by C. T. Hsia
64. This line refers to the Jin ruler.
65. The stories of Chu Ni and Ling Zhe are told in the wedge of the play in Anthology.
66. During the Jin dynasty, a stone qilin 麒麟 (a mythical animal) was placed by the graves of lords. The allusion here is to Du Fu’s line “At the imposing grave by the garden, the qilin was lying down” (Yuanbian gaozhong wo qilin 苑邊高冢臥麒麟) (Du Fu, Du shi xiangzhu 6.447). In Du Fu’s line, the image evokes chaos and destruction in postrebellion Chang’an. Here, instead of mutability, the image represents a dignified death.
67. The tune title is “West of the River Version of Flowers in the Rear Courtyard” in Anthology.
68. Literally, “cut the grass and eradicate the roots.”
69. Lines from “Blue Song” and “Coda” in act 1 of the Anthology edition overlap with lines in this aria.
70. Gou 彀 is literally “arrow” or “the distance covered by a shot arrow.” It has come to mean “trap,” as in the expression “Please, sir, this way to the trap” (Qingjun rugou 請君入彀).
71. The glue made from a fish’s air bladder is said to be highly adhesive.
72. Literally, “there are so many affairs in the world that are enveloped in silence,” which means both “they can be understood without being said” and “nothing can be said about them.”
73. The couplet works on the parallelism between “white-clothed minister” (i.e., a minister who rises from humble origins) and “black-headed worm,” an unworthy person.
74. “Nine cauldrons” usually refer to the nine ritual tripods that symbolize the mandate to rule. Here the idea of the cauldron is combined with that of the wok (the original has “a wok like the nine cauldrons”) to conjure the image of a container with liquid in which the victim is boiled alive.
75. The Qilin Room is where the portraits of meritorious officials are honored.
76. Literally, “I do not believe that canine traces will be found in front of the tiger’s gate.”
77. The Anthology edition has “Cheng Ying’s tongue,” which follows more logically from the plot. Here the aria follows another line of reasoning: Gongsun Chujiu is said to bring the execution upon himself by exposing how Tu Angu has usurped power and made a puppet of Lord Ling.
78. “Five Skandha” relates to the Sanskrit term for the five elements that constitute the illusion of self. Here it is just a way of describing Tu Angu’s rage.
79. Literally, “hard to scratch the itch of his heart.”
80. Here “the Son of Heaven” refers not to Lord Ling but to Tu Angu, the prospective ruler as Cheng Bo imagines it.
81. Literally, “calls himself ‘the Unworthy One’ [gua 寡] and ‘the Orphaned One [gu 孤]’”—gua and gu are conventional modes of self-address for rulers, especially in the preimperial period.
82. The uncommon phrase xiedan 歇膽 means, literally, “gallbladder stopping.” The gall bladder (dan) is the organ associated with courage, so this can mean that all who confront Cheng Bo will fail in their courage. Xu Qinjun thinks the two characters xiedan may in fact be xieao 蝎螯 (scorpion): “All will be fearful and cowed by me, as by a scorpion” (Xin jiao Yuan kan zaju sanshi zhong, 324).
83. Literally, “the crown level with heaven,” described as a kind of crown with rows of white-jade beads in the front and back that the emperor wore for major sacrifices.
84. There would be no heavenly justice if Cheng Bo were to adhere to his earlier proclamation and help Tu Angu usurp the throne.
85. “One man” can mean Zhao Dun and his clan by implication, or it can (less plausibly) refer to the Jin ruler.
86. The “he” in question probably refers to the Jin ruler.
87. The person taught to “assassinate his ruler and murder his father” would be Cheng Bo himself, since he is on the cusp of joining Tu Angu in his usurpation. By acting as Tu Angu’s son, he would be complicit in his own father’s murder.
2
TRICKING KUAI TONG
ANONYMOUS
TRANSLATED BY WAI-YEE LI
INTRODUCTION
WAI-YEE LI
Qin unification in 221 B.C.E. ended centuries of a de facto multistate system and introduced a level of standardization and central control hitherto unknown. The Qin Empire, however, began to disintegrate not long after the death of the First Emperor of Qin (r. 246 B.C.E.–210 B.C.E.). At first some of the forces that rose up in insurrection looked to the resurgence of the pre-Qin aristocratic elites of other domains eliminated by Qin. It soon became obvious, however, that a commoner’s origins are no obstacle to meteoric rise, as evident in the ascendancy of Liu Bang, posthumously honored as Emperor Gaozu (r. 206 B.C.E.–195 B.C.E.). The subsequent success and duration of the Han dynasty may confer the aura of historical inevitability on the rise of Han, but during the chaotic years of Qin-Han transition—indeed, well into early Han—there was greater uncertainty. The Han historian Sima Qian, for example, looks back on the period of Qin-Han transition with a sense of wonder, almost puzzlement: “In five years, the command of the realm changed three times. From the beginning of human history, there was never a time when the mandate to rule changed so quickly” (Shiji 16.759).
