by C. T. Hsia
45. On the meaning of “mark the page,” see chap. 5, this volume, n. 20.
46. Jiang Shang or Jiang Ziya (ca. twelfth century B.C.E to eleventh century B.C.E.) was adviser to King Wen and King Wu of Zhou. For Guan Zhong of Qi, see chap. 4, this volume, n. 34; for Fan Li of Yue and Zhang Liang of Han, see chap. 2, this volume, nn. 21, 22, 52, and 66.
47. Chacha is implying that the proper laws should comply with the way of heaven—by ruling that his uncle and surrogate father should be executed, Shanshouma is going against the way of heaven.
48. The line means, literally, “there is an enthusiast in the kitchen.” The idiom is often used in a positive context, referring to how fervor in the family can solve problems. Here it is used with a twist to indicate that the officers are beating Old Chiliarch ferociously.
49. Hong Hao glosses wabolahai 洼勃辣駭 as the Jurchen phrase meaning “to beat someone to death.” Wang Hong, in his annotations to The Tiger Head Plaque, suggests that wabulahai 瓦不剌海 is a variant of the same expression, and since chi 赤 is the Jurchen word for “you,” the whole phrase chiwabulahai 赤瓦不剌海 would mean “You deserve death!” or “Damn you!” (Zang Maoxun, YQX, 2:1150). The context, however, is somewhat ambiguous. Shanshouma can be referring either to himself or his uncle. Guan Hanqing uses the same phrase in Lamenting Cunxiao (Huijiao xiangzhu Guan Hanqing ji, 141, 158).
50. The expression here is nuantong 暖痛, literally “to warm someone’s pain.” It was customary for friends and relatives to bring food and drinks to someone who suffered beating in court to assuage his pain.
51. Here Old Chiliarch is referred as tikong. It may mean that he has lost his position as chiliarch.
52. The original line (bufu shaomai 不伏燒埋) means “to refuse to submit to the fees for the cremation or the burial.” According to Yuan laws, the guilty party had to pay for the funeral (cremation or burial) of the person who suffered wrongful death (Song Lian et al., Yuanshi 103.2625–33).
53. Not only has he lost face, his “face” is so far gone that it might as well be beyond the azure clouds.
54. The original four lines rhyme as in many quatrains—that is, the first, third, and fourth lines rhyme.
FEMALE AGENCY
7
RESCUING A SISTER
GUAN HANQING
TRANSLATED BY GEORGE KAO AND WAI-YEE LI
INTRODUCTION
WAI-YEE LI
Guan Hanqing (ca. 1224–ca. 1300) was the most prolific playwright of northern plays. Jia Zhongming described him as “the leader of the Pear Garden” (liyuan lingxiu 梨園領袖). He was firmly ensconced in the theatrical culture of his time, forming friendships with actors and other playwrights, and he is said to have “applied powder and paint to his face” (mianfu fenmo 面傅粉墨) and acted on stage.1 A native of Dadu, he traveled south to Hangzhou. He is credited with no less than sixty-eight plays, of which eighteen have survived in whole and three in fragments, although in some cases the attribution has been debated.2 Four of these plays are found in Yuan Editions. Guan was also an acknowledged master of songs (sanqu 散曲), but only fifty-seven songs (xiaoling 小令) and fourteen song suites (taoshu 套數) attributed to him survive. One famous song shapes his image as the ironic, playful, and defiant habitué of theaters and pleasure quarters: “I am the resounding bronze bean that cannot be steamed to mush, boiled to pulp, hammered to submission, fried to explosion” (Wo shi ge zhengbulan zhubushou chuibubian chaobubao xiangdangdang yili tongwandou 我是個蒸不爛、煮不熟、捶不扁、炒不爆、響噹噹一粒銅豌豆); he will stop going down the road of “mists and flowers” only if Yama, the king of hell, personally summons him and drags him down with the help of gods and demons. With the canonization of vernacular fiction and drama, Guan Hanqing is honored, among other things, for championing the downtrodden. Tian Han’s 田漢 (1898–1968) play Guan Hanqing 關漢卿 (1958) dramatizes how he criticizes social ills and expresses his rebellion by writing The Injustice Done to Dou E. In some ways, Guan Hanqing’s place in the canon answers the need to identify “the greatest Chinese playwright.” As Patricia Sieber has pointed out, critical traditions on Guan Hanqing provide insights into textual transmission, the reception of Yuan drama, as well as shifting categories of significance in literary history.3
