IT WOULD BE PRESUMING FAR TOO MUCH TO HOLD THAT any art comprehensively or faithfully reflects all major aspects of a civilization. Even in their collective whole the arts are partial reflectors while each art presents an image fragmentary and in many respects partial. This view proves to be all the more warranted when the body of work regarded as the classics in any art is considered. Time is a winnower, leaving a simplified image. As indicated in the preceding pages, classical tradition in Chinese poetry favors emotional, moral, or descriptive writing; although much Taoist and some Buddhist influence shines through the centuries, the most potent force here is Confucian. As years passed The Book of Songs became the most powerful spring-head for Chinese verse. Though its qualities were not precisely what later poets desired, since Chinese culture became riper and richer with the passing of centuries, it became clear that the main directions had been set early. Such Taoist elements as persisted did not greatly affect the development of verse or drama. The humanistic tradition prevailed.

Similarly, in the theatre of live actors conditions were hospitable to reflections of social and ethical aspects of life. Fanciful and artificial as the Chinese theatre may appear, at heart it remains in accord with the prevailing outlooks of history, manners, and social relations. Only a few plays deal with mythology. The supernatural is secondary to the terrestrial scene; the proper study of drama, it seems, is man in relation to his fellow men as observed from the standpoint of the family, the marketplace and the city. The few ghosts that appear behave much as though they were known persons who simply had not died but merely remained for the most part hidden from human eyes.

In this respect there is good evidence that the so-called live theatre differed materially from the long popular puppet stage. Strangely enough, this stage offered a scope and freedom denied the living actors. A puppet can perform acts entirely beyond the range of the human actor. Puppets may also represent birds and beasts much more readily than actors of flesh and blood. Limitations of scale that weigh upon the live theatre have no significance for the puppet theatre. Puppets attained early and held long the enthusiastic devotion of audiences in China as well as through virtually all Southeast Asia, India, and the Malay archipelago. In a large proportion of puppet-shows fancy ran riot; they blithely represented deities and demons, the leading figures of folklore and mythology. Puppetry became one of the most fertile media to exploit the boundless license of the imagination. It was also, as it ever has been, a medium to express not only the marvelous and miraculous but the grotesque and the laughable. It is hardly too much to say that throughout Asia puppetry proved the ideal medium for folk humor. Unfortunately, just what words the puppet-masters of Asia may have spoken is lost virtually beyond recall; indeed, the plays, very seldom put into writing, almost completely escape us. Only in Japan did puppetry incontestably produce a great literature to last through the ages. This is one of the many unique features of Japanese culture. Unhappily, China has left no such legacy.

Despite this default, China affords an unsurpassed or even unequaled medium of expression, at times sharing the freedom of the puppet stage and capable of carrying much of high value for the romantic phase of Chinese civilization—the prose narrative. The Chinese are singularly happy in story-telling of all sorts. Although admirable Chinese narrative poems exist, such as The Romance of the West Chamber, chief source for the play of the same name, the genre of the long verse narrative failed to win the popularity in China which it attained in the Near East and in the West. Prose became the favorite medium for the story-teller. In very early times the short story was raised to a high degree of refinement, chiefly created by oral storytellers before their tales were collected and circulated, first in manuscript and subsequently in print. So enthusiastically was the short story cultivated that when long prose narratives began to appear they inclined to a strong episodic structure. Lengthy books thought to justify designation as novels are, of course, extremely well known and in a few instances possess almost the organic structure of the chief works of fiction in the West. Yet the short story remains the most representative form of Chinese narration and many of the most celebrated long tales prove, when their form is analyzed, to be collections of brief tales strung more or less loosely together. Many books are literally travelogues, by their very nature episodic.

Most Chinese long stories fall into the category of naturalistic fiction. Although in view of the nature of Chinese culture no such story can be entirely divorced from the supernaturalism deeply entrenched in the popular mind, these books stand as a rule close to the general tenor of the stage. They stand quite apart from the main current of classical poetry, partly because the larger number of true novels are erotic whereas eroticism was expressed in verse chiefly in popular lyric verse, firmly wedded to music. Many of the most famous Chinese novels, as The Dream of the Red Chamber and Lotus (Hunglou meng and Chin p’ing mei) are tales both emotional and realistic with only slight infusions of humor. As already noted, very considerable humorous elements enliven the famous folk novel with a semihistorical setting, the Shui-hu chuan, translated by Pearl S. Buck as All Men Are Brothers, providing materials for countless plays lusty in humor. Some humor, though by no means in such an abundant stream, flows through the episodic and more historically grounded book, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. To examine the humor of these works could only lead to considerable repetition, since the finest essence of this humor is distilled in plays considered in the preceding chapter.

The two veins of humor that at present invite critical attention are, first, that proceeding from the fantastic, the exuberant, and the unfettered imagination, often lifted into supernatural realms or to a complete dreamlike release from all sober naturalism, and, second, virtually the antithesis of the foregoing, the humor derived from intimation, inference, and insinuation, in turn springing from a sophisticated outlook on manners and morals. It is hardly extravagant to hold that in both these areas Chinese literature is unsurpassed. Fantasy attains its most amazing heights in Chinese story-telling; Chinese civilization further attains the sharpest edge of social refinement. Humor finds itself at home in each domain. That humor is a biforked being is widely recognized, if on no other grounds than the elementary distinction between its physical manifestations, the reactions upon the human face in laughter and smiles. On the whole, Chinese story-tellers, especially in the classical age, are more fertile and fluent in the exuberant than in the reticent forms of humor, although many celebrated specimens in each category might be cited.

For purposes of the present inquiry, though several works may be mentioned in passing, two famous examples of the humor of released fancy will be reviewed, the long, episodic tale, Hsi-yu chi, The Journey to the West, first known to English readers through Arthur Waley’s delightful translation as Monkey, and the famous collection of short stories by P’u Sung-ling, translated by Herbert A. Giles as Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio . Incidentally, no complete English translation of either of these books exists. Waley rendered less than half of his original text, omitting the majority of the episodes. A second translation into English, entitled The Monkey King, by George Theiner, closely parallels over a third of Waley’s work but renders a considerable number of the tales omitted by his predecessor. Yet it falls equally short of the full length of the Chinese book and the tales first translated by Theiner are on the whole of less interest than those which Waley’s rendering includes and his successor omits. Although Giles also omits many stories in P’u Sung-ling’s lengthy book, even so, he is generous in the number of tales that he offers.

Although neither of the Chinese masterpieces, then, has as yet been fully rendered into English, both are available to English readers in versions that may be considered representative of the whole and virtually as faithful to their originals as the limitations of translation inevitably admit. There are some omissions of passages which the average English reader might interpret as indecent or salacious, yet these omissions, even if thought regrettable, are not seriously injurious. The book here chosen to represent the arch and insinuating humor grounded upon a relatively sober observation of the manners and morals of Chinese society is The Scholars (Ju-lin wai shih) by Wu Ching-tzu, which has been rendered into English by Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang.

Monkey, as Wu Ch’eng-en’s book will henceforth be called, has been categorized in various ways as, for example, a “folk-novel” or a “picaresque novel.” In the end it must be admitted that it complies with no category in Western literature and is virtually unique even in the East. It certainly does not resemble the novel considered as a literary form. As already indicated, it has something in common with most long narrative books in Chinese in that it is distinctly episodic. Its theme places it among books of travel, but to say this is to say little, for the Odyssey complies as well with this description but in no serious way resembles Monkey. When examined more critically in terms of its essential qualities it proves to be a veritable chimera or zoological monstrosity, since it combines the spirit of many species, like a Chinese dragon, where beast, bird, and fish unite in one organism. It is in part history, romantic entertainment, religious meditation, philosophical lucubration, ecclesiastical satire, and, in very large part, hilarious humor. Only the last of these constituent features is, of course, of primary concern here, but some further scrutiny is required to segregate this element from the bewilderingly rich complex in which it stands with so much brilliance, like lustrous stones embedded in heterogeneous materials of sober hues.

The humor is all the more delightful because of its unexpected setting, which instead of overwhelming it sets it off in a massive frame. Although the statement that all in the book which is not humor exists merely to show forth the humor to greatest advantage would doubtless be an exaggeration, one is almost tempted to risk it. Were we to attempt to underline passages indisputably humorous we should, to be sure, find that only a minor part of the book had been so marked. But quantity and mass seldom prove vital considerations in art’s appraisal. Quality outdoes quantity. Conditions in the arts are closer to chemistry than to arithmetic. A few grains of an intrinsically potent infusion may actually give the whole its essential color and flavor.

The entire conception of the story is obviously absurd and its telling is all the more ludicrous because it is so often executed with a straight face. The world has applauded Monkey as a remarkably humorous and vastly entertaining book. Most of it, if read in a sober mood, will seem to be a record of wonders, a recounting of strange and often miraculous adventures. The narrative has something in common with the fanciful wonderbook popular shortly afterward in Europe, The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, describing a journey to Jerusalem and the Near East.

Yet Monkey is clearly a travel book of wonders and much more. It recounts a long and painful pilgrimage, a mission half human and half animal, to secure the most compendious collection of the Buddhist scriptures. With the complete success of this religious and heroic venture the story ends. Comparatively few of its readers, however, have taken this pious achievement as the author’s chief object. He is clearly a humorist who takes much greater interest in the amusing idiosyncracies of his characters than in the contents of the holy scriptures, which, incidentally, only one of the band of devoted pilgrims could read, all but this single, almost colorless individual being profoundly illiterate. Who can imagine Monkey, Pigsy, Sandy, or the White Horse reading a book!

It should at least be clear that Monkey is the best of all animal fables. It is stored with all the imaginative riches which this universally cultivated type of literature and popular legend admits at the same time that it happily dispenses with the dubious moral which became puritanically attached to the species ever since it took fixed form in the Sanskrit of the Panchatantra. Read from one point of view, it glorifies the Buddhist faith; read from another, it glorifies animals. The two heroes with whom the reader clearly sympathizes most and who chiefly capture his imagination are animals, namely, Monkey and Pigsy. In precisely what sense they are animals is a question initially to be considered, since much of the story’s humor hangs on the calculated ambiguity of their condition.

Are these characters to be thought of as animals with certain human properties or humans with animal properties? Or just what are they? The answer first of all must be that the reader is not expected to insist upon an answer but to believe in them as he finds them. The only thoroughly dull and melancholy major figure in the book is the only priest, the all-too-human Tripitaka, an historical figure, leader of the expedition to secure the sacred texts. All the others have commenced their lives as supernatural creatures. Monkey has drunk the elixir of immortality. His immediate comrades in Tripitaka’s service are all indestructible and have at one time or another been in heaven, although only Monkey’s career in the celestial spheres is related at any length. Pigsy and Sandy have been monsters. Through the intercession of the deity of mercy, Kuan-yin, they have been converted, the first into a chimerical being with a pig’s head and a body half-way between pig and man. Sandy’s appearance is left vague though he may well be thought of as having to some extent a serpent’s head. Monkey, of course, has a monkey face and body, though dressed as a man. All speak and think as men, though each is sharply characterized in relation to the animal he represents. Monkey is clever and virtually all-powerful not so much by means of his physical strength as through his mental agility. He possesses by far the greatest assortment of magic tricks and has twice as many incarnations at his command as any of his comrades. These transformations are said to number seventy-two but, of course, the author avoids stating precisely what is meant. For example, is his power to appear as a man considered one incarnation or does the initial statement include the number of individual persons whom he represents? The former supposition is the more plausible, since he impersonates humans so prodigally.

Behind this type of literary imagination stands the representation of animals in art and on the stage by live actors or puppets. As already stated, the last medium is the most effective because of the extraordinary liberties which it permits. So far as known, the truly dramatic theatre of China, unlike that of Japan, made comparatively little use of masks, though make-up was employed in the most extravagant manner. The imaginative reader is invited to experience the fantastic world evoked by the story under consideration as a carnival of figures masked as animals. An interesting refinement is mentioned in Monkey’s case. According to the rules—and all, even in wonderland, proceeds by rule—whenever he attempts to deceive people by pretending to be a person his head changes completely. But under his garments he remains a hairy monkey. When stripped of his clothes, he is revealed for what he truly is.

