1

good afternoon everyone or good morning

2

good evening depending on what time zone

3

you happen to be in

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um what's nice about these zoom events

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is that we can bring together

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a much wider audience and reach people

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from all over the world

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my name is michael berry i am the

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director of the

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center for chinese studies at ucla it's

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my great pleasure to welcome everyone

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back to

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another one of our events uh this is an

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event that

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i'm particularly excited for i as you

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can see i'm a fan i

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started reading professor hagel back in

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graduate

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school even though i'm a scholar myself

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of film and modern chinese literature

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his work on late imperial literature has

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always been very inspiring and so it's

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it's great to have him here with us

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virtually

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in just a moment my colleague winghui

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professor wu will be introducing

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professor hagel

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but i wanted to thank everyone for

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attending and supporting our events

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online

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i also want to give you a little

32

snapshot of some of the upcoming events

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this week on friday tomorrow we will be

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co-presenting or we're a co-sponsor of

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an event that the asia society is

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putting on with a film premiere

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of the film leap uh next week we will

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have another one of our center for

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chinese scholars forums which brings

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together

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faculty from disparate fields here at

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ucla to try to create a dialogue

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amongst various china scholars and

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especially in this time

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of remote teaching and learning i think

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it's really important we build community

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so i hope those of you

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of course within ucla but also outside

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join us for that event to learn more

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about

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current research being done on campus

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related to china at ucla

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moving forward which also with a heavy

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heart that i

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mentioned an event we're holding on

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april 8 which is

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memorial to our dear esteemed colleague

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professor james tong who passed away

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last year

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and we're going to be having a virtual

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memorial for professor tong

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and i also want to extend an invitation

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to those of you out there

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uh colleagues at ucla friends of

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professor tong if you

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uh would like to speak at that event

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please do contact me or contact esther

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joe

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our assistant director and we look

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forward to seeing many of you

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in what we hope will be a warm

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celebration of his legacy here at ucla

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and without further ado i'm going to

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turn the microphone over to my colleague

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who is a specialist in late imperial

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chinese literature

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and theater she is completing a book

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manuscript tentatively entitled virtuoso

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performance on the page

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reading drama in 17th century china and

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she will have the honor of introducing

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our speaker professor wool

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thank you michael um good afternoon

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everyone my name is inhue

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i'm an assistant professor of chinese at

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ucla and it's my great pleasure

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to welcome everyone to today's event

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which will feature professor robert

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hagel from washington university in

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saint louis

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first i will briefly introduce our

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speaker today professor robert hagel

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is lisa lord dickman professor

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emeritus of comparative literature and

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professor emeritus of chinese at

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washington university in san luis

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where he had a long and fruitful career

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of over 40 years

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he's a specialist in late imperial

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chinese literature from 1500

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to 1900 is the author co-editor and

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translator of many books

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to name just a few most influential ones

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those

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include the novel in 17th century china

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reading illustrated fiction in late

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imperial china writing and law in late

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imperial china

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in recent years i've learned that

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professor hego has been collaborating

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with his former

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graduate students in several translation

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projects

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those include a collection of short

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stories

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idol talk under the bing arbor that came

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out in 2017

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and two books that came out last year

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and

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one is lilu's book bimuyu and the other

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is a 17th century novel

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chiopu known as further adventures on

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the journey to the west

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i should also mention that professor

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hegel is one of the most dedicated

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teachers and mentors i have known

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who continued to support his students

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long after their graduation

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i'm privileged to be one of his students

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when i asked him to virtually join a

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class i'm teaching this quarter

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he graciously agreed so the talk today

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is held

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in conjunction with my class called the

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traditional chinese narrative and

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fiction

137

which covers chinese narrative

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conventions from the tongue to the chin

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peers

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he's going to introduce idol talk under

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the bing arbor

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and share some of his most recent

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thoughts on how narrative conventions

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established by the time of the late meme

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were

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contested and reinvented and how social

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values were parodied and debunked

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although the content of his talk is

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tailored to a class

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i should say that it will be inspiring

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to not only students but any audience

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who are interested in late imperial

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so during the talk we welcome you to

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submit your questions in the q and a

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panel anytime

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and then at the end of the talk i will

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read out the questions and let professor

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higo answer them now let me hand it over

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to professor higgo he'll begin his talk

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in just a few seconds

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thank you so much well i'm sure it's an

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honor to join your class professor barry

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it's an honor to have been

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invited to speak for the center for

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chinese studies and esther joe thank you

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for all your help and reassurance

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because

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as a relative newcomer to zoom and

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digital

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uh correspondence this is uh not

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familiar territory for me so

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if i if i uh somehow make a mistake here

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please forgive me but i wanted to talk

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about this

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collection of short stories that i um

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had of good fortune to edit

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along with the translations by many of

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my former students and present students

180

at the time

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idle talk under the bean arbor or

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dopancynhua

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is a collection of 12 stories printed

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about 1660 in a style now generally

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considered vernacular chinese

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that is it uses a classical and

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colloquial words an expression

188

based on the grammar and syntax of the

189

spoken language

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vernacular story first appeared in the

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middle of the 16th century

192

both the form and the style of writing

193

were perfected by fangmanglung

194

in the 1620s with his three great

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collections of 40 stories each

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but those of you who are in ways class

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already know this

198

and you already know that what makes

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most of these stories so interesting is

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that they exhibit what's been called a

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kind of

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formal realism that is the stories

203

contain details about the settings of

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actions the things that their characters

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do

206

and their characters motivations

207

these details make the story seem

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convincing as if they were real

209

events

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[Music]

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hold on just a second here

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there we go

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uh even though the details are cleverly

214

and quite obviously manipulated to make

215

the stories amusing

216

and often edifying as well because they

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became standard practices for writing

218

in the vernacular huaban form these can

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be called

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conventions and that's what i want to

221

talk about today feng manglung surveyed

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earlier collections of stories written

223

in tur's classical literary style

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looking for particularly interesting

225

tales

226

he and his collaborators amplified those

227

old stories

228

with new subplots and lots more details

229

of everyday life

230

uh by doing so he made this literary

231

form a great success among readers at

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the end of the ming empire

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and through the qing period as well

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their earlier uses of

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their uses of earlier narratives as

236

source material became the conventions

237

of writing for

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mangalong and his contemporary ling chu

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but idle talk under the bean arbor is

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unconventional

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in many ways it's comprised of twelve

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stories each presented as if the reader

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were watching and listening to an oral

244

presentation

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the conventional narrator in feng

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wong-woo short stories ostensibly

247

pretends to be a professional

248

storyteller

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instead in idle talk these raconteurs

250

are all

251

amateurs and they vary in their ability

252

to tell a good story

253

i suspect that aina the the author of

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these tales deliberately made them so

255

interestingly the audiences in idle talk

256

are personified as common villagers

257

they're not ignorant or naive but

258

they're not educated either

259

whether or not these audience members

260

are able to read printed fiction

261

they are all familiar with storytelling

262

the audience members know

263

what constitutes a good story they have

264

high expectations of the teller

265

and his delivery consequently these

266

listeners actively criticize or praise

267

each teller for his tale

268

for the most part they are pleased by

269

stories that sound convincing

270

stories that they can relate to

271

emotionally

272

even to the even when the content of the

273

tales is brutal

274

or gruesome as some of them are

275

feng mongong stories and those of his

276

contemporary author lingmong chu

277

were all based on earlier narratives

278

they built on and expanded what other

279

writers had written before

280

by contrast these idle talk stories are

281

deliberately and regularly

282

disrespectful of their sources when

283

based on earlier narratives

284

aina turns his source stories on their

285

heads

286

idle talk tales and challenge

287

the veracity and validity of

288

conventional stories

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and the values they ostensibly embody

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there

291

i'd get to other elements uh that set

292

this collection apart from its

293

predecessors in a few minutes

294

but first i want to talk a little bit

295

about the book as a material object

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and the processes involved in its

297

production

298

as you will see i believe that the

299

physical form of the collection

300

suggests something of its overall

301

significance

302

this is the fung man or the style or the

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title sheet

304

it functions like the title page in

305

modern books to introduce the title the

306

author

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and the printer sometimes fung men carry

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a few lines of advertisement although

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this one is playing by convent

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by comparison which was a fashion of

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early chain printers

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these fung men were printed on thin

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paper just as the other sheets

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in the book the process of making copies

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of a book in 17th century china

316

could be carried out by very few

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craftspeople in any one project

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they could be either men or women first

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a scribe usually professional would

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write out on thin

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paper the entire text in standard form

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characters

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of uniform size each page had the same

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number of lines and each line

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had the same number of characters red

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top to bottom

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right to left as in all other texts

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then each sheet would be deliberately

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pasted down on

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printing boards on which the spaces

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around the lines of the characters

