“Waiting for the Unicorn” | Open Indiana

Ch’ien Ch’ien-yi (Shou-chih; MU-CHAI, MU-WENG, YÜ-SHAN MENG-SHOU, and TUNG-CHIEN YI-LAO) was an official, scholar, bibliophile, and poet whose controversial career spanned the two dynasties of Ming and Ch’ing. A native of Ch’ang-shu, Kiangsu, and scion of a scholarly family, he passed his chin-shih examination in 1610 and rose through the Hanlin Academy to become vice-president of the Board of Ceremonies. In 1629, amid bribery charges, he retired to his native place, where he had to face the additional disgrace of imprisonment as a result of a lawsuit involving a kinsman. Not long after his release from prison, however, Ch’ien was able to indulge his twin passions—beautiful women and rare books—neither of which he found a hindrance to the spread of his poetic fame.

As a bibliophile, Ch’ien was said to have amassed a magnificent collection containing many Sung and Yüan editions, which he housed in his Purple Clouds Pavilion (Chiang-yün lou) on his country estate. Though his collection was partly destroyed in a fire that engulfed the building in 1650, five years after it was built, a catalog of his collection is still extant, known as the Chiang-yün lou shu-mu (in series 9 of the Yüeh-ya-t’ang ts’ung-shu). He shared the use of his villa and library with a celebrated singing girl to whom he gave the name of Liu Shih (q.v.), who was then much admired for her literary talents as well as for her beauty among the courtesans frequented by the poets of his day. He met her in 1640 and a year later officially married her as a concubine (she was then in her early twenties). Among the many accounts of this romantic affair, it is said that when she asked Ch’ien why he favored her, he answered, “I love you for your raven-black hair and your snow-white complexion.” To this reply, she gave the rejoinder (for choosing him above others): “Then I love you for your snow-white hair and your dark-as-lacquer complexion.” The two of them shared literary tasks, as in the editing of an anthology of Ming poetry, and wrote poems in “response” (by using the same rhyme words) to each other’s works. (These poems were separately published as the Tung-shan ch’ou-ho chi, now included in Ch’ien’s Mu-chai Ch’u-hsüeh chi, chüan 18–19).

Unfortunately, the poet’s luck in love did not spill over into politics: a series of frustrations dogged his political career. His advancement in the Ming court was cut short by his alleged activities as a member of the Tung-lin party. Then, out of loyalty to the Ming royal house, he even served briefly as president of the Board of Ceremonies (1644–1645) after Peking had fallen and the Prince of Fu, Chu Yusung (1607–1646), had set up his temporary court in Nanking. When the Manchu forces entered Nanking, however, Ch’ien was said to have rejected his concubine’s suggestion that they commit suicide together, and he was among the first to declare allegiance to the new dynasty. Under the new regime, he was again given high posts in Peking, but was soon dismissed and imprisoned on charges of aiding some Ming loyalists. Worse still, during the long Ch’ien-lung reign (1736–1796), all his writings were condemned as disloyal to the new dynasty and placed on the proscribed list (and the printing blocks were ordered to be burned).² His unsavory reputation as “someone who has served two masters” (erh-ch’en) persisted for the next two hundred years, and this was sufficient to account for his lack of influence among later Ch’ing poets. It was not until the twentieth century that a fresh appraisal of Ch’ien as a poet began to appear.³

