The Great Recreation: Ho Ching-ming (1483-1521) and His World (Sinica Leidensia)

The Great Recreation Sinica Leidensia Edited by Barend J. ter Haar In co-operation with P.K. Bol, D.R. Knechtges, E...

Author: Daniel Bryant

48 downloads 2712 Views 4MB Size Report

This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!

Report copyright / DMCA form

DOWNLOAD PDF

The Great Recreation

Sinica Leidensia Edited by

Barend J. ter Haar In co-operation with

P.K. Bol, D.R. Knechtges, E.S. Rawski, W.L. Idema, E. Zürcher†, H.T. Zurndorfer

VOLUME 89

The Great Recreation Ho Ching-ming (1483-1521) and His World

By

Daniel Bryant

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2008

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

ISSN: 0169-9563 ISBN: 978 90 04 16817 6 Copyright 2008 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. 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. printed in the netherlands

for L.B, who told me it was scarcely begun, for Yixi, who thought it might never be finished, for Lee Su-chuan and Chou Yen-wen, who made so much of it possible, and for Charles and Vicky, Pat and Ray, and Dick and Sonja, who were with me all the way

CONTENTS Preface .......................................................................................ix Abbreviations and Other Citation Conventions .......................xxvi Chapter One: The Prodigy .........................................................1 HSIN-YANG ..............................................................................1 A RESPECTABLE FAMILY .........................................................5 PROMISE ..................................................................................9 SUCCESS ................................................................................18 Chapter Two: The Society of Lettered Men ..............................30 A TAINTED MANDATE ...........................................................30 THE LOW MING .....................................................................38 THE MENTOR .........................................................................47 FIRST STEPS ..........................................................................53 Chapter Three: The Embassy to Yunnan ...................................65 THE LAST GOOD EMPEROR ....................................................65 SOLITUDINEM FACIUNT .........................................................78 AN EXEMPLARY RETURN .......................................................87 THE BOY ON THE THRONE .....................................................99 Chapter Four: Retreat ............................................................. 105 “THE BRIGHT MOON” .......................................................... 105 COUP AND C OUNTER-COUP .................................................. 119 CROSSING THE HU-T’ O ........................................................ 124 “A SONG OF TA-LIANG” ....................................................... 137 HO UNA CASA NELL’ HONAN ................................................ 147 Chapter Five: Retirement........................................................ 159 AUTUMN M OONLIGHT ......................................................... 159 DISTANT THUNDER .............................................................. 189 THE WINTER OF OUR CONTENT ........................................... 205 Chapter Six: The Life of the Mind .......................................... 227 MOURNING .......................................................................... 227 THE ART OF LETTERS .......................................................... 236 MASTER HO ......................................................................... 271 Chapter Seven: Peking ............................................................ 282 DOWNFALL .......................................................................... 282 CHANGING PLACES .............................................................. 286 THE LEOPARD QUARTER ...................................................... 295

viii

CONTENTS

GRACIOUS LIVING ............................................................... 304 INTERESTING TIMES ............................................................. 317 Chapter Eight: Life at the Centre of Things ............................ 343 ONE HELLUVA FIRE ............................................................. 343 THE YOUNGER GENERATION ................................................ 353 COMINGS AND GOINGS ........................................................ 357 Chapter Nine: Archaism .......................................................... 388 ANCESTORS ......................................................................... 388 COMPASS AND SQUARE ........................................................ 400 THEORY ............................................................................... 415 PRACTICE ............................................................................ 427 Chapter Ten: A Career in Government..................................... 431 LOSSES AND GAINS .............................................................. 431 SCANDAL ............................................................................. 443 BECALMED .......................................................................... 447 THE YOUNGEST GENERAL ................................................... 471 Chapter Eleven: Shensi........................................................... 484 PROJECTS ............................................................................ 484 THE SOUTHERN EXPEDITION ................................................ 493 AN EXCURSION IN THE HILLS ............................................... 497 THE ARCHERY RITE ............................................................. 506 Chapter Twelve: Last Things.................................................. 516 TU FU .................................................................................. 516 TWO DEATHS ....................................................................... 524 THE FUTURE OF THE PAST ................................................... 535 Epilogue: Why Ho Ching-ming?............................................. 545 Appendix One: Early Biographies of Ho Ching-ming ............. 563 Appendix Two: The Text of Ho Ching-ming’s Works.............. 593 THE YUNG R ECENSION ........................................................ 601 THE SHEN RECENSION ......................................................... 603 THE YUNG AND SHEN RECENSIONS ...................................... 605 THE TA-FU YI-KAO ............................................................... 615 THE YÜAN AND STANDARD RECENSIONS ............................. 619 Appendix Three: The Seven Masters of the Ming .................... 641 Appendix Four: Finding List for Translated Works................. 659 Bibliography ........................................................................... 667 Index ....................................................................................... 694

PREFACE Early in the year 1512, an official and well-known writer named Shao Pao 邵寶 (1460-1527) received a visit from a servant in a family with which he was acquainted, fellow provincials in Wu-chin 武進, in what is now Kiangsu. 1 The servant had come bringing a message from his young master, a boy named Wang Chieh 王節: Since my late grandfather the Capital Censor and my late father the Drafter died one after the other, my grandmother has been raising me herself. Now she has died and is to be buried. I am not versed in propriety, but my uncle the Commander says that there should be an epitaph. You are an old friend of the family, but I am young and unable to visit you in person, so I have asked this man to request the text from you. 2

The servant then knelt and presented Shao with a letter from the Commander and a draft biographical notice intended to serve as a basis for Shao’s epitaph. Grandmother had been quite a woman. Chosen by a Nanking Minister of Civil Office, Wang Yü 王終 (1424-95), as a wife for his son Wang Yi 王沂, she had proven an ideal daughter-in-law and wife. After her own son died, she had raised and educated the sons of her husband’s concubines. The elder of these sons, Wang Pien 王昪, was the lad Wang Chieh’s father. He had entered official life by privilege, appointed a Drafter in the Secretariat on the strength of the high rank attained by his grandfather Wang Yü. When Pien’s father Wang Yi had risen in his turn to a rank that allowed him to sponsor a family member for a privilege appointment, Yi’s wife, the grandmother of

———

1 For Shao Pao (t. Kuo-hsien 國賢, h. Erh-ch’üan 二泉 ), see HY 3/186, TL 288, KHL 36.43a (1487—Yang Yi-ch’ing). (See below, chapter one, for conventions followed in biographical references.) He had passed the highest level civil service examination, the chin-shih, in 1484. That he was an early follower of Li Tung-yang, had served as an Education Intendant in Kiangsi, where he rebuffed the overtures of Prince Ning, and had been expelled from office for his opposition to Liu Chin are aspects of his biography that will increase in significance when the following pages have been read. He was living at home at this time, looking after his elderly mother. 2 Shao Pao, “Epitaph for Lady of Virtue Wang, née Yang” 王淑人楊氏墓誌銘, Jung-ch’un T’ang Ch’ien-chi 容春堂前集 (Earlier Collection from the Hall for Accomodating Spring) (SKCS) 17.25a (193).

x

PREFACE

little Chieh, persuaded him to put family solidarity ahead of personal affection by nominating a son of his brother, the Commander who would eventually be both the guardian and advisor of Yi’s orphaned grandson and the effective sponsor of her own memorial inscription. When her husband Yi died while at his provincial post, she set off at once to escort his body back to Wu-chin for burial, without even waiting for Wang Pien to arrive from the capital. Indeed, by the time Pien caught up with the cortege, it had already crossed the Huai River. Lady Wang’s biography has come down to us first of course because Shao Pao agreed to the request that he write it, and second because his works have survived to the present day. He begins his epitaph text by telling the story of the servant’s message, and I have chosen to begin this book with his account because it illustrates in a small way both the challenges and the remedies that arise in the process of our very partial recovery of the past. The focus of our interest here is not Madame Wang, in fact, but rather her husband’s son, and Wang Chieh’s father, the Drafter Wang Pien, friend of our real subject Ho Ching-ming 何景明, and a young man now so nearly lost to history as to make one despair of all expectations founded on youthful promise allied to advantaged birth. Though nothing of Pien’s work survives today, he was evidently recognised as a promising poet not only by his fellow Drafter Ho Ching-ming, but also by Ho’s mentor Li Meng-yang 李夢陽 (14731530) and older friend Pien Kung 邊貢 (1476-1532) as well. His appointment as a Drafter, which followed a three year term as ‘Apprentice Calligrapher’ (hsi-tzu 習字), was announced in the fourth month of 1504. 3 Wang’s father died in the eleventh month of the same year, while serving in the provinces, but not too far from Peking. Pien had evidently gone to visit his father the preceding fall, when Ho presented him with a rhapsody on his departure. 4 For reasons now lost to view, Pien did not leave Peking to go into mourning until the following spring, when Ho Ching-ming was among the friends wishing him farewell, in Ho’s case with a set of four rather old-

——— 3

Hsiao-tsung Shih-lu 孝宗實錄 (Veritable Record of the Filial Ancestor) (Taipei: Chung-yang Yen-chiu Yüan, 1964) 210.9b (3918). 4 “Later Rhapsody on Thoughts of Separation” 後別思賦 , HTFC 2.11b (25; 賦:026).

PREFACE

xi

fashioned poems. 5 Other poems are extant from this occasion by Li Meng-yang, Pien Kung, and Hang Huai 杭淮 (1462-1538). 6 Although Ho’s poems do not refer to the reason for Wang’s departure, they do set the date as the second month. Pien Kung’s poems confirm that the season was spring and are quite explicit as to the occasion being Wang’s father’s funeral. This means that the poems must come from the second month of 1505. Almost two years later, on the eve of a political crisis during which Ho would leave office in disgust and return home to live in retirement, he said farewell to a friend, Tu Mu 都穆 (1459-1525), who was going south, and took advantage of the opportunity to send a poetic message along to his former colleague Wang Pien. 7 Tu Mu later recorded, in a colophon to the collected works of Pien’s grandfather Wang Yü, that Pien had had Li Meng-yang prepare the edition and that both Li’s editorial work and Tu’s own colophon testified to the close friendship bwtween them and Pien. 8 A year or so later—the exact date cannot be determined—Ho wrote a poem missing Wang and wondering how he was getting on, as he had had no word since returning home. 9 This is the last reference to Wang Pien in Ho’s works. When Wang Pien emerged from the prescribed mourning period (twenty-seven months) and returned to the capital, Ho was still at home, and by the time Ho returned, late in 1511, Pien, friend and fellow of the best young writers of the age, was gone, having died by the spring of that year, as

———

5 “Presented to Wang Wen-hsi” 贈王文熙, HTFC 9.6b (110; 351:001-004). Two of these poems are translated below. 6 Li Meng-yang, “Presented to Drafter Wang Pien” 贈王舍人昪, “Additional Poems Presented to Drafter Wang” 又贈王舍人, K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi 空同先生集 (Collected Works of Master K’ung-t’ung) (1530; repr. Taipei: Wei-wen, 1976) 9.5a (185); Pien Kung, “Presented to Wang Wen-hsi” 贈王文熙, Pien Hua-ch’üan Chi 邊華泉集 (Collected Works of Pien Hua-ch’üan) (Chia-ching edition; repr. Taipei: Wei-wen, 1976) 1.8a (19); and Hang Huai, “Saying Farewell to Wang Wenhsi, Who is Returning Home to Observe Mourning” 送王文熙守制還家 Shuang-hsi Chi 雙溪集 (The Paired Stream Collection) (SKCS) 1.4a (254). There are three poems by Hang, but the title in this edition says ‘two’. The authors of these poems will be introduced in due course below. 7 “Sent to Wang Wen-hsi” 寄王文熙, HTFC 19.14b (328; 352:149). 8 Tu Mu, “Collected Works of Wang Su-kung” 王肅公集, Nan-hao Chü-shih Wenpa 南濠居士文跋 (Essays and Colophons by the Retired Gentleman of the Southern Moat) (Ming edition; repr. Hsü-hsiu SKCS vol.922. Shanghai: Shanghai Ku-chi, 1997), 2.7b (633). 9 “Thinking of Drafter Wang Wen-hsi” 懷王舍人文熙 , HTFC 17.4b (267; 252:508).

xii

PREFACE

we know both from Shao Pao’s epitaph for his adoptive mother and from a poem lamenting him that Li Meng-yang wrote on his own return to the capital shortly after Pien died. 10 What is striking about this account of Wang Pien is the scattered nature of the sources and the complexity of the process of putting them together. An incidental part of the problem is that Pien’s friends, in accordance with custom, rarely refer to him by his formal name Pien, usually giving his informal name Wen-hsi 文熙 instead, sometimes in conjunction with his official title. Since Drafters were often appointed by privilege, a search of the Veritable Records for such an appointment of a man named Wang in the early years of the sixteenth century produces Pien and his grandfather Wang Yü. Consultation of the Ming-jen Ch’uan-chi Tzu-liao So-yin (hereafter abbreviated TL) leads to Shao Pao’s epitaph for Pien’s father’s wife, the most informative single source, even though Pien is not its central figure. Only by combining this, the biography of his father, Wang Yi, also entered in the Veritable Records, 11 and the various poems by Ho Ching-ming, Li Meng-yang, Pien Kung, and Hang Huai, along with Tu Mu’s colophon, all of which turn up in searches of the works of Ho’s contemporaries, can one piece together the above account. 12 As the evidence begins to collect, it fortunately begins to cohere as well, eliminating other possible candidates for identification with ‘Wen-hsi’ and resulting in the account given above. While the case illustrates how much (and how little) can be learned about people for whom no formal biography exists, it also suggests how much luck and labour is required to assemble the sources. The example of Wang Pien also reminds us what a tiny part of ‘history’ survives and that what we remember is not at all what the remembered and unremembered alike would have hoped or expected. It is not surprising then that we are prone to clinging to figures who have left something of themselves behind and, among these, to writers, whom we suppose to be more fully accessible than those whose actions are recorded without any trace of their inner lives. For this reason, among many, this book is about Wang’s friend Ho Ching-

——— 10

“Weeping for Drafter Wang Pien” 哭王舍人昪, K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi 32.16a (879). 11 Hsiao-tsung Shih-lu 218.8b (4108). 12 For a full account of the process, see TK 164.

PREFACE

xiii

ming rather than Wang himself. Ho was among the leading poets of his age and left works amounting to more than 1600 poems and over 200 pieces of prose. In addition to his own works, Ho’s life is recorded in numerous biographical accounts and collections of anecdotes (see Appendix One) and he is addressed or mentioned in the extant works of many of his contemporaries. If we are to understand any man of Wang Pien’s time, Ho seems about as good a subject as we are likely to find. 13 All the same, much of what we would like to know does not emerge in these sources. Although we know the names of hundreds of Ho’s acquaintances, for example, we do not know those of either of his wives or of any of his daughters. Although he lived in Peking for many years, we have only the most general idea of where in that city his residence was located. Although he is best known today for his participation in a literary ‘school’, the ‘Seven Masters of the Ming’ 明七子, relatively few of his surviving works come from the period during which this group was most active. Moreover, modern scholarship has shown the group itself to be in large part a retroactive creation of later writers. 14 In short, our ignorance is a large and impressive thing that we need to keep continuously in view, but it need not be an impediment to action. It is part of the human condition to be working at all times in partial incapacity, but if our efforts are necessarily imperfect, they are no less necessary for that. Charles Rosen has remarked, with reference to certain expressive effects in a Beethoven piano sonata that were even more impossible to realise on instruments of Beethoven’s period than they are on those of ours, “The modern piano, however, is sufficiently inadequate to convey Beethoven’s intentions.” 15 If this book cannot hope to recreate in full the history of Ho Ching-ming and his contemporaries ‘wie es eigentlich gewesen [ist]’, I hope that it will

———

13 One of Ho’s contemporaries, the philosopher Wang Yang-ming 王陽明 (14721529) was the most influential thinker of the Ming dynasty and has been much studied. See, among much else, Tu Wei-ming’s interesting book Neo-Confucian Thought in Action: Wang Yang-ming’s Youth (1472-1509) (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976). Wang is so commonly referred to by his ‘pen-name’ Yangming that I use it here instead of his formal ming, [Wang] Shou-jen 守仁. 14 This label is so misleading that it has been banished to the Back of the Book, where it is discussed in Appendix Three. 15 Charles Rosen, The Romantic Generation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), p.3.

xiv

PREFACE

at least increase our understanding to some degree and that its inadequacies will be sufficiently evident to give other scholars a purchase on their correction. The book itself has in any event been a very long time a-writing. I had translated a few of Ho Ching-ming’s poems along with others by Ming dynasty poets while a graduate student in the 1970s, but put them aside to concentrate first on my dissertation and then on my ‘tenure book’, a collection of translations of tenth century lyric poetry. When these were done, I thought I would take a short break before returning to work on my dissertation subject, the T’ang poet Meng Hao-jan 孟浩然. Paul Kroll had just produced a fine introduction to Meng for the Twayne World Authors Series, and through the good offices of Professor William Schultz, I was invited to do a volume for the same publisher on some other writer, preferably from the Ming or Ch’ing dynasties. I chose the Ming, and in particular its middle century, because it seemed almost scandalous that there was at the time no monograph in English on any poet from the period. Among the writers of the time, I chose Ho Ching-ming in large part because he seemed the most generally esteemed by his contemporaries and I wanted to avoid the common practice of working on a particular ancient Chinese poet simply because he suited modern Western interests. (In saying this, I have the persistent Han-shan/‘Cold Mountain’ 寒山 cult chiefly in mind, but there are numerous other cases both in China and elsewhere of the shape of literary history being misrepresented in order to provide user-friendly materials responding to narrowly contemporary tastes or priorities.) After almost three years of steady research and writing, I was on schedule to complete the manuscript by the contracted date, but when this was only a few months away, I received a telephone call from someone at Twayne. They were getting out of China, cancelling all their contracts, and wouldn’t need my manuscript after all. By the time I had digested this news (which I did chiefly by taking to my lawn chair and rereading all of Jane Austen), I realised that I was one lucky scholar. There had been all along an enormous lacuna in my work on Ho Ching-ming, one that I could not possibly have filled in the time or space available for the Twayne volume. Simply put, I had written a ‘life’ with very little chronology to it. The problem (and the eventual solution) derived from the state of Ho Ching-ming’s collected works. A substantial account of the corpus, its publication

PREFACE

xv

history, and the implications for research is provided in Appendix Two of this book. For the present, it is sufficient to point out that the poems are explicitly divided into four groups, corresponding to four different locations in which Ho wrote. Most of the poems are found in just two of these groups, one of poems written in his hometown and one of poems written in the capital, Peking. Two much smaller groups come from a trip that he took to southwest China in the years 1505-6 and from his last years as a provincial official in Shensi from 1518 to 1521. Within these groups, there is no explicit chronology. Indeed, in the edition I was relying on at the time, an exemplar of what I refer to here as the ‘Standard Recension’, the largest sets of poems are implicitly grouped by theme, so that farewell poems are all found together, as are seasonal poems, poems written at social gatherings, and so forth. Lacking a detailed chronology, I couldn’t do much more with this than say that Ho had lived in Peking during certain years and written hundreds of poems there, of which I offered a selection in translation. With the original deadline no longer pressing, I realised that there was nothing for it but to undertake a full analysis of all of the textual evidence that might contribute to the needed chronology. I set to work, attempting to identify people mentioned in Ho’s works and to date the works themselves. If, for example, a poem was written on saying farewell to someone taking up a new official post and I could identify the addressee and date the appointment, then I could date the poem within a range of a few months. At the same time, I began to examine all the extant editions of Ho’s works, collating variant readings and comparing the order in which the works were arranged in each. By the time I had begun to make substantial progress in this work I found that I had also produced an ‘appendix’ to my manuscript that was already over two hundred pages long by itself and filled with detailed evidence intelligible only to readers of Chinese, something that no publisher in the Western world would dream of taking off my hands. This meant that an additional stage was necessary, one that I had never anticipated. I would have to publish the ‘appendix’ separately in Chinese, a language that I read and speak with some ease, but in which I had never written more than a few personal letters and a little doggerel verse. Fortunately I was invited at this point to spend the academic year 1991-92 at the Center for Chinese Studies 漢學研究中心 in Taipei, where I found not only a vastly larger range of sources

xvi

PREFACE

than were available in Canada (more work!) but also helpful friends, gratefully acknowledged below, and access to computers capable even then of word-processing in Chinese. I took a deep breath, began writing, and, by the time I exhaled, five years or so later, I had completed the manuscript of a book, which was published under the title Ho Ching-ming Ts’ung-k’ao 何景明叢考 (Assembled Studies of Ho Ching-ming), the ubiquitous TK of the annotations to the present book. TK has four main parts: a very detailed chronological biography in the nien-p’u 年譜 format of traditional Chinese scholarship; a collection of two hundred or so short biographies of people mentioned in Ho’s works, many of whom, including Wang Pien, had not been identified before; a study of all the published editions of Ho’s works, including lists of variant readings and a genealogical stemma; and an assemblage of the evidence for dating all of the poems that can be dated. The appended materials include a finding list for Ho’s works, a small collection of uncollected works, and a rather large collection of poems addressed to or concerning Ho, written during his lifetime or shortly after it by his contemporaries. The most important single finding of TK is that one of the early compilations of Ho’s works, the one referred to here as the Shen recension, reflects a generally chronological arrangement of Ho’s works. This means that poems that cannot be dated on the basis of evidence in the poems themselves can still be assigned an approximate date according to their placement in this text. Given this discovery, a large part of Ho’s work comes into focus as having been written at a particular time and in the context of particular events. The present book of course draws extensively on this evidence. I have tried to provide adequate documentation for all claims and interpretations offered here, but in many cases, additional material is to be found in TK, to which readers of Chinese are referred. It then remained to return to the original book manuscript in English, first to revise it in light of all that had been learned in the course of compiling TK and then to bring it to completion. The course of the entire project has thus gone, in the course of thirty-odd years, from being almost purely literary to being heavily historical, or at least very much concerned with historical sources, with a return to the literary in the most recent years of work. Considering how relatively little has been written about the period

PREFACE

xvii

and the people with whom this book is concerned, readers may reasonably wonder what it undertakes to supply. It attempts above all a full, even a ‘thick’, account of Ho Ching-ming’s life and the world in which he lived. The biographical material alone gives, I hope, a much fuller and more detailed account of Ho’s life than is available in a Western language for almost anyone in pre-modern China. Both the life itself and the fact of its being possible to write it in sometimes daily detail may encourage more such studies. Ho’s life was not, however, nearly so eventful as those of some of his contemporaries, so I have not refrained from extensive reference to the experiences of some of them as examples of things that might have happened to Ho under different conditions. Ho spent most of his adult life as an official in the Chinese civil service, including more than ten years in the capital, Peking, and almost three in the province of Shensi. He had virtually no influence on historical events while in the capital, but he was an observer at close range, and many of his associates were deeply involved in them, sometimes at very great cost to themselves, so I attempt to keep this background in view. As a consequence, parts of the book supply an admittedly incomplete account of some of the major historical issues of the period 1502-21. Some readers may feel that my treatment of the Emperor Wu-tsung, who reigned for most of this period, is frivolous, but I think it might be more accurate to say that Wu-tsung was a deeply frivolous person whose frivolity I take quite seriously. At all events, to adapt a phrase from Leavis, Wu-tsung received so much more than deference in his own day that I have felt no scruple in treating him chiefly as a foil to Ho and his fellow literati officials. To the limited extent that Ho is known to modern readers, it is as an exponent of literary Archaism, one of the main currents of Ming dynasty literary thought. Archaism has had a very poor press during the past century, for reasons that will be taken up chiefly in the Epilogue, but we will not begin to understand the civilization of late Imperial China without confronting both its nature and its influence. This book argues, for the most part implicitly, that Archaism was a serious and appropriate response to the cultural conditions of the age. At a time when the only avenue to public recognition at the highest level lay through a system of civil examinations that required adherence to a narrow, if not especially unreasonable, set of interpretations of a few canonical texts combined with mastery of a

xviii

PREFACE

difficult and abstract literary format, while excluding what had long been the essence of the examination process, poetic composition, poetry became first a neglected art, and then, in Ho’s day, one of the few avenues by which educated men might define an authentically personal relationship with their cultural heritage. Archaism’s bad press has been to a considerable degree a matter of misunderstanding of the practice of Archaist poets. A study concentrating on only one of them cannot hope to explore the variety of this, but it should suggest at least that more was involved than simple imitation, which is what is often alleged. The Archaists were concerned above all with questions of ‘form’ in a broad sense of the word. They sought, for example, to establish, or to reestablish, in their view, clearer distinctions between the differing structural patterns of what are now called ‘old style’ ( 古體 ku t’i) and ‘new style’ ( 今體 chin t’i) verse and to exercise the utmost care in the selection of words. They were preoccupied, often in ways that would have seemed strange to many of their immediate predecessors and are certainly likely to seem so to many of us, with minutely evaluative criticism of poetry both past and present, as though a contemporary critic were to weigh by the ounce, as it were, the relative merits of Landor vs. Poe or Jonson vs. Marlowe. At the same time, their treatment, at least in Ho’s case, of the words of even their most honoured ancestors could be surprisingly free, even ironic, suggesting both a free drawing on the entire tradition characteristic of Leonard B. Meyer’s idea of a ‘fluctuating stasis’ and something of the insouciance of the exuberantly Post-Modern. Well over one hundred of Ho’s works, mostly poems, are translated here, along with a few by some of his contemporaries, and some conventions have been followed in their presentation. The texts of poems, but not ‘Rhapsodies’ (賦 fu) or prose works, are given in Chinese as well as in translation. Annotation of the works takes several forms. ‘Technical’ information, such as the source of the text, variant readings, and reference to related works by Ho or other writers, is given in footnotes. Explanatory material needed for understanding of the work, such as literary allusions, geographical information, and the like, is given in the text adjacent to the poem. In addition, for about one hundred of the poems I provide, immediately following the translation and in similar format, a compilation of literary sources whose language is echoed in the work. I am under no illusions as to

PREFACE

xix

the completeness of this material, but readers will appreciate, I hope, the opportunity of getting some sense of how deeply imbued with all that preceded them these poems from late in the literary tradition are. 16 It is not always a simple matter to distinguish between an allusion that a reader really needs to be aware of in order to comprehend a poem and a reminiscence that explains nothing but whose recognition would have been an important part of the experience of Ho’s readers until a century or so ago. To echo Rosen, I hope that my presentation of this material will be sufficiently indistinct to convey some impression of Ho Ching-ming’s practice. In any event, wherever the boundary line is drawn, it remains true that the continuity of these works with their tradition is an important aspect of literary Archaism, and we shall consider this in due course. In a perfect world, of course, there would be a variety of books about Ho Ching-ming available in English, each intended for a different audience. We remain sufficiently distant from perfection that for the foreseeable future this one volume may have to do for all. Some of the historical and literary background that non-specialist readers require may seem superfluous, at best, to specialists, the more so as political, economic, social, intellectual, and art historians will realise all too soon that I am not one of them. At the same time, readers without Chinese may find much of the documentation, such as the discussions of variant readings and textual reminiscences in the translated poems, a good reason to skip back to the main text, but others deserve explanations of my choices, especially because access to copies of all four of the chief recensions of Ho’s works cannot be taken for granted. It is sometimes suggested that academic projects cannot escape being driven by contemporary interests, whether subtly political or grossly material. While this may sometimes be the case, it is a matter of degree. In the present instance, as explained above, the choice of a topic was governed by a desire to explore terra incognita, without prejudice as to what might be found there, and the particular subject

———

16 These notes are based on a combination of checks of a card index to the poems against published concordances of other Chinese texts and incidental wide reading over the years. Such a process can scarcely avoid missing a great deal. If I were starting over again, I would of course use the various sorts of computer assisted indices and data bases now available.

xx

PREFACE

by the judgments of his contemporaries. If it remains a mystery how such a choice can be seen to have served the interests of the rich rather than the poor, the left rather than the right, or the pious rather than the worldly, what will not be surprising is that once the research had been done, some of the findings proved more likely to be instructive for the present than others. I have tried, with limited success, to keep such reflections out of the text, saving them for discussion in the Epilogue, to which urgent seekers for relevance are encouraged to turn. In principle, choosing a title for the first book in English on a Chinese poet or painter ought to be a simple matter of translation. Virtually every man with literary or artistic pretentions in traditional China had at least one self-chosen ‘pen name’ or ‘studio name’ (號 hao). These names are frequently used to refer to such men even today and translating one of them into English usually gives an insight into the personality and aspirations of its holder. A notably successful example of this is Burton Watson’s rendering of Fang-weng 放翁, the hao of the Southern Sung poet Lu Yu 陸游, as “The Old Man Who Does as He Pleases.” Ho Ching-ming is not so easy to deal with. He used three hao during his lifetime, all of them the names of mountains in the vicinity of his native district. Two of these he used only earlier in life. The third looks promising as a title for a book about a man traditionally classified as a literary Archaist: Ta-fu 大復. Ta means ‘great’; fu can mean ‘return’, but it is most frequently encountered as a prefix, much like Latin re-, and one whose wide range of possible applications resembles that of re- as well. As a name for a mountain, Ta-fu refers to the point at which migratory birds were thought to turn back from their southward flight. A ‘Great Return’ in this sense is probably not what Ho had in mind, but the list of real alternatives is a long one, including ‘recovery’, ‘rebirth’, ‘recuperation’, ‘restoration’, ‘renewal’, ‘reconstitution’, ‘redefinition’, ‘revitalisation’, and ‘recreation’. I have chosen the last of these possibilities because it contains ambiguities that seem to emerge more frequently and more insistently in the study of Ho’s work than either his critics or his admirers have generally recognised. Various other conventions are followed in this book. One that will have been obvious already is that a version of the Wade-Giles system is used for transcribing Chinese, rather than pinyin, and that geographical names that have become naturalised in English according

PREFACE

xxi

to the old ‘Postal Atlas’ system, such as Peking, Shensi, Fukien, and Soochow, appear in those forms here. The Ming province equivalent to modern Hupeh and Hunan is referred to as Hukwang by analogy. 17 There are good reasons for all of these choices. Pinyin has been energetically promoted by the Chinese government (which of course puts it, as a policy, in somewhat dodgy company) and also taken up by many foreign writers, especially in the popular press, but it is notoriously opaque to the English reader, who is likely to be led less seriously astray by Wade-Giles Ts’ao Hsüeh-ch’in, for example, than by pinyin Cao Xueqin. Wade-Giles is, moreover, the system used in most of the more important English works cited in the references here, so its use will lead to less confusion for readers without Chinese who are moving between this book and others. This book in particular suggests two additional reasons for eschewing pinyin. One is that reflection on the many ills and abuses of Ho’s age calls attention to the habit of Chinese governments of inflicting their follies on the helpless. I take some satisfaction in not passing this particular folly on to my readers. On a much more practical level, a book of this length whose protagonist is named, in pinyin, He Jingming could not bear the ambiguities of reference arising from numerous sentences beginning with the word ‘He’. 18 For the rest, I write Peking rather than Beijing for the same reason that I write, in other contexts, Vienna, Florence, Moscow, The Hague, and, for that matter, Bombay and Rangoon rather than Wien, Firenze, Moskva, ‘s Gravenhage, Mumbai, and Yangon. The book is in English, after all, and I see no reason other than condecension to treat place names in Europe in one way but those in Asia in another. Note that in Wade-Giles I write yi rather than i throughout. I also differ from usual practice by capitalizing Chinese titles as though they were meaningful

——— 17

In the special case of two men whose names are spelled the same way in both Wade-Giles and pinyin, though written with different characters in Chinese, I refer to one as Hsü Chin 許進 and the other as Hsü Tsin 徐縉. Non-specialist readers who may soon be struggling to keep Li Tung-yang, Li Meng-yang, Wang Yang-ming, and Meng Yang distinct will, I hope, appreciate this small attempt at relief for their distress. A similar potential confusion between the names of two dynasties is handled in the same way: ‘Tsin’ 晉 refers to the post-Han regime; ‘Chin’ 金 to the one contemporaneous with the Southern Sung. 18 For more detailed critiques, see Daniel Bryant, “The Use of Pinyin,” JAS 40 (1980): 90-93, and “The Why and Why Not of Pinyin—A Response to DeFrancis,” Journal of the Chinese Language Teachers’ Association 27 (1992): 111-14.

xxii

PREFACE

expressions rather than strings of nonsense syllables. In several cases, I give references to multiple editions of premodern Chinese works. In some cases this is necessary because early editions vary in their contents. In the others it is a matter of convenience for readers who wish to follow up a citation but may not have access to more than one edition. Ever increasing numbers of old Chinese books are now available in reprint form. In referring to such titles, I give the original pagination first, followed by a parenthetical citation of the reprint pagination. Local gazetteers 方志 (fang chih) not cited from reprint editions are distinguished by the reign title during which they were compiled. With two exceptions, the translation of Chinese official titles here follows Charles O. Hucker’s invaluable Dictionary of Official Titles in Imperial China. I translate 縣 (hsien), the smallest administrative unit staffed by the central government, as ‘County’ rather than ‘District’, an alternative that Hucker himself recognised as common, and refer to the Surveillance Vice-Commissioners or Assistant Commissioners responsible for Education Intendant Circuits 提督學道 (t’i-tu hsüeh tao) simply as ‘Education Intendants’. In the case of two common forms of Chinese obituary biography, I also translate hsing-chuang 行狀 (‘Account of Conduct’) as ‘curriculum’ and mu-chih-ming 墓志銘 (‘Tomb Inscription’) as ‘epitaph’. The traditional musical instrument most commonly mentioned by Ho Ching-ming and his contemporaries, the ch’in 琴, is sometimes rendered here as ‘lute’, though in fact zittern or zithern is closer in meaning (and sometimes used). “Flow My Tears” would sound very odd indeed played on a ch’in, but this was the instrument played in China by the sort of people who played lutes in Europe. I have adopted the following conventions for reference to Chinese dates: 1) Reference to a year in the Western calendar is to the Chinese year corresponding to most of the Western year. The Chinese calendar is lunar and begins some weeks later than the Western, at the time now called ‘Chinese New Year’. For example, what I refer to as ‘1515’ is in the Chinese calendar the tenth year of the Cheng-te reign and corresponds to the period from January 15, 1515 to February 2, 1516 in the Julian calendar then in use in the West. Because the Chinese calendar was lunar rather than solar, it required more elaborate correction than our quadrennial leap year; the extra length of ‘1515’ was due to an entire extra ‘leap month’ (jun yüeh 閏月) intercalated in

PREFACE

xxiii

the summer of that year to keep things on track. The four seasons of the Chinese year correspond in nature to ours, but are calibrated to the months, the first to third months being spring, and so forth; 2) references such as ‘first month’ are to the months of the Chinese year; 3) references to an exact date including a month of the Western calendar are of course to the corresponding day in the Western system. One source of occasional confusion arises from uncertainty whether reference to the passage of time is given according to the inclusive reckoning of calendar years (hsü-nien 虛年 ) prevalent, but not universal, in Chinese, or according to elapsed time (chou-nien 周年). See PC 7-8 and TK 2 for discussion. Note also that in this study, ages given in sui 歲 (‘years’) accord with Chinese practice, which— contrary to some popular belief—is based not on the date of conception or some sort of idiosyncratic addition of years but straightforwardly on inclusive reckoning: people are one sui in the first (Chinese) calendar year of their lives, two su i in the second, and so forth. No work of this sort, especially one so long in progress, can be completed without the help and cooperation of many people and institutions. I despair of adequately recognising all the assistance I have received or of expressing the depth of my gratitude, but the following remarks, along with the dedication, are my poor attempt to give thanks where thanks are due. TK was dedicated to my teachers, and they remain the people without whose early instruction, encouragement, and inspiration I would never have been able to get started. They include Ted Pulleyblank, Yeh Chia-ying 葉嘉瑩, Li Ch’i 李祁, Jan Walls, Jim Caswell, and, less formally, Yim Tse 謝琰 and Shimizu Shigeru 清水茂, more remotely Joseph Levenson, and more recently Ch’en Shuncheng 陳舜政. I remain grateful to Bill Schultz for the initial impetus to undertake this book and for his steadfast support throughout its Twayne phase, to Ray and Pat Young for their unfailing hospitality in Vancouver and on Denman Island, to Richard John Lynn and Sonja Arntzen for long-standing friendship and thoughtful help (Dick Lynn’s help with the ‘Mojikyō’ fonts made it possible to include in the text certain Chinese characters which Microsoft’s philosophy dreams not yet of), and to Gail Chin for patience and encouragement in the early years and especially for telling me forthrightly that the Twayne draft was “interesting, but not a book yet.” Yixi Zhang’s presence has

xxiv

PREFACE

brightened my life in every way for many years, during which she must have wondered more often than she let on whether ‘the book’ woujld ever get off my desk. In the end, as the manuscript was approaching completion and its author was approaching despair at the prospect of finding a suitable publisher, both were brought safely under the wing of E. J.Brill through the good offices of Alfred Hoffstädt and Wilt Idema. Once there, the meticulous care, sound advice, and—most of all—patience of Patricia Radder saw manuscript and author alike smoothly through the publication process. At the University of Victoria, I am grateful to my colleague Karen Tang 卜暟瑩 for gentle but apt criticism, especially of early drafts of TK, to Richard King for a helpful reading of the ‘Epilogue’, to Greg Blue for lending me a copy of Death by a Thousand Cuts before it was otherwise available, to Jean Merritt, Alice Lee, and Joanne Denton in the Department office for decades of helping me cope, to my student Cheryl Xi-ru Wang 王希儒 for preparing a useful annotated review of recent Chinese scholarship on Ho Ching-ming and Li Meng-yang, and to the various evolving administrative units that have supported my research in material ways. Among the many people in Computing Services whose cheerful assistance over the decades made the whole undertaking possible were Martin Milner, Mel Klassen, and above all Laura Proctor. The encouragement and support of many friends and institutions in Taiwan were crucial from the time I began work on TK to the present. The whole undertaking would have been impossible without the practical support and welcoming environment of the Center for Chinese Studies, whose invitation to spend a year as Visiting Scholar got me started on TK, and the staffs of the National Central Library, the Fu Ssu-nien Library, and the History and Philology Institute of the Academia Sinica, who made work so pleasant and efficient. My friends Lee Su-chuan 李素娟 , now at the Academia Sinica, and Professor Chou Yen-wen 周彥文 , of Tamkang University, were endlessly helpful and continual sources not only of encouragement but of effective support, not to speak of enjoyable society. Kung Hsientsung 龔顯宗, Chien Chin-sung 簡錦松, Ts’ui Yen-hui 崔燕慧, Li Chin-yün 李今芸, and Ch’en Jo-shui 陳弱水 were kindly encouraging and often helpful. In Japan, the continuing hospitality of the Chinese Department of

PREFACE

xxv

Kyoto University and the Jinbun Kagaku Kenkyujo has been a valued support for over thirty years. Among other Japanese institutions, I should single out the staff of the Sonkeikaku Bunko in Tokyo for their help on several visits. In China, the Peking Library was an indispensible and helpful source of materials available nowhere else, as was the library of East China Normal University in Shanghai. I am grateful to my brother-inlaw Zhang Endi 張恩迪 both for his hospitality and for his important assistance in tracking down the Ta-fu Yi-kao. During a memorable visit to Hsin-yang Normal College in Ho Ching-ming’s native city, Li Shu-yi 李叔毅 and Yao Hsüeh-hsien 姚學賢 were among those who took time to share their wide expertise on Ho with me, including a walk to the site of Ho Ching-ming’s grave, while Chou Tzu-liang 周子良 escorted me on a high road and back road tour of many of the landmarks that remain from Ho’s day. At the Fukien Provincial Library, I remain grateful to Mr. Lin Yung-hsiang 林永祥 of the Rare Book Room for his efficient assistance during my visit to consult the unique copy of the Ta-fu Yi-kao. Here in North America, the library of the University of British Columbia has been my standby since undergraduate days, while the librarians of the University of Washington, Harvard University, Princeton University, Columbia University, and the Library of Congress were unfailingly helpful. And finally, I am indebted to the institutions and associations that have allowed me to try out various parts of this book in the form of conference papers and seminar presentations, including the University of Alberta, Harvard University, the University of Minnesota, Tamkang University, Western Washington University, Asian Studies on the Pacific Coast, and the American Oriental Society, especially its Western Branch, whose members have cheerfully endured for so many years my contributions on every conceivable topic short of “Ho Ching-ming and Global Warming.”

ABBREVIATIONS AND OTHER CITATION CONVENTIONS An Ch’i See under Li Po. Analects For the original text cited, see Lun-yü Yin-te 論語引得 (A Concordance to the Analects of Confucius), Harvard-Yenching Institute Sinological Index Series, Supplement No. 16, 1940; repr. Taipei: Chinese Materials and Research Aids Service Center, 1972. For translations, see under Lau, Waley. Annals For the original text cited, see Ch’un-ch’iu Chingchuan Yin-te 春秋經傳引得 (Index to the Spring and Autumn Annals Classic and Commentaries), Harvard Yenching Institute Sinological Index Series, Supplement No. 11, repr. Taipei: Chinese Materials and Research Aids Service Center, 1966. For translation, see under Legge. Birrell Anne Birrell, New Songs from a Jade Terrace, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986. Changes For the original text cited, see Chou Yi Yin-te 周易引得 (Index to the Changes of Chou), Harvard-Yenching Institute Sinological Index Series, Supplement No. 10, repr. Taipei: Chinese Materials and Research Aids Service Center, 1966. For translations, see under Lynn, Wilhelm/Baynes. Chuang-tzu For the original text cited, see Chuang-tzu Yin-te 莊子引得 (Index to the Chuang-tzu), Harvard-Yenching Institute Sinological Index Series, Supplement No. 20, 1947; repr. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1956. For translations, see under Graham, Watson. Ch’u Tz’u For the original text cited, see Ch’u Tz’u Pu-chu 楚辭補注 , compiled by Hung Hsing-tsu 洪興祖 , SPPY, repr. Soji Sakuin 楚辭索引, compiled by Takeji Sadao 竹治貞夫, Kyoto: Chūbun, 1972. For translations, see under Hawkes. CLEAR Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews CTS Ch’üan T’ang Shih 全唐詩 (Complete T’ang Poems). Peking: Chung-hua, 1960. References to CTS are accompanied by the numbering (as K.nnnnn) of the Tōdai no Shihen 唐代の詩篇 (T’ang Poems), Compiled by Hiraoka Takeo 平岡武夫, et al., Tōdai Kenkyū no Shiori 11-12, Kyoto: Kyōto Daigaku Jimbun Kagaku Kenkyūjo, 1965.

CITATION CONVENTIONS

xxvii

DKJ Morohashi Tetsuji 諸橋轍次 et al., comp. Dai Kan-Wa Jiten 大漢和辭典 (Great Sino-Japanese Dictionary). Tokyo: Taishūkan, 1974. DMB L. C. Goodrich and Chaoying Fang, eds., Dictionary of Ming Biography, New York: Columbia University Press, 1976; the name given in parentheses is that of the author of the entry being cited. Documents For the original text cited, see Shang Shu T’ung-chien 尚書通鑑 (Concordance to the Shang Shu), compiled by Ku Chiehkang 顧頡剛, et al., Peking: Harvard-Yenching Institute, 1936. For translations, see under Karlgren, Legge. FKP Fu K’ai-p’ei 付開沛, “Ho Ta-fu Nien-p’u” 何大復年譜, Hsin-yang Shih-fan Hsüeh-yüan Hsüeh-pao 1982.2:115-118, 1982.3:34-57. Graham A. C. Graham, Chuang-tzu: The Inner Chapters. London: Unwin, 1981. Hawkes David Hawkes’s translation of the Ch’u Tz’u is cited from both Songs of the South, London: Oxford University Press, 1959, and Songs of the South, Second Edition. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985. HJAS Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies HTFC Ho Ching-ming 何景明, Ho Ta-fu Chi 何大復集. Page references are given first to the Wen-yüan-ko Ssu-k’u Ch’üan-shu 文淵閣四庫全書 edition and, in parentheses, both to the typeset and punctuated Honan edition edited by Li Shu-yi et. al, and published in Chengchow in 1989 (Chung-chou Ku-chi) and to the numbering system used in TK (see below). The two editions cited are not the best texts, but are the most readily available, the former in reprints from both China and Taiwan and in the Ssu-k’u Ch’üanshu Chen-pen 珍本 , 7th series. The Honan edition includes collation notes from the Shen recension (the Yeh-chu-chai edition, see below) and several Ch’ing editions of the Standard recension. An appendix to TK (pp.335-82) provides a finding list for the four major recensions. Poems are assigned a six digit number with a colon between the third and fourth digits. Each of the first three digits classifies the poem according to the divisions observed in Ho’s works. That is, the first digit distinguishes among the four roughly chronological “collections” that are explicit in the text: 1 = the “emissary” collection 使集 (shih chi), poems from the years

xxviii

CITATION CONVENTIONS

1505-06, when Ho travelled from Peking to Yunnan and back as official bearer of the tidings of the death of Emperor Hsiao-tsung 孝宗 and the succession of Wu-tsung 武宗 ; 2 = the “home” collection 家集 (chia chi), poems from Ho’s various periods of residence in Hsin-yang, but also including poems written while travelling homeward; 3 = the “capital” collection 京集 (ching chi), poems written during Ho’s various stays in Peking; and 4 = the “Shensi” collection 秦集 (Ch’in chi) or 關中集 (Kuan-chung chi), poems from the years 1518-21, when Ho was serving as Education Vice Commissioner for Shensi. The second digit refers to the meter of the poem, 5 representing pentasyllabic verse, and so forth. The third digit refers to the form: 1 = old-style verse; 2 = regulated verse; 3 = extended regulated verse (排律 p’ai-lü); 4 = quatrains. Prose works have numbers only after the colon; the three digits before the colon are replaced by the type of text (e.g. 序 ‘preface’, 書 ‘letter’), etc. The remaining three digits, coming after a colon, refer to the serial order of the poems as published. Numbers in the range 001499 refer to the “Shen” recension. This recension of Ho’s works can be shown to incorporate a chronological element presumed to come from Ho’s own manuscript collections (see Appendix Two and TK 287-334, 編次考 pien-tz’u k’ao). For this reason, these numbers can often be used as mnemonics for the chronology of the numbered poems. Numbers in the range 501-899 are assigned to works not included in the Shen recension. They are derived from the order of the Yung and later Yüan and Standard recensions. These numbers are in general without chronological significance, but can be used, like the others, to locate poems in the finding lists appended to TK. Works in all forms that appear only in the Ta-fu Yi-kao 大復遺稿 (YK), which is not indexed in TK, are here given numbers in the range 901-999. HY Pa-shih-chiu-chung Ming-tai Chuan-chi Tsung-ho Yinte 八十九種明代傳記綜合引得 (Combined Indices to Eighty-nine Collections of Ming Dynasty Biographies), Harvard-Yenching Institute Sinological Index Series, No.24, repr. Taipei: Chinese Materials and Research Aids Service Center, 1966. JAOS Journal of the American Oriental Society JAS Journal of Asian Studies Karlgren The following translations by Bernhard Karlgren are

CITATION CONVENTIONS

xxix

cited in conjunction with their original texts: The Book of Documents, Stockholm, Museum of Far East Antiquities, 1950; The Book of Odes, Stockholm: Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, 1950. KHL Chiao Hung 焦竑, comp., Kuo-ch’ao Hsien-cheng Lu 國朝獻徵錄 (Records of the Offered Testimony of Our Dynasty), 1616; repr. Taipei: Hsüeh-sheng, 1965. Knechtges Knechtges, David, Wen Xuan or Selections of Refined Literature, vol.1-, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982-. Lao-tzu See under Tao-te Ching. Lau The following translations by D. C. Lau are cited in conjunction with their original texts: Lao-tzu: Tao Te Ching, Harmondsworth: Penguin: 1963; Mencius, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970; The Analects, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979. Legge The following translations by Lames Legge are cited in conjunction with their original texts: The Ch’un Ts’ew with the Tso Chuen, repr. Taipei: Wen-shih-che, 1971; The Shoo King, repr. Taipei: Wen-shih-che, 1971. LHH Liu Hai-han 劉海涵, Ho Ta-fu Hsien-sheng Nien-p’u 何大復先生年譜 (Chronological Biography of Ho Ta-fu), Lungt’an Ching-she Ts’ung-k’o, [Hsin-yang?], 1923. Also reprinted several times recently in China; there is a reset edition of the chronology alone in YC, pp.303-12. Li Po Works by Li Po are provided with four references: 1) Rihaku Kashi Sakuin 李白歌詩索引 (Concordance to the Poetry of Li Po), Compiled by Hanabusa Hideki 花房英樹, Tōdai Kenkyū no Shiori 8, Kyoto: Kyōto Daigaku Jimbun Kagaku Kenkyūjo, 1957; 2) CTS; 3) K. (see under CTS); 4) Li Po Ch’üan-chi Pien-nien Chushih 李白全集編年注釋 , Compiled by An Ch’i 安旗 et al., Chengtu: Pa-Shu, 1990. Lu Ch’in-li Lu Ch’in-li 逯欽立, comp., Hsien-Ch’in Han Wei Tsin Nan-pei-ch’ao Shih 先秦漢魏晉南北朝詩 (Poetry of the Pre-Ch’in, Han, Wei, Tsin, and Northern and Southern Dynasties), Peking: Chung-hua, 1983. Lynn The following translations by Richard John Lynn are cited in conjunction with their original texts: The Classic of Changes: A New Translation of the I Ching as Interpreted by Wang Bi, New York: Columbia University Press, 1994; The Classic of the Way and Virtue: A New Translation of the Tao-te Ching of Laozi as

xxx

CITATION CONVENTIONS

Interpreted by Wang Bi, New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. Mencius For the original text cited, see Meng-tzu Yin-te 孟子引得 , Harvard-Yenching Institute Sinological Index Series, Supplement no. 17, 1941; repr. Taipei: Chinese Materials and Research Aids Service Center, 1966. For translation, see under Lau. MS Ming Shih 明史 (History of the Ming Dynasty), Compiled by Chang T’ing-yü 張廷玉, et al., Peking: Chung-hua, 1974. MSCS Ch’en T’ien 陳田, comp., Ming Shih Chi-shih 明詩紀事 (Records of Events in Ming Poetry), repr. Taipei: Ting-wen, 1971. MST Chu Yi-tsun 朱彝尊, comp., Ming Shih Tsung 明詩綜 (Compendium of Ming Poetry), repr. Taipei: Shih-chieh, 1970. MTC Ming T’ung-chien 明通鑑 (Comprehensive Mirror of the Ming), compiled by Hsia Hsieh 夏燮, Peking: Chung-hua, 1959. NCG Nippon Chūgoku Gakkaihō PC Yao Hsüeh-hsien 姚學賢, Huo Chao-an 霍朝安, and Chin Jung-ch’üan 金榮權, Ho Ching-ming P’ing-chuan 何景明評傳 (Critical Biography of Ho Ching-ming), Kaifeng: Honan Tahsüeh, 1993. PP Pai-pu Ts’ung-shu Chi-ch’eng 百部叢書集成 . Reference is given to the original ts’ung-shu and to the series and case numbers of the PP reprint, separated by a slash. Rihaku Kashi Sakuin See under Li Po. Shih-hua Several Ming dynasty works in the shih-hua (‘remarks on poetry’) tradition are cited in more than one edition. In most cases, reference is to three texts: 1) Hsü Li-tai Shih-hua 續歷代詩話 (Continued Remarks on Poetry Through the Ages), Taipei: Yiwen, 1971; 2) Li-tai Shih-hua Hsü-pien 歷代詩話續編 (Remarks on Poetry Through the Ages, Continued Compilation), Peking: Chung-hua, 1983; and 3) Ming Shih-hua Ch’üan-pien, 明詩話全編 (Comprehensive Collection of Ming Remarks on Poetry). Compiled by Wu Wen-chih 吳文治 et al. Nanking: Kiangsu Kuchi, 1997. These are cited as Yi-wen edition, Chung-hua edition, and Ch’üan-pien. SKCS Ssu-k’u Chüan-shu 四庫全書 Songs For the original text cited, see Mao Shih Yin-te 毛詩引得 (Index to the Mao Songs), Harvard-Yenching Institute

CITATION CONVENTIONS

xxxi

Sinological Index Series, Supplement No. 9, 1934; repr. Tokyo: Japan Council for East Asian Studies, 1962. For translations, see under Karlgren, Waley. SPPY Ssu-pu Pei-yao 四部備要 SPTK Ssu-pu Ts’ung-k’an 四部叢刊 Tao-te Ching For the original text cited, see Lao-tzu Chu-tzu So-yin 老子逐字索引 (Single Word Concordance to the Lao-tzu). Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1996. For translations, see under Lynn, Waley. TK Pai Jun-te 白潤德 [Daniel Bryant], Ho Ching-ming Ts’ung-k’ao 何景明叢考 (Collected Studies of Ho Ching-ming), Taipei: Taiwan Hsüeh-sheng, 1997. Where relevant, errors and omissions in TK are corrected here. TL Ch’ang Pi-te 昌彼得 et al., comps., Ming-jen Chuanchi Tzu-liao So-yin 明人傳記資料索引 ((Index to Ming Biographical Materials), 1965; repr. Taipei: Chung-yang T’u-shukuan, 1978. TM Ssu-k’u Ch’üan-shu Ts’un-mu Ts’ung-shu 四庫全書存目叢書 TP T’oung-pao TSCC Ts’ung-shu Chi-ch’eng 叢書集成 Tu Fu Reference to the works of Tu Fu is to the Tu Shih Yinte 杜詩引得 (Index to the Poems of Tu [Fu]), comp. Hung Yeh, et al. Harvard-Yenching Institute Sinological Index Series, Supplement No.14, repr. Taipei: Chinese Materials and Research Aids Service Center, 1966. To this are added references to CTS and K (see above, under Li Po) Tui-shan Chi Reference to the works of K’ang Hai 康海 is to three editions: 1) Tui-shan Wen-chi 對山文集 (Collected works of Tuishan), in 10 chüan, Chia-ching edition; repr. Taipei: Wei-wen, 1976; 2) Tui-shan Chi, edition in 19 chüan, 1545; repr. TM 4:52, Tainan: Chuang-yen Wen-hua, 1997; and 3) K’ang Tui-shan Hsien-sheng Chi, edition in 46 chüan, 1582; repr. Hsü-hsiu SKCS vol.1335. Shanghai: Shanghai Ku-chi, 1995. Unless otherwise indicated, if only two page references are given, the work is not included in the Wei-wen reprint edition; if only one, it is found only in the 1582 text. Page references are preceded in all cases by the short title Tui-shan Chi. Veritable Records Reference is to the edition of the Ming Shih-lu

xxxii

CITATION CONVENTIONS

明實錄 published by the Institute of History and Philology of the Academia Sinica. Waley The following translations by Arthur Waley are cited in conjunction with their original texts: The Analects of Confucius, 1938; repr. New York: Vintage, n.d.; The Book of Songs, 1937, repr. New York: Grove Press, 1960; The Way and its Power: A Study of the Tao Te Ching and its Place in Chinese Thought, New York: Grove Press, 1958. Watson Burton Watson, trans., The Complete Works of Chuang-tzu, New York: Columbia University Press, 1968. WH Wen Hsüan 文選 (Selections of Literature), compiled by Hsiao T’ung 蕭統 , repr. Taipei: Cheng-chung, 1971. For translations of Rhapsodies (賦 fu), see under Knechtges; poems found in WH are also given a citation in Lu Ch’in-li. Wilhelm/Baynes References to the Changes include a reference to Richard Wilhelm, The I Ching or Book of Changes: The Richard Wilhelm Translation rendered into English by Cary F. Baynes, Bollingen Series 19, third edition, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967. YC Li Shu-yi 李叔毅, P’eng Hsüeh-min 彭學敏, and Liu Wen-chin 劉文金, comps., Ho Ching-ming Yen-chiu 何景明研究 (Studies of Ho Ching-ming), Chengchow: Chung-chou Ku-chi, 1992. YK Ta-fu Yi-kao 大復遺稿 (Remnant Manuscripts of Tafu), compiled by Jen Liang-kan 任良榦, preface dated 1539. YTHY For the original text cited, see Yü-t’ai Hsin-yung 玉臺新詠 (New Songs from a Jade Terrace), compiled by Hsü Ling 徐陵, 1774 edition of the Yü-t’ai Hsin-yung Chien-chu 箋註, repr. in Gyokudai Shin’ei Sakuin 玉臺新詠索引 (Index to the Yü-t’ai Hsin-yung), compiled by Obi Kōichi 小尾郊一 and Takashi Tadao 高志真人. Tokyo: Yamamoto, 1976. Poems found in YTHY are also given a citation in Lu Ch’in-li. For translations, see under Birrell.

CHAPTER ONE

THE PRODIGY HSIN-YANG Ho Ching-ming 何景明(1483-1521) was born in Hsin-yang 信陽, now a city of modest size located on the north side of the Shih 溮River where it emerges from the foothills of the Ta-pieh 大別 Range into the rolling basin of the Huai, which the Shih joins a few dozen miles to the east. 1 Although Hsin-yang has been a part of Honan province for

———

1 For an account of Ming and early Ch’ing biographies of Ho Ching-ming, see Appendix One. The three basic sources for Ho’s life are the curriculum by his student Fan P’eng 樊鵬, the epitaph by his associate and brother-in-law Meng Yang 孟洋, and the biography by Ch’iao Shih-ning 喬世寧, who had studied with Ho in Shensi shortly before his death. Ch’iao’s biography was written many years later than the other two. Wang Tao-k’un 汪道昆 (1525-93) says ‘several decades’ in his “Grave Stele Inscription for the Late Mr. Ho of Hsinyang, Education Intendant and Shensi Surveillance Commission Vice-Commissioner” 明故提督學陜西按察司副使信陽何先生墓碑, written sometime after 1573, at the request of Ho’s grandson Ho Lo-wen 何洛文 (d.1600) and included in the appendix to most editions of the Standard recension. All three sources are in general agreement, as one would expect, since they are all ‘family’ records based on the same set of recollections or anecdotes. Two other important early biographies are those in the Huang Ming Hsien-shih 皇明獻實 (Presented Actualities of the Imperial Ming) compiled by Yüan Chih 袁袠 (1502-47), Ming-jen Wen-chi Ts’ung-k’an 17 (Taipei: Wen-hai, 1970) 40.[3a] (769) and in the works of the poet and dramatist Li K’ai-hsien 李開先 (1502-68), Li K’ai-hsien Ch’üan-chi 全集 (Complete Works of Li K’ai-hsien), compiled by Pu Chien 卜鍵 (Peking: Wen-hua Yi-shu, 2004) 10.773-75. Biographical details in what follows that are not otherwise attributed are taken from Fan, Meng, and Ch’iao. Along with other materials, they served as major sources for the chronological biography by Liu Hai-han (LHH). Liu’s chronology is useful, but it is quite short (14 double pages) and many of its conclusions are rather carelessly drawn. The greater value of Liu’s work lies in its supplements, extensive collections of primary sources related to Ho and his work. These are particularly valuable because, as Liu puts it, he did not exclude material by writers hostile to Ho, “wrong-headed as they are!” (LHH 2.44a) The recent and much more detailed chronology by Fu K’ai-p’ei (FKP) is particularly useful for the earliest stages of Ho’s life and the history of his family. Though distinguished by resourceful use of Ho’s collected works, Fu’s chronology is seriously weakened by its reliance on a very limited body of other source material. Some errors in FKP are corrected in Ts’ao-mu 草木, “Kuan-yu ‘Ho Ta-fu Nien-p’u’ Jo-kan Wen-t’i ti K’ao-cheng” 關於何大復

2

CHAPTER ONE

over seven centuries, the nearest major political and cultural centre is Wuhan, over one hundred miles away on the far side of the mountains and now the administrative centre of neighbouring Hupei province. 2 The place thus has a long history of geographical bivalency. Local tradition pointed to the site of a terrace erected by the Baron of Shen 申, a feudatory of the ancient Chou 周 dynasty, whose capital lay in the north, but for most of antiquity the area belonged to the southern state of Ch’u 楚 . 3 Even later, during the Northern and Southern Dynasties (317-589) and the Southern Sung (1126-1279) periods,

———

年譜若干問題的考證 (Examination of Several Problems With Respect to the ‘Chronological Biography of Ho Ta-fu’), Hsin-yang Shih-fan Hsüeh-yuan Hsüehpao 1991.3: 58-61; in PC; and more in TK, Part 1, pp.1-109, “Shih-wen Hsinien-k’ao” 詩文繫年考 (Chronological Study of Poems and Prose). There is a useful review of Chinese scholarship on Ho from 1949 to the late 1990s in Chin Jung-ch’üan 金榮權, “Chien-kuo Yi-lai Ho Ching-ming Yen-chiu Shu-p’ing” 建國以來何景明研究述評 (Critical Account of Research on Ho Ching-ming Since 1949), Yin-tu Hsüeh-k’an 1999.4: 77-80. For Fan P’eng (t. Shao-nan 少南, h. Nan-ming 南溟), see TL 804, HY 2/255, TK 155. For Meng Yang (t. Wang-chih 望之, h. Yu-ya 有涯), see TL 283, HY 2/184, KHL 69.14a (3015—by Yen Sung 嚴嵩, later to be a notorious Grand Secretary), TK 127. For Ch’iao Shih-ning (t. Ching-shu 景叔, h. San-shih 三石), see TL 675, HY 2/87, TK 126. In general, and insofar as possible, at the first mention of one of Ho’s contemporaries page references are given to the TL and HY indices and to a biography in DMB, if one exists, or else to one in Chinese, usually in MS or KHL (in the case of DMB and KHL, the name of the original author of the biography is given, if known). Additional information, including a list of works by Ho that refer to the person, can be found in TK, Part 2, pp.111200 “Jen-wu-k’ao” 人物考, to which a page reference is given as well. 2 The standard sources for Hsin-yang are the [Ch’ien-lung] Hsin-yang Chou Chih 信陽州志 (Gazetteer of Hsin-yang Sub-Prefecture) of 1749 and the [Min-kuo] Hsin-yang Hsien 縣 Chih (Gazetteer of Hsin-yang County) of 1936. Both the Hsien Chih and the 1925 typeset edition of the Chou Chih were reproduced in Taiwan in 1976 by the Ch’eng-wen company, and it is to these Ch’eng-wen editions that reference is made here. Fragments of a 1660 gazetteer are preserved in the Peking Library, as is a 1690 supplement, but I have seen neither of these. 3 Two Ch’u tombs of the early Warring States period were excavated a dozen or so miles north of Hsin-yang in 1957 and 1958. See Hsin-yang Ch’u Mu 信陽楚墓 (A Ch’u Tomb in Hsin-yang), Honan Provincial Archaological Research Institute (Peking: Wen-wu, 1986). A set of musical bells found in one of the tombs proved to have remained so accurately pitched that it was used in a recording of “The East is Red” broadcast from China’s first artificial satellite. For a summary account of other archaological finds in Hsin-yang, see Ou T’an-sheng 歐潭生, “Hsinyang Ch’u Wang Ch’eng shih Ch’u Ch’ing-hsiang Wang te Lin-shih Kuo-tu” 信陽楚王城是楚頃襄王的臨時國都 (The Wall of the King of Ch’u in Hsin-yang was the Temporary Capital of King Ch’ing-hsiang of Ch’u), Chung-yüan Wen-wu, T’e-k’an (1983): 52-54. Ou gives a list of earlier studies of Hsin-yang antiquities, some of them by Kuo Mo-jo.

THE PRODIGY

3

when China was divided between hostile regimes in the north and south, Hsin-yang was held by the south. Only with the emergence, early in the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), of administrative units roughly equivalent to the provinces of modern China was Hsin-yang finally assigned to Honan. This status was a relatively recent thing in Ho Ching-ming’s time, comparable to that of Alaska in the United States of America or of Alsace in France today. Ho clearly counted as a Honanese—many of his closest friends were fellow provincials—but in his poetry he sometimes refers to himself as a ‘man of Ch’u’. Just as it straddles the line between north and south, so too does Hsin-yang face at once toward both hills and plain. Geography makes such places a kind of terrestrial analogue to harbours, partaking both of the settled area close at hand and of whatever it is that lies on the far side of the mountains or desert at whose portal they stand. Krakow or Reno, Denver or Timbuktu, here the weary traveller, soldier, or refugee rests before or after the trials of the crossing, and sometimes settles. Although the society of Hsin-yang in Ho Ching-ming’s day was stable, even sedentary, and had been for all of living memory, one has only to look into the antecedants of the townspeople he mentions in his works to discover wave after wave of immigrants, few of whom are likely to have thought, when they first came to Hsin-yang, that the place would be their permanent home. 4 Thus, in spite of a location more or less in the centre of the Chinese-speaking world today, Hsin-yang has been something of a frontier town for much of its history. Frontier towns tend to be rowdy places. The epitaph for one Hsü Lien 徐聯 (1459-1515), who served as Assistant Surveillance Commissioner for Hsin-yang’s Military Defense during a period when Ho was living at home, comments, “the region is one in which four administrations meet; there are numerous mountains and valleys, and bandits make trouble.” 5 An elderly official

———

4 Ting San-hsing 丁三省 has pointed out that the ancestors of all the poets active in Hsin-yang in Ho’s day had come there from other places. See his “Ho Ching-ming yü Ming Hung-Cheng Hsin-yang Tso-chia Ch’ün” 何景明與明宏正信陽作家群 (Ho Ching-ming and the Group of Writers in Hsin-yang During the Hung[-chih] and Cheng[-te] Periods of the Ming), Hsin-yang Shih-fan Hsüeh-yüan Hsüeh-pao 1991.3: 50-56. 5 KHL 94.68 (4101). For Hsü Lien (t. Ch’eng-chang 成章), see TL 470, HY 3/127, KHL 94.68a (4101—Ku Lin 顧璘), TK 142. Note that when Hsü Lien left Hsinyang for another post, Ho presented him with a farewell poem, “A Ballad of Lung-yu: Saying Farewell to Assistant Commissioner Hsü” 隴右行送徐少參, HTFC 12.11b

4

CHAPTER ONE

at Hsin-yang Normal College, asked in 1993 how long he had been there, replied, “Since we came down from the hills in ’49.” One such immigrant to Hsin-yang was Ho Ching-ming’s greatgreat-grandfather, Ho T’ai-shan 太山. His ancestors are said to have settled in Lo-t’ien 羅田, in northeastern Hupei, after one of them had served as a local official there, perhaps at the time of the Mongol conquest, late in the thirteenth century. During the Red Turban uprising of the 1350s, T’ai-shan fled with his family north across the Ta-pieh Hills to resettle in a village near Hsin-yang. When an army fighting for Chu Yüan-chang 朱元璋, founder of the Ming dynasty, arrived in Hsin-yang, probably in the late 1360’s, its general set up two banners, one white and one red, announcing that those who would be soldiers for the Ming should gather around the red banner and those who would be civilians around the white. Perhaps Ho T’ai-shan had already made up his mind to settle, but in any event he took his place under the white banner. 6 He could not have known—though he may well have had hopes—that he was thereby setting a course that would eventually lead to his descendants being among the leading citizens of Hsin-yang for generations and to one of them being the most celebrated native of the place to appear between T’ai-shan’s day and our own.

———

(167; 271:510). Hsü was known for his scrupulous honesty. Ku Lin tells us that there was a medicine chest at Hsin-yang, which Hsü refilled whenever he had used some of the contents. He left office in 1505 to go into mourning for his mother, but returned briefly after his mourning period expired. For Ku Lin, see below, chapter two. See below also for Lü Nan 呂柟, who offered a similar characterisation of Hsin-yang, though one a good deal less succinct and draped in citations from old books, in a farewell essay written for another man going to take up the same position, Ching-yeh Hsien-sheng Wen-chi 涇野先生文集 (Literary Works of Master Ching-yeh) (1555; repr. TM 4:60-61, Tainan: Chuang-yen Wen-hua, 1997) 3.13a (541). 6 This account, from the posthumous curriculum that Ho wrote for his father (see below, chapter six), tends to confirm the statement by Charles O. Hucker, “It is said that, whenever the Hung-wu emperor [Chu Yüan-chang] gained control over a new territory, his officers visited every village and called on all males to choose whether to be civilian subjects or Ming soldiers, and their decisions categorised their families in perpetuity,” “Ming Government,” The Cambridge History of China, edited by Denis Twitchett and John K. Fairbank, vol.8, The Ming Dynasty, 1368-1644, part 2, edited by Denis Twitchett and Frederick W. Mote, p.63 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

THE PRODIGY

5

A RESPECTABLE FAMILY The family into which Ho Ching-ming was born had only recently begun to emerge from several generations of obscurity. The descendants of Ho T’ai-shan lived as small land-owners, or perhaps even peasants. There is no mention of any member of the family holding office between the time of the unnamed ancestor who settled in Lot’ien and that of Ho Ching-ming’s grandfather, Ho Chien 鑑. Chien was a son of T’ai-shan’s second son Ho Lung-erh 隆二 (or Ho Hai 海)—the first son had gone off to Nanking to seek his fortune and was never heard from again. Ho Ching-ming tells us that it was in Ho Chien’s time that, “our family finally had a humble hut in town.” 7 Ho Chien was the first member of the family to study and was employed by the government as a tien-shu 典術 (‘Superintendant of Trades’), an expert on yin-yang geomancy and superintendant of local practitioners of what we would today think of as local ‘service trades’: diviners, entertainers, dentists, midwives, and the like. 8 Chien’s fourth son was Ho Ching-ming’s father Ho Hsin 信 (1441-1509), who also served as a minor official and is said to have been an able versifier. 9 The family’s hopes were lodged originally with one of Hsin’s brothers, but when the latter died young, Hsin ‘took up the thread’. Ho Hsin married twice. By his first wife, Madame Lu 盧, he had two sons, Ching-shao (1462-1507) and Ching-yang 景暘. After her death, he was remarried, to a Miss Li 李, and had two more sons, Ching-hui 景暉 and Ching-ming, and a daughter by this second wife. 10 His children

———

7 This remark is from Ching-ming’s ‘Sacrificial Text’ for his eldest brother Chingshao 景韶, “Sacrificial Text for my Late Elder Brother, Sir Tung-ch’ang” 祭亡兄東昌公文, HTFC 38.lb (653; 祭:001). See chapter 4. 8 Such at least were the functions of a tien-shu in Ch’ing times, according to Charles O. Hucker, A Dictionary of Official Titles in Imperial China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985), pp.506-07, item 6644. 9 There are two biographical sources for the life of Ho Hsin (t. Wen-shih 文實, h. Mei-ch’i 梅溪 ). One is the curriculum, compiled by Ho Ching-ming himself, “Curriculum of my Late Father, Sir Plum Stream, Honourary Gentleman for Summoning and Secretariat Drafter” 封徵士郎中書舍人先考梅溪公行狀, HTFC 37.1a (641; 狀:501). See chapter 6. The other is the epitaph written by Li Meng-yang, “Epitaph for the Joint Burial of Sir Ho, Honourary Gentleman for Summoning and Secretariat Drafter” 封徵士郎中書舍人何公合葬墓志, K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi, 44.12b (1274). See TL 274, TK 113. 10 Wang Tao-k’un says that Ho received his name, which means “sunlight-bright,” because his mother dreamed of the sun while she was pregnant. This seems

6

CHAPTER ONE

were by far the most successful generation the family had produced. Of the four sons, only Ching-hui failed to pass an examination or hold office. 11 The daughter married Meng Yang (1483-1534), a fellow townsman who served as an official and was both a close literary associate of Ho Ching-ming and the author of his epitaph (see above). 12 Ho Hsin was evidently a man of considerable intelligence and force of character. A few years before Ho Ching-ming was born, Hsin was called upon to serve as an unranked assistant in the provincial government offices. He soon impressed the Administration Commissioner, one Wu Chieh 吳節, with his ability, and his advice was often sought and taken. In one case, it was Ho Hsin’s counsel that headed off what could have been a ruinous corvée assignment for the peasants of several districts. A one-time payment in cash and kind was substituted, to their relief. 13 He was also present at a famous political event, though his role in it would have been lost to history had Ho Ching-ming himself not proudly retold it in his posthumous biographical essay about his father. When the powerful, but cruel and corrupt, eunuch Wang Chih 汪直 came to Honan on a tour of ‘inspection’ the local officials were terrified, and everyone, from the Grand Coordinator of the province on down, prostrated themselves in Wang’s presence. The only exception was the Education Intendant, Ch’en Hsüan 陳選, who merely bowed. When Wang Chih angrily demanded to know who he was and what

———

questionable, since all four sons had the word “sunlight” in their names, including the two born of Ho Hsin’s first wife. Perhaps Ho’s biography has been ‘contaminated’ with an incident from that of Li Meng-yang, whose name means “dreaming of the solar force.” Liu Hai-han, who incorrectly gives Meng Yang’s Epitaph as the source, links this name to a similar prenatal dream of Li’s mother (LHH 1.1b). 11 For Ho Ching-hui, see TK 114. 12 There has been some confusion as to the nature of Meng Yang’s family relationship with Ho. See Kung Hsien-tsung 龔顯宗, “Ming Ch’i-tzu chih Shih-wen chi ch’i Lun-p’ing chih Yen-chiu” 明七子詩文及其論評之研究 (A Study of the Seven Masters of the Ming and Their Criticism) (Ph.D. dissertation, Chung-kuo Wenhua Hsüeh-yüan, 1979), p.50, note 5. 13 Ho Hsin’s suggestion was not unprecedented in itself. The process of converting to cash payments the corvée obligations characteristic of the early Ming was well under way by this time; see Ray Huang, Taxation and Governmental Finance in Sixteenth Century Ming China (London: Cambridge University Press, 1974). What would have struck an observer at the time was the fact of the suggestion coming from someone of such humble rank.

THE PRODIGY

7

office he held, Ch’en identified himself. Wang asked Ch’en if he thought an Education Intendant was superior to a Grand Coordinator (which he certainly was not, by a distance of two to four steps on a civil service scale of eighteen). Ch’en replied that he did not, but that he had particular responsibility to provide a proper example for the province’s students. 14 Ch’en was spared the likely consequences of his courage in this case, as he would not be a few years later, when conflict with another eunuch cost him his life. The presence of a large crowd of students surrounding the provincial offices evidently persuaded Wang Chih to move on to the next item on his agenda, which was to instruct the Grand Coordinator to draft a requisition for fine horses from the various districts of the province. This the Coordinator was quite willing to do, but when he tried to write out the order, he was so overcome by nerves that he could not hold his brush steadily enough to write. At this juncture, Ho Hsin, to general approbation, took over the brush and wrote the order out in his place, saying that such a document was too insignificant a job for so senior an official and could be left to a scribe such as himself. This part of the incident is recorded only in Ho’s posthumous biography. The same pride in the values exemplified by his family and community recurs often in his writings and, indeed, in his own conduct. Men were expected to show steadfast courage, both physical and moral, as his father had done. They were to be public-spirited, honest, and, if possible, learned. Learning was not possible for all, of course, and its lack did not bar a man from respect. Ho later wrote a warmly admiring memorial biography of a man named Fan Liang 樊亮 (1459-1513), the father of Fan P’eng. Fan Liang had been a mistreated younger son, but he took to trade, prospered on account of his honesty, industry, and intelligence, and was eventually chosen district headman, winning approval in this position for his refusal to adjust tax rates on the basis of either bribes or friendship. Although a good reckoner, he remained illiterate, but saw to it that his son Fan P’eng got an education. He had his reward when P’eng eventually entered on a career in the civil service. 15

——— 14 15

For this incident, see, inter alia, DMB 160, MS 49.4389, KHL 99.8a (4376). “Epitaph for Fan Mao-chao” 樊懋昭墓誌銘, HTFC 36.9b (625; 銘:004).

8

CHAPTER ONE

The Chinese tendency to see the family, rather than the individual, as the essential social, economic, and even moral unit of society is exemplified by the story of Fan Liang and his son, and also by Ho’s account of the mother-in-law of one of his brothers, Ho Ching-yang: When old Mr. Wang [her husband] was district elder, he often went into town. I was young then, and often saw her. When the humble and junior among his clansmen or fellow villagers came to visit, Madame Wang never failed to give them food and drink. What is more, she served the visitors personally and stayed to look after them, her only concern being lest they not eat and drink. How fitting it was that her sons and grandsons should be so numerous and she herself so long-lived, since she was so kind and loving to others. 16

Almost everyone to be encountered in the pages of this book was a civil servant, or aspired to be one, for most of his career. 17 Ho Hsin was both able and determined to see his sons educated and launched into official life. This necessarily required of them a degree of selfdiscipline not usually thought a part of the natural endowment of children. The effort to instill it in them surely contributed an element to their personalities visible later in Ho Ching-ming’s sense of mission and in his anxious insistence on strict morality in public life. It is visible too in his inclusion, when he came to write a posthumous biography of his eldest brother Ching-shao, whom he describes as a ‘loner’ who “did not get on well with others,” of an incident in Chingshao’s childhood when he displeased his father in some way and was angrily rebuked. When Ho Hsin emerged from his room in the small hours of the night, he was startled to find the young Ching-shao kneeling silently outside the door. “What are you doing here?” “I cannot sleep so long as you are angry with me,” was the boy’s reply, whereupon the father, deeply impressed, relented. Ching-shao passed the provincial examination for the chü-jen (舉人 ‘licentiate’) degree in 1486. 18

——— 16

“Grave Stele for Mme. Wang, née Ho” 王母何氏墓碑, HTFC 36.3a (620; 雜:504). 17 The classic treatment of the relationship between civil service careers and social status during the Ming and Ch’ing dynasties is Ping-ti Ho, The Ladder of Success in Imperial China: Aspects of Social Mobility, 1368-1911 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962). 18 For Ho Ching-shao (t. Chung-lü 仲律), see HY 3/261, TL 274, KHL 96.23a (4213—his curriculum written by Ching-ming, HTFC 37.10a [647; 狀:001]), TK 114. All the primary sources agree on the date 1486 (Ch’eng-hua ping-wu 丙午) for Ching-

THE PRODIGY

9

PROMISE The childhood of a Chinese poet is remarkably difficult to discover, and that of Ho Ching-ming is no exception. Almost the only sources we have are the memorial texts composed after his death by several close associates and a few texts of the same sort written for relatives and family friends, most of them by Ho himself. These afford some glimpses of life in the large, moderately prosperous, and determinedly ambitious provincial family into which he was born, but they do not provide any sort of detailed chronology of his early years. At the most, they sketch his family background to a limited extent, trace his occasional travels, and supply a few anecdotes that seem to give some insight into the growth of his personality and his intellectual and literary abilities. That the personality and abilities to emerge in these anecdotes are surprisingly like those of the adult Ho Ching-ming may be cause both for interest in the consistency of his character and for suspicion that the selection and telling of the anecdotes may have been decisively influenced by perceptions of him as an adult. Signs of Ching-ming’s precocity were no doubt a source of satisfaction to Ho Hsin and are fondly recorded. It is said that by the age of five he could make up rhyming couplets and was memorizing several hundred words a day. The method of elementary education in traditional China was founded on the rote memorization of canonical texts at an early age (when in fact such learning is much more effective than it would be later in life). What is meant here, then, must be the learning of several hundred words of running text, not that number of new characters. By the age of seven he had begun to compose his own works. He showed proper respect for his elder brothers, not answering back even when struck. This self-control seems to have persisted. Ho’s student Fan P’eng reports that he never

———

shao’s chü-jen success, except Fan P’eng’s curriculum, as printed in the blockcarvers’ names family of the Standard recension of HTFC (see Appendix Two), which gives a non-existent date, Ch’eng-hua ping-tzu 丙子; tzu 子is evidently an error for wu 午. The date 1483, found in DMB, p.510, is an error. A note added to a poem written some months after Ching-shao’s death, “Lament for Sir Tung-ch’ang” 東昌公哀辭, HTFC 15.9b (228; 252:015) refers to an epitaph by K’ang Hai, Tui-shan Chi 38.10a (429). (See “Abbrevations, Short Titles and Other Citation Conventions” for the format of references to K’ang’s works.) K’ang’s epitaph retells several points found in Ching-ming’s essay, but adds little new.

10

CHAPTER ONE

saw Ho’s face show either joy or anger. Meng Yang tells us that Ho was tall and lean as a child. In 1494, Ho Hsin received an appointment to take charge of the postal relay station in Wei-yüan 渭源, in what is now southeastern Kansu. He had previously held a similar post in Hui-ning 會寧, not far away. After three years in Hui-ning, he had resigned to observe mourning for his mother. 19 He took Ching-hui and Ching-ming with him to this new post. This region was then, as it is today, one of the poorest and most backward in China. 20 Moreover, they arrived during a bad year. The entire province had summer taxes cancelled because of crop failures. 21 As earlier in Hui-ning, Ho Hsin distinguished himself in Wei-yüan by his refusal to compromise with those who attempted to wield power improperly. In Hui-ning, he had refused to show undue respect to a local military officer who was abusing his authority, and indeed accused him in person of misconduct. When the officer was eventually cashiered and his accomplices arrested, Ho Hsin alone among the local minor officials escaped censure, because of his earlier resistance. While Ho Hsin and his sons were living in Wei-yüan, the local prefect, Li Chi 李紀 (1441-1515), 22 an imposing and incorruptible

———

19 The locations and durations of Ho Hsin’s two postings to Shensi are clear in his own curriculum, and epitaph, but garbled elsewhere. Fan P’eng says that Ho Chingming went to Hui-ning with his father, which is mistaken (he does not mention Weiyüan). Meng Yang corrects this to Wei-yüan, while Ch’iao Shih-ning refers to Lint’ao 臨洮, perhaps because it was the administrative seat of the prefecture to which Wei-yüan pertained. All three say that Ho Ching-ming was twelve at the time. This, and the combination of Ching-ming’s report that his father served three years in Weiyüan with Fan P’eng and Meng Yang’s telling us that after the return home Chingming needed only nine months study to qualify for the 1498 provincial examination, makes 1494 the likeliest date. The question is somewhat muddied by Ho’s own reference to his being in Lin-t’ao at “eleven or twelve or so” (see below), by a textual variant (‘thirteen’) in Fan P’eng’s account, and by the pervasive uncertainty as to whether the various references in the sources to ages and durations were arrived at by the inclusive reckoning of calendar years or according to elapsed time (see Preface). 20 Among much other testimony concerning the relative backwardness of the north, compared to southern China, see the comments of Ch’oe Pu, a Korean official whose journal of a visit to China during the years 1487-1488 is a valuable independent source for the period. Ch’oe comments on the “poverty and desolation” of northern China and the prevalence of illiteracy. See John Meskill, Ch’oe Pu’s Diary: a Record of Drifting Across the Sea (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1965), pp.15, 155. 21 MTC 37.1427 (entry 1493.22). 22 For Li Chi (t. Ch’ao-chen 朝振, h. Mo-an 默菴), see TL 206, HY 2/248, TK 148. Much of what we know of Li Chi and Ho’s association with him comes from the

THE PRODIGY

11

man who was stationed in nearby Lin-t’ao, heard of Ching-ming’s talents, summoned him for an interview, and was sufficiently impressed to see that he was enrolled in the local school. 23 Ho proved to be a model student. One day when the teacher had been called out of the classroom for a short while and the rest of the boys had given themselves up to rowdy horse-play, even standing on the teacher’s own mat, Ho alone remained in his place, reciting the lesson as though the teacher were still present and ignoring the teasing of his skylarking classmates. Li Chi happened to be visiting the school and noticed this. On another occasion, Li, dressed in all his regalia, summoned Chingming. When Ho arrived, Li said to his wife, “Do you think me a successful man? Some day this lad Ho may surpass me!” 24 Years later, perhaps in 1505, Ho addressed a long “Ballad of Bygone Days” 憶昔行 to Li Chi’s son Li Ju-tso 汝佐, beginning with the lines: 我年十一十二餘、與子握手相懽娛。嚴君視我猶視子、日向庭前問詩禮。 When I was in my eleventh or twelfth year or so, You and I grasped hands and played happily together. Your honoured father looked upon me as a son; In the courtyard daily asking me about the Songs and Rites. 25

———

memorial texts that Ho wrote for him at the request of Li’s son, “Epitaph for the Late Mr. Li, Ming Grand Central Grand Master, Vice-Governor Assisting in Administration, and Chief Commissioner of the Fukien Tax transport and Salt Monopoly Commission” 明故大中大夫資治少尹福建都轉運鹽使司運使李公墓誌銘, HTFC 36.4b (621; 銘:001), also in KHL 104.27a (4684) and “Sacrificial Text for Master Li Mo-an” 祭李默菴先生文, HTFC 38.4b (655; 祭:002). Both texts probably date from not long after Li’s death in the spring of 1515. 23 Meng Yang tells us that the teacher soon declared, “he has learned all I can teach him” and left, a story that smacks somewhat of the stock repertoire of anecdotes about precocious youths. Similarly suspicious is the story of someone who tested the young Ho Ching-ming by giving him the first six words of the Mencius and asking him to supply an appropriate examination essay theme, which Ho is said to have done without hesitation. See Liang Chang-chü 梁章鉅, Chih-yi Ts’ung-hua 制藝叢話 (Gathered Comments on the Crafted Art [of the Examination Essay]) (Shanghai: Shanghai Shu-tien, 2001) 23.437, quoting a Ch’ing writer named Meng Ch’ao-jan 孟超然 and quoted in turn in LHH 2.43b—the page number is misprinted).). 24 There is some uncertainty as to the connection between the incident at the school and Li Chi’s remark to his wife. In his Sacrificial Text, Ho mentions only the latter. Fan P’eng gives both, but in a way that does not suggest that they were related. Li K’ai-hsien combines them, Li K’ai-hsien Ch’üan-chi 10.774. This seems plausible, but we cannot be sure. 25 HTFC 13.2b (177; 371:007). The last of the quoted lines alludes to a passage in the Analects that refers to Confucius’s teaching of his son, Lun-yü Yin-te 34/16/13;

12

CHAPTER ONE

After three years in Wei-yüan, Ho Hsin, who suffered from an ailment of the feet or legs, took advantage of an obligation imposed on the local minor officials, that they accompany a visiting Censor many miles on foot, to resign his post. Li Chi, on learning that Ho Hsin had insufficient money for his return home, presented him with a horse and wagon and held an official farewell ceremony on his departure, addressing a toast to Ho Hsin as ‘my old friend’, and to Ching-ming as ‘my young friend’. 26 Ho had been studying the Annals ( 春秋 Ch’un-ch’iu) in the northwest, but he took up the Documents (尚書 Shang Shu) after his return home, studying with his brother Ching-shao. 27 In Ho’s day, candidates specialised in only one Classic, and their choices had incidental consequences that arose from the examination competition itself rather than from the intellectual content of the texts. The Documents was only a fraction of the length of the Annals, including the Tso Commentary, but for that reason the competition was more intense among those candidates who specialised in the Documents, typically about three times more numerous than those who had memorised the Annals. 28

———

Lau, p.141; Waley, p.207. The poem refers to a time when Ho was “11 or 12 or so,” to the lapse of ten years, to his having married, and to “three springs” of toil in or for a “single office.” In TK (p.10), I adopted Fu K’ai-p’ei’s argument that the three years is an inclusive count from a 1502 examination success to a first appointment in 1504. The problem is, however, somewhat more complex. The “ten years,” though it may be a round number, must refer to the time that Ho and Li Ju-tso had not seen each other. It is preceded in the poem by an image of their sadness at parting, which would refer to the time of Ho Hsin’s return home from Shensi in 1496 or 1497. This means that the poem could be as late as 1506 or 1507. On balance, I now think the likeliest date is 1505. Ho wrote a poem to Li Chi himself in Peking sometime before he left in 1507. The most likely occasion for Li to have been in the capital during this period was the periodic general review of civil officials, metropolitan and provincial, carried out in the spring of 1505 (for a burst of social and literary activity in conjunction with the review of 1517, see below, chapter ten). Li Chi’s son Li Ju-tso was presumably travelling with his father. For Li Ju-tso, see (Wan-li) Lu-an Fu Chih 潞安府志 (Gazetteer of Lu-an Prefecture) 11.33b, TK 147. Although registered as a student, Jutso is said not to have been inclined to seek an official career. 26 This incident is recorded in the epitaph Ho wrote for Li. 27 Wang Tao-k’un’s stele inscription says that he studied the Shang Shu with Ching-yang, but this seems clearly to be a mistake. The related error in FKP is corrected in Ts’ao-mu, “Jo-kan Wen-t’i.” See also TK 3. For a dauntingly comprehensive account of the examination system that Ho now confronted, see Benjamin A. Elman, A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000. 28 See Elman, Cultural History, pp.267, 280-84, 654, 701.

THE PRODIGY

13

After only nine months of work on the Documents, he was ready to attempt the triennial official examinations. These involved three stages. There was a test at the local level, then one in the provincial capital, successful candidates in which received the chü-jen degree, as Chingshao had done. Finally, there was the examination for the chin-shih 進士 (‘doctor of letters’) degree, held in Peking. The odds against success were very heavy. Ho remarked many years later, in a preface he added to the list of successful candidates in the Honan provincial examination held in 1513, that while fewer than 10,000 of his fellow provincials studied for the examinations, fewer than one thousand were actually deemed qualified to take them, and only eighty men had passed that year. 29 When one considers that only one in roughly ten chü-jen succeeded in the chin-shih and some of them only after repeated attempts over a period of twenty years or more, the challenge that Ho faced emerges starkly. All the same, he got off to a promising start. Li Han 李瀚 (1453-1533), the censor in charge of examining candidates in Ju-ning 汝寧 Prefecture, to which Hsin-yang pertained, was so impressed by Ho’s essays that he made a trip back to Hsinyang to meet him, saying, “a splendid talent!” 奇才奇才. 30 In the fall of 1498, Ho went up to Kaifeng 開封, the provincial capital, along with his brother Ching-yang, to sit for the provincial examination. Both were among the relatively few who passed, but Ching-ming had the distinction of ranking third among all the candidates. 31 When word of his success was brought to him, Ho was asleep, and he evidently took the news with more calm than was expected. “Why are you not rejoicing?” asked the bearer of the good tidings. “I knew I could do it. But the ancients regarded success in the examinations at an early age as a misfortune, so what occasion for rejoicing is there?”32 He was then fifteen years old. 33 Also among the

———

29 “Preface to the ‘Record by Age of Fellow Graduates in the Honan Examination of the Year Kui-yu [1513]’” 河南癸酉同年齒錄序, HTFC 31.19a (559; 內:023). 30 Fan P’eng is the source for this anecdote. For Li Han (t. Shu-yüan 叔淵, h. Shihlou 石樓), see TL 228, HY 2/242, KHL 31.51a (1304—Chang Pi 張璧), TK 151. He was a scholar and bibliophile with a reputation for humane and able administration. 31 The topic was a phrase from the Mencius, “Ch’i was good and capable, and able to follow in the footsteps of Yü” 啟賢能敬承繼禹之道, Meng-tzu Yin-te 37/5A/6; Lau, p.145. For Ho Ching-yang (t. Chung-sheng 仲昇), see TL 274, TK 114. 32 Li K’ai-hsien Ch’üan-chi 10.774. As is often the case, Li is elaborating on his source, in this instance, Fan P’eng, in whose version Ho is silent as to the opinions of the ancients.

