The Case of Wang Wei (Ca

_full_journalsubtitle: International Journal of Chinese Studies/Revue Internationale de Sinologie _full_abbrevjournaltitle: TPAO _full_ppubnumber: ISSN 0082-5433 (print version) _full_epubnumber: ISSN 1568-5322 (online version) _full_issue: 5-6_full_issuetitle: 0 _full_alt_author_running_head (neem stramien J2 voor dit article en vul alleen 0 in hierna): Sufeng Xu _full_alt_articletitle_deel (kopregel rechts, hier invullen): The Courtesan as Famous Scholar _full_is_advance_article: 0 _full_article_language: en indien anders: engelse articletitle: 0 _full_alt_articletitle_toc: 0 T’OUNG PAO The Courtesan as Famous Scholar T’oung Pao 105 (2019) 587-630 www.brill.com/tpao 587 The Courtesan as Famous Scholar: The Case of Wang Wei (ca. 1598-ca. 1647) Sufeng Xu University of Ottawa Recent scholarship has paid special attention to late Ming courtesans as a social and cultural phenomenon. Scholars have rediscovered the many roles that courtesans played and recognized their significance in the creation of a unique cultural atmosphere in the late Ming literati world.1 However, there has been a tendency to situate the flourishing of late Ming courtesan culture within the mainstream Confucian tradition, assuming that “the late Ming courtesan” continued to be “integral to the operation of the civil-service examination, the process that re- produced the empire’s political and cultural elites,” as was the case in earlier dynasties, such as the Tang.2 This assumption has suggested a division between the world of the Chinese courtesan whose primary clientele continued to be constituted by scholar-officials until the eighteenth century and that of her Japanese counterpart whose rise in the mid- seventeenth century was due to the decline of elitist samurai- 1) For important studies on late Ming high courtesan culture, see Kang-i Sun Chang, The Late Ming Poet Ch’en Tzu-lung: Crises of Love and Loyalism (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1991); Dorothy Ko, Teachers of the Inner Chambers: Women and Culture in Seventeenth-Cen- tury China (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1995), chapter 7; and Susan Mann, Precious Re- cords: Women in China’s Long Eighteenth Century (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1997), chapter 5. See also Paul Ropp, “Ambiguous Images of Courtesan Culture in Late Imperial China”; Wai-yee Li, “The Late Ming Courtesan: Invention of a Culture Ideal”; and Dorothy Ko, “The Written Word and the Bound Foot: A History of the Courtesan’s Aura,” in Writing Wom- en in Late Imperial China, ed. Ellen Widmer and Kang-i Sun Chang (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1997), 17-45, 46-73, and 74-100, respectively. For a recent case study of the celebrated Xue Susu 薛素素 (1568-?), see Daria Berg, Women Writers and the Literary World in Early Modern China (1580-1700) (London: Routledge, 2013), chapter 3. 2) Ko, “The Written Word,” 82-83. ©T’oung Koninklijke Pao 105 Brill (2019) NV, Leiden, 587-630 2019 DOI: 10.1163/15685322-10556P03 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 07:55:34PM via free access 588 Sufeng Xu bureaucrats.3 In particular, current research has centered on several famous late Ming courtesans such as Liu Rushi 柳如是 (1618-1664) and her love relationships with leading loyalist scholar-officials Chen Zilong 陳子龍 (1608-1647) and Qian Qianyi 錢謙益 (1582-1664) during the Ming-Qing transition. Through the study of figures like Liu, scholars have amply demonstrated the strong identification between loyalist scholar-officials and the elite courtesans they extolled during the dynastic transition. However, given the complexity of late Ming courtesan and literati culture, there are areas where further investigations can be con- ducted, especially when we take into account the fact that loyalist courtesans like Liu spent a significant portion of their adult lives under the Qing and are classified in Hu Wenkai’s 胡文楷 catalogue of Chinese women’s writings as Qing dynasty women.4 Moving beyond “love and loyalism,” a prominent theme that has dominated recent scholarship on late Ming courtesan culture, I attempt to show the complexity of this culture by focusing on the nonconformist Wang Wei 王微 (ca. 1598-ca. 1647, zi Xiuwei 修微), one of the most distinguished courtesan poets of the Ming dynasty.5 Like Liu Rushi, Wang Wei has also been considered a loyalist courtesan in recent scholarship due to her anti-Manchu sentiments during the dynastic transition.6 However, unlike Liu who lived in the Qing for most of her adult life, Wang Wei died three years after the fall of the Ming. It is important to note that she had been the concubine of the Donglin scholar-official Xu Yuqing 許譽卿 (1586-1662, zi Xiacheng 霞城) for over twenty years at the time of the transition.7 Moreover, as a young courtesan in her early and mid-twenties around the early 1620s, Wang Wei was an active member of the renowned literatus-merchant Wang Ruqian’s 汪汝謙 (1577-1655, zi Ranming 然明) Unmoored Garden (Buxiyuan 不繫園), a mixed-gender poetry club on a boat in Hangzhou, whose members’ ac- 3) Ko, Teachers, 254-55. 