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Women Warriors and Amazons of the mid Qing Texts Jinghua yuan and Honglou meng

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Louise Edwards
Louise Edwards
Affiliation:
University of Queensland
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Extract

Many cultures include in their narrative discourse tales of women who have gone to war or joined the hunt and indeed Chinese culture has produced a plethora of tales which relate the deeds of such strong and exceptional women. The general opinion from Western academics about these women is that they are rebelling against restraints imposed upon their sex by patriarchal society and ‘under the guise of patriotism or wifely devotion [find] an understandable motive for rejecting hearth and home.’ That patriarchal discourse should perpetuate through history and literature a subversive mode of thinsimply because it was duped by the invocations of patriotism an loyalty appears less than convincing. Certainly, if these are the woman warrior's motives then they have been exceptionally well disguised by the literary redactions of the deeds of the women warriors in Chinese culture. It is the intention of this article to explicate the complexity of the woman warrior in Chinese culture and reveal the multiplicity of discursive functions she fulfils by using the specific case of two mid Qing texts, Honglou meng and Jinghua yuan. The contradictions embodied in the recurring form of the woman warrior and her Amazonian sisters hold a key to understanding the complex and ambiguous signifying systems of sexual ideology in mid Qing Chinese culture. In this respect I will be invoking an Althusserian notion of the specific relationship between ideology and literature whereby the particular feelings or perceptions generated by the literature are regarded as being produced by the ideology within 'which it bathes, from which it detaches itself as art, and to which it alludes' through an internal distanciation from that very same ideology.2 In Honglou meng and Jinghuayuan this internal distanciation is made apparent by the elaborate use of myth in the former and irony in the latter.

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Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 29 , Issue 2 , May 1995 , pp. 225 - 255
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

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3 Liangyu, Qin (1574–1648) was appointed as general in the Ming forces after the death of her husband, General Ma Qiancheng, and is described as being ‘talented in both the martial and cultural arts (wen wu shuangquan).’ Shaoying, Yuan and Guizhen, Yang (eds), Zhongguo funu mingren cidian (Changchun: Beifang funü ertong chubanshe, 1989), p. 456.Google ScholarHongyu, Liang (c. 1130), formerly a courtesan, became the wife of the Song general Han Shizhong. At the end of the Northern Song when her husband was locked in a seemingly hopeless battle with the invading Jurched, Liang's courage and battle plans were instrumental in vanquishing their foes. Yuan and Yang, Zhongguo funü, p. 530. Her deeds, typified by her fierce beating of the drums which signalled the start of the retaliation, form part of the 80 chapter Qing novel Shuo Yue quan zhuan by Qian Cai. This book was reprinted by Shanghai's Guji chubanshe in 1980. Thirteenth Sister is the heroine of Wen Kang's mid Qing Emu yingxiong zhuan and is renown for her martial arts skills and her defence of justice. She rescues a hapless scholar from bandits and redistributes ill-gotten gains with the aim of righting social wrongs. Hu Shi has written a preface to the novel in which he gives details of the authorship, discusses the extent to which the novel is autobiographical as well as providing a general critique.Google Scholar‘Hu Shi zhi kao zheng,’ in Keng, Wen, Emu yingxiong zhuan 2 volumes (Taipei: Xinwenfeng chuban gongsi, 1979), pp. 1–26.Google Scholar

4 The Taiping forces had battalions of women amongst their ranks whose peasant origins, unbound feet and trousered legs gave them the reputation of being barbarians. The Red Lantern Brigades emerged during the Boxer Rebellion. Young women, typically between the ages of twelve and eighteen, organized themselves into units which engaged in intelligence and support activities for the local men involved in the rebellion. They adopted a uniform of red shoes, hats, trousers and coats and carried a red lantern. Both the Taiping Women's battalions and the Red Lantern Brigades are discussed in more detail in Kazuko, Ono, Chinese Women in a Century of Revolution, 1850–1950, edited by Fogel, Joshua A. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989), pp. 1–21 and pp. 49–53.Google ScholarLater still, during the Sino-Japanese War Chang-tai Hung has described the development of the woman warrior in ‘spoken drama’ as a method to galvanize people to fight against the invading Japanese. Chang-tai Hung, ‘Female Symbols of Resistance in Chinese Wartime Spoken Drama,’ Modern China 15.2 (April 1989), p. 151.Google Scholar

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10 The 1606 Wan Li edition of the 8 juan, 58 chapter Yang jia jiang yanyi (also known by its full title Xinbian quan xiang Yang fu shidai zhongyong tongsu yanyi) was edited and reprinted by the Zhejiang renmin chubanshe in 1980.