14

CHAPTER ONE

successful candidates were a number of men who would later be close to Ho. Some of them would be in office with Ho in Peking, including Ts’ui Hsien 崔銑 (1478-1541), T’ien Ju-tzu 田汝耔 (1478-1533), and Wang Hsi-meng 王希孟 (1475-1515). Others were friends from Hsinyang, including Liu Chieh 劉節 and Yüan Jung 袁鎔. Another was Tai Yi 戴誼, who had been studying with Ho Ching-shao alongside Ching-ming and whose son Tai Kuan 冠 would be Ho’s own student and friend and play a crucial role in the posthumous publication of Ho’s works. 34 It may have been on his departure from Kaifeng to return home after the examination that Ho wrote the following poem, which, if this dating is correct, would be among the earliest of his extant poems. It is not found in any of the recensions of his collected works, but was included in a now extremely rare compilation titled “The Remnant Manuscripts of Ta-fu [Ho Ching-ming]” (Ta-fa Yi-kao 大復遺稿), assembled under the direction of a magistrate of Hsin-yang almost twenty years after Ho’s death. 35 Since, as we shall see, Ho came to occupy a leading place in Peking poetic circles soon after he took up residence there, these early years must have been the time of an active apprenticeship, but this is now lost to our view. The poem is a highly conventional farewell piece:

———

33 The early memorial texts say that he was in his fifteenth year (sui), while the preface to his works by his friend Wang T’ing-hsiang 王廷相 gives his age correctly as 16 sui. LHH argues that 16 is correct, but is ‘corrected’ by Fu K’ai-p’ei. It is pointed out in PC that the discrepency is a matter of inclusive versus non-inclusive reckoning (pp.12-13). One of the authors of PC, Chin Jung-ch’üan, added, in his own biography of Ho, that Ho’s followers may have wished, in giving the lower age, to emphasise Ho’s precocity. See Chin’s “Ho Ching-ming Nien-p’u Hsin-pien” 何景明年譜新編 (Newly Compiled Chronological Biography of Ho Ching-ming), Hsin-yang Shih-fan Hsüeh-yüan Hsüeh-pao (1995.1): 98-102, 99. See also TK, p.4. 34 We know about Tai Yi’s education from the epitaph written for him by Meng Yang, “Epitaph for Mr. Tai, Senior Administrator to the Prince of Chao” 趙王左長史戴公墓誌銘, Meng Yu-ya Chi 孟有涯集 (Collected Works of Meng Yu-ya) (1538 edition) 17.9a. For Tai Kuan, see below, chapter two. 35 For the compilation of the Ta-fu Yi-kao see Appendix Two. The poem includes no clear reference to a place, but since Ho says that he has been flying about with “caps and gowns” from whom he will now be separated, it seems likely that this poem evokes a departure from either Peking or Kaifeng. Of Ho’s two autumn departures from these places, his 1518 setting out for Hsin-yang on his way to take up office in Shensi appears less likely.

THE PRODIGY

15

別友悲秋歌秋風烈烈天氣涼、草木搖落悲嚴霜。寒蛩哀吟南鴈翔、遊子秋來戀故鄉。別君城隅愁斷腸、何忍與君隔殊疆。征人徭徭宿空房、展轉不昧思難忘。從遊翩翩接冠裳、倏爾異為參與商。 Song: Taking Leave of a Friend and Grieving at Autumn 36 The autumn wind blows fiercely; the breath of heaven cools; Weeds and trees tremble and shed, suffering in biting frost. A wintry grasshopper buzzes in sorrow; southward geese soar above; A wandering man all autumn long yearns for his native district. I take my leave at a bend of the wall; sorrow breaks my heart; I cannot bear to part from you, cut off in a different land? A man on the road, far, far away, lodges in an empty room; Tossing and turning, unable to sleep, he thinks and cannot forget. We roamed together, darting about, meeting with caps and robes; Now sundered all at once, as far apart as Shen and Shang.

The next step was the chin-shih, successful graduates of which were normally assured entrance into the civil service with a good chance for a promising career. Ho sat for the test in Peking the following spring, but this time he was unsuccessful. His paper did not pass, supposedly because it contained too many unusual characters. 37 All the same, the trip to Peking had not been a complete loss by any means. Already a celebrity in Honan after his chü-jen performance, to the extent, if our sources are to be believed, that he had to hide in the government offices to avoid crowds of well-wishers and to churn out hundreds of pages of cursive calligraphy a day in order to satisfy requests for his brushwork, 38 Ho continued to attract attention after arriving in Peking.

———

36 271:901, YK A.4a, not found elsewhere. Shen and Shang are constellations at opposites sides of the sky. 37 The field within which Ho had failed to place was a distinguished one. Li Tungyang 李東陽, who was one of the examiners, recorded in an essay that they exulted after reading the papers, “How civilisation has prospered, to attain to this extent!” 文之盛、一至此哉. See “Preface to ‘Records of the Metropolitan Examination’” 會試錄序, Li Tung-yang Chi 李東陽集 (Collected Works of Li Tung-yang) (Changsha: Yüeh-lu Shu-she, 1983-85) 3:19. For Li, see below, chapter two. 38 Ho is not generally known as a calligrapher, something lamented later in the century by a scholar named Yü Meng-lin 余孟麟, who greatly admired two pieces of Ho’s brushwork shown to him by the later Archaist poet Li P’an-lung 李攀龍 (151470). One piece was from Ho’s years at home and the other from the time he spent as an official in Shensi. Yü’s point is that Ho’s reputation as a writer and morally serious official had overshadowed his excellence as a calligrapher. See Yü Hsüeh-shih Chi 余學士集 (Collected Works of Academician Yü) (1600 edition), 11.7a.

16

CHAPTER ONE

We do not know how many of his later associates he met at this time, but a number of them were in the capital and probably would have heard about the brilliant young candidate from Honan. After his examination failure, Ho entered the National University, although he stayed for only one month before returning home. 39 There were several good reasons for entering the University. For one thing, its students had a much better record of success in the chin-shih examination than did other candidates. Moreover, while the provincial degree qualified one for an official appointment, the positions available to holders of the chü-jen were relatively humble postings in the provinces, from which promotion was uncertain and slow. 40 Chinshih graduates could look forward to early appointment to middleranked positions, often in the central government offices in Peking, followed by eventual promotion leading to the upper levels of the civil service. Ambitious young men often chose entrance into the University, even if only for a brief period of study, hoping to succeed eventually at the chin-shih. 41 Career motives aside, life at the National University had much to recommend it, including opportunities to form friendships with the leading thinkers and writers of the day, many of whom would be in office in Peking at any given time. Ho evidently made a mark during his stay. On his departure for Hsin-yang, he was presented with a

——— 39

The entry on Ho in Chu Mu-chieh’s 朱睦榴 (Huang-ch’ao) Chung-chou Jen-wu Chih 皇朝中州人物志 (Account of Personages from the Central Region During the Imperial Dynasty) (1737; repr. Taipei: Hsüeh-sheng, 1970) 13.5b (380), appears to suggest that Ho stayed on at the University until a year before his chin-shih pass in 1502; the basis for this is unknown. 40 See Yang Lien-sheng, “Ming Local Administration,” in Charles O. Hucker, ed. Chinese Government in Ming Times: Seven Studies, p.15 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969). Yang also supplies information on the salaries and ‘perks’ available to such local officials (pp.18-21). Hucker’s magisterial survey chapter “Ming Government” in the Cambridge History of China, vol. 8, pp.9-105, does not entirely replace his concise and accurate account of the Ming dynasty civil service, “Governmental Organization of the Ming Dynasty,” HJAS 21 (1958): 1-66, and the index to it that appeared in HJAS 23 (1960-61): 127-51, both reprinted in Studies of Governmental Institutions in Chinese History, edited by John L. Bishop, pp.57-151, Harvard-Yenching Institute Studies 23, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968. Hucker’s detailed study of one important part of the Ming government, The Censorial System of Ming China, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1966) is also extremely useful, even though it concentrates on periods other than that of Ho Ching-ming. 41 Ping-ti Ho notes that failed chin-shih candidates often entered the University in preference to accepting provincial appointments, Ladder of Success, pp.26-27.

THE PRODIGY

17

poem by the Libationer, Han-lin Academician Lin Han 林瀚 (14341519). This was an unusual mark of honour. 42 Lin had been in the Academy for around ten years by 1499, which would have given him ample experience in judging the abilities of promising young scholars. As in the case of Li Chi, Ho responded by honouring Lin Han as a teacher and his son as a brother. 43 Since the chin-shin examination would not be held again for three years, Ho had nothing to do after his return home except to continue his preparations for it. His brother Ching-shao was appointed Magistrate in Pa-ling 巴陵 (modern Yüeh-yang) in northern Hunan at about this time, having given up his own quest for the chin-shih on his father’s advice. Ching-ming went with him to his post, perhaps in order to continue his studies under his brother’s direction while improving at least indirectly his knowledge of local government institutions. It was probably a highly instructive experience, for Paling had a reputation as a tough place to govern, to the extent that few officials sent there managed to last to the end of their three-year terms. Ho Ching-shao not only completed a first term, he stayed on for a second, not leaving Pa-ling until 1506. We know that Ho Ching-ming was writing poetry in Pa-ling from a reference in a farewell poem that his friend and mentor Li Meng-yang (1473-1530) presented. to Ho in the summer of 1505 (see below, chapter three), but none of his extant early works can be assigned to this stay. 44

———

42 Lin Han, Lin Wen-an Kung Shih-chi 林文安公詩集 (Collected Poems of Mr. Lin the Literate and Calm Gentleman) (1537 edition) 3.4a. For Lin Han (t. Heng-ta 亨大; h. Ch’üan-shan Hsien-sheng 泉山先生), see TL 299, HY 3/146, MS 163.4428, TK 152. Lin later ran afoul of the eunuch Liu Chin, but was rehabilitated and died in favour at a ripe old age (see below, chapter seven). 43 Ho later wrote a poem to Han’s son Lin T’ing-mo 廷模, “Farewell to Vice Prefect Lin Li-cheng, Who is Going to Ch’ao-yang” 送林利正同知之潮陽, HTFC 13.9b (184; 371:028). The poem refers to Han and to a ten-year friendship with T’ingmo, which would probably have begun in 1499, or possibly in 1502. The (Chia-ching) Ch’ao-chou Fu Chih 潮州府志 (Gazetteer of Ch’ao-chou Prefecture), 5.11a, lists Lin as Vice-Prefect in 1514. For Lin T’ing-mo (t. Li-cheng 利正), see HY 3/143, TK 151. 44 For Li Meng-yang; t. Hsien-chi 獻吉; h. K’ung-t’ung-tzu 空同子), see DMB 841 (Chaoying Fang), TL 219, HY 2/235, TK 150. There have been a number of biographical studies of Li Meng-yang, including two chronological biographies. The first of these is the “Chronological Table of Master Li K’ung-t’ung” 李空同先生年表 by Chu An-hsien 朱安形, like Chu Mu-chieh a descendant of Chu Yüan-chang’s fifth son. This is appended to K’ung-t’ung-tzu Chi 空同子集 (Collected Works of Master K’ung-t’ung), edited by Teng Yün-hsiao 鄧雲霄, edition in 66 chüan. The other is

18

CHAPTER ONE

SUCCESS The 1502 chin-shih examination found Ho back in Peking. The Chief Examiner in this year was the calligrapher and poet Wu K’uan 吳寬 (1436-1504). The three topics that Ho had to write on were taken from the Analects and the Mencius: 1) “The Master heard the shao in Ch’i and for three months did not notice the taste of the meat he ate. He said, ‘I never dreamt that the joys of music could reach such heights.’” 2) “Confucius said, ‘There are three things the gentleman should guard against. In youth when the blood and ch’i are still unsettled he should guard against the attraction of feminine beauty. In the prime of life when the blood and ch’i have become unyielding, he should guard against bellicosity. In old age when the blood and ch’i have declined, he should guard against acquisitiveness.’” 3) A passage in Mencius’s discussion of the well-field system. 45 This time Ho’s name was on the list of those who had passed, at the still remarkably early age of nineteen. 46

———

Suzuki Torao 鈴木虎雄, “Ri Bōyō Nempuryaku” 李夢陽年譜略 (Brief Chronology of Li Meng-yang) Geibun 20 (1929): 1-18. Suzuki follows Chu closely, but adds a discussion of Li’s relationship with Wang Yang-ming and some remarks on editions of his works. There is now a popular biography replete with imaginary incidents and conversations: Hsüeh Cheng-ch’ang 薛正昌, Li Meng-yang Ch’üan-chuan 李夢陽全傳 (Complete Biography of Li Meng-yang) (Changchun: Changchun Ch’u-pan-she, 1999). Li Meng-yang’s birth and death dates have been controversial, both because early sources disagree and because recent scholars have not always handled them with care. The best account of this problem, which concludes that the correct dates are 1472-1530, is Wang Kung-wang, “Li Meng-yang Sheng-p’ing Jo-kan Shih-shih te K’ao-so Pien-wu” 李夢陽生平若干史實的考索辨誤 (An Investigation and Correction of Several Historical Facts Concerning Li Meng-yang’s Life), She-k’o Tsung-heng 1996.3:35-37, 41; pp.35-36. For Li Meng-yang and Ho Ching-ming, see Wang Kung-wang 王公望, “Li Meng-yang K’ung-t’ung Chi Jen-ming Chien-cheng. (chih san)” 李夢陽空同集人名箋證之三 (Notes on Personal Names in Li Mengyang’s Collected works of K’ung-t’ung, Pt. 3), Kansu She-hui K’o-hsüeh 1995.5:6770, p.68. 45 See 1) Lun-yü Yin-te 12/7/14; Lau, p.87; cf. Arthur Waley, p.125; 2) Lun-yü Yinte 34/16/7; Lau, p. 140; cf. Waley, pp.205-206; 3) Meng-tzu Yin-te 19/3A/3; Lau, pp.99-100. 46 The final results were announced on April 24. See Kuo-ch’üeh 國榷 (National Assessment), compiled by T’an Ch’ien 談遷 (Peking: Ku-chi, 1958) 44.2783. This was perhaps a good time to be a leading candidate from Honan. James Parsons notes that the time of greatest influence for Honan men in the Ming government came during the Hung-chih reign (1487-1505), when they occupied no less than 24% of the highest posts in the central government, “The Ming Dynasty Bureaucracy—Aspects of Background Forces,” in Hucker, Chinese Government in Ming Times, pp.185-87. In

THE PRODIGY

19

The odds against success in the civil examinations were so high that it is not surprising that the successful candidates regarded themselves with some exhilaration as a breed apart. As Ho himself put it in a poem written years later, in 1516: 憶年二十當弱冠、結交四海皆豪彥 I remember back when I was twenty, barely more than a boy; Making friends from all the world, and every one a genius. 47

Men who passed the chin-shih examination in the same year preserved a tradition of group identification analogous in some ways to that of a Western graduating class, but much stronger, in part because all were destined for the same sort of career and would be encountering one another continually for the rest of their lives. Several of Ho’s fellow graduates of 1502 would be among his closest friends in later years, including two fellow natives of Honan, Wang T’ing-hsiang (14741544), and Ho T’ang 何瑭 (1474-1543), two philosophers who would disagree sharply in later life. Both men were what we would call Confucianists, but Wang developed in a direction that is today regarded as ‘materialist’, 48 while Ho T’ang remained much closer to the orthodox tradition derived from the Ch’eng brothers, Ch’eng Hao

———

general, however, Honan was somewhat underrepresented in the civil service, at least in the higher levels of provincial administration. See Otto Berkelbach van der Sprenkel, “The Geographical Background of the Ming Civil Service,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 4 (1961), pp.302-36, especially pp.308, 311. 47 HTFC 13.18b (193; 371:058). The poem is “The Ballad of Master Li” 李大夫行, which is chiefly concerned with his friend Li Lien; longer extracts are translated below, chapter ten). 48 For Wang T’ing-hsiang (t. Tzu-heng 子衡, Ping-heng 秉衡; h. Chün-ch’uan 浚川), see DMB 1431 (Chaoying Fang), TL 35, HY 2/42, TK 162. Wang’s official career was longer and more successful than those of many of Ho’s friends. He was very active both as a writer on Confucian subjects, including both philosophy in the narrower sense and such subjects as ritual and music, and as a correspondent with others with similar interests. See both his major work, the Shen-yen 慎言 (‘Wellweighed Words’) and the smaller treatises on funeral rites and the like, together with responses to Meng Yang, Ku Lin, and Ho T’ang, to be found in chüan 33-41 of the Wang Shih Chia-ts’ang Chi 王氏家藏集 (Mr. Wang’s Collected Works Stored at Home) (Chia-ching edition; repr. Taipei: Wei-wen, 1976) and in chüan 4 of the Neit’ai Chi 內臺集 (Inner Terrace Collection) (all included both in the Wei-wen reprint of Wang’s works and in the Wang T’ing-hsiang Chi 王廷相集 (Collected Works of Wang T’ing-hsiang) (Peking: Chung-hua, 1989). For Wang’s philosophy, see Chang Woei Ong, “The Principles are Many: Wang Tingxiang and Intellectual Transition in Mid-Ming China,” HJAS 66 (2006): 461-93.

20

CHAPTER ONE

程顥 (1032-85) and Ch’eng Yi 程頤 (1033-1107), and Chu Hsi 朱熹 (1130-1200). 49 At the same time, it is clear from some of Ho Chingming’s poems to him that Ho T’ang also had a serious interest in Taoism. Two other fellow graduates whose friendships with Ho would last for the rest of his life were K’ang Hai 康海 (1475-1541), and Wang Shang-chiung 王尚絅 (1478-1531). Wang was a minor poet, but a close friend. His daughter would be engaged to Ho’s second son Ho Li 立 (b.1515) by the time of Ching-ming’s death in 1521. 50 K’ang Hai had taken top place in the 1502 examination. His future political disgrace and the reputation as playwright and lyric poet to which this would indirectly lead were unforeseen at this time, as was his role in the posthumous collection and first publication of Ho’s work. 51 Of course, just as Ho had failed in his first attempt, many candidates were not successful in 1502. Ho’s friendships with some of them, including Lü Nan 呂柟 (1479-1543), probably date from 1502. Lü entered the National University after his examination failure in 1502, as Ho had done briefly in 1499. 52 Lü had shown himself an extraordinarily assiduous student from early youth. Yang Yi-ch’ing 楊一清 (1454-1530, see below, chapter two), while an official in Lü’s native Shensi, recognised his merit while Lü was still young. Lü would fail the chin-shih examination in 1502 and again in 1505, only

——— 49

For Ho T’ang (t. Ts’ui-fu 粹夫; h. Hsü-chou 虛舟), see DMB 518 (Hok-lam Chan), TL 276, HY 3/264, TK 114. 50 For Wang Shang-chiung (t. Chin-fu 錦夫; h. Ts’ang-ku 蒼谷), see TL 39, HY 2/53, KHL 84.12a (3554—Chu Mu-chieh), TK 163. Chang Chang-fa 張長法 offers an appreciative introduction in his “Wang Shang-chiung chi ch’i Wen-hsüeh Ch’uangtso” 王尚絅及其文學創作 (Wang Shang-chiung and his Literary Creation), Chengchow Ta-hsüeh Hsüeh-pao 1986.4:65-71. Although Wang is not counted a member of any of the literary circles around Ho Ching-ming and Li Meng-yang, he did adopt many of their ideas, particularly Li’s interest in the imitation of T’ang poetry. The early Ch’ing poet Wu Wei-yeh 吳偉業, in referring in a colophon to the high quality of Ho Ching-ming’s poetry, listed Shang-chiung along with Wang T’inghsiang, Ts’ui Hsien, T’ien Ju-tzu, and ‘and others’ as Ho’s followers, cited in LHH 2.22b, quoting Wei’s “Colophon on the Ta-yü Chi by Wang Long of Meng-chin” 題孟津王鑨大愚集. Wang retired to observe mourning for his father in 1503 and returned to office in 1506. For Ho Li, see TK 112. He passed the provincial examination in 1543 and held provincial offices after that. 51 For K’ang Hai (t. Te-han 德涵; h. Tui-shan 對山), see DMB 692 (Tilemann Grimm), TL 500, HY 2/315, TK 133. 52 For Lü Nan (t. Chung-mu 仲木; h. Ching-yeh 涇野), see DMB 1010 (Julia Ching), TL 259, HY 2/299, TK 123.

THE PRODIGY

21

to take top honours in 1508, having spent much of the intervening period in the National University. He was later an energetic teacher of Ch’eng-Chu tao-hsüeh (‘Neo-Confucianism’), one of the few to be important in his day, but he protected less orthodox philosophers, including both his mentor Chan Jo-shui 湛若水 (1466-1560) and Wang Yang-ming, from persecution in spite of his disagreement with their views. Ten days after the examination results were announced, many of the new graduates were assigned to their first official posts. K’ang Hai was made a Compiler in the Han-lin Academy, the prestigious office in charge of literary and historical work at court in which many highranking senior officials, including many Grand Secretaries, began their careers. Wang Shang-chiung also received a substantive appointment, as a Secretary in the Bureau of Operations, Ministry of War. Wang T’ing-hsiang was named a Bachelor, which meant that he would be an observer, gaining experience in government routines until he could be appointed to a position with more specifically defined responsibilities. This was the normal sort of appointment to be received by a new graduate whose standing in the examinations had not been especially high, and Ho might have expected the same. However, he had placed 173rd in the third group, and only 102 members of this, the lowest group, were appointed Bachelors. According to Meng Yang, the reason for Ho’s failure to receive an appointment was that he did not like going about paying social calls on important people. 53 In any

——— 53

See the Hsiao-tsung Shih-lu (Taipei: Chung-yang Yen-chiu Yüan, 1964) 185.7b (3416) for the assignments. According to Li K’ai-hsien, the reason for Ho’s low ranking was that “those in power disliked poets, even were they equal to Tu Fu or Li Po,” Li K’ai-hsien Ch’üan-chi, 10.774. Indeed, the atmosphere in official circles was not entirely friendly to poetry even at this time, when the leading figure at court was Li Tung-yang. Chu An-hsien’s Nien-piao of Li Meng-yang notes that when Li returned to Peking in 1498, his interest in poetry was dismissed with the comment that “even Li [Po] and Tu [Fu] were just drunks.” The same comment, though directed at an unnamed follower of Li Tung-yang rather than specifically at Li Meng-yang, is attributed to Tung-yang’s fellow Grand Secretary Liu Chien 劉健 in Hsieh Chen’s 謝榛 Ssu-ming Shih-hua 四溟詩話 (Remarks on Poetry from the Four Seas), Yi-wen edition 2.9b; Chung-hua edition 2.1170; Ch’üan-pien 3:3149. Lu Shen 陸深 gives a fuller account of Liu’s disdain for poetry in his “Record of Halting the Troika” 停驂錄, Yen-shan Wai-chi 儼山外集 (Outer Collection from Mt. Yen) (SKCS) 14.2b-3a (74). Lu and Hsieh are cited in Ch’ien Chen-min 錢振民, Li Tung-yang Nien-p’u 李東陽年譜 (Chronological Biography of Li Tung-yang), pp.201-02 (Shanghai: Fu-tan University, 1995).

22

CHAPTER ONE

event, it would be almost two years before Ho finally received his first position in the civil service. Ho’s other concern at this time was the celebration of his marriage, to a certain Miss Chang 張氏 of Hsin-yang. Now that his future was promising, if not assured, he returned home to be married and did not come back to Peking until the following year. The very earliest of Ho’s surviving prose works may be a modest essay written shortly after his chin-shih pass and return home to Hsinyang in 1502. The occasion for the piece was a request from one Hsiao Hu 蕭琥, described by Ho as “an acquaintance of my father and elder brothers for some tens of years and of mine for six or seven,” for a ‘studio name’. Hsiao evidently—and rightly—thought that the prestige of Ho’s chin-shih outweighed the disadvantage of his relative youth. Ho praises Hsiao’s pure and unworldly character and gives him the name ‘ancient peak’ (ku-feng 古峰), adding that Ho himself has been dreaming of “ascending by stone steps, canopied by hoary dark leaves and singing lustily where the mists and cloudwrack are deepest.” 54 We do not know more than approximately when Ho wrote his essay for Hsiao Hu, and the same is true of the few other known works and events of this period. The following poem is mostly likely from late in 1503 because it refers to him ‘lodging in retirement’ while his ‘lofty ambition waits’. 友竹買園惟種竹、身與竹為儔。一逕白雲裏、千竿清吹幽。江亭朝對雨、水榭早迎秋。翠袖天寒倚、朱絃日暮愁。風因故人至、月為此君留。逸駕今誰並、前身是子猷。人多嫌寂寞、吾獨慕清修。苦節長如此、虛心不外求。琴樽忘老病、几席共綢繆。歲晚根逾固、霜繁花益稠。山空鷓鴣怨、海闊鳳凰憂。高志寧須待、深棲且自謀。何因孤興發、吹笛上君樓。

——— 54

“Preface for the Presentation to Hsiao Wen-yü of the Studio Name ‘Ancient Peak’” 贈蕭文彧號古峰序, HTFC 35.4a (607; 序:510). Hsiao Hu (t. Wen-yü 文彧, h. Ku-feng) descends to earth with a bump in one of the three other works that Ho addressed to him, celebrating Hsiao’s success in obtaining work as a school teacher, “Saying Farewell to Hsiao Wen-yü, Who is Going to Teach in Lin-ch’uan” 送蕭文彧分教臨川序, HTFC 35.16a (616; 序:518). Another work is a poem inscribed on a painting of Hsiao’s, “A Song of ‘Ancient Peak’s’ Painting of Plums” 古峰畫梅歌, HTFC 12.9a (165; 271:504), YK A.3b. The third is found only in the Yi-kao. I have not collated the YK text of the essays. For Hsiao, see TK 178.

THE PRODIGY

23

Befriending Bamboo 55 I bought a garden and planted only bamboo, Taking bamboo for my companion there. A single path leads into the white clouds; A thousand stems alone in fresh, pure breezes. In a river pavilion, facing the rain in morning; By a water arbour, welcoming autumn early. Kingfisher sleeves draw close as the heavens turn cold; Scarlet strings sorrow as day turns to dusk. A zephyr comes for the sake of familiar friends; The moon lingers on account of these gentlemen. With whom will I pace my idle carriage now? In a former life I must have been Tzu-yu! Many feel uneasy with solitary quiet; I alone admire their pure refinement: Restraint in adversity so constant as theirs, Vacant hearts that seek nothing outside themselves. With zittern and flask I forget old age and illness; By arm-rest and mat we are bound closely together. As the year grows late, they take root more firmly; When frosts are frequent, their blossoms grow more dense. The hills are vacant; partridges complain; The lakes are vast; phoenixes distressed. My lofty ambition will have to wait a while; I lodge in deep retirement and ponder for myself. Whence does it come, this burst of joy in solitude? Playing my flute I climb this pavilion of yours. The sixteenth line is reminiscent of a line in the second of Tu Fu’s “Inscribed on Chang’s Hermitage” 題張氏隱居, “For Chang’s pears we do not seek outside” 張梨不外求. 56 A more remote source, but one more in Ho’s mood is a line in Hsieh Ling-yün’s 謝靈運 “On the Road,

——— 55

HTFC 23.13b (416; 353:001). In the seventh line, the Shen recension reads 柚’pomelo’ in place of 袖 ‘sleeve’, a reading unlikely to be authorial. Liu Hai-han quotes a “Record of the Befriending Bamboo Poem” by someone named Kuo 郭—his personal name is not recorded, LHH 3.16ab. This gives a few rather random biographical notes, quotes all of a poem by Ho addressed to someone, otherwise unidentified, named Juan Shih-lung 阮世隆, HTFC 12.7a (164; 271:032) and then records that “recently those gentlemen in office in Chung-chou (i.e. Honan, Ho’s native province) have eagerly sought Ta-fu’s collected works, the most precious being . . .” [apparently the Bamboo poem was cited in the original at this point]. 56 Tu Shih Yin-te 271/14B/6, CTS 224.2391, K.10910. The pears of one Chang of ‘Big Valley’ were praised in P’an Yüeh’s “Rhapsody on Living in Retirement.” See WH 16.6b (211), Knechtges, 3:153.

24

CHAPTER ONE

I Reminisce About the Mountains” 道路憶山中, “Finding one’s nature is not a matter of seeking outside” 得性非外求. 57 Two lines after this, the poem recalls Wei Ying-wu’s 韋應物 “Sent on Taking Leave of Li Tan” 寄別李儋, “In the past, we were literary officials together; / In all our association, we were bound closely together” 宿昔同文翰、交分共綢繆 . 58 There is another reminiscence of Wei Ying-wu in the penultimate line, in this case of Wei’s “At Shared Virtue Temple After Rain: Sent to Censor Yüan and Erudite Li” 同德寺雨後寄元侍御李博士, “Still and lonely, a burst of joy in solitude” 蕭條孤興發. 59

It is possible to take this poem as being about either Ho’s own residence, as I do, or that of someone he was visiting. The only pronouns in the original are the ‘I’ in line fourteen and the ‘your’ in the last line. The latter might refer to the bamboo. The fourth couplet is an ingenious reworking of the final one from a famous and very different sort of poem, Tu Fu’s “A Fine Lady” 佳人, which describes a beautful woman of high birth who has fallen on hard times after the An Lu-shan Rebellion, “As the heavens turn cold, her kingfisher sleeve are thin; / As day turns to dusk, she keeps to the tall bamboo” 天寒翠袖薄、日暮倚修竹. 60 Tu’s poem is a portrait drawn with great psychological insight. Ho’s use of it here is as a kind of ‘framed quotation’: “these bamboo are so beautiful as to remind one of that heart-breaking poem by Tu Fu whose conclusion I adapt, the better to make sure that you remember it as you read or hear mine.” The fifth and sixth couplets of this poem draw on one of China’s classic ‘bamboo stories’, an anecdote about Wang Hui-chih 王徽之(d.388), whose informal name was Tzu-yu. Making a brief stopover while travelling, he planted bamboo outside his lodging. Asked why, he replied, “I cannot pass a single day without these gentlemen!” 61 The

——— 57

WH 26.30a (368); Lu Ch’in-li, p.1177; Hsieh Ling-yun Chi Chiao-chu 謝靈運集校注 (Collected and Annotated Works of Hsieh Ling-yün), compiled by Ku Shao-po 顧紹柏 (Taipei: Li-jen, 2004), p.277; cf. the translation by J.D. Frodsham in The Murmuring Stream: The Life and Works of the Chinese Nature Poet Hsieh Ling-yün (385-433), Duke of K’ang-lo (Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press, 1967), vol.1, p.153. 58 Wei Ying-wu Chi Chiao-chu 韋應物集校注 (Collected Works of Wei Ying-wu, Collated and Annotated), compiled by T’ao Min 陶敏 and Wang Yu-sheng 王友勝 (Shanghai: Shanghai Ku-chi, 1998) 4.267. 59 Wei Ying-wu Chi Chiao-chu 2.95. 60 Tu Shih Yin-te 77/5/23-24, CTS 218.2287, K.10593. There is a translation and insightful discussion of this poem in David Hawkes, A Little Primer of Tu Fu (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), pp.78-86. We shall return to Tu’s poem in Chapter 3. 61 Tsin Shu 晉書 (History of the Tsin), compiled by Fang Hsüan-ling 房玄齡

THE PRODIGY

25

eighth couplet is built on the physical qualities of bamboo, stiff and resistent joints (節) and a hollow core, taken as metaphor. Just when Ho returned to Peking is also not clear, but the balance of probabilities is that it was in 1503, perhaps late in the spring, perhaps not until autumn. 62 Sometime during this period, and apparently after the return to the capital, Ho’s wife died. We know nothing of her except her surname, Chang. Ho wrote a set of three poems mourning her death, thereby conforming to a tradition extending back at least to the fourth century poet P’an Yüeh 潘岳. 63 悼亡鳴雞報早朝、出戶履晨霜。仰視東方星、三五不成行。念子當此時、燈前理衣裳。恍然失所在、零淚空滂滂。 Mourning the Death of my Wife (second of three poems) 64 A crowing rooster proclaims the break of day; I go out doors and tread the morning frost. Looking up, I gaze at the stars in the east, Here and there, no longer forming lines. I think of you, how at just this hour, Beside the lamp you would be getting dressed. Dazed and dumb I seem to have lost my way, As floods of drenching tears flow vainly down. The sixth line incorporates a reminiscence of a “Fulling Clothing” 擣衣 by Hsiao Yen 蕭衍, who reigned as Emperor Wu of Liang, written in the persona of the wife of a man who is absent, “Soft, soft girls of the same palace, / Help me prepare his clothes” 嫋嫋同宮女、助我理衣裳. 65 The next line may recall Li Po’s 李白 “Farewell to Wei Wan, the Mountain Dweller of Wang-wu, Who is Returning There” 送王屋山人魏萬還王屋, “Faring alone, he loses his way” 獨往失所在. 66

“Here and there,” in the fourth line, translates三五 (literally ‘[by] threes [and] fives’), referring to the last stars visible as the sky lightens.

———

(Peking: Chung-hua, 1974) 80.2103. 62 See below for a discussion of the date. 63 For P’an’s poems, see WH 23.18a (317); Lu Ch’in-li, p.635. Two of the poems are translated by J. D. Frodsham in An Anthology of Chinese Verse: Han Wei Chin and the Northern and Southern Dynasties (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), pp. 86-88. 64 HTFC 9.7b (112; 351:008). 65 YTHY 7.1b (107); Lu Ch’in-li, p.1534; I quote the translation in Birrell, p.182. 66 Ri Haku Kashi Sakuin 0502/04; CTS 175.1788; K.08365; An Ch’i, p.1142. A variant reading in the line, 往往 in place of 恍然, is closer to Ho’s text.

26

CHAPTER ONE

But the expression carries with it strong associations from the ancient Songs, in which it occurs in the lines, “Tiny are those little stars, / Here and there in the east” 嘒彼小星、三五在東, found in a poem traditionally explained as referring to a nobleman’s consorts. 67 The poignant contrast between the conjugal felicity of the Songs passage (Ho ignores, as we should, that the reference is to secondary consorts) and Ho’s bereavement finds expression in his “no longer forming lines.” Finally, sometime in 1504, Ho was duly appointed as a Drafter in the Central Drafting Office (chung-shu she jen 中書舍人), a post he was to hold for many years. 68 In some ways it was not a particularly good one. He was serving in the capital bureaucracy, to be sure, rather than out in provincial obscurity, but Drafters were often appointed from among men like Wang Pien, whose eligibility for appointment was hereditary rather than being based on examination success, and this would have lowered the prestige of the office considerably. 69 Although his was a substantive post, involving the preparation of memorials and other documents for the Grand Secretariat, Ho would lack the sort of immediate responsibility for criticism of government operations that his friend Wang T’ing-hsiang accepted with his appointment as a Supervising Secretary in the Office of Scrutiny for War in the same year, after he submitted a report on frontier defense that he had written while in the Han-lin Academy (their salaries were

——— 67

Mao Shih Yin-te 4/21/1; Karlgren, p.12; Waley, p.108. Meng Yang tells us the year of Ho’s appointment. That this follows his mention of Madame Chang’s death is our only basis for supposing that this was the order of the actual events. The poems, cited above, mourning Ho’s wife’s death come from the Ching-chi, which is made up of works written in Peking (or, in a very few cases, on the road thither). They are found, moreover, in a block of works that antedate 1507. By the winter of 1506, Ho had remarried; in 1505, he was in the far southwest of China. This leaves 1502-04 as possible dates for the poems. If Meng Yang’s sequence is reliable, 1504 is ruled out, since he mentions the year only after recording Madame Chang’s death. The latter event he assigns to either ‘the second year’ or ‘two years’ after the marriage. By elimination we arrive at 1503 as the date of her death—the reading ‘second year’ is thus the right one. There is a thorough account of the various kinds of Drafters in the Ming government in Yen Kuang-wen 顏廣文, “Ming-tai Chung-shu She-jen Chih-tu K’ao-lüeh” 明代中書舍人制度考略 (A Brief Study of the Institution of Secretariat Drafters in the Ming Dynasty), Hua-nan Shih-fan Tahsüeh Hsüeh-pao (1999.6): 107-13. 69 See Hucker, “Governmental Organization,” p.31 (89). 68

THE PRODIGY

27

at the same scale). 70 Sometime after his appointment, he said farewell to a colleague who was leaving the capital. 送陸舍人使吳下柳拂清江畫鷁飛、節旄更喜便南歸。迴風樹裏吹官騎、返照河邊上客衣。北固樓臺秋寺遍、長洲花草故宮非。登臨莫怪多詞賦、吳下才人是陸機。 Saying Farewell to Drafter Lu, Who is Dispatched to Wu-hsia 71 Willows brush the limpid river; painted herons soar, An envoy’s banner happier now, returning to the south. A circling wind among the trees blows past the heralds and escorts; Along the river the light of the setting sun ascends a sojourner’s robe. Pavilions and outlooks on Pei-ku Hill, in all the autumn temples; Blossoms and herbiage on Long Island—old palaces no more. Climbing to look, wonder not to see so many rhapsodic poems; The men of genius in Wu-hsia none other than Lu Chi!

Pei-ku Hill overlooks the Yangtse at Chinkiang, where the Grand Canal meets the river. The old Long Island Garden, near Soochow, was the hunting preserve of the Kings of Wu in ancient times. Lu Chi 陸機 (261-303), a native of the region, was a great poet of the Tsin dynasty. Ho was reminded of his responsibilities and opportunities as Hsin-

———

70 See DMB 1431; Kuo-ch’üeh, 45.2822. The date was November 19, 1504. Ho T’ang received a new appointment as a Han-lin Compiler at the same time. For the importance of Supervising Secretaries, see Hucker, “Governmental Organization,” pp.31, 52 (89, 110), and Censorial System, esp. pp.52-53. 71 HTFC 27.7b (480; 372:101). Drafter Lu is unidentified, but may be the same man as the Drafter Lu, informal name Tzu-yin 子引, who was dismissed from office sometime during the years 1507-11. See “On Hearing that Drafter Lu Tzu-yin has been Dismissed from Office: Also Missing Drafter Hsü Te-chang [Wen-ts’an]” 聞陸舍人子引罷官兼懷徐舍人德章 (HTFC 17.4a [266; 252:504]). For Hsü Wen-ts’an 文燦 (t.Te-chang, h. Tung-fu 東洑), a native of Yi-hsing who was appointed a Drafter by privilege, see KHL 77.7 (3247—Wan Shih-ho 萬士和), TK 140. Pien Kung (see below, chapter two) wrote a farewell poem to a Drafter Lu Tzu-yin. See “Saying Farewell to Lu Tzu-yin” 送陸子引, Pien Hua-ch’üan Chi (Chia-ching edition; repr. Taipei: Wei-wen, 1976) 3.22a (153). In the third line, the Standard recension records a variant found nowhere else, 催 ‘hurries’ in place of 吹 ‘blows’. This reading makes as good sense as the lemma, but is attested nowhere else and probably arose because the two words are near homonyms. The latter fact might even strengthen the case for its being authorial, derived from a manuscript available to Ho’s family at the time the Standard recension was compiled.

28

CHAPTER ONE

yang’s favourite son in the capital by a request received in this year. One Chang Kung 張拱, who had been serving as Magistrate of Hsinyang for seven years—during which period Ho had passed the provincial and metropolitan examinations—was promoted to a ViceDirectorship in the Nanking Ministry of Finance. 72 After he left to take up his new post, the leading people of Hsin-yang rushed material to Ho in the capital, reminded him that he was a native of the place who had been advanced by Chang, and urged him to produce an inscription for carving on a stele to be set up in honour of Chang’s good administration. Ho prepared a laudatory account of Chang and his virtues, not least among which was his attention to the fostering and promotion of local talents. 73 Chang had not only restored the local shrine to Confucius, which had fallen into a state of disrepair, but also established an academy on a historic hillside east of the town. The result of his efforts was a conspicuous increase in the number of local students who succeeded in qualifying for the civil service examinations. As the local gazetteer points out, five Hsin-yang students passed the provincial examinations in each of the competitions held during his tenure, a striking contrast to preceding decades. 74 The new Magistrate replacing Chang was Sun Jung 孫榮, a native of Hua-jung, 華容 in Hukwang, whose son would become a friend and follower of Ho’s a few years later. He took up office in Hsin-yang in 1504, before the request for a memorial of Chang Kung’s service, and Ho wrote a poem for him on his departure from Peking on the Cold Food Festival, March 27, 1504, a “Ballad of Five Horses” 五馬行. 75

——— 72

For Chang Kung (t. Chao-yi 朝儀), see TK 136. “Stele On Thoughts of Mr. Chang’s Departure” 張公去思碑, HTFC 36.1a (619; 雜:503). 74 (Ch’ien-lung) Hsin-yang Chou Chih 6.8b (212). The graduates are listed on pp.7.4ab (233-34). They include Ho Ching-ming, his brother Ching-yang, Tai Yi, Yüan Jung, and Liu Chieh in 1498, and Meng Yang, Ma Lu 馬錄, Hu Tsan 胡瓚, and two other men in 1501. 75 HTFC 13.1b (176; 371:001). ‘Five horses’ refers to the team traditionally associated with a Magistrate. For Sun Jung (t. Mao-jen 懋仁), see (Ch’ien-lung) Hsinyang Chou Chih 6.8b (212), TK 129. Sun was from Hua-jung, in northern Hunan, where he had an estate evoked by Ho in HTFC 33.1a (579; 記:001). The gazetteer of Hua-jung identifies him as a chü-jen of 1483, (Kuang-hsü) Hua-jung Hsien Chih 華容縣志 (Gazetteer of Hua-jung County) (1882; repr. Taipei: Ch’eng-wen, 1975), p.180). It also gives his informal name, Mao-jen, which is the one used in Ho’s references to him. Ho seems to have genuinely admired Sun, since he accepted his son as a student and later contributed two essays to the literary activities connected with Sun’s 73

THE PRODIGY

———

29

departures from Hsin-yang, “Preface to the Poems Saying Farewell to Mr. Sun, Our County Magistrate, Who is Going to the Merit Evaluations” 送郡守孫公考績詩序, HTFC 35.1a (605; 序:003); “Preface Saying Farewell to Sun of Ch’u-chou” 送孫處州序, HTFC 35.14b (615; 序:005).

CHAPTER TWO

THE SOCIETY OF LETTERED MEN A TAINTED MANDATE Ho’s career was now under way in earnest, and with it his participation in the larger worlds of Chinese political and literary history. Henceforth, his life would be inseparable from issues of public importance, and it is necessary, if many of his attitudes and actions are to be properly understood, to offer some account both of the reason why his success in the examinations was so crucial and of the inherently contradictory obligations and opportunities that the evolution of Chinese political culture had placed in his path. The first of these can be dealt with more briefly than the second. As Charles O. Hucker has observed, The examination system had become “the preeminent avenue by which educated young men entered the civil service, and after the early Ming decades few men reached positions of influence in the civil administration without having won examination degrees.” 1 The system had emerged during the T’ang dynasty (618-906) as a way for talented men not of aristocratic birth to enter government service on their own merit. To a limited extent during the T’ang, and generally during the Sung (960-1279), the examinations provided a reasonably equitable and effective means for accomplishing this end. In place of evaluation by his peers on the basis of birth, the candidate for office was tested on intellectual or literary attainments by an ‘objective’ system operating under Imperial sponsorship. 2 Heated debates flourished at times over the merits of

——— 1

See Charles O. Hucker, The Ming Dynasty: Its Origins and Evolving Institutions, Michigan Papers in Chinese Studies 34 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies, 1978), p.49. This work offers an excellent and concise account of Ming history and institutions, with an emphasis on the formative earliest decades. 2 For an acute analysis of the significance of the examination system at the time of its reconstitution by Empress Wu of the T’ang, see R. W. L. Guisso, Wu Tse-t’ien and the Politics of Legitimation in T’ang China, Western Washington University Program in East Asian Studies Occasional Papers 11 (Bellingham: Western Washington University, 1978).

THE SOCIETY OF LETTERED MEN

31

emphasizing ‘practical’, as opposed to literary, content in the questions put, but direct interference with examination results by the court, if not unknown, was not systematic. The successful graduate thus carried with him, whatever the course of his later career, the prestige of having succeeded by his own efforts in a difficult and equitably judged test of ability. 3 But the Mongol conquest of China during the thirteenth century had first challenged and then fundamentally altered the role of the examinations. Initially, the Mongol Yüan dynasty had simply abolished the examinations, preferring to attempt the administration of China as much as possible by non-Chinese. The examinations were reinstituted by the Mongols themselves as early as 1313. But they reappeared in a form that differed in two significant ways from that followed during the Sung dynasty. In the first place, there were quotas that put Chinese, and particularly southern Chinese, at a severe disadvantage. Secondly, the emphasis of the examinations was changed from literary composition, as under the Sung, to a limited body of Confucian texts, together with a similarly limited corpus of commentaries on them based on the tao-hsueh tradition founded chiefly by the Ch’eng brothers, Ch’eng Hao and Ch’eng Yi, and Chu Hsi. 4 Except that under the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) the quotas would be applied according to provincial residence—still to the detriment of southerners—rather than along ethnic lines and literary composition was entirely dropped, these two innovations were inherited from the Yüan and continued to be fundamental to the examination system during the rest of the dynasty, and by extension, to its educational institutions and, to a considerable extent, its intellectual life as well. 5 Thus, the Ch’eng-Chu philosophy, which in

——— 3

For a concise account of Sung debates over the examination curriculum, see Benjamin A. Elman, A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000), pp.12-19, 25-29. 4 For the reemergence of ‘Confucian’ institutions under the Mongols, see John W. Dardess, Conquerors and Confucians: Aspects of Political Change in Late Yüan China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1973), but note the dissatisfaction with Dardess’s use of the term ‘Confucian’ expressed by Elizabeth Endicott-West in her review of the book, Ming Studies 9 (1979), pp.37-40. Benjamin Elman, in his discussion of the examination curriculum, points out that literary composition was not dropped entirely, as Dardess suggests, but rather reduced in importance; see Cultural History, pp.29-35. 5 For the Ming regional quotas, see Hucker, The Ming Dynasty, pp.49-50, and

32

CHAPTER TWO

the Sung had represented a system of Neo-Confucian thought that was both an intellectual achievement of the highest order and a challenge to contemporary intellectual and political trends, had by the midfifteenth century become a heavily supported orthodoxy. This had happened in several stages, the adoption by the Mongols of Ch’engChu commentaries on a limited number of Classics as the basis for the civil service examinations being only one of these. The founding of the Ming led to others. Like many other famous dates, 1368, the year in which the Ming dynasty was established, is of very ambiguous significance. To a superficial view, it might appear to mean above all the liberation of the Chinese people after approximately a century of rule by the Mongol descendants of Genghis Khan and his followers, a rule distinguished, especially in its early years, by savage repression and the contempt of the conquerors for the Chinese and their civilization. 6 Almost as much significance may be attached to the date as marking the point at which Chu Yüan-chang, a barely literate man approaching forty, born a peasant and previously a beggar and a Buddhist monk, made his successful claim to the imperial throne after years of warfare against both the Mongols and rival warlords. But both of these events, the end of Mongol rule and the personal triumph of Chu Yüan-chang, though marking genuine change, had been many years in the making, and it was those years that formed their significance. First disrupted by the outbreak of widespread rebellions initiated by the sectarian Red Turbans in 1351, Mongol rule in southern China had never been entirely reestablished, and had been dealt a death-blow by the politically-motivated removal of the able commander Toghto (Chinese T’o-t’o 脫脫) on the eve of apparently certain victory over the rebels in 1354. All the same, the Mongols were to remain a serious threat to Chinese power for much of the Ming period. Chu Yüan-chang had been methodically building up the area under his control since his capture of Nanking in 1356. His extension of personal power, geographically and institutionally, would continue

———

Elman,Cultural History, pp.88-97. For the significance of the final elimination of literary composition, see Elman, pp.37-38. 6 The Mongols established their control of northern China in 1234; in the south, not until 1279.

THE SOCIETY OF LETTERED MEN

33

virtually until his death in 1398. Perhaps the most important single step in this process was the placing of the top levels of all branches of the government directly under the Emperor’s control in 1380. 7 The year 1368 can be said to mark, then, not necessarily an end or a beginning, but certainly a significant transitional point. But if this is so in a political or military sense, what are we to say of 1368 from the standpoint of cultural history? Did the reestablishment of Chinese sovereignty mean a simultaneous restoration of Confucian principles in government, bringing with it a renewal of interest in Confucian thought in general? The answer is yes, but it is a complex ‘yes’, one with ramifications for the future of intellectual and literary life down to the time of Ho Ching-ming and beyond. Chu Yüan-chang took his role as Emperor with the greatest seriousness, but his position with respect to the Confucian tradition was ambivalent. As a Chinese emperor, he was by definition the ruler of a ‘Confucian’ state, and he accepted with a profound sense of responsibility the obligations that the position entailed. Illiterate peasant that he had been, he was to be the moral examplar and teacher of the civilised world, the final arbiter of public values. At the same time, he brought to his new role a profoundly pessimistic view of human nature. 8 There were antecedants for this within the Confucian tradition, but it had not been the dominant strain in Confucian thinking. It was the Confucian philosopher associated with the assertion of goodness as innate in human beings, Mencius, whom Chu Yüanchang found it hardest to accomodate within his system, eventually feeling forced to expunge certain passages from the Mencius in order to ‘sanitise’ it for educational purposes. 9 Given his distrust of human nature and his need for a large body of educated personnel to man his administration, it is not surprising that Chu’s reign was marked by continual intervention in the educational and selection processes. Although his policies were very influential in setting the tone of the examination system for the rest of the Ming

——— 7

See Hucker, The Ming Dynasty, p.41. For the way in which Ming ideology was formed by Chu Yüan-chang and his “Confucian” advisors, see John Dardess, Confucianism and Autocracy: Professional Elites in the Founding of the Ming Dynasty (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983). 9 For Chu Yüan-chang’s difficulties with the Mencius and the consequent difficulties some literati had with him, see Elman, Cultural History, pp.78-88. 8

34

CHAPTER TWO

dynasty, Chu himself was highly suspicious of the process and was so dissatisfied with the graduates of the first chin-shih test held during his reign, in 1371, that he suspended the metropolitan examinations until 1385. The long-term structural solution seems, in hindsight, almost inevitable: the adoption on a permanent basis of the simplified curriculum based on the one introduced during the Mongol regime. Underlying the change in content lay a change in the significance of the examinations for those who took them. Now, one not only proved intellectual and literary ability by an examination success, but also ideological conformity as well, at least if one was prudent. 10 . The legacy of Chu Yüan-chang included a strong and efficient state, but its basis was, in the words of Charles Hucker, “a distinctive style of rule that modern students have come to call Ming despotism. It provided a capriciously absolutist pattern for Chinese government into our own time.” 11 Elements of it came from the Mongol period, or even earlier, but as a coherent style of government, it was Chu’s creation. 12 Perhaps it even made unavoidable those events of the first years after his death that confirmed its hold on the Chinese polity and ushered in the most barren century of Chinese cultural history since its earliest beginnings. Suspicious of his generals and officials, Chu Yüan-chang had had no one to whom he could entrust the security of his dynasty except his sons. He sent all but the eldest, Chu Piao 朱標, whom he kept in the capital to be trained as his successor, out to provincial strongholds, where they were given a great deal of power and responsibility, especially for frontier defence. Chu Piao died in 1392, and, after some hesitation, Chu Yüan-chang chose as his heir Piao’s eldest living son, Chu Yün-wen 朱允炆, then a youth of fourteen. When Chu Yün-wen succeeded to the throne in 1398, he faced the difficult task of

———

10 Elman argues that the examination system functioned as a kind of symbiotic relationship from which both court and gentry benefitted, but within which their competing interests sometimes emerged openly, as when examiners set questions, or candidates submitted answers, that implied criticism of examination policy of the orthodox interpretations of the Classics. See, for example, Cultural History, pp.41115. 11 Hucker, The Ming Dynasty, p.3. 12 For an excellent account of the creation of Ming institutions, see Edward L. Farmer, Zhu Yuanzhang and Early Ming Legislation: The Reordering of Chinese Society Following the Era of Mongol Rule, Sinica Leidensia 34 (Leiden: E.J.Brill, 1995). Farmer includes translations of the four fundamental Ming codes.

THE SOCIETY OF LETTERED MEN

35

maintaining control over a number of uncles, all of them much older and more experienced than he and in possession of considerable military power. His determined efforts to bring them under control led to the rebellion of the oldest and most powerful among them, Chu Ti 朱棣 (1360-1424), who succeeded first in fending off attempts to suppress his uprising, based in what is now Peking, and then in marching south, capturing Nanking, and usurping the throne, which he held under the reign title Yung-lo 永樂 (“Eternal Joy”) from 1402 until his death and then passed on to his descendants. His success was not without its associated costs. After his forces had taken Nanking, Chu Ti ordered Fang Hsiao-ju 方孝孺, a leading advisor to the newly deposed young Emperor, to compose a text expressing loyalty to Chu Ti. Fang stubbornly refused, calling Chu a usurper to his face, and was executed, along with almost a thousand of his friends and relatives, for his resistance. 13 Chu Ti was an efficient ruler, and the Yung-lo period was in many ways a stable and prosperous one. But the act of usurpation and the ferocity with which Chu Ti had extirpated all signs of loyalty to Chu Yün-wen naturally gave rise to deep misgivings among educated men, for young and perhaps incompetent as Chu Yün-wen might have been, he had been the legitimate ruler and moreover one who had shown himself seriously devoted to Confucian principles in government. Chu Ti might accomplish every manner of practical improvement in the state of the Empire and still not expunge the consciousness of this. Perhaps because of this combination of actual power with the insecurity of illegitimate rule, Chu Ti worked very hard at establishing not only stability but also consolidation and even expansion. It was he, for example, who sent the celebrated eunuch Cheng Ho 鄭和 on his seven voyages of exploration, which reached the east coast of Africa a century before Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope. 14 He was also responsible for ordering the compilation of the largest written

———

13 Elman gives a chilling account of this event, complete with a translation of Fang’s confrontation with Chu Ti, as well as of the similar case of Lien Tzu-ning 練子寧; see Cultural History, pp.97-100. 14 Edward L. Dreyer’s review of the much ballyhooed book by Gavin Menzies, 1421: the Year That China discovered the World, not only demolishes the claim that Cheng Ho’s destinations included North America, chiefly on the ground that the ships at Cheng’s disposal could not possibly have made a Pacific crossing, but also puts the real voyages in much needed perspective. See Ming Studies 50 (2004): 131-38.

36

CHAPTER TWO

work ever assembled by human hands under a single title, the Yung-lo Ta-tien 永樂大典 , a classified digest that set out to encompass virtually the entire corpus of writings produced by Chinese civilization, divided up and arranged under a single outline. The editing of this colossal work, complete in over 22,000 chapters, provided work for a large number of unemployed intellectuals and may have helped to assuage their misgivings about his rule, as well as keeping them under surveillance. Two other compendia, ideologically less neutral but similarly reassuring to the literati, and incidentally strongly definitive of orthodoxy, were completed in 1415. These were the Wu-ching Ssu-shu Ta-ch’üan 五經四書大全 and the Hsing-li Tach’üan 性理大全, the former being a collection of commentaries on the Confucian Classics and the latter a digest of tao-hsüeh philosophy. These two works eventually became central to the curriculum required of all civil service examination candidates and exerted a deadening effect on innovation among the career-minded. Chu Ti was continuing a project begun by his father, that of codifying all manner of standards of interest to the state. Chu Yüanchang had, for example, sponsored the compilation of works as dissimilar as a new legal code, the Ta Ming Lü 大明律, and a standard work on pronunciation, the Hung-wu Cheng-yün 洪武正韻, and had also taken an active part—much too active in the eyes of some of his officials—in determining state ritual practices. As Theodore de Bary has remarked, “There had always been discrepencies between Confucian ideals and Chinese dynastic practice, but now with tao-hsüeh teaching so identified with the ruler, it too could become contaminated by his actions and implicated in his crimes.” 15 Moreover, by the end of the century, the infamous ‘eightlegged essay’ (pa-ku wen 八股文) had become the required form for examination answers. 16 The formal difficulties of this style of writing,

———

15 Theodore De Bary, Neo-Confucian Orthodoxy and the Learning of the Mindand-Heart (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), p.169. 16 For discussions of the “Eight-legged Essay,” see Sung P’ei-wei 宋佩韋, Ming Wen-hsüeh Shih 明文學史 (History of Ming Literature) (Shanghai: Shang-wu, 1934), chapter 6; Chu Tzu-tsui (Tchou Tse Tsoei) 朱滋萃, “Pa-ku-wen Yen-chiu” 八股文研究 (Study of the Eight-legged Essay) Chung-Fa Ta-hsüeh Yüeh-k’an 7.1 (1935): 1-35; and Ch’en Te-yün 陳德芸, “Pa-ku Wen-hsüeh” 八股文學 (Study of the Eight-legged Essay), Ling-nan Hsüeh-pao 6.4 (1941):17-49. There is a brief, but provocative, note on pa-ku wen in Ch’ien Chung-shu’s 錢鍾書 T’an-yi Lu 談藝錄 (Record of Remarks on the Arts) (Revised Edition Peking: Chung-hua, 1984), pp. 32-33. Ch’ien makes a

THE SOCIETY OF LETTERED MEN

37

the necessity not to deviate from the prescribed interpretations of the Classics, and the assumption that the vast majority of candidates would not succeed led in the course of the dynasty to increasing cynicism in preparation and bitterness in failure, and even to dissatisfaction—among serious thinkers—with success. The effect of these events and developments was to split the Ch’eng-Chu tradition into two very different streams. On the one hand, men whose aspirations were essentially careerist in nature concentrated on mastering the prescribed curriculum, developing what Ho Ching-ming would later refer to, and with undisguised exasperation, as ‘career capital’. On the other, as Wing-tsit Chan puts it, “creative and selfrespecting scholars refused to wear this jacket, shunned the civil service examinations, and sought independence and freedom in moral cultivation.” 17 A crucial example of the latter course was Wu Yü-pi 吳與弼 (1392-1469), who can be seen as the real founder of Ming tao-hsüeh. While studying the Classics and Sung Neo-Confucians in preparation for the official examinations, the young Wu came to the realization that serving a usurper was incompatible with Confucian principles. He thereupon announced, to the horror of his father, who had been among the first officials in Nanking to accept the legitimacy of Chu Ti’s rule, that he would not participate in the examinations. Eventually he withdrew to the countryside of his native Kiangsi, where he lived as a commoner, studying and teaching. 18 In a way Wu’s withdrawal was analogous to the reaction of Sung thinkers, including Chu Hsi himself, to the failure of Confucian political reform in the last decades of the Northern Sung. In each case

———

breathtakingly large claim for the value of the best of these essays and sketches the historical antecedants of their form. For Chien, see Theodore Huters, Qian Zhongshu (Boston: Twayne, 1982), pp. 37-69. For a thorough treatment of the formal features of pa-ku-wen, see Cheng Pang-chen 鄭邦鎮, “Ming-tai Ch’ien-ch’i Pa-ku-wen Hsingkou Yen-chiu” 明代前期八股文形構研究 (Study of the Structure of Eight-legged Essays in the Early Ming) (Ph.D. dissertation, Taiwan National University, 1987). Benjamijn Elman offers an excellent short account of the origins, structure, andcultural significance of the ‘eight-legged’ essay in Cultural History, pp.380-99. He locates the origin of the form in the examination essays of Wang Ao 王鏊 (for whom, see below, chapter four), and translates two examples with commentary. 17 Wing-tsit Chan, “The Ch’eng-Chu School of Early Ming,” in Wm. Theodore de Bary, ed. Self and Society in Ming Thought, p. 45 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970). 18 See DMB, pp. 1497-1501.

38

CHAPTER TWO

the result was a search for new directions in the development of Confucian thought, directions that led toward greater reflection on the place of the individual. In the Ming this trend developed as an interest in the role of the human mind. This was a question that had not played a major part in the thought of Chu Hsi. By the same token, some problems that had been of great importance to Chu were generally ignored by the independent Confucian thinkers of the fifteenth century, even by those, such as Ts’ao Tuan 曹端 (1378-1434) and Hsüeh Hsüan 薛瑄 (1392-1464), who thought of themselves as orthodox followers of the Ch’eng-Chu tradition. By others, the new concerns were frankly recognised as innovations, and we can see them as leading toward the philosophy of Wang Yang-ming. China was ready for stability as the fifteenth century opened, and stability is what Chu Ti promised and delivered. The emperors who followed him were by no means as determined or as competent, and there was to be a century’s full share of political imbroglios and alarms, and one serious military defeat and consequent succession crisis in 1449 (see below), but there is no century in Chinese history between the eleventh and the eighteenth as little troubled by major upheavals. The world into which Ho had grown up was thus one of relative peace and stability, whatever its inequities or internal contradictions. This peace and stability depended to a great extent on one class of men, the civil service, which Ho was now qualified to enter. THE LOW MING It is clear that soon after his chin-shih success, if not before, Ho Ching-ming was recognised as a promising poetic talent within the leading literary circles in Peking. Both because this recognition was crucial to his future career and because the nature of these circles and Ho’s relationship to them has been misunderstood in the past, we shall pause here to consider the literary milieu into which he emerged. To begin, however, some understanding of the literary world at the beginning of the sixteenth century is appropriate at this point, for it should help to explain the consuming interest in literature that these men had. The preceding century or so, from the early years of the Ming to

THE SOCIETY OF LETTERED MEN

39

about 1480, marks one of the low points in Chinese literary history. It is common for the first decades of a major Chinese dynasty to produce relatively little of interest in the way of literature. The most recent example is a very striking one. Whether or not there were any writers of the very first rank active in China in 1949 is perhaps debatable. The real point, and one often remarked, is that even those writers who were both well established in the literary world and in favour with the new regime published little or nothing of real importance after that year. The tendency in the West has been to interpret this as a consequence of totalitarian political control of the arts or of cynical accomodation on the part of writers, and it is clear that these were often the case at the level of the individual writer. But in fact, like so much in contemporary China, the phenomenon as a whole is consistent with earlier cases and this for broadly cultural reasons that far predate our century and the meddling with literature by such influential amateurs as Karl Marx and Mao Tse-tung. The role of writers has always been so deeply engaged with the political realm in China that the successful founding of a new dynasty has always drained the energies of the literate community much more seriously, and for a longer time, than would ever be the case during an equivalent political revolution in the West. Writers go on writing, of course, but they also devote enormous amounts of time to organising, administering, advising, and reconstructing and, as a consequence, there is rarely anything in the way of a new direction taken until the new regime has been in place for decades. The T’ang dynasty was established in 618, but new developments in literature and first-rank poets are not importantly evident until almost a century later. The Sung, founded in 960, produces, even by the most generous estimate, only one poet of any importance, Wang Yü-ch’eng 王禹偁 (9541001), early in its history, and the real flowering of Sung literature has to wait until the middle of the eleventh century. The Ch’ing dynasty could be considered in some ways an exception, but the Ming certainly is not, although Kao Ch’i 高啟, reckoned by common consent its greatest poet, died in its seventh year (1374). The point is rather that no new writers of real eminence appeared after the founding of the Ming, though certainly great volumes of both poetry and prose continued to be produced. Kao Ch’i

40

CHAPTER TWO

was brutally executed on the orders of Chu Yüan-chang and on the flimsiest of grounds. 19 Liu Chi 劉基 (1311-75), often accorded second place after Kao, survived only by virtue of great services rendered to Chu, beginning long before 1368. Ho Ching-ming’s own favourite among writers of the period, Yüan K’ai 袁凱 (see below, chapter five), feigned madness to escape court service after inadvertently arousing Chu’s anger. And indeed it is hard to escape the conclusion that at least part of the blame for the dearth of important writing during the last decades of the fourteenth century lies with the increasingly suspicious, intolerant, and vicious Emperor. His repeated murderous purges, whose victims ranged from men who had served him loyally for decades to those who were accidentally implicated on account of innocent and temporary associations long past, took thousands of lives, especially in the later years of his reign. 20 Added to these were the additional purges attendant on the usurpation by his son Chu Ti. Chu Yüan-chang eventually acquired some degree of expertise in orthodox learning, sought not so much for its own sake as as a defence against the pretensions of scholars. His respect for learning and contempt for the learned, a combination not unknown today, may have been brought with him from his peasant background. Geography may also have played a role—he was from a culturally rather backward area, while his most serious rival had controlled the genteel lower Yangtse delta and had cultivated its men of letters. In any event, Chu’s distrust of scholars and poets made life in his service, or writing outside of it, a dangerous affair. By the end of his reign, serious interest in poetry was associated more with provincial centres than with the metropolitan administration and its officials. Some of these provincial schools made important contributions, at least in the long run.

———

19 See F. W. Mote, The Poet Kao Ch’i, 1336-1374 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962) for a detailed account not only of Kao’s life, but also of the rise of Chu Yüan-chang and its significance for Chinese literature during the Ming. 20 See, inter alia, the biographies of Sung Lien 宋濂 and Yeh Po-chü 葉伯巨 (d.1376-77) in DMB, pp.1225-31, 1572-76. Note that some of the more outrageous anecdotes concerning his persecution of the literati have been discounted after careful examination; see Ch’en Hsüeh-lin [Chan Hok-lam] 陳學霖, “Hsü Yi-k’ui Hsing-ssu Pien-wu chien Lun Ming-ch’u Wen-tzu-yü Shih-liao” 徐一夔刑死辨誣兼論明初文字獄史料 (Correcting Errors Concerning the Execution of Hsü Yi-k’ui and Discussing the Sources for the Literary Persecutions of the Early Ming), Journal of Oriental Studies 15 (1978): 77-84; English abstract, pp.46-47.

THE SOCIETY OF LETTERED MEN

41

If the decades of Chu Yüan-chang’s reign had been culturally devastating, the century to follow was the closest thing to a wasteland that imperial China can show. Art, letters, and thought all enter the doldrums during this period. Certainly there is no comparable period in all of Chinese literary history so devoid of important writers as the years ca. 1390-1480. Even vernacular literature, which had flourished under the Mongols, seems to have vegetated at this time. 21 The aspect of fifteenth century Chinese civilisation that has been best studied hitherto is painting. Even so, in his book on painting in the early and middle Ming, James Cahill comments that, “the interval of nearly a century from the destruction of Soochow artistic circles in the 1370’s until the maturity of the first great Wu 吳 school master of the Ming, Shen Chou 沈周 (1427-1509), around 1470, represents a hiatus not only in the local development but also in the whole course of literati painting.” 22 His discussion of this period is organised around two main poles, the Che 浙 school, whose leading representative was Tai Chin 戴進 (1388-1462), and the Wu school of Shen Chou and his predecessors. In fact, aside from the gap in creative activity, at least among those whom later historians and critics would see as part of the ‘literati’ tradition, there is little in the history of painting during this period that can be seen as strictly parallel to literary history, so we shall simply note a few points of interest in a more general way. The first of these is that the gap itself seems to have different causes. Painting depends to a certain extent on patronage, at least in the broad sense of a receptive audience. This was largely lacking in the fifteenth century because the court, on the one hand, took little real interest in art, and because the prosperity of such southern centres as Nanking and Soochow was not what it had been or would become— Nanking ceased to be the capital early in the century, and Soochow

——— 21

For perceptive comments to this effect, see Andrew Plaks, “Shui-hu Chuan and the Sixteenth Century Novel Form: An Interpretive Reappraisal,” CLEAR 2 (1980): 5-6, note 7, and Wilt Idema, “The Wen-ching Yüan-yang Hui and the Chia-men of Yüan-Ming Ch’uan-ch’i,” TP 67 (1981): 106. The exception, a grandson of Chu Yüan-chang named Chou Yu-tun 朱有燉 (1379-1439), is too exceptional for generalisation. See Wilt Idema, The Dramatic Oeuvre of Chu Yu-tun (1379-1439) (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1985). 22 James Cahill, Parting at the Shore: Chinese Painting of the Early and Middle Ming Dynasty 1368-1580 (New York: Weatherhill, 1978), p. 57.

42

CHAPTER TWO

was slow to recover from the damage inflicted during the late Yüan and the reign of Chu Yüan-chang. In literature, by contrast, patronage of a sort was more readily forthcoming. As we shall see shortly, the dominant styles in both poetry and prose were associated chiefly with figures who held high rank at court. What patronage there was for painting was more openly commercial, at least in the South, and indeed the stigma attached to the Che school, at least by such late Ming critics as Tung Ch’i-ch’ang 董其昌 (1555-1636), was that it was a school of artisan painters, good craftsmen to be sure, who turned out decorative works intended for sale, rather than freely following their own ideals as cultivated amateurs for the enjoyment of high-minded friends. It is worth repeating, at least as a reminder that the century has been misunderstood as well as insufficiently studied, that this disdain was not the case at first. Indeed, Lu Shen 陸深 (1477-1543), a friend and colleague of Ho Ching-ming, praised Tai Chin, as did the great Archaist writer of the mid-sixteenth century Wang Shih-chen 王世貞 (1526-90). 23 In literature the wasteland is more obviously inhabited only by mediocrity, and it is to literature that we turn next. The dominant style in poetry and prose throughout this period is now usually referred to as the Secretariat Style (臺閣體 t’ai-ko-t’i), because officials in the Han-lin Academy, including several Grand Secretaries, were associated with its creation and dominance. This style is usually characterised as one of bland simplicity, especially as compared with the High T’ang styles favoured by Ho Ching-ming and his associates, but in fact the picture is somewhat more complex. 24 As Chien Chin-

——— 23

Cahill, Parting at the Shore, p. 52. It should be pointed out that for this period the central Chinese literary tradition, shih poetry, remains very little explored. For the fifteenth century in particular, we lacked until quite recently even a reliable survey. At most there were short sections in two detailed histories of orthodox literature during the Ming and the brief prefatory comments attached to a large anthology of Ming poetry (MSCS) compiled early in this century. For the former, see Sung P’ei-wei, Ming Wen-hsüeh Shih, esp. pp.57-80, Li Yüeh-kang 李曰剛, Chung-kuo Wen-hsüeh Liu-pien Shih, Shih-ko Pien 中國文學流變史、詩歌編 (History of the Evolution of Chinese Literature, Poetry) (Taipei: Lien-kuan, 1976) 3:221-66, and MSCS pp.591, 607-608, 945. Sung and Li are by far more detailed than MSCS, but still quite sketchy and given to traditional evaluations rather than independent research and judgement. For a preliminary survey of what appear to be some of the more interesting aspects and issues of the period, see Daniel Bryant, “Chinese Poetry and Poetics During the Low Ming (1390-1480),” (Abstract in 24

THE SOCIETY OF LETTERED MEN

43

sung has argued, the Academy was staffed by men of broad learning who had excelled in the chin-shih examinations, and the essence of the Secretariat style was resistence to the vulgarity of literature written by ordinary officials of lesser educational and literary attainments. 25 This was no doubt due at least in part to the absence of literary composition from the examination curriculum, as well as to the relative rarity of chin-shih graduates among the civil officials during this period. The representative poets of the Secretariat Style were men born between 1365 and 1380 and active up to about the middle of the fifteenth century. 26 Theirs was the generation that came to maturity just at the end of Chu Yüan-chang’s reign, weathered the storms of the brief reign of Chu Yün-wen and the usurpation of Chu Ti, and dominated political and cultural life until—to choose the most useful of various possible dates—1449, the year of a serious defeat of a Ming army and the capture of the reigning emperor at its head by the Mongols at T’u-mu 土木. The longevity in power of these men was in part a result of the usurpation. Chu Ti tended to choose his advisors from among men, mostly younger, who were not associated with his predecessors, while his successors maintained considerable continuity in administration, so that those who rose quickly to prominence early in the century tended to remain there for several decades. 27

———

Proceedings of the Thirty-first International Congress of Human Sciences in Asia and North Africa (Tokyo: The Tōhō Gakkai, 1984), pp.521-22. The publication of Chien Chin-sung 簡錦松, Ming-tai Wen-hsüeh P’i-p’ing Yen-chiu 明代文學批評研究 (A Study of Ming Dynasty Literary Criticism) (Taipei: Hsüeh-sheng, 1989), and Ch’en Shu-lu 陳書錄, Ming-tai Shih-wen Yen-pien Shih 明代詩文演變史 (Evolution of Ming Dynasty Poetry and Prose) (Nanking: Kiangsu Chiao-yü, 1996) marked a significant advance. 25 See Chien Chin-sung, Ming-tai Wen-hsüeh P’i-p’ing, pp.21-36. 26 There are, for example, the seven poets listed by Sung P’ei-wei, pp.57-62. The following table summarises some information about them: names dates chin-shih DMB TL 1. Chin Yu-tzu 金幼孜 (1368-1431) 1400 – 306 2. Chou Shu 周述 (d. 1436) 1404 – 323 3. Huang Huai 黃淮 (1367-1449) 1397 665 656 4. Wang Chih 王直 (1379-1462) 1404 1358 37 5. Yang Jung 楊榮 (1371-1440) 1400 1519 714 6. Yang P’u 楊溥 (1372-1446) 1400 [1537] 711 7. Yang Shih-ch’i 楊士奇 (1365-1444) – 1535 696 27 The most detailed and insightful treatment of the Secretariat Style is in Chien

44

CHAPTER TWO

The most celebrated among these men, and the recognised representatives, even creators, of the t’ai-ko-t’i were the ‘Three Yangs’: Yang Shih-ch’i, Yang Jung, and Yang P’u. Of the three, Shihch’i is the best known, though generally disparaged, as a poet. An example of his work is this poem: 漢江夜泛泛舟入玄夜、奄忽越江干。員景頹西林、列宿燦以繁。凝霜飛水裔、回飆蕩微瀾。孤鴻從北來、哀鳴出雲間。時遷物屢變、游子殊未還。短褐不掩脛、歲暮多苦寒。悠悠念行邁、慊慊懷所歡。豈不固時命、苦辛誠獨難。感彼式微詩、喟然興長嘆。 Yang Shih-ch’i: Drifting at Night on the Han River 28 My drifting boat enters the mysterious night, Suddenly crossing beyond the river’s edge. The circling luminary falls to the Western Grove; The serried constellations glimmer in their multitudes. Congealing frost flies at the water’s brink; A circling whirlwind stirs the gentle ripples. A solitary goose comes from the north; Its grieving cries emerge among the clouds. As seasons shift, the world is in constant flux; This wanderer has still not come back home. My short robe does not reach my calves; At year’s end I suffer much from cold. Far, far away, I muse on my journey’s course; Unfulfilled, I long for what I love. How could this not be the lot of the times; My bitterness is truly the hardship of solitude. I am moved by that song on ‘Oh, to Return!’ And groaning aloud, I heave a long sigh.

In addition to the three Yangs, other writers have been linked to the Secretariat Style. The most important of these is probably Wang Chih, who also served for long periods in high office. The following is a

———

Chin-sung, Ming-tai Wen-hsüeh P’i-p’ing Yen-chiu, pp.19-83. 28 Yang Shih-ch’i, Tung-li Shih-chi 東里詩集 (Collected Poems from the Eastern Ward) (SKCS), 1.8b (304); see also Shen Te-ch’ien 沈德潛, Ming Shih Pieh-tsai Chi 明詩別裁集 (Separate Collection of Ming Poems) (Shanghai: Shanghai Ku-chi, 1979) 3.59. Ch’ien Ch’ien-yi 錢謙益 (1582-1664) remarks aptly of Yang’s poetry, “One can discern in it the manner of a Chief Minister in a time of peace, but if one is judging on the basis of literary values, it comes last,” Lieh-ch’ao Shih-chi Hsiao-chuan 列朝詩集小傳 (Short Biographies from the Collected Poems from Successive Reigns) (Peking: Chung-hua, 1959), p. 102.

THE SOCIETY OF LETTERED MEN

45

representative example of his work: 月下對酒萬里浮雲盡、孤城畫角殘。月從今夜滿、人在異鄉看。隱隱關山遠、凄凄風露寒。客愁難為減、應賴酒杯寬。 Wang Chih: Drinking in the Moonlight 29 Over thousands of miles the drifting clouds are gone; In a lonely city, painted shawms fade away. The moon has reached its full tonight I see it from an unfamiliar land. Dark, dark, the high mountains far away; Chill, chill, the wind and dew so cold. For a sojourner’s sorrow, hard to find a cure; Best to rely on the breadth of a wine cup!

The writer generally given credit for rising up against the Secretariat Style and ending its dominance is Li Tung-yang, who came of very humble stock but had passed the chin-shih examination in 1463 while still a teenager and had come to be the leading political and literary figure of his day by the time Ho Ching-ming appeared in Peking. 30 . His relationship to the Secretariat Style is probably overdue for reevaluation. For one thing, it appears that Li Tung-yang did not use the term t’ai-ko-t’i to characterise the work of Ming writers. For him, the term was a much more general one referring to writings by high officials of any period (e.g. Po Chü-yi 白居易). 31 His evaluation of Yang Shih-ch’i was not unfavourable; he noted that Yang emulated Tu Fu’s poetry and thought he wasn’t bad at it. 32 And indeed, a

——— 29

Cited from MST 18A.12a. For Li Tung-yang (t. Pin-chih 賓之; h. Hsi-ya 西涯), see DMB 877 (Chao-ying Fang), TL 201, HY 2/226, TK 147, and Ch’ien Chen-min, Li Tung-yang Nien-p’u (Shanghai: Fu-tan University, 1995). See also below. 31 See Bryant, “Low Ming,” for this point, based on a reading of Li’s [Huai-]lut’ang Shih-hua 懷麓堂詩話 (Remarks on Poetry from the Longing for the Hills Hall), Li-tai Shih-hua Hsü-pien (Taipei: Yi-wen, 1971); Li-tai Shih-hua Hsü-pien (Peking: Chung-hua, 1983) 3:1367-1400; Ming Shih-hua Ch’üan-pien (Nanking: Kiangsu Kuchi, 1997) 2:1622-74; Li Tung-yang Chi (Changsha: Yüeh-lu Shu-she, 1983-85) 2:928-63) and the passages by him collected in the Ming-tai Wen-hsüeh P’i-p’ing Tzu-liao Hui-pien 明代文學批評資料彙編 (Compendium of Materials on Ming Literary Criticism), compiled by Yeh Ch’ing-ping 葉慶炳 and Shao Hung 邵紅, Chung-kuo Wen-hsüeh P’i-p’ing Tzu-liao Hui-pien Pt.7, pp.251-64 (Taipei: Ch’engwen, 1979). 32 Li Tung-yang, [Huai-]lu-t’ang Shih-hua, Yi-wen edition, p.12a; Chung-hua edition, 3:1385; Ming Shih-hua Ch’üan-pien 2:1638; Li Tung-yang Chi 2:546. 30

46

CHAPTER TWO

contemporary and friend of Li Tung-yang, Hsü T’ai 徐泰, saw Li’s own poetic style as derived from Yang’s. 33 Li represents not so much a new style per se as a more serious interest in poetry as practice. This reflected the evolving place of poetry in the life of educated men of his day, which was in turn conditioned by the elimination of poetic composition from the civil service examination curriculum in the Ming dynasty (see below, chapter nine). As a critic, he shows the same practical good sense that served him well in his political career. He remarks, for example, that while he could not approve of restricting one’s poetic language to no more than what one’s washerwoman could follow (as Po Chü-yi once claimed to have done), neither could he see much point in writing poems that even the most clever and learned could not make sense of (meaning the late T’ang poet Li Shang-yin 李商隱). 34 The example of his own poetry was important in encouraging greater attention to mastery of prosody and euphony and more serious attention to personal expression. Above all, in the course of his long term as one of the leading officials in Peking, he played an active role in encouraging younger writers, both by his supervision of the official examinations—he was Chief Examiner in 1484 and 1490, and then in every chin-shih selection from 1496 to 1511—and through his leadership of a literary circle in the capital for many years. 35 Li Tungyang was thus an important transitional figure. As a high official, and eventually a Grand Secretary, he was a natural heir to the t’ai-ko-t’i, but his active sponsorship of younger writers created a group of junior officials for whom excellence in poetry was a serious goal.

——— 33

Hsü T’ai, Shih-t’an 詩談 (Chats on Poetry), Pai-ling Hsüeh-shan; repr. PP 8/5, p.4a; Ming Shih-hua Ch’üan-pien 明詩話全編 2:1392. 34 Li Tung-yang, [Huai-]lu-t’ang Shih-hua, Yi-wen edition, p.5a; Chung-hua edition, p.1375; Ming Shih-hua Ch’üan-pien 2:1628; Li Tung-yang Chi 2:535. 35 For a monographic study of what is known as the “Ch’a-ling School,” Li and his followers and associates, see Lien Wen-p’ing 連文萍. “Ming-tai Ch’a-ling-p’ai Shihlun Yen-chiu” 明代茶陵派詩論研究 (Study of the Poetics of the Ch’a-ling School in the Ming Dynasty) .M.A. thesis, Tung-wu University, 1989. See also Sung P’ei-wei, Ming Wen-hsüeh Shih, pp.81-89; Yokota Terutoshi 橫田輝俊 , “Mindai Bunjin Kessha no Kenkyū” 明代結社の研究 (Studies of the Formation of Societies by Ming Dynasty Literati), Hiroshima Daigaku Bungakubu Kiyō 35-tokushūgo-3 (1975), pp.810; Li Yüeh-kang, Liu-pien Shih, pp. 269-95; and Kung Hsien-tsung, “Ming Ch’i-tzu Shih-wen chi ch’i Lun-p’ing chih Yen-chiu” 明七子詩文及其論評之研究 (A Study of the Seven Masters of the Ming and Their Criticism), Ph.D. dissertation (Chung-kuo Wen-hua Hsüeh-yüan, 1979), pp.136-39.

