The Nine Cloud Dream

by Kim Man-jung

  10. The civil service examination system (keju 科擧, gwageo in Korean) began in imperial China and was used until 1905. During the Tang dynasty, this exam was theoretically open to all men, regardless of social background (except slaves and those of the lowest classes), and was based on knowledge of the classics. A high score on the exam would win the candidate a government position and could change the fortunes of his entire extended family for subsequent generations. Korea, which modeled its gwageo system on the Tang system, administered the exams until they were abolished after social reforms in 1894.

  11. I have used the Japanese term go here because that is how the game is generally known in the West. The Korean term is baduk and the Chinese is weiqi (圍棋), which means “encirclement chess.” Go is played with black and white stones on a board with a grid of nineteen by nineteen lines, and its rules are very simple but the potential play configurations exceed the number of atoms in the observable universe. During the Tang dynasty, go was one of the requisite “cultivated arts” a gentleman scholar was expected to know (the other three being calligraphy, painting, and music). The image of two Taoist immortals playing go on a mountain is a common theme in traditional Chinese painting.

  12. Here the reference is to Taoist immortals, who are either residents of the Heavenly Kingdom or are humans who have achieved their immortality by practicing Taoist alchemy. Taoist immortals have a status similar to the devas of Hindu culture.

  13. The Koreans translate this instrument as a geomungo, which is based on the Chinese qin. It is in the same family of instruments as the zither, an instrument Confucian scholars were expected to master.

  14. Peng Zu (彭祖, also Penzi) is often called the Taoist Methuselah for having lived a long life spanning two dynasties—777 or 800 years, depending on which account one reads. The term yoga (referring to any practice used to achieve “union” with the divine) is generally applied to Taoist practices today, though they might more accurately be called qigong (practices for cultivating the life force of qi).

  15. A “cash” is a traditional Chinese coin (方孔錢) that has a square hole in the center. The coins were carried on strings for convenience.

  CHAPTER 3.

  Meeting Ch’an-yüeh at Lo-yang

  1. The Luo River (洛河) is a tributary of the Yellow River. The city of Loyang (Luoyang), one of the “four great ancient capitals” of China, is located where the Luo joins the Yellow River.

  2. The pipa is one of the most popular Chinese musical instruments, often called the Chinese lute for its similarity to the Western string instrument.

  3. A love story recorded by the great historian Szu-ma Ch’ien (Sima Qian, b. 145 BCE). Szu-ma Hsiang-ju was a marvelous and unconventional poet who seduced a young widow, Cho Wen-chün, and ran off with her, defying social convention. This is alluded to again later, after Shao-yu meets Cheng Ch’iung-pei.

  4. The expression jing di zhi wa (井底之蛙, “frog at the bottom of the well”) comes from a famous Taoist fable in the Zhuangzi. The story, told by Kung-sun Lung to Prince Mou of Wei, is about a frog who is happy and brags of his existence in the limited world he can perceive at the bottom of a well. When a turtle from the eastern sea describes the vast ocean to him, the frog is abashed and crestfallen, realizing the smallness of his world.

  5. Han Wudi, Emperor Wu of Han (漢武帝), considered one of the greatest emperors in Chinese history, ruled from 141 to 87 BCE.

  6. Wei was a short-lived dynasty that lasted from 220 to 266.

  CHAPTER 4.

  A Mysterious Priestess

  1. Han Yu (韓愈, 768–824) was an important literary and intellectual figure during the Tang dynasty. He was known as the greatest prose stylist of his time, and he was a critic of both Taoism and Buddhism.

  2. Chinese music is based on the ancient pentatonic scale. The five tones, which correspond to the Taoist elements, are: gong 宫 (Earth), shang 商 (Metal), jue 角 (Wood/Air), zi 徽 (Fire), and yu羽 (Water), which also correspond, respectively, to the five emotions: anxiety, grief, anger, excitement, and fear.

  3. Although she is Minister Cheng’s wife and the birth mother of Lady Cheng, she would have kept her own surname.

  4. Also known as a litter. Small sedan chairs were typically carried by two or four men and open, unlike a palanquin, which was generally closed.

