“The Rhetoric of Chin p’ing mei”
Drama and Song:
The Language of Convention
Chinp’ingmei alludes to at least 25 plays of the Yüan and Ming, sometimes merely naming them in passing, sometimes quoting whole suites of songs, and sometimes structuring the plot of the novel around an incident from the drama.1 The songs of the Ming are quoted even more extensively than plays: 20 song-suites and 120 individual songs appear in the text, and others are mentioned by name.2 These songs and plays add an important dimension to Chinp’ingmei, introducing the professional entertainers to whom the Hsi-men family and their guests are implicitly compared. Allusions to drama and song also round out the personalities of two leading characters: Ying Po-chüeh, who is Hsi-men Ch’ing’s chief sycophant and self-appointed mentor in matters of taste, and P’an Chin-lien, who uses her knowledge of drama and song to manipulate Hsi-men Ch’ing and the other wives.3 Like the fiction on which the novel drew, the songs and plays in Chinp’ingmei are used to emphasize the author’s concerns. They are signals to like-minded readers, the Ming literati who collected dramatic texts, or considered Shui-huchuan a modern Shih-chi, or studied popular song so as to make pronouncements about the public consciousness. For people like these, surrounded by drama and song and accustomed to seeking moral or political statements in them, such allusions could function as a kind of private language, an implicit commentary of the sort described above.
More than half of the popular songs in Chinp’ingmei can be found in extant Ming songbooks.4 Some of them are the popular songs of the day; others are taken from drama. Most of the plays that are quoted from or alluded to in Chinp’ingmei are either tsa-chü or ch’uan-ch’i, but the novel also mentions puppet theater and the skits called pai-hsi and yüan-pen.5 Fifteen plays are identified by name in the novel, and ten more plays are quoted without identification. Here we must exercise caution before we can be sure an allusion to drama is intended, since dramatic songs were often popular independently of their provenance. Two things suggest, however, that we are expected to know the source of these unidentified quotations from drama. Their ironic function in the novel is indistinguishable from that of the identified allusions, and in Chapter 20 the author himself seems to instruct us to remember their source, when he has P’an Chin-lien plunge Wu Yüeh-niang into despair by identifying a song from the ch’uan-ch’iTs’ai-louchi. Certainly the author expects us to know the plots or the lyrics of the plays and songs that he does name. This knowledge is indispensable if we are to understand why Hsi-men Ch’ing is irritated in Chapter 21, when P’an Chin-lien calls out the title of a song that will embarrass Wu Yüeh-niang, or when visiting eunuchs are treated as figures of fun in Chapter 31, after they ask for songs from the tsa-chüPao chuang-ho. In Chapter 63, the author draws our attention to parallels between the world of Chinp’ingmei and the world of the ch’uan-ch’i drama Yü-huanchi, when he has the servants create an uproar because one of the maids has the same name as the heroine of the play. The Ming readers of Chinp’ingmei knew the stories on which much of the drama was based, since the plays frequently had traditional plots that could be found in a variety of sources. And literati bibliophiles prided themselves on knowing Yüan tsa-chü texts by heart. It seems safe to assume, then, that where songs are quoted from plays known to Ming audiences, allusion to the play as a whole is intended.
It seems likely, however, that not all of the plays quoted in Chinp’ingmei were actually in the contemporary performing repertoire. (Ho Liang-chun, a generation earlier, complained that the tsa-chü performing tradition was dying out.) Many of the tsa-chü in Chinp’ingmei were probably popular among the author’s contemporaries only as written texts.6 By alluding to them, the author shows himself to be one with the collectors of drama, fiction, and song who must have been his chief intended audience. He could be certain that such a public would understand the traditional implications of conventional plots and lyrics. Thus he could use these allusions to remind readers of various cultural conventions. Plays reminded people that virtuous censors and faithful widows are vindicated, if not in life then in death; or that ladies fade delicately away when they lose their lovers, or that a prostitute who gains the love of a good man will automatically reform.
But just as he understood these expectations, so he was able to manipulate and, on occasion, to satirize them. In this chapter we will examine how the author of Chinp’ingmei used the conventional assumptions of drama and song at their face value, as part of his implicit commentary on his own characters. Then, in Chapter 6, we will examine moments in the novel where the author seems to resist these conventional assumptions. At such moments he turns stereotypes on their heads, showing us that even as weapons of irony, they are inadequate to the evil he intends to portray.