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would be carefully carved out by very

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careful

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process leaving the characters

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on the board in reverse the board would

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be linked

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at be inked i'm sorry a sheet of thin

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paper would

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be laid down upon it patted uniformly

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all over

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and then you could pull off a printed

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sheet

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up to a thousand or more copies could be

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pulled pulled from a single block

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although it appears usually a print run

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for fiction was far

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fewer than that this is from china's

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first novel the

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popular romance on the chronicles of the

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three kingdoms sanger tungsuyani

351

printed in 1522. you'll notice

352

that the center column here sort of

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disappears

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that's because when this book was first

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printed uh

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the pages were folded so that the

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printed sides faced each other

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and the uh middle of the page was glued

359

to the spine and that's what

360

made the book

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excuse me by the late ming however

362

around 1600 it was much more common

363

to have the printed sides folded out

364

this left the wide

365

outside margins of the pages to be sewn

366

together to form

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the spine of the book in that form and

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this way the center column with the

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block

370

number becomes the page number

371

these printed pages were sewn into

372

fascicles

373

which might be protected in pasteboard

374

covers

375

but it appears that most books were not

376

sold in covers

377

here's an example of a recent edition of

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illustrations reprinted from a 17th

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century imprint of

380

auschwitz a novel known in english

381

as the water margin or outlaws of the

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marsh

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excuse me note that the image is

384

constituted

385

by half on each of the two adjoining

386

sides of two different sheets of paper

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so far the printing of the idle talk was

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completely conventional following the

389

standards i've just shown you here

390

now most books printed in the 17th

391

century were illustrated

392

the process of producing illustrations

393

was the same as that for texts

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an artist would draw an image on thin