THE SOCIETY OF LETTERED MEN

47

THE MENTOR When Ho Ching-ming returned to Peking in 1503, the most important younger member of Li Tung-yang’s circle was Li Meng-yang, a man only ten years Ho’s senior who was on his way to becoming the leading poet and literary thinker of his generation. 36 Meng-yang’s links to the circle went back to the late 1480’s, when he had studied with one of Li Tung-yang’s followers, the poet Shao Pao, whom we met in the Preface as a writer of epitaphs. At this time, Meng-yang was preparing for his first, unsuccessful, attempt at the provincial chüjen examination in 1489. His talents were recognised by another close associate of Tung-yang’s in 1491, when Yang Yi-ch’ing took notice of him, as well as of Lü Nan, while serving as an education official in Shensi, their native province. Like Li Tung-yang, Yang was known for his active role in seeking out and promoting younger talents. 37 Having passed the chü-jen examination in 1492, Li Meng-yang came to the capital from Kaifeng, his adopted home, to sit for the chin-shih, which he passed in 1493 at the age of twenty-two sui. He scored very high (twentieth out of 298) and would probably have been appointed to a junior post in the central government but for the deaths of his parents, which kept him in mourning until 1498, first in Kaifeng, and later in his ancestral district, 慶陽, in Shensi, where he stayed until his belated appointment to an official post in Peking. By this time, the triennial chin-shih examinations had brought into public life a number of men who would become close friends of both Li Meng-yang and Ho Ching-ming, including K’ang Hai’s fellow Shensi provincial Wang Chiu-ssu 王九思 (1468-1551) and an accomplished poet named Pien Kung, all of whom passed in 1496. 38

———

36 For Li Meng-yang and Li Tung-yang, see Wang Kung-wang, “Li Meng-yang K’ung-t’ung Chi Jen-ming Chien-cheng. (chih san),” Kansu She-hui K’o-hsüeh 1995.5:67-70, p.67. 37 For Yang Yi-ch’ing (t. Ying-ning 應寧; h. Sui-yen 邃菴), see DMB 1516 (Chou Tao-chi), TL 694, HY 3/153, TK 153. Ch’en T’ien cites a group of poems written on Yang Yi-ch’ing’s studio by both Li Tung-yang and Li Meng-yang, along with pieces by nine other poets associated with Tung-yang (MSCS ting-1.1162). These poems were probably written during the years 1498-1501, when Yang was in Peking. 38 For Wang Chiu-ssu (t. Ching-fu 敬夫 ; h. Mei-p’o 渼陂 ), see DMB 1366 (Tilemann Grimm), TL 19, HY 2/40, TK 161. We know from a poem written in 1507 that Ho and Wang were acquainted by this time (see HTFC 8.1a [85; 251:022]). Wang

48

CHAPTER TWO

The year after Li’s return, 1499, brought a new crop of candidates to Peking for the examinations, including Ho Ching-ming. The graduate who was to be the most celebrated in later times was Wang Yangming, the future philosopher, who ranked ninth among the graduates in 1499. He was appointed to office in Peking and joined the literary circle around Li Tung-yang. In addition, Wang Shang-chiung and several other men as yet unmentioned here were associated with them, including a southerner named Chu Ying-teng 朱應登 (1477-1526), who was in Peking until 1505, when he was appointed to a post in Nanking; 39 and an official, poet, and former child prodigy, Liu Yün 劉鈗 (1476-1541), who had so impressed Emperor Hsien-tsung 憲宗 (r.1464-1487) that he was made a Drafter by privilege at the age of seven, while still so small that it is said Yang Yi-ch’ing had to lead him by the hand along the complicated route to and from his workplace. 40 Son of a man who had been a Grand Secretary for ten years, Liu spent fifty years in office and, in spite of his unorthodox beginnings and his lack of a higher degree, had both a reasonably successful career and good relations with his fellow officials. This was also, of course, the year of Ho Ching-ming’s chin-shih failure. 41 Ho may have met Li Meng-yang at this time, but we have no

———

went home to care for his parents in the spring of 1504. See Hsiao-tsung Shih-lu (Taipei: Chung-yang Yen-chiu Yüan, 1964) 208.8a (3869). It is not clear when he returned to Peking. For Pien Kung (t. T’ing-shih 廷實; h. Hua-ch’üan 華泉), whom we encountered in the Preface as a friend of the ill-fated Wang Pien, see DMB 1120 (Hok-lam Chan), TL 941, HY 2/84, TK 184, and Chi Jui-li 紀銳利, “Pien Kung Nienp’u Chien-pien” 邊貢年譜簡編 (Concise Chronology of Pien Kung), Liao-ch’eng Shih-fan Hsüeh-yüan Hsüeh-pao 2001.1:88-99, 39. Pien is said to have learned to recite Classical texts from his grandmother while still sitting on her knee as a babe in arms. For an introduction to Pien as a writer, see Chi Jui-li, “Pien Kung te Shih-hsüeh Li-lun yü Ch’uang-tso” 邊貢的詩學理論與創作 (Pien Kung’s Poetics and Creation), Tung-yüeh Lun-ts’ung 22.5 (2001), pp.114-17. 39 For Chu Ying-teng (t. Sheng-chih 升之; h. Ling-hsi 凌谿), see TL 149, HY 2/14, KHL 102.23a (4573—Li Meng-yang), TK 146. Chu wrote a poem to Ho Ching-ming some time after his move south, so he must have met him at this time; see LHH 4.7a. 40 For Liu Yün (t. Ju-chung 汝忠; h. Hsi-ch’iao 西橋), see TL 846, HY 3/249, KHL 22.81a (941—Li K’ai-hsien), MSCS ping-11.1133, TK 119. Li K’ai-hsien says that Liu joined Li Meng-yang and Ho Ching-ming in a “poetry society” in 1503, while he was in the Ministry of Personnel. 41 K’ang Hai too may have failed the 1499 examination. He was certainly eligible to sit for it, as he had passed the chü-jen in the preceding year. Note that while complete lists are preserved of those who passed the chin-shih in any given competition during the Ming and Ch’ing periods, evidence of failure is only occasionally available. It is, for example, only from the biography that Wang Chiu-ssu

THE SOCIETY OF LETTERED MEN

49

evidence for this. He was noticed by at least some of Li Tung-yang’s circle. A southern member of the group named Ku Lin 顧璘 (14761545), who was a friend of Li Meng-yang and later of Ho, records the favourable impression that Ho made on several noted writers in the capital while ‘still a lad’ whose childish frame could hardly support his formal dress. 42 This presumably refers to the time of Ho’s first chin-shih attempt, when he was still only fifteen. Ku and Ho may have met then, since the two men whom Ku names as admirers of Ho’s at the time, Ch’u Ch’üan 儲巏 (1457-1513) and the epitaph writer Shao Pao, were also associated with Li Tung-yang, and Ku himself did not receive his first provincial appointment until this year. Historical hindsight sees Li Meng-yang as a more important poet than Li Tung-yang and even more clearly as the more important literary theorist, one of the most influential of the entire Ming period. There has, however, been a tendency to see more of an explicit opposition between Tung-yang and Meng-yang than the available evidence will support. 43 Tung-yang was after all a senior statesman in

———

(see above) wrote of his younger brother Chiu-feng 九峰 (see below, chapter eight) that we know that Chiu-ssu failed the provincial examination in 1490. We may presume, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, that most of the examinees were recently successful chü-jen. Another of the failures in 1499 was the painter T’ang Yin 唐寅 (1470-1524), who was implicated in a scandal that led to the imprisonment of Ch’eng Min-cheng 程敏政 (1445-99+), the Chief Examiner that year. 42 Ku Lin, Kuo-pao Hsin-pien 國寶新編 (New Compilation of Treasures of the State) (Chi-lu Hui-pien; repr. PP 16/5), p.6b. This work, a small collection of short accounts of contemporary writers, was written many years later. It seems simplest to suppose that Ku was an eyewitness, but it is also possible that he heard the story from Meng Yang while the two men were in exile together in the southwest during the years 1513-15 (see below, chapter seven). For Ku Lin (t. Hua-yü 華玉; h. Tung-ch’iao 東橋), see TL 957, HY 3/44, MS 286.7354; MSCS ting-5.1230, TK 195. He was a southerner, from Soochow, and passed the chin-shih in 1496. Most of his official career was spent outside of Peking, so he and Ho probably did not spend that much time together. One poem by Ho addressed to Ku in Nanking, “Sent to Ku Hua-yü [Lin]” 寄顧華玉, HTFC 19.15a (328; 352:150), was probably written in the fall of 1506, so they may have met in 1505, when Ku may have come up from Nanking, where he held office from 1502 to 1509 or 1510, for the audit of officials (see below, chapter ten). 43 On this point, see Chien Chin-sung, “Li Ho Shih-lun Yen-chiu” 李何詩論研究 (Study of the Poetics of Li Meng-yang and Ho Ching-ming) (M.A. thesis, National Taiwan University, 1980), pp.58-66, 81-83. The most influential source for the assumption that Meng-yang was actively trying to rebel against or replace Tungyang’s literary position is the seventeenth century scholar and critic Ch’ien Ch’ien-yi, who was very favourably disposed toward Li Tung-yang but very hostile to Li Mengyang. See his Lieh-ch’ao Shih-chi Hsiao-chuan, p.245. Chien Chin-sung traces

50

CHAPTER TWO

his fifties, so it would not be surprising if the younger members of his group such as Meng-yang and Pien Kung had more frequent and informal contacts with one another than with him, or if in the process their ideas about literature began to evolve away from his. Another element in the picture is the status of Li Meng-yang and some of his associates at the time, including Pien, who were not members of the Academy, but rather officials in the ministries, and hence not part of the perhaps unduly self-conscious elite associated with the Secretariat Style. 44 During the years 1498-1502 or so, Li Meng-yang still counted as part of Li Tung-yang’s literary circle, though he may already have been moving toward greater independence. 45 Certainly debates about poetics and a degree of competitiveness were part of the picture, to the extent that Wang Yang-ming, who belonged to it at this time, is said to have become disillusioned with literary activities as a fitting vehicle for his quest for a sense of personal authenticity. 46

———

Ch’ien’s interpretation to the writings of K’ang Hai and Wang Chiu-ssu, who were, as we shall see, outside Li Tung-yang’s circle at this time and may have blamed him later for the failure of their official careers. 44 See Chien Chin-sung, Ming-tai, pp.52-58. On the significance of the chin-shih and the Han-lin ‘club’, though without reference to the Secretariat Style, see Elman, Cultural History, pp.157-63. 45 Li Tung-yang wrote an epitaph for Li Meng-yang’s father; see Li Tung-yang Chi 3:230; the epitaph is dated 1502 or slightly later by Ch’ien Chen-min, Li Tung-yang Nien-p’u p.172. Note that relations between Li Tung-yang and Li Meng-yang remained at least polite even afterwards. See, for example, the long poem that Mengyang wrote in 1506, to congratulate Tung-yang on his reaching the age of sixty sui, “A Poem for the Sixtieth Birthday of Sir Western Bank, the Junior Mentor, in Thirtyeight Rhymes” 少傅西涯相公六十壽詩三十八韻 K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi (1530; repr. Taipei: Wei-wen, 1976) 28.12b-13a (736-37). 46 On Wang’s participation, see Yokota, “Mindai Bunjin Kessha,” p.11. For a concise account of Wang as a poet, see Toyoda Jō 豐田穰, “Ō Yōmei no Shi ni Tsuite” 王陽明の詩に就いて (On the Poetry of Wang Yang-ming) Shibun 21.8 (1939): 37-47. Toyoda singles out Yang Yi-ch’ing and Li Meng-yang as the most important influences on Wang’s poetry. Noting Wang’s reported devotion to poetry in the 1500’s, Toyoda surmises that the relative scarcity of poems datable to this period may be due to their having been excluded from Wang’s works at a later date. Ch’ien Ming 錢明 comes to the same conclusion and discusses Wang’s links with Li Mengyang, Hsü Chen-ch’ing, Cheng Shan-fu, and others in “Wang Yang-ming yü Ming-tai Wen-jen te Chiao-yi” 王陽明與明代文人的交誼 (Wang Yang-ming’s Friendships with Ming Dynasty Literati), Chung-hua Wen-hua Lun-t’an 2004.1:88-94. Tu Weiming suggests that Wang’s retirement and renunciation of literature in 1502 may have been related to his having “been greatly agonised by the strife for literary fame among his friends in the capital;” See Neo-Confucian Thought in Action: Wang Yang-ming’s Youth (1472-1509) (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976),

THE SOCIETY OF LETTERED MEN

51

Some younger writers did hold aloof from Tung-yang’s circle. Wang Chiu-ssu was one of these, even though he had originally been ‘discovered’ by Ma Chung-hsi 馬中錫, one of Tung-yang’s followers, and his success predicted on the basis of resemblances between his work and Li’s. 47 Another independent was Ho’s fellow graduate K’ang Hai. In spite of Li’s admiration—K’ang had, after all, passed first among the 1502 candidates and Li was the Chief Examiner— K’ang snubbed Li by having the memorial texts for one of his parents written by his friends and fellow provincials Li Meng-yang, Tuan Chiung 段炅, and Wang Chiu-ssu instead of asking Li Tung-yang. 48 Small incidents such as this one may have contributed to a feeling that there was a ‘younger’ circle in the capital and that Li Meng-yang was at its centre. 49 Since K’ang, Wang, and Tuan were all in the Academy,

———

pp.26-30. There may be an element of truth in this, insofar as it refers to possible disagreements, or simple competition for preeminence, between Li Tung-yang’s other followers and those of Li Meng-yang, but Tu’s analysis here is tainted by anachronism, in that he seems to assume that a famous disagreement between Li Meng-yang and Ho Ching-ming dates from this period. As we shall see, this controversy did not arise until 1515, and in fact there seems to be little evidence of real discord so early within Li’s circle. Tu’s work is deservedly acclaimed, but his use of literary history unfortunately draws heavily on the insufficiently critical work of Sung P’ei-wei. He also makes two innocuous but unsettling errors in transcription on pp.28-29: Ching-mei for Chung-mo and Yang Fu for Yang P’u. 47 See the biography of Wang by Li K’ai-hsien, Li K’ai-hsien Ch’üan-chi (Peking: Wen-hua Yi-shu, 2004) 10.763-68, also in KHL 22.25a (913). Li explains Wang’s later career failures by commenting that while Liu Chien didn’t like poetry (see above, chapter one), he did admire talent, while Li Tung-yang took exception to Wang’s works differing from his own and eventually found a way of getting back at him. 48 See Ho Liang-chün 何良俊, Ssu-yu Chai Ts’ung-shuo 四友齋叢說 (Collected Remarks from the Four Friends Studio) (Peking: Chung-hua, 1959), p. 126. John Meskill translates this passage in his Gentlemanly Interests and Wealth in the Yangtse Delta Association for Asian Studies Monograph and Occasional Paper Series 49 (Ann Arbor: Association for Asian Studies, 1994), p.74. Ho Liang-chün’s book is among the major sources for Meskill’s magisterial synthesis. For Li Meng-yang’s inscription for K’ang’s father, see “Epitaph for the Elder K’ang, Court Gentleman for Ceremonial Service and Gentleman-Confucian, Registry Clerk of P’ing-yang Prefecture, with the Posthumous Office of Senior Compiler in the Han-lin Academy” 將仕郎平陽府經歷司知事贈儒林郎翰林院修撰康長公墓碑, K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi 42.1b (1180). For Tuan Chiung, see below, chapter eleven. 49 By far the most detailed and comprehensive discussion of Li Meng-yang’s evolving group of associates in Peking during these years is that in Chien Chin-sung, “Li-Ho Shih-lun Yen-chiu,” pp.24-28. Chien also discusses Li’s colophon to a group of poems written at a poetry meeting early in 1511 (pp.69-74). In the colophon, Li lists a group of twelve writers who had associated with him during his early years back in Peking, including Ch’u Ch’üan, Chao Ho 趙鶴, Ch’ien Jung 錢榮, Ch’in Chin 秦金, Ch’iao Yü 喬宇, Hang Chi 杭濟 (1452-1534), Hang Huai, Ho Meng-ch’un 何

52

CHAPTER TWO

the gesture would have been all the more noticeable. Thus it was significant that Ho paid visits to Li Meng-yang and Pien Kung soon after he returned to Peking in 1503. The three men were soon fast friends and literary associates. 50 The nature of their circle, its ideals, and the extent to which it was a self-conscious group at the time are questions of some complexity that we shall examine later. It was evidently not a clearly defined group, but rather an informal cluster of like-minded young writers who met irregularly to compose poetry together and criticise each other’s work. 51 Wang Chiu-ssu, for example, had his poetry improved by Li Meng-yang and his prose by K’ang Hai, and the same is said to have been true of other members of the circle. 52 The first poem in a set of three that Ho addressed to Li Meng-yang later, probably early in 1505, refers to “ranks of transcendants, in cap and gown competing to follow after [Li],” which rather suggests the atmosphere of the literary salon. 53 In any event, it seems clear that by the time Ho Ching-ming went to

———

孟春 (1474-1536), Wang Yang-ming, and Pien Kung. He adds the names of several who joined later, including Ho Ching-ming, Ku Lin, Tu Mu, Chu Ying-teng, and Hsü Chen-ch’ing 徐禎卿 (1479-1511; see below for most of these men). See “Colophon to the Poems Written Together During the First Month Attendance at Court” 朝正倡和詩跋, K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi 58.15ab (1671-72). 50 Li K’ai-hsien records that Ho changed his hao, or pen-name, from Pai-p’o 白坡 to Ta-fu at this time; see Li K’ai-hsien Ch’üan-chi, 10.774. Ta-fu is the name of a mountain in Ho’s native region, just as K’ung-t’ung, Li Meng-yang’s hao, was the name of a mountain in his. Li’s “Rhapsody on Ta-fu Mountain” 大復山賦 was written to commemorate the occasion; see K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi 3.2b (54). 51 Yokota, “Mindai Bunjin Kessha,” p.15. 52 This correction of each other’s work is referred to in Li K’ai-hsien’s biography of Wang Chiu-ssu, which quotes Wang’s preface to his own works, continuing, “And not only mine; even among the works of Ho Ta-fu [Ching-ming], Wang Chün-ch’uan [T’ing-hsiang], Hsü Ch’ang-ku 昌穀 [Chen-ch’ing], and Pien Hua-ch’üan [Kung] there were those brought to completion by the two gentlemen” Li K’ai-hsien Ch’üanchi, 10.764-65. The slightly later critic Hsieh Chen refers to a late emendation by Li Meng-yang of a line by Ho Ching-ming; see Ssu-ming Shih-hua, Yi-wen edition 2.12a, Chung-hua edition, 2.1174, Ming Shih-hua Ch’üan-pien 3:3154; cited in MSCS ting1.1170. All extant editions of Ho’s works have Ho’s original reading rather than Li’s ‘correction’. See “First Day” 元日 HTFC 22.2b (383; 352:248). The poem dates from the year 1515, in any event, so this particular episode cannot pertain to the period referred to by Wang Chiu-ssu. For Wang Chiu-ssu and Li Meng-yang, see Wang Kung-wang, “Li Meng-yang K’ung-t’ung Chi Jen-ming Chien-cheng. (chih san),” Kansu She-hui K’o-hsüeh 1995.5:67-70, pp.68-69. 53 HTFC 9.8b (113; 351:011). The three poems in the set, titled, “Presented to Li Hsien-chi” 贈李獻吉, are in the style of old yüeh-fu ballads and thus not explicitly descriptive of Li’s location or the date of their composition.

THE SOCIETY OF LETTERED MEN

53

visit him, Li Meng-yang had moved (or was moving) beyond Li Tungyang to formulate a literary ideal based on the notion of ‘Archaism‘. 54 Archaism is a large topic, whose discussion in more detail we shall defer until we take up an important debate between Li and Ho that took place in an exchange of letters ten years later (see below, chapter nine). Just how fully developed this ideal was in 1503, and how fully it was shared by such friends as Ho Ching-ming, are questions hard to answer with any precision now, but it seems certain that by 1505 Li Meng-yang was the central figure of a literary coterie of his own, that Archaism was an element of its ideology, and that Ho Ching-ming was recognised as an important participant. 55 FIRST STEPS Since Ho Ching-ming is known today almost exclusively as a poet, it is unfortunate that his first steps as a writer are obscure. Verse composition was evidently part of his education from an early age. We shall find him remarking in 1507 that he had been writing poetry for ten years, but it is hard to know how literally to take this. 56 Few of the poems from Ho’s first years in Peking can be dated with any precision. The most that can be said about Ho’s early works is that a body of poems and a few pieces of prose can be shown to date from the years

——— 54

I adopt this term from the work of James J. Y. Liu and Richard John Lynn. Recalling this period while reading Ho’s works after he had died, another participant, Wang Chiu-ssu, wrote, “You and Master K’ung-t’ung [Li Meng-yang] / Ascended together into the Hall of the Great Odes” 爾與崆峒子、齊升大雅堂, “Reading Chung-mo’s [Ho Ching-ming] Works” 讀仲默集, second of two poems, Mei-p’o Chi 渼陂集 (Chia-ching edition; repr. Taipei: Wei-wen, 1976) 4.17a (151), YC 261, TK 392. The opening line of the first poem is “Great Odes have for ages not been written” 大雅久不作, which is of course the very famous first line of the first of Li Po’s famous set of “Ancient Airs” 古風; see Ri Haku Kashi Sakuin 001/01; CTS 161.1670; K.07865; An Ch’i p.936. 56 Chien Chin-sung takes it at face value; see “Li-Ho Shih-lun Yen-chiu,” p.20. In his preface to the works of Wang Shang-chiung, Ma Li 馬理 (see below, chapter seven) remarks that in all ages writers have had a ‘starting point’ and that Ho’s was a man named Kao Chien 高鑑 (1452-1518), a Hsin-yang native many years Ho’s senior; see Wang Shang-chiung, Ts’ang-ku Ch’üan-chi 蒼谷全集 (Collected Works from the Deep Green Valley) (1758; repr. Ssu-k’u Wei-shou Shu Chi-k’an 5:18, Peking: Peking Ch’u-pan-she, 1998); for Kao, Wang, and Ma, see below. It is not certain that poetry in particular is the reference here, but Kao was known as a minor poet (his works are evidently no longer extant). 55

54

CHAPTER TWO

1503-07. 57 Since it is certain that Ho was writing poetry before this, we must conclude that he suppressed his juvenilia, or at least left them out of his own collections of his verse. It is probable that many of the poems found only in the “Remnant Manuscripts” collection are early, but there is little evidence on which to date them. What is striking about the extant works from Ho’s first years in Peking is how few in number they are, how uncertain is their attachment to known events, and how little representative they are of the sort of literary life that he is portrayed as leading at the time, both in contemporary sources and in later literary histories. There remain forty-odd miscellaneous poems in various forms (to which a few undated longer poems are perhaps to be added). Few of these early works are addressed to known participants in the salons and debates of the day. Only three titles refer to people whom we know from other sources to have been his colleagues in the intense exploration of poetic ends and means at this time. 58 Among the earliest of Ho’s extant Peking poems is the following, probably written in the spring of 1504, around the time of the inscription for Chang Kung and the poem for Sun Jung. Censor Tung is unidentified, but it is clear from the poem that he had a trip to the middle Yangtse basin in view. 贈董侍御何處采芳蘋、維舟湘水濱。草間露彩薄、沙上月華新。杳杳侵滇路、依依向楚人。汀花不寄遠、惆悵獨逢春。

———

57 For an account of the textual history and arrangement of Ho’s works, and of the process of establishing their chronology, see Appendix Two. A fuller discussion, including all the evidence, in found in TK, Pts. 3-4. Uncollected works are gathered in TK, pp.383-88. Several of them appear to date from the trip to Yunnan in 1505-06, but none is clearly earlier. Indeed, the presence of several items that belong to the Shih-chi period strengthens our presumption that Ho’s earliest works were ‘thinned’ before inclusion in the HTFC. It was of course, common for writers to exclude items of one sort or another when collecting their works for publication. Li Tung-yang’s follower Ho Meng-ch’un tells us that when Li was editing the works from the latter part of his life, he excluded “all those written for the rich and powerful,” Yü-tung Hsülu 餘冬序錄 (Ordered Records from the Remains of Winter) (1528; repr. TM 3:10102, Tainan: Chuang-yen Wen-hua, 1995) 36.8b (19). 58 “Presented to Li Hsien-chi” (HTFC 9.7a [113; 351:011-013]), mentioned above as ballads, and “Replying to Hsien-chi” 答獻吉 (HTFC 9.9b [114; 351:014-015]) are addressed to Li Meng-yang, “Taking Leave of Wang Ping-heng” 別王秉衡 (HTFC 18.14b [304; 352:130]) to Wang T’ing-hsiang.

THE SOCIETY OF LETTERED MEN

55

Presented to Censor Tung 59 Where are you going, to pluck the fragrant duckweed, Mooring your boat by a bank of the River Hsiang? Amid the grass, the glimmer of dew is thin; On the sand-bars, the moon’s glory is fresh. Far, far away, you advance on the road to Tien; On and on, approaching the men of Ch’u. Islet blossoms cannot be sent afar; Sad and forlorn you will meet with spring alone. Ho could scarcely have been unaware of the “Plucking Duckweed” poem in the Songs, but there appears to be no significant link between that poem, whose subject was traditionally interpreted as feminine virtue, and his. 60 The second couplet is reminiscent of the third in one of the late Six dynasties poet Chiang Yen’s 江淹 imitations, this one of a monk named Superior Hsiu 休上人, “Regret at Parting” 別怨, “Now the glimmer on the dew is shimmering; / The glory of the moon begins to linger” 露彩方汎豔、月華始徘徊. 61

An auspicious beginning (it is an early example of Ho’s pentasyllabic regulated verse, the form he used by far the most commonly), this poem appears to require no support from Archaist literary theory. Along with spring, autumn was the chief season for social occasions and the poetry that went with them, and there is a clutch of works in various forms that can be assigned with more or less confidence to this year, though, in general, the more rewarding the work, the less certain its date. We know from a poem written a year later that Ho spent the evening of the Moon Festival (fifteenth day of the eighth month, September 22) with friends; three other poems written on Double Nine (ninth day of the ninth month, October 16) record an excursion to a temple during which he missed his brother Ching-shao; and a long “Rhapsody on White Chrysanthemums” was requested by his host, a Censor named Feng Yung 馮顒, during a party held five days later. 62

——— 59

HTFC 19.10a (321; 352:124). See Mao Shih Yin-te 3/15; Karlgren p.9; Waley, p.72. 61 WH 31.30a (443); YTHY5.2b (77); Lu Ch’in-li, p.1580; Chiang Wen-t’ung Chi 江文通集 (Collected Works of Chiang Wen-t’ung) (SPTK) 4.14a (34); cf. Birrell, p.135, “Dewy spangles splash riches, / The moon’s flower starts to shimmer.” 62 For the poem written at the Moon Festival in 1505, see “Moon Viewing on the Fifteenth Night at Ch’a-ch’eng” 查城十五夜對月, HTFC 15.4b (221; 152:019-023), fourth of five poems; for the temple outing, “Climbing the Pavilion at Graceful Favour Temple on the Ninth Day” 九日登慈恩寺閣, HTFC 20.11a (346; 352:12660

56

CHAPTER TWO

The following autumn poem is more probably from 1504 than from any other particular year. 雙梧草堂君愛堂前樹、嵯峨碧幹雙。相思秋月下、風子落雲牕。 At Double Phoenix-tree Cottage (first of two poems) 63 You love the trees that stand before the hall, Towering high, a pair of jade-like trunks. I think of you beneath an autumn moon; Maple pods are shed in a cloudy window . . . The third line is reminiscent of a line in Tu Fu’s “Twenty Rhymes Sent to Li Po, the Twelfth” 寄李十二白二十韻, “Old, I chant beneath an autumn moon” 老吟秋月下. 64 The second couplet as a whole recalls that of the T’ang poet Ku K’uang’s 顧况 quatrain “Remembering my Old Friends in P’o-yang” 意鄱陽舊遊, “A sojourner from Ch’u, when his heart is broken: / Maple seeds falling under a bright moon” 楚客斷腸時、月明楓子落. 65

Three contrasting poems set in springtime, all possibly, but not

———

128); for the “White Chrysanthemums” Rhapsody 白菊賦, HTFC 2.6a (21; 賦:022). For Feng Yung (t. Yu-fu 有孚), see HY 3/27, TL 625, MS 188.4989, TK 198. He would soon be forced to commit suicide after offending the eunuch Liu Chin. 63 HTFC 28.7b (501; 354:003). ‘Double Phoenix Tree’ was a hao of the poet Hua Ch’ang 華昶 (1459-1521; t. Wen-kuang 文光, h. Mei-hsin 梅心). For Hua, see TL 672, HY 2/218, KHL 90.10a (3905—Shao Pao), TK 175. He was a chin-shih of 1496. It is by no means certain that Hua is referred to in this poem, as he was reassigned from Peking to Nanking in 1599 after he submitted an indictment of Ch’eng Mincheng in the examination scandal (see above). It is possible that he and Ho met at this time or that Ho knew of him through their mutual friend Ch’ien Jung. For Ch’ien (t. Shih-en 世恩, h. Po-ch’uan 伯川), see TL 880, TK 188. He left Peking early in Liu Chin’s regime. Ho wrote a poem in the sao style as Ch’ien left the capital and several later works as messages. Ch’ien may have assisted Li Meng-yang when Li was in trouble (see below, chapter eight). In the last line, the Ch’ing editions of the Standard recension (K’ang-hsi, Ch’ien-lung, and Hsien-feng periods) read 桐 ‘phoenix tree’ rather than 楓 ‘maple’. This reading, probably due to a confusion of similar characters, is plausible, considering the title and the image of the trees’ trunks. It is even possible that it is authorial, since the Yung recension does not include this poem, whose text derives from the frequently careless Shen recension. The most famous Chinese poem mentioning maples is probably “Mooring in the Evening at Maple Bridge” 楓橋夜泊 by the T’ang poet Chang Chi 張繼. In this case 村 is found as a variant for 楓 in the second line of the poem. For interesting discussion, which concludes that 村 was probably the authorial reading, see Ping Wang, “Maple Leaf—A Poetic Image Worth A Thousand Pieces of Gold,” unpublished paper presented at the 2007 meeting of the Amiercan Oriental Society, Western Branch. 64 Tu Shih Yin-te 339/44/37, CTS 225.2430, K.11100. 65 CTS 267.2962; K.13724.

THE SOCIETY OF LETTERED MEN

57

certainly, from 1505, illustrate Ho’s handling of three conventionally poetic occasions, the boudoir lament in quatrain form, the heptasyllabic song, and the brief gesture of farewell. 寫情莫將錦瑟怨年華、柳絮飄零夢謝家。小院迴廊鎮春晝、何人來為掃庭花。 Emotions 66 Do not lament with your patterned lute the glory of the year; Willow fluff drifts and flutters in dreams of a House of Hsieh . . . A tiny court and meandering walkway possess the springtide day; No one will ever come to sweep away the garden blossoms. The third line incorporates almost verbatim a line from Tu Fu’s “The Pavilion at Fragrance Accumulated Temple in Fu-ch’eng” 涪城縣香積寺宮閣, “In a tiny court and the walkway meanders, still and lonely in spring” 小院廊迴春寂寞. 67

A ‘House of Hsieh’ was a common euphemism for a singing-girl house. 柳絮歌長安三月百花殘、滿城飛絮何漫漫。千門萬戶東風起、陌上河邊春色闌。美人高樓鎖深院、白花濛濛落如霰。晴窗窈窕朝日遲、亂入簾櫳趂雙燕。遊絲相牽時裊裊、委地飄廊不須掃。君不見江頭綠葉吹香棉、隨波化作浮萍草。 Song of Willow Catkins 68 In Ch’ang-an in the third month, the flowers dwindle away; Flooding the city, how the flying silk spreads everywhere,. In a dozen gates, ten thousand households, the east wind rises; Along the avenues, beside the river, the look of spring fades. Beautiful women in lofty pavilions, shut away in deep courtyards— White blossoms fall like sleet in veiling torrents. In a sunlit window, quiet, secluded, the morning daylight lingers; In a flurry they enter through blinds and frames, follow a pair of

———

66 HTFC 29.6a (517; 374:004). In the third line, the Ch’ien-lung and Hsien-feng editions of the Standard recension read 鎖 ‘lock’ in place of 鎮 ‘possess, occupy’. This is another case in which the poem is not found in the Yung recension, suggesting the possibility that a misreading originating in the Shen recension has been successfully emended by conjecture. In this instance, however, the argument in favour of the emendation, which is simply more conventional, is not strong. 67 Tu Shih Yin-te 387/41/5, CTS 227.2463, K.11290. 68 HTFC 14.14a (210; 371:008).

58

CHAPTER TWO

swallows. Drifting silk, strand by strand, constantly coiling and swirling; Left on the ground, drifting the corridors, no need to sweep them away. Do you not see: there by the river, through green leaves blow the fragrant threads, Following the ripples they turn into and patch of floating duckweed.

The occasion for the following poem was probably the return of a native of Honan (or even Hsin-yang, though there is no local reference in the poem) who had failed the 1505 chin-shih examination. 69 送鄉人還楊柳花飛蕪草青、故鄉南望幾長亭。城邊客散重回首、愁見孤鴻落晚汀。 Saying Farewell to Someone from my District Who is Returning Home 70 Willow blossoms fly aloft as weeds and grass turn green; Gazing southward toward our home, past so many long post stages . . . Beside the walls the guests disperse—I turn back to look again, Behold with sorrow a single goose alight on an evening islet. Except for the first line, Ho’s entire poem is a kind of ‘riff’ on a famous poem by the T’ang poet Tu Mu 杜牧: 題齊安城樓嗚軋江樓角一聲、微陽瀲瀲落寒汀。不用憑欄苦迴首、故鄉七十五長亭。 Inscribed on the Wall Tower at Ch’i-an 71 Harsh and mournful by a river pavilion, a single bugle note, Pale sunlight spreads in a flood, alighting on a wintry islet. No use to lean on the railing and turn back with bitterness:

———

69 A poem more certainly written on such an occasion this year is “Saying Farewell to Yang Tzu-chün, who is Returning to Kwangtung After Failing in the Examinations” 送楊子濬下第還廣東, HTFC 18.14b (303; 352:129). Yang Tzu-chün is not identified, but there is a poem by Lu Shen (see below, chapter six) whose title shows that he was eventually appointed to the Court of Judicial Review, “Saying Farewell to Yang Tzu-chün of the Court of Judicial Review, Who has Obtained an Appointment and is Returning Home to Ling-nan” 送楊子濬大理得告歸嶺南, Yenshan Chi 儼山集 (Mt. Yen Collection) (SKCS) 8.8a (50). 70 HTFC 29.6a (517; 374:005). 71 CTS 522.5966; K.28159; Fan-ch’uan Shih-chi Chu 樊川詩集注 (Collected Poems of Fan-ch’uan, Annotated), Annotated by Feng Chi-wu 馮集梧 (Shanghai: Kuchi, 1978), p.212. Cf. the translation by A. C. Graham, Poems of the Late T’ang (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965), p.128.

THE SOCIETY OF LETTERED MEN

59

There are seventy-five long post stages from here to home. In addition, Ho’s final line also recalls that of another famous heptasyllabic quatrain, Wang Wei’s 王維 “Saying Farewell to Case Reviewer Wei” 送韋評事, “And behold with sorrow a single wall beside the alighting sun” 愁見孤城落日邊. 72

It is significant that this last poem, short as it is, contains two verbs of seeing, for the graceful treatment of visual motion is at its heart. A reader’s vision follows the drift of blossoms over the landscape, is directed southward toward Ho’s native Honan, a journey that fades into a string of stages, and then returns to the point of farewell, only to be turned back once again to capture the vision that embodies Ho’s image of both the solitary traveller on his way and his own transitory resting in the capital, a vision that incidentally exemplifies some of the typical thematic elements—descent, evening—characteristic of poetic closure. 73 By the end of 1504, candidates for the 1505 chin-shih examinations had begun to gather in Peking in preparation for the tests, which took place in the spring. Ho’s elder brother Ching-yang was evidently among them, though he would not be successful. We know that he was in Peking because Ching-ming’s student and friend Tai Kuan wrote an epitaph for a daughter of Ching-yang who had come up to the capital with her father and died in the summer of 1505, two days before Hsiao-tsung, in her seventeenth year. 74 Among the successful candidates this time were several old or future friends. Ho’s fellow

———

72 CTS 128.1307; K.96141; Wang Yu-ch’eng Chi Chien-chu 王右丞集箋注 (Collected Works of Junior Assistant Director Wang, Annotated), Annotated by Chao Tien-ch’eng 趙殿成 (Hong Kong: Chung-hua, 1972), p.264. 73 See Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Poetic Closure: A Study of How Poems End (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968). 74 Tai Shih Chi 戴氏集 (Collected Works of Mr. Tai) (1548; repr. TM 4:63, Tainan: Chuang-yen Wen-hua, 1997) 12.8b (87). The following autumn, after he returned from Yunnan, Ho Ching-ming arranged for her burial. She had been engaged to a son of a Sun family, perhaps to a son of the new magistrate Sun Jung, and perhaps even to Sun Chi-fang 孫繼芳, soon to be Ho’s student and friend. Tai wrote the epitaph because he was a friend of her brother Ho Shih 何士. For Tai Kuan (t. Chung-ho 仲鶡; h. Sui-ku 邃谷), see TL 915, HY 2/104, KHL 95.69a (4177—Fan P’eng), TK 142. Fan P’eng’s account of Tai in KHL describes him as a faithful follower of Ho’s and one whom Ho held in high regard. Tai Kuan’s father Tai Yi had passed the chü-jen examination along with Ho in 1498 (see above, chapter one), and this no doubt influenced Ho’s selection as teacher for his son; see the biographical entry on Tai Yi in the (Ch’ien-lung) Hsin-yang Chou Chih (1925; repr.Taipei: Ch’eng-wen, 1976), 8.14a (289). Note that there were three Ming writers with the identical name Tai Kuan.

60

CHAPTER TWO

townsman Meng Yang was among them. Then there was Ts’ui Hsien (1478-1541), a poet and a convivial companion with a youthful capacity for alcohol meriting comment in the dynastic history. 75 Fortunately, his longevity exceeded even his capacity, and since he was a prolific writer in all forms, we owe much of our knowledge of men in Ho’s circle to posthumous texts for them written by Ts’ui (his poems have not survived). 76 Among the subjects of these texts was Chang Shih-lung 張士隆 (1475-1525), like Ts’ui a native of An-yang 安陽 in northern Honan. 77 Chang’s father had been an unworldly man whose devotion to the bottle had, unlike that of Ts’ui Hsien, never been outgrown. He died after Shih-lung’s provincial examination success in 1495. When the mourning period expired, Shih-lung came up to Peking, bringing along both his mother, whose strong character was the model for his own, and his younger brother and sister. After a period of study in the National University, he took the 1502 chin-shih examination, but failed. He stayed on in the capital, studying with Ma Li (see below, see chapter eleven), and took a trip home to An-yang in 1504. He and Ts’ui returned to Peking the following year, when both passed the examination. His initial appointment was in the provinces, where his strictness held the population in awe. He would return to the capital in 1512 as a Censor, at which time he and Ho became close friends. Tai Kuan’s works throw an interesting light on Ho’s literary

———

75 For Ts’ui Hsien (t. Tzu-chung 子鍾; h. Hou-ch’ü 後渠, Shao-shih 少石, Huanyeh 洹野), see TL 613, HY 2/192, MS 282.7255, TK 131. Ever ready with the edifying spin, MS goes on to record that in his middle years Ts’ui devoted himself energetically to study and that “his every word and deed was appropriate” (yen tung chieh yu tse 言動皆有則). He became, in fact, one of the notably serious Confucians of his generation. 76 Ts’ui’s prose works are found in two different formats, the Huan Tz’u 洹詞 (Words from the Huan), in 10 chüan chronologically arranged but lacking many works (SKCS), and the Ts’ui Shih Huan Tz’u 崔氏洹詞 (Mr. Ts’ui’s Words from the Huan), in 17 chüan, a fuller collection but arranged by genre (1554; repr. TM 4:56. Tainan, Chuang-yen Wen-hua, 1997). 77 For Chang Shih-lung (t. Chung-hsiu 仲修; h. Hsi-ch’ü 西渠), see TL 514, HY 3/60, KHL 98.81a (4337—Chu Mu-chieh), TK 134. There are two errors in the latter. One is the location of Chang’s first provincial post, which should be Kuang-p’ing 廣平, not Kuang-hsin 廣信. The other is the use of an ‘enumerative comma’ that misleadingly suggests that the KHL includes not only Chu Mu-chieh’s biography, but also Ts’ui Hsien’s epitaph. The former is largely based on the latter, which is not in KHL but is included in Ts’ui’s works, Ts’ui Shih Huan Tz’u 14.14a (451), Huan Tz’u 5.7a (475).

THE SOCIETY OF LETTERED MEN

61

activities at this time, for they show that the two men were reading, and perhaps writing, song lyrics (tz’u 詞) together. This comes as a surprise, since there are no such poems in Ho’s collected works, and he does not even mention the form in any of his discussions of poetry. On the last night of 1503, while at home in Hsin-yang, Tai had been inspired to match some of the tz’u of Chu Shu-chen 朱淑真, a woman of the Sung dynasty often thought second only to Li Ch’ing-chao 李清照 as a female tz’u poet. Tai brought these poems north with him when he moved to Peking as the end of the mourning period for his mother was approaching. When he showed them to Ho, the latter granted that one or two of them were satisfactory—such at any rate is Tai’s modest claim in a colophon he added to the poems in the fall of 1505. 78 Perhaps influenced by his student, Ho wrote some tz’u of his own, but the only ones known are three found in the “Remnant Manuscripts” and one other preserved in an anthology. 79 We can,

——— 78

Tai Shih Chi 11.1a-9a (76-80); Ch’üan Ming Tz’u 全明詞 (Complete Ming Song Lyrics), compiled by Jao Tsung-yi 饒宗頤 and Chang Chang 張璋 (Peking: Chunghua, 2004), 658-62. Tai had obtained a copy of Chu Shu-chen’s collected tz’u from one Ch’en ‘Yi-shan’ 陳逸山, a native of Ch’ien-t’ang, in Chekiang (see TK 11). In the Yi-kao, we find two heptasyllabic verse poems by Ho matching Chu Shu-chen and Ch’en Yi-shan. The letter narrating the episode of Tai’s showing his poems to Ho is dated in the autumn of 1505. By this time, Ho had already left on a mission to Yunnan, so these poems by Ho may come from the spring of 1505 or just a little earlier. Jen Liang-kan 任良榦 , the compiler of the Yi-kao, might have found them in the household of Tai Kuan. It is just possible that the poems in the Yi-kao are Tai’s. This would explain why they were not included in the Shen recension, which Tai prepared for publication. On the other hand, we know that Tai eventually came to feel that, as the old saw had it, “to toy with things is to injure one’s sense of purpose” (wan wu sang chih 玩物喪志), and so he gave the form up; see Tai Shih Chi 11.8b (80). He might have excluded Ho’s poems from the Shen text for this reason, although he left the account of his poems in his own works. 79 YK B.12a-13b (詞:901-903), Ch’üan Ming Tz’u, p.740. The third of the poems in YK, to the melody “Nien Nu Chiao” 念奴嬌 expresses a wish for a snowfall after most of a winter had passed without any snow. This was the case in 1508, when it rained, but did not snow, until the middle of the twelfth month, a situation to which Ho referred in a number of works (see below, chapter five and TK 35-36). The other two poems, to the melody “Yeh Chin Men” 謁金門, are poems of farewell but cannot be dated with any precision, though one of them is probably addressed to Ho’s friend Chia Ts’e 賈策 (see below, chapter five) and hence probably comes from Ho’s years in retirement in Hsin-yang. The fourth poem is a “Bamboo Branch” 竹枝 song, formally indistinguishable from a heptasyllabic new-style quatrain. The Ch’üan Ming Tz’u cites this from the Ku-chin Tz’u-t’ung 古今詞統, a late Ming anthology. See Kuchin Tz’u-t’ung 古今詞統 (Compendium of Song Lyrics Ancient and Modern), compiled by Cho Jen-yüeh 卓人月 and Hsü Shih-chün 徐士俊 (Ch’ung-chen edition;

62

CHAPTER TWO

however, infer the existence of others because Tai’s works include poems matching additional tz’u by Ho. 80 Just as Ho was gaining new friends, he said farewell to a less recent one, Wang Pien, who had joined Ho in the Drafting Office the year before, appointed by privilege on the basis of the high office held by his grandfather (see Preface). Ho Ching-ming was among the friends wishing him farewell when he went into mourning for his father, in Ho’s case with a set of four rather old-fashioned poems, two of which follow: 贈王文熙 Presented to Wang Wen-hsi [Pien] (two of four poems) 81 II 行子夜中起、月沒星尚爛。天明出城去、薄暮長河岸。草際人獨歸、烟中鳥初散。解纜忽以遙、川光夕凌亂。 A man on the road gets up in the dead of night; The moon has set, but stars are glimmering still. As the sky grows light, he leaves the town behind; As twilight fades, he is on the long river banks. At the edge of a meadow, someone comes home alone; Within the haze, the birds begin to scatter. Casting off your line, you are suddenly far away: The light on the river at sunset troubled and dancing . . . IV 息馬中林樹、烟靄何氛氳。遲遲仲春日、叢薄華且芬。上有單飛翼、哀鳴振層雲。冉冉征途客、踟躕不忍聞。嗟哉彼何物、日夜求其群。 I rest my horse by a tree within the grove; The mists and cloud banks—how they roll and billow! Slowly, slowly, through the mid-spring days, Clumps and thickets flower and grow fragrant. Above, a single pair of wings in flight, Grieving cries that shake the layered clouds.

———

repr. Hsü-hsiu SKCS, vols. 1728-29, Shanghai: Shanghai Ku-chi, 1995). 80 “Matching [a Poem to the Melody] ‘Yü Mei-jen’ by Master Ta-fu” (Tai Shih Chi 11.10b); “Matching [a Poem to the Melody] ‘Lang t’ao sha’ by Master Ta-fu” (Tai Shih Chi 11.12b). None of these match any of the known tz’u by Ho 81 HTFC 9.6b (110; 351:002, 004). For poems by Li Meng-yang, Pien Kung, and Hang Huai written at the same time as Ho’s, see Preface.

THE SOCIETY OF LETTERED MEN

63

On and on, a sojourner on the road, Pauses, lingers, cannot bear to listen. Alas! What sort of creature is it, Day and night to seek its fellows! The first line of the first poem differs only in its last word from one in Pao Chao’s 鮑照 “Ballad of East Gate” 東門行. In Pao’s poem, the line is the second half of a couplet contrasting the wife left behind and the husband departing, “The one staying at home closes her bedroom door and lies down, / The man on the road takes his meal in the dead of night” 居人掩閨臥、行子夜中飯. 82 The image, however, goes farther back. It can be found in one of the poems attributed to Su Wu 蘇武 and associated with his farewell from his friend Li Ling 李陵, “The man on campaign yearns for his former road, / Gets up to see how the night is passing” 征夫懷往路、起視夜何其. 83 The third line of the second poem duplicates, with the addition of one word (required by the metre), a line that occurs twice in the Songs. The Songs context closest to Ho’s is in the “Bringing out the Carts” 出車 poem, “The spring days are drawn out, / All plants and trees are in leaf” 春日遲遲、卉木萋萋. 84 Calling birds occur in the Songs and other early texts. An early example of birds call for missed mates is found in Sung Yü’s 宋玉 “Rhapsody on the Kao-t’ang Shrine” 高唐賦, “Birds in flocks chirp and chatter, / Male and female, lost from their mates, / Sadly wail, crying for each other” 眾雀嗷嗷、雌雄相失、哀鳴相號. 85 An early example in verse is found in Ts’ao Chih’s 曹植 “Poem Presented to Wang Ts’an” 贈王粲詩 , in which a sorrowing persona goes out for a walk under the blossoming spring trees and comes to a pool where he sees, “In the middle, a single Mandarin duck, / Crying sadly in search of its mate”中有孤鴛鴦、哀鳴求匹儔. 86 Ho’s seventh line differs in only one word from a line in the final couplet of a poem by Tu Fu about the ‘Jade Flowery Hall’ 玉華宮, an abandoned palace he passed while travelling, “On and on, ever on the road. / Who is he who lived forever?” 冉冉征途間、誰是長年者. 87 The last part of Ho’s poem, especially the final line, is reminiscent of a passage toward the end of Wang Ts’an’s

——— 82

WH 28.20a (391); YTHY 4.26a (74); Lu Ch’in-li, p.1258; Pao Shih Chi 鮑氏集 (Collected Works of Mr. Pao) (SPTK) 3.3a (9). 83 WH 29.10b (401); YTHY 1.16b (23); Lu Ch’in-li, p.338; cf. the translation in Birrell, p.41. 84 Mao Shih Yin-te 36/168/6; I quote Waley’s translation, p.125; cf. Karlgren, p.113. 85 WH 19.5b (252); Sung Yü Chi 宋玉集 (Collected Works of Sung Yü), compiled by Wu Kuang-p’ing 吳廣平 (Changsha: Yüeh-lu Shu-she, 2001), p.50; I quote the translation in Knechtges, 3:335. 86 WH 24.3b (327); Lu Ch’in-li, p.451; Ts’ao Tzu-chien Chi 曹子建集 (Collected Works of Ts’ao Tzu-chien) (SPTK) 5.7a (22). 87 Tu Shih Yin-te 51/6/15, CTS 217.2276, K.10561.

64

CHAPTER TWO

“Rhapsody on Climbing the Tower” 登樓賦, “Beasts, wildly gazing, seek their herds; / Birds, crying back and forth, raise their wings” 獸枉顧以求群兮、鳥相鳴而舉翼. 88

The second of these poems is a much more purely ‘old’ poem than the first. The isolated and not clearly sequential opening couplets, the ‘obvious’ employment of the solitary bird as symbol for the traveller (poet), and the use, invisible in translation, of such grammatical particles as ch’ieh 且 and tsai 哉 all make this clear. For all that these poems exemplify poetic conventions, whether of joy or of sorrow, we might be forgiven for feeling that, the loss of his wife aside, Ho was perhaps never again so happy in Peking as during this first promising year or two in the capital, when it seemed that the reign of Hsiao-tsung might last for decades to come, adorned, he might fondly (though not unreasonably) hope, by a literary efflorescence in which he and his new-found teachers, friends, and associates would play distinguished roles. The event would prove very different, and swiftly so.

———

88 WH 11.3b (147); Wang Ts’an Chi Chu 王粲集注 (Collected Works of Wang Ts’an, Annotated), compiled by Wu Yün 吳雲 and T’ang Shao-chung 唐紹忠 (Hsinyang: Chung-chou Shu-hua, 1984), p.46; I quote the translation in Knechtges 2:241.

CHAPTER THREE

THE EMBASSY TO YUNNAN THE LAST GOOD EMPEROR Emperor Chu Yu-t’ang 朱祐樘, who had reigned during the Hungchih 弘治 era (1487-1505) and is known by his posthumous title Hsiao-tsung (‘Filial Ancestor’), died in June of 1505 at the age of only thirty-five, to be succeeded by his thirteen year old son Chu Hou-chao 朱厚照 . It is not easy to find a Ming emperor whom one can characterise as ‘good’, but Hsiao-tsung had been among the best. He had made a serious attempt to be a ruler in the Confucian style, had generally avoided harsh treatment of his court officials, had kept his personal expenditures within reason, and had restrained the influence of eunuchs. 1 His death would affect not only Ho Ching-ming, but all of his fellow officials and, indeed, the course of Chinese history. Had he lived to a more normal span, China might have been spared some of the unfortunate consequences of the reigns of his irresponsible son, known posthumously as Wu-tsung 武宗, and Shih-tsung 世宗, the head-strong nephew who succeeded Wu-tsung in 1521. As it was, the high hopes and expectations for the future felt in the circle of young officials to which Ho Ching-ming belonged were in for a series of cruel disappointments. Indeed, the unhappy days of Wu-tsung’s reign had been foreshadowed even in the last months of his predecessor. One of Hsiao-tsung’s few failings was the latitude that he allowed the relatives of Empress Chang 張后. In the spring of 1505, Li Mengyang memorialised against a number of current abuses, some of which

——— 1

Ch’oe Pu remarked on the praise that Hsiao-tsung received early in his reign, especially for his reduction in the influence of eunuchs. See John Meskill, Ch’oe Pu’s Diary: a Record of Drifting Across the Sea (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1965), pp.114-15. Charles Hucker characterises Hsiao-tsung as “conscientious and responsive”; see The Ming Dynasty: Its Origins and Evolving Institutions, Michigan Papers in Chinese Studies 34 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies, 1978), p.97,

66

CHAPTER THREE

clearly implicated the Changs. He was arrested briefly for his presumption, and was in danger of serious punishment, but a senior official spoke in his favour to the Emperor himself, and in the end Li was only fined. 2 On the accession of Wu-tsung he was even promoted, as was Pien Kung. The death of Hsiao-tsung brought a new responsibility for Ho Ching-ming. He was ordered to go as formal bearer of the news of the succession to the province of Yunnan, in the far southwest. 3 Such a mission was something of a ‘plum’, since it meant that Ho would be travelling with a pass allowing him to use the post system for transportation and to lodge in official quarters. Potentially the trip might also have allowed him to improve on his finances considerably by accepting expensive gifts from his hosts or from others wanting a word said for them in the capital. Li Meng-yang saw him off with a long poem, in which he described in somewhat hyperbolic terms the grief and consternation felt by the civil officials on the death of Hsiaotsung. 四海哭若喪慈母、百官狂走天為黑。 All within the seas wail as though for a loving mother; The hundred officials run wildly about; the Heavens turn black . . . 4

———

2 MTC records his arrest in the third month (40.1529). See the set of seventeen poems that Li wrote during his imprisonment, “Telling of my Indignation: Seventeen Poems written in the Fourth Month of the Yi-ch’ou Year of Hung-chih [1505]” 述憤一十七首弘治乙丑年四月作, K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi (1530; repr. Taipei: Wei-wen, 1976) 10.1b-4b (200-206). The second of Ho’s “Replying to Hsien-chi [Li Meng-yang]” poems (see above, chapter two) probably refers to Li’s release, HTFC 9.9b (114; 351:015). Ho begins it with the declaration, “Our prince is a Yao or Shun of ancient times!” 吾君古堯舜. 3 The despatch of officials to the most distant provinces, including Yunnan, is recorded in the Hsiao-tsung Shih-lu under a date corresponding to June 24, 1505 (Taipei: Chung-yang Yen-chiu Yüan, 1964) 224.5a (4245). The officials are not named. For a study of Ho’s mission and its route, see Yao Hsüeh-hsien 姚學賢 and Ts’ao-mu 草木, “Ho Ching-ming Ch’u-shih Yunnan Tsa-k’ao” 何景明出使雲南雜考 (Miscellaneous Studies of Ho Ching-ming’s Mission to Yunnan), Honan Shih-fan Tahsüeh Hsüeh-pao 20.4 (1993): 48-51. They are chiefly concerned with correcting errors in Fu K’ai-p’ei. 4 “Presented to Drafter Ho, who is Conveying the Proclamation to Various Districts in the South” 贈何舍人齎詔南紀諸鎮, K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi 18.2a (387). Ho’s compositions on the occasion were the equally hyperbolic “Announcing the Calamity” 告咎文, HTFC 3.3b; (29; 賦:002), and a poem of farewell for Wang T’ing-hsiang whose allusions to the Han dynasty writers Chia Yi 賈誼 (“able at critical Memorials” 賈生能抗疏) and Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju 司馬相如 (“excellent at

THE EMBASSY TO YUNNAN

67

Later in the poem, Li also refers to Ho’s older brother Ching-shao, still in office in Pa-ling, through which Ho would pass on his trip to the southwest, and to poems that Ho had written there six years previously. 巴陵縣令舍人兄、接詔會弟西樓中。童年題詩在高壁、六載不到紗為籠 The Magistrate of Pa-ling is the Drafter’s elder brother; Receiving the proclamation, he will meet his younger brother in the Western Tower. The poems inscribed in your childhood years remain on the high wall; For six years you have not come—gauze forms a screen . . . 5

Li Meng-yang’s farewell poem ends with a question, “When you return, what will you have to present to the Son of Heaven?” Ho was away from Peking for almost a year on this trip, and during this time he produced a considerable body of writing: just over one hundred poems survive, along with three long ‘rhapsodies’ (fu 賦 ), and a variety of other works. Because the preservation of works written by Ho before this trip is very haphazard, the importance of the poetry written during the Yunnan trip is greatly increased, the more so as it is narrowly datable, representative of all major forms, and written independently of any day-to-day influence from Ho’s contemporaries and seniors. This is true even though the very uneven way in which the surviving material is distributed over the course of his travels suggests that he may have written a good deal more than now survives. We have very little from the area between Peking and the Yangtse, although Ho passed through Hsin-yang on his way back, and possibly on his way south as well. Once Ho reaches the Yangtse, we find at least one poem written in virtually every county or guard district (wei 衛) through which he passed, as far as the border of Yunnan. 6 Almost

———

writing” 司馬善為文) probably refer to Li and Wang; see “Taking Leave of Wang Ping-heng” 別王秉衡, HTFC 18.14b (304; 352:130). 5 Li also wrote two additional short poems later in the year, on thinking of Ho and on receiving word from him in mid-journey. See “On Getting News that Master Ho has Passed Hunan” 得何子過湖南消息 and “Remembering Master Ho” 憶何子, K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi 24.5a (591). 6 A few poems written during the last stage of his mission are included in the Ching-chi (see below). Others may have been lost, some perhaps even during a robbery (see below). The poems in the Shih-chi are arranged chronologically within each formal genre, virtually without exception. This is particularly clear since most of them refer to the place in which they were composed.

68

CHAPTER THREE

the first of these poems was written in what is now part of the city of Wuhan: 武昌聞邊報傳聞彍騎近長安、北伐朝廷已遣官。路繞居庸烽火暗、城高山海戍樓寒。一時邊將當關少、六月王師出塞難。先帝恩深能養士、請纓誰為繫樓蘭。 At Wu-ch’ang I Hear a Report from the Frontier 7 I hear a report that nomad horsemen are drawing near Ch’ang-an; For a northern campaign the Imperial Court has already appointed commanders. The road coils round at Chü-yung Pass, where beacon fires are dim; The walls are high at Shan-hai Barrier, where lookout towers are cold. For a single season the frontier generals who tend the gates were few; In the sixth month the royal armies find crossing the borders hard— Our former Emperor’s favour was profound, able to foster warriors; Who will request a hatstring now and tie up Lou-lan with it? The first line is reminiscent of one in the Liang dynasty poet Yü Hsi’s 虞羲 “Singing of General Huo’s Northern Expedition” 詠霍將軍北伐, “Nomad horsemen enter Yu and Ping” 虜騎入幽并. 8 The last line then recalls Tu Fu’s “End of the Year” 歲暮, “Heaven and earth are daily flowing blood; / In the Imperial Court, who will request a hat-string?” 天地日流血、朝廷誰請纓. 9

Chü-yung Pass and the Shan-hai Barrier were strongpoints in the defence of Peking from the north. Mention of the old T’ang capital at Ch’ang-an refers by Ming convention to Peking. The Han dynasty official Chung Chün 終軍 was given a long hatstring when setting out on a campaign against a southern kingdom. He used it to tie up the enemy king, from which incident ‘requesting a hatstring’ has come to mean “requesting the opportunity to serve the state by leading an expedition against a foreign enemy.” 10 Lou-lan was a state in the Tarim basin in Han times. Wu-ch’ang was not far from Pa-ling, and

——— 7

HTFC 24.1a (418; 172:002). MTC records nomad incursions at this time, 40.1531-32. 8 WH 21.20a (291); Lu Ch’in-li, p.1607. Yu and Ping were districts on the northern frontier. 9 Tu Shih Yin-te 352/35/5-6, CTS 226.2437, K.11132. 10 Han Shu 漢書 (History of the Han), compiled by Pan Ku 班固 (Peking: Chunghua, 1962) 64B.2821.

THE EMBASSY TO YUNNAN

69

soon Ho was at Yün-hsi, some miles northeast of Pa-ling, anticipating a reunion with his brother: 雲溪驛雲溪驛裏經過處、六七年間兩度行。風土不殊初到日、雨牆難認舊題名。異方見月思鄉縣、遠客逢秋念友生。明日巴陵江上酒、弟兄相對不勝情。 Yün-hsi Post Station 11 The inside of Yün-hsi station is somewhere I’ve been before, Six or seven years ago I passed it twice on the road. The look of the place is just the same as the day I first was here; On the rainy wall it is hard to make out my name inscribed back then. Seeing the moon from a distant land, I think of my native district; Encountering autumn far from home, I miss my friends and colleagues. Tomorrow in Pa-ling, drinking wine on the river, We brothers will meet, overcome by our affection. The fourth line is reminiscent of a couplet in Wei Ying-wu’s “Responding to Li Shih-sun of Honan’s Inscription on Fragrant Hills Temple” 答河南李士巽題香山寺, “Walls and surfaces have collapsed or weathered in places; / I cannot see the old inscribed names” 牆宇或崩剝、不見舊題名. 12

Another poem written as Ho approached Yüeh-yang strikes an almost contemporary note of protest against deforestation. Praising the great old pines that had shaded the road near P’u-ch’i 蒲圻 on his earlier visit to the area, he laments, 只今復向巴邱道、野草漸多松漸少。 But now as I come again along the road to Pa-ch’iu, Wasteland weeds gradually increase, while the pines grow fewer and fewer 13 s.

And continues, 年年官吏催斧斤、故老雖怒那敢嗔。 Year after year, officials and their lackeys send in the axes and bills; Long-time residents may be angry, but dare they raise their voices?

Soon he was with Ching-shao in Pa-ling, to which he often refers by

——— 11 12 13

HTFC 24.1b (419; 172:004). Wei Ying-wu Chi Chiao-chu (Shanghai: Shanghai Ku-chi, 1998) 5.349. “Ballad of the Ancient Pines” 古松行, HTFC 11.1b (141; 171:002).

70

CHAPTER THREE

its alternate name Yüeh-yang: 岳陽楚水滇池萬里遊、使車重喜過巴丘。千家樹色浮山郭、七月濤聲入郡樓。寺裏池亭多舊主、城中冠蓋半同遊。明朝又下章華路、江月湖烟綰別愁。 Yüeh-yang 14 From the River in Ch’u to the Pool of Tien, a voyage of ten thousand leagues; By official carriage I again delight in visiting Pa-ch’iu Hill. The beauty of trees by a thousand houses floats the mountain walls; The sound of waves in the seventh month is heard in the county office. Inside the temple, pavilions and ponds keep many former tenants; Within this town, half the caps and carriages are my old companions. Tomorrow morning I set out again, along the way to Chang-hua; River moonlight and mist on the lake tether my parting sorrow. Ho’s third line inescapably recalls the opening of the third poem in Tu Fu’s great set of “Autumn Meditations” 秋興八首, “A thousand houses rimmed by the mountains are quiet in the morning light” 千家山郭靜朝暉. 15

The ‘River’ is the Yangtse, Ch’u the region of Hunan and Hupeh. The ‘Pool of Tien’ is a large lake at whose north end is located Kunming 昆明, the capital of Yunnan, Ho’s destination. Pa-ch’iu Hill overlooks Lake Tung-t’ing on the outskirts of Yüeh-yang. King Ling 靈王, an early ruler of the state of Ch’u was said to have constructed the Chang-hua (‘Patterned and Ornate’) Terrace in 534 B.C.E. in what is now (and was in Ho’s day) Hua-jung. 16 The poems written in Wu-ch’ang and Yüeh-yang are heptasyllabic regulated verse. This form had been brought to perfection during the Early and High T’ang (ca. 600-775), but it is associated with Tu Fu above all. It was Tu who developed the form from one chiefly used for poetry in the Early T’ang courtly manner into a vehicle for intensely personal poetry written in a densely allusive and multiply suggestive

———

14 HTFC 24.2a (419; 172:005). At the end of the first line, the K’ang-hsi, Ch’ienlung, and Hsien-feng editions read 經萬里 ‘passing ten thousand leagues’ for 萬里遊 ‘journey of ten thousand leagues’. 15 Tu Shih Yin-te 467/32C/1, CTS 230.2510, K.11550; I quote the translation by A.C. Graham, Poems of the Late T’ang (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965), p.53. 16 Ch’un-ch’iu Ching-chuan Yin-te 363/昭7/2左; Legge, p.616.

THE EMBASSY TO YUNNAN

71

language. After this development, the form came to be the one central to the work of such later T’ang poets as Li Shang-yin and Tu Mu. 17 Ho’s poem was possibly written to present to friends in Yüeh-yang. It is a ‘public’ poem, and thus avoids the kind of intensity found in more personal writing. The following poem, also written in Yüeh-yang and also in the heptasyllabic regulated form, sounds a more personal note: 岳陽城中聞笛何處笛聲三四弄、坐聽疑隔楚江濆。落梅折柳怨清夜、激羽流商哀白雲。月上山樓人獨倚、風高秋院客先聞。洞庭空濶瀟湘冷。縹緲餘音送鴈群。 Hearing a Flute Within the Walls of Yüeh-yang 18 Somewhere, the sound of a flute performing three or four refrains— I sit and listen, surmise it to be across this river of Ch’u. “Falling Plum Blossoms,” “Willow Switches” complain of the limpid evening; Urgent yü and flowing shang lament beneath white clouds. The moon ascends a mountain pavilion where someone lingers alone; A breeze picks up in an autumn courtyard; a stranger is first to hear. Lake Tung-t’ing is vast and void; the Hsiao and Hsiang are chill; Far in the distance remnant notes bid flocks of geese farewell.

“Falling Plum Blossoms” and “Willow Switches” were the names of old yüeh-fu ballads. Yü and shang are notes of the musical scale. The Hsiao and Hsiang are two rivers in southern Hunan famous for their beauty. Their waters eventually drain into Lake Tung-t’ing. From Yüeh-yang, Ho crossed around the north end of Lake Tungt’ing, passing through Hua-jung. 華容弔楚宮別館離宮紛綺羅、細腰爭待楚王過。章華日晚春遊盡、雲梦天寒夜獵多。廢殿有基人不到、荒臺無主鳥吹歌。西江烟月長如舊、只有繁華逐逝波。

———

17 For Tu Fu’s role in the development of heptasyllabic regulated verse, see Kao Yu-kung and Mei Tsu-lin, “Tu Fu’s ‘Autumn Meditations’: an Exercise in Linguistic Criticism,” HJAS 28 (1968): 44-80. For Tu’s influence on Late T’ang poets, A. C. Graham, Poems of the Late T’ang. Chien Chin-sung notes that one characteristic of the Archaists, as distinguished from both the Soochow literati and the poets of the Secretariat style, was that they wrote in general many more pentasyllabic poems than heptasyllabic. 18 HTFC 24.2a (419; 172:006).

72

CHAPTER THREE

At Hua-jung: Mourning the Palaces of Ch’u 19 In separate halls and detached palaces, flurries of gauze and brocade, Slender waists were waiting for the King of Ch’u to visit. At Chang-hua Terrace the days grew late and springtime outings ended; In Yün-meng Marsh as skies turned cold there were many hunts at night. By abandoned halls the graves remain, but no one ever visits; The weed-grown terrace lacks a tenant—birds sing to no avail. The western river’s hazy moon remains just as before; It is only the busy glory that has followed the waves away.

From Hua-jung, Ho moved on to Chin-shih, at the northwest corner of the Hunan basin. Here he wrote a poem in the ‘old style,’ but reminiscent of the T’ang revival of the form: 津市打魚歌大船峨峨繫江岸、鮎魴鱍鱍收百萬。小船取速不取多、往來拋網如擲梭。野人無船住水滸、職竹為梁數如罟。夜來水長沒沙背、津市家家有魚賣。江邊酒樓燕估客、割鬐砍鱠不論百。楚姬玉手揮霜刀、雪花錯落金盤高。鄰家思婦清晨起、買得蘭江一雙鯉。簁簁紅尾三尺長、操刀具案不忍傷。呼童放鯉潎波去、寄我素書向郎處。 A Fishing Song of Market Ford 20 The larger boats are tall and towering, moored by the river’s shore; Bream and pout, all leaping and splashing, are taken by the millions. The smaller boats can catch fish quickly, but do not catch so many; Back and forth, they cast their nets, as fast as throwing a shuttle. Country folk who have no boats live by the water’s edge; They weave bamboo into a weir, as close-meshed as a net. Since last night, the river has risen, submerging the sandy banks; Now in Chin-shih every household has some fish to sell. In a wineshop inn beside the river, a feast for merchant guests:

———

19 HTFC 24.3a (420; 172:009). One claimant for the site of the Chang-hua Terrace built by King Ling of Ch’u was located on the east side of the county town, see (Lung-ch’ing) Yüeh-chou Fu Chih 岳州府志 (Gazetteer of Yüeh-chou Prefecture) 7.83a, which quotes Ho’s poem. 20 HTFC 11.2b (172; 171:003). Chin-shih (“Market at the Ford”) was a few miles east of Li-chou 澧州, on the west side of Lake Tung-t’ing, see (Lung-ch’ing) Yüehchou Fu Chih 7.69b. ‘Orchid River’ was another name for the Li 澧 River in northwest Hunan (Ch’u). There is a French translation of this poem in Paul Demiéville, ed., Anthologie de la poésie chinoise classique (Paris: Gallimard, 1962), pp.476-77.

THE EMBASSY TO YUNNAN

73

Chopping off fins and slicing the meat, and never mind the cost! The jade-like hands of a maid from Ch’u brandish a frosty knife; Snowy blossoms scatter and fall, heaped in a golden basin. In the house next door a pensive wife gets up in the clear of dawn, Goes out to shop and buys a pair of Orchid River carp. Flailing and flapping, their pink tails, all of three feet long; She readies her knife and clears the table, but cannot bear to wound. She calls a servant to free the carp to dash off through the waves, “To carry a letter on plain silk to where my man is staying . . .” The penultimate line of this poem may end with a reminiscence of a writer not usually associated with Ho, the late T’ang poet Li Ho 李賀, whose “Song of a Palace Beauty” 宮娃歌 ends, “I hope you will be as bright as the sun, / And turn me loose to ride a fish, dashing off through the waves” 願君光明如太陽、放妾騎魚潎波去. 21

One might take this as a simple account of the sights of Chin-shih, and so perhaps it may be, in part. But comparison with the following poem by Tu Fu makes it clear that Ho’s poem is also a very self-consciously literary production: 觀打魚歌杜甫綿州江水之東津、魴魚鱍鱍色勝銀。漁人漾舟沉大網、截江一擁數百鱗。眾魚常才盡却弃、赤鯉騰出如有神。潛龍無聲老蛟怒、迴風颯颯吹沙塵。饔子左右揮霜刀、鱠飛金盤白雪高。徐州禿尾不足憶、漢陰槎頭遠遁逃。魴魚肥美知第一、既飽驩娛亦蕭瑟。君不見朝來割素鬢、咫尺波濤永相失。 A Song of Watching the Fishing 22 At the eastern ferry across the river at Mien-chou, Breamfish leap and splash, their beauty finer than silver. The fishermen’s bobbing boats submerge great nets, Cutting across the stream for a single haul of several hundred. A host of fish of common worth, all rejected and thrown back, Crimson carp leap up as though divinely inspired. Lurking dragons keep their silence, ancient sharks are angry;

———

21 San-chia P’ing-chu Li Ch’ang-chi Ko-shih 三家評註李長吉歌詩 (Songs and Poems of Li Ch’ang-chi with Three Commentators Annotations), compiled by Wang Ch’i 王琦 (Peking: Chung-hua, 1959), p.84. J.D. Frodsham, in the notes to his translation of this poem, comments on Wang’s difficulty with the image of the palace lady straddling a fish; see his The Poems of Li Ho (Oxford: Clarendon, 1970), p.94. 22 Tu Shih Yin-te 139/9, CTS 220.2314, K.10701.

74

CHAPTER THREE

An eddying breeze sighs and soughs over dust and sand. The butchers brandish their frosty knives to left and right; Slices fly onto golden platters, a heap of white snow. The ‘bald-tails’ of Hsü-chou are not worthy of remembrance; The ‘raft-heads’ of Han-yin have fled far away. The breamfish here are rich and fine; I know they are the best; But once I am full, my content and pleasure turn to nothing. Don’t you see sir, all the colourless fins cut off today, So close to the waves that they have lost forever!

The form is the same except for the more frequent rhyme changes in Ho’s work; the length is almost equal; and of course several of Ho’s phrases have been adapted from Tu Fu’s lines, especially in Ho’s sixth couplet, which is a close reworking of Tu’s fifth. 23 The most important thing Ho has done is his shift of the theme of the poem away from a praise and regret formula derived from the Han rhapsody tradition to a combination of the ‘vignette of rural life’ tradition with that of the ‘forsaken wife’. The other poem that lies behind Ho’s is of course the yüeh-fu ballad “Watering my Horse at a Gap in the Great Wall” attributed to Ts’ai Yung, in which such a wife is given two carp, 客從遠方來、遺我雙鯉漁。呼兒烹鯉漁、中有尺素書。 A sojourner came from far away, Presented me with a pair of carp. I called a servant to boil the carp; Inside, a letter on a foot of plain silk. 24

From Chin-shih, Ho skirted the foothills to the south until he came to

——— 23

Tu Shih Yin-te 140/9/9-10, CTS 220.2314, K.10701. Tu’s second poem on the same theme (140/10) has successive couplets beginning with “large” (大 ta) and “small” (小 hsiao), but in this case referring to the fish rather than to the boats. 24 WH 27.16a (377); YTHY 1.24b (27); Lu Ch’in-li, p.192; there are translations by Stephen Owen in his Anthology of Chinese Literature (New York: Norton, 1996), p.258, and in Birrell, p.48. The Wen Hsüan treats the poem as anonymous. A scholar writing a few decades after Ho’s time, Chang Ting-ssu 張鼎思, citing the Tan-ch’ien Tsung-lu 丹鉛總錄, argued that the image had arisen because in ancient time letters were folded in the shape of carp. There was no question of people boiling real fish and finding letters inside, and the commentators who take the image in the poem literally are, Chang fumes, like “idiots trying to interpret dreams.” See Chang’s Lang-yeh Taitsui Pien 琅邪代醉編 (A Compilation from Lang-yeh to Take the Place of Drunkenness) (1597; repr. TM 3:129-30; Tainan: Chuang-yen Wen-hua, 1995) 38.16a (373). Whatever Ho Ching-ming actually believed about the epistolary conventions of antiquity, in the poem he treats the image quite literally.

THE EMBASSY TO YUNNAN

75

the lower reaches of the Yüan 沅 River, the major waterway of Western Hunan. He then made his way up the Yüan valley from Wuling 武陵 (modern Ch’ang-te 常德), where he paused long enough to write poems on some of the memorials to the legendary ‘Peach Blossom Spring’ 桃花源 immortalised by T’ao Ch’ien 陶潛. 25 The trip was often rewarding—most of the poems written along the way commemorate the beauty of the scenery—but it was long and sometimes hard as well, even if Ho sometimes playfully exaggerated his hardships, as in this poem: 自武陵至沅陵道中雜詩亭午入大谷、烈陽經中天。樹木多欝蒸、石圻起焦煙。掘地飲我馬、數尺不得泉。僕夫告飢渴、揮汗墮馬前。安得萬間廈、坐使清風延。

Miscellaneous Poems on the Road from Wu-ling to Yüan-ling (third of ten poems) 26 At high noon I enter a great valley, The torrid yang passes the zenith of heaven. Trees and bushes fill with dense steam, Stony crags give off scorching smoke. I dig a trench to water my horses, Several feet down without reaching moisture. My groom complains of hunger and thirst; Sweat drips from my horse’s chest. Where can I find a mansion of ten thousand rooms, Just to make a cool breeze linger?”

We know that he is not deadly serious, of course, because of the playful twists he gives to several earlier texts. The third line recalls the opening of Liu Hsiang’s 劉向 “Thinking of Antiquity” 思古 in the Ch’u Tz’u, “Dark, dark, the deep wood; the trees and bushes so very dense” 冥冥深林、樹木鬱鬱 . 27 The fourth line will strike anyone

———

25 See “Peach River Shrine” 桃川宮, HTFC 7.1b (70; 151:002-005); “Grotto of the Men from Ch’in” 秦人洞, HTFC 24.3a (420; 172:010-011). Ho also referred to his visit later, in a poem written in the capital about a painting of the place, “A Song of the Picture of the Peach Spring” 桃源圖歌, HTFC 14.4a (201; 371:510). 26 HTFC 7.2b (72; 151:008). For an interesting variant reading in line four, see below. In the final line, there is a tempting alternative rendering for the expression translated here as “just to make” (坐使 tso shih), “for seated envoys.” Syntax appears to require the reading chosen; see Chang Hsiang 張相, Shih Tz’u Ch’ü Yü-tz’u Huishih 詩詞曲語辭匯釋 (Compendium of Explanations of Poetic Vocabulary) (Peking: Chung-hua, 1953), p.452. 27 Ch’u-tz’u Pu-chu 16.24b (528); Hawkes first edition, p.165; Penguin edition,

76

CHAPTER THREE

who knows Pao Chao’s “Suffering from the Heat” 苦熱行 very forcibly as a close reworking of one of Pao’s lines. 28 There is also a playful reference to the Songs in Ho’s ‘hunger and thirst’. 29 Most noticeable of all, though, is the allusion, in his final couplet, to a famous poem that Tu Fu wrote after the roof of his hut was blown off in a storm. Describing how the thatch was scattered about by the wind, Tu depicts gangs of local boys stealing it right before his eyes while he shouts himself hoarse in impotent protest. No sooner does he return home in defeat than it begins to pour cold rain, and soon he and his family are soaked through. Suddenly, Tu’s vision shifts to Utopia (I quote the translation by A. R. Davis) : 安得廣廈千萬間、大庇天下寒士俱歡顏、風雨不動安如山。嗚呼、何時眼前突兀見此屋、吾廬獨破受凍死亦足。 Where can I find a mansion of a million rooms? To shelter every poor scholar, with a smiling face; In wind and rain unmoved, secure as a mountain. Oh when before my eyes there sprang up such a house, Though my hut alone were smashed and I froze to death, I should be content. 30

Now, it should be clear that Ho Ching-ming is adapting Pao Chao, for example, not because he is unable to think of any better way to describe the heat, but rather as part of his mock-heroic tone. The Tu

———

p.298. 28 WH, 28.20b (391); Lu Ch’in-li, p. 1266; Pao Shih Chi (SPTK) 3.4a (10). In Ho’s line, the first two and the last two words of Pao’s line change places. This has a bearing on a textual variant that is evidently the result of graphic confusion. The Yüan and Standard recensions read 坼 ‘split’, in place of the Shen recension’s 圻 ‘crag’ (the Yung recension of course does not include this Shih chi poem). While it is clear from both the commentary to the Wen Hsüan and the variant readings cited by Lu Ch’in-li that 圻 was the reading of the Pao Chao poem, the origin of the variant 坼 is uncertain. There is an alternative meaning for 圻, ‘territory surrounding the royal domain’, so it is possible that someone found this unintelligible in the context and opted for the alternative 坼 as the lectio facilior. The perpetrator is unlikely to have been Ho Chingming himself, since he would have been familiar with both Pao’s line and with another similar use of 圻 in a poem by Hsieh Ling-yün; it seems more likely that the variant arose in the course of the preparation of the common ancestor of the Yüan and Standard recensions. 29 Mao Shih Yin-te 14/66/2. 30 “Song of my Thatched Hut Damaged by the Autumn Winds” 茅屋為秋風所破歌, Tu Shih Yin-te 137/3/19-24, CTS 219.2309, K.10686; A. R. Davis, Tu Fu (New York: Twayne, 1971), pp.79-80. For another translation, see William Hung, Tu Fu: China’s Greatest Poet (1952; repr. New York: Russell and Russell, 1969), p.172.

THE EMBASSY TO YUNNAN

77

Fu reference, however, is another matter. As we saw in the case of Ho’s “Befriending Bamboo” (chapter one), he sometimes reworks a passage in a classic poem so as to suggest the possibility of depths that he does not intend to plumb himself. This time, however, he takes a greater risk, and we cannot be sure that he succeeds. Tu’s poem strikes too delicate a balance between ironic self-deprecation and universal compassion for a mock-heroic treatment of it not to be dangerous. Tu Fu’s generous impulse is a hard-won victory over fear and anger and shame and despair; Davis calls it a “magnificent outcry against misfortune,” and William Hung says it is “true to the noblest sentiments of humanity.” 31 Ho’s ‘breezy’ appropriation of it cannot help but strike an uneasy chord in any reader who recognises his source—and what reader would not? And yet, though the chord sounds in the reader, it apparently did not in Ho Ching-ming or in his contemporaries. Indeed, there is no suggestion, even among later critics opposed to the Archaists, that Ho was to be faulted for irreverence—quite the contrary, if anything. It is true that this poem is an early work, and also one unlikely to be encountered by anyone who was not reading Ho’s corpus as a whole, but if traditional critics were to be troubled by it, at least one of them surely would have sounded the alarm. 32 All the same, the discrepency is striking between Ho’s use of Tu Fu here and the more reverent attitude we might expect from someone hoping to restore the values of antiquity. The approach is one of reference rather than reverance. Tu’s works, like those of Pao Chao and the contents of the Songs, being widely known, were ideal as sources of lines that could be reworked and made to function in entirely new ways without any danger of their borrower’s skill going unnoticed because of the obscurity of his source. This might seem a surprisingly ‘modern’ (or even a post-modern) approach for a poet thought of as an ‘Archaist’. In fact, however, it is something akin to

———

31 For a more sophisticated response, see Eva Shan Chou, Reconsidering Tu Fu: Literary Greatness and Cultural Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp.125-28. 32 A generally acute modern critic, in praising the social conscience that Ho displays in another poem in this set, attributes it to the influence of Tu Fu, but he says nothing about this poem. See Jen Fang-ch’iu 任訪秋, “Ho Ching-ming Chien-lun” 何景明簡論 (Brief discussion of Ho Ching-ming), Hsin-yang Shih-fan Hsüeh-yüan Hsüeh-pao 1986.1: 27-35, p.33.

78

CHAPTER THREE

the ‘art-historical art’ that is often found in the tradition of Chinese painting from the Yüan dynasty on. To find analogous Western examples, we must look to much more recent times, where there are such cases as the reworking of Mahler’s Second Symphony (and much else) in Berio’s “Sinfonia,” William Styron’s “Call me Stingo,” Luis Buñuel’s use of the “Et incarnatus” from Bach’s Mass in B minor as background to a scene of a transvestite pulling on his nylons in “Viridiana,” or Francis Bacon’s radical transformations of Velazquez in his “Study After Velazquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X,” taken up for further development recently by the British composer Mark Anthony Turnage in his “Three Screaming Popes.” All of these are works that absorb a variety of existing pieces of music, literature, or art in ways that make them both independent creations and commentaries on their sources. 33 We need not suppose that Ho’s motives were the same as any of theirs to recognise that his technique is similar. SOLITUDINEM FACIUNT Ho continues to play the student poet at intervals during his trip (there is a rip-roaring remake of Li Po’s famous “Hard is the Road to Shu” 蜀道難, for example, complete with ‘oohs and aahs’), 34 and even at times the official, but for the most part he appears in these poems as the tourist in a poor and distant land, by turns entranced by the exotic scenery and irritated by the inconveniences (although, unlike modern tourists, he spares us his complaints about the ‘facilities’), both charmed by the picturesque natives and disquieted by their violence and squalor. 自武陵至沅陵道中雜詩山深多樹木、百里人民稀。時有四五家、茅茨隔山陵。沙田不可耕、何以禦歲饑。門前數畝園、祇收蓬與藜。平明出汲澗、薄暮始得炊。童稚那敢出、但畏逢虎罷。草黃納晚禾、桑綠催官絲。嗟爾遠方人、辛苦誰具知。

——— 33

There is, of course, an immense body of recent criticism concerned with this phenomenon, a corpus that I will not attempt here to summarise, or even to introduce. 34 This is “The Kuan-so Range” 關索嶺, HTFC 11.7a (146; 151:026). For Li Po’s original, see Ri Haku Kashi Sakuin 062; CTS 162.1680; K. 07926; An Ch’i, p.175.

THE EMBASSY TO YUNNAN

79

Miscellaneous Poems on the Road from Wu-ling to Yüan-ling (eighth of ten poems) 35 The mountains are deep, with many trees and shrubs; For dozens of miles, inhabitants are rare. From time to time there are four or five households, Their thatched huts cut off by mountain slopes. The sandy fields cannot be ploughed; How to ward off hunger at year’s end? Outside the door there is a modest garden, Whose only provision is fleabane and spinach. At first light they go to bring water from the creek; As dusk is fading they finally get to cook. The children scarcely dare to go outside, For fear of meeting tigers or bears. When the grass grows yellow, they gather the late grain crop; As mulberries turn green, are pressed for tax in silk. Alas, you people living in distant parts, You suffer and toil, and no one knows how much!

One poem written after Ho had crossed into Kweichow 貴州 province brings home the still ‘Wild West’ character of this distant frontier region, where the authority of the government was spread very thin: 清平令清平縣之令、不識何為者。庭前長野桑、庭後長山檟。猛虎上我城、青狨啼我舍。昨日出城去、騎馬到部下。部民道遮之、持刀殺其馬。入門顧妻子、所居無完瓦。秋風吹樹木、白日落原野。永夜空城中、哀哀淚如瀉。 The Magistrate of Ch’ing-p’ing 36 The Magistrate in charge of Ch’ing-p’ing County Is not the man to know what should be done. Outside his office grow untended mulberries; Behind his yard grow mountain ash trees. “Ferocious tigers come up to our walls; Blue-black gibbons shriek atop our houses . . .” Yesterday he went outside the town; Astride his horse, he rode off to the village. The village people stopped him on the road;

——— 35

HTFC 7.3b (73; 151:013). HTFC 7.5a (74; 151:018). The ‘no carvers names’ family of the Standard recension leaves blanks in place of 長 “grow” in the fourth line and 騎 “astride” in the eighth. The 野竹 ‘country bamboo’ edition of the Shen recension reads 力 “force” in place of 刀 “dagger” in line 10, the result of confusing similar characters. 36

80

CHAPTER THREE

With daggers in hand they took his horse and slew it. He came in the gate and looked at his wife and children, Their dwelling without a single unbroken tile. An autumn wind blows in the trees and shrubs; The glowing sun sets over meadows and fields. All night long, inside the empty walls, Grieving, grieving, their tears spill forth in a flood. Ho’s Magistrate who didn’t know ‘what to do’ may go back to the luckless perch in the Chuang-tzu who found himself in danger when he was trapped in a little bit of water in a wheel rut. 37 Ho’s tigers recall a line in one of Tu Fu’s great long poems, “The Journey North” 北征, “A ferocious tiger stands before me.” 38 That this similarity is not accidental is the more likely since the next line echoes a line in another Tu Fu poem, “Stone Pagoda” 石龕 “Before me, gibbons howl as well.” 39

Ch’ing-p’ing, in east-central Kweichow, was a very new part of the Chinese empire. It had been part of the Mongol realm, but was inhabited by tribesmen, as it continued to be in Ho’s day. The Ming court established a Chief’s Office (chang-kuan ssu 長官司) there in 1389, recognising the local authority of a tribal ruler. Only in 1494, just a dozen years before Ho’s visit, was it incorporated into the standard system of local government with the establishment of a County office and the appointment of a Magistrate. 40 The hapless, and mercifully anonymous, official of Ho’s poem was thus one of the first men to attempt to extend the reach of the State directly into the local tribesmen’s lives, and it is not surprising that his attempt was contested. 41 There is a bitterly ironic reference in the antepenultimate

——— 37

Chuang-tzu Yin-te 73/26/8; Watson, p.295; Graham, p.119. Watson translates 何為者 as “what are you doing here?” Graham as “what would you be?” Graham’s rendering better fits the context in the Chuang-tzu, but Watson’s works better in Ho’s poem. 38 Tu Shih Yin-te 48/3/31, CTS 217.2275, K.10558; cf. the translation by Susan Cherniack in her unpublished dissertation, “Three Great Poems by Dù Fù: ‘Five Hundred Words: A Song of my Thoughts on Traveling from the Capital to Fèngxiān,’ ‘Journey North,’ and ‘One Hundred Rhymes: A Song of my Thoughts on an Autumn Day in Kuífŭ, Respectfully Sent to Director Zhèng and Adviser to the Heir Apparent Lĭ’” (Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1988), pp.162-65. See below, chapter six, for another reference to this poem. 39 Tu Shih Yin-te 93/12/4, CTS 218.2297, K.10642. 40 MS 46.1205. 41 Surviving records neither identify a magistrate nor confirm any particular unrest in the period just before Ho’s visit. Ho wrote elsewhere in a satirical vein of inept or cowardly local officials; see “The Walling of Lüeh-yang” 城略陽, HTFC 6.11a (68; 樂:510).

THE EMBASSY TO YUNNAN

81

couplet to the famous letter that Ssu-ma Ch’ien 司馬遷 wrote to his friend Jen An 任安 in order to explain how he submitted to castration rather than commit suicide and leave his great history unfinished. Speaking of common human nature, Ssu-ma wrote, “It is the nature of every man to love life and hate death, to think of his relatives and look after his wife and children.” 42 The last line of Ho’s poem is identical in all but its last word to a line in the fourteenth of Li Po’s “Ancient Airs” 古風, which describes a battlefield on which 360,000 men had died, perhaps a less extreme example of the playfulness in the reference to Tu Fu’s hut a few days earlier. 43 One element in the unruliness of the local population was its mixed ethnicity, with a preponderance of non-Chinese tribal peoples such as the Miao and the Lo, whose allegiance to the Ming throne was only contingent. Ho’s Kweichow poems tend to portray the men as plain savages, as in “The Magistrate of Ch’ing-p’ing,” and the women as examples of the fetching looseness that northern men find irresistably plausible as a full account of the character of southern women, as in the following two examples: 偏橋行城頭日出一丈五、偏橋長官來擊鼓。山南野苗聚如雨、饑向民家食生牯。三尺竹箭七尺弩、朝出射人夜射虎。砦中無房亦無堵、男解蠻歌女解舞。千人萬人為一戶、殺血祈神暗乞蠱。沙蒸水毒草根苦、上山下山那敢杜。蠢爾苗民爾毋侮、虞庭兩階列干羽。 “A Ballad of Leaning Bridge” 44 Over the walls, the sun has risen one yard five; The senior official of P’ien-ch’iao comes out and beats the drum. South of the mountain the rustic Miao gather like rain; Starving, they head for people’s houses, eat their cattle raw. With bamboo arrows three feet long and bows of seven feet, Mornings they go out hunting men, in the evening, tigers. There are no rooms within their stockades, even walls are lacking; The men can sing barbarian songs; the women know how to dance; A thousand or ten thousand, all comprise a single household;

———

42 WH 41.15b (571); transl. Burton Watson, Records of the Grand Historian of China (New York, Columbia University Press, 1961), vol.1, p.[xii]. 43 Ri Haku Kashi Sakuin 13/16; CTS 161.1672; K.07878; An Ch’i, p.910. 44 HTFC 11.3a (143; 171:004). Pien-ch’iao (“Leaning Bridge”) guard district lay at the western edge of Chen-yüan 鎮遠 Prefecture. Ho passed through here a little before reaching Ch’ing-p’ing.

82

CHAPTER THREE

With killing and blood, they pray to the spirits, secretly begging for hexes. Sands steaming, water foul, herbs and roots so bitter, Up the hills and down the hills, how can they dare to stop. Stupid, you Miao people, you are lacking in shame! On the twin stairs of the forest courtyard, line up your staves and arrows! 羅女曲羅女年十五、自矜好研色。山葉雜山花、插髻當首飾。蠻方立門戶、男女多生涯。昨聞城中市、女出男在家。上市買黃絲、染缉作花布。裙短衫袖長、不惜雙脚露。夜行山中道、何處吹蘆笙。我歌連臂曲、曲罷動郎情。動郎情、與郎匹。生女復生男、三年始同室。 Song of the Lo Girl 45 The Lo girl is fifteen years of age, She brags about her own good looks. Mountain leaves mixed in with mountain flowers, She sticks at her temples to adorn her hair. In the local way of setting up house together, Boys and girls have many ways to manage. Lately I heard on market day in town, The girl goes out and leaves the boy at home. She goes to market and buys some yellow silk, Dyes and weaves it, making flowered cloth. Her skirt is short, her blouse and sleeves are long; She does not mind if her two feet show. At night she walks along the mountain path; Somewhere a set of reed panpipes is playing. “I sing a song of arms entwined; When the song is done it touches his heart. It touches his heart, I am his mate; I bear a daughter, And raise a son besides. After three years, we finally dwell together.”

The following poem, written for official ceremonies marking the reception of Ho’s mission at Kweiyang, the administrative centre for Kweichow, captures something of the relationship between the Ming and its ‘minority nationalities’, as they would be called today:

——— 45

HTFC 5.1b (73; 151:025).

THE EMBASSY TO YUNNAN

83

皇告蠢蠢苗民、浩浩炎邊。是俾是承、亦共戴天。黑齒髮椎、執弩被氊。載歌且謠、皇帝萬年。 The Imperial Proclamation (third of three strophes) 46 Thick and stupid, the Miao people, Broad and wide, the torrid frontier. Enable this! Accept this! Thereby to share in bearing up heaven. Blackened teeth and hair in knots, Holding bows and wrapped in mats, They make up songs and chant them: Long live the Emperor!

The Ming court had only three years before provided an overwhelming demonstration of its capacity for beneficent attention to local needs by carrying out a savage campaign in western Kweichow intended to suppress ‘bandits’ led by a woman named Mi-lu 米魯. The lasting effects of the fighting are evident in Ho’s repeated references to the widowed and homeless survivors, as well as in his occasional unease at travelling virtually unescorted through the region as a representative of the court. 城南婦行城南有寡婦、見客泣數行。自言良家女、少小藏閨房。青春嬌素手、白日照紅妝。父母偏見憐、嫁我不出鄉。前年彌魯亂、腥穢入我堂。弟兄各戰死、親戚俱陣亡。嗟哉華艷質、忍恥罹兇強。憂愁雲髮變、辛苦朱顏傷。昨聞故夫在、息消通兩方。百金贖我身、三年歸舊僵。歸來門巷異、人少蓬蒿長。轉盼夫亦死、兒女空在旁。雹田無耕犢、寒臘無完裳。人生固有命、妾獨遭此殃。况復官軍至、燒焚廬井荒。主將貪賄賂、百死不一償。朝廷自有法、出師亦有名。妾身何足道、無乃乖天常。 Ballad of the Woman South of the Wall 47 South of the wall there is a widowed wife, Seeing a stranger, she breaks out in streams of tears.

——— 46

HTFC 4.1a (39; 古詩:005). At this same official banquet, Ho wrote a poem— blissfully (or willfully) ignorant of the future—praising the Emperor’s rule by jen (仁 ‘humanity’); see “At the General Banquet in the Provincial Offices” 省中公讌, HTFC 11.3b (143; 171:005). 47 HTFC 7.7a (76; 151:027). There is another account of the devastation, with a similar denunciation of the greed of the government commanders in Ho’s “Ballad of P’an-chiang” 盤江行, HTFC 11.4a (143; 171:006).

84

CHAPTER THREE

She says that she came of a proper family, When young concealed within the women’s quarters. In the bloom of youth she was proud of her pale hands; The glowing sun shone on her pink rouged face. “The favoured darling of my father and mother, They married me within my native district. A few years back, during the Mi-lu Troubles, Stinking filth came into our halls. All my brothers died in the fighting; Every relative lost in battle. Alas! My blossomed beauty Endured disgrace, ensnared in evil and violence-Bereft and grieving, my cloudy tresses altered; In suffering and pain, my rosy face suffered. Lately, I heard my husband was still alive; The two of us were able to get in contact. For a hundred coins he redeemed my person; After three years, I returned to my former district. I came back home, but gate and lane had changed; People were few, and weeds were growing tall. In the blink of an eye, my husband too was dead; Son and daughter alone remained beside me. Our barren field has neither plough nor calf; In the cold of winter we lack for unpatched clothes. Human life is truly bound by fate; I have met with nothing but this loss. How much worse when the government troops arrived! They burned and wrecked; my hut and well were ruined. Their commander was avid for loot and bribes; A hundred deaths would bring me no compensation. The Imperial court must have its proper laws; Despatching an army surely has a standard. My humble person may be unworthy of notice; But do not set the constants of heaven awry!” Ho’s third line is almost identical to the corresponding line in Tu Fu’s “A Fine Lady” 佳人, “She says she is the daughter of a proper family” 自云良家子, and the heroine of Tu’s poem also lost her her brothers in a rebellion. 48

The woman’s plaint—and it is no doubt significant that she comes from a ‘proper’ family; no leaves in her hair—presents a picture of

———

48 Tu Shih Yin-te 76/5; There is a translation and commentary in David Hawkes, A Little Primer of Tu Fu (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), pp.78-86.

THE EMBASSY TO YUNNAN

85

recent history that contrasts strongly with the official account, in which a well-planned campaign by an army 80,000 strong, drawn from five jurisdictions, sweeps along the very same route that Ho was following, crossing the P’an-chiang, raising the seige of An-nan 安南, and pursuing the insurgents as far as P’ing-yi 平夷 , where the unhappy woman warrior Mi-lu meets her end in battle at the hands of a local tribesman who had been made a Prefect in the Chinese administration. The surviving accounts of the events leading up to the Mi-lu Rebellion reflect the usual assumptions made by a metropolitan bureaucracy attempting to deal with colonial unrest: capricious savagery on the part of the aboriginals and corruption and bungling on the part of local officials (after all, if they were any good they would not have been assigned to such a place). Accounts of the Rebellion’s suppression, which are more consistent only to the extent that they report active, rather than passive, involvement of the court, reflect the same bureaucracy’s preoccupations: eradicating any open challenge to state authority and apportioning blame. 49 Mi-lu is presented as the divorced wife (or expelled concubine) of an aging native Assistant Prefect at P’u-an 普安. She is said to have connived, after the latter had retired in favour of his son, with the son and a division commander named Ah-pao 阿保 to get herself recalled. The old man was so displeased by this that he had the son put to death and the commander’s camp razed, whereupon Mi-lu and Ah-pao took up arms against him and drove him out. The provincial authorities intervened to make peace, but Mi-lu had her former husband poisoned as he was returning from refuge in Yunnan and then rose in rebellion

——— 49

For Mi-lu and the origins of the troubles, see MTC 39.1475, 1494, and Hsiaotsung Shih-lu 154.11b (2752), 175.2a (3191), which record the initial outbreak of unrest in the ninth lunar month of 1499, probably when it was reported at court, and subsequent developments in the sixth month of 1502, when the counter-attack was ordered. In general, Ming policy in the region was to recognise local chiefs, some of whom were women, and to leave them to govern their followers according to local custom. Court recognition of course strengthened the hand of the chiefs, but at the same time it increased the stakes in the event of contested leadership. For an account of subsequent attempts, during the Ch’ing dynasty, to extend Chinese cultural influence into frontier society by linking recognition of local chiefs to their participation in a Chinese educational system and other normative behaviour, see John E. Herman, “Empire in the Southwest: Early Qing Reforms to the Native Chieftain System,” JAS 65 (1997): 47-74. See also John Philip Ness, “The Southwestern Frontier During the Ming Dynasty” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1998).