Guan Hanqing was a versatile playwright. He wrote historical plays dramatizing the pathos of heroes blighted by fickle fortune or humbled by mortality; famous examples include Lord Guan Attends the Meeting Alone with a Single Sword (Guan dawang dandao fuhui 關大王單刀赴會) and Guan Yu and Zhang Fei Go Together to Western Shu in a Dream (Guan Zhang shuangfu xi Shu meng 關張雙赴西蜀夢), both featuring heroes from the era of the Three Kingdoms. His courtroom drama presents Judge Bao as the agent of justice. Like Selling Rice in Chenzhou, Judge Bao Thrice Ponders the Butterfly Dream (Bao daizhi sankan hudie meng 包待制三勘蝴蝶夢) and Judge Bao Uses a Ruse to Execute Lu Zhailang by Guan Hanqing portray a Judge Bao who combines incorruptible sagacity with trickery, the pursuit of the rule of law as well as the mastery of its creative twist. Another famous play about crime, punishment, and justice (or rather its miscarriage) is The Injustice Done to Dou E That Moves Heaven and Earth (Gantian dongdi Dou E yuan 感天動地竇娥冤). Instead of being classified as courtroom drama, however, The Injustice Done to Dou E is often lauded as tragedy, ever since Wang Guowei characterized it as such in 1912.4
Wrongfully accused of murder, Dou E is executed and only posthumously exonerated. However, instead of dwelling only on the pathos of victimhood, Guan Hanqing emphasizes Dou E’s agency as she challenges her mother-in-law, denounces the villains, and curses heaven and earth and official corruption.5 Such strength of character is evident in many of Guan’s heroines, be they proud courtesans, headstrong ingenues, savvy commoners, cunning maids, determined wives, or selfless mothers. Indeed, many of his plays are “female texts” (danben), of which our play is a notable example. Zhao Pan’er Uses Seductive Wiles to Rescue a Sister Courtesan (Zhao Pan’er fengyue jiu fengchen 趙盼兒風月救風塵), or Rescuing a Sister in short, tells the story of how a naive courtesan, Song Yinzhang, is tricked into marrying an abusive and manipulative suitor, Zhou She. In order to extricate Song Yinzhang from this dismal union, Zhao tricks Zhou into believing that she is ready to marry him, dowry and all, if only he divorces Song. The play ends with a prefect dispensing punishment to Zhou and restoring Song to her earlier suitor, a poor scholar.
Courtesans have significant roles in about a dozen extant Yuan plays.6 In the rich corpus of writings about courtesans in the Chinese tradition, these Yuan plays occupy an important niche. Just as in poems, stories, and plays from other periods, we have here courtesan-poets who master the ornaments of literati culture, scholar-courtesan romances, stories of betrayal and abandonment, resourceful courtesans who take their fates into their hands, and devious prostitutes who ruin families. But the particular combination of romantic glorification of love and its ironic deflation is quite distinctive in Yuan drama. There is deeper empathy with the courtesan’s perspective. Sometimes we seem to have an insider’s view as a courtesan sings of her dilemmas, insights, triumphs, or defeats; after all, the world of the theater and that of the pleasure quarters overlap. Theatrical illusion and romantic illusion are intertwined, and the actress playing the part of courtesan is probably also describing her own situation. In Prefect Qian Tactically Favors Xie Tianxiang by Guan Hanqing, the courtesan Xie Tianxiang sings of her plight: “You said that the parrot in the golden cage can recite poetry / And is thus my fitting analogy. / But the greater this cleverness, the more escape becomes an impossibility! / Skills with the flute and the lute just means patrons I have to enthrall, / Excellence in singing just means that I am at their beck and call.”7
Sometimes the longing for romance is combined with pragmatic calculations. In Prefect Qian Tactically Favors Xie Tianxiang, for example, Qian takes Xie into his household so that he can keep her “pure” for her lover, the poet Liu Yong. Ha
ving plighted troth with Liu, Xie is nevertheless not above wondering why the prefect is not showing any interest in her. Confined in Qian’s home, she longs for the “conditional freedom” of a courtesan’s life: “In the past when I was a courtesan in houses of pleasure, / It was nothing more than giving at a few banquets my fair measure, / When I got home I was still a spirit unbound. / But now I have been thrown into this bottomless prison!” In Du Ruiniang Shows Her Wit at Golden Thread Pond, also by Guan Hanqing, the courtesan Du Ruiniang seems to see through all the clichés of scholar-courtesan romances even as she hankers after that ideal: “I see all too clearly: just as clouds disperse after the rain, your passion is spent, / Yet I cannot help hoping that a lasting union is what you meant!”
