by AnonYMous
“If this fellow Yuan hadn’t dallied with prostitutes and become infatuated with that whore, he never would have abandoned his wife and forced her to sleep alone,” said a third. “That’s why she quarreled with him all the time. Yuan You rented a house for Paria and lived with her instead of at home. He treated his wife as a stranger and cut off all communication with her. And now there are no children. Isn’t it true that the Yuan family line will come to an end? The Sage said, ‘There are three unfilial acts, and leaving no descendants is the worst of them.’3 From this we can see that anyone who dallies with prostitutes is the most unfilial of men.”
“If we were to believe what you people say,” said a fourth man, “there couldn’t be any such person as Paria in the brothels. According to you, whores are all fancy talk and fine promises; they cheat you out of your money; they cause you to be obsessed with sex, to quarrel with your wife, to squander your property, to lose your money and your life; there are simply no good and virtuous women among them. But isn’t this tablet we’re honoring today that of a prostitute who married and then sacrificed her life in order to die with her husband?”
“You may claim that she’s an outstandingly virtuous woman from the brothels,” said a fifth man, “but in my opinion, if this fellow Yuan hadn’t dallied with prostitutes, married this Paria, and set her up in her own house, he wouldn’t have indulged his sexual desires by night and day and worn himself out, developed consumption, and died vomiting blood. In the last analysis, it’s best not to go near any of those places.”
And so the argument continued, back and forth. Just as they were arriving at a stalemate, they saw a man in his fifties, white-haired, toothless, and haggard, who was clapping his hands and singing in a loud voice:
The brothel’s fine, say it over and over.
There groups of friends convene,
Just for a cup of tea, they say—
But soon it becomes routine.
The brothel’s fine, say it over and over.
Its splendors have no end.
No matter how you watch your purse,
Once there you’ll spend and spend.
The brothel’s fine, say it over and over.
There songs are sung all day.
With wine and music dawn till dark,
Your heart is stolen away.
The brothel’s fine, say it over and over.
Requests are sweetly put
For clothes and jewels, money too—
The bills are hard to foot.
The brothel’s fine, say it over and over.
Love is the greatest danger.
Last night she vowed to marry you;
Today she’s wed a stranger.
The brothel’s fine, say it over and over.
She’ll praise you to the sky.
But whatever sum you offer her,
She’ll never say, “Too high!”
The brothel’s fine, say it over and over.
Your love won’t let you go.
Day and night you will never leave;
Your wife you’ll hardly know.
The brothel’s fine, say it over and over.
When all your property’s sold,
The love that she has given you
Will suddenly turn cold.
The brothel’s fine, say it over and over.
There love’s disease is rife.
With rheumy eyes and scabby head
You may well lose your life.
The brothel’s fine, say it over and over.
Too long was I in thrall.
I’ve now escaped the brothel’s snare,
Never again to fall.
He walked along clapping his hands in time to the song and laughing. He gave the appearance of being mad, and the way he was carrying on prompted spectators to follow him in growing numbers. Past Taiping Bridge he went, as far as the crossroads on the eastern side, a densely populated area, and then, in a sudden puff of wind, he vanished without a trace.
The people watching were amazed. One man said, “I know that fellow who was singing just now. His name is Guo Shi, style Lairen [Old Hand].4 He used to get his greatest pleasure from drinking and staying overnight in the brothels—he was completely infatuated with them. I wonder why he’s clapping his hands and singing like that. He must have been cheated by some prostitute and felt so crushed by the experience that he’s gone out of his mind. Did you hear those two words ‘fine’ and ‘over’ that he kept repeating in his song? I believe that once our affairs in this world reach the point of being fine, they’re over. In the case of brothels, the finer we want our experience to be, the sooner it’s over. I have no idea where he might have gone. Let me go and tell his family.” He hurried off to do so.