The popular songs in Chinp’ingmei (which differ somewhat in diction from dramatic songs) are either hsiao-ling (individual songs) or t’ao-shu (song-suites). Like the tz’u poetry of the Sung dynasty, they are set to prosodic patterns (ch’ü-p’ai) that still bear the names of songs whose melodies have long been lost. (Where he does not quote a song in full, the author generally gives us both this ch’ü-p’ai and the first line of the Ming lyric, making identification unambiguous.) The songs in Chinp’ingmei serve a variety of functions. They are used realistically (Lantern Festival songs are sung as entertainment at Lantern Festival banquets, and so on), and they are used dramatically, violating the conventions of fiction, at moments when the characters burst into song to express strong emotion. The songs used realistically (principally in the middle 60 chapters) are usually sung by the professional entertainers who are summoned to gatherings of family or guests.
These entertainers’ songs provide a valuable record of Ming performance practice, corroborated here and there in memoirs but nowhere else so fully described. This is the aspect of song in Chinp’ingmei that has been most fully studied.7 But these songs have also been shown to serve a narrative function: by their repetition of certain motifs, they foreshadow and comment on developments in the plot. In the chapters before P’an Chin-lien’s cat sends Li P’ing-erh’s son into convulsions, cats and flowers (recalling P’an Chin-lien’s flower-name Lotus) appear in the songs. In the chapters leading to Li P’ing-erh’s death, we find broken mirrors (the sign of parted lovers) and a dropped vase (p’ing, for Li P’ing-erh). And in the chapters between Li P’ing-erh’s death and Hsi-men Ch’ing’s, images of snow predominate, suggesting the “cold” that is emblematic of the family’s decline. But there is no winter without hints of spring and regeneration, so we find images of plum-blossoms (mei-hua) coupled to these images of snow, foreshadowing the rise of the servant Ch’un-mei (Spring Plum) as the family falls.8 The seasonal progression that these songs suggest is of a piece with the language of heat and cold in Chapter 27, and indeed Hsi-men Ch’ing calls for a song in Chapter 27 that emphasizes this seasonal progression. (In the song, the sun is at the zenith, which means that it must soon decline.)9 The song, about the Red Emperor or “Lord of Heat,” reminds us of Hsi-men Ch’ing’s own rising fortunes and his “imperial” position within his household. It fits with the other “imperial” songs that are sung here and there for Hsi-men Ch’ing; they all help to establish the family’s allegorical dimension as an empire in miniature.
The realistically presented songs thus keep the structure of the novel before us, if we attend to the “single words and isolated phrases” that function as significant motifs. More than half of the hsiao-ling in Chinp’ingmei are not presented in this way, however. They are used, instead, as dramatic dialogue or dramatic soliloquy, producing a set of effects that we will turn to in Chapter 6.
Four very brief allusions can serve to open this discussion. In these four cases plays are named, not quoted, and the action of the novel proceeds with no further mention of them. But all four allusions are linked to the novel’s main themes. The four plays are Sha-kouch’üan-fu (Killing a Dog to Admonish a Husband), Hung-p’aochi (The Red Cloak), An-tuCh’en-ts’ang (The Secret Crossing at Ch’en-ts’ang), and T’a-hsüehhsün-mei (Treading the Snow in Search of Plum-blossoms).
Sha-kouch’üan-fu is given in a puppet performance after Hsi-men Ch’ing’s funeral in Chapter 80. The Hsi-men household is already disintegrating at this moment: the third wife Li Chiao-erh has returned to her brothel, and Ying Po-chüeh has begun to cultivate good relations with one of Hsi-men Ch’ing’s former rivals. Hsi-men Ch’ing’s sworn brothers have provided a meager offering before his spirit-tablet, in marked contrast to what Hsi-men Ch’ing provided earlier for Li P’ing-erh. A puppet performance of Sha-kouch’üan-fu is part of the ritual funeral entertainment for the sworn brothers and other relations. In the play, an elder brother prefers the company of his profligate sworn brothers to that of his own virtuous brother, and he refuses to think ill of his cronies even when they beat and rob him. Through a strategem involving a dog made to look like a corpse, his wife brings him to his senses. A performance of Sha-kouch’üan-fu at this point in the novel clearly criticizes Hsi-men Ch’ing’s sworn brothers and his own gullibility. Hsi-men Ch’ing’s wives, moreover, are no match for the virtuous and competent wife of the play.
Hung-p’aochi, in a more complex allusion, links the fortunes of the household to the fortunes of the state. This play (which is not extant) seems to have treated the Red Cloak incident in the famous early ch’uan-ch’iPai-t’uchi (White Rabbit).10 In this episode, the play’s hero Liu Chih-yüan is given a red cloak by his commander’s daughter, who has noticed an auspicious nimbus surrounding him as he makes his rounds on patrol duty. The cloak is her father’s ceremonial robe, and Liu is sent to be flogged when he is found wearing it. Miraculously, the ropes used to tie him burst into flames, and a mysterious power stays the hands of his punishers. The commander accepts these signs of Liu’s high destiny, and raises him in rank. The hung-p’ao thus functions as a symbol of legitimacy - an inner, moral legitimacy that maintains its force even when it seems to fly in the face of propriety.
