1. THE LITERARY WORLD OF CHINP’INGMEI

1. This discussion of Chinese novels is indebted to Andrew Plaks, “Shui-huchuan and the Sixteenth-century Novel Form: An Interpretive Analysis,” CLEAR, 2, No.1 (1980), 3-6. In “Full-length Hsiao-shuo and the Western Novel: A Generic Reappraisal,” NewAsiaAcademicBulletin, 1 (1978), 163-176, Plaks argues convincingly that the normative stance of irony and the close relation to critical theory in both Chinese and Western novels justifies using the term “novel” for this Chinese literary genre.

2. The earliest extant edition of San-kuochihyen-i bears a preface dated 1522 (this edition includes an earlier preface dated 1494), and that of Shui-huchuan bears a preface dated 1589, though a version no longer extant had been printed by 1550. For a listing of studies on authorship and dating of these four novels, see Plaks, “Interpretive Analysis,” p. 3, n. 1 and p. 4, n.3. The textual history of Chinp’ingmei is discussed by P.D. Hanan in “The Text of the Chinp’ingmei,” Asia Major, New Series, 9 (1962), 1-57.

3. See the prefaces included in the facsimile of the Japanese Naikaku edition of Ku-chinhsiao-shuo (Stories Old and New) by Feng Meng-lung (1574-1646) (Taipei: Ting-wen shu-chü, 1974), and to the novel San-chiaok’ai-mi, discussed below. The Ku-chin preface begins by comparing short stories to long fiction like San-kuo and Shui-hu. The preface to San-chiaok’ai-mi compares San-chiao to Hsi-yuchi and Shui-huchuan. Chinp’ingmei demonstrates this sense of genre by taking Shui-hu as its point of departure (see Chapter 4 below).

4. All references are to Chinp’ingmei in the following facsimile of the 1618 edition: Hsiao-hsiao sheng (pseud.), Chinp’ingmeitz’u-hua, 5 vols., (Tokyo: Dai An, 1963). All citations are to volume, chapter, and page.

5. See Plaks, “Interpretive Analysis,” p. 8, n.12 for this language and a list of commentary editions.

6. Hsi-men Ch’ing learns of the conception of his first son in a chapter filled with hyperbolic references to the summer heat (Chapter 27); the heat is shot through, however, with images of the cold to come. (Chill and snow dominate the second half of the novel.) P’an Chin-lien, whose element is metal, overcomes Li P’ing-erh, whose element is wood, just as might be predicted from Five-Element Theory. For a discussion of the Five Elements, see Feng Yu-lan, AHistoryofChinesePhilosophy, trans. Derk Bodde, 2nd ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952), II, 19-23.

7. Little is known of the seventeenth-century critic whose pseudonym is Chang Chu-p’o. His prefaces and commentary to Chinp’ingmei are collected in Liang-chungChu-p’op’ing-tien-penho-k’ant’ien-hsiati-ich’i-shuChinp’ingmei, 8 vols. (Hong Kong: Hui-wen ko shu-tien, 1975). Chang Chu-p’o and his commentary are discussed by David Roy in “Chang Chu-p’o’s Commentary on the Chinp’ingmei,” in ChineseNarrative:CriticalandTheoreticalEssays, ed. Andrew Plaks (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), pp.115-123. Roy has also completed a translation of Chang’s long essay Chinp’ingmeitu-fa (“How to Read the Chinp’ingmei”). It will appear in a forthcoming book entitled HowtoReadtheChineseNovel.

8. Ming writings on drama and song have been collected in Chung-kuo ku-tien hsi-ch’ü yen-chiu yüan, ed., Chung-kuoku-tienhsi-ch’ülun-chuchi-ch’eng (Peking: Chung-kuo hsi-chü ch’u-pan she, 1959-1960), II-IV. The didactic claims that Ming writers made for drama early in the dynasty were also made for classical language fiction. For examples see the prefaces included in the collection Chien-tenghsin-huawaierh-chung, ed. Chou I (Shanghai: Ku-tien wen-hsueh ch’u-pan she, 1957). Late Ming vernacular fiction was thus heir to a long tradition of justification.

9. Many of the early and middle period stories discussed by Patrick Hanan in TheChineseVernacularStory (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981) fit this description. Criteria for assigning dates to these stories are found in Hanan’s TheChineseShortStory:StudiesinDating,Authorship,andComposition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973). The Ch’eng-hua era chantefables discussed below in Chapter 2 are a species of completely formulaic written vernacular literature.

10. Robert Hegel, in TheNovelinSeventeenthCenturyChina (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), pp.1-4, discusses the traditional and modern appraisal of Chinese novels. Throughout TheChineseVernacularStory, Hanan gives criteria for distinguishing the probable degree of literary cultivation of authors and audiences. Wilt Idema, in ChineseVernacularFiction:TheFormativePeriod (Leiden: Brill, 1974), distinguishes sharply between “art novels” such as the four discussed here, and a tradition of chapbook vernacular fiction. Plaks, in “An Interpretive Analysis,” also treats these four novels as a separate class within Chinese fiction of the sixteenth century, their complexity and sophistication suggesting highly literate authors. While the Chinese critic P’an K’ai-p’ei considers Chinp’ingmei the work of a storytellers’ or dramatists’ guild, his colleague Hsü Meng-hsiang reminds him that the educated elite shared interests that could account for all of the features leading P’an K’ai-p’ei to his hypothesis of collective authorship. See P’an K’ai-p’ei, “Chinp’ingmei ti ch’an-sheng ho tso-che,” in Ming-Ch’inghsiao-shuoyen-chiulun-wenchi, ed. Jen-min wen-hsüeh ch’u-pan pien-chi pu (Peking: Jen-min, 1959), pp.173-180, and Hsü Meng-hsiang, “Kuan-yü Chinp’ingmei ti tso-che,” in ibid., pp. 181-184. For scholarship on Chinp’ingmei in Hong Kong and Taiwan, see Sun Shu-yü, Chinp’ingmeitii-shu (Taipei: Shih-pao wen-hua ch’u-pan kung-ssu, 1978) and Wei Tzu-yun, Chinp’ingmeit’anyüan (Taipei: Chü-liu t’u-shu kung-ssu, 1979).

11. Plaks points out that contemporaries analyzed Chinp’ingmei and other novels using the critical vocabulary that had been developed for poetry and classical prose. See “Interpretive Analysis,” pp.7-8, and p. 8, n.12. Hegel argues similarly on pp.57-58.

12. Hegel, pp.5-6 and p.264, n.14, reviews population studies for this period.

13. See Ho Ping-ti, TheLadderofSuccessinImperialChina (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962), and Ann Waltner, “Building on the Ladder of Success: The Ladder of Success in Imperial China and Recent Work on Social Mobility,” MingStudies, No.17 (Fall 1983), pp.30-36, for studies of social mobility during the Ming and Ch’ing periods.

14. Evelyn Sakakida Rawski, EducationandPopularLiteracyinCh’ingChina (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1979), pp.109-124 (Chapter 5).

15. See Tadao Sakai, “Confucian and Popular Educational Works,” in SelfandSocietyinMingThought, ed. Wm. Theodore De Bary (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), pp.331-345.

16. For a representative quote see the essay “Chung-lu shu-yüan chi” of Li K’ai-hsien (1501-1568), in LiK’ai-hsienchi, ed. Lu Kung (Peking: Chung-hua shu-chü, 1959), II, 668. Li’s position is that stuffing oneself with booklearning so as to pass the examinations has nothing to do with the Way of the sages. Rather, one should look to his own heart for the sincerity of the ancients - which will, incidentally, insure success in the examinations. See also letters included in Kuei Yu-kuang’s (1507-1571) collected works, Chen-ch’uanhsien-shengchi (Shanghai: Ku-chi ch’u-pan she, 1981) to his friends P’an Shih-ying (“Yü P’an Tzu-shih shu,” I, 149-150); and Chou Hsing-shu (“Sung Chou chi-shih Hsing-shu pei-shang hsü,” I, 231-233). Though both of these men (and, eventually, Kuei himself) did pass examinations and take up official posts, still Kuei reminds them of the differences between “examination studies” directed at worldly advancement, and true learning leading to enlightenment. For the evolution of the “eight-legged essay” (pa-ku-wen) form in which examination candidates were required to write, see Sung P’ei-wei, MingWen-hsüehshih, Kuo-hsüeh hsiao-ts’ung-shu, no.93 (Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1934), pp.204-254. Willard J. Peterson discusses the Ming examination system and its critics in BitterGourd:FangI-chihandtheImpetusforIntellectualChange (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), pp.2-9 and 44-63.

17. See Charles O. Hucker, “Governmental Organization of the Ming Dynasty,” HJAS, 21 (1958), 1-66; and TheMingDynasty:ItsOriginsandEvolvingInstitutions, Michigan Papers in Chinese Studies, no.34 (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies, 1978). For continuity with the Yüan, see Edward Dreyer, EarlyMingChina:APoliticalHistory,1355-1435 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1982), pp.9-10.

18. See Charles O. Hucker, TheCensorialSystemofMingChina (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1966).

19. For a description of the Wan-li reign, see Ray Huang, 1587,AYearofNoSignificance:TheMingDynastyinDecline (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981).

20. Feng Yu-lan, II, 47.

21. Feng Yu-lan, II, 52.

22. For a survey of Ming thought and its antecedents in Sung and Yüan, see Feng Yu-lan, II, chapters 10-14; Wm. Theodore De Bary, ed., SelfandSocietyinMingThought (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), and TheUnfoldingofNeo-Confucianism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975); and the Ming volume of Hou Wai-lu’s Chung-kuossu-hsiangt’ung-shih, IV hsia (Peking: Jen-min ch’u-pan she, 1960).

23. The Ta-hsüeh, a Han Confucian text central to the Neo-Confucian revival from the time of Han Yü (768-824) and Li Ao (died ca.844), states that “the extension of knowledge lies in the investigation of things.” The aim of the Neo-Confucian “investigation of things” was not the mastery of the physical world, as in Western science, but an apprehension of one’s place in the world, whose ethical and physical dimensions were inseparable.

24. The Hsing-lita-ch’üan, Wu-chingta-ch’üan, and Ssu-shuta-ch’üan, respectively. For the continuing sway of these Sung teachers, see an imperial rescript of the Chia-ching emperor’s, dated 1539, quoted in Yü Chi-teng (1578 c.s.), Tien-kuchi-wen (Peking: Chung-hua shu-chu, 1981), pp.311-312, where the emperor explicitly condemns unorthodox lines of thought and states that only Chu Hsi’s interpretations are correct.

25. For the nature of the criticism directed at Ming thinkers who gathered in academies, and their response to it, see John Meskill, AcademiesinMingChina:AHistoricalEssay, Association for Asian Studies Monograph, no.39 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1982), pp.66-159. The broad educational movement which found outlets in private academies and public meetings seemed to the government inseparable from the popular religious movements which led on occasion to political rebellion of a millenarian nature. Yu Chi-teng, Tien-kuchi-wen, p.311, also quotes a Chia-ching memorial calling for the destruction of all books by Wang Yang-ming and Chan Jo-shui (1466-1500), and of all academies founded by their disciples, on grounds of unorthodoxy (yeh). The Chieh-anlao-jenman-pi (Peking: Chung-hua shu-chü, 1982) of Li Hsu (1505-1593) records that the Ming scholar and teacher Ch’en Hsien-chang (1428-1500) was accused of harboring arms (p.174).

