SOURCE: Liu Wu-chi. “Great Novels by Obscure Writers.” In An Introduction to Chinese Literature, pp. 228-46. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1966.

[In this essay, Liu provides an overview of the major novels of the late Ming and early Ch'ing dynasties: Journey to the West, The Golden Lotus, Dream of the Red Chamber, and The Scholars. With the exception of Journey to the West, Liu finds that an unflinching, even graphic realism characterizes the masterworks of the early Chinese novel.]

Contemporaneous with the short story, the Chinese novel flourished from the middle of the Ming dynasty to the end of the Ch'ing (sixteenth to early twentieth century). Many writers devoted their time and energy to the writing of fiction and their output was impressive, particularly in the late Ch'ing period. This effort was noteworthy because, in spite of the recognition of the novel as an established literary genre, it was still considered a minor art form compared with poetry and nonfictional prose. For this reason as we have seen earlier, the authors preferred to remain anonymous and used only their pseudonyms; of the known novelists, almost all lived obscure lives unrecorded in dynastic history. The most recognition they achieved was minor official positions and local fame among small groups of friends. An undertone of frustration and bitterness seems to have prevailed in their writings. It is no coincidence that realistic descriptions and satirical expositions of contemporary life have characterized Chinese fiction since the Ming period.

Among the bulk of Chinese fiction written in the last several centuries, four novels stand out as the most important, if not also the greatest. These are Journey to the West (Hsi-yu chi), Gold Vase Plum (Chin P'ing Mei), Dream of the Red Chamber (Hung-lou meng), and Informal History of the Literati (Ju-lin wai-shih); the first being a supernatural novel, the second and third realistic novels of society and family, and the last a satirical novel. In the meantime, the historical romance continued to be popular; in the novel of adventure, brave chivalrous swordsmen, counterparts of medieval knights in Western literature, replaced the bandit-leaders as heroes;¹ “the novel of beauty and genius,” a typical Chinese love romance, had its vogue not only in China but in Europe as well.² All these types have enriched Chinese fiction and each has its own outstanding examples, but our discussion, brief and only introductory, has to be confined to the four major works mentioned above.

The supernatural novel, represented by the Journey to the West (known to English readers as Monkey³), is as much the product of folk tradition as of the author's creative imagination. It contains a world of fantastic invention, in which gods and demons loom large and vie for supremacy. The supernatural beings are of many varieties: a hierarchy of celestial deities under the Jade Emperor of the Taoist cult; a shadowy world of ghosts and spirits presided over by the King of Hades; a host of local divinities, dragon kings, monsters and goblins. There is also an array of Buddhist saints and arhats headed by Sakyamuni (Buddha) in the Holy Mountains of the West. Most popular among them is the Bodhisattva, Kuan-yin, sometimes called the Goddess of Mercy. The Buddhist idea of retribution and the Taoist search for gold and the elixir of life have further nourished popular belief, to which Confucianism contributed the cult of heroes and ancestors. This polytheistic pantheon has provided Chinese novelists with ample material for supernatural tales.

The evolution of the Journey to the West is as complicated and fascinating as that of the Three Kingdoms and the Marshes. Like them, it has passed through a series of oral and written stages before attaining its present form. Its most important author, but not its sole creator, was Wu Ch'eng-en (1500?-1582), a scholar-official in the Yangtze region. Before the publication of Wu's novel in 1592, there existed a number of earlier works on the same subject: a poetic novelette, a six-part drama, and a crude colloquial story. Other versions have appeared since 1592, including two adaptations, one in a four-part book entitled The Four Journeys.⁴

The Journey to the West is divided into three parts: (1) an early history of the Monkey Spirit; (2) a pseudo-historical account of Tripitaka's family and life before his trip to fetch the sutras in the Western Heaven; (3) the main story, consisting of eighty-one dangers and calamities encountered by Tripitaka and his three animal spirit disciples—Monkey, Pigsy, and Sandy (a fish spirit). In the first part are related the birth of Monkey from a magic rock, his coronation as the monkey king, and his attainment of magic powers. The latter include the ability to turn a somersault of 108,000 li; the mastery of seventy-two kinds of transformation; the use of a mighty iron cudgel which can be changed into a small needle to be placed behind the ear; and the trick of turning his hair, when pulled out, into thousands of little monkeys. Armed with these abilities, Monkey extended his sway over earth and sea; but he also coveted an official position in Heaven. Among the riots which he subsequently caused in that celestial sphere, the theft of the immortal peaches in the garden of the Heavenly Queen and the wreck of Lao-tzu's Crucible of the Eight Trigrams are especially well told. In the latter story, Monkey, who had been smelted in the crucible after his capture by the Heavenly Host, was thought to have been burned to death in the fiery flames, but actually he suffered only from smoky red eyes; finally he made good his escape, as described in the following passage:

Time certainly passed fast and it was already the end of the forty-nine day period when Lao-tzu's alchemic process was consummated.

One day he came to open the crucible to take out the elixir of life. Monkey was covering his eyes with both hands, rubbing them and shedding tears, when he heard a noise atop the crucible. Suddenly he opened wide his eyes and saw a light. Without waiting any longer, he jumped out with one leap. As he rushed outside, he gave the crucible of the eight trigrams such a kick that it fell with a crashing sound. Greatly flustered, Lao-tzu's servants, who had been watching the fire under the crucible, all came out, as did the other celestial guards and attendants, to drag Monkey back, but he tripped up every one of them like an epileptic white-browed tiger or a mad one-horned dragon. When Lao-tzu himself rushed forward to grab him, Monkey gave him such a push that he fell head over heels. After making good his escape, Monkey took out from behind his ear the magic cudgel, which, when swung against the wind, grew into the size of a bowl in its diameter. Thus armed once more and striking out indiscriminately here and there, he caused again a great uproar in the celestial palace. The Nine Planets were so frightened that they locked themselves in and the Four Heavenly Kings fled without a trace.

(Chapter 7)⁵

The mighty Monkey was finally subdued by the Buddha, who had him sealed inside the Mountain of the Five Elements until such time as he would be set free by Tripitaka in his journey westward.

In addition to the pseudo-historical tale of Tripitaka's life, the second part contains the supernatural stories of the execution of the dragon king for disobeying Heaven's command and of the T'ang Emperor's trip to the underworld, where he had to bribe his way out from the clutches of hungry ghosts. This led to the celebration of the great Mass for the Dead, the choice of Tripitaka as its officiator, and his mission to fetch Buddhist scriptures at the emperor's command. History tells us, however, that instead of being regally equipped for the trip, Tripitaka to make the pilgrimage⁶ actually had to brave the persecutions of an imperial ban against travelling abroad.

The bulk of the novel,⁷ to which the first two parts are mere introductions, deals with the numerous calamities Tripitaka had to suffer on his westward journey at the hands of monsters, ghosts, and demons, who all clamored to eat him alive. But through the efforts of his animal-spirit escorts, especially Monkey, and with the aid of Buddhist and Taoist gods, who now ranged themselves on Monkey's side, Tripitaka succeeded in overcoming the dangers and reached the Western Heaven, where he later became a Buddhist saint together with his three disciples.

The adventures of the Buddhist pilgrims are related in a way that is not only hair-raising, but also immensely witty and amusing. Pigsy, noted for his stupidity, gluttony, and lecherous desires, became the butt of Monkey's raillery. The latter had a native instinct for mischief and pleasantry, and poked fun at all and sundry, his master not excepted. Thus the novel contains many jocular and exciting stories that fire the imagination of young and old alike. As an illustration is told briefly here the episode of a series of Buddhist-Taoist contests in the Kingdom of Cart Slow, situated along the route of the Chinese pilgrims.

This kingdom was dominated by three animal spirits in human shape who styled themselves Taoist immortals. With the king's connivance, they set out to persecute Buddhist monks and made them do the meanest labor under the supervision of Taoist taskmasters. It happened that at the time of Tripitaka's arrival there was a great drought in the land. So instead of maltreating the Buddhist pilgrims as urged by the pseudo-Taoist immortals, the king ordered a rainmaking contest between the Buddhists and Taoists, promising better treatment for the Buddhists in the kingdom and passports for the visiting monks, if they won. One of the Taoist Immortals was given the honor of starting. Sword in hand, his hair loosened, he mounted a high altar erected in the palace compound for the contest. As he recited his spells, he burned Taoist images, texts, and yellow papers; he also banged his tablet on the altar to summon the spirits. At his repeated bidding came the Old Woman of the Wind, hugging her bag; her boy holding tight the rope at the mouth of the bag; Cloud Boy and Mist Lad; Thunder God and Mother of Lightning. They were all about to perform their tasks when they were stopped by Monkey, and no rain fell. Then came the turn of the Buddhists. Armed with neither sword nor tablet, Tripitaka went up the altar to pray and recite the sutras. At this moment, Monkey displayed his mighty cudgel, pointing it toward the sky. Immediately, the Old Woman of the Wind brought out her bag, the boy loosened the rope at its mouth, and with a great roar the wind rushed out. Bricks hurtled; sand and stones flew; dark clouds covered the city and the palace.

Presently Monkey pointed again, and deafening peals of thunder shook the earth. It was as though a hundred thousand chariots were rolling by. The inhabitants of the town were frightened out of their wits and one and all began burning incense and saying their prayers. “Now Thunder God,” screamed Monkey, “do your work! Strike down all greedy and corrupt officials, all disobedient and surly sons, as a warning to the people!” The din grew louder than ever. Then Monkey pointed again, and such a rain fell that it seemed as if the whole Yellow River had suddenly fallen out of the sky. This rain fell from early morning till noon. The town was already one vast swamp when the king sent a message saying, “That's enough rain. If there is much more it will ruin the crops and we shall be worse off than ever.”

(Chapter 45)⁸

This was followed by other contests: an endurance test in meditation; a guessing game; and the last, a competition in head-cutting, belly-ripping, and bathing in boiling oil, in which the three Taoist Immortals ultimately met their deaths. The victorious Buddhists were given a great feast and a royal escort out of the kingdom.

The novel, strangely enough, has been variously interpreted by early Chinese commentators as an allegorical treatise on the three schools of Chinese religion and philosophy. The main story, as we have seen, is essentially Buddhist in nature and orientation, but to regard it as an exposition of the new laws of Buddhism is just as absurd as to interpret it as an elucidation of the Taoist formula for refining the golden pill of immortality, or as an allegory of the Neo-Confucian principle of self-cultivation through the illumination of the heart and the revelation of human nature.

Also farfetched is the more recent view of the novel as representing a socio-political struggle, in which, it is said, the oppressive agents of the ruling class are pitted against the righteous forces of the people represented by Monkey. He is seen as the personification of folk ideals and strength in an autocratic society. His rampages in Heaven and Hell are represented as the bold struggles of the oppressed against despotism; his fight with monsters and demons—“claws and teeth of the ruling class”—as heroic combats against the evil forces of society; his conquest of the impassable mountains and rivers as man's efforts in surmounting the barriers of nature. “The victory of Monkey,” the recent critics conclude, “is also the victory of the people.”⁹

Perhaps, if any extra significance is to be read into this novel, it can be regarded as a good-natured satire on human foibles and bureaucratic stupidities, and as an allegory of the pilgrim's progress toward Buddhist salvation. To project the satire into the Heavenly realm, which is described as a vast bureaucracy, is not so much to attack the hierarchy of gods as to poke fun, on a higher level, at the follies of the earthly government. The parody of government red tape is shown in the use of a letter of introduction by the T'ang Emperor to gain favorable treatment during his visit to Hades; in his borrowing money on a promissory note; and in his bribery of the hungry ghosts mentioned previously. Even Buddha's disciples demanded gifts when they were sent to accompany Tripitaka to fetch the sacred books from the “Treasury.” They said to Tripitaka:

Having come here from China you have no doubt brought a few gifts for us. If you will kindly hand them over, you shall have your scriptures at once.

(Chapter 98)¹⁰

At first Tripitaka refused and would have brought back to China blank scriptures—even though they are the true ones, according to the author—if he had not detected the fraud in time. Finally, he had to part with his golden alms bowl as a “commission” to Buddha's disciples before they gave him the written scrolls he wanted.

Two aspects of the human spirit are represented in the novel, one by Tripitaka, the other by Monkey. The former is man as he really is. Neither heroic nor superhuman, he falls an easy prey to fierce monsters as well as to his own demon of fear and misgiving. In spite of all his learning and virtue, he cowers before physical dangers. He is frightened by the attack of robbers, spirits, and goblins; his tears fall like rain when the river dragon swallows his horse. But he emerges heroic in the end because he is strong in his devotion. On the other hand, Monkey may be regarded as a symbol of man's restless ambition. As the omnipotent immortal that every man secretly desires to be, he fulfills his wildest dreams. But he misuses his power and defies the gods; thus he gets burned by playing with fire. It is only when he is able to channel his power in a right direction and use it for a right cause that Monkey, like Tripitaka, gains salvation—the one by curbing his ambition, the other his self-doubts.

Interesting as these interpretations are, the novel must be read and appreciated as a work of literature per se. Here, its merits are obvious. The vastness of its fantasy, the rich variety of its supernatural stories and characters, and the inexhaustible fund of its wit and humor combine to make the Journey to the West one of the most delightful books in world literature. Moreover, as a novel of religious allegory or a satirical romance, its adventures are more thrilling, more entertaining, and more colorful than its Western counterparts, The Pilgrim's Progress and Don Quixote, to which it has been sometimes compared.

The most important type of Chinese fiction, however, is the social and domestic novel, in which contemporary life and manners are depicted faithfully, intimately, and almost microscopically in a special Chinese brand of realism. What distinguishes the latter from Western realism is the role of the indispensable narrator. True to the Chinese storytelling tradition, the narrator is present everywhere, for he not only sees, hears, and reports on every detail in the story, but in a sly and insinuating manner he also takes the reader into his confidence and imbues him with his own feelings and attitudes; whenever appropriate he makes his own comments and asides. The art of Chinese fiction lies in the author's ability to tell his tale in such a seemingly artless and effortless way that the reader, while enjoying the story, is so taken in by the storyteller that he becomes happily oblivious of the unlikelihood of the latter's ubiquitous presence.

Such a master novelist is the anonymous author of the Gold Vase Plum, rendered respectively in two different English versions as The Golden Lotus¹¹ and The Adventurous History of Hsi-men and His Six Wives.¹² The novel was first mentioned toward the last years of the sixteenth century, its earliest extant version containing a preface dated 1617. The author is known by his pen name, Hsiao-hsiao sheng (A Laughing-laughing Scholar) of Lan-ling, or I-hsien in Shantung, in whose dialect the novel is written. This evidence of its authorship by an unknown writer from Shantung, probably a professional storyteller, belies the claim that the novel was written by some famous literary figure of the time.¹³ In later editions, some of the local dialect peculiarities have been eliminated or changed into more common expressions.

The first realistic social novel, antedating by at least two centuries its French counterparts, the Gold Vase Plum depicts the dark aspects of a Chinese society riddled with filth and corruption, iniquity and rascality. Although the action of the novel took place toward the end of the Sung dynasty (early twelfth century), the society it reflects was undoubtedly that of the author's own time. The chief male character, Hsi-men Ch'ing, the owner of an apothecary shop, was a rake and bully, who through swindling and imposture rose to wealth and local power. In his household were six wives, among whom the two most important were Golden Lotus and the Lady of the Vase, as well as numerous maidservants including Spring Plum (Golden Lotus' maid). Their names combine to give the novel its title. An archetype of the seducer of women, Hsi-men Ch'ing was a remote cousin of Lothario and Don Juan. He differed from them, however, in that he was a worldly fellow shorn of romantic glamor; the women fell victims to him not because of the gay seductiveness of his person but because of his money and power. Carnal desire, instead of romantic love, guided his encounters with innumerable prostitutes and the adulterous wives of his friends and subordinates.

This one hundred chapter novel may aptly be called the crime and punishment of the Hsi-men family. Here is an interesting case of a Chinese story in which poetic justice descended rather tardily on the evil-doer, whose penalty in this life was no more than cuckoldry. Otherwise, Hsi-men Ch'ing lived a happy wicked life, enjoying his debaucheries to his heart's content. It was only after his death from overindulgence that retribution in a more violent form came to the other members of his family. Most of them, sinners themselves, met their deserved ends in the chaos and disaster that followed the Jurchen invasion of North China in the twelfth century. The lonely survivals were his principal wife, the only decent woman in the novel, and her son, who became a Buddhist monk to do penance for his father's sins.

A powerful and merciless exposure of a decadent society, the book would have been a well-accepted masterpiece if it were not for its unabashed, flagrant pornography. The author, it seems, delighted in salacious descriptions of perverted sex, and no amount of whitewash can cover up the filth of the novel before whose glaring immorality Western works of similar nature, some well-known modern novels not excepted, pale into insignificance. It has been suggested that a major editorial operation could transform it into something more wholesome, but once its foul cankerous tissues were removed, it would no longer be its true self—a naked representation of the corroding body social.

Viewed aside from the moral issue, the Gold Vase Plum is one of the greatest novels ever written in the Chinese language. It gives a unique picture of the ways of the world, whose winds blow alternately hot and cold; it depicts vividly and skillfully such scenes of society as are found in the comedies of Ben Jonson, of whom the Chinese author was a contemporary. The characters, everyman in his humor, whose words and actions are reproduced clearly and minutely to the meanest detail, appear before us not as alien ghosts of a remote past but as evil genii that haunt the conscience of the modern man. The novel is a perspicuous presentation of human foibles and failings, too many to be enumerated. It suffices to quote here the following passage, which cleverly blends sarcasm, humor, and pathos as illustrative of the artless art of Chinese realism:

Ch'ang Shih-chieh thanked Hsi-men Ch'ing and took his leave, placing the packet of silver inside his sleeve. He went back home in a cheerful mood, but just as he was about to go in, his wife came out of the door to accost him, shouting noisily:

“You good-for-nothing! You, bare stick as lean as a leafless wu-t'ung tree! You have gone away for a whole day and left your wife to starve at home, and yet you come back so jolly pleased with yourself. Aren't you ashamed? Here we are without a roof of our own and have to bear other people's bad breath, blown into your wife's ears! Do you think she relishes it all?”

Ch'ang did not open his mouth. He waited until his wife had scolded herself out before he gently fumbled from his sleeve the packet of silver and placed it on the table. Then he took off the wrapping and gazing at the silver pieces, he addressed them thus:

“Oh, you, my square-holed elder brothers! As I set my eyes on you, so glittering, tinkling, and pricelessly precious, how my body tingles all over! What a pity I couldn't gulp you down with a mouthful of water! If you had come earlier, I would not have suffered from the ill breath of this lewd woman.”

The wife saw clearly before her a heap of some twelve or thirteen ounces of silver in the packet. She was so overjoyed that she pushed forward closer to her husband and tried to grab it from him.

Ch'ang said, “All your life you have had nothing but abuse for me, your husband, but the minute you see this silver, you want to be near me. Tomorrow I'm going to buy some new clothes with this silver, dress myself up, and spend my days elsewhere all by myself. I'm not going to fool around with you any longer.”

The woman asked, all smiles on her face, “My elder brother, where indeed did you get these silver pieces?”

Ch'ang made no reply.

“My elder brother,” the woman persisted, “how can you really be angry with me? I merely want you to get ahead in life. Now that we have this silver, I'd like to talk to you about how we could buy a house to settle down. Isn't that splendid? But instead, you are making such a show! As your wife, I haven't done anything wrong. You are angry with me, but that isn't fair.”

Ch'ang still would not open his mouth. So the woman just blabbed on, but when he continued to ignore her, she felt remorseful and could not help shedding a few tears. When he saw this, Ch'ang said, “You, woman, neither farm nor weave, but you are pretty good at abusing your husband.”

Hearing this, the wife let down her tears in a stream. The two both shut their mouths tight and as there was no one to make peace between them, they sat there sullenly. Ch'ang thought to himself: “Life is hard for this woman. After all the hardships she has had, how could I blame her for complaining? Today I have all this silver with me. If I disregard her, people will say that I have no affection, and if his lordship Hsi-men should get wind of it, he'd blame me.”

So he smiled and told his wife, “I of course want to have you. Who's blaming you? Only, you had so nagged me that I had to walk out of the house. But I am not angry with you and I'll tell you plainly about this silver. This morning as I couldn't stay in the house any longer, I went to Second Elder Brother Ying to invite him to have three cups with me in the wineshop. Then we went together to wait on his lordship at his residence. Luckily, he was at home and had not gone out feasting. Thanks to Second Brother Ying, I don't know with how much wagging of his tongue, he finally got for me these silver pieces. I was further promised that as soon as I have found a house I'd be given more silver to make a purchase. These twelve ounces are just for my current expenses.”

(Chapter 57)¹⁴

A century and a half after the publication of the Gold Vase Plum appeared the most famous of the Chinese novels, the Dream of the Red Chamber, over the tragic fate of whose young hero and heroine countless generations of Chinese readers have shed tears of sympathy and compassion. This evidence of the novel's moving power speaks well for its artistic excellence. Few works, whether Oriental or Occidental, are its peers in the vastness of its length, the vividness of its narration, the subtlety of its character portrayal, and the skillful use of the colloquial language. It represents the highest development of Chinese fiction and with it the transition of the novel from collective to individual authorship is completed.

The author of the Dream of the Red Chamber has been identified as Ts'ao Chan (1724?-1764),¹⁵ better known as Ts'ao Hsüeh-ch'in. He was the scion of a wealthy official family, which in his early youth became impoverished because of political reverses. Now generally considered as autobiographical,¹⁶ the novel is epitomized by a verse in the opening chapter:

Here are pages full of absurd words—
A handful of hot and bitter tears.
They all say the author is crazy,
But who would know his true intent?

(Chapter 1)¹⁷

The affluence of the Ts'ao family during Hsüeh-ch'in's childhood in Nanking must have contrasted poignantly with the poverty of his last days in the western suburb of Peking, where he wrote the novel and where he died. His friends and contemporaries testified to his family's having to eat gruel for lack of money, to his “daily gazing at the Western Hills to feed himself on the evening clouds,” and to his dying of sickness without a doctor's care. Ts'ao Hsüeh-ch'in apparently did not finish the novel at the time of his death but left the last part of the manuscript in an imperfect state. Only eighty chapters of the novel were copied and circulated during the author's lifetime¹⁸ and almost thirty years elapsed between his death and the publication of the complete 120-chapter novel in 1791. Based upon a preface and an introduction written for a revised 1792 edition, as well as upon other scattered references, critics have attributed the authorship of the last forty chapters to Kao E, an unsuccessful scholar. This view, however, has been challenged in recent years because of the discovery of new evidence.¹⁹

In the Dream of the Red Chamber is drawn a vast panorama of Chinese family life, represented by the great house of Chia with its two main branches, their numerous offshoots, and a proliferation of kinsmen, as well as a large retinue of dependents and domestics. Compared with the Chias, the Forsytes of Galsworthy's trilogy seem a rather simple family group. Most graphically described in the Chinese novel are the life and activities of some thirty main characters flanked by four hundred or more minor ones who flit in and out of the novel in their secondary roles. This immense body of material, presented in a realistic manner, provides one of the best documents for a study of the extended Chinese family: its structure, organization, and ideals such as clan solidarity and honor, respect for old age, parental authority, filial obedience, sex relationship, the position of women, the role of the concubines, maidservants, and other domestics.

From this vast array of male and female characters emerge three principal figures: Chia Pao-yü and his two girl cousins, Lin Tai-yü (Black Jade) and Hsüeh Pao-ch'ai (Precious Clasp), upon whose triangular love pivots the story of the novel. This love affair, however, should not be regarded as the main plot in the Western sense of the word but rather as the chief episode in a novel of innumerable episodes relating the fall and decline of the Chia family in Peking.

Pao-yü, a talented but spoiled child, was the heir of one of the two great branches of the Chia clan. As such he was doted on by his paternal grandmother, the Matriarch, who protected him from the occasional discipline administered by his severe Confucian father. His offenses, however, were no more serious than truancy in the company of his many sisters and girl cousins, among whom the most lovely were Black Jade and Precious Clasp. Equally fair and gifted, they represent two prototypes of female beauty in the Chinese concept: the former, with a slender, willow-waisted body in danger of being wafted away by the wind, is poetically inclined, highly susceptible, jealous, and given to crying; the latter is more normal and healthy, with a happy disposition and a shapely form somewhat on the plump side. In the company of such charming girls, with whom he versified, flirted, and fell in love, no wonder Pao-yü threw overboard the Confucian classics and read instead the Romance of the Western Chamber.