11 Zhichu, Wang, ‘Shu sheng suibi,’ rpt. in Honglou meng juan, Su, Yi (ed.) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1980), p. 386.Google Scholar

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14 Ibid.

15 Xun, Zhang, ‘Jinghua yuan he Honglou meng,’ Huaiyin shizhuan xuebao: zhe she ban 4 (1988), pp. 62–6.Google Scholar Reprinted in Zhongguo renmin daxue shubao ziliao she (Compilers of books and materials China's People's University), Fuyin baokan ziliao ‘Honglou meng’ yanjiu (Copied materials of journals and newspapers on Honglou meng research) [hereafter RD] 2(1989), pp. 47–51.Google Scholar

16 Xun, Zhang, ‘Jinghua yuan he Honglou meng,’ p. 49.Google ScholarTanchun, Jia says in Chapter 56 that if she had been born a boy then she would have left home long ago and taken on a career.Google Scholar

17 Shi, Hu, ‘Jinghua yuan de yin lun,’ in Shi, Hu, Hu Shi wencun di er ji (Taipei: Yuandong tushu gongsi, 1953), pp. 412–33.Google Scholar

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19 Lixin, Huang, ‘Ming Qing nannü pingdeng de shehui sichao yu Honglou meng,’ Honglou meng xuekan 2 (1986), p. 325Google Scholar and Lixin, Huang, ‘Ming Qing hunyin ziyou de shehui sichao yu Honglou meng,’ Shanghai daxue xuebao: she ke ban (Shanghai University journal: Social Sciences Edition) 4 (1989), pp. 29–35.Google ScholarRpt. ‘ n RD 4 (1989), p. 23;Google ScholarZhongming, Zhou, ‘Lun Honglou meng yu Jin Ping Mei,’ Honglou meng xuekan 3 (1989), pp. 195–233.Google Scholar

20 Evans, Nancy, ‘Social Criticism in the Ching: The Novel Ching-hua yuan,’ Papers on China, Volume 23 (Cambridge, Mass.: East Asia Research Center, 1970), p. 62.Google Scholar

21 Kao, Hsin-sheng C., Li Ju-chen (Boston: Twayne, 1981), p. 94.Google Scholar

22 Huang, Wang Pi-twan, ‘Utopian Imagination in Traditional Chinese Fiction,’ Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation from the University of Wisconsin-Madison 1980, p. 140.Google ScholarMany of Li Ruzhen's most humorous satires on the treatment of women in his time are found in his chapter on the Women's Kingdom where a male protagonist is captured and subjected to the many painful beautification processes, such as foot binding and hair plucking that women in the Qing were subjected to. Wang notes Li's debt to books such as the Shanhai jing which contains a women's kingdom that has no male citizens. Wang, ‘Utopian Imagination in Traditional Chinese Fiction,’ pp. 120–1. The poem titled the ‘Land of Women’ appears in the ‘Haiwai xijing’ section of the Shanhai jing and proceeds as follows: ‘Chien Ti swallowed, and/ Chiang Yuan walked;/ In the Land of Women/ They bathe in the Huang River,/ Then are pregnant and give birth;/ If a boy, he dies.’ The first two lines refer to the legends of conception wherein two concubines of the Emperor Ku, the aforementioned Jian Di and Jiang Yuan, conceive by asexual means: Jian Di while bathing in the Xuan Qiu river, swallows a colourful egg dropped by a crow and Jiang Yuan after treading in the footprint of a giant. Shan Hai Ching: Legendary Geography and Wonders of Ancient China, Commentary by Kuo P'o —Chin dynasty, Explanatory notes by Hao Yihsing—Ch'ing dynasty, Translated by Hsiao-Chieh Cheng, Hui-Chen Pai Cheng and Kenneth Lawrence Them (Taipei: National Institute for Compilation and Translation, 1985), p. 345.Google Scholar

