Family and State in Traditional Chinese Thought

Confucian texts establish the link between family and state by defining essential social relations in terms of the family or extensions of the family. Filial piety trains the son for service to the emperor, fraternal loyalty is the basis for friendship, and so on. Foremost among these texts is the Ta-hsüeh, one of the Four Books of the Ming examination curriculum, and thus memorized by every aspirant to official success. The brief text of the Ta-hsüeh begins by stating the three goals of self-cultivation, and follows them with an eight-point program for the achievement of these goals. The Ta-hsüeh amplifies and systematizes concepts found in earlier and contemporary writings; it was not the only source of these ideas either at the time of its formulation in the Han or during the centuries in which it was central to Confucian education. But it is perfectly representative of those ideas, and its conciseness and wide currency in the intellectual world of the Ming make it appropriate for a discussion of the relation between state and household, as perceived by the author and audience of Chinp’ingmei. The central ideas of the Ta-hsüeh are contained in the following passages, with which the text begins:

The remainder of the text is an exegesis of this program, with supporting quotations from earlier classics, and edifying examples from the lives of sage emperors. The text is quite clear on the responsibilities of rulership, as we can see from the following passage:

This was not meant to undercut the bureaucratic apparatus that already existed in the Han; on the contrary, one of the ways in which the ruler manifests his humanity is by choosing wise ministers. But the emperor is at the apex of this pyramid of influence. Thus in all periods when Confucianism dominated Chinese political discourse, the emperor’s observance of appropriate rites, his choice of a mate and his veneration of his ancestors, were considered central to the success of his government.

Specific advice was therefore given to him on these topics. One splendid example, dating from the Sung, is the Ta-hsüehyen-i (Extended Meaning of the Great Learning) of Chen Te-hsiu (1178-1235).⁵ Chen’s commentary on the slender Ta-hsüeh fills several fat volumes with illustrations of virtue and cautionary tales of emperors who brought their states to collapse. A product of the Sung Neo-Conf uci an revival, the Ta—hsüeh yen—i spends far fewer pages on the actual government of the state than it does on the self-cultivation necessary to govern the state. It seems to have been assumed that a properly edified emperor would govern properly. Regulation of the family is the immediate precondition in the Ta-hsüeh for governing the state, and as such it concludes and dominates the second half of the Ta-hsüehyen-i. Popular literature tells us how dangerous it is for the royal ladies to quarrel, or for the wrong sort of woman to be elevated above her palace colleagues. Here in the Ta-hsüehyen-i we learn just who the wrong sort of woman is likely to be, and where the susceptibilities of an amorous but misguided emperor are likely to lead. The empress bears (or, at the very least, educates) the crown prince, and is in a position to admonish the emperor. The choice of a proper empress is thus “the great affair of the nation,” the fundamental affair of state. Breeding tells: she must not be a singing-girl, like Empress Chao of Han Ch’eng-ti (r.32-6 B.C.), who brought his family line to an end. (The text reminds us that the bad last rulers of the three legendary dynasties of antiquity also chose singing-girls as their consorts.) The example she sets makes her the mother of the empire. There must be no confusion in the hierarchy of empress, consorts, and concubines, and the emperor must at all costs avoid partiality to a favorite concubine or her son. His failure to do so would put the imperial succession in question, inviting faction and intrigue. (Numerous examples are given.) This is a specific (and central) instance of household disorder leading directly to calamity at the level of the state. The interdependence of household and state are further underscored by quotations from the Lichi (Records of Ritual) and standard commentaries in which an exact parallel is drawn between the “Six Palaces” of the Empresses, and the “Six Ministries” of the bureaucracy.⁶ In the Six Palaces, the emperor’s three consorts, nine secondary wives, twenty-seven palace ladies, and eighty-one concubines constitute his “inner government,” while in the Six Ministries, his three dukes, nine censors, twenty-seven ta-fu, and eighty-one yüan-shih constitute his “outer government.” Though this perfect numerical parallel is the idealized description of antiquity, not corresponding to actual practice in either Han or Sung, it serves to emphasize the importance for the entire empire of regulating the “inner government,” the royal family. (The eunuchs, another component of the “inner government,” must also be properly restrained.) The Ch’un-ch’iu (Spring and Autumn Annals) is quoted to the effect that the three primary sources of social disorder are ping-hou (placing empresses and other palace ladies on the same footing), p’i-ti (ranking concubines with the legitimate first wife), and liang-cheng (the usurpation of the emperor’s power by his ministers).⁷ Inner and outer government must be ruled by the same hierarchical principles.

In the Ming, a massive “supplement” to the Ta-hsüehyen-i appeared, the Ta-hsüehyen-ipu (Supplement to the Extended Meaning of the Great Learning) of Ch’iu Chün (1420-1495).⁸ More practical and less speculative than Chen Te-hsiu, Ch’iu Chün devoted his treatise to the last two points of the Ta-hsüeh program: governing the state and pacifying all under heaven. The Ta-hsüehyen-i, drawing its models primarily from remote history, warns the emperor against any deviation from the ideal conduct and standards of the ancients. The Ta-hsüehyen-ipu, by contrast, instructs the emperor on numerous practical matters, ranging from village rites and sacrificial customs to the conduct of the border defenses. But Ch’iu Chün begins his monumental treatise on the government of the state with a section on the regulation of the court, and that section begins with a subsection on putting the canonical familial relations in order.

