ACCIDENTAL INCEST FILIAL CANNIBALISM AND OTHER PECULIAR ENCO

ACCIDENTAL INCEST FILIAL CANNIBALISM AND OTHER PECULIAR ENCOUNTERS IN LATE IMPERIAL CHINESE LITERA

Jade Horse and the Historical and Cultural Implication of “Journey to Annam”---Concerning the other critical elements and descriptions in the story “Journey to Annam” is the third story in Zhaoshibei, written by the Master of Zhuoxuan Pavilion酌玄亭主人 in early Qing. It is about the downfall of an official family(Hu family) in Guangxi and the loss and gain of a merchant family(Du Jingshan’s family), connected by the exchange of a jade horse and thirty spans scarlet velvet in Annam. Special researches about it were rare. However, Tina Lu’s book Accidental Incest contributes the whole Chapter Four “Exchange Across Borders” to it and her analysis is thought provoking. She raised many enlightening questions that she had reached no definite answers. Considering the most common narrative strategy in Huaben, that is the karmic retribution, Lu says: “A story all about what lies beyond the borders makes the peculiar choice to conclude with an entirely enclosed narrative about the connection between the state sphere and the domestic sphere: no outside forces contribute to the death of the young lecher(Hu Yanei) or to the fall of his father(Hu Commissioner). Everything necessary to their destruction lies within their own four walls.” Then what causes the downfall of the family? “If the pacification commissioner and his family can be punished without Du Jingshan’s travels to Annam, then why did those travels have to take place at all?” Why a jade horse? It’s tempting to simply adjust it to the notion “being restless and whimsical like a monkey or a horse”(心猿意马) that does appear in the text: the mind unbridled like a horse or a monkey, young man gets lost in desire all the time(意马心猿拴不住,郎君年少总情迷). However, despite the “give the show(horse feet) away”(露出马脚), even the horse he rode on to run away does not really fit into the notion of an unbridled horse(a metaphor for a restless mind). “Get off the horse! How could you a barbarian ride on my horse from Annam!”(“快下马来!俺安南国的马,可是你蛮子偷来骑得的么!”) The horse was stolen from an Annamese and he couldn’t control it. He was scolded as a barbarian(蛮子) because he tried to ride on it. The live horse here is obviously a counterpart or even a metaphor of the jade horse, both belong to Annam. What authorizes the Annamese to call Hu Yanei a babarian(蛮子)? He does not condemn him of stealing his horse, but satires him of being a barbarian who cannot ride on an Annam horse. What’s his value system revealed in this scene? Why does the author put the plot like this? It certainly has something to do with the other aspects of Annam ethnography described in the story and they together show the author’s value for the writing of the story. I will talk about it later but first of all we have to define the Jade Horse and look into the issue why it has to be a jade horse to be traded for the velvet. Jade horse appeared in history beginning at Shang Dynasty. During the pre-Qin time, it had the flat appearance and symbolized the character of courtier(“臣”). In Han Dynasty, it took on the design of an immortal riding on it and became three-dimensional. In Tang, it was still in the shape of a standing horse. But after Song and Yuan, the image of a lying horse became common and when it was shaped as a standing horse, it was not a normal horse but a monster that has the shape of a horse. Considering that in Ming, lying horse is the fitted image of a jade horse, we are supposed to give the jade horse in the story an appearance of a lying horse if it is a common object made at the time. But judging by the description in the story, the jade horse is related to an immortal who rides on it, so it should have the shape of a standing horse ready for someone to ride on. However, it is also described as a paperweight through Zhu Chunhui’s eyes, in this sense, it should better be a lying horse or a standing horse with a pedestal. Combining these, I would assume the jade horse in the story to be a standing horse with a pedestal like the jade horse in the story in Record of Anecdotes(《闻奇录》) written in the Five Dynasties. In the story, a little jade horse was found underground who could shout like a real horse by Shen Fushi(沈傅师) , a Suzhounese who was proficient in calligraphy. It was fed on cinnabar and could produce shit. The Summery of Palacehall Xuan (《宣室志》) quoted by Extensive Records of the Taiping Era(《太平广记》) Volume 401 also has the story that an official Shen Youzhi(沈攸之)’s wife had a little jade horse tied up by a green rope, it could turn into a real white horse and run away in the night and then come back in the morning. Shen Youzhi was also a Jiangnanese who was a senior general in Song Dynasty of the Southern Dynasties. He led the insurrection in 477 AD. against Xiao Daocheng(萧道成), who usurped the throne of Song Dynasty. The