86

CHAPTER THREE

with Ah-pao, building three forts in P’u-an, which they left in the charge of Ah-pao’s son, and laying seige to An-nan, where a former concubine of the poisoned man was living with her two sons. The provincial authorities, whom subsequent investigation showed to have been taking bribes from both Mi-lu and the concubine, blamed the native Prefect of Chan-yi 霑益 , in Yunnan, one An-min 安民 (variously said to be Mi-lu’s father or her nephew) for the trouble. Anmin responded by first attacking and beheading Ah-pao and his son, and then by secretly helping Mi-lu to murder the former concubine and her sons in An-nan, all the while further bribing the provincial authorities to subvert their own pacification campaign, which was badly defeated in battle with the rebels. When word of the uprising reached the court in Peking, a general counter-offensive was organised and sent into action. For concluding the whole business in only five months and reporting the cutting off of at least 4,800 rebellious heads into the bargain, the field commander was made Minister of War in Nanking, with the honourific title Junior Guardian of the Heir Apparent. 50 The impressive average of over thirty heads per day no doubt impressed the defeated aboriginals in a different way, since from their perspective the significant ratio was one head per affected neck. Ho’s poem tells us that civilians, even of the governing class, could see desolation without calling it peace. 51

———

50 For an account of the successful central government campaign that followed receipt of reports of the initial defeats, see Hsiao-tsung Shih-lu 189.3b (3490) ff., summarised in MTC 39.1502-03. There are also two quite extensive follow-up accounts of the episode. The first is included in the “Veritable Record” for the intercalary fourth month of 1504 and presents the findings of the official investigation, which revealed widespread bribery as one of the causes both of the uprising and of the extensive costs of its suppression, Hsiao-tsung Shih-lu 211.4b (3934) ff. The final, and quite circumstantial, account is adjoined to the entry in the Wu-tsung Shih-lu 武宗實錄 (Veritable record of the Martial Ancestor) concerning the sentencing of the most important offenders, which did not take place until the tenth month of 1505, shortly after Ho passed through the region (Taipei: Chung-yang Yen-chiu Yüan, 1964), 6.5b (198) ff. Although decapitation had initially been proposed for more than a dozen of the most senior and compromised of the officials involved, in the end the two judged deserving of the harshest punishment escaped with their lives, being merely stripped of their official status. 51 Cf. Tacitus, Agricola 30.5: “ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant,” (“they make a desolation and they call it peace”), trans. Maurice Hutton, rev. R.M. Ogilvie; (Loeb), p.81.

THE EMBASSY TO YUNNAN

87

AN EXEMPLARY RETURN The surviving poems take us with Ho directly across Kweichow in a matter of a few weeks, but the sequence breaks off shortly after he crosses the border into Yunnan. The latter province was something of an anomaly in the Ming empire, in that it remained in the hands of the descendants of Mu Ying 沐英, the general who had conquered it for the Ming founder in the fourteenth century. 52 They were enfeoffed as Dukes of Ch’ien-kuo 黔國, the Duke at this time being Mu K’un 崑 (1482-1519), a young man of Ho’s age said to have been fond of literature. 53 Ho wrote a number of poems celebrating sites apparently on Mu’s estate, and even sent a poem back to him later from the capital. Two of these are quite substantial works—or perhaps they are simply long and elaborate, but intended to give the impression of substance. One is a heptasyllabic old-style poem in fifty lines on the “Phoenix Roost Pavilion: Composed for [the Duke of] Ch’ien” 棲鳳亭為黔國賦—the syntax of the title suggests that the pavilion’s very existence should cause a phoenix to come there to roost. 54 The poem’s praise of ‘the general’ and his lofty tastes is conspicuous. The other piece, an even longer “Rhapsody on a Painted Crane” 畫鶴賦 does not mention the painting’s owner, but both the position of the piece in Ho’s works and its scope suggest that Mu K’un was the addressee in this case as well. 55 The other poems written in Kunming, the administrative centre of the province, are few in number and much less ambitious; there are a few quatrains written on Mu K’un’s estate, a farewell poem for a minor educational official named Sun whom Ho had met in Peking in 1503, and two ‘Double Nine’ poems whose main point is how much Ho wishes he were back in Peking celebrating the

——— 52

On Mu Ying and his descendants as rulers of Yunnan, see Peter Rupert Lighte, “The Mongols and Mu Ying in Yunnan—At the Empire’s Edge” (Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1981). 53 For the identification of Mu K’un (t. Yüan-chung 元中; h. Yü-kang 玉岡), see Wang Shih-chen, Yen-shan T’ang Pieh-chi 弇山堂別集 (Separate Collection from the Mt. Yen Hall) (Peking: Chung-hua, 1985) 38.673. For Mu himself, TL 161, HY 3/14, MS 126.3763, TK 157. Peter Lighte, “Mongols and Mu Ying,” discusses Mu K’un on pp.86-90, 128-30. See also p.186, note 237, for Mu K’un’s participation in the campaign against Mi-lu, whom Lighte treats as a male, taking fu 婦 to be part of a name although it is quite clear in the primary sources that she was a woman. 54 HTFC 11.5b (144; 171:008). 55 HTFC 1.2b (2; 賦:030).

88

CHAPTER THREE

holiday with his friends there. 56 The hospitality shown Ho in Kunming was evidently all but overwhelming, but he is said to have refused a number of expensive gifts. A eunuch named Hsiung 熊 was one of those whose gifts he turned down in Yunnan, an action that caused Hsiung to praise his character and repent of his own misdeeds. While this incident is consistent with many others recorded of Ho, it is worth noting that Ho himself is the only likely source for its becoming known later. 57 He underlined the point himself in two prose pieces written after he had set out on his return trip in the tenth month. His route, quite different from his outward trip, took him across Yunnan, travelling northeast by land to emerge at Yung-ning Guard Station 永寧衛 (modern Hsü-yung 叙永), just across the border into Szechwan. 58 Here he was robbed during a stopover for the night, an event that he recorded in the first of these essays: Laughing at the Thief 59 When I arrived at Yung-ning, there were no clerks or runners to

———

56 “Jade Studio” 玉菴為黔國賦, “Excursion to the Fish Pond of Ch’ien” 遊黔國魚池, HTFC 28.11b (507; 174:001, 002-005); “Saying Farewell to Instructor Sun” 送孫教諭, HTFC 15.5b (223; 152:025); “On the Ninth Day in the Inner Garden of Ch’ien” 九日黔國後園, HTFC 24.6a (423; 172:021-022). 57 Fan P’eng is our source for this incident. 58 He summarises his route in a passage in his “Letter to Commissioner Hou” (see below). 59 HTFC 38.7b (658; 雜 :005); only the introduction is translated here. The remainder, written as rhyme-prose mostly in a four-syllable metre, repeats some of the details and comments on the significance of the theft. There are two possible Yungnings to be considered. One, in Kweichow, is the one through which Ho had passed on his way out to Yunnan. This seems to be impossible here, since Ho refers to his purpose in coming to Yung-ning, which was to secure a boat in which to continue his trip. The only waterway to transit the Kweichow Yung-ning is the north fork of the P’an 盤, which drains to the southeast through Kwangsi and Kwangtung. The other Yung-ning lay in southeast Szechwan, at what is now Hsü-yung. This is clearly the Yung-ning that accords with the texts. The local river there flows north into the Yangtse, down which Ho travelled on his return voyage. Moreover, the route to this Yung-ning from Kunming would have passed through the Ch’ih-shui 赤水 guard district, which Ho mentions having traversed. There remains, however, a problem raised by Ho’s letter to Commissioner Hou (see below), in which he refers to his having met Hou before, during his trip through Kweichow, when Hou treated him courteously and even presented him with a small gift. One wonders where and how this earlier meeting would have taken place, since Kweichow and Szechwan were entirely separate administratively and since Ho had been nowhere near the Szechwan Yung-ning on his way to Yunnan.

THE EMBASSY TO YUNNAN

89

welcome me, and when I went to the post-house, no furnishings or utensils had been set out. It was deserted and there was no one there to report to. Earlier, when I came through the city gate, I had noticed that no prohibitions or precautions were in effect, and when night fell I heard neither bell nor watchman’s rattle. I became anxious lest there might be thieves and warned the servant. He said that he had never heard of thieves within the moat. All the same, I had the gateman lock up tight and set out torches all around the walls to light up even the innermost rooms. I ordered the servant to sleep in the middle room. In the middle of the night he suddenly shouted, “Robbery! Robbery!” When I got up to see where the thief had broken in, I found that the walls were all made of plaited bamboo covered with lime. Thus, once the thief had climbed over the neighboring fence, he simply cut an opening through the side of the building and came in through that. On giving careful thought to what had been in my bag, I realised that there was nothing of value, only my clothing and sixty-odd books, though the latter were ones that I was very fond of. In the morning, someone came to report a trunk abandoned on the bank of the river north of the town wall. There was nothing in it, but books were scattered about, half of them in the water. I had them gathered up, and when I examined them, they were indeed from my luggage. Apparently, when the thief opened the trunk he only took away my clothing and left the books. How lucky for me that he left the books; what a kind-hearted thief! Now, thieves want to take advantage of a large haul. Yunnan is famous for its rare products. Whoever visits the place is bound to purchase such things as aromatic woods, precious shells, rhinoceros horns and elephant tusks, unusual stones, and gold and silver before returning. The thief must have had this in mind when he coveted my things, but what a mistake he made! Any competent thief should be able to glance at a man and tell whether he is rich or poor, or to examine a room and tell whether it is empty or full. Thus none of his robberies is unsuccessful and none of his calculations is not realised. This thief took my clothes, but if he wears them they will not fit, and if he sells them he will give himself away. Although this does not do me any good, its good to the thief is slight indeed. He cannot have been a very accomplished thief! Having appreciated his kindness in leaving my books, I laughed at his incompetence at robbery. This essay makes fun of him and also reports the evidence to the police . . .

Of course, it also makes a claim for Ho’s honesty and frugality, a claim also made in the opening section of the second essay, actually a letter to written to the unhappy official responsible for Yung-ning, a certain Regional Military Commissioner Hou 侯都閫:

90

CHAPTER THREE

Letter to Commissioner Hou 60 Commissioner Hou: Though I may be mean in the matter of exchanging gifts, I am also very scrupulous and dare not be careless about it. The ivory chopsticks and comb that you presented to me earlier I did not really want to accept, but when you first came to meet me, you were so earnest in your attentions that I did not want to reject your kindness, and so I did not turn them down. Only after I was on my way did I realise how deficient was your notion of propriety. Any offering intended to show respect, provided it were offered in accordance with the tao and received in accordance with propriety, would be accepted even by Confucius himself. Provided that no appearance of carelessness attached to the gift, a gentleman would not scruple to do so. While I dare not appropriate the name of gentleman for myself, I do feel uncomfortable in accepting an improper gift and request that you agree to its return, still in the original package. Fortunately, you will not blame me greatly if I venture to offer you a word of counsel . . .

Ho then procedes to excoriate Hou on account of his recent experiences at Yung-ning, recounting the state of apprehension that his trip through the wild tracts separating it from Kunming had aroused and adding, “I even began to regret that I had made this journey, but I did look forward to Yung-ning as though it were home, because you were there.” Then came the disappointment of going unwelcomed and uncared for, compounded by the robbery. The personal distress caused Ho aside, “I am bearing the Emperor’s commands and you are an official of the Emperor; is it not proper that as an official of the Emperor you should show respect for the Emperor’s commands?” Ho then continues in the same vein at some length, going so far as to compare Hou to a certain Mr. She 葉, legendary for his obsession with dragons, which lasted until the day a dragon actually appeared in his garden, whereupon he fled in terror, showing that his enthusiasm did not extend to real dragons. 61 Ho’s implication is of course that Commissioner Hou is a believer in

——— 60

HTFC 32.11a (569; 書:001). Hou is not identified. The translated passage is about one sixth of the whole. 61 The locus classicus is the Hsin Hsü; see Hsin Hsü Chu-tzu So-yin 新序逐字索引 (Single Word Concordance to the New Accounts) (Taipei: Shang-wu, 1992) 5.28/31/10-16, in which story is used to shame a hypocrite, just as in Ho’s letter. She is the correct reading of the name in this context, although it is often pronounced yeh by the unwary.

THE EMBASSY TO YUNNAN

91

propriety only until he is expected to behave according to it. Fortunately for Ho and the officialdom of southwest China alike, the rest of his trip appears to have gone unmarked by incident, though he continued to interpret its events in moral terms, as in one of the best works of the trip—difficult though its virtues are to reproduce in English—a rhapsody inspired by the first stage of his boat trip down to and into the Yangtse Gorges: Rhapsody on Propelling the Boat 62 My mission to Tien is a journey of ten-thousand li. I have crossed many mountains and ranges by cart and on horseback, racing across them, up and down without concern for the hardship. When I reached Yung-ning, I arranged for a boat for my return, hoping thus to avoid the difficulties of travel overland. It was the season of frost, and the rocks were exposed. The river rushed as swiftly in its narrow bed as an arrow speeding from a crossbow when the trigger is released, its momentum enjoying not the slightest respite. I was very alarmed by this. There was an old boatman guiding the boat, his manner very relaxed. He worked the punting pole himself at the bow, while another man handled the rudder astern. The steersman did not venture to decide the direction or degree of turn himself, but took his cue from the old boatman. For his part, the old boatman nodded, pointed, and glanced, nor did any of his signals fail to be acted upon, whether to port or starboard, whether gentle or hard. At all times the direction and speed of the boat were appropriate to the river’s flow, so that it did not touch the banks or strike the rocks. I was very much reassured by this and asked, “Is there some tao to your boat-handling?” The old boatman stepped forward, pole in hand, and replied, “There is. Let me tell you about it. Whatever is put to a use is an implement. If an implement is not sound it is not fit for use. What uses it are my arms, legs, eyes, ears, and mouth. If these are at all idle, they will not be able to use it. My arms, legs, eyes, ears, and mouth are in the service of my mind. If my mind is inattentive, my arms, legs, eyes, ears, and mouth will not be of use. Pole and rudder are my implements; port and starboard, hard and gentle, and direction and speed are the uses I put them to. Therefore, I first see to it that my implements are sound, in order to suit my use for them. I dare not allow my arms, legs, eyes, ears, or mouth the slightest idleness or my mind the slightest attention to anything else. This done, I can glide smoothly with the calm currents, bob quickly through white-water rapids, and remain untroubled though

——— 62

HTFC 1.4b (3; 賦:029).

92

CHAPTER THREE

in the midst of a whirlpool. Moreover, I am also able to detect the condition and movement of the river. Thus where there are turbulent stretches, deep pools, shallow backwaters, invisible bars, or hidden rocks, I notice them while still far away and so can make my preparations to deal with them dozens of li in advance, so that no harm comes to my boat. Other boatmen prefer speed to delay and take shortcuts rather than go the long way ’round, with the result that some are wrecked. I just follow the river’s course without rushing anywhere. Although I may be delayed, this way I avoid being wrecked. This is the whole of my tao.” I said, “The guiding of a boat is like an art; how short of an art do the actions of people in the world fall!” I then made a preface from his words and composed a rhapsody to strengthen my resolve. On the first day of the first month of winter, Frost shimmered and shivered, showing its force. The rivers tumbled and thundered and collected in canyons, Trees and weeds faded and shed, turning sparse. I thought on the first rising of solid yin, Stroked the slow fading of the year’s flowering. Weary of the length of distant travels, I arranged for a boatman on the river’s bank. He wields our oars to advance and make the crossing; The rocks are fearful and jagged. The current is rough and choppy, not easy going; Its direction changes a hundred times and progress is slow. The noise thunders and echoes, splashing and spurting; Like drawing a bow and letting fly an arrow. Of overhanging eaves there is surely a warning, 63 My mind is fearful and uncertain within. What supernatural powers the boatman has! He excels at discerning currents and understanding tricks. He watches the helmsman to set our course, Drawing up our pole to advance along it. Reckoning left and right to set the proper course, He checks the proper degree of turn. Swift, slow, veering off, and dead ahead—each has its rule; He never misses it by even a fraction. He heads for swift rapids to accomplish speed, Copes with mad billows when grown precarious.

———

63 This alludes to the story about a general who restrained his Emperor when the latter was about to gallop down a steep slope. He said, “I have heard that the son of a house with a thousand pieces of gold does not sit under the edge of the eaves and that the son of a house with a hundred pieces of gold does not straddle the railing of an upstairs balcony.” See Han Shu 49.2270.

THE EMBASSY TO YUNNAN

93

He begins to meander and turn as though fleeing, Then dashes across without delay. Having followed the flow to rest in the constant, He seizes the strategic points and shows his skill. He meets the surging waves and waits briefly, Enters a whirlpool and does not linger. Prepared for the rocky shore he weaves and meanders, He takes advantage of the water’s nature and does not oppose it. Surely grasping an art is the abode of the Tao; How should I know how to hold it? It is making my mind its master, That truly weighs activity and movement. If all the members are not exerted, Then how will they suffice for the purpose? If the materials are sound and the implements sharp, Then putting them to use is possible. The will is collected and calm and then approaches it, Disciplining the unstable mind and getting advantage thereby. There are many chances indeed for buffeting and collision; The mind responds to them and then is calm. I prefer to be simple and slow, rather than clever and quick; I condemn twisted ways and rushed courses. Extend this skill and abide therein; Even in the lairs of barbarians the same will hold. Alas, that custom has ceased to employ this; Why is this craft not followed today? They advance in confusion and reap their errors; Withdraw in isolation and appear at fault. To surpass them inspires envy and attracts insult; But not to match them is truly shameful. To tread in others’ footsteps provides few standards; Some are stilled in speech and caught up in worry. To left and right, before and behind, they have no fixed direction; Blind to the source of superiority and inferiority. Stupidity must come to “butting the hedge.” 64 Knowledge may lapse into “notching the boat.” 65

———

64 The image of a goat butting a hedge, with the result that its horns are caught and it can neither back up nor go forward, comes from the “Power of the Great” hexagram in the Changes, see Chou Yi Yin-te 22/34/三, 上; Lynn, p.347.; Wilhelm/Baynes, p. 135. 65 The old joke about the foolish man who, having lost his sword overboard while being ferried across a river, took a knife and cut a notch on the gunwale at the point from which the sword had dropped, so that he would know where to dive for the sword once the boat had reached shallow water, is from the Lü Shih Ch’un-ch’iu; see

94

CHAPTER THREE

They enter the boundless expanse and do not reach the end; Float the vast waters and do not linger. Mired in ruts and rules, their views contract; They abandon standards and measures and seek what is beyond. Alarmed by hardships, they cannot make distinctions, Working at discord they cannot make common cause. Who decks himself in bowstrings to harden himself? Who wears a thong to make himself soft? As for my scant progress, I have not taken my doctrine from one side only. The fine and the great cannot be given up; I am aware of my modest art and will not neglect it. I will take care over the varied aspects of forking roads; Even on level ground there are places like Lü-liang. 66 I will gallop across the important crossings, Ford the vast gulfs of officialdom’s seas. I reflect on my route thus far and consider with care; Whereby to apply caution in my navigation.

Fortified with all this good advice, Ho descended the Yung-ning River. Not far below Yung-ning itself he stopped at Chiang-men, where he wrote the first extant poem since those composed in Kunming and one of the best of the trip: 江門小店江門市、孤舟聞暮砧。遠沙含細雨、缺岸隱疎林。旅宿青楓晚、人烟翠嶽深。漸臨巴蜀道、一慰望鄉心。 Chiang-men 67 By a tiny inn in Chiang-men market town, On a lonely boat I hear the evening washing. Distant islets harbour a fine rain; The broken bank conceals a scanty grove. A wayfarer’s lodging, late among green maples;

———

Lü Shih Ch’un-ch’iu Chu-tzu So-yin 呂氏春秋逐字索引 (Single Word Concordance to the Spring and Autumn Annals of Mr. Lü) (Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1994) 15.8/89/14-16. 66 Lü-liang 呂梁 was a mountain with a waterfall in whose fatal torrents Confucius saw a man swimming without danger; see the Chuang-tzu Yin-te 50/19/49; Graham, p.136; Burton Watson, p.204. 67 HTFC 15.6a (223; 152:027). Chiang-men Gorge, at the southern edge of modern Na-hsi 納溪 County, on the border with Yung-ning, had been an obstacle to navigation until it was cleared early in the Ming dynasty. See (Chia-ch’ing) Na-hsi Hsien Chih 納溪縣志 (Gazetteer of Na-hsi County) 3.3b (108).

THE EMBASSY TO YUNNAN

95

The smoke of mankind, deep in emerald ranges. Soon to set out on the road to Pa and Shu, I comfort a little my homeward tending heart. The phrase that ends Ho’s poem may be a reminiscence of the opening of “On an Autumn Day, Climbing to the Temple on Duke Wu’s Terrace and Gazing into the Distance” 秋日登吳公臺上寺遠眺 by the High T’ang poet Liu Chang-ch’ing 劉長卿, “Now that the ancient terrace has fallen, / Autumn comes to a homeward tending heart . . .” 古臺搖落後、秋入望鄉心. 68

This poem is an example of a common genre, the traveller’s reflection composed during idle moments at a stopping place. At its heart is the third couplet. In the original text, the verbs have been placed as the third words in each line up to the fourth (there is none in the first line). Although it cannot be readily duplicated in translation, the poem achieves a particular effect by having the verbs (‘is-late,’ ‘is-deep’) come at the very end of the lines in this couplet. The resulting lack of any hint of transitivity or causation achieved thereby tends to ‘freeze’ the vision of the poem and the closing couplet takes up in its adverbs (‘in-a-momently’, ‘a-little’) the fragile stillness of the scene to add resonance to what might otherwise have been a somewhat pat statement (Pa and Shu lay downstream, in the direction Ho was travelling) . There are only a few poems from Ho’s trip down the upper Yangtse, perhaps because he was making rapid progress downstream, and the practicalities of writing meant that for the most part poems would be produced during stopovers. He may also have been hard at work polishing his recent rhymeprose on the Taoist boatman, translated above. Another of the best poems of the trip was written after he was well into the gorges: 泊雲陽江頭玩月扁舟泊沙岸、皓月出翠嶺。開窗鑒清輝、照我孤燭冷。高林散疎光、遠渚接餘景。縱橫銀漢迴、三五玉繩耿。弦望幾更易、客行尚殊境。佳期邈山嶽、端坐令人省。

——— 68

CTS 147.1496; K.07059; Liu Chang-ch’ing Chi Pien-nien Chiao-chu 劉長卿集編年校注 (Annotated Chronological Edition of the Collected Works of Liu Changch’ing), compiled by Yang Shih-ming 楊世明 (Peking: Jen-min, 1999), p.276. I adopt the reading 入 in place of 日 in the second line.

96

CHAPTER THREE

Enjoying the Moonlight while Moored at the Yün-yang River 69 My narrow skiff moors by a sandy bank; A dazzling moon emerges from emerald ranges. I open a window, admire the limpid gleam That shines on the chill of my lonely candle. A lofty forest scatters the scanty light; Distant islets catch the last of the sun. Across the sky the Silver River curves; Faint and wan the Dipper’s Handle flickers. Crescent and full moons come and go by turns; A sojourner wanders still in a far off land. Happy meetings are blocked by mountain ranges; Sitting still here makes my thoughts turn inward.

This is reminiscent of such T’ang works as Meng Hao-jan’s travel poems written in southeast China, both in obvious ways (Meng wrote a famous quatrain on the moonlight seen from his boat as he moored for the night) and in less obvious ones. Although it is clearly an oldstyle poem, several of its couplets flirt with new-style effects. The constant, but always coherent, sweep of his visual imagination holds the poem together in a way essential to a High T’ang ku-shih, but not common in really old poems. A sign of Ho’s mastery of coherent transition is his handling of the link between the descriptive central part of the poem and the close. Having introduced the moon in the first couplet and devoted the central part of the poem mostly to heavenly lights, he returns in the ninth line to the moon, now regarded both as a marker of passing time and as a link between Ho and a distant friend, and uses it, together with the mountains, also introduced in the first couplet, to bring the reader finally in the last line to the poetic persona, a figure now seen not simply as a traveller, but as person sitting still, surrounded and made small by the scale and beauty of the natural world. The closing words thus embody the result of the entire process of thought through which the poem has led us. Gazing at the full moon from a boat while travelling is one of the preeminent poetic occasions in Chinese. Hence while many of the images in Ho’s poem have multiple analogues in the works of earlier poets, the poem itself does not suggest many literary links with other

———

69 HTFC 7.8b (77; 151:031). The local history of Yün-yang includes “Enjoying the Moon from a Pavilion by the River” as one of the “eight sights of Yün-yang.” See (Chia-ching) Yün-yang Hsien Chih 雲陽縣志 (Gazetteer of Yün-yang County) 1.9b.

THE EMBASSY TO YUNNAN

97

works. The closest parallels are with a poem that Tu Fu wrote while visiting the famous Lung-men (龍門 ‘Dragon Gate’) Temple, located near Loyang. 70 Three of Tu’s four rhyme words are shared with Ho’s poem and the fourth, 影 , is closely related to another of Ho’s, 景. Ho’s fifth line is similar to Tu’s fourth, “The moonlit wood scatters the clear gleam” 月林散清影, and both poems end with the same phrase, Tu’s reading “Makes me turn deeply inward” 令人發深省. The phrase translated as “faint and wan” in the eighth line is the same “three and five” that was translated as “here and there” in Ho’s poem mourning his first wife (see above, chapter one). What I have called the “Dipper’s Handle” is in fact Alioth, the star in the handle closest to the bowl of the Big Dipper, called in Chinese the Jade Cord 玉繩. I have translated 佳期 neutrally as “happy meetings,” but it can refer to one’s bride, wife or lover, an interpretation that would not be out of place at this time, as Ho was soon to be married (see below). Where it occurs in the “Lady of the Hsiang” 湘君 poem of the “Nine Songs,” Hawkes renders it as “my love.” 71 A much more conventional poem followed soon after: 峽中自昔偏安地、于今息戰侵。江穿巫峽隘、山鑿鬼門深。濁浪魚龍黑、寒天日月陰。夜猿啼不盡、凄斷故鄉心。 In the Gorges 72 Since long ago a land of local peace, Even today it is free from war and strife. The River threads the straits of Shamanka Gorge; Mountains chisel the depth of Ghostly Gate. In turbid waves—the fish and dragons are black; Under winter skies—the sun and moon are dimmed. The cries of evening gibbons are never ending; Their keening breaks my homesick longing heart. Ho’s third line is reminiscent of the penultimate line in a famous poem

——— 70

Tu Shih Yin-te 5/4, CTS 216.2253, K.10497. Ch’u Tz’u Pu-chu 2.9b (28); Hawkes, first edition, p.38; Penguin edition, p.108. 72 HTFC 15.6a (224; 152:029). Shamanka Gorge (wu-hsia) is one of the three main gorges of the Yangtze, near the border between Szechwan and Hunan and soon to be swamped in silt and water behind the Three Gorges Dam. The historical Ghostly Gate 鬼門 was actually far away, in southern Kwangsi. Ho is using it in the general sense of “a southern canyon through which the living rarely return.” At the end of the fifth line, the Shen recension reads 里’village’ in place of 黑’black’. The former makes no sense in the context, so it is not surprising that even the Yüan recension reads ‘black’. 71

98

CHAPTER THREE

by Tu Fu, “I Hear that the Government Armies have Taken Ho-nan and Ho-pei” 聞官軍收河南河北, “On from the Gorge of Pa, threading Shamanka Gorge” 即從巴峽穿巫峽. 73 Ho’s penultimate line recalls a line in Hsieh Ling-yün’s “On Climbing the Highest Peak of Stone Gate” 登石門最高頂, “Shrill, shrill, the evening gibbons cry” 噭噭夜猿啼. 74

The poems from this trip break off shortly after. Indeed, it is striking that none of the poems from this period refers, even obliquely, to the major event of his return, his marriage, probably celebrated in Hsinyang, where Ho must have stopped over on his return journey, to a Miss Wang 王氏, a native of nearby T’ang-hsien 唐縣. We know only a little more about Miss Wang than about Ho’s first wife. She was two years younger than Ho and bore all of his six children, three sons and three daughters. Ho never refers to her in his writings, but they appear to have been a devoted couple, insofar as we can judge from the meagre evidence available. She accompanied him on all his travels, personally prepared all his food and drink, and sat with him whenever he continued his studies late into the night. We know from a poem sent to Ho’s third brother Ching-hui back in Hsin-yang late in the year that Ching-hui accompanied Ching-ming from home all the way to Peking on his return trip. 75 Very little poetry survives from this leg of Ho’s journey. There are only a single poem written during the Lantern Festival (the fifteenth day of the new year), probably in Hsin-yang, and three more that refer to places he passed on his way north along the route to Peking, including this one, evoking Ts’ao Ts’ao’s 曹操 tomb and the pavilion where Ts’ao’s widowed consorts had been kept on in order to rejoice his soul with their dancing. 76

——— 73

Tu Shih Yin-te 382/14/7, CTS 227.2460, K.11271. WH 22.13b (302); Lu Ch’in-li, p.1167; Hsieh Ling-yün Chi Chiao-chu (Taipei: Li-jen, 2004), p.262; cf. the translation in J.D. Frodsham, The Murmuring Stream: The Life and Works of the Chinese Nature Poet Hsieh Ling-yün (385-433), Duke of K’anglo (Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press, 1967), 1:144. 75 “Thinking Fondly of my Third Elder Brother” 懷三兄 HTFC 19.12b (324; 352:155). 76 See, in addition to the poem translated below, “Lantern Festival” 元夕, HTFC 22.3a (384; 352:131); “On the Hsin-cheng Road” 新鄭道中, HTFC 21.12a (374; 352:132); “Ch’i-men” 淇門, HTFC 21.12a (374; 352:133). These poems are included in the Ching-chi. PC, p. 37, as well as Chin Jung-ch’üan in “Ho Ching-ming Nien-p’u Hsin-pien,” Hsin-yang Shih-fan Hsüeh-yüan Hsüeh-pao 1995.1: 100, assign Ho’s poem “Watching the Flood” 觀漲 (271:004) to this trip, but in fact it comes from the summer of 1507. See TK 25. 74

THE EMBASSY TO YUNNAN

99

銅雀臺美人望陵處、無復翠華過。殿冷閑歌吹、宮春罷綺羅。落花嬌靨盡、芳草怨魂多。日暮漳河水、東流空白波。 Bronze Sparrow Terrace 77 Beautiful women gaze toward the tomb; No more will the kingfisher pennons visit. The palace is wintry; ceased, the songs and music; The halls in spring are done with brocade and gauze. Falling blossoms and haughty dimples gone; Fragrant herbs and resentful souls are many. At the end of day, the River Chang Flows to the east in vacant foam-white waves.

THE BOY ON THE THRONE Ho was welcomed back to Peking by Li Meng-yang. The two men exchanged poems on the occasion, but they must have had some serious discussions of current events as well, for the official Peking to which Ho returned in the summer of 1506 was not that of his first years in the capital. 78 The trend of events at court was ominous. A eunuch named Liu Chin 劉瑾, who had originally been favoured for his management of the palace music academy during the reign of Wutsung’s grandfather and then placed in Wu-tsung’s service while the latter was Heir Apparent, had now come to be much relied on by the boy Emperor. His political influence had been increasing steadily since before the accession of Wu-tsung, and Ho arrived as the struggle between Liu and the civil officials was intensifying. 79

———

77 HTFC 21.12a (374; 352:134). For a related poem that might have written at this time or during some other trip along the road between Hsin-yang and the capital, see the yüeh-fu ballad “Singing Girls of Bronze Sparrow” 銅雀妓 , HTFC 5.6b (48; 樂:011). 78 See “On My Return from Tien and Shu [Yunnan and Szechwan], Li of the Ministry of Revenue and Drafter Ma Come to Visit” 自滇蜀歸李戶部馬舍人見訪, HTFC 20.11b (347; 352:135). Ma is probably a man named Ma Chih 馬陟 (for whom see TK 196). Li Meng-yang had been in the Revenue Ministry for most of the time since 1499 and was promoted to director of a bureau in 1506. His poem on the occasion, “Master Ho Arrives from Tien” 何子至自滇, K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi 24.5b (592), matches three of the four rhyme words of Ho’s (or vice versa) and compliments him on the “Propelling the Boat” rhapsody. 79 For Liu Chin, one of the four most notorious eunuchs of the Ming, see DMB 941

100

CHAPTER THREE

It is virtually impossible at this distance to come to a just verdict in any case of conflict between the traditional Chinese bureaucracy and the palace eunuchs, and such conflicts were endemic. In some cases, eunuchs may have acted in the interests of the state as a whole, since the bureaucracy was drawn exclusively from a single class with its own economic, as well as ethical, interests to protect and pursue. But by and large a successful eunuch made his career by diverting his emperor from the weight of government and filling the power vacuum thus created himself. 80 This seems clearly to have been the case with Liu Chin. By indulging the young Wu-tsung’s lack of interest in the business of government and encouraging him to enjoy himself, Liu Chin was able both to enrich himself and to keep official protests from being acted upon or, in some cases, even seen, by the Emperor. 81 That such abuses of power by eunuchs occurred over and over again in Chinese history suggests that they are to be accounted for neither by the personal weakness of this or that emperor nor by the

———

(Yung-deh Richard Chu), TL 853, HY 3/245. There is a usefully detailed chronological account of Liu’s years in power in the Ming Shih Chi-shih Pen-mo 明史紀事本末 (Recorded Events in Ming History from Start to Finish), compiled by Ku Ying-t’ai 谷應泰 (TSCC; repr. Taipei: San-min, 1969) 43.445-65. The rising chorus of protest against Liu dominates the annals for 1506 in MTC, 41.1543-61, particularly in entries 1506.14, 17, 19, 21, 23, 26, 29, 37, 41-43, 45, 49-53). There is a convenient account based on the more reliable Chinese sources in Fu T’ung-ch’in 傅同欽 and K’o Ch’eng 克晟, “Ming-tai Ta T’ai-chien Liu Chin” 明代大太監劉瑾 (The Great Ming Eunuch Liu Chin), Ku-kung Po-wu-yüan Yüan-k’an 1980:2.25-28, 71. 80 See Shih-shan Henry Ts’ai, The Eunuchs in the Ming Dynasty (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), for a full and lively account, well grounded in Ming historical sources. One of his goals is counter the uniformly negative image of eunuchs by pointing out cases in which they made constructive contributions to the welfare of the dynasty and its populace. David Robinson, “Notes on Eunuchs in Hebei During the Mid-Ming Period,” Ming Studies 34 (1995): 1-16, discusses the local influence of eunuchs in the area south of Peking, with reference to Liu Chin. 81 See DMB, pp.308-309. In the present instance, we are chiefly concerned with Liu Chin as he appeared to and affected Ho Ching-ming and his friends among the official class. This was, of course, the class of people who wrote history in China, and thus the Chinese record of Liu Chin is uniformly hostile to him. Yung-deh Richard Chu comments (DMB 944), “Liu Chin respected no traditions. He made changes in almost every field, some of them good, which may even be described as reforms.” Perhaps a historian will attempt one day to interpret Liu as a reformer, unpopular not only because he was a eunuch who had attained power by catering to the wants of a vicious Emperor and one who treated his opponents with real severity, but also because his policies threatened the vested interests of the educated land-holding class from which the civil administration was exclusively recruited. It is perhaps significant that Shih-shan Henry Ts’ai makes no attempt to advance this view of Liu.

THE EMBASSY TO YUNNAN

101

supposed moral inferiority of eunuchs as a class. The roots of eunuch power lay deep in the structure of the Chinese system of imperial government, a structure that persists in some ways to the present day. The essence of this structure lay in a separation of final executive authority from the apparatus of civil administration. In Chinese terms, the separation was between the ‘within’ (內 nei) and the ‘without’ (外 wai), that is, between those inside the palace and those outside. The “within” consisted of the Emperor, along with those who served him personally, including the palace women (and frequently their male relatives), eunuchs, and any personal favourites he had admitted to his circle, such as entertainers, religious figures, and the like. The “without” consisted of the large, well-organised, and essentially selfperpetuating civil bureaucracy, which, while it could not reach important policy decisions on its own and was made up of individuals whose appointments to office required the Emperor’s consent, had the power to dilute, obstruct, and ‘interpret’ policy simply by the weight of its numbers, given the obvious impossibility of an emperor running the entire apparatus of government in person. This division naturally conditioned quite different systems of value among those on its two sides. A member of the educated class who was in political disgrace, retired, or simply unemployed, might hope to establish a reputation by teaching or writing, or he might retire to his native district to manage his landholdings and enjoy recognition as a leader of local society. Eunuchs, in contrast, were generally despised and had only one available career and only one possible employer, the emperor. Their essential function was that of personal service within the palace—there were thousands of women there and, while most of them had no sexual contact with the emperor, it was imperative that there should not be the slightest doubt as to the paternity of any children they might bear. But the eunuchs had no prospect for reward except from the emperor and so, in the same way as family members of favoured consorts, they were liable to be employed by him as a counterweight to the collective power (or at least the collective inertia) of the civil bureaucracy. 82 Their tenure in power was also limited. Not

——— 82

Although the Ming was the last dynasty in which the ‘eunuch evil’ was pervasive, the underlying structure persisted. In the Ch’ing dynasty, eunuchs were for the most part kept in check; it was the Manchu bannerman who filled the necessary slot of the insider and whose career was defined by his role as the agent of the

102

CHAPTER THREE

only could they only prosper by pleasing the Emperor, they could only go on pleasing him while he was alive. The accession of a new Emperor generally meant the permanent, sometimes fatal, end of the careers of those of the ‘within’ who had done conspicuously well during the previous reign. Liu Chin’s prospects in this regard looked good. In later middle age himself (he was about sixty when Wu-tsung came to the throne), he was set to become the dominant figure in the regime of a sovereign still in his teens. Provided that he did not overreach himself or allow himself to be outsmarted by a coup, he might well become the most powerful man in the known world for the rest of his life. In the event, he would die in a most hideous way under the executioner’s knives after barely five years in power, having overreached and been outsmarted both. If Liu Chin was an exaggeration of his type, the young Emperor was on the way to becoming a grotesque of his. Indeed, had Wu-tsung not existed, he could perhaps only have been invented by Federico Fellini. Chu Hou-chao took the reign title Cheng-te 正德 (‘Orthodox Virtue’) and would eventually be given the doubly ironic posthumous designation Wu-tsung 武宗 (‘Martial Ancestor’) after his own early death in 1521. 83 He would go down in history (very far down, in fact) as one of the most reprehensible emperors of a dynasty with more than its share of dreadful sovereigns. An Emperor is almost as difficult to understand, at this or any distance, as a eunuch. The most obvious reason for this lies in the opacity of the available sources, which, for all that they are voluminous, generally shrink from any opportunity to depict an emperor as a human being. In Wu-tsung’s case, this difficulty is somewhat diminished, both because he was succeeded by a cousin rather than by a son and because there was, at first, general continuity in personnel at the upper levels of the civil administration from his reign to the next. This meant, on the one hand, that those preparing the “Veritable Record” for Wu-tsung’s reign were both well-informed and

———

supreme authority, with senior positions being filled in tandem by one Manchu and one Chinese. In more recent times, the role has been inherited by the Party Secretary, structurally a eunuch rather than a civil servant. 83 Ironic because his martial exploits had been the purest playacting and because, in spite of a conjectured sex life whose intensity and quite sordid variety were to become the stuff of legend, he died without issue.

THE EMBASSY TO YUNNAN

103

in a position to be relatively frank. On the other, it tended to diminish any urge to present a balanced view, and indeed encouraged the revelation of incidents prejudicial to Wu-tsung’s reputation. The greater obstacle to understanding is perhaps simply a failure of imagination. 84 On a superficial view, the role of Emperor of China might look attractive. The appeal of essentially unlimited opportunities to exercise overwhelming power and frolic with the ladies of the inner palace tends to obscure the many drawbacks of the office. To begin with, if one actually took the position seriously, the amount of paperwork was enormous, and almost all of it bore on aspects of the Empire with which an emperor had no personal experience and thus little basis for judgement beyond the arguments, often conflicting, of officials whose own grounds for interest were unclear. Then, there was the weight of ritual. As Son of Heaven, the Emperor occupied a position of cosmic import and enormous responsibility (again, if he took the role seriously). His regular participation was required in elaborate rituals intended to mediate between the human realm and the superhuman or to retain the support of the spirits of his predecessors, enshrined in the temple of the Imperial clan. These responsibilities could be delegated only temporarily and on the most urgent grounds. His behaviour on such ritual occasions was rigidly prescribed, as officious experts in such matters were ready to remind him. Even as the absolute ruler of the Empire his role was hedged about with limitations, the most important being that he did not issue decrees on his own initiative, but could only respond to proposals originated by his officials, to whose memorials (generally quite long and cast in elaborately formal language) he responded with written notations in crimson ink, even if only a laconic k’o (可 ‘approved’) or pu-k’o (不可 ‘not approved’). Of course a strong-willed emperor could work around many of these restrictions. The Ming founder, as we have seen, took so strong and creative interest in his ritual responsibilities as to be the despair of

——— 84

A distinguished exception is the discussion by Ray Huang, in 1587, A Year of No Significance (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1981), pp.1-41. Huang’s account of Wu-tsung (ibid., pp.95-102) is one of the few to consider Wutsung’s behaviour as a human response to an institutional predicament. David Robinson briefly surveys some of the literature on Wu-tsung in Bandits, Eunuchs, and the Son of Heaven: Rebellion and the Economy of Violence in Mid-Ming China (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2001), pp.220-21, notes 10-12.

104

CHAPTER THREE

his more conservative advisors. If the Emperor could not, strictly speaking, initiate legislation, he could certainly let it be known what sort of proposals he was minded to approve or disapprove and then, since the appointments, promotions, and punishments of civil officials also required his assent, see to it that he received policy suggestions that were to his taste. There were some limits to the mayhem an active, but foolish, wrong-headed, or malevolant emperor could inflict upon his empire. The concerted opposition of the civil service, manifested by protest and remonstration at senior levels and by inaction and non-compliance at lower levels and in the provinces (the latter phenomenon, at least, still very evident today), could over time simply wear down a ruler’s purpose, though the costs of this to those resisters who came particularly to his attention could be heavy indeed. Even bad emperors could frequently be cajoled, flattered, or bluffed into taking good advice. And if all else failed, as it did every few centuries, a dynasty could collapse and be replaced by a new one headed by an emperor with more realistic priorities. Wu-tsung presented a different sort of problem. However foolish and wrong-headed he may have been, the real nature of the threat lay elsewhere. Being emperor simply did not interest him. He took his power, and his permanent right to exercise it, for granted, but resisted or ignored all attempts to make him take seriously the responsibilities that went with it. Coming to the throne in adolescence, he remained in many ways a child, with a child’s short attention span and disinclination to help with the chores, and conflict was inevitable between him and officials distinguished by the sort of prickly highmindedness that Ho Ching-ming had displayed, not to say flaunted, during his embassy.

CHAPTER FOUR

RETREAT “THE BRIGHT MOON” The poems by Ho that can be assigned to the summer and fall of 1506 come close to equaling in number all that survive from the years before his trip to Yunnan, but the early stages of Wu-tsung’s history are only occasionally visible in them. They are generally unremarkable, recording visits, farewells, and messages to absent friends. The following is an example: 江南思四首寄曹毅之燈下雨鳴秋舫、浦口潮迴暮鍾。何處鄉思不見、江南開遍芙蓉。 Thoughts of the South: Sent to Ts’ao Yi-chih [Hung] (first of four poems) 1 Below a lamp the voice of rain on an autumn boat; At the mouth of a cove as the tide turns back, an evening bell. Is there a place where longing thoughts do not appear? South of the River, lotus blossoms blooming everywhere . . . Poems on the theme of “Thoughts of the South” go back at least to the pair by Hsiao Kang 蕭綱, Emperor of the Liang dynasty. 2 The third line is reminiscent of a line in the T’ang poet Chang Jo-hsü’s 張若虛 wellknown “An Evening of Blossoms and Moonlight on a River in Spring” 春江花月夜, “Is there a place of longing thoughts in a moon-bright pavilion?” 何處相思明月樓. 3

——— 1

HTFC 28.10b (506; 364:001). For Ts’ao Hung 曹弘 (t. Yi-chih 毅之), see HY 2/276, MST 36.28a, TK 144. Ho wrote another poem for Ts’ao in the fall, see “Missing Ts’ao Yi-chih [Hung] on an Autumn Evening” 秋夕懷曹毅之, HTFC 19.12a (324; 352:144). The Ts’ao Hung of all historical records, though a southerner, did not pass the provincial examination until 1516, and the chin-shih only in 1517. Although the set of poems from which the one translated comes could possibly be much later in date, the autumn poem ‘missing’ Ts’ao is part of a block of poems that are clearly no later than 1507 (see TK 308-09). It is thus possible that the Ts’ao Yichih whom Ho addresses is a different person. 2 Lu Ch’in-li, p.1912. The phrase 浦口 ‘mouth of a cove’ occurs in the second of Hsiao’s poems. 3 CTS 117.1184; K. 05577.

106

CHAPTER FOUR

One work from this period, however, “The Bright Moon,” is of special importance, for it provides a sense of how seriously the ‘historical’ study of poetry was taken in Ho’s circle. Ho’s preface to this long and self-consciously literary composition, one of his longest poems and one perhaps best understood as a kind of ‘graduation exercise’, marks a culmination of his poetic studies. 明月篇 The Bright Moon 4 When I first read the heptasyllabic songs of Tu Fu, I admired the precision of their disposition of material and their deeply telling use of words. Inadequate as was my intellect, I did try to imitate them in my humble way, for it seemed to me that long poems attained sageliness

———

4 HTFC 14.14b (210; 371:009). There is a Japanese translation of the poem in Yoshikawa Kōjirō 吉川幸次郎, Gen Min Shi Gaisetsu 元明詩概說 (Introduction to Yüan and Ming Poetry), Chūgoku Shijin Senshū, second series 2 (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1963), pp.185-189. John Timothy Wixted, in his excellent translation of Yoshikawa’s book, includes only part of the poem, Five Hundred Years of Chinese Poetry, 11501650: The Chin, Yüan, and Ming Dynasties (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), p.150, explaining in his preface that, “as the poem is a long pastiche of allusions that make little or no sense without lengthy explication, I decided that the present excerpts adequately suggest the nature of the piece” (p.xvi). Having criticised Wixted’s failure to translate the entire poem, in my published review of his translation (CLEAR 13 [1991]: 154-60), I must now concede that there is something to be said for his decision. Not only is the poem long and difficult, it is a very early work and no more representative of Ho’s mature style than the “Gurrelieder” is of Schönberg’s. There is a quite remarkably similar work with the same title, though without a preface, by Wang T’ing-hsiang; see Wang Shih Chia-ts’ang Chi 王氏家藏集 (Mr. Wang’s Collected Works Stored at Home) (Chia-ching edition; repr. Taipei: Wei-wen, 1976) 13.2b (476), Wang T’ing-hsiang Chi 王廷相集 (Collected Works of Wang T’inghsiang) (Peking: Chung-hua, 1981) 13.188. Some specific parallels are pointed out below in a separate note. The expression ‘flowing light’ 流景 most commonly refers to the light of the setting sun, but the moon is probably meant here. The Ssu-k’u Ch’üan-shu actually emends 景 to 影, probably with this in mind. Coincidentally, in the third line of the sixth stanza, 影 is again part of a textual problem. The ending of this line, 行憐影, is emended in the later, ‘no carvers names’, family of the Standard recension to the easier 憐行影. See TK 279. In line 59, the first of the penultimate stanza, the Shen recension reads 朱顏 ‘scarlet cheeks’ in place of 青蛾 ‘moth eyebrows’. This is a puzzling reading given that “moth eyebrows” continues a pattern of double anadiplosis after a rhyme change seen earlier in the poem, but it might be pointed out that in the next line “wrapped-up longing” is a repeated phrase but “harboured love”, prosodically parallel to “moth eyebrows” or “scarlet cheeks,” is not. The significance of the textual echo of Emperor Wu (see text) is uncertain. No doubt it supports the reading “harboured love”; the question is whether it supported it for Ho Ching-ming or only for his later editors. What is significant is that the Yüan recension, which generally follows the Shen closely, differs here, and so I follow the majority in my translation.

RETREAT

107

with Tu. Afterwards, I read songs and poems from the Han, Wei, and later periods, down to those written by the Four Talents of Early T’ang. 5 In going over these, I came to realise that because Han and Wei had taken up where the “Three Hundred Songs” had left off, their flowing style too was worthy of attention. As for the Four Talents, they were capable of abundance and charm, but they strayed far indeed from antiquity. Their musical rhythms, though, were always worth singing. I then understood that Tu’s words were indeed deeply telling, but that his tone was lacking in supple flow. While he became the by-word of one school, this was in fact only because of evolution in the forms of poetry. Now, the root of poetry lies in its expression of character and emotion, and for this there is nothing more incisive and readily perceived than the relationship between husband and wife. 6 This is why the “Songs 詩經 (Book of)” opens with the “Ospreys” and why the Six Principles begin with the Airs. It is, moreover, why the writers of Han and Wei, even when their meaning concerns the relationship between ruler and subject, or between friends, unfailingly express it as a matter of husbands and wives, in order to make known their frustrations and communicate their feelings. The implications of this are far-reaching. Seen in this light, Tu Fu’s poems, though they range widely over worldly concerns, generally draw little on the ways of husbands and wives. He combines the Odes and the Hymns to the highest degree, but is sometimes deficient in the principle of the writers of the Airs. Is this not wherein his tone is inferior to that of the Four Talents? I have written the present poem during days of leisure. Its theme and tone may perhaps resemble those of the Four Talents, but my talent and substance are timid and weak and my thinking extremely common and low. Thus the marshalling of words is rank and confused. I have not done anything to pull it together or make it more attractive, simply recording it in anticipation of its being cut and trimmed by someone wiser in matters of music. 7

——— 5

The ‘Four Talents of the Early T’ang’ were Lo Pin-wang 駱賓王, Lu Chao-lin 盧照鄰, Wang Po 王勃, and Yang Chiung 楊炯. 6 See Wang T’ing-hsiang’s preface, dated 1518, to his set of ten “Bamboo Stem Songs of the People of Pa,” 巴人竹枝歌 “The tao of ruler and subject, friend and associate, and men and women are the same, but the feelings of men and women are particularly suitable for touching the emotions . . .”, Wang Shih Chia-ts’ang Chi 20.10b (866), Wang T’ing-hsiang Chi 20.369. For a modern expression of the same idea, see Florence Chia-ying Yeh Chao, “The Ch’ang-chou School of Tz’u Criticism,” HJAS 35 (1975): 101-132, “If one is looking for an immediately apprehended, universally understood, and powerfully effective image of love to use in a poem, sexual love is it” (p.131); repr. J.R. Hightower and Florence Chia-ying Yeh, Studies in Chinese Poetry, pp.439-61 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998) (p.460). 7 In the twenty-first of his “Thirty-two Quatrains Written in Playful Imitation of Yüan Hao-wen’s “Discussing Poetry” 戲倣元遺山論詩絕句, the Ch’ing poet and critic Wang Shih-chen 王士禎 (1634-1711; not to be confused with the late Ming

108

CHAPTER FOUR

長安月、離離出海嶠。遙見層城隱半輪、漸看阿閣衡初照。瀲灩黃金波、團圓白玉盤。青天流影披紅橤、白露含輝汎紫蘭。紫蘭紅橤西風起、九衢夾道秋如水。錦幌高褰香霧濃、瑣闈斜映輕霞舉。霧沉霞落天宇開、萬戶千門明月裏。月明皎皎陌東西、柏寑岧嶤望不迷。侯家臺榭光先滿、戚里笙歌影乍低。濯濯芙蓉生玉沼、娟娟楊柳覆金堤。鳳凰樓上吹簫女、蟋蟀堂中織錦妻。別有深宮閉深院、年年歲歲愁相見。金屋螢流長信階、綺櫳燕入昭陽殿。趙女通宵侍御牀、班姬此夕悲團扇。秋來明月照金徽、榆黃沙白露逶迤。征夫塞上行憐影、少婦窻前想畫眉。上林鴻雁書中恨、北地關山笛裏悲。書中笛裏空相憶、幾見盈虧淚沾臆。紅閨貌減落春華、玉門腸斷逢秋色。春華秋色遞如流、東家怨女上粧樓。流蘇帳捲初安鏡、翡翠簾開自上鉤。河邊織女期七夕、天上嫦娥奈九秋。七夕風濤還可渡、九秋霜露迥生愁。九秋七夕須臾易、盛年一去真堪惜。可憐揚彩入羅幃、可憐流素凝瑤席。未作當罏賣酒人、難邀隔座援琴客。客心對此嘆蹉跎、烏鵲南飛可奈何。江頭商婦移船待、湖上佳人挾瑟歌。此時憑闌垂玉箸、此時滅燭斂青蛾。玉箸青蛾苦緘怨、緘怨含情不能吐。麗色春妍桃李蹊、遲輝晚媚葛蒲浦。與君相思在二八、與君相期在三五。空持夜被貼鴛鴦、空持暖玉擎鸚鵡。青衫泣掩琵琶絃、銀屏忍對箜篌語。箜篌再彈月已微、穿廊入闥靄斜輝。歸心日遠大刀折、極目天涯破鏡飛。 Moon of Ch’ang-an, Heavy and ripe it emerges from seaside cliffs. I behold in the distance walls in tiers darkening half the disk, Briefly see towers with four sets of eaves enclosing the initial glow. Shimmer and glimmer, the golden waves; Full and round, the White Jade platter. Light aflow in the azure heavens opens up red pistils; A glow enclosed in white dew sets lavender orchids afloat. Over lavender orchids and red pistils a west wind rises; The Nine Grand Roads and narrow lanes in autumn flow like rivers.

———

writer of homophonous name, 王世貞, mentioned elsewhere) disagreed with Ho’s account, attributing his excellence to natural ability rather than the example of the Four Talents; see Yü-yang Shan-jen Ching-hua-lu Hsün-tsuan 漁洋山人精華錄訓纂 (Assembled Glosses on the Record of Essential Blossoms by the Mountain Dweller of Yü-yang) (SPPY), 5B.24a. The editors of the Ssu-k’u Ch’üan-shu Tsung-mu T’i-yao 四庫全書綜目提要 (Summary of the General Catalogue of the Complete Writings of the Four Storehouses), comp. Chi Yün 紀昀 , et al., trace the evolution of the heptasyllabic ballad and conclude that in fact Ho owed something to the style as developed by the Four, but that its origins were earlier and that Wang’s purpose may simply have been to discourage pointless ornamentation (Taipei: Shang-wu, 1971), p.3656, quoted in LHH 3.36ab and MSCS, ting-1.1173-74. Lu Chao-lin 盧照鄰, one of the Four Talents, wrote a poem on the moon, but it is very different in form from Ho’s (CTS 41.519, K.02763).

RETREAT

109

Brocade hangings are rolled up high as incense fog disperses, Beaded curtains lit from the side as light cloudwrack spreads upward. Fog subsides and cloudwrack falls as the heavenly realm appears; Ten thousand doors and a thousand gates bathe in the moon’s light. The moon’s cast glow is dazzling white on paths to east and west; From Po-ch’in, lofty and tall, one’s gaze is not confused. The verandas and outlooks of noble houses are first engulfed in light; On the pipes and singing of imperial cognates shadows are suddenly cast. Lush and glowing, lotus rises from jade shallows; Green and graceful, willows cover the firm embankments. Up atop a phoenix pavilion—a maiden playing a flute; Deep within a cricket hall—a wife is weaving brocade. Set apart are secluded halls that close in secluded courtyards; Year after year and age after age, sorrow is there to be seen. From a golden chamber the fireflies glide to Ch’ang-hsin stairs; Through brocade windows swallows enter Chao-yang Palace. The daughter of Chao serves through the night upon the Imperial couch; Consort Pan this very evening suffers with her round fan. All autumn long the brilliant moonlight shines on golden frets; The elms are yellow, the sand is white, the roads are long and winding. A man on campaign beyond the frontiers, marches, admiring the light; A young wife beside her window thinks of painting her brows. In the Imperial Grove are geese and swans, regret contained in letters; In a northern land, in mountains and passes, grief in the sound of fifes. Contained in letters, the sound of fifes—remembrance to no avail; Fullness and wane so often seen—teardrops dampen the breast. In a scarlet boudoir her features fade—shedding the glories of spring; At Jade Gate his heart is broken—meeting the beauty of autumn. The glories of spring and beauty of autumn change places as though in flux; An eastern neighbour’s longing daughter climbs her rouge pavilion. Rainbow-tasseled curtains are rolled as she first sets up her mirror; Kingfisher-feathered blinds are opened, climbing the hooks themselves. Beside her River the Weaving Maid awaits the Seventh Night; Up in heaven, how can Ch’ang-o bear the autumn months? The wind and waves of the Seventh Night can still be ferried, But frost and dew of autumn months give rise to sorrow far away. The months of autumn and Seventh Night will pass by in a twinkling; When years of glory once have gone—truly cause for lament. How charming the bright colours seen through gossamer curtains; How charming the white moonglow congealed on jewelled mats. Not having been a wine-selling girl standing behind the bar,

110

CHAPTER FOUR

Hard to welcome a stranger plucking a lute at a nearby seat. At the sight of this a stranger’s heartstrings sigh that time slips by; That magpies fly away to the south—how can this be borne? Down on the river a merchant’s wife moves her boat and waits; Overlooking a lake a beautiful woman holds her lute and sings. This is the hour—to lean on a railing with streams of jade-like tears; This is the hour—to snuff out candles and frown with moth eyebrows. Streams of tears and moth eyebrows bitterly wrap up their longing; Wrapped-up longing and harboured feelings cannot be spit out. Lovely colours and spring allurements—a peach and cherry lane; Lingering glow and evening enchantment—an iris flower cove. When we fell in love I was just sixteen; When we pledged our engagement I was just fifteen. For nothing I clutch my evening blanket adorned with bridal ducks; For nothing I clutch the warmth of a jade supporting a roosting parrot. A dark blue tunic weeps to cover the strings of a guitar; How can silver screens bear to face the words of a koto? The koto is plucked a second time—the moon already faint; Threading hallways and coming through gates, a hazy, sidelong glow. A homesick heart more distant every day, a sabre broken; To the end of sight on heaven’s brink a broken mirror flies. Although the moon was always a very commonly used image in Chinese poetry, the earliest extant poem whose title suggests that the moon is its subject is one by Fu Hsüan 傅玄 whose title is identical to Ho’s. 8 In fact, the moon appears only as an image in Fu’s first line, after which the poem is concerned with evoking the appearance and life of a beautiful young woman. Much the same happens in Pao Chao’s “Ballad of the Bright Moon” 代朗月行, although in this case the moon persists into the second line. 9 “Walls in Tiers” 層城 was the name of one of the peaks of the Kunlun Mountains, but the word must be used only in a general sense here, as the Kunlun lay in the far west, even relative to Ch’ang-an, in the opposite direction from the rising moon. “White jade platter” is a poetic image for the moon. Who first used it may be uncertain, but the most memorable instance is probably the opening of Li Po’s “Old Ballad of the Bright Moon” 古朗月行, “When

——— 8

YTHY 2.16a (43); Lu Ch’in-li, p.559. See the translation in Birrell, p.76. The antecedants of Ho’s poem are discussed in some detail in Liao Chung-an 廖仲安, “Tu Ho Ching-ming “Ming-yüeh P’ien” 讀何景明明月篇 (On Reading Ho Ching-ming’s ‘The Bright Moon’), Hsin-yang Shih-fan Hsüeh-yüan Hsüeh-pao (1985.4): 34-40. Liao also offers an extensive account of the later reception of Ho’s argument that the Four Masters surpassed Tu Fu in this type of poetry. 9 Lu Ch’in-li, p.1266; Pao Shih Chi (SPTK) 3.8b (12).

RETREAT

111

I was little and didn’t know what the moon was, / I called it the “white jade platter” 小時不識月、呼作白玉盤. 10 The first line of the third stanza includes a phrase from a couplet in the second of Li Po’s wellknown “Ballads of Ch’ang-kan” 長干行 (the first was translated by Ezra Pound), written in the persona of a young woman whose husband is a river merchant away on a journey, “In the eighth month, a westerly wind arises; I imagine you setting out from Yang-tzu” 八月西風起、想君發揚子. 11 The last line of this stanza recalls, in a conventional phrase that occurs elsewhere, a poem by Lo Pin-wang, one of the four masters of the early T’ang referred to in Ho’s preface. In a poem on the Imperial capital, 帝京篇, Lo wrote, “The Three Thoroughfares and Nine Grand Roads beautify a corner of the wall, / Ten thousand houses and a thousand gates open in the in dawn” 三條九陌麗城隈、萬戶千門平旦開. 12 In the first line of the next stanza, ‘dazzling white’ has been used to describe the moon since the “Moonrise” 月出 poem in the Songs, which opens, “The moon rises dazzling white” 月出皎兮. 13 A more direct inspiration for Ho’s line is probably the opening of the last of the “Nineteen Old Poems 古詩十九首,” “The bright moon, how dazzling white, / Shines on my gossamer bed curtain” 明月何皎皎、照我羅床幃. 14 The end of the next line is reminiscent of the end of Ts’en Shen’s 岑參 “On Climbing the West Pavilion at Kuo-chou in Early Autumn with Various Gentlemen for the View” 早秋與諸子登虢州西亭觀眺, “There is only the place of my garden at home; / I linger and linger; my gaze is not confused” 唯有鄉園處、依依忘不迷. 15 In the sixth line of this stanza, Ho may have had in mind a passage in Pan Ku’s 班固 “Rhapsody on the Western Capital” 西京賦, “Surrounded by a firm dyke, planted with willow and osier” 周以金堤、樹以柳杞. 16 The cricket in the last line of this stanza comes from an eponymous poem in the Songs, “The cricket is in the hall” 蟋蟀在堂. 17 In the second line of the next stanza, the phrase “year after year and age after age,” is really a pair of near synonyms, nien 年 referring to calendar years and sui 歲 to

——— 10

Ri Haku Kashi Sakuin 0118/01-02; CTS 163.1695; K.07981; An Ch’i, p.1096. Ri Haku Kashi Sakuin 0117; K.07980; CTS 163.1695; An Ch’i, p.1731. The authenticity of this second poem is contested, but Ho Ching-ming would surely have known it, even if he thought it the work of Li Yi 李益 or one of the other poets proposed as the true author. See An Ch’i, loc. cit. for a discussion of the issue of authorship. 12 CTS 77.834; K.04148; Lo Lin-hai Chi Chien-chu 駱臨海集箋注 (Annotated Works of Lo Lin-hai) (Hong Kong: Chung-hua, 1972), p.7. 13 Mao Shih Yin-te 29/143/1; Karlgren, p.90; Waley, p.41. 14 WH 29.8a (400); Lu Ch’in-li, p.334. 15 CTS 201.2100.; K.09832; Ts’en Shen Shih-chi Pien-nien Chien-chu 岑參詩集編年箋註 (Collected Poems of Ts’en Shen, Chronologically Arranged and Annotated), compiled by Liu K’ai-yang 劉開揚 (Chengtu: Pa-Shu Shu-she, 1995), p.441. 16 WH 2.16b (24); cf. the translation in Knechtges 1:211. 17 Mao Shih Yin-te 23/114/1,2,3; Karlgren, p.74; Waley, p.199. 11

112

CHAPTER FOUR

‘anniversary-like’ annual events, such as harvests and years of human age. Ho would have known it from the “Grieving for the White-headed Old Man” 代悲白頭翁 by Liu Hsi-yi 劉希夷, an Early T’ang poet, but not one of the ‘Four Talents’, “Year after year and age after age, the blossoms look similar; / Age after age and year after year the people are not the same” 年年歲歲花相似、歲歲年年人不同. 18 A slightly later example, of interest because it comes from a poem that also mentions some of the famous women referred to in the same stanza of Ho’s poem, is Li Po’s “Warm Spring Song” 陽春歌, “A sagely prince for thirty-six thousand days, / Age after age and year after year, what to make of the pleasures!” 聖君三萬六千日、歲歲年年柰樂何. 19 The second line of the next stanza ends with a reminiscence of Wang Ts’an’s 王粲 “Rhapsody on Climbing the Tower” 登樓賦, “The roads are long and winding, far in the distance; / The rivers are long indeed, and exceeding deep” 路逶迤而脩迥兮、川既漾而濟深. 20 The last line of this stanza recalls a line in Tu Fu’s “Wash the Weapons and Horses” 洗兵馬, “For three years in the sound of fifes, ‘The Moon over Passes and Mountains’” 三年笛裏關山月. 21 A rather large anthology could no doubt be made up entirely of Chinese poems at whose end tears dampen someone’s breast, but Ho would certainly have known in particular both what may be the earliest of these, Shen Yüeh’s 沈約 “A Beautiful Woman Appears in my Dream” 夢見美人, “And how can you know that my heart is broken? / Flowing, flowing, tears soak my breast” 那知神傷者、潺湲淚霑臆 , 22 and the penultimate couplet of Tu Fu’s “Grieving by the River” 哀江頭, “When in life we are moved, tears soak our breast, / The river waters and river blossoms—can they ever have an end?” 人生有情淚霑臆、江水江花豈終極. 23 The second couplet of the next stanza recalls the second couplet of a Tu Fu poem entitled simply “The Moon” 月, “From a dusty case, first open the mirror; / The wind-blown blinds climb to the hook themselves” 塵匣元開鏡、風簾自上鉤. 24 As commentators on Tu Fu point out, he uses lines from older poets that referred unambiguously to real mirrors and curtain hooks and transforms them into images of the moon appearing through and above the clouds. Ho Ching-ming then takes Tu’s lines and uses them within a poem on the moon, but once again referring to earthly objects in a woman’s boudoir. The fourth line of the next stanza

——— 18

CTS 82.885; K.04335. Ri Haku Kashi Sakuin 0093/07-08; CTS 163.1690; K.07957; An Ch’i, p.464. 20 WH 11.2b (146); Wang Ts’an Chi Chu 王粲集注 (Collected Works of Wang Ts’an, Annotated), compiled by Wu Yün 吳雲 and T’ang Shao-chung 唐紹忠 (Hsinyang: Chung-chou Shu-hua, 1984), p.46; cf. the translation in Knechtges, 2:239. 21 Tu Shih Yin-te 71/18/11, CTS 217.2278, K.10568. 22 YTHY 5.12a (82); Lu Ch’in-li, p.1640; cf. the translation in Birrell, p.142-43. 23 Tu Shih Yin-te 43/20/17-18, CTS 216.2268, K.10540. 24 Tu Shih Yin-te 507/16/3-4, CTS 230.2531, K.11673. 19

RETREAT

113

recalls a line in Hsieh Ling-yün’s “Around my Residence in the New Camp at Stone Gate there are High Mountains on All Sides, Curving Streams, Rapids, Tall Bamboo, and Lush Forests” 石門新營所住四面高山迴溪石瀨脩竹茂林詩, “Fragrant dust congeals on jeweled mats” 芳塵凝瑤席. 25 The second line of the next stanza is compounded from two sources. The opening quotes a line by a “Short Song” 短歌行 by Ts’ao Ts’ao that can be seen as the ancestor of a long tradition of ballads whose persona makes a speech after drinking (see below, chapter six). The couplet in question is, “The moon is bright, the stars faint; / magpies are flying to the south” 月明星稀、烏鵲南飛. 26 The magpie line became a tag used in poems about separation, such as the opening of Hsiao Yi’s 蕭繹 “Cold Night—Three Rhymes” 寒宵三韻, “The magpies flew south in the night; / My man has gone and not returned” 烏鵲夜南飛、良人行未歸, 27 or the moon, such as the final couplet of Tu Fu’s “Moon” 月 (third of three poems), “Southward flying are the magpies; / Late in the night it sets at the river’s edge” 南飛有烏鵲、夜久落江邊. 28 The rest of Ho’s line is also a familiar tag; the earliest extant example is probably the second poem in the “Nine Arguments” 九辯 in the Ch’u Tz’u, “My prince does not know; / how can it be borne?” 君不知兮、可柰何. 29 The second line of the next stanza recalls a line from the first of three “Songs of the White Brass Horseshoes of Hsiang-yang” 襄陽白銅蹄 by Hsiao Yen, “Harboured love cannot be spoken; / At parting it dampens her gossamer robe” 含情不可言、送別霑羅衣. 30 In the next line, Ho alludes to a comment about peach and plum blossoms in the Shih Chi that is more fully employed in his poem “Song of Ta-liang” (see below). 31 The seventh line of this stanza alludes to a couplet in the eighteenth of the “Nineteen Old Poems,” “The weave patterned in a pair of bridal ducks, / I made it

——— 25

WH 30.8b (415); Lu Ch’in-li, p.1166; Hsieh Ling-yun Chi Chiao-chu (Taipei: Li-jen, 2004), p.256; cf. the translation by J.D. Frodsham, “Our jeweled mats are thick with scented dust,” The Murmuring Stream: The Life and Works of the Chinese Nature Poet Hsieh Ling-yün (385-433), Duke of K’ang-lo (Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press, 1967), p.136. 26 WH 27.18a (378); Lu Ch’in-li, p.349; Ts’ao Ts’ao Chi Yi-chu 曹操集譯注 (Collected Works of Ts’ao Ts’ao Interpreted and Annotated) (Peking: Chung-hua, 1979), p.18. 27 YTHY 7.28a (120); Lu Ch’in-li, p.2054, giving the alternate title “Cold Boudoir” 寒閨; cf. the translation in Birrell, p.203. 28 Tu Shih Yin-te 431/14C/7-8, CTS 230.2528, K.11653. 29 Ch’u Tz’u Pu-chu 8.3b (306); cf. the quite different translation, appropriate in its context, by David Hawkes, “But my lord would have none of it. What could I do?” Songs of the South, first ed., p.93; Penguin ed., p.210. In the Penguin edition, Hawkes alters the title of the set to “Nine Changes.” 30 YTHY 10.22b (184); Lu Ch’in-li, p.1519; cf. the translation in Birrell, p.285. 31 Shih Chi 史記 (Records of the Historian) (Peking: Chung-hua, 1959) 109.2878.

114

CHAPTER FOUR

into a shared-joys coverlet” 文彩雙鴛鴦、裁為合歡被. 32 The ninth line draws on the final couplet of Po Chü-yi’s “Lute Song” 琵琶行 (see also below), “And who among those present wept most copiously? / The Vice-Prefect of Chiang-chou’s blue tunic is damp!” 就中泣下誰最多、江州司馬青衫濕 . 33 The penultimate line of the poem is an expansion of one in the opening couplet of the first of Tu Fu’s two “The Moon on the Fifteenth Night of the Eighth Month”(i.e. the Moon Festival) 八月十五夜月, “Filling the eyes, a flying bright mirror; / To a homesick heart, a great sabre broken” 滿目飛明鏡、歸心大刀折. 34 Both this and Ho’s final line draw on this couplet as well as on the closing couplet of an anonymous old quatrain (古絕句), “What is at the great sabre’s hilt? / A broken mirror flying up into the sky” 何當大刀頭、破鏡飛上天. 35

This poem assumes knowledge of a fair amount of history and geography. The Nine Grand Roads were the main arteries of T’ang dynasty Ch’ang-an. There analogues may be seen in other cities laid out on the pattern of a Chinese capital city, including Peking, Kyoto, and Savannah, Georgia. The narrow lanes, which recur in Ho’s “Song of Ta-liang” (see below), ran through the large blocks formed by the boulevards. Autumn is the season of high water and copious flow in Chinese rivers. Po-ch’in is in Shantung. Duke Ching 景 of Ch’i is said to have climbed a terrace there and looked out over his state. 36 The penultimate line in the same stanza refers to the story of Nung-yü 弄玉, daughter of Duke Miao 繆 of Ch’in. Her father married her to a man named Hsiao Shih 簫史, an expert player on the flute. He taught Nung-yü to play, and the two of them performed duets atop a terrace. Their playing was so effective that a phoenix came to roost on their roof. Eventually Hsiao Shih, mounted on a dragon, and Nung-yü, on the phoenix, flew away into the sky and never returned. 37 In the next

———

32 WH 29.8a (400); YTHY 1.3b (17); Lu Ch’in-li, p.333; cf. the translation in Birrell, p.32. 33 CTS 435.4821; K.22341; Po Chü-yi Chi 白居易集 (Collected Works of Po Chüyi), compiled by Ku Hsüeh-chieh 顧學頡 (Peking: Chung-hua, 1979), p.241. 34 Tu Shih Yin-te 465/27A/1-2, CTS 230.2530, K.11664. 35 YTHY 10.1a (173); Lu Ch’in-li, p.343; cf. the translation in Birrell in, p.264. Lu points out that the term ‘quatrain’ post-dates the poem and was probably added when the Yü-t’ai Hsin-yung was compiled; Birrell, that the whole poem, including these lines, is based on a series on puns. 36 Han-fei-tzu Chi-chieh 韓非子集解 (Collected Explications of Han-fei-tzu), compiled by Wang Hsien-shen 王先慎 (Peking: Chung-hua, 1998) 13.312. 37 The story, originally included in the Lieh-hsien Chuan 列仙傳, is no longer found in this work except where it has been restored on the basis of later quotations in

RETREAT

115

line, the woman weaving brocade is probably Su Hui 蘇蕙. Missing her husband, who was away, she wove an elaborate text in brocade and sent it to him. It was in a form called hui-wen 迴文, in which the text can be read both forward and backward, with additional poems to be found by reading diagonally, etc. In poetry, at least, women miss their absent husbands and send them presents of cloth most often in the autumn, the season when crickets are heard. In fact, one name for the cricket is the ‘weaving-hurrier’ 促織. Su’s story is briefly told in her Tsin Shu biography. 38 The fifth stanza conflates the stories of a number of famous imperial consorts of the Han dynasty. Emperor Wu of the Han promised to build a palace decorated with gold for his childhood sweetheart. 39 Ch’ang-hsin Palace was the residence of the Han empresses dowager, to which consorts who had lost favour were sometimes sent. Chao Fei-yen 趙飛燕 (‘Flying Swallow’), a favourite consort of Emperor Ch’eng 成 of the Han, was intensely jealous of her younger sister, who lived in the Chao-yang Palace. Flying Swallow herself had displaced Pan Chieh-yü 班倢伃, who was sent to live in the Ch’ang-hsin Palace, where she wrote a famous poem (also translated by Ezra Pound) likening herself to a discarded fan. 40 Su Wu, a Chinese envoy held captive by the Hsiung-nu, was freed after a representative of the Han Emperor, sent to bring him and others home, told the Hsiung-nu khan that Su had fastened a letter to a goose’s leg, the letter being recovered when the goose was shot in the Imperial hunting park. 41 Although entirely fabricated, the story sufficed not only to win Su’s release but also to inspire many generations of poets, including Ho. The next line refers to an old yüeh-fu ballad titled “The moon over Passes and Mountains” 關山月, whose theme was the

———

commentaries such as that of Li Shan 李善 to the Wen-hsüan, WH 28.24a (393]) or Li Hsien 李賢 and others to the Hou Han Shu, 後漢書 (History of the Later Han), compiled by Fan Ye 范曄 [Peking: Chung-hua, 1965] 83.2772). 38 Tsin Shu (Peking: Chung-hua, 1974) 96.2523. 39 The story of his childish promise is told in the Han Wu Ku-shih 漢武故事 (Stories of The Martial [Emperor of] Han), attrib. Pan Ku (SKCS), p.2a. Duly recognised as Empress, the girl failed to bear a son for ten years and eventually fell from favour, accused of employing witchcraft against her rivals. Her brief ‘official’ biography is in Han Shu (Peking: Chung-hua, 1962) 97A.3948. 40 For the melancholy histories of Ch’eng-ti’s various Empresses and consorts, including Pan Chieh-yü, ‘Flying Swallow’, and her sister Chao-yi, see Han Shu 97B.3983-90. 41 Han Shu 54.2466.

116

CHAPTER FOUR

sadness of separation. Jade Gate was the western extent of Chinese rule in the Han. The original “eastern neighbour girl” was described by Sung Yü in his “Rhapsody on Teng-t’u the Lecher” 登徒子好色賦, “And of the lovely ladies of my village, none can compare with the daughter of my eastern neighbour” 臣里之美者、莫若臣東家之子. 42 Because this girl is described, admittedly by Sung Yü himself, as being so lovesick that she has been climbing her fence for three years to catch glimpses of him, she is a more likely model than the alternative, a domineering mother’s idea of the ideal daughter-in-law who appears in the long anonymous Han ballad “Southeast the Peacock Flies” 孔雀東南飛 , “Our eastern neighbour has a fine daughter” 東家有賢女. 43 Legend held that two unlucky celestial lovers, the Herd Boy and the Weaving Maid, were kept apart by the Milky Way all year except for the seventh night of the seventh month, when magpies formed a bridge between them. The story is associated with the Seventh Night holiday (see below). Ch’ang-o (properly 姮娥) was originally the wife of the Archer Yi 羿. She stole the elixir of immortality and fled with it to the moon, where she remains, immortal to be sure, but cold and lonely too, a Chinese Luna Lisa, as it were. The final couplet of the next stanza refers to a famous couple, Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju 司馬相如 and Cho Wen-chün 卓文君. While Ssu-ma, a handsome, brilliant but unemployed young poet, was visiting her father’s house, Wen-chün spied him through a door and was smitten at once. The two of them eloped that very night, to the fury of her father, who disinherited her. Ssu-ma sold off his possessions and the two of them opened a wine shop with their capital, Wen-chün selling heated wine from the pot and Ssu-ma doing the washing up. Her father was so chagrined at this that he eventually relented and settled a small fortune on the couple. 44 The middle couplet of the next stanza alludes to Po Chü-yi’s famous “Lute Song,” although it borrows only one phrase from the poem itself. This poem describes Po’s encounter with an aging musician, once the toast of the capital but married off to a

———

42 WH 19.10a (254); Sung Yü Chi (Changsha: Yüeh-lu Shu-she, 2001); I quote the translation in Knechtges, 3:351, very slightly modified. 43 YTHY 1.31b (31), repeated 1.39a (35); Lu Ch’in-li, p.283; cf. the translation in Birrell, pp.34, 61. 44 The story is told in Shih Chi 117.3000 and Han Shu 57A.2530-31.

RETREAT

117

travelling merchant when her beauty faded. 45 There is an additional reference to this poem in the penultimate stanza (see notes above). In the next stanza, the ‘bridal ducks’ of the first line of the penultimate couplet are what are usually called Mandarin Ducks (Aix galericulata). These birds are known in China not only for their beauty, approached, among North American ducks, only by the Wood Duck, but also for the lasting bonds between male and female breeding pairs. This is one of Ho’s longest and most complex poems. Space does not permit an analysis of all its wonders, but we can remark on at least some aspects of it. First, there is a framing gesture, in that the poem opens with the moon’s rise and ends with its setting. Even the detail of the half-covered disk is recapitulated. Familiar too are the repeated words used to link some of the stanzas. 46 The poem differs from many of Ho’s long poems in its relative lack of symmetrical balance. In the fourth stanza the interest of the poem shifts from description of the moon’s rise and the appearance of the world under its light to the loneliness of separated or neglected lovers. These two sections are not of balanced length, nor are they entirely mutually exclusive. In the descriptive section there are hints (‘narrow lanes,’ ‘beaded curtains, ‘pipes and singing’) that women’s sorrows are to be revealed under the moonlight, and the moon recurs in the later parts of the poem. It is at the end of the fourth stanza that the women themselves are introduced, and their concerns dominate the rest of the poem. Aside from the closing four lines, the rest of the poem falls into three sections, the last stanza of each of which begins by repeating two phrases from the immedately preceding lines. The first of these subsections centres on Han dynasty figures, imperial consorts and soldiers’ wives. The second part is concerned with mythical women thought of as living in the heavens, the Weaving Girl (a star, separated by the Milky Way from her stellar lover the Herd Boy except for the seventh night of the seventh month) and Ch’ang-o, Goddess of the

——— 45

Po Chü-yi Chi, p.241. Formal features found in the analogous poem by Wang T’ing-hsiang (see above) include an opening passage in the pentasyllabic metre, the repetition of two parallel phrases in one couplet together at the beginning of the next (as in the ‘red pistils’ and ‘lavender orchids’ and other examples in Ho’s poem, a couplet both of whose lines begin with “This is the hour . . .” (此時 tz’u shih), and a line beginning 與君 yü chün (literally “together with you,” translated here as “When we . . .”). In addition, many of the allusions used are the same. 46

118

CHAPTER FOUR

Moon. The last couplet of this section refers to the famous Han couple Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju and Cho Wen-chün, and so introduces the lute, which provides a link to the third subsection. In this part of the poem, somewhat anachronistically, T’ang figures are evoked, the merchants’ wives of Po Chü-yi’s “Lute Song” and Li Po’s “River Merchant’s Letter.” The lute is mentioned again, providing a sudden but effective step to the concluding description of the moon’s setting. By the time this point is reached, we have covered so much ground that a reader is not surprised to find that these thoughts really have taken up an entire autumn night. It should be noted, especially because we now generally consider Tu Fu to have been the greatest of all Chinese poets, that he was not so highly esteemed in the Ming dynasty before the time of Li Mengyang and Ho Ching-ming, so that Ho’s preference for Tu in New Style Poetry but for the Four Talents in long poems would not have shocked his contemporaries as it may us. 47 Ho’s attitude to Tu in his preface is after all not inconsistent with that found in the “Miscellaneous Poem on the Road from Wu-ling to Yüan-ling” discussed in the preceding chapter. His interest in Tu Fu is here expressed as a matter of technique. He looks to Tu not as a moral or even a cultural hero, as readers of the Sung or modern periods have done, but rather as someone whose handling of verse is to be evaluated relative to other writers. 48 “The Bright Moon” probably dates from the autumn of 1506, as Ho’s literary idyll in the capital was drawing to an end. K’ang Hai had recently returned to Peking after several years at home in Shensi, in mourning for his father. A pair of poems by Ho from this period commemorates his having invited K’ang drinking. 49 These were in fact the last moments of the Archaist literary circle in Peking. A year

———

47 For a good introduction to this issue, see Liu Ming-chin 劉明今, “Ts’ung Mingjen tui Tu Fu te P’ing-chia K’an Ming-tai Shih-hsüeh te Feng-shang” 從明人對杜甫的評價看明代詩學的風尚 (Ming Dynasty Poetic Taste as Seen in Ming Evaluations of Tu Fu), Wen-hsüeh Yi-ch’an 1987.6:100-108. 48 Chien Chin-sung agrees with Suzuki Torao 鈴木虎雄, that Ho’s preference for the Four over Tu Fu is not to be taken seriously. See Chien, “Li-Ho Shih-lun Yenchiu” (M.A. thesis, National Taiwan University, 1980), p.140, and Suzuki, Shina Shiron Shi 支那詩論史 (History of Chinese Poetics) (1927; repr. Tokyo: Kōbundō, 1954), p.58. 49 “In Mid-Autumn, on the Seventeenth Night, Keeping K’ang Te-han [Hai] Here to Drink” 中秋十七夜留康德涵飲, HTFC 9.10b (115; 351:018-019).

RETREAT

119

later, Hsü Chen-ch’ing 徐禎卿 (1479-1511) would write a poem lamenting how things had changed in the year since he and Li Mengyang had met to drink in the moonlight on the Moon Festival, just two days before Ho and K’ang’s party, and perhaps no farther from the composition of Ho’s poem. 50 COUP AND COUNTER-COUP Indeed, the storm that would break up the happy circle was already brewing. A trace of it appears in a poem with the cryptic title “A Change in the Stars”星變 51 This is sometimes associated with an astronomical event recorded in the Ming Shih from the eighth lunar month, but it seems better to see it as linked to the memorial on the subject submitted by the Court Astronomer, one Yang Yüan 楊源, late in the ninth month, reporting unusual motions of stars thought to correspond to the throne and urging the young Wu-tsung to rid himself of unworthy advisors and pay proper attention to his duties. 52 In later years, Wu-tsung would generally respond by simply ignoring such remonstrations, though at times they came thick and fast from his very highest officials. Liu Chin, however, well understood that the

———

50 “Last Year at Mid-Autumn, I was Drinking with Hsien-chi [Li Meng-yang] and Chanting Quietly under the Moon, Now like Flying Tumbleweeds We have been Separated for a Whole Year, Winter and Summer, and on this Evening the Times have Changed and Things are Different: I Gaze at the Moon and Write this Melancholy Work” 往歲中秋與獻吉飲幽吟於月下飛蓬一失載離寒暑今茲之夕時異事非對月舉觴悵然有作, Hsü Chen-ch’ing, Hsü Ti-kung Wai-chi 徐迪功詩集外集 (Collected Poems of Hsü Ti-kung, with Outer Collection) (Hung-Cheng Ssu-chieh Shih-chi) 3.1b. For Hsü Chen-ch’ing (t. Ch’ang-ku 昌穀, Ch’ang-kuo 昌國), see DMB 3569 (Hoklam Chan), TL 468, HY 3/124, TK 141, and Wang Yi 王乙 and Ch’en Hung 陳紅, “Hsü Chen-ch’ing Nien-p’u Chien-pien” 徐禎卿年譜簡編 (Brief Chronological Biography of Hsü Chen-ch’ing), Yunnan Chiao-yü Hsüeh-yüan Hsüeh-pao 11.4 (1995): 41-46. I have not yet seen the book-length chronology by Fan Chih-hsin 范志新, but various errors and oversights in it are corrected by Liu Hua-ping 劉化兵 in his “Hsü Chen-ch’ing Nien-p’u K’uang-pu chi Chih-yi” 徐禎卿年譜匡補及質疑 (Addenda, Corrigenda, and Queries Concerning the Chronological Register of Hsü Chen-ch’ing), Shantung She-hui K’o-hsüeh 2001.5:67-68. 51 HTFC 22.1a (381; 352:146). 52 The Wu-tsung Shih-lu (Taipei: Chung-yang Yen-chiu-yüan, 1961) 7.12a (527) records this under a date corresponding to October 13, 1506, the twenty-seventh day of the ninth lunar month. MTC records a comet in the seventh month (Peking: Chunghua, 1959) 41.1555. It gives the story of Yang Yüan at the end of its material on the tenth month, as an addendum to its account of Liu Chin’s coup (41.1565).

120

CHAPTER FOUR

attack was directed at him, that his position was not yet secure enough to allow indulgence in disdain, and that an early fall from power, before he had built a network of support among senior officials, would probably cost him his life. He insisted that the astronomer be beaten severely, and in the event the unhappy Yang died of his wounds. Ho’s poem was probably written before the beating, perhaps even before the memorial was submitted, and is so oblique that its point would be invisible if we could not date it or if we did not know of the astronomer’s report (Ho also refers to flowers blooming out of season). The poem on these natural aberrations is succeeded by a dozen works, mostly short poems but also including a substantial rhapsody, all apparently dating from the few days before the crisis erupted. 53 This is when Ho says farewell to his friend Tu Mu, who was going south, 54 and takes advantage of the opportunity to send poetic messages along to Wang Pien (see Preface) and to Ku Lin, who would later record the story of Ho’s initial success in Peking (see above, chapter two). 55 He urges Tai Kuan, who had been thinking of going to visit his father, to stay on. 56 And some opportunity to send messages home produced poems for Meng Yang, Meng’s wife (Ho’s sister), and

——— 53

The “Second Rhapsody on White Chrysanthemums” 後白菊賦 describes the flowers blooming out of season, but does not draw any evidently political conclusions, HTFC 2.8a (22; 賦:023). 54 “Saying Farewell to Secretary Tu Hsüan-ching [Mu]” (two poems) 送都玄敬主事, HTFC 18.13a (304; 352:147-148). For Tu Mu (t. Hsüan-ching 玄敬), see DMB 1322 (Liu Lin-sheng), TL 642, HY 3/170, TK 185. Tu had studied poetry with the painter Shen Chou; see Ssu-k’u Ch’üan-shu Tsung-mu T’i-yao, p.3631. He passed the chin-shih in 1499. After returning home to Soochow, Tu would spend two weeks with a fellow graduate of 1499, the philosopher Wang Yang-ming, who would be impressed with his learning. 55 “Sent to Wang Wen-hsi [Pien]” 寄王文熙, HTFC 19.14b (328; 352:149), “Sent to Ku Hua-yü [Lin]” 寄顧華玉, HTFC 19.15a (328; 352:150). 56 “Master Tai has been Here with Me, but He Says that He is Moved by Autumn and Wants to Return: These Poems are to Console Him and Keep Him On” (two poems) 戴生在吾語感秋思歸詩以慰留, HTFC 20.5a (338; 352:151-152). Tai Kuan wrote answering poems to match Ho’s rhymes, “Matching the Rhymes of Ta-fu [Ho Ching-ming], Who is Keeping Me On” 和大復見留之韻, Tai Chih Chi (1548; repr. TM 4:63, Tainan: Chuang-yen Wen-hua, 1997) 8.10b (53). Tai Yi had accepted a low-ranking post as Instructor in the state school of Hsien-hsien 獻縣, south of Peking, rather than attempting the chin-shih because his own father was quite elderly. Fan P’eng tells us that while on trips to visit his father, Tai Kuan’s devotion to study took the form of continual recitation of his lessons, to the wonderment (at the very least) of bystanders.

RETREAT

121

Ho’s brother Ching-hui (for this last poem, see above). 57 Ho can scarcely have been unaware of what was brewing, since Li Mengyang was an important figure in the opposition to Liu Chin, but these poems betray no hint of anything beyond the sentiments conventional to their several occasions. A pair of poems written on the first day of the tenth month perhaps—but no more than perhaps—reveals something more. The date is their only title. 十月一日今日孟冬朔、輕烟澹曉暾。北風飄一鴈、寒氣入千門。消息斷行客、關河迷故園。浮生元不定、俯仰任乾坤。 First Day of the Tenth Month (first of two poems) 58 Today is the first day of the winter season; Light haze pales the daybreak light. The north wind whirls a single wild goose; Wintry weather enters a thousand gates. All news cut off from travellers on the road, Over passes and rivers I miss my former garden. This floating life is from the first uncertain; Looking up and down, I rely on heaven and earth.