The hung-p’ao functions similarly in Chinp’ingmei, since it associates the corruption of the eunuch-officials with the ruin that will overtake Hsi-men Ch’ing. In a touch of ironic commentary, the phrase hung-p’ao has been associated with Eunuch Liu since Chapter 61, when Ying Po-chüeh drew our attention to the hung-p’ao chrysanthemums presented by Liu to Hsi-men Ch’ing.11 And in Chapter 64 of the novel, Eunuch Liu “hasn’t the patience” to listen to Hung-p’aochi, a tale involving legitimate access to power. Finally, the hung-p’ao links this chapter to Hsi-men Ch’ing’s death in Chapter 79, where Wu Yüeh-niang dreams that she loses her hung-p’ao - in other words, where the illegitimacy of Hsi-men Ch’ing’s power is finally exposed by his demise.12
The allusions to An-tuCh’en-ts’ang and T’a-hsüehhsün-mei give us quick glimpses of Ying Po-chüeh’s wit and Hsi-men Ch’ing’s susceptibility to flattery. An-tuCh’en-ts’ang is the story of an apparent threat that diverts the enemy’s attention, allowing a decisive victory. Ying likens Hsi-men Ch’ing to the legendary general Han Hsin of the play, by praising his subtle handling of a disturbance involving the wastrel Wang San-kuan.13 Wang San-kuan, grateful that Hsi-men Ch’ing has kept him out of trouble, has brought gifts to Hsi-men Ch’ing and asked to be adopted. On the most obvious level, Ying simply means to say that the arrest of the other ruffians threatens those who have been let off, and when that threat is not carried out, a real victory over them is won. (They now fear Hsi-men Ch’ing and will not dare to cross him). But while attention is focused on threats to the son, Ying does not know that Hsi-men Ch’ing has actually gained a prize far more desirable: he has seduced the mother, Lady Lin. Since even Ying does not perceive this further significance of his remark, the reader, who has all the necessary information, is provided a nice touch of irony at Ying’s expense. As usual, Ying has praised Hsi-men Ch’ing for something that actually deserves the most scathing criticism, and the reader knows where such uncriticized actions will lead.
Ying alludes to the second play, T’a-hsüehhsün-mei, when he urges Hsi-men Ch’ing to visit the singing-girl Li Kuei-chieh in Chapter 20. “Brother,” he says, “if we go home now they won’t take us in. I know it’s been ages since you’ve gone to the Quarter to see Kuei-chieh. Since it’s snowing, let’s be like ‘Meng Hao-jan treading the snow looking for plum-blossoms’ (Meng Hao-jan t’a-hsüeh hsün-mei), and look in on her.”
The play itself, whose exact title is quoted by Ying Po-chüeh,14 dramatizes a famous anecdote about the T’ang poet Meng Hao-jan, and contrasts the purity of Meng’s desires with the sensuality of the poet Li Po. (Li prefers singing-girls and peonies to plum-blossoms and solitary contemplation.) What is amusing in Chinp’ingmei is the contrast between the exquisitely refined Meng Hao-jan and the grossly sensual Hsi-men Ch’ing, and between Meng Hao-jan’s disapproval of singing-girls and Hsi-men Ch’ing’s avidity for them - which will culminate, as Chapter 20 ends, in a jealous rampage when he finds Li Kuei-chieh with another client. And here, now that the central characters have been assembled over the course of these twenty chapters, we find the first juxtaposition of the images of snow and spring plums.
Allusion to T’a-hsüehhsün-mei thus reinforces the effect produced by allusion to song, and we will see other instances where such allusions are closely linked. But allusion to drama is more complex than allusion to song, since by alluding to drama the author could remind his readers of an entire narrative plot. His allusion to drama is of two kinds: he uses plays about impropriety to tag his characters with the attribute of immorality, and he uses other plays with exemplary heroes and heroines to show, by contrast, how far the novel’s characters have fallen away from virtue. The plays of the first type are usually tsa-chü, and treat issues of private (typically sexual) morality. Those of the second type are usually ch’ uan-ch’i, which raise issues of public morality as well. Sometimes the author juxtaposes allusions to these two kinds of plays, in order to suggest the inseparability of these two kinds of morality. Such juxtaposition reinforces the sexual metaphor that runs through the book.
