on the canal
to Da-liang, Emperor Yang ordered the construction of five hundred boats, the im
perial boat fitted with sails of palace brocade. Another story tells how he ordered
all the fireflies (believed to be born of rotting plants) in the region to be gathered,
then one evening he went out on an excursion and set them all loose, and their light
lit up the mountains and valleys. Yet another story tells how Emperor Yang once
dreamed that he encountered the last ruler of the Chen with his palace ladies. One
among them was exceptionally beautiful, and she turned out to be Li-hua, the last
ruler's favorite. Emperor Yang requested that she dance for him the famous "In the
Rear Court Flowers on Trees of Jade/'
Emperor Yang, paying no heed to the troubles of governing in his various amuse
ments, was eventually overthrown by the Tang. Li Shang-yin was fascinated by Em
peror Yang and wrote a number of poems about that ruler and his ill-fated dynasty.
The Sui Palace

The halls of the palace at Lavender Springs
shut in mists and rose clouds,
but he wished to occupy City of Weeds
to serve as the Emperors home.
Had the jade scepter not, by consequence,
gone to him with the sun-knobs
2
I am sure that those brocade sails
would have made it to the horizon.
Even today the rotting plants
are bare of fireflies
yet for all time the.hanging willows
will have their twilight crows.
If under the Earth he happens to meet
the last ruler of Chen,
it would not be right again to ask
for In the Rear Court Flowers.
2Before the Tang founder rose in rebellion against Emperor Yang, he was observed to have 7/sunknobs" on his forehead, protuberances that were a sign in his physiognomy that he was destined to
become emperor.
516
The Tang Dynasty
The Sui Palace

He roamed off to the south on a whim,
no precautions for the journey,
who in the palace reflected on
those boxes filled with protests?
In spring breeze the entire land
was cutting up palace brocade~
half to be mudguards for his saddles,
half to be for his sails.
Tang Tales (chuan-qi)
During the Tang, an old tradition of prose anecdotes was transformed into a fully
developed fictional form, later known as chuan-qi~"transmitting accounts of re
markable things.
Although the majority of such stories treated some form of the su
pernatural, there were also purely human love stories and tales of heroism. One of
the most common types combined the supernatural with the love story or erotic en
counter.
A common concern in tales of love was faith kept and faith broken. By keeping
faith with another, a creature of the spirit world could rise to the level of a human
being, and by breaking faith a human being could sink to the bestial. The model of
such relationships is pragmatic and economic: each party gives something essen
tial, and so long as accounts are balanced, no mechanism of retribution is set into
motion. If, however, one party fails to pay back what is given, the consequences are
dire.
Many of these stories take place in Chang-an and give us a vivid picture of life
in the city in the eighth and ninth century. One important narrative device for
putting young heroes in the beds of young heroines was Chang-an;s ward system,
by which the city was divided in various "quarters, each separated from the others
by walls that would be locked at sunset and opened only at daybreak. Anyone who
found himself in a quarter other than his own at dusk would have to stay the night.
Two Tales of Keeping Faith

Shen Ji-ji (fl. ca. 800) Rens Story
Ren was a woman of the werefolk.
And there was Wei Yin, now a lord governor, ninth in seniority in his
branch of the family, maternal grandson of Li Huithe Prince of Xin-an.
Wei Yin was an undisciplined and wild young man, who loved to drink.
And there was his uncles sisters husband, surnamed Zheng, though I
dont recall his given name. In his early years Zheng had practiced the mar
tial arts, and he too loved wine and pretty women. Being poor and without
family of his own, he lived as a dependent of his wifes family. Once he and
Wei Yin found one another, they were inseparable wherever they went.
In August of the summer of 750
Wei Yin and Zheng were riding together
on the lanes of Chang-an on their way to a drinking party in the Xin-chang
Quarter. When they reached the southern part of the Xuan-ping Quarter,
Zheng excused himself for some reason or other and asked Wei Yin to go
on ahead by himself, saying that he, Zheng, would be along shortly. Wei
^18
The Tang Dynasty
Yin then went off east riding his white horse, while Zheng rode his donkey
south into the north gate of the Sheng-ping Quarter, There he came upon
three women walking along the street, of whom the middle one, dressed in
white, was a rare beauty. No sooner did he see her than Zheng was infatu
ated. He whipped his donkey now in front of her, now behind, always on
the point of bantering with her flirtatiously, but not daring. From time to
time the woman in white cast a sidelong glance at him, having understood
what was on his mind. Then Zheng joked with her, And how is it that such
a beautiful woman as yourself is going on foot? The woman in white
laughed, What can I do but go on foot if someone doesnt loan me his
mount? Zhang replied, This miserable mount is hardly an adequate al
ternative to such a lovely person walking, but I will offer it to you at once.
I would be quite content to follow you on foot.
They looked at each other and laughed o u t. As they went along to
gether, he fell increasingly under her spell, and they gradually began to be
have quite familiarly with one another. Zheng followed the womenand by
the time they reached the Le-you Gardens in. the east, it was already getting
dark. Here they came to a compound with earthen walls and a carriage gate.
The buildings inside were quite well built and properly proportioned. As the
woman in white was about to go in, she looked around and said, Wait here
for a little while. Then she went inside, leaving one of her female bond
servants in the open gate. The bondservant asked his name and familyand
after Zheng had told her, he asked of the woman in white. The servant an
swered, Her name is Ren, and she is the twentieth in seniority.
After a short while he was invited in. Zheng tied his donkey at the gate
and left his cap on the saddle. He first met a woman in her thirties, who wel
comed him. This was Rens elder sister. Rows of candles were litvarious
dishes set out, and cups of wine were raised in frequent toasts. Having
changed her attire, Ren came out. They drank until they were tipsy and very
merry. As the night drew on, they finally went to bed. Her features were cap
tivating and her body was beautiful. In the way she looked when singing
and laughing and in all her movements there was a sensual loveliness that
was virtually not of this mortal world.
When it was almost dawn, Ren said, You had best go now. My broth
ers are attached to the Music Academy, which is under the jurisdiction of
the Southern Guard Command. Early in the morning they will rise and go
out, so you cannot linger here. They agreed on a future meeting, and he
left.
Having set out, he came to the ward gates, which had not yet been un
barred. There was the shop of a Turkish pastryseller beside the gate, whose
owner was just then hanging up his lanterns and firing his ovens. Zheng went
in through the curtains to rest and sat down to wait for the drums that would
announce the opening of the gates. As a consequence he got to talking with
the shopowner, and pointing to where he had spent the night, Zheng asked
him, KWhen you turn east from here, theres a gate. Whose compound is
that? The shopowner replied, Thats just wasteland surrounded by a bro
ken-down wallthere are no buildings there. Zheng said, But I just passed
by the place~how can you say that theres nothing there? and he argued
with the man stubbornly. Then the shopowner realized, Ah! now I under
stand. There is a fox there that often seduces men to spend the night with
her. Ive already seen this happen a few times now. Are you another one who
has met her? Zhengs face flushed and he didnt tell the truthNono.:
In full daylight he went back to look at the spot and did see the earthen
wall and carriage gate just as before; but when he peered inside, it was all
overgrown with scrub, with abandoned garden plots. After he got home, he
saw Wei Yin, who berated him for missing the party. Zheng didnt let on
what had happened and excused himself with some other story. Neverthe
less, he kept imagining Ren5s sensual beauty, and the desire to see her again
remained unforgotten in his heart.
A dozen or so days passed. Zheng was out and going into a clothing store
in the Western Market when all at once he saw her, accompanied by her ser
vants as before. Zheng instantly shouted to her. Ren turned to the side and
tried to lose herself in a crowd to avoid him. But Zheng kept shouting to
her and pushed his way forward. Finally she stood with her back to him,
screening her face from his sight with a fan that she held around behind her.
You know, so why do you come near me? He answered, I do know, but
I dont care. She replied, The situation makes me very embarrassed. Its
hard to look you in the face. Zheng then saidSince I think on you so in
tently, how can you bear to reject me? She replied, How could I dare re
ject you? Its just that I am afraid of being despised by you.
Zheng then swore an oath, and the import of what he said was very mov
ing. At this Ren turned her eyes to him and removed the fan, revealing the
same dazzling sensual beauty that she had before. To Zheng, she said, I
m
not the only one of my kind in the human world. You just dont recognize
them. Dont think of me as a singular freak. When Zheng entreated her,
telling her of his joy in her, she replied, The only reason my kind is despised
and loathed by human beings is because we are thought to harm people. Pm
not like that. If you dont despise me, I would want to serve you all my days
as your wife.55Zheng agreed and began to make plans where she could live.
Ren said, To the east of this spot, where a large tree comes out from among
the roof beams, there is a quiet, secluded lane; you could rent a place there
for me to live. That man who went riding a white horse east from the south
ern part of the Xuan-ping Quarter earlier~wasnt he your legal wifes
brother? His house has ample furniture and household goods that you could
borrow.
At the time Wei Yins uncle was serving in posts out in the provinces,
and three apartments9worth of his household goods were kept in storage.
Following her suggestion, Zheng first went to inquire about the lodgings,
then went to see Wei Yin to borrow the household goods. When Wei asked
what he wanted them for, Zheng said, I have just gotten myself a beauti
ful woman and have rented lodgings for her; now I need to borrow house
The Tang Dynasty
hold goods to fix the place up. Wei Yin laughed.e<Considering your looks,
you must surely have gotten yourself a spectacularly ugly woman. How
could you possibly get a perfect beauty?55
After loaning him things like curtainsbeds, and mats, Wei had a quick
witted servant boy follow Zheng and spy out where he was going. In a short
time the lad rushed back to make his report, panting and streaming with
sweat. Wei Yin met him and asked, Was she there? and further, What
did she look like? The lad said, She is a wonder~the world has never seen
her like. Wei Yins family and kin were widely spread and numerous
moreover, having gone on escapades since his early years, he had come to
have extensive grounds to make judgments of beauty. He then asked, Is
she as beautiful as so-and-so? The lad answered, That person is not of
her caliber. Wei Yin brought up four or five beautiful women for com
parison, and in each case the boy said, Not of her caliber. At that time
Wei Yins sister-in-law, the sixth daughter of the Prince of W u, had a full
and sensual beauty like that of a goddessand both sides of the family had
always acclaimed her the foremost in beauty. So Wei Yin said, Is she as
beautiful as the sixth daughter of the Prince of Wu? And again the boy said
Not of her caliber. Wei Yin slapped his hand down in amazement. How
could there be such a person in the world? He instantly ordered water to
be drawn so that he could wash his neck, put his turban on, applied lip balm,
and set off.
Zheng happened to be out when he arrived. On entering the gate, Wei
Yin saw a young servant boy holding a broom sweeping; there was a bond
servant at the gate, but he saw no one else. He then asked information of
the servant boy, who laughed and said, Theres no such person here. Wei
Yin was looking all around the inside of the rooms, when he caught sight
of a red skirt showing beneath a door panel. He forced his way in to check
it out and saw Ren, who had curled up to hide behind the door panel. Wei
Yin dragged her out, bringing her over into the light so he could take a look
at her. She virtually exceeded what he had been told. Wei Yin wanted her
so much that he behaved like a madman. He threw his arms around her and
forced himself on her, but she would not submit. Wei Yin used his strength
to hold her fastand when the situation became desperate, she said, I sub
mit, but please loosen your grip a little.
When he did as she asked, she fought back as she had before. This hap
pened several more times until Wei Yin exerted all his strength to hold her
fast. Rens own strength was exhausted, and she was sweating as if she had
been soaked by rain. Realizing that she couldnt escape, she let her body relax
and didnt resist any more, yet her expression changed to one cif heartfelt
sadness. Wei Yin asked why, saying, How unhappy you look! Ren gave
a long sigh. Its just that I feel sorry for Zheng. Wei Yin said, What do
you mean? She replied, Zheng is six feet tall yet is unable to protect one
womanhow can he be a real man! Yousir, have led a life of wild excess
since your youth and have had many beautiful women a multitude of
those you have encountered have been comparable in beauty to me. Yet
Zheng, who is poor and of humble background, has only myself to suit his
fancy. Can a heart that has had something in abundance be so hardened as
to plunder the same from someone who does not have enough? I feel sorry
for his poverty and want, that he is unable to stand on his own. He wears
your clothes and eats your food, and thus he is bound by you. If he could
provide even simple food for himself, he should not be brought to this. In
Wei Yins domineering arrogance there was some sense of justice. Hearing
what she had said, he immediately set her down, and straightening his
clothes, he apologized, saying, I cant do this.
A short time later Zheng arrived, and looking at Wei Yin, he beamed
with joy. From that point on, Wei Yin provided Ren with ail her firewood,
grain, and meat. Now and then Ren would stop by. In her comings and go
ings she would sometimes go by carriage, sometimes ride a horse, sometimes
travel in a sedan chair, and sometimes walkher choice was not uniform.
Wei Yin would go about with her every day, and be extremely happy to do
so; the two grew very familiar and intimate with one another, and there were
no barriers between them, except for sexual intimacy. Wei Yin came to love
her and honor her. He begrudged her nothing, and at every meal and every
time he drankshe never left his thoughts. Ren knew that he loved her, so
she apologized to him. I am ashamed to be loved by you so much, but this
poor body is inadequate to answer your generous feeling. I cannot betray
Zheng, thus I cannot accommodate myself to your pleasure. I am from this
region of Qin, and I grew up in this, Q in
s greatest city. My family is one of
entertainers, and many of my relations on both sides have been kept as con
cubines. For this reason I am well acquainted with all the winding lanes of
Chang-an5s pleasure quarters. There may be some beautiful and pleasing
young girl who has not yet been takenlet me bring one for you. For I want
by this to repay your goodness. Wei Yin said, What good luck! In the
bazaar there was a woman who sold clothes called Miss Zhang, with smooth
and bright skin. Wei Yin had always been attracted to herso he asked Ren
if she knew her. Ren replied, That is my cousin. It will be an easy matter
to bring her to you. And after about two weeks she finally brought her.
A few months later, Wei Yin grew tired of her and dismissed her. Ren
then said, The women of the marketplace are easy to procure and not worth
much effort. If there is someone absolutely out of reachsomeone hard to
devise a plot to get hold ofjust tell me_ for I want to be able to use all my
strength and wit in this. Wei Yin then said, During this most recent Cold
Food Festival I was visiting Thousand Blessings Temple along with a few
other companions.1 There I saw a musical performance arranged by Gen
eral Diao Mian in the great hall. There was a skilled flageolet player of about
sixteen years of age, her hair done in a pair of coils that hung down to her
ears. She had an air of sweetness about her and was utterly desirable. Do
The Cold Food Festival was a spring festival in which the use of fire was forbidden.
The Tang Dynasty
you know her, by chance? Ren replied, That is Chong-nu. Her mother is,
in fact, a cousin of mine. It
s possible to go after her. Wei bowed to her
with respect, and Ren promised him.
Ren then began to pay frequent visits to the Diao household. After some
what more than a month, Ren wanted two bolts of the highest grade silk to
use as a bribe. Wei Yin provided these. Two days later, Ren was dining with
Wei when Diao Mian sent a servant leading a black steed to bring Ren to
see him. On hearing this summons, she said to Wei Yin with a smileIts
worked. Earlier Ren had given Chong-nu something that made her grow
sick, an illness that neither acupuncture nor medicines could relieve. Her
mother and Diao Mian were extremely worried about her and were going
to summon a soothsayer. Ren secretly bribed the soothsayer, and pointing
out where she lived, she ordered him to say that it would be lucky to trans
fer her there. After examining the illness, the soothsayer said, It is not ad
vantageous for her to be in this houseshe should go reside at such-and-such
a place to the southeast where she will obtain quickening life forces. When
Diao Mian and the girls mother made a thorough survey of the location, it
turned out that Rens residence was in the area. Diao Mian consequently
asked that Chong-nu be allowed to stay there. Ren made a pretense of ob
jecting on the grounds that her house was small and cramped, and agreed
only after they entreated her earnestly. Then Chong-nu, with all her clothes
and ornaments carried in litters and accompanied by her mother, was sent
to Ren's. When she got there, her sickness got better. Just a few days later
Ren secretly led Wei Yin to her, and he had intercourse with her. After a
month she was pregnant. Her mother was frightened and immediately took
her back to Diao M iansfrom which point the affair was over.
On another occasion Ren said to Zheng, Would you be able to get five
or six thousand cash? I have a scheme to make you a profit.wZheng said,
All rightand by going to borrow money from people, he got six thou
sand cash. Ren then said, In the market there is someone selling a horse
with something wrong with one of its legs. Buy it, take it home, and take
care of it. Zheng went to the market and at last saw a man leading a horse
and looking for a buyer. There was a flaw on one of its left legs. Zheng
bought it and took it back home with him. His wifes brothers all ridiculed
himsaying, That creature was just something someone was trying to get
rid of. Why did you buy it? Not long afterward Ren saidSell the horse
now. You should get thirty thousand cash for it. Zheng then went to offer
the horse for sale. When someone offered him twenty thousand cash, Zheng
refused to part with it. The whole market was saying, What problem does
the first man have that he is willing to spend so much, and why does the
other man love the horse so much that he wont sell? Zheng rode the horse
back home, and the man who had wanted to buy it followed after him, re
peatedly raising his offer until it reached twenty-five thousand. Zheng, how
ever, would not part with it, saying, I wont sell it for less than thirty thou
sand.55His wifes brothers all crowded around and berated him; unable to
maintain himself against them, he sold it, never getting the full thirty thou-.
sand.
Afterward he secretly confronted the buyer and asked him why he had
been willing to pay so much. It turned out that one of the imperial horses
kept in Zhao-ying County had something wrong with one of its legs. This
horse had died three years agoand the functionary in charge had not
promptly taken it off the official records. The government office had sent
an allowance for its upkeep totaling sixty thousand cash, and he speculated
that if he were to buy another for half that amount, he would still be reap
ing a handsome profit. If there were a horse to make the full complement,
then the functionary would get its entire allowance for fodder and grain. And
since what he would have to pay would be less than he made, he bought it.
Since her own clothes were old and frayed, Ren also asked Wei Yin for
clothes. Wei was going to buy whole bolts of cloth to give her, but she didn
t want that: I want to get clothes that are ready-made. Wei Yin then
called someone from the market, Old Zhang, to make the purchases for her
and he had Zhang meet Ren to find out what she wanted. When he saw her
Zhang was alarmed and said to Wei Yin, This woman has to be a goddess
or someone related to the imperial house whom you have secretly carried
off. She is not someone who should be kept in the mortal world. I urge you
to send her back as quickly as possible before some disaster befalls you.
That was how much her beauty could stir people. In the end he found ready
made clothes for her, and she did not sew them herself. He did not, how
ever, understand why.
More than a year later, Zheng was selected for a military post and was
appointed assistant director for military affairs of the Huai-li district, which
was in Jin-cheng County. Since Zheng had a legal wife and household, he
might go out for the day, but he always slept home at night. It always upset
him that he could not have Ren with him every night. When he was about
to leave to take up his post, he invited Ren to go along with him. Ren did
not want to go: Traveling together for weeks on end cannot be considered
a pleasure. Please just estimate how much will keep me provided with meat,
and grain, and I will stay here as always, awaiting your return. Zheng en
treated her earnestly, but she grew only less willing. Zheng then sought out
Wei Yin to provide help in persuading her, and together they urged her once
again and questioned her on her reasons for refusing. After a long time Ren
said, A soothsayer said that it would be unlucky for me to travel west this
yearand thats why I dont want to go. Zheng was completely infatuated
with her and could think of nothing else. Together with Wei Yin he laughed,
saying, How can you be so intelligent, yet be led astray by such mumbojumbo? They stuck to their request, and Ren saidIf by chance the sooth
sayer^ words prove true, what good will it do if I die for you for nothing?^
And both of them said, How could this happen? and they pleaded as
earnestly as before. Unable to have her own way in this, Ren went. Wei Yin
loaned her a horse and held a parting banquet for them at Lin-gao, waving
his arms to them as they went off on their way.
52 4
The Tang Dynasty
After two days of travel, they reached Ma-wei. Ren was riding her horse
in front, and Zheng was riding his donkey behind. Further behind, the two
women servants were riding apart. At that time the Imperial Groom of the
West Gate had been hunting with his dogs for ten days in Luo River County,
and he happened to meet them on the road. One of his dark gray dogs leaped
out from among the grasses, and Zheng saw Ren fall to the ground in a flash
reverting to her original shape and running south. The gray dog chased her.
Zheng ran after it shouting, but he couldnt stop it. After a little more than
a league the dog caught her.
With tears in his eyes, Zheng took money from his purse and paid to have
her buried. And he had a piece of wood carved as the grave marker. When
he went backhe saw her horse grazing on the grasses beside the road. Her
clothes were left draped on the saddleand her shoes and stockings were still
hanging in the stirrups, as if a cicada had metamorphosed from its shell.
Nothing else was to be seen but her hair ornaments, which had fallen to the
ground. The two women servants were also gone.
After a little more than ten days, Zheng returned to the city. Wei Yin
was delighted to see him and greeted him, asking, No harm has come to
Ren, has there?
Zhengs eyes streamed with tears as he repliedShes
dead.MHearing this, Wei Yin was stricken with grief, and the two men
clasped one another there in the room, giving full expression to their sor
row. Softly Wei asked the cause of her death, and Zheng replied, She was
killed by a dog. Wei Yin then said, However fierce a dog may be, how
could it kill a human being? Zheng answered, It was not a human being.5*
Wei Yin was shocked. What do you meannot a human being
?
Then
Zheng told him the whole story from beginning to end. Wei Yin was amazed
and could not stop sighing. On the next day, he ordered a carriage to be made
ready and went off with Zheng to Ma-wei. He opened her tomblooked at
her, and went back feeling a lingering unhappiness. When he thought back
on all that had happened, only the fact that she did not make her own clothes
was rather strange in comparison to human beings.
Afterward Zheng served as a supervisor-general, and his household be
came very wealthy, with over ten horses in his stables. He died at the age of
sixty-five.
During the Da-li Reign, IShen Ji-ji, was living in Zhong-ling and used
to go about with Wei Yin. Wei told this story often, with the result that I
learned many of the details. Later Wei Yin became Palace Censoras well
as Prefect of Long-zhou, where he died without returning to the capital.
I am struck that such humanity could be found in the feelings of a crea
ture so alien. When someone used violent force on her, she did not aban
don her principles, and she met her death by sacrificing herself for someone
else. Among women today there are those who are not her equal. It is un
fortunate that Zheng was not a perceptive man, merely attracted by her
beauty and not seeing the evidence of her nature- Supposing there had been
some scholar of profound discernment, he would surely have been able to
investigate the principles in such a transformation, to discern the lines of dis-
tinction between human beings and spirits, to write it out in a beautiful style
and thus to transmit such subtle feelings to posterityhe would not limit
himself to just savoring her good looks and a love story. It is a pity!
In 781
I left my post as Reminder of the Left and was going to Wu. Gen
eral Pei Ji, the Vice Governor of Chang-an Sun Cheng, the Director of the
Ministry of Revenue Cui Xu, and the Reminder of the Right Lu Chun all
happened to be going to live in the Southeast. In the journey from Qin to
Wu we all followed the same route, both land and water. At the time, the
former Reminder Zhu Fang was also traveling, and he went along with us.
We floated down the Ying River and then the Huai, our double boat car
ried along by the current. By day we would feast and at night tell stories,
with each of us presenting strange tales. When these gentlemen heard of the
events surrounding Ren, all were deeply touched and amazed. As a conse
quence, they asked me to transmit it as an account of strange things.
~W ritten by Shen Ji-ji
True self-sacrifice is most often found in women, but answering devotion in men is
also acknowledged. From "Ren's Story," it may seem that a love affair with a crea
ture from beyond the human world was a safe undertaking; but Ren's surprise on
finding that Zheng still wanted her, in spite of the fact that she was a were-fox, was
more in keeping with conventional wisdom that miscegenation with supernatural
beings or ghosts was bad for one's health and fortune. Nevertheless, a willingness
to brave such a prohibition might be as much a proof of love and reciprocating faith
as of overwhelming lust, as seems to have been the case with Zheng.
Li Jing-liang (fl. 794) Li Zhang-wu5s Story

The ancestry of Li Zhang-wu, otherwise known as Li Fei, was traced to the
Zhong-shan region. From his earliest years he was intelligent and well in
formed, and whatever happened he knew what to do. He was, moreover, a
skilled stylist, and his writings always reached the height of perfection. Al
though he had a high opinion of his own achievements in improving him
self, he abhorred putting on airs. He was of a refined and handsome ap
pearance and was genial to those who approached him. He was a good friend
of one Cui X in of Qing-he, another cultured gentleman and a collector of
antiquities. Because of Zhang-wu
s astute intelligence, Cui Xin would often
seek him out for discussions; together they penetrated the most subtle mys
teries and thoroughly investigated questions. Contemporaries compared
Zhang-wu to Zhang Hua of the Jin Dynasty.
In the year 787, Cui Xin had taken the post of administrative aide to the
prefect of Hua-zhou, and Zhang-wu came from Chang-an to visit him. Sev
eral days later he was out walking, and saw a very beautiful woman on the
northern avenue of the market. He then concocted a story, telling Cui Xin
that he had to have some dealings with an old friend outside the city. He
next rented lodgings in the beautiful womans home. The master of the house
was named Wangand the woman was his daughter-in-law. Zhang-wu was
The Tang Dynasty
greatly attracted to her and took up intimate relations with her. Staying there
somewhat over a month, the experience cost him more than thirty thousand
cash, which was doubled by the expenses of providing things for the daughter-in-law. Yet their two hearts were in perfect accord, and their love for
one another grew steadily stronger.
Eventually Zhang-wu had to attend to his own matters; and when he told
her that he would be returning to Chang-an, he spoke of their parting with
great feeling. Zhang-wu left her a piece of silk, patterned with a mated pair
of ducks, their necks entwined. He also gave her a poem
This silk patterned with mated ducks
ties knotted for a thousand years.
After parting recall their necks entwined
you will surely feel sad for these times before.
The daughter-in-law answered him with a white jade finger ring and a
poem:
Pick up this finger ring of longing,
when you see this ring, remember me.
I want you to wear it always,
going round in rings that have no, end.
Zhang-wu had a servant, Yang Guoto whom the daughter-in-law fur

nished a thousand cash as reward for his zealous services.
Eight or nine yeafs passed after they parted. Zhang-wu
s home was in
Chang-an and he had no way to keep in contact with her. Then in 791be
cause his friend Zhang Yuan-zong had taken up lodging in Xia-gui County
near Hua-zhou, Zhang-wu once again left the capital and went to join
Zhang Yuan-zong. All of a sudden he thought of that past love and turned
his course across the Wei River to visit her. It was getting dark when he
reached Hua-zhou, and he planned to stay over at the Wangs house. But
when he reached the gate, the place was silent and deserted, with no trace
of anyone there. There was only a bench for guests placed outside. Zhangwu thought that they had either passed away, or that they had given up their
profession and returned to farming, staying for a while in rural areas, or that
they had simply been invited to a gathering and had not returned.
He was standing there at the gate, ready to go find lodging elsewhere,
when he saw a woman who lived next door to the east. He went up to her
and inquired about them, and she told him that the elder Wangs had indeed
given up their profession and gone off somewhere, but that the daughterin-law had died two years previously. He continued to chat with lier to get
more of the details, and she said, My name is Yang, and I am the wife of
their neighbor to the east. May I inquire what your name is, young sir?
Zhang-wu told her. Then she added, Did you once some time ago have a
menial by the name of Yang Guo? Zhang-wu replied, I did. Hearing this,
she wept and told him, I have lived in this quarter of the city for five years
and was on very good terms with the young Mrs. Wang. She once told me,
My husbands house is like a hotel, and I have caught the eye of many men.
Some made advances to me as they came and went, and they all used up their
fortunes, said pretty words, and swore great vows. But none of them ever
stirred my heart. Then some years ago a man named Li Zhang-wu took up
lodging at our house. When I first saw him, I was lost before I knew it. Af
terward I shared a bed with him and received real love and joy from him. It
has now been many years since I parted from him, yet my heart still yearns
for him, so much so that I sometimes go the whole day without eating and
cannot sleep the whole night through. O f course I cant confide this to any
one in the family. Furthermore, I get taken one place and another by that
husband of mine, so there is little chance that I would meet with him even
if he were to come. If he should, by chance, come here, you could recognize
him by his attractive looks and his name. Try to see if it is him, and if there
is no mistake, confide my devotion to him and also tell him how deeply I
feel. If the man has a servant named Yang Guo, it
s him.5
Not two or three years after that she grew sick and bedridden. When
she was close to death, she again confided in me. I am only a poor person
of humble birth. I have had the undeserved good fortune to receive the kind
attention of a man of the best sort, and my heart is always stirred by thoughts
of him. This has gone on so long now that I have become sick, and I do not
expect to recover. Giving him my heart long ago has unexpectedly led to
this. Yet I want to express to him the unhappiness I will have to endure in
the underworld and my sighs that we must be separated now forever. If it
does happen that he asks again to stay here, I hope for a spirit meeting in
the phantom realm.
Zhang-wu then asked the neighbors wife to open the gateand he or
dered his attendants to go buy fodder, firewood, and food in the market. As
he was about to prepare his bedding, a woman suddenly appeared, broom
in hand, coming out of the chamber sweeping the ground. The neighbors
wife did not recognize her, so Zhang-wu inquired of her from whence she
had come, and she said that she was a person of the household. When he
pressed her with further questions, she said softly, The deceased wife of
the Wang family has been touched by the depth of your feeling for her and
will meet you. But she is worried that you might be frightened, so she sent
me to communicate with you. Zhang-wu then swore an oath, saying, It
was for this that I came here. Although the world of light and the dark world
below differ, and though mortal men all look on the dark world with dread
and loathing, because of the intensity of the love I bear herI truly have no
hesitations. When he finished saying these words, the woman holding the
broom appeared much gladdened and withdrew, pausing for a moment
half-hidden behind the gate, then no longer to be seen.
Zhang-wu had food and drink prepared, and he called for the spirit to
come and taste his offerings. After he finished eating and drinking, he lay
down to go to bed. A little after ten oclock the oil lamp to the southeast
ern side of his bed suddenly dimmed. When this happened repeatedly,
Zhang-wu knew in his heart that a transformation was occurring, and he
The Tang Dynasty
had the lamp moved up against the wall in the southeastern corner of the
room. All at onee he heard a rustling sound at the northern edge of the room
and it seemed as if there were a human form gradually drawing closer. After
five or six steps he could make out her features. When he looked at her at
tire, it was indeed the daughter-in-law of his former host. She appeared no
different from before, but her movements had an airy suddenness and the
tone of her voice was lighter and more clear. Zhang-wu got out of bed, em
braced her, and took her hand, and their joy in each other was just as openhearted as it once was. Then she said, Since I have been entered in the reg
ister of the dead, I have forgotten all my kin and dear ones. Only my hearts
longing for you is still as it used to be. Zhang redoubled his intimacies, and
nothing was different from before~except that she asked someone to check
for the morning star several times, for when it appeared, she would have to
soon go back, not being permitted to stay there long. And always, when rest
ing from their lovemaking, she would express the sincere gratitude she felt
for her neighbor, Madam Yang, saying, Were it not for her, who would
have communicated my silent suffering to you?55
When the last hour of night arrived, someone was there to tell her she
should go back now. She got out of bed weeping and went out the gate, arm
in arm with Zhang-wu. She looked up and gazed on the Milky Way and gave
a long, sad moan, then went back into the room. She untied a brocade bag
that hung from the sash at her waist and took something from it to give to
him. Its color was sky blue, and the material was dense and hard. It was like
jade but colder, and its shape was like that of a small leaf. Zhang-wu did
not recognize it, and she said, This is called a Mo-he jewel from the Dark
Garden on Mount Kun-lun. It is not something you could ever find. I was
playing with the Lady of the Jade Capital near the Western Peak, and I saw
this among all her jewels and earrings. I was quite taken with it and spoke
to her about it, whereupon the Lady took it and gave it to mesaying,
Whenever one of the immortal hosts in the Caverns to Heaven gets one of
these jewels, he considers it a glorious event. Since you serve the occult way
of Daoism and are a sincere person, I will make a present of it to you. Trea
sure it always, for it is not something that exists in the mortal world Then
she gave him a poem
The River of Stars sinks downward now,
this soul is ready to pass beyond.
I want you to hold me one more time,
for after this moment forever farewell.
In return, Zhang-wu gave her a precious white hairpin. He also an
swered her with a poem
World of darkness, world of light divide our fate,
who would have thought this meeting could occur?
Who could refuse to part once again,
yet I sigh for where you will go from here.
Thereupon he took hold of her, weeping, and held her a long time in his
arms. She then gave him another poem
With our last farewell I longed to meet again,
this parting now is forever.
A new grief joins with former pain
locked for all time in the world below.
To this, Zhang-wu answered:
Future meeting so far no date can be set,
and the pain felt before comes again.
On our separate paths no letters pass,
so how can I send you my love?
When they finished telling each other all that they felt so deeply on part
ing, she went back toward the northwest corner. After taking several steps,
she looked around and wiped away her tears, saying, Li Zhang-wu, dont
put me out of your heart~think of me when I am down in the world below.
Again she stood there a long time, choked with tears; then, seeing that the
sky was growing bright, she rushed over to the corner of the room and dis
appeared. There was only a murky darkness left in the room and the cold
lamp flame, half extinguished.
Zhang-wu hastily packed his belongings, ready to leave Xia-gui and re
turn to the Wu-ding Fortress in Chang-an. The magistrate of Xia-gui and
Zhang Yuan-zong had a drinking party to see him off. When he grew some
what tipsy, Zhang-wu thought of her and referred to what had happened in
a poem
Waters do not turn back west,
the moon, but briefly full:
this brings heartache to the man
beside these ancient walls.
Early tomorrow, in dismal gloom,
our paths will split apart
I wonder what year will ever come
when we will meet again.
After he finished reciting that, he took his leave of the magistrate. He
went on alone for several leagues and again recited the verse. All of a sud
den, out of nowhere, he heard a sigh of appreciation. When he listened again
carefully, it was in fact Wangs daughter-in-law. And she said, In the dark
world, places are strictly divided. When I leave you now, we will never be
joined together again. Knowing how you yearn for me, I have braved the
chastisement by the Overseers of Shades and have come to see you on your
way. Take care of yourself! And Zhang-wu was even more enthralled by
her.
When he reached Chang-an, he told the story to a Daoist companion, Li
Zhu of Long-xi. He too was touched by Zhang-wus true love and composed
a poem:
The Tang Dynasty
Stones sink in Liaos vast sea,

mated swords parted by Chus long sky.
He knows they will never meet again,
sundered from her, heart filled with setting sun.
Zhang-wu served in the Chief Ministers bureau at Dong-pingand once
when unoccupied, he called a jade carver to come look at the Mo-he jewel
that he had acquired. Not recognizing what it wasthe jade carver did not
dare work on it. Later, Zhang-wu was sent on a mission to Da-liang and
called in another jade carverwho had a rough notion of what it was. Keep
ing close to its original formhe carved it to resemble hemlock needles. Later
again Zhang-wu was sent on a mission to the capital, and he always kept
this object inside the folds of his coat. When he reached the eastern avenue
of the market, he chanced to see a Central Asian monk, who immediately
approached his horse, kowtowed, and said, You have a jewel inside your
coat. I beg you to let me see it. Zhang-wu led the monk to a quiet place,
took it out, and showed it to the monk, who spent a long time rolling it over
and over in his hand. Then he said, This is one of the rarest objects from
Heaven and it is not found in this mortal world.
Later, whenever Zhang-wu passed through Hua-zhou, he would visit
Madam Yang and give her gifts, which he continues to do to this day.
Two Tales of Faith Broken

The lover who keeps his faith is finally rewarded, receiving an object that is solid
and precious evidence of a moment when the supernatural realm crossed over into
the human realm. Precarious moments are balanced out by equal exchanges of love,
poems, and objects. A failure to give equal exchange, however, can be like a bad
debt that never goes away.
Jiang Fang (fl. early 9th century), Huo Xiao-yus Story

During the Da-li Reign (766-779), one Mr. Li of Long-xi, with the given
name Yi, passed the jin-shi examination. In the following year he was to take
the higher examination, Picking Out the Finest, and waited to be put to
the test by the Ministry of Personnel. He reached Chang-an in August of that
summer and took a lodging in the Xin-chang Quarter of the city. He was
from an illustrious family and had shown real talent since his childhood. At
the time people said that his elegant phrases and splendid lines were un
equaled, and well-established men who were his seniors were unanimous in
acclaiming him. Whenever he thought with pride about his superior quali
ties, he longed to find a fair companion. He sought widely among the fa
mous courtesans, but after a long time he still could discover no one suit
able.
There was in Chang-an at the time one Miss Bao, a procuress, who had
formerly been a maid of Commander-escort Xue. It had been more than a
decade since she bought back her indenture contract and made a respectable
marriage. W ith her ingratiating nature and clever tongue, she had contacts
with all the powerful families and kinsmen of the imperial consorts, and she
was commended as the best person around for quickness and savvy. Hav
ing constantly received good-faith commissions and rich presents from Li
Yi, she was particularly well disposed toward him.
It happened that several months later, Li Yi was idling away the time in
the southern pavilion of his house. In the course of the midafternoon he sud
denly heard an urgent knocking at his gatewhich turned out to signal the
arrival of Miss Bao. He hurriedly straightened his clothes to go greet her:
My dear Miss Bao, what brings you here so unexpectedly today? Bao
repliedAnd has my young bookworm been having a pleasant dream? I
have for you a fairy princess who has been banished to this lower world.
She asks no money~she yearns only for a man of gallantry and feeling.
Someone of this caliber is a perfect match for you.
When Li Yi heard this, he leapt for joy and wonder. Drawing Bao by the
hand, he bowed and expressed his gratitude, Ill be your slave my whole
life; I would die for you without flinching. Then he asked the g irl
s name
and where she lived. Bao told him all the details. She is the youngest daugh
ter of the former Prince Huo, Xiao-yu by name. The prince was extremely
fond of her. Her mothers name is Jing-chi, a maidservant who enjoyed the
princes favor. Soon after the prince passed away, Xiao-yu
s brothers were
not inclined to keep her in the household because she came from such a hum
ble background, so they gave her a share of the wealth and sent her off to
live elsewhere. She has changed her name to Zheng, and no one knows that
she is the princes daughter. In all my life Fve never seen such a voluptuous
figure. Yet she has noble sentiments and an independent manner. She sur
passes others in every way. She understands everything from music to po
etry and calligraphy. Recently she sent me to find her a good young man
who is her equal in quality. I told her everything about you, and since she
already knew of your name, she was exceptionally pleased and satisfied. She
lives in Old Temple Lane in the Sheng-ye Quarter, in the house just beyond
the carriage gate. Ive already set a date for you to meet~tomorrow at noon.
Just go to the end of the lane and look for her maid Cinnamon, and you
re
there.
After Bao had left, Li Yi made all his plans for the visit. He ordered his
houseboy Qiu-hong to go to his cousin, Lord Shangthe Capital Adminis
trator, to borrow his fine black yearling and a golden bridle. He had his
clothes laundered, and he bathed, taking special care to be well groomed.
The combination of joy and excitement prevented him from sleeping the en
tire night. As daylight broke, he put on his turban and looked at himself in
the mirror, afraid that she wouldnt find him to her liking. Then he paced
back and forth until it was noon, at which point he rode with great haste
directly to the Sheng-ye Quarter. When at last he reached the place agreed
upon, he saw a maid standing there waiting. She greeted him and asked,
Arent you Li Yi? He got down from his horse, and she led it next to the
houselocking the gate securely behind her. He then saw Miss Bao coming
The Tang Dynasty
out from inside. Still at a distance, she laughed and said, Now what brings
you barging in Here? Li Yi continued joking with her as she led him in
through a central gate. In the courtyard there were four cherry trees, and
from the one in the northwest corner there was hung a cage with a parrot
in it. When it saw Li Yi come in, it spoke: A man is coining~quick, pull
down the curtains!55By nature Li Yi was proper and reserved, and his heart
was still apprehensive and beset by doubts. When he heard the bird speak
out so suddenly, he was overcome with panic and didn
t dare go on further.
While he was still hesitating there, Miss Bao led Jing-chi down the stairs
to greet him. She invited him in, and they sat down across from one another.
Jing-chi was perhaps somewhat over forty, delicate and still very attractive.
She laughed and chatted and made herself agreeable. Then she said to Li Yi,
I had heard before that you were a man of both talent and feeling. Now I
can see for myself the elegance of your appearance and bearing. This is
clearly not a case when theres nothing behind a reputation. I have one
daughter, and though she has been but poorly educated, her looks are not
altogether ugly. It would be most fitting if she could make a match with a
true gentleman. Miss Bao has discussed this idea with me often, so I will now
order her to serve you respectfully as a wife. Li Yi thanked her. I am a
very ordinary and awkward person, of no particular distinction. I had not
expected to receive such kind regard. If only you would condescend to
choose me for this, it would be a glory for mealive or dead
Then she ordered that wine and food be served and had Xiao-yu come
out from her chamber on the eastern side of the hall. Li Yi went to greet her,
but all he was aware of was something like an alabaster forest and jade trees
throughout the whole room, casting their dazzling radiance back and forth,
and as he turned his gaze, the crystalline rays struck him. Xiao-yu then went
and sat by her mother, who said to her, You are always fond of reciting
-When I opened the curtains, wind stirred the bamboo
and I thought it was my old friend coming.
Those lines are from a poem by this very Li Yi. Better to see him in person
than to spend the whole day imagining him as you recite. Xiao-yu lowered
her head, giggling, and whispered softly, But better still to hear o his rep
utation than to see him in person, for how could a man of talent be want
ing in looks to match? At once Li Yi rose and bowed, saying, The young
lady loves talent; I value beauty. These two preferences here illuminate one
another in a conjunction between talent and good looks. Mother and
daughter looked around at one another smiling. Then they raised their
winecups in several rounds. Li Yi stood up and asked Xiao-yu to sing. At
first she was unwilling, but her mother insisted. Her voice was bright and
clear, and the handling of the melody was precise and wondrous.
When the drinking was finished, Miss Bao led Li Yi to the western wing
to rest for the night. The courtyard was peaceful and the chamber was a spacidus one, with splendidly worked curtains. Miss Bao ordered the servants
Cinnamon and Washed Gauze to help Li Y i take off his boots and undo his
533
sash. A moment later, Xiao-yu arrived. What she said to him was loving and
tender, and the manner of her words was winsome. The instant she took off
her gauze robes, he saw that her body was gorgeous. They lowered the bed
curtains and drew close to one another on the pillows, experiencing the trans
ports of pleasure. To Li Y is mindeven what happened on Wu Mountain
and by the banks of the Luo could not have been better.
In the middle of the night, Xiao-yu suddenly began to weep as she gazed
on Li Yi: I come from a courtesan background and know that I am not a
proper match for you. Now, because of your love of beauty, I have been
given to someone as kind and worthy as yourself. But I worry that one morn
ing my beauty will be gone, and your love will leave and go elsewhere. Then
the clinging vine will have nothing to cling to, and summers fan will be cast
away in the growing cool of the autumn. In the instant we were at pleasures
height, without realizing it sadness came. When Li Yi heard this, he could
not help being stirred to sighs. Then he pillowed her head on his arm and
said softly, Today I have gained everything that I hoped for in this life. I
swear never to abandon you, or may my body be torn to pieces and my bones
ground to powder. My lady, how can you say such a thing? Please bring me
a piece of white silk so I can write a vow on it.
Xiao-yu then stopped weeping and ordered her servant Cherry to lift up
the bed curtains and hold a candle, after which she gave Li Yi a brush and
ink. Whenever she had spare moments from practicing music, Xiao-yu had
always liked poetry and calligraphy. The brush and inkstone brought from
her chests had previously been from the princes household. She then got out
an embroidered bag from which she took three feet of white silk ruled with
fine black lines, a type known as Yue maiden. This she gave to Li Yi. Li
Yi had always been quite talented, and no sooner did he take brush in hand
than he had completed it, drawing metaphors of mountains and rivers,
pointing to sun and moon as witnesses to his faith. Every line showed the
utmost sincerity, and whoever heard it was much moved. When he finished
writing, he ordered that it be put in a jeweled box. From then on, they clung
to one another like kingfishers in the paths through the clouds. They were
together day and night like this for two years.
In the spring of the following year, Li Yi passed the higher examination,
Picking Out the Finest
by his skills at calligraphy and compositionand
he was given the post of Recorder of Zheng County. In June he had to go
to take up his office, and he was supposed to also go to Luo-yang to pay his
respects to his parents. Most of his kinsmen and close friends in Chang-an
went to the parting banquet. At the time there were still some remaining
traces of spring, and the scenes of summer were first coining into their glory.
When the drinking was done and the guests went their separate ways,
thoughts of the coming separation were twisting through their thoughts.
Xiao-yu said to him, Because of your reputation due to your talent and your
family statusmany people admire you. I am sure that quite a few will want
to form a marriage connection with you. Moreover, you are in the position
whenas they say, there are strict parents at home and no legitimate wife
The Tang Dynasty
in your chamber. Once you leave, it is inevitable that you are going to an
advantageous marriage. The words of the vow that you wrote were noth
ing more than empty talk. Nevertheless, I do have one small wish that I want
to put before you right now. Carry it forever in your heart. W ill you hear
me out?
.
Li Yi was shocked and amazed, What have I done wrong to have you
say something like this? Say what you have to say and I will have to accept
it. Xiao-yu then said, I am eighteen now and you are twenty-two. There
are still eight more years until you reach that season of your prime when a
man should establish a household. During this period, I want to experience
a lifetime of love and pleasure. After that it will still not be too late for you
to make a fine choice from a noble family and conclude a marriage alliance.
I will then cast the affairs of mortal men behind me, shave off my hair and
put on the black habit of a nun, and in doing so a long-standing wish will
be fulfilled.
Li Yi was both touched and ashamed, and without realizing it his eyes
were streaming with tears. He then said to Xiao-yu, What I swore by the
shining sun will be so until death. Even growing old together with you does
not fully satisfy my intentions, so how could I have such a recklessly fickle
heart? I beg you not to doubt me. Just live as usual and wait for me. By Oc
tober I will surely have made it back to Hua-zhou. Then I will find some
one to send to bring you to me. Our meeting is not that far away.55In a few
more days Li Yi said his final goodbyes and went east.
Ten days after he reached his post, he asked for leave to go to Luo-yang
to see his parents. Even before he reached home, his mother had already
worked out the arrangements to have him marry Miss Lu, and the agree'ment had been settled. His mother had always been strict and unbending,
so that Li Yi wavered in indecision and did not dare refuse. In consequence
he had to go to the brides family to thank them according to custom, after
which a close date was set for the wedding. The Lus were, moreover, a fam
ily of the highest rankand when they married off one of their daughters,
the value of the wedding gifts offered had to be set at a million cash. If there
were anything less than this sum, propriety would demand that they not pro
ceed. Li Y is family had always been poor, and the wedding required that
he go looking for money. Using various pretexts, he went far off to visit
friends and relations, spending the period from autumn to summer travel
ing in the Yangzi and Huai River region. He had, of course, betrayed his
vow and had gone long past the date set for his return. By silence and hav
ing her hear nothing from him, he wanted to put an end to Xiao-yu
s hopes;
and he charged his friends and relations in Chang-an not to let word leak
out to her.
Ever since Li Yi had missed the appointed time for him to send for her,
Xiao-yu had often sought news of him, but the various wild rumors and spec
ulations were never the same from one day to the next. She went to consult
soothsayers and tried all the various means by which fortunes could be told.
For more than a year she kept her anxiety and her sense of outrage to her
self. She lay wasting away in her empty chamber until she became seriously
ill.
Despite the fact that Li Y i
s letters had stopped altogether, Xiao-yu^
hopes and fantasies did not leave her. She sent gifts off to friends and ac
quaintances in order to get them to pass on any news to her. In her desper
ation to get some word of him, the savings on which she lived were all used
up. She would often give private instructions to the maids to secretly sell
some ornament or piece of clothing from her trunks. Usually she would en
trust these to Hou Jing-xians pawnshop in the Western Market to be put
on sale. Once she instructed her maidservant Washed Gauze to take a hair
pin of purple jade to have it sold at Hou Jing-xians establishment. On the
street, Washed Gauze met an old jade carver from the Imperial Craftshops.
When he saw what she was carrying, he came up and identified it. That
hairpin is a piece I myself made. When in years gone by the Prince of H uo
s
youngest daughter was going to have her hair put up into coils for her com
ing of age, he had me make this and gave me ten thousand cash in return. I
have never forgotten it. Who are you and how did you come by this?
Washed Gauze said, My young mistress is that very daughter of the Prince
of Huo. The household was dispersed and she has fallen on hard times, hav
ing given herself to a man. A while ago her husband went off to Luo-yang,
and she has heard no news of him. It has been almost two years now, and
she has become ill through her misery. She ordered me to sell this so that
she could offer gifts to people and try to get some word of him.
The jade carver was moved to tears: To think that the sons and daugh
ters of the nobility could fall into such misfortune and end up like this! The
years left to me will soon be done, and to see such reversals from splendor
to decline is a pain not to be borne. He then led Washed Gauze to the man
sion of the Princess Yan-xian, where he recounted the whole story in detail.
The princess too was deeply moved and gave her one hundred and twenty
thousand copper pieces.
At this time the daughter of the Lu family, to whom Li Yi was betrothed,
was in Chang-an. Having completed his task of gathering together sums ad
equate for the marriage gifts, Li Yi returned to Zheng County. In the final
month of that yearhe once again asked for leave to go into the city. In se
cret he chose out-of-the-way lodgings and didnt let anyone know where he
was. Li Yi had a cousin, one Cui Yun-minga graduate of the examination
in the Confucian Classics. Cui had an extremely generous nature, and in
years gone by he had always accompanied Li Yi to drinking parties at Xiaoyu
s house. As they laughed and chatted over food and drink, he had never
been treated with the least formal reserve. Whenever he had gotten a letter
from Li Yi, he would always report it faithfully to Xiao-yu. And Xiao-yu
for her part would always provide firewood, fodder, and clothing to help
Cui out, so that Cui was especially grateful to her. When Li Yi arrived in
Chang-an, Cui went and told Xiao-yu the entire truth. Xiao-yu sighed in in
dignation, How can such things happen in the world? She then asked all
her friends to use any means possible to get him to come to her.
The Tang Dynasty
Li Yi was aware that he had not kept the date he set with Xiao-yu and
had betrayed his vow. He further knew of Xiao-yu
s condition, that her sick
ness had made her an invalid. In his shame, he hardened his heart against
her and absolutely refused to go. He would go out in the morning and come
home at night, trying in this way to avoid her. Xiao-yu meanwhile wept day
and night and entirely forgot about eating and sleeping. She had hoped to
see him at least once more, but finally there seemed to be no way. Her rage
at the wrong he had done her deepened, and she lay sprawled helplessly on
her bed. There were, of course, those in Chang-an who knew of her. Men
of delicate feeling were uniformly moved by the strength of Xiao-yu*s pas
sion, while men of the more bold-hearted and impetuous sort were all en
raged at Li Y is casual heartlessness.
The season was May, and everyone was going on spring outings. Li Yi
and five or six of his friends had gone to Chong-jing Temple to enjoy the
peonies. They were walking along the western gallery, taking turns reciting
lines of poetry. Wei Xia-qing, a native of the capital and intimate friend of
Li Yi, was walking along with him in that company, and he said to Li Yi,
Today the weather and the scenery are splendid. All the trees and plants
are in full flower. But think of poor Xiao-yu in her empty chamber, having
to swallow the wrong done to her. The fact that you have been able to aban
don her so absolutely shows that you are truly a hard-hearted person. A
mans heart shouldnt be like this. You really ought to think about it!
At the very moment he was criticizing Li Yi with such feeling, there sud
denly appeared one of those bold-hearted and impetuous fellows, wearing
light robes with a yellow satin shirt, carrying a bow under his arm. He was
a handsome, dashing fellow, splendidly attired, with only one shaved-head
Turkish servant in attendance on him. He had come up unseen and had lis
tened to the conversation. All of a sudden he came forward and greeted him,
saying, Arent you Li Yi? My family comes originally from Shan-dong, and
we are related by marriage to the kinsmen of the imperial consorts. Although
I myself am lacking in the literary gracesI enjoy the company of worthy
men. Having so admired your illustrious reputation, I have always longed
to encounter you. What a fortunate meeting this is today that gives me the
opportunity to cast eyes on your exquisite features! My own poor lodgings
are not far from here, and I have there such musical entertainments as can
provide pleasure to the heart. There are also eight or nine beguiling wenches
and ten or so fine steeds, as you prefer. I would like you to stop by for a
visit.
Li Y is companions all listened to these words, and each in turn was
moved by such eloquence. Thereupon they all went riding off in the com
pany of this bold-hearted gentleman. They wound their way swiftly through
several quarters of the city until they came at last to the Sheng-ye Quarter.
Because they were getting closer to where Xiao-yu was staying, Li Yi lost
his inclination to stop by for a visit, and inventing some excuse, he tried to
turn his horse back. But the bold-hearted gentleman said, My place is just
a little further. Youre not going to back out on me, are you? And with this
he took hold of the reins of Li Y is horse and led him along. Delaying in this
fashion, they came at last to Xiao-yus lane. Li Y is spirit was in a daze; he
whipped his horse, trying to turn back. But the bold-hearted gentleman
abruptly ordered several servants to hold him and make him continue on.
Moving swiftly, he pushed Li Yi in through the carriage gate and had it
locked fast. He then announced, Li Yi has arrived The whole household
was so startled with delight that their voices could be heard outside.
The night before, Xiao-yu dreamed that a man in a yellow shirt had
brought Li Yi to her; and when he reached the place to sit down, he had
Xiao-yu take off her shoes. Xiao-yu woke with a start and told the dream
to her mother, who explained, Shoes come in pairs, like the pair formed
when a man and wife are rejoined. To take off is to come apart. Coming
apart after being rejoined must mean the final farewell. From this I can tell
that you will surely see him again, but after seeing him you will die.
At the break of dawn, Xiao-yu asked her mother to comb her hair and
do her make-up. Because Xiao-yu had been sick so long, her mother secretly
thought that she was delirious and didnt believe her. Reluctantly she forced
herself to comb Xiao-yus hair and put on her make-up. But no sooner had
she finished than Li Yi arrived. Xiao-yu had been bedridden for quite some
time and needed another persons help even to turn over. But when she heard
that Li Yi had comeshe rose in a flash, changed her clothes, and went out,
as if some divine force were moving her.
When she saw Li Yi, she held back her anger and gazed at him fixedly,
saying nothing. Her wasted flesh and lovely features gave the impression that
she could endure it no longer. For a moment she hid her face behind her
sleeve, then looked back at Li Yi. Such things touch people painfully, and
everyone present was sobbing. In a little while a few dozen dishes of food
and jugs of wine were brought in from the outside. Everyone present was
startled to see this, and they immediately asked where the food had come
from. All of it had been sent by the bold-hearted gentleman in the yellow
shirt. When the food and drink were laid out, they went to sit down.
Xiao-yu leaned to the side and turned her face, gazing sidelong on Li Yi
for a very long time. Then she raised a cup of wine and poured it out on the
ground, saying, I am a woman; my unhappy fate is like this. You are a man;your faithless heart may be compared to this. Fair of face and in the flower
of my youth, I perish swallowing my resentment. I have a loving mother at
home, yet I will not be able to care for her. My fine silken clothes and the
music of pipes and strings will from this point on be forever ended. I must
carry my suffering to the underworld, and all of it was brought on by you.
Li Yi, Li Yi! We must now say farewell for good. But after I die, I will be
come a vengeful ghost and allow you no peace with your wives and concu
bines for the rest of your days
W ith that, she grasped Li Y i
s arm with her
left hand and threw the cup to the ground. W ith several long and mournful
cries, she died. Her mother lifted the corpse and rested it in Li Y is arms,
telling him to call back her soul. But she did not revive.
The Tang Dynasty
Li Yi dressed himself in white mourning robes on her account and wept

for her day and night with the deepest sorrow. Then, on the evening before
she was to be buried, all of a sudden he saw her within the white-curtained
spirit enclosure, her appearance as lovely and desirable as she used to be.
She was wearing a pomegranate-colored skirt with a purple tunic and a red
and green cape. She leaned against the curtain, took her embroidered sash
in hand, and looking around at Li Yi, said, I am embarrassed to see that
there is still such feeling in you that you have come like this to see me on
my way. Even in the dark realms below, I could not help being moved to
sigh. Once she finished speaking, she was no longer to be seen. On the next
day she was buried in the Yu-su Plain near Chang-an. Li Yi came to her
graveside and mourned until he could mourn no morethen turned back.
Somewhat more than a month later, he carried out the wedding cere
monies with Miss Lu. Feelings of sadness and sympathy filled his heart, and
he had no joy in it. In July that summer he went back to Zheng County to
gether with his wife Lu. Ten days after he arrived, he was sleeping together
with Lu when all of a sudden he heard the sound- of someone calling out
side the curtains. Li Yi woke with a start and lookedthere was a man who
seemed somewhat over twentywith a graceful and handsome appearance,
hiding behind the curtains and repeatedly calling to Lu. Li Yi rose franti
cally and went around the curtains several times, but all of a sudden the man
was nowhere to be seen. From that point on, he began to harbor evil suspi
cions in his heart and was jealous of everything. There were none of the easy
pleasures of life between husband and wife. He had a close friend who re
assured him, going over the affair in detail, and his mind gradually eased.
But then again ten days later he was coming in from the outside as Lu was
playing the harp on the couch. Suddenly he saw, tossed in from the gate, a
box of variously colored ivory and gold filigree, a bit larger than an inch in
diameter. This fell in Lu
s lap. Around it was a piece of light silk tied in a
love-knot. When Li Yi opened it and looked inside, there were two love
beans, a scarab, a passion pill, and some aphrodisiac made from a foaling
donkey. At that point Li Yi bellowed in rage, his voice like a tiger. He took
the harp and beat his wife with it, questioning her to make her tell him the
truth. But Lu could not explain any of it. After that he would often whip
her violently and practiced every manner of cruelty on her, until at last he
accused her publicly in open court and sent her away.
Once he had divorced Lu, Li Yi would sometimes share a bed with
women of the lower classes, serving girls and concubinesbut always he
would grow jealous and suspicious. Sometimes he would find somje reason
and kill them. Li Yi once visited Guang-ling and there obtained a well-known
young woman known as Miss Ying. Her appearance was sleek and seduc
tive, and Li Yi was very pleased with her. Whenever they sat together, he
would tell her, In such-and-such a place I got such-and-such a girl, who
committed such-and-such an offense, and I killed her in such-and-such a
way
He would tell such stories daily, hoping in this way to make her fright-
ened of him and keep his womens quarters free of sexual misconduct. When
he went out, he would take a washing tub and put it over Ying on the bed;
then he would set seals all around it. When he got back, he would check the
seals all around, and only when he was satisfied would he break the seals
and let her out. He also kept a very sharp sword and would say to his serv
ing girls, This is Ge Creek steel from Xin-zhouto be used especially for
cutting off the heads of those who commit transgressions.wWhatever woman
Li Yi met, he would instantly become jealous. He married three times, and
each of the others went like it did the first time.
It is very hard to read "Ying-ying's Story," below, without taking sides, or without at
least deciding which side the story really takes. Some, accepting that this is an au
tobiographical work by Yuan Zhen, argue that, in the context of the public Confu
cian values of the period, Zhang's behavior is justified. However, such an interpre
tation ignores the values of the Tang love story, which were as powerful or more
powerful than the Confucian pieties by which Zhang excuses his actions at the end
of "Ying-ying's Story." "Huo Xiao-yu's Story" bears witness to such values. The most
chilling possibility is that ''Ying-ying's Story" is indeed an autobiographical work,
an attempt by the author to exculpate himself, and that some peculiar blindness on
the part of the author, having convinced himself by his own rationalizations, pre
vents him from seeing the shabbiness of his actions.
In the end, nothing survives unsullied in this story: neither Zhang nor Ying-ying,
neither Tang images of love nor Confucian virtues. Poetry seems false; formal prose
is ludicrous; and the articulation of social virtues seems something too conveniently
deployed for private motives. Some modem Chinese critics, looking for a pleasant
love story, are appalled by the tale. But even though its numerous retellings smoothed
over everything that makes the story uncomfortable, it remains one of the most com
pelling and influential narratives in the Chinese tradition.
Ying-ying's letter, quoted in full (though the author purports to give only the gist
of it), is a remarkable piece of prose, with the most complicated twists and turns of
the heart working at cross purposes with the Tang delight in formal eloquence. Yingying the stylist sits uncomfortably beside Ying-ying the woman driven to distraction.
In the same way, the Ying-ying who wants to show the self-effacing concern of a
model wife is in conflict with another Ying-ying who is both desperate and enraged.
If this is not a real document, it is a recreation with a psychological verisimilitude
unparalleled in the period. We should note that Zhang's letter to Ying-ying was not
included. From Ying-ying's reply, it is clear that this letter again declared his love
for her, which makes his behavior on receiving her letter all the more questionable.
Yuan Zhen (779-831) Ying-yings Story

In the Zhen-yuan Reign (785-804) there was a certain man named Zhang,
of a gentle nature and handsome appearance. He held steadfastly to his per
sonal principles and refused to become involved in anything improper.
The Tang Dynasty
Sometimes a group of friends would go off to a party and behave riotously.

While the others tried to outdo one another in wanton and unbridled reck
lessness, Zhang would remain utterly composed, and they could never get
him to act in an intemperate manner. At this time he was twenty-three and
had never been intimate with a woman. When a close friend questioned him
about this, Zhang excused himself, saying, The famous lecher of antiquity,
Deng Tu-ziwas not a man of passionate desirehis were the actions of a
brute. I am someone who is truly capable of passionate desire, but simply
have not encountered it*. How can I say this? Things of the most bewitch
ing beauty never fail to leave a lasting impression on my heartand this tells
me that I am not one of those free of passion.55And the one who had ques
tioned him acknowledged this in him.
Not long afterward, Zhang visited Pu-zhou. About a dozen leagues east
of the city there was a residence for monks known as the Temple of Uni
versal Salvation, where Zhang took up lodgings. It happened that a widow,
one Madam Cui, was on her way to Chang-anand since her journey took
her through Pu-zhou, she too stopped over at this temple. Madam Cui had
been born a Zheng, and Zhangs mother had also been a Zheng. When they
traced the family connection, it turned out that she was his maternal aunt
at several removes.
That year Hun Zhen, the Military Governor, passed away in Pu-zhou,
and Ding Wen-ya, the court officer left in charge, was not liked by the
troops. After the funeral, they rioted and pillaged widely in Pu-zhou. Madam
Cui had a great wealth of household goods as well as many servants. The
hostel was frantic with alarm, and they did not know where to turn for help.
Zhang had earlier developed friendly relations with the circle around the
commandant of Pu-zhou, and he asked for guards to protect Madam Cui.
As a result, no harm came to her. About a dozen days later, the Investiga
tor Du Que arrived with an imperial commission to take charge of the
troops, and he issued commands to the army, after which the disturbance
ceased.
Madam Cui was exceedingly grateful for Zhangs kindnessso she had
a feast prepared in his honor. As they dined in the central hall, she said to
Zhang, Your widowed aunt lives on, carrying her young children with her.
I have had the misfortune of a close call with a major outbreak of violence
among the troopsand I truly could not have protected these childrens lives.
Thus it is as if my young son and daughter owe their lives to you. What you
have done for us cannot be compared to an ordinary kindness. I would now
insist that they greet you with all the courtesies due to an elder brother, in
the hope that this might be a way to repay your kiftdness. Then she gave
this order to her son. His name was Huan-lang, a gentle and handsome boy
somewhat over ten years old. Next she gave the order to her daughter:
Come out and pay your respects to your elder brotheryou are alive be
cause of him
A long time passedand then the girl declined on the excuse
that she wasnt feeling well. Madam Cui said angrily, Mr. Zhang protected
your life. Otherwise you would have been taken captive. How can you still
keep such a wary distance from him ! After another long wait, the daugh
ter came in. She wore everyday clothes and had a disheveled appearance,
without having dressed up specially for the occasion. Tresses from the coils
of her hair hung down to her eyebrows and her two cheeks were suffused
with rosy color. Her complexion was rare and alluring, with a glow that
stirred a man. Zhang was startled as she paid him the proper courtesies. Then
she sat down beside her mother. Since her mother had forced her to meet
Zhang, she stared fixedly away in intense resentment, as if she couldnt bear
it. When he asked her age, Madam Cui saidFrom September 784
the first
year of the emperor's reign, until the present year, 800, makes her seven
teen years old.55Zhang tried to draw her into conversation, but she wouldn
t answer him.
Finally the party ended. Zhang was, of course, infatuated with her, and
he wanted to express his feelings but had no way. The Cuis had a maidser
vant named Hong-niang. Zhang greeted her courteously a number of times
and then seized an opportunity to tell her what he felt. The maid was scan
dalized and fled in embarrassment, at which Zhang regretted what he had
said. When the maid came the next day, Zhang was abashed and apologized,
saying, nothing more about what he wanted. But then the maid said to
Zhang, What you said is something you should not have dared to say and
something you should not dare allow to get out. However, you know the
kinship ties of the Cuis in some detail. Given the gratitude Madam Cui feels
toward you, why dont you ask for her hand in marriage?
Zhang replied, Ever since I was a child I have by nature avoided un
seemly associations. When I have been around women, I would never even
give them suggestive glances. I never would have thought that a time would
come when I found myself so overwhelmed by desire. The other day at the
partyI could scarcely control myself. For the past few days I walk without
knowing where I am going and eat without thinking of whether I am full or
not. I
m afraid I wont last another day. If I had to employ a matchmaker
to ask for her hand marriage, with the sending of betrothal tokens and for
mal inquiries about names, it would be another three months, and I would
be a fish so long out of the water that you would have to look for me in a
dried fish store. What do you think I should do? The maid replied, Miss
Cui is virtuous and guards herself scrupulously. Even someone she held in
the highest regard could not lead her into misconduct by improper words;
plans laid by lesser folk will be even harder to carry through. She does, how
ever, like to compose poems and is always mulling over passages, spending
a long time on pieces of wronged love and admiration. You should try to
seduce her by composing poems that express your love indirectly. Otherwise
there will be no way.
Zhang was overjoyed and immediately composed two Spring Verses
to give to her. That evening Hong-niang came again and handed over a piece
of colored notepaper to Zhang, saying, Miss Cui has instructed me to give
The Tang Dynasty
you this. The piece was entitled The Bright Moon of the Fifteenth. It
went:
I await the moon on the western porch,
my door half ajar, facing the breeze.
Flower shadows stirbrushing the wall
I wonder if this is my lover coming.
Zhang understood the subtle message implied. That night was April 14.
There was an apricot tree on the eastern side of her apartments, and by
climbing it, he could get into her quarters. On the following evening, the fif
teenth, when the moon was full, Zhang climbed the tree and got into her
quarters. When he reached the western porch, the door was indeed half ajar.
Hong-niang was lying there asleep in her bed, and Zhang roused her. Hongniang was startled: How did you get in here? Zhang lied to her, Yingyings note summoned me. Now go tell her that Ym here. Soon afterward
Hong-niang returned, saying over and over again, She
s here! She
s here!
Zhang was overjoyed and surprised, certain that -he would succeed in this
enterprise. But when Ying-ying did arrive, she was in proper attire with a
stern expression on her face. She proceeded to take Zhang to task item byitem: By your kindness you saved our family, and that was indeed gener
ous. For this reason my sweet mother entrusted you with the care of her
young son and daughter. But how could you use this wicked maid to deliver
such wanton verses to me? I first understood your saving us from molesta
tion as virtue, but now you have taken advantage of that to make your own
demands. How much difference is there between one form of molestation
and the other? I had truly wanted to simply ignore your verses, but it would
not have been right to condone such lecherousness in a person. I would have
revealed them to my mother, but it would have been unlucky to so turn ones
back on a persons kindness. I was going to have my maid give you a mes
sage, but I was afraid she would not correctly convey how I truly feel. Then
I planned to use a short letter to set this out before you, but I was afraid you
would take it ill. So I used those frivolous and coy verses to make you come
here. Can you avoid feeling shame at such improper actions? I want most
of all that you conduct yourself properly and not sink to the point where
you molest people! When she finished her speech, she whirled about and
went off. Zhang stood there in a daze for a long time. Then he went back
out the way he had come in, by that point having lost all hope.
A few nights later, Zhang was sleeping alone by the balcony when all of
a sudden someone woke him up. He rose in a flash, startled, and fo'und that
it was Hong-niang, who had come carrying bedding and a pillow. She pat
ted Zhang, saying, Shes here! Shes here! What are you doing sleeping!
Then she put the pillow and bedding beside his and left. Zhang rubbed his
eyes and sat up straight for a long time, wondering whether he might not
still be dreaming. Nevertheless, he assumed a respectful manner and waited
for her. In a little while Hong-niang reappeared, helping Ying-ying along.
When she came in, she was charming in her shyness and melting with de
sire, not strong enough even to move her limbs. There was no more of the
prim severity she had shown previously. The evening was the eighteenth of
the month, and the crystalline rays of the moon slanting past his chamber
cast a pale glow over half the bed. Zhangs head was spinning, and he won
dered if she might not be one of those goddesses or fairy princesses, for he
could not believe that she came from this mortal world. After a while the
temple bell rang and day was about to break. Hong-niang urged her to leave,
but Ying-ying wept sweetly and clung to him until Hong-niang again helped
her away. She had not said a word the entire night.
Zhang got up as the daylight first brought colors to the scene, and he
wondered to himself, Could that have been a dream? In the light there
was nothing left but the sight of some make-up on his arm, her scent on his
clothes, and the sparkles of her teardrops still glistening on the bedding. A
dozen or so days later it seemed so remote that he was no longer sure. Zhang
was composing a poem called Meeting the Holy One in sixty lines. He
had not quite finished when Hong-niang happened to come by. He then
handed it to her to present to Ying-ying.
From that point on, she allowed him to come to her. He would go out
secretly at dawn and enter secretly in the evening. For almost a month they
shared happiness in what had earlier been referred to as the western porch.
Zhang constantly asked about how Madame Zheng felt, and she would say,
I cant do anything about it. And she wanted him to proceed to regular
ize the relationship. Not long afterward Zhang was to go off to Chang-an,
and before he went he consoled her by telling her of his love. Ying-ying
seemed to raise no complaints, but the sad expression of reproach on her
face was very moving. Two evenings before he was to travel, she refused to
see him again.
Zhang subsequently went west to Chang-an. After several months he
again visited Pu-zhou, and this time his meetings with Ying-ying lasted a se
ries of months. Ying-ying was quite skilled at letterwriting and a fine styl
ist. He repeatedly asked to see things she had written, but she would never
show him anything. Even when Zhang repeatedly tried to prompt her by giv
ing her things he himself had written, he still hardly ever got to look over
anything of hers. In general, whenever Ying-ying did show something to
someone else, it was always the height of grace and polishbut she appeared
unaware of it. Her speech was intelligent and well reasoned, yet she seldom
wrote answering pieces in response to what he sent her. Although she treated
Zhang with the greatest kindness, she still never picked up his verses in a
poetic exchange. There were times when her melancholy voluptuousness ^
took on a remoteness and abstraction, yet she continually seemed not to rec
ognize this. At such times, expressions of either joy or misery seldom showed
on her face. On another occasion she was alone at night playing the harp,
a melancholy and despairing melody. Zhang listened to her surreptitiously,
for had he asked her to play, she would not have played any more. W ith
this Zhang became even more infatuated with her.
The Tang Dynasty
Soon afterward Zhang had to again go west to Chang-an, to be there in

time for the literary examination. This time, on the evening before he was
to leave, he said nothing of his feelings, but instead sighed sadly by Yingying
s side. Ying-ying had already guessed that this was to be farewell. With
a dignified expression and a calm voiceshe said gently to Zhang, It is quite
proper that when a man seduces a woman, he finally abandons her. I dont
dare protest. It was inevitable that having seduced me, you would end it
all this is by your grace. And with this, our lifelong vows are indeed ended.
Why be deeply troubled by this journey? Nevertheless, you have become un
happy, and there is no way I can ease your heart. You have always claimed
that I am good at playing the harp, but I have always been so shy that I could
n't bring myself to play for you. Now that you are going to leave, I will ful
fill this heartfelt wish of yours. Thereupon she brushed her fingers over the
harp, playing the prelude to Coats of Feathers, Rainbow Skirts. But after
only a few notes, the sad notes became so unsettled by bitter pain that the
melody could no longer be recognized. All present were sobbing, and Yingying abruptly stopped and threw down the harp, tears streaming down her
face. She hurried back to her mothers house and did not come back.
The next morning at dawn, Zhang set out. The following year, not hav
ing been successful in the literary competition, Zhang stayed in the capital.
He then sent a letter to Ying-ying to set her mind to rest. The lines Yingying sent in reply are roughly recorded here
I received what you sent, asking after me. The comforting love you show is all
too deep. In the feelings between man and woman, joys and sorrows mingle.
You were also kind to send the box of flower cutouts and the five-inch stick of
liprougeornaments that will make my hair resplendent and my lips shine. But
though I receive such exceptional fondness from you, for whom will I now make
myself beautiful? Catching sight of these things increases my cares, and nothing
but sad sighs well within me. From your letter I am given to understand that
you are occupied by the pursuit of your studies in the capital. The path to
progress in studies does indeed depend on not being disturbed. Yet I feel some
resentment that Ia person of so small account, have been left behind forever in
a far place. Such is fate. What more is there to say?
Since last autumn I have been in a daze as though I did not know where I
was. In the chatter of merry gatherings I sometimes make myself laugh and join
in the conversation, but when I am alone in the still of night, tears never fail to
fall. And when I come to dream, my thoughts usually are of the misery of sep
aration, which stirs me until I am choked with sobbing. When we are twined
together, absorbed in our passion, for a brief while it is as it once used to be;
but then, before our secret encounter comes to its culmination, the soul is star
tled awake and finds itself sundered from you. Although half of the covers seem
warmyet my thoughts are on someone farfar away.
Just yesterday you said goodbye, and now in but an instant the old year has
been left behind. Chang-an is a place of many amusements, which can catch a
xnan
s fancy and draw his feelings. How fortunate I am that you have not for
54 5
gotten me, negligible and secluded as I amand that you were not too weary of
me to let me occupy your thoughts for at least a moment. My humble intentions
have no means to repay this. But when it comes to my vow to love you forever,
that is steadfast and unwavering.
Long ago, connected to you as a cousin, I happened to be together with you
at a banquet. Having inveigled my maidservant, you consequently expressed
your private feelings. Young people are unable to maintain a firmness of heart.
You, sir
stirred me as Si-ma Xiang-ru stirred Zhuo Wen-jun, by playing the harp.
Yet I did not resist, as did Xie Kun
s neighbor by throwing her shuttle when he
approached her. When I brought my bedding to your side, your love and honor
were deep. In the folly of my passion I thought that I would remain in your care
forever. How could I have foreseen that, once having seen my lord
it would
be impossible to plight our troth? Since I suffer the shame of having offered my
self to you, I may no longer serve you openly as a wife. This will be a source of
bitter regret that will last until my dying day. I repress my sighs, for what more
can be said? If by chance in the goodness of your heart you would condescend
to fulfill my secret hope, then even if it were on the day of my death, it would
be for me like being reborn. But, perchance, the successful scholar holds love to
be but of little account and sets it aside as a lesser thing in order to pursue things
of greater importance, considering his previous mating to have been a vile ac
tion, his having taken enforced vows as something one may well betray. If this
be so, then my form will melt away and my bones will dissolve, yet my glowing
faith with not perish. My petals, borne by the wind and trailing in the dew, will
still entrust themselves to the pure dust beneath your feet. Of my sincerity unto
death
what words can say is all said here. I sob over this paper and cannot fully
express my love. Please, please take care of yourself.
This jade ring is a thing that I had about me since I was an infant. I send it
to you to wear among the ornaments that hang at your waist. From the jade is
to be drawn the lesson of what is firm and lustrous, thus unsullied. From the
ring is to be drawn the lesson of what continues on forever, never breaking. Also
I send a single strand of tangled silken floss and a tea grinder of speckled bam
boo. These several things are not valuable in themselves. My message is that I
would have you, sirbe as pure as the jade, that my own poor aspirations are
as unbroken as the ring, that my tearstains are on the bamboo, and that my
melancholy sentiments are like this twisting and tangled thread. Through these
things I convey what I feel, and will love you always. The heart is close, though
our bodies are far. There is no time set for us to meet. Yet when secret ardor ac
cumulates, spirits can join even across a thousand leagues. Please take care of
yourself. The spring breeze is often sharp, and it would be a good idea to force,^
yourself to eat more. Be careful of what you say and guard yourself. And do not
long for me too intensely.
Zhang showed her letter to his friends, and as a result many people at
the time heard of the affair. One good friendYang Ju-yuan, was fond of
composing verses and wrote a quatrain entitled Miss Cui
The Tang Dynasty
Pure luster of this young Pan Yue

even the jade cannot compare;
sweet clover grows in courtyard
as snows first melt away.
The amorous young talent
is filled with spring desires
poor Miss Xiao, her broken heart
in a letter of just one page.
IYuan Zhen of He-nan, completed Zhangs Meeting the Holy One

in sixty lines.
Pale moonlight breaks in above curtains,
fireflies flash through the sapphire air.
The distant skies begin to grow dim,
and below, trees have grown leafy and full.
Past the yards bamboo come notes of dragon flutes
the well-side beech is brushed by phoenix song.
Her filmy gauze hangs like a thin haze,
soft breezes resound with her waist-hung rings.
Crimson standards follow the Goddess of the West,
the heart of clouds proffers the Lad of Jade.
As nights hours deepen, people grow still
or meeting at dawn in the drizzling rain.
Pearl-glow lights up her patterned shoes,
blooms5brilliance hidden by embroidered dragon.
Jade hairpin, its colored phoenix in motion,
gauze cape that covers red rainbows.
He says that from this Jasper Flower Beach
he must go to dawn court at Green Jade Palace.
By his roaming north of the city of Luo
he chanced on Song Yu
s eastern neighbor.
When he flirted, at first she gently refused,
but in secret soft passions already conveyed.
From her lowered coils the tressesshadows stirred,
her circling steps obscured in jade white dust.
Face turned, glances flowed like flowers and snow,
she mounted the bed, bunched satins born in arms.
Mated ducks, their necks twined in dance,
kingfishers encaged in passions embrace.
Her black brows knit in modesty,
her carmine lips, warming, grew softer.
Breath pure as the fragrance of orchids,
her skin glossy, her marble flesh full.
547
Worn out, too tired to move her wrist,

so charming, she loved to curl up.
Her sweat flowed in beads, drop by drop,
her tangled tresses thick and black.
No sooner made glad by this millennial meeting,
she suddenly heard nights hours end.
At that moment resentful, she lingered on,
clinging with passion, desire unspent.
A sad expression on languid cheeks,
in sweet lines she vowed the depths of love.
Her ring-gift revealed a union fated,
a love-knot left showed hearts were the same.
Cheeks, powder in tears flowed on nights mirror,
lamps last flickeringinsects far in the dark.
As the sparkling rays still dwindled away,
the sun at dawn grew gradually bright.
She rode her cygnet back to the Luo;
he played his pipes as he climbed Mount Song.
Her musk still imbued the scent of his clothes,
his pillow oily, still flecked with her rouge.
Thick grow the grasses beside the pool,
wind-tossed, the tumbleweed longs for the isle.

Her pale harp rings with the cranes lament
she looks toward the stars for the swans return.
The sea is so vast, truly hard to cross;
and the sky is high, not easy to reach.
Goddess moving in cloud, nowhere now to be found
and Xiao-shi is there in his high chamber.
Every one of Zhangs friends who heard of the affair was stirred to
amazement. Nevertheless, Zhang had already made up his mind. I was on
particularly good terms with Zhang and asked him to explain. Zhang tên
saidAll such creatures ordained by Heaven to possess bewitching beautywili inevitably cast a curse on others if they don
t do the same to themselves.
Had Cui Ying-ying made a match with someone of wealth and power, she
would have taken advantage of those charms that win favor from a man
and if she were not the clouds and the rain of sexual pleasure, then she would
have been a serpent or a fierce dragon~I do not know what she would have
transformed into. Long ago King Shou-xin of Yin and King You of Zhou
controlled domains that mustered a million chariots, and their power was
very great. Nevertheless, in both cases a woman destroyed them. Their hosts
were scattered, they themselves were slain, and even today their ignominy
has made them laughingstocks for all the world. My own virtue is inade
quate to triumph over such cursed wickedness, and for this reason I hard
ened my heart against her.55At the time all those present were deeply moved.
The Tang Dynasty
Somewhat more than a year later, Ying-ying married another, and Zhang
too took a wife. He happened to pass through the place where she was liv
ing and asked her husband to speak to her, wanting to see her as a mater
nal cousin. Her husband did speak to her, but Ying-ying refused to come
out. The fact of Zhangs pain at such a rebuff showed on his face. Ying-ying
found out about this and secretly composed a piece whose verses went:
Ever since I have wasted to gauntness
and the glow of my face has gone,
I toss and turn thousands of times,
too weary to get out of bed.
Not because of him at my side
that I am ashamed to rise
grown haggard on your account, I
d be
ashamed in front of you.
And she never did see him. A few days later, Zhang was ready to go and she
composed another poem to say a final farewell.
Rejected, what more can be said?
yet you were my love back then.
Take what you felt in times gone by
and love well the person before your eyes.
From that point on, he knew nothing further of her.
People at the time generally accepted that Zhang was someone who
knew how to amend his errors. At parties, I have often brought up this no
tion. One would have those who know not do such things, but those that
have done such things should not become carried away by them.
In a November in the Zhen-yuan Reign, my good friend Li Shen was stay
ing over with me in the Jing-an Quarter. Our conversations touched on this
affair, and Li Shen made particular comment on how remarkable it was. He
consequently composed Ying-yings Song to make it more widely known.
Cuis childhood name was Ying-ying, and he used this in the title.
The Song Dynasty
THE SONG DYNASTY: PERIOD INTRODUCTION
In 960, just
over half a century after the last puppet Tang emperor was de
posed, Zhao Kuang-yin overthrew the "Later Zhou," the large
regional regime that dominated North China, and declared the
establishment of his own Song Dynasty. Unlike its predecessor
state, the Song proved equal to its imperial pretensions, and
over the next two decades it conquered the five or so remain
ing regional states and reunified the country. A new capital was
chosen at the economically strategic city of Kai-feng (Bianjing), located at the head of the Grand Canal, on which tax grain
was shipped from the rich farmlands of the lower Yangzi River
region.
In premodern Chinese political theory, the imperial government was based on
two complementary principles: wu, the military aspect of government, and wen, a
term that encompassed civil government, cultural values, and "literature." Having
built his dynasty out of the constant and immensely destructive warfare of the first
half of the tenth century, the first Song emperor made a conscious decision that his
would be a dynasty guided by the principle of wen. In addition to his own experi
ence, the lesson of history seemed to clearly demonstrate the consequences of mil
itarization for the Tang, whose central government never fully recovered from the
widespread formation of regional military commands after the An Lu-shan Rebel

lion. The Song thus never sought the conquests in Central Asia, Korea, or Vietnam
that the Han, Sui, and Tang had. After only a hundred and fifty years of peace, how
eve r, th e So n g 's re m a rk a b le m ilita ry in ep titu d e w o u ld lead to th e loss o f N orth
China.
The first Song emperor was a strong supporter of scholarly projects. He com
missioned large compilations of Tang institutions, classical literature, and tales;
these works survive and preserve much Tang material that would have been other
wise lost. The government also sponsored a new manuscript edition of the Daoist
Canon (the collected scriptures of Daoism) and, more important, printed versions of
the Confucian Classics. Printing had existed in the Tang, but its use was strictly lim
ited; early in the Song, however, the imperial printing shops provided uniform (if
not always carefully edited) editions to be used throughout the empire. Also in the
late tenth century, a version of the Buddhist Canon (the collected Buddhist scrip
tures) was printed. Commercial printing flourished in the Northern Song and even
more in the Southern Song. People continued to use manuscripts alongside printed
books throughout the Northern Song and afterward, but as in Europe four and a half
centuries later, the advent of printing brought about a profound change in the avail
ability of earlier works and the dissemination of new ones. Not only were books more
available, their form changed from the Tang scroll and folding book to the Chinese
bound book of light paperl Not only could a literate person afford to own more
books, they presented less of a problem of storage and were easier to consult.
The social basis of power had changed so dramatically from the Tang that an
e n tire ly n e w sty le o f
officeholder w a s
re cru ite d b y th e So ng c iv il s e rv ic e e x a m in a
tio n . T h e T a n g had b e e n , at its v e ry c o re , an a risto c ra tic so c ie ty . A lth o u g h the e x
553

amination system did bring in outsiders, appointment to positions still depended
heavily on family and patronage. The grand old families of the first half of the Tang
gave way to military clans and other newly powerful families, but the role of pa
tronage did not change. The continual violence during the last decades of the Tang
and throughout the Five Dynasties effectively eliminated all such powerbrokers, and
the examination system of the Song was far more perfectly meritocratic than its Tang
antecedents. Patronage and a strong bond between an examiner and the candidates
he graduated continued, but the primary loyalty of the new bureaucracy was to the
state and its institutions.
In the fundamental reconstitution of the Chinese cultural and political order that
occurred early in the Northern Song, a new kind of writer and intellectual emerged.
This new intellectual was generally more learned, possessed broader interests, and
cultivated a sensibility very different from his Tang predecessors. One of the best
examples is Ou-yang Xiu (1007-1072). Before the Song, the most famous writers
had almost always been on the margins of real political power, and only in the MidTang had they been important in a major intellectual movement. Ou-yang Xiu stood
at the center of his age. He was an important political figure and an excellent judge
of talent in younger men, promoting some of the most important political and liter
ary figures of the dynasty. One of the most symbolically important projects under
taken by any new dynasty was to write the "official history" of the preceding dy
nasty; Ou-yang Xiu was given charge of the rewriting of the existing history of the
Tang. While some modern critics have faulted his historiographical principles, Ouyang Xiu gave serious thought to how history should be written, in contrast to many
of his Tang predecessors who simply recompiled earlier materials. He was an anti
quarian scholar whose collection of inscriptions, with attached colophons, was a
foundational text in Chinese epigraphy, and he was a literary writer whose poetry
and prose helped establish the lucid, balanced, and genial manner that has become
the hallmark of the Northern Song style.
Ou-yang Xiu also pioneered a new style of informal writing: random notes of
thoughts, experiences, and current affairs whose casual grace gave the impression
of the "gentleman at home." Among his informal writings was a small booklet enti
tled Remarks on Poetry (Shi-hua), consisting of reminiscences and judgments on ear
lier and contemporary poetry. This work set the model for and gave its name to an
important genre of literary criticism in which fragmentary observations carried more
authority than the elaborate arguments of formal literary theory. Informality of a very
different kind can be seen in Ou-yang Xiu's lyrics for popular songs composed for
parties. T h e s e c e le b ra te th e pleasures o f flirtatio n, the
agonies o f
longing, and the
charms of typical beauties; indeed, some of Ou-yang Xiu's lyrics are much more
erotic than those of his contemporaries. In all these areas, Ou-yang Xiu contributed
to the formation of a new literature of private life.
In yet another area, Ou-yang Xiu proved to be a figure of great significance. The
imperially sponsored printed edition of the Confucian Classics had been printed with
th e c o m m e n ta rie s m o stly a u th o riz e d d u rin g th e e a rly seven th c e n tu ry . T h e s e c o m
m e n ta rie s rep resented a c u m u la tiv e trad itio n o f s c h o la s tic in terp retatio n stretch in g
from the Han to the seventh century. Relatively little significant scholarship on the
classics had been done in the Tang itself. Song intellectuals began to reexamine the
The Song Dynasty

texts and measure them against the received commentaries. No longer content sim
ply to accept the authority of the written tradition of interpretation, they began to
question both the interpretation of specific parts of the Confucian Classics and their
deeper meaning. Ou-yang Xiu's commentary on the Classic of Poetry was a semi
nal work in this process, rejecting many of the scholastic interpretations of the
Poems for more natural readings. This movement became "Neo-Confucianism," or,
in the Chinese phrase Dao-xue, "the study of the [Confucian] Way/'
The Confucianism of the Tang elite in many ways resembled pre-Reformation
Catholicism: the truth of its principles was accepted without question, certain prac
tices were scrupulously observed, and it was intertwined with social and political
authority. But Confucianism was not a creed that one generally "took to heart" in
every aspect of one's life, measuring one's own attitudes and behavior against the
values embodied in the Confucian Classics. In the early ninth century, Han Yu had
called for a more personal commitment to Confucian values, and the depth of Han
Y u 's c o n v ic tio n s , c o n jo in e d w ith th e fie rc e e lo q u e n c e o f h is p ro se, m ad e h im a c u l
tu ral hero to m a n y N o rth ern S o n g in te lle c tu a ls . T a n g Confucians w e re co m m itted
to the texts of the classics; Song Neo-Confucians were concerned with the values
in the texts, which developed into an elaborated philosophy and personal religion.
The old scholastic interpretations of the classics had addressed disagreements, but
they represented a consensus, a single authoritative interpretation; Song Neo-Con
fucianism soon produced multiple and divergent interpretations. It is, perhaps, no
accident that both Neo-Confucianism and the European Reformation accompanied
the wide dissemination of texts in a new culture of the printed book.
The Song soon had a lesson in the hazards of taking even the most admirable
values too seriously in the complex realities of the political world. Between 1069
and the early 1070s, the Confucian reformer Wang An-shi persuaded the new em
peror Shen-zong to enact sweeping cultural and political reforms. Wang's proposed
reforms were directed toward solving the empire's increasing fiscal crises and im
proving the morals of the populace, but they were justified through Wang's own in
dependent interpretations of the Confucian Classics (Wang himself wrote several
commentaries). Wang An-shi's policies were enacted as the "New Laws.The suc
cess of the New Laws has been much debated: they clearly achieved some of their
fiscal o b je ctiv e s, b ut at th e p ric e o f suffering an d so m e p o p u la r unrest. O n a m o re
profound level, they represented the attempt of the central government to exercise
direct social and economic control over the provinces to an unprecedented degree.
They constituted a new kind of government power, fortified by a grim sense of moral
conviction, and they marked the end of the relatively tolerant gentility and free po
litical discussion that had characterized the Song government earlier. Convinced that
all the failures of the New Laws were due to the interference of the opposition, Wang
An-shi and his followers forced into retirement or exiled everyone who disagreed
with them. Among Wang's opponents was the most famous writer of the day, Su Shi
(1037-1101), whose poems were scrutinized for insults to the government; real and
imagined slights were discovered, and Su was thrown into prison and put on trial,
a trial from which he barely escaped with his life. Such experiences contributed to
the growing separation between political life and a new set of private values, known
as "literati" culture, which separated itself from engagement in public affairs.
555

The problems that the policies of Wang An-shi and his party sought to address
involved foreign relations as well as the budget. Having resisted the dangerous and
expensive course of expansion on its Northern frontiers, the Song found itself fac
ing small but militarily powerful states that grew up between the steppe and China:
these were Xi-Xia in the Northwest and the Liao in the Northeast. In 1125, the Liao
w a s o v e rth ro w n b y a ju r c h e n p e o p le , w h o n am e d their n e w d y n a sty th e Jin . T h e fo l
lo w in g y e a r, Jin a rm ie s m o ved e a s ily through Song defenses and to o k K ai-fen g . T h e n ,
in 1127, the emperor Hui-zong and his son were carried north to the Jin capital, and
the conquest of the North was completed. That same year a Song prince declared
himself emperor south of the Yangzi River, whose cities were filling with a stream
of refugees from the North. The Yangzi, with its large warfleets, proved an impass
able barrier to the Jin armies, and the period known as the Southern Song began,
with its capital in the great commercial center of Hang-zhou.
Tang Chang-an had been a great city, but it was a city constructed for the main
tenance of imperial control. Each of its wards had walls and gates that were closed
in curfew every night; trade was limited to the capital markets. In contrast, the two
Song capitals, first Kai-feng and then Hang-zhou, were open inside the city wall and
had a lively night life. These cities represented a true early modern urban culture.
With their markets, entertainment districts, artisan quarters, booksellers, and parks,
the Song capitals were enjoyed as cities in ways that Chang-an never was. The Song
did not discourage trade, and both capitals thronged with merchants. Kai-feng was
said to have supported fifty theaters, the largest of which could admit a thousand
viewers. Writers took a special delight in the lore of the city_ its scenic spots, good
restaurants, skilled entertainers, and festivals. Copies of a long handscroll painting of
a spring festival in Kai-feng survive, depicting the bustle of the city in loving detail.
Painting reached new heights of development in the Song, and numerous paint
ings from the dynasty still exist. The motifs are various: monumental landscapes and
pastoral scenes, ink paintings of bamboo the quality of whose brushwork recalls cal
ligraphy, paintings of birds and flowers done in meticulous detail, swift cartoonlike
sketches associated with the "sudden enlightenment" of Chan (Zen) Buddhism.
Paintings might be done on commission or, in the Southern Song, for sale, but paint
ing also became a part of "literati" culture, a leisurely pastime for amateurs, done
for amusement or to be given to friends. Literati painting represented a reaction
against the growing skill in representation and the professionalism it demanded; an
expressive clumsiness or naivete in ink paintings done on the spur of the moment
was prized. Painting became one among a range of artistic activities including the
composition of poetry, calligraphy, and musical performance.
Any image of Chinese literature as static is fundamentally wrong; nevertheless,
the nature of change in Chinese literature was profoundly different from the mod
ern Western notion of change in which new fashions and interests supersede their
predecessors. Cultural change in premodern China was essentially accretive, with
n e w styles an d form s add ed to o ld e r o nes that th em selves ch a n g e d but w e r e ra rely
abandoned. Thus the Song inherited the forms of classical poetry (shi) established
in the Tang; no new forms were added, but Song poets handled those forms and
many traditional topics in a way that was quite distinctive and recognized by all sub
sequent readers of poetry as being characteristically "Song." Though begun in the
556
The Song Dynasty

Tang, the song lyric (ci) was the poetic genre that later readers associated with the
Song. In this case, Song writers did expand the genre formally and thematically and
put their own stamp on it. "Old style prose"_ prose that did not use strict parallelism
and rhyme~had been advocated by the Tang writer Han Yu. This was taken up in
the Song and used as the medium for lucid and complex argumentation. And new
kinds of informal prose were explored, seeking to convey something of the natural
ness and ease of speech in classical Chinese.
No written language ever exactly reproduces a spoken language, but when the
written and spoken languages have diverged to such a degree that it is no longer
possible to ignore the difference, we often find the attempt to create a new written
language to approximate speech. As a non-alphabetic script, some aspects of writ
ten Chinese could effectively conceal historical and dialectical phonological varia
tion. A Chinese character in the Classic of Poetry would have been pronounced very
differently in 600 b.c. than it is in the present; yet the modern reader pronounces
that character without needing to take into account the vast phonological changes.
Linguistic change, however, goes far beyond the pronunciation of individual words:
there were new compounds, new usages of old words, new grammatical particles,
and new syntactic patterns. To write the spoken Chinese of the Song, even imper
fectly, required the invention of new characters or using old ones in new ways to
represent the sounds of the spoken language. Chan Buddhism had always stressed
the immediacy of the spoken word over the "dead letter" of Buddhist scripture; and,
perhaps ironically, when the sayings of the Chan masters were transformed to writ
ten texts, there was an attempt to reproduce in writing the immediacy of their ver
nacular speech. The Neo-Confucians learned many lessons from Buddhism, and
when the sayings of the greatest master of Southern Song Neo-Confucianism, Zhu
Xi (1130-1200), were written down, these too were written in the vernacular. But
the most important use of the written vernacular was in first producing written ver
sions of the oral literature that flourished in the urban culture of the Song.
In the entertainment quarters of the great urban centers there was a rich world
of performance literature that was enjoyed by commoners and elite alike. Profes
sional storytellers were divided by specialty: among these specialties were the elab
oration of Buddhist sutras, chivalric romances, and men who popularized history,
elaborating the standard histories in vernacular Chinese with a wealth of invented
incidents and narrative devices to hold the interest of the audience. Another cate
gory of storyteller specialized in xiao-shuo, the term now translated as "fiction." Xiaoshuo included love stories, stories of heroic bandits, and crime stories with the Con
fucian magistrate as detective. There were also musical narratives mixing verse and
prose~the verse serving either to advance the narrative or to create a pause and ex
press the sentiments evoked by the situation. The Tang tale "Ying-ying's Story
ap
pears recast and elaborated in several such performance genres. Out of this tradi
tion of popular retelling, the story finally emerged in the theater, in the
fourteenth-century play Account of the Western Verandah (Xi-xiang ji, also trans
lated as The Moon and the Zither). Such performance literature was never intended
for writing, but the commercial publishers of the Southern Song, always searching
for new markets, discovered its appeal. Thus in this period we have the beginnings
of a continuous tradition of written vernacular literature in print.

557

The dominant intellectual figure of the Southern Song was Zhu Xi. Zhu consol
idated the philosophical speculations of his predecessors and produced his own com
mentaries on many of the Confucian Classics. But perhaps Zhu Xi's greatest influ
ence came from his interest in Confucian pedagogy. From the classics he selected
the "Four Books"the Analects, the Mencius, and two chapters from the Classic of
Rites~which, together with his commentary, were to serve as the basis of a Confu
cian education. In the following dynasty, the Yuan, Zhu Xi's commentaries on the
classics were made state orthodoxy, and the "Four Books" became the core of a
streamlined Confucianism.
Safe behind the Yangzi River, the Southern Song flourished. Frontier conflicts
with the Jin Dynasty continued sporadically, but generally the two dynasties settled
down to more or less regular diplomatic relations. To the north, however, a new and
far greater threat was growing. In 1206, a young Mongol leader declared himself
Genghiz Khan, uniting the Mongol tribes and some of the eastern Turks. Mongol
armies spread through Central Asia and attacked the Jin to the east. In 1234, they
conquered North China and put an end to the Jin. Mongol energies in the follow
ing years were largely occupied by their campaigns in the West; however, when Khubilai became Khan in 1260, the Mongols were ready to turn their attentions to the
prosperous Song. In 1271, Khubilai set himself up as emperor in the Chinese style
and proclaimed his new dynasty as the Yuan. By 1276, Mongol armies entered Hang^
zhou and accepted the surrender, and in 1279 the final Song resistance was crushed
in a naval battle off the coast of Guang-dong.
Traditions of Song Lyric

(Tang and Song Dynasties)
The forms of classical poetry (shi) reached their full complement in the Tang Dynasty
and they continue to be used, unchanged, to the present day; these were verses of
predominantly regular line lengths with the rhyme falling on the last syllable of each
couplet. Through the Tang, but not afterward, classical poetry was often sung; in the
eighth century, however, a new kind of song lyric appeared, which by the tenth cen
tury had completely supplanted classical poetry for the lyrics of popular music.
The primary formal trait of this new song lyric was the use of lines of uneven
length, with the rhyme falling after one, two, three, or more lines. Thus the couplet~
the forma
building block of the classical poemwas replaced by a more fluid and
irregular movement between lines; and that fluidity seemed to listeners and lyricists
alike to provide a better medium for the expression of mood and feeling. Many schol
ars believe that the rise of the new song lyric came alongside new melodies and per
formance traditions, some from Central Asia, whose irregular musical phrases re
quired lyrics to match. Each new melody had its own character and requirements.
These new song lyrics were often called simply qu-zi ci, the "lyrics of songs. From
this latter term came what is now the most common term for such song lyrics: ci.
Ci have "tune patterns, a matrix containing a set number of lines of given
length, rhymes in fixed positions, and tonal requirements at certain positions in each
line. In Chinese, one does not speak of "writing" c/.but of "filling i
ci; that is, "filling in lyrics" to a known melody. Thus lyrics are identified by the title of the tune,
prefaced with "to." Especially from the tenth century on, there is usually no relation
between the theme of the lyric and the tune title. By the eleventh century, it became
common practice to add, after the tune title, a note on the occasion when the lyrics
were composed or on their topic.
The social situation of song deserves some comment. Before the late eleventh
century, when the song lyric became a more personal form composed and performed
by both genders, such songs were often performed by hired women singers at par
ties, women whose services might be sexual as well as artistic. The themes are pri
marily the pleasures of the party, love, and images of desire. At the same time, in
this earlier period of the song lyric, all the known lyricists are men. Thus we have
the peculiar situation of men writing words, often explicitly, in the voices of women,
to be sung back to them.
Although it was revived as a purely literary form in the seventeenth century, the
great age of the song lyric spans the second half of the Tang, the Five Dynasties, and
the Songfrom the middle of the eighth through the thirteenth century. In this sec
tion, we will treat that entire period. Before the twentieth century, our knowledge
of the origins of the song lyric depended on a small corpus of short songs by known

Tang poets. Early in the twentieth century, however, a large library of manuscripts
was discovered in the caves of Dun-huang, a trading center and garrison town of
the bleak Northwest. The Dun-huang manuscripts, which had been sealed into the
caves early in the eleventh century, contained a rich store of texts on religion,
thought, and popular literature. Among them were a large number of anonymous
song lyrics from the eighth through the tenth centuries. In language and sensibility,
these works represent a picture of the early song lyric that is very different from what
we find from elite lyricists of the period.
The following pair of poems should give some indication of the difference be
tween "high" literary style and the popular style found in the lyrics preserved in the
Dun-huang manuscripts. The first is a quatrain attributed to the second half of the
eighth century; the author is variously given as Li Duan or Geng Wei. The title, "Bowing to the New Moon," is the theme: a young woman comes out in the evening,
bows to the moon, and makes vows or prayers concerning her beloved. Although
the lyric may have been intended to be sung, it represents elite poetic values that
contrast sharply with the second piece, an anonymous Dun-huang lyric to the same
tune title and on the same theme. The quatrain is v is u a lw e cannot see into the
woman's heart or hear her words, and therefore everything must be inferred from
surfaces described. In the popular lyric, however, the woman speaks her feelings di
rectly. The more literary quatrain depends upon the aesthetics of indirectness: a sug
gestion of deep feeling that is never made explicit, revealed in words spoken but
unheard. In the more vernacular anonymous song, delivered in the voice of the
woman herself, nothing is withheld. Such extensive explicitness is the virtue, the
pleasure, and sometimes the limitation of popular literature in the vernacular.
Bowing to the New Moon (late 8th century, attributed to Li

Duan or Geng Wei)
Opening drapes, she sees the new moon,
at once she goes down the stairs and bows.
No one hears her whispered words,
on her skirts sash the north wind blows.
Anonymous (Dun huang)to Bowing to the New Moon (Bai
xin yue) (before 850)
My traveling mans off in another land,

already now its the new year, and
he still has not returned.
I am galled by his loves, so like water
wherever he roams he strays recklessly
and takes no thought of his home.
Beneath the flowers I point far away,
and to gods of Heaven and Earth I pray~
The Song Dynasty
up to this very day

he has left me alone to stay in my empty room.
Above me Heavens blue arch remains,
there sun, moon, and stars surely know,
though far away.
I sit against the curtain screen,
in drops my tears stream
on my gauze gown with golden beads.
I sigh at my unlucky destiny;
bad karma has brought me to this.
But still I wish to see his face
and swear never to betray him.
The following anonymous lyric is a song comprised of two stanzas in which each
stanza represents a voice in an imaginary dialogue between a woman and a mag
pie. The call of a magpie was supposed to indicate the imminent arrival of a visitor
from far away. The woman hopes it will be her absent beloved returning.
Anonymous (Dun-huang), to The Magpie Steps on the

Branch (Que ta zbi)
I cant stand that lucky magpie~
its words are full of lies;
it brings good news, but never
news of something true.
Several times its flown here,
now Ive captured it alive
and locked it in a cage of gold
to stop it talking to me.
I simply wanted to be nice

and bring her some good news,
I never thought she
d lock me up
inside this cage of gold.
I really hope her soldier man
comes home very soon~
she
ll set me free to fly away
off into blue clouds.
Like popular songs everywhere, the Dun-huang songs often evoke scenes of fantasy
rather than the singer's immediate world. Below is a fisherman's song, set in the far
away lush lakes region of the Southeast.
Anonymous (Dun-huang)to Washing Creek Sands

(Huan x i sha)
I roll away my books and poems,
climb in a fishing boat,
wearing rainhat and raincoat,
my fishing rod in hand.
I row away to the deepest spot
within those sapphire waves,
past rapids after rapids.
I
m not like those who fished before,
for me it is because this age
hates good and worthy men.
And that is why I take myself
down to the swamps and cliffs,
and will not go to Emperors court.
Treatment of a Motif: The Drunken Husband's Return

As in earlier classical poetry, song lyrics often elaborate and play upon a body of
conventional poetic situations. One of the most common of such situations in "love"
poetry was the wife lying awake at night waiting for her absent man to return. The
genius of the popular tradition was to not quite parody such a languidly erotic situation, but to add enough irony to make it human. Thus the question arose: What
happens if the man comes home drunk? There are a number of popular treatments
of this motif in song lyrics from the eighth to tenth centuries. In the late ninth or early
tenth century, the theme made its way into elite literary song lyrics, and the way it
was transformed offers an excellent example of what happens to popular themes
when they enter the "high" tradition. The first few popular lyrics that follow are filled
with events; not only does the woman speak, in the first lyric we even see her lug
ging the drunken man to bed. As the motif becomes increasingly elevated, static de
scriptions of the boudoir replace action, and the woman's response becomes iricreasingly subdued, until she is at last reduced to poignant silence.
Anonymous (8th century?)to The Drunken Lord

(Zui gong-zi)
The hound is barking at the gate,
I know that my man has come.
I go down scented stairs in stocking feet
my darlings drunk tonight.
I lift him through the beds gauze curtains;
he wont take off these robes of gauze.
If he
s drunk, well let him be drunk then
its still better than sleeping alone.
The Song Dynasty

Tang and Song lyricists enjoyed playing with different levels of language. One of
their favorite devices was moving suddenly from artificially "poetic" language to
something earthier and more direct. Here the wife's response is quite different from
that in the preceding lyric.
Anonymous (Dun-huang), to Fishermans Lyrics (Yu ge ci)

Behind the embroidered curtains
a lovely woman lies asleep,
when the hound in the yard barks frantically.
And the maidservant says:
. The masters back.
Hes helped off his splendid steed,
dead drunk.
She comes from behind the screen,
straightening hair like piles of cloud,
and sheds tears of love as orioles sing.
Youve been messing around with someone else!
He says, KI have not!
Its obvious you have betrayed me.
Wei Zhuang (834?-910), to Immortal in HeavenM

(Tian xian zi)
He comes home late always staggering drunk
to be hoisted through tassels onto the bed,
still not sober.
The smell of alcohol on his breath
blends with musk and orchid scent.1
He wakes from his stupor with a start,
laughs out loud and always says,
'
How long does a mans life last?
Xue Zhao-yun (early 10th century), to The Drunken Lord

(Zui gong-zi)
Languidly binding her dark strands of hair,
her W u mesh stockings are ironed smooth.
On the bed a small hamper for scenting clothes,
with a new piece of fabric,
Shao-zhous faded red.
1_The "musk and orchid scent" suggests that he has been with courtesans. "H ow long does a man s
life last?" was a venerable cliche in drinking songs.
Oh no!
Out of nowhere
he comes sneaking in,
stained with wine from head to toe.
He pesters me until
I groggily open my eyes
and asks me all sorts of silly things.
In the following "high" version (much preferred by later critics), notice how the wife's
silent response to evidence of infidelity has taken the place of an exchange of words. As
in the earlier pair of poems on "Bowing to the New Moon" (pp. 560-561), the repressed
suggestion of feeling was felt to have greater intensity than its direct expression.
Yin E (early 10th century), to The Drunken Lord

(Zui gong-zi)
Evening mist veils the mossy pavements
the gate of the mansion, still not shut tight.
All the day long hes been drunk,
off seeking springtime pleasures,
and as he returns,
his body is swathed in the moonlight.
He left his saddle with arms around
some girl with embroidered sleeves,
and on his kerchief that fell to the ground
a tangle of petals stuck.
But what thing in particular
upsets the lovely lady most?
it is the marks of lipstick,
fresh upon his clothes.
Although popular motifs were transformed when they were assimilated into elite po
etry, their livelier, more vernacular forms did not necessarily disappear. The acci
dental survival of the Dun-huang manuscripts gives us a fortunate glimpse of pop
ular song of the Tang and Five Dynasties. A craze to collect popular songs some six
centuries later bears witness to the remarkable continuity of the popular song tradi
tion. The following song, in seventeenth-century slang, is included in Feng Menglong's (1574-1646) collection of the Gua-zhi-er,, "Hanging Branch Songs."
Anonymous (collected early 17th century), Hanging Branch

Song
Late at night my lover comes home,
hes gotten himself smashed
crashed flat on his face,
asleep in his clothes. A disgrace!
The Song Dynasty
I would have preferred

if he hadnt come back at all.
I waited past midnight,
wasted my time,
me and my lonely light.
But,
on second thought,
hes not drunk all that often.
Even
a drunk lover in my arms
beats lying in bed alone.
Tang and Five Dynasties Lyrics

Song lyrics were not really considered a separate genre by elite literary writers late
in the eighth and early in the ninth centuries. Poets would try their hand at writing
lyrics for popular melodies. The short song "Dream of the Southland" (Meng Jiang
nan), composed in this manner, was popular in the early ninth century.
Huang-fu Song (early 9th century), to KDream of the

Southland (Meng Jiang-nan)
Oil, scented with orchid, burns down in the lamp,
and on my folding screen the red
banana flowers grow dark:
I peacefully dream of the Southland,
of the day when plums are ripe,
of a flute played in a boat by night,
as the rain pelts down,
of someone speaking on the bridge
by the way station.
'
Wen Ting-yun is generally considered the first truly distinctive literary writer of song
lyric. His lyrics belong very much in the tradition of "the poetry of the women's chambers"scenes of opulently furnished bedrooms and extensive gardens*, in which the
woman's gestures or the objects of her attention become signs of her inner state. This
was the highly stylized imagery of love poetry used for romantic communication be
tween the sexes in the entertainment quarters of the Tang capital Chang-ari.
Wen Ting-yun (d. 870)to Boddhisattva Barbarian55

(Pu-sa man)
>
Inside a curtain of crystal,

on a pillow of lapis lazuli,
565
warm incense coaxes a dream,

bedspread embroidered with lovebirds:
beside the river, willows like mist,
wild geese flying and a sky
of dying moonlight.
Threads of lotus rootfall colors pale,
cloth figures cut in various forms,
two long tresses blocked by scented red,
and the jade hairpin: wind on her head.
Vignettes of the bedroom, of musical performance, and of the complex interactions
between men and women became a favorite topic for song lyric.
He Ning (898-955)to Mountain Flower (Sban-hua-zi)

Cold notes from silver-inlay pipes,
a melody held long.
Chill is the ripple-patterned mat,
cool the painted screen.
Her alabaster wrist weighed down
with bracelets of gold,
hair combed, and lightly made up.
Again and again she adds incense,
her slender hand grows warm,
and once trying the wine,
her ruby lips gleam.
Feigning to play with the red strands
of the fly-whisk
she swats her true love.
Songs such as the following lyrics to wBoddhisattva Barbarian" were popular homages
on the joys of the Southland. Wei Zhuang has other lyrics to the same tune on the
same topic, developed in phases.
Wei Zhuang (ca. 836-910), to ccBoddhisattva Barbarian55

(Pu-sa man)
I
Everyone says that the Southlands fine,

in the South the traveler should remain
till old and gray.
Springtime waters are bluer than sky,
in a painted boat lie,
listening to the rain.
566
The Song Dynasty
Beside the bara woman like moon,

her gleaming wrists both of compacted snow.
Never go home until you are old,
for if you go homeit will break your heart.
II
And now I think back on the Southlands joys,
a youth in those days, my spring clothes thin,
I rode my horse by the slanting bridge,
and the upper rooms were filled
with red sleeves beckoning.
An azure screen with hinges of gold,
drunk, I spent nights in clumps of flowers.
When I now catch sight of branches in bloom,
I vow not to go home till my hair is white.
Ou-yang Jiong (896-971), to The South Country

(Nan xiang zi)
In his bright-colored skiff he rests his oars.
Beyond the hedge of rose of Sharon blooms
bamboo screens a bridge.
Traveler on the waters,
maiden on the sands:
she turns her head, she looks around
and smiling points to where she lives
in the grove of plantain.
to Washing Creek Sands55 (Huan x i sha)
'
Speak no more when we meet

of tears that filled your eyes,
when the wine is done we can again
speak our pleasure and delight,
behind phoenix screens on lovebird pillows
a night spent in golden bedding.
A delicate scent of orchid and musk,
I hear her breathing hard,
and the fine threads of lace she wears
reveal flesh~
at such a time does she still resent
that her lover was untrue?
Li Yu (937-978) was the best known and most loved of all the early lyricists. Li Yu
was the last emperor of the Southern Tang, one of the several regional states into
567

which China was divided after the breakup of the Tang. This short dynasty, founded
by Li Yu's father, owed its name to the fictitious claim that the family was de
scended from the Tang royal house and was the legitimate successor to the Tang.
When Li Yu took the throne in 961, the Southern Tang was a client state of the
new Northern military power, the Song, which was successively eliminating the
regional states and consolidating its rule. In 975, the Song formally ended the
Southern Tang and sent Li Yu off to its new capital at Kai-feng to live under house
arrest.
The pathos of the pleasure-loving Southern emperor who loses his domain
and thinks back on vanished glories was a powerful image in the tradition.
The first of the following lyrics shows Li Yu writing in the tradition of the erotic vi
gnette.
Li Yu (937-978), to Boddhisattva Barbarian (Pu-sa man)

The flowers are bright, the moon is dark,
veiled beneath light fog:
tonight would be the perfect time
to go and see her love.
She treads the stairs in stocking feet,
holding in hand
slippers with golden threads.
To the south of the painted hall they meet,
she trembles a moment in his arms.
Its so hard to get out now
lets grab all the pleasure we can
to Pleasure in the Lovely Woman (Yu mei-ren)

Flowers in spring, moonlight in fall,
when will they ever end?
and how much can we know
of what is past and gone?
Upstairs in my room last night
the east wind came again;
I cannot bear to turn and look home
in the light of the moon.
Its carved railings and marble pavements
are, I
m sure, still there
all that changes is the flush
on the face of youth.
Tell me then of sorrow~how much can there be?
It is exactly like:
a whole river of springtime waters
flowing off to the east.
568
The Song Dynasty
(attributed), to he Pleasures of Meeting (Xiang-jian huan)

W ithout a word I climbed the western tower
the moon was like a hook.
The silent yard stretched deep
through chestnut trees,
enclosing autumn, cool and clear.
You can cut it, but never cut it through,
get it set
then its a mess again
thats the sadness of being apart.
It has a flavor all its own
in the human heart.
The Party Songs of the Eleventh Century

The short song lyrics of the first part of the Song Dynasty continued traditions of the
preceding centuries, though in a new context of political and social stability. Many
such lyrics were party songs, performed at gathering by hired entertainers. Often they
celebrated the joys of the moment, urging the guests to drink, to be mindful of life's
brevity, and to take note of the flashing glances of paid flirtation.
The two most prolific of such lyricists were Yan Shu (991-1055) and Ou-yang
Xiu (1007-1072). Although the lyrics themselves might conjure up images of young
wastrels spending their lives in wine, women, and song, both Yan Shu and Ou-yang
Xiu were, in fact, distinguished senior statesmen and literary figures. At the same
time, we can be certain that they enjoyed a good party.
Yan Shu (99 1-1055), to Breaking Through the Ranks

(Po zhen-zi)
(
That time of year when swallows are set to go,
and in high rooms last night, west wind.
I sought a small party in
this mortal world,
we held our golden cups beside
clumps of chrysanthemums.
The songs lasted long, and faces
powdered white flushed red.
Then sinking sunlight again
pierced the curtains,
light chill progressively touched the beech.
So much in the heart I could not say~
on slips of fine paper
I wrote into melody
these feelings, in thousands, one after another.
569

The following, also by Yan Shu, is one of the most famous of all song lyrics, in which
the woman singer urges the listener to take his joy in the moment.
to 'Washing Creek Sands55 (Huan x i sha)

Only a moment, this seasons splendor,
this body, a bounded thing;
to part now as if it didnt matter
easily breaks the heart;
so dont be hasty, refusing
the partys wine, the banquets song.
Mountains and rivers fill our eyes, but care
is wasted on things too far
besides which, this grief at spring passing,
at wind and rain that bring down flowers;
it is better by far to take as your love
the person before your eyes.
Ou-yang Xiu (1007-1072) (or Feng Yan-si)to Butterflies Love

Flowers (Die Man hua)
Deep, so deep within the yard
how deep I cannot say,
piles of mist among willows,
veil behind veil beyond number.
His jade-studded bridle and well-wrought saddle
are there where he takes his pleasures
from the upper chamber she cannot see
the Zhang Terrace road.
The rain is violent, winds blow wild,
it is the end of May;
the gate stands shut in twilight
no clever plan to make spring stay.
W ith tears in eyes, then ask the flowers
but the flowers have nothing to say:
a tumult of red flies away
past the swing.

Beyond the willows soft thunder,
rain upon the pond,
and the sound of rain as it splatters
lotuses to shreds.
By the small towers west corner
a broken rainbow bright,
The Song Dynasty
where we lean upon the railing

waiting for moonlight.
The swallows come in flying,
peer from rafters and beams,
from a jade hook dangles the curtain sash.
Motionless ripples of coolness,
the bedmats patterns flat.
There a pair of crystal pillows
and beside them, a fallen hairpin.
The Songs of Romance

Nowhere is the boundary between fantasy and reality more blurred than in ro
mance. Cultural images of romance take shape somewhere in the space between
the impulse of desire and the stability of the social institution of marriage. On the
one hand, romance has to be something more than mere desire; it aspires to dura
tion (in contrast to a party song's invitation to joy in the moment). On the other hand,
in the premodern world, both in China and the West, romance is generally located
outside marriageeither in courtship or in extramarital relationships. The reason for
this may simply be that romance depends on a liberty of choice on the part of both
parties (or the illusion thereof). In premodern China, where marriages were arranged
by families, the site of romance was the "entertainment quarters," somewhat like
the "demimonde" of nineteenth-century Paris. In the Tang capital of Chang-an and
the Song capital of Kai-feng, these quarters were special sections of the city.
Like the singers, dancers, and actresses of nineteenth-century Paris, the women
of the entertainment quarters were performers, usually singers, and romance was the
predominant theme of their songs. As in the French demimonde, the boundary be
tween a singer taking lovers and simple prostitution was a gray area. In the Chinese
case, some evidence suggests that a singer might continue to have sex with many
clients, but consider one to be her lover. Such singers generally belonged to estab
lishments to which they were indebtecffor their upbringing and training. If she found
sufficient favor with a man of means, a singer might hope to be bought out and es
tablished as a concubine.
The images of romance in songs and stories hide the social inequalities and the
economic necessities that were the reality of liaisons in the entertainment quarter.
But images of romance, rather than simple sex, were what these singers sold. And
romance, with its possibility of freely choosing and being freely chosen, had a way
of beguiling both those who listened and those who sang. Although many surely en
joyed or used the images as a polite fiction, people did fall in love.
'
Traditional China had an elaborate repertoire of images of romance. While some
form of separation between lover and beloved may be essential to all love poetry
the preferred form of separation in the West was that of the beloved not yet attained
in China the emphasis was on the separation of those who were already lovers. Be
fore the eleventh century, love poetry was most commonly a male fantasy of a
woman in love, enduring exquisite tortures of the heart while awaiting the return of
571

her beloved (who was away either because he was a heartless rake or because he
was in the army). In the eleventh century, however, the male lover also became a
central figure in the repertoire of love images, and his sensibility was closely mod
eled on that of the woman in love. The new prominence of this figure of male long
ing marks a significant change in the culture of romance in China.
Yan Ji-dao, the last of the Northern Song masters of the short lyric, wrote songs that
served in several ways as an afterecho of the tradition of party song: not only are
they the last, they often evoke memories and scenes of love and pleasure lost.
Yan Ji-dao (m id-llth-early 12th century), to Butterflies Love

Flowers (Die lian hua)
I was drunk as I left the western hall;
then sober, I couldnt recall.
A springtime dream, clouds of fall,
join and scatter all too easily.
My window half-filled with the moon descending*
small sleep again.
Peacefully spread on a painted screen
are the green hills of the South.
On my clothes the stains of wine
and in my poems the words
a lot of dots and lines which mean,
taken on the wholedespondency.
My red candle is moved
but sees no resolution;
and wastes its tears on my behalf
in nights cold.
to Partridge Weather (Zhe-gu tian)

W ith such feeling your brightly colored sleeves
held up the goblet of jade to me,
but in those days we didnt care
if faces flushed red with the wine,
when you danced the moon low in the willows
and sang out the breeze in the peach blossom fan.
Then,
after we each went our way,
I thought back on when we first met
and have joined you so often in dreams,
that perhaps tonight I overdo it,
taking the silver lamp in hand
572
The Song Dynasty
to shine on you, still afraid

that this meeting too is a dream.
to Partridge Weather (Zhe-gu tian)

A short lyric while drinking,
it was there I met Yu-xiao
between silver lamps and the melody,
gorgeous beyond compare.
If during the song I fell down drunk,
no one would care
then, the singing done, I made my way back,
the wine not gone from my blood.
The springtime is so quiet
the night lasts on and on.
And the sky with its sapphire clouds
is as far as the Palace of Chu.
In dream my soul has the habit
of breaking free of its bonds,
and again I strode over willow flowers,
across the Xie Bridge.
to The Springtime of Marble Halls (Yu-lou chun)

The east wind did it again, unsentimental
in its designs; it blew the land full of petals,
passionate red and fetching white.
High in green mansions curtain shadows wont block away
melancholysame mood as last year
on the same day.
You
d never know how Pve always botched
springs last moments so badly, with wasted tears
climbing high places everywhere.
But this time Ill have my golden flagon
filled to the rim. How often drunk hereafter
will I watch the blossoms all fall away?
to Young Ruan Returns (Ruan lang gui)

Here at the worlds edge dew turns to frost
on the statues* golden palms, while clouds pursue
long lines in the sky, geese-drawn.
,
I make the most
of the Double Ninthred sleeves
573
and glasses of green wine. The human heart

works here much as it does at home:
purple orchids in sashes
and yellow chrysanthemums stuck in hair.
I really try to govern that old wildness.
And I want to make a trade: deep drunkenness
for this dreariness, so stop that clear singing
which tears at the heart.
The preceding lyrics belong to the category of "short songs" (xiao-ling). There was
another song form known as "long lyrics" or mart-ci. Anonymous "long lyrics" can
be found among the Dun-huang songs. Many early literary lyricists tended to avoid
the form, but it seems nevertheless to have been popular in the demimonde. The
early eleventh-century lyricist Liu Yong, however, not only composed lyrics for the
"long songmelodies, he also made extensive use of the vernacular and a range of
romantic situations far greater than those found in "short songs." As a result, he was
the most truly "popular" lyricist of his day, the darling of the demimonde, while de
spised by many of the more old-fashioned lyricists. It was Liu Yong who began the
fashion of writing songs about male longing, a motif picked up by the younger Yan
Ji-dao.
Liu Yong (987-1053)to Turning Back After Seeing the

Flowers (Kan-hua hui)
When I reckon up these hundred years
burdened with life,
high times and wretchedness follow each other.
The tug of advantagethe lure of renown
both go by in a flash,
and nothing stops the two orbs,
a jade moon rushing,
a golden sun in flight.
The bloom on your cheeks becomes white hair,
and what good does having the highest rank?
Worldly troubles are always too many,
fine parties are always too rare.
So how can you help breaking into a smile?
In the deepest spot of the painted hall
songs are sung to flutes,
and never forget the cup of wine
and the woman, a spray of flowers.
The scenes are sweet in the land of drunkenness
take my hand and well go there together.
574
The Song Dynasty

It is ironic that Liu Yong, the poet of the demimonde, was also the first poet to use
the lyric to describe landscapes~though usually, as in "Joy at Midnight/' he reserves
the last stanza to declare his longing for his beloved back in the capital.
to Joy at Midnight (Ye-ban le)

A solid mass of cloud,
dark and gloomy weather,
in a tiny boat
riding my whim
I left the river isles;
and passed through thousands of canyons and cliffs
to the deepest spots in the creeks of Yue.
There raging waves gradually calmed,
and a breeze of woodsmen suddenly rose
when I heard merchant travelers
shouting back and forth.
W ith sails raised high
painted prows glided,
they bent swiftly past the southern shores.
Tavern signs flashed in my gaze
a village lay clumped in the fog,
and several lines of frosty trees.
As the fading sun set, the fishermen
made their way home, knocking clappers.
Broken lotus shed petal shreds,
dying willows appeared in bits;
by the bank in twos and threes
girls washing gauze
fled the traveler,
bashful and giggling to one another.
Coming here, my thoughts turn
to splendid chambers too lightly left,
and myself, wave-borne duckweed that cannot rest.
Too bad that our pact to meet, made earnestly,
will finally be hard to keep.
Depressed at being apart, helplessly upset
that I cant make the date
to return to you late in the year.
Tears well in my eyes,
the road to the capital stretches faint and far.
Far off the voice of a wild goose,
lost from the flock,
in the long skies of evening.

By the late eleventh century, the song lyric was on its way to becoming a truly lit
erary art rather than popular song. In some cases, as in Su Shi's lyrics, this meant
expanding the genre by drawing on diction and motifs previously reserved for clas
sical poetry. Another larger group of writers made the song lyric a specialized art
for the connoisseur, with carefully crafted phrases and subtle turns of mood a po
etry of fine sensibi Iity. Lyricists such as Zhou Bang-yan utilized the repertoire of love
images, as in the following song, in which the lover stands outside the house of his
beloved.
Zhou Bang-yan (10 5 6 -112 1)to Gallant (Feng-liu-zi)

A new green in the tiny pond,
breeze stirs curtains, dancing
shattered shadows in setting sun.
How I envy their passage
in and out of her gilded rooms swallows, the same
that nested there before
and the flowering vines that twine
on mossy walls
as in a previous time.
From within her splendid chambers
deep behind figured veils
,
I hear the harps and oboes play.
There is something she would say, then refrains,
and her troubled thoughts fail
their sweet communication.
Before she can sing, her voice chokes in sobs
and, dejected, she has someone bring
a cup of clear wine.
Though far from her, I know
her make-up has just been done,
and opening her vermilion door,
I am sure she waits alone for the moon
in the western corridor.
Most bitter of all for the dreaming soul
that tonight I will not reach her side.
And I wonder when she will tell to me
sweet words and secrets of her heart.
She sends me Qin Jias mirror,
and Han Shous perfume in furtive exchange.2
Whats to keep Heaven
from letting us meet just a little while!
2Qin Jia's mirror (received from his wife) and the incense given to Han Shou by the daughter of a
superior official (who fell in love with Han at first sight) are both figures for love tokens.
576
The Song Dynasty

Peach Creek was the place where two young scholars met goddesses and remained
with them a while before returning to the mortal world. Such brief encounters with
divine women were favorite figures for romantic liaisons.
to Spring in the Mansion of Jade
(Yu-lou chun)
At Peach Creek I did not stay

enjoying myself at leisure;
once lotus roots break in fall,
they never can be rejoined.
I waited for her back then
on the bridge with red rails,
and today I follow all alone
a path of yellowed leaves.
Lines of hilltops in the mist
green beyond counting,
geese turn their backs to evening sun
toward dusk growing redder.
The person, like clouds coming after the wind
and moving onto the river;
the passion, like floss that sticks to the ground
in the aftermath of rain.
Su Shi (1037-1101)
Su Shi (Su Dong-po), greatest of all the Song writers, also tried his hand at song lyrics.
Su largely abandoned the themes of parties and lost love, turning instead to the more
reflective themes of classical poetry. The following famous lyric is based on a poem
by Li Bo, but the old motif is soon transformed by Su Shi's characteristic panache.
to Song for the River Tune55 (Sbui-diao ge-fou)

1076, mid-autumn, drinking till dawn I wrote this. Also thinking of my brother
Su Che.
How long has the moon been up there?
I ask blue Heaven, wine in hand.
And I wonder
in those palaces of sky
what year this evening is?
I would ride the wind up there,
but fear
those marble domes and onyx- galleries
are up so high I couldnt bear the cold.
I rise and dance, clear shadow capering~
what can compare

to this world of mortal men!
Curving past crimson towers,
then lower past grillwork doors,
it shines upon the sleepless.
It should not trouble me,
but why, when people part,
is it always full and whole?
For mortals there is grief and joy,
coming together and going apart;
the moon has bright and shadowed phases,
wholeness and then something gone~
things never stay at perfection.
So I wish that we continue long
to share across a thousand miles
its lovely graces.

I was drinking that night on Eastern Slope,
I sobered and got drunk again,
and when I went back it seemed about midnight.
My servant boy was snoring,
it sounded like the thunder,
When I knocked at the gate, no one answered,
then I leaned on my staff
and listened to the river.
Fve always resented how this body
has never been my own,
will the time ever come when I can forget
being always busy?
The night ended, the winds calmed,
the wrinkled waves grew flat,
Ill set off from here in my small boat
on river and lakes lodge the rest of my days.
to Settling Wind and Waves (Ding feng-bo)

On May 7 1ran into a rainstorm on the Sand Lake Road. The raincoats had
all been sent on ahead, and the people traveling with me were all thrown
into confusion. I didnt even notice. Soon it cleared up, and I wrote this.
Pay no heed to those sounds,
piercing the woods, hitting leaves
why should it stop me from whistling or chanting
and walking slowly along?
578
The Song Dynasty
W ith my bamboo cane and sandals of straw

I move more free than on horse.
W ho
s afraid?
Let my life be spent with a raincoat
in the misty rain.
*
A biting chill in the spring breeze

blows me sober from wine.
*
A bit cold,
but the sunshine that sinks on the hilltop
comes back to welcome me.
Turn your head to where you just were,
where the winds were howling,
go back
on the one hand, its not a storm;
on the other, not clear skies.
To "The Charms of Nian-nu" is probably Su Shi's most famous lyric, written on a visit
to what he thought was the site of the great battle at Red Cliff during the Three King
doms. Cao Cao had brought his army to the northern shore of the Yangzi River and
was preparing a fleet to cross over and invade the southern kingdom of Wu. For pro
tection, he had his warships chained together. Zhou Yu, the admiral of the Wu river
fleet and brother-in-law of the King of Wu, sent fire ships disguised as a grain convoy.
By the time the ruse was discovered, it was too late and Cao Cao's fleet was sunk. Su
had made an historical error: it was the wrong Red Cliff. But it scarcely matters.
to The Charms of Nian-nu (Nian-nu jiao): Meditation on the

Past at Red Cliff
Eastward goes the great river,
its waves have swept away
a thousand years of gallant men.
And they say
that west of the ancient castle here
is that Red Cliff
of Zhou Yu and the Three Kingdoms.
A rocky tangle pierces sky,
leaping waves smash the shore,
surging snow in a thousand drifts.
Like a painting, these rivers and hills
where once so many bold men were.
I envision Zhou Yu back then,
just wedded to the younger Qiao,
his manly manner striking.
W ith black turban and feather fan
laughing in conversation
579
as embers flew from mast and prow

and the smoke was sinking away.
The spirit roams that long-ago land
you will laugh at this sentimental me,
hair streaked with white before my time.
Yet this human world is like a dream
and I pour out my winecup as offering
into the rivers moonbeams.
Li Qing-zhao (1084-ca. 1151)

Although the surviving corpus of lyrics that can confidently be attributed to her is
rather small, Li Qing-zhao's work has a distinct quality all its own. Song lyric often
aspired to join technical mastery and an ease that gives the impression of natural
speech. Some of Li Qing-zhao's longer songs achieve precisely this quality. Li
Qing-zhao was also one of the earliest theorists of the song lyric, and her ''Dis
course on Lyric" (Ci-lun) asserts the difference of the genre from classical poetry
( .
Like a Dream (Ru meng ling)

I will always recall that day at dusk,
the pavilion by the creek,
and I was so drunk I couldnt tell
the way home. My mood left me,
it was late when I turned back in my boat
and I strayed deep among lotuses
how to get through?
how to get through?
and I startled to flight a whole shoal
of egrets and gulls.
"
Poets inevitably became concerned with the ability of language to adequately rep
resent the world and convey the quality of human experience. Their hope was that
poetic language could somehow get beyond ordinary language. In the ninth cen
tury, the poet Du Mu had written:
In this world adrift, except in poems

all words are forced on things.
The following song lyric, Li Qing-zhao7s most famous, begins with an untranslat
able series of two-syllable compounds evoking the "atmosphere" in the human
heart and in the outer world. The lyric tries to capture the mood of the moment, mea
suring it, finally, against the common word "sorrow" to remind us of the difference
580
The Song Dynasty

between the particularity of a state of mind and the imprecise, strangely impersonal
words that we normally use to categorize experience~words "forced on things."
to Note After Note (Sheng-sheng man)

Searching and searching, seeking and seeking,
so chill, so clear,
dreary,
and dismal,
and forlorn.
That time of year
when its suddenly warm,
then cold again,
now its hardest of all to take care.
Two or three cups of weak wine
how can they resist the biting wind
that comes with evening?
The wild geese pass by
thats what hurts the most
and yet theyre old acquaintances.
In piles chrysanthemums fill the ground,
looking all wasted, damaged_
who could pick them, as they are now?
I stay by the window,
how can I wait alone until blackness comes?
The beech tree,
on top of that
the fine rain,
on until dusk,
the dripping drop after drop.
In a situation like this
how can that one word sorrow grasp it?
In "Southern Song, there is a confusion between the scene of a real lotus pond
in autumn, with its withering and broken vegetation, and the scene of a lotus pond
decorating an old dress, whose flaking gilt imitates the autumnal scene of real lo
tuses.
to Southern Song (Nan-ge-zi)

Up in heaven the star-river turns,
in mans world below
curtains are drawn.
581
A chill comes to pallet and pillow,

damp with tracks of tears.
I rise to take off my gossamer dress
and just happen to ask, KHow late is it now?
The tiny lotus pods,
kingfisher feathers sewn on;
as the gilt flecks away
the lotus leaves grow few.
Same weather as in times before,
the same old dress
only the feelings in the heart
are not as they were before.
Originally composed for women singers, the early song lyric often represented a styl
ized "feminine" voice~although a feminine voice constructed by male writers. It
was felt to be a language of sensibility, with the capacity to express feeling more
perfectly than the symmetrical regularity of classical poetry. In lyricists such as Li
Yu, and later in the lover's discourse of Yan Ji-dao and Liu Yong, that "feminine"
language of sensibility was appropriated (or reappropriated) by male writers to speak
in the first person in ways impossible in classical poetry. Partially in reaction to Liu
Yong, Su Shi created a new kind of song lyric that seemed, to premodern readers,
to represent a "masculine" style; and thereafter the styles of song lyrics conveyed a
strong sense of gender difference.
The "masculine" style was called hao-fang, loosely translated as "bold and ex:
travagant"; the "feminine" style was called wan-yue, something like "having a del
icate sensibility. Although male lyricists might write in either or both styles, women
lyricists like Li Qing-zhao generally adopted the "feminine" style, as in the lyrics
above. To the surprise and genera
approval of traditional critics, the following lyric
shows Li Qing-zhao writing in the masculine style.
1
to Free-Spirited Fisherman (Yu-jia ao)

Billowing clouds touch sky and reach
the early morning fog,
the river of stars is ready to set,
a thousand sails dance.
My dreaming soul moves in a daze
to where the high god dwells
I hear Heaven speak,
asking me with urgent concern
where I am going now.
And I reply that my road is long,
and, alastwilight draws on;
582
V*
The Song Dynasty
I worked at my poems and for nothing have

bold lines that cause surprise.3
Into strong winds ninety thousand miles
upward the Peng now flies.4
Let that wind never stop,
let it blow this tiny boat away
to the Three Immortal Isles.
The Early Southern Song

By the later part of the twelfth century, the song lyric had become a highly wliterary" form, sometimes still sung but no longer a popular song. Lu You is considered
the greatest classical poet of the Southern Song. His song lyrics differ from his po
etry in tone and treatment; but unlike earlier song lyrics, they treat the same kinds
of topics as classical poetry.
Lu You ( 112 5 -12 10 ) to Partridge Weather (Zhe-gu tian)

My home is set in blue-gray mists,
within the waning light;
the worlds concerns concern me not
a whit, nor a hair.
Misty fluids, marble white, poured to the last drop,
I walk my way through bamboo;
tracts on extending my life rolled away,
I lie here and look at the hills.
I yearn for carefree independence,

yet accept that my body grows frail_
but it wont stop me from cracking a smile
'
no matter where I go.
At last I grasp the Creators mind,
so different from mortal mans:
he lets his heroes age away
with utter unconcern.
The following three short songs by Xin Qi-ji are not the kind of lyric for which he
was best known; those were the long lyrics in which he expressed his despair over
3The first line of the second stanza recalls Wu Zi-xu's response after flogging the corpse of the King
of Chu, declaring his indomitable w ill. The line that follows echoes Du Fu, speaking with pride of
his own poetry.
4The Peng was a huge mythical bird described in the Zhuang-zi. Li Qing-zhao uses it as a figure of
such greatness that smaller creatures cannot comprehend its magnitude.
583

the loss of the North to the non-Chinese Jin Dynasty and his frustration at the Song
government's inability to recapture it.
Xin Qi-ji (114 0 -12 0 7 )to Clear and Even Music (Qing-ping
yue). An account on the Censer Mountain Road
A harness goes flying beside the willows
the weight of a travel coat soaked with dew.
A sleeping egret peers at the sand
its lonely reflection stirs;
and I am sure that its dreams
are filled with fish and shrimp.
Bright moonlight and the scattered stars
lie all along the stream,
the gorgeous outline of a woman
washing filmy gauze.
She laughs and turns from the traveler,
goes off back to her home
at the sound of a child crying in front of her gate.
r
to West River Moon (Xi jiang yue). Expressing what was on

my mind
I was drunk and craved some pleasure and fun
no time for sorrow even had I wished.
Just lately Ive grasped that in books of the past
there are really some points that are not at all true.
Last night I fell over drunk by a pine,
and asked that pine, Just how drunk am I ?
It seemed the pine moved to give me a hand,

I shoved the pine and said to it, Scram!
to Ugly Slave55 (Chou nu-er)

When I was young, I didnt know
how sorrow tastes.
I loved to climb up high in a tower,
I loved to climb up high in a tower,
And writing new songs, I forced myself
to speak of sorrow.
But now I know the taste of sorrow all too well.
I
m ready to speak of it, then stop,
I
m ready to speak of itthen stop,
And say instead, Cool weathera nice autumn.55
584
The Song Dynasty
The Master Craftsmen

Jiang Kui represents a new type of literary figure that appeared in the Southern Song:
the more or less professional writer-musician who lived as a client of the rich and
powerful. Jiang Kui never served in public office, nor did it seem that he had any
inclination to do so. He was, above all, a craftsman who sought the perfect union
of word and melody. The following song, with its lengthy preface, combines the
artist's fascination with the technical details of his craft, an act of devotion to a local
cult deity, and praise of the Southern Song's security against aggression from the Jin
Dynasty in North China. In the last part of the Preface, Jiang refers to one of Cao
Cao's attempts to invade the southern kingdom of Wu, whose king was Sun Quan.
Jiang Kui (ca. 115 5 - 12 2 1) to Red Filling the River

(Man jiang bong)
The old pattern for lyrics to the song Red Filling the River rhymed in an
oblique tone and often failed to match the requirements of the music. Con
sider, for example, the closing lines in Zhou Bang-yan5s version
Most bitter to her were the butterflies
filling the garden in flight
to whisk them away she had no heart.
,
Only when a singer modulates the word heart (xin) into the falling tone
(xin) will it go along with the requirements of the music. For a long time I
had wanted to do a version using the level tone but had not been able to get
it just right. It happened that I was sailing on Nest Lake and heard the sounds
of pipes and drums on the far shore. I asked the boatman what the music
was, and he explained: It is the local inhabitants offering their good wishes
to the Old Lady of the Lake. I then made a prayerIf I can get a steady
wind that will carry me straight across to Ju-chao31 will compose lyrics for
Red Filing the River rhyming in the level tone to serve as a song to wel
come the goddess and send her on her way. No sooner were my words fin
ished than both the wind and my writing brush sped swiftly along, and in
an instant the lyrics were completed. As a closing line I had and the rings
on her sash were heard,M in which the rhyme did indeed answer the re
quirements of the music. I copied it out on a piece of green notepaper and
let it sink under the white-capped waves. That was on the last day of March,
1191. In August of that year I again passed by the shrine and had the lyrics
carved between the pillars. A traveler later came from Ju-chao who told me
that the locals would always sing these lyrics in their prayers to the Old Lady.
I would add that when Cao Cao reached the mouth o the Ru-xu River,
Sun Quan sent him a lettersaying, When the spring floods rise, your lord
ship had best be swiftly gone. To which Cao Cao replied, Sun Quan does
not b lu ff
; whereupon he decamped his army and turned back. The mouth

of the Ru-xu is close to East Pass, through which flows the waters of the
river and the lakes. I hold the notion that there must have been someone
585
overseeing that moment when the spring floods rose. And I gave credit for
the deed to the Old Lady of the Lake.
When the Old Lady camethe goddess undying,
her gaze took in these thousand acres
of azure rippling.
Her pennons and banners descended together
with seething clouds
that blurred the view of the mountains ahead.
She bade her dragon herds be hitched,
golden were their yokes,
and all the handmaidens in her train
wore crowns of jade.
As the night grew deep, the winds died down
in the unpeopled stillness,
and the rings on her sash were heard.
This spot where the goddess worked wonders
come have a look!
She holds secure the Huais right bank,
bulwark of the Southland;
She sent six stout angels in lightning and thunder
specially to hold East Pass.
And I laugh at those warrior heroes,
that none were any good:
a boat-pole
s depth of springtime floods
sent little Cao Cao running
but then how could he have known
that She who did it all
was in this small red chamber
in the shadows of the blinds?
'
The following is Jiang Kui's most famous lyric, on the topic of plum blossoms. The
melodies that Jiang composed for this lyric and others still survive.
to Fragrance from Somewhere Unseen (An xiahg)

In the winter of 1191,1went off in the snow to visit Fan Cheng-da at Stone
Lake. When I had stayed with him a month, he handed me some paper and
asked for some lines to appear in a new style song. I composed these two
melodies. Fan Cheng-da couldnt get over his pleasure in them, and had a
pair of singing girls practice them until the tones and the rhythms were sweet
and smooth. Then I gave them the name Fragrance from Somewhere Un
seenand Broken Shadows.
The Song Dynasty
The moons hue of days gone by

I wonder how often it shone on me
playing my flute beside the plums?
It called awake that womanwhite marble,
and heedless of cold,
together we snapped off sprays.
But now this poet grows old,
and the pen that once wrote songs
of the breeze in spring

.
is utterly forgotten;
Im just intrigued by those sparse blooms
over beyond the bamboo,
how their chill scent
seeps into party mats.
These river lands now
lie somber and still.
And I sigh
to send them to someone traveling far,
as tonight their snow begins to heap high.
W ith kingfisher cups
and easily brought to tears,
restive, I recall
pink petals that never speak.
I always think back where we once held hands:
where the freight of a thousand trees weighed
on West Lakes cold sapphire.
Now petal by petal once more
they all blow away,
never again to be seen.
,
Shi Da-zu (fl. 1200)to Scent of Lace (Ji luo xiang). On

spring rain
A deed of chill betrays blossoms,
its mist-work beleaguers the willows,
it furtively hastens springs finale
for thousands of miles around.
Murky and overcast all the day through,
in the gloom it seems just ready to fall,
then desists.
Dismayed by pollens weightthe butterflies
wait the night in the western parks;
and swallowsfinding delight in the sticky mire,
bring it home to the southern shore.
Worst, how it frustrates lovers:

they cannot meet,
for her inlaid coach will never make it
down Du-ling Street.
I gaze as far as I can
through the rivers murky fog,
which then at dusk is borne swiftly away
by springtime floods;
and I cant discern the post road ford.
Hazy and vague, peaks faraway
are Miss X ie
s brows in a charming pout,
appearing with tears.
I look down the steep bluff
as green foliage grows anew,
and see there fallen specks of red
in the current, conveying melancholy.
I recall that day
when our gates closed in the blooms of the pear,
we kept trimming the wick of the lamp
and talking till deep in the night.
Wu Wen-ying achieved the height of sophistication in the art of the song lyric, some
times pressing the Chinese poetic language to extremes never before reached. To
his opponents, his lyrics were fragments that "dazzled the eyes.To weave those
fragments together required deep familiarity with the traditions of the song lyric in
order to catch the subtle shifts in mood and time. His was a highly ornamented po
etry of carefully chosen words, strange figures, and sometimes precious images, as
in the following lyric in which the bees dash themselves against the swing rope,
drawn helplessly by the lingering fragrance of the now-absent beloved.
Wu Wen-ying (ca. 1200-ca. 1260)to "Wind Enters Pines

(Feng ru song)
I listened to wind and listened to rain
passing the Festival of Light,
too sad to draft a eulogy
for funerals of flowers.
The green before my hall darkens
the path where clasped hands parted,
every inch of those willow fronds
is an inch of tender passion.
Then shivering at springs chill,
the wine hits me,
and warbling through my morning dream,
orioles sing.
The Song Dynasty
Day after day in the western park I sweep

the pavilion in the grove
and enjoy as ever the newly cleared skies.
Orange bees often go batting against
the rope of the swing
where is printed the scent of her tiny hand
from days gone by.
Despair that those paired duck slippers do not come,
and moss on the secret stairs grows all night long.
to Night-Closing Flowersw (Ye he hua). Going along the Crane

River on my way to the capital, I moored at Feng Gate and was
moved to write this
Where willows darken the river bridge
and orioles stay sunlit in terraced parks,
there my short walking cane is often lured
by scents of spring.
Once before we moored here by night
when we voyaged deep into passions land.
Hard rhymes were set for the lyrics,
wine-filled cups kept coming.
We trimmed waxen sparks of the candle
as the water-clock
s arrow sped on.
Those spots where together we roamed:
wave-walking footsteps on azure paths,
lines of oars at Heng-tang.
Ten years spent in one long dream, now dreary.
And it seems that West Lakes swallows have gone
to nest in an unkempt inn in W u.
Coming again I am moved in so many ways,
and shout, as before, for a pitcher of wine.
On the creek the rain drives hard,
flowers toss wildly on the shore.
I enjoy the last crows flying past
in this gray magnitude.
On this upper story once shared with my friend
for whom can I now point out
plants blooming here in the setting sun?
to Treading the Sedge (Ta suo xing)

Glossy marble swathed in lace,
lipscherry rests upon a fan,
braided bracelet still bearing
'
lotion scent faint.

Pomegranate hearts in empty folds,
the red of her dancing skirt;
tarragon twigs surely must weigh
her sad hair-coiis to tangles.
Noon dreams, thousands of hills,
through the window, an arrow of light,
wrists scented ringmark, removed just recently,
the red threads.
She is there across the river
inside the sound of the rain,
the evening wind in the kumi leaves
stirs sadness and reproach.
Interlude: ^
Li Qing-zhao's Epilogue to ^
Records on Metal and Stone
Li Qing-zhao (1084-ca. 1151) was not only one of the finest lyricists of the Song
Dynasty, she also left one of the most remarkable accounts of domestic life, the fall
of the Northern Song, and the Song passion for collecting books and antiquities. The
account was appended to her late husband's monumeptal collection of old in
scriptions, Records on Metal and Stone. Her "Epilogue" is a work that unites both
love and deep resentment; it commemorates her husband, Zhao De-fu's scholarly
labors while at the same time warning her readers of the folly and danger of too great
an attachment to mere things.
Literary Chinese generally omits pronouns, which are usually clear from con
text. In Li Qing-zhao's "Epilogue, however, this omission creates a significant prob
lem: we cannot tell the first-person plural ("our collection") from the third-person
singular ("his collection). We can see how the couple's antiquarian interests grad
ually passed from a shared pleasure to the husband's personal obsession, an obses
sion from which Li Qing-zhao felt increasingly excluded; at a certain point in the
translation, it thus seems appropriate to shift from "we" to "he."
What are the preceding chapters of Records on Metal and Stone}the

work of the governor Zhao De-fu. In it he took inscriptions on bells, tripods,
steamers, kettles, washbasins, ladles, gobletsand bowls from the Three Dy
nasties of high antiquity all the way to the Five Dynasties (iminediately pre
ceding our Song); here also he took the surviving traces of acts by eminent
men and obscure scholars inscribed on large steles and stone disks. In all
there were two thousand sections of what appeared on metal and stone.
Through all these inscriptions one might be able to correct historical errors,
make historical judgmentsand mete out praise and blame. It contains things
which, on the highest level, correspond to the Way of the Sages, and on a
lower level, supplement the omissions of historians. It is, indeed, a great
amount of material. Yet catastrophe fell on Wang Ya and Yuan Zai alike:
what did it matter that the one hoarded books and paintings while the other
merely hoarded pepper? Chang-you and Yuan-kai both had a disease it
made no difference that the disease of one was a passion for money, and of
the other, a passion for the transmission of knowledge and commentary. Al
though their reputations differed, they were the same in being deluded.
In 1101in the first year of the Jian-zhong Reign, I came as a bride to
the Zhao household. At that time my father was a division head in the M in
istry of Rites, and my father-in-lawlater a Grand Councilor, was an exec
utive in the Ministry of Personnel. My husband was then twenty-one and a
591
student in the Imperial Academy. In those days our two familiesthe Zhaos
and the Lis, were not well-to-do and we were always frugal. On the first and
fifteenth day of every month, my husband would get a short vacation from
the Academyhe would pawn some clothes for five hundred cash and go
to the market at Xiang-guo Temple, where he would buy fruit and rubbings
of inscriptions. When he brought these homewe would sit facing one an
other, rolling them out before us, examining and munching. And we thought
ourselves persons of the age of Ge-tian.1
When, two years later, he went to take up a post, we lived on rice and
vegetables and dressed in common clothbut he would search out the most
remote spots and out-of-the-way places to fulfill his interest in the worlds
most ancient writings and unusual script. When his father, the Grand Coun
cilor, was in officevarious friends and relations held positions in the Im
perial Libraries; there one might find many ancient poems omitted from the
Classic of Poetry, unofficial histories, and writings never before seen, works
hidden in walls and recovered from tombs. My husband would work hard
at copying such things, drawing ever more pleasure from the activity, until
he was unable to stop himself. Later, if he happened to see a work of paint
ing or calligraphy by some person of ancient or modern times, or unusual
vessels of the Three Dynasties of high antiquity, he would still pawn our
clothes to buy them. I recall that in the Chong-ning Reign, a man came with
a painting of peonies by Xu X i and asked twenty thousand cash for it. In
those days twenty thousand was a hard sum to raise, even for children of
the nobility. We kept the painting with us a few days, and having thought
of no plan by which we could purchase it, we returned it. For several days
afterward my husband and I faced one another in deep depression.
Later we lived privately at home for ten years, gathering what we could
here and there to have enough food and clothing. Afterward, my husband
governed two prefectures in succession, and he used up all his salary on lead
and wooden tablets for scholarly work. Whenever he got a book, we would
collate it with other editions and make corrections together, repair it, and
label it with the correct title. When he got hold of a piece of calligraphy, a
painting, a goblet, or a tripod, we would go over it at our leisure, pointing
out faults and flaws, setting for our nightly limit the time it took one can
dle to burn down. Thus our collection came to surpass all others in fineness
of paper and the perfection of the characters.
I happen to have an excellent memory, and every evening after we fin
ished eating, we would sit in the hall called wReturn Home and make tea.
Pointing to the heaps of books and histories, we would guess on which line
of which page in which chapter of which book a certain passage could be
found. Success in guessing determined who got to drink his or her tea first.
Whenever I got it right, I would raise the teacup, laughing so hard that the
tea would spill in my lap, and I would get up, not having to been able to
^ e -tia n was a mythical ruler of high antiquity, when everyone lived in a state of perfect content
ment.
.
The Song Dynasty
drink any of it at all. I would have been glad to grow old in such a world.
Thus, even though we were living in anxiety, hardships, and poverty, our
wills were not broken.
When the book collection was complete, we set up a library in Return
Home Hall, with huge bookcases where the books were catalogued in
order. There we put the books. Whenever I wanted to read, I would ask for
the key, make a note in the ledgerthen take out the books. If one of them
was a bit damaged or soiled, it would be my responsibility to repair the spot
and copy it out in a neat hand. There was no longer the same ease and ca
sualness as before. This attempt to make things convenient led instead to
nervousness and anxiety. I couldnt bear it. I began to plan how to make do
with only one meat dish in our meals and how to do away with all the fin
ery in my dress. For my hair there were no ornaments of bright pearls or
kingfisher feathers; the household had no implements for gilding or em
broidery. Whenever he came upon a history or the work of a major writer,
if there was nothing wrong with the printing and no errors in the edition,
he would buy it on the spot to have as a second copy. His family always spe
cialized in the Classic o f Changes and The Zuo Tradition, so the collection
of works in those two traditions was the most perfect and complete. Books
lay ranged on tables and desks, scattered on top of one another on pillows
and bedding. This was what took his fancy and what occupied his mind,
what drew his eyes and what his spirit inclined to; and his joy was greater
than the pleasures others had in dancing girls, dogs, or horses.
In 1126, the first year of the Jing-kang Reign, my husband was govern
ing Ze-chuan when we heard that the Jin Tartars were moving against the
capital. He was in a daze, realizing that all those full trunks and overflow
ing chests, which he contemplated so lovingly and mournfully, would surely
soon be his possessions no longer. In the third month of spring in 1127, the
first year of the Jian-yan Reign, we hurried south for the funeral of his
mother. Since we could not take the overabundance of our possessions with
us, we first gave up the bulky printed volumes, the albums of paintings, and
the most cumbersome of the vessels. Thus we reduced the size of the col
lection several times, and still we had fifteen cartloads of books. When we
reached Dong-hai, it took a string of boats to ferry them all across the Huai,
and again across the Yangzi to Jian-kang. In our old mansion in Qing-zhou
we still had more than ten rooms of books and various items locked away,
and we planned to have them all brought by boat the next year. But in the
twelfth month Jin forces sacked Qing-zhou, and those ten or so rooms I
spoke of were all reduced to ashes.
The next autumn, the ninth month of 1128, my husband took charge of
Jian-kang Prefecture but relinquished the position in the spring of the fol
lowing year. Again we put everything in boats and went up to Wu-hu and
Gu-shu, intending to take up lodging on the river Gan. That summer in the
fifth month we reached Chi-yang. At that point an imperial decree arrived,
ordering my husband to take charge of Hu-zhou and to proceed to an au
dience with the Emperor before he took up the office. Therefore he had the
593
household stop at Chi-yang, from which he went off alone to answer the
summons.
On August 13he set off to carry out his duty. He had the boats pulled
up onto the shore, and he sat there on the bank, in summer clothes with his"
headband high on his forehead, his spirit like a tigershis eyes gleaming as
though they would shoot into a person, while he gazed toward the boats
and took his leave. I was terribly upset. I shouted to him, If I hear the city
is in danger, what should I do? He answered from afar, hands on his hips:
Follow the crowd. If you cant do otherwise, abandon the household goods
first, then the clothes, then the books and scrolls, then the old bronzes but
carry the sacrificial vessels for the ancestral temple yourself. Live or die with
themdon't give them up! W ith this he galloped off on his horse.
As he was hurrying on his journey, he suffered sunstroke from the in
tense heat, and by the time he reached imperial headquarters, he had con
tracted a malarial fever. At the end of SeptemberI received a letter that he
was sick in bed. I was very alarmed, considering my husbands excitable na
ture and how nothing had been able to prevent the illness from deteriorat
ing into fever; his temperature might rise even higher, and in that case he
would have to take chilled medicinesthen the sickness would really be some
thing to worry about. Thereupon I set out by boat and traveled three hun-1
dred leagues in one day and one night. At the point when I arrived he was
taking large doses of chai-hu and yellow qin; he had a recurring fever with
dysentery, and the illness appeared mortal. I was weeping and in such a des
perate state I could not bring myself to ask him what was to be done after
his death. On October 18 he could no longer get up; he took a brush and
wrote a poem. When he finished it, he passed away, with no thought at all
for the future provision of his family.
After the funeral was over, I had nowhere to go. His Majesty had already
sent the palace ladies elsewhere, and I heard that future crossings of the
Yangzi were to be prohibited. At the time I still had twenty thousand juan
of books, two thousand copies of inscriptions on metal and stone with
colophons, table services and mats enough to entertain a hundred guests,
along with other possessions equaling those already mentioned.21 also be
came very sickto the point where my only vital sign was a rasping breath.
The situation was getting more serious by the day. I thought of my husbands
brother-in-law, an executive in the Ministry of War on garrison duty in
Hong-zhou, and I dispatched two former employees of my husband to go
ahead to my brother-in-law, taking the baggage. In February that winter,
the Jin invaders sacked Hong-zhou and all was lost. Those books which, as
I said, it took a string of boats to ferry across the Yangzi were scattered into
clouds of smoke. What remained were a few light scrolls and calligraphy
pieces; manuscript copies of the collections of Li Bo, Du Fu, Han Yu, and
Liu Zong-yuan; a copy of Current Tales and Recent Bon-mots a copy of
2A jimn, originally a "s c ro ll, came to be something like a chapter. The size of a library was mea
sured not in volumes but in juan.
594
The Song Dynasty
Discourses on Salt and Irona few dozen rubbings of stone inscriptions from
the Han and Tangten or so ancient tripods and cauldrons; and a few boxes
of Southern Tang manuscript editions all of which I happened to have had
removed to my chambers to pass the time during my illnessnow a solitary
pile of leftovers.
Since I could no longer go upriver, and since the movements of the in
vaders were unpredictable, I was going to stay with my younger brother Li
Hang, a reviser of edicts. By the time I reached Tai-zhou, the governor of
the place had already fled. Proceeding on to Shan through Mu-zhou
we left
the clothing and linen behind. Hurrying to Yellow Cliff, we hired a boat to
take us toward the sea, following the fleeing court. The court halted a while
in Zhang-an, then we followed the imperial barge on the sea route to Wen
zhou and Yue-zhou. In February, during the fourth year of the Jian-yan
Reign, early in 1131, all the officials of the government were released from
their posts. We went to Qu-zhou, and then that May, now the first year of
the Shao-xing Reign, we returned to Yue-zhou, and in 1132 back again to
Hang-zhou.
When my husband had been gravely ill, a certain academician, Zhang
Fei-qing, had visited him with a jade potactually it wasnt really jade but
alabaster. I have no idea who started the story, but there was a false rumor
that they had been discussing presenting it to the Jin as a tribute gift. I also
learned that someone had made formal charges in the matter. I was terri
fied and dared say nothing, but I took all the bronze vessels and such things
in the household and was ready to turn them over to the imperial court. But
by the time I reached Yue-zhou, the court had already gone on to Si-ming.
I didnt dare keep these things in the household any longer, so I sent them
along with the manuscript books to Shan. Later when the imperial army was
rounding up defeated enemy troops, I heard that these had all been taken
into the household of General Li. That solitary pile of leftovers/5of which
I spokehad now been reduced by about fifty or sixty percent. All that re
mained were six or so baskets of books, paintings, ink and inkstones that I
hadnt been able to part with. I always kept these under my bed and opened
them only with my own hands.
At Kuai-ji, I chose lodging in a cottage belonging to a local named
Zhong. Suddenly one night someone made off with five of the baskets
through a hole in the wall. I was terribly upset and offered a substantial re
ward to get them back. Two days later, Zhong Fu-hao next door produced
eighteen of the scrolls and asked for a reward. By that I knew that the thief
was not far away. I tried every means I could, but I still couldnt get hold of
the rest. I have now learned that they were all purchased by the Circuit Fis
cal Supervisor W u Ye. Now seventy or eighty percent of that solitary pile
of leftovers is gone. I still have a few volumes from three or four sets, none
complete, and some very ordinary pieces of calligraphy, yet I treasure them
as if I were protecting my own headfoolish person that I am!
Nowadays when I chance to look over these books, its like meeting old
friends. And I recall when my husband was in the hall called uCalm Gov595
ernance in Lai-zhou: he had first finished binding the volumes, making title
slips of rue leaves to keep out insects and tie ribbons of blue silk, binding
ten juan into one volume. Every day in the evening when the office clerks
had gone home, he would do editorial collations on two juan and write a
colophon for one inscription. O f those two thousand inscriptions, colophons
were written on five hundred and two. It is so sadtoday the ink of his writ
ing seems still fresh, but the trees on his grave have grown to an armspan in
girth.
Long ago when the city of Jiang-ling fell, Xiao Yi, Emperor Yuan of the
Liang, did not regret the fall of his kingdom, yet destroyed his books and
paintings [unwilling to see them fall into the hands of his conquerors]. When
his capital at Jiang-du was sacked, Yang Guang, Emperor Yang of the Sui,
wasnt concerned with his own death, only with recovering his books
[demonstrated when his spirit overturned the boat in which they were being
transported so that he could have his library in the land of the dead]. It must
be that the passions of human nature cannot be forgotten, even standing be
tween life and death. Or perhaps it is Heavens will that beings as insignif
icant as ourselves are not fit to enjoy such superb creatures.3Or perhaps the
dead too have consciousness, and they still treasure such things and give them
their devoted attention, unwilling to leave them in the world of the living.
How hard they are ta obtain and how easy to lose!
From the time I was eighteen [two years younger than Lu Ji was sup
posed to have been when he wrote The Poetic Exposition on Literature55]
until now at the age of fifty-two [two years after the age at which Chu Boyou realized the error of his earlier life] a span of more than thirty years
how much calamity, how much gain and loss have I witnessed! When there
is possession, there must be loss of possessionwhen there is a gathering to
gether, there must be a scatteringthis is the constant principle in things.
Someone loses a bow; another person finds a bow; whats so special in that?
The reason why I have recorded this story from beginning to end in such
detail is to let it serve as a warning for scholars and collectors in later gen
erations.
Written this second year of the Shao-xing Reign (1132)the first of Oc
tober.
Li Qing-zhao
3wSuperb creatures," you-wu, here figuratively applied to books and antiques, usually refers to dan
gerously beautiful women, who inspire destructive passion in those attracted to them.
Classical Prose
In the modern West, the category of "literature" tends be confined to poetry, drama,
and narrative fiction. Other prose forms, such as essays and speeches, may be con
sidered marginally "literary, but by and large non-toional prose has come to be
excluded from the domain of literature. In classical Chinese literature, as in Greek,
Latin, and earlier European literatures, non-fictional prose was considered an es
sential part of the domain of literature; fictional narrative (in verse or prose) and
drama, however, were not considered fully legitimate literary forms until very late
in the tradition.
Prose was one of the primary means by which a member of the educated elite
participated in political and social life. The examination essay was essential to be
coming an accredited member of the imperial civil service (and all sense of noble
duty aside, this involved very attractive privileges, e_g_, exemption from military ser
vice and taxes). Letters, ''policy discussions" (yi), and memorials to the throne were
the only means by which those outside the decision-making inner circle of govern
ment could comment on and participate in the formulation of public policy. In so
cial life, one would be called upon to produce "accounts" (ji) describing places or
buildings, prefaces, inscriptions, and commemorative funerary forms, as well as let
ters. The writing of prose was not merely functional, however: a great prose writer
might hope to be remembered for his public writing. The standard histories had spe
cial sections devoted to men of letters, usually prose writers, and in other biogra
phies the histories would often incorporate complete essays, memorials, letters, and
other forms.
*
Classical Chinese prose must be approached through its genres. Each genre
served a distinct function and each had its own history. The most public and polit
ical genre (apart from drafting government decrees) was the memorial to the throne,
by which a political opinion could be formally presented to the emperor and his
inner circle of advisers.
Memorial
Although memorials to the throne (which have survived in the tens of thousands)
are often important documents for the study of history, memorials that have become
famous in the classical prose tradition tend to be those that reflect on the character
of the writer. Han Yu's "Memorial Discussing the Buddha's Bone" has perhaps some
historical significance as representing the resentment of certain Confucian intellec
tuals against the influence of Buddhism (though we may wonder whether this so
cial phenomenon makes Han Yu's famous memorial historically significant or whether
597

Han Yu's famous memorial makes the social phenomenon worthy of attention). This
memorial was, however, a singularly ineffective political act, resulting only in Han
Yu's banishment (although brief suppressions of Buddhism later in the ninth century
followed in part from advisers who took the same line as Han). What made the
memorial one of the most famous examples of Han Yu's prose were the same qual
ities that made it politically ineffective: it is belligerently uncompromising and, as a
memorial to the throne, disrespectful to the edge of personally insulting the emperor.
Not only is the writing too blunt, the scarcely concealed message in Han Yu's litany
of imperial lifespans is that an emperor who reveres Buddha will not live long.
Longevity was ever a touchy point in the imperial presence, and promises of
longevity had been among the chief theological commodities of the Daoists, with
competition from the Buddhists. Han Yu here begins as a Confucian purveyor of
moderate life extension: to live out a full span of years His Majesty need only be
like the Sage-Kings, governing over an empire no longer infested by Buddhists.
Han Yu (768-824)Memorial Discussing the Buddhas Bone

One of Your Majestys officers speaks.
I am of the opinion that Buddhism is nothing more than a religion of the
outlying tribes. Since the Eastern Han it has made inroads into the heart
land, but such a thing never existed in high antiquity. In days of yore the
Yellow Emperor sat on the throne for a hundred years and the years of his
life reached one hundred and ten. Shao-hao sat on the throne for eighty years
and the years of his life reached a hundred. Zhuan-xu sat on the throne for
seventy-nine years and the years of his life reached ninety-eight. Emperor
Gu sat on the throne for seventy years and the years of his life reached one
hundred and five. Emperor Yao sat on the throne for ninety-eight years and
the years of his life reached one hundred and eighteen. The emperors Shun
and Yu both lived to be a hundred. And in those days the world enjoyed
perfect peace; the common people were secure in their happiness and lived
to ripe old age. Yet at this time there was no Buddhism in the heartland.
Afterward Tang of the Yin also lived to a hundred years. O f Tangs de
scendants, Tai-mou sat on the throne seventy-five years, and Wu-ding sat
on the throne fifty-nine years. The histories do not say to what ages they
livedbut taking into account recorded spans of years, it seems probable that
both lived no less than a hundred years. King Wen of the Zhou lived to
ninety-sevenKing W u, to ninety-three; King M u sat on the throne a hun
dred years. And at this time too the Buddhist religion had not yet made in
roads into the heartland so they did not achieve such spans because they
served the Buddha.
The Buddhist religion appeared only in the reign of Emperor Ming of
the Han, and Emperor Ming sat on the throne for only eighteen years. After
him, turmoil and destruction were continuous, and fate gave no long reigns.
From the Song, Qi, Liang, Chen, and Toba Wei on, devotion to the Buddha
became increasingly intense; and reign spans were exceedingly short. There
was, of course, the case of Emperor W u of the Liang, who sat on the throne
59R
The Song Dynasty
for forty-eight years. Three times at different periods in his life he offered
up his own body as a gift to the Buddha: no red meat was used in the sac
rifices in the ancestral temple, and during the day he ate only one meal, which
was restricted to vegetables and fruit. But afterwards he was beset by the
rebel Hou Jing. He starved to death in his palace compound of Jin-lingand
his dynasty also subsequently perished. He sought good fortune through de
votion to the Buddha, but reaped only his own downfall. Consideration of
these cases leads us to understand that the Buddha does not merit devotion.
When Gao-zu, the Tang founder, first took the sacred authority of rule
from the Sui, proposals were made to get rid of it. But court officials in those
times Jacked far-seeing judgment. They were incapable of any deep under
standing of the Way of the early kings, or of what is fitting in both ancient
and modern times, or of how to expound the matter fiilly for His Majestys
enlightened grasp and thereby to preserve us from this scourge. The issue
was subsequently set aside, which is something I have always deplored.
In the past several millennia and centuries, there has never been the like
of Your Wise and August Imperial Majesty, holy in sageliness, spirited in
war. When you first took the throne, Your Majesty did not permit people
to take vows to become monks, nuns, or Daoist priests; you further did not
permit the foundation of new monasteries and Daoist temples. I had always
thought that the intention of the founder Gao-zu would surely be carried
out at last by Your Majestys hand. Even though this has not yet been ac
complished, how can you give them free rein and make them prosper even
more than before!
I recently heard that Your Majesty has commanded a group of monks
to welcome the Buddhas bone in Feng-xiangthen, as you watch from an
upper chamber, it will be carried with ceremony into the palace precincts.
You have also ordered that all the temples take turns welcoming it and pay
ing it reverence. Although I am very foolish, I suspect that Your Majesty has
not, in fact, been actually so deluded by the Buddha as to carry out such au
gust devotions in search of blessings and good fortunerather,t a time when
the harvest is abundant and the people are happy, I suspect that you are sim
ply accommodating the hearts of the people by putting on a display of illu
sory marvels and the stuff of a stage show for the inhabitants of the capital.
How could such a sagely and enlightened ruler as yourself bring himself to
have faith in this sort of thing?
Nevertheless, the common people are foolish and ignorant, easy to lead
into error and hard to enlighten. If Your Majesty behaves like this, they will
assume that you serve the Buddha from genuine feeling. All will say, The
Son of Heaven is a great Sage, yet still he gives Buddha his wholehearted re
spect and faith. What are we common folk that we should begrudge even
our lives? They will set their heads on fire and burn their fingers. In tens
and hundreds they will undo their clothes and distribute coins; and from
dawn to dusk they will try harder and harder to outdo one another, wor
rying only that they are not acting swiftly enough. We will see old and young
in a desperate scramble, abandoning their places of business. If one does not
599
immediately strengthen the prohibitions against this, they will pass from one
temple to anothercutting off arms and slicing off flesh as devotional of
ferings. This is no trifling matter, for they will be the ruin of our good cus
toms, and when the word gets out, we will be laughed at by all the world
around.
The Buddha was originally a tribesman from outlying regions. His lan
guage is incomprehensible to those who inhabit the heartland, and his clothes
were of a strange fashion. He did not speak the exemplary words of the early
kings, and he did not wear the exemplary garb of the early kings. He did
not understand the sense of right that exists between a ruler and his officers,
nor the feelings between father and son. If he were still alive today and, on
the orders of his own kingdom, were to come to an audience with Your
Majesty in the capital, Your Majesty would tolerantly receive him, but with
nothing more than a single meeting in Xuan-zheng Palace, the single feast
to show politeness to a guest, and a single present of clothing. Then he would
be escorted to the border under guard in order to keep him from leading the
people astray.
But now he has been dead for a very long time. Is it fitting that you order
his dried and crumbling bone, this disgusting and baleful relic, to be brought
into the imperial palace? Confucius said, Respect gods and spirits, but keep
far away from them .
In ancient times when a member of the great nobil
ity made a visit to a state to offer condolences, he would command a shaman
to precede him with a peach branch and a broom of reeds to ward off ma
lignant influences. Only under these conditions would he offer his condo
lences. Now for no good reason you are receiving this disgusting and de-caying object, and you will personally inspect it_ but without a shaman
preceding you and without using the peach branch and reed broom. Not one
of your many officials has told you how wrong this is, nor have your cen
sors brought up the error of it. O f this I am truly ashamed.
I beg you to hand this bone over to the charge of someone who will throw
it into fire or water and finish it forever, thus putting an end to the confu
sions of the world and stopping this delusion in generations to come. This
will result in having all the people of the world understand that what a great
Sage does infinitely surpasses the ordinary. 'Wouldnt it be splendid! Wouldn
t it feel good!
If there is any divine power in the Buddha that can bring down curses,
whatever calamity should befall, let it fall on me. Heaven will observe me
from above, and I will feel no ill will or regret. Deeply stirred and filled with
the utmost loyalty, I respectfully offer this memorial for Your Majestys ears.
Your Majestys officer trembles with awe.
Although the memorial here is a serious one and has been treated all too seriously
by the tradition, it is memorable because of its humor. Such humor is closely allied
to Han Yu;s revulsion at pollution pollution from contact with death and with things
foreign. Han Yu has .taken a relic that usually commanded great devotion and has
The Song Dynasty

placed it in a new context, deflating its religious aura and making the devotion
showed to the relic ludicrous: "Ugh, the crumbling bone ofa long-dead barbarian/'
One imagines a courtyard full of monks all chanting and the emperor Xian-zong
standing on a balcony watching piously. In the center is a raised reliquary. Into this
scene walks Han Yu in his severe Confucian garb. He steps through the chanting
crowd, opens the reliquary, and, with a look of evident disgust, gingerly picks up
the bone in two fingers and carries it to the nearby river, where he tosses it away.
Beneath the Confucian values here lies the Zhuang-zi, with its technique of rad
ically shifting perspective in order to show the relativity of value. The tacit claim
made by Han Yu in using such a technique is that it will reveal the inherent quality
of things as opposed to the false honor accorded them by custom. In the Zhuangzi, Confucian ceremony is often the butt of the act of devaluation; in Han Yu, the
butt is Buddhist relic-worship.
.
Essay
The essay (lun or shuo) was 3. genre much like its Western counterpart, ranging from
formal exposition to quirkier and more personal explanations of a question. In the
following piece, Liu Zong-yuan gives an account of a thesis advanced by Han Yu
and twists it with his own conclusion. Han's proposition is so unlike the positions
he takes elsewhere that we do not know whether to read this as tongue-in-cheek,
as a dark mood, or as a tour de force done for the sheer pleasure of working out a
shocking hypothesis.
1
Liu Zong-yuan (773-819), A Theory of Heaven

Han Yu addressed Master Liu, Do you know my theory about Heaven?
Well, I will tell you my theory. These days whenever someone suffers from
the torment of disease or is worn down by humiliation or endures hunger
and cold, he looks up and cries out to Heaven: Those who harm folk flour
ish; those who help folk perish! Or they look up and cry out to Heaven
Why have you caused things to go so utterly wrong?
No one who behaves
like this truly understands Heaven.
When a piece of fruit or a melon has become too rotten to eat, insects
grow in it. When the vitality of a mans blood fails and becomes sluggish,
abscesses, swelling pustules, and hemorrhoids form; insects grow in these
too. When wood rots, there are grubs withinwhen plants putrefy, fireflies
come forth from them. These are obviously things that appear only after
decay sets in. When something decays, insects are born out of it; and when
the Primordial Force or Yin and Yang decayed, out of that human beings
were born.
"When insects grow in that thing, it decays even further. Chewing at it,
boring holes in it, the harm that the insects inflict on the thing increases
greatly. If someone were able to get rid of them, such a person would have
done a good deed on behalf of the thingbut whoever lets them multiply
and gives comfort to them is the enemy of the thing. The incremental decay
that human beings cause to the Primordial Force and to Yin and Yang has
also increased greatly. Men plow meadows and fields; they cut down the
mountain forests; they dig down to underground springs to find wells that
provide them with drinkthey excavate graves in which to put their dead.
Moreover, they dig latrinesthey pound hard earthen walls to surround their
homes and their citiesthey raise platforms of pounded earth on which to
build pavilions and lodges for their excursions; they dig channels for rivers
and canals, irrigation ditches, and ponds; they kindle wood for fires; they
alter metals by smelting themthey mold pottery and grind and polish stone.
Everything in the world looks the worse for wear and nothing can follow
its own nature~human beings are responsible for this. Seething in their fury,
constantly battering, they assault, destroy, ruin, and wreck; nor have they
ever desisted. Is not the harm they inflict on the Primordial Force and upon
Yin and Yang even worse than what insects do?
In my opinion if one were able to cut away at humanity and make them
dwindle over the days and years, then the harm inflicted on the Primordial
Force and Yin and Yang would steadily diminish. Whoever could accom
plish this would have done a good deed for Heaven and Earth. But whoever
lets them multiply and gives comfort to them is the enemy of Heaven and
Earth. These days no one understands Heaven, so they cry out to it in re
proach. In my opinionwhen Heaven hears their cries of reproach, then those
who have done it a good deed will inevitably receive a rich reward; but those
who have inflicted harm on it will inevitable receive grave punishment.
What do you think of what I have said?
Master Liu then said, Was there something that got you truly worked up
that you propose this? It is well argued indeed and beautifully put. But let
me carry this theory to its conclusion. Human beings refer to what is dark
mysterious, and above us as Heaventhey refer to what is brown and be
neath us as Earth. They refer to that vast, undifferentiated murkiness in be
tween as the Primordial Force; and they refer to the cold and heat as Yin
and Yang. However large these are, they are no different from fruits and
melons, abscesses and pustules, or plants and trees.
Let us suppose there were someone or something able to get rid of what
bores holes in them~would there be any reward for such a creature? Or
one that let them multiply and gave them comfort~would there be any anger
against such? Heaven and Earth are a large fruit. The Primordial Force is a
large pustule. Yin and Yang are a large tree. How could such things reward
a good deed or punish harms inflicted? Those who do such good deeds, do
so on their own; those who inflict harm, inflict it on their own. To expect
either reward or punishment is great folly. Those who cry out in reproach,
expecting Heaven will feel sorry for them and be kind to them, show even
greater folly. As for you, you trust in your own sense of kindness and right
and move freely within that, during your life and on until your death. Why
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attribute your preservation or destruction, your gains and your losses, to a

piece of fruit, a pustule, or a tree?
Letters
The epistolary tradition is a very old one in China. The Zuo Tradition contains what
purport to be diplomatic letters from the period of the "Springs and Autumns of Lu,
and by Western Han we have personal letters whose attribution we can accept with
confidence. Like the essay, the letter is an open genre whose topic is not circum
scribed by occasion. Furthermore, the level of formality can vary greatly according
to the circumstances to which the letter speaks and the social relation between writer
and addressee. What one does not find in the early period is the engagement in the
details of everyday life that make Latin letters by Cicero and Pliny the Younger so
attractive. The following letter by Bo Ju-yi is an early example of the Chinese infor
mal letter.
Bo Ju-yi (772-846)Letter to Yuan Zhen (Yuan Wei-zhi)

The night of June 10. Bo Ju-yi writes:
Wei-zhi, Wei-zhi, its been three years since I have seen your face and al
most two years now since I have received a letter from you. How long does
life last that we can be separated so distantly as this? This is something we
feel all the more strongly when two hearts are bonded together, yet in bod
ies set far apart, as if one were in Turkistan and the other in Yue. Whatever
we do, we can neither be together nor can we forget one other. We are both
joined together and kept apart, until our hair turns white. How can this be,
Wei-zhi? It is our destiny, and nothing can be done about it!
When I first reached Xun-yang, Xiong Wan-deng came and brought me
a note that you had written the preceding year when you were gravely ill.
In the first part you told me about the symptoms of your illness, then you
gave an account of what was in your mind while you were sick, and finally
you talked about this friendship that we have shared over a lifetime. And
you wrote then, At this moment of crisis I have no time for anything else
except gathering together a few packets of my writings to be sealed with the
note: T o be sent to Bo Ju-yi at some future time, hoping that they will serve
in place of a letter
I was very deeply moved by the feeling you showed
for me in this. At the same time I cast eyes on the poem that you sent when
you heard of my demotion.
No flame in the dying lamp,
rays blurred and quivering;
this is the evening I heard that you
were exiled to Nine Rivers.
In sickness and drawing close to death,
I sat straight up in alarm
in the dark the wind was blowing rain

into my cold window.
Even a stranger could scarcely bear to read lines like theseimagine how
much they touched my own heart! Even now every time I recite them, it still
makes me throb. But let me leave these matters aside and give you a rough
account of what has been on my mind of late.
It has already been three years since I came to Nine Rivers. My body is
strong, and my mind is very much at ease. Both I and the members of my
household have been fortunate not to have any illnesses. Last summer my
elder brother arrived from Xu-zhou, bringing with him six or seven young
boys and girls of the extended family who had lost their parents. Everyone
about whom I had previously been worried was here with meand we can
share good times and bad, feast and famine~and this is the first reason I
feel such peace of mind.
The weather tends to be cool here in Jiang-zhou, and the region has lit
tle unhealthy miasma. Although there are poisonous snakes, mosquitoes, and
gnats, they are rather uncommon. The fish from the river Pen are quite
plump, and the river wines here are excellent; the other things eaten here are
much the same as we have in the North. Even though the number of mouths
to feed in the household is far from few and a vice-prefects salary is not
great, we are able to provide for ourselves by frugal management of what I
bring in, so that we can avoid having to ask others for help in food and cloth
ing. This is the second reason I feel such peace of mind.
Last autumn I visited Mount Lu for the first time. When I reached the,
foot of Incense Burner Peak in between Westgrove and Eastgrove Temples
I saw cloudy streams and springs flowing over the rocksit was the most
marvelous sight in the whole world. I was so fond of it I couldnt let it go,
so I built a thatched cottage there. In front of the cottage there are a dozen
or so tall pines and more than a thousand long stalks of bamboo. Green
hanging moss serves as the fence, and white stones serve as a bridge; flow
ing waters wind in a circle down below the building, and a waterfall comes
down beside the eaves. Red pomegranates and white lotuses grow ranged
along the ponds and pavements. This is just the general picture; I cant give
a full account. Every time I go there by myself, I end up spending ten days.
Everything I most enjoy in life is right there. Not only do I forget to re
turn,,5 I could well stay there throughout my old age. And this is the third
reason I feel such peace of mind.
When I reckon up how long it has been since you received a letter from
me, I
m sure you must be expecting one with increasing anxiety. I have set
down these three reasons for my peace of mind on purpose, to let you know
how things are and forestall any worry you may feel. As for other matters,
I will describe them item by item as follows.
Wei-zhi, on the night I am writing this letter I am right here in my
thatched cottage, by my window in the mountains, letting my pen run freely,
scribbling randomly as my thoughts carry me; and now that I am about to
The Song Dynasty
seal it up, I find that, unbeknownst to me, it is almost dawn. When I lift my
head I see only one or two mountain monks, sitting or sleeping. And I also
hear the gibbons wailing on the mountain and the birds chirping sadly in
the valley. The friends of my life are thousands of miles away. At this mo
ment thoughts on the foul world suddenly creep upon me; and drawn on by
old habits, I write these couplets:
I recall sealing a letter to you
on a night long ago,
behind Golden Phoenix Palace
as the sky was growing bright.
When I seal this letter to you tonight
where do I find myself?_
inside a lodge upon Mount Lu
in front of a candle at dawn.
Bird in a cage, monkey behind bars

but neither are yet dead;
meeting again in this mortal world
will happen in what year?
Wei-zhi! Can you understand how I feel this night?
Prefaces
Prefaces come in a great variety of forms, from the scholarly to the lyrical and de
scriptive. The more lyrfcal and descriptive prefaces tend to be those for banquet col
lections in which a group of people compose poems for a party and one of the num
ber is delegated to write the preface. The following preface is an early example of
such, composed in a . d . 400 by an anonymous member of the Buddhist circle around
the famous monk Hui-yuan, on an excursion to Stonegate Mountain in the Lu Moun
tain Range. Notes on geography, a stylized appreciative description of the landscape,
and a meditation on the significance of the experience come together in the high
style of Southern Dynasties prose.
Anonymous (member of Hui-yuans circle), A Preface for the

Poems Written on an Excursion to Stonegate
Stonegate lies somewhat over ten leagues south of the temple chapel and is
also known as Screen Mountain. Its base connects with the main peak of Lu
Mountain, but its form is disjoined from all the other hills. It opens the way
for the confluence of those three streams, which together begin their flow
upon it. Sheer crags shine in dark mystery above, their noteworthy shape
received from What is Naturally So. It was from this shape that the moun
tain got its name. Although this is but one corner of the Lu Mountain Range,
it is truly the most remarkable vista in the region. This judgment is always
605
handed down as received wisdom, but many are those who have never laid
eyes on the place. Those who have been there are rare, because of its cas
cading rapids and perilous pinnacles where the tracks of men and beasts dis
appear, and because of paths turning through the twisting hills where the
road is full of obstructions and hard going.
In April of the fourth year of the Long-an Reign (400), our abbot Huiyuan made an excursion there, leaning on his meditation staff, in order to
compose verses on these mountains and waters. More than thirty compan
ions who shared the same inclination joined him, brushing off their robes
and setting off in the morning, their discontent at not having previously gone
there augmenting their elation. Though the forested ravines were remote and
out of the way, still we opened a path and eagerly pushed forward; though
we mounted precarious places and found our footing over rocks, we were
content because of the delight we were experiencing. When we reached
Stonegate, we pulled our way along by taking hold of trees and clinging to
vines, crossing the full stretch of the perilous slope. Dangling arms like apes,
we pulled one another along until at last we attained the summit.
Thereupon, as we rested on those crags, we embraced the splendid
scenery and surveyed in detail what lay below. Then did we realize that of
all the beauties of Lu Mountains seven peaks, the most wondrous were all
contained in this place. Twin turrets towered before us, and behind us
craggy cliffs stretched off in tiers, each setting off the others. Ridges of hills
encircled us as a screen, with prominent cliffs arranged on all sides to serve
as our frontier domains. In the middle were formations that resembled stone
platforms and stone pools and lodges within a palace compound. Such
shapes, each according to its kind, touched us with delight. Clear streams
flowed apart, then poured together in a confluence, with pellucid deeps that
cast mirroring reflections purer than those of Pool-of-Heaven. Patterned
stones gave off bright colors, beaming like relaxed faces. Red-willowspines,
and aromatic plants lit up our eyes with their leafy richness. This is the full
measure of its divine beauty.
That day the feelings of all present sped with pleasure, and we viewed
all that lay around us without tiring. Not long after we had been letting our
gaze drift, the atmosphere began a series of frequent changes. Where fog and
wisps of cloud accumulated, the shapes of the thousands of images were hid
denwhere sunbeams on the water cast back light, reflections of all the
mountains hung upside down. And in the manner of such moments of rev
elation and concealment, there seemed some divine spirit that could not be
fathomed. When it was as if this spirit would mount up to usthe soaring
birds beat their wings and the shrill cries of the gibbons resounded. The
clouds turned their coaches round to return home, and one could imagine
therein the forms of the Undying, the feathered folk; in the harmonious min
gling of melancholy sounds there seemed lodged the notes of their mysteri
ous melodies. Though only in the vaguest way could we still hear them, our
spirits were elated by thisthough finding delight in unanticipated pleasures,
the good cheer this brought us lasted throughout the day. There was truly
606
The Song Dynasty
a unique flavor to such serene contentment, yet it is not easy to put into
words, something to think back upon after we had withdrawn from the
place.
Here among the slopes and valleys there was nothing to govern our
grasp of these phenomena; the way in which our feelings gave rise to ela
tion should not have occurred, affecting a person as profoundly as this. It
must have been that our capacity for unbiased perception lent clarity to their
appearances, and that our calm indifference and distance guaranteed the gen
uineness of such feelings. We talked about this over and over again, yet it
still remained something obscure that we could not fully understand. Soon
afterward the sun announced the impending evening, and this scene we had
kept before us was gone. At this point we were enlightened to the mysteri
ous reflections of the recluse and achieved understanding of the larger con
ditions that are constant within phenomena. The appeal was one of spirit,
and not merely a landscape of mountains and waters.
Thereupon we paused on the lofty summit and let our gaze roam all
around. Nine Rivers was like a sash, and the mountains and hills became
but bumps. Investigating the question from this perspective, as the shapes
of things may be huge or tiny, so human wisdom too should be the same.
Then we heaved great sighs, that even though the universe lasts on into re
mote spans, past and present fit together as one. Vulture Peak [in India,
where the Buddha Sakyamuni received a sutra] lies far from sightand paths
to it, grown over with vegetation, make it more inaccessible with each pass
ing day. Had there not been the wise Sakyamuni, who would have preserved
any trace of its quality? In consequence of these deep places here we have
become enlightened regarding something far awayand, strongly moved
such thoughts continue within us. We were each individually joyful at the
shared pleasures of this single encounter, and we were moved that such a
fine moment will be unlikely to recur. Feelings came forth from within,
whereupon we all wrote poems about it.
"
During the Tang, when someone was setting out on a journey and all his friends
gathered for a formal
eavetaking, they would often compile the poems composed
on the occasion in a small collection, for which one member of the group would
write the preface. From this practice developed the genre of the "presentation preface
or "parting preface, which came to be written to stand alone without poems.
In the following presentation preface, Han Yu puts the defense of the private life into
the mouth of his friend Li Yuan, though the defense begins as a praise of public suc
cess.
}
Han Yu, A Preface on Sending Li Yuan Back to Winding Valley

On the south slopes of the Tai-hang Range is found Winding Valley. The
springs are sweet in Winding Valley and the soil is rich, so that trees and
plants there grow in leafy abundance. Few men dwell there. Some sayuThe
valley is called Winding because it circles around between two moun607
tains. Others say, This valley is set in a remote place, and its shape is shut
off from the outsideit is a place where recluses go Wending their way '
My friend Li Yuan dwells there.
Yuan has said, I understand quite well what people call (a man of sub
stance/ He is of use to others and extends his generosity to themin his own
time his name is prominent. He sits in the imperial councils of state; he moves
ahead through the official ranks or down; he helps the Son of Heaven issue
commands. When he is outside the central government, he raises the battle
flag, lines up his men with their bows and arrows; he is the warrior who
shouts as he takes the lead, and those who follow him fill the road. Each of
the men for whom he provides attends to what he should, and they hurry
back and forth on both sides of the road. When he is pleased, he gives re
wards; when he is angered, he metes out punishments. When a group of tal
ented men crowd before him, he draws examples from past and present and
commends abundance of virtue; he listens without becoming irritated. His
brows arch finely and his cheeks are plump; he has a pleasing voice and a
relaxed bodyhe is splendid on the outside and astute within. Women with
their light gowns billowing, hiding behind long sleeves, faces powdered
white and brows painted blue-black, live peacefully in rows of chambers,
envious of favor shown to others, confidently trusting to their own charms.
They compete in sensuality and win his affection. These are the things that
happen when a man of substance meets the appreciative understanding of
the Son of Heaven, and exerts his energy in his own times.
It is not that I despise these things and run away from themrather fate
is involved. You cant get such things just by chance. I live in the humblest
way and remain in the wilderness; I climb up to the heights and gaze into
the distance or spend the whole day through sitting under a leafy tree; I bathe
in clear springs and keep myself clean. In the mountains I pick wild plants
that are delicious to the palate; I fish in the streams for a catch that is fresh
to eat. There are no set times to restrict my daily doings only what I am
easy with. It is better to avoid the assault that must follow than to enjoy the
commendation that comes before. It is better not to have ones heart trou
bled than to enjoy bodily pleasures. I am not bound to follow regulations
in regard to carriage and uniform the headsmans ax will not fall on me;
order and turmoil are unknown; dismissals and promotions are unheard of.
My life here is what a man of substance does when he does not meet with
his proper time, and this is what I do. Others serve at the gates of great lords;
they go scurrying along the paths of powertheir feet are about to carry them
forward, but they falter in uncertainty; their mouths are about to speak, but
they swallow their words; they stay amid filth and foulness and feel no
shame; they meet with punishments and are executed; and if they are lucky
beyond all measure, they can finally quit by dying of old age. How would
you make the decision whether this is a worthy course or one unbefitting?
IH an Yu of Chang-li, heard what he said and found it resolute. I gave
him some wine and made a song for him that went
608
The Song Dynasty
In Winding Valley
you have your mansion.
The soil of Winding Valley
can serve for planting.
The streams of Winding Valley,
can bathe a man and be followed.