395

paper that was then pasted face down on

396

a board

397

all the blank spaces carved out to ready

398

the board for printing

399

but while the text became standardized

400

in style and form

401

of written characters the image and

402

images in printed books might reveal

403

a great range of artistic

404

experimentation

405

the han hilo imprint of idle talk under

406

the bean arbor the earliest

407

extant edition is one of the most

408

noteworthy in this regard its images

409

seem to have been drawn and carved by

410

the same artist

411

who produced images for several other

412

books of fiction

413

around the same time this person

414

presumably male

415

produced unusually imaginative symbolic

416

representations

417

of events characters and situations in

418

which the fiction

419

in the fiction being illustrated and

420

this he was quite

421

unconventional so here's the

422

first idle talk illustration with

423

ambiguous

424

hints at the content of the book the

425

bean vines

426

growing on an arbor presumably refer to

427

the imagined setting for the tales to be

428

told

429

as in the title of the book but the

430

poetic couplet

431

mentions a herd of horses which must

432

refer to the manchu

433

cavalry as in this translation i assume

434

that the couplet here was written by the

435

illustrator

436

as his comment upon reading the stories

437

i'll talk more about the relevance of

438

this couplet to the collection

439

in a few minutes

440

the second image of idle talk under the

441

brenar bean arbor

442

imagines the setting of the fictional

443

storytelling

444

half of the image was printed from two

445

blocks the pages then bound together to

446

make one stylistically

447

conventional picture the illustrations

448

are followed by a preface

449

the preface was ostensibly written by a

450

friend of the author

451

it praises the brilliance of the

452

author's stories and forewarns us of

453

aina's subversive uses

454

of earlier narratives it says in part

455

quote

456

he brashly appended the 21 official

457

dynastic histories

458

looking for accounts of insignificant

459

matters

460

he closely studied the 18 buddhist

461

arhat's discourses on

462

cause and effect he has hastened through

463

old legends

464

as well whether about what is wrong or

465

what is right

466

his stories instantly inspire reverence

467

among his readers interesting statement

468

then comes a forward in which the author

469

attributes his

470

inspiration to a series of poems by a

471

local poet

472

of an earlier day but no record has ever

473

been found that could identify that poet

474

apparently aina the layman wished to

475

present his

476

pic his readers with puzzles that would

477

arrest their

478

uh reading and cause them to pay close

479

attention

480

this motivation seems to lie behind the

481

contents of the stories

482

and the relationships to the

483

illustrations as well

484

the first story session is

485

is introduced by explaining the bean

486

arbor as a social gathering place

487

people can set in the shade of the bean

488

vines there to avoid the scorching

489

summer sun

490

and will enjoy a bit of breeze the

491

audience is not fixed over the course of

492

12 storytelling sessions in the

493

collection

494

people come and go and different voices

495

respond to the tales in different ways

496

and an aspect of the formal realism of

497

these stories that contrast

498

sharply from earlier short story

499

collections

500

this general setting a kind of frame

501

story for the rest of the tales

502

is itself new no earlier vernacular

503

fiction writers

504

has dramatized the telling of stories in

505

this way

506

nor had any illustrator represented the

507

reception of conventional

508

fictional tales as individuals from a

509

broad swath

510

of chinese society in form

511

the illustration for session one is

512

conventional

513

but it's the content that's

514

unconventional by representing the

515

setting in the actions in the native and

516

the narrative

517

in this illustration a small crowd

518

assembles the illustrator envisions the

519

bean arbor to be in her water

520

for a cooling breeze he portrays people

521

of all ages coming together and an older

522

man perhaps the owner of the arbor

523

sitting in the place of honor this older

524

man greets his guests and seems ready to

525

tell them a story

526

the audience and setting have been

527

established having been established

528

this first session begins with a common

529

topic

530

jealousy among women

531

this is the illustration for session one

532

the two-headed two-tailed bird

533

and it has a poetic couplet the couplet

534

reads in the west the jealousy bird has

535

one body but two heads

536

when male and female are at odds their

537

two necks

538

strangle each other please and thought

539

another version of this reference makes

540

no mention of gender differences instead

541

it tells that the same bird the chi

542

ponyo the old lady bird

543

which says something has had

544

has two independent heads while one head

545

is sleeping the other head ate a

546

pressure

547

a delicious flower when the first head

548

awoke and found it had

549

had it missed out on the flower it

550

ate a poisonous flower instead and not

551

surprisingly

552

the bird and both heads died hence the

553

image is the embodiment of jealousy

554

but the inscription specifies it as a

555

male versus

556

female the storytelling session begins

557

with a young man

558

from the audience voices a complaint

559

perhaps he's about the ages of you

560

students in a book he has been reading a

561

poem strikes him as

562

unbelievable the poem says the bite of a

563

green

564

of a green bamboo viper the stinger on

565

the rump of a bee

566

neither can be as poisonous as the heart

567

of a woman

568

can be presumably because of his

569

romantic youthfulness the young man

570

rejects the idea that women can be so

571

powerfully jealous jealous

572

a more experienced elder perhaps of my

573

age

574

explains that jealousy is a common topic

575

for gossip

576

and a common experience among married

577

couples

578

here's a new narrative technique to

579

personify an emotional response to

580

something a person has

581

read the elder then tells of a book

582

titled a mirror of jealousy which has

583

been written for male readers

584

the book explains how to avoid more

585

extreme forms of jealousy and how men

586

can help their wives

587

learn to be moderate in their demands

588

but the old man relates

589

women got hold of the book and learned

590

from it how to become

591

more shrewish in treating their husbands

592

they even demanded a sequel with further

593

instruction

594

on how to be even worse now to me this

595

anecdote seems to be

596

a wry comment on the unintended

597

consequences of

598

print in an age when literacy was

599

spreading well beyond the privileged

600

male

601

elite many male members of the educated

602

elite in late imperial china felt women

603

should not be taught to read

604

they feared that literate women might

605

upset the status quo for privileged male

606

elite i suppose aina's story

607

to attest to the growing audience of

608

women readers and it does exemplify the

609

idea promoted

610

by other fiction writers as well that

611

what people read influences how they

612

think

613

and how they act this assumption is an

614

old idea

615

after all it is implicit in the

616

traditional notion that scholars of the

617

confucian classics

618

automatically become moral exemplars

619

simply by imbibing the values and what

620

they have read

621

however the historical record does not

622

validate that assumption

623

confucian train administrators were not

624

necessarily good men

625

the story collection debunks that idea

626

as well

627

then another old man proceeds to tell of

628

the jealous woman

629

ford on a river where women have women

630

have to make themselves look ugly

631

in order to cross safely attractive

632

women are likely to be drowned on the

633

way across

634

by a vindictive woman demon this demon

635

was originally a jealous wife

636

she had been married to a foolish man

637

who was aroused by reading an ancient

638

poetic description

639

of a goddess a goddess who is

640

purportedly more beautiful than his

641

plain wife

642

worse yet he exclaims his wish to have

643

such a glorious mate

644

his jealous wife is outraged and she

645

drowns herself in chagrin

646

but she returns as a vengeful ghost

647

lying in wait to drag him into the river

648

with her

649

she succeeds and she extends her

650

vindictiveness to any other attractive

651

woman

652

who might want to cross the river a

653

second

654

main tale of this story

655

expands a convention that was developing

656

through the sixth

657

uh 17th century of combining two or even

658

three short narratives on

659

similar topics into one longer story

660

excuse me the final tale in this session

661

is an example of one upsmanship in

662

663

it kind of recounts the appearance of an

664

even more ferocious female demon

665

that can only be pacified by a shrine in

666

her honor

667

and maybe not even then the main tale

668

rewrites the legend of of uh

669

judge retweet in the seventh century bce

670

the handsome jedway was happily married

671

to a beautiful woman

672

but he was the loyal bodyguard of a

673

noble named chunger who flees for his

674

life

675

from his rival's assassins jia

676

accompanies his lord as they are

677

continuously on the run for 19 years

678

but during those decades je never

679

informs his wife of her of their

680

whereabouts in order to

681

escape detection but because he has

682

apparently just disappeared

683

jez wife thinks he must have taken up

684

with another woman

685

and a lump of jealousy grows in her

686

heart as her frustration

687

and anger build over the years

688

but in his own mind jizz tell the

689

faithful husband

690

and when his lord finally gains power

691

judged way

692

finally goes home but his wife does not

693

believe his tale of dutiful service

694

as an excuse for his absence again it's

695

another story that's not believed this

696

is the theme

697

in this collection despite his po

698

protests of fidelity the wife keeps him

699

on a leash like a dog

700

to prevent his running off again when

701

his former superior can't find jia in

702

order to reward him

703

the lord tries to force jesuit way out

704

of hiding

705

he has the forest burned down on the

706

mountain where jesuit way

707

has been living instead of fleeing the

708

flames

709

jesuit way builds another fire to ensure

710

that he and his wife

711

perish in the conflagration together

712

they die in each other's embrace later

713

a small hard object is found in their

714

burned corpses it is the stone that

715

formed from her 20 years of

716

gnawing jealousy when it is smashed

717

bits fly all across the land where they

718

can still be found

719

in jealous women everywhere now there's

720

commentary that follows

721

this session as with all the other

722

sessions in the book

723

and it notes that female jealousy and

724

male dread are only

725

natural but notes that jealousy is not

726

specific to women

727

hence the story becomes a parable on

728

self-centeredness

729

as the commentator says the conduct of

730

the petty

731

and their extreme persecution of others

732

close quote

733

thus the story is as moralistic as the

734

735

however it is a parody showing that good

736

intentions and conflicting obligations

737

may have

738

very negative outcomes and that

739