Romantic Tsa-chü: Tales of Illicit Love
The tsa-chü quoted in Chinp’ingmei have a variety of themes. The four plays discussed above give us some idea of their range, and there are others in the novel that deal with dynasty-building and Taoist self-cultivation. But the Yüan tsa-chü that were best-loved during the Ming were the romantic comedies, and they have a special place in Chinp’ingmei, given the prominence of eros in this novel. Three in particular serve in a fashion analogous to the pao-chüan discussed above: they are performed at ladies’ gatherings, and their connotations point up the mismanagement of the Hsi-men household. The three are Liang-shihyin-yüan (Two Lives of Love), Liu-hsiehchi (Leaving a Shoe), and Hsi-hsiangchi (The Romance of the Western Chamber).
These three plays are used to frame the betrothal of Hsi-men Ch’ing’s first son Kuan-ko to the infant daughter of the neighboring Ch’iao family. The betrothal takes place in Chapter 41, at a party to which the Ch’iao ladies have invited the Hsi-men wives. During the party Kuan-ko and the Ch’iao baby are found laughing together on the k’ang. The ladies are enchanted, and when Wu Yüeh-niang’s sister-in-law proposes a match, they all quickly agree. Informal betrothal rituals are carried out, and songs from the third act of Liang-shihyin-yüan are performed.15
Liang-shihyin-yüan is representative of a large class of tsa-chü comedies, treating as it does the relations between a beauty and a wandering scholar. The beauty in this play is Yü-hsiao, a singing-girl loved by the scholar Wei Kao; she dies of a broken heart when he goes off to take the examinations. She is reincarnated, however, as the adopted daughter of Wei Kao’s friend General Chang, and is finally given to Wei Kao in marriage. The third act of the play shows the Chang household in pandemonium over Wei Kao’s attention to his reincarnated love. He has approached her surreptitiously, which enrages his friend Chang. Chang’s fury erupts when Wei Kao compares her to the singing-girl of his youth. Yü-hsiao herself chides him for not sending a proper matchmaker for her, and Chang threatens Wei Kao and his troops with pitched battle. It takes the emperor, in Act 4, to calm the storm and convince Chang of Wei Kao’s honorable intentions.
Chinp’ingmei quotes this song-suite from Act 3, thus making an implicit criticism of the irregular betrothal of the two infants. Since traditional marriage was a contract between families, with a view to producing male heirs and so fulfilling the dictates of filial piety, a matchmaker ought to have been dispatched from one family to the other. The advantages to each family ought to have been carefully considered, and so on. (In the Chapter 41 allusion to Liang-shihyin-yüan, the third-act songs about the matchmaker are left out; readers were required to remember that part of the suite themselves. This was one of the Yüan plays most popular among Ming connoisseurs, however, and we can probably assume that they did.) Moreover, Wan-li editions of this play add a framing-tale in which the hero and heroine are originally Chin-t’ung and Yü-nü (Golden-boy and Jade-girl), sent down from the Taoist heaven to exhaust their remaining sexual desire. Liang-shihyin-yüan was thus seen in the Ming as a play about irrepressible sexual desire.
Pan Chin-lien’s disgruntled comments after the betrothal raise the issue of legitimacy, when she says that no one is even sure who Kuan-ko’s father is. (She has already pointed out that he is only the son of a concubine, making all the fuss over his destiny inappropriate.) The play Liu-hsiehchi, also about sexual impropriety, is alluded to in such a way as to reinforce this sense of illegitimacy.
The anonymous Liu-hsiehchi has an adventurous heroine who keeps a cosmetic shop with her mother. She arranges a tryst with her scholar-lover on the night of the yüan-hsiao festival, and a comedy of errors results when she is unable to rouse him from a drunken sleep. The remorseful young man swallows the scented handkerchief that she has left as a love-token. (She has also left a tiny shoe.) Here the noted Judge Pao performs the function of the emperor in Liang-shihyin-yüan, unraveling mysteries to bring the young man back to life and unite him with his beloved.
Despite its undeniable charm and popularity, this is another tale of illicit love. When it is performed in Chapter 43, at a gathering to celebrate the betrothal and Li P’ing-erh’s birthday, it suggests the same improprieties as did Liang-shihyin-yüan: unregulated desire, and disregard for the proprieties. The play has been briefly foreshadowed earlier in Chapter 43, when songs performed for the Hsi-men ladies mention a scented handkerchief and an embroidered shoe as tokens of an absent lover.16 There can be no mistaking the intended analogy between the novel and the play, since the party in Chinp’ingmei is also held on the night of the yüan-hsiao festival.
