Literati Storytelling in Late Medieval China

Manling Luo

• Publisher: University of Washington Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780295805603
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Asian Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Scholar-officials of late medieval China were not only enthusiastic in amateur storytelling, but also showed unprecedented interest in recording stories on different aspects of literati life. These stories appeared in diverse forms, including narrative poems, "tales of the marvelous, " "records of the strange, " historical miscellanies, and transformation texts. Through storytelling, literati explored their own changing place in a society that was making its final transition from hereditary aristocracy to a meritocracy ostensibly open to all. Literati Storytelling shows how these writings offer crucial insights into the reconfiguration of the Chinese elite, which monopolized literacy, social prestige, and political participation in imperial China.

CHAPTER 1

Sovereignty

The Case of the Illustrious Emperor

The Illustrious Emperor was the most talked-about monarch in the period after the An Lushan Rebellion because he embodied a paradox of both brilliant success and catastrophic failure. His reign, during the Kaiyuan (713–742) and Tiaobao (742–756) eras, was a period of sustained peace and prosperity that marked the apogee of the Tang dynasty. It was interrupted in 755, however, by the rebellion of the non-Chinese general An Lushan, which devastated the country. During the emperor’s flight to southwest China, his army mutinied, killed his chief minister Yang Guozhong (d. 756), and forced him to execute his favorite concubine Precious Consort Yang (Yang Guifei, 719–756). Soon he also had to abdicate in favor of his son.¹ The court never fully recovered from this weakening of central authority, in particular from the subsequent rise of military governors who originally helped to pacify the rebellion but later became alarmingly powerful; one such governor eventually brought down the dynasty in the early tenth century. The end of the Illustrious Emperor’s reign thus marked a crisis in sovereignty, when erosions of sovereign power allowed various political players, including military men, eunuchs, and scholar-officials, to compete for dominance.

Stories about the Illustrious Emperor thus provided a perfect medium through which late medieval scholar-officials could reimagine sovereignty and define modes of engagement with the monarch that strengthened their own power and authority. As the supreme political power of the ruler, sovereignty had long been central to political discourses. Early in the Tang, Emperor Taizong (r. 626–649) wrote treatises that showed a monarch’s perspective on his own roles and responsibilities; later, a little-known literatus named Zhao Rui (fl. 716) put together a compendium to synthesize theories of rulership, illustrating efforts on the part of scholar-officials.² Of course, political and ritual representations of sovereignty had always been essential to rulers in legitimizing and sustaining their imperial authority.³ The Illustrious Emperor himself, for instance, performed grandiose rites to heaven and earth (feng and shan) on Mount Tai and its foothill, respectively, and erected a stele bearing an inscription that he personally composed and transcribed.⁴ Poetry also provided a personal, literary medium for these monarchs that allowed them to shape the images of their empire and themselves.⁵ Apart from such self-representations, the posthumous assessment of a ruler was an important subject of historiographical representations and open to controversy and manipulation.⁶ The forces affecting such images in the popular imagination were broader and more diverse, however, with monarchs becoming typecast as “good” or “bad,” or with other labels over time.⁷

While the images of the Illustrious Emperor as constructed in late medieval stories were part of popular representation, literati storytellers were not interested in sovereignty as political power per se but as a personal power of domination possessed and wielded by the monarch. By recounting stories of the Illustrious Emperor, post-rebellion scholar-officials tried to augment their privileged access to that power by envisioning special personal relationships that they could develop with the monarch. While sovereignty by definition dictated a subservient relationship for scholar-officials, and the focus of literati life on officialdom marked their dependence on that sovereignty, these special relationships with the monarch empowered scholar-officials by allowing them to position themselves as major players in the political sphere. In different genre forms, late medieval literati storytellers portrayed the Illustrious Emperor as a lover, a ruler, an emblem of dynastic apogee, and a mortal man: through such stories, they respectively asserted cultural and political modes of their intimate identification with the monarch, their sociohistorical instrumentality to his reign, and their belief in restraining his power.

Stories of the Illustrious Emperor do not really reflect what “actually” happened during his reign; rather, they constitute a flexible medium for post-rebellion scholar-officials to project visions of sovereignty best suited to their interests and agendas. This is similar to the posthumous cult of Elizabeth I that thrived in Stuart England: the cult offered a “representational flexibility” that allowed constituencies across a wide political spectrum to promote divergent models of sovereignty and to make sense of turbulent political conditions.⁸ Analogously, the Illustrious Emperor became a symbol for late medieval scholar-officials. A symbol encompasses a rich diversity of meanings and can be understood in different ways: the flexible, ambiguous nature of the symbol is important for building solidarity without the requirement of unified opinions.⁹ Late medieval literati storytellers clearly sought to construct a range of images of the Illustrious Emperor in order to define their own roles and powers in the political domain.

