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Garlic and Vinegar: The Narrative Significance of Verse in “The Pearl Shirt
Reencountered”
Author(s): Mei CHUN
Source: Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews (CLEAR), Vol. 31 (December 2009), pp.
23-43
Published by: Chinese Literature: essays, articles, reviews (CLEAR)
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20799715
Accessed: 22-05-2017 16:57 UTC
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Garlic and Vinegar:
The Narrative Significance of Verse
in “The Pearl Shirt Reencountered”
Met CHUN
Central Washington University
The prosimetric form, the incorporation of verse in prose narrative, is a distinctive
generic feature of vernacular fiction in late imperial China. Many scholars have
regarded verse in fiction as a type of narrative redundancy or a sign of orality. This
article examines the narrative significance of verse in Feng Menglong’s “The Pearl
Shirt Reencountered,” arguing that Feng utilized the two narrative spaces of the
prosimetric form?verse space and prose space?to juxtapose a highly moralizing
narratorial voice with a counter-voice influenced by Wang Yangming’s “School of
the Mind.”
The various forms of verse in fiction could be called “garlic and vinegar.”1
?Ling Mengchu i^MM (1580-1644), “Notes to the Reader” in
Slapping t?te Table in Amazement (“Pai’an jingqi fanli” t??llf #!])2
This article examines the significance of the prosimetric form in “The Pearl Shirt
Reencountered” (“Jiang Xingge chonghui zhenzhu shan” $?J^ifS#3^S^, hereafter
“The Pearl Shirt”).3 The prosimetric form, the incorporation of verse in prose narrative,
I wish to thank Professor William H. Nienhauser, Jr. and the two anonymous readers for their
helpful comments and suggestions. I am also indebted to Professor Robert E. Hegel and Lane J.
Harris, who read and commented on earlier versions of this work.
1 Here ko H means zuo W, that is, vinegar, according to its first definition listed in Ciyuan
(Beijing: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1983), p. 3134. I am grateful to Robert Hegel for bringing my
attention to this definition of lao. This quotation from Ling Mengchu demonstrates that verse
was significant for late Ming fiction writers and readers. But Ling’s usage of poetry in his
vernacular stories is different from Feng Menglong’s; it deserves a separate study.
2 Ling Mengchu, Pai’an jingqi lilt?f (Beijing: Renmin wenxue, 1991), p. 2.
3 In Feng Menglong, ed., Yushi mingy an Pfut?K “s (Beijing: Renmin wenxue, 1958), pp. 1-39.1 use
the translation by Jeanne Kelly in Y. W. Ma and Joseph S. M. Lau, eds., Traditional Chinese
Stories: Themes and Vanations (Boston: Cheng & Tsui, 1994), pp. 264-302, with modifications.
Quotations are followed by page numbers from both the Chinese text and the translation. For
?Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews 31 (2009)
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24 Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews 31 (2009)
is part and parcel of the storyteller’s rhetoric, but has been misunderstood as
indicative of the text’s origin in promptbooks. Scholars of late imperial fiction have
demonstrated that the explicit storyteller’s rhetoric consciously utilized by writers of
literary fiction is a relatively late development in vernacular fiction.4 The rhetoric of
the storyteller persona has thus received much scholarly attention. However, the
focus is often on the narrative function of the storyteller’s stock phrases used to
directly involve readers as an implied audience.5 Verse embedded in prose narrative
as a constitutional element of storytelling rhetoric has been relatively overlooked.
Verse, the prevailing interpretations suggest, remains insignificant, if not stigmatic,
for narrative because of its apparent redundancy and the potential inconsistency it
brings to a text. An investigation of what verse really signified and how it related to
prose is crucial for understanding the prosimetric form,6 and for strengthening the
the sake of consistency, the romanizations of Chinese terms and names in the Wade-Giles
system in quoted translations have been converted to pinyin.
4 One of the major contributions of Western studies of late imperial Chinese vernacular fiction is
the concept of a “simulated storytelling mode.” That is, the narrator merely assumes the voice
of a professional storyteller. Revisionists such as Patrick Hanan and Wilt Idema thus point out
the “literati” tradition of vernacular fiction instead of its so-called mass origin, which was
argued by the May Fourth Chinese scholars of classical fiction and continuously supported by
Marxist-oriented mainland scholars. See Patrick Hanan, “The Nature of Ling Meng-chu’s
Fiction,” in Andrew H. Plaks, ed., Chinese Narrative: Critical and Theoretical Essays (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1977), p. 87; Wilt Idema, Chinese Vernacular Fiction: The Formative
Period (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1974), pp. 35-6. See also Robert E. Hegel, The Novel in Seventeenth
Century China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981) and Andrew H. Plaks, Four
Masterworks of the Ming Novel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987) for further
discussions of literati rhetoric, aesthetics, and ideology in vernacular novels.
In the printed chantefables of the Chenghua (1464-1487) period, as Anne McLaren observes,
such explicit rhetoric is absent. McLaren’s detailed comparison of what she refers to as the
storyteller’s rhetoric in fiction and chantefables further strengthens Idema and other revisionist
scholars’ viewpoints. Cf. Anne McLaren, Chinese Popular Culture and Ming Chantefables (Leiden:
Brill, 1998), pp. 266,271-8.
5 For example, McLaren’s comparison of the storyteller’s rhetoric in fiction and chantefables is
limited to a discussion of stock phrases employed in both genres. See McLaren, pp. 271-8.
6 Shuochang wenxue (speak-and-sing literature) is a term coined by modern scholar Ye Dejun
(1979) to describe performance literature composed of alternating prose and verse. Chinese
drama including both sung arias and spoken prose is directly influenced by this form. For an
introduction to this form, see Wilt Idema, “Prosimetric Literature” in William H. Nienhauser,
Jr., ed., The Indiana Companion to Traditional Chinese Literature (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1986), pp. 83-92, and Anne McLaren, “The Oral-Formulaic Tradition,” in The Columbia
History of Chinese Literature, ed., Victor Mair (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), pp.
989-1014; for the influence of prosimetric literature on traditional drama, see Stephen West,
“Drama,” in Nienhauser, ed., The Indiana Companion, pp. 14-16. Victor Mair claims that the
prosimetric form is perhaps “the single most distinctive feature of popular narrative and drama
in China.” See his “The Prosimetric Form in the Chinese Literary Tradition,” in Prosimetrum:
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CHUN Garlic and Vinegar 25
revisionist position that the novel and vernacular story, rather than being “popular”
in nature, appeared in the late Ming as serious literary forms and vehicles for personal
expression by literati.
“The Pearl Shirt,” the first story in Feng Menglong’s tiltil (1574-1646) collection
of vernacular short stories, Stories Old and New (Gujin xiaoshuo “?^’Mft), is of especial
interest for the discussion of the relationship between verse and prose in Chinese
vernacular stories for the following reasons. First, among all stories in Stories Old and
New, it is believed to be the one most likely written by Feng Menglong, and thus best
exemplifies his control of verse and prose in making the huaben story out of its source
text, which does not include verse.7 Second, the story is based on a classical-language
tale “The Pearl Vest” (“Zhu shan” ?#) by Song Maocheng 5fcM (1569-ca. 1620),
Feng’s slightly older contemporary.8 The closeness in time of the huaben story with its
source text lessens the significance of other influential elements such as the historical
development of fictional narratives, thus foregrounding the difference in genre,
namely, how the simulated storytelling mode shapes the way a story is told.