Lest we forget the impropriety of Kuan-ko’s betrothal, the entire account of it is framed by references to Hsi-hsiangchi, the archetypal Yüan romantic comedy, and by all evidence the best-loved and most enduring of all Chinese plays. Drawing the outlines of its plot from a T’ang classical tale, Hsi-hsiangchi was by Yüan times a tale of the triumph of youthful love over misguided parental authority.17 The young lovers, a scholar and a girl of good family, consummate their love with the help of the maid Hung-niang, who rebukes the mother for the broken promises that have forced stealth upon the young couple. This play was first on all Ming lists of Yüan drama, and it was rewritten as fashions in drama changed, so that it could still be performed to the Southern music of the ch’uan-ch’i. Nonetheless, it too was seen as a tale of illicit love: the heroine Ts’ui Ying-ying became a byword for insatiable sexual appetites,18 and the Southern dramatic treatment coarsens some of the tsa-chü’s delicate hints of desire. Hsi-hsiangchi also headed Ming lists of plays that would injure public morals,19 and whether or not this actually kept it from being performed, the author was able to use the play’s reputation for its sign-value. When Wu Yüeh-niang calls for the performance of Hsi-hsiangchi in Chapters 40 and 42, she casts the shadow of impropriety over Kuan-ko’s betrothal.
Songs performed in Chapter 43 extend these intimations of impropriety by emphasizing the parallel between the household and the government. Two of the novel’s “imperial” song suites are performed at this party,20 and an influential relative of the Ch’iao family remarks that the emperor himself takes commoners as his concubines. (The Hsi-men family outranks the Ch’iao family.) We are thus reminded of the public improprieties to which these personal indiscretions are analogous. Hsi-hsiangchi is used to mark other public improprieties later in the novel, when it is coupled with the sort of “exemplary” ch’uan-ch’i described below.
Heroic Ch’uan-ch’i: Virtue and Sacrifice
The world of Ming ch’uan-ch’i drama is quite different from that of Yüan tsa-chü. The social conditions surrounding the rise of Yüan drama are still poorly understood, but the Chinese playwrights of the Yüan, whatever their level of education, had diminished opportunity for service at the Mongol court.21 Many of the best-known Ming playwrights, by contrast, had official careers, and Ming drama tends to emphasize issues of public morality more than Yüan drama does. The Southern dramatic form, longer and more flexible than Yüan tsa-chü, gave Ming playwrights the freedom to discuss these issues at whatever length they chose. By the early Ming, the Southern dramatic form already had certain conventions that may have made it seem particularly appropriate for the presentation of moral issues. The famous early Ming plays Yu-kueichi (The Deserted Boudoir),22 Ching-ch’aichi (The Thorn Hairpin),23 and Pai-t’uchi (The White Rabbit) all dramatize the issue of principle versus misguided authority, embodying this conflict as the separation of husband and wife, and the wife’s refusal to remarry.24 In the first two, the emperor (who in Yüan tsa-chü simply brought lovers together) now commends their fidelity by linking it to the other cardinal virtues of Confucian tradition. Love in these plays is conjugal, not erotic, and thus emphasizes the cardinal virtues. This is precisely how it is treated in the drama of Ch’iu Chun (author of the Ta-hsüehyen-i pu, discussed above in Chapter 2). His didactic play Wu-lunch’üan-pei (The Five Relationships Completely Fulfilled) helped to insure the respectability of ch’uan-ch’i drama among the literati. Wu-lunch’üan-pei set a pattern for the drama that followed: though certain later Ming critics deplored the pedantry of this play and those modeled on it,25 still there was no return to the uncomplicated sexual freedom of Yüan tsa-chü. The first scene of the fifteenth-century ch’uan-ch’iShuang-chungchi (The Loyal Pair) shows the moral burden that drama was now called upon to bear:
(The mo actor calls backstage) “Whose story are you performing, what tale?”
(Reply from backstage) “The tale of the double loyalty of Chang and Hsü during the T’ang dynasty.”
(The mo actor continues, speaking) “Ah, that story! Its potential for moral influence is great indeed: Chang Hsün requests leave to return home, and mother and son fulfill the demands of love and filial piety. Augmenting their care [for his mother] and giving way to each other in the performance of their duties, his wife and concubine are free of jealousy. In his official capacity, Chang Hsün has the welfare of the people at heart, and the people in turn feel a sincere desire to reciprocate. Friends understand one another; officers and men exert themselves to the utmost. The subject dies for his sovereign, and the concubine for her husband, thus establishing the principles of morality. The master bestows favor to the limit of his powers, and his servant sacrifices himself in return, causing the principles of ethics to shine forth brightly. Hearing of these righteous and morally courageous deeds, all are moved by generous and valorous purpose. Willingly sacrificing themselves in the face of danger, they do not give way to their fears and affections. A fresh recital of these ancient deeds, void of vanity or falsehood, will keep its audience spellbound in their seats. In the villages, youths will imitate these deeds of valor, while maids will take a pattern from this steadfast chastity. All between the Four Seas will be brought to the same standards of moral conduct, returning to the way of reverence for the ruler and respect for superiors. How can this be called a small improvement! I will now recite the prologue to give you an idea of what is to come.” [There follows a summary of the plot.]26
It was an easy transition, later in the dynasty, from plays like this one to those that dramatized contemporary political issues in moral terms.