26. Statements of this sort by major Ming thinkers can be found in all of the works cited in note 22. This attitude was also held by men who were not necessarily speculative thinkers. See, for example, Kuei Yu-kuang’s statement that “cultivating the self, regulating the family, governing the country, and pacifying all under Heaven [the conventional Ta-hsüeh prescription for good government, discussed below in Chapter 2] all arise from the li in my heart,” (“Shan-she shih hsüeh-che,” in Chen-ch’uanhsien-shengchi, I, 151-152.)

27. See Hucker, “The Tung-lin Movement of the Late Ming Period,” in ChineseThoughtandInstitutions, ed. John K. Fairbank (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), pp.132-162; and Heinrich Busch, “The Tung-lin Academy and its Political and Philosophical Significance,” MonumentaSerica, 14 (1949-1955), pp.1-162. Hucker’s and Busch1s emphasis on the importance of enlightenment as a subject of philosophical debate can be corroborated by any number of Ming sources.

28. For an account of Ming academies (shu-yüan), see Meskill.

29. The best-known such scholar was Li Chih (1527-1602). See also Ho Liang-chün, Ssu-yuchaits’ung-shuo (Peking: Chung-hua shu-chü, 1959), p. 7, where Ho evaluates Hsun-tzu’s interpretation of the Shih-ching, and p. 108, where he agrees with Hsün-tzu that the empire will be impoverished by an increase in the number of merchants and gentry. Li Chih’s life and thought are described in De Bary, “Individualism and Humanitarianism,” in SelfandSociety, pp.188-225. Li demonstrates his familiarity with various sutras and with Buddhism in general in his Fen-shu and Hsüfen-shu (published as one volume, Peking: Chung-hua shu-chü, 1975), passim. His essay on Hsün-tzu (“Hsün-ch’ing”) is in his Ts’ang-shu (Peking: Chung-hua shu-chü, 1974), III, 518-519. Li K’ai-hsien, in a reluctant preface to a work on physiognomy with which he does not agree (”Tseng hsiang-shih Liu Ch’ang-sha hsü,” in LiK’ai-hsienchi, I, 278-290), cites Hsün-tzu’s Fei-hsiangp’ien (A Refutation of Physiognomy), and joins Hsun-tzu in rejecting the notion that the study of physiognomy can reveal the inclinations of the heart. Kuei Yu-kuang states explicitly that until Hsün-tzu was unfairly demoted by Sung thinkers, he had been deservedly considered the equal of Mencius in advancing Confucian teachings. (“Hsün-tzu hsü lu,” in Chen-ch’uanhsien-shengchi, I, 20.)

30. Ho Liang-chün, who finds much to praise in Buddhism, distinguishes it clearly from “our Confucianism” (wu-ju). See his chapters on Buddhism and Taoism in Ssu-yuchaits’ung-shuo, pp. 187-201. Li K’ ai-hsien, in his “Wo ling-t’aï chi” (LiK’ai-hsienchi, II, 669-70), demonstrates that certain apparently Buddhist or Taoist assertions can be explained in terms of “reverence” (ching), a key term in Neo-Confucian self-cultivation. Kuei Yu-kuang differentiates the traditions clearly when he states that as Buddhism is on the wane of its own internal causes, there is no need for Confucian scholars to argue against it (“Pa Ta-fo ting-sui yung tsun-sheng t’o-lo-ni ching ch’uang,” in Chen-ch’uanhsien-shengchi, I, 109-110.) Buddhists also differentiated the teachings: see Chün-fang Yü, TheRenewalofBuddhisminChina:Chu-hungandtheLateMingSynthesis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), pp.68-71 and passim. yü’s book also discusses the extremely complex relationship between late Ming Buddhism and Taoism.

31. See N. Sivin, “On the Word ‘Taoist’ as a Source of Perplexity, With Special Reference to the Relations of Science and Religion in Traditional China,” HistoryofReligions, 17, Nos.3 and 4 (Feb.-May 1978), 303-330. On the Taoist Canon, see Ninji ōfuchi, “The Formation of the Taoist Canon,” in FacetsofTaoism:EssaysinChineseReligion, ed. Anna Seidel and Holmes Welch (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), pp.253-267.

32. This claim is widely found. Ho Liang-chün, in Ssu-yu chaits’ung-shuo, p.187, declares that Buddhism depends for its propagation on its affinities with Confucianism. A preface to San-chiaok’ai-mi, a novel written to propagate the teachings of Lin Chao-en (1517-1598), states that the function of Buddhism and Taoism is to supplement Confucianism by buttressing its moral teachings. Even eminent Buddhist clerics sometimes made this claim, in order to insure a hearing for their faith. (See Leon Hurvitz, “Chu-hung’s One Mind,” in De Bary, ed., SelfandSociety, p.475.) There was a deeply Confucian core to the teachings of Lin Chao-en himself, as Judith Berling has shown in TheSyncreticReligionofLinChao-en (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980).

33. See Feng Yu-lan, II, 168-175 and 434-451.

34. See Sakai Tadao, Chūgokuzenshonokenkyū (Tokyo: Kokusho kankōkai, 1960), and Cynthia Brokaw, “Determining One’s Own Fate: The Ledgers of Merit and Demerit in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century China,” Diss. Harvard, 1984.

35. The Chia-ching emperor, known for his Taoist enthusiasm, was perfectly content to raze Buddhist temples. See the example cited by Yü Chi-teng, Tien-kuchi-wen, p.310.

36. See the discussion of the Ta-hsüehyen-ipu below in Chapter 2.

37. Wang Yang-ming deplored the contemporary fragmentation of learning into schools and sects; he hearkened back to a supposed earlier time when the Three Teachings had been One. (See Liu Ts’un-yen, “Taoist Self-Cultivation,” in De Bary, ed., SelfandSociety, pp. 316-317.) Li K’ai-hsien, in “Chung-lu shu-yüan chi,” echoes the phrasing of Wang Yang-ming.

38. Ho Liang-chün closes his second chapter on Buddhism and Taoism (Ssu-yuchaits’ung-shuo, pp.194-201) with criticism of just such an abbot, and with a reconciliation of Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism on the grounds that all three strip away illusion. The teacher Lin Chao-en revalorized the mechanical prescriptions traditionally used in search of Taoist hsien immortality, employing them instead in the service of meditation practices similar to the Neo-Confucian emphasis on reverence or ching. (See Berling, LinChao-en, pp. 95ff.) Ming fiction and drama are frequently savage in their depiction of Buddhist and Taoist clergy, but respectful toward those true masters who have achieved enlightenment through sincere self-cultivation.

39. A good example is Li K’ai-hsien, whose writings identify him with the school of Wang Yang-ming (see especially his “Yüan-hsing t’ang chi,” in LiK’ai-hsienchi, pp.676-678). Li attained the chin-shih degree and reached high office in the Ministry of Rites before court intrigues forced his retirement. He then retired to his estate in Shantung, where he amassed an impressive library, wrote songs and plays, and wrote dozens of conventional essays.

40. See De Bary, “Individualism and Humanitarianism,” in De Bary, ed., SelfandSociety, pp.145-247, and Shimada Kenji, Chūgokuniokerukindaishiinozasetsu (Tokyo: Chikuma shobo, 1949). The notes to DeBary’s essay provide a rich bibliography on this topic.

41. See the articles on the Tung-lin Academy by Busch and Hucker noted above in n.27.

42. Hanan, VernacularStory, pp.1-2.

43. Primarily Chou Te-ch’ing’s (c.1270?-post 1324) Chung-yüanyin-yün, in LCCC, I, 167-285, translated by Hugh M. Stimson as TheJongyuanInYunn:AGuidetoOldMandarinPronunciation, Sinological Series, no.12 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966); but also such ch’ü-p’u as Chu Ch’üan’s (d.1448) T’ai-hocheng-yinp’u, in LCCC, III, 3-231.

44. David Johnson discusses one of the most famous early written vernacular prosimetric narratives, the ninth or tenth century WuTzu-hsüpien-wen, in “The WuTzu-hsüpien-wen and Its Sources,” HJAS, 40 (1980), 93-156 (Part I) and 465-505 (Part II). In his conclusion (pp.501-505) Johnson presents a model for the origin of later vernacular fiction in this pien-wen and works like it, and here and elsewhere in his essay he considers the social function of such vernacular literature. Victor Mair discusses the history of official attempts at the moral education of the masses through the use of the written vernacular in “Language and Religion in the Written Popularizations of the SacredEdict,” in PopularCultureinLateImperialChina:DiversityandIntegration, ed. David Johnson, Andrew J. Nathan, and Evelyn S. Rawski (Berkeley: University of California Press, forthcoming). An example of a vernacular edict by the Ming Hung-wu emperor can be found in Li Hsü, Chieh-anlao-jenman-pi, pp.34-35. For the Ming vernacular religious literature called pao-chüan, see Ch’en Ju-heng, Shuo-shushih-hua (Peking: Tso-chia ch’u-pan she, 1958), pp.123-129; Cheng Chen-to, Chung-kuosu-wen-hsüehshih, 2nd edition (1938; rpt. Peking: Wen-hsueh ku-chi k’an-hsing she, 1959), pp.306-347; Daniel Overmyer, FolkBuddhistReligion:DissentingSectsinLateTraditionalChina, Harvard East Asian Series, no.83 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976), pp.179-186, and “Values in Chinese Sectarian Literature: Ming and Ch’ing pao-chüan,” in Johnson et al, eds., PopularCulture; and Sawada Mizuho, Hokannokenkyü (Tokyo: Kokusho kankokai, 1975). Chang Chih-kung, in Ch’uan-t’ungyü-yenwen-fachiao-yüch’u-t’an (Shanghai: Chiao-yü ch’u-pan she, 1962), pp.27-32, discusses the tsa-tzushu that may have served as aids to literacy for the non-elite. In VernacularStory, p. 11, Hanan summarizes Chang’s discussion.

45. Idema, p.14, says that Ming critics of prose fiction considered a continuum between the poles of su-wen (“vulgar style”) and wen-tsao (literary sophistication). Hanan makes the same point in VernacularStory, pp.15-16.

46. See Wang Chi-te (fl. 1610-1620), Ch’ü-lü, LCCC, IV, 148.

47. The most influential statement of the promptbook theory is found in Lu Hsün’s ABriefHistoryofChineseFiction, tr. Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1964), pp.141 and 143. A more sophisticated version of it can be found in Hu Shih-ying, Hua-penhsiao-shuokai-lun (Peking: Chung-hua shu-chü, 1980), pp.161-164. Idema discusses and evaluates this theory on pp.xiii-xxii; he lists other statements of it on p.xvi, n.9. In TheChineseShortStory and TheChineseVernacularStory, Hanan shows that most Ming vernacular stories draw on written sources. In The Chinese Short Story, pp. 139-147, there is an account of how selected tales may have been generated from oral materials, but this account has little to do with the promptbook theory.

48. David Roy has demonstrated that even these chantefable tales cannot be taken as representative of the oral tradition, since they rely heavily on conventions of contemporary written literature. See his “The Fifteenth-century Shuo-ch’angtz’u-hua as Examples of Written Formulaic Composition,” ChinoperlPapers, No.10 (1981), pp.97-128.

49. Idema, pp.xl and 126ff.

50. Lo Chin-t’ang, Ming-taichütso-chiak’ao-lüeh (Hong Kong: Lung-men, 1966), and Yagisawa Hajime, Ming-taichütso-chiayen-chiu, tr. Lo Chin-t’ang (Hong Kong: Lung-men, 1966).

