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The Deer and the Cauldron-Two Chapters from a Novel by Louis Cha Tra Nslated Byjoh N Minfo Rd

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The Deer and the Cauldron-Two Chapters from a Novel by Louis Cha Tra Nslated Byjoh N Minfo Rd East Asian History NUMBER 5 . JUNE 1993 THE CONTINUATION OF Papers on Far Eastern History Institute of Advanced Studies Australian National University Editor Geremie Barme Assistant Editor Helen Lo Editorial Board John Clark Igor de Rachewiltz Mark Elvin (Convenor) Helen Hardacre John Fincher Andrew Fraser Colin Jeffcott W.] .F. Jenner Lo Hui-min Gavan McCormack David Marr Tessa Morris-Suzuki Michael Underdown Business Manager Marion Weeks Production Oanh Collins & Samson Rivers Design Maureen MacKenzie, Em Squared Typographic Design Printed by Goanna Print, Fyshwick, ACT This is the fifth issue of Ea st Asian History in the series previously entitled Papers on Fa r Ea stern History. The journal is published twice a year. Contributions to The Editor, EastAs ian History Division of Pacific & Asian History, Research School of Pacific & Asian Studies Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200, Australia Phone +61 6 249 3140 Fax +61 6 249 5525 Subscription Enquiries Subscription Manager, Ea st Asian History, at the above address Annual Subscription Australia A$45 Overseas US$45 (for two issues) iii CONTENTS 1 The Deer and the Cauldron-Two Chapters from a Novel by Louis Cha Tra nslated byJoh n Minfo rd 101 Selling Smiles in Canton: Prostitution in the Early Republic VirgilKit- yiu Ho 133 The Formation of the Guomindang Youth Corps: an Analysis of its Original Objectives Huang Jianli 149 Swan Songs: Traditional Musicians in Contemporary China -Observations from a Film Miriam Lang iv Cover calligraphy Yan Zhenqing Mll�@n, Tang calligrapher and statesman Cover photograph Sing-song girls of Hangchou (from Grace Thompson Seton, Ch ineseLanterns [New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1924]) THE DEER AND THE CAULDRON -the adventures of a Chinese trickster Two chaptersfrom a novel byLouis Cha • translated byjohn Minford 1RANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION In the Song dynasty there lived a poetcalled Liu Yong � jJ<;and in his time there • I use this name throughout for the writer was a popular saying-'Wherever there is a well of water, you will always find Zha Liangyong � �., whose most widely­ known Chinese pen-name,JinYong�., is people.who can chant the poems of Liu Yong.' Today we can say likewise: formed by splitting the last character in his wherever there are Chinese people, wherever there is a Chinatown, you will name into its component parts. Louis Cha always find the novels of Louis Cha.l has always been his name for use in a non­ Chinese context, and it therefore seems Walk into a bookshop in Hong Kong, Taipei, Singapore or stop at a appropriate to use it when introducing his bookstall in Peking, Shanghai, Canton or any Chinese city and make a note work to a Western reader. of what the really engrossed browsers are reading-the chances are it will 1 These are the words with which the Hong Kong criticLin Yiliang **0.7!i(better known be one of Louis Cha's novels. Stroll through the stacks of a Chinese studies as Song Qi ;�mt. or Stephen C. Soong) library in a Western university and see which shelves show most signs of begins an interview with Louis Cha con­ being used, which books are most higgledy-piggledy, thumb-marked, ducted on 22 August 1969. SeeZbuzi baijia kanfin Yang: 3 �T 8*:1- �. : :::. missing, in a word, read: it will bethe MartialArts fiction2 section, and within (Taipei, 1987), pp.33-54. Stephen Soong's that section the shelves devoted to Louis Cha's work. It is not just the young various articles on Cha are among the best­ and the middle-brow readers who are addicted. I have encountered over the written pieces to be found in the many years the most amazing variety of Cha-aficionados: elderly professors of booksproduced by the prolificJinxw! �!¥ Chinese archaeology and linguistics, the leading critic and collector of industry. Soong is from a prominent Wuxing (Zhejiang) family (his grandfather was a contemporary Chinese art, Johnson Chang ��t C"I graduated from the prosperous silk merchant, and his father, university of Louis Cha's novels"), modernist poets writing in Chinese, who T. F. Soong, or SongChunfang* Wtti, having for the most partdo not deign to read plain old-fashioned Chinese prose, but passed the last xiucaiexamination when he find Cha's work addictive.3 was thirteen, was educated at St John's and in Geneva and Paris, and became professor How can this phenomenon be explained? Stephen Soong offers three of drama at Peking University; he was possible reasons for Cha's popularity. The firstis the way his novels recreate somewhat unkindly immortalised in lOVER 1 2 LOUIS CHA /Somerset Maugham's sketch "A student of the quintessential Chinese spirit or "world," a mixture of elements taken from the drama"). Soong, who is perhaps best Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. The