traditional behavioral

740

behavioral standards should be

741

questioned

742

structurally session number one has

743

several old men telling stories that

744

they had heard from

745

other men the men who tell the stories

746

under the bean arbor

747

simply relate what they had heard their

748

personal experience consists

749

only in encountering storytellers who

750

themselves

751

tell what they had heard this produces a

752

series of stories within stories within

753

a story

754

this is an innovation of idle talk it

755

creates a spiral of narrative

756

unreliability

757

in which the ambiguity of the sources

758

makes the validity of any one story

759

indeterminable that is in contrast to

760

fun mongolian stories and others of the

761

time

762

the truthfulness and reality really

763

reliability of these stories

764

are questioned are they real to the

765

extent that they can reveal

766

some uh truth about contemporary society

767

here the audience rejects these stories

768

as largely implausible

769

or maybe they don't want to believe them

770

these stories seem to reveal

771

men's hidden fears of their wives

772

abilities

773

and their own vulnerable their own

774

775

interestingly interestingly the tale of

776

judge

777

way assumes that no man would remain

778

faithful to his wife

779

while being away from home for 20 years

780

says something about men at the time as

781

well

782

so here is another way that the dopang

783

784

are different from fang long stories

785

they are not reliable

786

as witnesses of the standards for proper

787

behavior

788

instead of being superficial in their

789

moralization

790

as some earlier short stories seem to be

791

this session

792

reveals painful truths about some people

793

it reveals their fears and insecurity

794

their frustrations and anger and the

795

real violence hidden just below the

796

surface

797

in many conventional human interactions

798

and i might add that crime reports from

799

the ching imperial archives reveal

800

precisely the same thing

801

the harmony that ideally prevailed in

802

chinese society

803

masked the tendency toward murderous

804

violence

805

among desperate people the antecedents

806

for the prologue stories in session one

807

were folk myths about pretrus

808

treacherous river crossings the

809

conventional tale of jejutway is

810

generally a tribute to the ideal

811

faithful servant the courageous and

812

resourceful man

813

who values dutiful service to his lord

814

more than

815

family obligations it's curious that a

816

story like this should

817

persist through time the legal codes of

818

the later dynasties mandated putting

819

traditional family obligations to

820

parents

821

ahead of other duties but in the hands

822

of this

823

anonymous writer aina such faithful

824

service

825

is shown to be impractical or even

826

foolish

827

here jejutoy is ridiculed as a pawn who

828

kills his wife and himself

829

to end an intolerable situation because

830

he cannot think of any means

831

to assert his personal integrity

832

that's a troubling idea session one sets

833

the pattern for the sessions or the

834

stories that follow

835

in each some honored tradition or social

836

assumption or respected practice

837

is held up to ridicule as patrick hannon

838

noted

839

these stories strip away all of the

840

moral and moral authority

841

of received tales leaving the values

842

they represent as ambiguous at best

843

this effect of subversion of

844

conventional standards

845

although there are moments of levity in

846

some of the stories and some are

847

relatively light-hearted

848

they do get progressively bleaker as one

849

reads through the collection

850

now i want to take a quick look at the

851

two stories uh from the collection that

852

you students of

853

will usher have read and then i'll

854

return to talk about the context in

855

which the collection

856

appeared now here's the illustration

857

for session seven it's labeled a logio

858

a seashell boat this legendary

859

submersible ship shaped like a snail

860

shell

861

could travel at the bottom of the sea

862

without admitting any water

863

references to this miraculous watercraft

864

appeared about the time of the first

865

emperor

866

in the third century before the common

867

era chinchilla huang had

868

sought it out because of his fascination

869

with the supernatural

870

and of course his quest for a personal

871

immortality

872

however this reference to chinchilla and

873

the image

874

are only tangentially relevant to this

875

story

876

the link is very weak in their youth

877

the brothers boy in shuchi had lived

878

near the sea

879

as did zhangziya the chief adviser to

880

the joe kings

881

and to the duke of joe this

882

johns it is jang zaya who saves the

883

brothers from being slaughtered by king

884

uh they

885

insult him but there is no connection

886

with the fen

887

to the fantastic ship for either the

888

brothers or the gianzia the link

889

is only that they both lived on the

890

seashore

891

the ambiguity of this image in this

892

context

893

begs the question whether this

894

illustration was only meant to pique

895

reader's curiosity or maybe even to

896

highlight the impossibility of shuchi's

897

898

you know the story inverts the

899

traditional tale of the brothers

900

who chose to starve themselves to death

901

in the mountains

902

in order to maintain the lofty

903

traditional precedent for the oldest son

904

to succeed his father in noble rank

905

here they also chide the founder of the

906

new joe dynasty for failing in his

907

ritual duties

908

filial duties to bury his father with

909

the appropriate

910

ceremonies of mourning their devotion

911

was always seen

912

as meeting the ultimate test of whether

913

a person would be willing to die to

914

uphold his principles

915

in the case of boy in shuchi the

916

challenge was more extreme

917

would they maintain their loyalty to a

918

lost cause

919

and moreover to an unworthy ruler

920

in aina's story shuchi complains

921

explains his motivations for leaving

922

their mountain retreat

923

they're numerous and fairly complicated

924

this story seems to me to be cluttered

925

with details about competition for ferns

926

to eat and the vegetarian beasts of

927

playa prey

928

that live on the mountains tigers eating

929

ferns don't

930

strike me as convincing shuchi dresses

931

himself in an odd costume when he

932

deserts his brother

933

he convinces the beasts of the mountain

934

to reser

935

to reassert their bloodthirsty nature

936

and then makes plans to ingratiate

937

himself

938

to the new joe ruler but then he is

939

captured by the ghoulish remains of his

940

former rulers forces

941

what are we to make of them beside their

942

grotesque wounds

943

and their mindless craving for revenge

944

does the buddhist deity who explains the

945

appropriateness of change

946

in the political realm at the end of the

947

story seem convincing to you

948

as modern readers this is not just a

949

scary story

950

i feel that it was of personal relevance

951

to many of its intended readers

952

in 17th century china i'll get back to

953

that in a moment

954

ostensibly session 11 in death commander

955

dong

956

re-beheads his enemy is a story about

957

karma and retribution

958

in which the lustful and cruel commander

959

nan is executed

960

for his sins but this bandit leader is

961

too powerful too well protected for

962

anyone to

963

carry out this richly deserved

964

punishment it takes a dead man to do the

965

job

966

a dead good man one who did not deserve

967

to die

968

one might look at this dana mall as

969

heaven's will

970

one could also see it as fantasy as wish

971

fulfillment as well

972

final nerve impulses may cause a body to

973

move

974

soon after death but dead men not even

975

those put astride their battle horses

976

do not have the ability to swing a sword

977

much less the aim to deftly

978

lop off an enemy's head nor do horses

979

necessarily know which

980

man is his master's enemy and have the

981

ability to find ways to kill that man

982

before dropping dead

983

itself however conventional chinese

984

beliefs

985

and traditional chinese beliefs death is

986

not necessarily the end

987

common people may return as ghosts as in

988

the spectral army that confront shuchi

989

in session seven

990

but in pre-modern china the virtuous

991

could also become

992

local gods by manifesting their spirits

993

to help the living

994

the story reports that commander dong

995

did just this

996

in the period after his death so perhaps

997

the villain is killed by a vengeful god

998

rather than by a dead man as a function

999

of the moral universe

1000

rather than as personal revenge the

1001

story is ambiguous at this point

1002

and then there's the prologue story for

1003

1004

the gothic tale of a traveler who

1005

encounters a living corpse

1006

on a dark and stormy night something

1007

that

1008

could have been made in medieval europe

1009

the body seems to have been killed when

1010

his head was cut off

1011

but officials from the underworld

1012

certifies not yet fated to die

1013

and he has done nothing wrong he's an

1014

innocent victim

1015

of wanton violence consequently this

1016

hapless man is restored to life

1017

but he's still lacking ahead even so he

1018

must work to earn a living

1019

despite his condition which is a very

1020

odd dash of ghoulish humor in my opinion

1021

the headless man's experience is

1022

explained to a traveler in a story told

1023

by an old man who has lived through the

1024

period

1025

in which these stories are set it was an

1026

age of anarchy

1027

brutality lust and want and bloodshed

1028

the vision the old man presents may have

1029

been inspired

1030

by the author's personal observations

1031

assuming that he lived through the 1630s

1032

and 1640s as an adult

1033

the story portrays a totally dystopian

1034

world

1035

a world now passed in the time of the

1036

telling but alive

1037

in the memory of the teller so what was

1038

the nature of that reality

1039

we readers must ask can men live without

1040

a head

1041

can a corpse swing a sword and kill an

1042

enemy since the answer to both questions

1043

can only be negative

1044

we must question why this gruesome

1045

fantasy was written in a break with the

1046

conventions of the story form

1047

that exemplifies formal realism

1048

now to me the story brings out the

1049

helplessness and the hopelessness

1050

of those who cannot emotionally

1051

withstand the horrors of their age

1052

a tale that embodies the ongoing

1053

nightmares

1054

of post-traumatic stress disorder

1055

in the writers reality in ours there can

1056

be no

1057

extension of life for the murdered

1058

innocent no revenge for the virtuous man

1059

who falls into a villain's trap

1060

the real horrors of the story are not

1061

the bloody tales it tells

1062

but what those tales refer to

1063

the events that serve to inspire this

1064

1065

and that can be used as a standard as a

1066

standard

1067

against which to compare the veracity

1068

i can only conclude that the anonymous

1069

inaudible

1070

witnessed the senseless sufferings

1071

caused by banditry and war

1072

and the decades of anarchy as the mingy

1073

empire collapsed

1074

and before the invading manchus clamped

1075

down on all violence that they

1076

themselves did not

1077

initiate or perhaps he heard about the

1078

suffering more

1079

through the tales told by others despite

1080

the brief references to commander dong's

1081

spiritual reappearance

1082