The fastness of Winding Valley
means none strive for your place.
It is deep and sequestered,
providing vast space.
It twists and turns,
when you seem to go, you return.
Ah, for the joys of wending about,
joys that have no end.
Tigers and leopards stay far from your steps
dragons hide themselves away.
Gods and goblins protect you,
and ward away all baleful things.
Drink there and eat, live long and be hale,
here is enough, what more should you hope for?
Grease my carriage, feed my horse,
I will follow you in wending around,
end my days roaming free.
Ou-yang Xiu (10 0 7-1072)Preface on Sending Xu Wu-tang Off

on His Way Home South
The living things of the world, its birds and beasts and plants and trees, as
well as the masses of men may differ in the way they live; but in their dying
all are the same. All come at last to putrefaction, dissolution, and oblivion.
Yet among the masses of men there are sages and men of Worthiness. It is
certainly true that they too live and die among the others, yet they have a
single difference that sets them apart from birds and beasts and plants and
trees and the masses of men: though they die, they do not perish, and the
longer the span of time that passes, the more perfectly they endure. What
makes them sages or men of worth is something cultivated in their persons,
put into practice in their actions, or revealed in their words. It is by these
three things that they are able to endure and not perish.
There is nothing that cannot be attained when cultivating it in ones per
son. Putting it into practice in actions, however, sometimes succeeds and
sometimes does not. And when it comes to revealing it in words, there is an
additional question of skill. It is all right to put it into practice in actions
but not to reveal it in words. The men who have come down to us in the
Classic of Poetry, the Classic of Documentsand the Historical Records were
certainly not all skilled at words.
609
It is also ail right to cultivate it in ones person, yet not put it into prac
tice in actions or reveal it in words. Among the disciples of Confucius there
were indeed some skilled in political action and there were some skilled in
words. But there was also someone like Yan Hui, who stayed in a narrow
alley, pillowed his head on his elbow, and went to bed hungry. When he was
in a crowd, he would spend the entire day in silence, as if he were a sim
pleton. Yet all the disciples at that time held him in the highest honor and
felt that they could never hope to be his equal. Even hundreds and thousands
of years after him, there has never been anyone who could equal him. The
fact that he has endured and not perished obviously did not depend on his
putting it into practice in his actionsmuch less in his words.
I have read the Bibliographical Treatise of Ban Gu and the catalogue
of the Tang Imperial Library, and I have seen the entries listed there. From
the times since the three ancient dynasties and Qin and Han, those who have
written extensively have had more than a hundred works credited to their
name, and those who had written less still have had thirty or forty. The num
ber of such men is beyond reckoning. But through scattering, destruction,
and loss, less than one or two out of a hundred there listed survive. I have
felt saddened by such menthe essays they wrote were beautiful and they
were skilled in the handling of words; but at last they were no different from
the blossoms of plants and trees being whirled away by the wind, no dif
ferent from the fine sounds of birds and beasts passing the ear. The great ef
forts that they expended in the employment of mind and energyhow does
that differ from the scrambling and hustling of the masses of men? All of a
sudden they were dead. And though it sometimes came sooner and some
times later, they finally joined the other three~plants and trees, birds and
beasts, and the masses of menin returning to oblivion. Such is the un
trustworthiness of words. Those who study today all aspire not to perish,
just as the ancient sages and men of worth did not perish. And they strive
earnestly their whole lives through, spending their hearts in writingsuch
sadness I feel for them all!
In his youth Xu Wu-tang of Dong-yang studied literary writing with me,
and gradually he came to be well spoken of by others. He has gone off and
joined other scholars in taking the examinations at the Board of Rites. He
ranked high in the examination and from this his name became well known.
His writing makes steady progress, like surging waters and mountains emerg
ing. But I wished to curb his overweening enthusiasm and urge him to re
flection. For this reason I have addressed these words to him on his return.
But it is true that I also delight in writing, and in this I am admonishing
myself as well.
Accounts of Visits (you-ji)

Chinese landscape prose cannot be separated from geographical and topographical
traditions. The most important early work in this genre is the Commentary to the Clas
sic of Rivers (Shui-jingzhu) by Li Dao-yuan (d. 527), which goes far beyond the orig
610
The Song Dynasty

inal work and draws on a variety of sources to detail the geography of China. Al
though sometimes used privately, through the eighth century the "account" was pri
marily a public genre to commemorate a building in its landscape setting. Liu Zongyuan's (773-819) "accounts of visits" written during his exile, the most famous of
which was the "Eight Accounts of Yong-zhou// helped to transform the genre into
a private and meditative form. Visiting a place, the writer of the account would both
describe it and reflect on the experience, discovering large questions in everyday
circumstances.
The two pieces by Liu Zong-yuan that follow are both from the "Eight Accounts
of Yong-zhou.The first account plays on the motif of acquisition and the transfor
mation of the acquired piece of land both through landscaping and the imagination.
The second piece describes finding a small mountain that resembles a city wall, lead
ing to a half-serious, half-tongue-in-cheek meditation on a creator of the world.
Liu Zong-yuan, An Account of the Small Hill West of Gu-mu

Pond (from the Eight Accounts of Yong-zhou
Eight days after I reached West Mountain, I was exploring about two hun
dred paces along the road that leads northwest from the mouth of the val
ley, and I found Gu-mu Pond. Twenty-five paces west of the pond, where
the water flowed swift and deep, a fish-weir had been made. Above the
fish-weir was a hill growing with trees and bamboo. Almost beyond count
ing were its rocks, which jutted out menacingly, rearing themselves aloft,
spurning the earth in their emergence and rivaling one another in rare
shapes. The ones that descended, interlocking downward from sharp clefts,
seemed like cattle and horses watering at the creek. The ones that rose,
thrusting their rows of horns upward, seemed like bears climbing on a
mountain.
The hill was so small it did not even cover an acre; one might have kept
it packed in a basket. I asked the person in charge, who said, This is land
of the Tang family for which they have no use. They put it on the market,
but couldnt sell it. I asked how much they wanted for it, and he said, Only
four hundred pieces. I couldnt let go of it, so I bought it. At the time Li
Shen-yuan and Yuan Ke-ji had come along with me, and they were both
overjoyed at such an unexpected turn of events. We each in turn went to get
tools, scything away the undesirable plants and cutting down the bad trees,
which we set fire to and burned. Then the fine trees stood out, the lovely
bamboo were exposed, and the unusual rocks were revealed. When we
gazed out from upon it, the heights of the mountains, the drifting of clouds,
the currents of streams, and the cavorting of birds and beasts all cheerfully
demonstrated their art and skill in performance for us below the hill. When
we spread out our mats and lay down there, the clear and sharply defined
shapes were in rapport with our eyesthe sounds of babbling waters were
in rapport with our ears; all those things that went on forever in emptiness
were in rapport with our spirits; and what was as deep and still as an abyss
was in rapport with our hearts. In less than ten full days I had obtained two
611
rare places. Even those who loved scenic spots in olden times may well never
have been able to equal this.
I must say that if I were to transport this splendid scenery to Feng, Hao,
Hu, or Du-ling, the nobility who are fond of excursions would rival one an
other to purchase it. Every day its price would increase by another thousand
pieces, and it would grow ever harder to afford. But now it is left forsaken
in this province; as they pass by, farmers and fishermen think it worth noth
ing, and even with a price of only four hundred pieces it has not been pur
chased for years on end. Yet Itogether with Li Shen-yuan and Yuan Ke-ji
have been singularly delighted to get it. Isnt this a case of having a lucky
encounter at last? I wrote this on stone to celebrate this hills lucky encounter.
An Account of Little Rock Rampart Mountain (from the Eight

Accounts of Yong-zhou
From the point where West Mountain Road comes out, I went straight
north, crossing over Yellow Rush Ridge and coming down the other side.
There I found two roads. One went off to the west; I followed it, but found
nothing. The other went north a bit and then turned to the east, where, after
no more than a hundred and twenty-five yards, the dry land stopped at the
fork of a river. There a mass of rock lay stretched across the margin. Along
the top were the shapes of baitJemezits and timbers, while to the side were
palisades and a keep, which had something like a gateway in it. When I
peered inside, it was completely black. I tossed a stone inand there was a
splash of water in a cavernous space. The echoes continued to resound for
a long time. By circling around I could climb to the summit, where I gazed
far into the distance. There was no soil, yet fine trees and lovely shafts of
bamboo grew theresturdy and quite unusual. The way they were spread
out in clumps and open spaces, together with the angles at which they were
set, made it seem like they had been placed there by some intelligence.
For a long time now I have wondered whether there was a Creator or
not. When I came to this spot, I became even more convinced of his exis
tence. But then I thought it peculiar that he did not make this in the heartlandbut instead set it out here in an uncivilized wilderness where, in the
passage of centuries and millennia, he could not even once advertise his skill.
Thus all his hard labor was to no purpose. Given that a deity should not be
like thisperhaps he does not exist after all. Someone said, It is to provide
solace for virtuous men who come to this place in disgrace. Someone else
said, Here the divine forces produce no outstanding men, but instead pro
duce only these things, so that south of Chu there are few people and many
rocks. I do not believe either claim.
Chinese writers from the Song Dynasty on often chose pseudonyms, and such pseu
donyms often described their self-image as a private person. Ou-yang Xiu, a distin
guished intellectual and political figure, styled himself the "Drunken Old Man." Then
612
The Song Dynasty

he had a pavilion constructed, to which he also gave his pseudonym. There he could
play this role he had chosen, display it to others, and celebrate it in prose.
Ou-yang Xiu, An Account of the Pavilion of the Drunken Old

Man
Encircling Chu-zhou all around are mountains. The wooded gorges of the
various peaks to the southwest are overwhelmingly lovely. The one that
stands out in the view, rising thick with dense growth, is Lang-ya M oun
tain. Going six or seven miles into the mountain, you gradually begin to hear
the sound of flowing waterand the watercourse that spills out from between
the two peaks is Brewers Stream. As the path turns with the bend of the
cliff, there is a pavilion, its wings outspread, standing beside the stream; and
this is the Pavilion of the Drunken Old Man.
Who was it who built the pavilion? It was the mountain monk Zhi-xian.
Who was it gave the pavilion its name? This was the governor himself. The
governor would come with his guests to drink here; and when he had got
ten a little drunk, he, being the eldest of the company, gave himself the nick
name Drunken Old M an. The Drunken Old M ans interest was not in the
wine itself but in being here amid the mountains and waters. The delight in
mountains and waters was first found in the heart and then lodged tem
porarily in the wine.
When the sun comes out and the forest haze lifts, or when the clouds
come back to the hills and the caves in the cliffs grow dark, all the trans
formations of light and shadow are the passages from dawn to dusk in the
mountains. Wildflowers spring up and give off secret fragrancesthen the
cassia trees rise high and form dense shadethen winds blow high up and
the frost gleams in puritythen the waters sink and stones appearthese are
the four seasons in the mountains. At dawn we go there and at dusk return
and as the scenery of the four seasons is never the same, so our delight too
is limitless.
And as for those who carry burdens along the paths and travelers who
rest under the trees, the ones in front shout and those behind answer
hunched over with age or with children in tow, they go back and forth with
out ceasing. These are the travels of the people of Chu-zhou. By the creek,
we fishthe creek is deep and the fish are plump. We use the streams water
in brewing wine; and since the water smells sweet, the wine is sharp and
clear. Pieces of fish and game from the mountains and vegetables from the
wilds are served to us in varying dishes; and these are the banquets of the
governor. Our delight when tipsy at these banquets does not come from the
music of harps and flutes. Someone playing toss-pot makes his throw some
one playing chess wins; horn-cups and wine tallies are all jumbled together
amid the noisy chatter of people getting up and sitting downand these are
the pleasures of the assembled guests. And the person with his face dark
ened by age and white-haired, lying passed out in the middle, is the gover
nor. drunk.
Then the evening sun is in the mountains and the shadows of people scat
ter in disarray; this is the governor going home and his guests following. As
the woods become veiled in shadow, there is a singing above and down
below, and this is the delight of the birds at the departure of the human vis
itors.
And yet the birds may experience the delight of the mountain forests, but
they do not experience the delight of the people. The other people may ex
perience the delight of coming to visit this place with the governor, but they
do not experience the governors delight in their delight. The person who in
drunkenness can share their delight and who, sobering up, can give an ac
count of it in writing is the governor. And who is the governor? Ou-yang
Xiu of Lu-ling.
Funerary Genres
In The Zuo Tradition, Confucius is credited with the saying: "If the language lacks
patterning, it will not go far.This has been given grand implications in the tradi
tion of Chinese literary thought, but on one level at least, wen, "patterning, simply
means "writing. Writing enables words to be carried distances in space and last
through time: it is in some essential way commemorative. In China, as in many cul
tures, early traditions of writing served an important role in honoring and com
memorating the dead. There were several prose genres that played various roles in
helping the living place themselves in relation to the dead. These genres included
laments, inscriptions, and prayers or ceremonial addresses. Although such prosegenres were often intended to serve normative purposes, it is usually the most personal,
the most individual, and the least normative works that are still appreciated today.
Cao Zhi (192-232), A Lament for Golden GourdJin-hu

Jin-hu was my firstborn daughter, and though she had not yet learned to
speak, she could already recognize expressions on a persons face and knew
what was in our hearts. She died an untimely death, after a life of only one
hundred and ninety days. I wrote these lines for her
Caressed and nursed in swaddling clothes,
already childs laughter, though not yet speaking.
In less than a year untimely gone~
why was she punished by sovereign Sky?
It was surely brought on by my misdeeds,
I grieve for this infant, she had no fault.
She has left the embrace of father and mother,
her small bones dissolve in the filth of soil.
Sky is forever, Earth endures,
how long does a mans life last?
Whether sooner or later we do not know,
but a time will come when I go with you.
The Song Dynasty

Tao Qian, one of the most unconventional figures in the Chinese tradition, has left
perhaps the most unconventional use of a highly formal funerary genre, the
sacrificial prayer for the dead/7
-
Tao Qian, A Sacrificial Prayer for the Dead on My Own Behalf

The year is 427
the pitch-pipe
s note signals November.
The weather is cold, the nights grow long,
there is a gloom
the atmosphere.
W ild geese and swans are on their migrations
all growing things yellow and shed their leaves.
And Master Tao is taking his leave
of this inn where he lodged on his journey
to return forever to his earliest dwelling.
Old friends are upset and grieve for him,
having come together this evening
to feast him before he sets off.
They have laid a table with fine vegetables
and offered him a round of clear wine.
But when he looks at their faces, they are already dim;
when he listens to voices, they seem ever more blurred.
Such a sad moment!
This earth, this huge clod of soil, is so vast,
and the high welkin stretches on and on.
These give birth to the thousands of things,
and I happened to become a man.
And ever since I became a man,
it was my fortune to be poor.
Gourd and foodbasket were ever bare,
summers thin clothing laid out in winter.
Yet happy inside, I drew water from vales
and sang as I carried my firewood along.
Hidden behind my brushwood gate
I did my work both night and day.
Springs and autumns passed in succession,
there were tasks to be done in my garden.
I did my hoeing, I did my weeding,
then it was nurturedthen grew lush.
I found delight in my books,
I accompanied them with my seven-string harp.
In wintertime I sunned myself,
in summer I bathed in streams.
No energy remained in me after my labors,
yet my heart was ever at peace.
'
I rejoiced in Heaven, accepted my lot,

and reached my full span of years.
And this full span of years
everyone clings to them so.
Men fear they will accomplish nothing,
greedy for days and begrudging their seasons.
When alive they are treasured by the age;
even when gone men think of them.
But I alas, go my singular way,
I have ever been different from men like these.
To find favor gave me no sense of glory,
nor could any soiling stain me.
I lived aloof in my bare cottage,
drinking till tipsy, composing poems.
Though I recognize fortune and understand fate,
who can help turning to look back fondly?
Yet in this change I will now undergo
I can be without resentment.
I have passed a full span to ripe old age
seeking comfortable privacy for myself.
And aged now, I meet my end
what more is there to yearn for?
Cold and warm seasons move on,
those gone differ from those alive.
Kin of mother and wife come in the morning,
good friends rush to my side by night.
Bury him in the midst of the meadow
to give peace to his soul.
I will move on, blind in the darkness
grim is the door to the grave.
The excess of Songs liegeman would shame me,
I laugh at the thrift of Yang Wang-sun.1
I have vanished into vast darkness,
I have gone far from all agony.
Raise no mound and plant no trees,
let sun and moon pass overhead.
I did not value praise when alive,
who cares for songs of me afterward?
Life was truly difficult,
I wonder how death will be?
Alas.
p'Song's liegeman" was Huan Tui, who had a lavish stone casket made that took more than three
years to complete. Yang-Wang-sun, on the other hand, commanded his children to bury him naked.
The Song Dynasty
Parables
'
Although they were an important part of Chinese prose writing since antiquity,
"parables" were not considered a distinct genre in the repertoire of Chinese prose
genres. Nevertheless, such short works remain among the best known and loved of
classical prose writings. The lessons of these later parables, sometimes made explicit
as in the second of the two by Liu Zong-yuan that follow, are more often than not
political.
Liu Zong-yuan, Three Cautionary Tales

The Fawn of Lin-jiang
A man of Lin-jiang once caught a fawn while hunting and wanted to raise
it. When he entered his gate, his pack of dogs began to drool, and they all
began to advance on ittheir tails wagging. The man was furious and made
them cower to him then every day he would carry the fawn in his arms over
to the dogs until they got used to seeing it. He forced them not to misbe
have and gradually got them to play with it.
After a long time the dogs all behaved as the man wantedand as the
fawn gradually grew larger, it forgot that it was a deer. It believed that the
dogs were its true friendsand became increasingly familiar with them,
butting them and knocking them over. In fear of their master, the dogs would
romp with the deer in a very friendly manneralthough every once in a while
one would bite on his own tongue.
Three years later the deer wandered out the gate and saw another pack
of dogs on the road. There was a large number of them, and the deer went
running toward them, wanting to play. These other dogs were at once de
lighted and stirred to fury. Together they killed the deer, ate it, and left bits
of the carcass strewn all over the road. Until the very moment it died, the
deer didnt understand.
The Story of the Fuban, or Pack Beetle

The fuban is a small insect that excels at carrying loads on its back. When
it chances on something as it walks along, it immediately takes hold of it,
and then, raising it up with its head, it loads the thing onto its back. The
weight on its back gets increasingly heavy, but it will not stop what it does,
even in dire straits. Its back is quite rough, so that the things it has accu
mulated do not slip off. It eventually collapses and just lies thereunable to
get up. Sometimes a person will feel pity for it and get rid of its load. But
no sooner is it able to walk again than it takes hold of things just as it did
before. It also likes to climb high placesand when it does so, it will con
tinue to use every bit of its strength until it falls to the ground and dies.
Those in our own times who lust to lay hold of things will never back
away when they chance on possessions by which to enrich their household.
They dont understand that it encumbers themrather, they fear only that
*617
they won't accumulate enough. When they become weary and stumble, they
are dismissed from office or sent into banishment. They even think that an
ill has befallen them in this. If they can get up again, they will not forbear.
Every day they think about how they can get a higher position and increase
their income, and their greed for acquisition intensifies. As they draw near
to falling from their perilous perch, they may consider those who have sim
ilarly perished before, yet they never take warning from the example. Though
their bodies are immense by comparison, and they are named human be
ings,Myet their wisdom is that of a small insect, and also worthy of pity.
Informal Prose
In addition to the older prose genres, new and relatively informal genres of classi
cal prose grew in popularity from the Song Dynasty on. The language in these works
ranged from an easy classical style to a mixed style in which elements and con
structions from the vernacular appear within the classical. These new genres included
informal letters, travel and p e rso n a l diaries, collections of "random jottings" (bi-ji),
memoirs, and colophons (short prose pieces written in comment on books, paint
ings, and pieces of calligraphy).
Su Shi ( 10 3 7 -110 1) Written After Seeing the Paintings of Wu

Dao-zi
Those with knowledge first fashion a thing those with ability carry it
through. It is not accomplished by one person alone. The superior man in
his study and all the various artisans in their skills reached a state of com
pletion in the passage from the Three Dynasties of antiquity through the Han
* down td the Tang. When poetry reached Du Fuwhen prose reached Han
Yu, when calligraphy reached Yan Zhen-qingand when painting reached
W u Dao-zi, then all the variations of past and present and all the possibili
ties in the world were over. W u Dao-zis paintings of people and things are
like casting a reflection with a lamp; in anticipating what is to come and re
calling where they were, seen from side or angle, slanting or level, each is
perfect in degreeand he achieves the proportions of nature, without erring
in the smallest detail. He displays fresh thoughts within strict rules and
leaves the most subtle sense of pattern beyond swaggering self-expression.
This is what Zhuang-zi meant by plenty of space for the blade to move or
a wind rising from plying the ax. He is absolutely unique in ancient and mod
ern times. As for other paintings, I may not necessarily be able to tell the
painters name. But when it comes to Wu Dao-zi, no sooner do I look at one
than I can tell if it is genuine or a fake. Few indeed are the genuine ones in
our age, yet the one Shi Quan-shu has in his collection is such as I have seen
only once or twice in my life.
~W ritten October 7, 1085.
The Song Dynasty

The following is a colophon attached to a prose account-"" written by Fu's friend
Dai Ting-shi (the Feng-zhong referred to in the colophon) about a tower that Dai
himself had constructed, the inspiration for which was a dream Dai had had.
Fu Shan (1609- 1684)Colophon on the Account of the Scarlet

Maple Tower
Because of Feng-zhong5s dream, there was a towerbecause of the tower,
there was an account of the tower. The tower resembles how it was in his
dream, and the account resembles his tower. But then who can say that these
really correspond? In any case, dream and account both having been com
pleted, he further enjoined me, old fellow that I am, to write on the topic.
Now it happens that I am someone quite able in telling dreams. I once main
tained that the most remarkable men in the world, the most remarkable
events, the most remarkable creatures, the most remarkable scenes, and the
most remarkable transformations were none so remarkable as a dream.
When it comes to dreams elusive presences and spectral fleetings, the liter
ary mans writing brush cannot describe one thing in a million.
Nonetheless, insofar as the elusive scenes in literary works themselves
resemble dreams, they lie beyond our common expectations. Feng-zhong
truly has a great love of literature. For my own part, I cannot write but I
can dream. Now and then Ill be reading some piece out loud for Feng-zhong,
and all at once Ill find myself in a scene of dream. Both of us will be all
groggy and confused; and then as we come to our senses again, we will for
get it. I can still recall one or two things, but Feng-zhong immediately for
gets everything and retains nothing. This is why I am the one who tells
dreams and Feng-zhong is the one who listens to dreams. Now telling dreams
and listening to dreams are poles apart. It is most fortunate that Feng-zhong
forgets them. For if the least of them lingered in his mind, I would lead Fengzhong into a land of engulfing blackness, and he would never awaken.
Place
China has an immense literature of "place, which includes descriptive geography,

"accounts" (ji) of scenic landscapes and buildings, travel diaries, poems, and nu
merous local gazetteers that compiled a wealth of information on the natural, po
litical, cultural, and literary history of each region.
China was the largest territory of the premodern world whose inhabitants had a
sense that it was "one place." Other cultural regions were divided by language and
rival ethnic groups or were unified as a single people (such as the Arabs). However
vague its boundaries, China was seen (perhaps erroneously) as a unified territory,
polity, people, and culture. Chinese religious, diplomatic, and commercial travels,
along with continuous emigration outward, especially into Southeast Asia, show that
the Chinese were no less venturesome than their European counterparts. In Europe,
however, accounts of marvels seen on distant voyages were the norm of travel lit
erature and no small force behind the European age of exploration. Although ac
counts of distant journeys do play a role in Chinese literature, that role is much
smaller than the role played by the literature of internal travel. China had the first
tourist industry, and its huge territory was gradually mapped by writing poems,
prose accounts, inscriptions, travel diaries until the pleasure of travel became in
no small part the physical experience of a place already known from texts.
Cold Mountain's sense of "place" as purely a state of mind was relatively rare
in classical Chinese literature, its most famous expression being Tao Qian's "the mind
far away, its place becomes remote." Most "places," however, are made by config
urations of nature or by accidents of history: places have a physical form and his
torical lore that the writer encounters and to which he responds. The lore of a place
and even ways to observe a place's physical forms are transmitted in such texts.
The Master of Cold Mountain (Tang)

Someone asked me the way to Cold Mountain
to Cold Mountain no road goes through.
The ice does not melt on summer days,
when the sun comes out, the fog there glows.
How did someone like me get there?
my heart is not at all like yours.
If only your heart were just like mine,
you could get right there right away.
The Song Dynasty
When Su Shi, the most famous of all Song writers, visited Lu Mountain, he resolved
at first to be an "innocent" traveler, wanting to experience the mountains without
writing poems (as a modern tourist might resolve to travel without taking pho
tographs). This initial resolution quickly fell prey to demands arising from his fame
as a poet. Then a friend sent him a guide to the mountain, which told him where to
go and what to look for, quoting famous poems by previous visitors, and Su Shi could
not stop h im s e lf fro m re sp o n d in g to e a rlie r p o em s a b o u t the m o u n ta in s. In d e e d , the
final quatrain in the account below, which is taken from Su's collection of informal
accounts, The Forest of Records, became one of the most famous of all Lu Moun
tain poems.
Su Shi, Account of a Visit to Lu Mountain

(from The Forest o f Records)
When I first entered the Lu Mountain Range, I found its mountains and
valleys extraordinary. Never before in my life had I seen their likeand I had
hardly any time to come up with the expected responses. At this point I had
the notion that I didnt want to write any poems. But afterward, whenever
I met monks or laymen in the mountains, they always said, Su Shi is here!
Before I knew it, I had written a quatrain that went:

Straw sandals, cane of green bamboo,
I roam, leaving strings of a hundred cash.2
But I marvel how deep in the mountains
everyone knows the old count.3
Having finished this, I scoffed at myself for the folly of my earlier decision.
Then I wrote two more quatrains that went
Green hills feel no cause to act familiar;
haughty they rise and refuse to be amiable.
If I want to recognize Lu Mountain^ face,
in some future year it will be an old friend.
And another:
I recall long ago admiring this place,
and then first roamed in its distant haze.
But this time it isnt in a dream
this really is Lu Mountain.
On that day someone sent me a copy of Chen Ling-ju
s Account of Lu
Mountain. I read it as I went along, and saw that he mentioned poems by
2This refers to a story of the monk Zha-dao who, when he ate some dates by the roadside, left a
string of cash hanging from the tree to pay for his meal.
3The "old count" is the Count of Dong-ling, who took up planting melons after the fall of the Qin
Dynasty. Su Shi uses the reference playfully here to term himself someone who formerly held high
office and now acts the role of the commoner.
*621
Xu Ning and Li Bo. Before I knew it, I couldnt help laughing. In a short
while I entered the Kai-yuan Temple, and the abbot there asked for a poem,
whereupon I wrote a quatrain [on the Cascade] that went:
The god sent this silvery river
that hangs in a single stream,
for all time its only lines of verse
were written by Li Bo.
The splashing spray of its flying current
I wonder how much there is
not enough to wash away
one bad poem by X u Ning.
I went back and forth in the northern and southern parts of the range for
over ten daysfinding it to be the most splendid scenery, finer than one can
adequately describe. If I were to select the two most entrancing spots,
Scoured Jade Pavilion and the Three Gorges Bridge are beyond comparison.
Thus I wrote two poems for them. Last of all, I went with old Chang-zong
to visit West Forest Temple and wrote another quatrain:
See it stretched before you in a ridge;
from the side it becomes a peak,
no matter from where I look at the mountain
it is never exactly the same.
I cannot tell the true face
of Lu Mountain,
which is simply because I myself
am here within the mountain.
'
My Lu Mountain poems are summed up in this.

Those who wrote landscape "accounts" (ji) often gave the history of a place, telling
o f its p re vio u s visito rs and e x p la in in g th e origin o f its n am e. In the fo llo w in g
famous
"Account of Stone Bell Mountain," Su Shi speaks as the venturesome empiricist, cor
recting the failures of his predecessors and demonstrating the link between the place
and its name.
Account of Stone Bell Mountain

It is written in the Classic o f Waters: By the mouth of Lake Peng-li we find
Stone Bell M ountain. Li Dao-yuan [d. 527the commentator on the Clas
sic of Waters] gave the opinionIf you stand over the deep pools and a faint
breeze agitates the waves, then water and stone will smack against one an
other, giving the sound of a huge bell. Such is the storythough people
have always been dubious about it. If you place a bell or chimes in water,
they wont ring no matter how strong the winds and waves aremuch less
stone.
The Song Dynasty
In the Tang, Li Bo was the first to go seek out the place where this was
supposed to occur, and he found two stones by those pools.4He struck them
and listenedthe sound of the one on the southern side was muffled and deep,
while the tone of the one on the northern side was clear and carried far.
When he stopped using the drumstick, the aftertones kept rising, until the
last resonances slowly came to an end. And here he thought he had found
the source of the story. I find, however, that! have even more doubts about
this version than I have about Li Dao-yuans. Stones with ringing tones are
much the same anywhereso why was this place singled out with the name
Bell
In 1084, the seventh year of the Yuan-feng Reign, on July 14I was on
my way by boat from Qi-an to Lin-ru. My eldest son, Mai, was going to
take up his post as commandant in De-xing County in Rao-zhou. I went
along with him to the mouth of the lake to see him off, and this gave me a
chance to visit the so-called Stone Bell. Oae of the monks at the temple had
his young servant boy take a hatchet to strike one or two rocks chosen from
a jumble of rocks there. The little clink clink they made was truly ludicrous,
and I found it utterly incredible.
As the night came on and the moon grew bright, M ai and I got in a small
boat and went off all by ourselves to a spot beneath the sheer cliff. The huge
rock stood leaning a thousand feet above us, like some fierce beast or strange
demon ready to seize human beings in that brooding darkness. And then
high on the mountain, a roosting falcon, hearing human voices, flew up sud
denly with a screeching cry among the clouds. Then also there was some
thing like the sound of an old mans giggling laughter among the mountain
valleys. Someone said that this was the stork.
At that point my heart was shaken and I was ready to turn back, when
a huge sound came out over the waters, booming like a bell being struck
continuously. The boatman was quite frightened. But when I'took the time
to examine the phenomenon closely, I found that there were crevices in the
rocks at the foot of the mountain, whose depth I couldnt tell. When a small
wave entered them, it heaved and sloshed about, producing this sound.
The boat turned back and passed between two mountains at the entrance
to the mouth of the bay. There in midcurrent stood a large rock, with room
enough for a hundred persons to sit on it. It had hollow spaces inside and
many cavities that either sucked in or spurted out wind and water, produc
ing sounds like ding-dong and ding-a-ling. These answered the earlier boom
ing sounds as if music were being played. I laughed and said to Mai, Do
you recognize it? The one that goes boom is the famous wu-yi bell of King
Jing of the Zhou; the ones that go ding-dong and ding-a-ling are the song
bells once given to Wei Jiang [by Lord Dao of Jin]. The ancients werent de
ceiving us.
Can a person make a decision regarding the existence of something
purely on the basis of his own fancy, without having seen it with his own
4This Li Bo is not the poet, but a prose writer who composed an essay on the site in 798.
623
eyes or heard it with his own ears? What Li Dao-yuan saw and heard was
pretty much the same as what I had just experiencedyet he didnt speak of
it in enough detail. If a grand gentleman weren't willing to moor a small boat
at the foot of the sheer cliff in the night, he couldnt know about it. Though
the fishermen and navigators on the lake know about it, they cant express
it. This is the reason the explanation was not passed down to the present
times. And some fool tries to find the source of the story by striking rocks
with an ax and thinks he has gotten the truth. This is my record of the mat
ter, deploring the brevity of Li Dao-yuan
s account, and laughing at the folly
of Li Bo.
Thrills
Su Shi's investigation of the empirical basis of the mysterious sound of bells plays
counterpoint to the eerie boating scene that precedes it. Many landscape accounts
are soberly philosophical and descriptive, but there are also those that deliberately
seek to evoke the thrills of travel, to recapture some of the excitement of the un
known in a genre whose primary function is to make the place known and familiar.
Chao Bu-zhi ( 10 5 3 -1110 ) An Account of a Visit to North

Mountain at Xin-cheng
Thirty miles north of Xin-cheng we went ever deeper into the mountains,
where the plants, trees, streams, and rocks became increasingly isolated. At
first we could still ride among the teeth of the stones. On every side were
huge pines, some bent over like the awnings of carriages and others straight
like parasolsthose that stood upright were like human beings, and those
that lay down were like great serpents. Among the grasses beneath the pines
were streams bubbling up, then disappearing until they fell into wells of stone
with a ringing sound. Among the pines were vines some twenty or so feet
long, twisting around like great eels. On the top there were birds, as black
as mynah birds, with red crests and long beaks, bobbing their heads up and
down and pecking with a rapping sound.
A little farther west a single peak rose abruptly to a prominence
and there
was a path marking a division on it, a path that could be traveled only on
foot. We tied our horses to outcroppings of stone and went up, helping each
other along. When we looked up through the bamboo, we could not see the
daylight. We went on like this for four or five leagues until we heard the
sounds of barnyard fowl. Monks in cassocks of plain cloth and slippers came
out to greet us. As we talked with them, they stared at us in wide-eyed amaze
ment, like deer that could not be touched. At the summit there was a build
ing with twenty or so rooms, its balconied outer hallway curving along the
course of the cliff wall, twisting like the course of a snail or a rat3after which
we came out into the open again. There doors and windows faced one an
other. As we sat down, a howling gust of mountain wind came, and all the
The Song Dynasty
chimes and clappers in the halls were set ringing. We few looked around at
one another in surprise, not knowing into what kind of realm we had come.
And when it was evening, we all went to bed.
It was then Novemberthe heavens were high and the dew clear, the
mountains deserted and the moon bright. We looked up at the stars, which
together shed a great light, as if they were right over us. Through the win
dow twenty or so stalks of bamboo began tapping against one another with
an endless clacking. Among the bamboo, palm and plum trees stood dark
and ominous, looking like disheveled demons holding themselves apart.
And we few again looked around at one another, our spirits so shaken that
we couldnt get to sleep. As it gradually grew light outside, we all left.
Several days after I returned home, I was still in a daze as if I had en
countered something, so I wrote this account from memory. I never went
there again, but I always see what occurred in my minds eye.
The following popular anthology piece is an even more sophfsticated attempt to

evoke the mood of a trip and the alternation between terror and exhilaration on the
part of the travelers. The writer's obvious pleasure in the thrill of danger (even
though the danger proves imaginary rather than real) is counterbalanced by the con
clusion, in w hich he solemnly chastises himself for his lack of caution_ reminding
the reader that in the Confucian tradition the thrill of danger is illicit.
Cheng Min-zheng (ca. 1446-ca. 1500)Night Passage Over

Two Passes
I asked for leave to return to my home in the South. In winter, on Decem
ber 161478I crossed Great Spear Ridge and reached Great Willow Sta
tion. It was only a little after noon, and I didnt want to stop just there. When
I asked the attendant of the way station, he deceived me, saying, You can
still make it to Chu-hou by evening. I got on my horse and had gone thirty
miles, when I dimly heard one of my party saying, Clear Current Pass lies
ahead its terribly dangerousmany tigers. That stuck in my mind.
When we reached the pass, it was already getting black, and there was
no place to which we could turn back. At that point I sent someone to have
the official couriers hurry ahead at the foot of the mountain, holding gongs
and carrying torches as we proceeded. At the opening of the pass, two peaks
rose up several thousand feet high on either side of us; and when I looked
up, I couldn't see all the way to their summits. The stone walkway being
steep and rougheveryone dismounted, and we went up at such an incline
that we seemed to be climbing on each others shoulders. We further agreed
that if there were some cause for alarm, those in front and behind would re
spond by shouting and making loud noises. At that moment it happened that
there was a large shooting starflaring brightly as it coursed from east to
west. Then a cold wind came up violently, and the torches all went out. The
plants and trees on the mountains all around us were making howling
625
sounds in the wind. From all of this everyone felt in grave danger, and we
shouted and made noise without letup. The gongs were rung, and the moun
tain valleys shook with their echoes. We went on about six or seven miles
and reached the summit, where we suddenly saw the moon come out like a
gleaming plate of silver, casting its glow everywhere. At this point we raised
our hands and congratulated one another. But even so, as we went down
the mountain my heart was still apprehensive, and I couldnt calm down for
quite a long time. I surmise that this pass was the very place where the Palace
General Zhao Kuang-yin smashed the Southern Tang and captured its two
generals. Although this trip was dangerous and full of strangeness, it was
I
m sure, the crowning moment of my entire life. At about ten oclock that
night we reached Chu-yang.
At noon on the seventeenth, we passed Quan-jiao and were hastening to
He-zhou. Having luckily gotten out of one dangerous situation, I had be
come blase and had no further anxieties. We went on forty miles and crossed
Back River, when I saw the shadowy form of a mountain directly facing us.
I asked someone in my party and was told that we would have to climb this
before we could reach the Xiang-lin Temple in He-zhou. In a little while the
sun gradually passed behind the peak, and the horses moved into a spur o f
the mountains. The ridges and peaks bent around and merged, with care
fully laid out mulberry fields and several villages just like Wu-ling or Mate
Pool Mountain, and I found it delightful.
Then evening came on, and as we went further in, it became increas
ingly mountainous. Plants and trees blocked the road, which seemed to go
on so far that we did not know where it would end. We passed a temple in
the wilds where I met an old man, whom I asked, "What mountain is
this? He said, This is the old Zhao Pass. Its still more than thirty miles
to Xiang-lin Temple. You had better hurry because there are people setting
fires on the mountain ahead of you, burning the plateaus to drive off the
tigers.
That time we had prepared neither gongs nor torches. At the side of a
mountain we waded through a swift torrent, and there were eerie rocks like
a forest. The horses shied away from these. The whole party thought the
rocks were tigers crouching to pounce, and people turned to run in the op
posite direction, falling over on top of one another. The sounds of our
shouts was very weak, but even when we forced ourselves to yell loudly, we
couldn't drive them away. After quite a long time we got up again. As we
went on along the ridge, I peered intently down the slopes and into the
crevices, but they were so deep I couldnt see the bottom. There were the
splashing waters of a torrent that seemed fast or slow according to how
strongly the wind was blowing. I looked up and saw the stars and constel
lations filling the sky. And I predicted that I would probably not escape this
time. Then I thought how once long ago Wu Zi-xu found himself in great
difficulty in this very pass. I wonder if this sort of thing is inevitable for any
one who comes to this terrible place. It was after ten oclock when we
The Song Dynasty
reached Xiang-lin Temple. In the lamplight I was lost in a daze, as if I had

been reborn.
Since I had been away from my parents for such a long time31 showed
no foresight in anything. Challenging danger andtraveling by night, I had
crossed two passes and braved the lairs of tigers. Though I stood on the brink
of peril, I had the good fortune to escape. And this may well be called lack
of caution, I have dutifully noted it down as a warning to posterity.
People and Places

In Chinese popular religion, as in Greco-Roman antiquity in the West, there were
spirits of place gods or demigods who had a claim to certain natural objects or ter
ritories. Writers in an elite culture did not often directly acknowledge such spirits
(Han Yu was one of the exceptions), but in their place we often find a personified
landscape. Like people, landscapes come to public notice or hide themselves away
like recluses; and also like people, landscapes depend on human beings for recog
nition.
Wen Zheng-ming (1470-1559 ), Preface to the Joint Collection

of Poems on Seeking Plums on Xuan-mu Mountain
Xuan-mu Mountain is in the southwestern part of W u Prefecture, over
looking the Great Lake. Western Summit and Copper Pit shine beside it on
either side. There can be found thousands of sprays of alabaster plums, grow
ing mixed together with pine and bamboo. At the juncture between winter
and spring there is a rich profusion of fragrance and color from the blos
soms. And on the sheer cliffs, among the melting patches of snow, they give
off a glow, both above and down below in the rippling vastness of light upon
the waters, thousands of acres within a single sweep of the eye. All the moun
tains of Lake Dong-ting are as if tightly stacked on a bookcase. It is the
supreme realm, the region of those pure beings who live forever.
Yet the place is remote and out of the way, with few people living there,
and unreachable by horse and carriage. Even though it has ancient monas
teries and famous abbeys, these have become rundown through the long
years; and their eminent monks and their lively and spirited gentlemen have
gradually disappeared into the past. No one can truly grasp the quality of
the place unless they have genuine perceptiveness and their sentiments are
inclined to such isolated places. Nor can one ramble through such a realm
without feeling a full measure of that excitement that comes with high spir
its and a willingness to go off on ones own. Furthermore, to express the
place in poetry, to celebrate in verse each variety of thing viewed, requires
a deep insight into its splendors. In this regard I find something worthwhile
in the compositions on seeking plums by Messrs. Fang and Wu.
In ancient times, notable mountains were made glorious by particular
personsyet the reason they were so valued was not merely for roaming
627
around sight-seeing. Those people had some notable worthiness whereby

they honored such places, and found some insight into those mountains
through their own elevated sentiments and the grace of their temperaments.
Nevertheless, without the robust brilliance of literary works to bring out
what was remarkable and otherwise hidden, these places still would have
ended up dim and unknown. So it matters not whether a mountain is low
or high, near or far: if it happens to encounter some notable person, that is
always enough to have its splendors celebrated all the world over.
This homeland of mine, W u, is called the prefecture of mountains and
waters. Yet the most famous places nowadays are Tiger H ill and Spirit
Ridge, which became important because of the prose of Gu Ye-wang and
poems by the Daoist Qing-yuanby Li Bo, by Wei Ying-wu, and by Bo Juyi. The splendors ofXuan-mu Mountain are really in no way inferior to those
other two, but at the moment there have been few who were capable of ex
pressing what makes the place noteworthy. I can only conclude that the
mountain had not yet found the right people for it, and that its own liter
ary works had not yet been written and accepted.
It has been said that the various mountains of Yong-zhou and Liu-zhou
became widely known through the writings of Liu Zong-yuan. Yet the ex
ceptional qualities of Liu Zong-yuanss prose could only have been brought
out by those very mountains of Yong-zhou and Liu-zhou. Other poems by
Messrs. Fang and Wu do indeed have great darity and beauty, but critics
say that the pieces on Xuan-mu Mountain are particularly fine. Might we
not then say that the exceptional qualities of that particular landscape had
something about it that brought out the best in them as well? And their own
genuine perceptiveness and their sentiments inclined to isolated placesto
gether with that excitement that comes with high spirits and a willingness
to go off on ones ownthese truly made it possible for them to have in
sight into the place. Moreover, both of these men have refinement and have
established themselves; they have been eminent in public service, and known
for their principles when withdrawing into private life, unwilling to assume
commonplace obsequiousness toward others. The sum of what they have
achieved will surely make them eminent. And in time to come someone will
surely read their poems and imagine seeing the persons, all through their en
joyment of the splendors of this mountain. Thus I wrote this preface for pos
terity.
O ne of the earliest and best-known discussions of the principle whereby a place be

comes known through a particular person is the following account by Ou-yang Xiu.
O n Mount Xian near the city of Xiang-yang was the famous "stele for shedding tears,"
dedicated to the third-century governor Yang Hu. O n this mountain, Yang Hu wept
when he considered how many worthy people had died, their names now forgot
ten. For Ou-yang Xiu, the account is an occasion to consider the significance of ming,
w hich means both "name" and "fame."
The Song Dynasty
Ou-yang Xiu (100 7-1072)An Account of the Pavilion on

Mount Xian
Mount Xian looks down on the river Han; when I gaze at it, I can barely
make it out. It is surely the smallest of the major mountains, yet its name is
particularly well known in Jing-zhou. This is, of course, because of the per
sons associated with it. And who are those persons? None other than Yang
Hu and Du Yu.
The Jin was engaged in a military struggle with the state of W u, and it
was considered of great importance to hold Jing-zhou. These two men
Yang Hu and Du Yu, were governors here in succession; and thus in the con
quest of W u and in the fulfillment of Jins destiny, their glorious deeds
crowned that age. Some lingering echo of their valiant and dashing manner
still suffuses the whole region, where the Yangzi meets the river Han and
people today still think on them. But it is on Yang Hu that they think most
deeply.
Du Yu is, perhapsthe more famous for his deeds, while Yang Hu is fa
mous for his kindness. Although these two men differed in their actions, in
both cases what they did was sufficient to bring them immortality. But I do
wonder why it was that they were both so anxious about their fame in later
ages. The story goes that Yang Hu once climbed this mountain and in de
pression said to his entourage that the mountain would be here forever, while
men of ages past had perished utterly and no more was heard of them. Then
he considered his own case and fell into deep sorrow. Little did he realize
that the mountain would become famous because of him. Du Yu, on the
other hand, had his achievements inscribed on two stones; one of these he
set up on the mountain, and the other he threw in the deepest part of the
river. He understood quite well that valleys and hills would someday change
their places. What he did not understand was that the stone would some
day wear away. Was it that they both went too far in their concern for im
mortality out of too much pleasure in fame? Or did they long for such re
mote goals because they paid themselves too much honor?
The mountain has had a pavilion from early times. Tradition has it that
this is the place Yang Hu visited. It has often fallen into ruin and just as often
has been rebuilt; the reason for this is that there have been so many in later
ages who admired Yang H u
s name and thought about the kind of person
he was. In 1068my friend Shi Zhong-hui left his post as ceremonial direc
tor and came here to Xiang-yang as governor. Because the pavilion was get
ting old, the following year he enlarged it and renovated it, surrounding it
with a magnificent balcony and extending its rear porch, making these as
popular as the pavilion itself.
Shi Zhong-huis name is well known in our times, and his excellent rep
utation follows him wherever he goes. Xiang-yangs people are peaceful
under his government, and they delight in going with him on excursions.
Thus it was that they came to give his former office title to the name of the
629
new porch_ The Porch of the Ceremonial Director. They wanted, more
over, to record the occasion on stone so that it would be transmitted far into
the future along with the names of Yang Hu and Du Yu. Shi Zhong-hui was
unable to prevent them in either matter, so he came to me to write the ac
count.
I am of the opinion that since Shi Zhong-hui understands so well the
proper admiration for Yang Hu5s manner and how to follow in his footsteps,
we can know the kind of person he is and his aspirations. Because the peo
ple of Xiang-yang love him and are contented with himwe can know the
way he has governed Xiang-yang. This is written because of the desires of
the people of Xiang-yang.
When it comes to the splendid forms of the mountains and rivers around
the pavilion, the blurring haze of plants, trees, clouds, and mist coming into
view and disappearing in the broad and empty expanse, hanging between
presence and absence, which can fully satisfy the gaze of a poet as he climbs
these heights and writes his own Li Sao~ it is best that each viewer find such
things for himself. As for the frequent ruin and repair of the pavilion, either
accounts already exist or the details do not merit close examination. I will
say nothing more.
~ A n account written by Ou-yang Xiu
on the twenty-second day of December, 1070
A City: Yang-zhou
Take all this worlds bright moonlit nights,
divide them in three parts,
and the two most breathtaking
are the city of Yang-zhou.. . .
from Xu Ning, Recalling Yang-zhou
Like all the great cities of China, Yang-zhou was very much a "place," with a com
plex history and personality. Yang-zhou was once Guang-ling, popularly believed
to have been the "W eed-Covered City" on whose ruins Bao Zhao (ca. 414-466)
wrote a famous poetic exposition. The city described there w as a great commercial center whose
nhabitants showed their arrogance and heedless extravagance
until suddenly fortune reversed itself and the city was reduced to a wasteland. Yangzhou's reputation as a city of pleasure lured Emperor Yang of the Sui to leave Changan and establish his "River Capital" there (sound political reasons for making Yangzhou a capital weigh little beside the force of its legendary sensuous attractions).
Here Emperor Yang built his fabled Labyrinth (Mi-lou), in w hich he housed h/s
palace ladies.
Emperor Yang's notorious extravagance in the "River Capital" was held to have
been one of the factors responsible for his fall and the destruction of the Sui Dynasty
by the Tang. Emperor Yang was buried in his beloved city, at a spot called Thunder
630
The Song Dynasty

Basin. By the Tang, the city had acquired a reputation for its moonlight and melan
choly sensuality. As Du Mu wrote to his friend Judge Han Chuo in Yang-zhou:
Yang-zhou has twenty-four bridges,

and on nights when the moon is bright,
at what spot is a girlwhite as marble,
being bidden to play on the flute?
Du Mu was Yang-zhou's poet, and lines of his poetry were always associated with
the city. Du Mu's most famous poem_ and the most famous poem of the city
speaks of a decade spent by the poet in love affairs with the courtesans of Yangzhou's entertainment quarters, the "blue mansions."
Du Mu, Getting Something Off My Mind

Footloose and lost on the rivers and lakes
I went my way carrying wine,
Chu womens waists, slender and fine,
danced lightly on my palm.
After ten long years I woke at last
from a Yang-zhou dream
I had won only fame for careless love
in its blue mansions.
Presented to Someone on Parting

She is graceful, lithe, and winsome
just somewhat past thirteen,
a cardamom bud on branchtip
early in April.
There were ten miles of springtime breeze
along the streets of Yang-zhou;
the beaded curtains were all rolled up,
and none could compare with you.
Yang-zhou (first of three)

The soil of Yang-di's Thunder Basin Tomb,
his former Labyrinth for losing one
s way.
At whose home do they sing his River Song
as the bright moon fills Yang-zhou?
Fitting that splendid horses go idly forth;
well done a thousand in gold tossed away.
In all the din a drunken young man
half removes his cloak of purple fur.

The serenity of one of Yang-zhou's most famous Buddhist temples exists in coun
terpoint to that city of pleasure.
Written on Chan-zhi Temple in Yang-zhou

Rain passes, a cicadas piercing cry,
wind whistles, an autumn of cassia and pines.
Green moss fills its pavements and stairs,
where white birds linger willingly.
Twilight haze appears deep in the trees
as the sun goes down by a small tower.
Who would have known down the Bamboo West Road
the singing and piping that is Yang-zhou?
Du Mu's contemporary Zhang Hu thinks of Chan-zhi Temple in a very different way.
Zhang Hu (9th century), Roaming Free in Huai-nan

For ten miles long avenues
join markets and neighborhood wells,
and on the Bridge of Bright Moonlight
I watch the goddesses go.
The best thing in human life would be
to die in Yang-zhou:
Chan-zhi and Shan-guang Temples
have good fields for tombs.
As a rich and low-lying city north of the Yangzi, Yang-zhou was beyond the pro
tection of the river fleets that guarded the great cities on the southern shore. Thus,
Yang-zhou often came to be sacked and destroyed during invasions from the North.
When the Jin Dynasty wrested North China away from the Song, Yang-zhou re
mained generally under Southern Song control, but was several times devastated by
Jin attacks. In 1176, the young Southern Song lyricist Jiang Kui passed by the ruins
and recalled Du Mu's city.
Jiang Kui ( 115 5 - 12 2 1) to Yang-zhou Andante55

On the first day of winter in 1176,1 passed by Wei-Yang. The night snow
was just clearing from the sky, and shepherds purse and millet filled my gaze.
When I entered the city walls, a desolation lay all around me. The cold wa
ters grew sapphire as the colors of twilight gathered, and the garrison bu
gles moaned sadly. My heart was stricken with grief, and I was stirred to
sorrowful thoughts on the citys past and present. Therefore I composed this
melody. The Old Man of a Thousand Cliffs thought that it had the kind of
sadness that we find in Millet Lush in the Classic o f Poetry.
The Song Dynasty
Famed metropolis East of the Huai,

'(
splendid spots at West of Bamboo, where I uncinched my saddle pausing a while
on my journeys first stage.
Through ten miles of springtime breeze I passed

and everywhere was millet so green.
.
Ever since the Turkish horses
spied across the river, then left,
its ruined pools and towering trees
seem weary of telling of war.
Dusk comes on gradually
with clear bugles blowing the cold
all here in this deserted city.
Young Du M u supremely admired it;
yet I would guess
that were he to come again today,
he would be shocked.
Even though
his lines on the cardamom bud were skilled
and his dream of blue mansions was fine,
it is hard to write these stronger feelings.
The twenty-four bridges are still here,
and swept along in the heart of the waves
is the cold and soundless moon.
I think on the red peonies by the bridgefor whom
do they come again year after year?
As Ou-yang Xiu recalled the site on Mount Xian where Yang Hu once shed tears
thinking of human mortality, many of the places associated with Ou-yang Xiu him
self became "famous because of the person." One of the best known of such sites
was Level Mountain Hall, just outside Yang-zhou. Su Shi wrote the following song
lyric on revisiting the hall after Ou-yang Xiu's death.
Su Shi, to Moon Over West River55: on Level Mountain Hall

Thrice Ive passed by Level Mountain Hall_
in half the sound of a fingers snap.
Ten years since I saw that old man, the immortal,
whose written words are dragons still
flying upon these walls.
I will grieve for him, stylist and governor,
singing willows and spring wind still.
Just tell me no more how all things vanish
in the turning of a head
even before my head could turn,

they were all already a dream.
There is the truth understood by Ou-yang Xiu that a place becomes recognized on
account of a person. Ou-yang Xiu's own Level Mountain Hall was often destroyed
and just as often rebuilt because the building was supposed to be there. Literate in
habitants of Yang-zhou
officials serving a tour of duty in the area, and visitors all
expected its presence. Modern Western sensibilities prefer ruins or an empty space
with a plaque marking the site; the Chinese have preferred imaginative reconstruc
tion. Just as literary accounts were written on behalf of buildings, buildings came to
be erected on behalf of literary accounts, thereby producing new literary accounts.
Level Mountain Hall was rebuilt in honor of Ou-yang Xiu's literary genius and
his status as a Confucian culture hero. Yet there was an incongruity that such a site
should be so close to Yang-zhou, the city of wealth and sensual pleasure; all this
comes together in the seventeenth century when the hall is rebuilt yet again.
Wei Xi (1624-1680)An Account of the Reconstruction of

Level Mountain Hall
Level Mountain Hall is some five miles northwest of the walls of Yang-zhou.
It was constructed by Ou-yang Xiu in the Song. Ou-yang Xiu was governor
of this prefecture toward the end of the Qing-li Reign in the late 1040s when
all the world enjoyed universal peace. Preferring easygoing simplicity in
governing, he was able to initiate this undertaking, and he would drink and
compose poems here with guests and colleagues.
Now after more than six hundred years, it has fallen into ruin and been
rebuilt more than once. It even came to the point where it was completely
swept away, leaving nothing but underbrush and weeds; it was illegally
seized and made into a Buddhist temple. And yet this place, because of Ouyang Xiu, has become increasingly well known throughout the world. Those
who climb up here and gaze out are deeply touched by the very same sort
of thoughts one has on Mount Xian.
Yang-zhou has been acclaimed as a scenic spot since ancient times, yet
the place itself has very little of the beauties of mountain forests or hills and
ravines. W ithin the city itself there is only one little mound called Kangs
Mountain
from which the waters of the Han Canal can be seen on three
sides. But outside the city there is Level Mountain Hall, giving the most ex
tensive view of all the mountains of the Southland. There was a building on
Kangs Mountain
yet at the same time Level Mountain Hall long lay in
ruins. Since this hall was first constructed, Yang-zhou has suffered the hor
rors of war on several occasions. In 1230, early in the Shao-ding Reign, one
hundred and eighty-two years after Level Mountain Hall was built, Li Quan
was in rebellion; but he still could hold a grand drinking party there. I won
der if this hall might not have had the good fortune to be spared burning
during the wars; or perhaps it was destroyed by fire and some worthy per
son restored it.
The Song Dynasty
In our own time the surveillance commissioner Jin Zhen used to govern
this prefecture. Once he had his administration running smoothly, he was
distressed that no offerings were being made to his worthy precursor Ouyang Xiu and that the prefectures most scenic spot had been left so long
abandoned. Together with Wang Mao-Iin, who is from a prominent local
family, he planned an extensive rebuilding; the hall was completed in fifty
days, without collecting a single copper from the common people.
There was a terrace and the hall, behind which was a building of several
stories, with two wings outspread, where offerings could be made to the
spirit of Ou-yang Xiu. It was airy and spacious, with a splendid beauty, giv
ing access to thousands of scenic views. I dont know how it compares to
Ou-yang X ius building back then, but from it we can infer His Excellency
Jin Zhen
s intentions regarding the moral education of the people and the
promotion of virtuous customs.
The customs of Yang-zhou are, in facta melting pot for people from
every corner of the land. It is a concourse for the fish trade, for the salt trade,
and for money. Those who have served in office and powerful families move
here. Therefore its people have a great lust for gain, love parties and excur
sions, procure singers and pursue courtesans, wear fine clothes, and live for
the pleasure of the moment in order to show off their splendor to others.
Only the most worthy among them still has any interest in things of culture.
Once His Excellency had restored the ruin, he often drank and composed
poetry here with members of prominent local families and those who came
to visit him. This practice had the following result: what these people heard
and cast their eyes on here gave them a joyous admiration for both the land
scape and things of culture. Soon every family and household was reciting
poems, until the way of literature and of the Classic o f Poetry gradually
changed the atmosphere of money and horse-trading. Moreoverthe land
of Yang-zhou is flat and soggy; only this mountain is somewhat higher and
thus fit to be a place for fighting. By building the hall here and making it a
place for the regular use of ceremonial vessels, His Excellency may well have
intended to mollify its bellicose atmosphere by the presence of cultural ac
tivities.
His Excellencys given name is Zhenand his courtesy name is Changzhen. He is a native of Shan-yin in Zhe-jiang. In mid-autumn 1677I was
staying in Yang-zhou, and His Excellency happened to come up from the
Southland to take care of the regulations of the salt monopoly. He halted
his coach and entourage and walked on foot down my winding laneand
then with great courtesy asked me to compose this account. And I coiisidered how Kang Mountain received its name only from the Ming writer
Kang Haiwhile Level Mountain Halls name is known all over the world
because of Ou-yang Xiu. Since a place is valued because of a person, what
you have done here will go far indeed.
The Ornaments of
"Literati" Culture
The Master said: Set your ultimate aims on the Way. Cleave to
virtue. Keep close to gentleness. At your ease roam in the arts.
Analects VII.6
The literature of the Tang showed an immense cultural confidence that can be seen
in other aspects of the dynasty. Literature still seemed to be, in Lu Ji's remarkable
phrase, "the means for all principles of nature"~the external pattern through which
the workings of the world and of human beings could be made manifest. Whether in
consequence of changes in society, in thought, or in the internal momentum of liter
ary traditions themselves, Song classical literature as a whole presents a very different
face from that of the Tang.
With commercial printing and a significantly larger educated class, the actual
practice of classical literature was far more widespread in the Song than in the Tang.
The surviving corpus of Song poetry and literary prose is many times larger that what
survives from the Tang. At the same time, literature in the Song Dynasty seems to
have lost something of its grandeur and sense of importance. During this dynasty,
classical literature took on the role it would retain until the twentieth century: as a
leisurely pastime, one art among many. Despite some famous memorials to the
throne written in the Song, official prose works increasingly came to be seen as mere
documents rather than works of literature. Other literary genres, which served in peo
ple's private lives, became central to one of the Song Dynasty's most important cul
tural achievements: the creation of a realm of private life and leisure that could be
kept to some degree separate both from the demands of state service and from the
unremitting moral seriousness of Neo-Confucian self-examination and self-cultiva
tion. This kind of literature~along with its attendant arts of painting, calligraphy,
and approved forms of music became the heart of "literati" culture, a space of free
dom and sanctioned pleasure within an increasingly intrusive public world. To
these arts were added a wide range of other elite pastimes, such as collecting, antiquarianism, and the creation of gardens. Literature was the matrix that unified this
set of cultural activities, commenting on and interpreting them, giving meaning to
their display and exchange.
Connoisseurship
The arts, including poetry itself, became an important topic within Song writing. A
poem often served as an act of appreciationto praise a friend, to offer thanks for
a gift, or to take pride in a new "find." Connoisseurship, collecting, and antiquari'6 3 7

anism went hand in hand with composition. The following poem by Ou-yang Xiu
tells of his discovery in 1045 of a short inscription by the famous eighth-century cal
ligrapher Li Yang-bing, a master of seal script, an archaic style of writing Chinese
characters (the English translation "seal script" is because this style of writing was
used in making seals). The style of the poem, derived ultimately from the Tang poet
Han Yu, is one the characteristic poetic "types
for commenting on works of art and
antiquities: a section of imaginative description is embedded in a rambling, discur
sive verse style.
Ou-yang Xiu begins with a letter to his friends, explaining the situation and telling
them what they are supposed to do:
Ou-yang Xiu, Seal Script in Stone (1045)

Dear friends,
Recently, by the grace of the court, I was made governor of this prefecture.
In the southwestern part of the prefecture is Lang-ya Mountain, with the
stream made famous by Li Yao-qing, onetime Mentor of the Heir Appar
ent. Earlier when I was in the Academy, the Royal House sent an order to
seek out texts on old steles all over the world, which were to be collected in
the Academy. It was there that I had a chance to see Li Yang-bing
s seal script
Inscription for the Mentors Stream Those who make a study of seal script
say that even though there are many extant examples of Li Yang-bing's work,
none of them can compare to this particular inscription. For the past ten
years I have constantly wanted to get hold of a copy, but with no success.
When I came here, I obtained one. But in addition, at the side of the stone
that bears the inscription, there is another group of more than ten charac
ters by Li Yang-bing. These are even more marvelous than the text of the
inscription itself, even though they are rarely seen in circulation. A moun
tain monk, one Hui-jue, pointed them out for me, and I lingered for a long
time beneath them, unable to tear myself away. Accounts, both recent ones
and older ones, have thoroughly documented remarkable sites in these
mountains, and I felt especially distressed that this inscription alone had es
caped their mention. I wanted to describe itbut feared lest my own writ
ing prove inadequate for my thoughts. The men whose writing I cherish yet
cannot equal are you two, Mei Yao-chen and Su Shun-qin. For this reason
I am sending you both this poem together with an ink rubbing of the in
scription, asking of you poems about the calligraphy carved in that stone.
From cold cliff a cascade flies,
it falls upon green moss,
Here a wonder!script in stone
set by cascades side.
The man who wrote it now is dead,
his bones have rotted away,
but these his words do not perish,
in the mountains folds they stay.
The Song Dynasty
An aging monk of the mountains

feared erosion of the stone
and made a print upon paper,
rubbed with the charcoal of pine.
He wished a copy to be shared

by people of our times,
and took one to give to me,
a match for finest jade.
It seemed to me these characters

were made by no stroke of the brush,
it seemed in fact things not to be done
by human powers at all.
When first the Earth and Heavens
in embryo split apart,
the Primal Force congealed to this
high and looming thing.
In those days birds of the wilderness
stepped on this mountain stone,
they left their tracks forever here
upon these slate gray slopes.
The god of the mountain did not want
men to see it often:
he gave off constant clouds and fog
to bury it deep away.
When bands of immortals fly through sky
and wish to come down to read,
they always employ the moons clear light
as it rises over the sea.
Poor mewho lacks ability
to judge the calligraphers skill
when I see this, I am only aware
that it opens both heart and eyes.
Good phrases stint me, my words are dull
and not worth writing down,
so I wrap them and mail them far away
to Su Shun-qin and Mei Yao-chen.
Ou-yang XiVs playful myth that the inscription was actually bird tracks made at the
beginning of the universe echoes the legend of the invention of Chinese characters
by Cang-jie, who drew his inspiration from observing the tracks of birds. Ou-yang
Xiu had asked for answering poems from his friends Mei Yao-chen and Su Shun639

qin. Those poems survive and show neither Mei nor Su at his best. From Mei Yaochen's verse we may quote a couplet that only a Song poet could have written:
You, sir, understand this stone,

the stone does not understand you;
but you, sir, and that man before [Li Yang-bing]
are certainly true friends.
Su Shun-qin, whose poetry often shows strained hyperbole in imperfect emula
tion of his Tang predecessors, has one brilliant image of the script as the horns and
ta lo n s of dragons buried within the stone:
And then it seems like dragons and basilisks

sprouting talons and horns,
hiding away in the azure rockface,
coiled up and not stretching out.
Su Shi's writings on the arts are among the most remarkable in the Song. His
poems have all the virtues of Song poetry and at times they raise its very weaknesses
to the status of high art. Su Shi is chatty, humorous, sometimes perverse. The fol
lowing poem is to an acquaintance who was adept in "draft cursive" (cao-shu), a
free, often unreadable script in which a man of culture was supposed to be able to
give expression to an otherwise suppressed extravagance of spirit.
Su Shi, Shi Cang-shus Hall of Drunken Ink (1068)

All worry and woe in life begins
from learning to read and write~
be able to roughly mark your name
and then you should call it quits.
What point is there in cursive draft
that flaunts the spirits speed?
the blur in my eyes when I open a scroll
makes me ill at ease.
Yes, I too have been fond of it
but always I laugh at myself
how can we cure this affliction
as it shows itself in you?
You tell me that in doing this
you find a perfect joy,
minds satisfaction, not distinct
from spirits roaming free.
Just recently you built a hall
and named it Drunken Ink
The Song Dynasty
comparing this art to drinking wine

that melts anxieties.
I see now that Liu Zong-yuan
wrote something not untrue
such affliction may crave dirt and ash
as if it were haute cuisine.
Still we may say that in this art

you have achieved the heights:
worn-out brushes pile by your walls
like little hills and knolls.
When the whim strikes, one swish of the hand
and a hundred sheets are gone:
in a fleeting moment a splendid steed
bestrides the entire land.
My own script takes shape to my mood,
I have no special technique
the dots and lines just follow my hand,
its a bother to try too hard.
Then tell me why in your critiques
I am singled out for praise,
isolated words and scraps of paper
all find themselves collected.
Your script may be properly judged
no lower than Zhong or Zhang
on a lower level my own is still better
than that of Luo or Zhao.
You should no longer sit by the pool
and practice so ardently,
in the end just take all that writing silk
and use it to stuff a quilt.1
The artist's passion and his utter absorption in his art are treated humorously in the
poem above. Yet Shi Cang-shu's half-foolish obsession is related to one of the high
est values in painting: a loss of self in the thing depicted, as in the following famous
poem by Su Shi on a painting of bamboo by his close friend Wen Tong.
]The penultimate couplet, echoing old traditions of evaluative comparisons, refers to the great cal
ligraphers Zhong Yao and Zhang Zhi, and to the good but less distinguished calligraphers Luo Shujing and Zhao Yuan-si, all from the beginning of the calligraphic tradition in the first three centuries
a.d . The last line refers to an anecdote about Zhang Zhi, whose own specialty was draft cursive: he
would practice his calligraphy by a pool so often that it became black with his ink.
641
On the Paintings of Bamboo by Wen Tong in the Collection of

Chao Bu-zhi (first of three)
At the moment Wen Tong was painting bamboo,
he saw the bamboo and no person
Not just that he saw no person,
he was emptiedlet go of the self;
His person was transformed with bamboo
in an endless production of freshness.
There is no Zhuang Zhou alive in this world
who now grasps such fusion of spirit?
A somewhat different and more subtle development of this notion of art can be seen
in the famous opening of Su Shi's account of bamboo paintings, again by Wen Tong.
from ,An Account of Wen Tongs Paintings of the Slanted

Bamboo of Yun-dang Valley55
When bamboo first grow, they are sprouts only an inch long, yet all their
joints and leaves are already complete. They pass from shedding their
sheaths, like cicada husks and snakeskins, and reach a point when they thrust
up like swords ten yards highthis occurs as something innate within them.
Nowadays painters do them joint by joint and accumulate their foliage leaf
by leaf~and there is nothing left of a bamboo in it! The reason is that in
order to paint bamboo, the painter must get the bamboo beforehand in his
breast; then, when he takes hold of the brush and looks fully, he actually
sees what he wants to paint and quickly sets out in its pursuit, and it is com
pleted with a flourish of the brush, in which he goes after what he has seen
like a falcon swooping down on a bounding hare~if you go off just a lit
tle, it gets away. This is what Wen Tong taught me. I could not do this, yet
I recognized that it was true. When the mind has recognized how something
is true, yet is unable to do it, the internal and the external are not the same
mind and hand do not respond to one another, which is an error of inade
quate learning.
Whenever there is someone who sees it within himself yet has not reached
the mature stage to take hold of it, he may normally consider himself to be
fully developedyet on the point of doing somethinghe loses it. This goes
beyond the question of bam boo.. . .
On the Painting of Tiered Bluffs . . . " is one of Su Shi's finest poems on painting,
first "reading" the scene, then linking the experience of art to fantasy and memory.
CATi
The Song Dynasty
On the Painting of Tiered Bluffs and the Misty River in the

Collection of Wang Ding-guo (1088)
'
A sad heart upon the river,
hills in a thousand tiers,
azure masses adrift in sky
as if they were clouds and mist.
J
^
Whether a mountain or whether a cloud

from afar no one can tell,
then in misty skies clouds scatter,
the mountain remains as it was.
I see only two slopes, slate gray,
that darken sheer valley below,
and into it go a hundred courses
of streams cascading down;
They wind through forests, encircle stones,
now hidden, now seen again,
wending on down to the valleys mouth
forming a rushing river.
The river grows level, the mountains divide,

the forested foothills end
there a small bridge and a wilderness inn
rest before the mountain.
Someone walking has passed just a bit
beyond the towering trees;
theres a fishing boat, like single leaf,
where river swallows the sky.
From where did the governor
get hold of a work like this?
adorned by the finest brushwork,
so clearly fresh and fine.
I know not where in this mortal world
one might find such scenery,
but I would want to go there at once
and buy a two-acre field.
Have you ever seen that spot so remote
at Fan-kou in Wu-chang
where Ithe Master of Eastern Slope,
remained for five long years?
643
There spring breezes shook the river,

the sky spread opening wide;
and when twilight clouds rolled away rain,
hills showed their winsome charms.
Crows beat their wings through red maples,
companions of nights spent afloat
and snow-loads falling from tall pines
woke me sharply from drunken sleep.
Peach blossoms and flowing water
do exist in the world of men
Wu-ling
s dwellers need not be all
gods and the undying.
The rivers and hills are empty and pure,
but I belong to the dust
though there may be a path to reach them,
it is not my fate to follow.
So I give you back this painting
and I sigh repeatedly,
yet Im sure
old friends in the hills will write
poems calling me to come home.
The reference to peach blossoms and Wu-Iing echoes Tao Qian's famous story of
"Peach Blossom Spring," a community secluded from human history. Tang writers
began to treat this place as if it were inhabited by immortals (an unwarranted elab
oration of Tao's story to which Su Shi strenuously objected elsewhere).
The act of appreciation is closely related to the act of evaluation and judgment.
The praise of one painter often requires the dispraise of another; and when the artist
dispraised is highly regarded by most people, the act of appreciation can become
the assertion of "true taste" against conventional opinion. In the following poem by
the eleventh-century poet Wang An-shi, the famous painter Ju-ran is lightly dismissed
in favor of two painters preferred by Wang, who rarely lacked self-confidence in his
judgments. As in Su Shi's poem above, the experience of the painting is given as a
personal fantasy stirred by the painting. In both cases, the initial fantasy jogs the
viewer's memory~in Su Shi's case, a memory of his years of exile in Huang-zhou,
and in Wang An-shi's case, the memory of another painting he liked.
Wang An-shi (10 2 1-10 8 6 )My Brother Wang Chun-fu Brings

Out a Painting by the Monk Hui-chong and Engages Me to
Write a Poem on It
Painters there are in droves,
and hardly worth the listing;
The Song Dynasty
but of the more recent, Hui-chong

is the one I most esteem.
It is August; clouds of a heatwave
come welling up from woods
yet this transports me, wild and free,
and drops me down on an isle.
In broken stubble of yellow reeds
snow blankets the ground,
ducks and geese stand serenely,
each with a companion.
Scenes witnessed in times gone by
stand now before my eyes:
level sands and unruffled waters
the beach of West River.
Twilight haze engulfs a boat,
it hides the fishing net
a man is sleeping, slumped in sounds
like the creaking of the oars.
I strongly suspect this painter-monk
has powers of Perfection Achieved
the skill to detach and carry away
landscapes of elsewhere.
He filled a basin with water,
mixed herbs of fantasy,
then splashed them over raw silk
and changed this heat to chill.
Ju-ran5s few panels of mountains
in the Han-lin Academy
show needless excess of pigment and ink,
haphazard in execution.
But Cui Bai of Hao-liang
is a good painter as, well;
once I saw his blossoms of peach,
serene in their first bloom.
Tipsy with wine, his carefree brush
brought up a springtime breeze,
and I feared they would be whirled away
in a rain of pink petals.
The gliding oriole sought a branch,
winsome and ready to speak,
^45
honeybees were collecting pollen

in a train of wings and legs.
A single age with two masters, both
the apogees of art,
with tattered clothes and worn-out horses
longtime wayfarers.
In splendid hails the price was deemed high
ten thousand pieces of gold
as they stressed the point that painters today
could not equal those of old.
During the Northern Song, there appeared many new forms of writing on the arts.
In contrast to the rare but grand comments by Tang writers, Song intellectuals took
pride in creating a casual, almost offhand discourse in both poetry and prose. A new
critical genre, "Remarks on Poetry" (Shi-hua), took its name from a work by Ou-yang
Xiu consisting of random comments and reminiscences on poetry.
Song writers were intensely aware of the differences that separated them from
their Tang predecessors. Sometimes they spoke with pride of their own accom
plishments, but often we can see something like an awe of the Tang. As collectors
and scholars, they were also keenly aware of texts and artifacts lost, and the
loss of past greatness was strangely linked to the physical loss of such texts and
artifacts, as well as to the deterioration of what has survived, as in the following
entry.
from Ou-yang Xiu, Remarks on Poetry (Shi-hua)

In these days when literature is at the height of its glory, Secretary Chen
Cong-yi has received singular praise for his old style learning. His poems are
very much like those of Bo Ju-yi. After Yang Yi and Liu Yun wrote their se
ries of group compositions and the Xi-kun Collection became current, as
piring writers did their best to imitate that style. Poetry underwent a com
plete change, and the new fashion was called the Xi-kun style.55 Because
of this, the poetry collections of the great Tang masters were virtually aban
doned and were not found in general circulation. At one point Chen chanced
to obtain an old edition of Du Fu
s poetry, whose text was full of errors and
lacunae. In Du Fu^ poem sending off Waterworks Commissioner Cai, there
was the line:
His body lighta single bird . . .
One word had been lost. Thereupon Chen and several of his friends tried to
fill in the missing space. One tried:
[His body light: a single bird] goes swiftly.
The Song Dynasty
Another tried
[His body light: a single bird] sinks.
And another:
*
v
[His body lighta single bird] rises.

And another:
[His body light: a single bird] descends.
No one could get it just right. Later Chen got hold of a good edition, and
found that the line was in fact:
His body light: a single bird in passage.
Chen accepted his defeat with a sigh: as he saw iteven though it was a question
of only one wordneither he nor any of his friends could equal Du Fu
s choice.
The preceding anecdote reappears in the following poem by Su Shi, written to a
friend to thank him for the gift of the tattered remains of a painting by Wu Dao-zi,
the greatest Tang painter of Buddhist subjects. It is an urbane
rambling poem, filled
with references, yet it touches on many of the essential questions of connoisseur
ship: the ability to recognize true art, the destruction of art, and the relation between
art's value as art and as commodity.
Su Shi, Some Time Ago in Chen Han-qing5s House in Changan I Saw a Painting of the Buddha by Wu Dao-zi. It was
unfortunately tattered and falling to pieces. When I saw it again
over ten years later in Xian-yu Z i-ju n s house, it had been
mounted and restored. It was given to me by Zi-jun and I wrote
this poem to thank him (1078)
Noblemen whose wealth is great,
whose lives are spent in ease,
are rivals to purchase painting and script
and never reckon the cost.
They have taken the script of Yin Tie-shi
to serve as their Wang Xi-zhis
2
and have further introduced Zhu Yao*s work
in the place of W u Dao-zi.3
2Su Shi's note: "Yin Tie-shi lived in the time of Emperor W u of the Liang (r. 502-549). Nowadays,
among the model calligraphy sheets attributed to the eider Wang, there are some with the name
^ ie -s h i/ Wang Xi-zhi was generally considered the greatest calligrapher of all time.
3Su Shifs note: "Many of the paintings currently collected as W u Dao-zi^s are actually the brushwork of Zhu Yao/'
Reeking of smoke and water-stained,

these are mounted on rollers of jade
who understands which valued more~
gray disk or its deerskin pouch?4
W u Dao-zi
s paintings of Buddha
were gifts of divine spirit
in the metamorphosis of dream he became
an immortal flying the skies.
Then waking, he would start to paint,
heedless of painstaking thought;
matchless marvels divine would come
out through his brushs hairs.
I saw this painting long ago
when staying in Chang-an,
and I sighed for this perfect treasure,
my eyes were streaming with tears:
I could not bear to look upon
its shredded silken threads,
they had become like butterflies
fluttering in air.
Yet you were able to have it mended,
to patch and repair its gaps
though the whole remains dismembered,
its spirit is still complete.
By Bao-zhi, the monk, I vaguely see
the ruler and the knife;
its ashuras are still dauntless;
its heavenly maids still fair.
Just as when thinking of Du Fus
line on the bird in flight
though you want to add the missing word,
you know there is no way.
I wonder, receiving this from you,
if you truly had this intent
to act for the sake of the common eye,
by this to wash them clear.
4ln a story in The Han History, the jade disks presented to the throne were worth less than the deer
skin pouches in which they were presented. Here the reference may suggest the inability o f aristo
cratic collectors, concerned only with fine mountings, to appreciate the paintings themselves. In
the context of the preceding lines, however, it may well suggest that the mountings are, in fact, worth
more than the examples of painting and calligraphy they have collected.
The Song Dynasty
Once those noblemen see this,

they will surely blush with shame;
the thousand sheets in their brocade bags
wont be worth tossing away.
*
>
No need to find for them further use

to trade for threads of hemp
just put a single torch to them
and let them fly off in smoke.
Ordinary Things
If they had lost something of the magic of Tang poetry, many Song writers embraced
the unmagical everyday world and sought to celebrate it in their poems. We often
find a delight in the trivial and its imaginative transformation into poetry. Song poets
made it their business to notice things previously left unnoticed. Ou-yang Xiu's older
contemporary Mei Yao-chen often embedded these details in verse that was will
fully unpoetic. His ideal of "mellow blandness" (ping-dan) had an admixture of the
unpoetically harsh, as in the following lines in which he describes his poetry
I write poems that suit my nature and mood,

and come quite close to mellow blandness.
Rough phrases are left unfinished,
they jab the mouth worse than burrs.
I would have poured forth a great dark sea,
but my vessel is small, and already brimming over.
If Tang poets were the ocean (great talent), the Song poet would accept his
smaller vessel and make a virtue of it. The last line of the following poem is not sim
ply bad, it is willfully bad, breaking the grand Tang poetic ending just as the trivial
topic mocks Tang poetic sleeplessness.
Mei Yao-chen (1002-1060), A Companion Piece to Xie Jingchus Spending the Night in My Wifes Study, Hearing Mice,
and Being Greatly Troubled
Blue burned the lamp flame, the man was asleep,
hungry mice came gradually forth from their holes.
W ith the ringing of basins and bowls overturned,
he wakes startled and listens, dreaming ceased.
He worries theyll thump tables inkwell,
then fears lest they gnaw the shelves5books.
His son, naive, mocks a cats meow~
that was really a childish idea.
In the Rain, Spending the Night in the Library of

Messrs. Xie, Xu, and Pei
.
The hard rain rang as it dashed on the window,

I was just going to sleep by the dying lamp.
Insectsvoices kept up terribly long,
the echoes were carried to my lonely pillow.
The rest were all drunk, seemed not to hear,
I was forced to listen, and it was awful.
The night was shortI never slept

my eye was irritated by a dust speck.
Mei Yao-chen became famous for the following poem on the blowfish, a seasonal
delicacy relished in spite of (or because of) its deadly poison, which, when errors
are made in the preparation, has been the final meal of many a daring gourmet.
At a Party Given by Fan Zhong-yan the Guests Spoke of Eating

River-Hog or the Blowfish
Spring isles grow with shoots of reeds,
spring shores fly with willow flowers.
At such times river-hog is prized
beyond the common run of fish.
Its form may make one marvel,
there is also no worse poison.
Its raging belly is like a great hog

its furious eyes like a southeastern frog.
When fried in the kitchen, if things go amiss,
it will enter the throat like the sword Mo-ya.
Why give sustenance to tooth and palate
with something that wrecks the body like this?
If one dare question the Southerners thus,
they band to defend it and boast its merit.
They all say its tasty beyond any measure,
none think of how many folk die from the pleasure.
And since to my views they will make no concession,
I helplessly sigh and give no more expression.
w n
The Song Dynasty
When Han Yu came to Chao-yang at last,

at a dinner of snakes he was left aghast.
When Liu-zhou was Liu Zong-yuans a b o d e ,'
he learned to grow fond of the taste of to a d .Although both creatures may be abhorrent, r
ones life is not risked by an accident.
Such flavor may truly be like nothing else,
but within is mayhem thats limitless.
Great beauty has some evil as pair
I really think that saying is fair.5
Though the small things of life find their way into the work of many Song writers,
the poet closest to Mei Yao-chen in the poetic celebration of the quotidian was Yang
Wan-li. In contrast to Mei Yao-chen's sometimes willful clumsiness and plainness,
Yang Wan-li found in such topics inviting occasions for wit and small wonders of
daily life. Yang Wan-li's poetry often involves playful transformations and metaphors:
a sheet of ice becomes a fragile gong, or a line of ants carrying food becomes the
return from a royal hunt laden with spoils.
Yang Wan-li (112 7 - 1206)A Child Playing with Ice

From the metal bowl a child
took early morning ice,
he pierced it with colored thread
to serve as silver gong.
Struck, it echoed like a jade chime
piercing through the woods,
then all at once the sound of glass
shattering on the ground.
Watching Ants
When one of them chances to meet another,
he whispers, asking the way,
I cant understand the reason
theyre so often moving house.
How much provision is necessary
to feed bodies so small?
returning home from the hunt,
their wagon train is filled.
5Here Mei Yao-chen paraphrases a passage from The Zuo Tradition, humorously but aptly applied
to the situation.
651

Both of Yang Wan'li-s quatrains above are pure play. In other cases, the poetic at
tention to small things hints at something deeper.
Su Shi, Thirteen Companion Pieces for Wen Tongs

Garden Pool in Yang-zhouBridge Over the Lake
Its red railings and painted posts
brightly reflect in the lake,
in white linen and black gauze cap,
you go, dragging your feet.
Beneath the bridge turtles and fish
are teeming late in the day
for they recognize the sound of your staff
crossing over the bridge.
Yang Wan-li, June 10 1 1 7 7 Traveling by Boat to Take Up My

Post at Pi-ling. Held up by adverse winds, we stayed the night at
the mouth of the Zhou-pi River
I cant stand hearing the cries
of insects from both shores
and take a candle to melt melancholy,
along with a cup of wine,
I wonder who stayed the night on this boat
as melancholy as I?
the roof of the boat still bears
the streaks of candle soot.
The act of poetic imagination that makes the small thing the focus of attention is often
given as a minor triumph over some harsher reality:
Su Shi, East Slope

Rains have bathed Eastern Slope,
the moonlights colors are clear,
the passage of market folk is done,
only wilderness folk walk now.
Let no one hate that the path on the ridge
is rocky and too rough~
I myself am fond of the clatter
of my staff as it drags along.
'
Particularly in the Southern Song, the use of poetry to create in miniature a world
of the imagination became commonplace. In the face of many kinds of restriction,
652
The Song Dynasty

acts of poetic imagination might restore freedom and power. The next two poems
are by Lu You, the most famous of Southern Song poets.
Lu You ( 112 5 -12 10 ) Snowy Night
I
r
My books lie scattered all around,
boxes of pills among them;
huddled in blanketsfrom time to time
I burn incense from Hai-nan.
Growing old and slow, I laugh at myself,
that a young mans heart survives,
that still loves to listen to northern winds
blow snow across my bed.
n
On village lanes the snow turns slush,
and people cease their goings;
the dot of a Buddhist temple lantern
is a bright grain of red sand.
How late now the falcon returns
to his mountain home to roost
the winds bear the whir
of mighty wings.
It is one thing to possess a childish fascination with the small things of the world; it
is something else to claim to possess such naYvete, to hold that as the highest value,
and to celebrate one's own innocence;
Drawing Water from the Well and Making Tea

I get up sick, done looking at my books,
pull hands into sleeves, clear night stretching on.
All the neighborhoods silent, nowhere a sound,
and the lamp fire now burns chill and low.
My servant boy too is sleeping soundly,
so I go draw water and make my own tea.
heres the sound of the well pulley creaking:
a hundred feet down the ancient well sings.

Inside, my organs shiver from the cold,
then from bone to hairI
m revived, aware.
I go back; moonlight fills the corridors
and I cant bear to step on sparse shadows of plums.
653

As Lu You, Yang Wan-li, and other writers imaginatively transformed the world
around them by acts of words, they also actively staged such experiences in the phys
ical world. The leisure life, from the agenda of a planned excursion to the con
struction of gardens, was shaped by images given in poetry; and those activities and
constructions in turn gave rise to poems.
The Song saw the appearance of new forms of casual prose consisting of ran
dom jottings on various topics. Sometimes these books of jottings treated political
matters, sometimes they treated literary matters, and sometimes, as in the piece that
follows, they addressed such basic questions as sunning oneself in winter. This pas
sage from a miscellany entitled Rustic Chat from the East of Chi (Qi-dong ye-yu), by
the thirteenth-century Southern Song writer Zhou Mi, gives a good illustration of the
interplay between art and private life, with its odd mixture of playfully displayed eru
dition, bodily comfort, "home improvement," and the writing of poems. He begins
with examples of sunning oneself in earlier anecdotes and poems.
Zhou Mi (1232 -12 9 8 ) Sunning Oneself

(from Qi-dong ye-yu)
Yuan An would lie with his back to the sun and have his boy scratch his
back, saying, Now that really feels good! Zhao Sheng would bare his back
to the sun on an open patio, waiting for woodsmen and herdsmen to return.
From this we have the lines in Du Fus poetry:
My back to the light, I wait for woodsmen and herdsmen.
and
My back to the light, I am near a high wall.6
and from Sunning Oneself in West Tower
When, shivering with chills, I weary of black winter,
I revel in this soaring tower, my back to the light.
and later there is
In a while my hair feels gently warmed,

gaunt flesh grows imperceptibly more plump and glossy.
The sun truly shows its deep kindliness,
waning energies suddenly have a recourse.
Teetering, I must bother to pay close attention,
but effortless now, I draw my sick feet.
Bo Ju-yi
s Sunning goes:
6This seems to be the second line of a poem entitled "Evening, which Zhou M i has either misremembered or had access to a variant reading no longer extant. Present editions read: "To toast my
back, I draw near to theunlight on the wall."
The Song Dynasty
W ith a glow the winter sun comes forth

and shines on my rooms south corner.
My back to the light, I sit with eyes closed*
gentle breath courses through starving flesh.
At first its like drinking a heady wine,
and then like one reviving from hibernation.

Thawing outside, all my bones stretch,
content within, I have not a single care.
I feel expansive, I forget where I am,
my mind joins together with the void.
All of these are examples of a deep understanding of the quality of sunning
ones back.
Winter days merit such fondness that they truly seem like things to be
offered as presents. Chao Duan-ren once had a case of the chills that no med
icine could cure. It got better only when he toasted his back in the winter
sunlight. Zhou Bang-yan once wrote a poem that went:
Winter sunshine is like village beer
its strange warmth lasts but a moment.
One insists that it go on and on,
but however we yearn, it is suddenly gone.
I once built a small tower for sunning myself in Nan-rong and named it
Porch for Offering Sunlight. I hung it all around with white, oiled cheesecloth
so that the open brightness of sunlight was plentiful throughout the whole day,
and the comfortable relaxation of my limbs was not limited to a mere moment.
It happened that a visitor joked with me, This is what is meant by the cottonpadded jacket of the world
and we had a laugh about it. Then later I saw He
Si-ju^ Song of the Yellow Cotton-Padded Jacket
whose preface went:
In March there was a great snowfall that did not stop for ten days. When the
sun came out, in the house next door they called to one another to go lie in the
sun, saying, The yellow cotton-padded jacket is out.
On reading this, I realized that the expression had already been used before.
But then Wang Li-zhi had also named his window for taking the sun the
Overcoat Porch.
[Zhou Mi then goes on to quote the poem written for Wang Li-zhi's porch and other
examples of sunning oneself in the past.]
Perhaps the finest poetry on the small experiences of life occurs not when those
experiences are staged or transformed by a witty interpretation, but when they are
presented as accidental discoveries, in which something is noted that has interest
but no obvious meaning.
Chao Duan-you (11th century), Spending the Night at an Inn

Outside the West Gate of Ji-zhou
Winter woods in the last sunlight,
crows about to roost
blue lamp flames flicker on the wall,
at once there, at once gone.
In the stillness of a gentle rain
I pretend to be asleep,
I lie listening to a tired horse
munch on the last of the hay.
"
In Chao Duan-you's poem above and Huang Ting-jian's below, we have two roughly
contemporary quatrainsw e don't know which is the earlierthat make the same
"discovery." Either in dream or lying with his eyes closed, the poet seems to hear
the "poetic" sound of rain, but in reality it is a horse munching on hay. As in so many
poems of the period, the comparison calls attention to the imagination's transfor
mation of everyday experience. In that process, the usually unpoetic imagea horse
munching on hay acquires a nearly magical dignity. But almost certainly one of
these two poets was writing not from a fresh, imaginative experience of everyday
life, but from having read the other poem. It might be mere literary imitation, or per
haps the second poet actually did experience the similitude in real life, but noticed
it only because he had read the other poem. Even more than in earlier periods, in
the Song the relation between poetry and experience became reciprocal: poems grew
out of experience, but the experience of poetry also shaped experience in the world
outside poetry.
Huang Ting-jian (1045- 110 5 )August 17 Sleeping in Daytime

In this worlds red dust, wearing hat of straw
and raven black hose,
I imagine seeing a pair of white birds
upon the gray-green isles.
A horse is munching on dry straw,
a sound by my pillow at noon
as the dream forms, it is wind-blown rain
rolling the waves on the river.
Pastoral Scenes
Song Dynasty writers were not so much interested in everyday experience in its own
right as in staging or discovering the extraordinary within the ordinary. They ro
manticized the details of the simple life to create an essentially pastoral vision of
satisfied domesticity. The poetic worlds they described in their own lives were
closely related to a more traditional pastoral poetry"snapshots" of rural scenes and
the timeless contentments of village life. Like modern photographers, they would
The Song Dynasty

carefully frame such scenes and try to catch their subject at a significant moment.
At the same time, when they themselves are the subjects of the "snapshot, there is
a strong sense that they are posing but trying hard to appear to have been caught
unawares.
1
He Zhu (10 6 3 -112 0 )A Walk in the Wilds

From the ford a tiny path
slants off toward the city;
where waters sink, a single village
lies across soft sands.
In a hut of yellow thatch
soaked by sporadic rain
a white-haired old lady sits,
watching over her melons.
Kong Ping-zhong (d. after 1 1 0 1 ) The Grain Is Ripe

The millet smells sweet in the west wind
across a hundred miles,
streams draw back to underground channels,
the harvest is brought in.
The old ox has pretty much done with
obligations of the plow:
chewing grass at the top of a bank,
it rests in the setting sun.
Ou-yang Xiu, Ox
As the sun comes over the eastern hedge,
brown sparrows fly up in alarm
the snows melt and springtime stirs
the sprouts of plants to growth.
Earthen embankments stretch level,
the paddy fields are vast;
bearing a young boy stretched on its back
and leading a calf, it walks.
Fan Cheng-da (112 6 119 1 ) A Description of Walking in the

Meadows on Cold Food Festival (first of two)
A wilderness inn by a dock with weeping willows,
a rundown temple in clumps of bitter bamboo.
Waters where egrets peer through reed-weirs,
winds where crows peck ashes of paper cash.
657
An old woman leads a girl with thick make-up,

a boy helps an old man, reeling drunk.
In this remote village the festival was good
I
m sure because last years harvest was rich.
Lu YouVisiting West-of-the-Mountain Village

Dont laugh at the old farmers
all muddled with winter beer,
in years of plenty they entertain guests
with chicken and suckling pig.
Hills in layers, stream after stream,
it seems theres no way through
willows conceal, the flowers are bright,
then here is another village.
Flutes and drums in succession,
Spring Festival draws near;
their clothes and caps are simple,
the old ways linger here.
From this day on, if you permit,
Pll come idly in moonlight,
and unexpectedly, propped on my staff,
knock at your gate one night.
Walking in the Wilds

Afternoon butterflies dance in the vegetable plot;
under clear skies doves sing in wheat fields.
Sometimes I go to the shade and briefly rest,
then walk privately along the path.
Village women peer at me through the hedge,
old men of the hills brush off mats in welcome.
Can things like this be found in court and market?
a good laugh is solace for lifes last days.
Fan Cheng-da was the master of the rural vignette. His most famous and much im
itated work was a series of sixty "Various Occasions of Interest in the Fields and Gar
dens Through the Four Seasons, Each is a brief moment in the imagined lives of a
farming household.
Fan Cheng-daVarious Occasions of Interest in the Fields and

Gardens Through the Four Seasons
XV
Butterflies go in pairs
culling pollen from the flowers;
through long days no visitors come
to the farmers home.
Then chickens fly over the hedge,
a dog barks in his lair,
and you know a traveling peddler
is here to sell his tea.
r.
XXXI
At daybreak, out to weed the fields,
in evening hemp is spun,
boys and girls of the village
each has a role in the home.
The younger children dont yet know
how to help with tilling or weaving,
they too, in the shade of a mulberry,
are learning to plant melons.
xxxm
A traveler in the brown dust,
his sweat flowing like broth,
stops a while at a farmhouse
to drink from the sweet-smelling well.
They offer him a flat stone
to sit before the gate:
noon in the shade of willows
is where the breeze is most cool.
XL
He calmly watches a spider weave
its web hanging low from the eaves,
it somehow or other obstructs
small insects from flying through.
A dragonfly hangs upside down,
a wasp is also trapped
they frantically call to the mountain boy
to help them break the siege.
XLIV
A newly constructed threshing floor,
clay surface as flat as a mirror,
where every family beating the grain
make the best of the frosty weather.
659
In the sounds of singing and laughter

the rumble of light thunder
the flails echo all night long
until the day grows light.
LII
The burning sap of a pine brand
serves them as a lamp
its thick smoke resembles ink
and darkens all the room.
Towards evening they wipe clean
the paper on southern windows,
taking note that the setting sun
is twice as red as before.
Wit
Tang poets occasionally composed clever epigrams, but the numerous shades of wit
and humor played a much larger role in Song poetry, which often prided itself on a
lightness of touch. Such poems usually aimed for the hint of a smile rather than a
laugh. Sometimes we barely notice.
Yang Wan-liStrolling Along a Juniper Path in the Morning

(second of two)
The rain stopped and in the groves
a chill arose,
when wind pierced through into the path,
the morning seemed still more fresh.
I walked where I pleased and chanced to come
to a spot where no one was
I startled the mountain birds to flight,
and I also was startled.
Lu You On the Three Peaks of Magic Stone Mountain

Wondrous peaks welcome my horse
and startled a weak old man:
the summits of Shu and mountains of Wu
are all washed away to nothing.
Green and gray they poke from the Earth
to a height of five thousand yards;
and I troubled them to coil themselves up
into this tiny poem.
6^0
The Song Dynasty

In the following poem, Lu You refers to himself by his pseudonym, the "Old Man
Set Free."
Plum Blossoms III (1202)

They tell me that the plums
bloomed in the morning breeze
their snowy piles are everywhere
all around in the hills.
Is there some method to transform
one body into billions?
for each tree of blossoming plums,
one Old M an Set Free.
Yang Wan-li, For Play

W ild chrysanthemums and moss
mint coins of their own
yellow of gold, green of bronze,
rivals both in charm.
Heavens Lord disburses these
to poor poets
but they purchase only melancholy

and purchase him no fields.
Coda: Self-Consciousness
The ancient definition of classical poetry was to "speak what the mind is intent on"
("Great Preface") or to "sing one's feelings and nature/' Song poets continued to write
poems about interior experience, but when doing so they often located the point of
view outside themselves: they set up the camera and then hurried to take their place
in the snapshot. Their wit and irony, and sometimes a capacity for self-mockery, fol
lowed from such self-consciousness. They not only know what a poet's sensibility
should be, they also know what he is supposed to look like.
Lu You, Meeting a Gentle Rain on the Sword-Gate Pass Road

(1172)
The dust of travel on my clothes
mixes with stains of wine,
nowhere I go in these distant travels
fails to melt the heart.
I wonder should this body of mine
have been a poet or not?
.661
riding a donkey in gentle rain

I enter Sword-Gate Pass.
In Moonlight
The moonlight white, the yard is bare,
the shadows of trees are spare,
magpies, unsettled on their roosts,
go flying around the boughs.
This old man is imitating
childish girls and boys,
batting the passing fireflies
and letting dew soak his clothes.
Su Shi (1037-1101)
Su Shi, also commonly known by his pen name Su Dong-po, was the most out
standing literary figure of the Song. Unlike most Tang and writers of earlier periods,
Su Shi enjoyed the full measure of adulation as a cultural hero in his own lifetime_
his role strengthened by his political difficulties during the regimes of Wang An-shi
and his followers.
A native of Mei-shan in Sichuan, Su Shi, with his father Su Xun and his brother
Su Che, set out for the capital in the middle of the eleventh century to seek office.
Ou-yang Xiu was their patron, and the examiner who passed both brothers in 1057.
After taking the jin-shi examination, Su Shi began a promising political career, serv
ing first in a provincial post, then in the capital. In 1069, Wang An-shi began to put
his political reform policies into practice and came into conflict with many of the
leading intellectuals of the day; these he either forced into retirement or sent out to
provincial posts. Late in 1071, Su Shi himself was sent off to govern Hang-zhou;
thereafter, except for a few brief periods in thcapital, Su spent the remaining thirty
years of his life in one provincial post after another.
Su Shi's political difficulties enhanced rather than harmed his role as a cultural
hero. As a young man, he was generously promoted by figures such as Ou-yang Xiu,
and as he grew older he was eagerly sought by young men seeking his support in
turn. Su Shi was the master of all literary forms: classical prose, classical poetry, song
lyric, and informal prose (friendly letters, colophons, and notes). He was also a
painter and calligrapher of distinction.
Su Shi was the spokesman for one powerful current in Song intellectual culture:
a casual engagement with experience that was equally distinct from Buddhist de
tachment and from the rigid ideological engagement of Wang An-shi and some of
the Neo-Confucians. Such casual engagement offered a relaxed pleasure that was
quite different from the intensity of passion and was a value that Su Shi held and es
poused. It was, however, not a value that Su, with his immensely turbulent person
ality, could comfortably live up to.
Account of the Hall of Precious Artworks

The superior person may let his interests find temporary lodging in exter
nal things, yet he may not let those interests remain caught up in things.
When our interests find temporary lodging in external things, even the hum
blest things can bring delight and even the most beguiling things can bring
no harm upon us. But if our interests do remain caught up in things, even
the humblest things can do us damage and even the most beguiling things
bring no delight. It was Lao-zi who said, All the colors together blind the
663
eyes. All the musical notes deafen the ears. All flavors ruin the palate. And
galloping on field hunts brings out a madness in the mind of man. But the
Sage never gives these four things up~he simply lets his interests lodge in
them only temporarily. Liu Beithe founder of the Shu-Han Kingdom, had
the gift of bold actionyet he loved to plait animal hair. X i Kang, the Daoist
eccentric, achieved the spirits perfection, yet he loved the labors of a smith.
Ruan Fu was a free spirit, yet he loved waxed clogs. These are hardly the
sensual pleasures of sound, physical beauty, smell, or taste; yet throughout
their lives these men found an unflagging delight in such things.
Among all the things that bring us joy and have the capacity to please a
person without swaying him, nothing can compare to books and paintings.
But when our interests remain caught up in them and cannot get loose, the
evil they can wreak is beyond the telling. By these Zhong Yao was brought
to vomit blood and dig up a tomb.1Emperor Xiao-wu of the Liu-Song, who
wanted to be the dominant calligrapher of the time, came to feel spite for
Wang Seng-qian. Huan Xuans speeding boat, in which he carried his col
lection of books and paintings in order to have them with him always, and
Wang Yas multiple walls, by which he protected his collection, were both
childish amusements that harmed the nation and brought ruin on the men
themselves. Such is the evil of having ones interest caught up in things.
When first I was young, I loved both books and paintings. I feared only
losing what I already had and that others would not give me what they them
selves had. But then I laughed at myself and saidI care so little for wealth
and honor, yet I treat books with the highest regard. I care little about my
life or death, but my paintings are important to me. Doesnt it seem that Fve
gotten things upside down and lost what is basic in the heart? From that
point on, I didnt dote on them any more. Even thoughwhen I came upon
something that gave me pleasure, I would sometimes keep it, I no longer
cared when such things were taken by someone else. Compare them to
clouds and mist shapes passing before the eyes or to all the different birds
that stir the listening ear of course we rejoice when we encounter them;
but when they are goneour thoughts do not hang on them. Thus books and
paintings always give me delight, yet they can do me no damage.
Although Commander Escort Wang Shen hails from the quarter of the
imperial in-laws, in his clothing, in his sense of ceremony and right, in his
learning, and in his literary accomplishments, he is of equal stature to poor
scholars. His style of living eschews rich foods and fancy fare; he keeps apart
from the sensual pleasures of ear and eye and devotes himself to books and
paintings. To the east of his mansion he has built a Hall of Precious Art
works where he keeps what he has acquired; and he has asked me to write
an account for it. Worried lest he have the misfortune to be as I was in my
youth, too much loving these things, I have made a point of telling him this,
'Zhong Yao, the third-century calligrapher, saw a specimen of Cai Yong's calligraphy and beat him
self for three days until he was black and blue. When Wei Dan died and had the piece of Cai Yong,s
calligraphy buried with him, Zhong Yao dug up the tomb to get hold of it.
The Song Dynasty
in hopes that he can enjoy the fullness of their delights and keep far from
the potential damage.
An account written this twenty-second day of September, 1077
to KFragrance Fills the Yard (Man-ting fang)
Hollow glories won on a snails horn,

on a fly
s head some small advantage gained:
when I think about it, why
do we go to such pointless trouble?
Everything that happens
has been settled long before~
no one comes out short,
no one comes out ahead.
So Ill make the most of my leisure,
and the fact I
m not yet too old,
and indulge myself to my limit
in a little wildness.
In lifes possible hundred years
you should let yourself get drunk in total
thirty-six thousand times.
I have considered it
and how much longer do we have
with gloomy winds and rain
keeping us from half?
Also why should we
spend the rest of our lives arguing
over whats betterwhats worse?
We are lucky to have cool breeze
and also the silvery moon,
a cushion of moss spread for us,
a tent of cloud stretched high.
The Southland is fine,
a thousand cups of sweet wine,
and a songFragrance Fills the Yard.
Account of the Terrace Passing Beyond
In all things, however ordinary, there is something that deserves reflection.

And insofar as there is something that deserves reflection, there is in all such
things something in which we can find delight, and it need not be unusual
or peculiarly beautiful. You can still get drunk chewing the dregs or guz
zling weak beer. Fruit and vegetables and other growing things can all pro
vide plenty to eat. Extending this by analogy, I will find delight no matter
where I go.
'665
What we mean by seeking good fortune and avoiding adversity is that

good fortune brings happiness, while adversity brings sadness. But human
desires are endless, while the things that can satisfy our desires are limited.
So long as distinctions of attraction and aversion battle within me and so
long as decisions on which course to choose converge before me, few things
bring delight, while the things that bring sorrow remain ever numerous. This
mayin fact, be thought of as looking for adversity and turning down good
fortune.
To look for adversity and turn down good fortune is hardly human in
stinct. If someone does so, there is something in external things that clouds
his instinct. Such people move within external things and not beyond them.
Things have no real distinctions of magnitude in their own right; and yet
when someone reflects on them from within, every single one of them looms
large. Should things loom large over me, my eyes are always dazzled and
confused. As if watching a struggle through a crack, how can one tell who
is the victor and who the loser? In this way attractions and aversions spring
up out of control, and anxieties and delights emerge from them. Can we help
feeling sorry for someone in such a situation?
When I left Qian-tang [Hang-zhou] to take up the administration of Jiaoxi [Mi-zhou], I forsook the steadiness of the boat and submitted to the dif
ficulties of going by horse and coach. I left behind the attractions of carved
walls and took shelter in a dwelling with plain beams. I turned my back on
vistas of lakes and mountains to walk through a wilderness of mulberry and
hemp. On the day I arrived, I found the harvest had been bad for several
years running. There were bandits everywhere in the outlands, and com
plaints clogged the courts. I kept to a plain diet, each day eating only med
lar and chrysanthemums. Obviously people suspected I was unhappy. But
when I had been there for a full year, my features looked increasingly healthy
and the white in my hair every day progressively reverted to its former
black. For I found delight in the purity of their customs, while office work
ers and populace alike were comfortable with my ineptness.
At that point I had work done in the park, and had the buildings and
grounds cleaned up; I ordered the tall, dense trees on An H ill cut down to
repair what had been broken; and I made plans to complete the work what
ever way I could.
In the northern part of the park there was an old terrace built into the
contours of the city wall. I had the building there thatched and renovated a
little. And from time to time I go up there with others and look around, giv
ing my mood free rein. To the south there is a view of Horse-Ear Mountain,
while Chang Mountain is sometimes hidden and sometimes dimly appears,
seeming both close at handyet far away perhaps there are good men liv
ing in seclusion there? Then to the east you have Lu Mountain, into which
Lu Ao went into retreat during the Qin Dynasty. To the west there is a view
of Mu-ling, shadowing like rampartswhere the lingering glories of Lii
Shang and Duke Huan of Q i still survive. To the north I look down over
the river Wei, where strong feeling overwhelms me when I think on the deeds
The Song Dynasty
of Han Xin, Count Huai-yin, and lament how his story did not come to a
good end. The terrace is high and stable, deepset and brightcool in sum
mer and warm in winter. In dawns when the snow is falling or on evening
of wind atid moonlight I never miss chance to be there, and my guests never
miss a chance to go along with me. We pick vegetables in the garden, take
fish from the ponds, brew sorghum beerboil and^ eat unpolished rice. And
we say, what a delight to visit the place!
At this time my brother Zi-you happened to be in Ji-nan, heard about
this place, and wrote a poem about it in which he gave the terrace the name
Passing Beyond.s>In this he saw that my ability to find delight wherever I
go comes from the fact that I roam beyond things.
Occasions of delight, whether staged or accidentally encountered, are a recurrent

motif in Su Shi's writing. Literary works, particularly poems, celebrate such moments,
reflect on their significance, and reaffirm Su's conviction that joy is possible only
when we do not cling to it. The moment's magic is, by its very nature, transitory.
Getting Up at Night in a Boat (1079)

It was the rustling of a faint breeze
blowing through rushes and reeds:
I opened the door to watch the rain,
but moonlight filled the lake.
The boatmen and the waterbirds
were both in the same dream,
a large fish leaptthen dived deep down,
like a frightened fox fleeing away.
In nights depths both creatures and men
lie outside each others concerns,
and I was alone, a body and shadow
for our mutual amusement.
In the dark, rivertides rose on the isles
with the sad sounds of winter worms,
the sinking moon hung in the willows
which I saw as a spiders web.
This life goes by me in a flash
with anxiety and troubles,
clear scenes like this pass my eyes
and last but for a moment.
Roosters crowthe bell tolls,
the birds all go scattering;
they beat the drum at the front of the boat

again shouting each to the other.
Although Su Shi warns against the dangers of clinging to things and to experience,
writing often serves as the means to catch the moment before it gets away from him.
The following are entries from one of Su's collections of informal prose, The Forest
of Notes (Zhi-lin). The Song pleasure in informal prose is closely related to the fas
cination with the moment~ its accidents, its random details and unexpected plea
sures.
N
Visiting White Waters. Written for my son Su Mai (from The

Forest o f Notes)
December 121094.1visited the Monastery of the Buddhas Footprints with
my young son Mai. We bathed in the pool formed by the hot springs there,
which were very hot indeedbeing virtually able to cook something. We went
east following the contours of the mountain, and a little to the north there
was a waterfall a hundred yards high. This flowed off around the mountain
in a number of sharp turns, then at one bend formed a pool whose deepest
parts were plumbed to a depth of forty-five feet without reaching the bot
tom. The waters splashed with snowy froth and roared like thunder, both
delightful and awe-inspiring. On the waters bank there were some twenty
or thirty huge human footprints, which are known as the Buddhas Footprints. At twilight we went home, and retracing our steps, we watched while
they burned away the vegetation on the mountainquite a fire. In no time
at all we passed several valleys and reached the river. When the moon came
out over the mountains, the highlands were awash in midcurrent, and we
scooped watery handfuls of pearls and jade rings. We got home about ten
o'clock, and again I drank with M ai as we ate the remaining sweets and
boiled vegetables. I looked at my woozy shadow but wasnt very sleepy, so
I wrote this out for M ai
~The Old M an of East Slope
Account of a Visit One Night to Cheng-tian Temple (from The

Forest o f Notes)
December 121083nighttime. I had taken my clothes off and was about
to go to sleep when the moonlight came in through the window. Delighted
I got up and went for a walk. I kept thinking how there was no one to enjoy
this with me, so I went off to Cheng-tian Temple looking for Zhang Huaimin. Huai-min also hadnt gone to sleep, and we walked together in the
courtyard. At one end of the courtyard there was an elusive radiance, as if
from a body of waterand in that water there seemed to be the intricate pat
tern of waterplants. These were, in fact, shadows of cypress and bamboo.
W ill there ever be a time without moonlit nights, or is there any place that
The Song Dynasty
has no cypress and bamboo? It is only that there are few easygoing people
like the two of us.
The "Record of Music" in the Classic of Rites observed that temple music should not
be too loud and extravagant, giving a sense of restraint by omission. In the same way,
ceremonial dishes served in the temple should be blan#, leaving out some possi
bilities of flavor. Any kind of experience, carried to the limits of intensity, reverts
quickly to its opposite, as in the famous line of a song attributed to Emperor Wu of
the Han: "when pleasure crests, grim thoughts are many, A certain reserve seemed
to make the continuity of pleasure possible. The very lack of excitement in the fol
lowing poem ensures the perfection of the poet's pleasure, which lingers on into the
composition of the poem, looking back to catch the memory of the fleeting moment.
On the Winter Festival I Visited Lone Mountain and the Two

Monks Hui-j in and Hui-si (10 71)
The sky looked like snow,
clouds were filling the lake,
terrace and tower appeared and vanished,
the hills seemed there, then gone.
Waters so clear that stones were revealed,
and I could count the fish;
deep in the woods there was no one,
birds called each to the other.
On this winter festival I didnt go home
to be with children and wife,
I sought these holy men, known by repute,
which was really to please myself.
Where was the holy mens lodging found?
in front of Jewel Cloud Mountain
where the road twists and turns.
There was Lone Mountain, so completely alone
who would build his hut here?
yet if holy men have the holy Way
then the mountain cannot be lonely.
Paper windows and bamboo roof,
deep within it was warm,
wrapped in cassocks they sat asleep
on mats for meditation.
The cold weather and journeys distance
made my servant worried;
the carriage was readied, I hurried back,
before it was late afternoon.
'669
When we left the mountain I turned to gaze

it was covered by clouds and trees,
and all I could see was a wild hawk
circling the pagoda.
The very blandness of this trip
left its residue of pleasure:
when I reached home I was in a daze,
still shaking myself from dream.
I wrote this poem as swift as fire
to catch what was fleeting away,
for once a clear scene escapes us
it cannot be grasped again.
Account of a Visit to Pine River (from The Forest o f Notes)

Some time ago I was transferred from Hang-zhou to Gao-miand I went in
a boat with Yang Yuan-su. Chen Ling-ju and Zhang Zi-ye both followed
us, and we visited Li Gong-ze in Hu-zhou. Next we were joined by Liu Xiaoshuand we all went to Pine River. At midnight the moon came out, and we
had a drinking party at Hanging Rainbow Pavilion. Zhang Zi-ye was eightyfive years old and was known all over the world for his song lyrics. There
he composed a version of Settling W ind and Waves, whose summation
went
It is said that worthy men have gathered
under the astral lines of Wu,
and should you ask~
Im sure at their side youll find
the Old M ans Star.
Everyone at the party was having a great time, and some of us were so drunk
we passed out. I have never forgotten that joy. Now seven years have passed.
Zhang Zi-ye, Liu Xiao-shu, and Chen Ling-ju have all joined the world of
shades. On September 9 this year, an ocean storm brought a tidal wave that
left over nine feet of water on level landthe pavilion and bridge over Pine
River were swept away and not a trace was left. When I think on that by
gone momentit was truly a dream.
February 121072written at night in Lin-gao Pavilion in Huang-zhou
"The Ocean Mirage at Deng-zhou,about a mirage at sea, is one of Su Shi's finest
poems, characteristically balancing engagement and disengagement, visionary in
tensity and play, and turning at last to measure Su's poetic experience with a simi
lar experience by Han Yu. The central term that begins the poem is "emptiness"
kong~ a technical term in Buddhist thought referring to the illusoriness and
insubstantiality of sensory perception. Both the mirage created by the sea god and
the poet's imaginative .representation are "empty" things, "airy" visions.
The Song Dynasty

After the sea god performs his conjurer's trick in producing empty illusions for
Su Shi's amusement, Su recalls one of Han Yu's most famous poems, "Visiting the
Temple of Mount Heng, Then Spending the Night at the Buddhist Monastery: I
Wrote This on the Gate Tower, composed when Han was returning from a term of
exile in the far south where he served as governor of-Chao-yang (see p. 485). Han
had hoped to get a good view of Mount Heng, but
Surges of cloud and oozing fogs

hid its waist halfway up;
and though a summit it must have had,
none could get all the way through.
I came here just at the time
of the season of autumn rains,
it was shut up in shadowy vapors,
there was no clear breeze.
If to silent prayers from my secret heart
an answer is here given,
it must be because one upright and true
is able to touch and sway.
'
In an instant all was swept clear,

the throngs of peaks emerged!
I looked up and saw them towering there,
buttresses of blue sky.
Purple Awning fanning out
until it touched Pillar-of-Heaven,
and Stone Granary in hurtling vaults
Assuming that the god of the mountain hdd answered his silent prayer, Han Yu rev
erently goes off to the temple of the god, overseen by a scruffy priest who tells his
fortune.
He took the talismans in his hand

and showed me how to toss them
said, This is most lucky of all,
no other cast can compare.
Banished from sight in barbarian jungles,
lucky not to be dead,
my food and clothing just barely enough,
willing to meet my end.
To be prince, lord, minister, general,
all hope has fled long ago~
671
though the god might wish my good fortune,

it is something not easily done.
In contrast to Han Yu's painful irony, the Song poet offers an altogether different an
swer
The Ocean Mirage at Deng-zhou (1085)

I had long heard about the ocean mirage at Deng-zhou. Old men told me
that it usually appeared in spring and summer andsince it was now later
in the year, it wouldnt be appearing again. I went there five days after reach
ing my post; and thinking it would be too bad if I didnt get to see it, I made
a prayer in the temple of the sea god Prince of Extensive Virtue. On the fol
lowing day the mirage appeared, and I wrote this poem.
In the cloudy sea off to the east,
there is emptiness on emptiness,
where immortal hosts appear and vanish
in an empty radiance.
As this drifting world is swept along
there are thousands of images bom,
but how could there really be cowry gates
hiding palaces of pearls?
This mind knows well that what it sees
are all but conjured forms,
yet to please my ears and eyes I dared
bother the craftsman-god.
In the cold of the year the water is chill,
Heaven and Earth are closed tight,
but on my behalf He roused from sleep
and whipped on dragons and fish.
Its tiers of mansions, its azure hills
came forth in frosty dawn
an event so rare it thoroughly shocked
even centegenarians.
Whatever we get in this mortal world
permits being taken by force,
but beyond this world there are no things
and who can intimidate there?

What I made was but a casual plea
the god did not refuse:
truly this monstrosity was wrought by man,
not troubles Heaven-sent.
The Song Dynasty
When the governor of Chao-yang

returned from his southern exile,
he was cheered to see Stone Granary
'
He thought that someone upright and true :

had touched the wraith of the hill
how could he know that the Shaper of Things
just felt pity for his frailty?
The face relaxes, a mpments laughter
is not a thing easily had
indeed the god did answer you,
and generously as well.
In thousands of miles of dying sunlight
a lone bird sinks away,
then all I see is the sapphire sea
polishing its green bronze.
'
This new poem of mine and its fancy words,

have they any more point than this?
they will join it, change and vanish away
along with the eastern wind.
Poetry may be as insubstantial and pointless as the ocean mirage at Deng-zhou, a
mere construct of "fancy words" and wit, like the following poem on peonies that
bloomed in winter. But the poem still can have serious consequences.
Companion Pieces to Chen Xiangs Peonies on a Winter Day

(1073) (first of four)
A single bloom of beguiling red,
an azure almost dissolving,
shining back the glory of spring,
shaming the frost and snow.
The Artist of Change wants only to show
a novelty of craft
and will not allow these idle flowers
even the briefest respite.
Chinese poets would sometimes write political commentary into the most innocu
ous poems. Readers might often discover such political messages, even when they
were not intended.
Su Shi was strongly opposed to the "New Laws" policies of Wang An-shi and
his followers, and in 1079, the poet was thrown into prison on the charge of slan
dering the regime in his poetry. A record of his trial has survived, known as "The
,673

Poetry Trial on W u Terrace," and it is one of the most remarkable documents of Chi
nese poetic interpretation and misinterpretation. Poems are brought up by the pros
ecution and the "slanderous intent" is explained. Some of these poems clearly do
make unkind references to the current government, but lyrics like the one above, an
apparently harmles and witty comment on the unseasonable blooming of some pe

onies, were also included in the indictment. In regard to the set from which the poem
above is taken, the charge against Su was: "These four poems were ridiculing the
senior officials then overseeing government policy by comparing them to the Artist
o f C h a n g e , seekin g o n ly to c o m e up w ith n o vel sch em es an d p reven tin g the c o m
m on
people from enjoying even a brief respite."
Escaping the serious charges against him, Su Shi was sent off to a low post in
Huang-zhou, where he wrote some of his most famous poetry. The "Eight Poems on
Eastern Slope" "Dong-po, from which he took the name by which he is often
k n o w n ta k e Su b a c k to b a sic s, to fa rm in g , an d to th e th e m e o f h a rd sh ip o v e rc o m e
by effort and imagination. The Preface and the first two poems of the set follow.
from Eight Poems on Eastern Slope (1081)

Two years after arriving at Huang-zhou, I found myself in ever greater want
with each passing day. An old friendMa Zheng-qing, felt sorry that I had
so little food, and from the government office he requested a few dozen acres
for me on the site of an old military camp so that I could grow things for
myself there. This land, long left to run wild, was a field of thorns, shards
and stones. In addition, there was a major drought this year. All my energy
was virtually exhausted in the effort to reclaim the land. I set aside my plow
with a sigh and wrote these poems, both to console myself for nay labors
and in hopes that I would forget these efforts with the onset of the coming
year.
I
An abandoned fort for which no one cared
its fallen walls filled with scrub.
Who would spend willingly muscles strength
in efforts unrewarded later in the year?
Only the solitary wayfarer,
left with nothing by Heaven, with nowhere to flee.
At last he comes here, picks up shards and stones,
the year has been dry, no moisture in soil.
From this rugged place among the thorns
he wants to scrape an inch of growth.
Then he sets his plow aside with a sigh
when will my granary be piled high?
674
The Song Dynasty

II
Though these weed-filled fields have run wild,

there are crops that suit its high and low spots.
In the damp bottoms I will plant my rice,
.(
set dates and chestnuts on flats to the east.
This scholar of Shu in the Southland
has already been offered mulberries.
-
And good bamboo are not hard to grow

I just worry the shoots will spread uncontrolled.
I still have to choose a fine spot
and measure it out to site my house.
When my servant boy burned the dry grass,
he ran to tell me a well was uncovered:
I dont yet dare expect full meals,
but of a bucket of water I am assured.
Also from Su Shi's period in Huang-zhou came the two famous "Poetic Expositions
on Red Cliff." The following passage is the second (for the first, see pp. 292294).
The Second Poetic Exposition on Red Cliff

It was the night of the full moon in December of the same year. I was walk
ing back from my Snow-Viewing Lodge on my way to Lin-gao. Two com
panions were with me as we passed Brown Mud Slope. A frost had fallen
and the trees had all lost their leaves; our shadows were there on the ground,
and I looked up and saw the bright moon. Then I looked around and saw
that it had delighted the others. We went our way singing songs in response
to one another.
Eventually I sighed, saying, I have companions but no wine, or wine
but nothing to eat along with it. The moonlight is silvery and the breeze is
cool. What can we do on a wonderful night like this? One companion said,
Today as it was getting dark, I pulled up my nets and had caught a fish
with a very large mouth and tiny, delicate scaleswhich looked like a Pine
River bass. But then where will we get some wine? When we got back, we
consulted with our wives, and my wife said, I have a gallon of wine which
I
ve kept put away for a very long time in anticipation of just such an un
foreseen need.
Thereupon we took the wine and the fish and again went to visit the base
of Red Cliff. You could hear the sound of the rivers current, and the shore
rose up sharply for a thousand feet. The mountains were high and the moon
small; the water level had fallen, and rocks had emerged from the surface.
675
It had not been all that many months and days since the first time we came
here, yet the mountains and the river had become unrecognizable. Then I
gathered up my robes and stepped onto the bank, finding my footing up the
steep slope and pushing back the undergrowth. I crouched on a tigerlike
boulder and climbed a dragon-twisting tree. I pulled my way up to the pre
cariously perched nest of the roosting hawk and looked down into the hid
den palaces of Ping-yi, the river god. My two companions were not able to
follow me there.
Then there came a long
piercing screech. The trees shudderedthe moun
tains resounded and the valleys echoed; the wind came up and the waters
were seething. I too was struck dumb and distressed, shivering and afraid,
and I felt such a chill that I could not stay there long. I went back and got
in the boat, and we pushed off to midstream, to come to rest wherever the
boat might take us. It was then about midnight and all around us was a for
saken gloom. It happened then that a solitary crane was coming over the
river from the east. Its wings seemed like wagon wheels, and it had a black
lower garment with a pure white jacket. It gave a longshrill cryandmak
ing a close pass over our boatit went off to the west.
Soon afterward my companions left, and I too went to go to sleep. 1^
dreamed of a Daoist wizardsoaring lightly in his feathered robes, and as
he was passing by Lin-gao, he descended. He bowed to me and said, Did
you enjoy your visit to Red Cliff? When I asked him his name, he bowed
his head and would not answer me. But ah!then I understood. Wasnt
that you this last night who flew past us and cried out? The Daoist looked
around smiling, and I woke up with a start. When I opened the door and
looked for him, I couldnt see him anywhere.
The experience of more or less continual administrative exile, being transferred from
one post to another, imparted a sense of unreality to all past experience, along with
intense attention to the details of the present moment.
to Down and Out Drunk (Zui luo-po) Written on

Leaving Jing-kou
The clouds were thin, the moon was faint
I sobered up around ten oclock
just as the boat was shoving off.
As I turned to gaze on the lonely city,
gray mists closed around it.
I recall the time she was singing,
but I don
t recall coming back.
My turban askew, fan fallen from hand,
the hammock slick,
when I woke there was no one there
to tell my secret dreams.
The Song Dynasty
Throughout this life I am swept along

when will it ever cease?
My home is in the southwest,
but I am always setting off
to go farther on southeast.
Su Shi continued to be transferred .from post to post, and in his last years was sent
as far south as possibleto Hai-nan Island. In 1100 he was recalled, but died in
1101 before making it back to the North. The second of the two following poems
was written while making the crossing from Hai-nan back to the mainland.
Tong-chao Tower at Zheng-mai Station (1100)

For the rest of my days I would grow old
in a village of Hai-nan,
and the god will send down Shaman Yang
to summon back my soul.
Dim in the distance, at the base of sky,
where a hawk is sinking away,
is a hairs breadth line of green mountains,
and that is the heartland.
Crossing the Sea, June 20110 0

Orion lies flat, the Dipper bends down,
it is almost midnight now,
after harsh rains and daylong wind
skies also know how to clear.
When clouds scatter, the moon shines bright,
who needs add decoration?
for Heavens complexion and colors of sea
are basically clear and pure.
All that remains is that old man of Lus2
wish to sail off on a raft;
and I roughly discern the melody
of the Yellow Emperors music.3
In southern jungles I died nine times
yet I feel no cause for complaint
this present trips utter wonder
crowns my entire life.
2The "old man of Lu" is Confucius, who, in despair that the Way was not in practice in the world,
once expressed a wish to sail off to sea on a raft.
3The Zhuang~zitells of the Yellow Emperor performing his cosmic music in the wilderness by Lake
Dong-ting.
'677
Relationships
Even more than their Tang precursors, Song poets wrote within a web of literary and
personal relationships. Poems were to be read in relation to other poems, both pre
sent and past, and they invoked knowledge and memories shared with friends and
kin. Su Shi's most frequent poetic correspondent was his brother Su Che. Su Che's
"Thoughts of Former Times at Mian-chi,to which the following was a companion

piece, survives, but it is poor. Su Shi's poem, however, stands on its own, speaking
of the vanishing traces of things that survive only in shared memories.
A Companion Piece to Su Ches Thoughts of Former Times at

Mian-chi
Human life no matter where
do you know what it is like?
It must be like the swan in flight
that treads in slushy snow.
By chance it leaves within the slush
the marks of its feet;
the swan flies on thereafter who
can reckon its direction?
The old monk there has died,
a new pagoda is made;
there is no way on his crumbling wall now
to see poems we wrote there before.
But those rocky roads of days gone by
do you recall them still?
how the way was long and we were worn out
and my limping donkey brayed.4
In the following poem, Su Shi's patron, the great Ou-yang Xiu, was indulging in one
of his favorite poetic modes: hyperbolic description in the manner of the Tang poet
Han Yu. This style was considered particularly appropriate for praising works of art.
The poem by Su Shi that follows at p. 680 seems to be on the same stone screen,
n o w in th e p o sse ssio n o f O u -y a n g X iu h im s e lf ~ o r p e rh ap s on
another scre e n v e ry
patterns in th e stone w e re d e v e lo p e d b y in k brushwork. Not only does he adopt the style of Ou-yang Xiu's poem; Su Shi playfully re
sponds to the earlier work and refutes Ou-yang Xiu's myth that the patterns in the
stone were made by wgods and demons" at the beginning of creation or perhaps
made purposely to humiliate mortal men and their limited talents. In Su Shi's ver
sion, the spirits of two famous former painters, frustrated by their incorporeality, have
been working at their craft in the afterlife.
m u ch lik e the first, in w h ic h the
4Su Shi's original note says: In that past year my horse had died at Er-ling, and I rode a donkey to
Mian-chi.
The Song Dynasty
[Ou-yang Xiu] On the Carved Stone Screen of Wu Kui

the Han-lin Academician (1056)
When dawn5s rays enter the woods,
all birds awake with a start;
and flying in flocks with a whir of wings,
the crows cry out raucously.
"
'
They wind through the woods in all directions,

then cast themselves into sky,
for yellow-beaked fledglings in the nest
wait famished to be fed.
The female comes down to peck the ground
the male wheels high overhead,
then female and male to each other call
and go flying back again.
The woods are empty of people,
the voices of birds rejoice,
an ancient tree touches Heaven
with gnarled, twisting boughs.
Beneath it is an eerie stone
stretched among the trees,
buried in mists and grasses,
streaked with lichens and moss.
Tell me now, who could depict
a scene such as I have described?
it isin fact, in Wu Kui
s house
on his screen of stone.
A Guo-zhou craftsman hewed the hills
and took the mountains bones,
he carved by dawn and hacked at dusk
no task of a single day
then thousands of images all came forth
from there within the stone.
I sigh at mans folly in failing to see
how hard it was at first
for He Who fashioned Heaven and Earth
they claim, instead, existing things
arose spontaneously,
mere processes of Nature.
Dont men know how they chiseled and carved,
cutting out representations
of loathsome things and things that please,
all the thousands of poses and postures
that can never be exhausted,

how gods suffered and demons wept
by day and night never
finding any ease?
Were it otherwise, how could we have in this screen
what perfected skill and fullest forethought
of finest craftsmen could not achieve?
half present and half unseen
in a filmy blur
of rising clouds and haze.
When gods and demons worked this deed,
Earth and Heaven begrudged the possession;
it was hidden in Guo-zhou
s mountains,
in the most remote of their stones.
If man but have the will,
there is nothing he cannot obtain
though Earth and Heaven are godlike,
they could not hide it away.
Or it also seems that demons and gods
love always to prevail
and show their spite for our kind,
wishing here to show ultimate strangeness
past the point our talents fail,
and did, in fact, have Zhang Jing-shan
bring it from the west.
W u the Academician
saw it and merrily chortled,
he drunkenly dipped his lavender brush,
streaming with charcoal ink.
Your talent, sir, may well compete
to rival demons and gods,
but unfortunately I have grown very old
and cant keep you company.
Ou-yang
u-yang aXiu
i u Asl
Asks Me to Write a Poem on a Stone Screen ThatU
He Owns (10 71)
Who sent you that stone screen
on which there are of ink
the very faintest traces?
No tall forests are depicted there
nor mighty growths,
just a lone pine
The Song Dynasty
unaging after thousand of years,

on a snowy ridge west of E-mei.
Cliffs have collapsed, streams are cut off,
you can gaze but never
reach that spot
where lonely mists and setting sun
join in a dimming haze.
It rises writhing, shaped by winds,

its true appearance achieved
I believe at last in this carved depiction
there is Heavens skill indeed.
But then I suspect that Bi Hong and Wei Yan
lie buried beneath Guo-zhous hills,
and though their bones may rot away,
their hearts last on forever.
The promptings of spirit and clever ideas
could find no outlet there;
these were transformed to blankets of mist
that sank within the stone.
*
The great painters since ancient days
have been no common men
in describing the likenesses of things
they are much the same as poets.
I would have you write a poem, sir,
to console their untimely fates,
do not let those two men,
biting back their fury, weep
in secret mansions of the tomb.
Many of Su Shi's prose accounts are also part of his large network of friends and ac
quaintances. In an account of a friend's pavilion and his pet cranes, we can hear
echoes of his belief in not letting one's feelings';/remain caught up in things. One
keeps what one loves by always letting go of it; thus the cranes always return to the
man who "sets them free" every day.
An Account of the Pavilion for Setting the Cranes Free

In the autumn of 1077 there was a great flood at Peng-cheng, whose waters
reached halfway up the door of the thatched cottage of Zhang Tian-ji of
Cloud Dragon Mountain. In the spring of the following year the waters re
ceded, and Zhang moved to the east of his former dwelling, up to the
foothills of the eastern mountains. When he climbed to the heights and
looked out, he found a rare vista and built a pavilion on the summit. The
ridges and crests of Peng-cheng

s mountains join around the city on all sides,
as if protecting it by a great ring, the only gap being about twenty percent
of the western edge. Our mountain mans pavilion happened to be situated
exactly facing that gap. During the passage from spring into summer, the
trees and vegetation stretch to the sky. During the snowy months of autumn
and winter, a thousand leagues around are all the same color. In the shift
ing from darkness to sunlight during rainstorms there are a hundred varia
tions both above and below.
Our man of the mountains had two cranes, which were well trained and
fine fliers. At dawn he would set them free toward the gap in the mountains
to the west, letting them go wherever they pleased. Sometimes they would
stand on some field on the slopes; at other times they would soar above the
clouds. Then at twilight they would head for the eastern mountains and re
turn. For this reason he named it The Pavilion for Setting the Cranes Free.55
Together with some companions and subordinates, ISu Shi, the gover
nor, once went to see this man of the mountains. We drank wine in his pavil
ion and enjoyed ourselves. Then I bowed to him and declared, Do you
know how enjoyable such a private life is, living here in seclusion? One
would not exchange it for anythingeven to be the ruler of the realm. In the
Classic o f Changes it says: A crane cries out in the shade; its young ones
join in.And the Classic of Poetry says:
The crane cries out in deepest marsh,
its voice is heard in the skies.
tcFor the crane is indeed a pure and aloof creature, at ease and free, pass
ing beyond all the worlds filth. For this reason the writers of the Changes
and the Poems used it as a figure for worthy men, good men, and men of
private virtue. To be the familiar of cranes and to amuse oneself with them
seems something that should have benefit and do no harm. Nevertheless,
Duke Yi of Wei destroyed his domain because of his love of cranes. The Duke
of Zhou composed the 'Declaration Against Wine
and Duke Wu of Wei gave
admonition in the Poem Dignified
both considered wine as the very worst
thing, making people besotted and bringing ruin. Yet Liu LingRuan Ji, and
their sort used wine to keep themselves entirely genuine and established a
reputation in later ages. Think of it! The ruler of the realm cannot be per
mitted to love even so pure, aloof, easy, and free a creature as a cranefor
if he loves it, he will destroy his domain. Yet someone who withdraws from
the world to the mountain forests cannot be harmed even by so besotting
and ruinous a thing as winemuch less by cranes! Considering the matter
from this point of view, the delights of the recluse and the ruler cannot even
be spoken of in the same breath.
Our man of the mountains was amused and laughed. Thats right!
Then I composed songs for setting the cranes free and calling them back.
The cranes go off in flight
to the gap in the western hills,
soaring high and scanning below,
The Song Dynasty
they choose where they will go.

Drawing in wings in a whir,
*(
it seems they will alight~
but what do they suddenly see
again beating their wings aloft?
They spend whole days among valleys and streams,
pecking sapphire mosses and treading white stones.
The cranes are coming back
to the shadows of eastern hills.
Below them is a man,
yellow cap, straw slippers,
homespun coat, playing the harp.
He eats what he grows himself
you cranes have your fill on whats left.
Turn back, turn back!
In the western hills you cannot linger long.
An account written this eighth day of January,* 1078
Song Classical Poetry
The classical poetry of the Song Dynasty presents a very different face from that of
Tang poetry; it offers its own, quite distinct pleasures. Still, despite the great diver
sity of Song poetry, there remains in it some direct identity when compared to the
poetry of the Tang. Critics have remarked on the Song classical poets' genialityand
reserve, in contrast to the intensity of the Tang poets, and on Song poetry's self-con
sciousness. One of the oldest critiques, offered in the Song itseif, was of Song po
etry's explicit philosophizing, in contrast to what seemed the more authentic ex
pression of emotion in Tang poetry. "Philosophizing" (suggesting a diminutive and
popularized form of philosophical reflection) may adequately describe the Song clas
sical poets' discursiveness and their constant tendency to offer rationalizations or
witty explanations for phenomena and experience. Though generally valid, all of
these characterizations of Song poetry and contrasts with the Tang are inadequate
attempts to explain what was a basic shift in sensibility.

As with every generalization, there are many exceptions to broad characteriza
tion, and many refinements that should be made. Song poets loved a fine couplet
no less than a Tang poet, but to later readers, the Song couplet would often show
the "traces of the hatchet" a sense of conscious, careful craft that seemed to con
trast with the ease of the best High Tang couplets. The finest Song couplet seemed
like something made; the finest High Tang couplet seemed like something found.
Song poets retained the forms of Tang classical poetry, but something deep had
changed. To their own taste and to the taste of later poets and readers, Tang poetry
was often preferable (though there were groups who modeled themselves on Song
poets in the Qing). Tang poetry may have been preferred, but the world that had
produced such a poetry was gone; in its place was a new, and in many ways more
modern age.
Ou-yang Xiu (1007-1072)

Ou-yang Xiu was the dominant cultural figure of his day and the first representative
Song literary figure. He was an historian, politician, antiquarian, epigrapher, liter
ary critic, writer of prose, poetry, and song lyric, as well as the patron of most of the
important figures in classical literature of the eleventh century. His achievements in
c lassical po e try s h o u ld probably b e ranked last a m o n g his m a n y a c c o m p lis h m e n ts .
Although Tang poets often imitated their predecessors, in the Song, modeling
poems on earlier poets became a pervasive phenomenon. The poetic tradition had
evolved into a repertoire of styles and voices, each associated with a particular po
etic genre and type of situation, and available to the Song poet when he sought to
684
The Song Dynasty

assume a role. The first poem below, in which Ou-yapg Xiu declares his chosen per
sona as the "Drunken Old M a n , is modeled on several poems by the Mid-Tang poet
Bo Ju-yi. Here the weighty act of self-naming, of choosing a pseudonym, is figured
as an accident and chance whim.
On the Pavilion of the Drunken Old Man in Chu-zhou

Forty is not yet old, and I
just chance to sign poems Drunken Old M an .
When drunk I leave everything behind,

so why would I still need to note my age?
I love simply how this pavilions brook
makes its way here through tangles of peaks,
Sounding as though it were falling from sky,
spilling straight down toward these two eaves.
,
Then off it flows to the stream by the cliff,

where hidden springs add to its gurgling
Its sound never drowns out conversation,
its clarity, unlike that of flutes and harps.
O f course I find flutes and harps lovely,
but their music is much too fast and loud;
Therefore I often take wine in hand
and walk far away to this purling stream.
W ild birds peer at me when Fm drunk,
and creeks clouds keep me here asleep.
H ill flowers waste their practiced smiles,
not knowing how to speak with me.
Only the breeze that comes from the cliff
will blow me back sober again.
The famous calligraphy paper known as "Clear Heart

paper, properly "Clear Heart
Hall" paper, was made for Li Yu, the last emperor of the so-called Southern Tang,
one of the Five Dynasties ("a century of warfare when pike and shield/streamed with
battle's blood). A Song collection of literary anecdotes remarks that this particular
paper was not considered very valuable at the very beginning of the dynasty, but
once Ou-yang Xiu wrote the following poem, its price rose dramatically, to the point
where it became virtually unattainable. The judgment of the connoisseur can never
be fully disentangled from commercial value.

The poem is characteristic of some of Ou-yang Xiu's best-known poetic work:
a chatty exposition, occasionally dropping in a fine metaphor, with many lines that
are flabby verse rather than poetry. In such poems, Ou-yang Xiu unfailingly promotes
his friends, just as, in this case, he also promotes the value of "Clear Heart" paper.
Yet such garrulous verse seemed to fulfill the Song interest in a casual and natural
poetic form to express a genial, generous personality.
A Companion Piece to Liu Changs Clear Heart Paper55

Have you not seen how those truly rare talents,
Shi Man-qing and Su Shun-qin,
were long cast down into hardship
and buried at last in brown dust?
Though Su Shun-qing lived a paupers life
in death he grew in esteem:
scraps of writing and incomplete drafts
are now like precious gems.
Shi Man-qing in drunkenness wrote
a poem on a red plaster wall;
patches of plaster have crumbled away,
dusky from charcoal smoke.
Like the river spilling from Mount Kun-lun,
its momentum twisting round bends;
or snows weighing down on Great Mount Hua,
looming high above.
Ever since these two young men
perished, one after the other,
the atmosphere of our rivers and hills
stands everywhere subdued.
Though your household came to possess
the paper called Clear Heart,
I wonder who there is left alive
who would dare set brush to it?
Mei Yao-chen, Xuan-zhouJs old poet,
is starving and near to death;
when the golden swan breaks its wings,
sad are the sounds of its cries.
From time to time he eats his fill,
and then he can speak fair,
like listening to loud singing
as golden flagons are quaffed.
Though both the younger men are dead,
this older man survives
The Song Dynasty
aging craftsman, capable still

of skillfully trimming to size.
Why did you not send the paper to him?
why set it instead before me?
its like spurning honest discourse,

preferring banter and wit.
Sad to say, I am in my decline,

no more what I used to be,
and all I can do is take this bundle
to open, then roll up again,
A century of warfare when pike and shield
streamed with battles blood
now all that kingdoms songs and dance
are terraces grown with weeds.
Yet the artifacts of those bygone days
are all good and finely made,
they lie abandoned everywhere
^
buried in brush and scrub.
From where did you get hold of
paper such as this?
pure and tough and glossy,
a roll of a hundred sheets.
The duties of my office
happily leave me leisure;
poems exchanged with the Secretariat
continue and redouble.
From ancient days the world was never
lacking in literature
how do we know that in times to come,
such writers wont show up again?
Though Ou-yang Xiu is best known for longer monologues in which he assumes the
role of the "Drunken Old Manor the generous patron, some of his most attractive
poems are virtually anonymous pieces such as "Boating on West Lake
and "White
Egret," close in style and sensibility to his song lyrics.
Boating on West Lake: to Zhang Shan, Academician and

Fiscal Commissioner
Light on the waves, colors of willows,
veils of sapphire haze,
to winding isles and arching bridges
our painted skiff makes its way.
The farther we go, the more lovely,

we fear only that it will end;
but on deeper within, the more secret,
and it seems a space without bounds.
In the fragrance of figured satins
fine guests are brought to stay,
and the sound of harps and piping
sweeps in with evenings wind.
Half-drunk then, we turned the boat,
uncertain of our direction,
there were mansions and terraces high and low
in the light of the evening sun.
White Egret
Splashing on stones, the rapids sounds
are like the drums of battle
a surface of waves that toss the sky
seems like silver hills.
When rapids leap and waves smash,
in wind as well as rain,
it stands there alone with dignity,
thoughts even more serene.
Mei Yao-chen (10021060)

Ou-yang Xiu saw himself as a patron on the model of Han Yu, and one of the func
tions of a patron was to gather a circle of writers and champion them. Anyone who
assumed the role of Han Yu needed someone to correspond to Meng Jiao, the im
poverished older poet whose unappreciated genius was to be promoted. Ou-yang
Xiu found his Meng Jiao in Mei Yao-chen, a politically unsuccessful older man who
had turned his attention fully to poetry. At this point the resemblance between Meng
Jiao and Mei Yao-chen stops (although Mei, so often explicitly compared to Meng
Jiao, occasionally attempted to imitate the Tang poet in more substantial ways). The
violence of the following poem, one of Mei's most famous, is similar in some su
perficial ways to Meng Jiao's work.
A Lone Hawk Over the Buddha Tower of the Monastery of

Universal Purity
From my newly rented lodgings
I saw the temples tower,
its green and gold stood shining
before my ramshackle rooms.
Over the tower with my own eyes I saw

pigeons in their flocks,
nesting, perching, drinking, feeding,
heedless of passing time.
Canned rafters, muraled walls were stained
by droppings everywhere;
they soiled even the shoulders and head
of the statue of the Buddha.
Monks of the temple did not dare
make use of slings and arrows
then all at once a gray hawk appeared
spreading its deadly talons.
Crows cawed, the magpies squawked,
mynah birds were screeching
for thither the savage hawk had come
to seek out the smell of flesh.
The hawks fierce and fiery heart
stood in no awe of their numbers;
r
in a flash it shattered a single skull,
the others around were alarmed.
The dead bird came plummeting down,
and before it hit the ground,
with turning wing the hawk took it
like a whirling gust of wind,
Then perched alone on the roofs ridge,
freely shredding its prey,
ripping flesh in beak, laying liver open,
flinging the guts away.
An old owllacking the skill,
cruel yet cowardly,
wheeled in circles, ready to close,
and pierced it with famished eyes.
Soon afterwards the hawk was full
and flew away on its own;
fighting for scraps one could not tell
vultures from common birds.
Groups of children were pointing,
passers-by all laughed,
I now recall this and make it a poem
beside this autumn river.

Mei Yao-chen's large collection of poetry (close to three thousand poems) contains
a great variety of work. He is best known for the topics he took up, often close ob
servations of details of everyday life that had not previously been treated in poetry.
His work sometimes extended to criticism of social abuses. Mei's simplicity shows
itself to advantage in the moving poems on the death of his first wife and of several
of his children. Mei Yao-chen's poetic ideal was the difficult term ping-dan, some
thing like "mellow blandness," an aesthetic flatness whose beauty was supposed to
grow on the reader rather than striking him or her immediately.
Writing of My Sorrow
Heaven took my wife from me,
then also took my child.
And though my eyes are never dry,
this heart is ready to die.
Rain falls and enters the ground,
a pearl sinks to the floor of sea.
If you go to the sea, you may see the pearl,
or dig in the ground, you may see the water.
But men, when they go to the streams below,
we know they are gone forever more.
I stroke my chest, who can tell me why?
this gaunt and worn ghost in the mirror.
Listening to a Neighbor Singing at Night

I couldnt get to sleep one night,
a neighbor sangI heard something rare.
I envisaged her red lips in motion,
and fancied dust flying from beams.
A beat missed surely she smiled to herself;
I rose and dressed to listen unobserved.
But when I had dressed, her song was done,
I was left with glow of the moon in my window.
On March 26 1048I Had a Dream

Since the time that I remarried,
two years she stayed out of my dreams.
But then last night I saw her face,
and mid-evening was struck by pain.
The darkening lamp showed its faint light,
it somberly shone on the rafters and beams.
690
The Song Dynasty
Out of nowhere snow beat on my window,borne along, as well, by a furious wind.

T
Crescent Moon
When the crescent moon comes shining
on the corner of my roof,
the dog on the west side barks,
the eastern neighbor is troubled.
Deep in the night bright spirits
and wraith-things are astir,
on the ancient plain theres a rustling
and there is no wind.
Wang An-shi (1021-1086)

Wang An-shi was a scruffy Confucian political theorist, of totalitarian inclinations,
firmly convinced of the correctnessôf his own views and of the urgency of their im
plementation for the redemption of the Song state. He had the misfortune to have
his reform program taken seriously by the new emperor Shen-zong, and his politi
cal agenda was put into practice in the "New Laws" policy of 1069, which gained
him the immediate opposition of conservative and pragmatist alike. Although he has
a few poems on social issues, Wang An-shi is best knownsomewhat incongru
ously as a fastidious stylist of quatrains and regulated verses and as an ardent admirer of Du Fu.
The Temple of Shooting Stars

Into jutting clouds terrace and hall
rise looming upward;
long river that reaches thousands of miles,
a single cup of wine.
From here I see streams and mountains
swallow down sun and moon,
while far in the distance no wagon or horse
brings along dust and dirt.
W ild geese fly on paths through cloud,
their voices pass down low,
the visitor draws near Heaven's Gates,
and quickly comes back from dream.
The scope of such splendor only a poem

could tidily display;
but Ilacking talent, am put to shame,
having come here so casually.
691

Jin-ling, the ancient seat of the Southern Dynasties, had long been a favorite topic
for poets. Although Wang An-shi carefully keeps the historical moment undefined
in the following poem, he is probably referring to Jin-ling primarily as the capital of
the Five Dynasties Kingdom of the Southern Tang and to its surrender to the Song.
To Ou-yang Xiu, the artifacts of the Southern Tang were simply lying around for the
taking, as he says in "A Companion Piece to Liu Chang's 'Clear Heart Paper'
Yet the artifacts of those bygone days

are all good and finely made,
they lie abandoned everywhere
buried in brush and scrub.
Note that Wang An-shi more correctly recognizes tomb robbery as the source of so
many antiquarian treasures.
Meditation on the Past at Jin-ling III

The lay of the land bends eastward here
on the rivers thousands of miles,
among the clouds, Heavens Turrets
paired peaks for eternity.