second is his recurring concern known as a scholar of The storyof the stone, for traditional Chinese ethical values-loyalty, piety, humanity, honour. The brings to hiscritiques of Cha's work not only a trained critical eye and a wide reading of third is his fluent prose style. This, says Soong, preserves the essential beauty literature, Chinese and Westem, but also an of Chinese prose, it is timelessly Chinese, it has not beencorroded by the un­ extensive experienceof the Hong Kong film Chinese Western sentence structures that have so overwhelmed many industry and literary scene. Chinese writers of this century.4 2 This is an woefully inadequate English term, but to date I have beenunable to find The popularity of the Martial Arts genre earlier in this century has been anything better as an equivalent for wuxia explained by Uu Ts'un-yan :t9J!t¥t in the following terms: "Such stories xiaoshuojil;�+�. I can't say I prefer the aroused an extraordinary enthusiasm among readers at this time, when the a1temativesoff ered: Storiesabout Swordsmen poor and down-trodden all over China were struggling for survival amidst (c. T. Hsia), Chivalric Fiction Qames Liu), Stories of Chivalry (Liu TS'un-yan), Novels the debris of civil war."5 C. T. Hsia !il�l�has his own explanation, referring of MartialChivalry, or Novels of Fantasy and this time to the period after the Second World War: "Probably, in their MartialArts Adventure (Chard). Theproblem impotence to relieve the suffering of their compatriots under Communist with 'MartialArts is that it leavesuntranslated ' rule, these readers have turned to a simpler world of fantasy where the the xia, and instead substitutes shu ii. In certainimportant senses (es peciallyfor Deer) champions of justice have never failed to punish the oppressors.,,6 'picaresque romance' is close, but for the But this more recent popularity has not been restricted to the Chinese majority of novels produced within the diaspora. During the past decade, since Cha's books have become available genre it is misleading. in Mainland China, they have been enormously popular there as well. While 3 I will not attempt to deal here with the some critics welcome the arrival of a new genre, others bemoan it as countless adaptations of Cha's works as plays, films and 1V series. This merits a "escapist. "7 There is here some of the old Chinese attitude that the reading study of its own. of novels of any kind is something to be mildly ashamed of, and the taking 4 Soong, Interview, p.4S. Nor, one might of pleasure in it a symptom of some individual or social malaise. Do we in add, has Cha's prose been corrupted by the fact need any of these SOCiological explanations? Is not the pleasure the barbarism of so much post-I949 Mainland prose. I can think of no finer example of novels give itself a sufficient raisond' etm ? The West is scarcely any better modem Chinese prose than the short off. "Is it fear of fictional artificiality or a puritanical distrust of pure pleasure postscript to Liancheng jue, dated March which has led to an increasing relegation to the status of 'popular' and, by 1977, in which eha tells the story of his old implication, 'inferior' literature of a genre which has myth and legend as its family servant's life, which inspired the , writing of the novel. It is simple, unaffectedly ancestors? ,8 "The modem world's dismissal of adventure as an entertaining elegant, understated and moving. but minor experience is unprecedented. Few cultures have been so willing 5 Liu Ts'un-yan, ed., Chinese middlebrow to tempt the gods. That we should do so says a great deal about the arrogance fiction (Hong Kong, 1984), Introduction, of our cultural values."9 p.32. 6 C. T. Hsia, The classicChinesenovel(New There has been, it is true, throughout the centuries an abiding Chinese York, 1968), p.30. Hsia refers to eha as the fascination with the figure of the xia, which was so well described by James "reigning practitioner of the genre," and Uu r��� in his classic work The Ch ineseKnight-Erra nt: "Historically, comments (n.49): "Manyreaders of cultivated knight-errantry is a manifestation of the spirit of revolt and nonconformity taste compare him seriously to Alexandre Dumas, pew: in traditional Chinese society, sometimes lying underground and sometimes 7 "Louis eha has created a mythological erupting to the surface. Its ideals are admirable, though these have not always world for modemman, developedfrom the been realized in practice, and may have even provided excuses for mere escapist fantasies of the Martial Arts fiction lawlessness."l0 Or, in the rather more succinct words of U Bo * B: of the '305 and '40s; in his novels he has constructed a finely crafted literary pagoda It is better to be a knight-errant than a scholar; on the foundations of the popular novel: What is the good of teaching the Classics till your hair grows white?ll Zhang Weimin �*�, "Xia yu Zhongguo wenhuade minjian jingshen"��tpillil:�:�t This general fascination with the genre of MartialArts fiction is not hard l¥:J�r.
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