One of the “might have been” scenarios was the tripartite division of the realm in the early third century B.C.E. In 204–203 B.C.E., when the outcome of the struggle for supremacy between Xiang Yu, King of Chu (also called the Overlord of Chu or King Xiang in the play), and Liu Bang, King of Han, seemed uncertain, the person who could have formed “the third foot of the tripod” was the strategic genius Han Xin, Liu Bang’s marshal. According to the chapter devoted to Han Xin (juan 92) in Records of the Grand Historian, Han Xin had humble beginnings. A short stint in Xiang Yu’s camp ended when Xiang failed to heed his strategic proposals. His service under Liu Bang might have been similarly brief had Xiao He (who later became prime minister during the reign of Emperor Gaozu) not recognized his genius and urged Liu Bang to make him marshal. Han Xin’s military successes were instrumental in the founding of the Han dynasty, but Liu Bang had always regarded Han Xin with suspicion, and Han Xin was charged with treason and executed in 196 B.C.E.
Sima Qian does not explicitly state that the charge is unfounded but implies Han Xin’s innocence by, among other things, adding a passage in which Han Xin refuses to heed his adviser Kuai Tong’s suggestion that he should carve off his own power base and turn against Liu Bang. With the typical rhetorical prowess of Warring States persuaders, Kuai urges Han to establish himself as the third power in a threefold division of the realm. Having failed to convince Han Xin to rebel (Shiji 92.2623–26), Kuai ends up “feigning madness and becoming a shaman” (yangkuang wei wu 佯狂爲巫). “Feigning madness” became a wonted way to avoid persecution or to enact detachment in the Chinese tradition, and in our play madness is presented as a kind of higher reason as well as political protest. After Han Xin’s arrest, he is said to have regretted not heeding Kuai’s advice. Liu Bang then arrests Kuai for sedition but releases him when Kuai defends his earlier counsel as loyalty to Han Xin. Originally named Che, Kuai is called Kuai Tong in the Han histories out of respectful avoidance of Emperor Wu’s (r. 141–87 B.C.E.) given name (Liu Che).1 (In this play he is called Kuai Che or Kuai Wentong, although the name “Kuai Tong” is used in the title. To avoid confusion, we have translated his name throughout as “Kuai Tong.”) According to Ban Gu’s 班固 (32–92) “Treatise on Writings and Letters” (Yiwen zhi 藝文志), Kuai Tong records examples of the strategic reasoning of Warring States persuaders and adds his own preface in a compilation entitled Junyong 雋永, now no longer extant (Hanshu 45.2167).
Heroes and events from the Qin-Han transition are presented in a number of Yuan (or Ming) zaju plays. All of them, except our play, describe how strategists and generals join Liu Bang’s cause and achieve victory in triumphal stories of dynastic rise and merit rewarded. Zhang Liang Humbly Presents Shoes at the Bridge (Zhang Zifang yiqiao jin lü 張子房圯橋進屨) by Li Wenwei 李
文蔚 (thirteenth century), for example, traces the rise of Zhang Liang, and the anonymous Han Ministers Return Home in Brocade (Han gongqing yijin huanxiang 漢公卿衣錦還鄉) celebrates the fruit of victory for Liu Bang’s supporters.2 Han Xin’s strategic genius is described in the anonymous Marshal Han Secretly Passes Through Chencang (Han yuanshuai andu Chencang 韓元帥暗度陳倉).3 His rise to glory is the subject of Jin Renjie’s 金仁傑 (d. 1329) Xiao He Pursues Han Xin in the Moonlit Night (Xiao He yueye zhui Han Xin 蕭何月夜追韓信), found only in Yuan Editions.4 It tells the story of how the disaffected Han Xin leaves the service of Liu Bang only to be pursued by Xiao He, who recognizes Han’s genius and eventually convinces Liu Bang to confer on him the title of marshal. Han Xin then plays a crucial role in Liu Bang’s victory. The play here deals with a less-happy chapter in the association between Xiao He and Han Xin. The same discernment that allows Xiao He to recognize Han Xin’s genius also instills fear of Han’s potential sedition once the empire has been unified. Here Xiao He plots Han Xin’s downfall, although, according to Sima Qian, Liu Bang is the main culprit in turning against his erstwhile comrades.