In those days troops moved over the earth,
a manly hero took it
when a Sage came forth in the heartland,
each place surrendered in turn.
In a vast silence of river and hills
the royal aura lies buried,
a gloomy bleakness of mist in the wind
fills the windows of monks.
Ruined barrows and rifled tombs
stripped of their caps and swords
who again will weep on his sash
and pour out a cup in libation?
Climbing Bao-gong Pagoda

My tired servant and worn-out horse
I left at the gate of pine,
while I myself took my long bamboo cane
to lean on these roots of stone.
The river moon wheeled through sky
making its own daylight,
as clouds over ridges split darkness
and cast a shadowy dusk.
A rat shook the stillness of summits,
along its passage sounds rose,
692
The Song Dynasty
in the desolate chill a crow mounted swiftly,

its shadows wingbeats faced it.
In a place like this we do not know
who is guest and who is host
this holy man forgets the self,
*"
while I myself forget words.1
Wu-zhen Monastery
Stream in the wilds running zigzag,
scouring stairs to the rooms,
noontime window, a fading dream
as birds call one to the other.
Day after day the breeze of spring
blows on the fragrant plants
'
until north of the hill and south of the hill
the path is almost gone.
One Day Coming HomeBallad (on the death of his wife)

When we were poor I rushed here and there
to provide us clothing and food;
a hundred days spent rushing here and there,
and I could come home only one.
It pains me that we will not live out
a lifetimes worth of pleasure,
My wish was that when we were old
we could stay together.
It is gloomy in the empty room
where the coffin curtains hang,
the blue lamp flame at midnight,
the sound of weeping faint.
I can envisage face and voice,
*but where now are you yourself?
and if we meet in the world below
will it be you or not?
Huang Ting-jian (1045-1105)

For all his importance in the history of Chinese poetry, Huang Ting-jian's poetry is
difficult for modern Chinese readers to appreciate and even harder to appreciate in
translation. Song poets were already intimidated by the achievements of their Tang
1/;Forgets the self" also has the sense of "forgets about me."
693

predecessors, and Huang Ting-jian's generation had Song literary giants such as Ouyang Xiu and Su Shi before them. Huang Ting-jian's response was to use the work
of his predecessors and transform it. His poems are studded with allusions and
phrases drawn from earlier poetry, cleverly reworked. Even more significant is the
pJay of registers, mixing vernacular expressions with recognizably "poetic" phrases.
Out of all this comes a playfully urbane delight in language and poetic tradition.
This was apparent to well-educated Song readers who shared Huang Ting-jian's own
background, and his work was so much admired it was taken as the beginning of a
whole school of poets, the "Jiang-xi School," which remained active through the rest
of the dynasty. For modern Chinese readers, however, such sophistication is reduced
to copious footnotes; and for readers of translation, it is altogether invisible.
Following the Rhymes of Huang Da-lins Sent to Su Che

Half lifetimes fellows and friends
are gone with the passing water,
for how many men will portraits of honor
enter the Royal Gallery.
In springtime wind and springtime rain
the flowers pass my eyes,
north of the river and south of the river
water strikes the skies.
I am ready to take off my badges of bronze,
I am soon to seek the Way,
knowing full well that friendship like stone
is in different to unequal years.
For each wagtail there is the frustration2
of longing to go home,
with days and months hastening
a forehead filled with snow.
To Huang Ji-fu
I am lodged by the northern sea,
you, by the sea in the south,
I would send a letter by wild goose,
but forbear, being unable.
Peach and plum in springtime breeze,

a single cup of wine;
night rain on the rivers and lakes,
a lamp ten years before.
2The "wagtail" refers to the third stanza of Classic o f Poetry CI XW: "Wagtails in the meadows,/brothers pressed by troubles." It suggests the unchanging love of brothers for one another (Huang Da-lin
was Huang Ting-jian's elder brother).
MA
The Song Dynasty
To keep a household all I have

are four bare walls,
in healing ills I do not hope
to three times break my arm.3
I imagine you there studying,
'
your head already white,
with gibbons wailing across the creek
among miasmal vines.
Asking for a Cat

Since autumn the rodents have taken
a gross advantage of cat-death:
they eye my crocks, upset my plates,
disturb my sleep by hight.
Ive heard tell that your pussikins
has littered several young,
I purchased a fish strung on willow twig
to beseech you for a kitty.
Lu You (1125-1210)
Lu You was the most famous of the Southern Song poets and the most prolific poet
before the Ming, with approximately ten thousand poems to his credit. Such produc
tivity is all the more remarkable because Lu You destroyed virtually all the poems he
wrote before middle age. Modern Chinese critics lay special weight on his poems ex
pressing the frustrated desire to conquer the North and reunify China. Even though
this "patriotic" impulse was important to Lu You, such poems form only a very tiny
portion of his work as a whole, most of which celebrates the moments of his daily life
with genial wit. Poetry in such volume, chronically arranged, approaches diary: al
though there is almost nothing in his collection that rises to the heights of the best Tang
poets, Lu You is rarely clumsy and boring. The easygoing pleasures provided by his
work are different from those we normally expect of poetry.
Small Garden
Misty plants of my small garden
reach to my neighbors home
and through the shade of mulberries
a single path slants.
I lay here reading Tao Qians poems,
but before I finished the book,
3The phrase "three times break my arm" echoes a proverb in The Zuo Tradition that after thrice break
ing an arm one can become a good doctor. Huang Ting-jian is probably referring to his capacity to
"doctor" the ills of the folk he governs.
695
I took advantage of gentle rain

to go and weed my melons.
Gazing in the Evening North of M y Cottage

I
Red trees and green forests
streaked with twilight mist,
ever beside the bridge there is
a boat where fish are sold.
The lines of Du M u
s poetry,
the paintings of Li Cheng,
all can be found right here beside
the masters walking stick.
II
Every day by the crossing
my tiny boat stays tied,
an old man grown too lazy
to travel beyond his gates.
A single bamboo walking cane
passing beyond my sparse hedge
gives full command of a thousand cliffs
and Fall in ten thousand valleys.
End of Spring (1197)

A thatched cottage of several rooms
on the shores of Mirror Lake,
a thousand-volume library
doesnt help my poverty.
Swallows come and swallows go,
I pass another day,
flowers blossom, flowers fall,
the course of spring is run.
I open a book with joy to see
the friends Ive known in life,
and Im shocked by the mirroring water
not the man I used to be.
I laugh at myself, how this heart remains
that wants to destroy the Turk;
The Song Dynasty
when I stand on the heights, I am carried away

and I almost forget where I am.
Lonely Cloud
Ive lived on this very mountain

for the past forty years,
I served at court and did no good,
and so came home again.
Dont think me strange if, standing long,
I lean on this balcony~
its because I love that lonely cloud
so calm the whole day long.
Lu You took as his pseudonym the "Old Man Set Free, In addition to celebrating
mild domestic pleasures, he also enjoyed assuming a role of extravagant excess in
the manner of Li Bo. This was the proper frame of mind for writing in the wild cal
ligraphic style of draft cursive.
Song of Draft Cursive

-
To brew three thousand gallons of beer

I bankrupt my family,
yet for thousands of gallons of wistfulness
this beer will be no match.
Early this morning my drunken eyes
saw lightning flashing on cliffs,
I seized my brush, looked all around
hemmed in by Earth and Heaven.
All of a sudden the brush went sweeping,
I was utterly unaware:
wind-blown clouds had entered my breast,
Heaven had lent me its force.
Dragon gods battled on wild plains
shrouded in reeking fog;
strange wraiths shattered the mountains
blackening the moonlight.
At this moment I drove away
the sorrow lodged in my chest:
I slammed the bench with a loud shout,
in frenzy my turban fell.
697
The paper of W u and Shus white silk

did not suit my mood:
I consigned it all to the great hall

whose walls were nine feet high.
The following famous poem is supposed to have been written by Lu You on his
deathbed.
For My Sons
Dying now, I know full well
that nothing truly matters,
and yet Im sad I did not see
China united once more.
The day the royal armies quell
our heartland in the North,
forget not in our family rites
to let this old man know.
Yang Wan-li (1127-1206)

By the Southern Song, the standard themes and forms of expression of classical po
etry had been fully explored, it was always possible to give a new twist to an old
image, but the language of poetry had come to seem increasingly commonplace and
flat. The poet Yang Wan-li addressed this problem by a militant vitalisman inten
tion to make all that was habitual and moribund alive and lively. Yang Wan-li bor
rowed the term "vitalism" (huo-fa) from Chan Buddhist discourse, where it referred
to the way in which Chan teaching might make the truths of Buddhist scriptures im
mediately apparent. In Yang Wan-li's poetic use, "vitalism" appeared as the impulse
to shock and surprise, by wit and humor, by reference to the gritty details of life, by
daring metaphors, by taking note of what poets commonly overlooked, and by an
aggressive use of vernacular, even slang, terms in classical poetry.
Yan Ji-sheng, Chancellor of Education, Invited His Junior

Colleagues to Visit the Pei Garden. In our boat we sailed around
Lone Mountain enjoying the lotus blossoms. Then late in the
day we moored at the imperial park at Yu-hu. I wrote ten
quatrains (one of ten)
As soon as the boat shoved off
we were far from the worlds dirt,
and swept along, we rode the winds
crossing the Great Void.
One of the party, by accident,
dropped some pastry crumbs:
The Song Dynasty
fish and turtles in countless numbers

came out within the waves.
During an Intercalary August After the Arrival of Autumn

It Was Hot in the Evening and I Went to Be Cool in the
Prefectural Garden (first of two)
When I made it to the top of the wall,
at once my eyes saw clearly
twilight hills were rivals to offer me
several sharp points of green.
Then weeping willows ceased their dance
of leaves within west wind
for the longest time one leaf alone
did not stop.
One Day Before New Years EveWhile Returning by Boat,

We Moored at Qu-wo Market, and I Spent the Night in
Zhi-ping Temple
The river was broadthe winds were strong,
cold cut through my thick coat,
there were more rocky rapids than shore
as the boat made its way upstream.
The market was not so far away,
but the boat could not put in,
yet my fancies had already rushed ahead
to a spot beside bright lanterns.
That night I stayed in an old temple,
which I entered slogging through mud,
the soggy kindling when set ablaze
crackled like insectscries.
Cold windows and freezing walls
combined to keep me from sleep~
but better by far than the flimsy boat roof
where I looked up and saw the sky.
In the market the people shouted and sang
keeping the holiday,
while a huddled poets pair of knees
rose higher than his cheeks.
When I make it homemy children

will ask me how things were
but tomorrow I wont be able to bear
telling this mood tonight.
699
Just Before the Mid-March 116 4 Festival, I Heard That My

Father Was Not Feeling Well. Going back west I saw plum
blossoms and had these thoughts (first of two)
Along the highway at Tong-jiang
I keep on heading west,
a thousand trees of wild plums
hang over the sparse hedge.
Just yesterday in the capital
borne in a bamboo tray
for three hundred copper coins
you could buy a single spray.
Besides allusiveness, Yang Wan-li's poetry delighted in jargon and slang terms,
which he embedded in classical verse as some modern American poets mix ver
nacular and literary English. The following poem uses Chan Buddhist jargon and the
cryptically magisterial tone of Chan. The third line reminds the reader that the cas
sock and begging bowl are mere customs and not an essential part of Buddhism; the
analogy is that poetic traditions, which seem so necessary and constricting, are not
an essential part of poetry. The fifth line refers to the famous couplet of Xie Lingyun's "Climbing an Upper Story by the Pool" (see p. 321):
Pond and pool grow with grasses of spring,

garden willows vary the birds that there sing.
'
Yang Wan-li's couplet suggests that not only should the line of poetry be beautifully
crafted as something to be envisaged, it should also have an elusive attraction "beyond
the words." The final image of food suggests something of a unique, indefinable flavor.
Two Companion Pieces for Li Tian-lin (first of two)

YouVe got to cut loose to learn poetry,
trust your own hand to bring unique heights.
Cassock and begging bowl are no old tradition,
a hills weight is just like a hairs.
W ithin the line there are ctgrasses in pond3
yet beyond the words, both eyes are dazzled.
So tasty!~what can I liken it to?

a frosty crab pickled in dregs of beer.
Ten Stanzas on the Autumn Rain (one of ten)

I was sick of hearing the rain drip
from the beech beside the well,
I got up to see the drizzling sky
everywhere in my gaze.
The Song Dynasty
The eastern hills lay stretched out

for thirty miles:
beyond a curtain of pearls
an azure-colored screen.
March 5 118 0 . In early morning crossing on the Great Marsh

ferry (first of two)
The river and hills beyond the fog
I cannot clearly see,
only by dogs and roosters
can I tell theres a village ahead.
All over the planks of the ferryboat
the frost is thick as snow,
printed by my straw sandals
is the very first mark.
The play of contrived metaphors in the following poem might seem more
characteristic of the baroque poetry of Marino or Gongora than of Chinese
poetry. The crescent moon becomes a bowl, presumably of silver foil over lac
quer, from which the silver has worn away except around part of the rim. Then
it becomes the eye of the moon-maiden herself, blank to show her contempt
for the poet; or, lit areund the edge, it becomes a sidelong glance, showing sup
pressed love. Finally, the orb becomes the wheel of her coach, led away in
the dawn by the morning star (a plum of jade) and followed by a host of lesser
stars.
Going to the Palace Library Early in the Morning with the

Crescent Moon Just Rising
I rushed toward my office, lantern in hand,
gates were still shut on both sides of the street.
Alone the pale moon-maiden had risen early
to wash her jet bowl in a sapphire pond.
Its costly rim peeling and showing its lacquer,
around half the rim remained silver light.
All at once she gave me contempts blank eye,
rebukes round stare, directed at me.
Through her pupil black vapors threaded,
glancing sidelong, not daring to show what she feels.
There was one gleaming plum of jade
that went ahead leading her voyaging wheel.
701
And several flickering grains of gold

served as her train in the coachs dust.
Dawns roosters announced their message thrice,
and the capitals riders went galloping.
Star-rays were gradually almost gone,
and moonbeams grew pale, with vanishing streaks.
Then the Golden Crow flew up into the sky
and spewed forth a red dragons scales.
A Child Crying for Food

Warm and well fed, could I fail to know
my lords kindness to me?
but that small child, used to poverty,
is always hungry.
The moment I hear the child crying
every morning at dawn
is exactly the time when the millet
is almost fully cooked.
The reference to cooking millet in the last two lines recalls the Tang tale in which
a dreamer lives a lifetime filled with successes and sufferings, only to wake and find
that all had occurred in the time it took a pot of millet to be fully cooked.
Coda
For all their wit and fine sensibility, the Southern Song poets were also writing their
poems while the millet was still cooking. Having ruthlessly crushed Southern Song's
rival, the Jin Dynasty, in 1276 Mongol armies under the command of Bayan, the
rough Mongol general ironically referred to as "Grand Minister/' descended into the
South and put an end to the Song. Wang Yuan-liang, whose exact dates are un
known, was a court musician who ultimately accompanied the Song imperial harem
north to captivity in the Mongol capital of Beijing. The scene in the following poem
is the surrender of the Southern Song.
Wang Yuan-liang, Songs of Hu-zhou (third of ninety-eight)

In the palace halls crowds of officials
are dumbstruck and say nothing,
Grand Minister Bayan demands we be quick
with the document of surrender.
The women of the harem all
stand behind the beaded curtains,
while thousands of horsemen with wild hair ride
in circles before the hall.
702
The Song Dynasty

The following anonymous Northern song lyric comes from a century or so later. The
peaks referred to are on either side of West Lake in Hang-zhou, the Southern Song
capital. Like the Southern Dynasties before it, the Southern Song has become a faded
dream in a land of pleasure.
,
to Leaves of a Thousand Lotuses55 (Qian-he ye)

Tall peak to the south,
tall peak to the north,
with caves in mist and pale cloud.
Founder of the Southern Song,
the whole stage now left bare,
As always in the hills of W u
breeze blows the tavern streamers_
twice dreamt now,
that dream of the Southland.
Interlude: Wen Tian-xiang

(1236-1282) and the Fall of the
Song
The Mongol conquest of China proceeded by stages over the course of a half cen
tury, from their first battle with the Northern Jin Dynasty in 1227 until the naval bat
tle off the coast of Guang-dong in 1279, which saw the death of the last claimant
to the Song throne. Not only were the Mongols ruthless in battle, theirs was a cos
mopolitan savagery that for a while inoculated them against the blandishments of
Chinese civilization. Content to enrich themselves from the Confucian tax machine,
the Mongols initially felt contempt for Confucian civil virtues. That double experi
ence of the Mongols' ruthlessness and their cultural contempt helped produce a re
markable group of Chinese writers in the thirteenth century, the so-called loyalists
(yi-min). The Chinese term yi-min means literally "the people left behind, those
who, after the establishment of a new dynasty, retain their loyalty to the former dy
nasty either by active resistance or by a passive refusal to take public office. Although
the Mongol dynasty, under its Chinese name the Yuan, soon mellowed to something
closer to the familiar Chinese dynastic routine, the initial shock of Mongol hostility
helped to create a sense of national identity in the conquered elite.
Wen Tian-xiang's achievements as a writer are inextricable from the dramatic
experiences of his life and death in the Yuan subjugation of the Southern Song. The
top graduate of the palace examination of 1256, Wen began a promising political
career as the Southern Song was beginning to face a Mongol threat in the North.
With the Mongol invasion of the South, he played a role in the unsuccessful mili
tary defense of the dynasty. When at last in 1276 the Mongol commander Bayan
camped his army on Gao-ting Mountain near the Southern Song capital of Hang
zhou, Wen Tian-xiang was made Grand Councilor and sent to Bayan's camp to ne
gotiate. Bayan placed him under house arrest and had him accompany the Yuan
armies; en route Wen Tian-xiang escaped. He was eventually recaptured and wit
nessed the final stand of Song forces in the great naval battle of 1279. At last Wen
was sent to Da-du, modern Beijing, where he was kept in prison, refusing repeated
offers from Khubilai to serve in the Yuan government. Enfeebled and almost blind,
Wen Tian-xiang requested death, which was finally granted to him in 1282 when
he was executed in the marketplace.
Wen Tian-xiang's early writings show him an able but not especially gifted writer
in the Southern Song mode. The story of his initial detention, his escape, and recap
ture is told in two collections, the first and second series of The Account of the Com
pass (Chinese compasses took the southern end of the compass needle as the primary
indicator, thus the compass could serve as a figure for Wen's loyalty to the South).
These two collections are essentially of poetry, but there is so much connecting prose
between the poems in the first account that the work becomes, in effect, a poetic diary.
In the following selection from The Account of the Compass (Zhi-nan lu). Wen
704
The Song Dynasty

and a group of other Song officials are being taken north. When they reach Zhenjiang on the Yangzi, they escape from their Northern guards and, after many diffi
culties, reach Zhen-zhou somewhat upriver on the opposite bank. Zhen-zhou is
under the command of Miao Zai-cheng, whose superior, Li Ting-zhi, the Military
Commissioner of the Huai-dong Region stationed in Yang-zhou, suspects Wen of
being a spy for the northerners. Li Ting-zhi orders Mjao Zai-cheng to put Wen to
death. Miao cannot bring himself to carry out these orders and instead puts Wen
Tian-xiang outside the city walls and bars the gates against him. From there, Wen
sets off toward Yang-zhou and beyond, through a countryside infested with North
ern troops.
Wen's simple prose, with its sense of excitement and detail, is often superior to
his flaccid verse that usually merely summarizes the situation described in the prose.
To give a sense of the structure of the poetic diary, some of the verses have been
translated; others have been omitted.
from The Escape from Jing-kou (The Account o f the

Compass)
At night on April 29 we got out of the city of Jing-kou, and taking a short
cut across the floodplain to the riverwe embarked by boat. We went up
stream past Gold Mountain and hurried toward Zhen-zhou. We ran into
hardships and difficulties in every imaginable form. I have given an account
of each of these with a poem.
The Difficulty o f Deciding on a Plan

Ever since I was taken captive outside the capital, I had plotted to escape
but with no success. At Xie Village on the way here, I almost got away. At
Ping-jiang I had again wanted to flee my captors, but it hadnt worked out.
When we reached Zhen-jiang, making some kind of plan seemed even more
urgent. We discussed making a dash to Zhen-zhou. Du Hu, the Archivist,
and the Lecturer Yu Yuan-qing plotted with me in earnest. Du said to me,
If this succeeds, well be incredibly lucky. If were not lucky and the plot
gets out, well all die. Do you resent the prospect of dying? I put my hand
on my heart and swore, No regrets, even to the death. And I kept a dag
ger on me to be ready to kill myself if the enterprise did not succeed. Du also
asked to die to show his loyalty. The plan was decided.
To go north or south~every man
suffers torment at a crossroads
but bold hearts, whatever the cost,
vowed to go southeast.
Had we not then hacked the table1
1During the Three Kingdoms period, when the Northern warlord Cao Cao invaded the Southern king
dom of Wu, many of the King of Wu's advisers wanted to surrender to him. The king drew his sword
and hacked apart the table in front of him, saying that anyone who again suggested surrendering to
Cao Cao would end up like the table.
705
and willingly risked our lives,

which man of us that midnight
would have dared break free from our guard?
The Difficulty of Going on the Streets

Jing-kou had no walls, but there were barricades on all the major streets.
The city was about ten leagues away from the river. We chanced to
find an old army drover, who led us on a shortcut through a number
of back alleys, and then we found ourselves all at once in the open
moors. We hurried to the bank of the river, which turned out to be
quite close. If we hadnt found out about that shortcut and had just gone
down the main streets of the market district, we never would have made
it.
Chimney smoke linked all the rooftiles,
enclosed as though in an iron jug,
and we had to find a shortcut
to reach the river shore.
Who was that man, willing to be
last recourse for the general?
an old soldier of the garrison
who longed for officials of Han.
The Difficulty o f Finding a Boat

The Northerners5boats were everywhere on the river, and the common folk
didnt have a single boat left that we could ask to use. Du Hu tried to
arrange something, but because there were no boats we all sighed and gave
up. After that, Yu Yuan-jing met an old acquaintance who was in charge of
the boats for the Northerners. He made him a secret proposal, promising
him two thousand taels of the Pacification Commissioner^ silver. But the
man said, Whats money got to do with it? I will have saved the Grand
Councilor for the sake of the dynasty and accomplished a great deed. All I
want is a note to prove at some future date that I came to your aid. After
ward we gave him the note testifying to his service, and we gave the Pacifi
cation Commissioner the responsibility of making him take a hundred taels.
He was a good man. It would have been all over if we hadnt had this sin
gle encounter.
We planned and plotted for ten days,
but alas there was no boat;
in misery I beat my breast,
my tears flowed with blood.
It seemed to me that fisherman
was sent to us by a god,
706
The Song Dynasty
we met him on the Yangzi,

on the great rivers bank.2
The Difficulty o f Getting Past the Barricades

Everywhere in the villages and markets the Northerners had set up barriers,
using a dozen or so horses to block the roads. We were coming to one of
the barricades when the horses shied. We were terrified, but fortunately the
Northern soldiers were all sound asleep, so we got away.
Daggers in our sleeves,
learning to go gagged,3
we were crossing by the barrier gate
when the horses grew suspicious.
The night was still, the sky was dark,
our shadows scattered away,
and the snoring gf the Northern troops
was just then like thunder.
The Difficulty of Going Upriver

Once we had embarked in the boat, I thought we would go directly upriver
and that nothing else would come upI hadnt known thatin fact, boats of
the Northerners lay all along the riverbank for twenty or thirty leagues.
There was a frenzy of activity everywhere, with the sounds of the watch
men^ rattles and crying out the hours of the night. Our boat had no alter
native but to pass right beside every one of the boats of the Northerners.
Luckily no one questioned us; but when we had gone seven leagues, a river
patrol suddenly appeared, and they shouted over, What boat are you? We
yelled back that we were a fishing vessel out to catch blowfish. Then the pa
trol called out in a loud voice, Snoopship!
Snoop was what the North
erners called spies.) The patrol boat was going to cut in front of our boat,
but it just so happened at that moment that the river tide was ebbing, and
their boat stuck in the shallow waters, unable to reach us. At that point every
one in our boat was sweating. It was just sheer luck that they didnt catch
us.
War galleons along both banks
lined the long stream
like mice we hid in our lone skiff
and rowed on forward.
After seven leagues on the riverside
we were startled by a shout,
2Wen is comparing the man who got them a boat with the fisherman who rescued Wu Zi-xu on his
flight to Wu.
3In wartime, soldiers were required to wear wooden gags in their mouths to keep them from talk
ing.
707
but Heaven caused the tide to ebb

and the patrol boat ran aground.
The Difficulties in Gazing Toward the City

As soon as we caught a favorable breeze, I thought we could reach the out
skirts of Zhen-zhou by the final hour of night. But after a long time the wind
calmed, and when the sky brightened, we were still more than twenty leagues
from Zhen-zhou. We were quite afraid that boats of the Northerners were
chasing us, and we were also frightened that mounted patrols would be on
the Huai shore. The anxiety and pressure of that moment was more than I
can express. The men in our boat pulled the oars and pushed the poles with
all their might. Where the boat could be pulled along, we went onshore and
hauled the tow rope. But even though we felt the urgency in our hearts, our
strength wasnt up to it. And to see the city in the distance and yet be un
able to make any further headway was terrible~the difficulty of escaping
from the mouth of a tiger.
The Difficulty of Going Onshore

The moat around Zhen-zhou is linked to the riverbut only when the tide
is high can one reach the city by boat. That day we moored at Five-League
Village and went onshore. It was desolate outside the city walls; all was still,
with no one in sight. The land all around us was flat as the palm of a hand,
with no barriers anywhereand our only concern was to be lucky enough
to reach the walls. As we went along the road, we kept turning our heads
apprehensively, afraid that pursuing cavalry would burst down upon us.
When we made it to into the city gates, we beard that the morning of the
day before Northern mounted scouts had reached Five-League Village. It was
the first of May.
Five leagues we went along the bank
and entered Zhen-zhou,
outside the walls it was desolate,
even ghosts grieved there.
We suddenly heard folk on the road
saying with a sigh
that the morning before mounted scouts
had reached the riverside.
The Difficulty o f Getting into the City

Once we reached the foot of the walls of Zhen-zhou, people who heard about
us gazed at us in crowds. We told them that the Grand Councilor Wen Tianxiang had escaped at Zhen-jiang and had fled directly here for refuge. The
various officers in command of the city came forward and immediately in*vited us inside the walls. Miao Zai-chengthe governor of the citymet me
and welcomed me. We talked for some time about the situation in the coun
try, and I was stirred to such rage that I wept. He immediately urged me to
708
The Song Dynasty
stay in the official residence, and I was lodged in Qing-bian Hall. After that,
my companions arrived. We were led to an officer, who searched our per
sons for weapons. Only when it was found -that we had none were we
trusted. The precautions they took were so strict! If it had happened that
fears and suspicions had run rampant in peoples hearts and they had closed
their gates and refused to take me in, then where would I have gone in the
vastness of this world? It was a precarious situation indeed.
My body light and tossed about
into Luan-jiang,
the governor greeted me with joy
and gave me a refuge.
But had they closed their walls,
not answering my cries,
through this world 5twixt life and death
my road would have kppt going on.
After the party made it safely to Zhen-zhou, the governor Miao Zai-cheng received
orders from his superior, Li Ting-zhi, to have Wen Tian-x*iang killed as a Northern
spy. Wen's dramatic escape seemed implausible without the connivance of the
Northerners. Unable to bring himself to carry out the order of execution, Miao Zaicheng had Wen evicted from the city.
Some geography is helpful here. Wen is in the Huai region north of the Yangzi,
divided into two military districts, Huai-dong (East-of-the-Huai) and Huai-xi (Westof-the-Huai). Miao urges Wen to go to Huai-xi, whose Military Commissioner is not
hostile to Wen. Wen wants instead to go north to Yang-zhou, the center of the Huaidong district, to meet Li Ting-zhi and clear his name. After his courage fails him at
Yang-zhou, Wen continues north to Gao-you (or Gao-sha), then turns southeast to
ward the coast. The Song armies are spread everywhere in garrisons, permitting the
Yuan forces to defeat them piecemeal. It was Wen's hope to unite the various re
gional commands and thereby offer more effective resistance.
from Leaving Zhen-zhou (The Account o f the Compass)

On the third day after I reached Zhen-zhou, Governor Miao said, After
breakfast, take a look at the walls. I was pleased and agreed to do so. A
little while later Commander Lu came and took me to Lesser West Gate,
where I could get a good view from atop the wall. Soon after that Com
mander Wang arrived, and we strolled outside of the wall. All at once Com
mander Wang said, There is a man in Yang-zhou who has given informa
tion against you. He then took out a dispatch from the Military
Commissioner Li Ting-zhi. I examined it, and it turned out that someone
who had escaped from the Northerners had given testimony regarding what
he had witnessed. He had said, There is a certain Grand Councilor who
709
has been sent to Zhen-zhou to betray the city. Wang was not supposed to
have let me see it. As I stood there, upset and shaken, the two commanders
suddenly whipped their horses and rode back into the city. Lesser West Gate
was shut on me and I couldnt get back in. I stood there outside the walls in
complete confusion, not knowing where I would die.
That morning I agreed to wear armor
and go off to look at the walls,
we rode in a group beside the moat,
and I sighed at the dust of war.
I never expected to be thrown out,
locked beyond Western Gate,
worn down by troubles in these times,
with no one to tell my case.
Suspecting that I was in the employ of the Northerners and that Gover
nor M iao
s loyalty had been subverted by me, the Military Commissioner,
Li Ting-zhihad sent a supervisor to Zhen-zhou. He said, It is simply not
reasonable that a Grand Councilor could have been able to escape. And even
if he had been able to escape, it is not reasonable that he could have brought
a dozen men with him. Why didnt you have them shot down with arrows?
Instead you opened the city gates and let them inside! His intention was to
make Governor Miao kill me in order to show his own loyalty. It was ter
rible!
Last night from Yang-zhou
a courier came riding,
wrongly suspecting and ready to kill,
a man who was loyal and good.
No wonder, Governor Miao,
that you seem to lack shrewdness
the other day you never should
have let the gates be opened.
The Military Commissioner wanted me killedGovernor Miao couldnt

shield me. Miao was torn between doubting me and trusting me, but his com
passion for me was the stronger.
As soon as I was lucky enough to escape and reach Zhen-zhou, I had
begun discussions on uniting the armies of the two Huai regions to work
for the restoration of the dynasty. But Li Ting-zhi, the Military Commis
sioner, suspected me of being in the employ of the Northerners and wanted
me killed. Everyone in the Southland and in the North knows that I am loyal;
only in the Huai region am I not trusted. My reputation and my works dur
ing a lifetime of public service have reached nowhere in this area. In the vast
ness of this world, to whom can I speak?
I remained outside the gate a long time. Suddenly two men came out.
These were Captains Zhang and Xu of the militia. I charged them to give
710
The Song Dynasty
me an explanation, and the two men said, Miao Zai-cheng sends you this
message: that he has sent the two of us to accompany you and find where
Your Excellency plans to go. I replied that I had no choice but to go to
Yang-zhou and see Li Ting-zhi. One of the captains said, Governor Miao
says that you can't stay in Huai-dong. I said, I dont know Xia in Huaill trust my life to Heaven and go to Yangxi and I have no way to get there. I
zhou.55Then the two captains said, Lets get going, then. After a long time
a company of fifty men with bows and swords came along to join us. The
two captains rode ahead, with Du Hu and I side by side on two horses fol
lowing behind. And thus we set out.
While I was outside of Lesser West Gatebeside myself with anxiety and
with nowhere to turn, my traveling companion Du Hu cried out to the heav
ens and almost threw himself into the moat to die right there. Those who
had followed me were all drained of color and didnt look like living men
no one knew what to do. I couldnt get back in the city walls, and outside
the city there might be unforeseen encounters with soldiers. We stood there
on the wild moor with nothing to eat or drink, and I brooded to myself,
How can I die here? I paced about, feeling as though I had been stabbed
in the heart. Later we got the two captains to go along with us, and Gover
nor Miao also sent bundles of clothing and supplies. It was the third day of
the month.
My fortune spent, perils braved,
I escaped the felt-cloaked Mongols
I never thought that a Southern official
would be treated like a foe!
I will remember all that happened
outside Lesser West Gate,
and every year on the third of the month
I will weep by the riverside.
The captains led us on for several leagues, to a point from which we could
still look back and see the walls of Zhen-zhou. All of a sudden, right there
in the wilderness, the fifty soldiers suddenly took hold of their swords,
halted, and went no further. I came up from behindand the two captains
asked me to dismount, saying there was a matter we had to discuss. The sit
uation looked very alarming. I dismounted and asked them what it was they
wanted to discuss. They said that we should walk on a ways. When we had
walked some distance, they then said, Lets sit a w h ile , I thought they were
going to kill me right there. I began talking with them. The two captains
said, KWhat happened today was not Governor M iao
s idea. In fact, the M il
itary Commissioner Li Ting-zhi sent someone to have Your Excellency
killed. Governor Miao couldnt bear to see you harmed, so he sent us to ac
company you. But now where do you want to go? I said, Im going to
Yang-zhouwhere else is there for me to go? They saidWhat if they have
Your Excellency killed in Yang-zhou? I told them, No matter_ Ill go there
711
trusting in fate.55The two captains then said, KGovernor Miao has sent us
to accompany you to Huai-xi. I replied, Huai-xi is right across from Jiankang, Tai-ping, Chi-zhou, and Jiang-zhou, all of which have been occupied
by the Northerners, and there is no way to get there. I just want to meet M il
itary Commissioner Li; and if I can get him to trust me, then I still want to
combine the troops to work for the restoration. Otherwise I ll take the road
to Tong-zhou and go by sea to the imperial headquarters.
The two captains then said that the Military Commissioner had already
refused my plan, and that the best thing for me to do would be to hide out
in some stockade in the mountains. I replied, What good would that do?
If I really am meant to live, then Ill live; if Im to die, then Ill die. It will be
decided by the walls of Yang-zhou. Then the two captains said, fitGover
nor Miao has made a boat ready for you on the shore. Your Excellency
should travel by river, and then you can go to either the Southern side or
the Northern side. I was shocked and said, Whats this youre saying? This
means that Governor Miao also suspects me! The two captains saw how
sincerely I rejected their suggestion and said, Governor Miao didnt know
whether to believe you or not, so he ordered us to act on our own discre
tion. We can see what kind of person you are, a loyal servant of the throne
in everything you say. We wouldnt dare kill you. Since Your Excellency is
really going to Yang-zhou, our company will escort you there. It was then
that I realized that Governor Miao had not made up his mind and had ac
tually sent the two captains to keep an eye on the direction of my speech
and then to act on their own discretion. If at any point my answers had not
been on the mark, I would have been killed right there in the wilderness and
no one would have known anything more about it. It was very upsetting.
I took out one hundred and fifty taels of silver I had brought with me
and gave it to them for the fifty troops, promising them another ten taels
when we reached Yang-zhou. As for the captains, I promised to give them
a hundred taels to divide between them. Then we set forth.
Out in the moors I dismounted,
they asked me where I would go
my life or death actually hung
on their personal discretion.
Had not those local militiamen
been clearsighted in judgment,
none would have known of the puddle of blood
unjustly shed.
On the road the two captains turn back, leaving Wen and his party with an escort
of twenty men to accompany them to Yang-zhou; a little farther along the way, those
men too desert and tell Wen to follow a peddler, who will lead the party to Yangzhou. Once he reaches Yang-zhou, Wen Tian-xiang has second thoughts about giving himself up to the judgment of the Military Commissioner who has ordered his
712
The Song Dynasty

death. He and his party turn instead to a roundabout route that will bring him to the
camp of the fleeing Song government.
from Reaching Yang-zhou (The Account o f the Compass)

We traveled by night in complete silence, and when we reached the western
gate of Yang-zhou, it was locked up tight. Nearby was a temple to the god
San-shi-langwith only the walls remainingit had no roof at all. Our
whole party spread out, lying against one another on the ground. The time
was already midnight; the wind was cold and the dew was soaking us. Our
distress was beyond description.
When I had left Zhen-zhou, I really had no place to go and had no choice
but to proceed with all haste to Yang-zhou, hoping that I might be cleared
of suspicion by the Military Commissioner. But now that we had reached
the walls, in the dismal cold of wind and dew, I could hear a deathly, mur
derous sound in the drums and bugles. I was left in confusion, not knowing
what to do.
Depressed that in all Earth and Heaven
I have nary a place to go,
in wind and dew from Level Mountain,
what time of night is it now?
How can I let old Li Ting-zhi
have his way with me?
from the high tower come bugles and drums
why do they sound so sad?
The Military Commissioner had sent orders to Zhen-zhou to have me
killed. If I knocked at the gates of Yang-zhou now, I was afraid that he might
have me shot. This spot outside the wall was quite close to the Yang-zi
Bridge. But it was dangerous, and there were also patrols. I could neither go
on or withdraw.
The helmets on the city wall
watch me, swords in hands;
on the plain all around Turkish horsemen
ride circling the town.
All my life I never knew
the tears that Yang Zhu shed,4
but coming here I understand
that either course is hard.
Du Hu thought that since Li Ting-zhi wanted me killed, the best course
would be to find some spot as soon as possible where we could avoid the
4The ancient philosopher Yang Zhu was supposed have wept at a crossroads, not knowing which
way to go.
713
patrols for a day, then to make a dash for Gao-you by night and try to reach
Tong-zhou. Then we could go by sea back to the Southland, where I might
get an audience with the two princes and show my determination to serve
the dynasty.5 It would accomplish nothing just to die by the walls.
Captain Jin Ying maintained that since there were patrols outside the
walls and it was five or six hundred leagues before we got to Tong-zhou,
there was no way we could get there. It would be better to die by the walls
of Yang-zhou than to die after undergoing such hardship. We would still be
dying in the South. But he still thought that Li Ting-zhi might not kill us.
The ocean clouds are faint and far
at the end of the skies of Chu,
the dust from Turks fills all the roads,
we cannot go as we please.
Supposing that some morning we
are carried off, captives of war
better to throw our lives away
and die in Yang-zhou.
I couldnt decide whether to go on or stay, and then Yu Yuan-qing
brought out a man who sold firewood, saying, Your Excellency is in luck!
I asked himCan you guide us to Gao-sha? And he replied that he could.
Then I asked him, Where can we hide away for a day? He said that his
own house would do; and when I asked how far away it was, he said it was
twenty leagues or so. I next asked him whether they had patrols or not, and
he answered that there hadn't been a single one in the past few days. I asked,
What if the patrol comes today? And he answered, It depends on whether
your luck holds.JS
Beside the road by chance we met
a man who sold kindling
he said to us he could find the way
to take us to Gao-sha.
My own home lies thirty leagues
away from here:
a nook in the hills where for a while
you can shun the dust of war.
While Wen was trying to decide whether to risk entering Yang-zhou or to head to
Gao-you (Gao-sha), the day was gradually breaking. Fearing discovery, four of his
friends left him in indecision and set off on their own. Wen panicked and went off
after them, away from Yang-zhou.
5These were the Prince of Yi and the Prince of Guang, who were in Wen-zhou, directing the Song
resistance.
714
The Song Dynasty
I had no choice but to leave the outskirts of Yang-zhou and make haste
toward the home of the firewood seller. But the sky was gradually getting
brighter, and we couldnt go on any further. When we had gone fifteen
leagues, there was an earthen-walled enclosure halfway up the hillside
which had once been a peasants dwelling. It had been thoroughly gutted
and had no roof beams or tiles left. In the middle were heaps of horse dung.
At the time we were afraid that the Northerners would have lookouts on
the heightsand as soon as they saw a band of travelers, they would come
in pursuit. All we could do was hide out for a while inside the earthen-walled
enclosure. We had bungled very badly in our planning, and our lives were
at the mercy of Heavens will.
By starlight we were on our way
to the home of that rustic man,
then light of dawn spread everywhere,
the journey seemed too far.
In our panic all we found to do
was stop halfway up the hill,
in crumbling walls, above which lay
just a cover of white cloud.
When we entered the earthen-walled enclosure, the hills all around us
were utterly silent and there wasnt even the distant form of a person any
where. At the time we had no rice to eat; and even if we had rice, we had
no fire where we could cook it. Our money did us no good.
On our way we came on a broken hut
good only as chicken coop,
a plain hut out in the wilderness
.
where even ghosts wept in sorrow.
In our sleeves we carried money
but had no rice to buy,
and even had we plenty of rice,
we still had no fire to cook.
There was no way to avoid the dung and filth inside the earthen walls.
We just cleaned out space for a few people. I spread some of the clothing I
brought to be between me and the bare ground. I would sleep, get up, then
sit back down, get up again, and then lie down to sleep. The day seem to
drag on unbearably, and my spirits were beginning to flag. It was a terrible
situation.
4
As a rule the Northerners send out their patrols only before noon, and
then these return separately in the afternoon. We held out from sunrise to
the afternoonat which point we were exhilarated and said, Our lives have
been given to us this day! All of a sudden we heard the loud noise of human
voices. When we peered out from the wall, it turned out to be several thou
sand Northern cavalry heading to the west. At this point I blamed myself
715
for not dying by the walls of Yang-zhou, but instead letting myself be cap
tured here. It was a bitter thing indeed! At that very moment a strong wind
suddenly rose, and black clouds came rolling up over us. Then several drops
of light rain fell, and the hills grew all murky and black, as if some god were
working to rescue us.
Tossed here and there, dispirited,
I had reached the end of my road,
I scratched my head and paced about
as the sun drew overhead.
Then from nowhere the sounds of mens voices
came like a boiling tide,
and black clouds burst upon us,
and winds were filling the hills.
Those several thousand cavalry kept on going, following the curve of the
hill, and passed right behind our earthen enclosure. Everyone in our party
went white and no one looked like a living person any more. We sat hunched
down right against the wall, afraid they might see us through the doorway.
If one of those horsemen had ridden in, we would have ceased to be mem
bers of the human race then and there. At the time the sounds of the horses*
hooves and their quivers were clearly in our ears, with only a single wall be
tween. Fortunately it began to rain hard, and the horsemen just passed right
on. It was terrifying.
As midday ended thousands of riders
suddenly came from the east;
we hid away in that broken-down farm,
our fate was feather-light.
When beyond the wall we heard only
the rainstorm in its passage,
each of us looked at his shadow
congratulating rebirth.
There were eight of us in that earthen-walled enclosure: myself, Du Hu,
Jin Ying, Zhang Qing, Xia Zhong, Lii W u, Wang Qing, and Zou Jie. It was
already past noon and we thought that no more patrols would come. At thet
bottom of the hill a league away there was an old temple with a beggar
woman living in it. There was a well in front of the temple, so I sent Lii Wu
and Zou Jie down the hill to draw some water for us. I thought they also
might be able to get some rice or vegetables to ward off our hunger a little.
A patrol came by unexpectedly, and both men were captured. They took out
the nearly three hundred taels of silver they were carrying and gave it all to
the patrol. The Northerners took the silver, and they managed to avoid get
ting killed. They came back only after the patrol passed. They wept facing
us, but once again we had been lucky enough to get away with our lives.
The Song Dynasty
Earlierwhen we had not been able to go on further with the firewood

seller and had consequently gone into the earthen-walled enclosure, I had
given the firewood seller the task of going into the city to buy some rice to
save our lives. I said, We cant endure going the entire day without eating.
The officials in the city will open the gates in the late afternoon, so when
the rice arrives, it will be dusk. That day, several hundred Northern cav
alry made a sortie against the western side of the city. Thus they didnt open
the gates and the firewood seller couldnt get out. We were starving and ut
terly at a loss as to what to do. Furthermore, we were exposed to the sky in
the earthen-walled enclosure and couldnt sleep. Therefore we went down
the hill and put up in the temple, to stay there with the beggar woman.
Once we reached the temple and before we had settled in, a man carry
ing a club suddenly arrived. After some time, three or four others came in
one after another. I thought we were not going to get away this time for sure.
But then I learned that in fact these men had come from the city to look for
firewood by night and then take it back into the city early in the morning
to sell it. They had no bad intentions toward us. Several of them cooked up
some rice soup and gave what was left to us. That evening one of them, a
young lad still in his teens, lit a fire in the courtyard, which shone very
brightly. None of the woodcutters went to sleep. I and my friends were worn
out and went to sleep. It was beyond description.
We stopped that night in an old temple
seeking a soup of boiled greens,
there were a few woodsmen
whose names I didnt know.
But the young lad seemed to know
that I had troubled dreams
he lit a fire of green wood
that burned until the dawn.
After talking with the woodcutters, the men agree to take Wen and his party to their
village, from which they set out to Gao-you.
from On the Gao-sha Road (The Account o f the Compass)

We had hired mounts and were making swift progress toward Gao-sha by
night. After having gone more than forty leagues, we came to a plank bridge
and lost the road. All evening long we went through the level fields, unable
to tell east from west. Our bodies were soaked all over by droplets of mist
in the air, and both we and our horses were worn out and hungry. We sim
ply went on through the fog, unable to make anything out.
Then in a moment the hills around us gradually brightened, and all at
once I saw the shadowy forms of Northern horsemen. There was a bamboo
717
thicket by the road, and we hurriedly went into it to get away from them.
A moment later there were twenty or so horsemen surrounding the thicket
and shouting. The Military Inspector Zhang Qing was hit in the left eye by
an arrow; he took two blade wounds in the neckthen they cut off his hair
and left him naked on the ground. Wang Qing, an officer in the Ministry of
War, was tied up and taken off. When Du Hu and Jin Ying were captured
in the thicket, they took out the gold they were carryingbribed the patrol,
and managed to escape. I lay hidden in a spot not far from Du. When the
Northern horsemen entered the thicket, they passed right by me three or four
times and never saw me. I didnt think I would get out of this alive. Zou Jie,
a groom in the Royal Stud, was lying under a clump of small bamboo; a horse
had stepped on his foot when passing and he was bleeding. Lii W uof the
Office of Military Administration, and his personal attendant Xia Zhong,
fled to a different spot. I expected that I was surely going to die in this en
terprise.
When things became most desperate, the wind began howling through
all the cracks and crevices of the earth, confusing mens voices. The North
erners were in a state of alarm that they hadnt caught everyone and sus
pected some god must be aiding us. The horses left. Then I heard them mak
ing plans to burn the bamboo, and I hurriedly scrambled toward the hill in
front of melooking for another clump of bamboo in which to conceal my
self. Not knowing which road to take and on top of that having nothing to
eat, no situation in a persons life could be more desperate than this. A lit
tle while later when Lii W u brought me the news that the Northern horse
men had gone back to the Bay, and also let me know that Yu-nian Levee
was by the road, I didnt entirely believe what he was telling me.6 Never
theless, we had no alternative if we wanted to stay aliveso we did our best
to get there as quickly as possible, this being one chance in a million. We
were in a panic, scrambling ahead on our hands and knees, unable to walk.
When we had made our way out from Yang-zhou previously, there had
been, three men leading the way and three men bringing along the horses.
Now there were only two left, the others having fled or been captured. When
those two came out of their daze, each grasped his cudgel and followed after
us, with intent to do us harm. We walked on, not sure what to do, but we
had no choice. As it grew later, we suddenly came upon several woodsmen,
who seemed to have descended upon us like Buddhas. We happened to find
a large basket that a person could sit in, and we fastened it with cords. Then
we hired six fellows and took turns being carried; in this way we rapidly
came out west of the walls of Gao-you. We couldnt cross the river until
dawn had comeand we were in constant fear that at any moment horse
men would appear, chasing us. We stayed over at Chens inn, lying on its
straw-covered floor and enduring our hunger. In the full light of dawn, we
crossed the river and our hearts calmed at last. When a hurt is over, a per
son thinks about it, and then tears fall like rain.
6The bay was just north of Yang-zhou, where the Mongo army attacking Yang-zhou was encamped.
718
The Song Dynasty

This long story is followed by a still longer poem of 172 lines, one of Wen Tianxiang's best, in which he retells the whole story in poetic fashion. There the account
continues.
,
The Northerners thought that Gao-you hadeen sending rice to relieve

the siege of Yang-zhou, so that night they had sent cavalry from the Bay to
cut off all the river crossings, of which Yu-nian Levee was one. If we had
n't lost our way that night, we might have reached the levee by two or three
, in the morning, and then we would have all been caught in their net with
no one escaping. I then realized that our panic all evening long and losing
our way was also as if the gods and spirits were operating in our midst, stir
ring things up. In the aftermath of such chaos, though I felt lucky to still be
alive, I wondered what I had done to deserve to be brought to such extreme
straits.
from tcReaching Gao-sha (The Account o f the Compass)

When we got to Gao-sha, there were very strict precautions against enemy
spies. At the time we were using the basket as a sedan chair, and those who
saw us felt sorry for us. Moreover, blood was oozing all over Zhang Qingss
face, and his clothes were all stained. Everyone knew this was because we
had run into the Northerners, and they no longer suspected us of being spies.
I heard, however
that Li Ting-zhi had sent documents to all the various com
mands informing them that the Grand Councilor might try to come and be
tray their city, and ordering them to be on guard to keep him out- There
fore we didnt dare go into the city itself, but quickly bought a boat and left.
Setting O ut from Gao-sha

At dawn I set out from Gao-sha
lying in a barge,
a vast extent of level sands,
a spreading stretch of waters.
The boatman points out for me
the shore with roiling mist~
this very year, North against South,
so many battlefields.
For a thousand leagues around the level Huai the dune grasses formed
into hummocks, rising out of the high sands, bleak and desiccated every
where I looked. The waters at Gao-you connected with those of the Bay,
going down to Hai-ling and up into Shi-yang, passing Lian-shui County, all
belonging to this district. On April 6there had been a battle at the Chengzi River in which our army won a great victory. People had pointed out a
certain place as being the site of that battle.
Beside the Cheng-zi River
tangled corpses lie,
719
the bloody flesh on the south shore

is fainter and hard to make out.
North and south of the Tai-hang Range,
out beyond Yan Mountain,
how many are the wandering souls
that go chasing the horses hooves?7
When we reached the Cheng-zi River, heaps of corpses covered the

moors and there were countless corpses carried along in the current of the
river. The stench of rotting was unbearable, and continued up and down the
river for almost twenty leagues without interruption. On April 6Commis
sioner Liu Yue and Hong Lei-zhen caught the baggage train accompanying
the Northerners; from Ji Family Village they struck its vanguard, and from
Gao-you they struck its center. It was a major defeat for the Northerners.
Liu Yue died in the battle, and Hong Lei-zhen is now in Gao-you. Ive heard
it said that since the Northerns entered the Yangzi and Huai area, this is the
only battle in which our troops had a major victory.
All day long we passed on through
piles of white bones,
losing a rudder in the current
can break a persons heart.
Our oarsmen from Hai-ling
always look around dread
when boats approach on the water
or horses approach on land.
'
As we passed through the battlefield that day, there was an utter still
ness in every direction. The oarsmen were edgy, constantly afraid that some
one would come forth from the Bay, and also afraid that horses would come
after us on land. In the midst of our fear and sense of desperation, the rud
der happened to snap, and it took a long time to get it fixed. It was a dan
gerous moment indeed.
Eventually, Wen made his way to the seashore at Tong-zhou, then took an ocean
going vessel down the coast to the Song court at Wen-zhou. His loyalty proven, he
was involved in a series of unsuccessful defenses against the advancing Yuan armies
until early in 1279, when he was recaptured by Yuan forces in Guang-dong.
7The Tai-hang Range and Yan Mountain were in North China; Wen is imagining the souls of the
Northern battle dead trying to get back to their homeland.
The Yuan and Ming

Dynasties
THE YUAN AND MING DYNASTIESrPERIOD INTRODUCTION
Over the centuries, North China had passed through long pe

riods of war, devastation, and conquest by non-Chinese peo
ples, but the Mongol conquest of the North in 1234 was in
many ways unique, chiefly in the indifference of the Mongols
to the benefits of Chinese civilization~except as those bene
fits served the Mongol war machine. Legend has it that Genghiz
Khan considered turning his newly conquered territory into a
large pastureland for Mongol ponies, and judging from the his
tory of his conquests, he probably had the will, the means, and
the ruthlessness to effect such a decision. He was dissuaded,
the story goes, on being shown that the Chinese tax system
would prove to be a more profitable use of the land. The Mongol conquest of North
China was, like early Mongol conquests everywhere, of stunning ferocity, depopu
lating entire regions. But for the Confucian intellectuals who had ruled China and
wrote its history, such mere physical violence was hardly a greater affront than the
change in their own status in the new Mongol hierarchy of professionsclose to the
bottom of a list graded by usefulness. Slightly better than beggars and inferior to ar
tisans and Buddhist monks, the Chinese intellectuals who had comfortably served
the Jurchen Jin Dynasty saw what had seemed an immutable social order turned up
side down. When, in a milder mood, the Mongols conquered the Southern Song
some forty years later, an ethnic hierarchy placed the Mongols on top, followed by
foreigners from the Mongol conquests in the West, then Northern Chinese, followed
by "Southerners" at the very bottom.
Despite the profound cultural affront, in South China the Mongols and their for
eign henchmen (such as Marco Polo) were a mere irritant. The Mongols, in their new
Chinese guise as the Yuan Dynasty, recognized that the region was a profitable en
terprise, so they disrupted neither commerce nor patterns of landholding. Despite
heartfelt regrets about the end of the Song, carefully buried in elaborate metaphors,
the old Southern Song elite essentially remained in place and continued Southern
urban culture largely unchanged.
The Mongols' Chinese capital at Da-du (modern Beijing) was, however, a truly
cosmopolitan city and very different from the Chinese cities of the South. Chinese
elite culture was represented there, yet at the same time a truly popular urban cul
ture flourished with unprecedented confidence and vitality. The vernacular songs
of Da-du delighted in boasting, caustic satire, buffoonery, and direct eroticism, all
treated in the lively argot of the city. Voices that had been rigorously excluded from
the decorum of elite literature here found expression, and these voices gained much
of their energy precisely because they violated such rules of decorum. This was a
counterculture, and we have indications that such a counterculture already existed
in the Song, though its texts were rarely preserved; from the Yuan, however, printed
songbooks have been preserved, attesting not only to the existence of such a Iiterature but that it had become a commodity that could be sold in print to a literate read
ership.
Closely related to vernacular songs were the "variety plays," za-ju, each of
whose four acts was built around a song suite interspersed with dialogue. The top723

ics of these plays were largely shared with storytelling: stories from history, partic
ularly the Three Kingdoms; romances elaborated from Tang and Song classical tales;
stories of Wu Song and his righteous bandits from the end of the Northern Song; and
court cases, in which a mystery is resolved by a wise magistrate. The variety plays
were associated with Da-du; the Southern cities had their own local drama, differ
ing from variety plays in music and structure. In contrast to the variety play's four
acts, the Southern plays were long, sprawling affairs with many acts and many
singers.
The earliest Southern plays, dating from the Yuan, were preserved in manuscript.
Variety plays, however, like the songbooks, were first printed in the Yuan. From the
Yuan also comes the earliest printed edition of vernacular stories. Both storytelling
and drama predated the Yuan, but the Yuan stands out as a moment when vernac
ular literature entered print culture and became available in the privacy of one's
home as well as in the street.
Although it left its mark on the Chinese cultural imagination, Mongol rule of all
China lasted less than a century. By the second quarter of the fourteenth century,
regional rebellions were already breaking out everywhere in response to the inep
titude and corruption of the Yuan government. A scheme to issue paper money, for
example, led to runaway inflation and economic disaster. In 1356, Zhu Yuan-zhang,
at the head of a regional army, conquered the old Southern Dynasties capital of Jinling and used it as a base to defeat other warlords and the Yuan armies sent against
him. In 1368, the last Yuan emperor abandoned Da-du and fled back to Mongolia.
In the same year a new dynasty, the Ming, was proclaimed, with its capital at Jinling, now renamed Nanjing. In a subsequent reign at the turn of the fifteenth cen
tury, the primary capital was moved to Da-du, which was renamed Beijing.
Zhu Yuan-zhang, the founder of the Ming, was not an attractive ruler: he was
autocratic, bloodthirsty, and narrow-minded. His son Zhu Di, who usurped the suc
cession, was a match for his father. He executed not only the individuals who op
posed his usurpation but their families and associates. It is said that in response to
FangXiao-ru's opposition to his taking the throne, Zhu Di put to death almost a thou
sand people~all Fang's extended family members, friends, and neighbors. In con
trast to the relatively tolerant emperors of the Tang and Song, who expressed dis
pleasure by sending offending officials into exile, the Ming represented a new style
of imperial rule and a degree of intimidation that changed forever the relation be
tween the emperor and officialdom.
Despite some disastrous wars with the Mongols in the frontier region and the
depredations of Japanese pirates along the coast, the Ming was, by and large, a pe
riod of peace and unprecedented prosperity. Particular acts of imperial tyranny, and
later of the tyranny of the imperial eunuchs, had relatively little impact on the cul
tural, social, and economic history of the dynasty.
One sign of the confidence of the new dynasty was a series of six imperially spon
sored voyages undertaken between 1405 and 1422, commanded by the eunuch
Zheng He. These voyages took him to Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, and
ultimately down to Zanzibar on the east coast of Africa. The voyages were carried
out on an immense scale: the first included almost 28,000 men, and 62 large and
255 smaller ships. The largest of these ships measured 440 feet in length and were
T)A
M
186 feet wide, many times bigger than the largest ships in the subsequent European
age of discovery. Despite encounters with pirates and battles with local rulers, the
voyages of Zheng He were a combination of trading expeditions and diplomatic mis
sions. Ultimately it was the sheer magnitude of these expeditions and the enormous
costs they incurred that led to their end. Unlike the later European voyages, they
were not profitable on such a scale. Moreover, the European powers' control of their
newly established colonies took a very different turrr in the Chinese case, where the
spread of traders and colonists throughout Southeast Asia was a private undertak
ing that carried the emigres away from the control of the Chinese polity.
Education spread rapidly in the Ming, with the "Four Books"Zhu Xi's compact
selection of the essence of the Confucian Classicsas the imperially sanctioned core
of the curriculum. The unprecedented number of aspirants to public office, all of
whom knew the "Four Books" by heart, required an examination system that could
exclude the majority. Out of the older requirement for the composition of formal
prose developed a new kind of examination essay called the "eight-legged essay,
ba-gu wen, requiring a highly formalized argument in eight balanced parts, devel
oping some Neo-Confucian theme. It was a form that invited error and awkward
ness, thus offering some common criteria for grading. The genre, however, tested
skills that were of no practical use for the bureaucracy, either in matters of statecraft
or in the documentary eloquence essential to the smooth functioning of the bu
reaucracy.
Classical poetry and "old style" prose continued to be written, but contempo
rary critics felt strongly that these forms had become weak and awkward in com
parison to the Tang and earlier periods. Toward the end of the fifteenth century a
new movement arose among intellectuals, seeking the renewed vitality of classical
literature by the strict imitation of earlier writers. Several generations of these intel
lectuals are grouped together as the "Archaists." The Archaists believed that each
of the major genres of classical literature had achieved a degree of formal perfec
tion at a certain historical moment, and that the compositions of that brief period of
flourishing should set the immutable norms for all subsequent writers. Prose was sup
posed to have reached its moment of perfection in the Qin and Han; poetry in the
"old stylereached perfection in the Eastern Han and Wei; and regulated poetry
reached perfection in the High Tang. If the aspiring writer confined himself to these
formal models, he would be able to infuse them with his own spirit and concerns.
The Archaists' own literary works were uninspiring in the realization of their
agenda for literary reform. Their open advocacy of imitation produced a strong
countermovement in the last part of the sixteenth century, and an enduring hostil
ity that remains enshrined in Chinese textbooks on the history of literature. Despite
being almost universally reviled in later times, their more subtle influence was enor
mous. In a society that had developed an immense appetite for the forms of elite
culture, they offered a version of literary composition that could be taught. Their an
thologies, pedagogic in intent, had a wide circulation; and the poems and prose
pieces that they selected as exemplary models have remained part of the literary
canon to the present day.
The Ming also saw the large, amorphous cycles of popular storytelling emerge
as novels. Although such novels are conventionally assigned authors, the authors
725

named are historically very suspect. These novels are essentially anonymous, the
commercial compilation of story cycles that had evolved over centuries. In many
cases, they appeared in numerous and very different editions during the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, and modern editions simply choose the version they be
lieve to be the "best," on grounds of priority, amplitude, or aesthetic integrity.
The old storytelling cycle treating the breakup of the Han emerged as The Ro
mance of the Three Kingdoms (San-guo zhi yan-yi), traditionally attributed to one
Luo Guan-zhong, the earliest edition of which is dated to 1522, followed by many
subsequent editions. Many scholars believe that this was originally a Yuan work.
The second of these novels is Water Margin (Shui-hu zhuan), attributed to one Shi
Nai-an; its earliest extant edition also comes from the early sixteenth century, and
it too was reprinted in many differing commercial editions. This tells of a group of
righteous bandits at the end of the Northern Song. The third novel is The Journey to
the West (or Monkey; Xi-you ji), attributed to Wu Cheng-en, the earliest extant edi
tion dating to 1592. This tells the story of the Tang monk Xuan-zang (also called
Tripitaka) and his journey to India to fetch Buddhist scriptures, aided by three su
pernatural disciples, the most important of whom was the ever resourceful wMonkey" (Sun Wu-kong). Branching off from Water Margin came the first original nov
el istic composition: this was The Golden Lotus Qin Ping Mei), probably completed
in the late sixteenth century and first published in 1617. Linked tangentially to one
of the major figures in Water Margin, it treats the sexual escapades of a powerful
member of a local elite, Xi-men Qing, his excesses, and ultimate demise.
The Ming also saw the increasing popularity of the long Southern drama, spurred
on by the vogue for The Lute (Pi-pa ji), by Gao Ming (1305-ca. 1370), a melodra
matic work about a poor but loyal wife who goes in search of her politically successfu
husband, who has been compelled to remarry. Southern drama had numer
ous regional styles, and among these a form known as Kun-qu emerged dominant
in the sixteenth century. The immense popularity of these plays contributed to their
transformation into a literary drama for reading as well as performance.
Ming culture became perhaps more memorable in the stylish individualism of
its last sixty years than in all the two preceding centuries of the dynasty. Many schol
ars believe that the foundation of late Ming individualism can be traced back to the
influential Neo-Confucian philosopher Wang Yang-ming (1472-1529). Wang Yangming's thought is too complex to permit easy characterization, but perhaps its best-
known and most influential aspect was the claim that moral categories exist within
the mind alone and do not depend on study and the outer forms of Confucianism.
Wang Yang-ming's focus on individual self-cultivation gave some support to the re
markable turn against social norms that occurred toward the end of the sixteenth
century. The eccentric philosopher Li Zhi (1527-1602) entitled his works Fen-shu,
Books to Be Burned; in them, he offered a sharp critique of conventional moral judg
ments. His most influential essay, "On the Child Mind," argues that everything gen
uine follows from an immediacy that is inherently corrupted by learning and soci
ety; the argument is framed in a passionate defense of vernacular literature.
Li Zhi was greatly admired by the three Yuan brothers, the most famous of whom
was Yuan Hong-dao (1568-1610). Yuan Hong-dao advocated a poetry of complete
spontaneity, by which a person could give free expression to whatever was natural

within him. Yuan Hong-dao even wrote a preface for his brother's poetry which de
clared that his brother's formal errors and stylistic lapses were more valuable than
the passages in his works that were beautiful in a conventional sense: ordinary grace
was a function of norms, while lapses came from the individual alone.
Yuan Hong-dao also singled out the crude popular songs of the villages as being
the most perfect of the dynasty's literature. This led,to a vogue in collecting popu
lar song, most notably by Feng Meng-Iong (1574-1646). Feng published two col
lections of such songs, the most famous of which, the/'Mountain Songs" (Shan-ge),
was composed in Wu dialect. The frankness of their eroticism was felt to be an ex
pression of "natural" feeling. Feng Meng-Iong was widely involved in editing and
publishing vernacular literature, of which three collections of vernacular stories are
best known.
The age was fascinated with qing, a term that ranges from the more delicate wsentiment" to "passion.Qing was often paired with the motif of "dream," bridging the
world of the senses and that of the mind; dream sometimes cast a haze of illusion
around the experience of qing and sometimes became the means by which it could
be realized in the world. Both qing and dream were strongly associated with the plays
of Tang Xian-zu (1550-1617). Tang's Peony Pavilion (Mu-dan ting) was the most
popular literary work of his day, and its celebration of love gave it a near-cult sta
tus. In Peony Pavilion, a young woman falls in love in a dream, then dies of long
ing, only to return to life when her dream lover appears in the flesh and takes up
lodging near her grave.
The cult of Peony Pavilion was shared as much by women as by men. Literacy
among elite women made great advances in the Ming. The number of female writ
ers increased, and these writers looked back to the meager survivals in earlier liter
ature to establish a tradition of women's literature. The heroines of the day were the
great courtesans of Nanjing; poets and connoisseurs, they participated fully in the
artistic life of the city and received the adulation of literati throughout the empire.
The fortunes of the Ming were, however, coming to an end. Famine and wide
spread corruption weakened the fabric of the state, and in the 1630s there were a
number of uprisings that the government had difficulty controlling. Beyond the
Great Wall in the Northeast, a non-Chinese peoplethe Manchus had formed a
highly disciplined state and military machine, and had gained the allegiance of the
large population of Chinese frontiersmen living in the region. In 1644, the most powerful of the Chinese rebel armies, commanded by Li Zi-cheng, entered Beijing, and
the Ming emperor committed suicide. The story goes that one of Li Zi-cheng's gen
erals took the beautiful Yuan-yuan, promised as a concubine to Wu San-gui, the Ming
general holding the fortifications in the Northeast against the armies of the Manchus.
In rage, Wu San-gui opened the passes and invited in the Manchus, who quickly
defeated Li Zi-cheng before turning to slowly conquer the rest of the country. They
proclaimed their new dynasty the Qing.
Yuan Vernacular Song
In 1127, the Song Dynasty lost the North to the non-Chinese Jin Dynasty, a division
that intensified the cultural gap between North and South China that had been
growing over centuries. The Mongols, who replaced the Jin Dynasty in the North,
established Da-du (modern Beijing) as their Chinese capital in 1264, and a few years
later proclaimed themselves as a new dynasty, the Yuan. During the Yuan, Da-du
developed a flourishing urban culture, one that seems to have prided itself on its
vigor and roughness in contrast to Southern refinement, which its inhabitants often
saw as effete. The former tunes of song lyrics from the Northern Song capital of Kaifeng were carried south and became an ossified literary form in the Southern Song.
Some of those same Northern Song melodies and new ones went farther north and
reappeared in Yuan Da-du transformed. These Yuan popular song lyrics are char
acterized by new themes, a new tone, and a striking use of Northern vernacular Chi
nese.
Since the same melodies were used in the aria suites of Yuan variety plays, the
vernacular lyrics were called "independent songs" (san-qu). Some of these songs
appear as single short lyrics; others appear in sets to the same tune, making vari
ations on a single theme; still others occur in suites of different melodies, work
ing together just like the song suites that formed the core of an act in a Yuan va
riety play. These song suites could be long lyrics, but many were narrative or
dramatic monologues.
Guan Han-qing, who flourished in the last part of the thirteenth century and
into the fourteenth, was both a dramatist and a lyricist of vernacular song; he was
also the greatest master of the rough city slang of Da-du. He also obviously loved
Da-du's urban culture. His most famous song suite, on the theme of "not giving
in to old age, assumes the voice of an old rake celebrating life in the entertain
ment quarters of the city_ drinking, gambling, and above all enjoying its courte
sans, the "flowers" and "willows" described below. Such a suite should not be
taken as a "realistic" portrait of Guan Han-qing or of anyone else, but as repre
senting a new set of values in song, an anti-hero who is admired not for the qual
ities he claims to possess, but for the way in which he boldly claims those quali
ties of which society disapproves. He portrays himself as defiant, canny, and a
survivor. The conventional values at which he snubs his nose are not simply
proper Confucian social mores; he also mocks the conventional values of the plea
sure quarters and its love affairs. Guan Han-qing is not the Song lyricist who
stands with hesitant longing before the house of the beloved: he tells us at the out
set that he has enjoyed them all.
Guan Han-qing (late 13th-early 14 century), to

A Spray of Flowers (Not Giving In to Old Age)
Fve plucked every bud hanging over the wall,
and picked every roadside branch of the willow.
The flowers I plucked had the softest red petals,
the willows I picked were the tenderest green.
A rogue and a lover, Ill rely
on my picking and plucking dexterity
til flowers are ruined and willows wrecked.

I
ve picked and plucked half the years of my life,
a generation entirely spent
lying with willows, sleeping with flowers.
to Liang-zhoti
I
m champion rake of all the world,
the cosmic chieftain of rogues.
May those rosy cheeks never change,
let them stay as they are forever.
For among the flowers I spend my tim e
.
I forget my cares in wine;
I can
swirl the tealeaves,
shoot craps,
play checkers,
do a shell game.
And I know whatever there is to know
about music in every key~
nothing sad ever touches me.
I go with girls with silver harps
on terraces of silver,
who play upon their silver harps,
and smiling, lean on silver screens.
I go with jade white goddesses
and take them by their jade white hands,
then shoulder to jade white shoulder,
^ we go upstairs in mansions of jade.
I go with girls with pins of gold
who sing their songs of golden threads,
who raise their golden drinking cups
and golden flagons brimming full.
You think Im too old!
Forget it!
Im the best known lover anywhere,
Fm center stage,
Im smooth,
729
sharp, too!
Im commander in chief
of the brocade legions
and garrisons of flowers.
And Ive played every district and province.
to Ge-wei
You boys are baby bunnies
from sandy little rabbitholes
on grassy hills,
caught in the hunt
for the very first time;
I
m an ol pheasant cock plumed with gray;
Ive been caged,
Ive been snared,
a tried and true stud
w ho
s run the course.
Ive been through ambushes, pot-shots,
dummy spears,
and I never came out second-best.
So what if they say:
A man is finished at middle age
you think Im going to let
the years just slip away?
Coda
Im a tough old bronze bean
that can still go boing
steamed but not softened,
stewed but not mush,
whacked but not flattened,
baked but not popped.
Who let you boys worm your way in
to the brocade noose
of a thousand coils
that you cant chop off
and you cant cut down
and you cant wriggle out
and you cant untie?
The moon of Liangs park is what I enjoy,
Kaifeng wine is what I drink
Luo-yang
s flowers are what I like,
Zhang-tai
s willows are what I pick.
Me, I can
recite poems,
write ancient script,
play all stringed instruments

woodwinds too;
and I can:
sing KThe Partridge,M
dance Dangling Hands
I can hunt
play soccer,
play chess,
shoot craps.
You can
knock out my teeth,
scrunch up my mouth,
lame my legs,
,
break both my hands;
but Heaven bestowed on me this gift
for vice in each assorted kind,
so still I
ll never quit.
Not till Yama the King of Hell
himself gives me the call,
and demons come and nab me
my three souls sink to Earth below,
my seven spirits float away
into the murky dark,
then, Heaven, thats the time
Ill walk the lanes of misty flowers
no more.
Although we find the practice earlier, in the Yuan, Ming, and Qing it became com
mon for writers and anyone with cultural pretensions to take pseudonyms. Since writ
ers often gave names to the libraries or "studios" where they worked, one of the most
popular kinds of pseudonyms was the "studio name." Zhong Si-cheng, the fourteenth-century connoisseur of theater and vernacular song, named his studio for what
he felt was his most outstanding trait.
Zhong Si-cheng (14th century), from a song sequence to

A Spray of Flowers (A Word About Ugly Studio)
I. to aA Spray of Flowers
Born to dwell between Earth and Sky,
endowed with humors of Dark and Light,
and given a man-childs body, I
was sure to make my way in the world.
Whatever I did would have gone all right,
and each particular suited me.
731
But comments provoked one point of contention

friends old and new,
no matter who,
snicker when they catch sight of me.
IL to ceLiang-zhouM
Because my looks dont meet wide commendation,
my inner merits cant appear as they please;
half a lifes writing brings no compensation
for nothing my breast holds rich tapestries,
and my lips drip pearls of poetry.
I cant help this ashen complexion,
the missing teeth, the double jowls,
added to which are eyes like slits,
the narrow brow,
a too short space
twixt nose and lips,
and scraggly wisps of thinning hair.
If only I could have gotten
Chen Pings pure and jadelike glow,
He Yan
s handsome, gallant features
if only I could have gotten
Pan Yue
s splendid looks and figure.
And I know
the real reason why!
I
m sick of facing my mirror each morning,
and furious at Mom and Dad
for not having tried their very best!
Should the day ever come when a royal decree
summons the homely to serve the state,
I guarantee
Fll top the list.
III. to Ge-wei
There are times
at those idle moments as evening draws nigh
at the back door I stand
with a winged black hat of gauze on hair
piled sky-high,
and jet black boots sticking out from my gown
that brushes the ground
then all of a sudden I start to laugh.
I look like what?
a modern-day
queller of demons, Zhong Kui,
who could not frighten a ghost away.
IV. to tcSheep-Herding Pass

If the hat is askew,
friends can blame you;
^
but a face unappealing
is nobodys failing;
its true,
as they say,
men honor appearance,
and a dignity of face
invites a certain deference.
I think about this lying in bed and rage rises in my heart:
Fve lived these thirty years in vain,
nine thousand times its been on my mind
just like knots in lumber
you cant plane smooth,
a congenital illness
no remedy can soothe.
V. to ^Congratulating the Groom
Whatever can run in this world cant fly,

no matter how much goes your way,
no matter how gifted and clever you be
in quiet times I understand
the meaning of this for me,
and secretly comfort myself this way.
I have no urge to see the frontier
or by a pool to stroll
the fish in the pool would dive in fear,
and frontier geese would fly off in alarm,
and if I went to park and grove
even the commonest birds would flee.
Theyll paint me no portrait while I live,
and dead, theyll write no poems for me.
IX . Coda
FI1 always recall one night in the rain
when the lamp had just gone out
the autumn wind blew over my bed,
and I was still far off in dream.
There I met someone,
he asked me join him,
733
and he said that I

was meant rise high.
Having been a Confucian scholar,
you were to hold office as well;
a man who could take it easy,
with a fine eye for detail too.
But there was a certain moment
when best-laid plans went awry
and since your body was formed thus,
regret can remedy naught.
I can only bring it about that you
receive an ample salary,
have many children and grandchildren,
a good marriage
plenty of property,
a well-stocked granary,
good fortune added,
and great longevity.
I came here on purpose
just to let you know.
Soon Im going to leave you,
and beg your forgiveness.
*
At last he heaved a few sighs
in a moment of remorse.
On waking I remembered him,
remembered who he was
he was that very demon
who shaped me in the womb back then
and made me
unhandsome.
Vernacular song lyrics started out in the songs of the entertainment quarters, and
many of the extant san-qu treat the world of romance and the courtesans. Some
times bawdy, sometimes comic, sometimes merely coy, such lyrics are light and often
delightful pieces.
Xu Zai-si (14th century), to Dead Drunk in the East Wind

(Chen-zui dong-feng)
My sweetheart and I had long been apart,
I didnt know when we
d meet again.
Then all of a sudden I saw him today
passing right in front of my door.
I was going to shout,
then worried that people around would stare.
734
So I sang out
right then and there
the popular River Melody
to let him know by the voice it was me.
Although the qualities of such songs often evaporate on reflection (and usually in
translation), many depend on the surprising pleasure of vernacular usage, especially
when a conventional languidly "poetic" situation is suddenly naturalized, both in
language and sentiment.
Bo Pu (1226-after 1306)to Victory Music (De sheng yue)

I walk here all alone,
Ive walked a trail into the ground,
and back and forth a thousand times
I
ve walked in vain.
W ont you hurry up and let me know.
Come on,
dont make me hang around till daWn!
Many of the Northern vernacular songs were sentimental love songs, churned out
for the commerce of the entertainment quarters; others were song settings of com
monplace poetic material. There was also a wit and irony that was relatively rare in
classical poetry and the older song lyric.
Qiao Ji (d. 134 5)to Lti-yao-bian Of Myself

I didnt graduate in the top ten,
I
m not in :The Lives of Famous Men.55
Now and then I
m Sage of Beer,
I find zen of poetry everywhere.
A cloud and mist valedictorian,
the drunken immortal of lakes and the river.
In conversation, witty and clever
my own kind of Royal Historian.
After forty years I still endure,
of life's finer pleasures,
connoisseur.
'
In the early 1260s, a butterfly of remarkable size was sighted in Da-du. This was the
stuff of vernacular song. Not only did it call to mind the conventional association
of the butterfly as the gallant young rake tasting "flowers" (courtesans), but the mem
ory of Zhuang Zhou's famous "butterfly dream" was irresistible (see p. 122).
735
Wang He-qing (late 13th century), to Heaven Drunk

(Zui-zhong Tian), Big Butterfly
It came crashing out of Zhuang Zhous dream,
its two mighty pinions mounted east wind.
Three hundred famous gardens
were every one picked clean~
who would ever have thought
it was such a man about town?
It terrorized the honeybees
chasing blossoms5scent,
and when it gently flapped its wings,
it fanned a gale of flowersellers
east across the bridge.
Vernacular song did not, like most classical poetry and the older song lyric, avoid
the body and physical love. Sometimes it was merely titillating, sometimes obscene,
and often comic, as in Wang He-qing's literally "reversed" version of spending the
n ight in b e d w ith his girlfriend.
to Helped Home Drunk (Zui fu gui)

My lips were squeezed against her
glossy coils of hair,
her back lay pressed against my breast_
hardly what they call
sweet cheeks nuzzled everywhere.
I had to heave my plaintive sighs
into the nape of her neck.
I never saw her face all night,
my view:
her ivory combs backside.
Lan Chu-fang (14th century?)to Four Pieces of Jade

(Si-kuai yu)y Passion
I am utterly bumbling,1
she is as homely as can be;
but no matter how bumbling and homely
weve fallen deep in love.
Because she's homely, her heart is true,
which makes a bumbling fellow like me
care for her all the more.
]ln the context of Yuan urban culture, "b u m b lin g , literally, "ru stic, could perhaps best be trans
lated by the American slang term "nerd."
736
Such a homely lover

and such a bumbling mate
make a match found only in Heaven.
"
One of the favorite songs was Yi-ban-er, literally, "A H alf, Lyrics to this song usu
ally concluded with the lines: "half one thing, half another." Although apparently
trivial, the significance of this song's popularity lies in its interest in conditions that
were intermediate or made up of contradictions; especially when applied to human
feeling, it marked, like Yuan irony, a growing interest in the complexity of human
behavior and feeling.
Guan Han-qing, to A H alf (Yi-ban-er)

Cloudy coils of hair and hazy tresses,
blacker than piled crows,
with a rustling of crimson satin
a golden lotus foot shows.
No common flower over the wall
is quite so pleasing
.
you tell off your good-for-nothing lover
and half of you is furious,
and half of you is teasing.
Xu Zai-sito Moon Palace (Chan-gong qu)s Spring Passion

I had never felt longing all my life,
no sooner do I feel it now
than longing brings me injury.
My body, like a eloud adrift;
the heart, like willow catkins flying,
my force, like spiders floss
drifting in air.
Only a thread of incense smoke remains
still here,
And Iwondering where
my high-class lover has gone.
Precisely when
did the symptoms first appear?
when the lamp had half dimmed its light
and the moon had grown
half bright.
Although vernacular song had its beginnings in urban entertainment quarters, liter
ary men soon used it to evoke idyllic rural scenes.
737
Zhang Ke-jiu (ca. 1280-after 1348)to Someone Leaning on

the Balustrade55 (Ping-lan ren)By the Lake
Far-off waters, sunlit skies
bright with colored wisps of cloud
sinking away.
Ancient shore, a fishing village
where fishing rafts are spread.
The azure curtains of a tavern keepers home.
A painted bridge where willow catkins blow.
Guan Yun-shi (128 6 -1324 )to Clear River (Qing-jiang yin)

I gave up what little status I had
and went away
it makes the heart feel good!
Beyond white clouds laughters heard.
And if a few true friends and I
drink ourselves sick, who cares at all!
Our drunken sleeves go dancing
and we loathe
a universe that seems too small.
Vernacular song took over and "translated" into its own idiom many of the standard
themes and types of classical poetry and earlier literary song. The following is a stan
dard occasion, writing a poem on a famous ancient site; in this case, Tong Pass,
which guarded the approach to Chang-an.
Zhang Yang-hao (1270- 1329 )to Sheep on the Hillside

(Shan-po yang), Thoughts on the Past at Tong Pass
Here peaks and ridges seem to mass,
waves of the river seem enraged,
into river and hills and out again
goes the road through Tong Pass.
I gaze toward the Western Capital,
it gives pause to thought.
This spot
that Qin and Han marched past
breaks the heart,
towers and chambered galleries
turned to dirt all.
The common folk suffered
when kingdoms rose;
the common folk suffered

when kingdoms fell.
The Yuan Dynasty began in brutality and ended with a sense of corruption and in
eptitude that went beyond even the infamously failed last reigns of earlier dynasties.
Classical poetry may have directed barbed ironies against those in power, but the
unsubtle sarcasm of the following anonymous vernacular song was almost unique.
The "River Project" was a massive public works enterprise of 1351 to build a trans
port canal to Da-du. The introduction of paper money caused runaway inflation and
combined with other factors to wreck the economy.
Anon., to Drunk in an Age of Peace (Zui tai-ping)

Glorious is our Mighty Yuan!
all power is held by vile men.
The River Project and paper cash
were root cause of our doom,
driving millions to insurrection.
Laws that govern slacken,
laws that punish, stern,
the common folk burn
in rage:
men eat men,
cash buys cash,
things never before seen.
Thieves hold public office,
officials turn to thieves,
good men are confused with f o o ls ,a sad state indeed.
Ma Zhi-yuan (1260-1325)
Writers of lyrics for vernacular song rarely show the kind of salient personalities that
we find in classical poetry and even in Song literary song lyric. Rather than indi
viduality, their preferences appear in the range of themes and styles that vernacular
song offered. These lyricists often assumed the voices of conventional roles, not un
like the roles provided in drama. Guan Han-qing may be distinctive for his love of
city slang and the culture of the demimonde, a love witnessed in both his plays and
in his lyrics. Ma Zhi-yuan appears from his plays and songs as someone with rather
more "literary" preferences, though little more of his life is known than of Guan Hanqing's.
One particularly popular form of sart-qu was the short lyric describing a scene,
perhaps related to the poetic vignettes of rural life found in the Southern Song and
contemporary Yuan quatrains on paintings. The most famous short song lyric of the
739
Yuan is just such a simple description, it is often praised in traditional critical terms
for its handling of stasis (jing) and motion (dong).
to KHeaven Pure Sand55 (Tian jing ska)Autumn Thoughts

Withered vines, old trees, twilight crows.
Small bridge, flowing water, peoples homes.
Ancient road, the west wind, gaunt horse.
The evening sun sinks westward.
A man, broken-hearted, on a far horizon.
to Shou-yang Melody (Shou-yang qu Clearing Haze at a

Market in the Hills
Past the village filled with flowers,
west of the thatched tavern.
Wisps of cloud brighten in late afternoon,
the rain stops, the heavens clear.
Hills all around
within the fading light
of the sun hanging low in the sky.
To this brocade screen
is added another swathe of azure green.
to aShou-yang Melody (Shou-yang qu), A Sail Returns to the

Distant Shore
The evening sun goes down,
tavern streamers calm.
Two or three boats have still
not yet touched the shore.
Waters smell sweet from fallen blooms,
a thatched cottage late in day.
Beside the broken bridge
each fishseller goes his way.
to wShou-yang Melody (Shou-yang qu)Evening Bells in a

Misty Temple
Chilly mist hangs thin,
the ancient temple pure.
Nearing dusk the sounds grow still
from people praying to Buddha.
Borne with the western wind, a bell
late in the day
rung three or four times.
740
It will not let the aging monk remain

deep in his meditation.
to Shou-yang Melody55 (Shou-yang qu)Evening Sunshine in a

Fishing Village
The rapping of mallets ends,2
in twilight sunbeams flash.
By a levee with green willows
come sounds of fishermens songs.
At several homesfrom scrapwood gates, *
hang idle nets drying in sun.
All are snatched up within
this picture of catching fish.
to aShou-yang Melody (Shou-yang qu), Autumn Moonlight on

Lake Dong-ting
Clouds veil the moon,
breeze plays the chimes:
two different kinds
of enhancement for my gloom.
I trim the silver lamp wick
to write whats in the heart,
then give a long moan
the sound
blows out the flame.
The following suite of seven songs, one of Ma Zhi-yuan's most famous, begins with
the call to seize pleasure while you can, and ends with the praise of the simple life.
A Suite on Autumn Thoughts

L to aA Boat Going by Night (Ye xing chuan)
The time passed in lifes century,
a dream of a butterfly.
Looking back, all
that happened brings a sigh.
Spring comes today,
tomorrow flowers fall.
Hurry to offer another toast~
night ends,
the lamplight burns away.
2The mallets are used to frighten the fish into the nets.
741
II. to Tall Trees Far Away 39(Qiao-mu yao)
I imagine Q in
s palaces,
the towers of the Han,
all have turned to meadows now
where sheep and cattle graze.
How else would woodsmen and fishermen
have their tales to tell?
Although great stone inscriptions lie
broken on their grassy tombs,
I cant make out the serpentine words.
IIL to Celebrating the Xuan-he Reign (Qing Xuan-he)
They have come to fox tracks and rabbitholes,
so many proud and daring men.
The Three Kingdoms then,
a tripods legs however strong
cracked midway.
Was it Jin?
Was it Wei?
IV. to The Wind That Brings Down Plum Blossoms" (Luo-mei-feng)

If Heaven makes you rich
be not too intemperate.
Yet
fine days, fair nights last not long.
Then, rich man, let us say
your heart is stingy, hard as steel
how could you just throw away
pleasures of moonlight and breeze
in your brocade hall?
V. to ffWind Enters Pines (Feng ru song)

Before my eyes the crimson sun
sinks again to the west,
fast as a wagon rolls downhill.
Just look in your mirror tomorrow at dawn,
a further increase of snow white hair.
Youll g et in bed and s a y farewell
forever to shoes left on the floor.
Mock not the doves incompetence
because it borrows anothers nest.
I bumble along and always play the fool.
VI. to Keep Stirring Things Up (Bo-bu-duan)

Fame and profit are done,
shoulds and shouldntare gone.
742
The worlds red dust can never lure

me out my door.
Green trees are the perfect cover
^
for roofs corner,
and green hills fit the broken ledge
in my garden wall.
And so much more!
my thatched cottage and bamboo hedge.
VIL to Feast at the Pavilion of Parting (Li-ting yan sha)

The crickets chirping stopsI wake
,
comfortable and snug
but when the rooster crows come cares
in thousands never ceasing.
When will it be through?
I view
ants parade in packed maneuvers,
chaotic swarms of bees that brew
honey, and the furious din
of horseflies seeking blood.
The Green Meadow Hall of Lord Pei Du,
Magistrate Tao at White Lotus Club.3
These things I love when autumn comes
to pick chrysanthemums mixed with dew,
to split purple crabs with frost within,
to burn red leaves to warm my wine.
I think in our lives the cups will pass
a limited number of rounds,
and how many times in all
comes the autumn festival?
I charge my servant to keep in mind:
if Kong Rong comes seeking me
4
tell him he
ll find
me utterly drunk by the eastern hedge.
3Pei Du, one of the great ministers of the early ninth century, eventually retired to his estate called
Green Meadow Hall, where he held famous parties for literary men. Magistrate Tao is Tao Qian,
who, according to one erroneous legend, was associated with the monk Hui-yuan's famous "White
Lotus Club."
4Kong Rong, an intellectual and literary man of the Three Kingdoms period, was supposed to have
said that he had no worries as long as he had ample guests and the winecups were never empty.
743
Variety Plays: Guan Han-qing,

Rescuing One o f the Girls
(Jiu feng-chen)
W ritte n d ra m a in C h in a a p p eared in th e c o n te x t o f an e sta b lish e d th e a tric a l p ra c

tic e th at w a s m u ch o ld e r. In the urb an c u ltu re Song an d Jin d y n a stie s, the skits and
popular musical entertainments of earlier periods gradually assumed more complex

an d e x te n d e d fo rm s, w ith sto ries d e v e lo p e d in su ites o f songs an d im p ro v ise d d ia
lo g ue. In N o rth C h in a d u rin g th e Y u a n D y n a s ty th ere d e ve lo p e d a k in d o f p la y c a lle d
a "variety play," za-ju, consisting of four acts, usually with an additional short act
k n o w n as th e " w e d g e ." T h e c o re o f e a c h a c t w a s a sin g le su ite o f songs in th e sam e
m u sica l m o d e , a ll sung b y o n e o f the le ad in g c h a ra c te rs. B e tw e e n th e so ng s, and
often in terru p tin g th e m , w a s sp o ke n d ia lo g u e . T h e m a te ria l o f su ch p la y s w a s m u ch
th e sa m e as th at o f u rb a n sto ry te llin g : great h is to ric a l sag as, v irtu o u s b a n d its, lo ve
stories from Tang tales, detective stories featuring the canny and virtuous Judge Bao,
along with some lively stories of urban life, of which Rescuing One of the Girls is
an e x a m p le .
The relation between surviving printed editions of variety plays and the reality
o f th e a tric a l p ra c tic e is a c o m p lic a te d q u e stio n . T h o u g h th e so ng s, co m p o se d b y the
"dramatists," provided a degree of stability, such plays were almost certainly not per
formed from scripts. Rather, they were continually changed in reperformance by the
p ro fe ssio n al a c to rs, b u ild in g o n th e strengths o f a p a rtic u la r tro u p e an d re sp o n d in g
to the needs and inspiration of the performance. The earliest printed versions of such
p la y s , d atin g fro m th e th irtee n th c e n tu ry , co n ta in o n ly th e song s, w ith m in im a l stage
direction and hints of dialogue. The fuller editions of Yuan variety plays, including
the present text of Rescuing One of the Girls, are Ming recreations in writing of a
complete variety play performance.
B y its v e ry n atu re , th e ate r is a h ig h ly a rtific ia l m e d iu m . R ead ers an d th eaterg o
ers o f d iffe re n t tra d itio n s b e co m e used to the c o n v e n tio n s o f th e ir o w n d ra m a , and
its a rtific ia lity see m s less s trik in g ; but w h e n a re a d e r e n c o u n te rs a p la y fro m an o th er
culture, conventional dramatic devices can disrupt the illusion. Variety plays have
m a n y su ch in tru s iv e d e v ic e s . First and fo rem o st are th e songs th at fo rm th e c o re o f
e a ch a c t (in th e tra n sla tio n b e lo w , th e m e lo d y title s th at m a ke up th e so ng su ite h ave
been o m itte d ). W h e n c h a ra c te rs m a k e th e ir e n tra n c e th e y in tro d u c e th e m se lv e s,
often reciting a verse that identifies their type. Situations are explained rather than
g ra d u a lly re v e a le d , as in m o st W e ste rn d ra m a . C h a ra c te rs c o m e an d go o n th e stage
w ith little regard fo r th e u n ity o f p la c e , an d w h e n th e y a re g o ing to u n d e rtake so m e
a c tio n , th e y often d e c la re w h a t th e y a re d o in g to th e a u d ie n c e , as w a s n e c e s sa ry in
a theatrical tradition that used few stage props. For example, when a character is
a b o u t to en te r a h o u se , he o r sh e wH I d e c la re , " I'v e c o m e to so -an d -so 's h o u se ; H I
744

go in now." Finally, characters repeatedly summarize the situation before adding
some new comment.
Very little is known about Guan Han-qing's life. He worked in the last part of
the thirteenth and first two decades of the fourteenth century. More than any of his
contemporary dramatists, Guan Han-qing seems the voice of the city culture of Dadu (now Beijing), a militant "counterculture" in both its language and values. A play
like Rescuing One of the Girls represents something genuinely new in the Chinese
literary tradition. There is a touching moment in Zhao Pan-er's first aria when she
sings of the life of a courtesan; she says (see p. 749) that if she married,
Id pretend to act like an honest woman,

to work at submission and be a good wife;
but I cant help being what I am, *
just a no-good dancehall girl,

fickle in heart and always
meaning other than what I say.
And how would the last act end?
The public values of Neo-Confucianism demanded absolute sincerity. The cour
tesan, however, is profoundly corrupted by always knowing better, seeing hypocrisy,
conceiving of stratagems and alternatives. She is worldly and she knows too much,
but this curse of lost innocence turns out, in a corrupt world, to be Zhao Pan-er's
virtue. She is, perhaps, the first true "anti-heroin the Chinese tradition. Good ends
are achieved by lies. Zhao Pan-er's lies to the villain Zhou She might be justified,
but she also bends the truth badly before the virtuous magistrate. Confucian social
values are not the only targets in the play: the conventional values of Chinese ro
mance are attacked, too, though they win out in the end.
Guan Han-qing's plays are crude, and except for the patriotic sentiment of crit
ics that would make him the Chinese Shakespeare, the obvious coarseness of his
work can be too easily dismissed. Guan Han-qing is no Shakespeare, who could
stand between court and commons, speak in both worlds, and transcend both. In
Rescuing One of the Girls, Guan Han-qing revels in the common. There is nothing
pretty about his world, and good is relative, measured against caricatures of evil.
The courtesan's wiles are set against a relatively honest beastliness, and we applaud
her victory. This was the horror of late imperial civilization, with its obsession with
genuinenessthat the lie may be humanly better than an odious truth.
-The customs of sexual commerce in late imperial China differed in significant

ways from those in the West. None of the available English words quite fits the sit
uation, being either too rough or too sanitized. The borrowed French term "demi-
mondaine" is closest to the status of the women in Rescuing One of the Girls. The
women of the Chinese entertainment quarters were performers, singers, and dancers;
however, there is very little reference to artistic accomplishments here (except per
haps in Song Yin-zhang's talent for nude somersaults). These women were also cour
tesans, who made their living by selling romance as much as sex, and they often
looked to being bought out of the business and installed as mistresses or secondary
wives. The language of marriage is always used in these transactions, but because

such relationships were not sanctioned by the man's parents, they differed from the
family alliances of "regular" marriages. The woman was entirely subject to the man's
goodwill: he could either throw her out (as Zhao Pan-er anticipates Zhou She will
do with Song Yin-zhang) or keep her against her will (as Zhou She in fact does).
ACT I
Enter Z h o u Sh e .
Z
hou
Sh e
[recites]:
Thirty years gorging and guzzling,

two decades lucky with girls
all my life Fve never bothered
with costs of room and board,
on booze and women I spend my cash.
The names Zhou She. My familys from Zheng-zhou and I
m the son of
a lieutenant governor. Ive hung out in the dancehalls ever since I was a
youngster. Here in Kaifeng theres a singer named Song Yin-zhang. She
s
got her heart set on marrying me, and Ive got my heart set on marrying
her. The only thing is that her mother wont go along with it. Ive just
gotten back from a business tripand I guess I
ll go to her place now to
see her mother and bring up this question of our getting married. [Exit]
Enter Mrs. Song and Song Yin-zhang.
Mrs. SongI
m from Kaifeng. I was born a Li, but I
m a Song by marriage.
My husband passed away some time ago. My daughter here, Yin-zhang,
is all Ive got left in the world. This girl of mine knows all there is to know
about fast-talking and playing on words. Zhou She from Zheng-zhou has
been her man friend for some time now. The two of them want to get
married. Fve tried every trick in the book to put a stop to it. [to Song
Y i n -z h a n g ] Listen Yin-zhang, its not that Im just trying raise difficul
ties in this marriage to Zhou She~ I
m just afraid youre going to have
a bad time of it later on.

Song Yin-zhangDont worry, Momma. Ive really got my heart set on mar
rying him.
Mrs. SongAll right, all right, go ahead and do what you want.
E n ter Z h o u She.
Z h o u She Here I am at their door. F ll go right in. [Greets them]
Song Y in - z h a n g Zhou She, you

re here!
Zhou SheI came right over to find out about us getting married. Whats
your mother say?
Song Yin-zhangMy mother says its okay.
Z h o u She
W ell then, I
ll go see her. [Mrs. Song comes in and greets him.]
I came right away to find out about getting married to Yin-zhang.
Mrs. SongIts a lucky day todayIll go albng with this, but dont go treat
ing my daughter badly!
Zhou SheI would never treat my girl badly. Come onMomma, you go
invite all the other girls and their friends vv^hile I go get things arranged.
Mrs. Song [to Yin-zhang]Honey, you stay and take care of things Gere
while I go invite all the girls.
Z hou She [recites]:

Ive spent all my energy for years,
today at last our wedding nears.
Song Yin-zhangIt was all destined to work out this way.

Mrs. SongBut you cant always tell what will happen in love. [Exeunt
omnes]
Enter An Xiu-shi.
An [recites]:
I failed my exams like Liu Fen,
a thousand years of rue;
yet like Fan Dan I keep my goals
poor my whole life through.
I figure that if Heaven
ever has its way,
a man of books and learning
it surely wont betray.
The names An Xiu-shi, from Luo-yang. Ive studied Confucian texts
since I was little, and Im full of learning. My trouble is that all my life
Fve never been able to take my mind off drinking and girls. When I came
to Kaifeng there was a singer, Song Yin-zhang, who became my girl
friend. She originally wanted to marry me, but now she's going to marry
Zhou She instead. Her best friend is Zhao Pan-er. Why dont I go see
her now to try to get her to talk Song Yin-zhang out of this. Is Zhao Paner home?
Enter Zhao Pan-er.
Zhao Zhao Pan-er5s the name. I heard someone calling for me at the door.
Fll go open it and see who it is. [Greets An] I wondered who it was
its you! Why are you here?
A n I came all the way here because I want you to do me a favor. Yin-zhang
was originally going to marry me, but now shes going to marry Zhou
She instead. And I want to see if I can get you to talk her out of it.
ZhaoDidnt she promise to marry you first? How can she want to marry
someone else now? This marriage spells trouble for sure!
[Sings]
Dancehall girls keep men company,
we chase after money all our lives
747
for our retirement plan

we cant waste time with winning ways
just to show how much we care
for some man that has our heart.
I think when it comes to marriage,
your timing cant be off,
not a moment,
not an instant.
How did he catch her fancy?
How did they get to meet?
Even if shes headstrong,
and headlong
to get it done as soon as she can,
she may well regret it later
and hit herself on the head.
We seek happily-ever-after5s,
to quit and settle down,
but its just like the blackest ocean
where its hard to find your way.
In my view
youll never know anothers mind,
youll never outsmart Heavens design.
If marriages made in Heaven
depended on just a you and me
who wouldnt want to pick a person

just to suit her fancy?
She may pick her way through millions
but if she wants an honest man,
shell probably search a lifetime
and never find a mate;
but if she wants to marry
a handsome, clever man,
shell probably end up dumped,
quite casually,
halfway along the way.
Then whether shes dunked in dog-piss
or left on a piles of cowpies,
shell find herself suddenly flat on her face_
and then when she finally opens her eyes,
just who will she have to blame?
I can think of some married just a few days
their looks were wrecked,
they were gaunt as ghosts.
But they couldnt explain
and couldnt complain,
748
they just cried in vain.

I
ve seen some good-looking girls,
hot for marriage,
who met some hard-hearted men
and spent their lives sleeping alone
I think the whole thing sucks.
I can tell you what it would be like if I were to get married to one of my
clients.
A n
What would it be like?
Zhao [sings]
Id pretend to act like an honest woman,
to work at submission and be a good wife;
but I cant help being what I am,
just a no-good dancehall girl,
fickle in heart and always
meaning other than what I say.
And how would the last act end?
I may live in the lanes of the demimonde,
in the streets of willows and flowers,
but nothing comes cheap to me.
I dont fleece clients with phony wares,
but they are out to gain
whatever little edge they can;
corrupt of morals, every one,
false in action, rash in deed.
If a guy has visited me a few times, and then I dont ask him for money,
he
ll think, This girls a golddigger.
He
ll just think I
m not coming clean,
he
ll say:
the girl means to bamboozle me.
Some women love to be dancehall girls,
and some love to be mistresses.
Ladies who run a household
throw tantrums for nothing at all
we are merchants of illusion, with an eye
to earn interest on our capital
but if one of us gets married
soon she comes to feel
the jab behind the feint.
And thats a girl who cannot learn
from another girls blunder.
You sit here a while, and Ill go try to talk her out of this marriage. Just
dont be too overjoyed if I succeed, and dont be too disappointed if I
dont.
749
An : I wont stay. Id rather go home and wait there to find out how it goes.
Do the best you can for me. [Exit]
Zhao Pan-er walks over and greets Song Yin-zhang.

ZhaoAre you going out to pay a call, Yin-zhang?
Song Yin-zhangNo, Im not going outI
m going to get married.
ZhaoWell now, Fve come just this moment to put in a good word for a
man you can marry.
Song Yin-zhangWho5s that?

ZhaoAn Xiu-shithe scholar.
Song Yin-zhangMarry An Xiu-shime? Wed end up playing beggarman
and beggars wife!
ZhaoThen who do you want to marry?
Song Yin-zhangIm marrying Zhou She.
Zhao Listen, isnt it a bit soon for you to be getting married?
Song Yin-zhangWhats too soon about it? Its Hey, baby! today and
Heybaby! tomorrow~a big pimple to squeeze all the pus out of.1But
when I
m marriedI
ll be a Mr. Zhangs wife or a Mr. Li's spouse.
If I could have the title of a proper wife, I think it would be great, even
if I had to die and become a ghost.
Zhao [smgs]
Before you act youd better think,
then think it through again.
Right now youre young and green,
Ill find you another man
and take my time.
For your part its easy~
just keep snug as a bug at home;
from your very best friend
this sincere admonition
I dont think you could stand
the mans disposition.
A man w ho
s a husband cant act like a lover, and a man w ho
s a lover
cant act like a husband.
Song Yin-zhangExplain that to me.
Zhao [sings]
A man whos a husband
cant act like a lover
she doesnt know what that means.
A lover can be just a hollow facade,
a man w ho
s a husband is honest inside.
Song Yin-zhangBut Pan-er, Zhou She dresses so nicely, and he's really
cute.
T his metaphor is based on a pun; da-jie ("Hey, baby," literally, "big sister)the way one addresses
a singing girl, and the homophone "big p im p le /

Zhao
[sings]
Even if that fellow wore
a dung beetles shining shell,

what does he understand
of relationships in families?
Why do you want to marry him?
S o n g Y i n - z h a n g I w a n t t o m a r r y h i m b e c a u s e h e
Z h a o And just how does he treat you well?
tre a ts m e w e ll.
S o n g Y i n - z h a n g T h e r e s s o m e t h in g f o r every s e a s o n o f th e y e a r. D u r in g
those little naps I love to take in summertime, he fans meand in winter

he warms the covers for me and helps me rest comfortably. When I go
off somewhere to pay a call, he fixes the collar ties on the clothes I wear
and straightens my hairpins. And its because he treats tne well in things
like this that I want to marry him with all my heart.
Z
hao
: S o t h a t s w h y ?
[Ss]
Now Fve heard how you really feel,
the reason you do what you do,
and I cant stop a bit of a smile.
So he fans you to sleep in those hot summer months
and in winter he warms things up~
do you think he
s worried youll catch a chill
through your thick clothes?
And when youre eating he takes a spoon
to get out the gristle and skin
when you go out, he ties your collar
and straightens up your clothes
and in your hair arranges the pin.
But all of this is just false show
that girls never see through,
but fall more deeply in love.
You think your loves sweet as honey,
but once yousre married and in his house,
he
ll probably dump you in less than a year.
Hell soon bare his teeth and curl his lip,
whack with fists,
kick with feet,
and beat you till youre left in tears.
Your boat will be in midriver then,

too late to fix the leaks,
and who will you have to blame?
First think things through,
or youll be sorry.
751
I cant talk you out of this now,

but a day will come
Ill have to figure out how
to save you from helpless pining.
Yin-zhang, if things go bad for you later on, just dont come complain
ing to me.
S o n g Y i n - z h a n g E v e n i f I w e re c o n d e m n e d t o d ie , I w o u l d n t c o m e c o m
p la in in g to y o u .
Enter Z h o u She.
Z h o u S h e S p r e a d o u t th e w e d d in g g ifts , b o y s , so w e c a n a d m ir e t h e m a b it.
Z hao Is this guy that just came in Zhou She? If he doesnt say anything to
me, Ill let it be; but if he says just one word, Fll give him a piece of my
mind.
Z h o u S h e S o th is is Z h a o P an-er?
Zhao
Thats right.
Z h o u S h e P le ase, h a v e s o m e t h in g t o e a t a n d d r in k .
ZhaoYouinviting me to eat something! Im so hungry at home my cheeks

are gaunt~oh no, theres nothing in any of my cooking pots. You think
its an autumn moon shining in the cellar, that Fve never seen food like
th is !
Zhou SheLook, I have something Id like you to do for me, Miss. Would
you vouch for the person I
m going to marry?
Z h a o V o u c h f o r w h o m ?
Zhou SheFor Song Yin-zhang.

Z hao What do you want me to vouch for? Her needlework? Her cooking?
Her embroidery? Her ability to furnish the bridal chamber? Her sewing?
Her ability to raise children?
Zhou She[Aside] This bitch has got a mean tongue on her. [to Zhao Paner] Everythings all set anyway, so I dont need you.
Z hao Then Im leaving. [Goes out door]
En ter
A n X iu - s h i.
AnHow did your talk with Yin-zhang go?

Z h a o I g o t n o w h e r e .
A n In that case Ill be off to the capital to take the examinations.
Zhao Dont go just yet. There5s something in which Im going to need you
A n Ill go along with you. Fll stay here in the inn to see what you come up
with. [Exit]
Zhao [smgs]
That girls a monster, a demon,
a temptress who trips men up~
dont be too sure those are legs in her pants;
and when we spit out our blood for her,
she thinks its just red dye.
Dont believe all the sweet-talk you hear.
She hates you so
she would easily gouge out your eyes

shes only happy
if you stick close to her all the time.

[Aside] I hope she comes to her senses quickly.
Our poor Shuang-lang, scholar lover,
had a golden tiara ready for her

and cloudlike cape.
[Aside] He had the great lady in his hands,
But instead, because of a tea sellers fortune,
she married the merchant Feng Kui.2 [Exit]

Z h o u S h e N o w t h a t w e ve s a id g o o d b y e t o y o u r m o t h e r , g e t in th e s e d a n
c h a ir , a n d w e l l b e o f f t o Z h e n g - z h o u .
[Recites]
No sooner out of the courtesans gate

than you are the wife of a decent man.
Song Yin-zhang [continuing]
Whats got me worried is:
when I bear the abuse of this decent man
F l l t h i n k o f b e c o m in g a w h o r e a g a in .
[Exeunt]
ACT II
Enter Z h o u
Sh e
and
So n g Y
i n -z h a n g
Zhou SheIve ridden horses all my life, and now Ive fallen off trying to
ride an ass. I just about wore out my tongue trying to get this woman to
marry me. I had her get into the sedan chair, I got on a horse, and we
left Kaifeng on our way to Zheng-zhou. I let the sedan chair go on ahead
because I was atfraid that the better class of people would make me the
butt of their jokes and say, Zhou She has married Song Yimzhang.55
Then I see the sedan chair bouncing up and down. So I go up ahead, give
the guys who are carrying it a flick of my whipand say, Are you try
ing to put something over on me? And I ask them, Why are you mak
ing it bounce? Just carry it! And they say, Its not our doing~we dont
know what the young lady is up to in there. When I lift the sedan chair
curtain and take a look, I see her stripped down to the buff, turning som
ersaults. Then, when we get to my house, I tell her, Sew up the quilt
ing so that I can sleep under it I come into the room and I see a quilt
standing on end, as tall as the bed. So I shout, Where are you, woman?
And I hear an answer from inside the quilt, I
m here, Zhou She, inside
the quilt. So I say, What are you doing inside the quilt? And she says,
2Zhao Pan-er here is alluding to a popular love story in which Su Xiao-qing was in love with the
scholar Shuang-jian (or Shuang-lang), but was forced to marry the tea merchant Feng Kui. Shuangjian, after getting office, finds a poem she has
eft, and eventually rescues her.
753
I was sewing in the cotton stuffing, and I got myself stuck inside some
how.,5 I pick up a stick and am just about to hit her when she says, Its
no big deal if you hit me, Zhou She, but dont hit old Mrs. Wang next
door. And I say, Great! You
ve got the neighbor in there too!
Song Yin-zhangI never did any such thing!

Zhou SheI havent told the half of it. I may beat you to death with my own
hands, you bitch, but Im never going to sell you off or let you buy your
way out. I
m going off to get something to drink now, and when I come
back I
m going take my time beating you up. [Exit]
Song Yin-zhangYou always get in big trouble if you dont believe what
a good person says. Zhao Pan-er tried to talk me out of thisbut I would
n't listen, and no sooner did we get inside his house than he hit me fifty
times just to teach me a lesson. He beats me and yells at me morning and
night, and Im sure Im going to die at his hands. Theres a peddler next
door named Wang whos going to do some business in Kaifengand Fve
written a letter for him to take to my mother and Zhao Pan-er to have
them come get me out of this. If they take too long, Im not going to be
among the living. Heaven! You
re letting me get beaten to death! [Exit]
E n ter
M rs. Song,
crying.
Mrs. SongIm Song Yin_zhang

s mother. My daughter went and married
Zhou She, but yesterday Wang the peddler brought me a letter, and in
it she writes, No sooner did we get inside his house than he hit me fifty
times just to teach me a lesson. Now he beats me and yells at me morn
ing and night, and pretty soon Im going to die. Please beg Pan-er to come
get me out of this as quickly as she can. I
ll take the letter to Zhao Paner to let her know and to see how we can get Ying-zhang away from
there. Poor little Ying-zhang, you*re going to be the death of me. [Exit]
En ter
Z h a o P an- er.
Zhao Pan-erThe names Zhao Pan-er. I keep wondering when I

m going
to be able to get out of this way of making a living.
[Sings]
Getting married has been on my mind
these past few years, and Ive heard
how some girls paid their indenture
and some girls were bought free.
They made themselves suck up to rich men
and never realized
that rich men will break a dancehall girl
and lightly toss her aside.
Every one of them,
eyes bulging wide,
is like fish dumped from a net;
every one of them,
lips in a pout,
7 54
is like pigeon shot from the air.

No planting them in the Royal Park,
those common roadside willows,
and no respectable household
will ever put up with a whore.
At first men always mean it a little,
but in the long run
it never works out well.
Who has not wedded impetuously?
or leapt at the chance of married life?
and then who hasnt been carelessly dumped?
We are bubbles all, adrift on the waters
each one after another.
We make our own folks into enemies,
so mad they wont see us again,
like sun and moon or opposing stars,
each rising as the other sets,
when we get caught in mens snares.
They show every form of ardent passion,
thousands of kinds of love and care~
until, in the end,
the slate is wiped bare.
Enter M
r s.
So n g .
is her house. I
ll go in and find her. [Greets her] Pan-er,
Fm terribly upset!
Z h a o Mrs. Song, why are you crying like this?
Mrs. S o n g Let me tell you. Yin-zhang didnt listen to your advice and mar
ried Zhou She anyway. No sooner did she get inside his house than he
hit her fifty times just to teach her a lesson. Now hes beating her within
an inch of her life, and she cant last much longer. What are we going to
do?
Z h a o So, Yin-zhangs being beaten.
M r s . S o n g This
[Sings]
I think back when she secretly married
3
I feared they would never get along.
The things I said then that needled her
now have all come true.
It was only last autumn you left.
He was the most shiftless
of all shiftless men,
but you thought he really loved you
and that you both would be joined fast.
3The "secrecy" probably refers to Zhou She's parents.
755
So you spread out the lovebird covers

and hung up the phoenix drapes,
hoping it would last like Heaven,
endure as long as Earth
but once you step past the threshold

and know what hes likeyoure through.
Ive watched this sort of thing many a time,

and now its no business of mine,
the whole things out of my hands.
[Aside] But Zhao Pan-er . . .
Youre in a situation where
if you let her die and don

t save her
youll be shamed forever for failing
the oath of sisterhood we swore.
So thats how its turned out. Who let you marry him?
Mrs. SongBut Pan-er, Zhou She promised . .

Zhao [5/ngs]
Doesnt each of them put on a woeful face
and claim hes going to die?
But when it comes right down to it,
doesnt each of them change his mind halfway?

Youre the courtesans all-too-honest mother
what young men say when they want a girl
is the same the whole world over
Zhou She is not the only liar.
Doesnt each of them point to Heaven,
all kinds of vows he swears
vows soon done, like autumn winds
blowing past the ears.

Mrs. SongBut Pan-er, how are we going to save my daughter?
Zhao Fve got a couple of bars of silver stashed away. Well take those and
go buy her away from him.
Mrs. SongBut he said he
ll beat her to death rather than sell her off or let
her buy her way out.
Z h a o P a n -e r
thinks a w hile then says som ething in M r s . S o n g s ear.
Z h a o . . . I t s th e o n ly w a y .
M rs. S o n g
But can you bring it off?
Zhao Dont worry. Let me have a look at the letter. [Mrs. Song hands
her the letter and she reads]: Dear Momma and Pan-er. I didnt
believe your good advice and now I
ve ended up in big trouble. As soon
as I got inside his house he hit me fifty times just to teach me a lesson.
Now he beats me and yells at me morning and night, and I cant t
ake the abuse any more. If you come soon, you may see me again,
756
but if you delayyoull never see my face in this world again.

Yin-zhang. Oh Yin-zhang, what got into you to do this in the first
place?
[Sings]
I think on how it used to be,
when one of us worried,
we worried together,
when one was in sorrow,
our sorrows were shared.
Now she tells me shell soon be gone,
buried on some grassy hill,
a ghost who roams back alleys
begging for gifts of village wine~
you told me that after youre gone . .
Well, dear sister, didnt you yourself say, It
s Heybaby! this and Hey,
baby! that~a big pimple to squeeze all the pus out of. Better to get mar
ried and be a Mr. Zhangs wife or a Mr. Lis spouse.
[Sings]
If I could be known as a proper wife,
it would be great,
even if I had to die and turn a ghost.
Mrs. Song, has the man who brought the letter gone yet?
Mrs. SongNot yet.

Zhao I
ll write a letter and send it to Yin-zhang. [Writes and sings]
Ill compose this letter myself
to send her all my love
and tell her not to let
a word of my scheme leak out.
Fll send it to that once reckless
and now repentant girl,
give greetings to the sufferer
whose body aches all over.
Didnt I try to talk you out of itYin-zhang?
But there really was no reason
you should find such a brute,
thrashing you heartlessly with his stick
till your fresh red blood oozes down,
spending each morning in your home
like a criminal on death row ~
I
m sure youre not long for this world.
Whats more, youre living so far away
in Zheng-zhou
that no one can watch over you,
757
so it couldnt be helped that these awful things

came about.
M rs. So n g [weeping]How can my poor daughter stand it? How are you
going to get her out of this, Pan-er?
ZhaoD on
t worry, Mrs. Song.
[Sings]
Just to make you bear it better
I
ll come up with another plan
Ill fix up these cloudy coils of hair
and wispy tresses,
[Aside] and then on again with my gown of brocade,
with its coral hooks

and lotus buttons,
Fll go wiggle my hips

and be oh so sexy.
Ill make these powdered cheeks of mine
rescue your daughter-cadaver,
Ill risk myself, in spite of all,
so let him curse me and curse some more.
Im not just talking big now

he
ll never escape the hands of this whore!
Mrs. SongKeep a sharp eye out and be careful when you get there, Paner. [Weeps] Oh daughter, you
re going to be the death of me!
Zhao [5/ngs]
Just stop your heart from fretting,
relax those worried brows,
Ill pull it off and bring her back
without a hitch.
That bastards girl-chasing heart
will come like a puppy to me,
trying to show how clever he is.
When I get there, I
ll talk to him a little, and if he
ll sign the divorce pa
pers, thatll be it. But if he wont sign them, then Ill give him a few
pinches here and a little fondling there and a few hugs and a few squeezes
till his whole body melts like butter and goes completely numb. It will
be like rubbing a little sugar under his nose, and the guy will try to lick
it but he wont be able to get to it, and hell try to bite it, but he wont
be able to reach it. I
ll trick him into signing the divorce papers, and once
Yin-zhang gets hold of the divorce papers, shell be out of there in a flash.
And at that point Ill make my own exit. [Sings]
And wont it be a sensational scene
when I make this man give her up! [Exit]

758
ACT III
Enter Zhou She and Innkeeper.

Z h o u She [recites]:
Everythings set by destiny,

no point in workinglife drifts by.
Nothing but pretty women and wine
can ever fluster this heart of mine.
Listen, boy, when I had you open this establishment, it wasnt because
I had an eye to get money for rent to take care of my family. If a goodlooking woman comes to the innjust call meno matter whether shes
on the government payroll or in business for herself.
InnkeeperGot it. But since you're always on the move, where am I going
to find you at any particular time?
Zhou SheYou can find me in the whorehouse.

InnkeeperAnd if youre not in the whorehouse?
Zhou SheYou can find me in a gambling den.
InnkeeperAnd if youre not in a gambling den?
Zhou SheThen you can find me in jail. [Exit]
Enter the errand boy Zhang Xiao-xian with suitcases,
Zhang Xiao-xian [recites]

I make my living with cleated boots
and umbrella to keep off the rain,
my living is made passing love notes

that tell of secret passion.
Im not an idle person, so
I never get to be idle,
and even when I have idle time, Im
incapable of idling.
Zhang Xiao-xian
s my name, which means Just Slightly Idle. Ive
never been involved in regular business, but whenever a singer or one of
the girls needs someone to pass messages back and forth between lovers,
I
m always the one they call. This time Zhao Pan-er had me pack two
suitcases of clothes and things to go to Zheng-zhou. Everythings setand
its time to mount up, Miss.
Enter Zhao Pan-er.
ZhaoXiao-xian, do you think I can make that guy hot for me dressed up
like this? [Xiao-xian falls down] What are you doing?
Zhang Xiao-xxanYou dont need to worry about making him hot for
youthis time even Ive melted down!
Z h a o [sings]
I really feel bad for her,

worries fill my breast;
759
shes gotten herself in a mess

with no way out.
That woman was hot-headed
she didnt think it through
and now Isve got to make myself playone of that troupe who lead souls astray.
Ill puff my breath ever so slightly,
and set his heart aflame,
Ill make him kick the traces,
go bolting out of the stall.
And I
ll make out that hes a lover
like no one else in the world.
Thinking this up is easy enough,
but no small thing to bring off,
and manys the time I would have preferred
not to interfere;
it
s the old lady I
m sorry for first,
having no one to support her;
and second, being so used to the road,
Ive a special pity for travelers;
and third~well, craving a drink myself,
I take pity on a drunkard.
So once we get there,
Ill give it my heart and soul.
'
And here as Ive been talking we

re already in Zheng-zhou. Xiao-xian
take the horses while I stop here a while in the shade of this willow.
Zhang Xiao-xianSure.
Zhao Just making idle conversation, Xiao-xian, but you know that people
from good families behave well, while people from the wrong sort of fam
ilies have bad habits.
Zhang Xiao-xianTell me what you mean.
Zhao [sings]
A high-class ladys a high-class lady
a dancehall girls a dancehall girl.
So what if she struts
cross the threshold
wiggling her hips,
she can
t stop him bossing her around
and making her into a slave
and she has to put up with it silently.
Good families powder their faces
lightly and with good taste,
unlike us, who gob it on;
good families comb out their tresses,
with a slow and gracious ease
unlike us, who just untie hairbands
760
leaving deep marks on the chin.

Good families well understand degrees
of intimacy and reserve,
and know how to observe
when to be distant, when to comply

its a sort of breeding thats quite distinct.
Its nothing like us at all
monkeys locked in empty rooms,
with a thousand deceitful wiles,

with a million sham persuasions
you can never get rid of the ways of a whore.
Zhang Xiao-xianHeres an inn. Lets stop here,

Zhao Call the innkeeper. [Innkeeper greets them] Get a nice clean room
ready for me and put my bags in it, then go ask Zhou She to come see
me~tell him Fve been waiting here a long time.

InnkeeperAll right.
Innkeeper walks awaycalling out:
Zhou She, where are you?
Enter Zhou She.
Zhou SheWhats going on?

InnkeeperTheres a good-looking woman at the inn asking for you.
Zhou SheWell, lets get going, then!
Greets Zhao Pan-er. [Aside]:
Now heres a good-looking girlie.
Zhao Good to see you, Zhou She.

. . [Sings]
My friends got a good eye for men,

and she must have good luck too
she
s spruced up her splendid husband
even more splendidly,
right in the prime of his youth.
Zhou SheNow where have I met you? It was at a bar. You were playing
the zither. And didnt I give you a strip of brown silk?
Zhao [to Zhang Xiao-xian]: Did you ever see that happen?
Zhang Xiao-xianPve never seen you with a strip of brown silk.
Zhou SheAh! Didnt I share a meal with you once when I was drinking at
a bar, having come to Shen-xi after clearing out of Hang-zhou?4
Zhao [to Zhang Xiao-xian]: Did you ever see that happen?
Zhang Xiao-xianI never saw it.
4This may refer to Zhou She's travels, the business trips he mentioned in the first act, but some com
mentators suggest that these are streets in the entertainment quarters.
7^1

Z h a o [s/'ngs]:
Youre always hot for new girls,

you grow forgetful and mix up the old,
whats more your eyesight is failing.
Its just like those lines in the ballad:
Ium,. . .
knew you once beside that creek
of peach blooms in Wu-ling,
but now you feign conjectures
and recognize me not
And here my own dreams have been fitful,
tormented because of you!
Zhou SheNow Ive got it. You

re Zhao Pan-er, arent you?
Z h a o Thats right.
Z h o u She Youre Zhao Pan-er! Well great, just great! You were the one
trying to stop my marriage. Innkeeper, lock the door and beat up Xiaoxian here!
Z h a n g X ia o - x ia n Hey! Dont beat me up! Here the lady comes with a
trousseau of embroideries and brocade, with toilette and bedding to
marry you, and you want to beat me up?
Zhao Sit down, Zhou She, and listen to what I have to say. When
you were in Kaifeng, people were always bringing up your name
until my ears were all abuzz with you. But I never met you. By the time
I got to meet you I was already a wreckI couldnt eat or drink from
thinking of you. When I heard you were going to marry Song
Yin-zhang, how could I help getting upset? Here I wanted to marry
you, Zhou Sheand you were going to have me vouch for Yin-zhang
instead.
[Sings]
And then since I was the older,
I put a good face on it,
supported the wedding
dont you realize I was jealous,
and tried on purpose to break the match?
You may seem sharp on the outside,
but inside youre just a little slow.
But marry me now
and Pll let the whole thing go.
Look, I came here looking for you with the best intentions, bringing my
carriage and horses and my whole trousseau, and now you want to beat
me up and yell at me for no good reason. Turn the carriage around, Xiaoxian, were going home.
Zhou SheIf I had known you came to marry me, I would never have
wanted to have the little fellow beaten up!
767
ZhaoYou really didnt know? Well, since you didnt know, dont leave;
just sit here and keep me company.
Zhou SheI wouldnt mind sitting here with-you for daysno, even for a
year or two.
Enter Song Yin-zhang.
Song Yin-zhangSince you havent been home for a couple of days, I fol
lowed you here to the inn to see what you were up to. And here I find
Zhao Pan-er sitting with you! That old whore is so shameless that she
s
even come after you here. Zhou She, you
d better not come home ever
again, because when you do come, Im going to take myself a knife and
you can take yourself a knife, and well fight it out between us. [Exit]
Zhou She [taking his stick]: Im as ready as you are, and if the lady werent
present, Fd kill you in a moment.
Z h a o [Aside, sings]:
I wont forgive him either,

but why wont I dare be open about it?
Ill grit my teeth and bear the pain,
but how can I watch you beat her up?
Dont they say,
One night together as man and wife
means a hundred nights of gentleness,H

so calm yourself, man, stop fuming
if he
s going to be rough,
he ought to be rough in secret,

he ought to think twice
before acting this,way in front of me
what genteel lover would ever
beat a bargirl to death?
But here I see him raging,
patting that cruel stick,
even the most hot-tempered men
are not as bad as you.
[To Z h o u She]
Suppose you beat her to death with that rough stick youre holding
what then?
Zhou SheWhen a man beats his woman to death, he doesn't have to pay
with his own life.
Zhao Now who would be willing to marry you if you go around saying
things like that! [Aside, sings]:
Ill pull the wool over his eyes,
trick him to do what I want,
7G
Fll leave this jerk nowhere to run.

Just watch me, little sister, see
one sweet-talking whore
save a girl of the streets.
[to Zhou She]You almost made me fall for that one. While you were
sitting here, you sent for your wife to come make a scene and insult me.
Xiao-xian, turn the carriage around. W e
re going back.
Z h o u She
Come on, honey, sit down. I didnt know she was going to come
here. Strike me dead if I knew she was coming.
ZhaoYou really didnt have her come? The girlsno good. Here
sthe quick
est way out~you get rid of Yin-zhang and Ill marry you right away.
Zhou SheI
ll divorce her as soon as I get home. [Aside] Whoa! Slow down
a moment! Ive been beating that woman regularly, and shes so scared
of me that if I give her divorce papers, shell be gone in a trail of smoke.
Then if this one wont marry me, Ill lose out on both sides. Dont go
rushing into things! I had better make sure of this woman. [To Zhao
Pan-er] Look, baby, I may have the wits of a donkey, but lets just say
I go home and divorce my wife, but then you just shut your eyes tight
and wont marry me. Then Ill be losing out on both sides. So youve got
to swear an oath.
ZhaoYou really want me to take an oath, Zhou She? All rightif you di
vorce your wife and I dont marry you . . may horses trample me to
death in my own living room, may a candlewick crush my pelvic bone!,
There now, youve forced me to take a really serious oath.
Zhou SheInnkeeper, bring us some wine.

ZhaoDont buy any wine. Fve got ten bottles of wine in my carriage.
Zhou SheThen Ill go buy us some lamb.
ZhaoNo need to buy lamb. Isve got a cooked lamb in my carriage.
Zhou SheFine. Well then, let me go buy some red silk.
Z hao Dont buy any red silk. In my luggage I have a matched pair of strips
of red gauze. D on
t let it bother you, Zhou She. W hat
s yours is mine,
and whats mine is yours.
[Sings]
One who is dear will be so ever,

as kin are always kin.
Iwith my flowerlike body,
with my youth like a tender
shoot of bamboo,
for a splendid marriage
will bring you in dower
fine silver ingots.
I dont care
if our life brings
more chaff than wheat,
no matter if you take other women
Ill bear with the worst you do

you wont regret being my husband
for all the rest of your life.
If you5re broke, Ill be glad
to share your poverty,
But if you5re richwell,
dont mock me if my comfort
breeds wantonness
and makes people talk.
If that suits your wishes well,
divorce the woman with you now.
I dont want you to spend a penny on me

it was I who came to you all on my own.
All Fve saved, all that I have
I put to your familys service;
sleek horses and light furs
I bestow on you yourself
Ill pay myself for the bridal suite

where we become man and wife.
If I marry you, I wont be like Song Yin-zhang, who knew nothing of
needleworkcooking, embroidery, how to furnish the bridal chamber,
all kinds of household tasks.
[Sings]
Just write out the divorce papers
and all you*re owed will be squared away. [Exeunt omnes]

ACT IV
Enter Song Yin-zhang.
Song Yin-zhangZhou She ought to be back soon. [Enter Zhou She. She
greets him] What would you like to eat?
Z hou She [enraged] All right. Bring me a pen and a piece of paper. Im going
to write you divorce papers and I want you out of here right away!
Song Yin-zhang [takes the divorce papers but doesn't leave]What have I
done to make you divorce me?
Zhou SheAre you still here? Get out right now!
Song Yin-zhangSo youre really divorcing me! Was this what you said
back then when you wanted me? You treacherous man, you monster!
You may want to get rid of me, but I wont go! [Zhou She pushes her
out the door] Im out of his house! Youre such a dimwit, Zhou She. And
you, Pan-er, you were brilliant! Im going to take these divorce papers
straight to the inn to find her. [Exit]

Zhou SheNow that this bitch is gone, Ill be off to the inn to marry Paner. [Goes to innshouts] Innkeeper, wheres the woman who was just
here?
765
InnkeeperShe got in her carriage and left as soon as you were out the door.
Zhou SheIve been had! Bring me my horse. Im going to catch up with
her.
InnkeeperThe horse is foaling.

Zhou SheThen harness the donkey.
InnkeeperThe donkeys lame.
Zhou SheAll right, Ill catch up with her on foot.
InnkeeperFll go after her with you. [Exeunt]
Enter Zhao Pan-er and Song Yin-zhang.
Song Yin-zhangI would never have gotten out of there if it hadnt been
for you.
Zhao
Hurry up!
[Sings]
I have to chuckleso dependably
he wrote out the writ of divorce!
and now wheres oar conniving friend?
So sure of his way with women,
so sure of the tricks of power,
but he couldnt outwit my clever tongue
with its thousands and thousands of lines.
Let me have a look at the divorce papers, Yin-zhang. [Song Yin-zhang

hands over the papers and Zhao Pan-er switches them] If you ever want
to get married again, Yin-zhang, everything depends on this piece of
paper as proof, so take good care of it!
Song Yin-zhang takes the paper. Enter Zhou Shecatching up with them.
Zhou She [shouting]Where do you think you're going, you bitch? You're
my wife, Yin-zhang, so how do you think you
re going to get away from
me?
Song Yin-zhangYou gave me divorce papers and kicked me out!

Zhou SheDivorce papers have to have five fingerprints. How can one with
only four fingerprints be the real thing?
Song Yin-zhang opens the paper to look at it. Zhou She snatches it away
from her and rips it to pieces with his teeth.
Song Yin-zhangPan-er! Zhou She has chewed up my divorce papers!

[Zhao Pan-er goes over to protect her]
Zhou SheYoure also my wife.
Zhao How could I possibly be your wife?
Zhou SheYou drank my wine.
Zhao I had ten bottles of good wine in my carriage~you cant claim they
were yours!
Zhou SheYou accepted my lamb.

Z hao I brought the cooked lamb m yselfyou cant claim it was yours!
Zhou SheYou accepted my pledge of red silk.

ZhaoI brought my own piece of red gauze~you can
t claim that was yours!
[Sings]
The lamb and wine
were from my own carriage,
I brought the red gauze myself.
Youre corrupt through and through
and never true,
laying false claim to anothers goods.
Zhou SheBut you swore that you would marry me.
Zhao [s/wgs]
I was just stringing you along,
I make my living
by taking such oaths and vows.
And if you dont believe me
ask dancehall girls anywhere
who live in streets of flowers:
is there one who would not swear
before a bright and scented candle?
Is there one who would not call
on Heaven high and Earth so deep?
Is there one who would not hazard
retribution from the gods
if she proved false?
If all such pledges and vows had been valid,
they and their kin would have all
long been dead.
You go along with him, Yin-zhang.
Song Yin-zhang [terrified]: If I go with him Ill be a dead woman.

Zhao [sings]
You never think ahead,
so giddy and confused.
Zhou SheThe divorce papers have been destroyed, so what else can you
do but go with me?
[Song Yin-zhang looks terrified]

ZhaoDont be scared. The papers he tore to pieces in his teeth were a fake
writ of divorce. [Sings]
I had the standard form copied on purpose
and gave it to you,
here
s the original from before.
Zhou She snatches at it

Even nine oxen couldnt drag it away from me!
767
Zhou She [seizing Zhao Pan-er and Song Yin-zhang]There are laws
against this sort of thing. You and I are going before the magistrate. [Exe
unt]
-
Enter Magistrate Li Gong-Bi, with Zhang Qian, the bailiff.
Li Gong-bi [recites]
My fame and virtue in governing
are known to our emperor,
on fine nights each household

need not lock the door.
When rain stops folk go out
to plow in green wilds
no dogs bark under moonlight

in villages of flowers.
I am the governor of Zheng-zhou, Li Gong-bi. Im holding morning
court today to hear a few cases. Zhang Qian, prepare the docket.
Zhang QianYes, sir!

Enter Zhou She, Zhao Pan-er, Song Yin-zhang, and Mrs, Song.
Zhou She [shouting]Justice, Your Honor!

Li Gong-biWhat's the accusation?
Zhou SheHave mercy, Your Honor! Fve been defrauded of my wife!
Li Gong-biAnd just who defrauded you of your wife?
Zhou SheIt was Zhao Pan-er who devised a scheme to defraud me of my
wife, Song Yin-zhang.
Li Gong-biAnd what does the woman have to say?

ZhaoSong Yin-zhang already has a husband, but she was forcibly taken
by Zhou She to be his wife. What's more, he gave her divorce papers yes
terday. So how could I have defrauded him?
[Sings]
This guy is a vicious brute,
his family, high-handed and rich,

thoroughly false and conniving
he has never set foot on the path of truth.
Song Yin-zhang has her own man,
but he forced her into his home.

Evil-tempered debaucher of girls,
all too arrogant, ruthless and cruel,
a villain,
doing wrongs wherever he goes.
Here are the divorce papers,
I beg Your Honor to examine them.
Bnter An Xiu-shi at back of stage.

7/Cft
An Xiu-shiPan-er just sent a message to me, saying, Yin-zhang has her

divorce papers. If you come quickly and make an accusation to the mag
istrate, you can get her as your wife. Heres the courtroom door. Fll
yell, Justice!
Li Gong-biWhos that making noise outside the court? Bring him in.
Zhang Qian [bringing An Xiu-shi forward]: The man making the complaint
is here before Your Honor.
Li Gong-biWho are you accusing?
A n Xiu-shiMy names An Xiu-shi, the fiance of Song Yin-zhang, who was
forcibly carried away by Zhou She to be his wife. I beg Your Honor to
judge the matter.
Li Gong-biWho will stand as your guarantor?

An Xiu-shiZhao Pan-er.
Li Gong-biZhao Pan-er, you said that Song Yin-zhang already had a man
who was to be her husband. Who is it?
Zhao Its this man, the student An Xiu-shi.

[Sings]
In his youth he studied Confucian wisdom
he has learned the Nine Classics by heart;
we are also from the same hometown,
and since she accepted his pins and rings
and engagement gifts,
she is clearly a good man's wife.
Li Gong-biNow I ask you, Zhao Pan-erare you really the one who will
stand as his guarantor?
Zhao [sings]
The guarantees I put before you can be trusted_
but how could he stand up to
that wife-stealer5s schemes?
That was no honorable marriage
that so openly violated customs!
I pray Your Honor give a decision today
and unite them as man and wife.
Li Gong-biZhou She, its obvious to me that Song Yin-zhang already has

a husband, so how can you still maintain that she is your wife? Were it
not to spare your father the humiliation, I would turn you over to the
authorities for punishment. So all present heed the judgment that I ren
der now: Zhou She shall be flogged sixty times and reduced to the sta
tus of a commoner. Song Yin-zhang will go back to An Xiu-shi as his
wife. Zhao Pan-er and the rest are all to return to their homes.
[Recites verses]
It was all because of a bawd

s greed,
as Zhao Pan-er has in detail explained;
Zhou She did not keep to his proper role,
769
and An the scholar will be joined with a wife.

A ll bow to the court and thank the Magistrate.
Z h ao [sings]:
I
ve explained each detail to Your Worship
to split greedy man from suffering girl.
If Miss Noodlebrain stops making lifelong vows,
in the quarter for lovers
our lovebirds will join once again,
man and wife.
Thus:
Scholar An among flowers and willowsM
accomplished his nuptials,
And Zhao Pan-er, the prostitute,
rescued one of the girls.
from The Romance of the Gods ^TCi

(Feng-shen yan-yi):
Ne-zha and His Father
The long Chinese prose romances of the Ming Dynasty, written in vernacular Chi
nese or in a mixed classical and vernacular style, grew out of story cycles that had
evolved over the course of centuries. Such story cycles also were material for pro
fessional storytellers, and incidents from these cycles provided a rich source of plots
for variety plays. The most famous of the prose romances were The Romance of the
Three Kingdoms (San-guo zhi yan-yi), on the wars that followed the dissolution of
the Han Dynasty; Water Margin (Shui-hu zhuan), on a band of righteous outlaws in
the Song Dynasty; and Monkey or The Journey to the West (Xi~you ji), on how the
ever resourceful Sun Wu-kong ("Monkey") and his companions guarded the Tang
monk Tripitaka on his pilgrimage to India to fetch the Buddhist scriptures.
The sixteenth-century Romance of the Gods (Feng-shen yan-yi) is a fantastic elab
oration of ancient history in one hundred chapters. It recounts the rise of the house
of Zhou and the overthrow of the wicked last ruler of the Shang Dynasty and his in
famous consort Da-ji, in the novel presented as an evil spirit in human guise. Past
that broad statement of narrative theme, all resemblance to ancient history ceases.
Both the Shang and the rising Zhou are aided by wizards, Daoist immortals, boddhisattvas, and spirits of various animals and inanimate objects in more or less
human form. All have magical powers and engage in titanic battles using magical
weapons. The souls of those killed in this combat are kept in reserve in the Jade Void
Palace in Heaven, and at the end of the romance, these souls are appointed as gods
by Jiang Zi-ya, the architect of the Zhou victory. It is from this "investiture of the
godsthat the romance takes its name.
Incorporated into the romance is a version of the very old story of Ne-zha (or
Nata in his Indian form), son of the demon-king (devaraja) Vaisravana (here known
as one Li Jing, a failed Daoist acolyte turned general). When Jiang Zi-ya comes down
the mountain and begins to assemble the forces to support the Zhou cause, Ne-zha
becomes an important champion on the Zhou side. But before this occurs, early in
The Romance of the Gods, three episodes are devoted to the story of Ne-zha's birth,
his disastrous childhood exploits, and his subsequent conflict with his father.
Ne-zha has the terrifying charm of a deity's power in the mind of a seven-yearold. In contrast to the polite, reserved, and sometimes timorous male figures in elite
literature, Ne-zha, like many other heroes of prose romance, tends to act on im
pulse~and his impulses are frequently violent The only thing that can control such
violence is a hierarchy of power, within which Ne-zha eventually finds his place.
Like his close kin Sun Wu-kong ("Monkey"), Ne-zha eventually learns to wbegood
by being forced to act good.
771
In Ne-zha's struggle with his father, an economy of moral exchangewhether

of obligation or revenge~comes into conflict with the more absolute Confucian de
mand for filial piety. A child owes his corporeal existence, his "flesh and bones, to
his parents. To Ne-zha's mind, once he has repaid that debt by an act of filial selfsacrifice and been reincarnated, there is no further bond between him and his fa
ther. To underscore that point, he consistently refers to his father as "Li Jing." It re
quires considerable coercion on the part of his Daoist master and his immortal
associates to bring Ne-zha to his knees and say "Father" again.
The Romance of the Gods, attributed to one Xu Zhong-lin (died ca. 1566), draws
everywhere on the occult lore of popular Daoism. This is a world where the high
immortals dwell in caverns on magic mountains with fantastic names, surrounded
by disciples who are gifted with a measure of the powers of their masters. Each of
the high immortals is a master of magic arts and possesses magic treasures that serve
as weapons. Despite their occasional claims of pacifism and serenity, they can be
a hot-tempered and violent lot, ready to take offense and test their skills against oth
ers. The wisest of these high immortals (those who will be in the service of the Zhou)
already know the future in some detail; they direct the course of the novel whose
plot is predestined.
Episode XII: Ne-zha Is Born into the World at Chen-tang Pass

Within the cavern Goldenray
there was a treasure rare
who went down to the mortal realm
to aid a gentle liege.
Already the glow of good fortune
shone from the line of Zhou;
in turn the essential spirit
was lost in the House of Shang.
The Great Cycle ever has needed
many to prop and brace;
always in times of ascendant glory
was the shimmer of kalpa fires.
In the moment of one cycles ending
a new beginning is met,
if court and commons both hide from sight
it is pointless to sigh with care.1
There was a commander at Chen-tang Pass whose name was Li Jing. At a

young age he had studied the Way and practiced its discipline, honoring the
Popular prose romances commonly punctuate the prose narrative with verse and rhymed descrip
tive passages. Unlike later novels, where the verse often is put to useful purposes, here the verse is
often doggerel.
772
high immortal of Western Kuil-lun, Antidote-to-Adversity, as his master.

There he learned the magic technique of Elemental Vanishing. But because
he could not perfect the Way of the Immortals, he was sent down the moun
tain to help King Zhow of the Shang. He came to hold the office of Com
mander and enjoyed the wealth and honor of the mortal world.
His principal wife
whose maiden name was Yin, had borne him two chil
dren: the eldest was named Jin-zha, and the next was named Mu-zha. Af
terward Madam Yin again became with child, but after three years and six
months she still hadnt given birth. This curious circumstance constantly
troubled Li Jing. One day he pointed to his wifes belly and said, To carry
a child more than three years and still not give birth means that it must be
some monster or demon. His wife, who was also upset, replied, This preg
nancy certainly doesnt bode wellI worry about it day and night. And
hearing what she said, Li Jing felt quite unhappy.
At midnight that very night Madam Yin was sleeping soundly when she
dreamed that a Daoist, his hair bound up in a double coil and dressed in
Daoist robes, came right into her bedroom. The lady began to scold him,
You have absolutely no sense of how to behave! This is my bedroom. How
did you get in here? This is terrible! The Daoist only said, Quicktake
this child, foal of the unicorn. Before she could answer him, the Daoist took
something in his hand and put it into her bosom. At this she woke up with
a start, her whole body drenched in cold sweat. She hurriedly woke Com
mander Li and told him the whole thing: I just dreamed thus and so. . . .
As she was speaking, Madam Yin could already feel the pains in her womb.
Li Jing hastily got up and went to sit in the front hall, thinking to himself,
After carrying the baby for three years and six months, and now after what
happened tonight, its finally going to be bornbut it remains to be seen
whether it will be lucky or unlucky.
As he was pondering this, two maids came in a panicSir, the madam
has just given birth to a demon! Hearing this, Li Jing hurried to her bed
room as quickly as he could and grabbed his precious sword; but what he
saw was a globe of reddish vapor in the chamber, and an unearthly fragrance
filled the whole room. There was a ball of fleshdripping wet and perfectly
round, like a wheel. Amazed, Li Jing hacked at it with his sword, and there
came a sound as if it were ripping apart. Opening up the ball of flesh, out
jumped a young child, filling the whole place with reddish light. His face
was as white as powder, and there was a golden bracelet around his right
hand; around his belly was a piece of fine red silk, and golden rays shot from
his eyes.
The divine sage who had been incarnated into the mortal world and ap
peared at Chen-tang Pass was the officer who would go in the forefront of
Jiang Zi-yas army. He was the avatar of Numinous Pearl. That golden
bracelet was the Cosmic Ring, and the name of that piece of fine red silk
was the Celestial Confusion Cloth. These were the magic treasures that
guarded Goldenray Cavern on Primordial Mountain.
773
When Li Jing hacked open the ball of flesh, he saw a young child emerge
and begin running about everywhere. Astounded at this marvel, Li Jing
went over and took the child up in his arms. It was so obviously a fine young
boy that he couldnt harden himself to treat it as a demon and take its life.
He then passed him to his wife so that she could have a look. Neither of
them could help feeling affection for the boy, and each was delighted.
On the following day a number of Li Jing
s subordinates came to offer
him their congratulations. Li Jing had just finished sending them on their
way when his adjutant came in and announced, Sirtheres a Daoist out
side who wants to see you. Since Li Jing had originally been a Daoist him
self, he couldnt ignore his own kind and immediately replied, Ask him to
come in The adjutant rushed out to invite the Daoist in. The latter strode
straight into the great hall anddirectly facing Li Jing, said, A humble Daoist
at your service, General. After quickly exchanging courtesies, Li Jing of
fered the Daoist the seat of honor. W ithout any show of polite reluctance,
the Daoist sat right down. Li Jing then asked, From which of the fabled
mountains do you come, master, and from which cavern? And what do you
have to tell methat you visit this pass? To this the Daoist replied, I am
the high immortal Unity from Goldenray Cavern on Primordial Mountain.
I heard that you just had a son, and I came especially to congratulate you.
I wonder if you would be so good as to let me have a look at the child?
Hearing what the Daoist said, Li Jing to]d a servant to bring the child
in. The servant brought out the child in her arms. Taking the child by the
hand and looking him over, the Daoist asked, What time of day was the
child born? In the early morning before dawn
replied Li Jing. Not
good
said the Daoist. Li Jing asked, Should we then not keep him? No
you should keep him
replied the Daoistbut since he was born in the early
morning hours, he will break the one thousand seven hundred injunctions
against killing. The Daoist went on to ask, Have you given him a name
yet? Li Jing replied that he had not, and the Daoist said, Would it be all
right if I gave him a name and made him my disciple? To this Li Jing replied,
I would be glad for you to be his master. How many sons do you have?
asked the Daoist. Three now
replied Li Jing, The eldest is called Jin-zha,

and his master is the Exalted Celestial 'Extensive Dharma of Remarkable
Culturefrom Nimbus Cavern on Five Dragons Mountain. The next oldest
is called Mu-zha, and his master is the high immortal Universal Goodness
from White Crane Cavern on Nine Lords Mountain. Since you want this
child among your disciples, just give him a name in keeping with the oth
ers, and you will be his master/9 <eFor your third son Ill choose the name
Ne-zha
said the Daoist. Li Jing thanked him, saying, My gratitude is
boundless for your generosity in bestowing this name on him He then or
dered his servants to prepare a vegetarian meal, but the Daoist declined.
his is unnecessary. I have things to attend to and must get back to my
mountain right away. Since he was adamant in his refusal, all Li Jing could
do was see the Daoist on his way ouof the official compound. There the
Daoist said goodbye and went off straightway.
Li Jing had been having no problems at the pass. Then suddenly the news
came that four hundred counts of the empire had rebelled. He immediately
issued orders to guard the pass fortifications closely, to drill the army and
give his troops further training, and to defend the positions on W ild Horse
Ridge.
Time sped by, and seasons changed. Before he knew it, seven years had
passed. Ne-zha was seven years old and six feet tall. It was midsummer and
the weather was blazing hot. Jiang Wen-huan, the Earl of the East, had re
belled and fought a great battle with Dou Rong at Spirit Roaming Pass, and
therefore Li Jing was drilling and training his soldiers daily.
Ne-zha was growing restless and irritable from the heat. He went to pay
his respects to his mother, and then, standing over to one side, said, I want
to go out to the other side of the pass fortifications to have some fun, but I
thought I should ask you first, Mother. Madam Yin, who doted on her son,
replied, If you want to go out beyond the walls and have some funyou
should have a household guard take you. Dont try to have everything your
own way, and come back quickly. I
m afraid you father will return from
drilling the troops. YesMother,55answered Ne-zha.
When Ne-zha went with the guard outside the walls of the pass, it was
typical July weather and terribly hot.
The true fires of the Daystar
were smelting the dust and dirt,
the green willows and lovely grains
had almost turned to ash.
The man on travels dreads its might,
too spent to lift his foot;
the lady fair stands in fear of the heat,
too tired to climb the terrace.
In the cool kiosk it
s scorching and dry
like smoke from a blazing brand;
in the river tower there is no breeze
as if buried in a fire.
Speak not of the fragrance of lotuses
reaching the nooks of the park
Only with thunder and gentle rain
can a persons mood relax.
.
'
Ne-zha went out beyond the walls of the pass with his guard. After pro
ceeding for a bit more than a mile, it became difficult to continue on because
of the heat. His face streaming with sweat from the hike, Ne-zha told the
guard, Why dont we take a rest in the cool shade of those trees up ahead?
When the guard reached the shade of the green willows, he felt a sweet
smelling breeze brush over him and all his discomforts melted away. He
rushed back to tell Ne-zha, The shade of the willows is very pleasant and
cool. We can get out of the heat there.
Hearing this, Ne-zha was immediately filled with delight and entered the
grove. He undid the sash of his robe and relaxed, feeling completely happy.
All at once over to one side he noticed clear waves rolling past and spilling
green waters. Willows hung down along both shores, and there were gentle
gusts of breeze; you could hear the waters splashing over jumbled stones
along the banks.
Ne-zha got up at once and went over to the riverside, calling out to the
guard, Ive gotten all hot since we left the pass, and my whole body is
sweaty. Im going to bathe myself on the rocks here for a while.MTo this
the guard replied, Be careful. We had better be getting back pretty soon,
because your father will probably be returning. It doesnt matter
said
Ne-zha.
He then took off his clothes, sat on the rocks, and put his seven-footlong Celestial Confusion Cloth in the water to wash it off. He didnt real
ize that this was Nine Bend River, which emptied into the Eastern Sea.
When Ne-zha put his magic treasure into the water, it made all the water
5 turn red. He swished it about, and the rivers heaved and shookhe shook it
a bit, and the very universe shuddered. There was Ne-zha washing his cloth,
not realizing that the great Crystal Palace of Waters was being deafened by
the roar.
We turn now from Ne-zha washing his cloth to Ao-guang, dragon king
of the Eastern Sea, who was sitting in his Crystal Palace when he heard a
thundering din all around. He quickly called his attendants and asked,
Theres no earthquake due~why are my palace halls shaking like this?
Then he deputed Li Gen, the yaksha of the Ocean P atrol

2 to go the oceanfeeding rivers to find out what was causing this bizarre disturbance. When
the yaksha got to Nine Bend River and looked around, he noticed that the
water was all red and shimmering with light. But all he could see was one
small boy washing a red kerchief in the water. The yaksha rose from the
water and called out in a loud voice, Boy
what kind demonic object is that
youre holding, turning the water red and making our palace shake?
When Ne-zha turned to look, he saw something in the water with a face
blue as indigo, hair red as cinnabar, a huge mouth with fangs, and a large
ax in his hand. Ne-zha saidYou there, creature, what sort of thing are you
that you can talk? At this the yaksha flew into a rage. I am the yaksha as
signed to the Ocean Patrol by my lordhow dare you insult me by calling
me creature
?
And he leapt out of the water onto the shore, ready to swing
his ax down on Ne-zha*s head. Ne-zha was standing there stark naked; and
when he saw the yaksha coming toward him with violent intent, he dodged,
took the Cosmic Ring from around his right hand, and tossed it into the sky.
This magic treasure was among the things that the Jade Void Palace on
Mount Kun-lun had bestowed on the high immortal Unity to guard Gold
enray Cavern. No mere yaksha could survive that, and it came down right
2A demon. Originally Indian, the yaksha entered Chinese mythology and folklore through Buddhism.
on his head, dashing his brains out. The yaksha died immediately there on
the shore.
He
s gotten my Cosmic Ring all messy
laughed Ne-zhaand he went
back to sit on the rock and wash the ring. And how could the Crystal Palace
survive this second magic treasure~the great halls of the palace were all in
danger of being shaken down. My yaksha hasnt come back from going to
investigate
said Ao-guang. This is a disaster! As he was speaking, one
of his dragon soldiers came in and reported, Our dragon lord is hereby in
formed that the yaksha Li Gen has been killed on dry land by a young boy.
Shocked, Ao-guang said, Li Gen was commissioned by His Sacred Majesty
himself in the Gallery of Numinous Aether. Who would dare kill him? Then
he gave the command, Summon my dragon soldiers. I am going person
ally to see who this is.
At that moment the dragon kings Third Prince, Ao-bingarrived and
said, Why are you so angry, Royal Father?55Ao-guang then told him the
story of how Li Gen had been killed. Dont trouble yourself, Royal Father
said Ao-bing, your son will take care of it. Ao-bing quickly assembled his
dragon troops, mounted his Waterproof Beast, raised his painted trident, and
marched straight out of the Crystal Palace. As he cut through the waters,
the breakers fell like mountains, raising waves and billows in every direc
tion until the water had risen several feet on dry land. Ne-zha stood up and
looked at the water, exclaiming, KWhat a flood! Then he saw a water crea
ture appearing amid the waves, on which was seated a man, all decked out
in colorful clothes and brandishing his trident in a menacing way. Who was
it that killed our yaksha of the Ocean Patrol, Li Gen? he shouted in a loud
voice.
It was me
replied Ne-zha. Once Ao-bing saw him, he asked, Who
are you? I am Ne-zha, the third son of Li Jing of Chen-tang Pass. My fa
ther is personally in charge of the defense of this region and master of the
fortifications. I was washing myself here because of the heat and minding
my own business. He came and insulted me, so I killed him it doesnt re
ally matter.
The Third Prince Ao-bing was shocked. You vicious little tough! The
yaksha Li Gen was given his post by his Sacred Majesty in Heaven. You
have the gall to kill him and then dare to speak to me so rudely! The Third
Prince took his painted trident and aimed a blow at Ne-zha. Having no
weapon with which to defend himself, Ne-zha dodged out of the way:
Hold on a moment! Who are' you? I have the right to know who you are
I am Ao-bing, the Third Prince of the Dragon King of the Eastern Sea.
At this Ne-zha laughed. So youre Ao-guang
s son! You have no business
acting so high and mighty. If you get me irritated, Ill catch you allright
down to that old sardine your father, and skin the lot of you. At this the
Third Prince yelled, My temper's going to explode! W hat a vicious little
tough! Such a way to behave! And he aimed another blow of his trident
at Ne-zha.
777
Ne-zha was desperate and threw open his Celestial Confusion Cloth into
the sky. Looking like a thousand burning embers, it came down and wrapped
itself around the Third Prince, knocking him off of his Waterproof Beast.
Ne-zha stepped forward and put his foot on Ao-bings neck, then lifted his
Cosmic Ring and brought it down on his head. This brought out the Third
Princes true form, a dragon stretched out straight on the ground. Ive re
vealed the little dragon's original appearance,wsaid Ne-zha. FineIll pull
out his tendons and make a dragon-tendon thong for my fathers armorpack.55
Ne-zha pulled out the tendons of the Third Prince and took them straight
back to the pass. His guard had been so frightened that his whole body was
weak; as they drew near to the commanders gate, his legs were shaking so
badly that he could barely walk. When Ne-zha went in to greet his mother,
she said, Where have you beenyoung man? Youve been gone half the
day! Ive just been playing around outside the walls, answered Ne-zha,
and I hadnt realized it was getting so late. Then he went off to the gar
den behind the house.
When Li Jing returned from drilling his troops, he dismissed his atten
dants, took off his armor, and sat in the rear hall. There he worried about
the misrule of King Zhow of the Shang3 how he had driven the four hun
dred Peers of the Empire into rebellion, and how the plight of the people
grew more dire with each passing day.
Back in the Crystal Palace, Ao-guang listened to the report of his dragon
troopsNe-zhathe son of Li Jing of Chen-tang Pass, has killed the Third
Prince and pulled out his tendons. Hearing this report, Ao-guang was
shocked. My son was a full-fledged deity, in charge of raising clouds,
bringing rain, and nurturing the life of all things. What do you mean, he was
killed? Li Jing~when you studied the Way on Western Kun-lun Mountain,
you and I were on very good terms. You have let your son do this evil deed
and kill my sonthis is already an injury whose memory will last to the hun
dredth generation! But how dare he, on top of everything elsepull out my
sons tendons! Even to speak of it pierces me to the very quick!
Ao-guang flew into a great rage, rankled because he could not avenge
his son right then and there. Accordingly, he transformed himself into a
scholar and went directly to Chen-tang Pass. Reaching the commanders
quarters, he addressed the gatekeeper, Please inform your master that his
old friend Ao-guang has come to pay a visit.55The adjutant went into the
inner apartments and announced, Theres an old friend of yours outside,
Ao-guang, who has come to see you.55 Its been many years since we last
saw each other/5said Li Jing, I
m really lucky to meet him again today.
And hastily neatening his clothes, he went out to welcome him.
Ao-guang entered the great hall, paid his respects, and sat down. Seeing
the look of rage on Ao-guang
s face, Li Jing was on the point of asking him
what the matter was, when Ao-guang said, Li Jing, my worthy brother, a
fine son youve got there! Li Jing laughed and answered him, KWe havent
778
had a chance to get together for many years, brother, and were really lucky
to have this unexpected chance to meet todaywhy do you burst out with
something like that? I have only three sonsthe eldest is Jin-zha, the second
oldest is Mu-zhaand my third son is Ne-zha. All are disciples of Daoist mas
ters from the fabled mountains. Theyre far from perfect, but theyre still not
good-for-nothings. Dont misjudge them, brother
Brother
replied Ao-guang, it is you who misjudge them, not I! Your
son was washing himself in Nine Bend River; and I dont know what kind
of magic arts he used, but he almost shook down my Crystal Palace. I sent
my yaksha to see what was going onand he killed my yaksha. My third son
went to find out what was going on, and he also killed my third son and
he even pulled out all his tendons! By this point Ao-guang felt such swelling
bitterness in his heart that he burst out in rage: Are you still going to pre
tend ignorance and defend him?
Li Jing hurriedly answered, laughing even harder, Its not my family.
Youre making a mistake in blaming me. My eldest son is on Nine Dragon
Mountain studying the magic artsmy second son is studying the magic arts
on Nine Lords Mountain. My third son is only seven years old and never
goes outside the main gate. How could he have been able to do anything of
that magnitude! But it was your third son, Ne-zha, who killed them,
replied Ao-guang. At this Li Jing said, This whole thing is truly bizarre.
Dont be so hastybrother. Ill have him come out and we can see what hap
pened.
Li Jing then went back into the rear apartments, and Madam Yin asked
him, Who is that in the great hall? It
s my old friend, Ao-guang,Mreplied
Li Jing. Someone killed his Third Prince, and he claims that Ne-zha did it.
Im going to have Ne-zha come out now and introduce himself. Where is
Ne-zha now? Madam Yin thought to herself, He did go outside of the
walls today, but how could he have done something like this? But she didnt dare tell this to her husband and simply said, He
s in the garden out
back
Li Jing went straight back into the garden and shouted, Where are you,
Ne-zha? He called for quite a while without getting any reply, so Li Jing
then went straight to Crabapple Terrace and noticed that the gate was
locked. He stood there and shouted for Ne-zha in a loud voice. Ne-zha, who
was inside, heard him and quickly opened the gate. What have you been
doing in thereson? asked Li Jing. Ne-zha replied, I went outside the pass
fortifications today for no particular purpose and went to play at Nine Bend
River. It was so hot I got down in the water to wash myself. There was this
horrible old yaksha named Li GenI didnt do anything to provoke him,
but he called me all kinds of names and then took his ax and tried to cut me
in half. So I hit him with my ring and killed him. And there was some Third
Prince or other called Ao-bing who tried to stick me with his trident. I
wrapped him up in my Celestial Confusion Cloth on the shore, then stepped
on his neck with my foot, and got him with my ring too! And to my sur_
779
prise he turned out to.be a dragon! Well, I thought to myself how dragontendons are so valuable, so I pulled all his tendons out and was just making
a dragon-tendon thong for your armorpack, father.
Li Jing was so badly shaken that his mouth hung open as if he were a
simpleton. He was tongue-tied and couldnt say a word. After a moment he
screamedWhat a disaster you are! YouVe brought a catastrophe down
on us! Quickly now, go see your uncle and explain it to him ! Dont
worry, Father
said Ne-zha. If someone doesnt know, he can

t be held
responsible. And on top of that, I havent done anything to the tendons yet
if he wants them, theyre right here, in perfect shape. I ll go see him
Ne-zha rushed to the great hall and paid his respects to Ao-guangsay
ing, Uncle
I didnt know what I was doing and made a big mistake~I hope
youll forgive what I did. The tendons are still in their original condition
I havent done a thing to them.
Seeing the tendons caused Ao-guang great pain, and he said to Li Jing,
Here youve begotten such an evil child, and you just told me that I was
mistaken. Now he admits it himself, and youre still willing to let it pass.
And on top of everything else my son was a full-fledged deity, while the yaksha Li Gen was given his commission by Heaven! How can you two, father
and son, just do as you please and kill people for no good reason? Tomor
row I
m going to petition the Jade Emperor and ask that your spiritual mas
ters deal with you! At this Ao-guang departed in a towering rage.
Li Jing stamped his foot and, weeping loudly, cried out, KWe are in se
rious trouble! When his wife heard him weeping so piteously in the front
courtyard, she immediately asked a servant to find out what was wrong. The
servant reported back, Today when the third young master went out to
play, he killed the Third Prince of the dragon king. Just now the dragon king
was arguing the matter with the master, and tomorrow he is going to peti
tion the Heavenly Court for a judgment. I dont know why the master is
weeping so.
Madam Yin quickly rushed to the front courtyard to see her husband.
When Li Jing saw his wife coming, he immediately stopped crying and said
with great bitterness, I tried to become an immortal and didnt succeed.
But no one would have expected that you would bear me such a fine son asthissomeone who is going to bring disaster down on the entire family! That
dragon prince was a full-fledged deity who brings rain, and Ne-zha wan
tonly murdered him. Tomorrow the Jade Emperor will act on the petition,
and you and I have two days at the most before we both become ghosts under
the executioners blade! Then he began crying again in utter despair. His
wife was also streaming with tears, and she pointed to Ne-zha and said, I
had you in my womb for three years and six months before you were born,
and I suffered I dont know how much misery. Little did I know that you
would become the cause of the destruction of the whole family!
Seeing his parents crying like this, Ne-zha felt very upset, and he got down
on his knees before them. FatherMotherlet me explain things. Im not
780
an ordinary mortal. I am the disciple of the high immortal Unity from Gold
enray Cavern on Primordial Mountain. Both of my magic treasures were
'given me by my master, and I doubt that Ao-guang is any match for me. Im
going to go now to Primordial Mountain and ask my master what to do
hell surely have an idea. People always say, (When one person does some
thing, that person is responsible.I would never get my parents involved.
Ne-zha went out of the gate of the compound, picked up a handful of
dirt and scattered it in the air, then vanished without a trace. Disappearing
into a cloud of dust, he went to Primordial Mountain. Theres a verse that
supports this:
Our lad paid a visit
to Primordial Mountain
he gave account of the situation
with Eastern Sea
s Ao-guang.
Before the Precious Virtue Gate
he worked his dharma power
know now that immortals magic arts
are not for nothing famed.
Ne-zha disappeared in a cloud of dust and came to Goldenray Cavern
on Primordial Mountain, where he awaited his masters bidding. The lad
Golden Wisp quickly informed the masterNe-zha awaits your bidding.
Have him come in, replied the high immortal Unity. Golden Wisp went
back to the door of the cavern and said to Ne-zha, wThe master commands
you to enter.
When Ne-zha came to the Sapphire-roaming Bench, he fell to the ground
and paid his respects. Since youre not at Chen-tang Pass, whats the story
that brings you here? asked the high immortal. By your grace, m aster
said Ne-zha, I was born as a mortal at Chen-tang Pass, and I am now seven
years old. The other day I happened to be washing myself in Nine Bend River
when Ao-guang5s son, Ao-bing, unexpectedly did me injury by his vile
words. On the spur of the moment I got mad and ended his life. Now Aoguang is going to petition the Heavenly Court, and my parents are in a state
of panic. I am very upset about this and have no way to save them. I had no
alternative but to come to the mountain and earnestly entreat my master to
pardon this crime I committed in my ignorance, in hopes that you will be
so kind as to save them.
The high immortal thought to himself, If Ne-zha in his ignorance made
the mistake of killing Ao-bing, it was ordained by fate. Although Ao-guang
is a king among the dragons, raising clouds and bringing rain, how can he
pretend not to understand a sign sent down by Heaven? And bothering
Heaven with such a small matter as this shows that he really doesnt know
much about the shape of events. Quickly he called out, Ne-zhacome over
here! Open your gown! The high immortal drew a Daoist talisman with
his finger on Ne-zha
s chestand then instructed him, When you reach Pre
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cious Virtue Gate, do thus and so. When youre done, go back to Chen-tang
Pass and explain to your parents. Fm here to help you if theres a problem.
This doesnt involve your parents in any way. Get going now!
Ne-zha left Primordial Mountain and went straight to the Precious Virtue
Gate of Heaven. It was, as they sayRare scenes of Heavens palaces, no sem
blance of the mortal worldlavender fog and reddish cloud webbed the Sap
phire Void. Yes, the Upper Heavens were like nothing else at all:
When first he mounted the Upper Realm, at once he caught sight of
Heavens halls; myriad streams of golden light spurting reddish
rainbows, a thousand trails of magic vapors puffing lavender fog.
And he saw Heavens South GateFashioned of dusky sapphire glass,
adorned with glistening tripods.
On both sides were four huge columns, and winding around each
column was a red-whiskered dragon that raises clouds and drives the
fog.
Directly in the middle were two bridges of jade, and standing on those
bridges were cinnabar-crested phoenixes, with their brightly colored
feathers spread into the sky.
Luminous wisps flashed with glints of celestial light; a sapphire fog
cast its veil, covering Dipper and Sun.
In Heaven there were thirty-three Palaces of the Immortals, among
them:
The Palace of Dispatching Clouds,
The Kun-sha Palace,
The Palace of Lavender Aether,
The Palace of Supreme Yang,
The Palace of Supreme Yin,
The Palace of Transforming Joy;
and on the golden roof-ridge of every palace was the Golden Griffin
that can tell right from wrong.
There were also seventy-two precious halls, among them:
The Hall of Dawn Audience,
The Hall of Rising through Emptiness,
The Hall of Precious Light,
The Hall Where Immortals Gather,
The Hall of Petitions;
and on every hall there were jade unicorns lined as pillars.
There were:
The Terrace of the Star of Long Life,
The Terrace of the Star of Rewards,
The Terrace of the Star of Wealth;
and beneath those terraces were rare flowers that did not fade for
millennium upon millennium.
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There were:
The Furnace for Refining Cinnabar,
The Furnace of the Eight Trigrams,1
The Furnace of Liquid Fire
and around these furnaces were brocade plants green ever through
eons upon eons.
Gowns of ruby satin in the Hall of Sagely Audience shimmered with
wisps of goldlotus crowns at the foot of the Stairs to the Vermilion
Plaza blazed with the glow of sapphire and gold.
In the Treasure Hall of Numinous Aether golden studs clustered upon
the doorsbefore Galleries of the Sages assembled phoenixes danced
on the crimson gates.
Covered passageways, winding porches stood out everywhere with
intricate grillwork patternsthree-tiered eaves clustered all around,
with dragons and phoenixes soaring at every level.
On top were gourd-shaped cupolas, lavender-looming, brightly
glistening, smoothly roundedfreshly shining, clearly dazzlingall
round were sounds of jade pendants, thickly clustering, densely
layered, resonantly tinklingplink-a-plink dribbling, brightly clear.
For as they say:
In Heaven5s palaces strange things
are present in all kinds;
^
in the world below things like these
are every item rare.
Silver simurghs on golden towers
join Precincts Lavender;
unusual blooms and wondrous plants
reach Heavens of Alabaster.
The Jade Hare on his way to court
passes beside the altar;
the Golden Crow, consorting with Sages,
flies on down below.
Should ever a man have the lucky fate
to come to Heavens realm,
he will never fall back to the mortal world
and escape its corrupting filth.
Ne-zha reached Precious Virtue Gate early and caught no sight of Aoguang. Seeing that the various gates of Heavens palaces had not .yet been
opened, Ne-zha stood below the Gate Where Immortals Gather. After a short
while he heard the jingling of Ao-guangs formal court attire coining directly
toward Heavens South Gate.
Seeing that Heavens South Gate was not yet open, Ao-guang said, T m
earlythe Yellow Turban warriors of the guard are still not here, so Fll have
to wait. Now Ne-zha could see Ao-guang, but Ao-guang could not see Ne783
zhafor the magic talisman that the high immortal Unity had drawn on Nezhas chest was called The Seal of Invisibility
which, of course, was the
reason that Ao-guang could not see Ne-zha.
Seeing Ao-guang waiting there, Ne-zha
s heart flew into a rage. Striding
over to Ao-guang, Ne-zha lifted his Cosmic Ring and bashed Ao-guang on
the back, in the region behind the heart, with the blow known as the hun
gry tiger paws its prey.55Ao-guang fell to the ground, and Ne-zha went up
and set his foot on Ao-guangs back. And if you want to know what hap
pened to Ao-guang, just read the next episode.
Episode XIIIThe High Immortal Unity Catches

Rock-in-the-Stream
What was, by nature, mere rock learned
to seize initiative,
a womb of consciousness formed therein
for ten thousand years.
It sucked in moonlight, fed on stars,
searched the pits in Earth,
it added Firegot hold of Water,
hid Heavens Active Force.
It rashly vaunted magic arts
of bringing fog and clouds,
and listened to the immortals,
humming dragon, howling tiger.
Caught in fires of eon
s end
no recourse did it have~
and thus we know that right and wrong
are finally brought full circle.
*
Ne-zha had put his foot on Ao-guangs back at Precious Virtue Gate; and
when Ao-guang twisted his head around and recognized that it was Ne-zha,
he was overcome with a burst of rage. But having been knocked down and
held in place by Ne-zhas foot, he couldnt force himself up, so he heaped
insults on him You brazen little bully! You havent lost your baby teeth
yet, and youre not even dry behind the ears, but you brutally killed an im
perially commissioned yaksha, and on top of that you killed my Third
Prince! What hostility did you bear him that you dared pull out his tendons?
Such viciousness is a crime not to be pardoned. And now, on top of every
thing else, you have struck down the divinity in charge of raising clouds and
bringing rain right outside of Precious Virtue Gate! There is no worse abuse
of Heavens generosity~even cutting your corpse up into mincemeat wouldnt settle the score!
These insults threw Ne-zha into a fury, and he chafed that he couldnt
kill Ao-guang then and there with his ring. But he had to follow Unitys in
structions, so he held him down and said, You just keep on shouting, but
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it wouldnt be a big deal if I killed you, you old sardine! You dont know
who I amI am none other than Numinous Pearl, the disciple of the high
immortal Unity from Goldenray Cavern on Primordial Mountain. I
m under
orders from the Jade Void Palace to take an avatar as the son in the house
of Li Jing of Chen-tang Pass. Because the lineage of King Tang, the House
of Shang, is to perish and the House of Zhou is to rise, Jiang Zi-ya will soon
come down from his mountain. And I am to be the officer in the vanguard,
helping Zhou crush the Shang king. I just happened to be washing myself
in Nine Bend River when your people tried to push me around. I lost my
temper and killed two of thembut thats nothing very important. But you
go and present a complaint to Heaven. According to what my master says,
it wouldnt matter even if I killed all you old lizards!
Hearing this, Ao-guang kept at Ne-zha, What a sweet child! Go ahead,
hit me, hit me! You want me to hit you
said Ne-zha, then Ill hit you.
And he yanked up his fist and socked him on both sides a dozen or so times
at one go, until Ao-guang was yelling. Youre a thick-skinned old lizard,M
Ne-zha declared. I
m not going to hit you any more because it doesnt scare
you. But theres an old saying, A dragon is scared of having its scales torn
offa tiger is scared of having its tendons pulled out Ne-zha grabbed Aoguangs court robes and pulled them half openexposing the scales on his
left side. Ne-zha then tore off several handfuls with his bare hands. After
tearing off forty or fifty scales, fresh blood was streaming from the wound
and it hurt right down to Ao-guang
s bones. Unable to bear the pain, Aoguang shouted, Spare me! If you want me to spare your life
responded
Ne-zha, T m not going to let you present your complaint to Heaven. I
ll
spare your life if you go with me to Chen-tang Pass. And if you dont do
what I say, Ill kill you with my Cosmic Ring. If I do, the high immortal Unity
will take charge, so Fm not scared of you.
Finding himself dealing with such a dreadful person, Ao-guang had no
choice but to accept: I would prefer to go with you
Then I
ll let you up
Ne-zha said. Ao-guang got up and was about to go with him when Ne-zha
saidI
ve heard how dragons can do transformations. If they want to be
big, they can stretch all the way from Heaven to Earthand if they want to
be small, they can hide themselves in a mustard seed. Im afraid that if you
escaped, I wouldnt know where to find you. Change into a little tiny snake,
and I
ll carry you.
Unable to get away, Ao-guang had no choice but to change himself into
a little green garden snake. Picking Ao-guang up and putting him in his
sleeveNe-zha left Precious Virtue Gate and set off for Chen-tang Pass. In
just an instant he arrived at the commanders compound. The household
guard immediately reported to Li Jing, The third young master is back.
On hearing this, Li Jing was quite unhappy. Then he saw Ne-zha entering
the compound and coming to greet his father.
Seeing the furrows in Li Jings brow and the look of distress on his face,
Ne-zha came forward to accept his punishment. Where have you been!?
Li Jing asked him. I went to the South Gate of Heaven
replied Ne-zha,
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to ask Uncle Ao-guang not to present his complaint. At this Li Jing yelled
in a loud voice, l5on
t lie to meyou little monster! Who do you think you
are that you would dare go to tHe region of Heaven! This is all a pack of
wild stories to deceive your parents! Its driving me mad!
You dont have to get so angry, Father,Msaid Ne-zha. Uncle Ao-guang
will bear me out in this.55To this reply Li Jing said, More nonsense! And
just where is Uncle Ao-guang now? Right here
replied Ne-zha. And he
pulled a green garden snake out of his sleeve and dropped it on the ground.
In a puff of air Ao-guang changed himself back into human form. Li Jing
gasped in amazement and quickly asked, <cWhy were you in that shape,
brother ?wAo'guang was in a rage and told him the whole story of how he
had been assaulted at the South Gate of Heaven, then gave Li Jing a look at
the scales on his side: You have begotten an evil child! I am going to get
the dragon kings of all the four seas to go with me to the Hall of Numinous
Aether and present a full account of the injuries I have suffered! Then well
see how you
re going to explain it away! At this he turned into a gust of
wind and left.
Li Jing stamped his foot and saidThis things going from bad to worse!
What are we going to do? Ne-zha came up to him, got down on his knees,
and said, FatherMother, try not to worry. When I went to get help from
my master, he told me that I wasnt reincarnated here merely on account of
my own personal merit. I am under commission from the Jade Void Palace
to protect a virtuous ruler. It wouldnt matter a bit even if I destroyed all
the dragon kings of the four seas. If theres something too big for me to han
dle, my master will naturally take responsibility. So, Father, you shouldnt
let it occupy your mind.
Being a Daoist, Li Jing was aware of the divine mysteries. What's more,
he had seen that Ne-zha had the techniques to beat up Ao-guang at the South
Gate of Heaven. Since he had been given some higher office by Heaven, there
had to be some reason for it. Madam Yin, on the other hand, simply felt
love for her son. Seeing Ne-zha standing off to the side and Li Jing fuming,
bitterly angry at his son, she said to Ne-zha, MWhat are you still doing here?
Get off to the back!
Ne-zha did what his mother told him and went straight to the back gar
den. He sat there a while feeling glum, then left the garden and went straight
up to the wall tower on the fortifications of Chen-tang Pass to catch some
cool breeze. At this time the weather was terribly hot and he had never been
to this spot before. Here he saw beautiful scenery: a vast, hazy expanse,
where green willows hung gracefully, and gazing into the broad sky, it
seemed like a round canopy of fire. As they say: All over the faces of trav
elers flowing Beads drip downan idle man escaping the heat waves the fan
he holds.
Ne-zha took a look and said, I never knew what fun this spot was!
Then, over on the weapons rack, he caught sight of a bow, which bore the
name Cosmic Bow
and three arrows, which bore the name CHeavenShakers. Ne-zha thought to himself, The master told me I would be the
786
officer in the vanguard when we destroy the empire of the Shang and the
royal line of King Tang. When am I going to have a chance to practice my
military skills if I dont do it now? And whats rftore, I have a bow and ar
rows right here ready for me. Why dont I practice a bit?
Ne-zha's heart filled with delight. He took the bow in his hand, notched
an arrow on the bowstring, and shot it to the southwest. The arrow went
whizzing off, surrounded by a red light and swirling flashes of color. Nezha never should have shot this arrow. As they sayAlong the river he made
a cast of fishing line and hookand from that moment made a catch of tri
als and tribulation.
Ne-zha didnt realize that this bow and these arrows were the magic trea
sures guarding Chen-tang Pass. The Cosmic Bow and the Heaven-Shakers
had been handed down since the time the Yellow Emperor routed the rebel
Chi-you. And during all that time no one had been able to use them. On this
particular day, Ne-zha picked them up and shot an arrowand he shot that
arrow all the way to White Bone Cavern on Skeleton Mountain. A member
of Lady Rock-in-the-Stream
s household named the Sapphire Cloud lad had
gone to the foot of the cliff, flower basket in handto pick herbs. The arrow
hit him right in the throat, and he fell to the ground and died. When the lad
Colored Cloud saw that Sapphire Cloud had been killed by an arrow, he
rushed in to tell Lady Rock: I dont know w hat
s going on, but my brother
has been shot in the throat by an arrow and killed.
Hearing this, Lady Rock went out of her cavern to the cliffside and saw
that Sapphire Cloud had indeed been killed by an arrow. Then she noticed
that there was a name inscribed on the arrow, just under the fletches: Li
Jing, Commanding Officer of Chen-tang Pass. In a rage, Lady Rock said,
Li Jing! When you couldnt be successful in achieving the Way, I had your
master send you down the mountain to find wealth and honor in the mor
tal world. Now that you have become a great lord, not only do you not think
to repay my goodness to you, you shoot my disciple with an arrow instead!
Kindness has been answered by hostility. Then she shouted, Colored
Cloud, watch over the cavern. Im going to get my hands on Li Jing and pay
him back for this outrage.
Lady Rock mounted her blue simurgh and went off in a vast sweep of
golden wisps and shimmering scarlet haze. As was said: The marvelous
tricks of immortals never can run outa foot away the blue simurgh arrived
at Chen-tang Pass. There, in the middle of the sky, the Lady shouted in a
loud voice, Li Jing, come out here to me!
Li Jing had no idea who was shouting for him and when he rushed out
to see, it looked like Lady Rock-in-the-Stream. Li Jing fell to his knees and
bowed: Your disciple Li Jing humbly greets you. I hope you will forgive
me for failing to come out and welcome you properly.wA fine thing youve
done, replied Lady Rock, and here youre still making pretty speeches to
me! Then she took her Cloud-Ray Scarf, on which were the Eight Trigrams
(with magic markings of four trigrams on the outer surface and able to en
close the treasures of all phenomena within), and threw it down, com787
manding her Yellow Turban warriors, Take Li Jing to my cavern! Out of

nowhere the Yellow Turban warriors seized Li Jing and carried him away.
When they got to White Bone Cavernthey let him go. Lady Rock left her
blue simurgh and took a seat on her rush mat. The warriors brought Li Jing
before her, and he got down on his knees. Li Jing
said Lady Rock<when
you failed to achieve the Way of Immortals, you found wealth and honor
in the mortal world. Who did you have to thank for this? Now I find that
instead of thinking how to repay me, you have conceived malice against me.
What explanation do you have for shooting my disciple Sapphire Cloud?
This all came as a total surprise to Li Jing, who had no idea what was
going on. What have I done wrong, Lady? said Li Jing. The Lady replied,
ccYou answer my kindness with hostility, shoot and kill a member of my
t household, and you still pretend to know nothing! Where is the arrow?
asked Li Jing. Bring the arrow for him to see! commanded Lady Rock.
When Li Jing looked at it, it was, in fact, one of the Heaven-Shakers. Li Jing
was amazed and said, The Cosmic Bow and the Heaven-Shaker arrows
have been handed down since the time of the Yellow Emperor. They are now
the magic treasure guarding Chen-tang Pass. But who was able to use them?
All this comes from your disciples bad luck lately, in which bizarre things
have been happening. I hope that Your Ladyship will keep in mind that I
am guiltless in this and wrongedand that it is hard to clear myself. Set me
free to return to the pass and discover who shot the arrow, then I
ll bring
him back so that guilt and innocence may be assessedI hope you will not
punish someone who is guiltless. If I dont find who shot the arrow, then I
will accept my death. To this Lady Rock said, In this case Ill set you free
to go back. But if you dont find out who did it, Fll ask your master to deal
with you. Go now!
Li Jing took the arrow back with him and reached the pass hidden in a
cloud of dust. Making himself visible again, he entered the commanders
compound. Madam Yin had not known what was going on when she saw
Li Jing snatched away out of nowhereand when Li Jing returned, she was
in a state of panic. Why were you just hauled off like that out of nowhere?
she asked. I was frightened out of my wits!
Li Jing stamped his foot and said with a sigh, WifeI ve been at this
post for twenty-five years nowand who could have expected the run of bad
luck that Fve been having recently? Up in the watchtower on the walls there
is the Cosmic Bow and the Heaven-Shaker arrows, which are the magic trea
sures that protect this pass. Somebody or other shot one of those arrows and
killed a disciple of Lady Rock-in-the-Stream. But my official title was on the
arrow, so she had me taken away to pay for it with my life. I pleaded with
her to let me come back here and find out who really did it. I wont be quits
with her until I take that person back to her. Then Li Jing went on to say,
About that bownobody has ever been able to pull it. Could this possi
bly be Ne-zhas doing again? No, thats not possible
replied his wife.
Do you mean to suggest that with the whole Ao-guang affair not yet set-
788
tied, he would stir up even more trouble? Besides, Ne-zha couldnt draw the
bow
Li Jing thought about it for a moment and had an idea. He called to his
attendant, Ask Ne-zha to come see me.55In no time at all Ne-zha came in
and stood over to one side. You tell me that your master accepts respon
sibility for your actions
said Li Jing, and that he told you to assist a vir
tuous ruler. Why dont you go practice your military skills a little so that
youll be more effective when the time comes. I made up my mind to do
just that
replied Ne-zha. I was just in the watchtower on the wall, and I

saw a bow and arrows there. I shot off one of the arrows, and it was sur
rounded by a reddish light and a cloud of lavender haze. I shot one good
arrow clear out of sight!
This drove Li Jings temper to a point where he shouted, You little trou
blemaker! First you kill the Third Prince, and the whole thing is still not set
tled. Now you provoke this other catastrophe!MHis wife just held her tongue
and said nothing. Not understanding the situation, Ne-zha asked, Why?
What else happened? That single arrow
replied Li Jing, killed the dis
ciple of Lady Rock-in-the-Stream. The Lady had me taken away, but I per
suaded her to let me come back and find the person who shot the arrow.
And now it turns out to be you! You go see the Lady and explain yourself
to her!
Dont get so angry, Father, laughed Ne-zha. Where does Lady Rock
live? And where was her disciple? How could I have possibly killed him?
Im not going to take the blame if Fm being accused for nothing. Then Li
Jing told him, Lady Rock lives in White Bone Cavern on Skeleton M oun
tain. Since youve killed her disciple, you go see her. What you say is rea
sonable, Father
replied Ne-zha. Lets both go to the White Bone Cavern
or whatever. But if it wasnt me who did it, Im not coming back until I give
her one hell of a whack! You go first; I
ll follow along right behind you
And thus father and son went off to Skeleton Mountain hidden in a cloud
of dust.
Golden light rose from the arrows flight,
and in the Great Void red clouds shone.
The high immortal is in our world now
the royal child may bide in peace.
Boast not rashly of magic arts
you must learn to recite the Book of Jade.
The millions of evils are hard to set right:
the imperial army must be smashed.
On reaching Skeleton Mountain, Li Jing instructed Ne-zha, You stay
right here. Pm going to go in' and report back to the Lady. At this Ne-zha
smiled coldly. And where will I be when she makes her groundless accu
sations against me and decides how she is going to deal with me?
Li Jing went into the cavern and was received by Lady Rock. Who shot
789
my lad Sapphire Cloud? Li Jing declared to the Lady, It was my own

wicked sonNe-zha. I wouldnt dare disobey you in this, and Fve brought
him here to your cavern~he is outside awaiting your orders. The Lady then
ordered Colored Cloud, Have him brought in.
Seeing someone coming out of the cavern, Ne-zha thought to himself,
t(When youre going to strike a blow, be sure you
re the first to strike. This
is her lair, and I wont have the advantage in there. He lifted the Cosmic
Ring and delivered a blow. Unprepared to protect himself, Colored Cloud
took the blow on the neck and fell to the ground with a shriek, gravely
wounded and in peril of his life. Hearing the sound of someone falling out
side her cavern, the Lady rushed out. Colored Cloud was already on the
ground, struggling for life. You monster! said Lady Rock. You continue
to do evil and have wounded another of my disciples!
Ne-zha saw Lady Rock dressed in her golden crown with fishtail pat
terns, a huge red grown marked with the Eight Trigrams, and hemp shoes
with silken tiesshe was coming after him with the sword Tai-e in her hand.
Ne-zha took back his ring and sent it spinning at her. Seeing that this was
Unitys Cosmic Ring, the Lady said, Aha! So its you! Then the Lady
caught the Cosmic Ring in her hand. Ne-zha was shocked. Quickly he took
out the seven-foot Celestial Confusion Cloth and threw it to wrap the Lady
up in it. The Lady laughed aloud and raised her open sleeve to receive it.
They watched as the Celestial Confusion Cloth fluttered down ever so lightly
into the Ladys sleeve. Come on, Ne-zha
shouted Lady Rock, try using
a few more of your masters magic weapons and see what my own magic
arts are like!
Having no weapons left with which to defend himself, Ne-zha had no
choice but to turn and run away. Then the Lady shoutedLi Jing, this has
nothing to do with youyou had better go back. As Li Jing was returning
to his pass, Lady Rock went chasing after Ne-zha. In flying clouds and light
ning bolts and driving rain and gales, she stayed hard on his heels for a long
time until he reached Primordial Mountain. When he got to Goldenray Cav
ern, he went into the gate in a panic and bowed down before his master.
Why are you in such haste, Ne-zhaasked the high immortal. To this
Ne-zha replied, Lady Rock has falsely accused me of shooting her disciple,
and she took her magic sword to kill me. She
s captured your Cosmic Ring
and your Celestial Confusion Cloth. She
s chasing after me, and she wont
give upshes right outside the cavern now. I didnt know what to do so I
came to find you and beg you to save my life!
The high immortal Unity said, You little monster! Go back into the
peach garden for a while, and let me go out and see what can be done. The
high immortal went out and leaned against the gate to his cavern. There he
saw Lady Rock coming along in furious pursuit, sword in hand and her face
suffused with rage. Seeing the high immortal Unity, she bowed her head re
spectfully. Greetingsbrother. After Unity returned the courtesy, Lady
Rock said, Using your magic arts, brother, a disciple of yours has killed
my lad Sapphire Cloud, seriously wounded my lad Colored Cloud, and then
790
used the Cosmic Ring and the Celestial Confusion Cloth to try to harm me.
So, brother, if youre willing to tell Ne-zha to come out to methen we
re
still on good terms and the whole matter can be put to rest. But if you try
to protect him youll be wasting your good efforts for someone who isnt
worth it, and it wont be pretty.
Ne-zha is inside my cavern
replied the high immortaland its not
hard to get him to come out~just go to Jade Void Palace and see the Elder
of our sect. If he wants him delivered to you, Fll deliver him to you. But Nezha was sent into the world on the orders of the Heavenly Emperor, and he
is to assist a virtuous ruler. Im not protecting him for my own personal rea
sons/5
At this the Lady laughed. You
ve made a big mistake, brotherusing
your Elder to intimidate me. Do you really mean say that youre going to
let your disciple run wild and do evil, killing my disciple, and then try to in
timidate me with this high and mighty talk! Do you really think Im no match
for you? Should I just give up? Hear this:
Mysterious are the Way and its Power,
coming from Primal Fusion;
whosoever perfects the vigor of Qian
will attain life everlasting.
EssenceBreathand Spirit refined
this is no idle theory;
The Five Vapors honor the Primal as lord
far from reckless words!
Sitting peacefully on the Gray Dragon
I go to the Lavender Pole-Star
and joyously ride on the white crane
descending to Mount Kun-lun.
Do not try then to dupe my" sect
with the Elder of your teaching
the cycle of kalpas turns in a ring
from sources in the thousands.
The high immortal Unity said, Rock-in-the-Stream, I take this to mean
that your mastery of the Way is pure and lofty. You belong to the Jie sect,
the Teaching of Severing; I belong to the Chan sect, the Teaching of Open
Access. Because, for the past fifteen hundred years, we have never managed
to cut away the Three Corpse-spirits that curse the body, and because we
have violated the injunctions against killing, we have been sent down to be
born in the mortal world, where there will be campaigns and executions and
killing and battles, by which the fated span of the eon will be brought to a
close. The lineage of Shang, descended from King Tang, is to be destroyed,
and the House of Zhou rise. In the Jade Void Palace, gods will be invested
with powers, and they will enjoy wealth and power in the mortal world. The
Three Teachings Daoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism have all sub
scribed to a 'List of the Gods/ and my own teacher has commanded that
791
our sect send down our numerous disciples to be born into the world below
to assist the virtuous ruler. Ne-zha is the incarnation of Numinous Pearl,
who will assist Jiang Zi-ya destroy the royal line of Shang. He bears the com
mand of the Elder of our sect, Primal Origin. If he harmed your disciples, it
was destined by Heaven to be so. How can you claim to comprehend all that
is or that you will eventually ascend to the heights? Those such as you
should not worry or be filled with cares; you should feel neither humiliation
nor elation. It would be best to practice self-control. Why be so easily stirred
by a mere trifle and do harm to the grace of your Way?
Lady Rock could not endure the fires that burned in her heart, and she
shouted, The Way is one~how can there be levels in it? Although the
Way is one
replied the high immortal, it comes out differently in each
person. Let me explain it to you
Convergent rays of sun and m o o n
refined a bloom of gold:
a single kernel of numinous pearl
shed light throughout the chamber.
When he shakes Earth and Heaven,
the might of his Way is known
he will escape from life and death
when his deeds of merit are done.
He will roam free through the universe,
leaving the trace of passage,
then return to the Three Pure Realms
where his name will be established.
Straight up through the rainbow clouds,
steady his path through sky,
the lavender simurghthe scarlet crane
will come on their own to greet him.
Flying into a great rageLady Rock took her magic sword in hand and
swung it at the high immortal. Unity dodged the blow, then slipped back
into his cavern. He there took his own sword, and dangling it from his hand,
he secretly put something in his pouch. Then, facing eastern Kun-lun, he
bowed down: On this mountain today your disciple will set aside the in
junction against killing. When he finished, he went out of the cavern and
pointed at Lady Rock. Your grounding is shallow, and your practice of the
Way is weak~how dare you be so insolent as to commit mayhem on my
mountain! Lady Rock swung her sword at him again, and Unity blocked
the blow with his own sword, saying, Nicely done!
Rock-in-the-Stream was actually the refined essence of a stone that had
drawn on the numinous vapors of Heaven and Earth and had received the
luminous essences of sun and moon. She had attained the Way for several
thousand years but had still not achieved the fruit of true immortality. Now
a Great Eon was coming to its close, and her original appearance could not
surviveit was because of this that she had come to the mountain. The first
reason was that Rocks own time had run out; and the second reason was
that this was the place where Ne-zha would have his incarnation. Destiny
is fixed, and it cannot be evaded.
Lady Rock and the high immortal Unity attacked one another back and
forth, whirling up and down several times around and blocking each others
blows, and before long one could see only the glow of sparkling clouds. Then
Lady Rock took out her dragon-whisker scarf with the Eight Trigrams and
threw it into the air to wound the high immortal. But Unity only laughed
and said, Can thousands of evils ever even touch the right? At this the
high immortal recited several phrases and pointed to the scarf: Fall now ~
what are you waiting for? And the scarf with the Eight Trigrams came
falling down. Lady Rock flew into a greater rage; her cheeks flushed as pink
as peach blossoms, and her sword seemed like a snowflake. ctWhen things
reach this stage, we have to go on with it, commented Unity. He leapt out
of the circle of the fight and tossed his Nine Dragons Net of Spiritual Fire
into the sky. Rock was caught within the net and couldnt get out.
Seeing his master use the net to catch RockNe-zha sighed, If hed only
given this to me earlier, we wouldnt have had to waste so much energy!
Ne-zha then went out of the cavern to his master. When the high immortal
Unity turned his head and saw his disciple coming, he thought, Oh no!
When the little devil sees my net, he
s going to want it. But he cant use it
yet. I can only hand it over to him when Jiang Zi-ya becomes the general.
And the high immortal quickly shouted, Ne-zha! Get going! The dragon
rulers of the four seas have presented their petition to the Jade Emperor, and
theyve gone to seize your father and mother!
Hearing this, Ne-zha5s eyes welled with tears and he entreated the high
immortal, KMaster, have mercy on my parents! No sons heart can ever be
at peace if he gets his parent implicated in troubles he himself has caused.
Then he began to cry in a loud voice. Seeing Ne-zha in such a state, the high
immortal whispered in his ear, Do thus and so, and you can save your par
ents from harm. Ne-zha bowed in gratitude and went off to Chen-tang Pass
hidden in a cloud of dust.
When the high immortal Unity caught her in his net, Lady Rock became
completely disoriented. The high immortal clapped his hands together, and
flames began to lick up from within the net, giving off a blazing light. Nine
fire dragons spiraled upward around herthese were the spiritual fires of
Concentrated Meditation that were burning Lady Rock. Then with a crash
of thunder the Lady's true form emerged from the smeltinga large piece of
rock. This rock had come into being out beyond the Purple and Brown of
Heaven and Earth. It had passed through earth and water and fire and
wind. And it had been refined into an Essence endowed with spiritual con
sciousness. But this day its destiny was settled, and in this place it was to
die. Thus was its true form revealed. Herein the high immortal Unity had
to relax the injunctions against killing. He retrieved his Net of Spiritual Fire,
his Celestial Confusion Cloth, and his Universal Ring, and went back into
his cavern.
793
Meanwhile Ne-zha was flying with all possible speed back to Chen-tang
Pass. There he heard an uproar of voices in front of the commanders com
pound. When the crowd of guards saw that he had arrivedthey hurriedly
reported to Li Jing, Your son is back. Standing before the dragon kings
of the four seas~Ao-guang, Ao-shun, Ao-ming, and Ao-jiNe-zha shouted
in a shrill voiceWhen one person does something, that one person is re
sponsible. I killed Ao-bing and Li Gen, and I must pay with my life. But it
is not right that a son implicate his parents in what he himself has done.
Then facing Ao-guang, he said, I am not a person of small account. I am
Numinous Pearl. I bear the commands of the Jade Void Palace, and it was
my destiny to be born into the mortal world. This day I will cut open my
belly, gouge out my intestines, and scrape the bones, returning this body of
flesh to my parents so that they will not be implicated in my misdeeds. W ill
this satisfy you? For if it does not satisfy you, we will all go together to the
Hall of Numinous Aether to see the Ruler of Heaven, and there I will tell
my own story.
When Ao-guang heard this, he saidAll right, in this case your parents
are spared, and you will be known for your filial devotion to your parents.
Then the four dragon kings set Li Jing and his wife free. Ne-zha took a sword
in his right hand. First he hacked off his other arm at the shoulder, then cut
open his own belly, gouged out his intestines, and scraped the bone, scat
tering his seven earthly souls and his three heavenly souls, and his life was
over. As they had agreed, the four dragon kings then returned.
Madam Yin, his mother, put Ne-zhas corpse in a wooden coffin and had
it buried.
Ne-zha
s souls had lost their physical lodginghe was the incarnation
of a jewel that had borrowed the essences of physical life, and thus he had
souls. Ne-zha was tossed wildly and whirled along with the wind straight
to Primordial Mountain. And if you dont know what happened afterwards,
read the next episode-
Episode XIV: The Reincarnation of Ne-zha from a

Lotus Blossom
The mystery of immortals power
cannot be estimated:
to raise the dead and bring back life
they have their strange techniques.
A grain of magic cinnabar
restores the jewel of life,
in several stalks of lotus leaves
the drifting soul returns.
To pass beyond the common world
one needs not unclean bones,
to be a Sage one must seek out
the soul-recalling scent.
From this point on the Ruler-Sage

extended his domain,
the founding of the House of Zhou
made use of helpers.
The lad Golden Wisp went into the cavern and informed the high im
mortal Unity, I dont know whats going on
My fellow disciple Ne-zha was
lost far in the darkness, then tossed wildly and whirled along; the wind
brought him to rest here. When he heard this, the high immortal already
understood what it meant, and he hurried out of the cavern. There he gave
his instructions to Ne-zha: This is not the place where you will rest secure.
Go back to Chen-tang Pass and appear to your mother in a dream. Fortyleagues from the pass is Azure Screen Mountain, and on the mountain there
is a bare spot. Command your mother to have a Ne-zha Shrine constructed
there. When you have received offerings of incense there for three years, you
can again take your place in the mortal world and assist the true ruler. Get
going quickly now! You cant hang around here!
Hearing this, Ne-zha left Primordial Mountain for Chen-tang Pass. At
exactly the hour of midnight, Ne-zha went to his mothers bedroom and
called out, Mother, I am your child Ne-zha. My soul has no resting place
now, and I hope you will consider what pain I suffered in dying. Forty
leagues from here there is a mountain named Azure Screen. Set up a shrine
for me there and let me receive a little incense so that I can go live in Heaven.
My gratitude for your kindness is greater than anyone can imagine
Madam Yin woke up and realized that it had been a dream. Then she
wept out loud. Why are you crying?
asked Li Jing. Then his wife told him
all about the dream.
Li Jing flew into a rage: aHow can you still be crying for him? He caused
us no small amount of harm! People always say that dreams come from the
dreamers own mindthe only reason your having such crazy dreams is be
cause youre thinking about him. Dont be fooled. To this his wife said
nothing.
The next night Ne-zha came to her again in a dream, and again the night
after that. No sooner did Madam Yin close her eyes than there was Ne-zha
standing before her. After a week or so, Ne-zha, whose soul was as hot-tempered in death as his personality had been belligerent in life, addressed his
mother. Ive been here asking you to do this for a number 'of days now,
and you don
t care anything at all about how much I suffered when I died.
If you wont make a shrine for me, Im going to make so much trouble
around here that youll wish you had!
This time when Madam Yin woke upshe didnt dare tell Li Jing. She
secretly gave some taels of silver to a trusted servant, who broke ground for
the construction on Azure Screen Mountain, erected the shrine, and had an
image of Ne-zha fashioned. In ten months the work was done.
Here on Azure Screen Mountain Ne-zha made manifest his divine na-
ture and stirred the hearts of all the populace. Each one of their thousands
of prayers was answered. The buildings in the temple complex rose stately
and high, and all was perfectly regular.
Through the shrine's arched gateway
stucco walls appeared,
crimson doors and rings of bronze
arrayed on every side.
Sapphire tiles and carved eaves,
three feet of water,
several cypress and juniper trees,
a terrace in two layers.
His jeweled place on the pedestal
was decorated with gold,
dragon and phoenix banners all
with holy colors decked.
The hooks that hung from the curtains
swallowed the half moon,
ferocious demon judges
stood in the dirt and dust.
The smoke of aloes and sandalwood
coiled into phoenixes,
and day by day in droves
worshippers came to pray.
When Ne-zha made manifest his divine nature on Azure Screen Moun
tain, the common people who dwelled near and far on every side all came
to worship him with incense. They came in droves, like ants in an unceas
ing line, each day more numerous than the last. And he answered every one,
whether they prayed for blessings or to avert some evil. Time flew by, and
before he knew it, half a year had passed.
As we said earlier, the Earl of the East, Jiang Wen-huan, was avenging
his father; he mustered an army of four hundred thousand men and horse,
and at Spirit Roaming Pass he fought a great battle with Dou Rong, in which
Dou Rong was unable to achieve victory. As a resultLi Jing had been
drilling his army on W ild Horse Ridge and kept his own pass secure.
One day, while bringing his troops back past Azure Screen Mountain,
Li Jing saw the throngs going back and forth. The men and women going
to the temple to worship ranged from doddering old folks to babes in arms;
they went in droves like ants, and the smoke from their fires gathered above
them.
Still on horseback, Li Jing asked, This is Azure Screen Mountain why
this unbroken line of men and women in such numbers? The adjutant
replied, Half a year ago a god made manifest his divinity here. He answers
each one of thousands of prayers. If someone prays for blessings, blessings
come; if another wants to avert calamity, the calamity is gone. This is the
reason that men and women from all around have been stirred to offer him
incense. On hearing this a thought rose in Li Jings mind, and he asked the
adjutant, Whats the name of this god? This is the Shrine of Ne-zha,55
replied the adjutant.
Li Jing flew into a rage and gave the order, Make camp! Im going up
the mountain to worship and offer incense. His men stood there, and Li
Jing let his horse race up the mountain toward the temple, while the men
and women worshippers quickly opened a path for him. He let his horse race
on right to the front of the main temple hall, where he saw an inscription
hanging high above the gate, and on it was written: The Temple of Nezha. When he went inside, he saw the image of Ne-zha, looking just as he
had when alive. On either side stood the demon judges. Li Jing pointed to
the statue and began to hurl insults at it. You little beast! You caused all
sorts of trouble for your parents when you were alive, and now that you're
dead, you
re making fools of the common people! When he finished, he
lifted his whip and with one blow shattered Ne-zhas gilded image into
pieces. Li Jings rage grewand with one kick he knocked over each of the
demon judges. He then issued the command, Light fires! Burn the temple
down! Next, he instructed the people who had come to worship, This is
no god! You shouldnt worship him. The crowds were so frightened that
they went running down the mountain as fast as they could go. By the time
Li Jing got back on his horse, his rage had still not subsided. This is shown
in the following verse:
The moment that the valiant troops
reached Azure Screen Mountain,
at once they saw the common folk
daily coming to worship.
He whipped the gilded image,
shattered it to bits
he kicked the demon judges down,
and they too were destroyed.
A fire burned the temple,
its flames then mounted high,
the smoke passed through the air
the light was blazing bright.
And all because that vapor
reached Dipper and the Ox,
strife between son and father
became a battlefield.
When Li Jings troops entered Chen-tang Pass, he dismounted at the com

mander's compound and gave the order, Dismiss the men. Li Jing went
into the rear hall; and when his wife came to greet him, he berated her, A
fine son you bore! After all the harm he brought on me, you went ahead and
had a shrine built for him to stir up delusions among the common folk! You
797
won't give up until Fve had to resign my badge of office! he government

is run by ruthless and domineering ministers, on top of which I have no per
sonal connections with Fei Zhong and You Hun. If anyone gets word of this
to the capital at Zhao-ge, corrupt officials will impeach me for falsely call
ing on evil spirits, and everything that I have accomplished over the past years
will be sacrificed for nothing. And all this would be because of what you
have done, woman! W ellI burned his temple down today. And if you build
it back up for him, Fll never forgive you!
Turning now from Li Jing to Ne-zha, on that day Ne-zha had been away
from his shrine working his divine powers; when he came back, he saw that
nothing remained of his temple. The mountain was scorched bare, and the
flames and smoke had not completely died out. His two demon judges came
to meet him with tears in their eyes.
What happened!?55 asked Ne-zha. The demon judges replied, CCom
mander Li of Chen-tang Pass burst up the mountainside, smashed your
gilded image, and burned down your shrine. We have no idea why. CLi Jing,
there is nothing between you and me any more
said Ne-zha. I gave my
flesh and bones back to my parents, so how could you break my gilded image
and burn my shrine, leaving me no place to rest? Ne-zha felt extremely
dispirited and brooded over the whole thing for a long time. I had better
go back to Primordial Mountain.M
Having received the smoke from incense for half a year, Ne-zha already
possessed a little form and voice. In a short while he reached the high moun
tain and went into the cavern. There the lad Golden Wisp led Ne-zha to see
the high immortal Unity, who said, How come youre here and not in your
shrine receiving incense? Ne-zha got down on his knees and explained the
situation. My father smashed my clay image and burned down my shrine.
Since I had no place to stay, all I could do was come here. I beg you to have
pity on me and save me.
Hearing this, the high immortal said, Li Jing did wrong in this. Since
you returned your flesh and bones to your parents, your presence on Azure
Screen Mountain had nothing to do with him. Now that he has prevented
you from receiving the smoke of offerings, how can you get a body? Whats
more, Jiang Zi-ya is due to come dow n from his mountain very soon. All
right then, since its for you, Ne-zha, I
ll do you a good turn. He then told
Golden Wisp, Go pick two lotus blossoms and three lotus leaves from Five
Lotus Pool and bring them to me The lad rushed out and got the lotus blos
soms and lotus leaves, then put them down. The high immortal first took
the flowers and picked off the petals, spreading them into three separate
groups, representing Heaven, Earth, and Man. He then snapped the ribs of
the lotus leaves into the three hundred bones. The three leaves themselves
were arranged in the positions of high, middle, and low, representing
Heaven, Earth, and Man. Next the high immortal took a kernel of metallic
mercury and placed it in the middle. Using the technique of Anticipating Na
ture, he set the vital energies operating through the ninefold turns. He di
vided the dragon of Li, which is the Sign of Fire, from the Tiger of Kan, which
is the Sign of Water, thus separating the Female and Male Essences. Then
he grabbed firm hold of Ne-zHas souls and heaped them into a pile on the
lotus, shouting, Hurry up, Ne-zha, take human form! There was an echo
ing sound, and a man leapt forth. His face was white as powder
his lips were
crimson, beams of light flashed from his eyes, and his body was fifteen feet
tall. This was Ne-zhas reincarnation from a lotus blossom.
When he saw his master, Ne-zha fell to the ground and bowed. The high
immortal then saidIt
s really upsetting that Li Jing destroyed your clay
image. Honored M aster
replied Ne-zha, I cannot give up this desire

to be revenged on him.Come with me into the Peach Garden
said the
high immortal. There the high immortal gave him the Fire-Point Spear, and
in no time at all Ne-zha was familiar with its use. Ne-zha wanted to go down
the mountain right then to take his revengeand the high immortal said,
Your technique with the spear is fine. Ism giving you my pair of Wind-andFire Wheels to stand on, along with the talismans and spells to use them.
The high immortal also entrusted him with a leopard-skin pouch in which
he put the Cosmic Ring, the Celestial Confusion Clothand a brick of gold.
Be off with you now to Chen-tang Pass. Ne-zha bowed his head to the
ground to thank his master, then mounted the Wind-and-Fire Wheels, plant
ing his feet firmly upon themhe took the Fire-Point Spear in hand and went
straight off to Chen-tang Pass. As the verse says:
A pair of lotus blooms revealed
a body reincarnated,
Numinous Pearls second life
transcended common dust.
His hand held a magic treasure,
a snake-pike lavender flamed;
his feet on Wind-and-Fire Wheels,
in golden wisps of cloud.
W ithin his pouch of leopard skin
was peace for all the world;
inside his cloth of red brocade
were blessings for the folk.
O f sages from every age
he was foremost of all,
the tale from the chroniclers pen
is fresh for ten thousand years.
When Ne-zha reached Chen-tang Pass, he went straight through the

walls and up to the commanders compound, where he called out in a loud
voice, Come out to me at once, Li Jing! An adjutant went in and reported,
The third young master is outside. He
s standing on Wind-and-Fire Wheels,
holding the Fire-Point Spear in his hand, and calling for you by name. I dont
know whats going onbut you had better go out and settle things with him
799
Nonsense
shouted Li Jing. When a person is dead, he cant come

back to life! As he was saying this, another person came in and said, If
you dont get out there fast, he is going to fight his way into the compound.
Li Jing flew into a rage. Well see about that! He quickly picked up
his painted halberd, mounted his gray steedand went out of the compound.
There he saw Ne-zha standing on his Wind-and-Fire Wheels, holding the
Fire-Point Spear, and of a size very different from what he had been before.
Li Jing was shocked and said, You little beast! You did monstrous things
while you were alive; and now that your soul has returned, youve come here
to get us in trouble again! Li Jing!replied Ne-zha, I gave you back my
flesh and bones, and there is no connection between us any more. Why did
you go to Azure Screen Mountain, shatter my gilded image, and set fire to
my shrine? Now Ive got you, and I
m going to pay you back for the bitter
hate you caused by that one blow! Then he flourished his spear and thrust
it, aiming a blow at Li Jings head. Li Jing met the blow with his painted
halberd. Around and around they spun, spear and halberd both raised.
Ne-zha
s strength was boundless, and after only a few rounds Li Jing was
quite overwhelmed: the strength of his sinews was spent and the sweat ran
down his spine. All Li Jing could do was flee away to the Southeast. Ne-zha
shouted after him in a loud voice, Dont think Ill spare your life this time.
Li Jing! I wont turn around until I
ve killed you! And with this he went
off after him.
In no time at all Ne-zha was just about to catch upfor his Wing-andFire Wheels were as fast as Li Jings horse was slow. In his desperation Li
Jing had no choice but to get off his horse and disappear in a cloud of dust.
Any old Daoist can do these magic tricks with the elements
laughed Nezha. Do you really think that Fll let you go simply because you disappear
in a cloud of dust? He then stepped up onto his pair of Wind-and-Fire
Wheels and set off chasing him in the sounds of a wind-driven fire, like fly
ing clouds and a lightning bolt.
Li Jing was thinking to himself, What am I going to do? This time when
he catches up to me, Ill be killed by one thrust of his spear! As Li Jing saw
Ne-zha just about to close in on him, he suddenly heard someone singing a
song
Beside a pool of clear water, bright moon
by a bank of green willows, peach blooms.
A chaste savor distinct from all else:
a few cloudy wisps flying up through the sky.
When Li Jing looked, he saw a Daoist lad, wearing a turban, a Daoist
robe with wide sleevesand hemp shoes with silken ties. This was Mu-zha,
disciple of the high immortal Universal Goodness from White Crane Cav
ern on Nine Lords Mountain. I
m here, Father
said Mu-zha. When Li Jing
looked and saw that it was indeed his second son Mu-zha, he felt calmer.
At that moment Ne-zha, riding his wheels, caught up and saw Li Jing con
versing with a Daoist lad. When Ne-zha leapt down from his wheels, Mu-
zha came toward him, shouting in a loud voiceSlow down, there! You
have a lot of nerve, you monster! For a son to kill his father violates every
principle of ethical conduct. If you turn around and get out of here as
quickly as you can, Ill spare you.
Who are you to talk so high and mighty? replied Ne-zha. To this, Muzha said, You dont even recognize me! I am Mu-zha! Realizing that this
was his older brother, Ne-zha quickly shoutedYou dont understand the
whole situation, brother.55And then Ne-zha told him the story of what hap
pened on Azure Screen Mountain in all its details. K. . . who is in the right,
Li Jing or me? his is nonsense!55shouted Mu-zha, Parents are always
in the right
never the other way around! But Ne-zha continuedCI hacked
open my belly, gouged out my entrails, and gave him back my flesh and bone.
Theres nothing between us any more, so why should I still have any feel
ings for him as a parent?
Mu-zha flew into a rage, You unnatural son! And he struck at Ne-zha
with his sword. Ne-zha blocked the blow with his spear, saying, There is
no enmity between us, Mu-zha. Stand back and let me take my revenge on
Li Jin g .
But Mu-zha only shouted, What a monster! How can you possi
bly be so evil! As Mu-zha again came at him with his sword, Ne-zha said,
This is the work of fate~choosing death rather than life. Then he returned
the blow, striking toward Mu-zha
s face. Circling around one another ex
changing blows, the two brothers engaged in a great battle.
Noticing Li Jing standing over to one side, Ne-zha was afraid he would
get away and grew impatient. Knocking aside Mu-zha5s sword with his
spear, Ne-zha took his golden brick and tossed it into the air. Catching Muzha off guard, the brick hit him on the back, in the region right behind the
heart, and he fell to the ground. Then Ne-zha mounted his wheels to get Li
Jing, who turned and ran off. Even if you run to some island in the sea,
shouted Ne-zha, my hatred will not be appeased until I bring back your
head!
Li Jing flew off just like a bird that had lost its grove or a fish that had
slipped through the net, without any sense of where he was going. After flee
ing for quite some time, Li Jing saw that the situation was not good and
sighed to himself, Enough! I dont know what terrible things I must have
done in a former life that first kept me from attaining the Way and then made
me beget such a vindictive creature. But if it has to be this way, the best thing
to do would be to die by my own hand so that I wont have to endure hu
miliation by this boy.
*
Just as he was about to kill himself, he heard someone shouting, Dont
do it, General L i! The person then composed an extempore song that
went:
Clear breeze brushing willows beyond the wilds,
blossoms bob in the water upon the pool.
If you ask of the place where I dwell in peace
in the depths of white clouds I make my home.
801
The singer was the Exalted Celestial named Extensive Dharma of Re

markable Culture53 from Nimbus Cavern on Five Dragons Mountain, and
he approached with his dust-whisk in hand. Seeing him, Li Jing spoke.
Venerable mastersave my miserable life! Go into my cavern, replied
the Exalted Celestial, and I will wait for him here.
In a moment Ne-zha came chasing up in pursuit, his spear in hand. He
was in a belligerent and violent temper, his feet planted on his Wind-andFire Wheels. There he saw a Daoist, who may be described as follows:Hair drawn into double tufts, spreading into hazy cloud; a watercompound gowntightly bound with silken ties.
Immortals air, a Daoists bones, he wanders as he pleases; hidden in
his breast are found countless mysteries.
.
By the Gate of First Beginning in the Palace of Jade Void, the Chief of
All Immortals goes to Coiling Peach Tree.
Relying on the Five-fold Breaths, the Domineering was refinedthe
Immortal-fost5ring Way achieved by one of Heavens Sovereigns
line.
Ne-zha saw an immortal standing on the mountainsidebut he didnt see
Li Jing. D aoist
he asked, have you seen a general pass by? The Exalted

Celestial replied, Just now a General Li went inside my Nimbus Cavern.
What do you want with him? He is my enemy, Daoist
said Ne-zha. You

had better send him out of your cavern because this doesnt concern you. If
Li Jing gets away, Fll have a go at you with my spear instead of him.55
To this the Exalted Celestial said, Who are you? Such bloodthirstiness
wanting to skewer even me with your spear! Not realizing the sort of per
son this Daoist was, Ne-zha shouted, I am Ne-zha, disciple of the high im
mortal Unity of Goldenray Cavern on Primordial Mountain! You cant go
treating me lightly! The Exalted Celestial replied, I
ve never heard of any
disciple of the high immortal Unity called Ne-zha. You can go act rudely
somewhere else, but not here at my place. If you keep on behaving this rudely
here, Ill take you off into my peach garden and let you languish there three
years after giving you two hundred strokes of the cane!
Having no idea what was good for him, Ne-zha twirled his spear and
aimed a blow at the Exalted Celestial. The Exalted Celestial dodged and ran
back to his cavern. Ne-zha got on his wheels and chased after him. Turning
his head and seeing that Ne-zha had gotten close, the Exalted Celestial took
something out of his sleeve. This was named the Vanishing Dragon Stake,
also known as the Golden Lotus of the Seven Treasures. When he tossed it
into the air, winds rose up from all four directions and clouds came rolling
over the sky. Dust and dirt were lifted in the wind and struck with a sound.
Lost in the gloomy and murky darkness, Ne-zha couldnt tell where he was
going. Then all of a sudden his neck and two legs were clamped by metal
bandsand he found himself standing upright against a gleaming golden pil
lar. When Ne-zha opened his eyes wide to look, he found himself completely
unable to move.
802
What a monster! said the Exalted Celestial. Youve behaved very

rudely indeed. Then he called to Jin-zha, Fetch me my cane! Jin-zha quick
got the cane and brought it to the Exalted Celestialwho then said, Beat
him for me! Jin-zha did as his master ordered; he took the cane and gave
Ne-zha a beating until the true fires of Concentrated Meditation came pour
ing out from all Ne-zha5s seven apertures. Then the Exalted Celestial said,
Stop now
and went off into the cavern with Jin-zha.
Ne-zha stood there thinking to himself, Instead of catching up to Li Jing,
Ive been given a beating myself and cant even get away! In the depths of
his fury Ne-zha ground his teeth together, but there was nothing he could
do but stand there burning with rage.
Reader, the high immortal Unity had knowingly sent Ne-zha here in
order to subdue his murderous nature. Thus the high immortal already
knew the situation he was in. As Ne-zha stood there seething, over to one
side he caught sight of a broad gown with wide sleeves and hemp shoes with
silken ties. It was the high immortal Unity.
Seeing himNe-zha shouted, Master, save me! He shouted this sev
eral times, but the high immortal ignored him and went directly into the cav
ern. There the lad White Cloud announced, he high immortal Unity is
here. The Exalted Celestial went out to welcome himand, taking him by
the hand, laughed, Your disciple has asked me to give him some instruc
tion.55 The two immortals then sat down. Ne-zha
s violation of the in
junctions against killing had grown so serious, said the high immortal
Unitythat I sent him here to subdue the violence of his nature but I had
no idea he would end up committing a transgression against the Exalted Ce
lestial himself! Then the Exalted Celestial ordered Jin-zha, Let Ne-zha
come.55 Going to Ne-zha, Jin-zha said, Your master is calling for you.
Since you obviously didnt know what to do with me
replied Ne-zha,
you worked some kind of eye-blinding spell and then made me unable to
move and still you came and play around with me! Jin-zha just laughed
and said, KClose your eyes And Ne-zha had no choice but to close his eyes.
When Jin-zha had finished drawing the magic tdisman, he took back the
Vanishing Dragon Stake. When Ne-zha quickly looked around, neither the
stake nor the metal bands were anywhere to be seen. Then, nodding his head,
Ne-zha said, All right, all right. I
ve really gotten the worst of it today. Ill
go into the cavern now and meet my master, then I
ll decide what to do.
The two of them went into the cave, where Ne-zha saw the Daoist who
had beaten him sitting on the left side and his master sitting on the right.
The high immortal Unity said, Come over here and bow to your uncle!
Not daring to disobey his masters orders, he had to bow down, saying,
Thank you for the beating! Then he turned and bowed to his own mas
ter.
At this the high immortal called out, Li Jing, come over here. Li Jing
fell to the ground and bowed his head. As for what happened on Azure
Screen Mountain, you really shouldnt have been so narrow-minded that
s
the cause of this strife between son and father. Standing over to the side,
Ne-zha
s temper was rising until his face seemed like it would catch on fire
and he felt that his hatred would not be appeased until he had devoured Li
Jing. Both the immortals already understood what was on his mind. From
now on
said the high immortal, neither of you, neither father nor son
may offend the other. Then he instructed Li Jing to leave first.
Li Jing thanked the high immortal and went straight out. This drove Nezha into a frenzy of rage, but he dared not say a word. He simply stood over
to the side pinching his ears, rubbing his cheeks, and giving long sighs.
Laughing secretly to himselfthe high immortal said, Ne_zha, go back
now. Keep a close watch over my cavern. Im going to play a game of chess
with your uncle and I
ll be back in a while.
Hearing this, Ne-zha was overjoyed and said, Yessir! He left the cav
ern as fast as he could, got on his Wind-and-Fire Wheels, and went off in
pursuit of Li Jing. After chasing him for a long time, Ne-zha caught sight of
Li Jing ahead of him riding in a cloud of dust. In a loud voice he shouted,
Dont try to run, Li Jing~ Im on my way!
Seeing him, Li Jing cried out bitterly, That Daoist didnt mean what he
said. Since he sent me away firsthe should not have let Ne-zha leave the
mountain, and now he
s after me. That was really a traitorous thing to do,
to let him come chasing me after such a short time! What am I going to do!
And he fled on ahead.
W ith Ne-zha following hot on his heels, Li Jing saw no route of escape.
Just as the situation was getting desperate, there appeared a Daoist up on a
hilltop, leaning against a pine among the rocks. MCould that be Li Jing
down there at the foot of the mountain? said the Daoist. Li Jing lifted his
head, saw a Daoist, and said, MMaster, I am Li Jing
Then the Daoist said,
Why are you in such a hurry? Li Jing replied, Ne-zha is hot on my trail,
said the Daoist, and

master. Please save me! etQuickly, come up the h ill
stand behind me. I
ll save you Li Jing climbed the hill and, still out of
breath, took a position behind the Daoist. Then the sound of Ne-zha?s
Wind-and-Fire Wheels could be heard, and he was about to reach the foot
of the hill. When Ne-zha saw the two of them standing there, he gave a frosty
smile. I dont think I
m going to get the worst of it this time! And he rode
his wheels up the hill.
Are you, by chance, Ne-zha? asked the Daoist. That I am
replied
Ne-zha. etWhy do you have Li Jing standing there behind you?55 Why are
you chasing him? asked the Daoist. Ne-zha then told him the whole story
of what had happened on Azure Screen Mountain. To this the Daoist said,
Since this was all cleared up at Five Dragon Mountain, you are breaking
faith by chasing him again. Stay out of this business between us
replied
Ne-zha. I am determined to get him today and assuage this bitter hatred
that I feel.
To thisthe Daoist said, Wellsince you wont have it any other way
Then he turned to Li Jing and said, Go fight himyand Ill watch. wVenerable master
said Li Jing, this beast has boundless strength. I cant beat
him Then the Daoist straightened up, spit on Li Jing, and gave him a slap
on the back, saying, You beat him, and Ill watch. Ill be here so theres no
problem Li Jing had no choice but to take his halberd and thrust it at Nezha, who met the blow with his Fire-Point Spear.
There on the hilltop father and son battled for fifty or sixty rounds. But
this time Ne-zha was hardpressed, until the sweat ran all over his face and
his whole body was giving way with fatigue. Unable to fend off the painted
halberd any longer, Ne-zha brooded to himself, Li Jing could never beat
me on his own. The reason has to be because the Daoist just spat on him
and gave him a slap. I know what to doFll pretend to slip up, then strike.
Ill run the Daoist through with my spear first, and then I
ll get Li Jing.
Ne-zha leapt out of the circle of battle and aimed a thrust at the Daoist.
The Daoist spread his mouth wide open, and a white lotus blossom emerged,
blocking the Fire-Point Spear. Stop now, Li Jing
said the Daoist. Hear
ing this, Li Jing hastily parried the Fire-Point Spear. Then the Daoist asked
Ne-zha, ceListen, you monster! Your father and you may be trying to kill
each other, but theres no enmity between us. Why did you just strike at me
with your spear? My white lotus caught the blow
otherwise you would
have gotten me by a sneak attack. W hats going on? Li Jing couldnt beat
me before, replied Ne-zha. When you told him to fight with me, why did
you spit on him and slap him on the back? This was obviously some trick
of yours to keep me from winning in the fight. Thats why I tried to stab
you with my spear, to assuage my anger!
So you dare to try to stab me, monster! said the Daoist. Ne-zha flew
into a rage, twirled his spear, and aimed another blow at the Daoists head.
The Daoist jumped over to one side and raised his sleeves upward. There
appeared winding wreaths of magic cloud and a vortex of lavender fog, from
which an object fell; and Ne-zha found himself trapped inside a pagoda of
intricate grillwork. Then the Daoist hit the pagoda with both hands, and a
fire broke out inside. It burned Ne-zha until he shouted, Spare my life!
From outside the pagoda, the Daoist asked, Do you acknowledge your fa
ther, Ne-zha? Ne-zha had no choice but to answer repeatedly, I ac
knowledge him as my father, master! Since you have acknowledged him
as your father,35said the Daoist, I will spare you. Thereupon the Daoist
quickly took back the magic pagoda. When Ne-zha opened his eyes to look,
there was not the least burn anywhere on his body. Ne-zha thought to him
self, How weird! This Daoist really is playing tricks on me! Ne-zha
said the Daoist, since you have acknowledged Li Jing as your father, get
down on the ground and bow to him. When Ne-zha seemed reluctant to
do so, the Daoist was about to invoke the pagoda again, so Ne-zha had no
alternative but to subdue his temper, keep his mouth shutlower his head,
and bow down. But still he looked unrepentant. So the Daoist said, I want
to hear you say Father from your own lips. Ne-zha refused, and the
Daoist saidNe-zhasince you wont say 'Father,5you still havent given
in. Fm getting my golden pagoda to burn you again. Desperate, Ne-zha re
peatedly shouted in a loud voiceFather! Your son admits he was in the
wrong!
Even though he had spoken these words with his lips, in his heart he had
not given in. Secretly he ground his teeth, thinking to himself, <eLi Jing, youre
going to have to be taking this Daoist around with you for a long time!
The Daoist then called to Li Jing Kneel down and I will tell you the se
cret of the golden pagoda. If Ne-zha refuses to obey, you can invoke this
pagoda and burn him . Standing off to the sideNe-zha silently cried out in
anguish. Then the Daoist said, Ne-zhafrom now on you and your father
are to be on good terms. At some time in the future you will both serve as
officials in the same court, and there you will assist a virtuous ruler bring
his work to fruition. Never again speak of what happened before. Ne-zha,
go now. Seeing how the situation stood, Ne-zha had no choice but to re
turn to Primordial Mountain.
Li Jing then knelt down and said, Venerable Master, you have exercised
the Way generously and have redeemed me from great peril. May I ask your
name and the name of this mountain of the immortals ?w
The Daoist replied, I am the Daoist Burning Lamp of Primal Aware
ness Cavern on Magic Vulture Mountain. When you failed to perfect your
self in the Way, you were given riches and honor in the mortal world. Now
ZhowKing of the Shang, has lost his virtue, and great turmoil is unleashed
upon the world. You should not serve in office now; go hide yourself in a
mountain valley and forget advantage and fame for while. W ait until Wu
of the House of Zhou raises an army, and then come forth again to do great
deeds.Li Jing bowed his head to the ground, then returned to his pass and
subsequently disappeared.
The Daoist had been asked by the high immortal Unity to subdue Nezhas nature here to make him acknowledge his father. Later, the father and
his three sons were to become sages in the flesh. Li Jing is the devaraja Vaisravanawho bears the pagoda in his palm. A later poet wrote
O f yellow gold was fashioned
a grillwork pagoda
ten thousand threads of shining light
pierce the ninefold sky.
It was not Burning Lamp alone
who used his dharma power
Heaven made son and father
to join again.
This was the second time that Ne-zha appeared at Chen-tang Pass. Af
terwards Jiang Zi-ya came down from his mountain, at the same time King
Wen finished his seven-year sentence in You-li Prison. And if you want to
know what happened, read the following episode.. .
Late Ming Informal Prose
Classical literature of the second half of the fifteenth and most of the sixteenth cen
tury was dominated by the influential literary group known as the "Archaists, The
Archaists advocated strict adherence to formal models established by earlier writ
ers. "Old style" verse was supposed to be modeled on the poetry of the Han and
Wei, regulated poetry was supposed to be modeled on the High Tang, and prose
was supposed to be modeled on pre-Qin writing. The theories of the Archaists were
wonderfully teachable and well suited to the demands of an educational system
growing rapidly in the new prosperity of the sixteenth century. Anthologies of model
essays and poems served the schoolteacher and autodidact alike. Moreover, the in
sistence on strict imitation of models proved a useful way to prevent solecisms and
awkwardness in student writers, for whom literary Chinese had become increasingly
remote from the language they spoke.
At the same time, such a formalistic view of writing inspired a sense of falseness
and artificiality that went against the most ancient values of Chinese literature,
where poetry was supposed to give direct expression to feeling and whose prose was
supposed to be an independent expression of the writer's values. It is not surprising,
therefore, that Archaism provoked a strong reaction among certain groups of intel
lectuals during the second half of the sixteenth century (though Archaism retained
its hold on the early stages of literary education). When the Archaists championed
formal correctness, these new intellectuals of the late Ming championed informal
ity, even awkwardness. When the Archaists championed discipline, these new in
tellectuals championed freedom and following one's natural inclinations. When the
Archaists championed "moral seriousness," these new intellectuals championed
trivial things and the unplanned surprises of the ordinary.
A major inspiration in this literary movement was the eccentric and heterodox
intellectual Li Zhi. His discourse ;/n the Child-Mind^ touched a whole younger gen
eration. One consequence for literature was a new sense of the value of drama and
prose fiction, of which Li Zhi spoke with approval. This was virtually the first time
in the Chinese tradition that prose fiction and drama were not justified defensively,
but rather treated as "literature" on a par with poetry and the essay. Another con
sequence was a renewed interest in informal prose. Anthologies of the period often
refer to such works as "minor pieces" (xiao-pin), treating the experiences of daily
life with humor and delight
Although "On the Child-Mind" had literature as its primary topic and was im
mensely influential in subsequent literature, the essay itself is certainly not "literary,
nor does it practice the values it preaches. Li Zhi's adoption of the ponderous style
of Chinese philosophical writing may make the first part of his argument seem more
807
difficult than it actually is. The "beginning of mind" (or with the ambiguity of liter
ary Chinese, "beginnings in the mindis both the presumed innocence of the
child's response and immediate or impulsive thoughts and responses in a n y o n e ~
so m eth in g lik e th e im p lic it "first th o u g h ts" th at m ust h a v e b een th ere in o rd e r to say
we had "second thoughts" about something.

