Song Dynasty Figures of Longing and Desire: Gender and Interiority in Chinese Painting and Poetry 9004369392, 9789004369399

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Song Dynasty Figures of Longing and Desire

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004369399_001 Lara C.W. Blanchard - 978-90-04-36939-9 Downloaded from Brill.com05/05/2020 10:59:28AM via free access

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Women and Gender in China Studies



Edited by Grace S. Fong (McGill University) Editorial Board Louise Edwards (University of New South Wales) Nicola Spakowski (Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg) Robin D. S. Yates (McGill University) Harriet T. Zurndorfer (Leiden University)

VOLUME 10

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/wgcs

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Song Dynasty Figures of Longing and Desire

Gender and Interiority in Chinese Painting and Poetry By

Lara C.W. Blanchard

LEIDEN | BOSTON

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Cover illustration: A Lady at Her Dressing Table. Su Hanchen (fl. ca. 1120s–60s), Southern Song dynasty, mid-12th century; fan, ink, color, and gold on silk, 25.2 × 26.7 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Denman Waldo Ross Collection (29.960). Photograph © 2017 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2018015655

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 1877-5772 isbn 978-90-04-36278-9 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-36939-9 (e-book) Copyright 2018 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

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For Audrey, Steve, Shirley, and Daria

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Contents Contents

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Contents Acknowledgments ix List of Figures xii Abbreviations xiii Introduction  1 1 Gendered Subjectivity and Representing Interiority 12 Subjectivity and Authorship 13 Women Poets, Erotic Personae, and Female Subjectivity 14 Women Painters and Images of Women 19 Cross-Dressing and Authenticity 28 Pictorial Representations of Inner Feelings 54 Modes of Representing Emotion in Figure Painting 58 Melding of Feeling and Scene 63 Interiority and the Inner Quarters 66 Courtly and Literati Audiences: Evidence from Commentaries 71 2 Political Interpretations of Desire 77 Handscrolls of Goddess of the Luo River 80 Compositions of the Song Dynasty Paintings 94 Reading Desire and Rejection 113 The Beijing Handscroll Night Revels of Han Xizai 116 Singing Girls in Tang and Song Texts 119 Content of the Beijing Scroll 126 Early Assessments of Han Xizai’s Character 137 Political Interpretations of Night Revels  141 Night Revels and Pictorial Cross-Dressing 151 3 Male Audience and Authorship: Projecting Desire and Longing onto the Female Figure 157 Huizong’s Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk 161 Pounding Silk and Women’s Work 165 Zhang Xuan’s Painting and Huizong’s Copy 172 Mou Yi’s Pounding Cloth 183 Visualizing a Palace-Style Poem 185 Text and Interpretation 203

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Contents

4 The Female Audience: Modeling Idealized Femininity 208 Women and Fan Paintings 210 Acquiring Fans Painted with Lonely Women 216 The Enclosed Garden 222 Mirrors, Makeup, Interiority, and Performing Femininity 227 Ladies Adorning Their Hair with Flowers: A Bed-Screen? 246 Conclusion: Interiority and the Value of Connection 252 Works Cited 273 Index 296

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Acknowledgments Acknowledgments

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Acknowledgments This book has been more than a decade in the making, and I am deeply grateful to the Women and Gender in China Studies editor Grace S. Fong and members of the series editorial board—Louise Edwards, Nicola Spakowski, Robin D.S. Yates, and Harriet T. Zurndorfer—for their willingness to bring it to publication. I thank Patricia Radder and other members of the Brill staff for their hard work to that end. My colleagues in the Art and Architecture Department at Hobart and William Smith Colleges have been extremely supportive of this work, particularly the art historians: Michael Tinkler, Elena Ciletti, Stanley Mathews, Patricia Mathews, Liliana Leopardi, and Kathryn Vaughn. My thinking on this topic began while I was a graduate student at the University of Michigan, where I especially benefited from the wisdom and guidance of Martin J. Powers (who gave me a foundation in critical thinking and Chinese art history), Shuen-fu Lin (who introduced me to Chinese literature—especially poetry—and philosophy), Jonathan Reynolds (for whose class I did my earliest research on pictorial representations of emotion), Celeste Brusati (who got me thinking about the nature of representation in painting), and Patricia Simons (whose approach to gender studies and feminist art history changed the entire direction of my research). Over the years various entities offered material support for this work. These include the Provost’s Office, the Warren Huntington Smith Library, the Asian Studies Department, and the Art and Architecture Department at Hobart and William Smith Colleges; the East Asia Program at Cornell University; the Freer Gallery of Art at the Smithsonian Institution; the Ministry of Education, Republic of China; and the Rackham Graduate School, the Department of the History of Art, the Center for Chinese Studies, the Women’s Studies Program, and the Institute for Research on Women and Gender, all at the University of Michigan. Without their assistance, this study would not have been possible. Some of the material in this book has appeared already in print, and I am grateful to have permission to use it again here. My discussion of Emperor Huizong, desire, and patronage appeared in slightly different form in “Huizong’s New Clothes: Desire and Allegory in Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk,” Ars Orientalis 36 (2006): 111–35. I included a more abbreviated analysis of a painting by Mou Yi than that presented here (and no discussion of gender) in an article on the artist’s comments about the purpose of painting; see “Mou Yi’s Pounding Cloth: Painting, Play, Reference, and Discourse in Song China,” Artibus Asiae 73, no. 2 (2013): 295–341. I briefly presented some of my ideas

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about scholars, courtesans, and reclusion in “A Scholar in the Company of Female Entertainers: Changing Notions of Integrity in Song to Ming Dynasty Painting,” NAN NÜ: Men, Women and Gender in China 9, no. 2 (2007): 189–246. Finally, some of my preliminary ideas about paintings-within-paintings and gender appeared in “Lonely Women and the Absent Man: The Masculine Landscape as Metaphor in the Song Dynasty Painting of Women,” in Gendered Landscapes: An Interdisciplinary Exploration of Past Place and Space, ed. Bonj Szczygiel, Josephine Carubia, and Lorraine Dowler (University Park, Pa.: The Center for Studies in Landscape History, The Pennsylvania State University, 2000): 33–47. Numerous individuals beyond those named above have provided commentary, advice, or support on various aspects of this project, at different stages of development, and I am grateful for their input. They include Jasmine Alinder, Laura Bassett, Betty Bayer, Tamara Bentley, Kimberly Besio, Lisa Bessette, Peter Bol, Beverly Bossler, Katharine Burnett, Katherine Carlitz, Wen-chien Cheng, Elizabeth Clement, Claudette Columbus, Anna Creadick, Bahar Davary, Jodi Dean, Kevin Dunn, Maureen Flynn, Roslyn Lee Hammers, Susan Henking, Carmenita Higginbotham, Wendy Holden, Martin Huang, Kyle Johnson, Ellen Johnston Laing, Lisa Langlois, Irene Leung, Allison MacDuffee, Heather Lee Miller, Susan Pliner, Marcelle Pour, Jennifer Purtle, Lee Quinby, Benjamin Ridgway, Sandra Seekins, Tatiana Senkevitch, Maureen Shanahan, Mary-Louise Totton, Christina Waugh, Margaret Weitekamp, Leela Wood, Marshall P.S. Wu, Yao-Fen You, Patrick Young, and many others. Anna Wager (William Smith College ’09), Julia O’Halloran (William Smith College ’10), and Christopher J. Slaby (Hobart College ’09) provided research assistance at a critical stage. I could not have completed my research without the assistance of multiple librarians, particularly Deirdre Spencer at the Fine Arts Library, University of Michigan; Lily Kecskes at the Freer and Sackler Library, Smithsonian Institution; Michelle Hubbell at Cornell University Library; and Dan Mulvey and Joseph Chmura at the Warren Huntington Smith Library, Hobart and William Smith Colleges. I wish to thank Sewall Oertling, Ellen Johnston Laing, Samantha Fogg, and Kathryn Cowles, who provided me with useful sources on Chinese art, literature, and philosophy. As the project enters its final stages, I am deeply appreciative of the assistance of Roslyn Lee Hammers, Kristen L. Chiem, and Adam Joel Ensign, who provided crucial contacts with Chinese museums, and Charles King, who did a superlative job of copy-editing the entire manuscript. Last but not least, the manuscript has benefited from the suggestions of multiple anonymous reviewers; any errors that remain are my own. In addition, I need to express my gratitude to my friends and family. Since arriving in Geneva, New York, I have been sustained by friendships with

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Acknowledgments

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Anna Creadick and Kevin Dunn, May Farnsworth and Jim Norwalk, Ingrid Keenan and Rob Carson, Meghan and Dave Brown, and Nan Crystal Arens and David Kendrick. Since I began my education, my parents and members of my extended family (too many to mention by name, but including a greatgrandfather, grandparents, great-aunts and great-uncles, aunts and uncles, first cousins, second cousins, and everyone in between) have cheered me on. But most particularly: my sister, Audrey, has been my dearest friend since we were young and also a patient and interested listener with a good ear for titles. (And she and her family always provide me with food and lodging whenever I need to visit the Freer Gallery.) My husband, Steve, has moved with me to Ann Arbor, Taipei, and Geneva, has sat with me through many setbacks, has taught me more about writing than he realizes, and has been good company on research trips to Boston, Washington, New York, and Toronto. My motherin-law, Shirley, welcomed me wholeheartedly into a new family and provided a haven more times than I can count. My daughter, Daria, who has never known a time when I have not been working on this book, has been a constant source of joy. I dedicate this book to these four.

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List of Figures

List Of Figures

List of Figures 1.1–1.3 2.1–2.4 3.1–3.4

Section 1 of In the Palace, after Zhou Wenju, before 1140 36, 38, 39 Section 2 of In the Palace, after Zhou Wenju, before 1140 42–45 Section 3 of In the Palace (Palace Ladies at Leisure), after Zhou Wenju, before 1140 46–49 4.1–4.2 Section 4 of In the Palace, after Zhou Wenju, before 1140 50, 52 5 Detail of Lady Wenji’s Return to China: Parting from Nomad Husband and Children, ca. 1125–50 62 6.1–6.12 Goddess of the Luo River (Liaoning Provincial Museum) 82–93 7.1–7.10 Goddess of the Luo River (Palace Museum, Beijing) 96–105 8.1–8.5 Goddess of the Luo River, 12th–13th century (Freer Gallery of Art) 108– 112 9.1–9.5 Night Revels of Han Xizai, after Gu Hongzhong, ca. 1127–1200 127, 131, 133, 134, 136 10.1–10.5 Palace Banquet, late 10th–early 11th century 149–153 11.1–11.2 Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk, attributed to Emperor Huizong, early 12th century 162, 163 12.1–12.8 Mou Yi, Pounding Cloth, 1240 186–193 13 Su Hanchen, A Lady at Her Dressing Table, mid-12th century 212 14 Embroidered Cage, Morning Mirror, attributed to Wang Shen 213 15 A Lady Watching a Maid with a Parrot, early 13th century 215 16 Self-adornment scene from Admonitions of the Court Instructress to the Palace Ladies, after Gu Kaizhi, possibly 5th–7th century 235 17 Ladies Adorning Their Hair with Flowers, after Zhou Fang, late 9th–10th century 248 18 Palace Ladies Tuning the Lute, after Zhou Fang 256 19 Liu Yuan, Sima Caizhong’s Dream of the Courtesan Su Xiaoxiao, early 13th century 258 20 Ma Lin, Layers of Icy Silk, 1216 260 21.1–21.4 Zhao Lingrang, Whiling Away the Summer by a Lakeside Retreat, 1100 263–266

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Abbreviations Abbreviations

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Abbreviations DHGC HJJ QSC QTS YFSJ YTXY

Dunhuang geci zongbian 敦煌歌詞總編, edited by Ren Bantang 任半塘 Xinyi “Huajian ji” 新譯花閒集, compiled by Zhao Chongzuo 趙崇祚 Quan Song ci 全宋詞, edited by Tang Guizhang 唐圭章 Quan Tang shi 全唐詩, edited by Peng Dingqiu 彭定求 (1645–1719) et al. Yuefu shiji 樂府詩集, edited by Guo Maoqian 郭茂倩 Jianzhu “Yutai xinyong” 箋注玉臺新詠, compiled by Xu Ling 徐陵

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Abbreviations

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Introduction Introduction

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Introduction Who says that heartbreak cannot be painted? The painter’s heart corresponds to the feelings of real people. 誰謂傷心畫不成。畫人心逐世人情。 Wei Zhuang 韋莊 (836–910), “Picture of Jinling” (Jinling tu 金陵圖)

Emotional attachment between men and women is a prominent theme in Chinese culture, significant in both literature and painting. Since the early imperial period, Chinese theorists have sought to understand the nature of inner feelings, particularly how they manifest outwardly as emotion. One way that premodern poets and painters explored these manifestations was in imagining select women as preoccupied with romance. I use the term “romance” here to refer to situations, well-established in poetry and fiction, of love affairs and sexual relations between men and women (this more colloquial than literary sense of “romance” is how the term is used throughout this book). The Song dynasty (960–1279; known as the Northern Song before 1127 and the Southern Song afterward) marks an important moment in the representation of this idea, a period when images of women experiencing longing or desire became increasingly nuanced, both in song lyrics (ci 詞) written by scholars and courtesans and in paintings made by court artists and members of the literati. The paintings in particular provide a rich body of material for investigating Chinese conceptions of feeling and emotion, and also Chinese conceptions of the construction of gender, the nature of representation, and text-image relationships. Paintings that allude to romance or eroticism occupy a problematic place in Chinese art historical accounts. Some of these paintings depict interactions between men and women and might simply be classified as figure painting (renwu hua 人物畫),1 but the majority focus on isolated female figures and thus 1 A ninth-century text on painting indicates that there were four major genres of painting: in rank order, figure painting, paintings of birds and animals, landscapes, and architectural subjects; Zhu Jingxuan 朱景玄 (fl. ca. 806–40), Tangchao minghua lu 唐朝名畫錄 [Record of Famous Painters of the Tang Dynasty], ed. Wen Zhaotong 溫肇桐 (reprint, Chengdu: Sichuan meishu chubanshe, 1985), 1; cf. Alexander C. Soper, trans., “T’ang Ch’ao Ming Hua Lu: Celebrated Painters of the T’ang Dynasty by Chu Ching-hsüan of T’ang,” Artibus Asiae 21, no. 3/4 (1958): 206. In an early twelfth-century imperial painting catalogue, figure painting was one genre of ten, ranked second only to Daoist and Buddhist subjects; “Xu mu 敘目 [Introduction to Contents],” in Xuanhe huapu 宣和畫譜 [Xuanhe Painting Catalogue], ed. Yang Jialuo 楊家駱 (1120; reprint, Taipei: Shijie shuju, 1967), 5–8; cf. translation in Susan Bush and Hsio-yen Shih,

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form a subset of the genre called shinü hua (written 士女畫 or 仕女畫). While figure painting was once considered one of the highest forms of art, the critical discourse reveals a declining regard for paintings of women as the Tang and Song dynasties progressed, especially for those that overtly reference longing and desire.2 The term shinü appears to refer to a woman from an aristocratic, official, or scholarly family, generally someone of relatively high standing in Chinese society; the meaning of the word appears to change over time along with the definition of the word shi 士, which referred to someone prepared to “serve” (shi 仕) in government office—an aristocrat in the Tang dynasty (618– 907), a bureaucrat in the Northern Song, or a “local elite” in the Southern Song.3 I translate shinü as “lady” in an attempt to capture as many shadings of the Chinese term as possible, but the paintings include representations of not only the above-mentioned women but also courtesans, who were highly educated but considered less respectable in the middle imperial period.4 Zhu Jingxuan 朱景玄 (fl. ca. 806–40), the author of Record of Famous Painters of the Tang Dynasty (Tangchao minghua lu 唐朝名畫錄), seems to be the first connoisseur to use the term shinü hua 士女畫 to denote a group of paintings, and his text indicates that the Tang court artists who specialized in it were considered among the best painters of their time: he classifies Zhou Fang 周昉 (ca. 730–ca. 800) in the “inspired class, middle grade” (shenpin zhong 神品中).5 In the Song dynasty, however, the notion of what constituted meaningful art dramatically shifted with the rise of the literati,6 and critics such as Mi Fu米芾 (1051–1107) began to dismiss examples of shinü hua as insignificant.7 comp. and ed., Early Chinese Texts on Painting (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard-Yenching Institute, Harvard University Press, 1985), 103–105. 2 James Cahill alludes to critical distaste for Chinese paintings that represent either the feelings of figures or relationships that do not emphasize moral behavior in Pictures for Use and Pleasure: Vernacular Painting in High Qing China (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2010), 4. 3 Peter K. Bol discusses the identity of the shi 士 in “This Culture of Ours”: Intellectual Transitions in T’ang and Sung China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), 4, 32–75. See also Ciyuan 辭源 [The Source of Words] (Beijing: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1988), s.v. shi 士, shinü 士女, shi 仕, shinü 仕女; and Paul W. Kroll, A Student’s Dictionary of Classical and Medieval Chinese (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2015), s.v. shi 士, shi 仕. 4 Beverly Bossler, Courtesans, Concubines, and the Cult of Female Fidelity (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Asia Center, 2013), 20–21. 5 Zhu, Tangchao minghua lu, 5–7; cf. Soper, “T’ang Ch’ao Ming Hua Lu,” 210–12. 6 On scholarly culture in the Tang–Song transition, see Bol, “This Culture of Ours,” 108–211. 7 Mi Fu, Huashi 畫史 [Painting History], in Meishu congshu 美術叢書 [Fine Arts Series], ed. Huang Binhong and Deng Shi 黃賓虹、鄧實 ([Taipei]: Yiwen yinshuguan, [1947]), 10:52.

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Introduction

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Reasons for the particular marginalization of the small set of paintings that depict eroticized women are twofold. First, by the eleventh century, they stood in opposition to pictorial images of virtuous figures.8 This represents a development of the middle imperial period: before the Tang dynasty, “exemplary women” (lienü 列女) were not particularly differentiated from “beautiful women” (meiren 美人); indeed, the category of “worthy beauties” (xianyuan 賢媛) seems to blend the two.9 Images of virtuous women served as didactic models of behavior, with surviving examples that date back to the Han dynasty (206 bce–221 ce). Such images continued to be relevant in the Song dynasty: the Southern Song court propagated pictorial guides to female behavior, in the form of illustrated versions of the Classic of Filial Piety for Girls, for example.10 Paintings of women obsessed with their love relationships, depicting elaborately dressed female figures engaging in leisure activities, did not fit into this mold; indeed, literary scholars were already criticizing poems on similar themes as “decadent” (tuifei 頹廢) in the Tang dynasty.11 Second, the literati valued works that clearly reflected their own discourse on painting as a mode of expression equal to poetry, with many of the same rhetorical aims. The position of a given work of art within the canon has to a great extent depended upon critical perceptions of its rhetorical functions.12 Some Chinese critics viewed images of women as frivolous, merely depicting women’s daily lives and created solely for men’s enjoyment.13 This study examines in depth what these intertextual works reveal about the nature of representation through their visualization of interior states and their correspondence to prominent genres of poetry, not only song lyric but also palace-style poetry 8

Guo Ruoxu 郭若虛, Tuhua jianwen zhi 圖畫見聞誌 [Experiences in Painting], in Alexander C. Soper, trans., Kuo Jo-hsü’s Experiences in Painting (Tu-hua chien-wên chih): An Eleventh Century History of Chinese Painting Together with the Chinese Text in Facsimile (Washington, D.C.: American Council of Learned Societies, 1951), 1.15a–b; cf. Soper’s translation in ibid., 18. 9 Audrey Spiro, “Creating Ancestors,” in Gu Kaizhi and the Admonitions Scroll, ed. Shane McCausland (London: The British Museum Press, 2003), 57. Julia K. Murray, “Didactic Art for Women: The Ladies’ Classic of Filial Piety,” in Flowering in 10 the Shadows: Women in the History of Chinese and Japanese Painting, ed. Marsha Weidner (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1990), 33, 42–46. 11 Fusheng Wu, The Poetics of Decadence: Chinese Poetry of the Southern Dynasties and Late Tang Periods (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), 33, 38–39, 73, 189–90. 12 Audrey Spiro discusses the functions mentioned in early texts on painting in “Creating Ancestors,” 54. 13 Guo, Tuhua jianwen zhi, 1.15a–b; cf. Alexander Soper’s translation in Experiences in Painting, 18. See also Murray, “Didactic Art for Women,” 28.

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(gongti shi 宮體詩) of the Southern Dynasties (420–589) as well as Music Bureau poetry (yuefu shi 樂府詩) of the Tang dynasty in particular. As the complexity of the paintings begins to be acknowledged, they are deservedly attaining a more prominent place in the history of Chinese art.14 Somewhere between the eighth and eleventh centuries, the themes addressed in Chinese paintings of women change, as reflected in Experiences in Painting (Tuhua jianwen zhi 圖畫見聞誌). Author Guo Ruoxu 郭若虛 (fl. 1071– 80) asserts that Northern Song paintings of women compare unfavorably to those of earlier periods: In the past, I have looked at masterpieces of ancient painting from the genres of “golden boys and jade girls” and deities and constellations. The female figures within them have extremely stern faces and spirits of pure antiquity. They naturally possess a stately and regal beauty, causing viewers to feel respect and continual admiration. Contemporary painters, however, value pretty faces, so selected to gratify popular taste. Their vision does not encompass the proper ways of making painting compelling. This is a matter for viewers’ consideration. 歷觀古名士畫金童玉女及神仙星官，中有婦人形相者，貌雖端嚴神必 清古，自有威重儼然之色，使人見則肅恭有歸仰心。今之畫者，但貴 其姱麗之容，是取悅於眾。目不達畫之理趣也。觀者察之。

He adds: If one asks how contemporary artists compare to those of ancient times, I respond that contemporary artists working in ancient styles are deficient in many ways, though they have some surpassing aspects. But if one speaks of Buddhist and Daoist subjects, figures, ladies, or oxen and horses, then contemporary artists are not as accomplished as the ancient.

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Ellen Johnston Laing, “Chinese Palace-Style Poetry and the Depiction of A Palace Beauty,” The Art Bulletin 72, no. 1 (March 1990): 284–95; John Hay, “The Body Invisible in Chinese Art?” in Body, Subject and Power in China, ed. Angela Zito and Tani E. Barlow (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 45–63; and Jan Stuart, “Revealing the Romance in Chinese Art,” in Love in Asian Art & Culture, ed. Karen Sagstetter (Washington, D.C.: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, 1998), 11–29.

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Introduction

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或問近代至藝與古人何如。荅曰，近代方古多不及，而過亦有之。若 論佛道，人物，士女，牛馬，則近不及古。15

Guo means to demonstrate his superior appreciation of paintings in comparing the admirable female figures of earlier periods with the pretty faces of his own. When he speaks of “pure antiquity,” perhaps he thinks of paintings such as Admonitions of the Court Instructress to the Palace Ladies (Nüshi zhen tu 女使 箴圖; a detail is represented in fig. 16) and Exemplary Women (Lienü tujuan 列 女圖卷), which both presented virtuous women; one version of the former, at least, was attributed to Gu Kaizhi 顧愷之 (ca. 345–406) by the early twelfth century.16 Not all female figures in early Chinese pictorial art were intended as colorless models of correct feminine conduct—indeed, scholars debate whether the surviving version of the Admonitions scroll, in the British Museum, functions as a didactic painting or is intended as satire17—but such representations were prominent. Northern Song connoisseurs consistently emphasize the pleasing appearance of shinü, which may explain why this term is defined as an alternative for meiren.18 In a section where Guo considers “suitability of characterization” (qi ru zhong 其如種) in painting, he proclaims: “It is fitting for ladies to be abun15

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18

Guo, “Lun furen xingxiang 論婦人形相 [On Women’s Appearances]” and “Lun gujin youlie 論古今優劣 [On the Superiority and Inferiority of Ancient and Contemporary],” Tuhua jianwen zhi, 1.15a–b, 19b; cf. Alexander Soper’s translations in Experiences in Painting, 18, 21. Admonitions of the Court Instructress to the Palace Ladies, in the British Museum, is thoroughly discussed and fully reproduced in Shane McCausland, First Masterpiece of Chinese Painting: The Admonitions Scroll (New York: George Braziller, 2003), as well as idem., Gu Kaizhi and the Admonitions Scroll. Mi Fu is the first to attribute a painting of this title to Gu Kaizhi, in Huashi, 4; Alfreda Murck, “The Convergence of Gu Kaizhi and Admonitions in the Literary Record,” in McCausland, Gu Kaizhi and the Admonitions Scroll, 143–44; cf. Nicole Vandier-Nicolas, trans., Le Houa-che de Mi Fou (1051–1107), ou Le Carnet d’un connaisseur à l’époque des Song du Nord (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1964), 1. Audrey Spiro notes that an Admonitions scroll is also mentioned in the early twelfth-century Xuanhe Painting Catalogue in “Creating Ancestors,” 53; cf. Xuanhe huapu, 1.45. Exemplary Women, also attributed to Gu Kaizhi but probably a Song painting, belongs to the Palace Museum, Beijing; reproduced in Gugong Bowuyuan, Gugong Bowuyuan canghua ji 故宮博物院藏畫集 [The Painting Collection of the Palace Museum], 8 vols. (Beijing: Renmin meishu chubanshe, 1978–91), 1:20–32. Julia Murray suggests that the Admonitions scroll is intended to be properly admonitory in “Who Was Zhang Hua’s ‘Instructress’?” in McCausland, Gu Kaizhi and the Admonitions Scroll, 104. Audrey Spiro argues for it as parody in “Creating Ancestors,” 59. Ciyuan, s.v. shinü 仕女, shinü 士女.

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dantly elegant, beautiful, and delicate in form.” (士女宜富秀色婑媠之態。)19 This statement, coupled with his charge that contemporary painters appealed to popular taste, insinuates that this art was produced solely for the titillation of male viewers. The scholar-official Su Shi 蘇軾 (1037–1101), citing the Confucian Analects (Lunyu 論語),20 similarly evaluates Zhou Fang’s paintings: Formerly, Zhou Fang’s figure paintings all entered the inspired class, yet ordinary people only knew of his ladies. Isn’t this referred to as “not yet seeing someone who loves virtue as much as sex?” 昔周昉畫人物，皆入神品，而世俗但知有周昉士女，皆所謂未見好德 如好色者歟？21

Still, suggesting that paintings of shinü only appealed to male voyeurs ignores their use by court and literati painters and viewers as vehicles for expression and commentary, the contributions of female artists and poets to the creation of female figures of desire, and the responses of a female audience. In the early Yuan dynasty (1260/79–1368), perhaps as early as the 1280s or 1290s, another critic, Tang Hou 湯垕 (d. before 1317),22 offers a different assessment of shinü hua. He suggests that painters from the Tang to Song dynasties who excelled at representing women portrayed them with sensitivity to their interior lives: 19 20

21

22

Guo, “Lun zhizuo jiemo 論製作楷模 [On Models for Creating],” Tuhua jianwen zhi, 1.7b; cf. Alexander Soper’s translation in Experiences in Painting, 11. Sometimes ascribed to the disciples of Confucius, this text, one of the Confucian classics, appears to have existed by the Han dynasty (206 bce–220 ce); for a summary of the scholarship on its authorship and date, see Michael Loewe, ed., Early Chinese Texts: A Bibliographical Guide (Berkeley: The Society for the Study of Early China and the Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 1993), 314–15. Su Shi, “Ti Zhang Ziye shiji hou 題張子野詩集後 [Afterword to Zhang Ziye’s Poetry Collection],” Su Shi wenji 蘇軾文集 [Collected Writings of Su Shi], ed. Kong Fanli 孔凡禮 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1986), 5:2146; “Zi han 子罕 [What the Master Seldom Speaks Of],” Lunyu zhushu 論語注疏 [Annotated “Analects”], ed. Ruan Yuan 阮元 (1815), 80, (accessed 30 May 2016). See Ronald Egan’s discussion in The Problem of Beauty: Aesthetic Thought and Pursuits in Northern Song Dynasty China (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Asia Center, 2006), 245–46; he translates se 色, which I have translated as “sex” but literally means “color,” as “sensual beauty.” Regarding Tang Hou’s biography and the date of his text Huajian, see Diana Yeongchau Chou, A Study and Translation from the Chinese of Tang Hou’s “Huajian (Examination of Painting)” (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2005), 21–32.

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The art of representing ladies lies in catching their attitudes in the inner apartments. Various artists have achieved this subtlety, including Zhou Fang and Zhang Xuan [fl. 713–42] of the Tang dynasty, Du Xiao [n.d.] and Zhou Wenju [fl. 961–75] of the Five Dynasties [907–60], and, more recently, Su Hanchen [fl. ca. 1120s–60s] and his generation. They all understood that the art was not in the application of makeup or in the gold filigree and jade pendants, or, in other words, taking ornament as the basis for representation. I once came into possession of a scroll titled Palace Ladies, a work by Wenju. He suspended a jade flute from the belt at a woman’s waist, directed her gaze toward her fingertips, and conveyed her feelings through her still position. The viewer knows that she is longing for someone. 仕女之工，在于得其閨閣之態。唐周昉、張萱、五代杜霄、周文矩、 下及蘇漢臣輩，皆得其妙，不在施朱傅粉，鏤金佩玉，以飾為工。余 嘗收宮女圖，文矩筆也。置玉笛于腰間帶中，目視指爪，情意凝佇， 知其有所思也。23

This passage suggests that the most appealing paintings of women from these periods provide insight into their emotional states24—a more satisfactory explanation of the shift in content. The character si 思 in the last line of the passage could be more conservatively translated as “thinking,” but it has strong connotations of longing in love poetry,25 and the rhetorical connection between poetry and painting suggests that it should be translated similarly in a discussion of paintings of women. Such pictures derive their abiding appeal from their attempts to render the figures’ feelings. This revolution in the representation of women, which can be dated to the Tang–Song transition, coincides with a similar development in literature.26 23 24

25

26

Given discrepancies among the published editions of Tang Hou’s text, I rely on the Chinese transcription that appears in Chou, Tang Hou’s “Huajian,” 163–64. James Cahill, writing about meiren hua of a later period, reaches the same conclusion in “Paintings Done for Women in Ming–Qing China?” NAN NÜ: Men, Women and Gender in China 8, no. 1 (2006): 33. Connotations of the character si are discussed in Hans H. Frankel, The Flowering Plum and the Palace Lady: Interpretations of Chinese Poetry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976), 58; the poetic theme of “longing for someone” (the same phrase used in this passage, you suo si 有所思) is discussed in Stephen Owen, The Great Age of Chinese Poetry: The High T’ang (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1981), 127. Scholar Zhang Xuecheng 章學誠 (1738–1801) assesses this phenomenon as the result of the “aestheticizing and sexualizing of women’s writing” and the “commodification of

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Introduction

Early poetry about women’s feelings of love or longing tends to rely on the “lament” tradition, with poems written in the voice of an abandoned woman expressing her sorrow.27 The first anthology to focus on themes of women’s interiority is the sixth-century collection of palace-style poetry, New Songs from a Jade Terrace (Yutai xinyong 玉臺新詠). Xu Ling 徐陵 compiled the poems at the Liang court of the Southern Dynasties, in the salon of Xiao Gang 蕭剛 (503–51), who reigned as the Jianwen 簡文 emperor from 549 to 551. While many poems in the anthology date to this time, the earliest were several centuries old when Xu selected them. The poets were predominantly male—emperors, princes, literati—but included educated women.28 Their vision of the abandoned woman persona included codified attributes: the appearance of noble birth; luxurious surroundings; beauty enhanced with elegant clothing and cosmetics; and, above all, an air of melancholy and vulnerability resulting from ceaseless pining for an absent lover.29 The process of creating this persona follows a pattern consistent with Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity: poets working in the courtly mode used a prescribed formula to create a literary discourse on a woman’s emotional landscape, presenting the lovelorn female persona as an object of desire.30 Writers continued to cite this lamenting female persona. In the mid-Tang dynasty, the literary community’s new regard for love stories reflects the rise of a “culture of romance,” redefining the private sphere as one of intimate experiences and feelings. That era witnessed a new context for such stories and for numerous poems on themes of love and longing: the demimonde, a realm in which men mixed freely with female entertainers and daughters of

27 28

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women’s talent as entertainment”; Susan Mann, “Presidential Address: Myths of Asian Womanhood,” Journal of Asian Studies 59, no. 4 (November 2000): 846. Paul F. Rouzer, Articulated Ladies: Gender and the Male Community in Early Chinese Texts (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), 129–30, 139, 145–46. Xu Ling 徐陵, comp., Jianzhu “Yutai xinyong” 箋注玉臺新詠 [The Annotated “New Songs from a Jade Terrace,” hereafter abbreviated as YTXY] (Taipei: Guangwen shuju, 1967); cf. Anne M. Birrell, trans., New Songs from a Jade Terrace: An Anthology of Early Chinese Love Poetry, Translated with Annotations and an Introduction (London, Boston and Sydney: George Allen & Unwin, 1982). Anne M. Birrell, “The Dusty Mirror: Courtly Portraits of Woman in Southern Dynasties Love Poetry,” in Expressions of Self in Chinese Literature, ed. Robert E. Hegel and Richard C. Hessney (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 35. Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (New York and London: Routledge, 1993), 2, 94–95.

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merchants.31 Subsequently, the Song literati expanded upon the persona of the lovelorn courtesan, chiefly in song lyrics, although by this period even the intimate marital relationships of scholars had become a topic of greater interest. Indeed, song lyrics showcase the emotions of the speaker, no matter what topic the poet addresses; the association of ci with the expression of romantic feelings reaches a peak in the late eleventh and early twelfth century.32 Perhaps because of the new interest in sentiment, the lovelorn woman became a more nuanced persona.33 The reevaluation of the significance of private feelings ultimately permitted pictorial representations of the emotional attachments of women.34 Despite their concern with intimate relationships, most Song paintings that present romantic themes focus on women in isolation, with no male figures pictured. The reasons for this become apparent when investigating constructions of femininity in regard to heteroerotic relationships. A number of important Song paintings, including but not limited to examples of shinü hua, portray women’s romantic interactions with men largely through poetic context. In order to depict women’s feelings about their relationships with men, Song court artists and members of the literati availed themselves of the preexisting construction of the romantic female persona in poetry. At first, some of their paintings simply appear to represent aristocratic women and courtesans enjoying the limited activities deemed appropriate for them, yet the unifying theme of these works is a woman’s emotional reaction to the presence or absence of her lover. Song painters generally depicted eroticized female figures engaged in four types of feminine pastimes: spending reflective moments in gardens or the women’s quarters, playing musical instruments, dressing and adorning themselves, and working with cloth. Significantly, each of these pictorial themes takes advantage of tropes developed in love poetry 31

32

33 34

Stephen Owen, The End of the Chinese ‘Middle Ages’: Essays in Mid-Tang Literary Culture (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 6, 87, 130 n. 2. Paul Rouzer sees the new interest in romance as reflecting the greater complexity of the societal roles of literati; Rouzer, Articulated Ladies, 201–202, 226–27. For more on representations of love in Tang dynasty stories, see Daniel Hsieh, Love and Women in Early Chinese Fiction (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2008). Shuen-fu Lin, “The Formation of a Distinct Generic Identity for Tz’u,” in Voices of the Song Lyric in China, ed. Pauline Yu (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994), 3–29. Egan notes that the lovelorn woman remained a conventional figure in early song lyrics in The Problem of Beauty, 239, 283, 303. Martin J. Powers, “Love and Marriage in Song China: Tao Yuanming Comes Home,” Ars Orientalis 28 (1998): 54, 57.

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that convey the figures’ feelings or moods. Extant Song paintings include works that encompass these four themes. But what kinds of functions could paintings of women in love serve? Why were themes of interiority so resonant? Which groups constituted their intended audience? (Or, as Judith Butler asks in Gender Trouble, “From what strategic position in public discourse and for what reasons has the trope of interiority and the disjunctive binary of inner/outer taken hold?”35) These are the questions that this book addresses. I have chosen to focus primarily on works of art that not only are representative of the various ways that paintings can express interiority, but also can be linked to specific individuals who were artists, patrons, collectors, or viewers, as this permits greater understanding of their historical context. Chapter 1 begins with questions of perspective, both of author and audience, and how perspective relates to subjectivity and interiority. I first examine song lyrics of female authorship and critical accounts of paintings by court ladies, women of scholarly families, and courtesans, considering them against a painting that is likely of male authorship: In the Palace (Gongzhong tu 宮中圖, figs. 1.1–4.2), a Song copy of a painting by court artist Zhou Wenju of the Southern Tang kingdom (937–75). I then turn to textual sources that discuss strategies for representing feelings in painting and poetry, and finally consider male viewers’ responses to paintings of women. Chapter 2 analyzes allegorical and political interpretations of sexual desire in painting, focusing on Song representations of Goddess of the Luo River (Luoshen fu tujuan 洛神賦圖卷, figs. 6.1–8.5) and Night Revels of Han Xizai (Han Xizai yeyan tu 韓煕載夜宴圖, figs. 9.1–9.5). Goddess of the Luo River depicts the unrequited love between a deity and a prince; Night Revels of Han Xizai represents the interaction of scholars and courtesans in ways that hint at the possibility of attachment on the part of the courtesans. In both cases, critical interpretations of love poetry as political commentary invite similar interpretations of these paintings, though it is necessary to consider whether allegorical readings exclude other potential meanings. Chapter 3 examines two paintings of male authorship—which circulated at court and among the literati—as potential sites of projected feeling: oblique expressions of emotion through the figures of women. The works I consider are Emperor Huizong’s 徽宗 (1082–1135, r. 1101–25) Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk (Dao lian tu 擣練圖, figs. 11.1–11.2) and Mou Yi’s 牟益 (ca. 1178– ca. 1242) Pounding Cloth (Dao yi tu 擣衣圖, figs. 12.1–12.8), which coincidentally 35

Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990), 134.

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have similar themes. This chapter questions whether the notion of the “determining male gaze” and the potential identification of the viewer with the (unpictured) object of the female figures’ longing or desire (a framework originally posited in Laura Mulvey’s feminist analysis of narrative cinema)36 illuminate the functions of these paintings. Chapter 4 considers paintings that might have targeted a female audience and that employ the desirable female figure as a model for idealized attitudes and behavior. I focus on three fans that could have been kept by women— A Lady at Her Dressing Table (Zhuang jing shinü tu 妝靚仕女圖, fig. 13), attributed to Su Hanchen; Embroidered Cage, Morning Mirror (Xiulong xiaojing tu 繡攏曉鏡圖, fig. 14); and A Lady Watching a Maid with a Parrot (Xuan gui tiao ying 璇閨調鸚, fig. 15)—and use these to consider a fourth painting once mounted as a three-panel screen: Ladies Adorning Their Hair with Flowers (Zan hua shinü tu 簪花仕女圖, fig. 17), attributed to Zhou Fang. While the content of all these paintings could be interpreted using the rubrics outlined in Chapters 2 and 3, their formats suggest a different rhetorical function. The paintings featured in this book have often been misunderstood as straightforward representations of women’s lives. Yet they demonstrate the multiple ways that Song painters visualized feelings such as desire or longing, experienced by both women and men, and used these to convey ideas that were not solely confined to the vicissitudes of romantic relationships. 36

Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Screen 16, no. 3 (1975): 11, 13.

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Chapter 1

Gendered Subjectivity and Representing Interiority Examining the authorship of and audience for Song paintings that focus on women’s emotional attachments reveals that gender is an important category of analysis for these works. Though these paintings are concerned with women’s interiority and thus might be interpreted as representing or constructing female subjectivity, virtually all of the surviving examples are attributed to male artists of the court or of the literati: none by a woman is known to survive. The pattern of male authorship of images of lonely or desiring women that these paintings suggest is not attested throughout Chinese culture, however. Before painters took up the theme, writers of palace-style poetry, Music Bureau poetry, and song lyric created an indelible image of the lovelorn woman, and though most poets working in these genres were men, courtesans originated song lyric, performing and sometimes writing the earliest examples.1 Furthermore, while women’s genuine feelings were understood as the basis of some poems in these genres, which readers perceived as feminine,2 a sense of superficiality and artifice was certainly an aspect of palace-style poetry.3 As my analysis reveals, both poems and paintings on themes of longing and desire necessarily involve complex negotiations of interiority and subjectivity, on the part of not only the creators but also the audience, who perceived female 1 Kang-i Sun Chang, The Evolution of Chinese Tz’u Poetry: From Late T’ang to Northern Sung (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), 8–10, 12; and Marsha L. Wagner, The Lotus Boat: The Origins of Chinese “Tz’u” Poetry in T’ang Popular Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), 86–87. 2 Grace S. Fong addresses the representation of femininity in all three genres in her “Engendering the Lyric: Her Image and Voice in Song,” in Yu, Voices of the Song Lyric in China, 107–44; she discusses the gendering of song lyric on pp. 108, 114–18, and of Southern Dynasties Music Bureau poetry on pp. 110–12, and she considers the use of the female image in palace-style poetry on pp. 112–14. On the femininity of song lyric, see also Lin, “The Formation of a Distinct Generic Identity for Tz’u,” 18–19; and Ronald Egan, The Burden of Female Talent: The Poet Li Qingzhao and Her History in China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2013), 82–83. Note Judith Butler’s discussion of the work of Luce Irigaray on phallogocentric language’s exclusion of the feminine and the subsequent inability to represent women, in Gender Trouble, 18–19; cf. Luce Irigaray, “Any Theory of the ‘Subject’ Has Always Been Appropriated by the ‘Masculine,’” in Speculum of the Other Woman, trans. Gillian C. Gill (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), 133–46. This may be applicable to Chinese poetry; Rouzer, Articulated Ladies, 8. 3 Wu, The Poetics of Decadence, 29, 66.

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figures as sites of projection. In this chapter, I explore gendered authorship of paintings of women and its implications for subjectivity, pictorial strategies for representing a figure’s interiority, and textual evidence of the male audience for paintings that considered women’s interiority.

Subjectivity and Authorship

The question of whose subjectivity is represented in romantic images of women has the potential to illuminate the paintings and poetry discussed in this book. Although images of women’s longings and desires seem to focus on women’s feelings, they also refer obliquely to men’s feelings: their desire for women who desire them, their longing for distant women, their expectation of their lovers’ loyalty,4 or their thoughts on other topics altogether. Men who wrote about women were often considering not only women’s roles in society but also their own;5 men’s paintings of women may have operated in the same way. Although most surviving examples of romantic paintings are assumed to be the work of male artists and produced for male viewers, some among this group lack secure attributions and may represent female perspectives: romantic poetry by women does survive, as do textual accounts of paintings by women, and examining these texts can reveal gendered responses to themes of longing and desire. Because these works often represent idealized visions, they disclose more about how the culture regarded both men and women than about typical heteroerotic relationships. The subjective position in palace-style poetry, Music Bureau poetry, and song lyrics about women is variable, as revealed by modes of representation that range from the “objective,” voyeuristic descriptions of a detached observer6 to the deployment of first-person male or female voice. Song paintings of women, which depend on those poetic constructions, similarly play upon the different potential alignments of subjectivity between authors, viewers, and depicted figures. Internal cues in poetry—the judicious use of a pronoun, for example—sometimes indicate a writer’s perspective, but the subjective 4 See Julia Ching, “Sung Philosophers on Women,” Monumenta Serica: Journal of Oriental Studies 42 (1994): 259–74, for increased concern about women’s loyalty in the Song following the relative freedom of Tang women; cited in Mann, “Myths of Asian Womanhood,” 850. 5 Bossler, Courtesans, Concubines, and the Cult of Female Fidelity, 9–10. 6 For a discussion of different interpretations of this phenomenon, see Anna M. Shields, Crafting a Collection: The Cultural Contexts and Poetic Practice of the Huajian Ji (Collection from Among the Flowers) (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2006), 17, 181, 193–94.

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Chapter 1

position in painting is inherently unstable and open to interpretation. While paintings of women can be understood as reflecting a voyeur’s vantage point and the object of his or her gaze, a painter’s deployment of female figures can correspond to the adoption of female voice in song lyric: the clearly performative nature of the latter unmasks the performative potential of the former. In certain circumstances, both artists and viewers (whether male or female) might identify with some aspect of a depicted female figure and adopt her subjectivity. Women Poets, Erotic Personae, and Female Subjectivity Though the poets who created the romantic female persona were predominantly male, women’s writing contributed to its construction. New Songs from a Jade Terrace included compositions by female poets, among them Xu Shu 徐 淑 (fl. mid-second century), Bao Linghui 鮑令暉 (fl. ca. 464), and Liu Lingxian 劉令嫻 (fl. late fifth–early sixth century).7 By the late Tang, courtesans were writing and performing the desiring female persona in the emerging genre of song lyric. Some female entertainers of the period wrote poems for exchange with scholars that were suitable for performance; they also may have composed popular lyrics presenting a courtesan’s perspective on her relationships.8 Women’s participation in creating images of female personae consumed with love relationships makes for interesting problems of subjectivity: what happens when a female poet adopts a female persona? Scholarship on Tang poetry provides insight into this question. Three women poets of the period, Li Ye 李冶 (d. 784), Xue Tao 薛濤 (768–831), and Yu Xuanji 魚玄機 (842–72), all courtesans, addressed their poems on love to men they knew, indeed writing almost exclusively for a male audience,9 and these examples suggest a correlation between female author and persona. Moreover, 7

For poems by these women, see YTXY, 1.18a, 4.11b–13a, 6.18a, 10.4a, 10.14a–b; cf. translations by Birrell in New Songs from a Jade Terrace, 47, 122–24, 178, 268, 280. 8 Chang, The Evolution of Chinese Tz’u Poetry, 8–10, 12; and Wagner, The Lotus Boat, 10–11, 86–87. The earliest examples of popular lyrics survive in the cache of manuscripts found at Dunhuang, on the Silk Routes; the authors’ names are generally not recorded. Maureen Robertson, “Voicing the Feminine: Constructions of the Gendered Subject in 9 Lyric Poetry by Women of Medieval and Late Imperial China,” Late Imperial China 13, no. 1 (June 1992): 74. Their poems are included in Peng Dingqiu 彭定求 (1645–1719) et al., ed., Quan Tang shi 全唐詩 [Complete Tang Poems, hereafter abbreviated as QTS], 12 vols. (reprint, Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1960), 11.803.9035–46, 11.804.9047–56, 11.805.9057–61, and many appear in translation in Kang-i Sun Chang and Haun Saussy, eds., Women Writers of Traditional China: An Anthology of Poetry and Criticism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 56–75, as well as Wilt Idema and Beata Grant, The Red Brush: Writing

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women sometimes wrote in autobiographical voices in the genre of shi 詩 poetry, which is often perceived as reflecting an author’s subjective position.10 A fourth courtesan, the renowned Zhao Luanluan 趙鸞鸞 (fl. eighth century) of the Pingkang 平康 entertainment district in the capital, Chang’an, wrote a series of five shi poems that gives a tantalizing impression of erotic pleasure. Her poems focus on ever-more-intimate parts of a female body, progressing from “Cloud Curls” (Yunhuan 雲鬟) and “Willow Brows” (Liumei 柳眉) to “Sandal­­wood Mouth” (Tankou 檀口), “Silken Fingers” (Xianzhi 纖指), and “Creamy Breasts” (Suru 酥乳). The last reads: Powder-fragrant, sweat-slick, a lute’s jade pegs— aroused in spring, glowing like cream, sleek as threads of rain. After a bath, a handsome gentleman caresses and plays with them: potent blossoms, cool and firm as purple grapes. 粉香汗溼瑶琴軫，春逗酥融綿雨膏。浴罷檀郎捫弄處，靈華凉沁紫葡 萄。11

The implied comparison in the first line, between a woman’s nipples and a lute’s tuning pegs, underscores the erotic connotations of certain musical instruments. As an example of shi poetry, this verse could be perceived as an expression of Zhao Luanluan’s genuine sexual pleasure. Recognizably female voices inform the treatment of the female persona in song lyric, resulting in something approaching an authentic female subjectivity. Anonymous song lyrics in the popular tradition (as opposed to those from the literati tradition) sometimes characterize male voices as unreliable, a stance that suggests a female perspective.12 Nevertheless, women who wrote erotic song lyric did not necessarily express their own feelings: instead, they more typically evoked feelings of longing and desire conventional to this

10

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Women of Imperial China (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Asia Center, 2004), 178–95. Maureen Robertson gives a cogent summary of the complexity of subjectivity in shi poetry in “Changing the Subject: Gender and Self-inscription in Authors’ Prefaces and Shi Poetry,” in Writing Women in Late Imperial China, ed. Ellen Widmer and Kang-i Sun Chang (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 176–78. QTS, 11:802.9033; cf. translations of all five poems by Jeanne Larsen in Chang and Saussy, Women Writers of Traditional China, 76–78. Maija Bell Samei, Gendered Persona and Poetic Voice: The Abandoned Woman in Early Chinese Song Lyrics (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2004), 17, 150.

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essentially performative genre.13 Though it was possible to inscribe the feminine image with their own perceptions, women who composed song lyrics could also adopt an established erotic persona.14 Some readers and critics did not recognize this, expecting seamless continuity between female authors and personae,15 especially in song lyric. They assumed that such a “feminine” genre was a natural medium for a woman’s voice and that erotic song lyric featuring a female persona genuinely reflected a female poet’s feelings and experiences.16 These are highly problematic assumptions. Female authors using female voice in song lyric might simply avail themselves of a constructed persona, and women’s expressions of erotic feelings in other genres, such as shi poetry, were not necessarily accurate representations of their own interiority. Certainly, examples of female-authored erotic poetry that break with convention may present an indisputably female subjectivity, resulting in something different from what a man might have written.17 Prior to the late Ming dynasty (1368–1644), however, no discourse suggested that women’s poetic writing might be understood as distinct from men’s;18 instead, the ability to create a fresh view of feminine personae was valued in poets of both sexes.19 Examples of ostensibly female-authored song lyric that demand to be understood as genuine laments sometimes prove to be male-authored fictions. One lyric reputedly by a Tiantai barracks courtesan named Yan Rui 嚴蕊 (fl. ca. 13

Fong, “Engendering the Lyric,” 114–15; Idema and Grant, The Red Brush, 199–200. See also Stephen Owen, “Meaning the Words: The Genuine as a Value in the Tradition of the Song Lyric,” in Yu, Voices of the Song Lyric in China, 30–69, for an exploration of the discontinuity between author and persona. 14 Samei questions whether “literati conventions of femininity” should actually be understood as less genuinely feminine in Gendered Persona and Poetic Voice, 18. 15 Ronald Egan summarizes some of the reasons behind this assumption in The Burden of Female Talent, 109–12. 16 For discussions of these critical perceptions, see Samei, Gendered Persona and Poetic Voice, 18, 67–68; and Idema and Grant, The Red Brush, 199–200. Ronald Egan links the failure of male readers and critics to recognize a woman poet’s ability to construct an artificial persona to the patriarchal society of imperial China in The Burden of Female Talent, 112. 17 For example, Ronald Egan, in comparing the palace poems of Lady Huarui 花蕊夫人 (fl. ca. 935) and Huizong, suggests that her poems reflect a “more consistent effort to capture plausibly lived female experience”; Ronald Egan, “Huizong’s Palace Poems,” in Emperor Huizong and Late Northern Song China: The Politics of Culture and the Culture of Politics, ed. Patricia Buckley Ebrey and Maggie Bickford (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Asia Center, 2006), 392. 18 Rouzer, Articulated Ladies, 7. 19 Samei, Gendered Persona and Poetic Voice, 73.

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1160) addresses her profession in a manner unusual for the period. The opening lines read: It is not that I love the courtesan’s life; It’s the karma of a past life that has wronged me. 不是愛風塵，似被前身誤。20

Because they reject the desiring persona more typical of poems attributed to courtesans, they read as a candid expression of the writer’s pain. This lyric, however, was actually composed by one of Yan’s male associates.21 While the song lyric tradition permits authenticity, it is imprudent to assume that a lyric recorded under the name of a female poet presents an authentic female voice. The body of work attributed to Li Qingzhao 李清照 (literary name Yi’an Jushi 易安居士, 1084–ca. 1155), China’s preeminent female poet, clearly illustrates the willingness of critics to assign female authorship to song lyrics even when doing so is unwarranted. A recent study of her writing reveals how the number of lyrics attributed to her steadily grew from the Southern Song through the twentieth century, even after the earliest collections of her work were lost. Those lyrics that scholars can confidently link to her authorship tend to feature a distinctive voice: that of a persona of the same social class as Li Qingzhao herself and given to expressing ideas or sentiments that are unconventional in song lyric. Nevertheless, one must keep in mind that the poet most likely presented deliberately cultivated personae rather than commenting on her own life.22 Examining the range of Li Qingzhao’s lyrics—just one type of writing in which she engaged—demonstrates that she did not limit herself to stereotypical romantic themes. For example, one of her lyrics mentions problems of poetic composition, and a few others feature a female persona enjoying an outing in nature rather than remaining cloistered indoors.23 Yet Li Qingzhao did avail herself of the romantic themes common to song lyric, often bringing a fresh 20

Attributed to Yan Rui, Tune: “Bu suanzi 卜算子 [The Fortune-Teller],” trans. Sophie Volpp, in Chang and Saussy, Women Writers of Traditional China, 106–107; Volpp acknowledges scholarly questions about whether Yan Rui ever existed. The Chinese text appears in Tang Guizhang 唐圭章, ed., Quan Song ci 全宋詞 [Complete Song Lyrics of the Song Dynasty, hereafter abbreviated as QSC] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1965), 3:1677. 21 Egan, The Burden of Female Talent, 18–20. 22 Ibid., 91–105, 324–25, 388. 23 Ibid., 49–51, 335–39.

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perspective.24 One song lyric with a relatively reliable attribution to Li Qing­ zhao combines the lamenting female persona with the trope of self-adornment (discussed further in Chapter 4). Written to the tune “On the Phoenix Terrace, Thinking of Playing the Flute” (Fenghuang taishang yi chuixiao 鳳凰臺上憶吹 簫), it reads: Incense cold in the golden lion, the disheveled quilt lies in red waves. Rising, but too lazy to comb her own hair— she’s allowed the jeweled cases to fill with dust. The sun’s rays reach the curtain hook, and with them rises fear of the bitterness of parting. So many small events she wants to speak of, but still she waits. Newly become thin, not from the onset of wine-sickness nor this autumnal grief. “Waiting, waiting! At this parting, a thousand, ten thousand repeats of ‘Yang Pass’ but still it was too hard to stay. I remember that Wuling man, so far away, mist enveloping the Qin tower, yet only the flowing water before the tower will remember me. Until day’s end, my gaze frozen, frozen, staring, in this place, and now, add once again a portion of new sorrow.” 香冷金猊，被翻紅浪，起來慵自梳頭。任寶奩塵滿，日上簾鉤。生怕 離懷別苦，多少事，欲說還休。新來瘦，非干病酒，不是悲秋。 休休！這回去也，千萬遍陽關，也則難留。念武陵人遠，煙鎖秦樓。 唯有樓前流水，應念我，終日凝眸。凝眸處，從今又添，一段新 愁。25 24 25

Ibid., 343. The Chinese text and an English translation appear in Egan, The Burden of Female Talent, 127. A version of the lyric with significantly different wording also appears in QSC, 2:928,

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This lyric may demonstrate the degree to which women embraced the lamenting persona in poetic composition. It is tempting to consider some autobiographical motive behind its composition, and in fact critics have tended to attribute this work to a period when Li Qingzhao and her first husband, Zhao Mingcheng 趙明誠 (1081–1129), might have been separated. Still, one should not assume that the words represent Li’s own lived experience.26 It is possible to translate this lyric, as I have done here, as encompassing two distinct voices: that of a relatively detached observer in the first stanza, and that of the imagined female persona herself in the second—an arrangement which follows a pattern found in earlier song lyrics.27 This alone could indicate the different subjectivities of author and persona. Yet while Li Qingzhao takes advantage of the already established romantic feminine persona, she also includes unusual tropes: the imagery of flowing water that remembers the woman when no one else seems to and the artful suggestion of an already vast well of feeling. When a female poet adopts a feminine persona, her subjective position becomes more complicated. Again, this circles back to the issue of performance. Female-authored poetry in female voice enjoys an aura of authenticity precisely because of the reader’s or listener’s willingness to collapse author and persona into a single entity. While some compositions may represent the author’s feelings or circumstances, even the most heartfelt lyric relies upon a constructed persona. Especially in examples of poetry written by women, one cannot assume that female subjectivity is always distinct or recognizable. Women Painters and Images of Women While quite a few female-authored poems from the middle imperial period survive (though in smaller quantities than male-authored poems),28 this is not true of compositions by female painters. The catalogue Views from Jade Terrace: Chinese Women Artists, 1300–1912 includes an index of the known extant paintings by Chinese women: the earliest artist represented is Guan Daosheng 管 道昇 (1262–1319) of the Yuan dynasty.29 This does not mean that women did not paint in earlier periods, only that their work was not preserved. Snippets of information about female artists, extracted from published painting histories, were collected in an early nineteenth-century text. Titled History of Jade under the tune title “Fenghuang taishang yi chuixiao.” 26 Egan, The Burden of Female Talent, 127–29, 324–25. 27 Shields, Crafting a Collection, 270. 28 Egan, The Burden of Female Talent, 389. 29 Marsha Weidner et al., Views from Jade Terrace: Chinese Women Artists, 1300–1912 (Indianapolis: Indianapolis Museum of Art, 1988), 176–87.

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Ter­race Painting (Yutai huashi 玉臺畫史) and compiled by Tang Shuyu 唐漱 玉 (a.k.a. Tang Souyu), it details women’s artistic accomplishments from the third century through the Qing dynasty (1644–1911). They include court ladies (empresses, concubines, princesses, and wives of members of the imperial family); women associated with literati and artistic families (including wives, daughters, concubines, and maids); courtesans; and nuns.30 Still, the women mentioned were only those whom connoisseurs noticed. Though this source hints that female artists from the Tang through Song periods did paint romanticized female figures, none is explicitly described as a painter of the genre that such works tended to belong to, shinü hua: one must read between the lines of the few entries that do suggest romantic themes embodied in female figures. Two entries on Tang women suggest that female artists’ depictions of female figures may have begun with self-portraits. For example, one finds an entry on eighth-century courtesan Cui Hui 崔徽 that greatly embellishes an anecdote earlier recounted in Zhang Junfang’s 張君房 (fl. 1005) Record of the Feelings of Beauties (Liqing ji 麗情集). The earlier account reads: In the Tang dynasty, Pei Jingzhong served as a surveillance official,31 and he was sent to Puzhou. He had a relationship with Cui Hui. When Jingzhong was recalled, Hui became resentful of his inability to stay with her, and after some time she fell ill. She painted her self-portrait to send to Pei with a note saying, “Cui Hui quite soon will not resemble the figure in this scroll.” 唐裴敬中為察官，奉使蒲中。與崔徽相從，敬中回，徽以不得從為 恨，久之成疾。自寫其真以寄裴曰，崔徽一旦不如卷中人矣。32

Though brief, this anecdote suggests that Cui Hui painted an idealized selfportrait, rendering herself at her most beautiful, which undoubtedly coincided with her period of happiness with Pei Jingzhong. Clearly, however, she foresees a physical decline that corresponds to her deteriorating emotional state. The version in History of Jade Terrace Painting adds a number of details. It identifies Cui Hui as a government courtesan (fuchang 府倡) from Hezhong 河中 30 31 32

Tang Shuyu, comp., Yutai huashi, in Huang and Deng, Meishu congshu, 17: 113–244. Charles O. Hucker, A Dictionary of Official Titles in Imperial China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985), s.v. 47, ch’a-kuan. Zhang Junfang, Liqing ji, in Songdai biji xiaoshuo 宋代筆記小説 [Song Dynasty Anecdotes and Stories], ed. Zhang Guangpei 張光培, 24 vols. (Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe, 1995), 15:91.

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prefecture, dates this episode to the Xingyuan 興元 era (784–85), and names the person who conveys the portrait to Pei Jingzhong. It also describes Cui Hui as using a mirror to paint her portrait (a trope that may allude to romantic exchanges as well as idealized behavior; I discuss mirrors in more depth in Chapter 4) and indicates that Cui Hui thereafter went mad and died. Tang Shuyu’s longer anecdote stresses that the courtesan acts upon real attachment.33 A second anecdote included in Tang Shuyu’s text indicates that a Tang wife used a revealing self-portrait to shame her straying husband. This entry, on Xue Yuan 薛媛, appeared earlier in a ninth-century or Song text, Fan Shu’s 范攄 Discussions of Friends of Clouds and Streams (Yunxi youyi 雲溪友議). Fan Shu’s more detailed version of the story reads: Nan Chucai from Haoliang traveled to the regions of Chen and Ying. After he had spent years there, the governor admired his virtuous demeanor and wanted his daughter to be Chucai’s wife. Chucai had a wife at home, but because he cared deeply about receiving an official post and suddenly forgot what was right, he assented at once and then sent his servant back home to collect his zither, books, and other things; it seemed that he would not return to his old love. He also spoke of seeking the Dao in Qingcheng and visiting a monk on Hengshan; this was incompatible with an official’s reputation, only an affair of deceit. His wife, Xue Yuan, excelled at painting and calligraphy, and her writing was exquisite. She knew that Chucai did not remember the feelings built upon shared hard times, and rather than relying on the strength of their bond, she faced a mirror and painted her portrait, writing a poem in four rhymes to send with it. When Chucai received his wife’s portrait and exemplary poem, he was very ashamed. All at once he became a model husband and perfectly trustworthy, and this resulted in husband and wife growing old together. A village saying goes, “At one time a wife abandoned her husband; today the husband left his wife. If she did not indulge herself in painting, she would have been all alone in an empty house.” Xue Yuan’s poem, “A Portrait to Send to My Husband,”34 reads: “I want to put down 33 Tang, Yutai huashi, 5.215; for a translation, see Lara C.W. Blanchard, “Imagining Du Liniang in The Peony Pavilion: Female Painters, Self-portraiture, and Paintings of Beautiful Women in Late Ming China,” in Women, Gender and Art in Asia, c. 1500–1900, ed. Melia Belli Bose (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), 129. 34 Her poem is recorded in QTS, 11:799.8991. This source gives an alternative character in the second line, changing the “treasured mirror” to a “cold mirror” (hanjing 寒鏡). Cf. translation by Lily Xiao Hong Lee in Lily Xiao Hong Lee and Sue Wiles, eds., Biographical

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my paintbrush / but first pick up my treasured mirror. / Already surprised at the loneliness on my face, / I slowly perceive the fading at my temples. / It will be easy to sketch my tears, / but harder to write of the grief at my core. / I am afraid you will become muddled and forget me, / so from time to time open up this picture and look at it.” 濠梁人南楚材者，旅游陳潁。歲久，頴守慕其儀範，將欲以子妻之。 楚材家有妻，以受頴牧之眷深，忽不思義，而輒已諾之。遂遣家僕歸 取琴書等，似無返舊之心也。或謂求道青城，訪僧衡岳，不親名宦， 唯務玄虛。其妻薛媛，善書畫，妙屬文；知楚材不念糟糠之情，別倚 絲蘿之勢，對鏡自圖其形，幷詩四韻以寄之。楚材得妻真及詩範，遽 有雋不疑之讓，夫婦遂偕老焉。里語曰：「當時婦棄夫，今日夫離 婦。若不逞丹青，空房應獨自。」薛媛寫真寄夫詩曰：「欲下丹青 筆，先拈寳鏡端。已驚顏索寞，漸覺鬢凋殘。淚眼描將易，愁腸寫出 難。恐君渾忘却，時展畫圖看。」35

In this case, the sorrow and longing presumably conveyed by the portrait are reiterated in the moving poem that accompanied it. This anecdote indicates that wives might avail themselves of tropes indicating attachment, as a means of competing with other women. Significantly, Xue Yuan’s poem intimates that painting might serve as a more natural reflection of feelings than poetry, perhaps revealing an effort to grant painting a more authentic value than its artificial nature usually inspires. History of Jade Terrace Painting lists only two Song-era women as painting female figures with literary or historical associations. The first is a concubine of Southern Song emperor Gaozong 高宗 (r. 1127–62), named Liu Xi 劉希 (d. 1187) but known as Liu Guifei 劉貴妃, Liu Wanrong 劉婉容, Lady Liu 劉夫人, or Lady Shangyi 尚衣夫人. Xia Wenyan’s 夏文彥 (b. ca. 1315) Treasured Mirror of Painting (Tuhui baojian 圖繪寶鑑) relates the scope of her talent: Lady Liu was named Xi; her literary name was Furen. In the Jianyan era [1127–30] she was in charge of the inner palace writing of imperial text.

35

Dictionary of Chinese Women, Volume II: Tang through Ming, 618–1644 (London and New York: Routledge, 2015), 529. Fan Shu, “Zhen shi jie 真詩解 [Explaining Truth in a Poem],” in Yunxi youyi 雲溪友議 [Discussions of Friends of Clouds and Streams] (Shanghai: Gudian wenxue chubanshe, 1957), 1.4; cf. Tang, Yutai huashi, 2.127–28. Similar information is provided in the entry on Xue Yuan in Lee and Wiles, Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women, Volume II, 529. For a translation of the excerpt in Tang Shuyu’s text that derives from this anecdote, see Blanchard, “Imagining Du Liniang in The Peony Pavilion,” 129–30.

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She excelled at painting figures and took the old masters as her teachers for both brushwork and writing imperial characters. Emperor Gaozong loved her deeply, and her paintings bore a Fenghuatang seal. 劉夫人希字號夫人。建炎年掌内翰文字，善畫人物，師古人筆法及寫 宸翰字，高宗甚愛之，畫上用奉華堂印。36

Chapter 2 will discuss how one of Gaozong’s concubines could have inscribed the calligraphy on the Liaoning Provincial Museum painting Goddess of the Luo River (figs. 6.1–6.12):37 perhaps the writer was Liu Guifei. If her study of art included copying masterpieces of figure painting, she could have been the painter of that particular handscroll, meaning that one could interpret it as a document asserting her loyalty to Gaozong. No evidence links her to the calligraphy, however, much less to the painting, which bears neither a signature nor any Fenghuatang seal. The Fenghuatang was Liu Guifei’s residence, and the seal appeared on works of art in her collection, including landscape paintings, flower-and-bird paintings, works of calligraphy, and even ceramics.38 According to Wang Yuxian’s王毓賢 Notes on Painting Matters (Huishi beikao 繪事備考), the Fenghuatang seal was also impressed upon works that Liu Guifei painted herself. While none seems to survive, Wang’s text does list titles of a selection of her paintings; it too mentions that she excelled at figure painting. Three of the titles appear to allude to palace women’s work with cloth and suggest an emphasis on virtuous aspects of that work. They include Replenishing the Threads of the Palace Clothing (Gongyi tianxian tu 宮衣添綫圖), Mending the Ceremonial Robes (Bugun tu 補袞圖), and Palace Embroidery (Gongxiu tu 宮 鏽圖).39 36

37 38

39

Xia Wenyan 夏文彥, Tuhui baojian 圖繪寶鑑 [Treasured Mirror of Painting] ([Shanghai]: Shenzhou guoguangshe, 1929), 4.15b; this edition refers to a “Chunhuatang 春華堂” seal rather than a Fenghuatang seal, which I believe to be a printing error. The error is corrected in Tang, Yutai huashi, 1.119–20, which otherwise repeats the earlier text verbatim. Chen Pao-chen, “The Goddess of the Lo River: A Study of Early Chinese Narrative Handscrolls,” 2 vols. (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1987), 1: 209–10, 242. Hui-shu Lee, Empresses, Art, and Agency in Song Dynasty China (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2010), 131–35. Two of these works are discussed in Ankeney Weitz, Zhou Mi’s “Record of Clouds and Mist Passing Before One’s Eyes”: An Annotated Translation (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 102, 118, 164; cf. Zhou Mi 周密, Yunyan guoyan lu 雲煙過 眼錄 [Record of Clouds and Mist that Have Passed Before My Eyes], 2 juan (reprint, Taipei: Yiwen yinshuguan, 1969), 1.26a, 1.36a, 2.9a–15b. Wang Yuxian, Huishi beikao, 8 juan (reprint, Taipei: Taiwan shangwu yinshuguan, 1971), 2:6.56a–b; cf. Tang, Yutai huashi, 1.121. An occasional poem treats embroidery as a natural

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Intriguingly, Liu Guifei is also credited with a painting of the most notorious imperial concubine, in a passage from Wang Keyu’s 汪砢玉 Coral Net Record of Painting (Shanhuwang hualu 珊瑚網畫錄). The painting’s subject is Yang Yuhuan 楊玉環 (719–56), better known by the title Yang Guifei 楊貴妃. She had married the Prince of Shou 壽王 (715–75), son of Emperor Xuanzong 玄宗 (a.k.a. Minghuang 明皇, r. 712–56), but left the marriage and briefly became a Daoist nun, using the name Taizhen 太真. Thereafter she became the guifei, or Honored Consort,40 of Xuanzong himself in 745. For a time, her status as beloved concubine translated into power for herself and members of her family, including three sisters, who all received titles, and a cousin, Yang Guozhong 楊國忠 (d. 756), who became Chief Minister. Although legend has it that Yang Guifei and the emperor pledged eternal love, their relationship was tumultuous, and she was eventually accused of impropriety with the general An Lushan 安祿山 (ca. 703–57). When An fomented rebellion in the capital, emperor and consort fled to Shu, and she died en route, either killed by the emperor’s men or compelled to commit suicide. Xuanzong died later in the same year, and the latter part of his reign is thus intertwined with tales of his tragic attachment to this consort.41 Wang Keyu’s account of Liu Guifei’s painting suggests that it emphasized the consort’s lack of virtue: Taizhen Intoxicated and Pouring out Flower Nectar (Taizhen zui yi hualu tu), by Lady Liu: On one occasion, Taizhen was drinking alone and intoxicated, when she rose to suck the nectar from flowers on a branch beside her. This scene was most worthy as a model for sketching. In this portrait, she is abundantly plump yet delicate, with dainty features and flesh the color of peach blossoms, [leading one to] think of Yuhuan as flushed and slippery with sweat. She holds a heap of chrysanthemums to hide her red pastime for a heartbroken woman; see, for example, Wei Zhuang 韋莊 (836–910), Tune: “Qing ping yue 清平樂 [Pure, Serene Music, 1/2],” in Robin D.S. Yates, trans., Washing Silk: The Life and Selected Poetry of Wei Chuang (834?–910) (Cambridge, Mass.: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1988), 198. 40 Hucker, A Dictionary of Official Titles, s.v. 3366, kuei-fei. 41 A brief sketch of Yang Guifei’s life and embellishments on her story are given in Mann, “Myths of Asian Womanhood,” 848–50; a fuller account, with translations of relevant historical passages, appears in Howard S. Levy, “The Career of Yang Kuei-fei 楊貴妃,” T’oung Pao 45, no. 4/5 (1957): 451–89. She is the subject of a famous poem by Bai Juyi, “Chang hen ge 長恨歌 [Song of Everlasting Sorrow],” QTS, 7:435.4816–20; cf. translation by Dore J. Levy in Chinese Narrative Poetry: The Late Han through T’ang Dynasties (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1988), 129–33.

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lips—perhaps using them to become sober? It is credible that this came from a famous brush. Formerly it bore a Fenghuatang seal, so we know it was a painting of the Jianyan era by inner-palace scribe Lady Liu. Regret­ tably, during remounting, the seal was cut off by an inferior hand. Thus I tentatively propose that it must have been originally by a Song painter. Written by Wang Keyu, drunk on the Double Ninth of the dingwei year [1607] of the Wanli era [1572–1620]. 劉夫人作太真醉挹花露圖。太真在當時，惟宿酒未醒，曉起傍花枝吸 露，此景最堪摹寫，是像豐致灧灧，眉目楚楚，肌色如桃花，想玉環 紅汗浥也。把菊盈盈掩絳唇，固藉以解醒乎。信出名筆哉。第舊有奉 華堂印，知為建炎掌內翰劉夫人所繪。惜裝演時，為庸手剪去。然暗 中模索，要自宋人揮染，萬厯丁未重九日，醉裡汪砢玉題。42

Wang’s description suggests that Liu depicted Yang Guifei as lovely but disheveled and debauched. Sucking the nectar from flowers, moreover, would have been a highly suggestive image. Representations of Yang Guifei drunk may refer to tales of her rivalry with Jiang Caipin 江采蘋—known as Meifei 梅妃, the Flowering-Plum Consort—in which the former would drink while the emperor spent time with the latter. (Meifei nonetheless appears to be a wholly invented figure, featured in a “tale of strange events” or chuanqi 傳奇 that dates to the Tang or Song dynasties.)43 Liu Guifei may have meant to suggest that she herself was neglected in favor of a competitor. In choosing to illustrate a story about a concubine with whom she shared a title, however, perhaps Liu Guifei sought to force a direct comparison between herself and her subject, one that may have proved flattering to the artist. Li Qingzhao, who is better known for her writing, is also linked to paintings based on poetry, works that represent bamboo and rocks, and small landscapes, though all accounts that discuss her as an artist significantly postdate the Song and may represent later attempts to make her over in the image of a 42

43

Wang Keyu, Shanhuwang 珊瑚網 [Coral Net], 48 juan (1643; reprint, Kyoto: Kanseki Repository, 2016), 29.21b–22a, (accessed 28 July 2016); cf. Tang, Yutai huashi, 1.120, which provides Wang’s text nearly verbatim. Maggie Bickford translates excerpts from the tale and argues for a twelfth-century date in Bones of Jade, Soul of Ice: The Flowering Plum in Chinese Art (New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 1985), 176–79. See also Mann, “Myths of Asian Womanhood,” 849–50; Chang and Saussy, Women Writers of Traditional China, 268n. For an overview of Tang dynasty chuanqi, see William H. Nienhauser Jr., “T’ang Tales,” in The Columbia History of Chinese Literature, ed. Victor H. Mair (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 579–94.

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multitalented woman.44 History of Jade Terrace Painting cites a text by Song Lian (1310–81), Collection of Song Scholars (Song xueshi ji 宋學士集), which claims that she created a painting that takes up themes of attachment. Song Lian’s account begins: Letian was living in exile in Jiangzhou when he heard a merchant’s wife playing the pipa and wiped away tears of sorrow and joy; it could be said that he was not good at handling suffering and difficulty. However, his poem about it has been passed down and makes readers sad even now— what of those who hear of this affair? Li Yi’an made a picture [of the poem] and wrote it out; her thoughts covertly dwelled within. 樂天謫居江州，聞商婦琵琶，抆淚悲歡，可謂不善處患難矣。然其詞 之傳，讀者猶愴然，況聞其事者乎。李易安圖而書之，其意蓋有所 寓。45

Letian is the courtesy name of poet Bai Juyi 白居易 (772–846), and Song Lian claims that Li Qingzhao made a painting on the theme of one of Bai’s bestknown poems, “Song of the Pipa” (recorded under the alternate Chinese titles Pipa xing 琵琶行 and Pipa yin 琵琶引). The poem describes the longings of a former singing girl, sold as wife to a merchant and then frequently left alone when he traveled.46 Song Lian’s text dates some two hundred years after Li Qingzhao lived, and the attribution may not be credible. Still, he believed that Li Qingzhao was the artist, and he wrote a poetic colophon for the painting in which he unfavorably compares her to Bai Juyi’s protagonist, possibly as a means of registering a critique of Li Qingzhao’s second marriage to Zhang Ruzhou 張汝舟—a stance reflective of Ming views on chastity.47 A painting 44 45

46

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Ronald Egan calls into question the notion of Li Qingzhao as a multitalented woman accomplished in calligraphy, painting, and music in The Burden of Female Talent, 247–49. The title of this text gives the impression that Li Qingzhao only copied out Bai Juyi’s poem and did not make the painting; Song Lian, “Ti Li Yi’an suoshu ‘Pipa xing’ hou 題李易安所 書琵琶行後 [On Li Qingzhao’s Calligraphy of ‘Song of the Pipa’],” Song xueshi quanji 宋學士全集 [Complete Collection of Song Scholars], 40 vols. (Taipei: Yiwen yinshuguan, 1970), 30:32.6b–7a. Tang Shuyu also claims that Li Qingzhao was responsible for both painting and calligraphy in Yutai huashi, 2.138. Bai Juyi, “Pipa yin,” QTS, 7:435.4821–22; cf. Burton Watson, ed. and trans., The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry: From Early Times to the Thirteenth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), 249–52. Ronald Egan discusses Song Lian’s colophon in depth in The Burden of Female Talent, 248, 258–60.