The crisis finally broke a few days after these poems were written. It was Ho’s friend and mentor Li Meng-yang, though only Director of a Bureau, who acted as the catalyst in setting in motion the attempt to oust Liu Chin. 59 When, after a court session, the Minister of Revenue Han Wen 韓文, Li’s immediate superior, burst into tears of frustration

———

57 “Thinking Fondly of Wang-chih [Meng Yang], My Brother-in-law” 懷望之姊夫, HTFC 19.12a (324; 352:153), “Thinking Fondly of my Elder Sister” 懷姊, “Thinking Fondly of my Third Elder Brother” 懷三兄, HTFC 19.12b (324; 352:154, 155). 58 HTFC 22.3a (384; 352:156). 59 My account of these events follows quite closely that given by Hsia Hsieh in MTC (41.1559 ff.), for which the chief source was the Wu-tsung Shih-lu (18.7a [543] ff.). As Hsia points out in his commentary (41.1562), the various sources are often unclear as to chronology and also contradict one another. Hsia’s conclusion is that the Shih-lu, which tells the whole story as part of its entry recording the retirements of Liu Chien 劉健 and Hsieh Ch’ien 謝遷, is in general the most reliable account. There is a good account of these events, giving more consideration to the role of the Grand Secretaries than we can here, in Sakakura Atsuhide 阪倉篤秀, “Busōchō ni okeru Hakko Datō Keikaku ni Tsuite” 武宗朝における八虎打倒計画について (On the Plot to Overthrow the Eight Tigers During the Reign of Wu-tsung), in Ono Kazuko 小野和子, ed., Min-Shin Jidai no Seiji to Shakai 明淸時代の政治と社會, pp.43-62 (Kyoto: Kyoto Daigaku Jimbun Kagaki Kenkyūjo, 1983).

122

CHAPTER FOUR

over the growth of Liu Chin’s power, Li stepped forward and asked bluntly what Han expected to accomplish by crying. If all the senior officials, led by Han, were to submit a report criticising Liu and stick to their position in the ensuing struggle, the thing could be done. “Excellent!” cried Han, straightening up and stroking his beard. “I have lived long enough; not to venture my life for this would be to fail in my responsibilities to the Empire!” He then had Li draft their report. 60 It was indicative of the precarious nature of their enterprise that Han found it necessary to abridge Li’s draft once it was done, commenting as he did so, “It won’t work if it is too literary or too long. If it’s literary, His Majesty won’t pay attention; and if it’s too long, he won’t read it all.” Indeed, the major charge to be laid against Liu Chin and his clique was that they were imperilling the state by encouraging Wu-tsung to have too much fun. Aware that the fourteen year-old Wutsung was not the ideal audience for such an argument, Li and Han did what they could within the brief space through which they could hope to hold his interest, mentioning the evil omens (the ‘change in the stars’ and the unseasonable flowering also found in Ho’s poem), citing unhappy parallels from history, and, probably their best shot, charging that Liu Chin was not after all interested in Wu-tsung’s fun so much as in his own. Taking advantage of memorials critical of Liu already submitted by Supervising Secretaries and Censors, the Grand Secretaries Liu Chien, Hsieh Ch’ien, and Li Tung-yang convened a meeting of senior officials on the twelfth day of the tenth month and submitted their indictment to the Emperor. Wu-tsung did show that he was shocked; tears came to his eyes and he stopped eating. He despatched to the officials’ meeting two senior eunuchs, who reported back to him three times in the course of the day. His inclination was simply to relegate Liu Chin and his cronies to Nanking, but Hsieh Ch’ien held out for execution, and Liu Chien pushed his table aside and sobbed, “When the late Emperor was on his death bed, he took my old hand in his and laid the responsibility for the state on me. The earth is not even dry on his grave yet. If I fail in this, how will I ever be able to face him in the

———

60 For the report, see Li Meng-yang, K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi (1530; repr. Taipei: Wei-wen, 1976) 39.1a (1095).

RETREAT

123

next world!” Alone among the Grand Secretaries, Li Tung-yang was somewhat conciliatory. The senior eunuch present, Wang Yüeh 王岳, known as an honest man and unusual among the eunuchs for his adherence to principle, agreed with the Grand Secretaries and undertook to report their views to the Emperor. 61 Liu Chin and a group of seven other eunuchs allied with him were already concerned by the attacks being made on them. Secretly informed by the Minister of Civil Office, one Chiao Fang 焦芳 (of whom we shall hear more), that the Grand Secretaries had decided to put their case to Wu-tsung in person the next day, in concert with Han Wen and the other senior officials and with the assistance of Wang Yüeh, Liu Chin and his allies threw themselves at the Emperor’s feet and tearfully begged him to take their part. They blamed the whole incident on Wang Yüeh, who, they said, planned to restrict Wutsung’s movements and deny him his pleasures. Furious, Wu-tsung promoted Liu Chin to the post of Director of Ceremonial on the spot, making him in effect the senior eunuch and hence the head of the palace administration. Two of Liu’s allies were put in charge of the ‘Eastern and Western Depots’, the two eunuch-run secret police agencies. The next day, just as Han Wen and the others were renewing their calls for Liu Chin’s execution, they were summoned to the palace. When they arrived at the gates, they were met by Liu Chien, who said, “The thing is all but done; simply persist, gentlemen.” When the Minister of War, Hsü Chin 許進 (1437-1510) cautioned, “Excessive vehemence could set things awry,” Liu did not reply.62 After a while, a eunuch named Li Jung 李榮, who had participated in the previous day’s meetings along with Wang Yüeh, came to them and took their memorials, saying that he had been commanded to inform them that while their opinions were well-intentioned and correct, the Emperor had decided to extend lenience to the eunuchs in view of their long service to him and that he would deal with the case in his own way. The officials were stunned by this, but Han Wen and a Deputy Minister named Wang Ao 王鏊 persisted. Han launched into a harangue anent the eunuch’s misdeeds. When Li simply assured them

——— 61

For Wang Yüeh, see DMB 1454 (Yung-deh Richard Chu). For Hsü Chin (t. Chi-sheng 季升 ; h. Tung-ya 東崖 ), see DMB 576 (L. Carrington Goodrich and Lee Hwa-chou), TL 489, HY 3/51, TK 181. 62

124

CHAPTER FOUR

that Wu-tsung was aware of the charges but was choosing to be lenient, Wang Ao stepped forward and asked, “And if His Majesty should not deal with them, what then?” To this, Li, who was of course in a very awkward position, replied, “Do you think my head is sheathed in iron, that I can dare to interfere in state affairs?” Whereupon he withdrew. Recognising that while they might lead their sovereign to reason they could not make him think, Liu Chien and Hsieh Ch’ien handed in their resignations the same day. Although by well-established custom such offers to resign were only accepted, if at all, after they had been repeatedly submitted, in this case both men were ordered to retire and return home at once. No doubt Wu-tsung had tired of the whole business, and Liu Chin wanted his opponents out of the way as soon as possible. Li Tung-yang sent in his resignation also, but he was kept on. The places of Liu and Hsieh were taken (in a canny balancing act) by the informer Chiao Fang and by Wang Ao, the last official to voice his resistence. 63 Wang Yüeh was reassigned to Nanking, but Liu Chin sent people to murder him en route. CROSSING THE HU-T’O In the aftermath of the coup, a number of Ho’s friends, Li Meng-yang most importantly, were driven from office, and some were given good reason to fear for their lives. 64 Ho himself was evidently not

———

63 For Chiao Fang (t. Meng-yang 孟陽; h. Shou-ching 守靜), see DMB 233 (L. Carrington Goodrich), TL 676, and HY 2/312. For Wang Ao (t. Chi-chih 濟之), see DMB 1343 (Hok-lam Chan), TL 78, and HY 2/53. Wang spent most of his term trying to resign, and eventually succeeded in retiring due to ill health in 1509. Note that the post of Grand Secretary occupied an ambiguous status relative to the rest of the civil bureaucracy. As Hucker notes, “Grand Secretaries came from the Hanlin Academy, with high honourific ranks, but they were regarded by the rest of the civil service as representative of imperial authority;” see The Ming Dynasty: Its Origins and Evolving Institutions. Michigan Papers in Chinese Studies 34, pp.90-91. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies, 1978. Note that Wang Ao has been said to have begun the tradition of the ‘eight-legged essay’. See above, chapter two. 64 Li was relegated to a post in Shansi in the twelfth month (see MTC 41.1565). MTC records this event in conjunction with Han Wen’s dismissal in the eleventh month of 1506, but the Wu-tsung Shih-lu does so only in an entry assigned to the end of the first month of 1507 (21.6a [605]). Li’s own account, in his “Record of my Thatched Hall on the River” 河上草堂記, says that he returned in the intercalated first month of 1507 (this was an extra month inserted in the calendar between the first and

RETREAT

125

implicated. Indeed, it is striking that while Li Meng-yang had played a central role in the attempt to unseat Liu Chin, some members of the ‘Seven Masters’ group that traditional literary history has built around him were apparently untouched by the event. In fact, Wang Chiu-ssu and K’ang Hai would actually prosper under Liu’s regime, though to their eventual cost. Whatever may have been Ho’s concerns for his own safety, he can only have been dismayed by the course that events had taken. This may account for what is apparently a sharp reduction in his writing. Only a half dozen or so titles are likely to come from the period immediately following the coup. One of these, however, comprises ten poems and attracts attention even as it deflects interpretation. A reader is alerted to the dual potential for significance and mystification by the title of the set, “Chanting of My Longings” (詠懷 yung huai). This is the title of a celebrated set of eighty-two poems by the early poet Juan Chi 阮籍 (210-263), who expressed in them all manner of responses to the thoroughly nasty political situation of his day, his comments cast in language so cryptic as to defy understanding as much, in many cases, in his own time as in our own. 65 Juan’s poems gave rise to an important tradition of poems whose presumed critique of contemporary events—for the presumption of critical intent went with the genre—was judged on their exhibited mastery of the requisite tone

———

second months of 1507). See K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi 48.4b (1390). In a note to his two “Setting Out from the Capital” 發京師 poems, he says that the poems were written in the second month, as he left with “Wang of the Bureau of Operations” 職方王子 (Wang Yang-ming) (K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi 9.3a [181]). Wang was imprisoned and then relegated to the provinces for his involvement with an earlier denunciation of Liu Chin. We know from the preface to a rhapsody on “The Trip South” 南征賦 by Lu Shen that Li and Wang left the capital on the same day (Yenshan Chi (SKCS) 1.7a [5]). Both MTC and the Shih-lu add that Li was also discharged from the ranks of those eligible to serve as officials. This was an additional, and quite serious, measure. It is possible that the relegation was ordered in the twelfth month and the expulsion from the official class only in the following month. Li was also included in the list of fifty-three men so discharged that was promulgated late in the third month (MTC 42.1573). Liu Chin’s murder of Wang Yüeh, though extreme, was not necessarily an isolated case. Wang Yang-ming is generally believed to have narrowly escaped a similar fate. 65 There is a complete translation of these poems with a full and characteristically masterful explication of their background and ambiguities in Donald Holzman’s Poetry and Politics: The Life and Works of Juan Chi A.D. 210-263 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976). Holzman translates the title yung huai more fully as “poems which sing of my innermost thoughts.”

126

CHAPTER FOUR

of assertive reticence. Ho’s poems cannot be exactly dated, but they almost certainly come sometime between September 4 (the two poems commemorating the drinking party with K’ang Hai) and Ho’s return home in the spring of 1507. The first of them illustrates the genre well: 詠懷北陸無淹晷、歲邁陰已長。攝衣起中夜、凜凜悲嚴霜。明月麗高隅、繁宿縱以橫。徘徊仰天漢、惋彼參與商。形影永乖隔、萬里徒相望。 Singing of my Longings (first of ten poems) 66 A northern land admits no delay in the sundial; The year strides on; its shadow is already long. I clutch my robe and get up in the depths of night; Shivering cold, I suffer in severe frost. Bright moonlight enhances the lofty corners; Teeming stars arrayed in all directions. I pace back and forth, looking up at the Heavenly River, Worried for the shen and shang up there. Their forms and outlines forever contrary and blocked, From ten thousand leagues, I can only gaze toward them.

The point of such a poem is not what it says or does not say, but rather that by its title it claims to be saying the unsayable. Is the frost emblematic of the political ‘chill’? Do the shen and shang constellations stand for Han Wen and Li Meng-yang, the endangered plotters? Or are they Liu Chin and Chiao Fang, or perhaps even Wutsung himself? To struggle with such questions is to miss the point. The essential parallel is outside the poems proper. By writing such poems, Ho was laying claim to a role: “I stand for Juan Chi. Like him, I am an honourable man trapped in a regime so vile and vengeful that I may not speak of it except in the most guarded and elusive terms. Note, nonetheless, that I am so speaking, which shows just how vile and vengeful it is (and how honourable I am).” 67

——— 66

HTFC 9.11b (116; 351:020). Yao Hsüeh-hsien et al. suggest that three other poems may have been written in the same spirit (YC 39-41). One of their suggestions is anachronistic (see TK 21), but the other two are at least plausible, even if there is no evidence except their tone: “Autumn Wind” 秋風, HTFC 4.5a (42; 古:003) and “Song of the Yellow Crane” 黃鵠歌, HTFC 6.4a (60; 樂:019). Another piece that may belong with these works in date, though not in tone, is the “Praise of Sweet Dew” 甘露頌, HTFC 3.3b (29; 賦:009) dated “mid-winter of the Emperor’s first year” 皇嗣元載仲月維冬, which suggests 67

RETREAT

127

Ho might very well have left the matter with the writing of this set of impenetrable jeremiads. As a Drafter, he was not among those officials who might submit a memorial to the throne in the absence of an invitation to do so. All the same, he evidently felt the need to show where he stood. He wrote a letter to the cautious conspiritor, Hsü Chin, who had replaced Chiao Fang as Minister of Personnel when the latter became a Grand Secretary, urging him to take a stand against Liu Chin. Ho had already addressed an elaborate birthday poem to Hsü Chin shortly after arriving back in Peking from Yunnan. 68 He was perhaps acquainted with Hsü through one or more of the latter’s successful sons, who belonged to Ho’s generation. 69 Even if they were already acquainted, however, Ho’s letter was a bold move, by which his biographers have rightly been impressed. After an extended and very deferential opening passage, in which he expresses his diffidence in approaching so senior a personage and points out the danger that influential eunuchs posed, Ho comes to the point: I venture to outline for Your Wisdom two policies, between which it is for Your Wisdom to choose. One is to maintain what is correct without deviation, not to accomodate the influential eunuchs, but to expel them. This is the superior policy. The second is to humble yourself in order to seek accomodation with the influential eunuchs without accomodating the world in ages to come. This is the inferior policy. Now, the strategies at present are limited to these two. Both of them involve nonaccomodation, but with non-accomodation by maintaining what is correct you can deflect decline and decadence from the present day and leave a glowing reputation to later ages. The damage is slight and the advantage great. But in the event of non-accomodation by selfhumbling, decline and decadence will increase without check and the glory of your reputation will be lost as well. The advantage is slight and

———

the winter of 1506-1507. Li Meng-yang wrote eight quatrains, in the archaic foursyllable metre, to celebrate this first-year Sweet Dew. See “Sweet Dew” 甘露, K’ungt’ung Hsien-sheng Chi 4.3a (85). 68 “A Birthday Greeting to Minister of War Hsü” 壽許司馬, HTFC 23.7b (410; 353:002). 69 Among Hsü’s four sons, Ho Ching-ming later addressed works to both Hsü Kao 許誥 (1472-1534; t. T’ing-lun 廷綸; h. Han-ku Shan-jen 函谷山人); see DMB 590 (L. Carrington Goodrich and Lee Hwa-chou), TL 489, HY 3/53, TK 181, and Hsü Tsan 許讚 (1473-1548; t. T’ing-mei 廷美; h. Sung-kao 松皋); see DMB 608 (L. Carrington Goodrich and Lee Hwa-chou), TL 491, HY 3/53, TK 181. These works are few in number and none is earlier than 1514, but both men were in office in Peking at the time of Ho’s letter to their father, so Ho may well have been acquainted with them already.

128

CHAPTER FOUR

the damage great. It is for Your Wisdom to choose which of these he values and which he despises. 70

Ho goes on to quote Confucius at some length and to underline the responsibilities of an official of Hsü Chin’s stature in the present case. In the event, however, it appears that his argument was to no avail, Although Hsü was respected for his opposition to another influential eunuch on an earlier occasion, he must have realised, as did Li Tungyang, that this particular battle had been lost beyond immediate remedy. Ho’s few remaining poems from this winter are a mixed lot. There is a series of farewell poems, including one for Tai Kuan, who was going away to stay with his father after all. There is also a poem to accompany a letter home, not included in the earliest editions, but clearly from this period (it refers to the twelfth month and to his return from Yunnan), 71 as well as several meditative pieces, including these two: 冬月冬月今宵滿、他鄉此夜情。城高初影堞、樓靜故當楹。霧濯寒輝苦、風吹夕暈生。捲簾愁不寐、庭樹宿鴉驚。

——— 70

HTFC 32.4a (564; 書:501). This letter seems to have been a touchy subject, perhaps because of Hsü’s sons. It is not included in the Yung or Shen recensions, which are the earliest (see Appendix Two). The Yüan recension lists the letter in its table of contents, but then leaves the pages blank. Since the number of blank columns tallies with the space that would have been occupied by the letter in the page format of that recension, the omission must have occurred very late in the editorial process. The Standard recension includes the letter, but with a variant in the title in some Ch’ing dynasty descendants. The same diffidence is found in the early biographies. Fan P’eng does not mention the letter at all. According to Meng Yang, Ho addressed letters to “highly-placed people” (諸尊貴). Ch’iao Shih-ning’s biography refers only to the letter to Hsü, giving his surname and post. Not until the biography in the Chung-chou Jen-wu Chih 中州人物志 (1568) is Hsü’s personal name given (see Appendix One). Hsü’s appointment to replace Chiao Fang is recorded in the Wu-tsung Shih-lu 18.14a (557), on the last day of the tenth month. Ho’s letter must be later than this date. 71 For these works, see “Visiting Hsü Te-chang on the Solstice” 至日過徐德章, HTFC 27.9a (482; 372:107); “An Evening Party in the Lu Pavilion” 陸子樓夜集,HTFC 27.9b (482; 372:108); “A Farewell Party for Tsu-pang at the Lu Pavilion” 陸子樓餞祖邦, HTFC 19.8a (318; 352:607); “Presented to Tsu-pang” 贈祖邦, HTFC 19.11b (323; 352:610); “Saying Farewell to Master Tai on His return to Hsien-hsien” 送戴生歸獻縣, HTFC 18.15b (305; 352:159)); “Presented to Liu Chien-chih on his Becoming Vice Commissioner” 贈劉柬之憲副, HTFC 19.10b (321; 352:162); “A Letter Home” 寄家書, HTFC 19.16b (330; 352:612).

RETREAT

129

A Winter Moon 72 The winter moon is at its full tonight; For another land, my longing on this evening. The walls are lofty—first it glows on a parapet; The pavilion is still, and so it faces the pillars. Fog washes the suffering of its wintry gleam; A breeze blows on the birth of its twilight halo. I roll up the blinds, unable to sleep for sorrow, And ravens at roost in the garden trees take fright. 歲晏歲晏看人事、蒼茫繫所思。浮雲當日暮、績雪見春遲。報國元無術、寧親未有期。獨憐張內侍、吟絕四愁詩。 End of the Year 73 At the end of the year, I consider human affairs; The hoary expanses tether my earnest thoughts. Under floating clouds, I face the end of day; In drifted snow, behold springtide’s delay. To repay the state I never had the skill; For putting my parents at ease there is as yet no date. I can only feel for Palace Attendant Chang, Chanting all though his “Poem of Fourfold Sorrow.”

The last couplet refers to the Later Han official Chang Heng 張衡 (78139), the preface to whose “Poems of Fourfold Sorrow” explains that he wrote the poems to express his concern over the deterioration of the times, but that he cast them in obscure language so as to avoid slander. Chang had aroused the antipathy of the eunuchs and retired for a while to his home in Honan, just as Ho would do not long after writing this poem. The sombre tone of “A Winter Moon” seems just as personal as the exuberant display found in “The Bright Moon” was public, but it too exemplifies the emulation of T’ang models so central to the Archaist ideal. Not too much later than this, Ho must have decided that he had better go home and requested permission to take sick leave. It is quite possible that he actually was ill, since he refers to being sick in some

——— 72

HTFC 22.1b (381; 352:158). HTFC 22.3b (385; 352:160). In the sixth line, I follow the Yüan and Standard recensions in reading 寧親 ning ch’in (“putting my parents at ease”). The Shen recension has 還家 huan chia (“returning home”), the lectio dificilior. In most cases, a reading unique to the Shen recension is a clear error. 73

130

CHAPTER FOUR

works written soon after arriving back home, but it seems more likely that his illness was a role adopted for the purpose of deflecting attention and avoiding persecution. Lu Shen wrote a farewell poem for him. 74 His decision to return home was perhaps influenced also by news of the death of his eldest brother Ching-shao, which must have come as a shock since Ching-shao was still in his mid-forties and had only recently been promoted from Pa-ling, where Ho had visited him two years before, to an office in Tung-ch’ang 東昌, in western Shantung. In his sacrificial text for Ching-shao, Ho tells how pleased Ching-shao had been with his new posting. In contrast to Pa-ling, where he had been up every morning at cock-crow, labouring to fulfill his duties, his workload in Tung-ch’ang was light and his position honoured. As he had said to Ching-ming, “My ease now must be recompense for my toils in Pa-ling!” He died just one day after writing to Ching-ming that he planned a trip to Peking to see him. The letter arrived while Chingming was entertaining some guests. Not long after he had shared its happy news with them, a servant entered to report Ching-shao’s death. Convinced that the servant was mistaken, Ching-ming angrily drove him from the room, only to discover in time that the report was true. 75 This was clearly a heavy blow, for Ching-shao had played an important role in Ho’s growth. As he wrote in one of his laments for his brother, composed after he got back to Hsin-yang,

———

74 “Having a Drink on Parting from Drafter Ho, Also Inquiring After Master K’ung-t’ung” 酌別何舍人兼問訊空同子, Yen-shan Chi 7.9a (45). Meng Yang’s epitaph says that Ho left for fear of imminent persecution. The chronology of Ho’s departure is obscured in the entry in DMB, which reports that he asked for leave shortly after returning from Yunnan in June of 1507 and that he was dismissed the following year before leave was granted. Now, it is clear that he returned to Peking in 1506, since he was there during the coup. He must also have stayed longer in Peking than did Li Meng-yang, since Lu Shen’s poem asks after Li, whom Ho would see as he passed through Kaifeng. It is also clear that he was at home by early summer of 1507, having crossed the Huai River while it was still spring (see below). In his “Rhapsody Telling of my Return,” HTFC 1.7b (5; 賦:013), see below, Ho says that he came south in the wu-ch’en 戊辰 year (1508), but this must be a reference to the formal date of his dismissal. 75 “Sacrificial Text for my Late Elder Brother, Sir Tung-ch’ang” 祭亡兄東昌公文, HTFC 38.1b (653; 祭:001). See also the five poems written to lament Ching-shao’s death, “Laments for Sir Tung-ch’ang” 東昌公哀辭, HTFC 15.9a (228; 252:014-018); as well as the “Curriculum for My Late Elder Brother” 王兄行狀, HTFC 37.10a (647; 狀:001).

RETREAT

131

入政光前軰、傳經實我師。 In serving the state, he shed a glow on his forebears; In conveying the Classics he was truly my teacher. 76

In any event, Ho certainly struck a sombre note in the set of poems that he wrote on his departure from Peking. 發京邑驅車出郊門、仗策遵古行。返顧望城闕、引領內懷傷。崇京槩霄漢、逶迤一何長。雙觀臨馳道、群宮儼相當。迅飆激櫺牅、游雲起縱橫。漢道值且盛、纓緌爛輝光。側觀青雲士、鳴珮倏來翔。梁生何慷慨、遼遼悲未央。 Setting Out from the Capital City (second of four poems) 77 Hastening my carriage, I leave the suburban gate, Whip in hand, I follow the ancient track. Looking back I gaze at the city towers, With craning neck and inmost feelings pained. Our honoured capital touches the starry stream; In curves and sweeps, how very tall it stands! Halls in pairs look out on Imperial avenues; Clustered mansions face their neighbours in state. A sudden gust rattles latticed window frames; Drifting clouds arise and roam unchecked. The way of Han has come to full fruition; Tassels and hatstrings shine with radiant light. I faintly behold some white cloud gentlemen With ringing pendants suddenly flocking around. How grave and grieving Master Liang appears— Long and hard, his lament is still not ended. The closest analogue to Ho’s first line is found in the second of Yen Yen-chih’s 顏延之 poems on “Autumn Barbarians” 秋胡, “Hastening my carriage, I leave the suburban wall” 驅車出郊郭, 78 but both Yen and Ho were influenced by such older sources as the “Nineteen Old Poems.” There is a perhaps coincidental resemblance between Ho’s second line and a line in a poem that Tu Fu wrote while in the Yangtse

———

76 “Laments for Sir Tung-ch’ang” 東昌公哀辭 (from the first of five poems), HTFC 15.9a (228; 252:014). These poems were written in the autumn, after Ho’s return to Hsin-yang. He presumably composed the Curriculum and Sacrificial Text (see above) at about the same time, and perhaps also his rhapsody “The Widow” 寡妻賦, a sympathetic portrayal of the plight of Ching-shao’s widow, HTFC 1.15b (10; 賦:014). 77 HTFC 7.10b (80; 251:008). 78 WH 21.13b (288); Lu Ch’in-li, p.1229.

132

CHAPTER FOUR

Gorges, “Staying Overnight at Marble Camp” 宿化石戍, “Whip in hand on the ancient woodbutter’s path” 仗策古樵路. 79 Ho’s second couplet is very close to one from Ts’ao Chih’s 曹植 “Presented to the Prince of Pai-ma” 贈白馬王彪, written as Ts’ao himself was leaving the capital, a poem that can be considered the ancestor of most ‘leaving the capital’ poems. 80 Ts’ao Chih’s couplet reads “Looking back, I yearn for the city towers; / With craning neck and feelings inwardly pained” 回顧戀城闕、引領情內傷. 81 As Li Shan’s commentary to Ts’ao’s poem suggests, the expression (nei) huai shang (‘inmost feelings pained’) is to be found in the Ch’u Tz’u, and indeed, among its uses there are several that Ho Ching-ming may have had in mind as well. 82 Ho’s seventh line is similar to one in an imitation of Ts’ao Chih by Chiang Yen, “Towers in pairs point to roads for galloping” 雙闕指馳道, 83 and his ninth reminiscent both of Ts’ao Chih’s “Presented to Hsü Kan” 贈徐幹, “Flowing whirlwinds rattle window frames” 流猋激櫺軒 and of another of Chiang Yen’s “Imitations,” “Curved window frames rattle in fresh gusts” 曲櫺激鮮飆. 84 Ho’s eleventh line recalls a number of lines by Tu Fu. The two most similar to Ho are from poems on quite different themes. One is “A Casual Theme” 偶題, a poem about the history of Chinese poetry, in which Tu mentions the sao 騷 poets and then adds, “The way of Han came to fruition from this” 漢道盛於斯. 85 In the other, written when saying farewell to a friend named Wei 韋, Tu compares his friend to an Eastern Han era statesman, setting the stage by saying, “The way of Han came to fruition in its mid-dynastic flourishing” 漢道中興盛. 86 The phrase “full fruition” 全盛 is also reminiscent of the opening line of the second of Tu’s “Remembering the Past” 憶昔 poems, “I remember the past, in the days of the full fruition of the K’ai-yüan reign” 憶昔開元全盛日. 87 Considering Ho’s familiarity with the Changes, it is likely that “radiant light” 輝光 in the twelfth line is an echo of the commentary on the twenty-sixth hexagram. 88 ‘White cloud gentlemen’ are men of lofty character or high rank. The phrase originates in the first biography in Ssu-ma Ch’ien’s

——— 79

Tu Shih Yin-te 246/9/12, CTS 223.2377, K.10879. WH 24.5a (328); Lu Ch’in-li, p.453; Ts’ao Tzu-chien Chi (SPTK) 5.7b (22). I adopt, from Lu Ch’in-li’s notes, the variant 回顧 in place of 顧瞻. 82 See Ch’u Tz’u Pu-chu, 4.19a (231), 15.2b (460), 15.7a (469); Hawkes, first ed. pp.70, 142, 146; Penguin ed., pp.170, 270, 274. 83 WH 31.10a (433); Lu Ch’in-li, p.1571; Chiang Wen-t’ung Chi (SPTK) 4.5b (29). Ho makes use of Chiang’s “Imitations” rather frequently. 84 WH 24.2a (326), 31.21b (439); Lu Ch’in-li, pp.450, 1576; Ts’ao Tzu-chien Chi 5.6a (21). 85 Tu Shih Yin-te 476/44/6, CTS 230.2509, K.11547. 86 Tu Shih Yin-te 554/7/17, CTS 233.2573, K.11875. 87 Tu Shih Yin-te 116/4B/1, CTS 220.2325, K.10736. 88 Chou Yi Yin-te 17/26/ 彖 5; cf. the translations by Lynn, “gloriously” (p.299) and Wilhelm/Baynes, “brilliance and light” (p.515). 80 81

RETREAT

133

Shih Chi, that of Po Yi 伯夷. 89 The phrase “how grave and grieving” in the penultimate line echoes Ts’ao Chih’s “Lute Song” 箜篌引.

It was in the nature of the Chinese administrative system that members of the educated class frequently had to leave the capital and that they were generally unhappy to do so. Such a setting out thus became a poetic occasion, as it was for Ho. It is not hard to see more in this poem than the surface might suggest. Careful irony lies behind at least some of the images, and allusions. Ho’s final couplet as a whole alludes to Liang Hung 梁鴻, a poor but upright scholar of the first century. On leaving the capital to live in seclusion, he is said to have composed a “Song of Five Sighs” 五噫歌, whose last line went, “Long and hard, and still not ended, alas!” 遼遼未央兮噫. 90 Ho would also have known Hsieh T’iao’s 謝朓 “Temporarily Sent to the Lower Capital, I Set Out from Hsin-lin and Reach the Capital: Presented to Two of my Office Colleagues” 暫使下都夜發新林志京邑贈西府同僚, whose opening line is “In the traveller’s heart, the lament is still not ended” 客心悲未央. 91 Liang Hung’s poem can in fact be seen as to some extent the seed from which Ho’s poem grew. Ho has greatly expanded it and enriched the texture with echos of analogous laments, but the core of his poem is the same as Liang’s, the contrast between the grandeur of the capital and the fate of the high-minded gentleman who is leaving it behind. The phrase I have translated as “grave and grieving” (k’ang-k’ai 慷慨) has a long history. In modern Chinese it has fallen to mean in many cases no more than ‘having deep pockets and an open hand’. But in older texts the meaning is richer, including sadness, regret, grandeur, and heroic resolution. The song sung by Ching K’o, who attempted to assassinate the first emperor of Ch’in (see below, chapter six), was k’ang-k’ai, as was another famous song, sung by Liu Pang, the first emperor of the Han when he returned to his native village after many years spent fighting his way to the throne. Händel, Brahms, and Mahler are sometimes k’ang-k’ai, as is, at the level of vulgarity, the theme from the movie “Exodus.” A poem written some distance south of Peking may express bolder

——— 89

Shih Chi 61.2127. Hou Han Shu 83.2766; Lu Ch’in-li, p.166. 91 WH 26.8b (357); Lu Ch’in-li, p.1426; Hsieh Hsüan-ch’eng Shih-chi 謝宣城詩集 (Collected Poems of Hsieh of Hsüan-ch’eng) (SPTK) 3.1b (16). 90

134

CHAPTER FOUR

defiance of the Liu Chin regime, but in allusions sufficiently ambiguous as to be almost opaque. The moment was of uncertain significance by its very nature. Now separated, perhaps forever, from the friends who remained in Peking, Ho contemplates not so much his future as the possible attitudes he might hold toward it: 滹沱河上長堤枕春郭、斷岸入殘暉。栖鳥張燈起、驚鳧觧纜飛。古人堪墮淚、吾道豈常非。未識臨河意、中流擊枻歸。 On the Hu-t’o River 92 The long dike pillows a springtime wall; Sheer banks lead into fading twilight. Roosting birds take flight as our lamps are lit; Startled ducks fly away as our lines are cast off. For the men of old I may indeed shed tears; Surely our Way will not be forever lost! Still not certain what ‘watching the river’ means, I come back home, striking my oars at midstream . . .

The Hu-t’o River flows from eastern Shansi eastward across the North China Plain south of Peking. It was a natural point for anyone travelling south from the capital to pause and reflect on the significance of his journey. 93 The phrase ‘shed tears’ (墮淚 to-lei) in

——— 92

HTFC 15.6b (224; 252:001). See, for example, Cheng Shan-fu’s 鄭善夫 poem written there in 1513, “On the Last Day of the Second Month, I Set Out from the Hu-t’o” 二月晦日發滹沱, Cheng Shih (Chia-ching edition) 3.4a, Shao-ku Chi (SKCS) 7.38a (122); for Cheng, see below, chapter seven. An important battle was fought near the Hu-t’o in the spring of 1401, during which the forces of Chu Yün-wen, second emperor of the Ming, were put to flight by those of his uncle, the eventually successful usurper Chu Ti, the Yunglo Emperor. Ho also wrote a poem on passing the Pai-kou River, site of another of the crucial battles of Chu Ti’s campaign, “Crossing the Pai-kou” 渡白溝, HTFC 7.9a (78; 251:002). For other contemporary poems on the Pai-kou battlefield, see those of Hsü Tsung-lu 許宗魯, MST 36.7 and Ch’ien Ch’ien-yi, Lieh-ch’ao Shih-chi 列朝詩集 (Collected Poems from Successive Reigns), Shih-ko Tsung-chi Ts’ung-k’an, Ming Shih Chüan (Shanghai: San-lien, 1989) 丙.16.20b (392B), and Chou T’ing-yung 周廷用, Pa-ya Chi 八厓集 (Eight Banks Collection) (1531 edition) 6.68a. For Chou T’ingyung (1482-1534; t. Tzu-hsien 子賢, h. Pa-ya 八厓), see HY 2/123, TL 318, KHL 86.57a (3678—Sun Yi), TK 125. He was probably acquainted with Ho through his fellow townsman Sun Chi-fang, with whom he had passed the Hukwang provincial examination in 1507 and whose son, Sun Yi, wrote his biography. DMB refers to a poem written here by Li Meng-yang on his way home in 1507, but I have not found 93

RETREAT

135

the fifth line was associated with a monument erected in Hsiang-yang 襄陽, Hupeh, to commemorate the good government of one Yang Hu 羊祜 (d.278). Yang had governed the district so well that its natives were said to weep on passing by the monument. 94 When Confucius was travelling, he found himself trapped and his supplies exhausted. In a moment of despair, he asked his disciple Tzu-lu, “Is our Way wrong? How have we come to this?” 95 The seventh line is built on a multivalent allusion. According to his biography in the Shih Chi, Confucius also marvelled while watching the power and unceasing flow of the Yellow River, adding that his inability to cross was the result of fate. A Taoist text, the Lieh-tzu 列子, refers to watching the river while fishing and catching fish by not having any conscious desire to do so. Another Taoist text, the Wen-tzu 文子, includes what looks like a proverb, “Rather than watching the river and wishing for a fish, it would be better to go home and make a net.” 96 During the Tsin dynasty, Tsu T’i 祖逖 (fl. ca. 300) struck his oars in ‘midstream’ while crossing over the Yangtse on a military expedition, vowing not to cross again until he had been successful in wiping out the enemy. 97 Ho’s uncertainty as to what the future would bring, along with his disgust at the course events had taken, is perhaps responsible for a tension in this poem that belies the calm of some of its images: the

———

such a poem in his works. We learn from Ho’s epitaph for Fan P’eng’s father that an ancestor of Fan’s had distinguished himself fighting on Chu Ti’s side at Pai-kou (see above, chapter one). Ironically, an ancestor of another of Ho’s friends, Kao Chien (see below, chapter five), had fought against Chu Ti and had been exiled to Hsin-yang as a consequence, his descendants living there still in Ho’s day, “Epitaph for the Late Master Kao, the Elder-born of Iron Creek, Prefect of K’ui-chou, of the Ming” 明故夔州府知府鐵溪先生高公墓誌銘, HTFC 36.16a (629; 銘:008). 94 Tsin Shu 34.1022. 95 Shih Chi 47.1931; K’ung-tzu Chia-yü Chu-tzu So-yin 孔子家語逐字索引 (Single Word Concordance to the Family Sayings of Confucius) (Taipei: Taiwan Shang-wu, 1992) 20.1, 40/1. 96 Shih Chi 47.1926, Lieh-tzu Chu-tzu So-yin 列子逐字索引 (Single Word Concordance to the Lieh-tzu) (Hong Kong: Shang-wu, 1996) 5/29/21; Lieh-tzu Chishih 列子集釋 (Collected Explications of the Lieh-tzu), compiled by Yang Po-chün 楊伯峻 (Peking: Chung-hua, 1979), p.173; A.C. Graham, The Book of Lieh-tzu (London: John Murray, 1960), pp.105-06; and Wen-tzu Chu-tzu So-yin 文子逐字索引 (Single Word Concordance to the Wen-tzu) (Taipei: Shang-wu, 1990) 6/32/30. 97 For this incident, see Tsu T’i’s biography, Tsin Shu 62.1695. For more allusions to this incident in Ho’s works, see “Single Skiff Studio” 一舫齋, HTFC 21.10b (372; 352:214) and “Saying Farewell to Mao Ju-li [Po-wen], Who is Going to Govern Hunan” 送毛汝厲按湖南, 19.6b (316; 352:503).

136

CHAPTER FOUR

first couplet would be appropriate in a poem of contentment in leisurely travel; the second, though it does introduce images of disturbance, really continues the mood of the first, for the scene is one of such calm that it was only with the intrusion of human activities that the birds were moved to flight. With the third couplet, however, the poem takes a turn that is unsettling, for its last half is not only different from the first in emphasizing thought over observation, but also ambiguous as to just what the thoughts are and how seriously they are to be taken. It is certainly possible to take the poem ‘lightly.’ Such a reading would take the phrase “shed tears” as an allusion to Yang Hu’s monument, since the looseness of its application here would undercut the specific force of the other allusions by analogy. The sixth line, thus weakened, would remain the strongest in the poem, but reduced to a more general expression of regret at a political reverse. Uncertainty in the seventh line would lie in the choice among recognition of fate, acceptance of a detached and calm attitude toward the world, and purposive action to attain one’s ends. The last line might contain no allusion, but simply be a gesture of closure, by way of shifting from contemplation to action. Or it might be an allusion to the ending of the “Fisherman” 漁父 poem in the Ch’u Tz’u, “ 漁父莞爾而笑、鼓枻而去。歌曰、滄浪之水清兮、可以濯吾纓。滄浪之水濁、可以濯吾足。遂去不復與言。

The fisherman smiled faintly and left, drumming on his oar and singing, “When the waters of the Ts’ang-lang are clear, I wash my capstrings in them; When the waters of the Ts’ang-lang are muddy, I wash my feet.” And then he left without saying anything more. 98

The implication of this would be that Ho’s attitude is one of detached resignation to the prospect of a life to be spent in retirement from the political upheavals and sordidities of the court. As David Hawkes puts it, “The meaning of the song is that you should seek official employment in good times and retire gracefully when times are troubled,” as Ho was doing. 99

——— 98

Ch’u Tz’u Pu-chu 7.2b (298); cf. Hawkes, first ed. p.91; Penguin ed. p.207. The Ch’u Tz’u commentary takes 枻 to mean ‘gunwale’; Hawkes translates, “struck his oar in the water.” 99 Hawes, loc. cit.

RETREAT

137

But it is also possible to take a more ‘aggressive’ reading, one that places greater importance on the site and on the allusion in the final line to the defiant Tsu T’i. 100 The victory of Chu Ti over his nephew was more than just the last successful military usurpation of the throne within a ruling house in Chinese history. Chu Ti’s extensive reprisals against loyalist officials did much to confirm the Ming literati in a realization that Chu Yüan-chang had not been an aberration, but rather was to be the pattern for imperial treatment of them. Thus Ho’s tears are shed not only for the ancient governor of a distant prefecture, but for the defeated at Hu-t’o as well, and by extension, for those suffering in his own day under the rule of the corrupt and irresponsible Wu-tsung and Liu Chin. His insistence on shedding tears, and on the persistence of the Confucian Way is strengthened by the bold gesture of appropriating the words of Confucius for himself. In this reading, the seventh line becomes a refusal to be waylaid by uncertainties and the final line an additionally defiant allusion to Tsu T’i’s vow to resist to the death. 101 “A SONG OF TA-LIANG” Whatever apprehensions Ho may have felt about his future, they did not inhibit the exercise of his brush on his homeward trip. In addition to the poems written on crossing the Hu-t’o, there are others marking the stages of his trip, composed at various sites associated with historical events or noted personages. 102 He also composed a very

——— 100

Uncertainty as to how the last line is to be understood is compounded by the imperfect matching of vocabulary. Two synonyms are employed for ‘strike’, 擊 and 鼓, and two for ‘oar’, 枻 and 楫. In each case, both terms are metrically equivalent, so there would be no need for Ho to vary his word choice just to meet structural requirements. He chooses 擊枻; the Ch’u Tz’u has 鼓枻, while the Tsin Shu biography of Tsu T’i reads 擊楫. 101 Ho’s disillusionment and regret is also expressed in another poem written on the way home, “The Shrine to Lord Lü” 呂公祠, HTFC 24.7a (425; 272:001). 102 In addition to the poems translated above, see “On the road to Cho-lu” 涿鹿道中, HTFC 7.8b (78; 251:001); “Thicket Terrace” 叢臺, HTFC 7.9a (78; 251:003); “Crossing the Yellow River” 渡河, HTFC 7.11b (81; 251:011); “At Hsü-hsia” 許下, HTFC 7.12b (81; 251:012); “Sir Restoration Cottage: Wang Chin” 復菴王公錦, HTFC 23.3b (407; 253:001); “Sir Foolish Cottage, Wang Hsiang” 愚菴王公瓖, HTFC 23.4a (408; 253:002); “Ballad of Ts’ai-chou” 蔡州行, HTFC 11.8a (147; 271:002); and “Crossing the Huai” 渡淮, HTFC 15.7a (225; 252:002).

138

CHAPTER FOUR

long (100 lines) and elaborately complimentary poem in the ‘extended regulated’ form, which was particularly well suited to elaborate displays of learning to present to Li Han, the examiner who had called Ho a “splendid talent” in 1598, now in office as Administration Commissioner for Honan. 103 Ho’s most important stopping point between Peking and Hsin-yang was of course Kaifeng, the administrative centre for Honan and the home to which Li Meng-yang had returned shortly before. Ho would almost certainly have stopped there for a while to spend time with LiWhile there is no poem by Ho that refers explicitly to a meeting at this time, one poem in particular, Ho’s “Song of Ta-liang,” though it does not refer to Li or his plight, was almost certainly written at this time in Kaifeng and in Li’s company. 104 Indeed, its self-consciously literary brilliance classes it with “The Bright Moon” as a kind of ‘graduation piece’: 大梁行朝登古城口、夕藉古城草。日落獨見長河流、塵起遙觀大梁道。大梁自古號名區、富貴繁華代不殊。高樓歌舞三千戶、夾道烟花十二衢。合沓輪趨交紫陌、鳴鐘暮入王侯宅。紅粧不讓掌中人、珠履皆為門下客。片言立賜萬黃金、一笑還酬雙白璧。帶甲連營殺氣寒、君王推轂將登壇。彎弧自信成功易、拔劔那知報怨難。已見分符連楚越、更聞飛檄救邯鄲。一朝運去同衰賤、意氣雄豪似驚電。楊花飛入侯嬴館、草色凄迷魏王殿。萬騎千乘空雲屯、綺構朱甍不復存。夜雨人歸朱亥里、秋風客散信陵門。川原百代重回首、宋寢隋宮亦何有。遊鹿時銜內苑花、行人尚折繁臺柳。繁臺下接古城西、暮深桃李自成蹊。朝來忽見東風起、薄暮飛花滿故堤。

———

103 “Offered to Administration Commissioner Stone Tower Li” 上李石樓方伯, HTFC 23.1a (405; 253:501). 104 Although there is no external evidence to corroborate the surmise, it seems likely that Li Meng-yang’s quatrain “Presented to Drafter Ho” 贈何舍人 was improvised as a response to Ho’s poem; see K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi 36.13a (1015). Since it was clearly written in Kaifeng and refers to Ho as a Drafter, it can only come from this occasion. TK (p.24) is mistaken in suggesting that 1518 is also a possible date for this poem: 朝逢康王城、暮送大堤口。相對無一言、含悽各分手。 In the morning we meet on the walls of Prince K’ang, In the evening, say farewell at a gap in the great embankment. Face to face, without a single word, We part hands, filled with grief.

RETREAT

139

A Song of Ta-liang 105 In the morning I climb to a gap in the old wall; In the evening tread the weeds on the old wall. Where the sun is setting, I see only the long river’s course, Where dust is rising, behold in the distance the road to Ta-liang. Ta-liang has been since ancient times declared a famous town, Wealth and prosperity, glory and abundance, for ages without a change. Lofty pavilions for song and dancing—three thousand houses; Narrow lanes through blossoms and mist—a dozen crossroads. Thick traffic on wheels and mounts criss-crossed the Purple Boulevards; Ringing bells at evening entered the mansions of princes and lords. Scarlet makeup that would not yield to her who danced on a palm; Pearl-sewn slippers worn by all the clients outside the gate . . . For but a word, a gift on the spot of ten thousand golden coins; For a single smile, the response a pair of white jade ornaments, Armoured soldiers, linked encampments; the air of slaughter chilled; Kings and princes pushed the chariots; generals stepped up to the stage. They bent their bows with confidence victory would be easy, Drew their swords without a thought that revenge would be hard! No sooner were parted tallies stretching from Ch’u to Yüeh, Than urgent appeals arrived, begging relief for Han-tan. In a single day its fortune changed, all withered and declined; Spirit and thought so virile and bold now seem like a flash of lightning. Willow blossoms fly into the mansion of Hou Ying; The look of the weeds grows chill and drear by the halls of the King of Wei. Ten thousand horsemen, a thousand chariots, massed like clouds for nothing; Brocaded houses, vermilion tiles could no longer be preserved. In evening rain the people returned to the village of Chu Hai; In autumn wind, their retainers dispersed through the Hsin-ling Gate.

———

105 HTFC 11.7b (146; 271:001). There is an early “Song of Ta-liang” by a T’ang poet, T’ang Yao-k’o 唐堯客, of whom nothing is known and of whose works none survive except this poem, CTS 777.8802; K.42384. Its vocabulary naturally duplicates Ho’s in places—’old walls’, ‘Hou Ying’, ‘Han-tan’—but no more than one would expect in a poem on the same subject. Some motifs similar to ones in this Ta-liang poem are found in Ho’s “Ballad of the Boulevards of Ch’ang-an” 長安大道行, HTFC 12.13a (169; 271:513), also in the Chia-chi. Ho’s student Fan P’eng also wrote a long (38 lines) “Song of Ta-liang” 大梁行, Fan Shih Chi 樊氏集 (Collected Works of Mr. Fan) (Chia-ching edition) 1.16b; also Fan Nan-ming Chi 樊南溟集 (Collected Works of Fan Nan-ming) (Sheng-Ming Pai-chia Shih, repr. TM 4:305, Tainan: Chuang-yen Wen-hua, 1997) p.1b.

140

CHAPTER FOUR

On the river meadows, a hundred ages—I turn back to look; The lodgings of Sung, the palaces of Sui—what of them remains? Vagrant deer nibble at times on the inner garden blossoms; People taking leave still pluck the willows at Fan’s Terrace. Below Fan’s Terrace, meeting the western end of the ancient wall, At the height of spring, the peach and plum trees naturally form a path. Since this morning, the eastern wind has suddenly picked up; In pale twilight, flying blossoms cover the old embankments. The earliest poem beginning with a couplet contrasting morning and evening that Ho is likely to have known is the second of Lu Chi’s poems “Presented to Secretariat Court Gentleman Ku Yen-hsien [Jung]” 贈尚書郎顧彥先, which begins, “In my morning roaming, I roam the Storeyed Wall; / For evening rest, come back to my night watch post” 朝遊遊層城、夕息旋直廬. 106 The line in the third stanza that refers to Chao Fei-yen (see below) does so in a way that recalls a “Drinking” 對酒 poem by the later Six Dynasties poet Chang Shuai 張率, “How to attract the best guests? / Make a palm-dancing girl offer [them such wine]” 何以留上客、為寄掌上人. 107 The last line of Ho’s third stanza may reflect two poems by Li Po that refer to the power of a single smile from a beautiful woman. One of them is in the fifty-fifth of Li’s “Old Airs” 古風, “For a single smile, a pair of white jades, / For a second song, a thousand golden coins” 一笑雙白璧、再歌千黃金. 108 The second is from the second of Li’s “White Linen Songs” 白紵歌, “For a beautiful woman’s single smile, a thousand golden coins” 美人一笑千黃金. 109 In the middle couplet of the next stanza there may be embedded a reminiscence of the “Denunciation of Ch’in” 過秦論 by Chia Yi 賈誼 , “Gentlemen did not dare bend their bows to take vengence” 士不敢彎弓而報怨. 110 The image of ten thousand horsemen and a thousand chariots—sometimes the numbers are reversed—is extremely common in reference to armies and entourages from early times. The earliest example in a metrical text is probably that at the beginning of Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju’s “Rhapsody of Sir Vacuous” 子虛賦, “With a cortege of chariots a thousand strong, / And choice entourage of a myriad horsemen” 車駕千乘、選徒萬騎. 111 T’ang poets combined

———

106 WH 24.19b (335); Lu Ch’in-li, p.680; Lu Shih-heng Chi 陸士衡集 (Collected Works of Lu Shih-heng) (SPTK) 5.8a (18). 107 YTHY 6.14a (100); Lu Ch’in-li, p.1781; I have adapted slightly the translation in Birrell, p.171. 108 Ri Haku Kashi Sakuin 0055/07-08; CTS 161.1679; K.07919; An Ch’i, p.615. 109 Ri Haku Kashi Sakuin 0122/02; CTS 163.1696; K.07985; An Ch’i, p.62. 110 WH 51.3b (702). 111 WH 7.17b (102); Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju Chi Chiao-chu 司馬相如集校注 (Collected Works of Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju, Collated and Annotated), compiled by Li Hsiao-chung 李孝中 (Chengtu: Pa-Shu Shu-she, 2000), p.1; I quote the translation in Knechtges,

RETREAT

141

both elements of these hosts in a single line, as in Tu Fu’s first “Remembering the Past” 憶昔, “I remember the past, when the former Emperor went to inspect the Northern Regions, / A thousand chariots, ten thousand horsemen, entering Hsien-yang” 憶昔先皇巡朔方、千乘萬騎入咸陽. 112

Ta-liang was once a great city, the capital of the Kingdom of Wei during the Warring States period. It was located on the south side of the Yellow River near what is now Kaifeng, the city in which Li Meng-yang lived, in a villa close by ‘Fan’s Terrace’, to which he refers repeatedly in his works. The fall of this city to the armies of the First Emperor of Ch’in led to the extinction of the state. See above for Chao Fei-yen (‘Flying Swallow’), who was said to have been so petite that she could dance on a man’s palm. The answering line in this couplet alludes to a story of late Warring States times. While one Lord Ch’un-shen 春申君 was serving as Chief Minister in Ch’u, Lord P’ing-yüan 平原君 of Chao sent an emissary to visit him. Ch’un-shen housed the emissary in the Upper Quarters. Wishing to impress Ch’u, the emissary presented hat-pins made of hawksbill tortoise shell and scabbards decorated with pearls and jade as gifts for Ch’un-shen’s retainers. Ch’un-shen had over three thousand retainers, and the senior among them wore slippers decorated with pearls when they met the emissary from Chao, at which the latter was greatly embarrassed. 113 Lord P’ing-yüan is also in the background of the story that lies behind the final line of the fourth stanza and much of the next two stanzas. When the Chao capital Han-tan 邯鄲, which lay about 150 miles to the north of Ta-liang, was beseiged by Ch’in, P’ing-yüan took advantage of his marriage to the sister of Lord Hsin-ling 信陵君 of Wei to seek urgently for assistance from Wei. The King of Wei was reluctant to anger Ch’in and held back, but Hsin-ling, the King’s younger brother, was moved by his sister’s pleading to come to the rescue of Chao. In this effort he was crucially aided by Hou Ying 侯嬴, a former recluse, and Hou’s friend Chu Hai 朱亥, who had been a butcher. With Hou as strategist and Chu as ‘hit-man’, he succeeded in

———

2:53. A search of Wen Hsüan will produce additional similar examples by the later Rhapsodists Yang Hsiung 揚雄, Pan Ku, Chang Heng, and P’an Yüeh. 112 Tu Shih Yin-te 115/4A/1-2, CTS 220.2324, K.10735. Wei Ying-wu uses the phrase in a similar evocation of an Imperial progress in his “Ballad of Li-shan” 驪山行, as does Po Chü-yi in his “Song of Unending Sorrow” 長恨歌. 113 Shih Chi 78.2395.

142

CHAPTER FOUR

lifting the seige of Han-tan and defeating Ch’in, by means of a ruse involving a divided tally. Hsin-ling continued to keep Ch’in at bay until slander cost him the confidence of the King of Wei. After this he retired and devoted himself to a life of pleasure and drink, dying a few years later. Within decades of his death, Ch’in defeated Wei, destroyed the city of Ta-liang, and massacred its inhabitants. 114 In the penultimate line, Ho quotes almost verbatim the now famous old saying (encountered above in “The Bright Moon”) that Ssu-ma Ch’ien used in his comments on the biography of Li Kuang 李廣 in the Shih Chi, “Peach and plum trees do not speak, and yet a path will form beneath them” 桃李不言、下自成蹊. 115 The poem’s form is that of an arch, in that the poem begins and ends with the poet’s presence, while its central portion consists of a long imaginative sweep over the history of the site. 116 Moreover, the opening and closing couplets are matched contrasts of evening and morning, with the difference that the final couplet sums up the significance of the poem, while the first had simply supplied a ‘frame.’ This ‘framing’ quality of the first stanza is evident in both of its couplets, for the second of them matches setting with rising and river with road. This is hardly an original touch in itself, but that Ho should employ it here is characteristic, and in fact this studied balance of elements is a feature of the entire poem. The immediate repetition of the name leads to the first of the descriptive stanzas. Each of these stanzas is a discrete unit, and all are built largely of parallel couplets. But if the stanzas are generally static, they are not motionless, nor are the links between them awkward. The second stanza meets the third in the image of the streets and their traffic, and if the second only suggests the pleasure quarter, as against the broad main boulevard with which the third opens, the suggestion is taken up again in the third, which sketches in allusive detail the extravagance that the second has introduced in general terms.

———

114 This abbreviated account is based chiefly on the biography of Kung-tzu Wu-chi 公子無忌 (Prince Hsin-ling) in Shih Chi 77.2377-85. 115 Shih Chi 109.2878. 116 The importance of the relationships between parts in a long poem was clearly recognised in Ho’s time. See the comments of Li Tung-yang, who noted Tu Fu’s excellence in this aspect of poetry ([Huai-]lu T’ang Shih-hua, Yi-wen edition p.3b, Chung-hua edition p.1373; Ming Shih-hua Ch’üan-pien 2:1627; Li Tung-yang Chi 2:533.

RETREAT

143

The break between the third and fourth stanzas is the real midpoint of the poem, and the way Ho handles it is a master stroke. First of all, it is only with the last word of the third stanza that one realises that the rhyme has not changed after four lines this time, as it did before. The word ‘jade ornament’ (pai pi 白璧 ), which makes this clear, is followed immediately by ‘armoured soldier’ (tai chia 帶甲), which seems to be at the farthest possible remove from jade ornaments, but in fact is in a subtle way quite similar—in their hard surfaces and liability to be strung together and moved about at will. Another deftly handled linking technique between both the second stanzas and the third and fourth is something that might be called a ‘diversionary shift’. In each case, the opening of the stanza, while in one way shifting attention and in another providing some continuity, disguises an essential continuity of milieu that pervades all the descriptive stanzas. That is, the opening of the third stanza seems to promise more description of the city proper and the multifarious activities of its busy inhabitants, but the stanza itself returns within two lines to references to the ‘song and dancing’ of the second. Similarly, the fourth stanza opens with soldiers, but shifts at once back to images of the privileged aristocrats of the preceding lines, albeit now responding to the new emergency. The sureness of the handling of forms seems to falter after the fourth stanza, in that the fifth and sixth stanzas seem to be alternatives to one another, rather than two successive parts both necessary to the poem. Moreover, it is the first of the two, rather than the second, that leads most appropriately back to the scene in which the poet’s voice reenters. After this uncertain passage, the poem comes to a smooth close. Indeed, one might think it almost too smooth and symmetrical. The link between the last two stanzas is of the same sort as that between the first two; we return in the last stanza to the wall that began the poem, and as noted above, the last couplet mirrors the opening. The unusually prominent symmetry of the poem is qualified in one respect in the last lines, however, as we finally are given an indication of the season, spring, heightening the sense of return—a cycle from glory to decay and back to growth—while sweeping the reader’s vision off into a final scene that combines antiquity with the

144

CHAPTER FOUR

present. 117 With the possible exception of the redundant stanza, then, this is a highly controlled and structured poem in spite of its sense of sweeping historical and physical vistas. In his preface to “The Bright Moon,” Ho had cited two models for old-style poetry. One of these was Tu Fu; the other, the ‘Four Talents of the Early T’ang’, who moved in various ways away from the dominant courtly poetry style of their age and toward the more individual styles of the High T’ang. 118 Comparison of his “Song of Ta-liang” with analogous works by Early T’ang poets suggests the sorts of tensions between models and creation that arose in practice. Two useful Early T’ang poems to juxtapose with Ho’s work are Lu Chao-lin’s “Ch’ang-an: A Theme from Antiquity” 長安古意 and Li Chiao’s 李嶠 “Ballad of Fen-yin” 汾陰行. 119 Both of these poems have been translated and discussed elsewhere, so the account given here will be brief and concerned chiefly with a comparison with Ho’s “Ta-liang.” 120 Lu’s poem is the most directly comparable ‘Four Talents’ work to Ho’s, on account of both formal considerations—like Ho’s poem, it is in a heptasyllabic metre throughout, with frequent rhyme changes— and thematic similarity. One’s initial impression of Lu’s poem is that a work so dazzling supports Ho Ching-ming’s modest refusal, in his preface, to claim that he had equalled the Four Talents in this form. On the formal level the differences are quite striking. They derive above all from Ho Ching-ming’s much more obvious concern with formal clarity. As we have seen, his poem abounds in symmetries large and small, and also pays considerable attention to the creation of a natural narrative flow. In contrast, Lu’s poem is relatively

———

117 The closing couplet of Fan P’eng’s “Song of Ta-liang” reads, “See where flowers blossomed in profusion long ago, / Where drifting clouds have always come at day’s end” 君看昔日繁華地、總有浮雲日暮來. 118 For an excellent discussion of the Four Talents, see Stephen Owen, The Poetry of the Early T’ang (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), pp.79-150. Owen does note, incidentally, that Tu Fu was one of the few admirers of the Four during his own day (p.80). 119 For Lu’s poem, see CTS 41.518, K.2672; for Li’s, CTS 57.689, K.03535. Fenyin is a place not very far from Ch’ang-an where Emperor Wu of the Han dynasty once performed the sacrifices to the Earth Spirit. 120 There is one translation and discussion of Lu Chao-lin’s poem in Owen, Poetry of the Early T’ang, pp.104-11, and another in Hans Frankel, The Flowering Plum and the Palace Lady (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976), pp.130-43. For a translation and discussion of Li’s poem, see Owen, Early T’ang, pp.118-22.

RETREAT

145

‘shapeless’. It can be divided at least roughly into four sections. The two opening stanzas, a total of sixteen lines, are devoted to the appearance of Ch’ang-an’s streets and architecture. This ends with the reflection that the city is full of strangers, 121 and the second section, comprising the next four stanzas, another sixteen lines, describes the beautiful women of the capital. The third section is the longest, six stanzas, or twenty-eight lines. It is built chiefly around images of the bold young men of the capital, but it also incorporates references to themes typical of the first two sections. Finally, the concluding section, two stanzas with eight lines, presents the ‘moral’ of the poem and introduces the figure of the Han dynasty scholar-poet Yang Hsiung 揚雄 (53 B.C.-AD 18), associated with a kind of immunity from time’s passing that is inaccessible to the busy citizens of the rest of the poem. But such a division of the poem hardly corresponds with the experience of reading it, in which a welter of sensual impressions and allusions hurtles by much in the manner of those citizens. This frenetic pace is characteristic of much of Lu’s more personal poetry, written as he began breaking free of the restraints of the courtly styles dominant in his day. 122 The formal coherence of Lu’s poem is a product more of its obsession with broad thematic areas—activity and impermanence, sensuality and conflict—that unify it by their continual reemergence and interplay rather than of any overall formal scheme such as is evident—to the point of being obtrusive when it falters, as in the ‘extra’ stanza—In Ho’s work. Li Chiao’s poem breaks neatly into two parts; the first twenty-six lines describe the festivities attendant on the Han sacrifice, and the last sixteen are concerned with the present abandoned site. The first section, at least, moves in a reasonably orderly way through the course of the celebration, pausing only to elaborate each scene with a couplet or two. The second section is less clearly put together. Its first eight lines are mostly concerned with the site, abandoned after the celebration, and the last eight with the poet’s presence there. But this division is not very clearly marked thematically. The bridge between the two largest sections is nicely handled, with an ironic juxtaposition of massed courtiers’ cheers for the Han Emperor’s long life followed

——— 121 122

Owen notes this, p.109. See Owen’s chapter on Lu, Early T’ang, pp.83-102.

146

CHAPTER FOUR

immediately by his permanent disappearance along with his entourage. Moreover, the descriptive lines contain moments of brilliance, which, so long as they are tied to the sequence of the Han celebration, work together to create a dazzling effect. But once this orderly sequence is finished, the poem seems to lose direction, falling into an apparently haphazard mixture of descriptive lines with conventional reflections on the transitory nature of human glory. This poem is thus closer to Ho’s in its structure, even in the appearance of a ‘breakdown’ in formal control toward the end. But its very similarities call attention to important differences. To begin with, Ho’s poem is much more old-fashioned than Li’s work, and this in two particularly important ways. In the first place, it is more archaising in its details. The matching couplet at the very beginning, for example, and its use as a self-conscious ‘frame’, suggests the yüeh-fu of Han and Wei more than the poems of Li Chiao or the Four Talents. Then, the structure, while asymmetrical, lacks Li Chiao’s concern, born of the court poet’s attachment to formal clarity, to maintain a clear narrative progression. In Ho’s work, the flexibility in presentation is a consistent part of the style, one that evokes the tendency of early yüeh-fu to be no more than simply plausible in their narrative sequence. Even more than Li, Ho is tied to the couplet. But here he differs from pre-T’ang models in a significant respect, in that, even while he constructs his poem out of semiautonomous couplets as an early poet would do, his couplets are those of a writer matured in the T’ang tradition. In short, although we can identify possible earlier models for Ho’s work, it appears that his borrowing of thematic elements was done without an analogous success in matching the structural workings of the earlier poems. This is, after all, rather what we should expect. It is much easier to borrow images as thematic devices, such as blossoms blown over the ruins, or local transitional devices, such as the use of a repeated phrase as a link between stanzas, than to ignore the unspoken assumptions about appropriate larger structures common to one’s contemporaries and to adopt those of an earlier age. Thus, even as Ho Ching-ming distinguishes between the yüeh-fu of Han and Wei, on the one hand, and the heptasyllabic songs of the Four Talents, on the other, commenting in the “Moon” preface that “they were capable of abundance and charm, but they strayed far indeed from antiquity,” his own attempt to recreate the style of the Four Talents thus appears

RETREAT

147

unsuccessful, to the extent that he has added elements from both the court style and the fu-ku ideal, both ornate couplets and old-fashioned repetitive gestures. HO UNA CASA NELL’ HONAN Ho arrived home in Hsin-yang toward the end of spring and settled in the country. 123 還家口號十年奔走違親舍、此日歸來喜不禁。敢向明時輕組綬、祇緣多病乞山林。閑居擬著潘安賦、高臥寧知謝傅心。早晚南巖桂花發、開軒相望一長吟。 Extemporised on Returning Home 124 For ten years—rushing and running, far from my parents’ home; But now today I have come back, and my joy knows no bounds. I dare, before a brilliant age, to make light of sash and jade; Solely because of frequent illness I seek the hills and woods. ‘Living at Leisure’, I plan to write a rhapsody of P’an Yüeh; ‘Resting aloft’, I wish to master Hsieh An’s state of mind. Morning and evening, cassia flowers bloom on the southern cliff; I open my window and gaze at them, heaving a long sigh. There is an irony, no doubt intentional, in Ho’s use of the phrase “rushing and running” 奔走, considering its first canonical use in the “Declaration on Wine” chapter of the Documents, “Rush and run to serve your fathers and seniors” 奔走事厥考厥長. 125 Another such may occur in the fourth line, where Ho’s ‘frequent illness” 多病 recalls a famous line by Meng Hao-jan that incurred, at least according to a

———

123 Yao Hsüeh-hsien 姚學賢 and Lung Li 龍麗 discuss the possible location of Ho’s residences in their article “Ho Ching-ming Yi-chi K’ao” 何景明遺跡考 (Examination of Sites Associated with Ho Ching-ming), Hsin-yang Shih-fan Hsüehyüan Hsüeh-pao 15.4 (1995): 75-78. They conclude that Ho’s ‘country estate’ was somewhere west of the city, but that its location cannot be determined any more closely than that. The family residence inside the city was, they argue, in the vicinity of what is now the Hsin-yang City Printing Plant. 124 HTFC 24.7b (425; 272:002). Another poem, “On the Fifth Day” 五日, HTFC 24.8a (425; 272:004), written on the fifth day of the fifth month (mid-summer) seems to refer to a recent return and was probably written in the same month. Ho refers to his having just recovered from an illness in an autumn poem written at home later this year (HTFC 24.8a [426; 272:005]). 125 Shang-shu T’ung-chien 300142ff.; cf. Legge, p.404, and Karlgren, p.43.

148

CHAPTER FOUR

ubiquitous but spirious anecdote, his Emperor’s displeasure, in his “At Year’s End, Returning to the Southern Hills” 歲暮歸南山, “Frequently ill, I have been rejected by a wise ruler” 多病明主棄. 126

P’an Yüeh—he of the set of three poems mourning his wife—wrote a “Rhapsody on Living in Idleness” 閑居賦, which is included in the Wen Hsüan. 127 The phrase ‘resting aloft’ (kao wo 高臥) is famous from its use in the biography of the Six Dynasties magnate and statesman Hsieh An 謝安 (320-385), who lived in retirement, “resting aloft in the eastern hills” and refusing to serve in government until after he was forty years old. 128 還至別業 Arriving Back at my Villa (first two of four poems) 129 I 雞鳴高樹杪、狗吠墟里間。家人望車徒、遠客造門端。入門問所親、上堂叙悲歡。行人暮飢渴、秉燭具盤餐。明月照西戶、三星爛空天。出門踐野草、白露倏以漙。十年苦行役、茲夕方來旋。寧知非夢寐、忽忽心未安。 A rooster crows atop a lofty tree; Dogs are barking down in the little hamlet. Family members watch for cart and groom; A road-weary traveller reaches the gateway entrance. I enter the gate and ask after those close to me; Ascending the hall I tell of my sorrows and joys. A man on the road grows hungry and thirsty by evening;

———

126 Meng Hao-jan Shih-chi Chiao-chu 孟浩然詩集校注 (Collected Poems of Meng Hao-jan, Collated and Annotated), compiled by Li Ching-pai 李景白 ([Chengtu]: PaShu Shu-she, 1988), p.281. 127 WH 16.1b (209), transl. Knechtges, 3:145-57. 128 Tsin Shu 79.2073. 129 HTFC 7.12b (82; 251:013-014). Ho refers to his arrival ‘at the end of spring’ (ch’un mu 春暮) in the fourth of these poems. In the fifth line of the second poem, the phrase ‘unbroken stream’ 綢繆 is that translated as ‘bound closely’ in Ho’s “Befriending Bamboo” (chapter one). Both renderings derive from the use of the phrase in the Songs, in which it opens each stanza of poem 118 and serves as the poem’s conventional name; see Mao Shih Yin-te 24/118; Karlgren, p.76; Waley, p.87. The Yung recension gives the title simply as 至家 “Arriving Home.” In the sixth line of the first poem, the ‘no carvers names’ family of the Standard recension reverses the first two characters, giving 堂上 “at the top of the hall,” as opposed to the other texts’ 上堂 “Ascending the hall.” In the next line, the Yung recension reads 苦飢 “bitterly hungry” rather than 飢渴 “hunger and thirst.” The Standard recension records this variant without specifiying a source. In the eleventh line of the second poem, the Yung recension reads “do not labour at” 無勞 rather than “there is no need to” 無為.

RETREAT

149

Candles in hand, they set out platters of food. The radiant moon shines in the western gate; Orion’s Belt glimmers high in the heavens. I go out doors and tread the grassy fields— Clear drops of dew have suddenly formed everywhere. For ten years now, hard travels and duty; Tonight I have finally come back home. I wish I were sure I am not asleep and dreaming; Restless and unsure, my mind is not yet calm. Ho’s fourth line recalls the opening couplet of a “Longing” 長相思 poem by the fifth century poet, Wu Mai-yüan 吳邁遠, “At dawn there was a traveller on the road. / Wistful, wistful, he neared our doorway” 晨有行路客、依依造門端. 130 The seventh line recalls the end of a poem in the Songs, “My lord is away on a mission, / May he not be hungry or thirsty!” 君子于役、茍無飢渴 . 131 The next line then reminds us of the fifteenth of the “Nineteen Old Poems,” a poem on the carpe diem theme, whose second couplet goes, “The daylight so short, the night so long— / why not go roaming, candle in hand?” 晝短苦夜長、何不秉燭遊. 132 The antepenultimate couplet of Ho’s poem is reminiscent of a line in the seventh of the “Nineteen Old Poems,” “White dew dampens the grassy fields” 白露霑野草, but this is a poem of autumn. 133 Li Po uses the phrase “finally come back home” 方來旋 at the very end of two poems, but in one of them the season is that of peach blossoms (late spring, as in Ho’s poem), and the rest of the line is “a thousand years” 千載, than which Ho is characteristically more modest. 134 II 詰晨親友至、筐榼携所需。各言平生歡、念予久離居。綢繆語未畢、展席臨前除。園榮亦已抽、况有盤中魚。人情倦懷土、富貴豈常於。無為泥形迹、所願恒相俱。 At break of day my closest friends arrive, With hampers and flagons bearing all we need. We talk of what we enjoyed in olden days, Thinking how long I have been living far away. In unbroken stream, our talk is not yet done,

——— 130

YTHY 4.13b; Lu Ch’in-li, p.1319; I quote the translation in Birrell, p.121. Mao Shih Yin-te 14/66/2; cf. Waley, p.92, Karlgren, p.45. 132 WH 29.7a (400); Lu Ch’in-li, p.333; the translation is from Stephen Owen, Anthology of Chinese Literature: Beginnings to 1911 (New York and London: W.W. Norton, 1996), p.261. 133 WH 29.4a (398); Lu Ch’in-li, p.330. 134 Ri Haku Kashi Sakuin 0413; CTS 172.1766; K.08278; An Ch’i, p.257. 131

150

CHAPTER FOUR

When a feast is spread out overlooking the steps in front. The gardens’ choicest have all been gathered; And there is even a fish on a platter as well. It is human nature to weary and yearn for one’s land; Fortune and prominence cannot be kept for long. There is no need to be mired in outward appearances; What I desire is always to remain with you. In the second poem, the phrase “live far away” 離居 in the fourth line is a fairly common one, but Ho would have known an early use in poetry, in the “Greater Master of Fate” in the “Nine Songs.” 135 Ho’s sixth line is reminiscent in all but time of day of a line in a poem that Tu Fu wrote on saying farewell to one K’ung Ch’ao-fu, with a message to Li Po, “On a clear evening we set out wine, overlooking the steps in front” 清夜置酒臨前除. 136 It is likely that the import of the expression “yearn for one’s land” 懷土, as in Ho’s line nine, grew or changed in meaning over time. When Confucius said, “A gentleman cherishes virtue; a small man cherishes land” 君子懷德、小人懷土, he probably had real estate in mind, since he continues, “A gentleman cherishes penalties; a small man cherishes favours.” 137 Later writers use the words to refer to homesickness, as in Wang Ts’an’s “Rhapsody on Ascending the Tower,” “All men share the emotion of yearning for their lands” 人情同於懷土 . 138 The slightly later poet Lu Chi even wrote an entire “Rhapsody on Yearning for my Land” 懷土賦. 139

The first of these poems evokes Ho’s arrival late on a spring day. Crowing cocks and barking dogs have been an image for quiet rural life since ancient times. See for example, the Tao-te Ching, “though neighboring states might provide distant views of each other and the sounds of each other’s chickens and dogs might even be heard, the common folk would reach old age without ever going back and forth between such places.” 140 Or Mencius, describing a well-populated and prosperous state, “The crowing of cocks and the barking of dogs could be heard all the way to the four bounds.” 141 Ho’s source for this opening couplet, however, is no doubt an anonymous yüeh-fu ballad

——— 135

Ch’u Tz’u Pu-chu 2.13b (119); Hawkes first ed., p.40; Penguin ed., p.111. Tu Shih Yin-te 21/1/14, CTS 216.2259, K.10519. 137 Lun-yü Yin-te 6/4/11; Lau, p.73; cf. Waley, p.104, “commoners set [their hearts] on the soil.” 138 WH 11.3a (147); Wang Ts’an Chi Chu, p.46; translation from Knechtges, 2:241. 139 Lu Shih-heng Chi 2.2b (8). 140 Lao-tzu Chu-tzu So-yin 27.80A; the translation is from Lynn, p.189; cf. Lau, p.142. 141 Meng-tzu Yin-te 10.2A/1; cf. Lau, p.75. 136

RETREAT

151

of the Han dynasty that begins, “A rooster crows from the summit of a lofty tree; / A dog barks inside a deep palace” 雞鳴高樹巔、狗吠深宮中. 142 Ho was not, of course, the first poet to have echoed these lines. One predecessor who would certainly have been in his mind is T’ao Ch’ien, who wrote, in the middle section of the first of his “Returning to the Farm” 歸園田居 poems: 曖曖遠人村、依依墟里煙。狗吠深巷中、鷄鳴桑樹巔。 Distant villages are lost in haze, Above the houses smoke hangs in the air. A dog is barking somewhere in a hidden lane, A cock crows from the top of a mulberry tree. 143

Now at home in Hsin-yang, Ho found himself once again settled within a small family circle. His parents were at home and so presumably was his brother Ching-hui. We know that Ching-yang held several provincial posts sometime after his chü-jen pass in 1498, so he may have been absent at this time. 144 After several years in the thick of political and social life in the capital, Ho naturally had his friends there very much in mind. One of the first expressions of this feeling was apparently written not long after his return and addressed to Yin Ying 陰盈, a colleague in the Drafting Office who had gone home to observe mourning: 寄陰舍人臥病春城暮、相思汝水潯。紫薇鸞掖遠、碧草鳳池深。鳴珮他年夢、看花此日心。故知俱散盡、北望一沾巾。

——— 142

Lu Ch’in-li, p.257. T’ao Yüan-ming Shih Chien-cheng Kao 陶淵明詩箋證稿 (Draft Annotations of T’ao Yüan-ming’s Poetry), compiled by Wang Shu-min 王叔岷 (Taipei: Yi-wen, 1975), p.105; Lu Ch’in-li, p.991; I quote the translation of James Robert Hightower, The Poetry of T’ao Ch’ien (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), p.50. 144 The first posting for Ching-yang that can be dated is his assignment to Ch’aohsien, in Anhwei. See the farewell essays written for him in 1512 by Lü Nan, “Saying Farewell to Ho Chung-sheng” 送何仲昇敘, Ching-yeh Hsien-sheng Wen-chi (1555; repr. TM 4:60) 2.17a (516), and Ts’ui Hsien, “Saying Farewell to Ho Chung-tzu, Who is Going to Ch’ao-hsien as Magistrate” 送何仲子知巢縣序, Ts’ui Shih Huan Tz’u, (1554; repr. TM 4:56) 2.34a (376), Huan Tz’u (SKCS) 1.27b (383); there is also a farewell poem by Sun Chi-fang, “At Hung-ch’ing Temple, Saying Farewell to Ho Chung-sheng, Who is Going to Govern Ch’ao-hsien, We Climb the Hill Behind the Temple” 洪灋寺送何仲昇宰巢縣登寺後山, Shih-chi Chi (Chia-ching edition) 2.6b. 143

152

CHAPTER FOUR

Sent to Drafter Yin 145 I lie here ill at dusk in a springtime city, Longing for the banks of the River Ju. Myrtle Bush and Eagle Wing are distant; The greenstone grass-flanked Phoenix Pool is deep. Of jingling pendants, my dreams of other years, For viewing flowers, my heart’s desire today . . . My oldest friends are all is dispersed and lost; I gaze to the north, my sash wet through. Ho’s last line is based on the last of four equivalent lines found in Chang Heng’s “Poem of Fourfold Sorrow” 四愁詩 poems, “I lean over and gaze to the north, and tears wet my sash” 側身北望涕霑巾. 146 In each of Chang’s four poems, the directions and the personal items wetted differ.

‘Myrtle Bush’ and ‘Eagle Wing’ (not literally an eagle, but a different sort of phoenix) were poetic ways of referring to the Secretariat and Chancellary, divisions of the bureaucracy long since abolished by Ho’s day, though the name of the Secretariat survived in the office Yin and Ho had shared. 147 At one time the Secretariat was located beside a ‘Phoenix Pond’. From the time of his departure from Peking until the promulgation of the order stripping him of his office, Ho was in a kind of limbo,

———

145 HTFC 15.7a (225:252:004). For the last word in the poem, the Shen recension reads ‘lapel’ 襟 rather than the homophonous 巾 of the others. The latter matches the Chang Heng line being adopted (see text), which makes it either obviously what Ho wrote or an obvious emendation by conjecture in the Yüan recension, which for the most part avoids differing from the Shen. In translating the poem I have adopted the less contorted mode of reasoning about the variant, but room for doubt remains. Yin Ying (t. K’o-fu 克復) was, like Ho, a native of southern Honan. He passed the chihshih in 1499 and was appointed a Drafter; see TK 189. He possibly withdrew to observe mourning for a parent not long after Wu-tsung came to the throne, before this poem was written. In the spring of 1508, when Liu Chin ordered the punishment of officials who were passively resisting his regime (see below, chapter five), Yin Ying was relegated to a post in the provinces for overstaying his leave. 146 WH 29.11a (402); YTHY 9.6a (147); Lu Ch’in-li, p.180; Chang Heng Shih-wen Chi Chiao-chu 張衡詩文集校注 (Poetry and Prose of Chang Heng, Collated and Annotated), compiled by Chang Chen-tse 張震澤 (Shanghai: Shanghai Ku-chi, 1986), p.3; cf. the translation in Birrell, p.235. 147 The ‘poetic’ names were actually those adopted for brief periods during the T’ang dynasty. The first of them takes two slghtly different forms, ‘Myrtle Bush’ 紫薇 and ‘Purple Tenuity’ 紫微, the latter a reference to a star in the northern sky thought to be the residence of the Heavenly Emperor. The former is the one used by Ho, the latter more likely to have been the original.

RETREAT

153

neither in office nor really in retirement. ‘Illness’, real or assumed, kept him in seclusion for the summer and early fall. In the preface he was eventually prevailed upon to write for the collection of farewell poems presented to Hsin-yang’s Magistrate, Sun Jung, he explains, “After I returned home, I stayed in a villa in the countryside, unable to join in social intercourse with my neighbours.” 148 It appears that he spent much of his time studying and writing. He prepared an edition of the poems of the T’ang writer Wang Wei at this time, and also wrote a long self-justificatory piece, his “Seven Narrations.” We shall return to take these up in chapter six. The reason for his seclusion was presumably that too open a display of good health or spirits could have provided an opening for a denunciation. The poem addressed to Li Han as he passed through Kaifeng, as well as another sent to Li’s successor Chang Tzu-lin 張子麟 (1459-1546), may well have been part of an attempt to win their support in anticipation of such a possibility. 149 The latter poem shows considerable familiarity with Chang’s earlier career. That Ho took the trouble to prepare and send this panagyric for a man with whom he seems to have had no other contact before or after—though they were both in office in Peking during the years 1511-18—is presumably a consequence of his precarious status as a known opponent of Liu Chin who had taken refuge at home on the pretext of an illness that, on the evidence of this poem, did not incapacitate him for flowery writing (which would have been his work in the capital had he stayed on there). As the senior administrative officer of Ho’s native province, Chang was in a position to do our poet a little incidental good or a great deal of harm, depending on what, if anything, he reported to

———

148 HTFC 35.1a (605; 序:003). Ho also contributed a poem to the occasion—Sun was going up to the capital for the regular civil service review of his record in office. See “Saying Farewell to Prefect Sun” 送孫太守 , HTFC 15.8a (226; 252:008). According to the (Chia-ching) Honan T’ung-chih, 34.86b, and the (Ch’ien-lung) Hsin-yang Chou Chih, 5.11b (182), Sun was appointed to Hsin-yang in 1504, and Ho had seen him off from Peking at that time (see above, chapter one). He and Ho would have met again when Ho passed through Hsin-yang on his way back from Yunnan. 149 For the poem sent to Chang Tzu-lin, see “Sent for Presentation to Regional Earl Chang” 寄贈張方伯, HTFC 11.9b (148; 271:005). For Chang (t. Yüan-jui 元瑞, h. Heng-shan 恆山) himself, see HY 3/59, TL 514, KHL 44.85a (1853—Yen Sung), TK 134. Chang was appointed Senior Administration Commissioner for Honan in the sixth month of 1507 and promoted to a post in Hukwang in the second month of 1508. See Wu-tsung Shih-lu 27.1a (703), 35.2a (841).

154

CHAPTER FOUR

Peking. That Ho suffered no special molestation during Chang’s brief term in office may reflect credit on Chang—Ho’s dismissal from office early in 1508 and the fine levied against him then were part of a general punitive sweep on Liu Chin’s part that Chang could not have influenced. It was in any case almost the last chance for so laudatory an account to have been written with any sincerity at all, for the earlier career that Ho so elaborately praises, one in which Chang might legitimately have taken pride, was followed by over a dozen years of unbroken success in the service of Wu-tsung’s court, which considerably tarnished his reputation. It is worth noting that Ho’s caution, or at least the reasons for it adduced here, stands in marked contrast to the experience of his friend Liu Yün, the former child prodigy. Liu too left office and returned home claiming illness on Liu Chin’s seizure of power. When he arrived, the local Prefect held a banquet to honour his conduct. “I am only twenty-eight,” Liu protested, “What conduct of mine could merit my being the guest of the district?” “You have the courage to resign, though only just an adult,” replied the Prefect, “What finer example of conduct could there be!” 150 The contrast between Ho’s experience and Liu’s may have been due to regional differences, to Liu’s status as a ‘child of privilege’, as opposed to Ho’s more humble origins, or to differences in the characters or affiliations of the officials with whom they dealt, among other reasons. In spite of the respite from court politics and the chance to read and write in solitude, this summer proved a grim experience, as two of the children in the family died within a space of less than two weeks, and it is not difficult to read in Ho’s accounts of these fragile lives his sense both of the pathos in their loss and of the dignity available to even the humblest individual who persists in following her moral sense: Inscription for the Tomb Marker of my Niece Wei-nü 渭女 151 My niece Wei-nü was the daughter of my third brother, who accompanied our father when he was in office in Wei-yüan, in Shensi. She was born at Wei, hence her name. She died young, in her twelfth year. She was quiet, pretty, alert, and clever, so slender of build that she

———

150 Li K’ai-hsien tells this story in his epitaph for Liu; see KHL 22.85a (943), Li K’ai-hsien Ch’üan-chi, 7.551. 151 HTFC 36.30a (639; 銘:101).

RETREAT

155

seemed hardly capable of carrying the weight of her clothing, and not much given to talking. She stayed indoors every day and devoted herself to needlework rather than joining the other girls in play. She was engaged to a son of the Wang family. In the summer of the year ting-mao [1507], there was a pestilence, and one of the maidservants in the household contracted it. No one dared look after her, but Wei-nü took drinking water to her where she was lying. The family strictly forbade this, but she would not obey them. After a few days, the maidservant recovered, but then Wei-nü herself fell ill. She did not want to worry her parents and told them that she was really not very ill. They believed her, since she didn’t appear to be delirious. After she had been ill for almost two weeks, she got up suddenly and cried out to her mother, “Dress me, I am not going to live!” Soon after this she was dead. This was the tenth day of the sixth month. She was buried on the very same evening, on the west side of the hill. I bitterly regretted that there had been no time for me to supply an inscription for her grave marker. A few days later, I prepared a brick and wrote a rough interment inscription on it. Then I had a servant open the grave and put it in. The inscription reads: “Once we bore you, we delighted in you, and now we have lost you. We cannot find you, but on the west slope there is a place, and there we have buried you.” Inscription for the Tomb Marker of my Nephew Yüeh-chou 岳州 152 My nephew Yüeh-chou was the second son of Sir Tung-ch’ang [Ho Ching-shao], born while he was magistrate of Pa-ling in Yüeh. At birth he was very light-skinned, with a prominent cranium. After he was able to speak, he would memorise what people read aloud whenever he heard them. He could recite several hundred words without forgetting. He bowed and made way for guests just like an adult. When Sir Tungch’ang died, he wept for grief, unable to sleep, crying, “Papa has abandoned me! Where has he gone?” Eventually he became ill and died of his illness, still weeping and calling for his father. He was in his fourth year and died on the twenty-third day of the sixth month, second year of Cheng-te . . .

Between the two memorials for his dead nephew and niece, or at least between their deaths, comes a poetic record of a third death, one that perhaps casts an odd light over the other two. The preface to this poem, titled “Mourning my Horse” 悼馬詩, reads:

——— 152

HTFC 36.30b (640; 銘:102). According to Ho Ching-ming’s curriculum for Ching-shao, his brother left two sons, the younger being Yüeh-chou. In the Sacrificial Text, however, he says that Ching-shao’s widow bore a son while escorting his coffin back home from Tung-ch’ang.

156

CHAPTER FOUR

Our family had bought a horse, a fine animal and still young. In the night of the fifteenth day of the final month of summer in the year tingmao (July 24, 1507), I had a sudden dream that a dragon was standing at the foot of the steps. It hunched over and staggered, then died. I awoke with a start. A servant was shouting outside the gate, “The horse is dead! The horse is dead!” I was amazed by this, and sorry for the horse, and so I wrote a poem mourning it in ten rhymes. 153

As helpless against the ravages of human mortality as he had been against the erosion of the traditional moral and political order at Wutsung’s court, we find Ho in his poetry written at home confronting his losses and seeking solace, not always with success, in a variety of forms. After the troubles of Ho’s first summer back in Hsin-yang, the autumn of 1507 was one of the most productive seasons of his life, so far as literary works are concerned. 154 By early fall he evidently felt sufficiently ‘recovered’ to emerge actively into local literary society. There are poems written at various seasonal festivities, in the convivial company of one or two friends, to be sent back to friends in Peking, and to record impressions in moments of solitude. 155

——— 153

HTFC 23.6a (409; 253:003). Ho may have begun the fall season with an elaborate rhapsody on the ‘Weaving Girl’ star, whose legendary annual reunion with her husband the ‘Herd Boy’ star is the occasion for the ‘Seventh Night’ festival in the seventh lunar month (see above). In his brief preface to this work, Ho acknowledges the precedent “Seventh Night” rhapsodies by Hsieh T’iao (464-99) and Wang Po (647-75), but faults them for simply dwelling on the joy of the lovers’ romantic tryst, without any underlying ethical purpose. This failing he undertakes to make up for in his own work, “Rhapsody on the Weaving Maid” 織女賦, HTFC 1.17a (11; 賦:015). Since the fu mentions his illness, it probably comes from this year. 155 Additional poems from this summer are “Offered in Response to Mr. Kao of K’ui-chou’s [Kao Chien] Poem Expressing his Admiration of the Peonies in Cultivated Talent Li’s Garden: Using His Rhymes” 高夔州先生示賞李秀才園中芍藥詩用韻奉答, HTFC 24.7b (425; 272:003); “Clearing After Rain” 雨霽, HTFC 15.7b (225; 252:005); “Idle Inspirations on the River, Now Flowing Again” 溪上水新至漫興, HTFC 28.12a (508; 274:002-005); and “Sent to Hsien-chi [Li Meng-yang] on the ‘Establishing Spring’ Day” 立秋寄獻吉, HTFC 15.8b (227; 252:011). Works from the fall begin with one entitled “After Being Ill” 病後, HTFC 24.8b (426; 272:005), and include “Seventh Night” 七夕 , HTFC 7.14a (83; 251:017-018); “Enjoying the Cool by a Bend in the River” 水曲納涼, HTFC 7.14b (84; 251:019); “Feelings at the Mid-Summer Festival” 中元節有感, HTFC 23.5a (408; 253:004); “The Moon on Mid-Summer Night” 中元夜月, HTFC 15.10a (229; 252:019); “The Western Suburbs” 西郭, HTFC 15.10b (229; 252:020); “Playing a Flute” 吹笛, HTFC 24.8b (426; 272:006); “Harvesting Rice” 穫稻, HTFC 15.10b (230; 252:021); and “Coming Back from the Stream in the Evening” 晚歸自溪上, HTFC 15.11a (230; 252:023). 154

RETREAT

157

Ho continued to miss his friends even after his life at home began to settle into its own form, with new friends and students for company and thinking and writing for solitude. A noticable bout of longing for his friends from the capital struck Ho in the fall, when he wrote a set of poems on six of them, ‘The Six Gentlemen’: Wang Chiu-ssu, K’ang Hai, Ho T’ang, Li Meng-yang, Pien Kung, and Wang Shangchiung, praising their personal qualities. 156 About the same time, he addressed a separate poem to Ho T’ang: 夢何粹夫內翰同鄉客、新知交更深。春從都下別、秋向夢中尋。圖史留東觀、詞章侍上林。中宵憶顏色、慰我索居心。 Dreaming of Ho Ts’ui-fu [T’ang] 157 In the Academy, a sojourner from my province; Once newly acquainted, our friendship grew ever deeper. In spring we took our leave in the capital; In autumn, go in search within a dream. With charts and annals he remains in the Eastern Hall; With poems and essays, serves in the Imperial Grove. Late at night, to recall his face and manner Comforts my heart in isolation here.