The "W a y" (Dao) and "Inherent Pattern" (li) were key concepts in Neo-Confu
cianism, which had become state philosophical orthodoxy. Although the great Neo-
Confucian philosophers argued that these were inherent both in the self and in the
external world, Li Zhi was intensely aware of the social and psychological truth that
these concepts and their application were learned and supported by social pressure.
Thus, from Li Zhi's perspective, these most revered principles in Neo-Confucian
thought were learned things that came from the outside and governed response, cor
rupting all that was spontaneous, natural, and innocent. The word translated as wina u th e n tic " (jia), w h ic h Li Z h i repeats ag ain an d a g a in , m e an s both "fa ls e " an d wbor-
ro w ed , in the sense of coming from elsewhere, not being one's own. Li's argument
hinges on that range of meaning: what comes from the outside is "borrowed," not
essentially one's own, and to represent oneself through such a borrowed medium
is to be "false."
If this attack on the fundamental principles of Neo-Confucianism and the glori
fication of drama and fiction were not shocking enough to conservative sensibili
ties, Li Zhi went on in the final section to assault the integrity of the Confucian Clas
sics themselves.
Li Zhi (1527-16 0 2) On the Child-Mind"

When I (using the pseudonym Mountain Farmer of Dragon Cavewrote
on the play Western ParlorI commented at the end: Those who judge such
matters may not think it is all right that I still have a child-mind.1The childmind is the genuine mind; and if having the child-mind is taken as not being
all right, then having a genuine mind is also taken as not being all right. Free
of all falseness and entirely genuine, the child-mind is the original mind of
ones very first thought. Loss of the child-mind means loss of the genuine
mind, and a loss of the genuine mind means loss of the genuine person. One
who is a person and not genuine will never again have beginnings.
As the child is the beginning of the person, so the child-mind is begin
ning of mind. How could minds beginnings ever be lost~but then how does
it happen that the child-mind is indeed lost so abruptly? Initially, things seen
and heard come in through eyes and ears. And when we take these as a gov
erning factor from withoutthe child-mind is lost. As we grow older, the
Way and Inherent Pattern come in through what we see and hear. And when
we take these as the governing factor from within, the child-mind is lost.2
1The Western Parlor, Xi-xiang ji, was a Yuan variety play by Wang Shi-fu, building on Yuan Zhen's
"Ying-ying's Story."
2Note that Li Zhi very much includes what we hear from others and what we read among sense im
pressions; the Chinese term is "seeing and hearing," reading associated with the former and oral
80S
After a long time, as what we see and hear of the Way and Inherent Pattern
steadily increases, what we know and what we are aware of also steadily
broadens. At that point we further learn that to be praised is desirable; we
endeavor to enhance opinion of ourselves, and the child-mind is lost. We
learn that to be criticized by others is undesirablewe endeavor to avoid that,
1
and the child-mind is lost.
Everything we see and hear of the Way and Inherent Pattern comes from
extensive reading and judgments about what is morally right. O f course the
ancient Sages read and studiedhowevereven if they hadnt read and stud
ied, the child-mind would have remained secure within them all by itself.
Even though they read and studied extensively, they also guarded their
child-mind and kept it from being lost. They were not like scholars of our
time, who repress the child-mind by extensive reading and moral judgments.
And since scholars have indeed repressed their child-minds by extensive
reading and moral judgments, what use was there in the Sages writing so
extensively and instituting their words if it only served to make scholars re
press their child-minds?
Once the child-mind is repressedwhen words are uttered, those words
do not come from what lies deep withinwhen they reveal themselves in ques
tions of governing, what they do lacks any coreand when they write, their
writing cannot reach others and accomplish its ends. In such people there is
none of the inner reserve that reveals itself as beauty; there is none of the
frankness and real substance that gives off its own aura. And if such people
try to write even one line with moral force in the words, they ultimately fail.
What is the reason for this? Their child-minds have been repressed, and their
minds are constituted of things external to themselves; that is, what they have
seen and heard, questions of the Way and Innate Pattern.
Since their minds are constituted of things they have seen and heard, the
Way and Innate Pattern, then their words come from those external things
and are not the words that the child-mind would say on its own. However
artful such words may be, what do they have to do with the self? Can an in
authentic person do otherwise than to speak inauthentic words, to act inauthentically, and to write inauthentically? In fact, once a person becomes
inauthentic, then he is inauthentic in every way. It follows from this that if
you speak inauthentically to an inauthentic person, the inauthentic person
will be pleased; if you tell an inauthentic person about inauthentic action,
the inauthentic person will be pleased; and if you talk over inauthentic writ
ing with an inauthentic person, the inauthentic person will be pleased. Being
inauthentic in every wayit becomes pleasing in every way. When the whole
stage is filled with inauthenticityhow can the short person standing in the
audience tell the difference? In this case, even if we have the most perfect
opinion with the latter. Primary sensory experience and these more linguistic forms of "seeing and
hearing" are alike in being external. Awareness of the Way and Inherent Pattern can come either
from direct observation or Neo-Confucian instruction, but Li Zhi is thinking very much of instruc
tion here.
809
works of writing in the whole world, it is not uncommon that they are de
stroyed by inauthentic people and do not survive to be seen by later gener
ations. The reason for this is that the most perfect works of writing in the
whole world always come from the child-mind. If the child-mind were per
manently preserved, then the Way and Inherent Pattern would not be prac
ticed and external things seen and heard would not take over. If the childmind were preserved, then literary quality would never be missing from
writing and no person would lack literary ability. It wouldnt be at all like
the kind of writing constructed to fit formal models, writing that is not lit
erature!
Why should poems have to be like those in the ancient A nthology} Why
should prose have to be like that of the pre-Qin period? Writing continued
to change after those periods, turning into the Six Dynasties style and then
turning into regulated poetry. It changed again and turned into classical tales;
it changed and turned into the early play-scripts and variety plays.3It turned
into The Western Parlor; it turned into the novel Water Margin it turned
into the formal essays that people practice today for the examination. Every
time a person of great virtue speaks of the Way of the Sages, it is perfect
writing, in times gone by as well as now
it cannot be judged in its histor
ical relation to the tendencies of the age. This is the reason I feel moved by
the inherent literary quality of anyone who has the child-mind~who cares
about the Six Classics or the Analects or the Mencius!
But lets consider what we find in the Six Classics, the Analects, and the
Mencius_ if theyre not passages of excessive adoration by some official his
torian, then theyre inordinate praise by some official. If neither of the
above, then it was inexperienced followers and dimwitted disciples writing
down from memory what their teacher had said. They gave the first part
without the last, or got the conclusion but left out the beginning. They
wrote it in books according to what they had personally witnessed. Later
scholars did not reflect critically, so they claimed that these had come from
the Sages own mouths and decided to view them as Classics. Who real
izes that for the most part these are not the words of the Sages? Even if they
did come from the Sages, they were uttered for some particular purpose,
nothing more than matching the treatment to the diseaseapplying a rem
edy at the proper moment to save this very same dimwitted disciple or in
experienced follower. If the medicine worked for the disease in question, that
doesnt mean we should cling fast to itwe certainly shouldnt right away
make it the perfect doctrine for thousands of generations!
Be that as it may, the Six Classics, the Analects, and the Mencius have
in fact become the stock excuses for Neo-Confucians and an abundant re
source for inauthentic people. It is perfectly obvious that they cannot speak
in words that come from the child-mind. This is a sorry state of things in
3"Play-scripts" (yuan-bert) were a Northern form of drama, no longer extant, that preceded the va
riety play.
810
deed! If only I could find someone who had never lost the child-mind of an
authentic Sage and have a word with him about writing!4
Yuan Hong-dao was a great admirer of Li Zhi's iconoclasm. Yuan Hong-dao and his
two brothers formed one of the most influential literary groups of the turn of the sev
enteenth century. Although the Yuan brothers themselves wrote in literary Chinese,
they were, like Li Zhi himself, champions of vernacular literature and folksong. In
an age when classical literature seemed to possess a weary sameness and hollow
formality, they desperately sought qualities of freshness, spontaneity, and some elu
sive attractiveness that could not be reduced to formula. The term qu, translated as
"liveliness" below, was just such a quality; it appears in things by chance and can
be appreciated only by those with y/intuitive grasp.Because such intuitive grasp is
a sign of distinction, other people "try" to attain it, but such self-conscious attempts
immediately become false.
Yuan Hong-dao (156 8 -16 10 )On Chen Zheng-fus Collected

Works, Intuitive Grasp
What people of our time find the hardest to achieve is liveliness. Liveliness
is like the colors of a mountain, or the taste in water, or the light on flow
ers, or the way a beautiful woman looks. Even the master of discourse can
not put down a single word about it; only those with intuitive grasp can un
derstand it. People these days admire what is known for liveliness and seek
the semblance of liveliness. For this reason, discriminating discussions of cal
ligraphy and painting or delving deeply into antiques are thought to be pure
and disinterested activities; involving oneself in the occult or removing one
self from the worlds dirt and confusion is thought to evince detachment.
On a lower level still, we have those like the connoisseurs of incense and tea
in Su-zhou. These sorts of things are all the mere surfaces of liveliness~what
do they have to do with spiritual feeling?
Liveliness, when it is achieved from what is natural, is deep; when
achieved from study, it is shallow. When one is a child, one knows nothing
of the existence of liveliness, but liveliness is present everywhere. The face
is never grave; the eyes are never still; the mouth prattles trying to talk; the
feet leap up and down and are never still. Lifes most perfect happiness is
truly never greater than at this time. This is, in fact, what Mencius meant
by not losing the heart of an infant and what Lao-zi meant by able to
be the baby.55This is the highest grade of liveliness, its correct enlightenment,
its highest doctrine.
4in the closing line, Lu Zhi playfully echoes a famous passage on language in the "Outer Things"
chapter of Zhuang-zi: "The reason for the net is the fish; when you get the fish, you forget the net.
The reason for the snare is the rabbit; when you get the rabbit, you forget the snare. The reason for
words is the idea; when you get the idea, you forget the words. If only I could find someone who
has forgotten words and have a word with him !
811
People of the forests and hills are not caught up and entangled in things
they are content to just pass their days; thus, though they do not seek for
livelinessliveliness is close at hand. The reason simpletons and ne
er-dowells are close to liveliness is because they lack status. The lower one's sta
tus, the lower the things one wants. They go where their hearts take them,
some for food and drink, others for women and entertainment, despising
nothing and shrinking from nothing; feeling themselves cut off from all
worldly expectations, they pay no attention to the world except to laugh at
it. This also is a kind of liveliness.
But as the years gradually go by3as ones official position gradually gets
higher, and as ones status gradually increases, ones body is as if in fetters
and ones heart is as if stuck by thorns. Ones hair, the bodys apertures, ones
bones and joints are all entangled by knowledge and experience; and though
one becomes ever more deeply aware of the pattern of things, still one grows
farther and farther away from liveliness.
My friend, Chen Zheng-fu, is deep in livelinessand thus liveliness is the
most prominent quality in his collected works, Intuitive Grasp, done in several chapters. If this were not so, I would not have written these comments
for him, even if he had the principles of the martyr-recluse Bo Yi or were as
noble as the hermit Yan Guang. Who would have thought that someone of
your status, of your official rank, and someone in the prime of his years like
yourself would have such a comprehension of liveliness?
Writing often celebrated refined pastimes and amusements of the intellectual elite:
the connoisseurship of art, books, tea, flowersalong with some more unusual
sports. There was a fascination with the special knowledge associated with each ac
tivity, even when that knowledge was invented on the spot. Writers often describe
techniques, hierarchies of qualities, or different types of the activity, as in Yuan Hongdao's account of spider-fighting.
Spider-Fighting
To my knowledge the technique of fighting spiders never existed in earlier
times. My friend Gong San-mu invented the sport. San-mu was staying in
the same lodgings as myself, and whenever the weather grew mild in spring,
each of us would catch several small spiders, ones with rather long legs, raise
them in a window, and, to amuse ourselves, make them fight for victory.
Spiders are usually found in the shadowy spots on walls or under tables.
Catch them when they have just formed a few long strands of their webs
without cross-strands, taking care not to move too quickly, because if you
move too quicklytheyll become frightenedand once frightened, theyll
never be able to fight. You should take the females and not the males, be
cause the male flees when he encounters an adversary. The males legs are
shorter and his belly thinnerits quite easy to tell them apart.
The way to train them is thistake the offspring of another spider that
has not yet hatched and stick it on a piece of paper in the window; when
812
the female spider sees it, she will take it as her own offspring and protect it
fiercely. When she sees the other spider coming, she will think it has come
to take her own young and will do everything she can to fight the other off.
You shouldnt use spiders who still have their eggs in their belly or whose
young have already hatched. When they come on the field, they first grab
one another with their legs; then after a few preliminary skirmishes, their
ferocity intensifies, and they go at it tooth and nail until you cant see their
bodies. The victor wraps her enemy up in threads and doesnt give up until
the other is dead. There are also those who get frightened and run off in de
feat in the middle of the battle; and there are some cases when the strengths
are so equally matched that they quit after several rounds.
San-mu is always able to determine ahead of time which ones will win
and which will lose. When he catches them, hell say that this one will be a
good fighter and that one wont be a good fighter and that these two are
well matched~and it always works out just like he says. The jet black ones
are the best; the ash gray ones second best; and the ones with mottled col
ors are the worst. We also have many special names for the typespurpleblack tiger
hawk-talons, tortoise-shell belly
black Zhang Jing ,
night prong
cheery lass
little iron lip s
in each case named for what
they resembled. You feed them flies and large black ants. We both knew how
they looked when they were hungry or well fed, happy or enraged but this
gets into a lot of little details that I
m not going to include here. San-mu was
very clever and good at poetry; as soon as he saw some skill or technique
practiced deftly, he understood it but also on this account he neglected his
studies.
Since the Song Dynasty, informal letters to friends and family had been treated as a
form separate from the stylized literary letters that an author would preserve in his
collected works. Like letter collections in the West, these letters were often published
separately. In their casualness and roughness of style, they perfectly suited the late
Ming ideals of spontaneity and easy informality, and they were often included in
anthologies of "minor pieces." Characteristic of late Ming self-consciousness, such
letters frequently took as their topic the very values they sought to embody. Two let
ters by Yuan Hong-dao and one by Tu Long follow.
Letter to Li Zi-ran
Have you been writing any poems recently? If you're not writing poetry, how
are you getting through these dreary days? A person can only be happy when
he finds something to put his heart into. Some people put their hearts into
chess, some into beautiful women, some into a particular skill or craft, some
into writing. The reason that the most self-realized people of olden times
were a level better than others was their unwillingness to simply pass their
lives drifting along.
Every time I see people with nothing to put their hearts intoso busy
all day long, as if they had lost something, worrying even though they have
813
nothing to worry about, getting no joy out of a scene before themI per
sonally can't understand why. This is being in hell while alivewho needs
the iron bedsthe bronze pillars, knife mountains, and sword trees! Its too
bad! Theres probably nothing really hard to do in the whole world; and as
long as you just get it over and done with haphazardly, your day will go
along like water forming its own channel. W ith a talent like yours, Zi-ran,
theres nothing in the whole world you couldnt do. Ym just afraid that
youre too cautious and serious and not willing just to throw yourself into
it and do it. Go ahead and try it. Its all right not to disappoint a true
friends intention to help you succeed.
Letter to Qiu Chang-ru

Ive been very concerned since I heard how sick youve been. If you should
die, all the grace and culture of the Southeast will be gone. Can I help being
concerned? As a county magistrate, Ive had to play the most hateful roles
they are indescribable. To give you a general idea: when I chance to meet a
superior official, Fm a slavewhen I entertain a guest who has dropped by,
I
m a courtesan; when I manage money or grain, I
m a warehouse supervi
sorwhen I explain things to the peasantry, Im an old lady matchmaker. In
the course of a single day, things blow hot and cold a hundred times, now
bright and active, now dark and passivethe county magistrate experi
ences all the worst qualities of the everyday world. Its painful and its like
poison to me.
My brother was going to pass through W u this autumn, and though he
did pass through, he just wanted to sit around in the county office library
reading books and poems, and we didnt get to go climb Tiger H ill as we
had before with Mr. Hou.
Have you felt much of an inclination to travel lately? Even though, as
chief officer of Mao-yuan here on the outskirts of Su-zhou, I dont have any
money to give to visitors, still I have wine to get drunk on, tea to drink, the
Great Lake as my spoonful of water on which to go boating, and Dong-ting
Mountain as my lump of rock to climb~so Fm not too gloomy. What do
you think?
Tu Long (1542-16 05), From the Capital, to a Friend

In Beijing I cover my face and ride a brown horsethe wind rises and the
dust flies, filling the streets and avenues. When I get home and dismount,
both of my nostrils are as black as chimney-holes. The piss of men and horses
mixes with the sandy dirt; and after it rains, you sink into the muck up to
your knee or saddle. Peasants push ahead, whipping their half-lame donkeys,
their shoulders rubbing against those of officials. When the cry comes to clear
the way for a high official, when you cant get to duck quickly into a wind-
814
ing sidelane
you run wildly until youre breathless and the sweat flows down
to your heels. That gives you a*sense of what its like here.
And I imagine the evening sunlight in some Yangzi River village far
awaythe fishing boats putting into shore, the last rays of the sun shooting
back into the forest, and the sand bright as snow. Under flowering trees fish
ing nets dry in the sun, and the white planks and blue awnings of a tavern
are half-hidden behind hanging willows. An old man comes out of a ram
shackle gate, holding a fish and carrying a jug. To go strolling on the sands
with a few good friends at this time would be far better than riding a horse
into the mud in the capital.
Chen Ji-ru (1558- 1639)A Colophon for The History of

Flowers
Those who have a taste for the wilderness but experience no delight in it are
woodsmen and herdsmenthose who let fruit rot without ever getting to taste
it are hired gardeners and grocers; those who have flowering trees but cannot enjoy them are the nobility. O f the famous men of olden daysonly Tao
Qian found his interest held everywhere by mulberry and hemp, by pines
and chrysanthemums, by fields and villages. Su Dong-po loved gardening
and was able to touch flowers and trees with his own hands. This comes
from a persons nature and cannot be forced. Force it, and even if you give
someone the History of Flowers
he will become irritable and throw it

away. But if such things are close to your nature and you also love them,
then I urge you to take this book with you to lie in the sun among the trees
and watch carefully as the flowers blossom and fall. What difference is there
between this and the course of the rise and fall of men and dynasties over
the past thousand yearsP What we refer to as the Twenty-one Dynastic His
tories,5 may well all be in this one unorthodox history.
Zhang Dai belonged to the generation of Ming writers who, in their maturity, wit
nessed the fall of the Ming and the establishment of the Qing Dynasty. Like other
writers of "minor pieces, Zhang Dai's best-known works, "The Dream Recollec
tions ofTao-an(Tao-an meng-yi) and "Tracing West Lake in Dream" (Xi-hu mengxun), treated special moments and small occasions; but Zhang Dai, writing after the
fall of the Ming, recasts such moments through the haze of memory.
Zhang Dai (159 7-1679 )Night Theater on Gold Mountain

( The Dream Recollections of Tao-an
en route from Zheng-jiang to Yan-zhou,
One day after mid-autumn in 1629
we reached Bei-gu in the late afternoon and moored the boat at the mouth
of the river. Moonbeams had been poured from an upturned bag into the
815
water, and their light played flickering on the waves; misty vapors swallowed
in the light, then spat it back out, whitening the sky. I was amazed and de
lighted; and when we moved the boat past Gold Mountain Temple, it was
already about ten o'clock. As we went through the Dragon-King Chamber
and into the main hall
everything was silent and black as pitch. Moonbeams
leaked through the forest and lay widely scattered like patches of snow.
I told my servant boy to bring the props and costumes for a play, and
we hung up lanterns throughout the main hall. And we performed two
plays Han Shi-zhongPrince o fQ i3at Gold Mountain and The Great Bat
tle on the Yangzi- The drums and gongs resounded everywhere, and every
one in the whole temple got up to look. There were old monks rubbing the
sleep out of their eyes with the backs of their hands, their mouths all hang
ing open in one accord. There was yawning and stretching and laughing and
sneezing, until gradually their attention was fixed; and where these people
were from, what they were doing, and when they had come~none of these
things did they dare ask.
When the plays were over, the daylight was soon to arrive. We undid
the moorings and crossed the river. The monks of the mountain followed
us down to the foot of the mountain and for a long time followed us with
their eyes, not knowing whether we were people or apparitions or ghosts-
Zhang Dai seems to have had a particular fondness for events that appear suddenly,
full of light and noise, then disappear just as suddenly. The following piece is an ex
ample of Zhang's breathless, impressionistic prose at its most characteristic.
Mid-September on West Lake

There is nothing at all to look at on West Lake in mid-September but peo
ple looking at the mid-September moon. There are five types of looking
among people looking at the mid-September moon. One type looks at it thus
in great pleasure barges with cabins, flutes and drums playing, banquets
teeming with tail-capped officials with lanterns, actors and servants in a tu
mult of voices and light, and though they call it looking at the m oon
they
dont actually see the moon. Another type looks at it thus: they are also in
pleasure barges, and these barges also have cabins, with famous courtesans
and the flower of the fair sex, and those whose hands are held include hand
some young catamites; laughter and cries are mixed together as they sit in
circles on open-air platforms, with seductive glances cast right and left; they
are right under the moon but they dont actually look at the moon. Yet an
other type looks at it thus: they are also in pleasure barges and there are also
voices in song, with well-known singing girls and relaxed monks pouring
small cups of wine and caroling softly, with gentle piping and strings played
softly, throat and woodwind each coming forth in turn; they are also right
under the moon, and they do look at the moon, but want others to look at
'
them looking at the moon. Yet another type looks at it thusneither in boat
nor carriage and wearing neither cloak nor turban, but drunk from wine and
having eaten their fill, they shout in small groups and make their way into
the crowds. At Zhao-qing Temple and Broken Bridge they make a racket,
and pretending to be drunk, they carol out of key; the moon they do indeed
look at, and those looking at the moon they look atand those not looking
at the moon they also look at, and actually dont look at anything. Yet an
other type looks at it thusin small boats with light awnings, clean tables
and warm stoves, teapots soon to boil, and the pale white porcelain quietly
passed round; good friends and fair ladies invite the moon to sit with them,
sometimes concealing their reflections under trees, sometimes fleeing the din
to the interior of the lake; they look at the moon, but no one sees how they
look when looking at the moonand they dont look at the moon self-consciously.
When the people of Hang-zhou go sailing on the lake, they go out midmorning and come back in the early evening, avoiding the moon as if it were
their enemy. But on this evening of such fair repute they all go out in throngs,
usually giving their household guards some wine money as a bonus, and
sedan-chair bearers, torches in hand, wait for them in lines along the shore.
Once they get in their boats, they hurry the boatmen to push off as soon as
possible from Broken Bridge, and catching up, they enter the swarm of
other boats. Thus, before ten oclock peoples voices, the drums and piping,
seem to boil up and crashseem like nightmares or talking in ones sleep
seeming to deafen and drown out speech, until all together the large boats
and small boats make for the shore, and one sees nothing but boat-pole
knocking against boat-pole, boat bumping boat, shoulder rubbing shoulder,
face looking at face. In a brief moment the excitement is over; the parties of
officials break up, with black-robed government servants yelling to clear the
roadsedan-chair bearers shout, and people in the boats become distressed
that the city gates will be locked, and, with, lanterns in hand like constella
tions of stars, they go offeveryone squeezed into groups. People on the shore
also follow the crowds to make it to the city gates, gradually growing fewer
and more scattered, until a moment later theyre all gone.
Only then did we moor our boat near the shore. And as the stone stairs
to Broken Bridge grew cool, we spread out mats on them and called to those
still out to come drink with us. At this time the moon was like a newly pol
ished mirrorthe hills were again freshly adorned, and the face of the lake
was again bathed clean. Those who had poured small cups of wine and car
oled softly came forththose who had concealed their reflections under the
trees also came forthwe exchanged friendly words with them and urged
them to sit with us. Companions in verse came bywell-known singing girls
showed upwinecups and chopsticks lay stillthroats and woodwinds sang
out. The moonlight was gray and cool, and the guests didnt go their ways
until the east was growing light. Then we pushed off in the boat again and
slept off the wine in the midst of ten leagues of lotus blossoms, whose fra
grance brushed over usand our clear dreams were quite contented.
817
Viewing the Snow from Heart of the Lake Pavilion

(The Dream Recollections of Tao-an
In February 1632,1was living at West Lake. There was a blizzard that lasted
three days, and the sounds of birds and people on the lake ceased entirely.
On the day in question, just as the night was drawing to a close, I took a
small boat, and wrapped in a fur coat and huddled close to a portable stove,
we went off by ourselves to look at the snow from Heart of the Lake Pavil
ion. There was a white haze of lake mist around the trees; the sky and the
clouds and the mountains and the water were all white above and below.
The only reflections on the lake were the single streak of the Long Em
bankment, the single dot of Heart of the Lake Pavilion, the single mustard
seed of our boat, and the few specks of the people in the boat.
When I reached the pavilion, there were two people sitting on a rug and
a servant boy who was tending a stove on which the water for heating wine
had just come to a boil. When they saw me, they were delighted and said,
Who would have thought there would be anyone else on the lake! They
dragged me over to drink with them, and I took my leave after forcing my
self to drink three mugs. When I asked who they were, I found out that they
were from Jin-ling and were visiting. When I got in the boatone of the boat
men mumbled, I guess the gentleman here isnt all that foolish because there
are others even more foolish than he is.
"Foolish" (chi) was a double-edged quality, sometime pejorative and sometimes pos
itive. It was applied to those who were "besotted" by love but was also the term used
to describe the innocence of children. To the boatman, going out in the freezing cold
at the break of dawn is "foolishness" in one sense; Zhang Dai reports the story pos
itively, because to him such "foolishness" is a quality in which he takes pride.
The Performance of Peng Tian-xi

The performances of Peng Tian-xi were the finest in all the world, yet in every
scene he stayed with the script and never altered a single word to suit his
own taste. When he wanted a scene performed, he would invite the actors
to his house and spend twenty or so pieces of silver; and in no time at all his
family fortune of one hundred thousand was used up. Throughout the
months of spring he was usually at West Lake and visited Shao-xing per
haps half a dozen times. He came to my house and played fifty or sixty scenes
without ever exhausting the range of his art.
Tian-xi usually played villains and clowns. The most vicious and violent
men of all time and the worst flatterers became even more cruel in passing
through Tian-xis hearton T ian_xi
s face they became still more wicked, and
coining from Tian-xi
s mouth they became even more malevolent. When he
put himself in their positions, it seemed that even the evil of King Zhow of
818
Shang was not as bad as this. He would knit his brows and peer around,
and there was really a sword in his heart and a dagger behind his smilehe
had a demonic air and a deadliness so sinister that the audience felt dread.
We may well say that all the book learning in Tian-xi
s breast, all the moun
tains and streams in his breast, all the schemes and stratagems in his breast,
and all his extraordinary and restless energy had nowhere to express itself,
so that he expressed it in this singular way.
When I see a good play, I regret that I cannot wrap it up in fine brocade
and pass it on forever without perishing. I have compared it to a whole night
of fine moonlight in the heavens and to a cup of tea brewed just for the right
amount of time_ all of these provide only a moments use, and yet we trea
sure them endlessly. When Huan Yin saw a fine spot in the landscape, he
abruptly shouted, It
s just too much, too much!5 There truly are such
things that are just too much, things the mouth cannot express.
Preface to Tracing West Lake in a Dream

I was born in the wrong time and have been far apart from West Lake for
twenty-eight years. Nevertheless not a day has gone by when West Lake was
not in my dreams, and the West Lake of my dreams has, in fact, never left
me for a single day. Earlier, in 1654 and 1657I twice went to West Lake;
and of places like the mansions beyond mansions of the Shangs at the Yongjin Gate, or the Qis5temporary lodgings, or the estates of the Qians and Yus,
along with my own familys gardensof a whole shore of lake villas there
survived only shards of the tiles. Thus what still existed in my dreams was,
in fact, not there at West Lake itself. And as for the view from Broken Bridge,
all the lithe willows and tender peaches of bygone days, the mansions and
pavilions for singing and dancewere as if swallowed up by a vast flood,
and not one in a hundred survived.
I then fled the place as quickly as I could, telling myself that I had come
here because of West Lake and that from what I now saw, it would be bet
ter to guard the West Lake of my dreams, where I could still keep it com
plete and unharmed. At that point I fancied how different my own dreams
were from the dream of Li Bo. When Li Bo dreamed of Tian-mu, it was like
a goddess or a renowned beauty; he dreamed of what he had never seen
and such a dream was illusion. But when I dream of West Lake, it is like my
home garden and my familyI dream of what used to be, and such dreams
are genuine.
I have now lived in lodgings rented from someone else for twenty-three
years, but in my dreams I am still where I used to live. The young servant
who served me then now has white hairbut in my dreams his hair is still
done up like a young boys. I cannot rid myself of these long-standing habits
and cannot escape an old disposition; and both now and hereafter I can only
5ln fact, the famous Eastern Jin aristocrat gave this response to hearing a song.
819
be melancholy in my Butterfly Cottage and walk slowly from my Bed of

Rude Awakening. My dreams are all that I have to hold to, a stream of scenes
of West Lake, still perfectly arranged and unmoving.
When the children want to know about it, I may happen to tell them;
and it may be all speaking a dream from within a dream, but it is not speak
ing out of this present nightmare. Thus I came to write the seventy-two en
tries of Tracing West Lake in a Dream and leave them for generations to
come as a reflection of West Lake. I am like that man of the hills who re
turned from the seaside, praising the pleasures of seafood in glowing terms;
and everyone in his hometown crowded around him to lick his eyes. But,
unfortunately, once those precious relishes and sweet morsels of shellfish
pass the tongue, they are gone~and then how can licking the eyes ever sat
isfy the craving?
~The sixteenth of the seventh month1671.
By Zhang Dai, the old man of Butterfly Cottage in Gu-jian
Belated ness
Although the Ming and Qing was a theater-loving culture, the arguments made by
some late Ming intellectuals for the legitimacy of drama and prose fiction as "high"
literature were intended to shock common opinion. Poetry was still generally con
sidered the most important literary form, and the High Tang was considered the
height of poetry and the immutable norm of poetic excellence. The more extreme
versions of such an opinion, held by the influential Archaists, declared that one
should not even read the classical poetry of the Song and Yuan dynasties, so far had
it diverged from the High Tang standard. That common opinion had serious conse
quences for contemporary poetic practice: new poems could either be like the Tang,
in which case they would be imitative, or unlike the Tang, in which case they would
be bad poems, swerving from the very qualities that seemed to define poetic excel
lence. The Archaists favored imitation; but a century of "Archaist" domination of
classical literature produced so much uninspired verse that new solutions had to be
found.
This dilemma in classical poetry was only one aspect of a much larger problem
in elite culture during the Ming and Qing: how a contemporary writer or intellec
tual could establish his own worth in a culture where past achievements set the stan
dards against which contemporary works were judged. A very similar dilemma can
be found in European culture from the Renaissance through the eighteenth century,
and the Chinese solutions parallel those of Europe in interesting ways. Both cultures
eventually produced a modern notion of "historicism, in which each period had
distinct qualities that defined what was "good" only for that period.
To argue, as Li Zhi and others did, for the importance of vernacular literature
was one solution to the dilemma; that solution emerged victorious only in the twen
tieth century. Another solution was to go back and take a fresh look at classical po
etry from periods other than the Tang, to develop a broader sense of what was "good"
in poetry, and to begin to develop a sense of relative historical value in which each
820

age had its own distinct strengths. The classical poetry of the Song, so maligned by
the Archaists, was the ideal place to begin. Thus the late Ming saw a revival of in
terest in Song poetry and a cultivated admiration for precisely those ways in which
it differed from Tang poetry. The following preface to a new edition of Song and Yuan
poetry compiled by Yuan Zhong-dao catches the flavor of the times. It was an un
easy defense of the Song, and, as always, the image of the Tang loomed large in the
background.
Yuan Zhong-dao was the younger brother of Yuan Hong-dao and a well-known
literary figure in his own right.
Yuan Zhong-dao (1570 -16 23), A Preface to Poetry of the

Song and Yuan
Poetry never reached a greater height than in the Tang. If a poem comes from
the hand of someone in the Tang, it possesses color when you look at it, it
possesses tone when you test it with a knock, and it seems to possess a bou
quet when you sniff it. Even from as much as a thousand years ago, those
poems are like blades just off the whetstone or the petals of flowers newlyspread. The Song and Yuan masters who followed them found in song lyric
and vernacular song the unique achievements of their own talents and feel
ings; and even if Tang writers had condescended to write in such forms, they
would not necessarily have been able to surpass the Song and Yuan. But
when it came to classical poetry, the Song and Yuan masters could only yield
place to the Tang. Take a couplet like Chang Jians on c<Broken Mountain
Temple
A bamboo trail leads through to hidden places,
a meditation chamber deep in flowering trees.
Ou-yang Xiu claimed that he could never come up to that, even if he spent
his whole life trying. Su Dong-po said that Ou-yang X iu had, in fact, be
come sick of the rich flavors of meat and fine rice and developed a taste for
conchbut this is not the case. Literature is bound up with the temper of
the times. Comments like these do not mean that their talents were inferior
to those of the Tang or that their learning was inferior it was merely a lim
itation imposed by the temper of the times and an inability to force them
selves to be the same. It is not a matter of want of effort that the Han and
Wei was not like the Classic of Poetry, or that the Tang was not like the
Han and Wei, or that the Song and Yuan were not like the Tang. Never
theless, it is indeed an error to seize upon this and subsequently claim that
the Song and Yuan had no poetry worthy of the name.
Past critics maintained that excellence in poetry was like the taste of salt
in water or the pure pigment in colors, that the meaning was not exhausted
when the words stopped. This is3in fact, true of countless individuals dur
ing each generation of the Tang and of countless poems by each of those in
dividuals. In expressing their emotions and drawing scenes, they made what
821
was far seem close at hand, and they made what was separate merge; their
excellence lay in a sense of something held in reserve and in not expressing
everything openly. Their style was elevated, their energy had an organic
unity, and they observed the rules strictly. Yet they were extremely conser
vative in their choice of material for poems, and the path they took was a
very narrow one. There is no question that the course of development they
set in motion had no choice but to change, becoming the Mid-Tang and the
Late Tang. Given the fact that Li Bo and Du Fu already could not help ex
tending poetrys range in new directions in order to say everything they
wanted to say, why blame the Song and Yuan masters for doing the same?
The Song and Yuan were the successors of the three phases of Tang po
etry, and they spent all their efforts and skill in poetry, until the splendors
of the universe were virtually all divulged with nothing left over. Those who
made poems found themselves at an impasse where change was necessary.
And they preferred to let each person bring out his own innate capacities,
to let each person come up with his own devices and strategies in order to
adequately convey what he wanted to saythey were never willing simply
to repeat or imitate, to gather up the drops of spit left by others to die in the
words of their predecessors.
Thus the full gamut of feeling was exhausted, and there was nothing they
left undescribed; the full range of scenes was exhausted, and there was noth
ing they left unused in their poems. They left nothing undescribedyet
reached the point of describing what did not need to be described; they used
everything, yet reached the point of using what did not need to be used. At
their worst what they wrote could be preposterous, clumsy, crude, or slick
and frivolous, as if they simply brought out poems like turning over a bar
rel or emptying a sack, without taking time to pick and choose. In general
they took their sense of measure from their own sensibilities and learned rules
only from their native wit; when a thought stirred them, they gave voice to
itand when the thought was done, they were silent. Even though they cannot compete with the Tang for the heights, still those points where their
flashes of brilliance cannot be expunged should be preserved in this world
together with the Tang. It is for this that Song and Yuan poems are being
printed here.
When I read the Song and Yuan masters, I find that the talents of the
most outstanding are high, their grace is also deep, and they read everything
there was to read. Thus when they conceived poetic ideas and fashioned
phrases, they tended to go far off on tangentseven if this was a different
mode from any other period in history, they still made something worth
handing on to posterity. I find it outrageous that later scholars, short on tal
ent and with pedestrian sensibilities, didnt read over the books gathered to
gether and just picked out the most superficial phrases of Tang poets on
wind, clouds, moonlight, and dew, while at the same time looking on Song
and Yuan writers as if they didnt exist. In fact, rhetoricians of recent times
came up with the unprecedented claim that one should not read the writ
ings of the Song and Yuan.
822
Any reader should draw from a wide range and garner what is best; each
of those talented and ingenious men over the course of five or six centuries
achieved something unique. When you take whats the best in them, it can
always bring something out in ones spirit and wisdom. Is it not a great in
justice to wipe them generally from consideration in one fell swoop? Ever
since this theory that one should not read Song and Yuan poetry appeared,
it has been the jungle in which closed-minded and lazy men have found
refuge. Since one need not read their books, they dont need to be preserved
either. In this case should we then just let the literary collections of the Song
and Yuan be scattered to the winds and lost, and not be concerned with them
any more?
Early in the Songthere were the collected works of the Nine M onks
;
it was said that if you put them together with Tang works, you couldnt tell
them apart. By the middle of the Song, their collected works no longer sur
vived. Lu You praised the poems of Pan Bin-lao as having an unequaled ex
cellence. And yet today we have no way to get a glimpse of Pans collected
works. Huang Ting-jian had the highest words for Gao Hes achievements
in emulating Du Fu, but even the local gazetteer of his native Jiang-ling omits
his name. Everywhere I see lines from the Song and Yuan written on a
painting or on some set topic, and there are some extremely fine poems; but
either we know of the person yet dont have his collected works, or we have
his works yet these dont include that poem. From this we know that a great
many Song and Yuan poems have not survived. If we look for them now,
we will find one in a hundred or ten in a thousand that we ought to trea
sure, make our secret acquisitions, and extol publicly to keep this part of
our culture from being lost forever; how then can they say that we need not
read this and need not preserve it!
The calligraphy and paintings of the Song and Yuan are still preserved
in the households of erudite connoisseurs and collectors and have become
immortal now. Yet the fact that their poems alone are so rarely exhibited
makes them truly lost classics. Pan Shi-heng of Xin-an has spent much ef
fort seeking out and purchasing various collected works by Song and Yuan
masters. He has had plates carved to print them in order to ensure that the
writings of these two dynasties last forever, together with those of the Tang.
This is a most welcome event in the past several centuries and one that is
very much in accord with my own feelings on the matter. Thus I have not
demurred and have written this introduction for him.
Diary
Although extensive travel diaries had been written since the Song, the great age of
the diary in China began in the late Ming. One of the best diaries of the period is
the long "Account of My Travels in Fei" by Yuan Zhong-dao. He begins by per
suading himself that he needs to get out of the house and take a vacation: that a trip
by boat would really be much better for his studies than staying at home trying to
read.
823
Yuan Zhong-dao, from Account of My Travels in Fei

1. December 11608, in the Wan-li Reign. Fve been staying in Yun-dang
Valley. After I failed the examination last year in 1607I lodged with Com
mander in Chief Qian of Yu-yang and came home this May. My brother
Hong-dao had previously held an office in the Ministry of Rites and was on
his way south in the winter of 1607-08 when he got news from the Min
istry of Personnel. He went back to the capital this spring, while I stayed on
at home. The bamboo in Yun-dang Valley grew leafier from each day to the
next, and the flowers grew more splendid. At several spots among them I
added pavilions and terraces, and I felt a strong determination to live a life
of retirement.
2. After living quietly for a few months, I suddenly longed to go traveling.
In fact, while I was in Yun-dang Valley I had had a really good experience
of the secluded life and was able to shut my door and study. But as things
were, it couldnt go on that way very long. I was oppressed by family re
sponsibilities and got caught up in social obligations to outsiders, such as
writing responses and paying social calls; and habitual guests were intrud
ing on me and disturbing me until finally I didnt have a moment to breathe.
These are the reasons I wanted to go traveling: First, famous mountains and
splendid rivers could flush clean the everyday concerns that filled me. Sec
ond, there are quite a few chapels in Wu and Yue where I could sit quietly
and study. Third, even though my learning has reached the level of reliable
interpretation, my intuitive powers are still not deep enough; beholding a
scene gives rise to feelings, but there are still many points where I get bogged
down on precipitous paths. On a trip I might meet famous monks and su
perior companions and be imbued with their improving influence, molding
and quickening the sense of everyday routine that I have in my bones and
making me susceptible to transformation. This is the reason I didnt dare
cling to my peace and quiet.
3. I happened to be with my uncle Gong Jing-ting when the talk turned to
the question of traveling. I said, Traveling shouldnt be pressured by ques
tions of fame and profit; its better just to go along with the river. However
when you go by riverits also best to buy ones own boat and carry ones
own provisions in it. Then, no matter whether you go quickly or slowly, no
matter whether it's near or far, you can hope to come upon fine scenery and
fine friends, and then you can linger there a long time and follow all your
impulses to climb mountains, go sailing, or just hang around; and you wont
be hurried along by your elders. Also there are a lot of storms on the rivers
and lakes, and only when you have your own boat can you travel when you
should travel and stop when you should stop_ there is nothing more con
venient than this. My uncle said, I have a boat that I had made myself, as
strong and solid as possible. Moreover, I
ve used it over the course of many
94
years, and now, nephew, I'll turn it over to you. At the time the boat was
right in Sha-shi, the district capital.
4. From town I crossed the river and went to the district capital to see to
preparations for the trip. At night the sky looked quite bad, with dense clouds
spread out on all sides. By daybreak the sky had cleared, and there were small
ripples on the surface of the river. The atmosphere was clear and lovely. I
took a short rest when I reached Yellow Rapids. In Wang Shi-pengs col
lected works this is written Yellow AltarM there must have been a reason.
5. I went to the river to get a look at the boat that Uncle Jing-ting had given
me, and it was quite sturdy. I got in the boat and made tea using river
water_ it was excellent. Then I took a stroll in the marketplace, recalling
when I came here twenty years before, with the girls like clouds Too bad
that its so dreary and deserted now .. . .
[Yuan Zhong-dao sets off on the river. Any expectation of escaping the circle of
friends and their demands would prove illusory but one suspects that Zhong-dao
never really wanted privacy in the first place. Letters also reach him.]
12. I received a letter from my brother Hong-dao in which he said, Now

I really understand that I cannot be an active, enthusiastic officialmy only
fear is that I cant get away from this quickly.MYou can tell what was on
his mind. I got a letter from Li Ben-ning that said, I recently read the Yuyang Collection and didnt know about the poems On the Words Wild
Goose.w When its convenient, I would be grateful if you would copy them
out and send them to me. I had actually written that poem in the spring
of 1606. Subsequently the monk Wu-ji wrote two more poems on the
topic. Next Hong-dao and I locked horns in competition in front of Ju-luo
Pavilion and together did ten more poems on the topic. Long Zhu-ling later
saw them and admired them, and he too did ten matching poems. Long
Jun-zhao also did ten matching poems, while the two official astrologers
Zeng and Lei did two poems apiece. I had my poem printed in my Yundang Collection. .
29. I embarked to go back to Gong-an and spent the night at He Cave.
There was nothing else to do in the boat, so I read, revised poems, burned
incense, made tea, and did calligraphy on fans. Thus I passed a day in ease.
30. I got in the boat with my uncles Gong San-mu, Gong Jing-ting, and
Gong Fang-ping. We moved the boat to the sandy beach on the northern
shore, where we sat on mats and drew characters in the sand to amuse our
selves. I got some intuition of the excellence of the ancients in making seal
impressions in clay and drawing in sand. The wind grew a little stronger,
and we moved closer to the water's edge and listened to the waters churn
825
ing. We boiled a fish and heated wine, then lay back drunk and sang bois
terously. We saw the evening sun turn blood red and decorate the isles and
sandbars.. . .
32. Night, there was a great blizzard. I had wanted to get in the boat and
go to Sha-shi, but was finally prevented by the snowfall. Nevertheless, the
bits of snow struck against the thousands of stalks of bamboo and made a
tinkling sound. With the window dark and the fire red, I read a few chap
ters as my whim took me, but found little interest in them. And I thought it
was too bad that whenever I wanted to go somewhere, something would
come up that would keep me from it; still, I go when the course of things in
dicates, and when thwarted, I stop~I just go with the flow. This is what
Huang Ting-jian meant by: There is no spot I cannot find lodging for a
dream.
These are just a few incidents from the early pages of Yuan Zhong-dao's diary, which
goes on in this vein, detailing the small pleasures, pains, and incidents of that pe
riod of his life, for 310 pages in a modern edition (it would be about two to three
times as long in English translation). Less than forty years later, we have a diary of
a very different sort short, and covering only ten days. But they were ten memo
rable days. The subtlety and cultivated ease of the late Ming has quite gone.
In 1645, Shi Ke-fa, commander of the Southern Ming forces, decided to make
his stand against the advancing Qing armies in the city of Yang-zhou. After a siege
of only seven days, the city fell, and what followed was the bloodiest chapter in the
Qing conquest of the Ming.
Qing critics, perhaps unfairly, sometimes blamed late Ming aesthetic and intel
lectual culture for the fall of the dynasty. The late Ming sensibility, with its focus on
private life and inner experience at the expense of concern for the polity, was af
terward seen as decadence. The citizenry of Yang-zhou certainly paid a terrible price
for their passivity and inability to act in their own defense, but they possessed the
ability to tell the story with an intensity of detail that makes it still memorable, and
that ability derived in no small part from an art of diary and "minor pieces" fostered
in an age of heedless peace.
Wang Xiu-chu, from Ten Days of Yang-zhouw

On the fourteenth of the fourth month in 1645, the High Commander Shi
Ke-fa couldnt hold his position on the Bai-yang River and fled to Yang-zhou
in disarray, closing the city walls tight to withstand the enemy. Up to the
twenty-fourth, the walls had not yet been breached.
There were soldiers defending each of the gates that controlled access to
the city. My own house was in the western part of the city, whose defense
was under the command of someone named Yang. Soldiers and staff were
distributed everywhere. I had two billeted in my house, as did each of the
houses around me. These soldiers acted in a shamelessly overbearing way,
and more than a thousand cash a day was spent to provide for them. Even
tually we had no choice but to make plans as a group to entertain their com
manding officer, and I even went to such lengths as to treat him with great
deference, so that our relations gradually became cordial. The commanding
officer was delighted and warned his troops to keep away from us.
This commanding officer liked music and was good mandolin player. He
wanted to get some well-known courtesan to entertain him in his time off
from his military duties. That evening he had invited us to drink with him.
Everyone present was ready to indulge himself freely when all of a sudden
a note came from the high commander; the officer looked it over and the
color drained from his face. Immediately he went atop the walls, and all of
us dispersed to our homes.
The next morning the high commanders proclamation was read outand
when it came to the words, So long as there is one man in the city to with
stand them, they will not oppress the common folk/all who heard it were
stirred to tears. We also got news that a patrol had achieved a minor vic
tory, and everyone touched their foreheads in celebration.
After middayone of my wifes relations came from Gua-zhou to get
away from the fleeing troops of the Earl of Xing-ping (Gao Jie was the Earl
of Xing-ping, and the high commander had dispatched him out of the city
to hold himself at a distance). Since my wife had not seen her in a long time,
they were sobbing when they met; but I had already been told by several
people that enemy troops had entered the walls. I quickly went out to see
what I could find out, and someone saidThe relief column of Huang De
gong, the Count of Jing-nan, has arrived. Then I observed that the troops
defending the wall were maintaining strict discipline. Next I went to the mar
ket, where there was an uproar of people talking. Men with their hair hang
ing loose and in bare feet appeared right afterward. I asked them what was
happening, but they were in such a state of panic and so out of breath that
they werent able to answer me. All of a sudden a few dozen horsemen went
galloping from the north toward the south in a disorderly mass like a surg
ing wave; they were closely gathered around a single manit was the high
commander. It turned out that they had fled out to the east of the walls, but
couldnt get through the soldiers assaulting the city, then had decided to flee
through the south gates and thus had passed through here.6 At this point I
realized that there was no doubt the enemy had entered the city.
Abruptly a single horseman appeared going from north to south. He had
let the reins drop and was going slowly, looking upward and crying out in
despairin front of him two foot soldiers led the horse by the bit and, out
of affection, wouldnt abandon himto this day I can see the picture clearly
in my eyes, and I regret never having learned his name. When that horse
man had gotten some distance away, the men who had been defending the
wall began to come down in droves to hide, throwing away all their helmets
6When the Manchu troops had broken through Yang~zhou's defenses, Shi Ke-fa tried to commit sui
cide, but was saved by his escort and taken out of the city, where the Manchus eventually captured
him and killed him.
827
and weapons. Together with them were those with head wounds and bro
ken legs; and when I turned and looked at the wall towers, they were al
ready completely empty.
Seeing that the city walls were too narrow to set up his cannons, the high
commander had earlier ordered plank scaffolding to be erected on the para
pets; room was left in the front for passage along the wall, while the back
part reached to the roofs of peoples houses, allowing extra space so that it
could rest secure. Before this work was completed, the first of the enemy
over the wall clasped their bows and descended with naked blades. The sol
diers defending the wall were jammed against one another; and since the way
was blocked off in front of them, they all escaped on the wooden planking.
Crawling along, some managed to reach the roofs; but the new planking wasn
t firmly fixed, and all at once the footing gave way; men were falling like
leaves, and ninety percent died. Those who reached the roofs broke tiles
wherever they stepped, all making sounds like swords and pikes striking one
another, or like a rain of hailstones or shot; the clanking and crashing
echoed all around without letup, and the people in the houses were in utter
terror and frantic, not knowing what to do. Inside and outside main halls
and deep into the womens apartments, everywhere the soldiers who had
been defending the wall were climbing down from roofs and in their fear
looking for some cubbyhole in which to hide themselves. The owners of the
houses yelled at them but couldnt stop them. Doors to corridors and be
tween adjoining rooms were shut, and all evidence of human habitation was
hidden from sight.
The back of my main hall faced the wall, and from a crack in my win
dow I peered out and saw soldiers moving along the wall south and then
west. They were marching in strict order and even in the heavy rain they
showed not the least suggestion of disarray, so I guessed they were a force
sent to bring the situation under control, and at that my heart calmed down
a little. Suddenly there was an urgent knocking at my door. This turned out
to be one of my neighbors, who wanted me agree to go out as a group to
welcome the Qing troops and set up a table with burning incense to show
that we were not resisting. Even though I knew this wouldnt workI still
wouldn't go against the consensus of the group and at the moment answered,
All right. Then I changed into clothes of a different color and kept a look
out, but for a long time no one showed up.
When I went back to the rear window to get a look at what was hap
pening on the wall, the companies of soldiers had somewhat thinned out;
some were on the move and some were standing still. All at once I saw that
there were some walking with women clustered among them, and I noticed
that the colors of the womens clothes were all in the Yang-zhou fashion.
Then I became very alarmed. I went back and said to my wife, The soldiers
are in the city. If something unforeseen should happen, you will have to com
mit suicide. My wife agreed and saidI have a certain amount of silver
that I want to turn over to you to take care of. We women no longer can
envision staying alive in this world. And with tears streaming down her
face, she got out her silver and gave it to'me.
At this point a domestic came inshouting urgently, Theyre here!
Theyre here! I rushed out, and looking north I saw several horsemen com
ing, holding the reins and moving slowly. At once the man who had gone
out to welcome the Qing troops bowed his head as though something had
been said. At the time everyone was watching out for himself, and there was
no normal interchange~even people a few feet away made no comment.
When they got somewhat closer, I realized that they were going from house
to house looking for money. Still their intentions seemed rather moderate:
as soon as they got a little something, they would let people go and demand
no more. Some people wouldnt give them what they wanted, but even
though they would hold them at sword point, they still didnt hurt anyone.
When I later learned that someone had been killed even though he made an
offering of ten thousand taels, it was, in fact, because people from Yangzhou itself had led the enemy soldiers to do it.
Next they reached my threshold. One horseman singled me out, point
ing to me and shouting to the horseman behind him, Get something from
the one with the indigo blue gown. At that the horseman behind dis
mounted, but I had already fled and hidden myself. Thereupon the rear
horseman let me gomounted up again, and left. I tried to figure it out to
myself. Im dressed in rough clothing like a servantwhy did they single
me out? After that my younger brother showed up, and one of my older
brothers also came. I discussed with them what should be done: The resi
dences all around me belong to rich merchants. What am I going to do if
they take me for a rich merchant as well? I then entrusted my wife and the
others to my eldest brother; he was to go out in the rain and take them as
quickly as possible by back lanes to the house of my next oldest brother.
His house lay behind the He family tombs, a stinkhole inhabited entirely by
poor people.
I stayed on at the house by myself to-see what would happen. All at once
my oldest brother showed up and said, The main roads are splattered with
blood. What are you waiting for staying here? If we brothers can stay to
gether dead or alive, we should have no regrets. So I reverently took the
familys ancestral tablets in my hands and went with my eldest brother to
the house of my other older brother. At that time one older and one younger
brother, his wife and her child, along with my wife and one child, my two
sisters-in-law, and one brother-in-law all took refuge in my brothers house.
Dusk was gradually falling, and the sounds of enemy soldiers killing peo
ple came from outside the gate, so we climbed up on the roof to hide for the
time being. The rain was very heavy, and a dozen of us were huddled to
gether in one rug, everyones hair drenched. Outside the gate the voices cry
ing out in pain kept ear and soul in a state of terror on into the night, when
all gradually grew still. Only then did we dare get down from the roof, climb
ing down from the eaves, and lit a fire to cook our meal. Inside the city fires
829
had started up on every side_ a dozen or so places nearby and more than
we could count farther away. Red beams of light glinted like bolts of light
ning, and the crackling sounds roared endlessly in our ears. We also heard
the muffled sounds of blows being struck, and now and again we would look
around in anguish the misery was beyond description. When the food was
ready, we looked at one another in such a state of shock that no one could
use their chopsticks and no one could suggest a plan as to what to do. My
wife took out the silver and broke it into four equal parts. My three broth
ers and I each hid one part. It was everywherein our hair, in our shoes, in
our clothes, in our sashes. My wife also found a worn-out robe and some
battered shoes for me so that I could be comfortable, and then I lay with my
eyes wide open all the way to dawn. A bird was singing in the sky that night,
its voice like the notes of a reed mouth organand there were also sounds
like a baby crying, all not far from our heads. Later I asked the others about
it, and they had all heard it too.
The twenty-sixth: After a while the force of the fires died down a bit. As
the sky gradually grew brighter, we once again climbed up on the roof to
keep out of sightand there were already a dozen people hiding in the roof
drains. All of a sudden by the eastern porch a man climbed up over the wall;
a soldier was following him sword in hand, bounding along in pursuit as if
flying. He looked and saw us, and the group of pursuers gave up on the man
they had been chasing and ran in my direction. I was shaking with fear and
immediately fled down from the roof; my elder brothers came next, and then
my younger brother. After we had run over a hundred paces, we stopped.
And from this point on I lost track of my wife and child, not knowing
whether they lived or died.
The cunning soldiers were afraid that too many people would hide them
selves, so they deceived people by claiming there were orders to bring calm
to the populace and that there would be no executions. People in hiding
scrambled to come out and follow them, and they had gathered a group of
fifty or sixty, with women making up half. My elder brother said, The four
of us are helpless, and if we run into rampaging soldiers who ignore the or
ders, we wont escape. It would be better to join this large group where it
will be easier to hide. And if it doesnt go well, I wont regret it as long as
we can die together
At that time our minds were in turmoil, and we did
n't know what the best stratagem would be to save our lives. So we all agreed
and together went to join the group.
There were three Manchu soldiers in charge of the group. They searched
everyone for silver and money, and my brothers were cleaned out of every
thing they carried, leaving only me unsearched. All of a sudden some peo
ple called out to me from the group of women. I looked closely and saw that
they were the two concubines of my friend Zhu Shu. I hurriedly stopped
them. Both women had disheveled hair and their flesh was showingtheir
feet were mired deep in the mud up to their calves. One of the women was
still carrying her baby daughter. A soldier hit them with his whip and threw
the baby into the mud, then drove everyone on. One soldier led the way
'.
830
holding a sword; a second soldier brought up the rear hefting a long spear
the third soldier sometimes stayed in the group and sometimes went to ei
ther side of it to keep anyone from escaping. The several dozen men were
driven along like dogs and sheep; if there was the least holding back, the
soldiers would immediately beat the person and sometimes kill him on the
spot. All the women were tied at the neck by a long rope, like pearls on a
stringthey would stumble at every other step, and their bodies were cov
ered in mud.7 Babies lay everywhere on the ground, some in between the
hooves of horses and some under peoples feet; brains and internal organs
were smeared on the ground, and the sound of wailing filled the wilderness.
We walked across ditches and pools stuffed with piles of corpses, hands
and feet layered on one another. The blood, flowing into the water, reddened
its sapphire blue and made it multicolored. The canal was filled in until it
was level with the ground. We came to the compound that had belonged to
Judge Yao Yong-yan of the Court of Judicial Review and entered directly
through the rear gate. The building held a deep maze of rooms, and every
where there were piles of corpses. I thought for sure that this would be the
place I was to die. But we wound our way through the rooms until we
reached the front door, then went out into the street and came to another
compound, which was the house of the western merchant Qiao Chengwang. This was the lair of the three soldiers.
We entered the gate, and one soldier was already there holding several
beautiful women captive inside. Baskets and hampers had been sorted
throughand brightly colored silks were heaped like mountains. When this
soldier saw that the three others had arrived, he gave a loud laugh and im
mediately drove our group, the several dozen men, to the rear banquet hall,
while keeping the women in a side chamber. In that chamber two square ta
bles were set up, with three seamstresses and a middle-aged woman mak
ing clothes. That woman was from Yang-zhou; she was heavily made up in
an elegant style and was dressed in splendid clothes with an elaborate hairdo.
She was smiling and chattering as she gave orders. She appeared cheerful
and quite content, and whenever she found something nice, she would im
mediately turn to the soldiers and beg to have it with wheedling, ingratiat
ing airs. I regretted that I couldnt snatch one of those soldiers swords and
cut the vile creature down. At one point a soldier said to the men, When
we were on the Korean campaign, we captured tens of thousands of women,
and not one of them failed to keep her honor. How is it that glorious China
has reached this level of shamelessness?wAnd this, alas, is how China came
to these troubles.
The three soldiers then ordered the women to take off all their wet
clothes, outer garments and underclothes from tip to toe. At the same time
they ordered the women making clothes to measure them for length and girth
to furnish them a change of fresh clothing. Under duress the women had no
7The women's difficulty in walking is no doubt due to their bound feetmaking it impossible to keep
pace in the muddy streets.
831
choice and were compelled to face them naked, with their private parts all
exposed, and they looked like they would die of shame~the scene was be
yond description. When the women had finished changing, they herded
them over to drink wine, while keeping up an endless stream of joking and
chatter. All of a sudden one of the soldiers hefted his sword and leapt up,
shouting sharply to those in the rear banquet hall, Gome on, Southerners,
come on! Several men who approached had already been tied upand my
eldest brother was among them. My next oldest brother said, Since the sit
uation has come to this, what more can I say? He then quickly took hold
of my hand and pulled me forward; my younger brother also followed him.
At that time there were over fifty males who had been captured; with the
mere lifting of a sword and a single shout, their souls took flight, and not a
single man failed to go forward. As I followed my older brother out of the
rear banquet hall, I saw that outside they were killing the men, and the group
just stood in line, each awaiting his fate. At first I had thought that I too
would willingly go to be tied up, but all at once, as if by divine aid, my heart
balked, and I fled back into the rear banquet hall to hide. And none of those
more than fifty men realized it.
The rooms on the west side at the back of the banquet hall still held all
the old women, so I couldnt hide there. I went through the central hall to
a back room, and it was filled with camels and horses feeding so that I couldnt get through. I felt an increasing sense of desperation, so I crouched down
and went under the animals bellies and came out on the other side after
crawling under several bellies. If I had startled one of those camels or horses
and one had lifted its hoof just a little, I would have immediately been
smashed into mush. I passed through several more levels of rooms, but none
offered a route of escape. Only at the side was there a rear gate that led to
an alley, but the soldiers had already shut this gate tight with a long spike.
I went from the rear alley back toward the front of the compound and
heard the sounds of killing in the front hall; at this my terror increased and
I saw no recourse. I looked around and the kitchen was over to the left. The
four men in it had been taken to serve as cooks. I asked if they would let me
join them, thinking that if they used me to perform menial tasks such as tend
ing the fire or drawing water, I might have a chance. But the four men
adamantly refused, saying, The four of us were selected for this task. If we
pick someone else and add to out number, they will surely suspect us of try
ing to put something over on them, and ruin will come to us
When I wouldnt stop pleading, they got even more furious and wanted to seize me and
take me outside.
Then I left and felt even more panic. I looked and saw that in front of
the stairs there was a wooden frame, on which there was a jug. It wasnt
very far from the room, so I climbed up on the framebut as soon as my
hand reached the jug, I lost my balance and fell, because the jug was empty
inside and I had been exerting too much force.
Nothing could be done about it5 so I ran quickly to the side alley gate
and hit the spike with both my hands and shook it a hundred times. But I
832
couldnt budge it. I then used a stone to hit it, and the sound reached the
outer courtyardI was terrified they would be alerted. I had no choice but
to again use all my strength to move it. My fingers were cut and blood
flowed, trickling in a stream down to both elbows. Suddenly the spike
moved; and using all my strength, I pulled on it. When the spike was in my
hand, I hastily worked at the bolt of the gate. The bolt was made of hibis
cus wood, and swollen from having been soaked by the rain, so that it was
twice as tight as the spike. I was desperate in the extreme, and the only thing
I could do was to force the bolt. I couldnt pull the bolt, but the hinges sud
denly snapped, and the door of the gate collapsed with a sound like thun
der. I quickly leapt up and flew through the opening, and I still dont know
where my strength came from. I ran quickly out the back gate and was right
at the foot of the city wall.
At the time soldiers and horsemen were everywhere one went. Unable
to go on, I ducked into the rear gate of the neighbor to the left of the Qiao
compound. Every place a person could hide had someone in it, and they
would never let anyone else in. Going from the rear to the front of the com
pound, I tried five times to get into a hiding place, and in each case it turned
out the same way. When I reached the main gate overlooking the street, there
were soldiers going back and forth in an unbroken stream. Everyone else
had deserted the street as being too dangerous a place to stay. I hurried back
in and found a bed. At the head of the bed was a canopy frame. After climb
ing up the post and curling up inside itmy panting subsided. All of a sud
den I heard my younger brother crying out on the other side of the wall
then
I heard the sound of a sword choppingafter three chopping sounds, all was
silent. After a short interval I again heard my second oldest brother say with
desperate earnestness, I have silver in the cellar of my house; let me go and
Ill give it to you. There was a blow and again it was silent. . .
The narrator's troubles were far from over. When he finally found his wife and what
was left of the family, the nightmare was just beginning.
/ u Vernacular Stories:
Feng Meng-long and Lang-xian
Although the Song Dynasty is the age in which the origins of printed vernacular fic
tion and the setting for many stories emerged, the earliest actual printed vernacular
stoties date from the Yuan and early Ming in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
Early vernacular stories drew on the plots of stories in the classical language and
covered the same range of themes, from tales of the supernatural to romance. To
this, however, were added new topics in an urban setting, such as stories of crime
and court cases.
Beyond the core of plot, vernacular fiction's resemblance to classical fiction
ceases. Early vernacular stories also evoke the ethos of storytelling~addressing the
reader, digressing, offering frequent judgments, citing verses, and giving descriptive
passages in rhythmic prose. Characterization is more developed and the settings are
described in more detail. Vernacular dialogue opened possibilities of nuance in ex
pression that were impossible in the classical language.
Vernacular stories continued to be published throughout the Ming, but the form
saw a major resurgence toward the end of the dynasty, in the early seventeenth
century. In that remarkable era of fascination with all that was unconventional,
Serious intellectuals for the first time turned their attention to collecting popular
literature and writing in the vernacular. Feng Meng-long (1574-1646) is now rec
ognized as the central figure in this interest in vernacular literature. Feng collected
folksongs and jokes, wrote plays and lyrics for popular songs, and elaborated old
novels. In addition, he published three large collections of stories, some from his
own hand.
"Du Tenth Sinks the Jewel Box in Anger," from Feng's collection Common
Words to Warn the World (Jing-shi tong-yan), is based on a classical tale and serves
as a good example of the conventions of vernacular stories. There is a long, chatty
introduction setting the historical background, and, like a storyteller, the narrator
breaks into the action with poems, wise sayings, and judgments.
Sixteenth-century China enjoyed a commercial boom comparable to that of
contemporary Europe. The Song Dynasty may have seen the beginning of an urban
mercantile culture, but the Ming of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries wit
nessed its maturity. In Tang tales of romance, economic questions were sometimes
present, but they were usually kept just beneath the surface; "Du Tenth Sinks the
Jewel Box in Anger" belongs to a long tradition of courtesan romances, but here
the exact costs, debts, and the balancing of accounts become central to the story.
his is a world of commerce, in which objects are commodities with prices prices
that are sometimes set on things that should not belong in a world of commercial
exchange.
834
Feng Meng-Iong (1574-1646) Du Tenth Sinks the Jewel Box

in Anger (from Common Words to Warn the World)
Translated by Robert Ashmore
The last barbarians swept away, the imperial seat is established
soaring dragons and dancing phoenixes a majestic scene!
To the left, encircled in a sash of east-sea sky;
to the right, hugged by Tai-hangs ten-thousand-mountain walls.1
Halberd and spear: the nine frontiers held in sway to the utmost passes;
gown and cap: the myriad fiefdoms look up in reverence to the
serene robes of state.
In a peaceful age, the people rejoice in the realm of Hua-xu;2
for ever and ever, a golden jar gleaming in the sun.3
This poem is devoted to the praise of our dynasty's founding of the capital
at Yan.4As for the situation of the Yan capital, it is guarded to the north by
towering passes) and commands the region of central China to the south. It
is truly a golden citadel, a heavenly mansion, a foundation not to be top
pled in ten thousand years! In the beginning, Granddad Hong-wu swept
away the barbarian dust and established his reign at Jin-ling.5This is the cap
ital known as Nanjing. When Granddad Yong-le led his troops out of Beiping to pacify the turm oil
6the capital was removed to Yan. This is the cap
ital known as Beijing. And all as a result of this removal, what had been a
region of bleak chill was transformed into a realm of flowered brocade. From
Granddad Yong-le the throne passed down through nine generations to
Granddad Wan-li,7the eleventh Son of Heaven of our dynasty. He was wise
and strong, perfect in both virtue and good fortune. He succeeded to the
kingdom at the age of ten and ruled for forty-eight years, during which time
he put down three armed uprisings. Which three were they?
The Prime Minister Toyotomi Hideyoshi of Japan, Bei Cheng-en of the
Xi-xia, and Yang Ying-long of Bo-zhou.8
1_The Bohai Gulf and the Tai-hang Mountain Range formed parts, respectively, of the eastern and
southwestern borders of the Northern capital zone in the Ming. The directions "left" and "right"' here,
as in old Chinese maps, assume a viewer facing south.
2Hua-xu: a legendary state characterized by natural and social tranquility.
3"Golden ja r :a poetic figure for the solidity and permanence of a nation's borders.
4Yan is the ancient name for the region of Beijing.
5The Hong-wu emperor Zhu Yuan-zhang (13281398) founded the Ming Dynasty in 1368 after de
feating the Mongol Yuan Dynasty.
6The Yong-le emperor Zhu Di (1360-1424), believed to have been Zhu Yuan-zhang's son by a lesser
consort, successfully usurped the throne from his nephew, the Jian-wen emperor Zhu Yun-wen
(1377-1402?); in a civil war lasting from 1399 to 1402. Zhu Di subsequently went to great lengths
to justify his right of succession, and to depict his own victory in the civil war as the "pacification
of turmoil."
7Zhu Yi-jun (1563-1620), emperor from 1573 to 1620.
8Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536-1598) gained the title kanpaku, or "prime minister/' in 1587. At this
point, he was effectively military ruler of Japan. He orchestrated invasions of the Korean peninsula
in 1592 and 1597.
835
Toyotomi Hideyoshi invaded Korea, and Bei Cheng-en and Yang Yinglong were native officials9who plotted revolt; they were put down one after
the other. There were none among the distant tribes who were not fright
ened into submission, and they strove with one another to pay homage and
tribute. Truly
One mans blessed fortune brings content to all;
No trouble within the four seas mars the nations peace.
Our story picks up during the twentieth year of the Wan-li period,1 when
the Japanese Prime Minister created discord by invading Korea. The King
of Korea submitted a missive requesting assistance, and our celestial court
dispatched troops to traverse the sea and go to the rescue. Around this time,
a proposal by a Bureau of Households official was granted approval, to this
effect
In view of the present armed strife, our logistical supplies are insufficient. Let
us provisionally adopt the precedent of accepting payment in exchange for po
sitions in the imperial academy.. . .
Now it turns out that there were several types of advantage for those who
bought academy scholar status in this way: it made it easier to study, easier
to participate in the civil service exams, and easier to pass. All in all, it added
up to a nice little prospect for career advancement. For this reason, the young
masters of official families and the scions of wealthy houses became un
willing to take the ordinary licentiates5exam, preferring to take advantage
of the quota and become academy scholars. Following the implementation
of this practice, the number of scholars at the academies at each of the two
capitals rose to over a thousand.
Among this number there was a young man surnamed Li, named Jia, with
the cognomen Gan-xian, a native of Shao-xing Prefecture in Zhejiang. He
was the eldest of the three sons of his father, Provincial Commissioner Li.
From childhood he had been studying in the local school, but had not yet
passed the district licentiatesexamination. At this time he entered the acad
emy at the Northern capital under the new provision. When he had been
enrolled as an academy scholar, he would pass the time in the compound of
the Ministry of Music2 along with his townsman the academy scholar Liu
9Bo Cheng-en (d. 1592), along with his father, Bo Bai, led a military uprising on the northwestern
frontier of the Ming in 1591; they were both killed when the uprising was put down by Ming troops.
Yang Ying-long (d. 1600) was a hereditary leader under the Ming of the Miao ethnic minority in the
Southwest. He led sporadic raids in the border region between Sichuan and Gui-zhou, sometimes
escalating into full-scale revolt, from 1587 until his defeat and suicide in 1600. Ethnic enclaves in
remote regions were administered on behalf of the Ming by dominant members of the
ocaethnic
group; once granted, the posts became hereditary.
M 592 in the Western calendar.
2 riginally a kind of imperial conservatory for the training and maintenance of musicians and
dancers for the court, by the Ming, the term "Ministry of Music" could also be loosely applied to
privately run brothels.
836
Yu-chun. There he encountered a famous courtesan. She was surnamed Du,

named Mei, and was tenth-born of her generation, so in the quarters every
one called her Du Tenth.
She was
High-toned allure from head to toe;
every inch coy scent.
Two arcs of eyebrow traced with green of distant hills;

a pair of eyes bright with welling autumn floods.
Face like a lotus bud~just like Wen-jun of the Zhuo clan;3
lips like cherriesnot a jot inferior to Fan-su of the Bai
household.4
Pity this slip of flawless jade
that fell by mistake amid whoredoms flowers and willows!
Du Tenth had lost her maidenhead at the age of thirteenand was at this
time nineteen. During those seven years there is no telling how many
lordlings and ducal heirs she had gone through, leaving each of them wan
ton and besotted with passionthey wrecked households and squandered
fortunes without the least regret. A jingle circulated around the quarters that
went:
When Tenth attends a drinking bout
abstainers quaff till the wine runs out.
When dandies meet Mei on their rounds,
They swear the rest all look like hounds.
Now our young master Li was a dashing fellow who had never before
encountered real womanly charms. When he ran into Du Tenth, his happi
ness exceeded all expectation. He took the whole burden of his youthful pas
sion and loaded it on her alone. Our young master had a handsome face and
a tender disposition, besides being a big spender and quick to say the right
thing. So he and Du Tenth became an inseparable couple who got along in
everything. Tenth, knowing how greedy and unjust her madam was, had
long been meaning to go straight. Furthermore, when she noticed how sin
cere and earnest young master Li was toward her, she was very much in
clined to throw in her lot with him. The thing was that master Li was deathly
afraid of his old man, and did not dare take her up on her proposal. Nonethe
less, the two grew ever more devoted to one another, and happily spent both
day and night in each others company, just like a married couple. They
swore by seas and vowed by mountains that they would never have thoughts
of another. Truly,
3Zhuo Wen-jun was the wife of the Han Dynasty writer Si-ma Xiang-ru.
4Fan-su was a singing-girl in the household of the Tang poet Bai Ju-yi.
837
Affection as deep as an unfathomed sea;

Loyalty as heavy as mountains, but higher.
Now as for Tenths madamwhat she saw was her girl being monopo
lized by Master Linone of those other worthy heirs and lordlings who were
drawn by Tenths reputation could get so much as a peek. In the beginning,
when Master Li was spending in grand style, the madam would hunch up
her shoulders and laugh ingratiatingly, playing up to him for all she was
worth. But days and months went by, and before they knew it, it had been
over a year. Master Lis coffers gradually grew empty, and he was unable
to spend according to his hearts desires. Then the madam began to snub
him. And when old Commissioner Li back home heard that his son was pass
ing his time whoring in the pleasure district, he repeatedly sent letters call
ing him back home. But Master Li was befuddled with Tenths charms, and
was forever putting off his departure. Later on he heard that his old man
was in a towering rage at home, and he became more unwilling than ever
to go back. The ancients said, friendship based on profit grows cold when
profit runs dry But that Du Tenth had a real affection for Master Li, and
the more she saw the hard financial straits he was in, the warmer she grew
toward him. Her madam told her repeatedly to send Li Jia away from the
premises, and when the madam saw that her girl was paying her no mind,
she began herself making verbal attacks on Master Li, in hopes of angering
him and thus provoking him to take his leave. But the young master was
mannerly and subdued by nature, and only became ever more accommo
dating in his tone.
The madam had nothing for it, and could only browbeat Tenth day in
and day out, saying, In our profession we rely on our guests for both food
and clothing. We see off the old at the back gate and welcome the new at
the front. Our forecourt stays as lively as a house on fire, and money piles
up in a heap. That Li Jia has been hanging around here for over a year now.
Forget about new guests, even our old patrons have been cut out of the pic
ture. Its clear as clear can be that its a ghost-catcher youve brought in
here~not even a little ghost would dare set foot in this door! Its to the point
where your old ladys household is running on nothing but wind. What way
is this to do business?
Du Tenth could not remain silent in the face of this dressing-down, and
answered, Master Li didnt show up here empty-handed. He
s spent big
money.MThe madam saidThat was thenthis is now. You just tell him to
go and spend some little money to keep your old lady and you in rice and
firewood, and thatll do. Those girls in the other houses are all money
trees it
s just like magic. Why does it have to be my place thats got all the
bad luck? Ive raised a money-losing white tiger. Every one of the seven ne
cessities has to be seen to by my poor old self.5 And its to the point where
sThe "seven necessities" were firewood, rice, cooking oil, salt, soybean paste, vinegar, and tea, re
ferring generally to day-to-day household expenses.
I have to see to the upkeep of this. Bum of yours, you lousy slut! Where are
my clothes and food supposed to come from? You go and tell that bum if
hes worth anything let him give me a few ounces of silver and buy you out
so you can go off with him. Then I can find another girl to support me. How
about that?
*
1
Tenth said, Mamado you mean that or are you just kidding? The
madam knew that Li Jia had not a penny to his name, and had even pawned
all his clothes. She figured he
d never be able to bring it off. So she replied,
When has your old lady ever told a lie? O f course I mean it. Tenth said
M ahow much money do you want from himP The madam said, If it
were anyone else, I
d ask for a thousand or so. But I know that bum cant
afford it, so Ill just ask for three hundred. Then I can go find another tart
to take your place. But theres just one thing: he
s got to give me the money
within three days. Fll hand you over to him as soon as he hands me the cash.
But if he hasnt got it within three days, then Im not going to trouble my
old self about any 'Master5this or 'Master5that"Ill cudgel his footsoles,
and drive that vagrant right out the door. And when that day comes, dont
you go finding fault with poor old me!
Tenth said, Though the young master may be a little strapped for cash
here this far from home, Im sure he can raise three hundred. But three days
is such a short time. Give him ten, and you5ve got a deal. The madam
thought to herself, This bum has got nothing but a pair of empty hands.
Even if I gave him a hundred days, where would he ever get the money? And
if he cant raise the money, then no matter how shameless he may be, I
ll bet
he wont have the nerve to show his face at this door again. Then I can put
this house back in style, and Mei wont have a thing to say about it. She
answered, For your sake, then. Ill give him ten days. But if the tenth day
comes and he hasnt got the money, dont go trying to blame it on me.
Tenth saidIf he hasnt raised the money inside of ten days, then Ill bet
he wont have the gall to come back here. I
m just afraid that if he gets the
three hundred taels of silver, Mama may have second thoughts. The madam
said, KMy poor old self is now fifty-one years old, and I carefully keep the
ten fast-days.6 How should I dare to tell a lie? If you dont believe me, we
can slap hands and swear on it. If I go back on my word, let me be reborn
as a pig or a dog.
The oceans water cant be guessed in cups;
that farcical old bawd has no goodwill.
Shes sure the struggling scholars purse is dry,
and speaks of marriage gifts to trick the girl.
That night, Tenth and the young master discussed their future as they
lay in bed. The young master said, Its not that I dont want this to work
out. But getting a girls name off the courtesans register is extremely ex6The ten days in each month on which Buddhist lay believers were forbidden to eat meat or slaugh
ter animals.
M9
pensive. Nothing less than a thousand taels will do the trick. My purse is
empty, down to the last speck. What can I do about it? Tenth said, I
ve
already got Ma to agree to only three hundred, but it
s got to be raised within
ten days. I know youve used up all your traveling funds, but dont you have
any friends or relatives in the capital who might lend you some? If you can
raise the set amount, then I shall be yours alone, and we can be spared the
overbearing behavior of that evil woman. The young master saidMy re
lations and friends have had nothing to do with me since I began spending
all my time in the pleasure quarters. Tomorrow Ill pack up my things and
set out, going to each house as if to take my leave. Then I
ll bring up the
topic of borrowing some money for traveling expenses. If I pool it all to
gether, perhaps I could reach that figure
He got up and dressed, said goodbye to Tenth, and set out. Tenth said,
Be sure to be quick about it. I will be waiting here for good news. The
young master saidI need no reminding about that. He set out from the
gate of the quarters and went in turn to the places of his various relatives
and friends, pretending that he was setting off for home and had come to
take his leave. When they heard he was headed home, they were in fact glad
to hear it. But then he came to the part about lacking traveling money and
hoping to borrow some. The adage has it that the mention of money dis
solves predestined ties
His friends and relatives did not respond to his pitch,
and, to tell the truth, they had good reason. They thought to themselves,
Here is this Master Li, a big-spending wastrel, enchanted with high living.
He
s been dallying here a year or so, and his father at home is sick with fury.
And today he suddenly wants to set off on his return? There is no telling if
this is real or an act. And what if it should turn out that the money he col
lects as 'traveling expenses ends up being paid out on whoring debts? If his
father should get wind of it, hed take our good intentions as bad ones . . .
One way or another we
re sure to end up on somebodys bad side, so when
all is said and done, its cleaner just to turn him down. And so they an
swered, It just happens we
re a little short at the moment, and unfortunately
cant help you out. Its really most embarrassing.. . . And it was the same
with each and every one of them; there was not a single man of noble sen
timent to agree to spot him ten or twenty.
Master Li rushed about for three days in a row without a thing to show
for it. He did not dare go back to tell Tenth it was no good, so he just made
equivocal replies to buy time. When the fourth day came and he still hadnt
come up with a plan, he felt too embarrassed to return to the quarters. And
since he
d been staying at Du Meis place lately, he did not even have lodg
ings of his own. So at this point he found himself with no place to spend the
night. All he could do was go to the lodgings of his townsman, the academy
scholar Liu
to stay over. When Liu Yu-chun saw the worry clouding the young
masters face, he asked him what he had been up to. The young master told
him all about how Du Tenth wanted to marry him. Yu-chun shook his head,
sayingI wouldnt be so sure about that. That Du Mei is the number-one
courtesan in the pleasure district. If she wanted to go straight, wouldnt there
840
have to be a marriage gift of ten measures of pearls and a good thousand in

silver? How could that madam just ask for three hundred? I bet the madam
is just down on you for having no moriey to spend, and taking up her girls
time for nothing. Shes made up a plan to get you out of her house. As for the
girl herself, shes been with you for a long time, and feels too much com
punction to say it outright. She knows good and well youre empty-handed.
But by setting this price of three hundred taels, and giving you ten days, she
makes it seem like she
s doing you a favor. And if you dont have the money
in ten days, you wont very well be able to show your face at their door. Even
if you did, she
d make fun of you and put you down. Youd end up with a
good dose of humiliation, and would naturally find it impossible to settle down
there again. This is an old brothel trick for getting rid of unwanted guests. My
good friend, I hope youll consider carefully~dont be taken in! If you want
my advice, I
d say your best plan is to make a clean break right away.55
O n hearing this, the young master sat a long while in silence, not know
ing what to think. Yu-chun continued, My friend, make no mistake. If you
really return home, the travel expenses wont come to that much, and there
will still be people to help you out. But if its three hundred you want, well
then, forget ten days, in even ten months you could scarcely raise that
amount. In this day and age, who do you expect will show understanding
for your situation? That mist-and-flowers woman knows youve got nowhere
to go to raise that kind of money, and is only telling you all this to put you
in an impossible position.
The young master said, Worthy brother, what you say is quite true.
But though he said this, he was unable to fully resign himself to it in his heart.
He continued as before to run about here and there looking for help~but
at night he did not return to the quarters. The young master lodged for three
days running in the rooms of academy scholar Liu, which made six all to
gether. When Du Tenth saw that the master had gone several days without
returning, she grew quite anxious, and sent her little servant boy Number
Four to go out on the streets looking for him. When Number Four went out,
it just happened that he ran into Master Li. Number Four called out to him,
Brother-in-law Li, the mistress is looking for you at home The young mas
ter felt too ashamed to go, and answered, I havent got time today. I
ll go
tomorrow. But Number Four had received strict orders from Tenth, and
grabbed hold of the young master and would not let go for anything. He
said, The mistress told me to find you. Youve got to come along.
Now the young master was secretly missing that whore, so there was
nothing for it but to give in and follow Number Four to the quarters. When
he saw Tenthhe just stood there dumbly. Tenth asked him, How is our
plan progressing? The young master began to shed tears. Tenth said, Can
it be that people have grown so unfeeling that you cannot raise the three
hundred? The young master, with tears in his eyes, said
KCatching tigers cannot be considered easy,
but begging favors is whats truly hard.
841
I
ve been rushing about for six days in a row, and havent a penny to show
for it. W ith this pair of empty hands Fve been ashamed to see you, so these
few days I have not dared come here. Today I received your command, and
come bearing up under shame. It is not that I havent tried. But human feel
ings have in fact come to this pass. Tenth said, Dont let that wicked crone
hear any of this. Stay here tonight, my loveI have another idea. Tenth
prepared food and drinkand shared a happy banquet with the young mas
ter.
When theyd slept half the night, Tenth said, My love, can you really
not come up with even a single coin? What is to become of the plan for my
future? The young master just wept, unable to answer a single word.
Around the fifth watch, it gradually grew light. Tenth said, The padded
quilt I sleep on contains a hundred fifty taels in odd change. This is my pri
vate savings. My love, you may take it. I will take care of half of the three
hundred, and you can take care of the other half- That should make things
easier. But there are only four days left before our time is up. Be sure not to
be late.
Tenth got up and gave the quilt to the young master, who was pleased
beyond his wildest expectations. He called the servant boy to take the quilt
away and took his leave. He went straight to Liu Yu-chuns place, and told
him all that had happened the night before. When they opened up the quilt
and looked inside, there were odd coins wrapped inside the stuffing. When
they took them to exchange, the amount really did come out to one hun
dred and fifty taels. Yu-chun said, astounded, This is truly a woman with
sincere intentions. Since she has real feeling, she should not be let down. I
will see to this on your behalf. The young master said, If our dream is ful
filled, I promise not to forget you
Then Liu Yu-chun, leaving Master Li at his place, set out himself to bor
row money. W ithin two days, he had put together the one hundred and fifty
taels, and handed them over the master, saying, It was not for your sake
that I borrowed this money, but rather because I am moved by the sincere
feeling of Du Tenth
When Li Jia had the three hundred in hand, it was like a gift dropped
from Heaven, and he went off, beaming with joy, to see Tenth. It was only
the ninth day, so he had not even used all ten of the allotted days. Tenth
asked him, A few days ago you had a hard time borrowing even the least
bit. How is it that now you have suddenly got a hundred fifty taels?
The
young master related to her the business with academy scholar Liu. Tenth
raised her hands to her forehead, saying, It is all thanks to the efforts of
Mr. Liu that our desires have been fulfilled. The two of them were over
come with happiness, and spent another evening in the quarters.
The next dayTenth rose early and said to Li Jia, Once I
ve handed over
this silver, I will be able to follow you. We should prepare the necessary car
riages and boats. I have recently borrowed twenty taels of white silver,
which you may take to cover our traveling expenses The young master had
842
just then been worrying that he hadfno source of traveling money, but had
not dared speak of it. When he received this money, he was extremely happy.
Before they5d done speaking, the ^madam came knocking at the door, say
ing, Meitoday is the tenth day. When the master heard her call, he
opened the door and asked her in, saying, We have benefited from your
kindness, and were just going to invite you here. W ith this he put the three
hundred taels on the table.
The madam had not expected the young master to have money, and
stood silently, her expression suddenly changing. She seemed to have it in
mind to go back on her promise. Tenth said, I have been in Mamas house
for eight years, and the gold and treasures I have brought in are nothing short
of a thousand talents. The happy occasion of my reformation today was
granted from Mamas own lips. There is not one jot lacking of the three hun
dred taels, nor have we passed the time limit. If Mama should go back on
her word and prevent us, my husband will take the silver away, and I will
make an end of myself this very instant. I fear that then you will have lost
both person and profit, and it will be too late for regrets. The madam had
no reply to make to this, and pondered it over for a while to herself. In the
end, all she could do was bring out a scale to weigh out the silver. She said,
Since it has come to this, I guess I wont be able to stop you. But if you
mean to go then go at once. Dont imagine youll take one bit of your clothes
and jewelry along with you
When shed done saying this, she pushed the young master and Tenth
out the chamber door, found a lock, and locked it right up. It was around
November at this time, and Tenth, who had just got out of bed, had not even
had time to dress. Wearing the old robe she happened to have on at the time,
she bowed twice to her M am a
Master Li also made a bow. W ith this they
departed, husband and wife, from the door of that old crone.
The carp slips off the iron hook
and glides off without looking back.
The young master asked Tenth to wait up a moment. I will go and call
a sedan chair to carry you. For the time being we can go to Liu Rong-qing
s
lodgings, and make further plans from there. Tenth said, All my sisters
in the quarters have stood by me through thick and thin. By rights I should
go and take my leave of them. Whats more it was from them that I got the
loan of that traveling money. It would not do to go without thanking them
Thereupon she went with the young master to the homes of all her sisters
to thank them and to take leave of them. O f the sisters it was Xie Yue-lang
and Xu Su-su who lived closest by, and they were also on especially good
terms with Tenth. Tenth went first to Xie Yue-langs house. When Yue-lang
saw Tenth going about in a bare hairknot and old worn robe, she asked in
bewilderment what had happened. Tenth told her the whole story, and led
Li Jia in to see her. Tenth pointed to Yue-lang, saying, The travel money I
received the other day was the loan of this elder sister. My lord ought to
843
thank her. Li Jia bowed again and again. Then Yue-lang asked Tenth to
dress, going in the meanwhile to invite over Xu Su-su.
When Tenth had done making herself up, the two beauties Xie and Xu
brought out their whole store~emerald brooches and gold bracelets, jade
hairpins and precious earrings, patterned skirts and brocade-sleeved blouses,
phoenix sashes and embroidered slippers, and they did up Tenth all over
again, so that she looked like a completely different person. They also pre
pared wine for a celebratory banquet. Yue-lang gave up her own chamber
to Li Jia and Du Mei to spend the night.
The next day, they had another big banquet and invited all the sisters
from the quarters. None of those who were good friends with Tenth failed
to appear, and they all drank to the health and happiness of bride and
groom. With pipes and strings, song and dance, each made the most of her
talents, intent on making it a joyful gathering. They kept at it right up until
midnight. Then Tenth thanked each of the sisters in turn. The assembled sis
ters said, Tenth is commander in the legion of glamour. She is now setting
out with her man, and we will have no more chance of seeing her. On the
day you choose to leave for good, we sisters should once more come to see
you off. Yue-lang said to them, When the time is fixed, I will come and
notify you. Our sister will be journeying hundreds of miles over hill and dale
along with her husband. Yet her savings are scanty, and she is not in the
least prepared. This is a matter that should concern all of us. We should work
together to ensure that our sister does not have to worry about being left
without resources All the sisters voiced their assent to this and went their
separate ways.
That evening, the master and Tenth lodged once more at the Xie house.
At the fifth watch, Tenth said to the young master, After this departure of
ours, where will we settle? Have you come up with some solid plan?
The
master said, My aged father is in the height of rage. If he learns that IVe
returned home along with a prostitute as my wife, he is sure to make trouble3and I may end up more trouble than help to you. Ive thought over this
again and again, and I still have no perfect plan. Tenth said, How could
the Heaven-ordained relation of father and son be permanently cut off? But
since it is not a good idea to provoke him by a sudden confrontation, it would
be better to take up temporary residence in the scenic region of Su-zhou and
Hang-zhou. You can return first, and ask friends and relatives to intercede
on your behalf before your reverend father and convince him to relent. Then
you can come and take me home with you. In this way all will be well on
both sides. The young master said, This is well said.
The next day the two set out, taking leave of Xie Yue-lang, and went for
a time to the lodgings of academy scholar Liu to get their luggage ready.
When Du Tenth saw Liu Yu-chun, she prostrated herself before him and
thanked him for the kind service which had allowed things to work out. On
some future day I swear that we will worthily repay your kindness. Yu_
chun hurriedly returned her bow, saying, You were stirred to true love for
844
your favorite, and did not change your feelings on account of poverty. This
makes you a hero among women. All your servant has done amounts to
'blowing a flame along with the wind
~reallywhat need is there to men
tion my insignificant efforts!
The three of them spent another day drinking. The next morning, they
selected an auspicious day for their departure and hired the necessary sedan
chairs and horses. Tenth once more dispatched her servant boy to take a mes
sage to say goodbye to Xie Yue-lang. When it came time to leave, bearers
and palanquins began arriving in great numbers. It was Xie Yue-lang and
Xu Su-suwho had brought along all the sisters to say goodbye. Yue-lang
said, Tenth sister is following her husband into distant parts, yet their trav
eling purse is barren. We are by no means able to put aside our sisterly con
cern, and have raised a meager sum among ourselves. Tenth sister, you may
take it under your care. It may be that in your long journey you fall short,
and even this may be of some small use. When she had done speaking, she
commanded the others to bring forward a gold-inlaid stationery box, which
was locked up most securely so that there was no guessing what it might
contain. Tenth neither refused it nor opened it to look inside. All she did
was to thank them earnestly. In a short while carriage and horses were in
readiness, and the attendant urged them to set out at once. Academy scholar
Liu poured out three cups of parting wine, and saw them off as far as the
outside of Chong-wen Gate, along with the troop of beauties. One by one
they tearfully took their leave. Truly,
None can predict a future meeting date
This moment of parting is most hard to bear.
Now when Master Li and Du Tenth had traveled as far as the Lu C anal
7
they left the land and took to boats. By good luck they were able to take ad
vantage of the envoy boat from Gua-zhou,8which was about to set out on
its return journey. They agreed on a price and reserved a cabin. When it came
time to board, Master Li5s purse had not the least bit of cash left in it. Now
you may be asking, if Du Tenth gave the young master twenty taels of sil
ver, how came it that he suddenly had nothing left? Well, the young master
had been whoring in the quarters till his clothes were all bedraggled. When
he got his hands on some money, he couldnt help but go to the pawnbro
kers to redeem some clothes, and have a set of quilts and bedding made.
What was left over was just enough to cover the carriage and horses.
Just as the young master was growing worried, Tenth saidMy hus
band, dont
troubled. The collection made by all my sisters will surely
7Lu Canal: a name for the northern section of the Grand Canal which linked the northern and mid
southern regions of China. The major embarkation point for traffic in and out of Beijing was at Tongzhou, approximately twenty kilometers east of the city.
8Gua-zhou was a transport post at the mouth of the Grand Canal, on the northern bank of the Yangzi
River.
845
help us out. W ith this, she took out the key and opened up the case. The
young master, who was standing to one side, felt ashamed, and did not ven
ture to peek at what was inside the box. Tenth pulled out a red silk pouch
and tossed it onto the table, saying, aWhy dont you open that up and take
a look? The young master lifted it up in his hand and felt that it was quite
heavy. When he opened it up and took a look, he saw it was all white sil
ver, together all of fifty taels. Tenth locked up the box once more without
saying what else might be inside. She merely told the young masterThanks
to the noble feelings of all my sisters, we will not only lack nothing on our
journey, but there should be a little something to help with our household
expenses while we pass the time in the South. The young master, startled
and pleased all at once, said, If I had not encountered you, my dear bene
factress, IL i Jia, would have been left without even a place to be buried. I
will never dare forget this debt of gratitude as long as I live. From this time
on, whenever their talk turned to events of the past, the young master would
always be moved to tears, and Tenth would try gently to console him. And
so they traveled on.
Before they knew it, they had reached Gua-zhouand the big boat
moored at the bank. The young master hired another boat, loaded their lug
gage onto it, and arranged that they should set out across the river at dawn.
It was now around the beginning of January, and the moon was as bright
as water as the young master and Tenth sat at the bow of the boat. The young
master said, Ever since we left the capital gate weve been penned up in one
little cabin with people all around us, and have been unable to speak freely.
Now weVe got this whole boat to ourselves, and have no further cause for
restraint. Furthermore, weve left the North behind us and are just now
drawing near Jiang-nan. It is fitting that we should set ourselves at ease and
drink as much as we please, so as to relieve our cooped-up feelings. Dear
benefactress, what do you say to that? Tenth saidI have grown long un
used to conversation and laughter, and I share this feeling of yours. That
you should speak of it now is proof of our fellow nature.
Then the young master brought out drinking vessels and arrayed them
on the deck, and spread out a felt mat for the two of them to sit on. The
cups passed back and forth between them. When they were half-giddy with
the wine, the young master, clutching his cup, said to Tenth, Dear bene
factress, your wondrous voice was counted finest among the quarters at the
time when my unworthy self first made your acquaintance. Each time I heard
one of your incomparable songs, I was unable to restrain the flight of my
soul. Much has gone awry since then, and both of us have long been anx
ious and ill at ease. The simurghs cry and the phoenixs song have long been
silent. Now on this clear river under the bright m oonin the still of the night
with no one else to hear, will you deign to sing me a song?
Tenth as well felt a sudden stirring, and she unleashed her voice and var
ied her tone, tapping out the time with a fan. Crooning and murmuring, she
sang from the scene The Exam Champion Holds the Cup to Chan-juan
846
from the opera Bowing to Moon Pavilion by the Yuan writer Shi Jun-mei,
to the tune of Little Red Peach. Truly,
The tone flies up to the Milky Way~clouds stop in their tracks;
the echo sinks into the deep pool fish come up to play.
Now on. a neighboring boat there was a young man surnamed Sun,
named Fu, with the cognomen Shan-lai
who was a native of Xin-an County
in Hui-zhou. His family had been in the salt trade at Yang-zhou for gener
ations and had amassed an immense fortune. Sun Fu was just twenty years
old at this time, and was also a fellow of the Nanjing Imperial Academy. He
was glamorous by nature, accustomed to buying smiles in the blue houses
seeking happiness in rouge and powder just as if on a jaunt to enjoy breeze

and moonlight. He was a commander in the legion of loverboys. Well, co
incidences will happen, and it came about that on that evening he was also
moored at the ferry dock at Gua-zhou, drinking alone in boredom. Suddenly
he heard the bright sound of a singing voice~chanting phoenix and piping
simurh could not compare to it in beauty. He rose and stood at the prow,
listening raptly for a while.
Soon he divined that the sound was coming from the neighboring boat.
Just as he was making ready to inquire, the resounding tones grew suddenly
still. Thereupon he dispatched a servant to ask the boatmen what it was. All
they knew was that the boat had been hired by his excellency Li, but they
did not know the background of the singer. Sun Fu thought to himself, This
singer is certainly not of respectable background. Now, how can I get a look
at her? He mused over thisstaying awake all night. When he
d stuck it
out to the fifth watch, he suddenly heard the wind on the river kicking up
fiercely. By dawn the sky was packed with dusky cloudsand snow swirled
wildly about. How can we know about this scene? There is a poem bearing
witness:
A thousand hills wiped clean of clouds and trees;
the tracks on countless human paths swept clear.
In poncho and rainhat, an old man on a skiff
fishes alone in the snow of the cold river.9
W ith this snowstorm enveloping the ford, the boats were unable to set
out. Sun Fu commanded his helmsman to move the boat, mooring it by the
side of Li Jias boat. Sun Fu, in ermine cap and foxfur coat, opened the win
dow and looked out, pretending to be enjoying the snowy scene. Du Tenth
had just then finished washing. W ith her slender jade white hands, she lifted
up the short curtain at the side of the boat and emptied the washbasin into
the river. Her powdered face shone out for a moment, and Sun Fu got a peek.
Sure enough, she was a heavenly beauty, and his soul was shaken and his
9This is the poem "River Snow," by the Tang poet Liu Zong-yuan (773-819), with minor alterations.
847
heart went wild. He stared intently at the spot, waiting for another chance
to see her, but he had no such luck. He sat long in a funk, and then loudly
chanted these two lines of Scholar Gao*s Poem of Plum Blossoms:1
Snow fills the mountain slopes, the recluse lies at ease;
moonlight shines beneath the forests eavesthe lovely one
approaches.
When Li Jia heard someone chanting poetry in the neighboring boat, he
stretched his head out of the cabin to see who it was. And with this he fell
right into Sun Fu
s trap. Sun Fu was chanting that poem precisely in order
to entice Master Li to poke his head out, so there would be a chance to start
up a conversation. Right away Sun raised his hand in greeting and asked,
Respected friend, what is your surname and given name? Master Li told
him his name and native place, and of course it would not do not to ask Sun
Fu in turn. Sun Fu introduced himself as well. Then they exchanged some
idle talk of the academy, gradually growing more cordial as they chatted.
Then Sun Fu saidThis snowstorm which has delayed our boats was
Heavens way of granting me the chance to meet you~this is truly a stroke
of good fortune for me! Lodging on board a boat is tiresome and monoto
nous. It is my sincere wish to go ashore with you for a drink in the wineshop,
so as to receive some small portion of your wise instruction. I earnestly beg
that you not refuse me! The young master saidwWe have met like drift
ing duckweed on the water. What right have I to put you to such trouble?
Sun Fu said, "What can you possibly mean? W ithin the four seas all are
brothers.12
He barked out an order to the boatmen to leap over and to the servant
boy to hold open an umbrella and receive the young master on board his
boat. Sun Fu came right up to the bow of his boat to greet him. Then, mak
ing room for the young master to lead the way, Sun followed up as they went
ashore. Before theyd walked more than a few steps, they came upon a
wineshop. The two walked upstairs and sought out a clean spot beside the
window. The steward laid out wine and snacks before them. Sun Fu raised
his cup and urged Master Li not to stand on ceremony, and the two of them
sat drinking and enjoying the snowy scene. First they exchanged a few po
lite commonplaces, but soon the conversation turned toward affairs of the
heart. The two of them were both men of the w orld
and found in each other
sympathetic listeners.
As their talk became relaxed and unrestrained, they grew ever more con
fidential. Sun Fu sent away all the attendants and asked in a low voice, "Who
was the clear-voiced singer on your boat last night? Li Jia was just then
anxious to play the man of the world, and he blurted out, That was Du
Tenth, the famous courtesan from Beijing. Sun Fu saidIf she is a sister
from the quarters, how is it she has become part of your household?wThen
Scholar Gao is the Ming Dynasty poet Gao Q i (133&-1374),
2A familiar quotation from the Analects, XJI.5.
the young master told all about how he first met Du Tenth, how they be
came lovers, and how later she wanted to marry him and how he borrowed
money to win her, from beginning to end in full detail.
Sun Fu said, My dear friend, your return home with this beauty is cer
tainly a happy event. What I wonder is, will your family be able to accept
her? The young master said, My humble mate is no cause for concern.
What worries me is my old father, who is by nature strict and unyielding.
This is still causing me some hesitation. Sun Fu, adapting his strategy to
the circumstancesasked, If you fear your reverend father may not accept
her, where do you plan to settle this lovely whom you are escorting? Have
you spoken to her of this and made plans together? The young master wrin
kled up his brows and answered, I have in fact discussed this matter with
my unworthy consort Sun Fu asked with a smile, Surely your esteemed
pet has a splendid strategem.39The young master saidIt is her intention
to take up temporary residence in Su-zhou or Hang-zhou, to linger for a
while among the hills and lakes. She would have me return first and ask re
lations and friends to put things delicately before the head of my family. At
such time as he shall change his ire to pleasure, we will consider how we
may best return. But what do you make of this?
Sun Fu sat murmuring to himself for a whileand put on an anxious ex

pression. He said, I made your acquaintance only a short time ago. If I pre
sume on such a brief friendship to speak frankly to you, I truly fear that you
will be offended The young master said, I find myself just now in need
of your wise instruction. Why need you stand on ceremony like this? Sun
Fu said, Your esteemed parent holds the keys of the provincial government,
and is sure to be strict about maintaining propriety in the affairs of his house
hold. From the beginninghe has been displeased that you frequented houses
of ill fame. How then can he be expected to accept your marriage to an un
chaste woman? Furthermore, which of your noble friends and relations will
not be solicitous of the wishes of your esteemed parent? If you vainly ask
them for favors, they are sure to refuse. And even supposing that some tact
less one among them puts in a word on your behalf, once he sees that your
esteemed parent does not mean to give in, he will surely change his tune.
You will find yourself unable either to restore harmony to your family or
to answer to your esteemed pet. Even whiling away the time amid the scenery
of hills and lakes is no long-term solution. If some day your savings should
run out, will you not be left with nowhere to turn?
The young master knew that all he had left was the fifty taels of silver,
and by now even that had largely been spent. When he heard this part about
being left with no place to turn, he unconsciously began nodding his assent.
Sun Fu continued, KI have one thing further to say. W ill you indulge me by
listening? The young master said, You are too kind. I beg you say every
thing that is on your m ind. Sun Fu said Distant relations should not
come between close ones. On second thought, I think it is better not to say
it. The young master said, Just say it, what harm can there be in that?
Sun Fu said, O f old it has been said, womans nature is water, devoid of
849
constancy.* How much more so of the league of mist and flowers, who lack
truth and abound in artifice? Given that she is a famed courtesan of the plea
sure districts, she must have acquaintances everywhere under the sun. It may
just be that she has a previous engagement in the South, and is making use
of you to bring her there, to run off with someone else. The young master
said, As for that, I really dont think that that is the case. Sun Fu said
Even if it isntthe young men of Jiang-nan are champion womanizers. If
you keep such a lovely alone there, it is hard to be sure there wont be some
'fence-climbing and wall-tunneling.And if you take her along home with
you, it is certain you will further inflame your esteemed parents anger
against you. There really seems to be no good way out of your present sit
uation. Moreover, the relation of father and son is sanctioned by Heaven,
and is by no means to be abrogated. If you offend your father on account
of a concubine, if you abandon your family due to a prostitute, everyone in
the world will surely agree that you are a reckless and outlandish person. In
the future your wife will not treat you as a husband, your brother will not
treat you as brother, and your colleagues will not treat you as a colleague.
How will you find a place to stand between Heaven and Earth? My friend
you really cannot but consider this carefully/5
When the young master heard all thishe was dazed and at a loss for
words. He edged his seat closer and asked, As you see it, what advice would
you give me? Sun Fu saidYour servant has one plan which could be most
advantageous. I only fear that you, enamored as you are of the joys of pil
low and mat, will not necessarily be able to carry it out, in which case it
would be a mere waste of words to tell you.55The young master saidIf
you have a plan that can allow me once more to know the joy of a harmo
nious family, you are trdy my benefactor. What need have you to be fear
ful of telling me? Sun Fu said, You have been roaming away from home
for over a year, and your stern parent has become enraged. Chamber and
tower are set at odds. Imagining myself in your position, it seems this must
be a time when, there can be no peace of mind in sleep or at table. However,
the cause of your esteemed parents anger with you is nothing more than
your fondness for the land of flowers and w illow s
for which you spend
money like dirt. You must seem sure to turn out a homeless wastrel, and
thus not suited to inherit the family fortune. To go home empty-handed at
such a time would be just the thing to set him off. But if you are willing to
set aside the affections of quilt and mattress, and act decisively when op
portunity presents itself, I would be willing to present you with a thousand
taels. W ith these thousand taels to placate your esteemed parent, you can
claim that you kept to your chambers at the capital and have not wasted the
least bit. Your esteemed parent is sure to believe this. From then on your
family will be at peace, and there should be no further grumbling. In no time
at all you could change disaster into good fortune. Please think this over care
fully. It is not that I am covetous of the charms of the lovely one. The truth
is that I am eager to give some small expression of my devotion to your welfare.
850
Now Li Jia had always been a man with no backbone who, when all was
said and done, was terrified of his dad. Sun Fu5s little talk went right to the
heart of his fears. He rose and bowed, saying, On hearing this instruction
from you, the scales have fallen from my eyes. But my little consort has stood
by me through a journey of hundreds of miles; I cannot in justice cut her off
all at once. Allow me to return and discuss it with her. When I have received
her earnest assent, I will come ba^k and present my reply. Sun Fu said
"When you talk to her, you ought to put it delicately. But if she is really mo
tivated by sincere loyalty to you, she
s sure to be unwilling to cause father
and son to split. She
ll certainly do her part to bring about your successful
return home.
The two of them drank a while longer, and when the wind settled and
the snow stopped, it was already quite late. Sun Fu told his servant boy to
settle the bill, and he led the young master by the hand down toward the
boats. Truly,
W ith strangers, say a third of what you think;
dont throw out all your hearts designs at once.
Now we turn to Du Tenth in the boat. She set out wine and dainties,
meaning to share a small banquet with the young master. When he failed to
return all day, she trimmed a lamp and sat up waiting for him. When the
young master came aboard, Tenth rose to greet him. He had a flustered ex
pression and seemed to have something unhappy on his mind, so she poured
out a full cup of warm wine and tried to console him. But the young mas
ter shook his head and refused to drink. Without uttering a single word, he
went right to bed alone and lay down. Tenth was worried by this, and, after
gathering up the cups and trays, she came and helped Master Li undress and
make ready to sleep. She asked him, What has happened that has put you
in such a gloomy mood? The young master just sighed, still not opening
his mouth to speak. She asked him the same thing three or four times, but
in the end she noticed he had already nodded off. Tenth could not resolve
it in her mind, and sat at the side of the bed, unable to sleep.
In the middle of the night, the young master woke up and sighed once
more. Tenth said, My lord, what difficult matter do you have in your mind,
that you sigh so? The young master sat up, clutching the blankets about
him, and made as if to speak, but stopped short several times. And then
streams of tears began running down his cheeks. Tenth clasped the young
master in her bosom and spoke softly to comfort him, saying, You and I
have been lovers for two years now, and we have held out to this daythrough innumerable trials and reversals, and every manner of difficulty. But
through all the hundreds of miles of our journey together I have never seen
you grieve like this. Now we are preparing to cross the river, on the verge
of a new lifetime of happiness. How is it that you instead grow sad and trou
bled? There must surely be some reason. Husband and wife share all equally
between them, in life and death. If any problem arises it can surely be talked
over. Do not be afraid to say whatever is on your mind.
851
The young master, thus repeatedly egged on, could not hold out, and at
last said tearfully, I was left destitute and without recourse at the ends of
the earth. I undeservingly received your forbearing indulgence, and you con
sented to follow me to this place. It is truly an incomparable favor that you
have done me. But I have pondered it over and overmy father, in his posi
tion of local prominence, is subject to strict standards of propriety. Fur
thermore, he himself is stern and inflexible by nature. I fear that if I add to
his irehe is sure to run me out of the house. If you and I are forced to wan
der rootlessly, where shall we come to rest? The joys of husband and wife
will be hard to preserve intact, while the relation of father and son will be
broken. During the day, I received an invitation to drink from my new
friend Mr. Sun of Xin-an. He considered this problem on my behalf.. . yet
my poor heart feels as if it is being cut!
Tenth said in great alarm, What is it you mean to do? The young mas
ter said, Being as I was personally involved in the situationI was unable
to grasp it clearly. Now my friend Sun has devised a plan for me which seems
quite good. My only fear is that you, my love, will not give your assent to
it. Tenth saidWho is this friend Sun? If the plan is a good one, what can
there be against following it? The young master said, My friend Sun is
named Fu, a salt merchant from Xin-an. He is a stylish young fellow. Dur
ing the night he heard the clear tones of your voice, and thus inquired about
you. I told him your background, as well as the reasons making my return
home difficult. He has it in mind to take you in for one thousand taels. W ith
that thousand taels I will have a pretext on which to call on my parents, and
you, my dear benefactresswill also have someone to rely on. But I cannot
bear to give up the affection I feel for you. It is for this reason that I am
grieved and weep. When he had said this his tears fell like rain.
Tenth removed her hands from him and laughed coldly, saying, The
man who devised this plan for you is truly a great hero. The fortune of the
thousand taels will enable you to restore your position in your family, and
I will go to another man so as not to be a burden to you. Originating in
feeling and stopping in accordance with propriety3 truly this can be
called a strategy with advantage on all sides. Where are the thousand
taels? The young master dried his tears and said, Since I had not received
your approval, the money has not yet been exchanged. It is still over at his
boat Tenth said, Go first thing in the morning to settle it with him. You
mustnt let this opportunity slip by. But a thousand taels of silver is a se
rious matter. You must be sure to have it counted out in full and securely
in your hands before I go over to his boat do not fall victim to an un
scrupulous trader.55By this time it was nearly the fourth watch, and Tenth
got up and lit a lamp and made herself up, saying, Todays dressing is for
the purpose of welcoming the new and seeing off the old. It5s no ordi
nary occasion.
3//Originating in feeling and stopping in accordance with propriety" a quote from the "Great Prefaceto the Classic o f Poetry.
852
Having said this, she attentively made herself up with powder and per
fume. In her ornate bracelets and embroidered jacket, she looked splendid.
A fragrant breeze seemed to play about her, and she radiated a brilliance
that dazzled all who saw her. By the time she was done dressingit was just
beginning to grow light outside. Sun Fu
s servant boy came to the bow of
their boat to await news. Tenth looked in at the young master, smiling as
though pleased with how things were going, and urged him to go and give
his reply, and to quickly, count out the silver in full. The young master went
in person to Sun Fu
s boat, and replied that he agreed to everything. Sun Fu
said, Counting out the silver is not a problem. But I would like to have the
lovelys make-up stand as security. The young master went back once
more to pass this reply on to Tenth. She pointed to the gold-inlaid stationery
box, saying, Go on and take it_
Sun Fu was greatly pleased. He then took one thousand taels of white
silver, and sent it off to the young masters boat. Tenth counted it out her
self and found to that it was sufficient in both purity and amount, without
the least error. Thereupon she grasped the gunwale and waved to Sun Fu,
and as soon as Sun Fu saw her, his soul flew out of him. Tenth opened her
crimson lips, exposing gleaming teeth, saying, Please send back that box I
sent over just now. In it are some travel documents of Master L i
s which
should be picked out and returned to him. Sun Fu already regarded Tenth
as a turtle in his trap, and without hesitation ordered his servant to carry
that gold-inlaid stationery box right over and place it at the prow of Li Jia
s
boat. Tenth took out the key and opened the lock. Inside the box were manysmall drawers. Tenth asked the young master to pull out the first drawer to
look, and there was all kingfisher feathers and bright pendants, jade hair
pins and jeweled earrings filling it up inside, probably worth several hun
dred taels.
Tenth threw it all right into the river. Li Jia and Sun Fu and the rest of
the people on the boats were all astonished. She then told the young master
to open another drawer. It was filled with jade whistles and golden pipes.
He opened another drawer full of antique knicknacks of ancient jade and
purple gold, probably worth several thousand. Tenth threw all this into the
great river. People began gathering on the bank, until they packed the en
tire shoreline. They said with one voice, What a shame! and were left
standing there, wondering what it was all about.
Finally Li Jia opened one more drawer. Inside this drawer there was an
other box. When he opened the box and looked, there were handfuls of
priceless pearls, and all sorts of sapphires, cat
s-eyesand rare treasures such
as they had never seen before. There was no guessing at their worth. The
crowd of people all cheered lustily, and the noise of their commotion was
like thunder. Tenth made as if to throw these things as well into the river.
In that instant Li Jia was overcome with remorse. He clasped Tenth and
wailed aloud. Then Sun Fu came over as well and tried to reason with her.
Tenth pushed the young master to one side and cursed Sun Fu, saying, Mr.
Li and I have endured every kind of hardship. It was no easy thing for us
853
to come this far. But you with your lecherous intentions hatched a cunning
plot that has dissolved all our destined life together in a single day, and de
stroyed the love and affection between us. You are my sworn enemy. If I
have consciousness after death, I swear I will take my grievance against you
to the clear-eyed gods. And you dream of sharing the joy of pillow and mat
with me!
Then she said to Li Jia, I languished in a fallen life for several years,
during which time I amassed some private savings. This was meant as a pro
vision against old age. I did not intend for those mountain vows and ocean
oaths that we exchanged to be broken even in our declining years. That day
as we were leaving the capital, I used the pretext of my sistersparting gifts
to store these hundred treasures in this box. There is no less than ten thou
sand taels here. I meant to use this to set you up in such style that you could
return to see your parents without shame. Perhaps they might have taken
pity on me for my sincerity and allowed me to assist your wife in the duties
of the household, so that I could live out my life relying on youwith no re
grets to my dying day. How could I have guessed that your trust in me was
so shallow that you could be confused by groundless counsel? You have
abandoned me at midjourney and betrayed my earnest heart. Today, before
these many eyes, I open this box to reveal its contents, so that you may learn
that a thousand taels is no great thing. In my jewel case there is true jadeI
regret that you lack eyes in your head to see it. Born in an ill-fated hour, I
fell into the bonds of a shameful life. And just as I made good my escape, I
have been cast aside once more. Today every person who has ears and eyes
can witness that it is not I who have betrayed you, but rather you who have
betrayed me!
At this the crowd that had gathered to watch all shed tears, every last
one of them
and they all cursed Master Li for a heartless deceiver. The young
master was both ashamed and grieved. He wept with remorse, and was just
beginning to beg for her forgiveness when, clutching the treasure box, she
plunged right into the heart of the river. The crowd cried out in alarm for
someone to save her. But all that could be seen were dark clouds over the
river, and the restless wavesthere was no trace of her. Alas, a famed cour
tesan, beautiful as flowers or jade, left all at once to be entombed in fishes
bellies!
The three souls settle to the water-kingdom^ trackless depths;
the seven spirits set off on the distant road of darkness.
At the time, the people who were watching gnashed their teeth in fury,
climbing over one another in their desire to thrash Li Jia and Sun Fu, which
startled these two so badly they didnt know what to do. They hurriedly
called out to the boatmen to set out, and went off in separate directions. Li
Jia sat in his boat looking at the thousand taels and thinking back on Tenth,
brooding day in and day out on his shame. These oppressive feelings even
tually drove him crazy, and he never recovered as long as he lived. As for
Sun Fu, after the shock of that day he fell ill and was bedridden for over a
854
month. All day he would see Du Tenth beside him, cursing him. In time, he
died. People said it was revenge exacted from the depths of the river.
And now we speak of that Liu Yu-chun. When his stint in the academy
at the capital was up, he packed up his things to return home, and moored
at Gua-bu.4He happened to drop a bronze washbasin in the river as he was
washing his face over the water, and. he sought out a fisherman to fish it up
with his net. When the net came out, what was inside was a little case. Yuchun opened the case to look, and in it were bright pearls and rare treasures,
precious things of inestimable price. Yu-chun richly rewarded the fisherman,
and kept the things by his bedside to play with them. That night in a dream
he saw a woman out in the river, striding toward him over the waves. When
he looked closely, it was Du Tenth. She approached him and greeted him,
and complained to him of Mr. L i
s unfeeling behavior. She also said, I was
the recipient of your gracious assistance, when you helped us out with that
hundred and fifty taels. I originally meant to seek out a way to repay you
when we came to the end of our journey. Little did I know that there was
to be no constancy from beginning to end. Yet I often bear your noble favor
in mind, unable to forget it. This morning I presented you a small case by
way of the fisherman as a small token of my heartfelt thanks. From this time
on, we shall never meet. When she had done speaking, he awoke all at once
in alarm. Only then did he realize that Tenth had diedand he sighed with
pity for several days.
Those who later assessed the merits of this case felt that Sun Fu, who
thought nothing of throwing away a thousand taels in a plot to steal away
a lovely woman, was certainly no gentleman
while Li Jia, who failed to rec
ognize Du Tenths sincere devotion, was a vulgar person not even worth talk
ing about. But most of all they wondered why a rare hero among women
like Tenth could not find a mate worthy of her, to ride away together on a
Qin Terrace phoenix.5 Yet she mistakenly took up with Master Li, casting
bright pearls and lovely jade before a blind man. The result was that grati
tude was made enmity, and their ten thousand feelings of affection were
changed to flowing water. This is most pitiful! A poem lamenting this event
says:
Do not talk idly of romance if you dont know the game;
a world is hidden there within loves name.
If one knew all of love that was in love to know,
the epithet romantic should be thought no cause for shame.
4Gua-bu is on the north bank of the Yangzi, about sixty kilometers upstream of Gua-zhou. It seems
possible that the two places are conflated here.
5A reference to the story of Xiao Shi and Nong Yu, daughter of Duke Mu of the state of Qin. Xiao
Shi was an expert player of the xiao, a whistlelike instrument, and could imitate the call of the
phoenix. At last, a phoenix descended to the couple at the terrace built for them by Duke Mu and
carried them off to Heaven together.
,
855

In Feng M e n g -lo n g 's fin a l c o lle c tio n o f sto rie s, C o n s ta n t W o r d s to A w a k e n the
W orld (Xing-shi heng-yan), there appears a group of stories by another hand, a writer
known only by his pseudonym Lang-xian, the "Wild Immortal," also tentatively iden
tified as the author of another collection of vernacular stories entitled The Rocks Nod
Their Heads (Shi dian tou). "Censor Xue Finds Immortality in the G uise of a Fish,"
based on a Tang tale, is one of the Lang-xian stories in Feng's collection.

The tale of heaven-sent suffering that leads to enlightenment and the renuncia
tion of public life had a long history in the literary tradition, but rarely did it take on
the comic d im e n s io n s it has here. Trapped in the body of a fish, Censor Xue rails
helplessly against his friends and colleagues as they debate whether to dine on him.
The mode of filleting and preparation, in which Censor Xue had himself instructed
his cook, is described in loving culinary detail, with the good censor himself as the
main course under consideration.
Lang-xian, Censor Xue Finds Immortality in the Guise of a

Fish (from Constant Words to Awaken the World)
Translated by Robert Ashmore
Pray, how did that white dragon come to be?
all through a puny fish
s sincerity.
Though now the dragon sport in the broad stream,
if rain and clouds force failed him,
wouldnt he be bogged in mire?
To learn the transformations of the airy soul,
rest rudderlessalways empty.
Its not sudden joy that dulls the senses:
Zhuang Zhou was once a butterfly,
and Xue Wei became a fish.
The story has it that in the Qian-yuan era [a.d. 758-760] of the Tang em
peror Su-zong there was an official by the name of Xue Wei. This Xue Wei
was a native of the Wu district, who had passed the jin-shi examination at
the end of the Tian-bao era [a.d. 742-756]. He started out as a district pre
fect in Fu-feng, where he built up quite a reputation. Later he was transferred
to the post of Censor in Qing-cheng district in Sichuan. His wifea certain
Madam Gu, from the leading family of Wu County, was a lovely woman
with a kind and gentle temperament. The two of them were a perfect match,
and lived together in mutual love and respect. Before they knew it three years
had gone by at the new post, and the district magistrate left town on a pro
motion. Censor Xues superiors, knowing well his character and ability, ap
pointed him to take over the seal of the district administration.
Now this Qing-cheng district was made up of remote mountains and
deep valleys with rocky and infertile soil. Years of poor harvests had left the
people destitute, and from time to time there were outbreaks of banditry.
As soon as Censor Xue took over the district administration, he instituted
856
a system of local accountability, and enlisted the cooperation of the citizenry

in apprehending bandits wherever they cropped up. He also set up a public
academy to foster young talent, and opened the relief granaries to assist the
helpless and destitute. Every spring he would go personally into each village
to supervise the plowing and planting, and would exhort the people with
well-meaning words to do their best to play their allotted roles in the com
munity. As a result of all this, crops flourished throughout the county and
the very bandits were transformed into upright citizens. Truly, public order
reached the point thatwdoors were left open at night, and lost valuables re
mained where they fell by the roadside. The common folk, out of gratitude
for the benefit which had been bestowed on them, composed a ditty in
praise of the Censors achievements.
Which went
In autumn theres harvest
and plowing in spring,
no overseer extorts rent;
our doors lie unlatched at night.
The people set happily to their tasks,
schools bring cultures blessings
moral and material benefit
all through Father Xue5s goodness.
From this day on in our childrens line,
we vow to preserve his name,
what will we call them?
wXue,s son and Little Xue.w
That Censor Xue was not only an upright and compassionate official who
loved the people like his own childrenin his dealings with his colleagues,
toohe was respectful and modest, treating them well in every way. As it
happens, in that district seat there were a deputy magistrate, a censor, and
two prefects. The district magistrate was called Zou Pang. He was also a
jin-shi graduate~in fact, it happened that he was a good friend of Xues from
the same class. The two prefects were named Lei Ji and Pei Kuanand they
also performed their duties in a scrupulous and ethical manner. The four of
them had so much in common in character and interest that whenever they
had a spare moment, they could be found together discussing poetry, play
ing chess, or sitting beside flowers or in the shade of a bamboo grove, shar
ing a drink together. They were constant companions who got on splendidly.
One evening, just when the Seventh Night festival had come around, Cen
sor Xue and his wife were together in their official quarters to pray for skill
and hold their own private celebration .. . (Now as it happens, on the
evening of the Seventh Night festival, every family of whatever social sta
tion would be sure to set out some wine and a few dainties for the banquet
of praying for skill and threading the needle. Now why do you imagine
that was? It all came about because of a certain daughter of the Emperor of
Heaven, named the Weaver Woman, who worked away at her loom day and
night. The Emperor of Heaven was fond of her for her industry, and mar
ried her to Oxherd to be his wife. Butwhod have guessed it!once the
Weaver Woman had married Oxherd, she was carried away with the joys
of love, and spent the days combing her hair and making herself up; she never
tended to loom and shuttle any more. The Emperor of Heaven was enraged,
and banished the Weaver Woman to live on the east side of the Milky Way,
and Oxherd to live on the west. In the whole year they were permitted to
meet just once, on this seventh day of the seventh month. On this day, mag
pies were sent to fill in the Milky Way for them so that they could cross over.
Because of this, the people of this world would keep track of the time when
they were to cross, and, standing out beneath the stars and moon, would
thread colored threads through needles5eyes_ if one could thread it through,
that meant receiving skill, and if one couldnt that meant missing skill.
In this way they would predict their skill in handiwork during the year to
come. Now just stop and think for a moment: Oxherd and Weaver Woman
had been longing all year for this one night when they could finally meet.
Whats morethey were only given three or four hours to pour out their sin
cere longing all at oncestill fearing there might not be time enough to tell
it all. How could they possibly have enough spare time to come to the
human world delivering skill? Is this not an absurd tale?)
Now on that evening, Censor Xue was in his courtyard, exchanging
toasts with his wife. Losing track of the time, they sat up until deep in the
night. Unexpectedly, Censor Xue took a little chill from the dewy night
breezes, and this chill soon grew into a serious illness. His whole body felt
as hot as if it were being roasted over coals and sweat poured from him like
rain. Gradually he stopped eating altogether, and lost track of what was
going on around him. He mumbled, I cant hold out another instant! Why
must you force me to stay here? Why dont you just let me go. . . . Now
you may well imagine that when a sick person begins speaking like this, it
is not good news. It so frightened Madam Gu that her wits and courage both
flew from her in an instant. But could she just sit there and watch him die?
O f course she had to call in doctors and consult diviners, summoning spir
its and offering up vows to the gods. As it happens, in that district there was
a certain Qing-cheng Mountainthe fifth immortal grotto of the Daoist sect.
On that mountain stood a temple in which there was an image of Lao-zi
which had been proven to be of marvelous efficacy. Truly, if one prayed to
it for clear skies one got clear skies, if for rain then it rainedif one prayed
for a son one got a son, if for a daughter, a daughter. Pilgrims flocked there
from far and wide. So Madam Gu wrote out a spirit-petition, and sent peo
ple to that Lao-zi temple to pray. Shed also heard that the fortune-slips of
that temple were most accurate, so she had them on one hand pray for the
protection of the Censor, to extend his lifespan and avert the calamity be
setting him, and on the other to ask for a fortune-slip, to try to get some
idea how the thing was likely to come out. And as for those three colleagues,
who had long admired Censor Xue for his virtue, when they heard what had
happened, they went on foot to the mountain to present offerings of incense,

and to express their willingness to forfeit part of their own allotted lifespans
in order to release the Censor from his peril. And just when the three col
leagues had turned back homeward, there came the elders of the entire
county, leading the common folk, who came in a body to prostrate them
selves and pray. It was proof of the good effect of the Censors accustomed
way of governing that he could,win over the hearts of the people like this.
Now the slip they drew was number thirty-two. The rhyme on that slip
said:
A hundred streams flow down to the river,
Peer down in the deep and hold back a shiver.
Why wander to Longmen to seek what you wish?
Three foot two, the enchanted fish.
A servant was sent to take a copy of this riddle back to the lady at the
district seat, yet she could make no more of it than they. She thought to her
self, I have heard that the slips people have received in the past have al
ways suited the person in question in every detail. How is it the one weve
drawn speaks of some condition not the least like my husbands? Is this a
good omen, or an evil one? Its really beyond me. Her hopes and fears grew
more tangled and confused than ever, and her anxiety increased. But then
she thought, Its plain that this slip may have no bearing on the situation
at all. Let me find a doctor to treat the disease~that at least is a sound ap
proach.55And she commissioned people to search about. Well, they found
out about a certain Daoist adept named Eight HundredMLi, who lived in
the prefectural capital of Cheng-du. He was said to have been the leading
disciple of the great Master Sun;6 andsince hed received eight hundred se
cret cures from his teacher
people called him Eight Hundred Li. And truly,
when he was called in to treat someone, the sickness would be gone as soon
as he
d set his hand to it; he was uncannily effective. Hed hung a New Years
couplet over his door which read,
Like Druggist Kang, I never change my price;7
Like Doctor Feng, I have apricots in groves.8
The thing was, when you called him in, you could never be quite sure
hed come. If he did agree to come, then you could bet there was some hope
for that patient. The fees he required were also different from the common
run of doctors: Sometimes hed demand several hundred taels before hed
6Master Sun: Sun Si-miao (581-682), a hermit-scholar famed during the early Tang Dynasty for his
medical expertise. The dates given here are based on Sun's own report, but popular tradition sug
gested he had lived several hundred years.
7"Druggist Kang": Han Kang (mid-2nd c.), a hermit-sage who, hoping to avoid the public eye, sup
ported himself selling herbal medicines in the Eastern Han capital of Chang-an. He became famous
in spite of himself for never changing a price in thirty years.
aDoctor Feng was a legendary doctor said to have been active around the turn of the third century.
He is supposed to have asked the patients he cured to plant apricot trees in lieu of monetary pay
ment.
859
so much as opened up his medicine case; at other times even after curing the
patient he would not ask for a single penny in compensationhe
d just want
someone to treat him to one roaring drunk. Sometimes hed set out as soon
as he got the summons; at other times there was no budging him no matter
how one begged. He was a hard one to fathom. As a general rule, though,
if one were sincere about it he
d be willing to come.
When Madam Gu learned of this medical man, she immediately dis
patched a servant bearing tokens of earnest to set out in the middle of the
night and invite that Eight Hundred Li. As luck would have it, he was
in the prefectural capital, and came as soon as he was called. W ith this the
ladys mind was eased somewhat. W hod have known that as soon as he
set foot in the door, before even taking a pulse, he said, Though this
illness looks mortal, it is nonetheless not mortal. What do you mean by
asking me here? Right away the lady related the whole story of the onset
of the sickness, as well as the rhyme they5d drawn at the Lao-zi temple,
for the doctors consideration, begging him to prescribe a cure. That Eight
Hundred55Li just snorted sarcastically, saying, This disease doesnt make
it into the medical books. I
ve got no medicine to prescribe for it. All you
can do is to keep feeling about his chest after hes dead as long as he
s
not cold, you must not lay him in his coffin! After two weeks or three weeks
or so, when he gets the hankering to eat somethinghe
ll come around of
his own. That slip from the Lao-zi temple, though accurate, will only
become clear after the factit is not something we can make a guess about
just now. He absolutely refused to administer any medicine, and set
off again without further delay. There was no telling what to make of
this. W ould this disease of the Censors really clear up of its own with
no need for medicine? Or had the doctor simply made up an excuse to
leave because the disease was already too advanced for a cure to be at
tempted?
Truly,
Green dragon and white tiger walk together;
no way of knowing what your lot might be.
When the lady saw that Eight Hundred Li had gone, she sighed,
When a doctor with a reputation like his is unwilling to give treatment,
could there be any other who would dare to try? Its sure the disease has
progressed past cure! All that we can do is wait helplessly for death to
come. She sat by the Censor as his fever raged for seven days and seven
nights, growing steadily more severe. Then all at once he lost consciousness,
and no amount of calling could bring him around again. The lady gave way
to sobbing, and meanwhile sent word to the three colleagues, so they could
set about preparations for the funeral. These three were just on their way
to see how things stoodand when they heard the evil news they all shed
tears. They hurried to the official residence to weep before the body, and
then spoke with the lady, consoling her for a while. As it was early autumn
and the weather was still hot, they set out separately to see to the coffin and
burial garments right away. By the third day all had been put in readiness,
and it should have been time to close up the coffin.
But just then as the lady was weeping bitterly, slumped down over the
body, she felt that, sure enough, there was a slight hint of warmth about the
chest. For this she began to think there might be something to the words of
Eight Hundred Li, and wanted to leave the body lying in the bed. But the
domestics all saidThats always been the way of it. Dead people can keep
warm about the chest for as long as three or four daysthey don
t really turn
cold right after they die. So what does that prove? Its now early Septem
ber, and the heat has not yet abated. If there is so much as a thunderclap,
that body will swell up in a secondthen how will you ever get it into that
coffin? The lady said, Master Li said that as long as his chest wasnt cold
he was not to be put in the coffin. Well, hes warm now, and even if I did
n't believe what Master Li said, Fd keep watch over him for half a month
or twenty days~how could I bear to shut him up after just three days, and
still warm? Anyway, the coffin is all readyjust leave me to keep watch day
and night. As soon as his chest grows cold I
ll put him inthat wont be too
late. O Heaven! Only let Master L i
s words come true. If I can tend my man
back to health, it wont be saving just one life, butcounting me, two lives.
They all tried again and again to dissuade her, but she just wouldnt lis
ten. And since they couldnt outstubborn her, they had no choice but to go
along with herthey left the Censor lying in his bed, with his wife keeping
constant watch. Enough on that account for now.
Now when the Censors illness entered the seventh day, his body grew ex
tremely hot, so that he could not bear it for so much as another moment.
His mind was completely taken up with the idea of finding a cool spot to
relax a spellperhaps thenhe thought, there might be some hope of the
sickness abating. So he slipped off quietly, evading the notice of his wife and
colleagues, and, picking up a bamboo staff, quietly left the official quarters
without calling anyone to wait on him. In a twinkling hed reached the out
side of the town walls. He felt like a bird leaving its cage, or a fish slipping
free from a net. Filled with delight, he put all thought of sickness behind him.
Now you may be wondering how the Censor, being an official, was able
to leave his quarters without a single person taking note of it. As it turns
outthe depth of his longing had given rise to a dream, and it was his dream
ing soul which felt all this was happening. His body remained behind as be
fore on the bedhow could it have gone anywhere? O f course, this left the
one watching over the body to weep and wail without cease day and night,
hoping against hope to pull life back from the maw of death. How could
she have known that the dreamer was drifting and floating without the least
hindrance, himself in fact drawing joy from the heart of suffering?
Censor Xue went out the South Gate and then headed off into the moun
tains. He came to a certain mountain called Dragonsease. On that moun
tain there was a pavilion that had been built by the Sui emperor Wen on the
occasion of the investiture of his son Yang Xiu as Duke of Shu. It was named
861
Refuge from Heat. Around it on all four sides was lush forest and long
bamboos. Breezes came from all directions, and there was not the least ray
of sunlight. So that King of Shu, whenever the sultry days came, would mar
shal his court guests off to this pavilion to escape the heat. It was truly a fine
cool spot! Just then when the Censor caught sight of it, he felt his spirits set
at ease. If I hadn't come out from the town, how should I ever have known
that there was a setting like this in the mountains? Fve been assigned to Qingcheng for a long while, yet I have never come to this place. And those col
leagues of mine, how could they find out about it? I ought to tell them, so
that we could bring wine goblets to this spot and hold a Heat-shunning Ban
quet. Its a shame that, in this worthy setting, I lack my worthy friends to
share it~when all is said and done theres something missing
The scene which lay before him was lovely, and he composed a poem
then and there. It went;
A half-days leisure snatched from drifting life,
on ruins brink, Ive scaled this slope alone.
Though here I draw breath close to Heavens gates,
dont let me float away without return!
Censor Xue sat a while in the pavilion, and then set off once again into
the mountains. There were no trees shading that mountain path, so it could
not compare to the cool comfort of the pavilion and he felt more and more
stifled as he went along. When bit by bit he
d covered three or four miles,
off in the distance he made out a large river.
Now what river do you suppose that was? Back when Great Yu was tam
ing the floods,9he channeled the M in River out of the M in Mountains. When
he
d passed through the lands of Mao-zhou and Sheng-zhou, he further
carved out this river
which is called the Tuo. To this very day, from the bank
of this river hangs a great iron chaintheres no telling just how long it is,
since its sunk down in the riverbottoxn. This is the spot where Great Yu
chained up Ying Dragonit turns out that when Yu was taming the floods,
whenever he came to a place where the watercourse was blockedhe5d send
that Ying Dragon on ahead. Let those peaks and crags be never so talljust
one flip of Ying Dragons tailand in an instant they
d be split in two. That5s
why Great Yu is also referred to as Wondrous Yu: if he did not know how
to command such creatures, how could he have set the floods to rest within
just eight years? To this day on the Si River there is another iron chain, which
holds down Water Mother (the form of this creature is like a macaque). Now
at this Tuo River, it was the Ying dragon. Both of these creatures were
chained up after the work of taming the floods had been accomplishedin
order to prevent any future trouble. Is that not a miraculous feat?
9Great Yu was the legendary founder of the Xia Dynasty, credited with saving the people from ram
pant flooding by digging China's system of rivers.
8^0
Just then the Censor was feeling oppressed by the heat as he walked along.
Besides, he was suffering from a fever. When he suddenly caught sight of
this stretch of the Tuo River, broad and rolling, extending without break to
the horizon, he naturally felt a fresh coolness penetrating to his very mar
row. He wished he could make every step into three and fly off at once like
a sail-cart. He didnt realize, however, that though it looked very close from
up on the mountain, once he
d come down, his path was cut off by East Pool
before he could reach the Tuo. This pool was quite large. The water was
clear as a mirror, and one could see right to the bottom even in the deepest
parts. And the bamboos along the banks shone with a fresh greenness you
could touch. The Censor took off his clothes and went into the pool to bathe.
It happens that the Censor was from the Wu regionhe had grown up
in the land of ponds and lakes. He had learned to dive from childhood. Since
hed become a grown man, this skill of his had fallen into long disuse. Un
expectedly coming here today, he felt the old joy come back to him with dou
bled force. As he splashed about, he happened to sigh to himself, This swim
ming of humans cant compare with that of the fishes, after all! I wish I could
borrow a suit of scales to grow onto my body, so I could swim about freely
where I pleasednow that would be more like it! Just then there appeared
a little fish by his side who, eyeing the Censor, said to him, If you want to
be a fish, theres no problem to it. Why speak of borrowing
W ait here
while I go to He Bo to work on it for you.55And almost before hed finished
saying this, the little fish was gone. This gave the Censor quite a scareand
he thought, How was I to know there were magical creatures in this water?
This is no place for swimming alone. I
d best get out of here with no delay!
Little did the Censor know that, having once felt such a desire, he could
not but be subjected to such a course of karmic retribution.
It led to:
Robe and cap:
doffed for a time along with human cares.
Scaly armor:
soon seen springing forth upon the water.
Censor Xue paused, sunk in thought, and was about to put his clothes
back on and make his way home, when the little fish suddenly reappeared
with news, saying, Congratulations! He Bo has made his will known.
And there came a fish-headed person, astride a large fish, with innumer
able little fishes in attendance before and behind, who read out He Bos
decree.
Which said
Town dwellers, water-wanderers: floaters and sinkers go by separate paths. If
not through some special penchant, who could pass freely along both?
Yon Qing-cheng Censor Xue Wei, native of Wu, member of the lesser or
ders of officialdom, joys in the watery vastness of the clear riverand swims with
happy abandon; wearied by the commotion of the dusty world, he shakes off
his robes and departs. Let him undergo for a time the scaly transfiguration, yet
not for life. Let him assume the duties of Crimson Carp of East Pond.
Pay heed! Those who indulge in far-roving pleasures with no thought of return
will surely be punished by the clear-eyed spirits; those who ignore the thin hook
and gulp the sweet bait will find it hard to escape the calamity of block and blade.
See that you do not, by some error, bring shame on our kind. Heed these words!
When the Censor had done listening to the reading of this decree, he glanced
down at his body to find that it had already grown scalesfrom head to toe,
he
d been transformed into a golden carp. Though he was shocked and amazed,
still he thought to himself, Since its come to this, let me at least go and swim
to my hearts content, to learn the pleasures of the watery life. And from that
time on, there was no spot among the three rivers and five lakes which he did
not visit in his travels as he wandered about according to his whim.
It turns out that as He Bos decree had appointed him Crimson Carp of
East Pool, that East Pool was like a fixed address to him; and no matter how
far afield he traveled, hed at least have to come back there to rest. Now being
tied down to that one little place began in time to make him feel a bit restless.
After a few days
that little fish came again and said to the Censor, Have you
not heard that in Ping-yang Prefecture in Shan-xi there is a mountain called
Long-men, or Dragongate? It was drilled through by Great Yu when he was
taming the floods. Beneath the mountain is the Yellow River. Now since there
is a stream at the top of the mountain that joins up with the waters of the Milky
Way, rushing down to become the headwaters of the Yellow Riverthat spot
is named Riverford. As we speak, the eighth month is coming around, and
the autumn floods will soon rush down, heralded by thunder. All the carp
under Heaven will go there to jump Dragongate, Why dont you request a
leave of absence from He Bo, and go yourself to jump? If you make it across
you will become a dragon~wouldnt that beat being a carp?
Now it just happened that right then the Censor was beginning to
grow a bit fed up with living in East Pool; when he heard about this, he
was overjoyed. Right away, he took leave of the little fish, and headed
straight for He Bos place. Now He Bo
s palatial halls all have coral
columns and tortoise-shell rafters a real dragon castle, a sea treasury, dif
ferent in its own way in every detail from the ones of this world. At this
time, carp from all the regions under He Bo
s jurisdiction the M in, Tuo'
BaYu, Fu, Qian, Ping-jiang, She-hong, Zhuo-j in, Jia-ling, and Qing-yi
rivers, along with the Five Streams, the Lu Waters, the Sevengate Shallows,
and the Three Straits of Qu-tanghad come to request leaves of absence
to go and jump Dragongate. The Censor, as the only golden carp present,
was appointed their representative, to lead them in to their audience with
He Bo. In keeping with ancient customa general banquet was held, just
like those held in this world to see off the candidates for the civil service
exams. The Censor and the carp of the various regions partook of the ban
quet, gave thanks for imperial bounty, and set off together for Dragongate
d have guessed, they couldnt make it over, and returned
to jump. W ho
with dotted foreheads. Now you may ask, W hats this about dotted
foreheads
That is because when the carp try to jump through Dragongate they have to fight their way against the current, concentrating all
their blood and vital spirits in the center of their foreheads, so that it looks
as if they've been dotted there with a red brush. Thats why people of this
world refer to unsuccessful exam candidates as having Kdotted fore
headsM it all stems from this. Truly,
Hardpressed to pass through Dragongate5s fierce flood
in shame they bear the foreheads splotch of blood.
Now in Qing-jiang County there lived a fisherman named Zhao Gan, who
made his living, along with his wife, netting fish out on the Tuo River. All
unexpectedly he
d netted a great snapping turtle that had dragged the net
along with it~even Zhao Gan himself was nearly pulled into the river. His
wife berated him, saying, <(We depended on that net as our sole capital, to
keep the two of us alive. Now that you've gone and lost our only fixed asset,
how do you expect to come by any liquid assets to buy a new one? W hats
more, those people from the district government come by every so often to
pick up a fish. What will you come up with to satisfy them now? The two
of them argued over this the whole night. Zhao Gan could not stand up to
her browbeating, and had nothing for it but to rig up a fishing pole and make
ready to come fish at East Pool. Now why do you suppose that Zhao Gan
left that great river behind, and came instead to this pool to fish? As it hap
pens, the current of the Tuo River is of the fastest, and thus perfect for net
ting, but unsuited to pole-fishing. So he thought of coming to East Pool to
try his luck at this new line of work. He stuck a fragrant lump of oily dough
on the end of that pole and tossed it into the water.
Now Censor Xue, ever since his return from getting his forehead dotted
at Dragongate, had been out of sorts, and had hidden himself away in East
Pool for several days without venturing out to look for something to eat.
His belly was just then aching with hunger. When Zhao Gans fishing boat
came paddling up, he couldnt resist following after it, just to see what was
afoot. As soon as he smelled the fragrance of that bait, he felt a great long
ing to eat it. He already had it up to his lips when he thought to himself, I
know good and well that theres a hook in this bait. If I swallow it, wont
he have then caught me? Though Ive turned for a time into a fish, is there
really no other place for me to look for food, that I must eat only whats on
his hook? And he returned to play about in the shadows of the boats hull.
But how could he resist the overpowering fragrance of that bait, which
seemed to bore its way right into his nostrils? What's more, he was very hun
gryhe really couIdn?t hold out any longer. He thought, I am a human
being, and who knows how much I weigh. And this little hook is going to
drag me away? And what if he does pull me out? Im a third-grade magis
trate in the district government, and he is the fisherman Zhao Gan. He can
not fail to know me, and will naturally send me on my way home to the dis865
trict seat. So wont I still end up eating his bait for free? He
d barely closed
his mouth around the baitand hadnt even had time to swallow when Zhao
Gan have a tug, and pulled him out. This is what is known as:
the eyes see through the trick,
but the belly cant hold back.
When that Zhao Gan saw hed hooked a golden carp about three feet
longhe clapped both hands to his head and cried out, Heavenly day! If
only I can catch a few more like this, Ill have enough money to tie a new
net in no time! The Censor called out to him repeatedly, Zhao Gan! You
are a fisherman under my jurisdiction. Hurry up and send me back to my
office. But that Zhao Gan paid him no attention, and went right ahead and
strung a straw rope through the Censors gills and threw him into the hold.
Then his wife said to him, The district government is always sending peo
ple at odd intervals to pick up fish. Now as I see it, with a fish as big as this
one, if some ministry errand-runner catches sight of it and takes it away
just how much government compensation do you think youll get for it?
W e
d do better to hide it away among the reeds along the bank and wait for
a peddler to come along, so we can sell it on the free market. And well have
that much more to spend ourselves. Zhao Gan said, Good idea, and took
the fish off to hide in the reeds, covering it with an old straw poncho. He
came back and said to his wife, If we can get a good price for this one, Pll
take some of the money and buy some beer for the two of us to get good
and drunk. If our luck holds through the night, who5s to say tomorrow I
wont catch two?
Now not too long after that Zhao Gan had hidden the fish and brought
the boat back, sure enough there came an errand-runner from the district
administration, named Zhang Bi, who called out to Zhao Gan, saying,
Fifth-Granddad Pei wants an extra large carp to poach. I came out to the
Tuo this morning to find you, but now youve moved over here, making me
search high and low for you, till I
m all sweaty and out of breath. Hurry up
now and pick me out a big one, and come along with me to deliver it. Zhao
Gan said, I
m much to blame for making you go out of your way, sir. Its
not that I wanted to move to this spot. But the other day I lost my net, and
have no money to buy a new one, so I had no choice. I have to hook a few ,
here until I can make up the money. But no big fish will take my hook all
I5ve got is three or four pounds of small ones. If you want those, take them.55
Zhang Bi said,<cFifth-Granddad Peis orders were to get a big one. How can
I report back with small ones?
W ith a lunge he jumped down onto the boat and lifted up the well cover
to look. Sure enough, they were all small ones. He was about to take those
and try and make do. But then he thought to himself, In a big wide stretch
like this, how could there really be no big fish? Its certain this guy is up to
something. He must have the big ones hidden away somewhere. W ith that
he went ashore and searched all around, but couldnt find anything. Next,
he went over to loak among the reeds. There was an old straw poncho flap8%
ping wildly up and down. Zhang Bi guessed there must be a fish under there.
When he strode up and lifted the poncho to look, it was a golden carp about
three feet long. When Zhao Gan and his wife saw what had happened they
could only curse their luck. Zhang Bi paid them no mind, but simply picked
up that fish and stalked off. He looked back over his shoulder and said, A
fine job of deception! You just wait till Fve reported this to Fifth-Granddad
Pei~youll get a sound beating, you rascal!
The Censoicried out in a loud voiceZhang Bi! Zhang Bi! You too must
certainly know me. Ive come by chance to East Pool, and am amusing my
self as a fish. How is it that seeing me you do not kowtow, but just sweep
me up and rush off? Zhang Bi paid not the slightest attention. He made
straight for the district seat, with that fish dangling by his side. Zhao Gan
followed at a distance. And all the while Zhang Bi was walking, the Censor
was cursing him.
Zhang Bi carried the fish up to the town gatewhere there was a soldier
named Hu Jian on guard. Hu Jian said to Zhang Bi, What a huge fish! FifthGranddad Pei has called all the granddads to a banquetand theyre all wait
ing just for that fish, so they can make poached carp. They say youve been
gone a long time with no word, and they just sent out an express message
to summon you. You
d sure enough better make it quick. When the Cen
sor lifted his head to look, it was that same south gate, called the Greeting
Fragrance Gate
through which he
d gone out the other day. He called out
to the gatekeeper, saying, Hu Jian! Hu Jian! The other day when I left town,
I instructed you that I was leaving on my own and that you neednt notify
the other granddads, or send anyone along to attend on me. Can it be that
before Ive been gone even one month, youve already forgotten? Now you
should go and notify the other granddads, and assign someone to attend on
me. How is it that you pay me no heedsuch impudence! Yet oddly the
gatekeeper seemed not to hear, just like Zhang Bi. That Zhang Bi went
straight on with the fish into the town gate, Censor Xue all the while yelling
and cursing without break.
There inside the gate were a clerk of the Households Bureau and a clerk
of the Penal Bureau, sitting opposite each other over a chessboard. That
Households Bureau clerk said, Yugh! A fish that size must weigh over ten
pounds! The Penal Bureau clerk said, What a lovely golden carp! He
should be pat in the 'Emerald Ripples Pool of rear hall in the ministry com
pound just for the pleasure of looking at himwhat a shame to waste him
just to make poached carp! The Censor bellowed, You two clerks wait
on me all day in the ministry. Though I may have turned into a fish, you
should recognize me. How is it that on seeing me you dont stand up, or run
to make report to the other granddads ?MThose two clerks just sat there as
before playing chess, as if they hadnt heard a thing. The Censor thought,
The saying has it that ca dog
s obeyed in office.5 Can it be that now that
Ive no control over you, youve lost all fear of me whatsoever? Do you think
that since I
ve been away these few daysmy office has been taken away?
And even if it had been taken away, I have still not left my post; when it
867
comes down to it I do have power over you. Just wait till I meet my col
leagues. WeJll write up reprimands against the lot of you slaves, and have
you flogged till skin splits and flesh bursts. . . .w
Dear Audience: take careful note of this situation, for in the next in
stallment the outcome will be made clear.
,
Now Madam Gu kept careful watch over Censor Xue5s corpse, and before
she knew it, more than twenty days had gone by. Yet the flesh remained as
firm as ever, showing no signs of deterioration. When she stretched out her
hand to feel the region of his heartit seemed as if it had grown if anything
warmer than before. Bit by bitthe warmth extended, till up as far as the
throat and down as far as the navel the body was not very cold at all. When
she thought back on the words of Master Eight Hundred Li, it seemed as 1
if they really were coming at least partly true. Thereupon she pricked out
some blood from her forehead and wrote out a spirit-petition. She asked a
few advanced Daoist adepts to hold a service to pray for a magical cure, and
protection for the Censor in his return to life. She made vows to rebuild the
Lao-zi temple, and to erect a golden image if her prayers were answered. On
the day when her petition was to be submittedthe three colleagues and the
civil functionaries and common people of the entire district all burned in
cense and prayed on the Censors behalf, as they had on that former day.
Fm reminded of that old saying, The blessed person bears the stamp of
Heaven55: now with an official as virtuous as Censor Xue, and with all the
civil servants and commoners of the county praying on his behalf, could there
be any fear that it would all come to nothing? It was just that this was a per
son w ho
d been dead over twenty days whom they were trying to restore to
life. Though no one who ever made a petition at that Lao-zi temple ever had
it go unanswered, still, of those souls that report before the hall of King
Yamanot a single one can ever return.
Truly,
Trust that good will ever come of good,
doubt not the power of the unseen gods.
Now on that night the adepts laid out seven bright lamps on the altar,
in the form of the seven stars of the Big Dipper. As it happens, the seventh
star of the Big Dipper is called the dipper handle. In spring it points to
the east, in summer to the south, in autumn to the west, and in winter to
the north, spinning about up there in Heaven. Only the fourth star, called
Heavens H inge
never moves. For this reason, the lamp in the position
corresponding to Heavens Hinge is specially designated as the Lifelamp. If this lamp is bright, then the person concerned will have no trou
bleif it is dark, then that person will be beleaguered by illness; and if that
lamp goes out, then one can be sure that person has little chance of recov
ery.
Now on that evening the presiding adept raised the ritud implements in
868
his hands and chanted incantations, praying fervently for the dispersal of
the evil influences. He entered into a trance, and personally submitted the
petition to the star-official, requesting that Censor Xues soul be permitted
to return to the world of light. When the others went to look at the seven
lamps, they were all burning brightly, and one felt that the Life-lamp was
especially brilliantmanifesting the truth of the saying that he was not yet
meant to die. The adept congratulated the lady on her good fortune, saying,
The Censor's Life-lamp is glowing with doubled brilliance. His return to
life will be at any time now. Above all you must remember not to give way
to excessive grieving, for fear that you may disturb the peace of his spirit
and make his return more difficult. The lady thanked him with tears in her
eyes, saying, If it comes out in this way, then I will not have gone through
this ceremony and the bitterness of these long days and nights of watching
in vain. When she
d heard this news, she felt her spirits lighten somewhat.
Without knowing it she grew groggy and fell asleep, and dreamed a dream:
As clear as day she saw the Censor all in a panic, rushing in at the gate
as naked as a newborn infant, his entire body stained with fresh blood. Cov
ering his neck with both hands, he said, Confounded luck! I was sailing
out on the river in high spirits, when all at once a wild wind rose up and
great waves stirred. My boat was overturned, throwing me into the water.
By good fortune the river god took compassion on me, seeing as my allot
ted span was not yet up, and sent me out of the river and on my way, be
stowing on me a suit of golden chainmail. Just as I made to seek out the road
into townI unexpectedly encountered a gang of robbers blocking the way.
W ith designs on my golden armor, they killed me with a single stroke. If you
have a thought for our marital bond, take care to keep watch over my soul
and bring me back.
When the lady heard this in her dream, she unwittingly let out a great cry,
and with this awoke. She thoughtJust now that Daoist priest said that he
would not die; how comes it that Fve had such a horrible dream? Yet I re
member that phrase from the book of dream interpretation: Those dreamed
dead will live.For all I can tell it may be that he has just now escaped
calamity through penitence, and for this reason appeared without a stitch
of clothing. All I can do is keep close watch over the body every moment.M
The next day the lady divided up the offerings from the votive altar and
sent them over to the three colleaguesthis is known as scattering fortune.
Prefect Pei, acting as host, invited the others to his home for a ceremonial
banquet. This is known as drinking fortune. It was for this reason that
Prefect Pei had sent Zhang Bi to the fishermans home to fetch a big fish to
poach, to go along with the wine.
In the end it was Second-grade Zou whose feelings for his old classmate
proved the stronger, as he sighed before the laden board, This is no ordi
nary drinking party, but has been called for the purpose of summoning Cen869
sor Xue back to life half of the very dishes on this table come from the vo
tive altar. Not knowing whether Censor Xue is to live or die, how can we
call up any appetite for food? Fifth-grade Pei then said, The ancients did
not sigh over their food. Do you think that you are alone in your worry for
your classmate? Do we not also worry for our colleague? I hear the priests
said that his return to life would occur either last night or today. Lets wait
until that fish comes so we have something to chase our drinkdrink our
selves silly, and wait here for news of him. W ont that fulfill both our pub
lic and our private obligations?
That day it was not until the early afternoon that Zhang Bi came into
the courtyard with the fish dangling at his side. As it came out, Fifth-grade
Pei had been made to wait just for that fish, and he was sitting there eating
peaches as he watched Second-grade Zou and Fourth-grade Lei play
backgammon. When he glanced up and saw Zhang Bi sitting there, he flew
off the handle and yelled out, I sent you to get fish and bring it here how
is it youve been gone so long? You mean to tell me that if I hadnt sent out
that express message to summon you, you wouldnt have come at all?
Zhang Bi kowtowed and told in detail the story of how Zhao Gan had hid
den the big fish away. Then Fifth-grade Pei ordered the attendant on duty
to drag Zhao Gan down and give him fifty good lashes with a whip. Zhao
Gan was left with skin in tatters and broken fleshfresh blood streaming
down his legs. Now why do you think that Zhao Gan didnt go away ear
lier, but instead had to follow Zhang Bi all the way back to the county seat,
as if just to come looking for this beating? It was those few pennies of gov
ernment compensation he was thinking of! Yet in the end he got fifty lashes
and never saw any payment. Wasnt he just like that golden carp that had
taken his hook? Truly,
In this world life and death are all for gain,
no thought of pause until our final day.
Fifth-grade Pei ran Zhao Gan off. When he lifted that fish to look, he
saw it was a golden carp, over three feet long. He happily exclaimed, This
fish is excellent! Send it at once to the kitchen to poach. Censor Xue cried
out, What do you mean fish
I am your colleague. How can you fail to
recognize me? Now I have endured a great number of insults and have been
waiting just to complain to you gentlemen, so that you can help me to exact
revenge. How is it that you too take me for a fishand send me off to the
kitchen to poach? If I am poached, will that not be a case of wrongful
death? For nothing Ive worked side by side with you all these yearsyou
don't show the least sympathy! But while he said all this, those colleagues
of his paid no attention whatsoever. The Censor was then worked up in the
extreme and burst outClassmate Zou, we were jin-shi graduates together
back in the Tong-bao era. We used to be the best of friends back at the cap
ital and have now been made colleagues here. Youre not like the rest of
them~how can you sit there and see me taken off to death without a word?
Then Second-grade Zou said to Fifth-grade Pei, In my humble opinion, this
fish should not be poached. There is a big pond for releasing life up at the
Lao-zi temple on Qing-cheng Mountain, and a lot of the people who go up
there to hold services buy fish, turtles, and shellfish to release in the pond.
Since todays feast is made up partly of the 'scattered fortune5from Censor
Xue
s service, we would do better to release this fish there as well, to plant
this karmic seed.
Fourth-grade Lei interjected, Releasing the fish is a noble idea! The
teaching of karmic retribution does not permit of doubt. Furthermore, we
have plenty of delicacies for our banquet as it is; what need have we to eat
poached carp as well? At this, Censor Xue, who was still lying out in the
courtyard, said, KClassmate Zou, you really are a scatterbrain! If youve a
mind to save me, why not just send me back to my quarters? What is the
point of sending me back up into the mountains~wont I perish of thirst?
Still, that would beat dying at the hands of the cook. Just wait till I
ve got
to the pool for releasing life and have returned to my true form, and put on
my robes and trappings to be an official again. Forget about Zhao Gan and
that lot of curslets just see which of you will have the nerve to come and
look me in the eye!
As he was blustering to this effect, Fifth-grade Pei replied again, say
ing, Old man, if you want to release this fish, that is a manifestation of
the sacred call to cherish life how should I presume to interfere? But that
ceremony of intercession was performed according to the tenets of Daoismbearing no relation to Buddhist teachings. If you wish to establish
good karma, this is not the proper occasion. Just think Heaven brings all
things to fruition expressly for the sustenance of humankind. Take fish,
for example: if they were not caught and eaten by people, then all would
be fish beneath the sky, and even the riverways would be blocked up.
Everyone does what they can to make themselves good, but this is a mat
ter of the heart and not of the mouth. Thus the old saw has it: The Bud
dha sits within the heart; meat and liquor pass by through the gullet. And:
If you would abide by Buddhist law, then abandon the desire of even a
sip of cool water. Do you really believe that just eating this fish will do
harm to the sincerity of our feelings for our departed colleague? A perfectly
good fish, and you wont poach it, but want to release it to no good pur
pose? How are we to know just because we don
t eat it that it will not be
eaten by an otter instead? It will die just the same. So when all is said and
done, it is better that we eat it. When the Censor heard this, he yelled
out, Lookyour two guests both want to release me. You really are mule
headed! Not only is your feeling for a colleague most tepid, it turns out
that you also utterly lack any understanding of the deference due of a host
to his guests!
Now it turns out that Fourth-grade Lei was diffident by nature. Seeing
how Fifth-grade Pei really had his heart set on making poached carp, he said
to Second-grade Zou, KMr. Pei does not go in for karmic retribution, so it
looks as if there is no saving this fish. Yet today as he is acting as our host,
and wants to take this fish to offer us, how can we be adamant in refusing
him? As I see it, it is not that we really mean to kill this fish; le t
s just say
that its allotted span has run out today and there is thus no saving it. Im
mediately the Censor burst outMr. Lei, you really are spineless! How do
,you come to be arguing on both sides at once? If you want him to release
me and he proves unwilling, you should continue to reason with him. How
can you turn around and persuade Classmate Zou to give up the thought of
rescuing me? Is it that youVe been living on a tight budget and havent had
any fish to eat in a long time, so that youre hoping for a chance to eat your
fill when the poached carp is ready?
All the Censor could do was to turn again to Second-grade Zou, saying,
Classmate! Classmate! Dont tell me youre just putting on a show of
friendship! A few insincere high-sounding words, and thats that? W ill you
not let out so much as another peep on my behalf? O f old its been truly
said, When one is to die and the other to live, the true depth of feeling comes
clear. If it were not that today I come to die and you to live, how should I
ever have known that your feelings for your classmate are as shallow as this?
If one day the term of my release comes, you just wait till I ve returned to
my old form~can I not do as that Secretary Zhai did and hang those words
of spite up at my door for you to see? Classmate, classmate, I only fear that
when you come to regret this, it will be too late! Though the Censor was
shouting and making quite a racket, host and guests all behaved exactly as
if they had not heard a thing.
Then Fifth-grade Pei called in the kitchen servant Wang Shi-liangsince
he was a skilled cook and made the best poached carp. Pei handed the fish
over to him saying, We want it to be both good and fast. Otherwise well
take you out just like that Zhao Gan and serve you up fifty lashes of the
whip. Wang Shi-liang answered that he understood and reached over to
pick up the fish. The Censor was so terrified that the three souls flew out
the top of his head and the seven spirits sank through the floor. He wept
piteously, and said, In the old days, we colleagues were as inseparable as
brothers. Why is it that today no matter how I beg you, you think only of
killing me? Ah, I have it: you surely envy me the administrative seal_ thats
why you have brewed up this villainy. Fll have you know, this seal was be
stowed on me by the authorities; I did not come by it through plotting! But
if youll only agree to let me go home, Ill resign this instant. What is so hard
about that? When hed said this, he once more burst into tears. Yet, whod
have imagined, his colleagues acted as if they had not heard! And the Cen
sor was rushed straight off to the kitchen.
In no time at all a chopping block had been brought over and the Cen
sor Jaid on top of it. When he
ooked up, he saw it was the very man who
had always served him as cook. He yelled out, Wang Shi-liang! Can you
not see that I am Third-Granddad Xue? If I hadnt passed all those W u re
gional recipes on to youwhat dishes would you have been able to come up
with on your own, that all your masters should play up to you so? Now you
should consider the debt of gratitude you owe to me for bringing you up in
the world. Hurry now, and report who I am to all the granddads, and have
me sent along home! What do you mean by putting me up on the chopping

board like this?
Yet strangely Wang Sh,i-Iiang paid not the least attention. Picking up the
knife in his right hand, he pushed down with his left on the fishs head. This
so discomfited the Censor that he flew into a rage. He snarled, You cur!
So you save all your fawning for Fifth-grade Pei and have no fear of me! Do
you imagine I have no means of getting back at you? He began to thrash
about, and flipped his tail right up in Wang Shi-liang
s face, catching him
just like the slap of an open palm to the side of the head, leaving him with
eyes dimmed and ears ringing. The cook brought both hands up to cover
his face and let the knife fall clattering to the floor. As he stooped back down
re so sassy, lets just
to pick up the knife, he sneeredAll right, fish! If you
wait and see how you like swimming around in my p o t!
It turns out that making poached carp calls for the sharpest knife possi
blethe fish must be sliced as thin as snowflakes, to be dipped into boiling
water for just a moment and then scooped out. W ith the addition of a little
pepper and some sesame oil, it comes out naturally tender and fresh-tasting. So Wang Shi-liang went once more to whet his knife. The Censor
when
his repeated calls still brought no responselet out a mournful sigh, and
thought, When that knife is sharpened, my life is at an end. Thinking back
now on the time I lay sick at homethat seems bearable compared to this.
Why did I ever steal out alone, to undergo this torment? If only Id never
seen East Pool, or, even if I
d seen it, if only Id never thought to go in
bathing. Or having gone in, if only Id never wished to turn into a fish! If I
hadnt wished for that, Id never have received He Bos summons, and all
this would never have happened. Still, before I
d become a fish there was
the little fish egging me onafter Yd become a fish, that Zhao Gan came along
to trick me. It is all the workings of fate, and Ive brought it on myself. How
can I blame anyone else? I only pity my poor wife, left alone in our residence,
without son or daughter~on whom can she rely? If only I could somehow
get a message to her, so that I could die without regrets! As he was moan
ing and weeping like this, Wang Shi-liang took the freshly honed blade and
chopped off his head with a single stroke. Truly,
While three inches of breath remain,
w ho
s willing to give up the least advantage?
When the six-foot body passes,
it all fades like a dream on a spring day.
Alas, poor Censor!
Now while over here Wang Shi-liang had just chopped off the fishs head,
back in the official residence in the district administration compound, Cen
sor Xue suddenly sprang upright on his bier. Forget about Madam Gu, who,
being a woman, was nearly frightened to death~even all those household
servants watching over the body wagged their heads and let their tongues
loll out, saying,<Strange! Weve been keeping close watch all along, and no
873
cat has jumped over the body. How is it then that the corpse has been drawn
upright? Then the Censor gave a sigh and said, How many days is it that
Ive been unconscious? His wife replied, Dont try to scare me! Youve
been dead for over twenty days, and we wondered whether you could ever
live again. The Censor said, "When did I ever die? I just had a dream. I
never guessed I
d been dreaming that long. Then he called out to the ser
vants, Go over to look in on my three colleagues. Right now theyre sit
ting in the hall, getting ready to eat poached carp. You tell them to put down
their chopsticks and not to eat it. Have them come over right away to my
residence to have a word with me_
Sure enough, the colleagues were in the hall drinking, and the poached
carp had just been brought in. They were just making ready to pick up their
chopsticks, when suddenly Censor Xue
s messenger announced, The Cen
sor has come around. He requests that you three gentlemen not eat the fish3
but come at once to the ministry to have a word. Those three were so
shocked they all leapt to their feet, saying, To think that Doctor Eight Hun
dred9Lis diagnosis and the lamps in the Lao-zi temple were so uncannily
accurate! They rushed over to the Xue residence, calling out, Congratu
lations, congratulations! The Censor said, Gentlemen
do you know what
has happened? That golden carp you poached just now was yours truly. If
it had not been for that knife stroke of Wang Shi-liang
sits more than likely
there would have been no waking from that dream.
The three of them stared vacantly, not taking in what he was saying. They
said, How could such a thing be possible? If it please Your Excellency, try
telling it to us from the beginning, so that we may give you our undivided
attention. Censor Xue said, Just now when Zhang Bi arrived with the fish,
Classmate Zou and Mr. Lei were playing backgammon, while you, Mr. Pei,
were sitting to one side eating peacheswere you not? Zhang Bi reported
that the fisherman Zhao Gan had hidden away the big fish and tried to pass
off some little ones. Mr. Pei was furious, and had Zhao Gan given fifty
lashes. Did this happen? The three of them said, Sure enoughit is as you
say. But how is it that Your Excellency knows this in such detail? The Cen
sor said, Now go and summon Zhao Gan, Zhang Bi, that soldier Hu Jian
who watches the Greeting Fragrance Gate, and those two clerks of the
Households and Penal Bureaus, along with the cook Wang Shi-liang, and
let me ask them a few questions.
The three colleagues sent off servants to call the lot of them in. When
they had all been assembled there, the Censor said, Zhao Gan, you were
fishing in East Pool and caught a golden carp about three feet long; on your
wifes instructions, you hid it among the reeds, covered with an old straw
poncho. When Zhang Bi came for fish you claimed not to have any large
ones. But the fish was discovered by Zhang Bi, who carried it up to the Wel
coming Fragrance Gate. There the gatekeeper Hu Jian said that Fifth-Granddad Pei had sent an express note to summon him and he
d better make it
quick. He then went inside the gate, where these two clerks were sitting fac
ing each other, playing chess. One saidThat fish is frightfully large! It will
874
certainly make good poached carp!5The other said, Such a lovely fish! It
should be kept in the pond of the rear hall, not wasted on poaching.When
Wang Shi-liang held the fish down on the chopping board, the fish flipped
its tail up and hit him in the face. He went again to sharpen his knife before
letting the blade fall. Now, did all those things happen?
Zhao Gan and the others all said in amazement, Every one of them.
But how did Granddad Xue come to know all this? The Censor said, I
was that fish. Ever since being caught, Ive been yelling without pause, de
manding to be sent home, yet none of you paid me any heed. What was the
meaning of that?
Zhao Gan and the rest of them all kowtowed, saying, Your servants
truly heard nothing. If we had heard, how should we have dared not to send
your eminence back to the ministry? The Censor also asked Prefect Pei,
When you, sir, wanted to make poached carp, Classmate Zou repeatedly
urged you to release the fish5and Mr. Lei chimed in to the same effect. Yet
you would not listen, instead calling Wang Shi-liang and urging him to set
about his business. Thereupon I burst out crying, saying, In vain have I been
your colleague all this while, that today you are hell-bent on killing me! Was
this the action of a man of humane sentiments? Now forget for the time being
Mr. Peis lack of courtesyClassmate Zou, and you too, Mr. Lei, did not in
tercede with a single word on my behalf. What am I to make of this?
The three of them simply looked at one another, saying, When did we
ever hear the least sound? And they rose together to beg forgiveness. The
Censor laughed, sayingAs long as this fish did not die, I could not live.
Whats past is past; there is no need to mention the matter further. With
this he dismissed Zhao Gan and the others. The three colleagues also took
their leave and returned to their homes. They threw the fish into the water
and swore that from that moment on they would never eat fish again.
It turns out that when the Censor had been crying out and weeping, there
had never been any sound at all; all that happened was that the fishs mouth
opened and closed. So there was good reason for the three colleagues and
Zhao Gan and the rest to have heard nothing.
Now when Madam Gu reflected back on the wording of the slip from the
Lao-zi temple, there was not one thing which had not been fulfilled. So she
told the Censor in full detail of the matter of the fortune-slip and the votive
offering she'd madeshe hoped to see to the fulfilling of the vows shed made.
The Censor said in amazement, After all the time Fve been here, I
d onlyheard that there was a Lao-zi temple on Qing-cheng Mountain, which drew
quite a number of pilgrims. How could I have known that it possessed mag
ical efficacy like this?
Right away he began seven days of fasting and prayer, and then, setting
lamps and incense in readinessprepared to go in person to the temple to
fulfill the vows. At the same time he sent people to make cost estimates for
lumber, for the setting up of the golden image, and for all the necessary labor.
Drawing on his personal fortune and on his government salary, he made the
875
necessary purchases, and awaited an auspicious day to begin the work. On

the morning of the seventh day, he dismissed his servants, and, accompa
nied only by a pageboy of twelve or thirteen, set out alone from his residence,
prostrating himself at every step, toward Qing-cheng Mountain. Just when
he
d got halfway up the mountain slope, as he was making his obeisance,
he suddenly heard someone calling out to him, saying, Censor Xue. You
know what? The Censor gave a start, and when he looked up, there was a
herdboy in a broad straw hatholding a small flute in his hand, seated side
ways on the back of a blue cow, who had just rounded a bend in the moun
tain slope. Censor Xue said, And what is it that youd have me know?
That herdboy saidDid you know that among the immortals there was a
certain Qin Gao, who first ascended to Heaven astride a scarlet carp? One
night at the table of the Queen Mother of the West, he stole a glance at that
Tian Si-fei who plays the Cloud-glockenspiel, and succumbed to worldly
thoughts. For this the two of them were banished into the mortal world.
Now, your former self was just this Qin Gao; and that wife of yours was
Tian Si-fei. Since your arrival at your post hereyouve been enamored of
the realm of the senses, unable to leave it behind. So you were sent to act
temporarily as Crimson Carp of East Pool and to undergo all manner of suf
ferings, so that you might change your ways. Why do you still not come to
your senses? Can it be that you still have not awakened from your dream?
The Censor said, According to what you say, I was once an immortal.
Yet now I
ve fallen into delusion. What I need, then, is a teacher to prompt
my memory.wThe herdboy saidIf its prompting you want, the person
is closer than a thousand leaguesin fact, as close as the end of your nose.
That master Eight Hundred Li of Cheng-du Prefectureis he not an im
mortal? Back in Han times, he was called Han Kang, and was there in
Chang-an all along, selling medicines and never changing his price. Later
on a woman saw through his disguise, and he changed his name to Eight
Hundred5 Li. People all say it
s because he received eight hundred secret
cures from Sun Si-miao. What they dont know is that his skills are far su
perior to those of Sage Sun; in fact, hes been alive for over eight hundred
years. Now the term of your banishment and that of your wife will soon
be at an end, and you are both due to be restored to the register of im
mortals. Why dont you ask that Eight Hundred Li, and have him clear
away your worldly delusion?
Now it just happened that Madam Gu had only told him about the mat
ter of the votive offering, and hadnt told him yet about Eight Hundred
Li and his diagnosis. Thus when the herdboy mentioned the name Eight
H undred
the Censor had not the least idea who that was. He thought to
himself, What does a herdboy in the mountain wilds know? He's just mak
ing up this whole outlandish tale; its not worth taking seriously; Let me just
stick to fulfilling these vows, prostrating myself at every step~that is the
important thing- Hed hardly expected that as soon as his head was turned,
that herdboy and ox would both change into a wisp of purple xnist, which
floated up into the sky. Truly,
876
The Yuan and M ing Dynasties
Face to face with immortals, you still dont know them

how can you hope to know your former lives?
The Censor, already somewhat mystified by the uncanny nature of his
transformation into a fish, on seeing this herdboy float away on a breeze,
was even more at a loss. He tried to settle his doubtsthinking, Was even
that herdboy part of a dream? Yet in the end he couldnt make up his mind
just what to think.
In time he
d made his way all the way to the Lao-zi shrine at the top of
the mountain, and kowtowed in thanks for the protection of the spirits which
had allowed him to return to life. All that remained was to fix an auspicious
day to fulfill the vow to rebuild the temple. When he'd paid his respects and
rose to leave, he noticed that the spirit-image of Lao-zi had exactly the ap
pearance of that herdboy. And there by the dais was an image of a blue cow
just like the one the herdboy had been riding. Only then did the realization
come to him who it was who had appeared to him, and he exclaimed, Its
clear as can be that that herdboy just now was the supreme Lao-zi, guiding
me to return to the ranks of immortals. Yet Ive got eyes in my head to no
good purpose, and let this chance slip by me! W ith that he threw himself
down again and begged forgiveness.
When he
d returned home, he told his wife in full detail all that the herd
boy had said. Only then did she say, When you were dangerously ill, we
invited in the master Eight Hundred5Li from Cheng-du Prefecture to come
examine you. He said the case was 'mortal yet not mortal,5and that we must
wait after your death for half a month to twenty-odd days, and youd grad
ually come back around of your own accord; there was no need to admin
ister medicines. When he was about to leave, he said again, That fortuneslip is true as true can be. Only after youve seen the fish will it become clear.5
As I see it, if he can tell the past and future like that, he really must be an
immortal. Never mind about Lord Lao-zi appearing to you and directing you
to go to him even if he were not an immortal, just for his trouble in com
ing to diagnose you, and so accurately at that, you ought to go and thank
him.55
When the Censor had heard all this, he saidSo there was this layer of
circumstance as well! Indeed, how should I fail to go and thank him? He
performed seven more days of ritual purification, and set off on foot for
Cheng-du to seek out Master wEight Hundred55Li. Just by luckon the day
he arrived, Eight Hundred Li was sitting in his medicine shop. As soon
as he saw the Censor, he asked him, So have you woken from your dream
yet? The Censor threw himself down on the ground and said, Your dis
ciple has now awakened. I only request, Master, that you instruct me, so
that I may free myself of this world and quickly hear of the great way.
Eight Hundred Li laughed and said, Now you5re not some novice with
no spiritual root who needs to learn about alchemical philters and all that.
In your former existence you were a banished immortalthe supreme Lord
Lao-zi has already explicitly revealed as much to you. You don
t recognize
877
yourself, and come asking another to recognize you? Can it be that you know
only a certain Censor of Qing-cheng County?
On hearing these words, realization came to the Censor in a flood, and
he prostrated himself in thanks, saying, Now your disciple has well and
truly awakened! Yet there remains the matter of the vow at the Lao-zi tem
ple. When I have fulfilled this vow, Ill quit my post and bring my wife along,
so that together with Master we may make good our return to the immor
tal rolls! W ith that he took leave of Eight Hundred Li and hurried back
to Qing-cheng County, where he told his wife all that Eight Hundred Li
had said. She also realized the truth upon hearing these words, that she had
been that Tian Si-fei who played the Cloud-glockenspiel before the Western
Queen Mother, who had fallen from that state as a result of worldly stir
ring. That night she and the Censor settled down in separate chambers, burn
ing incense and meditating, striving to realize their karmic destiny. The next
day, the Censor sent his seal of office over to Second-grade Zou, asking him
to take over the post, and submitted a report to his superiors. In the mean
while, he was urging on the workers in the construction of the great halls
and courts, and of the golden image. It was all most impressive and orderly.
At last the day came when the work was completed, and Second-grade
Zou, in order to fulfill a vow of his own, wanted to pitch in part of his salary
to help with the costs. He arranged to meet with the two county prefects,
whereupon they all went over to the Censors quarters to inform him of their
wishes. The servants thought he was in his room meditating, and went in to
announce the visitor's. But all they saw was a poem left lying on the writing
desk. There was no telling where the Censor and the lady had gone. The ser
vants handed that poem to Second-grade Zou to read. It was composed by
the Censor as a farewell to his colleagues and to the clerks and people of the
county. The poem read:
Through dreamed fish-body, happily unscathed;
if I
d been truly fish, then death too would be true.
Wherever life is death must be as well
I long to part from life and death, free from this worlds red dust.
When Second-grade Zou had done readinghe could not contain his
sighs, and said, If my classmate meant to take orders and cultivate his soul,
he ought to have left us with at least a word of farewell. As it isI cannot
help feeling a deep regret. Still, I
ll wager hes not gone far. And he sent
people to search all around, yet there was no further trace of him. Just as
Zou was standing there dumbfounded, Fifth-grade Pei laughedsaying,
You two gentlemen are really dense! Fll bet hes still unable to shake off
his love of the aquatic lifemore than likely hes gone to play carp again.
Just go down to East Pool and catch him, and therell be an end of it. . . .
Enough of these wild speculations of the three colleagues. To return to Cen
sor Xue and his wife, they were headed to nowhere else but to call on Eight
878
Hundred Li. That Eight Hundred Li laughed and said to the Censor,
Your former self was Qin Gao. Since youve not too far to go in your rise
to immortality, you should have a red carp waiting for you at East Pool.
Today, well return your red carp to you as before. What say you to that?
And to the lady, Since your banishment, Dong Shuang-cheng has tem
porarily filled in for you playing the Cloud-glockenspiel before the Queen
Mother of the West. Now it is time for you to play again.
Naturally the race of immortals are in on all the secrets, and there's no need
for any incantations or spiritual techniques~with a laugh they understand
all. At that time, the Censor and his wife said in turn to Eight Hundred
Li, Through all these years of selling cures and practicing medicine, saving
and enlightening the multitudes, your accumulated merit is quite consider
able. What need have you to linger in the world of mortals? Eight Hundred Li said, It is my destiny to make the ascent along with you. I have
been waiting for you here. In a moment, auspicious clouds twined about
them and prodigious mists appeared in profusion. The music of immortals
rang out in the heavens, and phoenixes and cranes soared about. Immortal
boys and girls clasping banners and canopies came forward to lead them on
their way: The Censor on his red carp, the lady riding a lavender haze, and
Eight Hundred,s Li astride a white crane, they ascended into Heaven to
gether. Young and old throughout the city of Cheng-du all saw it and made
obeisance toward the skieswith no end of sighing at the marvel. To this
day, the wondrous Bridge of Immortal Ascent marks the spot where they
ascended.
The poem says,
Confused and churning, this plot is novel:
a man turned fish, and fish made man again.
Once recognized, drea.ni form cant hinder nature;
through form to perfect nature is the way of the immortal.
Tang Xian-zu, Peony Pavilion:

Selected Acts
While the Northern "variety play" (za-ju) was flourishing in the Yuan capital at Dadu in the thirteenth century, a very different kind of drama was also taking shape in
the South. Although ^variety plays" continued as a genre of purely literary drama
through the Qing, the form had largely disappeared from the popular theater by the
late fifteenth century. Throughout the Ming, Southern drama continued to grow in
prominence, both as popular theater and as an elite literary form. These Southern-
style plays (so named for their musical style and its provenance~they were written
by Northerners and southerners alike) continued to be the dominant form of literary
df*ama through the nineteenth century.
Southern-style drama came to be known as chuan-qi, "accounts of remarkable
things, the same generic term applied to Tang tales (which provided many of the
plots for the plays). For the sake of convenience, we will refer to chuan-qi plays as
"dramatic romances. Dramatic romances were often vast, sprawling works, usu
ally with twenty to fifty scenes. Unlike the Northern variety play's restriction to one
singer per scene, dramatic romances allowed the free alternation of singing parts,
including duets and choruses. The plots of dramatic romances were often intricate,
with numerous subplots, usually weaving together one or more love stories with po
litical intrigue and/or warfare.
As classical poetry and song lyric had dominated the middle period of Chinese
literature through the Song, so drama was arguably the most popular literary form
of the Ming and the first half century of the Qing. Plays were widely read and per
formed, with performances both of entire works and individual acts. By the late six
teenth century, dramatists were already writing with a strong sense of the history of
earlier plays, and like modern film directors, they could assume that a significant
part of their audience would enjoy echoes of earlier works. Famous arias were cir
culated in songbooks and became as much a part of a standard repertoire of mem
orized texts as classical poetry; and as in the Renaissance West, the use of theatri
cal metaphors to describe social and political life became common. One famous
passage translates quite literally, "All the world's a stage."
It is difficult to draw the line between drama as theater and drama as literature.
Not all great theater is good literature, and certainly not all great dramatic literature
is good theater. There is, however, a significant body of plays that provides ample
but different pleasures in both reading and performance. Many variety plays and dra
matic romances are like the libretti of some famous Western operas: they were prob
ably a delight as theatrical spectacle but seem vapid as literary texts. By the fifteenth
century, however, plays were being published to be readsome primarily intended
880

to be read. Famous plays were often published in fine, illustrated editions, some
times with elaborate literary commentary.
Although certain earlier dramatic romances were intended for reading as well
as performance, the most important figure in literary chuan~qi was Tang Xian-zu
(15501617). His four main plays are known as "Lin-chuan's Four Dreams" (Linchuan being Tang Xian-zu's toponym). Dream serves an essential role in each of
these works, not only as a plot device but also as a thematic concern that touches
both the Buddhist idea of the emptiness of experience and an illusionist notion of
theater itself. The most famous of the four plays is Peony Pavilion (Mu-dan ting), writ
ten in 1598, and consisting of 55 scenes (340 pages in Cyril Birch's complete trans
lation).
An Aristotelian economy of plot is not characteristic of Chinese dramatic ro
mances. As the play opens, a young scholar named Liu recounts a dream of a beau
tiful young woman standing beneath a plum tree and takes Meng-mei (Dreamed of
Plum) as his name. Unbeknownst to Liu Meng-mei, the young woman in the dream
is Du Li-niang, the daughter of the prefect of Nan-an. Forced by her father to study
the Classic of Poetry, she reads the first poem, "Fishhawk, celebrating the perfect
marriage, and is so aroused by it that she arranges to go for a long walk in the flower
garden behind the residence.