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based on this poem would undoubtedly address its lonely female persona, but no such painting by Li Qingzhao survives, and thus one cannot know whether she might have presented a fresh view of the woman’s side of a romantic relationship. In Tang Shuyu’s compilation, these four—Cui Hui, Xue Yuan, Liu Guifei, and Li Qingzhao—are the only women of the Tang and Song eras described as using figure painting to consider interiority: most entries for women of these periods laud their talent in painting landscapes, ink bamboo, and other lofty subjects. Still, I argue that woman-authored paintings on emotional attachment must have been more numerous than this source indicates, particularly given the existence of female writers of erotic poetry. One entry in the Northern Song Xuanhe Painting Catalogue (Xuanhe huapu 宣和畫譜) suggests that certain subjects were simply not regarded as sufficiently serious: An imperial wife born to the Cao family [in the Song dynasty] was an excellent painter. Everything that she painted avoided the type of pleasant and feebly charming compositions that girls choose for enjoyment. It was truly as though, through her travels, she obtained beautiful scenes of rivers, lakes, and landscapes that she had viewed, and then collated them as fine compositions. 宗婦曹氏，雅善丹青，所畫皆非優柔輭媚取悅兒女子者，真若得於 遊，覽見江湖山川間勝槩，以集於毫端耳。48

This comment not only reflects the prominence that landscape attained as a genre, but also betrays an assessment of “feminine” painting as trivial in nature (perhaps echoing Guo Ruoxu on the topic of shinü hua). Ms. Cao is explicitly praised for making paintings that were not feminine. Perhaps critics refrained from mentioning female artists whose works used female figures to express longing or desire for two reasons: first, out of a sense that it was unremarkable for a woman to do so—in the way that critics came to view women as naturally drawn to and proficient at song lyric—and second, from an apprehension that such subjects were less worthy. These anecdotes suggest that when female painters did illustrate romantic themes, they used the same tropes found in earlier examples of poetry and painting, responding to the preexisting conception of female figures as consumed with longing or desire. Thus, female artists may have used paintings as vehicles for expression just as male artists did. 48

Xuanhe huapu, 16.457; cf. Tang, Yutai huashi, 1.117–18.

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Cross-Dressing and Authenticity In China, female poets and painters who addressed romantic or erotic themes worked within genres with a long history of male authors adopting a female persona for expressive purposes. This phenomenon in poetry is called literary cross-dressing or transvestism, referring to the way that a male poet might speak through a feminine persona or, in some cases, contrast the persona’s voice with his own (which suggests ventriloquism as well). Chinese poets used this device extensively in palace-style poetry, Music Bureau poetry, and song lyric.49 I suggest that such poems represent a subjectivity that is neither female nor male but transvestite.50 Even when female poets wrote in female voice, one cannot understand the resulting compositions as reflecting a purely female subjectivity. Scholars of Chinese poetry have argued that this circumstance too amounts to an act of cross-dressing: a woman writing as a man writing as a woman. Marjorie Garber has discussed a comparable situation in English drama, the filling of female roles with woman actors—replacing the boy actors that had played those roles through the Restoration era—as the opposite of a return to naturalism: instead, “a double substitution—a re-recognition of artifice.”51 In those Chinese poetic traditions that rely upon transvestism, concerns about authenticity are ubiquitous. One source of this concern is an idea advanced in the Great Preface (Da xu 大序, dating no later than the Former Han dynasty, 202 bce–9 ce) to the Book of Songs (Shijing 詩經, thought to date between the tenth and seventh centuries bce): Poetry is where the intent of the heart/mind goes. What in the heart is intent is poetry when emitted in words. 詩者。志之所之也。在心為志。發言為詩。52 49 Samei, Gendered Persona and Poetic Voice, 16–17, 28–35. Some male poets did not presume to render a woman’s feelings: Paul Rouzer discusses Tang quatrains that suggest that the female subject’s emotions are unreadable in Articulated Ladies, 293. 50 Garber suggests that the transvestite “define[s] and problematize[s] the entire concept of ‘male subjectivity,’” in Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety (New York: HarperCollins/Routledge, 1992), 98. Samei refers to it as a “male-defined feminine” in Gendered Persona and Poetic Voice, 17. 51 Garber, Vested Interests, 126. On cross-dressing in Chinese poetry, see Robertson, “Voicing the Feminine,” 68; Rouzer, Articulated Ladies, 8, 155–56; Samei, Gendered Persona and Poetic Voice, 18–19. 52 Translated by Pauline Yu, The Reading of Imagery in the Chinese Poetic Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 31–32; cf. Ruan Yuan, ed., Maoshi zhengyi 毛詩正義

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This concept is summed up in three words, shi yan zhi 詩言志, which can be translated “poetry speaks to intent.” It acknowledges poetry as a genuine expression of feeling, an unconscious outpouring comparable to the manifestation of emotion. Literary scholars observe that genres in which poets do not avoid artifice unsettle this assumption.53 Poetry that made use of literary cross-dressing thus could be marginalized as inauthentic. This is perhaps why Xu Ling’s preface to New Songs from a Jade Terrace intimates that it presents the work of female authors for female readers; such a claim avoids the issue of literary cross-dressing in the (predominantly male-authored) poems.54 In the Music Bureau and song lyric genres, the use of female voice might be explained through manifold associations with performance by female entertainers.55 But this does not explain why critics hailed Su Shi’s adoption of the song lyric genre to address “strongly individuated”56 and autobiographical topics as an important achievement: that suggests unease with transvestite subjectivity or a perception that men should not voice romantic feelings, even through an appropriate female persona.57 The close correspondence between poetry and painting suggests that there might be a visual counterpart to literary cross-dressing: pictorial cross-dressing. A painting does not have a voice in the same way a poem does, but a subject position is sometimes implied, and connoisseurs have discussed some paintings as expressive or as providing commentary. If painters or patrons could use female figures as a means of expressing their own concerns, the concept of transvestism may be relevant to examinations of male-authored paintings of women’s interiority. One painting that raises the question of subjectivity is In the Palace (figs. 1.1–4.2), which depicts the pleasures of imperial concubines [Commentary on Mao’s “Songs”] (1815), 1.13, (accessed 30 May 2016). The Book of Songs is also translated under the titles Book of Odes, Book of Poetry, Classic of Odes, and Classic of Poetry. For a summary of the origins of this text and scholarship on it, see Loewe, Early Chinese Texts, 415–23; for an English translation, see Arthur Waley, trans., The Book of Songs: The Ancient Chinese Classic of Poetry (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1987). 53 Samei, Gendered Persona and Poetic Voice, 13; citing Wu, The Poetics of Decadence, 4–5. 54 For an analysis of the preface, see Rouzer, Articulated Ladies, 132–37. 55 Joseph R. Allen, In the Voice of Others: Chinese Music Bureau Poetry (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1992), 228. 56 Egan, The Problem of Beauty, 283. 57 Samei discusses the use of female personae as a means of expressing genuine feeling in Gendered Persona and Poetic Voice, 12–13. The tenth-century Among the Flowers (Huajian ji 花閒集) collection includes some lyrics expressing longing written in first-person male voice; Shields, Crafting a Collection, 227–30, 274–77.

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with attributes that function as metonyms of their emotional attachments. Analyzing the manipulation of the figures is essential to any interpretation of the painting, whether it be understood as political or allegorical, an expression of the painter’s or patron’s thoughts or feelings, a model of idealized femininity, or an artifact of heteroerotic desire. In the Palace was once a long handscroll that depicted dozens of palace women diverting themselves. The painting, now divided into four sections, is a copy of a scroll (not extant) by Southern Tang court painter Zhou Wenju. Scholars concur that the four paintings are sequential sections of a single scroll: horizontal streaks in the silk extend through all four segments; the fragments are approximately consistent in height, ranging between 25.7 and 28.3 centimeters; and seals on the first section and on the colophon attached to the second section appear to match seals on the final section.58 Still, the different parts of the scroll may not be the work of a single artist: it is possible that the first two segments were by one artist and the latter two by another.59 All four sections credibly date to the Song era, based on the style of the painting, the 58

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Laurance P. Roberts, The Bernard Berenson Collection of Oriental Art at Villa I Tatti (New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1991), 30. One of the seals impressed after the colophon, reading “Junsima yin 軍司馬印,” appears again as a half-seal at the beginning of the first section and at the end of the fourth section, suggesting that the sections do belong together; this seal, however, is not consistent with an early twelfth-century date, as discussed by Waikam Ho in “Danyan Jushi Zhang Cheng kaolüe, bing lun Mo Zhou Wenju Gongzhong tujuan ba hou zhi ‘Junsima yin’ ji qita weiyin 澹巖居士張澂考略並論《摹周文矩宮中 圖卷》跋後之‘軍司馬印’及其他偽印 [A Brief Investigation of Danyan Jushi Zhang Cheng, along with a Discussion of the ‘Junsima yin’ and Other Spurious Seals Stamped after the Colophon to the Handscroll In the Palace, a Copy after Zhou Wenju],” Shanghai Bowuguan jikan 上海博物館季刊 4 (1987): 43. Discussions of the order of sections and the possibility of multiple artists appear in Yashiro Yukio 矢代幸雄, “So bo Shū-Bunku Kyūchū zu 宋摹周文矩宮中圖 [A Sung Copy of the Scroll ‘Ladies of the Court’ by Chou Wen-chü (Chinese, Five Dynasties)],” Bijutsu Kenkyu 美術研究, no. 25 (January 1934): 1–12; idem., “So bo Shū-Bunku Kyūchū zu no shin danpen 宋摹周文矩宮中圖の新斷片 [A New Fragment of the Sung Copy of the ScrollPainting ‘Ladies of the Court’ by Chou Wen-chü],” Bijutsu Kenkyu 美術研究, no. 56 (August 1936): 316; idem., “Saisetsu So bo Shū-Bunku Kyūchū zu 再說宋摹周文矩宮中 圖 [Again on the Sung Copy of the Scroll ‘Ladies of the Court’ by Chou Wên-chü],” Bijutsu Kenkyu 美術研究, no. 169 (1952): 159; Roberts, The Bernard Berenson Collection, 30; Wen C. Fong, Beyond Representation: Chinese Painting and Calligraphy 8th–14th Century (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 67 n. 31; and Eight Dynasties of Chinese Painting: The Collections of the Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, and The Cleveland Museum of Art (Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1980), 28.

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seals, and the quality of the silk.60 Though it is not clear why they were separated, the division of at least the first two sections possibly occurred in the early twentieth century at the hands of an art dealer.61 The sections are preserved in the Bernard Berenson Collection at Villa I Tatti, Florence (figs. 1.1–1.3), the Cleveland Museum of Art (figs. 2.1–2.4), the Harvard Art Museums (figs. 3.1–3.4), and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (figs. 4.1–4.2). They are known by multiple titles, and it is not clear how these were assigned. Although the English title of the Berenson section is now given as In the Palace or Ladies of the Court, it has been recorded under the title Spring Morning in the Tang Palace (Tang gong chunxiao tu 唐宮春曉圖); this version of the Chinese title seems to date back to the time of the painter and critic Dong Qichang 董其昌 (1555–1636).62 The Harvard section is known as Court Ladies, but its Chinese title is Palace Ladies Reveling (Gongnü yanle tujuan 宮女宴樂圖卷); I have not found any reference to this title in early painting catalogues. The Cleveland section is known as Ladies of the Court, and the Metropolitan section is known by the title In the Palace. For simplicity, I refer to the painting by the title in use in the early twelfth century, mentioned in the colophon: In the Palace (Gongzhong tu 宮中圖). This painting combines courtly and scholarly elements, suggesting the broad appeal of romantic themes. Its setting is the inner rooms and courtyards of the women’s quarters of the palace. Many of the women depicted therein enact poetic scenarios of longing and desire, suggesting that Zhou Wenju painted the original composition for the Southern Tang ruler Li Yu 李煜 (r. 961–75). Yet the copyist does not render the women in a courtly painting 60

The scrolls may represent extant examples of dingben 定本 (preliminary drawings) from the Northern Song that preserve Zhou Wenju’s composition; Howard Rogers, “Second Thoughts on Multiple Recensions,” Kaikodo Journal, no. 5 (Autumn 1997): 53. Wai-kam Ho assesses the first two sections of the scroll as dating to the Song era and notes the presence of a genuine seal of Zhang Cheng, who wrote the colophon in 1140, in “Danyan Jushi Zhang Cheng kaolüe,” 42–43. Roberts assesses the silk as of the Song era in The Bernard Berenson Collection, 30. 61 Roberts, The Bernard Berenson Collection, 29. 62 Ibid., 27. The painting is listed under this title in Bian Yongyu 卞永譽 (1645–1712), comp., Shigutang hua kao 式古堂畫攷 [A Study of Paintings of the Shigu Hall], in Shigutang shuhua kao 式古堂書畫攷 [A Study of Calligraphy and Paintings of the Shigu Hall], comp. Bian Yongyu (1682, reprint; Wuxing: Jiangu shushe, 1921), 11.15b-16a, (accessed 30 May 2016). A variant title, Spring Evening in the Tang Palace (Tang gong chunwan tu 唐宮春晚圖), appears in Sun Yuepan 孫岳頒, comp., Peiwenzhai shuhuapu 佩文齋書畫普 [Peiwen Hall Calligraphy and Painting Catalogue], 100 juan (Beijing: Neifu, Kangxi reign period of the Qing dynasty [1708–22]), 82.7a.

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style, instead choosing the “plain outline” (baimiao 白描) style associated with Northern Song scholar Li Gonglin 李公麟 (ca. 1049–1106), who used it for his Classic of Filial Piety (Xiaojing tu 孝經圖).63 The austere quality of baimiao may thus have undertones of propriety, but the figures of In the Palace are enhanced with light color—either a faint pink wash or a bolder application of red—in lips, cheeks, hair ornaments, and the occasional pot of makeup. The correlation of the word “color” (se 色) with adornment appears in the Confucian Analects, and the word was strongly associated with sex, as affirmed in Song dynasty lyrics about women in which “color” has a double meaning, underscoring the association between wearing makeup and sexual desirability.64 This aspect of In the Palace, then, helps to construct these figures as desirable and perhaps desirous. The spare style may indicate that the copy was intended for a scholarly audience, suggesting that not only a ruler would have enjoyed picturing himself as the object of the figures’ desire. In fact, a colophon to the painting suggests that this handscroll was created for a nephew of Li Gonglin, the scholar-official Zhang Cheng 張澂 (literary name Danyan Jushi 澹巖居士, fl. ca. 1138–43),65 and this paired with the use of baimiao provides evidence that Song literati sought to reinterpret eroticized poetic themes. Much of the information about the scroll derives from its colophon (fig. 2.4), which reveals some of the painting’s history. The colophon is dated 1140 and is signed Danyan Jushi. It reads: Zhou Wenju’s In the Palace depicts eighty women and children, as well as one man painting a portrait. In addition, there are powder boxes, musical instruments, basins and tubs, fans, chairs and mats, parrots, dogs, and 63

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Li Gonglin, Classic of Filial Piety, Metropolitan Museum of Art (1996.479a–c), New York; the painting is thoroughly discussed and reproduced in Richard M. Barnhart, Li Kung-lin’s “Classic of Filial Piety” (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1993), and reproduced online at Center for the Art of East Asia, Digital Scrolling Paintings Project (Chicago: The University of Chicago, 2013–), (accessed 30 May 2016). “Confucius said: ‘Clever words and a beguiling appearance [literally, “good color”] rarely make up for kindness towards others.’” (子曰：『巧言令色，鮮矣仁。』) “Xue’er 學 而 [Learning],” in Ruan, Lunyu zhushu, 1.5–6 (accessed 30 May 2016). For Song dynasty lyrics that clarify the double meaning of se, see Liu Yong 柳永 (987–1053), Tune: “Gu qing bei 古傾杯 [Drinking a Toast, as of Old]”; and Chao Duanli 晁端禮 (1046–1113), Tune: “Yu jie xing 御街行 [Driving a Chariot through the Lanes],” QSC, 1:27, 429. More information about Zhang Cheng is provided in Ho, “Danyan Jushi Zhang Cheng kaolüe,” 35–38; and Alfreda Murck, Poetry and Painting in Song China: The Subtle Art of Dissent (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, 2000), 200–202.

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butterflies. Wenju was from Jurong and served as painter-in-attendance at the Jiangnan Hanlin Academy. When he painted ladies, his style was similar to Zhou Fang’s but more delicate and beautiful. Once he painted a work titled Southern Village for the Last Ruler [Li Yu]. It is said that after one hour he put down his brush, and on that very day he presented it to the court, where by imperial order it was registered in the Palace Library. It is said that In the Palace is an authentic work. Previously it belonged to the family of the Chief Minister of the Court of the Imperial Treasury,66 Zhu Zai[shang, d. 1126]. It was copied for presentation as a gift [to me]. The wives all have tall hairdos, fashionable since the Tang dynasty. In this scroll, they are abundantly fleshy, with long skirts of fine silk; this is the style of Zhou Fang. When I was in Jiaonan, with one of the descendants of the original line of Emperor Gaozu [r. 618–26], I saw portraits of various emperors from the family collection. The palace women on either side of the emperors combed their hair roughly the same way as in this scroll. The maids arrange their hair in two large coils that hang to their shoulders, allowing the nape of the neck to show; this is ugly but it captures the style as it truly was. The Li family called themselves the Southern Tang dynasty, and therefore their attire was entirely based on the Tang system. But the romantic style actually derives from the Six Dynasties. Painters say that to distinguish old paintings one should first inquire about the clothing, carts, and furniture. This fully lives up to that saying. Written by Danyan Jushi, yiyou day of the fifth lunar month of the gengshen year [1140] of the Shaoxing era [1131–62]. 周文矩《宮中圖》，婦人小兒其數八十。一男子寫神。而壯具、樂 器、盆盂、扇、椅、席、鸚鵡、犬、蝶不與。文矩句容人，為江南翰 林待詔。作仕女，體近周昉，而加纖麗。嘗為後主畫《南莊圖》，號 一時絕筆。它日上之朝廷，詔籍之秘閣。《宮中圖》，云是真蹟。藏 前太府卿朱載家。或摹以見餽。婦人高髻，自唐以來如此。此卷豐肌 長襦裙，周昉法也。予在嶠南，於端溪陳高祖之裔見其世藏諸帝像， 左右宮人梳髻，與此略同。而丫鬟乃作兩大鬟垂肩項間，雖醜而有真 態。李氏自謂南唐，故衣冠多用唐制。然風流寔承六朝之餘。畫家者 言辨古畫，當先問衣冠車服，蓋謂是也。紹興庚申五月乙酉澹喦居士 題。67 66 Hucker, A Dictionary of Official Titles, s.v. 6162, t’ai-fu ch’ing, and 6165, t’ai-fu ssu. 67 The Chinese text of the colophon is published in Yashiro, “So bo Shū-Bunku Kyūchū zu,” 4–5, and Ho, “Danyan Jushi Zhang Cheng kaolüe,” 42. I am grateful to Grace S. Fong for suggestions on the translation.

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Zhang Cheng and the Northern Song official Zhu Zaishang 朱載上 were both from Shucheng 舒城.68 The colophon’s wording suggests that Zhu Zaishang’s painting might already have been lost in 1140 (which seems especially likely if one takes into account the chaotic fall of the Northern Song in 1127). The painting that survives today may be Zhang Cheng’s copy, and it must date before 1140 if one can believe the colophon. The colophon, however, has certain problems. Some of its passages are close in wording to another colophon with a Zhang Cheng signature, written for a different painting—which may mean that one or the other is a forgery.69 Moreover, the colophon for In the Palace is attached to the Cleveland scroll rather than the final section of the painting, and it has apparently been trimmed at the bottom; the characters of the colophon are cut along the bottom edge. This might indicate that the colophon was once attached to a different composition altogether, one of larger dimensions. (Like all the sections of the painting, the colophon also appears to have been trimmed at the left and right edges, possibly when the scroll was cut into pieces.) The seals stamped after the colophon also present an enigma: one may be Zhang Cheng’s authentic seal, but at least seven of the others appear to have been added with the intent of making the work seem older.70 This does not necessarily invalidate the colophon as Zhang Cheng’s genuine writing, but it does mean that one cannot assign a date to the painting on the basis of the colophon alone. Despite these concerns about Zhang Cheng’s colophon, it clearly describes the full painting, and it has a distinct subtext: that all elements depicted are based in reality. Zhang Cheng discusses women’s fashions of earlier periods in order to give the painting the status of a historically accurate portrayal; in this way, he asserts that Zhu Zaishang’s painting was an original painting by Zhou Wenju. Perhaps this reflects Zhang Cheng’s recognition that his own painting is only a copy of that earlier work, or perhaps he feels some anxiety about his memory of Zhu Zaishang’s painting. On a deeper level, though, it may demonstrate his awareness of the artifice involved in a male court painter’s imagining of a female perspective. His efforts to ground the painting in a past reality show his concern with discerning between genuine and artificial. At the same time, this rhetorical move is essential to making the ladies it depicts into the stuff of fantasy. If the viewers who enjoyed this painting could not believe that desirable court women such as these had existed in some place or time, even (or 68 69 70

Ho, “Danyan Jushi Zhang Cheng kaolüe,” 42–43. The second painting is a fragmentary version of Night Revels of Han Xizai; I discuss the passages that are identical in greater detail in the Conclusion. Ho, “Danyan Jushi Zhang Cheng kaolüe,” 44.

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perhaps especially) one far removed from their own, then the beauties would lose some of their appeal. An indispensable element of fantasy is that it must, in some rarefied instance, contain the potential of realization. The colophon identifies most of the depicted figures as ladies or maids. Many of the ladies wear love-knots, or pendants attached to ribbons hanging from the belt to the floor, tied in a knot below the hips. This ornament, as a token of a man’s affection, suggests the wearer’s attachment to a particular man.71 Many of those wearing elaborate headdresses are probably supposed to be imperial concubines, but those that play musical instruments might be (former or present) palace courtesans.72 The younger figures are either maids or daughters of the concubines; the maids wear their hair in loops bound at the ears, while the daughters often wear bows as well. Additionally, one little boy, no bigger than a toddler, appears in the Cleveland section (fig. 2.2). The colophon mentions a single man painting a lady’s portrait; he appears at the opening of the Berenson section (fig. 1.1). A second man, however, appears at the end of the Metropolitan Museum section (fig. 4.2). Zhang Cheng must have counted him as a boy (including him among the children) because he has no beard; I contend that he is a eunuch.73 These two male figures, appearing in the first and last scene, raise the question of whose subjectivity is represented. Beginning with a portrait painter (fig. 1.1) clarifies the content of In the Palace. The woman sitting for her portrait is a concubine wearing a voluminous pink floral headdress; a lady-in-waiting and two girls—one a daughter wearing a large pink bow—observe the process. Some emperors allegedly relied upon portraits of court ladies when choosing a sexual partner for the evening. A well-known story concerning this practice, focusing on the Former Han imperial concubine Wang Qiang 王嬙, known as Zhaojun 昭君, apparently originates in the fifth-century text A New Account of Tales of the World (Shishuo xinyu 世說新語). This text, written centuries after Wang Zhaojun lived, relates that a portrait painter did not fairly represent her beauty, and consequently Emperor Yuandi 漢元帝 (r. 48–32 bce) offered her as consort to a Xiongnu chieftain in 33 bce. Several other (mostly earlier) historical or literary accounts of Wang Zhaojun do not mention the existence of a portrait at all, describing 71

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An early poem listing the connotations of the love-knot and other ornaments is Fan Qin’s 繁欽 (d. 218) “Ding qing shi, yi shou 定情詩一首 [We Pledged Our Love, One Poem],” YTXY, 1.22a–23b; cf. translation in Birrell, New Songs from a Jade Terrace, 51–52. Wen Fong suggests that some of the women are ladies-in-waiting in Beyond Representation, 67 n. 31. Wen Fong proposes that the portrait painter is Zhou Wenju himself and that the young man near the end represents ruler Li Yu in Beyond Representation, 35, 67 n. 31.

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Figure 1.1 In the Palace. After Zhou Wenju ( fl. 961–75), before 1140; section of a handscroll, ink and color on silk, 28.0 cm h. Berenson Collection, Villa I Tatti, Florence, reproduced by permission of the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Photo: Paolo De Rocco, Centrica SRL, Florence.

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different reasons for her presentation to the chieftain. However, this elaboration proved so compelling that it continued to circulate even into the Tang dynasty, with allusions by prominent poets Li Bai 李白 (701–62), Bai Juyi, and Li Shangyin 李商隱 (813?–58), among others.74 The scene in the Berenson scroll undoubtedly alludes to this manner of documenting the concubines’ beauty for the emperor’s benefit and suggests that this handscroll was intended as a representation of women eager to attract the emperor’s attention. This interpretation is supported by the next grouping of figures: a concubine and two maids using translucent scarves to capture butterflies (fig. 1.2). The activity suggests the theme of Flower Morning or the Birthday of the Flowers, occurring in the second lunar month. On this day women traditionally wore flowers in their hair and attempted to catch butterflies, in hopes of being summoned to the emperor’s bed.75 The painter depicts the concubines as joyfully seeking union with the emperor, while minimizing the sense of competition among them. Starting the painting with these two scenes establishes a mood of sexual anticipation and excitement. Immediately following is a scene that presents a prelude to bathing, a topic that relates to self-adornment and possesses significant erotic potential (fig. 1.3). Two concubines carry a basin filled with water to a third concubine sitting in a chair. A fourth concubine, wearing an elaborate bow in her hair, holds the hands of an imperial daughter (also wearing a bow) as a fifth concubine looks 74

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Eugene Eoyang discusses the various accounts of Wang Zhaojun in Hanshu 漢書 [Han History, 1st cent. ce], Cai Yong’s蔡邕 (133–92) Qin cao 琴操 [Principles of the Lute, 2nd cent. ce], Fan Ye’s 范曄 (d. 445) Hou Hanshu 後漢書 [History of the Latter Han, 5th cent. ce], Shishuo xinyu, and Xijing zaji 西京雜記 [Miscellaneous Records of the Western Capital, early 6th cent. ce], and he provides translations of poems by Li Bai, Bai Juyi, and Li Shangyin that explicitly mention her portrait; see Eoyang, “The Wang Chao-chün Legend: Configurations of the Classic,” Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews (CLEAR) 4, no. 1 (January 1982): 6–13, 19–22; cf. Li Bai, “Tongqian er shou 同前二首 [Wang Zhaojun, two poems, 1/2]”; Bai Juyi, “Tongqian er shou [Wang Zhaojun, two poems, 1/2]”; and Li Shangyin, “Tongqian 同前 [Wang Zhaojun],” in Guo Maoqian 郭茂倩, ed., Yuefu shiji 樂府詩 集 [A Collection of Music Bureau Poetry, hereafter abbreviated as YFSJ] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1979), 2:29.430, 2:29.431. Additional Music Bureau poems on Wang Zhaojun appear in YFSJ, 2:29.426–35. See also Liu Yiqing 劉義慶, Shishuo xinyu 世說新語 [A New Account of Tales of the World], 2 vols. (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1982), 1:7.14b–15a; cf. Liu I-ch’ing, Shih-shuo Hsin-yü: A New Account of Tales of the World, trans. Richard B. Mather (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1976), 340–41. See also Idema and Grant, The Red Brush, 91–95, for a discussion of Wang Zhaojun and for translations of the Hou Hanshu and Xijing zaji texts. Ellen Johnston Laing, “Notes on Ladies Wearing Flowers in Their Hair,” Orientations 21, no. 2 (February 1990): 35–39; idem, “Chinese Palace-Style Poetry,” 284–86.

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Figure 1.2

In the Palace. After Zhou Wenju ( fl. 961–75), before 1140; section of a handscroll, ink and color on silk, 28.0 cm h. Berenson Collection, Villa I Tatti, Florence, reproduced by permission of the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Photo: Paolo De Rocco, Centrica SRL, Florence.

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Figure 1.3 In the Palace. After Zhou Wenju ( fl. 961–75), before 1140; section of a handscroll, ink and color on silk, 28.0 cm h. Berenson Collection, Villa I Tatti, Florence, reproduced by permission of the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Photo: Paolo De Rocco, Centrica SRL, Florence.

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on. A sixth concubine and a maid bring another chair. This scene concludes the Berenson scroll. Next, opening the Cleveland section, is a scene of two musicians fingering their stringed instruments, a ruan 阮 and a zither (fig. 2.1). Because of the association between stringed instruments and courtesans, these women may be palace courtesans entertaining the concubines or former courtesans elevated to the status of concubines. Three more ladies sit by the musicians. Models for the scene depicted here appear in two classical narratives, both featuring the sympathetic listener (zhiyin 知音). The first, from the Liezi 列子, tells of two male friends, Bo Ya 伯牙 and Zhong Ziqi 鍾子期. Bo Ya was an exceptional lute player who improvised upon his instrument as he imagined mountains or waters, while Zhong Ziqi was so attuned to his friend’s music that he could always discern Bo Ya’s thoughts.76 This story presents their like-mindedness as the basis for a strong homosocial bond, a concept that this scene from In the Palace may allude to. The second narrative is Bai Juyi’s “Song of the Pipa.” The narrator tells of detecting a former courtesan’s marital frustration through her expressive (and, once again, improvised) music, a deeply affecting experience for him.77 This poem suggests that the musicians depicted in In the Palace might convey their feelings to their audience: this would suggest the other women as supportive rather than adversarial. Though interrupted by the incongruously placed colophon (fig. 2.4), In the Palace continues with a long scene (extending from the Cleveland scroll, figs. 2.2 and 2.3, to the beginning of the Harvard scroll, fig. 3.1) showing women and children interacting. This has implications for the women’s fertility and suggests that one responsibility of palace women was to model femininity for their younger female counterparts. In this scene, two maids carry a palanquin in which a young girl sits holding a parrot. The usually caged bird evokes the practice of gender segregation,78 and the girl is likely meant to internalize this 76 Frankel, The Flowering Plum and the Palace Lady, 222. He cites Liezi 5.7a, a Daoist text already in existence in the fourth century (the date of the earliest commentary on it); Loewe, Early Chinese Texts, 298–301. 77 Bai Juyi, “Pipa yin,” QTS, 7:435.4821–22; cf. translation in Watson, The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry, 249–52. 78 An early poem, Mi Heng’s 禰衡 (ca. 173–98) “Yingwu fu 鸚鵡賦 [Rhapsody on a Parrot],” alludes to a caged parrot separated from its mate; Xiao Tong蕭統 (501–31) and Hu Kejia 胡克家(1757–1816), comp., Fangsong Hu Ke Wen xuan 仿宋胡刻文選 [Selections of Refined Literature], ed. Li Shan 李善 (Poyang, Jiangxi Province: 1809), 13.13a–15a; cf. Xiao Tong, comp., Wen xuan, or Selections of Refined Literature, trans. David R. Knechtges, 3 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 3:49–57. Mi’s rhapsody, written at request about a powerful friend’s parrot, was personal in nature and departed from

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lesson. Three concubines gather around them. One observes the procession while holding a pair of birds—a metaphor for enduring love. Another, wearing a large bow and carrying a fan, looks down at the girl, while a third helps to steady her in the palanquin. Nearby, three concubines hover over a clapping toddler, apparently male (judging from his hair); a maid waits nearby with a bowl. Finally, two more seated concubines watch seven girls—three of whom are imperial daughters with beautifully dressed hair—and five small dogs. This scene is followed in the Harvard scroll by another scene of musical per­formance (fig. 3.2). Here, three courtesans or concubines play the harp, the panpipes, and the transverse flute, accompanied by a maid on a clapper. Images of women playing pipes and flutes are sexually suggestive, clarifying that what is being expressed is stymied heteroerotic desire. The audience consists of two seated concubines, a maid, and a girl, and the latter two appear to be holding covered instruments of their own. The viewer might also understand this scene as a demonstration of the performance of desire for a generation of courtesans-in-training. What comes next is a long scene (extending from the Harvard scroll to the Metropolitan scroll, figs. 3.3, 3.4, and 4.1), involving sixteen concubines (mostly devoted to their toilette), five maids, and two small girls. First, the viewer finds two concubines with tall floral headdresses, again recalling the theme of Flower Morning; a small girl tugs at the love-knot suspended from the belt of the first. Another concubine stretches her arms languorously, as if just awakened. A maid holds a mirror for a concubine arranging her topknot; its re­ flection shows her happy face. Two concubines, one seated on a stool, one ar­ranging her coiffure, turn toward each other companionably. A maid holds a tray of cosmetic boxes for a concubine gazing at her face in a mirror (which the viewer only sees from the back); she strokes her plump cheek, perhaps smoothing powder onto it. The Harvard scroll closes with a concubine pinning up her hair. Then, at the beginning of the Metropolitan scroll, a group of five concubines and two maids gather around a concubine sitting on a couch, with a large basin next to her on the floor. The maid closest to her holds a tray of cosmetic boxes, and the other maid waits with a towel. Two of the ladies hold a mirror and stacked cosmetic boxes. In the background, a young concubine uses her conventions for such works; the circumstances are discussed in William T. Graham Jr., “Mi Heng’s Rhapsody on a Parrot,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 39, no. 1 (June 1979): 40–44, 51–53. A poem by Bai Juyi, “Yingwu 鸚鵡 [Parrot],” QTS 7.447.5035, suggests this interpretation and explicitly compares a caged parrot to courtesans in confinement; cf. translation by Rewi Alley, Bai Juyi: 200 Selected Poems (Beijing: New World Press, 1983), 199.

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Figure 2.1

In the Palace. After Zhou Wenju, before 1140; section of a handscroll, ink and slight color on silk, 28.3 × 168.5 cm. The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund, 1976.1. Photograph © The Cleveland Museum of Art.

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Figure 2.2 In the Palace. After Zhou Wenju, before 1140; section of a handscroll, ink and slight color on silk, 28.3 × 168.5 cm. The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund, 1976.1. Photograph © The Cleveland Museum of Art.

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Figure 2.3

In the Palace. After Zhou Wenju, before 1140; section of a handscroll, ink and slight color on silk, 28.3 × 168.5 cm. The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund, 1976.1. Photograph © The Cleveland Museum of Art.

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Figure 2.4

In the Palace. After Zhou Wenju, before 1140; section of a handscroll, ink and slight color on silk, 28.3 × 168.5 cm. The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund, 1976.1. Photograph © The Cleveland Museum of Art.

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Figure 3.1

In the Palace (Palace Ladies at Leisure). After Zhou Wenju, before 1140; section of a handscroll, ink and traces of pigment on silk, 25.7 × 177.0 cm. Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Francis H. Burr Memorial Fund, 1945.28. Photo: Imaging Department © President and Fellows of Harvard College.

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Figure 3.2 In the Palace (Palace Ladies at Leisure). After Zhou Wenju, before 1140; section of a handscroll, ink and traces of pigment on silk, 25.7 × 177.0 cm. Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Francis H. Burr Memorial Fund, 1945.28. Photo: Imaging Department © President and Fellows of Harvard College.

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Figure 3.3 In the Palace (Palace Ladies at Leisure). After Zhou Wenju, before 1140; section of a handscroll, ink and traces of pigment on silk, 25.7 × 177.0 cm. Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Francis H. Burr Memorial Fund, 1945.28. Photo: Imaging Department © President and Fellows of Harvard College.

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Figure 3.4

In the Palace (Palace Ladies at Leisure). After Zhou Wenju, before 1140; section of a handscroll, ink and traces of pigment on silk, 25.7 × 177.0 cm. Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Francis H. Burr Memorial Fund, 1945.28. Photo: Imaging Department © President and Fellows of Harvard College.

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Figure 4.1

In the Palace. After Zhou Wenju, before 1140; section of a handscroll, ink and color on silk, 26.5 × 146.0 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Douglas Dillon Gift, 1978 (www.metmuseum.org).

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fingers to apply red gloss to her lips; her laughing eyes show her good humor. Nearby, another concubine, wearing an elaborate pink ribbon on her head, stands with a pot of powder in her hands. Here, the application of makeup suggests preparation for an approaching romantic encounter, although these women may also beautify themselves as a way to pass time. Next, a concubine combs the hair of a young girl, as a second concubine and a maid with a tray look on, emphasizing that attention to one’s appearance is crucial in the construction of femininity. The girl furrows her brow in discomfort, as the woman tugs at her hair and offers a sympathetic smile. Although the girl is only having her hair looped over her ears to create chignons, in the style common to young girls and maids, she is essentially learning what it is to be feminine.79 In the final scene of the painting as a whole (and of the Metropolitan scroll, fig. 4.2), a concubine looks at a painting held by a second concubine, as two maids, two more concubines and a eunuch observe. Because the painting is shown from the back, we cannot know what it represents. However, it is tempting to imagine it as a concubine’s portrait being presented for her approval: this would neatly echo the scene of portrait painting found at the beginning, creating an elegant frame for this intimate glimpse of the usually inaccessible women of the inner palace and their diversions. Though the presence of both a male painter and a eunuch within the women’s quarters is significant, what is especially unusual is the emphasis upon the gaze of each. The painter depicted at the beginning of the scroll holds a complex dual role. First, he is a male viewer with rare access to this feminine space. Viewers of In the Palace should understand him as the emperor’s agent: his eyes are the emperor’s. Nevertheless, any male viewer is probably meant to identify with him. The concubine having her portrait painted is shown from behind: no viewer of the scroll would be able to see her face if not for its clear depiction in the portrait. Second, the painter alludes to the perspective of both Zhou Wenju and the unknown painter of the Song copy of In the Palace. The portrait-within-the-scroll serves as a synecdoche for the scroll itself, and it indicates that In the Palace presents a distinctly male point of view. While the depiction of this concubine is not unlike that of another concubine in the Harvard section, who is also seen from behind and whose face is only visible in mirror reflection, the portrait-within-painting has a different rhetorical function than the mirror-within-painting: a mirror reflects physical likeness as well as aspects of interiority, but the operation of the mirror is understood as 79

A poem that describes girls learning about femininity and adornment is Zuo Si 左思 (250?–306?), “Jiaonü shi 嬌女詩 [Spoiled Little Girls],” YTXY, 2.19b–21b; cf. translation in Birrell, New Songs from a Jade Terrace, 85–86.

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Figure 4.2 In the Palace. After Zhou Wenju, before 1140; section of a handscroll, ink and color on silk, 26.5 × 146.0 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Douglas Dillon Gift, 1978 (www.metmuseum.org).

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reflexive. In the Tang and Northern Song periods, however, members of the literati wrote about paintings—even portraits—in ways that reveal an understanding of painting as a construction: a painting was by nature an artifact, one that incorporated the painter’s interpretation of his subject.80 The eunuch also stands out among so many figures of women, and he and a concubine gaze together at another concubine appraising a painting, possibly her own portrait. It is significant that viewers of In the Palace cannot see precisely what image this female viewer, the other concubines, and the eunuch are all looking at. This may be a complicated trope for the unknowable female perspective. A female gaze (which might be interpreted as female subjectivity) is evident throughout: here, in the images of women regarding themselves in mirrors, and in the images of women watching musical performances, but this group in particular suggests that the figures represented in this scroll are an entirely artificial construction on the part of a male painter, highlighting the problem of authenticity that arises when men create figures that serve as models of femininity. Could the Song version of In the Palace have been painted by a woman? Painting histories do describe women artists who specialize in figures: for example, Liu Guifei in the Southern Song (as mentioned above) or a Ms. Tong 童 氏 of the Southern Tang period.81 Even if the unidentified copyist were female, however, what is depicted here does not reflect a consistently female subjectivity: the point of view in places is indistinguishable from that of a male painter. For one thing, because the scroll has been recorded as a copy of a Zhou Wenju original, one must assume that to a great extent this scroll reflects his perspective on the theme. Secondly, the content of the scroll does not substantially depart from the depictions of women in erotic poetry or in other examples of 80

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Ronald C. Egan, “Poems on Paintings: Su Shih and Huang T’ing-chien,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 43, no. 2 (1983): 413–19, 421, 425–26, 434–40, 444. On artfulness, naturalness, and the genuine in paintings of the Northern Song court and literati, see Martin J. Powers, “Discourses of Representation in Tenth and Eleventh Century China,” in The Art of Interpreting, ed. Susan C. Scott (University Park, Pa.: Department of Art History, Pennsylvania State University, 1995), 102–108. For a literati comment on portraiture, see Su Shi, “Zeng xiezhen He Chong xiucai 贈寫真何充秀才 [For the Portraitist and Cultivated Talent He Chong],” in Su Shi shiji hezhu 蘇軾詩集合注 [Annotated Selections of Su Shi’s Poetry], ed. Feng Yingliu 馮應榴 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 2001), 2:560–61; a translation appears in Peter C. Sturman, “In the Realm of Naturalness: Problems of Self-Imaging by the Northern Sung Literati,” in Arts of the Sung and Yüan, ed. Maxwell K. Hearn and Judith G. Smith (New York: Department of Asian Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1996), 166–67. On Ms. Tong, see Tang, Yutai huashi, 2.130–31; cf. Xuanhe huapu, 6.183–84, and Du Mu 都穆 (1458–1525), Tiewang shanhu 鐵網珊瑚 [Iron Net for Coral] (1758; reprint, Taipei: Guoli Zhongyang Tushuguan, 1970), 13.3b.

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shinü hua from the Tang and Song eras, suggesting that if the copyist did not rely on Zhou Wenju’s vision, he or she perhaps drew upon established images of palace women, which were largely constructed with the assumption of a male perspective. As literary scholars have suggested, though, a woman herself could adopt such a perspective in her own act of cross-dressing. In the case of the Song copy of In the Palace, both male and female gazes are perceptible, and we might conclude that the painting is thus an example of transvestite subjectivity.

Pictorial Representations of Inner Feelings

Gu Kaizhi, a figure painter and portraitist working predominantly in the latter half of the fourth century, wrote that artists must convey a figure’s inner qualities, which he described using the comprehensive term “spirit” (shen 神).82 His biography in the Jin History (Jinshu 晉書) records that he once addressed the issue of pictorial interpretation of poetic themes by citing a poetic couplet: “My hand sweeps over the five strings” is easy to paint, but “My eye bids farewell to homing geese” is difficult. 手揮五絃易，目送歸鴻難。

One interpretation of this couplet is that the depiction of feelings (qing 情) or moods (yi 意) presents different representational challenges than do concrete images.83 The first line refers to the representation of a musician’s performance, a straightforward task for a painter. The second, however, presents a more complex image: not merely the spectacle of migrating geese, but in addition the mood that such a spectacle would arouse. In his simple statement, this 82

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For discussions of this term, see Ronald Egan, “Conceptual and Qualitative Terms in Historical Perspective,” in A Companion to Chinese Art, ed. Martin J. Powers and Katherine R. Tsiang (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2016), 278; and Bush and Shih, Early Chinese Texts on Painting, 14, 33–34. Translated by Hsio-yen Shih in “Poetry Illustration and the Works of Ku K’ai-chih,” in The Translation of Art: Essays on Chinese Painting and Poetry, ed. James C.Y. Watt (Hong Kong: Centre for Translation Projects, Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1976), 8 n. 8. She identifies the poetic lines as from Xi Kang 嵇康 (223–62), “Zeng xiucai ru jun wu shou 贈秀才 入軍五首 [For the First Degree Graduate upon Entering the Army, Five Poems, 4/5],” dedicated to Xi Xi 嵇熹, in Xiao and Hu, Wen xuan, 24.6a. For a discussion of poetic moods in painting, see Egan, “Conceptual and Qualitative Terms in Historical Perspective,” 289–90.

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painter identifies one of the central problems of his art. The anecdote not only suggests the difficulties inherent in making a visual interpretation of poetry, but also reveals that even the earliest accounts of Chinese artistic practice express a concern with the problem of the representation of emotion in painting: a task that is complicated by issues of subjectivity. This interest in the pictorial rendering of emotions, especially those associated with poetry, increased in the Song dynasty. The scholar Ouyang Xiu 歐陽 修 (1007–72) discussed the ability to convey a state of mind as separating artists from artisans, a matter of some consequence to connoisseurs: Loneliness and calmness are moods difficult to paint. Though a painter may capture them, a viewer won’t necessarily recognize them. For this reason, though it is easy to perceive the flowing swiftness of [creatures] flying or running, or beings with superficial mindsets, it is hard to shape relaxed contentment or austere stillness, or a heart set on what is distant. As for [depicting] high and low, facing forward and turning back, far and near, and layering and overlapping, these are the arts of the artisan painter, not a matter for refined connoisseurs. 蕭條澹泊，此難畫之意，畫者得之，覽者未必識也。故飛走漽速，意 淺之物易見，而閒和嚴靜，趣遠之心難形。若乃高下向背，遠近重 複，此畫工之藝耳，非精鑒之事也。84

The entire passage concerns perception in painting, on the part of both viewer and artist. Ouyang Xiu distinguishes between rendering appearances and conveying feelings—the latter a rarefied skill that imparts a subtle sense of naturalism to a painting. Perhaps some of the scholarly disdain for shinü hua comes from a sense that the feelings embodied in the eroticized figures common to the genre were altogether too evident. This concern for the rendering of feelings in painting reflects the idea that they are an intrinsic part of human nature. This is set out in early texts, including the Book of Rites (Liji 禮記): The seven universal feelings are fondness, anger, sorrow, fear, love, hate, and desire. These seven one is capable of without study.

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My translation is a modified version of that by Susan Bush in The Chinese Literati on Painting: Su Shih (1037–1101) to Tung Ch’i-ch’ang (1555–1636) (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), 69, 194.

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Chapter 1 何謂人情、喜、怒、哀、懼、愛、惡、欲。七者弗學而能。85

It has been suggested that in this passage the concept of qing overlaps with that of “nature” (xing 性) and that qing is better translated as “the genuine,” and indeed the meaning of the term appears to undergo an evolution in several philosophical texts.86 Philosophers propose that emotions are responses to reality, a position reiterated in literary texts.87 This connection demonstrates why questions of subjectivity are so crucial in works that represent emotion. Part of what made the pictorial representation of emotion challenging was the conceptualization of it as the outward counterpart to an interior state— feeling—as developed in early theoretical texts on poetry. A classic articulation of this idea occurs in the Great Preface’s passage on poetry speaking to intent: What in the heart is intent is poetry when emitted in words. An emotion moves within and takes form in words. If words do not suffice, then one sighs; if sighing does not suffice, then one prolongs it [the emotion] in song; if prolonging through song does not suffice, then one unconsciously dances it with hands and feet. 在心為志。發言為詩。情動於中而形於言。言之不足。故嗟歎之。嗟 歎之不足。故永歌之。永歌之不足。不知手之舞之。足之蹈之也。88

These lines locate feeling within the xin 心, which refers to both heart and mind, and explain the different outward forms feelings may take, all of which might be characterized as ways of expressing emotion.89 The Great Preface is 85

86 87

88 89

Li yun 禮運 [The Conveyance of Rites],” Liji zhushu 禮記注疏 [Annotated “Book of Rites”], ed. Ruan Yuan (1815), 22.431, (accessed 3 June 2016). For a summary of the origins of this text and scholarship on it, see Loewe, Early Chinese Texts, 293–97. A.C. Graham, Studies in Chinese Philosophy & Philosophical Literature (Singapore: Institute of East Asian Philosophies, 1986), 59–66. Chad Hansen, “Qing (Emotions) 情 in Pre-Buddhist Chinese Thought,” in Emotions in Asian Thought: A Dialogue in Comparative Philosophy, ed. Joel Marks and Roger T. Ames (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 181–211. Translated by Pauline Yu in The Reading of Imagery, 31–32; brackets in original. Cf. Ruan, Maoshi zhengyi, 1.13 (accessed 30 May 2016). This is similar to the Foucauldian concept of the interior soul inscribed upon the body, insofar as one might consider the soul as the seat of intent; for an analysis of Michel Foucault’s formulation, see Butler, Gender Trouble, 135. Even closer to the concept articulated

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part of the Mao 毛 commentary on the first poem in the Book of Songs. The Mao school introduced allegorical readings for the poems (further discussed in Chapter 2), and one of the important aspects of the Great Preface is the connection between emotion and morality.90 Other literary texts further clarify the origins and manifestations of emotion. As early as the Qin (221–207 bce) and Han dynasties, it was believed that the heart/mind could be stirred by external circumstances or phenomena.91 In the sixth century, Liu Xie 劉勰 (ca. 465–522) reiterates that the seven emotions respond to things and could be expressed in song (or poetry), and, referencing the Great Preface, expands upon this point: Feelings are moved and words form; reason arises and patterns are perceived; one follows what is hidden to arrive at what is manifest, and therefore the inner can stand for what is outer. 夫情動而言形，理發而文見，蓋沿隱以至顯，因内而符外者也。92

Song dynasty poets continue to address this perceived connection between inner feelings and outward expressions of emotion. For example, Li Qingzhao wrote a song lyric to the tune “A Cut Plum Branch (Yi jian mei 一剪梅)” that ends with these lines: One cannot arrange for this feeling to disappear. Even as it drops from the brow It still rises in the heart. 此情無計可消除。纔下眉頭，却上心頭。 in the Great Preface is a discussion of emotion, the body, music, and movement in Leslie Gotfrit, “Women Dancing Back: Disruption and the Politics of Pleasure,” in Postmodernism, Feminism, and Cultural Politics, ed. Henry A. Giroux (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), 177–78. 90 Rouzer, Articulated Ladies, 75. Stephen Owen, Readings in Chinese Literary Thought (Cambridge, Mass.: Council on East 91 Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1992), 205–206. 92 Liu Xie, “Ming shi 明詩 [Explaining Poetry]” and “Tixing 體性 [Style and Nature],” Xinyi “Wenxin diaolong” 新譯文心雕龍 [New Interpretation of “The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons”], ed. Luo Ligan 羅立乾 (Taipei: Sanmin shuju, 1996), 2.82, 6.446; cf. Liu Xie, The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons: A Study of Thought and Pattern in Chinese Literature (Wenxin diaolong 文心雕龍), trans. Vincent Yu-chung Shih (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 1983), 60–61, 306–307.

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Li Qingzhao is discussing the feelings of “mutual longing” (xiangsi 相思) and “melancholy” (chou 愁) in this lyric; what is new here is her suggestion that facial expressions can be governed but feelings in the heart cannot.93 This idea that inner feelings could be manifested outwardly proves crucial for the visualization of emotion in painting. Painters, like poets, sought to represent women’s feelings and sensibilities naturalistically. Lyricists, for example, wrote in first-person female voice for dramatic purposes, expecting that women would sing their compositions; when performed by female entertainers, the lyrics seemed to convey women’s genuine feelings.94 Painting required an enactment that paid attention to visible cues, as indicated by Tang Hou: he suggested that the convincing pictorial representation of longing depended upon the rendering of a figure’s expression, gesture, and actions, as well as the depiction of meaningful objects in her environment (such as a flute).95 Thus, as in other cultures, painters principally articulated figures’ emotions using the body,96 but they also deployed culturally specific cues with received associations. In some cases, a painting’s style might suggest the prevailing mood.97 Through various visual strategies, painters sought to arouse viewers’ feelings. Modes of Representing Emotion in Figure Painting In figure painting, what primarily identified a pictorial subject as “emotional” was attention to how feeling manifested in the body. Both poets and painters recognized that facial expression was especially important in conveying mood. The “Rhyme-Prose on Literature” (Wen fu 文賦) by Lu Ji 陸機 (261–303) includes the couplet:

93

Ronald Egan translates the full lyric and discusses its implications in The Burden of Female Talent, 114–15, 331–32; cf. Li Qingzhao, “Yi jian mei,” QSC, 2:928 (with one changed character). 94 Chang, The Evolution of Chinese Tz’u Poetry, 66. 95 See my translation in the Introduction. 96 Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style, 2nd ed. (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 61. 97 For connections between style and melancholy, see Arthur Mu-sen Kao [Gao Musen] 高木森, “Shiren hua de qingchou yu yaxing—Jinchao yu Nan Song shiren hua de shiqing 士人畫的清愁與雅興–金朝與南宋士人畫的詩情 [Pure Melancholy and Refined Enthusiasm of Literati Paintings: Poetic Sentiment of Literati Paintings of the Jin and Southern Song Dynasties],” Gugong wenwu yuekan 故宮文物月刊 [The National Palace Museum Monthly of Chinese Art], no. 59 (February 1988): 79.

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Truly there is no difference between feeling and appearance, and thus every alteration appears on the face. 信情貌之不差。故每變而在顏。98

Accordingly, facial expression was given prominence in figure paintings, and Song critical texts acknowledge its importance. For example, Su Shi commented on a portrait of himself made by Chen Huaili (n.d.): The difficult point in catching a likeness is the eyes. As Gu Hutou [Kaizhi] said, “Expression in portraiture is all in the eyes […]” 傳神之難在於目。顧虎頭云，傳神寫照，都在阿堵中。99

Whereas Gu Kaizhi believed that the eyes held the key to conveying a figure’s interiority, Su Shi’s own comment on eyes reflects (or perhaps anticipates) what may be a development of his own era: the importance of the directed gaze as a component of visual expression in figure painting,100 certainly a phenomenon significant in images of women. Other anecdotes focus on different aspects of facial expression. One recounted in Record of Famous Painters of the Tang Dynasty describes how two court painters, Han Gan 韓幹 (ca. 715–after 781) and Zhou Fang, both received commissions for an official’s portrait. The official’s wife judged that Zhou Fang’s was more successful: The first has only captured Mr. Zhao’s appearance, but the second also transmits his character, and his attitude and emotion when he is speaking with a smile.

98

99

100

Lu Shiheng 陸士衡 [Lu Ji], “Wen fu 文賦 [Rhyme-Prose on Literature],” in Xiao and Hu, Wen xuan, 17.2b; cf. Stephen Owen, ed. and trans., An Anthology of Chinese Literature: Beginnings to 1911 (New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1996), 336–43; and translation by David Knechtges in Xiao, Selections of Refined Literature, 3:211–32. Su Shi, “Shu Chen Huaili chuanshen 書陳懷立傳神 [Written for Chen Huaili’s Portrait],” Su Shi wenji, 5:2214–15. Most of the text is translated in Ronald C. Egan, Word, Image, and Deed in the Life of Su Shi (Cambridge, Mass.: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, and the Harvard-Yenching Institute, 1994), 282; and Osvald Sirén, “Su Tung-p’o as an Art Critic,” Geografiska Annaler 17 (1935): 442–43. On Gu Kaizhi, see Egan, “Conceptual and Qualitative Terms,” 281–82; on Su Shi, see Spiro, “Creating Ancestors,” 62.

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Chapter 1 前畫者空得趙朗狀貌。後畫者兼移其神氣，得趙朗情性笑言之姿。101

This story continued to circulate in the Song dynasty, appearing in Guo Ruoxu’s Experiences in Painting. Guo’s text also contains an account of the lesser-known figure painter Tian Jing 田景 of the Northern Song: He painted two boys playing chess in front of a monk: the winner was triumphant, the loser dejected, and the monk watched them and smiled—just as in real life. 作二童奕碁於僧前。一則乘勝而矜誇。一則敗北而悔沮。僧臨視而 笑。聸顧如生。102

These anecdotes indicate that character and feeling were considered aspects of interiority and that a painter’s ability to convey a figure’s interiority through facial expression was prized. Gesture, too, was important, although critics mention it less often. A different passage from Su Shi’s colophon on the art of portrait painting refers to the role of gesture in capturing one’s essence: Jester Meng [fl. ca. 591 bce] imitated Sunshu Ao, clapping his hands, talking and laughing, so well that people cried out: “The dead live again!” Did he get his entire body to take on the resemblance? No, he did it by grasping where his feelings and thoughts lay, that’s all. 優孟學孫叔敖，抵掌談笑，至使人謂死者複生。此豈能舉體皆似耶。 亦得其意思所在而已。103

Gesture can also play a role in conveying emotion. Consider the story of Cai Yan 蔡琰 (courtesy name Wenji 文姬, b. 178) as told in Lady Wenji’s Return to China (Wenji gui Han tu canjuan 文姬歸漢圖殘卷). Fragments of a Song 101 Zhu, Tangchao minghua lu, 6; Guo, Tuhua jianwen zhi, 5.11a; cf. Alexander Soper’s translation in Experiences in Painting, 80–81. Dora C.Y. Ching discusses this passage in terms of conveying a figure’s spirit in “The Language of Portraiture in China,” in Powers and Tsiang, A Companion to Chinese Art, 143. 102 Guo, Tuhua jianwen zhi, 3.19a; cf. Alexander Soper’s translation in Experiences in Painting, 54. 103 Su, “Shu Chen Huaili chuanshen,” Su Shi wenji, 5: 2214–15. Audrey Spiro discusses this passage in terms of the importance of posture and gesture in “Seeing through Words: Shishuo Xinyu and the Visual Arts, a Case Study,” Early Medieval China 13–14, no. 1 (2007): 181.

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painting by this title survive in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.104 The poetic tradition includes many recensions of her story, beginning with accounts of her tragic life, long thought to be authored by Wenji herself.105 The Boston painting is based on a Tang cycle of poems by Liu Shang 劉商 (fl. ca. 766–80), “Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute” (Hujia shiba pai 胡笳十八拍). His verses relate how the Xiongnu, a nomadic people of Central Asia, invaded China and kidnapped Wenji, the daughter of an official, in 196. After removing her to the Central Asian steppe,106 a nomad chieftain marries her, and she bears his two children. (In another accounting, Wenji’s children have different fathers: a chieftain and his son.107 Liu Shang’s rendering of the slowly developing attachment between Wenji and her nomad husband may reflect the importance of romance in Tang literary circles.) The Boston painting agrees with Liu Shang’s poems in many details, although the unknown painter does make changes: for example, the nomads are represented as Khitans of the Liao dynasty (947–1125), a substitution that makes sense in the Song context.108 As long as Wenji lives among nomads she wishes to return home, and after twelve years her ransom at last arrives. But then, in the most heartrending scene of the painting, Wenji must bid goodbye to her nomad husband and children, who cannot accompany her back to China (fig. 5). Unmistakable gestures of sorrow reveal how deeply this event affects her and those who care for her. The scene shows twelve figures crying into their sleeves, including Wenji herself at the center of the group. Wenji’s children reach out to her, clutching at her clothes. The viewer recognizes the grief felt by Wenji’s husband, the largest figure, from the intensity of his ges104

The surviving four scenes are reproduced in Wu Tung, Masterpieces of Chinese Painting from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston: Tang through Yuan Dynasties (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1996), cat. nos. 12–15. A copy of the entire composition is preserved in Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute (Hujia shiba pai tu 胡笳十八拍圖), Metropolitan Museum of Art (1973.120.3), New York; published in Robert A. Rorex and Wen Fong, Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute: The Story of Lady Wen-chi, a Fourteenth Century Handscroll in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1974). Rorex and Fong translate Liu Shang’s complete cycle of poems as well. 105 Hans H. Frankel argues that none could have been written by her in “Cai Yan and the Poems Attributed to Her,” Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews (CLEAR) 5, no. 1/2 (July 1983): 133–56. 106 Irene S. Leung points out that this is one aspect of Wenji’s story where poets take some liberties, in “The Frontier Imaginary in the Song Dynasty (960–1279): Revisiting Cai Yan’s Barbarian Captivity and Return” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 2001), 75–76. 107 Rouzer, Articulated Ladies, 175. 108 Irene Leung discusses a similar substitution in Northern Song literati rhetoric in “The Frontier Imaginary in the Song Dynasty (960–1279),” 52–55.

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Figure 5

Detail of Lady Wenji’s Return to China: Parting from Nomad Husband and Children. Southern Song dynasty, ca. 1125–50; handscroll mounted as album leaf, ink, color, and gold on silk, 24.8 × 67.2 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Denman Waldo Ross Collection (28.64). Photograph © 2017 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

ture: he covers his face with both hands, as someone tries to comfort him. In this painting, where the diminutive scale of the figures prevents the viewer from focusing on their facial expressions, the painter depends upon gesture to communicate the prevailing mood. Context is a third way that emotion may be conveyed in figure painting. In paintings of women with romantic themes, a woman’s preoccupation with her love relationship is often revealed through pictorial tropes. Certain material things in her vicinity—generally elements associated with her through metonymy—serve as sites for the projection of her feelings.109 The object may operate as a metaphor, such as an incense burner standing for desire; or its 109

This was true in poetry as well; for a discussion of the meaningful objects in a woman’s environment, see Anne Margaret Birrell, “Erotic Decor: A Study of Love Imagery in the

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material may be evocative, as in the use of spotted bamboo for blinds or cosmetic boxes. Alternatively, the environment itself may be meaningful, filled with natural elements that beg for interpretation. Melding of Feeling and Scene One might assume that conveying emotion was only a critical problem in figure painting, but natural scenes, too, were understood to be imbued with feeling. Even a landscape painting might convey a certain mood.110 Strategies for conveying feeling may have derived from notions of the capabilities of poetic imagery. The Great Preface speaks of the rhetorical category of xing 興, a term translated as either “stimulus” or “affective image,”111 used to designate images that stir emotions rather than refer to feelings. In the third century, Lu Ji writes of the concept of ganying 感應, “stirring and response,” as an important feature of poetic composition.112 These concepts anticipate the idea of using scenes made up of such images to arouse emotions. Critics of Chinese poetry formulated several theories concerning the relationship of feeling to scene.113 Two are especially important for the rendering of feeling in painting. I translate the first, you jing ru qing 由景入情, as “moving from scenes to the realm of feelings.” The second, qing jing jiaorong 情景交融, I translate as “the melding of feeling and scene.” Both speak to poets’ use of natural scenes to arouse specific emotions in the reader. The basis for these concepts seems to have been first articulated in a text attributed to Wang Changling 王昌齡 (ca. 690–ca. 756). It says, There are three worlds in poetry. The first is called the world of things; the second is called the world of feelings; the third is called the world of ideas. 詩有三境。一曰物境，二曰情境，三曰意境。114

Sixth Century a.d. Anthology: ‘Yu-t’ai hsin-yung’ 玉臺新詠 (New Poems from a Jade Terrace)” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1979). 110 Kao, “Shiren hua de qingchou yu yaxing,” 68; Egan, “Conceptual and Qualitative Terms,” 285–87. 111 Yu, The Reading of Imagery, 48–49; Owen, Readings in Chinese Literary Thought, 46. 112 Owen, Readings in Chinese Literary Thought, 173–74. 113 Samei, Gendered Persona and Poetic Voice, 97–98. 114 Attributed to Wang Changling, Shi ge 詩格 [Rules for Poetry], translated by Richard Wainwright Bodman in “Poetics and Prosody in Early Mediaeval China: A Study and Translation of Kūkai’s Bunkyō Hifuron” (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1978), 375 n. 6.

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This definition provides a framework for developing ideas about the potential for interaction between the natural world, emotion, and meaning. In the Song dynasty, the complex connections between feeling and scene were clarified by Fan Xiwen 范晞文 (n.d.), who recognized this rhetorical strategy in the poetry of Du Fu 杜甫 (712–70). Citing excerpts of several poems, he writes that the poet alternated lines describing a scene with lines expressing feelings. Furthermore, Fan defines several terms that later critics would continue to examine. These include the nuances of “feelings-within-scene” (jing zhong zhi qing 景中之情), “scene-within-feelings” (qing zhong zhi jing 情中之 景), and the “melding of feeling and scene.” Fan concludes that when one comes upon a scene, one’s emotions must be stirred, and that in the absence of a scene, one’s emotions cannot be stirred.115 Another way, then, to convey feeling in a figure painting was to make strategic use of natural elements that were understood as metaphors. They might stand for specific feelings or bring to mind a situation that would stimulate an emotional response in the viewer. For example, in paintings of women longing for absent lovers, natural images such as plum trees or bamboo often stand for a missing man, whereas the appearance of ducks swimming together stands for lifelong love. The evocative natural scene could also appear in a figure painting as a screen-within-painting, especially useful in paintings that interpreted poetic themes.116 Indeed, several Song paintings of lovelorn women take advantage of this strategy: they include Pounding Cloth (figs. 12.1–12.8), A Lady at Her Dressing Table (fig. 13), and Embroidered Cage, Morning Mirror (fig. 14). The tactic of creating an obviously artificial landscape such as a painting-within-painting for the purpose of evoking specific feelings might be regarded as a pictorial counterpart to what critics such as Fan Xiwen would term “scene-within-feelings.” Critic Wang Fuzhi 王夫之 (1619–92) regarded the scene-within-feelings as “a metaphorical scene, generated from the poet’s authentic mood.”117 This makes the painting-within-painting an ideal vehicle for the expression of feeling, and 115 Owen, Readings in Chinese Literary Thought, 630 n. 14. Fan phrases the relevant concept as follows: “the interaction of feeling with scene so that the two become inseparable” (情景 相觸而莫分); he also writes, “Therefore, we know that a scene will not come forth without the presence of feeling, and feelings will not arise apart from the presence of a scene.” (固知景無情不發。情無景不生。) Fan Xiwen 范晞文, comp., Duichuang yeyu 對牀 夜語 [Night Chats Facing My Bed] (reprint, Changsha: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1937), 2.11. 116 Wu Hung, The Double Screen: Medium and Representation in Chinese Painting (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 21. 117 Owen, Readings in Chinese Literary Thought, 473. An alternative interpretation is that images used to embody feeling in a poem constituted an “imaginary” scene rather than an

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the Chinese term for it, huazhong hua 畫中畫, implies the perceived interiority of such a pictorial element. The use of scenes to evoke feelings is a strategy well suited to painting, not only because it is inherently visual, but also because it permits restraint in representations of emotion, an element valued in poetry from earliest times. The first poem in the Book of Songs, “‘Guanguan’ Cry the Ospreys,” is praised in the Confucian Analects for its understated treatment of joy and sadness, with neither going to extremes.118 By the Song dynasty, the best-regarded composers of song lyrics tried to avoid speaking directly of feelings, even though this genre of poetry almost exclusively focused on emotional situations, especially melancholy or lament. The ideal would later be articulated in the phrase “not a single word voices complaint” (wu yi zi yan yuan 無一字言怨), first applied by the critic Shen Deqian 沈德潛 (1673–1769) to Li Bai’s poem “Jade-Staircase Grievance” (Yujie yuan 玉階怨).119 For these poets, hinting at feeling through the use of appropriate scenes resulted in a subtlety that was highly esteemed.120 In figure painting, I argue, bodily expression serves as the pictorial equivalent of verbalizing feelings and natural imagery as the equivalent of the evocative poetic scene. Thus, in paintings of lonely women, the subjects are rarely shown with agitated facial expressions or histrionic gestures, as these would be inappropriate to the interpretation of poetic themes and the representation of refined figures. In Pounding Cloth, the women’s expressions and gestures, while undoubtedly mournful, remain subdued. Although the figures gradually become more expressive, the tenor of their mood is carried by the opening natural scene and, in the climactic scenes, screens with appropriate natural imagery. These subtly underscore the nature and depth of their feelings. Thus a Song figure painter concerned with the visualization of emotion has a number of strategies at his or her disposal. Some are purely visual, such as attention to a figure’s expression and gesture, which might be regarded as the pictorial counterpart to the use of a protagonist’s voice in poetry. Others seem “actual” one; James J.Y. Liu, The Art of Chinese Poetry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), 95. 118 “The Master said, ‘In “‘Guanguan’ Cry the Ospreys” there is joy without lasciviousness, sorrow without deep wounding.’” (子曰。關雎樂而不淫。哀而不傷。) “Ba yi 八佾 [Eight Pantomimes],” in Ruan, Lunyu zhushu, 30 (accessed 30 May 2016). For a translation of the poem, see Watson, The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry, 18. 119 Samei, Gendered Persona and Poetic Voice, 150. I am grateful to Shuen-fu Lin and Grace S. Fong for alerting me to the origin of the phrase. Li Bai’s poem appears in YFSJ, 2:43.632, and is translated in David Hinton, trans. and ed., Classical Chinese Poetry: An Anthology (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008), 187. 120 Chang, The Evolution of Chinese Tz’u Poetry, 37.

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virtually identical to those used by the poet: the use of objects within the pictorial context as metaphors or the use of natural imagery to convey feelings. For the depiction of desire or longing in paintings of women, however, perhaps the best strategy of all is the visual adaptation of poetic themes that connote these feelings. Interiority and the Inner Quarters Because feeling is considered essentially inner in Chinese thought, I argue that the “inner quarters,” or the women’s area of a wealthy household,121 are an especially appropriate metaphorical space for the exploration of interiority, and this may explain why poets and painters saw the female figure as ideal for the projection of desire. This construction dates back to New Songs from a Jade Terrace: Xu Ling’s preface suggests the importance of the inner quarters and interiority.122 This is why Tang Hou wrote, “The art of representing ladies lies in catching their attitudes in the inner apartments.”123 Song paintings and poems set in inner rooms and gardens reveal that these locations are strongly identified with romantic relationships. The concept of the inner quarters reflects the gendered dialectic between nei 内 and wai 外, “inner” and “outer.” In early ritual texts, “inner” is conceived as feminine and “outer” as masculine. The Neize 内則 chapter of the Book of Rites includes the following recommendation: “Men do not speak of the inner, and women do not speak of the outer.” (男不言内，女不言外。)124 Song conservatives Sima Guang 司馬光 (1019–86) and Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130–1200) both followed this source.125 While the terms nei and wai appear to originate in notions of physical space, they come to represent ideals of feminine and masculine

121

Only the wealthy could afford to practice strict gender segregation; Patricia Buckley Ebrey, The Inner Quarters: Marriage and the Lives of Chinese Women in the Sung Period (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), 23–25. On the inner quarters as a physical space, see Lisa Raphals, Sharing the Light: Representations of Women and Virtue in Early China (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), 225–26. 122 Rouzer, Articulated Ladies, 132–36, 289, 305–309; however, he tends to see this rhetorical move not as a means of signaling the rendering of intimate feelings but rather internal politics among, for example, court poets. For a complete translation of Xu Ling’s preface, see Birrell, New Songs from a Jade Terrace, 339–43. 123 Chou, Tang Hou’s “Huajian,” 163. 124 “Neize 內則 [Pattern of the Family],” in Ruan, Liji zhushu, 27.520 (accessed 3 June 2016). Several of the pertinent passages are translated in Robert Hans van Gulik, Sexual Life in Ancient China: A Preliminary Survey of Chinese Sex and Society from ca. 1500 b.c. till 1644 a.d. (reprint, Leiden: Brill, 2003), 58–59; and Raphals, Sharing the Light, 224, 232. 125 Ebrey discusses their writings in The Inner Quarters, 23–25. Lara C.W. Blanchard - 978-90-04-36939-9 Downloaded from Brill.com05/05/2020 10:59:28AM via free access

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conduct. In this sense, nei and wai complement the concepts of yin 陰 (feminine, dark, passive) and yang 陽 (masculine, light, active).126 Spaces designated as the women’s quarters typically included inner suites of rooms and attached gardens, all of which were (at least in theory) off-limits to men, except when they joined their wives for sexual interaction.127 An early Northern Song hanging scroll, Palace Banquet (Sui gong yanyou tu 隋宮讌遊 圖, fig. 10.1), illustrates a particularly grand example of such a space: the rooms and gardens of the women’s quarters of the palace appear before a series of locked gates (one of which seems to be guarded by female servants) and high walls (fig. 10.2). In Song dynasty song lyrics, poets use special terms for this area, including compounds that build upon the characters shen 深 (“inner” or “deep”) and zhong 中 (“middle” or “inner”) to suggest places nested within the heart of a residential complex;128 e.g. “inner rooms” (shen’ge 深閣 or shengui 深 閨);129 “inner place” (shenchu 深處);130 “inner palace” (shengong 深宮);131 and “inner courtyard” (shen tingyuan 深庭院, shenyuan 深院, or zhongting 中庭).132 Alter­natively, they used words that explicitly refer to women’s private spaces (ge 閣 or gui 閨, as in shen’ge and shengui above), resulting in such terms as

126 Raphals, Sharing the Light, 139–68, 212–13. The concepts of yin-yang are first set out in the Yijing 易經 [Book of Changes]. 127 In practice this segregation was not necessarily strictly observed: Ebrey, The Inner Quarters, 25, and Raphals, Sharing the Light, 225. 128 I included an abbreviated list of such terms in Lara C.W. Blanchard, “Lonely Women and the Absent Man: The Masculine Landscape as Metaphor in the Song Dynasty Painting of Women,” in Gendered Landscapes: An Interdisciplinary Exploration of Past Place and Space, ed. Bonj Szczygiel, Josephine Carubia, and Lorraine Dowler (University Park, Penn.: The Center for Studies in Landscape History, The Pennsylvania State University, 2000), 37. 129 Ouyang Xiu, Tune: “Xian zhong xin 獻衷心 [Revealing My Inner Heart],” and Du Anshi 杜安世 (n.d.), Tune: “He chong tian 鶴沖天 [Cranes Soaring in the Sky],” QSC, 1:165, 172. 130 Yan Jidao 晏幾道 (fl. ca. 1105), Tune: “Die lian hua 蝶戀花 [Butterflies Love Flowers, 8/14],” and Li Zhiyi 李之儀 (fl. ca. 1113–17), Tune: “Haoshi jin 好事近 [Happy Events Approaching, 1/3],” QSC, 1:224, 349–50. 131 Yan Jidao, Tune: “Jie pei ling 解佩令 [Song of a Loosened Girdle],” QSC, 1:256. 132 The term shen tingyuan is used in Ouyang Xiu, Tune: “Yujia ao 漁家傲 [Fisherman’s Pride, 3/24],” QSC, 1:136. A play on shen tingyuan and the terms zhongting and shenyuan can be found in Li Qingzhao, Tune: “Lin jiang xian 臨江仙 [Immortal by the River]”; Tune: “Tian zi ‘Chou nu’er’ 添字醜奴兒 [‘The Ugly Slave,’ with Added Words]”; and “Chun mu 春暮 [Spring Evening],” Tune: “Yuan wangsun 怨王孫 [Lamenting the Prince],” in QSC, 2:929, 930, 931. The first two of Li Qingzhao’s lyrics are translated in Egan, The Burden of Female Talent, 329, 340–41; the third is translated by Kenneth Rexroth and Ling Chung in Li Ch’ing-chao: Complete Poems (New York: New Directions Publishing, 1979), 33. Lara C.W. Blanchard - 978-90-04-36939-9 Downloaded from Brill.com05/05/2020 10:59:28AM via free access

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“perfumed rooms” (xianggui 香閨)133 and “boudoir” (guifang 閨房).134 All of these terms are explicitly gendered as feminine, and the interior places to which they refer are fitting metaphors for the heart/mind, the seat of feelings. Occasionally, the inner chambers serve as a metaphor for a woman’s sexual organs, making them apt sites for the location of desire. One example appears in the second stanza of a song lyric by scholar Liu Yong 柳永 (987–1053), to the tune “Spring in the Brocade Hall” (Jintang chun 錦堂春): Before, I depended on past promises. In the beginning, how he deceived me, stealing a snippet of my cloud curls. When will he return to be locked deep inside my perfumed chamber? Just wait until he wants my bitter clouds and unsettling rain— I’ll cover myself with the embroidered quilt and not meet him with joy. Then at the darkest hour, I’ll ask him sincerely: after this, would he dare behave so again? 依前過了舊約，甚當初賺我，偷翦雲鬟。幾時得歸來，香閣深關。待 伊要，尤雲殢雨，纏繡衾，不與同歡。儘更深，款款問伊，今後敢 更無端。135

This lyric presents the intense emotions of an abandoned and frustrated female persona. The word for “perfumed chamber” (xiangge 香閣) refers not only to the inner quarters, but also to her body. This is clarified with the next line’s reference to “bitter clouds and unsettling rain,” a more elaborate version 133

134 135

Yan Shu 晏殊 (991–1055), Tune: “Hongchuang ting 紅窗聽 [Listening at the Red Window, 2/2]”; Ouyang Xiu, Tune: “Dongxian geling 洞仙歌令 [Song of a Cave Transcendent, 1/2]” and Tune: “Gui zi yao 歸自謠 [Song of Return, 2/3]”; Shen Tang 沈唐 (n.d.), Tune: “Shuangye fei 霜葉飛 [Frosty Leaves Blowing]”; and Du Anshi, Tune: “Cai mingzhu 採明 珠 [Gathering Bright Pearls],” QSC, 1:92, 151, 161, 171, 182. Li Zhiyi, Tune: “Queqiao xian 鵲橋仙 [Transcendent at the Magpie Bridge, 1/2],” QSC, 1:345. Liu Yong, Tune: “Jintang chun,” QSC, 1:29. The complete lyric is translated in James R. Hightower, “The Songwriter Liu Yung: Part I,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 41, no. 2 (1981): 353; and Lap Lam, “A Reconsideration of Liu Yong and His ‘Vulgar’ Lyrics,” Journal of SongYuan Studies 33 (2003): 20.

