by Kim Man-jung
35. This is actually an erotically charged detail, since the “Spring Cloud” is rising to give formal thanks to Shao-yu. It refers directly back to all the lurid double entendres regarding the clouds and rain (see note 31, chapter 5).
CHAPTER 6.
The Boy at the Roadside
1. There were several major conflicts between Tibet and China during the Tang dynasty. The Tibetans actually captured the Tang capital of Chang’an in 763 during the An-shi rebellion, which had destabilized the empire. “Tibetan” was also a term that often referred to any of the “barbarian” tribes to the west, and Tang popular literature (stories like “The Tibetan Slave”) often features Tibetan characters who are fearsome and large.
2. The Queen Dowager of Nanyue, a kingdom northwest of China, wanted to make her kingdom part of the Han dynasty empire during the reign of Han Wudi in 113 BCE. At the time, she was married to Zhao Yingqi, who had served in Han Wudi’s court in Chang’an while he was a prince. Zhao and his queen had disagreements.
3. This sort of lavish reward is not unusual for Tang China, but it is probably exaggerated for dramatic effect. Gale’s translation says “five thousand rolls of silk and fifty horses,” probably because that seemed more reasonable!
4. Now known as Henan (河南)—a province in north-central China.
5. Qilin in Pinyin. This is typically translated as“giraffe,” but it is a mythic chimera. In Chinese folklore, it was an auspicious omen heralding the arrival of a great sage or a ruler, which is appropriate here. The Chinese phoenix is also a chimera and represents the union of male and female, suggesting here that Shao-yu will soon join again with Ch’an-yüeh.
6. A talent is approximately seventy-five pounds in weight.
7. Han-tan is now Handan (邯鄲), a city in the southwest of Hebei Province in China.
8. This is an allusion to the story about King Zhuang, who saved a young man’s reputation when one of his consorts broke the man’s hat string for accosting her in the dark during a banquet when the lamps had gone out. By having all the men break their hat strings before the lamps were relit, he made it impossible to determine who the offending party had been. The young man became a loyal servant of the king and repaid the debt by fighting for him. See D. C. Lau, ed., A Concordance of the Shou Yuan (Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1992), p. 42.
CHAPTER 7.
The Imperial Son-in-Law
1. The literal reading of her name is “Startled Wild Goose,” but the meaning is likely to be “Shy Wild Goose.”
2. This is a curious allusion, since it seems to refer to Li Jing (李靖, 571–649), also known as Duke Jingwu of Wei, the famous general who was a military adviser to the Tang emperor Taizong. When Li Jing was old, he was too ill to lead the Chinese invasion force against Goguryeo Korea in 644 and Taizong’s army was defeated.
3. A title not quite as high as a duke.
4. The classic devoted to history, usually translated as The Classic of History (also known as the Shangshu), is one of the ancient Five Classics of China. A decent scholar would have memorized it.
5. Prince Jin of Zhou, called “the Immortal Prince,” was the son of King Ling. The famous empress Wu, a staunch supporter of Buddhism, memorialized the tomb of Prince Jin in 699 shortly before she took a Taoist elixir to extend her life. That elixir was concocted by Zhang Changzong, whom she believed to be a reincarnation of Prince Jin. She was pleased with the elixir, and in banquets held at court she would have Zhang dress up as Prince Jin and play the flute, riding on a wooden crane. (See Jinhua Chen, Philosopher, Practitioner, Politician: The Many Lives of Fazang (643–712) (Boston: Brill, 2007), p. 208. Kim thus combines the associations of Taoist immortality, Buddhism, reincarnation, and romance here all at once.
6. Gale glosses her name as “Orchid” and uses that throughout.
7. Tang China had contact with ancient Byzantine Syria. In 635, during the reign of Emperor Taizong, a Nestorian Christian monk named Alopen arrived in Chang’an, the capital, on a mission. This historical event is documented on the Nestorian Stele, which was erected in 781. For the Tang Chinese, anything associated with Syria would have an exotic and mythic quality to it.
8. According to Chinese legend, Xiao Shi, the Divine Immortal, could make his flute sound like the call of a phoenix. When he married Nongyu, they flew off together, Xiao Shi riding a dragon and Nongyu riding a phoenix. See Shiamin Kwa and Wilt L. Idema, trans., Mulan: Five Versions of a Classic Chinese Legend, with Related Texts (Cambridge: Hackett, 2010), p. 29.