51. Lo Chin-t’ang makes this point in his discussion of Ch’iu Chün’s (1420-1495) Wu-lunch’üan-pei, a stupefyingly didactic work which was received enthusiastically by the Ming court. See “Wu-lunch’üan-pei yü Tzuhsiang-nang-ti kuan-hsi,” in Lo’s Chin-t’anglunch’ü (Taipei: Lien-ching, 1977), p.339. Hu Shih-ying, Hua-penhsiao-shuokai-lun, p.366, points out that the Ming code forbade the dramatic representation of historical emperors, concubines, sages, or worthies, but encouraged plays about righteous fathers, chaste wives, and filial sons, so as to move the people to virtue.

52. For the Southern dramatic tradition, see Tadeusz Zbikowski, EarlyNan-hsiPlaysoftheSouthernSungPeriod (Warsaw: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 1974); Ch’ien Nan-yang, Sung-Yüanhsi-wenchi-i (Shanghai: Ku-tien, 1956), and Hsi-wenkai-lun (Shanghai: Shanghai ku-chi ch’u-pan she, 1981); and Ch’ien-Nan-yang, ed., Yung-lota-tienhsi-wensan-chungchiao-chu (Peking: Chung-hua shu-chu, 1979).

53. See the Ming evidence adduced by Aoki Masaru in Chung-kuochin-shihhsi-ch’üshih, ed. and trans, by Wang Ku-lu (Peking: Tso-chia ch’u-pan she, 1958), pp.165-178.

54. For a clear statement of this view see Wang Chi-te, Ch’ü-lü, LCCC, IV, 55 and 155. Hsü Wei (1521-1593), in the first work of Ming criticism devoted to Southern drama, went a step further, directing his scorn at those who preferred the music of interlopers (the tsa-chü that had flourished under the Mongol Yüan dynasty) to indigenous Southern music and drama. (Nevertheless, he wrote in the tsa-chü form himself.) See Hsü’s Nan-tz’uhsü-lu, LCCC, III, 241.

55. In his Ch’ü-lü, Wang Chi-te comments on Li K’ai-hsien (LCCC, IV, 156 and 180), on Ho Liang-chün (LCCC, IV, 149 and 163), and on Wang Shih-chen (LCCC, IV, 163). In his Ch’ü-tsao (LCCC, IV, 27-42), Wang Shih-chen frequently voices his agreement or disagreement with Ho Liang-chün. They all knew the standard compilations on Yüan prosody and drama: Li K’ai-hsien has a song about someone who refused to return a copy of the T’ai-hocheng-yinp’u! (Tz’u-nüeh, in LCCC, III, 278.)

56. In his Tz’u-nüeh, Li K’ai-hsien approves Li Meng-yang’s (1493-1529) comparison between the songs of the day and the Kuo-feng of old (LCCC, III, 286). This observation was not restricted to those who collected drama and song; Kuei Yu-kuang draws the same comparison in a preface to a collection of poetry styled after the songs of the people (“Shen Tz’u-ku hsien-sheng shih hsü,” in Chen-ch’uanhsien-shengchi, I, 30).

57. Patrick Hanan discusses the history and connotations of these terms in the Ming. See VernacularStory, pp. 146-7 and passim.

58. See Li K’ai-hsien’s preface to his own collection of popular songs, Shih-chingyen-tz’u (LiK’ai-hsienchi, II, 320-321), where this statement supports yet another comparison with the airs of the Shih-ching. in his Tz’u-nüeh, Li quotes a contemporary assertion that popular song reaches heights inaccessible to trained poets (LCCC, III, 286). For the most famous collection of Ming folksongs, see Feng Meng-lung’s Shan-ko, ed. Kuan Te-tung (Peking, 1962); and the translation and discussion by Cornelia Tӧppelman, Shan-kovonFengMeng-lung (Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1973). Feng’s Shan-ko is discussed by John McCoy of Cornell University in an unpublished paper entitled “The Ming Dynasty Mountain Songs - A Preliminary Definition of the Genre” (cited by permission of the author).

59. Ho Liang-chün, Ssu-yuchaits’ung-shuo, p. 238.

60. By the late Ming, the main types of oral performance seem to have been drama, song, chantefable narration either on religious themes (these would be heard primarily in temples or in the homes of lay Buddhists, where monks or nuns would be invited to perform), or on a variety of fictional and semihistorical subjects. There was also extended prose narrative, either of fiction or history. Performers might seize on current events, as in the case of the storyteller whose tales denounced the wealthy Sung-chiang painter Tung Ch’i-ch’ang, when the latter had a maidservant abducted and her owner beaten. The works in this tradition were no longer transmitted solely orally; texts played some part, and there were literate performers. Oral performance was appreciated as an art, and storytellers were invited to perform in the homes of the wealthy and cultivated, as well as outdoors where crowds could gather. Even this oral performance was not purely vernacular: tales and chantefables were studded with T’ang and Sung poems, which were explicated for the audience. (This sort of explication was also incorporated from the oral tradition into written fiction.) Ch’en Ju-heng, Shuo-shushih-hua, pp.95-129, discusses oral literature in the Yüan and Ming. One of Hu Shih-ying’s main concerns is the relationship between oral literature and written fiction; he therefore summarizes or quotes much extant historical evidence about oral performance. Idema lists other studies on p.xiii, n.4. Johnson, pp.466-500, presents a very suggestive model for the development of a work of oral literature. Yeh Te-chün discusses oral storytelling in eighteenth-century Yangchow in Hsi-ch’ühsiao-shuots’ung-k’ao (Peking: Chung-hua shu-chü), 1979), II, 751-756.

61. Hu Shih-ying, Hua-penhsiao-shuokai-lun, pp.365 and 375.

62. Ho Liang-chün, Ssu-yuchaits’ung-shuo, p.341. Wang Chi-te makes similar observations in his Ch’ü-lü, IV, 143ff.

63. The two outstanding examples are Ch’iu Chün’s Wu-lunch’üan-pei and Shao Ts’an’s Hsiang-nangchi. Later Ming critics frequently critiziced the want of pen-se in these plays.

64. This sort of justification can be seen as early as the 1494 preface to San-kuochihyen-i. See the first ten unnumbered pages of the modern facsimile of the 1522 edition (Peking: Jen-min ch’u-pan she, 1975).

65. This view was already current by the 1530’s, as we can see from Li K’ai-hsien’s Tz’u-nüeh (LCCC, III, 286), where he lists five figures who make this comparison, with which he obviously agrees. He also shows us that the Yüan tsa-chüHsi-hsiangchi was popularly called a Ch’un-ch’iu (LCCC, III, 271). In the case of classical fiction, the comparison was already standard a century earlier: the writer of a 1433 preface to Li Ch’ang-ch’i’s (1376-1452) Chien-tengyü-hua explicitly compares this collection to the work of the classical historians (Chien-teng, pp.126-127). Here as in the case of vernacular fiction, the comparison is meant to refute the charge that the work in question is frivolous or immoral.

66. The preface to Shui-huchuan contained in Li Chih’s Fen-shu, p.109, shows the seriousness with which this book was related to the moral concerns of the age. On the other hand, the celebrated account of Chinp’ingmei contained in the Wan-liyeh-huopien of Shen Te-fu (1578-1642) makes clear the sheer delight that Ming literati took in Shui-huchuan and Chinp’ingmei, which they listed as drinking classics. (See Hanan, “Text,” pp.46-48.)

67. Hanan, VernacularStory, pp.30, 57-58, and all discussion of post-1600 literati authors.

68. This is the Hsin-hsin-tzu preface. See Hanan, “Text,” pp.2-4.

69. This little-known novel, apparently published between 1612 and 1620, has been studied by Sawada Mizuhō in BukkyōtoChugokubungaku (Tokyo: Kokusho kankōkai, 1975); and by Judith Berling, in “Religion and Popular Culture: The Management of Moral Capital in TheRomanceoftheThreeTeachings,” in Johnson et al, eds., PopularCulture. The only extant edition is in the possession of Tenri University. The author, one P’an Ching-jo, appears to have been associated with the Three Teachings cult of Lin Chao-en. The statement about metaphor appears in the first preface, by Chu Chih-fan of Chin-ling (n.d.).

70. See the edition published in Taipei by Ting-wen shu-chü in 1974. Similar claims had long been made for classical fiction: a 1420 preface to Chien-tengyü-hua (Chien-teng, p.125) argues much as Feng does in refuting the charge that “we Confucians” (wu-ju) should not read these fantastic tales of ghosts and spirits.

71. Hanan, VernacularStory, pp.59-68.

72. Wen-chingyüan-yanghui, in Ch’ing-p’ingshan-t’anghua-pen, no.14. On this collection, see Hanan, TheChineseShortStory, pp.141-142.

73. Hanan gives the example of “Langxian,” the pseudonymous author who was apparently a younger associate of Feng Meng-lung. See VernacularStory, p.134.

74. The play is Li K’ai-hsien’s Pao-chienchi. In his Ku-chütsa-yen, Shen Te-fu says that plays were typically written to express political resentment, and that Pao-chienchi is a well-known example (LCCC, IV, 207). Wang Shih-chen demonstrates the Ming habit of allegorical reading in his comments on the T’ang tale Ying-yingchuan and on the ch’uan-ch’iP’i-p’achi (Ch’ü-tsao, LCCC, IV, 33).

75. See Hegel, pp.85-103 and passim.

2. THE STRUCTURE AND THEMES OF Chinp’ingmei

1. For the stereotype of the bad last ruler in Chinese fiction, see Arthur Wright, “Sui Yang-ti: Personality and Stereotype,” in Wright, ed., TheConfucianPersuasion, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1960), pp.47-76.

2. Ho Liang-chün, Ssu-yuchaits’ung-shuo, p. 310.

3. Tr. Wing-tsit Chan, in SourcesofChineseTradition, ed. Chan, Wm. Theodore De Bary, and Burton Watson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), p.129.

4. Tr. Wing-tsit Chan, in Sources, p.116.

5. Chen and the ExtendedMeaning are discussed by Wm. Theodore De Bary in Neo-ConfucianOrthodoxyandtheLearningoftheMind-and-Heart (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), pp.83-126.

6. Ta-hsüehyen-i, 2 vols., Chung-kuo tzu-hsüeh ming-chu chi-ch’eng, No.13 (Taipei: Chung-kuo tzu-hsüeh ming-chu chi-ch’eng pien-hsiu wei-yüan hui, 1977), p.1115. The quotation, which begins chüan 38 of the Ta-hsüehyen-i, is from the Hun-i chapter of the Lichi.

7. Ta-hsüehyen-i, p.1096.

8. 64 vols. (Taipei: Commercial Press, 1971). Includes Wan-li preface dated 1605. Facsimile of Ch’ing Wen-yüan ko edition.

9. Several extant editions are listed in the introduction to Ta-hsüehyen-i, pp.3-4.

10. Evelyn Rawski has also noted how the widely used primers ThousandCharacterClassic, TrimetricalClassic, and HundredNames promoted the spread of Confucian values throughout various segments of the population. See her “Economic and Social Foundations of Late Imperial Culture” in Johnson et al, eds., PopularCulture.

11. These tales have been published in a facsimile edition: Shang-hai-shih wen-wu pao-kuan wei-yuan-hui, ed., MingCh’eng-huashuo-ch’angtz’u-huats’ung-k’anshih-liuchungfuPai-t’uchich’uan-ch’ii-chung (Shanghai: Shang-hai po-wu-kuan, 1973). They are discussed by Chao Ching-shen in “T’an Ming Ch’eng-hua k’an-pen shuo-ch’ang tz’u-hua,” Wen-wu, 11 (1972), 19-24.