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of the well-known kenning for sexual intercourse (“clouds and rain”) that derives from a description of the goddess of Wushan 巫山 in Song Yu’s 宋玉 (290– 223 bce) rhapsodies.136 Thus the inner quarters are uniquely suited for the expression of feelings of sexual longing and desire. In poems and paintings on the separation of lovers, the inner quarters gain further significance from their identification with domestic space. For example, Tang poetry set at the frontier deploys the faraway home, itself conceptualized as “inner” in comparison to the outside world, as the focus of a male persona’s nostalgic thoughts.137 Within that home, sometimes, is the woman he left behind, installed in the women’s quarters.138 The boudoir then could serve as the feminine counterpart of the masculine road, though a woman’s garden may fill that role as well.139 Poetry that examines the woman’s view on separation from her beloved retains the image of a woman in the inner quarters longing for an absent man, and her environment becomes saturated with her feelings: hence Su Shi’s poetic reference to a “lonely garden” (jimo yuanlin 寂寞園林).140 Although a text written by Neo-Confucian philosopher Cheng Yi 程頤 (1033–1107) explicitly treats women as more emotional than men,141 men were not considered to be unemotional. Rather, feelings were conceptualized as “inner” and may have been associated with a person’s “feminine” (yin) aspect, making feminine space the most appropriate metaphorical setting for the representation of emotional figures. Nuances of their feelings can be understood with attention to the details of the “inner place”: the natural elements of the

136 Shields, Crafting a Collection, 300. 137 Ronald C. Miao, “T’ang Frontier Poetry; An Exercise in Archetypal Criticism,” Qinghua xuebao 清華學報 [Tsing Hua Journal of Chinese Studies] 10, no. 2 (July 1974): 120. 138 One example is Wang Changling, “Congjun xing 從軍行 [Songs on Following the Army, 1/7],” QTS, 2:143.1443–44; cf. translation by Miao in “T’ang Frontier Poetry,” 118. 139 For the boudoir, see Birrell, trans., New Songs from a Jade Terrace, 19–20. For the garden, see a pair of lines from a song lyric: “Within the walls, a swing; beyond the walls, the road, / beyond the walls, a traveler; within, a laughing beauty.” (牆裏鞦韆牆外道。牆外行 人，牆裏佳人笑。) Su Shi, “Chun jing 春景 [Spring Scene],” Tune: “Die lian hua” (1/8), QSC, 1:300; cf. translation in James J.Y. Liu, Major Lyricists of the Northern Sung (a.d. 960– 1126) (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 153–54; translation by Jiaosheng Wang in Victor H. Mair, ed., The Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 322–23; and Julie Landau, trans., Beyond Spring: Tz’u Poems of the Sung Dynasty (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 124. 140 Su Shi, “Mu chun 暮春 [Evening in Spring],” Tune: “Die lian hua” (4/8), QSC, 1:300. 141 Ebrey, The Inner Quarters, 29.

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enclosed exterior of the garden, or the material elements of the enclosed interior of the bedroom or boudoir.142 Over the course of many centuries, the bedchamber and boudoir in poetry become irrevocably associated with the sorrow of separation, from the Book of Songs to a range of genres including Music Bureau poetry, palace-style poetry, and song lyric.143 The implications of the setting were so well understood in the Tang and Five Dynasties that the term “boudoir complaints” (guiyuan 閨怨) became shorthand for the abandoned woman theme in song lyric.144 I propose that this derives from both the binary opposition of home and the outside world and the perception of the women’s quarters as a place for heteroerotic interludes. Interior settings had few temporal elements (except for dust), but the luxurious objects found within the inner chambers were often gendered, serving as metaphors for a female persona’s feelings as well as signifying her status—and the higher her status, the more dependent she was on a man for support, making her more vulnerable.145 Because the inner chamber or boudoir is emphatically interior—an indoor space located in the innermost part of the household—voyeurism plays a significant role in representations of it, at least from a male perspective. In poetry, a male reader paradoxically finds a female persona that occupies a space forbidden to him to be nonetheless completely exposed through the author’s art.146 This location of the female persona in private space lends itself to the revelation of her innermost feelings, made possible by spying on her in her most intimate moments. One literary scholar defines the “quintessential rhetorical movement” of Tang erotic poetry as penetration, especially relevant in regard to women’s private spaces and thoughts.147 The poetic interest in penetration may be a strategy for representing increasingly internalized feelings.148 142 143

Birrell mentions the spatial tensions of the women’s quarters in “Erotic Decor,” 75. Michael E. Workman, “The Bedchamber Topos in the Tz’u Songs of Three Medieval Chinese Poets: Wen T’ing-yün, Wei Chuang, and Li Yü,” in Critical Essays on Chinese Literature, ed. William H. Nienhauser Jr. (Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1976), 168, 181. 144 Chang, The Evolution of Chinese Tz’u Poetry, 116–17. 145 Laing, “Chinese Palace-Style Poetry,” 288; Chang, The Evolution of Chinese Tz’u Poetry, 52. 146 Robertson, “Voicing the Feminine,” 69; Egan, The Burden of Female Talent, 111–12. 147 Paul F. Rouzer, Writing Another’s Dream: The Poetry of Wen Tingyun (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), 74. 148 Ronald Egan observes the opposite rhetorical movement, from inner to outer, in a lyric by Li Qingzhao to the tune “Huanxi sha 浣溪沙 [Sand of Silk-Washing Stream]”: this lyric begins with a female persona in the women’s quarters and ends with her looking outward to the natural environment, and he notes that the lyric concerns a woman’s observations

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Courtly and Literati Audiences: Evidence from Commentaries

Who constituted the audience for Song images of women experiencing desire or longing? Theories of the male gaze have led both art historians and literary critics to presume a male viewer,149 and commentary that indicates who owned or viewed certain paintings bears this out. Handscrolls in particular often included inscriptions appended as colophons by their owners and other viewers. Many of the extant romantic paintings of women from the Song dynasty belong to this format, which is often associated with particular viewing contexts: circulated at court, presented to scholar-officials, or shared among literati friends.150 Although paintings of women inspire less critical commentary than landscapes do, and the circumstances of their creation are rarely recorded, the assumption of a predominantly male viewership for these works is reinforced by colophons that mention who owned them, who ordered them, or how they were circulated. For example, a colophon on Pounding Cloth (figs. 12.1-12.8), written by the artist Mou Yi, explains that he painted two versions for his own amusement, although he shared the scrolls with close friends and ultimately presented one to Lord Wu 吳公, the Commandery Governor of Wenchang 文昌, and the other to his friend Dong Shi 董史 (fl. ca. 1240), a connoisseur and collector of painting and calligraphy.151 Such textual accounts

149

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rather than the expression of her emotional state. Egan, The Burden of Talent, 375–76; cf. Li Qingzhao, “Huanxi sha [3/3],” QSC, 2:928 (a lyric with three variant characters in the last line). See, for example, I Lo-fen [Yi Ruofen], “Bei Song ti shinü huashi xilun 北宋題仕女畫詩 析論 [Analysis of Northern Song Paintings and Poems on Women],” in Chuancheng yu chuangxin: Zhongyang Yanjiuyuan Zhongguo Wenzhe Yanjiusuo shi zhounian jinian lunwenji 傳承與創新：中央研究院中國文哲研究所十周年紀念論文集 [Tradition and Innovation: Essays Commemorating the Tenth Anniversary of the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy at Academia Sinica] (Taipei: Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy, Academia Sinica, 1999), 306; Robertson, “Voicing the Feminine,” 69; Fong, “Engendering the Lyric,” 113–15; Mary H. Fong, “Images of Women in Traditional Chinese Painting,” Woman’s Art Journal 17, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 1996): 25. Rouzer argues for a deeper subtext in Articulated Ladies, 7. For a discussion of literati paintings from the post-Song periods as “events,” see Richard Vinograd, “Situation and Response in Traditional Chinese Scholar Painting,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism (1988): 365–74. Guoli Gugong Bowuyuan 國立故宮博物院, Gugong shuhua lu 故宮書畫錄 [Record of Calligraphy and Painting in the Palace Museum], rev. ed. (Taipei: Taiwan shangwu yinshuguan, 1965), 2: 4.64–65. In regard to the content of romantic paintings, it may be significant that literati friendship in an earlier time “made possible the disclosure of personal feelings or events that in the context of other, more distant social relationships would be

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exist for only a handful of other Song paintings of women, some of which are no longer extant. The colophon attached to In the Palace, translated above, mentions that the Chief Minister of the Court of the Imperial Treasury owned the original painting in the eleventh century and that Zhang Cheng commissioned a copy of it in the twelfth. The Xuanhe Painting Catalogue, dating to about 1120, records that Zhang Xuan’s Pounding Silk then belonged to the imperial collection; sometime in the early thirteenth century, Jin dynasty (1115– 1234) scholar Yuan Haowen 元好問 (1190–1257) viewed this painting (a copy of which appears in figs. 11.1–11.2).152 Another painting attributed to Zhang Xuan, Court Ladies Playing the Qin (Guqin shinü tu 鼓琴士女圖), belonged to the imperial collection in 1120, later to the Jin emperor Zhangzong 章宗 (r. 1190–1208), and some time afterward to the Southern Song prime minister Jia Sidao 賈似 道 (1213–75).153 This painting was probably similar to Palace Ladies Tuning the Lute (Gongji tiaoqin tu 宮妓挑琴圖) in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (fig. 18). These examples of shinü hua are associated with specific male viewers. A study of similar images of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries suggests that paintings with erotic subject matter, including sexually explicit works, may have been principally intended to elicit a sexual response among viewers who were predominantly male, whereas works that engaged more deeply with women’s subjectivity may have had a different purpose and were especially suitable for female viewers.154 The Song paintings under consideration here, though not as uninhibited as paintings of later eras, still must be understood as erotic insofar as they engage with ideas about romantic feelings and relationships, but I argue that their primary design was not necessarily to sexually arouse their viewers. Women might indeed have related to the figures depicted within them: written records may have been circumspect about female viewers for various reasons. In fact, textual accounts attest to a variety of patronage practices and hint at widespread consumption of paintings of women experiencing longing or desire. Although not typical examples of either shinü hua or representations of love relationships, handscrolls bearing the title Night Revels of Han Xizai (see figs. 9.1–9.5) have left an intriguing cumulative record of the audience for this inappropriate”; Anna M. Shields, One Who Knows Me: Friendship and Literary Culture in Mid-Tang China (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Asia Center, 2015), 5. 152 Xuanhe huapu, 5.157; Yuan Haowen, Yuan Haowen quanji 元好問全集 [The Complete Works of Yuan Haowen], 2 vols. (Taiyuan: Shanxi renmin chubanshe, 1990), 1:34.772. 153 Xuanhe huapu, 5.158; Eight Dynasties of Chinese Painting, 9. 154 Cahill, Pictures for Use and Pleasure, 16, 21.

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pictorial theme, which dates back to the Southern Tang. Depicting the mutual desire of scholars and courtesans in the home of an imperial adviser, these provocative pictures elicited an atypical quantity of commentary in the form of published colophons, with much attention paid to the viewers of the scrolls and the importance of the male gaze. Li Yu of the Southern Tang (known as Li Houzhu 李後主, the Last Ruler) ordered the original version of the painting— which does not survive—and several Song texts suggest that his motive was voyeurism.155 A colophon by Zu Wupo 祖無頗 published in 1079, for example, reads in part: The Last Ruler wanted to appoint him as a minister, but from the time he heard that Han Xizai [902–70] was indulging himself in reclusion unobserved, he always wanted to spy on the parties in Han’s home. Thus he ordered painter Gu Hongzhong to do a painting that would catch Han Xizai. 後主欲用為相，而聞縱逸不檢，每伺其家宴，命畫工顧閎中丹青以 追。156

The colophon uses the term si 伺, “to spy,” to describe the ruler’s behavior. Later, the role of spy would be assigned to the court painter, although the ruler’s desire to witness the interaction of men and women at Han Xizai’s house remains uncontested. As part of the imperial painting collection, Night 155

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Wu Hung discusses this painting in terms of the “voyeuristic gaze” in The Double Screen, 68–71. The earliest account of the painting, however, suggests that the ruler wished to make his minister desist from this behavior; Tao Yue 陶岳, “Han Xizai weibo bu xiu 韓熙 載帷箔不修 [Han Xizai’s Curtains Are Not Drawn]” (1012), Wudai shibu 五代史補 [Supplement to the History of the Five Dynasties] 5 juan (reprint; [China]: Shanyin Song shi, 1887), 12a-b, (accessed 22 March 2018). Fuller translations of Song colophons for Night Revels of Han Xizai appear in Chapter 2. Zu Wupo, “Ba Han Xizai yeyan tu 跋韓熙載夜宴圖 [Colophon to Night Revels of Han Xizai],” in Zu Wuze 祖無擇, Longxue wenji 龍學文集 [Collected Writings of Longxue], ed. Wang Yunwu 王雲五 (reprint, Taipei: Taiwan shangwu yinshuguan, 1974), 16.13b–14a. A second, undated colophon that borrows substantially from Zu Wupo’s account includes this line: “The Last Ruler always spied on the reveling at [Han Xizai’s] house, sending painters like Gu Hongzhong to enter and make paintings.” (後主每伺其家宴，命畫工 顧閎中輩丹青以進。) This colophon is published (with some minor changes) in Arthur Mu-sen Kao [Gao Musen] 高木森, “Lun Han Xizai yeyan tu 論『韓熙載夜宴 圖』 [A Study on the Han Hsi-tsai’s Night Banquet],” Dongwu Daxue Zhongguo yishushi jikan 東吳大學中國藝術史集刊 [Soochow University Journal of Chinese Art History] 12 (October 1982): 2.

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Revels of Han Xizai was duly recorded in the Xuanhe Painting Catalogue, in an entry that again referred to Li Yu’s insatiable curiosity: […] when talk began to spread and the ruler heard one-sided accounts of Han’s wild indulgences, he thereafter wished to see his staging of noisy drinking parties in a setting of wine vessels, lamps, and candles. Since the ruler considered this impossible, he ordered Hongzhong to go to Han’s house at night to spy on him, then to remember what he saw and paint it. In this way Night Revels of Han Xizai has passed down to us. 聲傳中外，頗聞其荒縱，然欲見樽俎燈燭間觥籌交錯之態度不可得， 乃命閎中夜至其第竊窺之，目識心記，圖繪以上之，故世有『韓熙載 夜宴圖』。157

In this account, the term for “spying” (qiekui 竊窺), here applied to Gu Hongzhong, becomes even stronger. The phrase may be broken down into its component parts: qie, which suggests both stealing and stealth, and kui, which on its own implies stealthy looking;158 the compound, then, intensifies both the surreptitious and deceitful qualities of the artist’s look. The ruler is described as “desiring to see” (yu jian 欲見). Certainly the Song accounts of this painting give the impression that the female figures, constructed as feeling affection and desire for the men they entertain, were initially objects of Li Yu’s gaze. At the same time, these texts indicate that the ruler’s voyeurism was inappropriate. The Xuanhe Painting Catalogue account, for example, ends with the argument that Night Revels should not be viewed: As for [Li Yu] having his minister’s dirty laundry painted so that he could look at it, this is an excessively strange pleasure. It is like the story of Zhang Chang’s [d. 51 bce] explanation of his customary painting of [his wife’s] eyebrows, already lacking in propriety. What possible further purpose could there be for leaving it to the world? After one look, one can throw it away. 至於寫臣下私褻以觀，則泰至多奇樂，如張敞所謂不特畫眉之說，已 自失體，又何必命傳於世哉。一閱而棄之可也。159 157 158 159

Xuanhe huapu, 7.193. Ciyuan, s.v. qie, kui. Xuanhe huapu, 7.194.

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Nonetheless, at some point in the Song dynasty, the original composition of Night Revels of Han Xizai was copied, ensuring that the story would continue to exist in pictorial form. One official who viewed the Song copy now in the Palace Museum, Beijing (figs. 9.1–9.5) is Shi Miyuan 史彌遠 (fl. 1195–1220): his seal appears on the painting.160 Critic Tang Hou also viewed the copy, most likely in the late thirteenth century; he characterizes it as “not a proper object of enjoyment for a scholar’s collection” (非文房清玩).161 Although the scroll depicts men and women together, it seems to be associated primarily with a male audience, either court figures or scholars, despite suggestions that it is inappropriate for any audience, and the different subjectivities of patron and viewers lead to different interpretations of the subject.

…

Questions of authorship and audience complicate the construction of the feminine image in works on romantic themes. Perhaps so many paintings with romantic themes present only women because a male author or viewer can look at a female figure and imagine himself as the object of her desire if no male figure is present to belie the fantasy. While male poets, painters, and patrons are largely responsible for the poetic and pictorial images of women that depict them as experiencing longing or desire, women also participated in the construction of these personae and figures. Thus, the subjectivities represented in these works cross between masculine and feminine, containing both elements. The desiring female persona or figure is necessarily artificial, with the consequence that authenticity is of great concern in these images. The effort to establish authenticity for the persona is apparent in critics’ readiness to see female-authored poetry as representative of the author’s subjectivity. It is also apparent in commentary on erotic paintings that betrays the writer’s expectations that the female figures reflect reality. Some of the unattributed Song paintings discussed in these pages, perhaps especially those that would have appealed to a female audience, may have been the work of female painters. But because the aims of a female painter in making images of desiring women might have been identical to those of a male painter—to relate an allegory, to comment on her own experiences, to 160

161

Xu Bangda 徐邦達, “Gu Hongzhong hua Han Xizai yeyan tu 顧閎中畫《韓熙載夜宴 圖》 [Ku Hung-chung’s ‘Night Revels of Han Hsi-tsai’],” Zhongguo wenwu 中國文物 2 (March 1980): 26–27. The Chinese text appears in Chou, Tang Hou’s “Huajian,” 163.

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supply women with models of femininity, or to convey something about her own relationship—it is impossible to discern female authorship of any of these paintings without other kinds of evidence. Indeed, many Song images of women attempt to encompass both male and female perspectives.

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Political Interpretations of Desire

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Chapter 2

Political Interpretations of Desire Because they correspond to poetic themes, some paintings of women experiencing longing or desire can be interpreted allegorically. Early Chinese critics read much of the ancient poetry about a woman longing for a man as an allegory of a minister’s desire for his ruler’s respect, and textual evidence suggests that some among the Song literati continued to perceive marital relationships (and, by extension, sexual relationships) as analogues for ruler-subject relationships.1 Given the interest in representing emotional attachment in this period, however, a literal reading of poems and paintings on these themes also seems appropriate. In this chapter, I examine whether early political interpretations of themes of desire provide insight into Song literary and visual representations of heteroerotic desire, focusing on the rare paintings that show interaction between male and female figures. Such works might incorporate both levels of meaning. Some of the first poems to be reinterpreted as allegory include love or courtship poems from the Book of Songs.2 The Mao edition, in circulation between the first and third centuries, introduced commentary on folk songs from the section “Airs of the States” (Guofeng 國風) that interpreted them as allegories referring to specific political events.3 The new readings indicate that critics considered frankly erotic poems to be unfitting for an anthology that supposedly contained moral lessons compiled by Confucius.4 Some centuries later, Liu Xie’s The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons (Wenxin diaolong 文心 雕龍) reiterated that the poems had a political basis:

1 On allegorical interpretations of Chinese poetry, see Yu, The Reading of Imagery; Kang-i Sun Chang, “Symbolic and Allegorical Meanings in the Yüeh-fu pu-t’i Poem Series,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 46, no. 2 (December 1986): 353–85. Sima Guang reiterated that a wife’s loyalty to her husband could serve as a model for a minister’s loyalty to his ruler; Ching, “Sung Philosophers on Women,” 261–62. Paul Rouzer expands upon the assumption that the Chinese literature of desire, from the Zhou (ca. 1050–256 bce) through the Song dynasty, is inherently political throughout Articulated Ladies. 2 Pauline R. Yu, “Allegory, Allegoresis, and the Classic of Poetry,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 43, no. 2 (December 1983): 377–412. 3 Rouzer, Articulated Ladies, 23, 77. 4 Frankel, The Flowering Plum and the Palace Lady, 50–51; Watson, The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry, 5; Yu, The Reading of Imagery, 46; Waley, The Book of Songs, 335–37.

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The Book of Poetry was inspired by the dictates of the heart and long pentup indignation; it expressed the emotions and nature of the poets, in order to satirize their rulers. 蓋風、雅之興，志思蓄憤，而吟詠情性，以諷其上。5

In the Song dynasty, however, scholars Ouyang Xiu, Su Che 蘇轍 (1039–1112), and Zhu Xi argued for a more literal understanding of the folk songs.6 Evidently, the poems in the Book of Songs admit multiple levels of meaning.7 Deliberately allegorical poems that ostensibly concern a love relationship appear in the Warring States period (475–221 bce). In “Encountering Sorrow” (Lisao 離騷), poet Qu Yuan 屈原 (343–290 bce) assumes a female persona who laments her lover’s inconstancy, a situation encoding Qu’s own neglect by King Huai of Chu 楚懷王 (r. 328–299 bce) due to slander.8 Critic Wang Yi 王逸 (fl. 110–120) explains the role of the female persona here: Women are yin and do not act on the principle of independent responsibility, just as, when the ruler acts, the minister follows. Thus they have been used as a comparison to ministers. 女，陰也，無專擅之義。猶君動而臣隨也，故以喻臣。9

Thereafter, writers often implicitly compare the relationship of subject to ruler to that of an abandoned woman and her absent lover.10 By the Tang dynasty, the poetic image of the neglected and frustrated woman languishing within 5

Translated by James J.Y. Liu in The Art of Chinese Poetry, 71–72; Liu, “Qing cai 情釆 [Emotion and Literary Expression],” Xinyi “Wenxin diaolong,” 7.503. 6 Yu, The Reading of Imagery, 60, Frankel, The Flowering Plum and the Palace Lady, 50–51; Rouzer, Articulated Ladies, 17, 21–22. In this vein, Marcel Granet and Arthur Waley have attempted to restore the “original intentions” of the poems, as discussed in Yu, “Allegory, Allegoresis, and the Classic of Poetry,” 378–79; cf. Marcel Granet, “Chansons d’amour de la vieille Chine,” Revue des arts asiatiques 2, no. 3 (September 1925): 24–40; idem., Fêtes et chansons anciennes de la Chine, 2nd ed. (Paris: Librairie Ernest Leroux, 1929), 18; and Waley, The Book of Songs, 336–37. 7 Rouzer, Articulated Ladies, 22–23. 8 Watson, The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry, 46, 54–66. 9 Translated by Pauline Yu in The Reading of Imagery, 92; citing Wang Yi, Lisao jing zhangju 離騷經章句 [Commentary on the Classic of Encountering Sorrow], in Chuci buzhu 楚辭 補註 [Annotated “Songs of Chu”], ed. Hong Xingzu (1070–1135) 洪興祖 (reprint, Taipei: Yiwen yinshuguan, 1969), 1.12a. 10 Wai-yee Li, Enchantment and Disenchantment: Love and Illusion in Chinese Literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 19. Jean-Pierre Diény observes that these two images are so closely bound that one can eliminate neither reading in a poem Lara C.W. Blanchard - 978-90-04-36939-9 Downloaded from Brill.com05/05/2020 10:59:28AM via free access

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the inner quarters may serve as a trope for an under-utilized scholar’s dissatisfaction, suggesting a political reading for paintings of neglected women such as Ladies Playing Double-Sixes (Neiren shuanglu tu 内人雙陸圖), attributed to Zhou Fang.11 Still, it is difficult to determine whether Song paintings that present abandoned or neglected women were intended or perceived as allegorical at the time. None of the paintings of lonely women has historically been discussed as allegory. Critics did not initially interpret erotic song lyrics of the Song period as allegorical, nor did composers of such lyrics explain their choice of theme this way.12 Northern Song writers kept an uncharacteristic silence about their lyric compositions, which were sometimes denounced as scandalous. Song lyrics that dealt with sexual liaisons often reflected the involvement of literati with female entertainers, an association considered inappropriate by many educated men.13 Perhaps for these reasons, the expression of erotic love in these verses sometimes resulted in the poets’ self-censure.14 But in the Southern Song, after writers such as Su Shi began to expand the topics of the

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concerning such a relationship in “Les Dix-neuf poèmes anciens 古詩十九首,” Bulletin de la Maison Franco-Japonaise, n.s. 7, no. 4 (1963): 54; cited in Yu, The Reading of Imagery, 123. Jerome Silbergeld, China into Film: Frames of Reference in Contemporary Chinese Cinema (London: Reaktion Books, 1999), 135, 140. Ladies Playing Double-Sixes is attributed to Zhou Fang but probably dates to the Song dynasty and belongs to the Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. (F1939.37 and F1960.4, dually numbered because it was once divided into sections that entered the museum separately); for extensive documentation of the painting, see Stephen D. Allee, Joseph Chang, and Ingrid Larsen, Song and Yuan Dynasty Painting and Calligraphy (Washington, D.C.: Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, 2012), (accessed 29 October 2017). Reproductions of the painting are available at Smithsonian Institution, “Palace Ladies Playing Double Sixes,” Smithsonian, (accessed 21 December 2017). While Su Shi was charged with political defamation in 1079 because of the content of his shi poetry, his song lyrics were not used against him because this genre was not associated with political commentary; Egan, The Problem of Beauty, 287–90. In the Qing dynasty, the Changzhou 常州 School of critics suggested that song lyrics were allegorical commentary on contemporary events in the manner of The Book of Songs and “Encountering Sorrow”; Chia-ying Yeh Chao, “The Ch’ang-chou School of Tz’u Criticism,” in Chinese Approaches to Literature: Confucius to Liang Ch’i-ch’ao, ed. Adele Austin Rickett (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 152. Ronald C. Egan, “The Problem of the Repute of Tz’u during the Northern Sung,” in Yu, Voices of the Song Lyric in China, 201–202. Fong, “Engendering the Lyric,” 109. Lara C.W. Blanchard - 978-90-04-36939-9 Downloaded from Brill.com05/05/2020 10:59:28AM via free access

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genre, critics discuss lyrics on the abandoned woman theme as deliberately allegorical, and the literati start to write lyrics with this intention.15 Parallels between poetry and painting suggest that pictorial compositions with erotic themes from the Southern Song on could well have been intended as allegorical.

Handscrolls of Goddess of the Luo River

A narrative of desire and rejection that can be interpreted as allegory is Goddess of the Luo River, also known as Nymph of the Luo River.16 Three well-known handscrolls on this theme, in the Liaoning Provincial Museum (figs. 6.1–6.12), the Palace Museum in Beijing (figs. 7.1–7.10), and the Freer Gallery of Art (figs. 8.1–8.5), probably date to the Song. They present a romanticized female figure from a male perspective17 and are thus closely related to shinü hua. Although all three paintings were long thought to derive from a composition by Gu Kaizhi, recent scholarship suggests a more complicated provenance. The Liaoning and Beijing scrolls may be copies of a sixth-century Goddess composition, and the Freer scroll seems to be a copy of the Beijing scroll.18 In addition, the Liaoning scroll may be partially based on a Tang composition, as it includes details featured only in Tang annotations to the poem from which it derives.19 Critics Wang Yun 王惲 (1227–1304), in 1276, and Tang Hou, sometime in the following two decades, were apparently the earliest to mention seeing a composition of this title attributed to Gu Kaizhi; the painting that they saw may have been the Liaoning scroll.20

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Chao, “The Ch’ang-chou School,” 166–67. Wang Yao-t’ing [Wang Yaoting] 王耀庭, “Images of the Heart: Chinese Paintings on a Theme of Love,” Part 2, trans. Deborah A. Sommer, National Palace Museum Bulletin 22, no. 6 (January–February 1988): 1. 17 Wu, The Double Screen, 95, 96–97. 18 Chen, “The Goddess of the Lo River,” 1:110–11, 169–72, 244–45. 19 Thomas Lawton, “Obituary: Wai-kam Ho (1924–2004),” Artibus Asiae 65, no. 1 (2005): 148. 20 Shih, “Poetry Illustration and the Works of Ku K’ai-chih,” 16; Chen, “The Goddess of the Lo River,” 1: 92, 92 n. 84; cf. Wang Yun, Shuhua mulu 書畫目錄 [Catalogue of Calligraphy and Painting], in Shuhua lu 書畫路 [Record of Calligraphy and Painting, 1276], ed. Yang Jialuo, Yishu congbian, ser. 1, no. 17 (reprint, Taipei: Shijie shuju, 1968), 1:155; and Tang Hou, Huajian (see Chou, Tang Hou’s “Huajian,” 157).

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Analyzing their literary source, Cao Zhi’s 曹植 (192–232) “Rhyme-Prose on the Goddess of the Luo” (Luoshen fu 洛神賦),21 provides insight into the paintings’ possible rhetorical functions. Cao’s preface states that he is following an earlier rhapsody, Song Yu’s “Rhyme-Prose on the Goddess” (Shennü fu 神女賦), and formal similarities between the two poems include significant points of correspondence in their plots.22 Song Yu’s poem, however, has an ambiguous voice: critics have argued whether its described dream is supposed to be attributed to the poet or his king. Perhaps because Cao’s poem is written in the first person, actually beginning with the pronoun “I” (yu 余), some critics understand it as veiled autobiography and an allegory on his own circumstances.23 Readers of early works in the fu 賦 genre (translated as either “rhyme-prose” or “rhapsody”) believed that the narratives expressed the author’s feelings.24 “Rhyme-Prose on the Goddess of the Luo” relates this tale: returning home from the capital, the narrator stops at the Luo River, where he encounters a female figure of incomparable loveliness whom his companions cannot see. This is the goddess Fufei 宓妃, mentioned in three poems in the Songs of Chu (Chu ci 楚辭).25 He offers her a token of his affection; she responds in kind and suggests a tryst in the depths of the river. He demurs (in the manner of narrators “stilling passions,” ding qing 定情),26 and she expresses distress in agitated 21

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Cao Zijian 曹子建 [Cao Zhi], “Luoshen fu er shou 洛神賦二首 [Rhyme-Prose on the Goddess of the Luo, Two Poems],” in Xiao and Hu, Wen xuan, 19.7b–10b. All subsequent translations of lines from this poem come from Watson, The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry, 116–21. K.P.K. Whitaker, “Tsaur Jyr’s ‘Luohshern Fuh,’” Asia Major, n.s. 4, no. 1 (1954): 36–39. Song Yu’s rhapsody is translated in full in Owen, An Anthology of Chinese Literature, 190–93, and by David Knechtges in Xiao, Selections of Refined Literature, 3: 355–65. Rouzer, in an analysis of Jian’an 建安 poets (including Cao Zhi), discusses the tendency of early literati to identify a first-person speaker as the author’s authentic voice; see his Articulated Ladies, 60–63, 80, 82–83. Chen, “The Goddess of the Lo River,” 1:39. In this era, however, poets typically wrote on melancholy subjects regardless of their own emotional states; Hans H. Frankel, “Fifteen Poems by Ts’ao Chih: An Attempt at a New Approach,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 84, no. 1 (January–March 1964): 14. Whitaker, “Tsaur Jyr’s ‘Luohshern Fuh,’” 36. Fufei appears in “Encountering Sorrow,” “The Far-Off Journey” (Yuan you 遠遊), and “The Nine Laments” (Jiu tan 九歎); David Hawkes, trans., Ch’u Tz’u: The Songs of the South, An Ancient Chinese Anthology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959), 29, 86, 163. The Chinese text appears in Zhu Xi, ed., Chu ci jizhu 楚辭集注 [Collected Annotations to the “Songs of Chu”], 8 juan (reprint; Shanghai: Sanye shanfang, 1930). For more on the “stilling the passions” theme in rhapsodies, see Rouzer, Articulated Ladies, 49–58.

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Figure 6.1 Goddess of the Luo River. Traditionally attributed after Gu Kaizhi, Song dynasty; handscroll, ink and color on silk, 26.3 × 646.0 cm. Collection Of Liaoning Provincial Museum, Shenyang, P.R.C.

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Figure 6.2 Goddess of the Luo River. Traditionally attributed after Gu Kaizhi, Song dynasty; handscroll, ink and color on silk, 26.3 × 646.0 cm. Collection Of Liaoning Provincial Museum, Shenyang, P.R.C.

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Figure 6.3 Goddess of the Luo River. Traditionally attributed after Gu Kaizhi, Song dynasty; handscroll, ink and color on silk, 26.3 × 646.0 cm. Collection Of Liaoning Provincial Museum, Shenyang, P.R.C.

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Figure 6.4

Goddess of the Luo River. Traditionally attributed after Gu Kaizhi, Song dynasty; handscroll, ink and color on silk, 26.3 × 646.0 cm. Collection Of Liaoning Provincial Museum, Shenyang, P.R.C.

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Figure 6.5 Goddess of the Luo River. Traditionally attributed after Gu Kaizhi, Song dynasty; handscroll, ink and color on silk, 26.3 × 646.0 cm. Collection Of Liaoning Provincial Museum, Shenyang, P.R.C.

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Figure 6.6

Goddess of the Luo River. Traditionally attributed after Gu Kaizhi, Song dynasty; handscroll, ink and color on silk, 26.3 × 646.0 cm. Collection Of Liaoning Provincial Museum, Shenyang, P.R.C.

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Figure 6.7

Goddess of the Luo River. Traditionally attributed after Gu Kaizhi, Song dynasty; handscroll, ink and color on silk, 26.3 × 646.0 cm. Collection Of Liaoning Provincial Museum, Shenyang, P.R.C.

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Figure 6.8

Goddess of the Luo River. Traditionally attributed after Gu Kaizhi, Song dynasty; handscroll, ink and color on silk, 26.3 × 646.0 cm. Collection Of Liaoning Provincial Museum, Shenyang, P.R.C.

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Figure 6.9

Goddess of the Luo River. Traditionally attributed after Gu Kaizhi, Song dynasty; handscroll, ink and color on silk, 26.3 × 646.0 cm. Collection Of Liaoning Provincial Museum, Shenyang, P.R.C.

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Figure 6.10

Goddess of the Luo River. Traditionally attributed after Gu Kaizhi, Song dynasty; handscroll, ink and color on silk, 26.3 × 646.0 cm. Collection Of Liaoning Provincial Museum, Shenyang, P.R.C.

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Figure 6.11

Goddess of the Luo River. Traditionally attributed after Gu Kaizhi, Song dynasty; handscroll, ink and color on silk, 26.3 × 646.0 cm. Collection Of Liaoning Provincial Museum, Shenyang, P.R.C.

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Figure 6.12

Goddess of the Luo River. Traditionally attributed after Gu Kaizhi, Song dynasty; handscroll, ink and color on silk, 26.3 × 646.0 cm. Collection Of Liaoning Provincial Museum, Shenyang, P.R.C.

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movements and wails. Other deities then join her, and this development introduces an element of uncertainty, as she finds herself torn between the realms of gods and humans.27 Ultimately, she renounces consummation, indicating that divinities and mortals should not mix. As she leaves, she presents the narrator with an earring and professes her undying love. In the final lines, he is the undecided figure, trying to move on yet unwilling to leave Fufei behind. Compositions of the Song Dynasty Paintings None of the surviving Song paintings reproduces the entire composition of the source painting. The Liaoning painting is the longest, preserving a pivotal scene that does not survive in the other versions. The Beijing scroll, a rendering of figures in a blue-green landscape befitting the otherworldly subject matter, presents several scenes that seem augmented in comparison to the Liaoning scroll, and some judge this painting to be the most complete and most faithful to Cao Zhi’s poem.28 The Freer version reproduces only the latter part of the Beijing scroll, including some of the more problematic passages. The Liaoning scroll differs from the others in that Cao Zhi’s text appears in the composition’s negative space. The first twenty columns of writing differ stylistically from those succeeding, presumably replacing text that was lost or damaged. More importantly, the latter part of the text recalls the style of both Southern Song Emperor Gaozong and his consort, Empress Wu 吳 (1115–97), and could have been written by one of Gaozong’s concubines. This evidence suggests that the Liaoning scroll was produced at the mid-twelfthcentury court.29 The Beijing scroll might be attributed to a late Northern Song 27 28

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Her liminal state is important to understanding her position; Wai-yee Li, “Dream Visions of Transcendence in Chinese Literature and Painting,” Asian Art (Fall 1990): 68–69. On connections between blue-green landscape painting and connotations of other­ worldliness in the Song dynasty, see Susan E. Nelson, “On Through to the Beyond: The Peach Blossom Spring as Paradise,” Archives of Asian Art 39 (1986): 28–29, 30–31. On the relative completeness of the Beijing version of Goddess of the Luo River, see Ellen Johnston Laing, “Erotic Themes and Romantic Heroines Depicted by Ch’iu Ying,” Archives of Asian Art 49 (1996): 81; and Shih, “Poetry Illustration and the Works of Ku K’ai-chih,” 16. Chen, “The Goddess of the Lo River,” 1:191, 192, 209–10, 242. On Empress Wu and concubines who served as scribes for Emperor Gaozong, particularly Liu Guifei, see Hui-shu Lee, “The Emperor’s Lady Ghostwriters in Song-Dynasty China,” Artibus Asiae 64, no. 1 (2004): 63–64, 67, 70–76. Julia K. Murray discusses Gaozong’s interest in narrative handscrolls in “Sung Kao-tsung as Artist and Patron: The Theme of Dynastic Revival,” in Artists and Patrons: Some Social and Economic Aspects of Chinese Painting, ed. Chu-tsing Li (Lawrence, Kans.: Kress Foundation Department of Art History, University of Kansas; Kansas City, Mo.: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1989), 30.

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academic painter and the Freer scroll, clearly later, to a Southern Song court painter.30 Certainly the media of all three versions (ink and color on silk) are consistent with court patronage. The provenance of the scrolls, however, is unclear until some centuries later. The Liaoning scroll passed through private collections before the Qianlong 乾隆 emperor (r. 1736–96) obtained it sometime after 1789. The Beijing scroll entered his collection in 1741, and nothing concrete may be said of it before that (colophons purporting to be of Yuan or Ming date are likely inauthentic). As for the Freer painting, no record of it existed before Dong Qichang acquired it in the late Ming; his colophon claims that it previously belonged to the Ming imperial collection. Subsequently, numerous private collectors owned it.31 Thus, though all three scrolls likely originate with court patronage and returned to imperial collections, they did not remain at court throughout their history. The unknown copyists illustrate select images from the poetry. The beginning of the Beijing scroll (fig. 7.1) shows horses at rest and their grooms, corresponding to the beginning of Cao Zhi’s poem. The Liaoning scroll begins with the second scene of the Beijing scroll: the narrator and his retinue gaze upon the goddess, standing on a riverbank (figs. 6.1–6.2, 7.2). In the Beijing scroll, Fufei holds a “circular five-jeweled fan with two tufts of hair.”32 Both versions show the narrator second from the left, larger than the other figures and standing beneath an umbrella held by an attendant. (The Liaoning scroll, however, includes a maid standing just behind Cao Zhi’s entourage, which is otherwise entirely male, whereas the Beijing scroll has no maid and one fewer male figure.) Swans and a dragon in flight appear to the goddess’s right; above her, the moon is partly obscured by clouds; to her left, a red sun (inscribed with a crow) rises through the mist, and a lotus blooms upon the water. These are Cao Zhi’s metaphors for Fufei’s grace and splendor; in the Liaoning scroll, each image is annotated with corresponding lines from the poem. Where the poem includes a long section rhapsodizing upon the goddess’s beauty, the painters of both the Beijing and Liaoning scrolls render it through looped hair, pale skin, elaborate clothing, and trailing scarves. We next see 30

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Chen, “The Goddess of the Lo River,” 1:244–45, 260, 283. Wai-yee Li suggests that the Freer scroll dates to the twelfth to thirteenth centuries in “Dream Visions of Transcendence,” 66. Chen, “The Goddess of the Lo River,” 1:93–96, 279, 284–85. The inscriptions and seals on the Freer scroll are documented in Allee, Chang, and Larsen, Song and Yuan Dynasty Painting and Calligraphy, (accessed 29 October 2017). Laing, “Erotic Themes and Romantic Heroines,” 81. The Liaoning scroll’s figure seems to hold this tufted fan as well, but it is so damaged that it is difficult to be sure.

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Figure 7.1

Goddess of the Luo River. Traditionally attributed after Gu Kaizhi (ca. 345–406), Song dynasty; handscroll, ink and color on silk, 27.1 × 572.8 cm. Palace Museum, Beijing, P.R.C. Photograph provided by the Palace Museum.

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Figure 7.2

Goddess of the Luo River. Traditionally attributed after Gu Kaizhi (ca. 345–406), Song dynasty; handscroll, ink and color on silk, 27.1 × 572.8 cm. Palace Museum, Beijing, P.R.C. Photograph provided by the Palace Museum.

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Figure 7.3

Goddess of the Luo River. Traditionally attributed after Gu Kaizhi (ca. 345–406), Song dynasty; handscroll, ink and color on silk, 27.1 × 572.8 cm. Palace Museum, Beijing, P.R.C. Photograph provided by the Palace Museum.

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Figure 7.4

Goddess of the Luo River. Traditionally attributed after Gu Kaizhi (ca. 345–406), Song dynasty; handscroll, ink and color on silk, 27.1 × 572.8 cm. Palace Museum, Beijing, P.R.C. Photograph provided by the Palace Museum.

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Figure 7.5

Goddess of the Luo River. Traditionally attributed after Gu Kaizhi (ca. 345–406), Song dynasty; handscroll, ink and color on silk, 27.1 × 572.8 cm. Palace Museum, Beijing, P.R.C. Photograph provided by the Palace Museum.

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Figure 7.6

Goddess of the Luo River. Traditionally attributed after Gu Kaizhi (ca. 345–406), Song dynasty; handscroll, ink and color on silk, 27.1 × 572.8 cm. Palace Museum, Beijing, P.R.C. Photograph provided by the Palace Museum.

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Figure 7.7

Goddess of the Luo River. Traditionally attributed after Gu Kaizhi (ca. 345–406), Song dynasty; handscroll, ink and color on silk, 27.1 × 572.8 cm. Palace Museum, Beijing, P.R.C. Photograph provided by the Palace Museum.

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Figure 7.8

Goddess of the Luo River. Traditionally attributed after Gu Kaizhi (ca. 345–406), Song dynasty; handscroll, ink and color on silk, 27.1 × 572.8 cm. Palace Museum, Beijing, P.R.C. Photograph provided by the Palace Museum.

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Figure 7.9

Goddess of the Luo River. Traditionally attributed after Gu Kaizhi (ca. 345–406), Song dynasty; handscroll, ink and color on silk, 27.1 × 572.8 cm. Palace Museum, Beijing, P.R.C. Photograph provided by the Palace Museum.

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Figure 7.10

Goddess of the Luo River. Traditionally attributed after Gu Kaizhi (ca. 345–406), Song dynasty; handscroll, ink and color on silk, 27.1 × 572.8 cm. Palace Museum, Beijing, P.R.C. Photograph provided by the Palace Museum.

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illustrations of her “planting her colored pennants” (yi caimao 倚采旄): in the Beijing scroll she appears twice, standing on waves and hovering beside pennants fastened to poles (fig. 7.3), but the Liaoning scroll includes only the latter figure (fig. 6.3). She does not hold the tufted fan in either painting, a lapse difficult to explain considering how consistently it appears subsequently. A textual passage preceding this section in the Liaoning scroll relates most of Cao Zhi’s poetic rapture on Fufei’s beauty; the annotations within the scene describe her planting flags, then gathering irises from the water. At this point, there is a break in the Beijing scroll, with a short length of silk added to create a new juncture.33 What should appear here, judging from the poem, are the parts of the tale wherein the narrator offers a love token, Fufei responds by indicating where they might tryst, the narrator hesitates, and the goddess becomes distressed. The Liaoning scroll preserves their initial exchange: goddess (holding her tufted fan) and narrator face each other beside the river in the company of three attendants, the narrator offering his “girdlejade” (yupei 玉珮), an ornament that stretches from his hand down to the ground (fig. 6.4). This scene suggests the narrator’s rejection of Fufei both through his change in position—he faces right rather than left, a significant difference from earlier and subsequent scenes—and through the figure of one attendant, who turns his back on the viewer.34 This interchange between narrator and goddess is arguably one of the most important parts of the composition, if one interprets this work as focusing on desire and rejection. It seems unlikely that the painter deemed this meaningful encounter unnecessary to the narrative; more probably, this section was removed from the Beijing scroll because it could stand for the entire story on its own (especially considering the disjuncture found here). What one finds next in both the Beijing and Liaoning scrolls is a representation of multiple female deities; the Beijing scroll presents seven figures in four groups (figs. 7.3–7.4), while the Liaoning scroll has only four figures in two groups (fig. 6.5), corresponding to the first two groups shown in the Beijing scroll. Four of the figures depicted in the Beijing scroll are relatively tall and carry tufted fans, suggesting that they represent repeated appearances of Fufei in a continuous narrative.35 This scene likely represents a later section of the poem, where other deities, including the two queens of Xiang (Xiang zhi erfei 湘之二妃) and the Wandering Girl (Younü 游女), join Fufei; these precise passages of the text are written in this section of the Liaoning scroll. 33 34 35

Shih, “Poetry Illustration and the Works of Ku K’ai-chih,” 22. Chen, “The Goddess of the Lo River,” 1: 69–70. Shih, “Poetry Illustration and the Works of Ku K’ai-chih,” 22, 23.

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The scene immediately following in both the Liaoning and Beijing scrolls shows the narrator seated among five attendants, with Fufei hovering before him, holding her tufted fan (figs. 6.5–6.6, 7.4). In representing her with her head turned toward him and her body turned away, the artists illustrate her wavering. This scene represents another instance where Cao Zhi’s poem mentions his response to the goddess: “her fair face all loveliness—/ she makes me forget my hunger!” (華容婀娜。令我忘餐。) In fact, in virtually every instance where the pronouns “I” (yu) or “me” (wo 我) appear in the poem, the figure of the narrator appears in the corresponding part of the paintings. Notably, the Freer fragment begins with the conflicted figure of Fufei, her quandary manifested in her disconcerted facial expression and in the way her fluttering scarves emphasize the forward movement of her body even as her head turns back (fig. 8.1). In all three paintings, more deities appear in the succeeding scene (figs. 6.6, 7.5, 8.1), including Bingyi 屏翳 calling the winds, the River Lord (Chuanhou 川 后) gesturing at the waves, Nüwa (also pronounced Nügua) 女媧 floating in midair, and Pingyi 馮夷 beating a drum. Nüwa, also female, has furry legs and clawed feet; in earlier literature, she is an animalian goddess, described as halfserpent, half-woman.36 The deities’ materialization signals the moment when Fufei begins to have second thoughts about the narrator. The next scene modifies the sequence of events presented in the poem. Cao Zhi’s poem devotes several lines to Fufei’s carriage, pulled by dragons, with whales on either side, and describes her traveling some way in it before turning back to make a parting speech and to present a final gift. In the paintings, goddess and narrator are together again: Fufei rides a “jade phoenix,”37 and the narrator stands by the river beneath umbrellas held by his attendants, his empty hand stretched toward her (figs. 6.7, 7.6, 8.2). Fufei holds her tufted fan in the Liaoning scroll but not in the Beijing or Freer scrolls.38 Only after this scene do the painters show the goddess in her carriage with her fan, turning to look back toward the narrator (figs. 6.8–6.9, 7.7, 8.3). Perhaps the original painter judged that their leave-taking required a clearly rendered moment of acknowledgment on the part of both figures.

36 37 38

Edward H. Schafer, The Divine Woman: Dragon Ladies and Rain Maidens in T’ang Literature (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1973), 29. Shih, “Poetry Illustration and the Works of Ku K’ai-chih,” 23. She suggests that a section of the Beijing scroll, between the figures of the goddess and the poet, has been removed. Chen Pao-chen, discussing the Liaoning scroll, suggests that this female deity is not the Luo River goddess but one of her guardians; Chen, “The Goddess of the Lo River,” 1:77.

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Figure 8.1

Goddess of the Luo River. Traditionally attributed after Gu Kaizhi, Southern Song dynasty, 12th–13th century; handscroll, ink and color on silk, 24.2 × 310.9 cm. Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.: Gift of Charles Lang Freer (F1914.53).

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Figure 8.2

Goddess of the Luo River. Traditionally attributed after Gu Kaizhi, Southern Song dynasty, 12th–13th century; handscroll, ink and color on silk, 24.2 × 310.9 cm. Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.: Gift of Charles Lang Freer (F1914.53).

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Figure 8.3

Goddess of the Luo River. Traditionally attributed after Gu Kaizhi, Southern Song dynasty, 12th–13th century; handscroll, ink and color on silk, 24.2 × 310.9 cm. Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.: Gift of Charles Lang Freer (F1914.53).

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Figure 8.4

Goddess of the Luo River. Traditionally attributed after Gu Kaizhi, Southern Song dynasty, 12th–13th century; handscroll, ink and color on silk, 24.2 × 310.9 cm. Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.: Gift of Charles Lang Freer (F1914.53).

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Figure 8.5

Goddess of the Luo River. Traditionally attributed after Gu Kaizhi, Southern Song dynasty, 12th–13th century; handscroll, ink and color on silk, 24.2 × 310.9 cm. Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.: Gift of Charles Lang Freer (F1914.53).

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The ending of each of the paintings is straightforward: the narrator embarks in his boat, as described in the poem (figs. 6.9–6.10, 7.8, 8.4). In all three scrolls, he holds Fufei’s fan: something that any viewer would more readily recognize as her token than the earring mentioned in the poem. We subsequently see the narrator sitting on a bed by candlelight, indicating his sleeplessness (figs. 6.10, 7.9, 8.5). The Freer fragment ends here, but the Beijing and Liaoning scrolls present a final scene: the narrator in his carriage, looking back toward the river before he resumes his journey (figs. 6.11–6.12, 7.10). The poem does not describe him looking back, but this visual detail makes his longing for the goddess plain. In summary, the surviving Song compositions are remarkably faithful to the sequence presented in Cao Zhi’s rhapsody. Yet the two relatively complete scrolls are not entirely consistent with the poem, and the places where they break from the textual precedent all correspond to moments depicting the deep feeling between narrator and goddess. The additions are most striking. First, the painters amplify a moment when the narrator exclaims how Fufei’s beauty affects him—which merits only a few words in the text. Second, they reinterpret the moment of the goddess’s departure, adding a scene that suggests more intimate interaction between Fufei and the narrator than the poem does (a scene preserved in the Freer composition as well). Finally, they render the narrator’s regrets in the final scene. These embellishments suggest a heightened interest in interiority among Song court circles. The subtractions, however, may also be significant: the Beijing scroll lacks the moment of the first meeting of goddess and narrator, and the Liaoning scroll seems to treat this important moment rather briefly as well. Perhaps collectors identified a section representing the first declaration of mutual love as the essence of the story, making it ideal to present as a gift or to sell on the market. A similar fate could have befallen the first part of the Freer fragment. That scroll only preserves the scenes representing Fufei’s wavering (including the forces that convince her of the untenable nature of her love) and her ultimate rejection of the narrator. The missing pieces include the first encounter, the pledge of love, and representations of the goddess’s longing—in other words, moments that represent the passion of both figures. Reading Desire and Rejection Some scholars who see the poem and paintings of Goddess of the Luo River as allegory argue that they encode, in the male narrator’s love for the goddess, a narrative of Cao Zhi’s loyalty to his older brother, Cao Pi 曹丕 (187–226), who ruled from 220 as Emperor Wen of the Wei dynasty 魏文帝.39 Cao Pi viewed 39

Stuart, “Revealing the Romance in Chinese Art,” 13–14. An alternative viewpoint is presented in Watson, The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry, 116.

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Cao Zhi as a rival, and the classic theme in Chinese political allegory is the trouble between a ruler and subject, couched as the protagonist’s heteroerotic longing for an unattainable or rejecting other. Fufei is mentioned in the allegorical poem “Encountering Sorrow,” and in many respects Cao Zhi’s language echoes Qu Yuan’s.40 Qu Yuan’s narrator also makes a pledge to the goddess, offering his sash to her, but though he does enlist the help of a go-between— a minister of the sage emperor Fuxi 伏羲 (who was Fufei’s father) or possibly the goddess Nüwa—narrator and goddess meet and separate repeatedly, never entering into a covenant. Qu Yuan’s narrator then complains that Fufei “lacks decorum” (wuli 無禮).41 Cao Zhi’s allusions to “Encountering Sorrow” were signs to a discerning reader. Perhaps most importantly, in “Rhyme-Prose on the Goddess of the Luo” the relationship between Fufei and the narrator becomes one of Confucian restraint.42 In weaving Confucian philosophy into his tale of longing, Cao Zhi affirms that he accepts his place in the subject-ruler hierarchy. The gender dynamic in both poem and painting is, however, unusual. Allegorical poetry that suggests the loyalty of subject to ruler usually features a woman longing for a man; here, the male narrator makes the first pledge of sincerity. In some respects, this conforms with offerings from shamans to fickle goddesses in the Songs of Chu (Fufei is described as fickle in “Encountering Sorrow”), but this narrator seems confident that Fufei will return his feelings.43 Indeed, she promptly invites him to join her in the river, expressing disappointment when he declines (a scene absent from the Song paintings). The goddess ultimately recognizes the impossibility of the affair, leaving the narrator despairing. Then it is his turn to long for her. Unusually, the figures’ longing is mutual, rejections occurring on both sides. Cao Pi and Cao Zhi were brothers, emperor and prince, whose relationship was more complex than a simple hierarchy of ruler and subject, and perhaps this is why Cao Zhi frames a story of mutual longing and rejection in “Rhyme-Prose on the Goddess of the Luo.” The status of the narrator and Fufei in relation to each other is indeterminate, with their actions and speech suggesting that one or the other might be superior at various points.44 The power balance between the two changes throughout the course of the story: their relationship stands for that of two imperial brothers, both of whom were at different times favored to assume the throne. Both goddess and narrator hold power, as rendered visu40 Whitaker, “Tsaur Jyr’s ‘Luohshern Fuh,’” 39–42. 41 Watson, The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry, 61, 61n21; Zhu, Chu ci jizhu, 1.12a. 42 Ibid., 37–38. 43 Li, “Dream Visions of Transcendence,” 68. 44 Whitaker, “Tsaur Jyr’s ‘Luohshern Fuh,’” 41.

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ally in the Song scrolls. They tend to stand on the same plane when they interact; when he first catches sight of her in the Beijing scroll, she hovers above him, but usually when the painters picture her in midair they are not together. Leaving aside indications that their carriages are of different realms, Fufei’s appears better appointed (pulled by six steeds rather than four, and with more trailing banners). Though divine Fufei’s powers are supernatural, the narrator enjoys imperial status, with an entourage of solicitous attendants. These paintings serve as allegories of the loyalty of each figure to the other. Complicating matters, a second critical interpretation of Cao Zhi’s poem suggests that a real woman, the Empress Zhen 甄 (Cao Pi’s wife), inspired the figure of Fufei. Editions of the Selections of Refined Literature (Wen xuan 文選) include commentary, possibly authored by Li Shan 李善 (d. 689), suggesting that Cao Zhi loved the empress before she married his brother.45 This interpretation appears in Tang literature as well: the “Story of the Goddess of the Luo” (Luoshen zhuan 洛神傳), written by Xue Ying 薛瑩 (n.d.), suggests that Fufei is the empress’s ghost. In Tang poetry, Fufei’s divine status is underplayed, possibly in order to make her the model for a court beauty.46 Although many Qing and twentieth-century critics reject outright the identification of the Luo River goddess with Empress Zhen, citing both the age difference between her and Cao Zhi (he was a child when she married) and Cao Pi’s jealousy, poetic sources suggest that this story circulated in the Tang and Song periods.47 Its dissemination among Song readers suggests not only that the allegorical explanation was not wholly satisfactory, but also that the taste for romantic tales was unusually strong at this time. How, then, does one interpret the rhetorical functions of the three Goddess of the Luo River paintings? If they were commissioned by court patrons (as indeed all three scrolls might have been), one might privilege the allegorical interpretation, as a patron might use a painting on this theme to affirm the political hierarchy. The Liaoning scroll may have originated in Emperor Gaozong’s painting academy and embodied themes of loyalty to the ruler.48 Gaozong is known to have made gifts of calligraphy to high-ranking members of his court, possibly as a means of ensuring their loyalty, and narrative paintings that alluded to the devotion of a subject to a ruler might well have functioned in the

45 This text is translated in Idema and Grant, The Red Brush, 90–91. 46 Schafer, The Divine Woman, 88–91, 132–33. 47 Whitaker, “Tsaur Jyr’s ‘Luohshern Fuh,’” 44–48. An untitled poem by Li Shangyin that alludes to this interpretation of the poem is translated in Rouzer, Articulated Ladies, 298. 48 Chen, “The Goddess of the Lo River,” 1: 242.

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same way.49 Yet at the time the scrolls were made, the love theme might have been considered primary, given the circulation of the Empress Zhen origin story and Zhu Xi’s emphatically anti-political interpretation of the courtship poems of The Book of Songs. If one of Emperor Gaozong’s concubines served as the calligrapher for the Liaoning scroll, that might suggest an increased interest in the romantic aspects of the poem. Intriguingly, concubine Liu Guifei is described as one of Gaozong’s principal scribes, one who was involved in art collecting and connoisseurship and, moreover, received “tremendous favor” from Gaozong because of this.50 Without evidence of an artist’s or patron’s identity for any of the scrolls, however, it is impossible to pinpoint why they were made. Looking at how critics of the period interpreted potentially allegorical tales with erotic themes is the only thing that can give a fuller picture of the purposes of such a painting, and for that it is necessary to turn to a story that has been more extensively documented, not only in critical treatises on painting but also in dynastic histories.

The Beijing Handscroll Night Revels of Han Xizai

Han Xizai 韓熙載 was an official who advised all three Southern Tang rulers but gained notoriety during the reign of the Last Ruler, Li Yu. Reputedly, when this newly ascended ruler sought to promote him, he began to host infamous parties, providing courtesans for his students’ and colleagues’ entertainment. The events generated a series of paintings as well as written commentary that reveals different interpretations of his actions. A Song painting of Han Xizai includes imagery that, I argue, identifies him as a court hermit, indicating his loyalty to the state. The narrative departs from the allegorical figure of a woman pining for a man who has rejected her, focusing instead on courtesans simulating desire. The handscroll Night Revels of Han Xizai in the collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing (figs. 9.1–9.5) is probably a copy of a painting commissioned by Li Yu. Though court painter Zhou Wenju also reputedly made a painting on this theme, another court painter, Gu Hongzhong 顧閎中 (fl. 943–60), receives credit for the original composition.51 The Beijing scroll most likely dates to the 49 50 51

Murray, “Sung Kao-tsung as Artist and Patron,” 28. Lee, “The Emperor’s Lady Ghostwriters,” 64 n. 15. John Kwang-ming Ang identifies Zu Wupo’s 1079 colophon as the first to attribute the painting to Gu Hongzhong, describe it, and discuss its creation, in “Redating The Night Revels of Han Hsi-tsai 韓熙載 Attributed to Ku Hung-chung 顧閎中 in the Peking, Palace

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early Southern Song,52 based on the evidence of its seals and the eleventh- or twelfth-century style of depicted material culture, including landscape screens.53 The Southern Song court during the reign of Emperor Gaozong sometimes commissioned copies of paintings,54 and the Beijing scroll’s recipient may have been Shi Miyuan or his father, Shi Hao 史浩 (d. 1190).55 The painter creates a subtle portrait of Han Xizai by simultaneously manipulating the figures and the setting. Han Xizai is unquestionably the most important figure; the painter depicts him as bigger than his guests and

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Museum” (Master’s thesis, University of Michigan, 1985), 11. Zhou Wenju’s painting is mentioned in Tang Hou’s Huajian (see Chou, Tang Hou’s “Huajian,” 163); Xia, Tuhui baojian, 3.3a; and Zhou, Yunyan guoyan lu, 1.37b. Wu Hung proposes that a painting titled A Court Concert in the Art Institute of Chicago might be a copy of it; Wu, The Double Screen, 73–74, 127–29, 267 n. 82. The different versions are discussed in Weitz, Zhou Mi’s “Record of Clouds and Mist Passing before One’s Eyes,” 120–21, 281–82. I presented evidence for this date in Lara C.W. Blanchard, “A Scholar in the Company of Female Entertainers: Changing Notions of Integrity in Song to Ming Dynasty Painting,” NAN NÜ: Men, Women and Gender in China 9, no. 2 (2007): 223. The seals are discussed in Xu, “Gu Hongzhong hua Han Xizai yeyan tu,” 26–27. On material culture in this painting, see Yu Hui 餘輝, “Han Xizai yeyan tu juan niandai kao—jian tan zaoqi renwu hua de jianding fangfa 《韓熙載夜宴圖》卷年代考–兼探早期人物畫 的鑑定方法 [A Study of the Date of the Scroll The Nocturnal Entertainments of Han Xizai],” Gugong Bowuyuan yuankan 故宮博物院院刊 (Palace Museum Journal), no. 4 (1993): 38–49; and Michael Sullivan, “Notes on Early Chinese Screen Painting,” Artibus Asiae 27, no. 3 (1965): 246. Zhou Mi discusses many aspects of the imperial art collection in the Shaoxing reign in “Shaoxing yufu shuhua shi 紹興御府書畫式 [Styles of Calligraphy and Painting in the Shaoxing Imperial Court],” Qidong yeyu 齊東野語 [Words from the Country East of Qi], 20 juan (Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1935), 6.1a–7a. He names the connoisseurs who worked on cataloguing Gaozong’s collection, lists works of calligraphy and painting in the collection, and also notes that the court commissioned copies (using the words lin 臨 and mo 摹) of both calligraphic and painted works. For more on the connoisseurs who worked with the collection, see Charles Hartman, “Cao Xun and the Legend of Emperor Taizu’s Oath,” in State Power in China, 900–1325, ed. Patricia Buckley Ebrey and Paul Jakov Smith (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2016), 67. Peter Charles Sturman, in “Mi Youren and the Inherited Literati Tradition: Dimensions of Ink-Play” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1989), 408, cites Zhou Mi’s text in his discussion of copying at the Southern Song court; he also cites R.H. van Gulik’s Chinese Pictorial Art as Viewed by the Connoisseur (Rome: Instituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriento, 1958; reprint, Taipei: Southern Materials Center, 1981), 211. Yu, “Han Xizai yeyan tu juan niandai kao,” 53–54; De-nin D. Lee, The Night Banquet: A Chinese Scroll through Time (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2010), 28, 35–37, 41–45.

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distinguishes him with a tall, tasseled hat, a long beard, and long fingernails. The remaining figures fall into two broad groups: guests (mostly scholars) and attendants (courtesans and servants). The scholars all dress in dark robes (with the exception of one in red) and caps with hanging ties. Minimal facial hair indicates their youth. The only guest who is not a scholar is a monk with shaved head and saffron robe. The courtesans are vividly painted: most wear V-necked blouses and flowing skirts in delicate patterns, with colorful sashes and scarves, and adorn their topknots with hairpins and ribbons. Many wear love-knots, which would likely increase their appeal. Younger entertainers and maids wear fewer adornments and plainer clothing—long, high-necked dresses with side slits that reveal their underskirts, sometimes with a sash or girdle. The groups are gendered: host and guests are all male, entertainers and servants are all female. The handscroll employs the structure of a continuous narrative and comprises five scenes. Each is composed of a group of figures that either interact directly with each other or observe the same activity, framed by figures turning inward. Screens mark three of the transitions between scenes:56 a standing screen divides Scenes I and II, a folding screen separates III and IV, and another standing screen appears between IV and V. The lack of a partition between Scenes II and III may mean that part of the silk was removed.57 Significantly, Han Xizai appears five times. Although he is always recognizable by his size, beard, and hat, his clothes change throughout the scroll: he appears in a black robe, a yellow robe belted over an undergarment, or the undergarment alone. The changes of clothing could represent different temporal moments or his participation in the sexual activities offered by the courtesans. The ever-present hat reminds viewers of Han Xizai’s status.58 Three scenes feature musical performance, and two emphasize direct communication between scholars and courtesans. Similar to Goddess of the Luo River, Night Revels considers the interaction of the sexes rather than focusing solely on female figures. The entertainers are essential to the narrative, and the guests appear captivated by them. The 56 57

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Xu, “Gu Hongzhong hua Han Xizai yeyan tu,” 26; Wu, The Double Screen, 56. Wan-go H.C. Weng and Yang Boda 翁萬戈、楊伯達, The Palace Museum: Peking Treasures of the Forbidden City (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1982), 161; Li Song 李松, Wudai Gu Hongzhong “Han Xizai yeyan tu” 五代顧閎中韓熙載夜宴圖 [“Night Revels of Han Xizai” by Gu Hongzhong of the Five Dynasties] (Beijing: Bamin meishu chubanshe, 1979), 17. Tao Gu 陶穀 (ca. 902–70), in Qingyi lu 清異錄 [Record of the Pure and Unusual], 4 vols. (reprint, Taipei: Yiwen yinshuguan, 1965), 3:3.21a, writes: “In Jiangnan, Han Xizai created a light gauze cap. Hat makers referred to it as ‘Mr. Han’s relaxed style.’” (韓熙載在江南， 造輕紗帽，匠帽者謂為韓君輕格。)

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presence and activities of these courtesans flesh out the story of Han Xizai. His command of the services of numerous women attests not only to his power,59 but also to his character. Singing Girls in Tang and Song Texts Tang and Song dynasty “singing girls” (geji 歌姬, literally “singing entertainers”) or “courtesans” (ji 妓) were composers and performers: women who possessed unparalleled talent at music or poetry and whom scholars especially admired for the ability to write verse.60 They also provided sexual entertainment. In these periods, a courtesan’s musical or literary accomplishments inextricably connect to an erotic performance at which she excelled; singing, playing instruments, dancing, and composing poetry were all considered superior vehicles for the expression of feelings of longing and desire. The visual repre­ sentation of courtesans in Night Revels draws upon not only their historical circumstances, but also literature, particularly poetry, which figured largely in the lives of actual courtesans. Tang society divided courtesans into four different ranks.61 At the top was the “palace courtesan” (gongji 宮妓), who learned to perform new music in the Music Bureau (Jiaofang 教坊) established by Emperor Xuanzong in 714; information about these entertainers is recorded in Cui Lingqin’s 崔令欽 Records of the Music Bureau (Jiaofang ji 教坊記).62 A palace courtesan performed in the Pear Garden Conservatory (Liyuan 梨園) or at official banquets.63 The second rank belonged to “household courtesans” (jiaji 家妓).64 They typically served wealthy men and acted as status symbols. A third group consisted of “government courtesans” (guanji 官妓), assigned to officials posted to rural areas, and “barracks courtesans” (yingji 營妓), sent to the frontiers to serve the military. Independent courtesans who lived in urban brothels formed the lowest ranked 59 Ebrey, The Inner Quarters, 30. 60 Beverly Bossler, “Shifting Identities: Courtesans and Literati in Song China,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 62, no. 1 (2002): 6–7. 61 Robert des Rotours, trans., Courtisanes chinoises à la fin des T’ang, entre circa 789 et le 8 janvier 881, Pei-li tche (Anecdotes du quartier du Nord) [Beili zhi] (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1968), 11–14; and Wagner, The Lotus Boat, 82. 62 Rotours, Courtisanes chinoises à la fin des T’ang, 53 n. 5; cf. Cui Lingqin [Sai Reikin] and Sun Qi [Son Kei] 崔令欽、孫棨, Jiaofang ji, Beili zhi [Kyoboki, Hokurishi] 教坊記、北里 志 [Records of the Music Bureau; Records of the Northern Ward], ed. Saitō Shigeru 斉藤茂 (ca. 749, ca. 889; reprint, Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1992), 242–51. 63 Wagner, The Lotus Boat, 65, 82. 64 Yao Hsin-nung, “When Sing-song Girls Were Muses,” T’ien Hsia Monthly 4, no. 5 (May 1937): 476.

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group; some historians refer to these women as “common courtesans” (minji 民 妓), but this appears to be a later coinage.65 By the ninth century, independent courtesans in Chang’an primarily inhabited the Pingkang district, also known as the Northern Ward (Beili 北里). The best of them possessed talent at music, dance, or poetry. Biographies of these women, such as those included in Sun Qi’s 孫棨 Records of the Northern Ward (Beili zhi 北里志), emphasize musical skills or wit over beauty. The classifications of courtesans were not necessarily discrete: for example, independent courtesans could register at the Music Bureau and therefore be on call for government service.66 Following the An Lushan Rebellion of 755, the Music Bureau’s palace courtesans fled the capital for other cities, where they regrouped in “courtesan houses” (jiguan 妓館). These venues continued to expand even after the Music Bureau reopened in 757.67 As former palace courtesans had prestigious training, they enjoyed higher status than local courtesans, and they produced and performed new music in hierarchically organized houses located in urban centers such as Yangzhou, Suzhou, and Hangzhou.68 In the Southern Tang, the stratification among courtesans remained the same. The Southern Tang state (which became a vassal of the Song dynasty within twenty-five years and ceased to exist within forty) enjoyed a well-developed economy, with the capital located in Nanjing, on the Yangtze River. Its rulers patronized music and the arts, and Li Yu, who was famous for writing song lyrics, summoned courtesans to his palace.69 What helped make these women appealing companions was men’s value of their literary talent. Tang scholars developed relationships with courtesans based on a shared love of music and poetry,70 and gatherings of scholars and 65 Bossler, Courtesans, Concubines, and the Cult of Female Fidelity, 23 n. 29. 66 Cui and Sun, Jiaofang ji, Beili zhi, 252–71. Rouzer analyzes gendered rhetoric in the text in Articulated Ladies, 249–83; his observation about independent courtesans and the Music Bureau appears on p. 250. 67 Kishibe Shigeo 岸邊成雄, Tōdai ongaku no rekishiteki kenkyū 唐代音樂の歷史的研究 [Research on the History of Tang Dynasty Music] (Tōkyō: Tōkyō Daigaku shuppankai, 1960), 1:90, cited in Chang, The Evolution of Chinese Tz’u Poetry, 9 n. 26. 68 Kishibe, Tōdai ongaku no rekishiteki kenkyū, 1:82–106, cited in Wagner, The Lotus Boat, 80; and Chang, The Evolution of Chinese Tz’u Poetry, 9–10, 13. 69 Yan Ming 嚴明, Zhongguo mingji yishushi 中國名妓藝術史 [Famous Courtesans in Chinese Art History] (Taipei: Wenjin chubanshe, 1992), 53, 58–59. He divides Tang courtesans into palace, government, and household courtesans. For Li Yu’s song lyrics, see Daniel Bryant, trans., Lyric Poets of the Southern T’ang: Feng Yen-ssu, 903–960, and Li Yü, 937–978 (Vancouver and London: University of British Columbia Press, 1982). 70 Wagner, The Lotus Boat, 84.

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courtesans were customary: Records of the Northern Ward indicates that celebrations for successful examination candidates, held in the Music Bureau or the Pingkang district, regularly included singing girls.71 After such an introduction, the stage was set for further interaction. Outside the capital, literati poets visited courtesan houses for inspiration in writing song lyrics.72 In the Song dynasty, collections of anecdotes mention courtesans in the capitals of Kaifeng and Hangzhou,73 and their remarkable literary and musical talents inspired the literati to write song lyrics about them.74 These sources reveal the same stratification into four categories found in the Tang. Emperors Taizu 太祖 (r. 960–76), Taizong 太宗 (r. 976–97), and Renzong 仁宗 (r. 1023–63) each established a Music Bureau at the court to provide entertainment at banquets and other festivities, yet in the Northern Song this institution declined as the entertainment quarters flourished. Palace courtesans were highly visible figures even outside the court, which may have made this sort of entertainment more widely fashionable, leading to an increase in the numbers of independent courtesans. In the Southern Song, Emperor Gaozong dissolved the Music Bureau, reinstated it, then dissolved it again; subsequent emperors chose instead to hire entertainers as needed.75 The registration of government courtesans who could provide entertainment to officials in the prefectures continued in both the Northern and Southern Song, and in the later period such entertainment was staged in “wine storehouses” (jiuku 酒庫) or “winehouses” (jiulou 酒樓).76 But while courtesan banquets were important venues for the development of connections among men, some felt that it was inappropriate for scholars to develop intimate connections with courtesans, even as poetry and fiction continued to romanticize such relationships: certain sources suggest that officials were neither supposed to consort with independent courtesans, nor to become too close to government courtesans.77 An intimate relationship was best pursued with a household courtesan, who was 71 Rotours, Courtisanes chinoises à la fin des T’ang, 54–55; cited in Wagner, The Lotus Boat, 85. 72 Chang, The Evolution of Chinese Tz’u Poetry, 9–10. 73 Bossler, “Shifting Identities,” 7–8; cf. Meng Yuanlao 孟元老, Dongjing meng hua lu 東京 夢華錄 [Bright Dreams of Kaifeng] (Beijing: Zhongguo shangye chubanshe, 1982); Wu Zimu 吳自牧, Mengliang lu 夢梁錄 [Dreams of Hangzhou] (1274; reprint [Yonghe, Taipei County]: Wenhai chubanshe, [1981]); and Zhou Mi, Wulin jiushi 武林舊事 [Old Affairs of Hangzhou] (reprint; Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1991). 74 Bossler, Courtesans, Concubines, and the Cult of Female Fidelity, 29, 31–32, 34–35, 36, 37–38. 75 Ibid., 16, 18–19, 22, 27–28, 167–69; Chang, The Evolution of Chinese Tz’u Poetry, 14, 108–109. 76 Bossler, Courtesans, Concubines, and the Cult of Female Fidelity, 19–21, 172–74; Ebrey, The Inner Quarters, 219; and Gulik, Sexual Life in Ancient China, 231. 77 Bossler, Courtesans, Concubines, and the Cult of Female Fidelity, 24–25, 28–29, 30, 31–32, 34.

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something more than an ordinary servant but less than a concubine. Household courtesans could also be used to entertain male guests, and this in turn fostered a deeper connection among men.78 The entertainment district of the Southern Song capital was known as the Pingkang Ward (Pingkang li 平康里), recalling its Tang counterpart. In Old Affairs of Hangzhou (Wulin jiushi 武林舊事), Zhou Mi 周密 (1232–1308) divides independent courtesans into groups according to where they worked. In his recounting, first-class independent courtesans commanded high prices for refined musical entertainment in settings that included “singing establishments” (geguan 歌館) or “teahouses” (chafang 茶房、茶坊). Second-class independent courtesans primarily entertained officials in private winehouses (known by the same name used for the government-owned winehouses, jiulou).79 Third-class prostitutes worked in “tiled brothels” (wazi goulan 瓦子勾欄 or washe 瓦舍) established by the Southern Song army, according to Wu Zimu’s 吳自牧 Dreams of Hangzhou (Mengliang lu 夢梁錄), and predominantly served ordinary citizens and soldiers. Although these establishments may have taken their name from Hangzhou’s Wazi market, Wu Zimu offers a different explanation: As for the denizens of the tiled brothels, their arrival is likened to “the loose formation of tiles” and their departure to “the smashing of tiles,” meaning that they are easily assembled and just as easily dispersed. 瓦舍者，謂其來時瓦合，去時瓦解之義，易聚易散也。80

His comment suggests high turnover among the women as the basis for the name of these places. Preconceived notions about men’s affections play into perceptions of both marital relationships and those with courtesans. In a society where parents and matchmakers arranged marriages as familial alliances, one might expect little love between the two parties,81 though under ideal circumstances such 78

Ibid., 71, 79–80, 85, 87, 88–89. For anecdotes about household courtesans, see Ebrey, The Inner Quarters, 219, 225. Poets sometimes commemorated them in song lyrics, as in Su Shi, “Zeng Junyou jiaji 贈君猷家姬 [For Xu Junyou’s Household Courtesan],” Tune: “Jianzi mulan hua 減子木蘭花 [Magnolia Blossoms, Abbreviated, 3/8],” QSC, 1:322. 79 Bossler, Courtesans, Concubines, and the Cult of Female Fidelity, 174–75; Gulik, Sexual Life in Ancient China, 230–31; and Zhou, Wulin jiushi, 6.125–29. 80 Gulik, Sexual Life in Ancient China, 231; and Wu, Mengliang lu, 19.519–21. 81 Some writers criticized the system of arranged marriage: for example, Bai Juyi, “Yi hun 議 婚 [A Debate on Marriage],” from the series “Qinzhong yin shi shou 秦中吟十首 [Songs of Chang’an, Ten Poems, 1/10],” QTS, 7:425.4674; cf. translation in Alley, Bai Juyi, 120–21.