9. This is a funny bit of wordplay because the Chinese character for “panpipe,” 簫 xiao, can also be read to mean “miserable” or “dreary.” The second part of the name, 和 he, can also be read as “composition.” So her name is potentially its exact opposite: panpipe harmony vs. miserable composition.
10. A reference to Penglai, the Island of the Immortals (蓬莱仙境), equivalent to the Land of Faerie in Western tradition. See also note 26, chapter 1.
11. Eunuchs were present in the Chinese court as far back as the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE), according to historical records. They served emperors and kings, often closely, and because they were castrated (and thus could not have children or possibly impregnate a court woman like the queen or a princess), they were considered less of a potential threat to the ruler.In Chinese literature eunuchs are often depicted as conniving villains and cunning, self-interested advisers. Korean eunuchs, called naesi (內侍), are documented in The History of Goryeo. During King Sukjong’s rule, there was an entire department of eunuchs, and it lasted through the Joseon era until the Gabo reform in 1894.
12. Their names mean “Vermilion Girl” and “Jade Dew.”
13. The Tang emperor Xuanzong (唐玄宗) reigned from 713 to 756 (forty-three years), the longest reign of any of the Tang emperors. It’s curious that he comes up here, since he was the son of a royal consort and he lived through the brief reign of Empress Dowager Wu Zeitan (a consort who took over the throne). This is yet another cautionary allusion to King Sukjong’s reign (Xuanzong was also a Li, which would be a Yi, like Sukjong, in Korean).
14. This is a layered allusion. The Han dynasty figure Dongfang Shou (東方朔, 160–93 BCE) was Emperor Wu’s court jester, known as a buffoon. But he was also later known, in mythology, as a zhexian (謫仙), a“banished immortal.” The numerous references to the poet Li Po are also to someone banished, and allude to Kim’s own banishment by King Sukjong.
15. Emperor Kuang-wu of the Later Han dynasty tried to convince Sung Hung to divorce his wife and marry a royal princess. Sung Hung declined. See David Tod Roy, trans., The Plum in the Golden Vase; or, Chin P’ing Mei, Volume Four: The Climax (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), p. 775 fn. #23.
CHAPTER 8.
Strategy and Tactics
1. Wang Xianzhi (王獻之, 344–388) was one of China’s most famous calligraphers. This is a charged allusion, since Wang was famous for being able to improvise from his mistakes and still make beautiful art.
2. The game in question isn’t quite clear. Rutt also translates this as “backgammon,” a game that was known in China in the tenth century as shuanglu (双陆).
3. From The Book of Songs, one of the Five Classics of Chinese literature. This is part of a girl’s lament. In Gale’s translation, he changes the allusion to make it more comprehensible to Christians: “Is it God, or Mother Earth, or devils, or men who have done it?” See the James Legge translation of Shu Li in The Odes of Wang (https://ctext.org/book-of-poetry/odes-of-wang).
4. She alludes to the three relationships that govern the life of a proper Confucian woman just above: she must obey her father until she marries, then obey her husband after marriage. She must then obey her son, if she has one, upon his reaching majority.
5. The life of a woman was considered hard, so one hoped to be reborn a man in the next incarnation.
6. This
is another parallelism between Shao-yu and Kim Man-jung. After being allowed back from his first exile, Kim returned to court in 1679 and served on the Board of Rites, a position that involved monitoring and maintaining the proper protocol for Confucian ceremonies.
7. A reference to the Confucian philosopher Mencius (372–289 BCE), who said that the relationship between husband and wife was the greatest of human roles.
8. Emperor Taizong (598–649) was the second emperor of Tang, often considered the greatest of the dynasty. This is a very clever allusion in the text (and an apt coincidence in the plot, since the proximate theme has been marriage and its effect on the welfare of the state). The Tibetan invasion of Tang was precipitated by Songtsän Gampo’s displeasure at not being allowed to marry a Tang princess: Emperor Taizong had rejected the Tibetan ruler’s proposal. (The invasion involved only 200,000 soldiers.)
