by C. T. Hsia
SHANSHOUMA: Secretary, tomorrow we shall take a sheep and some wine and go to assuage his pain.50 (Sings:)
[Mandarin Ducks Coda]
In leading your troops you should brave sleeping on frost and snow,
The moon and the stars should be your cloak as you march into battle.
You had given me your pledge
That you would crave the cup no more,
As the saying goes, “Do not early words forget,
And thus avoid later regret.”
Who told you to sink in drunken stupor from dusk to dawn?
So now to whom should the rancor turn?
All this comes of being besotted with wine and song. (Exit together.)
ACT 4
(OLD CHILIARCH enters together with OLD LADY.)
OLD CHILIARCH: I thought that when Shanshouma became marshal he would watch out for me. Who would have thought that he would beat me one hundred strokes. My Lady, close the door, and no matter who comes, you are not opening the door.
OLD LADY: Your Honor, you have been beaten really bad! I’ll close the door. And now that we close the door and sit at home, what calamity could befall us from heaven?
(SHANSHOUMA enters together with CHACHA, SECRETARY, and GUARDS.)
SHANSHOUMA: Secretary, today I am going with my wife, leading a sheep and carrying wine, to soothe Uncle’s pain.
SECRETARY: Yes sir.
SHANSHOUMA: We have already arrived at Uncle’s house. Why is the gate closed? Go and call out to have someone open the gate. (GUARD calls.)
SHANSHOUMA (sings:)
[Zhenggong mode: Proper Decorum]
It’s because he was derelict of duty
That he suffered cruelty.
Ruling according to the laws of state, my judgment was right and clear.
Still for a close kinsman and a respected elder, there are taboos,
So today outside his gate, apology for my offense I choose.
[Rolling Silken Ball]
Quick as can be,
We have arrived at his abode.
Don’t say it is the marshal of the Southern Expeditionary Forces,
Just say a relative has come, bearing mutton and wine.
Don’t tarry then,
And you won’t be upbraided.
You must not unduly alarm him,
And when he hastens to open the gate,
Inform the officer,51 that old uncle of mine,
That his nephew Shanshouma and Chacha have come to assuage his pain,
That he should have no fear or suspicion! (Speaks:)
How is it that after all this calling, they haven’t opened the door? Secretary, you go and call out for me.
SECRETARY: Yes sir. (He calls out at the door.) Old Wanyan, open up, I have something to say to you.
OLD CHILIARCH: I’m not opening the door.
SECRETARY: You really are not going to open it?
OLD CHILIARCH: I’m not opening it.
SECRETARY: That old indictment of yours was not changed after all, so we must still call you to account.
OLD CHILIARCH: You want to call me to account, so just give another hundred strokes. But even if I were to die, I won’t open the door, so do what you like.
SECRETARY: Your Honor, old Wanyan insists on not opening the door. What shall we do?
SHANSHOUMA (sings:)
[Companion for Studying]
He said great is his grievance fair,
The bond between uncle and nephew is hurt beyond repair.
Have his deposition for all you care,
He will not change his heart or bow low with humility to bear.
“Death? So what? What’s the harm in a cup of weak wine?”
To the end, the responsibility is his to decline.52 (Speaks:)
Chacha, you call at the gate.
CHACHA (calls at the gate:) Uncle and Aunt, it’s me, Chacha, outside. Open the door, open the door!
OLD LADY: Just think: Chacha interceded for you yesterday, and it was only that obstinate nephew Shanshouma who refused to pardon you. For Chacha’s sake, let’s open the door.
OLD CHILIARCH: Since she bothers to come here today, she could have pleaded for me some more yesterday. Suppose I was already beaten to death—just don’t open the door.
SHANSHOUMA (sings:)
[Little Monk]
He is asking me, “Why did your whole family come today?
But the beating you gave me yesterday: was it just anyway?
Face I have lost, too far gone beyond the azure clouds to consider.53
From now on I might as well be an unreconstructed old wine bibber.
Thank you very much, wise and virtuous lady!”
No, no, no! No chance that he will hasten down the steps to welcome me! (Speaks:)
Let me go myself. Uncle, your nephew Shanshouma is here, open the door.
OLD LADY: Since the marshal has come here himself, we must open the door and invite him in. (She opens the door.)
SHANSHOUMA (kneels together with CHACHA and SECRETARY:) It is your nephew who has behaved wrongly!