insurrection failed and Shen hanged himself with his third son in the woods in Huarong Realm(华容界). In Huang Xiucai story in Lasting Words to Awaken the World(《醒世恒言》), which was written in Late Ming, earlier than the time “Journey to Annam” was written, before the downfall of the Ming Dynasty, the jade horse played the role of a supernatural power that related to Daoism and Buddhism, which saved the love of Huang Shun and Han Yu’e. The story had its origin in Tang Romance with the main character Huangshun(a real man in history) coming from Yangzhou, which endowed historical and cultural meaning to it, indicating the author’s intention of rewriting it into a huaben. We are also certain that the jade horse was a standing one because the original story was from Tang Romances. As to “Journey to Annam” story, from the description and the notion that it is an antique, it could be a standing horse that dates back to Tang. Annam got its own independence only at the end of Tang, before which time it had been under the reign of China for nearly a thousand years. In this case, the jade horse is a representative of the traditional Chinese culture. This notion is implicit in this text but is revealed in many layers as sarcasm maybe due to the early Qing censorship. So there are two important aspects concerning history and culture of the jade horse that cannot be ignored in this story, which are actually explicit in the text. First, jade horse is an antique. It is not merely some kind of ordinary paperweight but an antique that bear some history before it was sent to Hu Commissioner, some history concerning Annam’s history and culture, even relating to Li Jili(黎季犁). He should have been a prime minister of Annam. He once usurped the throne of the king and then was defeated by the Chinese and was taken to China as a captive. His heir, the Manager Li is dealing with Chinese merchants at the time, whom Zhu Chunhui thought would know how to get the prohibited scarlet velvet. But instead Li warned Du Jingshan of the difficulty of getting the velvet, the argument that “the adventure abetted by Master Li returns the jade horse to the very family from whom his own had taken it” by Lu is problematic because Master Li didn’t urged him on pursuing the velvet but warned him not even to try it and it was on the journey to Nituo Mountain to ask the returning of the silver that has been “robbed” that Du Jingshan run into the Zhuzhu family. In this sense, even political retribution is not the major problem in this story, it must have something to do with the encounter by Du Jingshan of Chinese culture with the Annamese culture, which is not only on the layer of present but relating to history. Second, it has magic power and some immortal is connected to it in the eyes of the old lady from Zhuzhu family. It’s way more than a dead object but something that has a live and immortal spirit, which certainly has something to do with culture and religion. An immortal is coming to ride on it every night and Hu Yanei is certainly not the right one to be its master, neither is his father who owns it before it is thrown to Fenggu by Hu Yanei. The downfall of the Hu family In addition to the calling of Hu Yanei a Manzi(蛮子) by an Annamese, Dujingshan calls Hu Commisioner a Manniu(蛮牛) when he told Zhu Chunhui about his mission assigned by him of getting thirty spans scarlet vevelt. When he was in China, he didn’t call him like that. It seemed that after he came to Annam, he realized this fact better. Even as the Manager Li is a manager himself, he doesn’t want to be called a Dianguan. Why is that? What is the naming system like in Annam? It seems that though they have no such courtesy like the one in China, their own naming system is still strict itself. To Hu Commissioner, the jade horse is a present from the King of Annam. He shouldn’t have given it to his son. Despite his ignorance of its historical and cultural value, he didn’t even treat it as a political object. To him, it could only be an ordinary paperweight like in the eyes of Zhu Chunhui. If it was an ordinary object, then why Du Jingshan said “This is an antique” when he first saw it? It is almost obvious here that the jade horse has something to do with the new cultural authority of Manchu government and the downfall of the Han Culture. In Han ethnics, even a merchant could recognize an antique, but the value of it has greatly downgraded so it could not be sold or be valuable enough to cause great trouble to Du even though he got it illegally. One could imagine if it were a literatus to have it, it would not be treated so casually, especially after it was recognized as an antique. To get the pretty Fenggu, Hu Yanei tried to use the pearl as a false evidence of robbing or stealing on the part of Du Jingshan to have him arrested or even killed, not the jade horse. But it was denied by Hu Commissioner because he didn’t want to risk to lose his position. Why