9. See note 2, chapter 2.
10. A reference to the treatise on strategy and tactics written in the eleventh century BCE by Jiang Tai Gong (姜子牙, Jiang Ziya), also known as the Duke of Zhou.
11. The eight trigrams, each made of a set of solid and broken lines, look very much like unit symbols on a battle map. This allusion is also directly related to the previous one, since Jiang Ziya’s conversations on strategy with King Wen are what is documented in The Six Secret Teachings. King Wen is credited with creating the most ancient configuration of the trigrams into the sixty-four hexagrams used in divination with the I Ching (Yijing), or The Book of Changes.
12. Mount Jishi (積石), meaning “Piled [or Long-Standing or Accumulated] Rocks,” is actually part of a range (currently known as the Amne Machin) that constitutes the southern part of the Kunlun range separating China from Tibet.
13. A cruel and clever antipersonnel weapon made of sharp metal spikes in a tetrahedral arrangement designed to have one point upward regardless of how they are scattered. They look similar to jacks used in the children’s game and are especially useful for disabling soldiers and horses. In modern times they have been used against vehicles to puncture tires.
14. A reference to Muné Tsenpo, who ruled Tibet for only a year or two at the very end of the eighth century. Not much is known about him, but it is said that he was sympathetic to Buddhism, which had just become the formal religion under the previous ruler, King Trisong Detsen (755–797).
15. The literal meanings of the first two names are “Sea Moon” (Chen Hai-yüeh) and “Rainbow” (Chin Ts’ai-hung). Rutt glosses Shen Niao-yen as “Mistwreath,” but the three characters in her name create a complex set of associations, literally “pouring bird smoke.” Since Niao-yen is the mysterious assassin who appeared from the air, this set of associations most likely refers to the way a flock of starlings can appear to swirl like liquid smoke. Her name should thus more accurately be conveyed as “Cloud of Starlings.”
CHAPTER 9.
Among the Dragon Folk
1. Her name refers to a white-topped wave, i.e., a “whitecap.”
2. The Jade Emperor, or the August Emperor of Jade (玉皇大帝), is the highest deity in the Chinese pantheon and rules the Heavenly Kingdom in much the same way Zeus abides over Olympus. But unlike Zeus, the Jade Emperor is also the ruler of all the heavens, the Earth, and the Underworld. He is also said to be the creator of the universe, and he administers the Heavenly Kingdom with a bureaucratic structure essentially similar to the Chinese royal court.
3. Yue Lao, or Yuè Xià Lǎorén, is the “old man under the moon” who serves as the god of marriage in Chinese mythology. He binds those who are destined to marry by using red silk cords on their feet. In Gale’s translation he changes this allusion to the “Grandmother of the Moon,” probably to make it more in keeping with Western notions of female deities like Hera, associated with marriage.
4. Technically, these creatures would be fish, but in Chinese folklore it would be understood that they could take on the form of men. In representations, they often have human bodies but the heads of various fish.
5. As with the Dragon King’s army of sea creatures, it is understood that the Dragon King himself can change form, though in his case he may take on any number of different forms.
6. An allusion to the great Chinese novel Journey to the West (西遊記, 1592), by Wu Cheng’en, in which the judge Wei Cheng beheads the dragon in a dream. Journey to the West, in its opening episode, also features the theme of becoming depressed after reaching the epitome of worldly success. When that happens to the Monkey King, his advisers tell him he has found religion.
CHAPTER 10.
Strange Dreams
1. Hengshan is one of the mountains mentioned at the beginning of the story. Bashan, interestingly, alludes to “Written on a Rainy Night: A Letter North (to My Wife),” a poem by the Tang poet Li Shangyin (813–858, famous for his “no title” poems) in which he writes, “You ask when I shall return; / Alas, I do not know. / On Mt. Bashan the night rain / floods the autumn pools.” Li Shangyin did not achieve the fame he could have because of factional disputes at court. This allusion is yet another subtle reference to Kim’s own exile and his own involvement in a factional purge by King Sukjong.
2. An allusion to a cliché in Tang poetry. A famous painting by Wu Bin called A Thousand Peaks and Myriad Ravines (1617) touches on the same convention. It can be viewed at the Indianapolis Museum of Art.
