Introduction

Introduction This volume includes two memoirs about courtesans in seventeenth- century China: Reminiscences of the Plum Shadows Convent (hereafter Plum Shadows) by Mao Xiang (sobriquets Piji- ang and Chaomin, 1611– 1693) and Miscellaneous Records of Plank Bridge (hereafter Plank Bridge) by Yu Huai (sobriquets Danxin and Manweng, 1616– 1696).1 It also presents anecdotes, stories, and poetic writings related to two of the most famous courtesans from that period: Liu Rushi (1618–1664) and Chen Yuanyuan (b. 1623). The world these materials evoke is that of the Lower Yanzi area in the final decades of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) and in the aftermath of its collapse in the early years of the Qing dynasty (1644– 1911). This was a period when a chorus of voices elevated aesthetic refinement and romantic sensibility and showed an extraordinary interest in recording perceptions, sensations, emotions, and memories. Often the same voices showed deep political engagement and were committed to bearing witness to contemporary turmoil and to remembering the world before Qing conquest. These writings therefore not only provide a window into the sights, sounds, smells, and texture of pleasures and pas- sions but also bear the burden of memory and nostalgia and show us the moral reasoning justifying apparent indulgence. xii Introduction COURTESANS IN CHINESE HISTORY The words for “courtesans” in Chinese, chang ၬ and ji ࿃, are etymologically related to the more ancient graphs chang ّ and ji Ծ, whose meanings include musician, singer, actor, and entertainer. The function of the courtesan is to provide pleasure, and the continuity between aesthetic and sensual pleasure implies an inherent ambiguity in her role. As object of desire and sexual exploitation, she could experience shame and degradation, yet as entertainer she was also, at least potentially, an artist who could claim self- expression and, in rare instances, even self- invention. In the hierarchy of sexual transactions, courtesans were distin- guished from mere prostitutes because of their accomplishments.2 From the fifth and sixth centuries on, there are records of famous courtesans who entertained not only with music, songs, and dance but also by mastering the ornaments of literati culture—zither, chess, wine games, poetry, painting, calligraphy, and refined, witty conversation. Mastery of such skills, often prized above beauty, sometimes meant a courtesan was less sexually available, although it also played a standard part in the game of seduction. The fascination with courtesans is bound up with the idea of permeable boundaries. The courtesan escaped the well-defined roles and relationships of traditional Chinese society. Classified as “debased” ( jian), she yet consorted with elite men, sometimes as intellectual equals, and could reclaim respectability through marriage (congliang).3 She could befriend elite women. Starting from the sixteenth century, we find poetic exchanges between elite women and courtesans; some of them are even vaguely homoerotic in tone, unavoidable perhaps because poetic conventions for prais- ing female beauty and talent are often rooted in male desire. In the eighteenth century, for example, it was not uncommon for elite women to invite famous courtesans to join them on pleasure excur- sions on the painted boats of Qinhuai. Theoretically “off limits,” Daoist priestesses could sometimes be de facto courtesans, as in Introduction xiii the cases of the famous Tang poets Yu Xuanji (842–872) and Li Ye (eighth c.). Several renowned seventeenth- century courtesans, including Wang Wei (ca. 1595–ca. 1647), Bian Sai (1620s– ca. 1663), and Liu Rushi, embraced Daoism and Buddhism, implicitly negat- ing the sensuous existence they once embodied but also potentially developing a new kind of allure. A courtesan was often born or sold into that station, but an elite or even aristocratic woman could have been reduced to that status because her family belonged to a vanquished dynasty, was an ousted faction in court, or simply got into political or economic troubles, and as such she retained the allure of what might otherwise have been inaccessible.4 A particularly notorious case was the Yongle emperor of the Ming dynasty (r. 1402– 1424). He ruthlessly eliminated officials who opposed his violent usurpation of the throne in 1402. Female family members of his opponents were often condemned to join the ranks of courtesans and prostitutes.5 In this sense, state control of courtesans answered the per- ceived need to maintain distinctions between the “debased” and the “respectable” (liang). The legends that Guan Zhong (d. 645 BCE), a Qi statesman for whom Confucius expresses both admi- ration and criticism in the Analects, invented the institution of “women’s