Remaking the story from its source, “The Pearl Vest,” Feng Menglong seems to
have introduced two contradictory features. Feng chose to retain the chief elements of
the classical tale’s plot, which offers an unusually sympathetic treatment of an
adulterous wife. Sanqiao a young wife who is seduced when her husband is
away on business, is not punished. Her husband, Jiang Xingge jffi?Uflf, out of his love
for her, merely divorces her without publicizing her adultery. Sanqiao thereafter
becomes the favored concubine of a magistrate, which enables her later to rescue her
former husband in a court case. Topping this fortunate coincidence, the magistrate
recognizes their true love and generously allows Sanqiao and Xingge to be happily
reunited. In reshaping the story to adapt to the prosimetric form, however, Feng
Crosscultural Perspectives on Nanative in Prose and Verse, ed. Joseph Harris and Karl Reichl
(Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997). Victor Mair suggests an Indian origin for the Chinese
prosimetrum (See “The Prosimetric Form in the Chinese Literary Tradition,” esp. p. 379). Other
scholars point to the possibility of an indigenous influence. See W. L. Idema, “Prosimetric
Literature,” p. 85, and Anne McLaren, “The Oral-Formulaic Tradition,” p. 993. For nuances
between different genres in speak-and-sing literature, such as medleys (zhugongdiao l??Iffl)
and chantefables (cihua MiS), see McLaren, esp. pp. 994-1009.
7 The relationship between verse and prose in “The Pearl Shirt Reencountered” is typical of
only one category of vernacular stories based on earlier prose narratives. The makers of these
“prose-verse narratives” added verse to adapt to the prosimetric form. Another category of
stories, which I call “verse-prose narratives,” include clusters of poetry relegating prose to a
secondary position that merely functions as a thread tying together various poems. Two paired
stories in Gujin xiaoshuo, “Zhao Bosheng Meets with Emperor Renzong in a Teahouse” ffiiS^?i
^iSt^ and “The Courtesan Mourns Liu the Seventh in the Spring Breeze” ^? # $ ^,
exemplify this category. The relationship between verse and prose in late-imperial vernacular
stories can vary; an exhaustive study would require an examination on a much larger scale.
8 See Patrick Hanan, “The Making of The Pearl-Sewn Shirt and The Courtesan’s Jewel Box,”
Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 33 (1973): 124-53.
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26 Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews 31 (2009)
superimposes a heavily moralizing voice while equally espousing, and even
magnifying, the theme of true love in the original story, thus running counter to the
prevailing conservative moral code. “The Pearl Shirt” poses an interpretive
conundrum: not only is the narrator inconsistent but readers are at a loss about Feng
Menglong7s own standpoint, since he seems to espouse both moralistic retribution
and genuine feeling (qing f#).
This interpretative problem directs us to the prosimetric form of vernacular
stories and the different narrative spaces that this form helps create. Since vernacular
fiction reached its maturity in the late Ming, when intense intellectual changes
brought forth the questioning of orthodox Neo-Confucianism, this article argues that
the prosimetric form offers a polyglot writer such as Feng Menglong plural spaces for
creation, negotiation, and potential subversion, and for participating in late-Ming
intellectual debates. The interpretive inconsistency, or discrepancy, for modern
readers arises from Feng’s conscious usage of two narrative spaces, the prose space
and the verse space, to juxtapose a highly moralizing narratorial voice with a counter
voice influenced by Wang Yangming’s (1472-1529) “School of the Mind.”
Simulating the storyteller mode through the adoption of the prosimetric form, Feng
Menglong and other, anonymous, authors not only distinguish their own voices from
the narrator’s, but also differentiate the voices of the verse and the prose narrators.
Through the hybrid voices of verse and prose, “The Pearl Shirt” produces multiple
layers of storytelling, moralizing, counter-moralizing, and reading. It is not my
intention to claim that “The Pearl Shirt” is typical of late imperial vernacular short
stories in general, but I hope that an analysis of Feng7s highly structured utilization of
the verse space will enable a fuller understanding of what Feng’s contemporary Ling
Mengchu refers to as “garlic and vinegar.”
The Prosimetric Form: Assumptions and Meanings
The verse element of late imperial vernacular stories is probably not well studied
because of two prevalent assumptions about embedded verse among scholars of
Chinese fiction. Both underestimate its significance.9 The first prevalent assumption is
91 have found only a few studies of verse that analyze, rather than denounce, its narrative
significance, but they all address vernacular novels. In “Setting the Tone: Aesthetic Implications
of Linguistic Patterns in the Opening Section of Shuihu zhuan” CLEAR 1992 (14): 51-75, Deborah
Porter reads the beginning verse in Shuihu zhuan as setting the tone for the following prose
narrative. In “Heroic Verse and Heroic Mission: Dimensions of the Epic in the Hsi-yu chi,”
Journal of Asian Studies 31.4 (1972): 879-97, Anthony Yu describes the paradoxical “fusion of the
real and the typical” in that verse in Xiyou ji is realistic in its description of things and is thus
beyond the standards of lyrical poetry. More often, Yu notes that descriptions tend to be
formulaic. Such kinds of verse, nonetheless, show the author’s harnessing of the poetic
elements for “epic effect” (p. 887). While Yu’s discussion of the function of verse suits Journey to
the West and links the novel to the Western concept of epic, his article does not address the
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CHUN Garlic and Vinegar 27
that verse presents a univocal voice with, and is hence supplementary to, the prose
narrative. In his reading of “The Pearl Shirt,” Keith McMahon regards aphoristic
verses as part of what he refers to as the storyteller-narrator’s “paraphernalia” or
narrative devices that strengthen the sense of causal inevitability in the story’s
development.10 In other words, verse is compatible with the overall narrative. Patrick
Hanan, in his discussion of the making of “The Pearl Shirt,” briefly mentions that the
couplets and poems “have a technical function quite apart from the modicum of
meaning they may contribute,”11 again reading with the erroneous expectation that
verse must be compatible with the prose narrative of a story. Such an expectation of
uniformity leads to the negative opinions shared by scholars of late imperial fiction
that verse interrupts, or brings “confusion, diffusion, and duality of vision.”12
The second assumption takes verse as “set phrases” and dismisses it as
simplistically indicative of oral origins. The modern scholar Shi Changyu 5 II Mu
refers to the verse as yunwen taoyu H3t$fp (poetic diction and set phrases) and states
that it is natural for the storyteller to incorporate preexisting verses and for the
audience to take their validity for granted in an oral context.13 The “poetic dictipn and
set phrases” in vernacular stories therefore reveal their “oral origin.” Shi then
qualifies his statement with the caveat that some stories clearly originate in the
written tradition drawing on chuanqi xiaoshuo and biji xiaoshuo, for example.14
Similarly, introducing the “oral-formulaic tradition,” Anne McLaren explains the
adoption of the prosimetric form in late imperial vernacular stories and novels as the
fulfillment of readers’ expectations that a popular text should include verse. This
hypothesis, while illuminating in pointing out the interaction of elite and popular
culture, undermines the agency of authors in using such a form.15
To view verse as mere set phrases obviously contradicts what certain storytellers
or vernacular fiction writers claimed. The thirteenth-century storyteller Luo Ye Mj$
wrote in his manual Notes of An Old Tippler (Zuizveng tanlu S?^i^iS) that as a
storyteller he borrowed lines from famous poets like Li Bai, Du Fu, Han Yu, and Liu
generalized usage of the prosimetric form of vernacular fiction in which “epic effect” is not a
consideration. Dore Levy enumerates three categories of poetry in Story of the Stone: incidental
descriptive verse, allusive verse, and original poems attributed to characters. All three
categories offer the reader an integrated experience with the text. Although her category of
allusive verse includes clich?s and set phrases, the majority of poems she examines are lyric in
nature. See Levy, “Embedded Texts: How to Read Poetry in The Story of the Stone” Tamking
Review 36.1-2 (2005): 195-227.