Not all Ming plays were quite as serious as Shuang-chungchi; we also find the ch’uan-ch’i version of Hsi-hsiangchi (NanHsi-hsiangchi), and lively tales of passion like Ch’in-hsin chi, a play about the Han poet Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju and his elopement with Cho Wen-chün.27 But the ch’uan-ch’i alluded to in Chinp’ingmei are almost all of the didactic type, stressing the conjugal tie and its importance to society. A glance at two of the plays, P’i-p’achi (The Lute) and Ts’ai-louchi (The Gaily-Colored Tower), will show how far above the Hsi-men household are the exemplary husbands, wives, and concubines of most Ming drama.
The centrality of the cardinal relations can be seen as early as the P’i-p’achi of Kao Ming (1345 c.s.), an enormously influential play from the last years of the Yüan dynasty.28 The play’s hero Ts’ai Po-chieh reluctantly leaves his wife and parents in order to take the examinations, in which he wins first place.29 He is commanded by the emperor to marry the prime minister’s daughter, herself a young woman of impeccable virtue. In his absence his parents starve, and his first wife undergoes harrowing ordeals, while he suffers torments of guilt. Finally, however, his loyalties are reconciled: he is united with both of his wives, and the trio spend three years tending his parents’ graves. In the final scene the emperor commends Ts’ai’s achievements and his filial piety. The songs quoted in Chapter 27 of Chinp’ingmei are from Scene 21 of the play. This is the scene in which Ts’ai Po-chieh calls for his famous ch’in, and describes to a servant how he rescued a piece of scorched wood from the fire and fashioned it into this instrument. He is aware that the sounds as he plays are different from what they have been in the past: involuntarily, his playing expresses the sadness and resentment he feels at being separated from his first wife. His second wife enters and begs him to play for her. Once again, he cannot help playing songs of loneliness and separation, which he explains to her by saying that he cannot accustom himself to the new string on his ch’in, now that he has lost his old one (a conventional way of alluding to his lost wife). She calls for wine; he weeps, but attempts to conceal his tears. Finally he joins her in wine and song. There is a brief rainshower. They retire.
As Hsi-men Ch’ing, P’an Chin-lien, Meng Yü-lou, and Li P’ing-erh leave the garden where Hsi-men Ch’ing has made love to Li P’ing-erh, they sing three of the final songs from Scene 21.30 The songs have to do with the passing rainshower and with lovemaking. The songs follow a brief rainshower in Chinp’ingmei, and to make sure we see the connection between the play and the novel, the language describing the rainshower in Chapter 27 hints at the coming quotation.31 In both play and novel the clouds and rain (conventional sexual images) point to the lovemaking that occurs, and this introduces an ironic contrast between the novel and the play. In P’i-p’achi, Ts’ai despairs, but is won over by the virtue of his new wife. He makes love to her even as he laments the loss of his virtuous first wife. The entire scene is written with great delicacy, the sexual acts merely suggested through poetic images. In Chin p’ingmei, however, the gross Hsi-men Ch’ing makes love to a new wife who entered his household illegitimately, and whose very presence drives the other wives to distraction. In making love to her, he forgets the jealous and licentious wife who had previously held his fancy, and who also entered the household after the murder of her husband. His forgetting is precisely what stimulates the jealousy between his wives.
Songs from the ch’uan-ch’iTs’ai-louchi are quoted in Chapter 20 of Chinp’ingmei.32 The play recounts the trials of the scholar Lü Meng-cheng,33 who has won the hand of the Prime Minister’s daughter, but who is banished with his bride when the Prime Minister learns of his low station. The couple’s virtuous poverty is described in detail. When Lü wins first place in the examinations, however, the deluded father is brought to his senses, and he welcomes the young couple home. The quoted songs are from this final scene, and they celebrate the fidelity of a virtuous young man and his legitimate wife, who now assume their rightful place in the young man’s family. In Chinp’ingmei, these songs are sung as the newly-arrived concubine Li P’ing-erh is introduced to Hsi-men Ch’ing’s disreputable sworn brothers. The actual first wife is neglected, and P’an Chin-lien whispers that the songs are an insult to Wu Yüeh-niang. Yüeh-niang is aggravated to the point of tears, and she refuses to listen when her brother urges her to be reconciled to Hsi-men Ch’ing. The characters of Chinp’ingmei can never achieve the harmony that the songs celebrate in the world of the play.