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unions were believed to foster devoted attachment. An early poem, “Southeast the Peacock Flies” (Kongque dongnan fei 孔雀東南飛), concerns a husband and wife forced to divorce by his mother, who kill themselves rather than entering new marriages, while both a poem and a lyric by Lu You 陸游 (1125–1210) commemorated his first wife, driven away by his mother against the wishes of both.82 Conservative scholars in the Song continued to prize virtuous wives, and thus girls studied moral texts.83 Yet girls’ education broadened in the Tang through Song periods, with daughters of literary families also studying subjects such as classical literature, philosophy, painting, and music.84 Still, while educated wives made good companions, scholars might have expected courtesans to prove a better match for their intellectual interests. A prospective courtesan studied music and poetry more extensively than most girls destined to marry, generally beginning in adolescence. Household courtesans were perceived as fitting companions for scholars, though men did also pursue relationships with both government courtesans and independent courtesans. These affairs may sometimes have represented a lasting attachment on the man’s part,85 though presumably the woman had little control over whom she entertained. That entertainment often entailed performances of songs that presented a woman’s perspective on longing and desire, which may have been equated with genuine romantic expression. Desire was usually expressed through female voice,86 a convention that correlates well with courtesans’ singing of erotic lyrics, and this contributed to the construction of courtesans as romantic figures. A courtesan might appear to sing of her own feelings just before having sexual relations, as convincing clients of her ardor could only add to her appeal.

82

“Kongque dongnan fei 孔雀東南飛,” YTXY, 1.23b–31a; cf. translation in Watson, The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry, 82-92. For translations of Lu You’s poem and lyric, see Watson, The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry, 320, 371; the latter is in QSC 3:1585, under the tune title “Chai tou feng 釵頭鳳 [Phoenix Hairpin].” 83 Sima Guang, Jiafan 家範 [Precepts for Family Life] (reprint, [Taipei?]: Zhongguo zixue mingzhu jicheng, [1977?]), 6.594. For discussions of this idea, see Ebrey, The Inner Quarters, 123–24; and Ching, “Sung Philosophers on Women,” 263. 84 Priscilla Ching Chung, Palace Women in the Northern Sung: 960–1126 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1981), 82–83; Egan, The Burden of Female Talent, 12–13. Tang accounts of women with a command of classical literature include a text by Bai Juyi; Robertson, “Voicing the Feminine,” 72. 85 Bossler, Courtesans, Concubines, and the Cult of Female Fidelity, 62. 86 Owen, “Meaning the Words,” 33.

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Liu Yong’s body of work, which includes song lyrics written from his own subjective position, occasionally addresses the authenticity of a courtesan’s performance. As a young man, he visited the entertainment district frequently,87 and he never forgets that a musician who plays a love song for an audience of men does not express her feelings of love for them. Yet even for him it seems unthinkable that such a woman not be expressing feelings for someone through her music, as seen in the second stanza of one of his lyrics: She strikes a pose, enveloped in a sunset robe. She shakes ivory castanets, beating the time, but thoughts of lament are hard to bear. Nevertheless she lets her voice resonate as she returns to playing soft music, then gazes about, crinkling her lined eyes, emptily catering to the hearts of Wuling men. She88 needs to believe the words of “green feelings” convey her thoughts, but her soulmate is elsewhere. 凝態掩霞襟。動象板聲聲，怨思難任。嘹亮處，迥壓絃管低沈。時恁 迴眸斂黛，空役五陵心。須信道， 緣情寄意，別有知音。89

Throughout this verse, Liu Yong stresses the artificiality of the protagonist’s performance. He implies the fickleness of her audience through an allusion to Bai Juyi’s “Song of the Pipa,” in which youths of Wuling competed for the attentions of a young courtesan before she fell out of favor.90 This singing girl apparently feels nothing for the men she entertains, but her feelings of love (rendered in the poem as “green feelings”) are genuine. They address an absent man, her

87 Chang, The Evolution of Chinese Tz’u Poetry, 14–15. 88 With no pronoun in the line and therefore no change of subject, I believe that Liu Yong continues to describe the female musician here. Other translators, such as Owen in “Meaning the Words,” 47 n. 24, and James R. Hightower in “The Songwriter Liu Yung: Part II,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 42, no. 1 (1982): 50, take this line to describe the audience’s need to believe the singer’s words. In any case, the line refers to the suspension of reality required to believe in the performance. 89 Liu Yong, Tune: “Rui zhegu [The Auspicious Partridge, 1/2],” QSC, 1:49. The lyric is translated in full in Hightower, “The Songwriter Liu Yung: Part II,” 50. 90 Bai Juyi, “Pipa yin,” QTS, 7:435.4821–22; cf. translation in Watson, The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry, 249–52.

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soulmate, literally the “one who understands the music” or sympathetic listener (zhiyin).91 The determination to cast courtesans as lovelorn women meant that early poetry about them often refrained from mentioning payment, similar to midTang stories of courtesan-scholar liaisons and in direct contrast to historical accounts of such interactions.92 In New Songs from a Jade Terrace, only a handful of palace-style poems refer to monetary transactions between courtesans and men.93 The discussion of price becomes more open in Song poetry: for example, Liu Yong’s lyrics sometimes mention the cost of women’s entertainment. His verses to the tunes “Light Willow Waist” (Liu yao qing 柳腰輕) and “River Tales” (He chuan 河傳) describe men bidding for a dancer’s attention, while those to the tunes “The Auspicious Partridge” (Rui zhegu 瑞鷓鴣) and “Joys of Longevity” (Changshou le 長壽樂) claim that one note of a song or a single smile determines a courtesan’s fee, described as “a thousand in gold” (qian jin 千金).94 Most poems of the palace-style and song lyric genres, however, omitted explicit details of these transactions. The elision suggests that an essential part of the idealized courtesan’s image was the idea that she felt love for a client, eliminating any hint of crass materialism. In literature and art, then, writers often render the courtesan as a willing partner in an ongoing affair, whereas in historical accounts, a singing girl appears to have little agency over the direction of her own life: her performance of “love” could be purchased.95 The performers mentioned most often in po91 Martin Powers translates this term as “soulmate” in “Love and Marriage in Song China,” 57. 92 Owen, The End of the Chinese ‘Middle Ages,’ 132. There are exceptions, and Paul Rouzer suggests that the discussion of economic obligations is the norm in Articulated Ladies, 242. 93 Shen Yue 沈約 (441–513), “Shaonian xinhun wei zhi yong 少年新婚為之詠 [For a Newly Married Youth]”; Wang Sengru 王僧孺 (465–522), “Yueye yong Chen Nankang xin you suona 月夜詠陳南康新有所納 [Moonlight Song of Chen Nankang’s New Arrival]”; idem., “Jian guizhe chu ying shengji liao wei zhi yong 見貴者初迎盛姬聊為之詠 [On Seeing a Lord Receiving His Beautiful Concubine]”; Fei Chang 費昶 (fl. ca. 510), “Wushan gao 巫山高 [Mount Wu High]”; Bao Zhao 鮑照 (412?–66?), “Dai baizhu geci er shou 代白 紵歌辭二首 [After ‘Song of White Sackcloth,’ Two Poems, 2/2]”; Liu Xiaowei 劉孝威 (d. 548), “Yong jiali 詠佳麗 [On a Beauty],” YTXY, 5.4b–5b, 6.6b, 6.7a, 6.15b, 9.16a, 10.24a–b; cf. translations in Birrell, New Songs from a Jade Terrace, 137–38, 166, 176, 245–46, 294. 94 Liu Yong, “Liuyao qing [Light Willow Waist],” “He chuan [River Tales],” “Rui zhegu [1/2],” “Changshou le [Joys of Longevity],” QSC, 1:15–16, 47, 49, 50–51; cf. translations in High­ tower, “The Songwriter Liu Yung: Part I,” 341–42, 346; and idem., “The Songwriter Liu Yung: Part II,” 50, 53–54. 95 Eventually, poetry too would address courtesans’ lack of agency. Qing dynasty poems written by scholars and popular songs attributed to anonymous courtesans describe girls’

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etry are singers, lutenists, flutists, and dancers. In painting, stringed instruments, flutes and pipes, and dancing become important visual cues for the pictorial rendition of women’s emotions. Still, the performer is key: musical performance and dance, as outward manifestations of feelings, indeed represent emotions, according to the Great Preface. Poet, reader, painter, and viewer understood how a musician’s apparent emotional response could arouse similar feelings among the members of the audience. In Night Revels of Han Xizai, the depiction of the courtesans correlates with the idealized poetic vision. The women are most likely household courtesans, though they might also be independent courtesans from the entertainment district. While some texts clarify that they enact scenarios imagined first by their host, pictorial references to their feelings of longing or desire suggest the women as romanticized figures. Content of the Beijing Scroll Scene I of the Beijing scroll opens with an image that dispenses with subtlety: the oblique representation of a bed, its curtains tied open to reveal rumpled bedclothes and a pipa’s neck, suggesting that the bed contains a guest and a courtesan (fig. 9.1). Though their liaison occurs within sight of many figures within the room (the frame of an adjacent couch offers some concealment), most pay no attention. The open drapes reveal that modesty is unnecessary. This tantalizing suggestion of uninhibited sexual activity serves as an introduction to the painting’s content: the unapologetically intimate relationship between courtesans and scholars attending a banquet (or a series of banquets), which in turn affirms the homosocial bonding of male guests and their host. To the left of the curtained bed, seven scholars and four courtesans have assembled to hear a pipa performance. The numerous verses concerning lutenists and lute-playing in Complete Song Lyrics of the Song Dynasty (Quan Song ci 全宋詞) reveal the instrument’s erotic associations. Zu Wupo’s 1079 colophon describing the content of a Night Revels scroll suggests that the original work also began with such a scene: At the beginning of this scroll, Han is with his students; Secretariat Zhu Xian; Yin Can, who ranked first in the imperial examination; Li Jiaming,

misery at being bought and sold and indicate that a courtesan’s flirtatious behavior disguises her suffering; Paul S. Ropp, “Ambiguous Images of Courtesan Culture in Late Imperial China,” in Widmer and Chang, Writing Women in Late Imperial China, 32–41.

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Figure 9.1 Night Revels of Han Xizai. After Gu Hongzhong ( fl. ca. 943–60), Southern Song dynasty, ca. 1127–1200; handscroll, ink and colors on silk, 28.7 × 335.5 cm. Palace Museum, Beijing, P.R.C. Photograph provided by the Palace Museum.

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Assistant Director in the Music Bureau,96 and Li’s younger sister, who plays a foreign lute.97 其卷首即與公門生，朱銑紫微，印粲狀元，及教坊副使李嘉明，并其 妹按胡琴。98

This comment predates the Beijing scroll. Zu Wupo focuses on five people; he may have seen his priority as identifying the host, the highest-ranked scholars, and the pipa player. An anonymous, undated colophon attached to the Beijing scroll names more figures: [Han Xizai] often met to drink with Erudite of the Court of Imperial Sacrifices Chen Zhiyong, the pupil Shu Ya, Secretariat Zhu Xian, Principal Graduate99 Lang Can, and Assistant Director in the Music Bureau Li Jiaming. Li’s younger sister played the foreign lute, the host beat the drum, and the courtesan Wang Wushan danced “double-sixes.” 常與太常博士陳致雍，門生舒雅，紫薇朱銑，狀元郎粲，教坊副使李 家明會飲。李之妹按胡琴，公為撃鼓，女妓王屋山舞六么。100

Virtually all of the figures in this first scene are engrossed in the lutenist’s performance, judging by their intent expressions and inclined postures. Han Xizai is the large, bearded man wearing a tall hat, and the other scholars are his associates and students. Han sits on a couch with the red-robed Principal Graduate, who scored highest on an imperial examination. A table in front of them bears bowls of food, wine ewers in ceramic warmers, and cups. The man seated at the table’s far end, clasping his hands, is one of three figures who do not look at the pipa player; instead, he looks directly at the viewer of the painting. This is a rare occurrence in Song painting, and given that his gaze suggests his awareness of the viewer, I argue that this figure represents Gu Hongzhong: as a “painter-in-attendance” (daizhao 待詔), he would wear an official’s robes, and crossed hands were a gesture of respect dating from the Tang 96 Hucker, A Dictionary of Official Titles, s.v. 7545 tzu-wei; s.v. 2101 fu-shih. 97 A pipa was sometimes called a “foreign lute” (huqin) due to its origins among nomad peoples. 98 Zu, “Ba Han Xizai yeyan tu,” 13b–14a. 99 Hucker, A Dictionary of Official Titles, s.v. 6143 t’ai-ch’ang po-shih; s.v. 1515 chuang-yuan. 100 An image of this inscription is published in Gugong Bowuyuan, Gugong Bowuyuan canghua ji, 1:14.

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dynasty.101 Perhaps this figure expresses deference to the primal viewer, Li Yu, in a visual equivalent of the original signature, which might have read “Your servitor, Gu Hongzhong” (Chen Gu Hongzhong 臣顧閎中). Two more scholars stand in the background: one taps a flute against his hand while watching the pipa player, and the other, also with clasped hands, looks across the room at Han Xizai. Beside the lutenist, another scholar leans forward to see her better. Courtesans mingle with the scholars. One stands beside Han Xizai. Close to the lutenist is an adolescent girl whose outfit suggests her lower status: she wears a simple blue robe with a beige girdle and a black belt. But she also wears hair ornaments, indicating that she ranks higher than a servant. Behind her is another courtesan, standing near three scholars. The only courtesan who does not mix with the company hides in the background, next to two drums, peering out at the audience from behind a screen. Most of the figures seem intent on the lutenist’s performance. Following their gazes, the viewer finds the center of attention: Li Jiaming’s sister, playing her pipa. This woman is one of two identified by Zu Wupo: later in his colophon, he refers to her as Ningsu 凝酥 and mentions that she left home as a child, presumably to begin apprenticeship as a courtesan.102 She holds a plectrum in her right hand, pressing the strings at the neck with her left. She wears a love-knot, suggesting both her capacity for attachment and that her lute is a medium for expressing romantic feelings.103 All elements of her appearance seem seductive. Significantly, Ningsu avoids the gaze of anyone in the audience,104 concentrating on her fingering. The slanting lines of her pipa’s tuning pegs join with angled planes on the rock in the painting behind her to create a diagonal that interposes between her eyes and the face of the scholar beside her, indicating that she looks downward, toward the instrument. In poetry, her evasion of ev101

102

103 104

Yu, “Han Xizai yeyan tu juan niandai kao,” 43–44. Other figures that make this gesture—a scholar in Scene I and the Buddhist monk in Scene II—look directly at the figure of Han Xizai. Zu Wupo writes: “The two maids ordered to leave home as children were called Ningsu and Suzhi” (幼命二婢出家號凝酥、素質) in Zu, “Ba Han Xizai yeyan tu,” 13b–14a; see also Chen Wannai 陳萬鼐, “Zhi tan Yeyan tu 摭談夜宴圖 [Resuming Discussion of the Painting Night Revels],” Gugong wenwu yuekan 故宮文物月刊 [The National Palace Museum Monthly of Chinese Art], no. 24 (March 1985): 44, 46. This identification is reasserted in the Beijing scroll’s short biographical colophon. I earlier published this idea about Ningsu’s love-knot in Blanchard, “Lonely Women and the Absent Man,” 42. Audrey Spiro reads this differently, arguing that she meets the gaze of the scholar sitting next to her, in “Creating Ancestors,” 62.

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eryone’s gaze would suggest the absence of her beloved. Most likely, she is supposed to be performing a love song as if it expressed her own feelings for an absent lover, revealing an appealing vulnerability. The painter, in showing the other courtesans as active viewers, suggests that the men in Han Xizai’s home are not the only ones to derive pleasure from the lute performance. Scene II (fig. 9.2) focuses on a young courtesan’s performance of the dance known as “double-sixes” or “sixes-in-dice” (liu yao 六么), or alternatively as “green waist” (lüyao 綠腰). Zu Wupo’s description identifies her: Han Xizai appears again beating a drum as the courtesan Wang Wushan dances double-sixes. Wang Wushan was unusually intelligent, and Han Xizai felt most tender towards her. 又公自擊鼓，妓王屋山舞六么。王屋山俊慧非常，公最憐。105

Zu Wupo later gives her nickname as Suzhi, and says that she too left home as a child. The popular liu yao dance was “gentle,” or a lithe dance that expressed feeling, as opposed to “vigorous.” The dancer characteristically expressed herself entirely through the movement of her sleeves, stamping her foot to mark the rhythm.106 This abbreviated scene includes Han Xizai, four scholars, a monk, and two young women. The gaze of the figures provides an organizing principle: one group looks at Han Xizai, the other at the dancer. Han Xizai, wearing yellow, plays a large standing drum, similar to those visible in the background of Scene I. His brow is furrowed, suggesting weariness or unhappiness, yet his expression as he watches Suzhi dance seems indulgent. A scholar beside him smiles and claps. Beyond them stands a monk. Tao Yue 陶岳 first suggested the attendance of monks in his account of the night revels;107 in later centuries, writers identify this monk as Deming 德明, one of Han Xizai’s friends. His presence here is significant: Buddhist monks should have avoided this kind of revelry.108 Han Xizai and the remaining figures all gaze at the dancer. The Principal Graduate, still in red, sits in a chair, twisting his body as if a moment earlier he had been watching Han Xizai play. In front of the monk stands a scholar who 105 Zu, “Ba Han Xizai yeyan tu,” 13b–14a. 106 Li, Wudai Gu Hongzhong “Han Xizai yeyan tu,” 10, 11, 19 n. 14. 107 Tao, “Han Xizai weibo bu xiu,” 12a-b, (accessed 22 March 2018). 108 Weng and Yang, The Palace Museum, 161. Sun Chengze 孫承澤 (1592–1676) identifies the monk in Gengzi xiaoxia ji 庚子銷夏記 [Notes Written in the Summer of 1660] (1660; reprint, China: Bao Tingbo, 1760–61), 8.4a–b.

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Figure 9.2

Night Revels of Han Xizai. After Gu Hongzhong ( fl. ca. 943–60), Southern Song dynasty, ca. 1127–1200; handscroll, ink and colors on silk, 28.7 × 335.5 cm. Palace Museum, Beijing, P.R.C. Photograph provided by the Palace Museum.

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plays a clapper and smiles enthusiastically at Suzhi. Beside her is another female figure, in a plain dress suggesting youth or the status of a servant, who smiles and applauds. Suzhi also appeared in the first scene. Here it becomes clear that her girdle and belt are designed to emphasize her waist, regarded as able to transmit feeling in dance. A bent leg suggests her stamping foot. Her left hand rests on her hip, and her right arm moves; long sleeves cover her hands, their movement essential to the dance. Turning her back on the painting’s viewer, she turns her head to face Han Xizai. Choosing a dance regarded as emotionally evocative and allowing her gaze to meet his makes her performance seductive. Scene III dispenses with musical performance and depicts the direct communication of Han Xizai and six female figures who serve him (fig. 9.3). The viewer first sees two who approach Han Xizai. One is a maid with pinned-up hair, seen from behind and wearing a simple dress. She balances a tray with a wine ewer and two cups on her shoulder. The courtesan next to her, holding three flutes and a pipa, has half-turned and bent her head toward the maid. They stand next to another bed, again with open bedcurtains, in which another couple has retired, their forms hidden by the bedclothes. Though the other people in the room seem uninterested, the maid cranes her neck in order to see into this alcove. The courtesan tries to block the inquisitive maid’s view of the bed with the pipa. Han Xizai sits with four courtesans on a couch adjacent to the bed. The female figure at right, head inclined, looks at Han Xizai. The two figures next to her engage in conversation: one, hands hidden in long sleeves, turns her head as if in response to the other, who leans forward in an attitude of eagerness. A fourth sits on the back section of the couch, gazing at Han Xizai. He wears a black robe and washes his hands in a basin held by Suzhi.109 Their reciprocal gaze bespeaks the affection that Han reportedly felt for this young woman. But whereas Suzhi smiles at him, he seems weary. His hand-washing may suggest his dissociation from the impure activities taking place all around him. At the same time, the disparity between his large figure and her diminutive one reminds the viewer of their age difference and his relative power. Scene IV incorporates two groups of figures: a half-dressed Han Xizai attended by three courtesans and a quintet of flutists with a scholar accompanying them on the clapper (fig. 9.4). The most visually arresting figure in the group at the right is a courtesan shown from behind. The back of her gray robe is decorated with pairs of geese, metaphors for lifelong love, and she holds an oval fan with a picture of a blossoming tree, suggesting transient beauty—an 109

Ang, “Redating The Night Revels,” 8.

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Figure 9.3

Night Revels of Han Xizai. After Gu Hongzhong ( fl. ca. 943–60), Southern Song dynasty, ca. 1127–1200; handscroll, ink and colors on silk, 28.7 × 335.5 cm. Palace Museum, Beijing, P.R.C. Photograph provided by the Palace Museum.

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Figure 9.4

Night Revels of Han Xizai. After Gu Hongzhong ( fl. ca. 943–60), Southern Song dynasty, ca. 1127–1200; handscroll, ink and colors on silk, 28.7 × 335.5 cm. Palace Museum, Beijing, P.R.C. Photograph provided by the Palace Museum.

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interesting juxtaposition of temporal cues. She turns her head toward another courtesan. Han Xizai sits cross-legged in a chair, his shoes discarded on the footrest, clad only in his hat and a long-sleeved underrobe that hangs open to reveal his rounded stomach. Perhaps he has interacted sexually with some of the courtesans. He holds an undecorated square fan up to his face, shielding it from the third courtesan, who stands before him, looking at him attentively. She holds a clapper, part of which is visible by her left shoulder. Although the two groups do not interact, Han Xizai gazes toward the flutists, leading the scroll’s viewers to look there as well. The quintet includes courtesans on the right and at center playing transverse flutes, while the other three play doublereed pipes, creating an image suggestive of fellation. They alternate head positions, imparting a sense of liveliness to the performance. Each one wears a love-knot, suggesting once again that men would understand them to express their own feelings of romantic attachment through their instruments. To their left, a lone scholar accompanies them on a clapper. His participation indicates his enthusiasm for the music and perhaps insinuates a connection to one of the courtesans. In Scene V, courtesans and scholars form groups of two or three (fig. 9.5). Beside a screen, a courtesan engages a bearded scholar standing with arms folded. Only his head turns toward her, as if he had been enjoying the flute performance. The painter suggests that the courtesan is making conversation by showing her gesticulating with one hand. To their left is a group of three figures: a scholar and two courtesans. The scholar sits sideways on a chair, his black robe gaping at the hem. He gazes up at one of the courtesans, grasping her wrist. She rests her hand possessively on his shoulder but does not engage his gaze. Instead, she looks balefully at the other courtesan, who leans on the back of the scholar’s chair and stares back at her. Although this tableau may represent the prelude to a ménage à trois, it is equally likely that the scholar is deciding whom he prefers as a sexual partner, or that the first courtesan is warning the second away. Han Xizai stands in the center of this scene, facing the threesome. He appears as he did in Scene II, wearing his hat and a belted yellow robe and holding drumsticks. He raises his hand as if to bid his guests goodnight. The last two figures of the handscroll are another scholar, whose thin mustache and lack of beard suggest youth, and a courtesan, dressed in a flowered skirt adorned with a love-knot. He looks at her with a cajoling expression. One of his hands presses against the small of her back, while the other points into the distance, urging her to accompany him. She seems troubled and hesitant, one hand pressed to her mouth and eyes downcast. The long sleeves extending beyond her hands are the most exaggerated example of the fashion seen thus

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Figure 9.5

Night Revels of Han Xizai. After Gu Hongzhong ( fl. ca. 943–60), Southern Song dynasty, ca. 1127–1200; handscroll, ink and colors on silk, 28.7 × 335.5 cm. Palace Museum, Beijing, P.R.C. Photograph provided by the Palace Museum.

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far, making her seem childlike. The viewer might read this pair as a sign that the painter understood how little agency courtesans had in their professional lives, but there is another, more likely interpretation: this last courtesan pretends reluctance in order to excite her partner. Early Assessments of Han Xizai’s Character Night Revels of Han Xizai includes features of a pictorial narrative: a linear structure with discrete episodes, an easily recognizable protagonist and several supporting characters, as well as an identifiable setting. But a strict definition of narrative requires the elements of action, change, and time,110 and the Beijing scroll seems to lack the element of change, what one might refer to as the plot. Without this part of the narrative structure, the carefully crafted interaction collapses into a morass of detail. The structure seems closer to song lyric’s employment of juxtaposed and disconnected images.111 The painting presents filtered impressions of Gu Hongzhong’s initial observations. An official throws a party for students and colleagues, with courtesans, wine, music, and ultimately sex. Though the host may participate, it seems equally possible that he encourages his guests but walks out alone himself, as suggested in Scene V of the Beijing scroll. Song-era viewers regarded this volatile combination of images as impugning Han Xizai. Various descriptions of the painting appear in painting catalogues, informal histories, and dynastic histories dating from the Song period onward; these cite his relationship with courtesans as evidence of his character. Although the writers clearly encountered different compositions, most accounts pay particular attention to Han Xizai’s so-called debauchery, mainly embodied in the figures of the courtesans.112 In most of the Song and Yuan texts, his banquets signal his abandonment of scholarly ideals, which is often interpreted as a reflection of his dissolute character. The earliest account, titled “Han Xizai’s Curtains Are Not Drawn” (Han Xizai weibo bu xiu 韓熙載帷箔不修), dates to 1012 and appears in Tao Yue’s Supplement to the History of the Five Dynasties (Wudai shibu 五代史補). The title refers to the opened curtains of Han Xizai’s beds—a metaphor for public 110 111

112

Julia K. Murray, “What Is ‘Chinese Narrative Illustration’?” The Art Bulletin 80, no. 4 (December 1998): 605, 608. Brook Ziporyn describes this phenomenon in song lyric in “Temporal Paradoxes: The Intersections of Time Present and Time Past in the Song Ci,” Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews (CLEAR) 17 (December 1995): 92–93. I presented this argument previously in Blanchard, “A Scholar in the Company of Female Entertainers,” 222.

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lewdness.113 This account emphasizes Li Yu’s displeasure, stating that the ruler explicitly commissioned the painting in order to shame Han: Han Xizai was an official in Jiangnan who rose to the rank of Vice Min­ ister.114 In his late years, he was unrestrained. He had a hundred female servants. Whenever he invited guests to his home, he first ordered his female servants to exchange glances with them. Some of the women would flirt with them, some would hit them, and some would go so far as to fight over their boots or official tablets, without the music ever stopping. Afterward, Han Xizai would eventually emerge. This became habit and was repeated often. Doctors and several monks who made Daoist drugs always came. All had attained greatness in their fields. They mixed freely with the female servants and other women. The puppet emperor [Li Yu] learned of this, and although he was angry, this was his highly ranked minister, so he didn’t want a direct confrontation of his activities. Instead, the ruler ordered his painter-in-attendance to make a painting of these events, in order to present it to him and make him ashamed of himself. Yet Xizai looked at it calmly. 韓熙載仕江南官至諸行侍郎。晚年不羈，女僕百人。每延請賓客，而 先命女僕與之相見，或調戲，或毆擊，或加以爭奪靴笏，無不曲盡。 然後熙載始緩步而出，析以為常。復有醫人及燒煉僧數輩每來，無不 升堂，入室與女僕等雜處。偽主知之，雖怒以其大臣，不欲直指其 過，因命待詔畫為圖以賜之，使其自愧。而熙載視之安然。115

Though the text describes female servants (nüpu 女僕) and does not explicitly refer to courtesans, I surmise that “servants” is a euphemism.116 Han Xizai directs his household courtesans to engage with important guests; in the Song, when Tao Yue wrote this account, such a performance did fall within the realm of expectation for household courtesans,117 but it would normally be considered improper for other women in an official’s household. Nothing else here speaks to Han Xizai’s fitness as an adviser to the ruler. He is judged by the conduct of his “servants,” specifically their interaction with other men. 113 Ibid., 222–23. 114 Hucker, A Dictionary of Official Titles, s.v. 5278, shih-lang. 115 Tao, “Han Xizai weibo bu xiu,” 12a-b, (accessed 22 March 2018). 116 Song household courtesans were often referred to by vernacular coinages involving another word for servant (shi 侍); Bossler, “Shifting Identities,” 23. 117 Bossler, Courtesans, Concubines, and the Cult of Female Fidelity, 71, 79–80.

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Two other Song accounts give a different reason for the ruler’s commission of the painting, yet still emphasize Han Xizai’s licentious activities. These passages paint Li Yu as a would-be voyeur. The earlier is Zu Wupo’s colophon of 1079, which, as discussed in Chapter 1, claims that the ruler wished to spy on Han Xizai’s revels and used Gu Hongzhong to “catch” him. The early twelfthcentury description that appears in the Northern Song imperial Xuanhe Painting Catalogue substantially concurs with Zu’s account: […] the Secretariat Drafter, Han Xizai, valued mixing with aristocrats and really loved singing girls, especially during evening drinking parties, although his guests mixed together in confusion, shouted wildly, and were completely unrestrained. Li Yu valued his ability, so he disregarded this and didn’t ask about it. But when talk began to spread and the ruler heard one-sided accounts of Han’s wild indulgences, he thereafter wished to see his staging of noisy drinking parties in a setting of wine vessels, lamps, and candles. Since the ruler considered this impossible, he ordered Hongzhong to go to Han’s house at night to spy on him, then to remember what he saw and paint it. In this way Night Revels of Han Xizai has passed down to us. 是時中書舍人韓熙載，以貴游世胄，多好聲伎，專為夜飲，雖賓客揉 雜，歡呼狂逸，不復拘制，李氏惜其才，置而不問。聲傳中外，頗聞 其荒縱，然欲見樽俎燈燭間觥籌交錯之態度不可得，乃命閎中夜至其 第竊窺之，目識心記，圖繪以上之，故世有『韓熙載夜宴圖』。118

As in Zu Wupo’s colophon, this passage foregrounds the ruler’s value of Han’s “ability” as an official. These passages do not explicitly say that the ruler commissioned the paintings in order to assess Han’s fitness as a minister. Clearly, though, his behavior was regarded as irregular. In the Yuan dynasty, Tang Hou’s Examination of Painting included a description of the Beijing version of Night Revels (it mentions a colophon still attached to the scroll along with one of its seals). Again, the author refers to Han Xizai’s impropriety, but unlike the earlier writers, Tang Hou ignores biographical details, confining his observations to what is reflected in the painting:

118

Xuanhe huapu, 7.193. The passage must have recorded a scroll different from that now in Beijing, as the Beijing scroll bears no Xuanhe huapu seals; Ang, “Redating The Night Revels,” 13. The phrase “a setting of wine vessels” (zunzu jian 樽俎間) connoted revelry (yanhui 宴會) in the Song period; Ciyuan, s.v. zunzu.

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Li the Last Ruler ordered Zhou Wenju and Gu Hongzhong to do pictures of Night Revels of Han Xizai. I saw two versions by Zhou, and in the capital I saw Hongzhong’s brushwork, which differs slightly from Zhou’s work. It has a colophon by Shi Wei, Wang Hao and a Shaoxing seal.119 Although not a proper object of enjoyment for a scholar’s collection, it may at least serve as a warning against illicit pleasures. 李後主命周文矩，顧閎中圖『韓熙載夜宴圖』，余見周畫二本。至京 師，見弘中筆，與周事蹟稍異，有史衛，王浩題字，並紹興印。雖非 文房清玩，亦可為淫樂之戒也。120

This author implies that the behavior of Han Xizai and his friends was regarded as a type that should not be openly practiced or viewed. A slightly later passage by Tuotuo 脫脫 (1313–55) in Song History (Songshi 宋 史) reads in part: He accumulated many gifts over a period of time, and thus he acquired over forty courtesans and concubines, all of whom were extremely accom­ plished musicians. These women were not subject to normal constraints, but brazenly entered the outer rooms to mingle with Han’s guests and students. Li Yu was impressed with Han’s loyalty and his views on state matters, and he wished to help him. At last, though, because of “the curtains and screens not being closed,” as a reprimand Li Yu demoted him to the position of Minister of the Right, putting him in charge of Hongzhou. Han Xizai dismissed all his courtesans and set off in a single cart. Then Li Yu detained him, appointing him to the post of Director of the Palace Library, an office he held only briefly. The courtesans who had been dismissed returned one by one, and soon everything was as before. Li Yu sighed, “I have no recourse!” 又累獲賞賜，由是蓄妓妾四十餘人，多善音樂，不加防閑，恣其出入 外齋，與賓客生徒雜處。煜以其盡忠言事，垂欲相之，终以帷薄不 修，責授右庶子，分司洪州。熙載盡斥諸妓，單車即路，煜留之，改

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The Beijing scroll actually has a Shaoxun 紹勛 seal; Tang Hou simply misread the characters. Xu Bangda identifies the seal’s owner as Shi Miyuan. As for the colophon, its signature may read Shi Hao, Wei Wang, and refer to Shi Miyuan’s father. Xu, “Gu Hongzhong hua Han Xizai yeyan tu,” 26–27. The Chinese text appears in Chou, Tang Hou’s “Huajian,” 163.

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秘書監，俄而復位。向所斥之妓稍稍而集，頃之如故。煜歎曰：“吾 亦無如之何！”121

Tuotuo was not so much objecting to Han’s acquisition of household courtesans as to his failure to keep them segregated from other men. One might suspect that Han had flouted notions of gendered space: generally, a woman’s entry into masculine space, as depicted in the Beijing scroll, would contradict conventions of gender segregation that dictated that women should keep to the inner quarters. But courtesans were not like wives or daughters, and lack of concern with such segregation was typical among even palace courtesans.122 Reading between the lines, what Tuotuo finds egregious is Han Xizai’s blatant and widely remarked use of his own household women to entertain other scholars in his official residence. Tang scholars regularly discussed professional and political matters among independent courtesans (outside the home).123 Han Xizai, however, invited guests into his home to enjoy the services of his own courtesans and concubines, so often that it became public knowledge. In doing so, he violated a long-standing cornerstone of Chinese bureaucratic theory: the separation of private affairs—a category under which personal relations with women in one’s own home would fall—from public business.124 The transgressive entry of the courtesans into the “outer rooms” represented in the painting seems designed to disclose salient information about Han’s character: that he has abandoned the appropriate behavior of a high-ranking official. Political Interpretations of Night Revels A further key to the outrage incited by Night Revels can be found in the ending to the Xuanhe Painting Catalogue entry on Gu Hongzhong (translated in Chapter 1). The story of the Former Han official Zhang Chang 張敞 doing his wife’s makeup125 is one of unseemly indulgence in sensuality (such a 121 Tuotuo, Songshi [Song History] (reprint, Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1977), 40:478.13866–67. 122 Bossler, “Shifting Identities,” 9–10. 123 Lois Fusek, trans., Among the Flowers: The “Hua-chien chi” (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 22. 124 On public and private in the Han court, see Martin J. Powers, Art and Political Expression in Early China (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1991), 194–95, 367–68. On the Song dynasty perception of corruption as a private offense distinct from administrative delinquency, see E.A. Kracke Jr., Civil Service in Early Sung China, 960–1067; with Particular Emphasis on the Development of Controlled Sponsorship to Foster Administrative Responsibility (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1953), 171–72. 125 Ciyuan, s.v. “Zhang Chang,” and Birrell, New Songs from a Jade Terrace, s.v. “Chang of the capital.”

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voluptuous interest in body or surface would be more fitting for a relationship with a courtesan), but his explanation exacerbated the situation because it called attention to the act. In a sense, Gu Hongzhong’s original painting similarly publicized something that ought to have been swept under the carpet—a scene of unabashed indulgence in the pleasures of the flesh. (Perhaps someone ultimately discarded the original painting in an apprehension that documenting Han Xizai’s behavior was going too far.) All subsequent paintings on the theme violated the same principle: certainly the painter of the Beijing scroll, in beginning with a representation of an occupied bed, intended his painting to be shocking. This is why Tao Yue excuses the original painting as intended to shame the subject, and Tang Hou assesses the Beijing scroll as a warning of what not to do. While seeing Han’s home as public space is integral to understanding the consequences of the events taking place within, the very existence of paintings of these events brought them into the public realm as well. This emphasis on the public nature of both the events and visual representations of them helps to establish a political interpretation for both. At this point, let us reconsider Zu Wupo’s colophon. In Chapter 1, I translated an excerpt that mentions Li Yu’s motives for commissioning the painting, but the part immediately preceding that suggests that Han was reacting to an untenable situation at court: The Southern Tang Vice Minister of the Secretariat, Lord Han Xizai, knew that the Last Ruler could lose his throne. He let go of his inhibitions, wallowing in cups of wine and polluting himself. The Last Ruler wanted to appoint him as a minister, but from the time he heard that Han was indulging himself in reclusion unobserved, he always wanted to spy on the parties in Han’s home. Thus he ordered painter Gu Hongzhong to do a painting that would catch Han Xizai. 南唐中書侍郎韓公熙載後主時知國祚將廢。放懷杯酒間以自污。後主 欲用為相，而聞縱逸不檢，每伺其家宴，命畫工顧閎中丹青以追。126

This account assigns a political meaning to Han Xizai’s actions. “Reclusion” usually refers to a scholar’s practice of retiring from court to the wilderness. Zu Wupo hints that although Han Xizai had not left court, he deliberately made it impossible for Li Yu to consult him, effecting a quasi-retirement while continuing to serve. He had essentially taken the role of court hermit, the most 126

Zu, “Ba Han Xizai yeyan tu,” 13b–14a.

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exalted rank of recluses.127 Zu Wupo’s text includes what may be the first suggestion that Han Xizai had a political purpose for behaving as he did, and it is strikingly different from other accounts of Night Revels that focus on how out of character his actions were. Still, some Song and Yuan sources do allude to Han Xizai’s political difficulties. A passage that links his unseemly behavior to his position at court can be found in Zhou Mi’s Guixin Miscellaneous Records (Guixin zashi 癸辛雜識), published in the late Southern Song and titled “Begging for Food in the Singing Girls’ Courts” (Qi shi geji yuan 乞食歌姬院): Han Xizai served as a minister in Jiangnan. When Li the Last Ruler ascended the throne, he was rather suspicious of northerners, and some died of poison. Xizai feared disaster; therefore, he openly indulged his feelings and did not observe propriety. He destroyed his house in acquiring and selling one hundred courtesans and musicians, who played music in an uncultivated and lewd manner. There was nothing that they did not get up to, and the monthly salary he received could not provide for them. Thereafter in tattered clothing and broken-down shoes, he pretended to be a blind man carrying a stringed lute, prompting his pupil Shu Ya, holding a clapper in his hand, to pull him along, accompanying him through the house, in order to get enough for daily meals. Afterward someone painted Night Revels in order to ridicule him; for this reason he felt miserable. In the Tang dynasty, the aged Pei Xiu, in order to mend his torn furs, went to the singing girls’ courts holding an alms bowl and begging for food, and this was not perceived as tainted by vulgarity. One can say that the actions make the man: now, it is known that before Xizai this precedent already existed, and although Lord Pei escaped into Chan Buddhism, and Xizai was fleeing disaster, I say that Xizai was acting in accordance with traditional practice, whereas Lord Pei was acting according to his own inclinations. Their real intentions were not the same. 韓熙載相江南，後主旣位頗疑北人，有鴆死者。熙載懼禍，因肆情坦 率，不遵禮法。破其家財售妓樂數百人，荒淫為樂，無所不至，所受 月俸至不能給。遂敝衣破履作瞽者持絃琴，俾門生舒雅執板挽之，隨 房乞丐以足日饍。後人因畫夜宴圖以譏之，然其情亦可哀矣。唐裴休 晚年亦披毳衲于歌姬院持鉢乞食，不為俗情所染。可以説法爲人，乃

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For the respect accorded court hermits, see Li Chi, “The Changing Concept of the Recluse in Chinese Literature,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 24 (1962–63): 243.

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Chapter 2 知熙載之前已有此例，雖裴公逃禪，熙載避禍，余謂熙載是世法，裴 公是心法，心跡不同也。128

The text gives the impression that as an unappreciated northerner (he was from present-day Shandong province), Han Xizai gave up any hope of service or else decided to indulge his own predilections while he could; though the passage connects the political climate with Han Xizai’s behavior in using the telling conjunction “therefore” (yin 因), his actions are not entirely consistent with those of a court hermit. Where the writer compares Han Xizai to Pei Xiu, he uses Buddhist metaphors: one might also translate this part to read “Xizai is the dharma; Lord Pei is the esoteric teachings,” meaning that Pei Xiu behaved in a way that better accords with inner truth, while Han Xizai merely followed a script. The writer sees nothing admirable about the latter’s actions. Tuotuo, however, gives the following praiseworthy assessment of the man: Xizai’s talent was superior, and when he had an opportunity to use it he was utterly diligent. His character was noble and frank, with no inferior or crooked aspects. He did not accede to anyone. Although he was expelled, to the end his integrity was unchanging, and in Jiangzuo he was called “Master Han.” 熙載才氣俊逸，機用周敏，性高簡，無所卑屈，未嘗拜人。雖被遣 逐，終不改節，江左號為“韓夫子”。129

While a reader might see a hint of the respect accorded to a court hermit here, Tuotuo (unlike Zhou Mi) does not explicitly link Han’s political difficulties to his organization of the night revels. While both sources intimate a political motive for Han’s behavior, they do not make the case for it as directly as some later sources do. One might dismiss Zu Wupo’s mention of reclusion as inconsistent with other accounts of the period, except that the Southern Song painter of the Beijing scroll also clearly intended to depict Han Xizai as a recluse.130 This was recognized in the Yuan dynasty: Ban Weizhi’s 班惟志 1326 poetic colophon to 128

Zhou Mi, comp., Guixin zashi [Guixin Miscellaneous Records] (reprint, Taipei: Yiwen yin­ shuguan, 1966), 1: 37a–b. Wu Hung, in The Double Screen, 263 n. 36, claims that this passage appeared in an earlier text, but I have not been able to confirm this. 129 Tuotuo, Songshi, 40:13866–67. 130 This aspect of my argument has been published in a different form in Blanchard, “A Scholar in the Company of Female Entertainers,” 225–27.

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the Beijing scroll suggests Han Xizai as a court hermit.131 The pictorial cues are unmistakable: first, the figure of Han Xizai is reminiscent of renowned political recluses of the past. Scene IV of the Beijing scroll shows his gaping undergarment, suggesting the untrammeled behavior (and dress) of such prototypical recluses as the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, who lived during the third century, also a time of political turmoil. Anecdotes about them were recorded in A New Account of Tales of the World.132 They not only refused to serve in political office, but also reveled, indulged in wine, and sat about naked: all practices referenced in Night Revels. Later commentators regarded the Seven Sages in two ways: as immoral men or as serious dissenters of both politics and convention.133 Tellingly, the former description meshes well with early interpretations of Night Revels, while the latter defines a recluse’s behavior. Pictorial representations of the Seven Sages include fourth- to fifth-century tomb depictions at Xishanqiao, which show them in casual poses and attire, drinking and enjoying lute music.134 The painter of Night Revels seems to incorporate textual and visual accounts of the Seven Sages into his depiction of Han Xizai. Second, the assembly of so many like-minded men at Han Xizai’s house brings to mind the close friendships based on shared values that recluses typically cultivated.135 Finally, the representation of uninhibited interaction with courtesans may be linked to the representation of Han Xizai as a court hermit: the women’s interaction with scholars signals that Han Xizai has discarded decorum and begun to engage in a recluse’s untrammeled behavior (as may also be said of his compatriots). However, the fact that Ningsu had a brother who worked in the Music Bureau would likely remind the viewer that the most talented

131 Wu, The Double Screen, 46; Lee, The Night Banquet, 56–62. 132 The anecdotes appear at various places in the text but especially at the beginning of Chapter 23; Liu, Shishuo xinyu, 1:7.28a–30b; cf. Richard Mather’s translation in Liu, Shihshuo Hsin-yü, 371–76. 133 Audrey Spiro, Contemplating the Ancients: Aesthetic and Social Issues in Early Chinese Portraiture (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990), 92–93. 134 Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove and Rong Qiqi, Eastern Jin dynasty, late 4th cent.; stamped bricks, 2.4 m l., from the Tomb at Xishan Bridge, Nanjing; Nanjing Museum. For discussions and illustrations of these reliefs, see Spiro, Contemplating the Ancients, 91–121; and Ellen Johnston Laing, “Neo-Taoism and the ‘Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove’ in Chinese Painting,” Artibus Asiae 36, no. 1/2 (1974): 1–54, fig. 2. 135 For discussions of poetry on this theme, see Frankel, “Man in His Relations with Other Men,” Chapter 3 in The Flowering Plum and the Palace Lady, 33–40; Burton Watson, “The Poetry of Reclusion,” Chapter 5 in Chinese Lyricism: Shih Poetry from the Second to the Twelfth Century, with Translations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971), 68–89.

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courtesans lived and worked within the capital, and Han’s continued presence there suggests him as a court hermit. In the Beijing scroll, the events take place in the masculine space of Han’s residence: the painter suggests this through details such as the screen paintings found there. Most are landscapes depicting imagery gendered as masculine.136 Scholars traveled through mountainous terrain and along rivers to assume their political posts;137 they could also retire to remote places, leaving their official duties behind. In helping to identify the rooms depicted here as masculine space, these paintings-within-the-painting establish the transgression that Tuotuo assigns to the courtesans (significantly, Tuotuo’s may be the first text to identify the setting as the “outer rooms” of Han’s home). But these screen paintings also add to the political reading of the scroll: several may be interpreted as landscapes of reclusion, befitting Han Xizai’s assumption of the role of court hermit. The screen visible at the foot of the bed in Scene I depicts a fisherman in a boat, a metaphor for a recluse: numerous literary sources describe fishermen as having escaped the drudgery of the outside world, living carefree lives in the wilderness.138 Meanwhile, the standing screen behind the pipa player features a tall, gnarled pine rooted in rocks, a metaphor for the upright, stalwart character of a scholar who maintains his integrity through adversity. This painting is firmly situated within the Li-Guo tradition, featuring the characteristic use of diffuse ink, the rendering of deep distance, a pine tree painted in the Li Cheng 李成 (919–67) style with dramatic crab-claw branches, and rocks in the manner of Guo Xi 郭熙 (ca. 1001–90) with rough textures showing the effects of time on the landscape. It resembles paintings of a type produced for the appreciation of the late eleventh-century court.139 Even a painting that does not represent a landscape can be interpreted as related to the theme of reclusion: in Scene III, a section of a couch-screen visible between two conversing courtesans shows a flowering branch. While such images often represent a woman’s beauty, flowering branches are also associated with the recluse,140 and this interpretation of the painting better matches its location in the apartments of a man portrayed as a court hermit. 136 For more on this idea, see Blanchard, “Lonely Women and the Absent Man,” 38, 41, 42. 137 Egan, The Burden of Female Talent, 335. 138 John Hay, “Along the River during Winter’s First Snow: A Tenth Century Handscroll of an Early Chinese Narrative,” The Burlington Magazine 114 (May 1972): 297–98. 139 Deng Chun 鄧椿 reported that Emperor Shenzong 神宗 (r. 1068–85) “loved Guo Xi paintings” (昔神宗好熙筆) in Huaji 畫繼 [More on Painting] (1167; reprint, Beijing: Renmin meishu chubanshe, 1963), 10.123. Shenzong also collected Li Cheng paintings; Wai-kam Ho, “Aspects of Chinese Painting from 1100 to 1350,” in Eight Dynasties of Chinese Painting, xxviii. 140 Bickford, Bones of Jade, Soul of Ice, 22.

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The pictorial evidence suggests that the twelfth-century painter of the Beijing scroll represented Han Xizai as a scholar who wished to retire and deliberately caused the ruler to forfeit his counsel by behaving in a debauched manner. As early histories and colophons suggest, Han directs the courtesans to entertain his guests musically and sexually, and the public mixing of the two sexes is foregrounded here. Paradoxically, taking on a court hermit’s role implies a noble objective on Han’s part: he will not serve an ineffective ruler. Later descriptions of the painting, particularly by intellectuals with troubled political careers, assign exactly this sort of motive for Han Xizai’s revelry.141 No textual accounts that predate the Southern Song overtly characterize Han Xizai’s intentions the way later sources do. The Beijing scroll itself goes farther toward making the case for Han as a court hermit than any of the pre-twelfth-century textual accounts. The story of Han’s attempt to avoid serving in an official position by adopting scandalous behavior could originate with versions of the painting from the Southern Song or later—any copies of Gu Hongzhong’s work must have taken some liberties with the content of the original painting—with the idea of Han as a court hermit only being recorded in texts after this date. Perhaps Song commenters tended to focus upon the public enactment of the scholars’ desire for courtesans because the political interpretation, while possible, had not been naturalized at that time. That interpretation now seems standard: modern historians assert that Han Xizai had given Li Yu’s father, Li Jing 李景 (r. 943–61), some strategic counsel that he had ignored, resulting in the Song empire’s conquest of the Southern Tang state, and, moreover, that Han suffered from the slander of members of a different political faction at court.142 These are offered as the impetus for Han’s night revels.143 What is more surprising is that, in keeping with poetic idealization of courtesans, the painter of the Beijing scroll presents them, at times, in romanticized ways. Night Revels of Han Xizai, like Goddess of the Luo River, presents a complex picture of a problematic political situation, with the women’s presence indicating that Han Xizai affects the role of a court hermit. Simultaneously, though, the painter presents the courtesans as feeling affection for him: Suzhi’s gaze in Scene III, the robe embroidered with geese in Scene IV, and, possibly, the ubiquitous love-knots. Becoming entangled with government or private 141 Sun, Gengzi xiaoxia ji, 8.4a–b. 142 Johannes L. Kurz, “Han Xizai (902–970): An Eccentric Life in Exciting Times,” in Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, ed. Peter Lorge (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2011), 84–85. 143 Li, Wudai Gu Hongzhong “Han Xizai yeyan tu,” 7.

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courtesans was not only inappropriate for officials but also possibly illegal, potentially leading to charges of debauchery,144 and perhaps these signs of the courtesans’ relationship with the host accounts for some of the scandal provoked by Night Revels. One must ask whether their devotion to Han, who often seems somewhat impassive, could be read as an allegory for Han’s loyalty to his state or to a ruler who does not appreciate him. Zu Wupo’s colophon suggests this when he calls attention to Han Xizai “beating a drum” (ji gu 擊鼓). “Beating a Drum” is a poem in the Book of Songs that describes soldiers following a leader to defeat and, thereafter, despairing of returning home.145 The events described in the poem resonate with Han’s situation, as later viewers describe Han’s inability to prevent the downfall of the Southern Tang. This might indicate that the drums in Scenes I and II could be subtle metaphors for a minister’s lack of appreciation by his ruler, exactly the basis for so much allegorical poetry. Still, an allegorical reading of the Beijing scroll presents several problems. For one, it includes some anti-Confucian content: in addition to showing its protagonist behaving in ways considered beyond the pale by Neo-Confucian writers of the period, it depicts him in ways that recall Daoist figures (e.g., the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove) and features the figure of a Buddhist monk. These elements readily persuade the viewer that Han Xizai was engaging in the behavior of a recluse, but it is less clear that we should read the connection between the courtesans and him as a Confucian allegory of loyalty. In addition, Song viewers did not understand this scroll as an allegory. Early viewers of the original painting repeatedly denounced its subject, and a reader receives the impression that most do not admit the interpretation of Han as a court hermit, much less one loyal to his state. Perhaps the original scroll contained no obvious references to eremitism. These may have been introduced by the Song copyist who created the Beijing scroll, in an attempt to recoup his subject’s reputation—akin in some ways to the allegorical interpretations appended to the love poems of the Book of Songs. The need to rehabilitate the content of the original version of Night Revels of Han Xizai becomes clearer when compared to a roughly contemporary 144

Bossler, “Shifting Identities,” 16; Bossler, Courtesans, Concubines, and the Cult of Female Fidelity, 24–25. 145 Ruan, Maoshi zhengyi, 2.80–81 (accessed 30 May 2016). This phrase also forms the beginning of an idiom, jigu mingyuan 擊鼓鳴寃, which one dictionary translates “to beat the drum at the magistrate’s door to bring a grievance to his attention”; Liang Shih-chiu, ed. 梁實秋, A New Practical Chinese-English Dictionary [Zuixin shiyong Han-Ying cidian 最新 實用漢英辭典] (Taipei: Far East Book Co., 1971), s.v. 2069, jigu mingyuan.

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Palace Banquet. Northern Song dynasty, late 10th–early 11th cent.; hanging scroll, ink and color on silk, 162 × 111 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, ex coll.: C.C. Wang Family, Gift of Oscar L. Tang Family, 2010 (www. metmuseum.org).

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Figure 10.2

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Detail of Palace Banquet. Northern Song dynasty, late 10th–early 11th cent.; hanging scroll, ink and color on silk, 162 × 111 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, ex coll.: C.C. Wang Family, Gift of Oscar L. Tang Family, 2010 (www.metmuseum.org).

painting, Palace Banquet (fig. 10.1). This hanging scroll depicts the preliminaries to a festive occasion involving palace women and possibly the emperor, who has not yet arrived. Unlike Night Revels, it is set in the women’s quarters, shown in the foreground, with a series of locked gates and doors placed further back that emphasize how access to this inner space is restricted (fig. 10.2). Most of the figures gather in a courtyard where a table for the banquet has been laid beneath paulownia trees. One attempts to thread a needle, an activity with erotic overtones that indicates the occasion as Seventh Night, when according to myth the Weaving Maiden and the Cowherd were briefly reunited.146 The figures located within the adjacent areas engage in activities that refer to sexual anticipation: one woman, her back to the viewer, plays a pipa (fig. 10.3), and two young girls within an enclosed garden hold flowers and a fan and 146 Maxwell K. Hearn, Along the Riverbank: Chinese Paintings from the C.C. Wang Family Collection (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1999), 60–62. Anne Birrell mentions that threading needles had an erotic meaning in New Songs from a Jade Terrace, 320.

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Figure 10.3

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Detail of Palace Banquet. Northern Song dynasty, late 10th–early 11th cent.; hanging scroll, ink and color on silk, 162 × 111 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, ex coll.: C.C. Wang Family, Gift of Oscar L. Tang Family, 2010 (www.metmuseum.org).

attempt to capture a butterfly (fig. 10.4). In an interior room, someone sleeps beneath heaped blankets (fig. 10.5), painted in a way that presages the beds in the Beijing Night Revels scroll. This portrayal of the prelude to an evening banquet, however, only suggests the coming merriment; unlike Night Revels, it does not actually show it. Yet because of the existence of these tropes for social and sexual interaction, the painter of Night Revels could create a handscroll whose political charge is primarily manifested in the erotic interaction of scholars and courtesans. Night Revels and Pictorial Cross-Dressing The representations of intimate exchanges between courtesans and scholars in Night Revels present interesting problems of subjectivity: I posit that it may stand as a pictorial counterpart of the phenomenon of literary cross-dressing. The courtesans mostly seem nonchalant or enthusiastic participants in the revelry, although two notable exceptions occur in the last scene: one figure in the putative ménage à trois, who glares at her rival, and the reluctant figure at

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Figure 10.4

Detail of Palace Banquet. Northern Song dynasty, late 10th–early 11th cent.; hanging scroll, ink and color on silk, 162 × 111 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, ex coll.: C.C. Wang Family, Gift of Oscar L. Tang Family, 2010 (www.metmuseum.org).

152 Chapter 2

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Figure 10.5

Detail of Palace Banquet. Northern Song dynasty, late 10th–early 11th cent.; hanging scroll, ink and color on silk, 162 × 111 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, ex coll.: C.C. Wang Family, Gift of Oscar L. Tang Family, 2010 (www.metmuseum.org).

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the end of the scroll. One must understand the courtesans as expert performers of a facsimile of desire. Accounts of this painting that treat Han Xizai’s debauchery as embodied in the courtesans’ transgressions, such as Tao Yue’s “Han Xizai’s Curtains Are Not Drawn,” do so because the painter depicted them, not Han Xizai, as instigators of the activity. Though Han Xizai directed the courtesans to interact with his guests, in the handscroll he seems passive, with all the activity initiated by the women. In Scene I, he is a mere observer as a female musician entertains the room with her pipa. In Scene II, although Han accompanies the dancing on a drum, his facial expression suggests weariness, as if the women or his guests had only with great effort persuaded him to play along. Compare him to the two women in this scene: Suzhi waves her sleeves and stamps her feet, and the maid is animated as she claps with the rhythm. In Scene III, Han ignores the conversation of the courtesans around him as Suzhi waits upon him and yet another courtesan entertains someone sexually in the adjacent bed. In Scene IV, Han hides his face behind his undecorated fan (which obscures rather than reveals his interiority) as three courtesans seek to engage him and a quintet of flutists bends to their instruments. Han bids his guests and the women goodnight in Scene V with the weary posture of a man who has no more interest in the party. Nearby, a courtesan attracts a scholar’s attention, two more fight over a second scholar, and a third scholar persuades a fourth courtesan to join him as she puts on a show of reluctance; their night is just beginning even as Han Xizai’s ends. Throughout the scroll, the good humor exhibited by the courtesans and his guests eludes him. What the painter has done might be regarded as the visual equivalent of appropriating a woman’s voice. Just as male lyricists might adopt female voice to make a female protagonist an active speaker, here the painter depicts the courtesans as engaged to create a sense of their agency. In Night Revels of Han Xizai, the musical performances, which can all be construed as conveying some heartfelt emotion, are implicitly seductive. The courtesans’ appearances are designed to appeal, with elaborate adornments intended to enhance their beauty and suggest an ability to form genuine attachments. The men are either passive observers like Han Xizai or at most minor participants in the musical performances. They need do nothing to attract the women’s attention: it is the women’s role to engage them. Even in the case of the final couple, where the scholar coaxes a courtesan to tarry with him, the viewer suspects that she only feigns hesitation in order to seem more seductive. As a result, the men within the painting seem taken in by the courtesans’ performances of desire, and male viewers of the painting were struck by the women’s “brazen” attitudes147— 147 Tuotuo, Songshi, 40:13853–72.

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when of course it was the painter who created these figures. The painter’s acknowledgment of the courtesans’ performative role reflects the perception of courtesans that one receives from erotic poetry (whether authored by men or women) and thus seems authentic, yet simultaneously reiterates the artifice that inflects the construction of their personae. Considering that the interaction between the courtesans and Han Xizai is a factor that permits a political reading of the Beijing scroll, the painter’s manipulation of the female figures helps to create a nuanced comment on Han Xizai’s integrity.

…

Reading heteroerotic longing or desire as inherently allegorical or political is a long-standing critical tradition, at least in Chinese poetry. It begins with Han dynasty criticism of courtship poems of the Book of Songs, and thereafter this interpretation is applied to other collections of love poetry. But the Southern Song period witnesses two significant and apparently contradictory developments: Zhu Xi argues that the Book of Songs’ erotic verses were not composed as allegories, and poets begin to employ the form of the song lyric, previously associated almost exclusively with erotic content, for the purpose of political commentary. It is exactly at this point that matters become more complicated. When love themes start to achieve primacy, as they begin to in the Tang–Song periods, does that mean that they need to be taken at face value only, excluding the allegorical reading? Or can both readings coexist? Song paintings such as Goddess of the Luo River and Night Revels of Han Xizai suggest that in this period, viewers might not only enjoy the pictorial representation of longing and desire but also, if so inclined, see the stories as inherently political or allegorical. Significantly, both explicitly show heteroerotic interaction and are located in settings other than a household’s inner quarters: Goddess of the Luo River is set in nature and Night Revels in the public spaces of Han Xizai’s home. These two scrolls break the formula presented in examples of shinü hua, leading critics to look for meanings beyond the familiar narratives of female desire from poetry. The Goddess of the Luo River scrolls reinterpret a poem that is regularly read as allegorical, and thus the Liaoning version at least might have been used to express devotion to Gaozong of the Southern Song. While the original version of Night Revels of Han Xizai may have had Li Yu’s desire to look upon debauched behavior as its basis, the Beijing scroll also seems to be a production of the Southern Song court, suggesting a political reason for its making. Zu Wupo sees its protagonist as a recluse, a reading that is now widely cited and supported by visual evidence. At the same time, the painting depicts some courtesans as devoted to Han Xizai, again suggesting the

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greater cultural interest in romantic themes in this period. While a viewer might cast the affection of courtesans for the protagonist as an allegory for Han’s loyalty to the Southern Tang state, protestations of his loyalty do not clearly emerge until accounts that postdate the Song. Nevertheless, when one looks back at texts of the Song period and the Beijing scroll, one can glimpse the kernels of this interpretation as well. As we turn to classic examples of shinü hua—paintings that focus on female figures who can be perceived as ladies rather than goddesses or courtesans—we should keep the possibilities of allegory in mind.

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Male Audience and Authorship: Projecting Desire and Longing onto the Female Figure Quintessential examples of shinü hua focus on virtuous women, desirable women, or women who are both virtuous and desirable, usually representing them as isolated from men. In the absence of male figures, images of isolated women experiencing desire can seem one-sided, suggesting that desire itself may have been gendered as feminine in certain historical contexts. Tang and Song culture evidently construed longing and desire as appealing feminine traits and required that an explicit image of men’s desire be recast as something else altogether. Though the commingling of male and female figures in certain court paintings encourages an allegorical reading, an image of women longing for unseen men permits this and other interpretations, while commenting on and revealing much about masculine desires. Scholars have argued that in some examples of literature and visual culture, female figures can serve as surrogates for male figures.1 Chinese poetry provides ample evidence for a rhetorical displacement of male desire or longing onto a female figure, and contemporary explanations for this displacement argue that it affords vicarious pleasure, gives a sense of control, or represents a form of repression.2 Another interpretation is that a male writer might adopt a female persona in order to express feelings that he could not openly discuss.3 I propose that the notion of a man’s feelings for a woman as improperly indulgent and best unmentioned may explain the early emergence of figures of lovelorn women as a sublimated expression of men’s interiority. A comparable situation can be found in film theory: Laura Mulvey proposes two possible dynamics whereby a cinematic female figure may embody masculine desire. In the first instance, a “determining male gaze projects its fantasy on to the female figure which is styled accordingly”; though she speaks of a 1 Lawrence Lipking, Abandoned Women in Poetic Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 50. 2 Egan, The Problem of Beauty, 240; Li, Enchantment and Disenchantment, 42; Rouzer, Writing Another’s Dream, 73–74; Birrell, “The Dusty Mirror,” 67; and Fong, “Engendering the Lyric,” 114. 3 Florence Chia-ying Yeh, “Ambiguity and the Female Voice in ‘Hua-chien Songs,’” in Studies in Chinese Poetry, by James R. Hightower and Florence Chia-ying Yeh (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Asia Center, 1998), 127–28; Samei, Gendered Persona and Poetic Voice, 4, 6–7, 10, 11, 36 n. 11; Egan, The Burden of Female Talent, 162.

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male writer or director, this dynamic finds a parallel in a male painter’s or patron’s vision of an ideal woman. In the second instance, Mulvey suggests a means by which a male viewer might see his own desire reflected in a lovelorn figure: through identifying with a male protagonist to whom a female character becomes attached, thereby becoming subject to his gaze alone.4 Song examples of shinü hua usually lack a present male figure to which female figures address their longings—no pictured male with whom the viewer may identify. Nevertheless, Chinese paintings of women in love do possess two features identified by Mulvey as important. They similarly tend to represent glamorous women and generally allude to different narratives of female desire, in this case, those familiar from genres of erotic poetry. A male viewer looking at a painting of a lovelorn woman might well enjoy imagining himself as the object of her desire, perhaps especially because of the lack of male figures.5 By the Song dynasty, the female figure might embody the feelings of male painters or viewers. Representations of emotional attachments between couples became more common in Song poetry and painting; the actual letters of lonely women to their absent husbands were even published.6 By the late eleventh century, poets more frequently wrote shi poetry or lyrics in a male voice that expressed their romantic yearnings or frustrations.7 But this leads to a question: where are the paintings of men yearning for absent women? I argue that paintings of lonely or desiring women, which were, after all, generally of male authorship, tell more about how the culture viewed men in regard to their relationships with women than they do about the typical woman’s experience. Although these paintings seem superficially to be concerned only with a woman’s feelings, they may also refer obliquely to a man’s longing for a woman from whom he is separated and, more generally, to a traveler’s homesickness (with the possibility of extrapolating further, using these feelings as similes for others that might have nothing to do with love).8 I surmise that conceptions of masculinity preferred that a man be the invisible object of a woman’s desire.9 4 Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” 11, 13. 5 Wu, The Double Screen, 98–99. 6 Owen, The End of the Chinese ‘Middle Ages,’ 130; Powers, “Love and Marriage in Song China,” 51–62. 7 Colin S.C. Hawes, The Social Circulation of Poetry in the Mid-Northern Song: Emotional Energy and Literati Self-Cultivation (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005), 55–56; Egan, The Problem of Beauty, 327, 347. 8 Samei, Gendered Persona and Poetic Voice, 176–90. 9 Anna Shields, in a discussion of ninth- and tenth-century song lyric, suggests that it may be a matter of propriety instead; Shields, Crafting a Collection, 262.

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It was not considered unseemly for a man to express his feelings about certain kinds of personal relationships. Many poems and paintings celebrate men’s friendships with other men.10 For instance, reclusion is a predominant theme that, perhaps somewhat ironically, focuses on a man’s relationship with like-minded individuals; Night Revels of Han Xizai alludes to this idea. Another Song painting that raises the topic of friendship is a painting attributed to Qiao Zhongchang 喬仲常 (fl. early twelfth century), The Red Cliff (Hou chibi fu tu 後赤壁賦圖), which is based upon Su Shi’s second prose poem on the subject. In one detail of Qiao Zhongchang’s scroll, Su Shi and his friends enjoy wine together: a sign of their bond.11 Farewell paintings, presented on the occasion of parting, also attest to the enduring relationship between men. An early example, Hu Shunchen’s 胡舜臣 (fl. 1119–31) Calligraphy and Painting for He Xuanming upon His Dispatch to Qin (He Xuanming shi Qin shuhua hebi tujuan 郝玄明使秦書畫合璧圖卷), dated to 1122, shows a mounted official ascending a mountain path, with the academy painter’s poem to the recipient inscribed at the top left; minister Cai Jing 蔡京 (1047–1126) added his own farewell poem to the scroll as well.12 Paintings such as these, which commemorate homosocial relationships, suggest the value of connections between men. Overt male expressions of intense attachment to a woman were somewhat less common in Chinese culture. There are poems of undeniably male authorship in which a man speaks movingly of an absent woman, and some of these can be interpreted as authentic expressions of personal feelings. A relatively early example is Du Fu’s poem “Moonlit Night,” which describes how the eighth-century poet, far from home, gazes at the moon and wonders longingly whether his wife looks up at it too.13 In the eleventh century, Su Shi writes a lyric on his abiding grief at the death, ten years previous, of his beloved wife

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On the poetic exchanges of mid-Tang literati friends, see Shields, One Who Knows Me, 133–99. Qiao Zhongchang, The Red Cliff, ca. 1123, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Mo. The scroll is fully illustrated online at Center for the Art of East Asia, Digital Scrolling Paintings Project, (accessed 30 May 2016). Elizabeth Brotherton, “Two Farewell Handscrolls of the Late Northern Song,” Archives of Asian Art 52 (2000–2001): 44–45, 60 nn. 5–7; figs. 1–2 in this source illustrate the painting, Calligraphy and Painting for He Xuanming upon His Dispatch to Qin, which is in the collection of the Osaka Municipal Museum of Art. Du Fu, “Yue ye 月夜 [Moonlit Night],” dated 756, QTS, 4:224.2403; cf. translation in Watson, The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry, 224.

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(an atypical topic for a song lyric at the time).14 By the late Northern Song, certain songwriters who employed male personae and themes of heteroerotic attachment crafted a distinctly masculine voice.15 Nevertheless, poems in which a lonely man expresses his sorrow at having to part from a woman are relatively few, while the reverse situation is ubiquitous. In painting, the discrepancy is even greater: the pictorial depiction of a man overcome with emotion at separation from a woman is almost unknown. The prince at the end of the Liaoning and Beijing versions of the Goddess of the Luo River paintings (figs. 6.11, 7.10) looks back regretfully toward a female figure that is supernatural, not an ordinary woman. Otherwise, I can think of only one Song example: the scene in the Boston fragment of Lady Wenji’s Return to China where Cai Wenji’s nomad husband breaks down as she prepares to return to her homeland (fig. 5). Because he was not Chinese, his representation is not circumscribed by constructions of Chinese masculinity. To be sure, the lack of paintings of Chinese men lamenting an absent woman may reflect the small percentage of Song paintings that have survived to the present, but if they did once exist, that might also reveal that such themes did not prove popular with collectors. While painters seem reluctant to represent explicitly men’s attachment to women, a complicated system of poetic and pictorial tropes developed to denote women’s attachment to men. Yet because most works representing desiring women were attributed to men, they cannot be transparent depictions of women’s feelings. Many images of desiring women are better understood as idealizations with particular, often allegorical, connotations (similar to the paintings discussed in Chapter 2), or, when one can make a case for their use in a private or intimate context, implicit representations of men’s attachment to women. The image of the lonely woman might be best understood as a male projection, itself an acknowledgment of men’s desire to remain central in the thoughts of the women they leave behind. Think back to Tang Hou’s suggestion, discussed in the Introduction, that the most appealing paintings of women from the Tang and later periods provide insight into the figures’ emotional state. Indeed, many Song paintings of women portray them in regard to their intimate relationships with men. In this chapter, I consider examples 14

Su Shi, “Gong zhi furen Wang shi xian zu, wei ci ci, gai daowang ye 公之夫人王氏先卒， 味此詞，蓋悼亡也 [My Wife, Ms. Wang, Died First, so I Wrote This Lyric in Mourning],” Tune: “Jiang shenzi 江神子 [River Goddess, 9/9],” QSC, 1:300. See my translation in Chapter 4. Egan has discussed the ambitious nature of this lyric, which in its treatment of a particular occasion reflects the sensibilities of shi poetry, in The Problem of Beauty, 282. 15 Shields, Crafting a Collection, 275–76; Egan, The Problem of Beauty, 241, 272–73, 327–47; Egan, The Burden of Talent, 371–72.

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acknowledged to derive from the styles of two artists mentioned by Tang Hou: Zhang Xuan and Zhou Fang. Huizong’s Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk The painting Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk (figs. 11.1–11.2), attributed to Northern Song emperor Huizong, stands as an unmistakable representation of women’s desire.16 The composition shows three distinct aspects of textile work, and a short version of its Chinese title is Pounding Silk (Dao lian tu 擣練 圖), describing an activity carried out by four women that is depicted at the beginning of the handscroll. Subsequently, we see a woman either spooling thread or spinning17 and a woman sewing, as well as multiple figures using a pan filled with hot coals to iron a length of silk. Possibly the most charming image in the painting is a little girl playing peek-a-boo beneath the stretched cloth. Their fashionable appearance and luxurious ornaments indicate that the female figures are imperial concubines and their maids or daughters, with the setting presumably the women’s quarters of the palace. All are dressed in richly colored garments of silk patterned with abstract designs, floral motifs, or paired birds. The younger figures wear their hair in looped braids or little chignons held with combs and ribbon—styles that seem simple next to the concubines’ loose topknots, secured with spotted bamboo combs, hairpins, and plaques of jade. All but the child wear makeup, accentuating their foreheads with beauty marks. Palace women are common subjects of early shinü hua and erotic poetry. A literary scholar, in a discussion of the palace poems (gongci 宮 詞) of Wang Jian 王建 (768–833), explains their appeal: they were sequestered within the palace and leading lives of privilege, yet drawn from the ranks of ordinary citizens.18 Because of this scroll’s association with Huizong’s authorship, it seems quite natural that the painting should depict palace women. It is necessary, however, to recognize this as a meaningful choice on the part of the 16

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Much of the material in this section has already been published in Lara C.W. Blanchard, “Huizong’s New Clothes: Desire and Allegory in Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk,” Ars Orientalis 36 (2006): 111–35. Wu Tung, Tales from the Land of Dragons: 1,000 Years of Chinese Painting (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1997), 142; Wu Hung, “The Origins of Chinese Painting (Paleolithic Period to Tang Dynasty),” in Richard M. Barnhart et al., Three Thousand Years of Chinese Painting (New Haven and London: Yale University Press; Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1997), 77. Egan, “Huizong’s Palace Poems,” 364.

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Figure 11.1 Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk. Attributed to Emperor Huizong (r. 1101–25), after Zhang Xuan ( fl. 713–42), Northern Song dynasty, early 12th century; handscroll, ink, color, and gold on silk, 37.1 × 145 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Special Chinese and Japanese Fund (12.886). Photograph © 2017 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

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Figure 11.2 Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk. Attributed to Emperor Huizong (r. 1101–25), after Zhang Xuan ( fl. 713–42), Northern Song dynasty, early 12th century; handscroll, ink, color, and gold on silk, 37.1 × 145 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Special Chinese and Japanese Fund (12.886). Photograph © 2017 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

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painter, one that reverberates with traditions of erotic poetry and suggests this painting as a carefully crafted comment on the emperor himself. The scroll is accepted as a free copy after a painting by Tang court artist Zhang Xuan. In fact, the full title, inscribed on the scroll by Emperor Zhangzong of the Jin dynasty, is Tianshui’s Copy of Zhang Xuan’s “Pounding Silk” (Tianshui mo Zhang Xuan Dao lian tu 天水摹張萱擣練圖). Tianshui is a nickname for Huizong, but he may not have made the painting himself: court painters likely acted as his surrogate in most (if not all) instances, which helps to account for the large quantity of scrolls that he is recorded to have produced.19 The title is written in a style that resembles Huizong’s renowned slender-gold calligraphy, which Zhangzong also practiced, and the scroll bears at least seven of Zhangzong’s seals, including one impressed on the title.20 Zhangzong’s interventions with the scroll attest to its provenance in Huizong’s collection; presumably, the Jurchens took the painting after Huizong’s capture.21 Still, even if the painting is not of Huizong’s authorship in the traditional sense, it was probably made for him, and therefore we may still refer to it as Huizong’s scroll. The scroll features stylistic elements common to seven other important Huizong attributions, including the isolation of the figures against a blank ground, precise brushwork, and vivid color.22 The absence of Huizong’s cipher and inscription suggests only that it was not intended for official use as an imperial instrument.23 As for Zhang Xuan’s painting, the Xuanhe Painting 19

Maggie Bickford, “Huizong’s Paintings: Art and the Art of Emperorship,” in Ebrey and Bickford, Emperor Huizong and Late Northern Song China, 498–513. 20 Zhangzong’s seal Mingchang 明昌 is stamped on the title. Tseng Yu-Ho Ecke, in “Emperor Hui Tsung, the Artist, 1082–1136” (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1972), 25, 137, 138, claims that seven of Zhangzong’s seals appear on this painting. Preceding the painting, on the mounting, one finds Zhangzong’s gourd-shaped seal reading Bi fu 袐府 (before the title strip) and another reading Mingchang baowan 明昌寳玩 (at the bottom edge). On the seam between the end of the painting and the mount, one finds two more seals identified as Zhangzong’s: Yufu baohui 御府寳繪 (at the top edge) and Neidian zhenwan 内殿珍玩 (at the bottom edge). Facsimiles of these four seals appear in Victoria Contag and Wang Ch’i-Ch’ien, Seals of Chinese Painters and Collectors of the Ming and Ch’ing Periods, Reproduced in Facsimile Size and Deciphered, rev. ed. (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1966), 665. A fifth seal reading Mingchang yulan 明昌御覽 can be seen mounted after the painting, but its impression does not match that of the seal pictured in ibid., 666. 21 Wu, Tales from the Land of Dragons, 143 n. 1. 22 Maggie Bickford, “Emperor Huizong and the Aesthetic of Agency,” Archives of Asian Art 53 (2002–2003): 76. 23 Bickford notes which paintings tend to bear Huizong’s inscription and cipher and how they functioned as “works of state” in “Huizong’s Paintings,” 457, 466, 471–72, 485, 488–89, 498–513.