after his death this equation of reality

1083

although passed with dystopia

1084

explodes the utopian ideals of late

1085

1086

for personal behavior and for the social

1087

harmony

1088

in general

1089

generally the subversion of ideals in

1090

this and other stories

1091

constitutes the contrariness in this

1092

1093

idle talk under the bean arbor achieves

1094

this subversion

1095

specifically through the ironic

1096

inversions of received wisdom

1097

the idea that society should ideally be

1098

organized hierarchically and that women

1099

should be passive and suburban

1100

subservient to males because of their

1101

subs

1102

supposed weaknesses is blown away by the

1103

story that shows how easily men can be

1104

put under

1105

women's control the idea that buddhist

1106

clerics should be devoted to their faith

1107

and not pursue wealth and privilege

1108

is torn apart by the stories in which

1109

the

1110

monks are only pretending to be monks

1111

really highwaymen

1112

and other stories about which in which

1113

1114

monks seem to be more concerned with

1115

accumulating money

1116

than in helping their believers reach

1117

any kind of salvation

1118

the idea that the common people are

1119

lacking in ethical standards and must be

1120

taught by

1121

not to be moral by educated men this

1122

ideal extends to the proposition

1123

that fiction is good because it teaches

1124

people

1125

proper confucian morals to women and

1126

youth

1127

this assertion appears in the prefaces

1128

to many novels and story collections

1129

as a rationale for the social valley

1130

value of history

1131

i'm sorry the social value of fiction

1132

but of course

1133

there are some very good characters in

1134

these stories

1135

who are in fact uneducated

1136

and the idea that confucian values

1137

derived from ancient texts

1138

are genuine and effective but in these

1139

1140

those supposed universal values come out

1141

as scholarly bombast

1142

and often conventional rationales for

1143

personal benefit

1144

as patrick hannon has written aina's

1145

1146

questions the very basis of belief

1147

in a morally determined universe

1148

which seems to me to strike at the very

1149

core of

1150

chinese culture traditionally

1151

to sum up some of the some of the themes

1152

in idle talk under the bean arbor

1153

there's violence and uncertainty

1154

displacement deception disillusionment

1155

paranoia

1156

and the retreat of the literati from

1157

their dominant role in society as

1158

sources of moral guidance

1159

there's unpredictability in human

1160

affairs

1161

even in the finality of death

1162

fate and personal self-interest as the

1163

causes for events in their outcomes

1164

is up for grabs which is it is it either

1165

the stories in idle talk question or

1166

subvert conventional visions of the past

1167

by rewriting earlier stories to make

1168

them more brutal

1169

less elitist less romantic more common

1170

sensible

1171

they intervene in trent in tradition by

1172

rewriting moralistic tales of legendary

1173

figures like shisher

1174

or jager toy they intervene in society

1175

by questioning concepts of loyalty as in

1176

the story of shuchi

1177

and family obligations to support a

1178

headless brother among one other things

1179

ewing both using both caricature and

1180

challenge

1181

these stories question the validity and

1182

importance

1183

of new confucian thought i haven't

1184

mentioned the 12th story but

1185

it is uh simply a lecture by a confucian

1186

scholar

1187

which is pure nonsense and

1188

is questioned for being just that

1189

by members of the audience

1190

now idle talk stories are the

1191

culmination of a century of development

1192

of the vernacular short story

1193

structural elements became conventional

1194

through their successful use

1195

and development by fangmonglong in

1196

historic collections

1197

they include stories told in prose with

1198

poem interruptions to comment on

1199

characters and events the omniscient and

1200

consistent narrative

1201

the reuse and adaptation or extension of

1202

earlier story materials

1203

with emphasis on the values of the elite

1204

these are the conventions of form

1205

in collections like collections

1206

stories are grouped with parallel or

1207

contrasting

1208

themes in pairs in groups of four or

1209

even groups of eight stories

1210

historically the vernacular story form

1211

developed from anonymous 16th century

1212

1213

compiled and printed under the auspices

1214

of a member of the ming imperial family

1215

they developed through feng lang long's

1216

development of the form and his

1217

1218

and lingmung chu's expansion of the form

1219

through greater imagination and

1220

creativity and writing of the stories

1221

but the main fall produced provoked the

1222

politically engaged fiction collection

1223

ching yajong a bell in the still of the

1224

night

1225

probably in 1641. one of its stories is

1226

on the suicide of the chunyun emperor

1227

and the fall of beijing to moms mobs of

1228

highway men

1229

one is a story about a contender for the

1230

throne a man named mongerming

1231

a third narrates the desecration of the

1232

ming tombs in 1635

1233

making these stories into a current

1234

called chersher joshua

1235

fiction on current events most of the

1236

stories in that collection are about

1237

loyal ministers

1238

as a reaction they use playful parodies

1239

and lighthearted satires of conventional

1240

values

1241

of the 1640s are marked contrast

1242

and then a juicer is much more

1243

cantankerous more biting rejections of

1244

conventions

1245

of form and content may well respond to

1246

liu's fiction

1247

there are indications that the two may

1248

have known each other

1249

there are interesting references in some

1250

of these writings

1251

to the same references that you see it

1252

appearing in

1253

aina juicers stories so there may be

1254

some connection between the two

1255

but to me the stories in

1256

idle talk under the bean arbor seem to

1257

reflect general historical factors

1258

in addition to probable personal trauma

1259

that is many intel maine intellectuals

1260

fed that felt that their world had

1261

collapsed

1262

that the end times for all culture and

1263

taste had arrived

1264

some even thought that traditional

1265

values might have been the cause for the

1266

fall of the main

1267

but manchus worked hard to become more

1268

traditional than the ming rulers

1269

had been in terms of administrative

1270

structures and standards of behavior

1271

in particularly endorsing the study of

1272

confucian classics as qualifications for

1273

administrative positions

1274

this convinced some of the han elite who

1275

swore allegiance to the new

1276

regime and took positions in the qing

1277

bureaucracy

1278

on the other hand significant numbers of

1279

ming

1280

intellectuals and other members of the

1281

elite went into retirement

1282

to symbolize their unwillingness to

1283

compromise their loyalty

1284

to the empire that failed many of these

1285

dissidents became or pretended to become

1286

buddhist monks who renounce civil

1287

society

1288

despite the buddhist inclinations

1289

suggested by his pen name

1290

our author aina whose name has to do

1291

with

1292

the cushion on which you sit for

1293

meditation our author aina did not write

1294

stories that favorite buddhist values

1295

but apparently he was not won over by

1296

the manchu leader's

1297

appeals either his stories paint the end

1298

of the world

1299

of received values and culture indeed

1300

aina's fictional world is characterized

1301

by skepticism

1302

that shows the emptiness of the

1303

teachings of the past

1304

for any relevance in post apocalyptic

1305

age in which i now is living and writing

1306

as a prologue for session

1307

five the little beggar who was truly a

1308

truly

1309

filial the narrator comments on what a

1310

fine day it was

1311

and on the carefree nature of their

1312

gathering under the arbor he continues

1313

1314

our breeze has suddenly arisen the

1315

fragrance of bean flowers is wafting

1316

across

1317

our foreheads cooling our bodies

1318

preparing us for some idle talk

1319

of worldly affairs past and present

1320

but we shouldn't misunderstand the word

1321

idol here

1322

it's only during moments of idleness

1323

that our better nature can assert itself

1324

and we can utter the most sincere words

1325

that can move us

1326

most deeply clearly aina the layman

1327

wished to do just that to move his

1328

readers most

1329

deemed deeply with his stories

1330

and i believe that they were successful

1331

in doing so at least they have been

1332

for me the beggar's boy of sessions five

1333

by the way is both extremely filial and

1334

loving

1335

and caring for his influent mother for

1336

many years carrying around on her on his

1337

back

1338

finding good food for her all without

1339

benefit

1340

of any confucian education

1341

so let me stop there and see if you all

1342

have any questions

1343

thank you for your attention

1344

thank you professor hagel for the

1345

wonderful and

1346

thought-provoking talk so now the floor

1347

is open for questions

1348

and i will read out the questions in the

1349

q a chat box and i would also encourage

1350

people in the audience to continue to

1351

post your questions

1352

i'm so sorry i should turn on my video

1353

so now

1354

um please keep posting questions in the

1355

uh in the q a box and so

1356

now let's go to our first question uh

1357

this is by brenda

1358

ciao from is who is a student in my

1359

class

1360

so brenda's question is did shutshi

1361

have the animals returned to their blood

1362

thirsty

1363

nature to get rid of the people in on

1364

the mountain who might notice his

1365

absence

1366

so this is a specific question about uh

1367

session

1368

seven i think yeah that's that's a

1369

that's an interesting question

1370

because the story leaves it ambiguous

1371

but one can only assume

1372

if they are uh man-eating as the story

1373

says they are

1374

they'll go back and they'll eat up all

1375

these these and these people who have

1376

uh fled into the mountains to try to

1377

make a good reputation for themselves

1378

so that element seems to me to be a

1379

a critique of the sort of assumed

1380

positions this

1381

assumed self-righteousness of

1382

many people of his generation but you

1383

know i read these stories all

1384

as as relevant to the author's time and

1385

i think they were

1386

i mean anybody who's lived through well

1387

let's say

1388

now the vietnam war for example

1389

as i have who have lived through the

1390

uh pandemic which we all have lived

1391

through

1392

won't easily forget it it'll have its

1393

effects

1394

and it'll change the way we think to a

1395

degree

1396

so you know not surprisingly i think

1397

1398

the times in which these stories were

1399

written did affect their uh

1400

their content rather dramatically

1401

thank you and our second question is

1402

from uh

1403

ming hyo so this question is about the

1404

translation

1405

of the idol talk and the wing arbor so

1406

mikhail noticed that the translation

1407

reads like stories originally written in

1408

english

1409

so and he's very interested in

1410

your experience about co-editing these

1411

translations

1412

did you do any re-translation on the

1413

individual stories i think that's what

1414

the question is about

1415

sure well this was a this was a really

1416

interesting project

1417

and i enjoyed it tremendously as a

1418

matter of fact because

1419