10 Keith McMahon, Causality and Containment in Seventeenth-Century Chinese Fiction (Leiden: E. J.
Brill, 1988), pp. 14-50.
11 Hanan, “The Making,” p. 138.
12 Ibid., p. 138.
13 Shi Changyu, Zhongguo xiaoshuo yuanliu lun ^M^WMMM (Beijing: Sanlian, 1993), p. 251.
14 Ibid., p. 258.
15 See McLaren, “The Oral-Formulaic Tradition,” pp. 1011-2.
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28 Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews 31 (2009)
Zongyuan,16 and that these verses were not meant to be insignificant clusters of set
phrases and vulgar words. Both Ling Mengchu i???U (1580-1644) and Li Yu
(1611-1680), two other famous huaben writers contemporary with Feng Menglong,
claimed originality in their verse. In Ling’s Slapping the Table in Amazement, First
Collection (Chuke F ai’an jingqi yiji ?ZJ^!lttll1t r?), verse is one of the five topics
discussed in the preface. Ling states that more than half of his verse is original. In his
Silent Operas (Wusheng xi ?S????) and Twelve Structures (ShVer lou + 2 ), Li Yu also
utilizes original verse.17 Undoubtedly, verse is a space where the author’s narrative
creativity can be asserted.18
To explain Ling Mengchu’s and Li Yu’s emphasis upon verse, Shi Changyu
invents an evolutionary process for verse in prosimetric literature: from set phrases to
partial creation to original poetry. This “emplotment,” along with the association of
set phrases with oral tradition, is too simple. No less than original poetry, set phrases
constitute a conscious choice on the author’s part. Consider “Ruan San Repays his
Karma in the Nunnery of Idle Cloud” (Xianyun an Ruan San chang yuanzhai ff?’zkM&i
E?W?%?M) from the same collection. An earlier vernacular version, “The Tale of the
Ring” (Jiezhi’er ji ?t?cfpJLIE) in Qingping shantang huaben ^^lllilfS^ (Vernacular
short stories from the Clear and Peaceful Mountain Studio, ca. 1550), allows us to
compare later and earlier vernacular versions.19 Such comparison reveals that set
phrases were added, rather than deleted as Shi surmises, when the story was aimed at
a reading audience. On the other hand, more elegant verse from the earlier version is
deliberately omitted. The editor of the later “Ruan San” story, in other words,
deliberately favored the usage of set phrases as verse, although he stands at a greater
distance from the always vaguely defined “oral tradition.”
The above two assumptions converge in characterizing verse as narrative excess.
As redundancy or sign of orality, verse is best thought of as “displaced” in a written
text and counterproductive for its narrative purposes.20 Both assumptions annul the
16 Luo Ye, Zuiweng tanlu (Shanghai: Gudian wenxue chubanshe, 1957), p. 3. “I^brIW ifc, ?I, it,
mm?-, m-n&m, ft, ?, mm/’
17 For a discussion of Li Yu’s assertion of his originality, see Shi, Zhongguo xiaoshuo, p. 259.
18 The drum-song (guzici) version of “Cui Yingying Shangdiao dielianhua ci” Sltliffiii?ifKf?
M attributed to the Song prince Zhao Delin ?f?? (fi. 1110) is another representative example.
The author’s contribution was to divide the original Tang chuanqi tale “Huizhen ji” #J?f?B into
ten parts and insert passages of his own verse as narrative markers. For discussions of this text,
see: Zheng Zhenduo %UM (1898-1958), Zheng Zhenduo shuo suwenxue ??SgM?3t^
(Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 2000), p. 282; also Liangyan Ge, Out of the Margins: The Rise of Chinese
Vernacular Fiction (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2001), pp. 22-4.
19 “The Tale of the Ring” (Jiezhi’er ji rtc??fJLfE) in Qingping shantang huaben ^
(Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 1992), pp. 129-39.
20 Liangyan Ge observes that cihua in the late Ming loosely designates any work of vernacular
fiction “that contains examples of verse, whether this poetry is used for narrative purposes or
not.” Such an observation supports the interpretation of verse as narrative excess. See Ge, Out of
the Margins, p. 45.
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CHUN Garlic and Vinegar 29
author’s agency and therefore foreclose a more productive way of looking at verse as
an important element in vernacular fiction.
Verse in “The Pearl Shirt” superficially substantiates both the aforesaid
assumptions, rendering the story an excellent case study for examining our current
understanding of verse in the prosimetric form. For example, verse in “The Pearl Shirt”
is often introduced following statements such as: “the ancients put it well” (guren
daodehao “??f?i??#?P), “truly” (zhengshi jEH), “as the saying goes” (zhejiaozuo i?Nf?O,
and “a poem testifies to this” (you shi wei zheng Wlf^tllf), which are narrative
markers asserting the verse’s compatibility with the prose narrative in general.
Inserted after the prose narrative, which already marks its self-sufficiency in the form
of additional conclusions, verifications, and descriptions, verse usually appears to
repeat what is stated in the prose, as if repetition increases the credibility of the
narration. For example, after a detailed description of the couple’s heartbreaking
separation, the author versifies, “Of all the sad occasions in the world, / None matches
that of parting in life or separation through death” 1&?Jjf&Ml??^, MltJ?ftmtk
The verse often consists of paired lines of doggerel, which follow the appearance
of a regulated poem in the form of five or seven characters; the language is hackneyed
and low in literary quality.22 Although the verse claims to describe, to comment, or to
reiterate, its hackneyed language sometimes undermines these claims. For example,
the verse describing Sanqiao’s first husband Jiang Xingge M?fl1 is as follows:
Clear brows and bright eyes, white teeth and red lips,
A dignified step, and clever speech,
His intelligence surpasses a student’s
And his ingenuity matches that of a full-grown man.
People called him “a little cherub.”
All admired him as a priceless gem.
Over-seasoned?
21 Ibid., pp. 6,267.
22 Verse-prose narratives, on the other hand, include verse of better literary value while the
prose tends to be perfunctory. This also implies that Feng regarded verse and prose as separate
narrative spaces.
23 Ibid., pp. 2,265.
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30 Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews 31 (2009)
Because the verse is full of stale set-phrases it is almost deprived of any reference:
“white teeth and red lips” {chibai dhunhong t?f ?lJ??E) only leaves its reader a vague
idea of Jiang Xingge’s good looks, which annuls the descriptive function of the verse.
One can thereby conclude that verse’s descriptive claim is deceptive.
Verse is narratively insignificant, serving, as Hanan briefly puts it, “a technical
function.”24 Beyond its intrinsic “limitations,” it may also be at odds with the purpose
of the prose narrative.25 To use Ling Mengchu’s metaphor, the seasonings overpower
the food. An obvious example can be quoted from “Yang Balao’s Extraordinary
Family Reunion in the Land of Yue” (Yang Balao Yueguo qifeng ^A^iSB rH?) in the
same collection. A failed scholar, Yang Balao is forced to support his family by
becoming a businessman. The embedded verse comments on his stupidity in leaving
home for a business trip: “Look at the xintianweng bird standing by the river?He
never leaves home, but does he ever starve” if #tt?{f AM, ??ti ^M ? SI ?it?26 This
line refers to a famous Ming poem by Yunnan poet Lan Tingrui ?S S ?fif about
xintianweng and its livelihood.27 Xintianweng are believed to be unable to catch fish
and rely on the droppings of fish hawks. Since fish hawks are voracious hunters and
their droppings are abundant, xintianweng never worry about starvation. Of course, in
the story Yang Balao simply has no inherited family fortune-or fish droppings-to
support his livelihood, but has to go on business trips to “catch the fish” himself,
quite similar to Jiang Xingge’s situation. Reference to this poem, then, brings an
additional layer of contrast between verse and prose.