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Catalogue records that Huizong owned a painting by that artist titled Pounding Silk,24 which makes it plausible that Huizong’s scroll is a copy. Unfortunately, the original version of Pounding Silk has not survived. Zhang Xuan specialized in depicting ladies, and because Tang Hou alluded to his facility in representing their emotional attachments, we might expect that his original painting focused on women’s longing or desire. This is, in fact, suggested by Huizong’s copy. The theme of women making cloth and particularly pounding silk is well known from palace-style poetry, Music Bureau poetry, and song lyric, where it is understood as an expression of feminine longing for an absent man.

Pounding Silk and Women’s Work A green jade pounding-cloth stone and a seven-jeweled, golden-lotus mallet— I raise it high and slowly let it fall, softly pounding just for you. 碧玉擣衣砧，七寶金蓮杵。高舉徐徐下，輕擣只為汝。25

This poem, titled “Qingyang Ford,” dates to the sixth century and is one of many that treat the activity of pounding cloth (dao yi 擣衣) as a trope for desire and/or longing. The process was one of several stages in the production of cloth. As “Qingyang Ford” is a Music Bureau poem, it was likely meant to be performed, perhaps by a singing girl for a male audience, given the unmistakably erotic connotations of the words. They are spoken (or sung) in the voice of an aristocratic woman, one whose pounding implements are fashioned of jade or encrusted with jewels. The precious nature of her tools suggests her high status and betrays the construct: this is an image designed to appeal to a male audience, not a representation of the reality of domestic labor. This representation of pounding cloth as a chore undertaken for men’s titillation is primarily a construction of poets and painters; it plays upon the more usual associations of other types of work with cloth, particularly weaving and needlework, with domesticity. One can trace those associations to the longstanding perception that such work was closely linked to female virtue. Ban Zhao 班昭 (ca. 45–ca. 115), a female historian of the Latter Han dynasty (25–220) and the author of Instructions for Women (Nü jie 女誡), listed 24 25

Xuanhe huapu, 5.157. In addition to Pounding Silk, the catalogue records two scrolls titled Palace Women (Gongnü tu er 宮女圖二). “Qingyang du 青陽度 [Qingyang Ford, 2/3],” YFSJ, 3:49.711.

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“womanly work” (nügong 女工) as one of four elements that women should strive to cultivate; it encompassed spinning, weaving, and food preparation.26 The term is sometimes written as nügong 女紅, with the same pronunciation but a slightly modified second character, specifically classifying the labor as work with cloth.27 Moreover, an old adage, “men plow, women weave” (nan geng nü zhi 男耕女織), neatly assigns agriculture to the realm of men and sericulture to that of women,28 in accordance with the gendered dialectic of outer as masculine and inner as feminine. A Song court painter preserved this close association between womanly work and feminine virtue in an illustrated version of the Classic of Filial Piety for Girls (Nü xiaojing 女孝經), depicting spinning and sewing as model activities for filial women of the common people.29 In the Tang and Song dynasties, poets introduced a critical perspective by emphasizing the demands of the labor, sometimes contrasting the differing circumstances of women who made fine silk and those who wore it, and at other times raising taxation issues that by their very nature revealed political and economic concerns.30 Several extant Song paintings of sericulture seem to 26 27 28

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The full text is translated in Idema and Grant, The Red Brush, 36–42, with the pertinent passage appearing on p. 39. Francesca Bray, Technology and Gender: Fabrics of Power in Late Imperial China (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997), 184. In practice, of course, the division was not so clear-cut. For a discussion of sericulture in the Song dynasty, see Ebrey, The Inner Quarters, 131–51. For more on the gendered division of labor in China, see Bray, Technology and Gender, 183–205. The painting is attributed to Ma Hezhi 馬和之 (fl. ca. 1130–80), “Common People,” chapter/section 5 of the Classic of Filial Piety for Girls, National Palace Museum, Taipei. For a discussion and illustrations of this painting, see Murray, “Didactic Art for Women,” 27–53. The text of the Classic of Filial Piety for Girls dates between the mid-Tang and Northern Song dynasties, and Chapter 5 mentions both spinning and sewing; Julia K. Murray discusses the date of the text and translates it in “The Ladies’ Classic of Filial Piety and Sung Textual Illustration: Problems of Reconstruction and Artistic Context,” Ars Orientalis 18 (1988): 95–129. One Tang example is by Wang Jian, “Dang chuang zhi 當窗織 [Weaving at the Window],” QTS, 5:298.3380; cf. translation by William H. Nienhauser in Liu Wu-chi and Irving Yucheng Lo, eds., Sunflower Splendor: Three Thousand Years of Chinese Poetry (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1975), 192–93. Others are found in Bai Juyi, “Zhong fu 重賦 [Heavy Taxes],” from the series “Qinzhong yin shi shou [2/10],” QTS 7:425.4674; cf. trans. in Alley, Bai Juyi, 121–22; and idem., “Liaoling, nian nügong zhi lao ye 繚綾、念女 工之勞也 [Liaoling Silk—Commemorating the Tribulations of Womanly Work],” QTS, 7:427.4704 and YFSJ, 4:99.1380 (under title “Liaoling”); cf. translation in Watson, The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry, 245–46. For Song poetry on women making cloth that does not construct them as erotic objects, see Ebrey, The Inner Quarters, 131–51.

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accentuate this account of women’s work.31 Perhaps for these reasons, when cloth-making becomes an erotic theme, poets and painters generally cast the female personae or figures as wives, concubines, or nubile girls. Conveniently, the word for a bolt of cloth (pi 疋) was a homophone (and thus likely a pun) for the word mate (pi 匹).32 “Pounding cloth” and the more specific “pounding silk” (dao lian 擣練) are phrases that refer to the beating of textiles with pestles or mallets. Translators of Chinese poetry have for decades referred to this process as “fulling,” a term that emphasizes the cleansing that results from the action of pounding— though in an erotic context the action itself ultimately proves most significant. Several sources provide further information about what pounding silk accomplished. From the Former Han dynasty on, a worker would apply plant ash to raw silk and then beat it in order to remove gum, thus making it soft and supple. Variant interpretations of the term suggest that the procedure could prepare silk for dyeing, or that “pounding clothes” later came to mean pounding laundry.33 “Qingyang Ford” illustrates the potential for innuendo inherent in the theme of pounding cloth. The implement the woman uses to beat her cloth,34 the slow and steady rhythm she attains, the intimate tone in which she tells a lover that she does it just for him—all of these factors reveal why pounding cloth became a metaphor for erotic reverie. The unknown poet of “Qingyang Ford” (and any singing girl asked to perform it) simulates a sexual act in four short lines, with the cloth likened to vaginal tissue. But this is an exceptional poem, for its female persona either attempts to seduce a potential partner or engages

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On sericultural paintings, see Roslyn Lee Hammers, Pictures of Tilling and Weaving: Art, Labor, and Technology in Song and Yuan China (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2011). Ronald C. Miao, “Palace-Style Poetry: The Courtly Treatment of Glamour and Love,” in Studies in Chinese Poetry and Poetics, ed. Ronald C. Miao (San Francisco: Chinese Materials Center, 1978), 15–16. Ulla Cyrus-Zetterström, Textile Terminology: Chinese-English-French-Swedish (Borås, Sweden: Centraltryckeriet Åke Svenson AB, 1995), s.v. dao lian; Angela Yu-yun Sheng, “Textile Use, Technology, and Change in Rural Textile Production in Song China (960–1279)” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1990), 52–53; Luo Zhufeng, ed. 羅竹風, Hanyu da cidian 漢語大詞典 [The Great Chinese Dictionary] (Shanghai: Shanghai cishu chubanshe, 1986–), s.v. dao yi 擣衣. Anne Birrell writes that “the word for the fulling tool used to pound silk fibres (love) was a complicated pun for a husband or lover,” but doesn’t tell the basis for the pun, in New Songs from a Jade Terrace, 21.

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in an ongoing affair. Most other poems on this theme describe women pounding cloth for men who have left them lonely. The classic scenario of a woman pounding cloth fixes the setting as an autumn night.35 This helps to set the desired tone: autumn is a naturally gloomy time of year when nights grow longer and landscape features become barren, and the character for “melancholy” (chou 愁) combines the characters for “autumn” (qiu 秋) and “heart” (xin 心). Thus, in the Chinese poetic tradition, references to autumn not only call to mind aging and the passage of time, but also serve as metaphors for separation. The woman worries about her husband, drafted into service some months earlier. Her distress over their separation becomes concern for his well-being, which in turn takes the form of anxiety over his clothing: because neither had imagined such a long separation, he has only spring- or summer-weight garments with him. Too worried to sleep, and sexually frustrated as well, she spends her nights pounding cloth and making a set of winter clothes to send him. Thus the sound of poles striking stones becomes a synecdoche for melancholy.36 The story shares some elements of the Meng Jiangnü 孟姜女 legend related in the Zuozhuan 左傳.37 Meng Jiangnü’s husband, Qi Liang 杞梁, had been conscripted to help build the Great Wall. Because he counted on the government to provide him with clothing, he took no winter clothes with him. Meng Jiangnü, presumably worried about his welfare, makes him some winter-weight clothing and takes the garments to the site herself. There she discovers, to her grief, that her husband is not only dead but buried in the Wall.38 35

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Song Qici 宋齊辭 (fl. Jin), “Qiu ge shiba shou 秋歌十八首 [Eighteen Autumn Songs, 16/18],” from the series “Ziye si shi ge qishiwu shou 子夜四時歌七十五首 [Ziye Songs for the Four Seasons, 75 Poems],” YFSJ, 2:44.648. Xie Huilian 謝惠連 (407–33), “Dao yi 擣衣 [Pounding Cloth],” YTXY, 3.16a–b, and see my translation below; Liu Yun 柳惲 (465–511), “Dao yi shi yi shou 擣衣詩一首 [Pounding Cloth, One Poem],” YTXY, 5.10b–11b; cf. translation in Birrell, New Songs from a Jade Terrace, 144–45. Cao Pi, “Ye ting dao yi yi shou 夜聽擣衣一首 [Listening to Someone Pounding Cloth at Night, One Poem]”; Xiao Gang 蕭綱 (503–51) [Emperor Jianwendi of the Liang 梁簡文帝, r. 549–51], “Qiugui yesi 秋閨夜思 [Night Thoughts in an Autumn Bedroom],” YTXY, 3.12a– b; 7.14a–b; cf. translations in Birrell, New Songs from a Jade Terrace, 101, 194, and Robertson, “Voicing the Feminine,” 71. This Confucian text existed by the Former Han dynasty; for a summary of its origins and scholarship on it, see Loewe, Early Chinese Texts, 67–76. Marsha Wagner discusses the legend and translates relevant poems from the Dunhuang repository in The Lotus Boat, 93–96; cf. “Meng Jiangnü,” Tune: “Dao lianzi 擣練子 [Pounding Silk, 1/4 and 3/4],” Dunhuang nos. P. 3911, P. 2809, and P. 3319, in Ren Bantang 任半塘 [Ren Na 任訥], ed., Dunhuang geci zongbian 敦煌歌詞總編 [A Corpus of Song’s Words in Dunhuang Manuscripts, hereafter abbreviated as DHGC], 3 vols. (reprint, Shanghai:

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Poems dating to the Southern Dynasties and earlier usually tell the woman’s sorrow at length, emphasizing her appearance as she does her work. The palace-style poems in New Songs from a Jade Terrace, in particular, detail how women dress in their finest garments and jewels to perform this labor. Although in some poems male personae imagine the wives they left behind faithfully pounding cloth, in others female personae refuse to pound cloth while their lovers are traveling.39 Most poems deal with separated spouses, but this is not always the case, as in a work where the poet shares his fantasies of the unseen woman he hears pounding cloth in the night—someone who must be both lonely and beautiful.40 In the poetic construct, pounding cloth could be a way for an aristocratic woman, with no need to support herself through work, to express feelings of longing. In sixth-century variations, the theme becomes so closely associated with longing that it is used as a leitmotif in poems that focus on a different theme, and the mention of a woman pounding cloth suffices to set a sorrowful tone in very short poems.41 In the Tang dynasty, “Pounding Silk” (Dao lianzi 擣練子) becomes a tune title for song lyrics, indicating the popularity of this theme. Such lyrics often focus on the sadness of parting.42 At the same time, the idea of a woman

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Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1987), 2:3.549. For more details, see Jao Tsong-yi [Rao Zongyi] 饒宗頤 and Paul Demiéville, Airs de Touen-houang (Touen-houang k’iu 敦煌曲) (Paris: Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1971), 64–65, 67, 114–15; Arthur Waley, trans., Ballads and Stories from Tun-huang: An Anthology (New York: Macmillan Company, 1960), 145–49; Wang Ch’iu-kuei, “The Formation of the Early Versions of the Meng Chiang-nü Story,” Tamkang Review 9, no. 2 (Winter 1978): 111–40. For a poem featuring a male persona imagining his faithful wife, see Qiao Zhizhi 喬知之 (d. 697), “Cong jun xing,” YFSJ, 2:33.485. An example of a lonely female persona refusing to pound cloth can be found in a woman’s poem: Bao Linghui, “Ti shu hou ji xingren 題書後 寄行人 [Poem Sent to a Traveler],” YTXY, 4.12a; cf. translation in Birrell, New Songs from a Jade Terrace, 123. Fei Chang, “Hua guan sheng zhongye wen chengwai dao yi 華觀省中夜聞城外擣衣 [Hearing Someone Pounding Cloth beyond the Wall at Midnight],” YTXY, 6.12b–13b; cf. translation in Birrell, New Songs from a Jade Terrace, 173–74. Wang Sengru, “Dao yi [Pounding Cloth]”; Xiao Yi 蕭繹 (507–55) [Emperor Yuandi of the Liang 梁元帝, r. 555], “Hanxiao san yun 寒宵三韻 [Cold Night, Three Rhymes]”; Jiang Hong 江洪 (fl. ca. 502), “Qiufeng er shou 秋風二首 [The Autumn Wind, Two Poems, 2/2]”; YTXY, 6.7b–8a; 7.22b; 10.12a; cf. translations in Birrell, New Songs from a Jade Terrace, 167, 203, 277. See, for example, Tune: “Dao lianzi,” Dunhuang no. P. 3718, DHGC, 2:3.563–64. An exception is a cycle of lyrics titled “Meng Jiangnü,” Tune: “Dao lianzi (3/4),” Dunhuang nos. P. 3911, P. 2809, and P. 3319, DHGC, 2:3.549; cf. translation in Wagner, The Lotus Boat, 94–95.

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pounding cloth becomes an overwhelmingly aural image. Poem after poem uses the “sound of pounding cloth” (daoyi sheng 擣衣聲)—the beat of poles against resonant stones—to convey the feelings of personae. For the male traveler, this primarily means homesickness (xiangxin 鄉心),43 brought on by the familiar sound of a domestic activity that his loyal partner would perform. Although he misses his partner, she represents the comforts of home, and it is difficult to separate his feelings for her from his homesickness. For the woman left behind, however, the feelings stirred by this sound generally strike at the heart of her relationship, whether she fights to sustain it or has given up hope.44 Her emotions might range from worry,45 melancholy (chou 愁),46 “wavering feelings” (yaoqing 搖情),47 or longing (si 思 or xiangsi 相思), to heartbreak

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Liu Changqing 劉長卿 (709–80?), “Yugan lüshe 餘干旅舍 [At an Inn in Yugan],” QTS, 3:147.1493; cf. translation by William H. Nienhauser in Liu and Lo, Sunflower Splendor, 116. Du Fu 杜甫 (712–70), “Qiuxing ba shou 秋興八首 [Autumn Thoughts, Eight Poems, 1/8],” QTS, 4: 230.2509; cf. translation by Wu-chi Liu in Liu and Lo, Sunflower Splendor, 141, and David Hinton, trans., The Selected Poems of Tu Fu (New York: New Directions Books, 1989), 81. Nevertheless, not all the poems dealing with the effect of the sound on a female persona focus on her emotions regarding an absent man: they can also reflect her empathy for another woman. Li Bai, “Bayue ge 八月歌 [Song of the Eighth Month],” from the series “Yuejie zhe yangliu ge shisan shou 月節折楊柳歌十三首 [Songs of Cutting a Willow Branch for Different Months, Thirteen Poems, 8/13],” YFSJ, 3:49.723. Li Bai, “Qiuge 秋歌 [Autumn Song],” from the series “Ziye si shi ge si shou 子夜四時歌四 首 [Ziye Songs for the Four Seasons, Four Poems],” YFSJ, 2:45.653; cf. Watson, trans., The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry, 207. No word for worry is explicitly used, but that is the tenor of the woman’s feeling. “Zhengfu shu zai 征夫數載 [Several Years a Soldier],” Tune: “Feng gui yun 鳳歸雲 [Phoenix Returning to the Clouds],” Dunhuang nos. S. 1441 and P. 2838, DHGC, 1:1.58; cf. translation in Chang, Evolution of Chinese Tz’u Poetry, Appendix 2, 213. Based on the Dunhuang manuscripts in which it appears, the poem probably belongs to the Yunyao ji 雲謠集 [Collected Ballads of the Clouds] and if so would date to the High Tang period; Wagner, The Lotus Boat, 74. For a verse in which the female persona imagines the absent man feeling melancholy, see “Bian shi rongyi 邊使戎衣 [Sending a Soldier’s Clothes to the Frontier],” Tune: “Shi’er yue 十二月 [Twelve Months, 10/12],” Dunhuang no. P. 3812, DHGC, 3:5.1263– 64; for a French translation, see Jao and Demiéville, Airs de Touen-houang, 117–18. Zhang Ruoxu 張若虛 (fl. 710–27), “Chunjiang hua yueye 春江花月夜 [Flowers by the River on a Moonlit Night in Spring],” YFSJ, 2:47.679; cf. translation by David Lattimore in Classical Chinese Literature: An Anthology of Translations, ed. John Minford and Joseph S.M. Lau (New York: Columbia University Press; Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2000), 1:820–23.

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(duanchang 斷腸),48 pain (shang 傷),49 grief (bei 悲),50 or resentment (hen 恨).51 Though the phrase “pounding silk” is a pun for another dao lian 擣戀, “pounding love,”52 this image most often evoked sorrow. Tang court painters developed cloth-pounding as a fully realized pictorial theme, at least according to later painting catalogues. Zhang Xuan’s painting is joined by a Zhou Fang painting titled Pounding Cloth, which is mentioned in Ming and Qing catalogues.53 Two Song paintings on this theme survive—of which Huizong’s scroll is the earlier—and this is somewhat surprising, for in Northern Song lyrics, pounding cloth and making winter clothing for soldiers (tropes that share many of the same presumptions) are mentioned primarily to set a melancholy mood.54 Nevertheless, in the same period, this aspect of women’s work with cloth continues as an erotic theme in painting, perhaps because the scenario lends itself so well to visual interpretation. The nature of the activity provides an excuse for depicting female figures, worn out from their exertions, in disarray: hair falling down, sleeves pushed up, even perspiring. Their dishevelment would remind a viewer of how they would likely look after a sexual encounter, increasing their desirability. Although Chinese poets 48

Liu Changqing, “Yuexia ting zhen 月下聽砧 [Listening to Pounding Stones beneath the Moon],” QTS, 3:148.1524; cf. translation by Dell R. Hales in Liu and Lo, Sunflower Splendor, 117. 49 In a Tang poem by Wang Bo 王勃 (649–76), “Qiuye chang 秋夜長 [Autumn Nights Long],” a woman is “wounded by longing” (si zi shang 思自傷); YFSJ, 3:76.1071. 50 Tune: “Daoyi sheng 擣衣聲 [The Sound of Pounding Cloth],” Dunhuang no. S. 2607, DHGC, 1:2.309. 51 “Shu ke liulang 戍客流浪 [Roaming Soldier],” Tune: “Dong xian ge,” Dunhuang no. S. 1441, DHGC, 1:1.157; this poem may have been part of the High Tang Yunyao ji. 52 Birrell, New Songs from a Jade Terrace, 21. 53 Wang, Shanhuwang, 47.61b, (accessed 28 July 2016); Bian, Shigutang hua kao, 2.116b, (accessed 30 May 2016); Sun Yuepan, comp., Peiwen zhai shuhuapu, 98.37a; Li Diaoyuan 李調元 (1717–95), Zhujia canghua bu 諸家藏畫簿 [Register of the Zhu Family Painting Collection], 10 juan, in Hanhai 函海 [Sea of Letters], ed. Li Yucun 李雨村 (1778; reprint, Taipei: Hongye shuju, 1968), 30:10.5b. 54 Yan Jidao, Tune: “Shaonian you 少年游 [Wandering Youth, 4/5],” QSC, 1:247. The theme also persisted in tune titles, as in Han Wei 韓維 (1017–98), Tune: “Hu dao lian ling 胡擣練 令 [Song of Nomads Pounding Silk],” QSC, 1:198. Poems that mention soldier’s clothing include Xia Song 夏竦 (984–1050), Tune: “Zhegu tian 鷓鴣天 [Partridge Sky],” and Li Zhiyi, Tune: “Lin jiang xian [1/2],” QSC, 1:9, 352. In a few poems, the labor is more thoroughly described, as in a lyric wherein a beauty remembers that she has not yet pounded her soldier’s clothing, so she takes up the mallet as her tears fall; Su Shi, Tune: “Shuilong yin 水龍吟 [Water Dragon’s Chant, 2/2],” QSC, 1:330.

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might choose imagery for its emotional associations,55 painters needed to consider the pictorial qualities of an image as well. This emphasis on the visual may help to explain, in Song painting, the decline of mulberry girls and weavers (who had been prominent in early erotic poetry)56 and the increasing popularity of women expressing their feelings of longing in a session of clothpounding. Mulberry girls and weaving maidens do appear in Song painting— with baskets in the mulberry grove, or at looms—but perhaps because their movements are less apt as visual metaphors for love or longing, they tend to signify as rural laborers.57 A woman beating cloth, however, makes for an especially evocative visual image, as she typically uses a long pole and must put all her energy into pounding. In Huizong’s scroll, the beating of the fabric is portrayed as one of the most exciting stages in silk production. Zhang Xuan’s Painting and Huizong’s Copy It is instructive to read what may be a description of Zhang Xuan’s version of Pounding Silk, found in the writings of Yuan Haowen. According to this Jin dynasty scholar, Zhang Xuan had painted a set of scrolls depicting the activities of palace women; Yuan refers to the scrolls with the descriptive title Four Scenes of Palace Women (Si jing gongnü 四景宮女). His discussion of the paintings includes precise notations on each figure’s clothing and status. The main activity of the first scroll seems to be musical performance, with women playing flutes and zithers and dancing, but it also shows female scholars writing and women picking flowers. The second scroll depicts women looking at flowers, and again playing musical instruments: pipa, flute, clapper. The fourth scroll portrays maidservants holding children.58

55

James J.Y. Liu, The Interlingual Critic: Interpreting Chinese Poetry (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1982), 47. 56 Mulberry girls and weaving maids appear throughout New Songs from a Jade Terrace. For more on mulberry girls, see Joseph Roe Allen III, “From Saint to Singing Girl: The Rewriting of Lo-fu Narrative in Chinese Literati Poetry,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 48, no. 2 (December 1988): 321–61. 57 “The Seventh Month,” from the Odes of the State of Bin (Shijing Binfeng tujuan 詩經豳風 圖卷), may represent women harvesting mulberry leaves; it is attributed to Ma Hezhi 馬 和之 (fl. ca. 1130–ca. 1170), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1973.121.3) and reproduced in Fong, Beyond Representation, pl. 28a. An image of a woman weaving appears in Sericulture (Can zhi tu 蠶織圖), attributed to Liang Kai 梁楷 (fl. 1201–1204), Cleveland Museum of Art (77.5), reproduced in Eight Dynasties of Chinese Painting, cat. 61C. 58 Yuan, Yuan Haowen quanji, 1:34.771–73. The Xuanhe Painting Catalogue does not record a set of scrolls by Zhang Xuan titled Four Scenes of Palace Women. Xuanhe huapu, 5.155–56.

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The third scroll might have been known elsewhere as Pounding Silk. Yuan’s description of it reads: One: a large paulownia tree with a well beneath it. Beside the well is a silver bed. Under the tree are four or five fallen leaves. A palace lady with her hair pinned up wears a pale yellow garment with half-sleeves colored bright red and with dark flowers on her patterned skirt. She sits on the square bed, which has a quilt but no bedskirt. She pounds silk with a pole at the foot of the bed, and a maidservant holding a pole stands in front of the bed. Another maidservant facing her beats the silk. The silk bears a pattern of flowers. According to the [Xuanhe] Painting Catalogue, [Zhang] Xuan made a painting of the poetic line: “By a golden well, a paulownia tree’s leaves turn yellow in autumn.” He titled it Lament of Changmen;59 dare I say that this is that painting? The banana leaves have turned slightly; this cannot be meaningless. Beneath the tree, a palace lady with a headdress of flowered brocade with a green ground, who wears an embroidered red skirt, sits on the square bed. In the picture, the even brocade fills a box, and a maidservant unrolls the red patterned silk to measure it. Beside them, autumn hibiscus grows lushly. Next to a lake rock, a young girl waves a fan at glowing coals, preparing them for use in ironing silk. Two palace ladies sit on the large square bed. One wears a flowered headdress and faces out toward the viewer. She wears a closefitting garment embroidered in red with half-sleeves colored blue, a skirt patterned with peach blossoms, and a double-red belt with ends dangling. The other, with one knee raised at the foot of the bed, stitches clothes. She wears a close-fitting garment in peach blossom brocade with green embroidered trim, and she cuts an embroidered section. Two maidservants hold the white silk twill, and a maidservant and a wife iron it. A young girl in white brocade playfully lowers her head beneath the silk. In the center, two figures, both with sashes about their chests, languidly tie them, and there is another with a different skirt. The foregoing constitutes one scroll. 一，大桐樹，下有井，井有銀牀。樹下落葉四五。一内人冠髻，著淡 黃半臂金紅衣，青花綾裙，坐方牀，牀加褥而無裙。一擣練杵倚牀 59 The Xuanhe Painting Catalogue passage describing Lament of Changmen and mentioning this poetic line appears in Zhang Xuan’s biography, but no painting of that title is listed at the end of the entry on Zhang Xuan, indicating that it may not have belonged to the imperial collection. Xuanhe huapu, 5.155–59.

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Chapter 3 下，一女使植杵立牀前。一女使對立擣練。練有花，今之文綾也。《 畫譜》謂：萱取『金井梧桐秋葉黃』之句為圖。名《長門怨》者，殆 謂此邪？芭蕉葉微變，不為無意。樹下一内人花錦冠，綠背搭，紅繡 為裙，坐方牀。繪，平錦滿箱，一女使展紅纈托量之。此下秋芙蓉滿 叢，湖石旁，一女童持扇熾炭，備熨帛之用。二内人坐大方牀：一戴 花冠，正面，九分紅繡窄衣，藍半臂，桃花裙，雙紅帶下垂尤顯然； 一膝跋牀角以就縫衣之便。一桃花錦窄衣，綠繡櫩，裁繡段。二女使 掙素綺，女使及一内人平熨之。一女童白錦衣，低首熨帛之下以為 戲。中二人雙綬帶胸腹閒繋之，亦有不與裙齊者。此上為一幅。60

In some respects, this could be a description of Huizong’s scroll.61 The copy, however, lacks the scenes of women measuring and cutting silk that Yuan Haowen describes. It also omits Zhang Xuan’s detailed setting of an autumnal garden: the well, the banana tree, the hibiscus, the lake rock, the fallen leaves of the paulownia tree—whose name in Chinese, wutong 梧桐, is a pun for “we are together” or “we are the same”—and even the bed, replacing many of these overtly erotic elements with a background of plain silk. This suggests that the painter of Huizong’s scroll took liberties in copying the original, which incorporated poetic imagery that would signify the longings of lonely women.62 Yuan Haowen’s description of Zhang Xuan’s original painting suggests that it may have drawn upon two poetic sources, both relating to imperial women abandoned by their emperors when younger entertainers attracted the emperors’ attention. First, and rather simply, if the title of Zhang Xuan’s painting was Lament of Changmen, that suggests a connection to the “Rhapsody on the Tall Gate Palace” (Changmen fu 長門賦), attributed to Sima Xiangru 司馬相如 (ca. 179–117 bce). Written in first-person female voice, it relates the plight of Empress Chen Jiao 陳嬌; Emperor Wudi of the Former Han 漢武帝 (r. 141–87 bce) sent her to live in the Changmen palace after he met singer Wei Zifu 衛子 夫. A preface of dubious origin claims that the rhapsody allowed the empress to regain the emperor’s favor.63 60 Yuan, Yuan Haowen quanji, 1:34.772. I am grateful to Shuen-fu Lin for help with this translation. 61 Wu, Tales from the Land of Dragons, 142. 62 Wu Tung suggests that the members of Huizong’s Imperial Painting Academy sometimes practiced a form of “selective imitation” in Tales from the Land of Dragons, 143. 63 See the translation and discussion by David Knechtges in Xiao, Selections of Refined Lite­ rature, 3:159–67; cf. Sima Zhangqing 司馬長卿 [Sima Xiangru], “Changmen fu,” in Xiao and Hu, Wen xuan, 16.5b–7b. On the preface, see David R. Knechtges, “Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju’s ‘Tall Gate Palace Rhapsody,’” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 41, no. 1 (June 1981): 49–51.

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Zhang Xuan’s second set of poetic allusions is more complex and involves the imperial concubine Ban Jieyu 班捷妤 (fl. ca. 48–ca. 6 bce), renowned for her virtue and rejected by Emperor Chengdi of the Former Han 漢成帝 (r. 32–7 bce) for the younger, lovelier dancer Zhao Feiyan 趙飛燕 and her sister. Yuan Haowen proposes that Zhang’s painting might have illustrated the opening line from the first of five poems titled “Autumn Song of Enduring Trust” (Changxin qiuci 長信秋詞) by Wang Changling;64 poet and painter both lived in the early eighth century, and Yuan Haowen indicates that the painting included the imagery of the poem’s first line. Comparing Wang Changling’s other four poems to the description of Zhang Xuan’s painting reveals some additional points of correspondence between the poetic and painted compositions, however: the second poem in the series mentions pounding-stones (zhen 砧), cutting (cai 裁), and sewing (feng 縫); the third describes a female figure holding a round fan; and the fifth refers to the sound of pounding cloth (daoyi sheng).65 This suggests that Zhang Xuan perhaps wished to allude to the cycle as a whole.66 Significantly, the female persona featured in the poems is recognizable as Ban Jieyu through the fifth poem’s mention of the Changxin palace, where she retired to serve the emperor’s mother, as well as through the third poem’s references to her broom and round fan.67 The Han History (Hanshu 漢書, first century ce) describes Ban Jieyu as a concubine with an admirable understanding of Confucian rules of deportment for women: in a famous incident, she refused to ride with the emperor in his palanquin, noting that paintings of ineffectual rulers showed them in proximity to their concubines, not their advisers. After the emperor became besotted with Zhao Feiyan, Ban Jieyu wrote a rhapsody lamenting her fate and, perhaps, another poem

64

65

66

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I Lo-fen, “Guiyuan yu xiangsi: Mou Yi Dao yi tu de jiedu 閨怨與相思：牟益『擣衣圖』 的解讀 [Melancholy Longings of the Boudoir: A Reading of Mou Yi’s Painting ‘Pounding Cloth’],” Zhongguo wenzhe yanjiu jikan 中國文哲研究季刊, no. 25 (September 2004): 37. For the Chinese text of all five poems, see Wang Changling, “Changxin qiuci,” QTS, 2:143.1445; they are translated and analyzed in Paula Varsano, “Whose Voice Is It Anyway? A Rereading of Wang Changling’s ‘Autumn in the Palace of Everlasting Faith: Five Poems,’” Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture 3, no. 1 (April 2016): 9–18. Varsano cautions that the poems have been understood as a cycle since the Southern Song but that there is no evidence that they were read that way earlier, in “Whose Voice Is It Anyway?” 8. Charles Egan, “Recent-Style Shi Poetry: Quatrains (Jueju),” in How to Read Chinese Poetry: A Guided Anthology, ed. Zong-qi Cai (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 211; Varsano, “Whose Voice Is It Anyway?” 15.

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(translated in Chapter 4).68 These references to historical figures indicate a specific variation on the abandoned woman theme, one in which an empress or a concubine of relatively high rank is exiled to a detached palace: possibly the subject and setting of Zhang Xuan’s lost painting. Intriguingly, some scholars regard the “Rhapsody on the Tall Gate Palace” and Ban Jieyu’s “Rhapsody of Self-Commiseration” (Zidao fu 自悼賦) as comparable compositions,69 underlining the similarities between Empress Chen and Ban Jieyu. Certain aspects of both Zhang Xuan’s original painting and Huizong’s copy should give the viewer pause. The most pressing question concerns the reason why palace women would be shown working with cloth. This aspect is likely present in the original, if Yuan Haowen’s description of Zhang Xuan’s painting can be taken as evidence. Yuan states that, though they have maidservants to assist them, ladies do the cutting, the sewing, and much of the pounding. In the Tang dynasty, when poems describe rural women laboring to produce garments that women of high status treat carelessly, it was probably not the norm for palace women to make clothes: in Wang Changling’s eighth-century poem cycle, for example, the persona of Ban Jieyu can be read as an observer or listener rather than a participant. Nor was it usual practice for the majority of imperial concubines in the Northern Song, when Huizong or one of his court painters copied Zhang Xuan’s scroll—although certain figures in the service organization of palace women were indeed responsible for the production of palace clothing, and eighteen of Huizong’s nineteen wives had been effectively promoted from this organization.70 One interpretation is that Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk represents a ritual activity known as “palace sericulture” (gongcan 宮蠶).71 In this practice, the empress and her palace women gathered mulberry leaves, reeled 68

69 70 71

Ban Jieyu and the passage from the Hanshu are discussed and her rhapsody translated in Idema and Grant, The Red Brush, 77–82. For more on Ban Jieyu, see David R. Knechtges, “The Poetry of an Imperial Concubine: The Favorite Beauty Ban,” Oriens Extremus 36, no. 2 (1993): 127–44; and Knechtges’s discussion and translations in Chang and Saussy, Women Writers of Traditional China, 17–21. The episode in which she refused to ride with the emperor is illustrated in the painting Admonitions of the Court Instructress to the Palace Ladies and discussed in Murray, “Who Was Zhang Hua’s ‘Instructress’?” 105–106. It also is illustrated in a scene from a lacquer-painted wooden screen found in the tomb of Sima Jinlong 司馬金龍 (d. 484), Northern Wei dynasty, 484, Shijiazhai, Datong, Shanxi province; a reproduction of the scene appears in McCausland, Gu Kaizhi and the Admonitions Scroll, pl. 19. Knechtges, “The Poetry of an Imperial Concubine,” 141–42. Ching Chung, Palace Women in the Northern Sung, 10, 91–102. Wu Tung discusses this possibility in Tales from the Land of Dragons, 142.

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silk from cocoons, and made clothing, either for sacrificial purposes or to be worn by the ruler. Accounts of palace sericulture in early historical texts reveal that the practice might have begun as early as 167 bce; they invariably describe the ceremony as beginning in springtime.72 Scenes depicting this imperial rite may have codified the symbolic role of a palace lady.73 In Huizong’s scroll, where the painter has omitted many components of Zhang Xuan’s setting that would connote loneliness—including bed, paulownia, banana tree, and all indications of autumn—this is a plausible interpretation. But it is not wholly satisfactory, for the painting flouts the conventions of palace sericulture in another way: the Monthly Ordinances (Yueling 月令, before 240 bce) specifically notes that women participating in the rite are commanded “not to adorn themselves in finery.”74 In this respect, palace sericulture does not fully explain the events portrayed in Huizong’s painting, although the women in Huizong’s scroll may be adorned in finery because this is the most efficient way of visually conveying their status as palace women. If Huizong’s scroll does represent the solemn rite of palace sericulture, why does it focus on only three steps of the process, and why these three (pounding silk, sewing, and ironing) in particular? The Northern Song painter did not reproduce every activity depicted in Zhang Xuan’s original painting, suggesting that those chosen for illustration were directly pertinent to the meaning he wished to convey. It seems likely that these steps were selected for their unabashedly erotic connotations. The innuendo inherent in an image of women pounding silk makes this the perfect opening for this scroll, if the painter primarily wishes to show the palace women’s desire for the emperor. This interpretation also accords greater significance to the Chinese title of Huizong’s scroll, Dao lian tu. Undoubtedly there was a reason for beginning with such a suggestive activity and then titling the painting after it. The next scene, which shows women working with thread, similarly accommodates the language of desire. The word for thread (si 絲) is a homophone for longing (si 思), and if the sewing woman is making clothing for the emperor, then the inclusion of this 72

Derk Bodde, Festivals in Classical China: New Year and Other Annual Observances during the Han Dynasty, 206 b.c.–a.d. 220 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), 263–72. According to Bodde, the texts include Monthly Ordinances [Yueling 月令, before 240 bce], The Book of Rites [Liji 禮記, dating to the Zhou and Han dynasties], The Rites of Zhou [Zhouli 周禮, dating to the late Zhou or early Han dynasty], Han History, Comprehensive Discussions in the White Tiger Hall [Baihu tongyi 白虎通義, 1st cent. ce], Han Old Observances [Han jiuyi 漢舊儀, ca. 25–27 ce], Han Observances [Hanyi 漢儀, ca. 251 ce], Sui History [Suishu 隋書, 6th–7th cent.] and Jin History [Jinshu, 6th–7th cent.]. 73 Wu Hung, “The Origins of Chinese Painting,” 76. 74 Bodde, Festivals in Classical China, 264.

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scene reiterates her vivid recall of the contours of his body. Finally, in the image of women ironing—a much less common trope in erotic poetry—the use of hot coals may be significant. A Northern Song lyric by Zhou Bangyan 周邦彥 (1056–1121) suggests that coals and ashes can be metaphors for feelings: She must see the old, dying coals within the gold censer. She won’t willingly let her fond feelings become like those cold ashes. 金爐應見舊殘煤。莫使恩情容易，似寒灰。75

The heat of the coals in Huizong’s scroll indicates the burning passion that these women must feel for their absent object of desire. If one follows poetic cues and reads Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk as representing the women’s desire, then the women shown here evoke archetypal figures of erotic poetry. In New Songs from a Jade Terrace, for example, poets commonly construed figures working with cloth as palace women wearing fine garments, hair ornaments, and cosmetics. One of several poems titled “Pounding Cloth” from this collection is especially helpful in interpreting the images in Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk. Written by Emperor Wudi of the Liang dynasty 梁武帝 (r. 502–49), it is set in a palace: They say he rode north of the Yi waters. I said goodbye north of the river. Deep in longing—the bit cruel in the horse’s mouth— I weave a dream in an empty bed. Waking suddenly, colors swim before my eyes, and I begin to be pained by fine white silk. In Zhongzhou leaves fall from the trees, and at the barriers frost must have come early. Insects hide as the weather grows severe, and grass in the courtyard turns yellow again. A golden wind on the only clear night, the bright moon suspended above inner chambers— slender and delicate, girls from this palace assist me in preparing garments. Irregular rhythm of the poles at night, 75

Zhou Bangyan, Tune: “Yu meiren 虞美人 [The Beautiful Lady Yu, 1/3],” QSC, 2:618; the complete lyric is translated by Irving Y. Lo in Liu and Lo, Sunflower Splendor, 363.

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sorrowful laments stirred by autumn stones. Light gauze flying on jade wrists, faint emerald on a base of red rouge, in vermilion cheeks color already rising, sidelong glances making eyes brighter. Pounding with all our “not-a-stone” a pattern of paired mandarin ducks; gripping a golden knife for the cutting, burning incense that smells of orchids. Our reunion is long in coming, so I’ll keep this to send to your cold country. Who is there to see my makeup? Longing for you makes one’s heart bitter. 駕言易水北，送別河之陽。沈思慘行鑣，結夢在空牀。既寤丹綠謬， 始知紈素傷。中州木葉下，邊城應早霜。陰蟲日慘烈，庭草復云 黃。金風但清夜，明月懸洞房。嫋嫋同宮女，助我理衣裳。參差夕 杵引，哀怨秋砧揚。輕羅飛玉腕，弱翠低紅妝。朱顏色已興，眄睇 目增光。擣以一匪石，文成雙鴛鴦。制握斷金刀，薰用如蘭芳。佳 期久不歸，持此寄寒鄉。妾身誰為容，思君苦人腸。76

This poem describes lonely palace women intricately made up, pounding and cutting cloth, with a brazier burning in the background. All of the labor is compressed into a single night, a poetic construct that does not accurately reflect the time necessary for completion of each task. In these respects, the poem is rather similar to Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk: both works share a reliance on conventional themes to convey feelings. In Wudi’s poem, the emphasis is on pounding cloth, an activity that the women carry out full of resolute feeling—“not-a-stone” acting as a kenning for the stalwart heart and alluding to the poem from the Book of Songs in which the metaphor first appeared.77 Wudi’s poem is explicit about the protagonist’s unhappiness, mentioning longing, pain, bitterness, and how she hears “mournful laments” in the 76

Xiao Yan 蕭衍 (464–549) [Emperor Wudi of the Liang 梁武帝, r. 502–49], “Dao yi [Pounding Cloth],” YTXY, 7.1a–b; cf. translation in Birrell, New Songs from a Jade Terrace, 182. I am grateful to Shuen-fu Lin for help with this translation. 77 Birrell, New Songs from a Jade Terrace, 321. The poem is “Bo zhou 柏舟 [Cypress Boat],” and the relevant couplet reads, “My heart is not a stone—you cannot turn it.” (我心匪 石，不可轉也。) Zhu Xi, ed., Shijing jizhu 詩經集注 [Collected Annotations to the “Book of Poetry”] (reprint; Taipei: Wanjuan lou tushu, 1996), 2.13; cf. translation in Waley, The Book of Songs, 71.

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sound of poles striking stones. It also contains indirect cues of melancholy, through mentions of both autumn and moonlight, which makes for an especially poignant image in poetry about separated lovers.78 In addition, the female persona’s failure to recognize her own face suggests that sorrow is adversely affecting her appearance. The textile pattern of paired mandarin ducks in the poem is an ironic image given the lovers’ separation, yet it represents the woman’s hope that their love will last. Despite the participation of a group of women, the poem clarifies that the work is done for the benefit of one man, the protagonist’s beloved. For court ladies, making clothes for a beloved traveler is an exceptional gesture. Because a woman of high rank does not need to undertake such toil herself, it becomes more meaningful if she personally handles these intimate tasks. And it is, of course, fitting that these are court ladies, considering that the imperial author might imagine himself as the recipient. Similarly, in Emperor Huizong’s painting, the identification of the figures as palace women reiterates that this is labor born of love or longing, not of necessity. The viewer first sees four women pounding silk. Judging from their hairstyles, none is a maid (contradicting Yuan Haowen’s description of the co­rresponding section of Zhang Xuan’s lost painting). Although these ladies could easily have maids do the work for them, it is important to the conceit that they process the cloth themselves. The painter emphasizes this through the placement of their slender white hands, which correlate with the self and simultaneously invite contrast with the substantial wooden poles they hold. A similar emphasis on hands is seen in the next section, showing two ladies working with thread. Here the graceful movement of their hands helps to identify their work, for the fine thread is not readily visible. In the scene of women ironing, we do see the assistance of maids: one helping to hold up the length of cloth, and a second fanning coals in the brazier. But ladies hold either end of the roll of white silk, and another passes a pan of coals over the cloth. The little girl playing beneath it adds a sense of whimsy to the painting, but more importantly serves as a foil for the uncharacteristic labor of the palace women. 78

The moon as metaphor for love had complex associations, with connotations of both unity and wavering. In one poem, a woman and a man, each married to someone else, take advantage of the moonlight to steal out for a tryst. The moon, slipping in and out of the clouds, seems to be a metaphor for marital infidelity, but it also helps to bring this couple together, by lighting their way. Xie Lingyun 謝靈運 (385–433), “Dongyang xi zhong zengda er shou 東陽谿中贈答二首 [An Exchange of Poems by Dongyang Stream],” YTXY, 10.3a; cf. translations in Birrell, New Songs from a Jade Terrace, 267; and Watson, The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry, 174. See also Du Fu’s “Yueye,” QTS, 4:224.2403; cf. translation in Watson, The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry, 224.

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Other details reinforce this reading. The combs that most of the ladies wear are made of spotted bamboo, a material that alludes to the longing of Emperor Shun’s two wives, the Xiang River goddesses, for their lost husband; they shed tears of blood that permanently stained the bamboo growing by the river.79 Here the subtle detail of spotted bamboo for the women’s combs is especially appropriate if they are consorts waiting for an imperial summons. The round fan held by the maid tending coals bears a painted scene of ducks by a snowy riverbank with reeds growing in the water. Significantly, ducks are metaphors for lasting love, and both the season and the river setting may represent the passage of time. Finally, one of the figures near the beginning of the scroll provides a gestural cue that indicates her desire. The fourth figure from the right meets the viewer’s eye as she pulls up her sleeve, revealing her pale forearm. Her action recalls a couplet from a poem by Wang Jian, titled “Song of Pounding Cloth” (Dao yi qu 擣衣曲): Women and girls face each other and begin to work. As they bare their white wrists, the mallets sing. 婦姑相對初力生，雙揎白腕調杵聲。80

As mentioned above, Wang Jian is known for writing a set of one hundred palace poems during the reign of Tang emperor Jingzong 敬宗 (r. 825–26); these poems claim secondhand knowledge of the activities of the palace women’s quarters.81 In exposing her plump arm, the woman not only opens a usually covered part of her body to the viewer’s gaze, but also discloses her status. Her skin is not coarsened by work and weathered by the sun, but soft and white— the skin of a pampered court lady. One could read her gesture as knowing and seductive or as unwittingly vulnerable. This single figure clarifies the painter’s awareness of the erotic subtext of the pictorial theme. Now: what are the references to eroticism found in Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk meant to convey? Let us return again to the problem of the status of the palace women. Certainly it derives from poetic tradition and 79

80 81

An early reference to this myth is found in Zhang Hua 張華 (232–300), Bowu zhi 博物志 [A Treatise on the Investigation of Things], ed. Zhou Riyong 周日用 (reprint, Taipei: Yiwen yinshuguan, ca. 1950), 10.2a. Wang Jian, “Dao yi qu 擣衣曲 [Song of Pounding Cloth],” YFSJ, 4:94.1317. For more on Wang Jian’s palace poems, see Egan, “Huizong’s Palace Poems,” 362–63. For the Chinese text of his palace poems, see QTS, 6:302.3439–46; nine of the series are translated by William H. Nienhauser in Liu and Lo, Sunflower Splendor, 193–95.

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makes the unlikely labor of these women even more meaningful. However, their identification as palace women may be important for another reason. Because this scroll was produced directly for the emperor (if not literally by him), and because it represents imperial ladies, the focal point of their longing would appear to be Huizong himself. Perhaps Huizong projected himself as the object of their desire. One can imagine what an appealing image this must have been on a personal level, with implications for the emperor’s virility, but it potentially has political applications as well. One can, again, interpret this painting of women desiring the emperor as concerned with the allegory of the loyalty of the subject to the ruler. Huizong could have commissioned this copy of Zhang Xuan’s scroll with just this interpretation in mind: many of the paintings that emerged from Huizong’s court record auspicious events, which fulfill the distinctly political function of affirming the correctness of Huizong’s reign.82 In keeping with (but perhaps subtler than) images of auspicious omens, which represent Huizong’s possession of the mandate of heaven and which were likely displayed at court,83 Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk serves as an implicit display of Huizong’s ability to command his subjects’ devotion and loyalty, even though one cannot assume that this painting served as a public image. Huizong’s work in another field provides some assurances that Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk encodes both an erotic and an allegorical meaning. The emperor’s palace poems represent a significant departure from earlier collections. Those written by Wang Jian and Lady Huarui 花蕊夫人 (consort of Meng Chang 孟昶, r. 934–65, of the Latter Shu kingdom) tended to focus on palace ladies, while Huizong’s take up topics that cast aspects of his governance in a favorable light. The fact that Huizong nevertheless continues to write about palace ladies indicates that they too can embody confirmations of his fitness to rule, particularly because his poems insist upon the virtue of his ladies.84 Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk has a dual meaning. The reference to palace sericulture—which cannot be overlooked—allows the viewer to understand the women as virtuous. At the same time, the choice of the most erotic aspects of the rite, and the seemingly incongruous emphasis on the women’s artificially heightened beauty, deepens the allegorical reading by 82

83 84

Bickford, “Emperor Huizong and the Aesthetic of Agency,” 72–73, 89; Peter C. Sturman, “Cranes above Kaifeng: The Auspicious Image at the Court of Huizong,” Ars Orientalis 20 (1990): 35, 36, 41. Bickford, “Huizong’s Paintings,” 485. Egan, “Huizong’s Palace Poems,” 382–83, 387–88.

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opening up the possibility of representing the women’s desires. The absence from the painting of any male figure to represent the object of their desire encourages a male viewer to project himself as that object. Because these women in Huizong’s scroll must be understood as imperial concubines, the male viewer implicated is Huizong himself. The references to emotion in Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk suggest that it must have been a relatively private painting, but still one that veils its eroticism with a veneer of decorum. Thus, Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk is a painting of striking subtlety. Its references to palace sericulture allow a viewer who so chooses to focus on the virtuous qualities of Huizong’s imperial concubines, tempering the erotic connotations of the theme. But those erotic connotations cannot be wholly suppressed, so well do they correspond to the tropes developed in palace-style poetry, Music Bureau poetry, and song lyric—in some cases even seeming to cite certain poetic lines. This allows the viewer to read this painting as a representation of the desire of the concubines for the emperor, calling to mind the allegorical interpretations of such poetic themes. As such, Huizong’s scroll stands as a double-edged comment on his fitness to rule, one that takes a Tang image of palace women’s longing and bends it to the will of the Northern Song emperor. This is most likely an allegorical painting—but the allegory can only be completed through the projection of the emperor as the absent male object of the women’s desire.

Mou Yi’s Pounding Cloth

A painting that more fully explores the sorrowful aspects of the theme of women making clothes for absent men appears over a century later, in the Southern Song. In 1240, the painter Mou Yi completed his second version of a handscroll titled Pounding Cloth (figs. 12.1–12.8).85 It is significantly different from Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk, despite the similarity of the theme: Mou Yi did not create this painting at court, and his painting seems a much more private endeavor than Huizong’s.86 85

86

Pounding Cloth is on the list of the seventy most restricted works of art in the former imperial collection. Guoli Gugong Bowuyuan, Gugong shuhua jinghua teji 故宮書畫菁 華特輯 [Catalogue to the Treasured Paintings and Calligraphic Works in the National Palace Museum], trans. Donald E. Brix (Taipei: Guoli Gugong Bowuyuan, 1996), 126–31. My argument about Mou Yi’s status as a professional or amateur painter has been published in slightly different form in Lara C.W. Blanchard, “Mou Yi’s Pounding Cloth: Paint-

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We know little about Mou Yi’s status: he seems to embody aspects of both court and literati painters.87 I have only found three texts that give any information about him, suggesting that he was a relatively unknown figure. Of these, the most illuminating source is his own two-part colophon for Pounding Cloth. The first part, which he wrote upon completing the painting, refers to his sources of inspiration. The second part, which he wrote when he decided to present the painting as a gift, explains his history of giving away handscrolls on this theme. The colophon reveals that he came from Shu (present-day Sichuan province) and suggests that between 1238 and 1240, he was moving about Jiangxi province in southeast China. Tellingly, it betrays the rhetoric of a scholar.88 Another testament to his literati sensibilities can be found in the Record of Calligraphy in the Imperial Song (Huang Song shulu 皇宋書錄), written by the connoisseur Dong Shi (the recipient of Mou Yi’s second Pounding Cloth painting) around the year 1242; it alludes to the painter as a late friend and mentions his interest in archaic calligraphic scripts.89 Finally, a very short account in Xia 87

88

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ing, Play, Reference, and Discourse in Song China,” Artibus Asiae 73, no. 2 (2013): 295–98. Although later Chinese critics seem to suggest a strict dichotomy between court painters and the literati in this period—see, for example, Dong Qichang’s formulation of the Northern and Southern Schools of painters—recent research indicates that in the tenth to thirteenth centuries there was a good deal of overlap between the two spheres. For more on the Northern and Southern Schools, see Bush, The Chinese Literati on Painting, 158–72. On the literati, see Robert E. Harrist Jr., “I Don’t Believe in the Literati but I Miss Them: A Postscript,” Ars Orientalis 37 (2007): 214; Deborah Del Gais Muller, “Hsia Wen-yen and His T’u-Hui Pao-Chien (Precious Mirror of Painting),” Ars Orientalis 18 (1988): 139; cited in Jerome Silbergeld, “The Yuan ‘Revolutionary’ Picnic: Feasting on the Fruits of Song (A Historiographic Menu),” Ars Orientalis 37 (2007): 21. His inscription hints that the act of sharing the painting with others was ultimately more important than the painting itself, an idea reinforced by the inscriptions of the recipient and later viewers; in a sense, this makes the handscroll more event than object, which could be interpreted as more in keeping with a scholar’s attitude toward art. Vinograd, “Situation and Response,” 365–74. Mou Yi’s presentation of his Pounding Cloth paintings to friends and acquaintances as a means of discharging obligations could also suggest literati practice; explorations of the topic can be found in James Cahill, The Painter’s Practice: How Artists Lived and Worked in Traditional China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 59–67; James Cahill, “Types of Artist-Patron Transactions in Chinese Painting,” in Li, Artists and Patrons, 9, 13, 15–17; and Michael Sullivan, “Some Notes on the Social History of Chinese Art,” in Proceedings of the International Conference on Sinology: Section of History of Arts [Zhongyang Yanjiuyuan Guoji Hanxue huiyi lunwenji 中央研究院國際 漢學會議論文集] (Taipei: Academia Sinica, 1981), Vol. 7, Section of the History of Arts [Yishushi zu 藝術史組], 159–70. Dong Shi, Huang Song shulu 皇宋書錄 [Record of Calligraphy of the Imperial Song] (ca. 1242; reprint, Taipei: Yiwen yinshuguan, 1966), 3.9a; for a translation, see Blanchard, “Mou

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Wenyan’s Treasured Mirror of Painting describes the artist as a court painter of the competent class during the reigns of emperors Lizong 理宗 (r. 1225–64) and Duzong 度宗 (r. 1265–74).90 Xia Wenyan was writing over a century later, which may account for his apparent mistake about the painter’s life dates, but his identification of Mou Yi as a court painter is perhaps affirmed by the content of Pounding Cloth itself. The literary source of the painting is a palace-style poem of the same title by Xie Huilian 謝惠連 (407–33),91 and paintings on such themes were disdained by Northern Song literati.92 While it is difficult to reconcile Mou Yi’s scholarly leanings with the textual and pictorial evidence of courtly associations, it is possible that he was a professional court painter with the attitude of an amateur.93 Mou Yi’s status is relevant because it suggests a broadening audience for shinü hua in the Southern Song. The handscroll begins with three important texts: Mou Yi’s painting; a copy of Xie Huilian’s poem; and Mou Yi’s two-part colophon detailing his artistic process. It is necessary to read all three together to understand what the painter accomplished in this scroll, which may be read as a projection of a man’s feelings onto female figures. He depicts a household of distraught women rising in the dead of an autumn night to make winter clothes for husbands long gone to the frontier: the subject of Xie’s poem. Visualizing a Palace-Style Poem The first thing Mou Yi’s colophon tells readers is that he took Xie Huilian’s poem as his inspiration.94 Selected for inclusion in New Songs from a Jade Terrace, this poem was a classic of the palace-style genre. It includes all the Yi’s Pounding Cloth,” 295–96. 90 Xia, Tuhui baojian, 4.19b. 91 Xie Huilian’s life dates have elsewhere been given as 397–433, but David Knechtges offers these revised dates in his biographical sketch of the poet in Xiao, Selections of Refined Literature, 3: 392. Nicholas Morrow Williams explains the argument for these dates in “A Conversation in Poems: Xie Lingyun, Xie Huilian, and Jiang Yan,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 127, no. 4 (October 1, 2007): 491 n. 1. 92 Mi Fu’s Painting History assesses such works as follows: “As for [paintings of] ladies and feathers-and-fur, those of high rank seek pleasure as they playfully examine them, but they do not come up to the class of pure objects of amusement.” (至於士女翎毛，貴游 戯閱，不如清玩。) Mi, Huashi, 52. 93 Valérie Malenfer Ortiz, Dreaming the Southern Song Landscape: The Power of Illusion in Chinese Painting (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 4, 54. 94 My subsequent argument about the correspondence between Mou Yi’s painting and Xie Huilian’s poem as well as allusions to earlier painting styles has been published in slightly different form in Blanchard, “Mou Yi’s Pounding Cloth,” 305–306, 308–16, 329–30.

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Figure 12.1 Pounding Cloth. Mou Yi (ca. 1178–ca. 1242), Southern Song dynasty, 1240; handscroll, ink on paper, 27.1 × 466.4 cm. The Collection of National Palace Museum (SH23), Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C.

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Figure 12.2

Pounding Cloth. Mou Yi (ca. 1178–ca. 1242), Southern Song dynasty, 1240; handscroll, ink on paper, 27.1 × 466.4 cm. The Collection of National Palace Museum (SH23), Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C.

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Figure 12.3

Pounding Cloth. Mou Yi (ca. 1178–ca. 1242), Southern Song dynasty, 1240; handscroll, ink on paper, 27.1 × 466.4 cm. The Collection of National Palace Museum (SH23), Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C.

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Figure 12.4

Pounding Cloth. Mou Yi (ca. 1178–ca. 1242), Southern Song dynasty, 1240; handscroll, ink on paper, 27.1 × 466.4 cm. The Collection of National Palace Museum (SH23), Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C.

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Figure 12.5

Pounding Cloth. Mou Yi (ca. 1178–ca. 1242), Southern Song dynasty, 1240; handscroll, ink on paper, 27.1 × 466.4 cm. The Collection of National Palace Museum (SH23), Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C.

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Figure 12.6

Pounding Cloth. Mou Yi (ca. 1178–ca. 1242), Southern Song dynasty, 1240; handscroll, ink on paper, 27.1 × 466.4 cm. The Collection of National Palace Museum (SH23), Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C.

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Figure 12.7

Pounding Cloth. Mou Yi (ca. 1178–ca. 1242), Southern Song dynasty, 1240; handscroll, ink on paper, 27.1 × 466.4 cm. The Collection of National Palace Museum (SH23), Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C.

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Figure 12.8

Pounding Cloth. Mou Yi (ca. 1178–ca. 1242), Southern Song dynasty, 1240; handscroll, ink on paper, 27.1 × 466.4 cm. The Collection of National Palace Museum (SH23), Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C.

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hallmarks of the theme of women pounding cloth: autumnal setting, women taking care with their dress as if to meet their lovers, work intensifying their feelings of sorrow. Xie’s poem can be roughly divided into four sections. Xie Huilian begins his poem with attention to time and setting, in lines 1–6: The Big Dipper does not linger in one place; the sundial moves quickly, as if pressed. White dew soaks the garden chrysanthemums, and autumn winds lay bare a locust tree in the courtyard. Susu, buzz katydid wings. Lielie, the cicadas cry. 衡紀無淹度，晷運焂如摧。白露滋園菊，秋風落庭槐。肅肅莎雞羽，   烈烈寒螿啼。95

Here Xie considers the movement of a constellation96 and the rapid progress of a sundial, referring to the passage of seasons and ever-shorter days. Then the poet turns his attention to a garden, with two couplets full of images indicating the season: “white dew,” one of twenty-four periods of the year, beginning September 8;97 chrysanthemums that bloom in autumn; autumn winds that cause leaves to fall. Even the mournful “crying” of katydids and cicadas is significant: although a casual reader might assume that the characters used to represent their sounds are merely onomatopoeic, susu suggests a desolate mood, and lielie implies a chilly feeling.98 The opening section provides the first hint that this work concerns the sorrow of separation. Lines 7–12 introduce the poem’s protagonists, who dress and adorn themselves as if preparing for a nocturnal rendezvous with their lovers, but only call to each other. In the darkness of night, the empty blinds are tied up, and the moonlit sky brightens the inner apartments. 95

96 97 98

Xie Huilian, “Dao yi,” YTXY, 3.16a–b. My translation of this and succeeding sections of the poem is especially indebted to Burton Watson’s in The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry, 176. I published earlier versions of this translation in Blanchard, “Mou Yi’s Pounding Cloth,” 308–309, and in idem., “Lonely Women and the Absent Man,” 36–37. The Chinese star referred to here, Hengji 衡紀, is identified as the fifth star of the Big Dipper in Luo, Hanyu da cidian, s.v. Hengji and Yuheng 玉衡. Mathews’ Chinese-English Dictionary, rev. ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1956), 1178. I am grateful to Wen-chien Cheng for this observation.

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Beautiful women fasten their garments. Neatly adorned, they summon each other: jade hairpins emerge from northern rooms, tinkling gold walks through southern halls. 夕陰結空幕，霄月皓中閨。美人戒裳服，端飭相招攜。簪玉出北房，   鳴金步南階。

These lines imply that the women so miss their lovers in the lengthening autumn nights that, sleepless, they are compelled to rise. Xie Huilian begins this section with a couplet that establishes the setting as the women’s quarters in the middle of the night. While the tied blinds may be a metaphor for their constraint, more importantly they show that all may be revealed. They permit the reader a voyeuristic glimpse into the apartments, and also allow light, which as a yang element is gendered masculine, to penetrate into feminine space. Then Xie describes them getting dressed, an activity generally carried out behind closed doors. He uses metonymy to reduce the women to their ornaments, which indicate their precious and protected status and, by “tinkling,” also reveal the delicacy and grace of their movement. These women are overwhelmingly feminine. At the end of this section, the women move out of feminine space,99 a crossing that helps to imply their loneliness, because it reiterates that there are no men about. Their transgression of the boundary between feminine and masculine space, in addition, may have been titillating for male readers. In the third section of the poem, lines 13–16, Xie turns to the women’s activity on this night: they use poles to pound cloth against stones. Beneath high eaves the flat stones resonate, and by tall columns, the pounding poles sound sad. Subtle fragrance rises from pairs of sleeves, while light sweat smudges pairs of brows. 櫩高砧響發，楹長杵聲哀。微芳起兩袖，輕汗染雙題。

99

“Northern rooms” is one way to refer to the inner quarters in the Southern Dynasties, when the women’s living space was situated in the north of a wealthy household. Birrell, New Songs from a Jade Terrace, 321, s.v. “north.” I discussed this idea in Blanchard, “Lonely Women and the Absent Man,” 37.

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The poet firmly establishes their desirability: they seem too well-dressed for the labor-intensive activity of pounding cloth, and even the bodily marks of their exertion seem beautiful, for they emit fragrance and only perspire lightly, causing their makeup to fade. Their slight disarray might heighten their attractiveness to men, ironic considering the absence of their husbands from the fictive space of the poem, but completely in keeping with the expectations of the reader. Also in this section, for the second time, Xie mentions sadness in conjunction with a sound, here the beat of pounding poles. This parallels the melancholy sound of calling cicadas and emphasizes the poignancy of the moment. Indeed, the descriptions of high eaves and long columns serve mainly to suggest a large space completely filled by their unhappiness. The conclusion of the poem, in lines 17–24, focuses on one woman, who speaks her feelings in a soliloquy. “The fine white silk is already made, but my traveling husband has not yet returned. Cut it with the scissors from my bamboo box, then sew a robe to last ten thousand miles. The chest I fill with my own hands, and all alone I shut it, to await your opening. The belt for your waist I made as in the past, but I don’t know if it will still fit.” 紈素既已成，君子行未歸。裁用笥中刀，縫為萬里衣。盈篋自予手，   幽緘侯君開。腰帶准疇昔，不知今是非。

The speaker first muses aloud about her own involvement in the task at hand— the particulars of preparing and sending the clothing—and appears to give directions to a servant. But in line 21, she begins to address her husband directly. This line also marks the sudden appearance of the personal pronoun yu, making an emphatic contrast with the woman’s delegation of other duties. It is possibly relevant that the character Xie Huilian uses for the chest that she fills, qie 篋, is identical to the one he uses in another poem for a “longing-for-eachother box” (xiangsi qie 相思篋) that holds cloth.100 This final passage decisively identifies the reason for the woman’s sadness as her separation from her husband, only hinted at previously. In the last couplet, wondering whether his belt will fit as before, she betrays a fear that things will never be the same: he could 100

Xie Huilian, “Dai gu 代古 [After a Classic],” YTXY, 3.16b–17a; cf. translation by Birrell, New Songs from a Jade Terrace, 106.

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be starving or dead, or he might never return. The mention of his waist is the only reference to his physiognomy in the poem, contrasting with the many details of the woman’s body: her hands, her brow, her sweat, her sleeves, her movement through the apartments, the act of getting dressed. Xie effectively contrasts her corporeality with her husband’s more uncertain existence. Mou Yi’s visual adaptation of this poem follows the narrative, but of necessity he emphasizes certain aspects, downplays others, and introduces new elements. While he employs much of Xie’s imagery in his painting, he also draws upon visual sources that enhance the emotional quality of the theme. In fact, most of Mou Yi’s changes relate to the difficulties of representing feelings visually. This is suggested in the first part of his colophon, which begins: The poem on the right is Pounding Cloth by Xie Huilian (five characters per line, twelve rhymes). This work [the poem] details the attitudes, activities, and expressions of the gentle women of the inner quarters. There are countless concepts and tones within it, and subtleties that lodge outside of words. I continually sigh in admiration of it. Accordingly, I selected Zhou Fang’s beautiful women, in their tranquil positions, and painted them to make a handscroll [on this theme]. My thoughts were shallow and my brush awkward. Although [my painting] is not sufficient to fully describe the implied parts of Xie’s poem, one may say that it is a literal interpretation, and thus it naturally can be called similar. 右謝惠連擣衣詩五言十二韻。曲盡閨闈婉嫡動息矉伸之態。意韻萬 千。妙在言外。詠歎不已。因取周昉美人。稍加位置。畫為橫卷。思 短筆拙。雖不足以形容謝詩妙處。若曰模章寫句。亦自謂得其彷彿。101

This passage brings up several important points. Mou Yi, with possibly ironic humility, claims that his painting is only a literal interpretation of Xie’s poem, unable to capture the underlying implications of the theme. At the same time, his writing reveals his admiration for Xie’s depiction of the “attitudes, activities, and expressions of the gentle women of the inner quarters.” He praises the poem for its subtlety and intimates that his own work cannot equal it in the 101

Guoli Gugong Bowuyuan, Gugong shuhua lu 2:4.64–65. My translation of it here and below is first indebted to Richard Edwards’s published translation in “Mou I’s Colophon to His Pictorial Interpretation of ‘Beating the Clothes,’” Archives of the Chinese Art Society of America 18 (1964): 7–12; I am also grateful for the comments of Martin J. Powers and his students in the spring of 1996. A full translation of the colophon appears in Blanchard, “Mou Yi’s Pounding Cloth,” 298–99.

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expression of emotion, what he refers to as “the implied parts of Xie’s poem.” This modesty should not be accepted at face value; considering Mou Yi’s respect for what Xie has accomplished, it stands to reason that he would attempt to create an equally nuanced painting. Mou Yi’s painting is comprised of six scenes, based on his use of compositional dividers such as trees and the grouping of figures. The opening scene (figs. 12.1–12.2) depicts an autumnal garden, corresponding to lines 1–6 of Xie Huilian’s poem. It presents a view of a courtyard in which chrysanthemums bloom. Katydids, recognizable from their long antennae and bent legs, perch on two of the plants. In the air, to the left of a much later inscription,102 a cicada flies, its wings a blur; another crawls on the trunk of a tree as leaves fall. Mou Yi takes the courtyard, chrysanthemums, tree with falling leaves, katydids, and cicada directly from the poem. He omits the sundial, the stars, and the dew—the last, at least, might be difficult to paint—but the images he selects from Xie’s poem are more than sufficient to establish the season as autumn and set a melancholic mood. The rhetorical strategy of penetration is especially evident in the painting’s second scene, which introduces the protagonists (figs. 12.2–12.3). In this scene, six ladies put the finishing touches on their appearances while standing on a sheltered porch. This scene corresponds to lines 7–10 of Xie’s poem, and as in the text, Mou Yi depicts lovely women dressing: the first one from the right ties her sash, the second fingers her scarf, the third opens a jar, and the fourth fastens an earring.103 They all dress alike, in V-necked garments with long skirts and ornately patterned scarves wrapped around their shoulders, and the four at the left all wear combs in their hair. These details of their dress indicate that these women are of high status within the household, and the fact that the first ties her sash may signify that they are married women: it recalls the sash-binding ceremony (jieli 結縭) performed at the time of marriage, a material representation of a woman’s connection to her husband and his family.104 The women are arranged in pairs, sharing a quiet sympathy. Mou Yi frames them with rolled-up blinds above, trees at right and left, and a railing below. They are, in essence, surrounded by barriers. The necessity of penetrating the space to pry into a usually private activity contributes to the sense of voyeurism, 102 103

The inscription, dated 1748, is by Qing emperor Qianlong. The fifth woman makes a gesture that is difficult to interpret: with hands crossed, she points to her right eye. 104 Ban Jieyu reflects on this in her “Rhapsody on Self-Commiseration,” as discussed in Knechtges, “The Poetry of an Imperial Concubine,” 138.

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present in the poem also but much more tangible here. The process of probing beneath the surface to better expose their feelings has begun. The moonlight, an important element in the second section of the poem, suffuses the entire scroll but is especially evident in this and the previous scene, where Mou Yi paints luminous tree trunks and leaves. In this scene, Mou Yi’s allusion to Zhou Fang is clear, yet the figures are executed in a style that is quite different. For example, the figures in Ladies Adorning Their Hair with Flowers (fig. 17), attributed to Zhou Fang, are painted in a naturalistic style meant to display the court painter’s skill. Look at the second woman from the right: the artist not only uses rich color but also models the lady’s right arm to show the roundness of the form. The way the pattern of her skirt undulates suggests the body underneath, and the sheer fabric of her scarf is carefully rendered. Mou Yi, however, draws his figures in simple, lightly modulated outlines. His use of patterning is sparser and does little to suggest depth, and generally he seems less concerned with material details. Mou Yi’s ladies are less elegant than Zhou Fang’s, their faces less delicate, their clothing less opulent. But the two sets of figures are still strangely alike. They share the same quiet demeanor, the same manner of tilting their heads to one side, even the same dainty finger movements. Throughout Pounding Cloth, Mou Yi’s women exhibit restraint. Moving through the scroll to the third scene, the viewer next finds two groups of four figures making their way through a courtyard (presumably one that is not reserved for their use) toward another porch and a suite of rooms, as in lines 11–12 of the poem (figs. 12.4–12.5). They are a combination of ladies and maids; Mou Yi signals their status through size, hairstyles, and subtle details of clothing, especially distinctions between ornate and simple patterns on scarves. But the faces of all are somber. The two in the lead are maids (as is evident from their short stature, bound hair, and spotted scarves); they carry candlesticks, useful in indicating the nighttime setting. Behind them stroll two ladies (in more intricately patterned scarves), whose serene demeanor is belied by the way they stand close together, as if seeking comfort from each other. The one on the right wears an ornament with three columns of hanging baubles on her belt: the tinkling gold ornaments described in the poem. Following them come two ladies adjusting their hairpins, and two maids (wearing plain scarves) who carry bolts of cloth. Mou Yi captures both their beauty and the restlessness that causes them to rise at such a late hour, and also provides an early hint of how the women will pass the night. They approach a covered pavilion, where the night’s work begins (fig. 12.6); this is the fourth scene. The simple structure is delineated by posts at each

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corner105 and raised blinds hanging from eaves too high to be seen. At the right, a maid kneels on the floor, spreading cloth on a low table with carved legs. In the center, two ladies hold a single pole and beat cloth against a block. In unison, they reach up to wipe the sweat away from their temples, mirroring each other. A third lady supervises the labor from a chair, gripping the armrests. A second maid, holding a bowl in one hand and with a towel draped over her shoulder, waits on her. The weary gestures of the two ladies who do the pounding and the tension of the seated lady reveal how much they have invested, both physically and emotionally, in this work. As in the second scene, Mou Yi frames the tableau so that the viewer seems to peep in at them. In this climactic scene, which corresponds to lines 13–16 of Xie Huilian’s poem, Mou Yi first starts to embellish upon the text. He keeps the poet’s high eaves and tall columns, as well as the women working and perspiring. What he adds are rolled-up blinds—here, made of spotted bamboo, and referring to the sorrow of women separated from their husbands—and a screen painting infused with the anxiety of separation. It depicts a river with misty hills in the background, painted in the style of a twelfth-century river landscape, Dream Journey over the Xiao and Xiang Rivers (Xiao Xiang woyou tu 瀟湘臥遊圖), by Master Li of Shucheng 舒城李生.106 Mist refers to impermanence by its transient nature, and rivers to the passage of time in their continuous flowing, so together they can represent the uncertainty effected by a long separation. But even more appropriately, travelers frequently people scenes of rivers wending their way past mountains.107 Erotic poetry gives the impression that ladies 105

In the right front corner, where a post should be, there is none; but a paper seam here and a strangely truncated cut-out in the railing in the background indicate that a short section of the painting has been removed, probably during remounting. 106 Master Li of Shucheng, Dream Journey over the Xiao and Xiang Rivers, ca. 1170, Tokyo National Museum. Valérie Malenfer Ortiz mentions the connections between Master Li’s painting and the first landscape represented in Mou Yi’s painting, and she notes that while Master Li may have been a relative or descendant of Li Gonglin, it is impossible to be certain; Ortiz, Dreaming the Southern Song Landscape, 44–46, 54, 108; the painting is reproduced in her pl. 1. 107 This is the case in several Song landscape paintings. See, for example, Li Tang 李唐 (ca. 1050–after 1130), Mountains by the River (Jiangshan xiaojing 江山小景), National Palace Museum, Taipei, reproduced in Guoli Gugong Bowuyuan, Gugong shuhua jinghua teji 故 宮書畫菁華特輯, cat. no. 36; Xia Gui 夏珪 (fl. ca. 1180–1224), Twelve Views of Landscape (Shanshui shi’er jing 山水十二景), Southern Song, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Mo. (32-159/2), reproduced in Eight Dynasties of Chinese Painting, cat. no. 58; Xia Sheng 夏森, Full Sail on the Misty River (Yanjiang fanying tu 煙江帆影圖), 13th cent., Southern Song, Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Oh. (former Collection of Mr. and Mrs. A. Dean Perry), reproduced in Eight Dynasties of Chinese Painting, cat. no. 60.

