Ink and Tears: Memory, Mourning, and Writing in the Yu Family Rania Huntington
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University of Hawai'i Manoa Kahualike UH Press Book Previews University of Hawai`i Press Fall 8-31-2018 Ink and Tears: Memory, Mourning, and Writing in the Yu Family Rania Huntington Follow this and additional works at: https://kahualike.manoa.hawaii.edu/uhpbr Part of the Asian History Commons, Comparative Literature Commons, and the Other Arts and Humanities Commons Recommended Citation Huntington, Rania, "Ink and Tears: Memory, Mourning, and Writing in the Yu Family" (2018). UH Press Book Previews. 14. https://kahualike.manoa.hawaii.edu/uhpbr/14 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the University of Hawai`i Press at Kahualike. It has been accepted for inclusion in UH Press Book Previews by an authorized administrator of Kahualike. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Ink and Tears MEMORY, MOURNING, and WRITING in the YU FAMILY RANIA HUNTINGTON INK AND TEARS INK AND TEARS Memory, Mourning, and Writing in the Yu Family Rania Huntington UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I PRESS HONOLULU © 2018 University of Hawai‘i Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 23 22 21 20 19 18 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Huntington, Rania, author. Title: Ink and tears : memory, mourning, and writing in the Yu family / Rania Huntington. Description: Honolulu : University of Hawai‘i Press, [2018] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018004209 | ISBN 9780824867096 (cloth : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Yu family. | Yu, Yue, 1821-1906. | Yu, Pingbo, 1900–1990. | Authors, Chinese—Biography. Classification: LCC PL2734.Z5 H86 2018 | DDC 895.18/4809—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018004209 Cover art: Feng Zikai, Plum Tree and Railings, from Yu Pingbo, Yi (repr., Hangzhou, 2004), poem 14. University of Hawai‘i Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Council on Library Resources. In memory of my father, Robert Watkinson Huntington III, 1937–2015 He took me to the library. CONTENTS Acknowledgments ix Introduction xiii Prologue: Impressions on Snow: Parents 1 1. From the Plum Raft to the Tea Fragrance Chamber: Husband and Wife 7 2. Brilliance, Fortune, and an Ailment of the Heart: Their Children 35 3. Remembering Patterned Splendor: The Grandson and His Wife 64 4. Embroidery and Ink: Granddaughters 136 5. Does Spring Remain?: Great-grandchildren 160 Epilogue: Beyond Five Generations 194 Appendix 203 Notes 211 Glossary 255 Bibliography 259 Index 269 vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This book has been a long time in the making and the debts of gratitude I have incurred have been consequently great. The Yu family— descendants Yu Changshi, Yang Jinfeng, and Yu Bingran have been incredibly gracious, welcoming me to their homes in both Tianjin and Beijing and patiently answering my questions and providing materials. Support for this research was provided by the University of Wisconsin– Madison Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education with funding from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. This support was provided through multiple different programs: a Vilas Associate Grant, the Fall Research Competition, and the Scholarly Monograph Subvention Pro- gram. This project was also supported by a Chiang Chien-kuo Scholar Grant. I have also at various times enjoyed the support of graduate research assistants: Chun-Ting Chang, Sharry Zhang, Aaron Balivet, and Yang Gu. Although not formally research assistants, Zhang Yingchun and Zhang Chong of Zhejiang University accompanied me on my first visit to important Yu family sites in Hangzhou. Tobias Zürn organized a workshop on intertextuality that provided a key transition in my vision of this project. This book was born because of two encounters with the Yu family’s legacy made possible by libraries, first a book loaned by the library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and then a book held by the Nanjing library. Others also provided invaluable assistance: the staff and resources of the Uni- versity of Wisconsin–Madison Library, including interlibrary loan; the Shang- hai library; the Beihai branch of the National Library of China; the Zhejiang library; the Tianjin library; and the Beijing University Library. Michael Sam- bar of Cricket Graphics designed the family trees. I have discussed portions of this project with audiences of colleagues at Harvard University, the Huntington (no close relation) Library and Gardens, the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Wuhan University, INALCO in Paris, the University of Strasbourg, and Columbia University. Parts of chapters 1 and 2 have previously appeared in print in the article “Memory, Mourning, and Genre in the Works of Yu Yue,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 