CULTURAL INTIMACY: THE ILLUSTRIOUS EMPEROR AS LOVER

By recounting stories about the relationship of the Illustrious Emperor with Precious Consort Yang, late medieval literati storytellers transfigure him into a lover, and hence a literati hero. In other words, by imagining the emperor as a lover, storytellers integrate him into a shared cultural sphere of sentimentality and sexual desire—the emergent literati culture of romance. This transfiguration represents a new, intimate mode of cultural identification with the monarch as “one of us.”

The “Ballad of Eternal Sorrow” (Changhen ge) by Bai Juyi and its companion work, “An Account of the ‘Ballad of Eternal Sorrow’” (Changhen ge zhuan) by Chen Hong (fl. 785–830), played a central role in the transfiguration of the Illustrious Emperor into a lover.¹⁰ Bai Juyi wrote his ballad after he had embarked on a promising career, passing the Presented Scholar examination in 800, a special examination at the Ministry of Personnel in 803, and a decree examination (zhiju) held by the new Emperor Xianzong (r. 805–820) in 806.¹¹ Over the next four decades Bai became a leading literary figure and rose to the upper echelons of Tang bureaucracy. His poetic reputation extended far beyond his time and beyond the Tang Empire.¹² Less is known about Chen Hong, who obtained the Presented Scholar degree in 805 and seems to have served only in low- and middle-rank positions. He aspired to be a historian and compiled a thirty-fascicle history that is no longer extant.¹³

The collaboration between Bai Juyi and Chen Hong occurred in the context of Xianzong’s successful military campaigns, which restored the political dignity of sovereignty. After half a century of rampant warlordism, the new emperor demonstrated that he was willing and able to assert central authority. In 806–7, right after his ascension, Xianzong’s campaigns defeated the unruly military governors Liu Pi (d. 806) in the southwest and Li Qi (d. 807) in the Yangzi region. Loyalists extolled Xianzong’s accomplishments, as we see in the poem “On the Sagacious Virtue of the Emperor of the Yuanhe Reign” (Yuanhe shengde shi) written in 807 by Han Yu, then Erudite of the National University.¹⁴ Bai Juyi’s poetic rendition and Chen Hong’s prose account constituted a literary-historical project to restore the dignity of the image of Xianzong’s great-grandfather, the Illustrious Emperor.

This image had been tarnished by his favoring of Precious Consort Yang and the subsequent outbreak of rebellions, a detail that made him fit the stereotype of the debauched last ruler only too well. Floral Purity Palace (Huaqing gong), the hot spring resort that the emperor frequented with Precious Consort Yang, became one of the popular sites for Tang writers to reflect on historical cause and effect. The poem “Passing Floral Purity Palace” (Guo Huaqing gong) by Li Yue (fl. mid-to late eighth century), for instance, was explicit in its criticism of the emperor: “The lord amused himself and made light of the myriad state affairs. / [After] the melody ‘Rainbow Skirts,’ warfare arose within the four seas.”¹⁵ Even those who were sympathetic to the emperor were prone to make damaging historical analogies. The famous poet Du Fu (712–770), for instance, wrote in the poem “Northern Journey” (Bei zheng): “I have never heard that the fall of the Shang and Xia dynasties / is traced to the execution of [the bewitching consorts] Bao Si and Da Ji.”¹⁶ Du Fu believed that the death of Precious Consort Yang signified a Tang revival because her execution by the Illustrious Emperor proved his sagacity, thus distinguishing him from those earlier rulers who were unable to change their self-destructive trajectory. Yet by comparing her to the notorious femmes fatales Da Ji and Bao Si, Du Fu perhaps inadvertently suggested similarities between the emperor and the rulers destroyed by these women. The moralism linking the emperor’s political downfall to his sexual obsession with Precious Consort Yang emanated from the long-standing belief that indulgence of excessive sexual desire marks moral deficiency on the part of men in general and monarchs in particular.¹⁷

The twin compositions of Bai Juyi and Chen Hong aimed precisely to salvage the image of the Illustrious Emperor by redefining his sexual obsession as romantic devotion. Glossing over inconvenient details, such as that Precious Consort Yang was originally the emperor’s daughter-in-law and that he gave her a makeover by turning her into a Daoist priestess before taking her into his harem,¹⁸ Bai and Chen portray the emperor simply discovering and falling in love with a beautiful woman from the Yang family. He and Precious Consort Yang enjoy a blissful life, but it is cut short by the rebellion and her consequent execution. The inconsolable emperor enlists the help of a Daoist wizard, who finds out that Precious Consort Yang has become an immortal on a faraway island. When she receives the wizard, she not only reveals a secret pledge of eternal love between her and the emperor, but also conveys her loyalty to him and her longing for their future reunion.

In line with the melodramatic convention of the ballad (ge), a subgenre of Music Bureau poetry (yuefu), Bai Juyi’s poetic version movingly describes the Illustrious Emperor’s emotional journey from happiness to pain and longing, and concludes with climactic lines evoking the pledge of love between him and his consort as well as their eternal devotion and sorrow:

On the seventh day of the seventh month in the Palace of Eternal Life,

At midnight, when no one was around, they whispered to each other:

In heaven, we wish to become two birds with paired wings;

On earth, we wish to be twin trees with branches interlocked.