  5. “The Rainbow-Feathered Robe” was the tune that originally accompanied the dance of a famous consort, Yang Guifei, as she performed for Xuanzong (Emperor Minghuang), who ruled from 713 to 756.

  6. Ji Kang (嵇康, 223–262) was a Taoist philosopher and alchemist. Though he tried to avoid court intrigues, he was sentenced to death by Sima Zhao (King of Cao Wei) for defending a friend who had been framed. Three thousand scholars signed a petition to release Ji Kang, but to no avail.

  7. Bo Ya (伯牙) was a famous musician and poet known for his qin playing during the Spring and Autumn Period (770–476 BCE).

  8. Shun (舜), also known as Emperor Shun, is one of the three legendary Sage Kings of China, the other two being Yao (堯) and Yu (禹). Shun is said to have lived sometime between 2294 and 2184 BCE.

  CHAPTER 5.

  Tryst with a Fairy and a Ghost

  1. Princess Taiping (太平公主, d. 713), whose name means “Princess of Peace,” was a daughter of the infamous Empress Wu Zeitan, whose reign interrupted the Tang dynasty for fifteen years with her second Zhou dynasty.

  2. This is a double-edged statement, since it can mean that Shao-yu was so competent that he discharged his duties swiftly and efficiently or that officials at court didn’t really have much to do. Here, given Kim’s wit, it is likely to mean both.

  3. 十三; Gale simply renders his name as “Thirteen,” whereas Rutt uses “Shih-san.” It is a lucky number in Chinese for its homophonic value (similar in sound to “definitely alive”), but, given the pervasive Taoist and Buddhist symbology in Kuunmong, this name is most likely an ironic reference to the thirteen dhutangas, or ascetic practices. The Buddha himself prescribed only ten dhutangas for his monks, but his rival cousin, Devadatta, proposed a stricter set of thirteen to show he was even holier. Here, Thirteen’s behavior is hardly ascetic. (The thirteen dhutangas are still practiced by some monks of the Thai Forest tradition.)

  4. 王維 (699–759); one of the most celebrated Tang dynasty poets. He was a Buddhist in his later years and also known for his fabulous landscape paintings. See note 8, chapter 2.

  5. “Peach Blossom Spring Story” (桃花源記), or “The Peach Blossom Land,” was a fable by Tao Yuanming, written in 421, about a Shangri-la–esque land where people lived oblivious to the outside world (see also note 11, chapter 5).

  6. Wulingyuan (武陵源) is a scenic area in Hunan, China, famous for its surreal sandstone formations often depicted in classical Chinese art and used as the setting of myths and supernatural romances. The Wulingyuan Scenic Area is a Natural World Heritage site.

  7. Zigefeng (紫閣峰), literally “Purple Pavilion Peak”; probably a reference to the eighth stanza of Tu Fu’s famous poem“Reflections in Autumn,” or “Autumn Meditations”: “From Kunwu, the Yusu River comes winding ’round, / The dark shade of Purple Pavilion Peak sinks into Meipi Lake.”

  8. See note 24, chapter 1.

  9. Every six thousand years, according to Chinese mythology, the Jade Emperor and his wife, Xi Wangmu, held a fabulous banquet called the Feast of Peaches, in which they served the Heavenly Peaches to the deities to keep them immortal. The trees in the peach orchard bloomed only once every millennium, and it took another three thousand years for the peaches of immortality to ripen. In Wu Cheng’en’s sixteenth-century novel Journey to the West (西遊記)—a story which would have been familiar to Kim Man-jung and which shares motifs in common with Kuunmong—one of the Monkey King’s great crimes is to gluttonously eat up all the peaches reserved for the banquet.

  10. This is an allus
ion to the Chinese legend of Wu Kang, a lazy and impatient young man who wants to be immortal. First he studies herbal medicine with a Taoist master, but gives up after only three days. Then he fails at learning the military arts. He is too impatient to study books. Wu Kang finally angers his master and is banished to the Moon Palace, the abode of the moon goddess. He is told that the only way to come back to Earth is to chop down the cassia tree that grows there. Wu Kang tries to chop it down, but the tree is magical—it heals itself after each blow of the ax—and so Wu Kang is still on the moon, chopping away. It is said that when the moon is full, one can see the shadows of Wu Kang and the magical cassia tree, and when the moon is big in the fall, cassia buds will fall from it and perfume the clouds.