wards” (nülü) in order to use “the earnings of their noc- turnal unions” to enrich the state6 or that the ancient Yue king Goujian (fifth c. BCE) kept widows on a hill to entertain his sol- diers7 point to the notion that “women of pleasure” could serve the “public good.” The rationale is that the errant energy of society could thus be channeled and controlled to facilitate its proper functioning. Taxes levied on courtesans were called “flower con- tribution” (huajuan) or “powder money” (huafen qian, zhifen qian) in various periods.8 Song courtesans were drafted as vendors of wine, which was sold through government monopoly. In the late thirteenth century the first Ming emperor (r. 1368–1398) estab- lished sixteen towers to house official courtesans (guanji) in Nan- jing, then the capital. The purpose was apparently to increase xiv Introduction revenue and to encourage urban revival.9 Almost six centuries later, the Qing loyalist general Zeng Guofan (1811– 1872), “taking Guan Zhong as example,” tried to revive the economy of the Lower Yangzi area by lifting the ban on courtesans, which had been enforced by the insurgents during the Taiping Wars (1850– 1864). Taxation and public records defined the parameters of state control. Entertainers under the control of the Registry of Musi- cians (yueji), formalized in 528 in north China during the North- ern Wei dynasty (386– 534), had a debased status that was hereditary: they could not marry “respectable” persons and could not easily remove their names from the registry (luoji, tuoji), and sumptuary rules applied to them.10 The enforcement of such rules varied greatly in different periods. Entertainers in the registry came to belong to the Right and Left Bureau of Music Instruc- tions (jiaofang si) upon their establishment in 714. This early Tang (618– 907) reorganization of a late sixth-century Sui (581– 618) institution was to last in one form or another till the end of the imperial era.11 The bureau specialized in the training of court entertainers. These entertainers were sometimes called official courtesans and could be summoned for performance in state celebrations and official feasts. In 606, Emperor Yang of Sui (r. 604–618) dazzled a Turkish delegation with a large-scale musical gala in the Sui capital Luoyang. As many as 30,000 female entertainers were involved in this extravagant display of state power.12 Courtesans could also be asked to entertain foreign delegations or serve at state banquets. Flourishing in tandem with official courtesans were private courtesans (siji), usually associated with an independent establishment in an urban setting. Indeed, by the seventeenth century, the period in which the texts translated in this volume were writ- ten, the boundaries between official and private courtesans were blurred. Belonging to the Music Registry seemed to involve little more than special taxes and the obligation to attend certain official feasts. Unlike entertainers kept inside the confines of rich and powerful families (jiaji) as property of their master, both official Introduction xv and private courtesans had choices about their accessibility that was in varying degrees negotiable. From about the tenth century onward, the relationship between officials and courtesans was curiously both legitimized and crimi- nalized. During the Song dynasty (960– 1279), official courtesans entertained and performed at social gatherings, but officials could be demoted because of sexual liaisons with them.13 There are stories of courtesans who sacrificed themselves rather than own up to rumors of their intimate relationship with an official. Thus did the courtesan Yan Rui defend the official Tang Yuzheng: in stories that cast the famous Confucian philosopher Zhu Xi (1130– 1200) as the unforgiving and unsympathetic moralist, Yan Rui refused to implicate Tang, endured flogging, and earned the rep- utation of being a heroic “woman knight-errant” (xianü).14 At the same time, there were Song courtesans who married civil and military officials. One notable example was Liang Hongyu, who married Han Shizhong (1090– 1151) before he attained prominence as a military commander; she is remembered in miscellanies, fic- tion, and drama as the heroic woman who beat the war drum on the battlefield as the Song fought the Jurchens.15 Ming laws stipu- lated that officials who took courtesans as wives and concubines would be flogged and forced to separate from them, and strict sumptuary laws were supposed to apply to denizens of entertain- ment quarters. Yet various sources indicate that it was common practice for officials to take courtesans as concubines. Throughout the Qing there were periodic decrees prohibiting prostitution and forbidding liaisons between officials

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