by Steven Moore
But most Chinese novelists went further back in history to find admonitory parallels to “caution the world” about what was going on in their own time. In the 1620s, Fang Ruhao published two novels set a thousand years earlier: the 40-chapter Lost Tales of the True Way (Chan zhen yishi) concerns a Buddhist monk and three disciples who help found the Sui Dynasty (581), while in the 60-chapter Later Tales of the True Way (Chan zhen hou shi) one of those disciples is reincarnated during the reign of evil Empress Wu Zetian (ruled 684–705) and helps rectify the state. Neither has been translated, but according to Daria Berg they follow in the grand tradition of Luo Guanzhong’s Three Kingdoms and The Water Margin “in their depictions of competing states, adventures involving bandits and rebels, battles with monsters and demons, and erotic encounters.”13
Another veiled attack on contemporary politics via historical fiction is The Merry Adventures of Emperor Yang (Sui Yangdi yanshi, literally “The ‘Romantic’ History of Emperor Yang of the Sui”), a novel published in 1631 by the pseudonymous Qidongyeren (“Hick from the Sticks”).14 Everyone in 17th-century China knew Emperor Yang (ruled 589–618) was a proverbial bad ruler who exploited and overtaxed his subjects while indulging in personal extravagances. While expanding the various historical records and earlier short stories about Yang to novel length, Qidongyeren set up obvious parallels between the Sui Dynasty despot and the late Ming emperor, Wan-li, who had died in 1620 after a 47-year reign as bad as anyone’s in Chinese history. Like The Water Margin and other classics, Emperor Yang tests the concept of loyalty: while a noble virtue in the abstract, loyalty to an incompetent, dangerous ruler is problematic, and elicits different responses from the main characters in the novel. A clever dwarf named Wang I is loyal to the person of the emperor, going so far as to emasculate himself (as if dwarfism weren’t enough of a handicap) so that he can hang out with the emperor during his lengthy periods in his well-stocked harem. Yu Shih-nan, a political yes-man, is mindlessly loyal to the emperor in the same amoral way German prison guards were to Hitler. Yang’s principal wife is loyal to the office of emperor, no matter who occupies it; after her husband is strangled, she climbs into bed with his successor. Similarly, Yang’s concubine Chu Kuei-erh is loyal to the divine prestige of the emperor, no matter how bad he acts. But the author makes it clear that what ultimately matters is that Yang was disloyal to his office (and thus disloyal to heaven), thereby deserving to be killed.
Emperor Yang sounds like a well-made novel; like earlier Chinese classics, its chapters are structured dramatically in groups of 10, with elements from the opening chapters reprised with new meaning near the end. It makes intelligent use of its sources, and to Hegel it’s obviously “the product of meticulous planning, a clear design, careful compilation, and thorough polishing” (85). It was popular in its day, but faded after it was suppressed by the Manchu, along with The Water Margin, for justifying rebellion against unjust rulers.
Parts of Emperor Yang were incorporated into an even better novel published a few years later, Forgotten Tales of the Sui (Sui shi yiwen, 1633) by Yuan Yuling (1592–1674).15 As the title indicates, it takes place during the Sui Dynasty, though it spills over onto the early years of the Tang (established 618), mirroring the same end-of-an-era turmoil of Yuan’s own time. The protagonist is a historical character named Ch’in Shu-pao (d. 638); his later career as a successful Tang general was well known, but Yuan wanted to dramatize his early days as a young man making his uncertain way through a chaotic world of civil unrest and widespread crime.
Born into a military family, young Ch’in neglects his studies to concentrate on weapons and strategy, then becomes “something of a hooligan,” Hegel tells us, “getting into fights for the avowed purpose of righting wrongs in the manner of a knight-errant” (124). His mother talks him into become a minor constable, and then the romantic teen gets his first taste of the real world while transporting prisoners. He fights off some brigands, gets mixed up in an accidental homicide, goes broke, kills a rapist (which results in the deaths of hundreds of others), and comes to feel like a failure. He later turns his life around and becomes the famous general of Chinese history, but his character development represents a major innovation in Yuan’s hands. Since most characters in earlier Chinese fiction are one-dimensional types who show little development, Ch’in’s growth “from teen-age uncertainty to mature self-assurance” (Hegel, 112) represents a radical change in the concept of literary characterization. Equally novel is the point of view of one individual’s reaction to his times rather than the communal overview most previous novelists used.