At least half the figures in the main part of the book, that recording the pilgrimage to India, at one time or another are not what they seem to be. In other words, they possess the power to project their souls into other bodies than their own. This conception, so convenient for an author addicted to humor and the flights of fantasy, harmonizes, of course, with the serious religious doctrine of the transmigration of souls. Humans become animals and animals humans. Such transformations are natural as breathing. Probably the most popular pathway for supernatural commerce of this kind was between foxes and humans. The present story makes use of this belief in folklore, although this particular transformation by no means holds the dominant position which it occupied in the brilliant cycle of animal tales in the West, Reynard the Fox. In the Orient a woman might only too readily be a fox or a fox a woman. Who could say? Only a magician could know. Life is imagined everywhere as a scene characterized by an infinite number of metamorphoses.

This observation raises questions pertaining equally to humor, to myth, and to religion. Where the priest possesses the powers of a magician he is held by his followers to be a true priest, whereas in alien eyes he appears as a magician. So in the Christian Middle Ages the saints performed miracles through their relationship to God (or God performed them through the medium of his saints), whereas in Christian eyes the Mohammedans who performed wonders by aid of the devil were obviously not saints but magicians! The performance of secular miracles constitutes magic, which, rightly understood, is reserved for the intervention of saints, angels, and God, violently altering the usual course of nature. The Taoists made, in fact, no such sharp distinction, although especially in the eyes of the Buddhists, incredulous of Taoist performances, these frequently appeared the illusions of black magic. They were considered performances that would not bear the test of reality; the figures so conjured were illusions and not, in Hamlet’s words, true and honest ghosts. The pious reader of Monkey interprets the supernatural proceedings as true miracles, the humorous reader presumably sees them as works of magic. But all the ancient inhabitants of Asia delighted in magic and magicians and were highly susceptible to believing in them. Their sentiments in this regard were aesthetic rather than religious. Even when knowing themselves fooled, they delighted in being fooled. That the sleight of hand was invisible was enough. The praise was for the dexterity of the performer. The more inscrutable the act became, the better.

The humor of Monkey lies in large measure in the ambiguity which has just been traced. One can read its story as a pious tale or as riotous entertainment. To be sure, the author specifically avows his piety. He does not announce himself as an entertainer but to have done so would have been to violate the laws of entertainment itself, as he knows so well. The magician must at all cost retain a grave face. Though others laugh at his performances, he does not. He leaves the matter safely at the disposal of young and old, who are only too eager to accept the bait artfully laid for their delectation, just as is the reader who is in quest of humor and fun.

The analysis of humor almost inevitably has its forbidding side, yet a turn of the wrist may to some degree redeem it. Be it remembered that in nine pages out of ten in Wu Ch’eng-en’s story one or more persons are in grave trouble or even in mortal danger. It is the extreme of understatement to say that the journey to India is beset with almost continuous peril and that in the prelude to the novel largely devoted to Monkey’s life in heaven this mock-hero is continually in deep water. There is, to be sure, a pattern visible everywhere that might according to logic much relieve the seriousness of the situations, yet by the unstated rules of humor’s game the reader is forbidden to take it into account. He must presume the danger in each instance to be real, although should he pause to reflect he would know that from each deadly peril the pilgrims are bound to emerge safely. No matter how desperate the danger may seem, Monkey’s wit will save the day. So the book, together with most manifestations of humor, is founded upon a contradiction. By its very nature it defies the ways of nature which everyone knows. In real life some incidents are bound to end badly. Monkey’s story constitutes the apotheosis of the happy ending following on mortal dangers. This occurs again and yet again. Unconsciously the reader discovers the clue, playing the game according to the rules. With each episode he persuades himself to shudder at the perils into which the pilgrims have fallen. In each instance he laughs with pure delight at the cleverness by which Monkey extracts himself and his fellow travelers.

The book is actually in two parts, brief scenes before the pilgrimage commences and the much longer section, in reality the body of the book, which occupies the pages after Tripitaka leaves the capital of China and acquires the companions who alone make possible the success of his venture. All the preliminary scenes are of high value for the work as a whole. Monkey, not his master, Tripitaka, is certainly the heart of the story. It is with his birth out of stone that all begins. Here Buddhist doctrine is the clearest. The most immobile form is changed into the symbol for all mobility. Only for a few pages, where the scenes become quite realistic and we witness the decision of the Emperor, during a magnificent feast, to send his mission to secure the scriptures, does Monkey fall out of sight. He has been motionless for five hundred years, imprisoned in stone because of his shameless escapades in heaven. The lights of the story are artfully dimmed during the recess when the stage is occupied primarily with the Emperor and his chosen scholar, Tripitaka. For the moment fiction turns to history. The lights go on again only when Monkey is released from his confinement and constituted Tripitaka’s guide-in-chief.

Arthur Waley suggests that the scenes in heaven are an allegory of scenes on earth, that Monkey symbolizes “genius” and the hosts of heaven represent the dull, stupid, and tyrannous regime or, in terms of modern popular usage, the corrupt and stupid “establishment” that in governing actually misgoverns.¹⁹ To be sure, much Chinese literature and especially the more imaginative and poetic forms of this literature suggest this view. There is no intention here to deny it some validity. But the main contention here is that the book is both more philosophical and more facetious than Waley’s statement suggests. Insofar as there is an allegory, Monkey might better be viewed as wit and intellect but in heaven he is also clearly irresponsible and irrepressible. He is by no means the same after his incarceration and his conversion. Earlier he again and again offends sound morality or at least conventional morality. There seems really no reason to doubt that the author accepts the orthodox view of the Heavenly Way, holding the Emperor in heaven at least essentially just. It is important to note, moreover, that Tripitaka himself does not effect Monkey’s conversion. Kuan-yin, the gods, and Monkey himself effect that. Monkey has learned the hard way. Although never ceasing to be something of a playboy and himself a humorist, he does indeed become an instrument of righteousness. He even acquires guardian angels who stand ever at his side. The precise nature of his heavenly guides is nowhere stated, a reticence on the author’s part that leads his translators, for example, to designate these supernatural beings at times as “angels” but more often merely as “guardians.” The familiar and optimistic thought behind the book’s bifurcation seems to be that evil can be turned into good if the innermost heart has at all times been sound. Youth sows its wild oats. Afterward come enlightenment, conversion, and true insight.

Monkey’s career sets the key for the other portraits as well. Pigsy, Sandy, and the White Horse, his chief associates in aiding Tripitaka, have all been changed from monsters and menacing creatures. Life, the humorist observes, is essentially inconsistent. Among living beings are millions of transformations and metamorphoses. Most spectacular of all is the repeated transformation whereby evil turns into good. It is indeed a cheerful thought and sound basis for erecting a giddy edifice to house the comic spirit.

There can be no question as to the quality of extravagance conspicuous in the forescenes in heaven. The entire book is a temple dedicated to humor. Humor is the only true god. Monkey continually gets drunk, indulges himself outrageously, robs the Emperor’s orchard, gulps down Lao Tzu’s elixir of immortality, sleeps when he should watch, and roves mischievously abroad when he should sleep. Although the gods are not bluntly ridiculed, they repeatedly are victimized by the acts of this redoubtable and irrepressible ape, the bad boy of heaven. How any normal child, restive and possibly rebellious in the face of parental authority, must rejoice in this episode in heaven! The most sacred objects of Buddhist and Taoist ritual are presented in a thoroughly absurd light. Decorum, which stands close to the heart of all true Confucianism, is utterly violated. Of course in the end Monkey suffers for his pranks and is converted, or at least half converted. His rebellion notwithstanding, heaven remains secure. The Evil Angel is at first expelled but, with a greater charity than appears in orthodox Christianity, seen in a somewhat minimal conversion. Evil is disappointed but wit, intellect, and, above all, humor remain and even triumph. Waley’s limited view in this instance might itself even be taken to reflect the bureaucratic outlook. Perhaps just for once he wrote as a mere Englishman.

The book’s temper depends in part on its delightful theogony. While gods and philosophers are not actually ridiculed, as would be the case did the Chinese book resemble the hilariocomedia or the Western burlesques of the gods best represented by Lucian, even the gods are denied a reign of unbroken dignity and solemnity. Heaven’s Emperor is, perhaps, too remote on his far-away throne to feel the wind of comedy blowing strongly. Actually, the most important deity in the book is Kuan-yin, goddess of mercy, after the great Buddha himself the most often depicted of all members of the Chinese pantheon. She occupies much the position in the humorous epic, Monkey, that Pallas Athena holds in the Odyssey. One goddess protects the hero, Monkey, the other the hero, Ulysses. Yet Pallas in the Greek poem at all times maintains her dignity and her divine aspect, even when seen in her metamorphosis as an eagle. Kuan-yin is, on the contrary, overseen at times in an undignified condition. Once, for example, when Monkey is forced to go to her serene forest retreat seeking aid, he finds her literally with her hair down, no make-up on her face, and her clothes and ornaments in confusion. She has been absent-mindedly pondering all day on her favorite’s perilous plight. Unprepared for social intercourse, just as she is she hurries unceremoniously from her sacred grove to save the stranded pilgrims. The reader is, of course, sympathetic with this all-powerful goddess of sympathy but the humor is inescapable.

As befits a humorist, Wu Ch’eng-en offers no general apology for mankind, though he devoutly believes in the resilient spirit residing in the eminently fallible human race. The burden of his imagery is to remove the gods from unruffled serenity in heaven, since Monkey assails their palaces with his rough-housing, and still more to call human dignity and pretensions to account but, with the essential perversity of all humor, to exalt the animals, especially at the expense of man. Wu’s book humorously turns the universe upside down, or rather it is an ape who turns heaven upside down while on earth the semi-animal attendants of Tripitaka far surpass that sage in all useful points of knowledge. They have no personal involvement in the goal of the expedition. The scriptures are the last things on earth to attract them. They have enlisted in the quest out of sheer goodness of heart and the fervent wish to care for and protect the poor human being who has so rashly undertaken it.

It is Tripitaka, the one completely human, historical being in the adventure, who alone is impotent and witless. Despair continually overtakes him. Repeatedly he collapses, breaking down into hopeless tears. He even falls off his horse from fright. Perhaps the greatest understatement in the entire story is Monkey’s comment that Tripitaka is somewhat timid. His tears are positively maudlin. Monkey declares, as well he might, that he hates to be preached at by Tripitaka. The latter is utterly earth-bound and prosaic. His inability to make up his mind and the ease with which all persons impose upon him and totally deceive him lead Monkey to remark that his master is pliable as water. In short, he is a perfect fool if ever there were one. From this conclusion only a mind totally divorced from humor could conceivably dissent. Yet Tripitaka is in one sense clearly the moving figure in the story, Monkey, Pigsy, Sandy, and the dragon horse being merely his satellites. The knowledge of the holy scriptures and fervent devotion to them appear to do him no earthly good, nor does the author consent to show that any real consolation or happiness springs from meditations on the divine. Tripitaka is a point of no motion about which revolves a world alive with motion, color, energy, and laughter.

As with virtually all manifestations of humor, the masterkey is paradox. The plot of almost any episode might easily be used for a thoroughly serious or even tragic tale. In this regard two of the best-known stories may be cited. One, the story of the Lion Demon in the Kingdom of Cock-Crow, has a plot remarkably close to Shakespeare’s Hamlet. A villain has murdered a king, usurped his throne and married the murdered king’s wife. The ghost of the slain monarch appears to an avenger, who rectifies the situation with a thoroughness, to be sure, even beyond the powers of the noble Prince of Denmark. It is of much moment that the Chinese story ends with a touch of sublimity. It appears that the villain was not really a villain but the lion-vehicle on which the great Bodhisattva, Manjusri, is accustomed to ride. Buddha himself had decreed the entire course of events.