i um had found out about these stories

1420

from

1421

reading uh patrick hannan's book that

1422

you read a little bit of yourselves

1423

and so i picked up the collection and as

1424

i read through it i realized these are

1425

all really quite unlike anything i had

1426

read before

1427

even all of the sannyan stories that

1428

fong malone had written

1429

and i wanted to get them into

1430

translation but i felt that i wouldn't

1431

be able to do it all myself i was still

1432

teaching at the time

1433

and so i asked various people if they

1434

were interested and i was having a

1435

translation seminar at the time

1436

and several of the students in the

1437

seminar said they would like to do that

1438

a couple of other people did as well

1439

and so um we divvied up the stories

1440

and they all uh produced translations

1441

independently but

1442

being the oldest and being their

1443

former instructor in many cases and

1444

being the editor

1445

gave me a certain privilege over

1446

modifying the translations but in point

1447

of fact

1448

the copy editor for the press

1449

was extremely good at

1450

pointing out the awkwardness of some of

1451

our translations and helping smooth it

1452

out and so forth

1453

so i'd like to say that the best parts

1454

are all mine but that would be

1455

uh unfair to everybody else who worked

1456

really hard to make these stories

1457

as good as they are and i think part of

1458

what we were going on

1459

is is trying to recreate this idea of

1460

telling a story

1461

and that's that's one of the things that

1462

makes these stories unusual

1463

and uh an element that is

1464

constantly referred to in the collection

1465

itself at the beginning of

1466

most stories there's some dialogue that

1467

goes on

1468

some some person is uh requested to tell

1469

a story somebody else says no don't tell

1470

that story i don't want to hear that i

1471

want to hear something else

1472

and so there's the process of of

1473

of oral communication that goes on that

1474

which we did try to recreate

1475

in the translations of this of these

1476

1477

nice question though thank you thank you

1478

i i think i agree with that and the

1479

person who raised the question that

1480

you know this volume translation is so

1481

readable and

1482

it's such a valuable addition to you

1483

know

1484

our course list and now we can add these

1485

stories to

1486

our syllabus and our students have a

1487

wider range of

1488

stories to read from um and the

1489

following question is from charles

1490

hayford

1491

um so this question is about the

1492

reactions

1493

what other writers or critics

1494

might have to announce a collection so

1495

what

1496

kind of a response that i know

1497

collection might have induced in his own

1498

1499

and what was the reputation of this

1500

collection in later generations

1501

those are very good questions

1502

i don't have a complete answer for them

1503

but each ch

1504

each session is followed by a commentary

1505

and although it's it was conventional

1506

for some writers some some collections

1507

at least that the author would write his

1508

own commentary

1509

often the commentary was written by

1510

somebody else and it seems to me

1511

reading through these comments at the

1512

end of the stories that they were

1513

written by somebody else

1514

whether that person was the same person

1515

who wrote the preface

1516

i'm not sure the preface is very

1517

congratulatory says

1518

wonderful stories genius writer all

1519

these sorts of things

1520

that you might expect a good friend to

1521

write to try to help

1522

sell your your collection of stories but

1523

the um

1524

the commentator at the end of each story

1525

generally takes apart the story to the

1526

extent that he talks about

1527

what's important there and he takes

1528

these stories very seriously not as

1529

entertainment

1530

but as social commentary political

1531

commentary in in some cases

1532

and so i would say that these these

1533

stories were read

1534

uh as meaningful

1535

not simply entertainment by any means

1536

and um one can say

1537

a few things not a lot about a few

1538

things about how often a story

1539

collection or a novel

1540

or a play or anything else was reprinted

1541

later and during the qing period

1542

the punch was was repeated uh was

1543

reprinted several times

1544

and it was one of those collections that

1545

um

1546

came to be re rediscovered in the very

1547

end of the qing period in the late 19th

1548

century

1549

uh and early 20th century it was

1550

reprinted

1551

fairly frequently as um

1552

i think intellectuals saw the parallels

1553

between the beginning of the qing and

1554

the end of the chain as the fall of the

1555

dynasty the ming dynasty and

1556

the obvious decline and weakness of the

1557

qing dynasty

1558

and texts reflecting that earlier period

1559

come to be

1560

more widely known so people did take it

1561

as serious fiction people did

1562

did read it the question is always how

1563

many

1564

and unless we have some sort of printed

1565

uh response

1566

it's hard to know in european literature

1567

scholars often point to what's called

1568

marginalia the the comments that people

1569

wrote in the margins of their books

1570

but you don't find those in chinese

1571

books

1572

a chinese fiction at least and part of

1573

the reason is because

1574

there are very few copies of any one

1575

edition

1576

available now one could conclude that

1577

there never were that many copies

1578

available

1579

and i think that's probably right now a

1580

printing block can print

1581

a thousand copies if they touch it up a

1582

little bit with

1583

the with the engraving tool maybe uh two

1584

or

1585

more thousand copies was fiction ever

1586

printed in so many copies there's

1587

absolutely no reason to believe it was

1588

may have been printed in dozens of

1589

copies 100 or 200 copies

1590

but when throughout all of the chinese

1591

speaking world

1592

you can only find in libraries around

1593

the world nowadays

1594

you can only find two three or four

1595

copies of any one edition

1596

you have to wonder how many there were

1597

to begin with so

1598

when i say that it was popular it meant

1599

that it was in print

1600

but keeping in mind that in before the

1601

present day really before the 20th

1602

century at least

1603

for a book to be in print meant that a

1604

book was in print in a particular place

1605

and not necessarily widely available

1606

across the country or even

1607

any other city there was a

1608

a trade between fujian which is a

1609

printing

1610

printing center and jiangnan cities

1611

especially uh

1612

jinding or nanjing to a certain extent

1613

between

1614

suzhou and hangzhou and so forth but

1615

available in beijing well that might not

1616

happen in sichuan probably not

1617

and so um there's always a limit to how

1618

much you can claim a book of fiction or

1619

book of any kind in in pre-modern china

1620

actually circulated

1621

okay i think we have several questions

1622

lining up in the box but in the meantime

1623

i just want to mention that we still

1624

have plenty of time

1625

so please keep submitting your questions

1626

1627

okay i think we have another related

1628

question

1629

and which has to do actually translation

1630

and also

1631

uh like what kind of audience would you

1632

want to reach

1633

with this translation so this question

1634

is from mimi yang

1635

asking that what would you hope for

1636

people who don't know

1637

any chinese history and culture get from

1638

reading these translated stories

1639

that's a good question well on this on

1640

the hope

1641

that people who wrote this collection of

1642

1643

would be in precise of that position we

1644

included a lot of notes

1645

and references explaining the historical

1646

uh uh

1647

illusions and so forth and of course

1648

writers of this period

1649

regularly referred to what they assumed

1650

would be common knowledge on the part of

1651

their original readers that is say

1652

males educated and education of course

1653

before the 20th century really only

1654

meant

1655

training for the civil service

1656

examinations that meant you read the

1657

classics and you were

1658

and you memorized them the four books

1659

the five classics and so forth then you

1660

went on to the histories

1661

and so the assumption was that

1662

you would know who jadget way was from

1663

the original stories

1664

you would know who she sure was and most

1665

beautiful woman of ancient china and

1666

and so forth but assuming that our

1667

readers of this

1668

translated collection would not

1669

necessarily know any of that

1670

we've we put a lot of notes into the

1671

1672

the cultural references section it's

1673

called and then

1674

each translator included a number of

1675

notes

1676

they appear in the back of the book and

1677

explaining particular things that are

1678

not common to the rest of the stories

1679

and in my introduction i tried to

1680

sketch out some of the things that i

1681

think are most important

1682

you know one of the things that hannan

1683

does in his

1684

chapter on aina as

1685

as hannan always did put his finger

1686

precisely on some of the

1687

most sensitive points and i should say

1688

the ambiguity of these stories

1689

the fact that they debunk traditional

1690

1691

and specifically the idea of harmonious

1692

society the idea of

1693

a moral universe the idea that learning

1694

somehow is a good thing

1695

and teaches people how to be good

1696

um all these sorts of things we can pick

1697

out of these stories with enough

1698

guidance

1699

and my hope was that with the

1700

introduction and the notes and so forth

1701

we could provide enough guidance for

1702

a person to get a good sense of what

1703

these meant

1704

but you know it's

1705

to be honest uh our reading in 21st

1706

1707

america can never be the same as reading

1708

in 17th century china

1709

we're reading from quite different

1710

perspectives quite different views

1711

and of course there's always something

1712

lost in translation

1713

and contrary always something added in

1714

1715

uh is our translation

1716

successful in portraying the style of

1717

language

1718

and the the tenor of language of the

1719

original

1720

now one of the things i tried to do in

1721

editing these stories which

1722

i didn't do much of frankly was to try

1723

to get the tenor right

1724

now did i or didn't i um no reviewer has

1725

actually taken us to task for that

1726

uh what one of the things that a

1727

reviewer did point out

1728

is that the translations don't sound the

1729

same

1730

and that's just fine said the reviewer

1731

because the

1732

storytellers differ from kl to tale

1733

and so they should sound a little

1734

different and they do sound a little

1735

different in the original it seems to me

1736

and we tried to uh to recover that

1737

but yeah read lots more uh if if this

1738

encourages people to read more stories

1739

there's a hundred and twenty stories by

1740

fun

1741

all an excellent translation by yongshu

1742

and yang yunshin

1743

and then another 40 stories by uh

1744

lingmangchu and another

1745

whatever it is i think it's about a

1746

dozen stories in

1747

liu's translated collection by patrick

1748

han

1749

brilliant translations so if we

1750

succeeded in having

1751

interested you to read more that's

1752

a success on our part

1753

thank you the next question is from uh

1754

so we have several questions but

1755

i think we will um first

