Censored by Confucius (2 page)

Introduction

Yuan Mei's controversial collection of short tales of the strange and supernatural,
Censored by Confucius,
first appeared in 1788,
¹
only ten years before Yuan's death. Written in a climate of political and moral conservativism fostered by stifling Confucian orthodoxy, these tales of ghosts, sex, betrayal, revenge, litigation, transvestism, homosexuality, and corruption provide a rich tableau of daily life in China. The popularity of these "exposes" led to their censorship in 1836 as the Qing government (1644—1911) attempted to control the spread of anti-establishment sentiment (Chan 1991, p.
40). Yuan Mei scorned the prudery and moralism propagated by the court and orthodox Confucian scholars of his time, choosing instead to expose hypocrisy and excessive puritanism as the real problems of mid-Qing society.

His direct challenge to court orthodoxy in these tales is reflected in the title he chose for the collection. The phrase "censored by Confucius" (
zi bu yu
) is drawn from the seventh book of the Confucian
Analects
—
Zi bu yu guai, li, luan, shen.
This has been variously translated as "The subjects on which the Master did not talk, were extraordinary things, feats of strength, disorder, and spiritual beings" (Legge 1985, p. 201); "The topics the Master did not speak of were prodigies, force, disorder and gods" (Lau 1982, p. 88); and "The Master never talked of wonders, feats of
strength, disorders of nature, or spirits" (Waley 1956, p. 120).

Thus, where the official, Confucian-inspired version of Qing life and culture finds the supernatural and the immoderate anathema, Yuan Mei found them to be a rich and challenging source of inspiration. Moreover, his impolitic citation of "the Master" did not pass unnoticed by his contemporaries. Zhang Xuecheng, a conservative scholar by comparison with Yuan, gained fame for his savage invectives against the "heretical" Yuan's use of classic Confucian texts:

. . .
there has never been anyone [except Yuan Mei] who, in broad daylight and beneath the warming sun, has dared to go to this extreme in denying the precedence of the Classics, doing away with sanctity and law, and indulging in such perverse, depraved, obscene, and licentious ideas! (cited in Nivison 1966, p. 264)
²

For his part, Yuan justifies his unconventional collection as the whims of an aging man who wishes to spend his remaining days as enjoyably as possible. In his "Seven Poems on Aging" he writes of the many pleasures he finds in his increasing years:

Talk of books—why they please or fail to please—
Or of ghosts and marvels, no matter how far-fetched,
These are excesses in which, should he feel inclined,
A man of seventy-odd may well indulge, (cited in Birch 1972, p. 199)

While Confucius may not have condoned discussion of ghosts and marvels, lust and love, crime and retribution, Yuan and a large section of the reading public most certainly did. Arthur Waley writes of the collection, "The Chinese had an insatiable appetite for wonder-tales, and collections of them had been made since very early times" (Waley 1956, p. 120). Having established himself in the previous half century as one of the greatest poets of his era, a prodigy in scholarship, and a formidable literary critic, Yuan was more than confident enough to indulge his literary whims as a septuagenarian.

His satisfaction with the collection and his enjoyment of the reaction it drew are evident in his continuation of the task. In 1796, a mere two years before his death, he completed a sequel—his increasing age perhaps inspiring his continued interest in the life of the underworld and its interaction with the living.

The Life of Yuan Mei

Yuan Mei's life was both long and immensely successful. He was born in 1716 in Hangzhou, a city famous for its beautiful scenery and rich literary tradition. His family was genteel but rather poor. His father took up junior secretarial positions around the country as a means of support. Yuan began his formal schooling at six and progressed so rapidly that by the age of eleven he had passed the first-level examinations and become an accredited scholar. For a man, success in Qing society was measured largely in terms of his ability to pass the various
levels of official examinations. The degrees thereby conferred granted the scholar access to the range of positions available in the extensive government bureaucracy. Yuan's early success confirmed his reputation as a prodigy—many men spent their whole lives failing the examinations. In 1736, less than a decade after Yuan's initial success, the emperor announced a set of special examinations for selecting scholars to write the official histories. Yuan was selected to represent Hangzhou and at age twenty was the youngest candidate to attend. He was not, however, one of the fifteen, from a total
of two hundred aspirants, to pass. His feelings about this failure and the ghostly encounter that preceded it form part of one of the stories in
Censored by Confucius.
In "Memories of Suiyuan" he narrates how the ghost of an old family retainer told him before the examinations that he would not be successful. The enthusiastic and optimistic young Yuan remained unconvinced of this premonition until the results were published.