The literal translation of the title of our play is Sui He Tricks the Mad Kuai Tong (Sui He zhuan fengmo Kuai Tong 隨何賺風魔蒯通), or, abbreviated, Tricking Kuai Tong (Zhuan Kuai Tong 賺蒯通). Sui He is featured in several other Yuan plays. In Shang Zhongxian’s 尚仲賢 (thirteenth century) The First Han Emperor Washes His Feet to Provoke Ying Bu (Gaohuang zhuozu qi Ying Bu 高皇濯足氣英布), which appears in both Yuan Editions and Anthology,5 Sui He convinces Ying Bu to switch allegiance from Xiang Yu to Liu Bang during the Chu-Han struggle. Sui He is the male lead in Using His Schemes, Sui He Tricks Ying Bu (Yun jimou Sui He pian Ying Bu 運機謀隨何騙英布): here his role as trickster is more prominent as he brings Ying Bu to Liu Bang’s camp by sowing suspicion between Ying Bu and his adviser, Fei Ke.6 Sui He is famous for his wit and powers of persuasion (Shiji 55.2039, 91.2599–2603), but in Tricking Kuai Tong his “trickery” is limited to hiding and overhearing the supposedly mad Kuai Tong lamenting Han Xin’s fate and his own. Despite Sui He’s success in “outwitting” Kuai Tong, the latter is vindicated in the play on two levels: his prescient judgment in remonstrating with Han Xin is borne out by the latter’s betrayal, and his eloquent defense of Han Xin’s loyalty to the Han dynasty results in the rectification of a historical injustice. The account of Han Xin in Records of the Grand Historian ends with the eradication of his clan, and any “rectification” of his wrongful accusation is merely “the historian’s justice.” In the Yuan play, as recompense for Han Xin’s unjust death, the Han officials who bring about his execution have a collective change of heart after listening to Kuai Tong’s enumeration of Han Xin’s achievements and loyalty. Liu Bang, historically responsible for plotting Han’s death, is here represented by an offstage voice decreeing Han’s rehabilitation and Kuai’s reward. The belated remorse of the Han emperor and the ministers who brought about Han Xin’s death is hardly convincing—it seems to be no more than an attempt to ameliorate tragedy and to glorify the power of Kuai Tong’s rhetoric. In this sense, the play reins in the anger and lament roused by the betrayal of a loyal official by a perfidious court and adheres to the idea of a basically just polity with a worthy ruler, although its most heartfelt arias, sung by Zhang Liang in act 1 and by Kuai Tong in acts 2 to 4, uphold political disengagement or the longing for freedom from the political realm. Ultimately, personal loyalty is more tangible and reliable than political loyalty. In Ban Gu’s Han History, Kuai serves other masters before and after Han Xin (Hanshu 45.2159–67), but the play emphasizes his exclusive loyalty to Han Xin. While Kuai’s identity as rhetorician persists from the historical accounts to this dramatic reenactment, the purpose of rhetoric is different. In Records of the Grand Historian and Han History, rhetoric is usually concerned with power politics and strategic reasoning; here rhetoric vindicates fundamental probity and urges reciprocity.
Tricking Kuai Tong is mentioned in Zhu Quan’s Correct Sounds. In addition to the version in Anthology, on which this translation is based,7 the play also exists as one of the “palace manuscripts” (neifu ben 內府本) in the Maiwang Studio Collection. Significant textual variations are explained in the notes. In general, the diction in the Anthology version is more polished, and its conclusion is more rueful, almost ironic, as if in recognition that the vindication of Han Xin and Kuai Tong is but a necessary fiction. The shorter act 4 in the palace manuscript is more insistently (and incongruously) cheerful, using as finale a celebratory feast.
TRICKING KUAI TONG
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
Role type
Name, social role
OPENING MALE
XIAO HE, prime minister, Lord of Zan
COMIC
FAN KUAI, general, Lord of Wuyang
MALE LEAD
ZHANG LIANG, counselor, Lord of Chenliu
EXTRA MALE
HAN XIN, marshal, King of Qi
MALE LEAD
KUAI TONG, persuader, Han Xin’s adviser
EXTRA MALE
SUI HE, Han official
EXTRA MALE
CAO CAN, Han official, Lord of Pingyang
EXTRA MALE
WANG LING, Han official, Lord of Anguo
EXTRA MALE
PALACE OFFICIAL
CHILDREN
GUARDS
SOLDIERS
ACT 1
(OPENING MALE dressed as PRIME MINISTER XIAO HE enters leading the GUARDS.)