Both Ts’ai-louchi and P’i-p’achi present the conjugal tie as part of a larger social order. Since P’i-p’achi, like many another Ming ch’uan-ch’i, closes with an imperial commendation, its final scene links child, parent, and sovereign in a continuum of loyalties. Other ch’uan-ch’i quoted in Chinp’ingmei make loyalty to the sovereign still more central: sending their protagonists into battle, these plays keep the affairs of state before us even as we watch wives and parents long for the hero’s return. When these plays are quoted, they create a contrast not only with the Hsi-men household, but with the world of Chinp’ingmei officialdom. When the visiting chuang-yüan (examination prizewinner) of Chinp’ingmei calls in Chapter 36 for songs from the ch’uan-ch’iHsiang-nangchi (The Scent-bag),34 the exemplary chuang-Yüan of the play is contrasted with the false chuang-yüan of the novel. In the play (which is about virtuous resistance to the tyrannical Southern Sung minister Ch’in Kuei), the chuang-yüan will suffer punishment and want in his struggle against unjust government. The chuang-yüan of the novel, an adopted son of Ts’ai Ching named Ts’ai Yün, owes his place solely to court intrigues against the actual prizewinner. (To point up the contrast between novel and play, the author has Ts’ai Yün call for songs that show the hero of Hsiang-nangchi enroute to win his place in the examinations.) True to the tenor of Chinp’ingmei, the novel’s actual prizewinner An Ch’en has made his peace with corrupt officialdom, and he accompanies Ts’ai Yün on this visit. He is on his way to be married, and he calls for songs from the ch’uan-ch’iYü-huanchi, songs that celebrate the wedding of a poor but promising hero to a chaste bride. An Ch’en is poor enough (he cannot afford to marry in the capital, and he and Ts’ai Yün must borrow from Hsi-men Ch’ing to complete their journey), but his promise is hardly the sort fulfilled in the play.
The bride’s songs from Yü-huanchi are sung by Hsi-men Ch’ing’s promiscuous servant Shu-t’ung. An Ch’en is visibly attracted to the boy (just as Hsi-men Ch’ing has been), and the allusion to Yü-huanchi is thus juxtaposed to the sexual corruption of these undeserving officials, who ought to be living by the ethical standards of Hsiang-nangchi. As we will see below, plays are paired at other points in the novel to produce similar contrasts.
Public Transgression and Private Vice
In the structurally congruent Chapters 65 and 76, plays and songs comment on Hsi-men Ch’ing’s scramble for promotion. In Chapter 65, Hsi-men Ch’ing entertains the Grand Marshal Huang, in order to insure his own promotion. In Chapter 76, the theme of promotion is no less prominent, as Hsi-men Ch’ing intercedes for one friend after another. The play Huan-taichi, which is about merit and promotion, is performed for visiting officials in both chapters. These performances art followed by parallel gatherings at which Hsi-men Ch’ing’s cronies eat leftover food and have the actors sing for them as well. The songs at these second gatherings make a cynical comment on the talk of promotion, by hinting at sexual misbehavior.
The hero of Huan-taichi, P’ei Tu (765-839), has been told by a physiognomist that he is destined to die in poverty, despite his aspirations to official service. When he restores three jeweled belts to their rightful owner, however, his physiognomy changes. A temple spirit memorializes the Heavenly Emperor about P’ei’s act of merit, and he is rewarded by rapid advancement in his career. He serves the court as an upright censor and later as a general who puts rebels to flight. The woman to whom he restored the belts is able to free her father from the persecution of a wealthy neighbor. When this play is performed in Chapter 65, it punctuates the account of worldly and spiritual promotion in this and the following chapter (where Li P’ing-erh’s funeral service is performed). But P’ei Tu’s brilliant career is simply the outward sign of Heaven’s regard for him, his ming. It is P’ei Tu’s act of merit that determines his changed ming and resultant official success. Allusion to Huan-taichi reminds us by ironic contrast that Heaven is unlikely to view Hsi-men Ch’ing or Li P’ing-erh with the same sort of favor. Musicians perform a song about upright officials, underscoring the contrast.36 The same sort of ironic contrast is produced in Chapter 76, when the corrupt censor Hou Meng (1054-1121) calls again for Huan-taichi.