Zhao Pan’er in our play is more deeply cynical. She can maneuver a happy ending for a sister in her trade, but her compassion is ironic and clear-sighted. Here sisterhood is the female and déclassé version of the Peach Garden Oath sworn by the legendary heroes in stories about the Three Kingdoms. Zhao Pan’er saves one of her own like a knight-errant, but she does so using the ploys of a courtesan, freely couching her heroic exploit in antiheroic self-deprecation.8 She does not balk at twisting facts in front of the magistrate in the last scene in order to discredit Zhou She. Ultimately she mocks the world as well as herself as she turns potentially tragic self-understanding into the stuff of comedy. Nothing escapes the caustic wit of Zhao Pan’er—the empty vows of patrons, the vain hopes of prostitutes, the trap of respectability, the illusion of romance, lies by all and sundry. Her relentless self-mockery and defiant independence remind us of Guan Hanqing’s self-portrayal in the cited lyric.
Rescuing a Sister is mentioned in The Register of Ghosts and now exists in Anthology as well as Ancient Masters in the Maiwang Studio Collection. George Kao’s translation (A Sister Courtesan Comes to the Rescue), published in Renditions (1998), is based on Anthology. We are presenting a revised edition based on Ancient Masters; significant differences with Anthology are explained in the notes. There is another translation of the play (Rescuing One of the Girls, also based on Anthology) by Stephen Owen in An Anthology of Chinese Literature: Beginnings to 1911 (1996). The ironic deflation of romance in the play is toned down in the version from Anthology, which presents Scholar An Xiushi as a more plausible Confucian character and puts a greater emphasis on respectable marriage as a real alternative for a courtesan.
RESCUING A SISTER
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
Role type
Name, social role
OPENING MALE
ZHOU SHE, scion of a wealthy official family
OLD WOMAN
MOTHER SONG, SONG YINZHANG’s mother
EXTRA FEMALE
SONG YINZHANG, a young courtesan
EXTRA MALE
AN XIUSHI, a scholar betrothed to SONG YINZHANG
FEMALE LEAD
ZHAO PAN’ER, a sister courtesan of SONG YINZHANG
CLOWN
IDLE BOY, a hanger-on with the courtesans
INNKEEPER
EXTRA
PREFECT
ATTENDANT
ZHANG QIAN
ACT 1
(OPENING MALE dressed as ZHOU SHE enters.9)
ZHOU SHE (recites:)
Full thirty years I boozed and whored with pluck.
For two decades the Flower Star has brought me luck.10
I’ve never known the price of rice my whole life long,
But always want for money for women, wine, and song.
My name is Zhou She, and I am a native of Zhengzhou, the son of Deputy Prefect Zhou. Ever since I was a youngster, I’ve been a frequent patron of the flower houses. There is a singsong girl in this city of Bianliang11 named Song Yinzhang. She has her heart set on marrying me, and I am eager to take her for a wife. The trouble is her mother will not consent to the marriage. I’ve just come back from some business.12 Today is an auspicious day, so I am making this trip—for one thing to pay my respects to the mother, and for another to bring up this matter of marriage. (Exits.)
(OLD WOMAN as MOTHER SONG and EXTRA FEMALE as SONG YINZHANG enter.)
MOTHER: “Flowers may come back in bloom, but we will not our youth resume.”13 This old party is a native of Bianliang, surnamed Li. My husband, surnamed Song, is dead these many years, and I have only one daughter, named Song Yinzhang. This child of mine is good at all kinds of word games—Splitting the Character, Stringing the Lines, you name it: she knows them all. There is this Zhou She from Zhengzhou who’s been going with my child, and they have set their hearts on getting married. But I am fobbing him off with lies and excuses: I’m only afraid my child will suffer in the end.14
YINZHANG: Mama, don’t worry. I have my heart set on marrying him.