12. This is the seventh tale in the collection, and was printed in 1471.

13. The Princess’s speech is on p.11b; Shih-lang’s is on p.15a.

14. Shih-te t’ang edition, Scene 30, chüan 2, p.24b.

15. Shen-yü kuan edition, Scene 26, p.68a.

16. See Dreyer, pp.237-264 (Chapter 8) for this argument.

17. David Roy has already pointed out the importance of the Confucian chain of influence in Chinp’ingmei, in “A Confucian Interpretation of the Chinp’ingmei,” in Chung-yangyen-chiuyüan kuo-chiHan-hsüehhui-ilun-wenchi, Proceedings of the International Conference on Sinology, Section on Literature, August 1980 (Taipei, 1981). Similar conclusions (and the obvious importance of the Ta-hsüeh for this novel) are reached by Plaks in “Interpretive Analysis,” pp.11-12.

18. Text of memorial, 1.17.389-392; Ts’ai Ching’s intercession in Chapter 10, 1.10.218; similar appeals to Ts’ai Ching, 1.17.393 and 1.18.406-411; salt merchants appeal to Hsi-men Ch’ing, 1.25.108; delivery of Hsi-men Ch’ing’s son, 1.30.246-248; Hsi-men Ch’ing’s official appointment, 1.30.238 and 1.30.250. For a discussion of the replication of the surname Ts’ai, see Paul Varo Martinson, “Pao Order and Redemption,” Diss. University of Chicago, 1973, pp.280-288.

19. Hsi-men Ch’ing fines Chamberlain Liu, 2.34.339-40; Hsi-men Ch’ing uses imperial tiles for his own tomb, 2.35.398; memorials offered by Censor Tseng, 3.48.184-186 and 3.49.199-200; Censor Tseng disciplined, 3.49.200; Hsi-men Ch’ing singled out by Chu Mien, 4.70.353-354; Cleric Huang, 4.65.169-171, 4.66.185-188 and 192-201. For the replication of the surname Huang, see Martinson, “Pao Order and Redemption,” pp.270-279, and for the parallel between spiritual ascent and political promotion, see his “The Chinp’ingmei as Wisdom Literature: A Methodological Essay,” MingStudies, No.5 (Fall 1977), pp.51-53. For the historical antecedents of Ts’ai Yün and An Ch’en, see Hanan, “Sources,” pp.48-49.

20. Shu-t’ung’s intercession, 3.34.346-350; quarrels in Chapter 72, 4.72.392-399; Ch’en Ching-chi’s suggestive behavior, 5.81.14, 5.81.17, 5.86.116; attempted rape, 5.84.73-74; nightmare, 5.100.493-497.

21. Wu Yüeh-niang’s admonition, 2.26.138; the narrator quotes the same proverbial saying, 4.78.685; Li Ming expelled, 2.22.46-49; Tutor Wen expelled, 4.76.626-632; Lai Wang lays blame on P’an Chin-lien, 2.25.108-109; begins affair with Sun Hsüeh-o, 2.25.108.

22. In both episodes, the narrative interweaves the maids’ and wives’ gatherings, and in Chapter 46, an identical line of dialogue emphasizes the parallels between them: 3.46.125, 132, and 139.

23. Han Tao-kuo, 5.81.9-10; Lai Pao and maidservants, 5.81.15; Hsi-men Ch’ing’s promise to Ch’en Ching-chi, 1.20.485; death of Ch’en Ching-chi, 5.99.459; Li Chiao-erh, 4.80.803-808; Sun Hsüeh-o, 5.90.221-228; proverb, 5.81.1 and 5.81.19; garden in disarray, 5.96.377.

24. See Hsüan-hoi-shih, Shui-huchuan, and many plays.

25. The “Four Tyrants” introduced at 1.1.6 of the Chinp’ingmei are Kao Ch’iu (d. 1126), Yang Chien (d.1121), T’ung Kuan (d. 1126), and Ts’ai Ching (1046-1126).

26. One such figure is Chang Ta, mentioned at 1.17.391. A Ming figure named Chang Ta died heroically in 1550 during a siege of Ta-t’ung, north of T’ai-yüan in Shan-hsi. See T’an Ch’ien, Kuo-ch’ueh, 6 vols. (Peking: Ku-chi ch’u-pan she, 1958), 4.59.3750; Hsia Hsieh, Mingt’ung-chien, 4 vols. (Peking: Chung-hua shu-chü), 3.59.2264-2265; and DictionaryofMingBiography, p.263. There is no corresponding figure in standard Sung historical sources. In Chapter 17 of Chinp’ingmei, Chang Ta is listed in a memorial as having been defeated at T’ai-yüan. This memorial requests severe penalties for those responsible for weak border defenses, but corrupt officials keep these penalties from being meted out. The author of Chinp’ingmei ascribes the difficulties besetting the empire to weakened defenses arising from internal corruption and the neglect or persecution of virtuous officials. Thus his mention of this particular Ming figure does more than add a passing topical reference. It can also be seen as underlining the book’s main concerns.

27. 2.21.27.

28. 2.31.257.

29. All of these song-sequences are contained in the Ming collection Tz’u-linchai-yen (TLCY), (preface dated 1525; see bibliography for modern facsimile edition.) David Roy has compiled the following citations: Chin-shanghua, 1.15.355 and 4.78.715, TLCY 618-623; Chiang-tuch’un, 2.21.18, TLCY 867-872; Ch’un-yünyüan, 3.43.72, TLCY 262-264; Hua-meihsü, 3.43.72 and 3.46.118, TLCY 279-284; Chihsien-pin, 3.58.506, TLCY 893-896; Ch’ingna-ao, 3.60.573, TLCY 1028-1032; Tsui-huayin, 4.78.733, TLCY 1106-1109. Authorship and provenance of the songs, where known, are given in TLCY. These songs are composed for seasonal occasions and are performed at appropriate moments in the Chinp’ingmei. Reference to the emperor is for the most part confined to the coda and one or two other verses, but it dominates the entire Ch’un-yünyüan and Ch’ingna-ao sequences listed above. The Ch’un-yünyüan sequence congratulates the emperor on his birthday, and is sung for Li P’ing-erh on the occasion of her birthday and the betrothal of her son. The Ch’ingna-ao sequence begins with a recital of traditional cosmology, continues with the announcement that “the emperor has ascended the Dragon Throne,” and praises the emperor’s wise rule in each succeeding song. This sequence begins the entertainment at a feast held to congratulate Hsi-men Ch’ing on the opening of a new shop. References to Han Wu-ti also open or close several chapters: 1.17.382, 2.39.479, 3.43.47.

30. Hanan, “Sources,” pp.43-47.

31. P’an Chin-lien calls Kuan-ko a “crown prince,” 2.31.271. (Wu Yüeh-niang, railing at Hsi-men Ch’ing about P’an Chin-lien’s behavior in Chapter 75, recalls this reference at 4.75.574. The reader is thus not allowed to forget it.) Quotations from Ju-ichünchuan are identified in Hanan, “Sources,” pp. 43-47. Eunuchs call for Paochuang-ho, 2.31.280. Imperial kinswoman’s comment, 3.43.69.

32. The Wan-li succession controversy is discussed at length in L. Carrington Goodrich and Chaoying Fang, eds., DictionaryofMingBiography (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976), pp. 208-211, and Huang, passim. The controversy over the heir-apparent began with the birth of Cheng Kuei-fei’s son in 1584, and continued unabated until his departure for his own fief in 1614. The popular image of the Wan-li emperor may have contributed to the characterization of Hsi-men Ch’ing in other ways as well. The emperor’s behavior was popularly supposed to indicate his inordinate sexual appetite, a trait which characterizes Hsi-men Ch’ing and indeed any bad last emperor. One of the few projects for which the Wan-li emperor showed enthusiasm was the construction of his own mausoleum, which required excessive taxation in labor and in kind, just as Sung Hui-tsung’s Ken Yüeh is supposed to have done. (See Huang, pp.124-129.) Hsi-men Ch’ing’s construction of an elaborate mausoleum, using tiles from the imperial brickworks, proceeds in the novel in parallel with Sung Hui-tsung’s construction of the Ken Yüeh. Meng Yü-lou’s retort to her dead husband’s maternal uncle in Chapter 7 may contain yet another implicit comparison between Hsi-men Ch’ing and the Wan-li emperor: in one of the novel’s few references to an actual Ming event, the sale of brood mares from the T’ai-p’u ssu, Meng Yü-lou points out that the emperor himself, when short of cash, borrows from the T’ai-p’u ssu, so that a man of affairs such as Hsi-men Ch’ing can hardly be faulted for borrowing. Both the Lung-ch’ing emperor (r.1566-1572) and the Wan-li emperor are known to have turned to the T’ai-p’u ssu for funds. See Hanan, “Text,” p.39, n.45, for further references.

33. Feng Chin-pao’s name changed to Cheng Chin-pao, 5.93.311, Kuan-ko’s reincarnation, 3.59.557.

34. See R.H. Van Gulik, SexualLifeinAncientChina (Leiden: Brill, 1961), p.157 and all index entries under “sexual alchemy.”

35. The pun on the word yin was pointed out by Andrew Plaks, and that on the name of Ts’ai Ching by David Roy in “New Interpretation,” pp. 19-20.

36. Hsi-men Ch’ing’s sycophants eat food intended for him, 3.42.31, 3.46.139, 4.67.207, 212, 213; memorials having to do with finance, 1.17.188-192, 3.48.190-195, 3.49.200; references to the emperor’s tomb, 4.65.152, 4.68.257, 4.78.787; Wang Liu-erh’s intercession, 3.47.157-163; Hsi-men Ch’ing impeached, 3.49.186; Hsi-men Ch’ing receives aphrodisiac, 3.49.224-231; Censor Tseng’s memorial, 3.49.200; Ts’ai Ching’s seven suggestions, 3.48.190-195; Hsi-men Ch’ing warned, 3.49.229; Hsi-men Ch’ing’s sexual relations with Wang Liu-erh, 4.79.744-750; with P’an Chin-lien, 4.79.751-755.

37. 3.50.235.

38. Hsiao-ko’s conception can be assumed to have taken place early in Chapter 53. For a summary of the evidence, see Hanan, “Text,” pp.35-36.

39. The suite that Li K’ai-hsien quotes from the play FanLikueihu of Fan Tzu-an couples language describing the loss of family and state with a phrase conventionally used to describe singing-girls: “falling in love with the new and casting off the old.” See the T’ai-p’ingling song in Tz’u-nüeh, LCCC, III, 319.

40. 3.49.210, 213-220.

41. Wu Yüeh-niang a madam, 3.51.256-257; Hsi-men Ch’ing offers to pay P’an Chin-lien, 3.51.278, 3.52.301; P’an Chin-lien demands skirt, 3.52.301; Ch’en Ching-chi’s sexual favors, 5.93.307, 5.96.392; Wang Liu-erh and her daughter, 5.98.437. As early as Chapter 11, Hsi-men Ch’ing has compared two of his wives to singing-girls (1.11.231), and Li P’ing-erh is explicitly likened to a prostitute on at least three occasions: 1.13.305, 1.15.351, and 1.15.352. When we are introduced to the microcosmic Hsi-men household, the narrator points out to us that its finances are in the hands of Li Chiao-erh, a former prostitute (1.11.233).

42. Li P’ing-erh humiliated, 1.19.452-458; P’an Chin-lien tormented, 2.27.177-178; Hsi-men Ch’ing dismays Cheng Ai-yüeh, 3.59.537; sexual hierarchy, 1.18.423-424, 4.72.411, and 4.75.532.

43. 4.64.131.

44. Hsi-men Ch’ing’s excessive grief after the death of Li P’ing-erh moves even the sycophant Ying Po-chüeh to scold him for causing the other wives distress (4.66.179).