67, no. 2 (Dec. 2007): 253– 293, and are reused here with permission of the editors. Two short pieces on ix x Acknowledgments specific topics in the Yu family’s memory work have been translated into French: “Rêves des morts: Cas tires des annals de la famille Yu de Deqing” (Dreams of the dead: Cases from the Yu family of Deqing) translated by Vincent Durand-Dastè, in Fantômes dans l’Extrême-Orient d’hier et d’aujourd’hui volume 1 (Paris: Inalco, 2017), 171–201; and “The Sentimental Education of Yu Biyun,” trans. Marie Bizais, in Éducations sentimentales: Normes et représentations des relations amoureuses et sexuelles en contextes orientaux (Strasbourg University Press, forthcoming). Three anonymous readers, Pamela Kelley, Helen Glenn Court, and the rest of the editorial staff at the University of Hawai‘i Press have helped discipline a labor of love into something I hope could have value for other readers. My Madison colleague William H. Nienhauser Jr. also made meticulous comments on the entire manuscript. Each time my work has been enriched by the insights of these colleagues and students, and always my mistakes remain my own. None of this work would have been possible without the tolerance of my immediate family—Dipesh, Bram, and Delenn—for frequent research trips and my sometimes baffling preference for the company of the dead. I finally have to express my gratitude to the subjects of the book them- selves. From the beginning to the conclusion of this project, the Yus—fathers and daughters, sons and wives, grandfathers and cousins and granddaughters- in-law—have taught me much about the human capacity to cope with loss and change, and the power of quixotic projects of memory and collection. These have not been merely academic lessons. FIGURE F.1 Map of significant places in Yu family history: key Acknowledgments xi 1. Deqing Yu family’s ancestral home, Yu Yue’s birthplace (prologue, chapter 1) 2. Linping Ancestral home of Yu Yue’s mother’s family; he moved here at age four (chapter 1) 3. Beijing Recurring destination of Yu Yue and Yu Biyun for examination attempts. The family relocates here after 1916. (chapters 1, 3, 5) 4. Bianliang Yu Yue’s place of office, yimao (1855) to his dismissal in dingsi (1857). Also the place of death of Chen Changwen in yisi (1905). (chapters 1, 5) 5. Suzhou Yu family’s residence, dingsi (1857) to gengshen (1860), then yichou (1865) to bingchen (1916) (chapters 1–5) 6. Hangzhou Yu Yue is the head of the Gujing jingshe from wuchen (1868) to wuxu (1898), and during those decades divides his time between Suzhou and Hangzhou. Site of the Yu family graves in the generation of Yu Yue and his children, as well as that of Chen Changwen and eventually the rest of her family. The ancestral home of the Yus’ in-laws the Xu clan. (chapters 1–5) 7. Shangyu The city of Shangyu and Chapu village on its outskirts were among the family’s places of refuge during the Taiping civil war from gengshen (1860) to xinyou (1861). Also the final place of office of Yao Wenyu’s father Yao Guangjin. (chapter 1) 8. Shanghai The Yus take refuge here briefly before heading north in renxu (1862), then again in xinhai (1911). Home of Western-style publishing houses with which Yu Yue is involved. (chapters 1, 5) 9. Tianjin Avoiding the Taiping civil war in the south, the Yus live here from renxu (1862) to yichou (1865). (chapter 1) 10. Hengzhou Home of Peng Jianzhen and her grandfather Peng Yulin. (chapter 3) 11. Jiaoshan Peng Yulin was stationed here at the time of Peng Jianzhen’s marriage to Yu Biyun in gengchen (1880). (chapter 3) 12. Wuchang Common midpoint of Peng Jianzhen’s journey between her marital home in Suzhou and her natal home in Hengzhou. (chapter 3) 13. Chenglingji Site where Peng Jianzhen and Yu Biyun stop together the one time they share the journey between Hengzhou and Suzhou in gengyin (1890). (chapter 3) 14. Wenzhou Place of the death of Yu Qingzeng in dingyou (1897), which she subsequently haunts. (chapter 4) 15. Dongyue village, Xi Country Site of Yu Pingbo’s exile during the Cultural Revolution, 1970 to 1972 (chapter 5) Source: This map was produced with QGIS software and a basemap from Natural Earth (www.naturalearthdata.com). INTRODUCTION A GRAVE FOR TEETH, A GRAVE FOR BOOKS When Yao Wenyu lost a tooth sometime around dingmao (1867), her family kept it. At that moment, this wife, mother, and grandmother in a prominent scholar’s family was just beginning years of relative prosperity and stability after frequent moves and separations from her husband in the first decades of their marriage (see figure I.1). Some of their wanderings had been spurred by the vicissitudes of his career, some by the Taiping civil war that wracked China in the 1850s and early 1860s. In renwu (1882), three years after her death, her widower Yu Yue (1821–1907) buried her tooth together with one he had lost the previous year, inscribing the tiny grave with a poem.