wasn’t the jade horse mentioned at all? It was a present from the King of Annam, how could Hu commissioner not treasure it or at least want to keep it at all? He didn’t care about the losing of the jade horse but was only disturbed by the losing of the pearl. To go even further, he lost the chance to use the jade horse as false evidence of some wrongdoing on Du because of his poor knowledge of history and culture. How could an official raised by imperial examination(科举) so ignorant of political, historical and cultural value? Comparing his reaction to the Zhuzhu family’s reaction, why is the jade horse so precious in Annam and so worthless in China? Yet it turned out in the story that the jade horse became the critical thing to absolve Du from the crisis and it’s like the politic of Annam is the fair judge of the lawsuit never taken to court. This could only happen when the lawsuit was looked over through the so-called trade of the jade horse and the scarlet velvet, which is not a trade in economic sense or even a political one because there is no direct political relationship between Hu and Zhuzhu family. Only cultural comparison between them is obvious. The only resolution to why the Hu family’s downfall was caused by no external forces is their ignorance of the cultural tradition and the failure of nurturing the heir according to the scholarship tradition. When an official care only about gathering money but pay no attention to the nurturing of the heir, his family is bound to fall. It showed the worry of the literati about the downgrade of culture due to the national regime transformation from Han to Manchu. Because of the ignorance of the jade horse, even his intention of getting profit by punishing Du will fail at the end. Obviously his plan was that Du wouldn’t be able to get the scarlet velvet on time and he could get his property as a punishment for that. Instead, he got the scarlet velvet that he couldn’t sell to get silver, so it is actually worthless. That’s why neither the velvet Hu got from Du nor the one Du kept was mentioned anymore. It is obvious that Hu was punished in failing in the revenge because his ignorance of the value of the jade horse, which represents his ignorance of history and culture. Du Jingshan and Fenggu’s loss and gain Lu says: “The horse might change hands, but ultimately its return to where it belongs will right other wrongs too, whether personal or political, but perhaps not before Fenggu and Du Jingshan suffer unduly.” But did they really suffer unduly? If Du Jingshan’s gaining the Pearl by grasping the hat of the Hu Yanei can be seen as unintentional, Fenggu’s keeping the jade horse should be seen as a wrongdoing at any rate. If she only got a handkerchief, she would have thrown it back or simply discarded it. From “Papaya” in “The Songs of Wei” (《卫风·木瓜》) to “There is linen on the hill” in “The Songs of Wang”(《王风·丘中有麻》) and “The woman says that the cocks crow” (《女曰鸡鸣》) in The Book of Songs, jade was seen as a token of love between unmarried young lovers. When it came to an illegal extramarital affair, most of the time cloth was taken as a keepsake, which bears erotic meaning. Because of this, the jade horse was tied to a handkerchief. One simply couldn’t throw a single jade horse or jade whatever to a woman to flirt with her. Even despite the political and historical token of it, the jade horse as a token of love bear some cultural meaning itself, representing controllable and mediate love, which here in the story carry a voyeur’s desire instead. In the story of Huang Xiucai, a jade horse is not only a token of love but actually saved the love. Being a lovelace, Hu Yanei threw the jade horse to Fenggu and specially reminded her that it was a jade horse, meaning it was worthier than the handkerchief, representing he tried to use it as a commodity with commercial value to get women. He was totally ignorant of its cultural meaning even as a token of love. So the ignorance of the cultural value of it was showed on Hu family’s side by Hu Yanei in addition to Hu Commissioner. As a counterpart, Du Jingshan treated it in a peculiar way. After pointing out it was an antique, he asked Fenggu to pack it with his luggage so he could prepare it as a present to send to the merchant in Annam maybe because he assumed it wouldn’t be possible to trade it for great value. One could assume he might trade the pearl for silver. In Late Ming, the trade of pearl was ordinary, just like the trade of Styrax, Chinese Eaglewood and Cinnabar. But the trade of jade was in another system---the antique. If the jade horse was made at the time, it was worthless. But if it was an antique, it could be valuable. That’s why at the time many antiques traders faked them to get profit. It turned out to be an antique because it was in royal collection and was given to the only heir left of the Zhuzhu family, the child, by the King of Annam, and he asked the child to keep it