1756

maybe answer some questions having to do

1757

a specific

1758

uh story that was covered in the talk

1759

and then we will circle back to some of

1760

the general questions

1761

so one of the questions has to do with

1762

session 11 from daniel

1763

um so daniel was wondering whether you

1764

know this horrifying stuff

1765

that was mentioned in section 11 such as

1766

you know you know cutting open the

1767

pregnant women's belly or collecting

1768

human hearts to eat are these

1769

exaggerations that they offer

1770

or what is historically grounded

1771

i think most people most scholars

1772

believe that they're

1773

historically grounded um

1774

humanity is a pretty sad lot it doesn't

1775

matter when

1776

or where or whom we are all perfectly

1777

capable of doing

1778

terrible things especially if we feel we

1779

have the privilege of doing terrible

1780

things without

1781

necessarily having to suffer for it

1782

one of the

1783

sets of legends about ancient china

1784

talks about the evil

1785

last rulers of the three dynasties of

1786

highest antiquity talk about having a uh

1787

a pool made of

1788

of of wine and making people get down on

1789

their hands and knees and drink from the

1790

pool

1791

so they look like cattle drinking from

1792

it meaning demeaning common people and

1793

servants and so forth

1794

one has people uh breaking

1795

open the shins of old men to see if

1796

they're empty

1797

because there was a story that bones

1798

become empty as you get older

1799

there's also the story of slitting open

1800

the bellies of pregnant women to see

1801

what the gender of the

1802

of the infant would be and betting on it

1803

and so forth

1804

did those things really happen probably

1805

um one of the things that's known

1806

is that the horrors of

1807

the banditry of that became prominent

1808

in the last years of the ming before the

1809

manchus suppressed it

1810

was particularly bloodthirsty and

1811

it seems that times of anarchy bring out

1812

the worst

1813

in people um and these stories show us

1814

some of that

1815

and i think one of the things that the

1816

stories do for us as 21st century

1817

readers is make us confront

1818

how awful people can be

1819

to make a timely reference

1820

i think the people who assaulted the

1821

capital on

1822

in january were perfectly capable of

1823

doing any kind of violence if they had

1824

had the

1825

opportunity through the heroism the

1826

capital guards and so forth they were

1827

forced away

1828

but uh in this country now there

1829

are uh warnings of extremists who would

1830

apparently go to most any lengths

1831

to assert their right to be whatever

1832

they wanted to be

1833

would they slit open babe pregnant women

1834

no would they do something

1835

equally terrifying probably

1836

how do we know these are not just

1837

hyperbole well

1838

we don't necessarily they could be

1839

hyperbolic

1840

and one of the things that the stories

1841

do and i i should emphasize

1842

this i said it before that by putting

1843

stories within stories within stories

1844

you're removing the validity of

1845

the potential validity the

1846

predictability of the outcomes and so

1847

forth those stories

1848

and you're you're you're uh sort of

1849

protecting

1850

yourself against uh claims that you're

1851

making absurd

1852

assertions i didn't i didn't see this

1853

myself

1854

i just heard it you heard it from a man

1855

or he didn't see it himself he just

1856

heard it

1857

and this this is a technique of this

1858

story collection which is

1859

really quite troubling in itself because

1860

it seems to be pointing on to things

1861

1862

we can't talk about because it's too

1863

awful

1864

but i am talking about and it is awful

1865

so i don't know and they're troubling

1866

stories that's what drew me to the

1867

collection and that's why i

1868

encourage students to to to translate it

1869

in part because it's such an

1870

ironic contrast to the uh

1871

happy little stories of the you for

1872

example the

1873

story of the telescope which is

1874

delightful but silly

1875

and uh the male mentions his mother

1876

which is probably possible it certainly

1877

struck a lot of readers through time as

1878

1879

as really demonstrative of what human

1880

love can be

1881

paternal love maternal love and so forth

1882

and does it matter

1883

what the biological sex of the person

1884

who is loving

1885

is well no as a matter of fact

1886

it's a story for our age as well after

1887

all and that's one of the reasons

1888

to answer an earlier question i i i'm

1889

pleased to see that these stories get in

1890

can get into classrooms today

1891

because i think they do have relevance

1892

for us i mean we're all humans

1893

we don't really change that much we

1894

haven't changed that much in tens of

1895

thousands of years

1896

and the lessons that can be drawn from

1897

stories that are 400 years old written

1898

in originally in chinese

1899

may very well be relevant to speakers of

1900

english on the other side of the globe

1901

in the 21st century

1902

okay i think we have another um very

1903

interesting question which is uh from

1904

chris ham

1905

and this question is about um

1906

1907

and ham is uh chris is wondering

1908

uh if professor have any thoughts have

1909

on the

1910

apparent abundance of huaban formed

1911

after aina and the youth generation

1912

1913

common scholarships tend to suggest that

1914

this genre weapon was sort of exhausted

1915

after aina and the and after that

1916

we see the re uh surgeons of classical

1917

language tales such as the poisonings uh

1918

1919

but neither of these explanations seem

1920

to address the richness or developing

1921

complexity of the form as professor

1922

hegel describes it

1923

so in other words this question is about

1924

uh

1925

you know the i would say the afterlife

1926

of huaban

1927

after um aina

1928

is this form is its potential and

1929

richness already exhausted after i know

1930

that's a very good question thank you

1931

for asking that now

1932

one of the things that's become fairly

1933

obvious

1934

in scholarship over the last say 30

1935

years

1936

is how

1937

political agendas shape scholarship

1938

and the um history of

1939

modern chinese literature actually the

1940

modern history of

1941

chinese literature was written in the

1942

early decades of the 20th century

1943

at a time when the qing dynasty had

1944

fallen

1945

and the young intellectuals very often

1946

wanted to get rid of everything

1947

traditional and and discounted as

1948

as uh as old and

1949

a weight to be thrown off on the other

1950

hand

1951

there were those who wanted to say no we

1952

can't just all be western

1953

we have to see something good in our own

1954

tradition

1955

and so they began to create what we now

1956

see

1957

as canons of literature

1958

of course in poetry and so forth levi

1959

dufu long way

1960

sure um all these people were canonical

1961

long before they're seen as the

1962

among the best of china's poets liching

1963

zhao and others

1964

and so recreating a canon of poets was

1965

not hard

1966

but because people did not officially

1967

accept

1968

fiction vernacular fiction as an

1969

artistic form

1970

there were no sort of that canons well

1971

of course everybody knew that the great

1972

novels were the great novels

1973

sang

1974

jinping if you can put up with it uh and

1975

then of course

1976

among the great novel of the 18th

1977

century which is still

1978

an outstanding masterpiece by any

1979

any set of criteria

1980

um but in the short story the huaban

1981

story a few

1982

were picked out as canonical

1983

that is say fung man was it ling mong

1984

chu was not bad

1985

but it was only sort of literary

1986

historians who dug around and found that

1987

qingping shantan huaban

1988

collections which were all start a part

1989

of a collection called leo

1990

or 60 stories published about 1550

1991

they were actually quite interesting

1992

they used satire and irony and

1993

and some of the tricks that became known

1994

as

1995

central to later huaban

1996

well one of the things that patrick

1997

hennon did

1998

in writing his his story on the

1999

vernacular his book on the vernacular

2000

story is

2001

is take a look at what really exists

2002

and especially after um

2003

after matsudung finally died and china

2004

began to

2005

sort of open itself to its own history

2006

and scholars began to look through

2007

library collections and to see

2008

what's there to reprint what's there and

2009

so lo and behold the waban didn't die

2010

with the collection of 40 stories

2011

chosen from their collections uh

2012

um gina gucci one

2013

or fantastic visions past and present

2014

that that was reproduced something like

2015

35 times during the qing period

2016

they were very popular stories and the

2017

other

2018

story collections were were

2019

reprinted to a certain degree but during

2020

the chain period

2021

there were other waban collections that

2022

2023

actually like a joshua bay for example

2024

um um

2025

well i can't recite them off the top of

2026

my head but they're on my top shelf up

2027

2028

uh i have at least a dozen i guess

2029

collections of weapons

2030

that were published during the uh the

2031

qing period

2032

the form didn't die out and the

2033

interesting thing is that

2034

the um style the classical

2035

literary pieces too the classical

2036

2037

pieces of fiction were very popular and

2038

if you look at the numbers of books

2039

which is number of titles the number of

2040

printings during the qing period

2041

during the ming period what you find is

2042

the more popular books were actually

2043

classical short fiction and that

2044

pu sungling was among

2045

others because he was relatively popular

2046

but because he was

2047

inventive and

2048

put forward as sort of the only person

2049

who was writing

2050

good stuff in classical language that's

2051

really not true at all

2052

so if you look at the bigger picture of

2053

what really existed

2054

uh you find that the huawei continued up

2055

till the 21st

2056

up to the 20th century and the classical

2057

literary

2058

tales never really died out in

2059

popularity that they changed in form

2060

and one of the things that makes uh poo

2061

songling

2062

interesting is that he began to write

2063

more about contemporary events

2064

not necessarily as social criticism but

2065

as things he had heard and events that

2066

were going on

2067

and the classical language short stories

2068

short fiction written after pusa ling

2069

have a graduate student who's

2070

theoretically writing a dissertation on

2071

2072

if she can they became more and more

2073

socially engaged and

2074

so busan ling did make a difference he

2075

helped

2076

create a richer field for

2077

fiction in that form but in point fact

2078

then

2079

he included some of the fiction i should

2080

say some of the concerns of fiction

2081

that have been written in the vernacular

2082

as well so the two really continued

2083

through the qing period

2084

and it's only uh into the

2085

20th century well into the 20th century

2086

2087

the modern vernacular story uh becomes

2088

really

2089

the dominant form there's a book um

2090

a history written

2091

uh within the last 10 or 15 years about

2092

about popular fiction in china and it in

2093

it

2094

it gets rid of that artificial 1911

2095

break off and talks about fiction that

2096

was popular

2097

in more or less the vernacular language

2098