23 Edwards, Louise, ‘Women in Honglou meng: Prescriptions of Purity in the Femininity of Qing Dynasty China,’ Modem China 16, 4 (10 1990), pp. 407–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24 Prince Heng is recorded as being responsible for the security of Qingzhou starting in the twelfth year of Hongzhi (1499). He died in the seventeenth year of jiajing (1538). Xifan, Li and Qiyong, Feng, Honglou meng da cidian (Beijing: Wenhua yishu chubanshe, 1990), p. 800.Google Scholar

25 I have used David Hawkes translation of poem and text throughout with the abbreviation SS referring to The Story of the Stone, followed by chapter number and finally by page number. Xueqin, Cao, The Story of the Stone: Vol. 3: The Warning Voice, trans. Hawkes, David (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982). For my own reference I have used the Beijing Shifan daxue edition of Honglou meng in four volumes.Google ScholarXueqin, Cao, Honglou meng (Beijing: Shifan daxue chubanshe, 1987).Google Scholar

26 Songling, Pu, ‘Lin Siniang’ in Liaozhai zhiyi—di yi ce (Jinan: Jilu shu she chuban fa xing, 1981), pp. 437–42;Google ScholarShizhen, Wang, Chi bei ou tan—xia ce (Taibei: Shangwuyi shuguan, 1976), juan 21;Google ScholarWeisong, Chen, Furen ji reprinted in Congshu jicheng xinbian no. 101 (Taipei: Xinwen feng chubangongsi, 1986), p. 712.Google Scholar

27 Yun, Bai, ‘Gudai funu de yingxiong xingxiang,’ jiefang junbao, 7.3. 1951.Google Scholar See also Rufa, Zhang, ‘Mulan shi de zhuti shi shenme?,’ Yuwen xuexi 11 (1981), pp. 14–15. The latter article argues that Mulan shi's main theme is not the call for sexual equality because, among other things, she assumes a domestic role as soon as her filial duties are accomplished. Zhang argues instead, like Bai Yun above, that the poem tells of the devotion to the nation and the bravery of the labouring women in traditional China and how hard they worked for peace. His argument is framed against a comment in the Zhongguo wenxue yanjiusuo's Zhongguo wenxue shi, where the idea was promoted that Hua Mulan shi was in opposition to the discriminatory treatment women received in traditional China and was supportive of women's equal access to social power.Google ScholarZhongguo shehui kexueyuan wenxue yanjiusuo (eds), Zhongguo wenxueshi (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1985), pp. 324–7.Google Scholar

28 Meishu, Zhu, ‘Gui hua ci xin jie,’ Liaoning daxue xuebao 3 (1980), pp. 71–5.Google Scholar See also Jianyin, Zhou, ‘Guanyu Gui hua ci,’ Honglou meng xuekan 1 (1983), pp. 187–90;Google ScholarYizhao, Mao, ‘Guihua ci shi shuo?,’ Honglou meng xuekan 2 (1980), pp. 232–3.Google Scholar

29 Danwei, Zhu, Honglou meng yanjiu (Taibei: Guiya wenhua, 1990), pp. 166.Google Scholar This is originally published in the PRC and was reprinted in Taipei.

30 I have abbreviated the title to JHY and accompanied it by the chapter and page number. I have used the following edition of Jinghua yuan and all translations are my own. Ruzhen, Li, Jinghua yuan (1828; Taipei: Xuehai chubanshe, 1985), p. 51.Google Scholar An abridged translation has been completed by Lin Taiyi—see note 13 above. I have included Lin's translations of the characters’ names in parentheses next to the first mention of a character's name for those readers who are familiar with the novel in this translation only.

31 The anti-Zhou rebels were the opponents of the Empress Wu whose reign (684–704) was called the Zhou Dynasty.

32 The novel is ironic on this point. Many of the women who participate in the first examinations open to women, organized by the Empress Wu, are members of the anti-Zhou rebel families and despite having received this benefit from the Empress participate in the battle against her forces at the close of the novel.

