INTRODUCTION: READING AND WRITING THE COURTESAN Th e prostitute’s body is by defi nition a storied body, itself enacting and also creating narratives of pas- sion, lust and greed as it passes through the social economy.1 真是饮食男女, 人之大欲了。我何妨去考察考察, 这是嫖家的侦探学问了。2 I. Of Time and Narrative It would be hard to dispute the literary supremacy of courtesans in world literature, compared to other female fi ctional characters, even in this day and age. At the turn of the twenty-fi rst century, a general Google search for the term ‘courtesan’ yielded at least 42,200 web pages, spanning a vast cultural and temporal spectrum that included websites such as “Dating for Adults,” “Local Hotties” and so on. Th erefore I cannot claim any originality as a graduate student who found herself drawn by courtesans as subjects of representation in Ming and Qing fi ction; I soon became aware of the fact that many scholars before me had fallen victim to the charming inhabitants of the fi ctional pleasure quarters of late imperial China. Still, my desire to understand the ‘aura’ of these characters by map- ping out its genealogy and that of the discourses generated around them in late imperial Chinese vernacular fi ction immediately became a sort of imperative in my research and overrode any fears I may have had about lack of originality. So many courtesans crowd the pages of countless fi ctional works at almost any given time in Chinese liter- ary history that one would be quite tempted to simply enjoy these characters from a hedonistic perspective, one so comfortably occupied by so many authors and readers who had come before me. Yet these 1 Peter Brooks, Body Work. Objects of Desire in Modern Narrative (Harvard Uni- versity Press, 1993), 70. Brooks’ analysis helped me frame and think critically through the issue of the body and its representation in late imperial Chinese fi ction. 2 Li Boyuan, Haitian hongxueji, (Jiangsu guji chubanshe, 1997 [ca. 1899]), 79. 2 introduction heroines beg a reading that is not just narcissistic and private or, as it is oft en the case, romanticized and public; rather, they ask for one that is lucid and aimed at going against the grain of most recent attempts to freeze forever these protean characters in their mould. Th is book was consequently born from the pleasure that these women have given me as a passionate reader of late imperial Chinese literature, as well as from the critical questions they have simultane- ously posed to me as a scholar interested in literary history, narrative and gender. Its goal is to engage the multi-layered literary icon of the courtesan, in order to fl esh out a coherent narrative about prostitu- tion, desire and sexuality in late imperial fi ctional sources, with a spe- cial focus on the late Qing period and constructions of masculinity. So, who is this courtesan? Terminology is the fi rst challenge in the path to answering this question and this book accordingly begins with an exploration of the Chinese used in the original sources. In terms of the English language, ‘prostitute’ here is the more general term and refers to any woman who engages in sex work; a ‘courtesan’ is a pros- titute who associates with men of wealth and prestige, is oft en kept by one or more of these men, and is a public fi gure.3 Both terms refer to a ‘public’ fi gure, though in diff erent social contexts. Etymologically, a prostitute is somebody who stands or is set (statuta, from statuere) in public ( pro). To prostitute is to set something, oneself, perhaps, before someone else to off er it for sale.4 Visibility is then strictly connected to the social role of this category of women, be they courtesans or pros- titutes; however, as Hershatter points out, given the strong hierarchy in Chinese prostitution and in the working conditions of women who sold sexual services in a high-class brothel or in the street, hierarchy that we fi nd clearly refl ected in fi ctional sources, it is highly prob- lematic to talk about ‘prostitution’ as a unitary occupation.5 One may ask at this juncture: what is the most benefi cial angle from which to study these representations of courtesans and prostitutes? What are the forces that are involved in the creation and perpetuation of these 3 See C. Bernheimer, Figures of Ill Repute. Representing Prostitution in Nineteenth Century France (Harvard University Press, 1989), 6. 4 C. Gallagher, Nobody’s Story. Th e Vanishing Acts of Women Writers in the Mar- ketplace, 1670−1820 (University of California Press, 1995). 5 G. Hershatter, Dangerous Pleasures. Prostitution and Modernity in Twentieth Cen- tury Shanghai (University of California Press, 1997), 19..