This story, or, in other words, this episode within the book, ends with a scene surprisingly like an apotheosis in a baroque opera. The deity ascends to Heaven riding on the lion-vehicle, leaving all well with the mortals upon earth. All wounds are healed. This story, to repeat, might be told with complete seriousness. But in Monkey all actions exist on two levels, the lower marked by gravity, the upper by gaiety. No doubt whatsoever exists as to which receives the greater attention from the average reader or, for that matter, from an enlightened reader. In the course of this episode the chief characters appear in the most ridiculous attitudes. Probably the climax of the comic element occurs when Monkey lets Pigsy down a well, where he will discover the miraculously preserved body of the dead king. By a still greater miracle the king’s soul is induced to reenter the body. The good king has suffered because of an inadvertent error that offended the deity. Like most figures in the story who have fallen into error, he is after due penance forgiven and established in his original state of happiness. But who could believe that this sequence of eminently serious events would become the occasion for a veritable whirlwind of comedy?

The second episode chosen to illustrate the book’s calculated ambivalence is the equally well-known story, The River That Leads to Heaven and the Great King of Miracles. Here the kernel of the action is a legend known in virtually all quarters of the world reflecting what was originally a sacred rite held in utmost veneration, the sacrifice of one or more children to be devoured by a watery monster as offering for the security of a city. The Chinese story by no means flinches in indicating the pathos implicit in the situation. But soon the tables are turned decisively in the direction of comedy. The children offered to the monster are, in reality, Monkey and Pigsy, one impersonating the male child, the other the female. As the episode develops it grows increasingly ludicrous. A religious myth becomes an uproarious farce.

Some further remarks on the book’s general reception assist at this point in interpretation of its humor. Commentaries, especially from the point of view of esoteric Buddhism, have been lavished upon it. It would be exceedingly captious and supercilious to dismiss such commentary as beside the mark. The book contains much impressive symbolism. It would be equally erroneous to hold that it is primarily satirical or that it lacks satirical or humorous elements. When it first appeared, approximately 1370 A.D., and indeed long after its appearance, it was generally regarded as frivolous, existing quite outside the province of serious or legitimate literature, a book to be shunned by all polished readers. But if its literary value was denied, especially by orthodox Confucians, its value as entertainment of a lower order could not be denied. Hence it was described as a temptation which the right-minded scholar-gentleman should resolutely put aside. But this was clearly puritanical idealism. The book has always been popular among young and old, the innocent reader and the informed. Espedaily worth noting is its popularity with children or adolescents. Certainly it must often have been read to the young rather than by them, for fluent reading ability in Chinese is only attained, except by children of genius, after childhood. Many anecdotes tell of young people who have reveled in Monkey, concealing their enjoyment to avoid the frowns of older and wiser persons. Monkey is a book for the normally growing child much as Pilgrim’s Progress was for the child destined to become an austere Puritan. The book has the maturity of Gargantua and the beguiling quality of Winnie the Pooh. It is a book singularly beyond time, delightful for young and old, for the old world and for any world as yet imaginable. Its humor is infectious today as always.

Whoever analyzes the book does well to recall that humor is by its very nature a transitory phenomenon. Only an idiot laughs or smiles continuously. Taking one consideration with another—to quote W. S. Gilbert—a reader would be rash to regard Monkey either as a wholehearted apology for Buddhism or a satire upon it. The fundamentally humorous aspect so pervasive throughout precludes any entirely consistent or logical interpretation. As the author speaking in his own person at one time informs us, “the three religons,” namely Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism, are all to be honored for the three are really one. Also, none is to be revered so far as to exclude its advocates from the swift shafts of humor. There is no conclusion, only an ending. Thus the visit to the long-sought temple of the Supreme Buddha in India by no means brings the pilgrimage to a thoroughly solemn termination. On the contrary, the monks, annoyed for no sufficient cause, at first fill the pilgrims’ baskets with scrolls having no writing on them whatsoever. On casually unrolling these shortly after the pilgrims have begun their homeward journey, they discover that they have been tricked. With a bland rather than an angry temper they return, modestly requesting to have the sorry state of affairs remedied. This is done by placing genuine scrolls in the pilgrims’ hands so that they again proceed on their homeward way.

The episode must assuredly be an anticlimax in any thoroughly pious view of the story, though it may well be a parable in mysticism. Yet during the first major part of the story, the episode of Monkey in heaven, an incident occurs much to Buddha’s glory and much to the boastful ape’s consternation. Buddha declares that if Monkey alights on his hand he cannot escape from it. Monkey interprets Buddha’s remark as a challenge, takes a mighty leap through space and preens himself with the belief that he has come to the end of the universe, where stand five massive red pillars. When he recovers from his illusion, regaining his right senses, he finds that he is still in the hand of Buddha, whose fingers do in truth comprise the pillars guarding the universe. This is a typical though decidedly eloquent religious fable, carrying conviction to any devout and susceptible mind. The comment may follow that the author believes in the theological doctrines of Buddhism but perceives greed and evil in the priesthood. This supposition would be to impose a logical view upon him which his persistent sense of humor will not tolerate. His book is not overt propaganda. Clearly, the right course is to accept him with all his inconsistencies upon his head and to find in humor the chief key to the riddle of interpretation.

The religious name which Monkey wins in heaven contributes considerably to the book’s meaning. This name signifies “Aware of Vacuity.” It implies a mystic outlook shared by Buddhist and Taoist alike. Here vacuity signifies the conception of a universe where coherent meaning for the whole is impossible for man to attain. Within vacuity, then, the winds of caprice blow as they will. The irrational alone is magnified. Humor above all other elements in man’s spiritual being thrives in this atmosphere. In China a metaphysical humor belonged more to the Taoists than to the Buddhists, while Confucianism nourished a fundamentally different kind of humor. With much aesthetic justification, the initial section of the narrative, which might be called “Monkey in Heaven,” prepares the ground on which the most prominent species of humor in the work flourishes most readily.

The book’s humor is, incidentally, elucidated by the comparison, seldom if ever made, between the symbol of the monkey here and the attitude toward monkeys in the Ramayana. Did Wu Ch’eng-en know the Sanskrit poem? Possibly he did not, though it is by no means impossible that in one form or another he did know it or at least felt its influence indirectly through stories of monkeys popular in all parts of Asia. Hanuman, king of monkeys, has been even more endearing to the Hindus than the chief character in Wu Ch’eng-en’s book has been to the Chinese. It is true that in the episode relating his secret entrance into the harem of the demon Ravana in the city of Lanka, and in his interviews there with Queen Sita in captivity some traces of humor can be found. Yet on the whole Hanuman is regarded not only as being a king but virtually as a god, while he and the other noble monkeys in Rama’s army of liberation are conceived throughout the epic in serious and heroic terms. Glints of humor almost inevitably occur in the picturing of the monkey world—how could it be otherwise?—but in the Ramayana gravity and even pathos prevail. Rama is seldom seen to laugh. He even takes his relation with the army of monkeys with special seriousness. How different, then, is all this from the vastly more amusing conception of the monkey king in the Chinese masterpiece! A reader at any time tempted to view the Chinese tale as primarily serious and grave does well to place it beside the other great monkey legend of the East. The contrast should cast some light upon the true character of Wu Ch’eng-en’s whole work.

Just as the completely incongruous juxtaposition of the animal figures on one hand and Tripitaka on the other produces an exquisitely humorous effect, so does the juxtaposition of the equally sympathetic characters, the clever, quick-witted Monkey and the slow-moving, stupid, and sensual Pigsy. Here once more their creator obviously loves both his children and plays no favorites. He is extremely kind to Pigsy, especially in view of Pigsy’s ludicrous form and still more absurd mentality. The formula underlying the book, in keeping with the principles underlying the purest forms of humor, rests in the incongruous conjunction of raillery and friendship, envy and loyalty, existing between the two chief animal figures. Few passages in their story rival those which depict their repeated quarrels and reconciliations. Among these passages, to mention but two, is, first, the account of Monkey frightening Pigsy out of his wits by pretending to be a demon-messenger from hell and, second, the episode depicting Monkey’s transformation into a hoglouse to pester Pigsy by nipping him in the ear. Again, the contrast is perfected in the contrasted caricatures. Monkey, being by nature restless, makes a miserable failure in his effort to simulate meditation, whereas Pigsy repeatedly falls asleep when important action is demanded.

The book, its composite form notwithstanding, keeps admirably to its subject, yet scope as well as harmony becomes a leading feature. Many tales possess a perverse species of dignity. Tripitaka, for example, resembles Don Quixote in Cervantes’ more ambitious passages, where pathos and even nobility obtrude upon a largely risible narrative. Yet at other times the humor stoops to that of the picaresque story so popular in the Renaissance or even to the Commedia dell’arte. “The Cart-Slow Kingdom,” one of the most quoted episodes, begins to all appearances seriously. A large group of Buddhist monks is subjected to brutal labor by a misguided monarch who falls beneath the influence of some false Taoists. (Be it noted that these magicians are explicitly stated to be impostors and not true Taoists.) The pilgrims are arrested at this corrupt Court. They are forced to undergo a series of competitions in magic with three pretenders, who in the end are shown to be a tiger spirit, a deer spirit, and a ram spirit, all three being malign. The tests in magic involving transformations which the little company of heroes endures are entirely in the temper of performances by magicians before a breathless public audience. So clearly do they also constitute ideal materials for puppet performances that it is really hard to believe that these were not consciously in the author’s mind when composing his scenes.

As noted above, the book has been called by some Westerners commenting on it a picaresque story. This obviously implies a likeness between Monkey and the heroes of these humorous tales in which the chief character is at once a sympathetic figure and very much of a rogue, a scamp for whom accepted principles of morality have no binding force. He is usually afflicted with poverty and born of humble stock. He lives off his wits, practicing deceits upon his betters. Considerable merit and weight must be granted to these tales, which cannot properly be dismissed as trivia or shallow entertainment. Yet how meager they appear when placed beside the far more profound apprehensions of the Chinese masterpiece, behind which lies a commentary on three religions, on an entire metaphysics, on social relationships rationally conceived and on the very roots of the sense of humor! It is no work to be summarized in glib phrases or facile generalizations but is in essence one of the world’s major poems, a triumph of imagination made possible only by virtue of the highly sophisticated culture from which it sprang.

It is more a tribute to its excellence than any sign of weakness in its style or texture that quotation from it in order to illustrate its essentially humorous qualities is exceedingly difficult. All its sentences should be taken in context. There are quotable phrases, it is true, with witty proverbs surprisingly like those from Sancho Panza’s tongue, but no one or one hundred of them gives the remotest picture of the book’s imaginative richness. Characters and concepts are developed structurally, woven like a tapestry or laid stone by stone to constitute a miracle of architecture. Although, properly speaking, the book has no plot, there can be no pulling out a specimen thread or stone to represent the whole.

Yet occasionally action pauses for a moment to present a tableau where the chief characters appear in peculiarly significant aspects and in specially significant postures. Such a passage is the triumphant conclusion of the tale, “The River That Leads to Heaven and the Great King of Miracles.” A beneficent spirit in the form of a huge turtle ferries the pilgrims across a river of great width that has during the days immediately preceding this event placed them in mortal jeopardy. The entire company, including the White Horse who has sprung from a dragon, assembles on the turtle’s back. The Western reader does well in this instance to recall the many sacred associations which the turtle-image must have evoked. But what an amusing picture these comedians make as they float serenely across “The River That Leads to Heaven” on the back of this strange monster! There is a certain sublimity in the conception but surely Wu Cheng-en was no man to miss the ludicrous aspect of his scene. Arthur Waley, with his accustomed skill, translates the passage as follows:

The white horse was led on to the middle of the turtle’s back; Tripitaka stood on the left, and Sandy on the right, while Pigsy stood behind its tail. Monkey placed himself in front of the horse’s head, and fearing trouble undid the sash of his tiger-skin apron and tied it to the turtle’s nose, holding the other end in one hand, while in the other hand he grasped his iron cudgel. Then with one foot on the creature’s head and the other firmly on its carapace, ‘Now turtle, go gently, he cried, ‘And remember, at the least sign of a wabble, you’ll get a crack on the head.’ ‘I shouldn’t dare,’ said the turtle, ‘I shouldn’t dare.’ Then while the turtle set off smoothly over the waters, the villagers on the bank burnt incense and kowtowed, murmuring ‘Glory be to Buddha, glory be to Buddha!’