His wife and children were astonished. After thanking the man who brought them the news, they fanned out in all directions looking for Old Hand, but although they searched for many days, they found no trace of him. Only later, when I, your narrator, lost my way and ended up on Mount Self-Deception did I learn that he had retired deep into the mountains and become an immortal. There he presented me with this book, Romantic Illusions, which contained the following four poems on its final page.
I’ve racked my brains and spat my blood in vain;
Romance is unreal, you must understand.
I send these words to all worthy young men—
The author of this book is an old hand.
Why do we call our lovers enemies?
The sins of the flesh must be paid when due.
If you lust once more and do further wrong,
She will avenge herself again on you.
Who would have thought that a singsong girl
Of the pleasure quarter would become a wife?
But clients scatter as flowers wither;
And what would await her at the end of life?
For thirty years I went there every day;
I know their empty dreams and vain pretense.
I’ve written this book, Romantic Illusions,
Which is full of nonsense that makes good sense.
NOTES
Introduction
1. Patrick Hanan, “Illusion of Romance and the Courtesan Novel,” in Chinese Fiction of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, 33–57 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004).
2. The finest is Han Bangqing’s Haishang hua liezhuan, translated by Eileen Chang and Eva Hung as The Sing-song Girls of Shanghai (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005). On the courtesans of the Foreign Settlements of Shanghai, see Catherine Vance Yeh, Shanghai Love: Courtesans, Intellectuals, and Entertainment Culture (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006).
3. Lin Yutang, My Country and My People (New York: John Day, 1935), 161.
4. The Yangzhou huafang lu’s detailed listings of streets with their locations may have even suggested the novel’s explicit itineraries See, for example, juan 9, pp. 178–190, in the Jiangsu Guangling guji keyinshe edition (Yangzhou, 1984). On the history and geography of Yangzhou, see Antonia Finnane, Speaking of Yangzhou: A Chinese City, 1550–1850 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004).
5. It is contained in a manuscript collection entitled Yangzhou fengtu cicui that is preserved in the Yangzhou Library. It is reprinted in Yangzhou zhuzhici, comp. Xia Youlan et al., 82–90 (Yangzhou: privately printed, 1992). Only the author’s studio name is given: Hanpu jiying of Yizheng.
6. For example, there are poems on the young men who take a small boat and follow the others (chap. 16), on mimics (chap. 13), on the mapi (chap. 16), on the impounding of boats (chap. 4), on the tea kiosk (chap. 16), as well as other poems on clothes, hairstyles, pipes, venereal disease, gambling, teashops, and opium. Fengyue meng is also related to some earlier oral and vernacular literature that deals with courtesans, loan-sharking, and gambling (Hanan, “Illusion of Romance,” 41–42).
7. Yan Duanshu et al., eds., Xuzuan Yangzhoufu zhi (1874), juan 17 and 18. A widow’s suicide for love is also very rare in
fiction. A story in the late-Ming collection Xing shi yan (no. 10) is one example. The case in Rulin waishi (The Scholars), chap. 48, is of a young widow pressured by her father into killing herself.
8. Hu Shi, “Zhencao wenti,” Xin Qingnian 5, no. 1 (July 15, 1918): 11.
9. It was first entitled Mengyou Shanghai mingji zheng feng zhuan. It has been reprinted several times since, sometimes under different titles. Fengyue meng was also utilized in other ways in the same period. The novel Shenlou waishi, of which there is an 1895 edition, reprints without acknowledgment the whole of the vaudeville section (chap. 10) as its own chap. 8.
10. This translation is based principally on the edition edited by Wang Junnian in Xiaoshuo erjuan, Zhongguo jindai wenxue zuopin xilie (Fuzhou: Haixia wenyi chubanshe, 1990) and secondarily on that edited by Hua Yun and published by Beijing University Press in 1990. Use has also been made of the 1883 Shenbaoguan edition in the Harvard-Yenching Library.
Chapter 1
1. “Flowers” stands for prostitutes.
2. In Ming and Qing dynasty literature Guan Zhong (725–645 B.C.E.) was often credited with creating the brothel as an institution. The belief was apparently based, erroneously, on a reference in the early historical text Zhan guo ce (Intrigues of the Warring States).