Her passions stirred by spring, she returns to her rooms, falls asleep, and is vis
ited by Liu Meng-mei in a dream. Liu Meng-mei carries her out into the garden and
they make love by the peony pavilion; when Du Li-niang wakes up, she is so over
whelmed by a sense of loss that she pines away and dies. But before expiring, she
paints her own portrait, and as her dying wish the portrait is buried by the peony
pavilion, while she herself is buried beneath the plum tree in the garden.
After Du Li-niang7s death, the family moves away; later, Liu Meng-mei, having
become sick on his way to the capital, takes up lodging in the garden to recuperate
and discpvers Du Li-niang's portrait. Meanwhile Du Li-niang has received permis
sion in the underworld to return to Earth, and she visits Liu, instructing him to dis
inter her body. Liu Meng-mei digs up her corpse, which has suffered no decay. Du
Li-niang revives; the couple marries and goes on to the capital, where Liu Mengmei passes the examination with the highest honors.
In one of the other plot strands, Du Li-niang's father is playing a major role in
defending the dynasty from invasion. After numerous complications, including Liu
Meng-mei's being charged with grave-robbing, the final fourteen scenes manage to
get the couple together with her parents, until at last, in a scene at court, Du Li-niang's
father accepts the marriage.
First comes Tang Xian-zu's own "Introductory Comment" on the play.
An Introductory Comment on Peony Pavilion

The young women of the world experience the feelings of love, but can any
of them compare with Du Li-niang? No sooner did she dream of her man
than she grew sickthe sickness became protracted; at last she reached the
point of painting her likeness with her own hand in order to preserve it for
others; then she died. Three years she lay deadand then, from the dark
881
world below, once again she sought the man of whom she had dreamed; then
she came to life. Someone like Du Li-niang may well be called a person with
the feelings of love.
No one knows where love comes from, but once it comes, it goes deep.
The living can die from it; the dead can be brought to life. And if the living
cannot die from it or if the dead cannot be brought back to life, then it is
not the ultimate love.
Why should the feelings of love experienced in dream not necessarily be gen
uine? Are there not quite a few people in this world who are living in a dream?
When the relationship between lovers depends on bedding together or intimacy
awaits the renunciation of public office, we are on the level of mere flesh.
The story of her father, Governor Du, resembles that of Li Zhong-wen,
the governor of the capital of Wu in the Jin, and the love story involving
Feng Xiao-jiang, the governor of Guang-zhou. I changed them a bit and elab
orated them. As for Governor D u
s torture of Liu Meng-mei to make him
confess to grave-robbing, this resembles the Han Prince of Sui-yang
s inter
rogation of Mr. Dan.1
The things that may happen in a human life cannot all happen in a sin
gle lifetime. I am not someone of comprehensive knowledge, and I must al
ways investigate matters to consider whether they are rational. But when we
say that something cannot happen rationally, how do we know that it might
not be inevitable through the feeling of love?
The steamy, perfervid, and sometimes precious poetry of "Waking Suddenly from
Dream" (below) made it one of the most popular scenes in the play and a standard
piece in the performing repertoire of Kun-qu, the most influential performance tra
dition of dramatic romance (though the scene was bowdlerized and revised for
singing).
n the late seventeenth-century-play Peach Blossom Fan, the heroine Xiangjun is shown learning to sing one of the suites from this scene as part of her training
as a courtesan. As Du Li-niang learns of passion from reading the Classic of Poetryf
so Xiang-jun learns to be the romantic heroine who gives all for love from reading
Peony Pavilion. In both cases, the lessons learned were not at all what was intended
by those in charge of the girls' education.
W AKING SUDDENLY FROM DREAM (X)
Enter Du L i - n i a n g and her maidSp r in g
Sc e n t .
Du Li-niang [sin^s]
Back from dreams in orioleswarbling,
a tumult of bright spring weather
everywhere, and here I stand
in the heart of this small garden.
1These are all earlier tales whose plot elements served as sources for Peony Pavilion.
882
The Yuan and M ing Dynasties

S p r in g S c e n t [sm g s ]
The stick of aloes burns away, its smoke is gone
thrown down,
the last embroidery threads
why does this spring touch my feelings

so much more than springtimes past?
Du
[recites]
I gazed down toward Plum Pass
L i -n ia n g
at dawn,
last nights make-up traces fading.

[continuing]
Hair done in tumbling coils
S p r in g S c e n t
with swallow cut-outs to welcome spring

as you lean upon the railing.
Du Li-niang
Cut but never severed,
put in order,
,
then tangled again
a melancholy without cause.

I have issued instructions to orioles

and have given direction to swallows
that hurry along the flowers,
to take advantage of the spring
and come see, come see.
Du Li-niangDid you have someone sweep up the path through the flow
ers?
Spring ScentI did.
Du Li-niangThen get out my clothes and vanity mirror and bring them to
me.
Spring Scent leaves and returns with clothes and vanity mirror.
Spring Scent [recites]
Done combing her cloudlike tresses,
she looks into the mirror,
ready to change her lacy gown
she adds another sachet.

Heres what you asked for.
Du Li-niang [s/n^s]:
Sunlit floss comes windborne coiling
into my quiet yard,

swaying and bobbing, spring is like thread.
I stop a moment to straighten
the flowered pins in my hair

to suddenly find that the mirror plunders
883
half my face, prodding

my sparkling tresses to one side. [Walks away]
Though I pace my chambers, do I dare
let my body be seen entire?
Youre nicely dressed up today.
Du Li-niang [smgs]:
Note the skirts madder red,
set off by vivid azure,
the opulent glitter of flowered pins
richly inlaid with gems
you can tell
my lifelong love of such
comes from my nature~
springs finest touch
is seen by no man ever.
No matter if, at the sight,
the fish dive deep
or wild geese come down
or birds squawk out in alarm
I only fear to shame the flowers,

to make the moon hide away,
and blossoms will quiver from sorrow.
Spring ScentIt
s time for breakfast. Lets go. [They walk] Just look!
[Recites]
Gold dust on painted walkways,
half is scattering of stars,
the moss at the lodge by the pool,
a single swathe of green.
Walking through grass, afraid to stain
new stockings of brocade,
feeling sorry that flowers ache
from the tiny golden bells.2
Du Li-niangIf I hadnt come to the garden, how could I have ever known
how beautiful spring was. [Smgs]
Coy lavenders, fetching reds
bloom everywhere, here
all left to this broken well
and tumbled wall. Fair season,
fine scene~overwhelming
weather. Where
2A reference to a story about the Tang Prince of Ning early in the 740s. He had bells hung by red
threads from flowers' branches, to scare away birds that might harm the blooms. Here, hyperbolically, even the smallest bells might themselves hurt the flowers when rung.
and in whose garden shall we find

pleasure and the heart5s delight?
My father and mother have never mentioned such scenery.
T o g e th e r
Drifting in at dawn, at twilight

roll away
clouds and colored wisps
through azure balustrades,
streaming rain, petals in wind,
a painted boat in misty waves
the girl behind her brocade screen
has long ignored
such splendor of spring.
Spring ScentAll the flowers have bloomed, but its still early for the peony.
D u Li-niang
Throughout green hills the nightjar cries

red tears of blood; and out beyond
the blackberry, the threads
of mist coil drunkenly.
Oh, Spring Scent!
And though the peony be fair,
how can it maintain its sway
when spring is leaving?
S p r in g S c e n t The orioles and swallows are mating!
Together
Idly I stare
where twittering swallows crisply speak
words cut clear,
and from the warbling orioles comes
a bright and liquid melody.
Du Li-niangLet
s go.
Spring ScentI really cant get enough of this garden.
Du Li-niangLet it go! [They walk onshe sings]
When you cannot get enough, you are ensnared,
then to enjoy each
of the twelve pavilions is wasted.
When the first impulse wears away,
it is better by far
to turn back home and idly pass the day.
They arrive.
[recites]
Open the gate to my western parlor,
in the eastern parlor make my bed.
The vase has purples-that-shine-in-hills,
Sp r in g Sc e n t
885
to the brazier aloeswood incense add.

You rest here a bit while I go check with your mother. [Exit]
Du Li-niang [sighs and recites]
In silence back from a springtime stroll,
I
ll do my face in the fashion of spring.
Oh, spring, now that I have become attached to you, what am I going
to do with myself when you go? Ai! Weather like this really wears a per
son out. Where is Spring Scent? [She looks aroundthen lays her head
down, mumbling] My goodness! Is it really true that springs beauty can
upset a person so? Ive always read poems and lyrics, and in olden days
young womens passions were stirred by spring, then when autumn came
that passion turned to pain. That was really no lie. Now is my sixteenth
year and I have not yet encountered a man who has snapped the cas
sia tw ig .
3Now that I feel this sudden yearning for springtime passion,

how will I get a visitor to my lunar palace?4 Once upon a time Lady Han
got to meet young Yu You, and Zhang chanced on Cui Ying-ying; and
lovers got together in The Account of the Poem on a Red Leaf and Cui
H ui
s Story.
5These fair ladies and talented young men first got together
in secret, and they all formed marriage alliances later. [Sighs] I was born
into a family of officials and I have grown up in an illustrious household.
Yet I have already reached fifteen, the age to have ones hair pinned up,
without having found a worthy mate. Im wasting the spring of my life,
whose years flash past me. [Weeps] What a pity that this complexion so
like a flower is destined to end up like a leaf. [Sings]

I cannot purge this riot of passion,
I am suddenly plunged into secret despair.
Young and winsome, for me must be chosen
a match from a house of equal station,
equal station, kin to the very gods.
Yet what blessed union would squander
the green spring of my youthful years?
Who sees my slumbering passion?
So must I remain retiring and demure.
But secret dreams will lead me where?
rolled on unseen with the light of spring.
3I.ev had success in the examinations.

4Du Li-niang is comparing her loneliness to that of the moon goddess Chang E.
5Lady Han, in the Tang palace, once composed a poem of her loneliness and longing on a red leaf;
she let it float out on the palace moat, where it was found by Yu You. His consequent passion for
her and their love story was elaborated in a play by Tang Xian-zu's contemporary Wang Ji-de, The
Account of the Poem on a Red Leaf. The love story of Zhang and Cui Ying-ying given in "Ying-ying's
Story" (see p. 540) was elaborated and given a happy ending in the Yuan play The Account o f the
Western Parlor, which is the version Du Li-niang has in mind. The story o f the courtesan Cui Hut
and her lover Pei Jing-zhong involves Cui sending Pei a painting of herself, as Du Li-niang w ill leave
a painting for Liu Meng-mei.
886
As I waver here
to whom can I tell hearts secret care?
I burn away,
my life is cursed, unless
I demand that Heaven tell me w hy.,
Im completely worn out. Ill put my head down and sleep a while.
She goes to sleep and a dream comes. Enter Liu Meng-meiholding a willow
(liu) branch.
Liu M eng-mei [recites]
As orioles meet the sunlights warmth
their singing voices mellow,
so when a man finds love and passion,
he laughs out loud from joy.

A whole pathful of fallen flowers
go off down to the waters,
this is the morning young Ruan Zhao
reaches Mount Tian-tai.6
I followed Du Li-niang back along the path, but where has she gone now?
[Turns and looks at her] Ah, there you are! [Du L i - n i a n g startles awake
and they see one another] Here you are~I was looking for you every
where. [Du L i - n i a n g gives him a sidelong glance but says nothing] I just
snapped off half a branch of a weeping willow in the flower garden. Since
you are so well versed in literature, would you write a poem for this wil
low branch? [Du Li-niang is at first delighted and is about to speak but
stops]
Du Li-niang [Aside]: Ive never met this man_ how did he get in here?
Liu Meng-mei [laughing]: Im madly in love with you.
[Sings]
Because of your flowerlike beauty,
and your youth flowing past like water,
Ive looked for you everywhere.
And you were here,
self-pitying in your lonely chamber.
Lets go somewhere and talk.
Du Li-niang smiles but won't go. Liu Meng-mei pulls her by her clothes.
Du Li-niang [softly]: Where are we going?
Liu Meng-mei [s/gs]
Pass round by the railing

where peonies stand,
6This alludes to a story of Ruan Zhao and a companion who encountered two goddesses in the Tiantai Mountains and stayed with them half a year. It became a standard figure for a love affair.
887
close by the great Tai-hu rock.
Du Li-niang [softly]: But what are we going there for?

L iu M
[sings]:
To unfasten your collars buttons
and loosen the sash of your gown.
You will hold your sleeves pressed
tight against teeth,
then after you bear
my tender attentions,
e n g -m e i
enjoy a moments sleep.

Du Li-niang is embarrassed. Liu Meng-mei puts his arms around her and she
pushes him away.
Together [sing]
Where have we met before
that we look at each other unsure?
How at a wonderful moment like this
could we come together without a word?
Liu M
forces his arms around Du L i - n i a n g and exeunt. Enter

with cap under bound-up haira red gown, and flowers stuck
e n g -m e i
Flo w er G o d ,
in cap and gown.

[recites]
As supervisor who expedites flowers
I cherish the flower-days
inspecting springs endeavors
another year goes its way.
The visitor suffers heartbreak, drenched
under a rain of reds,
Flo w er G o d
and mortals are lured to be hung in dream

beside these colored clouds.
I am the flower god who manages the rear flower garden of the Nan-an
district residence. Du Li-niang and Liu Meng-mei are fated to marry in
the future. Since Miss Du was so upset after her little spring excursion,
she had Mr. Liu come into her dream. We flower gods have a special
tender spot for fair young maidens, so I came to watch over her, want
ing her to enjoy perfect bliss in her lovemaking. [Smgs]
Now the turbid Yang force simmers up
transforming,
and see how he, squirming like worm
fans her passion.
Likewise her soul quivers at the crack
in charming azure foliage.
This is but shadows conjunction,
fancies brought to fullness within,
things appearing inside Karmic Cause.
But, ah, these lewd doings have stained

my galleries of flowers.
r il pinch off a blossom and let it fall to wake her. [He goes toward the
stage entrance dropping flowers]
How can she linger in her dream,
woozy with spring?
in red flecks of tattered flowers falling.
Young man, your dream is now half-done. When the dream is over, be
so good as to escort Miss Du back to her chambers. I go now. [Exit]
Enter Du Li-niang and Liu Memg-meiholding hands.

L iu M
[sings]:
For this one moment
Heaven gives ease,
sprawled in grass,
asleep on flowers.
e n g -m e i
How are you? [Du Li-niang lowers her head]

She nods her cloudlike coils of hair
with tousled red and azure skewed.
Dont forget this!
how I clasped you tight
and languidly lingered
I wish only our flesh
could fuse in a ball,
we drew forth red droplets
that shimmered in the sun.
Du Li-niangYou had better go now.

Together [sing]
Where have we met before
that we look at each other unsure?
How at a wonderful moment like this
could we come together without a word?
Liu Meng-meiYour body is worn out. Take care of yourself. [He goes with
her back to where she was and she resumes her position asleep; he pats
her lightly] I
m going now. [He starts offthen turns back] You
ve got
to take care of yourself now. Ill be back to see you.
[Recites]
She brought along a third of the rain
that comes with springtimes glory,
she slept away a whole cloudburst
on W u Mountain. [Exit]
Du Li-niang [suddenly waking and softly calling out\: You5ve gone, youVe
gone! [She sinks back into sleep]

Enter M rs. D u.
Mrs. Du [recites]:
My husband sits in a yellow hall,
my sweet daughter stands by her window.
Even on her embroidered dress
the birds and flowers are all in pairs.
Du
Daughter, how come you have dozed off here?

L i - n ia n g [waking and opening her mouth as if calling Liu]Aiya!
Mrs. DuChild, whats going on?

Du
L i -n ia n g
[getting upstartled]: Momma, youre here!
Mrs. DuChild, why dont you do some needlework or read something for
pleasure to ease your mind? Why are you sleeping here in broad daylight?
Du Li-niangI happened to go out to enjoy myself in the flower garden, but I

suddenly felt upset by the excitement of springtime and returned to my rooms.
There was nothing else to do, and without knowing it, I was worn out and
took a little nap. I hope yousll excuse me for not being awake to greet you.
Mrs. Du The flower garden is too isolateddont go there to take walks.
Du Li-niangYes, Mother.
Mrs. DuNow go off to your classroom and study.
Du Li-niangThe teachers not here so we have a little time off.
M rs. D u [sighing]: When a daughter grows up, its naturathat she gets
moody, so Ill just let her be for a while. As they say
[Recites]
She
s pulled one way and another by her children,
a mothers lot is hard toil. [Exit]
Du L i - n ia n g [giving a long sigh as she watches her mother leave] Heavens!
Today was certainly full of pleasant surprises for me! I chanced to go
into the flower garden, and with all the flowers blossoming around me,
the scene stirred me. My spirits sagged and I went back and took a nap
in my room. Suddenly I saw a young man, about twenty years old, hand
some and so very attractive. He had broken a strand of willow branch
in the garden, and laughing, he said to me, Since you are so well versed
in literature, would you write a poem for this willow branch? At that
moment I was going to give him an answer, but I thought it over, and
since Id never met him before and didnt know his name, how could I
casually hold a conversation with him just like that?
As I was thinking about this, he came out with some lines about how
heartsick he was, then he threw his arms around me and we went off to
beside the peony pavilion, right by the railing, and we made love together.
Both of our hearts were in perfect accord, with a thousand shows of love
and a million tendernesses. When our pleasure was finished, he escorted
me back to where I was sleeping and said Take care of yourself
a few
times. I was just about to see him out the door when my mother sud
denly came in and woke me up.
My whole body is in a cold sweat. This was really one of those lifetimes lived in a dream
I was all flustered when I greeted my mother,
and she rambled on at me..I had nothing to say back to her because my
mind was still on what happened in the dream and I hadnt calmed
down. I feel a constant restlessness, as if I had lost something. Oh Mother,
you told me to go to the classroom and studyI dont know any book
I can read that will get rid of this depression. [Wipes away tears and sings]
Rains sweet scent, a puff of cloud
just came to my side in dream.
But, alas, the lady of the house
called me awake from my fitful sleep
by the gauze-screened window.
A burst of fresh cold sweat
sticks to me and stings.
It drives my heart to distraction
my footsteps freeze,
my thoughts waver,
my hair hangs askew.

All spirit is almost spent,
and since neither sitting nor standing pleases me,
let me go off back to sleep!
Enter Spring Scent.

[recites]
Her evening toilette melts powders streaks,
spring dampness makes scenting clothes a waste.
Sp r in g Sc e n t
The covers have been scented, so lets go to sleep.

Du
[sings]:
This spring-troubled heart is weary
from roaming; it seeks
no scented broidered quilts to sleep.
Heaven!if you care,
let not that dream be gone too far.
L i -n ia n g
[Recites]
To idly roam and gaze on spring
I left the painted hall, [Zhang Yue]
screening willows and open plums
give overpowering scent. [Luo Ye]
I wonder where young Liu and Ruan
met the two fairy maids? [Xu Hun]
with a turn of the head springs east wind
breaks the heart for good. [Wei Zhuang]
In many cultures, one of the most durable and revealing conventions in early tradi
tions of romantic love is falling in love upon seeing a portrait of the beloved or hear

ing a description of him or her; and in the Chinese tradition, sometimes upon read
ing a person's writings. Liu Meng-mei, strolling in the garden where, unknown to
him, Du Li-niang lies buried, finds the self-portrait Du Li-niang made before she died.
The portrait shows her holding a plum branch, and the poem he discovers makes
reference to willows and plums. He finds this portentous, in that his surname Liu
means "willow," and the name he has taken, Meng-mei, means "Dreamed of Plum."
LOOKING OVER THE PORTRAIT (XXVI)
Enter Lru M eng-mei.
Liu Meng-mei [recites]:

On leaves of the plantain tree
raindrops do not stay,
on branches of the peony
soon the breeze will draw away.
Unclear, the portraits meaning,
let eyes focus there
where barely to announce itself
spring light makes its way.
Feeling lonely and somewhat downhearted during my travels, I took a
stroll in the garden at the rear of the compound. At the foot of the Great
Lake rock, I picked up a small painting on a scroll. I think it must be of
the Boddhisattva Guan-yin. It was well protected in a precious case. The
past ten days have been stormy, so I couldnt unroll it and take a close
lookbut happily the weather today is pleasant and brightso I can ex

amine it and offer my devotions. [Opens the box and unrolls scroll]
[Sings]
As in the Silver River of stars
the autumn moonlight hangs,
her body divine unrolls,
free from attachments, self-contained.
Here confirmed
are all her sacred signs.
She is really in holy Potala, yet
we chance to meet
here by the southern sea.
But [reflectively]
why is her radiant majesty
not set upon her lotus seat?
And wait a moment more!
why, beneath her Xiang silk skirt,
is there a pair
of wave-traversing, dainty feet?
If this is Guan-yin, why does, she have bound feet? Id better look this
over more closely.
rll think a little bit about
the image in the picture.
Thats it!
I'll bet
its probably a small Chang E
that hung in someones studio,
painted with such charm and grace.
Wellif this is Chang EI really ought to make some gesture of my re
spect.
Tell me true, Chang E, will I
snap the spray of cassia.7
But wait!how come this Chang E
beside her image has no trace
of lucky cloud?
And this cracked bark
does not seem like
the tiny blooms of her cassia grove.
It may not be Guan-yin and it may not be Chang Ebut there couldnt
possibly be a mortal girl like this.
Amazed am I
and overwhelmed:
I think Fve met her once before
and I grope for it in memory.
Let me have a good look. What this drawn by a professional painter or
by the beautys own hand?
I wonder from where
came this paintings maiden fair
beams of moonglow
that appear
beneath the brush.
Someone like her
would have made all the flower-kind bow low.
Her grace entirely innate,
a hard thing to delineate;
pale tresses, springtime wisps,
who could even approximate?
When I think about itno professional painter could have done this.
Most likely only she herself
could have made this likeness.
7That is, pass the examination, playing on the image of the cassia tree that grows in the moon.
Just a m inute~if you look very closely at the top of the scroll, there are
a few lines of tiny characters. [Looks] Hmm. It
s a quatrain. [Reads it
out loud]
Viewed up close it
s obvious,
and very much like me,
seen afar, immortal flying
self-contained and free.
If someday I could join the man
in the palace of the moon,
it will be by the flowering plum,
or by the willow tree.
So this really is a picture of a mortal girl amusing herself. But what did
she mean by: It will be by the flowering plum, /or by the willow tree
This is very strange!
[Sings]
Mountain passes and Plum Ridge,
a single swathe of sky
I look and wonder how she knew
that I
Liu Meng-mei
would be coming through.
I wonder what she meant to say
by join the palace of the moon
ril be gladbut take it slow,
think it over carefully:
for I am Liu, the W illow
and Meng-mei, Dreamed of Plum

why should Chang E bother
here to fix my name?
Lost in thought, I ponder:
could my dream be true?
But O how she turns her gaze on me!
From light in empty air descends
beautys slender grace,
stirring spring plantain,
billowing silk and lace.
Springtime passions there remain
confined between her brows
that trace
two azure hills of spring
and balmy tresses of spring haze.
Who could lightly disregard
two pairs of eyes
meeting in such mutual gaze?
And I am awash in the flash

of the turning glance ^
and the unflinching sidelong stare.
But why she is holding .a piece of a leafy plum sprig in her hand, just as
if she were holding me?
A leafy plum sprig in her hand,
a whispered poementice
hearts passions to a fall.
For mea painted feast
sates hunger; and for her,
plum-gazing to slake thirst.8
You, my dear,
never open mouths lotus-bud
even a bit,
but smiles suppressed,
behind the pale brushstroke
of her crimson lips,
give strong intimation of her passion.
It seems she want to sadly speak
all she needs is a puff of breath.
Her painting is like that of Cui Hui; her poem is like Su Hui; and her
calligraphy is exactly like that of Lady Wei. I may have some classical
dignity in my own workbut Ill never be this girls match. Having met
her unexpectedly like this, Ill write a poem to match hers.
Her paintings excellence is due
to nature and not art~
if not an immortal of Heaven
then an immortal of Earth.
Is he near or farthat man
shed join in the moon?

still there is some springtime here
by plum and willow tree.
[5/'g5]
Plying the brush she shows her skill,
good at writing poems,
their splendor enters stream and hill,
and others sing along.
I
m going to call out to her as loud as I can. My beauty! My love!
Do you know
8That is, the painting is all he has to satisfy his desire, while the woman in the painting has the plum
in her hand to take the place of him. This alludes to a story in which Cao Cao's soldiers were suf
fering from thirst, and Cao Cao told them there was a grove of plum trees up ahead where they could
satisfy their thirst.
I am shouting my throat raw,

crying to my Zhen-zhen
the painting that came alive.
I call to you to sneeze
a spray of heavenly petals.9
The feet that skim the waves
would splendidly descend
I do not see her image stir.
So, Im all alone here. But Ill keep looking over her portrait and exam
ining itbowing to it, calling out to it, and praising it.
For laying hands on such as her
I deserve congratulation
surely Willow and the Plum
have some deep connection.
And yet, my loveyour eyes do slay me,
image without body.
One should not too single-mindedly
make the painting bear reproach, [Bo Ju-yi]
but can one let it always hang
here at the courtyard door? [Wu Qiao]
In despair I write a poem,
hidden among willows, [Si-kong Tu]
it adds to drunkenness of spring,
sobering grows still harder. [Zhang Jie]
In the scene before "Secret U nion, the Daoist nun who lives in the compound holds
a ceremony for Du Li-niang, who roams in ghostly form about the place. Du Li-niang
eventually hears Liu Meng-mei calling out to her. As scene XXVIII, "Secret Union,"
opens, Liu Meng-mei continues his lover's discourse, then falls asleep, to be visited
by Du Li-niang.
SECRET UNION (XXVIII)
Enter Liu Meng-mei.
Liu Meng-mei [sings]

Where is the goddess I glimpsed?
her image blurs into empty air
like moonlight veiling sand.
Bereft, I linger here,
lost in a wordless reverie.
9A sneeze was supposed to be a sign that someone, especially one's beloved, was speaking of or
thinking of a person.
And now already the evening sun

sinks down into the west.
[Recites]
A single puff of rose red cloud
came down from Heaven on high,
her coy smile, like a blossom,
jades beguiling grace.
Who can picture forth for me
that sweet and living face,
facing me and holding back
a passion she cannot speak?
Ever since I encountered her features, in the passionate bloom of their
spring, she has been on my mind day and night. Now as the hours of
night grow late, I
ll spend a little time reciting those pearls of verse and
mulling over her spirit. And if, by chance, she should come to me in
dream, it would be for me a spring breeze passing. [He unrolls the paint
ing and looks it over] Just look at this beauty, her spirit restrained but
wanting so much to speak, her eyes pouring forth gentle waves. It makes
me think of those lines by Wang Bo: Sinking wisps of rose red cloud
fly level with the solitary heron; and autumn waters share the same color
with broad expanse of sky.
[Sings]
The evening breeze blows down
, one threadlike wisp of cloud
from Wu-ling stream,1
descending and emerging, she
of overwhelming grace.
Chaste and without flaw
bright against the crimson lace
fresh in the window screen.
And once again
I take this little painting
and hang it in my heart.
Dear girl, thinking of you will be the death of me.
So delicate, so reticent, sweet maid,
tender and refined, she seems
of noble family.
I envisage her,
swept away by a passionate heart,
looking in the mirror,
1//Wu-ling stream" refers to "Peach Blossom Spring/, which by the late imperial period had become,
in the popular imagination, the dwelling place of immortals.
and painting springlike features here,

her feelings locked within
could she envisage then the man
who, finding this, would rouse her?
She comes in flight like moonbeams,
leaving me to find
a magnitude of melancholy sky.
Usually I can sleep any night facing the moon. These past few nights, though~
Its secret beauty sends
darkling flashes of lunar loveliness,
a brilliance overwhelming.
They raise a clamor in my besotted heart,
and whether night or light of day
my troubled yearnings fix on her.
If I did not fear to stain
your painting by taking it in hand,
I would lie in bed,
arms wrapped around your image.
I think that we are surely destined to be lovers. Let me read out those
lines of her poem one more time.
[Reads out poem]

She chose to speak in the poem
for one who would understand~
of destiny shared by willow and plum.
Her passionate feelings gush
from the crack
in poolside rock,
and E-lii-hua, the goddess, flew
into this paintings silken mesh.
I should bow down before her.
I am in torment,
before cheeks5glow
and streak of brow
scratched into my heart
and the one I love
is not off beyond the horizon.
As I stay here on my journey, how can I get her to meet me for just one
brief moment of love?
I hate how this narrow strip resists
our double metamorphosis
put us on a painted screen,
I but a straw,
leaning against her jade white bough.
Love, can your ears, moon crescents crossed

by cloud-wisp tresses, hear
anything at all I say
from this broken heart?
Im ridiculous
flirting with her as I speak.
She is the autumn moon that hangs
by clouds edge over the seas,
or azure shadow in misty skies,
brushed over distant hills.
She should be my companion
in pure, unruffled ease
how can one even try
to tease her into passion?
I speak as if reciting spells
or reading out the scriptures.
The very stones may nod their heads,
and flowers rain from Heaven.
Yet why does such devotion not
bring the immortal maiden down?
It is that she
will not go strolling casually.
Wind rises within, and Liu takes the scroll.

To make the goddess stay
fearing the winds cruel caress,
I hold fast
to the ivory roller
on scrolls brocade.
Im afraid she
s going to be damaged. Fd better find some master to copy
the scroll.
I waste my breath!
how could such glorious majesty,
Guan-yin who views the moon in water,
come as mortal to my bed?
Perhaps I
ll meet her somewhere in the flesh,
then I
ll ask her how much love she feels,
and it will be no less
than the sense conveyed
by this portrait of springs passionate mood.
Fll trim the lamp wick again to look closely just one more time.
Such presence divine
would surely be feigned
if found in the world of mortal men.
899
[From withina wind blows the lamp's flame]

Such a gust of cold wind I feel!
Take care lest sparks fall
on the paintings image.
Enough nowIll try to sleep,
closing the gauze window screen,
and of her dream.
Goes to sleep. Enter the soul ofD v L i -n ia n g .

Du Li-niang [recites]
Long lying in the world below,
but no dream ever comes,
from my life there still remain
so many passions.
My moonlit soul goes following
the paintings pull,
I find him in the sound of sighs
borne upon the wind.
I am the soul of Du Li-niang, who had a dream of a garden in full flower
and then died of longing. It was then that I painted my own features in the
bloom of youth and buried it beneath the Great Lake rock. On it I wrote
in palace of the moon,
After wandering here several evenings, little did I expect to hear from in
side the eastern chambers a student cry out with a restrained voice, My
beloved
my beauty! There was misery in the sound of his voice, and it
stirred my very soul. I softly flitted into his chambers, where I saw a small
painting hung high on the wall. When I examined it more carefully, it

was the painting of my own youthful features that I had left behind. On
the back there was a companion piece to my poem. When I looked at
the signature, it was by Liu Meng-mei of Ling-nan. By the flowering
plum ~ mei~ or by the willow tree_ liu >sthere must be some destiny
at work here! And now with the leave of the authorities in the dark world
below, I have taken this fine night to finish out that dream begun before.
And I feel such bitter pain when I think of it.
[Smgs]
I fear
how fragrance fades and powder chills
from tears
shed on the sheer vermilion gauze,
to Gao-tang
s lodge again I come
to enjoy the glow of the moon.
900
Then all at once I turn and gasp in shame

at these disheveled coils of hair
I pat them straight.
Ah, and here is his room right before me!
Liu M
I fear being duped by the too straight way

that leads to Peach Blossom Spring,
let me swiftly be sure that it is him.
e n g - m e i [reciting her poem in his sleep]:
in palace of the moon,
Dearest!
Du
[listening with emotion]

His cries break
the heart and make
L i -n ia n g
tears flo w ~
these lines from my lost poem

he has without mistake.
I wonder if he's already asleep. [Peeks]
Liu Meng-mei cries out again.

From within the screen where he sleeps
he recites with fierce sighs.
Keeping the noise low
Ill rap at his window frame of azure bamboo.
Liu Meng-mei [waking up suddenly]Dearest!

Du Li-niang (moved):
Fll send the sweet soul off
to draw near.
Liu M e n g - m e i Hmmm. That sound of tapping on the bamboo outside my
door~was it the wind or a person?
D u Li-niang
A person.
Liu Meng-meiAt this time of night you must be the Sister bringing tea.2
You really shouldnt have.
Du Li-niangNo, not her.

Liu Meng-meiThen are you the itinerant nun staying here?
D u Li-niang
N o.
Liu Meng-meiNow that's really strange. And its not the good Sister either.
2The Sister is the Daoist nun, "Sister Stone," who had established a small convent of the grounds of
Governor Du's former residence.
901
I wonder who it could be. Let me open the door and take a look. [Opens
the door and looks around]
[Sings]
Out of nowhere a lovely maid,
whose charms bedazzle
with uncommon wonder.
Du Li-niang smiles and slips inside. Liu Meng-mei quickly closes the door.
Du
L i - n ia n g Hello,
young gentleman.
Liu Meng-meiMay I ask youmisswhere you come from and why have
you come here so deep in the night?
Du Li-niangGuess.
L iu M
[sings]
Ill bet its because of that lout
Zhang Qian, whose raft
has invaded your River of Stars,3
or it must be little Liang Yu-qing
fleeing the punishment by night
of Heavens officers?4
e n g -m e i
Du Li-niangThose are both immortals of Heaven. How could they be

here?
Liu Meng-mei
Are you the phoenix of bright colors
wrongly mated to a crow?
Du
L i -n i a n g
shakes her head.
L iu M e n g - m e i
Did I somewhere for your sake

to the green poplar tie my horse?
Du L i- n ia n g We never met.
Liu Meng-mei
It must be your vision is blurred,
mistaking me for Tao Q ian
5
if not, then perhaps you strayed,
3This is a common mixing of two allusions: first, of the Han explorer Zhang Qian, sent to find the
source o f the Yellow River; and second, o f the old man who rode a raft up into the River of Stars,
where he saw the Weaver Star. Liu Meng-mei is here comparing himself to the intruder on the raft
and Du Li-niang to the Weaver Star.
4Liang Yu-qing was supposed to have been the immortal handmaiden o f the Weaver. She ran off
with the star Tai-bo to Earth.
5Tao Qian's "Peach Blossom Spring," the refuge in the mountain cut off from history, became mixed
up with another story about peach blossoms, in which two young men, Liu Zhen and Ruan Zhao,
met two goddesses. In this confusion Tao Qian sometimes became, incongruously, the figure of the
handsome young man that caught the goddess's roving eye. Liu Meng-mei suggests that Du Li-niang
is such a goddess, but a dim-sighted one.
Du
eloping down the Lin-qiong Road.6

is no mistake.
L i - n ia n g There
Lru M e n g - m e i Are you looking for a lamp?

And yet you go about by night
without a lamp?7
And thus you wish to share my lamp,
red sleeves by my window of sapphire gauze.
Du Li-niang [smgs]:
I am not that heavenly maid
who scattered the blossoms of sacred scent
in vain;8
nor am I the scholars lamp
idly moist with waxen tears.
I am not like Zhao Swallow-in-Flight,
who came with reputation stained;9
yet neither am I Zhuo Wen-jun

who would hold fast
to newly widowed chastity.
You, young sir, once strayed in flowers,
the dreaming butterfly.
Liu M eng-mei [thinking]: Yes, I did have such a dream before.
Du Li-niang
Thus did I, to oriole fifes,
go to the willow array.
And if you wonder where my rooms are

not so far
just some doors down from Song Yus neighbor.1
Liu M e n g - m e i [thinking] Yes! Turning west from the flower garden at sun
down I saw a young woman walking.
Du Li-niangThat was I.
Liu M e n g - m e i Who is your family?
Du Li-niang [sings]
Off beyond the setting sun,
6This refers to the story of Zhuo Wen-jun, who, after hearing the Han writer Si-ma Xiang-ru play his
harp, ran off with him to Lin-qiong. Again, Liu Meng-mei suggests that Du Li-niang has the wrong
man.
7Liu Meng-mei is alluding to the "Domestic Regulations" of the Classic of Rites, in which it says that
a woman must have a lamp when she travels by night, and when she has no lamp, she should stay
put.
8This refers to a story in the Vimalakirti sutra, in which a heavenly maiden scattered divine blos
soms on the body of the sick Vimalakirti blossoms that did not cling to his body because of his
spiritual attainments.
9The Han consort Zhao Swallow-in-Flight was said to have had an affair before entering the imperia harem.
lwSong Yu's neighbor" is a literary allusion to a poetic exposition that became proverbial for the
beautiful "girl next door."
on the horizon
of fragrant prairies,
mother and father are all alone,
none other there.
M y age is sixteen years, a bloom
sheltered by leaves from wind,
chaste beyond reproach.
Spring left,
I was stirred to sighs,
when suddenly I glimpsed
your manly grace.
For no other purpose have I come
but to trim the lamp wick in the breeze
and chat at ease
by the western window.
Liu M eng-mei [aside]: Remarkable that such sensual beauty exists in this
mortal world! Out of nowhere in the middle of the night I have met a
bright-moon pearl. What can I say?
[Sings to Du
L i -n i a n g ]
Wonder-struck by beauty,
her loveliness beyond compare,
a smile flashes, passions
silver taper.
The full moon seems to retire
and I wonder
what night this could be
for the raft drifting through stars.
A woman with hairpins of gold
comes in nights cold,
a spirit of the upper air
to the bed of mortal man.
[Aside]
Yet I wonder of what sort of household
is she the child,
to welcome me in this fashion?
Fll ask more about her. [Turning back to Du Li-niang] Is this perhaps
a dream that you come to visit me so deep in the night?
Du Li-niang [smiling]: It is no dreamit is real. But Im afraid you wont
have me.
Liu Meng-meiAnd I
m afraid its not real. But if I am really beloved by such
a beauty, then I am happy beyond all expectation. How could I dare
refuse?
Du Li-nxangDon
t worryI have truly set my hopes on you.
Q 04
[Sings]
On cold slopes of a secret valley,
you make me blossom flowers by night.2
In no way was I ever wed,
as here you will discover
one by good family closely kept.
At the peony pavilion
loving hearts affection
by the lake rocks side,
shy and blushing bride
window of the scholars room,
in rattling of wind.
Let this fine night not be lost,
the cool breeze, bright moon
costs us nothing.3
Liu M e n g - m e i
In amazement melts the soul
and wakes from sleep in moonlit chill.
A burst of sudden splendor,
and I wonder
if this might be
W u Mountain in a dream.4
I am humbled by the way you tread
in flowers shade
without the least dread,
by the way you touch green moss
not sliding on its slipperiness,
by the way you ignore
a daughters obligation,
feeling no intimidation,
and, certain that there is no error,
in the way youve chosen me.
Look how the Dippers slanting low,
and how the flowers droop~
this late at night the flowers sleep.
Laugh merrily,
chant in bliss,
no breeze and moon will better this.
2This refers to a verse by Empress Wu, in which she commanded the flowers to blossom in the night
and not wait untidawn.
3"Cool breeze, bright moon" was a phrase that had become, in contexts like the present one, a standard figure for a sexual encounter.
4Wu Mountain's goddess meeting the King of Chu was a standard figure for a sexual encounter, ei
ther illusory or a reality so bewildering that it seems like illusion.
905
Lend me of your own free will

your lovely softness
and sweet charms,
and bear as I humble it,
humble it for but a moment.
Du Li-niangPlease forgive me, but let me first say one thing to you in all
earnest.
Liu Meng-meiDont hold backsay whatever you want.

Du
L i - n ia n g In this moment I give this precious body of mine to you. Do

not betray this love I feel. My lifelong wish would be fulfilled if every
night I could share pillow and mat with you.
Liu M eng-mei [laughing] Since you love me, how could I ever put you out
of my mind?
Du Li-niangOne more thing. Let me go back before the rooster crows.

Dont try to see me off~so that you will stay out of the early morning
wind.
Liu Meng-meiAs you say. But let me ask your name.

Du
[sighs and sings]:

Flower must have its root,
the jade, its sprout,
but were I to tell, it would call forth
too great a sound of gale.
L i -n i a n g
Liu Meng-mei
I look forward to your coming nightly from now on.
Du Li-niang
And now with me
let us annotate and compare
this very first flower
in the spring breeze.
Liu Meng-mei
Surging manner, wild scent

never encountered before, [Han Yu]
D u Li-niang
the moon slants past the high chamber,

the bell before the dawn. [Li Shang-yin]
Liu Meng-mei
Dawn clouds go in by night,

no trace of their passage, [Li Bo]
D u Li-niang
I wonder from which of the peaks

the goddess came. [Zhang Zi-rong]
The Qing Dynasty
Early in the
seventeenth century, the Manchus, a Tungusic people, consoli
dated a small regional state beyond the northeastern frontiers of
the Ming. They built a powerful army, drawing on the large Chi
nese population of the region as well as their own ethnic group.
In 1644, after the rebel Li Zi-cheng had taken Beijing and the
Ming emperor committed suicide, the Ming general Wu San-gui
opened the passes to the Manchu army and joined with them to crush Li Zi-cheng's
forces. The Manchus were poised for a conquest of China; but China was a very large
country and not one to be easily swallowed by a small regional state, however pro
fessional its military machine. The conquest was aided by the incompetence, disso
lution, or defection of numerous large Ming armies, and when Shi Ke-fa, one of the
few Ming generals with any resolution, tried to hold the city of Yang-zhou with a small
force, his quick defeat and the subsequent sack of that once prosperous city served
well to intimidate others who contemplated resistance. Vigorous defenses were
mounted in some regions, but the inability of Ming forces to coordinate resistance en
sured their ineffectiveness, and all opposition was brutally suppressed. When the
Qing armies descended on Nanjing, where a new Ming regime had been established
under the Prince of Fu, the Ming "restoration" government simply dissolved.
The early decades of Qing rule required the elimination of a series of Ming pre
tenders and several resistance movements. The Qing showed a ruthlessness in es
tablishing its authority that was comparable to that of the Ming in its own early years;
and if the Manchu rulers never won the general love of their Chinese subjects, they
THE QING DYNASTY: PERIOD INTRODUCTION
eventually enforced a degree of intimidated docility. Male Chinese subjects were

required to shave their heads except for a long pigtail or queue worn in the Manchu
style. Although the queue appeared as one of the most striking characteristics of "Chinese" attire to early Western observers, it was to the Chinese an often-hated symbol
of foreign domination.
Like other frontier peoples who had conquered China, the Manchus faced the prob
lem of becoming absorbed into the general Chinese population. The Jurchen Jin of the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries came from a people closely related to the Manchus,
and they had disappeared into the population of North China leaving scarcely a trace.
The Mongols, by contrast, had maintained their separateness, but had never been able
to quite establish themselves as effective rulers. The Manchus found themselves as
overlords of a multi-ethnic empire, including Mongols, Turks, and Tibetans as well as
Chinese, and they sought to ensure a measure of ethnic separation. Manchus were
supposed to marry only Manchus to preserve the integrity of the people. Blood was,
however, a less powerful force than culture; within a few generations, the sinicization
of the ruling Manchu elite was complete. Alarmed Qing emperors required the study
of the Manchu language for Manchus in China, and encouraged young Manchus to
spend time in Manchuria and experience the manly virtues of their forebears.
The Manchu state had never been entirely Manchu, even before the conquest
of China proper. The Manchu military organization was composed of military units
known as "banners, some of which were Manchu and some Chinese. The socalled bannermen and their descendants, Chinese and Manchu alike, were given
preferential treatment in positions in the Qing government.
909

While trying desperately to protect their ethnic identity, the Manchu emperors,
unlike their Mongo) predecessors, set out to be exemplary Chinese rulers. They were,
if anything, more puritanically Confucian than the Chinese, and they set a tone of
pious propriety that had consequences in the civil service and in elite culture in gen
eral. Censors were ready to denounce not only any book that contained imagined
ethnic slurs but also any book deemed "injurious to the public morals." The liter
ary inquisition" of the eighteenth century cast a pall of anxiety over writing, and the
relative liberty of the late Ming, including the first decades of Qing rule, gave way
to a general caution.
Although the Ming had been suffering from internal disturbances for decades,
the overthrow of the dynasty and the establishment of the Qing within the course
of a year profoundly shocked Chinese intellectuals. Many became monks or retired
permanently to private life, either because they had previously served the Ming or
out of a lingering sense of loyalty to the old dynasty. Coming to terms with the Ming's
destruction remained a preoccupation of writers for decades after the conquest. The
works of Zhang Dai (1597-1679) represent one form of homage to the fallen dy
nasty in dreamlike prose sketches of life in the Southern cities on the eve of the con
quest.
Kong Shang-ren's play Peach Blossom Fan (1699) represents the culmination of
attempts to represent the fate of the Ming. Written by a dramatist born in 1648, after
the Qing conquest, Peach Blossom Fan tells the story of two lovers whose fate is in
tertwined with that of the "Southern Ming/' the restoration regime in Nanjing that
lasted only a year. The play generally avoids reference to the Qing and its armies,
and when they are mentioned, it is usually in complimentary terms. The Southern
Ming is depicted as destroying itself through incompetence, greed, and a preoccu
pation with domestic intrigue.
The early Qing saw a strong reaction against late Ming individualism and a fas
cination with the imagination on the part of some intellectuals. A new empiricism
appeared in almost all branches of learning. Inspired interpretation was replaced by

reasoning from evidence. One area of scholarly research with profound conse
quences was historical phonologythe study of the way in which the pronuncia
tion of characters had changed over time. It was recognized that before the long
process of standardizing the script in the Qin and Han, scribes had often chosen char
acters purely to represent sounds. Such characters are called "loan characters" and
they occur throughout ancient texts. Armed with their new proto-science of histor
ical phonology, scholars began making new guesses about loan characters in an
cient texts and producing interpretations of the Confucian Classics that were very
different from the received interpretations. Since the Confucian Classics had a scrip
tural authority in the constitution of the state and elite society, such excellent schol
arship was inherently destabilizing and increased the gap between serious scholars
and the still orthodox interpretations of the Southern Song Neo-Confucian Zhu Xi.
A culture founded on ancient texts thus found itself no longer certain of the mean
ing of those texts.
"Literature" in the Qing was not conceived as a single category; rather, it was a
large field of distinct genres, some coming down in an unbroken tradition from the
Tang and Song, and others revived after a long period of relative neglect. Qing lit
910
The Qing Dynasty

erature was, moreover, closely linked to scholarship on earlier literature and its re
publication. The Qing government sponsored numerous scholarly projects, such as
the compilation of the Complete Tang Poetry (1705). Scholars, readers, and writers
often specialized in one or more genres and styles. The "song lyric" of the Song, for
example, was sometimes written as a purely literary form in the Mingthe old music
had been long lost~but it was not popular. Yet the last decade of the Ming witnessed
a major revival in the composition of song lyrics in the Song tradition, and this reviva
began a new and unbroken traclition of song lyric composition that continued
well into the twentieth century. Some writers wrote in other forms, but many spe
cialized only in the song lyric. It had its own history of contending schools in the
Qing, with anthologies and an immense corpus of critical writing. Moreover, this
history of Qing song lyric was inextricably linked to scholarship and criticism on
the song lyric of the Song Dynasty. The Qing lyricist presumed that his or her read
ers would be thoroughly familiar with his Song predecessors and would recognize
in his work how he positioned himself in relation to the history of song lyric. This is
not to say that Qing lyrics were necessarily imitative~in fact, the Qing tradition of
the genre is far richer in range and style than the Song but Qing originality was
founded upon a presumed body of learning and a familiarity with critical debate.
Similar specialties existed in the various periods of classical poetry, in old style7'
prose and formal prose, in informal prose genres, in vernacular song lyric, in vari
ety plays (which by this point had become a purely literary genre). The classical tale
of the supernatural had a long history, stretching back to the period immediately fol
lowing the Han. Despite the seventeenth-century vogue for vernacular short stories,
the classical tale (ranging in scale from the anecdote to something approaching a
novella) had been composed continuously. In the late seventeenth century, it
reemerged to prominence in Liao-zhai's Record of Wonders, by Pu Song-Iing
(1640-1715). This large collection of supernatural tales was immensely popular, and
it spawned renewed interest in the genre, taking the form of numerous versions of
such tales in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Pu Song-Iing;s collection of supernatural stories like the editions of Tang poets,
the anthologies of "old style" prose, famous plays, and all the major vernacular nov
elswas printed with extensive critical commentaries. Such commentaries might
be printed in the margins, in between the lines, or after passages. Earlier works, such
as the Tang poets or "old style" prose writers, usually had scholarly commentaries
as well. Critical commentary was not an academic addition to works usually read
without commentary; rather, it was almost impossible to find an edition of Pu SongIing or the famous novels without a commentary. For Tang and Song writers, edi
tions and anthologies without commentaries were the less popular, more scholarly
forms. Commentaries indicated literary techniques, brought out hidden implications
in passages, and in longer works called attention to the overall structure. Not until
the twentieth century, in part following the Western model and in part seeking to
break free of the habits of traditional criticism, would such works be printed with
out the critical commentaries.
The two outstanding novels of the eighteenth century represent a major trans
formation of the genre from its predecessors in the sixteenth and seventeenth cen
turies. The eighteenth-century novels are by known authors, and the rough exuber
911

ance of vernacular Chinese in earlier long fiction has been supplanted by a much
sharper and more refined vernacular. Both of these novels were not printed until
decades after the deaths of their authors. The first is The Scholars (Ru-lin wai-shi),
by Wu Jing-zi (1701-1754), first published in 1803. A medley of interlocking
episodes, The Scholars is a savagely satirical portrait of late imperial society, its
hypocrisy and the failure of its values. But probably the defining work of Qing lit
erature is Story o f the Stone (or Dream o f the Red Cham ber; Hong-lou meng), by
Cao Xue-qin (1715-1763). Cao worked on versions of his novel over the course of
about two decades, leaving it incomplete after eighty chapters. The first printed edi
tion of 1791 was completed by the addition of another forty chapters by Gao E (ca.
1740-ca. 1815).
Story of the Stone quickly became more than a success: like Shakespeare in En
glish or Don Quixote in Spanish, it won the utter devotion of readers soon after its
publication and that devotion has not diminished to the present day. On one level
it is the story of a magic piece of jade, destined to be born into the world and achieve
enlightenment by experiencing the disillusionment of love. The novel tells the story
of an adolescent boy, Bao-yu ("Precious Jade"), born into a powerful Qing house
hold just passing from the height of its powers into decline. Bao-yu lives surrounded
by women_ maidservants, sisters, cousins, and the older women of the household.
But his passion is reserved for his hypersensitive cousin Dai-yu ("Black Jade"). Story
of the Stone is an extraordinarily rich novel in the physical and cultural details of
life in eighteenth-century China; it is no less rich in the complexity of its vision of
the society, with moments of everyday pettiness and tenderness framed in a larger
and dangerous world of men and political power.
Story of the Stone was perhaps particularly moving because it represented the
very end of traditional Chinese civilization as a world unto itself. During the nine
teenth century, the Western powers made their presence felt in ways that would
change China forever. The Jesuit missionaries of the Ming and early Qing had sought
to c u ltiv a te C h in a 's ru le rs an d e lite . T h e ir te c h n ic a l k n o w le d g e an d d e v ic e s e lic ite d
th e fa scin a tio n o f m a n y C h in e s e in tellectu als; but althou gh th e e a rly m issio naries
won a select body of converts, their goal of the general conversion of China to a
Christian country was not on the horizon. Church politics and other factors even
tually led the Qing government to a general prohibition against Christianity in 1723.
In a little more than a century, Europe would return to China in full force.
Opium, initially smoked with tabacco, increased in use in China through the course
of the eighteenth century. By early in the nineteenth century, addiction had risen to
a serious level and the subsequent drain on silver reserves led to an increase in com
modity prices. By the 1830s, the problem had reached crisis proportions. A zealous
reformer, Lin Ze-xu, was dispatched by the Qing government to Canton, the primary
port of the Anglo-Chinese opium trade, where he destroyed all the existing opium
stocks. This and other sources of friction between the English and the Chinese, in
cluding the understandable reluctance of the English to turn their nationals over to
what they saw as the barbaric practices of the Chinese legal system, eventually led
to the Opium War in 1840. After English fleets decisively defeated Qing naval forces
and coastal defenses, the war was finally brought to an end by the Treaty of Nan
jing in 1842, by which Hong Kong was annexed and the English were given ex
912
The Qing Dynasty

traterritorial rights at five major Chinese ports; by these rights the English could live
in their own compounds and were subject to English rather than Chinese law. Once
England had exposed the helplessness of China in face of Western military tech
nology, in the decades that followed other Western powers competed to enforce
upon China their own treaties, with their own ports and the same rights as the
English.
In the middle of the century, the Qing faced an even more devastating challenge.
The period from 1850 through the early 1860s saw the rebellion of the Tai-ping tianguof the "Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace, The Tai-ping tian-guo was a theo
cratic movement based on a syncretism of Christianity and native Chinese millenarianism. The Tai-pings held Central China, including the great city of Nanjing,
and they defeated Qing armies again and again until Zeng Guo-fan (18111872),
the Qing intellectual and general, at last suppressed them. In 1864, after a prolonged
siege, Nanjing was at last taken and the city was sacked by Qing troops. While the
war with the Tai-pings was under way, the Western powers were demanding lega
tions in Beijing on a status of diplomatic equality, the right to travel in the interior
of China, opening the country to missionaries, and more territorial concessions for
trade. Negotiations broke down, and in 1860 a joint Anglo-French army invaded
Beijing, sending the Qing court into flight to their Manchurian capital at Jehol. The
resulting Treaty of Beijing gave France and England everything they had demanded.
In 1885, after hostilities, the French claimed Vietnam; Russia and Germany, in the
meantime, were also winning concessions under threat of force. In 1894, the SinoJapanese War broke out, leading to yet another humiliation for the Qing and treaty
concessions to the Japanese.
A half century of repeated military and political humiliation left both the Qing
government and much of the Chinese populace with a deep hatred for Japan and
the Western powers. Within the foreign concessions, governed by the laws of the
foreign powers, Chinese were treated as second-class citizens with few rights, and
they experienced Western racism. Western gunboats patrolled the coast and the
Yangzi River, ready to suppress any threat to foreign nationals. Eventually, in 1899,
the festering rage broke out in the Boxer Rebellion, a secret society sworn to rid China
of all foreigners. All foreigners were attacked, especially missionaries, and in 1900
the foreign legations in Beijing were besieged. A relief force made up of detachments
from Japan and the Western powers marched from Tian-jin to Beijing, and pre
dictably the Qing government was forced to pay large sums in reparations.
The encounter with the West brought other changes as well. Western novels
began to be translated, first freely recast in classical Chinese, but later translated ac
curately. Toward the end of the nineteenth century newspapers made their appear
ance, containing serialized novels that already showed Western influence. Students
went off to Europe and the United States, and primarily to Japan, bringing back not
only technical expertise but also Western literature and thought. As an East Asian
nation that had successfully adapted to the encounter with the West, Japan was seen
as a model of what China could become. In 1905, the old imperial civil service ex
aminations were abolished, and at last, in 1911, the Qing was overthrown with re
markable ease and the Republic was established. China's troubles were far from over,
but the old imperial system waL gone forever.
913

From the late Qing through the first decades of the Republic, classical literature
continued to be written in the old forms; but a new literature was taking shape, a
literature informed by Western and Japanese models. On May 4,1919, a large stu
dent protest called for basic cultural reform, including the abandonment of classi
cal Chinese in favor of the written vernacular. Literary and cultural traditions atten
uate and transform slowly, but sometimes a single date can serve as a symbol of
change. The May Fourth movement is generally understood as the beginning of mod
ern Chinese literature.
Li Yu, Silent Operas

(Wu-sheng xi)
Prior to the seventeenth century, Chinese fiction and drama usually embellished
older stories rather than inventing new ones. Even when an author invented a story,
literary c o n v e n tio n
d e m a n d e d th a t it b e presented as if it c a m e from so m e o u tsid e
source, either a contemporary or an earlier text. The dramatist and storywriter Li

Yu (1611-1680) took great pride in telling readers that his stories were the prod
ucts of his own fertile wit, and he rarely lets his readers forget his authorial pres
ence.
Like many Qing writers, Li Yu failed the civil service examination and had to
rely on his literary reputation to make a living. To support himself, he took the un
usual course of organizing a theatrical company and taking it on tour. As in
English th e a tric a l c o m p a n ie s o f th e E liz a b e th a n an d Ja c o b e a n e ra s , Li Y u a lso
wrote the material. Writing and publishing his plays was no less a business ven
ture, and was as much to attract patronage as for direct income. Part of what Li
th e
Yu sold was an image of Epicurean pleasures and pastimes embodied in the es

says entitled "Random Ventures in Idleness" (Xiart-qing ou-ji). These include sec
tions on gardening, eating and drinking, architecture, and health, as well as sev
eral on drama.
Li Yu wrote voluminously, turning out ten comedies of romantic intrigue, a

pornographic novel, and several collections of stories. "An Actress Scorns Wealth
and Honor. . : is drawn from the first of the story collections, entitled Silent Op
eras (Wu-shengxi). The story shows a preoccupation with theater that characterized
both Li Yu and his age. The interplay of truth and feigned appearances moves back
and forth across the boundaries of the stage, with Li Yu's voice ever present in the
background to draw conclusions for us. The intrusive narrator had long been a fea
ture of Chinese stories, but Li Yu plays the role with an ironic and self-congratulating gusto that is his trademark.
An Actress Scorns Wealth and Honor to

Preserve Her Chastity
Translated by Patrick Hanan
Poem:
Beautys power to stir the heart
Is heightened by her acting art.
Though her singing make a thousand cry,
N o tear will come to Beautys eye.
915
Lyric:
A pretty bawd with a singing voice~
Charms, she has them all.
Her constant smile will banish care,
Till all men think she favours them,
Their hearts in thrall.
They risk their lives to make her gifts,
Not stopping till they die.
They shower her with precious gems,
And when they get no sweets in turn,1
They thinkshes shy.
Both poem and lyric make the point that when it comes to charm, ac
tresses are in a different class altogether from the ordinary run of prostitutes.
Men lose their hearts to actresses, the strait-laced turning into romantics and
the tight-fisted into big spenders. Why should this be? Because in training
to become actresses, these women have practised those warbling, dulcet tones
and that delicate, willowy grace of theirs to perfection. There is no need for
them to affect such things in company, for they come naturally. When ac
tresses are placed beside girls of good family, their impurity outshines the
latter^ puritywhen put beside prostitutes, their naturalness highlights the
others affectedness. In addition, that carpet on the stage is a most peculiar
thing, for it hurts the ugly woman as it helps the beauty. When an ugly
woman comes on stage, she appears even uglier, but when a beautiful woman
does so, her beauty is enhanced. It is common for a woman of middling at
tractiveness off-stage to look like the reincarnation of Xishi or Yang Guifei2
as soon as she sets foot on stage and begins her performance, at which point
even a perfect beauty cannot compare with her. There are two reasons for
this. Firstly, actors and actresses are predestined for their trade and have a
god, Erlang, who watches over them. And secondly, the impression they
make is the result of long training, not something that can be produced by
a mere act of will.
However that may be, the four lowliest classes in society consist of pros
titutes, entertainers, lictors and slaves.3 Thus actresses, as both prostitutes
and entertainers, combine two of the four classes. Why, then, should an ac
tress be made the subject of a story? Because when a person from the lowli
est class of all performs the noblest deed of all, it is fully as remarkable as a
magic mushroom growing out of a dunghill, and it deserves to be publicized.
TThe allusion is to the love song "Mugua in the Poetry Classic: wShe threw a tree-peach to m e;/As
requital I gave her a bright greenstone," etc. See Arthur Waley, trans" The Book o f Songs (New York:
Grove Press, 1987), p. 31.
2O f the Zhou and Tang dynasties, respectively, they came to personify ideals of beauty.
3Sons born to people in any of these occupations were excluded from the civil service examina
tions.
916
The Qing Dynasty
Whereas other stories relate an anecdote as a prologue to the story

proper, this one will follow a different course. It has no need to play the host
ushering in the guest
for it will generate the child from the mother. To begin
with the dunghill and go on from there to tell of the magic mushroom~that
is something entirely new in literary composition.
Let me tell how in X ian county of Quzhou prefecture in Zhejiang there
was a township of moderate size ijamed Yang Village in which all of the in
habitants, men as well as women, took up acting as a career. Now, actors
are produced in every part of the country, not just this one, but actresses
were the specialty of this area, because the singing and acting here were re
markably authentic. If geomancy was one factor, genetic inheritance was cer
tainly another. Because an actresss parents were actor and actress them
selves, they brought into play during the sexual act, before the seed was
sown, the very same voices and movements that they employed on stage.
Thus the essential ingredients of an acting career were already present in the
father's semen and the mothers blood. Moreover, during the mothers preg
nancy, she would continue to act full time. The ancients held the theory that
a childs education begins in utero;4thus the mothers dulcet tones and wil
lowy grace would have been instilled in the child before birth. And once she
was born, everything she saw or heard had to do with the theatre. Custom
eventually turned into instinct, and she proved a natural performer. How
could anyone who took up acting at a later stage even begin to compare with
her? Which explains why this locality produced several outstanding ac
tresses in every generation.
Actresses in other parts of the country, who began as prostitutes, would
act during the day and entertain their clients by night, using their acting
merely to attract custom. But these actresses, with their three dos and three
don
t
s
were quite different.
,
What were these dos and donts of theirs?
Do let them look, but dont let them taste.
Do let them have the name, but dont let them have the reality.
Do let them plan, but dont let them succeed.
While they were on stage, the whole of their persons was visible to the
audience
and even off-stage they were still playful and flirtatious. However,
when it came to that goblet of aromatic wine they possessed, they would let
men water at the mouth but not wet their lips. This was what was meant by
letting them look but not taste
When young noblemen or rich merchants tried to use their power or
money to get them into bed, the actresses never refused outright, but their
consent was merely verbal. They would plead illness, claiming they could
not make love at the moment, or else pretend that their husbands objected
4l.e., taijiao, by which the embryo is held to be morally influenced by the mother's behaviour.
917
and suggest that their admirers await some other opportunity. But the days
would go by, and they would remain as unattainable as ever. This was what
was meant by letting them have the name but not the reality
Even if they went to bed with their admirers and behaved so passion
ately that you would think them genuinely in love, in their eyes it was just
a performance, as if they were playing a romantic scene or two with their
leading men. While the play was on, they were utterly serious, but when they
left the stage, they left their seriousness behind. Lovestruck young men
would frequently offer large sums of money to buy them out, but although
they consented, and let their admirers scheme away from dawn to dusk heed
less of the costs of courtshipthe plans would all end up as a spring dream,
for the actresses could never bring themselves to marry. This was what was
meant by letting them plan but not succeed
What was their motive for being so difficult? You must understand that
their hearts were not set on preserving their chastity for their husbands5sake,
but on making money for those husbands, and not small sums of money ei
ther, but large amounts. A mans true feeling for a woman does not arise
from the bodily contact, but from the eye contact that precedes it. A gour
mand at a feast will smell the aroma of the food before he sits down to din
ner and start watering at the mouth, feeling he has never in all his life met
with such delicacies; but after he gets the food into his mouth and has
wolfed down a meal of it, if a second gourmet dinner is brought out, he will
feel disgust rather than desire. Now, at the sight of a woman, a man is like
the gourmand at the sight of food; you can allow him to smell the aroma
but not to start eating, for once he does so, he will lose interest, and it will
be impossible to set his mouth watering again. Therefore the actresses from
this locality, who were well aware of the principle involved, did not enter
lightly into liaisonsbut made this tripartite formula of theirs a family heir
loom. Mothers passed it down to daughters, and mothers-in-law to daughters-in-law, through scores of generations, until one day an unfilial daugh
ter came along who rejected the formula outright and would let men do
anything~taste as well as look, have the reality as well as the name, suc
ceed as well as plan. As the proverb so aptly puts it: Every case is a law
unto itself. After years of this accommodating attitude, she had cooperated
with her husband to earn a large sum of money as well as a reputation for
unconventional behaviour.
Her surname was Liu and her personal name Jiangxian, and she lived at
the end of the Jiajing era.5 She was as pretty as a flower and as fair as jade,
she had an excellent voice and a beautiful figure, and she was blessed with
a sharp intelligence. Other actresses could play only one role, but she had
an exceptional versatility and would play the heroine or the hero, a man or
51522-66.
918
The Qing Dynasty
a woman, as the manager wished. And she had another talent too, of a free
unfettered kind; after the main play was over, she would quickly put on a
painted face and play the jing or chou.6 Her byplay was sparklingly origi
nal, and every word of it impressed her audience. They lost their hearts to
her, and there was no man who did not wish to take her to bed. And she
was exceptionally accommodating by nature, too. It was not absolutely nec
essary that you be endowed with Pan An
s looks and Cao Zhis talent
7 in
fact, even if you could neither jread nor write, and were as ugly as sin, she
would go to bed with you just so long as you could put up a large enough
sum of money.
From accepting the ugly as well as the handsome, she came to be patro
nised by the stupid as well as the intelligent, and before she was thirty she
had amassed a large fortune and established her husband as a local worthy
of some note. But although her business expanded, she never gave up her
profession, and would entrust her property to others while she and her hus
band went on tour. Their hope was to have a child who would one day take
over their responsibilities and allow them to retire.
But when things reach one extreme, they turn back toward the other.
After years of trying, this couple produced a daughter, another unfilial
daughter, who scorned not only the traditional family code but her own
mothers rules as well. In the end she created a true play out of a false play,
one that would be performed for thousands of years to come.
Her childhood name was Miaogu, and she was as pretty as a flower and
as fair as jade, a truly outstanding beauty whose charms were too numer
ous to mention. An old jingle sums her up:
One trace of powder she
d be too pale;
One touch of rougeshed be too red;
One inch more_ she
d be too tall
One inch lessshe
d be too short.
As for her voice, which stopped the passing clouds and lingered among
the roof-beams,
8 it was her forte and there is no need to speak of it. Not

only did she cause thousands to applaud her extraordinary art, she was ca
pable of suddenly driving the whole world crazy and leaving her audience
hanging between life and death. How did this happen? Because when she
came to a moving love scene, the audiences eyes would suddenly glaze over
and their mouths drop open, as if the sight had driven them to their deaths.
Thenjust as suddenly, they would begin dancing with joy, as if the sight
Conventional role-types of the traditional Chinese theatre that are distinguished by costume, make
up, and acting style. Jing generally portrayed warriors or villains; chou generally portrayed comic
characters.
7Pan Yue or Pan An (247-300) and Cao Zhi (192-232), personifications of male beauty and intel
ligence respectively.
8A cliche for beautiful song derived from the Lie Z i ("Tang wen").
919
had restored them to life. As a result, they raved over her, saying: KWhat
kind of woman is this, to hold the power of life and death over us? Her
troupe became famous simply because she was its lead actress.
But Heaven never makes one creature without making another to match
it. It so happened that there was also a male lead of unprecedented quality,
and when he came to be paired with Miaogu, theirs could truly be called a
match made in Heaven. And there was another remarkable thing about this
actor too; he did n^'t start out as a male lead, but was promoted from the
ranks of the jing and the chou. But in order to tell the story of this romance
of theirs, it is necessary to begin at the beginning.
When Miaogu was eleven or twelve, before she was capable of acting in
a full-length play, she would often join her mother in doing isolated scenes.
There was a young student there at the time whose surname was Tan and
whose personal name was Chuyu, and who came from Xiangyang prefec
ture in Huguang. His was an established family, but he had lost his mother
as a child, and when his father went away to study, the little boy had been
taken along. His father died while away from home, and the son was left
with no one to depend on. He had drifted about from place to place in east
ern Jiangsu and in Zhejiang, and was now sixteen years old. One glance at
Miaogu was enough to convince him that she was a ravishing beautyand
he determined to get to know her now, while she was still a virgin. Using an
interest in drama as a pretext, he made constant visits to the green-room.
He hoped to declare his passion with his eyes and arouse thoughts of love
in her; he would begin with the apertura and gradually work his way through
to the continuatio and exordium.9Alas for his hopes! Her parents exercised
such strict control over her that, except in acting class, she was not allowed
to talk to anyone outside the family. Although Tan spent months covertly
watching her, he found no opening for his advances.
One day he heard that Miaogus troupe was fully staffed except for a
jing and that they were looking for some bright young man to study along
side her. Since Tan was at a loose end anyway, how could he pass up such
an opportunity? He went at once to see Jiangxian and her husband and told
them of his desire to join the troupe. They were delighted, and invited him
to stay behind, make his bows to the teacher, and begin practising with
Miaogu that very day. Needless to say, as an intelligent youth, he picked up
the art very quickly. For her part, Miaogu, although still a child, was better
educated than many an adult. Even before Tan joined the troupe, she had
admired his looks and, noting how assiduously he attended the theatre, had
realized that the Old Tipplers mind was definitely on something other than
his w ine.
1When he joined the troupe, she realized that he had been driven
by his passion for her into disregarding the lowly status of actors; he was
using the drama class as a means of offering her his allegiance, even at the
9Names for the first three parts of the eight-part ("eight-legged") examination essay.
^ u y a n g Xiu (1007-1072) styled himself Zuiweng, "O ld Tippler." The quotation is from his essay
"Zuiweng ting ji."
The Qing Dynasty
cost of playing a painted face.2 He was obviously a romantic spirit, and

she wished to entrust her heart to him.
Unfortunately their drama teacher proved even stricter than her father.
He forbade all whispering when his pupils were reciting plays, and his main
concern, when they were practising their movements, was that they should
not touch. In effect, Tan was playing Liang Shanbo to Miaogus Zhu Yingta i
3for although they studied side by side, they never managed to exchange
a single word of love. Their only hope was to wait until their next lives and
then, like Liang and Zhuturn into butterflies and go off together.
After some time, Tan began to regret his decision. In acting
he
thought, ^<the male lead is the only role to study, if you want to preserve a
shred of gentility. Even if our love is not predestined and can never be ful
filled, on stage we
d at least have a 'pretext to expound the faith
and could
open our hearts to each other. If I called her wife, she would have to call me
husband. Although it could never be a real marriage, why not seize those
fleeting moments of love to consummate our desire and give meaning to my
joining the troupe? This painted face role is beneath my dignity as a man!
In any case, Fm depressed beyond words by the parts I have to play, which
are all either bumpkins or menials. And how can I stand the bile that rises
in me as I watch with starving eyes while she plays wife to another man?
One day, when the teacher was out of the classroom and the pupils were
all in their places recitingTan, who was sitting close to Miaogu, was
tempted to take this chance to declare his love but feared that the others
might overhear. Fortunately, apart from Miaogu and him self
4 no one else
in the troupe knew any classical Chinese. If he spoke in the vernacular, they
would understand, but if he sprinkled in a few classical expressions, they
would be left in the dark. So while everyone was reciting, Tan kept his eyes
on Miaogu and spoke to her, as if practising his part:
O Mistress, Mistress, most intelligent creature as thou art, how canst
thou not be aware of my purpose in coming?
Miaogu replied, also as if reciting: Man is not made of wood or stone,

so how can he be unaware? It grieveth me that I cannot speak my love!
Tan continued: Madam watcheth closely, and the pedagogue is strict.
How long must I wait ere I fulfill the desire of three lifetimes?
We can but give each other our hearts and await another day. Here,
before the gaze of all, there is, ifaithno chance of a tryst. Pray cease thy
too, too sanguine hopes.
Tan continued in a low voiceI am ashamed to go on playing painted
faces, and I beseech thee to intercede with thy parents and have me promoted
2This refers to the jing role-type, in which the actors' faces are heavily made up, and sometimes also
to the chou.
3A famous romantic legend. Dressed as a boy, Zhu Yingtai studies alongside Liang Shanbo. When
he discovers her sex, he tries to marry her, but she is already betrothed. After his death, she is pass
ing by his grave when it suddenly opens up for her. Their souls fly away together as butterflies.
4The text says "male and female leads, but Tan has not yet become the male lead.
921
to male lead, so that we can join in wedlock on the stage as an auspicious

omen of future love. What sayest thou, milady?
"Well said, forsooth, but if the suggestion issue from your humble ser
vant, it will but arouse parental suspicion and close the very door we wish
to open. Thou must needs use a stratagem.
<(And what stratagem would that be, pray?
The troupe setteth great value upon thy services, and if thou wishest to
leave, disdaining to play the painted face, nought will be denied thee. With
Xiao He at the rulers side, thou canst count on Han Xins being summoned
back to court,5
I shall respectfully do thy bidding
said Tan, with a nod.
A few days later, following her suggestion, he went and took leave of his
teacher and also of Jiangxian and her husband, saying that he wished to re
turn home and resume his studies. Jiangxian and her husband were aghast.
But youve just finished your training and are about to go on tour! Why
give it all up so suddenly? Together with the drama teacher, they probed
the reason for his change of heart.
"Even in poverty one must not give up one
s aspirations
said Tan. I
did receive an educationbut because of the decline in my familys fortunes, I
had no choice but to enter this lowly profession. My intention, in donning an
actors garbwas to express the frustration I felt. I assumed that, as principal
jing, I would be playing either Guan Yunchang or the Hegemon of Chu,6and
that although I would have to apply some greasepaint, at least in the more stir
ring scenes I could be true to my nobler self. It never occurred to me that, in
nine plays out of ten, I would be playing petty rogues, and that I would hardly
ever have a chance to play a superior man. No true gentleman would put up
with such a dishonourable role, and I am unwilling to do so any more.
Since you regard a painted face as beneath you, by all means choose a
role more to your liking. Theres no need to be inflexible!
Tan then offered his assessment of the various roles. As for the sec
ondary female roles, Im afraid a man would be sacrificing his manhood if
he stooped to play them. And in the case of the secondary male roles, Fm
afraid a young man would be losing his youthful vigour if he played an old
fellow. The only possibility would be the junior male lead, but he so often
works through others, helping them make their names, that he fails to es
tablish an identity of his own and present us with a nobler self, and that is
why I wouldnt consider the role.
At this point the drama teacher remarked to Jiangxian and her husband:
From what hes saying, its quite clear that he has set his heart on being the
male lead. In my opinion, his looks and voice are of the right calibre. The only
problem is that the male leads part is longer than anyone else
s, and weve
5Early in his career, the famous general Han Xin, feeling unappreciated, deserted. Xiao He, the prime
minister, who believed strongly in Han, raced after him, brought him back, and persuaded the ruler
to appoint him commander-in-chief.
6The warrior figures Guan Yu and Xiang Yu, of the Three Kingdoms and Qin dynasties, respectively.
The Qing Dynasty
already finished rehearsing and are about to go on tour. Even if we make him
the male lead, how is he going to memorize all those scripts at once?
Tan gave a laugh. The only question is whether Id accept the male lead.
If I did, my memory would be more than a match for those few dozen old
plays. At the rate of one dayI
d be learning ten every ten days. If we delay
the tour by a month, surely the thirty plays Ill have memorized by then will
be enough for any repertoire!
The drama teacher had been with Tan long enough to know his powers
of memory, so he urged Jiangxian and her husband to appoint him male lead
and make the present male lead a painted face. In fact Tan's memory was
so good that he was able to recall his lines after a single reading. In less than
a month, he had learned the thirty scripts, and he and Miaogu set off.
During his period of training, Tan had had to contend with her parents
protectiveness inside the house and the drama teachers surveillance outside
it, as well as with their classmates5constant presence, and he had failed to
come up with any effective way of expressing his love. But he had assumed
that, once they went on tour and the whole troupe was away from home,
they would, as colleagues, have to start behaving like members of the same
family~that is to say, there would be no segregation among them and no
suspicion. While rubbing shoulders with Miaogu, he should not find it too
difficult to inhale her warm fragrance and stroke her soft, translucent flesh.
To his dismay, he found that the rules of conduct in the green-room were
twice as strict again as in the womens quarters. Every man in the world
could make a play for the female leadexcept her fellow actors! The rule
was not of Jiangxian
s or her husbands devisingthere was a founding fa
ther of the acting profession, the god Erlang, and he it was who had estab
lished it. Byplay among the actors and actresses offended against morality
as much as incest between brother and sister. On stage you might jest and
banter to your hearts content, but as soon as you stepped off it, you had to
treat the actresses with perfect decorum and refrain from the slightest jest.
The merest hint of an affair was enough to offend against the god
s taboo,
and not only would business go into a decline, the whole troupe would fall
ill. Thus after Miaogu went on tour, she had to endure not only her parents
protectiveness and her teachers surveillance but also her fellow actors
scrutiny. When they saw her sitting beside Tan, they would sidle over to spy
on them, fearing they might start an affair that would affect not only them
selves but the entire troupe.
Pity these poor lovers, whose mouths were officially sealed, as it were,
and who could no longer employ even the classical language to communi
cate! Their only recourse was to use the past to express the present on
stageand to try to guess each others hidden meanings. Whereas other ac
tors and actresses preferred being off-stage, because on stage they had to
exert themselves and off-stage they could relax, Tan and Miaogu preferred
the stage, because there they could play husband and wife, while off-stage
they had to hold themselves above suspicion.
On stage, as male and female leads, they formed a dazzling couple, and
923
every man in the audience fell in love with her and every woman with him.
Inevitably, because they took such delight in their acting, they threw them
selves into every scene, and the same old plays, as performed by them, took
on an entirely new guise. In the romantic parts, the passion of their courtship
and lovemaking seemed to spring from the very marrow of their bones. None
of this was present in the play, but it never failed to captivate the audience.
In the tragic parts, their tirades against Heaven and Earth, their piteous
lamentations, seemed to issue from the very depths of their being. None of
this was in the printed text either, but it never failed to move the audience
to tears. What was the reason? Because what other actors performed was
the play, whereas they performed the truth. When a play is performed as a
play, no matter how well it is done, the male lead remains the male lead and
the female lead the female lead, and their spirits never join. Thus tragedy
does not seem tragic, nor joy joyous. When a play is performed as a play,
the audience looks on it as a play. But if it is performed as the truth, the fe
male leads spirit is fixed on the male lead while his soul is held in her hands,
and they fuse into a single person who feels the joys and woes of each. Thus
tragedy seems tragic and joy joyous. Tan and Miaogu acted their plays as if
they were the truth, and the audiences looked upon them in the same light.
Their very presence in the troupe helped raise the position of their
mediocre fellow actors. Other troupes earned no more than three to six taels
per play, but this troupe charged twelve taels, exclusive of the female leads
gratuities. For a hundred miles around, whenever the rich and eminent were
planning theatricals, they tried to engage the troupe. Those who succeeded
were proud of the fact, while those who failed took it as a personal disgrace.
Because of the new troupe's success, Jiangxian handed over control of
the old troupe to her husband so that she could accompany Miaogu. Her
aim was to instruct her daughter in the feminine wiles needed to make a for
tune. But Miaogu had given her heart irrevocably to Tan and refused to as
sociate with other men. Whereas they thought her the apple of their eye, she
thought them a thorn in her flesh. Get her to a party to accompany the guests
in their drinking, and she would declare that she never drank and refuse to
let the wine cup touch her lips. Say something personal to herand her face
would drop and she would find an excuse to leave. Rich young men squan
dered large sums of money to make her acquaintance, but they received not
a smile nor a frown in return, let alone any other favours. If jewellery was
created for her, she would wear it only once or twice, and then melt it down
and use the silver. If any clothes were made for her, she would put them in
the props trunk for the supporting actresses and not wear them herself. In
her heart she was determined not to take a second husband and to remain
chaste for Tan Chuyu, but she could tell no one of her resolve.
One day the troupe brought its plays to a place named Port X in which
there was an old temple called Lord Yan
s Temple.7 Lord Yan was a deity
7Tempies were built to Lord Yan during the Ming Dynasty. According to legend, he was a Song or
Q1A
The Qing Dynasty
in charge of wind and wave who, enfeoffed as the Marquis Pacifier-ofWaves

had demonstrated striking magical powers. The temple was built be
side a stream, where the gods birthday was celebrated on the third day of
the tenth month with theatricals arranged by the temples benefactors. In
past years they had invited Jiangxian^ troupe, but when they heard that the
junior troupe was even better, they sealed up the booking fee and sent it off
well in advance, which is how Jiangxian and her daughter came to be pre
sent.
,
In the past, the whole troupe, men as well as women, had arrived to
gether, but this time there had been a misunderstanding, and Tan and
Miaogu arrived before the others. They had been waiting years for this
fleeting chance and were not about to let it slip. But the temple was hardly
the place to make love, and they contented themselves with expressing their
true feelings for each other, after which they knelt down before Lord Yan
s
image and swore an oath togetherNeither ITan Chuyu, nor ILiu
Miaogu, will ever accept another in marriage. If our parents deny our plea,
we will join each other in death. We will never betray our love or reject our
commitment. If either of us breaks this vow, let him or her be destroyed
Just as they finished, they saw the other members of the troupe arriving.
Fortunately they escaped in time, and their secret was safe. Otherwise,<csus
picion would have seen ghosts in the dark
8and many ill-fated things might
have happened. After that days performance, they returned to their rented
quarters for the night, and there I shall leave them.
Let me now tell of one of the temples benefactors, a very rich man who
had bought himself an official post and served a term in the capital. He was
worth a good hundred thousand, and by now, approaching the age of fifty,
he had eleven concubines to his name. When Jiangxian was younger, she
too, had come under his tutelage, but he now observed that Miaogu was ten
times as beautiful as her mother, and he was prepared to put up a large sum
to marry her and fill up his complement of Twelve Golden Hairpins.5'9
Inviting both mother and daughter to stay, he treated them royally.
Needless to say, he renewed his friendship with Jiangxian, offering her his
tutelage once more. Then, at their moment of greatest intimacy, he ex
pressed his earnest desire to marry her daughter. Jiangxian would have
agreed, but for one consideration: that her daughter was a money-tree who,
if she could only be straightened out, was capable of making many large sums
far surpassing this one betrothal gift. On the other hand, Jiangxian would
have declined, but for a second consideration: that her daughter was of a
very stubborn nature and had refused to make money for her parents; rather
than have her offend people with her sulking fits, it might be better to marry
her off in exchange for ready money.
Yuan official who, after death, was deified and put in charge of calming storms. He is said to have
received the title Marquis Pacifier-of-Waves at the beginning of the Ming Dynasty.
8A cliche derived from the Lie Z i ("Kouyi").
9A reference to one man's having twelve concubines.
925
Unable to decide the issue, Jiangxian was forced to hedge. Its a most
generous offer, which I dare not refuse. But my daughter is still very young,
not yet fifteen. Moreover, we've hired a drama teacher to give her lessons.
There^l be time enough for marriage after sheJs been working for a few years
and has made some money for us. I really wouldn't presume to give my con
sent at this point.
I see
said the rich man. Well, this time next year well be holding
our theatricals again, and Fll invite you over and ask you for an answer.
Very w ell
said Jiangxian.
A few days later the performances came to an end and she took her leave.
Her motive, in replying like this, was to observe her daughter closely over
the course of the next year. If the girl were prepared to change her mind and
make some money for her parents, she would be kept at home to workbut
if she should prove incorrigible, Jiangxian would have this offer to fall back
on. Therefore, after leaving the rich man, she took an entirely different at
titude toward her daughter and opposed her at every turn. If the girl failed
to obey, she would be screamed at, and if screaming produced no effect, she
would be beaten. Miaogus willhowever, was as firm as iron or stone, and
she yielded not an inch. When bullied beyond endurance, she would refuse
to perform and even threaten suicide.
Next yeartowards the end of the ninth month, the rich man sent a ser
vant with an invitation for Jiangxian. On greeting her, he asked for her an
swer, and she, since her daughter was clearly not the stuff of which great
fortunes are made, accepted with alacrity. He then weighed out a betrothal
gift of a thousand taels and handed it over. The wedding was set for the
evening of the third, just after the last performance.
All this while, Jiangxian, reluctant to bring the subject up, had been keep
ing Miaogu in the dark. Not until the evening of the second did she inform
her.
When I brought you into the world, I went to great trouble to give you
a training, in the hope that you would cooperate with us and work hard to
improve the familys position. But youve been wilful from the very start,
and have actually turned against money. You dont know your place in so
ciety, you pout when you meet people, and one day youre going to find your
self in real trouble. This business is simply not for you, and you'd better pack
up your costumes and get married as soon as you can. I know a gentleman
whos very rich and who has served in office. If you became his wife, you
d
be a lady of sorts, and whats more, you5d never want for anything the rest
of your life. I ve already accepted his betrothal gift and promised you to him
as a concubine, and the wedding is set for tomorrow. Now dont start act
ing up, or youll make your mother very cross.
At first Miaogu was shocked out of her wits. She stared wide-eyed at her
mother.
MotheryouVe made a m istake
she said at last. I
m already mar
ried, and a virtuous woman does not take a second husband. Remarriage is
out of the question,
926
The Qing Dynasty
Jiangxian had no idea what her daughter was talking about. Her face
hardened.
Where is this husband of yours? Your father and I have had nothing to
say about it. Surely you havent taken it upon yourself to arrange a mar
riage?55
t
Of course not! You cant arrange your own marriage! You and Daddy
matched me with him when I was just a child. You know perfectly well the
one I mean, youre just pretending not to understand.
t you tell me who he
KWhat an extraordinary thing to say! Well, w on
is?
Tan Chuyu, the male lead, of course. Before he joined the troupe, he
used to pay us constant visits, always on my account. Even when he joined,
it was just an excuse to get a foot in the door and be closer to me. Then later
on, when he refused to play the jing and insisted on changing to the male
lead so that he could be paired with me, he did it because he wanted you to
guess his intentions, since he couldnt declare them openly. You and Daddy
have played the male and female leads, youve been in romantic plays to
gether, so you must have guessed his intentions. If you didnt want me to
marry him, you shouldnt have taken him on for training in the first place,
but even if you did take him on, you certainly shouldnt have switched him
to male lead. By letting him do both things, you made it quite clear that you
guessed his intentions and approved of the marriage. Every day since we
began our performances, hes been the husband and I the wife, as tens of
thousands in our audiences can attest. Everyone says that ours is a match
made in heaven. Yet now, after weve been husband and wife for years, you
suddenly tell me to betray him! Impossible! Youre so used to making such
compromises in your own life, Mother, that they dont shock you any more.
I may be an unfilial child, but my virtue is unsulliedand Im not going to
sully it now. I would never do anything so outrageous!
Jiangxian gave an involuntary hoot of laughter, then spat out a reply,
You must be dreaming! Playing husband and wife on stage isnt to be taken
seriously. Tell me: what do you think the word playmeans? It
s called a
play
so it
s 'playful.1How can you take it as real? How many actresses
have you noticed marrying their leading men?
<(Everything else in the world can be taken playfully except marriage.
When I began acting with him, I was ignorant of moral principle and thought
we were just acting in a play, so I readily called him husband. By now I
m
in the habit and cannot correct myself. All I can do is make the best of my
situation and recognize him as my husband. Other actresseswho are igno
rant of moral principle or who have lost their chastity, are free not to marry
their leading men. But I do understand moral principle, and I have preserved
my chastity, and so my only course is to marry Tan Chuyu.5>
Jiangxian realized that no matter what was saidshe and her daughter
would still be at cross purposes, so she stopped trying to persuade her and,
after a brief, angry outburst, took herself off to bed.
Next morning, when breakfast and lunch had passed and the time for
927
the performance had almost arrived, the rich man appeared in the theatre
dressed in his finest clothes and began parading up and down in front of the
stage, hoping to catch the audience's eye and make them sigh with envy:
He
s going to get this unattainable beauty into his seraglio, where hell enjoy
himself at w ill. He would dearly have loved to emblazon the words I
ve
Won the Queen of the Flowers551 across his forehead and bask in the audi
ence^ applause.
Tan was furious at the sight. He expected that Miaogu would make a
violent scene, refuse to go on, and eventually do so only after a beating from
her mother. But the world is full of surprises. Although Miaogu had
protested violently the night before, after a nights sleep, she seemed recon
ciled to her future. She looked perfectly happy, sitting there in the green
room without the trace of a pout. She even made an appeal to her fellow ac
tors: I shall soon be saying goodbye to you all. Weve been together for
years, but the play we do today will be the first real one weve ever done.
The others were all make-believe. Im asking all of you to back me up and
do your level best
Then she turned to Tan. So far youve always played a make-believe
hero, but this time you5re going to play a real one. So do your very best to
work with m e.
I dont know what you mean by doing my best. I wish youd explain.
Just watch me and do as I do. So long as we act in concert, youll be
doing your best.
Tan was deeply hurt, for what she was saying ran counter to everything
he had come to expect. When the rich man came swaggering into the green
room to ask for the repertoire, Tan, in a bitter mood, watched closely for
Miaogu5s reaction, thinking that with her nemesis there before her, she
would surely flush with anger. But she not only showed no anger, she seemed
to beam with delight.
Mother tells me
she said, standing up to address him, that after the
performance today I shall be going to your house.
Just so.
In that case, out of all the plays Ive learned, todays is the only one I
still have a chance to perform. After today the audience will never have an
other chance to see me. So you must let me put on my finest performance,
both to demonstrate my abilities and also to take my leave of the audience.
Would that be agreeable?55
O f course its agreeable.
ll
In that case, I shant let you choose the play, Ill choose it myself. I
"'Queen of Flowers" was a name given to Wang Meiniang, heroine of a Ming romantic story. The
most famous courtesan of her time, she is won over by the devoted attentions of a humble oil seller.
His winning of her is referred to, in the titles of both the Ming story and the Ming play based on it,
as Zhan huakui, "Possessing (or Winning) the Queen of the Flowers."
928
The Qing Dynasty
do a play Im familiar with, one that will let me do full justice to my tal
ents.5*
Quite right. You choose, by all means. But I wonder which one you
li
pick?
Miaogu took the repertoire, hesitated, then pointed to a title. Lets do
The Thorn H airpin/
2 she said.
The rich man thought for a momentthen began laughing. You
re not
comparing me with Sun Ruquan, by doing The Thorn Hairpinf Oh, very
well. So long as you're willing to marry me, it
s no great hardship to be Sun
Ruquan for a little while. And now that thats settled, lets have everybody
on stage!
Once the play was chosen, the cast dressed and took the stage, where
they all put forth their best efforts, as Miaogu had asked. No words were
dropped from the songs, no passages from the speech. Only Tansick at
heart, failed to give of his best. Fortunately, Miaogu was there to cover for
him; after he had sung the first word or two of a song, she would quickly
join him in a duet, saving him from utter disgrace.
As for her performance, it was divine, superb throughout. In the first few
scenes, however fine the acting, she failed to captivate the audience, but when
she came to Sending the Bride Away to Her Wedding
3the scene touched
her own anguish and her performance became spellbinding, as she uncon
sciously bared her heart and soul. Each syllable was worth a piece of gold,
each word produced a tear, until, in the most harrowing passage of allnot
only was her face streaming with tears, there was not-a dry eye in the audi
ence of over a thousand. Then when she came to Clasping a Rock and
Plunging into the River
4her rendering seemed even more tragic. Not only
did the audience shed tearsthe very elements seemed to grieve; the sun went
in and dark clouds covered the sky as with primeval gloom. Normally Qian
Yulian expresses only her private anguish and does not denounce anyone.
But the way Miaogu played the role was different; she inserted a new pas
sage at the point where Yulian intends to throw herself into the river but
has not yet clasped the rock to her bosom, and now Yulian cursed Sun
Ruquan by name. The rich man happened to be sitting beside the stage.
Miaogu stood facing him, and every time she spoke the words False-hearted
rogue she pointed at him, and every time she said Damned villain she
stared him in the eye.
He knew that her curses were meant for him, but he couldnt help feel2A Southern play of disputed authorship, written probably in the fourteenth century. Wang Shipeng
marries Qian Yulian, then leaves for the capital to take the examination. A rival suitor, Sun Ruquan,
forges a letter of divorce from him. Yulian throws herself into the river, from which she is rescued
by an official's boat. Eventually, she and Wang rediscover each other when sacrificing at the same
temple. The thorn hairpin, the humble engagement gift which was all his family could afford, serves
to prove her identity.
3Scene 10 ("Bi jia").
4Scene 26 ("Tou jiang").
929
ing a twinge of conscience and tried hard to be fair-minded. Far from get
ting angry, he nodded his head and exclaimed in admirationQuite right!
After a volley of curses, Miaogu clasped the rock to her bosom and went
to throw herself into the river. Other actresses, in doing this scene, would
jump from the back of the stage into the green-room, pretending to jump
into the river but actually jumping on to dry land. But Miaogus way of
throwing herself into the river differed again. Here, tooshe wrote a new
script that was even more remarkable than the first.
The temple lay opposite a broad stream, and the stage had been erected
outside the temple gate, with its back resting on the bank and its front ex
tending out over the water. Clasping the rock, Miaogu went straight to the
front of the stage, from which, as she concluded her song, she gave a mighty
leap_ right into the river. She had acted out a real play, just as she had
promised.
Shocked almost to death, the audience clamoured for someone to rescue
her. But before anyone could try, a second person had jumped in to join her.
How did that come about? As Miaogu was about to jump, she had suddenly
turned around and shouted in the direction of the green-room: Husband
Wang Shipeng! Your wife can stand this persecution no longer and is going
to throw herself into the river. How can you go on living without me? Tan,
who was sitting on the props trunk at the time, rushed on stage. When he
saw Miaogus leap, his one fear was that he might be too late to catch her
up, so he flung himself like an arrow into the water. He hoped they would
die in each others arms, but he was far from sure that he would ever be able
to find her.
By this time the whole audience knew that Miaogu had chosen The
Thorn Hairpin with this outcome in mind. Her cursing of the rich man had
been an incidental thing, to raise her spirits, not an attempt to get some ver
bal satisfaction before resigning herself to marriage. She had pleaded her case
fully the night before and her mother had not relented, so she knew she
would not be able to preserve her chastity after the days performance.
Rather than stab herself in her room and turn into a mute ghost, she pre
ferred to die openly and forthrightly in front of others, providing people with
a tale to tell for centuries to come.
That whole night she lay awake planning what to do, and composed this
remarkable script. Her first stroke of brilliance was in keeping a smile on
her face and betraying no resentment, which lulled people into complacency
and allowed her to pursue her aim. Otherwise, she would never have been
allowed to perform such a highly sensitive play. Her second stroke was in
not leaving the choice of play to someone else, but choosing it herself, which
gave her a pretext for expressing her feelings and venting her grievances. Had
she chosen some other play, even if she had inserted a few clever remarks
here and there, she could not have expressed her grievances as directly or as
satisfyingly. The third stroke of brilliance was that she did not try to arrange
the double suicide in secret, but publicly invited her lover to be her ghostly
9^0
The Qing Dynasty
companion, a move worthy of the maxim An upright person does not do

underhand things If she had tried to arrange the suicide behind peoples
backs, she would probably have failed to kill herself on this occasion and
been forced to wait until after her marriage to Sun Ruquan before emulat
ing Qian Yulian.
Afterwards the poets all wrote elegies, one of which ran
They swore to die before theyd break their vow.
Why call them mad? They
d promises to keep.
As one they leapt into the raging flood,
And turned to sole (soul) mates in the watry deep.5
Let me now tell of the lovers after they leapt into the water. The skies
had just cleared after heavy rain, and the mountain streams were raging tor
rents. This broad stream, with its steep banks, was different from others
a mighty river spilling down for hundreds of miles.6W ithin minutes after
the lovers had leapt into the water, it had swept them away to another dis
trict altogether, far beyond any hope of rescue, which is why the audience,
for all their shouting, did nothing to save them.
From the stage Jiangxian saw her daughter drown and began beating her
breast and stamping her feet, weeping without pause. Two thoughts dis
tressed herfirstly, she had lost her money-tree and had no one left to make
her fortune, and secondly, now that her daughter was dead, she might have
to return the betrothal gift, a case of losing both the person and the purse
in one fell swoop But then, after weeping for a while, she made a sudden
volte-face. Ignoring the relationship of mistress to patron, she charged the
rich man with using his money to drive her daughter to her death and de
clared that she was going straight to the authorities to file a complaint.
The audience already envied the rich man because of the way he had
flaunted himself. Now, on hearing that he had driven the girl to her death,
they were positively gleeful and rose up in arms, ready to go before the pre
fect and lodge a petition. Fortunately for him, the rich man knew the ropes
well enough to settle the case privately through an intermediary. He arranged
a peaceful solution by letting Jiangxian keep the thousand-tael betrothal gift
and distributing another thousand or more to buy the audiences silence. He
had failed in his attempt to marry Qian Yulian, merely spending a couple
of wasted hours as Sun Raquan. His only consolation was the thought that
a girl flirts by cursing the one she fancies. He told himself that he had been
personally cursed by the most beautiful girl in the world.
In Tonglu county of Yanzhou prefecture, there was a riverside hamlet
by the name of Port Newtown which had very few inhabitants, all of whom
were engaged in fishing. Among them was a man surnamed M o, known as
5Bimuyu are sole or flatfish. The male and female are said to be inseparable; hence, like butterflies
and mandarin ducks, they symbolize devoted lovers. "Sole mates" is a pun on "soulmates."
6A cliche, derived from the Song writer Chen Liang, which is most often applied to a forceful, ma
jestic style.
931
Fisherman Mo, who lived with his wife in a tiny thatched hut that they had
built beside the bank. On this particular day, expecting some large fish to
be swept down by the flood waters, they set out their big net and took turns
pulling it up.7 Then, a long way off, they made out amid the waves some
thing that was heading downstream. Taking it to be a large fish, Mo waited
until it came near and netted it at his first attempt. But, strangely enough,
although it had been clearly visible on the surfaceno sooner was it in the
net than it suddenly fell back and tried to submerge. Mo pulled as hard as
he couldbut he was unable to budge the net. He had to get his wife to help
him, and togetherwith the last ounce of their strength, they managed to
pull it out of the water.
A shock awaited them when they raised their heads and looked into the
net. It was no fish they had caught, but two bodies, face pressed against face
breast against breast, as if trussed up together. Filled with compassion for
the dead, Mo wanted to give them a decent burial. He tied the rope to a tree,
and he and his wife, with a great deal of effort, managed to lift them out of
the net. On examining them closely, they found they were a man and a
woman locked together in a tight embrace, as if they had been cast into the
river in the act of love. M o and his wife were puzzled. Then they looked
closely at the faces and saw that the bodies were not quite dead. While the
faces and feet were ice-cold, the nostrils retained a little warmth, even though
all breathing seemed to have stoppedThey can obviously be revived, said Mo. KWe5d better give them
mouth-to-mouth. Wouldnt it be wonderful if we could save both liveslike
building a fourteen-storey pagoda!8
Yesindeed! said his wife.
He put his mouth against the mansand she put her mouth against the
womans, and they blew their warm breath down into the two bodies.
W ithin minutes the pair had revived. They were helped into the hut and
asked how they had come so close to drowning.
They poured out their hearts to their rescuers. The man proved to be Tan
Chuyu and the woman Liu Miaogu. They had leapt into the water in turn,
fearing they might never find each other. But it seemed as if someone amidst
the waves were leading them together and preventing them from drifting
apart. It seemed, too, as if a gigantic fish were carrying them on its back along
the surface of the water, so that they didnt drown in the course of travel
ling a hundred miles. When the fish came near the net, it seemed to sense
that there were rescuers at hand and, as if wishing to deliver its charges and
return, it shook them off its back and swam away. That was why they were
on the surface one moment and submerged the next. Fortunately the net was
there to stop them from sinking to the bottom, and the mighty heave that
7The illustration in the Silent Operas, Combined Collection (Wusheng xi heji), an earlier anthology
than Priceless Jade, shows a large basket-shaped net suspended from a stout wooden pole that can
be raised or lowered with a rope.
8Pagodas are built with an odd number of storeys, to a maximum of thirteen.
9^9
The Qing Dynasty
Mo and his wife gave on the rope brought them up. Tan and Miaogu knew
that they owed their lives to Lord Yan
s miraculous powers, and they kow
towed to the heavens before bowing in gratitude to their rescuers. When Mo
and his wife learned they were a virtuous couple, they offered them their
hospitality, insisting the pair stay in the hut and treating them generously.
Thenas soon as Tan and Miaogu had recovered, they urged them to go fur
ther afield, because if the news of their rescue ever reached her parents, some
one would be sent for them, and they would not be able to continue as hus
band and wife.
Tan discussed the problem with Miaogu. Since I come from Huguang,
why dont we go back there? My family doesnt own much land, but if we
work it, we should be able to grow a little food for ourselves. Let me get
back to my studies and put in a few yearshard work, and I
m sure I l l suc
ceed.55
Youre absolutely rightbut it
s such a long way to go. We have noth
ing to our name, so where is the money coming from?
Mo could tell from Tan
s face that the man was no loser, and he decided
to offer him an examination loan. How much will you need for the jour
ney ?whe asked.
Anything would do. If we are very careful, ten taels should get us by.
Thats no problem. Pve collected several purses from my fishing. Ill get
the money together and lend it to you_ on one condition. If you fail, I dont
want a penny of it back. But if you study and succeed in the examinations,
I must be repaid tenfold. Nothing less will do.
Han Xin received a single meal from the washerwoman and repaid her
with a thousand taels.9Youve saved our livesmuch more than a meal! Yd
want to reward you handsomely anyway, even if you werent offering us a
loan, and all the more now that youre being so generous. If I should fail,
never mind, but if I succeed, I assure you I shant limit myself to a thousand
taels, let alone a mere hundred
Mo and his wife saw that he was eager to set o ffand so they prepared
a farewell feast. As might be expected, they provided delicacies from the seas
and rivers rather than from the mountains, dishes such as shrimp, fish, crab,
and turtle. There is no segregation of the sexes among poor folk, and the
two couples sat down together and drank until they were merry. Thenafter
a night
s sleep, they arose and Fisherman Mo gathered together ten taels in
loose silver and gave it to the young coupleafter which they took their leave.
From hardship itself, of course, they did not take their leave, but suffered
all the rigours of a hurried and difficult journey.
In less than a month they arrived. They fixed up a tumbledown house
on the property, moved into it, and set about bringing the abandoned fields
under cultivation in order to provide for themselves. Since Miaogu had been
busy studying acting from childhood on, she was utterly ignorant of womens
9ln Han Xin's Shi ji biography, the washerwoman feeds him for twenty or thirty days and he later
rewards her with a thousand catties of gold.
933
skills. Even her slippers and leggings had been made for her by others. Now,
as Tans wifeshe was studying these skills for the first time, but her quick
intelligence proved equal to the task, and she learned at the first attempt.
She spent her days weaving hemp and straw, and making shoes and stock
ings, all to bring in a little money and support her husbands studies. At first
Tan would labour in the fields during the day and study by night, but
Miaogu was so afraid the farmwork would distract him from his studies that
she persuaded him to give it up and depend on her handiwork alone for their
needs. Lest his studies be affected, she would not even let him go and buy
provisions, but entrusted those chores to a neighbour.
After three years of study, Tan began taking the examinations. He hit the
mark every time, no matter what the level of the examination. After enter
ing the prefectural school, he passed the provincial and metropolitan ex
aminations. Thenfollowing the palace examination, he was appointed
judge1of Dingzhou prefecture in Fujian. Since Fujian is adjacent to Huguang,
he ought by rights to have travelled down the Yangzi and revisited his home
en route, enacting a splendid Returning Home in Triumph scene.2But his
desire to repay his benefactor was far stronger than any thought of basking
in hometown glory, so he sent a servant to fetch his wife and bring her to
Jingkou to join him. From there they travelled through Zhejiang to Quzhou
and Yanzhou prefectures in order to worship Lord Yan and to repay and
thank Fisherman Mo and his wife. Tan felt it would be embarrassing if his
subordinates learned that he had begun life as an actor, so he sent the wel
coming party back to wait for him at Pucheng, while he and his wife en
joyed the mountains and lakes alone.
Arriving in Port Newtown, they found Mo and his wife fishing and sent
a servant over with a card to say that the man they had rescued was now
an official and on the way to his post. He was passing through and desired
to wait on them. Overcome with joy, Mo and his wife hastily took off their
bamboo hats and hemp coats, and without waiting for their visitors to come
ashore, went on board to congratulate them. Tan and Miaogu begged them
to take the place of honour while they bowed before them four times.
Tan appealed to Mo: Fishing is such a hard life, and it brings in so lit
tle money. Why not throw your nets away and come with me to my post,
where youll be able to enjoy a little wealth and prestige? While her hus
band was issuing his invitation, Miaogu, without waiting for their consent,
told her servants to start packing up their belongings. But Mo stopped the
servants from going ashore.
Your Honour, My Lady, he began, shaking his head, please forgive
mebut my wife and I are incapable of enjoying that sort of wealth and pres
tige; in fact we
re not even willing to accept it. Fishing may be a hard life
'Jietui meant a prefectural judge in Song times.
2The title of a common scene in which the hero returns home after his triumph in the metropolitan
and palace examinations.
934
The Qing Dynasty
and the earnings small, but it has its pleasures too. We fishermen are lucky
enough to live among blue hills and green waters, and to enjoy the clear
moonlight and the cool breeze. We need pay no money for good wine and
meat, just catch a few fish and use them for barter. We send no cards to in
vite our friends, just eat with them whenever they come by. It
s no idle boast
to say that we're the only people in the world who enjoy such pleasures.
There is some hardship, true, and the earnings are small, but at least they're
reliable. If you lead an idle life, youll constantly be dreaming of big sums
of money. If fate is against you, you wont succeed anyway, but even if you
should make money, youre bound to suffer trouble and anxiety before
parting with it. Youre proposing that I accompany you to your post, where
all my needs will be met, a case of one mans windfall, shared with all
which is fine. But I would never feel at ease there and I cannot accept your
offer, I
m ashamed to say. Moreover, my wife and I are accustomed to our
freedom. If we found ourselves penned up in an official residence, unable to
move, our frustration would surely bring on an illness. Youd be over there
in the courtroom trying cases and punishing tax evaders, but the sounds of
the lash and the cries of the punished would drift into the residence, and how
could we, tender-hearted as we are, bear the pain we
d feel on their account?
For that reason I prefer to go on living in poverty and must decline to share
in your wealth and prestige. Let me say, however, how much I appreciate
the generous offer.
Tan
s enthusiasm was distinctly chilled by this rendering of KFishermans P ride.
3 If thats the way you feel, I would never dream of trying to
press you
he said. The trouble is that Pve only just passed the examina
tions and have not held office, so I still cannot repay that generous loan you
gave me. However, as soon as Im in office, Ill send for you and throw a
few opportunities your way. When youve made some money, you can come
back here, buy some land, and have enough over to live on for the rest of
your days. At least youll get some recompense for saving our lives. Now,
dont turn this offer down, whatever you do
Again Mo shook his head. I
m still unw illing
he said. Gratuities and

commissions are not for unworldly folk like us. We leave that sort of thing
to those medicine men who pass themselves off as recluses.4Im not smooth
tongued or thick-skinned enough for all the self-promotion and chicanery
involved. The only thing I ask is that when youVe been in office a year or
so
you set aside a few taels you've honestly come by, either from your salary
or your savings, and send them along to me so that my wife and I can pro
3The title of a well-known aria type in the drama ("Yujia aow).

4The word shanren, recluses, came to refer also to self-styled recluses, especially writers and artists
who made a living from itinerant patronage seeking, an increasingly common phenomenon from
the mid-Ming on. As such, the term generally carried a derisory tone. Later in his life, Li Yu himself
came to depend on this very activity.
vide for our funeral things. Youd be doing us a great favour. But I will never,
ever go about asking for patronage, so dont send for me, whatever you do
Tan's respect for Mo was all the greater because of this refusal. He now
ordered a farewell feast prepared on board, but this time only mountain del
icacies were served, not seafood, because the latter was local produce for Mo
and his wife and Tan would not have dreamed of giving them ordinary fare.
And although he was now a distinguished man himself, he chose to ignore
the segregation of the sexes and had both couples sit and eat together. Be
cause their friendship had been formed while he was still poor and unknown,
he did not dare behave toward them as an official. Hosts and guests ate and
drank the whole night through, until finally, at the fifth watch, they took leave
of each other.
By the time Tan and Miaogu reached the scene of their suffering, it was
the beginning of the eleventh month, a full month after Lord Yans birth
day. What a pity we couldnt have been here a month earlier! said Tan.
Thered still have been some actors in the templeand we could have had
a play performed. What a fine thing that would have been, to celebrate the
gods birthday and express our thanks to him at the same time!
Just what I was thinking
said Miaogu, but the birthday is long past,
and I doubt that there are any actors to be found in such a rural area. We'll
simply have to prepare the offerings and sacrifice in silence
As they approached, however, they could see from a long way off that the
stage was still standing in front of Lord Yan
s Temple, and that the table and
chairs were still on it, as if the performances were not over. Tan sent one of
his servants off to inquire. It appeared that there had been several days of heavy
rain at the beginning of the tenth month, and that there was no shelter for the
audience. Now, people who put on ritual plays claim to be doing it for the
god
s benefit, but actually they do it for the audience. If the conditions dont
suit the audience, the god will scarcely be allowed to enjoy the play on his own!
So the benefactors cancelled the performances and arranged a make-up cele
bration for the third day of the following month. Tan and Miaogu had hap
pened to arrive just as the performances concluded and the actors were about
to be dismissed. Coincidence though this was, the power of the god may also
have had something to do with it. Perhaps he wanted this romancewhich
began in the theatre, to end in the theatre
and so delayed the festival until their
arrival, thus setting up a Happy Reunion finale.5
Tan sent a second servant off to find out which troupe was performing.
The answer came back that it was the same troupe as before, except that the
male and female leads were new. Jiangxian now played the male lead, and
her daughter-in-law, Miaogus sister-in-law, a girl of sixteen or seventeen,
played the female lead. After Miaogus death, there had been no one to take
her place, and the daughter-in-law had been brought in as a substitute. Al
though neither could compare with Tan or Miaogu, they were so much bet
5The last scene of a Southern play ("Tuanyuan") is traditionally a reunion after all conflicts have
been resolved.
936
The Qing Dynasty
ter than their competition that the temples benefactors had continued to in
vite them.
When she heard that her mother was present, Miaogu was eager to sum
mon her at once, but her husband resisted. If we see her now, the finale
will be very dull indeed. To create a little excitement, well have to do thusand-thus.6
You
re perfectly right
said Miaogu.
Tan told one of his stewards to draw twelve taels and write out a call
ing card, then give the following message to the temple benefactors: My
master is passing through here on the way to his post. He met with a ty
phoon on the river and made a pledge to the god that he would like to re
deem at this temple. He also wishes to engage the actors for one play, in con
sideration of which he remits the normal booking fee in full.
The benefactors, presented with this opportunity both to do someone a
favour as well as to see another play, were only too glad to accept. Tan told
his servants to prepare a pig, and a sheep in sacrifice and place them before
the gods image. They were to explain that their master had caught a cold
and could not go ashorebut that he would moor his boat alongside the tem
ple, with the cabin door opposite the gods image, and that he and his wife
would bow and give thanks from behind the curtain. Afterwards they would
sit and enjoy a little wine as they watched the play.
Jiangxian now approached to show them the repertoire. Your Honour,
which play would you like us to perform? she asked from outside the
cabin.
Tan told a servant to reply for him The Mistress had a dream last night
in which Lord Yan wanted to have The Thorn Hairpin performed, so please
do that play. Jiangxian took back the repertoire and returned to the green
room, where she dressed as Wang Shipeng.
Gentle reader, why do you suppose Tan and his wife chose this play
again? Were there no other good plays besides The Thorn Hairpin} You
must understand that they were less interested in seeing the play than in test
ing Jiangxian's love for her daughter. It was The Thorn Hairpin that Miaogu
had been performing when she leapt into the water, and their reason for
choosing the same play was to force Jiangxian to relive the experience. If
she wept a few genuine tears during the tragic scene, it would mean that she
had repented, and they would invite her on board to meet them. But if she
played the scenes routinely, without any sign of distress, there would be no
need to meet with her, and they could slip quietly away. That was why they
chose this play, of all plays. The choice was another example of Tans
shrewdness.
Jiangxian now appeared on stage as Wang Shipeng. During the first few
scenes, she showed no distress. Only when she came to the scene in which
her daughter-in-law, like Miaogu, played Yulian throwing herself into the
river, did her conscience begin to trouble her. Despite herself, the cruel cat
6The author wishes to hide the plan from the reader.
937
suddenly began crying over the dead mouse. But it was clear from the way
she cried that she was trying to keep the fact from the audience, because she
fought back her sobs and kept dabbing at her eyes with her sleeve. How
ever, when she came to Sacrificing to the River
7 she could control her
self no longer and burst into unrestrained sobbing. Whereas before she had
cried out Qian Yulian, wife, where are you?
she now, as she continued
sobbing, forgot where she was and substituted the word child for wife.
The audience knew she was weeping for Miaogu, but not even Master
Zhou8would have had the heart to criticize her mistake.
When Miaogu noticed how heartbrokenly her mother was weeping, her
own tears streamed down too, streaking her make-up. She told a maid to
pull the curtain aside and cried out: Mother! Dont cry! Your daughter dici
ng die! Im here!
Jiangxian stared wide-eyed at the boat and saw Tan Chuyu and her
daughter sitting there side by side, wine cups in front of them, like a couple
of wronged ghosts who had learned of the sacrifice being held on stage and
had come to partake of it. Panic-stricken, she screamed at the actors in the
green-room: My daughters ghost! Come quick!
The troupe dashed on stage, and, looking intently at the boat, declared:
Its her ghost, all right. Theres no doubt about it.
Hearing talk of ghosts, the audience panicked and turned to flee, at
which point one of Tan
s stewards, a resourceful fellow, stood up in the bow
and shouted to them: Theres no cause for alarm. Those arent ghosts you
see in the boat, theyre the real Master Tan and his lady. They were rescued
after they leapt into the water, and then the master passed the examinations,
and now he
s been appointed prefect of Dingzhou. He
s passing through here
on the way to his post. He and his lady owe their lives to one of Lord Yan
s
miracles, and thats why theyre giving thanks here today.55
At this, the audience turned back again and, instead of fleeing, pressed
forward to get a good look at this couple who had been saved from suicide,
hoping to have an item of news to take home. The theatre became a heav
ing mass of humanity, and the very old and the very young were forced into
the water or trampled underfoot. Tan saw the danger and hurriedly con
sulted with his wifeWeve already shown ourselves and cant hide any
more. I suggest we go on stage together and let everyone take a good look
at us. Otherwise someone will be crushed to death.
Very w ell
she said.
They changed into their formal clothes, Tan putting on his crimson col
lar and Miaogu her phoenix hood and cloud mantilla. Under new brightblue parasols they stepped ashore surrounded by servants and maids. First
they went to the image of Lord Yan and bowed low four more times. Then
7Scene 30 ("Ji jiang"). Actually it is not Wang but his mother who sacrifices, and the words quoted
do not appear in the play.
.
8Zhou Yu (175-210), who came to represent the expert critic of music.
938
The Qing Dynasty
they went on stage and paid their respects to Jiangxian. Finally, they called
all their fellow actors and actresses over and greeted them one by one.
Jiangxian and the rest of the troupe asked how they had come to be res
cued. Tan told of someone leading them through the water, of a great fish
carrying them on its back, of the fishs sudden disappearance when it reached
the net, and of their fortunate rescue by the fisherman and his wife. He told
his story in a loud, ringing voice so that all those on and off the stage could
hear it and learn to venerate the god all the more by knowing of his spiri
tual power.
Everyone was astounded. The benefactors came forward to offer their
congratulations. The rich benefactor who had tried to marry Miaogu was
afraid that Tan
s and Miaogus hatred would turn to thoughts of revenge,
so he hastily prepared some lavish presents and begged the others to inter
cede for him.
But Tan would accept none of the presents. W ithout the stimulus this
gentleman provided, not only would our romance not have succeeded, I
would still be an actor; I could never have risen to the position I hold. He
is not an enemy of ours, quite the contrary. How could I even think of re
venge The benefactors marvelled at him and praised his generosity.
Miaogu turned to her mother. Now that your son-in-law is a national
graduate and your daughter a lady, surely you wont want to go on with
your acting? Pack up your things as quickly as you can and come and live
with us, so that you wont have to make a spectacle of yourself any more.
Jiangxian was delighted that her daughter and son-in-law bore her no
grudge. Handing the troupe5s management over to her daughter-in-law, she
went off with Miaogu to enjoy a life of wealth and prestige. But within a
month of her arrival she came down with an illness that defied every attempt
at cure, and in the end she had to get her daughter to send her back again.
Once she was homethe illness vanished of its own accord, without further
treatment. As soon as she recoveredshe went on tour again, enjoyed ex
cellent health, and suffered no further misfortune.
Why? In the first placeshe had been destined for an actresss career by
the eight characters of her birth5*and could not be away from the theatre for
a day without incurring some mishap. Clearly, if someone has a lowly fate,
not even her own child will be able to raise her to a higher status, let alone
anyone else. Hence poor men should resign themselves to their lot, not hate
the rich and eminent for failing to raise them up. Secondly, Jiangxian had
grown accustomed to a frivolous life and could not suddenly switch to a se
rious one. Compare the case of a maidservant promoted to a wife, or a servant-boy adopted as a son; not only will their lowly destinies show in their
faces, they will get no pleasure from their new status but instead will feel
strain, which in turn will give rise to illness. Therefore prostitutes who re
form and get married, like priests who leave the priesthoodunless they do
9The eight characters represent the year, month, day, and hour of birth.
939
so of their own volition and are not pressured into it~ w ill not be able to
persevere and will ultimately revert to their old professions.
Let me turn now to Tan, whoafter serving six months in his new post,
sent Mo five hundred taels with the promise of more to come, to a total of
over a thousand. But M o, a scrupulously honest man, kept only one hun
dred, as the tenfold repayment of his loan, and sent the rest back.
When his term of office was over, Tan set off for the capital and again
passed through Quzhou, Yanzhou, and other towns. He renovated Lord
Yans Temple and also bought several acres of sacrificial land, which he
handed over to the benefactors to fund future sacrifices and theatricals with.
From there he went on to Port Newtown to visit Fisherman Mo.
M o opened with a few disdainful remarks designed to chip away at
Tans evident vanity and love of luxury, then went on to speak of matters
of gain and loss to attack his cupidity. Now, Tan already possessed a cer
tain spiritual capacity. In his days as an actor, he had noted how high the
excitement was as long as the play lasted one thousand in tears, ten thou
sand in love but that once it was over and the gongs and drums were
silent, the audience would stream out of the theatre without a single back
ward glance, as if they were cutting him dead. Clearly, there was no play in
the world that did not come to an end and no excitement that would last
forever. Therefore he had never felt any very strong desire for wealth and
prestige. Nowas he listened to M os enlightening talk, he felt as if he had
been subjected to a blow and a shout
1 just at the moment he awakened
from a dream, and he would never let himself be deluded again.
No longer did he have the slightest desire to seek promotion in the cap
ital or enjoy his hometown glory. Instead, by the side of Two Mile Stream
in Tonglu county, he bought an acre or two of hilly ground and built a
thatched hut on it. He spent his days fishing, partly to follow the lofty ex
ample of Yan Ziling2and partly to receive Fisherman Mo's guidance. By Mo
he was introduced to a circle of friends, ploughmen and woodcutters, men
of noble character who possessed the talent, if not the desire, to succeed in
public life. By spending his days with them, Tan learned something of fish
ing, woodcutting, and farming. Miaogu, too, had her circle of friends, in
troduced to her by M o
s wife, wise women who could have helped their hus
bands succeed in public life but chose not to press them. By spending her
days with these women, she learned something of raising silkworms and
spinning silk.
Both Tan and Miaogu lived on into their nineties. The only pity was that
they had no son. This was partly because Miaogus beauty was of the deli
cate type that is not conducive to bearing sons, and partly because Tan was
so deeply devoted to his wife that he could not contemplate taking a con
cubine.
]A Buddhist notion, it refers to a salutary shock administered by a religious mentor.
2Yan Guang, whose style was Ziling, of the Han Dynasty. Li Yu often used him as a symbol of the
high-minded recluse who refused office.
940
The Qing Dynasty
Critique
This romance has seven peculiar featuresall of which fly in the face of com
mon sense. One: an exceptionally wanton mother gives birth to a perfectly
chaste daughter. Two: someone from the lowliest social level performs the
noblest action. Three: whereas playwrights have always developed plays
from real events, this story develops real events from a play. Fourwhereas
the jing and chou roles have always been something for the male lead to fall
back on, here they serve as stepping-stones to his position. Fivesince cults
are established by the gods, Erlang, as the patron of the acting profession,
ought to have been called upon to play the celestial matchmakerinstead he
is left out, and it is Lord Yan, with no connection to acting, who takes his
place. Sixin fiction it is the main character who, without exception, takes
the subordinate characters away with him; when Tan Chuyu meets with sud_
den success, the normal thing would have been for him to take Fisherman
Mo off to become wealthy and eminent, instead of which it is the periph
eral M o who takes Tan off to become a high-minded recluse. Sevenplays
and stories have to end in an exciting finale to suit contemporary taste
without such an ending, they would be rejected by their audiences and yet
this story ends in rustic solitude.
One might well consider himself lucky if all of these unnatural and un
reasonable things did not provoke the readers irritation. How then, can one
explain the fact that they cause the reader to start praising the storys nov
elty as soon as he opens the book and leave him dancing on air as he closes
it? Impossible! All we can do is curse the author as a peculiar romancer who
deals in peculiarities.
Kong Shang-ren, Peach

Blossom Fan: Selected Acts
Kong Shang-ren's (1648-1718) Peach Blossom Fan is an historical drama that treats
the brief Southern Ming regime set up in Nanjing in 1644 after the capture of Bei
jing by the rebel Li Zi_cheng and the suicide of the legitimate Chong-zhen Emperor
of the Ming. This was the period of the Manchu invasion, which put an end to the
"Southern Mingin the process of establishing the Qmg Dynasty. Strong sentiment
for the Ming still lingered in the late seventeenth century when Peach Blossom Fan
was written (1699), and the Qing government was proportionally sensitive to any
hint of criticism. Luckily for Kong Shang-ren, the "Southern Mingwas so incom
petent and corrupt that an historically accurate portrayal would not offend Qing im
perial sensibilities. At the same time a passionate loyalty to the Ming could be rep
resented, not directed against the Qing but against the self-destructive folly of the
Southern Ming court.
In the play, Kong Shang-ren argued with some justification that the historical
events portrayed were themselves theater: the "Southern Ming" was show rather than
substance. Each of the two sections into which the forty acts are divided is intro
duced by an old man, once a minor participant in the events represented, speaking
from the fictitious present of the play's performance in 1684. He concludes the in
troduction to the second half with a verse that underscores the point:
In those days reality was a play,

this play today seems reality.
From sidelines I watch a second time
Heaven preserves the man with cold eyes.
The characters in the play all are based on individuals who took part in the ac
tual historical events, and Kong Shang-ren drew extensively on historical documents.
At the center of the action is the love story of Hou Fang-yu, one of the most famous
writers of the day, and the courtesan Li Xiang-jun. The historical Hou Fang-yu was
acquainted with Li Xiang-jun and even wrote a brief biography of her; but as with
other characters, the more everyday facts and events of history are transformed
under the imperatives of dramatic romance.
Performances of songs, plays, and popular storytelling, along with ceremonies

staged like performances, occur throughout Peach Blossom Fan. The arch villain,
Ruan Da-cheng, was not only a part of the corrupt Southern Ming government, he
was also the preeminent playwright of his own day. References to Ruan's most fa
mous play, The Swallow Letter, recur often as an example of a flawed, hollow art
(it is also the favorite play of Prince Fu, who becomes the theater-loving Southern
Ming emperor). Again and again, Peach Blossom Fan comes back to questions of
947
The Qing Dynasty

role playing, feigning, and the way the genuine can appear within a role. The finest
example is the young heroine Li Xiang-jun, who is first taught to sing the role of a
romantic heroine and finally becomes the kind of character she plays.
One of the most remarkable figures in the first half of the play is the painter Yang
Wen-cong. It is he who gives Li Xiang-jun her name and he who eventually paints
the bloodstains on Xiang-jun's fan into peach blossoms, from which the play takes
its title. Moving easily between the camps of the good characters and the villains,
Yang Wen-cong is the cause of the lovers coming together, the cause of their sepa
ration, and the one who initiates the events that lead to their eventual reunion. The
scenes translated here are the Prologue and the three central scenes that involve Yang
and the fan. Finally, part of the last reunion scene tells the ultimate fate of the fan.
The Prologue opens with a fictive first performance of the play in 1684, the be
ginning of a new grand cycle in the Chinese dating system. The old man, once an
officiant at the Ming ancestral temple, praises the good government of the reigning
Kang-xi emperor to help allay any hint of disloyalty.
PROLOGUE (I)OCTOBER 1684
Enter an O l d M
an
with a white beard, a felt bat, and Daoist robes.
O ld M a n
Is there such an antique as I?

antique of neither bronze nor jade,
but my face gives off an antique gloss.
The last soul surviving, companions gone
why flinch from young mens scorn?
The outrage that once filled my breast
has all been swept away,
and now I may well linger on, wherever
I find drink and song.
Now children revere their parents,
state officers are true,
all things rest secure,
so yearn no more for the ginseng root
that makes a man live long.
The sun shines gloriously on this age of sage-kingsand flowers bloom
in the onset of a new cycle of years. There are no bandits in the hills,
while gods and immortals fill the earth. I was once an Officiant at the
Court of Imperial Sacrifices in Nanjing, a post of no great prestige or
pay, so my name may be withheld here. It has been my great good for
tune to have escaped disaster, and I have been alive these ninety-seven
years, during which I have witnessed much of splendor and ruin. And
now I have reached the first year of a new hundred-and-eighty-year
cycle. A ruler comparable to Yao and Shun is on the throne, and minis
ters like Yu and Gao have been installed to aid him. Everywhere the pop943
ulace is happy, and the harvests have been abundant year after year. This
is the twenty-third year of the Kang-xi Reign, and twenty-one signs of
good luck have appeared.
Voice [offstage]: What are these signs of good luck?
Old Man [counting them off on his fingers]:

The Yellow River Diagram appeared.
The Luo River Inscription appeared.
The Star of Virtue brightened.
Auspicious clouds manifested themselves.
A sweet dew fell.
An oily rain came down.
A phoenix roosted.
A unicorn roamed.
The ming plant came out.
The sacred mushroom grew.
There were no waves on the sea.
The Yellow River cleared.
Every single one of these occurreddoesnt that deserve celebration? Fm
delighted to have lived to see such glorious times, and I roam about every
where. In the Tai-ping Gardens yesterday I saw a new play being put on,
entitled Peach Blossom Fan, which concerned what happened around
Nanjing in the last years of the Ming. It treated the emotions of separa
tion and reunion, and it described how people felt about the splendor
and ruin of men and kingdoms. The events really happened and the peo
ple were real ones; it was all accurate. I not only heard of these things,
I saw them all with my own eyes. Even more amusing, Inow a frail old
manwas actually put on the stage as one of the minor characters. This
inspired tears, laughter, rageand condemnation in me. And no one in
the whole audience realized that Ijust an old man to them, was really
one of the persons in the play.
V oice [offstage] W h o wrote this fine play?
O l d M a n D o n t you gentlemen k n o w that the m ost fam ous playw rights
dont reveal their names. But when you observe how he apportions praise
and criticism, it must come from someone with a family tradition in the
study of The Springs and Autumns; and its suitability for singing shows
that the author clearly had family instruction in the Classic of Poetry.
Voice [offstage]: In that case its obviously the Hermit of Yun-ting Moun
tain.
O l d M a n To w h o m are y ou referring?
Voice [offstage] Theres going to be a gathering of the upper crust of offi

cialdom, and theyre going to have this very play performed. Since youre
one of the characters in it and since youve also heard this new version
why dont you give us an outline of the plot beforehand, and well all
listen carefully.
O ld M a n
It
s all in the lyrics to Fragrance Fills the Yard
sung by the
Daoist Zhang Wei.
944
The Qing Dynasty
[Sings]
A young gentleman, Hou Fang-yu,
sometime resident in Nanjing,
was matched with the Southlands fairest;
Harm worked unseen by vicious lies
in one night split this loving pair.
They saw the world turned upside down,
the Jiang-Huai garrisons amok.
Next a blind prince took the throne,
choosing performers, his only concern,
while factions ills raised wicked ministers.
Their bond of love could not continue:
she in her tower with martyrs ardor,
he in his dungeon, in deep despair.
They owed thanks to Liu and old Su
whose earnest endeavors set them free.
At midnight ruler and minister fled,
who laments a loyal soul in misty waves?
And the peach blossom fan
shredded on the altar lay,
and I shall show you how they strayed.
Voice [offstage]: Excellent! Excellent! But sometimes we couldnt quite un
derstand you because of the ringing quality of the melody. Summarize it
again in a few lines.
Old Man Let me try.

[Recites]
The traitors Ma and Ruan lurked with swords
both inside the court and out;
deft Liu and Su went back and forth
seeking to tie the secret threads.
Young Hou Fang-yu found true loves course
broken beyond recall,
Zhang Wei the Daoist gave judgment
on glory and the fall.
But here as I
m talking, Hou Fang-yu has already come on stage. Lets
all watch.
Inherent in Peach Blossom Fan is a fascination with acting roles, both the kind that
occur on stage and the kind that occur in the political and social world. In scene II,
"Teaching the Song," we meet the heroine, Li Xiang-jun, at first the pure type of the
nubile virgin, literally nameless. From the painter Yang Wen-cong she receives both
a name and a marriage "plot," in which she is supposed to play her appointed role.
Between her naming and the suggestion of a match, she practices singing the role
of Du Li-niang in Peony Pavilion, the romantic heroine's role for which she is des
945

tined both on stage and off. At her side, however, is the music teacher Su Kun-sheng,
whose insistent corrections constantly remind us of the artifice of role.
The stage is set in the pleasure quarters of Nanjing, by the Qin-Huai River.
TEACHING THE SONG (II)APRIL 1643
Enter M adam Li Z hen-li, elegantly made up.

Li [sings]:
W ith dark-drawn browsI do not dose

the doors of this red mansion.
On Long Plank Bridge thin willow strands
flirt and draw the passing riders.
I tighten up the harp strings
and deftly work the mouth organs pouch.
[Recites]
Blooms of pear are like the snow,
the grasses like a mist,
springtime comes to the Qin-Huai,
here on both its shores.
Courtesans parlors in a row
look out on the waters,
and from each house reflections cast
the fetching images of girls.
I am Li Zhen-li, and I belong to the finest troupe of singers, to the most
famous band of misty flowers and moonlit breeze. I was born and
bred in the pleasure quarters, where I have welcomed clients and sent
them on their way across Long Bridge. This face, with its powder and
paint, has not yet lost its bloom, and ample charms remain to me. I have
raised one adopted daughter, a tender and gentle little thing, just now
beginning to take part in our elegant soirees; but in her shy grace, she
has not yet gone behind the lotus bed curtains. There is hereabouts a re
tired county magistrate called Yang Wen-cong, who is the brother-inlaw of Ma Shi-yingthe governor-general of Feng-yang, and a sworn
friend of Ruan Da-zheng, the former head of the Court of Imperial En
tertainments. On his frequent visits to my establishment, Yang has often
praised my daughter and wants to arrange for a client to do up her
h a ir.
1The spring weather is so bright and inviting today, I suspect he
ll
be here for a visit. [Calls out] Maid, open the curtains and sweep up, and
keep your eye out to see if any visitors are coming.
Voice [offstage]: Yes, maam.
h a v in g one's hair done up marked the passage into womanhood; here it is a euphemism for tak
ing her virginity.
946
The Qing Dynasty
Enter Y a n g
W e n -co n g .
Yang [recites]
Triple Mountains scenery is
a resource for my paintings,
the flair of Southern Dynasties
courses through my poems.
I am Yang Wen-cong, a licentiate and former county magistrate who has

retired from my post to live a quiet life. Li Zhen-Ii, the famous courte
san of the Qin-Huai, is an old friend of mine, and Im taking advantage
of the spring weather to pay her a visit and have a chat. Here I am now.
Ill be going in. [Enters] Wheres the lady? [Greets her] Splendid! See how
the petals of the plum have fallen and the fronds of the willows are turn
ing yellow. Soft and rich in color, springs beauty is everywhere in the
yard, which makes me wonder how we may best spend these moments.
Li: It is lovely indeed. Come to the little room upstairs. Ill burn some in
cense and put on some tea, and we can read over some poems.
Yang Even better! [They climb stairs. He recites]
Curtain stripes seem to cage the bird on its perch,
flowersshadows seem to guard the fish in its bowl.
These are your daughters apartments. Where is she?
LiShe hasnt yet finished dressing; she
s still in the bedroom.
YangAsk her to come out.
Li [calling out]: Come out, child. Mr. Yang is here.
Yang [reading the poems on her walls]: How remarkable! These are all
poems inscribed to her by well-known figures! [He clasps his hands be

hind his back and recites them]
Enter Heroine, splendidly made up.
Heroine [smgs]
Just now called back from sweetest dreams
I threw off red coverlets
broidered with mated ducks.
I put on lipstick and glossy rouge
and hastily did my hair
in a ponytail with straying tresses.
What relief is there for springs moodiness?
just learning new lyrics for songs.
[Greets Yang] Good-day, sir!
YangYou have grown even more stunning in these past few days since I
saw you last. These poems are not at all wrong in their praise of you.
[Reads on and registers surprise] W ell,
lo o k at this! Such prom inent fig
ures as Z h a n g Pu a n d X ia Yun-yi have both w ritten poem s to you. I re

ally m ust w rite y o u a p oem o f m y ow n, using their rhymes. [Li Z h e n - li
947
brings him a brush and inkstone. Yang takes the brush in hand and mulls
over it a long time, as if ready to recite] I cant do as well as themI might
as well hide my weaknesses by decorating your white wall here with a
few black-ink drawings of orchids.
Li: Thats even better!
Yang [looking at the wall]: Heres a rock like a fist painted by Lan Ying. I
can use his painting as a background and draw my orchids over at the
side of the rock. [Paints and sings]
The white wall glows
like rippling silk,
Here I sketch the Li Sao
s
poetic temper.2
Tender leaves and scented sheaths,
rain-burdened, drunk in streaks of mist.
This rock of Xuan-zhou, ink-flowers shattered,
with several spots of gray moss
tingeing the pavements randomly.
[Goes back and looks at it] Not bad!
No match, of coursefor black-ink orchids
done by masters of the Yuan,
that mood of nonchalance,
but our own famous beauties should wear
Xiang orchids at their waists.
LiThis is truly the brushwork of a master. You have added much beauty
to our apartments.
YangYou
re making fun of me. [To Heroine] Tell me your professional
name so that I can write it here in the dedication.
H e r o in e Im
still young and dont have a professional name yet.
Li: Why dont you do her the honor of giving her a name?
Yang There is a passage in The Zuo Tradition: wAnd because [the] orchid
has the sweetest smell in all the land, people will wear it in their sashes
and be fond of it .
3Why dont we call her Xiang-jun, Queen of Sweet

Fragrance
Li: Excellent! Xiang-jun, come over and thank Mr. Yang.
Xiang-jun [bowing]: Thank you very much, sir.
Yang [laughing]: We even have a name for these chambers. [Writes the ded
ication) In mid-spring, this sixteenth year of the Chong-zhen Reign,
1643
I chanced to draw these orchids in ink in the Chambers of Beguiling
Fragrance to win a smile from Xiang-jun, who is Queen of Sweet Fra
grance. Yang Wen-cong of Gui-yang,
2By the emblematic associations within the Li Sao itself, the orchid was, in its solitary purity, asso
ciated with Qu Yuan.
3See p. 81.
948
The Qing Dynasty
Li: Both the paintings and the calligraphy are superb, worthy of acclaim as
a double perfection. Thank'you so much! [All sit]
Yang As I see it, Xiang-jun here may be the most beautiful woman in the
land, but I don
t know her level of skill in the arts.
Li: She has always been spoiled and all'owed to have her own way, so she
didnt study anything. But just recently Fve asked one of the habitues of
the pleasure quarters to give her lessons in singing.
YangWho is it?
Li: Someone called Su Kun-sheng.
YangYes, Su Kun-sheng. His real name is Zhou Ru-song, originally from

He-nan and now a resident of Wu-xi. I have known him well for some
timehe is a true master. What suites of songs has he taught her?
Li: The Four Dream Plays of Tang Xian-zu.
YangHow much of them has she learned?

Li: She
s just now learned half of Peony Pavilion. [Calls to Xiang-jun]
Child, Mr. Yang here is no stranger to us. Get out your score and prac
tice some of the songs you know. After your teacher quizzes you, you
can try some new tunes.
Xiang-junHow can I practice my singing with a guest present?

Li: Don't be silly! For those of us in the quarter the costume for singing and
dancing is the endowment that provides us our food. How are you going
to get by if you wont practice singing? [Xiang-jun looks at her score]
Li [smgs]
When born among bevies of powder and paint,
and entering blossom and oriole troupes,
a throat that can carry an aria
is the place where we find our wealth.
Dont lightly throw your heart away,
but study The early morning wind
and dying moonlight sinking;4
then with red clappers slow beat,
from Yi-chun performers youll steal the glow
5
and tied before you gate will be seen
horses of princes.
Enter Su Kun-sheng, wearing a headband and in informal dress.

Su [recites]:
Idly I come to azure lodges
to train my parakeet
lazily leaving vermilion gates
to see the peonies.
4This phrase is adapted from a famous lyric by the Northern Sung lyricist Liu Yong.
5Yi-chun Palace was the site of the famous "Pear Garden Academy" of imperial musicians and singers
during the reign of Xuan-zong in the Tang.
949
I am Su Kun-sheng. Ive left Ruan Da-cheng

s levee to come here to the plea
sure quarters. Taking this beautiful girl through her lessons is certainly a
lot better than toadying to that foster child of a eunuch. [Goes in and greets
them] Well, Yang Wen-cong, fancy meeting you here. Its been some time.
YangMy compliments, Kun-sheng, on taking such a stunning beauty as a
pupil.
Li: Your teacher, Mr. Su, is here. Go pay him the proper welcome, child.
Xiang-jun bows.
SuNo need for that. Have you memorized thoroughly the song I taught you
yesterday?
Xiang-junI have.
SuWell take advantage of Mr. Yangs presence as our audience to ask him
for pointers as you go over it with me.
YangI just want you to show me how it should be performed.

Xiang-jun [seated opposite Su, sings]:6
Coy lavenders, fetching reds
bloom everywhere, here
all given to this broken well
and tumbled wall. Fair season,
'
fine scene, overwhelming
weather . . .
Su: Wrong! Wrong! Fair gets a beat and overwhelming gets a beat; dont
run the two clauses together. Lets try it again.
X i a n g - ju n
Fair season,
fine scene~overwhelming
weather. Where
and in whose garden shall we find
pleasure and the hearts delight?
Drifting in at dawn, at twilight
roll away
clouds and colored wisps
through azure balustrades
streaming rain, petals in wind . .
SuNo, thats not right again. Streaming carries a special weight in the
melodyit should be sung from the diaphragm.
X ia n g - ju n
streaming rain, petals in wind,

a painted boat in misty waves,
the girl behind her brocade screen
has seen but dimly
such splendor of spring.
6The aria she sings is from "Waking from Dream" in Peony Pavilion.
950
The Qing Dynasty
SuExcellent! Excellent! Exactly right! Lets go on.
Xiang-jun
Throughout green hills the nightjar cries

its tears of bloodand out beyond
the blackberry the threads
of mist coil drunkenly.

SuThese lines are a bit rough. Try them again.
Xiang-jun
Idly I stare
where twittering swallows crisply speak
words cut clear,
and from the warbling orioles comes
a bright and liquid melody.
SuFine! Now youVe completed another suite of songs.
Yang [to Li Zhen-u]Pm pleased to see that your daughter is so quick. I
have no doubt she will become a famous courtesan. [To Su] I met young
Hou Fang-yu the other daythe son of Hou, the executive in the M in
istry of Revenue. He is well provided for, and he also is known for his
talent. At present he is looking for a woman of distinguished beauty. Do
you know him, Kong-sheng?
SuOur families are from the same region. He is, indeed, a young man of
great talent.
YangWed be making no mistake if we arranged a union between these

two.
[Sings]
Fair match for our Sapphire, now sixteen:7
she sings charming songs,
he rides a sleek horse.
He will lavish her with turban brocades,8
and hand in hand they will drain their cups.
Wedding poems will speed them to bed,
a lacquered coach to greet the bride.
W ith a rare young noble as her mate,
7Sapphire, Bi-yu, was the legendary concubine of the Prince of Ru-nan in the Southern Dynasties.
8Brocade used for turbans was the standard figure for gifts (i.e., payment) to a courtesan.
951
year after year she will never let

her Ruan Zhao go away,9
by the spring waters of Peach Leaf Ford
he will buy a cottage and stay.1
Li: It would be just wonderful if such a young gentleman were willing to come do
up her hair.
I hope you will do what you can to help in bringing this match about
YangIt is on my mind.
Li [smgs]:
No pearl can compare to this girl of mine,
who mimics the new orioles sweet cries,
in springtime closed behind many gates,
never known by man.
We cant waste such a glorious spring day. Lets go have a little wine downstairs.
YangSounds good to me. [Recites]
In front of Little Su
s curtain,
flowers fill the meadow
2
Li:
orioles tipsy, swallows languid
across the springtime banks.
Xiang-jun
In my red silk handkerchief
are fruits of cherry,
Su
waiting for Pan Yues carriage
to pass west of the lane.3
Having arranged the sale of Xiang-jun's virginity, Yang Wen-cong anticipates a con
ventional union of "talented youth and fair maid/7Xiang-jun has studied the role she
is to play. After all, as her mother Li Zhen-li reminds her, it is by playing roles (singing
in musical drama and making customers fall in love with her) that she must make her
living. But instead of becoming the actress-courtesan who merely plays roles, Xiangjun learns her role too well and actually becomes the romantic heroine.
In the acts that follow, factional politics creep into the conventional love match.
The villain Ruan Da-cheng, rudely scorned by the politically progressive young men
of Nanjing, is looking for someone to support his cause and win acceptance for him
among the local elite. Yang Wen-cong tells Ruan of the match he has proposed be
tween Li Xiang-jun and Hou Fang-yu, and he suggests that if Ruan were to provide
9The story of Ruan Zhao and Liu Zhen's encounter with two immortal maidens in the mountains
and their staying with them for more than half a year became a standard figure for losing oneself in
a love affair. "Young Ruan Goes Away," Ruan-lang gui, was a famous melody.
1Peach Leaf was another famous concubine of the Southern Dynasties. Peach Leaf Ford, where Wang
Xian-zhi of the Jin supposedly wrote a quatrain to the young lady in question, was on the Qin-Huai
River, in the area of the pleasure quarters of Nanjing.
2LittIe Su was another famous courtesan of the Southern Dynasties.
3The Jin writer Pan Yue was known for his good looks. One story has it that when he traveled in his
carriage, the women would gather around him and throw fruit to him as a sign o f their attraction.
952
The Qing Dynasty

the "wedding gifts" (the price for Li Xiang-jun's virginity), Hou Fang-yu would be
obligated to return the favor and use his influence with his friends on Ruan's behalf.
Ruan Da-cheng agrees to the plan eagerly.
Yang Wen-cong then makes the proposal to Hou Fang-yu, intimating that Yang
himself will cover the cost of the wedding gifts. He arranges for Hou Fang-yu and
Li Xiang-jun to meet, and Hou is properly smitten by her beauty and shy charm. There
is a "wedding" banquet and the couple go off happily to bed. In the sobriety of the
morning after, Li Xiang-jun, hitherto docile and usually silent, begins to speak for
herself, insisting on learning the truth of where the wedding gifts came from. When
she knows the truth, she acts on it, causing the complications that will drive the play's
love story. Hou Fang-yu, on the other hand, is initially more willing to participate
in a world of compromises.
REFUSING THE TROUSSEAU (VII)M AY 1643
Enter Se r v a n t , picking up the nightstools.

S e rv a n t
Tortoise piss, tortoise piss

spews out little tortoises,
blood of turtle, blood of turtle
turns to little turtles fertile.
Tortoise piss and turtle blood,
whose is whose I cannot guess;
turtle blood and tortoise piss,
cant say if its that or this.
Whose is whose I cannot guess,
cant say who the father is;
who can tell one from another?

cant say w ho
s the fathers brother.
[Laughing] Tsk, tsktsk. Last night Miss Xiang-jun lost her virginity, and
the hoopla went on half the night. I got up early today and have to scrub
out the nightstools and empty the chamberpots. Theres so much to get
done. I wonder how much longer the client and our girl are going to
spend in each others arms. [Scrubs the nightstools]

Enter Yang Wen-cong.
Y a n g [s m ^5 ]
They spend nights deep in willow lanes

of Ping-kang Ward,4
and outside the gate a flower peddler
wakes them suddenly from dreams.
The finely wrought door still unopened,
and the curtain hooks are tinkling,
4The Ping-kang Ward was the pleasure quarter of the Tang capital Chang-an.
953
with spring blocked off by ten layers

of hanging lace.
Ive come early to offer Hou Fang-yu my congratulations, but as you can
see, the door to the establishment is closed tight and theres not a sound
from the servants. I suppose they havent gotten up yet. [Calls out] You,
boy, go over to the newlyweds5window and tell them that Fve come to
offer my congratulations.
ServantThey got to sleep rather late last night, and they may not have got
ten up yet. Why dont you come again tomorrow, sir.
Y a n g [laughing ]
D on
t be silly. Q u ic k , no w , go fin d out!
s that who just came?
Li [from within] Boyw ho
ServantIts Yang Wen-cong, whos come to offer his congratulations.

Li [enters hurriedly, recites]:
Head rests on pillow, spring nights too brief,
but good often comes from a knock at the gate.
[Greets Yang] Thank you so much for bringing about this lifelong union
for my daughter.
YangThink nothing of it. Have the newlyweds risen yet?

Li: They went to sleep late last night and still havent gotten up yet. [Ges
tures to Yang to sit] Please have a seat while I go hurry them up.
YangTheres no need for that.

E x it Li Zhen-li.
Yang [sings]:
Young passion is heady like flower wine,
so fine that they think of nothing else
but to share that sweet black land of sleep.
Which would have been impossible, of course, failing my help.
Pearls and kingfisher feathers gleam,
silks and satins ripple and rustle,
each and every item of new attire
is proclamation of loves desire.
Enter Li Zhen-u.
Li : Its so charming. Theyre both in there buttoning each other up and look
ing in the mirror to see how they look as a pair. Theyve finished comb
ing and washing upbut theyre not through with getting dressed. Lets
go into their rooms together and call them out to drink a cup of wine to
help their hangover.
YangIt was unforgivable of me to have woken them. [Exeunt]
Enter Hou
F a n g -y u
and X ia n g - ju n , fully made up.
Hou and Xiang-jun [sing]

Passions cloud joining
to cloudburst and rain
The Qing Dynasty
scratches a wondrous itch in the heart

who now disturbs the sleeping pair
of mated ducks?
Blankets heaved in waves of red,
as we joyously took full measure
of all loves pleasure.
A lingering scent on the pillow,
a lingering scent on the handkerchief,
sensations that melt the rapturous soul
tasted now as we rise from dream.
Enter Yang Wen-cong and Li Zhen-li.

Yang Well, youve gotten up at last. Congratulations. [He bows, then sits]
Did you like the wedding night verse I wrote for you yesterday evening?
Hou [bowing]Thank you very much. [Laughs] It was the height of excel
lence~except for one little po in t. . .
Y ang
W hat little point?
H ou However tiny Xiang-jun may beshe deserves be kept in a chamber
of gold, but [looks in his sleeves] how would I get her in my sleeves?5
All laugh.
YangIm sure you also must have written something fine last night when
you two declared your love.
H ou I just scribbled out something hastilyI wouldnt dare show you.
YangAnd where is the poem?

Xiang-junThe poem is on the fan.
Xiang-jun takes the fan out of her sleeve and gives it to Yang Wen-cong,
who looks it over,
YangIt
s a white satin palace fan. [Sniffs it] And it has a subtle aroma. [Re
.
cites the poem]
Blue mansions line the road,
a single path slants through,
here the prince first drives
the Count of Fu-ping
s coach.
Everywhere upon Blue Creek
there are magnolia trees
no match for blooms of peach and plum
in the east wind of spring.
6
5The Han emperor W u-di said that if he could get A-jiao as his consort, he would keep her in a
chamber of gold. Hou Fang-yu is referring to a line in Yang's poem in which she would be "hidden
in his sleeves, suggesting an embrace rather than Hou Fang-yu's joking interpretation.
6The poem is not repeated in this act, but I have included it from scene VI. The poem is, in fact, a
variation on one by the historical Hou Fang-yu. The praise of Hpeach and plum" over the magno-
955
Excellent! Only Xiang-jun would not be put to shame by this poem.

[Hands it back to X ia n g - ju n ] Take care of it. [ X ia n g - j u n puts away the
fan. Yang sings]

Scent of peach and scent of plum,
fragrance at its sweetest,
all written on a satin fan.
Lest they meet the tossing gusts
of wild winds,
hide it close within your sleeve
hide it close within your sleeve.
[Looks at X ia n g - ju n ] After her wedding night, Xiang-jun seems to have
an even more sensual beauty. [ T o Hou F a n g - y u ] You3re a lucky man to
enjoy this splendid creature.

HouXiang-juns natural beauty makes her the fairest in the land, but the
pearl and kingfisher ornaments that she wears in her hair today and all
her silken finery add something extra to her utterly flowerlike beauty.
She is entirely lovable.

LiThis is all thanks to Mr. Yangs assistance.
[Sings]
He sent the turbans of brocade

the chests of varied gems,
fringed curtains wound with pearls
and kingfisher feathers, silver
candlesticks, shades of gauze
shining through the night,
golden cups for offering wine
to go along with song at feasts.
And now he has come to see you so early today.
As though you were his very own

children he raised himself,
first providing the needed trousseau,
now also paying this early call.
Xiang-junIt seems to me3Mr. Yang, that even though you
re a close rela
tive of the governor-general, Ma Shi-ying, you are in rather difficult fi
nancial circumstances yourself and live on the goodwill of others; why
should you so casually throw away your money into the bottomless pit
of the pleasure quarters? For my own part, I am embarrassed to receive
it; and on your side, it was given anonymously. Please make things clear
to us so that we can plan how to repay such generosity.
H ou Xiang-jun is quite right to ask this. You and I have met like duckweeds
drifting on the wateryour show of kindness the other day was so gen
erous that I feel uncomfortable.
lia plays on Xiang-jun's surname Li, which is the word for "plum." Peach blossoms w ill play an
even larger role in the play.
956
The Qing Dynasty

Y a n g Since
I have been asked? I can only tell you the truth. The trousseau
and the party cost somewhat over two hundred pieces of silver, and all
of it came from a gentleman from Huai-ning.
H ou Who from Huai-ning?
Y a n g Ruan Yuan-hai, who was the head of the Court of Imperial Enter
tainments.
H ou Do you mean Ruan Da-cheng from An-hui?
Y a n g Thats right.
H ou Why has he been so lavish?
Y a n g He simply wants to become acquainted with you.
[Sings]
He admires your prospects and panache,
your name for talent like Luo-yangs Zuo Si,
your writings like those of Si-ma Xiang-ru.
Wherever you go, you find welcome;
all crowd around the young man in the coach.7
In the finest spots of the Qin-Huai
you sought a fair maiden for your side,
but you lacked the spread for the marriage bed
and lotus make-up.
You wonder who did this
the senior Ruan of the southern branch8
put himself out for your wedding apparel.
H ou Ruan Da-cheng was an acquaintance of my father's, but I despise him
and have had nothing to do with him for a long time. I cant understand
this unexpected show of generosity to me now.
Y a n g Ruan Da-cheng has a problem that troubles him and he would like
to put it before you.
H ou Please explain.
YangRuan Da-cheng used to be associated with Zhao Nan-xing and was

one of our own.9 When he later became associated with the faction of
Wei Zhong-xian, the eunuch, it was only to protect the East Grove fac
tion.1He had no idea that once the Wei Zhong-xian faction was defeated,
the East Grove faction would treat him like an arch enemy. Members of
the Restoration Society have recently advocated attacking him, and they
viciously beat up and humiliated him. This is a fight within the same
household. Even though Ruan Da-cheng has many former associates, no
one will try to explain his side of the story because his actions were so
7The reference again is to Pan Yue.
8This refers specifically to the Wei poet and eccentric Ruan Ji, to whom Ruan Da-cheng is, some
what outrageously, compared.
9Zhao Nan-xing had been a senior Ming official who was unjustly denounced and sent into exile
by the Wei Zhong-xian faction.
^The East Grove Society was a group of late Ming intellectuals dedicated to reforming the Ming gov
ernment. After they were purged, a successor group, the Restoration Society, was formed.
957
dubious. Every day he weeps toward Heaven, saying, It is painful to be

so savaged by one
s own group. No one but Hou Fang-yu of He-nan can
save me
This is the reason that he now seeks so earnestly to make your
acquaintance.
H ou Well, in this case I can see why he feels such anguish, and it seems to
me that he deserves some pity. Even if he had really been a member of
Wei Zhong-xian
s faction, he
s come around again and is sorry for his
mistakes. One shouldnt ostracize him so absolutely, and even less if
theres an explanation for what he did. Ding-sheng and Ci-wei are both
close friends of mine. I
ll go see them tomorrow and try to resolve this.
Y a n g It
would be a great blessing for us if you would do this.
X ia n g -ju n [angrily] W hat are you saying! R uan Da-cheng rushed to join
the corrupt men in power and lost all sense of shame. There is not a
grown woman or young girl who would not spit on him and curse him.
If you try to save him when others attack him, what camp will you be
putting yourself in?
[Sings]
You arent thinking
when you speak like this so frivolously.
You want to rescue him from ruin,
you want to rescue him from ruin,
but beware lest the judgment fall on you.
The only reason you
re going to speak for him is because he provided
my trousseauthat is disregarding the common good and selling oneself
for private benefit. Dont you realize that I find all these bangles and hair
pins and skirts and gowns beneath contempt. [She pulls out hairpins and
takes off gown]
I take off these skirts,
accepting poverty;
in homespun and simple adornments
a persons name smells sweet.2
Yang You
re being far too hot-tempered, Xiang-jun.
LiWhat a pity to throw away such fine things on the floor! [She picks them
]
Hou Splendid! Her judgment in this matter is better than mine. I truly stand
in awe of her. [To Y a n g ] Please don
t think ill of me in this. It
s not that
I wouldnt accept your suggestion, but I fear the scorn of women,
[Sfwgs]
In the pleasure quarters lanes
they can lecture on principle and good name;
while school and court,
while school and court
2ln this line, Xiang-jun is playing on her name, "Queen of Sweet Fragrance."
958
The Qing Dynasty
confuse virtue and vice,

and cannot tell black from white.
My friends in the Restoration Society have always held me in esteem be
cause of my sense of right. But if I associate myself with someone who
is corrupt, they will all rise and attack me; and I wont have a chance to
save myselfnot to mention someone else.
Principles and good name
are no common things;

one must consider carefully
what is serious and what is negligible.
YangConsidering Ruan Da-chengs goodwill, you shouldnt act so drasti

cally.
H ou I may be foolish, but I
m not going to throw myself in a well to save
someone else.
Y ang
In that caseI w ill take my leave.
H ou All these things in the chests belong to Ruan Da-cheng. Since Xiang-
jun has no use for them, there5s no point in keeping them, so would you
have them taken away?
YangAs the couplet goes:

'
One full of feeling finds himself

upset by lack of feeling,
I came here following my whim;
the whim doneI return.3 [Exit]
X
ia n g -j u n
shows herself upset.
H ou [looking at X ia n g -j u n ]: When I look at your natural beauty, pulling

out a few pearls and feathers and taking off your fine silken gown, your
perfect beauty is doubled in its perfection, and I think you are even more
lovable.
Li: Whatever you say, its still too bad to give up so many fine things.
[Sings]
Gold and pearls come to you,
you carelessly throw them away;
these spoiled and childish poses betray
all my hard efforts to sponsor you.
H ou These things arent worth brooding over. I
ll make the loss good in
kind.
Li: Then it will be all right.
[Recites]
The money spent on powder and paint
costs some consideration,

3This couplet, quoted as proverbial, is constructed of a line from a lyric by Su Shi and a metrical
rephrasing of a passage in New Stories and Tales o f the Times.
959
Xiang-jun
homespun skirts and hairpins of twig
do not bother me.
H ou
What matters is our Xiang Princess
could take off her pendants
4
Xiang-jun
the standard of taste does not follow
the fashions of the times.
Ruan Da-cheng, infuriated by Hou Fang-yu's refusal of his wedding gifts, uses the
opportunity of unrest in the army to accuse Hou of plotting rebellion. Yang Wencong hurries to warn Hou Fang-yu to escape before he is arrested. After parting from
Xiang-jun, who swears to remain faithful to him, Hou puts himself under the pro
tection of the great general Shi Ke-fa, a friend of Hou's father. Meanwhile the Ming
armies are collapsing everywhere, the rebel Li Zi-cheng takes Beijing, and the Ming
emperor commits suicide. The Manchu armies of the Qing come down from the
Northeast and take North China (an event treated in the play only with the utmost
discretion). A new Ming regime is established in the South, with its capital in Nan
jing. The new emperor is a figurehead, the drama-loving former Prince Fu, with the
villains Ma Shi-ying and Ruan Da-cheng as.the powers behind the throne.
With Hou Fang-yu out of the picture, Yang Wen-cong suggests to Ma Shi-ying a
new match for Xiang-jun. When she refuses, officers are sent to compel her to remarry.
Yang goes along to try to prevent trouble. Xiang-jun persists in her refusal and tries to
commit suicide by banging her head on the floor
staining the fan, her wedding gift
from Hou Fang-yu, with spots of her blood. Seeing that Xiang-jun will harm herself if
they persist, Li Zhen-li offers to go in Xiang-jun's place. Li Zhen-li is taken off, and as
the next scene opens, Xiang-jun is left alone in the house, lamenting her fate.
SENDING THE FAN (XXIII), JANUARY 1645
Enter Xiang-jun, looking ill, her head wrapped with a kerchief as bandage.
X iang-jun [srngs]:
These icy silks pierced through
by winds harsh chill,
the heart too dull
to light the scented brazier.
The single thread of blood, here
at the tip of brow,
is a more becoming red than red of rouge.
My lonely shadow stands in fear,
4When goddesses such as the Xiang Princess [Xiang-jun, punning on Xiang-jun's name) take off their
pendants, it is usually the sign of plighting troth with a man; here it seems to refer to Xiang-jun's
stripping away her ornaments in rejecting the trousseau.
960
The Qing Dynasty
a weak soul tossed about, my life

suspended as by a spring floss strand.
A frosty moonlight fills the upper rooms,
the nighttime stretches on and on,
and daylight will not melt this pain.
[Sits] In a moment when I had no other choice, I inflicted wounds on my

own flesh as the only way to save myself. By doing so I managed to keep
my honor intact. But now I lie here, sick and alone in these empty rooms,
under cold blankets within chilly bed curtains, with no companion. It's
so cold and lonely here.
Freezing clouds and patchy snow
block Long Bridge,
the red mansions are closed up tight,
and men seeking pleasure, few.
Low beyond the balcony the lines of geese
write signs in the skies,
and from the curtained windows
icicles hang;
the charcoal chills, the incense burns away,
and I grow gaunt
in the sharp evening wind.
Though I live here in the blue mansions of the pleasure quarters, all scenes
of love and passion are finished for me from now on.
Past patterned doors winds wail,
the parrot calls for tea, its skill
displayed for its pleasure alone;
the chambers are still,
the snow white cat hugs the pillow
sound asleep.
,
My skirt, pomegranate red
ripped to shreds,
waist dancing in wind,
and phoenix-decorated boots,
slit to pieces
the wave-pacing soles;
with sorrows increase sickness grows,
never again will these chambers allow
the turmoil of passion.
I think back on when Hou Fang-yu had to flee for his life in such haste,
and now I dont know where he
s gone. How can he know that I am liv
ing here alone in this empty house, protecting my honor for his sake?
[Rises and sings]

I recall how in an instant
all thrill of charming song was swept away,
961
at midnight passions flood forsaken;

I look for him at Peach Leaf Ford,
I seek him out by Swallow Jetty~
just hills with roiling clouds
where winds blow high,
and wild geese faint and far.
Who would have thought
that though the plums will bloom again
reliably,
the man would be still farther away?
I lean on the balcony
and concentrate my gaze,
but autumn floods from lovely eyes
are frozen hard by sour wind.
It enrages me how the servants of that evil man crowded into my gate
and insisted that I get married. How could I ever betray Hou Fangyu?
They took advantage of a courtesan
whose fate is fragile, not her own
their awful arrogance depended on
the Ministers authority.
To keep this alabaster body pure
I could not help rending
these features like flower.
The saddest thing of all is how my mother sacrificed herself for my sake
and was whisked away. [Points] See her bed there as it always was, but
when will she come back?
Just like a petal of peach,
borne on snow-capped billows
or floss of willow, tossed in wind;
her sleeves hid a face like the breeze of spring,
as she left the court of Han at dusk.5
Such lonelinessthe dust
that covers her quilt
not brushed away
a silence where a flower bloomed,
which I admire alone.
A rush of sourness catches me unawares when I consider this.
It seems to goad me in the heart,
f
so many teardrops spilled.
No girlfriends call me away
to idle pastimes
5U Zhen-li's forced marriage (in Xiang-jun's place) is here compared to Wang Zhao-jun being sent
from the Han court to marry the Xiong-nu Khan.
The Qing Dynasty
I listen to the clack of hooks

hanging from the curtain.
Sitting here with nothing to doIll take out the fan with Hou Fang-yu's
poem and look at it. [She takes out fan] Oh no! Its ruined, stained all
over with drops of my blood. What am I going to do?
Look at themsome far apart,
some thick together,
dark spots and pale,
with fresh blood haphazardly stained.
Not sprinkled from the nightjars tears,
these are the peach blooms of my cheeks
turned to a red rain,
falling speck after speck, splattering
the icy silk.
Oh Hou Fang-yu! This was all for you.
You caused me to dishevel
hairs cloudy coils
and mar my slender waist;
Senseless I lay like the Consort
on Ma-weis slope interred
6
my blood streamed like the concubine
who leapt from towers heights.7
I feared the shouts of those below
and left my too frail soul uncalled.
In silver mirror, afterglow
of scarlet cloud,
and on the lovers pillow,
red tears in spring flood.
In the heart a rancor sprouts,
and melancholy sits upon the brows,
I washed away the rouge,
that stained the seafolk gauze.
I feel a weariness coming over me. I
ll doze here a moment at my dress
ing table. [Falls asleep on the fan]
Enter Y a n g
Y ang
e n -c o n g
in everyday clothes.
[recites]
I recognize this red mansion
that slants on the water's face,
a row of dying willows
bearing the last of the crows.
6The reference here is to Yang the Prized Consort, whose death was demanded by the imperial guard
when Xuan-zong fled Chang-an.
7Green Pearl, the concubine of Shi Chong, threw herself from a tower rather than be taken from
him by a powerful enemy.
.
963

Enter Su Kun-sheng.
Su [recites]:
The silver harp and castanets,
a lovely maidens yard,
now with wind-blown snow the same
as the home of a recluse.
Yang [turning his head and greeting him]: Ah! Good to see youMr. Su.
SuAfter Li Zhen-Ii got married, Xiang-jun has been living alone, I cant stop
worrying about her, so I always come by to visit.
YangThe day that Li Zhen-li had to go, I stayed with Xiang-jun the entire
night, but Ive been so busy at the office these past few days that I havent
been able to get away. Just now I was going to the eastern part of the
city to pay a visit, and I thought I
d look in on her.
They enter her apartments.

SuXiang-jun wont come downstairs, so why dont we go upstairs to talk
to her.
YangFine. [They climb stairs. Yang points] Look how depressed and
sickly Xiang-jun seemsall worn out dozing there at her dressing table.
Lets not wake her up for a while.
SuHer fan is spread out here by her face. Why does it have so many
splotches of red?
YangThis was Hou Fang-yu

s wedding gift to her. She has always kept it
hidden and wasnt willing to show it. I imagine she
s left it out here to
dry because it got stained with blood from her face. [Pulls away fan and
looks at it] These spots of blood are a gorgeous red! I
ll add some
branches and leaves and decorate it for her. [Thinks] But I dont have
any green paint.
SuIll pick some of these plants in the flowerpots and squeeze fresh sap from
themthat can serve in place of paint.
YangAn excellent idea. [Su Kun-sheng squeezes plants and Yang paints
and recites]
The leaves share the green of aromatic plants,
the blooms draw their red from a lady fair.
The painting is finished. Su K u n - s h e n g looks at it with delight.
SuSuperb! Its some broken sprays of peach blossoms.
Yang [laughing]Its a true peach blossom fan.