Hegel praises Yuan Yuling’s naturalistic dialogue and unflinching adherence to realism: he translates the 2,000-word rape scene mentioned above, a brutally graphic account that no European novelist of the 17th-century would have dared to write, not even Grimmelshausen. Yuan blurs the easy distinctions between right and wrong, fate and freedom, and guilt and innocence in a manner that sounds very modern. But like most innovative fiction, Forgotten Tales of the Sui was soon forgotten. It was not reprinted after the first edition of 1633, and much of it was plagiarized later by Chu Renhuo for a lengthy, derivative novel called Romance of the Sui and the Tang (Sui Tang yanyi, 1695).
On a lighter note, there is The Jealous Wife (Cu hulu, literally “Gourd of Vinegar,” c. 1639) by the pseudonymous Fuci Jiaozhu (Leader of the Women-taming Sect), a short, outrageous novel about a shrewish wife—a perennial target in classic Chinese fiction since the Tang era. The tone of the novel is set in the first chapter when the narrator observes “during the sexual act [the wife] is indeed on the bottom, but outside of that she is always climbing on top of her husband’s head and taking a dump.”16 A wealthy, spoiled girl married to a modest orphan, Madame Du lords it over her husband, beats him regularly, and is so jealous she marks his penis each morning and checks it at night to make sure the mark hasn’t been worn off by any illicit friction. Childless after 40 years of marriage, she allows him to take a concubine, but gets one with an impenetrable vagina. The husband manages instead to impregnate her maid, whom Madame Du tries to murder. For this her soul is sent to hell for correction, where the “bone of jealousy” is removed from her back, and then returned to the yang world. (The infernal descent seems to be based on that in Yin-yang Dreams to Caution the World.) The henpecked husband, the tamed shrew, and the fertile maid can now live in harmony. Although the proper relationship between husband and wife is a serious theme in other Chinese novels, as we’ll see, here it is played mostly for laughs. Wu writes, “The author is playful even in relating the grotesque tortures Madame Du suffers in the underworld, such as being burned in a cauldron of boiling oil, bitten by snakes, and having her entrails cut out” (52). Brutal physical comedy isn’t for all tastes, but The Jealous Wife is another indication of the expanding range of Chinese fiction during the 17th century.
The most innovative novel of this period is undoubtedly The Tower of Myriad Mirrors (Xiyou bu, 1641), written by a young man named Tung Yueh (P Dong Yue, 1620–86). Its Chinese title translates “A Supplement to The Journey to the West”; several other novelists at this time were writing sequels to the great masterpieces of Ming fiction, but Tung’s short novel is intended to take place between chapters 61 and 62 of Wu Chengen’s lengthy original. It begins by announcing that a spirit called the Ch’ing Fish (a mackerel) will be Monkey’s next opponent on his pilgrimage to India, but it soon becomes apparent that Monkey is dreaming. And befitting what the author calls the “upside-down” nature of dreams, what follows is a dream-quest closer to Alice in Wonderland than to Wu’s road novel.17
A devout Buddhist who was convinced desire is the cause of suffering, Tung Yueh leads Monkey through a dreamscape of desires involving power, knowledge, and sex. In Wu Chengen’s original, Monkey relies on his strength to overcome obstacles, but is sometimes too quick to judge people and events by appearances (the illusory sensory world), often with fatal results. The Ch’ing Fish seeks to overcome Monkey by confront
ing him with things that make little sense on the surface, like the race of “sky-walkers” who are digging holes in the sky. Monkey’s baffled reaction tracks his realization that surface appearances are subject to multiple interpretations (and displays Tung’s gift for surrealistic flights of fancy):
Monkey considered, “They don’t have the look of celestial workers or ominous or evil stars. They are obviously people from earth, but why are they doing this sort of work here? They aren’t monsters disguised as men because I see no evil aura about them. Could it be that Heaven is infected with scabies and needs people to scratch its back? Or maybe Heaven has grown extra bones and has asked a surgeon to remove them? Or maybe Heaven is too old and they are chiseling it away so they can put in a new one. Or maybe Heaven has been covered by a screen, and they are removing the false Heaven for the real one. Or maybe the Milky Way has flooded and they are channeling away the excess. Or maybe they are rebuilding the Palace of Magic Mists and this is an auspicious day to break ground. Or maybe Heaven likes elaboration and has asked these people to carve a myriad lines to make a beautiful scene. Or maybe the Jade Emperor misses this mortal world and they are opening an imperial road so he can visit more often.” (3)