Significantly, verse abounds in the contradictions contributing to the “different
levels of authorial judgment” in “The Pearl Shirt” from “hackneyed and superficial
comment at one extreme, to the acute observation on the psychology of raised
expectations and the brilliance of some of the added scenes at the other.”28 Hanan’s
comments on the jarring inconsistency of the quality of the new elements added by
Feng Menglong deserve to be quoted in full:
The poem on the inconstancy of women is a stereotyped notion straight out of earlier
fiction and not on a par with other comments. And the burden of the final poem is
24 Hanan, ‘The Making,” p. 138.
25 Ibid., p. 138.
26 Yushi mingyan, p. 276. Translation is from Stories Old and New: A Ming Dynasty Collection,
trans. Shuhui Yang and Yunqin Yang (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000), p. 304;
modified.
27 Lan Tingrui is a slightly earlier contemporary of the famous sixteenth century poet and critic
Yang Shen Wo’\% (1488-1559). Yang Shen mentioned that he went to Lan’s descendant’s house to
collect more of his poems (Sheng’an shihua ftrMWfM, juan 14). Lan Tingrui’s poem probably
predates the story. It is collected in the famous sixteenth century poet and critic Yang Shen’s
Sheng’an ji ftMM (juan 81), Yunnan tongzhi SS?Life (juan 30), and Lidai shihua MfiMfS (juan
77) (in Wenyuange Siku quanshu ^iSMH?^Ii, electronic version). I am grateful to William H.
Nienhauser, Jr. for providing me with this reference.
28 Hanan, “The Making,” p. 137.
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CHUN Garlic and Vinegar 31
grotesquely inadequate. It asserts that the woman has not entirely escaped
punishment for her sins; she is now, in terms of seniority, only the second wife.29
Apparently expecting a univocal voice in both verse and prose, Hanan describes the
narrator in Chinese vernacular stories as superficial, garrulous, and irrelevant with
limited notions of morality.30 In his study of Stories Old and New, Yang Shuhui
attempts to solve this discrepancy by separating the narrator from the author. It is,
therefore, “the playful and unreliable narrator” who espouses a retribution scheme
and conducts moralization.31 Such differentiation, while effectively solving the
aforementioned disputes over Feng’s intention, is unclear about exactly how such a
distinction between the author and the narrator is achieved. After all, it is also the
moralizing narrator that presents to us the adulterous heroine, Sanqiao, who earns
our sympathy.
Yang and Hanan draw their examples of the inconsistent voices primarily from
the verse?they see a shift from a sympathetic position to a highly moralistic and
judgmental one. Verse is part and parcel of the narratorial inconsistency in “The Pearl
Shirt.” In late-imperial vernacular stories, narratorial inconsistency has posed a major
interpretive conundrum for different generations of scholars. John Bishop (1913-1974),
writing half a century ago and obviously assuming that a consistent narratorial voice
is necessary for “successful fiction,” refers to inconsistency as one of the “limitations
of Chinese fiction.”32 Eugene Eoyang, while exposing Bishop’s own “limitations” in
defining “limitations,” advocates applying different criteria because of the “orality” of
Chinese stories.33 Orality is, however, an equally simplistic explanation for
inconsistency. Rather than a limitation or result of implicit orality, the writers of
mature vernacular stories purposefully used storytelling as a simulated context and a
rhetorical device; “The Pearl Shirt,” for example, originates from a classical-language
tale and is firmly rooted in the written tradition despite the literary usage of the
simulated context suggesting orality. Even scholars who understand literati
participation in late-imperial fiction and its written traditions, such as Hanan, are
puzzled by the superficiality, inconsistency, and irrelevance of the narrator.34
29 Ibid. Italics mine.
30 Ibid., p. 136.
31 Shuhui Yang, Appropriation and Representation: Feng Menglong and the Chinese Vernacular Story
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1998), p. 52.
32 John L. Bishop, “Some Limitations of Chinese Fiction,” Far Eastern Quarterly 15 (1955-56): 239
247.
33 Eugene Eoyang, “A Taste for Apricots: Approaches to Chinese Fiction,” in Plaks, ed., Chinese
Nanative, pp. 53-73. Eoyang’s essay starts with Feng Menglong’s comment about fiction in the
written context but draws examples completely from oral literature such as transformation
texts without distinguishing between the two.
34 Hanan, “The Making,” p. 136.
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32 Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews 31 (2009)
The problematic of discrepancy leads to modern critics’ confusion about the
morality of Feng Menglong7s fiction in general. Hua-yuan Li Mowry takes at face
value the justification by fiction writers, editors, and publishers that “fiction is
edifying” (xiaoshuo jiaohua 4Ni&?Mfc) and regards Feng Menglong as a Neo-Confucian
moralist. Feng, for Mowry, appears to be a strong advocate of morality and ethics.
Feng in this incarnation becomes sincerely conflicted by two opposing stances, “the
indispensability of traditional morality and Confucian ethics” and “the desirability of
spontaneity and self-fulfillment.”35 For Timothy Wong, the narrator’s apparent
sermonizing is little more than casual banter.36 Feng, in Wong’s portrayal, becomes
the good-humored joker whose sole intention is to entertain without consciously
questioning Neo-Confucian morality. Wong’s caricature of Feng as a mere entertainer
unjustly overlooks the complexity of Feng’s ideological negotiation in his literary
works as a self-conscious writer and cultural entrepreneur.
Verse and Prose: Policing Voices
Modern scholars have regarded verse in “The Pearl Shirt” as overpowering and of
a lower literary quality than the rest of the text. The verse, however, cannot be
comfortably dismissed as stemming from genre conventions.37 In Feng Menglong’s
time, verse became a significant narrative space for the author’s creativity. The choice
of using set phrases is deliberate; Feng Menglong even underlined verse through the
narrator, who begins the story addressing the readers, “Kanguan (readers), now hear
me tell the cihua (chantefable) of ‘The Pearl Shirt'” W?tft ??]
t??. Cihua is one of several generic names for a variety of oral storytelling modes in
which the story is told in alternating passages of verse and prose. The sixteen
shuochang cihua texts from the Chenghua reign period (1465-87), unearthed in 1967,
significantly contribute to our knowledge of this oral genre.38 Except for “Lord Bao
Judges the Case of the White Tiger Demon” (Bao Longtu duan baihujing zhuan “SfiH
Iff ?j?ff fi?), comprised entirely of verse, the other fifteen cihua texts are prosimetric.
Performance markers like shuo t? (speak), chang Pi (sing), and zan ?t (comment) are
35 Hua-yuan Li Mowry, trans., Chinese Love Stories from “Ch’ing-?iih” (Hamden, CT: Archon
Books, 1983), p. 35.
36 Timothy C Wong, “Entertainment as Art: An Approach to the Gujin xiaoshuo/’ CLEAR 3
(1981): 235-50.
37 For a discussion of how “The Pearl Shirt Reencountered” is a compactly structured story, see
Zhou Xianshen J?l5fe?, Zhongguo gudian xiaoshuo jianshang ?IS??ft’hift S? (Beijing: Bejing
daxue, 1992), pp. 139-56.
38 The sixteen texts appeared in 1973 in the volume Ming Chenghua shuochang cihua congkan. See
Zhao Jingshen MiMffi, “Tan Ming Chenghua kanben shuochang cihua” i?^J$ft#^fftPit5fS,
Wenwu 11(1972): 19-22. For a substantial study of these texts, see McLaren, Chinese Popular
Culture.