XIAO HE (recites:)
For generations, records and texts are in Qin archives not kept,8
Among clerical officers of the Han, I am most adept.
Just look at the three Basic Articles of the Legal Code:
The merit of the Lord of Zan is of the premium mode.9
The name of this humble official is Xiao He, a native of Feng Pei.10 For my merit in helping the Han emperor, I have been honored with the post of prime minister. Keeping my place in court, there is only one thing that makes me uneasy: there are three ministers of great achievements in our house of Han: first and foremost, Han Xin; second, Ying Bu;11 third, Peng Yue.12 Now Han Xin is enfeoffed as King of Qi, Ying Bu as King of Jiujiang, Peng Yue as King of Daliang. Han Xin’s military power is overwhelming—stalwart troops by the hundreds of thousands, battle-tested generals by the scores. This cannot but bode trouble. As the saying goes, “Peace is by the general wrought, peace is for the general fraught.” Now I was the one who originally recommended Han Xin for office: he ascended the altar and was appointed marshal, and in five years he crushed Xiang Yu and elevated Liu Bang, helping to accomplish the Great Enterprise. For all I know, this man is someone to reckon with. Even the great overlord of Chu was destroyed by him! How much more worrisome then that he should now have power over the troops! If he were to harbor deviant intent, would he not regard the Han dynasty as something he could flip like the palm of his hand! Now this is not because “it is Xiao He who makes him, it is Xiao He who breaks him”13—this is not some unsavory flip-flopping business. But if one of these days the person I recommended were to make trouble, then surely your humble servant will be implicated and branded guilty by association. For this I have been racking my brain day and night: unless I can deploy some scheme, make my case with the emperor, act first to remove this person’s teeth and claws and then cut him down—only then would I never need to worry about future woes. Some days earlier, Fan Kuai, Lord of Wuyang, conferred about this with me, and I am more than ever filled with suspicions and hesitations.14 Guard, bring Fan Kuai here.
GUARD: Yes Your Honor. This way please, General Fan.
(COMIC dressed as FAN KUAI enters.)
FAN KUAI (recites:)
Bursting upon the scene at Hongmen: how daunting was my valor!15
It was enough to knock King Xiang Yu off his chair!16
As reward I got a vat of good wine, plus a pork shoulder:
Gorged with food and drink, for h
alf a month I was ever bolder!
I am none other than Fan Kuai, a native of Pei county holding the title of Lord of Wuyang. Ever since Han rule was established over the realm, there’s been peace in the eight directions and calm in the four seas. Now that there’s nothing much to occupy me, it occurred to me since I started out as a butcher, I must not let my original trade go rusty. That’s why I am practicing my old-timer’s skill and killing dogs for a lark.17 The prime minister is summoning me: I wonder what it’s all about, but there is no shirking the trip. Before you know it, here I am. Guard, report that Fan Kuai is getting down from his horse.
GUARD (reports:) Reporting to the prime minister: Fan Kuai has come to the gate.
XIAO HE: Invite him in.
GUARD: Please enter.
FAN KUAI (greets the PRIME MINISTER:) For what official business did the Prime Minister summon this old man?
XIAO HE: General Fan, I invited you here today because of the matter concerning Han Xin—and there is nothing more urgent. In the beginning it was I who recommended him—but this man now has too much power over the troops, if—as I fear—one of these days he harbors seditious intent, what is to be done? As I mull over this, I realize that you alone among the numerous meritorious officials are a close relative of the emperor’s.18 You must feel personally responsible for his well-being; that’s why I have invited you to confer about this.
FAN KUAI: Prime Minister, back then your humble servant already made his case: Han Xin was but a starveling of Huaiyin.19 Consider how, when our lord was stranded at the Hongmen meeting, I barged in, tramping down the Hongmen gate. Taking note of how awe-inspiring my demeanor was, King Xiang Yu bestowed on me a dipper of wine and a haunch of raw pork shoulder, which I devoured with a clean sweep. This shocked King Xiang so much that, eyes staring straight and mouth agape, he could scarcely move. It was only thus that we managed to protect our lord and have him return unscathed. Later, when the altar was built for the appointment of the marshal, I figured that the position would surely be mine. Prime Minister, wasn’t it your doing that things turned out otherwise!