Xiang-jun [waking startled]: Mr. Yang, Mr. Su, I
m glad to see you both.
Please forgive me. [She invites them to sit down]
YangDuring these past few days when I havent come to look in on you,
the wound on your forehead has gotten better. [Laughs] I have a painted
fan here that I would like to present to you. [Hands fan to Xiang-jun]
Xiang-jun [looking at it]: This is my old fan that was ruined by bloodstains!
I cant even look at it. [Puts it in her sleeve]
964
The Qing Dynasty
SuBut theres some marvelous painting on ithow can you not take a look
and admire it?

X ia n g - ju n When
was this painting done?

YangIts my fault. Ive just ruined it.
Xiang-jun [looks at the fan and sighs] Ah! The unhappy fate of peach blos
soms, tossed and fallen on this fan. Thank you, Mr. Yang, for painting
my own portrait in this.

[Sings]
Every blossom breaks the heart

lazily smiling in springtime breeze;
every petal melts the soul,
sadly swirled in the current.
Fetching colors freshly picked
drawn from nature;
even old masters like Xu Xi
could hardly have painted these.8
Vermilions tint is mixed on cherry lips
first sketch made on lotus cheeks,
then in a few strokesred peach blooms,
depicting the truth within.
You added some azure twigs and leaves,
remarkably fresh and fair,
and of an unfortunate woman
drew the portrait in blooms of peach.
YangNow that you have this peach blossom fan, you need a companion
like Zhou Yu to notice you and appreciate you.9 Do you really mean to
live here as a widow in the spring of your life like Chang E in the moon?
Xiang-junDont go on like this. Guan Pan-pan was also a courtesan, and
didn't she stay locked up in Swallow Tower until old age?1
SuIf Hou Fang-yu were to come back tomorrow, wouldn't you come down
from your tower then?

Xiang-junIn that case Pd have a glorious married life ahead and would
enjoy everything. I wouldnt just come down from my tower, I
d want
to go roaming everywhere.
YangWe dont often see such a long-suffering sense of honor these days.
[To Su K u n - s h e n g ] Mr. Su, I would feel a lot less worried if you would
go find Hou Fang-yu and bring him back here, out of the affection of a
teacher for his student.

8Xu Xi was a famous painter of flowers and vegetation of the tenth century.
9Literally, "a young master Zhou to pay attention to the tune," referring to Zhou Yu, the admiral of
the Wu fleet in the Three Kingdoms, who was said to have had a particularly fine ear for music.
Yang Wen-cong is, of course, continuing his campaign to have her remarry.
1Pan-pan, the concubine of the powerful Tang military governor Zhang Jian-feng, refused to remarry
after his death. Although such behavior was considered proper for first wives, it was an unusual sign
of devotion on the part of a concubine.
965
SuYes, I
ve had it in mind to go visit him for some time now, and
Fve found out that he served on the Huai for half a year with Shi Kefa, then from the Huai he came to Nanjing, and from Nanjing he went
to Yang-zhou. Now he
s gone off again with the army of General Gao
Jie to defend the Yellow River. I was going to go back to my home
town soon, and on the way I can go look for him when I have the
chance. [To Xiang-jun] It would be a good idea if I had a letter from

you.
My words come out without literary pol
ish. Would you write for me Mr, Yang?
X ia n g - ju n [to Y a n g W e n - c o n g ] :
YangJust tell me how to write what is in your heart.

Xiang-junJust let me think a moment. .. [Thinks] No, no! All my griefs
and sufferings are on the fan, so take the fan with you.
Su [delighted]: Well, this is a whole new style in personal letters.
Xiang-junWait while I wrap it up. [Wraps up fanthen sings]:
He plied the brushs silvery hairs
and will know these lines he wrote before.
Specks stain the red marks of the dice~
newly painted, hold it fast.
For though the fan be small,
it has hearts blood, ten thousand streaks;
wrapped up in my handkerchief,
with hairribbon wound about,
saying much more than palindrome brocade.2
Su [taking the fan]Ill take good care of it and deliver it for you.
Xiang-junWhen re you going to leave?

SuIll get my things ready in the next few days.
Xiang-junI just hope that youll set out soon.

SuAll right.
YangLets go downstairs now. [To Xiang-jun] Take good care of your

self. When we tell Hou Fang-yu of the hardships you have endured to
stay true to him, he will naturally come to get you.
SuI wont be back before I leave. As they say, [recites]
A new letter sent afar:
the peach blossom fan,
Y ang [capping couplet]
a yard forever shut up tight:

the Tower of the Swallows.3 [Exeunt]
Xiang-jun [wiping away tears]: Mama hasnt returned and now my teacher
is going away too. It
s going to be even more lonely closed up here in my
room.
2This refers to the famous palindrome woven into brocade by Su Hui and sent to her husband, both
to express her love and to call him home.
3The Tower of the Swallows is where Guan Pan-pan, the beloved concubine of Zhang Jian-feng,
shut herself up after his death.
966
The Qing Dynasty
^(
[Sings]
The warblers throat has done with

melodies of North and South,
the icy strings have given up

tunes of Sui and Chen,
my lips will no more play the pipes,
the flute is thrown aside,
the mouth organ is broken,
and castanets are cast away.

I wish only the fans swift delivery,
that my teacher be ready to set off soon;
4
Let my young Liu come on the third of M ay
then hand in hand well come down from the tower,
and eat our fill of peach blossom gruel.5
[Recites]
The letter will reach the garden of Liang
ere the snow has melted,
when the path along Blue Creek
will be blocked by springtime floods.
Peach Root and Peach Leaf
are visited by none,6
by Ding-zi Curtain
there is a broken bridge.7
Hou Fang-yu finally receives the fan and makes his way back to Nanjing, only to
discover that, through the machinations of Ruan Da-cheng, Xiang-jun has been taken
away into the imperial harem to perform for the drama-loving emperor. Along with
a group of his friends, Hou Fang-yu is arrested for his ties to the Restoration Society
and thrown into prison. Meanwhile, the Southern Ming is crumbling before the Qing
armies advancing on Nanjing. As the city is about to fall, Xiang-jun and Hou Fang-
yu escape separately, and they make their way to refuge in the mountains.
Around the central love story are numerous subplots that tell the grand story of
the destruction of the Ming Dynasty. The threads of all these interwoven stories come
together in scene XL, "Accepting the W a y , presided over by Zhang Wei, originally
an officer in the imperial guard in Beijing who had buried the Chong-zhen emperor
after his suicide. Zhang Wei had made his way to the Southern Ming court in Nan
jing. There he was given a high post but eventually grew disillusioned by the cor
ruption and theatrical falseness of the regime. His decision to withdraw from pub
lic life was inspired by another painting of peach blossomsthis one of the idyllic
4The reference is to Liu Zhen.

5This was evidently a custom of Luo-yang for the Cold Food Festival.
6For Peach Leaf, see note on p. 952; Peach Root was her sister.
7Ding-zi Curtain was a spot in the Nanjing pleasure quarters.

retreat of Peach Blossom Spring. The painting was done by Lan Ying, who had taken
up residence in Xiang-jun's quarters after she was carried off to the imperial palace;
and it was Lan Ying, working on this painting, whom Hou Fang-yu had discovered
on coming back to Nanjing and going in search of Xiang-jun. Indeed, Hou Fang-yu
himself writes the inscription on the painting that helps convince Zhang Wei to with
draw. When Zhang Wei leaves public life, he becomes the abbot of a Daoist
monastery in the mountains, the very monastery in which gather the various figures
in the play after fleeing Nanjing.
In the first part of "Accepting the W a y , Zhang Wei
aments the Chong-zhen em
peror (the Ming emperor who had taken his own life when Beijing fell); then Zhang
has visions of the loyalists who died defending the dynasty. We pick up the scene
as Xiang-jun and Hou Fang-yu come from separate directions to listen to Zhang Wei's
sermon. Xiang-jun is accompanied by Bian Yu-jing, a former courtesan who has be
come a Daoist nun, while Hou Fang-yu is accompanied by a Daoist priest, Ding Jizhi, a former balladeer.
FROM ACCEPTING THE W AY (XL), SEPTEMBER 1645
Enter Bian Yu-jing, leading Xiang-jun.
Bian Yu-jingThe greatest joy in Heaven and among mortal men comes from
doing good. We and a group of Daoist nuns have just strung up votive
banners before the altar to Empress Zhou, and now we come to the lec
ture hall to listen to the abbots sermon.
Xiang-junMay I just come along?

Bian Yu-jing {pointing]See all the Daoists and laypersons in the two side
porches; there are too many to count, so there shouldnt be any prob
lem with you watching. [Bian bows before the altar] Your disciple Bian
Yu-jing prostrates herself. [Together with Xiang-jun, she stands back to
one side]
Enter Ding Ji-zhi.
Ding Ji-zhiHard to be born in human form, hard to learn of the Way. [He
bows before the altar] Your disciple Ding Ji-zhi prostrates himself. [Calls
oui\ Hou Fang-yu! This is the lecture hall. To come here will bring you
joy.
Enter Hou
F a n g -y u
hurriedly.
H ou Here I am. Long weary of the sufferings of the secular world, I now
see the path that can lead to immortality. [Stands back to one side with
Ding Ji-zhi]
Zhang Wei [hitting his lectern]You good folk listening in the wingsyou
should abandon your worldly hearts utterly, for only then can you seek
the path that will lead you upward. If you still have even a grain of base
968
The Qing Dynasty
passionyou will have to endure a thousand more revolutions of the

karmic cycle.
Hou [looks at X iang-jun from behind the fan and is startled] Thats Xiangjun standing over there. How did she come to be here? [He pushes for
ward urgently]
Xiang-jun [sees him and is startled]: Hou Fang-yu, I almost died of longing
for you.
[Sings]
I think back on how you abruptly left me,

faint and far
across the silvery River of Stars
no bridge could span,

a barrier higher than
the very edge of sky.
No way to convey a letter,
I struggled in vain to reach you in dream,

and yet the passion did not end;
and when I escaped, the road to you
seemed even further away.
H ou {pointing to the fan]: When I looked at these peach blossoms on the
fan, I wondered how I would ever repay your love.
[Smgs]
See how fresh blood covered the fan
and bloomed into red blossoms of peach,

as they say flowers fell from Dharma Heaven.8
Xiang-jun and Hou Fang-yu examine the fan together. Ding Ji-zhi pulls
away Hou Fang-yu, while Bian Yu-jing pulls away Xiang-jun.
Bian Yu-jing: The abbot is at the altar. You cant go discussing how you
feel about one another now!
Hou Fang-yu and Xiang-jun cannot be restrained Zhang Wei slams his
hand on the lectern in fury.
Zhang WeiWhat sort of young people are you, making love talk in a place
like this? [He comes quickly down from the altarsnatches the fan out
o/Hou Fang-yu5s and Xiang-jun5s hands, tears it upand throws it on
the ground] These pure and unsullied precincts of the Way have no room
for lecherous young men and loose girls to get together and flirt with one
another.
8When Abbot Guang-cheng reached the best part in his lectures on the sutras, flowers were sup
posed to have fallen from Heaven.
969

Cai Yi-so [recognizing them]: Aiya! This is Hou Fang-yu of He-nan. Your
Reverence knew him once.
Zhang WeiWhos the girl?

Lan YingI know her. She5s Xiang-jun. I used to live in her apartments. She
is Hou Fang-yus concubine.
Zhang WeiAnd where have the two of them come from?

Ding Ji-zhiHou is staying at my Lodge of Finding the Genuine.
Bian Yu-jingLi Xiang-jun is staying at my Retreat of the Genuine Accu
mulated.
Hou [bowing to Zhang Wei]: This is Master Zhang Wei, who was so mer
ciful to me in the past.
Zhang WeiSo youre Hou Fang-yu. Im glad you were able to escape from
prison. Did you know that it was on account of you that I renounced
the world?
H ou How could I have known?
Cai Yi-soI am Cai Yi-so. I also renounced the world on account of you.
Ill tell you at leisure how all this came to pass.
Lan YingI am Lan Ying. I brought Xiang-jun here looking for you, but I
didnt think we would finally meet you.
H ou Xiang-jun and I will need lifetimes to repay your kindness in taking
us in, Ding Ji-zhi and Bian Yu-jing, and to repay the feeling you two
showed in guiding us, Cai Yi-so and Lan Ying.
X i a n g - ju n And dont forget Su Kun-sheng, who accompanied me here.
H ou And Liu Jing-ting, who came with me.
Xiang-junThe way in which Su and Liu stayed with us through everything,

without flinching in desperate situations, is even more moving.
H ou When my wife and I get homewe hope to repay you all for every
thing.
Zhang WeiIn all this babbling and jabbering, what do you think you are
talking about? Great upheavals have turned Heaven and Earth upside
down, and you

re still clinging to the love and passion that has taken root
within you. Isn
t this ludicrous!
H ou You are wrong in this! A man and a woman founding a household
has always been the primary human relationship, a focus for love through
separation and reunionthrough grief and joy. How can you be con
cerned about this?
Zhang Wei [furiously]Aaah! Two besotted worms. Just where is your na

tion, where is your family, where is your prince, where is your father? Is
it only this little bit of romantic love you cant cut away?
[Sings]
Pathetic trifling of man and maid
the world turned upside down
and you dont care;
you babble on
with wanton phrases, lurid words,
970
The Qing Dynasty
tugging clothes and holding hands, declare

a happily-ever-after to the gods.
Dont you realize that long ago
your fated wedlock was erased
from registries in Heaven?
With thudding wingbeats mated ducks
wake from dream
and fly apart,
the precious mirror of reunion

lies in fragments on the ground,
happy endings proved unsound.
Blush at this bad performance of your scene,
inspiring bystanderslaughter~
the great path lies before you clear,

flee on it immediately!
Hou [bowing]: What you have just said makes a cold sweat run down me,
as if suddenly waking up from a dream.

Zhang WeiDid you understand?
HouI understood.
Zhang WeiSince you understood, go accept Ding Ji-zhi as your teacher
right here and now.
Hou Fang-yu goes and bows to Ding Ji-zhi.
Xiang-junI also understood.
Zhang WeiSince you understood, right here and now go accept Bian Yujing as your teacher.
Xiang-jun goes and bows to Bian Yu-jing.
Zhang Wei [instructing Ding and Bian]Dress them for the parts of Daoists.
Hou
Fa n g -y u
and X ia n g -j u n change clothes.
Ding and BianWould Your Reverence please take the seat at the altar so
that we can present our disciples to you.
Zhang Wei climbs back to the altar and seats himself. Ding Ji-zhi leads H ou
Fang-yu and Bian Yu-jing leads Xiang-jun before him; they bow,
Z h a n g W e i [s/w ^s ]
Weed out the sprouts of passion,

weed out the sprouts of passion
and behold
jade leaves and boughs of gold
wither up and die;
cut out the embryo of love
cut out the embryo of love
and hear
phoenix chick and dragon spawn cry out.
971
Bubble swirling in the water,

bubble swirling in the water,
a spark struck from flint,
a spark struck from flint
half this life adrift remains
and now you will learn the Teaching.
[Pointing] The male has his proper domain, which lies to the south and
corresponds to the trigram Li; go then at once south of the southern
mountains, where you will learn the Genuine and study the Way.
H ou Yes. Now I understand the rightness of the great Way, and feel regret
recognizing the strength o f m y passion. [Exit D in g J i -z h i to the left, lead-
ing Hou Fang-yu]

Zhang Wei [pointing]The female has her proper domain, which lies to the
north and matches the trigram Kango then at once north of the north
ern mountains, where you will learn the Genuine and study the Way.
X i a n g - ju n Yes. In the turn of a head everything all proved to be illusion.
Who was that man facing me? [Exit Bian Y u - j in g to the right, leading
X
ia n g -ju n ]
Zhang Wei [descending from the altar with a loud laugh sings]:
Note that when those two parted
no lovelorn glances passed.
Thanks to my having ripped
shred by shred
the peach blossom fan,
no more may besotted worms
spin their soft cocoons of thread
enwrapping themselves a thousand times.
[Recites]
White bones and blue ashes lie
forever in the weeds
the peach blossom fan bids goodbye
to a southern dynasty.
Never again will come those dreams
of glory and the fall,
but when will love of man and maid
melt away once and for all?
Hong Sheng (1605-1704), J%f\

The Palace of Lasting Life:
Selected Acts
The long tradition of versions of the love story between the Tang emperor Xuan-zong
and Yang the Prized Consort culminated in The Palace o f Lasting Life (Chang-sheng
dian), a dramatic romance in fifty scenes by Hong Sheng. The first draft of the play
was done in 1679, with a more or less complete version appearing around 1684,
and the final version in 1688. It was immediately successful and remains, together
with Peach Blossom Fan, the high point of Qing drama.

There are few dramatic surprises in The Palace of Lasting Life. The scenes
mostly elaborate well-known incidents in a familiar story. Perhaps Hong Sheng's
most significant addition was the elaborate world of gods, goddesses, and minor
deities, who weave their way through the story and at last bring the Emperor and
Lady Yang together in the moon to the strains of "Skirts of Rainbow." The play's
considerable appeal lies in its poetry and the sense of spectacle created through
that poetry.
If dramatic romance has a claim to be great literature, it is not by plot or char
acterization, but by shifting perspectives that lend depth and complexity to the sig
nificance of events and things. We can see this in famous scenes such as "Stocking-Viewing," in which the sentimental musician Li Mo, a Daoist abbess, and Guo
Cong-jin, a peasant, view the relic of Lady Yang's stocking used by the innkeeper
GrannyWang to attract business to her establishment. Each reads the object's

significance in a different w ay. O n a larger, deeper level, each scene in the play
is set in a web of relationships to parallel scenes that constantly redefine per
spective. In one scene, we see couriers trampling down a peasant's grain field in
their hurry to bring fresh lychee fruit in time for Lady Yang's birthday. In the next,
we see the Emperor offering the fruit to Lady Yang as a birthday surprise. As she
eats the fresh fruit with delight, blind as the Emperor is blind to the suffering that
lie s b e h in d th e m o m e n t's p le a s u re , w e c a n v ie w th e fru it both as a thoughtful gift
of love and as the occasion of larger human suffering. Both scenes return to mind
when the Emperor, desperate and hungry in his flight from the rebel armies of An
Lu-shan, is offered a dish of plain barley by a peasant.
Motifs appear and disappear in continual variations, giving the play a complex
unity of a very different sort from the unity of plot expected in Western drama.
A c e n tra l m o tif o f th e p la y is th e m u sic " R a in b o w S k i r t s , w h ic h first ap p ears in
the eleventh scene as performed for Lady Yang during a dream visit to the moon.
Taken back to Earth and transcribed by Lady Yang from memory, the music passes
through a wide variety of situations and characters. In the end, when Lady Yang
and the Emperor are to be reunited in Heaven, that mortal version of "Skirts of
Rainbow" is preferred by Chang E, the goddess of the moon, to the original ver
sion.
973

D
X u a n -z o n g ,
r a m a t is
Pe r s o n a e
Li Long-ji
Emperor of the Tang, whose reign is the Tian-
b a o , av atar o f the im m o rta l Kong-sheng

L a d y Y a n g , Y a n g Y u- huan , the Prized C o n so rt, Tai-zhen, beloved o f
Xuan-zong and avatar of the immortal Jade Consort

G a o L i-s h i,
Chief Eunuch
A n L u -s h a n , frontier general w h o rebels against the

dynasty
Z
hang
Q i a n , a d m in istra to r for Y a n g G uo-zhong, C h ie f M in iste r,
uncle of Lady Yang

Yang G u o -z h o n g , Chief Minister, uncle of Lady Yang
L a d y H a n , L a d y Y a n g s sister
L a d y G u o , L a d y Y a n g s sister
L a d y Q i n L a d y Y a n g s sister
Guo Zi-yi, Tang general responsible for recapturing the

capital
P e a sa n t W
H
oman
G ir l
om ely
Flow erseller
Y o u n g Sq u ir e
Tavern W
a it e r
Chang E
goddess of the moon
Han-huang, attendant of Chang E
Y o n g -x i n , m a id o f L a d y Y a n g
N
ia n -n u ,
m a id o f L ad y Y a n g
L i G u i -n ia n , head o f the im p e ria l m usic ensemble

M
L ei H
i a n -q i ,
chim e player in im p e ria l ensemble
a i -q in g ,
uang
m a n d o lin player in im p e ria l ensemble
H u a i -z h i , m a n d o lin player in im p e rial ensemble

F a n -c h u o , player o f the clappers in im p e ria l ensemble
Li M o, scholar and amateur flute player

F ir st a n d Se c o n d C o u r ie r s
Fa r m e r
B l in d F o r t u n e t e l l e r a n d H is W
ife
St a t io n A t t e n d a n t
W
eaver
om an,
H e a v e n s D a u g h te r
goddess a n d star, p erm itted
to m eet her beloved O x h e rd once a year, o n the Seventh Eve o f the

seventh m o n th
T w o I m m o r t a l H a n d m a id e n s
O x h e r d , g o d a n d star, consort o f the W eaver
C h e n Y u a n -l i , officer in charge o f the im pe rial g uard
Guo C o n g -jin , an old peasant

G r a n n y W a n g , tave rn keeper
F ir st , Se c o n d , a n d T h ir d T r a v e l e r s , fro m Shan-xi
D a n c e h a l l G ir l
Nun, abbess of the Lodge of Maidenly Purity

T w o G u a r d ia n D eities
L ocal G od
Y a n g T o n g -y o u a w iza rd
974
PROLOGUE AND ARGUMENT (I)
Enter P r o l o g u e .
P r o lo g u e
On passions stage, in olden times as now,

whose hearts stayed true until the end?
If only lovers keep their faith
and never fail,
,
at last they will be joined again.
No separation troubles them,
though miles in thousands lie between
from north to south;
and life or death for two such hearts
is no concern.
I scorn those men
and women of this world
who complain
of harshness in their fate~
this is lack of love.
Love stirs even stone
and can turn
the Earth and Heaven.
It stands revealed in light of sun,
it lasts in histories.
Think of the loyal subject,
think of the filial child
all come to this because of love.
As Confucius did not cut away
the love songs of Zheng and Wei,
we set this law to melody.
And we have taken Tai-zhen
s Story,
new lyrics, new score,
which is love, and nothing more.
Bright Sovereign of the Tian-bao Reign,
his Consort Yang Yu-huan,
to meet were fated long before.
He let her bathe in Hua-qing Pool,
she then first felt his favors flood.
She prayed for skill on the Seventh Eve
in the Palace of Lasting Life,
where they swore the sweet vow
to be forever man and wife.
Her wondrous dance was just completed,
but ere the clear song was done,
from Fan-yang war drums boomed.
Then came the post station at Ma-wei;

the royal army would not go on:
for the rouged beauty, a last farewell.
His journey west was filled with pain
he could not bear the space between
the world below and this of mortal men.
The fortunate repentance of her errant soul
restored her to the gods5immortal roll.
And when the royal coach returned,
he meant to have her reinterred,
but only her perfume bag remained.
Heavens daughter pledged their reunion,
through a winged adept her love was conveyed
by inlaid box and golden hairpin sent.
Their story lasts on
of meeting in the palace of the moon
and of the dance called Rainbow Skirts
now shown upon the lyric stage.
The Tangs Bright Sovereign finds pleasure
in the feast where Rainbow Skirts is played;
the soul of Prized Consort Yang is severed
when the Yu-yang army rebels.
A wizard who went to the god
s great city
for a lunar meeting serves as guide;
The Weaver Star fulfills the vow
made in the Palace of Lasting Life.
DECLARATION OF LOVE (II)
E n ter the Tang
E m p e ro r X u a n - z o n g ,
fo llo w ed by Two E u n u c h s
E m p e r o r [sm gs ]
This mitered crown scrapes the sky, while I

sit on my southward-facing throne,
ruling by royal presence alone,
with hills and rivers joined as one
by sovereign Tang.
From cloudy heights the rain
restores the spring, and deep in palace grounds
the plants and trees breathe scent in unison.
An early morning levee in an age of peace
while spring is in such finery!
why should this hold me back from pleasure?
May I spend my lifes remaining days
in passions soft delights,
and I will not yearn for lands of gods
in white clouds.
976
The Qing Dynasty
[Recites]1
A blooming splendor enters harem gates,
and palace trees give off a springtime glow.
Heaven takes joy in seasonal accord,
men are in harmony, nothing goes amiss.
The Nine Songs extol politys priorities,
with Six Dances disperse the robes of court.
Now other amusements, Yang Terraces delight,
where last week the rain flew at twilight.
Iwho am now the Great Tangs Tian-bao Emperor, once rose up from
my princely estate, where I had waited biding my timeand took my own
place in the imperial succession. I have consistently chosen good men to
employ in my government, placing the likes of Yao Chong and Song Jing
in charge in the Hall of Audience. I have followed good advice as water
flows downhill, setting the likes of Zhang Jiu-ling and Han Xiu in my
ministries. I further am pleased that the atmosphere remains undisturbed
for thousands of miles along our frontiers, while among the common folk
rice is so cheap it costs three coppers a measure. It is truly the govern
ment of an age of peace, almost equal to the Zhen-guan Reign of my an
cestor Tai-zong. It has become customary to dispense with corporal pun
ishments, which makes my reign in no way inferior to the times of
Emperor Wen of the Han.
Recently, in leisure from my responsibilities, my feelings have found
an outlet in music and the attraction of women. Just yesterday I saw a
palace lady, one Yang Yu-huan, of a virtuous nature, soft and gentle, of
full-fleshed charms and striking beauty. Then I divined this lucky day to
enroll her in the harem as my Prized Consort. I have sent orders that she
be granted a bath in Hua-qing Pool and have commanded the palace
ladies Yong-xin and Nian-nu to wait on her and help her change. And
soon Gao Li-shi will bring her into my presence~that must be them com
ing now.
Enter G a o
and the Two P a l a c e L a d ie s holding fans,

leading the Consort Y a n g Y u - h u a n .
L i-sh i
[sings]\
I rejoice how favors flood descends
from Heaven upon me.
My bathing done and fully groomed,
I make haste to the bright regalia.
L ady Y ang
^ h e last three couplets of this poem are rearranged from an actual poem in five couplets by Xuanzong. Xuan-zong's original poem is set in summer and involves a banquet of officials. By rewriting
an opening couplet, Hong Sheng makes it spring and locates the scene in the harem.
977

P a la c e L a d ie s
In all Six Harems none have seen her,
and now at once they worry
they stand in lines on Golden Stairs

to steal a distant glimpse.
They arriveand
G a o L i -s h i
advances and kneels before the E m p e r o r .
G ao
Your humble servant Gao Li-shi salutes Your Majesty and begs to in
form you that Lady Yang, now formally registered as the Prized Con
sort, has arrived at the palace gates and awaits your instructions.
EmperorHave her come forward.

Gao His Imperial Majesty instructs the Prized Consort Yang to approach
the throne.
Lady Yang [coming forward and bowing]: Your Majestys Prized Consort
Yang Yu-huan salutes Your Majesty and wishes you everlasting life.
Eunuch AttendantRise now.

Lady Y a n g
Though of humble origin and plain appearance, I have been
selected for the harem. I was surprised to hear that I had been granted
such favor, and I
m so nervous Im afraid Im going fall to pieces.
EmperorYou are descendedfrom an eminent family and blessedwith both beauty

and virtue. My heart iswell content to receiveyou for servicein the bedchamber.
Lady YangLong live Your Majesty!
GaoRise now. [Lady Yang rises]
E m p e r o r H a v e t h e m set o u t th e b a n q u e t .
Gao Li-shi passes on the imperial instructions. Music is played within.

Lady Yang gives wine to the Emperor, and a Palace Lady gives
wine to Lady Yang. The Emperor is seated in the center, with
Lady Y a n g seated beside him.
E m p e ro r
[sings]:
Throughout this great realm everywhere

I sought a maiden pure and fair
to lead all ladies of the court.
This very morning Heaven granted me
s u c h lo v e lin e s s she t r u ly h a s n o p e e r
in all the Earth.

I do surmise
no other woman will share

my favor in Alabaster Palace,
and tablets of jade will bear

the titles of her praise;
three thousand beauties in powder and paint
must willingly yield to her.
A ll
And may this love stay full and fair
as Heaven lasts and Earth endures.
978
L a d y Y a n g [sings ]
Although I bask in commendation,

I brood a while in fear
that one so plain and lowly never dare
to join him in Peppered Chamber.
Receiving here such love and favor
parts me at once from mortal men.
I shall emulate:
Handmaiden Feng, who faced a bear,
protecting Hans Emperor Yuan,
and Lady Bans prudence refusing to share
a coach with Emperor Cheng
forever with scarlet stylus in hand,
a woman chronicler,
at my rulers side I will attend.
A ll

P a la c e Ladies [sing ]
In enjoying pleasure
I wonder who from this moment on
will be first in all the harem?
As with Flying Swallow, the Lady Zhao,
in the Palace of Shining Light,
whenever love and favor come,
they always fall on one alone.
So modestly decline no more
to dress yourself in a golden room,
or in jade mansions sing songs through,
or pass on flagons of cloudy brew
for thousands of years forever more.
A ll

E u n u c h s [sing ]
We look up and behold

sunlight circling dragon scales
pheasant tails shifting in clouds

delight shows on His Majestys face
before his new beauty freshly groomed
So keep the wine coming apace
whose scent blends with breeze of spring
through the palaces swirling.
Enjoy these things:
the round moons swaying gold,
tatters of cloud scattering lace,55
and dusk that draws on quickly where

clouds of many hues crowd
the imperial palace.
A ll
G ao
The moon has risen. It is time for Your Majesty to have the banquet
cleared.
E m p e r o r Lady Yang and I will stroll before the stairs and enjoy the moon
light for a while.
M usic w ithin . T h e E m p e r o r leads L a d y Y a n g fo r w a r d b y the h a n d w h ile the
others step back. They stand there together.
Emperor [s/wgs]
Down I come from the golden hall
more closely to study her features
by the lamplight of the moon,
no courtyard flower can compare
t o h e r s w e e t c o u n te n a n c e
as against me she gently presses.

The shadows of her tresses,
the rays upon her gown,
contrasts of dark and light display
her thousand full-fleshed charms.
[Laughs softly and faces L a d y Y a n g ]

The pleasures of this evening,
its cool breeze and shining moon,
bring laughter at the dream-rain
once darkening Gao-tang.
Lady Y a n g [sings]:
Companion of your revels,

from now on I am blessed to wait
attending on my Lord.
Standing a while on marble stairs,
Heaven speaks and comes the spring
whose scent enwinds the royal guard
and jade dew coldly soaks our garb.
Now I look around and peer
at golden palaces in tiers
where ducks joined in mated pairs
have settled for the night.
E m p e r o r Take the lanterns off to the Western Palace.
E unuchs
and P a la c e
L a d ie s ,
each holding a lantern, go offleading the E m
p e ro r and L a d y Y a n g .
980
The Qing Dynasty

A l l [singing ]
Flashing flames,
a thousand rows,
the crowding light of silver candles goes;
And when we turn to look
through beaded curtains drawn aslant,
a silver river of stars out there
faintly glows.
Through tiered walkways and winding halls
everywhere
the scented powder of petals
wafts upon the air.
How seems the night? The moon
stands high above the palms
of the statue Immortals of Bronze.
This is the night that reigns supreme
in beauty of spring weather,
red covers the azure screen,
and inside brocade clouds will be
a matched phoenix pair.
Bloom of Jasper, Trees of Jade,55
Night Moon and Spring River
each note sung in unison
as moonbeams pass the palace walls.
We lift the hanging arras of lace
and help the lovers, tipsy still,
into the orchid chamber.
G ao
We have reached the West Palace, Your Majesty.
E m p e r o r Let my attendants withdraw.
G ao : A spring breeze blows through lavender halls,
E u n u c h s And Heavens music from pearled mansions falls. [Exeunt attendants]
E m p e ro r [s/ngs]
Flame-plumes on the candle sway,

into the window moonlight shines,
let me now speak each particular
of love on this wonderful night.
T o g e th e r
Think not how this night drags on

in the harems other wings and halls.
P a l a c e L a d ie s
help the E m p e r o r a n d L a d y Y a n g change clothesthen exit.

The E m p e r o r and L a d y Y a n g seat themselves.
E m p e ro r
The silver candlesturning beams

scatter across your gauze and lace;
981

Lady Y a n g
where the royal scent is strongest

is the depth of love I bear.
E m p e ro r
This night throughout the harem

brooding brows will stare,
B o th
tomorrows rivals in singing

our Song of a Jewel Found.55
E m p e r o r Our vow to stay together through old age will begin from this very
night. [Takes a hairpin and box out of his sleeve] I brought this golden
hairpin and inlaid box as special tokens of our love.
[Sings]
This golden hairpin and inlaid box

with clustered jewels and medallions
of kingfisher plumes
have I guarded next to my heart
and have taken care to keep them
no matter what.
Tonight I give you this hair-pick:
to adorn your cloudlike coils of hair
with a phoenix pair
stuck in aslant.
And forever may this box:
stay hidden in your brocade sleeve,
tightly wrapped in scented silk.
May we be like those phoenixes,
in flight together, wing to wing;
may we be linked like the box pattern,
an interlocked love-knot of rings.
H e gives these to L a d y Y a n g a n d she receives them, w ith thanks.
L a d y Y a n g [s/wgs]
For the golden hairpin take my thanks,

and for the inlaid box,
and for the grace of your desire.
But I worry my plainness cannot repay
the drops of rain and dew that fall
from him who is Heavens Son. [Looks around]
But as I observe
phoenixes soaring and dragons that coil,
I do so love those heads
paired in infatuation,
and these twinned panels interlocked.
982
The Qing Dynasty
May our love be as.firm as this metal

may the hairpin be never divided,
may the box be always whole.
E m p e ro r
The pale light of the spring moon

shines on sprays of flowers, [Yuan Zhen]
Lady Y ang
this was the moment when first she received

the flood of royal favor. [Bo Ju-yi]
E m p e ro r
Ever leaning against this woman like jade,

the heart is intoxicated, [Yong Tao]
B o th
year after year and on forever

may we find joy here. [Zhao Yan-zhao]
BRIBE (III)
Enter A n
An
L u -s h a n
dressed like an archer, wearing a felt hat.
[sings]:
Hopes dashedI helplessly mourn
the promise my youth;
heartsick as well to fall,
trapped in the toils of law.
Yet ambitions beyond the common run
are hard to overawe,
and how can anyone quell
such surging savage energyrising a thousand yards?
Yet I had best endure the while.
[Recites]
My belly hangs down across my lap,
my strength can lift a thousand pounds;
shrewd enough and filled with schemes,
daring beyond all bounds.
Who would have thought such dragon-spawn
would willingly shrink from harm?
when rivers and seas seethe in my turmoil,
then men will shake in alarm.
Ah-shi-de prayed for a son on Ya-luo Mountain, she went home and gave
birth to me. Because of this she gave me the name Lu-shan, which sig
nifies Mountain of Fortune. At that moment rays of light filled her tent;
and the birds and beasts, chirping and yelping, all cowered and fled. I
later went with my mother when she was remarried to An Yan-yan, and
983
I took his surname, An. Know me then as An Lu-shan, native of Liucheng in Ying-zhou. I enlisted in the army of the regional commander,
Zhang Shou-gui, who thought I showed signs of remarkable things and
treated me as his foster son. He put me in charge of a strike force and
sent me off to assail the X i Tribes and the Khitan. But on one occasion
I grew overconfident and advanced carelesslyand my troops were
slaughtered and routed. Thanks to Commander Zhangs leniency and his
affection for me, I was not executed; but I have been sent under guard
to the capital to ask for imperial instructions in the case.
I reached the capital just yesterday, and it is not yet decided whether
things will go well or ill for me. But I am delighted that I have a sworn
brother here called Zhang Qian, who is an administrator in the office of
Chief Minister Yang Guo-zhong. Yesterday I paid off the officers es
corting meto set me free for a while. I asked Zhang Qian to take a bribe
to the Chief Minister, and he accepted my gifts. He told me to wait for
his answer, so I had better hurry ahead to see what will happen. [Walks
on\ Come on, Im not such a bad fellow~who would have thought I
would end up like this? It makes me really mad to think about it!
[Sings]
A wild dragon-serpent was I
just waiting to cleave the sea
and spill great rivers over their shore;
but now I
ve turned to a turtle,
out of the water, stuck in a jar
and this is what enrages me,
a trap that was sprung so suddenly
on a man of such daring and mettle.
Had I known that reverses in battle
would mean the headsmans ax,
I would rather have died in the desert
and escaped being bound in chains

both feet falling from under me.
Now I depend entirely
on gold changing hands in the dark,
to get me out of this pit.
And yet I reckon that Heaven
had purpose in making me
and would not, halfway along my course,
let me be broken for naught.
Now Ive reached the Ministers gate. Ill wait for Zhang Qian to come out.
Enter Z h a n g
Z
hang
Q ia n .
[recites]
The brother-in-law of our ruler
is ranked with the Three High Lords,
The Qing Dynasty
and Iof the Minister^ household,
hold an office of seventh degree. [Greets An]

Welcome, brother An! The Minister has accepted all your gifts and will
have you meet with him in the Ministry office.
An [bowing]: Thank you for taking care of things for me.
Z h a n g Since the Minister hasnt come out yet, lets go wait a while in my
office. Everything lies in the hands of him who in the Secretariat shapes
destiny .
A n to rescue a man who suffered reversals out in the frontier passes.
[Exeunt]
Enter Y a n g
G u o -z h o n g
with attendants.
[sings]
Her rise to glory is vaunted
within the palace grounds,
and royal favor extends
to homes of his marriage kin
brothers, sisters, and cousins all
receive His fond regard.
In the Secretariat I alone
hold power in the court:
the hands of men will be burned
by the blazing wind
of my authority.
Y a n g G u o -z h o n g
[Recites]
Rule of the kingdom comes to me,
it lies within my grasp,
eight Council seats, three Ministries
hold me in highest awe.
I leave the court in late afternoon
returning to my mansion,
then countless officials and underlings
bow in servility.
As uncle of the Prized Consort of the Western Palace, I
Yang Guo-zhong,
occupy the post of Minister of the Right and hold the rank of Minister
of Works. I share that imperial splendor which shines like the sun and
moon, and in my hands are commands that have the force of a thun
derstorm. [Chuckles] If I do engage in every excess and take whatever I
happen to desire, it is merely enjoying myself while I have the chance.
By taking bribes and amassing power I have the might to turn Heaven.
[To attendants] Leave me now. [Exeunt attendants]
Zhang Qian has just given me a report on a frontier general, one An
Lu-shan, who has been brought to the capital for punishment because
he lost a battle. He sent gifts to my office to get me to spare his life. It
985
seems to me that victories and defeats are quite normal for military men;
and if he happened to suffer a setback, the situation is forgivable.
[Laughs] So Ill spare his lifeits only because our court treasures its
human talents. But Fve ordered that he be brought to meet me to see for
myself.
Enter Zhang from behind.
ZhangZhang Qian reporting. An Lu-shan is waiting outside to meet you.

Yang Guo-zhongHave him come in.
Zhang
Yes, sir. [Exit]
Enter Zhang Qian, leading An Lu-shan in a blue robe and small felt hat
ZhangCome this way.

An [coming forward on his knees]: An Lu-shan, in disgrace
greets Your Ex
cellency with all humility.
Yang Guo-zhongYou may rise.

A n It is fitting that a condemned prisoner report to you on his knees.
Yang Guo-zhongZhang Qian has already explained your purpose in com

ing. Now tell me the particular circumstances of your offense.
A n Well, Your Excellency, heres what happened. I was carrying out or
ders to attack the X i and the Khitan . . .
Yang Guo-zhongStand while you explain.

An [rises and sings]:
Confident in our courage,
we charged into the fray,
no foe could stand in our way.
But their warriors caught us unaware
surrounded us that night.
And then we faced the naked blade,
our quivers bare.
Yang Guo-zhongHow did you get away?

An [replying] I cut a bloody path through the encirclement and fled.
[Sings]
A single horsea single spear,
I was lucky to escape
and now my only hope
that of past deeds consideration
and my small record might redeem
this grave transgression.
Yet never did I think today
Id face my execution! [Kowtows]
Show mercy, Your Excellency!
take pity on me!
Yang Guo-zhong [rising, sings]:

Breach of rulesloss of troops
touch statutes of the gravest kind;
The Qing Dynasty
and though I hold the reins of power
I dare not act as I please.

The punishment prescribed is clear
and hard to change. I fear

I have not the might to turn Heaven.
An [kneeling and weeping]: If only Your Excellency would help me, I will
live.
Yang Guo-zhong [smiling]

I may have some slight
power to persuade,
but herein lie devices
I cannot now explain.
An [kowtowing]Everything depends on Your Excellency taking personal
charge of the case!
Y a n g G uo- zh ong
All right. Wait until I go to court tomorrow, and Fll do
what seems best under the circumstances.
When the chance comes,

Ill open the net
and spare your life.
An [kowtowing]I am indebted to Your Excellencys great kindness. Per
mit me to repay you by being your horse, your spaniel. Fll take my leave
now.
Yang Guo-zhongZhang Qian, show him out.

Zhang [exiting with An Lu-shan]
'
Eyes now gaze for the victory pennant,

ears listen for welcome news. [Exeunt]
Yang Guo-zhong [thinking): It seems to me that this An Lu-shan is really

nothing but a minor frontier officer who has never been noted for any
particular accomplishments. If I make an exception in his case by cir
cumventing a death sentence and saving him, it will inevitably arouse His
Majestys suspicions. [Laughs] Ive got it! In his letter to the throne the
other day, Commander Zhang spoke of An Lu-shan
s knowledge of the
languages of the nomad tribes and his fine grasp of various military skills,
which made him suitable for employment as a frontier general. Ill drop
a hint in the Ministry of War to take this line, and then present a request
to His Majesty to have him summoned before the throne and examined.
In this process Ill take the opportunity to get an imperial decision in his
favor. Thats the best way.
The mettle to make all power ones own
is daring to the core, [Lu Zhao-lin]
one puts on a thousand faces
all in the blink of an eye. [Wu Rong]
To build a pile of yellow gold
may buy ones execution, [Li Xian-yong]
987
who knows but that selfish purposes

might even serve the common weal. [Du Xun-he]
In the intervening scene, the Emperor observes Lady Yang as she takes a daytime
nap. After she wakes, they go together to a pavilion. Yang Guo-zhong enters and
arranges an audience with the Emperor for An Lu-shan. Then the Emperor suggests
to Lady Yang that they go to the Bending River Park to view the peonies.
OUTING O N A SPRING HOLIDAY (V)
Enter the chief eunuch Gao Li-shi.
Gao [sings]:
In the harems exalted ranks
I hold the highest place,
I serve His Majesty personally

from dawn till the sun goes down.
Newly decked in formal gown
of gold, sableand jade,
in all my goings I enjoy
his special grace.
IGao Li-shi, the eunuch Commander of the Palace Horse Guard, am
charged with managing everything within the harem; and my power
looms over that of all other court officers. I take every opportunity to
suck out the very marrow of His Majestys wishes and to probe his
mind. By prudence and an ingratiating manner I have come to enjoy im
perial favor. Today is the holiday of the Third Day of the Third Month
and His Majesty, in the company of the Prized Consort, is going to pay
a visit to the Bending River Park. He has commanded me to summon the
Minister Yang Guo-zhong, as well as the Ladies of Qin, Han, and Guo,
to join the imperial retinue. I have to give them His Majestys instruc
tions.
[Recites]
To the Ward of the Marriage kin make known the word
that today He will grace Chang-yang Palace. [Exit]
Enter An Lu-shan in an official's cap and sash, followed by attendants.

An [sings]:
Since I sought protection
from a mighty clan,
the rain and dew of royal grace
have been renewed.
The one-time officer in chains delights to be
in service near the throne~

988
The Qing Dynasty
here someday
may daring purposes unfold.
Since I was restored to my post by His Majestys generosity, I have been
held in the highest favor. What most amuses him is my huge belly that
hangs down over my waist. One day I had an audience with the Emperor,
and he jokingly asked me what I had in there. And I answered, wOnly a
sincere and loyal heart. His Majestys face showed his great pleasure in
my answer, and from that time on he has placed increasing confidence
in me
promising that someday soon he will make me a prince. It has been
quite an extraordinary turn of events. All of you, leave me now. [Exe

unt entourage]
Today is the Third Day of the Third Month. The Emperor and Lady
Yang are going to visit the Bending River Park, with the Three Ladies
accompanying them. Every girl and gentleman of the city has gone to see
them. Im going to change into more comfortable clothes and ride off
there myself to have some fun.
Changes clothes, mounts horseand sets off.

No sooner am I through the gate than, lookhow the scented dust fills
the road, with horses and carriages like clouds. What a commotion! It
is as they say:
Drifting floss upon the road
entwines the drunken traveler,
singing birds behind the flowers
call to passers-by. [Exit]

Enter Two P r in c e s , a Young N o b l e m a n , and a Student,
all splendidly attired.
A l l [sing\i
People are roused by springs beauty,

and we adore
flower-filled breezes as if fanned,
squadrons formed by willow mist.
Whereer we pass
we see no trace
of the red dust
of the capitals lavender lanes. [They greet one another]
Good-day to you.
is the Purification Ceremony and were going to the Bend
ing River to enjoy ourselves.
P r in c e s Today
Young Nobleman and StudentI wonder if that group of carriages over

there is the Three Ladies coming. We had better hurry. [They walk on,
singing]
A tumultuous cavalcade
of broidered curtains, coaches fine,
989
wound with kingfisher feathers and pearls.

Rival attractions, each
trying to catch preeminence.
Billowing tendrils of musky scent
and orchid borne on the wind,
you can tell them even far away
by their colorful gowns and pendants glint. [Exeunt]

Enter the Lady of Han in an embroidered gown, the Lady of Guo in a
white gown, and the Lady of Qin in a scarlet gown, each riding
in a coach followed by servants and maids-in-waiting.
A l l [sing]
Here is our array:

clouds of figured gauze
a contest of enchantment,
each making brave display
of wispy tresses and jet black brows.
Graced with royal favor, we
have come together to survey
springtime at the river
by particular decree.
H an Ithe Lady Han . . .
Guo and Ithe Lady Guo
Q in: .. . and Ithe Lady Qin

T o g e t h e r ..
. have received a summons to visit the Bending River. So lets

be quickly on our way.
ServantsYes ma?am.
Ladies [sing]
Crimson wheels
crush scented sward,
where earrings lost and hairpins dropped
lie mingled with the fallen flowers.
Such is our glorious lot
the kin-by-marriage now will join
the royal retinue,
advancing bevies of palace finery. [Exeunt]
Enter An Lu-shan on horseback; catches sight of the

Three Ladies leaving.
A n [sings]:
Such marvels!
W ith a turning glimpse I see
unparalleled divinity,
that in an instant holds the soul in thrall.
They go in coaches so remote
it maddens me I cant approach.
990
The Qing Dynasty
I was on my way to the Bending River, when I had the good fortune to
run into the Three Ladies. Each single one of them has a divine beauty.
They can claim to be the fairest of the land. Emperor of Tang~you al
ready have Lady Yang, and now on top of that you have these three sis
ters of hers. Now, thats the life!
This, my critical observation:
when all the fairest flowers belong to one,
we understand
the majesty of Heaven's Son.
Ill just gallop forward and get a full view once.
Gazing into the dust before me
these hungry eyes see but a blur
I
ll have to keep urging my horse ahead.
Gallops ahead. Enter Attendant, who blocks his way.
AttendantHey! His Excellency the Minister is here! Who dares push his
way through so brazenly?
Enter Y ang G u o - z h o n g on horseback.
Y a n g G u o - z h o n g Whats causing
all the fuss?
Yang Guo-zhong and An Lu-shan look at one another.

An Lu-shan turns his horse and hastily exits.
AttendantI just met this man who was brazenly pushing his way through
here on horseback, so I blocked his way.
Yang Guo-zhong [laughing]: That was An Lu-shan who just rode off. But
why did he get out of here so quickly when he caught sight of me?
[Thinks it over] Where are the carriages of the Three Ladies?
AttendantJust ahead.
Yang Guo-zhongI see! How dare that scum An Lu-shan behave with such
rudeness!
[Sings]
An outrage!
insolence to royal kin,
rudely pushing above his station
to join the scented carriages.
Sudden fury swells within,
I scarcely can contain it.
Tell the entourage to form a tight circle around those carriages and to
drive off all idle onlookers. [They do as he says]

Hurry now, do not delay~
use golden whips to clear the way
and pursue with well-wrought saddles
their painted wheels.
991

A tte n d a n t
Ye who pass, take care!
come not too close, and fear

lest you provoke the Ministers ire. [Exeunt omnes]
Enter Peasant Woman, Homely Girl, Flowerseller, and Young Squire.
Women [sing]
Our fresh finery
gives us some glamour,
yokels are we,
peculiar our manner,
yet we can love
how sweet-smelling grasses
stick to skirts,
how the wildflowers
pile in our tresses.
They meet.
Peasant WomanAre you all on your way to visit the Bending River?
OthersThat5s right. Both the Emperor and his lady are there today, and
were all going to have a look.
Homely G irlThey say that the Emperor dotes on his lady just as if she
were a jewel. I wonder which of the two of us is prettier. [Flowerseller
laughs; Young Squire eyes the Homely Girl] And why are you look
ing at me so boldly?
Young SquireI was just noticing that your face has some jewels of its own.
Homely G irlWhat jewels?
Young SquireWell, your eyes are an inlay of cats-eye; your forehead is dec
orated with streaks like the banded agate; the beeswax yellow of amber
adorns your teeth; and of coral are your lips carved.
The Peasant Woman laughsthe Homely Girl hits the Young Squire
with her fan.
Homely G irlYou can just babble on, but yousve got no jewels at all.
Young SquireWho says?
Homely G irlBut your backdoor is like a silver mine~so many people
have been working to open up a pit in it!
Peasant WomanQuit joking around. Ive heard that when the carriages of
the Three Ladies pass by, they drop things all along the way. Lets hurry
up and see if we can find something.

Homely G irlLets get going.
They walk on, the Homely G irl flirtatiously teasing the Young Squire.
Together [sing]
Slowly rises the gentle breeze
and sweeps the clouds through sunlit skies,

992
The Qing Dynasty
once carriages so plush pass by,

springtime comes to plants and trees.
Young SquireMaybe well find something if we look around in the grass
here.
FlowersellerWell, Ive got to go now.

By crimson gates and fancy kiosks to cry
with all my heart:

Flowers for sale! Come buy! Come buy!
Exit Flowerseller, crying, Flowers for sale; others continue looking and
each finds something.
Homely G irl [to Peasant Woman]What did you find?

Peasant WomanA hairpin.
Homely Girl [inspecting it]: Its gold! And its got a tiny scarlet gemstone
on top. What luck!
Peasant Woman [to Homely Girl]What about you?

Homely G irlA single phoenix slipper.
Peasant WomanThats nice. Why dont you try it on?
Homely G irl [stretching out her foot to compare the size]: Phooey! I couldn
t even get a toe in it! But I will take this pearl off the tip. [Picks off the
pearl and throws the slipper away]
Young SquireLet me keep that.
Homely G irlYoure really going to keep that thing? Let me take a look at
what you picked up.
Young SquireIts a golden box wrapped in a scarf of merman lace.
Homely Girl [taking it and looking inside]: Hey, there are thin wafers, all
black and yellow, with a slightly sweet smell_ Ill bet theyre aphrodisi
acs!
Young Squire [laughing]It
s aromatic tea.
Homely G irlLet me give it a taste. [She and Peasant Woman chew some
then each spits it out]
Peasant WomanYechits bitter! How can anyone eat that?
Young Squire [taking it back]Cut it out. Lets all go on ahead. [They walk
on]
Together [sing]
Its the time for idle butterflies and bees,
willow-welcomed, lured by flowers
gazing where waters downward spill
from Dragon Tower
Bending River is drawing near.
Exeunt Young Squire and Peasant Woman

the Homely Girl is left behind alone.
Homely Girl [shouting]Wait a minute! Ive got to pee bad. Ill just piss a
little hole in the sand over here. [Exit]
993
Enter the T h r e e
L a d ie s
with
A ttend an ts
and M
a id s .
Ladies [sing]-.
Scent in clothes, scent of flowers,
odors mingle wantonly;
oriole voices, voices laughing
heard faintly mixed together.
See willow catkins shed their snow,
covering white duckweed,
pair by pair the bluebirds go,
bearing garlands of fallen red.
O f springs bright weather
two parts in three are gone,
in the slowing light of the lovely sun
our carriages hurry ahead.
AttendantMy Ladies, we have come to the Bending River.
H an Where is His Excellency the Minister?
A t t e n d a n t His Imperial Majesty is in Spring Prospect Palace, and His Ex
cellency the Minister has gone ahead there.
Ladies Han, Qin, and Guo get down from their carriages.
L a d ie s Isnt
this a lovely scene, after all!
[Sing]
Around the Bending Rivers shores
around the Bending Rivers shores
red petals tipsy, evenly spreading green.
By the Bending Rivers waters,
by the Bending Rivers waters,
new reeds grow and willow leaves are fine.
Enter Gao Li-shi with a young eunuchhe reins in his horse.

Gao [recites]
Royal decree brings a peach-spotted horse

chomping its bit of jade,
as mount on which to seat a skirt
with gilded butterflies. [Greets them]
A decree given orally by His Imperial Majesty: The Ladies Han and Qin
are to be granted a feast in one of the detached villas. Lady Guo is ordered
to ride this horse to the palace, where she will join Madam Yang for a feast.
Ladies [kneeling] Long live His Majesty! [They rise]
Gao [to Lady Guo]Please mount up.

Guo [s/gs]:
Inner Household officer
pressing me so urgently.
Sisters, I leave you alone now
and approach the royal breeze of spring.
The Qing Dynasty
Qin and Han [sing]

Not for nothing did you paint
pale moth-wing brows
to meet His Exalted Majesty.
Exit Lady Guo on horseback, led by Gao Li-shi.
QinLook how our sister, as favored as Empress Pei, rides off with a snap
of her whip.
HanLet her do as she will.

MaidW ill their Ladyships please come now to the villa to dine.
Pink peaches and sapphire willows,
spring in the festival hall, [Shen Quan-qi]
Han
spring excursions are of a piece,
their experience shared by all. [Zhang E]
Qin
Yet I would enjoy an Emperors love
and pleasure beyond all bounds, [Wu Ping-yi]
Together
and facing breeze I laugh apart
at those of springtimes splendid light. [Du Mu]
In the intervening scenes, the Emperor's interest in the Lady Yang's sister, the Lady
Guo, leads to a rift between him and Lady Yang, and between the sisters. In a pique,
the Emperor sends Lady Yang back to her home, but then is overcome with remorse.
When Lady Yang sends him a token of her love, the Emperor has her recalled.
OM EN (X)
Enter Guo Zi-yi, in turban, wearing a sword.

Guo [recites]
No one understands my mind
my purpose fair and bold,
this sword my sole protection
and my whole livelihood.
When all the world is set aright
and troubled times repaired,
that is the moment all will see
that I am a real man.
I am Guo Zi-yi from Zheng County in Hua-zhou. I have mastered the
lore of warfare, and I am equally well versed in questions of policy. My
aims are to bestride the whole earth and leave a legacy of peace and sta
bility in the kingdom. Now, with the military examinations behind me,
I have come to the capital to await selection for a post. But I find myself
995
here at a time when Yang Guo-zhong is secretly abusing his power and
An Lu-shan is enjoying an excess of imperial favor. The authority of the
court will soon have been abused beyond all repair. Still, without even
a minor postI dont know when I will be able to exert all my efforts on
behalf of the court.
S in g s ]
A mans bold thoughts must find expression;

I am not one who looks up and cries,
afraid that the sky will fall.
Yet I despise
that swallow-kind
nesting complacently in the hall
not one among them spies
the ravens on the roof.
They take no care
of the tiger penned or caged bear,
in temples they let the rats run wild,
let foxes make lairs in the wall.
Ilike Zu Di long ago,
when I hear the roosters crow,
often rise to dance at night,
resolved to save the state from peril.
I think of frequent rise and fall
of dynasties since time began
Ill make my deeds of glory known
to last within the world
and never let my name grow old
among woodsmen and fishermen.
And now that Fve reached the Chang-an market, Im going to get drunk.
[Walks on]
I slowly pace the royal streets
for brief respite from brooding cares
and from my travels to find ease.
Jostling crowds go to and fro
reeling like drunks that cant stand straight~
Not here we find that lord of Chu,
singing as he walks his way,
the only sober man?2
2The reference here is to Qu Yuan, who wrote in "The Fisherman'':
The whole of this age is filthy,
and I alone am clean.
The crowds of men are all drunk,
and alone am sober.
996
The Qing Dynasty
I look for a like-hearted companion,

but I am discouraged now to find
the fisherman Tai-gong is gone,
tiger-shooting Li Guang is far,
dog-butcher Fan Kuai is no more.3 [Exit]
Enter Tavern Waiter.

W
[recites]
This tavern that I run
is of the highest class:
no credit for oaths and forfeits,
you
ve got to pay your bill.
As long as you have cash enough,
be my guest and drink,
but if youre broke, I will not waste
even a drop of water.
a it e r
Im a waiter in the great Xin-feng Tavern in the Chang-an market. Our

tavern lies right between the east and west market districts, where crowds
of people are always passing in both directions. Everyone comes to our
tavern to have a few drinkspeople from the city and outsiders, princes
and lords, officials and market folk, military men and commoners. Some
just buy a drinksome order food with their drinks; some buy wine and
take it off with themsome bring their wine and drink it inside. I
m al
ways taking orders. But here comes another customer.
Enter Guo Zi-yi.
Guo [sfwgs]:
I gaze afar on green willows
swept aslant at the corners
of painted mansions,
blue tavern banners rattling,
they dance away from the breeze~
I wish I could find some Jing Ke,
who drank in the market of Yan,
to come share my wine with me.4
3This is a rather heterogeneous assortment of exemplary figures of antiquity to whose company Guo
Zi-yi feels suited. Tai-gong or Lu Shang was an aging fisherman when discovered by King Wen and
made an important minister in the rise of Zhou. Li Guang was one of the greatest of the Western
Han generals against the Xiong-nu. Fan Kuai, originally a dog butcher, was an important early West
ern Han minister.
4Jing Ke was the retainer-assassin of Prince Dan of Yan and serves as the type of hero that Guo Z i
yi would like to know.
[Calls out] Waiter!
Waiter [welcoming him ] Do come insir, and have a seat upstairs.

Guo [climbing stairs] This is really a nice tavern.
. [Sings]
Spacious windows and balconies,
the sunlight clear, refreshing breeze,
and on stucco walls all around
are frescoes of the drunken gods.
WaiterDo you want something to drink now or are you waiting for some
one?
Guo Fll have a few drinks by myself. Do you have some good wine for me?
WaiterIndeed we do. [Brings wine] Here it is.

Voice [calling from within]Waiter! Come here! [Waiter exits in a hurry]
Guo [drinkingsings]
No magistrate Tao Qian am I
idle and fond of wine,
nor do I ape the rude Guan Fu,
mastered by his cups,
headlong drinking made him
overbearing, rough*
My sober eyes stay open wide
does anyone take note?
I wonder if the Land of Drink
is deep enough to let me in?
I listen to the hubbub here
of streets and shops,
and one of Gao-yangJs drinkers
is lonely and quite lost. [Gets up to look]
Enter eunuchs and officialsall sumptuously attiredfollowed by servants

carrying golden coins and wineand leading sheep. They circle the stage and
exeunt. Enter W a i t e r with wine.
J
WaiterHeres warm winesir.

Guo I have a question for you, waiter. Where were those officials outside
going?
W a ite r
Drink up while I tell you. His Imperial Majesty has made a gift
of newly built mansions to the Minister Yang Guo-zhong, and to the

three Ladies of Han, Guo, and Qin. These four compounds were built
adjoining one another in the Xuan-yang Quarter, and all are modeled
on the building style of the imperial palace. These days if one of those
families builds something, they want it to be better than their neigh
bor^. And when the neighbor builds, he wants it to be still better than
the first familys building. If someone sees that his neighbor has built
something splendid, he will tear down his own house and build anew.
And he wont rest until he
s sure that he has something as good as his
998
The Qing Dynasty
neighbor. A single hall can cost upward of ten million strings of cop
per cash. Today the work has been completed on the Yangs5mansions,
and all the great and small officials of the court are taking presents of
sheep and wine. Everyone was passing by here on their way to offer
congratulations.
Guo [shocked]Can this be true?
W a i t e r Let me go see to warming
some more wine for you.
Guo [sighing]: This is what happens when the favor that the Emperor shows
his in-laws reaches such degree!
[Sings]
No common clan should arrogate
the privilege of the throne
in contests of extravagance,
vain show of earth and wood.
Here grandees gladly scamper off
to bend their servile waists,
rivals to reach the gates of power
like thronging to a fair.
W ill no one stand before the throne
and tell the way the people feel?

Their sapphire and vermilion tiles
are all smeared with blood.
[Rises]
I suddenly find my heart is filled with fury the wine has gone to my
head without my realizing it. Let me steady myself by taking a look

at the walls. [Looks] On this wall here someone has written some
lines of poetry in small characters. Let me have a look. [Reads them
out]
Yan
s market stands deserted,
from Han Pass no horse returns.
Should you meet a ghost beneath the hill,
tie her gauze robes on a ring.
This is really quite strange!
Here my eyes came to rest,

and line by line I read it out
from the first.
Considered carefully, this poem
hardly foretells a happy lot.
Let me see who wrote it. [Reads on] Written by Li Xia-zhou. That
name is quite familiaryes, thats itI

ve heard of a soothsayer named
Li Xia-zhou, who knows all that has passed and all things to come. He
must be the one.
999
[Sings]
Herein are things best left unsaid,

hidden in enigmatic words,
but now we have no Master Du
to solve the riddle of the verse.5
Perhaps this was some drunken scrawl,
the hands whim, a tangled flight
of crows across the wall.
[Noise offstage, Guo calls] Waiter!
Enter Waiter.
WaiterWhat do you want, sir?

Guo Why is there so much noise below?
WaiterIf you just look down from the window, you can see for yourself.
Guo looks out. Enter A n L u - s h a n , mounteddressed as an imperial prince
with attendants clear the way before him. He circles the stage and exits.
Guo Who was that?

W aite r [laughing]
Didnt you see his huge belly? That was An Lu-shan. He
is a particular favorite of His Majesty and once was even permitted into
the imperial section of the Golden Rooster Tent. Today His Majesty en
feoffed him as the Prince of Dong-ping. He has just now left court after
thanking the Emperor for his kindness, and now he is headed back to
his new mansion outside Dong-hua Gate, which brings him past our es
tablishment.
Guo [shaken with anger]: So this is An Lu-shan! What did he ever accom
plish that he should so suddenly be made a prince? I can read the signs
of treachery on this dogs face. This will surely be the person who will
bring war upon the whole world.
[Sings]
I see what he is:

a savage-heartedhalf-breed, sheep-herding slave,
the bees eyes and jackals voice show
a crafty schemer for sure.
How could they bring such a wild wolf
into the house to dwell?
dont they see how this fulfills
the prophecy on the wall?
He and the Emperors marriage kin
the whole lot show signs of witchery.
WaiterWhat has gotten you so upset, sir?
5Du Da-bo was the proverbial figure in vernacular literature of someone who could solve poetic
riddles.
1000
The Qing Dynasty
Guo [sz*gs]:
I canst help
this spreading, prickling chill
that makes my hairs to stand on end
against my cap,
and this searing rage that heaves
swelling in my breast,
again and again I turn my eyes
to the rare sword that clinks at my waist.
W a i t e r Please calm down,
sir. Let me bring you another jug.
Guo
Even if I emptied a thousand cups
and drank down a hundred jugs,
it would still not free me
from this engulfing weight of care.
W
PH drink no more. Here, take the money for the wine.

[taking money]:
For others it is
A few cups can calm a host of ills.
but in your case:
One outburst stirs a thousand cares. [Exit]
a it e r
Guo Z i-yi descends the stairs and walks along.

Guo Fll go back to my lodgings for a while.
[Sings]
I see the tangled situation of the times,
it strikes me to the heart with pain.
I came on cryptic lines
of prophecy within a poem
two things I cannot grasp
Heavens will and minds of men~
which sets me to futile brooding,
and knits my brows in furrows.
I see now the sunlight sink to dusk
as I rcach my dreary inn,
lost and bewildered.
Goes into lodgings and sits. Enter B o d y g u a r d . Greets him.
BodyguardAn announcement has come from court, master.

Guo [reading it]:
Ministry of Military Affairs:
Regardingofficial appointment
His Imperial Majesty instructs that Guo Zi-yi be posted to the
Tian-de Army.
1001
My orders have come through. Ill have to get my things packed right
away and set off for my post immediately. [Bodyguard sets to work]
Though the post is low and the duties minor, from now on I can at least
do my best for the court.
[Sings]
Like the fish in a foot of water
I still can stretch my fins,
like the bird caught among hawthorns
I still can spread my wings.
I rejoice that it is my lot
to spurn the clouds and rise
to Heavens avenues,
at last I will set the universe aright,
and I intend
a legacy of glorious deeds
to last a million years.
And though foul witcherys abroad,
I can do no less than on these shoulders bear
the sun and moon,
and with my own hand
prop up the Great Tang.
My horses hooves have trod the dust
several years for naught, [Hu Su]
but always a man of daring
will seize the crucial spot. [Si-kong Tu]
A low official, on his own,
blocked from the starry heights, [Wang Jian]
yet I wonder who else there is
to worry for our land. [Lii Wen]
THE MUSIC (XI)
Enter Chang E with attendant Han Huang.
Chang E [sings]
The finest nights lie under the sway
of my clear beams alone,
unsullied by the dusts least mote
since time began.
Windborne dews are strewn
through crystal air
and splash the moons silver rays, in a stream
of faintly tossing notes
of music of the gods.
1002
The Qing Dynasty
[Recites]
I pound the herbs of lasting life
far from the changing eons dust,
a clear and alluring countenance,
by nature pure, by nature true.
Look carefully among the clouds
where Heavens scented blossoms fall
there I rest in this single orb
by the gray-green Cassia Tree.
IChang Ehave always been mistress of the Supreme Yin. The legend
that I was once the wife of Hou Yi is a baseless rumor. This many-jeweled orb has lasted for thirty-six thousand years, a radiantly glowing
wheel of one thousand and two hundred miles. Here the Hare of Jade
and the Silver Toad produce a perfect jewel of everlasting brightness. And
here too the White Elm and the Cinnabar Cassia have been planted to
bring forth wondrous blooms forever. We have a piece of the music of
the gods, Coats of Feathers, Rainbow Skirts
long kept secret in the
moon-palace and never passed down to the world of mortal men. But
now in that realm below there is a Tang Son of Heaven who loves music
and can truly understand it. His consort, Yang Yu-huan, was, in her for
mer life, the Jade Consort of Peng-lai, the Isle of the Gods, and she used
to come visit the moon. I am, planning to summon her soul here in dream
and let her listen to this melody once again; then when she wakes, Fll
make sure she remembers it and puts it down in notation for string and
wind instruments. In the end the music of the gods in Heaven will linger
as a lovely tale among mortal men. Wonderful! Come here, Han-huang!
Han-huangHere I am.
E I want you to go to the harem of the Tang palace and bring the
soul of Yang Yu-huan here in dream to listen to a melody. When the
melody is done, take her back to where she was before.
H a n - h u a n g Yes, madam.
Chang E [recites]:
As she peacefully rests on her pillow
let her dream that she visits the gods
and secretly be taught the notes
of millennial melody.
Ch ang
H a n - h u a n g By your
orders, Lady, I will now leave the moon-palace and
go off to the palace of Tang. [Goes offsinging]

Glowing, the River of Light arcs down,
stars flash faintly, thickly strewn.
I peer to the world of dust below
and see but scented fog and haze.
I have left our Jade Precincts,
orderly and clear; I let
1003
my pendants toss their windborne rays

and robes on colored wisps throw light,
as I tread with tiny pace
stepping stones of reddish cloud.
I will take the music of Heaven
to give to the harems queen
and secretly summon her sweet soul
into the sparkling Moon.
Here I am in the womens quarters of the Tang palace.
See the fish-form locks shut fast

and the dragon-arras drawn
there Yang the Consort lies asleep,
like a cherry-apple bloom,

heightening her charm.
Softly now Ill wake her
clinging to her icy bed. [Calling]
Get up, my Lady.
Enter L a d y
ang
as a dreaming soul.
L a d y Y a n g [sm g s ]
I was just enjoying the cool of night,

fatigued feom bouts of clouds and rain55
I was drifting into tipsy sleep,
still wearing my powder and paint.

H a n - h u a n g Come,
my Lady.
Lady YangWho is that calling to me from under the eaves so deep in the
harem?
[Sings]
This surely is no palace maid with news

who comes so lightly to these painted eaves.
H
Quickly, madam!
[stretching wearilysings]:
Charmingly hesitant, groggy I stretch
a n -h u a n g :
Lady Y
ang
and ever so slowly open the drapes.

[Coming out, she meets Han-huang] Oh, its a palace lady!
Han-huang [sings]
I am not from Chang-men Palace,
in service there because I was spurned.
L a d y Y a n g If you are not a palace lady, then perhaps you are some beauty
from separate apartments.
H
a n -h u a n g
NoI am not ranked among

those Concubines called Fair-of-Face
who once did catch the eye of the throne.

1004
The Qing Dynasty

L a d y Y a n g Then
H a n - h u a n g I
who are you?

am the handmaiden in the moon, and my name is Han-
huang,
[Sings]
so my name is on the registers

of the Alabaster Palace
and the moons great galleries.
Lady YangYou
re an inunortal from the moon! Why have you
come here?
H
a n -h u a n g
[sings]
Pve just now come on instructions

of the goddess Chang E herself
to ask you to come and dispel the heat
under Cassia Palace's flowers.
L a d y Y a n g Amazing!
Han-huangNo need to hang back, my Lady. Come with me now and Ill
take you there.
Together [sing]
We head off into sapphire space,
and gradually beneath our feet
the clouds appear;
we pace
upon blue wisps, the winds
play gently in the listening ear.
Now eyes first fix
on dangling stars
that seem within the fingers grasp,

and soon we see the shimmering glow
the images of a palace
sunk within a mirror.
L a d y Y a n g Strange!
It's midsummer. Why is it so chilly here?
Han-huangThese are the lunar precincts of the Supreme Yin, known in

the world of mortal men as the Palace of Spreading Cold. Please come
in.
Lady Yang [delighted]: Just imaginehere I am, a person of gross corpo
real substance and ordinary looks, who this evening gets to visit the lunar
precincts. I
m really lucky.
[Moves aheadlooking aroundsings]
To visit such a splendid site

brings me such satisfied delight!
[Thinking it over] And yet it seems I have seen all these sights sometime
before.
1005
[Sings]
Circling these pavements of jade,
winding under the sapphire eaves,
vistas vaguely familiar
leave me wondering.
Isn
t that cassia over there blooming too early?
Han-huangThis is the Cinnabar Cassia of the moon, ever in flower all the
year long, scented in leaf and bloom.
Lady Yang [examining it] Such lovely flowers!

[Sings]
Insatiate observer,
pleasures multiply.
Golden blooms unfurl,
joined with azure leaves.
Swelling fragrance in the air
penetrates the gown
of someone hidden here away
in the Cassias shade.
[Music is played offstage] Look at the troupe of immortal maidens in pale

jackets and red skirts coming out from under the cassia playing music.
So beautiful to the ear!
Han-huangThis is the melody MCoats of Feathers, Rainbow Skirts.
Enter between four and eight Immortal M aidens, wearing white jacketsred
skirts, cloud-brocade capesnecklaces, and trailing sashes, each playing music
and singing as they circle the stage. Lady Yang and Han-huang stand off to
the side, watching.
Immortal M aidens {sing]

Bringing Heavens music,
clustered flowers compete
each to be the choice,
swishing skirts of rainbow
soaking in the dew.
Far cut off from times slow passage
in the worlds red dust,
here expressed is pure enchantment
of alabaster terraces.
But though the agile tongue may trill the pipes
and slender marble fingers pluck the strings
with harmonies increasing,
we waken not the nightmare dream
in the world of mortal men,
nor do we halt
the motion of the water-clock
in palaces of Heaven.
1006
The Qing Dynasty
On her pillow she visits gods,

and hearing the coda the melodies end,
gift to one who can understand
music, to transcribe again. [Exeunt]
L a d y Y a n g This music is so wonderful!
Its purity and tenderness touch my
very soul. This is really something not to be found in the mortal world.
[Sings]
I seem to have seen beauteous forms,
a company of fairy maids,
in a blur, in a haze;
I heard their clear notes to the end,
they linger still in mind.
I count each ringing of the chime,
I count each ringing of the chime,
and plunder every syllable
with light tap of my phoenix shoe,
and following the shifts in key,
1
I catch the melody,
marking it by fingertip.
My cheeks, embarrassed, glow
how foolishly I thought well
of charm I had in song
and dancing skill,
now humbled by comparison
to dignified performance here
of Heavens tune.
W ould it be possible to meet the Moon Queen?
is still too soon for you to meet the Moon Queen. And now
the sky is gradually growing bright. It is time for you to go back to your
palace.
H a n - h u a n g It
[Sings]
But you should keep in mind
that you found your way to the moon.
Lady Yang
Without a flaw will I recall
new notes of melody.
Han-huang
Its just too bad that half the night
you had to leave the king to sleep alone. [Exit Lady Yang]
Yang the Prized Consort has gone back to the Tang palace. I had better
go find my Lady the Moon Queen and report to her on my mission.
Sapphire tilesbeech balustrades,
halls of the moon drew open, [Cao Tang]
10 0 7
and take then the bright moonlight

to send you on your way. [Ding Xian-zhi]
Though permitted that Heavens music
be heard by mortal man, [Li Shang-yin]
now mortal man is hurried along
by drops of the water-clock. [Huang Tao]
In the following scene, Lady Yang appears writing out the score of the music she
heard in the moon. While Lady Yang goes to change her clothes, the Emperor comes
in and catches sight of the score. Lady Yang returns, and in the ensuing discussion
the Emperor tells her that Guo Zi-yi ("Omen") has been given a frontier command.
The Emperor then suggests that her composition be rehearsed by the musicians of
the imperial music academy for performance.
In the next scene, Yang Guo-zhong and An Lu-shan have a violent quarrel, after
which each denounces the other to the Emperor. To prevent further conflict between
his two favorites, the Emperor appoints An Lu-shan to take over the northeastern mil
itary command at Fan-yang.
MELODY-THEFT (XIV)
Enter Y o n g - x i n and N i a n - n u with the score in hand.

Y o n g - x i n [s /n ^ s ]
The score of Rainbow Skirts is done,

N
ia n -n u
{joining in]
deep behind the latticed windows

she copied out the secret textand then,
with perfumed throat and mouth like jade,
she had us learn this perfect tune.
Yong-xinAfter my Lady produced a new score of Rainbow Skirts
she taught it to the two of us.6 Soon His Majesty will visit Hua-qing
Palaceand when he does, Rainbow Skirts will be performed. We
have been commanded to give the score to Li Gui-nian in Chao-yuan
Tower and show him the particulars of how it is to be performed. He
then will have the members of the Pear Garden Ensemble rehearse it
every night.
Nian-nuWe have already taught them the whole prelude, and they have
that down. Today we should teach them the central movement.
Yong-xinJust look at the moonlight tonight, like waterperfect for per
forming music! Its time to take the score off to the tower.
T
og ether
[walking on]
Just now the cool moon rises

over the high tower,
6Chinese musical notation was less precise than Western notation. A score was accompanied by
instruction in its performance.
1008
The Qing Dynasty
drapes are furled in sweet south wind,

shining upon crystal.
Such clear heights suit perfectly
notes of fairy music
from halls of Spreading Cold. [Exeunt]
E n te r L i Gui-nian, a gray-w hiskered old manhead o f the im perial
music ensemble.
Li Gui-nian [sings\\
My name long known as court musician,
now in old age with new promotion,
Conductor of the Ensemble.
On call from dawn to dusk
I serve my shift in the Inner Court.
Previously but a common musician, ILi Gui-nian, received His
Majestys appointment to head the Music Academy of the Pear Gar
den. Lady Yang has recently composed a new melody called Rainbow
Skirts, and Yong-xin and Nian-nu have been instructed to teach me
how to execute the score. We are learning to play it in Chao-yuan
Tower, for it is to be performed very soon. We have to do a rush re
hearsal every night. I had better call my fellow musicians to get going.
Where are you?
Enter Ma Xian-qi, chime player.
M a X ian-qi [recites]:
When chimes are played by Xian-qi,
amazement strikes the very gods,
Enter Lei Hai-qing, mandolin player,7
Lei Hai-qing
the iron pick strives to commend
Lei Hai-qing.
Enter He Huai-zhian elderly mandolin player with a white beard.
H e H uai-zhi:
The mandolin of aging He
dominates the stage,
Enter H
uang
Fa n -c h u o ,
clapper player.
Huang Fan-chuo
I, Fan-chuo, born a Huang,
am master of the clappers.
7Lei Hai-qing played an unusual mandolin with a stone bridge, crane-tendon strings, and an iron
pick.
1009
All greet Li Gui-nian.

T o g e t h e r Here
Li
we are, sir.
Now, gentlemen,
G u i- n ia n Welcome.
[Sings]
Our Ruler has given us commands
to rehearse Rainbow Skirts with speed
and take no break.
Yong-xin and Nian-nu, lovely maids,
have brought the short, corrected score,
marked for the red ivory clapper,
and how they wait in the moonlight
in Chao-yuan Tower.
E n s e m b le In that case we had best get going.
L i Gui-nian [s/ngs]
Together then, gentlemen. [They walk on]

W ith the water-docks slow dripping
the cool of night comes on,
we will work through this new music
until we get it right,
we will work through this new music
until we get it right. [Exeunt omnes]
Enter Li M o, in scholar's garb.

Li M o [sings]:
I indulge youths uncurbed stirrings,
the imp of romance prods me on
to shape my heart through the wondrous truth
that lives in melody.
Ive heard tell this very night
in the precincts of Peng-lai Palace
a new song will be played
from a wondrous score transcribed.
Though originally from the SouthlandI
ve been staying here in the cap
ital. Ever since youth Ive been expert in the rules of music and am par
ticularly well known for my mastery of the iron flute. I recently heard
that in the palace a new melody was composed, called Coats of Feath
ers, Rainbow Skirts. The Master Musician Li Gui-nian and others are
rehearsing it every night in Chao-yuan Tower. I long to hear this new
piece, but I have no way to get hold of the score, kept secret. Ive made
inquiries about that tower, and it turns out to be right beside the wall,
outside which sounds can be heard. So Ive put my iron flute in my sleeve
and come here to Mount Li, taking advantage of this moonlight as bright
as day, to listen to it unseen. And what wonderful scenery Ive seen all
along the way!
10 1 0
The Qing Dynasty
Walking onsings:
The woodlands gather twilight haze,
the weather is cool and clear,
into cold skies the mountains rise,
crossed by the moons glittering rays.
What a lovely scene!_
Just as if I
were strolling through a painting.
A red curtain is hung across the stage to serve as the wall,

behind which is a tower.
Ive made it to the palace wall in no time at all.
Among the colored clouds I see
outlines of great watchtowers
sequestered traceries of light
set off in moons brightness. J
These shimmering beams confound my sight,
these shimmering beams confound my sight.
And I fancy the royal aura there
courses unseen,
while everywhere
in mansions of gods
women like jade idly lean
upon the balustrades.
Ive heard that Chao-yuan Tower lies at the west end of the imperial park,
so Ill go following the red wall to make my way there.
Walking on, sings:

Under the shadows of flowers
the royal road runs smooth,
I walk on ever so slowly
hugging the red wall. [Gazes]
I see a tall mansion appearing over the top of the wall in the shadows of
the weeping willows~I bet thats it.
[Sings]
When I fix my gaze and look closely,
when I fix my gaze and look closely,
I see billowing blurs of painted curtains
half concealing patterned windows. [Points]
Isnt that a red lantern up there!
Y
o n g -x in
and N i a n - n u climb the tower on the other side o f the wall.

Li G u i - n i a n and the musicians speak from within.
10 11
Li Gui-nianToday we should rehearse the central movement. Lets all play

it through once, starting with the prelude.
Li M o There seem to be voices coming from up therehidden behind the
light of the lantern. This is obviously the place. I
ll keep out of sight here
and listen.
Stands out of sight of the tower and listens, singing

Softly, now, softly,
hidden in blackness,
I secretly listen in the shadow of the wall.
Music is played within. Li M o takes his flute out of his sleeve.

Fll take out my flute and repeat each passage, carefully memorizing all
the fine points of the notes and rhythm.
[Sings]
I have listened until the moon is high,
after the first watch,
now at last strings sound together.
And deep in the night with everyone still
I delight how palace walls resound
with ringing sounds equally answering.
And the mind, in a flash, has learned the notes,
and the mind, in a flash, has learned the notes.
As the music of the full orchestra is heard faintly offstageLi M o repeats the
passage on his flute. The music then stops. Y o n g - x i n and N i a n - n u sing the
after-song within the tower. Li M o accompanies them on the flute.
Y
a n d N i a n - n u [sing]:
Black-dragon pearls are strewn,
a sudden shock when we come to the prelude.
Rolling clouds are shadows of sleeves,
wind-tossed snow whirling,
light dancing breeze.
Wind-tossed snow whirling,
light dancing breeze,
in the pale outline of misty brows,
a charm beyond measure.
o n g -x in
Li M o [continuing the song\

and the mind, in a flashhas learned the notes.
F u ll orchestra plays so ftly w ith in as before. Y o n g - x i n and N
within, Li Mo accompanying them on the flute.
Yong-xin and Nian-nu [sing]:

Pearls glow shining on azure,
10 12
ia n -n u
sing
The Qing Dynasty
the phoenix soars upward, the sixnurgh stays.

On Mount of Jade, on Peng-lai Peak
the Primal Goddess waves her sleeve
to lead along Shuang-cheng.
The Primal Goddess waves her sleeve
to lead along Shuang-cheng,
E-lii-hua turns her shoulder,
to summon Xu Fei-qiong.8
Li M o [continuing the song]
Full orchestra plays softly within as before. Y o n g - x i n and N i a n - n u sing

withinLi Mo still accompanying them on the flute.
Yong-xin and Nian-nu [smg]

Notes come fast, headlong the tune
strings and woodwinds in frenzy.
Soaring clouds stop suddenly,
dancing sleeves draw slowly back,
and sport a lighter grace.
Dancing sleeves draw slowly back
and sport a lighter grace,
a single note of singing flies
up to alabaster skies.
Li M o {continuing the 50g]:
The full orchestra goes through it offstage,
o n g -x in
and N
i a n -n u
exit,
Li M o What a wondrous melodylike bamboo tapping together in the au

tumn wind or the clinking of springtime icea clear stream of note of the
gods music and truly not something from the world of mortal men! It
was a real stroke of luck to steal it all in my flute.
[Sings]
Rainbow Skirts
music of Heaven,
heard by a traveler over the wall.
Notes and rhythm clear,
keys rightly used,
as in the breeze sounds soft and loud
each respond to the other.
I stole it in my flute
and when I let it out
nothing will be missing.
8The figures mentioned in this stanza are various goddesses and immortals.
10 13
It is quiet now, and no sound is heard from the tower. I imagine they
will play no more.
[Sings]
Musicians scatter, the song is done,
the red mansions grow still,
in fading moonlight on half the wall
shadows of flowers sway.
Look how the River of Stars sinks down and the moon sets, the Dipper
turns and Orion lies across the sky. Time to go back.
Puts his flute in his sleeve and walks onsinging

Turning back
to follow the homeward path.
I hear on the Jade Rivers flowing stream,
its echoes clear and remote,
like a trailing note
of Rainbow Skirts.
Hall and mansion rest in sky,
dear in the light of the moon, [Du Mu]
around high clouds the song revolves
and night is still more cool. [Zhao Gu]
I stole for myself several melodies
recently composed, [Yuan Zhen]
when I play my flute in the tavern now
it will be the newest tune. [Zhang Hu]
BRINGING HER FRUIT (XV)
Enter First Courier, carrying a basket o f lychees hung from a pole

whipping on his horse.
First Courier [sings]

Alone Ive sat astride the saddle
and traveled thousands of miles,
great were the hardships I endured
to bring these lychees to her.
An agent sent by royal command
cannot act on his own,
now I account all fortune and fame
less than a life of ease.
If only, when I reach Chang-an,
the Consort will be pleased.
I am a courier on the Western Circuit. Since the Consort Yang adores
fresh lychees, His Majesty has decreed that Fu-zhou is to send them as
10 14
The Qing Dynasty
tribute every year. The weather has been hot and journey long. But I can
not shrink from this task and now must make my horse fly on. [Exit gal
loping, singing reprise, I f only, when I reach Chang-an . .
Enter
Se c o n d C o u r ie r ,
carrying a basket of lychees, whipping on his

horse.
Second Courier [sings]

Hai-nan5s lychees, of all most sweet,
will please the palate of Lady Yang.
When picked th!ey are wrapped within their leaves
and in small bamboo baskets sealed.
My steed stops not by night or day
to make this delivery,
and all along the way
I fear delay
whenever a post station comes in sight,
I rush for it straightway.
I am a courier on the Hai-nan Circuit- Since Madam Yang adores fresh
lychees, the ones produced in Hai-nanwhich are far better than those
from Fu-zhoumust be brought as tribute by imperial decree, together
with those of Fu-zhou. But the journey from Hai-nan is even longer than
from Fu-zhou. After seven days pass, the lychees5flavor and aroma will
be lost. I must gallop on swiftly. [Exit galloping, singing reprise All
along the way I fear delay . .
Enter old Farmer.
Farmer [smgs]:
A farmer
s plowing and sowing
is a lot of effort and pain,
we worry about dry weather,
we worry about the rain.
These few sprouts are all we have
the whole year through,
and with the harvest half of that
is taken as revenue
I wonder sadly how much grain
will ever reach our bellies.
Every day I hope it will ripen,
I pray to the gods
and seek help from Heaven.
I come from the eastern village of Jin-cheng County. I have a family of
eight, and we depend entirely on these few acres of poor fields for our
livelihood. I heard this morning that couriers delivering fresh lychees are
following the most direct route all along the way, and no one knows how
much of the growing grain of framers they have trampled. This is why
10 15
IVe come out specially to watch over my own fields. [Gazes off\ There
are a pair of fortunetellers coming this way.
Enter a blind Fortuneteller, holding a clapper in his handand his Wife, a

blind woman, plucking a single-string guitar.
Fortuneteller [sings]
I live in Bao-cheng
and go now to Chang-an,
keen observer of the turning year
and of its ruling stars.
O f life as well as death
my judgments are made clear;
this mouth of ironclad prophecy
everywhere is famed.
A gentleman, though blind,
possessed of insight divine~

I give a cry:
To the gods come pray
and learn your fate.
Fortuneteller's WifeOld manweve been traveling for many days now

and my feet have gotten so sore that I really cant go on any further. At
this point Im not making prophecies about lives, just struggling to stay
alive.
FortunetellerWell, mother, I just heard someone talking hereabouts. Let

me go ask him where we are. [Calls out] Sir, what place is this?
FarmerThis is the eastern village of Jin-cheng County, bordering on the

western part of Wei-cheng.
Fortuneteller [bowing]: Thank you.

Horsebells are heard within. Farmer looks off in that direction.
FarmerOh no! A group of riders is coming! [Shouts] Sirs, you there on the
horses! Keep to the main road! Dont trample the grain growing in the
fields!
Fortuneteller [addressing his Wife]: Good news, motherthe capital isnt

far now. Fll go on ahead to hire a young donkey for you to ride.
Fortuneteller walks on, singing reprise, CCA gentlemanthough blind .

Enter First Courier, whipping on his horse and singing againIf only
when I reach Chang-an . , He hits the Fortuneteller and his Wife and
knocks them down, then exits. Enter Second Courier, whipping on his horse
and singing repriseAU along the way I fear delay . . . He tramples the
Fortuneteller to death under his horse, then exits. The Farmer, weeping,
stamps his feet3facing the place where the Couriers exited.
FarmerHeaven! See how this entire field has been trampled by those bas
tards! I have nothing left! It
s going to be hard enough for the family to
The Qing Dynasty
survive, and now theyre going to be after us for the tax grain. What am
I going to do? This is terrible!
FortunetellersWife [crawling]: They trampled us down! Old man, where

are you? [Feels the body] Heres my old man. Why dont you say some
thing? Have you been knocked out? [Feels further] Theres something
dripping wet on your head! [Feels him againthen smells her hand] This
is awful~theyve crushed out his brains! [Shouts, weeping] Heaven!
Call the authorities!
Farmer [turning around to look]: One of the fortunetellers has been tram
pled to death here!
Fortunetellers Wife [getting up and bowing her head]Fve got to find
the local authorities to bring back those horsemen to pay for my hus
bands life.
.
FarmerThose horsemen were delivering fresh lychees to Lady Yang. Who
knows how many people theyve trampled to death along the way. No
one can make them pay for those livesand a blind person like yourself
has even less chance.
Fortunetellers Wife What am I going to do then? [Weeping] Oh, old
man, I saw that your fate was to die on the road, but now how am I going
to take care of your body?
FarmerAll right. Youll never find the local authorities on your own. Ill
help you pick him up and bury him.
Fortunetellers WifeWell, thank you then. It would be just fine if I go

with you.
They pick up the Fortuneteller together and go off, alternately weeping

and flirting.
Enter Attendant of government way station.
Attendant [smgs]
The stationmaster ran away,
the stationmaster ran away,
the horses died and all thats left
is a single horses prick.
Of attendants there is one;

of grain and cash,
almost none.
Beaten and bawled out,

I have to hold them off alone,
I have to hold them off alone.
Im just an attendant in the Wei-cheng Station. Because Lady Yang adores
fresh lychees and because her birthday is on August 1both Fu-zhou and
Hai-nan have sent couriers bringing offerings, and they all want to get there
as quickly as possible. Their route passes through this way station. I can5t
help it that there isnt any grain or cash remaining in the station and that
10 17
all we have left for them is one scrawny nag. The official in charge was
afraid of getting beaten, and he ran off to no one knows where, leaving
me, an underling, in charge of the whole station. How am I going to deal
with the couriers when they come? Let them do as they will.
Enter First Couriergalloping.
First Courier [sings]:

In rays through brown dust the sun
bites into the mountain peak,
faster, faster, faster,
closer to Chang-an. [Dismounts]
Attendant! Get me a fresh horse, and be quick about it!
Attendant takes the horse. First Courier sets down his fruit basket and
straightens his clothing. Enter Second Courier, galloping.
Second Courier [sings]

Sweat pours from all my body,
my every limb is stiff,

hurry, hurry, hurry,
quickly change my mount. [Dismounts]
Attendant! Get me a fresh horse, and be quick about it!
Attendant takes his horse. Second Courier puts down fruit basket and sees
First Courier.
Second CourierGood-day, sir. Are you bringing lychees?
First CourierI am.
Second CourierAttendant! Where is the wine and food for the next stage
of the journey?
AttendantThere is none prepared.
First CourierAll right. We won
t eat. Bring the horses quickly.
AttendantThere are two of you gentlemen, but the station has only one
horse left~who will ride it depends on the two of you.
Second CourierWhat! A major way station like Wei-cheng and only one
horse? Quick~call that dog of a stationmaster of yours so I can ask him
where all the stations horses have gone.
AttendantIf you are wondering about the station horses, over the course
of the past few years they have all been ridden to death by gentlemen
bringing lychees. The official in charge of the station saw there was
nothing he could do about it, so now he
s run away.
Second CourierSince the official in charge of the station has run away,
we will hold you responsible.
Attendant [pointing]Isnt that just one horse over there in the stable?
First CourierAttendant, since I got here first, give it to me to ride.
Second CourierI have had a longer journey, coming from Hai-nan, so let
me take it.
The Qing Dynasty
First Courier [heading within, sings]

I will be first for a fresh horse,
and I
m not going to argue with you.
Second Courier [dragging him backsinging]:

Dont try to throw your weight around,
youll provoke me to use my fists.
First Courier [taking his lychees in handsinging]: Dont you dare spill my lychees!
Second Courier [taking his lychees and facing First Courier]Dont you
dare break my bamboo basket.
Attendant [trying to appease them, singing]:

Stop it now!
calm your rage.
The best thing would be for both of you
to ride the horse together.
Second Courier [puts down his lychees and hits Attendant]

What blather!
I
m going to beat you to death,
you putrid piece of muck.
First Courier [puts down lychees and beats Attendant]

Ym going to beat you too,
you shameless crook.
Second Courier [sings]:

Smooth-talking pilferer
of government mounts.
First Courier [sings]
Misuse of imperial property,
a gallon of gall.
Both [sing]
A flurry of lashesfists
pummel painfully,
we will thrash until
you cant bear it
and then well have our horses.
Attendant [kowtowing, sings]:

I kowtow again and again to the ground,
hoping Your Excellencies
will lay off a bit.
CouriersIf you want us to be done with you, get us fresh horses quickly.
Attendant [smgs]
There in front of behold
the only horse in the station . .
Couriers [sing]
We need one more!
Attendant [smgs]
That second horse may prove to be
rather hard to provide.
101
CouriersIf you dont have it, then well beat you.

Attendant [sings]
Just loosen your hold a while
and hear what I have to say
Ill have to take off my clothes
to give you to pawn for beer.
First CourierWho wants your old clothes!

Second Courier [looks at coat, puts it on]All right. Im really in a hurry.
Fll ride the horse I had and get a fresh one at the next stop.
Second Courier takes fruit and mountssinging reprise,

A ll along the way I fear delay,MExits.
First CourierQuick! Get me the fresh horse!

AttendantHere it is.
First Courier takes fruit and mounts, singing reprise
I f only, when I reach Chang-an/Exits.
AttendantLady Yang, Lady Yangall this because of a few lychees!

The golden chains of iron gates
open at break of day, [Cui Ye]

a royal parchment flies its way,
words of decree return. [Yuan Zhen]
The sounds of whips of post riders

swift as a lightning bolt, [Li Ying]
and no one realizes that these
are her lychees coming. [Du Mu]
THE CIRCLE FOR DANCE (XVI)
Enter Emperor, leading two palace attendants and Gao Li-shi.
Emperor [sings]
The hills are peaceful, breeze is light,
the daylight hours last long,
horn lamps shine in palace halls,
a thousand yards of cloud.
Purple vapors come from the east
and, gazing west to Onyx Pool,
the bluebird makes its fluttering descent
into the courtyard.9
9The phrase "Purple vapors come from the east," used in Du Fu's "Autumn Stirrings" (Qiu-xing bashou), refers to Lao-zi, the putative ancestor of the Tang royal house, going westward through the
passes to become an immortal. Onyx Pool was in the Kun-lun Mountains, where Zhou King Mu
feasted with the Queen Mother of the West. From her home in the Kun-lun Mountains, the Queen
Mother of the West once went to visit the Han emperor Wu in Chang-an, sending her attendant
bluebird ahead as a herald of her v is it These lines seem to prefigure the anticipated meeting be
tween the Emperor (a Li like Lao-zi) and Lady Yang.
The Qing Dynasty
Lady Yang and I have come to Mount Li to escape the summer heat.
Today is the first of August and the Lady5s birthday, so I have arranged
a special banquet in the Palace of Lasting Life to celebrate it. Then we
will also have the new song Rainbow Skirts performed. Gao Li-shi,
go to the harem and tell the Lady to come to the hall.
GaoAs you command.

Gao Li-shi faces within and passes on the message. From within comes the
answerffAs you command.>3Enter Lady Yang, elaborately dressedwith
Yong-xin and Nian-nu.
Lady Yang [sings]
In pepper-scented chambers sunbeams glow,
blooming branches play on window grills.
From the gate is hung a small flap
of imperial yellow,
embroidered with a phoenix pair
soaring on high beside the rainbow clouds.
[Greeting the Emperor] Your servant Yang greets Your Majesty. Long
live Your Majesty!
Emperor: And may such long life be shared with you, my Consort.
Lady Yang is seated.
Emperor [recites]:
In deep recesses of purple cloud
the Maiden Star shines bright,
Lady Yang
the Magic Peach, drenched in dew,
flourishes in suns light,
Yong-xin and Nian-nu

facing the flowers year after year
may this couple never grow old,
Gao Li-shi {joining in]:

and in this Palace of Lasting Life
we wish you life everlasting.
EmperorSince today is your birthday, I have arranged a special banquet

for lasting life so that we can enjoy ourselves together all day long.
Lady Yang I am overwhelmed by this kindness shown to me on my birth
day, and I would like to offer a toast to long life.
Gao Li-shiThe wine is ready.
Lady Yang bows and presents the wine to the Emperor, who offers her a
cup in return. Lady Yang drinkskneelingthen bows her head to the floor
and criesLong live Your Majesty!33Then she resumes her seat.
Emperor [smgs]
Theres a scent in the breeze, the sun is bright,
see blazing light shake on the single leaf
10 21
of the ming plant.1

Now the magnificent feast begins
with South Mountain reflected from afar
in goblets filled with wisps of cloud.
Together
Fruit formed of pods embracing,
the peach tree lives a thousand years;
paired flowers on a single stalk,
the lotuses bloom for ten yards.
Suited for pleasures,
this palace, well-named Lasting Life
is a realm to match immortal lands.
Enter a palace Eunuch, bearing a document.
Eunuch [recites]:
I hold in my hands a red placard
with golden flourish adorned,
we have all come to the precious halls
to wish you a thousand years.
[Greets them] Your Majesty, my Ladythe Minister Yang Guo-zhong

and the Ladies of Han, Guo, and Qin offer you this card with felicita
tions, and send their good wishes from outside the court.
Gao Li-shi takes the card and hands it over to the Emperor, who reads it.
EmperorOur thanks to them. Let the Minister not feel he has to observe
all the courtesies, but let him go back to court and take care of business.
The Three Ladies should come join us when Lady Yang and I go back
to the palace for the banquet.
EunuchAs you command. [Exit]

Enter Second Eunuch, carrying the lychees covered with a yellow cloth.
Second Eunuch [recites]
For this feast of longevity
in the gods Onyx Park,
from the fiery South are offered
the lychees known as youngest maid.
[Greets them] Your Majesty, here are fresh lychees presented from Fu
zhou and Hai-nan.
EmperorBring them here.

Gao Li-shi takes the lychees and removes the cloth covering them,
then presents them to the Emperor.
My Lady, since you love this fruit, I sent a special edict to these places
'The fabulous ming plant was supposed to grow a new leaf every day through the first half of the
month, then lose a leaf daily during the second half of the month. Since the present day is the first
of the month, there is only one leaf.
The Qing Dynasty
to have them brought to you with all possible haste. And today these fine
fruits have arrived just in time for your birthday banquet. Let us drink
another cup together.
L a d y Y a n g Long live Your Majesty!
EmperorMaids, bring wine.

N
ia n -n u
and Y o n g - x i n bring wine.
Lady Yang [sings]

r
A basketful,
fair fruits5aroma,
wrapped in yellow, brought from afar,
from west and south by royal command.
I love their rich and ripe
red velvety skin ^
with ciystailine balls of white within,
a pure fragrance in the hand,
on teeth a moisture sweet and cool.
Together
Now must the fiery date give way
and the pear of immortality,
for on these eternal terraces
at a banquet of longevity
these join the Goddess of Onyx Pool
in offering alabaster sap.
EmperorGao Li-shigive my command to Li Gui-nian to bring the musi
cians of the Pear Garden Academy into the hall to attend on us.
Gao Li-shiAs you command.

Gao Li-shi passes command within. Enter Li Gui-nian with musicians Lei
H ai-qing, He H uai-zhi, M a X ian-qi, and H uang Fan-chuo, all in brocade
gowns and splendid caps, respondingeeAs you command.
3
Li Gui-nian [recites]
Red clappers are ready,
the zither pegs tuned,
urging on one dressed in lace
to mount the stage for dance.
We5ve changed into new headgear,
the saffron-colored caps,
and in our troop have come here

before the royal throne.
[Greets E m p e r o r ] The musician Li Gui-nian brings the Pear Garden

Troupe to greet Your Majesty and the Lady.
EmperorLi Gui-nian, the other day you performed the overture of Rainbow Skirts Have you thoroughly rehearsed the second movement,
Coats of Feathers
Li Gui-nianWe have.
1023

E m p e r o r Well,
put your heart into the performance.
Li Gui-nianAs you command. [Rises and exits]
Lady YangYour Majesty, in the six sections of the overture the only tempo
is largo with no andante, while in the six sections of the middle move
ment the tempo is andante but with no allegro, and for this there is no
choreography yet.
It lifts as with a breeze,

in the mood of notes, a vibrancy,
stopping the brightly colored clouds in flight
and whirling around the rainbow beams.
The third movement of Coats of Feathers is called the Ornamented
Section
There every word and every note

contains the motion of a dance.
There are the slow notes, the tremolos, the rubatos,
echoing bell-like and clear,
a string of black-dragon pearls.
There is the statement of the theme, the exposition, and the finale,
each matching a thousand lithe positions
on the dance rug.
And then there is the hua-fan the dao-he the side beat, the fast beat,
and the stolen beat,
so many tones of melody,
all rising together with slow dance,
unfolding in the interplay
with leisurely song.
EmperorYou have described all the fine points of the song and dance.
L a d y Y a n g I
have had a circular surface of azure constructed. Let me dance

thereon to give Your Majesty some pleasure of entertainment.
E m p e r o r I have never had a chance to see your finesse in dance, Lady. Yongxin, Nian-nu, along with Zheng Guan-yin and Xie Ah-man, are to at
tend upon Lady Yang and bring in the azure circle.
Yong-xin and Nian-nuAs you command.

Lady Y ang [rising]: May I withdraw to change clothes, sire?
Fll put my costume in order

dress up once again,
then this body will fly upon
the circular surface of azure.
Exit Lady Yang with Yong-xin and Nian-nu.

1024
The Qing Dynasty

E m p e r o r Gao Li-shi
instruct Li Gui-nian to have the Pear Garden Ensemble play
the music according to the score. I will keep the rhythm myself on a Jie drum.
Gao Li-shiAs you command.

Gao conveys the instructions within. The Emperor rises to change. Li Guinian and the other musicians play music offstage. A circle of azure is placed
on the stage. Enter Lady Yang, wearing a splendid cap, a white embroidered
gown, a necklacea brocade cloud-mantle, kingfisher-decorated sleeves, and
a great red dancing skirt. Yong-xin and Nian-nu, along with Zheng Guanyin and Xie Ah-man, are all wearing white gowns for dancingand holding
multicolored rainbow streamers and peacock cloud fans. They step upon the
azure circle, crowding abound Lady Yang and completely hiding her. The
music stops and the pennons and fans slowly draw back, to show Lady Yang
dancing on the circle with Yong-xin, Nian-nu, Zheng Guan-yin, and Xie
Ah-man singing, Gao Li-shi kneels, holding the drum, while the Emperor as
sumes his seat and beats on it. Offstagethe musicians join in.
A ll [sing]:
Figured lace joins blossomslight,
a bud of red cloud ripples in the sky.
Behold the rainbow streamers circling round,
as scent from Heaven tumultuously falls.
W ith steady grace
fan shadows slowly draw apart and show
her bright array.
In every way
like those spirits of the air
that fall through moonbeams in their flight.
Now lightly tossing in the breeze,
she spreads her colored sleeves,
and on the azure circle shows her skill.
In windborne undulations
she forward comes, then draws away,
as bloom of lotus meets the wind
upon its bobbing leafy pad.
W ith cuffs upraised toward sky
as though about to fly,
her body bends in sudden turns
passing through measures unforeseen.
[Dancing more swiftly]

Now lost in whirling ecstasy,
spray of flowers catching gusts,
twig of willow rising,
phoenix outline mounting high,
shape of simurgh soaring.
10 2 5
Words cannot tell such charm of form,

upward blown by Heavens wind
amid the players' frenzied tones.
From icy strings and stops of jade
the notes are piercing clear,
from phoenix reeds and ivory pipes
come floods of melody.
Now blending with the beat of drum,
swelling and diminishing,
new modes of music compassed and performed.
Her trailing skirts of gold recall
how Lady Zhao was held by all
when dancing she took flight.
Em peror
stops drumming G a o
L i -s h i
carries drum away.
The dancing halts,

her wispy skirts draw in.
Lady Yang
bows to
E m p e ro r.
And once again her forehead bows,

and she shouts, Long live His Majesty!
Yong-xin, Nian-nu, Zheng Guan-yin3and Xie Ah-man help Lady Yang off
the dancing circle. Zheng G u a n - y i n and Xie Ah-man withdraw. E m p e r o r
rises, comes forward, and takes L a d y
Y ang
s hand.
EmperorThat was splendid! That was a dance! It gave a powerful im

pression of unearthliness, with intoxicating beauties appearing every
where. Just like the eddying wind or whirling snow or a swallow in flight
or the swimming dragon. You are unsurpassed in a millennium. Maids,
see to some wine! I am going to toast Lady Yang.
Yong-xin and Nian-nu bring wine; Emperor raises his cup and sings
I lift this flagon of gold
and face you with a gentle smile,
bidding those cherry lips to lightly taste
drop by drop. [Hands it to Lady Yang]
Now drain it to the dregs,
my gift of gratitude to you for having strained
limbs and waist in dance.
Lady Yang [taking the cup and thanking Emperor]
Long live Your Majesty! [sings]
This jadelike brew bestowed by his own hand
are favors broad waves,
I feel only shame that this exceeds
the merits of my paltry skills.
1026
The Qing Dynasty
[looking at Lady Yang]:

When I gaze closely on her face,
how she holds the cup,
every kind of lovers grace
strikes a man to the heart.
Em peror
Let your payment be ten bolts of golden brocade figured with mated
ducks and a hairpin of purple-rubbed gold from the river Li. [Takes out
a sachet] Here also is a sachet of eight precious brocade pouches filled
with ambergris to hang from your waist, to add to your dance costume.
Lady Yang [taking sachet and thanking Emperor]Long live Your Majesty!
Emperor [taking Lady Yang by the hand and walking]:

This fair dance of .Rainbow Skirts
can be enjoyed forever,
fit complement to my prayer
for your long life.
Lady Yang
My body is redolent throughout
with the unforeseen flood of favor.
Emperor [recites]
the secret galleries of Lasting Life
rest against gray sky, [Wu Rong]
Lady Yang
the jadelike sweet wines are portioned
in flagons for the toast. [Zhang Yue]
Emperor
Done with drinking, I cherish still more
the paired sleeves of the dance, [Han Hong]
Lady Yang
all over my body I newly bear
scents of rainbow-cloud. [Cao Tang]
Meanwhile, at his command in Fan-yang in the Northeast, An Lu-shan has been qui
etly removing his Chinese generals and replacing them with Central Asians like him
self. He watches a great hunt in which he reviews his army's prowess, secretly plot
ting rebellion.
At the same time, Lady Yang is suffering the torments of jealousy because the
Emperor has developed an interest in a new favorite known as the Plum Consort.
The Emperor is dallying with the Plum Consort in a pavilion when Lady Yang comes
to the door and demands admission. The Emperor, flustered, hides the Plum Con
sort, and in a comic scene that bears witness to the Emperor's infatuated weakness
before Lady Yang, she accuses him of deceiving her. The Emperor at first beats a
hasty retreat, then returns to console her and reassure her of his love.
Returning to the frontier, Guo Zl-yVs scouts inform him of An Lu-shan's prepa
rations for rebellion and how imperial investigators have been deceived into re
porting his loyalty. Meanwhile, back near the capital, the steamy pleasures of fe
10 27

male voyeurism innocently echo the more destructive envy that fuels An Lu-shan's
ambitions.
PEEKING AT THE BATHERS (XXI)
Enter First Palace M aid.
First Maid [5/wgs]

Since youth my face was natures gift
of pocking
foremost in bevies of palace demoiselles
in sweeping.
I met a young eunuch by the stairs,
adawdling,
I stuck out my hand and stroked his pants
but nothing.
[Recites in doggerel]
I
m number one of the palace maids
my standard is top-notch:
my cheeks are smeared with powder,
my mouth, a lipstick splotch.
My twinkling eyes are bells of bronze,
I flatten my brows to a line,
My dainty digits, ten pestles,
my willowy waist, great pine.
My naked body is lacquer coarse
and my footsies are bigger
than an outrigger
built to run a rapidscourse.
Lady Yang dotes on my cleverness,
and picked me for Rainbow Skirts chorus;
but my vocal cords were a sonorous wonder
from singing lips rose peals of thunder.
And my body proved a bit too bumbling
for I danced the royal table tumbling.
This did the royal dander inflame:
from the roll of dancers he struck my name.
I forthwith departed for Mount Li
to serve in Warmsprings Gallery.
The royal coach set off yesterday
to Hua-qing with Lady Yang to stay.
They will jointly bathe in warm pools here
by imperial writ
so I must sweep and clean and get everything set.
But here as Fm rambling on, another palace lady is coming.
1028
The Qing Dynasty
Enter S e c o n d
P a la c e M a id .
Second Maid [sings]

We have frittered away the spring of youth,
the harems bitter women,
we stamp our-feet and beat our breasts in vain,
none knows our pain.
We have wasted our lives without a man,
the dance of the wild goose
flying alone.
They greet one another.
First Maid"Whats this wild goose dance you

re talking about? Now that
His Majesty has Lady Yangs Skirts of Rainbow
he doesn't even care
for the Plum Consorts CStartled Swan dance any more.
Second MaidHow true! I used to be a maid of the Plum Consort. But since
my Lady took sick and died after returning from the Azure Tower in hu
miliation, I got sent off to this place.
F i r s t M a i d Thats how it is. Lady Yang is so jealous that we should give
up even dreaming of a day when we will enjoy the Emperors atten
tions.
S e c o n d M a i d Lets drop it.
F i r s t M a i d His Majesty is just about to arrive. Lets you and I go to the
outer corridor to wait for him.
They move to the edge o f the stage. Enter E u n u c h s , leading the E m p e r o r ,

L a d y Y a n g , N ia n - n u , a n d Y o n g - x i n .
Emperor [sings]
Around this pleasure palace the scenes
are private and rare:
see how beside the carved beams,
and beyond the pearl screens
the rain rolls off and clouds fly.
There, winding away,
several turns of vermilion rails
ring painted streams,
and long walkways in rising tiers
touch the azure haze.
A red wall encircles all
with passage opened through marble doors.
EunuchsYour Majesty, we have come to Warmsprings Palace.

EmperorLeave us now. [Exeunt- Eunuchs] My Lady,
Behold clear channels gushing under,
the turning wavelets and furrowed ripples,
whose soft luster of fragrant fountains
well suits your pale flesh.
1029
Let us bathe here, my Lady. [Nian-nu and Yong-xin remove the outer
robes from Emperor and Lady Yang]
Now softly undo your cloudlike gown,
pearl-glow already showing through
and jades white sheen,
I cannot but stand facing you,
cannot but love you,
cannot but care for you,
cannot but gaze on you,
cannot but cherish you.
Em peror
gives L a d y
Y ang
a hand down into the baths.
Y o n g - x i n Seeing the
love that His Majesty and Lady Yang share, Nian-nu,

is enough to make a person die of envy.
Nian-nuIndeed it is.
Y o n g - x i n [sm g s ]
On flowered dawns in one anothers arms,

embracing on moonlit nights,
they taste that soft and warm pleasure,
the bodys savor.
N ia n - n u
Like shadow and form, linked always together,
indivisible as when a knife cuts water.

A thousand small accommodations,
and hundred compliances,
two people joined
in flesh and in heart.
The tongue has no words for loves secret,
nor can the written word convey
that bed with lovebird curtains
where they lie together forever twined.
Yong-xinYou and I have waited on Lady Yang for many years nowand
though we have seen her charming face, we have never had a glimpse of her
naked body. Why dont we steal a peek through this gap in the hangings.
N i a n - n u A good idea.
Both peer through the curtains within.
Together [sing\
As we steal a glimpse
of her naked body before us spread
like a lotus riding upon the waves,
its charming glow besprent with dew.
The fragrant unguents melt away
from delicate wrists and arms,
a lithe torso rolling with sapphire ripples.
Yong-xin
Her frame, bright wisp of cloud,
her flesh is steeped in snow.
Nian-nu
A swathe of creamy skin,
paired buds poking through,
Yong-xin
a half speck of spring conceals
the small and musky navel.
Nian-nu
And I love the spot her red wraps gape
just barely revealing her private parts.
Yong-xin, look at His Majesty,
how he fixes his gaze on her!
And he smiles steadily
like someone whos lost his wits.
Together
Not just we her palace maids
almost take leave of our senses,
even the ruler, used to the sight,
cant control himself.
Yong-xin
W ould that the springtime waters run dry!
Nian-nu
Or that her marble mass be bathed
until it senseless swoons!
Yong-xin
Kisses unceasing upon her sweet shoulders,
Nian-nu
his arm ever circles her slender waist;
Yong-xin
our lady says nothing,
and discreetly smiles,
withholding her passion.
Nian-nu
And they are content,
as magic liquids and springtime breeze
sweep across them drunkenly.
Yong-xin
The light on the waves is warm,
rays of the sun cast their glow,
as this pair of dragons frolic,
rising out of the level pool.
Together
Almost like King Xiang of Chu
falling from thirst by Yang Terrace,
and she, just like the goddess,

brings back the twilight rain.
Enter First and Second Maids, unnoticedlaughing.
M a i d s Y o u t w o se e m t o b e h a v in g a g o o d tim e . L e t u s g e t t o see t o o .
Yong-xin and Nian-nuWere just waiting on Lady Yang while she is

bathing. Whats the good time about that?
MaidsIll bet you werent just waiting on Lady Yang, but stealing a peek
at His Majesty in there.
Yong-xin and Nian-nuShame on you! Dont talk nonsense. His Majesty
and Lady Yang are coming out now.
Exeunt Maids. Enter Emperor and Lady Yang.

E m p e ro r [szngs]
Rising from the warm pool

fresh cool runs through flesh,
I observe the increase
of radiant loveliness
within your face.
Most charming_ the scattered flecks
of make-up left
and in azure streaks a gloss appears
in drying clouds of hair.
Yong-xin and Nian-nu help Emperor and Lady Yang to change. Lady
Yang has a look of lassitude, and Yong-xin and Nian-nu hold her up.
E m p e ro r
You look like a willow in wind

or a bloom affrighted by dew.
So languid you cant hold yourself up,
charming in your frailty,

needing others to help you along.
Enter two Eunuchs with attendants pulling a small carriage.
EunuchsIf Your Majesty and our Lady would please get in the carriage
we will go back to Hua-qing Palace.
' EmperorLet the carriage follow behind.

E u n u c h s As y ou c om m an d, sire.
Emperor [taking Lady Yang by the handsings]

Let you and I go shoulder to shoulder
and hand in hand,

who needs a carriage to rush beneath the flowers?
let us go back with a fine breeze on our faces.

T o g e th e r
The one who's always on my mind

turns the mind to thoughts of love,
10 3 2
The Qing Dynasty
even those unfeeling flowers and birds

are fools of feeling,
all alike know to pair
and seek a common roost.
E m p e r o r [recites]:
The breath of flowers, exactly like
incense of compound scent, [Du Fu]
Lady Y a n g
avoiding breeze, having just emerged

from a tubs warm waters. [Wang Jian]
E m p e ro r
Attendants, hold her up,

charming in her frailty, [Bo Ju-yi]
Lady Y a n g
laughing, I lean by the east window

on a bench of white jade. [Li Bo]
SECRET PLEDGE (XXII)
Enter the goddess W ea v e r W
o m a n , with two
I m m o r t a l H a n d m a id e n s .
W e a v e r [s/ngs]
Clouds shelter my jade shuttle

as with skill I weave the threads on the loom.
Pangs of longing never come
to palaces of Heaven~yet
hearing this night is the Seventh Eve,
I think back abruptly on times gone by.
[Recites Q in Guans lyrics]

Fine wisps of cloud sport their craft,
shooting stars bear the news,
and now far off in the River of Stars
we will make the crossing unseen.
To meet just once in falls metal wind
and in the jade white dews
turns out to be better by far
than the countless meetings of mortals.
Our tender feelings seem like water,
this sweet moment is as in a dream
how can we bear to turn their heads
to the path leading back across Magpie Bridge?
But so long as both of us love
and so long as our love lasts on,
it does not need to be done
every night and every morning at dawn.
10 33
I am that Weaver Woman who, according to the decree of the High God,
wedded the Oxherd to become a heavenly husband and wife. Every year
on the Seventh Eve we cross the River of Stars and meet. In the world
belowthis day is the Seventh Eve of the seventh month in the tenth year
of the Tian-bao Reign. See how there are no waves on the River of Light,
which will soon be filled with magpies. I had best set aside my weaving
for a while and get myself dressed up.
Music is played faintly within. Enter magpieswhich fly around stage, A

bridge is set up and the magpies fly to either end.
Im m o r t a l H a n d m a id e n s The M a g p ie Bridge is erected. Y o u m ay cross the
River of Stars now, my Lady.

W e a v er W o m a n rises and walks toward it.
W e a v e r [smgs]
A ll
I set aside my woven words

and briefly ride a scented coach.
[sing]
For no clouds stain the sapphire sky,
and fresh cool comes with evenings breeze. [They step upon the
bridge]
We tread the bridge through shadows strewn
as down below us shines
Star-Rivers resplendent clarity.
By these new joys overwhelmed
the new moons slender sliver,
the moistness of the sparkling dew,
as magpies ply their wings below
in circling pairs;
we note at once how the Silver Stream
takes on new aspects in the fall.
I m m o r t a l H a n d m a id e n s M y Lady, we have crossed the M ilk y W ay .

W e a v e r Down there underneath the Star-River
I can just barely make out
a puff of incense smoke, coiling as it rises into the sky. Where is it com
ing from?
I m m o r t a l H a n d m a id e n s That is Yang Yu-huan, the Prized Consort of the
Tang Emperor, praying for skill in the palace.2
W e a v e r Its good that she has such a true heart. The Oxherd and I will go
down to watch her.
2"Praying for skill" was one of the various customs of the Seventh Eve. The "skill" referred to is pri
marily skill in weaving, a gift that the Weaver Woman star might well grant~though in the case of
the Prized Consort, "skill" is meant in a broader sense of "artful ch a rm . When a woman "prayed
for s k i" , she would capture a spider and put it in a box. Then she would see how much of a web
it spun by the next day, and that would tel! her the degree to which her wish had been granted.
1034
The Qing Dynasty
A ll [sing]
Heavenly meetings of lovers last on
year after year right here
and we smile at loves fate in the mortal world
that is in an instant gone. [Exeunt omnes]

Enter two attendant Eunuchs, holding lanterns, followed by Emperor.
Emperor [sings]
Tranquil autumn light
engulfed in wisps of sapphire smoke
bringing on the dark of night.
Showers pass the beech trees
leaving a faint chill;,
the Silver River arcs around
with frail wisps of cloud
a d o r n in g th e P a ir e d Stars. [Laughter within; the E m p e r o r listens]
I listen closelyborne on the breeze
is happy laughter past the flowers
in shadows of the trees.

Eunuch! "Whats all that laughter for?
E u n u c h [asking w ithin ]: H is M ajesty asks: w h a ts all that laughter for?
Voice [from within]: My Lady Yang has come to the Palace of Lasting Life
to pray for skill.
Eunuch [replying to Emperors question]My Lady Yang has come to the

Palace of Lasting Life to pray for skill.
EmperorAttendants, dont announce my arrival. Let me sneak in quietly.

[Sings]
Put the red lanterns away,
let me softly slip within
to the dragon-court
to get a better view.
Emperor moves off to the edge of the stage. Enter Lady Yang, with Yongxin and Nian-nu, accompanied by two palace girls carrying a box of incense,
a silk fan, a vase of flowers, a wax doll, and a golden basin)
Lady Yang [sings]:

The palace yard
is sunk in haze
from incense of golden braziers,
half concealing the candles* rays.
A spider the size of a grain of rice,
here securely enclosed
3Floating a wax doll in a basin of water was a ceremony associated with praying for fertility.
10 3 5
beans set to sprout in a pan of gold,

and sprays
of blossoms unfurl in a silver vase.
Yong-xin and Nian-nuWe have reached the Palace of Lasting Life, and
all the preparations have been readied for you to make the prayer for
skill. Would you now take a stick of incense, my Lady?
They take flower vase, dolland basinand set them on a table. Yong-xin
holds out the box of incense and Lady Yang takes a stick.
Lady YangI, Yang Yu-huan, with a reverent and earnest heart hereby re
spectfully address the Paired Stars. I humbly entreat your divine aid.
[Sings]
I pray that the love shown
by hairpin and box
long stay firm,
let the fan be not abandoned
when winds of autumn come.4
Emperor [secretly observing hersings]:

She is so lovely to my sight,
bowing low on alabaster stairs,
and I can hear
her muffled sounds of prayers.
Yong-xin and Nian-nu [seeing Emperor]His Majesty is here!

Lady Y ang
quickly turns and bows down before the E m p e r o r .

her up.
Em peror
lifts
EmperorAnd whats this mischief you are up to?

L a d y Y a n g T on igh t is the Seventh Eve, and I ve set ou t fruit to pray for
skill from the Weaver Woman, Heavens Daughter.

[laughing]: Y o u ve a lr e a d y p lu n d e r e d H e a v e n
would you have to pray for more?
Em peror
o f a ll its s k ill. W h y
Lady YangYou make me tremble with shame at such excessive praise.

Lady Yang and Emperor are seated. Exeunt Yong-xin, Nian-nu, and the
two palace girls.
EmperorMy Lady, I think on how the Weaver and the Oxherd are sepa
rated by the Silver River and get to meet only once a year. Such longing
is no easy thing to bear.
[Sings]
Night stretches on in autumn sky,
the sapphire river of stars is clear,
4This refers to a poem attributed to the rejected favorite Pan Jie-yu, in which the court lady com
pares herself to a fan, cast away once the cool of autumn comes.
10 3 6
The Qing Dynasty
the holy wayfarers have barely a chance

each to greet the other,
helpless that Heaven grants them a meeting
that lasts but an instant,
and all too soon the roosters crow
reaches their ears.
Then in the cold of clouds
and chill of dew
they hurry back
to yearlong solitudes.
Lady YangIt makes me sad when Your Majesty speaks of the pain that
the Paired Stars feel when they part. Its too bad that mortal men dont
know how things are in Heaven.
[Swgs]
If we asked, we would find
they suffer terribly the pangs of longing. [Wipes away tears]

EmperorWhy are you crying?
L a d y Y a n g I
realize that even though the Weaver and the Oxherd get to
meet only once a year, their love will continue as long as Heaven lasts
and Earth endures. Im afraid that the love Your Majesty and I share can
not possibly last as long as theirs.
EmperorWhats this, now!

[SzVzgs]
Though mated gods have everlasting life,
compared to worldly bonds like ours
theyre not much better off.
In mortal lifespans we may seize
all the excitement of romance,
we have our moments and our scenes
that heighten passion and pleasure~
why then sob with sorrow so? [Moves closer to Lady Yang and
speaks softly]
How can the Paired Stars compare
to you and I who share
every night and every dawn?
L ady Y a n g
The love you have shown me is deep, but tonight there are a
few things I want to say [Stops herself]
EmperorYou can say whatever you want to.

Lady Yang [facing Emperor, choked with sobbing]I have had your favor
and kind regard more than any woman in the harem. I am just afraid
that as time passes, I will gradually lose that love and that I will end
up as Zhuo Wen-jun did with Si-ma Xiang-ru, lamenting promises be
trayed.
1037
My heart aches whenever this thought comes,

and I brood how, lowly and poor,
Ive served in the royal chambers,
and have been raised so high
to wait on your wardrobe, share your coach.
But I fear that in the blink of an eye
flowers grow old
and nothing remains of spring
on lasting favor can none rely. [Weeping, grasps his clothes]
If I could get this love to stay
*
and last on long,
I would even die.
If I could get this love to run
its full course to the end,
in death I would close my eyes.
Then I would be far better than she
who once danced and sang
for Princess Ping-yang,
then the rulers love changed
and lonely in Chang-men Palace
her spirit crushed, teardrops fell
and her heart broke in helpless weeping
for the fate of fair faces.
Emperor [taking his sleeve and wiping away Lady Yangs tears]: Cease such
sad thoughtsmy dear. The love that I feel for you cannot be compared
to such casual attractions.
[Sings]
Cease hearts cares,
no more shed tears
fearing time passing
will bring about change. [Takes Lady Yang's hand]

Honeycakehoneycake,
stuck together fast,
never an instant apart.
Together [sing]
Or consider the long and trailing vine
lost among flowers, in dark of the moon,
then none can tell
its shadow from form.
Lady YangSince you love me so much, I ask you to take an oath with me
here under the Paired Stars to keep our love steadfast to the end.
EmperorThen lets both go burn incense and make our vow.
1038
The Qing Dynasty
Together [sing]
Leaning shoulder to shoulder,
we descend the stairs hand in hand.
Above the halls stretches the River of Light,
L a d y Y a n g [smgs]:
and suddenly I feel a chill

creep into my gown of mesh.
Emperor [sings]
Let us now, speaking softly,
swear by the mountains and seas.
Em peror
offers incensebows, and swears with
Lady Y
ang
By the paired stars above, ILi Long-ji. .
Lady Yangand I, Yang Yu-huan . . .

Together. . . because of the depth of our love, wish to remain together as
man and wife in every one of our future lives and never to be parted.
May the Paired Stars stand as witnesses if this vow is ever betrayed.
Emperor [bowing, sings]:

If in Heaven, may we become
those birds that fly on shared wing,
Lady Yang [clasping hands and bowing headsings]:
if on Earth, then may we become
branches that twine together.
Together [sing]
Heaven lasts, the Earth endures,
yet a time will come when theyre gone,
yet this oath of ours will continue
and never finally end.
Lady Yang [thanking Emperor with head bowed]: I am deeply moved by
your love and will keep this vow made tonight to the death.
E m p e r o r [taking L a d y Y a n g by the handsings]
Here in the Palace of Lasting Life
private vows were said,
L ady Y a n g [smgs]
but who is there tonight

to be our witness?
Emperor [pointing, sings]:

There by the bridge across the Silvery River
that pair of stars
Oxherd and the Weaver. [Exeunt]
Enter Oxherd wearing cloud-figured turban and robes of an immortalac

companied by the Weaver Woman with her two Immortal Handmaidens.
W e a v e r [sm g s ]
They made their vows, their secret troth,
1039
and prayed with heartfelt reverence
an undivided love in two,

whose mouths shared the same words.
OxherdGoddess, see what love the Tang Emperor and Yang Yu-huan
share!
[Sings]
Silently embracing,
leaning shoulder to shoulder,

no breach between them.
You and I have had the good fortune to be united in Heaven, and we
should direct what is played out on the stage of love below. Not only
thatthey made their vows before usso we should watch over them.
[Sings]
They yearn to be birds that fly on paired wing,
aspire to be branches joined,

wish to share future lifetimes
this is true love indeed
and we should have them ever be
guardians of romance
in the world of mortal men.
WeaverYet a disaster will befall them both, and death will part them. But
if at last they do not forswear the vows they took tonight, then we will
arrange their reunion.
O x h e r d What you say, goddess, is true. But look how the colors of night
draw to their close. Let us make our way back to our palace in the stars.
Takes W eaver W omans hand and they walk.
Together [sing]:
Heavenly meetings of lovers last on
year after year right here,
and we smile at loves fate in the mortal world
that is in an instant gone.
No need that years and months speed on
in the world of mortal men [Luo Ye]
the star-bridge stretches across the sky,
magpies turn back in flight. [Li Shang-yin]

Say not that meetings
in Heaven are too few, [Li Ying]
we simply do not have the heart
to send the asked-for skill. [Luo Yin]
In the next scenes, An Lu-shan appears in rebellion, defeating the imperial army
under Ge-shu Han and breaking through the passes that defend the capital. The Em
1040
The Qing Dynasty

peror is feasting with Lady Yang when the news arrives that An Lu-shan has defeated
the imperial army and is threatening Chang-an. As the scene closes, the Emperor
plans to flee the capital the next morning.
JADE BURIAL (XXV)
Enter Chen Yuan-uofficer in charge of the imperial guard

with attendant soldiers.
Chen [sings]:
On we speed, throngs
of pikes and pennons, on
we speed
Plumed Guards ward the royal coach,
the royal coach.
In panic fleeing the mutineers,
we set off on the march.
The road is rough,
the men trudge through,
when at last
will we make Cheng-du?
Because An Lu-shan has rebelled and taken Tong Pass, His Majesty is
making a journey to Shu to escape the fighting. He has ordered me, Chen
Yuan-li, the Long-wu generalto take charge of the palace troops that
will serve as his escort. We have just completed one stage of the journey
and reached Ma-wei Station. [Uproar within] You soldiers, whafs the
reason for all the noise?
Soldiers [within]: The rebellion of An Lu-shan and the fact that the Em
peror has been forced to flee is all Yang Guo-zhong
s fault~he abused
his power and stirred up the revolt. Unless this traitor is executed, we
will rather die than escort the Emperor any further.
ChenThere is no need for such rowdiness. Stay quietly in camp for a while,
and I will state the case to His Majesty, who will make the decision.
Offstage, soldiers agree. Exit Chen, leading his guardssinging the reprise,
The road is roughthe men trudge through
Metc. Enter Emperor and Lady
Yang on horseback, followed by Yong-xin and N ian-nu.
Emperor [s/wg5]:
Drops of tears are shed
for my palace in panic forsaken,
and I sigh
at this rag-tag retinue
heading to Cheng-du
off beyond the edge of sky.
On and on, ever farther
from the capital,
10 4 1
through half a dozen isolated

rivers and hills,
interspersed with a few
deserted shacks and fallen tiles.
Gao We have reached Ma-wei Station. May it please Your Majesty to rest
here a while.
Emperor and Lady Yang dismount, go in, and are seated.

Emperor: H ow wrong I was! What a mistake I made in showering favor on
someone who turned out to be a rebel! It
s I who has brought us to this
flight~I cannot tell you how much I regret it. My dear, if only I had not
involved you in these adversities!
Lady YangOf course I should be with you. I could never refuse to go

through these hardships. I only hope that the rebels will be crushed soon
so that Your Majesty can return to the capital. [More shouting within]
Soldiers [within]: Yang Guo-zhong took all power to himself and betrayed
the state. Now he is even aligning himself with Tibet. Either he dies or
we die, this we swear! Whoever wants to kill Yang Guo-zhong, come
with us quickly!
Enter Soldiers carrying swords, chasing Yang Guo-zhong around the stage.
They kill Yang Guo-zhong, then exit, shouting.
Emperor [alarmed]: Gao Li-shi, what

s all that noise outside? Tell Chen
Yuan-li that he is to report to me at once.
G ao
As Your Majesty instructs. [Passes command to Chen Yuan-u out
side, who enters and greets Emperor]

ChenChen Yuan-li reporting.
EmperorWhy are the soldiers in such an uproar?
ChenYour Majesty, Yang Guo-zhong instigated this rebellion by taking
all power upon himself. He also had private contacts with Tibet. This
aroused the rage of the Grand Army, and as a result they killed Yang
Guo-zhong.
Emperor [alarmed]Can it be? [Lady Yang turns away and wipes tears from
her eyes. Emperor ponders] All right then
give the orders to set out.
Chen {going out and giving orders]: These are His Majestys instructions:
He pardons you for taking it on yourselves to kill Yang Guo-zhong. Now
let us be on our way quickly.
Soldiers [again shouting from within]: Yang Guo-zhong may have been ex
ecuted, but there is still Lady Yang. We wont accompany the Emperor
unless Lady Yang is killed.
Chen [to Emperor]: The soldiers say that even though Yang Guo-zhong
has been executed, they wont set off as long as Lady Yang is alive. I
hope Your Majesty can overcome your private feelings and do what is
right.
Emperor [greatly alarmed]: How can they even suggest such a thing! [Lady
Yang clutches Emperor/s gown in terror] General,
10 4 2
The Qing Dynasty
[Sings]
Even if Yang Guo-zhong owed

atonement for his crimes,
already he has been seized and killed.
But the Consort spent her time with me
deep within the palace~

why should she
stir the armys mistrust?
ChenYour Majesty is clearly right, but the soldiers are in a fury, and I dont
sê what we can do about it.
Emperor [sings]
Come, sir,
make sure at once they understand
such a wild demand
is not their place! [More shouting within]
Chen [sings]:
Your Majesty,
hear the uproar in the ranks!

how can I restrain their rage?
Lady Yang [weepingsings]

Your Majesty,
I am shocked and stunned
by outcomes unforeseen;
already distressed that my uncle was slain,
I too find my fortunes turned.
Former lifetimes fix our fate;
forfeit is my own life now.
I pray my Lord surrender me up at once~
though to say so breaks my heart . .
EmperorNo more such talk, my Lady! [More shouting within]

Soldiers [within]Unless Lady Yang is killed, we absolutely refuse to escort
the Emperor!
ChenYour Majesty, even though Lady Yang has done nothing wrong, Yang
Guo-zhong was her blood uncle. The soldiers around Your Majesty are
not going to feel safe while she lives. If the soldiers feel safe, then Your
Majesty is safe. I beg you to give it some thought.
Emperor [ponderingsings]
I ponder in silence,
my thoughts in confusion.
Lady Yang [weeps; clutching Emperor^s robes, sings]

It hurts so~
how can I let you go!
Together [sing]
Poor ducks, mated pair,
tossed by winds and waves of storm,
caught in its cruel tyranny. [More shouting within]
10 4 3
Lady Yang [weeping, sings]: The soldiers make my heart leap in alarm,
Emperor [lost in thought, suddenly embraces Lady Yang weepingsings]:
My Lady
I simply cannot bear this.
Enter Soldiers shouting. They circle stage and surround the station,
GaoYour Majestysoldiers outside have surrounded the station pavilion.

If we hesitate further, they may get even more violent. What will we do?
EmperorChen Yuan-li, go out there immediately and calm the army. I will
find a way.
ChenAs you command. [Exit]

Emperor and Lady Yang embraceweeping.
Lady Yang [s/ngs]
The trembling soul takes flight
tears in crossing tracks are shed.
Emperor [sings]
In all my sovereign might,
less joy have I than he who wed
Mourn-No-More.5
Together [weepingsings]
How can love conjoined with right
be instantly cast aside?
Lady Yang [kneeling]I have enjoyed so much love from Your Majesty that
even my death cannot repay it. In this present crisis I hope you will per
mit me to end my life in order to pacify the army. If Your Majesty can
make it safely to Shu, then I am content to die.

[Sings]
I see no other way to quell the armys fury,
so gladly will I end my life,
gladly will I end my life. [Weepingshe buries her head in his

bosom]
EmperorHow can you say such a thing? If you sacrifice your life, what
would I care about the honors of my great palaces or the wealth of all
the world? Let the empire be destroyed and my family die, I refuse to
abandon you.
[Sings]
Let them howl,
I will feign to be deaf and blind

the wrong was entirely mine.
5That is, the Emperor is less fortunate than commoners who get to live to old age with their spouses.
The lines allude to the last couplet of a poem by Li Shang-yin on "Ma-wei"H ow is it that having
been for four decades Son of Heaven/is less than the Lu's home, which has Mourn-No-More."
10 44
The Qing Dynasty
Here blooms a flower of such grace

I cannot bear to see it felled
by tempests and to say
our last farewell
at the very edge of sky.
And if still they thwart my will,
to the brown sand let me fall
in your place.
Lady YangHowever deep Your Majestys love may be, when things
have reached this point, there is no way to save my life. If you persist
in trying to hold on to me, then the good w ill be destroyed with
the bad, and the wrongs for which I am responsible will be multiplied.
I beg Your Majesty to give me up in order to preserve the imperial
house.
Gao [kneeling^ wiping away tears] Since my Lady has shown herself so
heroic in her willingness to sacrifice her life, I hope Your Majesty will
accept your responsibility to the state and try to set aside your love. [More
shouting within]
Emperor [weeping, stamps his foot]All right then. Since Lady Yang is so
determined, I cannot compel her. Gao Li-shiju s t. . . just let my Lady
do as she will. [Covers his face and exitsobbing]

Lady Yang [making ceremonial bow]: Long live the Emperor! [Collapses
in tears]
Gao [addressing Soldiers within]Soldiers, listen! His Imperial Majesty has

given instructions that Lady Yang is to end her life.
Soldiers [shouting within]Long live the Emperor! Long live the Emperor!
Long live the Emperor!
Gao [helping Lady Yang to her feet]My Lady, please come back here with
me. [Helps her along]
Lady Yang [weepingsings]
A lifetime of separation
can happen in a moment,
the fairest face of all the age
is dying for her lord. [They reach a chapel]
GaoHere is the Buddhist chapel.

Lady Yang [going in]: Stop a while and let me say a prayer to the Buddha.
[Bows] Lord Buddha, think on Yang Yu-huan, [sings]
deep in sin,
deep in sin,
yet I hope that Buddha will redeem me.
GaoMy Lady, may you be reborn in Heaven.

Lady Yang risesweepingGao Li-shi kneelsweeping.
My Lady, are there any words you want to charge me with?
Lady Yang Gao Li-shi, the Emperor is getting on in years, and after I die,
you will be the only old friend he has left who can divine what is on his
10 4 5
mind, and you must take care to serve him. And expostulate with him
on my behalf not to think of me any more.
Gao [weeping]I understand.

Lady Yang Gao Li-shi, there
s one more thing. [Takes out hairpin and box]
This two-branched hairpin and inlaid box were given me by the Emperor
as tokens of his love. Bring them with you and bury them with memake
sure you dont forget!
Gao [receiving hairpin and box]I understand.

Lady Yang [weepingsings]:
The heartbreak and the pain
and bitterness beyond all words!
Enter Chen Yuan-li, pushing his way in at the head of his troops.
ChenSince you have, Lady, been instructed to die, what are you waiting
for, delaying His Majesty's journey?
Soldiers advanceshouting.
Gao [blocking their advance]You soldiers cant come in here. My Lady
Yang is this very moment going to return to Heaven.
Lady YangChen Yuan-li, Chen Yuan-li. .. [sings]

You did not use the weight of command
against the mutineers
instead you force me to take my life.
Gao Oh no! The soldiers are pushing their way in!
Lady Yang [looks around]: All right! All right! This pear tree will be the spot
where Yang Yu-huan meets her end. [Takes a white silk sash from around
her waist and bows] IYang Yu-huan, reverently thank His Majesty for
his love, and I will never see him again from this time forward.
Gao Li-shi sheds tears, and Lady Yangweeping

puts the noose around her neck.
Lady YangMy Lord!
Death now ends my fated span,
to Yellow Springs I descend,
yet beside the kings yellow banners
my soul will remain.
She hangs herself.
ChenThe Consort Yang is dead. Soldiers, withdraw at once!

[Exeunt Soldiers]
Gao [weeping]Oh, my Lady! [Exit]
Enter Emperor.
Emperor \recites\\
The six-fold army would not set forth,
1046
The Qing Dynasty
and the fragile arch of her lovely brows
died there before the horses.M

Gao [entering with white silk sash]Your Majesty, I am here to inform you
that Lady Yang has returned to Heaven. [Emperor has a numb expres
sion and doesn't answer; Gao Li-shi repeats] Lady Yang has returned to
Heaven, and this is the white silk sash with which she hung herself.
Emperor [looking at sash, beside himself with weeping]My Consort, my

Consort! Grief will drive me to my death!
Falls downGao Li-shi lifts him up.
Emperor [5/ngs]
*
Her features were once like the peach in bloom
like the peach in bloom,
Gao [sings]:
her life ends this morning with pear flowers,
with pear flowers.
[Takes out hairpin and box] My Lady charged me to have this golden hairpin
and inlaid box buried with her.

Emperor [weeping, looks at the hairpin and boxsings]:
This hairpin and this box,
were the seeds of our ruin.
In the Palace of Lasting Life
we shared mutual joy;

at Ma-wei Station
all joys are gone.
GaoHow are we going to prepare her for burial properly in all this con
fusion?
EmperorNever mind. Wrap her body in a brocade for the time being. Make
careful note where you bury her so that we can rebury her later with
proper ceremony. Attach the hairpin and the box to my Ladys clothes.
G ao
As you command. [Exit]
Emperor [weeping, sings]:

Warm fragrance, voluptuous jade,
pass away in an instant,
in this life I will see her no more
Enter Chen Yuan-li and kneels.
ChenWould Your Majesty make ready to set out?
Emperor [stamping his foot in anger, sings]:

What does it matter whether I go west or not?
Shouting within. Orders are given. Enter troops. Enter Gao Li-shi, who leads
Emperor to horse and helps him mount.
Together [sing]
A long stretch of sky, patches of fog
10 4 7
cold winds rattle the pennons and banners.

Slowly we make the long journey,
the troops of guards are foul with dust.
Who would have guessed that ruler and ruled
would share such peril?
Everywhere hated rebels pillage,
and beacon fires continue~

when will we get to slay
those tigers and jackals?
We gaze toward the sharp tips
of Shus mountains afar,
then peer back toward the palace towers
through several spots of drifting clouds,
though close by, Chang-an
is hidden,
Chang-an is hidden.
In the west the royal regalia brushed
Shus clouds in their flight, [Zhang He]
Heaven and Earth were thick with dust,
the vessels of state, in peril. [Wu Rong]

Her cicada wing tresses did not follow
the royal carriage away, [Gao Bing]
only ducks and egrets, startled to flight,
go instantly, one with another. [Qian Qi]
GIFT OF A MEAL (XXYI)
Enter Emperor with Gao Li-shi.
Emperor [sings]:
Troubled lovely brows too lightly lost,
my nightlong grief assumes a thousand shapes.
Too listless to crack my golden whip
in early morn,
now, past noon, I have not tasted
a single precious grain.
I journeyed westward in headlong flight, and yesterday at Ma-wei Sta
tion the army refused to go on. I had no choice but to let Lady Yang die.
[Weeps] I have reigned as Son of Heaven for nothing and now at last
have become one of the most hard-hearted men of all time. I
ve forced
myself to journey on another stage and now have come into the terri
tory of Fu-feng. I am having the retinue stop at Feng-yi Palace because
I have to rest a moment.
Enter Guo Cong-jin, an old peasant, bringing a dish of cooked barley.

1048
The Qing Dynasty
Guo [recites]:
Sunning my back, I may
meet the Son of Heaven,
from this gift of garden vegetables
know a man from the countryside.6
I am Guo Cong-jin, an old fellow who lives in the countryside around
Fu-feng. I heard that the Emperor was on his way west and had stopped
a while at Feng-yi Palace, so I cooked him up a bowl of barley and have
brought it to give to him as a mark of my respect. [Greets Gao Li-shi]

Your Honor, would you be so good as to announce that Guo Cong-jin
from the countryside has brought a meal.
Gao Li-shi announces him.

EmperorHave him come forward.
Guo [coming closer and greeting Emperor]: Guo Cong-jin, a commoner,
greets Your Majesty.
EmperorWhere are you from?

Guo [sings]:
In Fu-feng born and bred,
I worked the land till hair grew white,
feeling blessed that times were good.
I heard of a sudden rebellion
from which the royal cortege roamed,
and I felt infinite alarm.
I brought this bowl of barley
and came, bowed with humility,
to bannered gates
to set it before Your Majesty.
I pray, my Lord, do not despise
fare so coarse~
sustenance from a peasant.
EmperorI am grateful to you. Gao Li-shi, bring it here.

Gao takes the food and brings it to the Emperor, who looks at it.
E m p e ro r I have dwelled retired, deep in the palace, and have never once tasted this.
[Sings]
It was my wont
to be served at table by royal cooks;
dainty confections like gold and jade
filled a square yard before my plate,
the rarest morsels of every taste
yet I would dismiss them as flavored ineptly.
6This alludes to the proverbial story of the common man who felt so comfortable sunning his back
that he went to tell the emperor, so that he could enjoy it as well.
1049
Never would I have dreamed that today I would be satisfying my hunger

with something like this.
[Sings]
So drab,
barley mixed with bran
how can I get it down my throat?
Eats a little, then sets it aside.
How like it was for the Prince of Xiao

lost by the Hu-tuo River!7
Guo Do you know who is responsible for our present troubles?
E m p e r o r Who would you say is responsible?
Guo If you will pardon any offense it might give, Fll risk telling you straight
out.
E m p e r o r Speak freely.
Guo Yang Guo-zhong is responsible.
[S/wgs]
The man ran rampant,
taking advantage of kinships ties,
hungry for power, receiving bribes,
his poison spread throughout the world.
He feuded a decade with An Lu-shan,
till finally armed troops
rose up in Yu-yang.
E m p e r o r I had no idea that Yang Guo-zhong had started a feud or that An
Lu-shan was plotting rebellion.
Guo [sings]
Many a day had An Lu-shan

hidden treason in his heart,
and all in the whole world knew
the shape of his treachery.
Last year someone sent a letter to the throne giving Your Majesty evi
dence of An Lu-shan
s treachery, but Your Majesty had the man put to
death.
[Sings]
Thereafter who would willingly face

the headsmans ax
to state the case to the throne?
I h e "Prince of Xiao" was the emperor Guang-wu, who restored the Han Dynasty in a . d . 25. Ear
lier he had once been in desperate straits by the Hu-tuo River and had been sent food by a sympa
thetic officer.
1050
The Qing Dynasty
Emperor [with a bitter expression] Then it was my own blindness that

brought us to this.
[Smgs]
Thinking it over
with clear sight and sharp mind
a prince must always watch closely.
I recall when Yao Chong and Song Jing were my ministers.
[Sings]
They would always come with honest words,
and the mood of the folk, though far away,
seemed right there in the hall with me.
But somehow after Yao Chong and Song Jing died, the officials that filled
the court all tended to be greedy for position and trying to win my favor.
Guo Cong-jin
[Sings]
It turns out none could compare to you,
loyal here in the countryside,
pointing out to me
the treacherous frontier soldier,
the unscrupulous minister.
Guo But then if Your Majesty had not been brought to come here, how
could someone like myself have ever gotten to meet you face to face?
Emperor [smgs]:
And now you have made me eat
repentances bitter fruit~

though too late
and anger fills a hungry stomach.
Guo Your Majesty should rest now a while. I will take my leave now. [Sighs
and recites]
Even if a thousand stalks of snow
fill my head with white
none can burn a loyal heart
into an inch of ash. [Exit]
Enter C o u r ie r , with two attendants carrying multicolored silks.
[sings]
Over paths for birds and twisting sheepgut trails
I bring spring silks on the long post road.
Often did chains of hills resound
with the riders bells
that drew us daily nearer
the Emperors city.
C o u r ie r
10 51
I am a courier on the Cheng-du Circuit, and acting under the command

of the military governor, I am bringing one hundred thousand bolts
of bright spring silk to the capital. When I heard that His Majesty
had come to Fu-feng, I came here to present them, [to Gao Li-shi]
Would you be so good as to announce to His Majesty that the Cheng
du courier has arrived with the annual tribute of spring silks.
G a o L i -s h i
E m p e r o r Count
approaches
Em peror
and informs him.
the silk and accept the shipment, then send the courier
back.
The two attendants come forward with silksthen exeunt with Courier.
EmperorAssemble my officers and troops. I have something to say to them

directly.
Gao His Majesty summons the officers and troops of the Long-wu Guard
to hear his instructions.
Enter Guards.
Guards [recite]
We rise at dawn to the sound of kettledrums
and sleep at night clinging to saddles.
The officers and troops of the Long-wu Guard humbly greet Your
Majesty.
EmperorHeed what I have to say.

[Sings]
Upheaval has brought things unforeseen
we flee from the fighting afar
and fare through unfamiliar lands.
In our frantic exodus you toiled
to come with my retinue,
But today
I
ve pondered a better course for you.
GuardsWhat are Your Majestys instructions?

Emperor [sings]
Men on campaign think back on home,
men on campaign think back on home,
and the roads to Shu are like climbing sky.
I cannot bear to embroil you
and make you too lightly forsake
fathers and mothers, children and wives.
Therefore I will make my own way very slowly to Gheng-duaccompa
nied by the court officers and the young princes of the blood. Today each
of you may return to your own home.
10 52
The Qing Dynasty
[Sings]
You may cease to venture further on this course,
toiling on in hunger and cold.
Gao Li-shi, take the spring silks that the courier brought me and divide
them among the officers and troops as payment for the costs they have
incurred on the journey.
[Sings]
Unable to give the army its wages,
I portion out this silk
to serve as your p a y . .
GuardsYour Majestys instructions cut us to the very quick. Armies have
always been fed for a thousand days so that they may be used for a sin
gle morning.
[Sing]
Unable to wipe out those tigers and jackals,
unable to wipe out those tigers and jackals,
your fierce commanders feel helpless shame.
We want to go with you, even to death,
our battle cries for vigor depend
on imperial majesty.
We dare not accept these spring silks. [Sing]

Keep them until some future time
when rewards are due for deeds,
and may High Heaven look closely to see
any hearts perfidy~
we will never fail you.
E m p e r o r However deep your sense of loyalty may be, something in my heart
cannot bear having you accompany me, so you must go back.
GuardsIs it that you distrust us on account of Lady Yangs death?

EmperorNo, [smg5]
But old folks in Chang-an
are left in suspense
go back now,
and tell them their Emperor
has come to no harm.
GuardsDont say such things, Your Majesty. We want to go with you. We
swear our undivided loyalty.
Emperor and Guards [sing]

When the pall of evil is swept away,
we will turn back together
to the royal domain.
10 53
EmperorIt
s grown dark. Well make camp here for tonight and set out
early tomorrow.
GuardsYessir!
Sandstorms fly for thousands of miles,
war drums moan, [Qian Qi]
Gao
and the setting sun sinks under,
lower into the hills. [Luo Bin-wang]
Emperor
The pain and remorse I feel today
does no good at all[Wei Zhuang]
Gao
yet they cannot bear that his carriage wheds
head westward all alone. [Zhou Xian]
In the intervening scene, Lady Yang appears as a ghost trying to catch up with the
Emperor, but she is tossed about by the wind. There she witnesses demons from the
underworld dragging away Lady Guo and Yang Guo-zhong. Returning to Ma-wei
Station, Lady Yang is given the protection of the local god, who informs her that she
is an immortal banished to Earth and will not be carried off to the underworld.
DENOUNCING THE REBEL (XXVIII)
Enter Lei Hai-qing, carrying his mandolin.
Lei [recites]:
Civil servants and generalsall
former officers of the crown
I hate their two-faced treachery,
serving this upstart court.
In the Pear Garden Academy
some constancy remains:
musicians will not shamelessly cling
to that slender thread of life.
I am Lei Hai-qing, and I enjoyed the kindness of our Tian-bao Emperor,
waiting at his service in the Pear Garden Academy. Then An Lu-shan un
expectedly rebelled, taking Chang-anthe Emperor went west to Sichuan.
The civil and military officials who filled his court used to enjoy high
positions and rich salaries, passing privilege on to their children and gain
ing fiefs for their wivesthey enjoyed that splendor and became rich and
nobleand each item of that came from the kindness of the court. But
now every single one of them is hungry to stay alive and fears death. They
turn their backs on what is right and forget what kindnesses they re
ceived, rushing in an unbroken stream to submit to their new ruler. They
think only of their security and pleasures in the present moment and pay
10 5 4
The Qing Dynasty
no heed to the disgrace of their names for all time. It makes one feel
ashamed and angry! Even though I am only a musician, I could never do
anything so shamefully self-serving.
Today, An Lu-shan and all his renegades are holding a great banquet
by the Pool of Frozen Sapphire, and the Pear Garden Academy has been
given instructions to perform for him. Ill take this opportunity to get
close to him, and then Fll denounce him roundly and show this fury I
feel. Then I wont care if they tear me to pieces. So Fll be going now with
my mandolin in arm.
[Sings]
Even though we
are but musicians of low degree,
rough-hewn, ignorant, and naive,
though we never studied or advised
never passed the examinations
never stood high in the courtiersranks,
still in the temper of our blood
and in our breast
t
there is some conviction of the right
and a sense of loyalty.
Beholding now the ruin wreaked,
and living through hardship and peril,
meeting sad alterations in these times,
I cannot help grinding my teeth in pain,
my voice stifled, my hate restrained.
And how I hate!
that putrid backwoods general,
reeking slime, an ooze
upon the dragon throne,
a warty toad with wild fancies
to dine upon the goose,8
he actually forced our prince to flee
southward across the horizon.
Are such outrages to be borne?
Even if
I ate his flesh and slept on his skin,
this hate wouldnt be scraped away.
And who would have thought that those witless,
crooked-hearted, treacherous,
renegade dogs
whose used to flap their mouths
prating Devotion and Loyalty,
8This was a proverb for reaching above one's station.
1055
would at perils point sell out

from lust for wealth and honor?
They soon came wagging their tails as one,
receiving new positions,
and show their rulers worst enemy
deep gratitude for favor shown.
Are your false faces capable of shame?
I havent seen a single person dare
act as faithful subject of the throne.
Now, Lei Hai-qing
if I dont take this weight upon me,
for nothing am I flesh and blood.
If I hold unfailingly to right
and keep from dishonors stain,
I would willingly die and die again. [Exit]

Enter An Lu-shan with Two Soldiers.
An [sings]:
I have seized control of these rivers and hills
and named my dynasty the Yan,
my gown is dyed royal yellow,
on my head is the sky-touching crown.
And now in cool fall at Frozen Sapphire
my little troupes of the Pear Garden
for a splendid feast will dance and sing.
Once I raised the standards of rebellion at Fan-yangno one stood in my
way, and I made a long drive to the west, all the way to Chang-an. The
Tang Emperor fled to Shu, and all his splendid mountains and rivers have
fallen into my hands. [Laughs] Its wonderful! Today Ym bringing to

gether all my officials at Frozen Sapphire Pool to hold a feast in cele
bration of an age of peace and have a good time. Attendants_ have all
my officials arrived on time?
SoldierThey are all awaiting your pleasure in the outer gallery.

A n Let them know that they may come in.
SoldierAs Your Majesty commands. [Makes announcement] His Highness
announces that all the officials may enter.
Enter four turncoat O f f ic ia l s .
Officials [recite]
Today we have a new Emperor,
who used to be a minister back then.
We simply see that times have changed

it
s not that we
re ingrates and traitors. [They greet An]
May Your Majesty live ten thousand years! Long live Your Majesty!
A n Be at ease. I am taking the day off today from my official duties and
10 5 6
The Qing Dynasty
holding a special feast at Frozen Sapphire Pool to celebrate an age of

peace with you.
OfficialsLong live Your Majesty!
SoldierThe feast is ready. If Your Majesty pleases, we may go now.

Music is played within. The four turncoat Officials kneel and offer wine.
An [s/ngs]:
Beside this sapphire pool the dragon sports,
and colored clouds draw back to show
the fresh and lucent autumn weather.
Roaming through these purple halls,
I rest my riding crop a while.
I hold a feast
and scarlet-gowned minions scurry,
phoenix blades slice fine,
rolling up brocade sleeves,
streak-patterned plates are proffered full.
Officials offer wine and bow.

By this jasper pool
warrior generals like bears
civil officers like herons
bow as they pass fountains of wine.
Attendants, call in the Pear Garden musicians to perform.
SoldierAs Your Majesty commands. [Facing within] His Highness com

mands the Pear Garden musicians to perform for him. [Music from
within]
An [s/n^s]:
At my feast
the musicians play Balance of Heaven.
And Rainbow Skirtsof days gone by
again is sung,
half rising into clouds,
half blowing down along the wind.
Sounds rarely heard
apart from pure precincts of the moon,
only in the garden of Aloes Pavilion.
Today this music, tones of the gods,
is played no longer during the Tang.
A fine performance!
Officials: We feel that Your Majesty truly enjoys good fortune equal to
Heaven, for the Tian-bao Emperor of Tang spent no one knows how
much energy in having them learn this piece of music perfectly, and now
he has left it to Your Majesty to enjoy.
An [laughing]: There is something in what you say. More wine!
1057
Soldiers bring wine. Lei Hai-qing weeps within and sings.

Lei
Kettledrums crashed in You-zhou,

thousands of households lie in weeds
with smoke of beacon fires in wilds
on every side.
Leaves fall in deserted palaces,
when suddenly one shocked to hear
this song played!
The strangest of transformations,
truly Heaven and Earth are overturned,
truly men grieve and spirits rage.
[Weeps loudly] O my Emperor!

when again will you hold your court
with golden bells and officials all
bowing amid the dance?
A n W hos that weeping? How strange!
SoldierIts the musician Lei Hai-qing.

AnBring him in here. [Soldiers drag Lei Hai-qing before An] Lei Hai-qing,
this is terrible~ Im holding a feast to celebrate an age of peace, and for
some reason you dare to weep.
Lei [denouncing him]: An Lu-shan, you are only a failed frontier general
whose losses made you deserve beheading. Spared by imperial mercy, you
were made general and prince. But instead of doing your best to repay the
throne, you dared to raise your troops and start a rebellion, polluting this
holy city and driving our Emperor into flight. By this crime your evil has
reached its full measure, and in no time at all imperial troops will come to
destroy youso whats this about a banquet for an age of peace

An [in a rage] How dare you! Now that I have ascended the throne, all the
officials have sworn obedience to me. How can a musician of such little
account as yourself dare act so insolently! Soldiers, draw your swords
and watch him.
Soldiers draw their swords. Lei points at An Lu-shan and denounces him.
Lei [smgs]
I curse such utter treachery,

heart of beast, false face of man,
bodys hairs bristle in rage.
Though I am a musician, of low degree,
I am not like these shameless officials.
An Lu-shan,
you have stolen the sacred throne,
and disobeyed Heaven above;
soon your corpse will be streaked with blood.
10 58
The Qing Dynasty
Throws his mandolin at An.

I throw my mandolin
to crush a renegades head
and avenge the Emperor of the Kai-yuan.
Soldiers seize the mandolin.

An Take this man away immediately and kill him. [Exit soldiers, carrying
Lei Hai-qing away to execution] This is infuriating!

OfftoalsCalm your anger, Your Majesty. Why care about an ignorant musician?
AnI
m not in a good mood any more. You may leave me now.
OfficialsAs you command. We will see Your Majesty off back to the
palace. [They kneel]
An [recites]:
When with wine one meets good friends,
a thousand cups are too few;
when talking at cross-purposes,
a half a line is too much. [Exit in fury]
O fhoals [rising] He deserved to die. Imagine, a musician thinking to act the part
of a loyal official! Could it be that we here at the feast have been humiliated?
Everyone dresses himself for his role,

and what is a loyal official worth?
And, Lei Hai-qing,
since you never wore an officials black cap,
you were short on savvy.
[Recite]
The blood that has flowed in the land of Qin
has become a river, [Luo Yin]
whether a slave or whether a king
is the outcome of chance. [Li Shan-fu]
What person in this world will pity
those who suffer for principle? [Lu Xi-sheng]
all one should do is make merry
and never turn back. [Xue Ji]
BELLS (XXIX)
Gao Li-shi [shouting from within]Hurry forward, soldiers. Wait for us up

ahead. [Gongs ring within] Please mount up, Your Majesty.
Enter Emperor on horsebackwith Gao Li-shi following.
Emperor [smgs]:
I journey on these thousands of miles,
10 5 9
my heart grown heavy on the road.

See where the clouds and hills form tiers
in tangled twists like the grief I feel.
A limitless expanse of leafless trees
echoes with autumn sounds,
and in long skies a lone wild goose
joins with these its melancholy cries.
Since leaving Ma-wei Station I have tasted my fill of bitterness. The other
day I sent a courier with the imperial seal and an investiture tablet, by which
I abdicate in favor of the Crown Prince. We have traveled a month, and now
draw close to Shu. And I can take some joy in gradually getting farther from
the rebel armies so that we can go forward at a more leisurely pace. But
whenever I come upon the birds singing and falling flowers or blue waters
and green hills, they never fail to encourage sad thoughts, so lovely are they!
GaoYour Majesty, you are already thoroughly worn out by the rigors of
the journey. I beg you to banish such thoughts and not bring upon your
self such excess of pain.
EmperorOh Gao Li-shi, Lady Yang and I sat side by side at table and
walked shoulder to shoulder. And now in the panic of my flight west
ward, I sent her to such a terrible end_ how am I going to get her out
of my mind? [Weeps and sings]
This brings up things that pain the heart,
tears seem to pour from my eyes.
When I look back to Ma-wei slope,
a bitterness unbidden swells my breast.
GaoThere is a plank walkway on the mountains ahead. W ould Your
Majesty please take a firm grip on the reins and proceed very slowly?
Emperor [sings]-.
Flags and banners fluttering,
the dying sunlight at their backs
their shadows waving in the wind.
The horses on these rugged roads
never stop a moment.
Only somber clouds and darkening skies
the gibbons sad cries
that tear at the heart,
the nightjar shrieking bloody tears,
terrible to hear
so utterly disheartening,
so utterly disheartening.
Behold a desolation
the foot of E-mei Mountain
where few men pass,
cold rains, wind-driven, greet me,
and strike me in the face.
1060
The Qing Dynasty
Gao Its raining. W ould Your Majesty be so good as to come up to Sword

Tower to get out of the rain?
Em peror
dismounts, climbs the towerand seats himself,
Gao [addressing Soldiers within] Were going to stop here a while, men.
Well set off again as soon as the rain stops.
[S o l d ie r s
respond from
within]
[recites]:
I climbed a high place all alone,
my mood grew still more pained,
hills of Shu, Shu
s waters
I hate such magnitudes.
Em peror
..
I know not whence or why the wind

comes blowing on the rain
whose every drop is one more note
splashing on the heart.
[Sound of bells within] Listen to those sounds from way over there,
never ceasing. They can drive a person mad with their din. Gao Li-shi,
see what they are.
Gao It
s just the sound of the rain in the forest joined with the bell chimes
hanging from the eaves that echo in the wind.
Emperor: Ay! These bells make such a lovely sound!
[Sings]
Clinking, tinkling,
they fill the air with tingling chill,
the heart leaps in alarm.
I listen to them far away,
beyond the trees, beyond the hill,
their sounds at war within the storm,
echoing high, ringing low.
Each drop that falls is one more note,
each drop that falls is one more note,
splattering the blood-streaked tears
of a melancholy man.
This wounding scene before me brings
recollection of her leaf-strewn grave.
White poplars whistle in the wind,
the rain gusts violently
these moments when her lonely soul
feels solitude and chill.
Cold is the light from ghost-fires,
a riot of fireflies in soggy grass.
I repent betraying you in panic,
betraying you.
1061
I am left alone in this mortal world

and truly lack desire to live.
And this I say to that woman most fair:
I will join you later or sooner,
companion in that dark world below.
I am stricken by stillness of empty hills,
where bell sounds answer each other,
the plankway up is steep and rough,
like these writhing coils within,
and a pain that never levels out.
Gao
Dont torture yourself, Your Majesty. The rain has stopped now. Please come
down and well be off. [Emperor descends from the tower and mounts his
horse. Gao Li-shi goes within] Forward, men! [Gao Li-shi follows Emperor]
Emperor [sings]
The road ahead goes on and on,

my sorrow undepleted,
calling her soul to return,
leaving my capital,
both of these haunt the heart.
T o g e th e r
After the rain the mountain spires

are thousands of specks of green
beyond which I cannot see.
E m p e ro r
Unbroken ranges at Sword Tower

color a thousand miles, [Luo Bin-wang]
here someone cut from one he loves

doubles the grief he feels. [Luo Ye]
The royal carriage fruitlessly struggles
against the rain and mire, [Qin Tao-yu]
bells in the downpoura melody,
several lines of tears. [Du Mu]
In the scene that follows, Lady Yang's ghost appears, reflecting on her past life and
expressing remorse for the wrongs she has done. The local god overhears her and
gives her a permit allowing her to wander in the vicinity of Ma-wei Station.
In the next scene, we see Guo Zi-yi defeating An Lu-shan's generals. The scene
then shifts back to Cheng-du, where the Emperor, having abdicated in favor of the
Crown Prince, has learned of the defeat of An Lu-shan's army. The Emperor has or
dered that a statue of Lady Yang be made; when the statue is brou g ht in, he laments
before it. The local god of Ma-wei Station reports to the Weaver Star that Lady Yang
has repented of the wrongs she had committed while alive, and the Weaver Star says
that she can now be forgiven. The local god goes on to say that Lady Yang still clings
fast to her love for the Emperor. The scenes that follow treat the assassination of An
Lu-shan by one of his adopted sons and Guo Zi-yi's recapture of the capital.
1 06 2
The Qing Dynasty
STOCKING-VIEWING (XXXVI)
Enter G r a n n y
ang,
an old tavern keeper.
Granny Wang [sings]

This spot on the slope
at Ma-wei Station,
was an unfrequented location

but then I found Lady Yangs
stocking of brocade.
When I opened shop and resumed my trade
selling beer,
travelers going both ways
all stop here.
Now free from worries
I spend my days.
For a long time I ve made my living keeping a rundown tavern here on
Ma-wei Slope. When An Lu-shan rose in rebellion, the whole populace
fled. At the time I went into the Buddhist chapel within the precincts of
the station and saw a single brocade stocking beneath a pear tree, some
thing left by Lady Yang. I kept it, and to my great surprise it has turned
out to be a treasure. Now that Marshal Guo Zi-yi has smashed the rebels
and retaken the capital, peace has returned; and I run my tavern here as
I used to. Buthearing that I have this brocade stocking, people near and
far come to drink in my tavern and ask to see the stocking. In addition
to the cost of the wine I charge extra for looking at the stocking, so that
my life has grown quite prosperous. [Laughs] This has been a real stroke
of luck. This morning I am going to set up the tavern, for I expect cus
tomers will be on their way. [Exit]
Enter Li M o, dressed as a scholar,

Li M o [sings]:
The royal carriage headed west

and left a depth of bitterness
forever in this ancient station.
I am touched by his last farewell
to a face so fair,
like Green Barrow's desolation
where Zhao-jun lies buried on the steppes,9
or Purple Jade, Fu-cha
s hapless daughter,
dying untimely, then melting away.1
9Wang Zhao-jun, a beautiful court lady, unrecognized by the Han emperor because she was mis
represented by a spiteful court painter, was sent off to Central Asia to cement a marriage alliance
with the Khan. Her tomb, a spot of greenery in the steppes, was known as Green Barrow.
1Purple Jade was the daughter of Fu-cha, the King of Wu. She died of her hopeless passion for Han
Zhong, who later saw her beside her tomb, at which she melted away like mist.
1063
I couldnt get out of the capital before because troops were blocking the
roads; but now I am glad to see that peace is returning. Ive heard that
in Granny Wangs tavern by Ma-wei Slope there is one of Lady Yangs
brocade stockings, and Im going there to ask her to let me look at it.
Hey, theres a Daoist nun coming along.
Enter Nun.
N u n [recites]:
Epochal changes fill my eyes,

for ail I wipe back tears,
only a brocade stocking remains
offered for people to see. [Greets Li Mo]
Li M o : Where are you from, sister?
N un I am the abbess of the Lodge of Maidenly Purity in Jin-ling. I
had gone to the capital to seek scriptures, but because of the war I
couldnt return. I recently learned that Granny Wang has one of
Lady Yangs brocade stockings in her tavern, and Ive come here to see
it.
Li M o So you
ve come to see the stockingtoo. Why dont we go there to
gether? [They continue on]
Together [sing]
Fair as jade, she is gone,
too far to find,
yet the heart feels pain for a brocade rag
that remains in a rustic inn.
Here well buy wine and slowly drink
a while to closely study
what so draws curiosity.
Li M o This is the place. Lets go right in. [Both go in]
Granny Wang [greeting them]: Please take a seat inside. [Li Mo and Nun
are seated]
Enter Guo Cong-jin, the old peasant.

Guo: Fm so happy the fighting has stopped that Im on my way to Mount
Hua to make an offering. Passing by Ma-wei Slope just now I feel worn
out from walking. Theres a tavern hereabouts, and I think Fll go drink
a few cups. [Enters] Tavern keeper, bring me some beer.
Granny WangHere you are.

Guo [greeting Li M o and N un ]Nice to meet you.
Li Mo [addressing Granny Wang] : The first reason we came here was to

have a drink, but the second was that we heard you have a brocade
stocking that belonged to Lady Yang, and we wanted you to let us look
at it.
Granny Wang [laughing]Indeed, I do have such a brocade stocking

but. . .
1064
The Qing Dynasty
[ftVigs]
I guard this treasure most closely
and keep it always well wrapped
and hidden away.
I want its traces of scent not to fade,
I want its powders and oils to stay
and let no dirt stain it.
A fascinating thing it is
a thing to amaze;
travelers wanting to see it
are eager to come here to drink.
So if you dont mind spending a bit,
I would gladly let you closely study
what so draws curiosity.
Li M o This is as it should be. It
s quite all right to be charged extra, apart
from the cost of the wine.
Granny WangIn that case let me go get it. [She exits then returns with
stockingrecites]
Her jadelike toes are through wearing it,
it still bears traces of oils,
even closely wrapped in scarf of gauze
you still can smell the scent.
Here is the brocade stocking, sir. Have a look.
Li Mo [taking it and unwrapping it, he looks at it with the Nun]Just look
at the intricate workmanship of the pattern in the brocade! It's the high
est quality. It still has its gloss, and its rare scent has not dissipated. This
is truly something not of this mortal world.
NunWhat a wonderful scent! [Guo Cong-jing keeps drinking and pays no
attention]
Li M o [getting up with the stocking in handlooking at it, sings]:
See the thin lining of scented cotton,

supple and light as a cloud of the gods.
In golden palaces long ago
its tiny paces were seen by none.
How sad that today at a bar
it is displayed so casually
to the common eye.
Traces of thread, needlemarks
each layer wounds the heart.
Too bad that this loveliest lady ever,
who suffered the greatest wrong ever,
left nothing but this reliceternally fragrant,
to be passed on eternally.
Guo [irritated]: Damnit, sir, how come you are gawking at that? As I see it,
the Tian-bao Emperor made a wreck of the dynasty because he so fa
1065
vored the Prized Consort, spending day and night with her in pleasure.
The result was that war rose on all sides and the common folk were re
duced to misery. Now as the years of my life are drawing to a close, to
meet with such turmoil and upheaval! Seeing this brocade stocking today
only makes me feel bitter.
[Sings]
I imagine back then when newly made
and with red lotuses tightly sewn
it showed, touching the ground,
then hidden
by six-paneled Xiang silk skirts,
and our Lord
doted upon her every motion.
These heights of joy provoke
the working of our ruin
and great harm wreaked on all the folk.
Today the matters donethe persons gone,
this survives alone.
But no sooner do I glimpse the scented stocking toe
than misery returns,
and recalling our calamity
again I wipe back tears.
Granny WangWhy does seeing this brocade stocking upset him so much?
Ill bet he
s not willing to pay the extra charge.
Guo What extra charge?
Granny WangYoure obviously an old peasant, understanding nothing

about viewing charges.
Li M o You shouldnt argue about such trivial things, [to Nun] Sister, take
a close look, [to Granny Wang]Pll pay the charges for everyone. [Hands
it on]
Nun [takes it, getting up to look at it]: I think on Lady Yang, the loveliest
face of the age, a life of love ended so abruptly. Even though the stock
ing survives today, such a beauty will not come again. Such a sad thing!
[Smgs]
See these specks of azure, hooks of red,
leaves and flowers well wrought still.
That pair of gleaming feet is gone
one stocking remains, one phoenix alone.
Emptiness all
and in her fall and her abandonment,
unending bitterness,
a dream that faded at Ma-wei.
Such beauty for which a kingdom fell
1066
The Qing Dynasty
is but a mirage, no use at all.

Look not on these fraying threads
and recall where once she walked,
but rather believe that all splendor
is swept off with the winds of dawn.
[Passes stocking back to G r a n n y Wang] I think that Lady Yang was ac
tually a goddess who-was reborn in the mortal world. I am going to ask
you to donate this stocking to the Lodge of Maidenly Purity in Jin-ling,

where we will revere it as a sacred relic of the gods. What do you say to
that?
Granny Wang [laughing]: Im old and have neither sons nor daughters. My
livelihood for the rest of my life is entirely in this stocking. I really can
t
do as you suggest.
Li M o What would you say if I offered you a good price for it?
Guo Why would you want something that still stinks?
Granny WangI
m not going to sell it.
Guo [paying his bill\: Here, take the price for the beer.
Li M o [paying his bill]Here is the charge for all of us looking at the stock
ing.
Granny Wang [taking the money]'Thank you very much,

[Recites]
Never tire of getting drunk
in splendor of spring weather[Bao Rong]
N un
how many kingfisher feathers and pearls

have fallen to scented dust? [Lu Lun]
Li M o
All thats lefthalf up the slope,
this moon bending round, [Li Yi]
Guo
the hubbub out in these meadows
draws people who want to look. [Song Zhi-wen]
THE CORPSE RELEASED (XXXVII)
Enter L a d y
Y ang
as a spirit.
L ady Y a n g [s/ngs]
Swept along rippling in wind,

a shadow that never stays,
but sighs, wondering
where I will lodge on the road ahead?
The living are parted from the dead,
endless space lies in between
10 6 7
the man is not seen,

passion does not cease
nor does bitterness pass.
[Recites a lyric]
Lifes ultimate romance is done,
and pointless to repine
at cruel destiny.
Yet how can I now grind away
loves firm inscription,
that is the hearts inlay?
But now enjoy this moments ease
this moments ease~
none question the gift of the fading moon
and early morning breeze.
I am the spirit of Yang Yu-huan. Since receiving a travel permit
from the local god, I have let myself be carried by the wind from
one place to another. And Im glad that neither w ill Heaven take
me in nor Earth take charge of me. Nothing ties me down, and I drift
along in utter abandon. The only thing is that I cant find my way to
the Emperor and meet him again. [ L o o k s sad] I feel so miserable. Ill
go along with the wind now and see where it takes me. [She moves on
and sings]
My soul goes riding on the wind,
as if I roamed in dream,
the road is sunk in shadow,
I cannot tell apart
daylight and dark.
Through wild woods I pass and briefly pause,
suddenly hearing the mournful cries
of birds in the chilly haze

they frighten me away,
I cannot stay.
Blue phosphorescence drifts through tangled grass,
and I use it to light my way
as I go on ahead in the dark.
What place is this,
where the corner of a great hall lies
in shadowing layers of cloud?
[She looks] This is the main gate of the West Palace! Why dont I go in
and take a look?
She starts to go in. Enter two G u a r d ia n Deitieswith faces painted black and
whitemetal armor, each holding tablet and whip. They take their positions
on a spot above her.
The Qing Dynasty
Guardian Deities [recite]

While living, we were heroes,
we kept the world at peace,
dead, we are the dread spirits
who guard the palace gate.
[They lift whips and tablets to block
L ady Y ang]
Wherever you come fromghost-woman, you cannot break your way in

here!
,
Lady Yang [taking out travel permit} I am Yang Yu-huan. Here is my travel
permit.
Guardian DEirrES: It's Lady Yang herself! Now that An Lu-shan has been assassinatcd and his son Qing-xu has fled, Guo Zi-yi has purged the palace
precincts of their filth. The old Emperor is far away in Sha, and the new
Emperor is still staying at Ling-wu. Therefore the great compound is silent
and deserted, and the palace gates are all locked and barred. You are wel
come to go in, my Lady. We deities will withdraw and leave you. [Exeunt]
L a d y Y a n g [entering]Look! [recites]
The palace flowers are one and all
branches that break the heart,
there is no one behind the curtains
that hang and touch the ground.
I walk to where a painted screen
encloses a special spot~
clearly I see the hairpin and box
at the moment he gave me his love.
She weeps. On the stage have been set her old bed and curtainsalong with
various objects.
Sings.
I linger here bewildered
romance of bygone days. [Sits on bed]
I recall when first he gave
the hairpin and the box
firmly planting this affection.
We both to foolish love held fast. [Rrses]
But who would have guessed
with what haste
grim fate would tear us apart?
Look there how desolate and deserted are Aloeswood Pavilion and Calyx
Mansion! [Climbs stairs]
No one climbs the painted tower,
no flowers bloom in pairs,
and no new ballads are performed
now all is bleakness everywhere,
engendering sorrow.
1069
At such a melancholy scene

I cant help shedding tears.
This is the Palace of Lasting Life! It all comes back to me now . . . [She
weeps. On stage has been set the table with incense she used in praying
for skill in the Palace of Lasting Life] Over here was where I was that
day. . .
setting out incense, fruit, and melons to pray
for skill that night,
and over there is where
we bowed toward Oxherd and Weaver,
shoulder to shoulder, in secret prayer.

Oh, my Emperor! If only I could see you for a little while! But the
guardian deities have just now told me that the Emperor is still in Shu.
Fll slip back out of the palace gates and go to the Wei River Bridge to
look west toward Sichuan. [Walks and sings]

Into the clear fall scene I stare. [Steps on bridge]
I gaze but cannot see
E-Mei Mountain rising high
in cold clouds and distant trees.
Thoughts turn to the royal exile there,
his body weary, his shadow alone.
In sharp frosts his sickly horse
stands on Cheng-du's Thousand-Mile Bridge
I wonder if he
s well.
But even if his health is good,
I
m sure hes gaunt because of me.
Ill fly off to him! [She begins to fly but is whirled around by the wind]
Oh Heaven!
I thought this light and frail soul
could fly away;
but the journey grew farther and farther still,
with a thousand streams and a million hills.
[Looks around. A Buddhist shrine and pear tree are placed on stage]
heres a deserted Buddhist shrine all locked up, with a slanting pear txee.
It seems that a gust of wind has blown me all the way back to Ma-wei
Station!
[Sings]
The night is cold by the station wall,
a single lamps faint light leaks through.
And all around the Buddhas hall,
shadowy winds are rising.
I see the empty stables5moon-framed dark

a sudden lance of pain brings tears.
1070
The Qing Dynasty
Before me stands that pear tree,

hidden back and resting on the eaves
sweet scent severed, white flesh fell,
this is the spot where I am interred.
The love scene here was played to the end,
and of my doomed lifes destiny
all that remains
is the story.
Once rosy-cfieeked and ravishing,
fortunes were spent for my smile
now bleached bones lie forsaken
in a half-formed mound of soil.
Yet when I call to mind the depth of affection that I received when alive, I die
without regrets. Only loves destined ties that I could not seethrough to the end
leave this heart of mine restless and unable to forget, evenfor thousands of eons.
[Sings]
I look back in vain
destined love in dream;
the waters flowed away,
the flowers fell,
and what remains
is just this speck of old passion.
Like springs silkworm dying,
still spinning out its thread.
Whether grieving in the royal lodge
by Sword-Gate Pass
or keeping close to Ma-wei Slope
in the land of death,
I think at least we share this pain
that keeps going on.
When will golden pin and inlaid box
again be fair and whole,
and the incense wisp that bore our vows
made on the Seventh Eve,
now broken, be rejoined?
Enter Local God.
Local God [recites]:

From Heaven a courier brings a decree
for the secret soul in the underworld.
[Greets her] Consortthe Lady, Heavens Daughter, comes bearing the

High Gods command, and you should make yourself ready to receive
her. Fll be gone now.
1071
Lady YangThank you. [Exeunt separately]

Enter four immortal maidens carrying water basinbanners, and standards.
They lead the W e a v e r W o m a n , who holds the decree in her hands.
Weaver [smgs]:
From Heaven's precincts comes the jade decree,
attending in front and behind
crane and phoenix fly.
Because her love is genuine,
she is recalled
to peaks of Peng-lai.
Enter Local God, who kneels and greets her.
Local GodAs the local god of Ma-wei Slope, I bid your ladyship welcome.
WeaverSpirit, where is the soul of Lady Yang? Summon her here imme
diately so that she can hear the reading of the jade decree.
Local GodAs you command. [Exit]
Reenters with Lady Yang, no longer costumed as ghost They kneel
Weaver [reading out decree]: The jade decree has comekneel then
and listen as I read. Thus sayeth the Jade Emperor: You, Yu-huan of
the House of Yang, were originally Tai-zhen, the Jade Consort, who,
through a minor misdeed, was exiled for a short span in the mortal
world. Your affections strayed, as they should not have, into a worldly
love, which caused you to fall upon great affliction. Now, according
to the report of Our Daughter, you appeal to Heaven and repent
your errors; the burden of your transgression has been expiated and
your genuine love deserves mercy. I hereby authorize the use of the
body-refining techniques of the Supreme Yin, that you may again be
listed in the registers of immortals, and be given lodging in the dwellings
of the immortal spirits on Peng-lai. Give ye thanks now for this kind
ness.
Lady Yang [touching her head to the ground]: All hailhis Holy Highness!
[to Weaver] I also bow to Heaven's Daughter.

WeaverRise, Tai-zhen. On the Seventh Eve of the tenth year of the Tianbao Reign, just as I was crossing the River of Stars, I saw you and the
Tang Emperor in the Palace of Lasting Life secretly vowing the depth of
your love. Then, more recently, I heard from the local god of Ma-wei
that you were sincere in your repentance, and I made a report to the high
god, from whom we now have his own sacred words.
Lady YangThank you, your ladyship, for all your help.

Weaver [taking the basin of water and giving it to the Local God]This is
fluid jade and liquid gold. Take it and go with the Jade Consort to her
grave. There wet her original body. Once you have refined the physical
body and etherealized it, the body will be released from the dross phys
ical corpse and rise up to the sky. When the process is completed, escort
1072
The Qing Dynasty
her with music and banners to the precincts of the immortals on Penglai. I will go now and turn in the jade decree.
Local GodAs you command.

W
[recites]:
My coach returns to the paired phoenix gates,
eaver
clouds crowding around my seven-phase gown.2 [Exit with

immortal handmaidens]
Local GodCongratulations, my Lady. Lets go to the grave now. [He takes

the water basin and leads Lady Yang, singing]
East of the meadow the road goes north,
east of the meadow the road goes north
and there I see a small mound.
W e
re there.
Lady Yang [looking sadsings]

So this is the bog where beauty rests,
where the scent lies sequestered
from life gone by.
L o c a l G o d By command of the Deity of the Western Peak, I have preserved
this immortals body here. Let me lift it out.
Goes to stage door and drags in Lady Yangs corpsewrapped in a brocade

coverlet. Local God removes the brocade coverlet and holds corpse up in
standing position.
[startled, sings]:
My body looks like it used to be,
my body looks like it used to be
but the eyes are tightly closed,
and red lips are shut and say nothing.
G o d [wetting the corpse with the water]
I sprinkle it through with liquid gold,
I sprinkle it through with liquid gold,
and holy radiance floats on the face,
L ady Y ang
L ocal
Corpse opens eyes.
Lady Yang
and suddenly glances like fall floods flow.
The corpse's hands and feet move. A ll at once it takes a few steps toward
Lady Yang.
[alarmed]
In an instant it lives again,
in an instant it lives again
and moves forward,
in appearance no different from me. [She pauses, worried]
Lady Y ang
2The "seven phases" are the seven nightly positions in the sky occupied by the Weaver Star, asso
ciated with her weaving.
10 73
But wait! If this Yang Yu-huan is alive, where will Ithe other Yang Yuhuan, go?
The corpse suddenly begins to move toward L a d y

as she faces it.
L ocal G od
Y ang,
who looks stupefied
[clapping his bands and shouting]
My Lady, dont be misled,

she is in fact you
and you are in fact she.