33 Wheelwright, Amazons and Military Maids, p. 19;Google ScholarDugaw, Dianne, Warrior Women and Popular Balladry, 1650–1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).Google Scholar

34 A good linguistic explanation of the poems is provided by Yafei, Xie et al. (eds), Honglou meng zhuping (Nanning: Guangxi renmin chubanshe, 1982), pp. 390–5.Google Scholar

35 Eberhard, Wolfram, Dictionary of Chinese Symbols (Singapore: Federal Publications, 1990), p. 243.Google Scholar

36 Herein lies another similarity with Honglou meng. With the existence of a book that gives the protagonist Tang Xiaoshan/Jia Baoyu a cryptic preview of the events about to occur in the novel the parameters of plot development are neatly outlined. In Honglou meng the Registers are viewed as part of Baoyu's dream and cannot thereby be studied carefully by the puzzled Baoyu. Whereas in the case of Jinghua yuan Xiaoshan actually copies the text and carries it with her for many months until the Gibbon flies off with it.

37 Roddy, Stephan John, ‘“Rulin waishi” and the representation of literati in Qing fiction,’ unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1990, p. 285.Google ScholarQingyun, Wu argues that a sisterhood is developed amongst the women who come together to take the examinations, saying: ‘For the first time in Chinese history, women strive for the same goal and share the same fears and joys’; however, Wu forgets that the women are competing against each other for recognition and their sisterhood is based upon a mutual competitiveness rather than mutual devotion.Google ScholarQingyun, Wu, ‘Transformations of female rule: Feminist Utopias in Chinese and English literature’, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Pennsylvania State University, 1991, p. 170.Google Scholar Moreover, as Stephan Roddy as pointed out, Jinghua yuan's ‘feminization of the literati experience’ through the examination success of the hundred girls is ‘devoid of any serious moral content … and are notable precisely for the conspicuous absence of any concern with the larger moral order’ of the political world. Roddy, ‘“Rulin waishi” and the representation of literati in Qing fiction,’ p. 283.

38 Zeitlin, Judith T., ‘Pu Songling's (1640–1715) Liaozhai zhiyi and the Chinese Discourse on the Strange,’ unpublished Ph.D. thesis presented to Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 05 1988.Google Scholar

39 Songling, Pu, translated and cited in Zeitlin, , ‘Pu Songling's (1640–1715) Liaozhai zhiyi and the Chinese Discourse on the Strange,’ p. 119.Google Scholar

40 The use of female virtue as a moral mirror to degenerating menfolk is not unique to this particular section of Honglou meng. Rather throughout the novel, female competence in almost every aspect is emphasized as being better than men's. I have argued that this is not only praise for the talents of these women but also a symbol of social decline and disorder. See my article ‘Representations of Women and Social Power in Eighteenth Century China: The Case of Wang Xifeng,’ Late Imperial China, (June 1993).Google Scholar

41 Hongxian and Nie Yinniang are two swordswomen of the Tang. Hongxian (c. 770) appears in Yuan Jiao's (c. 853) Tang chuanqi ‘Hongxian zhuan.’ See Shinian, Xu (ed.), Tangdai xiaoshuo xuan (Changchou: Changchou shuhua, 1982), pp. 378–89. A servant to the Luzhou Military Governor Xie Song, Hongxian proved herself to be invaluable in her advice to her master. Through her magical talents she ensures that Tian Chengsi, the rebellious military governor of Weibo, is supportive and loyal to her master by stealing a precious golden casket from his pillow while he slept. The casket was then sent back to Tian by Xie to symbolize the latter's might and generosity. It is explained at the end of the tale that Hongxian was formerly a male healer who accidentally killed a woman who was pregnant with twins by providing the incorrect prescription. As punishment for this error he was reborn as the servant girl Hongxian. The tale of her deeds reappears in Liang Chenyu's Ming zaju titled Hongxian nu ye qie huang jin he (Hongxian steals the golden casket at night). Nie Yinniang is the central character of Pei Xing's (825–880) chuanqi of the same name.Google ScholarThis tale forms part of Pei's collection of wondrous tales titled Jian xia zhuan and can be found in Lengqie, Zhou (ed.), Pei Xing chuanqi (Shanghai: Guji chubanshe, 1980), pp. 22–5.Google Scholar The daughter of the General Nie Feng, Yinniang was kidnapped by a nun at the age of ten and for five years was trained in magical transformations and sword-skills. After returning home she marries and on the death of her father she and her husband join the Weibo Commanding Generals' household. Sent on a mission to kill Liu Changyi, the Chief general of the neighbouring province, Nie Yinniang instead decides to stay in Liu's service as she discovers him to be a man of greater talent and wisdom than her original master. Here she protects him from two assassination attempts with her magic power. Yinniang's tale is the basis of Yu Tong's (1618–1704) play Hei bai wei (The Black and White Donkeys). English translations of both these tales are found in Kao, Karl S. Y., Classical Chinese Tales of the Supernatural and the Fantastic: Selections from the Third to the Tenth Century (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), pp. 357–62 and pp. 363–70.Google ScholarLevenson's, Christopher translation of Wolfgang Bauer's and Herbert Franke's The Golden Casket: Chinese Novellas of Two Millennia (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1965) includes the story of Hongxian on pp. 136–42.Google Scholar