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never emerged from the inner quarters of their houses; at most, they might venture into a secluded garden. This makes a striking contrast with the men in their lives (merchants, conscripts, officials), who were often required to travel and thus are generally absent in these poems. In such scenarios, the women remain at home, waiting with growing distress for their men to return. Because travelers who moved through mountainous landscapes were typically men, it follows that a woman left behind might look at such a painting and visualize her absent lover. The screen painting thus suggests the cause of the women’s anxiety: not merely their husbands’ journey, but also their husbands’ absence.108 The screen neatly frames the heads of the three principal figures of this scene, hinting that this painting-within-painting represents their interiority; it thus can be read as a pictorial example of the poetic concept of the melding of feeling and scene. After the cloth has been pounded, three women bring it over to a raised platform where two women measure and cut a gleaming length of it and a third stitches clothes; this is the fifth scene (figs. 12.7–12.8).109 Three more women simply look on. In this scene, the faces and postures of the women become even more telling of their sorrow. One woman who carries the finished cloth, for example, frowns at the material in her hands, her face contracting as if she might burst into sobs. The others seem unable to tear themselves away from the scene. Two of the women watching stand close together, and one rests her arms on the other’s shoulders—perhaps companionably, perhaps in need of support. In depicting these emotional figures, Mou Yi deviates again from the poem. Lines 17–20 of Xie’s poem feature a distraught wife talking mostly to herself, but in the painted scene the presence of a large group of sympathetic women means that no single figure suffers alone. However, a landscape screen that Mou Yi has inserted into this tableau suggests that it is actually the three figures cutting and sewing cloth that are most affected by the men’s absence. The screen, painted in the style of Zhao Lingrang 趙令穰 (nicknamed Danian 大年, fl. ca. 1080–ca. 1100), depicts a river with willow trees faintly visible through the mist on the far bank and short, dark clumps of bamboo prominent at right. (See figs. 21.1–21.4 for an example of Zhao Lingrang’s painting, similar to Mou Yi’s painting-within-painting in its low embankments, depicted with horizontal strokes, and in the trunks of trees, rendered in emphatic strokes of a wet brush.) The addition of willow trees heightens the effect of this screen: they refer to the separation of friends or lovers in two ways. In the Han dynasty, willow branches were a memento given at 108 109

I discuss these ideas in Blanchard, “Lonely Women and the Absent Man,” 38. Another inscription by Emperor Qianlong, dated 1754, appears in this scene.

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the time of parting: sometimes the traveler would take the branch with him on his journey, but if kept by the one who stayed behind, the branch might sometimes be sent to the traveler to bring him home again.110 Secondly, the Chinese word for willow, liu 柳, is a homophone for another liu 留, “to stay” or “to remain behind.”111 This landscape is thus permeated with the sorrow of parting. In his tacit reference to the distance between lovers, Mou Yi may have meant to provide a pictorial counterpart to Xie Huilian’s words: “a robe to last ten thousand miles.” “Ten thousand miles” in some ways recalls long landscape handscrolls, which could bear titles such as A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains,112 although the type of painting that this referred to is more similar to the landscape screen that appeared in the previous scene, not this more intimate view of a riverbank. As in the preceding scene, the screen frames the heads of the three women laboring, suggesting that they have turned to work to give full voice to their feelings. In the sixth and final scene, Mou Yi returns to a more literal interpretation of the poem, closely adhering to the images of its final four lines. He depicts a group of women packing garments into a trunk (fig. 12.8). A maid stands by with an armful of clothing, while the hands of an older lady—her age apparent from the wrinkles around her mouth—are busy at the trunk’s lid. A third woman simply sits: the terrible expression on her face and her dejected posture suggest that she is overcome with grief. She and the others are transfixed by a belt held in the fourth woman’s hands. The most salient aspect of this scene is their apparent bereavement. The figures in the scroll gradually become more and more expressive, moving from the stoic faces of the second scene to the somber faces and gesture of comfort in the third, from the tension of the fourth scene to the frowns and supportive gestures of the fifth. In this last scene, the viewer finds the most mournful faces in the scroll. The lady who holds the belt, for example, looks at it with grief-stricken eyes. Her face even seems swollen, as if she has been crying. Throughout the scroll, Mou Yi pays careful attention to what he calls “the attitudes, activities, and expressions of the gentle women of the inner quarters.” As a result, their feelings are suggested by their labor and made explicit in 110 Frankel, The Flowering Plum and the Palace Lady, 96. 111 On associations between willows and parting, see Jerome Silbergeld, “Kung Hsien’s SelfPortrait in Willows, with Notes on the Willow in Chinese Painting and Literature,” Artibus Asiae 42, no. 1 (1980): 26. I discuss these ideas in Blanchard, “Lonely Women and the Absent Man,” 41. 112 For an example from the Northern Song, see Wang Ximeng 王希孟 (1096–1119), A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains (Wanli jiangshan 萬里江山), ca. 1113, Palace Museum, Beijing, reproduced in Gugong Bowuyuan, Gugong Bowuyuan canghua ji 2:94–132.

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their faces, postures, and gestures. A sense of melancholy suffuses this handscroll. At the same time, and proving his own words too humble, Mou Yi finds a way to match “the implied parts of Xie’s poem,” achieving the “subtleties that lodge outside of words” that he admired in the earlier text. He does this chiefly through the rhetorical use of landscape screens in the fourth and fifth scenes. Mou Yi’s painting, with its complex pictorial rendering of longing and sorrow, surpasses most extant examples of shinü hua in its representation of women’s emotional attachments. Far from stopping with the deployment of a type of labor that was traditionally coded as representing love or longing, the painter avails himself of the expressive potential of the body and uniquely visual elements such as paintings-within-a-painting. His conception of space, too, is significant: Pounding Cloth begins with a representation of a garden, and the movements of the figures, from a porch to a courtyard to another porch and finally to a suite of rooms, give the viewer the impression of being led inexorably inward (even as the poem suggests that the women are gradually moving out of the inner quarters). The scenes of women sewing clothes and packing the trunk occur against a blank background, meant to hint that the setting is an interior room. The painting’s structure reveals a steady progression from outer to inner. And moving through the scroll, the viewer finds that the gestures and faces of the lonely women become increasingly expressive. For all of these reasons, this handscroll represents a masterful translation of a poetic theme into a pictorial format. At the same time, the colophon provides evidence that we should read the handscroll Pounding Cloth as simultaneously an implicit expression of the male artist’s feelings and a site for the projection of viewers’ feelings. Text and Interpretation The biographical details mentioned in Mou Yi’s colophon hint that this painting expresses his own feelings of longing or homesickness. According to the colophon, by the year 1238, he had made the long journey from his native place to present-day Jiangxi province. In the spring of that year, he stayed in a monastery in Poyang 鄱陽, and while he was there he began his first handscroll based on the poem “Pounding Cloth,” a painting he would work on for months. Two years later, in 1240, he packed the scroll and moved to Yuzhang 豫章, and shortly thereafter he gave his painting away. In the autumn, Mou Yi spent some time at the home of Dong Shi in Donghu 東湖, where he began a second version of the painting. In the process of reworking it, he changed the composition, adding ten more women; soon after he completed it, he gave it to Dong Shi. (It is the second version that survives, bearing Dong’s seals and

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half-seals.113) It is plausible that with his repeated representation of such a poignant domestic scene he meant to address his own feelings of homesickness. For a traveler, the concept of home would be invested with nostalgia, and his choice of poem may be significant as well: Xie Huilian’s poem is about a man gone to the frontier, and the home is especially significant in such poetry.114 The colophon tells nothing about Mou Yi’s home life, and it is imprudent to assume that because he painted a household of women longing for an absent man that that is what he had actually left behind in Shu. His manipulation, for example, of the number of women depicted in the second painting indicates that he is unlikely to be making a faithful rendering of real family members back home. Yet Xie Huilian’s poem may have been especially meaningful for Mou Yi because he was traveling and, perhaps, because he missed someone waiting for him. The increased number of lonely women in the second painting may signify his increasing longing to return home. In farewell poetry and painting, the location of parting is imbued with emotional significance;115 perhaps this artist’s repeated renderings of women waiting at home reveals his own preoccupation with what he left behind. There is another intriguing possibility, suggested by Mou Yi’s own words: that his representation of women’s attachment to men might evoke his own affection for male friends.116 He explains his presentation of the second painting to his friend as an expression of their bond, writing, “Between friends, what difficulty could there be?” (於朋友 又何難。) Earlier, he writes of the first scroll, “I did not recklessly bring it out, but only showed it to those who could appreciate it” (非知音不妄出); the word he uses for “those who could appreciate it,” zhiyin, in another context would be translated as “sympathetic listeners,” meaning close friends.

113

114 115 116

Dong Shi’s seals appear intact in several places on the scroll, but most prominently after his copy of the poem and after a second inscription by him; several of his half-seals appear at the right edge of the section with Mou Yi’s colophon. National Palace Museum and National Central Museum, Signatures and Seals on Painting and Calligraphy: The Signatures and Seals of Artists, Connoisseurs and Collectors on Painting and Calligraphy since Tsin Dynasty [Jin Tang yilai shuhuajia jiancangjia kuanyinpu 金唐以來書畫家鑑藏家款 印普], 5 vols. (Kowloon, Hong Kong: Arts & Literature Press, 1964), 1:138. Miao, “T’ang Frontier Poetry,” 120. Brotherton, “Two Farewell Handscrolls of the Late Northern Song,” 48. A similar phenomenon appears in poetic compositions of the Northern Song, including a poem about entertainers written by Mei Yaochen 梅堯臣 (1002–60) and addressed to Ouyang Xiu; Hawes, The Social Circulation of Poetry in the Mid-Northern Song, 53, 55–56. This aspect of my argument has been published in slightly different form in Blanchard, “Mou Yi’s Pounding Cloth,” 333.

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Nevertheless, other interpretations of Mou Yi’s Pounding Cloth are possible. Again, an allegorical interpretation cannot be excluded, particularly when one considers Mou Yi’s status as an educated professional and/or court painter. The theme of lonely women in this painting could be framed as Mou Yi’s loyalty to a government indifferent to him. Unfortunately, not enough is known of the circumstances of his life and career at court to make this claim with any confidence. Alternatively, the handscroll may comment on the mobilization of numerous soldiers to defend the Southern Song territory.117 This is a return to a literal reading of the theme of women making clothes for husbands away at the frontier, plausible given the historical context. Mou Yi seems to have intended Pounding Cloth for an educated audience.118 It is significant that, with the exception of the “tranquil positions” of the ladies, which Mou Yi claims to have derived from Zhou Fang, he draws from scholarly painting styles in making his handscroll. Much of the painting is executed in Li Gonglin’s “plain outline” style. Even his paintings-within-paintings are done in the styles of artists who were affiliated with prominent scholars.119 The choice of both court and scholarly painters as sources may reflect Mou Yi’s participation in both realms, but at the same time his colophon includes several hints on how he expects his painting to be received. He concludes the first part of his colophon with this meditation: As for those who consider whether this painting is good or not, in the end I don’t know whether or not they will enjoy it. Where is the pleasure in obtaining it? Those who would examine this [painting] closely should together discuss the skill or awkwardness of brush and ink, and examine and consider this as well. 思慮善否者。其為樂果何如。得之果惡乎在。寓目者毋徒議筆墨之工 拙。試與共商榷之。

117 118 119

Kao, “Shiren hua de qingchou yu yaxing,” 78; I Lo-fen, “Guiyuan yu xiangsi,” 35. This aspect of my argument has been published in slightly different form in Blanchard, “Mou Yi’s Pounding Cloth,” 334. Li Gonglin and Zhao Lingrang were part of a loosely connected circle of scholars that centered on the figure of Su Shi. For discussions of their relationship with Su Shi, see Bush, The Chinese Literati on Painting, 4–5, 8–11, 30–31, 81, 96–97, 97 n. 25; and Powers, “Discourses of Representation,” 88–127. A third member of the circle, Song Di 宋迪 (ca. 1015–80), is credited with creating the pictorial theme of the Eight Views of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers, and Mi Fu, a fourth member, was known for his paintings of the Xiao-Xiang region; Murck, Poetry and Painting in Song China, 28, 30–32, 37–39.

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Mou Yi seems to anticipate that his handscroll might be viewed in the context of a gathering of scholars. He acknowledges that the enjoyment of a painting in such a situation usually arises from the opportunity for connoisseurs to offer critiques of the work, and the quantity of the styles that he cites suggests that he expected critics of his painting to play the game of identifying the references.120 Yet he hints that they should enjoy the painting for another reason, in the second part of his colophon. Mou Yi’s assertion that he would only share his scroll with those who could appreciate it suggests that he viewed the theme of women’s longings as one for private perusal. Certainly this fits with the intimate nature of the painting: although scholars did create works that dealt with the erotic theme of lonely women, they generally did not admit that these works were intended for public appreciation.121 Mou Yi’s painting was likely intended for small gatherings of scholars, where “the pleasure in obtaining it” would be derived in part from the sense of closeness created among those who viewed the painting together, perhaps even seeing the female companions represented as a reflection of themselves.122 At the same time, nothing would preclude a male viewer from projecting himself as the absent man that these women long for.

…

Song examples of shinü hua, preoccupied as they seem to be with themes of desire and longing, reveal much about constructions of gender in the context of heteroerotic relationships. Superficially, these works purport to convey women’s feelings and tend to show women within feminine space, and yet, as objects of male authorship and patronage, they are better read as male selfrepresentations. Huizong’s Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk and Mou Yi’s Pounding Cloth serve as ideal points of inquiry because we can reconstruct the circumstances under which they were created: most other examples of shinü hua cannot be securely associated with a named artist, while enough is known about Huizong’s patronage of the arts and of Mou Yi’s intentions to suggest the functions of these two paintings. Both are extraordinarily complex. If 120

121 122

The Northern Song literati enjoyed a variety of games centering on poetic composition, as described in Hawes, The Social Circulation of Poetry in the Mid-Northern Song, 31–50. Li Qingzhao wrote of playing a game of identifying textual references with her husband Zhao Mingcheng; see the translation in Egan, The Burden of Female Talent, 194–95. Ronald Egan has considered this problem in regard to Northern Song song lyrics in “The Problem of the Repute of Tz’u,” 191–225. A male viewer could identify directly with a female figure; Samei, Gendered Persona and Poetic Voice, 15.

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both paintings are vehicles for the authors’ own feelings (rather than merely demonstrating a compelling interest in erotic poetry), the simplest interpretation is that the paintings express men’s desires: Huizong’s for his concubines, Mou Yi’s for a woman (or women) left at home. Because men’s expressions of erotic desire were circumscribed by constructions of Chinese masculinity, which apparently precluded explicit pictorial displays of men’s longings, the portrayals of men wishing to return to lovers were subtle by necessity, projected onto the figures of women. But other shades of meaning beyond this most obvious one are plausible as well. The imagery of Huizong’s desirous yet virtuous concubines suggests loyal advisers, with Huizong as the ruler to whom both profess devotion. The imagery of lonely women in Mou Yi’s painting may suggest the artist’s own homesickness, his loyalty to an indifferent court (again through the allegorical interpretation of women’s longings), or—less personally—a comment on the political situation in the mid-thirteenth century. Male viewers of later periods might similarly read their own circumstances into these paintings: the Qianlong emperor’s third inscription to Mou Yi’s painting, dated to 1754, for example, refers to his longing for the late Xiaoxian 孝賢 empress (1712–48).123 These works disclose how the figure of the desiring woman could stand for a man’s unrealized hope. At the beginning of this chapter, I asked, “Where are the paintings of men yearning for absent women?” I propose that, in effect, these images of women’s longings can themselves serve as paintings of men’s longings, but not only for women. 123

I Lo-fen, “Guiyuan yu xiangsi,” 40–43.

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The Female Audience: Modeling Idealized Femininity All of the paintings discussed thus far seem to have been collected and viewed primarily by men, judging from the evidence of seals and inscriptions. An individual man might have projected himself as a participant in the pictured narrative of heteroerotic desire, comparing his own situation to the story. But what would happen if a woman viewed these paintings? Was she meant to identify with one of the women depicted as expressing longing or desire (as Mary Ann Doane proposes in her analysis of a different visual art form and a much later culture)?1 Analysis of a sixth-century palace-style poem in which a court lady contemplates a visual image of a beautiful woman suggests that Chinese women, at least at that time, were also expected to identify with models of idealized femininity.2 Men used Song examples of shinü hua as vehicles for expressing opinions on a range of topics; I propose that women could do the same. Although the most obvious function of those examples of shinü hua that depict themes of longing and desire was to please the male viewer, this does not mean that women could not appreciate such paintings. Other Song paintings of women did find a female audience, and one of their functions was to model a particular vision of femininity: for example, the different versions of the Classic of Filial Piety for Girls likely served as important components of a courtly woman’s Confucian education, following in the tradition of earlier paintings such as Admonitions of the Court Instructress to the Palace Ladies and Exemplary Women.3 In addition, women did demonstrate interest in themes of 1 Mary Ann Doane, “Film and the Masquerade: Theorising the Female Spectator,” Screen 23, no. 3/4 (September/October 1982): 78. 2 Paul Rouzer’s translation and analysis of Yu Jianwu 庾肩吾 (487–550), “Yong meiren zi kan hua yingling 詠美人自看畫應令 [A Beauty Sees Herself in a Painting],” YTXY, 8.7b, is informative, though elsewhere he writes that erotic subjects were likely not intended for women; Rouzer, Articulated Ladies, 151, 289. 3 Murray, “Didactic Art for Women,” 27–28. Hui-shu Lee speculates that the Beijing Palace Museum version of the Classic of Filial Piety for Girls (Nü xiaojing tu 女孝經圖, handscroll, light color on silk, 43.8 × 823.7 cm) may have been associated with Empress Wu, the consort of Emperor Gaozong of the Southern Song; Lee, “The Emperor’s Lady Ghostwriters,” 73–74. The Beijing paintings are reproduced in Zhejiang Daxue Zhongguo gudai shuhua yanjiu zhongxin 浙江大學中國古代書畫研究中心, Song hua quanji 宋畫全集 [Complete

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desire. At the Southern Song court, the empress Yang Meizi 楊妹子 (1162–1232) collaborated with court painter Ma Yuan 馬遠 (fl. ca. 1194–ca. 1222)4 to create compositions designed to strengthen her relationship with her husband, Emperor Ningzong 寧宗 (r. 1194–1224), writing poetry for their paintings of flowering branches. In one instance, she inscribed Ma Yuan’s painting of apricot blossoms with a couplet comprised of highly suggestive imagery: Receiving the wind, she presents her unsurpassed beauty, Moistened with dew, she reveals her red charms. 迎風呈巧媚，浥露逞紅妍。

The composition functions as an intimate message for Ningzong;5 given Empress Yang’s use of such images to fortify her own position, though, one must understand this pairing of painting and poetry as exceeding the simple expression of her feelings. With paintings such as this in mind, it seems entirely possible that by the Southern Song, women too appreciated paintings that represented their longings and desires through female figures. Although it is difficult to recover evidence of women’s encounters with shinü hua, in this chapter I turn to paintings that may well have been primarily enjoyed by women. None has documentation that connects it to a female viewer, but the format and content of each allow for some speculation on this point. The first three paintings that I discuss are fans that depict pensive women in secluded gardens. The theme of each clearly derives from erotic poetry and effectively represents a woman’s longing for an absent man. The fourth painting shows multiple women, again in a garden setting, and was once mounted as a screen. This painting appears to represent a story of the Collection of Song Painting], 8 vols. (Hangzhou: Zhejiang Daxue chubanshe, 2008–10) 1, part 5: 186–215. Hui-shu Lee notes that the Admonitions scroll bears Empress Wu’s seal in Empresses, Art, and Agency, 128. 4 Dates for Ma Yuan’s period of activity were not recorded. I propose ca. 1194 for the beginning of Ma Yuan’s activity as a painter—corresponding to the beginning of Ningzong’s reign—and an end date of approximately 1222, based on the date of his Twelve Views of Water. For discussions of his dates and reproductions of Twelve Views of Water, see Richard Edwards, The Heart of Ma Yuan: The Search for a Southern Song Aesthetic (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2011), 2–3, pls. 22a-l. 5 Lee, Empresses, Art, and Agency, 170 (her translation), 196–97; the painting is Ma Yuan, Apricot Blossoms, National Palace Museum, Taipei, and Lee reproduces it in fig. 4.2. For more on Empress Yang, see idem., “The Domain of Empress Yang (1162–1233): Art, Gender and Politics at the Southern Song Court” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1994).

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Tang court, but again the representation of the women’s desire for an unpictured man is unmistakable. It is plausible that women actually possessed the fans, and painted screens could function to divide space in the women’s quarters or a brothel. Courtesans who performed songs on themes of longing and desire might have acquired images such as these as part of the construction of their seductive personae. Wives might have appreciated such paintings because they provide insight into what men found appealing. Competition among wives and courtesan-like concubines led to strategies designed to increase their attractiveness to men;6 this helps to explain why women who were not courtesans might have sustained an interest in studying narratives of longing and desire. Although arranged marriages in the Song dynasty did not typically prioritize loving feelings between husband and wife,7 wives still vied with courtesans for their husbands’ attentions, and relationships with courtesans were based on male heteroerotic desires. The image of a woman faithful to her lover, pining for him in the solitude of the inner quarters, held great appeal for men, and a woman who cultivated this image herself would likely have been perceived as embodying the height of femininity.

Women and Fan Paintings

Three Southern Song fan paintings exemplify the shinü hua genre. These are A Lady at Her Dressing Table (fig. 13; a more literal translation of the Chinese title is A Lady at Her Makeup Table), attributed to Su Hanchen, in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Embroidered Cage, Morning Mirror (fig. 14), attributed to Wang Shen 王詵 (1036–89), in the collection of the National Palace Museum, Taipei; and A Lady Watching a Maid with a Parrot (fig. 15), also in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts. All focus on the unhappy connotations of the woman at her makeup mirror, a theme found throughout collections of erotic poetry, from palace-style poetry to song lyrics. Each painting centers upon a lady at her makeup stand in a deserted corner of a garden. Although none of the figures is alone—a servant is present in each case, as well as a younger lady in one instance—the audience is encouraged to view each one as lonely, as her possessions and her surroundings speak to her 6 Ebrey, The Inner Quarters, 42. Beverly Bossler discusses this competition as being rooted in a wife’s anxiety about her place in the household in Courtesans, Concubines, and the Cult of Female Fidelity, 106–107. 7 Ebrey, The Inner Quarters, 8.

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preoccupation with an absent male object of desire. The connotations of the theme of the mirror indicate that male lovers have left these women behind. The choice of the fan format may suggest that too: by the Song dynasty, the round fan in poetry could connote abandonment, through associations with a poem attributed to imperial concubine Ban Jieyu, to be discussed below.8 Each of the paintings presents a slightly different scenario. In A Lady at Her Dressing Table, a woman sitting on an ornate bench in a garden solemnly regards her face in a round bronze mirror set upon a stand, as a young maid hovers attentively nearby. Upon the table, someone has laid a stack of cosmetic boxes, a red tray with a jar and a bowl, a vase of blooming narcissus set upon a wooden stand, a hill censer, and, draped over the edge of the table, a length of cloth. Behind the table is a large screen painting of billowing waves. The garden contains a gnarled plum tree just beginning to bloom, a scholar’s rock, bamboo, and two potted plants set on a bench. The potted plants may be a metaphor for not only cultivation but also confinement and enclosure. Although the sparsely budding plum tree establishes the season as late winter or early spring, it is less important as a temporal element than as a metaphor for the hardiness of a scholar. The rock and the bamboo stand adjacent to the tree, and these also serve as metaphors for scholars. These elements on their own seem to indicate an absent man, but the presence of both narcissus and mirror suggests a more precise reading: narcissus can refer to a married couple,9 whereas the Chinese word for bronze (tong 銅) is a homophone for the word “together” (tong 同), and the roundness of the mirror can suggest unbroken marital happiness.10 In this instance, the woman may be a wife separated from her husband. Embroidered Cage, Morning Mirror, similarly, focuses upon a lady standing at a makeup table, transfixed by her own reflected image. In addition to the flower-shaped mirror on its stand, the table bears several gold lacquer trays and black cosmetic boxes. Behind the lady is a couch with a screen painting of mountains and rivers adjacent to it. Beyond the couch, a length of blue silk gauze stretches over a frame. In the foreground are two more figures: a younger lady and a maid, the former eagerly inspecting the trays of cosmetics that the latter holds. Flowers—possibly jasmine—and a blossoming tree with profuse leaves together suggest fertility and invite comparison with the visibly aged lady. 8 Samei, Gendered Persona and Poetic Voice, 53–55, 62. 9 Wolfram Eberhard, Dictionary of Chinese Symbols: Hidden Symbols in Chinese Life and Thought (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986), 249. 10 I am grateful to Ellen Johnston Laing for these observations.

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Figure 13 A Lady at Her Dressing Table. Su Hanchen ( fl. ca. 1120s–60s), Southern Song dynasty, mid-12th century; fan, ink, color, and gold on silk, 25.2 × 26.7 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Denman Waldo Ross Collection (29.960). Photograph © 2017 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

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Figure 14 Embroidered Cage, Morning Mirror. Attributed to Wang Shen (1036–89), Southern Song dynasty; fan, ink and color on silk, 24.2 × 25.0 cm. The Collection of National Palace Museum (VA15h), Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C.

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A Lady Watching a Maid with a Parrot, by contrast, presents a woman sitting on a couch, a book and a scroll next to her. She leans on a table piled with more books, writing implements, antiquities (including a flower-shaped bronze mirror on a stand) and a tall stack of cosmetic boxes, again in a garden. She turns her head toward her servant, who holds a parrot. Natural and material elements within the painting reiterate the painting’s probable theme. Behind the screen, a blooming plum tree is visible, and the books, writing tools, and antiquities indicate the woman’s high level of education. In certain contexts, parrots could stand for either courtesans or, less specifically, for lonely women,11 but in this case the combination of parrot, plum tree, and books has led scholars to interpret this as an image of Meifei, Yang Guifei’s reputed rival. According to her so-called biography, circulated in the Southern Song, she was a renowned poet and a favorite concubine of Tang emperor Xuanzong before the ascendance of Yang Guifei. The white parrot belonged to Yang Guifei and was called Xueyi Nü 雪衣女, Snow-Clad Maiden.12 In all likelihood, A Lady at Her Dressing Table and Embroidered Cage, Mor­ ning Mirror were court paintings, and both are attributed to men associated with the Song court. Su Hanchen was a painter-in-attendance in Emperor Huizong’s Academy of Painting and continued to serve as a court painter after the court moved south; the attribution to him is credible.13 Wang Shen, a member of Su Shi’s prominent circle of intellectuals, was the son-in-law of Emperor Yingzong 英宗 (r. 1064–67). Although scholars now dispute the authorship and date of Embroidered Cage, Morning Mirror, placing it in the Southern Song rather than the Northern Song,14 the traditional attribution indicates that connoisseurs long believed it to be a product of the court, and by the early nineteenth century, it had (once again?) entered the imperial collection as part of an album, Famous Paintings of the Song and Yuan Dynasties

11

For a comparison of a parrot to courtesans, see Bai Juyi, “Yingwu,” QTS 7.447.5035; cf. translation by Alley, Bai Juyi, 199. For a song lyric that juxtaposes a woman in an enclosed garden who misses her lover with a caged parrot, see Liu Yong, Tune: “Gan caozi 甘草子 [Sweet Grass, 1/2],” QSC, 1:14–15; cf. translation by Hightower in “The Songwriter Liu Yung: Part II,” 10. 12 Maggie Bickford, Ink Plum: The Making of a Chinese Scholar-Painter Genre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 55–59; Lee, Empresses, Art, and Agency, 101–104. 13 Wu, Tales from the Land of Dragons, 154. 14 Wu Hung, in The Double Screen, 246 n. 183, assesses the painting-within-painting in Embroidered Cage, Morning Mirror as in the style of Mi Youren 米友仁 (1086–1165) and assigns the painting a Southern Song date. Ellen Johnston Laing suggests a twelfth- to thirteenth-century date in “Chinese Palace-Style Poetry,” 286.

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Figure 15 A Lady Watching a Maid with a Parrot. Formerly attributed to Wang Juzheng ( fl. early 11th cent.), Southern Song dynasty, early 13th century; fan-shaped album leaf, ink and color on silk, 23.4 × 24.2 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Harriet Otis Cruft Fund (37.302). Photograph © 2017 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

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(Song Yuan ming hui 宋元名繪).15 The costly medium of both paintings is color on silk, and the painter of A Lady at Her Dressing Table used gold as well. The authorship of and audience for A Lady Watching a Maid with a Parrot, however, are more difficult to determine. It was formerly attributed to Wang Juzheng 王居正 (fl. eleventh century), about whom little is known save that he specialized in painting women;16 scholars now assess the painting as dating to the Southern Song.17 Similar in media and format to the other two paintings, it too could have been a court painting, although one could also imagine an accomplished professional painter as its author.18 Although each of these paintings renders its theme of a lonely woman in a slightly different way, they share the format of the round fan, the setting of an enclosed garden, and the proximity of mirrors and makeup to the central figures. These elements play upon the tension between interiority and surface in different ways. Fans had certain public functions, reflecting some aspect of the bearer’s inner persona and presenting it to the world. Similarly, both the setting of the bounded garden and the trope of the makeup mirror stress precisely this convergence of inner and outer. Because it is conceivable that these paintings were used by women, the multiple ways that these paintings seem to speak to these two opposing principles suggest that negotiating the duality of inner and outer may have been necessary for the construction of an appropriately feminine image. This group of paintings, indeed, is much more complicated than might be realized at first glance. Acquiring Fans Painted with Lonely Women Sometimes the format of a painting provides clues to its social context. A fan painting might be enjoyed purely as an art object. But as a smaller painting with less detail, such an item might also be less expensive, and therefore a broader sector of society would have the means to acquire such a painting. The growth of commerce in the Northern Song meant that merchants and other wealthy figures began to value and collect painting. Beginning at this time, 15

Hu Jing 胡敬 et al., comp., Bidian zhulin/ Shiqu baoji sanbian 秘殿珠林石渠寶笈三編 [Beaded Grove of the Secret Hall/ Precious Bookcase of the Stone Channel, Third Com­pi­ lation], 10 vols. (1816; reprint, Taipei: Guoli Gugong Bowuyuan, 1969), 8:4002. This is also mentioned in Guoli Gugong Bowuyuan, Gugong shuhua lu 4:6.208–10. 16 Wu, Tales from the Land of Dragons, 185. 17 Lee, Empresses, Art, and Agency, 101. 18 James Cahill, in Pictures for Use and Pleasure, 3, 16, 19–20, suggests that in later periods of Chinese history such works might be understood as vernacular paintings by urban studio artists.

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merchants often worked as itinerant art dealers, giving rise to a vibrant art market.19 Several sources reveal the Song market for fans. They were given as lottery prizes at the festival celebrating the Buddha’s Birthday at the Baoguo and Wansui Monasteries in Fuzhou, beginning in 1082, and paintings (presumably including fans) were sold at the Lantern Fair at the Kaiyuan Monastery in Shaoxing, as well as at the Xiangguo Monastery in Kaifeng.20 Deng Chun’s 鄧椿 1167 account of painting practice, More on Painting (Huaji 畫繼), includes an entry on the art of Liu Zongdao 劉宗道 (fl. 1111–17), which indicates a popular audience for paintings in this format even in the Northern Song: Each time he designed a fan, he painted several hundred of the same and only then would put them on sale; then they would be all over the city within a few days. The reason was that he feared someone else would start copying it first. 每作一扇。必畫數百本。然後出貨。即日流布。實恐他人傳模之先 也。21

More on Painting also mentions that Chinese fans competed in the marketplace with painted folding fans imported from Korea and Japan. The Korean examples sometimes featured subjects explicitly described as shinü: Many of those [fans] that are painted bear images of ladies riding in carriages, astride horses, enjoying spring outings, and gathering grasses. 所畫多作士女乘車，跨馬，踏青，拾翠之狀。22

19

Heping Liu, “Painting and Commerce in Northern Song Dynasty China, 960–1126” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1997), 14, 19–22. 20 Shiba Yoshinobu, Commerce and Society in Sung China, trans. Mark Elvin (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1970), 158, 159–60, 161. 21 Deng, Huaji, 6.78–79; see discussion in John Hay, “Chinese Fan Painting,” in Chinese Painting and the Decorative Style, ed. Margaret Medley (London: Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1975), 106; and Robert J. Maeda, trans., Two Sung Texts on Chinese Painting and the Landscape Styles of the 11th and 12th Centuries (New York: Garland Publishing, 1978), 102–104. 22 Deng, Huaji, 10.126–27; for a full translation of Deng’s commentary on fans, see Maeda, Two Sung Texts on Chinese Painting, 102–104.

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In the Southern Song capital of Hangzhou, shops that specialized in painted fans were located at the Coal Bridge;23 presumably one could order a fan with specific themes at such places. When affixed to a handle, painted fans have additional practical functions. Either a man or a woman might carry a round fan, effectively making it part of a costume and suggesting that the pictured scene might expose some aspect of the bearer’s identity or aspirations.24 Alternatively, one might use a fan to obscure one’s face, suggesting the possibility of masquerade. This function of fans is inferred in the term bianmian 便面, which dates back to the Former Han and might be translated as “convenient [for screening the] face.”25 It is most often mentioned in conjunction with men’s use, as in an infamous story about Li Gonglin that describes how he once covered his face with a fan in order to avoid two disciples of a colleague who had fallen out of political favor.26 The plain fan used by Han Xizai in Scene IV of the Beijing Palace Museum version of Night Revels of Han Xizai (figs. 9.1–9.5) possibly serves a similar purpose. Women, however, might also take advantage of the fan as screen. Round fans used to screen women’s faces appear in a poem by a reputed concubine of calligrapher Wang Xianzhi 王獻之 (344–88) named Taoye 桃葉 (fl. fourth century), in which a woman hides her worn face from her lover, and a Tang poem by Wang Jian, in which a female musician conceals her sorrow.27 Damage to the vertical axis of A Lady at Her Dressing Table and Embroidered Cage, Morning 23

Sullivan, “Some Notes on the Social History of Chinese Art,” 169; citing Jacques Gernet, Daily Life in China, on the Eve of the Mongol Invasion, 1250–1276, trans. H.M. Wright (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962), 85. 24 Gernet, Daily Life in China, 132; Ankeney Weitz, “The Vocabulary of Fashion: Word-Image Play in Southern Song Painted Fans,” National Palace Museum Bulletin 44 (October 2011): 39. 25 On the date of the term and the function of bianmian, see Hay, “Chinese Fan Painting,” 99. I have slightly amended the translation found in Ka Bo Tsang, More than Keeping Cool: Chinese Fans and Fan Paintings (Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum, 2002), 12. 26 Robert E. Harrist Jr., Painting and Private Life in Eleventh-Century China: “Mountain Villa” by Li Gonglin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 13. 27 Taoye, “Da Wang Tuanshan ge san shou 答王《團扇歌》三首 [Replying to Wang Xianzhi’s ‘Round Fan Song,’ Three Poems, 3/3],” YTXY, 10.2b–3a; cf. translations in Birrell, New Songs from a Jade Terrace, 267; and Samei, Gendered Persona and Poetic Voice, 67. Wang Jian, “Gongzhong Tiaoxiao 宮中調笑 [Tiaoxiao within the Palace],” Tune: “Tiaoxiao 調 笑,” translated in Wagner, The Lotus Boat, 111. Later, in fifteenth-century Suzhou, women could choose a different format, the folding fan, for the purposes of flirtatiously concealing and then revealing their faces; Marshall P.S. Wu, The Orchid Pavilion Gathering: Chinese Painting from the University of Michigan Museum of Art, 2 vols. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2000), 1:68.

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Mirror, corresponding to where the silk would have been attached to a handle, suggests that they were once mounted as fans rather than as album leaves, indicating that someone may have actually used them for this sort of practical purpose (although such damage could also have occurred if these fans were folded for a long period). Thus, either men or women might acquire a fan painting of a lonely woman for personal reasons. Still, although the image of a woman longing for her lover might have charmed a male viewer, it is hard to imagine a man openly carrying a fan with this theme. Such an action would be tantamount to publicly declaring an interest in erotic poetry or an unseemly concern with matters of the inner quarters. A man who owned a fan painting of this nature would more likely have kept it for private perusal, possibly mounting it as an album leaf. A scholar or court figure who appreciated a fan painting of a lonely woman might have considered it a projection of his own feelings of longing or home­­­sickness. It is also possible, however, that his female lover had ordered a fan painted with an image of a lonely woman as an expression of her affection. Two early poems that may be of female authorship suggest that a woman might give a man a fan as a gift: another poem by Taoye28 and the famous “Song of Lament” (Yuan gexing 怨歌行) attributed to Ban Jieyu, the concubine of Emperor Chengdi of the Former Han. The latter poem reads: Newly cut, the gleaming silk of Qi, Fresh and pure as frost or snow, Trim it to form a fan with acacias pictured, As round and full as the bright moon. It frequents the folds of My Lord’s robes, Trembles to bring forth a light breeze. But it always fears that autumn comes, When cool gusts disperse the blazing heat. Then it will be cast aside in your box— Your favor cut off in its prime. 新裂齊紈素，鮮潔如霜雪。裁為合歡扇，園園似明月。出入君懷袖， 動搖微風發。常恐秋節至，涼飆奪炎熱。棄捐篋笥中，恩情中道 絕。

In this poem, a fan painted with acacias (hehuan, “joyous union”) serves as a token of the female speaker’s affection for her husband, who keeps it on his 28

Taoye, “Replying to Wang [Xianzhi’s] ‘Round Fan Song,’ three poems [1/3],” YTXY, 10.2b.

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person. She takes his regard for it as a measure of his affection for her. Sup­ posedly, Ban Jieyu inscribed this poem upon a round fan herself and sent it to the emperor.29 “Song of Lament” might do more than express the female persona’s feelings: the fan mentioned therein, painted with such a significant image, serves as a conscious protestation of her loyalty. The idea of fans suggesting loyalty appears in writing beginning in the Han dynasty: a fan’s seasonal appearances and disappearances could connote an official coming forth to give loyal counsel to his ruler and then respectfully retreating, as in Fu Yi’s 傅毅 (d. ca. 90 ce) “Fan Inscription” (Shan ming 扇銘). Another early poem shares a number of elements with “Song of Lament,” including the use of a fan to convey both loyalty and personal feelings: Fu Xian’s 傅咸 (249–94) “Rhapsody on the Fan” (Shan fu 扇賦) features a personified fan cast aside and put into storage, lamenting that its goodness went unrecognized and resenting its isolation.30 Intriguingly, the voice of this poem is indeterminate as to gender—it could easily be read as male or female. “Song of Lament,” on the other hand, with its references to gleaming silk, joyful union, roundness, and the moon (a yin element), demands to be read in female voice, regardless of the sex of the author. Clearly, though, part of the force of “Song of Lament” is its reliance upon the allegorical equivalence between a government official and a consort as a means of conveying devotion. In addition to literary evidence that fans could be conceived as gifts expressing a woman’s feelings for a man, there is material evidence for this practice in the Southern Song. A fan painting, Autumn Mallows (Kuihua jiadie 葵花蛺蝶), found in the tomb of Ming Prince Zhu Tan 朱檀 (1370–89), may have initially been a gift from Empress Wu to her husband, Emperor Gaozong. Trained to write in Gaozong’s calligraphic style, she could have written the gold-ink inscription on the fan: members of the Southern Song imperial family often used that medium to inscribe gifts. The inscription is a poem, best understood as a lament in female voice. Autumn mallows are associated with loyalty, making this an appropriate image for the empress’s gift to her husband. For these reasons, this fan may embody the empress’s commitment to Gaozong.31 These ex29

30 31

Ban Jieyu’s poem is also recorded under the title “Yuan shi yi shou 怨詩一首 [Poem of Lament],” YTXY, 1.14b–15a; Rouzer, Articulated Ladies, 120–21 (his translation). Rouzer notes modern skepticism about the attribution of this poem to her. For more on the attribution, see Knechtges, “The Poetry of an Imperial Concubine,” 132–36. These writings by Fu Yi and Fu Xian are translated and discussed in Knechtges, “The Poetry of an Imperial Concubine,” 133–35. Lee, “The Emperor’s Lady Ghostwriters,” 75–76. Autumn Mallows, now mounted as a handscroll, is in the collection of the Shandong Provincial Museum in Ji’nan. For repro-

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amples show that an accepted function of fan paintings was to picture a metaphor for a woman’s lament, which she could then convey to her beloved. It is not such a stretch to imagine a similar function for fan paintings depicting lonely women in an isolated garden, and thus one cannot rule out male ownership and appreciation of these works. If these paintings of lonely women were publicly used as fans, however, meaning that they were worn on the body as part of an ensemble, and sometimes used to screen one’s face, then that would favor women’s ownership. There are several reasons why women might have wanted to use fans with such content. One is self-expression: a woman who appreciated the theme of the lonely woman might have identified with it or recognized how appealing the theme might be to her lover. In addition, courtesans had a vested interest in writing and performing lyrics on the theme, the better to beguile their customers. Hiding their faces behind a painted fan that depicted a lonely woman might have enhanced their performance of vulnerability and thereby their desirability, and the clear connections between the painted imagery and themes of erotic poetry would have been an asset for a courtesan. It is also conceivable that men gave such fans to signify attachment.32 I speculate that such objects might have been exchanged at the time of parting or sent in the course of a long separation. In keeping with the multivalent nature of images that focus on longing and heartbreak, one could analyze the lonely figures in these fan paintings as potent metaphors for the loss of political favor33 or as sites for the projections of men’s feelings. Alternatively, women might have acquired these paintings precisely because they modeled the idealized feminine image, revealing those attributes that men found most appealing, particularly enduring loyalty even in the face of suffering.34 Because the fans under discussion engage directly with

ductions of both the image and the inscription, see Shandong Sheng Bowuguan 山东省博物馆, “Fajue Ming Zhu Tan mu jishi 發掘明朱檀墓紀實 [Report on the Excavation of the Ming Tomb of Zhu Tan],” Wenwu 文物 [Cultural Relics], no. 192 (May 1972): pls. 2, 3.1. The poem is a revised version of a quatrain by poet Liu Chang 劉敞 (1019–68); Robert E. Harrist Jr., “Ch’ien Hsüan’s Pear Blossoms: The Tradition of Flower Painting and Poetry from Sung to Yüan,” Metropolitan Museum Journal 22 (1987): 56. 32 Ankeney Weitz has argued that the imagery on a fan with emotional themes was meant to indicate the feelings of the person bearing it or presenting it as a gift, in “Fan Paintings in Song Dynasty Material Culture” (paper presented at the 88th Annual Conference of the College Art Association, New York, 23–26 February 2000). 33 Rouzer, Articulated Ladies, 120–21. 34 Samei, Gendered Persona and Poetic Voice, 15.

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the theme of a woman’s construction of her image, I suggest that these paintings potentially had greater meaning for a female audience. The Enclosed Garden One feature that these three fans share is their representation of private gardens, which, as bounded exteriors, are liminal spaces:35 interior because of their presumed proximity to the women’s quarters and simultaneously exterior as apparent microcosms of the natural world. Although one might think of an outdoor garden as a space quite dissimilar from an inner room in the women’s quarters, in the poetic context a garden was also likely to be regarded as essentially inner and feminine. Song dynasty lyrics about lovelorn women, with their references to “inner courtyards” and “lonely gardens,” give the impression that these spaces were set aside for women, where they could spend contemplative moments. As a cultivated, artificially constructed, domestic space, the garden was poised in direct contrast with the (masculine) untamed wilderness.36 Few scholars have addressed the history of Chinese women’s gardens, although one study of Ming gardens raises important questions about women’s enjoyment of these spaces. These questions include whether women were permitted to spend time in gardens independently, where the garden fit into the gendered space of a segregated household, and, most significantly, whether there were certain types of gardens whose attributes were viewed as essentially feminine.37 These are critical points of inquiry not only for the Ming dynasty but also for the Song, not least in the representation of gardens in paintings of women. What makes the garden a setting especially well suited to themes of love and longing is its ability to evoke time38 and the gendering of the natural elements found within it. The seasonal changes of the garden were believed to parallel the human life span, alluding to the transience of both youth and beauty. It is not hard to see why such a setting would be employed in works on the theme of fleeting love. Certain flowers, trees, rocks, and insects may serve as metaphors for women and men, and their placement may suggest male-female interac35 36 37 38

For a discussion of liminality in ninth- and tenth-century song lyric, see Shields, Crafting a Collection, 189–90. Miao, “T’ang Frontier Poetry,” 117. Craig Clunas, Fruitful Sites: Garden Culture in Ming Dynasty China (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996), 206. David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames have written of the Chinese garden’s vistas as intrinsic structures of temporality, meant to evoke memories, in “The Cosmological Setting of Chinese Gardens,” Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes 18, no. 3 (Autumn 1998): 182.

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tion. In the Book of Songs, nubile women are commonly compared to many types of flowering plants and trees, primarily for their characteristics of beauty and fertility; this analogy appeared in later works as well, through the Song dynasty and beyond.39 Garden elements could also be gendered masculine: bamboo, pine, and flowering plum may all refer to a scholar or man of talent, because of their perseverance in and endurance of cold weather, a metaphor for hardship.40 An ornamental garden rock is not only strongly associated with scholars through its use in scholars’ gardens, but also a metaphor for the ruler or a court official because its vertical, craggy form refers to a mountain or to hills.41 Butterflies, attracted to feminine flowers, stand for male lovers.42 Even the wind, which leaves flowers disheveled and blows open women’s skirts, is

39

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42

For examples from the Book of Songs, see “Taoyao 桃夭 [Tender Peach]” and “Biao you mei 摽有梅 [Plums Are Falling]” in Zhu, Shijing jizhu, 1.4, 1.9–10; cf. translations in Watson, The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry, 19, 21. One of countless later examples is Xiao Gang (Liang Jianwendi), “Meihua fu 梅花賦 [Flowering Plum],” the titular poem in Frankel, The Flowering Plum and the Palace Lady, 1–3. In painting, these three plants are sometimes shown together, as in Zhao Mengjian 趙孟 堅 (fl. ca. 1226–90), Three Friends of the Cold Season (Suihan san you 歲寒三友), Song dynasty, National Palace Museum (VA2f), Taipei; reproduced in Guoli Gugong Bowuyuan and Guoli Zhongyang Bowuyuan 國立故宮博物院、國立中央博物院, Gugong minghua sanbai zhong 故宮名畫三百種 [Three Hundred Masterpieces of Chinese Painting in the Palace Museum], 6 vols. (Taichung, Taiwan: Guoli Gugong, Zhongyang Bowuyuan gongtong lishihui, 1959), 131. On garden rocks and the literati in the Northern Song, see Xiaoshan Yang, Metamorphosis of the Private Sphere: Gardens and Objects in Tang–Song Poetry (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Asia Center, 2003), 118–48. Evidence for the garden rock as a referent for a mountain is found in Kong Chuan 孔傳, “Xu 序 [Preface],” in Du Wan 杜綰, Yunlin shipu 雲林石譜 [Stone Compendium of Cloudy Forest] (ca. 1127–32; reprint, Taipei: Yiwen yinshuguan, 1966), 1a–2a; see the translation by John Hay, Kernels of Energy, Bones of Earth: The Rock in Chinese Art (New York: China House Gallery, China Institute in America, 1985), 37–38. Stephen Little discusses this passage in Spirit Stones of China: The Ian and Susan Wilson Collection of Chinese Stones, Paintings, and Related Scholars’ Objects (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1999), 16. The mountains and hills as metaphor for the ruler and his court officials is found in Guo Xi and Guo Si 郭熙、郭思, Linquan gaozhi 林 泉高致 [The Lofty Message of Forests and Streams], in Zhongguo hualun leibian 中國畫 論類編 [Categorized Discussions of Chinese Paintings], ed. Yu Kun 俞崑 [Yu Jianhua 俞劍 華] (reprint, Taipei: Huazheng shuju, 1984), 1:635, 642; cf. translations in Bush and Shih, Early Chinese Texts on Painting, 153, 178. See the Song dynasty tune title “Die lian hua [Butterflies Love Flowers].”

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gendered masculine.43 The elements of the garden setting are a rich source of meaning. In the gardens represented in A Lady at Her Dressing Table, Embroidered Cage, Morning Mirror, and A Lady Watching a Maid with a Parrot, barriers are emphasized: they are clearly enclosed. An enclosed garden, in juxtaposing cultivated space and untrammeled landscape,44 is especially appropriate as a setting for longing due to the heightened awareness of such a space as simul­ taneously inner/feminine and outer/masculine. The tension between the two states is seen in the early poem “Please, Zhongzi” (Jiang Zhongzi 將仲子) from the Book of Songs: the barriers surrounding village, house, and garden assume metaphorical significance. The poem reads: Please, Zhongzi, don’t trespass in my village, don’t snap the willow trees. Do you think I care about them? It’s that I respect my father and mother. I could love you, Zhong, but what my parents say I should respect. Please, Zhongzi, don’t leap over my wall, don’t break my mulberry trees. Do you think I care about them? It’s that I respect my older brothers. I could love you, Zhong, but what my brothers say I should respect. Please, Zhongzi, don’t steal into my garden, don’t break my sandalwood trees. Do you think I care about them? I’m just afraid of people’s gossip. 43

44

Shen Yue, “Hui pu lin chunfeng 會圃臨春風 [Encountering the Spring Wind in a Garden],” YTXY, 9.19a–20a; cf. translation in Birrell, New Songs from a Jade Terrace, 249–51. See also Empress Yang Meizi’s couplet for Apricot Blossoms, cited above. Hall and Ames, “The Cosmological Setting of Chinese Gardens,” 175.

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I could love you, Zhong, but the gossip of others is not to be taken lightly. 將仲子兮，無踰我里，無折我樹杞。豈敢愛之，畏我父母。仲可懷 也，父母之言，亦可畏也。 將仲子兮，無踰我墻，無折我樹桑。豈敢愛之，畏我諸兄。仲可懷 也，諸兄之言，亦可畏也。 將仲子兮，無踰我園，無折我樹檀。豈敢愛之，畏人之多言。仲可懷 也，人之多言，亦可畏也。45

The enclosures in these verses are clearly metaphors for the girl’s chastity, and Zhongzi seems eager to penetrate the barriers separating them, at least in her telling. More importantly, the poem explicitly identifies the girl’s particular difficulty: remaining true to her own inclinations while simultaneously negotiating an appropriate public image. The enclosed spaces described here are apt images for the dilemma she faces. The Chinese enclosed garden has a European counterpart in medieval literature and art: the hortus conclusus, which is also frequently associated with representations of love relationships.46 The associations of the hortus conclusus with chastity help to make it a metaphor for an unattainable object of desire, and the sense of boundaries is crucial to the trope.47 But the European hortus conclusus differs from the Chinese enclosed garden in its exaltation of its female occupant and its frequent appearance in works on a religious theme.48 The bounded garden described in palace-style poetry and song lyric commonly represents lost love. It is a space within which a solitary female figure waits for someone to return, usually entirely preoccupied with her longing (al45 Zhu, Shijing jizhu, 3.39–40; cf. translation by Watson, The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry, 26–27. 46 The hortus conclusus makes an early and possibly allegorical appearance in the “Song of Solomon”; Stanley Stewart, The Enclosed Garden: The Tradition and the Image in Seven­ teenth-Century Poetry (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1966), 35–40; cf. Song of Sol. 4:12 RSV. 47 Gail Finney, The Counterfeit Idyll: The Garden Ideal and Social Reality in Nineteenth-Century Fiction, vol. 81 of Studien zur deutschen Literatur (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1984), 17–18; Stewart, The Enclosed Garden, 31–45; Michael Niedermeier, “‘Strolling under Palm Trees’: Gardens—Love—Sexuality,” trans. Michael and Louise Davidson-Schmich, Journal of Garden History 17, no. 3 (Autumn 1997): 187–88. 48 I discuss some aspects of the differences in Blanchard, “Lonely Women and the Absent Man,” 37–38.

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though A Lady Watching a Maid with a Parrot, which shows the concubine Meifei with books, suggests that she could find other pursuits worthy of her time). Furthermore, the woman who waits within the garden walls is the one who is desirous, with her longing focused outward. Within the fictive space of the poem or painting, she is no one’s object of desire. (The girl of “Please, Zhongzi” is an earlier construction, significantly different from her counterpart in palace-style poetry and song lyrics.) Finally, the Chinese garden places greater emphasis on the passage of time,49 with the seasonal cycle of the garden’s natural elements prodding the lonely woman to mark the passage of time in her own body. The enclosures of the garden prevent her from pursuing her lover, even as she concentrates on what may befall him beyond its walls. By the Song dynasty, a representation of a bounded garden seems to be exclusively associated with themes of longing. The female figure caught within, unable or unwilling to move beyond the garden walls, is presented as passive and helpless, in stark contrast with her absent, traveling lover, yet because of its dual nature the enclosed garden encompasses the woman as well as her memories and imaginings of the man. In Chinese gardens, an enclosing wall is generally meant to emphasize a space’s center,50 yet, in works that deal with longing, a sense of the boundaries between inner and outer is essential.51 In paintings of lonely women, the visual cues that indicate an enclosed garden can be essential to understanding this friction between inner and outer. In A Lady at Her Dressing Table, the small space represented is clearly bounded: a carved balustrade marks the garden’s perimeter. The wave screen affords the lady a measure of privacy as she gazes upon her reflection52 and enhances the sense of enclosure, serving as a painted wall. Even the potted plants echo this theme. The sense of enclosure is also crucial in Embroidered Cage, Morning Mirror.53 The word “cage” in the English title comes from a variant character (long 籠) and heightens the sense that the central figure is confined to this space. The term usually refers to a luxurious boudoir or a lattice (long 櫳, the character used in the Chinese title) used to mark a space’s boundaries,54 neither of which 49

Stewart discusses several examples of enclosed gardens that reflect the passage of time in “Time,” Chapter 4 in The Enclosed Garden, 97–149. 50 Hall and Ames, “The Cosmological Setting of Chinese Gardens,” 175. 51 Samei, Gendered Persona and Poetic Voice, 151. 52 Sarah Handler, “The Chinese Screen: Movable Walls to Divide, Enhance, and Beautify,” Journal of the Classical Chinese Furniture Society 3, no. 3 (Summer 1993): 16. 53 I discuss this idea in Blanchard, “Lonely Women and the Absent Man,” 37. 54 Ellen Johnston Laing discusses the cage as a trope for the boudoir in “Chinese Palace-Style Poetry,” 288. Birrell discusses the use of the lattice in palace-style poetry in “Erotic Decor,” 124–32.

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is evident in this painting. The blue silk gauze stretched over a frame, however, evokes a wall, and stones set in the ground suggest a paved border.55 The landscape screen painted with mountains and rivers and thus representing the outer wilderness emphasizes that this garden is, by contrast, both an interior and an exterior space. A Lady Watching a Maid with a Parrot, for its part, provides an example of what a “cage” was supposed to look like. The setting of this scene is a garden adjacent to a building, with a lattice window visible at upper left. A low balustrade wends through the space, and a translucent screen stands behind the lady seated at the table. While the angle of the balustrade as it approaches the right edge of the composition might give the impression that the female figure in this picture sits outside the enclosure, not within it, I surmise that it is the area in front of the balustrade that is supposed to be enclosed. (The balustrade in A Lady at Her Dressing Table is similarly drawn.) The presence of the parrot, which lives its life in a cage, underscores the idea of confinement.56 Again, the theme of the lonely woman is aptly conveyed by the sense of an enclosed exterior space. Mirrors, Makeup, Interiority, and Performing Femininity The image of a woman looking into a mirror and/or applying makeup provided another way of showing the connections between interiority and surface. The trope draws its meaning from two concepts: the early equation of examining and improving one’s outward appearance with assessing and cultivating one’s inner character, and the idea that feelings were manifested upon the face. Thus, in poetry and painting, the interiority of a female figure who peers into a mirror should be understood as fully exposed. Although mirrors and makeup are closely intertwined tropes, they have rather different rhetorical functions. Chinese philosophers conceived of the mirror as a tool for self-awareness, associating mirrors with wisdom and virtue in early texts. The Zhuangzi 莊子 uses the mirror as a metaphor for the heart of a wise man (shengren 聖人, “sage,” or zhiren 至人, “perfected man”).57 Similarly, the writings of Han Fei 55

Mary H. Fong sees these stones set in the ground as a garden path, a metaphor for a man on the road, in “Images of Women,” 24. 56 Lee, Empresses, Art, and Agency, 106. 57 Bernhard Karlgren, “Early Chinese Mirror Inscriptions,” Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, no. 6 (1934): 12; cf. the “Yingdiwang 應帝王 [Responses for Emperors and Kings]” and “Tiandao 天道 [The Way of Heaven]” chapters of Zhuangzi, Xinyi Zhuangzi duben 新譯莊子讀本 [New Interpretations of Zhuangzi] (Taipei: Sanmin shuju, 1974), 121, 169. The Yingdiwang chapter is the seventh “inner chapter” of the Zhuangzi and as such likely dates to the late fourth century bce, whereas the Tiandao chapter (the

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韓非 (ca. 280–ca. 233 bce), collected in the Han Fei zi 韓非子, compare a mirror

to “right principles,” for both provide the capacity for critical self-examination.58 Because the mirror was closely tied to notions of self-awareness,59 examples of shinü hua that take advantage of this trope might promote feminine virtue. Mirrors also reveal a figure’s interiority. A well-known poem from the Book of Songs, “Cypress Boat” (Bo zhou 柏舟), includes the following line: “My heart is not a mirror, / you can’t just peer into it!” (我心匪鑒，不可以茹。)60 Song dynasty poets and painters, however, employed a woman’s mirror as a rhetorical device that could perfectly reflect her heart/mind, manifested superficially as expression and gesture. An early inscription upon a mirror reads: “The bright mirror reflects the self and knows people’s feelings” (昭兒明鏡知人請).61 In some of the most sophisticated poems from New Songs from a Jade Terrace, poets employed the mirror image to reveal a female persona’s awareness of her inner state.62 By the tenth century there was a long history of poetry concerning the potential of mirrors to reveal emotion. While a reader might understand a figure’s feelings to serve as metaphors for other elements of her interiority, such as her character, longing and desire were becoming gendered as feminine, and so they were also an important aspect of the idealized woman’s image. Because the representation of feelings is so important in erotic poetry, the mirror is a common trope there, but in addition, textual evidence from the Tang dynasty and earlier indicates that bronze mirrors sometimes functioned as tokens of a couple’s attachment. Inscriptions upon mirrors include phrases such as these: “May we forever not forget each other” (長毋相忘), “The beauty and the king will never forget their hearts’ longings” (美人大王，心思毋忘), and “[…] may husband and wife enjoy each other; may they day by day love

58 59

60 61 62

thirteenth) dates between 180 bce and the fourth century ce; Loewe, Early Chinese Texts, 56–57. Karlgren, “Early Chinese Mirror Inscriptions,” 13; for more on the Han Fei zi, see Loewe, Early Chinese Texts, 115–17. Wu Hung discusses more evidence of this idea in early texts in “The Admonitions Scroll Revisited: Iconology, Narratology, Style, Dating,” in McCausland, Gu Kaizhi and the Admonitions Scroll, 91. Translated by Watson, The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry, 22–23; Zhu, Shijing jizhu, 2.13. Inscription 87 in Karlgren, “Early Chinese Mirror Inscriptions,” 26, 74. Karlgren notes that qing 請 is a variant character for qing 情. Birrell, “The Dusty Mirror,” 58. Three examples are Wang Rong 王融 (468–94), “Guyi er shou 古意二首 [Two Poems on a Classic Theme, 1/2]”; Xiao Gang (Liang Jianwendi), “Qie boming pian shi yun 妾薄命篇十韻 [My Sad Fate, Ten Rhymes]”; and idem., “Ni gu 擬古 [After a Classic],” YTXY, 4.14a, 7.7b–8b, and 9.26a; cf. translations in Birrell, New Songs from a Jade Terrace, 125, 188–89, 256–57.

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each other better” (夫婦相喜，日益親善).63 According to poetry, men gave mirrors to women as tokens of affection as early as the Han dynasty and continuing into the Southern Dynasties; this sort of exchange seems especially associated with marriage.64 In the Southern Dynasties and the Tang dynasty, poets capitalized on the mirror’s role as a love token by using it as a prop in poems about women’s unhappy feelings about love. Thus song lyrics describe a woman waiting for her lover to return as she faces her mirror, or, more poignantly, clasping her mirror to her body as she weeps.65 In both cases the reader can imagine the women pining for the men who presented them with these gifts. And in one poem, a female musician who changes households keeps a mirror as a reminder of her former love.66 With the mirror understood as a tangible reminder of the attachment between a man and a woman, it became possible to use it to signal the status of a heteroerotic relationship. The female persona in question might be either a courtesan (who has fallen for a client she entertained only once, or who enjoys an ongoing but sporadic relationship with her beloved, interrupted by visits from other clients) or a wife (with a traveling or otherwise wandering husband).67 The mirror serves as a metaphor for the state of her relationship or as a metonym for her feelings about her lover. This presupposed a connection 63 64

65

66 67

Inscriptions 43, 56, and 162 in Karlgren, “Early Chinese Mirror Inscriptions,” 21, 49, 73, 76. The translations are Karlgren’s with modifications. Xin Yannian 辛延年 (fl. 2nd cent.), “Yulin lang shi 羽林郎詩 [The Imperial Guards Officer]”; Qin Jia 秦嘉 (fl. ca. 147), “Zeng fu shi san shou 贈婦詩三首 [To My Wife, Three Poems, 3/3]”; Shen Yue, “Shaonian xinhun wei zhi yong 少年新婚為之詠 [For a Newly Married Youth]”; Shi Baoyue 釋寶月 (fl. late 5th cent.), “Xing lu nan 行路難 [The Road Is Hard],” YTXY, 1.13b–14b, 1.17b–18a, 5.4b–5b; 9.17b; cf. translations in Birrell, New Songs from a Jade Terrace, 42, 46, 137–38, 247. “Puquan si zhong yi jiao xiu xing, yibaisanshisi shou 普勸四眾依教修行一百三十四首 [Universally Exhorting the Four Peoples to Rely on Teachings to Enter Practice, 134 poems],” Tune: “Shi’er shi 十二時 [The Twelfth Hour, 34/134],” Dunhuang nos. P. 2054, P. 2714, P. 3087, P. 3286, DHGC, 3:6.1611. Sun Guangxian 孫光憲 (898?–968), Tune: “Huanxi sha [4/9],” in Zhao Chongzuo 趙崇祚, comp., Xinyi “Huajian ji” 新譯花閒集 [New Interpretation of “Among the Flowers,” hereafter abbreviated as HJJ], ed. Zhu Hengfu 朱恆夫 (Taipei: Sanmin shuju, 1998), 388; cf. translation in Fusek, Among the Flowers, 143. Liu Yuxi 劉禹錫, “Tainiang ge 泰娘歌 [Song of Tainiang],” QTS, 6:356.3996–97; cf. translation by Daniel Bryant in Liu and Lo, Sunflower Splendor, 197–99. Xiao Yan (Liang Wudi), “Ni ‘Mingyue zhao gaolou’ 擬明月照高樓 [After ‘The Bright Moon Shines on the High Tower’]”; and Xiao Lun 蕭綸 (507–51) [Shaoling Wang 邵陵王], “Dai ‘Qiu Hu fu guiyuan’ 代秋胡婦閨怨 [After ‘The Bedroom Resentment of Qiu Hu’s Wife’],” YTXY, 7.2a–b, 7.20b; cf. translations in Birrell, New Songs from a Jade Terrace, 183, 201.

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between a woman’s self-adornment and her meetings with a man. A woman applying makeup and arranging her hair would naturally consult her mirror reflection,68 and she might particularly take pains with her appearance if she had arranged a rendezvous with a lover; a woman with no such plans had no reason to do so (at least, in poets’ imaginations). An abandoned woman might ignore her mirror for months or years, ceasing to polish it, leaving it covered, or letting it lie cold.69 Thus, in erotic poetry and painting, images of women looking into mirrors are commonly paired with the application of makeup.70 Artificially enhanced beauty was a defining attribute of aristocratic personae in particular. This was the case as early as the Southern Dynasties, as the poems of New Songs from a Jade Terrace testify. One poet devotes his verse to a catalogue of a desirable woman’s embellishments: her face is a surface for the painting of peach-pink rouge and grass-green brow powder, her body an armature for the draping of thin silk skirts and light gauze sleeves. Another rhapsodizes over the refined appearance of a woman to whom he longs to give a mirror: her waist with its embroidered sash, her delicately shod “jade” feet, her jeweled hairpins and brooches, her cloud-like hair, her pale skin, and especially her brow powder and lipstick.71 In Song poetry and painting, this delight in the adornments 68

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70 71

Mirrors were already being used for this purpose in the late Zhou and Han dynasties; W.T. Chase and Ursula Martius Franklin, “Early Chinese Black Mirrors and Pattern-Etched Weapons,” Ars Orientalis 11 (1979): 240–41. For dusty mirrors, see Xu Gan 徐幹 (171–218), “Shi si 室思 [Bedroom Longing]”; idem., “Qing shi 情詩 [Feelings]”; Jiang Yan 江淹 (444–505), “Zhang Sikong liqing 張司空離情 [Zhang Sikong’s Feelings on Parting]”; and Shen Yue, “Hui pu lin chunfeng,” YTXY, 1.20.b– 21b, 1.21b–22a, 5.1b–2a, 9.19a–20a; cf. translations in Birrell, New Songs from a Jade Terrace, 49–50, 51, 134–35, 249–51. See also Gu Xiong, Tune: “Jiuquan zi 酒泉子 [Song of the Wine Spring, 1/7],” and idem., Tune: “Xia fang yuan,” HJJ, 356, 364; cf. translations in Fusek, Among the Flowers, 134, 136–37. For covered mirrors, see Bao Zhao, “Ni gu,” and Xiao Ji 蕭 紀 (508–53) [Wuling Wang 武陵王], “Xiaosi 曉思 [Dawn Longings],” YTXY, 4.7b–8a, 7.23a; cf. translations in Birrell, New Songs from a Jade Terrace, 118, 204. See also Gu Xiong, Tune: “He chuan [1/3]” and idem., Tune: “Jiuquan zi [5/7]”; Sun Guangxian, Tune: “Lin jiang xian [1/2]” and idem., Tune: “Qing ping yue [1/2],” HJJ, 340, 360, 411–12, 415; cf. translations in Fusek, Among the Flowers, 128, 135, 151, 153. For stained and cold mirrors, see Liu Shuo 劉鑠 (431–53), “Dai ‘Xingxing zhong xingxing’ 代行行重行行 [After ‘On and On Forever’]”; Liu Huan 劉緩 (ca. 549), “Hangui 寒閨 [Cold Bedroom]”; and Bao Zhao, “Xing lu nan si shou 行路難四首 [The Road Is Hard, Four Poems, 1/4],” YTXY, 3.17a–b, 8.12a–b, 9.16a–b; cf. translations by Birrell, New Songs from a Jade Terrace, 63, 220, 246. Birrell, “The Dusty Mirror,” 46. Shi Rongtai 施榮泰 (fl. late 5th cent.), “Za shi 雜詩 [Miscellaneous Poem]”; and Shen Yue, “Shaonian xinhun wei zhi yong,” YTXY, 4.19b, 5.4b–5b; cf. translations in Birrell, New Songs from a Jade Terrace, 131, 137–38.

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available to women would persist. References to makeup, especially to expressive brows or tear-stained rouge, are ubiquitous in song lyrics of the period, and in paintings, female figures, whether courtesans or palace ladies, wear cosmetics in part as a marker of their status. Night Revels of Han Xizai (figs. 9.1– 9.5), for example, shows courtesans with whitened faces, accentuating the pallor of a woman who does not labor outdoors. In the Palace (figs. 1.1–4.2) accentuates the reddened cheeks and lips of the imperial concubines, suggesting the rosy flush of a sexually aroused woman. Makeup has a different rhetorical function than the mirror: where the mirror is a trope for self-awareness, makeup emphasizes the construction and performance of femininity, as an early poem about cross-dressing demonstrates. The “Song of Mulan” (Mulan shi 木蘭詩), dating to the fifth or sixth century, relates the story of a young woman, Hua Mulan 花木蘭, who passes as a man in order to take her father’s place in the army. Marjorie Garber has discussed transvestite figures as indicative of the disruption of cultural boundaries, not simply crossing between the categories male/female but others as well;72 if that logic can be applied to this Chinese example, the figure of Mulan calls into question the border between inner and outer. To signal her successful performance of both femininity and masculinity, the poet refers to gendered dress, adornments, and activities. At the beginning of the poem, Mulan engages in one form of womanly work, weaving. But the poet confounds the expectation that longing for someone is a quintessentially feminine trait: Ask her whom she’s longing for! Ask her whom she’s thinking of! She’s longing for no one at all, She’s thinking of no one special. 問女何所思，問女何所憶。女亦無所思，女亦無所憶。73

Longing for no one marks Mulan as an atypical young woman, preparing the reader for her decision to enlist in the army. To enact a man’s role, she outfits herself in masculine cloaks and acquires a horseman’s gear. Following a successful campaign, she requests that the emperor permit her to return to her village with her fellow soldiers. After arriving home—apparently bypassing her parents, sister, and brother, who all have advance notice of her arrival and 72 Garber, Vested Interests, 16. 73 Translated by William H. Nienhauser in Liu and Lo, Sunflower Splendor, 77; “Mulan shi er shou 木蘭詩二首 [Song of Mulan, 1/2],” YFSJ, 2:25.373–74.

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turn out to greet her—she disappears into her former bedroom, dresses in feminine attire, styles her hair, and makes up her face with pollen. (One component of makeup for fashionable women from the sixth century through the Tang dynasty was the application of powder to their foreheads, especially yellow powder or pollen,74 significant for its association with the sexual reproduction of plants.) Afterward, Mulan emerges to greet her comrades. According to the tale, her appearance astonished her fellow soldiers, who had never suspected over the course of twelve years that she was female. The poem ends with a comment on the difficulty of distinguishing between the sexes: The hare draws in his feet to sit, His mate has eyes that gleam, But when the two run side by side, How much alike they seem! 雄兔腳撲朔，雌兔眼迷離。兩兔傍地走，安能辨我是雄雌。75

The unknown poet overtly treats gender as mutable and wholly constructed. Mulan’s discard of feminine behaviors and assumption of masculine attributes allow her to pass as a man; reversing this equation, on the other hand, reveals her as a woman. Erotic poems that describe women’s makeup thus emphasize their femininity, and those that focus on its application accentuate the performative aspect of gender. At the same time, despite its concern with the enhancement of surface, this construction of femininity is usually presented as a matter for the inner quarters. In the Southern Song, for example, the inner quarters was the site for footbinding, an intimate practice involving mothers and daughters; judging from pictorial evidence, a woman did not display bound feet but hid them under long skirts.76 In poetry, the application of cosmetics similarly takes place in secluded bedrooms or gardens, and for the most part, a made-up woman is not seen by outsiders, unless she is a courtesan. Wearing cosmetics, despite its apparently superficial nature, is an “inner” behavior, and when a 74

Edward H. Schafer, “The Early History of Lead Pigments and Cosmetics in China,” T’oung Pao 44, no. 4–5 (1956): 419; Zhu Renxing 朱仁星, “Dang chuang li yunbin, dui jing tie huahuang 當窗理雲鬢，對鏡貼花黃 [At the Window, Arranging a Cloud Coiffure; / Facing the Mirror and Applying Pollen],” in Guoli Gugong Bowuyuan, Wenwu guanghua 文物光華 [Highlights of Cultural Relics] (Taipei: Guoli Gugong Bowuyuan, 1990), 4:54. 75 Translated by William H. Nienhauser in Liu and Lo, Sunflower Splendor, 80; “Mulan shi ershou [1/2],” YFSJ, 2:25.373–74. 76 Ebrey, The Inner Quarters, 37–43.

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male reader gains access to an image of a female persona making up her face, the image becomes more titillating because of the sense of voyeurism involved. Perhaps for this reason, men drew pleasure from the makeup itself. The infamous account of Zhang Chang, whose penchant for painting his wife’s eyebrows earned him an imperial reprimand, reveals that it was considered inappropriate for a man to concern himself with something so “inner.” His story is recalled in a Southern Dynasties poem by Liu Xiaowei 劉孝威 (d. 548), which describes a faithful husband longing to return to his wife, a woman he remembers as careworn and haggard. In the poem, written as a letter to her, he encourages her to refresh her makeup in preparation for his arrival but begs that she leave the painting of her eyebrows to him.77 Poems such as these explicitly acknowledge the construction of feminine beauty as a masquerade at which men may assist, through fantasy, word, or deed.78 In the Song dynasty, the conservative historian Sima Guang commented in Precepts for Family Life (Jiafan 家範), It is said that for a wife to be virtuous, she needs no bright talent nor to be extraordinary in any way. A wife’s speech need not be eloquent or lyrical. A wife’s face need not be beautifully made up. A wife’s achievements need not be so clever as to surpass those of men. 夫云，婦德不必才明絕異也。婦言不必辯口利辭也。婦容不必顏色美 麗也。婦功不必功巧過人也。79

This passage draws a clear parallel between the application of makeup and other forms of self-cultivation. Not all shared the sanctimonious view that attempts to refine themselves would distract women from matters of greater import, however. Centuries beforehand, a didactic poem by Zhang Hua 張華 (232–300), “Admonitions of the Instructress” (Nüshi zhen 女史箴), suggested that self-adornment and cultivating one’s character are analogous: All people know how to adorn their faces but not how to refine their characters. An unrefined character 77

78 79

Liu Xiaowei, “Ruo xian yujian ren zhi shuai’er ji fu 鄀縣遇見人織率爾寄婦 [I Saw Someone Weaving in Ruo County and Spontaneously Sent This to My Wife],” YTXY, 8.9b–10a; cf. translation in Birrell, New Songs from a Jade Terrace, 217–18. I am grateful to Patricia Simons for this suggestion. Sima Guang, Jiafan, 6.594.

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may deviate from what is correct. Sculpt it and polish it, and one could study to be a sage. 人咸知飾其容，而莫知飾其性。性之不飾，或愆禮正。斧之藻之，克 念作聖。80

Significantly, the painting of the same title once attributed to Gu Kaizhi illustrates these lines with a scene of palace women examining their mirror reflections (fig. 16). One lady smiles with satisfaction at her reflection in the round mirror she holds, raising her other hand to pat her hair; another lady faces a mirror mounted on a stand, sitting patiently with her arms in her sleeves, while a third woman dresses her hair. Cosmetic boxes litter the floor about them. With the lines from Zhang Hua’s poem inscribed beside these women on the scroll, the painter seems to imply that these women, who turn a critical eye to outward appearances, should be equally concerned with their behavior and character—which the mirror also has the capacity to reveal. A painting such as this, which takes up a woman’s ideal comportment and uses mirrors to signal its educational function, may be referenced even in paintings based on erotic poetry that use the mirror to suggest a woman’s longing. In other Song dynasty circles, a woman’s concern for how a man viewed her was seen as a natural reflection of her attachment to him. When Su Shi grieved for his first wife in the poem titled “My Wife, Ms. Wang, Died First, So I Wrote This Lyric in Mourning” (Gong zhi furen Wang shi xian zu, wei ci ci, gai daowang ye 公之夫人王氏先卒，味此詞，蓋悼亡也), he remembered her applying her makeup: Ten years have widened the gulf between living and dead. I don’t think about it, but it’s hard to forget. A thousand miles away lies the solitary grave, and I have nowhere to speak of my loneliness. Even if we met you wouldn’t recognize me, the dust covering my face, my hair like frost. 80

Zhang Hua, “Nüshi zhen,” in Xiao and Hu, Wen xuan, 56.2a. For translations of the full poem, see Shih, “Poetry Illustration and the Works of Ku K’ai-chih,” 10–12; “Text and Translation of Zhang Hua’s Poem, ‘Admonitions of the Instructress to the Court Ladies’ (‘Nüshi zhen’),” in McCausland, Gu Kaizhi and the Admonitions Scroll, 15–17.

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Figure 16 Detail of self-adornment scene from Admonitions of the Court Instructress to the Palace Ladies. After Gu Kaizhi (ca. 345–406), possibly 5th–7th century; handscroll, ink and color on silk, 24.4 × 343.8 cm. The British Museum, London.