Addressing L a d y
Y ang
and pointing to corpse.
This husk of a body is her,
Addressing corpse and pointing to L a d y
Yang.
this soul is her.

Let the true nature use the frame,
that ere now was cut in twain.
The corpse chases Lady Yang swiftly around the stage. Then Lady Yang
runs into the corpse and they fall down together. Corpse makes a hidden exit.
Lady
The original spirit enters its shell,

the original spirit enters its shell,
like a second quickening in the womb,
or twin rings fused as one.
Y a n g [rising, stands steadily and slowly sings]:
Suddenly waking from fogs of dream,
suddenly waking from fogs of dream,
long I had lost the I that used to be,
now spirit and body are whole again.
I think back in a daze,
I think back in a daze,
now Zhuang Zhou am I indeed,
but of the butterfly what remains?
I never expected that these cold bones would live again, and that the
soul, separated from the body, would fuse with it again. Truly, I thank
Heaven.
Like a traveler who lost his home,
like a traveler who lost his home,
I come back to the very spot,
and the dwelling is there as it used to be.
Deity, let me thank you for all your trouble.
Local GodIt was nothing. [They bow to one another]
L a d y Y a n g [sings]
Thank you for guarding me through the year,
thank you for guarding me through the year,
10 7 4
The Qing Dynasty
from rot and decay keeping me whole,

and sheltering the lost and sundered soul.
Local GodThe music and banners are all ready and wait to escort you to
the dwellings of the immortal spirits.
Lady Yang [about to set offthen stopping]Wait a moment. Now I have

been transformed and the corpse is gone. Someday His Majesty will re
turn and eventually he will want to come and rebury me. I have to leave
something here for him to recognize. Deity, would you take the brocade
coverlet in which I was wrapped and rebury it in the grave? And dont
let it disintegrate.
Local GodAs you command. [He takes the brocade coverlet, but it flies
off] How strange! How very strange! The brocade coverlet turned into
a many-colored cloud and flew off into the sky.
Lady Yang [gazing after it]: Ah, I see! When you were refining the physi
cal body, some of the liquid gold got on the brocade coverlet, and thus
it has acquired some immortal life force.
[Sings]
Colored cloud transformed and flying through air,
colored cloud transformed and flying through air,
seems to mimic the roaming immortals,
but what now will I Jeave behind?
The golden hairpin and inlaid box are things I must keep close with me.
I dont have anything else besides these. [She ponders] Ah, Fve got it! I
wear a brocade sachet at my breast, which the Emperor gave me when
I danced on the azure disk. Fll leave that behind. [She takes off sachet
and sings]
I hold the brocade sachet in hand,
I hold the brocade sachet in hand[sadly]
someday my Lord will recover this
better by far
than seeing no trace of me again.
[Hands brocade sachet to Local God] Deity, take this sachet and put it
in the grave.
L o ca l God [accepting it]: As you command. [Exits, then reenters] I have
placed the sachet as you required.
Enter four Immortal Maidens with music and banners.
Immortal Maidens [greeting Lady Yang]We handmaidens of Tai-zhen

s
compound in Peng-lai greet you. Would your ladyship please change your
clothes and come with us?
Music within. Lady Yang changes her clothes.
Local GodGoodbye, my Lady.

1075
Lady YangGoodbye, Deity. [Exit Local GodImmortal Maidens and

Lady Yang set out]
[Sings]
O ff toward Ying-zhou
where cloudy vapors shroud the air,
a cluster of gold and sapphire spires appears.
For immortals there the months and years
last on and on, as long as love.
When love is genuine and true,
through thousands of eons it will not wane.
To the golden hairpin and inlaid box I hold tight
right to the summit of Mount Peng-lai.
Ascends to a high place, then exits.

Melted away is the scent that once
hung tied upon my breast, [Zhang Hu]
many feelings and filled with love,
of course I cant forget. [Lu Gui-meng]
From this spot to Mount Peng-lai
the journey is not far, [Li Shang-yin]
the worlds of Heaven and mortal men
are both in distance faint. [Cao Tang]
BALLAD (XXXVIII)
Enter Li Gui-nian, looking even older, in worn-out clothes and hat, carrying
mandolin.
Li Gui-nian [recites]
No sooner did the drums of war
come rising from Yu-yang
than suddenly we saw the vines
grow over palace walls.
All thats left is this old man,
survivor with white hair,
who sets his lasting pain to song
that tells of glory and the fall.
I am that Li Gui-nian who used to be a musician in the court ensemble
and served in the Pear Garden Academy, blessed by great favor from His
Imperial Majesty. After I directed the rehearsal of Rainbow Skirts in
Chao-yuan Tower, the song was performed for the Emperor, and the
dragon countenance was greatly pleased. His Majesty and Lady Yang
rewarded me with over twenty thousand cash. No one imagined that An
Lu-shan would rise in rebellion and take Chang-an3driving His Majesty
10 76
The Qing Dynasty
into flight to the West and making the common folk flee for their lives.
We too, the musicians of the Pear Garden Academy, were driven thither
and yon, each escaping as best he could. I came to the Southland and
used up the last of my money here. I have had to take this mandolin and
sing songs just to provide myself with a meager living.
Today theres a big fair at Vulture Peak Temple by Blue Creek. There
will be a crowd, so Fm going there to perform.
When I think how
I used to sing before the Son of Heaven, and now must beat my clapper
from door to' door, it really makes me lose heart. [Walks onsinging]
In lifes last years, caught unawares,
I met with chaos, refugee
harried at every crossroad, finding
ruin and poverty.
My face, made black by storms of war,
while thinning hair and frosty beard
are turned a melancholy white.
Today adrift on far horizons,
all I have is my mandolin.
Hiding my face in shame, I go
up the long avenue,
down the short lane.
No Gao Jian-li am Iwho strummed
his cithern, sang sad songs~3
more like W u Zi-xu, who blew
his flute and begged.4
I think on how it used to be:
I played clear song and rushed to serve
in golden galleries,
and there composed new melodies
at the call
of the alabaster throne.
From Heavens heights, the royal grace
came flooding like the sea,
more than words can express:
snows cleared from the sky when he
went to Warm Springs on Mount Li,
in Xing-qing Pool the lotus bloomed,
and skiffs of the immortals sailed,
and in the halls of Hua-qing Palace
3Gao Jian-li was the friend of Jing Ke, the retainer of the Prince of Yan, who attempted to assassi
nate the First Emperor of Qin. When he set out, Gao Jian-li played his zither and sang a song of a
few lines.
4One legend of Wu Zi-xu was that when he escaped to Wu after the murder of his father and brother,
he survived by playing the flute and begging.
10 77
he enjoyed the moonlights charm
or on Calyx Tower took pleasure
in the scent of flowers.

At the moment when I bathed
in streams of royal admiration,
all at once there came about
a strange and tragic alteration.
His phoenix carriage fled in dust,
exiled prince at Sword-Gate Pass;
the fairest lady in the land
lay stained with blood on Ma-wei Slope.
While Ithrough the Southland, weep away
these lean bones and gaunt frame.
Destitute and wretched, I
can only go from door to door

hawking Rainbow Skirts
the royal score
and no one thirsts
for such brilliant melody.
I merely stand before these plants and trees
that bury parks and tombs
of the Six Dynasties,
my eyes are filled with glory and fall. [Moves over to edge of stage]
Enter Li M o in scholar's garb.
Li Mo [recites]:
Flowers stir the travelers eyes,
springtime wounds the homesick heart.
Since she of Rainbow Skirts is gone,
none remain who know true musics tone.
I am Li Mo. Earlier I stayed a time in the Western Capital, but after the
rebellion I came back here. Outside the palace wall I surreptitiously

transcribed several sections of Rainbow Skirts, but since that time I
have not been able to get my hands on the complete score. Recently I
heard that there is an old man who makes his living with the mandolin.
Everyone says that his technique is exceptional, like that of the former
performers of the Pear Garden Academy. Today is the great fair at Vul
ture Peak Temple, and I am sure hell be there, so I
m going to go try to
find him. Look at the throngs of visitors coming along the road!
Enter three Travelers from Shan-xivariously attiredwith a D ancehall
Girl.
F ir s t T
10 7 8
r a v e l e r [recites]
We peacefully stroll seeking sweetness,
unwilling to waste a fine spring,
The Qing Dynasty
Second Traveler [recites]

for the while to view this splendid fair
we follow the travelers.
Third TravelerHey, honey, you and I should [recites]

have our fun while the time is right,
not let it pass us by,
Dancehall G irl [recites]

lets listen to the mandolin
play a recent song.
Li Mo [to Second Traveler]: Excuse me, sir. May I ask the young lady what
recent song on the mandolin she was referring to?
Second TravelerDon
t you know about the old man who came here just
recently and plays the mandolin with such great skill? Since theres a fair
today at Vulture Peak Temple, were all going together to listen to him.
Li M o I was just on my way to look for this person. Would it be all right
if I joined you?
A ll That would be just fine. [They walk ori\ On we go, and here we have
come to the Vulture Peak Temple. Lets go in. [They go in]
Second TravelerI think that circle over there with plank benches all
around must be it. Lets make our way in together and have a seat to lis
ten. [They all s/Y]
Enter Li Gui-nian.
Li Gui-nian {greeting them]: Welcome. I imagine you all are here to hear my
songs, so please make yourselves comfortable. I welcome your com
ments.
A ll Go on.
Li Gui-nian [strumming his mandolin and singing]:
Dreams illusions,
glory and fall
so many I cant sing them all
and a grief that stirs your sighs
is too great for me to play;
only desolation fills my eyes
facing these rivers and hills. 1
Let me in swift strings convey
the bitterness repressed,
and in altering melody trace
the troubles and the pain,
thus slowly will I play for you
what happened years ago
in the Tian-bao Reign.
First TravelerThe Story of the Tian-bao now thats a good topic.

Third TravelerHey, honey~what song is he going to sing? Is it going to
be one of our Western songs?
1079
Dancehall G irlSomething like that.

Li Mo Sir, you cant sing the whole story of the Tian-bao Reign in one per
formance. Sing for us how Lady Yang first came to the palace back then.
Li Gui-nian [sings]:
At first peace reigned throughout the world
under our royal Tang,
when he sought the beauty of woman,
and chose the fairest brows.
There was a lovely girl,
grown up in the house of Yang,
deep in the women's chamber
a jewel without flaws.
Once our ruler saw her,
he was overcome with joy,
he gave her the golden hairpin,
he gave her the inlaid box
in Zhao-yang Palace she was judged
the foremost flower.
Dancehall G irlWhat did the lady look like?
Third TravelerWas she as cute as my little honey here?
Second TravelerJust let him sing.

Li Gui-nian [sings]
That lady had an inborn grace,
like a goddess, features fair,
modest and retiring past compare.
The very flowers concede defeat
to her twin cheeks, and to her waist
would willows yield,
more ravishing than Wang Zhao-jun,
of X i Shi, double the allure
as if Guan-yin came flying there
from summits in the sea,
or like Chang E, who stole away
from the sapphire heights of sky.
Her spring mood was all winsomeness,
her spring tipsiness had a pleasing air,
in spring sleep her dreams were still.
Even the finest painter
could never draw her various charms.
Second Traveler [laughing]When I listen to this old man telling of Lady
Yangs stunning beauty in such a lively way, its as if he had seen her
with his own eyes. Hes obviously not telling the truth.
Third TravelerAs long as he sings the story well, who cares whether he
s
telling the truth or not. Now hurry up and sing for us how the Emperor
treated her in those days.
The Qing Dynasty
Li Gui-nian [smgs]
Our Lord and ruler looked on her
like a pearl without a peer,
he lifted her high in his palm
all the day long.
Surpassing Zhao Swallow-in-Flight newly groomed
in palaces of Han, they were
kingfishers nesting in mansions of jade,
mated ducks enclosed in golden galleries,
embracing by night, in day side by side.
It made the clever man of state
befuddled and besotted,
of his own heart no longer master.
{In the court his sway grew lax,
he stood in the center of passions stage,
a hundred details cant describe
their settings for romance.
When walking, they walked together,
when seated, they were face to face.
As a pair
they actually lay on the royal throne,
and gained in trade shared pleasure
in moonlit nights and dawns of flowers.
Third Traveler [falling over]: Aiya! Its so real! When I hear this, I feel like
a snowman by a fire.
Dancehall Girl [helping him up] What do you mean by that?
Third TravelerFm melted. [All laugh]
Li M o Back then in the palace there was a song call Goats of Feathers,
Rainbow Skirts
which Ive heard some say was composed by the
Emperor himselfwhile others say that it was done by Lady Yang.
Perhaps you know the facts of the matter? Please sing about this for
me.
Li Gui-nian [5/ngs]
Back then
in Lotus Courts
the Lady Yang arranged those notes with care,
she wrote the score,
new version of the Rainbow Skirts.
In person, when the days grew long,
she taught it to her maids.
W ith pale hands spread,
she beat the clappers of sandalwood,
as every note and every word
emerged between
those gleaming teeth and ruby lips.
10 81
Like the sound of a string

of black-dragon pearls
easily echoing the tones,
like swallows and orioles
trilling their melodies,
like fountains gurgling under blooms
flowing into mountain streams,
like sutra-chanting crisp and clear
under the bright moon,
like shrilling in the lofty cold, the cranes
on Mount H ou
s crest,
like pendants of some spirit of the air,
tinkling in the night,
striding through the empty sky.
She passed it on
to the Pear Garden ensemble,
to the Academys companies,
and the Lady pirouetting on the azure disk
drew our rulers pleased regard.
Li M o This stream of divine notes in my ears depicts her well indeed.
First Traveler [sighing]And yet its too bad that the Emperor5s infatua
tion with Lady Yang, spending his days from dawn to dusk in pleasures,
brought about the uprising of the army in Yu-yang. Its painful even to
mention it.
Li M o But sir, don
t hold a grudge against Lady Yang for this. What hap
pened then was due to mistakes in giving responsibility to a frontier gen
eral and leaving the government to a power-hungry minister. This is what
brought about the overthrow of the royal government and caused the
upheavals all over the world. If the old ministers Yao and Song had still
been alive, this would never have happened.
First TravelerWhat you say is true.
Li Gui-nianIf the rebellion of the Yu-yang armies is mentioned, that really
was a cataclysm that was sad to behold and painful to hear of. But if you
all wouldnt mind, let me sing about it more fully.
All: Certainly.
As the music throbbed and droned
to dancing of the Rainbow Skirts
all at once there came the boom

and rumble of the battle drum
rising from Yu-yang.
Then a fruitless gibbering hum,
droves of letters to the throne
discussing the frontier,
startling both high and low,
and nothing was done.
10 82
The Qing Dynasty
Soon there was a roaring din,

in frightened alarm, stunned
in panic and terror, they pressed
squeezing through gates to the road leading west,
with the royal carriage bringing along
the Consort, charming in her tears.
Then all one could see were soldiers
dense around them in a mob,
hear their savage, cruel words,
brawling, bellowing, yelling,
all around in thunderous strife.
They drove apart
the loving, the adoring,
the doting and the caring
Emperor and wife.
In those brief moments there was drawn
a most melancholy picture
the loveliest of women ends her life.
First and Second Travelers both sigh.

Li M o [weeping]: It is really terrible that such a Heaven-sent beauty should
come to such a sad and violent end.
Third Traveler [laughing] Its only a ballad. Why are you shedding tears
in earnest?
Dancehall G irlWhere was Lady Yang buried after she died?

Li Gui-nian [smgs]
By the ramshackle building of Ma-wei Station,
off at an angle from a forlorn
chapel to the Buddha.
The fairest face of a generation
died there for her lord,
and grief to last a thousand years
dripped in blood on her scarf of gauze.
Her tombstone is a blasted tree,
marking her sad fate,
her grave, a bit of earth scooped out
it breaks the heart.
Never again will men pass by
that desolate moor,
and on the trackless edge of sky who mourns
for the pear blossomsfall?
Pity her solitary soul
harboring her sense of wrong,
kept company alone
by the wailing cry
of Emperor Wang,
10 8 3
turned into the nightjar

weeping to the moon.
First TravelerWhat did Chang-an look like after the devastation of the
rebellion?
Li G u i- n ia n Ladies and gentlemen, Chang-an, once a splendid place of em
broidered brocade, was an utterly unbearable sight after it was sacked
by An Lu-shan. Listen as I play some more.
[Sings]
Once the royal coach went west
along the road to Shu,
in Chang-an soldiers ran amok.
In the Purple Residence no more
did the thousand officers
come to morning audience,
all its splendor
instantly was swept away,
instantly was swept away.
From the harems crimson doors
long-legged spiders hang,
and in daylight foxes howl
right beside the royal couch.
Owls shriek,
weeds grow tall.
W ild deer run everywhere,
willows of the royal park and palace flowers
half withered and fallen.
Who is there to sweep them up,
sweep them up?
Bare beams set with tortoise shell
are fouled by swallows spatterings,
and all that remains is the crescent moon
shining in the dusk.
I sigh at such desolation,
^
a stench pervading everywhere,
a stench pervading everywhere,
the jade pavements bare
but for piles of horse dung.
Third TravelerMy god, weve been listening half the day, and Im going
wild with hunger. Hey, honey, why dont you and I go have a drink and
get some garlic dumplings to eat? [Takes some coins from his pocket and
gives them to Li Gui-nian, then exitsbantering with the Dancehall

Girl]
F i r s t T r a v e l e r Its getting late, lets get going. [Gives Li G u i- n ia n silver]
Heres something for you to buy a drink with.
Li G u i- n ia n Thank you very much.
'
The Qing Dynasty
First TravelerThere was an immense pain of glory and fall in what you
sang.
Second TravelerAnd you brought the audience to tears. [Exeunt two

Travelers]
Li M o Old man, it
s obvious from your mandolin playing that you are no
ordinary musician. From whom did you learn? Please tell me everything.
This mandolin once served
the Kai-yuan Emperor
and again brings forth
hearts pain and falling tears.
Li M o Someone who says this was obviously one of the court musicians of
the Pear Garden Academy.
Li Gui-nian [smgs]
My name indeed was on the list
in the Pear Garden Academy,
I stood in attendance among the flowers
of Aloes Pavilion,
and accompanied Hua-qing Palace feasts.
Li M o Are you old He?
Li Gui-nian [smgs]
No, I
m not He Huai-zhi.
Li M o Perhaps then you are Huang Fan-chuo?
Li Gui-nian [sings]
Huang and I were the seniors.
Li M o So then you must be Lei Hai-qing!
Li Gui-nian [smgs]
Though I play the mandolin
my name is not Lei:
he died long ago cursing treason,
his name lives on.
Li M o Then you must be Ma Xian-qi.
Li Gui-nian [sings]
Nor am I the master of stone chime,
the famous Ma Xian-qi
speak no more of those old friends of mine.
Li M o How did you come to be here?
Li Gui-nian [sings]
W ith ruin of the royal house,
destruction of the state,
fighting broke out everywhere,
and I was left to roam alone
in the Southland.
Li M o But then who are you?
Li Gui-nian [smgs]
Since you keep on pressing me on who I am,
10 85
know then
that my name among the musicians
was Li Gui-nian.
Li M o [bowing]: Ah! So you are Li Gui-nian, the leader of the troupe! I am
honored to make your acquaintance.

Li Gui-nianWhat is your namesir? And how do you come to know who
I am?
Li M o I am Li Mo.
Li Gui-nianAre you perhaps the Li who plays the iron flute?

Li M o Thats right.
Li Gui-nian: I
m very pleased to meet you. [Bows]
Li M o Can I ask you if you remember the entire score of Rainbow Skirts ?
Li Gui-nianI still remember it. Why do you ask?

Li Mo To tell you the truth, sirFve always loved music and was staying
in Chang-an before. When you were rehearsing Rainbow Skirts at
Chao-yuan Tower, I was secretly listening very carefully outside the
palace wallsand managed to get down several sections on my iron flute.

But I didnt get the entire score. Pve been searching everywhere to find
itbut no one knows it. But I have been fortunate enough to meet you
here today, and I wonder if you might be willing to teach it to me.

Li Gui-nianSince Fve met someone who truly understands music, why
should I hesitate to teach him my poor skills?
Li M o I would be very grateful if you would do so. Let me ask where you
are staying?
Li Gui-nianI am down on my luck now and just wander about. Im not
staying anywhere.
Li M o How would you like to stay at my lodgings so that I can learn it with
care?
Li Gui-nianThat would be just fine.
[Sings]
Like a frightened crow circling a tree
I keep away from the empty boughs,

And nowbeyond hope, I find myself
a swallow seeking familiar nest

among the painted beams.
Today one connoisseur delights
to find another of his kind
this meeting was remarkable,
exhilarating match of minds.
I will slowly teach you Rainbow Skirts
to pass on for a thousand years.
[Recites]
A welcome thing to pass along
the lanes of peach and willow, [Zhang Ji]
1086
The Qing Dynasty
Li M o
now I turn my coach aside
to seek the recluse ivy-clad. [Bo Ju-yi]
Li Gui-nian
If today the music lover
will linger on to listen, [Liu Yu-xi]
Li M o
no place in all the Southland
will fail to hear the song. [Gu Kuang]
In the scene that follows, Li Gui-nian appears again, visiting a nunnery, where he
finds a shrine dedicated to Lady Yang. Here he meets Lady Yang's two maids, Yongxin and Nian-nu.
THE IM M ORTALS RECOLLECTIONS (XL)
Enter Lady Yang as an immortalfollowed by an attendant spirit.
Lady Yang [sings]

Borne aloft by phoenix and crane,
I left to never return,
and now look back in vain
to the distance between
Heaven and mortal men.
Yet what happened before at Upright Hall
and in the Palace of Lasting Life
pulls without measure on the heart,
[Recites lyric]
Blurred by distance, depths of cloud
enclose those marble rooms,
now back on the lists of immortals
my thoughts arc in a daze.
I look back
and cannot help
expense of recollection.
By alabaster stairs
within the agate trees
all at once I see
outlines of bright phoenixes
roosting in their pairs
thoughts so often put from mind
again lay claim to me.
I have had the good fortune to receive a decree from the Heavenly Em
peror restoring me to my place among the immortals, and I have again
1087
taken up my residence in Tai-zhen

s compound. Yet those tokens by
which we pledged our love have never left me for a moment. And the
heart finds it impossible to forsake those vows we made on the Seventh
Eve. Its such a long tale.
[Sfwgs]
Driven apart in an instant,
yet between us remains such mutual care.
Life and death could not rend loves bond,
but all thats left is bitter pain
massing like hills.
There he, in sorrow unceasinghis thoughts
captive of loves old history;
here I, with tears that never dry,
shed bloody by a remnant soul
we both waste sighs.
Before we formed those fabled fish
that share a single eye,
troubles were upon us; and when drake
from duck is split, what matters
immortality?
She takes out the hairpin and box and looks at them.
See those feelings present still
in golden hairpin, paneled box
who would have thought while Heaven lasts
and Earth endures
our vows would be forsaken?
When will the blue phoenix come
to do my will,
to reunite our destinies
to let us meet again
to give bitter account of our miseries?
Enter Han Huang.
Han Huang [recites]:

I make the climb up Peng-lai,
gaze from the mountains height,
where ocean waves are shallow and clear,
there comes a crane in flight.
On orders from my Lady, the Mistress of the Moon, Ive come to get the
new score of Rainbow Skirts55from Tai-zhen, the Jade Consort. Now
that I
m here, I might as well go in. [Approaches and greets her] Madam.
Lady YangWhy have you come, spirit?

1088
The Qing Dynasty
H an H uang [laughing]: Do you still recognize me? Fm Han Huang.

Lady Yang [thinking it over]: Arent you the immortal spirit from the
moon?
H a n H u a n g Thats right.
Lady YangPlease have a seat. [Han Huang 5^5] Its hard to believe
that its been several years since I took leave of you in that dream. You
have come a long way to pay me a visit, so tell me what your purpose
is.
Han HuangListen while I explain it to you.

[Sings]
Because the music Rainbow Skirts
played in the Palace of Spreading Cold
caught your genius's fancy
and you scored anew with precision,
Ive been ordered by my Lady, the Mistress of the Moon,
to visit the true musician
to pay a far call on Mount Peng-lai,
and borrow that score of days gone by
for my Lady herself to read.
L a d y Y a n g I see. Back then I had the good fortune to hear the music of im
mortals in my dream. But even though I copied it down in an arrange
ment for strings and woodwinds, Fm still embarrassed at its imperfec
tions and mistakes.
[Sings]
Why should royalty of the moon

so blindly choose this remnant tune?
for here my recollections turn
round and round in weeping. [Weeps]
Han HuangLady, why are you spilling these tears?

Lady Yang
Having lived through Armageddon,
and having myself been crushed,
I am pained how these notes
grow cold and fade.
The crimson strings are broken,
and I am ashamed
to let this tune again be played.
Please explain to the Lady of the Moon that I do not dare answer her
bidding with that old score from the foul and common world. I beg her
forgiveness.
Han HuangLady, dont refuse so stubbornly. My Lady, the Mistress of

the Moon,
1089
[Sings]
holds your fine wit in esteem,
a rare thing ever,
framing these new melodies,
matchless among mortals.
Though sadly late she seeks it,
do not disappoint, please
her respectful attention.
L a d y Y a n g Since the Lady of the Moon has been so gracious as to send
you to meI have a copy here that I wrote out on first coming to this
mountain and chancing to recall the past.
H a n H u a n g That would be wonderful.
Lady YangMaid, go get it for me. [Maid exits and brings back the score]
MaidHere it is.
L a d y Y a n g Spirit,
though the score has been fetched, maybe it would be

best if it could be recopied.
Han HuangWhy?
Lady Yang [sings]
See how the notes blur into ruin,
lines smudged and broken,
all stained by tracks of tears.
H an Huang: It doesnt matter.

Lady Yang [giving her back the score]: All right, but please explain this to
the Lady of the Moon and tell her that since I copied it from dream,
there are many mistakes in the notes and tempo, so that I would be glad
to have her correct it.
Han HuangIll do that. And now I must take my leave. [Recites]:

From the very first until
the music was complete, [Wang Jian]
Lady Yang
how could it happen that Chang E
knew in such detail? [Tang Yan-qian]
Han Huang
Marvel not with what feeling
she felt sorrow at this song, [Liu Yu-xi]
Lady Yang
such beauty adrift in the moonlight
is set to meet with whom? [Li Shang-yin]
Exit H
an
uang
with score.
Lady YangMaid, lock the gate to my grotto and follow me in.

Exitfollowed by Maid.
In the scenes that follow, women are conscripted to disinter Lady Yang's corpse.
Since Lady Yang has undergone a bodily metamorphosis into an immortal, they find
1090
The Qing Dynasty

o n ly th e s a c h e t th a t L a d y Y a n g had p u rp o s e fu lly left b e h in d . T h e E m p e ro r has
th e s a ch e t c e re m o n ia lly b u rie d , an d G u o Z i- y i ap p e ars to e sco rt h im b a c k to th e c a p
ital.
A t th e ir a n n u a l m eetin g on th e Seven th E v e , th e O x h e rd an d W e a v e r stars d is
c u ss th e lo v e shared b y L a d y Y a n g and the E m p e ro r. T h e y d eb ate w h e th e r th e Em
p e ro r, h a v in g su rren d e re d L a d y Y a n g to his m u tin o u s g u a rd s, h as fa ile d in h is v o w s
o f u n d y in g lo v e . B e fo re re a c h in g a d e c is io n ab o u t h e lp in g the lo v e rs b e re un ited ,
th e y w ill lo o k fo r sig n s o f re m o rse .
T h e n e x t s c e n e o p e n s w ith th e E m p e ro r sta yin g a w a k e on a ra in y n ig h t, griefstric k e n o v e r th e lo ss o f L a d y Y a n g . U rg e d to sle e p b y G a o L i- s h i, th e E m p e ro r
is a w a k e n e d b y tw o h e a v e n ly m e ssen g ers w h o te ll h im th a t L a d y Y a n g a w a its
h im . T h e E m p e ro r rise s an d fo llo w s th em o u t in to th e c it y , w h e re h is w a y is b arred
b y C h e n Y u a n - li, th e o ffic e r w h o h ad d e m a n d e d L a d y Y a n g 's d e ath a t M a -w e i
S ta tio n . T h e E m p e ro r, e n ra g e d , o rd e rs th e m e ssen g ers to k ill C h e n . A fte r C h e n
Y u a n - li's e x e c u tio n , th e m e ssen g ers b rin g th e E m p e ro r to M a -w e i S tatio n an d v
a n is h . T h e E m p e ro r is lo o k in g in v a in fo r L a d y Y a n g w h e n th e sta tio n its e lf v a n
is h e s , an d he fin d s h im s e lf b y a riv e r. A d e m o n rise s o u t o f th e w a te r to a tta c k h im
an d a god en te rs s w ift ly to fig h t th e d e m o n o ff. A t th e en d o f the s c e n e , G a o Lish i h u rrie s in an d th e E m p e ro r w a k e s up to fin d th at it h ad a ll b een a d re a m . Even
so , th e E m p e ro r d e c id e s th a t it m u st h a v e b e en L a d y Y a n g 's s p irit th a t in s p ire d the
d re a m , an d h e d e te rm in e s to s u m m o n a w iz a r d to go s e a rc h fo r h e r in th e w o rld
beyo nd.
In th e s c e n e th a t fo llo w s , th e w iz a r d go es to lo o k fo r L a d y Y a n g in th e u n d e r
w o r ld . U n a b le to lo c a te h e r th e re , he sets o ff fo r H e a v e n , w h e r e he m e ets
th e W e a v e r S ta r. A ss u re d b y th e w iz a rd o f th e E m p e ro r's u n s w e rv in g lo v e , th e
W e a v e r d ire c ts th e w iz a r d to P e n g -la i, th e is le o f th e im m o rta ls . T h e W e a v e r
n e x t su m m o n s L a d y Y a n g to test th e firm n e s s o f h e r lo v e , an d c o n v in c e d at la st o f
th e lo v e rs' d e v o tio n , sh e p ro m ise s L a d y Y a n g th a t sh e an d th e E m p e ro r w ill be
re u n ite d . E v e n t u a lly , th e w iz a r d re a c h e s P e n g -la i a n d c o n v e y s th e E m p e ro r's
lo v e to L a d y Y a n g , w h o g iv e s h im h a lf th e h a irp in and h a lf th e p a n e le d b o x as a
p ro o f th a t sh e h as been c o n ta c te d . S h e se n d s w o rd to th e E m p e ro r th a t th e y a re to
m e e t a g a in so on in th e m o o n . T h e E m p e ro r, aged an d s ic k , re c e iv e s th e to ke n s
an d th e m e ssag e th ro u g h G a o L i- s h i, an d a n x io u s ly a w a its h is re u n io n w ith L a d y
Vang.
REUNION (L)
E n te r
Yang Tong-you, a Wizard.
Wizard [sings]
A single love has conjured forth
this wedding between Heaven and man.
And if the love they bear
knows no alteration ever,
the wish they made so long before
can truly be attained.
1091
I am the wizard Yang Tong-you, who previously discovered Lady Yang

s
soul living on the isle of Peng-lai. I received her personal instructions to
bring the Emperor to the Moon Palace to meet her on Mid-autumn Eve.
The Emperor is really the high immortal Kong-sheng, and this night of
the full moon in October is the proper time for him to fly up to Heaven.
Just after dusk now, you can see the sapphire sky like water and the sil
very River of Stars without a speck of dust. Its time now to lead the Em
peror on his way. But as I stand here speaking, here comes the Emperor
himself out of the palace.
Enter Emperor.
Emperor [smgs]:
Clouds open in the distant sky,
translucent sapphire,
and shimmering moonbeams brighten
alabaster halls.
Wizard [greets him]Your Majesty, I am your humble subject, the wizard.

EmperorDont stand on ceremony. Tonight. . .
[Sings]
Since you brought her engagement

to meet in the palace of moon,
I have kept impatient watch
for twilights passage.
To the high reaches of blue clouds
I trust to you to guide my feet.
WizardNights colors have darkened. Lets be on our way. [They proceed,

as Wizard recites a song lyric]
Where is the bright moon found?
I wave my handwe climb blue sky.
Emperor [continuing the Wizard^ lines with lines by Su Sht]
I wonderfor those in sky palaces
it is this evening
of what year?
Wizard [continuing Su Shi's lyric]:

Id go there riding winds, but fear
those onyx halls and domes of jade
are up so high
I could not bear the cold.
T o g e t h e r [continuing]
Then rise and dance,
cool shadows capering~
how can anything compare
to the world of mortal men?
E m p e r o r Master
the road to Heaven, is so far, how can we fly the full dis
tance?
WizardDont worry, Your Majesty. Ill toss this magic whisk that I have
1092
The Qing Dynasty
in my hand, and it will turn into a bridge for immortal spirits of the air,
and it will take you right to the Moon Palace. [ W iz a r d tosses his whisk,
which turns into a bridge, then exits]

EmperorJust look, a bridge has materialized out of nowhere and the wiz
ard has suddenly disappeared. Pll just have to make my way over the
bridge by myself.
[Sings]
Below my every footstep see
a rainbow-colored path appear,
all the way to the starsSilver River
and wisps of the upper air

there nothing is clear, all
is shrouded in scented haze. [Music within]

Somewhere I hear played
Heavens Balance melody;
and I must be drawing near
the lunar groves of cassia. [Withdraws]
Enter Chang Efollowed by Immortal M aidens holding fans.
Chang E [sings]:
Our jade disk, full circle now,
adds its autumn light
and with Rainbow Skirts playing,
our chaste revels
are appointed to begin.
I am Chang E, the Lady of the Moon. Here in the moon we use to have a
suite of Heavens music called Rainbow Skirts Long ago Yang Tai-zhen,
the Prized Consort of the Tang Emperor, heard it in her dream, then wrote
down a score that appeared in the world of mortal men. It turned out that
her version of the melody was even better than the one here in Heaven.
Recently Lady Yang has been confirmed among the ranks of the immor tals. I had someone go to Peng-lai to find a copy of her score and worked
it into the Heavens Balance suite, planning to have it performed this
evening. Heavens Daughter unexpectedly took pity on their deep love and
wanted their destiny together to continue. She has asked me to lend my
lunar precincts as a place where the two might meet. And now Yang Taizhen has sent the wizard Yang Tong-you to bring the Tang Emperor here
tonight. This is a story that will last forever.
[Sings]
His love endured,
his faith was firm,
so fitting it is that goddess and man
meet again.
1093
Thus was Heavens Daughter moved

and made things come out well for them.
All you, my immortal handmaidens, keep a lookout for Tai-zhen
s ar
rival, and have her wait the while in the shade of the cassia tree. After
she has seen the Emperor, I will meet with them.
Immortal MaidensAs you wish.

Together [sing]
Now at its finest is cassias splendor
now the sparkling dew is fresh.
We bring the loving pair together,
in Heavens chaste, inviolate zones.
Exit Chang E. The Moon Palace is set up on stageand the Immortal Maid
ens stand waiting at the palace gate. Enter Lady Yang with her Immortal
H andmaidens.
Lady Yang [sings]

I left Jade H ills immortal bowers
and reached these glittering galleries
to catch sight of the face of mortal man,
one purple-born.
The wish of past and future lives
is here fulfilled,
this evenings meeting will excel
encounters in years gone by. [Arrives]
Immortal JVIaidensPlease come in.

Lady Yang [going in]Where is her ladyship of the Moon?
Immortal MaidensThe Lady instructed us to invite you to wait here a short
while until the Emperor sees you. She will meet you after that. Please sit
a while.
Lady Yang sits as the Immortal Maidens stand beside the moon palace
watching out for the Emperor. Enter Emperor.
E m p e r o r [s/n g s ]
On and on I cross this bridge

whose end somehow eludes me,
And Ias moving in a dream,
whirl around astride the wind.
The clear glow is conspicuous,
but once inside its light,
vision fails me and I see
only dim shapes of terrace and hall,
as Heavens sweet odors invisibly
brush across my face. [Reads]
The Precincts of Extensive Cold and Pure Space This must mean the
precincts of the'moon.
1094
The Qing Dynasty
[5mgs]
I made a date to meet her here,

so why do I not see
that spirit of the air
from Peng-lai
s bowers?
Immortal Maidens [welcoming him]: Are you the Emperor?
Emperor: "That I am.

I m m o r t a l M a id e n s The Jade Consort has already been here for some time.
Please come.
E m p e r o r Where
is Lady Yang?
Lady YangWhere is the Emperor?

E m p e ro r [seeing L a d y Y a n g a n d w eep in g]: M y Consort!
Lady YangMy Emperor! [They embrace]

[sings]
Meeting at once we join hands,
choked with pain, words hard to find.
It seems to me that day
when jade was brokensweet scent crushed,
was all because my strength was weak,
entangling you in grievous wrong,
the fault was mine entirely.
Even now shame fills my heart,
which keeps me from saying how much
Ive longed for you.
L ady Y a n g
Your Highness, come now!
Em peror
The roots of my own misdeeds went deep,

my fate adverse,
these led to my undoing, and involved you
so that you almost could not escape.
The jade flesh perished in blooms of pear,
the soul, cut loose, with the nightjar flew.
But due to our vow
still unfulfilled,
with pain I recalled our shattered union,
and with foolish stubbornness clung
to old promises made.
I am grateful you did not forsake me,
but yearned with a single intensity
and sought me throughout
skys Sapphire Web and Yellow Springs.
Emperor: When I passed back by Ma-wei, I was going to have your body
reburied. To my surprise there was no trace of your bones, and all that
was left was a single sachet. After that I thought of you day and night,
and I had a wizard look everywhere for your soul.
1095
[Sings]
As soon as he reached the spiritshill,
he sought you out
and passed on the message of the heart.
Takes out hairpin and box.

O f the hairpin this single branch,
of the box this single panel,
and also you mentioned the words of our vow
made on that night of praying for skill.
L a d y Y a n g [taking out her pieces of the hairpin and box]: Here are the pieces
of hairpin and box that I have.
T o g e t h e r [sing]
Now is the inlaid box rejoined,
and, paired in flight, upon the pin
once more are swallows matched.
We helplessly recall
unbearable despondency
and seeing each other again
we cannot help
streaming tears.
L a d y Y a n g We have the Weaver Woman, Heavens Daughter, to thank for
taking pity on us and allowing our divided fates to be reunited. Our meet
ing this evening is truly not by chance.
[Smgs]
By that immortal spirits grace

the intertwined boughs
and birds that flew wing to wing
are joined again as they were before.
Heaven has mended partings pain,
and filled in sorrows sea.
T o g e t h e r [sing]
Thank Gray Heaven for its pity,
so restoring loving hearts.
Newly inscribed as immortal spouse,
high in the lavender wisps of cloud
eternity will attest our wondrous fate.
Im m o r t a l M a id e n The L ady o f the M o o n is here.
Enter C h a n g E.
C h a n g E [recites]:
The shadow of the white elm

shows clearly in the moon,
red cassia fragrance whirls
in breeze beyond the clouds.
1096
The Qing Dynasty
Emperor [greeting her]: Your Ladyship.

Chang ESire.
Lady Y a n g
Mistress.
Chang E: Donstand on ceremony. Please be seated. [All sit] Your Majesty,

MadamI want to congratulate you on your restoration to the immor
tals and that your love can now continue forever. Put all that happened
before out of your minds.
[Sings]
The only threat is lack of love
why fret if shared lives are broken?
You two were tempered by separation
and by death, smashed
through loves barriers to display
loves true face
showing thus the thread
of karmic connection, contingency
and consequent grace.
All common meetings will seem pale
encountering each other here
in the round moon
s palace, where
all things come to circle full.
Im m o r t a l M a id e n The ru ling comes fro m the M o s t H ig h .
Enter W e a v e r
S t a r carrying
the ruling.
Weaver [recites]
A thousand strands of artful weave
done in Heaven,
a hundred lifespansdestiny
binding mortal men.
Emperor and Lady Yang kneel.

This is the Jade Emperors decree for Li Long-ji, Emperor of the Tang,
and for his Consort, Yang Yu-huan: Verily ye two were once the high
immortal Kong-sheng and an immortal of Peng-lai whoon account of
a small infraction, had to dwell a while in the mortal world. Now, the
term of your exile having expired, I have approved what Heavens
Daughter has recommended. I have examined the depth of your love
for one another and command that you be lodged in the palace of the
Dao-li Heaven of Hearts Desire, to be man and wife forever. Let it
be so .
E m p e ro r a n d L a d y Y a n g [bo w in g ]
Hail the High God! [T h ey rise. W e a v e r
W om an
greets them and all are seated]
W e a v e r Your Majesty, Tai-zhen
your two hearts have been steadfast and

your love has been proven. Now you have become man and wife in
Heaven, which cannot be compared with mortal marriage.
[Sings]
From Dao-li, Heaven of Hearts Desire,
watch Earths red dust and sapphire sea
change their places instantly.
Eternal couplefree
of each and every tangling care.
Ranging at will,
passing moments everywhere
enjoying the moon and breeze,
without the lingering desire
for bodys pleasure, childish folly.
Gather now that bygone love,
the hairpin and the box,
for endless ages live out now
the wish you made before.
Chang E: The spirits are all assembled, and the moon banquet is suitably
laid. Let us now lift our cups in a toast to congratulate the Emperor and
the Jade Consort. H ave the w ine served. [Enter I m m o r t a l M aid e n s with
wine] Here it is now. [Raises a toast and sings]
In this pure immaculate hall
see the spirits gathered all5
lined upon the silken mats.
Here among the cassia blooms
a holy pair,
in cassia blooms a holy pair
will rule love forever more.
A ll
[continuing ]:
They meet upon this splendid night,

two divided, now made whole;
Shining on this splendid night,
the moon is also full and whole.
W e a v e r [facing L a d y Y a n g ]
Blind love steadfast unto death,
feeling all too firm,
this I esteem,
[facing Emperor]:
while you win scorn
for sometimes shifting in your vow.
All you saw were phantom flowers,
conjured shadows all
conjured shadows, phantom flowers
sweep that worldly dust away, and now
jointly rise to Heaven.
1098
The Qing Dynasty
All [continuing]:
They meet upon this splendid night,
tw o divided, now made whole
Emperor and Lady Yang

We thank Chang E for empathy
with loves subtle inflections;
and thanks to Heavens Daughter too
for mending our afflictions.
We went through walls of misery
and seas of sorrow without bounds,
through walls of misery
and seas of sorrow without bounds,
And now at once
we do renounce
passions folly with a smile.
A ll [continuing]
They pieet upon this splendid night
two divided, now made whole;
Life, death, the realm of ghosts
and immortality
theyve seen them all,
and soon in Heavens palaces,
two lotuses will bloom
upon one stem,
and then will be fulfilled the vow
made in the Palace of Lasting Life.
W e a v e r For our gathering this evening we will have the Jade Consorts
newly scored version of MRainbow Skirts. Where are my Heavenly
Maids? [Enter H e a v e n l y M a id s with instruments]
Heavenly Maids [recite]

By night in moonlight sing away
the Calling Phoenix melody,
and Heavens winds blow down below
notes of Walking in the Sky.
At your service.
W e a v e r Dance
for us now Rainbow Skirts.
Heavenly Maids [dancing]:

Fragrant is the cassia orb
as we perform new melody,
into dancing rows divided.
Pendants of the spirits spring,
1099
rushing past in alternation,

carried on the Heavens breeze
bearing ringing sounds afar.
Winding like the dragons motion
rising through a thousand forms,
wingbeats like the phoenix turning
rainbow colors manifest.
Wispy skirts go sweeping past,
face to face with sleeves widespread,
sewn with alabaster thread.
Puffs of azure cloud disperse,
piling streams of autumn light.
Beside the oboes cranesdown capes
swirl and undulate
showing forth on Gou-shis crest;
rainbow streamers scintillate
gathering beside the cushions
for the Jasper Pool feast;
fragrance wafting, groups of damsels
send jade petals scattering
in Galleries of Unblown Buds.
One stands forth singly,
mounts with swan-steps,
then hides the phoenix form
and slips past down below.
Gowns are gathered, fans deployed,
precisely to the beat
each syllable, one soaring turn.
They match the manner of the pace
of the Goddess of the Luo
crossing waves,
stir visions of Wu Mountains goddess
moving clouds.
*
Round and round the tones and poses
sweep along.
And with slow and sensual pace they tread
the stratosphere in song,
as to the notes of melody
the tinkling beats respond.
Glinting buds of red
open in the wind;
chasing silver stars,
rippling streams of cloud.
Unlike delights of mortal men
let lotuses be spread
and on these slowly tread
1 1 00
The Qing Dynasty
paired swallows lightly tossing.

Treading Air,
Treading Air upon the onyx terraces
Fei-qiong stirs a frenzy;
Nong-yu
.
Nong-yu on Qins terraces
plays her panpipes urgently.
Earthly passions, godlike thoughts
both deliberating.
Now the style of Heavens Balance
melody is changed,
artfully composed the final strains
spinning without ending.
The silver moon is gleaming,
the water-clock of jade drips on
to last a thousand years one sung,
dancing Skirts of Rainbow.55
Weaver: What a wonderful piece of music! It truly will reign supreme for a
millennium. Play this music to accompany the high irhmortal Kong-sheng
and the Jade Consort to the palace in the Dao-li Heaven of Hearts Desire.
Chang E: My heavenly maidens, let this music be played as you lead them
on their way. [Heavenly Maidens lead Emperor and Lady Yang away
playing music]
Gods and spirits are lovers all;
and. though Peng-lai Isle lies far,
you can get there through love.
From its first roots love works its waythrough eons and through life and death,
until at last the lovers join.
Unions in this world of dust
pass with anxious haste,
But theres a Heaven of Hearts Desire
where love goes on forever.
This differs from that common dream,
beguiled by grief and joy alike,
where gentle care and passion come
at last to emptiness.
Leap from that cave of wandering folly,
cut free the reins of fantasy
golden shackles fall away,
chains of jade grow loose.
Laugh as you ride your phoenix pair
to Heavens palaces,
insouciant and free.
Thus is the former Rainbow Skirts
1101
here composed anew.

When sung to those who understand,
their hearts will know,
and this will make love stay
for all eternity.
Who made the drunken dancer brush
against the seat of the guest? [Zhang Yue]
Spirits of the upper realms
await those banished down below. [Fang Gan]
Before they heard the KRainbow Skirts
played the whole way through, [Wu Rong]
the fragrant wind had carried them
to Da-luo Heaven. [Wei Xuan]
See a palace built by waters,
named for wLasting Life
[Wang Jian]
Heavens roads stretch on and on
to touch the skys pure heights. [Cao Tang]
And from this must the Jade Emperor
break the common rule, [Si-kong Tu]
that gods and spirits have their fates
which are not bound to love. [Li Shang-yin]
Pu Song-ling (1640-1715),
Liao-zhai's Record of Wonders

Stories of marvels and encounters with supernatural beings had been popular in
China at least since the Han Dynasty, but the favorite compendium of all such sto
ries was Liao-zhai's Record o f Wonders (Liao-zhai zhi-yi), by Pu Song-ling. By the
Qing, the number of educated men who sought public office far exceeded the num
ber of available positions. Pu Song-ling failed the provincial examinations and spent
h is life in th e e m p lo y o f o ffic ia ls and lo c a l g e n try in his n a tiv e S h an -d o n g . A p re
lim in a ry v e rsio n o f L ia o -z h a i's R e c o r d o f W o n d e rs w a s co m p le te d in 1 6 7 9 , though
he continued to add to it in the decades that followed. Numerous versions of the

c o lle c tio n c irc u la te d in m a n u scrip t, but the w o rk w a s not p u b lish e d u n til 1 7 6 6 . H e ld
up as a model of classical prose style and exposition, Liao-zhai's Record of Won

ders transformed the venerable genre of the supernatural tale into high art.
T h e supernatural tale seem s to h ave an sw e red som e hunger fo r the strange that is
a co m p o n e n t o f so cieties that are re la tiv e ly stable and o rd in a ry . In the C h in e se v e rsio n ,
strangeness often to o k th e form o f an ab rup t in trusion o f a sexual
d in a ry life. In
Liao-zhai's Record of Wonders, th e
relationship in to
or
strange and the o rd in a ry are often in
co m p e titio n ; ghosts, w ere-b easts, and im m ortal beings m a y b e d o m esticated, but th eir
pow ers e v e n tu a lly reveal th em selves in the co m m o n w o rld . T h is con stan t p la y on ap
p e aran ce and a truth that lies b ehin d a p p earan ce is w o rk ed out through the so cia l roles
and o bligations th at shap e hum an relatio nsh ip s, e s p e c ia lly betw een m en and w o m e n .
O n e s trik in g d iffe re n c e b e tw ee n m a n y o f Pu S o ng -lin g 's lite ra ry ghost sto ries and
their Western counterparts is the frequent undercurrent of whimsy and humor, found
p re c is e ly in th e c o n ju n c tio n o f the o rd in a ry an d the su p e rn a tu ra l the d o m e stic and
d e m o n ic . In " L ia n - x ia n g ," th e p ro tag o nist, y o u n g S an g , lies on h is d eath b ed liste n
in g to h is tw o riv a l g irlfrie n d s d e b ate th e re la tiv e d e stru c tiv e p o w e rs o f ghosts and
fo x e s , s u d d e n ly re a liz in g th e e a c h w a s , in fa c t, th e su p e rn a tu ra l cre a tu re th at the
o th er had c la im e d . T h e n arrato r's co m m e n t: "F o rtu n a te ly h e w a s so used to them
th at h e w a s n 't a la rm e d b y them at a ll/ 7 A t th e v e ry m o m e n t th at th e su p e rn a tu ra l re
v e a ls itse lf in the o rd in a ry w o rld , h e fin d s th at th e strange h as b e co m e o rd in a ry .
O n e fu rth e r a sp e c t o f the d o m e stica tio n o f th e strange is th e in tru sio n o f th e n ar
rator at th e en d o f e a c h sto ry, o fferin g a ju d g m e n t as the " C h ro n ic le r o f W o n d e rs / '
in the m a n n e r o f a C h in e s e o ffic ia l h isto ria n .
Lian-xiang
A native of Yi-zhouone Sang Xiao, also known as Sang Zi-minghad been
orphaned in his youth and taken up lodging in Red Blossom Port. Sang was
the sort of person who enjoyed the quiet, sedate life. Every day he would go
1103
out to take his meals with a neighbor to his eastbut he would spend the
rest of his time just sitting at home. His neighbor once jokingly asked him,
Arent you afraid of ghosts and foxes, living all by yourself? Sang laughed
and replied, Why should a grown man be afraid of ghosts and foxes?
Should a male of either type come, I have a sharp sword. If its a femaleI
should open the gate and welcome her in.
Sangs neighbor then went home and hatched a scheme with some
friends. They used a ladder to boost a courtesan over the way, and in no
time she was there knocking at his gate. When Sang peeked out and asked
who she wasthe courtesan said she was a ghost. Sang was utterly terrified,
and she could hear the sound of his teeth chattering. The courtesan then
backed away and left. Early the next day, Sangs neighbor came to see Sang
in his study; Sang related what he had seen and announced that he was going
back to his native district. At this the neighbor clapped his hands together
and asked, Why didnt you open the door and welcome her in? Immedi
ately Sang realized he had been hoodwinked and went back to the quiet life
he had led before.
A half a year went by, and then one night a young woman came knock
ing at his study. Sang thought that this was another joke being played on
him by his friend, so he opened the door and asked her in. She turned out
to be a beauty worth dying for. Sang was surprised and asked her where she
had come from. She replied, My name is Lian-xiang, and I am a courtesan
who lives west of here.MSince there were many establishments in the red
light district of the port, Sang believed her. When he put out the candle and
got in bed with her, their lovemaking was perfect. From that time onshe
would suddenly show up every fifteenth night.
One evening as he was sitting alone, lost in thought, a young woman
came flitting in. Thinking it was Xiang-lian, Sang greeted her and was talk
ing to herbut when he caught sight of her face, it was someone else alto
gether. She was just fifteen or sixteen, with billowing sleeves and her hair in
bangs, a winsome and charming creature, who seemed uncertain whether
to come any closer or to withdraw. Sang was aghast, suspecting she was a
fox. The young woman said, My name is Li, and I come from a good fam
ily. I am an admirer of your noble disposition and cultivation, and now I
have the good fortune to be able to come and make your acquaintance
Sang was delightedbut when he took her hand, it was cold as ice. And
he asked her, Why are you so chilly? She replied, How could it be oth
erwise, being so young and tender, yet left alone in the cold each night, in
the frost and dew? And when he had untied the folds of her dress, she was
indeed a true virgin. She said to him, Because of the love I feel for you, I
have now, in a short span, failed to preserve my innocence. If you do not
look on me as unworthy, I would like to share your bed always. But do you,
perhaps, have another woman for your bedroom?55Sang told her that there
was no one else but a nearby prostitute and that she didnt come to visit him
often. At this the young woman said, Ill be careful to avoid her. I dont
belong to the same class as those women of the entertainment quarters, so
1104
The Qing Dynasty
you have to keep this completely secret. When she comes, PU leaveand then
when she leaves, Fll come back.
As the roosters were crowing and she was about to go, she gave him an
embroidered slipper and said, By fondling this thing I have worn on my
body, you can let me know that you are longing for me. But take care not
to fondle it when anyone else is around When Sang took it and examined
it, he saw that it was as sharply pointed as a knitting needle. And his heart
was filled with love and desire. There was no one with him the following
evening, so he took it out and examined it. In a flash the young woman was
suddenly there, and they then shared tender intimacies. From then on when
ever he took out the slipper, the young woman would respond to his thoughts
and come to him. He thought this unusual and questioned her about it, but
she only laughed and said, It
s just coincidence.M
One night when Lian-xiang came, she said with alarm, How is it that
you look so pallid and drained of vitality? Sang said, I hadnt been aware
of it. Lian-xiang later took her leave and promised to come again in ten
days. After Lian-xiang left, Miss Li came regularly, leaving no evening free.
She asked himWhy hasnt your lover come in such a long time? Sang
then told her about the interval she had stipulated. Li laughed and asked,
In your eyes, how do I compare to Lian-xiang in beauty? Sang replied,
Both of you are extraordinary, but Lian-xiang
s skin is pleasantly warm.
At this, Li colored and said, If you are telling me to my face that she and
I are matched in beauty, then she must be a veritable goddess of the moonpalaceand I am obviously not her equal. After that she grew sulky. Then
as she reckoned it, the ten days were already up; and forbidding Sang to say
a word, she intended to get a glimpse of Lian-xiang.
On the following night Lian-xiang finally came, and they laughed and
talked quite cheerfully. But when they went to bed, she was shocked and
said, This is terrible! Its been only ten days since I saw you last~how could
you have deteriorated so badly? Can you assure me that you havent been
meeting with someone else? Sang asked her to explain, and Lian-xiang said,
I can see the evidence in your vital signs. Your pulse is fluctuating wildly,
like tangled threads. This is the symptom of the presence of a ghost.
The next night Li came, and Sang asked, Did you get a glimpse of Lianxiang?MLi answered, She is beautiful. As a matter of fact, I would even say
that in the whole human world theres no woman so lovely. Thats because
she
s a fox. When she left, I tailed herher lair is in the hill to the south.
Sang suspected Li was simply jealous and gave her a flippant reply. But
the next evening, he teased Lian-xiang: I really dont believe it, but some
one claimed you were a fox. Lian-xiang pressed him to tell her who had
said this, but Sang laughed and answeredI was just teasing you.55Then
Lian-xiang asked, Just how are foxes different from human beings? Sang
replied, Those who are bewitched by them grow sick, and in the worst cases
they die. This is the reason people are terrified of them. Lian-xiang said,
Its not so. When someone your age sleeps with a fox, their vitality is re
stored after only three days. So even if one were a fox, what harm would it
1105
do? But suppose there were a creature that sapped a persons energy every
daythere are people far worse than foxes. W ith all the corpses and ghosts
of people who died of consumption and other diseases, it
s hardly just foxes
that cause people to die. In any case, someone has obviously been talking
about me. Sang did his best to persuade her that this wasnt so, but Lianxiang questioned him ever more vigorously. At last Sang had no choice but
to tell her the whole story. Then Lian-xiang said, I was really astounded
at how sickly you had grown. But how else could you have reached this con
dition so suddenly? The creature must not be human. Don
t say anything
about this, but tomorrow nightI have to spy on her as she did on me.
That night, Li came. She hadnt exchanged more than a few words with
Sang when she heard a cough outside the window and disappeared imme
diately. Then Lian-xiang came in and said, Youre in serious danger. She
really is a ghost. If you keep on being intimate with her and dont break it
off quickly, the dark path is close at hand! Sang thought she was jealous
and said nothing. Lian-xiang then said, I realize that you can
t just put aside
your love for her, but still I cant bear to watch you die. Tomorrow, Fm going
to bring you some medicine to get rid of this malady brought on by an ex
cess of the feminine principle. Fortunately the disease hasnt taken deep root
in you, and it should be gone in ten days. I ask you to share a bed with me
so that I can keep an eye on the cure.
The next night she brought out some finely chopped herbs and made Sang
take them. In a little while he had a few bouts of diarrhea, after which he
felt that his entrails had been purged clear and his energy invigorated. Al
though he felt grateful to Lian-xiang, he still didnt believe that his sickness
had been due to a ghost. Every night Lian-xiang pressed close to him under
the covers; but when Sang wanted to make love, she stopped him immedi
ately. After several days, his flesh was back to its former fullness. When she
was about to leave, Lian-xiang urged him with all her might to break off
with Li, and Sang pretended to agree. But as soon as he closed the door and
trimmed the lamp wick, he immediately took hold of the slipper and turned
his thoughts to Li. Suddenly there she was. Having been kept away from
him for several days, she looked rather resentful; but Sang explained, These
past few nights Fve been having shamanistic therapy. Please dont be an
noyed with me. I still care about you. At this Li grew somewhat more cheer
ful. But later in bed Sang whispered to her, I love you very much, but there
are those that claim youre really a ghost. Li was tongue-tied for a long time
then rebuked him, That wanton fox must have bewitched you into believ
ing her. If you dont break off with her, I wont come here any more! Then
she burst into tears. Sang said all sorts of things to make her feel better, then
gave up.
The following night when Lian-xiang appeared, she knew that Li had
come again, and she said angrily, You must want to die. Sang laughed,
saying, Why are you so jealous of her? At this Lian-xiang grew even an
grierThe seeds of death had been planted in you, and I got rid of them for
you. What would have happened if I hadnt been jealous?wThen Sang at-
noe
The Qing Dynasty
tributed words to Li to tease Lian-xiangShe says that my sickness the other

day was the evil eye brought on by a fox. At this, Lian-xiang said with a
sigh, It really does happen as you say, but you have been duped and dont
know it. The whole thing is bound to turn out badlyand then even if I spoke
with a hundred tongues, how could I explain myself. Pll leave you now.
When I see you again in a hundred days, you will be bedridden. Sang couldn5t get hey to stay, and she departed at once in indignation.
From then onLi was always with him morning and night. After a little
more than two months, he began to feel very weak. At first he still tried to
shake it off by himself, but he grew steadily more gaunt and emaciated until
all he could eat was a bowl of thick porridge. He was ready to go back to
where his family lived, but he still was too attached to Li to bear to leave
her so abruptly. After a few more days, the sickness became debilitating, and
he couldnt get up any more. When Sang
s neighbor saw how feeble he had
become, he sent his servant every day to see to Sangs meals. It was only at
this point that Sang began to suspect Li and said to her, I regret not hav
ing listened to Lian-xiang
s advice. It has brought me to this. After saying
that, he lost consciousness. A while later he came toand when he opened
his eyes and looked around, Li was gone, obviously having decided to have
nothing more to do with him. Sang lay there emaciated, alone in his study,
longing for Lian-xiang as one might hope for a great bounty.
One day as he was lost in reverie, someone suddenly lifted the curtain
and came in. It was Lian-xiang. Standing by his bed, she said with a sad
smile, W ell
my naive friend, was I wrong? Sang was choked up for a long
time, then admitted how wrong he had been and asked her to rescue him.
Lian-xiang said, The disease has entered the vital regions below the heart,
and theres no way to save you. I came to say my last farewell to you, and
to show you that it was not jealousy. Sang was terribly upset and said,
heres something I have beneath my pillow~please destroy it for me.
Lian-xiang reached under and found the slipperthen took it over in the lamp
to examine it, turning it over in her hand. In a flash Li entered the room,
but then suddenly caught sight of Lian-xiang and turned to make her escape.
Lian-xiang blocked the doorway with her body, and Li found herself
hemmed in with no way out.
When Sang took her to task for everything she had done to him, Li had
no way to answer. Lian-xiang laughed. Now I have a chance to confront
you face to face. Some time ago you told our young friend that his previous
illness could only have been brought on by me. How about now ?
Li bowed
her head and admitted she had been in the wrong. Then Lian-xiang said,
You
re so beautiful, and yet you used love against him as if he were your
enemy.
At that, Li fell to the floor and burst into tears, begging for mercy. Lianxiang then helped her up and questioned her in detail about her life. Li said,
I was the daughter of the Assistant Li. I died young and was buried here just
outside the walls. Li Shang-yin wrote how when the spring silkworm dies, its
threads of longing end. In my case the spring silkworm may have died, but
1107
those threads remained and did not end. I just wanted to live with him hap
pily; it was never my intention to bring about his death. Then Lian-xiang
said, I have heard that ghosts gain advantage by someones death, because
after that person dies they can be with him forever. Is that true? Li answered,
No, its not true. When two ghosts meet, theres no way they can enjoy them
selves together. If they could, there are more than enough young men in the
underworld! Lian-xiang said, Foolish girl! A man cant take doing it every
night even with a human beingmuch less with a ghost!
Then Li asked, But
foxes bring about peoples deaths. What technique do you have that this is
not true for you? Lian-xiang answered, Those are the vampire foxes that
suck the vital essences out of a personI
m not that sort. There really are foxes
that dont do people any harm, but there are absolutely no ghosts that dont
do people harm~the Yin humors are too strong in them.55
As Sang heard them talking, he realized for the first time that they really
were a fox and a ghost. Fortunately he was so used to them that he wasnt
alarmed by them at all. The only thing on his mind was his sinking breath,
now as thin as a thread; and without realizing it, he groaned in misery. Lianxiang consulted with Li. What are we going to do about him? Li blushed
crimson and demurred. Lian-xiang laughed and said, I
m afraid that if he
gets strong and healthy again, youll be so jealous you'll be eating sour
grapes. Li straightened her sleeves in a demure attitudeIf there were some
doctor of national standing who could undo my betrayal of our friend, then
I would bury my head in the earth and never be so shameless as to show my
face in the world again.
Lian-xiang then opened a pouch and took out some medicine. I knew
long ago it would reach this stage, so after leaving Sang I gathered these herbs
on the Three Mountains of the immortals; and now that they have been cur
ing for three months, the ingredients are at last ready. If he takes these, they
will restore him to health, even if the malignancy has brought him to the
edge of death. Nevertheless, the medicine must be helped along by the very
same means by which he contracted the disease. That means that it is you
who must do your best to save him Li asked, What is required? Lianxiang answered, A drop of spit from your mouth. I will put in the pill, and
then you put your mouth on his and spit into it. A glow of embarrassment
rose on Lis cheeksshe lowered her head and fidgeted, looking at the slip
per. Then Lian-xiang teased her, I guess the slipper is the only thing that
satisfies you.At this Li became even more ashamed and seemed as though
she couldnt endure it. Lian-xiang then said, This is an ordinary remedy
for fevers~why are you holding back in this case?MThen she put the pill
between Sang5s lips and put increasing pressure on Li. Li had no choice but
to spit on it. Lian-xiang said, Again! And she spit on it again. After spit
ting on it a few more times, the pill finally went down his throat. After a
short while, there was a rumbling in his belly like the sound of thunder. She
gave him another pill and this time touched her own lips to his and dissolved
it with her breath. Sang felt a fire in his abdomen, and his vitality flared forth.
Lian-xiang said, He
s better!
1 1 08
The Qing Dynasty
When Li heard the rooster crow, she grew anxious and departed. Since
Sang was still an invalid, Lian-xiang had to stay and nurse him, since he had
no way to get his own meals. She locked up the door to give the false im
pression that he had gone back to his home region so that no one would
come to visit him. She kept by his side day and night, and every evening Li
too would come and give her wholehearted help. She treated Xiang-lian like
a sisterand Xiang-lian too came to feel a deep affection for her.
After three months, Sang was as healthy as ever. After that Li would stay
away for several evenings at a time, and when she did come, she would take
a quick look and leave. When she faced them, she seemed troubled and un
happy. Lian-xiang would always try to get her to spend the night with them,
but she was never willing. Once Sang went after her and picked her up to
bring her backher body was as light as one of the straw dolls used in buri
als. When she found that she couldnt get away, she lay down in her clothes
and curled her body into a ball that wasnt even two feet wide. Lian-xiang
increasingly felt sorry for her and secretly had Sang put his arms around her
and try to be intimate with her, but he couldnt wake her up even by shak
ing her. Sang fell off to sleep; and when he woke up and looked for hershe
was long gone.
For more than ten days after that, she didnt come again. She was very
much on Sang
s mind, and he would often take out the slipper and fondle
it together with Lian-xiang. Lian-xiang said, Its so lonely now. I still care
for her, and as a man you must feel it even more. Then Sang said, It used
,to be that she would come whenever I fondled the slipper; I did always won
der about that, but I never suspected she was a ghost. Now looking at this
slipper and thinking of her face really makes me miserable. Then he began
to weep.
The wealthy Zhang household had a fifteen-year-old daughter, Yan-er
who died suddenly without showing any signs of sickness. After a night had
passed, she returned to consciousness. She got up, looked aroundand
started to run away. The Zhangs barred the door, and she couldn't get out.
At this the young woman said, Im the spirit of the daughter of Assistant
Li. I have been deeply touched by the kind attentions of Mr. Sang
and theres
a piece of footwear of mine that still remains at his house. I really am a ghost,
so its not going to do any good to lock me up. Since there was a certain
coherence in what she was saying, they questioned her about how she came
to her present state. But she simply looked around in bewilderment, con
fused and unable to explain herself. Someone said that Mr. Sang was sick
and had gone back to his native region, but the young woman insisted that
this was erroneous.
The people in the household were quite perplexed. Sangs neighbor to
the east heard about this, so he climbed over the wall to peek in Sang5s house;
there he saw Sang talking together with a beautiful woman. He burst in to
catch them by surprise, but in a moment of confusion he lost track of her.
Alarmed, the neighbor asked Sang for an explanation; and Sang laughed.
As I said to you quite clearly before, if it was a female Id invite her i n .
1109
Then Sangs neighbor told him what Yan-er had said. Sang unlocked the
door and wanted to go find out what was going on, but there was no way
he could.
When Mrs. Zhang heard that Sang had notafter all, gone back to his
native place, she thought the whole matter was even stranger. She sent an
old serving woman to get the slipper, which Sang produced and handed over
to her. Yan-er was delighted when she got it; but when she tried to put it
on, it was smaller than her foot by a full inch, and she was greatly alarmed.
When she then took a mirror to look at herself, she was in a daze, suddenly
realizing that she had come to life in this other body. At she explained the
full course of events, and at last her mother believed her. When the young
woman looked at her face in the mirror, she wept loudly, saying, I had some
self-confidence in my looks back then, yet whenever I saw Lian-xiang, I still
felt embarrassment by comparison. But as it is now, I
m even less attractive
as a human being than as a ghost.
She would just hold the slipper and wail
inconsolably. She covered herself up with a quilt and lay stiff. They would
try to feed her, but she wouldnt eat, and her flesh and skin became all
swollen. For a full seven days she didnt eatbut she did not die and the
swelling gradually subsided. At that point, she felt so hungry she couldnt
bear it and began to eat again. After several days itching covered her whole
body, and the skin all fell away. When she got up in the morning, her bed
slippers fell from her feet, and when she went to put them on again, they
were too large and didnt fit. Then she tried on her old slipper, and now it
fit perfectly. She was delighted. Then she looked at herself in the mirror again
and found that her brows, her eyes, her cheeks, and chin were all just as they
had been originally and at this she was even more delighted. She then
bathed, combed her hair, and went to see her mother, and all who saw her
were pleased.
When Lian-xiang heard about this marvel, she urged Sang to send a
matchmaker with an offer of marriage; but because of the discrepancy in
the fortunes of the two households, Sang didnt dare proceed with rash haste.
On the old ladys birthday, he went along with her sons-in-law to congrat
ulate her. The old lady saw his name and had Yan-er look through the cur
tain to see if she recognized him. Sang was the last to arrive, and the young
woman burst out, grabbed his sleeve, and wanted to go home with him. Only
after her mother scolded her did she grow embarrassed and go back in. Sang
had gotten a clear look at her, and without knowing it3tears began to fall
from his eyes. At this, he prostrated himself on the floor in front of the old
lady and didnt get up. She in turn helped him up and didnt take it as bad
manners. As Sang left, he asked one of the young womans uncles to repre
sent him in negotiations for the marriage. The old woman deliberated and
chose a lucky day for to take him as her son-in-law.
When Sang went back, he told Lian-xiang about this, and they discussed
how to handle matters; but then Lian-xiang grew depressed for a long time
and finally wanted to take her leave of him. Sang grew quite alarmed and
wept. Then Lian-xiang saidYou are going to be married with all the
1110
The Qing Dynasty
proper ceremonies, and if I go along with you, F1I lose all respect.51 Sang
planned with Lian-xiang to first take her back to her own home, and then
to go get Yan-er and bring her back as his bride. Lian-xiang agreed. Sang
then explained the situation to Mrs. Zhang, who, on hearing that he had a
concubine, became furious and reproached him bitterly. But Yan-er did her
best to explain matters, and Mrs. Zhang did as she asked. When the day
cameSang went to get his bride and bring her home. The furnishings of his
house had been extremely messy and ill kept; but when he got back, there
were woolen rugs laid down on the ground from the gate into the main hall,
and thousands of lanterns in sparkling rows like brocade. Lian-xiang helped
the new bride under the green wedding awning, and when the bridal veil
was liftedthey were as happy to see one another as ever.
Lian-xiang joined them in the ritual exchange of winecups and ques
tioned Yan-er in detail on the marvel of her recent spirit wandering. Yan-er
then said, That day, I was depressed and upset. I just felt that I was no
longer human and that my body had become something unclean. After I left
you, I was so distraught that I didnt go back to my grave but let myself drift
along with the wind. Whenever I saw a living person, I felt envious of them.
In the daytime I stayed among the plants and trees, and by night I let my
feet drift along. Then I happened to come to the Zhang household and saw
a young girl lying on a bed. I approached her and then came right up next
to her, not knowing that I could come to life
When Lian-xiang heard this, she remained quiet, as if something were
on her mind. Several months later, Lian-xiang gave birth to a child. After
the delivery she became gravely ill, and her condition steadily deteriorated.
She clutched Yan-er5s arm and said, If I can burden you with my bastard,
let my son be your son. Yan-er wept and reassured her. They called in a
shaman doctor, but Lian-xiang immediately sent him away. As she lay on
her deathbed, her breath grew ragged, while Sang and Yan-er were both
weeping. Suddenly she opened her eyes and said, Don
t be like that. You
find joy in life; I find joy in death. If destiny permits, ten years from now we
may get to meet again.55After uttering these words, she was gone. When they
drew back the covers to gather her up, the corpse had changed into a fox.
Sang couldnt bear to treat her as something unhuman and gave her a lav
ish funeral.
They named her son Kit, and Yan-er treated him if he were her own issue.
Every year at the Qing-ming Festival she would take Kit in her arms and go
weep at Lian-xiang
s tomb. After several years Sang won a provincial de
gree from his native region, and the household gradually became more af
fluent. Yan-er had unfortunately not had a child of her own, and while Kit
was very clever, he was frail and sickly. Yan-er always wanted Sang to take
a concubine. One day a servant announced, Theres an old lady outside the
gate with a girl she wants to sell. Yan-er called out to have them brought
in. When she saw her, she said amazed, Lian-xiang has reappeared! When
Sang looked at her and saw that she did indeed resemble Lian-xiang, he too
was shocked. They asked how old she was, and woman answered that she
1111
was fourteen. How much do you want for her? And the old woman said,
This little piece of flesh is all I have. Its enough for me that I find a place,
that I am able to get enough eat and that in the future my old bones not just
be thrown in some ditch
Sang paid her well and let her stay. Yan-er took the girl by the hand and
took her into a room where they could be private; then she pinched the girls
chin and said with a laugh, Do you recognize me? The girl replied that
she did not, and Yan-er questioned her about her background. The girl said,
My name is Wei, and my father was a bean-paste merchant in Xu-cheng.
Hes been dead three years. When Yan-er thought about it and counted,
Lian-xiang had been dead for exactly fourteen years. She looked the girl over
carefully again, and all her features and the way she moved bore an uncanny
resemblance. Then she patted the girl on the top of the head, shouting,CLianxiang! Lian-xiang! Dont fool us in your promise to see us again in ten
years!
All of a sudden the young girl seemed as if waking from a dream and
said, Huh? Then she looked Yan-er over carefully. Sang laughed and said,
Its like that line of verse
As if they were old acquaintances,
the swallows come back again.
Tears streaming down her face, the girl said, Its true! I heard my mother
say that when I was born, I could already speak. They thought it was un
lucky, so they gave me clogs blood to drink in order to forget my previous
existence. Today its like just waking up from a dream. Arent you my friend
Li, who was ashamed to be a ghost? Then they all talked about their ear
lier lives togetherwith grief and joy mingling.
One day on the festival for visiting the graves, Yan-er said, This is the
day that Sang and I go to weep at your tomb every year. Then the girl joined
them on the visit to the tomb; the wild grasses were growing everywhere,
while the trees planted by the tomb had already reached a double handspan
in girth. The girl too sighed, and Yan-er said to SangLian-xiang and I have
been close to one another in two lifetimes now, and we cant bear to be apart.
Our bones should be buried in the same grave.MSang did as she asked; he
opened Lis tomb to get her remains, then took them back to bury with Lianxiangs. Friends and relatives heard about this marvel and stood by the
graveside in formal attire. Unexpectedly there were hundreds gathered there.
In 1670,1visited Yi-zhou during my travels southunable to go on because
of a storm
I stopped at an inn there. A certain Liu Zi-jing was there, a relative
of Sang
sand he showed me a work entitled Mr. Sangs Story by Wang Zizhanga member of his set. This was a long work of more than ten thousand
characters. I finished reading it, and the above is an abbreviated version.
Here follows the judgment of the Chronicler of Wonders: A dead per
son sought to live, and a living person sought to die. Is not a human body
the hardest thing to, attain in this world? Yet it seems to happen that those
The Qing Dynasty
who have such a human body always use it in such a way that they come to
shamefulness that makes them in life inferior to the fox, and in simply van
ishing away their death is inferior to the ghost.
Xiao-cui
Wang, the Grand Chamberlain of Ceremonialswas a native of Yue. When
he. was still a boy, he was napping, when all of a sudden the sky grew dark
and there was a mighty clap of thunder. An animal larger than a cat came
and hid under his bodysquirming and refusing to go. After a while the sky
cleared up, and the animal immediately went straight out. When Wang
looked closely and saw that it was not a cat, he grew frightened and called
to his big brother in the other room. His brother heard him and said cheer
fully, Well, brother, youre going to reach a very exalted positionthis was
a fox that came to you to escape being destroyed by thunder and lightning.
Afterward the young man did indeed pass the metropolitan examination
at a young age, and he rose from the post of county magistrate to become
a Censor. He had one son whose name was Yuan-feng, a simpleton who at
the age of sixteen didnt know the difference between male and female. As
a result, no one of his own class was willing to marry their daughters to him.
Wang was worried about him.
It happened that a woman brought a girl to his gate and requested that
she be made Yuan-feng
s wife. When Wang looked the girl over, she smiled
in the most fetching mannershe was a beauty of the highest order. De
lighted, he asked the name, and the woman said, Our family is named Yu,
and my daughter is Xiao-cui. Shes sixteen. He then discussed the question
of price with her, and she said, W ith me she has eaten rough fare and has
never been able to eat her fill. Now in a single day she will find herself liv
ing in spacious apartments, waited on by servants, and having all the meat
and fine rice she can eat. If she is content, then my own wishes are satisfied.
Im not going to haggle over a price for her as if I were selling vegetables!
Wang5s wife was very pleased and rewarded the woman generously.
Then the woman bade her daughter bow to Wang and his wife and instructed
her: These are to be your parents. You should serve them conscientiously.
I
m very busy and am going away for a while. Ill be back in a few days
Wang ordered his servant to hitch up the carriage to see her home, but the
woman said, I dont live far from here, and I dont want to be a bother.
Then she went out the gate. Xiao-cui didnt seem to miss her at all, but at
once went to the dressing table and began to play around with various ways
of making herself up. W ang
s wife doted on her.
After several days, the mother did not return. They asked Xiao-cui where
she lived, but she seemed befuddled and couldnt tell them the way. Conse
quently they set up separate apartments, and had her formally married to
Yuan-feng. When the relatives heard that the Wangs had picked up a poor
girl as Yuan-feng
s bride, they all made fun of them; but when they saw the
girl, everyone was amazed, and the gossip quieted down.
1113
Xiao-cui was also very clever and could see what pleased and angered
her in-laws. For their part, Wang and his wife were fond of the girl far be
yond an ordinary affection, and they were apprehensive lest she dislike their
son for his simple-mindedness. But Xiao-cui was very good-natured, and didnt despise him for it at all. Instead she enjoyed having a good time; she sewed
a piece of cloth into a round ball and then kicked it about for fun. Wearing
leather shoesshe could kick it twenty or thirty paces, then inveigle Yuanfeng to run after it and pick it up for her. Yuan-feng and the maids were al
ways going one after another, running with sweat.
One day Wang Senior happened to be passing by. W ith a thunk the ball
came flying and hit him square in the face. Xiao-cui and the maids ail made
themselves scarce, but Yuan-feng continued to leap up and down as he ran
to get it. Wang Senior was angry and threw a rock at him, whereupon the
boy collapsed to the ground, crying. Wang Senior informed his wife about
this, and she went to reprimand the girl. Xiao-cui lowered her head with a
faint smile, while digging her hands into the bed. Once Mrs. Wang had left,
she went back to her old pranks. Using powder and paint, she made up
Yuan-fengs face to look like a ghost. When Mrs. Wang saw thisshe grew
furious and shouted insults at the girl. Xiao-cui just leaned against a table
and fiddled with her sash, not frightened but also not saying anything. Mrs.
Wang couldnt stand it any more and took a cane to her son. When Yuanfeng started yelling, the girls expression changed and she bent her knees to
beg Mrs. Wang to show mercy. Mrs. "Wangs rage abruptly left hershe let
go of the cane and left.
Smiling, Xiao-cui then pulled Yuan-feng into a room, where she brushed
the dust off his clothes, wiped the tears from his eyes, rubbed the welts where
he had been beaten, and fed him dates and chestnuts. Yuan-feng stopped
crying and cheered up. Xiao-cui then shut the gate of the courtyard and again
dressed Yuan-feng up, this time as the Overlord Xiang Yu and then as the
Khan of the desert.1She for her own part put on fine clothes, tied her waist
tightand did the swaying dance of Yu in the commanders tent.2 Then she
would stick the tail feather of a pheasant in her piled hair, and strum the
mandolin in a continuous flood of notes.3They did this every day, laughing
and making an uproar in the room. Since Wang Senior thought his son was
a simpleton, he couldnt bring himself to scold his sons wife too harshly.
When he heard a bit of what was going on, he seemed to dismiss the mat
ter.
On the same street about a dozen doors down there was another Mr.
Wang, a Supervisory Censor, and the two Wangs couldnt stand one another.
]Here and with the ghost make-up, Xiao-cui is probably imitating conventional theatrical costume.
2This refers to the famous scene in the Historical Records and in later theater in which Xiang Yu,
the great competitor of Liu Bang for the empire after the fall of the Qin, finds himself at last sur
rounded by Han troops and holds a small feast in which he laments his fate and bids farewell to his
lady Yu.
3Here Yuan-feng is playing the Khan to whom the Han court lady Wang Zhao-jun was married
against her w ill. Xiao-cui plays Wang Zhao-jun, lamenting her fate on the mandolin.
1114
The Qing Dynasty
The triennial review of officials for promotion had just taken place, and Cen
sor Wang resented that our Mr. Wang had been given charge of the seal of
the Investigator for the He-nan Circuit. Censor Wang was looking for a way
to harnrhim. Wang Senior knew about his machinations and was very wor
ried, having no way to protect himself. One evening when he retired early,
Xiao-cui put on a cap and sash and dressed herself up as the Chief Minis
ter. She dut threads of white silk to make herself a full beard and also dressed
up two of the serving girls in blue gowns to act as her bodyguards. Then she
secretly mounted herself astride one of the horses in the stable and went out,
saying in play, I am going to pay a call on Mr. Wang.
She galloped to the gate of Supervisory Censor Wang and struck her at
tendants with her riding whipdeclaring loudly, I was going to pay a call
on Investigator Wang! Why should I bother to pay a call on Supervisory Cen
sor Wang? Then she turned the horse around and went back home. But
when she had almost reached the gate, the gatekeeper mistakenly took her
for the real thing and rushed in to inform Wang Senior. Wang Senior hur
riedly got up to go out to welcome him. When he realized that this was a
prank of his sons wife, he was furious and said to Mrs. Wang, Others have
chastised me for my shortcomings, but now this clown character from the
women of my own household pays me a visit to announce them publicly.
My downfall must not be far off! Mrs. Wang grew angry, rushed into Xiaocuis room, and yelled at her. But Xiao-cui only smiled foolishly and didnt
offer a word in her defense. Mrs. Wang would have whipped her, but she
couldnt bring himself to; she would have put her out of the house, but then
she would have had no home. Both husband and wife were so upset and an
noyed that they couldnt go to sleep all night long.
The Chief Minister at the time was a flamboyant figure; his behavior,
his attire, and his entourage were little different from Xiao-cuis costume;
and Supervisory Censor Wang also made the mistake of taking her for the
real thing. He went to keep watch at Wang Seniors gate that night, and when
the guest had not left by midnight, he suspected that the Chief Minister and
Wang Senior were hatching some secret plot. The next day when he saw
Wang Senior at dawn court, he asked him, Did His Excellency go to your
house last night? Suspecting that the Supervisory Censor was making fun
of him, Wang Senior hemmed and hawed in embarrassment and didnt re
ally answer him. At this, Censor Wangs suspicions were confirmed even
more stronglyhe laid his plots against Wang Senior to rest and from that
point on tried to get into Wang Seniors good graces. Wang Senior figured
out what had been going through Censor Wangs mind and was privately
delighted; yet he secretly directed his wife to urge Xiao-cui to mend her ways.
Xiao-cui answered her with a smile.
After another year the Chief Minister was dismissed from office, and it
happened that a private letter sent to Wang Senior was mistakenly delivered
to Supervisory Censor Wang. Censor Wang was delighted and first used
good friends of Wang Senior to go borrow ten thousand cash. Wang Senior
refused. Then the Censor himself went to Wang Seniors house. Wang Se
1115
nior was looking for his official cap and gown but could find neither; the
Censor waited for him for a long time and then became angry at Wang Se
nior^ cavalier treatment of him and was about to leave in a huff. Suddenly
he saw Yuan-feng dressed in imperial dragon robes and a crown of jade;
there was a young woman pushing him out from behind the door. The Cen
sor was quite shocked, but then he smiled and was nice to the lad. Making
him take off the imperial robes and crown, the Censor took them and left.
When Wang Senior came out hurriedly, his visitor was already long
gone. When he heard what had happened, his face turned white, and weep
ing loudly, he said, This young woman is our nemesis. On this very day
our entire family and all our relations will be executed. And together with
Mrs. Wang he took a stick and went off to find Xiao-cui. Xiao-cui already
knew this and closed her door, bearing their curses and insults. Wang Se
nior was furious and took an ax to her door. From within, Xiao-cui smiled
and told him, D on
t work yourself up into such a rage, sir. As long as I am
here, I will bear the rack and tongs and headsmans ax myself and I wont
let any harm come to you, my in-laws. If you go on like this, do you want
to kill me to shut me up?
And then Wang Senior stopped.
When Censor Wang got home, he wrote out a denunciation to the throne
indicting Wang Senior for lese-majeste, using the imperial robes and crown
for evidence. His Majesty was surprised and examined the evidencethe
crown was plaited from sorghum stalks, while the robes were a tattered
piece of yellow bundling cloth. The Emperor was furious at such false
charges. He also had Yuan-feng summoned to his presenceand when he
saw from his manner that Yuan-feng was obviously simple-minded, he said
with a laugh, So this would be our Son of Heaven Then he had Censor
Wang sent down to the Judiciary for trial. Censor Wang had also charged
that there was a witch girl in Wang Seniors house. The judiciary thor
oughly questioned the family servants, and they all said that it was just a
simple-minded boy and his touched wife who spent their days playing games.
The neighbors also offered nothing to contradict this. The case was then
closed and ex-Censor Wang was sent off to serve in the army in Yun-nan.
From this point on, Wang Senior considered Xiao-cui something extra
ordinary. And since her mother had not returned in such a long time, he con
sidered that she might not be a human being. He sent his wife to question
her, but Xiao-cui just laughed and said nothing. When she was pressed even
harder, she covered her mouth and said, Dont you realize that Fm the
daughter of the Jade Emperor in Heaven?
Soon afterward Wang was promoted to one of the senior positions in
the capital. He was over fifty and always felt troubled at not having any
grandchildren. Xiao-cui had lived with them three years, and every night
she
slept apart from Yuan-feng, so it seemed that they had never had intimate
relations. Mrs. Wang moved the bed and directed Yuan-feng to sleep to
gether with his wife. After several days, Yuan-feng came and told his mother
Take my bed awayI absolutely wont come back. Every night Xiao-cui
puts her feet and thighs on my belly, and I can hardly breathe. Shes also got
1116
The Qing Dynasty
the habit of poking around a persons thighs. Every one of the maids was
smirking. Mrs. Wang shouted at them, whacked them, and made them
leave.
One day Xiao-cui was bathing in her chamber. Yuan-feng saw her and
wanted to join her. Xiao-cui laughed and stopped him, ordering him to wait
a while. When she got out, she poured more scalding hot water into the tub,
took off his robe and pants, and then with a maid helped him to get in. Yuanfeng felt like he was suffocating from the steam and shouted that he wanted
to get out. Xiao-cui wouldnt listen to him and covered him over with a blan
ket. After a while he ceased to make any more sounds, and when they
opened it to look, he had expired. Xiao-cui smiled contentedly and was not
alarmed. She dragged him out and lay him on the bed. She wiped his body
until it was dry and clean, and then put a double quilt over him. Mrs. Wang
had heard about this and came into the room weepingYou crazy girl! Why
did you kill my son?
Xiao-cui beamed her most charming smile and said, W ith a son as simple-minded as this, youre better off with none at all. Mrs. Wang grew even
more enraged and charged Xiao-cui with her head lowered. All the maids
tried to pull her back and calm her down. Amid all this commotion, one maid
declared, Yuan-feng just groaned! When Mrs. Wang stopped weeping and
felt him, she found he was breathing, and a great sweat was pouring from
his body, soaking the mat and bedding. After a little while longer the sweat
stopped, and he suddenly opened his eyes and looked all around, scrutiniz
ing each member of the household as if he didnt recognize them. Then he
said, When I think back on the past, it all seems like a dream_ why is that?
Since his speech no longer seemed simple-minded, Mrs. Wang was amazed.
She took him by the hand to go consult with his father, and on being ques
tioned repeatedly, he was in fact no longer simple-minded. They were de
lighted as if they had just obtained a rare treasure.
When evening came, they moved his bed back to where it had been, and
again made it up with covers and a blanket to watch what he would do.
When Yuan-feng entered the room
he sent all the maidservants away. When
they looked in the next morning, the bed had not been slept in. From that
point on there was no more simple-mindedness on his part or craziness on
her partall was rosy between husband and wife, and the two were insepa
rable.
After more than a year, Wang Senior was impeached by the faction of
Censor Wang and dismissed from office for a minor offense. The family had
a jade vase long ago presented to them by the Vice-Censor of Guang-xi, its
value a thousand pieces of cash. They had taken it out to offer as a bribe to
a powerful official. Xiao-cui liked it and was holding it when it slipped from
her hands and shattered. She was so ashamed that she threw herself down.
Wang Senior and his wife, being on edge because of his dismissal from of
fice, flew into a rage when they heard about it. In turn they yelled at her and
cursed her. Then Xiao-cui roused herself and went out, saying to Yuan-feng,
During the time Ive been in your family, the things Ive protected and pre
1117
served have not been limited to just a single vase, so why am I not left with
some respect! Ill tell you the truth: I am not a human being. When my
mother was going to be struck by lightning, she was very generously pro
tected by your father. Moreover, you and I have a predestined span of five
years together, so she brought me to repay that kindness he once did and to
fulfill an abiding wish. I have been spat upon, I have borne curses, and more
hairs have been pulled from my head than I can count. The reason I didnt
go off immediately was because our five years together were not up. But now
how can I stay here one moment longer!
With that she went off in a tem
per, and by the time he went after her, she was long gone.
Wang Senior was despondent and felt lost, but his regrets did no good.
When Yuan-feng entered her chamber and cast eyes on the powders and slip
pers she had left behind, he broke into tears and wanted to die. He was un
willing to eat or sleep and every day grew more wasted and emaciated. Wang
Senior was quite worried and quickly set about to arrange a second mar
riage to console him, but Yuan-feng was not pleased with the idea. He only
sought out a skilled painter to portray Xiao-cuis likenessand day and night
for almost two years he would pour libations and pray before it.
It happened once that for one reason or another he was coming back
from another village as the bright moon was already casting its glow. Out
side the village there was a garden of a gentry household, and as Yuan-feng
rode his horse past outside the wall, he heard someone laughing and talk
ing. He pulled up on the reins and had his groom hold the bridle. When he
stood on the saddle and looked over, there were two girls playing on the
other side. Clouds were passing over the moon and it was so dusky he
couldnt make them out clearly. He heard one who was wearing azure
clothes say, You should be kicked out of here! Then one wearing red
clothes said, Youre in my garden. W ho
s going to get kicked out? Then
the one in azure replied, KYou
re shameless. You couldnt be a wife and got
yourself driven away, and you still presume to claim this as your property?
The one wearing red said, wWell5its better than being an old maid without
ever having been betrothed
When Yuan-feng listened to the sound of her voiceit sounded very

much like Xiao-cui
sand he quickly called to her. The one in azure went
off, saying, eTm not going to quarrel with you any more. Your young man
has come. Then the one in red came over, and it was indeed Xiao-cui. He
was beside himself with delight. She had him climb over the wall and helped
him down, saying, I havent seen you for years. You
re all skin and bones!
Yuan-feng took hold of her hands and wept, telling her everything and how
much he had missed her. Xiao-cui said, I knew itbut I couldnt bring my
self to face your family again. Now as I was playing with my big sister in
the garden, weve met again unexpectedly~this shows that what is predes
tined cant be avoided.
He asked her to come home with him, but she refused. Then he asked to
stay in her gardenand to this she agreed. Yuan-feng sent a servant to hurry
off and tell his mother. His mother got up in surprise and went off in a sedan
1118
The Qing Dynasty
chair. The lock was opened, and she came into the pavilion in the garden.
Xiao-cui immediately rushed over to welcome her politely. Mrs. Wang
clutched her arm and shed tears, earnestly declaring her previous faults, and
virtually overwhelmed, she said, If you are willing to overlook those painful
memories, come home with me and comfort me in my old age. But Xiao-cui
adamantly refused. Mrs. Wang was then concerned that this pavilion out in
the wilds was too solitary and dreary, and she made plans to have many peo
ple work there. But Xiao-cui said, wWe dont want to have anyone else around
but the two serving girls who formerly were with us day and night, for we
cant entirely do without someone to take care of us; beyond that, I would
have only an old servant to act as the gatekeeper. We dont need any others
at all. Mrs. Wang agreed to everything she said. She left Yuan-feng to con
valesce in the garden, providing him only his food and other daily needs. Xiaocui urged Yuan-feng to marry again, but he wouldnt go along with her.
After more than a year, Xiao-cui5s features and her voice gradually be
came different from what they had been previously. When Yuan-feng took
out her portrait and compared it with her present state, they were as far apart
as two different people. He thought this very strange. Xiao-cui said, "When
you look at me today, how can my beauty compare to what it used to be?
Yuan-feng said^ You
re beautiful as you are nowbut not quite as much so
as you used to be. Xiao-cui said, You mean, Ive gotten old! Yuan-feng
replied, How could you get old so quickly, only in your early twenties?
Xiao-cui laughed and burned .the portrait, and when Yuan-feng tried to res
cue it, it was already ashes. One day she said to Yuan-feng, Beforewhen
I lived at your house, your father said that I would die without bearing any*
children. Your parents are old, and I truly cannot bear a child; I
m afraid
that this will ruin the succession of your family line- Please marry someone
and set her up in your home. She could wait on your parents all the time
and you could go back and forth between here and there_ that would work
out well in every way.
Yuan-feng agreed and sent the bride-price to the home of the Han-lin
Compiler Zhong. When the blessed day drew near, Xiao-cui prepared clothes
and slippers for the new bride and had them sent to her mothers home. And
when the bride entered Wangs gate her speech, her appearance, and her
movements were not the slightest bit different from those of Xiao-cui. Yuanfeng thought this extremely strange. When he went to the pavilion in her
garden, he didnt know where Xiao-cui was. He asked a servant girl, and
she took out a red cloth kerchief, saying, Madam has gone to her mothers
home for a time, and she left this for you.95He unrolled the kerchief, and a
ring was knotted to itand in his heart he knew that she was not coming
back. Then he took the serving girls and went home with them.
Even though he never forgot Xiao-cui for a moment, Yuan-feng was for
tunate that every time he looked at his new bride, it was like seeing his old
love. Then he realized that Xiao-cui had foreseen his marriage to Miss
Zhong and had first changed her own appearance in order to comfort him
when he would miss her in days to come.
1119
Here follows the judgment of the Chronicler of WondersA fox still

thought to repay a kindness done, even one done through unconscious
virtue. Were they not contemptible who, having received the blessing of a
second lease on life, yet were still aghast at a broken pot? As the moon wanes
and is full again, so in the mortal world division came to fullness and re
union. And then, at her ease she departed. Now we can see that the loves of
immortals are deeper still than those in the common world.
Blue Maid
Huo Huan, also known as Huo Kuang-jiu, was a native of Jin. His father,
a county sheriff, had died before his time, leaving Huo Huan at a very ten
der age. Huo Huan was an exceptionally clever boy, and at the age of eleven
he was enrolled among students for a civil service position as a gifted lad .
4
But his mother, who doted on him to excess, forbade him to leave the fam
ily compound, and by the age of thirteen he still couldnt tell all his uncles
and cousins apart.
In the same ward of the city there was a review judge, a Mr. W u, who
became a devotee of the Way and went off into the mountains, never to re
turn. He had a daughterBlue Maid, fourteen years of age and beautiful be
yond the common measure. When younger, she had surreptitiously read her
fathers books and come to idolize the Maiden Goddess He. When her fa
ther disappeared, she made up her mind not to marry, and her mother could
do nothing about it.
One day Huo Huan caught a glimpse of her outside the gate. Although
the boy knew nothing about such things, he felt an intense love for her, but
he couldnt explain it in words. He straightway told his mother to send some
one to arrange an engagement. His mother knew that it would not be possi
ble and raised objections. Huo Huan grew depressed and dissatisfiedand his
mother, fearing to thwart her son's will, engaged a go-between to convey the
proposal to the Wu family. As expected, they did not agree. Huo Huan was
constantly brooding and trying to devise schemes, but he could see no way.
It happened once that a Daoist came to their gatecarrying in his hand
a small hand-spade about a foot in length. Huo Huan took it to look it over
and asked, W hat
s it used for? The Daoist answered, Its a tool for dig
ging out herbs. Although its sm allit can penetrate hard stone. Huo Huan
didnt really believe him, so the Daoist immediately cut into the stone of the
garden wall, which, at every motion of his hand, fell away as if it were de
composed. Huo Huan was amazed; he kept on examining it and didnt put
it down. The Daoist then laughed and said, Since you like it so much, let
me give it to you as a gift Huo Huan was delighted and tried to give him
money for it, but the Daoist refused to accept it and left.
When Huo Huan took it back and tried it on a range of rock and brick,
4"Gifted lad" was the term used for those who passed the preliminary qualifying examination at a
young age.
1120
The Qing Dynasty
there was hardly any resistance. All of a sudden it came to his mind that if
he made a hole in the wall, he could see that beautiful g irlnot realizing that
it was wrongful behavior. After the bell of the watch had rung, he cut his
way right through the wall and went directly to the W u mansion. There, after
digging holes through several more layers of walls, he reached the inner
courtyard. He saw a lamp fire still burning in a small chamberand when
he hid himself and spied in, it was Blue Maid taking off her evening attire.
In a little while, the candle went out and all was silent. When he made a hole
in the next wall and went inside, the girl was already sound asleep. Then he
took off his shoes and quietly got on her bed. He was afraid that if she woke,
startled, he would be yelled at and forced to leaveso he nestled down by
the side of her embroidered gown, smelling her sweet breath, and his hearts
desire was secretly satisfied. After his endeavors through half the night, he
was utterly exhausted; and closing his eyes just a little, he went off to sleep
without realizing it.
The girl woke up and heard the sound of breathing. Then she opened
her eyes and saw light coming in through the hole. Terrified, she hurriedly
got up and in the darkness unbolted the door and got out of the room. Then
she knocked on the windows and called to the women of the household, who
lit lanterns, grabbed canes, and went to her room
When they got there they
saw a young adolescent, dressed as a student, sleeping oblivious on her em
broidered bed. Examining him carefully, they recognized him as young Huo.
Only after they prodded him did he wake up, and then he got up at once,
his eyes sparkling like shooting stars. He didnt even seem to be very fright
ened, just too embarrassed to say a word. Since everyone was treating him
like a burglar, he was afraid they were going to yell at him.
At that point, Huo began to cry and saidIm not a burglar~it was re
ally only because I was in love with Blue Maid and wanted to be close to
her sweetness But everyone then doubted that a child could have dug
holes in several walls. At this, Huo Huan took out his spade and told them
about its remarkable powers. They each put it to the test and were utterly
astounded, exclaiming that it was a gift from the gods. They were all going
to tell Mrs. W u, but Blue Maid hung her head in brooding and seemed to
think this would not be a good thing to do. The other women divined what
was on her mind, so they said, This boy is from an eminent and respectable
household, and he hasnt violated your honor in the least. The best thing to
do would be to let him loose and make him leave, then to have him once
again seek a betrothal. In the morning we'll make up an excuse to your
mother about a burglar. How would that be? Blue Maid didnt answer, and
the women then hurried Huo Huan to get going. Huo Huan wanted his
spade back, and they all laughed and said, You foolish boy! You still cant
forget this tool of ruin!
Huo Huan spied a phoenix hairpin beside the pillow and furtively put it
in his sleeve, but a maid saw him do it and instantly told everybody. Blue
Maid said nothing, nor did she get angry. One old woman slapped him on
the neck and said, Dont think he
s so innocent~he
s extremely tricky
1121
and she dragged him along to the hole he had dug, from which he then made
his way out.
When Huo Huan got home, he didnt dare tell his mother the truth. He
simply urged her to send the matchmaker to the Wus again. But Huo Huans
mother couldnt bear an open rejection and instructed all the matchmakers
to arrange a marriage with someone else as quickly as possible. Blue Maid
found out about this and her heart was in a panic. She secretly conveyed her
innermost feelings to her mother. The mother was pleased and let the match
maker know. It happened, however, that a young servant girl let out the se
cret of what had gone on previously, and Mrs. Wu felt so humiliated that
she couldn't contain her rage. When the matchmaker arrived, she met an
even greater outburst of anger, as Mrs. Wu struck the ground with her cane
and railed against Huo Huan and his mother as well. The matchmaker was
frightened and snuck back, giving Mrs. Huo a full account of how things
stood. Then Huo H uan
s mother also flew into a rage, saying, I was to
tally ignorant of what that wicked boy did. Why should I bear the brunt of
such rudeness! Why didnst they kill that wild boy and that wanton girl both
while they were twining their legs together!
From that point on, whenever she met her relations she would immedi
ately tell the whole story. When Blue Maid heard about this, she could have
died from shame. And Mrs. Wu too greatly regretted the whole thing, but
there was nothing she could do to stop Mrs. Huo from talking. Blue Maid
secretly sent someone to tactfully approach Huo H uan
s mother, swearing
to her that she would not marry anyone else. Her words were very moving
and Mrs. Huo, touched by themspoke of it no further. And negotiations
to arrange another marriage for Huo Huan were subsequently halted.
It happened that a Mr. Ou-yang of Shensi was magistrate of the town,
and when he saw Huo H uan
s writing, he developed a high opinion of his
capacities. Sometimes he had Huo summoned to the county office, where
he treated him with the greatest kindness and generosity. One day he asked
Huo Huan, Are you married? To which Huo Huan replied that he was
not yet. When Ou-yang questioned him in some detail, Huo Huan re
sponded, Long ago I became pledged to the young daughter of the former
review judge Mr. Wu, but later, because of a minor feud, the matter has been
left hanging.59 Ou-yang asked him, Do you still want to go through with
it or not? At this Huo Huan grew embarrassed and said nothing. Ou-yang
laughed and said, I
ll get it done for you. At once he sent the sheriff and
the local schoolteacher with the proper bride gifts to the Wus. Mrs. Wu was
delighted, and the betrothal was settled.
When the year of engagement passed, Huo Huan brought Blue Maid
home as his bride. As soon as Blue Maid entered the gate, she threw the spade
on the ground, saying, This is a thing for burglars. Get rid of it. But Huo
Huan laughed. Dont snub our go-between!55Then he hung it as a treasure
from his sash, and it never left his person. Blue Maid was of a gentle, kindly,
yet reticent disposition. Every day she would pay her respects to her motherin-law three times, but for the remainder of the day she would just close her
1122
The Qing Dynasty
door and sit quietly, not concerning herself very much with household du
ties. Yet if H uo
s mother were gone elsewhere to offer condolences or con
gratulations, the management of household affairs was always in good
order.
After more than a year, she gave birth to a son, Meng-xian. She left every
thing to the charge of a wet nurse and seemed not to be particularly con
cerned for the child. After another five years, she abruptly said to Huo
Huan, By now the course of our love has lasted eight years. Our time left
together is short and the separation will be long. Nothing can be done about
it! Huo Huan was startled and asked her to explain, but she kept silent,
and in full attire went to pay her respects to her mother-in-law, then returned
to her own room. When he went after Blue Maid to question her, she was
lying on her bed, face up, and not breathing. Both mother and son mourned
for her deeply. They purchased a fine coffin for her and had her buried.
Huos mother was already frail and aging. Whenever she took the child in
her armsshe would think of his mother, and it was as if her heart would
break. After this she grew sick and became so exhausted that she could not
get up. She felt a revulsion against taking any nourishment. The only thing
she wanted was a certain fish dish that could not be obtained anywhere close
bybut could be purchased only at a place a hundred miles away.
At the time the hired couriers had all been sent on various errands; and
Huo, who was genuinely devoted to his motherwas in a hurry and couldnt wait. Taking money for his expenses, he set off by himself, and didnt
stop traveling day and night. But then he found himself in the mountains,
with the sunlight already sinking to darkness; he was hobbling on both feet
and couldnt go an inch further. An old man came up behind him and said,
You milst have gotten blisters on your feet. Huo Huan answered that he
had. Then the old man led him over to sit by the side of the road and struck
some flint to make a fire. Using some herbs he had in a paper packet, he
steamed both of Huo Huans feet. When Huo tried to walk again, not only
had the pain stopped but he also felt stronger and more energetic. Deeply
touched, Huo Huan expressed his gratitude, and the old man asked, Why
are you in such a hurry? Huo explained that his mother was sick, and from
there proceeded to tell the events that led up to it. The old man then asked,
Why dont you marry someone else? Huo Huan answered that he had not
found a good-looking woman. The old man then pointed to a mountain vil
lage in the distance and said, Theres a good-looking woman there. If only
you could go off with me there, I would arrange something for you. But
Huo declined on the grounds that his mother was sick and required a cer
tain fish. At this the old man folded his hands and said that if he should come
to the village someday, he should just ask for Old Wang. Then he went his
way. When Huo got ixomehe cooked the fish and offered it to his mother.
H uo
s mother improved somewhat, and in several days she quickly got bet
ter.
Huo Huan then had a servant and horse readied to go look for the old
man. When he reached the spot he had been before, he could no longer tell
1123
where the village was. He wandered around for some time as the evening
glow of the sun gradually sank away. The hills and valleys were very con
fusing; unable to get a clear view to orient himself, Huo climbed a hilltop
with his servant to look for a village. The mountain path was rough and
steep, too difficult to continue to ride, so he went up on foot, engulfed in
the darkening colors of mist. There he paced about, looking in all directions,
but there was still no sign of a village. He started down the mountain but
couldnt find the path back. Anxiety seemed to burn in his heart like a fire.
As he sought some refuge in the wilderness, nights blackness descended the
sheer cliff. Fortunately, several feet below him there was a swathe of wild
moss; and when he lowered himself and lay on it, its width was just enough
for his body. When he looked down, all was blackness and he couldnt see
the bottom. Huo was terrified and didnt dare make the least movement. He
was also fortunate that there were small trees growing all along the side of
the slope that held his body back like a railing.
After a while he noticed that near his feet there was a small cave open
ing. Huo felt overjoyed, and keeping his back against the rock, he wriggled
into it. There he felt safer and hoped to wait until daybreak to call for help.
Shortly thereafter, there was a beam of light like a star in the deeper part of
the cave. He started to go toward itand after a couple of miles he suddenly
caught sight of a cottage with a porchthere were no lamps or candles, yet
the light there was bright as day. A beautiful woman came out from a room;
he looked at her carefully, and it was Blue Maid. When she saw Huo, she
was startled. How could you get in here? W ithout taking the time to ex
plain, Huo took her hands and sobbed pitiably. Blue Maid tried to comfort
him. When she asked about his mother and their son, Huo gave an account
of all their troubles, and Blue Maid also grew melancholy. Then Huo said,
Youve been dead for more than a year nowthis must be the under
world.55Blue Maid replied, No, this is a precinct of the immortals. I didn
t die back then, and what you buried was only a bamboo cane. Since you
have come here, you have the destiny to become an immortal.
Thereupon she took him in to pay his respects to her father, a man with
a long beard seated at the head of the hall. Huo hastened to bow to him,
and Blue M aid said, Mr. Huo has come. The old man rose in surprise,
took his hand, and politely asked after him. Then he said, It
s a wonder
ful thing that youve come hereits your fate to stay here. But Huo po
litely declined, saying that he could not stay long because of his mother. The
old man said, I understand thatbut there wont be any harm if you linger
on here a few days. Then they fed him fine foods and wineand in the west
hall they had a serving girl set up a bed, which she covered with brocade
bedding.
As Huo was withdrawing for the night, he tried to get Blue Maid to share
the bed with him. She refused him, saying, This is not the sort of place to
permit such improper intimacies But Huo clutched her arm and wouldnt
let her go. Outside the window could be heard the derisive laughter of the
serving girl, and Blue Maid became even more embarrassed. As they were
11 24
The Qing Dynasty
struggling, the old man came in and screamed at Huo, Be gone at once!
Your commonness defiles my cave! Huo had always been obstinate, and
unable to endure the embarrassment, he colored and said, The feelings that
occur between and man and a woman cant be helped~why must you spy
on me? I dont mind getting out of here right now; just have your daughter
go along with me
The old man didnt object and ordered Blue Maid to go with him, open
ing the back door to see them off. Once he had tricked Huo into going out
the gate, the father shut the door and disappeared. When Huo looked
around, there wasnt the slightest seam or crack in the sheer cliff that loomed
before him. He was utterly alone and had no place to go. He looked up into
the sky where the sinking moon was hanging on high and the stars had al
ready grown sparse.
He remained there in despair for quite some time, and then his grief
turned to resentment. He faced the cliff and shouted, but there was no reply.
His fury mountedhe took the spade from his waist and set to digging his
way in through the rock, hacking away and cursing. In the twinkling of an
eye he had burrowed in three or four feet, and he heard the muffled sound
of someone saying, Damn him ! Huo then put all his strength into it and
dug even more quickly. Suddenly the end of his cave opened wide into a dou
ble door. He pushed Blue Maid out through the tunnel, saying, Lets go,
lets go! At once the wall closed up again behind them. Then she said an
grily, Since you loved me as your w ifehow can you treat my father like
this? What kind of old Daoist was it gave you that disastrous tool that can
aggravate and persecute a person to death!
Having found Blue Maid, H uo
s mood was somewhat calmer. He didn
t argue any more but simply worried about the danger of the road and
how hard it would be to get back. Blue M aid broke off two branches and
had each of them put the branches between their legs. At once these trans
formed into horses and in no time they arrived at his house. By that point,
Huo had been missing for seven days.
Huo had previously become separated from his servant. The servant
looked for Huo but couldnt: find him, then went back and informed Huos
mother. His mother sent people to search everywhere in the mountain val
leys for him, but no trace was found. H uo
s mother had been beside herself
with worry, and when she heard that her son had returned, she went out
overjoyed to welcome him back. When she looked up and saw Blue Maid,
she almost collapsed from the shock. Huo told her the general story, and
his mother became calmer and more cheerful. Because of the bizarre nature
of what had happened to her, Blue Maid was worried about provoking gen
eral gossip and wanted to have the family move at once. Huo
s mother agreed
with her. They had an estate in another districtand after a fixed period they
set off to go there, and no one knew anything about it.
They lived together there for eighteen years. Blue Maid had a daughter
who married into the Li family of the same town. Afterward, Huo
s mother
passed away at a ripe old age. Blue Maid told Huo, In the field of tall grasses
1125
of my home there is a pheasant nesting on eight eggs. Thats where she should
be buried. You and our son Meng-xian should take the coffin there and see
to the funeral service. Our son is already grown, and it is fitting that he
should remain in the mourning hut by the grave. Theres no need to have
him return with you. Huo did as she said, and came back alone after the
funeral. After more than a month, Meng-xian went to visit themand his
father and mother were both long gone. He asked an old servant about them,
and she said, They went to a funeral and never came back. He knew that
a marvel had transpired, but all he could do was heave a great sigh.
Meng-xians reputation as a writer was much bruited about, but he had
difficulties in the examination and in forty days he did not pass. Later, as
part of the local quota of candidates, he participated in the Shun-tian ex
amination, where he met a young man in the same dormitory as himself.
This young man was seventeen or eighteen, a splendid and nonchalant
young man with a certain spiritual manner. Meng-xian was quite drawn to
him. When he looked at his paper, Meng-xian saw that he was Huo Zhongxianon stipend from Shun-tian district.5Shocked, he stared in disbelief and
told his own name. Zhong-xian also thought it remarkable and asked where
he was from and his relatives.
Meng-xian told him in detail, at which Zhong-xian was delighted and
said, When I set off for the capital, my father advised me that among the
examinees if I met someone named Huo from Shansihe was of my family,
and that I should welcome the acquaintance. Now it
s happened. But how
is it that our names are so similar? Meng-xian. then questioned him about
the names of his parents and grandparents, and when Zhong-xian finished,
Meng-xian said in surprise, But these my own father and mother! Zhongxian was still uncertain because of the disparity in age, but Meng-xian said
My father and mother are both immortalshow can one judge their age
by their appearance ?MWhen he told the story of all that had transpired,
Zhong-xian believed him.
After the examinationthey didnt take time off to rest but made travel
preparations and returned to Zhong-xian5s home together. As soon as they
reached the gate, one of the family servants came out to welcome them and
told them that the night before their father and mother had disappeared.
Both men were very surprised. Zhong-xian went in and asked his wife to
tell him about it. His wife said, Last night we were drinking wine together,
and your mother said to me, You and your husband are still young and in
experienced. But tomorrow his elder brother will come, and I wont worry
any more. When I went into their rooms in the morning, they were de-
5It is common practice to vary the names of brothers and sisters in a set, distinguishing them by chang
ing one character of a two-character given name. Often,,as in this case, the variation indicates the
degree of seniority. Meng-xian is thus the "Senior Immortal," and Zhong-xian is the "Middle-Brother
Im m ortal, For someone named Huo Meng-xian, who thought he was an only son, to meet someone named Huo Zhong-xian might be startling because this would be the proper name to give to
his younger brother.
1126
The Qing Dynasty
serted. When the brothers heard this, they stamped their feet and were
stricken with grief. Zhong-xian still wanted to go after them, but gave up
when Meng-xian expressed the opinion that it would do no good. Zhongxian had passed the district examination. But since the family tombs were
located in Jin, he went back there with his brother. They still hoped that their
father and mother were still in the mortal world somewhere and asked for
information about them wherever they went. But no trace of them was ever
found.
Here follows the judgment of the Chronicler of WondersIn making a
hole in the wall and going to sleep on her bed, he showed naivete in thought;
in digging through the cliff and abusing the old man, he showed rash wild
ness in actionthe reason why the immortal brought the couple together was
purely a desire to reward his devotion to his mother with a gift of eternal
life. Nevertheless, having mingled with the mortal world and begotten chil
dren, why couldnt they have stayed to the end? What brought her to aban
don her sons several times in thirty years? Strange indeed!
1127
Qing Classical Poetry and

Song Lyric
Like the Elizabethan period in the English-speaking world, the Tang Dynasty held
for later readers an aura of unattainable perfection in poetry, an age when great
poems seemed to come with ease, even to undistinguished writers.
The classical poetry and song lyric of the Qing Dynasty was, in many ways, far
richer than the Tang, but the genius of Qing poetry has been obscured by several fac
tors. First, the immense volume of poetry written during the dynasty and the huge col
lections of its most prominent poets make it difficult for individual poems to stand out
and claim the degree of attention they deserve. Second, Qing poets drew on a great
depth of learning and familiarity with earlier poetry that they took for granted in their
audience. They could not foresee an age when their allusions would require learned
footnotes and their fine turns of phrase would go unobserved by most readers. (Still
less could they have imagined being translated into a language in which all their lit
erature and culture was largely unknown.) Finally, the classical language they used
had changed much since the Tang, whose poems can often be translated almost lit
erally, leaving the beauty of their images still apparent. The literary language of the
Qing was filled with set phrases, often figurative, that sound ludicrously artificial in
English. Fortunately, there are poems and poets that can be understood with a mini
mum of annotation, and these will form the greater part of our selection below.
One of the most striking characteristics of Qing classical poetry is the degree to
which it spread through all levels of elite society. The Ming and Qing saw a dra
matic rise in literacy, and by the Qing, the size of the reading and writing public
was very large in absolute numbers, if not as a percentage of the population as a
whole. Poetry increasingly became the means to participate in subgroups within lit
erate society. There was an interest in regional and local traditions as never before,
with immense pride in earlier poets associated with a particular locale. Women poets
formed groups, exchanging verses and defining a tradition of women's poetry in their
prefaces. Family traditions were important, and families often bore the cost of pub
lishing works by their members. Indeed, poetry became one of the many means to
establish social prestige.
The history of Qing poetry is of such complexity that it cannot easily be repre
sented in a short section such as this. The fall of the Ming and its aftermath was a
profound shock to the culture, and it inspired some of the finest classical poetry since
the Tang. Du Fu, the "poet-historian, was a powerful model, and numerous poems
bear moving witness both to particular incidents in the Qing conquest and to the
spirit of resistance. As the dynasty consolidated its rule late in the seventeenth century, the Manchu rulers were understandably disturbed by such poetry, and it was
censored. Many remarkable poets were lost in obscurity and their works recovered
and republished only in the twentieth century.
1128
The Qing Dynasty

The turbulence of the conquest was followed by a long period of peace and pros
perity, lasting from the late eighteenth into the early nineteenth century. With the
Qing authorities ever vigilant against potential slights, poets tended to avoid politi
cal topics. The old disputes of Ming poetics resurfaced in new guises: a school of
Formalists (ge-diao pai) reworked the old values of the Archaists into something less
wooden; the school of Natural Wit (xing-ling pai), represented in the present selec
tion by Zhao Yi (1727-1814), carried on the late Ming interest in immediacy and
genuine expression; and the school of Spiritual Resonance (shen-yun pai), led by
Wang Shi-zhen (1634-1711), argued for the centrality of elusive poetic images that
transcended both form and self-expression. And there were others, such as the
Manchu lyricist Nara Singde (1655-1685) and the classical poet Huang Jing-ren
(1749-1783), who belonged to no school, discovering their own distinctive poetic

voices apart from contemporary literary debates. Although there was no shortage of
poetic talent, the weight of the poetic tradition and the limitations it imposed made
themselves felt. Poets had been writing on the same topics in the same poetic lan
guage for a millennium, and while there was a degree of innovation, in a large sense
poetry had become a comfortably restricted mode of expression in a world that had
changed profoundly since the Tang.
In the political and cultural crises of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
classical poetry was tested for its ability to account for a world that was being trans
formed with violent swiftness. Although it had some successes in adapting to the
changes in the culture, classical poetry treating "modern" themes often calls attention
to the disparity between the modern reality and the language of poetic representation.
When a lyricist treated the Japanese Rape of Nanjing in the 1930s in the old poetic
language, the unprecedented violence of modern warfare was recast in the guise of a
tragedy that had befallen the city over and over again for fifteen hundred years.
It is artificial to declare the end of classical literature with the May Fourth move
ment of 1919, which advocated the exclusive use of vernacular Chinese and the re
placement of traditional literary genres with the new genres from Japan and the West.
Western influence had been slowly transforming Chinese literature for many decades
prior to 1919; and although the young elite enthusiastically took up the vernacular
literature movement, its goals were not fully realized until its gradual institution in
the school system closer to the middle of the twentieth century. There is no ques
tion that classical poetry and, to a lesser degree, literary song lyric were weary forms,
weighted down by their history, and unable to match the liberty of the new ver
nacular poetry (xin-shi) inspired by Western models. Nevertheless, valuable classical poetry continued to be written through the 1930s, and the form is still practiced
today, primarily by older scholars.
Gu Yan-wu (1613-1682)
Gu Yan-wu was one of the leading scholars of the early Qing: an historian, classi
cal philologist, antiquarian, and poet. Though still a relatively young man at the time
of the conquest, he remained passionately loyal to the Ming. "Autumn Hills" is one
of his earlier poems, on the Qing conquest.
Autumn Hills (first of two)

Autumn hills, more autumn hills,
and through those hills swell autumn rains.
They fought by the rivermouth yesterday,
today they fight beside those hills.
Fve heard that our right flank crumbled,
I now see the lefts resistance fade.
Our banners and pennons lie buried in earth,
by walls dance ladders and battering rams.
In but a morning, defeat at Chang-ping,1
the corpses lie covering ridges and slopes.
Three hundred barges set off for the north,
and on every barge are fair-faced girls.
Camels crowd river ports of Wu,
fifes playing, they enter the passes to Yan.2
Men of Yan and Ying of olden days
are still found south of the city.3
Wu Wei-ye (1609-1671)
Wu Wei-ye (or Wu Mei-cun, as he is often known) was one of the two best-known
poets of the period around the Qing conquest. A member of the Restoration Soci
ety, Wu belonged to the late Ming social world described in the play Peach Blos
som Fan, and his poetry on the Qing conquest of the South and its aftermath is among
the finest work in a period whose hardships inspired much memorable poetry. Re
luctantly persuaded to serve in the Qing government briefly in the 1650s, Wu suf
fered a deep sense of having betrayed the Ming, and he gave up his post willingly
on the death of his mother.
The following poem of 1645 is from a set in which Wu is fleeing with his fam
ily from the invading Qing army. Wu moves back and forth from the peaceful scene
around him to the crumbling Southern Ming state beyond his vision. "Nature's
Moat
was a kenning for the Yangzi River, supposed to protect the Southland against
invasion from the North.
^hang-ping was the site of a famous battle in the Qin unification when Qin armies were supposed
to have massacred four hundred thousand soldiers of the state of Zhao.
2Yan, into whose passes the victorious Qing armies enter, represents the region around Beijing.
3Yan and Ying were two of the great cities of the ancient state of Chu. After the Q in conquest of
those cities, Chu grandees, unwilling to serve Qin, settled south of the Qi capital at Lin-ze. Here,
of course, the allusion expresses the determined resistance of southerners to the Qing conquest.
1130
The Qing Dynasty
Escaping the Fighting (fifth of six)

The moon came out, the village ahead turned white,
on the creek its rays shone like washed silk.
We lifted oars and drifted midstream
sang bravely to winds that broke up sound.
Not that Natures Moat could not hold,
but constant depravities worked this grief.
Woe to you who made plans for our state
you have lost us half our rivers and hills!
The boatman prances, placing the punt,
and our small boat runs swift as an arrow.
Too bad that troops of the Yangzi and Huai,
our <(dread berserkers/5put up no fight.
To this lone cabin sounds of an iron flute come,
hearing its notes, my tears fall like sleet.
What have I done in this life
to live in such times of anguish and ruin?
In bygone days I roamed all the land,
I come at last to the Five Lakes shores.
Wearing hemp sandals and used to flight,
on hard times fallen, a simple common man.
Du Fu's poems during the An Lu-shan Rebellion provided a powerful model for poets
writing on the Qing conquest of the Ming. These could be simple narratives of small
incidents that revealed the larger conditions of the times. In the following poem, a
roving band of Ming soldiers, having fled the advancing Qing armies, plunder a vil
lage where Wu Wei-ye is staying. Wu cannot help think of the expenses lavished
on the army, which now seeks only to get out of harm's way.
Escaping the Fighting (last of six)

Marauders came when I rose at dawn,
a warship was moored by the market bridge.
A disorderly band of a dozen or so
came on shore to buy local beer.
Their gear was not a civilians,
but swords and bows had been lost.
1131
They bullied and beat an old shopkeeper,

men of no account, with raging looks.
And I wondered who their commander was,
coming here from an urge to roam carefree.
Our army used to press hard for taxes,
its orders were strict, no leeway at all.
They spoke ever of hardships for men on campaign
unpitied, the plowmans grueling toil.
The Southland now is defeated,
desolation spreads a thousand miles.
In this place only villagers dwell,
theres no room for your banners and pennons.
Go show the enemy your daring
dont use it to frighten folk like us.
The relation between the details of a poet's experiences and the poetic past is com
plicated in Qing poetry. Old poems echo in the background of Qing poems, but
this may be something more than literary allusion: familiar old poems were prob
ably a part of making sense of experience itself, and they provided models for re
sponse.
The following poem, in which Wu Wei-ye laments the death of his infant daugh
ter, is no less moving and no less heartfelt for being in the style of Du Fu. The poet's
real fear that his newborn daughter's cries would reveal the family's hiding place
also recalls Du Fu fleeing the "death and destruction" of the An Lu-shan Rebellion
with his family in a passage from "Song of Peng-ya.
My baby girl gnawed at me in her hunger,

and I feared wild beasts would hear her cries
I held her to my chestcovered her mouth,
but she twisted and turned, crying louder in rage.
A Lament for My Daughter (first of three)

You were born amid death and destruction,
the whole family lay hidden by roadside.
I feared your cries, thought of leaving you there,
we got away, and I loved you much more.
Children caught in catastrophes course,
pike and shield harassed your brief years.
1132
The Qing Dynasty
States rise and fall affects all the world

but when I think back, my distress is doubled.
"West Fields" is an idyllic poem on visiting the estate of Wu's friend Wang Yan-ke
after the Qing conquest. Behind this and other poems in the set is a long tradition
of lyrics, from Tao Qian to such works as Du Fu7s "Autumn Wilds" and Su Dongpo's "East Slope," about withdrawing to farming in face of adversity.
West Fields (first of four)

You dig and build, of worlds troubles weary,
in wilderness fields you find natures way.
Here north of the city you came ty chance,
beside the west creek studied Halting.4
Your greatness makes practice of privacy hard,
regions remoteness stirs report by the crowd.
Then Ia ll at once, come to visit you,
oars enter this reed and cattail sky.
The setting sun floats over distant trees,
in mulberries rises a faint hint of smoke.
The path turns, I lose my way on the creek,
but the ducks precede me, leading the boat.
A fragrance close by, I smell lotuses,
recumbent, I enter blooms fresh and lovely.
Mens voices emerge from weeping willows,
a fishing raft slants by the bending shore.
You take my handlook at me, smile
These are indeed my "Western Fields/
If always I could get a guest like you,
wed enjoy the delights of the wilds together.
We
ll sit on the grass, drain a jug of beer,
and find some joy in the years that remain.M
Mooring in the Evening

Winter hoes go in line along the shore,
light oars yaw, swept by the tide.
4"Halting" is the Buddhist cessation of desire and activity.
1133
The trees shed the last of tattered leaves,

winds blow a tangle of evening crows.
Where sand is deep, it holds the tracks of pigs,
the stream grows still and echoes with a fish spear.
We ask for firethe village beer comes,
our cooking smoke rises through reed flowers.
Some of Wu Wel-ye's finest poems are long narratives filled with allusions and his
torical references, which unfortunately do not fare well in translation. In the following
poem, of which only the opening is translated, Wu Wei-ye returns to Nanjing (for
merly Jin-ling) after the Qing conquest. From the ruins of the Ming Imperial Acad
emy, where Wu had served, he turns to the other Ming sites in this city that had been
both the first and final Ming capital.
from Thoughts Stirred on Meeting the Gardener of the Royal

Academy in Nanjing
Cold tides dashed on the ruined fort,
fiery clouds set Red H ill ablaze;
it was June when I reached Jin-ling,
on the tenth I crossed Great Pontoon Bridge.
The spots I had visited serving here
have all of them slipped from memory.
I met an old gardener on the road,
who asked me from where I had come.
,
Then I vaguely recognized a former employee,
and the circumstances caused hearts pain.
He opened the gate and invited me in,
broken buildings, a low surrounding wall.
Then he pointed into a clump of weeds,
saying this was the Royal Academy.
The office buildings were rubble piles,
which he gardened on lease to pay his tax.
He had changed the means of his livelihood,
but had made this his garden from nostalgia.
In troubled times he had kept to this land,
unwilling to go to another place.
I took the chance to walk over the site,
and at every step my brooding increased.
On the gray slopes backed against the water
had been the hall where I used to stay.
From all the world students gathered here,
compositions turned in at the Six Lodges.
1134
"
The Qing Dynasty
Pines and junipers, all ten spans in girth

and the ringing sounds of pipes and bells.
A hundred-acre clear and rippling pond,
with drooping willows all around the shore,
splendid porches overhanging pools,
where fragrant scent of lotus blew.
Chatting and laughing, all noble companions,
in flowers and moonlight we drained our cups.
There was a pavilion to the south
where beech and bamboo gave off a light cool.. . .
Wang Shi-zhen (1634-1711)

If the poetry of the mid-seventeenth century wears well, it is because the dissolu
tion and fall of the Ming provided an immediately engaging topic that went beyond
the arid literary disputes of the preceding era. Wang Shi-zhen was the most influ
ential poet of the first post-conquest generation. Wang and his poetry are known for
a principle, shen-yun, roughly translated as "spiritual resonance." This is a vague,
evocative term for a vague evocative quality that was associated with certain High
Tang poets and especially with their quatrains.
Wang Shi-zhen represents both some of the best and the worst sides of Qing poetry.
Much of his poetry was about either social exchange or capturing moments on his travels;
the engagement of poetry around the Qing conquest was gone. Wang was a craftsman,
who could turn the situation or the beauty of the momentary scene into polished poetry.
Crossing the Ancient Barrier Pass in the Rain (1672)

Perilous walkwaysflying cascades,
the mountain a thousand yards high,
I point afar to a fortress tower
there among twilight clouds.
And suddenly the west wind brings
whooshing gusts of rain
ash tree flowers will fill the road
as I cross the ancient pass.
On the Ba River Bridge: Sent Home to M y Wife (second of two)

Mount Tai-hua and Mount Zhong-nan
are here thousands of miles away,
not a place in this westward journey
that doesnt break my heart.
Should my lady happen to toss a coin
to find out of my fate
1135
in autumn rain and autumn wind

I cross the Ba River Bridge.
IfWang Shi-zhen sometimes sounds like Wang Wei, it was because the perfection of Wang
Wei's poetic art (rather than Wang Wei's values) captured Wang Shi-zhen's affection.
Farm Home by Cu-lai Mountain

On I go through empty azure mist,
appearing, fading, still more lovely shapes.
Road to the village through sapphire trees
the green hill faces a shrine on the peak.
In deep woods chickens and dogs grow still,
after much rain, sprouts on the slope are rich.
Someday Ill plant the north slope of Gui
nor will I be slow to plow on my own.
On the Qing-yang Road

Tall bamboo blanket a sunlit stream,
whose rippling glints by an empty bend.
As the sun goes down, snow melts away,
and homes are right there in the cold green.
What I Saw on the Northern Outskirts of Zhen-zhou

The cloud cover pressed on the city walls
as I left Zhen-zhou
s outskirts at dawn.
Past the outskirts, a striped bamboo grove
and the wind blew down the last of the snow.
At Daybreak I Crossed the Ping-jiang River and Climbed on

Foot to the Summit of Crossing-Above-Clouds Mountain
I really did cross above clouds
roaming wine in hand,

the utter wonder of Han-jia
crowns all this western land.
Its nine peaks face to the sun
and chant the river leaves
three watercourses flood on through,
embracing the district hall.
The Qing Dynasty
From the old man of Fu

s pavilion
the mountains grow more fair,
and springs gush from the coiled hair
of an ancient statue of Buddha.
As Su Dong-po grew older,
his home in Shu was on his mind,
he wanted no fief of ten thousand homes
in the world of mortal men.
Nara Singde (1655-1685)

Nara Singde (or, in the sinified version, Na-lan Xing-de) was a Manchu bannerman
(a member of the Qing military caste) and an officer in the imperial guard. He often
accompanied the Kang-xi emperor on his various journeys of state.
The early seventeenth century had seen a major revival of the song lyric as a
purely literary form. Song Dynasty tune patterns were still used, even though the orig
inal music had been long lost. The song lyric took on a very different tone from clas
sical poetry: it was often dreamy and evocative, the preferred form for love poetry.
Nara Singde's lyrics, particularly a number of pieces on the death of his wife, are
considered among the finest in the dynasty.

It was the moment when the pulley creaked
on the golden well, and fallen petals
filled the pavements, cold and red.
All at once I met her~
no telling for sure
what lay in her heart
or the look in her eyes.
Who can think it through and know? But now
it begins
striped marks on body from bamboo mat,
a shadow in candlelight.
to Clear and Even Music (Qing-ping yue)

Tresses in stormy tangles and coils,
she comes and I never know just when.
Weary we lean
on marble railings of balconies
watching the halo around the moon,
Easily then
talk turns to whispers,
her fragrance draws near.
1137
A soft breeze blows past the window screen,

meeting her now is a world away.
And from this moment on:
all the pain of spring and being apart,
in growing dusk facing the blossoms of pear.
to ccSeeking Fragrant Plants (Xun fang-cao)

Account of a Dream in Xiao Temple
How can I pass these nights far from home?
I dreamed I was with her,
reciting poems together,
by the latticed window. And annoyed
she feigned a smile and said
If you werent so lonely there,
would you still have wanted to come?
I had to leave all too quickly;
I had planned to stay
until temple bells were struck at dawn.

She suddenly pressed close to me
then a spark flashed from lamp wick falling,
and I was here facing
fire in a globe of glass.
to Golden Threads (Jin-lii qu)

Thoughts on the Anniversary of My Wifes Death
When will this misery end?
Dripping on empty stairs, the rain
of nights coldest hours is done
a weather for funerals of flowers.
These past three years went on and on,
her souitoo far to come in dreams,
and may I wake from this dream soon!
I guess by now Fve grown aware
this mortal world holds no appeal.
Better to be
below the soil
in those halls of endless night,
cool there and clear,
a plot of earth to bury care*
The pact of love, hairpin and box,
is forsaken in the end.
If I could get a letter
from streams in the world below,
1138
The Qing Dynasty
Yd like to know
her joys and sorrows this past year,
who she
s staying with. For me
it5s restless tossing all night long;
I cannot bear to hear
strings of marriage played again.
I hope we
ll be
true lovers in a life to come, then fear
we both have luckless destinies,
and future fate will be unkind
in last moonlight and failing wind.
My tears are gone,
ashes of paper rise.5
to Like a Dream55 (Ru meng ling)

In thousands of tents the men are drunk.
Starlight shimmers, about to sink.
My homeward dreams are blocked
by W olf River
and poked to pieces by river sounds.
Then I go back to sleep,
go back to sleep understanding
that waking has no appeal.
to Butterflies Love Flowers (Die lian hua), On the Frontier

The rivers and hills have no single master
in ancient times and now,
and in the notes of the bugles
- herdsmens horses constantly come and go.
O f this bleak wilderness filling my eyes
Whom can I tell?
west winds blow red maples
and make them old.
Where could pains suffered silently here
ever find expression?
Lances and armored horses,
the road to Green Tomb in twilight.6
Carried away, my feelings deepen,
how deep do they go?
5The "ashesare from the paper money burned in commemoration of the dead.
6Green Tomb was the legendary burial place of Wang Zhao-jun, a beautiful Han court lady who
was married against her w ill to the Khan o f the Xiong-nu.
1139
evening sunshine deep in the mountains,

deep in autumn, the rain.
Zhao yi (1727-1814)
Zhao Yi was one of a group of poets associated with the "school of Natural Wit"
(xing-ling pai), whose most prominent advocate was Yuan Mei (1716-1798) and
which played an influential role in the literary world of the eighteenth century. The
school of Natural Wit advocated a spontaneous ease in composition and lightness
of touch in poetry that was opposed to the elevated "spiritual resonance" of Wang
Shi-zhen and his followers. Zhao Yi was an historian, literary critic, and eminent in
tellectual, who for a period in his life served in the Qing government with distinc
tion.
Poems on M y Dwelling in the Rear Park (second of nine)

Fve suffered poverty years on end,
but this years been especially hard.
My wife and children came in and declared
there will be no breakfast tomorrow.
I laughed and told them to go away,
that I couldnt be bothered just now.
Im presently writing a little poem
and theres still a word not quite right.
Just wait until I finish the poem
and Ill take care of the groceries.
Look on the streets of the capital
no civil servants lie there starving to death!
Poems on M y Dwelling in the Rear Park (third of nine)

A visitor suddenly knocked at my door
with an offer of cash for some writing.
He asked me to do a tomb inscription
and insisted I make it flattering
in political life, a Gong Sui or Huang Ba
in learninga Zheng or Zhu Xi.
I thought it would be amusing,
so I did just as he required.
I patched a piece of fine phrases together,
and, lo and behold, a true gentleman!
I checked this against what he really did,
it was hardly an ounce to my ten pounds.
Suppose what I wrote is handed down
who could tell if the man was a fool or wise?
And perhaps they will cite it as evidence,
1140
The Qing Dynasty
to be copied at last in historical tomes.

Now I see that in histories of old
the most part belongs to pure puffery.
Returning on Yang Lake

My canvas sail billows lightly,
the evening breeze is soft,
I turn to look at Yang Mountain,
set right in the sunset glow.
Egrets dot the sapphire sky,
a flying word writ in white,
the trees dress up in red leaves,
presented with scarlet gowns.
The poets mood, the limpid waters
empty without a speck,
the hearts concerns, a peaceful cloud
distracted, not flying away.
I most enjoy the fisherpiens songs
their sounds in the creaking of oars
and rapping the rhythm on boatsides,
going with me all the way home.
Zhao Yi served a period as a magistrate of a district in Guang-xi, which was populated
primarily by non-Chinese. These indigenous peoples of southwestern China evoked
many of the same responses in eighteenth-century Chinese intellectuals that the native
peoples of the Americas evoked in Europeans. Sometimes they were described as mur
derous and thieving savages; at other times they were the "noble savage,
whose nat
ural behavior put to shame those with the artificial trappings of civilization. In the fol
lowing verse, Zhao Yi describes their courtship customs involving song exchanges
between young men and women. Zhao Yi associates the freedom to choose one's own
mate (not to mention unbound feet) with primal antiquity and an innocence lost in China.
Local Song
In months of spring, April and May,
the fairgrounds are in flower,
girls of the tribes, primped and rouged
go to the fairgrounds to court.
Long skirts and wide sleeves
all in fresh finery,
one sees no bow-bent slippers
and dainty feet three inches wide.
A young man of unknown family
comes to sing her songs,
1141
its not necessary that he be

kin by marriage or blood.
She only looks at his young face
fresh as a blossom of peach,
and as he sings, so she sings back
in verses never-ending.
In every single note is borne
currents of tender passion,
light as the drifting floss
that curls through the sky.
There are times when suddenly
it is blown apart by the breeze
notes carried over the hills ahead,
in quavering afterechoes.
And touching, when the song concludes
fervent glances are cast,
and she promises to meet him
by night in the glow of the moon.
These melodies speak mostly
of the red berries of passion,
folkways that rarely write
of green plums as they fall.7
Here in our age we truly find
unimpeded succession,
it is as if entering the hazy space
of the Hua-xu dream.8
I see now that our ritual laws
arose in later times,
folk of No-Cares and Ge-tians day
knew nothing of them at all.9
Have you not seen how two by two
the butterflies form pairs,
and without need of a go-between
they settle the marriage bond?
In Bed
Lying in bed I thought of a poem
and worried that I would forget,
I threw on my clothes and got up to write
in the dying light of the lamp.
7"Green plums as they fall" refers to a poem in the Classic o f Poetry, traditionally interpreted as re
ferring to marriage in the appropriate season (these young women seem to be rushing it).
8The "Hua-xu dream," described in the Daoist Classic Lie-zi, was the Yellow EmperoKs dream of a
primordial world of innocence.
1142
My wife broke out in laughter:

why take such painsold man
when the youngsters are at their studies
theyre not so caught up as this?
Livelihood
Our subsistence grows steadily bleaker,
the harvest was bad; just stony fields remain.
For fuel, we burn trees that stood leaf to leaf,
for meals, count on cash from writing inscriptions
The servant is young, I send my son on errands,
the house so bare the watchdog sleeps freely.
And faintly I hear the maids telling stories
of our days of feasting and me in official robes.
On Poetry (two of five)

I
The life I see all around me turns
on the Potter's Wheel of Change:
Heavens skill and human craft
always compete for the new.
The poet provides a new idea
that lasts five hundred years,
but when its reached a thousand years,
it seems like a cliche.
II
Poems of Li Bo and Du Fu
have passed through thousands of mouths,
and by now theyve come to seem
not vivid or new at all.
In every age our hills and our rivers
bring forth men of talent
and each holds sway over poetry
for a span of five hundred years.
9No-Cares and Ge-tian were mythica1

- rulers of earliest antiquity.
Huang Jing-ren (17491783)

Huang Jing-ren perfectly fulfilled the expectations for a certain type of Chinese
poet: talented, unsuccessful, impoverished, and doomed to die at a relatively
young age. It was a role Huang Jing-ren accepted completely, and though there
was an element of posing, it sometimes made possible a poetic daring that is lacking in more socially successful writers. Many critics believed, with some reason,
that Huang Jing-ren was the outstanding poet of the dynasty.
Written at Night at an Inn in the Hills (second and third of

three)
The city people are different
in their troubling fantasies;
to my eyes this world and I
are a wisp in autumn sky.
Just now those thousands of homes must all
be sharing the very same dream
above them, a white haze,
hangs low then rises high.
All night long these mountain windows
stand open on every side,
with rivers and lakes before and behind,
where my thoughts go on and on.
So stand at the window, set torch ablaze,
hold it high,
and watch the fish and dragons come
to drink in the light.
[title lost]
My home lies east of the eastern sea:
sea-castle miragesfamiliar sights
for a mind that is the same.
I shed ten years of tears for my shadow
in the deepest parts of hills,
but when I glimpsed a mountain ape,
my heart knew also delight.
Is this life perhaps? Or death? Neither
are worth my shouting in rage;
brows knit in a frown, then form a smile~
which of those moments is real?
Magnificent is the Shaper of Things
how will he use me now?
1144
The Qing Dynasty
Not of mist and cloud does he conjure shapes,

he conjures his shapes in me.1
Visiting Ju-fa-yuan Temple with Wang Qiu-cheng and

Zhang He-chai
I left the ancient temple in twilight mist
afraid on my return to find
my study in its autumn
as empty as these waters.
As nights black colors grew on my clothes,
I could not brush them away,
and wondered where to find other hills
still red in the evening sun.
A Companion Piece to a Poem by Qian Bai-quan

Here where the master, his whisk in hand,
~* once discoursed on the sutras,
we feel now the autumn chill
in August already upon us.
So much noise from crowds,
travelers outside these gates
yet after the great bells single sound
there is sound no more.
Dreaming of a Friend One Night

I am in halveshalf here far from home,
and half in a dream of home,
as the west wind rolls the leaves along
and rain beats on corridors.
I am a shadow, companioned by clouds
threading through the passes;
now the moonlight joins me as always
under this roof and rafters.
You speak to me with such kindness and care,
but somehow I dont comprehend,
^ h e last couplet refers to a passage in the Zhuang-zi, in which one zany Daoist visits another,
wracked by disease and dying: wThen Zi-Ii leaned against the doorway and spoke to Zi-lai, 'Mag
nificent indeed is the Shaper of Things. 1wonder what it's going to make you into; I wonder where
ifs going to have you go. W ill you be a rat's liver? A bug's arm, perhaps?'"
1145
and cannot see what would stop me

from taking your hand right now:
Then I wake up: on my pillow
theres not a spot left dry;
through the open curtains the hazy blur
of the long road to be traveled.
Offhand Compositions: New Years Eve 1774

I
Laughter and talk in a thousand homes,
the water-clock drips on
yet I feel a misery coming unseen
from beyond the world of things.
Silent, I stand on the market bridge,
recognized by none,
watching a single star like the moon
such a long, long time.
II
Year after year I waste this eve
reciting poems
beside the lamp my children
often secretly laugh at me.
Yet how could the likes of you understand
how much I regret
wastefully spending the hearts strength
to be a poet.
Although classical poetry continued to be written using the old circumscribed range
of topics throughout the nineteenth century, some voices were trying to express the
new cultural realities that China was confronting with the slow dissolution of Qing
rule and the intrusion of the West. The corruption and sporadic violence of nineteenth-century China again and again were met with a desire to bring about reform.
Classical literature and classical writing in general can be taken as an emblem of
the cultural problem. Historical depth was the virtue of classical writing, but by fig
uring everything in terms of precedents and prior usage, critics and writers alike had
difficulty accounting for what was truly new.
Gong Zi-zhen (1792-1841)

Gong Zi-zhen's most famous poems are the 315 quatrains written in the cyclical
year ji-hai, 1839, on a journey from Beijing to his home in Hang-zhou. Poets and
lyricists like Huang Jing-ren or Nara Singde complicated the cliches of the poetic
The Qing Dynasty

language to the point where they created something unique and fresh. Gong Zizhen's quatrains are often epigrammatic: he addresses poetic cliches and the com
monplaces of cultural response directly. At other times, the quatrains suggest an
almost melancholy resignation. Many are extremely allusive; given below are just
a few of the most famous that can be done in English without extensive annota
tion.
Poems of the Year Ji-haiy 1839

V
The sorrow of leaving sweeps over me,
the bright sun sinks in sky,
a poet on horseback heads eastward
and at once is past the horizon.
The fallen red petals are not
things without a heart~
they change into the mud of spring
to nurture still more flowers,
The following piece is on opium addicts, who filled the levels of officialdom during
the opium scourge of the nineteenth century. The first couplet seems to describe an
opium den. In the second couplet, Gong suggests that the addict go take a provin
cial post in the poppy-growing counties of West and Southwest China, where even
during the Cold Food Festival, when cooking fires (and by implication, the burning
of opium) are supposed to be extinguished, he could stay high (perhaps fancifully
under the influence of the poppies?).
LXXXVI
The addictslamps are ranged in groups,
scattered autumn fireflies,
- a registrar, fallen on hard times,
his tear-filled eyes aglow.
Why not go govern a city
in some county of poppy flowers,
and sleep through spring never waking
in the Cold Food Festival?
CXXV
All life in Chinas nine regions
depends on the thundering storm,
thousands of horses all struck dumb
is deplorable indeed.
I urge the Lord of Heaven
to shake us up again
and grant us human talent
not bound to a single kind.
1147
When I was passing Zhen-jiangI saw a service for the Jade Emperorthe Wind
Godand the Thunder God, with thousands and thousand of worshippers. The
Daoist priest begged me to write a supplicant verse.
CLXX
The sorrows and joys of my youthful years
surpass those of others,
I wept and sang without cause
and every word was true.
A grown man now, I get around,
naivete mixed with guile,
but the child-mind returns again
to this body in its dreams.
Another Repentance
Buddhists tell of kalpa fires
dissolving all when they come
what is it endures a thousand years,
raging like tidal bore?
I have ground away the light of day
in writings to save the state,
dark insights and mad ingenuities
recur in midnight hours.
They surge in me like a boiling flood,
needing a swords blow to sever
once gone, they are tangled still in thought,
consigned to the flute of poetry.
Hearts medicine, hearts native wit
are both the hearts disease:
I am resolved to burn in the lamp
these words of parable.
"From Spring to Autumn makes use of one of the favorite figures for represen
tations, and for poetic representations in particular: the dragon flying in the sky with
the clouds that accompany it. In order to catch its animate changes, the best repre
sentations of the dragon were supposed to show only fragments of the creature be
hind the cloud, from which the whole could be inferred.
From Spring to Autumn of 18 27 Some Things Came to Me

Which I Wrote Down Haphazardly (last of fifteen)
I once wrote a poem swearing off poems;
it was 1820the poem was wordy.
1148
The Qing Dynasty
The most pressing things you want to say

have always been hard to say clearly.
So Ill try to say them with cunning words,
but before I can say them, my voice fails.
I seek no forgiveness from the gods,
and would even less speak it to living men.
To the east of a cloud, one scale exposed,
one claw is exposed on the other side.
But better than showing scale and claw
is to show no claw and scale at all.
More true still of the things Ive said
of scale and claw the lingering trace.
I repent my writings from the very first,
in hearts silence I will strive for Void.
This year I truly swear off poems
the problem is not that my talent is gone.
Huang Zun-xian (1848-1905)

Not only did Huang Zun-xian represent the most important attempt to reform clas
sical poetry in the nineteenth century, he was also a Qing diplomat and political fig
ure of some note, serving in Chinese embassies and consulates in Tokyo, San Fran
cisco, London, and Singapore. He tried to strip away the allusions, the cliches, and
the commonplaces of response in classical poetry and to open up the poetry to the
objects and experiences of the new world China was entering. The Chinese poetic
language was, however, a stubborn thing. The poems written in the West, such as
a long, rather horrified verse narrative on witnessing the turbulent party politics of
the 1884 American election, offer rare and frequently surprising perspectives. The
following political epigram, written in 1885, protests the British occupation of Hong
Kong.
On Reaching Hong Kong

The waters are those of Yaos time,
the sun is the same as Xias
also the cap and gown I wear
are the uniform of Han.
Climbing the tower, I look all around
this truly is my land,
yet on the great flags I do not see
our yellow dragon.
1149

The greater part of Huang Zun-xian's collected poems are on the standard topics of
classical poetry; though good, these poems do not stand out strongly. More interest
ing are those works where the sensibility cultivated by practicing classical poetry ac
counts for a new experience. In the following quatrain, Huang crosses the interna
tional dateline on the second day of the second month, known as the "dawn of
flowers." Not only are there no flowers here to enjoy on the two "dawns of flowers."
An additional day seems a gratuitous gift for someone worried about wasting the time
of his life. It produces a particular problem in arranging the diary~the repetition of
a day, but one that is little different from the adjoining day of the same name.
Various Responses on an Ocean Voyage (one of fourteen)

On the eighteenth day of the first month I set off from Yokohama by paddle
wheeled steamer to America, and arrived on the twelfth of the second month.
I had nothing to do in the boat, so I wrote these lines haphazardly.
In the years and months of my middle age
I endure being tossed by winds,
more than half of the time of my life
has been thrown away in travels.
Today to break my melancholy
I edit my diary:
in only one year I have received
twice the dawn of flowers.
Qiu Jin (1879-1907)

Qiu Jin was a member of the revolutionary generation and a martyr of the Revolu
tion. Married and with two children, she left her family in 1904 and went to Japan
to study. There she joined the movement to overthrow the Qing government. After
returning to China, she founded a newspaper for women and continued her revo
lutionary activities. Involved in an abortive uprising in An-hui and Zhe-jiang in
1907, she was captured by Qing authorities, and executed.
This poem was written in 1904, after China's various humiliations at the hands
of Japan and the Western powers. Qiu Jin was then on her way to Japan. The "bronze
camels" were originally in Luo-yang; Suo Jing in the Jin prophesied that he would
see them growing with scrub and thorns, and the demise of the Western Jin fulfilled
his prophecy. Later the bronze camels came to stand for dynastic ruin.
Mr. Ishii of Japan Seeks a Matching Verse (using his rhymes)

It is rash to say that a woman
can never be a hero,
I ride the wind thousands of miles
heading eastward alone.
1150
The Qing Dynasty
The poets mood: a single sail

on the vast expanse of sea;
soul in dream: the sparkle of moonlight
on three isles of Japan.
The bronze camels have fallen,
in sorrow I turn to look;
the sweating horse at last is shamed
that the deed is left undone.
Such as this is hearts pain
and anger for my own land
how could I dare in my travels
just pass through the breeze of spring!
On the Yellow SeaA Man from Japan Sought Some Verses

and Also Showed Me a Map of the Russo-Japanese War
Riding the wind for thousands of miles
" I left and now return,
a lone body on the eastern sea,
spring thunder in her breast.
Can I bear to look at this map and see
how the colors change;
am I willing to let our rivers and hills
be left to the kalpa fires?
Strong wine cant melt away
tears of care for our land;
to save these times we must depend
on talent beyond the common.
We will spend the blood that flows
from a hundred thousand skulls,
but we must exert our strength to turn
Heaven and Earth aright.
Wang Guo-wei (1877-1927)

Wang Guo-wei was one of the most remarkable late Qing and early Republican in
tellectuals. He was a scholar of Western philosophy and lover of Schopenhauer; a
critic who wrote studies (still used) on the novel Story of the Stone, on early drama,
and on song lyrics; a scholar of ancient epigraphy; and an historian of the Yuan Dy
nasty. He was also an ardent Qing loyalist, which is one of the reasons offered to
explain his suicide in 1927.
Not only was Wang Guo-wei probably the single most influential critic and the
orist of the song lyric, his own works are some of the finest examples of the genre in
1151

the early twentieth century. During an age when momentous political concerns often
dominated literature, Wang Guo-wei's song lyrics kept to the old motifs and perfected
them according to his own theories of jing-jie, the visionary "world" created in a poem.
to Putting on Lipstick (Dian jiang chun)

Waves follow the currents of cloud,
and the oarsmens song goes slowly
over the waves away.
Several sounds of the oarlocks
go far into shores of cattails and rushes.
Where setting sunlight strikes current
are several specks of idle egrets and gulls.
At the spot where they fly off low
are countless reeds
that speak in the rustling wind.
As a student of Western thought and literature as well as of Chinese literature, Wang Guowei well understood the artificiality of the form in which he worked. More than many of
his best-known Chinese contemporaries, Wang gloried in that special poetic world, like
many of his Western counterparts. Perhaps such aesthetic radicalism (confined to his work
in song lyric) permitted him the whimsical insight of the lyric that follows.
to ccWashing Creek Sands55 (Huan x i sha)

Does something real lie behind
the words in your new songs?
Fancy phrases such as these
can make you want to laugh.
KBroken-hearted in lamplight
now who did you write that for?
I lean on the desk and peer around
at recent compositions,
then turn off the light and reckon up
joys known in the past
trivial passions of the heart
and nothing corresponds.
This lyric is a fitting coda for classical Chinese literature. Wang Guo-wei is the mod
em poet, familiar with Western thought and literature, who chooses to work in the
old forms. From ancient times, poetry in its various forms was supposed to give outer
expression to what lies in the heart. But there is a moment when Wang looks back
at his lyrics and re a liz e s th e y are ju s t w o rd s, o ld c lic h e s , th at no lo n g er m atch w h a t
he really felt.
f the old poetry is no longer adequate for the consciousness of the mod
ern Chinese writer, however, it is adequate in this lyric~to declare its own failure.
1152
The first section is devoted to translations of Chinese literature. The second list (at
p. 1159) is a brief introduction to critical studies of Chinese literature. Note that the
critical studies often contain extensive translations of material not found elsewhere.
Both lists are primarily limited to works in English, though works in French and Ger
man have been included in cases where they fill gaps or have reference value.
Translations
G E N E R A L A N T H O L O G IE S
Birch, Cyril, ed. Anthology o f Chinese Literature. 2 vols. New York, 1965.
Chang HsirT-chang. Chinese Literature: Nature Poetry. New York, 1977.
---------- . Chinese Literature: Popular Fiction and Drama. Edinburgh, 1973.
Davis, A. Rv ed. The Penguin Book o f Chinese Verse. Baltimore, 1962.
de Bary, W illia m T., W . T. Chan, and Burton Watson, eds. Sources o f Chinese Tradition. New
York, 1960.
Ebrey, Patricia Buckley. Chinese Civilization and Society: A Sourcebook. New York, 1981.
Lin, Yutang. The Im portance o f Understanding. Cleveland, 1960 (paperback ed. entitled
Translations from the Chinese).

---------- . The Wisdom o f China and India. New York, 1942; reprinted Taipei, 1968.
Liu W u-chi. K,uei H sin g :A Repository o f Asian Literature in Translation. Bloomington, Ind., 1974.
---------- f and Irving Lo, eds. Sunflow er Splendor: Three Thousand Years o f Chinese Poetry. Gar
den City, N.Y., 1975.
M air, Victor, ed. The Columbia Anthology o f Traditional Chinese Literature. New York, 1994.
Payne, Robert, ed. The W hite Pony: An Anthology o f Chinese Poetry from the Earliest Times
to the Present Day, N ew ly Translated. New York, 1947.
Rexroth, Kenneth. One Hundred Poems from the Chinese. New York, 1959.
---------- . Love and the Turning Year: One Hundred M ore Poems from the Chinese. New York, 1970.
---- , and Ling Chung. The Orchid Boat: Women Poets of China. New York, 1972.
Strassberg, Richard E. Inscribed Landscapes: Travel W riting from Im perial China. Berkeley,
4 1994.
W aley, Arthur. Chinese Poems. London, 1946.
---------- . The Tem ple and O ther Poems. New York, 1926.
Watson, Burton. Columbia Book o f Chinese Poetry. New York, 1984.
Yip, W ai-lim. Chinese Poetry: M ajor M odes and Genres. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 1972.
EA R LY LITERATU RE (TO TH E EN D O F TH E EASTERN H A N )

The
Classic of Poetry (Shi-jing)
Hightower, James R. Han Shih W ai-chuan: Han Ying's Illustrations o f the D idactic Applica-
tions of the Classic ofSongs. Cambridge, Mass., 1952.

1153

Karlgren, Bernhardt. The Book of Odes. Stockholm, 1950.
Legge, James. The Chinese Classics. 5 vols., reprinted Hong Kong, 1960 (English translations
of the Confucian canon, including the Classic of Poetry).

Pound, Ezra. The Classic Anthology D efined b y Confucius. Cambridge, Mass., 1954.
Waley, Arthur. The Book of Songs. 1937,1960; new ed. New York, 1987.
Early Prose
Birrel, Anne. Chinese M ythology: An Introduction. Baltimore, 1993.
Crump, J. I. Chan-kuo Ts,e. Oxford, 1970; revised ed. San Francisco, 1979.
Graham, Angus. The Book of Lieh-tzu. 1960; New York, 1990.
---- . Chuang Tzu: The Inner Chapters. London, 1981.
Knoblock, John. Xunzi. 3 vois. Stanford, Calif., 1988,1990,1994.
Lau, D. C. The Analects. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1979.
----
. Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1963.
---- . Mencius. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1970.
Waley, Arthur. The Analects of Confucius. London, 1938.
Watson, Burton. Courtier and Commoner in Ancient China: Selections from the H istory o f the
Former Han. New York, 1974.

---- . Han Fei lz u f Basic Writings. New York, 1964.
---------- . Hsun-tsu, Basic W ritings. N ew York, 1963.
---------- . Records o f the Grand H istorian: Chapters from the Shih Chi o f Ssu-ma C h'ien. New
York, 1958.
---- . Records of the Grand Historian: Translated from the Shih chi ofSsu-ma Ch'ien. 2 vols.
New York, 1961.
---------- . The Tso Chuan: Selections from China's O ldest Narrative H istory. New York, 1989.
---------- . The W ritings o f Chuang Tzu. New York, 1968.
Chu-ci a n d Fu
Hawkes, David. Ch'u Vzu; Songs of the South. Oxford, 1959; much revised ed. (The Songs
of the South) London, 1985.
Hervouet, Yves. Le Chapitre 7 77 de Che k i: Biographie de Sseu-ma Hsiang-jou. Paris, 1972.
Knechtges, David. The Han-shu Biography o f Yang Xiong. Tempe, Ar\z.f 1982.
---------- . "Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju's T a ll Gate Rhapsody/ " Harvard Journal o f A siatic Studies, 41.1
(1981).
---------- . Wen Xuan or Selections o f Refined Literature. 2 vols. Princeton, N.J., 1982, 1987.
---------- and Jerry Swanson. "Seven Stimuli for the Prince: The C h'i-fa o f Mei CIVeng." M on-
umenta Serica, 29 (1970-71).

Waley, Arthur. The Nine Songs: A Study of Shamanism in Ancient China. London, 1955.
---- . The Temple and Other Poems. London, 1925.
Watson, Burton. Chinese Rhym e-Prose: Poems in the Fu Form from the Han and S ix Dynas
ties Period. New York, 1971.

---- . Records ofthe Grand Historian: Translated from the Shih chi ofSsu-ma Ch'ien. 2 vols.
New York, 1961.
LITERATURE OF THE LATE HAN TO THE SUI
Birrel, Anne. New Songs from a Jade Terrace. New York, 1982.
---- . Popular Songs and Ballads of Han China. London, 1988.
Davis, A. R. Tao Yuan-ming. 2 vols. Cambridge, 1984.
1154

Dieny, Jean-Pierre. Les dix-neuf poem es anciens. Paris, 1963.
Frodsham, J. D. The M urm uring Stream : The Life and W orks o f the Chinese Nature Poet Hsieh
Ling-yun (385-433). Kuala Lumpur, 1967.
---------- , and Ch'eng Hsi. An Anthology o f Chinese Verse: Han W ei Chin and the Northern
and Southern Dynasties. O xford, 1967,
Graham, W illia m T., Jr. "The Lament for the South": Yu H sin's "A i Chiang-nan /i;/'C am bridge,
1980.
---------- . "M i Heng's 'Rhapsody on a Parrot/ " Harvard Journal o f A siatic Studies, 39 (1979).
Henricks, Robert G. Philosophy and Argumentation in Third Century China. Princeton, N.JV
1983.
Hightower, James Robert. The Poetry o f Ta o Ch'ien. O xford, 1970.
Holzman, Donald. Poetry and P olitics: The Life and W orks o f Juan Chi. Cambridge, 1976.
Kent, George. W orlds o f Dust and Jade: 47 Poems and Ballads o f the Third Century Chinese
Poet Ts'ao Chih. New York, 1960.
Marney, John. Beyond the M ulberries: An Anthology o f Palace-Style Poetry by Em peror Chienwen o f the Liang Dynasty (503-551). Taipei, 1982.
Mather, Richard. "The Mystical Ascent of the T ie n -fa i M ountains: Sun Ch'o's Yu T'ien-t'aishan Fu. Monumenta Serica, 20 (1961).
---------- . Shih-shuo hsin-yu: A N ew A ccount o f Tales o f the W orld. M inneapolis, 1976.
M iao, Ronald C. Early M edieval Chinese Poetry: The Life and Verse o f Wang Ts,an (a.d.
^ 77-217). Wiesbaden, 1982.

van G ulik, R. H. Hsi K'ang and His Poetical Essay on the Lute. Tokyo, 1941.
von den Steinen, D. "Poems of Ts'ao Ts'ao . Monumenta Serica, 4 (1939-40).
TANG POETRY: GENERAL

Bynner, W itter. The Jade M ountain: A Chinese Anthology. New York, 1 9 2 9 ,1 9 5 7 ,1 9 6 4 .
Graham, Angus. Poems o f the Late Tang. Baltimore, 1965.
Lattimore, David. The Harm ony o f the W orld: Chinese Poems. Providence, R.I., 1976.
Stimson, Hugh M . Fifty-five Vang Poem s: A Text in the Reading and Understanding o f Vang
Poetry. N ew Haven, Conn., 1976.
TANG POETRY: INDIVIDUAL POETS

Eide, Elling. Poems by Li Po. Privately printed, 1984.
Frodsham, J. D. The Poems o f L i H o. O xford, 1970.
Hawkes, David. A Little Prim er o f Tu Fu. Oxford, 1967.
Henricks, Robert G. The Poetry o f Han-shan: A Complete Annotated Translation o f Cold M oun
tain. Albany, N.Y., 1990.

Hung, W illia m . Tu Fu, China's Greatest Poet. Cambridge, 1952.
Kubin, Wolfgang. Das lyrische W erk des Tu M u. W iesbaden, 1976.
Larsen, Jeanne. Brocade River Poem s: Selected W orks o f the Vang Dynasty Courtesan Xue
Tao. Princeton, N.J., 1987.
Levi, Howard S., et at. Translations from Po Chd-i's C ollected W orks. 4 vols. New York,
1971-75.
Liu, James J. Y. The
Poetry o f L i Shang-yin. Chicago, 1969.

Obata, Shigeyoshi. The W orks o f Li Po. New York, 1922.
Red Pine. The C ollected Songs o f Cold M ountain. Port Townsend, Wash., 1983.
Robinson, G. W .
Poems of Wang Wei. Baltimore, 1973.

1155

Snyder, Gary. Riprap, & Cold Mountain Poems. San Francisco, 1958, 1990.
von Zach, Erwin. Han Yu's poetische W erke. James R. Hightower, ed. Cambridge, 1952.
----------- Tu Fu's C edichte. James R. Hightower, ed. Cambridge, 1952.
W aley, Arthur. The Life and Times o f Po Chu-i, 772- 846 a.d. London, 1949.
---- . The Poetry and Career of Li Po. London, 1950.

Watson, Burton. C old M ountain: 100 Poems by the Tang Poet Han-shan. New York, 1962.
YatesRobin D. S. Washing S ilk : The Life and Selected Poetry o f W ei Chuang (834?-910).
Cambridge, Mass., 1988.
Yip, W ai-Iim . H iding the U niverse: Poems by Wang W ei. New York, 1972.
Yu, Pauline. The Poetry o f Wang W ei. Bloomington, Ind., 1980.
EA RLY F IC T IO N ,
CHUAN-QI, PR O SE E S SA Y S, A N D O T H E R G E N R E S
Birch, Cyril. Chinese Myths and Fantasies. Oxford/New York, 1961.

Chang, H. C. Chinese Literature 3 : Tales o f the Supernatural. Edinburgh, 1983.
Cohen, A lvin P. Tales o f Vengeful G hosts: A Sixth-Century Collection o f Chinese Avenging
Chost Stories. Taipei, 1982.
Dudbridge, Glen. The Tale o f L i Wa. London, 1983.
Eberhard, W olfram . Chinese Fairy Tales and Folk Tales (translated from the German by
Desmond Parsons). London, 1937; New York, 1938.
Kao, Karl S. Y v ed. Classical Chinese Tales o f the Supernatural and the Fantastic. Blooming
ton, Ind., 1985.
Levy, Howard S. China's First N ovellette: The D w elling o f the Playful Goddesses, by Chang
Wen-ch'eng (ca. 657-730). Tokyo, 1965.

Liu Shih Shun. Chinese Classical Prose: The Eight M asters o f the Tang-Sung Period. Hong
Kong, 1979.
Ma, Y. W ., and Joseph Lau, eds. Traditional Chinese Stories: Themes and Variations. New York,
1978.
'
M air, Victor. Tun-huang Popular Narratives. Cambridge/New York, 1983.
W aley, Arthur. Ballads and Stones from Tunhuang: An Anthology. London, 1960.
Yang Hsien-yi, and Gladys Yang. The Dragon King's Daughter: Ten Tang Dynasty Stories.
Beijing, 1954.
---------- . The Man Who Sold a G host: Chinese Tales o f the 3rd-6th Century. Beijing, 1958.
---------- . Stories About Being Afraid o f Ghosts. Beijing, 1961.
SHI PO E TR Y O F TH E S O N G D Y N A S T Y A N D LATER
BuIIett, Gerald. Five Seasons o f a Golden Year: A Chinese Pastoral. Hong Kong, 1980 (trans
lations from Fan Cheng-da).
Chaves, Jonathan. The Columbia Book o f Later Chinese Poetry: Yuan, M ing, and Ch'ing Dy
nasties. New York, 1986.
---------- . Heaven M y Blanket, Earth M y P illo w : Poems b y Yang Wan-li. New York, 1975.
Lo, Irving Yucheng, and W illia m Schultz, eds. W aiting for the U nicom : Poems and Lyrics o f
China's Last Dynasty, 1644-1911. Bloomington, Ind., 1986.

Schmidt, J. D. Stone Lake: The Poetry o f Fan Chengda (1126-1193). Cambridge, 1992.
W aley, Arthur. Yuan M ei: Eighteenth Century Chinese Poet. London, 1957; reprinted Stan
ford, Calif., 1970.
Watson, Burton. The O ld Man Who D oes A s He Pleases: Selections from the Poetry and Prose
o fL u Yu. New York, 1973.
---------- Su Tung-p'o: Selections from a Sung Dynasty Poet New York, 1965.
1156

SONG LYRIC (Cl)
Bryant, Daniel. Lyric Poets o f the Southern Tang: Feng Yen-ssu (903-960) and Li Yu (937-978).
Vancouver, 1982.
Fusek, Lois. Am ong the Flow ers: English Translation. New York, 1982.
Hightower, James R. "The Songwriter Liu Yung." Harvard Journal o f A siatic Studies, 41.2
(1981 ), pp. 323-76; 42.1 (1982), pp. 5-66.
---------- . "The Songs o f Chou Pang-yen." Harvard Journal o f A siatic Studies, 37.2 (1977).
Landau, Julie. Beyond Spring: Tz'u Poems o f the Sung Dynasty. New York, 1994.
Liu, James J. Y. M ajor Lyricists o f the Northern Sung: a . d . 960-1126. Princeton, N.J., 1974.
Lo, Irving. Hsin Ch,i-chi. New York, 1971.
Rexroth, Kenneth, and Ling Chung. Li Ch'ing-chao: Complete Poems. New York, 1979.
Wixtedjohn Timothy. The Song Poetry of Wei Chuang (836-910). Tempe, Ariz., 1978.
Yates, Robin D. S. Washing S ilk : The Life and Selected Poetry o f W ei Chuang (834^-910).
V ERN ACU LAR SO N G A N D D RAM A
Arlington, L. C .f and Harold Acton. Famous Chinese Plays. New York, 1963.
Birch, Cyril. The Peony Pavilion (Mudan Ting). Bloomington, Ind., 1980.
Ch'en, Li-li. M aster Tung's Western Chamber Romance (Tung Hsi-hsiang Chu-kung-tiao): A
Chinese Chantfable. Cambridge/New York, 1976.

Ch'en Shih-hsiang, and Harold Acton, w ith Cyril Birch. The Peach Blossom Fan. Berkeley,
Los Angeles, and London, 1976.
Dolby, W illia m . Eight Chinese Plays: From the 13th Century to the Present. London, 1978.
Dolezelova-Velingerova, M v and J. I. Crump. Ballad o f the Hidden Dragon (Liu Chih-yuan
chu-kung tiao). Oxford, 1971.

Hayden, George A. Crime and Punishment in M edieval Chinese Drama: Three Judge Pao Plays.
Idema, W ilt, and Stephen West. Chinese Theater 1100-1450; A Source Book. Wiesbaden,
1982.
---- . The Moon and the Zither: The Story of the Western Wing. Berkeley, 1991.
Liu Jung-en. S ix Yuan Plays. Baltimore, 1972.
M ulligan, Jean. The Lute: Kao M ing's "P7-p'a Chi. New York, 1980.
Radtke, Kurt W . Poetry o f the Yuan Dynasty. Canberra, Australia, 1984.
Seaton, Jerome B. The W ine o f Eternal Life : Taoist Drinking Songs from the Yuan Dynasty.
Ann Arbor, Mich., 1978.

Shih Chung-wen. Injustice to Tou O fT o u O Yuan): A Study and Translation. Cambridge, 1972.
Yang Hsien-yi, and Gladys Yang. The Palace o f Eternal Youth. Beijing, 1955.
---- . Selected Plays of Kuan Han-ch'ing. Beijing, 1958.

M IN G A N D Q IN G C L A SSIC A L PR O SE A N D FIC T IO N
Chaves, Jonathan. Pilgrim o f the Clouds: Poems and Essays by Yuan Hung-tao and H is Broth-
ers. New York, 1978.
Giles, H. Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio. Shanghai, 1916.

Li Chi. The Travel D iaries o f Hsu H sia-k'o. Hong Kong, 1974.
Lu Yunzhong. Pu Songling: Strange Tales o f Liaozhai. Hong Kong, 1982.
M air, Denis C., and V ictor H. Mair. Strange Stories from Make-do Studio. Beijing, 1989.
M ow ry Li, Hua-yiian. Chinese Love Stories from the Ch,ing-shih . Hamden, Conn., 1983.
1157

Pratt, Leonard, and Chiang Su-hui. Shen Fu : S ix Records o f a Floating Life. Harmondsworth,
Middlesex, 1983.
.
Yang Hsiervyi, and Gladys Yang. Pu Songling: Selected Tales o f Liaozhai. Beijing, 1981
V E R N A C U L A R F IC T IO N :
HUABEN AND V E R N A C U L A R ST O R IES
Acton, Harold, and Lu Vihsieh. Four Cautionary Tales. London, 1947 (translations from Feng
Menglong's Xing-shi heng-yan collection).
Bauer, W olfgang, and Herbert Franke, eds. The Golden Casket (trans. Christopher Levenson).
Baltimore, 1967.
Birch, Cyril. Stories from a M ing Collection. London, 1958 (translations from the Gu~jin xiaoshuo collection).
Dolby, W illia m . The Perfect Lady by M istake. London, 1976 (translations from Feng Meng
long's collections).
Hanan, Patrick. A Tower for the Summer H eat New York, 1992 (translations from Li Yu).
---------- ed. Silent Opera (W usheng xi) b y Li Yu. Hong Kong, 1990.
Ma, Y_ W ., and Joseph Lau, eds. Traditional Chinese Stories: Themes and Variations. New York,
1978.
Scott, John. The Lecherous Academ ician. London, 1973 (translations from Ling Meng-chu's
collections).
van G ulik, R. H. D ee Goong A n : Three M urder Cases Solved b y Judge D ee. Tokyo, 1949.
Yang Hsien-yi, and Gladys Yang. The Courtesan's Jew el B ox: Chinese Stories o f the 10th17th
Centuries. Beijing, 1957 (translations from the collections o f Feng Meng-long and Ling Mengchu).
V E R N A C U L A R F IC T IO N : TH E C H IN E SE N O V E L
Brewitt-Taylor, C. H. San Kuo, or Rom ance o f the Three Kingdom s. 2 vols. Shanghai, 1925.
Egerton, Clement. The Golden Lotus. 4 vols. London, 1939 (translation of Jin Ping M ei).
Gu Zhizhong. The Creation o f the Gods. 2 vols. Beijing, 1992 (translation o f Feng-shen yan-
yi)Hanan, Patrick. The Carnal Prayer M at (Rou putuan) by L i Yu. New York, 1990.
Hawkes, David, and John M inford. The Story o f the Stone: A Chinese N ovel in Five Volumes.
Harmondsworth, M iddlesex/New York, 1973-86.
Lin Shuen-fu, and Larry Schulz. Tower o f M yriad M irrors: A Supplem ent to the Journey to the
W est, by Tung Yueh (1620-1686). Berkeley, 1978.
Lin, Tai-yi. Flow ers in the M irror. Berkeley, 1965 (translation of Jing hua yuan).
M artin, Richard. Jou Pu Tuan (The Prayer M at o f Flesh). New York, 1963.
Roberts, Moss. Three Kingdoms: A Historical Novel. Berkeley/Beijing, 1991.

Shadick, Harold. The Travels o f Lao Ts'an. Ithaca, N.YV 1952.
Shapiro, Sidney. Outlaws o f the M arsh. 3 vols. Beijing, 1980 (translation o f Shuihu zhuan).
W aley, Arthur. M onkey. London, 1942 (abridged translation o f Xiyou ji).
Yang Hsien-yi, and Gladys Yang. Wu Ching-tzu: The Scholars. Beijing, 1957.
Yu, Anthony. TheJourney to the West. 4 vols. Chicago, 1977-83.
T H E O R IE S O F LITERATU RE
Bodman, Richard W. "Poetics and Prosody in Early Medieval China: A Study and Translation
o f Kukai's Bunkyo hifuron." Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Cornell University, 1978.
1158

Ch'en Shih-hsiang. Essay on Literature. Portland, Me., 1953 (translation o f the "Poetic Expo
sition on Literature"). Reprinted in Cyril Birch, ed. Anthology o f Chinese Literature, From
Earliest Times to the Fourteenth Century. New York, 1965.

Owen, Stephen. Readings in Chinese Literary Thought. Cambridge, Mass., 1992.
Shi, Vincent Y. C. The Literary M ind and the Carving o f Dragons. New York, 1959; bilingual
reprint Taipei, 1970.
W ong, Siu-kit. Early Chinese Literary Criticism . Hong Kong, 1983.
Selected Critical Studies

GENERAL
Birch, Cyril, ed. Studies in Chinese Literary Genres. Berkeley, 1974.

Bishop, John L., ed. Studies in Chinese Literature. Cambridge, 1966.
Cheng, Frangois. Chinese Poetic W riting (trans. Donald A. Riggs and Jerome Seaton). Bloom
ington, Ind., 1982.
Chow Tse-tsung, ed. W en-lirt: Studies in the Chinese Hum anities. Madison, W is., 1968.
Frankel, Hans. The Flow ering Plum and the Palace Lady. New Haven, Conn., 1976.
Giles, Herbert. A History of Chinese Literature. London, 1901.

Hightower, James Robert. Topics in Chinese Literature. Cambridge, 1950.
Lee, Peter H. Celebration o f Continuity: Themes in East Asian Poetry. New Haven, Conn., 1976.
Levy, Dore J. Chinese Narrative Poetry: The Late Han Through Vang Dynasties. Durham, N.CV 1988.
Li, W ai-yee. Enchantm ent and Disenchantm ent: Love and Illusion in Chinese Literature.
Princeton, N .jv 1993.
Lin Shuen-fu, and Stephen O wen, eds. The Vitality o f the Lyric Voice. Princeton, N.J., 1986.
Liu^ James J. Y. The A rt o f Chinese Poetry. Chicago, 1962.
---------- . Essentials o f Chinese Literary Art. North Scituate, R.I., 1979.
---------- . Language Paradox Poetics: A Chinese Perspective. Princeton, N.J., 1988.
Liu W u-chi. An Introduction to Chinese Literature. Bloomington, Indv 1968.
Lynn, Richard John. Guide to Chinese Poetry and Drama. Boston, 1984.
Nienhauser, W illia m H v ed. Critical Essays on Chinese Literature. Hong Kong, 1976.
---------- . The Indiana Companion to Traditional Chinese Literature. Bloomington, Ind., 1986.
O wen, Stephen. M i-lou: Poetry and the Labyrinth o f D esire. Cambridge, Mass, 1989.
---- . Remembrances: The Experience of the Past in Classical Chinese Literature. Cambridge,
Mass., 1986.
---------- . Traditional Chinese Poetry and Poetics: Omen o f the W orld. Madison, Wis., 1985.
Yang, W inston L. Y., Peter Li, and Nathan Mao. Classical Chinese Fiction : A Guide to Its Study
and Appreciation. Boston, 1978.

EA R LY LITERATU RE (TO TH E EN D O F TH E H A N )
Crump, J. I. Intrigues: Studies o f the Charhkuo 7Ve. Ann Arbor, M ich., 1964.
Egan, Ronald C. "Narratives in Tso c h u a n . Harvard Journal o f A siatic Studies, 37.2 (1977).
Hawkes, David. "The Quest o f the Goddess." Asia M ajor, 13, 1-2 (1967); reprinted in Cyril
Birch, ed., Studies in Chinese Literary Genres. Berkeley, 1974.
Knechtges, David. The Han Rhapsody: A Study o f the Fu o f Yang Hsiung. London, 1975.
Rigel, Jeffrey K. "Poetry and the Legend o f Confucius' E xile/' Journal o f the Am erican O rien
tal Society, vol. 106, no. 1 (January-March 1986), pp. 13-22.

W ang Ching-hsien. The B ell and the Drum : Shih Ching as Form ulaic Poetry in the O ral Tra
dition. Berkeley, 1974.
1159

---------- . From Ritual to A llegory: Seven Essays in Early Chinese Poetry. Hong Kong, 1988.
Waters, Geoffrey. Three Elegies o f Ch,u. An Introduction to the Traditional Interpretation o f
the Ch'u-tz'u. Madison, Wis., 1985.
Watson, Burton. Early Chinese Literature. New York, 1962.
Yu, Pauline. The Reading o f Imagery in the Chinese Tradition. Princeton, N.J., 1987.
LITERATU RE FR O M TH E E N D O F TH E H A N T O TH E SU I
Allen, Joseph R. In the Voice o f O thers: Chinese M usic Bureau Poetry. Ann Arbor, M ich., 1992.
Birrel, Anne. Popular Songs and Ballads of Han China. London, 1988.
Chang, Kang-i Sun. Six Dynasties Poetry. Princeton, N.JV 1986.
D i ny, Jean-Pierre. Les dix-neuf poem es anciens. Paris, 1963.
Frankel, Hans H. ,yYueh-fu Poetry." In Cyril Birch, edv Chinese Literary Genres. Berkeley, 1974.
---------- . "Fifteen Poems by Ts'ao Chih: An Attempt at a New Approach." Journal o f the Am er
ican O riental Society, 84 (1964).
Frodsham, J. D. "The O rigins o f Chinese Nature Poetry." Asia M ajor, 7.1 (1960).
Graham, W illia m T., and James Robert Hightower. "Y ii Hsin's 'Songs o f S orro w /
Harvard
Journal ofAsiatic Studies, 43.1 (1983).

Hightower, James Robert. "A llusion in the Poetry o f T a o C h'ien." Harvard Journal o f A siatic
Studies, 31 (1971).
---- . "The Fu of T'ao Ch'ien." Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 17 (1954).
Hoizman, Donald, La vie et la pensee de Hsi K'ang. Leiden, 1957.
Marney, John. Chiang Yen. Boston, 1981.
---- . Liang Chien-wen ti. Boston, 1978.
Mather, Richard B. The Poet Shen Yueh (441-513): The Reticent Marquis. Princeton, N.J., 1988.
M iao, Ronald C. "Palace-Style Poetry: The Courtly Treatment o f G lam or and Love." In Ronald
M iao, ed., Studies in Chinese Poetry and Poetics. Vol. 1. San Francisco, 1978.
Owen, Stephen. "D eadw ood: The Barren Tree from Yu Hsin to Han Y ti . CLEAR, 1.2 (1979).
Rushton, Peter. "A n Interpretation of Hsi K'ang's Eighteen Poems Presented to Hsi Hsi on His
Entry into the Arm y." Journal o f the Am erica! O riental Society, 99.2 (1979).
Watson, Burton, Chinese Lyricism. New York, 1971.
T A N G PO ETRY: GEN ERAL
Kao Yu-kung, and M ei Tsu-Iin. "Syntax, D iction, and Imagery in T a n g Poetry." Harvard Jour
nal o f A siatic Studies, 31 (1971), pp. 49 -13 6.
---------- . "Tu Fu's 'Autum n M editations': An Exercise in Linguistic C riticism ." Harvard Journal
of Asiatic Studies, 28 (1968).

Nienhauser, William H. Bibliography of Selected Western Works on Vang Dynasty Litera
ture. Taipei, 1988.
Owen, Stephen. The Great Age o f Chinese Poetry: The High Vang. New Haven, Conn., 1980.
----------. The Poetry o f the Early Tang. New Haven, Conn., 1977.
Schafer, Edward. The Divine Woman: Dragon Ladies and Rain Maidens in Tang Literature.
Berkeley, 1973.
T A N G P O E T R Y : IN D IV ID U A L PO ETS
Chan Marie. "The Frontier Poems of Ts'en Shen." Journal of the American Oriental Society,
98.4 (O ctober-D ecem ber 1978), pp. 420-37.
1160

---- . Kao Shih. Boston, 1978.
Cheng Chi-hîen. Analyse formelle de I'oeuvre poetique d,un auteur des Tang: Zhang Ruoxu. Paris, 1970.
Chou Shan. "Beginning w ith Images in the Nature Poetry o f W ang W e i . Harvard Journal o f
Asiatic Studies, 42.1 (1982), pp. 117-37.

Davis, A. R. Tu Fu. New York, 1971.
Dem ville, Paul. Uoeuvre de Wang leZelateur (Wang Fan-tche). Pom espopulaires des fang,
VIII-IXsi^cle. Paris, 1982.

Hartman, Charles. Han Yu and the Tang Search for Unity. Princeton, N.J., 1985.
Hung, W illia m . Tu Fu, China's Greatest Poet. Cambridge, 1952.
Kroll, Paul. Meng Hao-jan. Boston, 1981.

Lee, Joseph J. Wang Ch'ang-ling. Boston, 1982.
Liu, James J. V. The Poetry o f L i Shang-yin. Chicago, 1969.
Nienhauser, W illia m , et al. Liu Tsung-yuan. New York, 1973.
---- . P7 Jih-hsiu. Boston, 1979.

O wen, Stephen. The Poetry o f M eng Chiao and Han Yu. New Haven, Conn., 1975.
Palandri, Angela. Yuan Chen. New York, 1977.