45. Hsi-men Ch’ing’s inappropriate insignia, 2.31.256, 2.31.261, 2.39.489, 4.71.361. Wives wear inappropriate insignia, 2.35.390, 3.43.67. See Wang Ch’i, San-ts’ait’u-hui, preface dated 1607 (Taipei: Ch’eng-wen ch’u-pan she, 1970), IV, 1541, and Ming-shih, (Peking: Chung-hua shu-chü, 1974), ch.67, p.1638. Wu Tien-en’s false claim, 2.30.238. P’an Chin-lien’s flirtation with Ch’en Ching-chi begins with their first meeting in Chapter 18 (1.18.420), and is finally consummated in Chapter 80 (4.80.796). Li Kuei-chieh adopted, 2.32.287. Hsi-men Ch’ing adopts Wang San-kuan, 4.72.415-416.

46. 3.51.280.

3. RELIGION IN CHINP’INGMEI

1. Wang Yang-ming’s concern about the Buddhist and Taoist fear of earthly attachments is discussed in Feng Yu-lan, II, 611. Kao P’an-lung (1562-1626) expressed similar reservations, as did other Tung-lin thinkers. See Busch, p.90, n.370. Idema, p.xxxi, points out that this attitude toward renunciation was characteristic of Chinese fiction during the Ming.

2. Martinson, “Pao Order and Redemption,” p.352.

3. Thus Hsi-men Ch’ing’s horoscope differs on pages 2.29.211 and 4.79.772.

4. See “How to Read the Chinp’ingmei, Sec.37.

5. See Chapter 1, n.29.

6. For an account of Ming morality books (shan-shu), see Sakai Tadao, Chügokuzenshonokenkyü, and his “Confucianism and Popular Educational Works,” pp.345-362; and Cynthia Brokaw, “Determining One’s Own Fate.” The idea that the phrenological marks changed with the human heart was popular in Ming drama; an example is the play Huan-taichi, quoted in Chinp’ingmei. Li K’ai-hsien echoes this belief in the essay cited above in Chapter 1, n.29. We find the conviction that karma could be altered by virtue and compassion in a story told by Nun Hsüeh in Chapter 59 of Chinp’ingmei (4.59.560).

7. Martinson, “Pao Order and Redemption,” p.346.

8. Hanan, VernacularStory, p.26.

9. Chapters 58 and 59.

10. 2.39.483.

11. Only the memorial that is a typical component of a Taoist chiao is included in Chinp’ingmei. We do not see the actual chiao. The use of written memorials characterizes the rituals of ordained, initiated Taoist priests, such as served the court. This is not presented as a heterodox rite. See Sivin, “On the Word ‘Taoist’,” p.307.

12. It seems to be a Taoist fen-teng (“Distribution of the Lamps”) ceremony, such as has been described by K.M. Schipper in LeFen-teng:RituelleTaoiste, Publications de L’Extreme Orient, no.103 (Paris: Ecole Française d’Extreme Orient, 1975).

13. Martinson, “The Chinp’ingmei as Wisdom Literature,” p.52.

14. Martinson, “The Chinp’ingmei as Wisdom Literature,” p.53.

15. 2.32.286, 3.58.496.

16. See Berling, LinChao-en, pp.95-103.

17. See Ch’angch’ing-chingching, annotated by Lin Chao-en, in Pai-puts’ung-shuchi-ch’eng, Series 17 (Taipei: I-wen yin-shu-kuan, 1969), XXXIV, 5a. Facsimile of the Ming Wan-li edition printed by Sun Yu-an. The Taoist classic Ch’angch’ing-chingching is here interpreted according to Lin’s views.

18. For Lin’s comments, see Mo-ho-pan-jo-po-lo-mi-to hsin-chingshih, annotated by Lin Chao-en, in Pai-puts’ung-shuchi-ch’eng, Series 17, XXXI, 8b-10b. This is the popular HeartSutra. Ho Liang-chün also comments on it in Ssu-yuchaits’ung-shuo, p.190. Passing references to the senses in terms that recall the Six Roots are found throughout the two chapters on Buddhism in Ho’s Ssu-yuchai (pp.187-201).

19. Lin ends many of the sections of his commentary on the HeartSutra with the question: “Who can possibly know [the truth of which I speak] without personally coming to the ‘other shore’ [true enlightenment, described throughout the sutra by the metaphor of crossing a river]?” But his directions for crossing to the other shore simply involve awakening to the vanity of desire, and he nowhere advocates withdrawing from the world. For Lin’s commitment to filiality and his quarrel with celibacy, see Berling, LinChao-en, pp.112, 196-197, 202, and 205.

20. For accounts of sectarian religion in the Ming, see Daniel Overmyer, FolkBuddhistReligion and “Values in Chinese Sectarian Literature;” Sawada, Hokannokenkyü, and Richard Shek, “Religion and Society in the Late Ming: Sectarianism and Popular Thought in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century China,” Diss. University of California at Berkeley, 1980.

21. For a formal description of pao-chüan and an account of their typical teachings by the late Ming, see Sawada, Hōkannokenkyū, pp.19-97; Li Shih-yü, “Pao-chüan hsin-yen,” in Wen-hsüeh i-ch’an pien-chi pu, ed., Wen-hsüehi-ch’antseng-k’an, Fourth Series (Peking: Tso-chia ch’u-pan she, 1957), pp.165-181, and Pao-chüanTsung-lü (Peking: Chung-hua shu-chü, 1961). For a more extended discussion with ample quotation from pao-chüan, see Cheng Chen-to, pp.306-307.

22. For a reconstruction of Lo Ch’ing’s life and work, see Overmyer, “Values in Chinese Sectarian Literature,” and “Boatmen and Buddhas: The Lo Chiao in Ming Dynasty China,” HistoryofReligions, 17,_ Nos.3 and 4 (Feb.-May 1978), 284-302; and Sawada, Hokannokenkyu, pp.301-365.

23. The Three Teachings are brought together in many pao-chüan. In a pao-chüan quoted by Sakai Tadao, three patriarchs are reborn in the mundane world to become Sakyamuni, who bequeaths the way of release from suffering; Lao-tzu, who bequeaths alchemy; and Confucius, who bequeaths the Four Books and the Five Classics. See Sakai, Zensho, pp.449-450. For popular motifs and Taoist teachings in pao-chüan, see Sakai, Zensho, pp.446-448. A similar list of “popular” and “Taoist” pao-chüan is found in Sawada, Hōkannokenkyū, p.62. Even here, however, the tales are generally given the Buddhist frame of rebirth and redemption, and the Buddhist salvational ideal is prominent throughout, showing close affinities between pao-chüan and the most popular orthodox form of late Ming Buddhism, Pure Land.

24. Typical late Ming pao-chüan teachings about the Eternal Mother appear in Chinp’ingmei in Huang-shihnüpao-chüan, quoted on 4.74.515-516; and in Yao-shihpao-chüan, recited at Li P’ing-erh’s death in Chapter 64 (4.62.93). Selections from Yao-shihpao-chüan can be found in Cheng Chen-to, II, 312-317.

25. Overmyer, “Values in Chinese Sectarian Literature.” As Overmyer makes clear, Lo drew his repudiation of conventional ethics from a Sung exegesis of the Diamond Sutra, the Chin-kangk’o-i. By the late Ming, certain followers of Wang Yang-ming were perceived as having held similarly dangerous ideas. See Busch, pp.103-111.

26. Quoted in Sakai, Zensho, p.479.

27. Wang Shih-chen (1526-1590), an official and a dominant figure in the Chia-ching literary world, was for a time a follower of T’an Yang-tzu, a young woman sectarian teacher. T’an Yang-tzu was herself the daughter of a prominent family. See Goodrich and Fang, eds., DictionaryofMingBiography, II, 1401, and Ann Waltner, “Tan Yangzi, A Sixteenth-Century Mystic,” paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies (Washington D.C., March 24, 1984).

28. Overmyer, FolkBuddhistReligion, pp.182-183; Sawada, Hōkan no kenkyū, pp.70-81.

29. Sakai, Zensho, pp.463, 478, 479; Sawada, Hōkannokenkyū, pp.61-62.

30. 4.75.521-522.

31. Sawada Mizuhō summarizes the plot and bibliography of all five scriptures in Hōkannokenkyū, pp.285-299. This material also appears as “Kimpeibaishiwa no hokan ni tsuite,” Chūgokubungakuhō5 (October 1956), pp.86-89.

32. In Hōkannokenkyū, pp.286-290, Sawada makes clear that this is not part of the Chin-kangk’o-i as we have it today.

33. A song about incest between a mother and son-in-law on 5.82.28 helps to draw our attention to the relationship between Ch’en Ching-chi and P’an Chin-lien.

34. 2.40.517-519.

35. 3.50.241.

36. 3.49.221-224.

37. tiu as dissipation, 3.49.222; as ejaculation, 3.50.252.

38. 3.50.241.

39. Taoist reclusion is presented as positive in various Ming tsa-chü, and in the early Ch’ing work T’ao-huashan (Peach-BlossomFan) of K’ung Shang-jen (1648-1718), where it signals a lack of alternatives, the impossibility of Confucian service in a world gone astray.

4. VERBAL TEXTURE AND NARRATIVE STRUCTURE

1. Skillful, seamless linkage between incidents was an explicit critical desideratum at the time of the novel’s composition. The Fan-li to the late Ming novel San-chiaok’ai-mi praise the way that work’s “veins and arteries are linked from beginning to end,” and the writer of the first preface to the earliest edition of Chinp’ingmei praises it in the same language, which seems to have been conventional. Chang Chu-p’o, in Section 13 of “How to Read the Chinp’ingmei”, gives specific examples of the skillful linking of incidents and themes. Plaks discusses this compositional principle in “Interpretive Analysis,” pp.6-9.

2. Ian Watt, TheRiseoftheNovel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957), pp. 13-34. Patrick Hanan applies Watt’s definitions to Chinp’ingmei in “A Landmark of the Chinese Novel,” UniversityofTorontoQuarterly, 30 (1961), 332.

3. Yu-wei or yu-so-wei. Chang Chu-p’o makes a similar point in Section 37 of “How to Read the Chinp’ingmei,” when he observes that the novel’s chronology is made purposefully inconsistent, to keep the book from seeming no more than a “daily record of the events in the Hsi-men household.”

4. The preface by Chu Chih-fan of Chin-ling to San-chiaok’ai-mi states that the book’s message is to be found in the p’ien-yenchih-tzu (single words and isolated phrases) whose significance must be understood by the perceptive reader.

5. “How to Read the Chinp’ingmei,” Section 41.

6. “How to Read the Chinp’ingmei,” Section 42.

7. 4.73.481.P’an Chin-lien and Hsi-men Ch’ing are described as curling up in bed “unaware that the east was already growing light.” See Burton Watson, tr., SuTung-p’o:SelectionsfromaSungDynastyPoet (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965), p.90. I owe the identification of this allusion to David Roy.

8. Dating and attribution of this story are discussed by Hanan in TheChineseShortStory. (See Hanan’s index for citations.) The plot is summarized and discussed in Hanan, VernacularStory, pp.67-68. The story is included in Ch’ing-p’ing-shant’anghua-pen (1934; rpt. Peking: Wen-hsüeh ku-chi k’an-hsing she, 1955), pp. 247-269.

9. Plaks, “Interpretive Analysis,” p.5.

10. Borrowings from Shui-huchuan, with information on editions, can be found in Hanan, “Sources,” pp.25-32.

11. The author prepares us to sympathize with Lin P’ing-erh’s grief at the death of her child, by showing us her sweetness to the other wives and her growing anxiety over the jealousy she causes them. (We are shown this anxiety even as we watch the heedless acts that insure their jealousy.) And Sung Hui-lien, whose imitation of P’an Chin-lien is so successful that she almost wins a place among the wives, wins our sympathy by the shock and contrition she feels when Hsi-men Ch’ing banishes her husband.