OLD CHILIARCH: You have dealt me such a beating yesterday, what kind of brazenness is this to come and visit me now?
SHANSHOUMA: Uncle, that was none of your nephew’s doing.
OLD LADY: Your uncle is so old. When you dealt him that beating, it was practically the death of him!
SHANSHOUMA (sings:)
[Paddling on the River]
You made a scene,
To vent your spleen.
As for me, I was upholding an official duty,
The laws to enact with clarity.
Did I not know that you are advanced in years?
And did I purposely give you those one hundred blows?
OLD CHILIARCH: After I suffered this beating because of you, you still say it was none of your doing. Was it my doing then?
SHANSHOUMA (sings:)
[Seven Brothers]
You don’t need to guess left and right:
Since you were wearing this plain gold plaque,
You should have defended the mountain pass steadily and warily.
Who told you to relish the moon and drink your fill in midautumn revelry?
Were the goblets of wine debts from a former life—now your indemnity?
[Plum Blossom Wine]
Ah! This round is not ending as accord.
But certainly it was neither the central commissioner
Nor the western censor
Who beat you till your flesh was torn.
Pray consider:
In that indictment there was nothing false or sly.
Would he who flogged you please step here,
And quickly the official plaque lift high,
So that the old gentleman may observe it bright and clear?
OLD CHILIARCH: According to you, then, who was it that dealt me those hundred strokes?
SHANSHOUMA (sings:)
[Conquering the Southland]
Ah! It was none other than the Tiger Head Plaque that authorizes its bearer to act on his judgment.
OLD CHILIARCH: So military regulations decreed my beating?
SHANSHOUMA (sings:)
I beat you until you wept and wailed,
As dry firewood wet flesh flailed.
Your bloody beating was by fate ordained:
Don’t say that as a nephew I was stained,
Or that I the womb shared by you and my father obliviously disdained. (Speaks:)
Chacha, hurry up and kill the sheep and pour the wine to assuage Uncle’s pain. (Sings:)
[Coda]
Quickly pour out the wine that will salve pain,
And fast slaughter the lamb that will with wine be twain,
So that Uncle may be in his state of drunken mirth of yore.
For you to live thus to a ripe old age
Will be a great blessing for us all!
OLD CHILIARCH: Since this is how it is, I won’t bear grudges any longer and will ju
st help myself to some wine.
OLD LADY: You had better remember the pain you suffered during the beating and drink less.
SHANSHOUMA:
It is not that I would the loving bond between uncle and nephew shatter,
But the regulations of the Tiger Head Plaque are no laughing matter.
Now as I explain the case from beginning to end,
The tie between loyalty and filial piety we will comprehend.54
Topic: The Director of the Bureau of Military Affairs Judges a Major Case
Title: The Bearer of the Tiger Head Plaque Acts on His Own Authority
NOTES
1. Sun bases his opinion on two poems in Qinghe ji 清河集 by Yuan Mingshan 元明善 (1269–1322); see Sun Kaidi, Yuan qujia kaolue.
2. Dexing is located near modern-day Xuanhua, about a hundred miles northwest of Beijing.
3. There are specific injunctions against drinking for chiliarchs in historical records (Tuotuo, Jinshi 44.996).
4. See West, “Jurchen Elements”; Xu Shuofang, Xu Shuofang ji, 97–101.
5. On Jin history and culture, see Tillman and West, China under Jurchen Rule; Franke, “Chin Dynasty”; Mote, Imperial China, 193–248, 265–88.
6. Hangyuan (“Music Bureau”) is literally “courtyard of the entertainers’ guild,” which commonly refers to pleasure quarters or theater districts (see the introduction). Either The Register of Ghosts is referring to a totally different play, or the line may allude to the fact that an actor is playing the minister in the hangyuan. The play we have seems to be set before Aguda became Jin emperor (and certainly before his death), but the kind of anachronism that allows the retroactive use of an emperor’s “temple name” is not uncommon, especially in drama and fiction.
7. The Jurchen language is Tungusic (belonging to the Altaic language family), and it must have translated into different rhythms and metrical qualities, whose contours are unfortunately no longer known. The tune titles left in transliteration in this act do not make sense in Chinese and seem to have been derived from Jurchen or Mongolian.