Ho T’ang had stayed on in Peking. He objected to the presumption of Liu Chin, most pointedly when he refused to kneel before him and criticised another official who did. Nonetheless he did attract Liu’s admiration and was promoted to the post of tutor to the palace

———

156 HTFC 8.1a (85; 251:022-027). Though linked by Ho, the six men were to have varied fates. For Ho T’ang, see second note below. Wang Chiu-ssu did become involved with Liu Chin’s political clique, which led to his dismissal from the civil service in 1510. He and Ho would not meet again for more than ten years. K’ang Hai went into mourning for his mother in 1508, but was later dismissed, perhaps unjustly, for his association with Liu. Pien Kung was still in office, but would be sent to the provinces in 1509 because of his opposition to Liu. Wang Shang-chiung remained in office and was promoted several times, but seems to have escaped involvement with the eunuch’s party. The omission of Meng Yang and Wang T’ing-hsiang is probably due to the former’s being a fellow townsman and the latter’s being in mourning from 1505 to 1508, and thus not in Peking at the time of Ho’s departure. 157 HTFC 15.10b (230; 252:022). Another interpretation of the second line might seem possible, since 更深 is an expression meaning ‘late in the night [watches]’. However, in this case 更 should be in level tone, which is not metrically acceptable at this point. The fourth line may include a reminisence of Ts’en Shen’s “At Parting, As I Leave Lin-t’ao Going North” 發臨洮將赴北留別, “I shall come back in private within a dream” 私向夢中歸, CTS 200.2081; K.09733; Ts’en Shen Shih Chi Piennien Chien-chu, p.288).

158

CHAPTER FOUR

eunuchs. He sought sick leave in 1510, was dismissed, and then recalled after Liu’s fall. 158 The “Eastern Hall” (tung-kuan 東觀) was a building in the Han dynasty imperial palace set aside for scholarly work and as a library.

———

158 A certain amount of confusion has crept into the sources concerning Ho T’ang’s biography during this period; see TK 115.

CHAPTER FIVE

RETIREMENT AUTUMN MOONLIGHT Of course Ho did not spend all his time missing his friends in Peking. As an already distinguished native son of Hsin-yang, he was naturally a centre of local elite society in spite of his youth. Although, as we shall see, Ho could be breathtakingly rude and thin-skinned in his relations with those of whose character he did not approve, both his works and descriptions of his personality make it clear that in company or at home he was genial and easy-going. Some of his friends in Hsin-yang were former officials living at home in retirement, as he was. Others were in office in Hsin-yang at the time. Still others are quite unknown outside of Ho’s works. Those who appear most often include Kao Chien 高鑑 (1452-1518), a chin-shih of 1478 who had retired from his post as Prefect of K’ui-chou 夔州 around 1500; 1 Ma Lu 馬錄 (1473?-1540?), who had passed the chü-jen in 1501 with Meng Yang; 2 Shen Ang 沈昂, a visiting native of Soochow; 3 Chao

———

1 For Kao Chien (t. K’o-ming 克明; h. T’ieh-hsi 鐵溪), see HY 2/169, Pen-ch’ao Fen-sheng Jen-wu K’ao 明分省人物考 (Study of Ming Men of Note, Divided by Province), compiled by Kuo T’ing-hsün 過廷訓 (1622; repr. Ming-tai Chuan-chi Ts’ung-k’an, vols.129-40, Taipei: Ming-wen, 1991) 92.10b (318), TK 199; the title of this source sometimes begins with Ming 明 rather than Pen-ch’ao 本朝 . Our knowledge of Kao’s life is almost entirely based on the long epitaph that Ho wrote for him, “Epitaph for the Late Ming Prefect of K’ui-chou, Mr. Kao T’ieh-hsi” 明故夔州府知府鐵溪先生高公墓誌銘, HTFC 36.16a (629; 銘:008). 2 For Ma Lu (t. Chün-ch’ing 君卿, h. Pai-yü 百愚), see TL 416, HY 3/141, KHL 65.53a (2844—Chu Mu-chieh), TK 197. Ho also wrote an epitaph for Ma’s mother, who died in 1516 while Ma was away on service as a censor, “Epitaph for the Child Nurturess Wang” 王孺人墓誌銘, HTFC 36.15a (628; 銘:007). We learn from this that her father had been a guardsman at Hsin-yang. Ma Lu would pass the chin-shih in 1508 and serve both in the provinces and in Peking. He was eventually banished to the southwest after opposing Shih-tsung in the Great Ritual Controversy of the 1520s. He died there at 68 sui, in the seventeenth year of his exile. 3 Since we know so little about Shen Ang (t. Tzu-kao 子高; h. Ch’ing-hsi-tzu 清溪子, see TK 157), it is perhaps worthy of note that Ho Ching-ming’s friend Cheng

160

CHAPTER FIVE

Hui 趙惠, a local poet and scholar who had introduced Ho to Shen; 4 Jen Yung 任鏞, a local tribute student; 5 Chia Ts’e 賈策, a senior instructor; 6 and Liu Chieh, a Hsin-yang native who had passed the chü-jen examination along with Ho in 1498. 7 In addition, Ho’s literary eminence and early examination successes attracted to him a group of students. Three of these were the sons of men whom Ho knew as friends. One was Tai Kuan, who had evidently left his father in Hsien-hsien and was continuing his studies with Ho in Hsin-yang. Then there was Sun Chi-fang 孫繼芳 (14831541), son of Sun Jung, the Prefect of Hsin-yang to whom Ho had addressed his “Poem of Five Horses” as Sun left Peking. 8 Sun Chifang would later become known as a fearlessly outspoken and highly principled official, but in the summer of 1507 he was staying with his father and studying for the chü-jen examination, which he and Tai Kuan both passed in the fall. Sun would not pass the chin-shih until

———

Shan-fu (see below, chapter seven), a poet of some importance associated with Archaism, may also have known him. Cheng, who was one of Ho’s closest associates after 1511, was from Fukien, but spent considerable time in the Soochow area from which Shen hailed and wrote a poem entitled “Visiting my Friend Clear Creek on an Autumn Day: Using Previous Rhymes” 秋日尋友清溪用韻, Shao-ku Chi 少谷集 (Collected Works from Shao-ku) (SKCS) 2.30a (37); not in Cheng Shih鄭詩 (Cheng’s Poetry) (Chia-ching edition). The poem does not, however, contain any explicit reference that would confirm that Cheng’s friend was Shen Ang. 4 Chao Hui (t. Yüan-tse 元澤, h.Hsüeh-chou 雪舟) later held office in Yunnan. See TK 184. He was perhaps related to one Chao Mo 謨, whose younger sister was married to Ma Lu; see (Ch’ien-lung) Hsin-yang Chou Chih (1925; repr.Taipei: Ch’eng-wen, 1976) 8.12b (286). 5 For Jen Yung (t. Hung-ch’i宏(洪)器, h. Ts’ao-t’ing 草亭), see TK 111. See Hsinyang Chou Chih 7.10a (245) for Jen’s status as a Tribute Student, one chosen as qualified for study in the National University or appointment to minor office. 6 For the identification of Chia Ts’e (h. Hsi-ku 西谷) with Chia Hsi-ku (the latter is the name appearing in Ho’s works), see TK 183. 7 For the identification of Liu Chieh (t. Ch’ao-hsin 朝信) with Liu Ch’ao-hsin (the latter is the name appearing in Ho’s works), see TK 121, Liu went to Peking in 1511 while Ho was in Hsin-yang, perhaps to attempt the chin-shih examination. In the title of one poem, “Staying Overnight in Hsien-yin Temple with Master Kao T’ieh-hsi [Chien] and Elder Brother Liu Ch’ao-hsin [Chieh]: Matching Rhymes” 同高鐵溪先生劉朝信兄宿賢隱寺次韻, HTFC 25.8b (444; 272:521), Ho refers to Liu as an “elder brother” (兄 hsiung), which suggests the possibility that one of Ho’s brothers was married to one of Liu’s sisters, but may simply refer to their having passed the chü-jen examination in the same year and suggest that Liu was the elder. 8 For Sun Chi-fang (t. Shih-ch’i世其; h. Shih-chi 石磯), see TL 445, HY 3/101, KHL 102.52a (4588—anonymous), TK 130. Ho’s “Rhapsody on Stony Chute” 石磯賦, HTFC 2.1a (17; 賦:021) was written at Sun’s request about a place in his native Hua-jung. Ho makes the topic his basis for a moral parable.

RETIREMENT

161

1511 and did spend some of the intervening period in Hsin-yang. A third student at this time was a young man from Hsin-yang named Fan P’eng, to whom we have referred already, as the author of Ho’s Curriculum, his first biography. In this, Fan proudly recalls how Ho had once told his father, Ho Hsin, “This lad is very clever; I have great hopes for him.” 9 Fan’s own father was of course the honest but illiterate trader Fan Liang, whose epitaph by Ho we have already encountered. We can get some feeling for the atmosphere in this provincial circle from an essay that Ho wrote for Shen Ang. Shen figures quite prominently in Ho’s works of this time, although his visit to Hsinyang was actually quite brief, comprising a few months in the latter half of 1507. Essay Presented to Master Clear Creek 10 Master Clear Creek once visited our district and inscribed a poem at a temple in the hills. I was still a child when he left, but after I was grown I visited the temple and saw his poem. This year I took leave and

———

9 The chronology of Fan’s association with Ho is not entirely clear. We know from the epitaph written by Ho that Fan’s father died late in 1513 (HTFC 36.9b [625; 銘:004]), and presumably P’eng would have stayed at home after this to observe the mourning period of twenty-seven months. This would have ended early in 1516, and Fan passed the chü-jen examination later that year. In the Curriculum, he says that he studied with Ho when he was growing up, that Ho was in office in Peking for six years after this, and then that it was five more years before Ho died. During this five year period, he began to devote himself to poetry and was looking forward to Ho’s return so they could discuss it. The periods of six and then “over five” years are hard to fit into the chronology of Ho’s life. Counting something over five years back from Ho’s death brings us to early 1516. Six more years gives early 1510, but Ho did not return to Peking until late in 1511. It is also odd, considering that Fan was asked to write the Curriculum, that there are only two poems in Ho’s works directly addressed to him. There is an encouraging poem in the Chia-chi, “Presented to Student Fan P’eng” 贈樊生鵬, HTFC 17.8b (272; 252:533), YK A.16b; and another one, written as Fan left for a trip to the Yangtse delta and Nanking, in the Ching-chi, “Saying Farewell to Master P’eng” 送樊生, HTFC 12.15b (171; 371:508). Neither of these poems can be securely dated, however, and both are in nature chiefly extravagant poetic plays on P’eng’s name, so they raise as many questions as they answer. Returning to the periods of years referred to in the Curriculum, the most likely interpretation is that the ‘six years’ refer to the period between Ho’s return to Peking late in 1511 and an otherwise undocumented but likely trip to Peking by Fan P’eng in order to attempt the 1517 chin-shih after his chü-jen pass in 1516, and that the ‘over five years’ is a generous inclusive reckoning of the time from then until Ho’s return to Hsin-yang to die. 10 HTFC 35.3a (606; 序:004). This essay was sent to Shen with a group of poems by his Hsin-yang friends after he had returned home.

162

CHAPTER FIVE

remained secluded in my retreat west of the city, only very infrequently receiving visitors. There is a man in my area named Chao Hui; he is an elder, and so I often meet him for conversations. One day he came with a guest. I asked who his guest was, and he replied, “He is Master Clear Creek. I knew him back when I was a student, and now he has come again, after twenty years.” Master Clear Creek is also an elder, a capable poet and an excellent lutenist. He is an inveterate traveller who has wandered throughout the Yangtse basin and the far south for thirty years. I too enjoy travelling. I have been to Yen 燕 and Chao 趙 [Hopeh], and to Ch’in 秦 [Shensi], Ch’u 楚 [Hunan], Tien 滇 [Yunnan], and Shu 蜀 [Szechwan]. But these were all trips taken on official business, not to satisfy my own wishes. I was delighted to discuss travelling with him. A senior of our district, Mr. Kao Chien, who previously served in the Ministry of War and on the borders of Ch’u and who also held provincial office in the lower Yangtse region and in Szechwan, is also fond of travelling. At present he has left office and is living in retirement, with no one to discuss travel with; he was overjoyed to talk several times with Master Clear Creek. And so Kao and I invited him to stay for more than a month. Every day we sang, chanted poetry, and played the lute until midnight without fail. 11 There is something of the accidental in human meetings and separations. When Master Clear Creek first came to our district, I was a mere child and Kao Chien happened to be away in office. After twenty years he has come again, and on his return we have gotten so much out of association together. Surely this is not accidental! . . .

After a quiet summer spent ‘recuperating’ in apparent solitude, it is the visit of Shen Ang that draws forth the first real signs of sociability. Among the earliest poems written in the company of Shen Ang are these two: 雨夜次清溪院靜聞疎雨、林高納遠風。秋聲連蟋蟀、寒色上梧桐。短榻孤燈裏、清笳萬井中。天涯未歸客、此夜憶江東。

———

11 For poems written with Shen Ang, see “Untrammeled Gentleman Shen has Come from Wu-hsia; He is an Able Versifier and an Excellent Performer on the Lute; He has Sent a Few Dozen Poems my Way, and Since He is Lodging in the Town and I Cannot Go Visit Him Because of my Illness, I Have Written This Poem to Invite Him to Come to my Humble Farm” 沈逸士來自吳下能詩善鼓琴閒投篇什見訊顧館於城中予以病不得造乃作此詩招致敝庄, HTFC 24.9a (426; 272:007); “Sitting at Night with ‘Clear Creek’ Shen” 同沈清溪夜坐, HTFC 15.11a (231; 252:027-028); “Clear Creek’s Thatched Hall” 清溪草堂, HTFC 15.13a (232; 252:033-036); and below.

RETIREMENT

163

A Rainy Evening, Matching “Clear Creek” (first of two poems) 12 The courtyard so still I can hear the scattered raindrops, Trees so tall they catch a wind from far away . . . The sounds of autumn are linked by chirping crickets; The look of winter ascends the phoenix trees. A narrow couch in the light of a single lamp; A clear reed flute among ten thousand wells: At the edge of the world a stranger not yet home Is remembering the south this very evening. The “sounds of autumn” and “look of winter” are a natural pair, and so are found opening the lines of a couplet, as in “Gazing on the River of Ch’in” 望秦川 by the High T’ang poet Li Ch’i 李頎, “The sound of autumn in the bamboo of ten thousand households, / The look of winter in the pines of Wu-ling” 秋聲萬戶竹、寒色五陵松. 13 The link to crickets is also made by Tu Fu, in his “A Playful Note to ViceMagistrate Yen Shih While Sitting in the Evening in the Official Courtyard” 官庭夕坐戲簡顏十少府, “A sojourner’s sorrow is linked to chirping crickets” 客愁連蟋蟀. 14 Li Po saw the look of a different season in the ‘phoenix trees’ in his “In the Autumn, Climbing the North Tower of Hsieh T’iao in Hsüan-ch’eng” 秋登宣城謝朓北樓, “The smoke of men among the chilly citrus, / The look of autumn in ancient phoenix trees” 人煙寒橘柚、秋色老梧桐. 15 Ten thousand wells imply ten thousand households, as in Tu Fu’s “Climbing the Pavilion on Oxhead Hill” 登牛頭山亭子, “The road emerges beyond a pair of groves, / The pavilion peers down on ten thousand wells” 路出雙林外、亭窺萬井中 . 16 Ho’s penultimate line combines reminiscences of both the

———

12 HTFC 15.12a (231; 252:029). In the title, I follow the Yung recension in reading 次 ‘following, matching’, in place of 似 ‘resembling’, which is the reading of the other three recensions. The latter reading is difficult to construe here; it would mean something like “A Rainy Evening, Like ‘Clear Creek’.” In contrast to this, ‘matching’ is a common activity in Ming poetry—as in the next poem translated—and clearly preferable. It is thus not especially surprising that this is also the reading of a Ming selection from Ho’s works that generally follows the Shen recension closely, the Ta-fu Chi 大復集 in 13 chüan published, according to the catalogue of the Sonkeikaku Library, during the Wan-li era by one Yang Pao 楊保 and extant in a half-dozen copies in China and Japan. Yang Pao presumably emended by conjecture. The real puzzle is why the other recensions, especially the Standard, did not emend for the same reason. The ‘Phoenix Tree’ is the ubiquitous wu-t’ung 梧桐, so called here because according to the Chuang-tzu, the mythical P’eng bird would perch on no other. I believe that this translation coinage was proposed by someone else, but I cannot recall who. 13 CTS 134.1361; K.06380. 14 Tu Shih Yin-te 532/13/3, CTS 232.2562, K.11826. 15 Ri Haku Kashi Sakuin 0725/05-06; CTS 180.1839; K.08583; An Ch’i, p.1075. 16 Tu Shih Yin-te 386/37/1-2, CTS 227.2462, K.11286.

164

CHAPTER FIVE

eighteenth of Tu Fu’s “Twenty Miscellaneous Poems of Ch’in-chou” 秦州雜詩, “The place is rustic, and autumn almost gone, / The hills are high, and a stranger not yet home” 地僻秋將盡、山高客未歸, 17 and Ts’en Shen’s “Saying Farewell to Censor Hsüeh of the Four Garrisons, Who is Returning to the East” 送四鎮薛侍御東歸, “As we say our farewells, tears wet my robe; / At the edge of the world, I alone am not yet home” 相送淚沾衣、天涯獨未歸. 18 雨中和清溪濛雨蕭條至、悲風日暮多。積陰生徑草、永夜落庭柯。宅愧高人隱、門勞長者過。白鷗如有意、相逐下烟波。 In the Rain: to Match a Poem by “Clear Creek” 19 Drear and still, a drizzling rain begins; “At the end of day, a grieving wind picks up.” Gathering shadows are born on the pathway grass; The long night leads the garden boughs to shed. My house humbled by a true sage’s retirement, My gateway troubles an elder to pay a call. White gulls, as though on purpose, Follow him down the misty waves . . . Ho’s second line is identical to the final line of a poem by Tu Fu, “Visiting the Former Estate of Vice-Director Sung Chih-wen” 過宋員外之問舊莊. 20 The final couplet is reminiscent of one by the High T’ang poet Ch’u Kuang-hsi 儲光羲, in the third of his “Kiangnan Songs” 江南曲, “Falling flowers, as though on purpose, / Flow back and forth, following my boat” 落花如有意、來去逐船流. 21 See below, chapter six, for the phrase “down the misty waves” 下煙波in another of Ho’s poems.

Ch’en P’ing 陳平, an important aide to Liu Pang 劉邦, founder of the Han dynasty, began life in very humble circumstances. Even so, his reputation for wisdom was such that the carriage tracks of great men were numerous outside his gate. 22 The Lieh-tzu is the source for the story of a young man so guileless that gulls would land on his boat

——— 17

Tu Shih Yin-te 321/1R/1-2, CTS 225.2419, K.11053. CTS 200.2075; K.09700; Liu K’ai-yang, comp., Ts’en Shen Shih-chi Pien-nien Chien-chu (Chengtu: Pa-Shu, 1995), p.352. 19 HTFC 15.12b (232; 252:032). 20 Tu Shih Yin-te 278/8/8, CTS 224.2394, K.10925. 21 CTS 139.1418; K.06653. 22 Shih Chi (Peking: Chung-hua, 1959) 56.2052; Han Shu (Peking: Chung-hua, 1962) 40.2038. 18

RETIREMENT

165

and play in his presence. However, after his father had asked him to take advantage of their trust to capture one, the young man found that the gulls would only circle overhead, but would no longer descend within his reach. 23 There is a nice touch in the second poem, only partly apparent in translation, in that the consistent emotional tone is one of withdrawal before the inclement nature and reduced light of winter, while the main verbs of the first three lines are all ones of motion or growth. Only in the fourth line is the emotional tone matched by a verb of descent. As often, the third couplet brings a shift to reflection. The tone is one of sad, even humble, recognition of his obscurity, for his house is not inhabited by a truly worthy recluse, nor do men of importance pause at his gate. His freedom from worldly ambitions is attested by the companionship of the gulls. Compared with some of Ho’s poems on his situation, such as the one written on the Hu-t’o River, this one is conspicuously more relaxed. The irony of the verbs is not only resolved in the fourth line, the resolution is confirmed and accepted in the last. An interesting formal point is the use of a parallel opening couplet. Such couplets are optional in regulated verse, but Ho exercises the option with unusual frequency. 24 That he incorporates an unchanged line by Tu Fu into all this is just one more touch of mastery. After a series of poems written in Shen Ang’s company, there is a return to solitary contemplation around the time of Ho’s birthday, early in the eighth month. 25 At times, Ho seems to forget the larger world altogether. 雨後三日不出門、草長門前路。登樓一水明、倚柱千山暮。

———

23 Lieh-tzu Chu-tzu So-yin (Hong Kong: Shang-wu, 1996) 2/11/12-14; Lieh-tzu Chi-shih 列子集釋 (Collected Explications of the Lieh-tzu), compiled by Yang Pochün 楊伯峻, (Peking: Chung-hua, 1979), pp.67-68; A. C. Graham, The Book of Liehtzu (London: John Murray, 1960), p.45. 24 Yokota Terutoshi 橫田輝俊has pointed out Ho’s partiality for parallel structures in his “Ka Keimei no Bungaku” 何景明の文學 (The Literature of Ho Ching-ming), Hiroshima Daigaku Bungakubu Kiyō 25 (1965): 246-61; pp.252-54. 25 See “Ting Day of the Eighth Month” 八月丁日, “My Birthday” 初度, HTFC 15.14b (234; 252:041, 042); “Sitting Alone” 獨坐, “Standing Alone” 獨立, HTFC 28.2b (493; 254:013, 014); “Night” 夜, “Shade” 陰, HTFC 15.15a (234, 235; 252:043, 044).

166

CHAPTER FIVE

After Rain (third of ten poems) 26 For three days now I have not gone outside; The grass is longer by the road in front. I climb a pavilion, and the whole river grows bright, Lean against a pillar, and dusk falls on a thousand hills. The second half of the poem echoes a couplet in the second of Tu Fu’s two poems “I Have Accompanied [Magistrate] Chang of Tzu-chou Boating on the River Several Times, and Each Time There Were Female Musicians Aboard, So I Wrote These ‘Sensuous Songs’ in Fun” 數陪章梓州泛江有女樂在諸舫戲為艷曲, “I halt my horse as dusk falls on a thousand hills, / Turn back my boat as the whole river grows fragrant” 立馬千山暮、迴舟一水香. 27

It was probably at about this time that Ho Ching-ming saw his nephew Ho Shih 士 off to Kaifeng, with instructions to visit Li Mengyang and bring back some of his writing. This does, at least, seem the most likely inference to draw from Ho’s preface to his “Rhapsody on the Lame” 蹇賦, which he says he had written at Li Meng-yang’s request, to match Li’s analogous work “Rhapsody on the Dulled Blade” 鈍賦, brought back from Kaifeng by Ho Shih. 28 Li’s rhapsody seems to be a response to the failure of the campaign to unseat Liu Chin. The most likely piece of business for an unemployed young man intended for a career in civil office to have in hand on a trip to the provincial capital was of course the examination for the chü-jen degree, which Ho Shih did eventually pass in 1513. The examinations were held in 1507 and 1510, among the years Ho Ching-ming spent in Hsin-yang. The tone of Li’s piece seems more appropriate to the earlier year, and the requirements of mourning for his grandfather would have kept Ho Shih from competing in 1510. The eighth month brought a great burst of poetry written in the

——— 26

HTFC 28.1b (492; 254:004). Tu Shih Yin-te 386/36B/5-6, CTS 227.2462, K.11285. HTFC 1.12b (8; 賦:003). For Li Meng-yang’s work, see K’ung-t’ung Hsiensheng Chi (1530; repr. Taipei: Wei-wen, 1976) 1.2a (3). Liu Hai-han, relying on Chu An-hsien’s often inaccurate Nien-piao, assigns this exchange of fu to 1515, but this is clearly wrong, since Ho’s piece is included in the Chia-chi. Wang Kung-wang 王公望 asssigns the same date, though he does not mention Liu Hai-han. See his “Li Mengyang yü Ho Ching-ming” 李夢陽與何景明 (Li Meng-yang and Ho Ching-ming), Shek’o Tsung-heng 2001.5:47-49. The suggestion in TK (p.28) that Ho Shih took Chingming’s rhapsody with him to Kaifeng for presentation is mistaken. For Ho Shih (t. Tzu-ku 子穀), whose father was Ho’s elder brother Ching-yang, see TK 112. 27 28

RETIREMENT

167

days centering on the Moon Festival, the high point being Ho’s moonviewing party on the fifteenth, attended by Kao Chien, Shen Ang, Chao Hui, and Ma Lu. 29 Varying combinations of personal expression, social occasion, and literary convention are evident in this series. The first two poems show two different aspects of the moon as a theme for poetry: 十三夜對月閒居愛明月、良節復與俱。金魄麗秋闉、皓彩揚雲衢。澄空歛霜煙、清飆蕩中區。徘徊廣庭內、改席臨方除。顧景怵衷慮、興心念居諸。天道遞消長、戒之在須臾。懷謙可久安、盛滿豈恒居。孰云質靡盈、所貴光不渝。 Viewing the Moon on the Thirteenth Night of the Month 30 Living at ease, I love the radiant moon; On a happy occasion, my joy is complete again. A silver spirit adorns the autumn portals; Dazzling colours enhance the cloudy crossroads. The limpid heavens gather frost and mist; A pellucid whirlwind sweeps the Middle Regions. Lingering here within a wide courtyard, I move my seat to look out on the square stairway. To gaze at this view brings out my inmost thoughts; Inspired at heart I recite, “Oh sun, ah moon!” The Way of Heaven varies wax and wane; The transition between them hardly takes a moment. By cherishing restraint one can long abide;

———

29 “The Moon” 月, HTFC 15.16a (236; 252:050-051); “I Invite Shen Ch’ing-hsi [Ang], Chao Hsüeh-chou [Hui], and Ma Pai-yü [Lu] to Climb the Pavilion: Following Pai-yü’s Rhymes” 邀沈清溪趙雪舟馬百愚登樓次百愚韻 , HTFC 24.9a (427; 272:008]), “On the Fifteenth Night, Kao T’ieh-hsi [Chien], Along With Shen Ch’inghsi [Ang], Chao Hsüeh-chou [Hui], and Ma Pai-yü [Lu] Visits my Humble Residence to View the Moon” 十五夜高鐵溪同沈清溪趙雪舟馬百愚過敝居對月, HTFC 8.3b (86; 251:030); and below. Li Meng-yang also wrote several poems on the middle nights of the lunar month; see K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi, 14.10b-11a (312-13) and 22.11b-13a (538-41), but these seem to have no relationship to Ho’s. Many of Ho’s contemporaries wrote poems on the nights of full or nearly full moons, but the only explicit ‘set’ I have found is that by Hsü Chin’s son Hsü Tsan 許讚 titled “MidAutumn Moon” 中秋月, with five poems for the fourteenth to seventeenth nights; see Sung-kao Chi 松皋集 (Pine Marsh Collection) (edition with 1543 preface in Naikaku Bunko) 11.9b. 30 HTFC 8.3a (87; 251:028). In the third line, I follow the Yung and Standard recensions in reading 魄 “spirit” and 闉 “portal” rather than 鳧 “duck” and 闈 “gate” as in the Shen and Yüan recensions. Graphic confusion seems to lie behind both variants.

168

CHAPTER FIVE

Glory and fullness will surely not last forever. What matter that its form is still not full? My treasure is this light that does not alter. To “gaze at the view” 顧景 or “gaze on the reflection/shadow” 顧影 often means to look at one’s own image with a sense of pride or selfsatisfaction, but here I think it better to take the phrase literally. Some of the phrases in the poem, such as ‘silver spirit’, are well established poetic diction. In line ten. “Oh sun, ah moon” (Ho’s text actually reads only “Oh, Ah,” but the reference is clear) is the recurrent stanzaopening phrase of a poem in the Songs whose theme is unfaithfulness. 31 The second line of the next couplet dovetails together echoes of two or three quite different texts. Confucius is recorded in the Analects as saying that the gentleman had three different ‘guard againsts’ in successive periods of life. For example, in youth he was to guard against feminine beauty 戒之在色. 32 The phrase admits, however, of different emphases. In a Tu Fu poem on the theme of the Herd Boy and Weaving Maid, which he characteristically mixes with thoughts on the relationship between ruler and subject, the line 戒之在至公 means something like “the thing to pay attention to is attaining fairness,” that is, to guard against partiality. 33 Ho’s sense seems to have moved further in the same direction, dropping the note of moral anxiety and replacing it with simple watchfulness. The other echoed phrase is “hardly takes a moment” 在須臾, familiar from the opening of the first of the poems that Li Ling presented to his friend Su Wu, “This happy time will never come again; / Until our parting there is scarcely a moment” 良時不再至、離別在須臾. 34 The end of the next couplet is also reminiscent of an earlier text, in this case a “Miscellaneous Poem” by the Tsin poet Tso Ssu 左思, “Youthful years will not last forever” 壯齒不恆居. 35 The last line may echo a piece of prose, Pan Ku’s Tien-yin 典引 (“A Disquisition on the Constants”), which at one point says, “Their light and beauty shines and does not alter” 光藻勆而不渝. 36 十四夜同清溪子對月林塘枉佳客、待月欣舉觴。今夕勝昨夕、已見生東方。離離降霄側、冉冉素雲揚。踰時灝氣澈、縣耀天中央。仰視渺難即、忽覺在我旁。清池含微波、左右浥流光。月行固當望、人會何能常。與子各鄉域、邂逅臨此堂。良時不屢值、明月安可忘。醉歌答永

——— 31

Mao Shih Yin-te 6/29; Karlgren, p.17; Waley, p.63. Lun-yü Yin-te 34/16/7; see Waley, p.205; Lau, p.140. 33 Tu Shih Yin-te 168/5/34, CTS 221.2338, K.10779. For another reference to this poem, see below, chapter six, “On the Pond.” 34 WH 29.8b (400); Lu Ch’in-li, p.337. 35 WH 29.23b (408); Lu Ch’in-li, p.735. 36 WH 48.17a (677). 32

RETIREMENT

169

夕、和我窈窕章。 Viewing the Moon on the Fourteenth Night with Master Clear Creek 37 By grove and pond I trouble an honoured guest; Awaiting the moon we happily raise our flagons. This evening it excels the evening past, Already appearing, born in the eastern quarter. Drooping, drooping, the crimson heavens crouch; Slowly, slowly, now the pale cloud rises. After two hours its resplendant aura is limpid, Suspended brilliance there at the heavens’ centre. Our upward stares can hardly cover the distance; But all of a sudden we find it right beside us! The clear pond waters harbour gentle ripples; To left and right they moisten the drifting glow. The moon progresses surely toward its fullness; Human meetings—how can they be lasting? I join with you, each from his village or hamlet, Our happy meeting outside this hall— So fine an occasion cannot be often met; The bright moonlight—how could we neglect it?

———

37 HTFC 8.3b (87; 251:029). Master Clear Creek is Shen Ang (see above). The Yung recension gives Shen’s surname and tzu, ‘Shen Tzu-kao’ 沈子高, instead. For 素 ‘pale’ in the sixth line, the Yung recension has 紫 ‘lavender’. Lavender clouds were an auspicious sign, seen above men of great virtue, for example. Here the description seems to be purely physical, so ‘pale’ seems to be the better reading. In the next line, the Shen and Yüan recensions read 氛 ‘emanation’ in place of 氣 ‘vapour, aura’, the reading of the Yung and Standard recensions. The difficulties of translating either word in this context tend to discourage the attempt to choose between them. An equally difficult crux comes in line 10, where the Yung recension reads 覓 ‘see, find’ while the other texts all read 覺 ‘notice, awaken to’. The compilers of the Standard recension thought the distinction important enough to justify their recording the Yung reading as a variant. It is easy to see how the similarity of the two characters led to the confusion, especially if 覺 was written in its long-established simplified form 覚, but hard to decide which word makes the better poem and hence, perhaps, the more likely authorial reading. That 覺 is the reading of both the Wen Hsüan and the Yü-t’ai Hsin-yung (see below) makes it the lectio facilior, since it strengthens the textual reminiscence, but I adopt it partly on the authority of the Standard recension, whose compiler lists覓 as a rejected variant. Although it remains possible, of course, that Ho intended to vary his source by writing 覓, the likelihood of graphic confusion makes this the more plausible explanation for the existence of the variant. In line 12, the Yung and Shen recensions read 挹 ‘scoop up [liquid].’ while the Yüan and Standard recensions have a homonym, 浥 ‘moisten’. In principle, the recensions compiled earlier are more likely to contain authorial readings. However, after turning the original text every which way in search of an interstice through which light might make its way, as Samuel Johnson once recommended, I do not think that ‘scoop up’ will make good sense here, in spite of the aqueous context.

170

CHAPTER FIVE

Drunken songs respond to this long evening, Written to match our “Beautiful Poems”. The tenth line of this poem combines elements from two adjacent lines of an old ballad sometimes attributed to Ts’ai Yung: “In dreams I see him by my side. / Suddenly I wake in another land” 夢見在我旁、忽覺在佗鄉. 38 Lines fourteen and seventeen are both reminiscent of the opening of the second of Ts’ao Chih’s “Saying Farewell to Mr. Ying” 送應氏, “Pure hours are hard to attain often; / Happy occasions cannot long endure” 清時難屢得、嘉會不可常. 39 “Our happy meeting” 邂逅 in line sixteen is among the oldest bisyllabic expressions in Chinese, occurring already in the Songs; in modern Chinese it generally means “by chance.” 40 In addition to Ts’ao Chih, just mentioned, line seventeen also echoes the opening of Li Ling’s poem for Su Wu, as in the preceding poem. The next line recalls Ts’ao Chih yet again, a line in one of his “Miscellaneous Poems” 雜詩, “Spring love, how could I forget?” 春思安可忘 . 41 The final couplet glances at two poems in the Songs. The “long evening” 永夕of the penultimate line recalls a line in the “White Colt” 白駒 poem, “in order to prolong this evening” 以永今夕. 42 The “Beautiful Poem” 窈窕章is “The Moon Arises” 月出 , the eighth in the “Airs of Ch’en” section of the Songs and an apt referent for Ho’s poem.

Both of these poems are rather ‘old-fashioned’ in some ways. The almost redundant character of the second and third couplets of the first poem, four lines that except for the rhyme words really might be taken in any order, and the sententious tone of the penultimate couplet of the same poem and the seventh couplet of the second suggest Han and Wei models. On the other hand, the sophistication of the descriptive lines and such touches as the paradox in the fifth couplet of the second poem belong to a later manner. And the structure of the poems taken

———

38 WH 27.16a (377); YTHY 1.24b (27); Lu Ch’in-li p.192; Ts’ai Chung-lang Wenchi 蔡中郎文集 (Collected Literary Works of Inner Gentleman Ts’ai) (SPTK), waichuan, p.7a (64); cf. the translation in Birrell, p.47. Birrell’s translation punctuates the poem somewhat differently. See the preceding note for an account of the textual variant in Ho’s poem. 39 WH 20.32a (278); Lu Ch’in-li p.454; Ts’ao Tzu-chien Chi (SPTK) 5.2b (19). 40 Mao Shih Yin-te 19/94/1, 24/118/2. Karlgren translates it as “carefree and happy” in the first case (p.61) and as “happy ones” in the second (p.76). Cf. Waley, who adopts the more recent, though very old, meaning “by chance” in the first case (p.21) and “this meeting” in the second (p.87). All of these meanings are possible in the case of Ho’s poem. 41 YTHY 2.5b (38); Lu Ch’in-li p.458; Ts’ao Tzu-chien Chi 5.10b (23). I quote the translation in Birrell, p. 67. 42 Mao Shih Yin-te; cf. Karlgren, p.128, Waley, p.194.

RETIREMENT

171

as wholes too is much more polished than would be the case in a really early poem. In the second of the two poems, for example, the basic pattern, inherited from early poetry, of situation—natural description—interpretation of significance is preserved, but the construction, especially of the descriptive lines, is very deftly handled. The progress of the moon is followed over a period of time, as the moon rises from the horizon to its zenith. The ninth line links the moon to its viewers by beginning with their action in gazing at it (implied by the preceding lines, but not presented explicitly) and this leads naturally, if swiftly, down to the pool in which the moon’s reflection is visible. One can almost see the two men rubbing their necks and looking around at each other as the spell of the rising moon’s beauty is broken. The ‘return to earth’ leads naturally to the seventh couplet and thus to the occasion and the party, the final couplet accounting for the poem itself. One of Ho’s finest Hsin-yang poems comes from a banquet in the fall of 1507. Although no guests are actually named. I suspect that it may in fact have been held on the Moon Festival itself, the fifteenth night, which Ho spent with Kao Chien, Shen Ang, Chao Hui, and Ma Lu. 43 聽琴篇美人橫琴坐我堂、酒闌為鼓三四行。燈孤月明客不發、絃悲調急秋夜長。吾家瑤琴久不拭、金徽玉珍無顏色。感君對此如有情、

———

43 One poem certainly comes from this occasion, and another probably does; see “On the Fifteenth Night, Kao T’ieh-hsi [Chien] Visits my Humble Residence with Shen Ch’ing-hsi [Ang], Chao Hsüeh-chou [Hui], and Ma Pai-yü [Lu] to View the Moon” 十五夜高鐵溪同沈清溪趙雪舟馬百愚過敝居對月 , HTFC 8.3b (88; 251:030), and “Inviting Shen Ch’ing-hsi [Ang], Chao Hsüeh-chou [Hui], and Ma Paiyü [Lu] Upstairs: Matching Pai-yü’s Rhymes” 邀沈清溪趙雪舟馬百愚登樓次百愚韻 , HTFC 24.9a (427; 272:008). Another poem probably from this period and possibly from this very occasion is found only in the Ta-fu Yi-kao (B.12a). The title, 同高鐵溪先生過趙石塘宅觀花聯句, can be understood in more than one way. The Yi-kao places the poem in a class by itself as a lien-chü (i.e. a poem in which two or more writers took turns contributing lines), the only such poem in Ho’s corpus. This implies reading the title as “A Linked Verse on Visiting the Residence of Chao Shiht’ang with Mr. Kao T’ieh-hsi [Chien] to Look at Paintings.” Since the compilers of the Ta-fu Yi-kao were working from manuscripts, probably in Ho’s own hand, it is likely that their handling of the poem is correct. Nonetheless, as there is no indication of the writers of separate parts of the poem, it should be noted that the title can also be rendered simply as “To Go With Mr. Kao T’ieh-hsi’s Linked verse ‘Visiting the residence of Chao Shih-t’ang to Look at Paintings’.” Chao Shih-t’ang (‘Stone Pool’) is unidentified, but may well have been related to Chao ‘Snowy Boat’ Hui.

172

CHAPTER FIVE

一彈使我三嘆息。樵歌響答山澗幽、楚歌慷慨雲夜愁。瀟湘猗蘭稍平逸、四坐但覺清商流。始聞白雪停翠竹、烈颷吹我溪上屋。忽然翻作廣寒遊、知是霓裳羽衣曲。含宮移羽何舂容、泠泠萬壑吟風松。煙岑一夕怨鳴鶴、江天何處驚般龍。我初好音惟好此、橫笛短簫徒聒耳。平生頗抱鍾期懷、四海難逢伯牙子。今夕何夕願不違、為君擊節淚沾衣。高歌雅和人世稀、河轉參橫君莫歸。 On Listening to Someone Play the Lute 44 A beautiful woman sets down her lute, seated here in my hall; As the banquet ends she prepares to perform just three or four refrains. Her lamp is alone, the moon is bright, the guests do not depart; The strings are grieving, the melody swift, it is “Autumn Night so Long.” This jeweled lute in our household has long remained unplayed, Golden frets and pegs of jade without the look of life. I am touched that you approach it as though with affection; As soon as you play I cannot help but heave a string of sighs. The songs of woodsmen echo and answer to the still of a mountain glen; The songs of Ch’u are grave and grieving with the pain of a cloudy night. The “Hsiao and Hsiang” and “Admiring Orchids” turn gradually even and free; All in the room are only aware of the flow of the pure shang tones. And now I hear white snow begin to settle on dark bamboo, A raging tempest blowing against my hut beside the creek. All of a sudden it turns into a visit to the “vast and wintry”, And I know that this is the “Song of Rainbow Skirts and Feather Robes.” The kung restrained and the yü astir, how they sound and respond! Pure and cool, ten thousand glens with murmuring breeze-blown pines. On a hazy crag all evening long, a sadly crying crane; Where between the river and heaven, a startled coiling dragon? From the very first my love of music has been a love of this; The transverse flute and treble pipes only jangle in my ears. All my life I have always cherished the longings of Chung Tzu-ch’i,

——— 44

HTFC 11.10b (149; 271:007). In the seventeenth line, the Shen recension reads 春 ‘spring’ in place of 舂 ‘pound’. The latter is part of the rhyming binome 舂容and hence clearly the better reading here. In the antepenultimate line, the Yung recension reverses the first two characters, giving 君為 ‘you do’ in place of 為君 ‘for you’. In both these cases the translation follows the majority of the recensions. For another poem by Ho on a woman playing a lute, see “Sorrow of the Jeweled Zittern” 瑤瑟怨, HTFC 6.b (60; 樂:051).

RETIREMENT

173

But in this world it is hard to meet a man like Po Ya-tzu. And now tonight, or any night, it is this I would not forego; Just for you I beat the measure as tears drop on my robe. A lofty song, refined and calm, rare in the world of men; Though the River revolves and the stars turn round—do not go back home! The first stanza ends with a reminiscence of the opening line of a “Miscellaneous Poem” by Ts’ao P’i 曹丕 , “Lingering, lingering, the autumn night so long” 漫漫秋夜長. 45 The phrase “autumn night so long” subsequently became a yüeh-fu ballad title, hence my translation. The next line ends with what may be a reminiscence of the final couplet of the Middle Tang poet Liu Yü-hsi’s 劉禹錫 “Matching Minister Li of Hsi-ch’uan’s ‘Faint Moonlight over the River Han: Visiting the West Lake of Grand Marshall Fang’” 和西川李尚書漢川微月游房太尉西湖, “The jeweled lute has long been stilled; / The resonance of the pines makes autumn sad” 瑤琴久已絕、松韻自悲秋. 46 The next line appears to conflate two poems found in the Yü-t’ai Hsin-yung, an “Autumn Night” 秋夜poem by Hsiao Yi, Emperor Yüan of the Liang, which ends, “Golden frets, tuning jade pegs, / This night I strum ‘Parted Geese’” 金徽調玉軫、茲夜撫離鴻, 47 and a “Thinking of Him” 思公子 by the Northern Ch’i poet Hsing Shao 邢劭, “Peach and plum trees without the look of life” 桃李無顏色. 48 The next line ends with what may be a recollection of Yü Chien-wu’s 庾肩吾 “Grass in the Ch’ang-hsin Palace” 詠長信宮中草, “Enclosing fragrance as though with affection” 含芳如有情. 49 The last line of the stanza has its origin in a line in the fifth of the “Nineteen Old Poems,” “Pluck once, and two or three sighs” 一彈再三 . 50 However, it also recalls several poems by Li Po, in particular the end of the eleventh of the “Ancient Airs,” “This makes me heave a long sigh; / Darkness lodges among the rocky cliffs” 使我長嘆息、冥棲巖石間, 51 and “Written on Looking for a Mountain Monk but not Meeting Him” 尋山僧不遇作, “This makes me sigh to no

———

45 WH 29.13b (403); Lu Ch’in-li, p.401; Ts’ao P’i Chi Chiao-chu 曹丕集校注 (Collected works of Ts’ao P’i, Collated and Annotated), compiled by Hsia Ch’uants’ai 夏傳才 and T’ang Shao-chung 唐紹忠 (Chengchow: Chung-chou Ku-chi, 1992), p.19. 46 CTS 358.4040; K.18892; Liu Yü-hsi Shih Pien-nien Chiao-chu 劉禹錫詩編年校注 (Poetry of Liu Yü-hsi, Annotated and Chronologically Arranged), compiled by Kao Chih-chung 高志忠 (Harbin: Heilungkiang Jen-min, 2005) 17.2328. 47 YTHY 7.28a (120); Lu Ch’in-li, p.2054; cf. the translation in Birrell, p.204. 48 YTHY 10.32a (189); Lu Ch’in-li, p.2263. 49 YTHY 10.27b (186); Lu Ch’in-li, p.2002; cf. the translation in Birrell, p.290. 50 WH 29.3b (398); YTHY 1.13a (22); Lu Ch’in-li, p.330. The Yü-t’ai Hsin-yung attributes the poem to Mei Sheng 枚乘. 51 Ri Haku Kashi Sakuin 0011/11-12; CTS 161.1672; K.07875; An Ch’i, p.580.

174

CHAPTER FIVE

avail, / I want to leave and yet I linger on” 使我空歎息、欲去仍徘徊. 52 Although Ho is evoking music, it is possible that his phrasing of the second line of his antepenultimate stanza recalls a line in an early Tu Fu poem “A Ch’iao-ling Poem in Thirty Rhymes Presented to All the Officials in the County” 橋陵詩三十韻因呈縣內諸官, “Breezeblown pines, so pure and cool” 風松肅冷冷. 53 The penultimate stanza opens with what is apparently a play on a line from the “P’an Shui” 泮水 poem in the Songs, “Cherishing our fine notes” 懷我好音. 54 What makes this a play on words rather than simply a reminiscence is that in the Songs line, ‘fine’ 好 is clearly an adjective, ‘fine, good, beautiful’, while in Ho’s poem it is a cognate word, a transitive verb written with the same character but pronounced in a different tone, ‘to be fond of, to like’. The next line conflates two or even three earlier texts. To begin with, there is the opening of Tu Fu’s “Boating at the West Bank of the City” 城西陂泛舟, “Dark brows and flashing teeth aboard a towered boat, / Transverse flutes and treble pipes grieve the distant skies” 青蛾皓齒在樓船、橫笛短簫悲遠天. 55 The rest of the line may derive from a passage in Hsi K’ang’s 嵇康“Letter Breaking Off Relations with Shan Chü-yüan” 與山巨源絕交書 , “I don’t like vulgar people, but sometimes I have to work with them, and at times, the seats are filled with visitors and retainers and the sound of their voices jangles in my ears. To be in some noisy, dusty, stinking place with the sight of all their innumerable shifts and tricks before my eyes, this is the sixth thing I cannot stand.” 56 An intermediary between Hsi K’ang and Ho’s poem may be Ts’en Shen’s “A Song of Prefect T’ien’s Beauty Dancing the ‘Like a Lotus Flower: A Northern Whirl’” 田使君美人舞如蓮花北旋歌, “Now I realise that no other song can compare with this; / ‘Picking Lotus’ and ‘Falling Plum Blossom’ only jangle in the ears” 始知諸曲不可比、採蓮落梅徒聒耳 . 57 The final stanza begins with a literal quotation of a line from the “Ch’ou-miu” 綢缪 poem in the Songs, in which the line is repeated in the middle of each of three stanzas. 58

——— 52

Ri Haku Kashi Sakuin 0802/07-08; CTS 182.1854; K.08659; An Ch’i, p.1217. Tu Shih Yin-te 33/12/10, CTS 216.2263, K.10530. Mao Shih Yin-te 80/299/8; Karlgren, p.257; Waley, p.269. Karlgren and Waley’s translations are quite different from one another, and mine differs from both of theirs. 55 Tu Shih Yin-te 281/15/1-2, CTS 224.2396, K.10932. 56 WH 43.5a (594); Hsi Chung-san Chi 嵇中散集 (Collected Works of Courtier Hsi (SPTK) 2.5b (11). 57 CTS 199.2057; K.09617; Liu K’ai-yang, comp., Ts’en Shen Shih-chi Pien-nien Chien-chu, p.198. In the title, I read 旋 rather than the rare character 査 found in Ts’en’s works. Liu K’ai-yang’s notes provide the various alternatives to be found in different sources and editions. 58 Mao Shih Yin-te 24/118/1,2,3; Karlgren, p.76; Waley, p.87. The line was borrowed by later poets, for example in an anonymous folk song from Yüeh included in YTHY 9.2b (145); Lu Ch’in-li, p.24; cf. the translation in Birrell, p.231. Tu Fu also 53 54

RETIREMENT

175

The ‘Hsiao and Hsiang’, ‘Admiring Orchids’, and ‘Song of Rainbow Skirts and Feather Robes’ were well-known pieces of music. Although the last of these was in fact a Central Asian song that had become very popular during the T’ang, a later legend maintained that Emperor Hsüan-tsung had travelled to the Moon, where he heard it performed in the ‘Vast and Wintry Palace’. Shang, kung, and yü are variously notes and modes in the Chinese musical system. A large body of yüehfu ballads were eventually classified as ‘Pure Shang Songs’, so it is possible that Ho is referring to the corpus rather than the notes. Po Yatzu, or Po Ya, was a great lutenist of antiquity who found in Chung Tzu-ch’i 鍾子期 a listener who could understand his inmost thoughts from his playing. When Chung died, Po Ya broke his lute, cut the strings, and never played the instrument again, saying that he no longer had anyone to perform for. 59 I have translated the poem as though the performer was a woman, chiefly because the opening words ‘beautiful person’ (美人 mei jen) usually, though by no means always, refer to women. It is also possible that the performer was a man, perhaps even Shen Ang himself. Ho Ching-ming appears to have been a knowledgeable and discerning lover of music. This poem is one of the more evident signs of this, but he draws on music as an example in other writings as well. The larger structure of this poem is symmetrical, two stanzas for the setting, three for the description of the performance, and two for Ho’s response. But Ho overlays this with a texture of anticipations and recalls, much as one would find in a piece of music. The final line of the first stanza, for example, anticipates the extended description of the performance, while the corresponding line of the second stanza anticipates Ho’s response at the end of the poem. The structure of the poem also recreates the experience of an actual performance. Note, for example, how the rest of the audience effectively disappears after the

———

uses the line twice, see Tu Shih Yin-te 8/10/1, CTS 216.2254, K.10502; 17/20/3, 216.2257, K.10514. Except that the line begins the poem in the Yüeh folk song and the first of the Tu Fu examples, these later cases are no closer textually to Ho Chingming’s poem than the Songs original. 59 Elements of the story of Po Ya-tzu and Chung Tzu-ch’i are found in a number of early texts. See, for example, the Lieh-tzu Chu-tzu So-yin 5/31/1; Lieh-tzu Chi-shih, p.178; A.C. Graham, The Book of Lieh-tzu, p.109-10; Huai-nan-tzu Chi-shih 淮南子集釋 (Collected Interpretations of Huai-nan-tzu), compiled by Ho Ning 何寧 (Peking: Chung-hua, 1998), p.1355.

176

CHAPTER FIVE

third stanza and how the texture of specific references to notes and titles thins out as the musical experience itself takes hold of Ho’s imagination. Even the desire for an ‘encore’ reflects this. In two later poems in the moon series the poet retreats more obviously behind the conventions of ‘moon poems’: 十六夜月日夕城煙歛、列宿出復多。開軒望明月、展席流素波。圓輝雖少虧、猶能遍天涯。單翫不為樂、念遠徒咨嗟。美人越崇京、高樓結綺霞。浮雲暮長征、何由覩光華。迅飈萬里至、霜霧日以加。坐憂桂枝歇、委落同泥沙。清輝茍相照、豈慮天河遐。 The Moon on the Sixteenth Night 60 As day turns to night, smoke from the town subsides; The stars in their places appear and then increase. I open a window and gaze at the shining moon, Spread out a mat in its pale gliding waves. Although its rounded light is slightly diminished, It still is able to fill the heavens’ span. To enjoy it alone can bring no pleasure at all; I long from afar, but can only sigh in admiration. A beautiful woman away in the glorious capital, In a lofty pavilion knots a brocade sunset. “Drifting clouds at dusk on their long voyage, How can they ever see its radiant light? Swiftly a whirlwind comes from ten thousand leagues; Frost and fog grow heavier day by day. I am sorry that the cassia bough is fading, Abandoned, neglected as though but mud or grit. If this pure radiance would only shine on me, How could I think the roads of Heaven distant!” Ho opened his window to gaze in the same words (開軒望) in the final line of “Extemporised on Returning Home,” translated in the preceding chapter. Ho’s seventh line echoes one by Li Po, in his poem “Presented to Assistant Magistrate Lu Ch’ien of Jen-ch’eng” 贈任城盧主簿潛,

———

60 HTFC 8.4a (88; 251:031). Meng Yang’s poem to the same title, Meng Yu-ya Chi (1538 edition) 2.3a, does not appear to be related to Ho’s. In line seven, I adopt the reading ‘enjoy’ 翫, found only in the Yung recension. The others texts have 居 ‘reside’. In the final line I again follow the Yung recension against the others, reading 遐 ‘distant’ rather than 何 ‘how/what’. The latter reading would give the line the sense, “What would I care for the roads of Heaven?” This seems less likely to me in this context, but by no means impossible. The compilers of the Standard recension report both variants, which may suggest that they thought them at least plausible.

RETIREMENT

177

“Bells and drums bring no pleasure at all” 鍾鼓不為樂 . 61 The archetypal poetic ‘lofty pavilion’ is in the fifth of the “ “Nineteen Old Poems,” which begins, “In the northwest there is a lofty pavilion, / That ascends to the level of the drifting clouds” 西北有高樓、上與浮雲齊. 62 It should be no surprise that the drifting clouds appear in Ho’s next line. ‘Knotting Brocade’ was the name of a historical ‘lofty pavilion’, one of three constructed by the last ruler of the Ch’en dynasty to house his consorts, in this case Precious Consort Chang. 63 Although the context is quite different, Ho would also have had in mind a passage in the “Distant Roaming” 遠遊 poem in the Ch’u Tz’u, “I carry my restrained spirit and mount the sunset, / Seize a floating cloud and voyage upward” 載營魄而登霞兮、掩浮雲而上征. 64 The phrase “abandoned mud and sand” 委泥沙 was often used both descriptively, as in the closing couplet of Tu Fu’s “Beneath the Blossoms” 花底, “I fully comprehend your fine colour and charm; / Do not become abandoned mud and sand” 深知好顏色、莫作委泥沙 , 65 and metaphorically, as in the early T’ang poet and calligrapher Yü Shihnan’s 虞世南 “At the Gate There is a Sojourner by Horse and Carriage” 門有車馬客 , “Encountering favour they emerge in feathered decorations; / Going astray they are abandoned mud and sand” 逢恩初毛羽、失路委泥沙. 66 “Pure radiance” 清輝 is a common term for the moon, as in Li Po’s “With Wine in Hand I Question the Moon” 把酒問月 , “When the pale green haze is utterly gone its pure radiance emerges” 綠煙滅盡清輝發, 67 and closing couplet of Tu Fu’s “Full Moon” 月圓, “In the old garden, pines and cassia bloom; / For ten thousand li they share the pure radiance” 故園松桂發、萬里共清輝. 68 十七月夜更深月復明、揚秀青雲端。浮颷倏以寂、長川靜波瀾。徘徊廣除下、白露棲崇蘭。仰見城西樓、迴光照文軒。樓中織綺女、延頸獨哀嘆。哀嘆未終已、素河橫西山。逝魄不長望、玉貌寧久妍。君毋吝光惠、使我芳歲闌。

——— 61

Ri Haku Kashi Sakuin 293/05; CTS 168.1732; K. 08157; An Ch’i, p.702. WH 29.31 (398); Lu Ch’in-li, p.330. Nan Shih 南史 (History of the South), compiled by Li Yen-shou 李延壽 (Peking: Chung-hua, 1975) 12.347. 64 Ch’u Tz’u Pu-chu 5.6a (277). My translation is intended to bring out the parallels with Ho’s poem. For an alternative rendering, see Hawkes, first ed., p.84, Penguin ed., p.196. 65 Tu Shih Yin-te 377/30/8, CTS 234.2585, K.11926. 66 CTS p.36.472; K.02566. 67 Ri Haku Kashi Sakuin 0662/06; CTS 179.1827; K.08521; An Ch’i, p.651. 68 Tu Shih Yin-te 497/38/7-8, CTS 230.2525, K.11634. 62 63

178

CHAPTER FIVE

The Moon on the Seventeenth Night (second of two poems) 69 As the hour grows late the moon is bright again; Raising its bloom beyond the darkened clouds. A drifting whirlwind suddenly falls silent; The long river stills its rippling billows. I linger beneath the wide stairway; Snowy dew rests on perfect orchids. I look up and behold a pavilion west of the town; A reflected glow shines on its patterned windows. Inside the pavilion a maiden weaving brocade Cranes ner neck but only sighs with grief. She sighs with grief and does not ever stop; The pale stream arches over the Western Hills . . . “The hasty spirit cannot be always full; A visage of jade will surely not charm forever. Do not begrudge the gift of light; And make me waste my fragrant years . . .” I have treated the endings of both of these poems as giving the imagined words of the woman in the pavilion, though this is not explicitly required by the text. “Beyond the darkened clouds” 青雲端 refers to great distances, but not always to ones impossible to traverse. An example that Ho would have known is the final couplet of Tu Fu’s “Parting from Tung T’ing” 別董頲, “I shall think of you wearing a white cap / And picking ferns beyond the darkened clouds” 當念着白

——— 69

HTFC 8.5a (89; 251:033). Note that the Shen and Yüan recensions combine the two poems. In the thirteenth line, I follow the Yung and Shen recensions in reading 常 ‘constant, enduring’; the Yüan and Standard recensions have a homonym, 長, whose meaning is similar (‘long, long-lasting’) but not quite identical. In the next line, the Yung recension reads 王 ‘king, royal’ rather than 玉 ‘jade’, surely an error caused by the similarity of the characters. There is also a puzzling variant in the penultimate line, either 毋 (wu ‘do not’) or 母 (mu ‘mother’). The Ming editions all appear to read mu; at least none of them has an unambiguous wu (the Yüan recension comes closest). The Honan edition editors, who prefer wu, record it in the Ch’ing dynasty editions, and it is clearly the reading of the Ssu-k’u Ch’üan-shu text. The two characters are readily confused, and Chinese block-cutters were, in my experience, often careless about distinguishing them, perhaps because in most cases the context makes it quite clear which is intended. In this case, the preceding word 君 chün (here used as a pronoun, ‘you’) makes either reading at least possible. If the character is mu, chün mu refers to a stepmother (the speaker’s mother being a concubine). The point would be that the stepmother is keeping the girl shut up in her chamber producing brocade when she would rather be married. The speech would reflect Ho’s own concern at being cut off from active service as an official. If the character is wu, as I have translated it, the imagined maiden is addressing an imagined lover and urging him to pay more attention to her, an image frequently used by poets who feel underemployed.

RETIREMENT

179

帽、采薇青原端. 70 The fifth line of this poem is reminiscent of the fourth couplet of the “Thirteenth Night” poem above. It is quite likely that both were written in the same place. This line also provides a good example of the sort of apparent textual echo that is to be ignored. The “to and fro below” turns up toward the end of the anonymous old poem “Southeast the Peacock Flies” 孔雀東南飛 in the line “To and fro below the garden trees” 徘徊庭樹下, which is followed, however, by “And hanged himself from a south-east bough” 自掛東南枝. 71 Ho’s tenth and eleventh lines are reminiscent of the eleventh line of the ballad “Suffering from the Cold” 苦寒行 by Ts’ao Ts’ao, “Crane my neck and sigh long with grief” 延頸長歎息. 72 “Fragrant years wasting away” 芳歲闌is an expression refering to fading youth. Ho would have been familiar with such earlier uses as Ts’en Shen’s “Saying Farewell to Li Chu, Who is Travelling Beyond the River” 送李翥遊江外, “I grieve for the death of autumn grasses, / Withered and worn, their fragrant year wasting away” 惆悵秋草死、蕭條芳歲闌; 73 and the opening couplet in Po Chü-yi’s “Enjoying Chrysanthemums in the Eastern Garden” 東園玩菊, “My youth has disappeared already; / My fragrant years are now wasting all the more” 少年昨已去、芳歲今又闌. 74

Ho remains, of course, throughout his stay at home, actively aware that his ‘fragrant years’ are wasting away. Tai Kuan and Jen Yung were away in Kaifeng for the provincial examinations at this time. After Tai and Sun Chi-fang passed and Jen failed, Ho wrote poems of congratulation and consolation as appropriate. 75 There are poems from about the time of the Double Nine festival that refer to Chao Hui, Ma Lu, and Jen Yung, and perhaps also to Fan P’eng. 76

——— 70

Tu Shih Yin-te 232/17/19, CTS 223.2372, K.10867. YTHY 1.39b (35); Lu Ch’in-li, p.283; cf. the translation in Birrell, p.61. 72 WH 27.18b (378); Lu Ch’in-li, p.351; Ts’ao Ts’ao Chi Yi-chu (Peking: Chunghua, 1979), p.24. 73 CTS 198.2034; K.09523; Ts’en Shen Shih-chi Pien-nien Chien-chu, comp. Liu K’ai-yang, p.229. 74 CTS 429.4731; K.21991; Po Chü-yi Chi (Peking: Chung-hua, 1979) 6.116. 75 For responses to their examination fates, see “Rejoicing that Tai Chung-ho [Kuan] has Passed the Provincial Examination” 喜戴仲鶡得鄉薦, HTFC 28.15a (510; 274:024-025); “Consoling Jen Hung-ch’i [Yung] and Other friends Who Failed to Pass” 慰任宏器諸友失第, HTFC 28.15b (510; 274:026-027); and “Sent to Provincial Graduate Sun Shih-ch’i [Chi-fang]” 寄孫世其舉人, HTFC 16.2b (240; 252:061). Note that Fan P’eng’s epitaph for Tai Kuan, as included in KHL, has a nonexistent date, Cheng-te ting-yu 正德丁酉, for Tai’s chü-jen success. 76 “A Note to Chao Hsüeh-chou [Hui] Requesting Chrysanthemums” 簡趙雪舟乞菊, HTFC 28.3a (494; 254:017-018); “Climbing the Heights on the Ninth Day with Ma Chün-ch’ing [Lu] and Jen Hung-ch’i [Yung]” 九日同馬君卿任洪器, HTFC 16.1a 71

180

CHAPTER FIVE

The end of autumn and early winter bring a series of more solitary poems, including many on the changing phases of the year—we learn that it was a warm and rainy winter, with no snow until around the solstice, long after the plum trees had blossomed. 77 Among the earliest of these poems is one mourning Ho’s first wife: 悼往行雲不歸詹、逝水難重迴。與子一為別、流光漱如推。形神往無存、夢想弗克諧。孤冡日荒穢、幽泉翳窮埃。重扃一以閉、千秋寧復開。時至展遐忱、傾醑澆黃菜。還思平生居、歲久生夕苔。寒風吹空閨、彷彿鳴玉哀。人生重恩義、况茲比翼乖。何能眷新歡、棄擲故所懷。 Mourning my Late Wife 78 The moving clouds do not return to the hills; Hard for a river to reverse its course. No sooner was I separated from you, Than the flow of time pushed swiftly onward. Your form and spirit are gone without a trace; My dreaming longings cannot be realised. Your lonely grave is more weedy by the day; The quiet rill’s canopy turned all to dust. Once the doubled doors were shut upon you, For a thousand years—would they might open again! The season arrives, unfolding far-reaching sadness, I pour out fine wine to sprinkle the yellow blossoms. My thoughts return to where you lived when alive; As long years pass, the evening moss grows there.

———

(238; 252:055-058); “Ma Pai-yü [Lu] Comes to Visit with Shen Ch’ing-hsi [Ang]: Matching Rhymes” 馬百愚同沈清溪見訪次韻, HTFC 24.9b (427; 272:009-010); and “Chrysanthemums in Cultivated Talent Fan’s Garden” 樊秀才園內菊, HTFC 16.1a (238; 252:054). Li Meng-yang sent Ho a “Ninth Day” poem, “On the Ninth Day: Sent to Drafter Ho Ching-ming” 九日寄何舍人景明, K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi 31.6b (828). 77 See below and “Peaches and Plums Blossom in the Ninth Month” 九月桃梨花, HTFC 28.3b (494; 254:019); “Climbing the Fishing Terrace” 登釣臺, HTFC 16.2a (239; 252:059); “Early Winter” 孟冬, HTFC 16.2a (240; 252:060); “Tenth Month” 十月, HTFC 16.2b (241; 252:063); “Last Chrysanthemums” 殘菊, HTFC 16.3b (241; 252:066); “Clear Weather” 晴, HTFC 16.3b (242; 252:068); “Thunder” 雷, HTFC 23.4b (408; 253:005); “Twenty Rhymes Tossed Off During Winter Rains” 冬雨率然有二十韻, HTFC 7.9b (79; 251:006). 78 HTFC 8.5b (90; 251:035). In the final line, the Shen recension reads 棄置 “reject and set apart”; the Yüan and Standard recensions both read 棄擲 “reject and throw away,” the second words being homonyms (the Yung recension does not include this poem). The difference matters little in translation.

RETIREMENT

181

A wintry wind blows through the empty bedroom, As though to give grieving voice to pendants of jade. In human life we value devotion and kindness; So much the more now our paired wings are sundered! How can I be attached to a new joy, And throw away what I cherished of old?

Soon after this, the round of agricultural work brought around a scene in which Ho felt a resonance with his state: 除架苦葉蕭踈久、秋匏亦委沙。家人空抱蔓、山鳥莫啼花。零落親寒事、蹉跎感物華。衰榮轉相代、何必恨生涯。 Clearing the Trellises 79 The bitter leaves have been withered and sparse for long, And autumn gourds lie sprawling on the sand. The family workmen wrap up the vines for nothing; No mountain birds are singing among the blossoms. Cold and fallen—I draw near the works of winter; Halt and clumsy, moved by the splendour of things. Exhaustion and blooming take their places in turn; Why must I regret the ends of life?

During this first year at home, Ho turns often to one of the Chinese poet’s most characteristic devices, the metaphor for his own condition that evolves from what might otherwise be a pure genre piece. Unlike his earlier poem on the fishing at Chin-shih, written on his way to Yunnan (see above, chapter three), this one turns to a source not usually associated with the Ming Archaists, a work by the arch-Sung poet Su Shih. Although Ho often played at matching rhymes with friends and colleagues in Peking (see below, chapter ten), this is one of the few cases in which matched the rhymes of a ‘historical’ poet: 觀打魚用東坡韻大魚跳波如擲塊、溪日溶溶照金背。小魚呴沫沿岸行、潛向沙邊翻荇蔕。家童舉網欣得鮮、特持庖丁割為鱠。磁甖始見紅尾搖、霜刃旋看錦鱗碎。我雖愛此不忍食、悔不先教放溪瀨。自愛含生天地間、寧知失意波濤外。嗟哉小物尚有然、人間得喪誰得會。君不見鯤與鯨、釣者持綸空爾思、倐忽乘雲下滄海。

———

79 HTFC 16.2b (240; 252:062). Tu Fu wrote a similar poem with the same title. See Tu Shih Yin-te 326/18, CTS 225.2422, K.11072.

182

CHAPTER FIVE

Watching the Fishermen: On Su Shih’s Rhymes 80 Large fish leap the ripples just like skipping stones; Sunlight floods across the stream, shines on golden backs. The smaller fish are blowing bubbles in rows along the bank, Hiding under lily pads, just beside the beach. Household servants lift the net, delighted at the catch, Carry it off to kitchen cooks to have it scaled and sliced. No sooner do the red tails flicker in the stoneware vats, Than frosty blades are seen to scatter brocade scales. Though I am fond of this, I cannot bear to eat them ; I wish I had set them loose in the purling stream before. Fond by nature of all that lives between the heavens and earth, I should have seen their downfall once they leave the waves behind. Alas, since things are so, even for tiny creatures, Who can know success and failure in human life? Don’t you see the leviathans and whales, How anglers, line in hand, seek them to no avail, As all of a sudden they ride a cloud down into the dark sea. 寒水郭逢寒早、城陰慘澹中。遠山常霧雨、衰柳更天風。病骨思狐貉、愁顏付酒筩。關河待氷雪、何處有途窮。 Winter 81 In a river town I meet with a wintry morning; In the shade of the wall, it is grey and gloomy. Distant hills abide in fog and rain; In withered willows, a change in Heaven’s winds. My ailing bones long for fox and leopard;

———

80 HTFC 11.12a (150; 271:008). For Su’s poems (there are two of them), see Su Shih Shih-chi 蘇軾詩集 (Collected Poems of Su Shih), edited by Wang Wen-kao 王文誥 and K’ung Fan-li 孔凡禮 (Peking: Chung-hua, 1982) 34.1787-90. Ho supplies some background to the writing of this poem in his brief essay entitled “On Reading the ‘Record of Perfect Blossoms’” 讀精華錄, HTFC 38.11b (661; 雜:009). The “Record of Perfect Blossoms” refers to a selection of poems by Su Shih’s colleague Huang T’ing-chien 黃庭堅, the “Record of Perfect Blossoms by Grand Astrologer Huang” 黃太史精華錄, compiled by Jen Yüan 任淵, who also compiled collections of poetry by Su Shih and Ch’en Shih-tao 陳師道. The essay is interesting in that it confirms that Ho not only knew Sung poetry, a corpus generally denigrated by Archaist writers (see below, chapter nine), but felt that he knew it well enough to criticise Jen Yüan’s selection as poorly made. In the title of this poem, the Shen and Yüan recensions lack the word 用 ‘on, using’. In the eighth line, in what is clearly an error stemming from visually similar characters, the 野竹 ‘Country Bamboo’ edition of the Shen recension reads 月 ‘moon’ in place of 刃 ‘blade’. 81 HTFC 16.3a (241; 252:065).

RETIREMENT

183

My mournful face depends on measures of wine. Mountains and rivers, awaiting snow and ice: Nowhere do my travels have an end. The fourth line recalls a line by Tu Fu, in his “Inn” 客亭, “In an autumn window, the look of summer remains; / In shedding trees, the change in Heaven’s winds” 秋窗猶曙色、落木更天風 . 82 There is another reminiscence of Tu Fu in the penultimate line, this time to “Distant Farewell” 送遠, “Herbiage and trees age through the years and months; / On mountains and rivers the frost and snow are clear” 草木歲月晚、關河霜雪清. 83

Two poems document an incident assignable to a particular date, the fifth day of the eleventh lunar month. In the first, Ho invites Shen Ang and Chao Hui to visit during rainy weather. 84 In the second, Ho evokes the rainy weather and how he had invited them to visit. While Chao shut his gate, went to bed, and refused to venture out, Shen braved the muddy roads and came to Ho’s for an evening of wine, poetry, and singing, joined eventually by an unidentified neighbour of Ho’s named P’eng. 85 Toward the end of winter, Shen Ang left Hsin-yang to return home. Shortly before he left, Meng Yang arrived for a short visit while on an official mission. In addition, Tai Kuan, Sun Chi-fang, and Ma Lu left for Peking to attempt the chin-shih examinations. Poems of welcome and farewell thus occupy an important place at this time. 86 When Tai

——— 82

Tu Shih Yin-te 384/25/1-2, CTS 227.2459, K.11267. For another reference to this poem, see below, chapter six, “On Seeing Snow as I Get Up at Dawn.” 83 Tu Shih Yin-te 327/21/5-6, CTS 225.2423, K.11076. 84 “During Rain on the Fifth Day of the Eleventh Month, I Invite Shen Ch’ing-hsi [Ang] and Chao Hsüeh-chou [Hui]” 十一月五日雨中邀沈清溪趙雪舟, HTFC 24.10a (428; 272:011). 85 “Ballad of a Rainy Evening” 雨夕行, HTFC 11.13b (152; 271:011). 86 For works associated with Shen Ang’s departure, see “Presented to Master Clear Creek [Shen Ang]” 贈清溪子序, HTFC 35.3a (606; 序:004); “A Second Leave-taking from Master Clear Creek [Shen Ang]” 再別清溪子, HTFC 16.4a (243; 252:071); and “Missing Master Shen [Ang]” 懷沈子 , HTFC 16.4b (243; 252:073). For Meng Yang’s visit, see “Rejoicing in the Arrival of Wang-chih [Meng Yang] and Welcoming Him with a Poem” 喜望之至以詩迎之, HTFC 16.4a (242; 252:070); “Presented to Wang-chih [Meng Yang] During Rain and Snow” 雨雪呈望之, HTFC 11.14b (153; 271:013); “On Hearing that Wang-chih [Meng Yang] has Bought a Horse and is Busy Packing, I Try to Keep Him On With a Poem” 聞望之買馬促裝以詩留之, HTFC 24.13a (431; 272:024); “Presented to Wang-chih [Meng Yang]” 贈望之, HTFC 8.6a (90; 251:036-040); “Taking Leave of Wang-chih [Meng Yang]” 別望之, HTFC 16.5a (244; 252:074); and “Missing Wang-chih [Meng Yang] on the Day of Man” 人日懷孟望之, HTFC 24.14b [432; 272:026]). Meng’s farewell poem,

184

CHAPTER FIVE

came to say farewell, Ho wrote a long poem called “Ballad of the Precious Sword,” alluding to the old custom of presenting a sword to a friend departing on a bold undertaking. 87 To judge from the number of poems written in Shen Ang’s company, he and Ho must have found each other congenial company. The surprising thing about the following poem, written in the winter, after Shen left Hsin-yang, is that it may be the very last reference to him in Ho’s works. 懷沈子沈生南國去、別我獨悽然。落月清江樹、歸人何處船。十年安陸舍、數口太湖田。想到鄉園日、生涯亦可憐。 Missing Master Shen 88 Master Shen has gone to a southern land, Parted from me, now so comfortless. A setting moon and trees by a clear river; The boat somewhere of a traveller homeward bound. For ten years, a hut in An-lu County; Several mouths for a field by T’ai-hu Lake. I picture the day you reach your garden at home; How sad it is, the limits of human life! Ho’s second couplet recalls, more in the original than in translation, a

———

“Responding to Ho Chung-mo [Ching-ming], Who has Written a Poem to Keep Me On: Matching Rhymes” 酬何仲默以詩見留次韻, is in Meng Yu-ya Chi 9.17b. For Sun, see “Sent to Sun Shih-ch’i [Chi-fang]” 寄孫世其, HTFC 28.3b 495; 254:022025). This set of quatrains was sent to Sun in Peking. Ho’s works do not refer to Ma’s departure, but we know he had been in Hsin-yang in the fall and passed the chin-shih in 1508. 87 See 寶劍篇, HTFC 11.15a (153; 271:014). Another poem written at about this time is “Entering the Capital” 入京篇, HTFC 12.13b (169; 271:018). Chin Jungch’üan takes it to be a poem that Ho wrote around 1516 referring to his own languishing career, “Ho Ching-ming Nien-p’u Hsin-pien,” Hsin-yang Shih-fan Hsüehyüan Hsüeh-pao (1995.1) :98-102; p.101. However, the poem is clearly assigned to the Chia-chi collection in all editions but the later “no block-carvers’ names” family within the Standard recension. The latter place it in the Ching-chi collection, but this seems clearly to be a late corruption probably based on an interpretation similar to Chin’s. See TK 30, 292. 88 HTFC 16.4b (243; 252:073). In the third line, the Yung recension alone reads 青’green’, in place of 清 ‘clear’. There seems to be no reason to adopt this reading. In the seventh line, the Yung recension has another unique and uncompelling reading, 若 ‘if’ in place of 想 ‘think’. In the same line, I follow theYung and Standard recensions in reading 園 ‘garden’ rather than ‘passes’ 關 as in the Shen and Yüan recensions. There is not a great deal to choose from among the two readings.

RETIREMENT

185

couplet in Tu Fu’s “In the Gorges” 峽隘, “Along the river are trees of distant lakes; / Where, now, is someone’s boat” 水有遠湖樹、人今何處船. 89

An-lu was a county in Hupeh, southwest of Ho’s home. Lake T’ai-hu is in Kiangsu, in the area of Shen’s native place. With so many of his Hsin-yang friends going north, Ho had both occasion to think of Li Meng-yang and ready opportunities to send Li a poem. 寄李空同黃河臘月氷十丈、縱有鯉魚那得上。楚天鴻雁避霜雪、未得逢春難北向。康王城邊沙草曛、梁王臺上多暮雲。野人歲晚誰相對、桐柏山中空憶君。 Sent to Li K’ung-t’ung [Meng-yang] 90 On the Yellow River in the year’s last month, the ice is ten yards thick; Even if a carp were there, it could never ascend the stream. Migrating geese in the skies over Ch’u are fleeing frost and snow; Hard for them to turn to the north until they encounter spring. Along the walls of King Shao-k’ang, the sand and grass at dusk; Above the Prince of Liang’s old terrace, many evening clouds. A man in the wilds at the end of the year, with none to be his companion, Among the Phoenix and Cypress Hills remembers you in vain.

Legend held that if a carp could ascend the Yellow River to its source it would be transformed into a dragon. The geographical references in the inner couplets are to Ho and Li, Ho being the geese in Ch’u unable to return northward and the walls of King Shao-k’ang and the terrace of the Prince of Liang being historical sites in Kaifeng, the former, at least, close to Li Meng-yang’s home. The T’ung-po (‘Phoenix Tree and Cypress’) Hills are the range running to the west and south of Hsin-yang. Among the peaks are Mt. Ta-fu and Mt. T’ai-tsan 胎簪, both names that Ho used as hao. Ho wrote three poems on or for the last night of the year. A pair of pentasyllabic old-style verse depicts him in the snug comfort of home, enjoying a festive meal and resigned to the pursuit of virtue in a

——— 89 90

Tu Shih Yin-te 450/17/5-6, CTS 229.2506, K.11530. HTFC 11.16a (155; 271:016).

186

CHAPTER FIVE

private life. 91 A heptasyllabic old-style “Song of the End of the Year” 歲晏行, in contrast, portrays the uncertain lives of the local poor, scrambling to pay their taxes under the hectoring of the collectors. 92 The unusual weather may well have interfered with agriculture, leading to the shortages and unrest of the coming year. That some of his friends were away in the capital naturally stirred nostalgia for happier times in Peking. 元夕懷都下之遊白馬金珂上苑東、六街歌舞散香風。豪遊已作三年夢、愁對春燈此夜紅。 Thinking of my Friends in the Capital on the First Full Moon of the Year (fifth of five poems) 93 A white horse and a golden bridle, east of the palace garden, Dancing and song along Six Boulevards, a fragrance-wafting breeze . . . Of brave adventures I have dreamed already my three years’ dream; Sadly I face a springtime lampwick burning red tonight.

Like some of the preceding poems, this one is intended as an evocation of literary precedents rather than as a faithful record of Ho’s life. The boisterous young aristocrat in the capital was a stock figure in High T’ang verse, particularly in heptasyllabic quatrains. The Six Boulevards were six broad roads running through the T’ang capital, Ch’ang-an, used here and elsewhere as a substitute for Peking.The red lamps of the entertainment quarter were a part of the image of the heptasyllabic seeker of youthful excitements, just as was the golden bridle, and this is the image that Ho uses to make the ‘awakening’ from past joys to present sorrow. Around this time, Meng Yang, who was travelling as part of his duties in the Messenger Office, 94 wrote a poem with Ho in mind:

——— 91

See “Last Night of the Year” 除夜, HTFC 8.7b (92; 251:041-042). HTFC 11.16b (155; 271:017). HTFC 29.4b (516; 274:525). A few days earlier, Ho had written a poem while missing Meng Yang (see above). Later in the spring, after the chin-shih examinations, Ho sent a nostalgic poem to Sun Chi-fang, who had failed, “Sent to Sun Shih-ch’i [Chi-fang]” 寄孫世其, HTFC 16.5a (244; 252:076). 94 On the post of Messenger, see Sun Wei-kuo 孫衛國, “Shih-shuo Ming-tai te Hsing-jen” 試說明代的行人 (A Provisional Account of Messengers in the Ming Period), Shih-hsüeh Ts’ung-k’an 1994.1:11-16. Sun notes that the heavy responsibilities borne by Messengers made the post a route to promotion for those who served successfully. 92 93

RETIREMENT

187

曉發趙州懷何仲默寒意欲沉西麓盡、明星亦報東方昕。村鷄樹上鳴未歇、僧磬林深清可聞。回首漸辭燕著雨、相思猶隔汝淮雲。莫嗔吏隱難相入、尊酒茅堂許論文。 Meng Yang: Setting Out from Chao-chou at Dawn I Think of Ho Chung-mo [Ching-ming] 95 The wintry moon is about to sink behind the western slopes; Bright stars are already heralding dawn in the eastern quarter. Atop the trees, the crowing of village roosters not yet ceased; In wooded depths, the clear-toned temple stone chimes can be heard. Looking back, I slowly leave the rains of Yen and Chao behind, Think of one cut off from me by clouds of Ju and Huai. Do not protest that clerk and hermit can hardly mingle together; With jugs of wine in your thatched hall we might discuss good writing.

Chao-chou (now Chao-hsien) is in west-central Hopeh. The region around it was held by the states of Yen and Chao in ancient times. The Ju and Huai are two rivers of Honan. Except for the latter part of 1508, the period 1508-1511 is one for which the problems in reconstructing the chronology of Ho’s works are most acute. Some Chia-chi poems for whose dates there is little real evidence seem most plausibly assigned to the spring of 1508, among them the following two, the first on a painting by a local worthy, unknown outside of Ho’s works, the second a celebration of one of the major festivals of the year. 題葉邦重山水畫限韻我愛君家畫裏峰、更看茅屋傍雙松。白雲不是人間路、滄海終期物外蹤。野徑一春無駐馬、石潭深夜有蟠龍。移家欲向溪邊住、坐聽青山日暮鐘。

———

95 Meng Yu-ya Chi, 9.15b, cited in LHH 4.13a; also TK 401. In another poem written at Chao-chou while ill, dated 1508/3/15, Meng refers to his fellow townsmen in another poem, “On the Fifteenth Day of the Third Month, Lodged While Ill at Chao-chou: At This Time, Drafter Ho [Ching-ming] has Retired and Tai [Kuan] and Ma [Lu] are Taking the Court Examination” 三月十五日病寓趙州時何舍人致仕馬戴二進士應廷試, Meng Yu-ya Chi 9.18a, cited in LHH 4.13a. It is not clear whether Meng fell ill in Chao-chou while on his way back to Peking from Hsin-yang or while on a later, separate assignment. The poem translated here suggests the latter, as Meng is leaving Yen (the area around Peking) but not anticipating an early meeting with Ho—if he were on his way to Hsin-yang, the poem could scarcely arrive there much before he did himself.

188

CHAPTER FIVE

Inscribed on a Landscape by Yeh Pang-chung: Composed to a Set Rhyme 96 I love the mountain peaks portrayed in this painting in your house; The more as I gaze on the thatch-roofed hut between a pair of pines. These white clouds are really not a road in the world of men; This dark sea awaits footsteps beyond the realm of things. The country path goes all spring long without a tethered horse; The stony tarn in the depth of night produces coiling dragons. I should wish, in moving house, to live beside this creek; Just to hear in these green hills the bell at end of day. The final line recalls that of Meng Hao-jan’s “Mooring in the Evening at Hsün-yang I Gaze Toward Mt. Lu” 晚泊潯陽望廬山, “At the end of day, I just hear the bell” 日暮但聞鐘. 97

It is important to realise that the impulse uppermost in the mind of a poet writing a poem such as this one was generally to compliment, at least indirectly, the man responsible for his opportunity to see the painting, whether the artist or the owner. In the latter case, the title often included a phrase such as “in the collection of . . .” The lack of such an indication here suggests that Yeh may have been a local painter. The poem keeps close to the conventions of its type, although it does avoid explicit praise of the quality of the painting. One nice touch occurs in the final couplet. After the predictable wish to live in the landscape depicted, Ho bases his last line not on visual images, found in the painting and used for all the images up to this point, but on the sound of a temple bell. This not only ends the poem by breaking the series of ‘scenes’, but also neatly compliments the painter—your painting is so evocative that I can hear a temple bell echoing in its hills! The Ch’ing-ming (清明 ‘clear and bright’) festival, still celebrated today, is the traditional occasion for sweeping and tidying up the graves of one’s family members. Taking place in late spring, the activity encourages a festive spirit often accompanied by a picnic, weather permitting (which it sometimes does not).

———

96 HTFC 25.12a (448; 272:533). The title is translated as it appears in the Standard recension. The Yüan recension gives the title simply as “A Landscape by Yeh Pangchung” 葉邦重山水畫. Yeh Pang-chung is unidentified, but see TK 176. 97 CTS 160.1645; K.07731; Li Ching-pai 李景白 comp., Meng Hao-jan Shih-chi Chiao-chu (Chengtu: Pa-Shu Shu-she, 1988), p.126. There are variants in both the title and the quoted line, but they do not affect the resemblance between the two lines.

RETIREMENT

189

清明碧草晴川麗、遊人興渺然。歲時聊仗履、兒女更鞦韆。沙白孤城日、山青萬井烟。風花暮無數、片片落河邊。 Grave-sweeping Day 98 Emerald weeds adorn the sunlit river; The joy of roaming revelers waxes expansive. Guests and friends rely on staves and sandals; Sons and daughters ride the swings in turn. The sand is white in the sun by the lonely wall; Hills are green over mist from ten thousand wells. Wind-blown blossoms, countless in the dusk; Petal by petal they fall to the river’s bank.

DISTANT THUNDER The closing couplet of this last poem suggests the possibility that Meng anticipated, or had felt, Ho’s disapproval of his not retiring also. Ho’s attitudes toward the capital, his friends still there, those already demoted and sent out to the provinces or living in retirement, and his own situation were liable to be complex. Aside from local leadership in one’s native place, the only conceivable career for a member of the educated class was public service. So, on the one hand, Ho’s delight in Tai Kuan’s success in the 1508 chin-shih examinations was no doubt genuine. But those who had been driven out of office by Liu Chin or who had retired to avoid him may have felt varying degrees of resentment toward those who stayed on in prominent positions. After Liu’s fall, a number of the latter, including Ho’s friends K’ang Hai and Wang Chiu-ssu, would be purged from the civil service, and even Li Tung-yang, who played a role in the eunuch’s downfall, would not

———

98 HTFC 17.11a (276; 252:547). Two variants in this poem call for comment. In the third line, I follow the Yüan recension in reading 賓朋 ‘guests and friends’ where the Yung and Standard recensions read 歲時 ‘year and season’, which might be translated in this context as ‘[on] seasonal holidays [we]’. The Yüan recension reading is more closely parallel to the ‘sons and daughters’ in the next line, and the lectio facilior does seem the better choice in this very unambitious poem. In the sixth line, the K’ang-hsi, Ch’ien-lung, and Hsien-feng editions of the Standard recension read 清 ‘clear, pure’ for the homophonous 青 ‘green’. Perhaps feeling the poem to call for something more interesting, the editors of the Honan edition prefer this Ch’ing dynasty alternative, calling it 新 ‘fresh, new’. That it may be, but in the absence of confirmation in any of the early editions, I do not adopt it here.