12. P’an Chin-lien is alluding to the fact that Ju-i, who served as wet-nurse to Kuan-ko while Li P’ing-erh was alive, has also asked for a fur coat. Ju-i’s request has reawakened P’an Chin-lien’s jealousy of the dead Li P’ing-erh.

13. 4.75.564-566. This translation draws on suggestions by David Roy, whose complete translation of the novel is in progress.

14. 4.76.605-607.

15. The hua-pen incorporated into Chinp’ingmei are discussed by Hanan in “Sources,” pp. 32-43.

16. 3.48.189 and 4.79.751.

17. See in particular 2.24.83 and 2.28.185-190. The passage in Chapter 28, where P’an Chin-lien finds that Hsi-men Ch’ing has saved a chin-lien of Sung Hui-lien’s even after her death, weaves this rivalry into the ongoing account of P’an Chin-lien’s sadistic treatment of her maid Ch’iu-chü, who is made a scapegoat in many of P’an Chin-lien’s rages. This is an example of the author’s skillful linkage of incidents, since it is Ch’iu-chü who will finally tell Wu Yüeh-niang about P’an Chin-lien’s illicit relations with Ch’en Ching-chi in Chapter 83. In his introduction to Chapter 28, Chang Chu-p’o waxes rhapsodic over the author’s subtle symbolizing of his protagonists, and his skill at weaving together all the strands of the narrative.

18. 1.5.119 and 4.79.753. Other similar verbal resonances can be found in the deaths of Wu Ta and Hsi-men Ch’ing (Wu Ta “pants a while and dies,” 1.5.120, and Hsi-men Ch’ing “pants half the night and dies,” 4.79.778); and in the language of various Taoists to Hsi-men Ch’ing and Li P’ing-erh. When the mysterious monk of Chapter 49 cautions Hsi-men Ch’ing on the use of the aphrodisiac he has just given him, his language (“Beware! Beware!” 3.49.231) is reminiscent of Immortal Wu’s when he cautions Li P’ing-erh in Chapter 29 on the evil omens in her horoscope (“Caution! Caution!” 2.29.218). And in Chapter 62, Hsi-men Ch’ing is warned in the exact language of Chapter 29 (“Caution! Caution!” 4.62.84) by the Taoist P’an not to enter her sickroom when she is on the point of death. The connection between Hsi-men Ch’ing and Li P’ing-erh that is implied by this verbal resonance is supported when both see dying visions of the murdered Hua Tzu-hsü.

19. I have examined Chapter 27 in greater detail in “Puns and Puzzles in Chinp’ingmei: A Look at Chapter 27,” T’oungPao, 67 (1981), 216-239. Parts of this discussion are drawn from that paper.

20. See Sections 10, 25, 83, 87, and 88 of “How to Read the Chinp’ingmei,” where Chang Chu-p’o makes clear his belief that the language of heat and cold is used metaphorically for the Hsi-men family’s prosperity and decline. In his interlinear commentary on Chapter 27, Chang points out all references, however brief, to heat and cold.

21. These cycles, and appropriate human responses to them, are explicitly discussed in Chapter 13 of the Ch’ing novel Hung-loumeng, which owes a great debt for both structure and themes to Chinp’ingmei. It is recognized that human beings can do nothing to stop the natural oscillation between heat and cold, but by prudent action they can survive periods of decline in relative calm. As Chapter 13 of Hung-loumeng opens, Ch’in K’o-ch’ing appears to Wang Hsi-feng in a dream and warns her that the household fortunes must decline, just as all natural phenomena decline after reaching the zenith. We are given a similar hint in Chapter 71 of Chinp’ingmei, when Hsi-men Ch’ing’s colleague Hsia (literally, “summer”) is effectively demoted just as Hsi-men Ch’ing reaches the zenith of his official career.

22. 2.27. 160. The T’ang poem is K’u-je-hsing, by Wang Ku (898 c.s.). See Ch’üanT’ang-shih (Peking: Chung-hua shu-chu, 1960), X, 7986-7987. This poem is also quoted without attribution in Chapter 16 of Shui-huchuan. See I-paierh-shihhui-tiShui-hu (1969; rpt. Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1978), p.236. I owe the identification of this poem to David Roy.

23. 2.27.167.

24. 2.27.168.

25. At his inappropriate betrothal in Chapter 42, Kuan-ko is given a little gold (chin) bracelet (3.42.24), and the first half of the next chapter is devoted to the uproar caused by the theft of gold (chin) bracelets from his room. During his deathbed convulsions in Chapter 59, the ladies feed him chin-yin (gold-and-silver) t’ ang and a gold (chin) pill, and Wu Yueh-niang tries in vain to open his mouth with a gold (chin) hairpin (4.59.545-6).

26. The word liang continues this subliminal function in the rest of the chapter, most notably during the sexual encounter between Hsi-men Ch’ing and P’an Chin-lien. Hsi-men Ch’ing sits on the sort of cold stool that P’an Chin-lien had been rebuked for using earlier (the “cold stool” had thus been underscored for the reader), and P’an Chin-lien uses liang bedding, languidly waving a fan to produce a liang breeze in the summer heat.

27. 2.27.163.

28. 2.27.159.

29. 2.27.174.

30. 2.27.168. Frederick W. Mote discusses the role played by food in Chinp’ingmei, and devotes several pages to Chapter 27. See Mote, “Yuan and Ming,” in K. C. Chang, ed., FoodinChineseCulture:AnthropologicalandHistoricalPerspectives (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), pp.221-225 and 248-252. Mote observes that Chapter 27 involves “ostentatious consumption of an intricately refined sort,” and that the details of this consumption are even more important in giving the grape-arbor scene its unique character than is the description of sexual activity.

31. 2.27.160-162. This passage draws on the same vocabulary of clichés as is found in Chapter 16 of Shui-huchuan. See in particular p.234 of I-paierh-shihhui-tiShui-huchuan.

32. 2.27.165-166.

33. 2.27.178.

34. 2.27.175.

35. 1.3.63.

36. 5.81.4.

37. 5.94.341.

38. The Ta-hsüeh states that “What is meant by ‘making the thoughts sincere’ (ch’eng-i) is ‘the allowing of no self-deception’ (tzu-ch’i).” See James Legge, ed. and trans., TheChineseClassics (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1960), I, 336.

39. 4.65.161.

40. 1.19.429.

41. 2.29.215.

42. See the index entries for “Destiny” in Wing-tsit Chan’s translations of ReflectionsonThingsatHand:TheNeo-ConfucianAnthologyCompiledbyChuHsiandLüTsu-ch’ien (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), and InstructionsforPracticalLivingandOtherNeo-ConfucianWritingsbyWangYang-ming (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963).

43. 2.29.222 and 3.46.147.

44. It seems to begin in Chapter 50, when Hsi-men Ch’ing insists on using his newly acquired aphrodisiac in intercourse with her despite the fact that she is still experiencing post-partum discharge (3.50.251). She says that what he wants to do is “unclean,” and begins to speak of her own death. This is a perfect example of the revalorization of the opening poem on ch’ing and se, since Hsi-men Ch’ing, and not Li P’ing-erh, is responsible for the unclean act he is about to commit.

45. This observation is made by both P’an Chin-lien (4.67.237) and Hsi-men Ch’ing (4.79.740).

46. Wayne C. Booth, TheRhetoricofFiction (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), pp.71-76 and passim.

47. Patrick Hanan, “The Making of ThePearl-SewnShirt and TheCourtesan’sJewelBox,” HJAS, 33 (1973), 124-153.

48. Hanan, “Pearl-SewnShirt,”, p.138.

49. Hanan, “Pearl-SewnShirt,” p.137.

50. 1.11.241.

51. Hanan, VernacularStory, pp.148-152.

52. 2.37.432.

53. 4.79.754-755. The quotation about lusts and desires is from Chuang-tzu. See Chuang-tzu, trans. Feng Yu-lan (New York: Paragon Book Company, 1964), p.112. I owe the identification of this allusion to David Roy.

5. DRAMA AND SONG: THE LANGUAGE OF CONVENTION

1. The Appendix below gives the location of all identified allusions. The Bibliography lists the editions of dramatic works that were consulted for this study. Scene-by-scene plot summaries can be found in Carlitz, “The Role of Drama in Chinp’ingmei,” Diss. University of Chicago, 1978, pp.385-514. These allusions to drama in Chinp’ingmei were identified by Feng Yüan-chün in “Chinp’ingmeitz’u-hua chung-ti wen-hsüeh shih-liao,” in her Ku-chinshuo-hui (Peking: Tso-chia ch’u-pan she, 1956), pp.192-204; by Patrick Hanan in “Sources,” pp.49-55; by David Roy in a private communication, and by myself. They are discussed in Carlitz, “The Role of Drama in the Chinp’ingmei,” Diss. University of Chicago, 1978.

2. These songs are identified by Hanan in “Sources,” pp.55-63.

3. Unlike Shui-huchuan, Chinp’ingmei gives us an account of P’an Chin-lien’s origins (see 1.1.19-22). (She has been trained as a singing-girl in a wealthy household.) Her sister wives are aware of her attainments in this area: Meng Yü-lou comments in Chapter 21 that none of them knows the entertainers’ repertoire as well as she does (2.21.32-33). Ying Po-chüeh instructs Hsi-men Ch’ing on the proper treatment of actors in Chapter 46 (3.46.114), and in Chapter 68 he disparages the eunuchs for their inability to appreciate Southern drama (4.68.144). In Chapter 45, he appraises an ornamental screen for Hsi-men Ch’ing (3.45.98-99).

4. David Roy has prepared an unpublished finding list for all songs in Chinp’ingmei that are contained in extant Ming songbooks. Modern editions of these songbooks are listed in the Bibliography.

5. Puppet theater, 4.80.795; pai-hsi, 3.58.455 and 4.65.156-157; yüan-pen, 2.31.277-280. The yüan-pen performance is discussed below in Chapter 6. The pai-hsi titles seem to have been chosen with the same care as the other allusions to drama: they refer to Taoist immortality, to the “Six Tyrants” ruling the empire, and to “Plums in Snow,” all of which relate to the novel’s central concerns.

6. Aoki Masaru discusses the decline of tsa-chü performance in Ming and Ch’ing in Chung-kuochin-shihhsi-ch’üshih, ed. and tr. by Wang Ku-lu (Peking: Chung-hua shu-chü, 1975), pp.173-178. The Chia-ching era writings contained in LCCC refer by name to many Yüan plays, and Wang Shih-chen’s (1526-1590) Ch’ü-tsao lists twenty that he says are still performed (LCCC, IV, 31). (He includes only four of the fourteen alluded to in Chinp’ingmei.) By the end of the dynasty, critics seem to have grown less familiar with tsa-chü performance (they are more interested in Southern drama), though they still demonstrate their familiarity with the requirements of tsa-chü prosody. But the greatest Ming anthology of Yüan drama, Yüan-ch’ü-hsüan, did not appear until late in the Wan-li era, showing that the texts of tsa-chü were still being carefully preserved for an interested public.

7. See Feng Yüan-chün.

8. See K’ang-i Sun Chang, “Songs in the Chinp’ingmeitz’u-hua,” a paper presented at the Chinese Language Teachers’ Association panel of the 1978 Annual Meeting of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (Chicago, Nov. 24, 1978).