The building of the Garden of Grand View on the Chia family estate marked the climax of the happy, carefree days of the young set, each of them housed in one of the scenic cottages in the garden. Their idyllic existence, however, was not unmarred by jealousy, suspicion, and puerile quarrels which led to many a tearful scene. This is especially true of the relationship between Pao-yü and Black Jade, a pair of sensitive and sentimental young lovers. In one of the episodes the lovers' quarrel was caused by Black Jade's being denied entrance one evening to Pao-yü's cottage, the Peony Court. She was particularly hurt because she overheard inside the laughing voices of Pao-yü and Precious Clasp. Recalling her own orphaned life in a relative's house, she felt deeply grieved and cried bitterly. The next day, brushing aside Pao-yü when he paid her a visit, she went to a corner of the garden where previously she and Pao-yü had buried the fallen peach blossom. There she wept and sang:

I am here to bury you when you fall;
I wonder when will come the day of my death?
People laugh at me for burying the flowers,
But who would bury me when I pass away?
Look, spring is waning and flowers have been falling,
That is the time when fair maidens too wither and die.
One morning spring departs and youth grows old—
Flowers fallen, the maiden dead, one unaware of the other.

(Chapter 27)²⁰

Her singing was overheard by Pao-yü, who had taken the same path to the “flower mound.” Deeply touched by her sentiments, he lay down on the hillside and broke out into sobbing.

While sadly lamenting her fate, Black Jade heard suddenly the sound of mourning from the top of the slope. She thought to herself: “People say I am crazy. How could there be another as crazy as myself?” She lifted her head to take a look and caught sight of Pao-yü. “Humph!” she said spitefully, “It's that hard-hearted and short-lived one! …” There she stopped short and covered her mouth with her hand. She then heaved a long sigh and walked away.

After having moaned awhile and then seen that Black Jade had gone away to avoid him, Pao-yü felt listless. He shook off the earth from his clothes, got up, and took the same way down the hill to go back to the Peony Court. By chance he saw Black Jade in front of him and immediately he hastened toward her and said: “Please stop for a minute. I know you won't look at me, but I'll just say one sentence and then leave you alone.”

Turning around, Black Jade saw it was Pao-yü. She was about to disregard him when she heard him say “just one sentence”; so she replied: “Well, go ahead!”

Pao-yü laughed, saying: “Would you still listen to me if I said two sentences?”

Hearing this, Black Jade turned away. Pao-yü sighed behind her and said: “If we had known this we shouldn't have behaved as we did in the past.”

When Black Jade heard these words she could not help stopping and turning around. “What happened in the past,” she inquired, “and what has happened now?”

“Well! When you first came to our house,” Pao-yü said, “who else but me would play with you so that we had fun together? Whatever I loved I gave you if you so desired; whatever I liked to eat, when I heard that you too liked it, I would put away neatly to keep for you when you came back. We ate at the same table and rested on the same couch. Things which the maids failed to think about and prepare for you, for fear you would be displeased, I would do in the maids' place. Cousins who have grown up together since childhood, I thought, would always be nice to each other, no matter whether they had been intimate or not; only then they would draw closer together than the rest. Who would have thought that after you have grown up and matured, you would not even deign to take a look at me—for three days paying no attention to me and for four days refusing to see me? On the other hand, you take to your bosom such remote relatives as Sister Precious Clasp and Sister Phoenix. I have no young brother or sister of my own. The two I have, you know of course, are not by the same mother as mine. I am an only child like you and I supposed your heart would be like mine. Who would have thought that I have gnawed my heart in vain and there is no one to whom I could utter my grievances?” As he spoke these words, he unconsciously fell into crying.

At that moment Black Jade, who had been listening to him and seen with her own eyes how things were, could not but feel afflicted, and she too shed tears, lowering her head without speaking one word.

Surveying the situation, Pao-yü continued, “I know I have been wrong. But even if that were not so, I would never dare do anything bad to you—moreover, if I have been wrong once or twice, you could either instruct me, warn me, or scold and beat me, and I would not feel so disheartened. But you simply ignore me completely and leave me bewildered and spiritless, not knowing what to do! If I should die, I'd be a wronged ghost and no Buddhist monks or Taoist priests of the highest order would be able to say penance enough for me to help me gain reincarnation. You would have to explain all the cause and effect before I could be reborn again!”

Hearing these words, Black Jade forgot right away the episode of the night before, banishing it beyond the clouds of the ninth heavens.

(Chapter 28)²¹

It was at this point that Black Jade learned that the door had been closed in her face by some indolent and garrulous maid without the young master's knowledge, and peace was made between the pair of young lovers.²²

This kind of idyllic life in the Garden of Grand View was occasionally disturbed by outside events and visitors, thus providing excitement and fun for its inmates. One such visitor was Liu Lao-lao (Old Dame Liu), a poor relative from the country. Dazed by the glittering wealth of the Chia family and incited by the mischief-loving Phoenix (Pao-yü's cousin's wife) and Mandarin Duck (Matriarch's maidservant), she committed one blunder after another during her visit, leaving behind her memories of hilarious episodes. The purpose of the visit was to present to the Chia family such fresh country produce as dates, melons, and vegetables in exchange for, hopefully, some substantial gift from her rich relatives. This country cousin was lucky enough to have the honor of being presented to the Matriarch. Upon entering the room, though dazzled by the many flowerlike, jewel-bedecked young women present, she was able to guess that the old lady who was reclining on a divan with a beautiful silk-dressed maid massaging her legs must be the Matriarch. The latter took a fancy to the visitor for her country manners and big stories, and invited her the next day to a feast at the Garden of Grand View. Tagging along in the Matriarch's retinue of lovely granddaughters and maidservants, Old Dame Liu took a grand tour of the garden. At dinner time she was given a seat at a side table next to the Matriarch's.

As soon as Old Dame Liu was seated, she picked up the chopsticks which were uncannily heavy and hard to manage. It was because Phoenix and Mandarin Duck had previously plotted to give her a pair of old-fashioned, angular-shaped ivory chopsticks gilded with gold. Looking at them, Old Dame Liu remarked: “These fork-like things are even heavier than our iron prongs. How can one hold them up?” Everyone laughed. By this time a woman servant had brought in a tiny food box and, as she stood there, another maid came forward to lift the lid. Inside were two bowls of food. Li Huan (Pao-yü's elder brother's widow) took one bowl and placed it on the Matriarch's table as Phoenix picked up a bowl of pigeon eggs to place it on Old Dame Liu's table.

Just as the Matriarch had finished saying, “Please eat,” Old Dame Liu rose from her seat and said aloud:

Old Liu, Old Liu, her appetite as big as a cow!
She eats like an old sow without lifting her head.

Having said her piece, with her cheeks puffed out she looked straight ahead without uttering another word. At first, all those present were astonished, but upon a moment's reflection, all burst out laughing at the same time. Unable to restrain herself, River Cloud (Matriarch's grandniece) spluttered out a mouthful of tea; Black Jade was choked with laughter and leaning on the table, could only cry and groan, “Ai-ya!” Pao-yü rolled down into the Matriarch's lap; joyously she hugged him and cried out, “Oh, my heart! my liver!” Madame Wang (Pao-yü's mother) also laughed, then pointed her finger at Phoenix, but could not utter one word. Aunt Hsüeh (Precious Clasp's mother), unable to control herself, spurted out her mouthful of tea on the skirt of Quest Spring (she and the other “Spring” girls were all Pao-yü's cousins and sisters), whose teacup fell on the body of Greeting Spring. Compassion Spring left her seat and pulling the wet nurse to her, asked her to rub her belly. None among the servants did not twist her waist or bend her back as they giggled. Some slipped out to have a good laugh while squatting down and others, having stopped laughing by now, came forward to change the dresses for the girls. Only Phoenix and Mandarin Duck controlled themselves and kept urging Old Dame Liu to eat.

Old Dame Liu lifted up the chopsticks but they were hardly manageable. Looking at the bowl in front of her, she remarked: “Well, well, even your hens are smarter than ours! They lay such tiny delicate eggs, very dainty indeed. Let me try one!” All the people had just stopped laughing but they burst out again upon hearing these words. The Matriarch laughed so much that tears dropped down; she just couldn't stop them and Amber (Matriarch's maidservant) had to pound her back to relieve her. The Matriarch said: “This must have been the work of that sly, impish Phoenix. Don't listen to her.”

Old Dame Liu was still exclaiming about how tiny and dainty the eggs were when Phoenix said jocularly to her: “They cost an ounce of silver apiece. You had better hurry up and taste one before they get cold.” Old Dame Liu then stretched out her chopsticks to seize the eggs with both ends, but how could she pick them up? After having chased them all over the bowl, she finally captured one with no little effort and was about to crane her neck to eat it when lo! it slipped off and fell on the floor. She was going to pick it up herself when a woman servant got it and took it out. Old Dame Liu sighed: “An ounce of silver! How it disappears without even making a noise!”

(Chapter 40)²³

In the course of the narrative, as Pao-yü grew up he was faced with two important events in his life: marriage and participation in the literary examination, both of which he resisted as long as he could. Gradually, conflict grew between him and his family, mainly because of his failure in serious studies and his morbid love for the fragile, ailing Black Jade, who had been pining away with consumption. His mind became deranged. The climax came when, hoodwinked by his family, he was led into marrying Precious Clasp, believing her to be Black Jade, as the real Black Jade was breathing her last in her deserted cottage. Her death was followed by a number of other catastrophes: more deaths in the family, Pao-yü's disappearance following his success in the examination, and the general breakdown of the once great and noble Chia clan. The tragedy was only slightly relieved in the end by the news of the restoration of the family fortune and of Precious Clasp's bearing a son by Pao-yü to continue the family line.

The last glimpse the readers have of Pao-yü is illusory but illustrative of the religious import of the novel. Chia Cheng, his father, was on his way home from Nanking, where he had buried the Matriarch in her family cemetery, when the following episode occurred:

One day he arrived at the P'i-ling post station, with the weather turning cold and snow falling. The boat was moored at a secluded nook on the river. Chia Cheng had sent his servants ashore to present to friends his visiting cards, explaining that he had to decline with thanks their invitation—he would not consider troubling them as he was so soon to set sail. Only a page was left on the boat to attend him. He then set himself to composing a letter home, which he intended to dispatch with a servant by the faster land route. He laid down his pen when he came to Pao-yü's disappearance. As he looked up, suddenly he saw on the bow of his boat someone dimly silhouetted in the bright snow. The person was baldheaded and bare-footed, his body wrapped in a flaming red cape of monkey-hair wool. He was kneeling down and kowtowing to Chia Cheng, who, however, failed to recognize him. Chia Chen hurried out of the cabin but before he could get hold of the man to find out who he was, the latter had kowtowed four times and stood up to greet him. Chia Cheng was about to bow back when he looked up and found himself face to face with Pao-yü! Chia Cheng was startled and asked hastily: “Is it you Pao-yü?” The man did not speak; he seemed both happy and sorrowful at the same time. “If you are Pao-yü,” Chia Cheng asked again, “how is it that you are dressed like that?”

Before Pao-yü was able to answer, there appeared on the prow two other persons: a Buddhist monk and a Taoist priest. They closed in on Pao-yü, one on each side of him, and said: “Your worldly duties have now been completed! Why don't you hurry away?” While speaking, the three went up the river bank as if wafted by the wind, and walked away. Heedless of the slippery ground, Chia Cheng rushed after them, but the three men were far ahead of him and he couldn't catch up with them.

(Chapter 120)²⁴

Ts'ao Hsüeh-ch'in's achievements in the novel are phenomenal but not beyond understanding. He accomplished what others had aspired to do, that is, to present faithfully, realistically, and graphically the picture of a typical upper-class Chinese family. His task was made much easier because the fictitious Chia²⁵ family was the Ts'ao family itself, in which Hsüeh-ch'in was brought up. As he had enjoyed the wealth and pomp of its heyday, so he witnessed bitterly its decline and ruin. It was caused not so much by the hostility of outward forces, although they had been building up against the family, as by its inner tension and corrosion, signs of which Ts'ao Hsüeh-ch'in must himself have detected during his younger days. It may even be possible to stretch the comparison further by identifying Pao-yü's character with the author's and to view Pao-yü's youthful escapades and penchants as those of Ts'ao Hsüeh-ch'in—such as his antitraditionalism and detestation of official life—though here a line must be drawn between what Goethe, Ts'ao's younger German contemporary, has called Dichtung und Wahrheit. It should be remembered that the Dream of the Red Chamber is after all a fiction and that to read into it too much of Ts'ao's life and thought or to exaggerate this autobiographical aspect of the novel would be to deny the artistic freedom and imagination of the author.

As indicated before, the Dream of the Red Chamber climaxes a long, realistic tradition in Chinese storytelling. It is not only a silhouette of life, but seems very close to life itself. All sorts of things happen in the novel; a motley group of characters pass in and out of it as occurs in this life; in it are ranged many kinds of emotions from the joys of love to the pangs of death—emotions that are sometimes intense and heightened, sometimes distracting and wayward. This point is made clear by the author himself in what is tantamount to a manifesto of realism in fiction. After having criticized the conventional novels of the past, Ts'ao Hsüeh-ch'in set forth in the beginning of this novel his own purpose and method of writing:

It seems much better to record the several maidens whom I have seen and heard about personally in the first half of my life. Although I dare not presume that they are more true to life than the others of the past, yet their deeds and actions would help dissipate the reader's grief and relieve him of boredom. The few doggerel verses in the book could also serve to provoke laughter during mealtime or over a cup of wine. As for the stories of separation and reunion, the emotions of sorrow and joy, the prosperity and decline of family fortune, the numerous occasions and varying circumstances—they are all set forth here in accordance with their cause and effect without my presuming to introduce even slightly any extraneous matter to make them lose reality.

(Chapter 1)²⁶

Thus, like most Chinese novelists, Ts'ao Hsüeh-ch'in made no effort to build up a plot for plot's sake, but simply wove the variegated threads of life—the trivial and commonplace as well as the spectacular and significant—into a colorful tapestry of supreme artistry and beauty.

An offshoot of the realistic novel is the satirical novel, which, however, is so important that it should be considered as another major type of Chinese fiction. The differences between the two are mainly in aim and emphasis rather than in content, technique, or style. Even their objectives are somewhat similar; thus in a realistic description of the unsavory aspects of domestic and social life, the satire is implied and always present. The satirical novel, however, differs from the realistic in that its assault on the evils of society is much more pronounced and intensive. Its best representative, The Informal History of the Literati (translated into English as The Scholars),²⁷ was written probably a few years earlier than the Dream of the Red Chamber. It ranks with the others mentioned in this chapter as one of the four great novels of the Ming-Ch'ing period. Space, however, permits only a brief mention of this unique work.

Written by Wu Ching-tzu (1701-1754), himself a member of the intelligentsia, the novel is an unmasking of the shameless behavior of the sham scholars of his time. The author's darts fall especially on the literary snobs, who are parasites of the rich and powerful. The objects of his satire are dual personalities, fawning before their superiors but arrogant in their dealings with those socially inferior. Each puts forth a false front of dignity and righteousness while in fact he is mean and vile. This attack on the literary pretenders is also an attack on officialdom and the examination system, as most of the scholars become officials after passing the examinations. Having thus raised themselves from poverty and obscurity, they display an utter disregard for official decency and, in spite of their professions of Confucian virtue, indulge in the age-old vices of Chinese bureaucracy such as nepotism, graft, and corruption. It should be noted, however, that there are also in the novel a number of good and honest scholars who stand out from the charlatans.

Wu's novel is an exposure of human weakness in general, hypocrisy being its chief target. While the scholars are typical hypocrites, they are equally representative of other follies and foibles. In a delightfully exaggerated and caustic manner is described the deathbed scene of Scholar Yen, a rich but parsimonious man, who purchased his degree by contributing a large sum of money to the Imperial Treasury—a common practice in those days. Scholar Yen had been seriously ill and speechless for three days. Just before his death, the sickroom was crowded with relatives and servants. On a table burned a wick-lighted oil lamp. The dying man was about to breathe his last when he stretched out his hand from the bed sheets and pointed feebly with his two fingers. The meaning of his gesticulation was incomprehensible to those present:

His nephews and servants all came forward to question him noisily. Some thought it signified two persons; others, two things; still others, two pieces of land. To all these wild conjectures he would simply shake his head to indicate a negative answer. Finally his wife, née Chao, having pushed the crowd apart, went up to him and said: “Dear, I am the only one here who understands your mind. You are upset because it wastes oil to burn two wicks together in the lamp. That's easy! I'll just pick away one of the wicks.” After having said this, she went immediately to remove the extra wick. While everyone was looking toward him, Scholar Yen nodded his head, let fall his hand, and immediately gave out his last breath. The whole family began to wail loudly with wide open mouths, and preparations were made to dress him for the funeral, after which they placed the coffin in the central hall of the third courtyard.

(Chapter 6)²⁸

Popular as it is, the Informal History of the Literati suffers from a basic weakness of the Chinese satirical novel, the lack of organic structure. If other Chinese novelists influenced by the storytelling tradition had a tendency to ramble on in a loose manner, they made at least an attempt to introduce a semblance of unity in their plots. On the other hand, that which strings together the various disconnected episodes in this novel is no more than its central theme mentioned above. The links between the episodes are so weak and ineffectual that the book might as well be divided into a number of separate stories like Thackeray's Book of Snobs. The same characteristic is also noticeable in the other satirical novels that flourished toward the end of the Ch'ing period. The appearance of the novel in the form of a travelogue²⁹ or in serial publications has further impaired the Chinese concept of the structure of fiction. It was not until the introduction of the Western novel in the twentieth century that Chinese writers became aware of the importance of plot-construction and began to learn this art from the literature of the West.

Notes

1. Endowed with great physical prowess and supreme swordsmanship, the Chinese heroes, like their European counterparts, perform feats of strength and fight in jousts and battles. No religious motive or emotional yearning, however, inspires their deeds. Love, whether sacred or profane, is unknown to them. On the other hand, their efforts are directed at aiding the great officials in the suppression of crime and the apprehension of evildoers, who may be outlaws, wicked officials, or rebellious princes. By combating the sinister forces of society, they render it a great service, for which they are loved by the people.

2. As specimens of Chinese fiction first introduced to Europe in the early eighteenth century, they are historically important for Western readers of Chinese literature. Translations such as The Pleasing History (later retranslated as The Fortunate Union and Breeze in the Moonlight) and Two Fair Cousins first appeared in English and French, and were immediately acclaimed by critics as examples of Chinese refinement and literary achievement. The popularity of these novels was due perhaps to their medium length, from eighteen to forty chapters, which can be easily handled in translation, as well as to their novelty and exotic appeal. It should also be remembered that before that time Europe itself was still under the influence of the elegant courtly society of Bourbon France and that at one time critical opinion in England had been swayed by the works of John Lyly. Like Lyly's Euphues, these Chinese novels are characterized by a stereotyped plot, artificial characters, and stale poetry. It is therefore unfortunate that the West should have gained its first impression of Chinese literature from these minor writings.

3. Quotations from Monkey (translated by Arthur Waley) by Wu Ch'eng-en, by permission of the John Day Company, Inc., publisher.

4. One part of this book, also entitled Journey to the West, is apparently an abridged version of Wu's novel instead of being its prototype, as has been claimed by some scholars. The other three parts deal with journeys to the north, south, and east, but they are all separate stories unrelated to each other.

5. Cf. Waley, Monkey, p. 73.

6. Arthur Waley, The Real Tripitaka (London, 1952), pp. 14-16.

7. By keeping intact the first twelve chapters of the original novel and reducing the other eighty-eight chapters into eighteen in the English version, Waley fails to give in Monkey a proper representation of the Chinese work. Most of the episodes in the second half of the novel, including some exceedingly exciting ones, as pointed out by Hu Shih, (Monkey, Preface, p. 4), are thus left untranslated.

8. Waley, Monkey, p. 231. A number of poems in the Chinese text are omitted in this translation.

9. Chung-kuo wen-hsüeh shih (A History of Chinese Literature), a co-operative project by the students of the Classical Literature Section of the Department of Chinese, Fu-tan University (Shanghai, 1958-1959), III, 144.

10. Waley, Monkey, p. 285.

11. The Golden Lotus, translated by Clement Egerton, 4 vols., London, 1939.

12. Chin P'ing Mei, The Adventurous History of Hsi-Men and His Six Wives (N.Y., 1947), tr. by Miall from Franz Kuhn's German version, with an introduction by Arthur Waley.

13. For the fascinating legend of its authorship by Wang Shih-chen, an eminent Ming dynasty writer, read Waley's “Introduction,” Ibid., pp.ix-xi. Waley's own theory that “Of possible candidates for the authorship of the Chin P'ing Mei I personally regard Hsü Wei as the strongest,” (Ibid. p.xix) follows a similar Chinese practice of attributing a popular work of literature to some well-known writer of the period without taking into account the important role of the popular storyteller in the development of Chinese colloquial literature from Sung to Ming.

14. Quoted from the 1617 (prefaced) edition. I have used this text, instead of later editions, for its crude simplicity and directness, e.g. instead of “Of course I want to have you,” the other editions have “I am just teasing you.” See Golden Lotus, III, 31-33.

15. While Ts'ao's death date has been established as 1764, there are different suggestions as to his birth date: (1) 1718 by Hu Shih; (2) 1724 by Chou Ju-ch'ang; (3) 1715 by Wu Shih-ch'ang. See Wu, On the “Red Chamber Dream,” pp. 103-113; 117-118. The difficulty of Wu's date is that it would make Ts'ao Hsüeh-ch'in almost fifty by Chinese counting at the time of his death, and this does not seem to agree with the primary source of Ts'ao's age, in which he is referred to as having died at forty or in his forties and in which he is compared to the poet Li Ho, who died young. I am more inclined to accept Chou's date and feel that Wu's objections to it are not unsurmountable.

16. Before this autobiographical interpretation of the novel was affirmed by Hu Shih and other scholars, previous interpretations can be summarized as follows: (1) the life and love of a Manchu emperor for a famous courtesan; (2) the love story of a Manchu poet and his talented concubine; (3) a political satire and a veiled attack on the Manchu dynasty. In a modified form the last interpretation has been revised in recent years by the critics on the Mainland who maintain that the novel is anti-feudal in its outlook. It attacks especially the traditional aspects of Chinese morality, political and legal institutions, the marriage system, and the examination system.

17. Cf. Dream of the Red Chamber, translated by Chi-chen Wang, (rev. ed. 1958), p. 7. It is omitted in The Dream of the Red Chamber, tr. by Franz Kuhn (in German), English tr. by Florence and Isabel McHugh. Both Wang's and Kuhn's versions are incomplete translations of the novel.

18. The earliest extant eighty-chapter handwritten version bears the date 1754, ten years before Ts'ao's death. The comments were made by one of his relatives, probably a paternal cousin. See Wu, xvi-xvii; 20-24, etc.

19. For a discussion of this question, read Wu, pp. 267-285, in which Kao's authorship of these forty chapters is reaffirmed; and C. T. Hsia's review of Wu's book in the Journal of Asian Studies, XXI, No. 1 (Nov. 1961), pp. 78-80. Also read Lin Yutang, “Reopening the Question of Authorship of ‘Red Chamber Dream,’” The Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, XXIX (1958), 327-387, in which Lin takes the view that the last forty chapters are the original work of Ts'ao Hsüeh-ch'in.

20. Last lines of the often quoted “Flower-burial Song” in the novel. Cf. Wang, p. 219; it is omitted in Kuhn.

21. Cf. Wang, pp. 219-21.

22. Pao-yü was thirteen in that year; Black Jade, twelve; and Precious Clasp, fifteen. Pao-yü had been only seven or eight and Black Jade probably six, when she came to live with the Chia family. See Chou Ju-ch'ang, Hung-lou meng hsin-cheng (New Evidences Concerning the “Dream of the Red Chamber”), (Shanghai, 1953), pp. 173-4; 183-4.

23. Cf. Wang, pp. 278-279.

24. Kuhn, pp. 578-579; Wang, p. 561 (a summary, not a translation).

25. The family name Chia is a homonym of the word meaning “fictitious.”

26. Cf. Wang, pp. 5-6. Omitted in Kuhn.

27. Translated by Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang (Peking, 1957).

28. Cf. Yang, Scholars, p. 105.

29. Such as Liu E's The Travels of Lao Ts'an, translated by Harold Shadick. Other English versions of the same novel are Tramp Doctor's Travelogue, translated by Lin Yi-chin and Ko Te-shun (Shanghai, 1939), and Mr. Derelict, translated by Yang Hsien-yi and G. M. Tayler (London, 1948).

Works Cited

Hsi-yu chi. Monkey. Tr. by Arthur Waley. London, Allen & Unwin, 1942. Translation of one-third of the novel, omitting many episodes from Chapters 13-100.

Chin P'ing Mei. The Adventurous History of Hsi-Men and his Six Wives. Tr. by B. Miall from the German version of F. Kuhn. 2 vols. New York, Putnam, 1940. (One vol. ed., 1947.)

The Golden Lotus. Tr. by Clement Egerton. 4 vols. London, Routledge, 1939. (Reprint: New York, Grove Press, 1954.)