MOTHER: As you will, as you will.
(ZHOU SHE enters.)
ZHOU: This is Zhou She. Here I am, right at their doorstep. Might as well go in.
(He greets SONG YINZHANG.)
YINZHANG: Here you are, Zhou She.
ZHOU: I’ve come straight here to ask about our marriage. How does Mother feel about it?
YINZHANG: Mother has given her consent.
ZHOU: Let me go see her.
(He greets the old lady.)
ZHOU: Mother, I’ve come straight here to ask about our marriage.
MOTHER: It’s an auspicious day today. I’ll give you my consent. Only you must not mistreat my child.
ZHOU: I wouldn’t dare mistreat Big Sister. Go invite all your sisters and brothers,15 Mother. I’ll take care of some things and be right back. (Exits.)
MOTHER: Daughter, you stay home and get ready. I’ll go invite all my old sisters over. (Exits.)
YINZHANG: Mother’s gone. Let me see who’s coming.16
AN XIUSHI (enters:)
Qu Yuan drowned in the river to his everlasting pain;
Yan Hui rejoiced in the Way and always disdained gain.17
This humble scholar is An Xiushi, a native of Luoyang. All my life I have had this weakness for wine and women.18 When I came here to Bianliang, I met and kept company with a singsong girl named Song Yinzhang. At first she promised to be my wife, but now she’s going to marry Zhou She. She has a sworn sister named Zhao Pan’er; let me go ask her to put in a word for me. Here I am already.19 Is Sister Zhao home?
(FEMALE LEAD dressed as ZHAO PAN’ER enters.)
PAN’ER: This is Zhao Pan’er herself. I am just about to do some needlework20 when I hear someone at the door. Let me see who it is. (They greet each other.) I was wondering who it might be. So it’s you, my brother-in-law. What are you here for?
AN: I’ve come specially to ask you a favor. Early on your sister Yinzhang promised to marry me, but now she’s going to many Zhou She. I beg you to have a talk with her on my behalf.
PAN’ER: Didn’t she pledge her troth with you earlier? And now she is going to marry somebody else! Truly, these romantic unions do not come easy! (Sings:)
[Xianlü mode: Touching Up Red Lips]
A prostitute follows and keeps company
And spends a lifetime in pursuit of money.
When it comes to the final reckoning,21
Why yield a hundred times, a thousand whims tolerate?
It’s all because she values the romantic élan of her mate.22
[River Churning Dragon]
The way I see it, a predestined pair
Is truly not something to manage then and there.
How can you be sure you’ve pleased?
How is the moment of mutual understanding seized?
Even if, head over heels, a match is soon made,23
She may end up beating her breasts, with belated regrets she can’t evade.
She seeks a bright future
And a “happily ever after” ending,
But they are hard to find—just like a black sea, and as heartrending!
Just figure: the human heart is hard to divine,
What is there to know about heaven’s design?24
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[Oily Gourd]
As for the matrimonial registry, is it by you and me done?25
Who wouldn’t want to pick a clever and handsome one?26
They all choose over and over, always turning once more:27
Marry an honest and down-to-earth man,
The fear is a lifelong mismatch hard to ignore.
Marry a clever and handsome one,
But being easily abandoned halfway one must abhor.
Why hide in dog piss?
Why huddle in cow dung?
All of a sudden you fall flat on your face in shame!
Then your eyes will be opened, but who’s to blame?
[Joy for All Under Heaven]
I think my companions early married
Waste away like ghosts, worn-out and harried.
Much to forbear, hard to tell,
Unable to quell
Indignities pell-mell.28
I’ve seen comely maids seeking a brave new life,
And for days my mulling ran rife:29
A life without man I bear—but why in cock’s name should I care?30 (Speaks:)
Brother, I too would like to marry one of my patrons. But let me spin some scenarios.
AN: What scenarios are those?
PAN’ER (sings:)
[Song of the God Nezha]
Let’s say as an honest woman I masquerade,
And the three compliances and four virtues I parade.31
But we can’t help being wicked harlots32
By three hearts and two minds unmade.
Indeed, what’s the third act? Whence the finale?
Though my home is in the flower-and-willow lane,
How can that be anything but a bane?