9. This song is Ch’ih-titang-ch’üanyaot’ai-hsü (The Red Emperor Holds Sway, Ablaze in the Great Void). It is the first of a suite from an early ch’uan-ch’i play entitled T’angPo-hengyinhuochihfu (T’ang Po-heng Achieves Good Fortune Because of Misfortune), which is no longer extant. See Ch’ien Nan-yang, Sung-Yüanhsi-wenchi-i (Shanghai: Shang-hai ku-tien wen-hsüeh ch’u-pan she, 1956), p. 116. I owe the identification of this source to David Roy. The text of this suite is preserved in TLCY, pp.264-265; YHYF, pp.361b-362a; and SSHS, pp.552-553. In his preface to Chapter 27, Chang Chu-p’o comments that this song concerns the whole plan of the novel.

10. The apparent existence of a play entitled Feng-hsüehhung-p’aoLiuChih-yüan is noted by Chou I-pai in his Chung-kuohsi-chüshih (Shanghai: Chung-hua shu-chü, 1954), p.343.

11. 4.61.25.

12. 4.79.740.

13. Ying’s remark is as follows:

He thus quotes both the t’i-mu and cheng-ming of the extant edition of this play, which are

14. The t’i-mu and cheng-ming of the extant edition are

15. The suite beginning Fei-ts’uich’uang-sha, to the tune Touan-ch’un. This suite is included in TLCY, pp. 1201-1204; YHYF, pp.13.60a-13.61a; and SSHS, pp.396-398.

16. 3.43.65. The fact that the love token is a shoe or chin-lien once again links the notion of sexual confusion to P’an Chin-lien.

17. The T’ang classical Hui-chenchi, by Yüan Chen (779-831), was elaborated into something very much like its Yüan dramatic form in the chu-kung-tiao (chantefable) narrative Hsi-hsiangchichu-kung-tiao of Tung Chieh-yüan (fl.1189-1209). For a translation and textual history see Li-li Ch’en, MasterTung’sWesternChamberRomance(TungHsi-hsiangchu-kung-tiao):AChineseChantefable (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976).

18. In a passage of conventional description in Chapter 37 of Chinp’ingmei (2.37.242), the concluding lines remind us that Ts’ui Ying-ying was an emblem of illicit love:

This reputation obviously persisted into the Ch’ing; one need only remember the passage in Chapter 42 of Hung-loumeng, where the virtuous Hsüeh Pao-ch’ai expresses her shock upon learning that Lin Tai-yü has read the play.

19. William Dolby, AHistoryofChineseDrama (London: Barnes and Noble, 1976), p.108; John Ching-yu Wang, ChinSheng-t’an, Twayne World Authors Series, no.230 (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1972), p.84.

20. Shoupinan-shan, to the tune Ch’un-yünyüan, 3.42.72, contained in TLCY, pp. 262-264; YHYF, pp.16.18a-19a; and SSHS, pp.551-552; and Hua-yüehmanch’un-ch’eng, to the tune Hua-mei hsü, 3.43.72, contained in TLCY, pp.279-284; YHYF, p.57a; SSHS, p.559; and NPKT, pp.77-78.

21. See Stephen H. West, “Mongol Influence on the Development of Northern Drama,” in ChinaUnderMongolRule, ed. John D. Langlois, Jr. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), pp.434-465.

22. The original title of this play was Pai-yüeht’ing (Moon-Prayer Pavilion), and it is based on the tsa-chü of that name by Kuan Han-ch’ing (1241? - 1322?). The ch’uan-ch’i is traditionally attributed to the late Yüan dramatist Shih Hui, but it seems to have been extensively revised during the Ming. See Aoki, pp.101-107; and Chao Ching-shen, YüanMingnan-hsik’ao-lüeh (Peking: Tso-chia ch’u-pan she, 1958), pp.34-43. Yu-kueichi is included in the late Ming anthology Liu-shihchung ch’ü, no.12.

23. On the authorship of Ching-ch’aichi, see Aoki, pp.108-111; and Chao, pp.13-27. Ching-ch’aichi is included in Liu-shihchungch’ü, no.2.

24. This point is discussed by Jean Mulligan in “The P’i-p’achi and its Role in the Development of the Ch’uan-ch’i Genre,” 2 vols., Diss. University of Chicago, 1976, pp.77-103.

25. In his influential study of Southern drama, Nan-tz’uhsü-lu, Hsü Wei (1521-1593) voices such a criticism of Hsiang-nangchi, an avowed “continuation” to Wu-lunch’üan-pei (LCCC, III, 243). Such criticism was motivated by the sense that excessive erudition made a play incomprehensible to its audience, thus violating the pen-se (fidelity to appropriate speech or language) of drama. The influential Wang Shih-chen states in his Ch’ü-tsao that Wu-lunch’üan-pei and Hsiang-nangchi do not move people, and cannot escape the charge of sterile pedantry (LCCC, IV, 34). These views are echoed in the Ch’ü-lun of Hsü Fu-tso (1560-1630), who says that the pedantry of Wu-lunch’üan-pei is enough to make one ill (LCCC, IV, 236).

26. Shuang-chungchi, Fu-ch’un t’ang edition, Scene 1, pp.2a-2b.

27. Ch’in-hsinchi, by Sun Yu (fl.1573-1620). Included in Liu-shih chungch’ü, no.22.

28. Parts of this discussion of P’i-p’achi have appeared in Carlitz, “Puns and Puzzles in the Chinp’ingmei.”

29. The character of Ts’ai Po-chieh is based on anecdotes about the historical figure Ts’ai Yung, tzu Po-chieh (133-192). In the introduction to his annotated edition of P’i-p’achi (Shanghai: Chung-hua shu-chü, 1965), Ch’ien Nan-yang describes the dramatic tradition in which Ts’ai Po-chieh was apparently portrayed as an ingrate who abandoned his wife and parents. Kao Ming rehabilitated his protagonist by giving him the positive attributes of the historical Ts’ai Yung, said to be a virtuoso on the ch’in and a model of filial piety.

30. Hsiang-wanlaiyükuonan-hsüan and Liu-yinchunghutsaohsin-ch’an, both to the tune Liang-chouhsü; and Lien-ihsits’ai-yüan, to the tune Chieh-chieh kao. Two more songs from the Liang-chouhsü suite of Scene 21 appear later in Chapter 27.

31. The first song quoted in Chapter 27 begins with the evocation of rain:

Adapted from Jean Mulligan, TheLute (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980), p.171. The rainshower in Chapter 27 is described as follows:

In Chapter 58 (3.58.487) we learn that the tzu of Commander Chou, whom Ch’un-mei will marry at the end of the novel, is Nan-hsüan.

32. The two arias Hsitekung-mingsui, to the tune Ch’iaohosheng, and Hsiaoyin-yinch’ing-hsi, to the tune T’iao-hsiaoling, both from Scene 20 of Ts’ai-louchi. The arias are included in YHYF 16.32b-33a; TLCY, p.1272, and SSHS, p.418-420.

33. Based on the historical Sung figure, 946-1011.

34. The arias Hua-pienliu-pien and Shih-tsaich’ing-tenghuangchuan, to the tune Ch’ao-yüanko, from Scene 6 of Hsiang-nangchi; and the arias Hungjuhsien-t’ao and Nan-paomu-shihch’ü-lao, to the tune Chin-t’angyüeh, from Scene 2.

35. The arias En-tehaowu-pien and Jo-chihshihchi-nien, to the tune Hua-meihsü, from Scene 13 of Yü-huanchi (Shen-yü kuan edition; LSCC Scene 12).

36. Kuan-chüpa-fu ch’en, to the tune I-chih hua (4.65.175). Contained in YHYF 8.4a; TLCY, p.1023; and SSHS, p.277-278.

37. Lo-yanghua, to the tune P’u-t’ ien lo (4.65.178). Contained in TLCY, p.73 and SSHS, p.578.

38. 4.64.140.

39. The five songs beginning with Ti-i lai wei ya-ching, to the tune I-ch’ un ling, from Scene 17 of Nan Hsi-hsiang chi. The analogous scene in the Northern Hsi-hsiang chi is Book II, Act II.

40. In Chapter 61 (4.61.6), Wang Liu-erh and Han Tao-kuo engage a singer to entertain Hsi-men Ch’ing; she performs this scene in its Northern version (the suite beginning Pan-wan tsei-ping, to the tune Fen-tieh-erh, from Book II, Act II). By arrangement, Han Tao-kuo then leaves his wife alone with Hsi-men Ch’ing, and the servant Hu Hsiu watches them have intercourse. (Before the suite from Hsi-hsiang chi, the singer has performed the suite Ch’iu-hsiang t’ ing, to the tune Tuan-cheng hao, from Pai P’u’s thirteenth-century tsa-chu Liu hung-yeh, about a palace lady longing for a lover. This suite is contained in TLCY, pp.825-832.) In Chapter 68 (4.68.263), the Hsi-hsiang chi suite Pan-wan tsei-ping is performed at the house of the singing-girl Cheng Ai-yueh, after which Cheng Ai-yüeh plays the part of a Hung-niang by suggesting that Hsi-men Ch’ing seduce the mother of his rival Wang San-kuan. Cheng Ai-yueh’s first performance in the novel, in Chapter 58 (3.58.502) is a song of Hung-niang’s from Book IV, Act II (the aria Yeh-ch’u ming-lai, to the tune Tou an-ch’un).

6. DRAMA AND SONG: THE CONVENTIONS UNDERMINED

1. A Wan-li Shen-yü kuan edition (KPHC) and the greatly revised late Ming LSCC edition are listed in the Bibliography. In the Wan-li edition the hero Wei Kao has virtuous friends who help him on his way, whereas by the LSCC version Wei Kao is such a paragon of Confucian virtue that he reforms these very friends. The LSCC version relegates the reincarnation of Yu-hsiao to the last three scenes, whereas it is woven integrally into the earlier Wan-li version. The LSCC revision even excises the magical reappearance of the jade ring that gives the play its name. See Carlitz, “The Role of Drama in the Chinp’ingmei,” pp.460-478.

2. Shen-yü kuan edition. In the last song of Scene 30, the hero rescues his wife from her father and points out her father’s errors of judgment:

3. In Scene 28 of the LSCC version, the father Chang Yen-shang states that “if you want to govern the country, you must first regulate your family.” In this context the statement is highly ironic, since Chang is about to have his daughter drowned because she refuses to remarry. Chang’s poor judgment is a major theme of the play.

4. Chü-chih ts’ung-jung, to the tune Chu yün fei. In Scene 6 of Yu-huan chi, this aria is sung by the hero Wei Kao. He describes his beloved Yü-hsiao in the prostitutes’ quarters as a “pearl in the mire,” as indeed she is, given her unexpected interest in Confucius and Mencius.

5. 1.8.166-167.

6. 2.38.475.

7. 3.52.317. Ying Po-chüeh is alluding to Li Kuei-chieh’s involvement with her other lover, Wang San-kuan.

8. The author’s contemporaries or near-contemporaries certainly enjoyed playing with this conventional diction. See, for example, the love-poem that Li K’ai-hsien writes to tease his friend Wang Chiu-ssu (1468-1551), after Wang breaks off with his mistress (Tz’u-nüeh, LCCC, III, 275.) The contrast between the tearful phrases of the song and Li’s mocking intention in writing it are similar to what we find in Chinp’ingmei.

9. James Joyce, Ulysses (New York: Random House, 1934), p.340.

10. The Shan p’o-yang songs introduced in Chapter 59 after the death of Li P’ing-erh’s son (3.59.555, 562, and 565) express grief so poignant that it is difficult to read them as irony. Nevertheless, since Kuan-ko has died as a result of his parents’ misdeeds, the songs function not just as individual expression but as part of the book’s evocation of retribution. Li P’ing-erh’s genuine grief makes this retribution all the more telling. And even these songs remind us of her guilt: when the woman in the song cries to heaven that she has never harmed a soul (3.59.555), she reminds us that Li P’ing-erh has done so more than once.