There will be a time when the long-lasting heaven and earth cease to exist;

Yet this sorrow will linger on and on, never ending.¹⁹

Despite such sympathetic portrayals, modern scholars have debated extensively over how serious Bai Juyi was in his romanticization of the emperor, as he also includes lines that seem critical, such as “Spring nights were unfortunately too short and the sun rose high; / From then on, the monarch stopped attending his morning court.”²⁰ The perceived conflict between sentimentalism and moralism in Bai Juyi’s ballad stems, however, from the fact that by presenting the emperor as a devoted lover, Bai creates a split in his identity: the emperor’s romantic role contradicts and destabilizes his political one.

In the verisimilar style of the “biography” (zhuan) form that originated in historiography, Chen Hong’s complementary prose account aims precisely to resolve this paradox by splitting Precious Consort Yang’s persona. On one hand, Chen Hong labels her a “creature of bewitching beauty” (youwu),²¹ embodying a feminine vice that is the source of the Illustrious Emperor’s political troubles. The first half of the story supports this image by describing how her ingenuity in monopolizing the emperor’s sexual attention leads her family to gain tremendous influence, especially her cousin Yang Guozhong, who abuses his power as a chief minister. Thus, “When An Lushan led his troops toward the imperial palace, he used punishing the Yangs as his pretext.”²² The execution of Precious Consort Yang thus not only appeases the mutinous soldiers but also redeems the emperor’s political failure. On the other hand, after her resurrection as an immortal in the second half of the story, Chen Hong turns her into a paragon of feminine virtue, particularly loyalty.²³ Referred to as the Jade Consort, she vows with a single-minded determination to reunite with the emperor: “Whether we are immortals or mortals, we will certainly meet again and resume our happy union as before.”²⁴ Her reincarnation as a devoted lover serves to absolve the emperor’s guilt for failing to protect her and to reward his persistent devotion.

By depicting Precious Consort Yang as both a bad and a good lover in the story, Chen Hong tries to present the Illustrious Emperor as a good monarch as well as a dedicated romantic hero. The prose account opens with the statement “During the Kaiyuan reign, the court was peaceful and in all lands within the four seas there was no trouble.”²⁵ As the country has become so peaceful, according to Chen Hong, there is nothing for the emperor to worry about, and, since he must have worked very hard to achieve this success, he certainly deserves romance as a diversion. Although he has thousands of palace women available to him, he sets his heart on a single one and showers her with his attention and gifts. Even when the Illustrious Emperor is perilously close to losing his political stature during the mutiny, Chen Hong emphasizes the emperor’s devotion to his beloved: “His Majesty knew that there was no way she could avoid [her end], but he could not bear to see her die. Turning his sleeve to cover his face, he had the attendants lead her away.”²⁶ The narration here does not focus on his political helplessness under duress, but rather confirms his love by showing his reluctance to abandon her. After her death he is shown wholeheartedly lamenting his romantic loss rather than his own miseries and disgrace as a retired sovereign deprived of power. The emperor’s romantic identity humanizes him: despite all of his powers as head of the empire, he has the mundane desire to be with his beloved for eternity, and in that sense he is as vulnerable as any man in the face of death and loss.

Chen Hong’s agenda to make the emperor’s dual roles consistent is filled with contradictions, however. If the death of Precious Consort Yang illustrates the price that a femme fatale must pay for the abuse of her sexual power, her rebirth as an immortal significantly undermines such an interpretation: it implies that after punishment can come redemption. Moreover, this contradiction in Precious Consort Yang’s image is detrimental to that of the emperor. When she is cast in an unflattering light, the emperor’s devotion to such a woman makes him seem foolish and ridiculous. Although she may be said to deserve execution, her dual roles as a political culprit and a romantic heroine turn the incident into a moment of powerful irony that reveals the emperor’s failure as a romantic hero. Even though he is ostensibly the most powerful man in the world, he is not able to protect his love; instead, he gives her up in exchange for his own safety and the endurance of the dynasty.

Despite such tensions, Bai Juyi and Chen Hong succeeded in popularizing the love story and redefining the Illustrious Emperor as a lover; Bai’s poetic version became particularly well known. The transformation of the emperor into a lover turned him into a literati celebrity, making him part of what Stephen Owen has termed a “culture of romance,” marked by increasing literati interest in poems and stories on love and romantic sentiments.²⁷ In such representations, the male role as a lover, defined by romantic passion for and devotion to a woman other than one’s principal wife, started to be cast in a positive light, although traditional moralism against sexual obsession with women continued to hold sway.²⁸ If the “poetry of seductive allure” (yanshi) by Bai Juyi’s best friend Yuan Zhen (779–831) illustrated a new poetic trend of constructing male romantic subjectivity in poetic terms,²⁹ sto...