In less than a day they had safely traversed the whole eight hundred leagues and arrived with dry hand and dry foot at the further shore. Tripitaka disembarked, and with palms pressed together thanked the turtle, saying, ‘It afflicts me deeply that I have nothing to give you in return for all your trouble. I hope that when I come back with the scriptures I shall be able to show you my gratitude/ ‘Master,’ said the turtle, ‘I should not dream of accepting a reward; but there is one thing you can do for me. I have heard that the Buddha of the Western Heaven knows both the past and the future. I have been perfecting myself here for about one thousand years. This is a pretty long span, and I have already been fortunate enough to learn human speech; but I still remain a turtle. I should indeed be very much obliged if you would ask Buddha how long it will be before I achieve human form/ ‘I promise to ask,’ said Tripitaka. The turtle then disappeared into the depths of the river. Monkey helped Tripitaka on his horse, Pigsy shouldered the luggage and Sandy brought up the rear. They soon found their way back to the main road and set out for the West.²⁰

With this passage before us, we may leave the magical and humorous world of a book that combines in one narrative a hundred or more episodes, virtually short stories in themselves, to consider much the same factors in the most famous Chinese collection of such tales, Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, or Pu Sung-ling’s Liao-chai chih-i. Since many of these stories are short and all self-contained, extended quotation for illustrative purposes becomes entirely feasible. A word should further be said about these translations. The Chinese itself is in prose, interspersed, as is quite customary in Chinese narratives, with verse passages. It has seemed to the present writer that Fu Sung-ling possesses an extremely poetic mind and style and that his tales of strange and miraculous happenings bear a fairly close relation to the narratives of miracle and wonder so popular in the Middle Ages and so often recited in a popular octosyllabic rhymed verse. These are the much less serious but, if possible, even more miraculous and almost certainly more fantastic tales popular both for reading and recitation in the East through several centuries. Although their more sophisticated readers probably at times questioned their historical validity, discounting the gesture of historical documentation which the author almost invariably makes, in most cases the readers presumably believed in their veracity. The word in the Chinese title which the English translator, Herbert A. Giles, renders as “stories״ might equally well be translated “reports.”

For the present discussion it is, of course, of chief importance that a large number of the tales are humorous, as all are presumed entertaining. But to the Chinese of the seventeenth century, and indeed for long periods before and after, no essential reason existed to divorce humor from reality or reality from humor. The world, claimed the Taoists and the Ch’an Buddhists, was like that—a scene far from abiding beneath the control of any reason apprehensible to man. Hence truth, if one could speak of it at all, was even more likely to appear humorous than prosaic. Popular belief in magic, in fox-men and fox-women, in transmigration, in transformation, and in ghosts prevailed on every hand. Grave scholars, even men like Fu Sung-ling, collected such strange tales, relishing them to the highest degree. It may be recalled that Edgar Allan Poe almost, if not actually, persuaded himself to believe in supernatural manifestations. How much more natural, then, that Chinese scholars three centuries ago should think and feel in this fashion! The highly sophisticated medieval schoolmen believed in miracles and in demonic visitations. Much of the supernatural world of the Chinese imagination appears to Western eyes closer to folklore than to religious faith, yet for the East the Western distinction barely applies. Science was, of course, in part alchemy while alchemy stood midway between science and religion. The freedom actually granted the poetic imagination in all these fields liberated the aesthetic mind from prosaic notions of reality and encouraged the free play of a highly animated sense of humor.

Sometimes the smile is kindly, naive, or both, sometimes distorted by a sense of the grotesque and even combined with shadows of malice. Especially to the Chinese modes of thought, devils and imps are loud in laughter; the underworld resounds with a sinister laughter; demons are even more humorous than men; ghosts delight in humorous trickery or the practical jokes of hell. The mere dexterity of the magician may in itself seem humorous and still more so his thoroughly innocent deception of those before whom he practices his secret arts. Admittedly, not all P’u Sung-ling’s tales are humorous or even contain glimpses of humor, but many do so and many of his best stories fall into this category. No well-rounded view of the more powerful and more typical features of Chinese humor becomes possible without a fairly close scrutiny of these altogether fascinating features.

Much as in analysis of the attraction of Monkey for those reading or hearing its stories, so in the study of the legends recorded by P’u Sung-ling the fascination of such materials for children is of much importance. In the following tale, Theft of a Peach, the narrator, speaking in his own person, declares that the miracle or magic which he reports he himself witnessed as a child and has never forgotten. He relates his story with several grains of salt. The incident has by no means a serious setting. The performance of a mountebank, it takes place during a carnival. The atmosphere is by no means greatly unlike that of a scene in a square at carnival time say in Venice of the days of Marco Polo. A large public, young and old, has assembled specifically to be amused. The judges of the events make no effort to investigate the circumstances of the miraculous show, the sudden erection of a peach-tree out of season and the harvesting of its fruit. The entire assembly is, it seems, only too happy to be deceived, since in the case of such an agreeable deception conviction is itself a pleasure. The public roots as eagerly on the side of the magician as an American sport crowd cheering for its home team.

The essential innocence or naivete of the scene is further enforced by its dramatis personae: the senior magic-maker enjoys as his indispensable aid the services of his young son, who climbs a pole that stands for the tree and plucks the magically ripened fruit. But this is by no means all; the best is yet to come. Parts of the boy’s body fall in succession from above and lie on the ground. The father, bathed in tears, places them in his magician’s box. Next, with loud cries of grief he collects contributions from the sympathetic crowd to secure the means to give his son’s soul a fitting funeral. Everyone in the back of his mind knows well enough the deceit but takes pleasure in it. Finally, the father raps loudly on the box, now presumed to serve as coffin, commanding the lad to come out and bow in appreciation before a generous and madly applauding crowd. The entire story is a masterpiece of humor, a secular miracle, a tribute in words to the entertainment arts of the populace. Actually, all classes, from grave officials who reign over the festivities of the day to the poor enjoying one of their rare holidays, delight in the performance, joining in the communal laughter. Certainly much of the humor and temper of the people can be discerned from examination of this tale.

THEFT OF A PEACH

When that I was a tiny boy

Town-visits were my keenest joy.

Spring was the time of festival,

Feasting, dancing, carnival.

Then as warmer days would come

Merchants flocked with flag and drum

Preceding them, while brilliant flowers

Were thrown about in lavish showers.

Revelers made their chief resort

The pageant at the mayor’s court.

I went with friends to share the fun

Of what was said and what was done.

Officials dressed in red were all

Seated by the mayor’s hall.

I was much too young to know

Who were these great men, row on row,

But loved the crowd’s incessant humming

Plus sounds of singing, shouting, drumming.

Right in the middle of the square

I saw a boy with dangling hair

Led by his father to the mat

Behind which the great statesmen sat.

The fellow with uncanny strength

Carried a pole of monstrous length.

It seemed to me he said some word

That in the din nobody heard.

I only saw the officials smile,

After which, in a little while,

The loud-mouthed herald of the Court

Ordered him to show his sport.

“What shall it be,” the man inquired.

“What is the magic most desired?”

After a minute’s hesitation

The leaders at the judge’s station

Asked the man himself to state

What trick he thought most intricate.

The man declared he could invert

Nature’s course and so convert

Spring to fall and fall to spring,

Toppling laws for man and thing.

After a pause the herald bade

The man to prove the words he said,

Bringing to hand before them all

Peaches that ripen in the fall.

The man observed that he could do it

By putting special effort to it

But that he was too sorely tasked

In doing what his masters asked,

For winter frost was barely past

And peaches usually the last

Fruit to ripen; so he held

Himself by such demands compelled

To what no man beneath the sun

At any previous time had done.

Still, he declared that he would try

Even before his master’s eye!

He then removed his hat and vest,

Placing them in a wooden chest.

Meanwhile the boy reminded him

That he had wagered life and limb

On what the two of them could do.

Honor called to prove it true!

The man was full of many a guile.

He hedged and grumbled for a while,

Then said: “Peaches will not grow

Here on this ground where recent snow

Has lain, but always grow on high

In the bright garden in the sky.

The mother goddess of the air

Keeps them and we must find them there.

Your greatest masters have collusion

With the goddess of illusion.”

“But how get there,” the youngster cried,

To which remark the man replied:

“We have the means.” At that he drew

A cord out of his box and threw

It up and up, till it was flung

To where the clouds themselves are hung,

To where the lark can scarcely fly

Beyond the reach of human eye.

No man in all the crowd could look

Aloft and see that magic hook!

Next, he called to him his son

Explaining what his art had done

But said the rope declined the freight

Of his own full and manly weight

So that the youngster must ascend

The cable boldly to its end.

The boy himself pretended fright

Calling the cable far too light

And frail ever to carry him

Without grave risk of life and limb.

To this the father loudly said

That they had rather both be dead

Than fail that day to do what both

Had promised with a sacred oath.

Moreover, they could not afford

To lose the promised, rich reward

Which, with precaution laid aside,

At length would win the boy a bride.

At that the youth no more evaded

The project, readily persuaded,

But clasped the cable and ascended

Beyond the point where vision ended,

Clambering like a spider there

Into the dizzy heights of air.

Then, with applause of all the town,

Abruptly a large peach fell down

Out of the clouds. Next, as most fit,

The father proudly handed it

To the high magistrates who took

On this at first a doubtful look

But presently were all agreed

It was a perfect peach indeed!

Just then the rope itself fell flat,

Resounding on the ground, whereat

The man exclaimed: “Some fiend has crossed

My magic here and all is lost!”

Then something from the heavens fell

To earth. Quicker than words can tell

He took it up and, weeping, said:

“This is my son’s dissevered head!

The heavenly gardener, no doubt,

Saw the thief and threw him out

Causing my dearest lad to fall

Over the heavenly garden’s wall.”—

Next, legs, arms, body with the same

Fatal precipitation came

To earth. The father to his breast

Clasped them and placed them in his chest.

“This was my only son,” he said,

“Who here so cruelly is dead.

Now I must place him on his pall

And carry him to burial.”

He then approached the judges’ seat

Casting him down beneath their feet:

“You see,” he cried, “what a peach cost

Since I in reaching it have lost

My precious son; therefore I pray

That you who saw my deed this day

Will generously give to me

Money to pay the funeral fee.”

The judges, smilingly, believed

The loving father as he grieved

And generously dismissing doubt

Poured their contributions out.

The father next with heavy knocks

Beat upon his magic box

Crying: “My boy, why must you hide

Ignominiously inside

And not come forth, a grateful son,

With thanks for what the judge has done?”

At that a subterranean sound

Was heard; next, with a joyful bound

The boy leapt out and deeply bowed

Before a madly cheering crowd.—

I saw this trick many years past.

I still can hold its image fast.

Men tell me that the same effect

Is used by the White Lily sect,

Who doubtless learned their magic lore

From him I knew long years before.

As a generally cheerful people, unusually successful in mercantile enterprises and, since Confucius set them firmly upon their path, a people no less practical than imaginative, the Chinese have cultivated humor arising from what seems even in their own eyes a curious and amusing conjunction of naturalistic and fantastic elements. Reality lies down beside fantasy. This is precisely the case in a story told by P’u Sung-ling, Boon Companion. A young scholar, fond of drinking, goes to bed with three bottles of liquor on the shelf beside his head. In the dead of night he awakes to find to his amazement that a fox lies at his side and that one of the bottles, full when he retired, is now empty. The considerate scholar refrains from disturbing the animal and himself calmly goes to sleep again. Most foxes in Chinese folklore, to be sure, are evil spirits and at one time or another appear as beautiful but treacherous women. Here events prove altogether the contrary. The story seems written from the fox’s point of view. When the student awakes, he discovers the fox gone but a handsome young man, fully dressed, at his side. He hails him as a boon drinking companion. Pleased with this cordial reception, the kindly fox commences to befriend his companion. He leads him to two stores of buried treasure, guides him in shrewd investments, is a loyal and good friend to his wife and proves a general and comprehensive blessing to the family. In Chinese eyes part of the story’s humor undoubtedly lay in its inebriate optimism. Such kind services were hardly to be expected from a fox. But then, humor lies in paradox and incongruity and this tale is obviously intended both to entertain and amuse:

BOON COMPANION

There was once a bright young man

Named Ch’e, whose natural feeling ran

To wine; he had a certain dash

Of humor but too little cash.