from the ming through the 1930s and 40s

2099

and in point of fact if you don't look

2100

at it from a sort of political

2101

perspective saying

2102

modernism versus traditionalism and so

2103

forth

2104

what you can see is a good deal of

2105

continuity forms didn't just

2106

come and go they sort of continued on

2107

they might wane in popularity but

2108

they don't start and end

2109

briefly with replacing one after another

2110

there's not a nice one leads to the next

2111

kind of progression

2112

each each collection sort of invents

2113

itself

2114

in interesting ways so if you're

2115

interested in chinese fiction

2116

and and want to make this a career

2117

there's lots to work on uh there's just

2118

just just looking at the post fung

2119

short story in the vernacular is enough

2120

to keep you busy for

2121

the better part of a career and if you

2122

wanted to look at what was popular in

2123

terms of classical

2124

uh writings

2125

um and did a little study on

2126

how many reprints there were of of

2127

particular collections

2128

you'd find that there was lots and lots

2129

of uh

2130

reprints of of classical fiction

2131

from the sixth dynast from the tongue

2132

from the song

2133

being reprinted all the way through to

2134

the end into the 20th century

2135

okay thank you and i think we still have

2136

time for professor higgo to briefly

2137

answer

2138

three questions uh after that we will

2139

conclude

2140

the recording but i have seen that

2141

among the audience there are former

2142

students and friends of professor hagel

2143

so

2144

if you are interested after we end the

2145

recording please feel free to stay for a

2146

while to chat

2147

and reconnect hang out for a while

2148

and so the next question is uh actually

2149

both

2150

the goa and the leaking ask this

2151

question so i think

2152

we can address this briefly which is

2153

2154

um the the image of the headless man

2155

in session 11 whether there's any

2156

you know historical reference or

2157

metaphorical uh

2158

meaning and having to do with this head

2159

does it

2160

sort of symbolize you know the chin uh

2161

you know policy of

2162

cutting the hair from the forehead of

2163

2164

you know its subjects or you know how

2165

what does it indicate about you know

2166

trauma and censorship of the qing

2167

dynasty

2168

that's a very good question and i would

2169

have to say that the

2170

you know you can't have a man without a

2171

head right not a living man without a

2172

head

2173

so this has got to be metaphorical what

2174

does it refer to

2175

well you know the story was at the

2176

beginning of the qing period you either

2177

cut your hair in the prescribed fashion

2178

if you were han

2179

at least or you'd lose your head

2180

and the story makes it perfectly clear

2181

that this man this headless man is

2182

is an innocent victim of violence then

2183

violence perpetrated for no particular

2184

reason

2185

he's slaughtered by uh he's part of a

2186

slaughter by

2187

a bunch of by bandits highwaymen after

2188

all

2189

so does it refer to cutting off your

2190

hair versus your head yeah

2191

probably that's entirely possible too

2192

2193

uh refer perhaps to uh the loss of

2194

direction

2195

uh of the leaders of the ming for

2196

example

2197

yeah that's entirely possible because

2198

the the last

2199

40 50 years of the ming

2200

empire uh there were sequence of

2201

really incapable rulers

2202

that the chung john emperor was the best

2203

and he was really not a very good ruler

2204

and of course he committed suicide

2205

because he didn't know what to do is his

2206

his courtiers were totally unprepared uh

2207

2208

unable to protect him when the bandits

2209

highwaymen overtook the city of beijing

2210

and so looking for a metaphorical

2211

meaning of that gruesome image

2212

is what the story is really all about

2213

which

2214

is it i think it's it's meant to be

2215

ambiguous we have to figure it out

2216

we have to figure it out as readers and

2217

and puzzle it out for ourselves

2218

the stories don't give us enough

2219

to really figure things out in many

2220

cases yeah of course traditional values

2221

are are

2222

debunked and

2223

some institutions are are questioned and

2224

the validity of old tales is

2225

very much open to guesswork

2226

but precisely what this author wanted us

2227

to think

2228

we have to figure out for ourselves and

2229

as i said the commentator offers some

2230

clues

2231

uh but doesn't exhaust these stories

2232

they're they're

2233

rich they're powerfully rich which again

2234

2235

one of the things that drew me to them

2236

in the first place

2237

um and their complexity is one of the

2238

things that makes them

2239

live today i believe

2240

um another question is about johnny fun

2241

so if i was wondering uh you know the so

2242

about the social setting of this uh

2243

in this collection so the jana landscape

2244

2245

the customs illusions do these things

2246

undercut the

2247

violence of the historical historical

2248

memories the

2249

collection addresses

2250

hmm um

2251

well for

2252

the period of the manchu conquest for

2253

2254

one of the elements one of the events

2255

that stood out most clearly through in

2256

the minds of intellectuals

2257

throughout the qing period especially at

2258

the end of the qing period was the

2259

massacre at yangzhou

2260

where at least 70 percent of the

2261

population was slaughtered because the

2262

uh army the main army that that was in

2263

charge of the city

2264

refused to capitulate to the manchus and

2265

so the manchus

2266

took over the city killed everybody that

2267

wasn't the only massacre of the sort

2268

so um jiangnan was

2269

not spared in the onslaughts they didn't

2270

suffer in the way the northern provinces

2271

did perhaps but

2272

the brutality with which the manchus

2273

took over

2274

there was

2275

horrendous

2276

and and referring to that setting

2277

one of the stories the one that i

2278

translated with a lot of help from a

2279

suzhou native and her father

2280

was about the free booters

2281

the people who made a life made living

2282

for themselves

2283

living off visitors who came to suzhou

2284

2285

who indulged themselves in the wine and

2286

the women

2287

and curio shopping and all these other

2288

sorts of

2289

pleasantries that you could carry on in

2290

in suzhou

2291

and um that story

2292

obviously reveals a good deal of of

2293

knowledge of the area

2294

and it uses suzhou terms that i

2295

couldn't figure out for myself and um

2296

there are references that no dictionary

2297

that i could find no encyclopedia could

2298

could refer to and and fortunately i've

2299

had a couple of students who

2300

are originally from suzhou and the the

2301

father of one of them

2302

shane james father um it's a

2303

sort of amateur local historian and so

2304

he could really

2305

tell me what some of these things were

2306

so there there's a lot of in-group

2307

references to jiangnan customs and

2308

culture

2309

and these stories but

2310

they're often negative they turn out to

2311

look they're not not sort of nostalgic

2312

and pleasant but

2313

look what fools these people are

2314

and what fools we are to accept what

2315

they

2316

offer so there's um

2317

there's ambiguity in in in all these

2318

sorts of things i

2319

you have to believe that aina was a

2320

pretty unhappy man

2321

and given the time he lived through i

2322

think we have to see that as as part of

2323

2324

did he have ptsd no i don't know that's

2325

just my speculation and

2326

i would never put that in print but it

2327

does seem to me

2328

that it's worth considering and i wish

2329

we knew more about the biography of this

2330

man who he was

2331

what his relationship might have been to

2332

leave you

2333

and why their their responses to

2334

similar settings and writing in a

2335

similar form

2336

should be so utterly different from each

2337

2338

even when they're writing within a few

2339

years of each other presumably

2340

and the last question is from ariel fox

2341

every question has to do with the gender

2342

of the narrators and also the audience

2343

in the story it seems that all the

2344

narrators are men

2345

and also the crowd who were occasionally

2346

referred to in the

2347

story were also men but in the

2348

illustration of the bing nubber it shows

2349

at the edge of the illustration it shows

2350

a woman actually dragging a child and

2351

gazing towards the bean arbor

2352

and so everyone was wondering whether um

2353

you know with is there any indication in

2354

the text

2355

of a mixed audience um to the stories or

2356

should we assume

2357

entirely male gathering uh much like the

2358

elite political societies that the

2359

goring

2360

seems to echo and parody

2361

well there's there's two two ways to

2362

answer that question because the

2363

the answer is sort of twofold at the

2364

beginning of of the first session

2365

uh it suggests and certainly this is my

2366

impression

2367

and i think that's where the illustrator

2368

got it too that men and women come to

2369

listen

2370

uh and these are local villages local

2371

farmers and so forth

2372

coming to enjoy the fresh air

2373

every narrator's male every person who

2374

questions the narrators

2375

is male uh the story about jealousy and

2376

so forth is certainly written from a

2377

male perspective

2378

and almost misogynistic one might even

2379

say

2380

uh at least in part although that that

2381

is debunked in the story

2382

as as just that an absurd

2383

absurd uh absurdly negative view of

2384

women

2385

but yeah the the uh

2386

author is clearly writing at a time when

2387

the assumption is that males are going

2388

to be reading and males are going to be

2389

writing and

2390

males are going to be the audience and

2391

so um

2392

uh this um this fellow aina

2393

interestingly enough writes about women

2394

only

2395

as sort of witnesses of what goes on if

2396

they appear in stories at all

2397

and there is a story about shisha for

2398

example which totally

2399

rewrites the original story and she is

2400

a tool she is so badly abused and

2401

misused by

2402

fondly her supposed husband or lover or

2403

boyfriend or whatever

2404

from the original tale that one could

2405

assume a kind of sensitivity on the part

2406

of aina the author

2407

to the plight of women in the hands of

2408

unscrupulous men

2409

and fondly is presented as a very

2410

unscrupulous man

2411

in this story

2412

but yeah this is um this is a

2413

a form written for men and by men

2414

uh and you don't find

2415

women presented sympathetically in many

2416

2417

of course the very first story of fung's

2418

first collection

2419

is is a good example of one of the most

2420

sensitive

2421

representations of women but even there

2422

uh sunchow

2423

the female central character

2424

is um a sort of victim

2425

of male predations and male expectations

2426

so this is this is uh not an

2427

enlightened group of writers and

2428

enlightened group of stories

2429

but of course that says something about

2430

the society that produces them too and

2431

can easily be derived from looking at

2432

the stories

2433

thank you to professor fox for that

2434

2435

thank you for this uh stimulating

2436

conversation i think it's time

2437

to wrap up so thank you everyone for

2438

your participation and support

2439

and please join me in thanking professor

2440

hegel for please

2441

facilitating this uh very provoking

2442

uh conversation thank you for the

2443

opportunity