There should be, however, no dispute as to Ch’ien’s stature as a scholar or as a poetic genius. At the time of his death, he was mourned by the fiercely independent Huang Tsung-hsi (q.v.) as a “leader of all poets in the empire for fifty years” (ssu-hai tsung-meng). This indeed is high praise. Ch’ien Ch’ien-yi’s reputation now rests on three large works: 1) his oeuvres, in two collections, known as Mu-chai Ch’u-hsüeh chi (110 chüan) and Mu-chai yu-hsüeh chi (50 chüan), published respectively in 1643 and 1644; 2) his anthology of Ming poetry, Lieh-ch’ao shih-chi (81 chüan), published in 1649; and 3) his annotated edition of Tu Fu’s (712–770) poetic works, published three years after his death. His own poetry is characterized by a wealth of allusions and gives evidence of his catholic tastes. He was highly critical of the Archaic School of Ming poets, the “Former Seven Masters,” and he declared his admiration not only for Tu Fu but also for poets of the Sung and Yüan dynasties. His scholarly interests ranged from history and the Confucian classics to the travel diaries of Hsü Hsia-k’o (1586–1641); a convert to Buddhism in his later life, he also wrote on Nestorian Christianity and Manichaeism under the T’ang. Ch’ien was a man for all seasons, it seems. That he could transform, for example, “boudoir poetry” into a kind of veiled political criticism or personal allegory is a mark of his true genius. (Additional selections from Ch’ien Ch’ien-yi’s poetry will be included under Liu Shih in this volume.)

(Irving Lo)

____________________

1. L. Carrington Goodrich and J. C. Yang, ECCP, 1:148–150.

2. See especially Luthur C. Goodrich, The Literary Inquisition of Ch’ien-lung (American Council of Learned Societies, 1935), pp. 100–107.

3. Notably Chou Fa-kao’s annotated edition of Ch’ien’s poetry, the Mu-chai shih-chu chiao-ch’ien (Taipei, 1978) and his separate volume Ch’ien Mu-chai/Liu Ju-shih yi-shih ehi: Liu Ju-shih yu-kuan tzu-liao (The Lost Poems of Ch’ien Ch’ien-yi and Liu Ju-shih and Materials for Research related to Liu ju-shih), published in the same year. Also see the three-volume Liu Ju-shih pieh-chuan by the eminent historian Ch’en Yin-k’o (1890–1969), published posthumously in Shanghai (Ku-chi, 1980).

Two Quatrains on the “Awash-in-Springtime Garden”
Album by Hsiao Po-yü of T’ai-ho:¹

Willow Creek

Mist clings to bank upon bank of willows,

Clouds rise from pool upon pool in the creek.

Try to find a place to drop a line?

One can get lost in the space of a foot.

(No. 1 from a series of 14, MCCHC, 7:15b-16a)

(Tr. Irving Lo)

Lotus Pond

Lotus leaves, how plump and full,

Flowery scent drifts on the water’s filigree;

Wistful, the mood of lotus pickers:

Their echoed songs haunt the autumn stream.

(No. 2 from a series of 14, MCCHC, 7:16a-16b)

(Tr. Ronald Miao)

Watching a Game of Chess:² Second Series

In hushed silence come the hollow echoes

of chessmen from the board—

Sobbings of the cold tide on the Ch’in-huai River

when autumn is gone.

A white head beneath the shadow of a lamp

on a cold night

Espies the fate of the Six Dynasties³

in a dying game of chess.

(No. 3 from a series of 6; MCYHC, 1:9b)

(Tr. Irving Lo)

Written in Prison

I ward off lance-sharp tongues and lips of steel,

Sitting, resting on a wheel blown by wind and fire.

But I don’t crave the fate of the Guest of Chung-shan⁴ drunk for three thousand days,

Unless I can return from death in six, like the prisoner beheaded at Chiang marketplace.⁵

A purplish jacket and hempen sandals⁶ do not proclaim me diseaseridden;

Between broad earth and high heaven, there’s some life in this body still.

With old age, what’s so becoming as a man’s rank or title?

From now on, let me just call myself “The Unrepentent One.”

(No. 1 from a series of 30; MCCHC, 12:2b)

(Tr. Irving Lo)

Upon Reading the Boudoir Poem of Mei-ts’un:⁷
Impressions

The Milky Way still warns of the fate of the Clear One;⁸

In the royal chamber, the incense-stick is ashes, the mana-gathering plate fallen.⁹

As silent as the stone stelle, who can talk when one’s mouth must be sealed?

A chessboard naturally groans from defeat, with beatings of an unquiet heart.