He found he hardly slept aright

Without three stoups-full every night.

Commonly as he went to bed

Three bottles stood beside his head.

One night he woke and turning over

Felt something strange beneath the cover.

Thinking that it was only clothes

Slipped off, he turned aside to doze

But stretching out his hand to see

What the obstacle might be,

Found his fingers grasping at

Something silky, like a cat,

Though larger, neither shirt nor sox.

Behold, he saw it was a fox,

Its head upon its silken paw!

Glancing upward, then, he saw

One of the bottles that he had

Beside his bed to make him glad

Was empty, with its cork outside.

“A boon companion!” then, he cried,

But careful never to awake

The creature, out of friendship’s sake,

He covered it and laid his arm

Across it, shielding it from harm.

He next arranged the candle’s light

Not to disturb the fox’s sight

Yet, when it should awake, to see

What transformation there might be.

About midnight the creature stretched

Itself out full. Eyes closed, it fetched

A yawn, then snuggled in Ch’e’s lap.

“You’ve had a comfortable nap,”

The man observed. But as he drew

The bed-clothes back he had in view

No fox but a young scholar dressed

Elegantly in the best

Garments that fresh young students wear.

He bowed and thanked Ch’e for the care

He took of him all night instead

Of rudely cutting off his head

Or giving some resounding curse.

“Oh,” replied Ch’e, “I’m not averse

To any liquor when I view it;

In fact I’m much addicted to it.

Let us be bottle-chums together

Through all the turns of chance and weather!”

So they lay down again to sleep,

Ch’e urging his new friend to keep

Firm faith in their companionship,

Letting no chance of meeting slip.

This was agreed, but later on

When Ch’e awoke, the fox was gone.

On the following night Ch’e poured

The best wine that he could afford

Befitting as a special treat

When he and his new friend should meet.

Sure enough, when twilight fell

The fox-man came and all was well.

They drank. The fox told jest on jest,

So that the scholar Ch’e confessed

He had not heard such stories ever

Nor met with anyone so clever;

He added that his heart was sore

Not having met with him before.

The fox said: “How can I repay

Such kindness as you show today

In giving me such warming drink?”

Ch’e replied: “Oh, never think

A thing about it! What’s a glass

Of wine? Just let the matter pass!”

“Well,” the fox answered, “you have not

Much money; wine’s not easily got.

I must try to find a plan

To make you a rich gentleman

Or at least how to accrue

Some good wine-capital for you.”

He came next evening with a tale

He promised would in no way fail:

That two miles down the south-east road

He would find a glittering load

Of silver. “It is yours to take;

But start from here before daybreak.”

So at next dawn Ch’e went out,

At first attended with some doubt

But found beside the common way

That two large lumps of silver lay

For anyone to take; so he

Took them himself and happily

Expended them on food and wine,

Sure that the fox would come to dine.

The fox next said that in the yard

Behind his house there was a barred

And hidden vault where he would find

Things still more welcome to his mind.

Ch’e did as told and found a treasure

In coins almost too great to measure.

“Now,” exclaimed Ch’e, “this wealth of mine

Suffices all our needs for wine!”

“Ah,” said the fox, “every one knows

Money not only comes but goes.

I must do something more for you.”

Accordingly a day or two

After this he said: “Note how

Buckwheat in the market now

Is selling cheap; but I incline

To favor buying in this line.”

Ch’e purchased forty tons, believing

All the advice he was receiving,

Though he incurred much ridicule

And neighbors took him for a fool.

Presently in a dreadful drought

All kinds of grain were rotted out

At which the price of buckwheat went

Upward hundreds of percent.

From this his wealth so much increased,

He purchased a square mile at least

Of the best ground and always grew

The grains the fox-man told him to.

The fox held Ch’e’s obsequious wife

A sister of his own for life

And also lovingly befriended

His children till their own lives ended;

Yet after Ch’e had died, he never

Came to their house, vanished forever.

As already noted, much of the humor linked to fantasy becomes in Chinese thought also allied to the religious and philosophical system most cordial to fantasy, humor, incongruity, and illogicality, Taoism. Magicians were likely to lean toward Taoism, Taoists were almost certain to have faith in magic since the pillars on which their world-system reposed were alchemy and astrology. Matter might be conjured before them or readily conjured away. Their irresponsibility and unpredictability had a distinct tang of the humorous. Their thought also had a nocturnal and mysterious quality, as elves hovering in moonlight. Laughter rang from hidden places in the dark. A literal-minded person would stand dumbfounded in the midst of their conjuring. Deception became a profession in the hands of the unscrupulous. Those who were kindred spirits with the magicians were befriended. Those who were alien to their occult ways of thinking and their mysterious behavior were liable to be discomforted.

Many amusing stories told with a dry humor relate their arts of mystery or deception. Several charming and truly lyrical tales of this sort are given by P’u Sung-ling, as by countless other popular story tellers. Spirit of the Hills is typical.

SPIRIT OF THE HILLS

Once on a time a man named Li,

Crossing tall mountains, chanced to see

Country-folk sitting on the ground

Passing cheerful cups around.

The group accosted him and vied

To have him lavishly supplied

With drink, forcing upon him there

Trays loaded with the costliest fare.

Together all sat down to dine

On richest food, with sharpest wine.

Such delicacies Li thought strange

To find on that rough mountain range!

Then, as they drank and sung and cheered,

A stranger suddenly appeared

Wearing a jet-black, yard-tall hat

Above a face as long as that!

The revelers were terrified.—

“The god, the mountain god!” they cried.

Not one was brave enough to stay;

They bolted, terrified, away,

Scattering in all directions, blind

With fear, nor dared to look behind.

Li found a hollow in the ground

With roots and boulders circled round,

Hid for a while; but then, at length,

Gathering some timid grains of strength,

Peeped out to see how the land lay.—

The wine and food were swept away;

The forest floor was wholly cleared;

Marks of the feast had disappeared;

Where revelry and fun had reigned

Only some dirty shards remained.

Lizards and efts, in eerie files,

Crawled over stained and broken tiles.

So many humorous and grotesque tales, laughing fantasies of the macabre and the miraculous, use the underworld for their scene that a representative showing encourages quotation of three of them. In the West, to be sure, both princes and common people of the underworld who cast morals and ethics to the wind were during the Middle Ages humorously conceived. Hell is indeed perhaps the only contribution of Christianity to humor. Thus in that eminently devout and religious masterpiece of Middle English poetry, The Ludus Coventriae, or Play of Conventry, on the whole preeminently serious, the brightest spot of humor is a soliloquy by Satan. To Milton, as a faithful Protestant, Satan had lost his humor and, for better or worse, become heroic. Thought on such matters in the Middle Ages was more relaxed and diverting. Among the peculiarly resilient and cheerful Chinese this tendency appears more advanced still. Whereas Buddhism in India depicted a hell that was seldom taken lightly, in China the doctrine of the underworld, by the medieval period largely Buddhistic, assumed less austere aspects. Especially by the seventeenth century, when P’u Sung-ling collected his tales, humorous pictures of the underworld were distinctly common.

His Saving Life affords a typical example of a bizarre and essentially lighthearted view of hell’s torments. Quite obviously, it not only lays no claim to orthodoxy or religious conviction, it is told solely to entertain and to amuse by virtue of its macabre images and infernal laughter.

A judge of the common court dies and goes to hell. There he learns that the shades are being prepared for their next incarnations. Most men, being evil, are doomed to become animals and hence are fitted out with animal skins taken down from a huge rack where thousands of hides are hung. This judge is doomed to become a sheep. A sheep’s pelt is painfully affixed to him. But suddenly word comes from the Clerk of Hell that while a judge the dead man had done a single deed of mercy in sparing a person unjustly condemned. To his excruciating pain, the sheep’s hide is flayed from the judge’s limbs. He is dispatched back to earth in the honorable condition of man. Still, he barely escapes; the transformation is imperfect. Throughout his new incarnation in human form he wears the stubby remnant of sheepskin clinging to his shoulder.

SAVING LIFE

A scholar from Shan Yu believed

He knew impressions he received

In earlier lives and could retail

Adventures from beyond the veil.

He said that in past life he, too,

Had been a scholar, but death blew

Life’s candle quickly out and sped

Him to the High Court of the dead.

There in Hell he saw in glory

The Lord High Judge of Purgatory.

Cauldrons stood with burning oil,

With torture engines, coil on coil,

Through which the guilty souls were hurled

Just as we read of in this world.

There by the eastern wall were strung

Huge frames on which the fiends had hung

Skins of sheep, dogs, horses, deer.

All condemned to reappear

On earth in these debased conditions

Found hides fit for their new positions.

A skin is lifted off its rack

And fitted on each sinner’s back.

This magistrate of whom I keep

Account was judged to be a sheep.

Fiends had already clothed him in

The livery of a fresh lamb-skin,

When the Clerk of Hell declared

That by him once the life was spared

Of one who in time long gone by

Had been unjustly doomed to die.

Hearing this, the Judge of Hell

Declared since he did one deed well,

Though countless sins decreed his fall,

One life spared redeemed them all.

The devils then tried, limb from limb,

To rend the sheep-skin clothing him

But found the going strangely rough;

No yank or pulling proved enough.

However, after he had been

Tortured both in flesh and skin,

They ultimately came to flay

The man and tore the hide away.

Still their success proved incomplete;

Their flaying was not wholly neat.

One tuft of sheep-skin still betrayed

The man beside his shoulder-blade,

A sign infallibly to tell

That he came recently from hell.

Many stories with scenes in the underworld retain a humorous element blended with a much stronger infusion of the sinister and diabolical. Humor is present but is tart and astringent. Such is the case in a tale developed with considerably more ingenuity than the foregoing and spun out to somewhat greater length, The Censor in Purgatory. Here the butt of the humor is again a member of the official class. Having pried too curiously into the affairs of men, this unfortunate bureaucrat decides to investigate hell. Popular report has told of an entrance to the underworld through the mouth of a nearby cavern. Although neighbors struggle to dissuade him from his rash and impious attempt, he is determined to make the effort. At first he is full of confidence in his success. Presently he finds himself in the Court of Hell, before the Judges. Being something of a judge himself, he is invited to sit upon hell’s gorgeous throne. But it soon becomes clear that from hell nulla est redemptio. Being in, it seems, he cannot get out! Suddenly, however, a messenger comes from heaven announcing the gods’ decree that all souls shall be released. Though at first elated, the censor soon finds hell’s exit extremely hard to locate, a profound darkness covering all. At this point the truly inspired humor of the story becomes manifest. A benign spirit informs him that he will be aided on his way only as he recites passages from the sutras. (There is a trace of orthodoxy here but humor is more conspicuous than belief.) The censor has been a poor scholar, his memory retaining only snatches of a single sutra. Whenever he recalls a few lines, a light glimmers in hell, enabling him to take a few steps forward. Whenever forgetfulness clouds his mind, darkness returns. Only after long delays and painful stumbling does he finally regain the light of day. The final passage is indeed a divine comedy, Dante’s hell lit by the kindlier light of Chinese fanciful humor.

THE CENSOR IN PURGATORY

According to an ancient story

The entrance into Purgatory

Lies in a cave beyond Feng-tu

Bottomless to human view.

All implements of torture there

Are thrown in total disrepair,

The tools that men have sometimes made

To serve them in their vicious trade.