42 Waltner, Ann, ‘The Grand Secretary's Family: Three Generations of Women in the Family of Wang Hsi-chueh,’ Family Process and Political Process in Modern Chinese History: Part I (Taipei: Zhongyang yanjiu yuan jindai shi yanjiu suo, 1992), pp. 543–77.Google Scholar

43 The disruption of her reign to notions of social order is supposed to atone Emperor Yang of the Sui for the overthrow of his dynasty by Tang in the judgement of the heavenly court of justice.

44 The lead character Tang Xiaoshan, although not a woman warrior, is also depicted as being the epitome of virtue in the traditional Chinese sense. Hsin-sheng C. Kao states that ‘Tang Kuei-chen's progress toward the immortal planet depends upon the success of her earthly fulfilment of female loyalty, piety, and chastity.’ Kao, Li Ju-chen, p. 95.Google Scholar

45 Gulik, R. H. Van, Sexual Life in Ancient China (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1974), p. 76.Google Scholar

46 Gulik, Van, Sexual Life in Ancient China, p. 157.Google Scholar

47 Xifan, Li and Qiyong, Feng (eds), Honglou meng da cidian, p. 800.Google Scholar

48 Hao, Zhai of the Qing dynasty wrote in his Tong su bian: Funü that although the coarse interpretation of this phrase takes ‘po gua’ to mean ‘po shen’ (to deflower) the actual meaning is derived for the structure of the character for melon (gua). Gua can be broken down to form two characters for the number eight (ba) and two lots of eight make sixteen. That Zhai was forced to discredit the coarse interpretation shows the extent to which it was prevalent.Google ScholarGuanzhong, Xiang et al. , Zhonghua chengyu da cidian (Changchun: Jinlin wenshi chubanshe, 1986), p. 169.Google Scholar

49 Xueqin's, CaoHonglou meng eulogises the innocence and purity of girls/women in this particular age group as well, although this theme is not elaborated in the Guihua ci poems. Lucien Miller presents a thorough survey of notions of childhood and adolescence in Honglou meng in his conference paper ‘Children of the Dream: The Adolescent World in Cao Xueqin's Honglou meng.’ Paper presented to the Symposium on Children in Pre-Modern China, May 25–27, 1990 at the Center for Advanced Studies, University of Virginia, Charlottesville. For information on the eulogizing of purity and innocence see Louise Edwards. ‘Women in Honglou meng,’ pp. 407–29.Google Scholar

50 Wu, Fatima, ‘Foxes in Chinese Supernatural Tales (Part I),’ Tamkang Review XVII, 2 (Winter 1986), p. 123.Google Scholar

51 See, for example, Shurong, Liu, ‘Sichuan nuxuetang kaixue zhi yanshuo,’ rpt. in Youning, Li and Yufa, Zhang, Jindai Zhongguo nuquan Yundong shiliao 1842–1911, p. 619;Google ScholarWangli, Liu, ‘Xinhai geming qian de funü yundong,’ rpt. in Youning, Li and Yufa, Zhang, Jindai Zhongguo nuquan Yundong shiliao, p. 762.Google Scholar

52 An English translation of this text can be found in Red Detachment of Women—A Modern Revolutionary Ballet (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1972).Google Scholar