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CHUN Garlic and Vinegar 33
highlighted in order to separate spoken from sung sections.39 As a result of centuries
long transmission, formulaic verse constitutes a distinctive feature in which other
stock elements are couched in Ming chantefables.40 Although the term cihua had lost
its specificity as a generic label by the late Ming, it became a loose way to designate
any work of vernacular fiction that contained verse.41 The self-reference of the story as
a chantefable connotes, emphatically, the inclusion of verse, which is Feng
Menglong’s addition to the source story.
The categorization of the story as a chantefable is, however, deliberately
misleading: “The Pearl Shirt,” developed from Song Maocheng’s classical story, has
its genealogy entirely in the written tradition. The artificial labeling as chantefable
represents Feng’s affirmation of his role in tailoring the pr?existent plot of the source
text through the incorporation of his creations, the enunciation of his meanings and
intentions, and the assertion of his interference, agency, and voice towards the text. By
having the narrator define the cihua characteristics of the text, Feng draws the readers’
attention to the verse as central to the conveyance of meanings in the text.42
Since “The Pearl Shirt” is adapted from a source story without significantly
changing the plot, the temporality of the story (the development of a storyline) is not
as important as its spatiality, namely, how the recasting of an old story in a new genre
enables the potential exploration of different narrative spaces to assert the author’s
meanings. Verse is not required in the genre of the classical-language tale; Song
Maocheng’s “The Pearl Vest,” specifically, incorporates no poetry. Verse in “The Pearl
Shirt” becomes a “creative” space opened up by the generic features of vernacular
stories. Beneath the verse, so problematic for many scholars, lie Feng’s conscious
manipulations of form, genre, and meaning.
The prosimetric form evokes shuodiang practice, whose dominant characteristic is
the co-existence of prose and verse voices performed by different individuals. For
example, Wu Hung7s study suggests that two people, the Dharma Master (Fashi ???SP)
and the Lecturer (Dujiang i?tS), performed popular Buddhist lectures (sujiang f?ti).
It is quite likely that transformation texts (bianwen H3t) were performed in the same
way.43 In present-day Suzhou, chantefable stories are typically performed by two or
39 For a more detailed discussion of the formal characteristics of chantefables, see McLaren,
Chinese Popular Culture, pp. 105-23.
40 Ibid., p. 114.
41 See Ge, Out of the Margins, p. 45. David Roy, “Tz’u-hua,” in Nienhauser, ed., The Indiana
Companion, p. 849.
42 Another famous example of simulated cihua is Jin Ping Mei cihua, with its distinctive and
numerous inclusions of popular songs.
43 Wu Hung, “What is Bianxiang??On the Relationship between Dunhuang Art and Dunhuang
Literature/’ Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 52.1 (1992), pp. 111-92. The historical basis of how
bianwen stories are performed derived from the discovery of the bianwen texts in Dunhuang in
1899. See Wang Chongmin 3EJI IS, et al. eds., Dunhuang bianwen ji ?WMSKtft (Beijing: Renmin
wenxue, 1957); also Victor Mair, T’ang Transformation Texts: A Study of the Buddhist Contribution
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34 Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews 31 (2009)
more artists who assume the responsibility for different performance modes such as
dialogue and singing.44 It is likely, then, that the change to prose from verse involves a
change of voice.
Before analyzing the two voices of “prose narrator” and “verse narrator” who tell
different stories, a brief summary of Feng Menglong’s basic additions to the prose
narrative is necessary. Overall, Feng7s efforts can be seen as attempts at extenuating
the wife’s wrongdoing.45 While Xingge is endlessly detained on his “short” business
trip, Sanqiao’s yearning for her husband’s return is exacerbated by a fortune-telling
incident newly added onto “The Pearl Shirt.” The fortuneteller’s prediction of
Xingge’s imminent return increases Sanqiao’s hope, but drains her emotionally when
the prediction proves false. The superb seduction schemes by Chen Dalang and the
cunning pearl-seller, Granny Xue, are related in minute detail further portraying
Sanqiao as victim, thus exonerating her.
The verse in the story, entirely Feng Menglong’s creation, constitutes a
distinctively separate narrative that reflects a very conservative moralistic doctrine.
The verse is visually separated from the prose narrative by its indentation. If we
further separate the verse from the text, the verse narration can be summarized as
follows. Starting with a comment on the importance of being “content with one’s lot
and being satisfied” Mft&f?MM, and a warning “if I do not debauch the wives of
other men / They will not debauch mine” ?^S?^i? A^SSJI, the verse narrator
prepares his audience for a story about retribution46 A good-looking young couple is
married, and soon the man has to leave in his shortsighted pursuit of profit. Because
of the woman’s fickle nature, she takes a new lover named Chen Dalang. Chen later
dies and his property is stolen as a form of karmic retribution; his widow then marries
newly-divorced Jiang Xingge. Sanqiao also receives her retribution?although she is
reunited with her former husband, she is shamefully demoted to second wife. While
in the prose narrative one finds what Hanan calls “a much more appealing kind of
requital,” renbao Affi (human requital),47 based upon the love between Xingge and
Sanqiao, the verse narrator emphasizes heavenly requital, or moral retribution. That is,
the verse, despite the narrative markers highlighting its compatibility with the prose
to the Rise of Vernacular Fiction and Drama in China (Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian
Studies, 1989). For a discussion of the possible influence of bianwen upon the prosimetric form,
see Yu, “Heroic Verse and Heroic Mission,” pp. 882-4.
44 For an illuminating discussion of the physical arrangement of the story-telling space in
contemporary Suzhou, see Mark Bender, Plum and Bamboo: China’s Suzhou Chantefable Tradition
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003).
45 Also discussed by Hanan, “The Making,” pp. 136-7; Yang, Appropriation and Representation, pp.
53-60. Both Hanan and Yang observe that Feng corrects the moral imbalance between Xingge
and Sanqiao by making the wife more in the right and husband in the wrong.
46 “The Pearl Shirt,” pp. 1, 264.
47 Hanan, The Chinese Vernacular Story, p. 105.
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CHUN Garlic and Vinegar 35
narrative, in actuality separates itself from the detailed, humanistic, and down-to
earth approach in the prose story.48
Feng Menglong utilizes the prosimetric form to juxtapose two different narrative
perspectives: the prose narrative often discredits the verse by pointing to the
invalidity of its moralistic generalization. For example, after Xingge’s failure to return
home the next spring, the verse narrator comments, “for profits the size of a fly’s head
/ He abandoned the love nest and a happy marriage” RhUtMWiM > ?f?SPfik ?li?49
The simplistic statement contradicts what the prose narrative has just told us, that is,
Xingge had no other choice except to go on the business trip?business being his only
and inherited career and the family is running short on funds. As Xingge notes, “If left
to sit idle, one can even consume a mountain.”50 Staying at home with his wife will
result in “tossing away this means of making a living” ?f?T??T^1tti?S& because
business relations need constant attention. In the prose narrative, Xingge’s love for his
wife is related in the smallest detail: he takes with him the younger of two male
servants because the older one will be more capable of taking care of the family while
he is away.51 Xingge’s sorrow is therefore derived from being forced into a career that
dooms him to leave his beloved wife. The sharp, careless, and awkwardly crafted
generalizations in the verse contradict, and yet ironically call attention to, the prose
narrative in which human love and helplessness is presented in touching detail.
The most distinctive discrepancy between the juxtaposed prose and verse appears
in the presentation of the heroine, Sanqiao. The verse narrator describes Sanqiao as a
fickle woman who receives retribution for her misdeeds. The prose narrator presents
Sanqiao as a woman of qing whose sexual transgression is not only excusable but
understandable. These opposing attitudes are juxtaposed in the major events in the
plot?Sanqiao’s affair, her remarriage, and her final reunion with her husband?and
will be analyzed in that order.