Hung-lou meng. Dream of the Red Chamber. Tr. by Chi-chen Wang. New York, Twayne Publishers (rev. and enlarged ed.), 1958. (First ed., New York, Doubleday, 1929; new abridged ed., Doubleday, 1958.)

The Dream of the Red Chamber. Tr. by Florence and Isabel McHugh from the German version of Franz Kuhn. New York, Pantheon, 1958.

Hung-lou meng. Wu Shih-ch'ang. On the Red Chamber Dream. Oxford University Press, 1961.

Ju-lin wai-shih. The Scholars. Tr. by Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang. Peking, Foreign Languages Press, 1957.

Lao Ts'an yu-chi. The Travels of Lao Ts'an. Tr. by Harold Shadick. Ithaca, New York, Cornell University Press, 1952.

SOURCE: Hsia, C. T. “Chin P'ing Mei.” In The Classic Chinese Novel, pp. 165-202. New York: Columbia University Press, 1968.

[In this excerpt, Hsia uses the story of Lotus, a novel within the novel Chin P'ing Mei (The Golden Lotus), to illuminate the strengths and the moral attitude of the text. The extreme obscenity of some portions of the novel are, for Hsia, a key aspect of its forceful “moral realism,” and they represent some of the best writing in the work.]

One cannot expect a work to possess ideological or philosophical coherence when it manifests such obvious structural anarchy. Yet, before one can properly appreciate the finer aspects of Chin P'ing Mei, one must attend to its often mutually contradictory moral and religious assumptions. On the whole, the novelist shares those ambivalent attitudes commonly seen in the colloquial tales of the Ming period: outward conformity with Confucian morality versus a covert sympathy for lovers and seekers after individual autonomy; belief in the Buddhist doctrine of karma and retribution versus an undisguised contempt for monks and nuns; envious disapproval of the rich and powerful versus merciless snobbery toward the lowborn and unfortunate. These remain attitudes rather than components of a consistent world view because, like the professional storytellers, the author seems incapable of resolving the contradictions in his own thinking. His mind is nothing if not common as he by turns appeals to one or another of the popular prejudices.

Chin P'ing Mei has been labeled a naturalistic novel by modern critics. If it is one, then its naturalism owes nothing to the nineteenth-century theories of heredity and environment, but is rather an outgrowth of the Buddhist theory of moral retribution. In a sense, Hsi-men Ch'ing and Lotus are just as helplessly conditioned to an evil existence by their previous karma as the unfortunates in Zola are conditioned by their heredity and environment. In Buddhist terms, the novel is about the redemption of Hsi-men's evil deeds by the willing self-sacrifice of Moon Lady and their son's election of a life of Buddhist dedication. If we take Hsiao-ko to be the reincarnation of Hsi-men, then we may say that the wheel of karma has ceased to turn for the latter because his own individual sins have been canceled through the intervention of a Buddha. But the other characters affected by his evil and perpetrating evil on the strength of their own karma—Lotus, Vase, Plum Blossom, Ch'en Ching-chi, and all the rest—have to undergo a series of rebirths until they have acquired enough merit to get off the wheel of suffering. The announcement of their impending rebirths in the last chapter (though in strict accordance with Buddhist morality, perhaps few of them deserve to be reborn as human beings) indicates that for them the drama of retribution is not confined to one mundane existence. Hsü Chin P'ing Mei (A continuation of Chin P'ing Mei), written by Ting Yao-k'ang during the early Ch'ing period, does concern itself with the further adventures of Moon Lady and Hsiao-ko as well as those of the deceased characters in their next round of human and animal existence.¹

But though the author of Chin P'ing Mei anchors his work on the Buddhist idea of karma, he speaks in his own person usually not as a Buddhist, but as a Confucianist regretting the religious necessity for renunciation. As a Buddhist, he would have heralded the birth of Hsiao-ko with joy since he is destined to cancel out his father's sins. Instead, we find in chapter 75 the author's disapproving comment on Moon Lady's engrossment in Buddhist tales when she is already big with child:

In ancient times, a pregnant woman would never sit or recline in such a manner as to cause injury to the unborn child. She would never listen to erotic music or look at anything suggestive of immodesty. She would frequently occupy herself with the classics of Poetry and History as well as rare objects of gold and jade. Frequently, too, she would ask a blind minstrel to recite old poetry to her. In this way, when the child was born, he would have proper features and a handsome figure, and when he grew up, he would be intelligent. This is known as King Wen's method of educating the child in the womb. Now that Moon Lady was with child, she should not have allowed those nuns to recite “precious scrolls” to her and expound the doctrines of karma and transmigration. In consequence of this, an ancient Buddha was moved to resume incarnation on earth. And a few years after the child was born, he would be claimed by that Buddha and made to foresake the world. Alas, how sad that the child could not inherit the family property and continue the family line!²

This sense of regret, later reinforced when the novelist describes Moon Lady's extreme reluctance to part with her son, actually strengthens the pathos of the novel. It is as if the author were appealing to the Chinese reader's instinctive preference for Confucian values so as to make him see the horror and desolation wrought by Hsi-men's evil deeds. If he had not been so wicked, perhaps Moon Lady would not have been so easily seduced by the nuns, and if she had not been so seduced, her son would have been properly brought up on the Confucian classics and would have in time passed the palace examination and become a distinguished official. The family line would have continued and prospered. The author's Confucian sympathies therefore place the Buddhist scheme of redemption in the perspective of tragedy.

For a Buddhist novel, Chin P'ing Mei is surprisingly crowded with Buddhist monks and nuns (and also Taoist priests) of dubious character. Except for one or two mysterious monks of obvious sanctity or magic power,³ there is hardly one reputable representative of the religious community in the book. All the nuns that ingratiate themselves with Moon Lady are somewhat shady, and the author undoubtedly agrees with Hsi-men in placing them among professional matchmakers and other disreputable females whose avocation is to swindle their patrons and bring about amorous liaisons. This contempt for nuns and to a lesser extent for monks, commonly shared by the Chinese, stems not so much from a disrespect for religion as from a sense of snobbery: the nuns and monks, just like matchmakers, quack doctors, and unsuccessful scholars reduced to making a living as pedagogues or scribes, are automatically suspect because their social status is low. If not villains, they are at least comic types to be laughed at without qualms. With its merciless ridicule of all people of humbler status, Chin P'ing Mei may be said to have been a book consciously designed for the middle class. In addition to many comic quacks like Dr. Chao, there is Dr. Chiang, briefly Vase's husband, who suffers cruel abuse from his wife and Hsi-men without any redress.⁴ The pederast Wen Pi-ku, a poor scholar serving as Hsi-men's secretary, is an object of pure scorn.⁵ (In other Chinese novels we find many a pedagogue resorting to pederasty out of necessity rather than by personal choice. The economic implication of his comedy is that he is too poor to afford a wife or the pleasures of a brothel.) Then, of course, the sponging friends of Hsi-men literally eat the crumbs off his table. The novelist, who has very little sense of refined humor, specializes in the comedy of destitution and has great fun with these shiftless clowns.

In this connection, it is interesting to note that Hsi-men Ch'ing has not always been presented in so unfavorable a light as is generally supposed. He is a man of wealth and position, and for the most part he is spared the author's ridicule. Our final impression of him is that of a likable person, cheerful, generous, and capable of genuine feeling. If he is frequently engaged in nefarious deals, he as often impresses us with his bounty. If he is a notorious seducer of women, the author makes it quite clear that his victims are begging to be seduced. In extenuating Hsi-men's crime, he is appealing to the Chinese prejudice that it is inevitably women who bring men to ruin with their sexual aggression and dangerous cunning. Nearly all Hsi-men's mistresses are shown to have been women of shady background and lewd disposition before they are approached by Hsi-men. Wang VI and Madame Lin are notorious for their promiscuity.⁶ Even Hui-lien (Wistaria, in Egerton's translation), the wife of the servant Lai Wang and the most pathetic of Hsi-men's victims, has a shady past. A maid in Judge Ts'ai's house, she is dismissed from service after she has been found sharing a paramour with her mistress behind the judge's back. Then she is married to a cook and finds time to have an affair with Lai Wang. After her husband has been conveniently killed in a brawl, she joins the Hsi-men household as Lai Wang's wife and easily attracts the attention of her new master. Though she is not as bad as the novelist initially depicts her,⁷ there is no doubt that she is a foolish and vain woman of loose morals.

In his long career as a profligate, then, though Hsi-men has been privileged to deflower young courtesans as an honored customer at brothels, he has not actually seduced a single virgin or virtuous woman from a good family. An indolent sensualist among easy women, he is almost the exact opposite of the energetic seducer in the Western tradition—Don Giovanni. He is certainly not a Vicomte de Valmont, the deliberate corrupter of innocence in Laclos's novel, Les Liaisons Dangereuses. But fortunately for the Chinese novel, if Hsi-men is a mere creature of self-indulgence in contrast to the diabolic French hero, his principal partner in lust—Lotus—does suggest the determination and evil cunning of the Marquise de Merteuil. The Chinese author, of course, lacks the artistry and intellect of Laclos, but if his work does attain moments of moral horror, it is certainly due to his unflinching presentation of Lotus' character. To this aspect of the novel's art we shall return.

But, as has been earlier mentioned, even the portrayal of Lotus has not been entirely unsympathetic, largely because of the author's ambivalent attitude toward the sexual function. Superficially, he is the stern moralist who seizes every opportunity to condemn adultery and debauchery, but the very fact that he takes so many pains to describe the sexual act belies the attitude of moral censure. While a dry, slangy, and at times almost clinical style suffices for most of the shorter passages, in the more elaborate accounts of coition the author relishes its every detail (even when he is not resorting to verse) with a kind of dispassionate lyricism which seems to imply that, while the participants may otherwise disgust us, the act itself, the performing organs, and the human bodies themselves are beautiful sights to contemplate. There are nauseating and even sadistic scenes that nullify that impression, and there is coarse comedy as when, for instance, lascivious-minded onlookers watch a copulating couple. But, on the whole, the sexual act when performed to the mutual pleasure of the partners is never entirely robbed of its human meaning, and for the many frustrated women characters it remains the sole redeeming event in their dull captive existence.

It is a pity that, except for the expensive photolithographic reprints of the tz'u-hua version, cheap modern editions of the novel have always appeared in an expurgated form even though the longer erotic passages are invariably well written. While on most occasions the author is content to borrow and adapt cliché-ridden verses and popular songs, he seems to have composed these passages with loving care. For one thing, his vocabulary, ranging from low dialectal terms to euphemisms of extreme poetic refinement, is quite astounding. To be sure, it is not all his own since sex manuals have been composed as early as the Han dynasty⁸ and erotic imagery has always been noticeable in certain types of Chinese poetry. Nevertheless, Chin P'ing Mei, the first full-length erotic novel in China, has gone far beyond its predecessors in its elaboration of sexual description. Like many Western amatory poets, the author is not without humor in his use of the double-entendre and the mock-heroic style. But, even in his playfulness, he seems to savor the reciprocal joy of the performers in every movement of their play. For the duration of their coupling, their moral stance outside the bed is forgotten and they are seen solely as lovers absorbed in the game of amorous combat.

The author also appears quite sensitive to the pain of sexual frustration. While Hsi-men cavorts with his women, his neglected wives appear the more lonely as they occupy their time with silly chatter and ugly squabbles, with birthday parties and conversations with nuns. With all her moral rectitude and reluctance to press her sexual claims as the first wife, Moon Lady appears perhaps the loneliest of them all. Even Golden Lotus, when she is being temporarily neglected by Hsi-men, invites commiseration as she projects herself in the role of the lovelorn woman in the popular songs. Though the author of Chin P'ing Mei makes no attempt to reconcile the claims of conventional morality and the instinctive self, there is little doubt that his elaborate descriptions of sexual play and his acute sympathy for sexual deprivation represent a kind of personal commitment to values ostensibly denied by the novel.

When all the points that conspire to make the novel a work of haphazard realism and moral ambiguity are conceded, a strong case can nevertheless be made for its being a work of terrifying moral realism if one is able to concentrate on the major episodes involving the main characters—especially Hsi-men, Lotus, Vase, and Moon Lady—and to refuse to be distracted by all the intervening passages of satire and burlesque, of comic frivolity and didactic solemnity. Fortunately, nearly all the “romance” episodes come pell-mell after chapter 80 so that they hardly affect the “novel” within the novel that we shall be considering in this section.⁹

Golden Lotus is clearly the dominant character in that “novel.” Except in her poetic moments, when she appears languid and dispirited, she is the most clear-headed and calculating character of the lot. She is born and reared a slave, and her savagery is the savagery of the slave, abject in her selfishness, cunning in her struggle for security and power, and ruthless toward her rivals and enemies. The plaything of an old roué and the victim of a travesty of marriage to a “seven-inch dwarf,” she is definitely among the injured and insulted, and the modern tendency, among playwrights and novelists who have portrayed her career, is to sympathize with her, at least for her early attempt to achieve a kind of normal happiness with her brother-in-law Wu Sung.¹⁰ But in the novel there is little evidence that she feels romantic about him, certainly not after her beauty has caught the eye of Hsi-men Ch'ing. (In the end, of course, Wu Sung returns as her nemesis. But one cannot take Part III seriously: if she were consistent with her earlier character, she would have tried to avoid rather than have entered with apparent alacrity the trap he sets for her.) And there is little in her character that calls for pity. She herself is unpitiful, and Plum Blossom, in defending her against her detractors, once praises her spirit of cheng-ch'iang, that is, her fierce determination to excel and beat the competition.¹¹ She is pitiless in her murder of her first husband, as in her treatment of her stepdaughter, Ying-erh. When Hsi-men deliberately neglects her following their first fling together, she releases her fury by clawing Ying-erh's face until blood flows.¹² This is a recurring situation: whenever she feels mistreated or sexually frustrated, she inflicts sadistic punishment on her own slave, whether she be the step-daughter or the maid Chrysanthemum (Ch'iu-chü).

Her drama proper begins with her removal to the Hsi-men house. Upon being introduced to the other wives, she knows right away that none is her match in beauty. Nevertheless, to safeguard her position, she ingratiates herself with Moon Lady and assiduously cultivates the favor of her lord not only by eagerly complying with his sexual demands but by making him a present of her pretty maid, Plum Blossom. With his favor more or less assured, she further strengthens her position by forming an alliance with the good-natured Meng Yü-lou, and then she tests her power by picking a fight with the wife enjoying the least favor with their husband, Hsüeh-o. Hsi-men is prevailed upon to kick and beat the latter violently.¹³ His eagerness to please her reassures Lotus and emboldens her to adopt a more aggressive policy toward Moon Lady. In the future she will time and again incite her lord to punish her enemies and demand from him proofs of his love.

But Lotus is also a nymphomaniac, Early conditioned to the notion that a woman's duty is to please her man, she has long capitalized on her slavery to make her lot endurable: to regard herself indeed as a sex instrument, but not so much to please her partner as to gratify herself. Soon she finds Hsi-men's sexual attentions inadequate: though spending little time with the other wives, he is a man of vigor with a roving eye, and a habitué of the local brothels. During one of his prolonged absences, therefore, Lotus forms a liaison with a boy servant, Ch'in T'ung, to satisfy her sexual hunger, but in doing so she incautiously affords the other wives a chance to avenge themselves. Hsüeh-o and Li Chiao-erh inform against her, and the enraged Hsi-men immediately orders his servants to give the boy “thirty terrible stripes till his flesh was torn and the blood ran down his legs,”¹⁴ and then dismisses him from service. But Lotus herself receives much lighter punishment: she is stripped of her clothes and commanded to kneel before her master to be cross-examined. Since the boy has already been harshly punished for his undeniable crime, one might logically expect Hsi-men to exact a confession from her: if he so wishes, he could beat her to death without incurring any legal difficulty. During the interrogation he does lash her once, but then he “looked again at the kneeling woman, her flower-like body unclothed. She was uttering piteous sounds and weeping so touchingly. His anger flew to Java, and with it all but a fraction of his determination to punish her.”¹⁵ Then he beckons Plum Blossom to come over. As he asks her to confirm Lotus' lying words, he keeps on fondling her. His undignified manner of holding court indicates that Lotus' nudity has aroused him (hence his need to fondle Plum Blossom) and he questions the latter so as to get out of a difficult situation without losing face. In this round of battle with her master, Lotus is exposed to public shame and she will be from then on much more on her guard when having trysts with Ching-chi. But the fact that Hsi-men does not have the heart to give her due punishment shows that she still enjoys the upper hand.

Then, to the further advantage of Lotus, Hsi-men becomes much more mellowed as the novel progresses. He still seeks sexual diversity, but more out of habit than out of an inner compulsion. His outbursts of anger become fewer as he becomes increasingly inured to his social and official routine. As a lover, he is now more intent on impressing women with his sexual prowess and giving them pleasure than on receiving pleasure himself. An occasional sadist, he is almost masochistically resigned to punishing himself with strenuous dissipation. In time he shows a more accommodating disposition which finds satisfaction in doing favors for others. His cruel treatment of Vase for her marriage to Dr. Chiang may be said to represent his last imperious act of domestic despotism. Upon installing her as his sixth wife, he absents himself from her chamber for the first three nights. Highly humiliated, she attempts suicide on the third night but, still in a punishing mood the next evening, he whips her and orders her to kneel before him in her nakedness.¹⁶ From then on, however, he finds so much contentment in her love and devotion that he cannot help being humanized under her influence. Vase's great love for Hsi-men is not something easily reconcilable with her cruelty to her first two husbands: this change in her character is primarily dictated by plot requirements so that she may serve as a complete foil to the aggressive and selfish Lotus. But, psychologically speaking, it is not entirely implausible that she should undergo this transformation because, as she repeatedly tells Hsi-men, with him she has finally found sexual fulfillment.¹⁷ He is able to satisfy her as no one else has been, and out of her supreme gratitude she becomes a concerned and affectionate wife.

For Lotus, Vase constitutes the greatest threat to her continuing enjoyment of her privileged position. Quite unlike Vase, she uses her sex primarily as a weapon in the battle for domination and measures her security by the frequency of her husband's visits. She tolerates his desire for sexual diversity only so long as the objects of his attention pose no threat to that security. In chapter 11-50, she has two rivals besides Vase, neither quite so serious. The first is the courtesan Cassia (Li Kuei-chieh), Li Chiao-erh's niece, who takes herself seriously because Hsi-men is her first, deflowering patron. She engages Lotus in a minor feud but, with so many other minor characters to attend to, the novelist soon loses interest in her and she drops out of the competition after chapter 12. The other rival is the pathetic and simple-minded Hui-lien, whom Lotus regards as more dangerous because there is the possibility of her becoming the seventh wife and therefore sharing Hsi-men's favors with her on a legal basis. And she cannot stand her bragging about her improved status as a mistress. When Hui-lien's husband grumbles about his cuckoldom, therefore, it is Lotus who incites Hsi-men to take harsh measures against him. He is first maltreated in prison and then banished to his home town, and the heartbroken Hui-lien commits suicide as a result.¹⁸ Lotus gloats over this triumph.

But Vase is much harder to dispose of. She is a rich lady well liked by everybody whereas Lotus herself is a lowborn slave generally detested in the household. Moreover, the fair-skinned Vase is a beauty in her own right, and once Lotus whitens her own body in an attempt to lure Hsi-men from his new love.¹⁹ But not only is he genuinely fond of Vase and grateful for her money; she soon becomes pregnant whereas, despite her practice of black magic, Lotus remains childless after her two miscarriages. Powerless to score any advantage over her rival, she is reduced to making jeering remarks about her pregnant condition in front of their husband. Hsi-men, however, immediately puts a stop to her impudence by inflicting upon her a mild form of sadism (in chapter 27, generally regarded by Chinese readers as the most obscene chapter in the whole book). The form of her punishment, however, still expresses his fondness for her in that it merely serves him as an excuse for further sexual experimentation. But insofar as Lotus is denied equal partnership in the game, she is being punished. She suffers a temporary setback.

After Vase has given birth to a boy, Lotus feels keenly her total eclipse. In her desperation, she tries to win her man back with proofs of sexual solicitude or to persuade the other wives to turn against her rival. When nothing comes of these efforts, she punishes her own slave, the maid Chrysanthemum, often without the slightest provocation, to give vent to her frustration. The most shocking instance occurs in chapter 58 where her torture of Chrysanthemum serves at once to spite Vase and to aggravate the condition of her sickly baby, Kuan-ko. That evening Lotus has stepped on dog dung and her new shoes are soiled. With a heavy stick she first beats the guilty dog, whose howling wakes up the child in the adjacent suite of rooms. But she continues beating it for a while even after Vase has sent her maid Welcome Spring over to ask her to desist. Next, Lotus berates Chrysanthemum for having kept the dog in her compound at this late hour and orders her to come forward to examine the shoes:

Tricked, she bent her head to look at them. Golden Lotus struck her face several times with one of the shoes until her lips were cut. Chrysanthemum drew back and tried to stop the blood with her hand.

“You slave, so you want to get away from me, eh?” Golden Lotus cursed her. Then to Plum Blossom: “Drag her here and have her kneel down before me. Then get the whip and strip all her clothes off her. I will give her thirty stripes if she takes them nicely. If she tries to dodge, I'll whip her all over.”

Plum Blossom pulled off Chrysanthemum's clothes. Golden Lotus bade her hold the girl's hands, and the blows fell upon her like raindrops. That slave girl shrieked like a pig being killed.

Kuan-ko had only just closed his eyes and now he was startled by the noise. This time Vase bade Embroidered Spring come to Golden Lotus, saying, “My mistress asks the Fifth Lady please to forgive Chrysanthemum. She is afraid the noise will frighten the baby.”

A little earlier, old woman P'an [Lotus' mother, who was paying a visit] was lying on the brick-bed in the inner room when she first heard the screams of Chrysanthemum. She hurriedly got up and asked her daughter to stop, but Golden Lotus would not listen to her. Now that Vase had sent Embroidered Spring over, she again came forward and tried to snatch the whip from her daughter's hand, saying, “Chieh-chieh, please don't beat her any more and give the lady over there cause to complain that you are trying to frighten her baby. I don't mind your breaking a stick over a donkey, but we must not harm that precious sapling.”

Golden Lotus was already wild enough, but when she heard her mother's words she was so inflamed with anger that her face turned purple. She pushed her mother away and the old woman all but fell down. “Old fool,” she said, “you go over there and sit. This doesn't concern you and why do you want to interfere? What's all this crap about a precious sapling and breaking a stick over a donkey? You are in league with everyone else to injure me.”

“You thief, you will surely die an untimely death,” retorted the old woman. “When did I behave like a spy? I came here only to beg a little cold food. How could you push me around like that!”

“If you put in a word for her again, see if I don't fix that old bitch over there,” Golden Lotus warned. “And I can tell you this: nobody is going to stew me in a pot and eat me up.”

Hearing her daughter scolding her so, old woman P'an went to her room and whimpered. Golden Lotus lashed Chrysanthemum twenty or thirty more times. Then she beat her with a stick until her skin and flesh were torn. Before she let the girl go, she drove her sharp nails into her cheeks and scratched them all over.

All this time Vase could only cover the baby's ears with her hands. Tears coursed down her cheeks. She was furious but there was nothing she could do.²⁰

By this scene Lotus has already decided on her course of revenge: to kill Vase's son and deprive her of her major source of advantage. Since the child is especially susceptible to fright, she now trains a cat to pounce on him. Long plagued by illness, he succumbs to the traumatic experience.

Confronted with Lotus' second major act of treachery (her first being her adultery with Ch'in T'ung), Hsi-men acts with surprising timidity. Though both Vase and Moon Lady have no reason to doubt that Lotus has deliberately trained the cat to scare the boy, Hsi-men makes no attempt to find out the truth when informed of his critical condition:

Hsi-men Ch'ing flew into a furious rage. He went straight to Golden Lotus' room and, without a word, took the cat by the legs and dashed out its brains on the stone flags underneath the eaves. There was a thud. The cat's brain was scattered like ten thousand peach blossoms, and its teeth like broken jade. Verily,

No longer would it catch mice in the world of men,
As it returned to the world of shades as a feline fairy.

When Golden Lotus saw her cat destroyed, she just sat on her bed and did not stir once. But no sooner had he crossed her doorsill than she muttered a curse, “Thief, someday you will die a robber's death. If you dragged me out of here and killed me, you would indeed be a hero. But what had the cat done to you that you should rush in like one gone crazy and hurl him to his death? When he goes to the court in hell and demands his life from you, I hope you will then be prepared. You thief and fickle scoundrel, you will come to no good end.”²¹

Recall how, in dealing with her earlier adultery, Hsi-men has at least gone through the motions of an interrogation; at this more dangerous manifestation of her malignity, he merely vents his wrath on the cat without even bothering to ask her any question. Though at the moment he may be too upset to punish her, still, he never returns to this task following the death of his son. We may blame the novelist for his failure to provide a major scene of confrontation, but his quiet handling of the present scene may imply that Hsi-men is now too much aware of Lotus' power over him to want to challenge it. She remains thoroughly insolent, acting the part of an injured woman whose beloved pet has been unaccountably destroyed. Hsi-men appears to beat a hasty retreat as Lotus' muttered curses trail after him.

