UC Berkeley GAIA Books Title Idle Talk: Gossip and Anecdote in Traditional China Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8mq6q2c0 ISBN 978-1-938169-09-0 Author Chen, Jack W Publication Date 2013-10-01 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Idle Talk New PersPectives oN chiNese culture aNd society A series sponsored by the American Council of Learned Societies and made possible through a grant from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange 1. Joan Judge and Hu Ying, eds., Beyond Exemplar Tales: Women’s Biography in Chinese History 2. David A. Palmer and Xun Liu, eds., Daoism in the Twentieth Century: Between Eternity and Modernity 3. Joshua A. Fogel, ed., The Role of Japan in Modern Chinese Art 4. Thomas S. Mullaney, James Leibold, Stéphane Gros, and Eric Vanden Bussche, eds., Critical Han Studies: The History, Representation, and Identity of China’s Majority 5. Jack W. Chen and David Schaberg, eds., Idle Talk: Gossip and Anecdote in Traditional China Idle Talk Gossip and Anecdote in Traditional China edited by Jack w. cheN aNd david schaberg Global, Area, and International Archive University of California Press berkeley los Angeles loNdoN The Global, Area, and International Archive (GAIA) is an initiative of the Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley, in partnership with the University of California Press, the California Digital Library, and international research programs across the University of California system. University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 2014 by The Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: 978-1938169-09-0 © Manufactured in the United States of America 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of aNsi/Niso z39.48–1992 (r 1997) (Permanence of Paper). To our sons: Damien Heller-Chen Milo Lei Schaberg Rafe Lei Schaberg Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 Jack W. Chen 1. word of Mouth aNd the sources of westerN haN history 17 David Schaberg 2. tales froM borderlaNd: Anecdotes iN early Medieval chiNa 38 Xiaofei Tian 3. KnowiNg MeN aNd beiNg KnowN: gossiP aNd social Networks iN the ShiShuo xinyu 55 Jack W. Chen 4. oral sources aNd writteN accouNts: authority iN taNg tales 71 Sarah M. Allen 5. i read they said he saNg what he wrote: orality, writiNg, aNd gossiP iN taNg Poetry Anecdotes 88 Graham Sanders 6. gossiP, Anecdote, aNd literary history: rePreseNtatioNs of the yuaNhe era iN taNg Anecdote collectioNs 107 Anna M. Shields 7. sheN kuo chats with Ink stoNe aNd writiNg brush 132 Ronald Egan 8. MeN, woMeN, aNd gossiP iN soNg chiNa 154 Beverly Bossler 9. glyPhoMaNtic dreaM Anecdotes 178 Richard E. Strassberg 10. the retributory Power of gossiP iN The STory of The STone 194 Dore J. Levy Postface: “believe it or Not” 217 Stephen Owen Bibliography 225 Contributors 239 Index 241 Acknowledgments Of the ten chapters included here, nine were originally presented at an international conference entitled, “Gossip, Anecdote, and Occasion in Traditional China,” held in May 2008 at UCLA. The editors would like to thank the American Council of Learned Societies and the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, which generously supported the conference and provided a publishing subvention. We would also like to thank the Center for Chinese Studies at UCLA, our home department of Asian Languages & Cultures, and the UCLA College of Letters and Science, for their additional support and encouragement. A number of papers presented at the conference could not be included in the present volume, but we are very grateful to Cheng Yu-yu, Michael Fuller, Mark Halperin, David R. Knechtges, Lee Fong-mao, Liu Yuan-ju, Andrew Miller, and Scott L. Waugh, as their participation greatly enriched both that occasion and the resulting volume. We would additionally like to single out Richard Gunde and Nathaniel K. Isaacson whose assistance made the conference possible, and Brian Bernards, Matthew Cochran, Maura Dykstra, David Hull, Tim Lee, and Hanmo Zhang, who graciously chaired the panels. The external reviewer provided insightful comments, which have strengthened the resulting volume. Finally, as with all things, we are grateful to our families for their understanding and patience. ix Introduction Jack W. Chen Let me begin with an anecdote, though one of a more modern vintage than the others discussed in this volume. On International Women’s Day (March 8) in 1935, the silent-film actress Ruan Lingyu 阮玲玉 added barbiturates to her congee, wrote two suicide notes, and then died of an overdose at the young age of twenty-four.1 The first note, which bore no particular