Donning a new robe for court audience: an affair of long ago;

Being cast aside like the Round Fan in autumn:¹⁰ my predestined fate.

Only on such a night when the imperial consort weeps her fate by the window,¹¹

Can such a feeling be known to a dying lamp and evening rain.

(No. 4 from a series of 4; MCYHC, 4:3a-3b)

(Tr. Irving Lo)

Drinking Wine: Second Series

The oars stop. I go to buy dark brew.

They say that only the wine from the Sun family’s good.

The old woman selling wine says to me:

“Too bad, Sir, you didn’t come earlier,

This year the price of wine is double.

My wine storage is nearly swept clean,

Only six tall jugs remain.

Their flavor is sweet and color, clear;

I saved them to marry off a pretty daughter,

And buy mutton to treat the neighbors.

I don’t mind making a special present, sir,

You’ll not suffer for want of dalliance!”

We trek through heavy rain, wet and slippery mud,

The servant boy’s teeth are tightly clamped.

Carefully, we lay up store in the ship’s cabin:

Here’s a burst of wealth—just like finding a treasure.

Bright lamps emit fresh blossoms,

Night rain echoes from the autumn grass.

“If you don’t hurry up and drink,

We’ll fail the old wineshop woman!”

(No. 1 from a series of 7, MCCHC, 12b-13a)

(Tr. Ronald Miao)

NOTES

1. Po-yü was the courtesy-name of Ming scholar-painter Hsiao Shih-wei (1585-?), a native of T’ai-ho, modern-day Lu-ling, Kiangsi province. Hsiao’s collected works were published under the title of Ch’un-fo yüan pieh-chi.

2. The game of go, or wei-ch’i, is meant here.

3. The term “Six Dynasties” refers to the Kingdom of Wu (222–80) during the Three Kingdoms period in Chinese History, and the five later dynasties of Eastern Tsin (317–420), Liu Sung (420–477), Southern Ch’i (477–502), Liang (502–557) and Ch’en (557–581), ruling over southern China, all of which had their capital in present-day Nanking. The river Ch’in-huai flows by this city to join the Yangtze, and the area along both banks of this tributary was famous in the old days as a bustling entertainment district.

4. According to an apocryphal story preserved in Po-wu chih, a man named Liu Hsüan-shih once drank a wine that put him to sleep for 3,000 days because the winemaker, a man of Chung-shan, forgot to warn him of the strength of his brew. At the end of this period, he suddenly remembered and found out Liu had been buried. When the coffin was opened, Liu came back to life.

5. A story from the Tso-chuan. A spy caught by the state of Tsin and beheaded at the marketplace of Chiang came to life six days later.

6. I.e., the traditional garb of a prisoner.

7. The poet Wu Wei-yeh (q.v.). Referring to the four “Without Title” lü-shih poems found in volume 12b, Wu-shih chi-lan.

8. According to legend, the T’ai-po Star once stole the waiting maid of the Weaving Girl, who was named Liang Yü-ch’ing (Jade-Bright) and together they disappeared into a cave for sixteen days. Yü-ch’ing was later banished to the moon, where she became the person who pounds rice with a pestle.

9. Signs of imperial decay, alluding to the bronze pillars of Chien-chang Palace of Han times, each holding a plate to gather manna from heaven, which was believed to confer immortality on those who drank it.

10. Alluding to the story of Pan Chieh-yü (ca.48-ca.6 B.C.), who is reputed to be the author of the poem “Round Fan,” which tells of her fate when she fell out of favor with a Han emperor.

11. Alluding to the story of another imperial consort of the Han dynasty, Chao Fei-yen (Flying Swallow; ?-1 B.C.), who was said to have told her life’s story to a confidant. She was made an empress by Emperor Ch’eng (reg. 32–7 B.C.), but she took her own life after being demoted to the rank of commoner under Emperor P’ing (reg. A.D. 1–5). Her biography later found its way into unofficial histories.

Waiting for the Unicorn