190

CHAPTER FIVE

be entirely forgiven for the compromises he had made while waiting for the opportunity to act. 99 One by one, many of Ho’s friends in Peking had resigned, been relegated to provincial posts, or even been driven out of official life altogether by Liu Chin. In the spring of 1508, Wang T’ing-hsiang was sent out to the provinces, and, in the autumn, a former Minister of War, Liu Ta-hsia 劉大夏 (1437-1516), was sent to the northern frontier as a common soldier at the age of seventy-one, though he had been a close advisor to the recently deceased Emperor—he had come to the rescue of Li Meng-yang in 1505 (see above, chapter three). 100 Liu Ta-hsia

———

99 For example, Ts’ui Hsien is said to have disparaged Li Tung-yang for cooperating with Liu (in a preface quoted in MSCS ting 13.1367—I have not found the original in any edition of Ts’ui’s works). Li K’ai-hsien, who was of course associated with K’ang Hai and Wang Chiu-ssu, claims that it was Tung-yang who revealed Han Wen and Li Meng-yang’s plans to Liu Chin, on which account he blames him for the years of misrule that followed; see Li K’ai-hsien Ch’üan-chi 10.770. Disagreement over Li’s role persists to the present day. For a strongly denunciatory interpretation, see Chao Chung-nan 趙中男, “Liu Chin Luan-cheng Shih-ch’i te Li Tung-yang” 劉瑾亂政時期的李東陽 (Li Tung-yang During the Period of Liu Chin’s Misrule), Shih-hsüeh Chi-k’an 1989.4:26-30. A contrasting, almost adulatory, view is expressed in Lan Tung-hsing 藍東興, “Ming Wu-tsung Shih-ch’i te Li Tung-yang Shu-p’ing” 明武宗時期的李東陽述評 (A Critical Account of Li Tung-yang During the Period of Wu-tsung of the Ming), Kweichow Ta-hsüeh Hsüeh-pao 1996.3:70-74. 100 For Liu Ta-hsia (t. Shih-yung 時雍; h. Tung-shan 東山), see DMB 958 (Ray Huang), TL 821, HY 3/226, TK 116. Liu’s most important accomplishment was his stabilization of the course of the Yellow River, which, after a series of costly floods, he succeeded in directing into a course that it would follow for over three centuries. Modern readers, at least in the West, are more likely to recall him as the Minister of War said to have hidden, or even burned, the charts that had been passed down from the voyages of Cheng Ho and his fleets. This incident appears in the K’o-tso Chui-yü 客座贅語, a miscellany compiled by Ku Ch’i-yüan 顧起原, but it is neither recorded in the memorial texts assembled in KHL nor referred to in the Ming Shih. The latter mention instead an analogous incident involving his concealing, while a mere Director of a bureau in the Ministry, accounts of earlier military campaigns in Vietnam, doing so in order to discourage a military adventure there that the court was considering. See KHL 38.77a [1562], an anonymous biography, and 38.80a [1563], a biography by Wang Shih-chen that served as the basis for the account in MS 182.4844. Modern historians have varied in their treatment of this material, with results too elaborately inconclusive to review in detail here. See J.J.L. Duyvendak, “The True Dates of the Chinese Maritime Expeditions in the Early Fifteenth Century,” TP ser.2, vol.34 (1938):341-412, pp.396-99; Jung-pang Lo, “Policy Formulation and DecisionMaking on Issues Respecting Peace and War,” in Charles O. Hucker, ed., Chinese Government in Ming Times, pp.41-72, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), pp.62-63; Ray Huang, China: A Macro History (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 1988), p.156, and the DMB biography cited above; Timothy Brook, Cambridge History of China, vol.8, Ming Dynasty, Part 2, p.617, and Confusions of Pleasure (Berkeley and Los

RETIREMENT

191

had denounced Liu Chin in 1506, months before the failed coup, and only the intervention of Li Tung-yang had saved Ta-hsia’s life then. 101 Lin Han, the Han-lin Libationer who had paid such a handsome compliment to the young Ho Ching-ming in 1499, had retired in 1505, before Liu Chin’s rise to power was complete. But he had opposed Liu even out of office and was eventually disgraced by him early in 1507. Indeed, Liu Chin’s reach was long, and even those posted far from Peking or living in retirement could not feel secure. 102 Others

———

Angeles: University of California Press, 1998), pp.120, 278; and Louise Levathes, When China Ruled the Seas: The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne 1405-1433 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994), pp.179-80. Two additional observations are offered here. The first is that the anecdote recorded in MS seems more convincing than the story told by Ku Ch’i-yüan, both because it includes a plausible and nonanachronistic occasion, the threat of a dangerous and wasteful military adventure conceived by a hated eunuch, and because its real point is not the fate of Cheng Ho’s charts, but rather the perspicacity of the Minister of War of the day, who predicts on the basis of the incident that Liu Ta-hsia will someday occupy his position. The second is that Joseph Needham’s comment that Liu Ta-hsia was among the “administrative thugs in the service of the Confucian anti-marine party” betrays an unjust prejudice that ill befits so great a scholar. See Joseph Needham, with the collaboration of Wang Ling and Lu Gwei-djen, Science and Civilization in China, Volume 4, Physics and Physical Technology, Part III, Civil Engineering and Nautics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), p.525. 101 Ho wrote two poems for Liu in 1508, “Sent for Presentation to Master Liu Tungshan [Ta-hsia], Matching the Rhymes of Chief Censor Lin” 寄贈劉東山先生次林都憲韻, HTFC 24.14b (433; 272:027), and “On Behalf of Prefect Sun, a Self-Inscription on the T’o-hsi Estate Matching the Rhymes of Master Liu Tung-shan [Ta-hsia] and Responding to Tung-shan” 代孫太守自題沱西別業次劉東山先生韻兼酬東山, HTFC 24.15a (434; 272:030). The second poem was written on behalf of Sun Jung, who, like Liu, was a native of Hua-jung. Ho’s first poem is included in a group of works in various forms collected by Ch’en T’ien in MSCS (MSCS ting-1.1167). The poems were all written to celebrate Liu’s ‘Thatched Cottage in the Eastern Hills’. The works in this group do not refer to Li Tung-yang, but were written to match the rhymes of a poem by another senior official, Lin Chün 林俊 (1452-1527). There are poems by Yang Yi-ch’ing, Li Meng-yang, Pien Kung, Ho Meng-ch’un, and Ho Ching-ming. Most of the other poets involved were living at home in retirement at the time, having run afoul of Liu Chin. Although the poems testify to a common literary bond among the men, they were not all produced at the same time but rather originated from individual gestures during the period between Liu’s initial disgrace and return home in 1506 and his further punishment, which was announced in the latter part of 1508. 102 An example is Hsiung Cho 熊卓 (1463-1509), a chin-shih graduate of 1496. He was among fifty-three officials, including Li Meng-yang, dismissed in the spring of 1507 for having offended Liu Chin, in Hsiung’s case probably in a critical memorial submitted the preceding summer (see MTC 41.1551, 42.1574). Almost a decade older than Li Meng-yang, he was evidently impressed by Li’s literary ideals. Li edited his works in 1510, the year after Hsiung’s death in Kiangsi, attributed to persecution by Liu Chin. Li’s Preface to Hsiung’s works claims for him an honourable place among

192

CHAPTER FIVE

were one after another finding excuses to leave Peking and return to their homes, claiming illness. Still others, already at home, were neglecting, like Yin Ying, to return to their posts as their periods of mourning or sick leave expired. The situation came to a head early in 1508. Liu Chin, who interpreted their delays—no doubt correctly—as expressions of protest, ordered that all those who overstayed their leaves should be dismissed. Over one hundred forty officials, including Ho Ching-ming, were affected. 103 Ho was now in retirement in earnest. The dismissals were accompanied by stiff fines, and the need to prepare payment may be related to Ho’s poem addressed to his distant cousin Ho Ching-wang 何景旺 , with whom he mentions staying for a month. 104 The experience may also be reflected in these poems, which also seem most plausibly assigned to the spring of 1508: 春興東風回首即殘春、日日清江愁白蘋。北去雲霄無道路、西來天地有烟塵。身經貴賤知交態、事到安危憶古人。却喜故園桃杏樹、花開又見一回新。 Spring Meditation 105 The east wind comes, and in a moment the end of spring is here;

———

the Archaists, as well as among the opponents of Liu Chin; see K’ung-t’ung Hsiensheng Chi, 51.1a (1455) and his sacrifice text (op.cit. 63.3b [1792]). Hsiung was apparently also acquainted with Ho Ching-ming, since he wrote a poem matching the rhymes of one by Ho. The title of Hsiung’s poem is “Matching the Rhymes of Ho Ching-ming’s ‘A Visit to the Ling-chi Shrine’” 和何仲默遊靈濟宮韻; see Ch’ien Ch’ien-yi, Lieh-ch’ao Shih-chi, ping-11.25a (356a); TK 389. The poem it matches, titled in Ho’s works “During Autumn Rains, I Visit the Cell of the Perfected Li” 雨中過李真人方丈 (second of two poems), HTFC 20.12a (347; 352:138), was written shortly after Ho’s return from Yunnan. For Hsiung (t. Shih-hsüan 士選, h.Tung-hsi 東溪), see TL 770, HY 2/279, TK 160. 103 For Liu’s policy on those who overstayed leaves, see MTC 42.1584, Wu-tsung Shih-lu (Taipei: Chung-yang Yen-chiu-yüan, 1964) 35.1a (839). 104 “A Long Song: Presented to Elder Brother Wang” 長歌行贈旺兄, HTFC 12.3a (160; 271:025). For Ho Ching-wang, see TK 113. 105 HTFC 25.8a (443; 272:519; YK A.26b). There are several variant readings in the text of this poem as it appears in YK. The lack of the ‘grass’ radical in 蘋 p’ing (‘duckweed’) is typical of the sort of obvious copying errors that occur in YK. That YK has 此 tz’u (‘this’) rather than 北 pei (‘north’) is also an error. To read ‘this’ would violate the parallelism with ‘west’ in the answering line. Finally, note that YK agrees with the Yüan recension in reading 桃杏 t’ao hsing (‘peaches and apricots’), followed in this translation, rather than the 桃李 t’ao-li (‘peaches and plums’) of the Standard recension.

RETIREMENT

193

Day after day, on the clear river, I sorrow for white duckweed. Toward the north, the cloudy sky is lacking any road; From the west, over heaven and earth, haze and dust are seen. Having known high station and low, I see how they are related, When things come up, in safety or peril, remember the men of old. And yet I rejoice in the peaches and apricots in my old garden; As they blossom, a fresh renewal once again appears. 暮春城邊楊柳飛白花、河上春風吹暮沙。飄飄歲月此雙燕、渺渺江湖聊一槎。人情翻覆似波浪、世態變化如雲霞。駟馬高車有憂患、只須料理東門瓜。 Late Spring 106 Along the walls, the willow trees let fly their snowy blossoms; On the river, springtime breeze blow over evening sands. Drifting, drifting, the years and months, here a pair of swallows; Far, far away on river and lakes, I wish for a single raft. Human feelings turn and tumble, resembling rolling waves; The world’s condition shifts and alters just like clouds and dawnwrack. Teams of horses and lofty carts bring worries and trouble with them; One only needs to tend one’s melons by the eastern gate.

“Tending a melon patch at the Eastern Gate,” probably refers to one Shao P’ing 召平, who supported himself by farming melons east of Ch’ang-an after losing his marquisate in the fall of the Ch’in dynasty. 107 He was known as an advocate of avoidance of the dangers of involvement in dynastic affairs, having abandoned all attachment to his former successes in the world and retired to a simple life as a farmer. It is, however, very unlikely that Ho Ching-ming actually busied himself with the weeding of a melon patch, and the Shao P’ing figure did not do justice to his situation. He had, after all, not simply lost his position, he had given it up as a matter of principle. Principle would out, however, and soon did. Ho composed a long “Rhapsody Telling of My Return,” whose preface includes his fullest account of his reasons for retiring and also sketches his literary ideals

——— 106

HTFC 25.9b (445; 272:702). See Shih-chi 53.2017; cf. Burton Watson, Records of the Grand Historian of China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961), vol.1, pp.129-30. Shao’s melons were usually referred to as ‘East Tumulus (東陵 tung-ling) melons’ because he had been Marquis of Tung-ling, but Ho’s ‘east gate’ melons presumably refers instead to the location of his melon patch. 107

194

CHAPTER FIVE

in some detail. It does not, of course, mention Liu Chin directly, but it clearly makes a claim for Ho’s recognition as a ‘righteous recluse’. His mission to Yunnan had been the first occasion for his probity to be put to a public test, and he had taken evident satisfaction in his conduct. A similar pride in his unwillingness to bend informs this preface. Telling of my Return (preface) 108 I have heard that those who travel different roads cannot see things from the same perspective and that those whose inclinations are unlike cannot be forced to agree. Thus, one who delights in the ocarina is not to be charmed by a lute and one who is fond of round things is not to be approached with square. Why so? Because their roads differ and their inclinations are unlike. Thus, when Master Chia [Yi] took refuge in Ching-nan, when [Tung] Chung-shu 董仲舒 retired to Chiang-tu, and when Ch’ü Yüan roamed the marshes and river banks, it was not because the three of them were incapable of accomodation, but because there were policies that were not in accord with their ideals and that they could not accomodate. 109 Thus, an archer does not change his shooting on account of others and a lutenist does not alter his playing on account of others. Thus, one can change one’s teacher but not the laws. Even in the natural world there are things that will not exchange humble stations for great ones, poverty for wealth, or disgrace for glory. Thus, lush grass does not cover walls and fine grain does not grow in cart tracks, for they fear the disappearance of that upon which they depend. For this reason, one who seeks to delight his mind will not seek to adorn his person, and one who seeks to be known ages hence will not seek to shine in the present day. Thus, the Master [Confucius] travelled widely condensing and editing the records of antiquity and polishing the Annals of Lu, Tso[-ch’iu Ming] 左邱明 wrote the Speeches of the

——— 108

HTFC 1.7b (5; 賦:013). This is only one of many fu that Ho wrote during his stay at home. Li Meng-yang also wrote two fu at crucial junctures in his life, “Rhapsody Telling of My Journey” 述征賦 in the summer of 1508, as he was going north to face trial for his opposition to Liu Chin, and “Rhapsody Announcing My Return” 宣歸賦 in 1514, after he was again struck from the rolls of those eligible for civil office. See K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi 1.4b (8) and 1.8a (15). Similarly, Wang T’ing-hsiang wrote his “Rhapsody Lamenting for the Times” 悼時賦 fu in 1509, a year after his disgrace by Liu Chin; see Wang Shih Chia-ts’ang Chi (Chia-ching edition; repr. Taipei: Wei-wen, 1976) 4.3a (131), Wang T’ing-hsiang Chi (Peking: Chung-hua, 1989) 4.47. 109 The word translated here as “accomodate,” (容 jung), also played an important part in the argument of Ho’s letter to Hsü Chin urging him to oppose Liu Chin (see above, chapter four). The word’s use in both pieces was probably a consequence of Ho’s consistent opposition to compromise rather than being in this case a conscious echo of his fruitless appeal to Hsü.

RETIREMENT

195

States, Ssu-ma Ch’ien put together the Records of the Grand Historian, and men like Hsün Ch’ing 荀卿 and Master Tung all wrote treatises to express their indignation in the face of hardship, humiliation, poverty, and distress. Would these sages and wise men have preferred to shine in their own day? Though I am slight in accomplishment and weak in understanding, I do respect the principles of the men of antiquity in my humble way. Once I had come of age, I entered public service and have now served in various capacities in provinces and capital for more than six years. But I frequently lamented how things went against my grain. In the wuch’en 戊辰 year of the Cheng-te era, the third year of the Emperor’s reign (1508), I was allowed to retire and return to my native hamlet so as to be able to look after my parents’ meals in person. 110 Once I had accepted this great forgiveness, I was able to reconcile myself to it entirely. But from the beginning I had desired to plumb the sources of writing, to sum up all the best in what I had seen and experienced so as to put together some poor words of my own as a warning against setting the common and the excellent equal. I once held that the writers of the Han were accomplished in writing but benighted as to the Tao, so that their words were miscellaneous and not to be relied upon, flawed and not to be taken as teachings. The great Confucians of the Sung were wise in the Tao but begrudged writing, so that they were good at following the ruts and keeping to their interpretations, but poor at “putting things side by side and linking categories” (比事聯類), 111 opening up what had not been expressed before. Thus, I faulted Han literature for the impurity of its Tao and Sung literature for the rigidity of its Tao. To go on seeking among them would not lead to any real accomplishment. If one were to ask for my worthless opinion, then I should desire to sum up their broad significance without troubling myself over the paragraph and line endings. With respect to the literature of the men of old, I should make it my business to acquire their bold outlook and their far-ranging interest. If I could attain their standards and methods, I should “construct my carriage behind closed doors and yet it would fit the tracks when I went out” (閉戶造車出門合轍), 112 without the

———

110 This would refer to Ho’s formal dismissal, not his actual return home in 1507, as a variety of sources make clear. For example, in the Curriculum that Ho wrote for his father in 1509 (see below, chapter six), he says that he came home in 1507 “because the tao was not established.” 111 This phrase also occurs in Ho’s letter to Li Meng-yang discussing poetry; see below, chapter nine. 112 The phrase in quotation marks was also used by Li Tung-yang in discussing poetry. Chu Hsi called it on ‘old saying’ in his Ssu-shu Huo-wen 四書或問 (Questions on the Four Books) (Shanghai: Shanghai Ku-chi, 2001), p.98, but I have not found an earlier source for it. See Li’s [Huai-]lu T’ang Shih-hua (Yi-wen ed. p.1b,

196

CHAPTER FIVE

trouble of trying it on the road first. Moreover, I would wish to imitate the point of Ssu-ma Ch’ien’s fondness for roaming, with a bold will to drift with the clouds and leave my traces throughout the world, in order to broaden my view and perfect my writings. This surely would not fall behind the remnant warmth of the men of old! With this in view, I have written this “Rhapsody Telling of my Return,” describing in general terms my point of departure, grasping the manner of the sages and wise men, and praising constancy of ambition. I am surely not daring to attach myself to the former wise men, but intend to display their excellence to future ages.

Li Meng-yang had been living at home in Kaifeng since his dismissal, writing poems critical of conditions at court, as we have seen. His opposition to Liu Chin had come so openly to Liu’s attention that the latter had him arrested by the much feared Embroidered Uniform Guard and brought to Peking in irons to stand trial early in 1508.113 Liu was on the verge of seeing to Li’s execution when, so the story goes, Li managed to smuggle a note to K’ang Hai. As it happened, Liu Chin had been seeking unsuccessfully for some time to cultivate K’ang’s friendship, for K’ang was from the same part of Shensi as Liu and enjoyed the prestige of a recent optimus, but K’ang had rebuffed him coldly each time. The tale of what followed is told, with much gusto, in the Curriculum of K’ang Hai written by his fellow provincial

———

Chung-hua ed. p.1370; Ming Shih-hua Ch’üan-pien 2:1623-24; Li Tung-yang Chi 2:530. Chien Chin-sung calls attention to the way in which Ho’s attitude toward the ancients here—seeking spiritual qualities in them rather than formal likeness— foreshadows his argument in his letter to Li Meng-yang some years later; see “Li-Ho Shih-lun Yen-chiu” (M.A. thesis, National Taiwan Unversity, 1980), p. 153. 113 Li’s arrest is reported in the first month of 1508 (MTC 42.1584), but Li’s own accounts are agreed that it was only in the fifth month that he was taken off to Peking; see K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi 24.8a (597), 47.14a (1379). Although the chief function of the Embroidered Uniform Guard was to serve as the Emperor’s personal bodyguard, for which purpose it acted as a kind of palace police force and maintained its own prison, it also served as a convenient assignment for persons whom the Emperor wished to have in personal attendance on him. One must suppose that the former Guard officer Ku Ying-hsiang 顧應祥 to whom Ho addressed a sociable poem (see Epilogue) was such a person. See “Saying Farewell to Ku of the Embroidered Uniform Guard, Who is Going to Kwangtung as Assistant Commissioner” 送顧錦衣咐廣東僉憲, HTFC 12.15a (170; 371:502). Li Chi (Ho’s benefactor in Lin-t’ao) had also been a Guardsman; see Ho’s epitaph for him, HTFC 36.4b (621; 銘:001), and chapter one. In his journal of his campaign in Shensi in 1510 (see below, chapter seven) Yang Yi-ch’ing comments, “At the time, the thief [Liu] Chin was in power, and policies and commands were harsh and abrupt. Whenever an Embroidered Uniform officer arrived, people were thrown into a panic,” Hsi-cheng Jih-lu 西征日錄 (Journal of the Western Campaign) (Chi-lu Hui-pien; repr. PP 16/3), p.1b.

RETIREMENT

197

Chang Chih-tao 張治道 (1487-1556): People were apprehensive, and no one dared come to Li’s defense. Meng-yang got a hasty note out of prison, which read, “Tui-shan! Save me! Save me!” (The note is still in existence.) The Compiler Ho T’ang told people, “If K’ang Hai is prepared to visit Liu Chin and plead for him, Li Meng-yang will live.” Someone spoke to K’ang about this and he said, “How could I begrudge one visit if it will save Li?” Although K’ang undertook to go, others thought it impossible. The next day, K’ang set out with a certain member of the Censorate, but when they reached the Tso-shun Gate, Ho T’ang came out of the Secretariat and said, “You have come about Li Meng-yang?” “Yes, I have.” Ho T’ang whispered in K’ang’s ear, “You might go in by yourself, but not with anyone else along.” And so K’ang did not go in, but said to Ho, “Liu is an unreasonable tyrant, but fond of his reputation. He may be gulled by flattery, but not convinced by reason.” Ho T’ang replied, “You alone can do it; no one else.” The next day, K’ang went again to Liu’s office. When Liu heard that he had come, he hurried out to meet him without even waiting to put his shoes on properly and invited him in for a drink. After they had been chatting for a while, Liu said, “People are saying there has never been an optimus to equal you! You have really shed a lustre on Kuan-chung [Shensi]!” K’ang made his move, “There’s nothing special about me! Have you heard people refer to ‘The Three Geniuses of Kuan-chung’?” Liu was taken by surprise, “What ‘Three Geniuses’?” K’ang replied, “You are first among them. Then comes Secretary Li, and then I follow along behind you two.” Liu asked, “You don’t mean Li Meng-yang?” “I do.” “He deserves death without reprieve!” “If he does, so be it. But Kuan-chung will lose a genius if he is killed.” He left in the evening after they had finished drinking. The next day, Liu proposed to the Emperor that Li Meng-yang be pardoned. 114

Ho wrote a set of two poems sympathizing with Li’s troubles, and Li

———

114 KHL 21.43a [861]. This account is often quoted in later sources. See, for example, the Kuo-ch’ao Ming-shih Lei-yüan 國朝名世類苑 (Classified Garden of Noted Nobles of Our Dynasty), compiled by Ling Ti-chih 凌迪知 (1575; repr. TM 3:240-41, Tainan: Chuang-yen Wenhua, 1995), 13.18a-19b, compiled in 1575. Some additional details are supplied in other texts. For example, according to the account in Ku Ying-t’ai 谷應泰, Ming Shih Chi-shih Pen-mo (TSCC; repr. Taipei: San-min, 1969) 43.53-54, neither Li nor K’ang had ever recognised the superiority of the other, and it was only the insistence of a follower of Li’s named Tso (probably Tso Kuo-chi 左國璣, his brother-in-law) that an appeal to K’ang was Li’s only chance to escape from his predicament alive that persuaded Li to write his note to K’ang, which Tso delivered. For Chang Chih-tao (t. Shih-chi 時濟, Meng-tu 孟獨; h. T’ai-wei Shan-jen 太微山人), who, with K’ang Hai, compiled the very first edition of Ho’s poems, see HY 3/79, TL 524, KHL 47.72a (1984—Ch’iao Shih-ning), and TK 135.

198

CHAPTER FIVE

answered with three of his own, in both cases before Li returned from Peking. 115 Ho begins the first of his poems: 聞君在羅網、古道正難行。 I hear you are caught in the fine-meshed net; The Way of old is truly hard to walk.

He concludes, 才大翻流落、安知造物情。 Ability so great, and yet you are cast aside; How can one understand the disposition of the Creator of Things?

Summer works are, as usual, rather few. Aside from the “Rhapsody Telling of my Return,” there are some pieces referring to the serious drought of early summer. 116 Sun Chi-fang’s father Sun Jung was reassigned to Ch’u-chou 處州, in southern Chekiang, at about this time, and Ho wrote several pieces commemorating the promotion itself and Sun’s visit to his villa in Hua-jung en route to his new post. 117

———

115 “Missing Li Hsien-chi” 懷李獻吉, HTFC 16.8b (249; 252:093-094; the Yung recension omits Li’s surname), and “Responding to Master Ho’s Inquiry” 答何子問訊, K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi 24.8ab (597-598), cited in LHH 4.3a. Ho also refers, in his poem on Li in the “Six Gentlemen” set (see above), to Li’s having offended by his ‘precipitous words’ 危言. Liu Hai-han says that Ho wrote to Li Tung-yang on Meng-yang’s behalf at this time. Ho did write a letter to Li Tung-yang later, but it has nothing to do with Meng-yang, and was probably written in 1512, “Letter to Li Hsi-ya [Tung-yang]” 上李西涯書, HTFC 32.9a (567; 書:503), see below, chapter seven. Liu may have confused this occasion with the one in 1514 when Ho wrote to Yang Yich’ing in support of Li Meng-yang. In later years, Li Meng-yang would remark that only Ho, Ch’ien Jung, and K’ang Hai had attempted to save him (see below, chapter eight), probably referring to Ho’s 1514 intervention. According to Li K’ai-hsien’s biography of Meng-yang, three people in all wrote to K’ang urging him to go to Meng-yang’s rescue: Tso Kuo-chi, a fellow provincial of K’ang’s from Shensi named Chang Ch’ien 張潛 (see below, chapter eleven), and Ho; see Li K’ai-hsien Ch’üan-chi (Peking: Wen-hua Yi-shu, 2004) 10.770. Li K’ai-hsien is in general an incorrigible embroiderer of stories, but he had known K’ang since his youth and so may have had this story from him. For five explicitly dated poems written by Li Meng-yang on his departure from Kaifeng, see his “Indignation at Separation, Five Poems Written in the Fifth Month of the Wu-ch’en Year of Cheng-te” 離憤五首正德戊辰年五月作, K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi 10.4b-5b (206-208). 116 See “Rhapsody: Worrying About the Drought” 憂旱賦 , HTFC 1.19a (13; 賦:017); “In Praise of Rain” 雨頌, HTFC 3.2b (28; 賦:008); and “Suffering From the Heat” 苦熱行, HTFC 5.12a (54; 樂:033-034). 117 In addition to the poem matching Liu Ta-hsia’s rhymes (see above), see “Saying Farewell to Sun of Ch’u-chou” 送孫處州序, HTFC 35.14b (615; 序:005);

RETIREMENT

199

The latter half of 1508, as we have already noted, is one of the better documented periods of Ho’s life. Barred from official life for an uncertain term, perhaps for ever, he was free to enjoy a life of relative leisure, reading, writing, and celebrating seasonal festivals in the company of his friends. As Ho put it in a poem addressed to one local friend, 罷歸翻自喜、舊業有青山。 Being dismissed turns out to be a blessing; My old estate still has its green hills. 118

Sun Chi-fang and Ma Lu had both returned to Hsin-yang after the chin-shih examination. Ma Lu went back to Peking after a brief visit. Some time before the Moon Festival, he and Ho went on an excursion to Hsien-yin 賢隱 (‘Wise Man’s Seclusion’) temple (still in existence) on the far side of the hills southwest of Hsin-yang. 119 Sun stayed on in Hsin-yang after his father left for Ch’u-chou, returning home to Huajung in the ninth month. 120

———

and “A Ballad of the Vice-Magistrate of Ch’u-chou” 處州別駕行, HTFC 6.6a (62; 樂:057). 118 “Responding to Ko Shih-hsiu [Lan]” 酬葛時秀, HTFC 16.5b (244; 252:077). The Yung recension adds the character 才 at the end of the title, evidently assuming that it should be understood as “Responding to Cultivated Talent Ko.” Ko Lan 葛蘭 was a Hsin-yang native who later passed the chin-shih; see TK 176. Although Ho does not refer to him often in his works, when he does so, it is as Ko Shih-hsiu, so the Yung recension’s reading is erroneous. Unlike Li Meng-yang, Ho in general avoids invidious comment on the political situation in his poems written at home. One exception comes in a poem written on Wu-tsung’s birthday in the fall of this year, “The Ten-Thousand Years Festival” 萬歲節, in which, having evoked the pomp of the court celebrations, he closes by asking who among the attendant officials would do as Chang Chiu-ling 張九齡 had done on the birthday of the T’ang Emperor Hsüan-tsung, present an admonitory text instead of expensive baubles and curiosities; see HTFC 16.11b (254; 252:109). His readers would of course have been aware that Chang had eventually been driven from office by Li Lin-fu 李林甫. Li’s maladministration was blamed for the subsequent An Lu-shan Rebellion, which came close to ending the T’ang dynasty and did end Hsüan-tsung’s reign. See Edwin G. Pulleyblank, Background of the Rebellion of An Lu-shan (London: Oxford University Press, 1955). 119 “An Outing to Hsien-yin Temple: Matching the Rhymes of Ma Chün-ch’ing” 遊賢隱寺次馬君卿韻, HTFC 16.16a (245; 252:080). A poem sent to Ma, who had gone back to the capital, comes from some time between the Moon Festival (middle of the eighth month) and Double Nine (ninth day of the ninth month); see “Sent to Presented Scholar Ma Chün-ch’ing [Lu]” 寄馬君卿進士, HTFC 16.7b (247; 252:088). 120 A poem written while relaxing with Sun in the evening comes from before the Moon Festival, “Sitting in the Evening with Sun Shih-ch’i” 與孫世其晚坐, HTFC 16.6a (245; 252:081); Ho’s farewell poems were written some time after the Festival,

200

CHAPTER FIVE

The Moon Festival was again an occasion for poetry: 十四夜水際浮雲起、孤城日暮陰。萬山秋葉下、獨坐一燈深。白露蒹葭落、西風蟋蟀吟。關山今夜月、橫笛有哀音。 The Fourteenth Night 121 At water’s edge the drifting clouds arise; A lonely wall grows dark at end of day. On ten thousand hills the autumn leaves are shed; Sitting alone, my single lamp is remote. White dew forms upon the rushes and reeds; The west wind is ahum with crickets. Over towering mountains, the moon tonight, And the sound of flutes in grieving tones . . . For another example of Ho sitting alone by a lamp, see “Sitting Alone” (below, chapter six). Ho’s fifth line is based on the “Rushes and reeds” 蒹葭poem in the Songs, each of whose three stanzas opens with a variation on first line pattern “Rushes and reeds are a deep green; / The white dew turns to frost” 蒹葭蒼蒼、白露為霜. 122

There is no explicit reflection on the significance of the poet’s experience here, only a concentrated evocation of it. Although the opening couplet is not parallel, the poem is unusual in having the verbs in each of the first six lines come at the end. Parallel couplets of course have their verbs in equivalent positions, but it is very unusual for two successive couplets to use the same position, and almost unheard of for three. The effect in this case is to minimise contrast, keeping all six lines as much as possible alike. There is an analogous lack of movement in the images. Although two of the verbs, at least, involve movement, it is movement presented at such a distance that it

———

but before the twenty-sixth, “Saying Farewell to Provincial Graduate Sun Shih-ch’i [Chi-fang], Who is Returning to Hua-jung” 送孫世其舉人歸華容, HTFC 16.11a (253:252:107-108). 121 HTFC 16.6b (246; 252:082). Some of the same conventions of moon poems can be seen in Wang Chiu-ssu’s pentasyllabic new-style poems “The Moon on the Fourteenth Night” 十四夜月, “On the Fifteenth Night the Moon is Not Visible” 十五夜不見月, Mei-p’o Chi 4.4b (126), and “The Moon on the Fourteenth Night: Drinking with Li Hsien-chi [Meng-yang]” 十四夜月與李二獻吉飲, Mei-p’o Chi 5.2b (168). 122 Mao Shih Yin-te 26/129/1-2; Karlgren, p.83; Waley, p.42. “Rushes and reeds” is a common expression in Ho’s poems,and this poem will not be cited every time it occurs. For a case in which the Songs texts does seem particularly relevant, see below, chapter six, “Autumn River Song.”

RETIREMENT

201

is is more an abstracted perception of movement having occurred than an image of actual change. Then, all but the fourth, and perhaps the fifth, lines are placed in the distance, which emphasises the isolation of the poet’s position and the lack of any expectation of change. Both the moon and the sound of flutes were associated with separation, but the mention of the flutes brings the poem to an end, both by providing a weak verb—consistent with the rest of the poem, and by shifting back to auditory imagery, already introduced by the crickets of the sixth line (as in the poem on Yeh Pang-chung’s painting above). Autumn imagery similarly informs the next two poems, written slightly later: 登堅山寺西峯插天起、絕頂寺門開。雲裏一僧住、山中無客來。落花平講席、積草徧香臺。我欲聞清梵、焚香坐不回。 Climbing up to Chien-shan Temple 123 The western crag punctures Heaven as it rises; On its utmost crest a temple gate is open. Within the clouds a single monk resides; Amid the hills no visitors arrive. Falling blossoms smooth the sermon mat; Abundant weeds spread over the incense terrace. My desire is to hear pure chanting in Sanskrit, Burning incense to sit without return. Ho’s third couplet is reminiscent of the second couplet in Meng Haojan’s “Inscribed on Master Jung’s Retreat” 題融公蘭若 , “Water chestnut and lotus perfume the lecture mat; / Pines and cypress surround the incense terrace” 芰荷薰講席、松柏繞香臺. 124

Chien-shan and its temple lay about fifteen miles to the west of Hsinyang. Its peak rose up as though it had been sharpened by carving, so that it was sometimes called 尖山 “Pointed Mountain” rather than 堅山 “Firm Mountain” (both pronounced chien-shan). On the mountain top were a Jade Emperor Pavilion and a Bodhidharma Hall and on the mountain side was a cave of unfathomed depth. 125 Ho Ching-ming is said to have had a “Study Pavilion” (讀書樓tu shu lou) on the grounds

——— 123 124 125

HTFC 16.7a (247; 252:086). CTS 160.1650; K.07757; Meng Hao-jan Shih-chi Chiao-chu, p.344. Hsin-yang Chou Chih, 1.7a (45).

202

CHAPTER FIVE

of the temple. 126 夜坐暮雨寒雲黯復開、山齋獨坐思難裁。水生門外沙鷗至、月落燈前江鴈來。四海交遊總消漢、十年蹤跡但塵埃。長安不見空回首、歲晚愁登萬里臺。 Sitting up at Night 127 Evening rain and wintry clouds turn dark and then clear up; I sit alone in a mountain retreat, unable to shape my thoughts. A stream is born outside the gate—sandbar gulls arrive; The moon descends beside my lamp—river geese come to call. My friends and companions within the seas are as the starry stream, My footsteps through the last ten years are only dust and ashes. Ch’ang-an city cannot be seen—for nothing I look back; At year’s end, I climb in sorrow the Terrace of Ten Thousand Leagues . . . The penultimate line recalls one in a famous source, the first of Wang Ts’an’s “Poems of Seven Laments” 七哀詩, “Southward I climb the slopes of Pa-ling, / Look back and gaze toward Ch’ang-an” 南登霸陵岸、迴首望長安. 128 The original touch in Ho’s poem is to have the climb to a high place come after the gaze instead of before.

A considerable number of poems were sent to absent friends and colleagues. Sometime late in the eighth month or early in the ninth, he sent off a batch of poems addressed to no fewer than seven people in Peking, probably to be carried by someone going up to the capital. 129

———

126 (Min-kuo) Hsin-yang Hsien Chih 4.4a (133). Yao Hsüeh-hsien and Lung Li discuss the ‘study pavilion’ and conclude that it may simply be a place where Ho studied briefly. See Yao and Lung, “Ho Ching-ming Yi-chi K’ao,” Hsin-yang Shihfan Hsüeh-yüan Hsüeh-pao 15.4 (1995): 75-78. They do provide a useful collection of poems written at Chien-shan on p.76. 127 HTFC 24.16a (434; 272:033). I follow the Standard recension in the fourth line, reading 江 ‘river’ in place of 鴻 ‘goose’ as in the Shen and Yüan recensions—the Yung recension lacks this poem. Because the word in this position in the line must be semantically parallel with 沙 ‘sand’ in the preceding line, ‘river’ is no doubt authorial, whether its appearance in the Standard recension is due to reference to original manuscripts or to successful emendation by conjecture. 128 WH 23.15b (316); Lu Ch’in-li, p.365; Wang Ts’an Chi Chu (Hsin-yang: Chungchou Shu-hua, 1984), p.15. The line was often echoed or simply quoted, as in Shen Yüeh’s “Climbing to a Height and Gazing at Spring” 登高望春, YTHY 5.4a (78), Lu Ch’in-li, p.1633. 129 For the poems addressed to Li Meng-yang, Ma Lu, and Chiao Huang-chung, see above and below. In addition, see “Sent to Messenger Juan” 寄阮行人, HTFC 16.7b (248; 252:089); “Sent to Supervising Secretary Chang Chi-sheng [Yün]” 寄張

RETIREMENT

203

The recipients included Tai Kuan, Meng Yang, Ma Lu, a fellow townsman and 1502 chin-shih named Chang Yün 張雲, 130 and Li Meng-yang—just out of prison and perhaps the occasion for writing to Peking. There is also a poem addressed to an one ‘Academician Chiao’ 焦太史. 131 The same Academician Chiao apparently turns up again in another poem, probably written in the fall of 1511 (see below, chapter seven). These poems are mysterious in several ways. The identity of their addressee is at once the most easily solved of the mysteries and the source of the most pressing of them. In order to be an Academician, one had to have passed the chin-shih with considerable distinction. The only man surnamed Chiao to have done so in Ho’s time was one Chiao Huang-chung 焦黃中 , who passed the examination in 1508. 132 The ordinary sorts of biographical sources are all but silent about Chiao Huang-chung, even though service in the Academy normally portended a degree of fame that almost guaranteed a place in the records. The gazetteer of his native place does confirm that he served in the Han-lin Academy, but it does so only in a terse note to its list of examination graduates, rather than in a separate biographical entry. 133 Sources for the history of the period, by contrast, are more revealing. In them it transpires that Chiao Huang-chung was the son of none other than Chiao Fang, the notorious Grand Secretary and the most highly placed of the tools through which Liu Chin’s regime operated (see above, chapter four). Chiao Fang openly

———

季升給事, HTFC 16.8a (249; 252:090); “Sent to Meng Wang-chih [Yang]” 寄孟望之, HTFC 16.8a (249; 252:091); “Sent to Chin-shih Tai Chung-ho [Kuan]” 寄戴仲鶡進士, HTFC 16.8a (249; 252:092). Messenger Juan is unidentified. 130 For Chang Yün (t. Chi-sheng 季升), for whose mother Ho later wrote an epitaph, see HY 3/73, TL 539, TK 137. Although imprisoned for his opposition to Liu Chin and barely forgiven for a later case of opposition to Wu-tsung, Chang eventually had a very successful career and lived to almost eighty. 131 “Sent to Academician Chiao Yün-te” 寄焦太史蘊德 , HTFC 16.7a (247; 252:087). Hucker gives 太史 as an informal reference to members of the Han-lin Academy, especially Junior Compilers, only for the Ch’ing dynasty, A Dictionary of Official Titles in Imperial China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985), p.481, item 6212. 132 For Chiao Huang-chung (t. Yün-te 蘊德, h. Huai-pin 淮濱), see TK 159, but note a misprint in the first character of Chiao’s tzu: replace the ‘water’ element with ‘silk’. 133 (Tao-kuang) Pi-yang Hsien Chih 泌陽縣志 (Gazetteer of Pi-yang County) (1824; repr. Taipei: Ch’eng-wen, 1976) 7.2b (489).

204

CHAPTER FIVE

manipulated the initial round of appointments given the 1508 chinshih graduates in order to get his son a place in the Academy. This bit of administrative sleight of hand did not, of course, go unnoticed. When K’ang Hai arrived at Chiao’s for a drink one day by hearty invitation and found the gathering to be one of disreputable hangerson, he accused Chiao of trying to inveigle him into a claque intended to bring down another Compiler whose father was the ousted Grand Secretary Hsieh Ch’ien. K’ang left in a huff after excoriating the other guests, thus making many enemies once again, as Chang Chih-tao assures us. 134 After several promotions, Chiao Huang-chung would request, and be granted, leave to accompany his father home when the latter fell afoul of his erstwhile patron Liu Chin in the summer of 1510, only weeks before Liu Chin’s sudden arrest and execution. We know very little of Chiao Huang-chung’s life after this. Like his father, he survived Liu’s fall without incurring any worse punishment than degradation to the status of commoner, though father and son were generally accounted to have been fortunate beyond their deserts in escaping with their lives. One of Liu Chin’s henchmen is reported to have said just before his execution, “I do indeed deserve to die. My actions ranked with those of Chiao Fang and Chang Ts’ai 張綵. Now I am suffering the ultimate penalty, and Ts’ai is in prison and condemned to death, while Fang is as free as a bird. What injustice!” 135 In 1512, when banditry was rampant and the court was hard-pressed to restore order, a number of officials laid the blame on conditions created by the administration over which Chiao Fang had presided. 136 Indeed, that the Chiaos had kept their lives, their freedom, and their property aroused a great deal of exasperation among Ho’s right-minded contemporaries. It was thus a serious miscalculation of the public mood when, in the summer of 1515, Chiao Fang sent Huang-chung, reportedly bearing with him heavy bribes, north to

——— 134

KHL 21.43a (861). MTC 43.1632. Chang Ts’ai had been among the most grasping of Liu’s gang. His particular speciality was the ruin of men whose womenfolk he coveted. This anecdote is also translated in Matthew Fryslie, “Inside Out: The Rhetoric of Derision in the Mingshi ‘Yandang zhuan’,” Ming Studies 51-52 (2005): 94-122, p.109. A typical anecdote mocking Chiao Fang and Chiao Huang-chung is translated in Fryslie, p.97. 136 See, for examples, the memorials recorded in the Wu-tsung Shih-lu 85.2b (1822), 86.2b (1844). 135

RETIREMENT

205

Peking with a petition protesting his innocence. The Ministry of Public Office rebuffed the Chiaos with a stinging report that concluded with a recommendation that the two of them be clapped in fetters and sent to trial. There was nothing for Huang-chung but to slink away home as quickly and quietly as he could. 137 Because Fang had served as a Grand Secretary, his death in the spring of 1517 is marked in the Veritable Records by insertion of an obituary notice. Its compilers appear to have spared no effort in including all the most shaming details of his career. 138 The very existence of Ho’s poems is thus puzzling at first sight. How did he come to be associating with Chiao Huang-chung? In fact the explanation of their acquaintance is straightforward, but worth noting as an example of the strength of particularistic bonds in Chinese society. To begin with, the Chiaos hailed from Pi-yang, a county just across the hills to the west of Hsin-yang. As a fellow provincial Ho would probably have been acquainted with the Chiaos long before Fang became Liu Chin’s pet Grand Secretary. Even more to the point, Chiao Huang-chung had passed the Honan provincial examination in 1498, along with Ho Ching-ming, his brother Chingyang, and other friends, including Ts’ui Hsien, Liu Chieh, Yüan Jung, and T’ien Ju-tzu. 139 Why Ho happened to address a poem to Chiao just at this time is not clear, but it may be that the poem was connected with Li Meng-yang’s troubles and his escape from them. THE WINTER OF OUR CONTENT Double Nine turned out to be a somewhat chilly day in 1508. The chrysanthemums had not bloomed, as we know from a poem that Ho wrote to match one by Liu Chieh on the subject. 140 Moreover, Kao Chien was ill and could not join in the celebration. 141 There was a

——— 137

For this incident, see Wu-tsung Shih-lu 124.8a (2495). Wu-tsung Shih-lu 147.5a (2873). 139 (Chia-ching) Honan T’ung-chih 河南通志 (Comprehensive Gazetteer of Honan) 17.36b-37a. 140 “Seeing No Chrysanthemums on the Ninth Day: Matching the Rhymes of Liu Ch’ao-hsin” 九日不見菊次劉朝信韻, HTFC 24.15b (434; 272:032). Liu’s poem is lost. In fact, none of his writing has survived. 141 “Missing T’ieh-hsi [Kao Chien] on the Ninth Day” 九日懷鐵溪, HTFC 16.10a 138

206

CHAPTER FIVE

‘make-up’ for the shortcomings of the year’s Double Nine later, a gathering at Kao Chien’s, complete with chrysanthemums and attended by Ho, Liu Chieh, Jen Yung, and Chia Ts’e. 142 Not long after this, Ho’s second son was born. 143 Ho presented additional poems to both Jen Yung and Chia Ts’e at about this time: The first two poems come from a set of four seasonal poems (i. e. one for each season): 任宏器草亭 The Thatched Pavilion of Jen Hung-ch’i [Yung] (two of four poems) 144 III 繞屋南山秋色靜、數枝寒菊一籬烟。酒醒讀罷秋聲賦、風落松梢響石泉。 The autumn charm of the southern hills surrounding the hut is calm: Just a few sprays of wintry chrysanthemums in a whole hedge of mist. Awakened from wine, I finish reading the “Sound of Autumn” Rhapsody; As the wind dies away, pine boughs echo the stony rill. IV 門外水流雲自起、雪峯半出草堂西。孤舟欲作山陰夢、月冷梅寒共一溪。 Outside the gate a river flows, and clouds begin to rise; Snowy peaks are partly visible west of the thatched hut. My solitary boat about to have a Shan-yin dream: The cool of the moon and the chill of plum trees share the entire creek.

There is every reason to assume that all four poems were written at the same time, so that at least three of them must be imaginary evocations of the seasons described. This makes it even less surprising to find that the poems rely to a considerable extent on literary rather than on natural inspirations. Reference to the famous “Rhapsody on the Sound

———

(251; 252:101). 142 “On the Twenty-sixth Day of the Ninth Month, Enjoying Chrysanthemums at the Home of Kao K’ui-chou With Instructor Chia, Provincial Graduate Liu, and Tribute Scholar Jen” 九月二十六日同賈廣文劉舉人任貢士高夔府先生宅內賞菊, HTFC 24.16a (435; 272:034-037). 143 “On the Birth of My Son” 生子, HTFC 25.1a (436; 272:038). 144 HTFC 29.3a (515; 274:515-516; YK B.10a). The reading 稍 shao (‘gradual’) for the homonymous 梢 “bough” in the YK text of the first of these poems is an error.

RETIREMENT

207

of Autumn” 秋聲賦 by Ou-yang Hsiu 歐陽修 is an obvious instance of this, but the first couplet is in fact built on the image of T’ao Ch’ien, who was known for plucking chrysanthemums by his hedge and gazing at the southern hills. 145 Although the title of the rhapsody is baldly stated, the next line takes up where Ou-yang left off, by having a ‘real’ sound emerge as that of the wind (in the rhapsody) dies away, capturing that brief moment of ‘awakening’ that one has after, for example, listening intently to a piece of music. The second of the poems also alludes to a famous incident. Wang Hui-chih, the man who could not endure a single day without bamboo (see above, chapter one), lived in Shan-yin. He awoke one winter morning to find that a snowfall had blanketed the landscape. He set out by boat to visit his good friend Tai K’ui 戴逵, but when he arrived at Tai’s gate, he turned around and went back home. When someone asked him why, he replied, “I went on an impulse and turned back for the same reason. Why did I have to see Tai K’ui?” 146 訪賈西谷儒宮入古檜、泮水靜塵埃。偶到閑官舍、能孤遠客杯。開門黃葉落、展席清風來。更喜庭前菊、寒花日暮開。 Visiting Chia Hsi-ku [Ts’e] 147 The Confucian hall is entered through ancient cypresses; The moat at the gateway stills all dust and dirt. I happen on the lodge of an official at leisure; And can hardly neglect a cup with a guest far from home. We open the gate and yellow leaves are shed; Spread out our mats and feel a cool breeze blow. But our greatest joy is the garden chrysanthemums, Whose wintry flowers bloom at the end of day.

——— 145

See T’ao’s poem, “Drinking Wine” (fifth in the series), T’ao Yüan-ming Shih Chien-cheng Kao, compiled by Wang Shu-min 王叔岷 (Taipei: Yi-wen, 1975) p.290; Lu Ch’in-li, p.998.; J.R. Hightower, translator, The Poetry of T’ao Ch’ien (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), p.130. For Ou-yang Hsiu’s fu, see Ou-yang Hsiu Ch’üan-chi 歐陽修全集 (Complete Works of Ou-yang Hsiu), compiled by Li Yi-an 李逸安 (Peking: Chung-hua, 2001) 15.256, and the translation by A. C. Graham in Cyril Birch, ed., Anthology of Chinese Literature: From Early Times to the Fourteenth Century (New York: Grove Press, 1965), pp.365-69. 146 See Liu Yi-ch’ing 劉義慶, Shih-shuo Hsin-yü 世說新語 (Worldly Sayings and New Comments) (Hong Kong: Chung-hua, 1973), pp.186-187; cf. Richard Mather, trans., Shih-shuo Hsin-yü (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1976), p.389. 147 HTFC 16.12b (255; 252:114).

208

CHAPTER FIVE

Ho’s fifth line is very reminiscent of a line by the Mid-T’ang monk poet Wu-k’o 無可, “Sent to my Cousin Chia Tao in Autumn” 秋寄從兄賈島, “I open the gate, and shedding leaves are deep” 開門落葉深, although in this case the resemblance may be fortuitous. 148

And indeed, Ho seems quite satisfied with his life at this season, though conscious of his position as a disappointed official—the robes made of lotus and water-chestnut leaves in the following poem recall the dress assumed by Ch’ü Yüan in the “Lament on Separation” (Li Sao 離騷). 149 溪上溪上茅齋不掩扉、西風初罷芰荷衣。月寒沙柳蕭蕭落、天晚江鴻肅肅飛。野客哦詩水邊立、家人沽酒夜深歸。相逢醉語休辭數、城外黃花漸覺稀。 Beside the Creek 150 Beside the creek a thatched retreat whose gate is never shut; The west wind dies away; I dress in lotus and water-chestnut robes . . . The month turns wintry, sandbank willows shed their cheerless leaves; The day grows late, and geese on the river fly away with a flurry of wings. A country sojourner chants his verses, standing beside the stream; A family servant, sent to buy some wine, comes back in the depths of night. Our drunken talk on meeting here is mostly idle chatter, Just noticed how outside of town, the yellow blossoms now so few . . . The fourth line ends with an echo of the Songs, “The wild geese take flight, / All aflurry their wings” 鴻鴈于飛、肅肅其羽. 151 西郊秋興舊家溮水上、門向釣臺邊。近市來沽酒、中流坐放船。蒹葭開晚照、洲渚接寒天。漁父如相識、長歌過我前。 Autumn Inspiration in the Western Suburbs (fourth of ten poems) 152 My old home is beside the River Shih; The gateway faces toward a fishing terrace.

——— 148 149

p.71.

150 151 152

CTS 813.9152; K.44349. Ch’u Tz’u Pu-chu 1.13b (8); translation in Hawkes, first ed., p.25; Penguin ed., HTFC 25.1a (436; 272:039). Mao Shih Yin-te 40/181/1-2; cf. Karlgren, p.125, Waley, p.118. HTFC 16.13a (256; 252:118).

RETIREMENT

209

On my way to market, buying wine; In midstream, I sit in my idle boat. Rushes and reeds bloom in the evening glow; Banks and islets touch the wintry sky. The old fisherman seems someone I know, Passing before me singing a drawn-out song. The third couplet is reminiscent of one in Tu Fu’s long poem “Presented on Farewell to Librarian Li the Eighth” 贈李八秘書別, “The Tu-ling tomb slants away in the evening glow; / The river Chüeh is streaked with wintry banks” 杜陵斜晚照、潏水帶寒淤. 153 Although the closing couplet refers chiefly to the Ch’u Tz’u (see below), the final line recalls, and rhymes with, that of Lu Chi’s ballad “A Long Song” 長歌行, “With a long song to take up my leisure time” 長歌承我閒. 154

As it happens, this last poem comes from a set evidently written in response to a set by Li Meng-yang, and we may take the opportunity to compare the two men’s styles. A poem from Li’s set follows: 河上秋興古有蒹葭客、吾今水一邊。茅栽寒淰淰、洲渚鬱蒼蒼。獵騎捎河鴈、歸人競野航。霜高木葉下、莫擬是瀟湘。 Li Meng-yang: Autumn Inspiration on the River (first of ten poems) 155 Once a stranger midst the rushes and reeds, Now I am here, on one side of the river. In my thatched retreat, the cold is congealed and frozen; Banks and islets are lush with dark, dark green. Hunting horsemen snare the river geese; The homeward bound dispute a rustic raft. With frost in the air, the leaves fall from the trees; Do not suppose this the land of the Hsiao and Hsiang.

Li’s poem was probably written in the fall of 1507, a few months after Li and Ho left the capital. 156 Li was, at any rate, in Kaifeng (other

——— 153

Tu Shih Yin-te 444/4/57-58, CTS 230.2514, K.11567. WH 28.10a (386); Lu Ch’in-li, p.656. 155 K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi, 27.12b (704). The Hsiao and Hsiang Rivers, famous for their scenery, were associated with autumn and with the two consorts of Emperor Shun, who were said to have roamed there from Lake Tung-t’ing, by which the alluded to leaves are shed in the Ch’u Tz’u text (see the second note below). These two poems are also compared by Yokota Terutoshi, in his “Ka Keimei no Bungaku,” pp.248-51. I have learned much from Yokota’s discussion, but do not reproduce it in mine. 156 Chu An-hsien’s Li K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Nien-piao assigns Li’s poems to 154

210

CHAPTER FIVE

poems in the set suggest this). Although the sets of poems do not duplicate rhyme schemes, as was sometimes done in answering poems, there is obvious echoing of vocabulary, some of which (e.g. Li’s ‘cold’ and Ho’s ‘wintry’, both 寒) is lost in translation. But the poems work quite differently, in spite of these superficial similarities. In this case, at least, Li’s poem is the more allusive. The first couplet draws the phrases ‘rushes and reeds’ and ‘on one side of the river’ from the Songs (see above, “Fourteenth Night,”); in poems by Tu Fu we find the phrases ‘congealed and frozen cold,’ ‘dark dark green’ (with ‘lush’ in the parallel line), and ‘rustic raft;’ and the penultimate lines draw ‘leaves are shed from the trees,’ a famous phrase, from the “Lady of the Hsiang” poem in the “Nine Songs.” 157 Some, even all, of the Tu Fu references might possibly be unconscious echoes, since the contexts from which they come do not add significantly to the meaning of Li’s poem. But the allusions to the Songs and Ch’u Tz’u are another matter. They would have been unmistakable to any reader with a basic knowledge of the literary tradition. Their point seems clear as well. The first links Li to the loved one (for which read the official out of favour) in the Songs, whose whereabouts is unknown; the second invokes an almost equally ancient source, apparently with no larger purpose than to remind the reader of the season, already suggested in each of the preceding couplets. The descriptive couplets, including whatever part of them is derived from Tu Fu, take the reader from the studio, presumably on the ‘other side of the river,’ out onto the stream itself, from which the hunters and the peasants at the ferry landing can be seen. This much is visually coherent, but the closing couplet seems awkward by comparison. The swift jerk into the sky, the falling leaves, and the imaginary displacement to faraway Hunan are brusque, jarring even, and the inclusion of the allusion to the Ch’u Tz’u seems gratuitous. Ho Ching-ming also bases his closing couplet on the Ch’u Tz’u, but the difference in the ways the two poets use their common source is instructive, particularly since Ho’s poem does appear to be modelled

———

1507 (p.8b) Li had built a villa near the banks of the Yellow River. 157 See Mao Shih Yin-te 26/129/1; Karlgren, p.83; Waley, p.42; Tu Shih Yin-te 413/2/4, CTS 234.2588, K.11940; 477/44/31-32, CTS 230.2509, K.11547; 347/21/6, CTS 226.2435, K.11121; and Ch’u Tz’u Pu-chu, 2.9a (111); Hawkes, first ed., p.38; Penguin ed., p.108.

RETIREMENT

211

on Li’s. We have noted the common phraseology already. Ho also uses a phrase (‘untethered boat’) that is the title of the Tu Fu poem that may have supplied Li with ‘cold is congealed and frozen,’ and he follows the general pattern of Li’s poem, introducing the river at the beginning and sweeping out over the river scenery in the inner couplets. By introducing the ‘fishing terrace’ in the second line Ho not only hints at his close, but also leads the reader’s attention out onto the river, where the poet himself is found on an idle boat (quite unlike the ‘rustic raft’ of Li’s raucous sixth line). The third couplet absorbs words from three different lines of Li’s poem while working them into a perfect regulated couplet, not only syntactically parallel and tonally antithetical, as the form requires, but also contrasting the reeds near at hand, which partially screen the sunset glow, with the stream, which reaches unobstructed to the horizon. When Ho introduces his allusion to the Ch’u Tz’u, then, he does so within a coherent poetic structure. The ideal is the fisherman of the book, who urged the frustrated statesman and poet Ch’ü Yüan, to whom the “Nine Songs” and other poems in the anthology are attributed, to withdraw from worldy contentions before rowing away singing (see above, chapter four). 158 Here, however, the image fits naturally into the poem, rather than bringing it up with a bump. The Fishing Terrace referred to in Ho’s poem lay on the north side of the Shih River, west of Hsin-yang and not far from Ho’s home. A set of poems on the site comes from the next month or so: 登釣臺薄暮登臺罷、雲山興不忘。門人攜酒至、日落更傳觴。一水星河渺、孤烟島嶼長。不愁歸路晚、明月在滄浪。 Climbing the Fishing Terrace (fourth of four poems) 159 In pale twilight, my climb to the terrace ends, But my joy in the cloudy peaks is not forgot. My students arrive, and bearing with them wine; As the sun sets, they pass around the cups. A single stream as far as the Starry River, An orphan smoke-wisp long as islands and banks. I do not regret to be late on my homeward road,

——— 158

Ch’u Tz’u Pu-chu, chüan 7 (295-99); Hawkes first ed., p.90; Penguin ed., p.206. HTFC 16.16a (260; 252:134). Ho Ching-ming’s tomb is in the hills above the site of the Fishing Terrace. See Hsin-yang Hsien Chih 4.3b (132), 4.18a (161). 159

212

CHAPTER FIVE

For the glowing moon is bright on Ts’ang-lang Stream. Ho’s third couplet is reminiscent of one by the late T’ang poet Li Tung 李洞, “Saying Farewell to Abbot ‘Cloud Minister’, Who is Travelling to An-nan” 送雲卿上人游安南, “Islands and banks divide the various realms; / The Starry River unites all the heavens” 島嶼分諸國、星河共一天 . 160 The Ts’ang-lang is of course the river that Ch’ü Yüan’s fisherman sings of.

These autumn poems paint a rather rosier view of Ho’s rural surroundings than the facts of common existence may have supported. Although there was some snow in the tenth month, the latter half of 1508 was unusually cool and rainy, to the extent that crop failure was widespread, resulting in famine and outbreaks of banditry. Toward the end of the year, these conditions appear in a variety of Ho’s works, including a formal proposal to the Administration Commissioner for Honan. Ho refers to a court edict of early in the tenth month and sets out his account of three hardships to be avoided (heavy taxation, imposition of corvée labour, and banditry) and one benefit to be extended (provision of relief grain from state granaries). 161 Ho’s particular concern with respect to banditry is that the government not respond to famine-induced breakdown of order by simply unleashing a campaign of indiscriminate arrests and persecution of the starving. He made the same point in an essay to be presented to a local elder named Li Chung-liang 李仲良. Ho tells us that with widespread crop failure and the resulting desperation of small holders and peasants (chung-min yi hsia 中民以下), a rise in banditry was to be anticipated. The Administration Commissioner had by this time ordered every locality to select one elder for the responsibility of catching and punishing bandits. At the suggestion of two local men, Ho writes to urge Li to be prudent in his work and not to arrest anyone without good grounds. 162 Ho illustrated the failures of the grain distribution in a poem titled

——— 160

CTS 721.8271; K.40282. “Draft Letter to the Regional Office Discussing Remedies for the Dearth” 擬與藩司論救荒書, HTFC 32.13b (570; 書:002). The recipient of Ho’s proposal was one Nan T’ang 南鏜 , who had been named Left [i.e. Senior] Administration Commissioner for Honan in the eighth month; see Wu-tsung Shih-lu 41.2b (954). For the order to relieve famine in Hukwang and Honan, see MTC 42.1595. 162 “Preface Presented to Elder Li Chung-liang” 贈李仲良耆老序, HTFC 35.18b (618; 序:006). 161

RETIREMENT

213

“Ballad of the State Granary” 官倉行, which depicts the imposing walls and gate of the institution, the bustle and noise of its functionaries, and the great carts pulled by pairs of oxen in which prominent families haul away piles of grain, while the hungry peasants standing outside get a scolding at any sign that they might be about to approach. 163 Ho also depicted a quite dismal picture of conditions in Hsin-yang in a set of three poems with the title “Sighing Over Winter Rains” 冬雨嘆. The first of these three poems, after giving the date as the tenth of the eleventh month, depicts unbroken drizzling chill rain and a landscapte turned to all but impassible mud. The second poem adds that there was no accumulation of snow (important for the growth of the next year’s crop, and concludes: 昨聞汝北多死亡、橫尸委骨官道傍。我里四鄰久已出、到今不知死何鄉。 Lately I hear that north of the Ju, many have died or vanished, Corpses strewn and bones abandoned beside the public highway. In my hamlet, neighbours all around have long since left; Even now I do not know in what district they may have died. 164

The last of these poems ends on an even more grisly note: 白晝狐狸行近郭。城下饑烏啄死人、蒼鷹側來怒相攫。 In broad daylight, foxes prowl the village outskirts. Below the city wall, a starving crow picks at a human body; A dusky raptor swoops to seize it in a fury.

These conditions are reflected as well in a pair of poems that Ho sent to Meng Yang at this time. Meng was anxious about his family at home and had written to enquire: 答望之念汝書難達、登樓望欲迷。天寒一鴈至、日暮萬行啼。饑饉饒群盜、徵求及寡妻。江湖更搖落、何處可安棲。

——— 163

HTFC 12.7b (164; 271:033). There is, in addition, Ho’s “Rhapsody on the Eastern Gate” 東門賦 , which draws heavily on Han and Six Dynasties literary conventions, to be sure, in its depiction of a desperate couple separating in a graveyard, but which probably represents a response to current conditions, HTFC 1.14b (9; 賦:012). It resembles in some ways Ho’s poem on the woman who survived the Mi-lu uprising in Kweichow (see above, chapter three). 164 HTFC 12.6a (163; 271:029-031).

214

CHAPTER FIVE

Replying to Wang-chih [Meng Yang] (first of two poems) 165 Thinking of you, how hard for letters to get through; “I climb a tower, and my gaze begins to stray.” As the sky grows cold, a single goose arrives; As the day grows late, a myriad streams of tears. Famine and dearth increase the bands of outlaws; Demands and imposts reach to widowed wives. Rivers and lakes are more unsettled still; Where a refuge safely to abide? Ho’s second line is identical to the first line of Tu Fu’s second “Climbing the Tower at Tzu-chou on a Spring Day” 春日梓州登樓. 166 The third line recalls Li Po’s “Saying Farewell to Drafter Chang, Who is Going to Chiang-tung” 送張舍人之江東 (attributed elsewhere to Meng Hao-jan), “As the heavens clear, a single goose is far away; / Where the lakes are broad, a solitary sail lingers” 天清一鴈遠、海闊孤帆遲. 167 This couplet is also reminiscent of one in a well-known poem by Meng Hao-jan, “Climbing the Ten-thousand Years Tower” 登萬歲樓, “As the sky grows cold and geese pass over, how could one not weep? / As the sun sets, gibbons cry and my heart all but breaks” 天寒鴈度堪垂淚、日落猿啼欲斷腸. 168 Ho’s third couplet recalls two quite different poems by Tu Fu. One of these evokes a time of peace: “Inscribed on Peach Trees” 題桃樹, “Widowed wives and bands of outlaws are not things of today; / In all the world, whether carts or script, is truly a single family” 寡妻群盜非今日、天下車書正一家. 169 The last line suggests the ideal (Chinese) state, in which all carts have axles of the same length (so that all fit into the ruts in the roads) and everyone uses the same form of script. Tu’s other poem, “A Ballad of Tiger

———

165 HTFC 17.1a (262; 252:143). There is an unusually large number of textual variants in this poem. In the second line, I follow the other recensions in reading 樓 ‘tower’ where the Yung recension has 高 ‘high’. In the fifth line, at least one uncorrected edition of the ‘carvers’ names’ family of the Standard recension reads 郡 ‘district’ for 群 ‘bands’. The last character in this line and the first in the next are partially illegible in the ‘Yi-yang’ edition of the Shen recension; descendant selected editions improvise their own readings for the latter character. 166 Tu Shih Yin-te 382/16A/2, CTS 227.2460, K.11273. For another reference to this poem, see below, “Poems Written While Moved by News of Master Wu-ch’ing.” 167 Ri Haku Kashi Sakuin 0501/03-04; CTS 175.1788; K. 08364; An Ch’i, p.284. 168 CTS 160.1657; K.07797; Meng Hao-jan Shih-chi Chiao-chu, p.496. The resemblance is a great deal more striking if one follows, as one surely should not, the 13 chüan Ta-fu Chi published later in the sixteenth century by Yang Pao (see above), in which 猿 ‘gibbon’ replaces 行 ‘streams’ in the fourth line. There are several variant readings in the tradition of Meng’s poems that affect the resemblance; all were currant by the time of Ho Ching-ming and Yang Pao, so we can’t be sure what version of the text either of them knew. 169 Tu Shih Yin-te 410/32/7-8, CTS 226.2448, K.11194.

RETIREMENT

215

Fangs” 虎牙行, describes the ravages of banditry and invasion. The closing lines read, “In all directions for a thousand li, defending against outlaws and bandits; / Frontier recruiting and pressing for taxes— widowed wives lament; A traveller from afar, in the middle of the night—tears dampen his breast” 八荒千里防盜賊、征戍誅求寡妻哭、遠客中宵淚霑臆. 170 Ho’s penultimate line is almost identical to the corresponding line in Tu Fu’s “Rushes and Reeds” 蒹葭, in which are evoked the plants withering at the end of the year, “On rivers and lakes they will collapse and fall” 江湖後搖落. 171

About this time, Ho said farewell to a certain Mr. Ch’ai 柴, whose very existence is recorded only in a few poems by Ho. Although he is given three different and quite respectful titles of address, including “Mr.” ( 先生 hsien-sheng), “Sir” ( 公 kung), and “Untrammeled Gentleman” ( 逸士 yi-shih), it seems clear from the ten poems gathered under the four titles in this group both that they all refer to the same man. He appears as a somewhat woebegone figure, an impecunious seeker after Taoist longevity with whom Ho had been acquainted in Peking (though there are no works addressed to him from that period) and who in the course of a wandering life had arrived in Hsin-yang in the Micawberish hope that “something would turn up.” We shall take the poems up in the apparent order of their composition. The first two titles are from the autumn of 1508 and the other two from the winter of the same year. “A Drunken Song: Presented to the Untrammeled Gentleman Ch’ai” 醉歌行贈柴逸士: 172 This poem refers to Ho’s meeting Ch’ai at mid-autumn, but does so in a way that suggests the reference is retrospective. This rather long poem (twenty-two lines) does not dwell on Ch’ai’s misfortunes—It may have been written before these became apparent—but does depict him as a man of somewhat reduced condition: 金市豪華如夢寐、玉京仙侶無消息。 Golden markets, bold and glorious, just as in a dream; Transcendent companions from the jade capital, of them there is no news.

——— 170 171 172

Tu Shih Yin-te 193/22/15-17, CTS 222.2364, K.10834. Tu Shih Yin-te 326/16/7, CTS 225.2422, K.11070. HTFC 12.8a (165; 271:502).

216

CHAPTER FIVE

“Saying Farewell to Mr. Ch’ai, Who is Going to Huo-ch’iu to Visit Chu T’iao-yüan” 送柴先生之霍邱訪朱調元: 173 Winter is about to set in, and Mr. Ch’ai is off to see an “old friend” who will no doubt, Ho assures him, commiserate with the turn his life has taken. This poem makes no mention of Ch’ai’s Taoist project, but the name of his old friend (otherwise unknown), T’iao-yüan 調元 (“Tuner of the Prime”) suggests the possibility of Taoist resonances. What the poem dwells on is Ch’ai’s bleak condition: 寒登具行李、早飯出山家。東路蘼蕪滿、西風楊柳斜。 By a wintry lamp, you ready your travelling kit; An early meal and you leave a mountain lodge. Your eastward road is covered in tangled weeds; The west wind blows the willow boughs aslant—

“Saying Farewell to Mr. Ch’ai: Two Poems” 送柴先生: 174 Now the end of the year is at hand, and Mr. Ch’ai is ready to set out again, his destination in this case unknown to us. We learn from these poems that he had left Peking late in the summer and lingered through the winter ‘on the shores of the River Ju’ (i.e., in southern Honan). We have to surmise that Chu T’iao-yüan had not proven as generous as had been hoped: 白首家無定、黃金藥未成。 White-haired now, your household insecure; Yellow gold, the elixir not yet found— 為客江湖遠、求仙歲月遲。 A sojourner’s life, far over rivers and lakes; In search of transcendance, the months and years drag on.

“The Sick Horse: Six Poems” 病馬: 175 The horse, once a fine steed but now old and sick, is identified as Mr. Ch’ai’s in the first line of this set of poems. One wonders what moved Ho to devote no fewer than six poems to this topic, poems that are relentless in their contrasting of images of the horse’s past as a marvellous (and expensive) steed raised amid the open spaces and brave adventures of the western frontier with its present state: old, sick, thin, cold, and

——— 173 174 175

HTFC 16.11a (253; 252:106). HTFC 16.16a (261; 252:135-136). HTFC 18.6b (292; 252:137-142).

RETIREMENT

217

mired in mud. The one favourable note is that of Mr. Ch’ai’s loyalty to the animal, which he will not abandon. That the horse’s owner was in no position to replace it with a better one is, however, the implicit corollary. It is striking that all of the poems have a departure from Hsin-yang in view, to the extent that we can scarcely tell whether Mr. Ch’ai left once, twice, or three times (twice seems the most likely). Given his feckless obsession, there is something touching in Ho’s concern—he may have been helping Ch’ai out with ‘small loans to tide him over’, but was no doubt unprepared to bankroll his search for The True Elixir. In the midst of all this, Ho found time to write a set of poems to console one of Liu Chin’s many victims, a man named Liu Jui 劉瑞. 176 Liu, a follower of Wang Ao who had been in the Han-lin Academy during Ho’s years in Peking and was known throughout his career as an incorruptible man devoted to principle, had been among the first to retire in opposition to Liu Chin, but because of his poverty he had been unable to return to his home in Szechwan and so had been staying with a cousin in Li-chou 澧州, northern Hunan (The places mentioned in the poems are all in the vicinity of Li-chou). 得五清先生消息尚客澧州悵然有懷作詩 Poems Written While Moved by News of Master Wu-ch’ing [Liu Jui], Who is Still Staying in Li-chou (two of six poems) 177 I 憔悴東都士、吾師更可嗟。三年為逐客、萬里未還家。暮阻巴山雪、春行楚岸花。江湖無路覓、流涕望天涯。 Weary and haggard, the Eastern Capital scholars; My teacher, among them, the one I most lament.

——— 176

For Liu Jui (t. Te-fu 德符; h. Wu-ch’ing Hsien-sheng 五清先生), see TL 848, HY 3/245, MS 184.4889, TK 120. It was Liu Jui who had recommended that Wang Ao be reappointed to office in 1505, on the completion of a period of mourning (see DMB, p.1344). 177 HTFC 17.2a (264; 252:150, 154). Ho’s brief Rhapsody “There are Epidendra on the River Li” 澧有蘭辭 was probably written at this time; see HTFC 3.1a (27; 賦:006). While in the region years later, Meng Yang wrote a poem of lament for Ch’ü Yüan, the semi-legendary Ch’u official and author of the “Nine Songs” and other works, using the rhymes of a poem by Liu Jui. Of course, the evocation of Ch’ü Yüan implies that, like Ch’ü, Liu had been unjustly driven from office by evil men who had succeeded in gaining the sovereign’s ear; see “Lament for Ch’ü Yüan, Using Wuch’ing’s Rhymes” 用五清韻弔屈原, Meng Yu-ya Chi 6.3b.

218

CHAPTER FIVE

For three years now he has lived an outcast stranger; From ten thousand leagues he has still not come home. At evening blocked by snow on the Hills of Pa, In springtime walking by blossoms on shores of Ch’u. On river and lakes, no road can be made out; With flowing tears I gaze toward the ends of the earth. V 跡為羇棲久、身因放逐勞。五溪淹日月、三峽尚波濤。夢裏推雙翼、愁邊見二毛。清風引歸袂、名共蜀山高。 Your footsteps have tarried long on a sojourner’s road, Your person troubled because of dismissal and exile. The Five Creeks submerge the sun and moon; The Three Gorges raise their ripples and waves. In your dreams, you flutter both your wings; In the midst of your sorrow, grey hairs appear. A cool breeze tugs at your homeward sleeve, Your name as lofty as mountains of Shu . . . The opening couplet of the second poem again recalls the first of Tu Fu’s “Climbing a Tower at Tzu-chou on an Autumn Day” poems (see above), in this case Tu’s second couplet, “My person has not returned to youth and health; / My footsteps are but those of a sojourner’s road” 身無却少壯、跡有但羇栖. 178 The second couplet is reminiscent of a different couplet by Tu Fu, this one in the first of Tu’s five great “Poems on Historical Sites” 詠懷古跡 (for which see also below, chapter twelve), “The towers and terraces of the Three Gorges submerge the sun and moon; / The robes and gowns of the Five Creeks share the cloudy hills” 三峽樓臺淹日月、五溪衣服共雲山. 179 Ho’s sixth line refers to the opening of the preface to the “Rhapsody on Autumn Inspirations” by P’an Yüeh, the man who wrote the original three poems mourning his wife (see above, chapter one), “In the fourteenth year of the Tsin dynasty [278], when I was in my thirtysecond year, grey first appeared in my hair.” 180

Word of Liu Jui’s continuing hardships may have been brought by Han Fu 韓福 (d.1545), the special commissioner who had been sent to Hunan to oversee relief operations there. 181 He passed though Hsin-

———

178 Tu Shih Yin-te 382/16A/3-4, CTS 227.2460, K.11273. For another reference to this poem, see above, “Replying to Meng Wang-chih.” 179 Tu Shih Yin-te 471/35A/3-4, CTS 230.2510, K.11556. 180 WH 13.4a (176); cf. the translation in Knechtges, 3:13, and the notes to this, 3:401-02. 181 For Han Fu (t. Te-fu 德夫), see HY 3/136, TL 897, KHL 30.37a (1252—anon.,

RETIREMENT

219

yang on his way back to Peking to report at the end of 1508, and Ho presented two poems to him on the occasion. 182 Although Han was a creature of Liu Chin, the latter turned against him either for having taken his assignment too seriously and offended powerful people in the process or, as some accounts have it, for having bribed Liu insufficiently from the proceeds of his private exactions in Hunan, which the confiscation of his property after Liu’s fall revealed to have been of extraordinary extent. The latter interpretation is the one found in Han’s biography in the Ming Shih, which places him in a collection of Eunuch Adherents 閹黨 along with such people as Chiao Fang and Chang Ts’ai. 183 The Kuo-ch’ao Hsien-cheng Lu (KHL), a standard collection of Ming biographies, includes no fewer than three accounts of Han. The first, given anonymously, is a glowing narration of Han’s early career in the provinces. This is followed by an account, evidently by Wang Shihchen 王世貞 , which lies behind the Ming Shih biography and describes Han as entirely ‘turned’ by Liu’s favour. 184 This is followed by an extract from the memorial stele for Han by K’ang Hai, which says nothing about a change, but rather describes Han responding in policy conferences entirely on the basis of right and wrong, to the extent that he frequently angered Liu Chin. 185 Han’s life was at all events filled with twists and turns. A native of Shensi, he had built an early reputation as an outstanding provincial official well before Liu Chin’s rise to power. His subsequent career

———

Wang Shih-chen, K’ang Hai), TK 194. 182 “Presented to Vice-Minister Han, Who is Returning from Hunan” 贈韓亞卿返湖南, HTFC 17.1b (263; 252:147-148). In the final couplet of the second of these poems, Ho asks Han to report the local famine at court. 183 MS 306.7841. Matthew Fryslie, “Inside Out,” is an excellent study of this material. 184 KHL gives the Yen-chou Pieh-chi 弇州別記as its source. This appears to refer to Wang Shih-chen’s Yen-shan T’ang Pieh-chi, a large collection of miscellaneous historical materials. See Wolfgang Franke, An Introduction to the Sources of Ming History (Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press, 1968), pp.50-54, for this work and another largely derived from it, the Yen-chou Shih-liao 弇州史料 (Historical Materials from Yen-chou). The Yen-shan T’ang Pieh-chi was completed in 1590, and thus would have been available as a fresh source during the compilation of the Kuoch’ao Hsien-cheng Lu, which took place from 1594 to 1616. However, the only reference to Han Fu that I have found in it is quite brief and clearly not the source for the KHL entry, see Yen-shan T’ang Pieh-chi (Peking: Chung-hua, 1985) 95.1812. 185 KHL 30.38a (1252); cf. “Stele for Master ‘Country Fields’” 野田先生碑, Tuishan Chi 6.1a (273), 16.6a (459), 35.6a (391).

220

CHAPTER FIVE

reminds us that there were after all conflicting interests in provincial government and hence competing standards to be applied to provincial officials. The court’s interest was above all in the most efficient extraction of revenue consistent with the maintenance of civil peace; local elites sought relief from taxation and the furthering of their interests at court; the peasantry wished the same for themselves, but with less hope of success and certainly much less chance of having their judgements of local officials ‘go down in history’. Han Fu’s speciality seems to have been law and order, which is more likely to have pleased the first two interests than the last. With this in mind, it is unfortunate that we do not know what led to Han’s imprisonment only a year or so before his passage through Hsin-yang. Liu Chin had him freed and interviewed him, interested, we are told, in winning over a fellow provincial who had established a good reputation already. The immediate outcome of this interview was a series of promotions and challenging assignments, including the one to Hukwang. Wang Shih-chen says that by the time he returned to Peking Liu Chin had fallen and Han’s bribes were then discovered. This is clearly anachronistic, as Liu would be in power for more than a year to come at this time. It does, moreover, seem clear that Han was sent on another assignment after Hukwang. This time he went to Liaotung, where the strictness of his measures led to a mutiny and his return in disgrace. By this time, Liu Chin had indeed fallen, and, according to K’ang Hai, it was in the process of investigating him that the Hukwang bribes, sent by other people but inside Han’s sealed correspondence, came belatedly to light. This led to his banishment to the frontier, where he remained until amnestied on the accession of Shih-tsung in 1521. K’ang Hai was, of course, a fellow native of Shensi who had suffered from being associated with Liu Chin. He is naturally at pains to show how an upright man could be dragged down by the fall of a villain who had employed him, because his was the same story. That his account is at least chronologically consistent tends to support its credibility. Ho Ching-ming’s poems are only partly helpful here, but they also tend to support K’ang Hai’s version of events to just this extent: their flattery of Han Fu would not have been appropriate or wise if addressed to someone who was being recalled in disgrace, as Wang Shih-chen would have it. Whatever the truth may have been, once amnestied, Han returned home to live in comfort until he died in

RETIREMENT

221

his ninety-first year. Ho greeted the new year with a ‘policy statement’ conditioned by what he had every reason to believe was the prospect of a very long, quite possibly a permanent, bar on his returning to official life: 元日言志北杓建寅月、東谷發首旦。氣轉青陽曖、日暎丹霞爛。羣物欣向榮、萬象倐改觀。自予脫朝簪、及茲謝塵幹。世事鑒倚伏、節候感迴換。岩耕慕長往、淵綸恣永玩。俯羨潛波鱗、仰慙雹霄翰。欽此無悶言、忘彼高飛嘆。勉懷日新志、庶以慰朝旰。 Expressing my Intention on the First Day 186 The Northern Dipper sets the inceptive month; The eastern valley produces the first dawn. The ethers revolve—the greening yang is warm; Sunlight makes the cinnabar cloudwrack glow. The host of things enjoys a turn toward blooming; Ten thousand images suddenly alter appearances. Since I discarded the hatpins of court dress, I have reached this refusal of dusty business. Events reflect dependence and submission; The seasons move me by their circling and change. To crags and ploughing I esteem the long-term way; In angling the deeps I will give myself up to enjoyment. Looking down, I envy fins beneath the waves; Looking up, I am shamed by feathers above thin clouds. I honour these who lack for downcast words, Neglect all those who sigh over lofty flights. I will try to cherish the aim of daily renewal, Hoping thereby to ease my dawns and sunsets.

The spring of 1509 seems in fact to have been one of the happier seasons of Ho’s life, or so it appears from the poems plausibly assigned to it. Other poems written early in the year express the same satisfaction at the prospect of a life of peaceful retirement. The season unfolds in easy drinking and poetry writing with Liu Chieh, Yüan Jung, Jung’s brother Yüan K’ai 鎧, Chia Ts’e, Yeh Pang-chung, and

———

186 HTFC 9.4a (107; 251:520). In the midst of a short “A Sigh for Falling Flowers” 落花嘆, probably written later in the same spring and whose theme is the same carpe diem mood, Ho plays the prematurely disallusioned poet: “South of the River Ju, Master Ho is not yet thirty; / His hair is not yet white, but his heart is already ashes grey” 汝南何生未三十、頭髮未白心已灰, HTFC 12.9b (166; 271:506), YK A.5a.

222

CHAPTER FIVE

others, in the mutual exchange of visits and greetings. 187 邀劉文直不至劉郎招不至、嗜酒世間稀。爾是劉伶後、何妨荷锸歸。 I Invite Liu Wen-chih, But He Does not Come 188 Master Liu was invited, but he did not come; His craving for wine is rarely matched in this world. Surely a descendant of Liu Ling; You could have gone home shouldering your spade!

Liu Ling was the archetypal drunk of China. When he went out, he carried a wine jug to keep himself supplied and was attended by a servant who carried a spade on his shoulder with which to bury Liu wherever he might drop dead. 189

———

187 “Chia Hsi-ku [Ts’e] Invites Me to Drink at a Temple in the Hills: Ch’ao-hsin [Liu Chieh] Not Having Arrived, a Poem to Hurry Him” 賈西谷邀飲山寺朝信不至詩以促之, HTFC 29.2b (514; 274:512), YK A.13.9b; “The Southern Garden of Yüan Wei-hsüeh [Jung]” 袁惟學南園, HTFC 25.8b (444; 272:522); “The West Garden of Mr. Yeh the Fourth” 葉四公子西園, HTFC 25.7b (443; 272:517), YK A.25b; “Yüan Ch’ung-hsiao [Ch’ih 勑 ?] Comes to Visit with Wei-hsüeh [Jung]” 袁冲霄先生同惟學過訪, HTFC 25.8a (443; 272:520), YK A.26b; “Yüan Wei-wu [Yüan K’ai] Invites Guests to Go Boating in the Evening: Matching Rhymes” 袁惟武邀客泛舟夜下次韻, HTFC 25.7a (442; 272:516); “At the Estate of Commander Yüan: Matching the Rhymes of Ch’ao-hsin [Liu Chieh] and Wei-hsüeh [Yüan Jung]” 袁揮使別墅次朝信惟學韻, HTFC 17.13b (279; 252:561). Ho’s fellow 1498 chü-jen Yüan Jung (t. Weihsüeh 惟學) and Jung’s younger brother Yüan K’ai (t. Wei-wu 惟武) were the sons of Yüan Hsün 勛 (t. Shih-ch’en 世臣), a local militia commander; see TK 179-80 for all three and for the tentative identification of Yüan Ch’ung-hsiao with Yüan Ch’ih. The family was an important one locally. As Ho says, in an essay he wrote as part of the choosing of an informal name for another younger brother, “There are several dozen hereditary Guard families in Shen 申 (i.e. Hsin-yang), but the Yüan clan has been renowned among them for a very long time,” “Explanation of the Informal Name of Yüan Wei-ch’i” 袁惟器字說, HTFC 33.14b (591; 雜 :502). The selection of an informal name was often a kind of avuncular gesture on the part of a friend of the recipient’s father or teacher. See, for example, the essay that Ho T’ang wrote on the occasion of selecting an informal name for one of Wang T’ing-hsiang’s students, at Wang’s request, “Explanation of the Informal Name of Fan Ju-ch’ien” 范汝謙字說, Po-chai Chi 柏齋集 (Cypress Studio Collection) (SKCS) 9.6b (594). Having passed the provincial civil service examination, Yüan Jung declined to inherit his father’s command (he would finally become a Magistrate in 1520). The command passed to K’ai and thence to K’ai’s son Ts’an 璨, to whom Ho married one of his daughters. It was Yüan Ts’an who edited the Yüan recension and took an edition of Ho’s works to Wang Shih-chen, probably in the 1550s, to request a preface for it. For Yüan Ts’an, see TK179. 188 HTFC 28.7a (500; 254:703). YK B.3b. Liu Wen-chih is unidentified. 189 Tsin Shu 49.1375.

RETIREMENT

223

雨後溪園即事偃息春朝宴、輕陰散野園。山雲行翠壁、溪雨度河源。鷺浴晴相倚、鳧飛暖自喧。疎楊映遠岸、細草入平原。開徑徒懷侶、臨流且避諠。豹終隨霧隱、龍豈怨泥蟠。鴻鵠皆千里、雞豚自一村。幽棲何限意、難與世人論。 Written in the Glen Garden after Rain 190 I relax at ease in the last of a springtide morning, Pale shadows scattered over meadow and garden. Mountain clouds pass over the dark green walls; Rain in the glen traverses river and streams. Herons bathe as sunlight gives occasion; Ducks take flight, and warmth brings out their clamour. Leafing willows are bright on the distant shore; Delicate grasses reach to the level plain. I clear a path, only longing for a companion; Look out on the stream the better to shun disturbance. Even a leopard sought concealment in the fog; Does a dragon resent a time of hibernation? Geese and swans will cover a thousand leagues; Chickens and pigs are content in a single village. At rest in seclusion, there is no end to my thoughts, But hard to discuss them with the run of men.

In the ninth line, it is possible that Ho has in mind the case of Hsieh Ling-yün, who was accused of sedition when he ‘cleared a path’ to his estate. 191 The antepenultimate couplet is based on two allusions. The first is to a passage in the Lieh-nü Chuan (“Accounts of Resolute Women”), in which a wife advises her husband to withdraw from competition for eminence, telling him, “I have heard that there is a leopard in the southern hills that stayed in the fog and rain without eating for seven days in order to make its fur glossy and bring out the pattern thereon. Thus it went into seclusion in order to keep harm at a distance.” 192 The second allusion is to an image found in texts as early as the Han dynasty, that of the dragon that lies curled in the mud until

———

190 HTFC 23.4b (408; 253:505). There is one variant in this poem. In the fourth line, the Ch’ing dynasty editions of the Standard recension published during the K’ang-hsi, Ch’ien-lung, and Hsien-feng periods all read 渡 ‘ferried’ in place of 度 ‘traversed’. 191 Nan Shih 19.540. 192 Ku Lieh-nü Chuan Chu-tzu So-yin 古烈女傳逐字索引 (Single Word Concordance to the Ancient Biographies of Ardent Women) (Hong Kong: Shang-wu, 1993) 2.9/17/30.

224

CHAPTER FIVE

it is ready to soar into the heavens. The first line of the following couplet alludes to the saying, “Geese and swans cover a thousand li in a single flight relying only on their six rows of feathers.” 193 The only source of regret was the departure of Jen Yung, who went up to Peking at this time. 194 His goal was evidently to obtain a post in the official school system, as such positions were open to men who had been approved as candidates for provincial examinations but had not passed. Jen was eventually appointed an Assistant Instructor (訓導 hsün-tao) at Hsin-ch’eng 新城 in Hopeh.

———

193 Han Shih Wai-chuan 韓詩外傳 (Outer Commentary on the Han Songs) (SPTK) 6.57; (SKCS) 6.16a (828); cf. the translation by James Robert Hightower, Han Shih Wai-chuan: Han Ying’s Illustrations of the Didactic Application of the Classic of Songs, Harvard-Yenching Monograph Series, 11 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1952), p.221. 194 For Jen Yung’s departure for Peking, see “Saying Farewell to Jen Hung-ch’i [Yung], Who is Going to the Capital” 送任宏器入京, HTFC 25.11a (447; 272:531532), YK A.27b; “A Second Farewell to Hung-ch’i [Jen Yung]” 再送宏器, HTFC 25.11b (447; 272:703). Neither of Ho’s farewell poems is dated. Ho refers, in the first of them, to Jen’s departing just as the plum blossoms are sending off the last snow and in the last to Jen’s being in ‘Ch’ang-an’ (i.e. Peking) in the third month. Establishing the year of his departure is more complex. We know from a poem by Meng Yang that Jen was welcomed to Peking by Meng and Ma Lu; see “Visiting Jen Ts’ao-t’ing [Yung], Who Has Just Arrived in the Capital: Matching the Rhymes of Chün-ch’ing [Ma Lu]” 訪任草亭初至都下次君卿韻, Meng Yu-ya Chi 9.21b. Meng was in Chaochou in the spring of 1508 (see above) and it can be shown that Ma was serving as Magistrate in Ku-an, Hopeh, by the spring of 1511. The (Chia-ching) Ku-an Hsien Chih固安縣志 (Gazetteer of Ku-an County) records his taking up his appointment in 1511. A farewell poem for him by Wang Ch’ung-ch’ing see below, chapter eight) shows that he left Peking in the tenth month of the year; see “Saying Farewell to Ma Chün-ch’ing [Lu], Who is Going to Govern Ku-an” 送馬君卿尹固安, Tuan-hsi Hsien-sheng Chi 端溪先生集 (Collected Works of the Master of Tuan Stream) (1552 edition) 8.ch’i-lü.1a. Meng Yang’s farewell poem refers to Ma’s arrival as the flowers were blossoming the previous year, “Taking Leave of Ma Chün-ch’ing [Lu], Who is Going to Govern Ku-an” 別馬君卿尹固安, Meng Yu-ya Chi 3.2b. Since Li Mengyang included Ma among the nine friends for whom he wrote celebratory poems at the end of 1508, after his release from prison, we know that Ma must have arrived in Peking by the turn of the year. The above evidence eliminates the springs of 1508 and 1511 as possibilities for Jen’s departure from Hsin-yang. In a later poem sent from Hsin-yang, Ho refers to Jen’s having been a sojourner for three years. Since Ho himself went back to Peking in 1511, we may conclude that Jen’s departure cannot have been later than 1509 (Ho is counting by inclusive reckoning, as usual). The preface to another poem evidently written at this time, the Ballad “Southern Hills” 南山篇, HTFC 6.12b (68; 樂:513), refers to an extant poem, not otherwise dateable, that Ho had written for Jen eight years before. The latter poem, “Inscribed on Jen Hungch’i’s ‘Thinking of my Parents’ Scroll” 題任宏器思親卷 , HTFC 25.14a (450; 272:540), YK A.29a, should thus come from 1502, or even 1501, and hence be among the very earliest of Ho’s extant works.

RETIREMENT

225

Toward the end of the season come two excursions with Ho’s students, one to Chien-shan, some miles west of Hsin-yang, culminating in a climb to the West Face Temple, which Ho had never visited before, the other to Black Dragon Pool, not far from Ho’s home. 195 The following poem from the first of these excursions suggests the flavour of the outing: 登西巖寺西林禪詠地、石壁倚天開。曲磴千盤上、飛泉一道來。園禽巢古殿、野鹿過香臺。共坐題詩暮、山花落酒杯。 Climbing to the Temple on the West Face (first of two poems) 196 In the western grove, a place for chanting of Zen; The stony cliff opens up on the verge of the heavens. Winding steps ascend by a thousand turns; A waterfall comes down in a single stream. Garden birds make their roosts in the ancient hall; Untamed deer pass by the incense terrace. We sit together—an evening inscribing poems— Mountain blossoms drop into our wine cups.

And the following set of three poems may suggest the ease of his relations with his local friends, among whom his fellow 1498 provincial graduate Liu Chieh was perhaps the closest, at least if we judge from the large number of extant poems that Ho addressed to him over the years. Fortunately, Liu would be one of the last of these friends to abandon life in Hsin-yang in search of a career in Peking or elsewhere in the provinces, remaining after Ma Lu, Tai Kuan, Sun Chi-fang.

———

195 “An Excursion with my Students on the Seventh Day of the Third Month” 三月七日同諸生出遊, HTFC 17.9a (273; 252:537); “Arriving at Chien-shan Temple” 適堅山寺, HTFC 29.1b (513; 274:504), YK B.8b; “On an Outing to Chien-shan, Master Juan Mentions the Western Cliff, Which I have Never Visited” 遊堅山阮生談西巖險絕予未嘗至, HTFC 17.14a (280; 252:562); “Climbing to the Chen-wu Shrine at the Summit of Chien-shan” 登堅山寺絕頂真武廟, HTFC 18.1a (284; 252:576-577); “Climbing to Western Crag Temple” 登西巖寺, HTFC 17.15b (282; 252:570-571); “Drinking at Night at Black Dragon Pool” 夜酌黑龍潭, HTFC 17.14a (280; 252:563564), “Black Dragon Pool” 黑龍潭, HTFC 28.16a (510; 274:701), YK B.8b. The first of these poems can be assigned to 1509 with certainty, as its title specifies the seventh day of the third month and the text refers to the Cold Food Festival, a day or two before Ch’ing-ming, the Grave-sweeping Day, which fell on the eighth day of the third month in 1509. 196 HTFC 17.15b (282; 252:570).