The Ta-hsüehyen-i was reprinted during the Ming, and it was also brought to the attention of Ming readers by Ch’iu Chün’s preface, which discusses the earlier work⁹. Ch’iu Chün’s own treatise is extant in a Wan-li edition of 1605. These two explications demonstrate a habit of thought that will be central to our analysis of Chinp’ingmei, namely, that it apparently made sense in Sung and Ming China to ask how the program of the Ta-hsüeh would work in actual practice, and to illustrate it with examples. Moreover, one need not have been an educated reader of the classics to assimilate the central ideas of the Ta-hsüeh, as a glance at fiction and drama will show.¹⁰

Family and State in Popular Literature

In 1967, farmers in Kiangsu province found among the artifacts in a well-preserved tomb a collection of shuo-ch’angtz’u-hua (chantefable) tales published during the Ch’eng-hua era (1465-1478) of the Ming.¹¹ The collection is a luxury edition, clearly printed and copiously illustrated. The tales are not the sort of literature we associate with scholars. With their limited and highly formulaic vocabulary, they are examples of the popular chantefable literature described in the previous chapter. The tales were found buried in the grave of what is thought to have been a low-ranking official’s wife, and we may conjecture that books of this sort were read by those of limited literacy in any household wealthy enough to buy books for recreation. For our purposes, the most interesting of these tales is Shih-langfu-machuan (The Biography of Imperial Son-in-Law Shih.)¹²

This tale is a fictional account of the fall of the Posterior T’ang dynasty (923-936). The Shih-lang of the title is Shih Ching-t’ang (892-942), first emperor of another short-lived dynasty, the Posterior Chin (936-947), during the period of disunion that followed the T’ang. The tale is cast in a conventional mold: Lu Wang (Li Ts’ung-k’o, 885-936), the “bad last emperor” of the Posterior T’ang, shows himself unfit to rule, and is supplanted by a leader of unquestionable moral authority, Shih Ching-t’ang. Lu Wang proves his unfitness to rule by the havoc he creates within his own family, preferring the upstart Empress, a former singing-girl, to his own sister the Princess. The Princess, moreover, is the wife of the valorous Shih-lang, on whom the border defenses depend.

In the incident that ultimately causes his downfall, Lu Wang sends the Princess to make a courtesy call on the Empress. The Empress refuses to acknowledge her presence for half a day. The two women quarrel over who is constrained by ritual to bow first. The quarrel ends in a shouting-match and fistfight, from which the maids extract their respective ladies. The Empress then gives Lu Wang a highly embroidered account of the incident, including the charge that his sister has insulted Lu Wang himself. Lu Wang imprisons the Princess, who says darkly that he is unfit to rule, if he would harm his own flesh and blood on the strength of tales brought by the upstart Empress. A virtuous minister makes the same complaint, and Lu Wang releases the Princess. By this time, however, she is bent on revenge, and she sends for Shih-lang, who besieges the imperial city, defeats the Empress’s brother in single combat, has the Empress put to death, and establishes himself on the throne.

The state, it is clear, is only as secure as the familial tie between Shih-lang and the Emperor. Almost the entire tale is set within the Emperor’s immediate family and court. The actors are bound to each other as ruler and minister, as husband and wife, or as siblings. The Emperor transgresses the loyalty due a virtuous member of his own family (it is clear that the upstart Empress does not merit his fidelity), and he loses his empire in consequence. As the Princess and Shih-lang say in separate, nearly identical speeches, governing a household is like governing a country; household and state are to be ruled in just the same fashion.

Moreover, it is clear from Shih-lang’s and the Princess’s speeches that misconduct on the Emperor’s part is a sort of moral poison, which will inevitably infect the entire society. Both Shih-lang and the Princess warn that if the Emperor deviates a whit from proper conduct, the world will fall into disorder, and they themselves cannot be expected to behave in a moral fashion.¹³ His actions, the tale makes clear, have freed them to topple the throne, an action justifiable only when an emperor’s conduct has already effectively corrupted society.

Shih-langfu-machuan thus illustrates simply but forcefully the teaching that the family must be regulated before the state can be governed. Shih-lang and the Princess also remind us that the emperor sets a pattern for those below him. In Shih-langfu-machuan, far removed from the examination curriculum or philosophical debate, these ideas are not scrutinized or developed. They function simply as accepted criteria for judgment, needing no justification. They function in similarly unexamined fashion in the tag-ends and doggerel verses found throughout Ming fiction and drama. In the play Huan-taichi (The Return of the Belts), for example, a general sings that his banners and troops are arrayed for battle, and he is answered with shouts of

In a Wan-li (1573-1620) edition of the anonymous ch’uan-ch’iYü-huanchi (The Jade Ring), the passing observation of a military official links family to state in a similar fashion:

Both of these works are mentioned in Chinp’ingmei, and the novel is filled with hints that the author intended us to recall the conventional Confucian teachings on family and state, though the emperor himself makes only the briefest of appearances. The venal court that the novel portrays has clearly forfeited its mandate over what has become a society of merchants and prostitutes. Let us now examine the ways in which Chin p’ing mei holds the court responsible for this moral decline. We will see that the traditional Confucian chain of authority is a central theme of the book.

