by AnonYMous
5. The song may be conventional in the sense that it is full of stock imagery. Note, however, that Wu Zhen constantly belittles his mistress.
6. Xiao Rang; Analects, 7.37; West Chamber, act 2, scene 1.
7. Lu Zhishen; Great Learning, 1.4; West Chamber, act 2, scene1. The “Penitence” is a Buddhist work that is said to have been composed by Emperor Wu of the Liang for his deceased wife.
8. Yan Qing; Mencius, 3A.3.6; West Chamber, act 2, scene 3.
9. Nü xiao jing, by a Tang-dynasty author.
10. A contemporary popular song tune. There are examples in juan 12 of Zhuxiang Zhuren’s Xiao hui ji, of which there is an 1837 edition.
11. This line is found in a number of songs on the West Chamber theme.
12. This joke still circulates in a variety of forms. The speaker is usually a rich man with cultural aspirations, and, having used the word “mother,” he has to balance it with “father.” Note that “fortune’ and “father” are near homonyms (fu).
13. Song Jiang; Analects, 10.16.5; West Chamber, act 4, scene1.
14. Many popular songs were structured on the sequence of the five watches into which the night was divided.
15. A strong type of opium produced in Bengal.
16. Literally, foster fathers, a term of respect used by the courtesans when addressing gang members, runners, and the like.
17. A common idiom, meaning that they will take notice only of force, not virtue.
Chapter 8
1. See the Meng xiang ci in Yangzhou zhuzhici liuzhong, ed. Du Zhaotang (Taipei: Jianguo shudian, 1951), 7b. According to the editor’s note, it was the custom when seeing off visiting women or children to give them benzoin scent.
2. To drive out evil influences.
3. A deity who reforms the wicked.
4. When debts had to be settled.
5. “String of cash” puns on Guanzhi.
Chapter 9
1. I.e., find a good client for her.
2. On the twenty-third of the twelfth month.
3. I.e., a sucker.
Chapter 10
1. In the New City.
2. In the Chinese text a list of the slips is given, including the sources and the prizes, but not, of course, the solutions.
3. “No sacrifices on yin days” (Yin bu ji si) is identical in sound to “Silver won’t help in the matter” (Yin bu ji shi), of which the clue is “Only gold can help in a crisis.” (Note that si and shi are pronounced alike in Yangzhou dialect.) All of the riddles here, known as the Zhaoyang type, are on this principle. The contestant is given the clue and the title or source and asked to come up with the original quotation.
4. The source is given as yan (proverb, popular saying). The quotation is Wu ying wu ye and the clue Wu yin wu ye. Yin and ying are pronounced the same in Yangzhou dialect.
5. All of the listed riddles appear to be of the Zhaoyang type. (Zhaoyang is an early name for Xinghua, in the vicinity of Yangzhou, where this type is said to have originated.) Note the number of the Zhaoyang type in the publications of the Zhushu chunshe poetry society (Aisu Sheng [Lover of Simplicity], ed., Zhushu chunshe chao, reprinted in Zhonghua mishu jicheng, ed. Gao Boyu et al. [Beijing: Renmin ribao chubanshe, 1991], 1:367–423). The explanation of this riddle is given in the Zhushu chunshe chao, 371 (fanli). It involves two moves, first via synonyms, then via homonyms. Shang xin (brokenhearted) is read as bei (sad); xi wen (ask about) is read as pan (question); erfu (husband) is read as lang (husband); and bing (illness) is read as ji (illness). Then the new version, bei pan lang ji, is read as homonyms in the common phrase “empty cups and dishes scattered about.” Note that we have been given a clue as to the general area of the answer.
6. Another characteristic Yangzhou type. Dan (true, red), dai (age), and chuan (hand down) are read as the homonyms “worried,” “bring,” and “boat,” respectively. The area of the answer is “human activity,” and the answer proves to be “pulling a boat upstream.”
7. Shi shuo xinyu, 11.3. This is the founding example of the type. Cao E was a famous filial daughter. As Cao Cao and a companion were passing by the stele erected in her honor, they saw this inscription on the back of the stele. Cao Cao guessed that the riddle meant “Utterly wonderful, lovely words.” For example, “yellow pongee” means “colored silk,” and the characters for “colored” (se) and “silk” (si), when combined, form the character for “utterly” (jue). “Youthful wife” means “young [shao] woman [nü],” which, when combined together, form “lovely” (miao), and so forth.