When Hsi-men Ch’ing is left alone with his friends after the official reception in Chapter 65, he asks for songs that recall his dead concubine Li P’ing-erh.37 Her living rival P’an Chin-lien overhears him and upsets the other wives by telling them about his lingering favoritism. Even Ying Po-chüeh is moved to rebuke Hsi-men Ch’ing for exciting their jealousy. At the second gathering in Chapter 76, songs from the ch’uan-ch’iSsu-chiehchi (The Four Seasons) recall the embarassment of the Five Dynasties figure T’ao Ku (903-970), when his infatuation with a singing-girl is brought to light. In contrast to Huan-taichi, this portion of Ssu-chiehchi is a tale of hidden vice, not hidden merit. And later in Chapter 76 of Chinp’ingmei, the hidden vice of Hsi-men Ch’ing’s scribe Tutor Wen will be revealed: he has been forcing the serving-boys to perform homosexual acts. But poor Tutor Wen has done nothing more than imitate his master, just as Tai-an and the maids have imitated master and mistresses whenever left to their own devices. And Hsi-men Ch’ing’s “promotion” of Li P’ing-erh - his sexual favoritism, which elsewhere in the novel is referred to as “promotion” (t’ai-chü) - mirrors the inappropriate favor shown him by the court. Tutor Wen has earlier reminded us that all officials, from the lowest to the highest, come up through the same ranks.38 These songs, with their suggestion of impropriety, show us how promotion in the present government is to be viewed.
Chapter 74 alludes to Hsi-hsiangchi and Shuang-chung chi, similarly juxtaposing a play about impropriety to one about virtue. The prizewinner An Ch’en appears again in this chapter; he has now risen to prominence in the Ministry of Works. He introduces Hsi-men Ch’ing to the influential Censor Sung, and has the Hsi-men household prepare a reception for the ninth son of Ts’ai Ching. This feast is framed by jealous intrigues among the ladies, and allusion to Hsi-hsiangchi (in its Northern and Southern versions) similarly frames allusions to the didactic Shuang-chungchi. As Hsi-men Ch’ing and his colleagues await the arrival of Ts’ai Chiu, An Ch’en calls for a famous scene from Nan Hsi-hsiangchi, in which the maid Hung-niang invites the hero to what she thinks will be his wedding feast, and instructs him on how to approach his inexperienced bride.39 As all amateurs of Chinese drama know, the maid’s promise is not fulfilled, and this contretemps sets in motion the clandestine meetings of the rest of the play. Here in Chinp’ingmei An Ch’en is a Hung-niang, arranging assignations between Hsi-men Ch’ing and his corrupt superiors. These violations of ethics will eventually help bring down the government; in this way An Ch’en’s promise is as unreliable as Hung-niang’ s. The author has earlier used the analogous scene from the Northern Hsi-hsiangchi to characterize Hsi-men Ch’ing’s sexual conquests;40 by using it again here in Chapter 74, he shows us the inseparablity of sexual and official corruption.
When Ts’ai Chiu arrives, he calls for songs from Shuang-chungchi, an account of resistance to rebel forces by a pair of heroes of the T’ang. The heroes are trapped inside the besieged city of Sui-yang, and reduced to eating birds, mice, and finally their willing servant and concubine. Heaven rewards them posthumously by allowing their spirits to judge the spirits of the rebel generals after the final victory of the T’ang. The play alludes repeatedly to the web of cardinal relationships that underly the social order: the mother, faithful wife, and loyal servant and concubine are as important to the play as are the generals themselves. Ts’ai Chiu, an official in the Sung government soon to be brought low by rebels, turns the irony of the allusion on himself, but the irony is also pointed at Hsi-men Ch’ing, since one of the play’s heroes is a former magistrate of Hsi-men Ching’s own county, Ch’ing-ho hsien.
As soon as the actors finish their songs from Shuang-chungchi, they launch again into a scene from the “improper” tsa-chüHsi-hsiangchi, reminding us that we cannot expect the heroes of Sui-yang in the disorderly world of this novel. The structure of the chapter shows promotion within the household proceeding by the same laws of influence and favor as are found at court, and Li Kuei-chieh (Hsi-men Ch’ing’s sexual partner and his wife’s adopted daughter) caps the chapter by singing of leaving one lover for another, the novel’s typical metaphor for opportunism among the officials.
Drama and song had been used as commentary long before the composition of Chinp’ingmei. They were often employed in this fashion within drama itself: the virtuous singing-girl of Yü-huanchi, for example, knows the roles of all the famous female paragons, whereas the rebel An Lu-shan of Shuan-chungchi refuses to listen to songs of wise rulership. (Predictably, he meets his doom.) The author of Chinp’ingmei steps across generic boundaries and brings this form of commentary into his novel. But in so doing, he sets up a contrast between the limited, conventional personae of drama and song, and the wider consciousness that he created for the protagonists of the novel. Was the contrast intentional? If so, what ends did it serve? The following chapter will examine this question.
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