Family and State in Chin p’ing mei

It must be noted, first, that the government of the mature Ming dynasty was structured in such a way as to insure Confucian criticism of its excesses. The emperor held unprecedented power in the Ming autocracy, but the bureaucratic functions of government were carried out by a class of Confucian scholars whose weight in the government was equally unprecedented. Early Ming emperors had turned to this group of Confucian scholars for practical rather than ideological reasons: they needed a pool of competent, literate officials, and the Confucian officials stood ready to hand. The nobles and military officials, alternate elites progressively displaced by the Confucian scholars, were simply less competent to administer a large peacetime empire.¹⁶ Early Ming emperors sought to mould the scholars’ thinking by bringing them all to the bureaucracy through the examination system, but this strategy inadvertently fostered a kind of class solidarity among Confucian scholars. Their sense of membership in a powerful group encouraged certain of them to draw on their tradition to criticize the government that had empowered them. The emperors excised the Mencian right to rebellion against unkingly rule from the standard examination texts, but we have seen from the Shih-langfu-machuan that they could not excise it from the popular consciousness. Thus they could not possibly excise it from the consciousness of well-educated, widely-read Confucian scholars. We have seen in Chapter 1 above the reasons for thinking that Chinp’ingmei was probably written by someone of this class, so it is not surprising that we find the Confucian chain of influence emphasized in this novel, constituting an implied rebuke to the government of the day. The transgressions of Hsi-men Ch’ing and his family are never presented in such a way that individual punishment would cure the problem. They are always linked to the example set by superiors.¹⁷

The Chain of Influence in Chin p’ing mei

Chinp’ingmei is set almost entirely within a single household, and thus emphasizes the canonical relations of ruler, subject, and family in Confucian tradition. Never for a chapter are we away from their definition and violation. While Ming hua-pen tales were not uncommonly set within a single family, such a setting was unprecedented in the novel-length fiction of the Ming. The recognized classics of the genre were episodic; the world was seen in them through the eyes of the traveler, the soldier, the stopper-at-inns. Even in the ch’uan-ch’i dramas that explicitly celebrated the canonical relations, the typical plot involved the separation of the hero from his family, to undergo a series of trials before their eventual reunion. It seems reasonable to suppose that the author of Chinp’ingmei knew that he was creating a new sort of narrative structure, which could demonstrate more effectively than the ch’uan-ch’i of the day the force of the ruler’s example. The head of the Hsi-men household becomes a minor official, and in his administration of justice he is self-interested and ruthless. These qualities he learns directly from his official superiors, with whom he is in contact throughout the narrative.

His fortunes are linked primarily to those of Ts’ai Ching (1046-1126), successively Secretary of the Board of Revenue and Senior Tutor to the Heir Apparent. Ts’ai falls from power shortly after Hsi-men Ch’ing’s death. His fall demonstrates the insecurities of patronage, a lesson Hsi-men Ch’ing ought to have learned early in the novel from the fall of his kinsman Yang Chien, another of Sung Hui-tsung’s ministers. (Hsi-men Ch’ing is related to Yang Chien through the marriage of his daughter). In Chapter 17, Yang Chien is impeached for inadequate military preparations; the same memorial goes on to cite the irregularities in the Hsi-men household and to demand punishment. The accusations against Yang Chien and Hsi-men Ch’ing are both placed in the context of dangers menacing the empire, which is likened to a body, ravaged from within and therefore unable to withstand invasions from without. Hsi-men Ch’ing has already obtained Ts’ai Ching’s intercession in Chapter 10, to shield him from the consequences of murder. A similar appeal and gifts to Ts’ai Ching assure Hsi-men Ch’ing’s safety after the fall of Yang Chien in Chapter 17, and by Chapter 25, Hsi-men Ch’ing’s apparent power is such that the salt merchants in his region send gifts to him, to procure his intercession on their behalf with Ts’ai Ching. Hsi-men Ch’ing becomes the conduit for bribes in his own district, a miniature Ts’ai Ching. In Chapter 30, a midwife surnamed Ts’ai delivers Li P’ing-erh’s child, Hsi-men Ch’ing’s first son Kuan-ko (“Official Elder Brother”), just as Ts’ai Ching “delivers” his first official post to Hsi-men Ch’ing in response to elaborate birthday gifts. The favoritism shown the son gives rise to the jealousy that will endanger the family line when the boy is murdered, just as the sins of the bureaucracy, for which the boy is named, bring down the empire at the close of the book.¹⁸

We come to know certain of the corrupt officials quite well, as Hsi-men Ch’ing is repeatedly their host: Ts’ai Ching’s adopted son Ts’ai Yün, given first prize in the civil service examination after the actual prizewinner is deposed through political intrigue; An Ch’en, the original prizewinner, who oversees the construction of Sung Hui-tsung’s mausoleum, built with the proceeds of excessive taxation; and the eunuch chamberlains Liu and Hsüeh, incredulous at the folly of censors willing to endanger themselves by remonstrating with the emperor. Hsi-men Ch’ing extorts money from the brother of Chamberlain Liu, convicted of using imperial timber in the construction of a private dwelling; in the following chapter, he uses imperial tiles in the construction of his own elaborate mausoleum. In Chapter 49, the virtuous Censor Tseng links Hsi-men Ch’ing to Ts’ai Ching once again, as he criticizes both Hsi-men Ch’ing (for his pardon of the murderous servant Miao Ch’ing) and Ts’ai Ching (for his suggestions for governmental reorganization). The censor is cashiered for his pains, and severely disciplined, in the same manner as Hsi-men Ch’ing has unjustly flogged, jailed, or exiled various innocent characters who have come before him for judgment. Hsi-men Ch’ing himself visits the capital in Chapters 70 and 71, and is singled out for recognition by Chu Mien (d. 1126), another canonical “bad last minister” of the Sung emperor. His perfect conformity to the corrupt standards of the day is underscored in Chapters 65 and 66, when the same eminent Taoist offers a funeral service for Hsi-men Ch’ing’s wife Li P’ing-erh, and conducts a sacrifice for the welfare of the court.¹⁹