Yuan spent the next two years perfecting his examination technique while struggling to make ends meet as a tutor for various families of the gentry. In 1738 he at last succeeded in passing the second-level examinations. Then in the following year his career took several major steps forward. He passed not only the third-level examinations but also the Palace Examinations, which secured his admittance as a fellow to the most prestigious national center of learning, the Hanlin Academy. During the winter of this same year, 1739, he was called home by his parents to marry a certain Miss
Wang, to whom he had long been engaged. For the next decade Yuan was employed by the throne first as a scholar and then as a bureaucrat.

His first posting, in 1743, was to Lishui, where at age twenty-seven he was appointed prefect. In 1745 he was transferred to the more senior post of prefect in a suburb of Nanjing. Inspiration for many of the tales in this collection undoubtedly developed during these years as an official. His contact with the social problems experienced by average citizens and his awareness of various miscarriages of justice form the basis of many of the tales. The ghostly revenge on corrupt officials depicted therein perhaps reflects a popular fantasy of "just desserts" generated to assuage
the sense of powerlessness among the more vulnerable citizens of Qing China. Arthur Waley's biography of Yuan provides many examples of actual judicial cases over which he presided. All these cases reveal Yuan's concern that the law be enforced humanely and without excessive moralism (Waley 1956, pp. 31—43).

By 1749 Yuan had grown weary of official life. He took early retirement at the age of thirty-three intending to continue his life as a poet, critic, and author of considerable stature. Yuan chose as his home a newly purchased property in Nanjing, the Sui Garden.
³
With his excellent reputation as a bureaucrat and his contacts at the highest level of the Manchu court well established, Yuan was not destined to spend his remaining half century in straitened circumstances. He occupied himself composing funeral inscriptions for the deceased relatives of friends and acquaintances, and writing poetry, which was always in high demand. In sum, his retirement ensured him a relatively carefree life that, in its rejection of stifling Confucian moralism, was lively enough to cause unfavorable comment from distinguished figures in the Nanjing area. Two f
eatures of his life as a leisured intellectual drew considerable disfavor —his sexual adventures and his attitude toward women's education.

During his employment by the throne, Yuan Mei had led an active social life and developed quite a reputation for loose living. He was well known for his fondness for boy actors and young women, but besides these sexual preferences, which were not entirely uncommon during his lifetime, his general lack of regard for social norms raised more than a few eyebrows in and around Nanjing. One of the sources of income for his retirement was the teaching of poetry wr
iting, and while this in itself could cause no scandal, Yuan included "among his students (this was thought especially outrageous) ... a fair number of talented ladies" (Nivison 1966, p. 263). His tutorials for women became known collectively as the "moth-eyebrow academy," for it was deemed desirable for beautiful women of the time to acquire mothlike eyebrows. Yuan's poetry-writing classes were held in his own home, the Sui Garden. This was thought particularly scandalous by intellectuals such as Zhang Xuecheng, since young women from wealthy families were normally educated in their own homes and m
ost certainly not in the company of men from outside their immediate families.
⁴
Yuan's circulation of the poetry written by his female students compounded the affront to conservative social practice for it took the products of the "inner female realm" out into the "public male domain."

Waley translated a mock letter of complaint about Yuan's conduct written by his friend and fellow poet Zhao Yi.

One of the complaints is that Yuan, having settled in his garden, "ransacked the neighbourhood for whatever was soft and warm, not minding whether it
was boy or girl." "He entices young ladies of good family to his house," the document goes on, "and all the 'moth-eyebrows' (i.e. handsome girls) are enlisted as his pupils." "He regards himself as stage-manager of all the elegances; but is in reality a sinner against the teachings of Confucius." (Waley 1956, p. 77)

Such outrageous behavior came close to earning Yuan banishment from Nanjing. His attitudes toward pleasure put him at odds not only with many of his Confucian peers but also with his Buddhist friends. Encouraged by Peng Shaosheng (1740-1796) to take up Buddhism, Yuan Mei wrote disdainfully of the Buddhist goal of relinquishing all desires:

". . . what makes a live man different from a dead one is precisely that he is capable of enjoying such pleasures." "What you are asking me to do," Yuan Mei continues, "is to behave as though I were dead, when in fact I am not dead." (Waley 1956, p. 82)

Yuan saw no sin in pleasure seeking and clearly intended to live life to the full—uninhibited by moralists who would have much preferred that the Qing dynasty's greatest poet from south of the Yangzi live a sedate life more befitting a man of his talent and reputation.