Rouzer, Paul. W riting Another's Dream : The Poetry o f Wen Tingyun. Stanford, Calif., 1993.
Schafer, Edward H. M irages on the Sea o f Tim e: The Taoist Poetry o f Ts'ao Tang. Berkeley,
1985.
Tu Kuo-ch'ing. Li Ho. Boston, 1979.
Wagner, Marsha. Wang W ei. Boston, 1981.
W aley, Arthur. The Life and Times o f Po Chu-yi. London, 1949.
---------- . The Poetry and Career o f Li PoLondon, 1950.
W ong Siu-kit. The Genius o f Li Po. Hong Kong, 1974.
C L A SSIC A L F IC T IO N , P R O SE E S SA Y S, A N D M ISC EL LA N EA
Edwards, E. D. Chinese Prose Literature o f the Vang Period. London, 1938.

Lu Xun, A B rie f H istory o f Classical Chinese Fiction (trans. Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang).
Beijing, 1959.
Ma, Y. W . "Fact and Fantasy in T a n g Tales." CLEAR, 2.2 (July 1980).
Schafer, Edward H. The Golden Peaches o f Samarkand: A Study o f Vang Exotics. Berkeley, 1963.
---------- . Pacing the Void: Vang Approaches to the Stars. Berkeley, 1977.
---- . Shore of Pearls. Berkeley, 1970.

---- . The Vermilion Bird: Vang Images of the South. Berkeley, 1967.
W ong, Tim othy C. "Self and Society in T a n g Dynasty Love Tales." Journal o f the Am erican
O riental Society, 99.1 (1979).
S O N G D Y N A S T Y A N D LATER PO E TR Y
Chang, Kang-i Sun. The Late M ing Poet Ch,en Tzu-lung: Crises o f Love and Loyalism . New
Haven, Conn., 1991.

Chaves, Jonathan. M ei Yao-chfen and the Developm ent o f Early Sung Poetry. New York, 1976.
Duke, M ichael S. Lu Yu. Boston, 1977.
Egan, Ronald C. The Literary W orks o f Ou-yang-hsiu (1007-1072). Cambridge, 1984.
---------- . W ord, Image, and D eed in the Life o fS u Shih. Cambridge, 1994.
Fuller, M ichael. The Road to East Slo pe: The D evelopm ent o f Su Shih's Poetic Voice. Stan
ford, Calif., 1990.
Lai, T. C. Tang Yin,
Poet/Painter (1470-1524). Hong Kong, 1971.

1161

Mote, F. W . The Poet Kao C h i. Princeton, N.J., 1962.
Palumbo-Liu, David. The Poetics ofAppropriation: The Literary Theoryand Practice ofHuang
Tingjian. Stanford, Califv 1993.

Schmidt, J. D. Stone Lake: The Poetry o f Fan
Chengda (1126-1193). Cambridge, 1992.
-- -. Yang Wan~li. Boston, 1976.

W aley, Arthur. Yuan M e i: Eighteenth Century Chinese Poet. London, 1957; reprinted Stan
ford, C a lif" 1970.
Wong, Shirleen. Kung Tzu~chen.'Boston, 1975.
Yoshikawa Kojiro, Five Hundred Years o f Chinese Poetry, 1150-1650 (trans. John Tim othy
W ixted). Princeton, N.J., 1989.
---------- . An Introduction to Sung Poetry (trans. Burton Watson). Cambridge, Mass., 1967.
S O N G L Y R IC
(Cl): G E N E R A L ST U D IE S
Chang Kang-i (Sun). The Evolution o f Chinese Tz,u Poetry: From Late Tang to Northern Sung.
Princeton, N.J., 1980.
---- . "Symbolic and Allegorical Meanings in the Yueh-fu pu-fi Poem Series/' HarvardJour
nal of Asiatic Studies, 46.2 (1986), pp. 353-85.
Ch'en Shih-ch'uan, "The Rise of Tz,u Reconsidered." journal of the America! Oriental Soci
ety, 90.2 (1970).
Fong, Grace. "Persona and Mask in the Song Lyric (Ci), Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies,
50.2 (1990), pp. 459-84.
Liu, James J. Y. M ajor Lyricists o f the Northern Sung: a . d . 960-1126. Princeton, N.J., 1974.
---------- "Some Literary Qualities o f the Lyric (Tz/u)// In Cyril Birch, ed., Studies in Chinese
Literary Genres. Berkeley, 1974.

Pien, Rulan Chao. Song Dynasty M usical Sources and Their Interpretation. Cambridge, 1967.
Soong, Stephen C., ed. Song Without Music: Chinese Tz'u Poetry. Hong Kong, 1980.
Yu, Pauline, ed. Voices of the Song Lyric in China. Berkeley, 1994.
S O N G L Y R IC : IN D IV ID U A L A U T H O R S
Fong, Grace. Wu W enying and the A rt o f Southern Song C i Poetry. Princeton, N.J., 1987.
Lin Shuetn-fu. The Transformation of the Chinese Lyrical Tradition: Chiang K'uei and South
ern Sung Jzfu Poetry. Princeton, N.j., 1978.
Lo, Irving. Hsin Ch'i-chi. New York, 1971.
VERN ACU LAR SO N G A N D D RAM A
Crump, Janies I. Chinese Theater in the Days of Khubilai Khan. Tucson, Ariz., 1980.
---- . Songs from Xanadu. Ann Arbor, Mich., 1983.
Dolby, William. A History of Chinese Drama. London, 1976.
Henry, Eric P. Chinese Am usem ent: The Lively Plays o f Li Yu. Hamden, Conn., 1980.
Hsia, C. T. "Tim e and the Human Condition in the Plays o f T a n g Hsien-tsu." In Theodore de
Bary, ed_. Self and Society in Ming Thought New York, 1970.
Hung, Josephine. Ming Drama. Taipei, 1966.
Idema, Wilt, and Stephen West. Chinese Theater 1100-1450; A Source Book. Wiesbaden,
1982.
Lopez, Manuel D. Chinese Drama: An Annotated Bibliography of Commentary, Criticism, and

Plays in English Translation. Methuden, N.J., 1991.
1162

Lynn, Richard. Kuan Yun-shih. Boston, 1980.
Mackerras, C olin, ed. Chinese Theater from Its O rigins to the Present Day. Honolulu, 1983.
Perng Ching-hsi. Double Jeopardy: A Critique o f Seven Yuan Courtroom Dramas. Ann Arbor,
M ic h " 1978.
Schlepp, W ayne. San-ch'u: Its Technique and Imagery. Madison, W isv 1970.
Scott, A. C. The Classical Theatre o f China. New York, 1957.
Shih, Chung-wen. The Golden Age o f Chinese Dram a: Yuan Tsa-chu. Princeton, N.J., 1976.
Strassberg, Richard E. The World of K'ung Shang-jen: A Man of Letters in Early Ch'ing China.
New York, 1983.
West, Stephen. Vaudeville and
Narrative: Aspects o f Chin Theater. W iesbaden, 1977.
M IN G A N D Q IN G F IC T IO N
Bishop, John L. The Colloquial Short Story in China: A Study o f the San-yen Collection. Cam
bridge, Mass., 1956.
Dudbridge, Glen. The Hsi-yu C hi: A Study o f the Antecedents to the Sixteenth-Century Chi
nese N ovel. Cambridge, Mass., 1970.
Hanan, Patrick. The Chinese Short Story: Studies in Dating, Authorship, and Com position.
---------- . The Chinese Vernacular Story. Cambridge, Mass., 1981.
---------- . The Invention o f L i Yu. Cambridge, Mass., 1989.
Hegel, Robert. The Novel in Seventeenth-Century China. New York, 1981.
Hsia, C. T. The Classic Chinese N ovel: A Critical Introduction. New York, 1968.
Idema, W . L. Chinese Vernacular Fiction : The Formative Period. Leiden, 1974.
Li, Peter. Ts,eng P'u. Boston, 1980.

Lu, Sheldon Hsiao-peng. From H istoricity to Fictionality: The Chinese Poetics o f Fictionality.
Stanford, Calif., 1994.
Mao, Nathan, and Liu, Ts'un-yan. L i Yu. Boston, 1977.
Plaks, Andrew. Archetype and A llegory in the Dream o f the Red Chamber. Princeton, N.J.,
1976.
---- . Four Masterworks of the Ming Novel. Princeton, N.J., 1987.
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W ong, Tim othy C. Wu Ching-tzu. Boston, 1978.
Yang, W inston L Y., and Curtis Adkins, eds. C ritical Essays on Chinese Fiction. Hong Kong,
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Zeitlin, Judith. Historian o f the Strange: Pu Songling and the Chinese Classical Tale. Stanford,
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Rickett, Adele. Wang Kuo-weifs Jen-chien tz'u-huaiA Study in Chinese Literary Criticism . Hong
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Saussy, Haun. The Problem o f a Chinese Aesthetic. Stanford, Calif., 1993.
Tu, Ching-i, trans. Poetic Remarks in the Human W orld: Jen Chien Tz'u Hua. Taipei, 1970.
Van Zoeren, Steven. Poetry and Personality: Reading, Exegesis, and Herm eneutics in Tradi
tional China. Stanford, Calif., 1991.

W ixted, John Timothy. Poems on Poetry: Literary Criticism by Yuan Hao-wen (1190-1257).
Wiesbaden, 1982.
Yeh Chia-ying, and Jan W alls. "Theory, Standards, and Practice o f C riticizing Poetry in Chung
Jung's Shih-p'in." In Ronald M iao, edv Studies in Chinese Poetry and Poetics. V ol. 1. San
Francisco, 1978.
Yu, Pauline. The Reading o f Imagery in the Chinese Tradition. Princeton, N.J., 1987.
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C O M P A R A T IV E LITERATU RE
Eoyang, Eugene. The Transparent Eye: Reflections on Translation, Chinese Literature, and Com
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N.J., 1990.
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Yip, W ai-lim . Diffusion o f D istances: Dialogues Between Chinese and Western Poetics. Berke
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Acknowledgments
Many of the translations here had gathered over the years, long before I developed
the intention to do this book. Most, however, were done over the past four years,
especially during summers, when I enjoyed the benefits of a translation grant from
the Bureau of Cultural Planning and Development of the Republic of China.
This book owes a deep debt to my students, who have taken much time editing,
correcting, and responding. The students in my Chinese literature in translation
class have caught countless typos and have been forthright with their disapproval.
What they did not like, I generally left out or changed. There is no critic so inno
cently ruthless as a roomful of thirty faces.
Over the years i have had numerous graduate students help me in preparing ver
sions of the growing manuscript: Jeanette Ryan, Sophie Volpp, Pauline Lin, and
Robert Ashmore.
have especially benefited from the help of Shang Wei, Chang Shuhsiang, and Pauline Lin in the translations from drama. Pauline Lin in particular went
above and beyond the call of duty in transporting chunks of the manuscript around
over the years to the far corners of the globe and sending back criticisms. In the final
stages, special thanks are due to David Schaberg, whose careful reading brought in
numerable lapses in sense and omitted lines to my attention. It is humbling to dis
cover how, after living with a manuscript such a long time, one comes to look but
not see.
I would also like to thank Anna Karvellas and the staff at Norton for their un
failing energy, care, and good humor in putting an author through his paces.
Finally I must thank my wife Phyllis, who has always known which of a set of
choices "sounds best, and who has steadfastly helped me over the years in the
preparation of yet another "big book."
A few of the selections have been previously published, sometimes in modified ver
sions, in the following works:
Robert Ashmore, translator, "D u Tenth Sinks the Jewel Box in Anger" and "Censor Xue Finds
Im m ortality in the Guise o f a Fish." Reprinted w ith the permission o f the translator.
Patrick Hanan, translator, "An Actress Scorns W ealth and H o n o r. . . from Silent Operas by
Li Yu (Hong Kong: Renditions Paperbacks, 1990). Copyright 1990 by Research Centre
for Translation, Chinese University o f Hong Kong. Reprinted w ith the permission o f the pub
lishers.
Pauline Yu, editor, Voices o f the Song Lyric in China. Copyright 1994 by The Regents of
the University o f California. Used w ith the permission o f University o f California Press.
Maynard Mack, General Editor, The Norton Anthology o f W orld M asterpieces, Sixth Edition.
Copyright 1995 by W . W . Norton & Company, Inc. Reprinted w ith the permission of the
publisher.
1165
Acknow ledgm ents

Stephen O wen, The Great Age o f Chinese Poetry: The High Tang. Copyright 1981 by Yale
University. Used w ith the permission o f Yale University Press.
Stephen O wen, M i-Lou: Poetry and the Labyrinth o f D esire. Copyright 1989 by the Presi
dent and Fellows o f Harvard College. Used w ith the permission o f Harvard University
Press.
Stephen O wen, Readings in Chinese Literary Thought. Copyright 1992 by the President and
Fellows of Harvard College. Used w ith the permission o f the Council o f East Asian Studies,
Harvard University.
Stephen O wen, Rem em brances: The Experience o f the Past in Chinese Literature. Copyright
1986 by the President and Fellows o f Harvard College. Used w ith the permission o f Har
vard University Press.
Stephen Owen, Traditional Chinese Poetry and Poetics: An Omen o f the W orld. Copyright
1985 by the Board o f Regents o f the University o f Wisconsin System. Reprinted w ith the
permission o f the University o f W isconsin Press.
Bo Ju-yi, "Letter to Yuan Zhen" from "Bai ju y i: Letter to Yuan Zhen , Renditions: A Chinese
English Translation M agazine, 41 & 42 (1994): 51-55. Used \Vith the permission of Rendi
tions, Research Centre for Translation, The Chinese University o f Hong Kong.
Author, First Line, and Title Index
abandoned fo rt fo r w hich no one cared, An,
674-75
Accepting the W ay (X L), September
1645 (Kong Shang-ren), 96 8-7 2
Accompanied by M y Kinsm an L i Ye,
Form erly Vice D irector o f the M in is try o f
Justice, and by Jia Z h i, Form erly D rafter
in the Secretariat, I Go on an Excursion
on Lake D ong-ting (L i Bo), 4 1 1-1 2
KAccount o f a V is it One N ig h t to Chengtian Temple (Su Shi), 668-69
Account o f a V is it to Lu M o u n ta in M (Su
Shi), 621-22
Account o f a V is it to N o rth M o u n ta in at
Xin-cheng, A n (Chao Bu-zhi) 624-25
KAccount o f a V is it to Pine R iver (Su Shi),
670
Account o f L ittle Rock Rampart M ountain,
A n (Liu Zong-yuan), 612 Account o f M y Travels in Fei (Yuan
Zhong-dao), 823-26
Account o f Peach Blossom Spring, A n
(Tao Q ian), 309-10
Account o f Stone Bell M o u n ta in (Su Shi)
622-24
Account o f the CompassThe (Wen Tianxiang), 705-20

Account o f the H a ll o f Precious
A rtw o rk s (Su Shi), 663-65
Account o f the Pavilion fo r Setting the
Cranes Free, A n (Su Shi), 681-83
wAccount o f the Pavilion o f the Drunken
O ld M an , A n (Ou-yang X iu ), 613-14
Account o f the Pavilion on M o u n t X ian,
An
(Ou-yang X iu ), 62 9-3 0
Account o f the Reconstruction o f Level
M o u n ta in H a ll, A n (Wei X i), 634-35
Account o f the Small H ill West o f Gu-mu
Pond, A n (Liu Zong-yuan), 611-12
Account o f the Terrace Passing Beyond
(Su Shi), 665-67
Account o f W en T ongs Paintings o f the

Slanted Bamboo o f Yun-dang Valley,
A n (Su Shi), 642
Accounts of M arvelsH (Cbuan-qi) (Pei
X ing), 198
Account to Go w ith the Song o f Lasting
Pain A n (Chen Hong), 448-52
Actress Scorns Wealth and Honor to
Preserve H er Chastity, A n (Li Yu), 915-41
addicts lamps are ranged in groups, the,
1147
A fternoon butterflies dance in the vegetable
plot, 658
Again Passing the Shrine o f the Goddess
(L i Shang-yin)512-13
Aged Hare, the w in try Toad, 491
A h H o w Splendid
54
A iya iya i!! H ig h !! M y , m y!! Steep?!! Yep.
Yipes!! 213-14
A ll along the bluffs o f the Ru, 34-35
A ll life in Chinas nine regions, 1147
A ll w rong and woe in life begins, 640
A lo ng the highway at Tong-jiang, 700
Analects (Confucius):
I.15, 59
II.258
11.10, 79
X I.2 6 , 312-13
X V II.9 , 58
ancient path darkened by shadows o f trees,
A n, 200
Anonym ous, 564-65
Anonym ous (Dun-huang), 560-63
Anonymous O ld Poem (A t fifteen I went
w ith the armies)261
wAnonymous O ld Poem (Flesh and blood )

(Su W u, attrib.), 251-52
Anonymous O ld Poem (When I bound
my
hair..
) (Su W u , attrib.), 251
Anonym ous Song Lyric to Bodhisattva

Barbarian
247-48
1167
Author First Lineand Title Index

MAnother Poem on M r. Zhengs Eastern
P avilion (Du Fu), 414
Another Repentance (Gong Zi-zhen), 1148
autum n m oons com plexion is ice, The, 482
Answering a Friends G ift o f C harcoal
A utum n winds b lo w over the earth, 491-92

A utum n winds rise, white clouds fly, 277-78
(Meng Jiao), 483

Answering M agistrate Zhang (Wang
W ei), 390-91
Answering Pei D i (Wang W ei), 374
Answering the Poem Left by M r. Su,
N o m in a lly o f the Bureau o f Forestry,
W hen He Stopped by M y V illa at
Lan-tian (Wang W ei), 371-72
An xiang (to Fragrance fro m Somewhere
Unseen (Jiang K ui), 586-87
Appended Discourses
63
A rm y Song (W ang Chang-ling), 409
A rm y Wagons: A Ballad, The (Du Fu),
468-69
As bright as the snow on m ountaintop,
233-34
Asking fo r a C at (Huang Ti-Jian), 695
As soon as the boat shoved off, 698-99
A t a Party Given by Fan Zhong-yan the
Guests Spoke o f Eating H iv e r-H o g ,or
the B low fish (M ei Yao-chen), 650-51
A t autum ns end nomad horsemen break
through, 461
A t daybreak, o u t to weed the fields, 659
A t Daybreak I Crossed the Ping-jiang
River and Clim bed on Foot to the
Summit o f Crossing-Above-Clouds
M o u n ta in (Wang Shi-zhen)1136-37
A t daybreak I felt uneasy at heart, 272
A t daybreak those mansions and towers,
453
A utum n Stirrings (Du Fu), 434-38

A utu m n Thoughts (Han Yu), 484-85
Back fro m three years in charge o f a

province, 499
bad poets all w in public office. The, 478
B ai xin yue (to KBowing to the N ew
M o o n M) (Anonymous), 560-61
Ballad (X X X V m ) (Hong Sheng), 1076-87
Ballad o f an O ld Cypress (Du Fu), 432-33
Ballad o f Mount Jing, A (Meng Jiao), 482
wBallad o f M u -la n T he (N orthern
Dynasties yue-fu), 24142
Ballad o f R unning Horse River: Sending
O ff the A rm y on a Western Campaign,
T he (Cen Shen), 467
Ballad o f the Former Palace (Wang Jian),
454
Ballad o f the Painted Eagle (D u Fu),
42 8-2 9
Ballad o f the Yong-jia, A (Zhang Ji)s 331
Bamboo Pole, 4 3 4 4
Ban Gu, 215-18

Bao Z hao, 323-24
Barred Gate
53
Barrier mountains, crossed in daw n
s moon,
460
Beat the drums booming, 199
Begging (Tao Q ian), 318
Behind barred gates, 53
Behind the embroidered curtains, 563
Bells ( X X IX ) (Hong Sheng), 1059-62
A t Dragon Pool he offers wine, 454

A t fifteen I went w ith the armies 261
A t K un-w u H ill the Yu-su B rook, 438
A t Peach Creek I did not stay, 577
A tta in ing L ife (Da-sheng), 133-34
A t the m oment W en Tong was painting
bamboo, 642
A t the w aters bottom a tracery screen
appears, 328
Bending R iver (Du Fu), 424

bend in the clear river flow s, A , 427
Beside the walls in yellow clouds, 399
Beyond the w illo w s soft thunder, 570-71
A t the Yangzi and H a n (Du M u ), 507

August 17Sleeping in D aytim e,M 656
A utum n Cares I I (Meng Jiao), 482
A utum n H ills (Gu Yan-W u), 1130
A utu m n hills, more autumn hills, 1130
A utum n hills draw in the last sunlight, 393
Biographies o f the Assassins (Si-ma

Q ian), 152-54
Biographies o f the Im perial In-Law s (Ban
G u) 215-18
wBiography o f Bo Y i and Shu Q i, The
1168
Bian Hes Jade H e

s Jade (Han Fei), 84
B illow in g clouds touch sky and reach,
582-83
Biographies o f Lian Bo and L in X ia n g -ru
(Si-ma Q ian), 84 -8 7
(Si-ma Q ian), 142-44

Biography o f M aster Five W illo w s w (Tao
Q ian), 314-15
Biography o f W u Z i-x u (Si-ma Q ian )
88-96
Birds are still w hiter against rivers sapphire,
438
birds in flig h t go o ff w ith o u t ceasing, The,
392
KB itter Cold, he (Cao Cao), 263
Black clouds weigh dow n on the walls, 471
B low n tum bling, leaves th a t fa ll to the
ground, 484- 85
Blue burned the lamp flame, the man was
asleep, 649
Blue M a id (Pu Song-ling), 1120-27
Bluffs o f the R u,M 34-35
Boating on the Reservoir West o f the
C ity (Du Fu), 416
Boating on West Lake: to Zhang Shan,
Academician and Fiscal Commissioner
(Ou-yang X iu ), 687-88
Boat o f Cypress (Classic o f Poetry
X X V I), 47
Boat o f Cypress (Classic o f Poetry X L V ),
47 -4 8
boat set sail upon the great river, The, 386
Bo Ju-yi 289, 3 8 3 ,4 4 2 -4 7 ,4 5 7 -5 8
4 9 6-5 02, 603-5
bondsman o f the house o f H u o, A , 2 3 5-3 6
Bones fro m battles are tram pled to dust,
472
Bo Pu, 735
Born to dw ell between Earth and Sky,
731-34
Bowing to the N ew M o o n (Li Duan o r
Geng W ei, attrib.), 560
Breaking the Branches o f W illo w s
(N orthern Dynasties yue-fu), 243
brigh t m oon comes fo rth from eastern hills,
The, 324
brigh t m oon comes out fro m Sky
M ou n ta in , The464
B right m oon o f the days o f Q in, 462
brightness is below, The, 18-20
b rig h t sun rests on the hills and is gone,
The, 408
Bringing F orth the Chariots
23 -2 4
Bringing H er F ru it (X V ) (Hong Sheng),
1014-20
Bring In the W ine (L i Bo), 284-85
Bring In the W ine (Li He), 289

brothers Cen have a passion fo r wonders
The, 414-15
Buddhists tell o f kalpa fires, 1148
bugle blow n sets marchers in m otion, A,
462-63
burning sap o f a pine brand, The, 660
Butterflies go in pairs, 659
By Heaven above, 227
By nigh t we passed over Fishermans Deeps,
319-20
<eBy the Passes (Lu Lun), 470
By the Passes: A Song (L i He), 471-72
By the Passes: A Song (Wang Changlm g)?466
By the Passes: Songs {Guan X iu ), 472
By the side o f Ruo-ye Creek, 381-82
By the walls o f W ei C ity the rain at dawn,
375
KCalling Back the Recluse (Zhao yin-shi)
(Q u Yuan, attrib.), 2 1 1-1 2
Calling Back the Soul (Zhao hun) (Qu
Yuan, attrib.), 20 4-1 1, 2 7 6 -7 7
Calling to the Recluse (Lu Ji), 272
wCalling to the Recluse I (Z uo Si), 272
Canon o f Shun
63
Cao Cao, 26 3 -6 4 , 280-81
Cao Pi, 28 1-8 2, 359-61
Cao Z h i, 194-97, 262, 26 5-6 6, 2 6 7 -7 0
282614
Cao Z h i and L iu Zhen could n o t shun
death, 288
Caressed and nursed in swaddling clothes,
614
Cascades fly fro m Mount L is cliffs, 454
Cen Shen, 411, 466-68
Censor Xue Finds Im m o rta lity in the
Guise o f a Fish (Lang-xian), 856-79
Chamber Thoughts I I I (X u Gan )266
wChang-an Has N a rro w A lleys (Eastern
Han?), 232
Chang E (Li Shang-yin), 515
Chan-gong qu (to M o o n Palace ), Spring
Passion (X u Z ai-si)737
Chao Bu-zhi, 624-25
Chao Duan-you, 656
chaotic tu m u lt o f maple tree shores, A,
412
Char o f lacquer, powder o f bone 4 8 9-9 0
1169
Author, First Line and Title Index

Cheerless, they leave their hometowns,
4 73-75
Cheng Min-zheng, 625-27

Chen H ong, 4 4 8-5 2
Chen Ji-ru, 815
Chen L in , 2 3 6-3 7, 278
Chen Shu-bao, 267
C hild C rying fo r Food, A (Yang W an-li),
Citadel o f Sapphire W alls (L i Shang-yin),

51 3-1 4
Citadel o f sapphire walls, twelve turns,
51 3-1 4
city people are different. The, 1144
Classic o f Changes:
Appended Discourses
63
Elucidation o f Changes (Wang Bi),
63-64
702
C hild Playing w ith Ice, A (Yang W an-li),
Classic o f Docum ents (Shu jin g ), Canon o f
651
C h ill and dreary, w in d and rain, 38
Classic o f Poetry:
C h illy is the n o rth w ind, 35

C h illy m ist hangs thin , 740-41
Choosing a D w elling Place in Luo-yang
(Bo Ju-yi), 499
Chou nu-er (to Ugly Slave (X in Q i-ji), 584

Chronicles o f Z h o u (Si-ma Q ian), 14-15
Chu-ci (Lyrics o f C hu } (Q u Yuan,
attrib.), 155-79
Calling Back the Recluse (Zhao yin-shi),
211-12
Calling Back the Soul (Zhao bun),
204-11
Far Roaming 176-81
Fisherman The
391-92
H ill W ra ith , The (Shan gui), 160-61
Junior M aster o f Lifespans, he (Shaosi~ming) (Q u Yuan, attrib.), 158-59
K ingdom s Dead, The (Guo-shang),
161
Lady o f the X iang River, The (Xiang
jun), 157-58
L i Sao, 162-75
L o rd in the Clouds {Yun-zhong ju n )t
156-57
Lord o f the East, The (D ong-jun),
159-60
N ine Songs, The, 156-62
wRites fo r Souls (Li-hu n), 162
Senior M aster o f Lifespans, The (D a sim ing), 158
Sovereign o f the East, The (Dong-huang
Tai-yi), 156
Y ello w Rivers Earl, T he (H e-bo), 160
Chu Guang-xi, 410
cinnamon beaker greets the gods child, A,
395
Circle For Dance, The (XVI) (Hong

Sheng), 1020-27
1170
Shun, 63 Tangs V o w
124-25
I Fishhawk
30-31
IV Trees with Bending Boughs

43
V Grasshoppers Wings
41
V I Peach Tree Soft and Tender, 34
VII Rabbit Snare

43
IX The Han So Wide, 31-32
X B kiffs o f the R u ,M 34-35
X II M agpies Nest
35 -36
X V n Dew on the W ay, 49 -5 0
X X Plums Are F a llin g , 36
X X E The River Has Its Forkings
54-55
X X III Dead Roe Deer, 36

X X IV Ah, H o w Splendid
54
X X V I Boat o f Cypress, 47
X X X First the W inds
36 -3 7
X X X IV D ry Leaves on the G ourd, 50
X X X V Valley W inds
37-38
X L I N o rth W in d
35
X L II Gentle G irl
44
X L V Boat o f Cypress, 47 -48
X L V I T horn-V ine on the W a ll?M 39
X L V III In the M ulberries,w 55
L I R ainbow , 39
L V I We H ad O u r D elight
50
L IX Bamboo Pole, 43 -44
L X I The River Is Broad
44 -4 5
L X IV Q uince, 45
L X V M ille t Lush, 4 5 -4 6
u
L X V I M y Prince Has Taken the Field,M
55 -5 6
L X X III Great C art
56
L X X V I Zhong-zi, Please, 4 6 -4 7
L X X W Shu Is on a Field H u n t
56
L X X X I I W ent A long the Broad Road,
51
L X X X II Rooster Crows 51
LXXXVn Lift Your Kilts,M57

X C W in d and R ain, 38
Author, First Lineand Title Index

X C IV Creepers on the M o o rla n d ,w 40
X C V MZhen and W e i,M 48
Cold mountains gro w ever more azuregray, 390
C V II Sandals o f Straw
53
C X I W ith in Ten A cres/49
C X III Huge Rat
52-53
C X IV C ricket, 275
C X V H a w th o rn on the M o u n ta in ,
C old notes fro m silver-inlay pipes, 566

C old tides dashed on the ruined fo rt, 1134
Colophon fo r T h e H isto ry o f Flowers
A (Chen Ji-ru), 815
274-75
C X X X I Y ello w B ird 2 6 -2 7
C X X X IH N o Clothes
52
C X X X V II Eastern Gates W hite E lm s ,
49
C X X X V III Barred Gate
53
C X L "Willows by the Eastern Gate
40
CLVni C utting the H a ft, 54

C L X I Deer C ry
275-76
C L X V II Gather the Fiddleheads
41 -4 2
C L X V III Bringing Forth the Chariots,
2 3 -2 4
C L X X V H Sixth M o n th ,M 24 -25
C L X X X IV Crane Cries O u t
40-41
C C X X X V I The Greater Brightness,
18-20
C C X X X V II Spreading
16-18
C C X L V She Bore the F o lk , 12-14
C C L L iu the D uke, 15-16
C C LV Overbearing
20-21
C C L X II Yangzi and H a n ," 22 -23
C C L X X II We Have in H a n d , 10
C C X C M o w in g Grasses
11
A irs
30 -5 7
Great Preface, 64-67

Classic of Poetry (Shi-jing), 10-57
C lim bing an Upper Story by the Pool
(Xie Ling-yun), 321
C lim bing Bao-gong Pagoda (Wang A nshi), 692-93
C lim bing Stork T o w e r (W ang Z hi-huan),
408
Cloud-covered hilltops f ill m y eyes, 510

cloud cover pressed on the city walls, The,
1136
Clouds b rig h tly colored, no w shadowed,
now w hite, 439
Clouds go d riftin g in b illo w in g floods, 266
Clouds veil the moon, 741
Cloudy coils o f hair and hazy tresses,
737
Cocks C ro w (Eastern Han?), 230-31
C oiling smoke o f sandalwood, 491
Colophon on the 'Account o f the Scarlet

M aple T ow e r (Fu Shan), 619
Come not too close to the sharp sword,
480
Common W ords to Warn the W orld (Feng
M eng-long), 835-55
KCompanion Piece for Grand M aster Yan^

N e w ly Cleared Skies
A (Yu X in ), 330
Companion Piece fo r X ie Jings Terrace o f
the Bronze Sparrow
A (Xie T iao)326
Companion Pieces to Chen X iangs Peonies
on a W inter Day,H (Su Shi), 673
Com panion Piece to a Pbem by Q ian
Bai-quan, A (Huang Jing-ren), 1145
Com panion Piece to L iu Changs Clear
H eart Paper
(Ou-yang X iu ), 686-87
Com panion Piece to Su Ches T hou gh ts
o f Former Times at M ia n -ch i (Su Shi),
678
Companion Piece to Xie Jing-chus Spending
the N ight in M y W ifes Study, Hearing
Alice, and Being Greatly Troubled
(Mei
Yao-chen), 649
Confucius, 312-13
Constant W ords to Awaken the W orld

(Xing-shi heng-yan) (Feng M eng-long
and Lang-xian), 856-79
Corpse Released, The (X X X V II)
(Hong
Sheng), 1067-76
Crane Cries O u t, 4 0 4 1
Creepers on the M o o rla n d
40
Crescent M o o n (M ei Yao-chen), 691
C ricket
275
Cricket in the hall, 275
Crossing the Ancient Barrier Pass in the
Rain (1672)
(Wang Shi-zhen), 1135
wCrossing the Barrier M ou ntainsM (Zhang
Zheng-jian)460
Crossing the Sea, June 20 1100 (Su Shi),
677
Crows C ry by N ig h t, The (L i Bo), 399
cuckoo is singing in the bamboo, The, 239
Cui Guo-fu, 408
C utting the H a ft
54
1171

D a rk blue brows and gleaming teeth, 416
Dong-buang Tai-yi (
The Sovereign o f the
Da-sheng ( A tta in ing L ife )133-34

D a si-m ing (wThe Senior M aster o f
Dong-jun ( The L o rd o f the East (Qu
Lifespans (Qu Yuan, a ttrib .), 158

date tree grows before m y gate, A, 243
Dawnlight to dusk transmuted the atmosphere,
320-21
D ays cicadas had already brought yearnings
pain, 328
Dead Roe Deer
36
Declaration o f Love (II) (Hong Sheng),
976-88
deed o f c h ill betrays blossoms, A , 587-88
Deep, so deep w ith in the yard, 570
Deer C ry, 2 7 5-7 6
Deer Fence (Wang W ei), 393
Denouncing the Rebel (X X V III)M (Hong
Sheng), 1054-59
Dense groves o f cassia in h ills hidden
places, 2 1 1-1 2
Descended from W eis W a rrio r K ing, you,
General, 429-31
MDescription o f Walking in
the Meadows
on C old Food Festival, A (Fan

Cheng-da)637-38
Dew on the hidden orchid, 490-91

Dew on the O nio n Grass (Han), 278
Dew on the W ay
49 -5 0
dews are soaking the way, The, 49 -50
Diagram o f Eight Formations, T he (Du
Fu), 432
Dialogue in the M o u ntains (L i Bo), 403
Dtan jiang chun (to Putting on L ip s tic k

(Wang G uo-wei), 1152
D ie lian hua (to Butterflies Love FlowersM)

(Ou-yang X iu ), 570
D ie lian hua (to Butterflies Love Flowers )
(Yan Ji-dao), 572

D ie lian hua (to Butterflies Love Flowers )
East (Q u Yuan a ttrib .)156

Yuan, attrib,), 159-60
D o nt Go O u t the G ate! (L i He), 4 9 5-9 6
D o nt laugh at the old farmers, 658
D o nt Plant Trees (Li He), 496
D o nt plant trees in the garden, 496
dragon, submerged, enhances sequestered
charms, A 321
Dragon Pool (L i Shang-yin), 454
D raw ing W ater from the W e ll and
M a kin g Tea (Lu Y ou)653
Dream ing o f a Friend One N ig h t (Huang
Jing-ren), 1145-46
Dream o f Heaven (L i He), 490-91
Dream Recollections o f Tao-an, The
(Zhang D ai), 815-19
KD rin kin g Alone by M o o n lig h t (L i Bo),
403
D rin kin g W ine V (Tao Q ian), 316
D ru nk, to Zhang Shu o f the Im perial
L ib ra ry (H an Y u), 287-88
D ry Leaves on the G ourd5 50
D u Fu, 285-87, 37 9,41 3-4 0,46 8-69 ,4 72 -75
Duke L iu the Steadfast, 15-16
452-53, 502-8
631-32
Du Mu, 380
Dun-huang (Anonymous), 560-63

During an Intercalary August After the
* A rriv a l o f A u tu m n It Was H o t in the
Evening and I W ent to Be C ool in the
Prefectural Garden (Yang Wan-li)699

dust o f travel on m y clothes, The, 661-62
dust storm over the G obi, A , 409
D u Tenth Sinks the Jewel Box in Anger
(Feng Meng-long), 835-55
D w elling in Peace on the Double N in th
(Tao Q ian), 315
D ying now , I kno w fu ll w e ll, 698
O n the Frontier (Nara Singde), 1139
Ding feng-bo (to Settling W ind and Waves )
(Su Shi), 578-79

Dipper stretches across the sky, The, 327
Discourse on Literature, A (Lun-wen)
(Cao Pi), 359-61

Discourse on T h in kin g o f Things as Being
on the Same Level (Q i-w u lun) 113-22
Discourses o f the Domains {Guo^yu), 300-301
Does something real lie behind, 1152
Dogw ood Strand (Wang W ei), 393
1172
Each day those gone are farther w ith dra w n,

260-61
Each person has some one addiction, 498
Early C old on the River; Something on
M y M in d (M eng H ao-ran), 396
Early M ig ra tin g Geese (D u M u ), 380
Eastern Gates W hite Elms
49
'
Eastern H an yue-fu 2 2 9 -3 6
East Gate (Eastern Han?), 250-51
East o f Ping-ling (Eastern Han?), 229

East Slope (Su Shi), 652
Eastward goes the great river, 579
east wind did it again, unsentimental, The,
573
Earing Bamboo Shoots (Bo Ju-yi), 500
Egrets (Du Mu), 507
Eight Accounts of Yong-zhouw(Liu
Zong-yuan), 61112
Eight-Note Gan-zhou, 101
Eight Poems on Eastern Slope (Su Shi),
674-75
eldest wife wipes off boxes of jade, The, 233
wElucidation of ChangesM(Wang Bi),
63-64
Empty skies recede far into mists all
around, 101
Encountering a Wounded Soldier (tu
Lun), 477
End of Spring (Lu You), 696-97
End of Spring: On My Newly Rented
Thatched Cottage at Ran-xi III (Du Fu),
439
Enjoying Rain on a Spring Night (Du
Fu), 427-28
Epilogue to Records on Metal and Stone (Li
Qing-zhao), 591-96
Escape from Jing-kou
The (Wen
Tian-xiang), 705-9
Escaping the Fighting (fifth of six) (Wu
Wei-ye), 1131
Escaping the Fighting (last of six) (Wu
Wei-ye), 1131-32
evening sun goes down, The, 740
Ever onward seasons shift, 313-14
Everyone says that the Southlands fine,
566-67
Every ten miles a horse is set galloping,
463
Facing the windmy sighs are stirred, 509
Falling Snow: A Song (Lu Zhao-lin), 461
Famine came, it drove me off, 318
Fan Cheng-da, 637-38
659-60
Faraway lies that star, the Oxherd, 257
Farm Home by Cu-lai Mountain (Wang
Shi-zhen), 1136
Farming Homes by Wei River (Wang
Wei), 387
Far off waters, sunlit skies, 738
Far Roaming
176-81
Fawn of Lin-jiang, The (Liu Zong-yuan),

617
Feng-liu-zi (to Gallant(Zhou Bang-yan),
576
Feng Meng-long, 834-55, 856
Feng ru song (to Wind Enters Pines
Wu
Wen-ying), 588-89
Feng-shen yan-yi (The Romance of the
Gods) (Xu Zhong-lin, attrib.), 771-806
Feng Yan-Si (Ou-yang Xiu), 290
570-71
Fine artifacts of the Six Dynasties, 504
(Wang Wei), 392
Fine wisps of cloud sport their craft, 257-58
First the Winds
36-37
Hshhawk, 30-31
fishhawks sing gwan gwan^T\\Q, 30-31
Flesh and blood join as branch to leaf, 251-52
flock of chickens squawked frantically, The,
423-24
flowers are bright, the moon is dark, The,
568
Flowers in spring, moonlight in fall, 568
Flowers of springtime, autumns moon, 510
Flowers so lovely in the spring groves, 239
Following the Rhymes of Huang Da-lin
s
Sent to Su Che(Huang Ting-jian), 694
Footloose and lost on the rivers and lakes,
631
For a thousand miles orioles sing, 504-5
Forest ofJokes, The (Xiao-lin) (Han-dan
Chun, compiler), 305
Forest of NotesThe (Su Shi), 66S-69s670-72
Forest of TalesThe (Yi-lin) (Pei Qi,
compiler), 305-6
For My Sons (Lu You), 698
For Play (Yang Wan-li)s 661
For ten miles long avenues, 632
For ten years I was a drifter, 505
For the rest of my days I would grow old,
677
Forty is not yet old, and I
685
Fox
39-40
Fox on the prowl, on the prowl, 39-40
From my newly rented lodgings, 688-89
From Spring to Autumn of 1827 Some
Things Came to Me Which I Wrote Down
Haphazardly (Gong Zi-zhen), 1148-49
From the Capital, to a Friend (Tu Long),
814-15
1173
AuthorFirst Lineand Title Index

From the ford a tiny path, 657
From the metal bowl a child, 651
From the mouth of the Ju-tang Gorge, 437
From west of the towering ochre clouds, 423
Frost and Moon (Li Shang-yin), 51415
Fu-chun Isle (Xie Ling-yun), 319-20
Fu Shan, 619
Gold Dust Spring (Wang Wei), 394

Gong Zi-zhen, 1146-49
good rain knows its season, A, 42728
Grain Is Ripe, The (Kong Ping-zhong), 657
Grand
279-80
<GrandM(Cao Pi), 281-82
wGrasshopper's Wings,M41
Graveyard
The (Han), 278
MGreat Cart
56
great cart goes rumbling along
The, 56
Greater Brightness
The
18-20
KGreat One, The (Si-ma Xiang-ru), 182-84
Great Preface to the Classic of Poetry,
64-67
Green, green is the grass by the river, 259
Green, green the grass by the river, 258
Green hills stretch past the north ramparts,
376
Green lees of beer newly brewed, 289
Guan Han-qing, 729-31, 737, 744-70
Guan-xiu, 200-201, 472
Guan Yun-shi, 738
Guo-shang (The Kingdoms Dead(Qu
Yuan, attrib.), 161
Guo-yu (Discourses of the Domains),
300-301
Gu Yan-wu, 1129-30
Garments of snow, tresses of snow, 507

Gather the Fiddleheads
41-42
41-42
(Meng Hao-ran), 396
Gazing in the Evening North of My
Cottage (Lu You), 696
Gazing on Hua-qing Palace at Daybreak,M
453
Gazing into the Wilds Under Newly
Cleared Skies (Wang Wei), 389
Geng Wei, 379
KGentle Girl, 44
Getting Out What I Feel (Li Bo), 404
Getting Something Off My Mind (Du
Mu), 631
Getting Up at Night in a Boat (Su Shi),
667-68
Gift of a Meal (XXVI) (Hong Sheng),
1048-54
Half a lifetimes fellows and friends, 694
GiH Who Danced the Whirl, Thew(Bo
Half-hidden, a bridge soars up, 406-7
Ju-yi), 457-58
halls of the palace at Lavender Springs,
Girl Who Danced the Whirl, The (Yuan
The, 516
Zhen), 455-57
Han-dan Chun, 305
Glorious is our Mighty Yuan!739
Han Fei, 84
Glossy marble swathed in lace, 589-90
Han Fei-zi (Han Fei), 84, 299-300
Goddess
The (Song Yu, attrib.), 190-93
Hanging Branch Song
Anonymous),
Goddess of the Luo, The (Cao Zhi), 194-97
564-65
Going from Luo-yang to Yue (Meng
Han HistoryThe (Ban Gu), 215-18
Hao-ran), 396
Han-shan (The Master of Cold Mountain),
Going Out Early and Meeting an Old Love 404-6620
I Give This to Her in Her Carriage (Shen
Han So Wide, The
31-32
Yue), 328
Han
s sovereign prized the beauty of flesh,
Going Out on the Le-you Plain (Du Mu),
442-47
506
Han Yu, 287-88, 484-89, 598-601, 607-9
Going to the Palace Library Early in the
hard rain rang as it dashed on the window,
Morning with the Crescent Moon Just
The, 650
Rising (Yang Wan-li), 701-2
Hard times wait in days to come, 279-80
Going to Visit Censor Wang on My Day
Hard to meet youth a second time, 212
Off and Not Finding Him Home (Wei
Hard Traveling II (Bao Zhao), 323-24
Ying-wu), 372
Hard Traveling IV (Bao Zhao), 323
1174

H a rd T raveling V I (Bao Zhao), 324
wH a rd Ways to Shu (Li Bo), 2 1 3 -1 4
harness goes flyin g beside the w illo w s, A,
584
Harsh winds b lo w the frost, 465
Have you not seen, 467-68
Have you n o t seen how those tru ly rare
talents, 686
H aving Fallen O ff m y Horse D ru nk,
Various Gentlemen Come to V is it M e
Bringing W ine (Du Fu), 28 5 -8 7
H a w th o rn on the M o u n ta in ,n 274-75
Heaven Above (Western H an), 227
Heaven beclouds and bewilders, 4 9 5-9 6
Heavens M o tio n s,M 108-10
Heaven to o k m y w ife fro m me, 690
He-bo ( The Y ello w R ivers E a rl (Q u
Yuan, a ttrib .)160
He calm ly watches a spider weave, 659
H e comes home late always staggering
drunk, 563
H e N ing, 566
H er doorway set in w hite stone cliff, 51213
Here among flowers one flask o f wine, 403
Here at the w o rld s edge dew turns to frost,
573-74
Here L i Bo w rote a poem, 505
Here peaks and ridges seem to mass, 738-39
Here where the. master, his w hisk in hand,
1145
H er lig h t tresses m im ic the d riftin g clouds,
wBiographies o f Lian Bo and L in

X ia ng -ru,w 84 -87
uBiographies o f the Assassins," 152-54
Biography o Bo Y i and Shu Q i, The
142-44
Biography o f W u Z i- x u / 88-96
Chronicles o f Z hou , 14-15
Prince o f W ei, The
145-52
H o llo w by Meng*s W alls, The (Wang
W ei), 392
H o llo w glories w o n on a snails horn665
H ong Sheng, 973-1102
hound is barking at the gate, The, 562
House o f H a n pursues the Khan, The, 470
H o w can I pass these nights far from
home?1138
H o w can you say, I have no clothes*
?52
H o w do you cut a haft?, 54
H o w gray and green stands M o u n t Tai-bo,
400
H o w long has the m oon been up there?,
577-78
Huai-nan-zij 301
Huang-fu Song, 565
Huang Jing-ren, 1144-46
Huang T ing-jian, 656, 693-95
Huang Z un-xian, 1149-50
Huan x i sha (to W ashing Creek Sands
(Anonymous), 562
Huan x i sha (to W ashing Creek SandsM)

(Ou-yang Jiong), 567
328
H e roamed o ff to the south on a w h im , 517
H er sleep has been fitfu l since spring began,
381
H e
s Jade
Bian Hes Jade (Han Fei), 84
(Yan Shu), 290570

H ua-zi H i ll (Wang W ei), 392
He went out East Gate, 250-51

H e X u n 326
Huge R a t/ 52-53
H u i-yua ns circle, 60 5 -7
H um an life no m atter where, 678
H um bly I dwell by the valley's mouth, 371-72
H u o X ia o -yu
s Story (Jiang FangK
531-40
He Zhu, 657
H ig h in the hall I saw a live bird, 4 2 8-2 9
H igh in the trees are sad strong winds,
270
H ig h on the terrace are sad strong winds,
26 5-6 6
H ill W ra ith , The (Shan gui) (Q u Yuan,
attrib.), 160-61
H is deeds overshadowed a land split in three,
432
H istorica l Records (Shi-ji) (Si-ma Qian),

135-54
(Wang G uo-wei), 1152
I D u Fu, have all m y life, 2 8 5 -8 7

I am in halves: h a lf here far from home,
1145-46
I am lodged by the northern sea, 694-95
I am tha t star at the Dipper's end, 239
I am u tte rly bum bling, 736
I asked his servant under the pines, 373
1175

I built a cottage right in the realm of men,
316
I cant stand hearing the cries, 652
I cant stand that lucky magpie
561
I Chanced on Rain at Wang-kou and
Recalled Mount Zhong-nan: Thus I
Offered the Following Quatrain (Pei
Di), 374
I climbed the hill to pick deerweed, 262
I couldnt get to sleep one night, 690
I cut fine-grained apricot for its beams, 392

I deplored the worlds ways, they hampered
and hemmed me, 176-81

I didnt even know my own face, 496-97
I didnt graduate in the top ten, 735
I drove my wagon out Upper East Gate, 260
I dwell in poverty, kin and friends scattered,
500-501
I face my wine, unaware of darkness
growing, 404
I face the table, I cannot eat, 324
If you love me dearly, 57
I gave up what little status I had, 738
I get off my horse, offer you wine, 375
I get up sick, done looking at my books, 653
I glow coining forth in the easdands
159-60
I go climbing up the Cold Mountain road
(Han-shan), 405
I had never felt longing all my life, 737
I happened to go out before White Gate, 240
I have a post but, 498-99
I have been told that Chang-an, 436
I have heard of Count Dong-ling
s melons,
271
I have no child to take down my writings,
481
I held my dress, not tying the sash, 239
I kept faring down roads choked with
weeds, 264-65
384
I leaned on my staff and called to the
recluse, 273
I left the ancient temple in twilight mist,
1145
I let my horse drink, then crossed autumn
waters, 466
I listened to wind and listened to rain, 588-89
I looked out north on the Gorge of Dry
Dark, 184-85
1176
Immortals Recollections, The (XL)

(Hong Sheng), 1087-90
In a mass they come forward bowing,
before the hall, 199
In a plain cottage among green hills, 483
In Bed (Zhao Yi), 1142-43

In Chang-an the fighting was out of control,
252
KInformal Composition (Meng Jiao), 480
In front of the shrine of Zhu-ge Liang, 432-33
In goblets of lapis lazuli289
In her yearning it seems she wants to come
closer328
In his bright-colored skiff he rests his oars,
567
In Jin-ling
A Second Series on Watching a
Chess Game (Qian Qian-yi), 334
In lonely stillness, echoes from twilight
eaves, 327
In months of spring, April and May
1141-42
In my middle years I came to much love the
Way, 390
In orchid baths bathed, hair washed in
blooms scent, 156-57
In pairs white swans came flying, 230
In response to the season new birds return,
328
Inside a curtain of crystal, 565-66
In the Mulberries,5* 55
In the night I could not sleep, 256-57
In the palace halls crowds of officials, 702
In the Rain, Spending the Night in the
Library of Messrs. Xie, Xu, and Pei
(Mei Yao-chen), 650

In the sixth month, all was in tumult, 24-25
43
In the valley we had our delight, 50
In this worlds red dust, wearing hat of
straw, 656
In thousands of tents the men are drunk,
1139
Into jutting clouds terrace and hall, 691
Invitation for Mr. Liu, An (Bo Ju-yi), 289
wInviting Writers to Drink (Meng Jiao),
288
In winters first month, from ten provinces,
421
I once wrote a poem swearing off poems
1148-49

I really did cross above clouds
1136-37
I ro ll away m y books and poems, 562
I sat on a boulder, Jet my fishing line hang, 33
I W atered M y Horse at a Spring by the

W a llw (Chen L in), 2 3 6 -3 7
I W atered M y Horse at a Spring by the
W a ll Im ita tin g the O ld Ballad (Yu
Shi-nan), 460-61
I sit alone in bamboo tha t hides me, 395

I sought in vast stillness calm chambers, 330
I Stand A lone (Du Fu), 426
I studied at night, by dawn was not done, 481
I W ent A lo ng the Broad Road

51
I w ent o ut the gates at sunset, 238
I w ill always recall that day at dusk, 580
I W rote This on the T ow e r by the W ater
I rushed tow a rd m y office, lantern in hand,

70 1-2
It came crashing out o f Zhuang Z h o u s

dream736
It dives in shallows fo r beakfuls o f moss, 327
It is nights third hour, its third division, 514

I t is rash to say that a wom an, 115051
I tried to clim b Zhao-cheng tower, but
wasnt able to make it all the w ay up. I
expressed m y disappointm ent in the
garden o f m y nephew, the m onk
W u-kon g (Meng Jiao), 48 3-8 4
I t seemed there was someone in the cleft of
the hills, 160-61

I t seems there is someone, he longs fo r
M ing-gao, 37 6-7 7
I t s fun to be on C old M o u n ta in Road (Han
Shan), 405
Its green hills lie in shadows 507-8
Its jade mansions lean at a tilt, 454
Its red railings and painted posts, 652
It was a fine feast, jo y suddenly left, 278
I t was outside Cloud Gate Temple, 505
It was the m om ent when the pulley creaked,
1137
It was the rustling o f a fa in t breeze, 667-68
I used to have no wine to d rin k, 212-13
I
ve lived on this very m ountain, 697
Fve plucked every bud hanging over the
w a ll 729-31
I ve suffered poverty years on end, 1140
I w a lk here a ll alone, 735
I wanted to clim b that thousand-step tower,
483-84
I was drinkin g that night on Eastern Slope,
578
I was dru nk and craved some pleasure and
fun, 584
I was dru nk as I le ft the western hall, 572
I was moved by h o w loving you were at
first, 238
I was sick o f hearing the ra in drip, 700-701
I was w alking about beside Peng Pond, 271
at the Kai-yuan Temple in Xuan-zhou; on

the low er side o f the temple compound
was W an Creek, w hich had people living
on both sides o f i t (Du M u ), 504
Jade Burial (X X V ) (Hong Sheng),
1041-48
Jade w hite dew scars and harms, 434
Jia Dao, 373
Jiang Fang, 531-40
Jiang K u i, 5 8 5 -8 7 632-33
Jiang V illage (D u Fu), 4 2 3-2 4
Jiao cries the yellow bird, 2627

Jia Y i, 110-13
Jia Z h i, 412
} i luo xiang (to Scent o f Lace
}. O n spring
rain (Shi Da-zu), 587-88
Jin Bamboo Ridge (Wang W ei), 393
Jing-man is n o t m y home, 256
Jing-yun, 410
Jin-lu qu (to Golden Threads )Thoughts
on the Anniversary o f M y W ife's D eath
(Nara Singde), 1138-39
Jiu feng-chen (Rescuing One o f the G irls)

{Guan Han-qing), 744-70
June 10 1177, Traveling by Boat to Take
Up M y Post at Pi-ling. H eld up by
adverse winds, we stayed the night at the
m outh o f the Z h o u -p i R iver (Yang
W an-li), 652
Junior M aster o f Lifespans, The
(Shao-si-ming) (Q u Yuan, a ttrib .)
158-59
Just Before the M id-M arch 1164 Festival, I
Heard That M y Father Was N o t Feeling
Well. Going back west I saw plum blossoms
and had these thoughts (Yang Wan-li), 700
Kan-hua hui (to ^T urn in g Back A fte r

Seeing the Flowers (Liu Yong), 574
Keep on going, on and on, 253-54
1177
Author First Line, and Title Index

K ingdom s Dead, The (Guo-shang) (Q u
Yuan, attrib.), 161
kingdom smashed, its hills and rivers still
here, A 420
King o f Q in D rinking, The (Li He),
493-94
K ing o f Q in rode his tiger, The, 493-94
Kong-Ping-zhong, 657
Kong Shang-ren, 942-72
Lace curtains flap on the open frame, 326
Lacquer Tree GardenM (Wang W ei), 395
Lacy trees, touching in separate rows, 394
Lady o f the X ia ng R iver, T he (Xiang jun)
(Q u Yuan, attrib.), 157-58
Lady w ill not go, s till does she linger, The,
157-58
Lake Q i (Wang W ei), 394
Lam entation at an Ancient Battlefield, A
(L i H ua), 4 7 5 -7 7
Lament by the R iverM (Du Fu), 422-23
Lament fo r Chen-tao (Du Fu), 421
Lament fo r Golden G ourd, Jin-hu A
(Cao Zhi), 614

Lament fo r Greenslope (Du Fu), 421
Lament fo r M y Daughter, A (W u W ei-
ye), 1132-33
Lament fo r O ld M r. Ji, the Finest Brewer
in Xuan-cheng, A (L i Bo), 404
Lan Chu-fang5 7 3 6-3 7
wLane o f Palace Ash Trees, T heM (Wang
Wei), 393
Languidly binding her dark strands o f hair,
563
Lang-xian, 856-79
Last night the breeze brought to bloom ,
40 9-1 0
Late at night m y lover comes home, 564
Late A utum n in the Q i-an D is tric t
(Du
M u ), 506
Laughter and talk in a thousand homes,
1146
Layers o f draperies hang in to depths, 511
lay o f the land bends eastward here, The,
692
Lazily waving a w hite feather fan, 404
Lazy and sicklyw ith much free time, 497
Leaves are dry on the gourd now , 50
Leaves fa ll from trees in the autum n w ind,
326
1178
Leaves o f water chestnuts curl in waves,

383
Leaving Z hen-zhou" (Wen Tian-xiang),
709-12
Left U n title d * (Layers o f draperies .)
(L i Shang-yin), 511
Left U n title d (That she w o u ld come . . )
(L i Shang-yin), 511-12
<eLetter in Reply to Ren A n M (Si-ma Q ian),
136-42
Letter o f Protest to the Prince o f W u
(M ei Sheng), 130-33
Letter to L i Z i-ra n (Yuan Hong-dao),
813-14
wLetter to Q iu Ghang-ru (Yuan
Hong-dao), 814
Letter to Yuan Zhen (Yuan W ei-zhi)M (Bo
Ju-yi), 603-5
Lian-xiang (Pu Song-ling), 1103-13
Liao-zhais Record o f W onders (Pu
Song-ling) j 1103-27
L i Bo, 122-23 2 1 3 -1 4 244, 247 28 4-8 5,
376-78, 381-82, 3 9 7 4 0 4 4 1 1 -1 2
46 3-6 5
L i Bos and D u Fus writings endure, 487-88
Lie-zi, 302
life I see all around me turns, The, 1143

L ife s years do n o t reach a hundred261
L ift Y o u r K ilts , 57
lig h t boat goes o ff to south cottage, A , 394
L ig h t on the waves, color o f w illo w s
687-88
lig h t scull greets m y w o rth y guest, A , 393
Li He
199-200, 289, 471
489-96
L i H ua, 4 7 5-7 7
Li-hun (Rites fo r Souls (Qu Yuan, attrib.),
162
L i Jing-liang, 526-31
Like a dream (Ru meng ling) (Li
Qing-zhao), 580
Liken mans life to m orning dew, 254
Lin-jiang xian (to <sIm m ortal by the R iver

(Ou-yang X iu ), 570-71
Lin-jiang xian (to Im m ortal by the R iver

(Su Shi), 578
L i Qing-zhao, 5 8 0 -8 3 59 1-9 6
L i Sao (Q u Y u a n , attrib.), 162-75
L i Shang-yin, 454 51 0-1 7
Lissome stalks shine in deserted bends,
393

Listening to a N eighbor Singing at N ig h t
(M ei Yao-chen), 690
L ite rary M in d Carves Dragons, T he
(Wen-xin diao-long) (Liu Xie), 343-59
C o ntin uity and V ariatio n: Chapter 29,
351-53
Determ ination o f M om entum : Chapter 30
353
Hidden and Out-standing: Chapter 40354
Its Source in the W ay: Chapter 1, 3 4 4-4 6
Nature and Form: Chapter 27 348-51
One W ho Knows the Tone: Chapter 48,
The 358-59
Sensuous Colors o f Physical Things:
Chapter 46, The, 3 5 5-5 7
S pirit Thought: Chapter 26 346-48
L ittle Chang-gan Song, A (Cui G uo-fu),
409
Lo ok there!, 284-85
L o rd in the Clouds (Yun-zhong ju n ),
156-57
L o rd o f the East, The (Dong-jun) (Qu
Yuan, a ttrib .) 159-60
Lost Songs Follow ing Short Songs (Li
He), 493
Lotus-Picking Song
Bo Ju-yi), 383
Lotus-Picking Song (L i Bo), 381-82
L u ji, 272, 336-43
Lu Lun, 470477
Lun-w en ( A Discourse on LiteratureM)
(Cao Pi), 359-61
Luo Bin-wang, 461
Luo-yang craftsman o f renown, A , 323-24
L u Y ou, 583, 653, 658, 66 0-6 2, 695-98
Lu Z hao-lin, 461
Little Sus Tomb (Li He), 490-91
Lying in bed I thought o f a poem, 1142-43

wLying Sick (Meng Jiao), 478
L iu the Duke
15-16
L iu Xiao-chuo, 329
L iu Xie, 343-59
Lyrics fo r the G irls o f Yue (L i Bo),

382
KLyrics o f Chu, see Chu-ci
Liu Yan, 328

L iu Y i-qing, 30 7-9
L iu Yong, 574-75
Liu Zhen, 265

Liu Zong-yuan, 601-3, 611-12, 617-18
Liveliho od (Zhao Y i)1143
Li Ye-si246
Li Yu, 568-69, 915-41
L i Zhang-wus Story (Li Jing-liang), 526-31
L i Z h i, 807-11
Local Song (Zhao Y i), 1141-42
Lodge in the Bamboo (Wang W ei), 395
Lone goose, n o t d rin kin g o r pecking for
food, 379
Lone H a w k O ver the Buddha Tow er o f
the M onastery o f Universal P urity, A
(M ei Yao-chen), 688-89
Lonely C loud (Lu You), 697
Lone W ild Goose (Du Fu), 379
Long Fve wanted to dw ell in south village
317
long stretch o f sky, vast sapphire, A , 503
Long-tou Ballad (Zhang Ji), 470-71
Long-xi: A Ballad M(Wang W ei), 463
Looking fo r the Recluse and N o t Finding
H im H om eM.(Jia Dao), 373
Looking over the P ortrait (X X V I) (Tang
Xian-zu), 892-96
M adam Shen, 328

M agnolia D e ll (Wang W ei)395
M agnolia Fence (Wang W ei)393
M agpies Nest
35-36
man is a pathetic bug, A, 241
M an jiang bong (to Red F illin g the R iver )
(Jiang K ui), 5 8 5-8 6
man o f D u-ling in commoner's clothes, A,
417-20
man should act w ith daring, A , 240
M a n s life in this dust-clouded w o rld
(Han-shan), 406
M an-ting fang (to Fragrance F ills the
Y a rd
Su Shi), 665
M an-ting fang (to Fragrance Fills the

Y a rd (Z hou Bang-yan), 291
Marauders came when I rose at dawn,
1131-32
M a rch 5 H 8 0 . In early m orning crossing
on the Great M arsh fe rry " (Yang
W an-li), 70 1-2
Master o f Cold M ountain, The
see Hanshan
M a Zhi-yuan, 739-43
M ed itatio n on the Past at Jin-ling I I I
(Wang An-shi), 692
M eeting (Eastern Han?), 2 3 1-3 2
11 79

Meeting a Gentle Rain on the Sword-Gate
Pass Road (Lu You), 661-62
Mei-pi Lake Song, A (Du Fu), 414-15
Mei Sheng, 130-33
Mei Yao-chen, 649-51, 688-91
MMelody-theft (XIV)
(Hong Sheng), 1008-14
Melons spreading, large and small, 16-18
Memorial Discussing the Buddhas Bone
(Han Yu), 598-601
Mencius (Mencius):
I A, 7, 28-29
II A, 2.xi, xvii, 61
V A
4.ii, 61-62
V B, 8.ii62
Meng Hao-ran, 33, 373
375, 395-97
Meng Jian-nan (to Dream of the
SouthlandM) (Huang-fu Song), 565
Meng Jiao, 288
478-84
Mid-autumn by Golden River, 380
Midcurrent Song
(Cui Guo-fu), 409
Midnight (Li Shang-yin), 514
Mid-September on West Lake (Zhang
Dai), 816-18
Millet Lush, 45-46
millet smells sweet in the west wind, The, 657
Misty plants of my small garden, 695-96
moaning of wind in autumn rain, The, 394
moon came out, the village ahead turned
white, The, 1131
moon grew dark in the wind, The, 409
Moon Over the Mountain Passes (Li Bo),
464
moon was black, the geese flew high, The,
470
Mooring in the Evening (Wu Wei-ye),
1133-34
Mountain Stones (Han Yu), 488-89
Mountain stones ragged and broken,
488-89
Mount Tai-hua and Mount Zhong-nan,
1135-36
wMoving My Dwelling I (Tao Qian), 317

Mowing Grasses
11
Mr. Ishii of Japan Seeks a Matching
Verse (Qiu Jin), 1150-51
Mulberries by the Path (Eastern Han?),
234-35
Murky and flooding, cold currents broaden,
374
MusicThe (XI) (Hong Sheng), 1002-8
1 18 0
My books lie scattered all around, 653

My Brother Wang Chun-fu Brings Out a
Painting by the Monk Hui-chong and
Engages Me to Write a Poem on It
(Wang An-shi), 64446
My canvas sail billows lightly, 1141
My home is set in blue-gray mists, 583
My home lies east of the eastern sea:,
114445
My lips were squeezed against her736
My love was taken by another, 238
My Prince Has Taken the Field, 55-56
My sweetheart and I had long been apart,
734-35
My thatch cottage was set in a narrow lane,
317-18
My tired servant and worn-out horse, 692-93
My traveling man
s off in another land,
560-61
My youth felt no comfort in common
things316
Nan-ge-zi (to Southern Song

(Li Qingzhao)
581-82
Nan xiang zi (to The South CountryM)
Nara Singde, 1137-39
new green in the tiny pond, A, 576
New home in a breach in Mengs walls, 392
Newly cleared skies, the meadows vast, 389
newly constructed threshing floor, A,
659-60
New Stories and Tales of the Times
(Shi-shuo xin-yu) (Liu Yi-qing), 307-9
New SwallowsM(Xiao Gang), 328
wNe-zha and His Father (from The
Romance of the Gods) (Xu Zhong-lin,
attrib.)
771-806
Nian-nu jiao (to The Charms of
Nian-nu)
Meditation on the Past at Red
Cliff (Su Shi), 579-80
night lasted on, I could not sleep, The, 239
Night Passage Over Two Passes (Cheng
Min-zheng), 625-27
Nights Midpoint (Du Fu), 439
Night stretches on in the palace of Wu, 100
Night Theater on Gold Mountain
(Zhang Dai), 815-16
Nine days of hustle and bustle, 372

Nine Songs
The (Qu Yuan, attrib.), 156-62

H ill W ra ith , The (Shan gui) 160-61
Junior M aster o f Lifespans, T he
(Shao-si-ming) (Q u Yuan, attrib.),

158-59
Kingdom s Dead, The (Guo-shang), 161
Lady o f the X iang River, The (Xiang
jun), 157-58
L o rd in the Clouds
(Yun-zhong ju n ),
156-57
L o rd o f the East, The (Dong-jurt),
159-60
Rites for Souls (Li-bun), 162
Senior Master of Lifespans, The [Da

si~ming)9158
wSovereign of the East, The (Dog- huang
Tai-yi), 156
Y ello w Rivers Earl, The (He-bo )160
Nineteen O ld Poems I, 253-54
Nineteen
Nineteen
Nineteen
Nineteen
Nineteen
Nineteen
Nineteen
Nineteen
Nineteen
Nineteen
Noblem en
O ld Poems I I
259
O ld Poems I I I
255
O ld Poems IV ,M 255
O ld Poems V
259-60
O ld Poems I X
258
O ld Poems X
257
O ld Poems X I II
260
O ld Poems X IV
26 0-6 1
O ld Poems X V
261
O ld Poems X I X
256
whose wealth is great, 647-49
N o C lo th e s , 52
N o one is seen in deserted hills, 393
N o rth Cottage (Wang W ei), 395
N o rth cottage, n o rth o f lake waters, 395
N o rth w a rd we clim bed the Tai-hang
Range, 263
N o rth W in d , 35
no rth w ind rolls up the earth, The, 4 6 6 -6 7
[N o title ] (Chen L in), 278
N o w late in life I love only stillness,
390-91
KOcean M irage at Deng-zhou, The (Su
Shi), 672-73
KO ffhand Compositions: N ew Years Eve
1774 (Huang Jing-ren), 1144
O fficer at Tong Pass, The (Du Fu), 425
O f old K ing W u conquered Y in , 125- 28
O f Swords
10 4-7
O f the god-king Gao-yang I am the far
offspring162
O il, scented w ith orchid, burns dow n in the

lam p, 454
O ld A irs V , T he (L i Bo), 400
O ld A irs V II, The (L i Bo), 401
O ld Airs I X The (L i Bo), 122-23
O ld Airs X IV The (L i Bo), 463-64
old man, a countrym an fro m Shao-ling, An,
422-23
O ld M an's Bitterness {Meng Jiao), 481
O ld men o f the prairie, tw o o r three homes,
387
O ld M r. Ji in the Y ello w Springs, 404
O ld Poem (I climbed the h i l l . . )262
Omen (X> (H ong Sheng), 995-1002
O n a day o f good luck, at the w ell-favored
hour, 156
O n a Lone D u ck (Xiao Gang), 327
wO n a W om an U n w illin g to Come F o rth
(Liu Xiao-chuo), 329
O n Chen Zheng-fu*s Collected W orks,
Intuitive G rasp (Yuan Hong-dao),
811-12
One Day Before N e w Years Eve, W hile
R eturning by Boat, W e M oo red at
Q u-w o M a rke t, and I Spent the N ig h t in
Z h i-p in g Tem ple (Yang W an-li), 699
One Day Com ing Home: Ballad (on the
death o f his w ife ) (Wang An-shi), 693
One I Love, The (Western H an), 227-28
One more daythen one more evening,
2 7 1-7 2
O n First A rriv in g in Ba-ling, Joining L i Bo
and Pei, W e Go Boating on Lake
D ong-ting (Jia Z h i), 412
On fo o t I climbed up Bei-mangs slopes,
262
O n I go through em pty azure mist, 1136
O n K ui-zhous lonely w alls 434-35
O nly a moment, this seasons splendor,
290 570
O n M arch 26 1 0 4 8 ,1 H ad a Dream
(M ei Yao-chen), 690-91
O n M y Lazinessw (Bo Ju-yi), 4 9 8-9 9
O n M y P o rtra it (Bo Ju-yi), 4 9 6-9 7
O n onion grass the dew, 278
O n ou r pillow s we made a thousand vows,
247-48
O n Passing by Hua-qing Palace (Du M u )
452-53
O n Poetry (Zhao Y i), 1143
1181

O n Reaching H ong K ong (Huang
Zun-xian), 1149
O n the Ba River Bridge: Sent Hom e to M y
W ife (Wang Shi-zhen), 1135-36
O n the Carved Stone Screen o f W u K u i
the H a n -lin AcademicianM (Ou-yang
X iu ), 679-80
O n the C h ild M in d (L i Z h i), 808-11
O n the Gao-sha Road (Wen T ian-xiang )
717-19
O n the Painting o f Tiered Bluffs and the
M is ty River in the Collection o f Wang
D ing-guo (Su Shi), 643-44
O n the Paintings o f Bamboo by W en Tong
in the Collection o f Chao Bu-zhiM (Su
Shi), 642
O n the Pavilion o f the D runken O ld M a n
in Chu-zhou (Ou-yang X iu ), 685
O n the Qing-yang Road (Wang Shizhen), 1136
O n the Set Topic: "Wild Goose on the
Sands (Geng W ei), 379
O n the Terrace o f Cang Jie*s Invention o f
Characters at the San-hui Tem ple (Cen
Shen), 411
O n the Three Peaks o f M agic Stone
M o u n ta in (Lu You), 660
O n the tips o f trees are lotus blossoms, 395
O n the very sum m it his thatched roo f-h ut,
372-73
O n the W in te r Festival I Visited Lone
M o u n ta in and the T w o M on ks H u i-jin
and H u i-s i (Su Shi), 669-70
O n the Y e llo w Sea: A M a n fro m Japan
Sought Some Verses and A lso Showed
M e a M a p o f the Russo-Japanese W a r
(Q iu Jin), 1151
O n Y in -w u P avilion (Yu X ua n-ji), 510
Opening drapes, she sees the new moon, 560
Open them wide, the gates o f the heavens,
158
O rchids o f autum n, the deer-weed158-59
O rio n lies fla t, the Dipper bends dow n, 677
O the magpie has its nest, 35-36
Others always insist that I d rin k, 287-88
O u r arm y was at Greenslope, 421
O u r great-shields we grapsed, donned
jerkins o f leather, 161
O ur subsistence grows steadily bleaker, 1143
O uter Things, 60
O uting on a Spring H o lid a y (V ) (Hong

Sheng), 988-95
O u t the Passes (Wang Chang-ling), 462
O u t to the F rontie r (Du Fu), 47 3-7 5
O u t West Gate, 279
Ou-yang Jiong, 567
Ou-yang X iu (Feng Yan-si), 57 0 -7 1
6 0 9 -1 0 613-14, 62 9-3 0, 6 3 8 4 0
646-47, 657, 67 9 -8 0 684-88
KOu-yang X iu Asks M e to W rite a Poem on
a Stone Screen T hat He O w ns (Su Shi),
680-81
Overbearing, 20-21
O x (Ou-yang X iu ), 657
O Zhen and W ei together, 48
Painted H a w k (Du Fu), 428
Painters there are in droves, 64 4-4 6
KPainting o f a Pine (Jing-yun), 410
Palace Lyrics X C V (Wang Jian), 381
Palace o f Lasting L ife , The (H ong Sheng),
973-1102
Palace towers o f Peng-lai, 4 3 6 -3 7
Pall Bearers Song I I (Tao Q ian), 21 2-1 3
Park o f Stories, The (Shuo-yuan), 301
teParted by Great Distances (L i Bo),
3 9 8-9 9
Parting (Wang W ei), 375

Parting (Wang Z hi-huan), 408
Parting from M r. Xue at G uang-ling
(M eng Hao-ran), 375
Passing by Lace-Crest Palace55(Wang

Jian), 454
Past the village filled w ith flowers, 740
Pavilion O verlooking the Lake (Wang
W ei), 393
Pay no heed to those sounds, 578-79
Peach Blossom Creek (Zhang X u ), 4 0 6 -7
Peach Blossom Fan (Kong Shang-ren), 942-72
Peach Tree Soft and Tender
34
Peeking at the Bathers ( X X I)
(Hong
Sheng), 1028-33
Pei D i, 374
Pei Q i, 305-6
Pei X ing, 198
Peony Pavilion (Tang Xian-zu), 71-76,

880-906
Pepper Tree Garden (Wang W ei), 395
Performance o f Peng T ia n -xi, The
(Zhang D ai), 818-19

^Performers on the Terrace o f the Bronze
Sparrow (He X un ), 326
Presented to Cao Biao, Prince o f Bai-ma

(Cao Z h i), 26 7-6 9
Perilous walkways, flyin g cascades, 1135
Presented to Someone on P arting (Du

M u ), 631
pines are dark and gloom y, The, 200-201

Ping-lan ten (to Someone Leaning on the
Balustrade )By the Lake (Zhang Ke-jiu),
738
Piping and singing from thousands o f lands,
453
Plagiarizing Poems (Meng Jiao), 481
plant does not die i f you p u ll up the stalk,
The480
Playing the pipes we pass to far shores, 394
Plum Blossoms I I I (Lu You), 661
Plums Are Falling
36
Poems o f L i Bo and D u Fu, 1143
Poems o f the Year ]i-h a i, 1839 (Gong Z izhen), 1147-48
Poems on M y D w elling in the Rear Park
(Zhao Y i), 1 1 4 0 4 1
Poetic Exposition on Gao-tang, T he
(Song Y u a ttrib .) 189-90
Poetic Exposition on Literature, The
{Wenfu) (Luji), 336-43
prince honors dearly loved guests, The, 282

Prince o f W ei, T he (Si-ma Q ian), 145-52
Prologue (I), O ctober 1684 (Kong
Shang-ren), 943^45
Prologue and Argum ent (I) (from The
Palace o f Lasting L ife ) (Hong Sheng),
975-76
Public Banquet (Cao Z h i), 282
Pu-sa man (to Bodhisattva Barbarian (Li

Y u), 568
Pu-sa man (to Bodhisattva BarbarianM)

(Wei Zhuang), 5 6 6-6 7
Pu-sa man (to Bodhisattva Barbarian )

(Wen Ting-yun), 565-66
Pu Song-ling, 1103-27
Qian-he ye (to Leaves o f a Thousand

Lotuses (Anonymous), 703
Q ian Q ian-yi334
Q ia o ji, 735
Poetic Exposition on Red C liff, The (Su

Shi), 29 2-9 4
Q i-dong ye-yu (Zhou M i), 654-55

Qing-jiang yin (to Clear R iver (Guan
Poetic Exposition on the O w l, The (Jia

Y i), 110-13
Q ing-ping yue (to Clear and Even M usic )
poet suffers m aking poems, A , 482-83

Pouring W ine A loneH (D u M u ), 503
Preface fo r the Poems W ritte n on an
Excursion to Stonegate, A
(Anonymous), 60 5 -7
Preface on Sending L i Yuan Back to
W inding Valley, A (H an Y u), 60 7-9
Preface on Sending X u W u-tang O ff on
H is W ay Hom e South (Ou-yang X iu ),
609-10
Yun-shi), 739
Qing-ping yue (to Clear and Even

M u sic ). A n account on the Censer
M o u n ta in Road (X in Q i-ji), 584
Q in Guan 257-58
Q in Jia, 254
Q iu Jin, 1150-51
Q iu W ei, 372-73
Qt-xvu lun ( Discourse on Thinking o f Things
Preface to 'Poetry o f the Song and Yuan

A (Yuan Zhong-dao), 821-22
wPreface to the *Joint Collection o f Poems
on Seeking Plums on Xuan-m u
as Being on the Same Level )113-22

KQ i-yu Songs (N orthern Dynasties, yuefu ), 2 4 0 4 1
Q ua tra in (Du Fu), 439
Q uatrain on the Pool Behind the D istrict
M o u n ta in (Wen Zheng-m ing), 627-28

Preface to the *O rchard Pavilion Poems
(Wang X i-zh i), 2 8 3-8 4
O ffice in Q i-an, A (Du M u ), 507

KQuatrains on Various Topics I (Wu Jun), 328
KQ uatrain W ritte n on the Road, A
Du
wPreface to
T ra c in g West Lake in a
Dream (Zhang D ai), 819-20
Prelude (Eastern Han?), 259
Que ta zhi (to The M agpie Steps on the
Prelude: W hite Swans in Pairs (Eastern

Han?), 230
Quince
45
Q u Y uan 155-79
M u ), 508
Branch (Anonymous), 561

river and hills beyond the fog, The, 701
wRiver Flooded, The (Du Fu), 427
R abbit Snare
43
R ainbow
39
Rain passes, a cicadas piercing cry, 632
Rains dense and steady darken deserted
river flooded outside m y scrapwood gate
bends, 374
rains d rip the sprouts out, The, 480
Rains have bathed Eastern Slope, 652
rain stopped and in the groves, The, 660
Rapids by the Luan Trees (Wang W ei),
394
rapping o f mallets ends, The, 741
Reaching Yang-zhou (Wen Tian-xiang),
713-17
MReading the Classic of Mountains and

Seas I (Tao Qian), 318-19
MReciting A loud, Alone in the M ou ntains
(Bo Ju-yi), 498

wRecord o f Music (Yue ji), 67-71
The, 427
KRiver Has Its Forkings, The
54 -55
River Is Broad, T he, 44 -45
rivers and hills have no single master, The,
1139
River V illag e (D u Fu), 427
river was broad, the winds were strong,
The, 699
Roads o f Luo-yang: Presented to the Director
Lu Xiang, The (Chu Guang-xi), 410
road to Long-tou is cut o ff, The, 470-71
Roaming Free in H uai-n anM (Zhang H u ),
632
Roaming in the N o rth Park by N ig h t
(Xiao Gang), 327
roe deer dead in the meadow, A , 36
Records on Metal and Stone (Li

Qing-zhao), 591-96
Red trees and green forests, 696
Reflection o f a H ig h Building in the
W ater, T he (Xiao Gang), 328
KRefusing the Trousseau (V II), M a y 1643
(Kong Shang-ren), 953-60

Release fro m M elancholy: Song (L i He),
49 1-9 2
Rem arks on Poetry (Shi-hua) (Ou-yang
Romance of the GodsThe (Feng-shen
X iu ), 6 4 6-4 7
Rens Story (Shen Ji-ji), 518-26
R u meng ling (to Like a Dream (Li
wReproach in the W om ens Chambers

(Wang Chang-ling)410
Ru meng ling (to Like a Dream (In
Rescuing One of the Girls (Jiu feng-chen)
R u meng ling (to Like a D ream ") (It was
(Guan H an-qing), 744-70

wRespectfully Answering D riftin g on the
River
(Yu X in ), 329
the m o m e n t.. .) (Nara Singde), 1137
Ruan Y u, 212
thousands o f tents .) (Nara Singde), 1139
Returning on Yang Lake (Zhao Y i), 1141

Returning to D w ell in Gardens and Fields
I (Tao Q ian), 316
Reunion (L )M (Hong Sheng), 1091-1102
Rising D ru n k on a Spring Day, T elling M y
Inten t (L i Bo), 404
rites are done now , drums beat together,
The, 162
Rites fo r Souls (Li-hun) (Q u Yuan,
attrib.), 162
1184
327
Ruan Ji 33 184-85, 253, 2 5 6-5 7, 2 7 0-7 2
Ruan lang gui (to Young Ruan Returns
(Yan Ji-dao) 5 7 3-7 4
Qing-zhao), 580
Restless and troubled fo r th irty years now ,

396
ritu a l ranks o f the Five Great Peaks, l l i e

485
yan-yi) (X u Z hong-lin, a ttrib .), 771-806

wRooster Crows, 51
Rows o f brocade curtains shelter her barge,
Sacrificiai Prayer fo r the Dead on M y

O w n Behalf, A (Tao Q ian), 61 5-1 6
sad heart upon the river, A , 64344
Salt M erchants W ife (in hatred o f
profiteers),M 50 1-2
Sandals o f S tra w , 53
Sandstorms f ill T urkish passes, 4 6 3-6 4
scene is lovely at the evening o f day, The, 389
Schemes of the 'Warring States (Zhan-guo
ce), 82-83
128-30
Schoolroom fo r W omen, The (V II) (Tang
Xian-zu), 71 -76
Seafarers speak o f th a t isle o f Ying, 401-3
Seal Script in Stone (Ou-yang X iu),
638-40

Searching and searching, seeking and
seeking, 581
Seasons close, evening skies clear to
translucence, 322
Seasons S hift (Tao Q ian), 31314
Second Poetic Exposition on Red C liff
The (Su Shi), 675-76
Secret Pledge (X X II) (Hong Sheng),
103340
Secret U nion (X X V m ) (Tang Xian-zu),
896-906
Seeing O ff Reverend Dan X I I (Meng
Jiao), 482-83
Selling Tattered Peonies (Yu Xuan-ji), 509
Sending a Friend on His W a y (L i Bo), 376
Sending a Palace Lady Back by N ig h t to
the Rear Boat (Xiao Gang), 327
Sending M r. Yuan on H is W ay on a
M ission to A n -x i (Wang W ei), 375
Sending O ff M r. Y in g (Cao Z h i), 262
Sending the Fan (X X III), January 1645
(Kong Shang-ren), 9 6 0-6 7
Senior M aster o f Lifespans, The (Da
si-ming) (Q u Yuan, attrib.), 158
Sensual Charms o f the Three W ives, The
(Shen Yue), 233
Sent to Judge H an Chuo in Yang-zhou
(Du M u ), 507-8
setting lig h t falls on a hamlet, The, 387
MSeven Sorrows*5 (Ruan Yu), 212
Seven Sorrows I (Wang Can), 252
Seven Sorrows I I (Wang Can), 256
shaman w om an pours w ine, The, 199-200
Shan gui (
The H ill W ra ith w) (Q u Yuan,
attrib.), 160-61
Shan-hua-zi (to M o u n ta in Flow er (He
Ning), 566
Shan-po yang (to Sheep on the Hillside )
Thoughts on the Past at Tong Pass738-39
Shao-si-ming ( The Junior M aster o f

Lifespans (Q u Yuan, attrib.), 15859
She Bore the F o lk , 12-14
She cast a quince to me, 45
She had happened to go by the river, 381
She is graceful, lithe, and winsome, 631
Sheng-sheng man (to N ote A fte r N o te
(L i Qing-zhao), 581
S h e n ji-ji 51 8-2 6
Shen Yue, 233328
She w ho firs t bore the fo lk , 12-14
Shi Cang-shus H a ll o f D runken In k

Su
Shi), 640-41
Shi Da-zu, 587-88
Shi-jingsee Classic o f Poetry

Shi-shuo xin-yu (New Stories and Tales o f
the Tim es) (Liu Y i-qing), 307-9
Shores shaded by hanging w illo w fronds, 327
short lyric w hile drinking, A , 573
Short Song (Cao Cao), 280-81
Shou-yang qu (to Shou-yang M e lo d y )A

Sail Returns to the D istant Shore (M a
Z hi-yuan), 740
Shou-yang qu (to Shou-yang M e lo d y'1),
A utum n M o o n lig h t on Lake Dong-ting
(M a Z hi-yuan), 741
Shou-yang qu (to Shou-yang M e lo d y )

Clearing Haze at a M a rke t in the H ills
Shou-yang qu (to Shou-yang M e lo d y )

Evening Bells in a M is ty Temple (M a
Z hi-yuan), 740-41
Shou-yang qu (to wShou-yang M e lo d y
)
Evening Sunshine in a Fishing V illage
(M a Zhi-yuan), 741
wShrine by the R iver (G uan-xiu), 200-201
Shui-diao ge-tou (to Song fo r the River

T une (Su Shi), 577-78
Shu Is on a Field H u n t, 56
Canon o f
Shu jing (Classic o f Documents)
Shun
63
Shuo-yuan (The Park of Stories'), 301

Sickness in poverty, true disgrace, 479
Sight-Seeing in the M oo rs Outside o f
Liang-zhou
(Wang W ei), 387
Si-kuai yu (to Four Pieces o f Jade ),

Passion (Lan Chu-fang), 736
Silent and empty, form er palace o f pleasure,
454
Silent Operas {Wu-shengxi) (Li Yu),

91541
Si-ma Q ian, 14 -1 5 8 4 -8 7 135-54
Si-ma Xiang-ru, 181-84
Since autum n the rodents have taken, 695
Since the tim e th a t I remarried, 690-91
Since you have gone away (Chen Shu-bao )
267
Since you have gone away (Wang Rong), 266
Since you have gone away (Yan Shi-bo)266
single bird o f prey beyond the sky, A , 426
single bloom o f beguiling red, A , 673
1185

Sixth M o n th , 24 -25
Sixth M o n th o f 408: W e H ad a Fire, The
(Tao Q ian), 317-18
S kirt o f gauzetigh t red sleeves, 239
sky looked like snow, The, 669-70
slanting path, shaded by palace ash, A , 393
Small Garden (Lu You), 695-96
snows are over, branches turn green, The, 329
Snowy N ig h t
653
soil o f Yang-di
s Thunder Basin Tom b, The,
631
solid mass o f cloud, A , 575
Someone asked me the w ay to Cold
M o u n ta in (Han Shan), 405, 620
Something Touched M e One N ig h t and I
T ry to Get I t O u t (M eng Jiao), 481
Some Tim e Ago in Chen H an-qings
House in Chang-an I Saw a Painting o f
the Buddha by W u Dao-zi. I t was
unfortunately tattered and falling to
pieces. W hen I saw it again over ten years
later in X ian-yu Z i-ju n
s house, it had
been m ounted and restored. It was given
to me by Z i-ju n and I w ro te this poem to
thank h im (Su Shi), 647-49
Song: Every N ig h t (X iao Gang), 327
Song fo r the Bank W here the Cock
C row ed (Wen Ting-yun), 332
Song fo r the G overnor o f W ild Goose
B arrier (L i He), 471
Song o f a Brow n W ren in W ild Fields
(Cao Zhi), 270
Song o f the A utum n W in d , 277-78

Song o f the Bright M o o n (Bao Zhao), 324
Song o f the Prince o f Lang-ya (N orthern
Dynasties yue-fu), 241
Song o f the Southland (Chu Guang-xi),
410
Song o f the Southland (Yu H u ), 381
Song o f the Spring Palace (Wang
Chang-ling), 409-10
Song o f W hite H a ir (Eastern Han?),
2 3 3 -3 4
Song o f W hite Snow: Sending O ff
Assistant W u on H is Return to the
C apital (Cen Shen), 4 6 6 -6 7
Song o f Xiang-yang (Cui G uo-fu), 408
Song o f Yong-zhou: I I N o rth Isle (Xiao
Gang), 327
wSong on Reflections in W aterM (M adam
Shen), 328
Song on V isiting Heavens Crone
M o u n ta in in a Dream: O n Parting, A
(L i Bo), 401-3
Songs fo r the Goddess Shrine on Fish
M o u n ta in (Wang W ei), 199
Songs o f Hu-zhou (Wang Yuan-liang), 702
Songs o f M y Cares I (Ruan Ji), 25 6 -5 7
Songs o f M y Cares I I (Ruan 33
Songs o f M y Cares V I (Ruan Ji), 271
Songs o f M y Cares X V I
Ruan Ji),
271
"Songs o f M y Cares 500011 (R u a n ji),
2 7 1-7 2
Song o f an A rrow head fro m the Battlefield

o f Chang-ping (L i H e) 4 89-90
Songs o f M y Cares L X V III (Ruan Ji),

184-85
Song of a Painting (Du Fu), 429-31
Song Y u, 189-93
sorrow o f leaving sweeps over me, The, 1147
Song o f a Young Noblem an at the End o f
Night (Li He), 491

Song o f D ra ft Cursive (Lu Y ou), 697-98
Song o f Lasting Pain (Bo Ju-yi), 44 2 -4 7
Song o f Liang-zhou (Wang H an), 407
sorrows and joys o f m y y o u th fu l years, The,

1148
Song of Liang-zhou (Wang Zhi-huan), 407
So tig h tly w ound, sandals o f straw, 53

Source o f Pain I I (Xiao Gang), 327
South Cottage (Wang W ei), 394
Song o f L o rd X ie
s V illa , A (Wen
Ting-yun), 332
South M ountains block up earth and sky,

The, 482
Song o f M ing-gao: Sending O ff M r. Cen, a

Gentleman in Retirement W ho Was
South o f the W alls We Fought (Li Bo), 244
Summoned to C ourt, A (L i Bo), 3 7 6 -7 7

Song o f M y Cares I I I (Ruan Ji)253
Song o f M y Cares W hen Going fro m the
C apital to Feng-xian, A (Du Fu),
417-20
1186
South o f the W alls We Fought (L i Ye-si),

246
South o f the W alls W e Fought (Western
H an), 228-29
South o f the W a ll We Fought (Wang
Shi-zhen)245

South on the lake the autum n waters,
4 11-12
**Sovereign o f the East, The (Dong-huang
Tai-yi) (Qu Yuan, attrib.)156

Speak no m ore when we meet, 567
Spending the N ig h t at an In n Outside the
West Gate o f Ji-zhou (Chao Duan-you),
656
KSpending the N ig h t in Reverend Ye
s
M o u n ta in Chamber, I was expecting the
senior M r. Ding, but he did not come
(Meng Hao-Ran), 373
Spider-Fighting (Yuan Hong-dao), 812-13
Spill water out on level ground, 323
Splashing on stones, the rapids sounds, 688
Spreading, 16-18
spring ice melts on the river Luo, The, 410
KSpring in the Southland (Du Mu), 504-5

Spring isles grow w ith shoots o f reeds,
650-51
Spring Longings (Wang Seng-ru), 329
spring river comes dow n past W hite
Emperor Castle, The, 329
Star sparkles break through trees on the
ridge, 327
starving hound gnaws a dry bone, A , 481
Summer Day in the M ou ntains (Li Bo),

404
Summers firs t m onth, a ll plants grow tall,
318-19
KSunbeams Shoot (Li Shang-yin), 514
Sunbeams shoot through a gauze w in d o w
screen, 514
Sundry Accounts o f the W estern Capital

(X i-jin g za-ji), 3 0 6 -7
wSunlight Cast Back (Du Fu), 440
Sunning Oneself (Z hou M i), 654-55
Sunrise in southeast, 234-35
Sun Chuo, 185-88
Su Shi (Su Dong Po)2 0 1 -3 2 9 2 -9 4
577-80, 618, 621-24, 633-34, 640-44,
647-49, 652 663-83
Su W u, 2 5 1-5 2
Swallows go w inging before the hall, 259
Swarms o f flies cluster around m y sick
horse, 482
Sweet wine o f the grape, 407
Taking D o w n a T re llis (D u Fu), 245
T a ll are trees in the south country, 31-32
T a ll bamboo blanket a sunlit stream
1136
379
S till and somber, a bare chessboard, 334
Stirred by Something at M ount, L i (Li
T a ll peak to the south, 703

Tangs V o w
124-25
Tang Xian-zu, 71-76, 880-906
Tao Qian, 212-13, 309-10, 312-19 615-16
Ta suo xing (to Treacling the Sedge (W u
Shang-yin), 454
Stocking-Viewing (X X X V I) (Hong
W en-ying), 589-90
Teaching the Song (II)A p ril 1643 (Kong
Sheng), 1063-67
Stopping By the Temple o f Incense
Massed (Wang W ei), 384
Story o f the Fuban, o r Pack Beetle, T he
Shang-ren), 946-52
Temple o f Shooting Stars, The (Wang
S till a long road to travel to Heng-yang,
(Liu Zong-yuan), 617-18

Stream in the w ilds running zigzag, 693
String M usic for the Gods (Li He),
199-200
Strolling A long a Juniper Path in the
M o rn in g (Yang W an-li), 660
Study in the H ills (Yu X in ), 330
Such bustling hubbub, as our troops, 425
Sui Palace, The (He roamed o f f . . ) (Li
Shang-yin), 517
Sui Palace, The (The halls o f the
palace.. _) (L i Shang-yin), 516
Suite on A utu m n Thoughts, A (M a Z h iyuan), 741-43
An-shi), 691
Ten Days o f Yang-zhou (Wang Xiu-chu),
826-33
Ten Stanzas on the A utu m n R ain (Yang
W an-li), 7 0 0-7 01'
That boat o f cypress drifts along, 47
thatched cottage o f several rooms, A
69 6-9 7
T hat man o f old was no disdainful clerk,
395
T hat painted pine looks exactly, 410
T hat she w o u ld come was empty words,
511-12
T hat tim e o f year when swallows are set to
go, 569
Then the blond-headed X ia n-p i, 331
1187

Theory o f Heaven, A (L iu Zong-yuan),
to wBodhisattva BarbarianH(Pu-sa man) (Li
601-3
There are some men, their aims unfulfilled ,
Y u), 568
to Bodhisattva Barbarian
375
There is a rainb ow in the east, 39
There is a rare tree in my yard, 258
There is flex and play in bamboo poles, 43-44
(Wei Zhuang), 566-67
There the m ille t is lush, 4546

There was a Great One in this age, 182-84
There was once one Undying on a crane, 401
These men th a t I ve met on the river, 412
These sticks, tied together, are fa llin g apart,
426
They ro ll on and on, rip p lin g and surging,
507
They tell me th a t the plums, 661
Thirteen Com panion Pieces fo r W en
Tongs 4Garden Pool in Yang-zhou
Bridge Over the Lake (Su Shi), 652

This m orning let there be jo y upon joy,
2 8 1-8 2
This province is tru ly a land o f bamboo, 500
This splendid pavilion enters azure mists,
414
Thorn-Vine on the Wall

39
^Thoughts Stirred on M eeting the Gardener
o f the Royal Academy in N a n jin g (W u
Wei-ye), 1134-35
thousand homes o f the m ountain to w n A ,
4 3 5-3 6
Three Cautionary Tales (Liu Zong-yuan),
617-18
Three Poems T h in kin g on Past Travels
(Du M u ), 505
Thrice Pve passed by Level M o u n ta in H a ll,
633-34
Through the green trees o f Xin-feng, 453
Tian-bao was in its fin a l years, The, 4 5 5 -5 7
Tian jin g sha (to Heaven Pure Sand
A utum n Thoughts (M a Zhi-yuan), 740
Tian xian zi (to Im m ortal in Heaven
(Wei Zhuang), 563
time passed in life s century. The, 741-43
[title lost] (Huang Jing-ren), 1144-45
to A H a lf (Yi~ban-er) (Guan H an-qing),
737
to A Spray o f Flow ers" (A W o rd A b o u t
Ugly Studio) (Zhong Si-cheng), 731-34
to A Spray o f H ow ers (N o t G iving In to
O ld Age) (Guan Han-qing) 729- 31
1188
(Pu-sa man)
to B o d h is a tm Barbarian (Pu-sa man)

(Wen T ing-yun)j 565-66
to Bowing to the N e w M o o n
(Bai xin
yue) (Anonymous),
560-61
to Breaking T hrough the Ranks (Po
zhen-zi) (Yan Shu), 569

T o brew three thousand gallons o f beer,
697-98
to wButterflies Love Flowers (D ie lian hua)
(Ou-yang X iu ), 570
to KButterflies Love Flowers (D ie lian hua)
(Yan Ji-dao), 572
to Butterflies Love Flowers (D ie liart hua),
O n the Frontier (Nara Singde), 1139
to KClear and Even M u sic (Qing-ping yue)
to wClear and Even M u sic (Qing-ping
yue). A n account on the Censer
M o u n ta in Road (X in Q i-ji)584
to Clear R iverM (Q ing-jiang yin) (Guan
Yun-shi), 739
to Dead D ru n k in the East W in d (Chenzu i dong-feng) (X u Z ai-si), 734-35
to D o w n and O u t D ru n k (Z u i luo~po)t
W ritte n on Leaving Jing-kou (Su Shi),
67 6-7 7
to Dream o f the Southland (M eng Jiannan) (Huang-fu Song), 565
to D ru n k in an Age o f Peace (Z u i taiping) (Anonymous), 739
to Fishermans Lyrics
ci)
(Anonymous), 563
to Four Pieces o f Jade (Si-kuai yu ),
Passion (Lan Chu-fang), 736
to Fragrance Fills the Y a rd (M an-ting
fang) (Su Shi), 665
to Fragrance Fills the Y a rd (M an ting
fang) (Zhou Bang-yan), 291
to Fragrance from Somewhere Unseen
(An xiang) (Jiang K ui), 5 8 6 -8 7

to MFree-Spirited Fisherman" (Yu-jia ao) (L i
Qing-zhao), 582-83
to G a lk n t {Feng-liu-zi) (Z hou Bang-yan)s
576
to Gods on the M agpie Bridge (Q in
Guan) 257-58

to MGolden Threads (Jin-lii qu), Thoughts
on the Anniversary o f M y W ife s Death
to Pleasure in the Lovely W om an (Yu

mei-ren) (Li Y u), 568

to KHeaven D ru n k (Zui-zhong Tian ), Big
to Putting on L ip stick (D ian jiang chun)

(Wang Guo-wei), 1152
to KReaching Golden Gates (Ye jin-m en)
(Yan Shu), 290-91
B utterfly (Wang He-qing), 736

to wHeaven Pure Sand (Tian jin g sha),
A utum n Thoughts (M a Zhi-yuan), 740
to Helped Hom e D ru n k (Z u i fu gui)
(Wang He-qing), 736
T o H is W ife " (Q in Jia attrib,), 254
T o Huang J i-fu (Huang T i-jian), 694-95
to Im m ortal by the R iver [Lin-jiang xian)
(Ou-yang X iu ), 570-71
to Im m ortal by the R iver (Lin-jiang xian)
(Su Shi), 578
to Im m ortal in Heaven (Tian xian zi)
(Wei Zhuang)563
to KJoy at M id n ig h t (Ye-ban le) (Liu
Yong), 575
to Leaves o f a Thousand Lotuses {Qian-
he ye) (Anonymous), 703

to Like a Dream (Ru meng ling) (Nara
Singde), 1137
to Like a Dream (Ru meng ling) (In
thousands o f tents...) (Nara Singde)1139
to Lil-yao-bian, O f M yself (Q iao Ji),
735
to KM o o n Over West R iver on Level
M o u n ta in H a ll (Su Shi), 633-34
to M o o n PalaceH (Chan-gong qu), Spring
Passion (X u Zai-si), 737
to M o u n ta in H o w e r (Shan-hua-zi) (He
N ing), 566
Tong-chao Tow er at Zheng-mai Station
(Su Shi), 677
to N ight-C losing Flowers (Ye be hua).
Going along the Crane River on m y way
to the capitalI moored at Feng Gate and
was moved to w rite this (W u W en-ying),
589
to N ote A fte r N o te (Sheng-sheng man)
(L i Qing-zhao), 581
to KPartridge W eather (Zhe-gu tian) (Lu
You), 583
to Partridge W eather (Zhe-gu tian) (A
short lyric w hile d rin k in g .. ) (Yan
Ji-dao), 573
to Partridge W eather (Zhe-gu tian) (W ith
such feeling. . ) (Yan Ji-dao), 572-73
T o Pei D i (Wang W ei), 389
to Red F illin g the R iver (M an jiang hong)

(Jiang K u i), 585-86
Torm ented (Meng Jiao), 478
to Scent o f Lace (Ji luo xiang). O n spring
rain (Shi Da-zu), 587-88
to Seeking Fragrant Plants (Xun fangcao), Account o f a Dream in X iao
Temple (Nara Singde), 1138
to Settling W in d and Waves (D ing feng-
bo) (Su Shi), 578-79

to Sheep on the H ills id e (Shan-po yang),
Thoughts on the Past at T ong Pass,
738-39
to Shou-yang M e lo d y (Shou-yang qu )A
Sail Returns to the D istant Shore (M a
Z hi-yuan), 740
to Shou-yang M e lo d y (Shou-yang qu )
A utum n M o o n lig h t on Lake Dong-ting
to wShou-yang M e lo d y (Shou-yang qu),
Clearing Haze at a M a rke t in the H ills
to wShou-yang M e lo d y (Shou-yang qu)^
Evening Bells in a M is ty Temple (M a
Zhi-yuan) j 740-41
to wShou-yang M e lo d y (Shou-yang qu),
Evening Sunshine in a Fishing Village
to Someone Leaning on the Balustrade
(Ping-lan ren), By the Lake (Zhang Kejiu ), 738
to Song fo r the R iver'Tune
(Sbui-diao
ge-tou) (Su Shi), 577-78
to Southern Song (Nan-ge-zi) (Li
Qing-zhao), 581-82
to Spring in the M ansion o f Jade (Yu- lou
chun) (Zhou Bang-yan), 577

to The Charms o f N ia n -n u {Niart-nii
jiao): Meditation on the Past at Red Cliff

(Su Shi), 579-80
to The D runken L o rd (Z u i gong-zi)
(Anonymous), 562
to The D runken L o rd {Z u i gong-zi) (Xue
Zhao-yun), 56 3-6 4

to The Drunken L o rd (Z u i gong-zi) (Yin
E), 564
to he M agpie Steps on the Branch (Q ue
ta zbi) (Anonymous), 561
T o the no rth o f the Chu kin g s palace
4 3 9-4 0
T o the northwest stands a tow er high,
259-60
to The Pleasures o f K icking the F ootb all
(Feng Yan-si), 290
to The Pleasures o f M eeting (Xiang-jian
huan) (L i Y u a ttrib .)569
to The South Country (Nan xiang zi)

T o the south o f Redbird Pontoon Bridge,
332
to The Springtime o f M arble H a lls
(Yu-lou chun) (Yan Ji-dao)573
T o the west o f Lake D ong-ting,H 412
to Treading the Sedge (Ta suo xing) (W u
W en-ying), 589-90
to T urning Back A fte r Seeing the Flowers
(Kan-hua hui) (Liu Yong), 574
to Ugly Slave {Chou nu-er) (X in Q i-ji),
584
to V icto ry M u sic (D e sheng yue) (Bo Pu),
735
Towards evening the piping grew m ournful,
465-66
to W ashing Creek Sands (Huan
(Anonymous), 562
to W ashing Creek SandsM (Huan
to Washing Creek Sands (Huan
(Wang Guo-wei), 1152
to W ashing Creek Sands (Huan
(Yan Shu), 290570
x i sha)
Tumbleweed rollin g, severed fro m ro o t

270
r
T urkish horn draws the n o rth w in d , The,
4 7 1-7 2
T urks Are Gone!, The (L i Bo), 465
T urn and look back from Chang-an, 452-53
T w o Companion Pieces fo r L i T ia n -lin
(Yang W an-li)s 700
T w o maidens roamed by rive rs shore, 33
Unclassified Poem (Cao Z h i), 265-66
Unclassified Poem (Liu Zhen), 265
Unclassified Poem I I (Cao Z h i), 270
Under vast skies, lim p id and clear, 506
Up in heaven the star-river turns, 581-82
Upon the screen o f mica, 515
Valley W inds
37-38
Vapors over water consume evenings light,
330
V a ria tio n on H a rd Traveling
(W ang
Chang-ling), 4 6 5-6 6
Various Occasions o f Interest in the Fields
and Gardens T hrough the Four Seasons
(Fan Cheng-da), 659-60
Various Responses on an Ocean Voyage
(Huang Z un-xian), 1150
x i sha)
V iew ing the Snow fro m H e art o f the Lake

P avilion (Zhang Dai), 818
V ie w in Spring, The (Du Fu), 420
V illa on Zhong-nan M o u n ta in (Wang
W ei), 390
x i sha)
Q H i)584
to wW in d Enters PinesM (Feng ru song) (W u
W en-ying), 588-89
To X iao and Xiang the royal daughters, 412
to Yang-zhou AndanteM (Jiang K ui),
632-33
to KYoung Ruan R eturns" {Ruan lang gui)
(Yan Ji-dao), 57 3-7 4
tra ce s o f rouge yet darken y ou r skin,
328
1190
Tresses in stormy tangles and coils, 1137-38

T sk , tsk and tsk, tsk 24 1-4 2
T u Long, 81415
x i sha)
to West River M o o n (X i jiang yue).

Expressing w h at was on m y m ind (X in
traveler in the brow n dust, A , 659
Trees shed their leaves, the geese cross

south, 396
Trees w ith Bending Boughs
43
V isiting Ju-fa-yuan Temple w ith W ang

Qiu-cheng and Zhang He-chai (Huang
Jing-ren), 1145
V isiting the M agic C liff w ith Various
Gentlemen o f the T ransport O ffice
Wu
W en-ying), 101
V isiting the Southern P avilion (Xie
Ling-yun), 322
V isiting the Southern T ow er o f Chongzhen Temple: Seeing 'Where the Recent
Graduates o f the Exam ination Have
W ritte n Their Names (Yu X ua n-ji), 510
AuthorFirst Line and Title Index

V isitin g the Temple o f M o u n t Heng, Then
Spending the N ig h t at the Buddhist
M onastery: I W rote This on the Gate
T ow e r (Han Y u ) 4 8 5-8 6
V isiting W est-of-the-M ountain V illag e
(Lu Y ou)658
V isitin g W hite Waters. W ritte n fo r m y son
Su M a i (Su Shi), 668
visitp r suddenly knocked at m y door A,
1140-41
V is it to the South M ountains, A (Meng
Jiao), 482
wagons went by rum bling, The, 4 6 8-6 9
W aking Suddenly from Dream (X ) (Tang
Xian-zu), 882-91
W alking in the H ills and Looking fo r the
Recluse, But Finding H im N o t I n (Q iu
W ei), 372-73
W a lkin g in the W ild s " (Lu Y ou), 658
W a lk in the W ilds, A (He Z hu), 657
Wanderer, homesick, where Yangzi meets
H an, 439
"Wandering to the T ian-tai M ou ntains,M
185-88
W ang An-shi, 64446, 691-93
W ang Bi, 63 -64
W ang Can, 252 256 264-65
W ang Chang-ling, 409 462, 46 5-6 6
waters o f Kun-m ing Pool, The, 437-38

Waves fo llo w the currents o f cloud, 1152
W ay o f Heaven, The, 64
We are lodged in this w o rld as in a great
dream, 404
We bring ou r chariots fo rth , 23 -2 4
We fought last year at the Sang-gan
s source,
244
We galloped ou r horses across river's edge,
460-61
W e H ad O u r D e lig ht, 50
W e Have in H a nd
10
We have in hand our offerings10
W ei X i, 634-35
W ei Ying-w u, 372
W ei Zhuang, 563, 5 6 6-6 7
W e met upon the n a rrow lanes, 231-32
Wen fu ( The Poetic E xposition on
Literature ( L u ji) , 336-43
W en Tian-xiang, 704-20
W en Ting-yun 200 332-33, 565-66
W en-xin diao-long (The Literary M in d
Carves Dragons (Liu Xie), 343-59
W en Zheng-m ingj 627-28
W e set our sails and gazed southeast,
396
Western H a n 102-4
Western Han yue-fu 227-29

West Fields (Wu Wei-ye), 1133
W ang G uo-w eij 1151-52

W ang H an, 407
W ang He-qing, 736
W ang Jian, 381 453, 45 4 -5 5 , 470
W ang Rong, 266
"W est Gate, 279

W est I gaze fro m Lake D ong-ting411
W est tow er, more than a hundred yards
W ang
W ang
W ang
W ang
Jiao), 480
KW hat Came to M in d W hen Chanting M y
Seng-ru, 329
Shi-zhen (1526-1590)245
Shi-zhen (1634-1711), 1135-37
W ei, 199, 3 7 1 -7 2 374, 375
high, 439
"What Came to M e in a M o o d (Meng
Poems (Bo Ju-yi), 497

wW hat I Saw on the N o rth e rn O utskirts o f
385-95, 462-63
W ang X iu-chu, 826-33
W ang X i-zh i, 2 8 3-8 4
W ang Y uan-liang702
Zhen-zhou (Wang Shi-zhen), 1136

W hat matters in their lives: to be seen w ith
W ang Zhi-huan, 407-8

W arm and w ell fed, could I fail to know , 702
W atching a H u n t (Wang W ei), 386
W atching A nts (Yang W an-li), 651
W ater chestnuts pierce floating algae, 507
W atering M y Horse by the Great W a ll
(Eastern Han?), 258
waters are those o f Yaos time, The, 1149
(Meng Jiao), 480

W hen a single petal falls away, 424
W hen a thousand miles o f long river, 508
When dawns rays enter the woods, 679-80
W hen evening sun passed over western
respect461
W hat Was in M y H eart on a Spring D ay
peaks, 373
W hen firs t I heard the m igrating geese,
514-15
1191

W hen Han-shan utters these words
(Han-shan), 406
W hen he travels he often suffers from
wounds, 477
W hen I bound m y hair and became your
wilderness temple, its grass-grown terrace
w ife, 251
W hen I came back, the sun still was high,
"W in d , The (Western H an), 102-4

"W in d and Rain
38
W in d -b lo w n frost rises from plain w hite
silk, 428
409
W hen I
W hen I
574
W hen I
W hen
made it to the top o f the w a ll, 699

reckon up these hundred years,
w in d blows hard, the hornbow sings, The,
3S6
was young, I did n t kn o w , 584
Living Q uietly at Wang-chuan I
Gave This to Pei D i (Wang W ei), 390

W hen m y love is sad, I m also down, 238
W hen one o f them chances to meet another,
651
W hen on the long river the sun goes down,
410
W hen the crescent m oon comes shining,
691
W hen the Southern Dynasties Emperor, 333
W hen they fo rm their berries red and green,
393
W hen we were poor I rushed here and
there, 693
W hen w ill this misery end?, 1138-39
W hen winds came to w illo w -lin e d shores,
506
Where did I pick the sweet pear?, 55
W here the curtain opens, I see hairpin's
shadow, 329
Where the Ju-tang
s w inding course is done
201-3
W here w illo w s darken the rive r bridge, 589
W here w ill we tie our true-love-knot?, 239
Where Yangzi Meets the H a n (Du Fu), 439
W h irlin g g irl, 457-58
W hite Egret (Ou-yang X iu ), 688
W hite Stone Rapids (Wang W ei), 394
W hite Stone Rapids are shallow and clear,
394
W hite strands o f hair in m y m irro r, 508
W ho can feel longing and not sing out?, 238
W ho claims that the rive r is wide?, 44 -45
W ho sent you that stone screen, 680-81
Whose yard is it the graveyard?, 278
W ild chrysanthemums and moss, 661
wilderness inn by a dock w ith weeping
w illo w s, A, 657-58
1192
at dusk, A 411
w illo w s, trees o f the eastern gate, The, 408
wW illo w s by the Eastern Gate
40
W illo w Waves (Wang W ei), 394
wine before me as I sing, The, 280-81

wine was gone, and the songs, The, 290
W inter hoes go in line along the shore,
1133-34
W in te rN ig h t (B o ju -y i), 500-501
W in te r W hite Linen Song
A (Yuan
Zhen), 100
W inter woods in the last sunlight, 656
Withered vines, old trees tw ilig h t crows, 740
W ith in Ten Acres, 49
W ith o u t a w o rd, I climbed the western
tower, 569
W ith such feeling your b rig h tly colored
sleeves, 572-73
W ith the A rm y A Ballad (Luo Bin-wang),
461
W ith the A rm y: A Ballad (Wang Jian),
470
W ith the Arm y: A Ballad (W ang W ei),
462-63
W ith the A rm y V (Wang Can), 26 4-6 5
W ith you I w ill roam to the rive rs nine
channels160
wom an said, The rooster crows
The,
51
W ondrous peaks welcome m y horse, 661
w o rk in m y office keeps p ilin g up, The, 265
W ritin g o f M y Sorrow (M e i Yao-chen),
690
W ritte n A fte r Seeing the Paintings o f W u
D ao-zi (Su Shi), 618
W ritte n at N ig h t at an Inn in the H ills
(Huang Jing-ren), 1144
W ritte n at W an M o u n ta in Pool (Meng
Hao-ran), 33
W ritte n Crossing the Y ello w River to
Q ing-he (W ang W ei), 386
W ritte n D u ring the Rain One N ig h t and
Sent Back N o rth (Li Shang-yin), 515

W ritte n on Chan-zhi Temple in YangzhouM (Du M u ), 632
W ritte n on the Kai-yuan Temple at Xuanzhou (Du M u ), 50 3-4
W ritte n on the Lake, Returning fro m the
Chapel at Stone ClifM (Xie Ling-yun),
320-21
W ritte n on the Temple o f M o u n t X ia o
(Wen Ting-yun), 200
W ritte n P layfully to Zhang J i (H an Yu),
487-88
W u Jun, 328
W u M o u n ta in (Su Shi), 20 1-3
Wu~sheng x i {Silent Operas) (L i Yu),
915-41
W u Wei-ye, 1130-35
W u W en-ying, 101 588-90
W u-zhen M onastery (W ang An-shi), 693
Xiang-jian huan (to The Pleasures o f

M eeting } (L i Yu, attrib.), 569
X iang jun ( The Lady o f the X iang R iver

(Q u Yuan, a ttrib .) 157-58
Xiang-yang is a young mans place, 408
X ia o -cu i (Pu Song-ling), 1113-20
X ia o Gang, 327-28
X iao-lin (The Forest o f Jokes) (Han-dan

Chun, com piler), 305
X ie Ling-yun, 319-23
X ie T ia o 326
X ie T ia o s mansion from Southern
Dynasties, 50 3-4
X i jiang yue (to "West River M o o n ).
Expressing w h at was on m y m ind (X in
Q i-ji)584
X i-jin g za-ji (Sundry Accounts o f the

Western Capital), 306-7
X in Q i-ji584
X in Yan-nian, O fficer o f the Guard
(Eastern Han), 2 3 5-3 6
Xu Gan, 266
X un fang-cao (to Seeking Fragrant
Plants**), Account o f a Dream in X ia o
Temple (Nara Singde), 1138
X u Zai-si, 734-35, 737
X u Z hong-lin, 771-806
Yang Pan-er (Du-qu Song), 240
Yang Pan-er (Li Bo), 247

Yang W an-li, 651 652, 660 661, 698-702
KYang-zhouM (Du M u )631

Yangzi and H a n , 22 -23
Yan Ji-dao, 5 7 2-7 4
Yan Ji-sheng, Chancellor o f Education,
Invited H is Junior Colleagues to V is it the
Pei Garden. In our boat we sailed around
Lone M o u n ta in enjoying the lotus
blossoms. Then late in the day we
moored at the im perial park at Yu-hu. I
w rote ten quatrainsw (Yang W an-li),
698-99
Y an Shi-bo, 266
569-70
Yan Shu, 290-91
Year after year I waste this eve, 1146
year is 427, The, 615-16
Ye-ban le (to Joy at M id n ig h t (Liu
Yong), 575
Ye he hua (to N ight-C losing Flowers ).
G oing along the Crane River on m y way
to the capital, I m oored at Feng Gate and
was moved to w rite this (W u Wen-ying),
589
Ye jin-men (to Reaching Golden Gates )
(Yan Shu), 290-91
Y ello w B ird , 2 6 -2 7
Y ello w R iver at Bian-zhou Blocked by Ice,
The (Du M u ), 508
Y ello w R ivers Earl, The (He-bo) (Qu
Yuan, attrib.), 160
yellow sands stretch o ff and up, The, 407
Yi-ban-er (to A H a lf (Guan Han-qing),
737
Yi~lin (The Forest o f Tales) (Pei Q i,

com piler), 30 5 -6
Y in E, 564
Ying-yings Story (Yuan Zhen), 54049
Y oo3 yoo cry the deer, 2 7 5 -76
Y ou asked when I was coming back, 515
Y ou ask me w h y it is, 403
Y ou dig and build, o f w o rld s troubles
weary, 1133
Y o u d rin k each day fro m G old D ust Spring,
394
young w ife in her chambers, The, 410
young W u g irl fro m Chang-an, A , 382
Y o u ve got to cut loose to learn poetry, 700
Y ou were born amid death and destruction,
1132-33
You were singing Yang Pan-er, 247
Yuan Hong-dao, 811-14
1193

Yuan Zhen, 100, 4 5 5 -5 7 54 0-4 9
Discourse on T hin kin g o f Things as Being
Yuan Zhong-dao, 821-26

yue-fuy 22748
Heavens M o tio n s
108-10
Heaven A bove (Western H an), 227
Yue ji (Record o f M usic,M 67-71

Yu ge ci (to Fishermans Lyricsw)
(Anonymous), 563
Y u H u , 381
Yu-jia ao (to Free-Spirited Fisherman (Li
Qing-zhao), 582-83
Ym4 ou chun (to Spring in the M a n sio n of
Jade (Z hou Bang-yan), 577
Yu-lou chun (to The Springtime o f M arble

H a lls (Yan Ji-dao), 573
Yu mei-ren (to KPleasure in the Lovely

W om an (L i Y u), 568
Y u Shi-nan, 460-61
Y u X in , 329-30
Y u X ua n-ji, 509
on the Same Level (Q i-w u lun), 113- 22

O f Swords, 104-7
O uter Things
60
parables from , 295-99
KRenouncing Kingship
18
The W ay o f Heaven," 64
Zi-ye Song (Liu Yuan), 328
Zi-ye Songs
238-39
wZi-ye Songs of the Four Seasons, The,

239
Z u i fu gui (to Helped Hom e D ru n k

(Wang He-qing), 736
Z u i gong-zi (to The D runken L o rd

(Anonymous)562
Z u i gong-zi (to The D runken L o rd (Xue

Zhao-yun) 563-64
Z u i gong-zi (to The D runken L o rd (Y in

E)564
Zhang Dai, 815-20

Zhang H u , 632
Zhang Ji331,470-71
Zhang K e-jiu, 738
Zhan-guo ce {Schemes o f the W arring
States), 82-83
128-30
Zhang X u , 4 0 6 -7
Zhang Yang-hao
738-39
Zhang Zheng-jian, 460
Zhao hun (MCalling Back the Soul (Q u
Yuan, attrib.), 204-11
Zhao Y i, 1140-43
Zhao yin-shi (MCalling Back the Recluse >
(Q u Yuan, attrib.), 2 1 1-1 2
Zhe-gu tian (to Partridge Weather**) (A

short lyric w hile d rin k in g .. _) (Yan
Ji-dao), 573
Zhe-gu tian (to Partridge W eather5*) (Lu

You), 583
Zhe-gu tian (to Partridge "Weather ) (W ith

such feeling. ) (Yan Ji-dao), 572-73
Zhen and W ei, 48
Z hong Si-cheng, 731-34
Zhong-zi, Please, 46 -4 7
Z hou Bang-yan, 291, 5 7 6-7 7
Z hou M i, 654-55
Zhuang Z hou dreamed o f a butterfly,
122-23
Zhuang-zi, 113-22
Attaining Life (Da-sheng), 133-34
1194
Z u i luo-po (to D o w n and O u t D ru n k )

W ritte n on Leaving Jing-kou (Su Shi),
676-77
Z u i tai-ping (to D ru n k in an Age o f

Peace } (Anonymous), 739
Zui-zhong Tian (to Heaven D ru n k )Big

B utterfly (Wang He-qing), 736
Z u o Si, 273
Zuo Tradition, The96

an
an
an
an
entry
entry
entry
entry
fo r
fo r
fo r
fo r
the
the
the
the
3rd year o f Duke D ing, 80

4 th year o f Duke Ding, 98
6th year o f Duke W en, 27
11th year o f Duke A i, 99
an entry fo r the 12th year o f Duke Xuan,

78
an entry fo r the 14th year o f Duke
Zhuang, 79-81
an entry fo r the 19th year o f Duke X i,
27-28
an entry fo r the 20th year o f Duke Zhao,
97-98
an entry fo r the 22nd year o f Duke X i,
78-79
an entry fo r the 25th year o f Duke Xiang,
63
an entry fo r the 26th year o f Duke Zhao,
125-28
an entry fo r the 31st year o f Duke Xiang,
59
General Index
Account o f M y Travels in Fei (Yuan

Zhong-dao)823
MAccount o f Peach Blossom Spring A n
(Tao Q ian), 309
Account o f the Compass3 The (Wen Tianxiang), 704-20
Account of the Poem on a Red Leaf, The

(Wang Ji-de), 886n
Account of the Western Parlor The3 886

Account of the Western Verandah (Xi-xiang
Ji) (The Moon and the Zither
557
accounts o f visits (you-ji)^61 0-1 4
landscape, 622-25
o f Su Shi, 622-24
Aeneid (V irg il), 441
aesthetics o f omission, 69
Afghanistan, 244
A irs (Feng) section o f Classic o f Poetry,
11, 30 -5 7
correspondences in 34 -44
lovers in, 5 3 -5 7
misunderstanding in, 44 50
organization of, 30
purpose of, 65 66
satire in , 52
A -jiao, 955n
alchemy, 176, 224
alcoholic beverages, translation and, x lv i
Analects (Lun-yu) (Confucius), 5, 31 350,
848
397, 436n 500
Tao Q ian influenced by 312-14

anecdotes, parables and pro fo un d jokes,
295-310, 320
chuan-qi 51849
collections of, 30 5-9
fro m Han Fei-zi299-300
o f H ig h Tang, 410
fro m Lie-zi302-5
fro m Zhuang-zi, 2 9 5-9 9
A n-hui, 1150
A n Lu-shan, 367 425455
A n Lu-shan Rebellion, 367, 368, 385, 397

4421131
poetry of, 42025
Anthologyy The (Wen Xuan) (Prince Zhaoming), 343

Archaist movement, 244 725, 8071129
aristocracy:
o f Southern Dynasties, 225
m eritocracy vs., 5 5 3-5 4
KA utum n Stirrings (Du Fu), 1020 m
A utum n W ild s (D u Fu), 1133
Ba (overlord), 4
ba-gu wen (eight-legged essay), 725
bamboo, as w ritin g m aterial, 9
Ban Gu, 135215
Bao Jiao, 495n
Bao Zhao, 323-24, 630
beech trees, 482
Bei-gong W en-zi, 60
Beijing (Da-du), 704 723 724 727, 728,
835, 909
Beijing, Treaty of, 913
Bi, Battle of, 77
bi (disk), 84
b i (comparison), 34 66
bi (that), 116n
Bin 1218
biography, 215
by Si-ma Q uian, 14244
Bi-yu (Sapphire), 951
Black Tortoise (Xuan-w u), 180
b lo w fish, 650-51
Bo Bai, 836
Bo Cheng-en, 836
Bo Ju-yi, 4 9 6 -5 0 2 837n
feast poem of, 289
occasional poetry of, 49 6 -9 7
private persona of, 497-99
on Yang Yu-huan, 44 2-4 7, 496
bone, as w ritin g m aterial, 3
1195
General Index
Boxer Rebellion, 913
characters, in Tang poetry, 380-83
Bo-wu zhi (Zhuang Hua), 435
Chen-du, 214n, 368

422
Bo Y i, 142
breath control, 176
Buddhism, 188 222224
Chan, 556, 557 698, 700
D u Fu in, 425-28
Chen Dynasty, 226 311 332515
Chen Hong, 442453
Chen Liang, 931
o f Han-shan, 40 4 -6
H an Y u on, 597-601
in M id d le Ages
224
in N o rth ern Dynasties, 225
in Tang Dynasty, 367
o f W ang W ei, 385, 386
Buddhist Canon, 553
butterflies, 735-36
Bu-zhou, M o u n t, Y7Sn
Cai Yong, 664
calendar, translation and, x lv
calligraphy, 429, 638, 641ns 6A7n, 664n,
685, 697
Calling Back the Soul, 272w, 276-77,
322-23, 49 4-9 5
Calyx M an or, 43 7
C a n g jie , 345ns 410, 639
Cang-wu, 169n
Cao Ba, 4 3 1
Cao Biao, 267
Cao Cao, 223 224 2 6 3 -6 4 2 8 0 -8 1
325-26, 429m, 431, 585, 705n, S95n

invasion o f W u planned by, 29192
506ns 579
Cao fam ily, 224
Cao Pi, Emperor, 198, 223 224 263, 267
281-82
429n
lite rary theory of, 335 359-61
cao-shu (draft cursive), 6406 4 6 9 7

Cao Z h i, 193 198 199, 224 261, 263
267-70, 282, 919n

Cao Pis p ro h ib itio n and, 267
Cen Shen, 366 466-68
chi (foolish)818
China:
absorption o f foreign cultures in , 909
cultural change in , 555-56
free speech issue in, 300301
history and literature tim eline fo r xxxvx x x v ii
wM id d le Ages of, see KM id d le Ages
tax system of, 704, 723
Western images of, x l
China, Republic of, 913
Chinese characters, 345 384, 410, 639
historical phonology and, 910
Song alterations to use of, 557
Chinese language, vernacular vs. classical,
x l-x li
cbou, 919n, 921n

C hristianity, 912913
chrysanthemums, 315
Chu (kingdom ), 4 7 -8 77 125, 302n
1130n
see also Chu-ci
chuan-qi (classical tales), 518-49
tales o f broken faith , 53 1-4 9
tales o f keeping fa ith 518-31
chuan-qi (dramatic romances), 880-81

Palace o f Lasting L ife , 973-1102
Peach Blossom Fan 942-72
Peony Pavilion, 71-76, 880-906
Chu-ci ( Lyrics o f C hu
)x liv , 7, 155-75,
249 391-92
Calling Back the Recluse of, 211-21
C alling Back the Soul of, 204-211
Far Roam ing of, 176-81
"Fisherman, The of 391-92
Central Asia, 36 6-6 7, 368, 375 409% 455

Tang poetry on, 45 9 -7 7
Li Sao of, 162-75
Chan (Zen) Buddhism, 556, 557 698, 700

Chang-an, 221 2 23252
N ine Songs of, 7 1 5 5 -6 2 ,1 7 6 , 395nf

398
D u Fu in 413 4 2 0 -2 5 433, 434

Kai-feng and Hang-zhou vs., 556
Tang capital at, 366, 367, 370 420 424
4 3 3 ,4 3 4
Chao Cuo, 449n
Chao-fu, 418
1196
shamanic tra d itio n in, 155-56 176 181

199, 204212
tra d itio n of, 176-205
Chu-qin (The Springs and Autumns ofLu)

(attrib. Confucius), 4 6 59, 6077
ci (song lyrics), see song lyrics
General Index
ci (this here), 116n
cities, 25 5-5 8, 739
concubines, 365 36 7 -6 8 745-46, 951,

965n
952
c iv il service examinations, 36 5-6 6, 367,

479
Confucian classics, 2 2 2 ,222, 223,553,

554
in M in g Dynasty, 725
in Song Dynasty, 553-54
classical Chinese, vernacular vs., x l-x li
classical prose, see prose, classical
Classic of Changes, 222ns 320, 344-45,

345w, 350
Classic o f Docum ents (Shu-jing)9 3 6 , 124,

222k
Great Plan chapter of, 345

Classic o f Poetry {Shi-jing), 3 -4 , 6 1 0 -5 7
222, 222ft, 249 694n
airs section of, 11, 3 0 -5 7
Cao Cao's allusions to 280
D u Fus allusions to, 426
early discussions of, 58 -7 6
MEastern M ou ntains (C L V I), 264
Great Odes section of, 11-23
Great Preface to, 64-67, 272w, 300,
S52n
human sacrifice in , 26 -2 9
as humans target, 71
H ym ns section of, 11
in later poetry, 252
KLesser Odes section o f, 11 2 3 24
as model o f representation 354-55,
355n
oral transmission of, 3 9, 44
Ou-yang X iu
s commentary on, 555
restraint in, 274-75
ritu a l and, 10, 26 48
sections of, 11
Temple Hym ns o f Z h o u section of,
10-11
tone and, 65
W ang W eis allusions to, 388
Classic o f Rites (L i / / ) 67, 903w
Record o f M u sic, 669
C lim bing an Upper Story by the Pool
(Xie Ling-yun), 700
C old M o u n ta in ,M 40 4 -6
commentariesin Q ing literature, 911
Commentary to Classic o f R ivers (L i Daoyuan), 610-11
Common W ords to Warn the W orld {Jingshi tong-yan) (Feng M eng-long), 834
Complete Tang Poetry, 911
civ il service exam ination and, 366

Four Books of, 558
L i Z h is assault on, 808-11
in Q ing Dynasty, 910
Song reexam ination of, 554-55
Z h u X is commentaries on, 558
see also Classic o f Changes; Classic o f

Docum ents; Classic o f Poetry; Springs
and Autum ns, The; Y ili
Confucianism, x x x ix , 6 , 18, 28
Buddhism and, 597-601
in Eastern H an, 22122
Em peror as viewed in , 181
Empress W u as viewed by, 365
literature judged by, 326
o f M anchus910
M on go l h o stility to, 704
in N o rth e rn Dynasties, 225
O ld T e xt school vs. N e w T e xt
school222
on poetry, 62
rites and music in, 70
Tang vs. Song, 555
Three Kingdom s reaction against
224
T radition alist, 44 6065
Western Han influence on, 223

Yuan H ong-dao on, 812-13
Z hou as model fo r values of, 12
Confucius, 4 -5 , 30, 31 58 77, 79, 301
345
397
677n
see also Analects; Springs and AutumnsThe
Cong River, 244n

connoisseurship lite ra ti culture and,
637-49
Ou-yang X iu on, 638-39
Su Shi on 640-44, 647-49
W ang An-shi on, 644-46
Constant W ords to Awaken the W orld

(Xing-shi heng-yan) (Feng Meng-long),
856
courtesans, 571
727
745-46, 952n
courtship, in Classic of Poetry^ 53-57
cun, x lv
c u t-o ff lines (jue-ju; quatrains), 325, 383
4 0 6-1 2
1197
General Index
Da-du (Beijing), 704, 723 724 727 728,
Peach Blossom Fair, 942-72
835m, 909
D ai Ting-shi, 619
possible beginnings of, 381

in Qing Dynasty, 942-1102
Dan, Prince o f Yan, 997

D an-fu, 18
danger, in landscape accounts, 6 2 2-2 7
Dao (Way), 107-8
405808
Daoism 5 -6 60 110, 222
anecdotes and parables in, 29 5-9 9, 301,
3 0 2-5 , 306320
Chu-ci and, 176
Rescuing One of the Girls, 744-70

role-types in, 919, 921n
in Song, 557
variety plays
723-24
on X uan-zong and Yang Yu-huan, 455
D riftin g Sands, 175n
drunken-husband^-return songs, 562-65
Huang-lao, 8 , 176 181223

o f L i Bo, 400-403
messianic, 224
drunkenness:
D u Fu on, 2 8 5-8 7
H an Y u on, 287-88
M eng Jiao on, 288
in M id d le Ages, 224
in The Rom ance o f the Gods 771-72
Du Fu, xxxix, 379, 413-40, 583n, 1020,
Tang Dynasty and, 367, 378

o f Yuan Zhong-dao, 823-26
see also Lao-zi; La o-zi; Zhuang-zi

Daoist Canon, 553
Da-ya ( Great Odes section o f Classic o f
Poetry, 11-23
D e (Power), 12 ,1 8
death
feast poems and, 276- 77278
w ritin g genres fo r 614-16
deflected tone (ze-shertg), 383
diet, 176
Di-gao, 171n
MDiscourse on Literature (Lun-wen) (Cao
Pi), 335, 359-61
Discourse on the L y ric (Ci-lun^ (L i Q ingzhao), 580
D iscourses o f the Dom ains (G uo-yu), 77
D i tribe, 12
domestic life:
Bo Ju-yis poetry of, 49 6-9 7, 4 9 9-5 0
D u Fu on426
L i Qing-zhao on, 591-96
Dong-hu 318w
Dong-po see Su Shi
D ong-ting, Lake, 4 1 1-1 2
Dong Z h u o 223, 252, 261
double ninth festival, 315
dra ft cursive (cao-shu), 640, 641 697
drama, x x x ix , 71 -76
L i Y u and, 915
o f Lasting L ife , 973-1102

1198
W ang H an on, 407

1133
A n Lu-shan rebellion poetry of, 42 0-2 5,
11311132
arrival of, at Jiang V illage, 4 2 3-2 4
Confucian allusions of, 416
on drunkenness, 2 8 5 -8 7
early, 413- 16
form ation-of-soldier poetry of, 472-75
fro n tie r poetry of, 468-69
in Kui-zhou, 4 3 1-4 0
as lyric poet416
m id- and late Xang poets compared w ith ,
478
o ti painting, 428-31
in Q in-zhou and Cheng-du, 425-28
Shakespeare compared w ith , 413
W ang An-shi
s adm iration fo r, 691
on Yang Yu-huan, 441
Zhuang-zi allusions of, 416-17

D u M u , 379-80, 502-8
W ang W ei compared w ith , 503
on Yang Yu-huan, 452-53
on Yang-zhou, 631-32
Dun-huang, 560, 56 4-6 5, 574
D u Shen-yan, 4 1 3-1 4
D u Tenth Sinks the Jewel Box in Anger
(Feng Meng-long), 834
dwellings, x lv i-x lv ii
in Tang poetry, 373

early China, 3-218
lite rary prose of, 102-23
narrative of, 77-101
oral transmission o f literature of, 3, 9, 44
General Index
poetry of,
see Classic o f Poetry
political oratory of, 124-34
Fen-shuy Books to Be Burned (L i Z h i), 726

Fisherman, The (attrib. Q u Yuan), 997n
see also Chu-ci; Classic o f Poetry:
Fishermen, 391
H istorica l Records; Springs and

Autum ns The; Zuo TraditionThe
Five Barrows, 436n

Five Coverings
187
Five Pecks o f Rice, 223
Eastern H a n , 32, 221-23
flora and fauna, 222

birds, 264-55
blow fish, 650-51
butterflies, 735-36
feast poems of, 278
origins of Shi in, 249

yue-fu of, 229-36
Eastern Jin Dynasty, 225311
Eastern Z h o u , 4
chrysanthemums, 315
East Grove Society, 957n

East Slope (Su Dong-po), 1133
cypress, 432
in Cbu-ciy 162
eccentricity, Three Kingdom s fascination

w ith , 224
horses, 656
eight-legged essay
725
peonies, 673
England, 912-13, 1149

shuo), 601
essay (lun
translation and, xlvii-xlviii
plu m blossoms, 586-87

w ild goose, 379-80
ethics, in early Chinese narrative80

M in g Dynasty and, 725
m ing plant, 1021
everyday objects, in Song poetry, 649-56

exchanges, as subject o f early Chinese
narrative, 83-87
willows (//), 394n, 407
in yue-fu, 229
Ford of Sky, Y75n
Forest o f Jo kes, The (X ia o-lin) (Han-dan
C hun), 305
excursion poems, 329-30

exordium, 128
Forest o f Notes, The (Zhi-lin) (Su Shi), 668-69

Forest o f RecordsThe (Su Shi), 622
famine
form , translation and, xliv-xlv
in M id d le Ages
221
Fan Cheng-da 658-60
Fang Guan, 420, 425
Fang X ia o-ru , 724
Fang-zhang, 185
Formalists
Fan K u a i 997n
free speech, 300-301
Fan Li, 99,100,101, 504n
frontier poetry,
(ge-diao pai), 1129

Four Books, 558725
fragm entation and isolation, in Southern

Dynasties poetry, 311
France, 913
459-77
Fan-su, 837w
H ig h Tang, 462-69
feast poetry, 274-94

of Cao Cao, 280-81
of Cao Pi, 281-82
of Cao Zhi, 282
of Classic o f Poetry^ 274-77
mid- and late Tang, 469-72

Southern Dynasties origins of, 459-60
fu
(exposition, poetic exposition), xliv, 7
6 6 ,1 0 2 , 1 5 5 ,2 2 3 -2 3
o f tenth and eleventh centuries, 289-91
100101
Fu-chaK ing o f W u , 99
Fu-fei, 170, 179ft, 193198
third-century interests and, 282-83
Fu Jian, 331
Fei (not so), 116n

Fei Lian, \69n, 179n
Fu Xi, 345
Fu Yue, 173ns 177n
Fei River, Battle of, 331
170n 179n
Feng Meng-long, 564727
Feng section of Classic of Poetry, see Airs
section of Classic of Poetry
Feng Long,
Feng-xiang, 423
Gao E912
Gao Jian-li, 1077n
Gao M in g , 726
Gao Q i, 848
Gao X ian-zhi, 366
119 9
General Index
G ao-X in, 171n
Gao-yang, Emperor, 162rt, 167ns 178n
Gao Yao, 172n

Gao-zu (L i Yuan), 365
ge (tower), xlvii
Genghiz Khan, 558
G engW ei, 379, 560
Genuine M en (Undying), 176 181,188%
378, 4 0 0 4 0 3
Germany, 913
Ge-shu H an, 368, 424
Ge-tian, 315, 592n, 1143
Goddess, encounters w ith , 1 89-97
Golden LotusThe {Jin Ping Mei), 726

Gong-sun Chou, 60
Gong-sun Long-zi113 116n, 118
Gong-sun Shu, 433
Gong-yang Tradition, the, 77
Gong Zi-zhen, 1146-49
Gou-jian, K ing o f Yue, 99 100 504m
Gou M ang, 179n
government, in poetry, 496 5 0 1 -2
Grades o f the Poets (Shi Pin) (Zhong Rong), 343
g ra ffiti, in Tang Dynasty, 374
Grand Canal, 845
Great Bellows, 341n
Great Odes (Da-ya) section o f Classic o f
Poetry, 11-23
Great W a ll, 23
Gua-bu, 855 m
Guang-dong, 558 704, 720

Guang-wu Emperor, 2 2 1 ,1050n
Guan H an-qing, 728-31, 739
variety play of, 744-70
Guan Pan-pan, 965n3 966n
Guan Yu, 922n
Guan X iu , 472
Gua-zhi-er (Hanging Branch Songs) (Feng

M en-long, com piler), 564
Gua-zhou, 845w, 855m
Gun (son o f Gao Yang), 167n, 168n
Guo A o, 167w, 17tn
Guo~feng (Airs o f the Domains), 30
Guo Pu, 43 8
Guo-yu (Discourses o f the Domains), 77

S^~shi (O ld Poems), 249, 2 5 1-6 2
Gu Yan-w u, 1129-30
hair, translation andx lv ii
H an Dynasty, 6 8 -9 14, 77
1200
collapse of, 249

Eastern, 221-23
usurpation of, 221
Western, 9 , 102 130155
X iong-nu battles w ith , 463n
H an Fei, 5, 83
Han Fei-zi anecdote in , 29 9-3 00
H an Gan, 431
Hang-zhou, 556, 558, 663
Su Shi in, 674-77
Han History (Ban Gu), 135

648
H an Kang, S59n
H an River, 32 33, 196n
Han-shan, 4 0 4-6 , 620
H a n X in , 318Wj 461ns 922ft, 933
H an Y u, 368-69, 479 4 8 4 -8 9 494, 555,
678 688
557
638
M em o rial Discussing the Buddhas
Bone
597-601
presentation preface of, 607-9
Su Shi compared w ith , 670-72
H an Zhong, 1 7 6 -7 7 ,1063
H an Z huo, 167n
hao-fang lyrics, 582

Hawkes, David, 176
heavenly journeys, in
181185
Chu-ci tra d itio n , 176,
He-bei, 244n
hemistiches, in Chu-ci, 156n
hermetics, 510-11
heroes, in early Chinese narrative, 81-83
He X un , 325-26
H ig h Tang, 385-412
fro n tie r literature o f 462-69
L i Bo 39 7 -^0 4
M eng Hao-ran, 3 9 5-9 7
quatrain of, 406-12
W ang W ei, 371-72, 373 374, 375
38384 385-95
historical phonology, 910
H istorical Records (Shi ji) (Sima Qian), 9

67, 88 -96 135-54 391-92, 963n} U 14 n
Zuo Tradition compared w ith , 87 -8 8 96
historical w ritin g , 77101; see also
H istorica l RecordsSprings and
Autum nss The; Z uo Tradition, The
H istory o f the Eastern Han, 49 2-9 3
history poems [yong~shi sh i), 378
o f L i Shang-yin, 510, 5 1 5-1 7
H o ng Kong, 91 2 ,1 1 4 9
General Index
H ong Sheng, 973-1102
Jiang K ui, 5 8 5-8 7
horses, 656
H o u Fang-yu, 942
H o u Ji (M ille t), Lo rd, 11 14 416 417
H o u Jing, 225-26
on Yang-zhou, 632-33
Jiang-nan region, 311
Jiang-xi School, 694
Jiang Yan, 438
H u ( T urks ), x lv i, 455470
huai-gu (m editating on the past), 374
Jian-kang (Jian-ye Jin-ling; Nanjing),

22 5-2 6, 311 333, 334, 724
Jian-wen (Xiao Gang), Emperor, 326-28
Jia Z h i, 4 1 1-1 2
H uai-nan, 211
Huai-nan-zh 355
H u a i River, 22
H uan, Duke o f Q i, 173nt 297-98
Huang Chao, 370
Huang D a-lin, 694n
huang-di (Emperor), 8
Huang-lao Daoism 8 176181
in H an Dynasty, 223
Huang T ing-jian, 693-95
Huang Z un-xian, 114950
H uan Jing-yen, 1129
H uan T u i, 6\Gn
H ua-qing Palace, 4 1 8, 4 5 2 -5 3 454
H ui-yuan, 605
H u i-zi, 113296
Hui-zong, Song Emperor, 556
hum an sacrifice, 26 -29
huo-fa (vitalism), 698

H u o Q u-bing, 462
H ym ns (Song) section o f Classic o f
Poetrys 11
hyperbolic satire, 181
im perial hunts, 332
impermanence and disillusionm ent poems,
260-62
independent songs (san-qu), 728743
in fo rm a l prose, 618-19
Late M in g , 807-33
o f L i Z h i, 807-11
Ou-yang X iu
s style of, 554
ofSu Shi, 621-22
668-70
o f Yuan Hong-dao, 811-14
o f Yuan Zhong-dao, 821-23
in k , 512w
Islam, 367
itin era ria component o f Chu-ci, 176
Jie (Xia ruler), 124

163n, 168w, 171n
Jie Yu, 390n
Jin (Pre-Qin dom ain), 77, 125, 128, 302
Jin (Jurchens), 556, 558 632, 723909
Jin Dynasty, 224, 270 329-31
jin g (villain role in drama), 919n, 921n
Jing Ke, 998
Jing-zhou (Jing-man), 252
Jin-ling (Nanjing), 724
jin -sbi (presented scholars), 365, 366, 367

479
jin -ti (recent style), 383
jiu (bird), 36
jiu (beer, wine), xlvi
Jiu feng-chen (Rescuing One of the Girls)
(Guan Han-qing), 744-70
joke collections, 295, 30 5 -6
jokes, see anecdotes, parables and profound
jokes
Journey to the West, The (Monkey; Xi-you

ji) (W u Cheng, attrib.), 726
juan (scroll) 594
jue-ju (Mcu t-o ff lines
quatrains), 325383
H ig h Tang, 4 0 6-1 2
JurchenJin Dynasty, 5 5 6 ,558 632,723,909
Kai-feng (Bian-jing), 553 556, 558
kalpas 494n
K hitan, 244n
K hu bilai Khan, 558, 704
kong-hou, x lv
Kong Rong, 743n
Kong Shang-ren, 910 942-72
Kuang Heng, 436n
Kui-zhou, 431-40
Kun-m ing Pool, 434
Kun-quj 726,
Japan, 913, 1150
jia (inauthentic), 808
Jian-an, 224
Jian-di 171
882
Labyrinth (M i-lou), 630

landscape accounts, 622-25
personified, 627-30
1201
General Index
landscape literature, 185
linked verse, 325
poetry 319 320, 321323

language, adequacy of, 63, 64
L in Ze-xu, 912
Lang-xian, 856-79
Lao-zi, 5 -6 3 6 7 ,437, 4 9 4 , 1020w
Legalism, 5 -6 , 8181
L i Qing-zhao, 58 0-8 3, 583

Epilogue to Records on M etal and Stone,
591-96
masculine song lyric of, 582-83
Lesser Odes (Xiao-ya) section of Classic

of Poetryt 11
2324
L i Sao (Q u Yuan, attrib.)) 7 1 6 2 -7 5 ,177w,
Letter in Answer to X ie o f the Secretariat

(Tao H ong-jin), 319
tw o components of, 176

L i Shan commentary, 187w
L i Shang-yin, x l, 454 51 0 -1 7 1044
letters, 597
in classical prose, 603-5
in verse, 374
o f Yuan Hong-duo, 813-14
Level M o u n ta in H a ll 633-35
level tone (ping sheng), 383
L i, K ing o f Z hou , 20
li (third of a mile)
xlv
Liang Dynasty, 226, 311
325
326-28, 330
Liao, 556
Liao-zhaVs Record o f W onders (Pu Songling), 911, 1103-27
L i Bo (poet), x x x ix , x l, 577
Daoism of, 400-403
fro n tie r poetry of, 464-66
as H ig h Tang poet, 397-404
Lake Dong-ting outing of, 411-12
L i H e compared w ith , 493
parting poem of, 376-78
as unrestrained, 40 3 -4
in Xuan-zong court, 397
yue-fu of, 243 246, 398-99

Li
Li
Li
Li
Bo (prose w rite r), 623

Cai, 462
Dao-yuan, 610-11
Duan560
Lie-zi, 1142n
anecdotes and parables in , 3 0 2 -5 , 357
L i Guang ( Flying General )462, 997n
L i He, 199, 4 8 9-9 6
feast poem of, 289
fro n tie r poetry of, 4 7 1-7 2
L i Bo compared w ith , 493
otherness as preoccupation of, 489
L i H u a (Tang prose w rite r), 4 7 5-7 7
Li-huas 516
U J i (Classic o f R ites), 67
L i Ling, 135, 251
U M u , 464
(holy one)156
1202
178, 948
hermetic poetry of, 51 0-1 5

L i Shi-min (Tai-zong), 365
literary salons, 311, 325, 343
o f M id d le Ages
335-61
lite ra ti culture in Song Dynasty 555,
556, 637-62
connoisseurship in , 637-49
ordinary things in, 649-56
pastoral scenes, 656-60
w it, 660-61
literature
as category o f w ritin g , x ix
in Song Dynasty, 637
o f Southern Dynasties, 225, 311-34
Tung Frontier, 4 5 9 -7 7
343-44
as wen
Western influence on, 9 1 3 -1 4 ,11291152
see also specific form s

L i T ing-zhi, 705709
L ittle Su, 952
liu (w illow s), 394
L iu An, 280
L iu Bang, 81114
L iu Biao, 252
L iu Ling, 289, 308
L iu Pi, H a n prince o f W u, 130
Liu Xiang, 436n

L iu Xie, 343-59
L iu X in , 351
L iu X iu , 221
L i Yang-bing, 638
Liu Yong, 574, 575, 582, 949n

L iu Y u -xi, 505
L iu Zong-yuan, 6 0 1 -3 6 1 1 -1 2 6 1 7-1 8
847n
L i X iang-jun, 942
L i Y u (song lyricist, emperor o f southern
Tang), 5 6 7 -6 9 582
General Index
Li
Li
Li
Li
Y u (Q ing w rite r), 915-41

Yuan (Gao-zu), 365
Z h i, 726, 807-11
Zi-cheng, 727 909, 942
Logicians, 113 116, 296

longing poems, 25 3-5 4, 257
long lyrics (m an-ci), 574
lou (tower) x lv i-x lv ii

Lou-lan, 460
Love:
in Classic o f Poetry, 5 3 -5 7
in song lyrics, 565-66, 5 7 1-7 7
Lu, 4
L u ji, 335-43, 637
Luo Guan-zhong, 726
Luo River, 170w
Lu Shang (Tai-gong), 173, 997
Luo Shu-jing, 641m
Luo-yang, 4, 221, 223, 252, 261
fa ll o f Jin capital in , 225
Tang eastern capital in, 368
lU-sbi (regulated verse), 383 41 5-1 6

Lu te, The (Pi-pa ji) (Gao M in g ), 726
Lu W ang, see Lu Shang
Luo You, 583, 653, 695-98
pseudonym of, 661
lychees, 452
lyric, 416
Lyrics o f C hus see Chu-ci
M anchu (Qing) invasion, 246826
Manchus, x x x ix , 727
see also Q ing Dynasty
man-ci (long lyrics), 574
M a o com mentary,M 31, 32, 32, 52 58
75n
marriage, in Classic o f Poetry, 53 -5 7
M a y Fourth Movem ent, 91 4 ,1 1 2 9
M a Zhi-yuan, 739-43
measures, translation and, x lv
M e i Sheng, 130, 204
. M e i Yao-chen, 639-40, 649 650-51,
M eng Jiao, 47 8-8 4, 688

M eng-zi (Mencius), 6, 2860
on interpretation o f Classic o f Poetry, 61
62
message and g ift poems, 258
M ia o Zai-cheng, 705709
m id- and late Tang poetry, 478-517
Bo Ju-yi, 49 1-5 02
D u Fu compared w ith , 478
D u M u , 502-8
Han Yu, 484-89
L i He, 4 8 9-9 6
L i Shang-yin, 510-17
M eng Jiao, 4 7 8-8 4
self-consciousness in 478, 496
Song h o stility tow ard, 478
Yu X ua n-ji, 5 0 9 -1 0
M id d le Ages
221-361
anecdotes, parables and profound jokes of,
295-310
Feast poems of, 274-94
literary theory of, 335-61
period in tro du ction to, 22 1-2 6
poetry o f southern Dynasties in,
311-34
see also shi (classical poetry); yue-fu

m ilitary:
in fro n tie r poetry, 4 6 2 -6 4
in M id dle Ages
223
poetry o f A n Lu-shan Rebellion,
420-25
in Tang Dynasty, 367-68
M ille t ( H o u ji) , Lo rd, 1114
Mi-lou (Labyrinth), 630

M i-lu o River, 7
Ming Dynasty, 333-34, 724

Archaist movement o f244
drama of, 744-70
Europe and, 725
im perial voyages in 724-25
intellectuals o f820
interest in Song poetry of, 821-23
yue-fu in, 244-45
688-91
m ellow blandness (ping-dan)649, 690
wM em o rial Discussing the Buddhas Bone
m ing plant, 1021

misunderstanding, as element o f Classic o f
(H an Y u), 597-601
memorials, 597-601
M on go l invasion, x x x ix , 558 702
Mencius79
M eng Hao-ran, 3 9 5-9 7
W ang W ei compared w ith , 388-89
Poetry, 44, 50
704-20
h o stility of, to Confucianism, 704
see also Yuan and M in g Dynasties
1 2 03
General Index
N ie Zheng, 152-54
m otifs:
birds, 265-66
N ine Songs, The (Q u Yuan, attrib.), 7

1 5 5-6 2 176, 395ft, 398
cities, 255-58
Daoist, 378
death, 276
drunken husbands return, 562-65
N in g Q i, 173
No-Cares
315, 1143
feasts, see feast poetry

impermanence and disillusion, 2 6 0-6 2
longing, 254257
male longing, 571, 574
messages and gifts258
parting, 249, 2 5 0 -5 3 374-78
N o ng Y u, 855 m
N o rth e rn and Southern Dynasties, 225,
311, 332
N o rth ern Dynasties, yue-fu of, 240-43
novels, 911-12
Western, 913
sorry to have missed y ou

371-74
stranger and women, 2 5 8-6 0
turning away, 272-73
in yue~fus 247
see also flora and fauna

M o u n ta in Songs (Shan-ge) (Feng Menglong), 727
M o -z i, 5 116n
M u ( O rch id >Duke o f Zheng, 80
Mugua
916n
musical instruments, x lv
N a n jin g (Jian-kang; Jian-ye; Jin-ling),
2 2 5 -2 6 ,3 1 1 , 333 334, 724
N anjing, Treaty o f (1842)912-13
Nara Singde, 1 1 2 9 ,1 1 3 7 -3 9
narrative:
anecdotes, parables and profound jokes,
2 95-310
conclusions avoided in, 16
early, 77-101
exegitical, 7981
o f fa ith broken, 531-49
heroes in , 81-83
o f keeping faith , 518-31
o f L i Y u, 915-41
stories, 834-79
o f Tang, 518-49
see also anecdotes; parables, and profound

jokes specific w orks
N a tu ra l W it school11 29,1140
two components of, 176
Old Poems (gu-shi), 249

O ld T e x t school o f Confucianism, 222
omission, aesthetics of, 69
O n the C hild M in d (L i Z h i), 726,
807-11, 808-9
opium , 9 1 2 ,1 1 4 7
O piu m W ar, 912
oratory, in early China, 124-34, 204n 212
O rchid Pavilion party, 2 8 2 -8 4 291
Ou-yang X iu , 55 4-5 5, 633 684-88
connoisseurship of, 638-40, 685 87
landscape account of, 628-30
pseudonym o f 612-13, 685, 687 920n
Remarks on Poetry, 554

646-47
song lyrics of, 569, 570
Su Shi and, 663 678-81
Over-the-mists gallery, 430
painting:
D u Fu on, 428-31
Song connoisseurship and, 642-46,
647-49
o f W ang W ei, 386
Palace o f Lasting Life, The (Chang-sheng
dian) (Hong Sheng), 455, 973-1102
Pamirs, 244n
Panegyric, 181
Pan Yue (Pan An), 919n, 952ny 957
paper, 9
Neo-Confucianism, 555, 725

745, 808
European Reform ation compared w ith ,
555
paper money, 724, 739
in Southern Song, 557

N e w Laws, 673, 691
parting poems, 249, 2 5 0 -5 3 374-78,
N e w T e x t school o f Confucianism, 222

N e w Y u e 496501
1 2 04
parables, see anecdotes, parables and

pro fo u n d jokes
40 7-8
party songs, 559-60
eleventh century, 569
General Index
Peach Blossom Fan (Kong Shang-Ren), 910,
942-72
Peach Blossom Spring (Tao Q ian), 644
902n
Peach Creek577
Peach Grove, Battle of, 424
Peach Leaf, 952 967n
Pei D i, 374392
Pei D u, 743n
Peng-lai, 123 185w, 436
Peng X ian, 165n
peonies, 673
Peony Pavilion (Mu-dan ting) (Tang X ia nzu), x l, 71 - 76 727, 88 0-9 06 949n
ping-dan (mellow blandness), 649, 690

ping-sbeng (level tone), 383
pi-pa, xlvi
place:
sense of, 620-33
spirits of, 62730
play-scriptsyuan-ben), 810
plum blossoms, 5 8 6-8 7
poems on things (yong-wu), 378
Poetic Exposition on Literature, T he
(W en fu) (L u J i) 335-43
poetic meter, syllabic
383
poetic theory, 34
poetry:
commentary w ith in , 44
s k ill in, as necessary to advancement,
367
social uses of, 371, 374
o f Southern Dynasties, 311-34
o f Tang, see Tang Dynasty, poetry o f
Poetry T ria l on W u Terrace, The
673-74
po licy discussions
(yi), 597
p o litica l oratory, in early China,
124-34
politics, politicization:
'
o f Bo Ju-yi, 476 50 1-2
in early Chinese narrative, 79-81
o f heavenly journey, 181
o f L i Shang-yin, 510
in Q ing Dynasty, 1128-29

o f Su Shi, 663, 673-74
o f W en Tian-xiang, 70420
Polo, M arco, 723
popular songs:
in Song Dynasty, 561, 564- 65574

in Three K in gd om period, 224
prefaces, 605-10
o f H an Yu, 60 7-9
printin g, 553
o f vernacular literature, 724
private life:
late M in g focus on, 826
Song creation of, 637
prose:
o f early China, 102-23
sk ill in as necessary in social life,
597
stories, 834-79
vernacular, in M in g Dynasty, 726
771-806
v e r s e u s e d in ,
111m
see also Zhuang-zi
prose, classical, 597-619

accounts o f visits, 610-14
essays, 601-3
funerary genres, 614-16
inform al, 618-19
letters, 603-5
memorials, 597-601
parables, 617-18
prefaces, 605-10
pseudonyms, studio name
731
Purple Jade, 1063w
Pu Song-ling, 911
1103-27
Q i, M o u n t, 12
q i (vital breath), 65, 461

Q ian Q ian -yi334
Q iao the Prince (W ang-zi Q iao), 176
188
Q i-dong ye-yu (R ustic Chat from the East
of Chi) (Zhou Mi), 654

Qi Dynasty, 311, 325
Q i Liang, w ife of, 259n
qin (harp), x lv , x lv i
Q in (kingdom ), 4 5 -7 8 145, 1130m
poetry of, 26
27
script of, 6 -7
qings 727
Q ing Dynasty, 727 909-1152
intellectuals in , 910
nineteenth-century realities of,
1146
period in tro du ction to, 90 9-1 4
1205
General Index
Q ing Dynasty, poetry of, 1128-52
Gong Z i-Z hen , 1146-49
Gu Yan-wu, 1129-30
Huang Jing-ren, 1144-46
Huang Z un-xian, 1149-50
N ara Singde, 1137-39
Q iu Jin, 1150-51
schools of, 1128
W ang Guo-wei, 1151-52
W ang Shi-zhen, 1135-37
W u Wei-ye, 1130-35
Zhao Y i, 1 1 4 (M 3
Q ing (M anchu) invasion, 246, 826
Q in Shi-huang, Emperor, 8
Rom ance o f the Three Kingdom sThe (Sanguo zhi yan-yi) (Luo Guan-zhong,
attrib.), 725
rom antic love, in Tang Dynasty, 369-70
Rong tribe, 12
Ruan Ji
33
270-72
431n, 957n
Ruo Tree, 169n
Ru-shou, 179n
Russia, 913
R ustic Chat from the Ea st o f Chi (Qi-dong

ye-yu) (Zhou M i), 654
Sang-gan River, 244
Sang Hong-yang, 501
Q in-zhou, 425-28
Q iu Jin, 1150-51
Q iu W ei, 322
san-qu (independent songs), 728-43
quatrains ( c u t-o ff lines ; jue~ju), 325

383
H ig h Tang, 406-12
ce), 81
124128
Schleiermacher, Friedrich, x liii
Q u Yuan, 7 155-56, 189 391 948,
912
script:
996n
racism, 913
Rain on the Beech Tree (Wu~tongyu) (Bai

Pu), 455
Recent Songs from a Terrace o f Jade {Yu~tai

xin-yong), 233, 343
recent style (jin-ti)9383
Red Cliff, 506, 579
party at 29 1-9 2
Red Eyebrows, 221
Red Waters, Y75n

regulated verse (lii-shi), 383-84 415-16691
Rem arks on Poetry (Shi-hua) (Ou-yang
X iu ), 554, 6 4 6-4 7
Rescuing One o f the G irls (Jiu feng-chen)

(Guan Han-qing), 744-70
Restoration Society, 957n 1130
retainers, 2 6 -29 , 279, 280
rhetoric, 124
ritua l:
Chu~ci and, 204; see also Chu-cishamanic

tradition in
Schemes o f the W arring States (Zhan-guo
Scholars, The (Ru-lin wai-shi) (W u Jing-zi),
H an, 9
Q in, 8
Shang, 3
fo r w ritin g vernacular Chinese, 557
scrolls, 9
change to bound books from , 553
se (great harp), x lv
seal script, 638
serial analogies, 298
Seven Masters o f the Jian-an
264 265
266
278359
sexuality, 745-46, 946n
see also concubines, courtesans

Shakespeare, W illia m , 413
shamanic tra d itio n , in Chu-ci 155-56, 176
18 1,19 9, 204212
Shaman Peng, \65n
Shaman X ia n, 165fts 172n
Shang (Yin) Dynasty, 3 , 12 18 20 77124
Shang Yang, 5
shanren, 935n
Shao-kang, 167w, 171
Classic o f Poetry and, 10
Shen De-qian, 407
fo r dead212
shen-yun (spiritual resonance), 1135
ôcks N od Their HeadsThe (Shi dian tou)

(Lang-xian, attrib.), 856
Romance o f the GodsThe (Feng-shen yanyi) (X u Z hong-lin, attrib.), x l, 77 1-8 06

1206
satire, hyperbolic, 181
Shen-zong, Emperor, 555691
she-ti3 162n
shi (classical poetry), 62
beginnings of, 249-73
General Index
Classic of Poetry and, 252

254
coming to city as subject of, 255-58
first-person voice of, 249
heavenly journey in, 184
impermanence and disillusion in, 260-62
longing in, 254
257
in Song Dynasty, 556-57, 684-703
stranger and woman in, 258-60
385, 559
in Tang Dynasty, 367
themes of, 250
yue-fu compared with, 249
shi (gentleman), 62
shi (power; momentum), 353
Shi Cang-shu
640-41
Shi Chong, 306
Shi-de405
Shi-hua (Remarks on Poetry) (Ou-yang
Xiu), 554
646-47
Shi ]isee Historical Records
Shi-jing, see Classic of Poetry
Shi Ke-fa, 826, 827w, 909
Shi Nai-an726
short songs (xiao4itig)y574
Shou-chun, 155
Shuang-guan Wan-er, 369
Shu-Han Kingdom, 223
Shu-jing (Classic of Documents), 3, 6
Shun (Zhong-hua), Sage-King, 163w,
169n
Shu Qi, 142
Sichuan, 397
Si-kong Tu, 508
Silent Operas (Wu-shengxi) (Li Yu), 915-41
silk, as writing material, 9
Silk Road366
Si-ma Cheng-zhen, 400
Si-ma family, 224, 270
287
Si-ma Qian, 9,1112
14
67, 7778
96,
135-54
castration of, 135
Han accounts by, 145-52
as idiosyncratic historian, 142
Nie Zheng biography by, 152-54
Si-ma Rui (Emperor Yuan), 225, 311
Si-ma Tan, 135
Si-ma Xiang-ru, 181, 222
837w, 903
singing, 324
Sino-Japanese War, 913
Sogdians, 455
Song (domain), 79
Song Dynasty, xxxix, 553-720
Confucian Classics in, 553, 554-55
on Du Fu, 413
entertainment in, 557
late Ming interest in, 821-23
period introduction to, 553-58
printing in, 553, 555
writers and intellectuals in, 554
yue-fu in, 244
Song Dynasty, poetry of, 661-62
on connoisseurship, 637-49
on ordinary things, 649-56
pastoral scenes, 656-60
self-consciousness in, 661-62
on sense of place, 620-33
song lyrics, 559-90
wit, 660-61
Song (Liu-Song) Dynasty, 311
song lyrics (ci), 559-90
drunken-husband^-return, 562-65
of early Southern Song, 583-84
as emerging literary form 576
of Jiang Kui, 585-87
landscapes in, 575
of Li Qing-zhao, 580-83, 583
literary vs. vernacular, 560-61
masculine, 582-83
in Ming Dynasty, 911
of Nara Singde, 1137-39
party songs of eleventh century,
569-71
party themes of, 559-60
in Qing Dynasty, 911
1128-53
of romance, 571-77
ofSu Shi, 577-80
of Tang and Five Dynasties, 565-69
of Wang Guo-wei, 1152
as written by men, 559
ofWuWen-ying, 588-90
Song (
Hymnssection of Classic of
Poetry, 11
Song Yu, 189
sorry-to-have-missed-youwpoems,
371-74
soul-calling, in Chu-ci, 204-14
warnings about, 213
Southern Dynasties, 225
literary theory in, 343-59
poetry of previous eras preserved in311
1207
General Index
Southern Dynasties
poetry of, 311-24
399-400
Bao Zhao, 32324
Tang poets compared with, 329684
Tao Qian, 312-19
Xie Ling-yun, 319-23
yue-fu of, 237-40
Southern Ming, 334
Southern Song, 556-58, 632
fall of, 704-20
poets of, 653
695702
song lyrics of, 583-84
Southern Tang, 567-68, 692
Spiritual Resonance school, 11291135
Springs and Autumns, The (Chun-qiu)
(Confucius), 4
6
59, 60, 77
222
Springs and Autumns of Ww and Yue (Wu
Yue Chun-qiu), 88
stories:
Liao-zhai
s Record of Wonders, 1103-27
Tang, 518-49
vernacular, 834-79
see also anecdotes, parables and profound
jokes; narrative; prose; tales
Story of the Stone (Dream of the Red
Chamber; Hong~lou meng) (Cao Xueqin)
9121151
storytelling, 557
in Ming Dynasty, 725-26
vernacular, 834
Su Che, 663, 678
Su Dong-po, see Su Shi
Su Hui, 966n
Sui Dynasty, 225
226
365, 515-16,
630-31
Sun Quan, 431585
Sun Si-miao, 859
Suo Jing, 1150
Su Shi (Su Dong-po), 201, 555, 663-83,
959ft,
1133
on arts, 640-44
on delightful occasions, 667-68
Hang-zhou period of, 674-77
Han Yu compared with, 670-72
Ou-yang Xiu and, 663, 678-81
political difficulties of, 663
673-74
on relationships, 678-83
song lyrics of, 577-80
582
633-34
travels of, 622-24
Su Shun-qin, 639-40
1208
Su Xiao-xiao, 490
Su Xun, 663
Su-zong, Emperor, 422, 423
swindles, in early narrative, 83-87
syllabic poetic meter, 383
Tai-gong (Lii Shang), 997n
Tai-hao, 179
Tai-ping tian-guo rebellion, 913
Tai-shi135
Tai-zong (Li Shi-min), 365
Talas River, 367
tales:
of faith broken, 531-48
of keeping faith, 518-31
supernatural, 1103-27
Tales of Emperor Wus The3436n-37n
Tang (Shang founder)124
Tang Dynasty, 226
365-549
Confucianism in, 368-69
frontier literature of, 459-77
mid-, 368-69, 469-75, 478-517
wofficial history of, 554
period introduction to, 365-70
Song overthrow of, 553
Southern Dynasties poets compared with,
329
tales of, 518-49
women in, 365, 366, 367, 368, 369-70
Wu Zi-xu story in, 88
99-100
yue-fu in, 243
246
247
284-89
Tang Dynasty, poetry of, 371-458
character types and vignettes in, 380-83
Du Fu, 413-40
High, see High Tang poetry
mid- and late Tang, see mid- and late Tang
poetry
occasional poems, 371
parting poems, 374-78
Song poetry compared with, 329684
wsorry-to-have-missed-youwpoems,
371-74
Xuan-zong and Yang Yu-huan as subjects
of, 441-58
Tang Xian-zu, xl, 71-76, 727, 880-906
Tao Hong-jing, 319
Tao Qian, xl, 225
309, 311, 312-19
390, 620, 644, 743, 902, 1133
individual as focus of, 312
Ksacrificial prayer for dead of, 615-16
General Index
self-image of, 314-15
Vim alakirti sutra 903n
W ang W ei influenced by, 388
V irg il, 441
Temple Hym ns o f Z h o u
w 10-11
terrace, x lv i
Three F la g s , 188
visits, accounts o f (you-ji), 610-14

vitalism (huo-fa), 698
Three Kingdoms, 223-24, 579, 705n, 724 wan, x liv , x lv

743k
W ang An-shi, 555, 691-93
T ian-tai, 185, 186
T ibet, 367
wars w ith , 244, 470
Tiered Walls, 186n

Tong-zhou, 845
tortoise shells, as w ritin g m aterial, 3
T oyoto m i Hideyoshi, 835
travel literature:
Chu-ci as, 176181

in late M in g , 823-26
on a rt 6 4 4-4 6
reform s of, 555 663, 673-74
W ang Bi, 224
W ang-di, 214
W ang G uo-wei, 1151-52
W ang He-qing, 736
W ang Jian, 470
W ang Ji-de, 886
Wang Mang, 221

W ang Shi-zhen1 1 2 9 ,1 1 3 5 -3 7
trees, 432
Wang Shu, 169n
Ktristiawcomponent of Chu-ci176
W ang W ei, x l, 199
trom pe d oeil428
Buddhism of, 385386
Tuanyuan
936n
Classic o f Poetry allusions of, 388
turning-aw ay poems, 272-73

twentieth century, 9 1 3 -1 4 ,1 1 5 0 -5 2
Du Mu compared with, 503
Uighurs, 368
U ndying (Genuine M en), cult of, 1 7 6,18 1,
188, 3 7 8 ,4 0 0 4 0 3 ,4 8 9
urban culture:
in Yuan Dynasty, 728744
farmers in poetry of, 387-89

fro n tie r poetry of, 46 2-6 4
as H ig h Tang poet, 385-95
landscape painting of, 386
M eng H a o 'ra n compared w ith , 388-89
parting poems of, 375
quiet life celebrated by, 390-91
regulated verse by, 38 3 -8 4
sorry-to-have-missed-you poems of,
variety plays (za-ju), 723-24
Rescuing One of the Girlss 744-70

structure of, 744
vernacular, Chinese:
classical Chinese vs., x l-x li
literature of, in M in g , 727, 820
m ixing o f poetic language w ith , 694, 700
song, 557
stories, 834-79
vernacular song, Yuan 723 728-43
classic poetry translated in to , 738-39
M a Zhi-yuan, 73943
verse form , 3 8 3-8 4
verse letters, 374
Vietnam , 913
vignettes:
bedroom, 566
rura l, 6 5 8-6 0
in Tang poetry, 380
371-72, 373, 374

Tao Qian and, 388
W ang Shi-zhen compared w ith , 1136
Wang Stream Collection of, 392-95

Wang Xi-zhi, 282-84
429
W ang Yang-ming, 726
W ang Y uan-liang, 702-3
W ang Z hao-jun (Lady W ang), 3 0 6-7 , 472
1063, 1114 1140
wan-yue lyrics, 582

W arring States period, 5 -8 62 77 102464
anecdotes and parables in, 29 5 -9 9 , 302-5
feast songs in , 279-80
Si-ma Q ians accounts of, 145-52
W ater M argin (Shui-hu zhuan) (Shi N a inan, attrib.), 726
W ei, Lady, 429
W ei Dan, 664
W ei Dynasty, 2 2 3 -2 4 225, 263, 270
1209
General Index
W ei
W ei
W ei
W ei
H ong, 64
Y ing-w u, 372, 497n
Zhong-xian, 957n
Zhuang, 5 6 6-6 7
wen, 34344, 553614
Wen, K in g o f Z hou , 1 0 ,1 8 , 20, 31 32
173s 252-53
W en Chang, 180n
Wen Tian-xiarig, x x x ix , 704-20
Wen t'in g -yu n , 56 5-6 6
Wen Tong, 641642
W en-xin diao-long ( The Literary M in d
Carves Dragons (Liu Xie), 34359
concealed significance vs. outstanding
W u, kingdom of, 4 223 224, 329

W u Z i-x u story and, 87-101
W u, K in g o f Zhou, 4 1018
W u Cheng-en, 726
W u D ao-zi647
W u-di, Emperor, 955n
W u-D ing, King, 173n, 177n
W u Jing-zi912
W u San-gui, 727, 909
wu-tong, x lv iii
Wu
Wu
Wu
Wu
Wei-ye, 1130-35
W en-ying, 101 588-90
Yun, 397
Zhao, Empress, 36 5-6 6, 369 905n
qualities in, 353-54

Confucian Classics and, 351
critics and readers in , 357-59
lite rary norms and the particular in,
350-53
m editation practices in, 346-48
m om entum in, 353
W u Z i-x u story, 1077

H istorica l Records version vs. Zuo
Tradition version of, 87-99
nature and fo rm o f literature in, 348-50

organization of, 343
X ia Dynasty, 124 163w, 167n, 168, 171w,
w rite r's relationship to natural w o rld in,

354-57
Western H an dynasty, 9102
anecdotes in, 295 302-5
Chu-ci learning in , 155
Confucianism influenced by223
p o litica l o ra to ry in , 130
yue-fu of, 227-29
Western Jin Dynasty, 225, 272-73
Western Parlor, The (Xi-xiang ji) (Wang

Shi-fu), 808
Western Z hou , 4
W h irl dance (hu~xuan), 452 455-58
w illo w s (liu ), 394n
wom an's voice, 509
women:
in Tang Dynasty, 369-70
as voice and subject o f Tang song lyrics,
560 565
w riters 369 50 9-1 0, 5 8 0 -8 3 ,1128
1150-51
w ritin g , see script
wu (m ilita ry aspect o f government), 553

W u Emperor, 8 - 9 , 135 181 215, 221
434, 436,
1210
5\2n, 669, 9 5 5 k
other poets on 99 -1 0 1 583
Wu Z i-xu Transform ation T e xt (W u Zi-xu
bian'wen), 88
862
X ia n s Emperor, 223, 252

xiang (image), 63
Xiang River, 163
Xiang Yu, 8 922w, 1114
X ia n -q iu Meng, 61
X ian-yun, 23 2441
Xian-zong, Emperor, 368601
X ia o Gang (Emperor Jian-wen), 326-28
X ia o Kuang, 198
xiao-ling (short songs), 574
X ia o Shi855n
Xiao-shuo storytellers, 557

Xiao-ya (MLesser Odes section o f Classic
o f Poetry3 11, 2324
X ie (Founder o f Shang Dynasty), 416
417
X ie An, 331
X ie Ling-yun, 311, 3 1 9-2 3 402, 700
X ie Shi, 331
X ie T iao, 326, 503
X ie X ua n331
X i He, 1 69n, 494n
X i Kang, 2S7ns 499n
X in Dynasty, 221
xin g (stirring; affective image), 34 58 66,

71, 75n
General Index
X in -jia ng , 244w
X in Q i-ji 583-84
X iong-nu, 8, 464
Y in (Shang) Dynasty, 3 12 18 20, 77

124
Y ing, 1130
Han battles with, 463/t

Xi Shi, 99
100
Xi-Xia
556
Ying-yings Story (Yuan Zhen), 540,

557
Yi the Archer, 167n
X uan, K ing o f Z hou , 4 ,2 1 -2 2
Y i Y in, 348
Xuan-pu^ 169
yong, 162
yong-buaiy 378
X uan-w u (Black Tortoise), 180

Xuan-zong, Emperor, 366s 367, 368 369
385 395, 422
Lady Yang and, as subjects o f literature,
441-58, 973-1102
X u Ling, 343
Xun-shi, 179n
Yong-jia, 330
yong-shi shi378
yong-wu, 378
you-ji (accounts of visits), 610-14
Yu (Great), Xia Founder, 167w, 168
172, 862n
Xu Xi, 965n
Yuan (Si-ma Rui), Emperor, 225311
X u You, 418n
yuan-ben (play-scripts), 810w

Yuan Dynasty, 558 704, 723-906
yaksha, 776n
Yan (city), 1130
Yan (state), 302, 835, 1130m
yan (speak), 62
period in tro du ction to, 7 2 3-2 7

variety plays of, 723-24
vernacular songs of, 723, 728-43
see also M in g Dynasty Mongol invasion

Yuan Hong-dao, 726 811-14
Yuan M ei, 1143
Yuan-yuan, 727
Yang, Emperor, 226 515-16, 630-31

Yang Guo-zhong, 368, 418, 449w
Yang H u , 628
Yan Guang, 940
Yuan Zhen (Yaun Wei-zhi) 455

497n, 540
Yang Wang-sun, 616n

Yang Wan-li, 651, 652, 698-702
Yuan Zhong-dao, 821-23

Yue (kingdom ), 4
Yang X iong, 22 2 -2 3 , 351

Yang Y ing-long, 836w
Wu Zi-xu story and, 87-101

Yue-fu (Music Office), 227229
Yang Y u-huan (Yang G ui-fei), 367-68,
yue-fu (poetry form), 227-48, 249

250
369,418^422, 963n
Xuan-zong and, as subjects o f literature,
44 1 -5 8 , 973-1102
Yang-zhou, 226, 712-14, 71Sn3 826
w ritings on, 630-35
Yang Z hu, 713n
Yangzi R iver, 4, 7
Yan H u i, 495n
Yan Ji-diao 572582
Yan Shu, 569-70
Yan-zi, M o u n t, 169
Yao, Sage-king, 163nf 167n, 417n
Ye Jia-ying, 433
Y ello w River, 221
Y ello w Turbans, 223
yi (policy discussions), 597

Yi-ban-er (A Half), 737
Yili
222n
3 1 1 ,3 2 3 325
animals in, 228
as category, 227n
characters in, 236
death and violence in , 2 4 0-4 1, 24546
domestic subjects of, 23032
from Eastern Han, 229-36

feast, 274-94
fix in g of, 233
frontier, 460
fro n tie r soldiers in 472
from Jian-an, 262-67

o f L i Bo, 28 4 -8 5 , 398-99
love and courting as subject of, 227
2 3 4 -3 6 ,2 3 9 -4 0 ,243 246247
masculine, 240
m ilita ry as subject of, 228, 241
fro m M in g Dynasty 244-45
1211
General Index
yue-fu (continued)
New
496, 501
fro m N o rth ern Dynasties, 240-43
other voices in tra d itio n and, 232- 33
243-48
puns in, 237, 238
shi compared w ith , 250
song aspects of, 230
fro m Southern Dynasties, 2 3 7-4 0
stranger and wom an, 258
as sung by women, 237
threatened relationships in, 269
fro m Western H an, 227-29
fro m Western Jin, 27 2-7 3
Yue-jue shur 88
Y u Shi-nan460
Yu-tai xin-yong (Recent 5os from a
Terrace ofJade)y233343
Y u X in , 329-30
Y u X u a n -ji, 50 9-1 0
za-ju, see variety plays

Zen (Chan) Buddhism, 556 557, 698
Zeng Guo-fan, 913
ze-sheng (deflected tone), 383

zhangx lv
Zhang D ai, 8 1 5-2 0910
Zhang Ji, 470

Zhang
Zhang
Zhang
Zhang
Liang, 348w
Q ian, 902n
Rong, 408
Zheng-jian, 460
Zhang Zhi, 641n

Zhao, Prince o f Z hou, 125-28
Z hao De-fu, 591
Z hao Kuang-yin, 553
Zhao-m ing, 343
Zhao N an-xing, 957n
Zhao Y i, 1129 1140-43
Zhao Yuan-si, 64 1
Zhao Zhan, 77
Zhe-jiang, 1150
Zheng (Z hou dom ain), 48
Zheng He, 724
Zheng Jiao-fu legend, 32 33, \96n
Zhen-zhou, 705709
zhi, 62
zhi (finger; to p o in t out), 116k
zhi-lin (The Forest o f Notes) (Su Shi),

668-69
Zhong Rong, 343
Z hong Si-cheng, 731-34
Z hong Yao, 641, 664n
Zhong-zong, Emperor, 365369
Z hou Bang-yan, 576
Z hou dynasty, 6 7 810
founding of, 11-25
m ilita ry campaigns of, 2 1 -2 2 , 23 24,
41
poetry of, see Classic o f Poetry
regional song divisions of, 30
writings of, 3-5; see also specific works
Zhou Mi, 654

Zhou Yu, 579
938w, 965n
Z h o w (Zhou), Emperor, 163n

Zhuang, Duke o f W ei, 51
Zhuang H ua, 435
Zhuang-zi (Zhuang Z h o u ), 6 108 295
296, 39Sn ,
Zhuang-zi (Zhuang-zi), 6, 60 108, 346n-
47w, 481w3601
677, 1145n
anecdotes and parables in, 29 5-9 9
Jewish tra d itio n compared w ith , 297
oratory parodied in , 13334
O uter Things chapter of, 811
pre-Socratics compared w ith , 296
prose of, 113
serial analogies in, 298
wisdom and, 298
Zhuan X u , 181
835n
724
Zhu Di
Zhu-ge Liang, 431-32
Z huo W en-jun, 837, 903n
Z h u X i, 51, 557, 558, 725, 910
Z h u Y i-jun, 835
Z h u Yuan-zhang, 724, 835
Z i-ju clan, 26, 27
Z i-x ia , 64
Zi-ye (m idnight), 237
Zuo Tradition, The, 6 59 77 280w, 614
6 5 695n
Historical Records compared with, 87-88,
96
letters in, 603
p o litica l oratory in , 125128
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An Anthology of Chinese Literature-Stephen Owen-1996 PDF

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An Anthology of Chinese Literature

Edited and Translated by

The text of this book is composed in Sabon

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

1. Chinese literature~Translations into English.

The Classic o f Poetry: Beginnings

The Zhou Founding

The Classic o f Poetry: "A irs"

Other Voices in the Tradition

Classic of Poetry X X X V Valley Winds

Using the Poems and Early Interpretation

Other Voices in the Tradition

an entry for the 4th year of Duke Ding

Other Voices in the Tradition

Early Literary Prose: The Delight of W ords

Early Political O rato ry

Si-ma Q ia n (ca, 145-ca. 85 bx.)

"The Nine Songs"

Journeys Heavenly and Earthly

The Encounter with the Goddess

Other Voices in the Tradition

Calling Back the Soul

Calling Back the Soul (Zhao hun)

Other Voices in the Tradition

Interlude Between the "Lyrics of C hu " and Yue-fu: "The

Ban Gu (a.d. 32-92)The Han History, from The Biographies

The Chinese "Middle Ages"

Other Voices in the Tradition

Yue-fu of the South

Yue-fu of the Northern Dynasties

The Beginnings of Classical Poetry (Shi)

Longing on the Road

Conning to the City

Impermanence and Disillusion

Cao Zhi (192-232)

Yan Shu (991-1055), to Washing Creek Sands (Huan

A n ecd otes, Parables, and Profound Jokes

The Poetry o f the Southern D ynasties

Tao Qian (Tao Yuan-ming, 365-427)

Xie Ling-yun (385 433)

Bao Zhao (ca. 414-466)

The Southern Courts

The Image of the Southern Dynasties

Lu Ji (261-303)The Poetic Exposition on Literature (Wen fu)

The Tang Dynasty

Tang Poetry: General Introduction

Other Poem Types

Du Fu (712-770), Lone W ild Goose

Character Types and Vignettes

An Example of Verse Form

High Tang Poetry

PERSPECTIVE, M O TIO N , A N D ATTENTION

Written Crossing the Yellow River to Qing-he

THE IMAGE O F THE FARMER

Farming Homes by Wei River

Other Voices in the Tradition

When Living Quietly at Wang-chuan I Gave This to Pei Di

Other Voices in the Tradition

THE "W A N G STREAM CO LLECTIO N "