11. 4.79.776.

12. A tz’u from the tsa-chü Chu-ch’uang yü forms the text of the note P’an Chin-lien sends to Ch’en Ching-chi in Chapter 83 (the tz’u beginning Chiang nu che t’ao-hua mien, to the tune Chi-sheng ts’ao, 5.83.54). This tsa-chü is no longer extant, but arias that have been preserved show it to have included just this sort of clandestine correspondence. See Chao Ching-shen, Yüan-jen tsa-chu kou-ch’en (Shanghai: Ku-tien wen-hsueh ch’u-pan she, 1956), pp.45-47.

13. 5.82.35.

14. For the virtuous singing-girl in yüan drama, see Wilt Idema and Stephen H. West, Chinese Theater, 1100-1450: A Source Book (Wiesbaden: F. Steiner Verlag, 1982), pp.348-350.

15. In the song Hsin-chung ch’ ien-kua, to the tune Liu yao chin (3.45. 106-107), the singer says she “does not want your jewels and gold,” but wants only to become man and wife. Another singing-girl sings to Tai-an in Chapter 50 of the difficulties of the prostitute’s life (3.50.246). Clearest of all is Ying Po-chüeh’s sardonic commentary on Li Kuei-chieh’s songs in Chapter 52, where he ridicules the conventional notion that she could “entertain a thousand guests with her heart set on a single lover” (3.52.316). Several other songs performed by singing-girls in Chinp’ingmei speak of the desire to become man and wife, though without mentioning prostitution as such. See the suite beginning Fan-hua man-mu k’ai, to the tune Chin-so kua wu-t’ung (3.43.63-66, contained in TLCY 1042-1045 and YHYF 9.70a-71b); Hsin-lü ch’ih-pien, to the tune Hua-yao lan (3.52.327-329, contained in TLCY 802-804 and YHYF 2.37b-38b); and Hsiang tuo-chiao ch’ing-hsing-erh piao, to the tune Ch’ing na-ao (4.77.649-652, contained in TLCY 1032-1036 and YHYF 9.78a-79b).

16. For a description of deliverance plays, which formed a recognizable sub-genre, see Idema and West, Chinese Theater, 1100-1450, pp.305-308.

17. This follows directly upon the allusion to Pao chuang-ho (discussed above in Chapter 5), about danger to the son of an empress. In its allusion to the poem T’eng-wang ko of Wang Po (Ch’üan T’ang-shih, II, 673), Wang Po yüan-pen also makes indirect reference to an emperor’s son. Thus the two allusions work together to keep the imperial dimension of the Hsi-men household before us.

18. See Chapter 1, n.74, and the preface and colophon to this play contained in LiK’ai-hsienchi, pp.749 and 852.

19. See Chapters 7-12 of Shui-huchuan.

20. See Richard Irwin, The Evolution of a Chinese Novel (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966), p.61.

21. Dictionary of Ming Biography, p.835; and Yagisawa Hajime, Mindai gekisakka no kenkyu, pp.184 and 237.

22. Wang Shih-chen recounts with distaste Li’s boast that Pao-chien chi was the equal of P’i-p’a chi (Ch’ü-tsao, in LCCC, IV, 36.)

23. Hsüeh-suo yü-che (pseud. for Su Chou), Pao-chien chi hsü, in LiK’ai-hsienchi, p.749. Su Chou’s biography is on pp.584-585 of LiK’ai-hsienchi. He was a good friend of Li’s and can thus be supposed to have understood Li’s intentions in writing Pao-chien chi. Li K’ai-hsien himself quotes three songs by a Liu T’ien-min of Chi-nan, written to express Liu’s resentment at being dismissed from office (Tz’u-nüeh, LCCC, III, 284).

24. Han-yeh wu ch’ a and Ssu-yeh t’ung-hsia, both to the tune Chu-ma t’ing.

25. The descriptive passage beginning Kuan-chu i-p’in, and the entire suite beginning with Hsiang fu-kuei, to the tune Tuan-cheng hao.

26. There are three other allusions or probable allusions to Pao-chien chi. In Chapter 68, the conventional description of comic-licentious nuns from Scene 51 is applied to the corrupt nuns of Chinp’ingmei. This language contains the conventional accusation that pregnant nuns abort their fetuses, and as quoted in Chinp’ingmei this continues the association between sexual excess, debased religious traditions, and sterility. The Huang-shih nü pao-chuan quoted in Chapter 74 of Chinp’ingmei is also quoted in Scene 41 of Pao-chien chi. This pao-chüan existed independently (see the discussion in Chapter 3 above). The entrapment of Lai Wang in Chapter 26 of Chinp’ingmei is similar to the entrapment of the hero Lin Ch’ung in Scene 11 of Pao-chien chi.

27. The suite beginning Shui-ching kung, to the tune Tuan-cheng hao. This suite is included in TLCY, pp.814-822; YHYF, pp.263b-266a; SSHS, pp.50-54.

28. In Chinp’ingmei, P’an Chin-lien has trained her cat to jump at raw meat wrapped in a red cloth; the cat then jumps at Kuan-ko when he is lying dressed in a little red robe (3.59.542). In Chao-shih ku-erh, the minister T’u-an Ku of the state of Chin murders the prime minister by training a dog to jump at a straw figure in court robes. The narrator draws the parallel between novel and play on 3.59.545.

29. LSCC, no.9.

7. THE CONCLUSION OF CHINP’INGMEI

1. In The Classic Chinese Novel: A Critical Introduction (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968), pp.181-182, C.T. Hsia accepts these images as redemptive, but states that the author’s clear Confucian sentiments qualify them, and “place them in the perspective of tragedy,” since for a Confucian, renunciation cannot function as redemption. Martinson, in “Pao Order and Redemption,” argues that the conclusion of the novel opens the Confucian judgments of the novel to indeterminacy, thus softening them by holding out hope.

2. For Buddhists as heretics (i-tuan chih t’u), see Li’s essay on renovating the Confucian temple of Po-hsing hsien (Po-hsing hsien ju-hsueh ch’ung-hsiu wen-miao chi), in Li K’ ai-hsien chi, II, 652. For familiarity with Buddhist terminology, see his own colophon to Ta-ya-ch’an, in LiK’ai-hsienchi, III, 868.

3. Ta ya-ch’an yuan-pen pa-yü. In Po-hsing hsien ju-hsüeh ch’ung-hsiu wen-miao chi, however, he says that the restoration of temples of all sorts is an Important activity, since it is associated with proper ritual. But here again the emphasis is on ritual as a means to self-cultivation, rather than as a shortcut to salvation.

4. 5.99.467.

5. P’i-p’a chi, Scene 22; and Pao-chien chi, Scene 38.

6. This antiphonal exchange of poems satirizes the conventions of sentimental classical-language fiction. The poems beginning “Hung-mien shih-ching chao ch’uang-sha” and “Hsueh wei jung-mao yü wei shen” (5. 100.478) are copied from the Ming collection Chien-teng yü-hua. See Chien-teng hsin hua wai erh-chung, p.294. (This quotation was identified by David Roy.) Many critics have taken Han Ai-chieh’s chastity at face value and found it touching. (See for example Chang Chu-p’o, Chin p’ing mei tu-fa, Sec. 11; and Hanan, “Sources,” p.39 and VernacularStory, p.125.) Such an evaluation accords with the sentimental attitudes that produced the popular theme of the virtuous or pathetic singing-girl, but as I have shown, this theme is purposely undercut in Chinp’ingmei. Ming fiction and drama were not prisoners of their sentimental conventions, which as we have seen were often treated with ironic detachment. The fact that the author associates Han Ai-chieh with the conniving courtesan of the hua-pen Hsin-ch’iao-shih Han Wu mai ch’ un-ch’ ing is, in my opinion, a clue to his real opinion of her.

7. Ku-chinhsiao-shuo, no.3. See Patrick Hanan, The Chinese Short Story (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973), references listed in index; and TheChineseVernacularStory (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981), p.66. For quotation in Chinp’ingmei, see Hanan, “Sources,” pp.37-40.

8. The author shows us an appropriately careful mother in Chapter 100, when Ch’un-mei tries to seduce one of the servants but his mother helps him to escape the household in order to preserve his integrity (5.100.470-472).

9. 3.58.517-522.

10. 4.68.274. She suggests that he seduce the mother and wife of Wang San-kuan, his rival for the singing-girl Li Kuei-chieh. Li Kuei-chieh is Wu Yueh-niang’s adopted daughter, and Wang San-kuan becomes Hsi-men Ch’ing’s adopted son. The degrees of incest in this relationship are discussed in Martinson, “Pao Order and Redemption,” pp.176-189.

11. Ornaments and hairpins, 3.59.552. Cheng Ai-yüeh an “immortal,” 3.59.534.

12. Kuan-ko’s death, 3.59.542-533. Taoist garments,3.59.557. Burial, 3.59.565.

13. 3.59.561.

14. P’i-shu, 3.59.556-557. “He was not your child,” 3.59.558. Nun Hsüeh’s tale, 3.59.559-561.

15. Kuan-ko’s dates of birth and death, 3.59.556. Hsiao-ko’s conception on a Jen-tzu day, see Hanan, “Text,” pp.35-36. Kuan-ko becomes ill after visiting tomb, 3.48.189. Hsiao-ko similarly ill, 5.90.216.

16. Hsi-men Ch’ing and Wang Liu-erh, 3.50.242-243; Tai-an and Shu-t’ung, 3.50.238; Tai-an visits brothel, 3.50.244-247; Shu-t’ung’s complaint, 3.50.239; Li P’ing-erh’s identical complaint, 3.50.251; Tai-an’s sore legs, 3.49.225; Hsi-men Ch’ing’s sore legs, 4.78.699 and 705, 4.79.742 and 751. Hsi-men Ch’ing and Pen Ssu’s wife, 4.78.683-684; Tai-an and Pen Ssu’s wife, 4.78.685; narrator’s comment, 4.78.685; Tai-an renamed, 5.100.500.

17. For a discussion of adoption during the Ming, see Ann Waltner, “The Adoption of Children in Ming and Early Ch’ing China,” diss. University of California at Berkeley, 1981.

18. See Ann Waltner, “The Loyalty of Adopted Sons in Ming and Early Ch’ing China,” ModernChina 10 (1984), 441-459. The statement attributed to Confucius is from the Shei chapter of the LiChi. I owe this observation to Ann Waltner.

19. For a discussion of Ming law relating to adopted children, see Shiga Shūzō, Chūgokukazokuhōnogenri (Tokyo, 1968), pp.575-610.

20. It has been shown that during the Ming, bondservants were on occasion given their masters’ surnames. See Joseph P. McDermott, “Bondservants in the T’ai-hu Basin During the Late Ming: A Case of Mistaken Identities,” JournalofAsianStudies 40 (1981), 675-701. This is a different matter, however, from establishing a servant as the sole remaining representative of the family line.

21. 3.55.413.

22. 5.88.174.

23. See Sawada, Hōkannokenkyū, pp.217-218 and 354-356.

24. Only these two of the six yüan-pen composed by Li K’ai-hsien are extant. They are contained, with prefaces and colophons, in LiK’ai-hsienchi, III, 857-869.

25. The existence of a sequel to Chinp’ingmei is discussed by Hanan in “Text,” pp.51-53. This sequel, which certain contemporary accounts claim is by the author of Chinp’ingmei, is said to have proceeded from the reincarnations described in Chapter 100 of Chinp’ingmei. Whatever their role in a sequel, however, these reincarnations still function ironically and didactically in Chinp’ingmei itself.