Events within the household mirror the pattern of corrupt intercession in the world outside, as we see from the constant juxtaposition of the two spheres. The memorial in Chapter 17, likening the empire to an unhealthy body, caps an account of the sexual, financial, and judicial irregularities attending Hsi-men Ch’ing’s marriage to Li P’ing-erh. In Chapters 34 and 35, Ying Po-chüeh helps to settle a court-case by having the homosexual servant Shu-t’ung intercede with Hsi-men Ch’ing through Li P’ing-erh. Hsi-men Ch’ing’s visit to the capital is followed in Chapter 72 by accounts of dreadful quarrels in his absence: the wives vie as savagely for access to him as do competing factions at court for access to the emperor. When the household and the border defenses weaken in the period after Hsi-men Ch’ing’s death, Wu Yüeh-niang herself becomes sexually vulnerable. Her son-in-law Ch’en Ching-chi becomes suggestive and irreverent. She is the victim of an attempted rape at the temple where she fulfills vows made at the time of Hsi-men Ch’ing’s death, and she relinquishes her son Hsiao-ko (“Filial Elder Brother”) in the final chapter after a nightmare in which she is nearly raped by the boy’s intended father-in-law.²⁰

Just as officials at court provide models for Hsi-men Ch’ing, so Hsi-men Ch’ing sets the tone for his household. His wife Yüeh-niang reminds him repeatedly that “When the ridgepole is crooked, the rafters run awry,” but he is deaf to her warnings. The infractions that he punishes are often patterned on his own: in Chapter 22, for example, he begins a flirtation with the maid Sung Hui-lien, but the musician Li Ming is abused and expelled for allegedly attempting the same sort of seduction of P’an Chin-lien’s maid Ch’un-mei. And in Chapter 76, the hsiu-ts’ai Tutor Wen is driven ignominiously from the household for engaging in the very homosexual acts that we have seen Hsi-men Ch’ing practice since he was given the servant Shu-t’ung in honor of his first official post. When Hsi-men Ch’ing seduces Sung Hui-lien, her husband Lai Wang lays the blame on P’an Chin-lien, whose dress and hairstyles Sung Hui-lien has been imitating. Lai Wang recalls that P’an Chin-lien entered the household by responding sexually to the master, and he fears that his own wife has now done the same. In the meantime he himself has imitated his master by committing adultery with the despised fourth wife Sun Hsüeh-o.²¹

In Chapters 46 and 75, the Hsi-men ladies go out to pay calls, and in their absence the maidservants make similar visits of their own, with drinking, games, and entertainment. The status differences that the maids perceive among themselves are thrown into relief during these visits, recalling the constant quarrels between the wives, whose effective status within the household is based on wealth and degree of access to Hsi-men Ch’ing.²²

The book’s last twenty chapters show the continuing force of Hsi-men Ch’ing’s example after his death, as various lesser characters who had been associated with him attempt petty tyrannies of their own. His employee Han Tao-kuo makes off with the profits from his cloth trade; the servant Lai Pao rapes the maidservants he is delivering to Chai Ch’ien. Ch’en Ching-chi, the son-in-law to whom Hsi-men Ch’ing had once promised his power and his property, is murdered in Ch’un-mei’s bed. He is Hsi-men Ch’ing’s “son,” and Ch’un-mei, given the pseudo-kinship relation of mistress to maid, is P’an Chin-lien’s “daughter.” (Ch’en Ching-chi is then mourned by Han Ai-chieh, the daughter of Hsi-men Ch’ing’s mistress Wang Liu-erh.) Those at the bottom of this pyramid of influence and power finally turn against their masters. P’an Chin-lien’s despised servant Ch’iu-chü bears the tales that lead to the expulsion of P’an Chin-lien and Ch’un-mei from the household. The second wife Li Chiao-erh foments a quarrel, returns to the brothel where Hsi-men Ch’ing had originally found her, and marries a rival of his. Sun Hsüeh-o, who has for years been a maid of all work to the other wives, runs off with Lai Wang, taking with her a share of the household goods. (She is captured and sold as a servant to Ch’un-mei, now the wife of a military commander; so far are the original fortunes of mistresses and maids reversed.) It is the genius of this novel not to condemn these characters, but rather to make clear how it is that they have been driven to their actions. In the words of a proverb that occurs more than once in Chinp’ingmei, “When authority fails, servants will scorn their masters.” Hsi-men Ch’ing’s personal prestige masks the actual weakness of authority within his household, a weakness apparent as soon as he dies, when those who had been his servants rise to positions of influence and ignore or patronize his remaining family. (When Ch’un-mei, wealthy and pregnant, pays a visit in Chapter 96, we see the once elegant Hsi-men garden overgrown and in decay.)²³

The revolt of the oppressed in Chinp’ingmei can be read as a warning to the rulers of the day, and this warning becomes even clearer when we turn to suggestions in the text that Hsi-men Ch’ing is a miniature emperor himself. The events of the Chia-ching and Wan-li reign periods subtly color this tale, though no emperor actually speaks from its pages.

The Hsi-men Household as a Microcosm of Empire

The treatment of the last Northern Sung court in Chinp’ingmei levels an implicit criticism at the government of the day. We know from fiction and drama that the court of Sung Hui-tsung (r. 1100-1126) was a byword, in the late Ming, for misgovernment and abuse of power.²⁴ The villains controlling the empire in Chinp’ingmei are the stock group of Sung Hui-tsung’s evil ministers.²⁵ The ruin of the empire in the novel results from the usual sins described in fiction and drama: the self-aggrandizement of corrupt officials, excessive taxation for unnecessary and capricious building projects, the muzzling of upright officials who speak the truth. This is the canonical list of sins ascribed to the degenerate last court of any dynasty. Chinp’ingmei, however, describes the Ming society of the author’s day, as is clear from allusion to Ming administrative geography, Ming titles and insignia, and - most easily apparent - Yuan and Ming drama and song. Occasionally, historical Ming figures are mentioned in the book’s quotations from “official” documents.²⁶ This actual Ming setting has been understood since the novel’s first appearance, and it associates the ruling dynasty with a particular “bad last court” of history and legend.