  11. Liu Chen and Yuan Zhao were cousins whose story, with several variants, is similar to that of Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle. In some versions they are out to fetch water or find medicine when they happen upon two fairies playing chess. In others, they happen upon a whole banquet of immortals. Relevant to this section of Kuunmong is the central theme of the legend: the two men, upon their return after what they think is only fifteen days (during which they had taken fairies as wives), discover that seven generations have passed and no one recognizes them. In despair, they attempt to return to the fairies in the Wu Ling Peach Paradise, but they can no longer find the entrance. In some variants of the story, they kill themselves in despair and the Jade Emperor takes pity on them, appointing Liu Chen the deity of good fortune and Yuan Zhao the deity of ill fortune. Liu Chen and Yuan Zhao Entering the Tiantai Mountains is a famous series of ink drawings with accompanying text done by Zhao Cangyun during the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368).

  12. Mount Tiantai (天台山); a mountain (“Heavenly Terrace”) as well as a mountain range in eastern China considered sacred by both Taoists and Buddhists. Buddhism began to flourish there in the late sixth century. The mountains became a major center for international pilgrims, and there were as many as seventy-two major temples there at one time, some of which are still standing even after the destruction of temples during the Cultural Revolution. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the temples in the region were a center for Buddhist scholars. The Korean Cheontae and Japanese Tendai sects are named for the Buddhism (the syncretic “Lotus School”) that originated in the Tiantai Mountains. Most relevant to Kuunmong is the fact that the great monk Zhiyi, who played a major part in establishing the religious culture of the Sui dynasty (581–618), settled in the Tiantai Mountains in 576. This parallels the opening of the novel, which describes how the great monk Liu-kuan established his temple on Lotus Peak in the Heng-shan range. Most relevant to this chapter (and thematically resonant with the novel as a whole) is the Tiantai doctrine, which follows the logic of Nagarjuna (who is often known as “the Second Buddha” for his wisdom) and asserts: (1) all phenomena are empty and without essential reality; (2) all phenomena have a provisional reality; and (3) all phenomena are without essential reality and are provisionally real at the same time. These three assertions are thematically central to the Buddhist reading of Kuunmong.

  13. A reference to the abode of the Chinese moon goddess, Chang’e, whose abode includes a cinnamon tree and a rabbit.

  14. Also called Lake of Gems or Green Jade Lake, the home of Xi Wangmu (西王母), “Queen Mother of the West,” the goddess who ruled over a paradise in the Kunlun Mountains. She was an especially popular figure in Tang dynasty poetry. Note the parallel to Lady Wei of the Southern Peak mentioned at the opening of the story. See note 10, chapter 5.

  15. Wang An-shi (王安石, 1021–1086); a poet, writer, and statesman of the Sung dynasty.

  16. Meng Chang (孟昶, 919–965); last emperor of the Later Shu (934–965), one of the Ten Kingdoms located in the present-day Sichuan area.

  17. Zhang Lihua (張麗華, d. 589) was an imperial consort renowned for her beauty. She was the favorite concubine of Chen Shubao, last emperor of the Chen dynasty.

  18. Gale’s and Rutt’s translations include the poems, which are not in the edition I used as my primary source. They are dramatically extraneous.

  19. In Chinese folk religion and in Buddhism as well as Taoism, those who die with unresolved issues, or die tragically, roam the Earth as egui (餓鬼), hungry ghosts. Hungry ghosts are not the same as the spirits of the normally deceased ancestors and they must be appeased by different means. Some hungry ghosts, who are attached to the world by unresolved desire, behave much like the figure of the succubus in Western culture.

  20. Taiji (太極); literally, “the supreme ultimate.” This is not the martial art but a reference to what is commonly represented by the yin/yang symbol in Taoist cosmology, the dynamic interplay of yin and yang qualities that gives rise to the phenomenal world.