The death of her son has also completely broken Vase's spirit. She no longer cares to keep up her struggle against Lotus and resigns herself to ill-health and death, leaving Hsi-men disconsolate and Lotus in a position to regain her dominance. But, in the short run, the removal of her rival has the effect of further alienating Hsi-men from Lotus not because he bears her any grudge but because, in the clutches of grief, he wants to keep vigil in Vase's bedchamber and does not feel the usual sexual stimulation. Then, one night, out of his gratitude to the nurse-maid Ju-i (Heart's Delight, in Egerton's translation), who has remained doggedly loyal to her dead mistress, he takes her to bed with him and lets nature reassert itself. Lotus is amused but not alarmed: she cannot dominate him unless he takes an active interest in women. While still grieving for Vase, Hsi-men now spends his nights with Ju-i; the affectionate courtesan Moonbeam (Cheng Ai-yüeh-erh), certainly the most charming girl in the whole book; and, of course, Lotus. Then he takes his trip to the capital.²²

Lotus' specialty as a sex partner takes the form of fellatio or, in Chinese euphemism, p'in-hsiao (tasting or playing the flute). The night before Hsi-men takes off for the capital, he and Lotus play that game, indicating his increasingly passive role even in bed. Upon his return, he spends his first night with Lotus, but he cannot fall asleep even after he has made love to her. Since Lotus also remains unsatisfied, she again suggests the game of p'in-hsiao to prove her utter devotion to him. At the risk of offending the reader, I must quote the ensuing important passage which happens to be one of the most disgusting scenes in the novel:

The woman made that suggestion for no other reason than to tie Hsi-men's heart to her. Moreover, he had been away from her for half a month; during all that time she had been so starved of sex that she was aflame with lust. Now that he was again with her, she wished she could enter his belly and stay there for good. So for the whole night she relished the flute without once letting it leave her mouth. When finally Hsi-men wanted to get off the bed to urinate, the woman still would not release the flute, saying, “My dearest, please pass all the urine you have stored up right in my mouth and let me swallow it. It is not worth the trouble to get up and expose your warm body to the cold.” Hearing this, Hsi-men was filled with boundless delight. He said, “Baby, I don't believe anyone could love me as much as you do.” Then he really passed water in her mouth and she let it go down her throat and slowly she swallowed it all. Hsi-men asked, “Does it taste good?” Golden Lotus answered, “It tastes a little alkaline. I would like to have fragrant tea leaves to take the taste away.” Hsi-men said, “There are some fragrant tea leaves in my white silk jacket. Get them for yourself.” Golden Lotus pulled the jacket from the headboard toward her, took a few leaves, and put them in her mouth.²³

For emphasis, the author concludes the scene with a didactic comment:

Readers, concubines are always ready to lead their husbands on and bewitch them. To this end, they will go to any length of shamelessness and endure anything no matter how revolting. Such practices would be abhorrent to a real wife properly married to her husband.²⁴

This episode, which could have been thought up only by a perverted genius, marks a new stage of Hsi-men's dotage. Apparently under the impression that Lotus really cares for him, from then on he spends most of his nights with her, to the consternation of his other wives, and she in turn becomes far more demanding and censorious of his behavior. A tired debauchee now occasionally complaining of aches in the groin and limbs, he almost has to get Lotus' permission to stay with other women. One evening he tells her that he is going to stay with Ju-i:

“Why don't you undress?” she asked.

He hugged her and smiled apologetically. “I came especially to tell you I am going over there tonight. Please give me that bundle of love-instruments.”

“You convict,” the woman scolded him. “So you think you can hoodwink me and get by with a nice excuse. If I had not been waiting at the side door, you would have gone there already. You think you would then have asked for my permission? This morning you promised that slut that you would sleep with her tonight and tell stories about me. That's why you didn't send a maid here, but asked her to bring the fur coat herself and kowtow to me. That slut, what does she take me for, trying to play tricks on me that way! When Vase was alive, you treated me like dirt. You think I won't get mad just because you are going to her old nest with some other birdie?”

“Who said I promised her anything?” Hsi-men Ch'ing said, again putting on a smile. “If she hadn't come and kowtowed to you, you would have had just as much cause to curse her.”

The woman deliberated for a long while and then said, “I will let you go, but you shall not take along that bundle. The things will all be filthy after you are through with that slut. Since you are going to sleep with me tomorrow anyway, let them stay clean.”

“But I am so accustomed to them I don't know what to do without them.”

Hsi-men Ch'ing badgered her for a long time, and she finally threw the silver clasp at him. “Take this thing if you must have it,” she said. Hsi-men Ch'ing put it into his sleeve as he said, “This is better than nothing.” Then he eagerly stepped out.

The woman called him back. “Come here. I am talking to you. I suppose you are going to sleep with her in the same bed the whole night through? If you do so, even the two maids there will feel ashamed. You'd better stay a little while and then let her sleep elsewhere.”

“Who said I shall sleep with her long?” Hsi-men said. He was leaving again.

Again the woman called him back. “Come here,” she said, “I order you. Why are you in such a hurry?”

“What do you want now?” Hsi-men Ch'ing said.

“You can sleep with her only because I let you, but I forbid you to talk a lot of nonsense about me. If you do, you'll encourage her to be brazen in front of us. If I find out you have done anything of the sort, I will bite off your thing the next time you come to my room.”

“Oh, you funny little whore,” Hsi-men Ch'ing said, “how can I put up with so many of your instructions?” Then he went straight to that other place.²⁵

One perceives a changed tone in their relationship: Hsi-men is now the furtive and apologetic husband and Lotus the righteous, commanding wife who has him at her beck and call with such rude commands as “I am talking to you” and “I order you.”

The next evening Lotus counts on Hsi-men's presence in her bedroom. According to the calendar, it is an auspicious night for getting pregnant, and she has prepared a special medicine for that purpose. But Hsi-men, after a busy day with his colleagues, is being detained in Moon Lady's room where other ladies of the house and women guests are gathered for a party. Impatient, Lotus goes straight to Moon Lady's suite to call him:

Seeing that Hsi-men Ch'ing showed no sign of leaving, she stepped forward and pulled aside the curtain, saying, “If you are not coming, I shall go. I haven't patience to wait for you any longer.”

Hsi-men Ch'ing said, “My child, you go first. I will come when I've finished my wine.” Golden Lotus went away.²⁶

Even for Lotus, this is unheard-of impudence: to charge into Moon Lady's room uninvited and try to drag their common husband away from her in front of all her guests. Little wonder the hitherto uncomplaining Moon Lady is provoked to pour forth in a magnificent tirade the accumulated resentments of the other wives against Lotus:

Then Moon Lady said, “I don't want you to go to her. And I have something more to tell you. It looks as if you two were wearing only one pair of pants. What kind of manners are these to barge in like that and force you to leave! That shameless slut! She thinks that she alone is your wife and the rest of us nobodies, and you are contemptible enough to go along with her. No wonder people are criticizing you behind your back. We are all your wives and you ought to treat us decently. You needn't advertise the fact that that one in the front court has got you body and soul. Since you came back from the Eastern Capital, you haven't spent a single night in the inner courts. Naturally people are annoyed. You should put fire into the cold stove before you begin on the hot one, and you have no right to allow one woman to monopolize you. So far as I am concerned, it doesn't matter because I don't care for games of this sort. But the others can't stand it. They don't say anything but, however good-natured they are, they must feel resentful. Third Sister Meng didn't eat a thing all the time we were at Brother Ying's place. She probably caught a chill in the stomach and has been feeling nauseated ever since. Mistress Ying gave her two cups of wine, but she couldn't keep it down. You should really go and see her.”²⁷

Hsi-men stays that night with Meng Yü-lou. But, even though her plans for the night remain unfulfilled, Lotus has affronted Moon Lady not thoughtlessly but deliberately, to advertise her improved position that can stand the combined assault of the other wives. Chapter 75, from which the preceding three excerpts have been taken, details their belated desperate attempts to curb her power. But their efforts come to little: Lotus is brought to give perfunctory apologies to Moon Lady but she retains her absolute dominion over their common husband.

By now Lotus is openly carrying on with Ching-chi whenever Hsi-men is not around to watch her. Precisely because Hsi-men himself is approaching his end (he dies in chapter 79), he seems to have partially recovered his zest for sexual conquest. His new mistress is Madame Lin, a lewd woman of the higher class, but for the first time in his life he is itching after something virtuous and unobtainable: the young and attractive wife of his newly arrived colleague, Captain Ho.²⁸ The night during the Lantern Festival when he is keeping his tryst with Wang VI, remembrance of the beautiful image of Mrs. Ho gives him a semblance of passion and he is literally exhausted. He falls into a dead sleep as soon as he returns to Lotus' bed in the small hours of the night. Lotus, wide awake with lust, finds him completely limp and incapable of sexual combat. In deep frustration, she finally wakes him up to ask where the aphrodisiac pills are, empties out the last four pills in the box, and takes one herself. Though well aware that the normal dosage per night is one pill (and Hsi-men has already taken that pill in readiness for his bout with Wang VI), Lotus has him swallow all three with a cup of strong white liquor so as to restore his virility even in his state of extreme fatigue. Soon the pills take effect. She then sits astride his inert body, applies some aphrodisiac ointment to harden the erection, and hungrily seeks deep penetration. She reaches orgasm twice, wetting in all five towels. But the somnolent Hsi-men cannot release himself even though his thoroughly congested glans is now assuming the color of raw liver. Scared, Lotus sucks it with her mouth until a large quantity of semen finally squirts out.

At first it was semen, and then it turned into a fluid composed mainly of blood, and there was no more hope for him. Hsi-men had fainted away, with his stiff limbs outstretched. Frightened, the woman hurriedly placed a few red dates in his mouth. But blood had followed semen and, now that the blood supply had been exhausted, his penis kept on squirting nothing but cold air until the ejaculatory motion stopped.²⁹

The author immediately adds to this grim passage a didactic summary of Hsi-men's career as follows:

Gentle reader, a man's supply of vitality is limited even though there are no bounds to his desire for sexual pleasure. It is also said that the addict to sexual pleasure has shallow spiritual capacities. Hsi-men Ch'ing had abandoned himself to lust, not realizing that when the oil in a lamp is exhausted its light will fail and that when the marrow in his bones goes dry a man will die.³⁰

But even a short-lived rake doesn't necessarily have to die a horrible death. The ghastly account of Hsi-men's collapse, while supporting the didactic passage, actually gives the impression of his murder by an unfeeling and insatiable nymphomaniac. In the next few days, while the best doctors are being summoned to succor him, Lotus still takes advantage of his peculiar condition (“His swollen scrotum was large and shiny like an eggplant”)³¹ to get sexual satisfaction: “His penis was firm as iron and day and night it stayed erect. At night, Lotus, who should have known better, would still sit astride him and have intercourse with him. And during a single night he would faint away and then regain consciousness several times over.”³²

The cumulative use of explicit pornography has finally yielded an unmistakable moral interest—in her triumphant posture over a moribund body to extract the last few pleasurable moments out of it and in her total contempt for the person of Hsi-men Ch'ing, Lotus is herself exposed as a loathsome creature of utter depravity. But, ultimately, Lotus' triumph proves her undoing. If Hsi-men is her instrument of pleasure, he is more importantly her source of power and security. Without his protection, she will be again a slave girl defenseless against the world. But in her insane pursuit of momentary pleasure, she becomes quite reckless of her future, and the ultimate pathos of her life is that all her cunning and cruel schemes for assuring herself a favored position in the Hsi-men household have been designed to secure a steady supply of sexual pleasure. She sees nothing beyond sex.

In reviewing the highlights of this self-contained novel about Lotus and Hsi-men, we have seen that their relationship is informed neither by the sentiment of love nor by what we would normally call sexual passion. As Westerners understand it, passion demands exclusiveness: though for obvious reasons Lotus wants to monopolize Hsi-men, she does not seriously expect from him complete loyalty, nor is she loyal to him though, confined to the house under the jealous surveillance of all the womenfolk, she has far less opportunity for promiscuity than her husband. She takes a passing fancy to a boy servant and later forms a liaison with a son-in-law, practically the only man in the household besides her master who is not of the servant class. For both sensualists, their bond is mainly physical: with all his variety of erotic adventures, Hsi-men still regards Lotus as the most satisfactory bedfellow, and Lotus, with her limited association with men, cannot expect a sexual partner of greater virility. On the elementary level, therefore, theirs is the biological drama of animal copulation. While man appears initially more aggressive and domineering than woman, he is her biological inferior and is inevitably beaten in the unequal combat. On that level Lotus appears as the queen bee or black widow spider except that, in her conscious contrivance for pleasure, her rapacity has ceased to be procreative.³³

Their relationship further shows the degeneracy of love in a polygamous and promiscuous society. When a man can buy as many concubines and slave girls and enjoy as many mistresses and prostitutes as his money and strength incline him to, he tends to regard each of his acquisitions as a thing rather than as a person. (It is of interest to note that in China pornographic stories began as reports of life in a royal or imperial harem.)³⁴ A concubine can, of course, secure the love of her husband with her infinite solicitude, as Vase does in the novel, but normally when a woman is regarded by her master as a thing, she, too, loses sight of her humanity. The apparent irony that the slave girl Lotus should turn out to be far more evil than the slave master Hsi-men is therefore understandable. As a man of wealth and position, he receives so much flattering attention from his wives and mistresses, his friends and hangers-on, that he can afford to be pleased with himself and to appear good-natured and generous. Though obsessed with sex, he has so many business interests and official duties to attend to that he turns to his women in the evenings as an agreeable break in his routine. Moreover, as a social conformist, he has to be pleasant and polite to the outside world and maintain a façade of good manners. Lotus, on the other hand, enjoys none of these social advantages. Isolated from the outside world and living in a household of constant squabbles, she doesn't have to be pleasant and watch her manners (in contrast, the courtesans, because it is their job to entertain their customers, appear much more vivacious and courteous than the wives of Hsi-men). She pursues no cultural interests (except her occasional singing) and has no visitors of her own (except her mother). All her thoughts are therefore directed to the one object that redeems her dull and mean existence—her enjoyment of sex—and her life is further brutalized as a consequence.

Katherine Anne Porter once wrote that Lady Chatterley's Lover describes a life that is nothing “but a long, dull grey, monotonous chain of days, lightened now and then by a sexual bout.”³⁵ If this description is somewhat unfair to Lawrence's novel, it could be applied to Chin P'ing Mei with far greater justice except that the chain of days in the Hsi-men household is not lightened but rendered more ponderous by the high frequency of sexual combat. Lotus is so dead earnest about sex that its enjoyment leaves no room for spontaneous and carefree fun. She is at nearly all times so grimly occupied that one is almost startled to find her in a rare moment of thoughtless merriment. In chapter 15, while on a visit to Vase's house during the Lantern Festival, Lotus stays upstairs to watch the street sights below:

Golden Lotus, Meng Yü-lou, and two singing-girls continued to look out the window at the fair.

Golden Lotus rolled up the sleeves of her white-silk outer jacket to show off the sleeves of her inner jacket which were embroidered all over with gold thread. She further displayed her ten fingers, all lustrous and daintily shaped like stalks of scallion. On them were six gold rings in the form of stirrups. Leaning half out of the window, she cracked melon seeds with her teeth and threw the shells at the people in the street. She laughed with Yü-lou all the time. Now and again she would point to something in the street and say excitedly, “Big sister, come and look at the pair of hydrangea-lanterns under the eaves of that house. They whirl back and forth and up and down so prettily.” Then: “Second sister, come and look at the big fish-lantern hanging from the lantern-frame by the gate opposite our house. Dangling from that big fish are so many little fish, turtles, shrimps, and crabs. They move about in unison so gaily.” Then she called Yü-lou, “Third sister, look over there at the grandma-lantern and grandpa-lantern.”

Suddenly a gust of wind made a large hole in the lower part of the grandma-lantern, and Golden Lotus laughed unceasingly.³⁶

In this scene Lotus is still new in the Hsi-men household and she flaunts her beauty without guile and retains the natural grace of a child in her gleeful enjoyment of the sights. The child in her rarely emerges after that. For Lotus as for most other members of that household, it is their willing forfeiture of innocence through their preoccupation with pleasure, security, or salvation that spells the boredom and horror of their existence.

Notes

1. In Chung-kuo wen-hsüeh fa-chan shih (The development of Chinese literature) (Peking, Chung-hua shu-chü, 1963), III, 1064, Liu Ta-chieh gives Ting Yao-k'ang's dates as 1599-1670, though other literary historians consulted by me give only approximate dates. His 64-chapter novel, although erotic, demonstrates the workings of karma with didactic explicitness. Subsequently, an author with the studio name of Ssu-ch'iao Chü-shih condensed the work to 48 chapters, renamed all its characters, and gave it the new title Ko-lien hua-ying. The latter is available in a German translation by Franz Kuhn under the title Blumenschatten hinter dem Vorhang (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1956); Vladimir Kean, tr., Flower Shadows Behind the Curtain (New York, 1959) is a shortened translation of the German version. For further information on Hsü Chin P'ing Mei and Ko-lien hua-ying see Dr. Kuhn's introduction to Kean's translation. The author of Chin P'ing Mei is supposed to have written a sequel called Yü chiao li (not to be confused with Yü Chiao Li, listed in Bibliography VIII), but this work, if it ever existed, has been long lost.

2. CPM, ts'e 16, chap. 75, p. 1b.

3. I have already mentioned P'u-ching, who claims Hsiao-ko at the end of the novel, and the mysterious Indian monk who gives Hsi-men the aphrodisiac pills and ointment in chap. 49. While the latter's fierce looks suggest “a veritable Lohan [Arhat],” (Egerton, II, 305), the former is supposed to be the incarnation of an ancient Buddha. In Hsü Chin P'ing Mei P'u-ching is definitely identified as an avatar of the Bodhisattva Kshitigarbha.

4. The story of Chiang Chu-shan is given in chaps. 17 and 19.

5. Wen Pi-ku is unmasked in chap. 76. His name puns with the phrase wen p'i-ku (warm the buttocks). Many of Hsi-men's sponging friends have such punning names.

6. A paramour of her brother-in-law, Wang VI enters into a liaison with Hsi-men with the connivance of her husband. Madame Lin's lewdness is known even among the local courtesans. It is Cheng Ai-yüeh-erh who informs Hsi-men of Madame Lin's availability in chap. 68. Hsi-men calls on the lady one afternoon in chap. 78, and they are in bed the same evening.

7. Hui-lien's past history is recounted in chap. 22. See Egerton, I, 349-50.

8. Cf. Han shu, chüan 30, Yi-wen chih (Essay on bibliography), which lists eight sex manuals.

9. In Part II, only the story of the servant Miao Ch'ing and his murdered master Miao T'ien-hsiu as given in chaps. 47-48 blocks the flow of the narrative. It is adapted from one of the crime-case stories in the collection known as Lung-t'u kung-an or Pao kung-an. Hanan believes that this borrowed tale “causes perhaps the only serious break in the Chin P'ing Mei's continuity” (“Sources,” p. 42).

10. Ou-yang Yü-ch'ien, noted for his varied activities in behalf of the modern Chinese theater, wrote P'an Chin-lien, a short play first published in Hsin-yüeh Yüeh-k'an, I, No. 4 (1928). Among the many popular historical novels by Nan-kung Po, a Hong Kong author now residing in Taiwan, is P'an Chin-lien (Taipei, Ta-fang shu-chü, 1965).

11. CPM, ts'e 17, chap. 78, p. 23a.

12. This episode takes place in chap. 8.

13. In chap. 11.

14. Egerton, I, 163 (CPM, ts'e 4, chap. 12, p. 8a).

15. CPM, ts'e 4, chap. 12, p. 9b.

16. This incident takes place in chap. 19.

17. In chap. 17 Vase is grateful to Hsi-men for his sexual attentions after being long neglected by her first husband. She tells her lover, “Who is ever like you in knowing how to please me? You are the medicine that cures my sickness. Night and day I can think only of you” (CPM, ts'e 5, chap. 17, p. 2b). Later, Vase marries Dr. Chiang to spite Hsi-men for his neglect. Following their reconciliation, however, she again praises him, using the same medical metaphor, “You are the medicine that cures me. Once treated by you, I could think only of you day and night” (CPM, ts'e 5, chap. 19, p. 15b).

18. In chap. 26.

19. In chap. 29.

20. CPM, ts'e 13, chap. 58, pp. 14b-15a.

21. CPM, ts'e 13, chap. 59, pp. 12a-b.

22. Vase dies in chap. 62 and Hsi-men takes his trip to the capital in chap. 70.

23. CPM, ts'e 16, chap. 72, pp. 10b-11a.

24. Ibid., pp. 11a-b.

25. CPM, ts'e 16, chap. 75, pp. 1b-2b. The antecedents relevant to our understanding of this conversation are as follows. Early that morning, after a night of love-making, Lotus asked Hsi-men to give her the sable coat that used to belong to Vase. After getting up, he went straight to Ju-i's room to get the coat. To placate Ju-i, who complained of his neglect, Hsi-men gave her a few pieces of Vase's clothing and promised her to stay the coming night with her. Ju-i then personally took the sable coat to Lotus and kowtowed to her. In the afternoon Hsi-men entertained some important guests at home. After he had seen them off to their sedan-chairs, upon his return to the house he was intercepted at the side door by Lotus and taken to her room.

    This excerpt contains at least two misprints. On page 2a, l.4, the period should be removed after the phrase ch'en-tao since it does not form a sentence with the preceding characters but begins a new sentence, Ch'en-tao t'ou-li pu-shih ya-t'ou … (That's why you didn't send a maid …). On the same page, l.6, the phrase lung p'an-tzu must have been a misprint for lung la-tzu, since the characters p'an (Mathews', No. 4893) and la (No. 3757) look rather alike. For the meanings of ch'en-tao and lung la-tzu, see Lu Tan-an, Hsiao-shuo tz'u-yü hui-shih (A dictionary of phrases and idioms from traditional Chinese fiction), pp. 608, 253.

26. Ibid., p. 17a.

27. Ibid., pp. 17a-b.

28. Hsi-men first sees her in chap. 78.

29. CPM, ts'e 17, chap. 79, p. 9b.

30. Ibid., pp. 9b-10a.

31. Ibid., p. 13b.

32. Ibid., p. 16a.

33. However, as noted earlier, Lotus has had two miscarriages while living with Hsi-men. After his death, she cohabits with Ch'en Ching-chi and again becomes pregnant. In chap. 85 she undergoes an abortion.

34. The first such story is “Chao Fei-yen wai-chuan,” most probably of the Han period; it is translated as “The Emperor and the Two Sisters” in Wolfgang Bauer and Herbert Franke, eds., The Golden Casket. Though scholars are not agreed about its date of composition, Chin Hai-ling tsung-yü wang-shen (King Hai-ling of the Chin dynasty destroys himself through unrestrained debauchery), the most blatant example of pornography in the San-yen collections and certainly one of the earliest such stories to employ the vernacular, adapts its salacious material partly from official history. Hanan traces Chin P'ing Mei's indebtedness to Ju-i-chün chuan, a Ming pornographic story in the literary language about Empress Wu and one of her favorites (“Sources,” pp. 43-47).

35. Katherine Anne Porter, “A Wreath for the Gamekeeper,” Encounter, XIV, No. 2 (1960), pp. 72-73.

36. CPM, ts'e 4, chap. 15, pp. 3b-4a.

Bibliography

A

Chin P‘ing Mei tz‘u-hua. 21 vols., Peiping, Ku-i hsiao-shuo k‘an-hsing-hui, 1933; 5 vols., Tokyo, Daian, 1963.

Hsin-k‘o hsiu-hsiang p‘i-p‘ing Chin P‘ing Mei (Chin P‘ing Mei: a new block print edition with illustrations and notes). There are no satisfactory modern reprints of this Ch‘ung-chen edition.

Egerton, Clement, tr. The Golden Lotus. 4 vols. London, Routledge, 1939; New York, Paragon Book Gallery, 1962.

Kuhn, Franz, tr. Kin Ping Meh, oder, Die Abenteuerliche Geschichte von Hsi Men und seinen sechs Frauen. Leipzig, Insel-Verlag, 1930.

Miall, Bernard, tr. Chin P‘ing Mei: The Adventurous History of Hsi Men and His Six Wives. New York, Putnam, 1940; reprint: Capricorn Books, 1962. A translation of the Kuhn version.

B

Bishop, John L. “A Colloquial Short Story in the Novel Chin P‘ing Mei,” in Bishop, ed., Studies in Chinese Literature.

Feng Yuan-chün. “Chin P‘ing Mei tz‘u-hua chung ti wen-hsüch shih-liao” (Materials for literary history in Chin P‘ing Mei), in Kuchü shuo-hui (Studies in old drama). Peking, Tso-chia ch‘u-pan-she, 1956.