Yuan Mei spent the remainder of his life in a genteel but indulgent fashion, traveling, collecting recipes, writing poetry, and composing funeral inscriptions.
⁵
He was interrupted only by the periodic bouts of malaria that had plagued him for decades. He died in his early eighties, survived by two sons (one adopted) and a daughter. Three other daughters died before he was fifty-four, and this may explain his fondness for nurturing the literary skills of young women. In his will he made fun of religious rites and Buddhist monks:

When I die I would be exceptionally pleased if you would tell your sisters to come mourn for me. I would really loathe religious chanting and vegetarian rites in the wake. If you come to weep for me, I would be greatly moved. But if the monks disturb my spirit by banging their wooden fish drums, I will make a hasty exit with my hands placed firmly over my ears. Would you feel at peace knowing that this had happened? (cited in Yang 1992, p. 247)

Biji xiaoshuo

Yuan Mei is best known for his poetry and literary criticism. His many poems and his essays on poetics celebrate the joys of living one's life
as one chooses, without having to imitate or be restricted by the teachings of the ancients. The most singular and significant feature of Yuan's style is its perverse and indulgent streak, almost a literary hedonism, which ensured that his work stood above that of his contemporaries. Lo and Shultz write of his poetic style, "Countering the prevailing demand that poetry must be didactic . . . Yuan held that the function of poetry is to delight" (Lo and Shultz 1986, p. 191). Yuan's
joie
de vivre
is reflected also in his love of good food. Known as a gourmet, he wrote many recipe
s for his favorite dishes (Spence 1977, pp. 259—94).

Yuan Mei's delight in life is also reflected in the short tales represented in this volume. His amoral, amused, and sometimes shockingly frank depiction of everyday life ensured that under his pen the genre of
biji xiaoshuo
would reach new heights. Clearly written with the goal of amusing both himself and his readers, the tales avoid moralism and are always written with wit and wonder at the mysteries of life, death, lust, and crime.

Biji xiaoshuo,
translated by Y. M. Ma as "note-form literature," have a long history in China (Ma 1986, pp. 650-52). These short classical prose tales first appeared in works of the Six Dynasties (221— 590), though the genre may very well extend as far back as the Han (206 B.C.E.—220 C.E.). Distinguished by two main characteristics—brevity and casualness —
biji xiaoshuo,
Ma notes, usually appear as collections rather than independent stories. Covering philology, history, or fiction,
biji xiaoshuo
form a significant part of China's prose heritage.

The earliest
biji,
and the subgenre most directly related to Yuan Mei's tales, are called
zhiguai
—records of the strange and anomalous.
⁶
The Han dynasty volume
Shan hai jing
(The classic of mountain and seas) is the most famous forerunner of this style of writing. It records strange creatures and semihuman beings living in mythical lands.
⁷
By the time of the Three Kingdoms and Six Dynasties,
zhiguai
writing had become an important and popular pursuit among the literati. The most highly regarded work of this time, Gan Bao's (fl. 320)
Soushen ji
(In search of the supernatural), is still
regarded as a definitive example of this style of writing. The revival and importance of the Daoist alchemists (
fangshi
) during this period, with their search for immortality and other occult goals, may account for the popularity of tales of the supernatural in Wei-Jin times.
⁸

By the Tang dynasty (618—907) another subgenre of
biji
had risen to prominence—the
chuanqi. Chuanqi
literally means "recounting the
strange." This new narrative form is still characterized by short sketches in the classical language, but the supernatural, where it appears, becomes incidental to more conventional scenes and events. The central characters are typically talented young men and beautiful young women and the plot often involves the resolution of their romantic entanglements.