3. This is an interesting conflation of names on the Emperor’s part. He seems to be combining two figures: Yang Feng and Guo Si, who are both historical figures from the Han dynasty. Yang Feng (楊奉, d. 197) was originally the leader of bandits, and he became a general when he joined Guo Si. When Guo Si (郭汜, d. 197) turned on Emperor Xian, it was Yang Feng who protected him by calling on his bandit comrades. This is decidedly a strange allusion, since here the Emperor apparently conflates a bandit-turned-loyal-subject with a general who is a traitor. It seems that he might be sarcastic in his praise for Shao-yu. However, in an allegorical reading, this conflation makes perfect sense, since King Sukjong was known for his fickle behavior and for flip-flopping in his loyalty to one faction, then another, in the Joseon royal court.
4. Retainer is a general term for a servant (usually of a royal family), but not of the menial kind. A high-level retainer would live in the inner court and have access to members of the royal family.
5. A prefect would hold a rank below that of a magistrate or a regional governor.
6. Ban Zhao (班昭, c. 45–116) is the first known female historian in China. When her older brother Ban Gu died in 92 CE, she finished his history of the Western Han dynasty. Later, she wrote Lessons for Women, a text prescribing appropriate feminine behavior. But Kim may be making a sly allusion to the fact that Ban Zhao was also known for instructing the royal family on exotic Taoist sexual techniques.
7. Meng Guang (孟光) lived during the Later Han dynasty (25–220), during the time of Emperor Ming (who ruled from 58 to 75). She was said to be homely and dark complected, wore a twig for a hairpin and skirt of coarse cloth, and was strong enough to lift a millstone. She is considered the paragon of wifely virtue by Confucian standards for her devotion and moral integrity.
8. The ancient Chinese valued jade above gold and silver, and it is often found in royal tombs. Jade was called the “stone of Heaven” and held a special place in cosmology because, like humans, it connected Heaven and Earth. It is a stone associated with healing, preventing decay, and protecting against evil. It is also considered modest but powerful, and special among stones because it is naturally warm and not cold to the touch. Confucius himself said that jade had eleven virtues.
9. In the Spring and Autumn Annals, it is said that Wu Yun (伍員, d. 484) of the Wu kingdom (722–481 BCE), during the Spring and Autumn Period (770–476 BCE) had a special, valuable sword that had the seven stars in it.
CHAPTER 11.
The Taking of Ch’iung-pei
1. What follows
is a brief summary of what transpired previously, as if Kim were catching the reader (and himself) up on the plot. To avoid redundancy, I have omitted it from the text and provide it here:
The Empress Dowager had not liked Ch’iung-pei at first, but the princess, disguised as a commoner, had found a place near the Cheng house and sent the embroideries as a ruse to meet Ch’iung-pei. She had become friendly with Ch’iung-pei and come to admire her virtue and wisdom and by doing so became intimate with her. She came to understand why Yang Shao-yu would never want to give up Ch’iung-pei, and she had gone as far as to promise to live together with her like sisters and share the same husband. She had written constantly to the Empress Dowager about all of this, but eventually changed her mind.
2. See note 8, chapter 2, on Li Po. Cao Zhi (曹植, 192–232) was also an accomplished poet and heavy drinker like Li Po, but he was a prince.
CHAPTER 12.
Shao-yu’s Regret
1. After Lan-yang moves to the palace, her mother cannot expect ever to see her again unless she is specifically invited to come for a visit. (Lan-yang herself would not have the authority to make such an invitation. She could only make a request to the Emperor or to the Empress Dowager.) As part of the royal family, Lan-yang would be sealed away from the outside world, so the Empress Dowager is being unexpectedly generous to Madame Ts’ui in this scene.
2. Shijing (詩經), also known as The Classic of Poetry, is the oldest collection of Chinese poetry and contains works dating as far back as the eleventh century BCE. It is one of the Five Classics and would have been memorized by a literary person in the Tang era.
3. Cao Cao (曹操, 155–220) was a warlord and eventually imperial chancellor during the Eastern Han dynasty. He is known as both a merciless tyrant and a benevolent ruler, depending on the source, but all agree that he was an accomplished poet.
4. The Kunlun range between the Gobi Desert and Tibet.