8. The type was supposedly invented by the Song poets Su Shi and Huang Tingjian. Only a couple of samples exist, perhaps because of its inherent difficulty. To the best of my knowledge, this riddle, using a sentence from Mencius, appears only in the Yangzhou riddle collection Zhushu chunshe chao (1:375). The solution is given, but the intermediate stage is not clear, to the translator at least.
9. Jia Ming separates the word for riddle into its component parts as “mystifying words.”
10. Jiang Taigong, who became adviser to the founders of the Zhou dynasty, is said to have fished with a straight piece of metal instead of a hook. In fact, he was waiting to be “discovered” by the Zhou kings. See the Yuan-dynasty historical tale Wu Wang fa Zhou.
11. I.e., the life of prostitution.
12. Yinyuan.
Chapter 11
1. The first characters in the words translated as “brush” and “mirror” are homonyms or near homonyms of the characters for Paria’s name.
2. The mirror is referred to in a common image as a caltrop flower. Paria’s forced interpretation is, of course, designed to provoke Yuan You.
3. The Thousand Poems (Qian jia shi) is a popular Song-dynasty anthology. However, these much-quoted lines were actually written by the early-Ming poet Gao Qi, in one of his “Nine Poems in Praise of the Plum Tree.” “Hermit” and “Beauty” are both images applied to the plum tree and its blossom, which makes Yuan You’s choice of the lines seem even more ludicrous.
4. Paria pretends to take the lines as descriptive of her genitalia.
5. I.e., deflowering.
Chapter 12
1. The Prince of Spring means the first month of spring. The emperor was traditionally hailed as living for ten thousand years.
2. A kind of tael that “had a more or less national range” (Lien-sheng Yang, Money and Credit in China [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1952], 47).
3. Both lines refer to examination success, but their meaning is here extended to another sphere.
4. A particular character is chosen. The leader quotes a line with that character in it. If, for example, that character is in the third place in the line, the person sitting in the third place at the table has to respond, and so on.
5. Shi Kefa (1602–1645), the general who tried to defend Yangzhou against the invading Manchu army.
6. Debts were settled three times a year, at major festivals, of which this was one.
7. The festivals were held in the summer, on the fifth of the fifth month, the eighteenth of the sixth month, and the fifteenth of the seventh month.
Chapter 13
1. In the text it is Lu Shu who watches the boats and Fragrance who lays on the feast—clearly a mistake.
2. Zongzi, glutinous rice mixed with other ingredients and wrapped in bamboo leaves.
3. Types of fireworks.
4. The text refers to Huizhou, from which many of the Yangzhou pawnbrokers came.
5. Li Dou, Yangzhou huafang lu (The Pleasure Boats of Yangzhou) (Yangzhou: Jiangsu Guangling keyinshe, 1984), 11.245.
6. See the Xiyouji (Journey to the West), chaps. 40–42, in which the Red Boy monster is subdued by Guanyin. Yangzhou huafang lu describes it as one of the acts performed by boys on the stern of the dragon boats (11.240).
7. Carp trying to leap up the Dragon’s Gate symbolize candidates attempting to succeed in the civil service examinations.
8. A story about Zhang Fei, one
of the warrior heroes of the Sanguo tongsu yanyi (Romance of the Three Kingdoms).
9. According to the nineteenth-century Suzhou writer Gu Lü, vaudeville reached Suzhou from Yangzhou. He lists a number of the turns described here (Tong qiao yi zhou lu [Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1980], 12.163).
10. The strategist Su Qin in the third century B.C.E. helped to form an alliance of six states against the powerful state of Qin. He is said to have been honored by all six states.
11. There is a pun on fengyue (romance) in this line.
12. This refers to the homonymous shi hu (ten pots), a card game.
13. There is a contradiction in the text with regard to time; the clock strikes twice now and also at the end of the chapter. This hour should no doubt be earlier than two.
14. A widespread type of entertainment performed by two or three people, one of whom performed with a fan while another played the fiddle. The titles belong to a standard repertoire.