as treasure. And the old lady of the Zhuzhu family described it as magical and bearing the meaning of immortality, which immediately reminds us of the Daoism and Buddhism that appeared earlier in the Huang Xiucai story exactly on the object of a jade horse originated in or before Tang Dynasty. This was predicated by Du Jingshan at the first sight of it, but he treated it casually. At the Late Ming and early Qing, the most valuable jade antiques were from Han Dynasty. In Tang the Chinese heartland was governed by the Li family that had the blood of Northern barbarian tribes, not purely Han, and the Tang royal family adopted Hu culture. In the stories at late Tang that contain a jade horse, the horses were all antiques that at least had transgenerational history. It seems that Annam had kept the authentic ancient culture of Han ethnic and that’s why it was so significant in the old lady’s eyes that the pair of the horses got together. It must represent something important, even something nostalgia. In the far south of China, that is Guangxi, the Hu Commissioner was indeed himself a barbarian of the traditional Chinese culture. In the realm of culture, Guangxi is an emblem of the exotic, implicating Chinese literati’s worry of Manchu’s destruction of Han culture. And when the heartland was governed by Manchu and the traditional culture was in the risk of being closed over, it had its everlasting revelation in Annam, one of the two geographical regions directly related to China that has been ruled by China for a thousand years thus culturally Chinese. The travel of the jade horse to China and then back to Annam does not contribute to the moral or economic circulation, not even political, although it is sent by Du Jingshan from a Chinese official to a former Annamese official family, but is an emblem of history and culture. Then we understand why Du Jingshan was punished on hardship but not economically and he even got some rewards because of the cultural mission he carried out successfully in this story. The journey was an educational one for him to clear his ignorance of the traditional culture and he did learn the historical and cultural meaning of the jade horse. He was also rewarded because of his eagerness of maintaining his family, which is the motive for him to go to Annam to get the scarlet velvet. For the petition by Fenggu that he see the jade horse as a representative of herself, he didn’t give it away to any merchants in Annam but treasured it as if it was his wife, only when he got the scarlet velvet so he knew his wife would not be separated from him that he let go of it. On Fenggu’s part, since her worry and reward make her loss and gain even, her appearance in public is just a cliché to start the whole story as a stimulus. Lu holds the same opinion: “The young wife’s presence on the balcony does not affirm connectedness but is instead the first step in a chain of events that ends up sending her husband outside the borders of the empire.” I do not agree with McMahon’s interpretation of this issue by gender perspective and Lu’s development of it. Female problem is not the major concern in the story so it’s very hard to interpret it through gender perspective. It’s the same with the other stories in Zhaoshibei. The other cultural evidences The story begins with a poem that suggests the subject of the story: “The centenary tomb has become wild fields. Only the present human joys and sorrows count. As dusk approaches, the cry of the cuckoo grows ever more plaintive. And in my leisure, I edit an unofficial history (野史), adding to my incomplete collection.” (百年古墓已为田,人世悲欢只眼前.日暮子规啼更切,闲修野史续残编.) It is a common phenomenon that novelists tried to adjust their novel writing to history. Actually it is the trend ever since fiction appeared in Chinese literary history. In Late Ming and Early Qing, writing novel and seeing it as a compliment to unofficial histories(稗官野史) to add to celebrity biographies and folk customs is a discursive means to show one’s historical concerns and the nostalgia feelings of the Ming Dynasty. About the Scarlet Velvet, its identity as a prohibited commodity has its own implication. And the process of capturing apes at Annam has long ago appeared in Chinese history before Ming, at which time Annam is only a province of China. Ape was called Xingxing(狌狌) in ancient times. “South Mountain Classic”(《南山经》) and “Classic of the Southern part of China”(《海内南经》) of Mountain and Sea Classics(《山海经》) recorded it as with human face and knowing human names. Li Daoyuan’s Commentary on the Waterways Classic(郦道元《水经注》) said it could talk to people with women’s voice and was eaten by human. Both Li Kang’s Summery of Wonders(李亢《独异志》) and Zhang Zhuo’s Selected Records of the Court and the Commonalty(张鷟《朝野佥载》) in Tang Dynasty described the ape as a beauty who knows human language and also has the knowledge of the history. It was addicted to wine therefore was captured by M