Feng Menglong juxtaposes the verse and prose as contradictory over Sanqiao’s
affair. The verse narrator generalizes Sanqiao as a fickle woman and laments the
female weakness that she exemplifies:
Years ago amid tears she bade her husband farewell.
Today, she cries with grief as she sees off her new love.
Deplorable indeed is the fickle nature of most women,
48 Robert Hegel also observes the different viewpoints in verse from the prose narrative in a
seventeenth century novel The Merry Adventures of Emperor Yang (Sui Yangdiyanshi
“Although the fictional adventures of Emperor Yang leave no doubt that the individual is to be
held culpable for cosmic order, as Confucianism traditionally taught, various editorial
comments by the narrator are less unequivocal. Often these comments are in verse.” See Hegel,
The Novel All.
49 “The Pearl Shirt/’ pp. 6, 268.
50 Md., pp. 5,267.
51 Ibid.
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36 Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews 31 (2009)
She calls a wild bird to supplant the gentle dove.
Preceding this harshly worded rebuke is a prose sequence detailing Sanqiao’s sincere
love for her husband and the helplessness of her situation. As mentioned earlier, Feng
Menglong adds elements that exculpate Sanqiao by directly contradicting the verse’s
claim about the fickle nature of women. Instead, the woman is the victim rather than
the victimizer. Even after Sanqiao has an affair with Chen Dalang, the prose narrative
remains vague as to whether her expression of desire can be seen as a transference of
her hopeless love for her husband to Chen?because both are of similar age and
appearance. Indeed, when Chen Dalang first presses the procuress Granny Xue for
help in seducing Sanqiao, Xue informs him that since Xingge’s departure she has
never left the upper story, “so chaste is she” S^^IP.53 As a witty character whose
scheme constitutes one of the highlights in the story, Granny Xue is more perceptive
and therefore more “reliable” than the verse narrator, who, with his stock terms and
hackneyed language, moralizes against and essentializes Sanqiao as a frivolous and
fickle woman.
Likewise the prose and verse narratives differ in their descriptions of Sanqiao’s
remarriage. The prose informs us that Sanqiao, heartbroken and regretful, initially
tries to commit suicide after her divorce. Her attempt at suicide is “pure stupidity,”
observes her mother, the commonsensical Mrs. Wang, because with her youth and
beauty it would be easy for her to find another match. Only after being carefully
watched by family members wary of her potential suicide does Sanqiao see the futility
of killing herself and give up the idea. Her stubbornness thus testifies to the true
devotion between the couple. After a detailed prose passage that convinces us of the
deep and passionate love on Sanqiao’s part, the verse, following the deceptively
misleading “Truly,” suggests the opposite:
Husband and wife were originally birds in the same forest.
When destiny determines each flies away.
52 Ibid., pp. 25,281.
53 Ibid., pp. 11,271.
54 Ibid., pp. 30, 285. In the third story, “Li Yuexian Gives Up Her Love to Save Her Husband” ^
? {ili fi) 8 ? S ^c, of the vernacular story anthology Huanxi yuanjia tfcl?5S=?C (Enemies
Enamoured, 1630s), the same couplet is used when the heroine, Li Yuexian, has to leave her
husband and remarry out of economic necessity. She eventually saves her husband in his court
case and they are reunited. See Huanxi yuanjia (Beijing: Zhongguo xiju chubanshe, 2000), p. 68.
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CHUN Garlic and Vinegar 37
Quoting a set phrase dismissive of true emotions between a couple, the verse narrator
is, again, ridiculously detached from reality and from the prose narrative that it
purports to comment on. As the reader learns in the latter part of the prose narrative,
Sanqiao does not “fly away,” but continues to help Xingge because of her steadfast
feelings towards him.
Now let us look at the different narrative voices on the final reunion. The endings
of Chinese vernacular fiction are sometimes referred to as tawei $t?|i (the otter’s tail), a
metaphor for a compact space with a large amount of information. An otter’s tail is
deemed of great importance and one of two basic requirements for “marvelous
writings,” observes the seventeenth-century fiction commentator Mao Zonggang
m (fi. 1660).55 The ending of “The Pearl Shirt” exemplifies an otter’s tail by slapping
readers with plenteous information in a rapid fashion. It ends with a verse, following
a short paragraph in prose with the usual term, youshi weizheng Wlt^ti! (there is a
verse which testifies to this), that trumpets the consistency between the prose
narrative and the verse. The verse emphasizes the moral retribution of Sanqiao’s
demotion to second-wife status, declaring that the whole process is still shameful:
A loving couple were joined for a lifetime.
But how shameful when the wife returns as a concubine.
Blessings and misfortunes come not without design.
Heaven above is the just official easiest to come by.
The verse builds upon an obvious imbalance: a lifetime’s loving marriage is
hastily dismissed as insignificant compared to a mere demotion in name. The prose
narrative preceding the concluding verse, however, points to a different issue,
Let’s go on and tell how Jiang Xingge brought Sanqiao home, where she met Pingshi.
Judging from the first marriage, Wangshi [Sanqiao] took precedence. But whereas
she had been divorced, Pingshi had become his wife through formal arrangement
and ceremony. Besides, she was a year older. Thus, Pingshi was given the position of
55 Jin Shengtan ^SB?, in his “Du diwu caizishu” HI??l^TH lists the method of the otter’s tail
(taweifa ?M?) among other rhetorical devices and explains, “At the end of an important
section things should not come to a sudden stop; rather, after-ripples from the main story are
used to bring out a gradual tapering-off” ^&A > W g^ffift , ZW^?MMZ.
See Jin Shengtan, “Du diwu caizishu” in Zhu Yixuan 7^-^ and Liu Yuchen SlliStfc, eds.,
Shuihu zhuan ziliao huibian 7Kir#? 141111 (Rev. ed. Tianjin: Nankai daxue chubanshe, 2002),
pp. 218-225,223. Translation of Jin Shengtan’s “How to Read The Fiflh Book of Genius” by John C
Y. Wang in David Rolston, ed., How to Read the Chinese Novel (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1990), pp. 131-145, 142. Also discussed in Fan Shengtian f?fSffl, Xiaoshuo lihua ‘bWtMM
(Hangzhou: Zhejiang guji chubanshe, 1989), p. 267. The other crucial element is the prologue.
56 “The Pearl Shirt,” pp. 39,292.
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38 Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews 31 (2009)
first wife and Wangshi became second wife. They addressed each other as “elder
sister” and “younger sister,” and from then on, the husband and the two wives
remained happy and united ever after.
si, 9tfo-*~m, mmm%o ^
Emphasized as an indication of her retribution in the verse, Sanqiao’s demotion
becomes ambiguous. In the style of an “otter’s tail,” Feng Menglong offers an
additional explanation for the change in hierarchy, if there is one, between the two
wives. This newly introduced element, the age difference?Pingshi is a year older?is
dissociated from social regulations and moral concerns. Because of the implicitness of
nouns in Chinese, we are not even sure who actually “lets” Pingshi be the first wife.
Sanqiao, most likely, willingly demotes herself to the position of secondary wife; what
matters for her is to be happily reunited with her beloved husband. That the three of
them live happily ever after again testifies strongly to the futility of retribution and
the emptiness of any moralistic contingency to punish Sanqiao for her misdemeanor.
The hierarchy between the wives is superficial, if not ridiculous.
Steering Between Voices
As discussed earlier, by Feng Menglong’s time, a conscientious author viewed
verse as a significant narrative space choosing from a repertoire ranging from set
phrases to original poetry for different purposes. The two conflicting voices?the
verse evoking a clear principle in all human affairs and the prose pointing to just the
opposite?are deliberate on Feng Menglong’s part, judging from the late Ming
intellectual and social background and his stance therein.