  21. Li Chunfeng (李淳風) and Yuan Tian-gang (袁天罡) together were like the Nostradamus of seventh-century Tang China. Li Chunfeng was a genius in mathematics, astronomy, and history. He wrote books on astrology and numerological prognostication, as well as descriptions of Taoist practices. Yuan Tian-gang, for his part, was the inventor of a practice called “Bone Weight Astrology.” He is said to have read the physiognomy of the young Wu Zetian (武則天), who became the empress consort Wu, making predictions about her future while missing the fact that she was a girl. Yuan and Li are credited with the Tui bei tu (推背圖, literally “Back Massage Drawings”), a famous book of enigmatic prophecies about China’s future. Some say it predicts World War III between China and the United States. This allusion refers to the previous episode in Kuunmong in which Yang disguised himself as a nun in order to get a look at his future wife’s face.

  22. The Four Seas, each associated with a cardinal direction, were considered the boundaries of China. See also note 10, chapter 1.

  23. It is generally believed in Korea and China (even today) that excessive sex produces dark circles under a man’s eyes because of the loss of vital fluid. This is in keeping with the Taoist practice of preserving and recirculating the seminal fluid to enhance the cultivation of qi, the life force.

  24. Rutt leaves this out for some reason. Gale translates: “Yang Won of Cho married a fairy and lived with her, and Nyoo Chon had a child with a ghost.”

  25. Once again, Rutt and Gale include poems here that are not in the edition I used as my primary source (see note 18, chapter 5). These were probably additions by someone other than Kim Man-jung during a later transcription or printing.

  26. Probably an ironic reference to the statesman-poet of the early Warring States Period (475–221 BCE) who wrote “Unpopularity,” which turns out to be the opposite of Shao-yu’s future. Herbert A. Giles’s 1883 translation of the poem, in Gems of Chinese Literature: Verse, concludes with the lines: “Behold the philosopher, full of nervous thought, / with a fame that never grows dim, / Dwelling complacently alone,—say, / what can the vulgar herd know of him?”

  27. This is a reference to the Han dynasty tale of Emperor Wu and Lady Li, which is often cited as the origin of Chinese shadow theater. Wu was distraught at the death of his favorite concubine. A Taoist sorcerer named Shao-weng summoned her spirit within a screen of curtains, but only under the condition that the emperor observe from a distance and not come close for a direct look. The poem Wu composed afterward begins with the lines, “Is it she? / Or is it not?”

  28. 春雲; Gale renders her name as “Cloudlet,” but it is more literally “Spring Cloud.”

  29. Jia (賈). The Chinese character here is the one for a surname for which there are some interesting homophonic readings consistent with the plot of the novel: 假, fake, borrow; 佳, beautiful. When considered pictographically, the layered homophonic associations comprise a joke, especially since Jia (家), another surname homophone, is a character made from the radicals of “house” over “pig” and is typically read as representing a prosperous home. In Chinese and Korean folklore, it is often the homely woman who is the most virtuous.


  30. Or Mengzi (372–289 BCE). Mencius is often called “the Second Sage” after Confucius, and his interpretations and commentaries of Confucius constitute the orthodox version of Confucianism. Mencius himself also wrote about human nature, education, and politics.

  31. Clouds and rain are references to sexual intercourse in classical Chinese literature, dating back to the Yin and Zhou dynasties, when sexual intercourse was part of the ritual for producing rain. In Taoist terms, this is one of the illustrations of the profound connection between humans and nature, but it had also become a prominent theme in pornographic writing and art by the Tang period.

  32. Gale adds, in what seems like an explication: “You are not a fairy, and you are not a spirit; but she who made you a fairy, and again she who made you a spirit, surely possesses the law by which we turn to fairies and spirits, and will she say that I am but a common man of earth and not want to keep company with me? And will she call this park where I live the dusty world of men, and not wish to see me? If she can change you into a fairy or into a spirit, can’t I do just the same and change you, too?”

  33. 姮娥, the Chinese goddess of the moon, also known as Chang-o or Chang’e (嫦娥). See also note 13, Chapter 15.

  34. This is one of the significant moments when Kim alludes to the “reality” portion of the novel from inside the “dream” portion by recalling the fairy servants of Lady Wei. The entire structure of Kuunmong is actually like a fractal woven together with large- and small-scale examples of this type of interpenetration, and this trope—consistent with the Hwaeom (華嚴) school of Buddhism (centrally important, particularly during the Joseon period)—is another piece of evidence that the text is of Korean origin.