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In a night’s lonely dream I suddenly returned home. At the little room’s window you were combing your hair, applying makeup. We gazed at each other without a word, only a thousand streams of tears. Year after year I know the heartbreak of that place, the moonlit nights, the ridge of young pines. 十年生死兩茫茫。不思量。自難忘。千里孤墳，無處話淒涼。縱使相 逢應不識，塵滿面，鬢如霜。 夜來幽夢忽還鄉。小軒窗。正梳妝。相顧無言，惟有淚千行。料得年 年斷腸處，明月夜，短松岡。81

This lyric is unusual in part for its emphasis on the male speaker’s emotions. Su Shi writes of his loneliness, using characters with that connotation to describe the grave, his feelings, and his dream. But he also attends to appearances, both his own and his late wife’s. In the last three lines of the first stanza, he speculates about a reunion that could only occur in a dream, noting how the years since her death have aged him. His vision of her at her makeup stand suggests that her loveliness is an integral part of the poet’s idealization of her memory. She is, in his mind, forever young and beautiful, and the stark contrast with his own deteriorating appearance helps to emphasize the passage of time since her death, underscoring Su Shi’s abiding love for her. The ability of makeup to heighten a woman’s desirability is due only in part to its accentuation of her femininity and enhancement of her beauty: another important function of makeup is its capacity for expressing her longing. A woman’s need to enhance her beauty and the ephemeral qualities of the cosmetics themselves reflect both the passage of time and the vicissitudes of male-female relationships, as seen in poems of both the Southern Dynasties and the Tang dynasty. In these works, a female persona could apply cosmetics to delight her lover, but if he left she might become obsessed with self-adornment, as if wishing for him to return. In one poem, the persona depends on

81

Su Shi, “Gong zhi furen Wang shi xian zu, wei ci ci, gai daowang ye,” Tune: “Jiang shenzi [9/9],” QSC, 1:300. My translation owes a debt to that of Burton Watson in The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry, 365 (under the title “Song of River City”); I have only made his excellent translation more literal.

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makeup to hold her lover.82 More often, her attempts to call him back remain futile: as an aging or abandoned woman, or as a courtesan with little claim on him, she could not realistically expect to receive her beloved’s favor again.83 Her pains to make herself alluring could make her a pathetic figure, especially if tears subsequently streaked her makeup.84 For the most part, however, poets write of the solitary female persona who no longer attends to her makeup, whether her male lover had abandoned her long before or had only recently departed.85 Instead, she is described as sitting disconsolately in front of her mirror, reflecting on the uselessness of applying cosmetics and deliberately renouncing her rouge or brow powder.86 Such neglect of her appearance signified the end of both her relationship and her desirability. 82

83

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Wang Xun 王訓 (511–36), “Fenghe shuai’er you yong 奉和率爾有詠 [Spontaneous Song, Respectfully Submitted to the Emperor, Matching the Rhymes of His Poem],” YTXY, 8.7a; cf. translation in Birrell, New Songs from a Jade Terrace, 214. For poems about the aging woman, see Fei Chang, “Xing lu nan er shou 行路難二首 [The Road Is Hard, Two Poems],” YTXY, 9.23a–b; cf. translation in Birrell, New Songs from a Jade Terrace, 254; and Wen Tingyun 温庭筠 (812?–66?), Tune: “Pusa man 菩薩蠻 [Deva-Like Barbarian, 7/14],” HJJ, 14–15; cf. translation in Fusek, Among the Flowers, 38–39. For poems about the abandoned woman, see Liu Lingxian 劉令嫻 (late fifth century to early sixth century), “Da wai shi er shou 答外詩二首 [Replying to the One Away, Two Poems, 1/2],” and Ms. Liu 劉氏 (wife of Wang Shuying 王叔英, fl. late fifth–early sixth century), “Zengda yi shou 贈答一首 [Reply, One Poem],” YTXY, 6.16b and 9.30a–b; cf. translations in Birrell, New Songs from a Jade Terrace, 178, 262. See also Gu Xiong 顧夐 (fl. ca. 933), Tune: “Yu meiren [2/6]”; idem., Tune: “Yulou chun 玉樓春 [Spring at the Jade Tower, 3/4]”; and Li Xun 李珣 (855?–930?), Tune: “Lin jiang xian [2/2],” HJJ, 335, 348, 514; cf. translations in Fusek, Among the Flowers, 126, 131, 188. For a poem about a courtesan, see Xiao Gang (Liang Jianwendi), “Yan’ge pian shiba yun 艷歌篇十八韻 [Song of Yan, Eighteen Rhymes, 1/3],” YTXY, 7.5b–6b; cf. translation in Birrell, New Songs from a Jade Terrace, 187– 88. Gu Xiong, Tune: “Yulou chun [4/4],” HJJ, 349; cf. translation in Fusek, Among the Flowers, 131. See also “Fengqing wenda er shou 風情問答二首 [Responding with Feeling, Two Poems],” Tune: “Nan gezi 南歌子 [Song of the South],” Dunhuang no. P. 3836, DHGC, 2:3.638; cf. translations by Marsha Wagner in The Lotus Boat, 99–100, and by Maija Bell Samei in Gendered Persona and Poetic Voice, 107–108. Wang Sengru, “Chungui you yuan 春閨有怨 [Spring Bedroom Resentment]” and Xiao Gang (Liang Jianwendi), “Qiugui yesi 秋閨夜思 [Night Thoughts in an Autumn Bedroom],” YTXY, 6.7b, 7.14a–b; cf. translations in Birrell, New Songs from a Jade Terrace, 167, 194. Wen Tingyun, Tune: “Pusa man [12/14],” HJJ, 21; cf. translations in Fusek, Among the Flowers, 40; and Wagner, The Lotus Boat, 149. Xiao Gang (Liang Jianwendi), “Dongxiao 冬曉 [Winter Dawn],” YTXY, 7.12a; cf. translation in Birrell, New Songs from a Jade Terrace, 192. “You dang jing nian 遊蕩經年 [Years of Dissipated Wandering],” Tune: “Zhu zhizi 竹枝子 [Bamboo Branch],” Dunhuang no. S. 1441,

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Related to the wishful application of cosmetics was an unhappy woman’s literal writing of longing upon her brow, in willow-branch or mountain makeup, a phenomenon found in Tang, Five Dynasties, and Song poetry. Describing a female persona painting her eyebrows green87 to resemble willow branches or mountains represented a different level of signification altogether. In a sense, her face became an expanse of silk or paper, upon which the poet drew evocative pictures. The landscape elements thus evoked were well-established metaphors in their own right. Willow branches already connoted the separation of friends or lovers, and willow-branch brows on female personae suggested their longings for beloved travelers.88 Even more common than willow-branch brows, though, were mountain brows, resembling another landscape feature that could evoke thoughts of men’s travel. High foreheads powdered yellow might resemble hills bathed in evening light, as in one of Wen Tingyun’s 温庭筠 (812?–66?) poems.89 A Tang lyric about a man taken with a courtesan describes her colorful beauty mark: “painted between her brows, a mountain in two dots” (眉間畫得山兩

87

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DHGC, 1:1.135 (a poem from the High Tang Yunyao ji); cf. a translation of a version with slightly different wording by Maija Bell Samei in Gendered Persona and Poetic Voice, 77–78. “Longshang miao shi shou 壟上苗十首 [Sprouts upon the Mound, Ten Poems],” Tune: “Baisui pian 百歲篇 [Songs for a Hundred Years, 4/10],” Dunhuang nos. P. 3361, S. 1588, DHGC, 3:5.1324–25; for a French translation, see Jao and Demiéville, Airs de Touen-houang, 101. Several poems refer to women painting their brows green, an important component of willow-branch or mountain brows. One example is Wei Zhuang, Tune: “Ye jinmen 謁金門 [Paying Homage at the Golden Gate, 1/2],” HJJ, 119; cf. translations in Fusek, Among the Flowers, 66; Yates, Washing Silk, 222. Another is Ouyang Xiu, Tune: “Ta suo xing 踏莎行 [Treading on Grass, 2/2],” QSC, 1:123; cf. translation in Liu, Major Lyricists of the Northern Sung, 34–35. Other poems mention cases where the brows are simply darkened. For Tang dynasty examples, see “Wuling kenqie er shou 五陵懇切二首 [Wuling Sincerity, Two Poems, 2/2],” Tune: “Huanxi sha,” Dunhuang no. S. 1441, DHGC, 1:1.185 (a poem included in the High Tang Yunyao ji); cf. translation in Fong, “Engendering the Lyric,” 115–16. See also Wen Tingyun, Tune: “Ding xifan 定西番 [Pacifying the Western Barbarians, 3/3],” HJJ, 42; cf. translation in Fusek, Among the Flowers, 45. For Song dynasty examples, see Ouyang Xiu, “Ruan lang gui 阮郎歸 [Young Ruan Returns, 1/2]”; Shu Dan (1041–1103) 舒亶, “Ci yun zeng geji 次韻贈歌妓 [Incidental Rhymes for a Singing Girl],” Tune: “Mulan hua 木蘭花 [Magnolia Blossoms, 1/3]”; and Chao Duanli, Tune: “Man ting fang 滿庭芳 [Garden Filled with Fragrance, 5/5],” QSC, 1:162, 365, 421. English renditions of Ouyang’s poem appear in Kenneth Rexroth, trans., One Hundred Poems from the Chinese (New York: New Directions Publishing, 1971), 53; and Landau, Beyond Spring, 106. See Rouzer’s comment and his translation of Wen Tingyun, “Ou you 偶遊 [Carefree Wanderings],” in Writing Another’s Dream, 21–22.

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點).90 These marks must have been similar to those found on the foreheads of

the female figures in Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk (figs. 11.1–11.2). Other poems suggest that the brows themselves take on the form of a mountain. In one, a man longs for a devastatingly beautiful woman, “her brows made up like melancholy, distant mountains” (一雙愁黛遠山眉).91 In other works, women pine for men long absent while wearing “brows the same as distant Mt. Xiang” (眉共湘山遠)92 or made up with “two lines of brow powder like the ridges of distant mountains” (兩條眉黛遠山橫).93 Song dynasty poets explicitly acknowledged how mountain brows might express emotion.94 One example that clearly demonstrates how this sort of makeup could encode feelings is a song lyric by Ouyang Xiu. Significantly, he titled it “Thoughts Revealed in Eyebrows” (Mei yi 眉意) and set it to the tune “Telling My Innermost Feelings” (Su zhongqing 訴衷情): At clear dawn, the bamboo blind rolls up a thin layer of frost. She puffs at her hands (hah!) and tries some plum makeup. Everything comes from her resentment of parting, which she paints as a line of distant mountains. Thinking of past affairs, she regrets her lost beauty. It is easy to be hurt. Preparing to sing, she first wrinkles her brow, wanting to laugh but frowning again. This really breaks people’s hearts. 清晨簾幕卷輕霜。呵手試梅妝。都緣自有離恨，故畫作遠山長。   思往事，惜流芳。易成傷。擬歌先斂，欲笑還顰，最斷人傷。95 90 91 92 93 94

95

Wei Chengban 魏承班 (fl. ca. 910), Tune: “Pusa man [1/2],” HJJ, 440; cf. translation in Fusek, Among the Flowers, 162. Wei Zhuang, Tune: “Heye bei 菏葉杯 [Lotus Leaf Cup, 1/2],” HJJ, 112; cf. translation in Fusek, Among the Flowers, 63. Sun Guangxian, Tune: “Pusa man [3/5],” HJJ, 399; cf. translation in Fusek, Among the Flowers, 147. Gu Xiong, “Xiafang yuan 遐方怨 [Lament on Distant Places],” HJJ, 364; cf. translation in Fusek, Among the Flowers, 136–37. Wang Qiyu 王齊愈 (n.d.), “Ji qing 寄情 [Sending Feelings],” Tune: “Yu meiren”; Shu Dan, “Yong jiuyun xi Wu Fengyi 用舊韻戲吳奉議 [Using Old Rhymes as a Play on Wu Fengyi],” Tune: “Jianzi mulan hua [1/2]”; Chao Duanli, Tune: “Ta suo xing 踏莎行 [Treading on Grass, 2/3]”; idem., Tune: “Pusa man [5/5]”, QSC, 1:358, 365, 429, 433. Ouyang Xiu, “Mei yi [Thoughts Revealed in Eyebrows],” Tune: “Su zhongqing [Telling My Innermost Feelings],” QSC, 1:123; cf. Julie Landau’s translation in Beyond Spring, 96; and

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Painting eyebrows to resemble mountains was, again, a way of expressing longing for departed lovers; and the fact that so many poets describe a particular resemblance to distant mountains emphasizes that the mountains are a metaphor for someone far away. In these examples of willow-branch and mountain brow makeup, the reader of erotic poetry finds that makeup could enhance the expression of a woman’s feelings. At the same time, the curiously pictorial nature of the makeup—with a face as a blank surface—suggests an interest in new methods of visualizing longing, by inscribing it upon a woman’s body. One might conclude that this move towards making emotion pictorial parallels the proliferation of the theme of women at their makeup mirrors in Song paintings. The allusions to adornment in the titles of A Lady at Her Dressing Table and Embroidered Cage, Morning Mirror provide the first hint of their themes.96 The “morning mirror” (xiaojing 曉鏡) in particular seems to have been a resonant image with specific connotations, appearing in several song lyrics of the period. One lyric by Yan Jidao 晏幾道 (fl. ca. 1105), to the tune “Moon over the West River,” reads as follows: Melancholy brows wrinkle to form the crescent moon, and as I weep, my makeup streaks like a wilted flower. With only a mandarin duck pillow, I retire at night. Reflected in the morning mirror, my heart’s feelings are listless. The wind worries your drinking cap, up in the eaves, and a cold smell emerges from the sleeves of your army shirt. With the green river in spring floods, sending word is hard, and the time when we hold hands in reunion will be later still. 愁黛顰成月淺，啼妝印得花殘。只消鴛枕夜來閒。曉鏡心情便懶。   醉帽檐頭風細，征衫袖口香寒。綠江春水寄書難。攜手佳期 又晚。97

In this lyric, the shift from nighttime to morning imagery suggests the passage of time and the endurance of the female persona’s disconsolate feelings. These verses also describe a woman obsessed with her appearance in the absence of her lover, presenting a scenario that is credible as a theme not only for Embroi­ dered Cage, Morning Mirror but also for A Lady at Her Dressing Table. In both of

96 97

Ronald C. Egan’s translation in The Literary Works of Ou-yang Hsiu (1007–72) (Cambridge and London: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 135. Laing, “Chinese Palace-Style Poetry,” 286. Yan Jidao, Tune: “Xijiang yue 西江月 [Moon over the West River, 1/2],” QSC, 1:256.

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these paintings, the image that appears upon the mirror’s surface provides a key to its significance. The ladies’ emotions are manifested in the objects that surround them as well, especially uniquely pictorial elements like screen paintings. The central figure of A Lady at Her Dressing Table views her reflection in a mirror, cosmetics in stacked bamboo trays at her disposal. Her expression, only visible on the polished surface of the mirror, is discontented: her anxious look of appraisal assesses whether her beauty has begun to fade, whether physical shortcomings drove her beloved away or discourage him from returning to her. At the same time, the magnification of her reflected image in the large mirror may be the artist’s strategy for emphasizing her interiority.98 The combination of mirror, cosmetics, and a love-knot tied in a bright red ribbon at her waist indicates that this woman is deeply attached to a man and likely indulging in thoughts of him. But judging from her expression and her relative isolation (she seems oblivious to the presence of the solicitous maid waiting at her elbow), it seems likely that those thoughts are not happy ones.99 The typical poetic scenario would have her abandoned by her beloved, examining her features for signs of stress, perhaps weighing whether or not her cosmetics will be of further use,100 but certainly wasting away from incurable lovesickness.101 The best she could hope for—aside from the return of her beloved—was that she would find another lover and have occasion to use her mirror again.102 But more often, poets suggest her life to be over, in some instances likening her to a dead goose or a lonely phoenix (birds almost always conceptualized in 98 Wu, Tales from the Land of Dragons, 154. 99 Wu Hung relates this painting to a Chinese saying, duiying zilian 對影自憐, which he translates as “gazing at one’s own image and lamenting one’s fate,” in The Double Screen, 15. 100 Some poems describe the unwilling separation of a couple, but even these still emphasize their separation, with the reunion as yet unrealized. A number of poems constructed as letters between husbands and wives exist; e.g., Qin Jia, “Zeng fu shi san shou [To My Wife, Three Poems],” and his wife, Xu Shu 徐淑, “Da shi yi shou 答詩一首 [Reply, One Poem]”; Lu Yun 陸雲 (262–303), “Wei Gu Yanxian zeng fu wangfan si shou 為顧彥先贈婦往返四 首 [Letters to a Wife, Four Poems for Gu Yanxian]”; Xu Fei 徐悱 (d. 524), “Zeng nei 贈内 [Sent to the One Inside],” and his wife, Liu Lingxian, “Da wai shi ershou [Replying to the One Away, Two Poems],” YTXY, 1.16b–18a; 3.7a–8b; 6.12a, 6.16b–17a; cf. translations in Birrell, New Songs from a Jade Terrace, 45–47, 94–95, 172, 178. 101 Xie Tiao 謝朓 (464–99), “Jingtai 鏡臺 [The Mirror Stand]” and Shen Yue, “Xie shou qu 攜手曲 [Song on Holding Hands],” YTXY, 4.18a–b, 5.5b; cf. translations in Birrell, New Songs from a Jade Terrace, 129–30, 138. 102 Gao Shuang 高爽 (fl. ca. 502), “Yong jing 詠鏡 [On a Mirror],” YTXY, 5.15b; cf. translation in Birrell, New Songs from a Jade Terrace, 149.

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male-female pairs).103 The solitary woman dwells on her sad state and longs incessantly for the man who left her, searching her mirror for a sign of what caused him to leave. In this Song painting, her fidelity to and complete preoccupation with the absent man—in this case, her husband—is evident. This reading is reinforced by various elements of the painting that together reveal the lady’s mood.104 Several of the objects that surround her provide the richest material for interpretation. For example, her stacked cosmetic boxes seem to be made of spotted bamboo, a reference to the loneliness of the bereaved Xiang River goddesses. The hill censer on the table may show the lady’s taste in antiques (as these objects date back to the Former Han dynasty), but, similar to the coals in Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk, it might also suggest her smoldering passion.105 The censer’s hill-shaped lid may be significant too: for a woman keeping herself hidden away from the outside world and dwelling on the absence of her lover, the image of a mountain might bring to mind a traveling man. Finally, the wave screen behind the table deserves mention, as the concept of the melding of feeling and scene may well be operative here.106 The screen depicts an expanse of stylized, patterned waves, rendered in short, even, curvilinear strokes that suggest the billowing surface of a large body of water. The waves may represent a sort of pictorial pun: one word for waves, lang 浪, can also be used to describe romantic feelings, uninhibited behavior, and even wandering.107 I propose that the wave imagery represents her longing for her wandering husband,108 especially appropriate given the per103

Xiao Gang (Liang Jianwendi), “Yong ren qi qie 詠人棄妾 [On an Abandoned Con­­cubine],” and Xu Ling, “Wei Yang Yanzhou jiaren da xiang jing 為羊兗州家人答餉鏡 [Reply with Thanks for a Mirror, for the Maid of Yang Yanzhou],” YTXY, 7.15b, 8.17b; cf. translations in Birrell, New Songs from a Jade Terrace, 195, 227. 104 Ellen Johnston Laing discusses the poetic use of such a strategy in “Chinese Palace-Style Poetry,” 288. 105 Early hill censers were used in religious ceremonies, where the incense could help to focus prayer and meditation. The figures and fantastic animals that usually appear on the mountain-shaped lid might suggest the realm of the immortals. Lothar Ledderose, “The Earthly Paradise: Religious Elements in Chinese Landscape Art,” in Theories of the Arts in China, ed. Susan Bush and Christian Murck (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 178. 106 Wu Hung, in The Double Screen, 16, has observed that the screen reflects the lady’s mind; he contrasts the screen with the mirror, which he sees as reflecting her physical likeness only. 107 Luo, Hanyu da cidian, s.v. langren 浪人 (wanderer), langman 浪漫 (wanton; poetic), langdang 浪蕩 (to wander; dissolute behavior). 108 Alternatively, the waves may refer to the lady’s “suppressed desire”; Wu, The Double Screen, 15. This interpretation may be based on Zhu Xi’s comparison of desire to waves; see

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ception of water as a yin element. However, they could also signify an unsettled situation or instability.109 As for Embroidered Cage, Morning Mirror, it goes even further in conveying the hopeless situation of the central figure, whose somber expression is again only visible in her mirror reflection.110 She remains faithful to her absent lover, as represented by the blue love-knot she wears, but because her face is visibly aging, the viewer understands that he has abandoned her. The mirror shows a horizontal line beneath her right eye, suggesting her bagging flesh, while her profile exhibits a receding chin, drawn skin about her eyes and lips, and multiple lines by her ear that indicate her sagging jawline.111 The unhappy woman whose appearance has begun to deteriorate is a common figure in erotic poetry. Her grim consultations with her mirror reveal a lined face, hollow cheeks, and thinning hair, the natural result of loneliness, aging, or both.112 In this painting, the woman stares fixedly at her gaunt face, ignoring the cosmetics in

109

110 111

112

Martin W. Huang, “Sentiments of Desire: Thoughts on the Cult of Qing in Ming–Qing Literature,” Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews (CLEAR) 20 (December 1998): 157. Yet another interpretation suggests that the screen imagery was intended to give pleasure, as she could imagine herself “gently rocking on the waves in the painting”; Handler, “The Chinese Screen,” 16. Wave screens have also been used in the context of a double portrait of a deceased husband and wife, as in a tomb mural, ca. 1099, from Baisha, Henan province, which is reproduced in Su Bai 宿白, Baisha Song mu 白沙宋墓 [Song Dynasty Tombs at Baisha] (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 1957), plate 22; for discussions of it, see Sullivan, “Notes on Early Chinese Screen Painting,” 249; and Handler, “The Chinese Screen,” 16. A song lyric by Yan Jidao describes how the poet becomes unsettled after listening to a song by a courtesan named Yuzhen 玉真: “At the end of the song, one’s feelings are like the flowing waves” (曲終人意似流波). Yan Jidao, Tune: “Mulan hua [6/8],” QSC, 1:233. In this case, the word for waves is not lang but bo 波. I discussed the figures and the landscape screen in Blanchard, “Lonely Women and the Absent Man,” 36, 40. These minute details, visible upon close inspection, tend to be invisible in reproductions. I am grateful to Lin Po-t’ing and Wang Yao-t’ing of the National Palace Museum for arranging a viewing session of this painting. Wang Sengru, “Wei ji ren zishang 為姬人自傷 [For a Courtesan Hurt by Someone]”; Ji Shaoyu 紀少瑜 (fl. ca. 535), “Chunri 春日 [Spring Day]”; and Xiao Gang (Liang Jianwendi), “Chougui zhaojing 愁閨照鏡 [Reflecting Mirror in a Melancholy Bedroom],” YTXY, 6.10a; 8.16a; and 10.20b; cf. translations in Birrell, New Songs from a Jade Terrace, 170, 225, 288. Wen Tingyun, Tune: “Pusa man [5/14 and 7/14],” HJJ, 12–13, 14–15; cf. translations in Fusek, Among the Flowers, 38, 38–39. See also Feng Yansi 馮延巳 (903–60), Tune: “Die lian hua [6/6],” QTS, 12:898.10158; Daniel Bryant translates the lyric and notes that its tune title should be “Que ta zhi 鵲踏枝 [Magpie on the Branch],” in Liu and Lo, Sunflower Splendor, 297–98.

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gold lacquer trays at her fingertips. When a mirror reflects the ravages of age, the female persona cannot hope to attract a new love (an exclusive privilege of the young),113 and this aging woman’s position is undeniably different from that of the younger lady in the foreground of the painting. Dressed in comparable finery, the latter boasts a plump, rounded face, and she bends eagerly over the fresh supply of cosmetics that a maid has just brought. Her youthful energy contrasts with the older woman’s fading beauty. The reliance upon an evocative painting-within-painting becomes even more important in the relatively spare environment of Embroidered Cage, Mor­ ning Mirror, where fewer objects allude to the aging woman’s feelings. The landscape screen stands out: rather than serving a practical function,114 it seems to be a means of indicating the absence of the woman’s lover, drawing upon the associations between wanderers and landscapes of mountains and rivers. The painter has used this screen rhetorically, to underscore the woman’s thoughts of her traveling lover. Thus in these two paintings, the women’s faces, attitudes, and even objects in their environment all speak to their overwhelming unhappiness at the absence of their men. Although these lonely ladies are depicted at their makeup tables, examining their faces in mirrors, it is significant that they make no move to use the many cosmetics available to them. Each appears to have forsworn the assistance that makeup can provide in enhancing beauty and attracting lovers: with the beloved gone from the picture, there is no one to attract. At the same time, there is no suggestion that these women are beyond love—even though at least one of them seems to be aging—for they still keep love-token mirrors, wear love-knots, and wait for absent men to return. The viewer is impressed by their faithfulness. It is probably no coincidence that the type of woman who would use these fans would want to cultivate this sort of image. Meanwhile, a male viewer might be intrigued by the sight of women in private moments. But more importantly, the mirror provides the best view of their faces, reflecting not only their physical appearance but also their hearts. 113

114

Liu Lingxian, “Da wai shi er shou [2/2],” YTXY, 6.16b–17a; cf. translation in Birrell, New Songs from a Jade Terrace, 178. Xue Zhaoyun 薛昭蘊 (ca. 900–32), Tune: “Xiao chong shan 小重山 [Manifold Little Hills, 2/2],” HJJ, 166; cf. translation in Fusek, Among the Flowers, 78. For an example of how landscape screens could serve a more material purpose, see a tenth-century lyric by Mao Wenxi 毛文錫 (fl. ca. 930), Tune: “Su zhongqing [1/2],” HJJ, 274; cf. translation in Fusek, Among the Flowers, 108. This lyric suggests that in a brothel, landscape screens divided sleeping areas and served as objects of contemplation for courtesans.

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A Lady Watching a Maid with a Parrot presents a somewhat different scene. In this painting, Meifei’s face is clearly visible, presented in three-quarter view, and her expression is calm. The viewer sees only the back of the bronze mirror mounted on a stand to her left. Meifei turns away from it and from the adjacent stack of covered cosmetic boxes. She may not have been using her mirror at all; with books on the table and next to her on the couch, the servant and parrot are probably drawing her attention away from her reading. Meifei, in fact, is not supposed to have been interested in makeup, and when Xuanzong turned from her to Yang Guifei, as the story goes, she tried to win his attention again through poetry rather than cosmetics.115 One could interpret the mirror shown here as a neglected mirror, a metaphor for hopeless love in poetry, but the conventions of the trope do not precisely match what is depicted in this fan. In poetry, a mirror’s disuse usually indicates the female persona’s lack of concern for her appearance, meaning that she has no one for whom to make herself desirable. In this case, Meifei’s hair is elaborately dressed, and her face is made up, with a whitened forehead and nose. The mirror might still stand for a love token, and coupled with another metaphor for longing, the incense burner, it suggests that one might understand her as lonely, albeit not desperate or helpless. The parrot, of course, signifies her romantic rival. The presence of the books and writing implements introduces an element not yet seen in an example of shinü hua: the woman’s literacy. But what books are these, and is she preparing to write? Several interpretations are possible. Perhaps Meifei is studying texts that define a woman’s ideal conduct, in which case one might understand the presence of the mirror and cosmetic boxes as tropes that signal her exemplary self-awareness. In fact, as a woman who does not seem wholly preoccupied with her appearance, she rather recalls Sima Guang’s dictum about the virtuous woman. Perhaps, surrounded as she is by emblems of her loneliness and still secluded in her garden, the books represent a collection of love poetry, and Meifei is preparing to record her thoughts about the emperor in her own poem or else writing a letter to him. In this case, one might see the mirror and cosmetic boxes as tropes that help to establish an image of a lonely woman consumed with her relationship—a romanticized figure. But unquestionably, this painting suggests reading and writing as appropriate pastimes for women.116 In doing so, it expands upon the earlier construction of the image of the idealized woman, presenting a new model of femininity.

115 Bickford, Ink Plum, 56; Lee, Empresses, Art, and Agency, 104. 116 Wu, Tales from the Land of Dragons, 185.

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These fan paintings, which engage with the poetic construct of the lovelorn woman, also address the ways that a woman’s interiority, including her feelings about her beloved, might be essential to the performance of femininity. A woman was supposed to be concerned with matters that were inner, and this was a crucial part of her superficial image: these paintings indicate that there were ways of balancing these two opposing principles. Moreover, they reveal a strategy whereby women could increase their own attractiveness. The poetic record makes it evident that the image of a lonely, faithful woman appealed to many men. But a woman could profit from her association with these images: by carrying such a fan publicly or even by studying it in private, she might project an eminently desirable persona.

Ladies Adorning Their Hair with Flowers: A Bed-Screen?

Ladies Adorning Their Hair with Flowers (fig. 17), attributed to Zhou Fang, is another painting that may well have constructed an image of idealized femininity for a female viewer. In this case, the original format of the painting suggests that women might have had access to it in relatively intimate moments. The painting, now mounted as a handscroll, originally was a low folding screen (xiaoquping 小曲屏), meant to be placed next to a couch (kang 炕), which could be used either for sitting or sleeping. Intriguingly, the painting could have been the central panel of a bed-screen.117 It is close in height (46 cm) to another painting that may once have been a folding screen: Verdant Forests, Distant Peaks (Maolin yuanxiu tu 茂林遠岫圖), attributed to Li Cheng, in the Liaoning Provincial Museum, now mounted as a handscroll.118 Ladies Adorning Their Hair with Flowers must have been remounted as a handscroll no later than 1131–62, judging from its Shaoxing seal.119 It also bears the seal of thirteenth-century prime minister Jia Sidao;120 the two seals together indicate that it belonged to the imperial collection in the early Southern Song and later 117

118 119

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Bed-screens are described in Wen Tingyun, Tune: “Pusa man [1/14],” HJJ, 4; and Yan Jidao, Tune: “Huanxi sha [5/21],” QSC 1: 239.; cf. translation for Wen’s lyric in Fusek, Among the Flowers, 37. Attributed to Li Cheng, Verdant Forests, Distant Peaks, handscroll, color on silk, 45.5 × 142.1 cm; reproduced in Zhejiang Daxue, Song hua quanji 3, part 1: 36–51. Zhao Xiaohua 趙曉華, “Zanhua shinü tu: you pingfeng hua gai wei juanzhou hua chuan cang zhi renshi 簪花仕女圖–由屏風畫改為卷軸畫傳藏之認識 [Ladies Adorning Their Hair with Flowers: Recognition of a Screen Painting Remounted as a Handscroll],” Gugong wenwu yuekan, no. 149 (August 1995): 120, 123. Laing, “Notes on Ladies Wearing Flowers in Their Hair,” 32.

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passed into the collection of a prominent figure at court. This suggests that the perceived function of the painting changed sometime during the Song dynasty. Poems from the Tang and Song dynasties, as well as A Lady at Her Dressing Table and Embroidered Cage, Morning Mirror, indicate that screens were among the furnishings found in feminine space. Perhaps this is why one art historian asks whether Ladies Adorning Their Hair with Flowers may have “represent[ed] women to themselves, providing models of ideal deportment and physical beauty.”121 The painting appears to represent concubines competing for a man’s attention, and I suggest that such a screen would have been appropriately located anywhere that women prepared for or engaged in sexual interaction with men.122 As such, it would be a clear artifact of heteroerotic desire. Ladies Adorning Their Hair with Flowers may be one of the earliest surviving examples of shinü hua, possibly dating to the Tang or Southern Tang.123 Although the painting therefore may only indicate pre-Song patterns of female viewership, it still suggests what women might have learned from images that romanticize longing and desire. The painting depicts six female figures. Five are ladies of high status who wear headdresses with floral sprays or single blossoms of considerable size. The single maid lacks the elaborate headdress of fresh flowers but carries a fan with a painting of a peony blossom.124 The prominence and size of these adornments suggests that the painting represents Flower Morning:125 notice that the figure at far left holds a butterfly in one delicate hand and another figure holds a flower. The attraction of butter121 122 123

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Craig Clunas, Art in China (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 49. Although Tang song lyrics mention painted screens as items of furniture in brothels, I have found no references to the use of screens decorated with images of women. Zhao Xiaohua argues that it dates to the Tang and represents a late work by Zhou Fang, whereas Ellen Johnston Laing notes that the styles of the women’s dress and hair conform to figures in the tenth-century tomb of the first emperor of the Southern Tang, Li Bian 李昪 (r. 937–43): Zhao, “Zanhua shinü tu,” 118–25; Laing, “Notes on Ladies Wearing Flowers in Their Hair,” 34–35; citing Xie Zhiliu 謝稚柳, “Dui Tang Zhou Fang Zanhua shinü tu de shangque 對唐周昉簪花仕女圖的商榷 [Some Different Opinions about Ladies Adorning their Hair with Flowers by Zhou Fang of the Tang Dynasty],” Wenwu cankao ziliao 文物 參考資料 6 (1958): 25–26. Yet another possibility, of course, is that the painting is a Song copy of an earlier work. Zhou Xun 周汛 concurs in identifying this less elaborately adorned woman as a maidservant in Zhongguo lidai funü zhuangshi 中國歷代婦女妝飾 [Adornments of Chinese Women throughout the Ages] (Hong Kong: Joint Publishing, 1988), 86. Laing, “Notes on Ladies Wearing Flowers in their Hair,” 35–39; idem, “Chinese Palace-Style Poetry,” 284–86.

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Figure 17 Ladies Adorning Their Hair with Flowers. After Zhou Fang (ca. 730–ca. 800), late 9th–10th century; handscroll, ink and color on silk, 46 × 180 cm. COLLECTION OF LIAONING PROVINCIAL MUSEUM, SHENYANG, P.R.C.

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flies to flowers was by this period clearly associated with male-female romantic and sexual interaction. Flower Morning may have originated in a spring fertility ceremony,126 making these references to such interaction especially appropriate. Unusually, the juxtaposition of masculine butterflies and feminine flowers suggests a sense of fulfillment. One story about the Tang emperor Xuanzong relates that on one occasion every spring he would choose his consort for the evening by having the court ladies adorn their hair with flowers and waiting for a butterfly to alight upon one of them. The story may well be apocryphal,127 but it is still entirely possible that Ladies Adorning Their Hair with Flowers refers to it. The serene smiles of the figures and their attitudes of pleasure and contentment suggest a mood of happy anticipation, which fundamentally concords with what one might expect from a representation of Xuanzong’s concubines engaged in such a contest. The setting of this painting is also a garden: at the far left, one finds a magnolia shrub with a profusion of budding blossoms next to a garden rock. The structures that might bound such a garden, however, are not apparent: there is no confining wall or balustrade, nor any use of painted or silken screens. This sort of erotic garden is closer to the European concept of the locus amoenus than to the hortus conclusus. The origins of the locus amoenus—the “bower” or “pleasance”—can be traced in part to the garden of Venus, goddess of love and fertility, a paradisiacal place of uninhibited sensuality.128 In such a space, the sense of enclosure was not paramount, making a woman found there sexually accessible and the garden a site for a tryst.129 The figures in the unbounded garden of Ladies Adorning Their Hair with Flowers revel in their sensuality. The natural elements of the garden—masculine butterflies and garden rock, together with feminine flowers—suggest the female figures’ accessibility and their sexual fulfillment. A male viewer could easily project himself as the unpictured object of their desire. One curious thing about this painting, however, especially if it is meant to represent Xuanzong’s concubines seeking a summons to the imperial bed, is 126 127 128

Laing, “Notes on Ladies Wearing Flowers in their Hair,” 36. Ibid., 37. Ilva Beretta, “The World’s a Garden”: Garden Poetry of the English Renaissance (Uppsala: S. Academiae Upsaliensis; Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1993), 23–24. However, the source of the term itself appears in Virgil’s Aeneid, where he describes Aeneas’s journey to Elysium; Finney, The Counterfeit Idyll, 16. 129 Rachel Crawford, “Troping the Subject: Behn, Smith, Hemans and the Poetics of the Bower,” Studies in Romanticism 38, no.2 (Summer 1999): 255–56, 258, 259.

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the lack of rivalry among these women. Depicting the reality of women’s competition might have contradicted the agreeable fiction of harmony among the concubines, even as the painter represented their desire for the same man. The painting’s appeal to a male audience is incontrovertible, but one can imagine a female viewer using it as a model for the construction of an irresistible persona: a woman who was appropriately desirous yet not outwardly aggressive. While examples of shinü hua may well have provided women with strategies for competing against each other for male attention, Ladies Adorning Their Hair with Flowers actually depicts such a competition but deliberately excises its least pleasant aspects.

…

Though male and female viewers might respond to examples of shinü hua in different ways, both audiences would likely understand these paintings of women as commentary on intimate, heteroerotic relationships, perhaps seeing the depicted narratives as analogous to their own circumstances. Still, because most painters of shinü hua were male, and because they were adapting tropes from poetic genres that were largely male-authored, a female viewer might have taken these images as representative of what men wanted to see. Fan paintings and bed-screens in particular are readily identifiable as metonyms for idealized femininity, items that women may have sought as a means of constructing an appropriate feminine persona. This does not mean that women never looked at handscrolls such as Goddess of the Luo River, Night Revels of Han Xizai, or Pounding Cloth—only that no evidence connects women to those works, so it is harder to project what a woman’s response to them might have been. Nor does it mean that artists intended fan paintings and bedscreens that depicted feminine longing and desire for women’s eyes only; these paintings would undoubtedly have (at least in private) appealed to men. Yet in A Lady at Her Dressing Table, Embroidered Cage, Morning Mirror, and A Lady Watching a Maid with a Parrot, the artists’ employment of mirrors and makeup as tropes of self-cultivation recall earlier didactic texts and images, suggesting that these paintings could serve as models for other aspects of womanhood. In addition, the multiple ways that these Song paintings evoke the dualities of inner and outer neatly mimic the process of emphasizing qualities associated with interiority in the construction of an appropriately feminine façade. Ladies Adorning Their Hair with Flowers includes no allusions to self-awareness and likely dates to an earlier period, yet it is impossible to rule out its use in the inner quarters of the palace, as one may surmise from the fact that it was once mounted as a three-panel screen and may have been used

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adjacent to a bed. Because it engages with the realities of women’s competition, it provides a model for women’s comportment in intimate circumstances. These cases clarify the different messages that women might have received from shinü hua.

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Conclusion

Interiority and the Value of Connection Song romantic paintings of women demonstrate multiple ways that art and interiority intertwine. First, and most obviously, they depict women feeling (most typically) longing or desire—themes that require a painter’s representation of not only an ineffable inner state, but also a female figure’s subjectivity. Second, paintings that were so clearly about emotion could serve, in much the same way as poems, as the authors’ expressions of their own interiority: thus, painters or patrons could use art to convey their ideas on topics that pertained to romance or addressed other situations. Third, paintings of longing and desire could stir thoughts or emotions in their viewers, as evident from some of the surviving inscriptions for these works. The skillful handling of subjectivity in particular allowed viewers to identify with a painted figure or to imagine themselves interacting with her, and that in turn meant that paintings on these themes could serve as political allegories or as models for femininity. Finally, the themes of interiority under consideration in these paintings could foster connections among people precisely because they stimulated deeper feelings, and this quality made the works intrinsically valuable, making them appropriate as gifts, for example. Throughout the early chapters of this book, I chose to focus on paintings with themes of longing or desire for which I could reconstruct a historical or social context. Though some are associated with members of the literati, most were produced at court. This suggests that the predilection for romantic themes was more prominent among members of the court than among the literati, especially given that some of the latter group registered distaste for paintings of this type, though it may also reflect the better preservation of works that once belonged to the imperial art collections. Thus: the Northern Song emperor Huizong commissioned Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk. The Liaoning Provincial Museum version of Goddess of the Luo River can arguably be placed at the court of Southern Song emperor Gaozong. At the court of Southern Tang ruler Li Yu, Zhou Wenju painted the original version of In the Palace, and both he and Gu Hongzhong painted versions of Night Revels of Han Xizai, possibly for the ruler’s inspection; Song copies of these compositions were owned or viewed by officials or scholars. Mou Yi, a painter who may have served at court but had literati sensibilities, created two versions of Pounding Cloth, giving one to an official and another to a friend who was a collector. Looking at tenththrough thirteenth-century patterns of artistic production, collecting, and

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viewing, then, both members of the court and highly educated individuals, including some who served in the bureaucracy, demonstrate a clear interest in romantic themes, a trend also seen in the broader culture. Because so much can be determined about the early histories of the paintings listed above, one can speculate on what they might have meant to specific male artists, male patrons, male collectors, and male viewers. The compositions of Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk and Goddess of the Luo River are believable as political instruments, with the former used by Emperor Huizong to assert his possession of the mandate of heaven and the latter possibly used as a signifier of political legitimacy at Emperor Gaozong’s court. Night Revels of Han Xizai, when first created, may have functioned as Li Yu’s critique of his minister; the Song copy seems to present the minister’s point of view, as a man of integrity unappreciated by his ruler. The surviving version of Pounding Cloth arouses sentiments consistent with homesickness and nostalgia, perhaps relating artist Mou Yi’s feelings during his travels, while at the same time attesting to his connection to his friend Dong Shi, the scroll’s recipient. Only In the Palace is difficult to classify, and this is because we know too little about collector Zhang Cheng’s motivations. Perhaps obtaining a copy of a painting owned in the Northern Song by official Zhu Zaishang helped to demonstrate Zhang Cheng’s esteem for this presumably influential man. Many figures within this painting approach the archetype of the neglected palace consort, which may have stood for an official with unshakable devotion to his ruler, though its presentation of multiple ladies passing time together may also convey camaraderie among officials. Coincidentally, Zhang Cheng is recorded as the author of another colophon, dated 1141 and mounted on a fragmentary copy of Night Revels of Han Xizai that is held in the National Palace Museum, Taipei. The colophon has striking similarities of content to the colophon written for In the Palace: following information about the painter (in this case, a summary of Gu Hongzhong’s court service and ruler Li Yu’s commission of Night Revels), whole passages are repeated verbatim or with minor changes (see my translation of the colophon in Chapter 1). The writer asserts that the artist is working in a style “similar to Zhou Fang’s but more delicate and beautiful,” referring in particular to the “abundantly fleshy” figures “with long skirts of fine silk.” (The figures in the surviving fragment, however, are slenderer than the figures in In the Palace.) He again recalls a visit to Jiaonan during which he viewed imperial portraits, and he compares the hairstyles of the female figures in Night Revels to those of palace women. (The hairstyles of the figures in this painting are actually somewhat different from those found in In the Palace, rendering it unlikely that a

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connoisseur would make the same claim for both.) Once more, the writer draws a link between the Southern Tang rulers and Tang style, but asserts that the style seen in this painting derives from the Six Dynasties. Finally, he concludes with the same aphorism about looking at “clothing, carts, and furniture” to date paintings. The colophon for In the Palace was dated to the fifth lunar month of 1140 and signed Danyan Jushi; this colophon is dated to the fifth lunar month of 1141 and signed “Danyan Jushi Zhang Cheng.” The quantity of repeated language might indicate that this colophon is forged, though it does bear a seal reading “Danyan Jushi” as well as the problematic half-seal reading “Junsima yin” that is also found on In the Palace.1 If the colophon for Night Revels were a genuine inscription by Zhang Cheng, it would suggest either that he had a particular interest in representations of figures neglected by their rulers, or, more simply, that he was an enthusiastic viewer of erotic representations of palace ladies and courtesans. If it is instead a forgery, however, that suggests that someone expected that it would be believable for Zhang Cheng to have consistent taste in regard to paintings with erotic subject matter. Chapter 4 turned to paintings of much more uncertain provenance: A Lady at Her Dressing Table; Embroidered Cage, Morning Mirror; A Lady Watching a Parrot; and Ladies Adorning Their Hair with Flowers. Judging from media alone, they must be the works of court or professional painters, and each one is in fact traditionally attributed to a specific painter. Su Hanchen was a figure painter at the Northern and Southern Song courts, but though the attribution of A Lady at Her Dressing Table to him is credible, it is impossible to know for whom the painting was created. The traditional attribution for Embroidered Cage, Morning Mirror is somewhat questionable: Wang Shen lived in the Northern Song, but the painting probably dates to the Southern Song, in the twelfth or thirteenth century. A Lady Watching a Maid with a Parrot has a similar discrepancy of dates: it is thought now to date to the Southern Song, but Wang Juzheng is supposed to have been an eleventh-century painter—though very little is known of him. Finally, Ladies Adorning Their Hair with Flowers is not entirely believable as an eighth-century painting, though images of full-figured women do suggest the Tang style of Zhou Fang. Though one cannot say for certain how these paintings functioned, their formats—fans and a folding screen—tend to 1 Night Revels of Han Xizai (Han Xizai yeyan tu), handscroll, ink and color on silk, 27.9 × 69 cm, National Palace Museum, Taipei. For reproductions of the painting and the text of the colophon, see Guoli Gugong Bowuyuan, Gugong shuhua tulu 故宮書畫圖錄 [A Cata­logue of Chinese Painting and Calligraphy in the National Palace Museum], 20 vols. (Taipei: Guoli Gugong Bowuyuan, 1989–), 15: 105–108. The colophon is mentioned in Max Loehr, “Chinese Paintings with Sung Dated Inscriptions,” Ars Orientalis: The Arts of Islam and the East 4 (1961): 252.

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suggest women’s viewership and use. Indeed, if they were intended for a female audience, which was less likely to be recorded, that could explain why their provenance is less clear. I have left two paintings of roughly the correct time period that include romanticized images of women out of this discussion, not because they are irrelevant to it, but because I could not identify author or audience with sufficient specificity. The first is Palace Ladies Tuning the Lute, another Zhou Fang attribution of uncertain date (fig. 18).2 Its media suggest a court painter; as a handscroll, it could have been viewed by either men or women. It depicts five figures in a garden setting. Two of these are maids, shown at either end of the composition—the one at right carries a cup, the one at left a tray. The three figures in the middle are ladies. At the center right, a lady dressed in pale colors sits on a chair beside a paulownia tree, gazing into the distance. The central figure sits with her back to us, next to a blossoming tree; she too holds a cup. The figure at center left sits facing us on a low, flat garden rock; her left hand plucks the strings of a seven-stringed zither (guqin 古琴) in her lap, while her right hand is shown beneath the instrument—positions that clarify that she is tuning the zither. The act of tuning an instrument rather than playing it has specific connotations, as made clear in a palace-style poem: Swallows play then return to the eaves. Flowers fly then fall before my pillow. My true feelings3 you don’t see. Wiping away tears, I sit tuning the strings. 燕子戲還簷，花飛落枕前。寸心君不見，拭淚坐調弦。4

This poem articulates the unrequited longings of a female persona waiting for her beloved to return, the idea most likely expressed in the painting as well.5 One might interpret this in numerous ways, however: is the painting meant to evoke ideas about political loyalty, perhaps that of an unappreciated official? 2 The earliest seal on the painting may date to the early twelfth century; Eight Dynasties of Chinese Painting, 8. James Cahill assessed this as a Song composition in An Index of Early Chinese Painters and Paintings: T’ang, Sung, and Yüan (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1980), 8. 3 Kroll, A Student’s Dictionary of Classical and Medieval Chinese, s.v. cun xin 寸心. 4 He Xun 何遜, “Wei ren qie si 為人妾思 [A Concubine’s Longings],” in YTXY, 10.13a; cf. translation in Birrell, New Songs from a Jade Terrace, 278. 5 Audrey Spiro proposes instead that the painting is a parody of typical images of ladies, asserting that the zither is usually associated with scholars, in “Creating Ancestors,” 60–61.

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Figure 18 Palace Ladies Tuning the Lute. After Zhou Fang (ca. 730–ca. 800); handscroll, ink and color on silk, 28 × 75.3 cm. the nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Mo. Purchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust, 32-159/1.

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Should we read the theme of longing more literally as the expression of a woman’s feelings toward a marital partner who neglects her? Or did the creator or the owner of the painting simply appreciate palace-style poetry or erotic imagery? How the painting functioned—what the artist or the patron saw in it— cannot be determined. A second painting presents a courtesan in a romantic light, positioning her as the idealized partner of a scholar (fig. 19).6 The painting, Sima Caizhong’s Dream of the Courtesan Su Xiaoxiao (Sima Caizhong meng Su Xiaoxiao 司馬才 仲夢蘇小小), is by Liu Yuan 劉元 (fl. early thirteenth century) of the Jin dynasty and is his only surviving work; according to the signature on the painting, he worked under a portrait painter and served in the Crafts Office (Zhiying si 祗應司).7 The story of Sima Caizhong and Su Xiaoxiao dates to the Song dynasty,8 but these two figures lived in different historical periods, and the story has fantastic elements. Sima You 司馬槱, courtesy name Caizhong, received the jinshi 進士 degree in 1091;9 Su Xiaoxiao was a late-fifth-century courtesan and poet. The painting shows Caizhong asleep in a chair, resting his head in the crook of his arm, with books at a table by his side indicating that he has been working into the night; at the bottom right corner, a sleeping boy is curled up on the floor. Su Xiaoxiao appears to him in a dream, a realm in which (some believed) two separated souls might be able to meet, as attested by Song dynasty song lyric;10 appropriately, the left side of the painting depicts a misty vision of the courtesan. The clapper that she holds under one arm indicates that she is an entertainer, while the scarves swirling about her suggest that she is a ghost. She presses a hand to her mouth in the familiar gesture conveying sorrow. According to the story, she sings to him of her former home in Qiantang 錢塘 (present-day Zhejiang province) and the passing of years. Caizhong is subsequently transferred there, only to discover Su Xiaoxiao’s tomb behind his house, and he dies shortly thereafter.11 Intriguingly, a quatrain by Su Xiaoxiao 6

For an assessment of this painting as an example of scholar-courtesan interaction, see Blanchard, “A Scholar in the Company of Female Entertainers,” 229–31. 7 Ellen B. Avril, Chinese Art in the Cincinnati Art Museum (Cincinnati: The Museum, 1997), 60; Hucker, A Dictionary of Official Titles, s.v. 1097, chih-ying ssu. 8 The story appears in He Wei 何薳 (1077–1145), Chunzhu jiwen 春渚紀聞 [Record of Things Heard on a Spring Islet] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1983), 102–103. A synopsis of the story is given in Li, “Dream Visions of Transcendence,” 70–72. 9 Peter C. Sturman, “The Poetic Ideas Scroll Attributed to Mi Youren and Sima Huai,” Zhe­ jiang University Journal of Art and Archaeology 1 (2014): 107. 10 Egan, The Burden of Female Talent, 345–46. 11 For further discussion of the painting, see Laing, “Erotic Themes and Romantic Heroines,” 85–86; and Avril, Chinese Art in the Cincinnati Art Museum, 59–60.

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Figure 19 Sima Caizhong’s Dream of the Courtesan Su Xiaoxiao. Liu Yuan ( fl. early 13th cent.), Jin dynasty; handscroll, ink and color on silk, 29.2 × 73.6 cm. Cincinnati Art Museum, J.J. Emery Endowment and Fanny Bryce Lehmer Endowment (1948.79), Cincinnati, Oh.

258 Conclusion

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preserved in the sixth-century New Songs from a Jade Terrace alludes to lovers meeting in a tomb, and the anthology identifies her as being from Qiantang;12 undoubtedly the story about her and Sima Caizhong builds upon these details. The story affirms the Song taste for romantic tales, and the painting indicates that interest in this particular tale persisted some one hundred years later in northern China under the Jin dynasty. The predominant message of the painting seems to be one of strong attachment even in the face of insurmountable obstacles. The precise motivations of Liu Yuan in making the painting are unclear, however, as the expression of such ideas could be appropriate in many situations. The number of surviving tenth- to thirteenth-century Chinese paintings that address themes of longing or desire through images of women is small, then, but other Song-era paintings raise these themes as well: for example, several paintings from the flower-and-bird genre. As discussed in Chapter 4, one art historian has considered the anonymous Autumn Mallows and Ma Yuan’s Apricot Blossoms, both fan paintings of the Southern Song court, as direct expressions of the feelings of Empress Wu and Empress Yang toward their husbands. Moving earlier, to the Northern Song, a hanging scroll attributed to Emperor Huizong, Mountain Birds on a Wax-Plum Tree (Lamei shanqin 蠟梅山 禽), includes a poem that clarifies that this image of a pair of white-crested bulbuls perched on a branch can be read as a wish for an everlasting commitment between a man and a woman (enduring “a thousand autumns,” qian qiu 千秋). The combination of painting, poem, and imperial calligraphy would work well as a gift on the occasion of a marriage or anniversary, or as an expression of Huizong’s own feelings toward one of his palace women.13 In each of these cases, the paintings are paired with poems that clarify the romantic associations of the images. A similar situation is presented in a 1216 flower painting by court painter Ma Lin 馬麟 (fl. ca. 1216–ca. 1254),14 Layers of Icy Silk (Ceng die bing xiao 層疊冰綃, 12

13

14

Su Xiao[xiao] 蘇小, “Qiantang Su Xiao ge yi shou 錢唐蘇小歌一首 [A Song by Su Xiao of Qiantang, One Poem],” YTXY, 10.536; cf. translation by Birrell, New Songs from a Jade Terrace, 272. This aspect of the painting is discussed in Qianshen Bai, “Image as Word: A Study of Rebus Play in Song Painting (960–1279),” Metropolitan Museum Journal 34 (1999): 63–64; and Bickford, “Huizong’s Paintings,” 469–70. The painting is reproduced in color in Ebrey and Bickford, Emperor Huizong and Late Northern Song China, fig. 11.5. See also Wang Yaot’ing, “Images of the Heart,” Part 2, 5. For Ma Lin, I propose activity dates of approximately 1216 to 1254 based on the dates of his paintings Layers of Icy Silk and Evening. For a discussion of his dates and a reproduction of Evening, see Edwards, The Heart of Ma Yuan, 2–3, pl. 23.

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Figure 20 Layers of Icy Silk. Ma Lin (ca. 1216–ca. 1254), Southern Song dynasty, 1216; handscroll, ink and color on silk, 101.5 × 49.6 cm. Palace Museum, Beijing, P.R.C. Photograph provided by the Palace Museum.

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fig. 20), which reads as a straightforward expression of eroticism but probably does not express the patron’s personal feelings. In some respects, the painting is superficially similar to Apricot Blossoms, which had been painted by Ma Lin’s father. Layers of Icy Silk depicts two branches of blossoming plum set at an angle, one extending vertically and one horizontally. The vertical branch points to a quatrain, inscribed by Empress Yang. The poem is about the pictured blossoms: Joined, like a cold butterfly passing the night in a flowery boudoir, embracing the sandalwood heart, remembering old fragrance. Open even at the cold tips of the branches, the blossoms are especially lovable: they must be the type used in Han-palace makeup.15 渾如冷蝶宿花房，擁抱檀心憶舊香。開到寒梢尤可愛，此般必是漢宮 粧.

Layers of Icy Silk belonged to a set of four plum-blossom paintings, each inscribed with poems full of romantic imagery written in the voice of a palace lady; this particular composition depicts a species of plum with luxurious double-petal blossoms.16 The poem’s first line, with its image of a butterfly warming itself inside the petals of a flower, not only describes the layered structure of the flowers but also evokes the intimate behavior of lovers and sets a tone for the rest of the poem. The ensuing references to “heart” and “love” (ai 愛) seem to confirm the nature of the feelings being expressed. The “boudoir” and the “Han palace” call to mind the living space of a lady of high status. Allusions to “sandalwood,” “fragrance,” and “makeup” suggest the artificial embellishments that enhance a lady’s femininity and desirability; plum-blossom makeup in particular appeared as an image in a lyric by Ouyang Xiu, as discussed in Chapter 4. The descriptions of action—“passing the night” and “embracing”— suggest sexual intercourse, though the word “remembering” appears here as well, suggesting that the true topic is cooled desire and nostalgia.

15 16

Painting and poem are discussed in Harrist, “Ch’ien Hsüan’s Pear Blossoms,” 58–59; Lee, Empresses, Art, and Agency, 203–205; and Edwards, The Heart of Ma Yuan, 62–66. Richard Edwards translates all four poems and identifies the variety of plum tree depicted in this painting as viridicalyx in The Heart of Ma Yuan, 62–65. The other three paintings in the set do not survive. Maggie Bickford clarifies that viridicalyx is a cultivar of Prunus mume in Bones of Jade, Soul of Ice, 247.

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With Empress Yang as the acknowledged patron, fifty-four years of age in 1216, perhaps the natural assumption is that Layers of Icy Silk was intended as an intimate communication to her husband, Emperor Ningzong. Other evidence on the painting, however, contradicts this interpretation: it bears an inscription in tiny characters, located between the empress’s seals, dedicating it to an official, Supervisor Wang (Wang Tiju 王提舉), someone who received more than one example of painting and calligraphy from Ningzong and his empress. This detail immediately calls into question any reading of poem and painting as an expression of the empress’s own feelings for the scroll’s recipient. One possibility is that Empress Yang used this work to create an image of herself as an idealized palace lady, someone of considerable status.17 Alter­ natively, she might have presented the painting to commemorate a happy event in the official’s life, such as his marriage, a function perhaps similar to that of Huizong’s Mountain Birds on a Wax-Plum Tree. In the end, Layers of Icy Silk suggests the ways that romantic imagery could be used in flower-and-bird paintings to political ends; an imperial gift to an official would certainly honor him and convey the giver’s regard for him, even if it did not address the nature of their own relationship. Landscape paintings might be used to convey romantic feelings as well. I mentioned in Chapter 3 that Mou Yi used the style of Zhao Lingrang’s paintings as a source for the second painting-within-painting in Pounding Cloth. A surviving painting by Zhao Lingrang in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, suggests that his work, like Mou Yi’s, could address the sorrow of lovers’ separation. Like Mou Yi, Zhao Lingrang was a figure who moved between different social circles: a member of the imperial family, he was nevertheless affiliated with Northern Song scholars such as Su Shi, Huang Tingjian 黃庭堅 (1045– 1105), and Dong You 董逌 (fl. 1100–30).18 His painting Whiling Away the Summer by a Lakeside Retreat (Huzhuang qingxia tujuan 湖莊清夏圖卷), dated to 1100 (figs. 21.1–21.4), reveals why not only the style but also the content of his work might have inspired Mou Yi’s painting. Whiling Away the Summer by a Lakeside Retreat is a handscroll that depicts an apparently unpopulated landscape, filled with images that repeat so often that they begin to seem insistent. These include humble houses at the beginning 17

This work identifies the recipient as Wang Tiju, but Hui-shu Lee observes that other works identify him as Wang Dutiju 王都提擧, Supervisor-in-Chief Wang; cf. Hucker, A Dictionary of Official Titles, s.v. 6395, t’i-chü; 7294, tu t’i-chü. For more on the recipient, and for this interpretation of Empress Yang’s intent, see Lee, Empresses, Art, and Agency, 93–94, 203– 205. 18 Bush, The Chinese Literati on Painting, 44, 51, 96–97.

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Figure 21.1 Whiling Away the Summer by a Lakeside Retreat. Zhao Lingrang (nicknamed Danian, fl. ca. 1080–ca. 1100), Northern Song dynasty, 1100; handscroll, ink and color on silk, 19.1 × 161.3 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Keith McLeod Fund (57.724). Photograph © 2017 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

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Figure 21.2

Whiling Away the Summer by a Lakeside Retreat. Zhao Lingrang (nicknamed Danian, fl. ca. 1080–ca. 1100), Northern Song dynasty, 1100; handscroll, ink and color on silk, 19.1 × 161.3 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Keith McLeod Fund (57.724). Photograph © 2017 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

264 Conclusion

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Figure 21.3

Whiling Away the Summer by a Lakeside Retreat. Zhao Lingrang (nicknamed Danian, fl. ca. 1080–ca. 1100), Northern Song dynasty, 1100; handscroll, ink and color on silk, 19.1 × 161.3 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Keith McLeod Fund (57.724). Photograph © 2017 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

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Figure 21.4

Whiling Away the Summer by a Lakeside Retreat. Zhao Lingrang (nicknamed Danian, fl. ca. 1080–ca. 1100), Northern Song dynasty, 1100; handscroll, ink and color on silk, 19.1 × 161.3 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Keith McLeod Fund (57.724). Photograph © 2017 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

266 Conclusion

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and in the center of the painting; paths that lead from the houses into nature; low bridges; groves and individual specimens of deciduous trees (including willows); bands of mist that curl through the trees’ foliage; green lotus leaves floating on the surface of the water, most thickly at the water’s edge; and at least three species of birds, shown in the branches of trees, swimming, resting at the water’s edge, and in flight. Taken in its entirety, this imagery starts to evoke the theme of parting. The contrasting images of houses and paths suggest travelers and those waiting for their return. As discussed in Chapter 3, willows evoke parting, and their juxtaposition with bridges deepens that association, while mist connotes transience. The lotus leaves and birds, however, particularly suggest that this painting is about the parting of lovers. One of the words for lotus is lian 蓮, a homophone for another lian 戀 which means “love,” and lotuses growing lushly on a lake bring to mind poetry about “lotus boats” filled with young women seeking to gather their blossoms,19 even though neither blossoms nor boats are present here. More significantly, paired birds in poetry often stand for enduring unions,20 and in Zhao Lingrang’s painting, the birds are almost always shown in groups of even numbers. (The pigment that he used for these birds has faded considerably over the centuries, and some are nearly invisible in reproductions.) At the right side of the composition, the tallest tree has four birds perched in it, a leaning willow has two birds in its branches, a pair of ducks swims near the first bridge, and at least three ducks (possibly four) can be found in the reeds. In the center of the composition, ten ducks swim on the lake; a pair of ducks swims toward willows on a small island; a pair of longnecked white birds sits at the distant shoreline behind them; a second pair of ducks is visible to their left, stretching their necks toward the water; and a third pair of ducks sits with their heads raised, bodies half hidden by the sloping embankment. Finally, toward the left side of the composition, there are two long-necked white birds to the left of a planked bridge; two long-legged, longbeaked birds stand at the bottom edge of the composition; four more ducks rest on the banks among the trees; another four ducks swim toward a final spit of land; at least one ghostly image of a bird appears hidden among lotus leaves; and two pairs of birds fly from the trees at the end of the painting. The details 19 20

On poetry about lotus boats and characters pronounced lian, see Wagner, The Lotus Boat, x–xi, xiii, 146. Stuart, “Revealing the Romance in Chinese Art,” 15; citing Bai Juyi, “Chang hen ge,” QTS, 7:435.4816–20; cf. translation by Levy in Chinese Narrative Poetry, 129–33. A single bird, on the other hand, could be used to signify divorce, as in “Kongque dongnan fei,” YTXY, 1.23b– 31a; cf. translation in Watson, The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry, 82–92.

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of paired birds in this painting are especially striking, and taken in conjunction with the rest of the painting’s imagery, they may indicate that Whiling Away the Summer by a Lakeside Retreat was meant to evoke the loneliness of someone waiting for a traveler to return, most likely a wife missing a husband, or else the homesickness of a traveler. A thorough survey of Song paintings in all genres would potentially reveal more paintings that allude to romance than those mentioned above, but the fact that such references are found in paintings of multiple genres indicates that tropes of longing and desire were useful concepts that were open to a variety of interpretations. Looking at examples from different genres also reveals that painters were able to convey these ideas with varying degrees of subtlety. Figure paintings that show the interactions of courtesans and scholar-officials or of a goddess and a prince stand as perhaps the most explicit representations of heteroerotic relationships. More ambiguous are images of women sitting in enclosed gardens, or engaging in activities such as playing music, making clothing, or catching butterflies; in these cases, the idea of the relationship is strongly implied. Flower-and-bird paintings and landscapes that use poetic imagery to evoke such feelings are perhaps the most covert of all, requiring careful decoding to reveal their meaning. It is undoubtedly significant that the compositions I have discussed were created predominantly by court painters and to a lesser extent by members of the literati, as it indicates that these two groups tended to value different means of representing interiority. The literati antipathy to images of romantic longing and desire only intensified with time. Indeed, by the later periods of imperial China, those artists who specialized in romantic or erotic images of women were primarily court painters, professional painters, or printmakers.21 The importance of interiority in Song painting becomes even clearer when we broaden our scope to consider works that focus on areas of emotional attachment beyond erotic longing and desire—particularly friendship, which is 21

For studies of such works, see Laing, “Erotic Themes and Romantic Heroines,” 68–91; Dawn Ho Delbanco, “The Romance of the Western Chamber: Min Qiji’s Album in Cologne,” Orientations 14, no. 6 (June 1983): 12–23; Hsu Wen-Chin, “Representations of the Romance of the Western Chamber in Chinese Woodblock Prints and Ceramics,” Asian Culture Quarterly, no. 4 (1991): 21–34; Blanchard, “Imagining Du Liniang in The Peony Pavilion,” 125–33; Cahill, “Paintings Done for Women,” 1–54; Cahill, Pictures for Use and Pleasure; James Cahill et al., Beauty Revealed: Images of Women in Qing Dynasty Chinese Painting (Berkeley: University of California Press, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, 2013); and Wu Hung, “Beyond Stereotypes: The Twelve Beauties in Qing Court Art and the ‘Dream of the Red Chamber,’” in Widmer and Chang, Writing Women in Late Imperial China, 306–65.

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addressed in and through painting in similar ways, and which I propose as the topic that members of the literati were more inclined to respond to than paintings of romantic themes. Possibly the most important Song dynasty painting to allude to this subject was literati painter Li Gonglin’s A Picture of Yang Pass (Yangguan tu 陽關圖). Though it is not extant, literary sources reveal that the painting was a response to a farewell poem by Wang Wei 王維 (ca. 699–ca. 761), “Seeing Yuan’er Off to Anxi” (Song Yuan’er shi Anxi 送元二使安西), which mentions the pass. Wang’s poem was recorded as an example of Music Bureau poetry under the title “Song of Wei City” (Weicheng qu 渭城曲). Significantly, Li Gonglin inscribed a poem on his painting that presented a new perspective on friendship: while Wang’s poem mourns the loss of friendship, Li’s ends with the possiblity of the renewal of friendships.22 I earlier mentioned a farewell painting of the early twelfth century that serves as a vehicle for emotional expression: Hu Shunchen’s Calligraphy and Painting for He Xuanming upon His Dispatch to Qin, which includes poems by both the painter (who was likely a member of Huizong’s Academy of Painting) and minister Cai Jing to the painting’s recipient; Cai’s poem suggests the continuation of their bond.23 Another painting, The Red Cliff, by Li Gonglin’s nephew, Qiao Zhongchang, straightforwardly addresses the subject of friendship in its pictorial imagery, beginning with the premise that it will represent an experience shared by Su Shi and his friends. Qiao’s handscroll includes a colophon dated 1123 by Zhao Lingzhi 趙令 畤 (1064–1134), one of Su Shi’s close friends.24 In fact, paintings on various subjects bear inscriptions that indicate they were used as a vehicle for communication among friends. In the Song era, we begin to see paintings with colophons that allude to these kinds of connections: for example, Mi Youren’s 米友仁 (1086–1165) landscape painting Cloudy Mountains (Yunshan tu 雲山圖), which bears the painter’s inscription dedicating the work to an unnamed friend.25 In one especially complex case, three 22

23 24

25

Brotherton, “Two Farewell Paintings of the Late Northern Song,” 51; she includes translations of both Wang’s and Li’s poems. Wang’s poem is also translated in Owen, An Anthology of Chinese Literature, 375; the Chinese text appears in YFSJ, 4:80.1139. Brotherton, “Two Farewell Paintings of the Late Northern Song,” 55–56. A recent article argues that the painting serves a memorial function and may have been commissioned by Liang Shicheng 梁師成 (ca. 1063–1126), a eunuch at Huizong’s court who claimed to be Su Shi’s “expelled son” (chuzi 出子); Lei Xue, “The Literati, the Eunuch, and a Memorial: The Nelson-Atkins’s Red Cliff Handscroll Revisited,” Archives of Asian Art 66, no. 1 (2016): 25–49. Sturman, “Mi Youren and the Inherited Literati Tradition,” 162–63. The painting’s inscription is discussed in Loehr, “Chinese Paintings with Sung Dated Inscriptions,” 247. It is reproduced in Eight Dynasties of Chinese Painting, cat. 24.

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Northern Song friends used a painting of a scholar—The Ear-Picker (Tiao er tu 挑耳圖), also known as Collating Texts (Kan shu tu 勘書圖), attributed to Southern Tang court painter Wang Qihan 王齊翰 (fl. 961–75)—as a catalyst for political commentary. The handscroll bears the colophons of brothers Su Che and Su Shi as well as their friend Wang Shen, attesting to the scroll’s circulation among these men, their close connections to each other, and their use of the scroll as the basis for personal expression and communication.26 Significantly, all of the examples listed above concern the interaction of members of the literati or scholar-officials with painting, and some members of this group considered that paintings of subjects from nature could reveal the interiority of an artist, as revealed by their poems-on-paintings (tihua shi 題畫詩). For example, consider Su Shi’s poem for the scholar Song Di’s 宋迪 (ca. 1015–80) painting titled An Evening Landscape of the Xiao-Xiang Region (Xiao Xiang wanjing tu 瀟湘晚景圖). It reveals that one group of the Northern Song literati perceived the act of painting as a manifestation of a painter’s thoughts: What a vast expanse you embrace, hills and rivers naturally bent and coiled. Managed properly from the beginning, the scattering and sprinkling should not be hard. A river city, people and houses few, a misty village with old trees in clusters. I know you have hidden thoughts— I look at the fine details to seek them. 落落君懷抱，山川自屈蟠。經營初有適，揮灑不應難。江市人家少， 煙村古木攢。知君有幽意，細細為尋看。27 26

27

De-nin D. Lee, “Colophons and Cultural Biography: Episodes from the Life of The Ear Picker,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 126, no. 1 (January–March 2006): 53–60. The painting and colophons are also discussed at length in Sturman, “In the Realm of Naturalness,” 173–77. The seals and inscriptions are discussed in Loehr, “Chinese Paintings with Sung Dated Inscriptions,” 235–36. The painting, a handscroll in ink and color on silk, 28.4 × 65.7 cm, belongs to the Department of History, Nanjing University; for a reproduction, see Zhongguo gudai shuhua jianding zubian 中國古代書畫鑑定組編, Zhongguo gudai shuhua tumu 中國古代書畫圖目 [Illustrated Catalogue of Selected Works of Ancient Chinese Painting and Calligraphy], 23 vols. (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 1986– 2001), 6:304, 蘇 18–01. Su Shi, “Song Fugu hua Xiao Xiang wan jing tu san shou 宋復古畫瀟湘晚景圖三首 [Song Di’s Painting of An Evening Scene of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers, Three Poems, 2/3],”

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The painting unfortunately does not survive, but it was evidently a landscape painting, possibly with content similar to Zhao Lingrang’s Whiling Away the Summer by a Lakeside Retreat, given the poem’s mention of coiled rivers, a village in mist, and clusters of trees. This poem demonstrates that in the Northern Song, literati friends would study each other’s paintings, looking for evidence of what the artist was thinking when he painted. At the same time, this painting which perhaps expressed Song Di’s ideas in pictorial form served as a vehicle for poetic communication between these two friends. The clear implication, then, is that we can understand certain Song paintings as artifacts of interiority—as disclosed through subject matter that corresponds to poetry, through the written texts that they accrued, and through the purposes that they served. What this may reveal about Song society is the different priorities of different social classes. Themes of longing and desire— of heteroerotic attachment—correlate with relationships defined by the hierarchy of gender, and the fact that painting and poetry incorporating these themes were predominantly created and enjoyed by members of the court, itself structured as a hierarchy, is undoubtedly not a coincidence. Because these themes were often expressed through female figures, though, they must also have seemed directly relevant to women—not only palace ladies, but also women of literati families and courtesans. Members of the literati, on the other hand, seem to have used themes of longing and desire in painting and poetry as a means of addressing all sorts of emotional situations, including the bond of homosocial friendship—a relationship that in its essential form was considered to eschew hierarchy and perhaps reflected increased social mobility in the Tang–Song era.28 The fact that the literati from the Northern Song on began to turn to paintings of other subjects, especially nature, as vehicles for personal expression and discourse only affirms the high regard in middle imperial China for paintings that addressed interiority in any form. Such works could not only provide an outlet for pictorial and verbal expression, but also function to strengthen bonds between people of various social groups, to affirm the value of connection.

28

Su Shi shiji hezhu 2:17.876. My translation is based on Ronald Egan’s in “Poems on Paintings,” 442; he discusses this poem’s claims about the inner life of the artist. See also Alfreda Murck’s discussion of the poem in Poetry and Painting in Song China, 68; she analyzes it as suggesting that paintings could reveal the painter’s character. Anna Shields discusses the Confucian notion that friendship was a non-hierarchichal relationship, the personal connections between literati during the Tang–Song transition, and the ways that mid-Tang poets used themes of longing to stand for friendship in One Who Knows Me, 18, 32–34, 55, 61–64, 165–67, 336. Peter Bol discusses the social mobility of scholars in the Song dynasty in “This Culture of Ours,” 60, 341–42.

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Zhu Renxing 朱仁星. “Dang chuang li yunbin, dui jing tie huahuang 當窗理雲鬢，對 鏡貼花黃 [At the Window, Arranging a Cloud Coiffure; / Facing the Mirror and Applying Pollen].” In Wenwu guanghua 文物光華 [Highlights of Cultural Relics] 4: 54–57. Taipei: National Palace Museum, 1990. Zhu Xi 朱熹, ed. Chu ci jizhu 楚辭集注 [Collected Annotations to the “Songs of Chu”]. 8 juan. Reprint. Shanghai: Sanye shanfang, 1930. Zhu Xi 朱熹, ed. Shijing jizhu 詩經集注 [Collected Annotations to the “Book of Songs”]. Reprint. Taipei: Wanjuan lou tushu, 1996. Zhuangzi 莊子. Xinyi Zhuangzi duben 新譯莊子讀本 [New Interpretations of Zhuangzi]. Taipei: Sanmin shuju, 1974. Ziporyn, Brook. “Temporal Paradoxes: The Intersections of Time Present and Time Past in the Song Ci.” Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews (CLEAR) 17 (December 1995): 89–109. Zu Wuze 祖無擇. Longxue wenji 龍學文集 [Collected Writings of Longxue]. 16 juan. Reprint, edited by Wang Yunwu 王雲五. Siku quanshu zhenben wu ji, no. 273. Taipei: Taiwan shangwu yinshuguan, 1974.