Hanan, P. D. “A Landmark of the Chinese Novel,” in Douglas Grant and Millar MacLure, eds., The Far East: China and Japan. University of Toronto Press, 1961.

—“The Text of the Chin P‘ing Mei,” Asia Major (new series), ix, Pt. 1 (1962).

—“Sources of the Chin P‘ing Mei,” Asia Major (new series), x, Pt. 1 (1963).

Wu Han. “Chin P‘ing Mei ti chu-tso shih-tai chi ch‘i she-hui pei-ching” (The age in which Chin P‘ing Mei was written and its social background), in Tu-shih cha-chi (Notes on history). Peking, San-lien shu-tien, 1957.

Yao Ling-hsi, ed. P‘ing-wai chih-yen (Papers and reference materials on Chin P‘ing Mei). Tientsin, Tientsin shu-chü, 1940. Reprint: Nagoya, Saika shorin, 1962. Contains a valuable glossary by the editor.

SOURCE: Roy, David T. “Chang Chu-p'o's Commentary on the Chin p'ing mei.” In Chinese Narrative: Critical and Theoretical Essays, edited by Andrew H. Plaks, pp. 115-23. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977.

[In this essay, Roy suggests that Chang Chu-p'o's commentary on Chin p'ing mei (The Golden Lotus) represents an early Chinese poetics of the novel. Chang Chu-p'o's assessment of the novel focuses on the style, structure, and technique of the work and de-emphasizes the issues of allegory and morality for which The Golden Lotus was notorious.]

In 1644 Chin Sheng-t'an (d. 1661) published an edition of the Shui-hu chuan, the text of which was accompanied by his own critical commentary.¹ Although rudimentary commentaries on works of vernacular fiction had appeared as early as the second half of the sixteenth century, this work of Chin Sheng-t'an eclipsed all its predecessors in popularity and established a vogue that resulted in the production of commentaries for all the major novels. As a result, from the late seventeenth century until the 1920's the most popular works of vernacular fiction were nearly always published with accompanying commentaries, and it is safe to assume that the way in which they were read was influenced by the viewpoints the commentators expressed. This large body of practical criticism must have exercised a considerable influence not only on the way in which existing works of fiction were understood and appreciated but also on the way in which new works were created. Despite this fact, however, with the exception of Chin Sheng-t'an's work² and the Chih-yen Chai comments on the Hung-lou meng,³ none of the commentaries on the major novels has been seriously studied.⁴

I am convinced that this sizable body of neglected criticism deserves our serious attention. If we are not simply to impose the critical concepts that have evolved from the study of Western literature on works that are the product of an alien tradition, it is incumbent upon us to learn as much as we can of the critical concepts that have informed the interpretation, and influenced the composition, of Chinese fiction in the past. One of the most important works in this neglected tradition is Chang Chu-p'o's commentary on the Chin p'ing mei,⁵ written sometime between 1666 and 1684,⁶ which has not hitherto attracted any scholarly attention. The following remarks should be regarded as a preliminary progress report on my continuing exploration of this perplexing but rewarding subject.

Who was Chang Chu-p'o? We are not even certain of his identity, for Chu-p'o is a courtesy name rather than his formal given name. All that we know about him is that he is alleged to have been a native of P'eng-ch'eng,⁷ an old name for Hsü-chou in northern Kiangsu, and that he may have been the son of an elder half-brother of Chang Ch'ao,⁸ a native of She-hsien in Anhwei, who resided in Yangchow during the last decades of the seventeenth century and who was a prominent author, patron of letters, and connoisseur of the arts.⁹

Among Chang Ch'ao's many publications there is an entertaining collection of his own aphoristic remarks on the art of life to which he gave the title Yu-meng ying, or Quiet Dream Visions. This work was circulated in manuscript among his friends before it was published, and he solicited their comments on it. His circle of acquaintances included many of the best-known writers, artists, and connoisseurs of the day, and, when the Yu-meng ying was published, their comments on his original aphorisms as well as on each others' remarks were included in it.¹⁰ Eighty-three of these comments, more than twice the number contributed by anyone else, are by someone named Chang Chu-p'o, who once refers to Chang Ch'ao as his father's younger brother.¹¹ These comments are clever, indicate a familiarity with, and appreciation for, vernacular fiction, and express attitudes toward life that are consistent with those expressed in Chang Chu-p'o's commentary on the Chin p'ing mei. There is no reason to doubt that they are by the same person.

In fact, there is some more conclusive evidence. At one point in the Yu-meng ying, Chang Chu-p'o remarks: “To write a commentary on a book is not difficult in itself. What is difficult is to get Heaven to provide one with the security and leisure, the time and the place, needed in order to write a commentary on a book.”¹² Later on he says, “I have had the experience of getting into trouble for printing a book.”¹³ This surely refers to his edition of the Chin p'ing mei, which was generally regarded as a pornographic work. In 1687 the Emperor K'ang-hsi issued an edict strictly prohibiting the publication of pornographic novels,¹⁴ and it may well have been as a result of this edict that he got into trouble.

We do not know Chang Chu-p'o's exact dates, but he tells us that he wrote his commentary at the age of twenty-six.¹⁵ Since the first-known reference to his work is dated 1684,¹⁶ we can assume that it was completed by the early 1680's, which would mean he was probably born in the 1650's. The only other information we have is a statement written between 1712 and 1715 by Liu T'ing-chi, who tells us that Chang Chu-p'o unfortunately did not live for long, and that after his death the printing blocks for his edition of the Chin p'ing mei were turned over in repayment of a debt to a man named Wang T'ien-yü, who burned them.¹⁷ Fortunately the work was already widely enough known so that this wanton act of destruction did not prevent its continued circulation.

Chang Chu-p'o's commentary on the Chin p'ing mei is a work of practical criticism distinguished from the work of other Chinese commentators by its emphasis on the structural integrity of the work rather than on the explication of allegory, the moral evaluation of subject matter, or the subjective appreciation of literary effects. We are fortunate to have Chang Chu-p'o's own statement of how he felt his approach differed from that of his most influential predecessor, Chin Sheng-t'an. In the introduction to his commentary he says:

The bulk of Chin Sheng-t'an's commentary on the Shui-hu chuan consists of short subjective comments. After several tens of chapters of my commentary had been published, someone mentioned this to me. I laughed and said, ‘The Shui-hu chuan is a successful composition in which the large structure is completely explicit. Each of the one hundred and eight characters has his own biography, and although these are interwoven, their sequence is perfectly clear. Therefore, Chin Sheng-t'an merely commented on individual words and phrases. In the Chin p'ing mei, on the other hand, the fine points of the large structure are concealed amid a welter of details. If one were to confine oneself to analyzing the subtleties of individual words and phrases, one would lose sight of the fine points of the large structure.’¹⁸

In another place Chang Chu-p'o tells us something about his motivation for composing his commentary and the way in which he approached his task. He says:

Why have I written a commentary on the Chin p'ing mei? I was impressed by the way in which the thousand stitches and ten thousand threads that make up the hundred chapters of this vast work are constituted from a single strand, and yet despite a thousand twists and ten thousand turns not a single thread is exposed to view. As I sat in solitude by my lonely window, reading the histories and standard authors, I occasionally took the time to glance at it and said to myself, ‘If someone does not divulge the golden needle by means of which such a superb work of literature was wrought, will people not fail to do justice to the infinite pains expended by the author.’

Some time passed during which I was afraid to undertake the task, not daring to take up my pen in haste. The details of this book are as fine as the hairs of an ox, which are numbered by the thousands and tens of thousands, yet all belong to a single body and are sustained by the same circulatory system. Although the needle-work is concealed, even widely separated elements are interconnected. Though I had certain insights I was deterred by the magnitude of the task.

More recently, oppressed by poverty and grief, and goaded by ‘heat and cold,’ when time weighed heavily on my hands, I came to regret that I had not myself composed a book about the way of the world in order to relieve my depression. Several times I was on the point of setting pen to paper but was deterred by the amount of planning which the over-all structure required. And so I laid aside my pen and said to myself, ‘Why don't I carefully work out the means by which this predecessor of mine constructed his book on “heat and cold”? In the first place this task will relieve my depression; and, in the second place, my elucidation of the work of my predecessor can count as an equivalent for my own planning of a book in the present. Although I may not have created anything of my own, will I not be required to do as much in order to ascertain the means by which this book was created in the past?’ Thus I have created a Chin p'ing mei for myself. How could I spare the time to write a commentary on the Chin p'ing mei for anyone else?¹⁹

The most succinct statement of Chang Chu-p'o's critical views is found in his essay in one hundred and eight numbered sections, entitled “How to Read the Chin p'ing mei,” which comprises the bulk of the prolegomena to his commentary. In the pages that follow I will select some of the more interesting passages from this work and let him speak in his own words.

To begin with, Chang Chu-p'o does not choose to concern himself, as so many others have done, with speculation as to the identity of the author of the Chin p'ing mei or with attempts to interpret it as a roman-à-clef. He says:

Hearsay in such matters is generally apocryphal and not to be taken seriously. … Therefore I shall ignore the theory that Hsi-men Ch'ing was intended to represent Yen Shih-fan [d. 1565], whose pieh-hao was Tung-lou and whose childhood name was Ch'ing-erh. As for the person who wrote the book I shall simply refer to him as the author. … Recently, I have seen a work called Ti-ch'i ts'ai-tzu shu [‘the seventh work by and for men of genius:’ an edition of the P'i-pa chi with commentary by Mao Tsung-kang]²⁰ which is full of speculation about Wang Ssu. [There is a theory that the P'i-pa chi was written to satirize a certain Wang IV since the characters for p'i-pa contain four examples of the element wang.]²¹ Although every commentator is entitled to his own views, I wonder if the time spent on these inconclusive speculations might not better be devoted to appreciation of the literary techniques embodied in the work.²²

Chang Chu-p'o's comments are not directed to the casual reader of fiction, the seeker after entertainment or diversion, but to the actual or potential practitioner of creative writing as a serious form of art. Here are a few of the things he has to say on this subject:

The Chin p'ing mei should not be read in a desultory fashion. If you read it that way, you will read only the obscene passages. Only if you take several days and read it all the way through will you perceive the single thread of continuity upon which the author has strung his succession of rising and falling actions.²³

If you try to imagine how the author conceived of this wealth of individually structured episodes you will come to realize how much planning, interweaving, and tailoring was required.²⁴

If you read the Chin p'ing mei as a description of actual events you will be deceived by it. You must read it as a work of literature in order not to be deceived by it.²⁵

If you read the Chin p'ing mei as a work of literature by the author you will be deceived by it. You must read it as though it were a work of your own in order not to be deceived by it.²⁶

Though you should certainly read it as though it were a work of your own, it is even better to read it as a work that is still in its early planning stages. Only if you start out with the assumption that you will have to work out every detail for yourself in order to avoid being deceived, will you avoid being deceived.²⁷

There is no feature of the art of writing that is not illustrated in the Chin p'ing mei.²⁸

How can anyone say that there is a single instance of irrelevant writing in the Chin p'ing mei?²⁹

Even the jokes and songs are all pertinent to the occasion and contribute to the desired effect. They may reveal something of the meaning of the chapter in which they occur, develop something from a previous chapter, or divulge something about the chapters to come.³⁰

The marvelous quality of this book lies in the skill with which the arteries that connect widely separated elements of the plot are concealed. The author never resorts to the facile introduction of narrative developments for which the reader is unprepared.³¹

In reading the Chin p'ing mei one should pay attention to the points of articulation in the structure, the episodes that are linked or correlated with each other. The novice who learns how to do this will be able to appreciate the Tso-chuan, the Kuo-yü, the Chuang-tzu, the histories, and the philosophers.³²

In reading the Chin p'ing mei one should pay attention to the points where the author takes special pains. Only if one understands why the author takes special pains at the points where he does is one fit to read the Chin p'ing mei, or to say that he knows how to read literature.³³

If a person who writes indifferently to begin with does not write any better after reading the Chin p'ing mei, he should burn his writing implements and take up the plow for his enjoyment. There is no longer any need for him to trouble himself with trying to write.³⁴

As these quotations indicate, the whole thrust of Chang Chu-p'o's criticism is informed by the desire to demonstrate the thesis that the work as a whole is an organic entity that has been constructed with great care and to which every detail, however insignificant in itself, makes a necessary contribution. He insists that the author's achievement cannot be fully appreciated unless the reader attempts to work out for himself the functional contribution that each detail of language, incident, and structure makes to the intended overall effect.

The critic's task is thus a creative one, requiring nothing less than the re-creation of a work of literature through the process of analyzing its constituent elements, ascertaining the functions they perform, and demonstrating how the particular way in which they are integrated into a larger whole contributes to the impact of the work considered as a totality.

Space does not permit more extensive quotation from Chang's prolegomena or the commentary itself, most of which is concerned with the specific details of the Chin p'ing mei, with which the reader may not be familiar. I will, however, list below some of the constituent elements, functions, and integrating devices about which he has interesting things to say.

Among the constituent elements are words, names, puns, metaphors, symbols, motifs, themes, poems, songs, jokes, dramatic performances, dialogue, characters, foils, settings, situations, episodes, chapters, sub-plots, and the plot as a whole. The functions of these elements include those of introduction, preparation, prefiguration, prediction, revelation, development, transition, summation, conclusion, characterization, and commentary. Among the integrating devices are: the treatment of time, the spatial and temporal distribution of the characters, the juxtaposition or interweaving of two parallel or contrasting episodes in each chapter, the dovetailing between the individual episodes, the incremental repetition of significantly correlated motifs, situations, or episodes, and the distribution of contrasting motifs in patterns of periodic alternation.³⁵

Chang Chu-p'o says of his own work: “Although I would not be so presumptuous as to say that I have succeeded in getting to the bottom of the author's mind, I have been motivated to write, despite my own inadequacies, by the desire to defend him against all the undeserved calumnies that have been heaped upon him. I would also like to open the drowsy eyes of aspiring writers to the author's achievement while at the same time making some small contribution to literary theory myself. Who can say that this is not worthwhile?”³⁶

I hope that what has been said above is sufficient to indicate something of the nature and importance of Chang Chu-p'o's work. I plan to publish in the near future a complete translation of his essay entitled “How to Read the Chin p'ing mei,” which is the closest thing that I know of in the Chinese language to a poetics of the novel. Although his interpretations may sometimes seem wrong-headed, forced, or overly ingenious, I believe that his approach is fundamentally sound, and that his commentary on the Chin p'ing mei, taken as a whole, is the most illuminating critical analysis in depth of any Chinese novel with which I am familiar in any language.

It has often been pointed out that the Hung-lou meng shows the influence of the Chin p'ing mei.³⁷ I would like to suggest that Ts'ao Hsüeh-ch'in was not only more indebted to the Chin p'ing mei than has generally been acknowledged, but that he almost certainly read it in Chang Chu-p'o's edition, and was significantly influenced in the composition of the Hung-lou meng by what Chang Chu-p'o has to say about the craft of fiction. Every constituent element, function, and integrative device to which Chang Chu-p'o calls attention in his commentary on the Chin p'ing mei also figures prominently in the Hung-lou meng. The degree of congruity is too great to be fortuitous. I think I have discovered some corroborating evidence for this hypothesis and plan to pursue this line of inquiry further in the future.

If this hypothesis is correct, then Chang Chu-p'o's commentary on the Chin p'ing mei is not only the best critical study of that work and the closest thing we have to a Chinese poetics of the novel, but also contributed significantly to the making of what is universally regarded as the culminating masterpiece of traditional Chinese narrative fiction. It is my hope that when this neglected work receives its just due, it will earn Chang Chu-p'o a significant place in the history of Chinese literary criticism.

Notes

1. See Richard Gregg Irwin, The Evolution of a Chinese Novel: Shui-hu-chuan (Harvard University Press, 1953), pp. 87-94.

2. See ibid., and John Ching-yu Wang, Chin Sheng-t'an (Twayne, 1972), pp. 53-81.

3. See Wu Shih-ch'ang, On the Red Chamber Dream (Oxford University Press, 1961), pp. 1-102.

4. There is a preliminary critical survey of Chang Chu-p'o's commentary on the Chin p'ing mei in Paul Varo Martinson, “Pao Order and Redemption: Perspectives on Chinese Religion and Society Based on a Study of the Chin P'ing Mei,” an unpublished doctoral dissertation presented to the Divinity School of the University of Chicago, 1973, pp. 19-42.

5. The edition I shall refer to is one recently reprinted in Hong Kong, entitled Liang-chung Chu-p'o p'ing-tien-pen ho-k'an t'ien-hsia ti-i ch'i-shu Chin p'ing mei (Hong Kong, Hui-wen-ko Shu-tien, 1975), hereafter abbreviated as TICS.

6. For the date 1666, see Chang Chu-p'o's “Chin p'ing mei tu-fa,” TICS, section 36, p. 14b, where he mentions having recently seen the Ti-ch'i ts'ai-tzu shu. This is an edition of the P'i-pa chi with a commentary by Mao Tsung-kang, the preface to which is dated 1666. See Aoki Masaru, Shindai bungaku hyōron shi (Tokyo, Iwanami Shoten, 1950), p. 299. For the date 1684, see P. D. Hanan, “The Text of the Chin P'ing Mei” (Asia Major, N.S., vol. ix, Part i, 1962), p. 55.

7. See Liu T'ing-chi, Tsai-yüan tsa-chih, as quoted in Wang Hsiao-ch'uan, Yüan Ming Ch'ing san-tai chin-hui hsiao-shuo hsi-ch'ü shih-liao (Peking, Tso-chia Ch'u-pan-she, 1958), p. 262.

8. Chang Chu-p'o refers to Chang Ch'ao as his father's younger brother in one of his comments in Chang Ch'ao, Yu-meng ying, in Yang Fu-chi, comp., Chao-tai ts'ung-shu pieh-chi, 1849, ch. 4, p. 13a. Chang Ch'ao's father, Chang Hsi-k'ung (b. 1606, chin-shih of 1649) wrote a work entitled Chia-hsün (preface dated 1669), in which he states that his wife was unusually virtuous in that she was able to treat the son of a concubine as though he were her own. See Chang Hsi-k'ung, Chia-hsün, in Wang Cho and Chang Ch'ao, comps., T'an-chi ts'ung-shu, 1695, ch. 18, p. 6b. This leads me to the hypothesis that Chang Chu-p'o may have been the son of an elder half-brother of Chang Ch'ao.

9. On Chang Ch'ao, see Shih Kuo-chu, et al., comps., She-hsien chih (Shanghai, 1937), ch. 7, wen-yüan, p. 11a.

10. See note 8 above. A substantial selection of the aphorisms and comments in this work has been translated into English in Lin Yutang, The Importance of Understanding (World, 1960), pp. 36-74.

11. See note 8 above.

12. See Chang Ch'ao, Yu-meng ying, p. 20a.

13. See Chang Ch'ao, Yu-meng ying, p. 33b.

14. See Wang Hsiao-ch'uan, Yüan Ming Ch'ing san-tai chin-hui hsiao-shuo hsi-ch'ü shih-liao, p. 22.

15. See Chang Chu-p'o, “Ti-i ch'i-shu fei yin-shu” (TICS), p. 2a.

16. See note 6 above.

17. See note 7 above. Liu T'ing-chi refers to Wang T'ien-yü by his courtesy name as Wang Ts'ang-fu. For this identification, see Shih Kuo-chu, She-hsien chih, ch. 5, p. 10b.

18. See Chang Chu-p'o, “Fan-li” TICS, p. 1a.

19. See Chang Chu-p'o, “Chu-p'o hsien-hua” (TICS), pp. 4ab.

20. See note 6 above.

21. On this theory, see Chiang Jui-tsao, Hsiao-shuo k'ao-cheng (Shanghai, Ku-tien Wen-hsüeh Ch'u-pan-she, 1957), pp. 22ff.

22. Chang Chu-p'o, “Chin p'ing mei tu-fa” (TICS), section 36, pp. 14ab.

23. Ibid., section 52, p. 20b.

24. Ibid., section 39, p. 15b.

25. Ibid., section 40, p. 15b.

26. Ibid., section 41, p. 15b.

27. Ibid., section 42, p. 15b.

28. Ibid., section 50, p. 19b.

29. Ibid., section 15, p. 4b.

30. Ibid., section 49, p. 19b.

31. Ibid., section 26, p. 11b.

32. Ibid., section 69, p. 22b.

33. Ibid., section 70, p. 22b.

34. Ibid., section 74, p. 23b.

35. Ibid., sections 1-108, pp. 1a-30a, passim.

36. Ibid., section 82, p. 26b.

37. The Chih-yen Chai commentator on the Hung-lou meng compares passages in that work with the Chin p'ing mei at least four times. See Chao Kang, Hung-lou meng k'ao-cheng shih-i (Hong Kong, Kao-yüan Ch'u-pan-she, 1963), p. 34. For three articles claiming to demonstrate the indebtedness of the Hung-lou meng to the Chin p'ing mei, see Yao Ling-hsi, P'ing-wai chih-yen (Tientsin, T'ien-chin Shu-chü, 1940), pp. 68-99. See also C. T. Hsia, The Classic Chinese Novel, (Columbia University Press, 1968), p. 259.

SOURCE: Yang, Winston L. Y., Peter Li, and Nathan K. Mao. “Romance of the Three Kingdoms and The Water Margin,” and “Journey to the West and Flowers in the Mirror.” In Classical Chinese Fiction: A Guide to Its Study and Appreciation, pp. 39-51, 71-78. London: George Prior Publishers, 1978.

[In these excerpts, Yang, Li and Mao first outline the importance of Romance of the Three Kingdoms and The Water Margin as foundational texts in the history of the Chinese novel. They address the evolution of the texts through the seventeenth century and the differing approaches to history taken by each author. They also note the varying interpretations that have been applied to the later work Journey to the West, noting its author's strengths in satire and characterization.]

ROMANCE OF THE THREE KINGDOMS AND THE WATER MARGIN

Romance of the Three Kingdoms and The Water Margin are important landmarks in the history of Chinese fiction. Popular in China, they represent significant achievements of Chinese literature. They are often treated together or compared with each other by scholars because of their obvious similarities. Despite their differences in design and in other areas, the two are grouped together for discussion in this essay.

A. ROMANCE OF THE THREE KINGDOMS (SAN-KUO CHIH YEN-I)

Romance of the Three Kingdoms, probably the most popular historical narrative in China, has been widely read not only by scholars and officials but by the less educated as well. In the West it is one of the few Chinese novels of which there are complete translations. It was first translated into English by C. H. Brewitt-Taylor more than fifty years ago.¹ Even though a more accurate English translation of the title should be the Popular Elaboration of the Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms, the novel has long been known in the West by its familiar name, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, adopted by Brewitt-Taylor.

The Romance has been attributed to Lo Kuan-chung (ca. 1330-1400),² of whom little is known. He was probably a playwright and fiction writer of the late Yüan or the early Ming period. Many other works, such as The Water Margin, have also been attributed to him. Of all the works attributed to Lo Kuan-chung, scholars generally agree that the Romance bears the closest resemblance to what might have been his original version. In addition, of the works attributed to him in whole or in part, only the Romance can be reasonably accepted as his own compilation, for Lo Kuan-chung's name appears not only in its earliest surviving edition but also in nearly all subsequent ones. Also, later bibliographical sources almost unanimously attribute the work to him.

The evolution of the Romance can be divided into three periods. The first period began with the T'ang dynasty (618-907) when oral tales about the events of the Three Kingdoms period became popular and ended at the beginning of the Ming (1368-1644). This period's major work was no doubt the San-kuo chih p'ing-hua (A P'ing-hua of the History of the Three Kingdoms). The second period started with the compilation of the Romance in the early years of the Ming. But no handwritten copies of the novel's original version have survived. The earliest surviving and probably the first printed edition, entitled San-kuo chih t'ung-su yen-i (Popular Elaboration of the Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms), was issued in the Chia-ching period (1522-1567). Numerous editions based on the Chia-ching version were published during the second half of the Ming dynasty. Most scholars believe that the Chia-ching edition was not derived from or based on the San-kuo chih p'ing-hua version but was an entirely different creation. The destruction of the Ming empire ended the second period of the history of the Romance. The third period began when Mao Tsung-kang (fl. 1679) produced a revised version and a commentary on the novel³ in the early years of the Ch'ing dynasty. The Mao edition has since become the standard version of the Romance and is still widely used today.

Many scholars, notably Hu Shih, believe that the Romance came about through a slow process of evolution,⁴ even though it reflects very limited influences of the folk tradition. In fact, it reveals in some respects an obvious departure from the storyteller's tradition. Capitalizing on the old Three Kingdoms story cycle, Lo Kuan-chung has refined its narration and reduced its falsification of history. Adding new elements to the cycle, he has created a small number of fictional episodes and a few ahistorical characters in accordance with known historical facts. Despite its extensive use of sources, the Romance is more likely the work of a single author.