The structure of the Hsi-men household associates Hsi-men Ch’ing with this “bad last court.” The parallels drawn in the LiChi between wives and ministers, inner and outer government, have been noted above in the discussion of the Ta-hsüehyen-i. There, the Six Palaces of the empresses and the Six Ministries of the officials are shown to be analogous to one another. In Chinp’ingmei, Hsi-men Ch’ing presides over a yamen, in which the liu-fang (six chambers) represent the Six Ministries at the local level. The pleasantry of a visiting nun in Chapter 21 reminds us of the numerical correspondence between the liu-fang and Hsi-men Ch’ing’s six wives, as she tells a joke whose point is just this correspondence.²⁷ Lest we forget the link between the liu-fang and the Six Ministries, the author has Ying Po-chüeh remind us in Chapter 31 that all officials, from the first to the ninth rank, are equally responsible to the throne.²⁸ The analogy between virtuous wives and virtuous ministers is a staple of the classical tradition, and as we watch Hsi-men Ch’ing’s six quarrelling wives we see a model for the factional strife that divided the Wan-li court. If the Hsi-men household is a miniature court (or indeed, a miniature empire, given the servants who are governed by Hsi-men Ch’ing and his wives), then Hsi-men Ch’ing is its emperor. He is a bad emperor in the classical mold: two of his wives (P’an Chin-lien and Li Chiao-erh) have been trained as singing-girls; he is intemperate and devoted to sensual pleasure; and he neglects his legitimate first wife for a concubine. His open preference for P’an Chin-lien or Li P’ing-erh at different points in the novel makes it impossible for the first wife Wu Yüeh-niang to regulate her household. Most damaging is the favoritism shown Li P’ing-erh after she conceives Hsi-men Ch’ing’s first son. Chinp’ingmei quotes from drama and song in such a way as to suggest that the resulting jealous quarrels are to be read as court drama.

On at least nine occasions, songs are sung for Hsi-men Ch’ing or his wives that either offer congratulations to the emperor or express gratitude for imperial favor.²⁹ Most telling is the appearance of these “imperial” songs in Chapters 43 through 58, where they combine with allusions to drama to suggest that Hsi-men Ch’ing’s son Kuan-ko be viewed as the “crown prince” of the household, and P’an Chin-lien’s murder of him as the work of a jealous empress. At the time of Kuan-ko’s birth, P’an Chin-lien refers sarcastically to the infant as a “crown prince,” and it has been observed that snatches of dialogue from Ju-ichünchuan (The Lord of Perfect Satisfaction), a Ming classical tale of the T’ang empress Wu Tse-t’ien, are given to P’an Chin-lien in Chapter 27, the chapter in which she learns that Li P’ing-erh has conceived a child.³⁰ In Chapter 31, visiting eunuchs call for a song, in the baby’s honor, from the tsa-chüPaochuang-ho (Carrying the Dressing-Case). They are reproved for choosing a song whose performance would be inauspicious, as the play is a tale of a crown prince menaced by a jealous empress. In Chapter 43, when Kuan-ko is betrothed to a neighbor’s daughter, two songs of gratitude for imperial favor are sung. They follow the statement by a prominent visitor (a kinswoman to the consort of the Heir Apparent) that “even the emperor takes commoners as his concubines!” In Chapter 58, the chapter before P’an Chin-lien has her cat frighten the infant to death, she herself calls for the performance of such a song.³¹ The birth of a son to Li P’ing-erh is the event that motivates much of the action of the novel from Chapter 27 until her death in Chapter 62. The Taoist ceremonies associated with the baby and his mother recall the Taoist enthusiasm of the Chia-ching emperor, and the “succession problem” suggested by P’an Chin-lien’s repeated questioning of the baby’s legitimacy can be seen in its full significance when we recall the succession problem at the Wan-li court.

The Wan-li emperor refused for over a decade to designate as heir apparent his eldest son, borne to him by a maid in service to the empress. He did not, despite the urging of the court, designate the mother of his eldest son as his Imperial Consort. The honor went instead to Cheng Kuei-fei (ca. 1568-1630), the palace lady who became his obvious favorite, and whose son he was suspected of wishing to choose as his heir. The emperor’s conduct was denounced in handbills and anonymous manifestos on the streets of Peking. The succession problem thus was not a matter internal to the palace. It agitated the capital and was laid to rest only when Cheng Kuei-fei’s son reached his majority and was sent to live on a distant princely estate. The controversy weakened the court by calling the emperor’s moral authority into question. The emperor’s refusal to designate an heir apparent was perceived as a violation of the prescribed hierarchy, resulting from his infatuation with a concubine. Historical accounts of the controversy adhere to the traditional categories of such works as the Ta-hsüehyen-i, and we must recall that whatever causes modern historians uncover for the weakness of the Wan-li throne, the succession controversy was perceived by contemporaries as central to this weakness. This perception, in turn, shaped events: if accountability within the bureaucracy was predicated on the emperor’s maintaining a certain hierarchical order, his authority and that of those who held their authority in his name would be eroded if he did not. The Wan-li controversy spanned the decades in which Chinp’ingmei was written, and the book, with its six quarrelling consorts and its crown prince, calls the whole affair forcibly to mind.³² (The singing-girl Cheng Ai-yueh, whom Hsi-men Ch’ing patronizes, has the same surname as the Wan-li emperor’s favorite, and Ch’en Ching-chi, who is Hsi-men Ch’ing’s surrogate in the last twenty chapters of the novel, patronizes another singing-girl whose surname is changed from Feng to Cheng, for no other apparent reason than to emphasize the surname Cheng. And Hsi-men Ch’ing’s first son will be reborn into a Cheng household!)³³

Other fiction of the age also took the emperor to task. But a comparison with SuiYang-tiyen-shih, supposedly modeled on the Wan-li emperor’s career, shows us the striking novelty of Chinp’ingmei, whose critique of the emperor is set outside the court altogether. By choosing to focus on the Hsi-men household, the author could simultaneously adumbrate the reigning emperor and show the effect of his conduct on his subjects. He does not do this by giving us a disguised catalogue of specific political abuses. He goes, instead, to the ideological root of these abuses: the violation of hierarchy and the refusal of the ruler to rule.