In the freer intellectual atmosphere brought forth by the economic and social
changes of the late Ming, Feng Menglong belonged to the group of literati who
challenged Neo-Confucian orthodoxy by drawing upon Wang Yangming and his
School of the Mind as their intellectual foundation. A dominant concept amidst this
intellectual change was the appropriation and valorization oiqing, which occupied an
important and celebrated position in literary criticism, philosophical thought, and
creative writing. Feng Menglong was a central figure in this movement, promoting
qing throughout his life and his various writings. In the preface to his History of
Feelings (Qingshi IWi), he states, “It has always been one of my ambitions to compile
a history of qing, and ever since I was a young man, I have been known to be qing
57 Ibid.f pp. 39, 292. I changed Kelly’s translation of “tuanyuan dao lao” ESHSJ?? because the
phrase has a very distinctive connotation of happiness.
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CHUN Garlic and Vinegar 39
crazy”; “[W]henever I see a person rich in emotion, I always desire to prostrate myself
before him/’58
The attraction of qing as a concept for literati influenced by Wang Yangming’s
School of the Mind lay in its dissociation from the increasingly ossified moral
principles of orthodox Confucianism.59 Another central figure in this literary
movement, the famous playwright Tang Xianzu iHfifffi (1550-1616), states,
I am not a man of full understanding who can account for everything in terms of
reason/principle (li). You never know when something absolutely impossible
according to reason/principle may turn out be something absolutely possible
according to love.
Feng Menglong states a similar claim in his preface to History of Feelings, “Scholars of
today only know of principle to normalize feeling, but not of feeling to sustain
principle” MfM^PS^?f ?la, W{tof?%MZf??.61 “The Pearl Shirt” concretizes
this juxtaposition of feeling versus principle and fulfills Feng Menglong7s goal of
“using the true feelings between men and women to disclose the falsities of orthodox
Confucianism” i&^izZM’?n ? ff ^ISt?if?lt as he declares in another preface.62 The
story offers a case where qing cannot be judged from a simplistic moral perspective,
nor categorized through a strict rectification of names. Sanqiao possesses the innate
knowledge of the good (liangzhi iUP) and, despite her adulterous digression, sustains
her deep feelings for her husband. Through a jarring juxtaposition of a conservative
Neo-Confucian moralistic voice and a sympathetic and tolerant rival voice, Feng
Menglong revised and rewrote the story in order to engage in contemporary
58 Qingshi ‘?ttFeng Menglong quanji $I??I?^:?, vol. 7 (Nanjing: Jiangsu guji, 1993), p. 1.
Translation from Mowry, Chinese Love Stories, p. 12.
59 Many scholars have addressed the complex concept of qing and its influence upon late
imperial literature. See, for example: Patrick Hanan, The Chinese Vernacular Story (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), esp. pp. 79-80 and 95-97; Kang-i Sun Chang, The Late
Ming Poet Ch’en Tzu-lung: Crises in Love and Loyalism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991),
pp. 3-9; Wai-yee Li, Enchantment and Disenchantment Love and ??lu?on in Chinese Literature
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993); Richard G. Wang, “The Cult of Qing:
Romanticism in the Late Ming Period and in the Novel Jiao Hong Ji,” Ming Studies 33 (1994): 12
55; Martin W. Huang, “Sentiments of Desire: Thoughts on the Cult of Qing in Ming-Qing
Literature,” CLEAR 20 (1998), pp. 153-84; Martin W. Huang, Desire and Fictional Nanative in Late
Imperial China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001); and also Maram Epstein,
Competing Discourses: Orthodoxy, Authenticity, and Engenderd Meanings in Late Imperial Chinese
Fiction (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), pp. 61-119.
60 “Mudan ting tici” fyift^MM, Tang Xianzu shiwenji ??RR?#3tft (Shanghai: Shanghai guji,
1982), p. 1093. Translation from Huang “Sentiments of Desire,” p. 168.
61 Qingshi, p.36.
62 “Xu Shan’ge” MClhffi, in Feng Menglong ed., Shan’ge L?ffc (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju,
1962).
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40 Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews 31 (2009)
intellectual debates. Strategies were necessary to convey this message. Feng
Menglong was, moreover, a professional writer tying his economic interests to market
consumption. Unfortunate in the increasingly competitive civil service examinations,
Feng Menglong had to seek economic opportunities brought forth by the boom of
commercial publishing. The market required and encouraged successful commercial
writers to expand their usage of rhetorical modes and linguistic registers for
broadening audiences, and to constantly shift roles to engage in practices that were
both commercially and intellectually relevant.
Polyvocality became one of the dominant trademarks of late-Ming professional
writers. Typical of the Jiangnan literati, Feng Menglong mastered three registers of
language: classical Chinese, “official Chinese” (guanhua If IS ), and written
representations of certain of the Wu ^ dialects. He edited The Ingenious Encounters of
the Wu Dialect (Wunong qiaoyu ^?JI^/iS), a collection of antithetical couplets in the
Wu dialect,63 and collected and compiled local Wu area popular songs, clearly
conscious of the cultural meaning of this gesture.64
Feng Menglong7s dislike for conservative Neo-Confucian morality is clear. A
ribald humorist, Feng Menglong makes fun of conservative Neo-Confucian ideology,
or even Confucius, with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek. The preface to his joke
collection says: “We should also laugh at Confucius, that old man. His wordy and
moralistic utterances will bury many people alive for nothing” X^IP?LTii^SlA?
immWW mt’A?l^JCn, OT??ffifr^f?Ai^* Challenging the absolute
authority of the Confucian classics, Feng Menglong claimed that his fiction serves as
an alternative, if not a superior, venue for edification because of its power to move
readers. In his preface to Enlightened Words to Instruct the World (Yushi mingyan P?tft^
s*), he states, “Even the recitation of the Classic of Filial Piety and the Analects fails to
move people this successfully and deeply” SI
63 Lu Shulun BISfi%, Feng Menglong yanjiu $\% (Shanghai: Fudan daxue chubanshe,
1987), p. 159.
64 The language phenomenon is interestingly recorded in another Gujin xiaoshuo story, “Qian
Poliu Begins his Career in Lin’an” ?l^M^^S?^. After his rise from local hooligan to king,
Qian Poliu returns to his hometown and treats his previous acquaintances to a luxurious
banquet. He puzzles them with a sophisticated toast suitable to his new status. The
identification of the new king as member of the in-group is only achieved after he sings another
ditty in the local Wu dialect. The banquet then proceeds to everyone’s delight. See the story in
Yushi mingy an PijittK “s (Beijing: Renmin wenxue, 1958), pp. 31747. For a summary of the great
variety of Feng Menglong’s works, see Lu, Feng Menglong yanjiu, pp. 81-160.
65 Qted, Lu, Feng Menglong yanjiu, p. 33. Prefaces to both of his joke collections satirize
Confucian orthodoxy.
66 Yushi mingyan, pp. 1-2.
67 Hanan, The Chinese Vernacular Story, p. 77.
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CHUN Garlic and Vinegar 41
Feng Menglong makes a visible effort to steer between the voices, turning to
structures within the story to guide his story’s potential reading. The framing of “The
Pearl Shirt” demonstrates Feng’s standpoint on the coexistent celebration of qing and
ossified moralistic principle. Preceding the “otter’s tail” the story divides into a
zhenghua lEIS (main story) and a houhua f?M (supplementary story), both followed
by ending statements, “This, then, is the main story of Jiang Xingge’s reencounter
with the pearl shirt” it # J? ” j$ ? fl1 S#3^#c#” JEM,68 or “This is the
supplementary story” ?Jt M.69 The so-called zhenghua and houhua tell the
completely different retribution stories of two minor characters, Chen Dalang and
Magistrate Wu. The zhenghua story ends with the death of Chen Dalang and the
marriage of Chen’s wife to Jiang Xingge, thus completing a distinctive circle of karmic
retribution. The supplementary story tells of the good karma of Sanqiao’s second
husband, Magistrate Wu, who discovers the true love between the couple and
reunites them. His reward is three sons in quick succession after having been unable
to sire a male heir.