4) See the entries on Liu, Gu Mei 顧媚, and Dong Bai 董白, in Hu Wenkai, Lidai funü zhuzuo kao 歷代婦女著作考 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1985), 430-34, 805, and 688, respectively. 5) Wang Wei’s dates are suggested by Ma Zuxi 馬祖熙, “Nü ciren Wang Wei jiqi Qishan cao ci” 女詞人王微及其期山草詞, Cixue 詞學 14 (2003): 220-34. 6) Ko, Teachers, 348, n.92. See also the entry on Wang Wei in Women Writers of Traditional China: An Anthology of Poetry and Criticism, ed. Kang-i Sun Chang and Haun Saussy (Stan- ford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1999), 320. 7) On the Donglin party, see John W. Dardess, Blood and History in China: The Donglin Fac- tion and Its Repression, 1620-1627 (Honolulu: Univ. of Hawai’i Press, 2002). T’oung Pao 105 (2019) 587-630 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 07:55:34PM via free access The Courtesan as Famous Scholar 589 tivities and publications seemed to cut across not only gender, but also class and dynastic lines.8 Styling herself Caoyi daoren 草衣道人 (Person of the Dao in Straw Garments), Wang Wei fashioned herself into the sort of paradoxical icon that was typical of the late Ming—she was at once a disengaged recluse capable of standing aloof from the world and a cultured person highly connected with friends and community. Was there a connection between nonconformism and loyalism during the Ming-Qing transition? If so, what was this connection and how did it take shape? Through an examination of Wang Wei’s courtesan career, her friend- ship networks in the Unmoored Garden, and her adoption of multiple identities such as xianren 閒人 (person of leisure), daoren 道人 (person of the Dao), and shiren 詩人 (poet), this article seeks to illustrate what I believe is an important explanation for the flourishing of late Ming courtesan and literati culture. I argue that the rising prominence of learned and literary courtesans was strongly connected to a new social formation of unconventional literati, the so-called men of the moun- tains (shanren 山人), a general appellation for literati who avoided office.9 Among them, Wang Wei’s intimate friend Chen Jiru 陳繼儒 (1558-1639, hao Meigong 眉公 and Migong 麋公) was the most prominent.10 These nonofficial urban elites of the prosperous Jiangnan 8) The club was so named after a painted boat Buxiyuan (built in 1623) where many literati gatherings took place. For general membership guidelines of the Buxiyuan, see Huang Ruheng 黃汝亨 (1558-1626), “Buxiyuan yue” 不繫園約, in Congshu jicheng xubian 叢書集成續編, jibu 集部, vol. 122 (Shanghai: Shanghai shudian, 1994), 954-55. For a description and discussion of the club, see Sufeng Xu, “Lotus Flowers Rising from the Dark Mud: Late Ming Courtesans and Their Poetry” (Ph.D. diss., McGill Univ., 2007), chapter 1, 86-95. 9) For studies of late Ming shanren, see Xie Xingyao 謝興堯, “Tan Mingji shanren” 談明季山人, Gujin 古今 15 (1943), in Kanyin zhai suibi 堪隱齋隨筆 (Shenyang: Liaoning jiaoyu chubanshe, 1995), 238-42; Suzuki Tadashi 鈴木正, “Mindai sanjin kō” 明代山人考, in Shimizu Hakushi tsuitō kinen Mindaishi ronsō 清水博士追悼記念明代史論叢, ed. Shimizu Hakushi Tsuitō Kinen Mindaishi Ronsō Hensaniinkai 清水博士追悼記念明代史論叢編纂委員會 (To- kyo: Daian, 1962), 357-88. Willard J. Peterson has noted that shanren refers to hermits, but in reality, these people “often sought to have contact with society” on their own terms. Peter- son, Bitter Gourd: Fang I-chih and the Impetus for Intellectual Change (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1979), 3. For a recent discussion of the late Ming shanren, see Xu, “Lotus Flowers,” chapter 1, 61-73. 10) On Chen Jiru and his publishing activities, see Yasushi Oki 大木康, “Sanjin Chin Keiju to sono shuppan katsudō” 山人陳繼儒とその出版活動, in Yamane Yukio kyōju taikyū kinen mindaishi ronsō 山根幸夫教授退休記念明代史論叢, ed. Yamane Yukio 山根幸夫 and Okuzaki Hiroshi 奥崎裕司 (Tokyo: Kyūko Shoin, 1990), 1230-51. T’oung Pao 105 (2019) 587-630 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 07:55:34PM via free access 590 Sufeng Xu region fashioned themselves as retired literati, devoting themselves to art, recreation, and self-invention, instead of government service.11 In constructing an “artistic and hedonistic counterculture,”12 they encour- aged the involvement of both courtesans and literary women of the gen- try class. I contend that scholar-bureaucrats of the late Ming were not the vital force behind the striking visibility and respectability of courtesans as is often assumed if we trace the development of courtesan culture back to the pre-conquest and even earlier periods of the late Ming. I present Wang Wei as representative of the courtesans who pursued an unconventional lifestyle typical of the shanren literati, a lifestyle characterized by nonconformity and cultural sophistication. This read- ing also reflects the judgment of Wang Wei’s own contemporaries.

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