addressee, blamed her estranged common-law husband Zhang Damin 張達民 for his cruelty and vindictiveness. During their time together, Zhang Damin had gambled away much of their money, and once Ruan fell in love with the Cantonese tea merchant Tang Jishan 湯季珊, Zhang demanded financial support, threatening to report Ruan for adultery. She agreed to pay him one hundred yuan a month, though this turned out not to be enough. Zhang repeatedly sought more money, threatening to go to the newspapers if Ruan did not agree to his demands. Tang Jishan opposed her continuing attempts to placate Zhang and in a fit of rage, slapped her across the face. Zhang decided to sue both Ruan and Tang in court and to slander Ruan in the tabloid newspapers. Despairing that public opinion would favor Zhang and realizing that life with Tang was also problematic, the actress decided to end her life. In one of the notes, she wrote: Alas! So what can I do? I keep thinking it over, and all I can think of is death. Alas! My death—how is it worth lamenting? Still, it’s just that I’m afraid gossip is something to be feared—gossip is something to be feared. 唉！那有甚麻法子想呢？想之又想，惟有一死了之罷。唉！我一死何足惜， 不過還是怕人言可畏，人言可畏罷了。2 And yet, while she feared the savaging of public opinion in her last days, the public would turn out in the tens of thousands at her funeral proces- sion to mourn her death. 1 2 / Introduction This tragic story is an anecdote about gossip, one that simultaneously demonstrates how gossip may become anecdote. To be sure, gossip and anecdote are not the same, though they are frequently related. While gossip is commonly defined as “idle talk,” that is, talk without productive value or factual reliability, anecdotes are usually understood as short, interesting narratives, told for amusement or to display wit. However, scholars have in recent years offered more complex definitions of both terms and set aside moralistic concerns, emphasizing how gossip and anecdote function within social communities. For example, the social psychologists Nicholas DiFonzo and Prashant Bordia describe gossip as “evaluative social talk about individuals . that arises in the context of social network formation, change, and maintenance . [and that fulfills] a variety of essential social network functions including entertainment, maintaining group cohesiveness, establishing, changing and main- taining group norms, group power structure and group membership.”3 Similarly, anecdotes, whatever their narrative interest, may also serve to bring about social cohesion. As the literary scholar Malina Stefanovska has written, “Telling anecdotes served as a means of tightening the com- munity and drawing its boundaries through the exchange of rumors and news” and through their “oral circulation, which undoubtedly preceded any written versions, delineated groups of shared interests, channels of communication, and elective affinities.”4 In this way, both gossip and anecdote are constitutive of, and constituted by, local structures of social organization and relationality—which is to say, the interpersonal net- works that manifest themselves throughout society. To return to Ruan Lingyu, this is a tale of gossip that points beyond the simple fact of gossipy scandal to the question of how tales of gossip are produced and circulated within society. Not long after her suicide, Lu Xun 魯迅 (1881–1936) would write an essay entitled, “On ‘Gossip Is Something to Be Feared’ ” 論《 人言 可 畏 》, in which he attacked the Shang- hai tabloid industry for its role in provoking Ruan’s death.5 Lu Xun, who otherwise had little good to say about gossip, makes a particularly telling point in his essay on the affair: If some malicious crone in Shanghai’s streets and alleys hears that some neighbor’s second wife has a strange man coming and going, she’ll be overjoyed to talk about it, but if it’s in regard to a wife in Gansu having an affair or whoever in Xinjiang is getting married again, then she won’t even want to hear about it. 上海的街頭巷尾的老虔婆，一知道近鄰的阿二嫂家有野男人出入，津津樂 道，但如果對她講甘肅的誰在偷漢，新疆的誰在再嫁，她就不要聽了。6 Introduction / 3 What Lu Xun perceives is that gossip and its anecdotes are always a product of particular communities, taking place only within a restricted social economy, a local network of participants, who all know (however distantly) the object of the gossip. That is, one can participate in gos- sip only if one belongs to the social network through which the gossip circulates—a tautological condition that might also be expressed by saying that gossip and the network along which it travels are mutually constitutive, that gossip in a sense creates the network along which it is circulated.