Such framing m ingle s the retribution and karma theme with the discourse o? qing.
The different retribution stories of Magistrate Wu and Chen Dalang can also be
explained in light of their ability or inability to “read” the true emotions between
Xingge and Sanqiao. Chen Dalang, scheming to take advantage of Sanqiao’s
loneliness even when informed of the deep love between the couple, is punished by
his misreading of their love for each other. Magistrate Wu, who immediately
acknowledges that they “love each other so much” #njfcfc#H^, is rewarded for this by
Heaven. The significance of these two minor characters, then, is their embodiment of
different interpretations and readings of the true emotions (zhenqing %\n) between
Sanqiao and Jiang Xingge. The simple sub-stories of retribution thus serve only as
veneer for the author’s serious concern with recognizing qing, an ability Feng boasts
of possessing in his preface to History of Feelings.
Besides framing the story, interlinear commentaries offer an extended space in
which Feng Menglong attempts to steer the intended reading of the story. The
commentator, believed to be Feng Menglong himself, inserts dots along the passages
where the qing between the two main characters is described in most touching detail.
For example, when Xingge broaches the subject of going on a business trip, Sanqiao
agrees but is tremendously saddened. Xingge cannot bear their separation either and
gives up the plan several times. The description of their heartrending departure is
dotted, in the marginal commentary, as a “touching description” Qiao moxie #?H?i).70
The interlinear commentator’s efforts to exonerate Sanqiao are also best represented
by the repeated usage of the same phrase “falling into their trap” (duo qiji le fil?ttT)
68 Ibid., pp. 35,289.
69 Ibid., p. 39.
70 Feng Menglong, Feng Menglong quanji gujin xiaoshuo yfii^ti^ft^^hift (Shanghai: Shanghai
guji chubanshe, 1993), pp, 1-93, p. 11.
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42 Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews 31 (2009)
five times, so as to lament the effectiveness of the matchmaker’s master plan 71 These
repeated phrases join with the prose to exculpate Sanqiao, presenting her as victim of
a plot. Along with the prose narrative, the commentaries subvert the verse’s
moralistic stance and the “heavenly requital” it endorses. If Feng Menglong inserts
the orthodox reading in verse, he also inserts another way of reading, more implicitly
and yet effectively, that highlights the appreciation of qing.
Feng Menglong’s vernacular story collections feature groups of stories that deal
with a similar issue and often comment upon each other, resulting in an additional
level of guided reading. In another story in the same collection, “Ruan San Repays his
Karma in the Nunnery of Idle Cloud,”72 the heroine Chen Yulan ^ E^73 conceives a
child after an illicit affair with Ruan San, who died on top of her during their first
sexual encounter. She remains with the Ruan family as a faithful widow and
cooperates with the patriarchs of the Ruan and Chen families in their attempts to
whitewash the scandal. When her son becomes a high official, she even receives a
memorial archway for her “chastity.”
“Ruan San” opposes “The Pearl Shirt” in illustrating how an underlying story of
yu (sexual desire) can be whitewashed into a moral tale. On the surface, the story
fits the Ming legal regulations requiring that a woman widowed before the age of
thirty remain unmarried until sixty before she could be considered for official
recognition.74 Yulan has kept her “widowhood” from the age of nineteen and is
therefore qualified for her memorial archway, but the story itself exposes the innate
irony in the grand narrative of “a model widow” created by a fame-hungry family by
accentuating the yu nature of the couple in various venues. The story, read together
with “The Pearl Shirt,” concretizes Feng Menglong’s statement in his History of
Feelings, “From ancient times deeds of loyalty, filial piety, and chastity conducted by
principle are definitely strained, but those guided by true emotions are assuredly
authentic”(?*S#IP^?* , ???ta_ttt## , ??M?it??ti#^M).75 Such
antithetical parallels further establish his position in the two policing voices.
Now keeping in mind Feng Menglong’s textual strategies in remaking “The Pearl
Shirt” and guiding the very reading of the story, let us revisit the nature of
didacticism in Feng’s works. Compared to Song Maocheng’s source story, Feng
Menglong’s vernacular version is much keener on persuasion and edification. Feng is
too serious to be a mere joker. He claims that he writes fiction to edify the world, and
entitles his vernacular story collections Enlightened Words to Instruct the World,
71 Ibid., p. 37, 42,43,45,50. The last time uses a variation, zhongji le It 7.
72 Ywsh/ mingy an, pp. 85-101.1 use the translation from Stories Old and New, pp. 94-113.
73 Yulan literally translates as Jade Orchid and indicates purity, but the author obviously uses
the name to play upon her later adultery.
74 See Katherine Carlitz, “Desire, Danger, and the Body: Stories of Women’s Virtue in Late Ming
China/’ in Christina K. Gilmartin and Gail Hershatter, eds., Engendering China: Women, Culture,
and the State (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), p. 107.
75 Qingshi, p. 36.
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CHUN Garlic and Vinegar 43
Universal Words to Alarm the World (Jingshi tongyan WtftfflW), and Lasting Words to
Awaken the World (Xingshi hengyan KtftffiIf). But the content and method of his
edification are different from traditional morality and Neo-Confucian ethics.
Authentic feeling is the basis of his teaching, through which he fulfills his role as both
fiction writer and ?difier.
The utilization of the prosimetric form in creating policing voices represents a
self-conscious subversion against and resistance to orthodox Neo-Confucian ideology.
Offering two different perspectives in the prose and verse, Feng Menglong
encourages his readers to reflect upon the two different narratives and the very nature
of storytelling and reading. The form is therefore the conveyor of meanings. Plurality
and dialogism in oral storytelling, retained in the prosimetric form, are the stimulus
for the writers of vernacular fiction to imitate the storyteller’s mode and to include
verse as the narrative seasonings that Ling Mengchu refers to as “garlic and vinegar.”
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- Contents
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- Issue Table of Contents
Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews, Vol. 31 (December 2009) pp. 1-166
Front Matter
Editorial
ESSAYS AND ARTICLES
A Music for Baihua: Lu Xun’s Wild Grass and “A Good Story” [pp. 1-22]
Garlic and Vinegar: The Narrative Significance of Verse in “The Pearl Shirt Reencountered” [pp. 23-43]
Knowing Sound: Poetry and “Refinement” in Early Medieval China [pp. 45-69]
Fragrant Rice and Green Paulownia: Notes on a Couplet in Du Fu’s “Autumn Meditations” [pp. 71-95]
Life’s Unattainable Goal and Actualized Meaning: Existential Anxiety and Zen Tranquility in Gao Xingjian’s Soul Mountain [pp. 97-120]
Messages from the Dead in “Nanke Taishou zhuan” [pp. 121-130]
Book Reviews
Review: untitled [pp. 131-134]
Review: untitled [pp. 134-138]
Review: untitled [pp. 138-142]
Review: untitled [pp. 142-143]
Review: untitled [pp. 144-147]
Review: untitled [pp. 147-150]
Review: untitled [pp. 151-154]
Review: untitled [pp. 154-159]
Review: untitled [pp. 159-161]
Brief Notices
Review: untitled [pp. 163-163]
Review: untitled [pp. 164-165]
Review: untitled [pp. 165-166]
Back Matter
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