In the fictional stereotype of the bad last ruler, this abdication of responsibility is conventionally coupled with sexual excess. The author of Chinp’ingmei followed this pattern in his creation of Hsi-men Ch’ing, as we will see below. The sexual behavior described in the novel is thus part of the cautionary design of the work.

Sex and Self-awareness in Chin p’ing mei

Chinp’ingmei has long been plagued by critics who either discount it as a work of pornography, or celebrate it as a bawdy classic that affirms the sexuality it describes. This second reading runs directly counter to the norms of late Ming society, and it cannot account for the intimate relation in Chinp’ingmei between sexual and official corruption. But this does not mean that sexual description is incidental to the narrative. The description of sexual activity serves to deepen the social critique inherent in the novel’s juxtaposition of family and state, demonstrating the protagonists’ compulsive expenditure of scarce resources, and their obstinate blindness to their own failings. We must not simply read these sexual descriptions with modern eyes, applauding what we may think they show us of “liberating” polymorphous perversity. (Such a reading is forced to ignore the narcissism and sadism that mark many of these sexual acts.) There is nothing liberating about the consequences of unregulated sexuality in Chinp’ingmei. Hsi-men Ch’ing’s mistress Wang Liu-erh is the most cooperative and inventive of his sexual partners, but this is exactly what exhausts him and costs him his life in Chapter 79. The notion of sexual excess had a set of conventional expectations attached to it by the late Ming, and we must allow these expectations to guide us if we are to fathom the design of the novel.

In the handbooks of sexual hygiene that circulated during the Ming, there is a notion of sexual economy, of getting and spending, that is fundamental both to the role of sex in Chinp’ingmei and to the role of women in the traditional characterization of the “bad last ruler.” Women are, potentially, instruments of dangerous disorder, and they are also sexually enervating. In the Taoist lore that gave rise to these handbooks, men and women seek to capture each other’s vital essence through sexual intercourse. A principal aim of sexual hygiene was to avoid “overspending” on the part of the male, who needed to nourish himself through sexual activity, rather than destroying himself.³⁴ This notion of expenditure makes an equation between money and semen, physical resources and financial resources, a natural one. In Chinp’ingmei this equation is underscored by the prominence of both yin (licentiousness) and yin (silver), and by the central figure of Ts’ai Ching, whose name puns on the characters for money and semen.³⁵ In the Hsi-men household we witness a prodigious financial and sexual overspending, whose significance is made clear to us at the midpoint of the narrative, the key chapters 49 through 51.

The officials, musicians, and menials who pass in and out of the Hsi-men household must all be entertained, paid, or fed for their services. (Hsi-men Ch’ing’s sycophants are fed even when they render no service at all: in the period of physical debilitation that precedes his death, they eat up the food supposed to restore him to health.) The male employees’ parties that follow most of the official receptions remind us of the sheer number of people whom the household must support. The expenditures to which the state is subject are listed for us in memorials or in passing references to the emperor’s tomb, reminding us of the steady financial pressure on the imperial finances. In Chapters 47 through 49, the “spending” requirements of corrupt government show us how we are to view Hsi-men Ch’ing’s sexual activity: in these three chapters, Hsi-men Ch’ing’s mistress Wang Liu-erh uses her sexual tie to Hsi-men Ch’ing to procure his intercession on behalf of the murderous servant Miao Ch’ing. Her efforts, and Miao Ch’ing’s payment to her, are interleaved paragraph by paragraph with an account of the lavish gifts Hsi-men Ch’ing must send to counter the impeachment that results from this intercession. At the end of Chapter 49, Hsi-men Ch’ing receives from a monk of mysterious origins the aphrodisiac whose final effect will be the “overspending” that causes his death. The memorial quoted at the beginning of Chapter 49 provides the context in which the gift of the aphrodisiac must be viewed. In this memorial, the same Censor Tseng who impeached Hsi-men Ch’ing in the previous chapter now turns his attention to the seven-point program suggested by Ts’ai Ching, a program that would alter the basis for imperial finance and civil-service recruitment. Tseng argues that the proposed plan would insure an excess of expenditures over revenues, causing the state to run dry. The reader is thus warned at the midpoint of the novel of the calamity that will overtake the state in the final chapters. Hsi-men Ch’ing is similarly warned by the mysterious monk to avoid excessive use of the aphrodisiac, a warning he disregards, just as Ts’ai Ching disregards the warning of Censor Tseng. Hsi-men Ch’ing’s financial and physical spending continue in an upward spiral until Chapter 79, when his successive sexual encounters with Wang Liu-erh and P’an Chin-lien drain him completely and bring on his fatal illness.³⁶