There are the obscene remains

Of worn-out fetters, gyves and chains

Left at the cavern’s dismal head

Until another load instead

Is brought upon another day

And that in turn is hauled away.

Night-working fiends hurry them down,

Charged to the budget of the town.

This sight in the Ming Dynasty

A rich official came to see

Whom some would title an Inspector,

A Censor or a Tax Collector.

He had a boundless inspiration

For personal investigation.

He would not believe the vulgar saw

Told by the common-folks in awe

And only when he had the view

Of things themselves would believe them true.

People labored to dissuade

His dangerous visit yet he paid

No heed to them, but, rashly brave,

Entered the hell-mouth of the cave,

Holding a lighted candle up

Fastened in a common cup.

Two trembling servants at his side

Followed him, their fearless guide.

They had gone some half a mile

Plodding through the deep defile

When suddenly the candle’s spark

Flickered a while, then all was dark.

They stumbled down a rocky stair

Hung between terror and despair

Till entering in all their glory

The Ten Great Courts of Purgatory!

Each judge was on his judgment seat,

His robes and tablets all complete.

On the East wall there seemed to be

A throne left as a vacancy.

When the judges saw this man

They all precipitately ran

Down the stairs to clasp his hand

And made him firmly understand

That time had ripened when his grace

Should fill the stately, vacant place.

“So you have come at last,” they said.

“We did not know that you were dead!

We trust that you were rich and well

Before death carried you to hell.”

Hua asked about the chair

Which they were offering to him there,

As if it were some special treat

Or lofty academic seat.

When he heard this was the Court

Of Purgatory, he stopped short.

Less moved now to rejoice than grieve,

He begged the Court freedom to leave.

“No, no!” they said. “Your seat is there.

Assume your honorable chair!

Isn’t it absolutely plain

You can’t return to earth again?”

Hua was overwhelmed with fear,

Begging the Court of Hell to clear

Their captive as a special case

Patently deserving grace.

The judges said none could proceed

Against the judgments Fate decreed,

Then bade their servant take a look

At Fate’s irrevocable book.

This showed that on a certain date

It was his firm, predestined fate

To enter in his mortal coil

The realm of night and burning oil.

Hua read the words and shook

As though cold water from a brook

Was streaming down his shivering back.

He thought of all things he would lack,

How he would surely see no more

His loving mother of four-score

Or see, while on his sombre throne

In hell, fair children of his own.

Just then a heaven-sent angel came

With golden armor all aflame

Entering hell’s dismal mouth

As one who brings cool drink to drought.

In hand he held a document

Which he was eager to present.

Aging, yellow silk portrayed

Whatever message Fate entailed,

All the judges bending low

Before their Master, row on row.

When the instrument was read

This is what the writing said:

“Grant general amnesty to all

Who languish in hell’s darkest hall—

And note, you demons, we say all!”

Hua might therefore take his way

Back to the brighter realms of day.

The judges gave congratulation

On his more favorable station,

Setting him gently on his road

To his more amiable abode.

But he had scarcely gone a slight

Half mile when he was plunged in night

So thick and sudden that his breath

Was shaken, as he yearned for death.

Then suddenly a god appeared

Before whom thickest darkness cleared,

Red-faced, long-bearded, from whom rays

Of splendor set the dark ablaze.

Hua at once made up to him,

Asking how to escape this dim

And dismal chasm where he lay

And reattain the world of day.

The god succinctly said: “You must

Repeat the sutras, child of dust!”

At this he vanished, not a trace

Remaining of his form or face.

Now Hua saw his perilous lot

Since certainly he had forgot

Almost all he ever knew

Of liturgies or legends, too.

However, he recalled a shred

Or two that he had one time read

In the Diamond Sutra. Hands in prayer,

He ventured to recite them there.

No sooner spoken, than a spark

Of daylight glimmered through the dark;

Then faded memory broke the chain.

The night-time settled down again.

He labored fiercely to recall

How the next syllable should fall.

Step by step the man would go

Forward by repeating so

Fragments of sutras that he knew

Until the cave was traversed through.

Finally, as his memory cleared

Blesséd daylight reappeared.—

What fate overtook the two

Servants no one ever knew.

It would be useless to inquire

How they escaped the infernal fire.

Not only hell itself but the grim monster, Death, may resign his claims to total terror beneath the bizarre fabrications of Chinese humor. Poetic imagination makes sport on Death’s doorstep. A good representation of this is afforded by an unusually brief story, Death by Laughing. The suggestion that, like the preceding, this may have been a folktale lies in the character of its chief figure and butt of eccentric satire. A rich man is hung by enemy soldiers passing through a town. The soldiers leave him suspended, presuming him dead. But servants come, take the man down and to their surprise discover him still alive. In time he wholly recovers with one exception; a wound remains on his neck. His head fails to sit comfortably on his shoulders. Several years later, once more a prosperous man, while eating and drinking at a feast with boon companions, jokes are told. The man, half drunk, becomes hilarious, laughs vehemently and in the end laughs so uproariously that at the point where his neck is wounded his head falls off, completely severed from his body. The Chinese are unrivaled in this macabre form of humor.

DEATH BY LAUGHING

Sun, a master of the rules

Governing the local schools,

Tells of a wealthy man cast down

By rebels passing through the town.

First they clubbed the man half-dead,

Then blithely hung him by the head

With such a jerk that from the noose

The dangling trunk suspended loose.

Shortly the rebels left the place.

Next, the man’s servants had the grace

To take the body down and found

Their master’s windpipe still was sound

And still some feeble signs of breath

Negatived the threat of death.

Bringing him home to his estate,

These servants set his head on straight.

The next day he commenced to moan.

After his blood-stained wound had grown

More bearable, the man, half-dead,

Was mercifully nursed and fed

With a small spoon until at last

His limbs were firm, his head was fast.

Some ten years afterwards he sat

With boon companions in a chat

Where many jokes were told, where jaws

Were strained and ears dinned with applause.

Our hero clapped his hands and rocked

Backward and forward until, shocked

By gales of laughter, seams of red

Appeared between his neck and head.

Then, shortly, he fell truly dead!

At first his father claimed his son

Murdered by the jesting one.

To this the company objected,

So for the common good collected

A sum for which the man suspended

His suit and all proceedings ended.

The three foregoing pieces illustrate something of this sinister type of extravagant fantasy with strong increments of humor. They suggest the phase of Chinese literature closest to folklore and to influences from the more imaginative religious cults. In keeping, however, with one of the most deep-seated ambiguities in Chinese thinking, another type of humorous story developed with its witty and somewhat cynical comment on manners and morals, such stories being guided by a conjunction of common sense and uncommon intelligence. In their mildly satirical humor they reflect the pronounced worldliness in Chinese thought, its urbanity and sophistication. They constitute humorous critiques of the official class, as the novel presently to be examined, The Scholars.

With a penchant for realism quite equal to their love of the marvelous, the story-tellers turned to many phases of social life. Here sex, the favorite theme of much Chinese fiction, is considered refreshingly from a rational point of view, the narrator’s sympathy almost invariably with those who keenly enjoy a normal sexual life. The puritanical or repressive forces, as frequently manifested by parental tyranny, are subjected to a highly civilized humor. This attitude has already been seen brilliantly expressed in the celebrated drama, The West Chamber. Proud virginity or obstinate widowhood are commonly viewed askance. This becomes the theme in a story equally notable for its common-sense morality, its passing recognition of the supernatural and its tone of restrained, virtually elegant comedy. Its setting is high life; the central figure, a prudish woman, is, however, pilloried by the humorist as decidedly foolish. Her admirer, who is later so absurd as to be her platonic lover, is even more ridiculous, forgoing a wife of flesh and blood to die of devotion to a statue! The wife, a far more sensible person and, unlike this Chinese Pygmalion, made of flesh and blood, slaps the face of the Virgin, who has been elevated as a goddess. The story is respectfully recommended to Christian moralists.

THE MARRIAGE OF THE VIRGIN GODDESS

Before divinity was won

Ma was a lady in Tung-wan;

At Kuei-chi town there stands a shrine

To the Plum Virgin, now divine.

Ma was once betrothed but when

Her lover died she foreswore men,

Believing it divinely plain

Widows should never wed again.

After her death her kinsmen raised

A monument and duly praised

The lady, giving her the name,

“Plum Virgin” to enlarge her fame.

Some years later a profound

Young Confucian scholar found

His way to Kuei-chi and saw

This shrine with reverential awe.

(Kuei-chi was the midway station

En route to his examination.)

That night he dreamed a servant came

With summons in the Goddess’ name

To visit her before the shrine.

This he did and the benign

Virgin said: “I thank you, sir,

Since you so graciously confer

A visit on me. To repay

Your courtesy in such a way

As seems befitting, I will be

Your handmaid for eternity.”

Mr. Chin bowed his assent

And shortly after as he went

Townward the lady happily

Kept him loving company,

Then said in parting: “When your day

Is come, I’ll carry you away.”

Waking next morning, Mr. Chin

Was by no means happy in

This dream; but still, that very night

A villager in dreams caught sight

Of the Plum Virgin, who affirmed

The marriage in heaven as confirmed.

She also gave a strict command

That pious citizens should stand

An image of the man beside

Her own, as now a heavenly bride,

An honor possibly too small

Yet better than not wed at all.

The city elders, thinking queer

To have a young man’s statue here

Next to their Virgin Goddess’ shrine,

At first resisted the design

But since they shortly all fell ill

At last they did the Goddess’ will.

Thus today two statues stand,

Virgin and man, on either hand.

Scholar Chin now told his wife

The Virgin Goddess claimed his life,

Put on his hat and robes, defied

All obstacles, and promptly died.

His wife, in rage, went to the shrine

Where the man with the divine

Goddess stood, a hateful place!

And promptly slapped the Goddess’ face.—

The lady, in her heavenly life,

Now is called, “Chin’s Virgin Wife.”

Finally, a humorous tale of an almost wholly intellectual nature illustrates how deftly the Chinese story-teller can skirt the edge of satire and yet by virtue of good humor save his work for the domain of singularly pure comedy. Few countries have created more pedants than China and few have given the world so many brilliant poems, plays, and stories ridiculing pedantry. This outlook gave the prose writers their favorite subject matter. Chinese aesthetics and literary criticism attain remarkable subtlety; thought and style often reach great suavity; rigid rules are noted only to be rejected in favor of intuitive and perceptive imagination. A Romantic point of view which nevertheless is by no means anarchistic is held superior to the absolutism too often afflicting the orthodox Confucians. The cogency of the liberal position as against the conservatives or reactionaries is seldom so well expressed as in one of the stories, or rather, in an episode of one of the stories, to which Herbert Giles affixes the appropriate title, “Smelling Essays.” The characters in this dialogue-tale include a profound, well-seasoned scholar, who is blind, and a voluble and specious young man who brings his essay to be judged by his senior. Characterization of both men is swift and sure. The blind man is clearly an intuitive judge of literature, a connoisseur endowed with singularly refined taste. He observes that he cannot read an essay, since he is blind. Moreover, the thought of subjecting himself to an oral reading is more than his frail patience can bear. Nevertheless, out of the goodness of his heart he declares that he can tell the merit of an essay by the smell of the paper on which it is written when burnt. The burning of the essay by the young literary fop creates a foul odor in the sage’s nostrils. A modest and more promising young scholar submits his essay to the flames, bringing forth a delightful perfume. Later, when the essays are submitted to the board of examiners, the specious essay wins the prize, the fragrant essay is rejected. The victorious student thereupon returns to the sage prepared to jest with him regarding his poor judgment. The man pleasantly replies that he is a good critic, with no pretensions as a prophet, and must not be held responsible for the bad taste and bad judgment prevailing at the time in the official centers of learning. The times, it seems, are out of joint both for good creative writing and sound criticism. A more sharply pointed and imaginative parable would be hard to find or a story or poem with more wisdom and less contamination from prosaic or didactic influence. Chinese critical thought appears here close to its most humorous and to its best.