15. The title is Da lianxiang. “Prodigal” refers to its subject matter.
Chapter 14
1. One qian is equal to 1/10 ounce.
2. A listing of common surnames that served as elementary reading material.
3. Meaning “light.”
4. A martial Daoist deity, whose image is often the guardian at the gate of a Daoist temple.
Chapter 15
1. This story has not been identified.
2. In this dance a shaman dresses up as a god and drives away the demons of illness.
3. In the Huayan sutra Sudhana (Shancai) visits fifty-three sages and other worthies.
4. It is not known what kind of trick this referred to.
Chapter 16
1. In fact, Emperor Qianlong gave the temple its name during his visit in 1765.
2. Guanyin.
3. I.e., they knelt down with the stool in front of them. A joss stick would have been attached to it.
4. Li Dou, Yangzhou huafang lu (The Pleasure Boats of Yangzhou) (Yangzhou: Jiangsu Guangling keyinshe, 1984), 13.290.
5. A dish of eggs was traditionally provided to friends and family when a woman was pregnant or gave birth.
6. See Li, Yangzhou huafang lu, 16.347, for a description of the mapi and their activities.
7. The Classic of Filial Piety (Xiao jing), first section.
8. A traditional card game known as shi hu (ten pots), also known as shi hu (ten lakes). It was often accompanied by gambling. By picking up and discarding cards, the aim was to collect sequences of numbers in the same suit. Since the suits were much the same as in mahjong, I have used the common English mahjong terms here.
9. The first line of a song in Hong Sheng’s (1605–1704) famous play Chang sheng dian (The Palace of Eternal Youth). In the play the singer is the musician Li Guinian, who is recounting the history of the emperors’ power for the benefit of his favorite, Yang Guifei.
10. The song is from the play Mudan ting (Peony Pavilion), by the Ming play-wright Tang Xianxu. It is also one of the songs that Lin Daiyu overhears, and is strangely moved by, in chap. 23 of Story of the Stone.
Chapter 17
1. A woman’s jealousy.
Chapter 18
1. Xinsi is one of the terms in the sixty-year cycle.
2. The styles of Jia Ming, Wu Zhen, and Wei Bi, respectively.
3. The reference is to the story “Shenxian zhuan” (Tales of Immortals), in which two young men, Liu and Ruan, meet and fall in love with two divine maidens. See the Taiping guangji, 61.
4. I.e., the number of years is not a multiple of ten.
Chapter 19
1. Piao feizi, meaning literally something like sluice out your insides.
Chapter 20
1. Mount Ling, in Henan province, was famous for its ancient Buddhist temples.
Chapter 22
1. Jin means “gold” and is also a surname. The surname Yin is a near homonym of the word for “silver.”
Chapter 24
1. The chief officer, or jail warden.
2. Instead of the nominal one thousand. Yuan You was in fact taking a commission on top of the extra money he had obtained from Wu Zhen’s wife.
Chapter 25
1. A jian is not the same thing as a room; it is a division of a house, usually measuring about nine by twelve feet, within the uprights supporting the roof.
Chapter 26
1. He was eighth in seniority in the male line in his generation of the family. His name, Wangba, is also a common term of abuse.
2. The word translated as “married” is cong liang. Used of a prostitute, it means she has shed her inferior status by marrying, usually as a concubine.
3. Si means four or fourth.
4. Possibly meaning a male prostitute.
5. Tinfoil sacrificial offerings.
6. The house was evidently on the west side of Ridge Street, backing onto the moat. The Taiping Dock was at the southern end of Ridge Street.
Chapter 27
1. This refers to a popular belief that if you adopt you will shortly afterward bear a child yourself.
2. Supposedly the best time for conception.
Chapter 28
1. Souls held in limbo until released by such services.
2. The text puts Mistress Dai at the head of this list, evidently by mistake. She was still in Suzhou.
3. I.e., been forced to take clients.
4. Literally, drum song verse.
5. Kinds of decorative lantern.
6. With willow branches.
7. I.e., the Duanyang Festival.
Chapter 29
1. Denoting an official of the fifth rank or above.
2. A form of patronage seeking.
3. Many northerners had migrated to Qingjiang (later known as Huaiyin).
Chapter 31
1. Chong xi. The term usually means to banish the demons of illness by arranging some joyous experience, such as a wedding. Here it is extended to mean banishing the demons of illness by anticipating the worst.
2. I. e., the reaction of a jealous wife.
Chapter 32
1. Stock names for prisoner escorts.
2. Her surname.
3. See Mencius, 4A.26.
4. Guo Lairen is a pun on guolai ren (old hand).