Of all the sources used by Lo Kuan-chung, the most important is Ch'en Shou's (233-297) Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms (San-kuo chih),⁵ a reliable official history of the Three Kingdoms period (220-280), when China was divided into Wei, Shu (also known as Shu-Han), and Wu. Lo has also utilized much of the information found in P'ei Sung-chih's (fl. 400-430) lengthy commentary on the official history. Lo shares many of Ch'en's views on history. But Ch'en, for political reasons, regards the Wei as the legitimate successor to the Han, whereas Lo considers the Shu as the sole heir to the Han Empire. Although they share the same orthodox Confucian didactic views on history, Lo obviously has adopted a cyclical interpretation of the rise and fall of dynasties.

In his presentation of historical episodes Lo, in most instances, follows the official history fairly closely. Because of the framework of the official history, Lo could not freely create fictional characters and episodes from imagination. Nevertheless, even within such limitations, Lo had managed to present many remarkable and fascinating accounts of historical events.

Lo Kuan-chung's views on the three states are amply revealed in his character portrayals. For example, in contrasting Liu Pei (162-223) of the Shu with Ts'ao Ts'ao (155-220) of the Wei, and Chu-ko Liang (181-234) of the Shu with the Wu general Chou Yü (174-218), Lo makes Liu and Chu-ko come out as much more positive characters than Ts'ao Ts'ao and Chou Yü. It should also be noted that Lo has extended his own predilections beyond character portrayals. To him the rivalry between the Shu and the Wei, like that between the Shu and the Wu, is a contest between legitimacy and illegitimacy; the forces of legitimacy, in his view, should rightly defeat those of illegitimacy. Therefore, he portrays most leaders of the Shu as heroes and those of the Wei or the Wu often as villains. This bias is seen in his portrayals of many major and minor characters.

Although he intends, in general, to glorify Liu Pei and his followers and to vilify Ts'ao Ts'ao, Sun Ch'üan (181-252) and their associates, Lo also painstakingly presents them as complex beings. For instance, his Ts'ao Ts'ao has many of the virtues as recorded in the official history; similarly, his portrait of the much admired Kuan Yü includes many of Kuan's character flaws. Successfully blending popular views with historical facts, he has produced many memorable portrayals. Even though he uses Ch'en Shou's official history Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms as his main source to develop his characters, he adheres to it or deviates from it as he sees fit. It is a generally accepted view that the Romance excels in its character portrayals, particularly in its descriptions of those obsessed with ambition. Several of his important characters will be examined to illustrate his portrayals.

Lo Kuan-chung has given much attention to Chu-ko Liang, the Prime Minister of the Shu Kingdom. In the novel, Chu-ko is portrayed as a military genius, scoring triumphs at the Battle of Ch'ih-pi, in the campaigns against the southern Man tribes, and in his numerous battles with Ssu-ma I. Lo stresses Chu-ko as a military commander without peer, a master of tactics and strategy who often defeats his enemy through strange plans and even through the use of magic; Lo places less emphasis on Chu-ko Liang's administrative abilities. However, in the official history, Chu-ko is a prudent and cautious administrator and a less-than-spectacular military commander. It is obvious that Lo has added new elements to the portrayal of Chu-ko Liang as found in the official history. To Chu-ko's high intelligence and organizational ability Lo has added the heroic qualities of wizardry and invincibility in war. Thus the fictional Chu-ko Liang possesses powers that the historical Chu-ko did not have. These include his magic powers, martial prowess, and a penchant for successfully executing strange and deceptive plans. In short, the difference between the historical and fictional Chu-ko is that the former is a cautious, orthodox, and politically oriented Legalist administrator whereas the latter is a Confucian statesman and invincible general with superhuman strategic abilities and Taoist magical powers. Having deviated significantly from his main historical source in his portrayal of Chu-ko Liang, Lo has transformed a historical figure into an essentially different fictional character. But a more careful scrutiny of Chu-ko in the novel will demonstrate the historicity of this character.

First of all, there are Chu-ko Liang's superhuman wisdom and magical powers. Throughout the novel superhuman elements play only a very minor part. Major Three Kingdoms figures, especially Chu-ko Liang, are rationalists who emphasize human efforts. Chu-ko Liang's superhuman powers fail to make significant differences in the final outcome of the military struggles. Also, some of his fictional contraptions and schemes, such as “wooden oxen” and “flying horses,” are actually elaborations of hints from the official history or from P'ei Sung-chih's commentary.⁶

Moreover, although Lo occasionally presents Chu-ko as a military commander of superhuman powers, he in the main has kept Chu-ko as a mortal and made him realistically human. It is true that Chu-ko's preternatural intelligence and wizardry often enable him to defeat almost any human adversary, but he is not immune from miscalculations and misjudgments. While stressing Chu-ko's noble qualities, Lo also shows Chu-ko's human weaknesses, such as his cruelty and cunning. In the novel he dies as a mortal despite his elaborate, almost mystical, efforts to prolong his own life. Since Lo intends the Romance to be essentially a human drama, he has no intention of portraying Chu-ko as a supernatural or divine being. What Lo has done is to weave together the historical image and popular views of Chu-ko into a complex and fascinating character.

Chu-ko Liang's master, Liu Pei, the founder of the Kingdom of Shu, is described as a descendant of Prince Ching of Chung-shan. Liu loses his father at an early age and is raised by his mother under harsh circumstances. He sells sandals and weaves mats for a living and he serves his mother faithfully. Small in size, he stands not quite five feet tall. His earlobes touch his shoulders; his hands reach past his knees, and his eyes somehow are positioned in such a way that they can see his own ears. His ch'i-hsiang (unusual appearance) is regarded as an indication of greatness. A man of few words and not particularly fond of learning, he is extremely generous and good-hearted. His countenance does not betray his thoughts and feelings. But in his heart, he harbors great ambitions, and he loves to associate with like-minded stalwarts.

An omen of his future greatness is a fifty-foot mulberry tree situated in the south-east corner of his home. From a distance it looks like the canopy of a huge carriage. A soothsayer predicts, “A man of noble destiny will certainly emerge from this house.”⁷ When playing with the neighborhood children under the tree one day, Liu Pei says, “I am the Son of Heaven, and I should ride in this carriage.”⁸ At fifteen his mother sends him to study with famous scholars. But his life remains uneventful until he is twenty-eight when he, Chang Fei, and Kuan Yü become sworn brothers to help suppress the Yellow Turban rebels. This marks the beginning of his political career.

Liu Pei's early career in the novel closely resembles what is recorded in the official history; fictional elements are comparatively few. He is not romanticized either as a hsia (knight-errant), a chiang (general), or a chün (prince); he appears as an ordinary man in a chaotic world. Ultimately, humility (genuine or feigned), generosity, and benevolence raise him above his fellow men. Portrayed as warm, generous, and sympathetic, he is a taciturn hero distinguished for his humanity.

Liu Pei's Prime Minister and Commander-in-Chief Chu-ko Liang is the wise counselor par excellence. Despite his wisdom, abilities, and resourcefulness, Chu-ko cannot act on his own. He is subject to the wishes and decisions of Liu Pei, whom he serves. Occasionally he must also yield to Kuan Yü (d. 219), the haughty general and one of the sworn brothers and trusted officers of Liu Pei. Kuan Yü, the leader of Liu Pei's Five Tiger Generals, epitomizes the warrior-general spirit. He has no realistic understanding of his own limitations, but his ability to assert himself enables him to capture the hearts of the Chinese people. And because of his independent spirit in spite of injunctions to the contrary, he becomes the embodiment of the heroic ideal of the popular imagination. His fearless bravery enables him to “look upon death as returning home”; his unswerving loyalty to Liu Pei and, above all, his stubborn pride and pristine purity make him tower over the other heroes, although they may have greater wisdom, prudence, or military skill. Even when a strategic compromise becomes necessary for his own survival and for the good of the state, he, the stubborn and extremely confident warrior, refuses to compromise and thus brings about his own death. When Chu-ko Chin, representing Sun Ch'üan, Emperor of the Kingdom of Wu, appeals to him at the City of Mai for one last chance to form an alliance with Sun Ch'üan against their common enemy, the Kingdom of Wei, Kuan Yü rebuts Chu-ko Chin harshly:

“I am just a simple fighter from the district of Chieh-liang. Favored by my Prince, I have been treated as his own brother, how, then, can I turn my back on righteousness and join with his enemy? If the city falls, I will simply die. A piece of jade may be shattered, but its color will never change. A piece of bamboo may be burned to ashes, but its joints will remain intact. I may perish, but my name will go down in historical records. Say no more; leave the city quickly. I will fight Sun Ch'üan to death.”⁹

From a strategic point of view, the action taken by Kuan Yü, who has been deified as the God of War, appears foolhardy, but to the popular imagination his conduct is consistent with the heroic ideal of the warrior-general. His goodness and purity, in the minds of the people, have overridden the strategic considerations of his commander-in-chief Chu-ko Liang, who observes that “Kuan Yü has always been harsh and arrogant; it is his harshness and arrogance that have finally brought about his downfall.”¹⁰ In short, Lo Kuan-chung's Kuan Yü is a hero tragically flawed by excessive self-confidence.

In the Romance there are many other heroes. But no matter how brilliant and talented they may be, most of their efforts are foredoomed to failure because the time is not propitious. It is under these circumstances that their actions must be judged. They make their choices and stand by them even though they know that the odds against their success are formidable. Their ambition is to help their respective chosen masters fulfill their ambitious designs. In fact, ambition is one of the most important themes of the novel. Nearly all the major characters are ambitious in one way or another. Some, like Ts'ao Ts'ao, dream of national unification through the annihilation of rivals; others, like Liu Pei, hope to restore the Han empire. Without exception, generals, ministers, counselors, strategists, and even minor officials all intend to serve their respective princes faithfully and play important roles. But in the end nearly all fail to reach their life-long goals, and many die in bitter disappointment. Stressing their ambitions, failures, and deaths, Lo Kuan-chung dramatically reveals, often at the deathbed, their helplessness, their inability to challenge fate, and their ultimate failure. Even though most of them know that the times are against them, and that it is unlikely that they will ever fulfill their ambitious goals, they would not give up their ambitions or admit their failures until the very end of their lives. A few examples of Lo Kuan-chung's powerful death scenes will provide some glimpses of their world.

Yüan Shao, an ambitious warlord of great military strength in his early years, has now lost much of his power, due to his indecisiveness, his lack of leadership, his inability to control his divided staff, and his personal preference for his youngest son, Yüan Shang.¹¹ In the end, his military strength is greatly reduced, and he is almost captured by his enemy. Deeply distressed, he becomes gravely ill. The following is a moving account of his death:

Yüan Shao heard about Yüan Shang's defeat, which came as a great shock to him. His old illness recurred. After spitting a huge quantity of blood, he swooned to the ground.

The Lady Liu, his wife, got him to bed as quickly as possible, but he failed to rally and his condition became critical. So she sent for Shen P'ei and Feng Chi to make final arrangements.

Yüan Shao could no longer speak; he only made motions with his hands. Lady Liu asked, “Can [Yüan] Shang succeed you?” [Yüan] Shao nodded his head. Shen P'ei at the bedside wrote out the dying man's testament. [Yüan] Shao turned over and uttered a loud cry and spat another large quantity of blood and passed away.¹²

Thus, Yüan Shao dies without fulfilling his ambitious goal of eliminating all his rivals.

Another famous general, Chou Yü, whose ambition is to help his prince Sun Ch'üan unify China by destroying all of Sun's present and potential rivals, dies in a similar manner. Portrayed as a narrow-minded person deeply jealous of the talents of Chu-ko Liang, he has tried repeatedly to kill Chu-ko even though his country and Chu-ko's are in alliance against their common enemy Ts'ao Ts'ao, who occupies most of China. But all of Chou's schemes to kill Chu-ko fail; his jealousy and bitterness toward his arch-enemy eventually bring about his own death. His final end, too, is typical of the deaths of many ambitious but frustrated heroes. Nearing death and realizing that he has failed to reach his ambitious goal, he says to his assembled generals,

“It is not that I don't want to express my loyalty to my country, but my end is at hand. Please serve our master well so that you may together establish a dynastic line.”

Having said these words, he fainted. Slowly he regained consciousness. He looked up to heaven and sighed deeply, “Since you have brought me into the world, why have you also brought [Chu-ko] Liang into it too?”

He cried out several times, and then passed away. He was thirty-six.¹³

Of all the death scenes in the novel Chu-ko Liang's is probably the most moving. During his last northern campaign against the Wei forces, he becomes gravely ill. One night, having scanned the heavens and studied the stars, he returns to his tent and says to his trusted aide Chiang Wei, “My life may end at any moment.”¹⁴ And he instructs Chiang to make elaborate arrangements to prolong his life. But when such arrangements fail due to the carelessness of Wei Yen, one of his generals, he says, “Life and death are foreordained; no prayers can alter them.”¹⁵ When Chiang Wei is about to draw his sword to execute Wei Yen for the latter's carelessness, Chu-ko says to Chiang, “My life is fated to end—it's no fault of Wei Yen.”¹⁶ When he lies dying, he composes a memorial to the Emperor of Shu which says in part:

“I have heard that life and death are governed by constant laws and that it is difficult to evade fate. Now that my death is at hand, I should like to express my humble loyalty. …”¹⁷

Chu-ko attributes his failure to reach his ambitious goal of restoring the Han empire and his impending death to Heaven's will or design. It seems to him that no one can change the workings of fate, no matter how extraordinary one may be. A sense of personal limitation emerges clearly from this and many other death scenes in the novel. Fatalism, indeed, dominates many important events throughout the novel.

The Romance cannot be considered a historical novel in the Western sense of the term, because of its fairly close adherence to historical facts, its emphasis on historical figures rather than fictional characters, its attention to historical events rather than fictional episodes, and its lack of imagistic or symbolic structure.¹⁸ It bears little resemblance to such historical novels as those by Sir Walter Scott. In addition, unlike the Western historical novel which generally concentrates on one or two characters, the Romance emphasizes the exploits of multiple heroes and villains and a rapid sequence of dramatic events within a historical period. Like a Chinese scroll painting of enormous length, as pointed out by Roy Andrew Miller, the Romance presents “a long, continuous spectacle, but only a single episode and a few characters are visible at any one time.”¹⁹ The novel is “caught up in carefully placed foci of excitement and emotion from time to time, giving articulation and structure to what otherwise might have been simply an interminable assembly of anecdotes and narrative clichés.”²⁰

With its close adherence to history and its retelling of history in a plain language, the Romance should probably be regarded as a popular history. In fact, Lo Kuan-chung's intent, as reflected in the title of his work and in Chiang Ta-ch'i's preface to the Chia-ching edition, is to retell the official history in plain language and to make its meaning more comprehensible to the common people. Identifying himself essentially as a popular historian, Lo has adhered closely to a strict chronological sequence and created relatively few patently fictional episodes. In short, with his strength primarily as a popular historian, he has created a single continuous narrative of the major events of the Three Kingdoms period. It is not a haphazard collection of anecdotes, rambling episodes or fictional biographies but a coherently structured narrative. He has greatly popularized the history of the Three Kingdoms period for the common people of China who otherwise might not have a chance to learn about it. Moreover, unlike the official historical account, Lo's version, in humanizing historical figures, enables the reader to see the cause and effect of historical events.

Harold Toliver says that “whereas fiction moves toward history in presenting an assumed historical reality, history writing moves toward fiction in its storied coherence and embellishments.”²¹ This statement aptly describes the Romance, a unique mixture of history and fiction. While some critics reject the book as creative historical fiction, arguing that it is not fully fictionalized with historical imagination, few, if any, historians accept it as authentic history because they do not consider it sufficiently truthful or objective. But many critics and historians fail to realize that, despite its slightly fictional elaborations and some episodes with little historical basis, the Romance is fairly reliable, because its elaborations and episodes seldom contradict recorded history; in fact, they tend to confirm historical facts. In dramatizing history, they have injected new vitality and vividness into the facts of history.

To summarize, Lo Kuan-chung's main contribution lies in his success in instilling a new life into the old Three Kingdoms cycle; he rejected vulgar elements common among folk speech and introduced a more elegant language. Embellishing the main thread of history without seriously contradicting historical facts and rejecting most of the sensational and supernatural elements found in oral tales and popular legends, he produced a fairly reliable and extremely popular and interesting historical account, superior to the official history in terms of readability and literary interest. Lo created a new genre of fiction: the yen-i type of popular historical narrative, a uniquely Chinese contribution to world literature.

B. THE WATER MARGIN (SHUI-HU CHUAN)

At about the time of the appearance of the earliest surviving version of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, The Water Margin²² (also known in the West as All Men Are Brothers, the title of Pearl Buck's translation²³) became available. Written in a far more colloquial language than the Romance, The Water Margin deals with the exploits of a band of outlaws of the early twelfth century. Even though some of its characters are historical, and the setting in the present Shantung province is geographically correct, The Water Margin, unlike the Romance, is a fully fictionalized account of history. With little historical basis, most of its episodes, derived from oral and legendary sources, are fictional and its heroes ahistorical. In short, while the Romance can be read as a type of popular history, The Water Margin is essentially fiction.

The Water Margin came about through a slow process of evolution. The History of the Sung (Sung shih) contains a note on a band of thirty-six outlaws led by Sung Chiang, their repeated victories over government troops, their subsequent surrender to the government, and their participation in the successful government campaign of 1121 against the rebel Fang La and Fang's followers. The exploits of this band somehow captured the popular imagination and eventually became popular subjects for Southern Sung professional storytellers. The earliest known fictional account of the Sung Chiang band is found in the Historical Anecdotes of the Hsüan-ho Period (Hsüan-ho i-shih), probably an early Yüan work based partly on storytellers' prompt-books and partly on other literary sources. Generally considered the prototype of The Water Margin, the Historical Anecdotes inspired the creation of countless legends, oral tales, written stories, and Yüan plays about the band, leading up to the novel's first written version toward the end of the Yüan or at the beginning of the Ming. But this version is no longer extant. During the Ming a number of episodes were added to the novel, and many editions are believed to have been published during that period. The earliest surviving edition dates from the middle of the sixteenth centuries. In 1614 a 120-chapter edition, which is the most complete version, appeared. It had remained popular until 1641 when a famous fiction commentator and champion of vernacular literature, Chin Sheng-t'an (1610?-1661), prepared a 70-chapter version. Retaining only the first seventy-one chapters of the 1614 edition and using Chapter 1 as the prologue, he added a commentary to the novel. His version tightened the novel's loose structure and eventually became the most popular edition. The two available English translations (by Pearl Buck and J. H. Jackson respectively) were both based on Chin's version.

Many significant differences exist between the 120-chapter and the 70-chapter versions. One major difference is found in the novel's ending. The 120-chapter version ends on a note of muted tragedy, because the heroes in this version die one after another, leaving their declared mission, “Practice the Way on Behalf of Heaven” (t'i t'ien hsing tao), unfulfilled. In fact, the various writers responsible for this edition had meant to glorify the heroes and use them as symbols of social protest against corruption and injustice. But the 70-chapter version ends differently. Its final chapter tells of the gathering of the heroes in the Hall of Loyalty and Righteousness on Mount Liang, and their proclamation of lofty ideals and grand missions, as seen in the following paragraphs:

Sung Chiang addressed the assembled leaders and impressed upon them the extreme importance of loyalty. He then told them that they were now all bound together and must live and die as one body, and that they must all support him to act according to Heaven's wish.

All the assembled leaders took a solemn oath to observe these conditions and then all swore, “We are all united today, and so we will remain throughout this life. Any one among us who will turn out to be a traitor or coward will be noticed by Heaven and be killed by the sword or lightning and his soul will be banished to Hades forever.” They then pledged each other in wine in which blood had been mixed. So was achieved this great assembly of heroes sworn to unite to uphold justice.²⁴

The textual history of The Water Margin is complex and its authorship especially puzzling. It has been attributed to various writers, including Lo Kuan-chung and Shih Nai-an. The attribution to Lo has never been firmly established, and the identity of Shih has been seriously questioned. Since the book is essentially a compilation of different hands at different times, a knowledge of its authorship is not crucial to its appreciation.

A Western reader may be disturbed by the novel's many inherent flaws, such as authorial digressions, contradictory views, stock phrases, gratuitous sadistic activities, narrative inconsistencies, loose structure, and episodes with little bearing on its central themes. He may also be disturbed by its large cast of characters, many of whom are undeveloped or stereotyped. Most are either heroes or villains, and the heroes' actions often contradict their declared sense of justice and righteousness.

In considering these apparent weaknesses, however, one should not evaluate The Water Margin by the same standards as he would in dealing with a modern novel. A proper appreciation of The Water Margin requires the consideration of its long evolutionary process, its multiple authors, and its folk and oral origins. Its folk origin is such that some scholars suggested that it be approached as a folk epic or saga.²⁵ If one can accept some characteristics of the novel as conventions, one is able to see its strengths in other areas. For example, although most heroes are stereotypes, some are well developed individuals. In addition, the novel is noted for its smooth and expressive colloquial style, exciting episodes, effective dialogue, vivid imagination, limited dependence on historical sources, and realistic descriptions of the common people.

Among the many exciting episodes in the novel, the description of Wu Sung's bare-hand killing of a tiger is outstanding. One of the one hundred and eight heroes of the band, he is intensely loyal to his brother Wu Ta and to his comrades. A man of principle and imbued with a strong sense of justice, he does what he considers to be right and he would rather go to jail or die than to yield. Even though his rough appearance and brute strength may suggest a lack of intelligence, he has enough moral fiber to resist the temptations of his seductive sister-in-law. Violent toward his enemies but generous and loyal to his friends, he is one of the most popular fictional heroes in China. When he is about to cross the Ching-yang Ridge, he is told by the keeper of a small inn, where he stops for food and drinks, that there is a fierce tiger on the Ching-yang Ridge. Though warned not to cross it alone, he proceeds to the mountain ridge after a good meal and a number of drinks. But soon the tiger appears. The following paragraphs describe his encounter with the tiger.

He went a little further, and now felt the effect of the wine. So taking his cudgel in one hand he unloosened his coat with the other hand. Staggering along he entered the forest. He came across a large block of smooth green stone against which he put his cudgel. He then reclined on the stone with the intention of sleeping there. Just then a strong wind sprang up, and he heard a sound among the trees, and at the same moment a large tiger sprang out. With an exclamation he rolled off the stone, seized his cudgel, and slipped to one side of the stone. The tiger was both hungry and thirsty, crouched on the ground, leaped, and seemed to descend out of space. As the tiger sprang forward Wu Sung was startled and covered with a cold sweat, but he dodged by slipping to one side. The tiger immediately turned round and roared like thunder, and the ridge almost quaked.

The tiger's tail was erect and stiff as a poker, and was lashing back and forth in rage. Wu Sung did not keep still, but kept moving about irregularly. In fact, a tiger has only three methods of killing men, a crouch, a leap, and a blow with its tail. If these three fail, the tiger will at once lose all courage or spirit. In such cases it will turn round and give a loud roar. When Wu Sung saw the tiger turning round he seized his cudgel with both hands. Using the utmost of his strength, he whirled it aloft and brought it down with a crash. There was a great noise followed by a fall of leaves and twigs from the dense undergrowth. Wu Sung saw that he had missed the tiger, and simply in his haste had hit the undergrowth. As his long cudgel was broken in half, he threw a part away. The tiger roared again, crouched, and leapt at Wu Sung, who swiftly stepped to one side. The tiger whirled round and came just in front of Wu Sung and planted its fore paws on the ground. Wu Sung threw the remaining half of the cudgel away, and seized the skin of the tiger's forehead with both hands, and pressed the tiger down on the ground. The tiger struggled to get up, but Wu Sung exerted all his strength and would not let it go the least bit. He kicked it in the eyes. This made the tiger roar and scoop out holes in the yellow soil with its front paws. Wu Sung pressed the tiger's snout into the hole in the ground, and it had to endure this disgrace as it was losing its strength. Wu Sung now grasped the loose skin on the tiger's head in his left hand; taking his right fist he hit the tiger severely. After about seventy blows blood streamed out of the tiger's eyes, mouth, nose, and ears, and the beast lay panting for breath … The body lay in a pool of blood. Using both hands he tried to move it, but he found that it was too heavy. …²⁶

The above and other exploits of Wu Sung vividly presented in The Water Margin have long made him a celebrated folk hero in China.

If The Water Margin is compared with the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a number of differences become apparent. The Water Margin covers a far shorter period of time than the Romance does. More importantly, The Water Margin's multiple authors of different periods were not interested in historical accuracy but merely in creating a narrative of popular heroes and exciting episodes developed from their own imagination or popular legends. On the other hand, the author of the Romance was seriously interested in historical substance, and his work is essentially a type of popular historical narrative based mainly on the official history of the Three Kingdoms period. Lastly, while The Water Margin may appear more creative than the Romance because of the former's creation of ahistorical characters and fictional episodes, each of the two has its own strengths. One may view The Water Margin as imaginative literature and the Romance as a type of popular history. While The Water Margin is unreliable as history but fascinating as fiction, the Romance appears to be fairly reliable and extremely interesting as a popular history.