The resources lost in this “overspending” are not simply physical money and semen. Rather, the book’s constant juxtaposition of illicit sexuality and corrupt official dealings suggests that the loss or diversion of these entities connotes a moral exhaustion from which neither the person nor the state can recover. The defrocked Nun Hsueh, attending Wu Yueh-niang in Chapter 50, assures her of the efficacy of retribution, the certainty that men will reap what they sow.³⁷ Appearing as it does at the midpoint of so highly symmetrical a novel as Chinp’ingmei, this conventional statement must be understood in its full significance for the narrative. The midpoint of Chinp’ingmei functions as a pivot on which the action turns, giving us the information we need to sense the probable outcome. Nun Hsüeh’s statement about retribution functions similarly here, coupled as it is not only with the mysterious monk’s gift of the aphrodisiac to Hsi-men Ch’ing, but also with the nun’s parallel gift to Wu Yüeh-niang of the fertility potion that will enable her to conceive her son Hsiao-ko. As the two drugs - each the gift of a heretical practitioner - work in concert, Hsiao-ko is conceived in such a way as to undermine any suggestion that he is meant to fulfill the dictates of filial piety.³⁸ Instead, the twenty chapters of his life in the novel show us simultaneously the extinction of the strife-ridden household and the loss to invaders of the empire’s ancestral northern lands.

The notion of prostitution provides a central metaphor in Chinp’ingmei for the forces behind this disintegration. (This metaphor was a conventional one; the author of Chinp’ingmei developed but did not invent it.)³⁹ The male figures of Chinp’ingmei all patronize singing-girls, who cannot, by definition, promise fidelity. These merchants and officials use expensive gifts to insinuate themselves into the powerful Hsi-men household, whose fidelity to them is insured only as long as material advantage results. Similarly, in Chapters 60 through 79, Hsi-men Ch’ing makes prodigal efforts to retain the favor of the minister Ts’ai Ching, virtually prostituting himself. This emphasis on actual or metaphorical prostitution is not redeemed in Chinp’ingmei by any suggestion of an alternative morality. There are no virtuous singing-girls in the novel, though they may be found in other works of Yuan and Ming literature. In Chinp’ingmei, the typical prostitutes are Li Kuei-chieh, who deceives her patron Hsi-men Ch’ing, and Li Chiao-erh, who returns to the brothel immediately upon Hsi-men Ch’ing’s death. The singing-girls not only accept payment for their services; they themselves are the currency for the corrupt official dealings of their patrons. When Hsi-men Ch’ing provides the adopted son of Ts’ai Ching with the services of an elegant singing-girl in Chapter 49, his aim is to have Ts’ai’s son intercede on behalf of his proteges.⁴⁰ The inconstancy of these women (a common theme even in the literature of the virtuous singing-girl, whose complaint is precisely that she is forced to be inconstant) functions in Chinp’ingmei to point up the disloyalty and inconstancy of the officials who patronize them.

The force of the novel’s equation between household and state is used to deepen our sense of this inconstancy, as the Hsi-men wives are likened, in various ways, to the singing-girls who entertain them. Wu Yüeh-niang flies into querulous rage at the suggestion that she is no better than a madam; Hsi-men Ch’ing indulgently offers to pay P’an Chin-lien for certain sexual acts; P’an Chin-lien, acceding, demands a skirt “just like Li Kuei-chieh’s.” Wu Yüeh-niang observes in Chapter 74 that the intrigues of the entertainers’ quarters cannot be worse than those in her own household. The “inner government” of the Hsi-men household is thus plagued by the same rivalries that beset the pleasure-houses. If the wives are prostitutes, however, the novel’s underlying equation between wives and ministers, household and state, demonstrates to us that the ministers are prostitutes themselves. By the conclusion of the book, those who prostitute themselves have center stage: Ch’en Ching-chi, reduced to beggary, lives by his sexual favors in a Taoist temple, and he finds Wang Liu-erh and her daughter, who have fled the capital after the fall of Ts’ai Ching, also making their living by prostitution. The empire is falling about their ears, however, and Ch’en Ching-chi’s manipulative sexual behavior is a wildly ineffectual attempt at the sort of control that P’an Chin-lien once almost - but never quite - exercised over Hsi-men Ch’ing. The ministers have similarly lost control of the state.⁴¹

Sexual activity in Chinp’ingmei is primarily an instrument of punishment or of gain. Just as P’an Chin-lien is humiliated sexually for her attraction to the servant Ch’in-t’ung, so Li P’ing-erh is humiliated, upon her entry into the household, for her attraction to Doctor Chiang. In Chapter 27, in the novel’s most notorious passage of extended sexual description, P’an Chin-lien is tormented by Hsi-men Ch’ing, to repay her for her jealousy of Li P’ing-erh. Hsi-men Ch’ing’s own pleasure is depicted as narcissistic and vulgar: he frightens his sexual partners with the size of his penis (which makes intercourse painful for them), and in Chapter 59 he dismays the elegant singing-girl Cheng Ai-yüeh by the crudity of his demands. The women with whom he has intercourse demand badges of status from him: clothing, ornaments, money. Sexual acts are used to enforce a perverted hierarchy, as P’an Chin-lien, desperate for the tokens that would put her on a footing with the wealthier wives, is goaded into certain acts on the grounds that others have performed them. (The servant Ju-i is then urged to follow her example.)⁴² Chinp’ingmei shows us no sexual generosity that we can admire. There are no Molly Blooms, no Lady Chatterleys. The only appearance of generosity is in Hsi-men Ch’ing’s relation to his sixth and favorite wife Li P’ing-erh. Even here, however, we must not be misled by the couple’s obvious enjoyment of each other. In the jealousy she provokes and the disasters that ensue, Li P’ing-erh exactly fits the role of “favored concubine” in the traditional description of imperial decline. She has entered the Hsi-men household, as did P’an Chin-lien, after the virtual murder of her husband. Before his death she had already spirited a great deal of his family’s wealth into Hsi-men Ch’ing’s possession. In her generosity to the other wives she is oblivious to the jealousy excited by her riches. (The servants’ comments make clear that she is heedless of the family’s finances.)⁴³ Hsi-men Ch’ing’s genuine affection for Li P’ing-erh has moved many a reader, as has Li P’ing-erh’s grief at the death of her son. Hsi-men Ch’ing’s affection is expressed, however, as a damaging partiality that causes him to neglect his other wives.⁴⁴ The sexuality depicted in Chinp’ingmei is destructive, and this is precisely why there are no extended passages describing Hsi-men Ch’ing’s sexual relations with Wu Yüeh-niang or Meng Yü-lou: Meng Yü-lou does her best to remove herself from the patterns of destructive interaction within the household, and Wu Yüeh-niang is reserved for a fate whose cause is religious credulity rather than sexual excess.