SMELLING ESSAYS

Two witty scholars, Sung and Wang,

With one less gifted from Yu-hang,

One day decided to resort

To an old ruined temple-court

Where, as their glances roamed around

That sanctified though dingy ground,

Where calm, scholastic learning reigned,

Suddenly scholar Sung exclaimed:

“Look, friends, and see a man of parts,

Master of all learned arts!

Though age has robbed him of his sight

He glows with keenest inner light.

Not the abstrusest composition

Evades his boundless erudition.

The paper that we just discussed

So inconclusively we must

Now hand to him to estimate

Its worth and veritable weight”

So they addressed this blind old man

And this is how their talk began.

Wang was the first to speak. He cried:

“Great doctor!”—Then the priest replied:

“No more of that! But tell me, please

The symptoms of your grave disease.”

Then Wang explained: “We do not seek

Your service as men ill or weak

In body but we come to find

Help in matters of the mind.

We hear that while you cannot see

With eyes you see internally

And though denied the outward view

Know profoundly what is true.”

The priest replied: “In my condition

How can I judge a composition

Which I can never hope to scan?—

You are an idiotic man!”

Next Wang replied: “Then it appears

You only have to use your ears.

Let me read my essay here

And so its contents will be clear.”

“What, man!” the sage said, “don’t presume

I shall consign myself to gloom

Hour after hour! I covet leisure,

Not to induce more pain but pleasure.

However, I can judge your prose

Accurately through the nose,

Nor is this the least offense;

In judging art good sense is sense.

Just burn your essay and I’ll say

How much your lucubrations weigh.

Burn your papers through and through

And then observe what I can do.”

Wang complied and threw a quire

Of paper in the sacred fire.

The old priest snuffed the smoke and said:

“Not so bad! You are well read

And competent to gain a place

In this year’s academic race,

Even to win a foremost station

In the State Examination.”

The youthful scholar from Yu-hang

Found the blind man’s judgment rang

Unconvincingly and said

Aside: “Come, let us burn instead

A classic work that all men hold

A masterpiece, revered of old,

Making this blind fool hold his tongue

By proving his brash judgment wrong.”

Readily the men acquired

An essay such as he desired,

The product of a famous name,

And cast it boldly on the flame.

One snuff was all the priest demanded

Until his lungs with joy expanded.

Before the work to ash expired

His tongue declared, “Divine! inspired!

Ah, how truthful, clear, auspicious!”

The savor is indeed delicious!”

The Yu-hang man felt a sharp pain

At this but dared to try again.

He threw an essay of his own

Into the fire. Dense smoke was blown

Into the nostrils of the priest

Who cried: “How dare you spoil my feast

With such a foul and nauseous smell!

May this stink descend to hell!”

At this the young man slunk away,

Hoping for a better day.

Later, when examination

Returns were published to the nation,

The scholar from Yu-hang came first

While Wang was rated with the worst.

In arrogance the former went

To see the priest with full intent

Of mocking him but he replied:

“The examiners you think keen eyed

And so mere vulgar judgment goes.

I see far better through my nose.

Besides, I spoke to you of art,

Which means a judgment from the heart.

Every honest man should see

I speak of art, not destiny.

The Scholars, a prose work of considerable length, reflects similar views shown in a much more spacious mirror. This novel by Wu Ching-tzu, written in the mid-eighteenth century, presents many problems of importance in the interpretation and appraisal of Chinese humor. Often described as humorous, it has almost as often been called satire. The theoretical distinction has several times been made and discussed in the course of this study. Answers can never be given wisely if put in dogmatic form, yet the issues crop up insistently, possibly more often in dealing with Chinese literature than in the description of any other. Although it should not be expected, then, that definitions of such elusive terms can be brought to finality, in the course of an argument something of consequence may be observed concerning the spirit and substance of a large number of Chinese masterpieces.

The peculiar difficulty in use of these terms where the Chinese are concerned lies deep within the spirit of Chinese writers themselves. With what may seem to a foreigner a sophistry of the emotions, the Chinese, it appears, can at the same time smile and be angry. This, after all, need not be surprising, since throughout the world experience abounds in such contradictions, as when eyes fill with tears of joy. Again, the Chinese, being to all appearances less romantically sentimental or soft-hearted than Westerners, seem often to find humor in incidents which might even seem to Westerners to evoke pathos. When a work of wit and trenchancy shows moral indignation on one hand or tender sympathy on the other it veers away from pure humor, becoming in the first instance satirical, in the second romantic. Naturally, like any other body of literature, the greater part of Chinese writing is straightforward and direct expression of the emotional life, without fires of indignation or direct expressions of sympathy with either joy or sorrow. It remains more or less objective, a reporting of events whether real or imaginary.

Beyond doubt Chinese tradition has to an unusual degree emphasized the moral sense. The outstanding role of Confucianism has stressed morality. Actions are judged as good or bad, ethically sound or censorable. Modes and manners have been established with remarkable firmness. Deviations from the straight path have thus been readily detected. The principles, strictly formulated, require, owing to the recalcitrancy of human nature, continual restatement and emphasis. The Chinese have, accordingly, exhibited an exceptional appetite for the didactic. All these tendencies have frequently played into the hand of satire and discouraged humor.

With a plasticity often surprising to outsiders, the Chinese have succeeded in developing both sides of a psychological condition; they can be extremely bitter and harsh, even to a degree that seems to others a height of cruelty, and also be particularly blithe, cheerful, and gay. Although a doctrine of the mean was formulated by Confucius and stressed by the earliest scholars following in his tracks, the social history often seems to refute this philosophy. On the one hand emotions grow tense and passions rise almost to a frenzy; on the other hand spirits relax as gaiety, fun, and frivolity win ascendancy. Sanity is achieved not by avoiding extremes but by balancing them.

A large proportion of Chinese fiction, both in short stories and long, maintains a serious tone. Much of the work may be described simply as straightforward accounts of life, without strong bias toward the weighty or the light. There are also many tales with a truly tragic insight. An unusually large number have a moral leaning. Of these, a considerable proportion also are unquestionably satirical. As a rule the satirical pieces are less personal and more moralized from a broad ethical outlook than is the analogous case in other cultures, for example, that of ancient Rome. Evil is drawn black, virtue shines bright. Sheep are segregated from the goats. This outlook has already been noticed in popular Chinese drama. The conception of hero and villain, protagonist and antagonist, has proved exceedingly popular in China and frequently discourages the rise of either the tragic or the comic sense, playing instead into the hands of melodrama.

This strong moral proclivity brings it about that in traditional Chinese fiction skies are often threatening and dark. Tales are sharply bitter; at least the bitterness remains sufficiently strong to repress the quality that Westerners are accustomed to consider humor. But the Chinese can smile more readily at the wry aspects of life than can most Westerners. The tartness of their humor has already been illustrated to some extent in several of the stories from P’u Sung-ling’s famous collection. Obviously, the pieces cited here have seemed at least to the present writer governed more by the spirit of humor than of satire. Yet elements of the satirical they certainly possess. As well known, much humor involves someone’s discomfiture. The reader or spectator laughs at the man who experiences a fall. The fall is painful to him, ridiculous to the viewer. The clown becomes hero in the literature of pathos. Humor can, indeed, be cruel; at times Chinese humor seems most cruel of all. When bitterness is in excess, a work presumably becomes satirical and not comic. The morality grows dense, the comic spirit becomes attenuated. No matter how the Chinese reader of such harsh scenes may feel or whether or not he laughs, the Westerner neither laughs nor experiences comedy.

Some of the most famous Chinese stories illustrate the character of Chinese satire and its mordant temper. Mention has already been made of the famous story, The Inconstancy of Madame Chuang, an anonomyous tale on a virtually legendary theme. The tale, as previously noted, contributed the plot to the popular Peking opera, The Butterfly Dream. This, it will be recalled, is the story of the wife who opens what she supposes to be the coffin of her recently deceased husband in order to procure a medicine for her new lover, in reality her husband in disguise. To the Chinese the story, as well as the play based closely upon it, is both satirical and humorous. Yet on the whole to Westerners it is considerably more satirical than comic, more sardonic than amusing. In appraising the mood in which the Chinese public experiences such works the attitude of the sage at the end of the famous story proves revealing. He becomes a misanthrope in general and a woman-hater in particular, ever afterward shunning female company. The Chinese, then, often desire their humor blended with much vinegar and salt. The French prefer another dressing, even for much the same dish.

The problems just considered are strictly relevant for the interpretation of Wu Ching-tzu’s brilliant but difficult book, The Scholars, which is clearly a bitter exposé of the scholarly or official class as it appeared in the mid-eighteenth century, when the social system, whose roots were in Confucianism, lay heavily upon the entire country. The deposit of centuries had created a preposterously topheavy, ossified, and pedantic academic class which ruled the land, a government, so to speak, by aging professors. There is small doubt of the seriousness of Wu’s attack. The entire book is a broadside launched at a single target. Although in its literary form highly episodic, in its moral and political intent it preserves a remarkable unity. The book’s fame rests not only on its brilliant writing but upon its unity of purpose and, above all, upon the importance of the subject and the palpable justice of much of the indictment of what would now be termed “the establishment.” It is a book in these respects almost without precedent, for few writers have had the courage to say what is said here and no other writer of Chinese prose had at his command such a vigorous style or such relentless force.

How, then, does the book differ in spirit from The Inconstancy of Madame Chuang and how can it be seen as humorous? At times, it should probably be admitted, its approach is truly satirical. Nevertheless, it maintains on the whole a remarkable blending of humor and indignation wherein humor as a rule gains much the upper hand. The author appears objective in the sense that he gives small evidence that he himself bears a merely personal grudge against the established system. Clearly endowed with astonishing powers of observation as well as of expression, he stands so far above the scene depicted that he may well afford to find it ludicrous. His art is purer than that of the satirist. Sometimes, too, one feels that he employs humor as insulation against a spectacle that would be unbearably oppressive or painful if viewed without humor and in its naked enormity.

Many angry books, especially in America, miss the mark because of their excesses. Their writers are moved so violently that their blows miss their mark. It is too easily forgotten that the best fighter is the man with the cool head, whose blows are closely calculated. Here beyond a doubt lies one of the best apologies for humor considered from either the psychological or the pragmatic point of view. The Scholars is a masterpiece of sanity. Not always did Chinese writers neglect the Confucian doctrine of the mean. In such masterpieces as this an ideal poise is achieved between an earnest moral purpose and a natural desire to afford entertainment. Humor is the salve that keeps the athlete’s limbs nimble. The Chinese found a magic formula for this particular elixir.

Unusual, on the whole, as The Scholars may be, at least some rough parallels can be drawn outside China that assist in characterizing Wu’s book. A broad sanity in the literature of social observation and reform distinguishes what is probably the most effective body of work in Western fiction of the nineteenth century, namely, Russian writing from Gogol to Chekov. There, too, wisdom and sanity were enlisted by writers equally skilled in realism and humor, combatting the dead weight of a decadent and an essentially cruel officialdom. Dead Souls is, possibly, the closest parallel in the West to The Scholars in the East. At heart the two books present notable similarities. But where there is so firm a base for comparison there is also a fair basis for significant contrast. First of all is the vast gulf between a society that has already achieved a most advanced stage in civilization, with certain of its institutions already showing marks of extreme decadence, and a society that has long suffered a rude and almost barbarous state of manners and which abruptly finds itself in the throes of a brilliant awakening. One civilization is threatened by over-ripeness, the other by the painful unrest of adolescence. Each is ripe for revolution, although their needs and specific conditions show extreme discrepancies.