In structure the two reveal even more dissimilarities. In contrast to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which has a tightly knit internal structure based on the interweaving of narrative strands, The Water Margin is composed of a sequence of cycles, each of which features a different hero. The first seventy chapters of The Water Margin are dominated by eight story cycles centering around eight important heroes, such as Lu Chih-shen, Lin Ch'ung, Wu Sung, and Sung Chiang. This cyclical chain is interspersed with descriptions of raids, rescue missions, and campaigns against the government. But it must be recognized that the system of linked plots is fundamentally a looser form of organization than that of the interweaving of narrative strands. In spite of this weakness in internal structure, the overall pattern of conflict and resolution in The Water Margin seems impressive. The opposing groups in the conflict are the “righteous” fugitives from the law on the one hand and the corrupt, despotic government on the other. In Chapters 1-70, a pattern of confrontation emerges; tensions increase as the number of outlaws grows and their organization strengthens. The group reaches its full strength when the number hits 108. Shortly afterwards, in Chapters 75-80, the government sends T'ung Kuan and Kao Ch'iu on separate occasions to suppress the band, but the band is too strong. It defeats T'ung Kuan twice and Kao Ch'iu thrice. However, in Chapter 82, a resolution of the confrontation is reached, when Sung Chiang surrenders to the government. Meanwhile, the plot continues to unfold. Poetic justice demands that the outlaws score greater and more impressive triumphs. They wage four successful campaigns against various rebel groups. And the final resolution takes places when Sung Chiang himself succumbs to the machinations of Kao Ch'iu and T'ung Kuan.

Even though the Romance has a tightly-knit internal structure of interrelated conflict situations and the interweaving of narrative strands, its overall pattern is comparatively weak because of its emphasis on a disproportionately long period of conflicts among the major parties and its cursory and anticlimactic resolution of the conflicts. On the other hand, while the system of linked-plots gives The Water Margin a relatively weak internal structure, the novel has a strong external pattern achieved through the combination of the following factors: unity of theme, an overall conflict and resolution situation, a geographic focus, and the band's common goals. In short, the Romance has a good internal structure but a weak overall pattern; The Water Margin, weak internally, is strong in its overall pattern. Each novel has its own specific structural features.²⁷

Notwithstanding differences in style, plot and theme, the Romance and The Water Margin marked the coming of age of the Chinese novel. While the former is concerned with a tripolar struggle for power in the last years of the Han dynasty and following Han's collapse, the latter deals mainly with the exploits of a band of Sung outlaws. In the former one finds generals, warlords, strategists and princes guided by Confucian political ideals, and in the latter, outlaws motivated primarily by righteousness and justice. The authors of the two works created different types of popular narrative, but very few later works patterned after them achieved the level of artistry as found in either the Romance or The Water Margin, both landmarks in the development of Chinese prose fiction.

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JOURNEY TO THE WEST AND FLOWERS IN THE MIRROR

A. JOURNEY TO THE WEST (HSI-YU CHI)

Journey to the West has been immensely popular in the West, largely because of the highly readable and abridged translation entitled Monkey by Arthur Waley.²⁸ A complete translation being prepared by Anthony C. Yu²⁹ will no doubt make it even more popular.

This work of comic fantasy recounts the pilgrimage of the famous and revered monk Hsüan-tsang (596-664), also known as Tripitaka, who journeyed to India in the seventh century to bring back 657 items of Buddhist scriptures. Since his return, his pilgrimage had been celebrated and embellished in various accounts, culminating in the famous novel Journey to the West. In the book Tripitaka is accompanied by four animal-disciples of superhuman abilities, including Sun Wu-k'ung, a monkey of magic power, wit, and intelligence (known simply as Monkey in Arthur Waley's version); and Chu Pa-chieh, known as Pigsy, the sensual and slothful pig with an enormous appetite. Their story involves demons of all sorts bent on eating or “cannibalizing” Tripitaka, because his flesh is supposed to confer immortality. He is seized again and again by them and is in turn rescued by his disciples (most often by Monkey), with the assistance of appropriate deities as needed.

Until Hu Shih, inspired by several Ch'ing scholars, established with convincing documentation that Wu Ch'eng-en (ca. 1506-ca. 1582), a mid-Ming poet, writer, and official, was the author of the novel,³⁰ it had often been attributed to Ch'iu Ch'ang-ch'un (fl. 1220), advisor to Genghis Khan, because Ch'iu's travel record bore the same title. Now Hu Shih's attribution has been widely accepted, though a number of scholars remain unconvinced, without being able to suggest other plausible candidates as the author of the novel.

Journey to the West is made up of prose extensively interlaced with original verse. Anthony C. Yu points out some of the most important functions of the verse in the narrative, including that of describing scenery, battles, seasons, and living beings, both human and nonhuman; that of presenting dialogues; and that of providing commentary on the action and the characters.³¹ These inserted poems are integral parts of the total narrative and are by no means intended by the author merely to show off his poetic talent.

The textual history of the Journey to the West,³² like that of The Water Margin, is quite complicated, but unlike the latter, the Journey is essentially the work of a single author. Long before the novel was written, the legend of Tripitaka became popular. In history Tripitaka was a monk of scholarly attainments and prodigious intelligence. He went through a long and hazardous journey to India in quest of Buddhist scriptures, spent the rest of his life in rendering many of these scriptures into Chinese after his return, and eventually established the Mere Ideation School of Buddhism. His fascinating journey inspired the growth of the legend of Tripitaka. Numerous stories, plays, and at least one novel about his journey, his companions, and the hardships they encountered during the journey were created. In fact, the popularity of the Tripitaka legend rivaled that of The Water Margin legend. It was Wu Ch'eng-en who combined these legends, oral tales, written stories, and Yüan plays into a unified work of one hundred chapters. The earliest extant version of Journey to the West, the Shih-te-t'ang edition, to which there were several antecedents, appeared in 1592. During the K'ang-hsi reign (1662-1722), a new edition, which incorporated the legend of Tripitaka's birth and youth into Chapter Nine, was published. Other Ch'ing editions simply added new commentaries but made few significant changes in the text. The popularity of the novel has generated a number of sequels and supplements, the best-known of which is the Hsi-yu pu (A Supplement to Journey to the West), noted for its description of subtle dream psychology.

Journey to the West tells mainly the story of Monkey and gives some details about Tripitaka and his two other protectors, Pigsy and Sandy. The first seven chapters describe the birth of Monkey, his acquisition of immortality and magic power, and his final subjugation by Buddha; Chapter Eight concentrates on Buddha's intentions to impart the Buddhist canon to the Chinese and the journey of Kuan-yin to the land of the East to look for a proper scripture pilgrim to bring the sutras from India to the East; Chapter Nine gives the family story of Tripitaka; the remaining chapters describe the journey itself and the pilgrims' encounters with demons, monsters, animal spirits, and gods in disguise. The last three chapters describe the successful completion of the journey, the audience of the pilgrims with Buddha, their return with scriptures to the T'ang capital Ch'ang-an, and the final canonization of the pilgrims.

Throughout the novel Monkey is the most important figure, a symbol of wisdom, intelligence, and resourcefulness. Hatched from a stone egg which for aeons has been absorbing the essences of Heaven and Earth, the Sun and the Moon, Monkey soon becomes king of his tribe. From a great Taoist immortal, he acquires magic powers and superhuman abilities. He terrorizes the Dragon Kings, forces the King of Hell to erase his name from the Register of the Dead, and literally raises hell in Heaven until the Jade Emperor grants his demand that he be given the title of Great Sage, the Equal of Heaven. He is finally conquered by Buddha himself and imprisoned under a fiery mountain, to be released five hundred years later to serve as Tripitaka's disciple and protector. Chapter one gives the following account of his origin:

Beyond the ocean there was a country named Ao-lai. It was near a great ocean in the midst of which was located the famous Flower-Fruit Mountain. This mountain, which constituted the chief range of the Ten Islets and formed the origin of the Three Islands, came into being after the creation of the world. …

There was on top of that very mountain an immortal stone, which measured thirty-six feet and five inches in height and twenty-four feet in circumference. The height of thirty-six feet and five inches corresponded to the three hundred and sixty-five cyclical degrees, while the circumference of twenty-four feet corresponded to the twenty-four solar items of the Calendar. On the stone were also nine perforations and eight holes, which corresponded to the Palaces of the Nine Constellations and the Eight Trigrams. Though it lacked the shading of trees on all sides, it was accompanied by epidendrums on the left and right. Since the creation of the world, it had been nourished for a long period by the seeds of heaven and earth and by the essences of the sun and the moon until it became pregnant with a divine embryo. One day, it split open, giving birth to a stone egg about the size of a playing ball. Exposed to the wind, it was transformed into a stone monkey endowed with fully developed features and limbs. Having learned at once to climb and run, this monkey also bowed to the four quarters, while two beams of golden light flashed from his eyes to reach even the Palace of the Pole Star. …

That monkey in the mountain was able to walk, run, and leap about; he fed on grass and shrubs, drank from the brooks and streams, gathered mountain flowers, and searched out fruits from trees. He made his companions the tiger, the wolf, and the leopard; he befriended the civet and the deer, and he called the gibbon and the baboon his kin. At night he slept beneath stony ridges, and in the morning he sauntered about the caves and the peaks. Truly, “in the mountain there is no end or beginning; the cold ceases but the year is unknown.” …

The handsome Monkey King had enjoyed this insouciant existence for about three or five hundred years when one day, while feasting with the rest of the monkeys, he suddenly grew sad and let fall a few tears. Alarmed, the monkeys surrounding him bowed down and asked, “What is disturbing the Great King?” The Monkey King replied, “Though I am very happy at the moment, I am a little concerned about the future. Hence, my vexation.” The monkeys all said with laughter, “The Great King indeed does not know contentment! Here we are daily having a banquet on an immortal mountain of a blessed land, in an ancient cave of a divine continent. We are neither subjects of the unicorn or the phoenix, nor are we governed by the rulers of mankind. Such independence and comfort are immeasurable blessings. Why, then, does he trouble himself with worry about the future?” The Monkey King said, “Though we are not subject to the laws of man today, nor need we be threatened by the rule of any bird or beast, old age and physical decay in the future will disclose the secret sovereignty of Yama, King of the Underworld. If we die, would we not have lived in vain, not being able to be ranked forever among the heavenly beings?”³³

The preceding passages vividly describe Monkey's origin and hints of his uniqueness. He is known for his seventy-two transformations, magic powers, and prodigious strength, but he has his limitations. For instance, he tells Buddha that he wants to replace the Jade Emperor on his throne by enumerating his wonderful attributes, his seventy-two transformations, his eighty-four thousand hairs each capable of transforming into a likeness of himself with equal powers, and finally his ability to travel 108,000 miles in one somersault. Buddha smiles at him and wagers that if Monkey could jump out of his hand, he would ask the Jade Emperor to abdicate in his favor.

“Of course, I can,” Monkey said. He then jumped on Buddha's right palm held out to him and started to somersault until he came to five pink columns so high that their tops were lost in the clouds. “This must be the edge of the universe,” he said to himself. “I must leave an inscription here to prove that I have been here.” So, plucking a hair from his body, he changed it into a writing brush and wrote on the middle column: “The Great Sage, Equal of Heaven, was here.” He also left his mark on the column in the manner of dogs. Then he somersaulted back, jumped off Buddha's palm, saying, “Now ask the Jade Emperor to abdicate in favor of me.”

“But, my little monkey, you never left my palm,” Buddha said.

“Of course, I did,” Monkey said. He then offered to take Buddha to the edge of the universe to prove it.

“We need not go to the edge of the universe for evidence,” Buddha said. “Look here and see for yourself.” Buddha opened his right hand and pointed to his second finger with his left, and there was Monkey's own handwriting, not yet dry.

“And if that does not satisfy you, shameless Monkey, smell this!” And so saying, he thrust his hand under Monkey's nose.³⁴

Monkey is baffled but decides to try again. He jumps on Buddha's palm, but before he has time to somersault, Buddha hurls him to the earth and imprisons him under a mountain in a desert on the way to the Western paradise.

Monkey is often portrayed as an interesting and humorous being in contrast to the humorless Tripitaka. The following excerpt well illustrates Monkey's sly humor.

In the meantime, Monkey had reached Kuan-P'ou. Changing himself into Erh Lang, he went into the latter's temple, where the attendants knelt and kowtowed to him in greeting. Monkey sat down in Erh Lang's chair and said, “Let me see what the offerings have been like since I went away.” The attendants brought him the three sacrificial beasts promised by Li Hu. “I can't remember what we did for him, but let's hope that he did not offer these things for nothing. And what else?” The attendant showed him a new silken robe given by Chang Lung. “We have more need for a suit of armor,” Monkey said, to the mystification of the attendants. “Anything else?”

“That's all,” the attendants answered, “but many petitions have come in.”

Monkey looked through the list: some asked for sons, some for relief from illness, some for money, and some for general blessings. The gifts promised in return varied according to the nature of the requests. Monkey was reading through the list with great interest and thinking to himself how profitable it was to be a templed deity when the real Erh Lang appeared before the temple.

“Have you seen Sun the Great Sage [Monkey]?” Erh Lang asked one of the guards, but the latter stared at him in astonishment and then pointed inside. He immediately recognized Monkey seated in Erh Lang's throne. The latter rose and said to Erh Lang, “This temple is mine now, so be a good boy and run along.”³⁵

If an allegorical interpretation is adopted, the journey itself may be seen as a quest for spiritual fulfillment, and the demons and monsters encountered on the journey as evil desires that attack man. Upon completing their mission and returning to Ch'ang-an, Tripitaka shows no signs of spiritual improvement because he has done little to improve his spirituality. But as a reward, Tripitaka is appointed by the Tathāgata to be Buddha, with the title “Buddha of Precocious Merit”; Monkey is promoted to be the “Buddha Victorious in Strife”; Pigsy to be Cleanser of the Altar; Sandy to the rank of an Arhat with the title “Golden Bodied Arhat”; and the white horse that carried Tripitaka to the West and back becomes one of the eight senior Heavenly Dragons. The story ends as follows:

The four pilgrims all kowtowed their thanks, and the white horse also made sign of its gratitude. Then by Buddha's order, the white horse was led to the back of the Holy Mountain, to the side of the Pool of Magic Dragons, into the middle of which it was pushed with a splash. After a short while, it began to stretch itself and its coat began to change in appearance. It grew horns upon its head and its body became covered with golden scales, while on its cheeks silver whiskers grew. Its whole form was suffused with magic tints, its four claws rested on prophetic clouds; it soared up out of the pool, wreathed its way in at the gate of the Palace, and circled about the Pillar that supports Heaven. All the Buddhas burst into exclamations of wonder at this miracle that the Tathāgata had wrought.

“Master,” Monkey said to Tripitaka, “I'm now a Buddha, the same as you. It's not fair that I should still wear this golden fillet, so that if you choose to recite your spell, you could still plague me. Make haste and say the ‘Loosing of the Fillet’ spell, so that I may get it off and smash it to bits. Otherwise the Bodhisattva may use it to play her jokes on anyone else.” “It was put upon you,” said Tripitaka, “at a time when you needed to be kept in hand. Now that you are Buddha, it has vanished of its own accord. Feel your head and you'll see.” Monkey put his hand to his head. What Tripitaka had said was quite true. The fillet was not there.

The promotion of the five saints took place in the presence of all the spirits of Heaven—Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, Arhats, monks, local deities and Guardian Spirits. While the newcomes took their appointed places in the great assembly, multitudinous voices rose in prayer: “Praise to the Buddha of the Past, Praise to Bhaishajya, Praise to Sākyamuni …” and so on through all the Buddhas, till finally for the first time they chanted “Praise to the Buddha of Precocious Merit, Praise to the Buddha Victorious in Strife.” Next they invoked the names of all the Bodhisattvas, Kuan-yin, Mahāsthāmprāpta, Manjuśri, Samantabhadra and the rest, ending with “Praise to the Cleanser of the Altar, praise to the Golden Bodied Arhat, praise to the Heavenly Dragon.”³⁶

The excerpt cited well illustrates the author's fertile imagination and good humor. But the novel is more than delightful entertainment; it is a very complex work. For instance, modern Western scholars emphasize its diverse modes of myth, allegory, and comedy; traditional Chinese commentators stress its allegorical meaning; and modern Chinese scholars, notably Hu Shih, reject the allegorical approach and emphasize its satiric and comic elements. While Hu Shih praises the novel as “a book of good humor, profound nonsense, good-natured satire and delightful entertainment,”³⁷ Chinese Communist scholars have attached more importance to its political and social satire. In view of its complexity, the novel should be analyzed through a variety of approaches,³⁸ and the intricate connections between its diverse modes should also be explored.

Because of its heroic mission and inclusion of heroic verse, Journey to the West is often believed to contain epic quality. Some even compare it with the Odyssey.³⁹ Despite its obvious epic dimensions, such as the heroic traits in Monkey's action and the thematic affinity of Tripitaka's mission to the quest motifs in Western epics, it lacks, as pointed out by Anthony C. Yu, such important features as “the hero's withdrawal, his subsequent return in disguise, the climactic experience of recognition and reunion with loved ones,”⁴⁰ which are usually found in Western epics.

If an allegorical interpretation is adopted, Journey to the West may be said to allegorize the reality of human life. Pigsy stands for human appetite and brute strength; Monkey, as mind or intelligence; Tripitaka, selfish and spiritually blind, as the average man in quest of salvation; and the demons and monsters as dangers and hardships in life.⁴¹ With the major characters representating different aspects of human nature, the entire journey may be viewed as man's spiritual quest for Buddhist salvation. However, it must be pointed out that the novel is not entirely Buddhist-oriented. Although it endorses certain ideas or teachings of Buddhism, it often singles out Tripitaka as an object of satire. It also mercilessly ridicules many Taoist priests. Nor does the novel wholeheartedly endorse Confucianism; in fact, it often attacks certain Confucian ideals and institutions and satirizes Confucian bureaucracy and its authority. Even though it does reflect certain ideas of each of the three schools (Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism), the novel cannot be interpreted as an elucidation of any one of them. While some scholars argue that its main story is essentially Buddhist in nature, one cannot say that it is definitely a Buddhist novel, considering the inclusion of certain Taoist and Confucian elements in the book. On the whole, Journey to the West is complex and reflects diverse religious and philosophical views.

There are a number of other approaches. With its inclusion of many comic elements, the novel can be read as a comedy about man's absurdity and his insatiable appetite.⁴² Tripitaka, concerned only with his own physical comfort and unable to attain Buddhist ideals, is an interesting comic figure, and Pigsy is undoubtedly the author's supreme comic creation.⁴³ Moreover, the author's mockery extends to almost every character in the book.⁴⁴ One may see the novel as a work of social criticism or even as a representation of a socio-political struggle, as suggested by Communist critics, but its satire is far more obvious than either social criticism or political commentary. For instance, the court of the Jade Emperor is a reflection of the human bureaucracy; the Jade Emperor is a helpless puppet swayed by his advisors; Tripitaka is a gullible creature who often listens to Pigsy's slander of Monkey and sends Monkey into exile or punishes him through the recitation of a magic formula which gives Monkey a splitting headache. Tripitaka is thus a sort of despotic ruler, Pigsy, a slanderer, and Monkey, a loyal and capable minister. The novel as a whole can be read as a good-natured satire on human foibles and bureaucratic follies and mismanagement.

Journey to the West excels in character portrayals. The author's imaginative powers enabled him to transform the historical Tripitaka into a unique fictional character. While the historical Tripitaka was a man of courage, tact, intelligence, and intellectual ability, his fictional counterpart is portrayed as an ordinary mortal, cowardly, tactless, humorless, slow in intelligence, and preoccupied with his own welfare and safety. Too much like the average man, he is unable to resist temptation and gains little moral insight or spiritual improvement from the journey. Unlike Monkey, who is able to develop a detachment from worldly things, Tripitaka remains obsessed with love and compassion and is thus enslaved by his senses.⁴⁵ On the other hand, Monkey provides a sharp contrast to Tripitaka. Loyal, intelligent, resourceful, and courageous, he is not only the protector but often the instructor of Tripitaka as well; he is the real hero in the novel. His initial quest for immortality is also one for spiritual understanding; in the end, he achieves a superior detachment from the enslavement of human senses. His acts throughout the novel suggest a defiance of established authority and a quest for knowledge and power.⁴⁶ Though he has the body of a monkey, he represents the best of human qualities. If Monkey represents intelligence, Pigsy symbolizes man's gross sensual appetites. Jealous, lazy, cowardly, and stupid, he is a symbol of every common man who seeks to fulfill his mundane goals.⁴⁷ Despite his impressive size and strength, he has no ambition beyond good food and sex. Tripitaka, Monkey, and Pigsy are supreme fictional creations, comparable to Chia Pao-yü, Faust, Hamlet, Don Quixote, and other famous literary characters.

Scholars have long been divided in their interpretations of Journey to the West. Ch'ing commentators made great efforts to extract profound religious and philosophical significance from the novel. A number of Western critics adopted some of the approaches of the Ch'ing scholars and went even farther. For instance, Timothy Richard suggested that Journey is not merely an epic, a book on travel, cosmogony, astrology, anthropology, comparative religion, and so on but is a little of all these. He pointed out that the book is filled with moral and religious purposes, that it even anticipates the modern theory of evolution (from monkey to man and from man to Buddha), and that its author was something of a Christian because he believed in neither Confucianism nor Taoism and Buddhism but something superior to all three.⁴⁸ In view of some of the far-fetched and excessive allegorical interpretations, Hu Shih proposed, therefore, to free Journey to the West from all kinds of allegorical interpretations⁴⁹ and stressed its elements of comedy, humor, and satire.

Monkey is the main hero in the novel and all the other characters only serve as his foils. Therefore, the novel could probably be read also as Wu Ch'eng-en's autobiography in heavy disguise. For was he not a gifted literocrat who served only briefly as a lowly sub-magistrate? And did not Monkey, the Great Sage, Equal of Heaven, have to endure the humiliation of serving as a common groom under the title of Curator of the Equestrian Galleries?

Journey to the West, which initiated the tradition of scholar-novelists, has many obvious strengths. Its author demonstrates a gift for comedy, satire, and allegory, and he makes the story secondary in importance to theme and characterization. Distinguished for its wit, humor, and wide-ranging fantasy, the novel presents thrilling adventures and fascinating supernatural tales; its complex themes and modes, its inclusion of both fantasy and realism, and its vivid and yet subtle characterizations are impressive achievements. What is remarkable is not only the author's fertile imagination and creative power but also his talent and ability in humanizing the gods and monsters and in presenting them as vain, gullible creatures that can be flattered, cajoled, and even hoodwinked.

However, as a work of literary art, the novel has its shortcomings. Like many other Chinese novels, it is crowded with stereotyped characters and repetitive episodes, some of which tend to weaken its unity. Also, some of the episodic incidents in Chapters 13-100, are tedious. Hence, Arthur Waley's decision to translate only a few of the forty-odd adventures in the latter half of the book has made it less tiresome to the Western reader.

Notes

1. C. H. Brewitt-Taylor, tr., Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Shanghai: Kelly & Walsh, 1925; reprint ed., Rutland, Vt.: Charles E. Tuttle, 1959). Moss Roberts has published an abridged translation, Three Kingdoms: China's Epic Drama (New York: Pantheon Books, 1976).

2. For a biography of Lo Kuan-chung, see Winston L. Y. Yang, “Lo Kuan-chung,” in L. Carrington Goodrich and Chaoying Fang, eds., Dictionary of Ming Biography, 1368-1644 (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1976), Vol. I, pp. 978-980.

3. For a study of Mao's version of the Romance and his commentary on the novel, see Winston L. Y. Yang, Mao Tung-kang (Boston: Twayne Publishers, forthcoming).

4. Hu Shih, “San-kuo chih yen-i hsü” (“Preface to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms”), in Hu Shih, Hu Shih wen-ts'un (Collected Essays of Hu Shih) (Reprint ed. Taipei: Yüan-tung t'u-shu kung-ssu, 1953), Vol. II, p. 468.

5. For a study of the use of the Chronicle as a source of the Romance, see Winston L. Y. Yang, “The Use of the San-kuo chih as a Source of the San-kuo chih yen-i” (Ph.D. Dissertation. Stanford: Stanford Univ., 1971).

6. Winston L. Y. Yang, “The Use of the San-kuo chih as a Source of the San-kuo chih yen-i,” pp. 280-281.

7. Lo Kuan-chung, San-kuo yen-i (Romance of the Three Kingdoms) (Peking: Tso-chia ch'u-pan-she, 1959), Vol. I, p. 3.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid., p. 613.