3. I.e., of romantic excess.
4. The text has Jiaochang (the Parade) before Lower Commerce Street, which is a mistake, presumably by an editor.
5. A widespread brothel custom. Potential clients could visit a brothel and be given a tea party at which they would meet the prostitutes. The party was nominally free of charge.
6. The name is a pun on guolai ren (old hand, veteran).
7. Daoist deities.
Chapter 2
1. I.e., the borrower received ten or twenty percent less than the face amount, but had to repay the face amount when the loan fell due. This kind of loan was designed to hide the fact that the true interest rate was being set at an illegally high level.
2. The Parade (Jiaochang) was the main entertainment center of the New City. Yangzhou at this time was composed of two walled cities situated side by side, with the New City to the east.
3. Yangzhou was the center of the rich Lianghuai region of the government salt monopoly.
4. A famous fan maker, whose shop was on Fan Lane (Shanzi xiang) in Hangzhou.
5. Mexican silver dollars, acquired through foreign trade, were in wide circulation as a second currency.
6. The origin was foreign, but it had long been copied by Chinese artisans.
7. A prose-and-verse genre in which the performer accompanied himself with drum and gong.
8. I.e., he was in line to take the post.
9. Tang-dynasty coins.
10. Fenzhang, by which a prostitute’s earnings were shared with the brothel. Kunzhang, the other type of contract found in this novel, meant that the woman was sold to the brothel in return for a periodic payment made to her family. I translate the latter term as “indentured.”
11. Raw opium was used by women, especially, as a means of committing suicide.
12. Lizhentang. It was established in 1840 through private funds donated by a merchant. It was intended for the reclamation of young prostitutes.
13. I.e., dupes or suckers.
Chapter 3
1. When the original Daichunlin shop proved highly successful, it was imitated by other shops set up nearby that called themselves by the same name.
2. On the eastern wall of the Old City, between the Old and New Cities.
3. A hardwood much used in furniture, ranging in color from red to gold.
4. A Yangzhou artist who flourished in the first half of the nineteenth century. Most of the artists mentioned in these pages were the author’s contemporaries and, quite possibly, his acquaintances.
5. A hardwood used for furniture in the Yangzhou region, especially in the nineteenth century.
6. A Yangzhou artist.
7. The recipient may possibly have been Yuan You’s father or grandfather.
8. A calligrapher from Yizheng, near Yangzhou city (Yan Duanshu et al., Xuzuan Yangzhoufu zhi [1874], 16.4b).
9. Meaning long life.
10. The character bo is explained by Lin Sumen as wood stuck on a brick base (Hanjiang sanbai yin [Yangzhou, 1808], 3.12a). It was apparently a Yangzhou specialty. I translate it according to context as either paneled or veneered.
11. Fang Hua lived in Yangzhou during the first half of the nineteenth century. He was a friend of Wang Yingxiang.
12. Yu Chan, style Buqing (Yan, Xuzuan Yangzhoufu zhi, 16.1b). Large landscapes were his specialty.
13. Wang Su, style Xiaomou (1794–1877).
14. Not yet identified.
15. Ni Can, style Yantian, of Yangzhou (1764–1841).
16. Liu Yi, style Guzun, of Yangzhou.
17. The rhapsody, by the Tang poet Du Mu, was a piece much favored by calligraphers. Qian Wenshan has not yet been identified.
18. A detailed account of this kind of opium smoking is quoted in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1911 ed., s.v. “Opium.”
19. The styles of Lu Shu and Yuan You, respectively.
20. The islet of Little Gold Hill is set in the scenic system of lakes and waterways to the north and northwest of the city.
Chapter 4
1. In the Old City.
2. I.e., the borrower receives a loan of only twenty-seven taels but has to repay (and pay interest on) the nominal sum of thirty taels.