8. See West, “Jurchen Elements.”
9. Ibid., 274–82.
10. Ibid., 293–94. Jurchen protagonists enthralled with music, dance, or the pleasure quarters appear in The Prime Minister Hosts a Feast at the Hall of Spring Splendor (Si chengxian gaohui Lichun tang 四丞相高會麗春堂) by Wang Shifu 王實甫; Iron Crutch Li Delivers the Golden Boy and Jade Maiden (Tieguai Li du jintong yunü 鐵拐李度金童玉女) by Jia Zhongming; Love in the Purple Cloud Pavilion, attributed to Shi Junbao; and the southern play A Playboy from an Official Family Takes the Wrong Career. One of Li Zhifu’s lost plays is titled The Wrong Career (Cuo lishen 錯立身) and may be a reworking of this last play. Four of Guan Hanqing’s plays feature characters that use Jurchen expressions—Madame Liu Celebrates Five Lords in a Feast (Liu furen qingshang wuhou yan 劉夫人慶賞五侯宴), Boudoir Beauties at Bowing to the Moon Pavilion (Guiyuan jiaren Baiyue ting 閨怨佳人拜月亭), A Cunning Maid Maneuvers Romance (Zha nizi tiao fengyue 詐妮子調風月), Madame Deng Grievously Laments Cunxiao (Deng furen kutong ku Cunxiao 鄧夫人苦痛哭存孝).
11. A good example is Cheng Ying in The Zhao Orphan.
12. Lunyu zhushu 13.18. In Han Feizi jishi (49.1057), “Wu du” 五蠹, the story of the stolen sheep is cited as an example of how Confucian morality can undermine loyalty to the state.
13. Mengzi 13.35. When Xianqiu Meng cites an ode (Mao 205) on a ruler’s universal jurisdiction and asks Mencius whether Shun’s father, by that logic, should become his subject, Mencius basically changes the subject and talks instead about Xianqiu Meng’s misunderstanding of the ode (Mengzi 9.4).
14. See, for example, the story of the Chu nobleman Qiji in Zuozhuan (Xiang 22.6, Yang 1069–70).
15. Stephen West points out the use of such plaques by the Mongols; he cites instances that make it clear that the characters corresponding to bianyi xingshi are carved on the plaque (“Jurchen Elements,” 279–80).
16. Judicious compromise, or “the weighing of differences” (quan 權), is an important concept in early Chinese thought; see Lunyu zhushu 9.30. The scholar Huang Kan 皇侃 (sixth century) glosses quan as “going against constancy and yet abiding by the way” (fanchang er heyu dao 反常而合於道). See also Zuozhuan (Cheng 15.1, Yang 873): “Sages reach optimal positions with their principles; second to them are those who keep their principles; the lowest are those who lose their principles” (sheng dajie ci shoujie xia shijie 聖達節，次守節，下失節).
17. See Zang Maoxun, YQX, 2:1122–54.
18. “Chacha” is the usual name for Jurchen women. According to Jiao Xun, “Jurchens and Mongols often call their women ‘Chacha’”; see Jiao Xun, Jushuo 1.17. Chacha’s self-introduction conforms to the stereotype of the martial, artless nomadic woman.
19. The relevant term here is tama 踏馬, also given as xima 躧馬, which indicates that the actor mimics riding on a stick called a bamboo horse (zhuma 竹馬), probably something akin to a hobbyhorse.
20. The coat is made of the feathers or down of the bird known as sushuang 鷫鷞, identified as a kind of wild goose.
21. These soldiers are also serving as farmers in peacetime under the so-called tuntian 屯田 system.
22. The term duanchang 斷場 literally means to pack up the barriers that mark the arena of the hunt.
23. A saying also quoted in The Zhao Orphan.
24. According to Gu Xuejie, the plaque with the insignia of tigers makes Shanshouma a myriarch, or one in charge of ten thousand troops (Yuanren zaju xuan, 309–10).
25. The term we’ve translated as “community leader” is jiashou 甲首 and means, literally, the head of a jia 甲, a unit of twenty households in the Yuan administrative system.
26. The “valiant vanguard” (ganzhan jun 敢戰軍), “those who dare to fight,” are likely in the vanguard and put in positions of the greatest danger.
27. This line also appears in a song suite about romantic dalliance by Guan Hanqing (Huijiao xiangzhu Guan Hanqing ji, 1655–1658).
28. In the Yuan system, the ruler placed his most trusted followers as “palace guards who took turns” (fan su 番宿). Descendants of these guards were entitled to serve as officials. This is another example of a Yuan practice woven into the supposed Jurchen context of the play.
