University of South Carolina Scholar Commons Theses and Dissertations Fall 2020 Games and Play of Dream of the Red Chamber Jiayao Wang Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd Part of the Comparative Literature Commons Recommended Citation Wang, J.(2020). Games and Play of Dream of the Red Chamber. (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/6178 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you by Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. GAMES AND PLAY OF DREAM OF THE RED CHAMBER by Jiayao Wang Bachelor of Arts Beijing Language and Culture University, 2010 Master of Arts University of Colorado at Boulder, 2012 Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature College of Arts and Sciences University of South Carolina 2020 Accepted by: Michael Hill, Major Professor Jie Guo, Additional Major Professor Gregory Patterson, Committee Member I-Hsien Wu, Committee Member Cheryl L. Addy, Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School © Copyright by Jiayao Wang, 2020 All Rights Reserved ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I want to thank my advisors, Prof. Michael Hill and Prof. Jie Guo for encouraging my work on Dream of the Red Chamber in the first place, and for being always steadfast support throughout the process. They have read every manuscript copy of my work and gave me tremendous advice in writing and research. Prof. Hill was very supportive when hearing my idea of writing a dissertation on the novel Dream of the red Chamber. He kindly offered me a great independent study course on Late Imperial Chinese Literature and Culture, suggesting me to look at the novel from the perspective of printing culture and its paratextual materials. Prof. Hill guided me through every sept of the process of my graduate studies. Prof. Guo guided me to approach the literary classic beyond novelist text itself. It is from her talk that I started to read the commentaries and the paratexts of the novel and eventually focus on games of the novel as the topic of the dissertation. Prof. Guo has always been generous with her time, unreserved in sharing her scholarship, meticulous in her reading, critical in her comments and inspiring in her talk. She leads me to think of kinship between the games and the novel. Her insightful comments and fresh perspectives always motivate me to go further and deeper in my work. I could not imagine finishing my dissertation without her being as my reader, guide, advisor and mentor. They both have set up superb examples, as rigorous scholars and supportive mentors. I benefitted greatly from the graduate seminar and independent studies with Prof. Gregory Patterson. His classes imparted interesting materials and fresh in Chinese iii studies. His erudition and meticulous reading are always inspirational and admirable. He questions me to think of the affiliation between the theme of the novel and the fundamental characteristics of games. I am also very fortunate to have Prof. Wu I-Hsien as a guide in my dissertation committee. She not only shared her enthusiasm for the novel with me but also gave me much-needed support and incisive comments in different stages of my dissertation. Prof. Wu suggested reading on the stone phenomenon in the late Qing and think of the connection between the literati leisure culture and the games. This dissertation owes a great deal to a number of scholars and mentors who did not hesitate to share their scholarship, insights and suggestions at various stages of my academic study. I am profoundly grateful to Professors David Ferris, Christopher Braider, Paul Kroll, Antje Richter, Michael House, Krista Van Fleit, Liu Jiang, and Michael Gavin. I also own greatly from the support of my friends and schoolmates at University of South Carolina. I cannot imagine finishing my graduate studies without their friendship and accompany. The list could not be comprehensive, but I would like to thank Gao Gengsong, Shen Xianmin, Cheng Wei, Zhang Jingsheng, Jin Xiang, Hu Wei, Yang Yiran, Hu Tingting, Chen Shuying, Qi Rui, Huang Yuan, and Zhang Pei for their warm friendship. I also received encouragement from other brilliant scholars in the field, despite their distance from me. Special thanks go to Shao Wenyuan for her warm encouragement in my solitary writing during the summer break in 2019 and her scholarly interest in my work. My archival research was generously supported by the Walker institute as well as the Carroll T. and Edward B. Cantey, Jr. Fellowship in Liberal Arts from the iv Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures at University of South Carolina. Most of the materials I used for this study were available to me at the National Library of China, Beijing University Library and Beijing Normal University Library. My thanks go to the helpful staffs there. I would like to express my gratitude to Fan Tianyi, Song Yuchen, and Zhan Xin for their friendship, help and great sense of humor during my study at in Beijing, This work could not have been possible without the unconditional love of my family. My parents always stand by me during the long journey of my Ph.D studies. I dedicate this dissertation to my parents, my brother, my brother-in-law and my niece. v ABSTRACT My dissertation examines the games derived from Cao Xueqin’s novel Dream of The Red Chamber during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (1880s-1920s) through its various literary and textual representations. In brief, the games create a sense of otherworldliness for players to imagine their mode of being in a space that is set apart from the daily grinds of the historical transition. Dramatic and literary sources have been a constant motif or theme for traditional games in China. However, it was after the publication of Dream of Red Chamber that the characters, the themes and motifs of the novel became a prominent element for various kinds of games in their visual design and game rules. The games became both an object for play and the medium through which the elite readers’ remarks and taste were effected. In this way, the games became an alternative medium for the reproduction of literati culture itself. My analysis concentrates on the rules and play of the games. Some of the game texts stand on the boundary between games (for play) and texts (for reading): on the one hand, it provided an interactive and communicative space for leisurely entertainment in social gatherings; on the other hand, some of the game rules were not practical to serve as instruction for social play and was emblematic display of elite readers’ own readerly pleasure in inserting fiction comments in the absurd context of game rules. I argue that the preference of the elite readers brought to the composition of games an increasingly literary emphasis intended more for the reader than for the player. The main body of this dissertation is divided into four chapters. Chapter two looks at a verbal game and traces the game rules to the banter and daily conversation in novel and the vi game texts in the encyclopedia books that were widely circulating in the market of the time. Chapter three looks at the connoisseurship object of seal carving and seal albums not only as a writing medium that carries and reproduces the content of the verbal game, but also as an “small item ” for play or amusement (yawn xiaopin 雅玩小品) for its own sake. Chapter four analyzes the rules of drinking game and the internal structures of divinatory practices in a larger social and cultural dimension. I explore the interrelationship between games and divination, and use of games as a writing technique of prophecies in the novel and in an imitation work of the novel. The last chapter traces the card games back to the interplay between personhood evaluation and appreciation (pinzao renwu 品藻人物) and the printed ephemerals of playing cards since the Ming. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................... iii Abstract ................................................................................................................................... vi List of Tables .......................................................................................................................... ix List of Figures .......................................................................................................................... x Chapter 1: Introduction ........................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 2 Verbal Games: Interplay, Media and Print ......................................................... 14 Chapter 3: The Story of The Stone: Seal Carving and Its Replications in Modern China ............................................................... 66 Chapter 4: Drinking Games: Divination, Prophecy and Imitation ..................................................................................................... 114 Chapter 5: Card Games: Communities of Taste ................................................................ 162 Chapter 6: Conclusion ......................................................................................................... 200 References ...........................................................................................................................