The consequences for literature of these discrepancies in life are manifested by contrasting points of view in Wu’s humor, which falls like sunlight and assists in hastening the growth of the new life as well as the disintegration of the old. The Chinese humor is essentially more complex than the Russian. The latter is more open and masculine, the former subtler and more feminine. In China the bureaucracy was poisoned by book-learning, in Russia it was deficient in it. One body of writing is burly and hearty, the other ironic and insinuating. In this respect, then, Wu Ching-tzu comes even closer to the great French humorists than to the Russian. His work combines the strength and sturdiness of the Russian heart with the suavity and refinement of French artfulness. A famous and often-quoted episode in The Scholars depicts a miser on his death-bed who, no longer able to speak, holds up two fingers as means of communication. Only his wife understands the dying man’s gesture. He longs to have one of the two wicks in the bedside lamp extinguished, since two mean waste and extravagance. The miser dies true to character. Even in matters of stylistic detail, the scene strongly suggests Molière and such refined comedy as The Miser.

Here and there parallels between the Chinese work and masterpieces in the West may be found. Yet no Western writing approximates the total effect of the Eastern. Ingredients of satire and humor, morality and comedy are blended to give another taste and another sparkle. The Chinese wine is by no means identical with the French or Russian. Wu’s laughter is at once peculiarly Chinese and profoundly universal. Strength and amusement stand poised in one of the happiest and most meaningful books known in the annals of literature.

No other work examined in these pages bridges the gap between East and West more smoothly or, for that matter, the opposite poles of past and present, ancient and modern. Here the chief cohesive force is a doctrine common, roughly speaking, to East and West, the doctrine of the mean. Moderation in this sense seems part of the saving grace of all civilized mankind. It has saved the humorist from many an outburst of satirical anger. Aristotle taught it from one angle, Confucius from another. In Wu’s book the dislike of extremes is almost as conspicuous as the scorn of bureaucracy. Wu is actually no revolutionary. He accepts the basic theories of Confucianism as surely as Wu Ch’eng-en in writing Monkey accepts those of Buddhism and Taoism. The faults that Wu Ching-tzu finds with society as he observes it lie almost as much in emotional distortions as in bureaucratic paralysis and spring from the same source. The Confucian system of society is presumed in theory to be essentially sound; the trouble lies in wrong application of the theory and in excessive emphasis, whereas normal, serene living dispenses with stress and strain, avoiding evils of enthusiasm and excess. A passage clearly revealing this appraisal may be cited. An aging man has at last passed the examination granting him his entrance into the official or mandarin class. But he is so overwhelmed with joy that he becomes virtually a madman, rushing about his village, shouting wildly, crying “Passed! Passed!” His derangement threatens to be incurable. At length, however, his neighbors hit upon a therapy surprisingly modern. He must, they decide, be subjected to shock treatment. If he is struck violently on the head by the man he fears most, the evil demon of excess will be exorcised, opening the way for his return to sanity. The formidable villager answering this requirement is a hulk of a man, the town butcher, accustomed to slaughtering large animals at a single blow. The passage that follows has considerable interest from a psychological point of view, showing insights popularly thought peculiar to recent thought in the West though in reality quite in accord with discerning observations of life intuitively made in China more than two centuries ago.

They found the new graduate holding forth before the temple, dishevelled and smeared with mud, clapping and shouting, “Passed! Passed!”

Forbidding as one of the escorting generals in a funeral procession, the butcher went up to him and thundered, “You ne’er-would-die beast! Passed! Passed what?” and gave him a resounding blow in the face. All the neighbors laughed. But the butcher was frightened by what he had done, his hand trembled and he dared not strike again. Nor was a second blow necessary, for the first had felled Fan Chin to the ground. The neighbors hurried up to him, rubbed his chest and pounded his back until they brought him to. The butcher felt a dull pain in his palm and could not bend his hand. He repented his rashness and said, “Indeed a star from Heaven should not be touched. I am being punished for my sin.” He brought a plaster from a drugmonger and put it on his hand.

“How did it happen that I am here?” Fan Chin asked.

“Congratulations, Your Honor.” the neighbors said. “You have passed, but you were upset a bit by the news. You are well now, so please return home and send off the proclaimers.”

“Yes, indeed,” Fan Chin said, “I remember now. I won the seventh place.” He did up his hair and washed his face in a basin borrowed from the drugmonger. Catching sight of his father-in-law he prepared himself for another scolding but the butcher said to him humbly, “Your Honor my worthy son-in-law, it was not that I was imprudent, but your honored mother wished that I should try to persuade you.”²¹

By no means all the book’s humor steps so frankly into the open as in the foregoing passage. Indeed, it is of the essence of the studied and deliberate style that one is rarely assured as to precisely the mood or view which its author prefers. A more elusive writer would be hard to find. Only a few generalizations may safely be made. On the one hand, he is presumably conservative, accepting the fundamental teachings of the sages, both of the Confucian and the Taoist schools. On the other hand, he finds that practice betrays theory; society is corrupted not so much by false ideas as by the decadence that has overtaken the old ideas when applied to actuality. The Confucians have become mere pedants, the Taoists mere anarchists. All this may be easily discerned through his amazingly broad canvas of Chinese society. Nevertheless, the picture is painted with such extraordinary objectivity that just what at any moment is in the author’s mind proves as hard to discover, to use a ready parallel, as in the case of Shakespeare. One of the obstacles to a forthright statement is that he explores the wide spreading roots of the social ill in the general cupidity, the roots of virtue in the natural goodness in human nature. In each case his thinking is unsystematic although at least orthodox.

The book’s terrain may best be charted by turning not to its more puzzling passages but to those where the intention seems most nearly clear. If there is any one hero in the narrative it is Doctor Yu, who presides over the Confucian ritual eloquently described in Chapter Thirty-Seven. This scholar has never passed the higher examinations. Only for a brief period does he serve the state at the capital and while there he clearly is uncomfortable. Most of his career is spent as teacher in an academy in Nanking, where he enjoys a considerable degree of intellectual and personal freedom. Even from this agreeable public position he retires in his later years. He is no innovator of new truths; he champions instead a return to the purity of old truths and old practices, a return to the innocence and ceremony of nobler and better times. Yet it is typical of the author’s art and outlook that even Yu is not depicted as faultless. In some of his moral judgments he is clearly shown as over-severe. In the epilogue we are told that the temple over which this good man has presided has been allowed to fall into melancholy ruin.

Yu is the constant north star shining in a sky that has for the most part fallen into dire confusion. The humor arises from malpractices as seen through critical and discerning eyes. All classes are shown not only as fallible but as fallen. Episodic as the work is, it observes an underlying and artful plan. The prologue and epilogue are alike inspired for the most part by the Taoist outlook. The former celebrates an historical figure who flourished in what for the writer himself is time past, the philosopher and eccentric, Wang Ming. Rather than take a government post or a government examination, Wang conceals himself in a hermitage in the Kuaichi Mountain. The epilogue introduces similar thoughts but in a somewhat more humorous spirit. Here are four eccentrics instead of one, all four social bohemians divorced from the contamination of a stupid establishment. One is a calligrapher, another an herb-seller who delights above all in the game of draughts. The third has once kept an unprofitable pawnshop and later a small tea-shop; he delights especially in composing poems and painting pictures. The fourth, by profession a humble tailor, acquires small wealth but is also a true lover of poetry, painting, and wine. All four are seen as whimsical characters, humorous primarily because they are to such a pronounced degree detached from the heat of social and public contention, at heart relaxed and more amused than pained by existence. The author is not merely detached, as is T’ao Yüan-ming; he is a master of social comedy.

Within this frame of prologue and epilogue he paints a canvas with multifarious figures from all walks of life, the learned and the ignorant, monks and tradesmen, rich and poor, civil servants and untamed outlaws. Broadly speaking, he has his reservations regarding all and smiles at all, at the same time that he deplores the universal folly. A rough pattern is discernible. The early pages, from which quotation has recently been made, tend to pictures of villagers and the relatively poor; the later pages, to portraits of the affluent and aristocratic. The farmers are boors, the aristocrats fops; the former have no manners, the latter affected manners. Cupidity and materialism have corrupted all classes. True culture and pure taste have given way among the scholars to dry, pretentious pedantry. The ruling class is the scholar class, whose pride of place is founded on a system of examinations that has fallen into an abyss of stupidity and corruption. Much of the humor derives from the lamentable story of cheating in the examinations and the deplorable and widespread venality by which success is attained through bribes.

The handful of scholars who in some measure escape from the pedantry so pernicious among the Confucians is represented as at least mildly ridiculous because of their romantic moods and extremely perverse eccentricities. This becomes especially clear in one of the book’s most brilliant sections, that depicting the effeminate and utterly unpredictable head of a decaying and once enormously wealthy family, the aristocrat Tu Shao-ching. He is a man of infinite eccentricities. His most fantastic characteristics derive from dislocations of the Confucian ideals themselves, for example, family piety. Thus he goes to any extreme of generosity to befriend any person who has in earlier years been in the good graces of his revered father. He is an essentially good, generous, highly intellectual man who, however, has lost his allegiance to the Confucian ideal of the mean. The author is clearly warmed by the spectacle of his lavish liberality, at the same time that he smiles at his total impracticality. So far does he remain free from the reigning vices of the mercantile class that he passes to the contrary extreme, becoming as ridiculous as, in the opposite manner, is the miser who protests the waste of two candles where one will suffice. The vulgar, it seems, worship property and material values in general; the decadent aristocracy simply does not know how to use the wealth in its possession and will consequently in the end become dispossessed. These are the pageants of human folly that The Scholars so vividly depicts.

Some generalizations regarding humor in China are, then, possible and a few have been advanced in these pages. But in the end a true statement of the case must be more concluding than conclusive. While unique qualities are discernible in Chinese humor, the sum of the matter is that virtually all types of humor in civilized lands outside China have flourished brilliantly in it, though never with precisely the same features as found elsewhere. Ultimately, all study of literature must be of comparative literature. In the house of humor are many rooms. Envisaging this house as a vast museum, at least a picture from China may rightly be in each gallery. As horizons in the twentieth century expand, pictures hitherto unfamiliar to the world at large are mounted on the walls. This book, to state its aims briefly, has attempted to display masterpieces of Chinese art and literature in these newly opened halls.

Nevertheless, if almost all the familiar types of humor are found among the vast treasures accumulated through some three millennia by Chinese art and literature, certain features may well be thought especially representative. These will in the nature of the case be related to our general conceptions of Chinese taste and imagination. The humor of any people is merely a part of its total culture or civilization, the section, one might say, on which the sun shines with special scintillation. The Chinese take humor seriously. It not only signifies happy surprise but happy intuition, a form of insight above or at least beyond logic. Hence they are indisposed to look down upon humor and condescendingly to admit a category of “light verse.” Even in the earliest recorded times the Chinese people, whether in towns or in the countryside, appear both uncommonly humorous and urbane. Naturally, their humor and urbanity join hands. Their language itself abounds in intimations implicit in their written characters and in the halftones of its extraordinary inflections. Hence the incongruity at the root of all humor lies peculiarly at the root and germ of Chinese humor. This is less outspoken or obvious than ours, less dependent on verbal wit and even less conspicuously resting on the surface than humor of the Hindus or the Japanese. The refractions are peculiarly delicate, the emanations singularly subtle. For this very reason the field cannot be too often studied and explored.

There is, quite obviously, no possibility of pinpointing terms in an area of necessity so elusive. Reluctantly as it may be, one turns in the end to Matthew Arnold’s device of the touchstone, quotation. The magic of a particle of oriental jade must serve as well as may be to carry a seemingly disproportionate weight of meaning. There is a famous quotation from the poet Ts’ao Chih, which may at the same time indicate the common ground that actually exists between East and West, between their seemingly disparate strains of humor and the peculiar quality of the humorous irony distinctive of China itself. The poem is at once homely and refined, like a common vegetable favored by a hand singularly skilled in cooking. The translation is by a witty poet born in China, at present living in the United States, Shih Shun Liu:

Beans are boiled with beanstalks as fuel;

The beans cannot help crying out in the pan:

“After all, we two spring from the same root.

Why press so hard with so fierce a flame?”

It is hard, I believe, to imagine this poem as derived from any other literature than the Chinese. It bears the pungency of a perfume perfected in only one land but enjoyable in all. It may, then, serve as a talisman for any inquisitive student of civilization who cares to enter and explore the enchanted world which is the traditional Chinese sense of humor.