29. He Liangjun in Siyou zhai congshuo 四友齋叢說 singles out “A Wind Bringing Down Plum Blossoms” (Luo meifeng 落梅風) for praise, considering its pathos “unalloyed dramatic force” (zheng danghangjia ye 正當行家也). The line He cites has “I am a Jurchen” (an Nüzhi ren 俺女直人) instead of “I am a poor man” (an qiongrenjia 俺窮人家). His comment is included in Cheng Bingda and Wang Weimin, Zhongguo lidai qulun shiping, 94.
30. Most scholars take the tune title, “Enahu” 阿那忽, to be a Jurchen or Mongol word. Some commentators associate ena with enuo 婀娜 (graceful). Two other tune titles in this act, “Hudubai” and “Tangwudai,” also appear to be transliterations of Jurchen or Mongolian phrases.
31. See chap. 1, this volume, n. 71.
32. The phrase in the original, kukou 苦口, literally “bitter mouth,” means insistent and patient advice but also puns on the idea of “bitter but effective medicine” (kukou liangyao 苦口良藥).
33. For “kinsmen,” the text has sadun 撒敦, the transliteration of a Mongol word that means “relatives.” The term for “wedding” here is baimen 拜門, literally “bowing at the gate.” According to Hong Hao 洪皓 (1088–1155), a Song official detained for fifteen years in northern China when it was under Jurchen rule, Jurchen parents did not interfere when their daughters formed liaisons and left home. Only when a woman bore a child would she come home with her man, who would bring gifts, “bow at the gate,” and behave like a son-in-law (Songmo jiwen 松漠紀聞), cited in Gu Xuejie, Yuanren zaju xuan, 317.
34. Jurchen leather belts were called tuhu 兔鶻, 吐鶻, and their trimmings indicated hierarchy: jade was
for the highest rank; next in line was gold (Tuotuo, Jinshi 43.985).
35. The description of Jinzhuma’s handsome appearance echoes the self-description of another Jurchen character, Jin Anshou, in Iron Crutch Li Delivers the Golden Boy and the Jade Maiden, in Zang Maoxun, YQX, 6:2780.
36. Wang Guowei identifies zhelagu 者剌古, also written as lagu 剌古 or zhegu 鷓鴣, as a Jurchen or Mongol tune (Song Yuan xiqu kao, 3). Stephen West identifies this as an “unsectioned bamboo pipe-flute” (“Jurchen Elements,” 287).
37. In 1153, the Jurchens moved their capital from Shangjing 上京 (now A-cheng county in Jilin province) to Yanjing 燕京 (modern-day Beijing), which was renamed Zhongdu 中都 (Central Capital).
38. In Zhongyuan yinyun, Zhou Deqing (d. 1365) mentions “Alluring Body” (Fengliu ti 風流體) as a Jurchen tune (Zang Maoxun, YQX, 1:78).
39. The account here differs from other sources on how Jurchens sinicized their names. Tao Zongyi lists thirty-one Han surnames, and the equivalents are different from what is enumerated (Chuo geng lu 1.14). See also Prefect Wang’s self-introduction in act 3 of The Moheluo Doll.
40. Zhulizhen 竹里真 may be a variant of Zhuyilijin 諸移里堇, from a Jurchen word for “tribal leader.” Huihui 回回 came to mean “Muslim” in the Chinese tradition, but here Huihui could also be the transliteration of a Jurchen word.
41. The word translated as “officers” is yila 曳剌, also written in Chinese as yiluohe 曳落河 and yelao 爺老, the Khitan word for “strongman” or “soldier.” In fiction and drama, Guanxi (West of the Pass) is the region that produces big, burly men.
42. According to Gu Xuejie, tikong 提控 (which we have translated as “officer”) refers to the prosecutor (Yuanren zaju xuan, 327). As the marshal or myriarch, Shanshouma’s office has under his command a prosecutor (tikong) whose task is to put together the documents detailing the charge. But in act 4, Old Chiliarch is also called Old Tikong, which may indicate his rank as an officer before he became chiliarch.
43. The phrase zhebo 者波 in the original, which we have translated as “what if I were to,” expresses something hypothetical. The phrase daisha 歹殺, often used in parallel with qiangsha 強殺 in Yuan plays, marks an emphatic way of referring to oneself (“As for me …”).
44. Abnegation of an older, more exalted person in front of a younger person or one of lower rank (in the family or in other hierarchies) would diminish the latter’s life span and good fortune. See chap. 5, this volume, n. 12.