None of these is correct, by the way; the sky-crew is creating a shortcut so that Tripitaka can visit the Jade Emperor’s palace for a pass because the ruler of the kingdom called Great Compassion has erected a sky-high bronze wall to block Monkey’s way to India. (The laborers miscalculated earlier and the palace fell through a hole.) The bronze wall reminds Monkey of the Great Wall erected by Emperor Ch’in in the third century bce, so the dreaming Monkey goes in search of Ch’in, but stumbles upon the Tower of Myriad Mirrors instead, where the surface of things is again multiplied to incomprehensible lengths in another fanciful catalog:
Monkey could not see where he had come in and felt bewildered. He looked up and saw that the four walls were made of precious mirrors placed one above another. In all there must have been a million mirrors—large, small, and odd-shaped; square ones, round ones, and others. He couldn’t count them all, but a few of the ones he recognized included a Heavenly Emperor mirror with an animal-shaped hook; a white jade heart mirror; a self-doubt mirror; a blossom mirror; a wind mirror; a pair of bird mirrors, male and female; a mirror that looked like a purple cotton lotus; a water mirror; an ice-terrace mirror; an iron-faced lotus mirror; a “me” mirror; a man mirror; a moon mirror; a Hai-nan mirror; a mirror in the shape of Emperor Wu of Han pining for his lady; a green lock mirror; a stillness mirror; a nothing mirror; a bronze mirror with seal-style characters in the hand of Li Ssu of the Ch’in Dynasty; a parrot mirror; a mute mirror; a mirror that retains reflections; a mirror shaped like the first concubine of Emperor Hsüan-yüan; a one-smile mirror; a pillow mirror; a reflectionless mirror; and a flying mirror.
Monkey thought, “This will be fun. Let me reflect a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, and a hundred million of me.” He went to start mirroring himself, but instead of his own image, what he saw was that every mirror contained other heavens and earths, suns and moons, mountains and forests. (4)
Monkey’s once-unified ego scatters in the myriad mirrors, and his former reliance on physical strength is gone: “Amazed, he could do nothing but let his eyes wander,” the passage continues. Soon he is transformed into Beautiful Lady Yu for a series of adventures, then finds himself judging the dead in hell, then meets a son he will have in the future, until finally “the Master of the Void” comes to wake him and to explain that his long dream was an illusion created by the Ch’ing Fish, which means The Tower of the Myriad Mirrors is like an illusory world created by an evil spirit.
My author is a Ch’ing Fish.
The spirit turns out to be Monkey’s evil doppelganger who had hoped to distract him long enough to kill Tripitaka and thereby gain immortality. Fully awake, Monkey notices a new monk closing in on his master and without hesitation cudgels him to death. Monkey resumes his search for food for his master, and there Tung Yueh’s supplement ends and The Journey to the West resumes.
In Finnegans Wake, Joyce generates much of his dream-content via puns and wordplay, and was anticipated in this regard by Tung.18 He rings changes on the sound ch’ing (P: qing), which depending on the characters used can mean a mackerel, “green,” “desire,” or the Ch’ing Dynasty. The Green Green World is the name given to the dreamscape the Ch’ing Fish has created, but it is also the red red sensual world, for according to the author, “The Tower of Myriad Mirrors is a dream of desire” (appendix). In chapter 60 of The Journey to the West—probably the sexiest chapter in Wu Chengen’s novel—Monkey ogles the concubine of his enemy the Bull Demon King and then seduces his wife into surrendering her magic fan. He gets her drunk and almost has sex with her, which follows an earlier encounter with Monkey that she later describes in terms symbolizing a violent rape.19 Surprised by lust, the anxious, guilt-ridden Monkey dreams of ridding himself of desire, made harder by the presence of several dreamgirls with faces like peach blossoms and names like Green Pearl, Miss Silk, and Rearview Allure. (I hope that’s not a mistranslation.) Evoking an ancient Chinese metaphor for fornication, Monkey says, “I regret my heart follows clouds and rain in flight,” spoken while disguised as Lady Yu on a night out with the girls, which ends brutally after Monkey returns to simian form and with his rod beats four of them “to red powder” (5). Finally, Ch’ing is the name the invading Manchus had already chosen for their future dynasty, and in 1641 Tung, like many literati, knew it would be only a short while before they took over, causing anxiety of a more palpable kind. In this sense, the novel is Tung’s escape from anxious reality into a dream of his own making.