The representation of sexuality in Chinp’ingmei is central to a system of false relationships, of which incest is the most serious. False claims abound in the novel, as when Hsi-men Ch’ing and Wu Yüeh-niang dress in official garments to which they are not entitled (much as the favored maids demand clothing to which they are not entitled), or when Hsi-men Ch’ing’s crony Wu Tien-en advances himself by asserting that he is the brother of Wu Yüeh-niang. The mutual seduction of P’an Chin-lien and Ch’en Ching-chi, who is technically a generation beneath her, is incestuous, and Li Kuei-chieh establishes an incestuous relation to the family, when despite her position as an acknowledged sexual favorite of Hsi-men Ch’ing, she presents herself to Wu Yüeh-niang as an adopted daughter. (Hsi-men Ch’ing deepens this incestuous connection when he adopts Wang San-kuan, the young man with whom Li Kuei-chieh has deceived him.)⁴⁵

Given a traditional morality grounded in patriarchal, hierarchical, essentially familial ties, it is difficult to conceive that these incestuous relationships, these violations of hierarchy, were intended by their author as positive acts. There exist songs collected during the Ming which treat sex (even adulterous sex) in an entirely playful fashion, but the mood of these songs is far removed from that of Chinp’ingmei. The songs do not describe sexual coercion, nor do they call up the expectations traditionally aroused by evil empresses, favored concubines, or rulers who neglect their responsibilities. Chinp’ingmei does call up these expectations. In Chapter 51, P’an Chin-lien tells Hsi-men Ching that the drug he has acquired freezes her womb, making her entire body numb.⁴⁶ Death, and not life, is the outcome of sexual excess in Chinp’ingmei.

The author of Chin p’ing mei thus depicts sexual attraction as a force of disorder, both a cause and a metaphor for the dangers that menace the state. Sexual activity sustains a system of corrupt and coercive relationships that the novel in its entirety will not allow us to admire. Certain readers of Chin p’ing mei have, however, sensed an inconsistency between the obvious corruption surrounding sexual activity in the novel, and the apparent relish with which that activity is sometimes described. But we need only look at a novel like Zola’s Nana, in our own tradition, to see that the two attitudes are not necessarily inconsistent. The two novels are written from opposite points of view: in Nana, the aristocracy demonstrates by its corruption that it deserves to be supplanted as a governing class, whereas in Chinp’ingmei, society is called upon to return to the purity of its original hierarchical descriptions, to “rectify the names” and thus achieve stable and just government. Nevertheless the two novels exhibit remarkable similarities. In both, the corruption of the governing class is presented primarily through the metaphor of sexual corruption. In each, the collapse of the household in question is preceded by a compulsive overspending that drains the protagonists financially and sexually. Both contain the apparent message that women corrupt society, and a deeper message that the society in question has corrupted itself. The narrator of Chinp’ingmei reminds us that “Sex does not mislead men; men mislead themselves,” and Nana wreaks her vengeance upon a ruling class that has “suffered a poison to ferment among the people.” Both novels end in tumultuous rapidity, the suddenly heightened pace of the narrative helping to demonstrate the inevitability of retribution, the unmanageability of the consequences that the protagonists have brought upon themselves. In their concluding pages, both novels turn from individual drama to the larger drama of the state in decline.

Zola insures our belief in Nana’s sexual attractiveness, and in the pleasure she brings to young Georges Hugon and the anxious, repressed Muffat. Looked at from our twentieth-century perspective, these both begin as liberating relationships for the men involved - and yet both men are destroyed by them. We cannot understand this destruction, however, unless we too experience the attraction the men feel, and so the sexual description central to the novel’s depiction of corruption must at least begin by seeming attractive. We ourselves must then be made to feel surfeited by the increasing extravagance of the narrative. Zola brings on this sense of surfeit by piling one sexual episode upon another, and finally allowing us to participate, with poor Muffat, in the discovery of Nana and the aged, decrepit Chouard. The author of Chinp’ingmei, more subtly, communicates the illicit nature of Chinp’ingmei’s sexual encounters by making us voyeurs: in clandestine company with P’an Chin-lien, Ying Po-chüeh, or various little boys, we watch these encounters through keyholes, we listen through walls. These other characters catch us in the act of watching Hsi-men Ch’ing and his various partners, thus exposing our own frailties, demonstrating that the reader has as great a need for self-cultivation as do any of the characters in the novel.

Sexual description in Chinp’ingmei is thus a means of probing the characters’ self-awareness, on which true enlightenment depends. The novel describes many contemporary practices aimed at salvation or enlightenment, and in the following chapters we will look at the author’s implicit judgment of them. Opportunistic religious behavior, as we will see, is no more acceptable in the novel’s terms than is opportunistic sexual behavior.