3. Jie and Zhou were infamous tyrants of the Xia and Shang dynasties, respectively.
4. The original loan was for thirty taels (of which he actually received twenty-seven). The interest was three. Two months’ interest in arrears comes to one eighty, and an extra three months’ interest to four fifty. Closing charges come to four, and the so-called discount (10 percent of fifty) to five. The total by Yuan’s calculations: forty-eight thirty.
5. The quality of noodles was distinguished by price. Yangzhou meng, by Zhou Sheng, describes the author’s experiences in Yangzhou from about 1840 ([Taipei: Shijie shuju, 1959], juan 3, p. 47).
6. Li Dou gives this as the name of one of the large pleasure boats (Yangzhou huafang lu [The Pleasure Boats of Yangzhou] [author’s preface dated 1795]; see 1984 ed., Jiangsu Guangling keyinshe, 18.404). It may have been a traditional name.
7. The Cangjingyuan (Scripture Repository) was one of four monasteries in the grounds of the famous Tianning Temple, which was just north of the city wall. The author did not find it necessary to point out the irony of a brothel’s leasing part of a monastery for its business. What is remarkable is that the name he gives the brothel—Jinyulou, or Advancing-the-Jade Hall—is that of another of the four monasteries attached to the temple. See Li, Yangzhou huafang lu, 4.91, on the monasteries.
8. On the northern wall of the New City.
Chapter 5
1. I.e., rectangular but with rounded ends.
2. The pear-shaped pipa, a plucked instrument.
3. Auspicious objects such as a pearl, an old coin, a mirror, and so forth.
4. The original West Chamber story of Yingying and Zhang, by Yuan Zhen (779–831).
5. An incident in Story of the Stone, chap. 62.
6. An incident involving characters from Story of the Stone. The Naiad’s House was Lin Daiyu’s.
7. A commonplace in fiction from at least the Ming dynasty.
8. A kind of firework.
9. These sites were south of the city wall. Lu Shu and Fragrance were high enough up to see over the whole of the walled city.
10. Counters of ivory or bone were often used in drinking games. In this novel, they are used by courtesans when singing songs as a substitute for drinking.
11. The song is based on an incident in chap. 50 of Story of the Stone. The poetry society is meeting in Li Yan’s Snowy Rushes Retreat. Baoyu has performed abysmally in composing linked verses, and as a penalty Li Yan has sent him to ask the prickly nun Miaoyu (Adamantina) in her
Green Bower Hermitage for some sprigs of plum blossom from her tree.
12. A song from Tang Xianzu’s play Handanji, scene 3. Perhaps more significant, it is sung in chap. 63 of Story of the Stone by the young actress Fangguan (Parfumée).
13. Huqin, a single-stringed bowed instrument.
14. Erhuang and Xipi were two independent kinds of music that, in the nineteenth century, were combined to form the music of what is now known as Beijing opera.
15. A species of magnolia.
16. The first words in the lines of the Chinese text make up the courtesan’s name. “Moon” (yue) and “fragrance” (xiang) combine to form Fragrance’s name, Yuexiang.
17. The Jinyulou was outside the city wall, and the gates were closed late at night.
18. A common topic, usually on the West Chamber theme.
Chapter 6
1. In the Old City. The wall mentioned is the one dividing the Old and New Cities.
2. An S-shaped design that symbolized good luck.
3. I.e., beauty patches.
4. A symbol of good luck.
5. The reader has to imagine that Mu Zhu takes “courtesan,” a word he doesn’t know, as “cousin.” The Chinese word biaozi (prostitute) is a homonym of biaozi (female cousin).
Chapter 7
1. The famous early novel Shuihu zhuan.
2. The Four Books of Confucian doctrine: The Analects, The Doctrine of the Mean, The Great Learning, and Mencius.
3. The famous early opera Xixiang ji. The quotations are drawn from the songs, not the dialogue.
4. Lu Junyi, whose nickname was Jade Unicorn; Analects, 11.9; West Chamber (the Jin Shengtan version, popular at the time), act 4, scene 3.