Before The Tower of Myriad Mirrors, dreams in literature were strange in content only; they usually followed a linear form that resembled everyday causality so closely that sometimes it is not even apparent a character is dreaming until the narrator concludes with something like “she awakened soaked in sweat. For it had all been a dream, and a bad one at that” (The Sorcerer’s Revolt, chap. 6). But Tung successfully replicates the hallucinatory weirdness of an actual dream: time is inexplicably contracted or expanded, characters transform into others, concepts are literalized, and seemingly illogical incongruities puzzle the dreamer. Though set in the 7th century, Monkey’s dream jumps around from the ancient past to the distant future; he enters the Tower of Myriad Mirrors first by tripping on a green stone, and later by falling into a pool; as the judge in hell, he orders a variety of bizarre executions on a traitor, who is repeatedly “blown back” into human form after being obliterated; hexagrams from the I Ching change into vines, then railings, then into confining ropes; a calendar runs backward; a fairy cave not only contains clouds, but they form “a tapestry of palindromes” (11); and there are Zenny similes like “Monkey made a sound like a flower falling on an empty stairway” (7) and “They slashed him into snowflakes” (9). What is a “mute mirror,” or a “reflectionless mirror”? In a few places Monkey gazes incomprehensibly at practices current in Tung’s own age (like its maddening civil-service examination system) or listens to a poetic recitation of previous episodes of The Journey to the West, recalling Don Quixote coming upon a novel about his exploits in a bookshop. The result is mindblowing, and it’s amazing that a 21-year-old student writing at the end of the Ming Dynasty could create a fiction that anticipates in so many particulars the works of Carroll, Freud, Kafka, Jung, Joyce, and Borges.
Fully aware of the difficulties readers would have comprehending his unconventional novel, Tung Yueh helps us out with metafictional commentary. The novel is prefaced by five pages of questions and answers—like a FAQ page on a website—which underline the novel’s Buddhist’s perspective, though not always as clearly as a non-Buddhist would wish. (“Q. When the Great Sage [Monkey] emerges from the Demon of Desire, there is the chaos of the five colored banners. Why is this? A. The Purity Sūtra says that when chaos runs its course, there is a return to the root. When desire reaches it
s extremity, you see your own nature.”) Tung also adds a few lines of commentary at the end of each chapter, some congratulatory (“The description of Monkey putting on a majestic air is indeed hilarious” [8]), some thematic (“Gathering in the strayed heart is the main idea of this book. It is disclosed here” [11]), and some as baffling as the incidents they describe (“The ladies’ teasing jibes are like pictures. Though full-fleshed they’re not bloated, but like plum blossoms, pure and thin” [5]).20 These devices, along with the text’s self-reflexivity and radical innovations, add to the novel’s postmodern aura.21 But not surprisingly, and despite Tung Yueh’s explanatory notes, the novel was too weird, too experimental for most readers and languished in obscurity until the 20th century, by which time other experimental novels had taught readers how to enter The Tower of Myriad Mirrors.
The witty and worldly Li Yu (1611–80) gives readers even more instructions for reading his iconoclastic novel, The Carnal Prayer Mat (Rou putuan [W–G Jou pu tuan], 1657). A comic erotic novel in 20 chapters, it begins with an introduction in which the author announces his theme—the evils of adultery—and justifies his use of graphic sexual content. The reading public isn’t interested in moral tracts, he notes, “but they love fiction. Not all fiction, mind you, for they are sick of exemplary themes and far prefer the obscene and the fantastic.”22 Pretending that the best way to teach a moral lesson is to wrap it in an immoral package, Li Yu admits: “Its descriptions of copulation, of the pleasures of the bedchamber, do indeed come close to indecency, but they are all designed to lure people into reading on until they reach the dénouement, at which point they will understand the meaning of retribution and take heed” (1). In addition, each chapter concludes (as did Tung Yueh’s Tower) with a “critique,” ostensibly written by a friend named Sun Zhi but probably written by Li himself, in which he notes how cleverly the author develops the theme and how innovative his fiction techniques are. The results are remarkable (qi) and ingenious (qiao), the two qualities Li Yu treasured most in works of art.23