10. Ibid., p. 623.

11. C. T. Hsia discusses Yüan Shao's human weaknesses in his The Classic Chinese Novel: A Critical Introduction (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1968), p. 71.

12. Lo Kuan-chung, San-kuo yen-i, p. 256.

13. Ibid., p. 449.

14. Ibid., p. 840.

15. Ibid., p. 841.

16. Ibid., p. 842.

17. Ibid., p. 843.

18. C. T. Hsia, The Classic Chinese Novel, p. 62.

19. Introduction to C. H. Brewitt-Taylor, tr., Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Reprint ed.), Vol. I, p. xi.

20. Ibid., pp. xi-xii.

21. Animate Illusions: Explorations of Narrative Structure (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1974), p. 7.

22. This title was adopted by J. H. Jackson in his translation, The Water Margin (Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1937; reprint ed., Cambridge, Mass.: C& T Co., 1976).

23. Pearl Buck, tr., All Men Are Brothers (New York: John Day, 1937; New York: Grove Press, 1957).

24. J. H. Jackson, tr., The Water Margin (Reprint ed.), pp. 916-917.

25. See, for instance, James J. Y. Liu, The Chinese Knight-Errant (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1967), p. 111.

26. J. H. Jackson, tr., The Water Margin, pp. 307-308.

27. For a more detailed discussion of the structure of the two novels, see Peter Li, “Narrative Patterns in San-kuo and Shui-hu,” in Andrew H. Plaks, ed., Chinese Narrative: Critical and Theoretical Essays (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, forthcoming).

28. Arthur Waley, tr., Monkey (New York: Grove Press, 1958).

29. The first of Anthony C. Yu's projected four-volume complete translation entitled The Journey to the West was published by the University of Chicago Press in 1977.

30. Hu Shih's views on the authorship of the novel are presented in his article, “Hsi-yu chi k'ao-cheng” (A Study of the Journey to the West), in Hu Shih wen-ts'un (Collected Essays of Hu Shih) (Reprint ed. Taipei: Yüan-tung t'u-shu kung-ssu, 1953), Vol. II, pp. 354-390.

31. Anthony C. Yu, tr., The Journey to the West (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1977), Vol. I, p. 24.

32. For a discussion of the text and authorship of the novel, see Anthony C. Yu's introduction to his translation, The Journey to the West, pp. 13-21. The introduction also contains extensive discussions of allegory and religious themes in the novel.

33. Anthony C. Yu, tr., The Journey to the West, pp. 66-73.

34. Chi-chen Wang, tr., “The Monkey King,” in George Kao, ed., Chinese Wit and Humor (Reprint ed. New York: Sterling Publishing Co., 1974), pp. 124-125.

35. Ibid., p. 122.

36. Arthur Waley, tr., Monkey, pp. 304-305.

37. Ibid., p. 5.

38. Recent studies of the various elements in the novel include the following: C. T. Hsia, “Journey to the West,” in his The Classic Chinese Novel: A Critical Introduction (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1968), pp. 115-164; Anthony C. Yu, “Heroic Verse and Heroic Mission: Dimensions of the Epic in the Hsi-yu chi,” JAS, 31 (1972), pp. 879-897; Andrew H. Plaks, “Allegory in Hsi-yu chi and Hung-lou Meng,” in Andrew H. Plaks, ed., Chinese Narrative: Critical and Theoretical Essays (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, forthcoming); James S. Fu, The Mythic and the Comic Aspects of the Quest: Hsi-yu chi as Seen through Don Quixote and Huckleberry Finn (Singapore: Singapore Univ. Press, 1977); and Karl S. Y. Kao, “An Archetypal Approach to Hsi-yu chi,” TR [Tam Kang Review], 5 No. 2 (Oct. 1972), pp. 63-97.

39. See, for instance, Harriet Dye, “Notes for a Comparison of the Odyssey and Monkey,” LEW [Literature East and West], 8 (1964), pp. 14-18.

40. Anthony C. Yu, “Heroic Verse and Heroic Mission,” p. 892.

41. For a thoughtful interpretation of the allegorical meanings of these characters, see C. T. Hsia, The Classic Chinese Novel, pp. 115-164.

42. Ibid., pp. 147-155. Cf. James S. Fu, The Mythic and the Comic Aspects of the Quest. Fu points out that the novel is “grotesque” as it represents “the mythically comic” in structure, and that the stories of the questers all follow the mythic pattern of the self striving for everlasting life.

43. C. T. Hsia, The Classic Chinese Novel, pp. 149-164. Hsia offers an interesting analysis of Pigsy as a comic and allegorical character.

44. Ibid., p. 147.

45. C. T. Hsia's analysis of the historical and fictional Tripitaka deserves attention. See his The Classic Chinese Novel, pp. 125-130.

46. Ibid., p. 133.

47. Ibid., p. 164.

48. Timothy Richard, tr., Mission to Heaven (Shanghai, 1913).

49. Arthur Waley, tr., Monkey, p. 5.

SOURCE: Hsia, C. T. “A Dream of Red Mansions.” In Approaches to the Asian Classics, edited by Wm. Theodore de Bary and Irene Bloom, pp. 262-73. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990.

[In this essay, Hsia introduces Hung-lou men, translated often as The Dream of the Red Chamber or as A Dream of Red Mansions, to a Western reading audience. Hsia argues that the novel is the culmination of the development of the Chinese novel through the Ming and early Ch'ing period, drawing from earlier landmark works including Chin p'ing mei.]

The Chinese novel Hung-lou meng is customarily known in English as The Dream of the Red Chamber (with or without the initial particle) because earlier partial translations bear this rather enigmatic title. Today, however, its continuing use is unjustified since we have a complete translation in three volumes by Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1978-80) under the apt title A Dream of Red Mansions. Another complete translation in five volumes by David Hawkes and John Minford is called The Story of the Stone (New York: Penguin Books, 1973-86), which accurately renders the novel's alternative title Shih-t'ou chi. However, since the work is best known in Chinese as Hung-lou meng, A Dream of Red Mansions should be its preferred title in English even though the Hawkes-Minford version is richer in style and more interesting to read.

A Dream of Red Mansions is the greatest novel in the Chinese literary tradition. As an eighteenth-century work, it draws fully upon that tradition, and can indeed be regarded as its crowning achievement. As that tradition is early distinguished by its poetry and philosophy, we expectedly find in Dream numerous poems in a variety of meters, including an elegy in the style of the Ch'u tz'u (Songs of the South, an ancient anthology), along with philosophic conversations that echo the sages of antiquity (Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Mencius) and utilize the subtle language of Zen Buddhism. As a late traditional man of letters, its principal author is further aware of the encyclopedic scope of Chinese learning and the heritage of earlier fiction and drama. He has made obvious use of the Ming domestic novel Chin P'ing Mei and the romantic masterpieces of Yüan-Ming drama such as The Romance of the Western Chamber (Hsi-hsiang chi) and The Peony Pavilion (Mu-tan t'ing). But his novel is greater than these not only for its fuller representation of Chinese culture and thought but for its incomparably richer delineation of characters in psychological terms. That latter achievement must be solely credited to the genius of its principal author.

That author is Ts'ao Hsüeh-ch'in (1715?-1763), an ethnic Chinese from a family that had served the Manchu emperors of the Ch'ing dynasty for generations. Though mere bondservants to the throne in status, Ts'ao's great grandfather, grandfather, and father or uncle all held the highly lucrative post of commissioner of Imperial Textile Mills, first briefly in Soochow and then in Nanking. The grandfather Ts'ao Yin played host to the K'ang-hsi emperor during his four southern excursions from Peking. But the Yung-cheng emperor, who succeeded K'ang-hsi in 1723, was far less friendly to the Ts'ao house. In 1728 he dismissed Ts'ao Fu, most probably Hsüeh-ch'in's father, from his post as textile commissioner of Nanking and confiscated much of his property. Then thirteen or fourteen years old, Hsüeh-ch'in moved with his parents to Peking in much reduced circumstances. It is believed that the Ts'ao clan temporarily regained favor after the Ch'ien-lung emperor ascended the throne in 1736. But by 1744, when Hsüeh-ch'in started composing his novel, he had moved to the western suburbs of Peking, again living in poverty: the Ts'ao family must have suffered another disaster from which it never recovered. The novelist had lost a young son a few months before his death in February 1763 and was survived by a second wife, of whom we know nothing further.

By all indications Ts'ao Hsüeh-ch'in should have had ample time to complete Dream to his own satisfaction, but it would seem that at the time of his death this novel of autobiographical inspiration—about a great family in decline and its young heir—was not yet in publishable shape even though manuscripts of the first eighty chapters, known by title as The Story of the Stone, had been in circulation for some time. Scholars now believe that Ts'ao must have completed at least one draft of the whole novel, but went on revising it, partly to please the commentators among his kinsmen, prominently a cousin known by his studio name of Red Inkstone (Chih-yen Chai), and partly to remove any grounds for suspicion that his work was critical of the government in devoting space to the tribulations of a family justly deserving of imperial punishment. If Ts'ao had indeed completed the last portion of the novel but didn't allow it to circulate, it could have been due to fear of a literary inquisition.

A corrected second edition of the 120-chapter Dream of Red Mansions came out in 1792, only a few months after the first edition of 1791. The new edition contains, in addition to the original preface by Ch'eng Wei-yüan, a new preface by Kao Ê, and a joint foreword by the two. Earlier scholars have arbitrarily taken Ch'eng to be a bookseller who had acquired manuscripts of the later chapters and had asked the scholar Kao Ê to put them into shape and edit the work as a whole. Some would even regard Kao Ê as a forger. Now we know that Ch'eng Wei-yüan was a staff member of the gigantic imperial project to assemble a “Complete Library in Four Branches of Learning and Literature” (Ssu-k'u ch'üan-shu). Ho-shen, a Manchu minister enjoying the complete trust of the Ch'ien-lung emperor, was made a director general of the project, and according to a new theory advanced by Chou Ju-ch'ang, a leading authority on the novel, it was Ho-shen himself who had ordered Ch'eng and Kao to prepare a politically harmless version for the perusal of the emperor. This theory should be taken seriously inasmuch as Ch'eng and Kao could not have dreamed of putting out a movable type edition of a massive novel without the backing of a powerful minister like Ho-shen and without the printing facilities of the imperial court.

Whatever its faults, the Ch'eng-Kao edition has remained the standard text for Chinese readers for two hundred years. Scholars, of course, will continue to regret that Ts'ao Hsüeh-ch'in did not live long enough to complete or oversee the publication of his own novel, and belittle or give grudging praise to Kao Ê's contributions as an editor and continuator of the first eighty chapters. But if the last forty chapters are not what they should be, the first eighty are also by no means a coherent narrative of seamless unity. In addition to minor inconsistencies in the story line, Ts'ao's inveterate habit for revision would seem to be responsible for more serious instances of narrative ineptitude as well. One plausible theory (endorsed by David Hawkes) proposes that even before starting on his great project, Ts'ao Hsüeh-ch'in had acquired or himself written a manuscript called A Mirror for the Romantic (Feng-yüeh pao-chien), about unhappy youths and maidens belatedly awakened to the illusory nature of love. He was apparently very fond of this manuscript and inserted some of its cautionary tales into his novel. He did so, of course, at the cost of upsetting its temporal scheme since the autobiographical hero and his female cousins lead quite unhurried lives while the trials of the deluded Chia Jui in chapter 12 and of the hapless Yu sisters in chapters 64-67 consume weeks in a matter of pages. Try as he might, Ts'ao could not have got himself out of this narrative impasse if he was determined to save these somewhat extraneous tales.

The story of the novel's composition and publication remains thus a very complicated affair demanding further research by specialists. The novel itself, however, should pose few difficulties for the Western reader unless he is intimidated right away by its sheer size. But the undaunted reader will be amply rewarded and will cherish the experience of having spent days and weeks with many memorable characters in a Chinese setting. A Dream of Red Mansions is about the aristocratic Chia clan which, like the Ts'ao family, has enjoyed imperial favor for generations. Its two main branches dwell in adjoining compounds in the capital, styled Ningkuofu and Jungkuofu. The nominal head of the Ningkuofu is a selfish student of Taoist alchemy who eventually dies its victim; his son Chia Chen and grandson Chia Yung are both sensualists. Grandmother Chia, also known as the Lady Dowager in the Yang translation, presides over the Jungkuofu. She has two sons, Chia She and Chia Cheng. Chia Lien, Chia She's pleasure-seeking son, is married to an extremely capable woman, Wang Hsi-feng. Despite her early triumphs in managing the household finances and driving her love rivals to suicide, this handsome and vivacious lady eventually languishes in ill health and dies. Her nefarious dealings are in large part responsible for the raiding of the Chia compounds by imperial guards and the confiscation of their property.

The Dowager's other son, Chia Cheng, is the only conscientious Confucian member of the family in active government service. A lonely man of narrow vision but undeniable rectitude, he has lost a promising son before the novel opens. Naturally, he expects his younger son by his legitimate wife, Lady Wang, to study hard and prepare for the civil service examinations. But Pao-yü, early spoiled by his grandmother, mother, and other female relatives, detests conventional learning and prefers the company of his girl cousins and the maidservants. Since late childhood, he has had as playmate a cousin of delicate beauty beloved by the Dowager, Lin Tai-yü. Some years later, another beautiful cousin, Hsüeh Pao-ch'ai, also moves into the Jungkuofu. In spite of Pao-yü's repeated assurances of his love, Tai-yü regards Pao-ch'ai as her rival and feels very insecure. As she progressively ruins her health by wallowing in self-pity, Pao-ch'ai replaces her as the family's preferred candidate for Pao-yü's wife. But the marriage when it does take place brings no joy to Pao-ch'ai since by that time Pao-yü has turned into an idiot. Broken-hearted and full of unforgiveness, Tai-yü dies on their wedding night.

Pao-yü eventually recovers and obtains the degree of chü-jen. But instead of returning home after taking the examination, he renounces the world and becomes a monk. The desolate Pao-ch'ai takes comfort in her pregnancy. A faithful maid, Hsi-jen (called Aroma in Hawkes and Minford) is eventually happily married to an actor friend of Pao-yü's. Another maid, Ch'ing-wen (Skybright in Hawkes and Minford), to whom Pao-yü was also much attached, had died of calumny and sickness long before his marriage.

Chinese novels before Dream are mostly about characters in history and legend. Though a type of short novel about talented and good-looking young lovers had become popular before his time, Ts'ao Hsüeh-ch'in quite properly dismisses these stereotyped romances in his novel for their palpable unreality. But his use of what we may call diurnal realism, the technique of advancing the novel with seemingly inconsequential accounts of day-to-day events and of lingering over days of family significance, clearly shows his indebtedness to the aforementioned Chin P'ing Mei, the only one of the four major Ming novels devoted to tracing the fortunes of a discordant large family. (The other three, all available in English translation, are: Romance of the Three Kingdoms [San-kuo-chih yen-i], Outlaws of the Marsh [Shui-hu chuan], and The Journey to the West [Hsi-yu chi].) But whereas Chin P'ing Mei is notorious for its graphic descriptions of Hsi-men Ch'ing's sexual life with his concubines and paramours, Dream is never pornographic despite its larger cast of male sensualists. The novel maintains instead a note of high culture by focusing attention on the hero and on several gifted young ladies whose poetic parties and conversations with him invariably touch upon intellectual and aesthetic matters. The life story of Chia Pao-yü, especially, is tested against all the major ideals of Chinese culture.

At the very beginning of the first chapter, Ts'ao places his hero in a creation myth that mocks his Faustian desire for experience, knowledge, and pleasure. When the goddess Nü-kua is repairing the Dome of Heaven, she rejects as unfit for use a huge rock of considerable intelligence, which consequently bemoans its fate and develops a longing for the pleasures of the mundane world. It can now turn itself into the size of a stone and, with the help of a Buddhist monk and a Taoist priest, it is eventually born with a piece of jade in his mouth as our hero (Pao-yü means “precious jade”). As a supramundane allegory, then, Dream is the transcription of a record as inscribed on the Stone itself after it had returned to its original site in the Green Fable Mountains. The Stone has found human life wanting, its pleasures and pains all illusory, and its detailed record—our novel—is by allegorical design a massive substantiation of that truth. Throughout the novel, the celestial agents of that allegory, the mangy Buddhist and lame Taoist, while watching over the spiritual welfare of Pao-yü, periodically mock or enlighten other deluded earthlings as well.

Chia Pao-yü is next characterized in chapter 2 by two knowledgeable outsiders as an unconventional individualist of the romantic tradition firmly opposed to the Confucian ideal of morality and service as represented by his father. To illustrate his propensity for love, our hero, while taking a nap in the bedchamber of Ch'in K'o-ch'ing (Chia Yung's wife) in chapter 5, is transported to the Land of Illusion presided over by the fairy Disenchantment. After warning him of the dangers of the kind of crazy love (ch'ih ch'ing) prized by the romantics, she introduces her own sister to him for the purpose of sexual initiation so that he may see through the vanity of passion and return to the path of Confucian service. The fairy Ko-ch'ing, who combines in her person the charms of both Tai-yü and Pao-ch'ai, of course enraptures Pao-yü, but he soon wakes up screaming after being chased by demons and wild beasts.

When lecturing Pao-yü, the fairy Disenchantment does allow a distinction between lust (yin) and love (ch'ing), and as someone truly committed to ch'ing (also meaning “feeling”), our hero is in no danger of being confused with several of his kinsmen who are often driven by lust to trample upon human feelings. But Pao-yü is so free of the taint of lust that the dream allegory confuses matters by presenting him as someone desperate for salvation after only a brief interlude of sexual bliss. Contrary to popular belief among Chinese readers, Pao-yü is not a great lover, nor does he function principally as a lover in the novel. It is true that remembrance of the sweeter portion of the dream has led him to make love to the maid Aroma the same evening. For all we know they may continue to share sexual intimacy thereafter, but his enjoyment of her body, explicitly referred to only once and rarely emphasized again, alters not a whit his high regard for her as a person and a friend. Pao-yü is actually more drawn to his other maid Skybright because of her entrancing beauty and fiery temperament, but she dies complaining of being a virgin, untouched by her young master.

Pao-yü is every girl's true friend. Once the Takuanyüan, a spacious garden built in honor of his elder sister, an imperial concubine, becomes the residential quarters of Pao-yü and his girl cousins, he sees them and their maids all the time and gives daily proof of his unfeigned friendship and solicitude for their welfare. He admires each and every one of these girls as an embodiment of celestial beauty and understanding, but worries about the time when they will leave the garden to get married. He knows only too well that with marriage their celestial essence will be obscured and that, if they survive their unhappiness, they will become as meanspirited as the older women in the Chia mansions.

As the sole young master in the Takuanyüan, Pao-yü therefore does his best to keep the young ladies and maids amused and to lull their awareness of the misery of approaching adulthood. But for all their lively parties and conversations, the young ladies have to leave one by one, by marriage, death, or abduction (in the case of the resident nun Miao-yü). It is these tragedies that reduce our helpless hero to a state of idiocy and prepare him for his eventual acceptance of his fate as an insensible Stone, regardless of suffering humanity. In that allegorical dream, the fairy Disenchantment has warned him only of his romantic propensity. But though he is grievously hurt when his elders rob him of his intended bride and marry him to Pao-ch'ai, ordinarily he is much more occupied by the tragic fate of Tai-yü, and of all other girls deprived of life or happiness. In accordance with the author's allegoric scheme, we should perhaps feel happy that he has finally gained wisdom and leaves this world of suffering for the life of a monk. But we cannot help feeling that his spiritual wisdom is gained at the expense of his most endearing trait—his active love and compassion for fellow human beings. Despite his irrepressible charm and gaiety, Chia Pao-yü must be regarded as the most tragic hero in all Chinese literature for ultimately choosing the path of self-liberation because his sympathy and compassion have failed him.

Pao-yü has a few like-minded male friends whom he sees occasionally, but inside the Chia mansions there are no men to whom he can unburden his soul. Even if he is not partial to girls, he has only these to turn to for genuine companionship. And it is a tribute to Ts'ao's extraordinary genius that he is able to provide him with so many sharply individualized companions to talk and joke with, to compete as poets, and to care for and love. Among these, Lin Tai-yü naturally takes pride of place as the principal heroine with whose fate Pao-yü is most concerned. Alone of the major heroines, she is assigned a role in the supramundane allegory complementary to the hero's. She is supposed to be a plant that blossoms into a fairy after the Stone, then serving as a page at the court of Disenchantment, has daily sprinkled it with dew. The fairy has vowed to repay his kindness with tears if she may join him on earth, and judging by the occasions Tai-yü has to cry while living as an orphan among relatives, never sure of her status in the Jungkuofu nor of her marital future, she has certainly more than repaid her debt to her former benefactor.

Yet as is the case with Pao-yü's allegoric dream, Ts'ao Hsüeh-ch'in almost deliberately misleads with his fairy tale about Tai-yü as a grateful plant. The reality of the two cousins in love is far more complex and fascinating than any allegory can suggest. Long before Tai-yü is in danger of being rejected by her elders, she seethes with discontent. Her every meeting with Pao-yü ends in a misunderstanding or quarrel, and these quarrels are, for her, fraught with bitter and lacerated feelings. This is so because the two are diametrically opposed in temperament despite the similarity of their tastes. Pao-yü is a person of active sympathy capable of ultimate self-transcendence; Tai-yü is a self-centered neurotic who courts self-destruction. Her attraction for Pao-yü lies not merely in her fragile beauty and poetic sensibility but in her very contrariness—a jealous self-obsession so unlike his expansive gaiety that his love for her is always tinged with infinite sadness.

Tai-yü, on her part, can never be sure of Pao-yü's love and yet maintains a fierce pride in her studied indifference to her marital prospects. One could almost say that her tragedy lies in her stubborn impracticality, in the perverse contradiction between her very natural desire to get married to the man of her choice and her fear of compromising herself in the eyes of the world by doing anything to bring about that result. In time her temper gets worse, and so does her health. Ts'ao Hsüeh-ch'in never flinches from physiological details as he traces her growing emotional sickness in terms of her bodily deterioration. Her dream scene in chapter 82, where Pao-yü slashes open his chest in order to show her his heart and finds it missing, and her ghastly death scene in chapter 98 are among the most powerful in the novel. Kao Ê must be given high praise if he had indeed a substantial hand in the writing of these chapters.

Because Pao-ch'ai nominally gets her man, Chinese readers partial to Tai-yü are less sympathetic toward her, and find personal satisfaction in seeing her as a hypocritical schemer. This misreading is, of course, unwarranted. It is true that, as a sensible girl docilely accepting her place in a Confucian society, she may have less appeal for Pao-yü and for the modern reader than Tai-yü with her neurotic sensibility and volatile temper. Yet both are strictly comparable in talent and beauty, and both are fatherless children living more or less as dependents among relatives. Though Tai-yü is initially jealous, they become the best of friends after chapter 45: two helpless pawns in the hands of their elders with no control over their marital fate. If the elders prefer Pao-ch'ai as Pao-yü's bride, at the same time they show little regard for her welfare. Though Pao-yü was once a desirable match, by the time the wedding is proposed he is a very sick person with no immediate prospect for recovery. Even more than Tai-yü, Pao-ch'ai is the victim of a cruel hoax, since there can be no doubt that the hastily arranged wedding is regarded by the elder Chia ladies as medicine for Pao-yü's health. For Pao-ch'ai's martyrdom their brutal and desperate self-interest is alone responsible.

As the wife of Pao-yü, Pao-ch'ai remains to the end a Confucian trying to dissuade him from the path of self-liberation. She is in that respect not unlike his parents in wishing to see him enter government service and get settled as a family man. But in the end she uses the Mencian argument to counter his Taoist resolve to leave the world. Even if the world is full of evil and suffering, or especially because it is so, how can he bear to sever human ties, to leave those who need his love most? How can one remain human by denying the most instinctive promptings of his heart? Pao-ch'ai cannot figure this out, and Pao-yü cannot answer her on the rational level of human discourse. It is only by placing human life in the cosmological scheme of craving and suffering that one can see the need to liberate oneself. It would be too cruel even for the enlightened Pao-yü to tell Pao-ch'ai that to cling to love and compassion is to persist in delusion: in the primordial antiquity of Taoism there was no need to love or commiserate.

As a tragedy, A Dream of Red Mansions has thus the overtones of a bitter and sardonic comedy. The Buddhist-Taoist view of the world prevails in the end, and yet the reader cannot but feel that the reality of love and suffering as depicted in the novel stirs far deeper layers of his being than the reality of Buddhist-Taoist wisdom. This Chinese masterpiece is therefore like all the greatest novels of the world in that no philosophic or religious message one extracts therefrom can at all do justice to its unfolding panorama of wondrous but perverse humanity. For any reader who would like a panoramic view of traditional Chinese life through the portrayal of many unforgettable characters in an authentic social and cultural setting there can be no richer and more fascinating work than Ts'ao Hsüeh-ch'in's A Dream of Red Mansions.