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296

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Index

Index abandonment 21 in painting 78–79, 176, 241–44 in poetry or song lyric 8, 68, 70, 78–80, 174, 176, 211, 230, 237 See also loneliness; neglect absence of men, in painting 9, 129–30, 157–58, 183, 201, 204–5, 241–45 of men, in poetry or song lyric 8, 69, 78, 124–25, 170n44, 195–96, 225–26, 229–30, 236–42 passim of women, not addressed in painting 158, 160, 207 of women, in poetry or song lyric 159–60 academic painting 94–95, 115, 269 See also Imperial Painting Academy Admonitions of the Court Instructress to the Palace Ladies (British Museum) 5, 176n68, 208, 209n3, 234–35 See also Gu Kaizhi; Zhang Hua adornment in painting 7, 9, 32, 35, 41–51, 118, 230–31, 234, 240, 247–49 in poetry or song lyric 18, 35n71, 51n79, 194–95, 229–40 self- 37, 177, 229–30, 233–37 See also beauty; dressing, in painting or poetry; makeup affection 35, 74, 81, 122, 132, 147, 156, 204, 220, 229 See also emotions; feelings; love agency 125, 137, 154 aging 168, 202, 237, 243–44 album leaves 218–19 allegory deployed by painters 75–76, 79–80, 148, 252 and paintings of male-female interaction 10, 80, 113–16, 148, 155, 157 and paintings of women 30, 77, 79–80, 157, 160, 182–83, 205, 207 in poetry or stories 57, 77–81, 113–14, 116, 148, 155, 220 Allen, Joseph Roe, III 172n56 allusions

in painting 199, 200–201, 205–6 in poetry 114, 124 Ames, Roger T. 222n38 Among the Flowers 29n57 Analects 6, 32, 65 See also Confucianism Ang, John Kwang-ming 116n51 An Lushan 24, 120 Apricot Blossoms (Ma Yuan) 209, 224n43, 259 aristocrats, aristocracy 2, 9, 139, 165, 169, 230 art collections 23, 33, 75, 95, 116, 140,246–47 imperial 72–74, 95, 117n54, 164–65, 183n85, 214, 246–47, 252–53 See also collectors; ownership art history, Chinese. See painting history, Chinese artifacts, paintings as 30, 53, 247, 271 artifice in painting 22, 34, 53, 64, 75 in performance 28, 124, 155 in poetry 12, 16n16, 28, 29, 75 artisans 55 artists. See painters art market 113, 216–18 attachment expressions of 159, 221, 228 in painting 9, 10, 22, 26, 27, 29–30, 35, 77, 160, 165, 203, 204, 241, 259, 268–69 in poetry or song lyric 61, 77, 159–60, 229 themes of 1, 271 See also emotions; feelings; marriage; relationships audience for musical performance, in painting or poetry 40, 41, 53, 124, 126 for painting 5–6, 11–13, 71–76, 185, 204–6, 208–10, 217, 220–22, 254–55 for poetry 6, 14, 165 and projection 12–13, 32, 182, 183, 203, 206–8, 221 See also viewership authenticity and feelings 12, 29n57, 58, 123–25, 144 in painting 22, 33–35, 53, 75, 155

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297

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and performance 124–25, 154 in poetry 15–17, 19, 28–29, 64, 75, 81n23, 159 authorship female, of paintings 10, 19–28, 53–54, 75–76 female, of poetry or song lyrics 8, 10, 14–19, 29, 57–58, 61, 75, 155, 219–20 and interiority 10, 12–13, 15–16, 29, 203–9 passim, 252–53, 268, 270–71 male, of paintings 10, 12–13, 28, 29, 34, 75–76, 158, 160, 164–65, 185, 206–7, 250, 252–53 male, of poetry or song lyrics 8, 12–19 passim, 28–29, 61, 75, 155, 157, 159–60, 219–20, 250 and poetic personae 14–17, 19, 28, 70, 81 and projection 12–13, 157–58, 180, 182, 185, 206–7 and subjectivity 10, 12–19, 34, 75, 81, 160 See also painters; poets autobiography 19, 29, 81 autumn in painting 174, 177, 185, 198 in poetry or song lyric 18, 168, 180, 185–94 Autumn Mallows (Shandong Provincial Museum) 220, 259 Bai Juyi 37, 122n81, 123n84 “Parrot” 41n78, 214n11 “Song of Everlasting Sorrow” 24n41 “Song of the Pipa” 26–27, 40, 124 Bai, Qianshen 259n13 Ban Jieyu 175–76, 211 “Rhapsody of Self-Commiseration” 176, 198n104 “Song of Lament” 219–20 bamboo 223 in painting 25, 27, 64, 200, 211 spotted 62–63, 161, 181, 200, 242 banquets. See revelry Ban Weizhi 144–45 Ban Zhao, Instructions for Women 165–66 Bao Linghui 169n39 Barnhart, Richard 32n65 barriers 198, 225 bathing, in painting or poetry 15, 37, 41 beautiful women 3, 5, 7n24



See also beauty; figure painting; paintings of women; virtue beauty 233, 236 metaphors for 132, 146 in painting 4–6, 36, 95, 113, 154, 182–83, 199, 230, 241, 244 in poetry 95, 113, 115, 169, 222–23, 230 See also adornment; beautiful women; makeup bedrooms, in poetry 18, 69–70, 232–33 beds 137–38, 250–51 in painting 126, 132, 142, 151, 154, 174, 177 Bian Yongyu, A Study of Paintings of the Shigu Hall 31n62 Bickford, Maggie 25n43, 164n23, 259n13, 261n16 birds, paired, in painting or poetry 41, 161, 241–42, 259, 267–68 See also ducks, in painting or poetry; geese, in painting or poetry; phoenixes Birrell, Anne M. 62–63n109, 66n122, 69n139, 70n142, 167n34, 226n54 Blanchard, Lara C. W. 21n33, 22n35, 117n52, 137n112, 144n130, 146n136, 161n16, 183–84n86, 184–85n89, 185n94, 197n101, 257n6, 268n21 blossoms as metaphors 132, 146, 222–23, 247–49 in painting or poetry 24–25, 146, 208, 211–14, 220, 247–49, 255, 259–62 worn in women’s hair 37, 247–49 Bodde, Derk 177n72 body 56–57n89, 221 expressive potential of 57–62, 65, 130, 132, 203 female 15, 68, 130, 132, 141–42, 167, 181, 196, 197, 226, 230, 240, 254 male 177–78, 197 in palace-style poetry or song lyric 68, 196, 197, 230 and size 33, 196–97, 199, 254 See also eyebrows; sexual organs Bol, Peter K. 2n3 Book of Changes 67n126 Book of Rites 55–56, 66, 177n72 Book of Songs 70, 223 allegorical or political readings of poems in 56–57, 77–78, 79n12, 148

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298 Book of Songs (cont.) commentary on poems of 65, 77–78, 116, 155 “Cypress Boat” 179, 228 Great Preface to 28–29, 56–57, 63, 126 literal interpretations of poems in 78, 155 “Please, Zhongzi” 224–26 books, in painting 214, 225–26, 245, 257 Bossler, Beverly 210n6 boudoir 226–27 in poetry 18, 67–70, 226n54, 261 boundaries 67, 195, 216, 222, 224–27, 231 See also enclosures Bo Ya and Zhong Ziqi 40 Bray, Francesca 166n28 bridges, in painting 267 bronze 211, 214, 228, 245 brothels 119–20, 122, 210, 244n114, 247n122 brothers 114–15 Brotherton, Elizabeth 269n22 Bryant, Daniel 120n69, 243n112 Buddhism 1n1, 4–5, 130, 144, 148 Bush, Susan 54n82, 55n84, 184n87, 205n119 Butler, Judith 8, 10, 12n2, 56n89 butterflies, in painting or poetry 32–33, 37, 150–51, 223, 247–49, 261, 268 Cahill, James 2n2, 7n24, 184n88, 216n18, 255n2, 268n21 Cai Jing 159, 269 Cai Yan (Wenji). See Lady Wenji’s Return to China (Museum of Fine Arts); Liu Shang, “Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute” calligraphers 21–23, 26nn44–45, 94n29, 116, 164, 220 calligraphy 22–23, 71, 164, 220 capitals 15, 119–22, 145–46, 217–18 Cao Zhi, “Rhyme-Prose on the Goddess of the Luo” 80–81, 94–95, 106–7, 113–15 See also Goddess of the Luo River scrolls; Xue Ying, “Story of the Goddess of the Luo” censers 62, 211, 242, 245 See also incense Center for the Art of East Asia 32n65 ceremonies 176–77, 198, 249

Index Chang, Kang-i Sun 77n1 Changzhou School 79n12 Chao Duanli 32n64 character 144, 146, 227, 228, 233–34, 271n27 of painted figures 59, 119, 137, 141 chastity 26, 225 Chengdi (Former Han emperor) 175, 219 Cheng Yi 69 Chen Jiao (Former Han empress) 174 Chen, Pao-chen 107n38 children, in painting 40–41, 51, 61, 161, 172, 180 Ching, Dora C. Y. 60n101 Ching, Julia 13n4, 123n83 Chou, Diana Yeongchau 6n22 Chung, Ling 67n132 ci poetry. See song lyrics Classic of Filial Piety for Girls (National Palace Museum) 3, 166, 208 Classic of Filial Piety for Girls (Palace Museum) 3, 208 cloth 166–67 See also clothing; silk; textile work clothing 104, 145 making of 168, 176–80, 183, 185–94, 196, 201, 202–3, 268 and period style 33, 34, 247n123, 254 and social status 35, 118, 129, 132, 161, 169, 172, 178, 198, 199 See also cloth; textile work clouds and rain 68–69 collectors of calligraphy or painting 23, 71, 113, 160, 208, 216, 252–53 and seals 23, 164, 208 women as 23, 116 See also art collections; ownership colophons to paintings 71 Northern Song 73, 116–17n51, 126–28, 130, 139, 142–43, 148, 155, 269–70 Southern Song 32–35, 71–72, 184–85, 197–98, 203–6, 253–54, 269 undated 73nn155-56, 128 Yuan or Ming 26, 95, 144–45 See also painting inscriptions color 6n21, 32 commentary painting as 6, 29, 75–76, 161–64, 183, 207, 250, 269–70

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299

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on paintings of male-female interaction 73–75, 126–28, 130, 137–40, 142–43, 147 on paintings of women 71–72, 172–74, 176, 217 on poetry 77–78, 116, 155 poetry or song lyric as 10, 79n12, 155 on portraits 59–60 See also criticism concubines 175–76, 206–7 as artists 20, 22–25, 27, 94, 116 and competition with other women 25, 37, 210, 214, 249–51 in historical accounts 35–37, 175 in painting 24–25, 29–30, 35–53, 161, 167, 183, 214, 225–26, 231, 249–50 in poetry or stories 24n41, 25, 37, 167, 175–76 as poets 211, 218–20 and relations with men 24, 140–41, 175–76, 214 See also palace women Confucianism 6, 65, 77, 114, 168n37, 175, 208 See also Book of Changes; Book of Rites; Book of Songs; Zuozhuan connections, interpersonal 121, 135, 148, 159, 198, 252, 269–71 connoisseurship 2, 20, 29, 55, 206 Song dynasty 6, 71, 116, 117n54, 184, 253–54 conventions 16n14, 145 departures from 16, 17–19 in palace-style poetry or song lyric 9n33, 16, 19, 28, 123, 178, 179 cosmetics. See makeup courtesans 41n78, 214 and attachment 9, 10, 21, 123, 129, 135, 154, 271 as composers, lyricists, or poets 12, 14–17, 119–20, 125–26n95 and desire 14–17, 73, 116, 154–55, 210, 221 education and training of 2, 41, 119–20, 123, 129 government 20, 119, 120n69, 121, 123, 147–48 in historical accounts 120–22, 125, 137–38, 140–41, 143–44, 146 household 119, 120n69, 121–22, 123, 126, 138, 141



independent or private 119–20, 121–23, 126, 141, 147–48 as painters 10, 20–21 in painting 2, 9, 35, 118–19, 126–39, 145–48, 151–56, 231, 254, 257–59, 268 palace 35, 40, 119, 120, 121, 141 and performance 12, 14, 119–20, 124–35, 137, 154–55, 210, 221 in poetry or stories 8–9, 40, 122n78, 125–26, 229, 232, 237, 257–59 and relations with men 119–42, 145, 147–48, 154–56, 210 and romance 121, 123, 147, 257–59 and scholars 10, 116–25 passim, 145, 154, 268 as singing girls 26, 119–26 passim Song 16–17, 119, 121–22 in song lyric 16–17, 122n78, 124–25, 238, 243n109 Southern Tang 116, 120, 143 Tang 20–21, 119–20, 143 See also entertainers, female; entertainment; prostitutes court ladies. See palace women Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk (attr. Huizong) 10–11 authorship of 161, 164–65, 182, 252 as copy of a Tang composition 164–65, 174, 176, 177, 182 female figures in 180–83, 206–7, 239 interpretations of 176–78, 181–83, 207, 253 and text-image relationships 171–72, 179, 183 See also Huizong (Northern Song emperor); Pounding Silk (Zhang Xuan); Zhang Xuan court painters 2, 6, 199, 268 Five Dynasties 6–7, 10, 30, 31, 33, 53, 73, 116, 128–29, 138–4o, 142, 252, 270 Northern Song 1, 6–7, 9, 12, 161–65, 177, 254, 269 as painters-in-attendance 33, 128–29, 138, 214 and paintings of ladies 5–7, 33, 34, 161–65, 214 Southern Song 1, 6–7, 9, 12, 184–85, 205, 209, 254

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300 court painters (cont.) Tang 2, 6–7, 59–60, 164–65, 171 See also court painting; painters court painting 271 Five Dynasties 6–7, 31, 33 Song 94–95, 116–17, 155, 177–78, 214–16 Tang 171 See also court painters courtyards 150, 198, 199, 203, 222 criticism of figure painting and portraits 59–60 of historical figures 26, 137–38, 140–44 literary 71, 115 of paintings of male-female interaction 72–75, 137–40, 142–43, 147, 155–56 of paintings of women 2–7, 172–74, 185, 206 of poetry 3, 10, 63–65, 75, 77–78, 81, 116, 155 of song lyrics 16n13, 16n16, 17, 19, 28, 79 See also commentary cross-dressing 231–32 literary or pictorial 28–29, 54, 151 Cui Hui 20–21, 27 Cui Lingqin, Records of the Music Bureau 119 dancers, dancing 56, 119–20, 130–32 in painting, song lyric, or stories 125–26, 130–32, 154, 172, 175 Daoism 1n1, 4–5, 24, 40n76, 138, 148 debauchery 25, 137, 147–48, 154, 155 decadence 3 deities, in painting or poetry 10, 81–115, 160, 268 Delbanco, Dawn Ho 268n21 Demiéville, Paul 170n46 Deng Chun, More on Painting 146n139, 217 desirability 32, 34–35, 171, 196, 221, 236, 237, 245, 246, 261 See also objects of desire devotion 148, 155–56, 182, 207, 220–21, 253 didacticism 3, 5, 166n29, 233–34, 250 Diény, Jean-Pierre 78–79n10 divorce 123, 267n20 See also marriage Doane, Mary Ann 208 domesticity 69, 165, 170, 204

Index Dong Qichang 31, 95, 184n87 Dong Shi 71, 184, 203–4, 252–53 Record of Calligraphy in the Imperial Song 184 See also Mou Yi; Pounding Cloth (Mou Yi) Dong You 262 Dream Journey over the Xiao and Xiang Rivers (Master Li of Shucheng) 200 dressing, in painting or poetry 9, 194–95, 197 See also adornment; clothing drinking, drunkenness 24–25, 74, 139, 145 drums, in painting or poetry 128, 130, 148, 154 ducks, in painting or poetry 64, 180, 181, 267 Du Fu 64 “Moonlit Night” 159 Du Mu, Iron Net for Coral 53n81 Du Wan, Stone Compendium of Cloudy Forest 223n41 Duzong (Southern Song emperor) 184–85 Ear Picker, or Collating Texts (attr. Wang Qihan) 269–70 Ebrey, Patricia Buckley 66n125, 122n78, 123n83, 166n28, 166n30 Edwards, Richard 197n101, 209n4, 261n15, 261n16 Egan, Ronald 6n21, 9n33, 12n2, 16nn15–17, 26n44, 26n47, 54nn82–83, 59n99, 67n132, 70–71n148, 160n14, 181n81, 206nn120–21, 271n27 Eight Views of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers 205n119 Embroidered Cage, Morning Mirror (National Palace Museum) 210, 211, 214, 216, 224, 226–27, 240–41, 243–44, 254 function of 11, 218–19, 250, 254–55 screen painting within 64–65, 214n14, 241, 244, 247 See also Wang Shen embroidery. See textile work emotions 69 aroused through painting or poetry 63–64, 252 and bodily expression 20, 56–62, 65 expressed through painting 10, 61–66, 197–98, 220–21, 252

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Index expressed through poetry or song lyric 9, 56–58, 78, 159–60, 197–98, 219–20, 236, 239 manifestation of 1, 29, 56–59 represented in painting 1, 7, 9–11, 55, 56, 58–63, 126, 154, 160, 183, 197, 200–202, 240, 252 represented in poetry or song lyric 1, 8–9, 65–66, 170–71 See also attachment; feelings; grief; joy; love; melancholy; sorrow emperors. See rulers empresses 20, 115–16, 174–77 Southern Song 94, 209, 220 enclosures 69–70, 211, 214n11, 216, 222, 224–27, 249 See also boundaries entertainers, female at court 119–21, 174–75 and the literati 14, 79 and the male audience 8–9, 124–37, 154–55 in painting or poetry 74, 118, 126–37, 154–56, 174–75, 204n116, 257–59 and performance 29, 58, 123–26, 154–55 See also courtesans; entertainment entertainment 8–9, 15 musical, and courtesans 40, 119–20, 123–35, 147, 154 in painting, poetry, or song lyrics 74, 123–37, 147, 154 sexual 118, 147, 154 See also entertainers, female; music; revelry Eoyang, Eugene 37n74 eremitism. See reclusion eroticism and musical performance 119, 126 in paintings of male-female interaction 72, 126, 132, 135, 151, 154, 208 in paintings of women 3, 9, 32, 37, 41, 55, 150, 171–72, 174, 177, 181–83, 208, 254, 268 in pictorial arts 1–2, 80, 259–61 in poetry or stories 14–16, 77, 116, 155, 165, 167, 208n2 in song lyric 15–16, 79, 123, 155 and suggestive imagery 25, 41, 72, 126, 135, 167, 172, 177, 209

301 See also sexual relations eunuchs 35, 51–53, 269n24 Exemplary Women (Palace Museum) 5, 208 expression facial 57–60, 62, 65, 130, 135, 154, 201–3, 227, 228, 241 in musical performance 119, 123–26, 129–32, 135 in painting 3, 6, 10, 27, 29, 58–66, 155, 159–60, 197–98, 201–5, 209, 219–21, 252, 259–62 in poetry 3, 8, 15, 28, 29, 56–58, 69, 81, 119, 157–60, 197–98, 209, 219–20, 239, 261–62 self- 221 in song lyric 9, 15–17, 29n57, 70–71n148, 79, 158 See also emotions; feelings; mood eyebrows 15, 74, 130, 197, 230–31, 233, 237–40 Fan Qin 35n71 fans functions of 216, 218–21 and gendered usage 210, 216, 218–19, 221, 244, 246, 250, 254–55 and interiority 154, 246 painted 11, 209–22, 246, 250, 254–55, 259 represented in painting 32, 95, 106–9, 132, 154, 175, 181, 218, 247 represented in poetry 175, 211, 218–20 round 211, 216, 218–20 Fan Shu, Discussions of Friends of Clouds and Streams 21–22 fantasy 35, 75, 157–58, 169, 233 Fan Xiwen, Night Chats Facing My Bed 64 farewell paintings 159, 204, 269 feelings 55–56 aroused through painting, song lyrics, or music 64–65, 126, 204–5, 252 expressed through makeup 236–40 expressed through musical performance 119, 123–26, 129–30, 135 expressed through painting 10, 13, 21–22, 61–66, 158–60, 185, 203–4, 206–7, 209, 219–21, 253, 257, 259–62 expressed through poetry 13, 28–29, 63–65, 69, 81, 119, 157, 159–60, 209, 219–20, 261

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302 feelings (cont.) expressed through song lyric 9, 15–19, 68–69, 159–60, 234–36 as genuine 12, 16, 29n57, 56, 58 as inner 1, 56–58, 66, 68–70 represented in painting 6–7, 9–11, 13, 54–55, 58–66, 72, 113, 179, 197, 199, 201–3, 207 represented in poetry 9–10, 69, 70, 170–71, 179 represented in song lyric 15–19, 57–58, 68–69, 178, 229, 239 and scenes 63–66, 201, 202, 242 See also affection; attachment; emotions; expression; grief; heartbreak; heart/ mind; joy; love; melancholy; mood; romance; sorrow female figures, in Chinese painting activities of 3, 9–10, 202–3, 268 as archetypes 178, 253 and beauty 5–6, 95, 113, 154, 182–83, 199, 230, 241, 244 as constructions 32, 53–54, 75 and desire 1, 6, 10–13, 27, 31–32, 41, 66, 71–77 passim, 116, 126, 157–58, 160, 165, 177–78, 181–83, 206–10, 247–50, 271 eroticized 9, 41, 55, 150–51, 167, 171–72 expressiveness of 29, 58, 61–62, 65, 202–3 and interiority 201, 227 isolated 1–2, 9, 226–27 and longing 1, 6–7, 11–13, 27, 58, 64, 71–77 passim, 114, 126, 157, 158, 165, 174, 180–83, 202–11 passim, 221, 226–27, 234, 250–59 passim, 271 as models of femininity 3, 4–5, 11, 166, 208, 247, 250–51 and projection 12–13, 62, 75, 157–58, 182–83, 185, 206–7, 221, 246 and romance 20, 75, 80, 126 and subjectivity 12–14, 29–30, 72, 75, 157–58, 252 and virtue 3–6, 157, 228, 245 See also figure painting; male figures, in Chinese painting; paintings of women femininity and conduct 66–67 construction of 9, 51, 216, 231–33, 236, 245–46, 250–51

Index

and desire 157, 228, 261 and longing 157, 165, 228, 231 models of 30, 40, 51n79, 53, 75–76, 208, 221, 245, 247, 250–52 and paintings by women 27 performance of 210, 231–32, 246 and space 66–70, 166, 195, 206, 222, 224 See also masculinity Fenghuatang. See Liu Xi (Liu Guifei) fertility 40, 223, 249 figure painting 4–5, 6 and attitudes of figures 7, 59–60, 106–9, 197, 199, 201–3, 205, 244 and distinctions between figures 117–18 expression in 58–66, 197–98, 201–4, 221 gendered interaction in 1–2, 77, 118–19, 126–37, 145–57 passim, 257–59, 268 gesture in 58–65 passim, 128–29, 135, 181, 201–3, 257 and interiority 13, 26–27 by women 23–27, 53 See also beautiful women; female figures, in Chinese painting; male figures, in Chinese painting; painters; paintings of women; portraiture fishermen, in painting 146 Five Dynasties 7, 70, 238 flower-and-bird painting 23, 259–62, 268 Flower Morning 37, 41, 247–49 flowers. See blossoms flutes, in painting or poetry 7, 41, 125–26, 132–35, 154, 172 Fong, Grace S. 12n2 Fong, Mary H. 227n55 Fong, Wen C. 30n59, 35nn72–73, 61n104 Foucault, Michel 56n89 Frankel, Hans H. 7n25, 41n76, 61n105, 145n135 friendship 40, 71, 130, 145, 184, 201, 204, 271 literati 71–72n151, 159, 268–71 in painting or poetry 159, 268–69 See also connections, interpersonal; relationships frontier 69, 119, 185, 204, 205 Fufei 81–107, 113–15 Fu Xian, “Rhapsody on the Fan” 220 Fu Yi, “Fan Inscription” 220

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303

Index Gaozong (Southern Song emperor) 121 paintings produced at the court of 22–25, 94, 115–17, 155, 252–53, 259 relationship with Empress Wu 208n3, 220, 259 relationship with Liu Guifei 22–23, 116 Gaozu (Tang emperor) 33 Garber, Marjorie 28, 231 gardens and enclosure 69–70, 150–51, 214n11, 216, 222, 224–27, 268 gendered elements within 222–24 and the inner quarters 67–68, 69n139, 200–201, 222 in painting 9–10, 66, 67, 174, 198, 203, 209–14, 216, 221–24, 245, 249, 268 in poetry or song lyric 66, 194, 200–201, 222–26, 232 women’s enjoyment of 222, 225–27 gaze of artists or patrons 73–74 female 18, 41, 53–54 male 11, 51–54, 71, 73–74, 157–58 object of 14, 74 of painted figures 7, 51–54, 59, 128–32, 135, 147, 181 of poetic personae 18, 129–30, 236 of viewers 73n155, 181 See also viewership; voyeurism geese, in painting or poetry 135, 147, 241–42 gender distinctions construction of 1, 166, 206, 232–33 and hierarchy 271 and performativity 8, 231–32 and segregation 40–41, 66n121, 67n127, 141, 222 See also inner; outer; yang; yin genuine. See authenticity gesture discussed in painting criticism 58, 60 in painting 60–62, 65, 128–29, 135, 181, 202–3, 228, 257 See also expression; figure painting gifts, paintings as 33, 113, 220, 252, 259, 262, 269 Goddess of the Luo River scrolls as allegory 113–16, 155



authorship of Liaoning Provincial Museum scroll 23, 115–16, 252–53 comparison of extant scrolls 80, 94–113 as copies of earlier compositions 80, 94 dates of 80, 94–95 female figures in 95–113 gender dynamic in 114, 160 inscriptions on Liaoning Provincial Museum scroll 23, 94, 95, 106 interpretations of 10, 115–16, 155, 253 male figures in 95–113, 160 missing scenes 106, 107n37, 113, 114 and patronage 94–95, 115–16, 252–53 text-image relationships in 95–113 See also Cao Zhi; Gu Kaizhi Gotfrit, Leslie 56–57n89 Graham, William T., Jr. 40–41n78 Granet, Marcel 78n6 Grant, Beata 16n16, 166n26, 176n68 grief in painting 61–62, 202 in poetry or song lyric 18, 22, 159–60, 170–71, 234–36 Guan Daosheng 19 Gu Hongzhong 73n155, 74, 116, 128–29, 139–42, 252, 253 See also Night Revels of Han Xizai scrolls Gu Kaizhi 5, 54–55, 59, 80 See also Admonitions of the Court Instructress to the Palace Ladies (British Museum); Goddess of the Luo River scrolls Gulik, Robert Hans van 66n124, 117n54 Guo Ruoxu, Experiences in Painting 4–6, 27, 60 Guo Xi 146 Lofty Message of Forests and Streams 223n41 hairstyles and age 35, 51, 118, 161 and beauty or fashion 33, 95, 230, 247n123 and social status 33, 35, 51, 118, 129, 178, 180, 198 See also adornment Hall, David L. 222n38

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304 Hammers, Roslyn Lee 167n31 Han dynasty 3, 6n20, 57, 141n124, 155, 177n72, 201–2, 220, 229, 230n68 Former Han 28, 35, 141–42, 167, 168n37, 174–75, 218, 219, 242 Latter Han 165–66 Han Fei, Han Fei zi 227–28 Han Gan 59–60 Hangzhou 120–22, 218 Han History 175, 177n72 Hanlin Academy 33 Han Xizai as court hermit 116, 142–48 as imperial adviser 74, 116, 138 paintings of (see Night Revels of Han Xizai scrolls) story of 72–73, 116, 118–19, 142 textual accounts of 72–75, 137–46, 154, 155 happiness. See joy Harrist, Robert E., Jr. 184n87, 261n15 Hartman, Charles 117n54 Hawes, Colin S. C. 206n120 Hay, John 217n21, 218n25, 223n41 heartbreak 23–24n39, 170–71, 221 See also attachment; emotions; feelings; grief; love; melancholy; relationships; sorrow heart/mind 28, 56–58, 68, 179 reflected in visual imagery 228, 242n106, 244 hermits. See reclusion He Wei, Record of Things Heard on a Spring Islet 257n8 Hightower, James R. 68n35, 124n88 hills 200, 223, 238–39, 242 See also mountains Hinton, David 65n119 histories, dynastic 116, 137–38, 140–41 home 69, 70, 170, 204, 206–7 homesickness 158, 170, 203–4, 207, 219, 253, 268 homophones. See puns hortus conclusus 225 Ho, Wai-kam 30n58, 31n60, 32n65 Hsieh, Daniel 9n31 Hsu Wen-Chin 268n21 Huai (King of Chu) 78

Index Huang Tingjian 262 Huarui, Lady 16n17, 182 Huizong (Northern Song emperor) authorship of paintings attributed to 161, 164–65 as patron of the arts 164–65, 182, 206–7, 214, 252, 259, 262 poetry by 16n17, 182, 259 wives of 176 See also Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk (attr. Huizong); Mountain Birds on a Wax-Plum Tree (attr. Huizong) husbands 77n1, 122, 158, 167n34, 198 in painting 61–62, 160, 243n108 in poetry, song lyric, or stories 22–23, 61, 123, 159–60, 233–36, 241n100 See also divorce; marriage; separation; wives Hu Shunchen, Calligraphy and Painting for He Xuanming upon His Dispatch to Qin 159, 269 idealization in images of women 13, 20, 30, 126, 147, 157–58, 160, 208, 221, 228, 236, 245, 246, 250, 257–59, 262 of women’s behavior 11, 21, 234, 245 Idema, Wilt 16n16, 166n26, 176n68 Imperial Painting Academy 115, 159, 174n62, 214, 269 See also academic painting impropriety 24, 79, 139, 143 incense 242n105 See also censers inner as aspect of duality 1, 10, 56, 58, 66–67, 69–70, 203, 216, 224, 226, 231, 250 as feminine 66–70, 166, 224, 233, 246 See also gender distinctions; inner quarters; outer; yin inner quarters 66–67, 141, 210, 219, 222, 232–33 in painting 7, 9, 31, 51, 67, 150–51, 161, 203 of the palace 22, 25, 31, 51, 67, 150–51, 161, 181, 250–51 in poetry or song lyric 67–70, 78–79, 181, 194–95, 197, 200–201

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305

Index In the Palace scrolls authorship and date of 30–31, 34, 51, 53–54 colophon by Zhang Cheng 30–35, 72, 253–54 as copies 10, 30, 31, 33, 34, 53–54, 253 female figures in 29–32, 34–54, 231, 253–54 male figures in 35, 51–54 section 1 (Berenson Collection, Villa I Tatti) 30–31, 35–40, 51 section 2 (Cleveland Museum of Art) 30–31, 34, 35, 40–41 section 3 (Harvard Art Museums) 30–31, 40–41, 51 section 4 (Metropolitan Museum of Art) 30–31, 35, 41–53 Southern Tang original 31, 32–33, 34, 252 and subjectivity 29–30, 53–54 See also Zhang Cheng (Danyan Jushi); Zhou Wenju; Zhu Zaishang intimacy 8–9, 160, 232, 246, 261 in relationships 121, 251, 262 Irigaray, Luce 12n2 Jao Tsung-i 170n46 Jia Sidao 72, 246–47 Jin dynasty 72, 164, 172, 257 Jingzong (Tang emperor) 181 Jin History 54–55, 177n72 joy 20, 26, 65 Jurchens 164 Kaifeng 121 Kao, Arthur Mu-sen 58n97, 73n156 Karlgren, Bernhard 228n61 Khitans 61 Knechtges, David 174n63, 176n68, 185n91, 198n104, 220n29 Kong Chuan 223n41 Kracke, E. A., Jr. 141n124 Ladies Adorning Their Hair with Flowers (Liaoning Provincial Museum) 11, 199, 246–51, 254–55 See also Zhou Fang Lady at Her Dressing Table, A (attr. Su Hanchen) 211, 214, 224, 226, 240–44



function of 11, 218–19, 250, 254–55 screen painting within 64–65, 211, 226, 241, 242–43, 247 See also Su Hanchen Lady Watching a Maid with a Parrot, A (Museum of Fine Arts) 214, 224, 254–55 female figures in 225–27, 245 as model for women’s behavior 11, 250 See also Wang Juzheng Lady Wenji’s Return to China (Museum of Fine Arts) 60–62, 160 See also Liu Shang, “Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute” Laing, Ellen Johnston 94n28, 145n134, 214n14, 226n54, 242n104, 247n123, 257n11, 268n21 lament 8–9, 16–19, 65, 78, 160, 220–21 Lam, Lap 68n135 landscape paintings 1n1, 71, 94 and female artists or collectors 23, 25–27 and feelings or mood 63, 262–68 and gender 27, 146 literati and 269–71 represented in painting 64–65, 116–17, 146, 200–203, 211, 227, 244 represented in song lyric 244n114 and travel 146, 200–202, 244 Last Ruler. See Li Yu (Southern Tang ruler) Latter Shu kingdom 182 Layers of Icy Silk (Ma Lin) 259–62 See also Ma Lin Lee, Hui-shu 94n29, 209n3, 209n5, 261n15, 262n17 Leung, Irene S. 61n106, 61n108 Levy, Howard S. 24n41 Liang dynasty 8, 178 Liang Kai 172n57 Liang Shicheng 269n24 Liao dynasty 61 Li Bai 37, 65 Li Bian (Southern Tang ruler) 247n123 Li Cheng 146, 246 See also Verdant Forests, Distant Peaks (Liaoning Provincial Museum) Li Chi 143n127 Liezi 40

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306 Li Gonglin 31–32, 200n106, 205, 218 See also Picture of Yang Pass (Li Gonglin) Liji. See Book of Rites Li Jing (Southern Tang ruler) 147 Li, Master, of Shucheng 200 See also Dream Journey over the Xiao and Xiang Rivers (Master Li of Shucheng) liminality 94n27, 222 Lin, Shuen-fu 12n2 Li Qingzhao (Yi’an Jushi) 17–19, 25–27, 67n132, 70–71n148, 206n120 Tune: “A Cut Plum Branch” 57–58 Tune: “On the Phoenix Terrace, Thinking of Playing the Flute” 18–19 Li Shangyin 37, 115n47 literati circles 71, 205n119 criticism 2, 3, 53, 59, 60, 65, 77–80, 81n23, 185, 252 discourse 3, 271 families 10, 20, 123, 271 friendships 71–72n151, 204, 268–71 painters 6, 9, 12, 31–32, 184–85, 205, 269–71 paintings by 1, 31–32, 71n150, 268–71 poets 8, 9, 79–80, 121 and romance 61, 71, 158, 252, 268–69 and society 9n31, 271 See also scholars Little, Stephen 223n41 Liu Chang 221n31 Liu Shang, “Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute” 61 See also Lady Wenji’s Return to China (Museum of Fine Arts) Liu Xiaowei 233 Liu Xie, Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons 57, 77–78 Liu Xi (Liu Guifei) 22–25, 27, 53, 94n29, 116 See also Gaozong (Southern Song emperor); Goddess of the Luo River scrolls Liu Yiqing, A New Account of Tales of the World 35, 145 Liu Yong, song lyrics of 32n64, 214n11 Tune: “Spring in the Brocade Hall” 68–69 Tune: “The Auspicious Partridge” 124–25 Liu Yuan 257–59

Index

See also Sima Caizhong’s Dream of the Courtesan Su Xiaoxiao (Liu Yuan) Liu Zongdao 217 Li, Wai-yee 94n27, 95n30, 257n8 Li Ye 14 Li Yu (Southern Tang ruler) 35n73, 120, 143, 147 as patron of the arts 31, 33, 73–74, 116, 129, 138–40, 142, 155, 252–53 See also In the Palace scrolls; Night Revels of Han Xizai scrolls Lizong (Southern Song emperor) 184–85 locus amoenus 249 Loehr, Max 269n25, 270n26 Loewe, Michael 6n20, 29n52 loneliness in landscape painting 267–68 in palace-style poetry 179, 195, 241–42 in poetry 7–9, 26–27, 69–70, 157, 159–60, 168, 169 in song lyric 159–60, 214n11, 236, 243 in Song paintings of women 12, 64–65, 79, 157–58, 203–7, 210–14, 216, 219, 221, 226–27, 242–46 in Tang paintings of women 22, 174, 177 See also abandonment; attachment; feelings; figure painting; grief; heartbreak; melancholy; sorrow lotuses, in painting or poetry 95, 267 love 55–56 expressed in music 124–25 knots 35, 118, 129, 135, 147, 241, 243, 244 metaphors for 41, 64, 132, 180n78, 181, 245, 267 in painting 1, 3, 10, 62, 69, 113, 116, 244 in poetry or song lyric 1, 8–9, 14, 69, 78, 79, 81–94, 180, 226, 236, 261 puns for 167n34, 171 stories 1, 8–9, 24, 257–59 themes 8–9, 155, 222 tokens 35, 81, 106, 113, 221, 229, 244, 245 See also affection; attachment; emotions; feelings; romance lovelorn women. See loneliness loyalty allegories of 113–15, 148, 155–56, 182, 205 expression of, in painting 23, 114–16, 148, 182, 205, 207 expression of, in poetry 113–14, 220

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307

Index

female 13, 23, 77n1, 220, 221 to rulers 23, 77n1, 113–15, 140, 148, 155–56, 182, 205, 207, 220 of scholar-officials 77n1, 116, 140, 148, 255 Lu Ji, “Rhyme-Prose on Literature” 58–59, 63 lutes 15, 40, 125–26, 128n97 See also pipa, in painting or poetry; zithers Lu You 123 Maeda, Robert J. 217n21 Ma Hezhi 166n29, 172n57 See also Classic of Filial Piety for Girls (National Palace Museum); Classic of Filial Piety for Girls (Palace Museum); Odes of the State of Bin (Metropolitan Museum of Art) makeup 232, 238–39 application of 7, 41–51, 74, 141–42, 227, 230–40 as cultivation 233–34, 250 and interiority 227, 236–40 in painting 32, 41–51, 161, 210–14, 216, 230–31, 240–45, 250 in poetry or song lyric 8, 178, 196, 230–40, 261 See also adornment; beauty; mirrors male figures, in Chinese painting absence of 9, 75, 157–58, 183, 201, 204–7, 209, 240–46 passim experiencing emotions 61–62, 114, 160 and the gaze 51–54, 95, 128–32, 135 and interaction with female figures 35, 61–62, 75, 77, 94–115, 118–19, 126–37, 145, 147–48, 151–55, 268 and subjectivity 35 viewers’ identification with 51 See also female figures, in Chinese painting; figure painting Ma Lin 259–61 See also Layers of Icy Silk (Ma Lin); Wang Tiju; Yang Meizi (Southern Song empress) Mann, Susan 24n41 Mao Wenxi 244n114 marriage 9, 26, 77, 122n81, 180n78, 198, 211 and attachment or love 122–23, 158, 210, 229, 234–36



See also divorce; husbands; relationships; wives masculinity 66–67, 75, 166, 222–24, 231–32 and desire or longing 157–60, 207 and space 69, 141, 146, 195, 222 See also femininity masquerade 218, 233 Ma Yuan 209, 259–61 See also Apricot Blossoms (Ma Yuan); Yang Meizi (Southern Song empress) McCausland, Shane 5n16, 234n80 Meifei (Flowering Plum Consort) 25, 214, 225–26, 245 See also Lady Watching a Maid with a Parrot (Museum of Fine Arts) Mei Yaochen 204n116 melancholy in painting 58n97, 198, 203 in poetry or song lyric 8, 58, 65, 81n24, 168, 170–71, 180 See also emotions; feelings; sorrow men and enjoyment of painting 3, 5–6, 205–6, 208 and feelings 13, 69, 122–23, 157–60, 185, 207, 221, 233, 234–36 interactions with women 1-2, 8–9, 119–26, 138–42, 233 metaphors for 222–24 See also authorship; male figures, in Chinese painting; masculinity; painters; patronage; poets; viewership Meng Chang (Latter Shu ruler) 182 Meng Jiangnü 168 merchants 8–9, 201, 216–17 metaphors in historical sources 144 in painting 40–41, 62–70 passim, 95, 132, 146, 181, 211, 214, 220–24, 227n55, 245 in poetry 64–70 passim, 95, 167, 168, 178–80, 214n11, 222–25, 228, 229, 238, 240, 245 metonyms, metonymy 29–30, 62, 195, 229, 250 Mi Fu 205n119 Painting History 2, 5n16, 185n92 Mi Heng, “Rhapsody on a Parrot” 40–41n78 military service 168

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308 Ming dynasty 7n24, 16, 26, 95, 171, 218n27, 220, 222 Minghuang. See Xuanzong (Tang emperor) ministers Northern Song 33, 72, 159 and rulers 77, 78, 138–40, 142, 147, 148, 253 Southern Song 72, 246–47 Tang or Southern Tang 24, 73–74, 138–40, 142, 143 See also officials mirrors as metaphors 227, 229, 234, 244–45, 250 and mirror stands 210–14, 234, 245 in painting 41, 51–53, 210–14, 216, 240–44, 250 in poetry or song lyric 21–22, 228–30, 240 reflections and interiority 21–22, 51–53, 227, 228, 234, 240–44 See also makeup mist, in painting 200, 267 Mi Youren 214n14 Cloudy Mountains 268 monks 138 in painting 118, 130, 148 mood 9–10, 37, 54–55, 58, 63–65, 194, 198 See also expression; feelings moon light of, in painting or poetry 180, 195, 199 in painting or poetry 95, 159, 180n78, 219–20 Monthly Ordinances 177 morality 2n2, 57, 77 Mountain Birds on a Wax-Plum Tree (attr. Huizong) 259, 262 See also Huizong (Northern Song emperor) mountains images of, in makeup 238–40 as metaphors 223, 240, 242, 244 in painting 159, 200–201, 211, 227, 244 See also hills Mou Yi 10–11, 71, 183–85, 197–207, 252–53, 262 See also Pounding Cloth (Mou Yi) Muller, Deborah Del Gais 184n87

Index Mulvey, Laura 11, 157–58 Murck, Alfreda 271n27 Murray, Julia 5n17, 166n29, 176n68 music and expression 40, 119, 129–32, 135 performance of, represented in literature or histories 40, 125–26, 143 performance of, represented in painting 9–10, 35, 40, 41, 118, 126–35, 151, 154, 172, 268 and representation of emotions 126, 154 and stringed instruments 40, 41, 126, 255 and wind instruments 41, 135 See also entertainment; flutes, in painting or poetry; Music Bureau poetry; lutes; pipa, in painting or poetry; zithers Music Bureau 119, 120, 121, 128, 145–46 Music Bureau poetry 70, 269 correspondence to paintings of women 3–4, 175 subjectivity and voice in 12, 13, 28, 29, 165 women represented in 12, 37n74, 165, 167–68 See also music; Music Bureau; performance Nan Chucai 21–22 narcissi 210 narrative 80–94, 95–113, 137 naturalism 55, 58, 199 naturalness 22, 27, 53n80 nature 168, 222, 227 imagery of 63–66, 70–71n148, 270 See also birds, paired, in poetry or painting; blossoms; landscape paintings; mountains; trees; water neglect 78–79, 253, 257 See also abandonment Nelson, Susan E. 94n28 Neo-Confucianism 69, 148 See also Cheng Yi; Confucianism; Sima Guang; Zhu Xi Nienhauser, William H., Jr 25n43 night in painting 185, 199 in poetry or song lyric 168, 169, 194–95, 240, 261 Night Revels of Han Xizai scrolls

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309

Index audience for and reception of 72–75, 141–42, 147–48, 155 colophons for 73, 116–17n51, 126–28, 129n102, 130, 139–40, 142–43, 144–45, 148, 155–56, 253–54 compositional structure of 118, 126, 130, 132, 135, 137 as copies of a Southern Tang composition 75, 116–17, 147, 252–53 as court paintings 116–17, 155, 252–53 female figures in 74, 118–19, 126–37, 145–48, 154–56, 231 imagery of reclusion in 116, 144–48, 159 interpretations of 10, 137, 141–48, 155–56 male figures in 118–19, 126–37, 144–45, 147–48, 151–56, 218 patron of Southern Tang paintings 73–74, 116, 138–40, 142, 155 scroll in National Palace Museum (Taipei) 34n69, 253–54 seals on Palace Museum (Beijing) scroll 75, 116–17, 139–40 See also Gu Hongzhong; Han Xizai; Li Yu (Southern Tang ruler); Shi Miyuan; Zhou Wenju; Zu Wupo Ningzong (Southern Song emperor) 209, 259, 262 See also Yang Meizi (Southern Song empress) nomads 61–62, 128n97, 160 Northern and Southern Schools of painters 184n87 Northern Song dynasty 34 bureaucrats and officials 2, 6, 33, 34, 72, 121, 159, 252–53 court 146, 182 images of women 1, 4–5, 31n60, 204n116 literati 53, 185, 223n41, 262, 269–71 palace women 176 painters 4–5, 26–27, 31–32, 53n80, 60, 177, 214, 254 painting 31–32, 67, 94–95, 177–78, 182, 252–53 rulers 10, 16n17, 121, 146n139, 161, 164–65, 174n62, 176, 182–83, 214, 252–53 song lyrics 79, 159–60, 171, 178, 206n121 Northern Wei dynasty 176n68

nostalgia 69, 204, 253, 261 nuns 20, 24 Nüwa 107 objects of desire 8, 158, 178, 210–11, 226 and projection, among male viewers 10–11, 32, 75, 158, 182–83, 249 See also desirability observers 13, 19, 70–71n148, 154, 176 See also viewership Odes of the State of Bin (Metropolitan Museum of Art) 172n57 officials 141, 220, 223 Northern Song 2, 6, 33, 34, 72, 121, 159, 253 in painting or poetry 126–28, 137–40, 147–48, 159, 201, 268, 269 and retirement 146–48 Southern Song 2, 32, 34, 71–72, 75, 121–22, 262 Southern Tang 72–74, 116, 138–42 Tang 2, 20–22, 24, 59, 119 as viewers of paintings 6, 33–34, 71–72, 75 See also ministers ornament. See adornment Ortiz, Valérie Malenfer 200n106 outer appearance 58–60, 216, 227, 234–37, 240–41, 243–46 as aspect of duality 1, 10, 56, 58, 66–67, 69, 70, 203, 216, 224, 226, 231, 250 and emotion 1, 56–58 as masculine 66–67, 166, 224 spaces 66–67, 70, 140–41, 146, 203, 224, 226–27 See also gender distinctions; inner; yang Ouyang Xiu 55, 67n132, 78, 204n116 “Thoughts Revealed in Eyebrows” 239–40, 261 Owen, Stephen 7n25, 16n13, 124n88, 269n22 ownership 71–72, 210, 221, 253, 257 See also collectors painters academic 94–95, 115, 159, 214, 269 compared to artisans 55

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310 painters (cont.) Eastern Jin dynasty 54–55, 59 female 6, 10, 13, 19–28, 53–54, 75–76 figure 54–55, 59–60, 65–66, 94–95, 144–55 passim, 160–65 passim, 171–77 passim, 185, 197–207 passim, 252–59 passim Five Dynasties 7, 30–33, 51–54, 73, 116, 128–29, 138–42, 146, 246, 252, 270 interiority of 10, 203–4, 206–7, 252, 270–71 Jin dynasty 257–59 literati 1, 6, 9, 12, 31–32, 159, 184–85, 205, 268–71 male 12–14, 31–35, 53–54, 75, 157–59, 185, 250, 252–71 passim Northern Song 4–6, 20, 25–27, 31–32, 59–60, 65–66, 94–95, 146, 159, 161, 164, 177, 210, 214, 216, 217, 252, 254, 259, 262–71 portrait 35, 59–60 professional 185, 205, 216, 254, 268 Southern Song 7, 20, 22–27, 51–54, 65–66, 71, 94–95, 115–16, 144–55 passim, 166, 183–85, 197–207 passim, 210, 214, 252–54, 259–62, 269 and subjectivity 10, 12–14, 29–30 Tang 2, 6–7, 20–22, 59–60, 72, 78–79, 160–61, 164–65, 171–77 passim, 199, 246, 247n123, 253–54 See also court painters painting history, Chinese 2, 4–7, 19–27, 53 and paintings of women 2, 4–5, 31n62, 71 and representations of emotion 1–2, 59–60 painting inscriptions 71–73, 164, 184n88, 201n109, 207, 208, 253–54 as communication 159, 270 in poetic form 159, 185, 209, 220, 261–62 See also colophons to paintings paintings of women audience for 10, 71–72, 75–76, 185, 208, 210, 250–51 authorship of 12–13, 71–72, 75–76, 164–65, 250 and connections to poetry 9–10, 13–14, 66, 78–79, 185, 197–203 criticism of 2–7, 55, 160

Index

functions of 10–11, 13, 208, 250–51 and interiority 3–4, 6–7, 10, 12–13, 29–30 as ladies (shinü hua) 1–7, 10, 20, 27, 53–55, 72, 156–58, 161, 185, 198–210 passim, 228, 240–51 passim, 255 romantic themes in 3, 9–10, 12, 75, 185 and subjectivity 12–14, 75, 158 and voyeurism 14, 73–74, 139 See also female figures, in Chinese painting; figure painting; women paintings-within-paintings and depictions of portrait-making 35, 51–53 and interiority 64–65, 200–203, 241–244 and natural scenes 64–66, 146, 200–203, 214n14, 226, 227 and stylistic allusions 205, 262 Palace Banquet (Metropolitan Museum of Art) 67, 150–51 Palace Ladies Tuning the Lute (Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art) 72, 255–57 See also Zhou Fang palace poems (gongci) 16n17, 161, 181, 182 palace-style poetry (gongti shi) authorship of 8, 12, 29 correspondence to paintings of women 3–4, 178, 183, 185, 255, 257–59 female personae in 8, 12, 169, 178–80, 225–26, 255 and interiority 8, 66, 70, 165, 228 and subjectivity 12, 13, 28 See also Xu Ling, New Songs from a Jade Terrace palaces 31, 161, 174, 175, 178 palace women 10, 20, 40, 247–50, 271 and labor 176–82 in painting 23, 32–54, 150–51, 161–64, 172–78, 181–83, 231, 234, 253–57 in poetry 161, 176, 178–80, 182, 208 See also concubines parrots, in painting or poetry 33, 40–41, 214, 227, 245 parting 159, 201–2, 221 in painting 107, 113, 159, 201–2, 204, 267–68 in poetry or song lyric 18–19, 159, 169, 204 paths, in painting 159, 227n55, 267

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Index patriarchy 16n16 patronage and commissions 59, 71–74, 115–17, 138–40, 142, 182, 252 court 94–95, 115–17, 138–40, 142, 164–65, 182, 206–7, 259–62 and expression in painting 30, 252–53, 259–62 female 209, 259–62 male 75, 138–40, 142, 157–58, 182, 206–7 See also authorship paulownia trees, in painting 150, 174, 177, 255–56 Pei Jingzhong 20–21 penetration 70, 195, 198–99, 225 perception 55 performance artifice and 124, 155 of desire 41, 154–55, 210, 221 and Music Bureau poetry 29, 165, 167 and song lyrics 12, 14, 19, 29, 58, 123–25 See also audience; music personae 210, 216, 245, 250 female, in Music Bureau poetry 28, 165, 167–68, 170n44, 175, 176 female, in palace-style poetry 8, 14, 28, 168, 169, 180, 220, 228, 229, 236–37, 255 female, in shi poetry 14–15, 26–27, 166 female, in song lyric 9, 14–19, 28, 29n57, 70–71n148, 82, 170n46, 237–40 and interiority 8–9, 15–17, 29n57, 68–69, 70, 169–71, 180, 228, 229, 236–40, 245, 255 male, in poetry or song lyric 69, 159–60, 169 and subjectivity 13–19, 28, 75, 78, 154–55, 157, 159–60 perspectives of audiences or authors 10, 13–18, 51, 53–54 female 13–16, 53–54, 76, 123 male 51, 53–54, 70, 76, 80 See also subjectivity phoenixes 241–42 Picture of Yang Pass (Li Gonglin) 269 pine trees, in painting or poetry 146, 223 Pingkang district, Chang’an 15, 120, 121 Pingkang Ward, Hangzhou 122

311 pipa, in painting or poetry 26, 126–30, 150, 154, 172 See also lutes plain outline style (baimiao) 31–32, 205 plants, potted 211, 226 pleasure 15, 140, 142, 157, 233 of viewing paintings 3–6, 74, 185n92, 205–6, 243n108 plum trees 64, 211, 214, 223, 259–61 See also blossoms poems-on-paintings 209, 220, 259, 261, 269, 270 poetry collections 8, 17, 245 poets and censure 79 at court 8, 66n122 and feelings 64, 77–78 female 6, 8, 14–19, 21–22, 27, 28, 169n39, 175–76, 209, 214, 218–20, 257–59 male 8, 14, 16–17, 28, 75 and political commentary 77–78 point of view. See authorship; perspectives; viewership politics commentary on, through poetry or painting 10, 77–78, 79n12, 166, 207, 253 discussed in textual sources 142–44 and functions of paintings 182, 262, 269–70 and interpretations of literature 77n1, 155, 182 and interpretations of painting 10, 30, 78–79, 115–16, 141–48, 151, 155, 182, 207, 221, 252–53, 255 and themes of desire 77 portraiture 20–22, 117, 243n108 commentary on 53n80, 59–60 painters of 20–22, 32, 35, 54–55, 59–60 of palace women 35–37, 51–53 See also figure painting Pounding Cloth (Mou Yi) 10–11, 183n85 audience for and recipient of 184, 203–6, 207, 252 female figures in 65, 197–205, 207 first version 71, 203, 252 inscriptions on 71, 184–85, 197–98, 201n109, 203–7 interpretations of 203–5, 207

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312 Pounding Cloth (Mou Yi) (cont.) presented as gift 71, 184, 203, 252–53 screen paintings within 64–65, 200–202, 205, 262 and stylistic allusions 199, 200–201, 205–6 text-image relationship in 185, 197–203 See also Mou Yi; Xie Huilian Pounding Silk (Zhang Xuan) 72, 164–65, 171, 172–77, 180, 182 See also Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk (attr. Huizong); Zhang Xuan power 24, 114–15, 119, 132 Powers, Martin J. 53n80, 125n91, 141n124, 205n119 Prince of Shou 24 princesses 20 printmakers 268 privacy 8, 141, 183, 244 and space 67–68, 70, 198–99, 222, 226 and viewing of paintings 160, 182–83, 206, 219, 246, 250 projection 62 and audience 10–13, 158, 183, 203, 2o6–7, 219, 221, 246, 249, 252 and authorship 10, 12–13, 160, 180–85 passim pronouns 13–14, 81, 107, 124n88, 196 propriety 32, 75, 158n9 prostitutes 122 See also courtesans; entertainment protagonists in pictorial arts 137, 158 in poetry or song lyrics 26, 65, 113–14, 154, 179, 194 public 137–38, 141, 142, 147, 155, 182, 206, 216, 221, 225, 246 puns 167, 171, 174, 177–78, 202, 211, 267 Qianlong (Qing emperor) 95, 201n109, 207 Qiao Zhizhi 169n39 Qin dynasty 57 Qing dynasty 7n24, 20, 79n12, 115, 125– 26n95, 171 “Qingyang Ford” 165, 167–68 Qu Yuan, “Encountering Sorrow” 78, 79n12, 114

Index Raphals, Lisa 66n121 recipients of paintings 117, 159, 262, 269 reclusion 116, 142–48, 155, 159 Red Cliff (Qiao Zhongchang) 159, 269 See also Li Gonglin; Su Shi rejection 80, 106, 113–14, 116 relationships heteroerotic 9, 13, 14, 70, 75–76, 121–23, 170, 206–7, 229, 236, 247, 250, 268 and hierarchy 77, 114–15, 271 homosocial 40, 121, 126, 159, 204–6, 271 marital 21–22, 77, 122–23, 209 See also attachment; friendship; love; marriage; romance; sexual relations Renzong (Northern Song emperor) 121 repression 157 revelry in historical accounts 137–38, 144, 145 and metaphors 137, 139n118 in painting 73n156, 126–37, 139, 147, 151 See also entertainment; Night Revels of Han Xizai scrolls Rexroth, Kenneth 67n132 “Rhapsody on the Tall Gate Palace” (att. Sima Xiangru) 174, 176 rhapsody, rhyme-prose 40–41n78, 81, 174, 176 rhetoric 7, 120n66 and functions of painting 3, 11, 81, 115, 184 in painting 198, 203, 227, 244 in poetry 63, 64, 66n122, 70, 157, 227, 231 rivers 146 in painting 27, 181, 200, 201, 211, 227, 244 See also landscape paintings; nature roads 69, 227n55 Roberts, Laurance P. 30n59 Robertson, Maureen 15n10, 28n51 rocks 223 in painting 25–26, 146, 174, 211, 249, 255 romance 1 culture of 8, 9n31, 252 and feelings 9, 29, 72, 129, 135, 242 and images of women 13, 71, 75, 123, 126, 147, 245, 247–49, 255–59, 268 in painting 1, 9–11, 13, 20, 27, 62, 71, 75, 80, 126, 247–49, 252–53, 255–62, 268–69, 271 in poetry 9, 13, 14, 27, 61, 121, 158, 261

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Index and relationships 11, 21, 66, 72 in song lyric 9, 17–19, 123, 158 in stories 8–9, 24, 115, 121, 257–59 See also attachment; love Rorex, Robert 61n104 Rouzer, Paul 9n31, 28n49, 29n54, 77n1, 81n23, 81n26, 115n47, 120n66, 125n92, 208n2, 220n29 rulers and advisers 73, 138, 142, 147, 175, 207, 220 and court painters 51, 116, 138–40, 164–65, 252 Former Han 35, 174–75, 219 Jin 72, 164 Latter Shu 182 Liang 8, 178–80 metaphors for 223 and ministers 77, 78, 138–40, 142, 148 Northern Song 10, 16n17, 121, 146n139, 161, 164–65, 174n62, 176, 182–83, 206–7, 214, 252–53 as patrons 138–40, 155, 164–65 and relationships with consorts 24, 25, 35–37, 94n29, 174–75, 176, 181, 220, 249–50, 253 Southern Song 22–23, 94, 115–17, 121, 155, 184–85, 209, 220, 252–53 Southern Tang 31, 33, 35n73, 73–74, 116, 120, 129, 138–40, 142, 147, 155, 247n123, 252–54 and subjects 77, 78, 113–16, 182 Tang 24, 25, 33, 119, 181, 214, 249–50 Wei 113–15 Samei, Maija Bell 16n14, 16n16, 28n50, 29n57 satire 5, 77–78 scholars 2, 8–9 as audience for paintings 32, 71–72, 75, 184n88, 205–6 and commentary on paintings or poetry 55, 78, 172–76, 184n88, 270–71 and entertainers 10, 14, 73, 79, 118–19, 120–23, 125–37, 140–41, 145, 147–48, 151, 154 metaphors for 211, 223 as painters (see under literati) in painting 118, 126–37, 145, 147, 154, 172, 268, 269–70 poetic tropes for 78–79, 146, 255n5

313 as poets (see under literati) See also courtesans; literati; reclusion screens painted 11, 176n68, 209–10, 246, 247, 250–51, 254–55 represented in painting 64–65, 116–18, 129, 146, 200–203, 211, 226, 227, 241–44, 247 represented in poetry or song lyric 244n114, 247 scrolls handscrolls and panoramic compositions 202 handscrolls and sequential compositions 30–31, 35–51, 118 handscrolls and viewing practices 71–72, 184n88, 205–6, 255 represented in painting 214 See also colophons to paintings; painting inscriptions seasons 168, 181, 194, 198, 211, 220, 222, 226 Selections of Refined Literature 115 self 206, 228 awareness 227–28, 231, 245, 250–51 cultivation 233–34, 250 “Sending a Soldier’s Clothes to the Frontier” 170n46 separation of friends 201, 238 of husbands and wives 21–22, 160, 168–69, 185, 196–97, 200–201, 211, 241–43 of lovers 69, 158, 160, 180, 201–2, 221, 238, 262 in painting 160, 185, 200–202, 211, 262 in poetry or song lyric 159–60, 168, 185, 196–97, 201 in stories 168 sericulture 166–67, 176–77, 182–83 See also textile work Sericulture (Cleveland Museum of Art) 172n57 servants, female 121–22, 138 in painting 67, 118, 129, 132, 172, 176, 210–11, 214, 245 Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove 145, 148 Seventh Night 150 sewing. See textile work

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314 sexual organs 68–69, 167 See also body sexual relations 1, 6, 32, 67, 77, 81, 106, 123, 247 anticipation of 37, 249 metaphors for 68–69, 247–49 in pictorial arts 72, 126, 132, 137, 154 in poetry or song lyric 79, 261 See also courtesans; eroticism; relationships Shaoxing reign. See Gaozong (Southern Song emperor) Shen Deqian 65 Shenzong (Northern Song emperor) 146n139 Shields, Anna M. 13n6, 71–72n151, 158n9, 159n10, 222n35, 271n28 Shi Hao 117, 140n119 Shih, Hsio-yen 54nn82–83, 107n37, 234n80 Shijing. See Book of Songs Shi Miyuan 75, 117, 140n119 See also Night Revels of Han Xizai scrolls shinü hua. See paintings of women shi poetry 14–16, 29, 79n12, 158, 160n14 Silbergeld, Jerome 184n87, 202n11 silk 166–67 in painting or poetry 165, 180, 219–20, 227 See also cloth; textile work Sima Caizhong’s Dream of the Courtesan Su Xiaoxiao (Liu Yuan) 257–59 See also Liu Yuan Sima Guang 66, 77n1, 245 Precepts for Family Life 233 Sima Jinlong, tomb of 176n68 Sima Xiangru 174 Sima You (courtesy name Caizhong) 257–59 singing 119, 123–26, 165, 167 See also Music Bureau poetry; song lyrics Sirén, Osvald 59n99 Six Dynasties 33, 254 See also Southern Dynasties social status 2 signs of 70, 114–15, 165, 172, 181, 198, 199, 230–31, 247, 261–62 Song Di 205n119 Evening Landscape of the Xiao-Xiang Region 270–71

Index Song dynasty. See Northern Song dynasty; Southern Song dynasty Song Lian, Collection of Song Scholars 26 song lyrics 3–4, 137 as commentary 79n12, 155 emotions conveyed through 9, 65, 159–60 of female authorship 1, 10, 12, 14, 15–19, 27 literati 1, 9, 15, 68–69, 79–80, 159–60, 206n121 of male authorship 16–17, 68–69, 124–25, 159–60, 178 personae in 9, 14–17, 28, 159–60 popular 14, 15 and subjectivity 12–19 themes or tropes in 1, 12, 70, 79–80, 159–60, 165, 169, 171, 183 voice in 14–19, 28, 29, 58, 158–60 writers of 65, 79–80, 120, 159–60 See also performance; singing “Song of Mulan” 231–32 Songs of Chu 81, 114 Song Yu 68–69 “Rhyme-Prose on the Goddess” 81 sorrow 55–56 in painting 22, 61–62, 183, 200–202, 257, 262 in palace-style poetry 70, 169, 180, 194, 196 in poetry or song lyric 8–9, 18–19, 26, 65, 70, 159–60, 169, 171 See also emotions; feelings; grief; heartbreak; melancholy; mood sounds, in poetry 169–70, 194, 196 “Southeast the Peacock Flies” 123 Southern Dynasties 3–4, 8, 169, 229, 230, 233, 236 See also Six Dynasties Southern Song dynasty 1, 2, 53 court painters 184n87, 209, 214, 254 court painting 3, 94–95, 115–17, 155, 209, 214–16, 252–53, 259–62 rulers 22–23, 94, 115–17, 121, 155, 184–85, 208n3, 209, 220, 252–53 Southern Tang kingdom 120, 247 court 33, 142–43, 147 court painters 7,10, 30, 31, 33, 51, 53, 73, 116, 128–29, 138–42, 252, 253, 270

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315

Index

officials 72–74, 116, 138–44, 147, 155 rulers 31, 33, 73–74, 116, 120, 138–40, 142, 147, 155, 247n123, 252–54 Song conquest of 120, 147, 148 See also Five Dynasties spaces exterior 69–70, 203, 222, 226–27 feminine 51, 66–70, 195, 206, 222, 247 interior 66–70, 150–51, 203, 222, 226–27 and interiority 66–70, 203 masculine 141, 146, 195, 222 private 67–68, 70, 150, 198–99, 222 public 142, 155 spirit 54, 60n101 Spiro, Audrey 3n12, 5n16, 59n100, 60n103, 129n104, 145n134, 255n5 spying 73–74, 139, 142 Stewart, Stanley 226n49 Sturman, Peter C. 53n80, 117n54, 270n Su Bai 243n108 subjectivity and authorship or audience 10, 12–19, 34, 75, 124 female 12, 13–19, 28, 34, 53–54, 72, 75 and images of women 12–14, 34, 252 and interiority 10, 12–13, 29–30, 56 male 28n50, 75 in painting 12–14, 29–30, 34, 35, 55, 75, 151, 252 in poetry 13–19, 124 transvestite 28, 29, 54, 75 See also perspectives Su Che 78, 270 Su Hanchen 7, 11, 210, 214, 254 See also Lady at Her Dressing Table (attr. Su Hanchen) Sullivan, Michael 117n53, 184n88, 243n108 Sun Chengze, Notes Written in the Summer of 1660 130n108 Sun Qi, Records of the Northern Ward 120, 121 Sun Yuepan, Peiwen Hall Calligraphy and Painting Catalogue 31n62 superficiality 12 surface 141–42, 230, 232, 240 and interiority 216, 227, 241 Su Shi friendships of 270–71



“My Wife, Ms. Wang, Died First, so I Wrote This Lyric in Mourning” 159–60, 234–36 and painting criticism 6, 53n80, 59, 60 scholarly circle of 205n119, 214, 262 poetry or song lyrics of 29, 79–80, 122n78, 159–60, 270–71 See also Li Gonglin; Red Cliff (Qiao Zhongchang) Su Xiaoxiao 257–59 synecdoche 51, 168 tales of strange events (chuanqi) 25 Taizong (Northern Song emperor) 121 Taizu (Northern Song emperor) 121 Tang dynasty 2, 33, 53, 209–10 court artists 2, 59–60, 164–65, 171, 175 culture of romance in 8–9, 61 paintings 7, 53–54, 78–79, 80, 171–77, 183, 247 poetry 3–4, 14–15, 37, 70, 115, 166, 170–71, 175, 218, 229, 236, 238 rulers 24–25, 33, 119, 181, 214, 249–50 song lyrics 169–71, 238–39 stories 25, 115, 125 women 13n4, 20–22, 27, 119–20, 232 See also Tang–Song transition Tang Hou, Examination of Painting 6–7, 58, 66, 75, 80, 117n51, 139–40, 142, 160, 165 Tang Shuyu (a.k.a. Tang Souyu), Jade Terrace History of Painting 19–22, 23n36, 26, 27, 53n81 Tang–Song transition 7–9, 20 Tao Gu, Record of the Pure and Unusual 118n58 Taoye 218, 219 Tao Yue, “Han Xizai’s Curtains Are Not Drawn” 137–38, 142, 154 taste, in painting 4–6, 252, 254 textile work embroidery or needlework 23–24n39, 165 ironing 161, 177–78, 180 in painting 9–10, 23, 161, 165–67, 171–74, 176–78, 180, 199–203 in poetry 165–72, 175, 179–80, 194–96, 231 pounding cloth 161, 165, 167–72, 175–77, 179–80, 194–96, 200–201 sewing 161, 166, 175–77, 201, 203

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316 textile work (cont.) and social class 166, 176–77, 180 spinning 161, 165–66 weaving 165–66, 172, 231 as womanly work 23, 165–66 See also cloth; clothing; sericulture; silk; thread text-image relationships and connections between painting and poetry 1, 7, 9, 13, 29, 55, 65–66, 80, 119, 255, 270–71 and pictorial interpretation of poetic themes 26, 32, 54–55, 64–66, 77, 94–113, 171–72, 174, 175, 183, 185, 197–203, 221 See also painting inscriptions; poems-onpaintings thread 177–78, 180 Tian Jing 60 time, passage of 168, 181, 194, 200, 222, 226, 236, 240 tombs pictorial arts from 145, 177n68, 220, 243n108 sculpture from 247n123 transgression 141, 146, 154, 195 transience 132, 222, 236, 267 transvestism. See cross-dressing travelers 21, 26, 146, 201–4, 238, 244, 267–68 in painting or poetry 158–59, 169, 180, 200–201 trees 198, 222–23, 267 See also nature; paulownia trees, in painting; pine trees, in painting or poetry; plum trees; willows, in painting or poetry Tsang, Ka Bo 218n25 Tuotuo, Song History 140–41, 144, 146 Varsano, Paula 175nn65–66 ventriloquism 28 Verdant Forests, Distant Peaks (Liaoning Provincial Museum) 246 viewership court 6, 32, 72 and feelings 55, 58, 64, 203, 252–53 female 53, 59–60, 72, 208–10, 221–22, 246–47, 250–51, 254–55

Index

and the gaze 181 and identification with figures 158, 206, 208, 252 and interiority 10, 13, 246, 250–53, 271 literati 6, 71–72, 184n88, 205–6 male 6, 13, 51, 71–75, 154, 158, 183, 204–8, 219, 221, 244, 249–50, 252–55, 269–71 of paintings of women 4, 5–7, 10–11, 34–35, 51–53, 71–75, 158, 184n88, 185, 203, 205–6, 219, 221–22, 249, 254–55 and projection 12–13, 32, 182, 183, 203, 206–8, 221, 249, 252 and subjectivity 13–14, 53–54, 72, 75 See also audience; gaze; observers; voyeurism Vinograd, Richard 71n150 virtue 227–28 in painting or poetry 3, 5–6, 23, 182–83, 207 and women 5–6, 24, 123, 165–66, 175, 182–83, 207, 228, 233–34, 245 See also figure painting; paintings of women voice ambiguity of 81, 220 female, in poetry or song lyric 13–19, 28, 29, 58, 123–25, 154, 165, 174, 196, 220, 261 first-person, in poetry 13, 16–19, 29n57, 58, 81, 159–60, 174, 196 male, in poetry or song lyric 13, 15, 29n57, 158–60, 234–36 and performance 14, 58 of a protagonist, in poetry 65 subjectivity and 14–15, 17–19, 28, 81, 154 transvestite 28 See also authorship; cross-dressing; song lyrics; subjectivity Volpp, Sophie 17n20 voyeurism and paintings of women 5–6, 14, 73–74, 139, 198–99, 200 in poetry 13, 70, 195, 198–99, 232–33 See also gaze; viewership Wagner, Marsha 168n38, 267n19 waiting 18–19, 204, 229, 267–68 Waley, Arthur 29n52, 78n6 Wang Bo 171n49

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317

Index Wang Changling 63–64 “Autumn Song of Enduring Trust” 175, 176 Wang Fuzhi 64 Wang Jian 161, 181n81, 182, 218 “Song of Pounding Cloth” 181 Wang Keyu, Coral Net Record of Painting 24–25 Wang Juzheng 216, 254 See also Lady Watching a Maid with a Parrot (Museum of Fine Arts) Wang Qiang (Zhaojun) 35–37 Wang Qihan 270 Wang Shen 210, 214, 254, 270 See also Embroidered Cage, Morning Mirror (National Palace Museum) Wang Tiju 262 See also Layers of Icy Silk (Ma Lin); Yang Meizi (Southern Song empress) Wang Xianzhi 218 Wang Wei, “Seeing Yuan’er Off to Anxi”/“Song of Wei City” 269 Wang Yi 78 Wang Yun, Catalogue of Calligraphy and Painting 80 Wang Yuxian, Notes of Painting Matters 23 Warring States period 78 water 18–19, 242–43, 267 See also rivers; waves, in painting Watson, Burton 113n39, 123n82, 145n135, 194n95, 236n81 waves 211, 242–43 weaving. See textile work Weitz, Ankeney 23n38, 117n51, 221n32 Wen Tingyun 238–39 Wen xuan. See Selections of Refined Literature Whiling Away the Summer by a Lakeside Retreat (Zhao Lingrang) 201, 262–68, 271 See also Zhao Lingrang wilderness. See nature Williams, Nicholas Morrow 185n91 willows, in painting or poetry 201–2, 238, 267 wind 223–24 wives 20, 21–22, 26–27, 77n1, 122–23, 176, 210, 233 in painting 21–22, 167, 198, 243n108



in poetry 26, 123, 159–60, 167–69, 185, 201, 229, 241n100 in song lyric 123, 159–60, 234–36 See also attachment; divorce; husbands; marriage; relationships women activities of 9, 165–67, 202–3 as artists 6, 10, 13, 19–28, 53, 75–76 as calligraphers 22–23, 26nn44–45, 116, 220 compared to ministers 77n1, 78–79 at court (see palace women) education of 2, 123, 208, 214 experiences and daily lives of 3, 11, 16, 19 and feelings 13, 158, 160 ladies (shinü) 2, 5, 156–58, 199–201, 205, 210–14, 217, 240–50 passim, 255, 261 in painting (see female figures, in Chinese painting) in poetry (see personae) roles in society 13, 165–66, 177 and talent 7–8n26, 25–26, 120–21 views of, in Chinese culture 13, 78, 233 as writers 7–8n26, 8, 14–19, 21–22, 158, 209 See also beautiful women; eroticism; men; paintings of women; virtue; wives Wudi (Former Han emperor) 174 Wudi (Liang emperor), “Pounding Cloth” 178–80 Wu Hung 73n155, 117n51, 144n128, 214n14, 228n59, 241n99, 242n106, 268n21 Wu (Southern Song empress) 94, 208n3, 220, 259 Wushan, goddess of 68–69 wutong trees. See paulownia trees, in painting Wu Tung 174n62, 176n71 Wu Zimu, Dreams of Hangzhou 122 Xiang River Goddesses 106, 181, 242 Xiao Gang (Liang emperor Jianwen) 8 Xiaoxian (Qing empress) 207 Xia Wenyan, Treasured Mirror of Painting 22–23, 117n51, 184–85 Xie Huilian 185n91 “Pounding Cloth” 185, 194–98, 200–204 Xiongnu 35, 61 Xishanqiao tombs 145

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318 Xuanhe Painting Catalogue 1n1, 5n16, 27, 72–74, 139, 141–42, 164–65, 173n59 Xuanzong (Tang emperor) 24–25, 119, 214, 245, 249–50 See also Yang Yuhuan (Yang Guifei) Xu Bangda 117n53, 140n119 Xue Tao 14 Xue Ying, “Story of the Goddess of the Luo” 115 See also Cao Zhi; Goddess of the Luo River scrolls Xue Yuan 21–22, 27 Xu Ling, New Songs from a Jade Terrace and female poets 8, 14, 29, 257–59 images of women in 8, 125, 169, 172n56, 178, 185, 228, 230 preface to 29, 66 yang 67, 195 See also gender distinctions; yin Yang Meizi (Southern Song empress) 209, 224n43, 259–62 See also Apricot Blossoms (Ma Yuan); Layers of Icy Silk (Ma Lin); Ma Lin; Ma Yuan; Ningzong (Southern Song emperor) Yang, Xiaoshan 223n41 Yang Yuhuan (Yang Guifei) 24–25, 214, 245 See also Xuanzong (Tang emperor) Yan Jidao 243n109 Tune: “Moon over the West River” 240 Yan Ming 120n69 Yan Rui 16–17 Yashiro Yukio 30n59 Yijing. See Book of Changes yin 67, 69, 78, 220, 242–43 See also gender distinctions; inner; yang Yingzong (Northern Song emperor) 214 Yuandi (Former Han emperor) 35 Yuan dynasty 6, 19, 95, 137, 139–41, 143–45 Yuan Haowen 72, 172–76, 180 Yu Hui 117n53 Yu Jianwu, “A Beauty Sees Herself in a Painting” 208n2 Yu, Pauline 77n1, 78n6 Yutai xinyong. See Xu Ling, New Songs from a Jade Terrace Yu Xuanji 14

Index Zhang Chang 74, 141–42, 233 Zhang Cheng (Danyan Jushi) 32–35, 72, 253–54 See also In the Palace scrolls; Night Revels of Han Xizai scrolls Zhang Hua “Admonitions of the Instructress” 233–34 A Treatise on the Investigation of Things 181n79 See also Admonitions of the Court Instructress to the Palace Ladies (British Museum) Zhang Junfang, Record of the Feelings of Beauties 20–21 Zhang Ruzhou 26 Zhang Xuan 7, 160–61, 164–65, 173n59 See also Pounding Silk (Zhang Xuan) Zhang Xuecheng 7–8n26 Zhangzong (Jin emperor) 72, 164 Zhao Feiyan 175–76 Zhao Lingrang 201, 205n119, 262–68, 271 See also Whiling Away the Summer by a Lakeside Retreat (Zhao Lingrang) Zhao Lingzhi 269 Zhao Luanluan, “Creamy Breasts” 15 Zhao Mingcheng 19, 206n120 Zhao Xiaohua 247n123 zhiyin (sympathetic listener) 40, 124–25, 204 Zhou Bangyan 178 Zhou dynasty 77n1, 177n72, 230n68 Zhou Fang 2, 6–7, 59–60 figural style of 33, 160–61, 197, 199, 205, 253–55 and paintings of women 7, 11, 78–79, 171, 246, 247n123, 253–55 See also Ladies Adorning Their Hair with Flowers (Liaoning Provincial Museum); Palace Ladies Tuning the Lute (Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art) Zhou Mi Guixin Miscellaneous Records 143–44 Old Affairs of Hangzhou 122 Records of Clouds and Mist that Have Passed before My Eyes 117n51 Words from the Country East of Qi 117n54 Zhou Wenju 116, 140

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Index and paintings of women 7, 10, 30–34, 35n73, 51, 53, 252 See also In the Palace scrolls; Night Revels of Han Xizai scrolls Zhou Xun 247n124 Zhuangzi 227 Zhu Jingxuan, Record of Famous Painters of the Tang Dynasty 1n1, 2, 59–60 Zhu Tan (Ming prince), tomb of 220 Zhu Xi 66, 242–43n108 commentary on the Book of Songs 78, 116, 155

319 Zhu Zaishang 33–34, 253 See also In the Palace scrolls Ziporyn, Brook 137n111 zithers 40, 172, 255 See also lutes Zuo Si 51n79 Zuozhuan 168 Zu Wupo 73, 116n51, 126–28, 130, 139, 142–44, 148, 155

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