226

CHAPTER FIVE

喜劉朝信過飲 Happy That Liu Ch’ao-hsin [Chieh] has Dropped in for a Drink (three poems) 197 I 坐惜芳菲晚、何人到野中。相邀一尊酒、來對百花叢。翡翠鳴春日、遊絲墮碧空。誰知豔陽節、爛醉與君同。 It seems a shame this fragrance has an end; Who ever comes out here among the fields? I invite you in to have a cup of wine, To come and see the flowers in their thickets. Halcyon kingfishers call all day in springtime; Drifting catkins drop from the azure void. Who holds this season of warmth and sunlight dear? Glowing drunk I would spend it just with you. II 西郭悽遲地、春風亦可憐。落花寒食雨、高柳夕陽天。岸幘行林側、移樽坐水邊。啼鶯如有意、數傍舞衣前。 Here in the western outskirts where I linger, The spring breeze is surely to be cherished. Shedding blossoms in rain of Cold Food time, Tall willows stand against the sky at sunset— With caps off kilter we stroll along the groves; Taking our cups, we sit beside the river. Singing warblers seem to come on purpose, To take their places among our dancing robes. III 烟樹孤城外、風花野水濱。羣鷗不避客、雙燕亦留人。況值清明後、酣歌爛熳春。相看三月暮、過我勿言頻。 Hazy trees outside the lonely walls, Breeze-blown flowers on the shore of a country stream— Flocks of gulls do not avoid visitors; Pairs of swallows also keep us on. All the more, now that Grave-sweeping is past: Merry songs of spring’s last tatters. As we watch the third month draw to an end, Never say you are dropping in too often!

———

197 HTFC 17.4a (266; 252:505-507). “Warmth and sunlight” (豔陽 yen yang) in the penultimate line of the first poem is a conventional epithet for late spring.

CHAPTER SIX

THE LIFE OF THE MIND MOURNING All this came to an abrupt end with the deaths of Ho’s parents, his father’s in April and his mother’s less than a month later. Ho wrote the Curriculum for his father, proudly eulogistic, but not overtly griefstricken. 1 More to the point for us, it is his longest single prose composition, and a valuable source for reconstructing his background. The deaths of Ho’s parents entailed an official mourning period of twenty-seven months, during which the range of permissable activities was considerably curtailed. All the evidence suggests that Ho took the requirements of the formal mourning period very seriously. He records, in a contribution to a set of writings by local eminences celebrating the current magistrate for his role in bringing much needed rain in the summer of the year, that he was reluctant to participate because of his mourning and did so only when pressed. 2 One consequence of the mourning regime was that there could be no thought of Ho’s returning to office until it ended, regardless of the course of political events. We have no way of knowing the actual depth of Ho’s grief, but one poem, titled “Sitting by Myself,” does seem to reflect his emotions at this time: 獨坐獨坐孤燈靜、憂心倍寂寥。橫河當戶轉、落月去城遙。淚向何時盡、魂從暗裏銷。此身雖復在、甘與歲時飄。

——— 1

“Curriculum of my Late Father, Sir Plum Stream, Honourary Gentleman for Summoning and Secretariat Drafter” 封徵士郎中書舍人先考梅溪公行狀, HTFC 37.1a (641; 狀:501). 2 “Preface to the Rejoicing at Rain Scroll”喜雨卷序, HTFC (Yüan recension only) 32.42a ( 序 :502). The magistrate’s meteorological virtue consisted in his having offered, while barefoot, prayers for rain to the spirits of local mountains and waterways.

228

CHAPTER SIX

Sitting Alone 3 I sit alone, in the quiet of an orphan lamp; A grieving heart redoubles my lonely seclusion. A stretch of river curves outside the door; The setting moon is far from the city wall. When will my tears be at an end at last? My soul dissolves along with the darkness here. Even though my person still abides, I would as soon be adrift with the years and seasons. See Ho’s “Fourteenth Night” (preceding chapter) for his sitting alone by a lamp under different circumstances. This first line also recalls a line in Wei Ying-wu’s “Summer Day” 夏日, “I sit alone in the quiet of the hills” 獨坐山中靜. 4 Ho’s sixth line is reminiscent of the very opening of Chiang Yen’s “Rhapsody on Separation” 別賦, “Nothing dissolves the soul in darkness as does separation” 黯然銷魂者、唯別而已矣. 5 Both lines of Ho’s final couplet recall lines by Tu Fu. The first of the Tu Fu lines occurs identically in two different poems, and in both cases as the penultimate line, just as in Ho’s poem, though the resemblance is admittedly less close than in the case of Ho’s final line. This is “Even though my person is sober it still is drunk” 此身醒復醉, found in both “Returning in Springtime” 春歸 and “Joining Liaison Censor Chang in a Banquet in the Southern Pavilion” 陪章留後侍御宴南樓. 6 Ho’s final line differs in only one word from a line toward the end of Tu Fu’s long poem “Fifty Rhymes Sent to Two Former Colleagues in the Capital, my old Friend Vice-Prefect Chia Sixth of Yüeh-chou and Prefect Yen Eighth of Pa-chou”寄岳州賈司馬六丈巴州嚴八使君兩閣老, “I would as soon move with the years and seasons” 甘與歲時遷. 7 Closer in spirit, if not in text, is a line in Shih Ch’ung’s 石崇 “Song of Wang Mingchün” 王明君詞, “I would as soon be at one with the autumn grasses”

———

3 HTFC 18.2b (286; 252:585). The title was not uncommon among the works of Ho’s contemporaries, many of whom used it for meditative poems. See, for example, the ones by Wang Shang-chiung, Ts’ang-ku Ch’üan-chi (1758; repr. Ssu-k’u Weishou Shu Chi-k’an 5:18, Peking: Peking Ch’u-pan-she, 1998) 4.3a (326) and 4.5b (327)—one of these using the rhymes of a poem by Ho, according to the subtitle, but not those of this poem; Fang Hao, T’ang-ling Wen-chi 棠陵文集 (Collected Literary Works of T’ang-ling) (Chia-ching edition) 7.3a; and Chou T’ing-yung, Pa-ya Chi (1531 edition) 7.13b. 4 Wei Ying-wu Chi Chiao-chu (Shanghai: Shanghai Ku-chi, 1998) 6.403. 5 WH 16.27a (222); my translation is intended to bring out the similarities to Ho’s line. The rendering in Knechtges, 3:201, keeps much closer to the structure of Chiang’s original: “Of the things that bring gloom and dissolve the soul, / Nothing can match separation!” 6 Tu Shih Yin-te 354/43/11, CTS 228.2480, K.11380; 388/43/15, CTS 227.2464, K.11294. 7 Tu Shih Yin-te 337/42/92, CTS 225.2428, K.11098.

THE LIFE OF THE MIND

229

甘與秋草并. 8

Not much other writing can be assigned to this period. Ho wrote an epitaph for Yüan Hsün 袁勛 (1446-1509), the father of Ho’s friends Yüan Jung and Yüan K’ai. 9 A return to the temple at Chien-shan produced a poem in a mode very different from the easy camaraderie of the springtime visit with his students: 訪堅山寺僧不遇峭壁何年寺、重來雪路迷。烟霞開寶地、霄漢接丹梯。逼面千峰起、回頭萬壑低。無人獨歸去、惆悵白雲西。 Visiting Chien-shan Temple, I do not Find the Monk There 10 A towering cliff and temple from what year? I come again, the snowy road uncertain. Mist and cloudwrack open a precious site; The Milky Way adjoins a cinnabar stairway. Directly in front, a thousand peaks rise up; Behind, ten thousand valleys drop away. There is no one here; I go back home alone; Sad and forlorn, west of the white clouds.

The year 1509 ends with a set of five rather brief pentasyllabic oldstyle verse titled “Telling of my Grief on the Last Night of the Year,” in which Ho contrasts the empty seats at the family table with the happiness of a year before, and 1510 begins with a pair of poems recording a visit to his parents’ graves on the first day of the new year: 除夕述哀去年值今夕、庭闈奉顏色。今年值今夕、空奠几筵側。蒼苔翳幽遂、翠柏開靈域。顧望西山陰、風雲為悽惻。 Telling of my Grief on the Last Night of the Year (third of five poems) 11 Last year, when the time came for this evening, Courtyard and gateway offered the look of life.

——— 8

WH 27.24b (381); YTHY 2.25a (48); Lu Ch’in-li, p.643; cf. the translation in Birrell, p.85. 9 HTFC 36.24b (635; 銘:505). See below for Yüan Hsün’s tolerance of being shoved off a bridge by a local churl. 10 HTFC 17.16b (283; 252:574). For the temples of Chien-shan, see above, chapter five. In the title, the Yüan recension reads 至 ‘arriving at’ in place of 訪 ‘visiting’ as in the Yung and Standard recensions (the Shen recension does not include this poem). 11 HTFC 9.2a (104; 251:511). Note that the fifth poem in the set is found only in the Yüan recension.

230

CHAPTER SIX

This year, the time comes for this evening: For nothing, libations beside the tables and mats. Dark green moss is shrouding the lonely adit; Lustrous cypresses open the numinous region. Looking toward the darkness on the western hills; The wind and clouds there leave me sad and grieving. 元日哭先人墓春色松楸地、凄涼望不窮。一哀臨逝水、痛哭起悲風。江海無歸路、塵沙有斷蓬。一杯元日酒、空灑九原中。 Weeping at the Graves of my Ancestors on the First Day of the Year (first of two poems) 12 A place of springtime beauty in pine and catalpa, Now chill and drear as far as the eye can see. A single lament, looking over the flowing river, My bitter weeping raises a grieving wind. By rivers and lakes there is no homeward road; In dust and sand, a broken tumbleweed. A single cup of wine for the year’s first day I sprinkle in vain among the Nine Plains. Ho’s fourth line differs in only one character, and that a homonym, from the final line in Tu Fu’s “Recovery of the Capital” 收京, “My vocal weeping raises a grieving wind” 慟哭起悲風. 13 The next line is very close to the penultimate line in the first of Ho’s poems on hearing news of Liu Jui (see previous chapter). It also resembles, probably adventitiously, the first line in the third of Tu Fu’s “Playfully Inscribed to be Sent to the Prince of Han-chung” 戲題寄上漢中王, “With bands of outlaws, there is no homeward road” 群盜無歸路 . 14 A final reminiscence of Tu Fu is found in the last line, which resembles the last line of Tu’s “Weeping for Censor Chang-sun” 哭長孫侍御, “Lonely and drear amid the Nine Plains” 蕭瑟九原中. 15

“Nine Plains” was an old word for a graveyard. The year 1510 was passed in quiet mourning. The closest thing to a ‘normal’ activity is found in a group of poems written when one Ma Ying-hsiang 馬應祥

———

12 HTFC 17.9b (274; 252:541), YK A.12a. For other poems on visiting his parents’ grave, see “On the Day Before the Harvest Sacrifice I Go to my Parents’ Grave” 社前一日上先墓, HTFC 17.10a (274; 252:543); “Visiting my Parents’ Grave: to Show to P’eng T’ian-chang” 過先人墓示彭天章, HTFC 17.15a (281; 252:567-568); “Visiting my Parents’ Grave” 過先墓, HTFC 28.16a (510; 274:702). 13 Tu Shih Yin-te 377/27/8, CTS 234.2585, K.11924. 14 Tu Shih Yin-te 387/42C/1, CTS 227.2464, K.11293. 15 Tu Shih Yin-te 302/22/8, CTS 234.2580, K.11899.

THE LIFE OF THE MIND

231

(1458-1526), a friend of Li Meng-yang, passed through Hsin-yang on his way to take up office as Education Intendant in Hukwang. 16 Ho evidently spent a good deal of his mourning period in seclusion, staying in one or more temples, if he did not actually take up residence in one. 17 There are poems recording subdued meetings with Liu Chieh, also staying in a temple, and Chia Ts’e. 18 The following two poems are probably from the spring of 1510, though the evidence for dating they provide is so thin that 1511 is also possible. 登謝臺故國蕭條登此臺、暮雲春色轉相催。蓬蒿滿地悲風起、樓觀當空側影來。山鳥不隨歌舞散、野花曾傍綺羅開。今來古往無窮事、萬載消沉共一哀。

———

16 “To Match ‘Saying Farewell to Kung-shun [Ma Ying-hsiang]’ by Hsien-chi [Li Meng-yang]” 和獻吉送公順 , HTFC 12.8b (165; 271:503), YK A.3a; “Saying Farewell to Kung-shun [Ma Ying-hsiang], Who is Going to Oversee Education in Hunan” 送馬公順視學湖南, HTFC 25.3a (438; 272:501-504), YK A.28a; “Saying Farewell to Kung-shun [Ma Ying-shiang] as He Goes to Hunan, Thinking of Old Friends” 送公順赴湖南有懷舊遊, and “Presented Again to Kung-shun [Ma Yinghsiang], Who is Held up by Rain” 公順阻雨又贈, HTFC 17.5a (268; 252:510, 511), YK A.13a. The first of these poems matches a poem Li Meng-yang had presented to Ma as he passed through Kaifeng, “‘Do you not See, Sir’: Presented to Assistant Commissioner Ma Ying-hsiang” 君不見贈馬僉事應祥, K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi (1530; repr. Taipei: Wei-wen, 1976) 18.9a (401). For Ma Ying-hsiang (t. Kungshun 公順; h. Yi-hu Shan-jen 攲湖山人), see TL 416, HY 2/138, KHL 97.72a (4265—an epitaph by Wang Chiu-ssu, see Mei-p’o Chi, 14.16b [560-570]), TK 197. He had passed the chin-shih in 1496, along with Pien Kung and Wang Chiu-ssu, and had held a series of posts in the central government. He had tried to retire during Liu Chin’s ascendency, but his outstanding record of competence made this impossible. He had displeased powerful people, and this provincial posting was taken to be a form of retribution. Meng Yang and Wang Chiu-ssu had written farewell poems for Ma as he left Peking; see “Saying Farewell to Hunan Education Intendant Ma Kung-shun [Ying-hsiang]” 送馬公順湖南提學 , Meng Yu-ya Chi (1538 edition) 10.4b, and “Preface [to Poems] Saying Farewell to Ma Kung-shun [Ying-hsiang, Who is Going to Hunan as Education Intendant” 送馬公順提學湖南序, Mei-p’o Chi (Chia-ching edition; repr. Taipei: Wei-wen, 1976) 8.8a (281). Note that of the set of four heptasyllabic regulated verse poems (272:501-504) that appear together in the Yüan and Standard recensions, the first and third are also found in the Yung recension and the second and fourth in the Ta-fu Yi-kao. 17 “Returning to the Temple from My Mountain Home” 自山家歸寺 , and “Approaching the Temple” 近寺, HTFC 18.1b (285; 252:579, 580), YK A.11a. 18 “Liu Ch’ao-hsin [Chieh] Studying in a Mountain Temple” 劉朝信讀書山寺, HTFC 17.5b (268; 252:512), “Hsien-yin Temple: Matching Liu Ch’ao-hsin [Chieh]” 賢隱寺次劉朝信, HTFC 17.13b (279; 252:560), YK A.9b; “Staying at Chia Hsi-ku’s [Ts’e] Studio” 留賈西谷學舍, HTFC 17.14b (281; 252:565).

232

CHAPTER SIX

Climbing the Hsieh Terrace 19 The ancient land is drear and desolate where I climb this terrace; Evening clouds and the beauty of springtide urge me on by turns. Weeds and briars overspread the earth; a mournful wind picks up; Pavilions and halls against the heavens: inverted shadows draw near. Mountain birds did not disband along with the songs and dancing; These country flowers once bloomed alongside figured silk and gossamer. The present arrives and the past recedes, all happens without an end; Ten thousand years dissolve and vanish, sharing a single lament. The third line appears to combine elements of two different early poems. The beginning of the line recalls one of Chiang Yen’s imitative poems, this one of Tso Ssu, “Weeds and briars overspread the central garden” 蓬蒿滿中園. 20 The end of the line is then reminiscent of the Tsin poet Liu K’un’s 劉琨 “Song of Fu-feng” 扶風歌, “Fierce, fierce, a mournful wind arises” 烈烈悲風起. 21 Ho’s third couplet seems a cousin to the corresponding couplet in a poem by the somewhat obscure late T’ang poet Li Yüan 李遠, “On Hearing Someone Tell of the Thicket Terrace” 聽話叢臺, “Strings and pipes have turned into the tunes of mountain birds; / Figured silk and gossamer remain in the blooming of country flowers” 弦管變成山鳥弄、綺羅留作野花開. 22 It is a truism that the past recedes, while the present just keeps on coming, so to speak. Ho’s seventh line reverses the more common order found, for example, in the very opening of P’an Yüeh’s “Rhapsody on a Westward Journey” 西征賦, “I sobbed and sighed, ‘The past recedes and the present arrives; how vast, how distant!’” 迺喟然歎曰、古往今來、邈矣悠哉. 23 Tu Fu also lies behind this couplet, especially an early couplet in his “How Sad” 可歎, “The past recedes and the present arrives, sharing a single time; / In a human life, none of the ten thousand affairs is lacking” 古往今來共一時、人生萬事無不有, 24 as well perhaps as a very different poem, the fourth of the “Nine Quatrains on Idle Inspirations” 絕句漫興, “Do not consider how outside oneself all happens without an end; / Just exhaust the limited cups while we are alive!” 莫思身外無窮事、且盡生前有限杯. 25

——— 19

HTFC 25.9a (444; 272:523). The site of the Hsieh Terrace is now unknown. See (Min-kuo) Hsin-yang Hsien Chih 4.3b (132). 20 WH 31.16b (436); Lu Ch’in-li, p.1574; Chiang Wen-t’ung Chi 江文通集 (Collected Works of Chiang Wen-t’ung) (SPTK) 4.8a (31). 21 WH 28.29a (396); Lu Ch’in-li, p.849. 22 CTS 519.5933; K.28016. 23 WH 10.1b (130); cf. the translation in Knechtges 2:181. 24 Tu Shih Yin-te 191/20/3-4, CTS 222.2355, K.10817. 25 Tu Shih Yin-te 359/18D/3-4, CTS 227.2451, K.11212.

THE LIFE OF THE MIND

233

Like many poems of this type, this one begins with an ascent to a high place for the view. The second line announces the theme underlying the entire poem, that Ho is moved both by images of decline and loss (‘evening clouds’) and by the beauty of the present. This is an uncommon contrast, in that usually evening and autumn occur together, or else morning and spring. In the second couplet, Ho sets them in opposition in contrasting lines. Spring has brought a return of life, but in the form of weeds, whose very vitality calls attention to the untended condition of Ho’s surroundings. Other buildings, between Ho and the sun, stand open to the sky, their shadows growing longer as the sun sets. In the third couplet, past and present are combined in both lines. Only in the final couplet does Ho draw the conclusion—not unexpected—that all alike will vanish in time. It is, then, essentially a conventional poem, in spite of the unusual juxtaposition in the second line, taken up in the inner couplets, and the conventional diction of the final couplet underscores this. 寒食沙岸青春雨、風吹野水涯。不沽寒食酒、空映古墳花。城郭人烟細、樓臺暮景斜。東流爾何意、滾滾送年華。 Cold Food 26 On a sandy bank, the rain of verdant spring; A breeze blows over the shores of a country stream. I but no wine for this the Cold Food day; Ｂlossoms gleam by ancient tombs to no avail. In town and suburbs the smoke of men is wispy; Over pavilion and terrace the evening sunlight slants. Flowing eastward—what does it all mean? Rolling, rolling, gone the splendour of the year.

In the summer, Chia Ts’e was invited to Chekiang, probably to take up a private teaching job, 27 and by early fall candidates were departing for Kaifeng to take the provincial examination. 28 Yüan Jung had the

——— 26

HTFC 17.10b (275; 252:546). “Hsi-ku [Chia Ts’e] has an Appointment in Che: I am Delighted by his Having Such an Opportunity, and We Talk of the Beauties of Che” 西谷有浙聘予喜其得勝遊因話浙中之勝, HTFC 17.6a (269; 252:516). 28 “Saying Farewell to Kao Tzu-teng, Who is Going to Take the Examination” 送高子登赴試, HTFC 17.6a (269; 252:518), YK A.16b; “Saying Farewell to Master Hsü, Who is Going to Take the Examination” 送徐生赴試, HTFC 17.6b (270; 252:521), YK A.17b. Another farewell poem probably written at the same time, 27

234

CHAPTER SIX

indelicacy to invite Ho to a party on Double Nine, though his own father had died even more recently than Ho’s. Ho declined with this poem: 九日袁惟學邀南園登高病不起經秋予臥病、九日汝登臺。悵望啼猿處、無由躍馬來。暮天雙鴈落、寒日一花開。亦有杯中物、孤懷未易裁。 Yüan Wei-hsüeh [Jung] has Invited me to Climb the Heights at his Southern Garden on Double Nine, But I am Ill and Do Not Go 29 All through autumn, I have been lying ill; On the Ninth Day, you are climbing the heights. I sadly gaze toward where the gibbons cry; Having no way to mount my horse and come. At the end of day, a pair of geese descend; In cold sunlight, a single flower blossoms. Besides, there is the ‘thing within the cup’; Which one in mourning cannot readily take.

Ho may actually have been ill; there are three references to recent recovery from illness in poems plausibly assigned to the following winter and spring, but quiet seclusion seems to dominant note in his works at this time. 30 Chang Yün’s mother died this winter, and Chang came back from Peking to go into mourning. At his request, Ho wrote

———

though the examinations are not explicitly mentioned, is “Saying Farewell to Chu Yuchung” 送朱有中, HTFC 252:519, found only in the Yüan recension, 17.7a, and in YK A.17a. 29 HTFC 17.9a (273; 252:536). There is a variant reading for the first word in this poem. For 經 ‘through’ (ching), the reading of the Yüan and Standard recensions, the Yung recension reads 一 ‘the entire’ (yi). The poem is not found in the Shen recension. Ching is the regular reading, so far as the requirements for tonal antithesis are concerned, but yi makes a better semantic parallel with 九 ‘nine’ (chiu). That yi is repeated in the sixth line is not decisive, as there its sense is different, ‘single’, matching ‘pair’ in the preceding line. It is quite possible that both readings are authorial, but since the Yüan recension probably derives from a ‘deposit’ manuscript that Ho left in the family home, its reading, carried over into the Standard recension, is perhaps to be preferred here. The heights that Yüan Jung planned to climb were probably architectural rather than alpine. It appears from another poem, “Yüan Weihsüeh’s [Jung] Southern Garden” 袁惟學南園, that the garden was in town. The third couplet reads, “Opening a path through tumbleweeds and artemesia, you have no vulgar visitors; / Entering the city walls, the flowering willows seem like a mountain residence” 開徑蓬蒿無俗客、入城花柳似山家; see HTFC 25.8b (444; 272:522). 30 “Moved by Spring” 感春, HTFC 25.5a (440; 272:508), YK A.27a; “Longing for the Western Hills” 懷西山, HTFC 18.1b (284; 252:578), YK A.10a. The latter of these is translated below.

THE LIFE OF THE MIND

235

an epitaph for Mme. Chang. 31 At about the same time, Liu Chieh, almost the last of his Hsin-yang friends, left for Peking: 送別劉朝信萬里向天涯、孤城對日斜。雲山共此別、世路獨長嗟。暮雪燕關樹、春風漢苑花。知君騎馬地、名姓滿京華。 Saying Farewell to Liu Ch’ao-hsin [Chieh] 32 Ten thousand li, on toward the edge of the world; By the lonely wall, we face the setting sun. Clouds and mountains share in this farewell; For worldly paths we only heave a sigh. Evening snow on trees in the passes of Yen, Spring breezes in flowers of the Garden of Han— I know that in the places where you will go riding, Your name will fill the splendour of the capital.

As winter came on, Ho both savoured his idleness and envied, just a little, his absent friend: 曉起見雪曙色空窗裏、鳴禽更好音。幽棲忘盥櫛、偃臥問晴陰。卷幔山雲起、開門野雪深。不愁泥凝路、騎馬度西岑。 On Seeing Snow as I Get Up at Dawn 33 The look of dawn appears in my empty window; Singing birds renew their pleasant songs. In secluded retreat I neglect my comb and basin, Lying at ease, inquire if it’s cloudy or clear. I roll up the blinds and mountain clouds arise; Open my gate as country snow grows deep. With no regret for the muddy, slushy road, I will ride my horse beyond the western peaks. Ho’s first line is reminiscent of the first line in Tu Fu’s “Inn” 客亭, “In my autumn window remains the look of dawn” 秋窗猶曙色. 34 The third line is very similar to another Tu Fu line, in his “A Passing

———

31 “Epitaph for the Honorary Child Nurturess Madame Chang, Née Li” 封孺人張公夫人李氏墓誌銘, HTFC 36.27a (637; 銘:506). 32 HTFC 17.7b (271; 252:526). For a second farewell poem, see “Taking Leave of Liu Ch’ao-hsin [Chieh] at Hsien-yin Temple” 賢隱寺別劉朝信, HTFC 25.10a (445; 272:526). 33 HTFC 18.5a (290; 252:597). 34 Tu Shih Yin-te 384/25/1, CTS 227.2459, K.11267. For another reminisence of this poem, see above, chapter five, “Winter.”

236

CHAPTER SIX

Traveller Comes to Visit” 過客相尋, “The place is secluded, and I have neglected my comb and basin” 地幽忘盥櫛. 35 The sixth line recalls yet another Tu Fu line, from his “To Show my Nephew Tso” 示姪佐, “Filling the valleys, the mountain clouds arise” 滿谷山雲起. 36

The following poem too must have been written while Liu was in Peking—’Purple Boulevards’ refers to the broad avenues of a Chinese capital city, and the rest of the diction in the third couplet is typical of T’ang poems written in the capital. The mention of Shan-yin at the end alludes to Wang Hui-chih’s winter impulse. 對雪懷劉朝信十月孤城雲黯然、萬峰飛雪此溪邊。烟斜細細縈寒日、風急飄飄落暮天。何處玉珂迷紫陌、幾家銀燭照華筵。茅堂此際堪乘興、不放山陰半夜船。 Looking at the Snow and Missing Liu Ch’ao-hsin [Chieh] 37 In the tenth month the lonely walls grow dark beneath the clouds, Ten thousand peaks in flying snow run all along this stream. In thin strands, smoke slants away, entangling the winter sun; In gusty wind it floats and dances, in the fading evening sky. Where along the Purple Highroads has your jade bridle gone astray? In how many houses are silver lamps ashine on glorious mats? In my thatch-roofed hall on this occasion I act upon my impulse, Without setting forth in a Shan-yin boat at midnight . . .

THE ART OF LETTERS Teaching and relaxing with his friends no doubt occupied a good deal of Ho’s time during his years at home, but he had other projects of a more serious and solitary kind in hand at the same time. Now that he was effectively isolated from the careers he had begun as a poet and civil official in Peking, the time had come for him to take stock of his

——— 35

Tu Shih Yin-te 474/38/3, CTS 231.2543, K.11738. Tu Shih Yin-te 331/36/5, CTS 225.2426, K.11090. 37 HTFC 25.10b (446; 272:528). This poem is found only in the Yüan and Standard recensions. I follow the Standard recension reading of the title. The Yüan recension reads ‘elder brother Ch’ao-hsin’ 朝信兄 rather than ‘Liu Ch’ao-hsin’. In the third line, the Ch’ing editions of the Standard recension (those from the K’ang-hsi, Ch’ien-lung, and Hsien-feng reign periods) read 霞’cloudwrack’ instead of 斜 ‘slants away’, a plausible reading, but not authorial. 36

THE LIFE OF THE MIND

237

position relative to both the literary tradition and the political world within which he had played his brief role. Moreover, the years 150911, after most of his Hsin-yang friends had left and he himself was in mourning, mark a kind of hiatus in his life, during which striking events and securely datable works alike are rather few. We will take advantage of this period to consider some important bodies of his work that either cannot be dated at all or else are by nature not primarily of biographical interest. We begin with poetry. However active and successful Ho had been as a poet in Peking, he had not written much about poetry there aside from the Preface to “The Bright Moon,” although he was involved in editorial work on an anthology. 38 Now that he was back home and settled in his ‘thatched cottage’ near the Fishing Terrace some miles west of Hsin-yang, on the Shih River, he was soon taking advantage of his freedom from official duties to pursue literary interests. In his first months at home, he read through the works of Wang Wei, making his own selection from them and arranging it with a preface: Preface to the Collected Poems of Vice Minister Wang [Wei] 39 When I came home on sick leave, I arrived just in time to find the long summer stretching in front of me. Everyone at home urged me to cut down on my reading because my strength was not entirely restored. Day after day I had nothing to occupy me and, living in an out of the way

——— 38

Chien Chin-sung notes that Ho was younger than the rest of the group active in discussing literary principles around Li Meng-yang and also that he spent less time in Peking than the others did during the crucial period 1502-1506, “Li Ho Shih-lun Yenchiu” (M.A. thesis, National Taiwan Unversity, 1980), p.28. All the same, as Chien notes (p.30), Ho did work on the Han-Wei Shih-chi 漢魏詩集 at this time, although it was not printed, with his preface, until 1517 (see below, chapter ten), and his editing of the poetry of Wang Wei and Yüan K’ai soon after his arrival home in Hsin-yang probably reflects the influence of Li’s circle and its activities. 39 王右丞詩集序 HTFC 34.2a (593; 序:001). References to Wang Wei are rare in Ho’s works. He is mentioned twice as a painter, in “The Estate at T’o-hsi” 沱西別業, HTFC 15.9a (227; 252:013), and “Thinking of Master Kao T’ieh-hsi [Chien]” 懷高鐵溪先生, HTFC 15.14b (233; 252:039), both works from the autumn of this year. Many years later, while serving as Education Intendant in Shensi, Ho went to visit the site of Wang’s famous Wang-ch’uan Villa and wrote poems about the place, “Deer Park Temple” 鹿苑寺, HTFC 22.15b (402; 452:022); “Wang-ch’uan” 輞川, HTFC 27.14a (487; 472:003). Note that there is a commentary—a doubtful and extremely dull one—to the works of Wang’s near contemporary Meng Hao-jan (689?-740) that is attributed to Li Meng-yang. See Daniel Bryant, “The High T’ang Poet Meng Haojan: Studies in Biography and Textual History” (dissertation, University of British Columbia, 1977), pp.35-37.

238

CHAPTER SIX

place, no one to talk with. I happened to pick up the works of Wang Wei and read them. I would read until I got tired and then lie down to rest. When I got up I would read some more. After some days, I had finished all the poems. Seeing that the long and short poems in the collection were all mixed together, I decided to investigate their formal patterns in order to discover the writer’s intention. I actually went to some trouble in my examination of them, and so I have put the poems in somewhat better order, relying to a certain extent on my own opinions in dropping or retaining them. I have arranged the penta- and heptasyllabic old-style poems in one chüan each. The pentasyllabic regulated verse, the most numerous group, also form one chüan. The heptasyllabic regulated verse make up one chüan, and I have combined the penta-, hepta-, and even hexasyllabic quatrains in one chüan. Each is headed by a title giving the form, so that each poem is placed in its proper niche. 40 There are five chüan in all, recorded in a single volume. I prepared it for my own study and perusal, not daring to show it to other people. It seems to me that, while his poems in other forms are really excellent, Wang’s old-style verse is not quite up to the same level. In fact, there are very few after Han and Wei times who maintain the breadth and depth of spirit found in the Airs and Odes. No sooner had Wang appeared than his genial purity and extraordinary genius made him a well-known figure in the world. But his very speed and facility did not lead to profundity. I have retained here those of his old-style poems that are relatively free of looseness and sloppiness, not daring to include more of them. In the old editions, there is one fu, which I have omitted here. As for the appended works by P’ei Ti 裴迪 and others, I have included those that are related to Wang’s own poems, so they are not all excluded.

He also began reading in earlier Ming writers and eventually wrote a preface for the works of one of them, Yüan K’ai, which most likely comes from the winter of 1508 or spring of 1509: Preface to the Hai-sou Collection 41 When I was in office, I had occasion to discuss poetry with Academicians and high officials. I said then that in the Three Ages of Antiquity and before, there cannot have been a single day without

———

40 This emphasis on the distinctions among metres and formal types is typical of Archaist thinking, as Ch’en Kuo-ch’iu 陳國球 points out in his “Chien-lun T’ang Shih Hsüan-pen yü Ming-tai Fu-ku Shih-shuo” 簡論唐詩選本與明代復古詩說 (Brief Discussion of Anthologies of T’ang Poetry and Ming Archaist Poetics), Wenhsüeh P’ing-lun 1993.2:111-121, p.118. 41 海叟集序 HTFC 34.3a (594; 序:007).

THE LIFE OF THE MIND

239

poetry, and thus their government was perfect and not to be equalled. After the Three Ages, those who spoke of government did not mention poetry, and it was precisely for this reason that they scarcely had government at all. Now, there are two reasons why poetry has not been perpetuated. Those who study for the sake of principles (理 li) liken it to a clever craft or a trifling occupation; by not putting real effort into it, they fail in the use of words. 42 Those who actually write poetry are tugged this way and that by contemporary taste, and take no thought for the highest excellence of accomplishment, and so they fail in the use of ideas. When words and ideas alike fail, then this culture of ours is lost. For this reason, those who study it without being fond of antiquity and serious in their attitude will certainly fail to achieve anything. I would compare it to lute playing. Classical pieces are what people don’t care to hear, and they are also hard to learn. The newer songs are catchy and pretty and easy to learn, and they are also popular. None but a person with genuine confidence in his own worth will avoid that which is easily learned and by which one may win the approval of others. It is just in this way that the ancient tao has found itself no longer listened to! My study of poetry has now extended for ten years, from when I was a student preparing for the examinations through service as an official. Each day I felt that what I had studied previously was incorrect. In poetry, although the highest praise is accorded to the T’ang, none among those who were fond of antiquity, beginning with Ch’en Tzuang 陳子昂, were equal to Li [Po] and Tu [Fu]. Still, while their ballads and new-style verse truly can be taken as a standard, their old-style poems are slightly lacking, and cannot entirely be so taken. For this reason, when I studied ballads and new-style verse, I learned something from them, supplemented by the other poets of the Early and High T’ang periods. But for old-style verse I had to seek my standards in Han and Wei. Although I still, even now, have hardly accomplished a single thing, I have held firmly to these as a source of confidence and have not dared to let loose of them. This year I was dismissed from office and returned home. I thought that since I had some excess energy I would devote it to a thorough study of the words of the men of old. In addition, I wanted to take up the collected works of the great poets of our own dynasty and read them too. I didn’t actually obtain many, and of the ones I did get and read, none really came up to my personal ideal, poor as that is. Only the poems of Hai-sou excelled. 43 His ballads and new-style poems take Tu

———

42 This is evidently a reference to the attitude of tao-hsüeh thinkers of the Ch’engChu tradition. 43 Sung P’ei-wei 宋佩韋 notes that Yüan K’ai’s style was derived from Han, Wei,

240

CHAPTER SIX

Fu as their model, but his old-style works do not do so entirely. If one looks for the model he adopted here, it surely is to be found among those in the Han and Wei and after. His output extended to all the forms, but it is not of great size and—alas!—few know of it. The prefect of our district, Sir Sun Mao-jen [Jung], is serious in his fondness for antiquity. His son Chi-fang has joined me in discussion and study, and we are in frequent contact. He once brought out for me some old books that had never been printed, saying, “So far as printed editions of old books are concerned, there are quite enough of works from the Six Classics down to the prose of the pre-Ch’in and Han periods. But Hai-sou was the best of the poets from the early period of our dynasty, and no one at all knows of him. It is apparent how difficult is the way of those who are fond of antiquity, and how important it is to transmit their works.” With this, he gave them to me, getting a commitment on my part to add my own humble comments and insights, so that Hai-sou’s ideas might be sought out thereby. Hai-sou’s surname was Yüan and his personal name K’ai. His collected works have been edited by Han-lin Bachelor Lu Shen, 44 with a preface by Li Meng-yang of the Ministry of Finance. 45 The account of his life and accomplishments can be discovered in them, so I will not tell it again here. 46

———

and High T’ang, which may explain Ho’s implied preference for his work, Ming Wenhsüeh Shih (Shanghai: Shang-wu, 1934), p.40. In any event, the Ch’ing critic Wang Shih-chen 王士禎 strongly opposed Ho’s preference for Yüan over Kao Ch’i, blaming it on his stylistic bias, Hsiang-tsu Pi-chi 香祖筆記 (Arethusa Brush Records) (Taipei: Hsin-hsing, 1988) 2.42, quoted in Sung, loc. cit.. 44 For Lu Shen (t. Tzu-yüan 子淵; h. Yen-shan 儼山), see DMB 999 (Hok-lam Chan), TL 568, HY 3/195, TK 192. He studied at the National University in Nanking after failing the chin-shih in 1502. He passed in 1505. He had greatly impressed Li Tung-yang and the philosopher Lo Ch’in-shun 羅欽順 while at the University and would hold academic posts for most of his career, eventually becoming Director of Studies at the University in Peking and one of the leading calligraphers of his generation. Although Li Meng-yang had been dismissed when Ho wrote this preface, Lu Shen was still in Peking, and in fact was promoted to Compiler in the Han-lin Academy later in 1507, perhaps due to the influence of Li Tung-yang. 45 Li’s preface is not included in his own works, but is to be found in Yüan’s. See Liang Lin-ch’uan 梁臨川, “Li Meng-yang te Liang-p’ien Yi-wen” 李夢陽的兩篇佚文 (Two Uncollected Works by Li Meng-yang), Wen-hsien 53 (1992.3): 286-87. 46 There is some uncertainty about the nature and timing of the contributions made to this edition by Lu, Li, Ho, and the Suns. Chien Chin-sung gives 1506 as the publication date, but Ho’s preface cannot have been written until 1508; see “Li-Ho Shih-lun Yen-chiu,” p.259. Chien is evidently taking the date from Lu Shen’s prefatory note or Li’s preface, both of which are dated Cheng-te 1, 8/8 [=August 27, 1506]. Lu Shen, who came from the same place as Yüan K’ai, did edit the collection, but says in his note that he read through the poems with Li Meng-yang. Li Mengyang’s preface says that Lu Shen had purchased a badly tattered old printed edition of Yüan’s works from “the household of a gentry family in the capital” 京師士人家, and

THE LIFE OF THE MIND

241

These two essays, like the preface to “The Bright Moon,” are, so far as they go, entirely consistent with the Archaist ideas current in Li Meng-yang’s circle in Peking. The impulses that run through them— discrimination on the basis of formal genres, with the assumption that the achievement of any particular poet may vary from one such form to another, antiquity as a source of positive value, the very evaluative tendency itself—are those that are central to Archaism. 47 Particularly striking is the combination, in the comments on Tu Fu and Wang Wei, of respect for the monuments of the tradition with a positively Kermanesque insistence on the unawed discrimination of levels of value within the Masters’ oeuvres. 48 Whether this attitude contradicts the common assumption of an inhibiting ‘burden of the past’ among Ming writers or represents instead an attempt to cope with the burden by aggressively cutting it down to size, it is certainly consistent with the approach to the tradition advocated by Li Meng-yang. Ho would,

———

that Lu had used this edition as the basis for his own. Li also refers to Ho’s praise of Yüan K’ai, using the same word for ‘best’ (冠) that Ho uses in quoting Sun Jung or Sun Chi-fang. Ho’s contribution raises the most questions, since he credits one of the Suns with inspiring him to write his preface, but in a way most easily interpreted as meaning that this happened in Hsin-yang and that Sun did not know of Lu Shen’s new edition (to which Ho’s preface was presumably to be added). Perhaps the best that can be done with this evidence is to suppose that it was actually the Suns from whom Lu Shen bought his copy text in Peking, doing so on account of Ho’s praise. This would have happened before Sun Jung left for Hsin-yang and Ho for Yunnan, Ho only finding the leisure to contribute his preface after his return home. 47 This can be seen in Li Meng-yang’s preface, in which he says of Yüan K’ai that his “White Swallows” 白燕 poem—the one for which he was, and remains, most famous—was “his most inferior and yet his best-known” work. Ch’en Yi 陳沂 (14691538), on the other hand, thought this poem outstanding; see his Chü-hsü Shih-t’an 拘虛詩談 (Chü-hsü’s Remarks on Poetry) (Chia-ching edition; repr. Peking T’u-shukuan Shan-pen Ts’ung-k’an, vol.102, Peking: Shu-mu Wen-hsien, n.d.) p.8a (852), also quoted in Ming Shih-hua Ch’üan-pien 2:1948. For Ch’en Yi (t. Tsung-lu 宗魯, Lu-nan 魯南; h. Shih-t’ing 石亭), see HY 3/212, TL 578, KHL 104.3a (4672—Ku Lin), TK 190. He was a Southerner who had been associated with Ku Lin and Cheng Shan-fu as a young man, but whose career was stalled by his failure to pass the chinshih until 1517, at the age of 49 sui. According to Ku Lin’s epitaph for him, Ch’en Yi had originally emulated the style of Su Shih, even calling himself “Su the Younger.” But in middle age, he changed his style, basing his poetry on High T’ang models and his prose on the Shih Chi and Han writers; see KHL 104.3a (4672). Fukumoto Masakazu 福本雅一 takes Yüan’s poem as the starting point for his “Hakuen Shi Kō” 白燕詩考 (A Study of White Swallows Poems), Tezukayama Gakuen Tanki Daigaku Kenkyū Nempō 28 (1980):54-82. This article supercedes an earlier version published in 1974. 48 See, for example, Joseph Kerman, The Beethoven Quartets (New York: W.W. Norton, 1966), especially the discussion of Op.18.

242

CHAPTER SIX

in time, have his own original contributions to make to Archaist literary thinking, and these would bring him into conflict with Li Meng-yang (see below, chapter nine). But in these prefaces he writes very much as the good student, earnestly seeking to apply, with due humility, the principles that he has been taught. If this decreases the interest the prefaces have for us, it can only increase our interest in his poetry, for it means that we shall have to attempt to discover, from the way Ho actually wrote, what he believed good poetry should be. Some opportunities to do so have already arisen, in the case of the poem written on his way to Yunnan that made complex use of Tu Fu and other sources (see above, chapter three), and, on a larger scale, the two long poems on the moon and the old city of Ta-liang (see above, chapter four). Another approach is to consider the question of the relationship between models and original creation, which would prove eventually to be the issue dividing Ho from his mentor. This is not the same as the question of sources. Sources supply words; models supply structures and thematic traditions. One promising approach to the question is to consider Ho’s use of traditional themes, examining how his work resembles or differs from that of his models. Since poems in these ‘sub-genres’, as they are generally but imprecisely called, are by their very nature the least likely to be auto-biographical in any specific way, they are also most appropriately, or at least conveniently, considered here, while both the restrictions of Ho’s mourning period and the textual uncertainties of the years 1509-11 reduce the number of poems that might be securely dated and hence used as the basis for a more biographical presentation. We shall consider first a poem frankly imitative of the earliest poems in the formal tradition, comparing it with poems of Han and Wei date. Sometime during his stay at home in Hsin-yang, perhaps early in 1508, Ho wrote this poem, part of a set: 擬古詩人生百年內、胡為形所役。登高覽九原、但見松與柏。徘徊故里閭、念我平生戚。斗酒相存問、度阡復逾陌。上堂展殷勤、華燈永今夕。何必傾庶饈、濁酤聊與適。朱顏難可常、鬢髮會當白。徧觀四海人、誰為不死客。良時弗為歡、衰暮嘆何益。死者長不作、生者長不息。日月更相送、萬古安所極。素絲有蒼黃、岐路多南北。在家常相問、出門安可測。落木歸本根、飛鳥戢羽翼。客遊在萬里、終當還故域。

THE LIFE OF THE MIND

243

In Imitation of Old Poems (thirteenth of eighteen poems) 49 For all a human life, a hundred years, Who would be a captive to form alone? I climb up high, look out on the Nine Plains, All I see are stands of pine and cypress. Wandering to and fro in my native hamlet,

———

49 HTFC 8.13a (98; 251:063). There is a variant reading in line twenty-three. In place of 素絲 ‘plain silk’, the Shen recension and the selected editions descended from it all have 青絲 ‘green/blue silk’. This is evidently the result of the similar shape of the characters. Many of Ho’s contemporaries wrote similar poems. See for example Cheng Shan-fu’s “Eight Poems Matching [T’ao] Yüan-ming’s ‘In Imitation of Antiquity’, while visiting the T’ao Garden in Chien-chou” 遊建州陶園和淵明擬古, written in 1517, Cheng Shih (Chia-ching edition) 7.8b, Shao-ku Chi (SKCS) 2.2a (23). The dating of Ho’s poems is problematic. One striking feature of the works that seem assignable to the spring of 1508 on purely textual grounds is the presence of a substantial body of what one might characterise as ‘set theme’ verse written in the pentasyllabic and heptasyllabic old-style and heptasyllabic quatrain forms, including these “Imitations of Antiquity.” If these poems do not supply any internal evidence for their dates, neither does consistent treatment of the evidence suggest assigning them anywhere other than the spring of 1508. It is, of course, possible that accidents of textual history may be responsible for this, that in arranging his verse from the years at home Ho Ching-ming himself set the ‘stock theme’ poems aside as a discrete group on account of their non-autobiographical character and that to interpret this placement as chronological evidence is erroneous. The same might be true of the assignment of Ho’s “Autumn Meditations” 秋興 poems, HTFC 24.11a-13a (429; 272:016-023), to the previous winter, but we may suppose that they, immediately preceded by another poem using Tu Fu rhymes, “Swallows, Matching the Rhymes of Tu of the Ministry of Works” 燕子次杜工部韻, HTFC 24.11a (429; 272: 015), were written in the company of Meng Yang during his visit, or perhaps to be sent to Li Meng-yang, to whom Ho addressed a poem, “Sent to Li K’ung-t’ung [Meng-yang]” 寄李空同, at about the same time, HTFC 11.16a (155; 271:016), translated below. The other poems, the “Imitations of Antiquity” 擬古詩, HTFC 8.9b-15a (94; 251:051068), the “Sensuous Songs” 豔曲, HTFC 8.8a-9b (93; 251:043-050), a set of poems on Hsin-yang historical sites, one of which is translated below, “Our District has been a Strategic Point Since Antiquity—Living at Leisure, I have been Inspired to Write Poems on its Historic Sites” 吾郡古要害地也閒居興懷追詠古跡作詩, HTFC 28.17b-18b (512; 274:036-043), and the four separate ‘historical poems’, “Ballad of Hung-men” 鴻門行, HTFC 12.2a (159; 271:023), “Ballad of Kai-hsia” 垓下行, HTFC 12.2b (159; 271:024), “Lu Lien” 魯連, HTFC 8.15b (100; 251:069), and “Chang Liang” 張良, HTFC 8.15b (100; 251:070), might have been written for Ho’s students or for his friends Wang Shang-chiung and Wang Yen 王綖 (1477-1537), who passed through Hsin-yang about this time, but we cannot be certain. A poem of farewell to them, referring to the third lunar month, comes from the spring of 1508, “At Hung-fa Temple, Taking Leave of Chin-fu [Wang Shang-chiung] and Sui-po [Wang Yen]” 洪法寺別錦夫邃伯, HTFC 16.5a (274; 252:075). For Wang Yen (t. Sui-po 邃伯, h. Lung-ch’iu 龍湫), see HY 2/70, TL 65, KHL 68.23a (2966—Han Pang-ch’i), TK 167. He was a man of assertive rectitude, who resigned from office several times rather than compromise in his opposition to the improprieties of imperial favourites. He was in mourning for his father at the time of the visit.

244

CHAPTER SIX

I think of those who were closest long ago. With a dipper of wine I seek them out, Cross the paths and go beyond the lanes. In the upper hall is extended cordial courtesy; Glowing lamplight makes this evening last. There is no need to down a lavish banquet; Turbid brew will serve us just as well. “Our ruddy cheeks are hard to keep for good; Temples and crown eventually turn to white. Wherever you look among the world of men, None was ever an immortal sojourner here. If we do not take pleasure in happy times, What will we gain by lamenting our twilight years? Those who are dead can never stir; Those who live can never rest. Sun and moon will keep on saying farewell, For ten thousand ages, never reach an end. Plain silk thread can turn to blue or brown; So many branching roads lead north or south. Living at home we see each other always; Once out the door, then who could fathom our fates? A shedding tree returns to trunk and root; Soaring birds will fold their feathered wings. A traveller’s roaming may cover ten thousand leagues, But in the end he must return back home.” “A human life of a hundred years” 人生百年 is a common expression and is to be found in poetry, as in the first line of a “Hard Travelling” 行路難 poem by the later Six Dynasties poet Fei Ch’ang 費昶, “Do you not see how a human life of a hundred years is like a flash of lightning?” 君不見人生百年如流電. 50 Ho is likely to have found the form of his line in a “Miscellaneous Poem” 雜詩 by the Tsin poet Chang Hsieh 張協, “Human life within the Encircling Sea, / Is as swift as bird flying past one’s eyes” 人生瀛海內、忽如鳥過目. 51 The second line combines phrases from the two ends of T’ao Ch’ien’s rhapsody “The Return” 歸去來辭, “It was my own doing that made my mind my body’s slave . . . On what account so flustered and busy, where would I wish to go?” 既自以心為形役 . . . 胡為遑遑欲何之. 52 There are many analogues to Ho’s third line, but it is particularly reminiscent of a line in the seventeenth of Juan Chi’s “Singing of my

——— 50

YTHY 9.29a (158); Lu Ch’in-li, p.2083; translation in Birrell, p.254. WH 29.24b (408); Lu Ch’in-li, p.745. 52 WH 45.19a, .20b (628); cf. the translation by J. R. Hightower, The Poetry of T’ao Ch’ien (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), pp.268-70, from which I have quoted the first of the two phrases. 51

THE LIFE OF THE MIND

245

Longings” poems, “I climb the heights and gaze at the Nine Provinces” 登高望九州. 53 Ho’s next line shows that he has in mind a meaning that ‘Nine Plains’ had acquired, that of a graveyard, where pines and cypresses were planted because their evergreen leaves suggested enduring life. The formula “I only see x and y” was common in poetry. See, for example, the fifth of Wang Ts’an’s “With the Army” 從軍詩 poems, “I only see groves and hills” 但見林與丘, 54 and one of Lu Chi’s “Coffin-pullers’ Songs” 庶人挽歌辭, “I only see caps and sashes” 但見冠與帶. 55 The more likely inspiration for Ho’s line is, however, the fourteenth of the “Nineteen Old Poems,” “I only see hills and grave mounds” 但見丘與墳. 56 This surmise is the more plausible because Ho’s next line, the fifth, is reminiscent of a line later in the same poem, which, following a mention of pines and cypress, reads, “I think of returning to my native hamlet” 思還故里閭. The sixth line takes its form from the penultimate line of the first of Ts’ao Chih’s poem’s on “Saying Farewell to Mr. Ying” 送應氏, “I think of where I lived all my life, / Choke up and cannot speak” 念我平常居、氣結不能言. 57 Ts’ao’s poem also begins with an ascent to a high place, and later mentions the “paths and lanes” of Ho’s eighth line. Ho’s seventh line resembles, more than the translation suggests, a line in the third of the “Nineteen Old Poems,” “With a dipper of wine we enjoy ourselves” 斗酒相娛樂. 58 The whole couplet appears to derive from one in Ts’ao Ts’ao’s “Short Song” 短歌行, “Past the lanes and crossing the paths, / I trouble old friends” 越陌度阡、枉用相存. 59 The eighth line is also reminiscent of one in Tu Fu’s great long poem “The Trip North” 北征, “Haltingly I go beyond the paths and lanes”. 60 The Wen Hsüan commentary by Ying Shao 應劭 cites an old ‘village saying’ 里語 from the Feng-su T’ung 風俗通 as the source for the first of Ts’ao’s two lines. 61 Ho’s ninth line borrows from the sixth section of Ts’ao Chih’s

——— 53

WH 23.8b (312); Lu Ch’in-li, p.500; I quote the translation by Donald Holzman, from his Poetry and Politics: The Life and Works of Juan Chi A.D. 210-263 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), p.134. 54 WH 27.13b (376); Lu Ch’in-li, p.362; Wang Ts’an Chi Chu (Hsin-yang: Chungchou Shu-hua, 1984), p.27. 55 WH 28.27b (395); Lu Ch’in-li, p.654; (SPTK) 7.4b (27). This is the third poem in the Wen Hsüan sequence, but the second in Lu Ch’in-li and the Lu Shih-heng Chi. 56 WH 29.6b (399); Lu Ch’in-li, p.332. 57 WH 20.32a (278); Lu Ch’in-li, p.454; Ts’ao Tzu-chien Chi (SPTK) 5.2b (19). 58 WH 29.2b (397); Lu Ch’in-li, p.329. 59 WH 27.18a (378); Lu Ch’in-li, p.349; Ts’ao Ts’ao Chi Yi-chu (Peking: Chunghua, 1979) p.18. 60 Tu Shih Yin-te 48/3/21, CTS 217.2275, K.10558; cf. the translation by Susan Cherniack cited above, in Chapter 3.. 61 WH 27.18a (378); see Lu Ch’in-li, p.236; the commentary on Tu Fu reprinted in the Tu Shih Yin-te, loc.cit. cites the same phrase, but gives the source as an “Old Yueh-fu Ballad on the ‘Gentleman’” 古樂府君子行. I have not found the passage in

246

CHAPTER SIX

“Presented to Piao, Prince of Pai-ma” 贈白馬王彪 , “And only afterward extend cordial courtesy” 然後展鄞勤. 62 Ho was probably also familiar with the close of the High T’ang poet Wei Ying-wu’s 韋應物 “Replying to Yang Chü-li” 答楊舉禮, “You ought to ready your solitary oar, / And come back here to extend cordial courtesy” 應當整孤棹、歸來展鄞勤. 63 The next line recalls one in the “White Colt” 白駒 poem in the Songs, “In order to make this evening last” 以永今夕. 64 Line eleven borrows from Ts’ao Chih’s “Lute Song” 箜篌引, “We loosen our belts and down a lavish banquet” 緩帶傾庶羞. 65 The next line represents an interesting phenomenon. Its closest ancestor is evidently an imitation itself, one imitating T’ao Ch’ien that forms part of a set of thirty “Poems in Miscellaneous Styles” 雜體詩 written by Chiang Yen. But Chiang’s line, “Turbid wine will suit me just as well” 濁酒聊自適, itself derives from the final line in the nineteenth of T’ao’s “Drinking Wine” poems, “Turbid wine will serve my purpose just as well” 濁酒聊自恃. 66 Couplets contrasting life with death, as Ho’s tenth does, are rather common in the tradition and put to a variety of rhetorical uses. Three that Ho would have known include the final couplet in a poem attributed to Su Wu, whose theme is the message of a man to his wife as he leaves on a military campaign, “If I live, I’ll come back to you again; / If I die, I’ll love you for eternity” 生當復來歸、死當長相思, 67 the opening couplet of Miao Hsi’s 繆襲 “Coffin-pullers Song” 挽歌, “While alive, you roamed the capital city; / Dead and gone, you are left in a field” 生時遊國都、死沒棄中野, 68 and Wang Ts’an’s eulogistic “Singing of History” 詠史詩, “Alive you were a hero among a hundred men; / Dead you are a model to stout soldiers” 生為百夫雄、死為壯士規. 69 Line 21 has at least a formal resemblance to one in Fu Hsüan’s “There is a Girl” 有女篇, “Sun and moon catch sight of one

———

the Feng-su T’ung. 62 WH 24.6b (328); Lu Ch’in-li, p.454; Ts’ao Tzu-chien Chi 5.7b (22). 63 Wei Ying-wu Chi Chiao-chu 5.331. 64 Mao Shih Yin-te 41/186/2, Karlgren, p.128, Waley, p.194. 65 WH 27.20b (379); Lu Ch’in-li, p.425; Ts’ao Tzu-chien Chi 6.1a (26); Cf. the translations by J.D. Frodsham, An Anthology of Chinese Verse: Han Wei Chin and the Northern and Southern Dynasties (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), pp.40-41, and George Kent, Worlds of Dust and Jade (New York: Philosophical Library, 1969), p.62.. 66 For Chiang’s poem, see WH 31.23b; Lu Ch’in-li, p.1577; Chiang Wen-t’ung Chi 4.11a (32). For T’ao’s original, not included in the Wen Hsüan, see T’ao Yüan-ming Shih Chien-cheng Kao (Taipei: Yi-wen, 1975), p.335; Lu Ch’in-li, p.1001; my translation is adapted from that of J.R. Hightower, The Poetry of T’ao Ch’ien, p.153. 67 WH 29.10b (401); YTHY 1.17a (24); Lu Ch’in-li, p.338; the translation is slightly adapted from that in Birrell, p.41. 68 WH 28.25a (394); not located in Lu Ch’in-li. 69 WH 21.2a (282); Lu Ch’in-li, p.363; Wang Ts’an Chi-chu p.18.

THE LIFE OF THE MIND

247

another from time to time” 日月時相望, 70 but the entire couplet derives from a line in the thirteenth of the “Nineteen Old Poems,” which is a graveyard lament, “Ten thousand years pass one after another” 萬歲更相送. 71 Behind the next couplet lies a passage in the Huai-nan-tzu, “When Master Yang saw branching roads he wept over them because they could go either north or south; when Mo-tzu saw bleached silk he bewailed it because it could be made yellow or black.” 72 This is a famous passage, and something of a cliché, but Ho ‘filters’ it through some earlier poetic versions, the closest of which is the final couplet of the Tsin poet Ts’ao Shu’s 曹攄 “Moved by Old Times” 感舊 , “Listening to music, what is it that I sigh for? / Plain silk and branching roads” 臨樂何所歎、素絲與路歧. 73 The antepenultimate line may adapt a line by Wei Ying-wu, from his “Responding to Vice-Magistrate of Ch’ang-an P’ei Shui” 答長安丞裴稅, “How could you fold your fearthered wings” 安能戢羽翼. 74 The penultimate line echoes a famous “Miscellaneous Poem” by Ts’ao Chih, “That man is ten thousand li away” 之子在萬里, 75 as well as a Chiang Yen imitation, in this case of Li Ling, “And I am ten thousand li away” 而我在萬里. 76 Ho was evidently fond of his line, as it is identical to one in another of his poems, “On the Pond” (see below). The final line is reminiscent of the last line in Wei Ying-wu’s “On the Last Day of the Month I Remember a Picnic Last Year at the Serpentine with my Closest Friends” 月晦憶去年與親友曲水遊讌, “At last I must return to my former hills” 終當還舊丘. 77

The earliest extant poems titled simply ni-ku are evidently a set of nine written by T’ao Ch’ien. 78 These were preceded, however, by poems explicitly written in imitation of particular earlier works. The earliest now extant were written by Fu Hsüan about a century and half

——— 70

YTHY 2.15a (43); Lu Ch’in-li, p.557; cf. the translation in Birrell, p.75. WH 29.6b (399); Lu Ch’in-li, p.332. 72 Huai-nan-tzu Chi-shih (Peking: Chung-hua, 1998) 17.1230. The vocabulary of the Huai-nan-tzu passage differs from Ho’s, reading 逵 rather than 岐 in some texts and 練 rather than 素, but unlike the case with textual allusions to poetry, the sense is the issue here. There is also a variant in Ho’s poem. For 素 ‘plain’, the Shen recension reads 青 ‘blue/green/black’. 73 WH 29.21a (407); Lu Ch’in-li, p.756. One of the Wen Hsüan commentators explains the first line in this couplet by reference to a passage in the Book of Rites, “When holding a coffin-pulling rope, do not smile; when listening to music, do not sigh” 執紼不笑、臨樂不歎. 74 Wei Ying-wu Chi Chiao-chu 5.316. 75 WH 29.15a (404); Lu Ch’in-li, p.456; Ts’ao Tzu-chien Chi 5.3a (20). 76 WH 31.9a (433); Lu Ch’in-li, p.1570; Chiang Wen-t’ung Chi 4.4b (29). 77 Wei Ying-wu Chi Chiao-chu 6.371. 78 T’ao Yüan-ming Shih Chien-cheng Kao, pp.373-402; Lu Ch’in-li, pp.1003-05; translation in J. R. Hightower, The Poetry of T’ao Ch’ien, pp.169-85. 71

248

CHAPTER SIX

before T’ao. Fu’s poems, like at least one slightly later set, were imitations of Chang Heng’s “Song of Fourfold Sorrows” 四愁詩. 79 Considering how early such poems appeared and what the objects of imitation were, it is not surprising that the ni-ku tradition generally takes “antiquity” to mean not the very earliest Chinese verse, the Songs and Songs of the South, but rather the anonymous yüeh-fu of the Han and similar poems by known poets of the late Han and early third century. Any reader familiar with such works will immediately recognise much of Ho’s poem as genuinely ‘antique’, for its theme, structure, tone, and even vocabulary are all very typical of what we find in poetry from the Han and Wei periods. This adherence to his models is particularly striking if we examine Ho’s poem at the level of individual phrases and lines, as the above commentary suggests. That is, such phrases as ‘human life’ 人生 , ‘pines and cypress’ 松柏 (these trees were planted on graves), ‘paths and lanes’ 阡陌 , and ‘out the door’ 出門 , to pick only a few, positively litter the early ballad literature. Ho’s first twelve lines, in particular, are all based fairly closely on models taken, with one exception, from the Wen Hsüan. I have enclosed the rest of the poem within quotation marks because it exemplifies a particular sub-tradition within ‘antiquity’, the monologue—familiar to habitués of Japanese railway stations on weekday evenings—of the older man who once in his cups catches sight of what he takes to be the hard truths of human life and feels an overpowering urge to share his insights with those around him. The locus classicus for this figure in the tradition of Chinese poetry is the “Short Song” by Ts’ao Ts’ao, cited above. It opens with the couplet, “With wine before you, you ought to sing, / What does man’s life amount to?” 對酒當歌、人生幾何 . 80 It is in the nature of the question that what follows will be cast in highly propositional language but in the nature of the speaker that continuity of argument will not be much in evidence. The opportunity for poetic exuberance is clear. The shift within Ho’s poem coincides with a marked decrease in the density of textual reminiscences, perhaps because the entire persona of the inebriated Ecclesiastes is a single such reminiscence itself, one that permeates the remaining lines.

——— 79

YTHY 9.14a (151); Lu Ch’in-li, p.573; translation in Birrell, pp.240-41. WH 27.17b (378); Lu Ch’in-li, p.349 (two variants); Ts’ao Ts’ao Chi Yi-chu p.18.. 80

THE LIFE OF THE MIND

249

Although Ho’s poem is half again longer than even the longest of the “Nineteen Old Poems” that it so resembles, it works on similar principles, the loose stringing together of thematically related but only plausibly sequential couplets, many of them consisting of versified bits of what appears to be folk wisdom. Taken as a whole, the poem falls into four reasonably distinct sections. The first eight lines form an introduction for the persona, evidently a man who has returned home after a long absence devoted to an attempt to make a career. The next four lines serve to sketch the setting of an evening spent drinking and reflecting with a surviving friend from time gone by. The rest of the poem is given over to a series of couplets expressing ‘antique’ bromides, but they can be at least roughly divided into an initial ten lines on human mortality, followed by a concluding eight on the theme of inevitable return home. To divide the poem into sections in this manner calls attention to one way in which Ho realistically creates an impression of antiquity in his poem. Aside from—and of course related to—their greater length, the most important formal difference between poems of the Han or Wei and T’ang new-style poetry lies in the enormously more tightly organised structure of the latter, or, to put it the other way around, the relative shapelessness of the older form. Hence the tendency for the more successful ‘antique’ poems to be either those whose thematic material strongly implies a sequential arrangement, such as a journey, a narrative, or a letter, or those that, on the contrary, imply a ‘naturally’ rambling quality such as a series of sententious apophthegms uttered while drinking. In the latter type, to which our examples belong, it is enough for the sequence of ideas to be plausible, but the ideas themselves must make a much more aggressive claim to intrinsic importance in order to be effective. This stands in sharp contrast to the statements or images in a T’ang poem, which are often trivial or of uncertain significance in themselves and draw their real power from their active participation in a much more highly organised structure. The parallel contrast closer to home would be Tchaikovsky as opposed to Mozart. From this standpoint, it must be admitted that Ho Ching-ming has outdone his model; indeed, he has done so almost to the point of parody. The five couplets that form the third section of his poem could be rearranged in almost any order without this resulting in any significant change in the effect of the poem, and much the same is true

250

CHAPTER SIX

of the last four couplets as well. At the same time, every grammatically complete line or couplet in these sections claims general validity as a principle of human life, and the relentlessly propositional texture combines with these claims to create the very ‘antique’ effect that is the point of the poem. The first section too has something of the same arbitrary quality. The opening can be read as a highly elliptical account of the occasion, “I reflected to myself that I shouldn’t spend my entire life scrambling to make a living, and seeing the world filled with graveyards, I decided after a long absence to return to my native place while there was still time.” But the thematic elements of this passage are, as we have seen, even more densely familiar from early sources than those of the later sections of the poem, which makes the elliptical quality of the passage both generally appropriate and less of a barrier to comprehension than it might otherwise be. Moreover, the real, if relative, lack of sequential presentation throughout the poem also places it within the tradition of ‘antiquity’ by creating in the poetic voice a persona who speaks seriously and from the heart to an audience capable of understanding his message by supplying the ‘missing’ elements in it. This claim for superior understanding—essentially a moral claim—is thus made, perhaps paradoxically, by a poem that exhibits in itself a high degree of disorganization. In short, Ho shows in this poem that he has internalised the tradition of old-style poetry so thoroughly that he can draw on it as a whole. Thus, I should argue, his adaptation of existing lines, so evident especially in the first half of this poem, but common throughout the corpus of his ku-shih, is not in all cases really a matter of allusion to particular texts, but rather of immersion in a tradition on which he draws without implying particular reference to any one source even as he borrows from it. 81 Closely related to the pentasyllabic old-style form of the “Imitation

———

81 For a clear-headed account of the various ‘levels’ of allusivenes in Chinese poetry, see J.R. Hightower, “Allusion in the Poetry of T’ao Ch’ien,” HJAS 31 (1971): 5-27, reprinted in James R. Hightower and Florence Chia-ying Yeh, Studies in Chinese Poetry (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), pp.37-55. I suggest that these are allusions of Hightower’s fifth type: “An expression or phrase in the line also occurs in a text undoubtedly familiar to the poet, but it makes no contribution to the reader’s appreciation of the line, and it is impossible to say whether the poet’s adoption of it was conscious or not” (p.67 [repr. p.38]).

THE LIFE OF THE MIND

251

of Antiquity” poems is the yüeh-fu ballad. Ho Ching-ming’s editors evidently thought of his yüeh-fu style poems as a special class of work, for they are found in a separate section of his works in most editions, rather than being assigned to any of the chronological subdivisions. 82 Thus we cannot be sure when most of them were written. However, some of them are classified as old-style poems written at home in the Yung recension, and this suggests that they may be most appropriately be considered here. Although they have been admired by some critics and are anthologised at least as often as Ho’s other works, it is hard to help noticing that they are among his most artificial productions. 83 This is not really surprising, for it is clear that he regarded the original yüeh-fu poems of the Han and early Six Dynasties with great respect and as having a canonical status. As we shall see, he eventually prepared his own anthology of these poems for the use of his students in Shensi, the Ku Yüeh-fu 古樂府 (“Ancient Ballads”). 84 This selection of ninety-one poems draws mainly on works attributed to the Han and Wei dynasties (ca.200 B.C.E.-ca.300 AD), but also includes a number of pieces thought in Ho’s day to have come from high antiquity. Most of Ho’s own yüeh-fu poems are on themes well established in the tradition. The following poem, for example, though its exact title is not found among Han and Six Dynasties works, is typical in its

——— 82

They occupy chüan 5-6 in the Shen, Yüan, and Standard recensions. The very earliest edition, the Yung recension, in 10 chüan and prepared in Shensi from Ho’s own manuscripts, includes a group of yüeh-fu poems, all assigned to the Chia-chi. A few poems treated as yüeh-fu in all other recensions occur in this one mixed in with works in other forms and assigned to the Chia-chi and Ching-chi. For an interesting and relatively sophisticated treatment of the yüeh-fu by Ho and his Archaist contemporaries, see Huang Cho-yüeh 黃卓越, “Ch’ien Ch’i-tzu Yüeh-fu Shih Chihtso yü Ming Chung-ch’i te Min-chien-hua Yün-tung” 前七子樂府詩制作與明中期的民間化運動 (The Making of the Yüeh-fu Ballads of the Former Seven Masters and the Mid-Ming Popularist Movement), Chung-kuo Wen-hua Yen-chiu, Autumn, 2003, pp.30-44. Huang’s analysis is thorough and free from the usual confusion of poet with persona, but I remain unconvinced that the ‘Early Seven’ were part of a ‘popularist’ literary movement. Li Meng-yang made appropriate claims for the merits of the work of his clients among the prosperous merchant class during his last years in Kaifeng, but the interest of his contemporaries, as well as his own in earlier years, seems clearly a matter of revivifying a literary tradition for its own sake. 83 The early Ch’ing critic and anthologist Chu Yi-tsun, for example, gave them more than 20% of the space he alloted to Ho in MST to yüeh-fu, though they occupy less than a tenth of the verse parts of HTFC. 84 For this collection, see chapter 11.

252

CHAPTER SIX

evocation of images and stylistic features of that period: 85 種麻篇種麻冀滿丘、種葵冀滿園。孤生易憔悴、獨立多憂患。當行思故旅、當食思故歡。先機失所豫、臨事徒嗟嘆。升蕭艾乃至、鉏桂致傷蘭。物理有相附、疇能識其端。斷金俟同志、抱玉難自宣。交結良匪易、君當圖未然。 Planting Hemp 86 In planting hemp, I hope to cover the hillside; Planting sunflowers, hope to fill the garden. Living in solitude, readily sad and mournful; Standing alone, with many cares and troubles. About to set out, I think of former companions; About to eat, I think of former revels. My earlier schemes have failed to attain their ends; Tending to business I only sigh and lament. When southernwort flourishes, mugwort then appears; In hoeing cassia, one brings harm to orchids. The nature of things is to have attachments; Who is able to know their ends? In severing metal, awaiting one who shares my goals; Clutching my jade, it is hard to make myself known. Befriending the worthy is no easy matter; You sir, ought to plan for what is to come. The third line may echo one from the Mid-T’ang poet Liu Tsung-yüan’s 柳宗元 poem “Inscribed at the Southern Ravine” 南澗中題, written while he was living in internal exile, “Living by myself, it is easy to be touched” 孤生易為感. 87 The phrase “many cares and troubles” in the next line echoes one in Hsi K’ang’s “A Song Written on Behalf of Ch’iu Hu” 代秋胡歌詩, where, however, this state is associated with that of being prosperous and renowned, “In riches, eminence, respect,

———

85 But see Lu Ch’in-li, pp. 416, 435 for poems by Ts’ao Jui 曹叡 and Ts’ao Chih with the titles “Planting Melons” 種瓜 and “Planting Arrowroot” 種葛, the former being included in Ho’s Ku Yüeh-fu (3.27b). The late Ming critic Ch’en Tzu-lung 陳子龍 saw a resemblance between Ho’s poem and the work of Ts’ao Chih; see Huang Ming Shih Hsüan 皇明詩選 (Selected Poems of the Imperial Ming) (1637; repr. Shanghai: Hua-tung Shih-fan Ta-hsüeh, 1991) 1.12a (65); quoted in LHH 2.17b. However, both of the old poems are concerned with the plight of a neglected wife, not the theme, or even the metaphor, of Ho’s poem. 86 HTFC 6.7a (63; 樂:062). 87 CTS 352.3942; K. 18496; Liu Ho-tung Chi 柳河東集 (Collected Works of Liu of Ho-tung) (Hong Kong: Chung-hua, 1972), p.713. It would also be possible to translate 孤生 as “born an orphan” in Ho’s poem, but I have opted to retain the likeness to Liu’s.

THE LIFE OF THE MIND

253

and glory; / Lie many cares, troubles, doubts, and solitudes” 富貴尊榮、憂患諒獨多. 88

A ‘hillside garden’ suggests the sort of modest living that would make hemp and sunflowers appropriate crops. This comes from the commentary on the fifth line of the twenty-second hexagram in the Changes, “This is elegance as from a hillside garden” 賁于丘園. 89 The setting is consistent with Ho’s retirement, an interpretation that finds support from the third line. David Hawkes translates 蕭艾 as a single plant, ‘mugwort’, in his translation of the “Lament on Separation,” 90 but in Ho’s ninth line, two different unpleasant plants are clearly required. 91 The penultimate couplet rests on two allusions. It is said in the Changes, “For two people to share mind and heart, such sharpness severs metal” 二人同心、其利斷金. 92 A man named Pien Ho is said to have found an uncarved jade in the mountains. When he presented it to the king, the latter was told by his jadesmith that it was a worthless rock and so declared Pien a fraud and had one of his feet cut off as punishment. When a new king came to the throne, Pien presented his jade a second time, only to be called a fraud again and lose his other foot. When a third king succeeded to the throne, Pien Ho clutched his jade to his breast and wept at the base of the mountains for three days and three nights, weeping blood when his tears were exhausted. The king heard of it and sent someone to look into the matter. His messenger asked Pien Ho, “What are you crying about? Lots of people get their feet cut off!” Pien Ho responded, “I am not crying because of my feet. I am crying because a precious jade is called a common rock and an honest man, a fraud!” The new king had Pien’s jade carved, and it did indeed turn out to be a precious stone. 93 Ho’s “Ballad of the River Yi” is based on the story of Ching K’o 荊軻, the man who tried to assassinate the King of Ch’in with a dagger

——— 88

Lu Ch’in-li, p.479. Chou Yi Yin-te 15/22/5; Lynn, p.276, Wilhelm/Baynes, p.93;. 90 Ch’u Tz’u Pu-chu 1.31b (17); Hawkes, first edition, p.32, Penguin edition, p.76. 91 My ‘southernwort’ and ‘mugwort’ are adopted from David Knechtges. See for example his translation of Chang Heng’s “Rhapsody on Contemplating the Mystery,” Wen xuan 3:109; original text in WH 15.3a (199) and Chang Heng Shih-wen Chi Chiao-chu (Shanghai: Shanghai Ku-chi, 1986), p.195. 92 Chou Yi Yin-te 41/hsi-tz’u/6; translation from Lynn, p.58; cf. Wilhelm/Baynes, p.306. 93 Han-fei-tzu Chi-chieh (Peking: Chung-hua, 1998), p.95. 89

254

CHAPTER SIX

hidden inside a map. Ching K’o’s history as a subject for poetry would make a considerable study in itself. 94 As do most poets writing on this theme, whatever their period, Ho ignores other poetic treatments and goes straight back to the original historical account, as incorporated into the Shih Chi (Records of the Grand Historian) and the Chan-kuo Ts’e (Strategems of the Warring States), from which he borrows a good deal of phraseology, departing from his script, as it were, only in his closing lines, in which he deplores the suicide of General Fan in preparation for Ching’s failed plot: 95 易水行寒風夕吹易水波、漸離擊筑荊卿歌。白衣灑淚當祖路、日落登車去不顧。秦王殿上開地圖、舞陽色沮那敢呼。手持匕首摘銅柱、事已不成空罵倨。噫嗟嗟、燕丹寡謀當滅身。光也自刎何足云、惜哉枉殺樊將軍。 The River Yi 96 A wintry wind blows at evening on the waves of the River Yi; Chien-li is plucking his lute while Ching K’o sings. Their white robes are spattered with tears—facing the farewell feast; As the sun sets, he boards his carriage and leaves with no backward

——— 94

References to Ching K’o turn up in a variety of genres. The earliest examples, and many later ones, are explicitly yung-shih (詠史 ‘singing of history’) poems. Others are poems of the same general type, but specifically concerned with Ching. Then, he is referred to fairly frequently in yüeh-fu poems on such themes as yu-hsia (遊俠 ‘martial heros’) and shao-nien (少年 ‘young warriors’). Finally, there are poems written along the Yi River that allude to Ching K’o’s farewell there as a piece of local history. The story was recently brought to the silver screen by Chen Kaige in his sumptuously vacuous epic “The Emperor and the Assassin.” Ho’s poem is unusual in that it is cast as a yüeh-fu, albeit one with an uncommon name, but takes the attitude of a yung-shih poem at the same time. 95 Shih Chi (Peking: Chung-hua, 1959) 86.2526. See the translation by Burton Watson in Cyril Birch, ed., Anthology of Chinese Literature: from Early Times to the Fourteenth Century (New York: Grove Press, 1965), pp.100-18. 96 HTFC 6.8b (65; 樂:067). There are two variants in this poem that divide the Standard recension editions between the ‘carvers names’ family and the ‘no carvers names’ family. In line 6, both the carvers names family editions read 阻 ‘obstruct’ in place of 沮 ‘flustered, crestfallen’. In line 7, the Shen recension and the no carvers names family reading 七 ‘seven’ in place of 匕 ‘spoon’, which is the reading of the Yüan recension and the carvers names family. Both variations are readily explained as being the result of confusion of similar characters. In the first case, the no carvers names text has been successfully emended, presumably by conjecture. In the second, an error in the Shen text was corrected in the Yüan, then reoccured in the no carvers names family.

THE LIFE OF THE MIND

255

glance. Within the halls of the King of Ch’in, he opens up the map; Wu-yang’s look is flustered, how can he dare to shout? With a spoon-handled dagger clutched in his hand, slashing at pillars of bronze, When all was over, he had not succeeded, cursing in rage for nothing. Alas, alas! Prince Tan of Yen was short of plans; it was right that he should die; As for Kuang, that he slit his throat is hardly worth remark. What a shame, the needless killing of General Fan! The first line echoes the farewell song attributed to Ching K’o himself, “The wind soughs and sighs, oh, the River Yi is cold” 風蕭岈兮易水寒. 97 Ho’s second line is identical to one in Li Ho’s “Ballad of the White Tiger” 白虎行. 98

The old yüeh-fu ballad was a natural form for poems on historical subjects, such as this one. 99 Kao Chien-li 高漸離 was a dog-butcher and drinking companion of Ching K’o. The fourth line is a compressed version of Ssu-ma Ch’ien’s account, with the addition of the setting sun. The middle stanza too compresses Ssu-ma’s version, presenting only two crucial moments, the first being when the plot is revealed and the second Ching K’o’s final failure, when mortally wounded he threw his dagger at the King, but missed him and struck one of the pillars of the throne room. The useless assistant Ch’in Wuyang 秦舞陽 was a Yen bravo whom Prince Tan had first thought of sending on the mission by himself, an idea that Ching K’o had dismissed with a snort. Ho’s last stanza comments on three important people in the story. Ching K’o’s attempt to assassinate the King of Ch’in was undertaken at the request of Crown Prince Tan 丹 of the state of Yen, a state threatened with invasion by Ch’in. T’ien Kuang 田光 was the intermediary sent to seek Ching’s help. In sending him, Prince Tan warned him that the matter was highly sensitive and that he should not

——— 97

Shih Chi 86.2534. San-chia P’ing-chu Li Ch’ang-chi Ko-shih (Peking: Chung-hua, 1959), p.180, J.D. Frodsham, The Poems of Li Ho, p.267. 99 Chou Yin-pin points out that Li Tung-yang’s ‘Imitation Ancient Yüeh-fu” were in fact ‘chanting of history’ poems (yung shih shih). See his “Lun Li Tung-yang te ‘Ni-ku Yüeh-fu’” 論李東陽的《擬古樂府》 (On Li Tung-yang’s ‘Imitation Ancient Yüeh-fu’), Ch’uan-shan Hsüeh-pao 10 (1988.1):110-16, p.110. 98

256

CHAPTER SIX

speak of it to others. Both because he was offended by the implied lack of confidence in his discretion that this warning implied and to impress Ching K’o with the seriousness of the situation, once he had delivered the Prince’s message, he commited suicide in front of Ching K’o by cutting his own throat. Fan Yü-ch’i 樊於期 was a former general from Ch’in who had fled to Yen. He too committed suicide by cutting his throat, so that Ching K’o could win the confidence of the King of Ch’in by bringing him Fan’s severed head. Ho objects that Prince Tan was not worthy of all this trouble, that T’ien Kuang’s death was of little account (perhaps because of its egoism), and that the death of Fan Yü-ch’i was wasted, since Ching’s attempt failed. The extreme concision of the narrative is not really a function of Ho’s poetic technique, but rather one of the story’s familiarity. The most successful of Ho’s yüeh-fu are perhaps those in which he treats the traditional elements most freely, as in the following poem: 秋江詞煙渺渺、碧波遠。白露晞、翠莎晚。泛綠漪、蒹葭淺。浦風吹帽寒髮短。美人立、江中流。暮雨帆檣江上舟。夕陽簾櫳江上樓。舟中採蓮紅藕香、樓前踏翠芳草愁。芳草愁、西風起。芙蓉花、落秋水。魚初肥、酒正美。江白如練月如洗、醉下煙波千萬里。 Autumn River Song 100 Haze stretches vast and endless, Far over the jade green waves; White dew dries, on halcyon reeds in evening. Adrift on light green ripples, Rushes in the shallows; A wind from the cove blows my cap, my chilly hair feels short. A lovely lady stands, Midstream in the river’s flow; In twilight rain the masts and sails of boats upon the river, In fading sunlight the latticed screens of a tower by the river. On the boats they are gathering lotus—the scent of scarlet stems;

——— 100

HTFC 6.3a (59; 樂:050). Ch’en Shu-lu 陳書錄 offers an appreciative reading of this poem in his “Shih Ku Hui Hsin, Pieh Ch’u Hsin Yi: Ho Ching-ming ‘Ch’iu Chiang Tz’u’ Shang-hsi” 師古會心別出新意:何景明《秋江詞》賞析 (Learning from the Ancients by Sympathetic Intuition, Producing One’s Own New Ideas: An Appreciation of Ho Ching-ming’s ‘Autumn River Song’), Ku-tien Wen-hsüeh Chihshih 1995.6:21-24. Meng Yang wrote a poem on a similar theme, see “Autumn Pond Song” 秋塘行, Meng Yu-ya Chi 1.5b.

THE LIFE OF THE MIND

257

Outside the pavilion, treading on halcyon, sorrow for sweet grasses. Sorrow for sweet grasses, A westerly wind arises; Lotus blooms and falls, Upon an autumn river. Now the fish are plump, The wine is at its best; The waters are white as though bleached silk, the moon as though bathed clean . . . Drunk I descend the hazy waves a thousand million leagues. The last line of the first stanza echoes a line by Tu Fu, without actually alluding to the poem in which it is found. Tu’s poem, “On Double Nine at the Ts’ui Clan’s Manor in Lan-t’ien” 九日藍田崔氏莊, begins by complaining of old age and takes up this note in his third line, “I’m embarrassed at my short hair when the wind blows my cap” 羞將短髮還吹帽. 101 For the second line of the final stanza, see the discussion of “The Bright Moon” above, in chapter four. Ho’s penultimate line probably draws on one from Hsieh T’iao’s “In the Evening I Climb Three Peaks and Gaze Back Toward the Capital” 晚登三山還望京邑詩, “The pure river is as still as bleached silk” 澄江靜如練. 102 Ho’s final line is reminiscent of one in a “Sent Afar by One in the Women’s Chambers” 閨人贈遠 by a minor Mid-T’ang poet, Wang Ya 王涯, “Parted by a thousand li of hazy waves” 煙波千里分. 103

Here there are images drawn in part from the yüeh-fu tradition, but the poem as a whole is independent of it. The opening lines echo the middle couplets of a poem by Ts’ao Chih variously entitled “Love Poem” 情詩 or “Miscellaneous Poem” 雜詩. 104 The context is rather different, though. Ts’ao’s poem is written in the persona of a woman missing a man who is engaged in a military campaign far away. His “vast and endless” refers to the distance between the lovers, and his

——— 101

Tu Shih Yin-te 294/3/3, CTS 224.2403, K.11971. See William Hung, Tu Fu: China’s Greatest Poet (1952; repr. New York: Russell and Russell, 1969), p.134. 102 WH 27.7b (373); Lu Ch’in-li, p.1430; Hsieh Hsüan-ch’eng Shih Chi (SPTK) 3.11a (21). Lu points out that there is a variant reading in the line, 凈“pure” for 靜 “still.” 103 CTS 346.3875; K.18197. Ch’en Shu-lu cites a later, but better known, line by the Early Sung tz’u poet Liu Yung 柳永. See his “Shih Ku Hui Hsin,” p.24., and Liu’s “A Bell in Driving Rain” 雨霖鈴, beginning “A cold cicada keen and chill” 寒蟬淒切, Ch’üan Sung Tz’u 全宋詞 (Complete Sung Song Lyrics), compiled by T’ang Kuichang 唐圭章 (Peking: Chung-hua, 1965), p.21. 104 WH 29.17a (405); Lu Ch’in-li p.459; YTHY 2.5a (38); Ts’ao Tzu-chien Chi 5.13a (25).

258

CHAPTER SIX

drying dew is a present contrast to the hard frost of the time when the man left. Anne Birrell translates these lines: 眇眇客行士、遙役不得歸。始出嚴霜結、今來白露晞。 Lost to sight is the wanderer, Faraway wars won’t bring him home. When first he left harsh frost gripped, By now white dew has dried. 105

Ch’en Shu-lu traces the closing two lines of this stanza back to the Songs and the Tsin Shu biography of Meng Chia 孟嘉. 106 In the former, the poem “Rushes and reeds” opens: 蒹葭蒼蒼、白露為霜。所謂伊人、在水一方。

Rushes and reeds are a deep green; The white dew turns to frost. The one whom I call ‘him’ Is somewhere along the stream. 107

Meng Chia was attending a ‘Double Nine’ party one windy day, and his cap was blown off without his realising it. When he finally left to visit the latrine, his host had the cap returned to his seat along with a mocking note written by one of the other guests. When Meng returned and saw it, he responded at once with a note of his own whose excellence impressed all present. 108 The second stanza opens with an image that may have been drawn from a poem by Po Chü-yi, “Listening to a Singer in Evening” 夜聞歌者 . 109 Although rain is not mentioned in Po’s poem, the singing beauty is seen beside the mast of a nearby boat on an autumn river. 110 The later lines of this stanza evoke no particular earlier poems but are shot through with the traditional imagery of romance on the water. Lotus were gathered by women in boats, women assumed in poetry to

——— 105

Birrell, p.67. Ch’en, “Shih Ku Hui Hsin,” pp.21-22. Mao Shih Yin-te 26/129/1-2; Karlgren, p.83; Waley, p.42. See “Fourteenth Night,” above, chapter 5, for this poem. 108 Tsin Shu 98.2581. 109 CTS 433.4791; K.22237; Po Chü-yi Chi (Peking: Chung-hua, 1979) 10.200. 110 Whether or not Ho had the Po Chü-yi poem in mind, a later editor may have; the Standard recension records a variant, “weeps” 泣, a word that occurs more than once in Po’s poem, in place of “stands” 立, which is the reading of all four of the early recensions. This variant is actually found the selection of Ho’s works compiled by Yang Pao 楊保 (see above, chapter five). 106

107

THE LIFE OF THE MIND

259

be young, beautiful, and flirtatious. The fragility of youthful beauty apt to be taken advantage of is of course evoked by the image of fragrant plants under foot. The phrase ‘descend the hazy waves’ 下煙波 is also found in Ho’s poem “In the Rain: to Match a Poem by ‘Clear Creek’.” See above, chapter five, where it is translated as ‘down the misty waves’. In another vagary of translation, my ‘thousand million leagues’ overstates Ho’s original distance, ‘a thousand ten-thousands of li’ by a factor of over two thousand, but it is doubtful that his persona is in any condition to monitor the odometer. A similarly aquatic piece is this one: 塘上行蒲生寒塘流、日與浮萍儔。風波搖其根、飄轉似客遊。客遊在萬里、日夕望故州。鶗鴃鳴歲暮、蟪蛄知凜秋。暑退厭絺綌、寒至思重裘。佳人不與處、圓魄忽四周。房櫳凄鳴玉、紈素誰為收。白雲如車盖、冉冉東北浮。安得雲中鴈、尺帛寄離愁。 On the Pond 111 Reeds grow at the mouth of a wintry pond; Daily mated to the floating duckweed. Breeze and ripples rock their stems; They eddy and drift like a traveller’s roaming. A traveller roaming ten thousand leagues away, As day grows late, looks toward his native district. The cuckoo cries at the end of the year; A cicada feels the chill of autumn. The heat withdraws—weary of light linen; Cold arrives—wishing for layered furs. A lovely lady is parted from me; The Round Ghost rushes through all four quarters. In latticed windows—chill ringing jade; New bleached silk—for whom is it kept? White clouds like a carriage awning, Stately and steady, they drift northeast.

——— 111

HTFC 5.7b (49; 樂:015). Li Meng-yang also wrote an “On the Pond Ballad” 塘上行; see K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi 8.2b (160). Other contemporary poems on the theme were written by Chou T’ing-yung, Pa-ya Chi 2.2a; Chu Ying-teng, Ling-hsi Hsien-sheng Chi 凌谿先生集 (Collected works of Master Ling-hsi) (Chia-ching edition; repr. TM 4:51, Tainan: Chuang-yen Wen-hua, 1997) 3.1a (394); and Hsü Tsan, Sung-kao Chi 松皋集 (Pine Marsh Collection) (edition with 1543 preface in Naikaku Bunko) 6.2b.

260

CHAPTER SIX

How to find a goose within the clouds, To bear my homesick sorrow on a foot of silk? The first line is reminiscent of Tu Fu’s “Setting Out from Ch’in-chou” 發秦州, “In the middle of the night, I hasten away in my carriage, / Water my horse in the flow of a wintry pond” 中宵驅車去、飲馬寒唐流. 112 Line 4 recalls a couplet in Ts’ao P’i’s “How Fine!” 善哉行, “Following the ripples, swirling and pushing on, / Something like a traveller’s roaming” 隨波轉薄、有似客遊. 113 There are a number of potential sources for the “looking as the day grows late” in the sixth line. Yen Yen-chih’s “A Mission North to Lo” 北使洛 includes the line, “As day grows late, I look toward the Three Rivers” 日夕望三川; 114 a Chiang Yen imitation of Ts’ao Chih, “Presented to a Friend” 贈友 has the couplet “In the morning I make a date with my fair one; / As the days grows late look toward the green hall” 朝與佳人期、日夕望青閣; 115 and the late Six Dynasties Poet Ho Hsün’s 何遜 “As the Day Grows Late, I Look Toward the River: Presented to Minister of War Yü” 日夕望江贈魚司馬 has the couplet “As the day grows late, I look toward the lofty wall; / Glowing bright beyond the white clouds” 日夕望高城、耿耿青雲外. 116 But none of these seems particularly close to Ho’s poem otherwise, and it may be significant that two of them are themselves, and at an early date, ‘imitations’. HCM’s thirteenth line is a literally retrograde version of one in a poem by Tu Fu on the theme of China’s ‘star-crossed lovers’, the Herd Boy and Weaving Girl 牽牛織女. Tu’s line reads, “ringing jade chills the latticed windows” 鳴玉凄房櫳. 117 The penultimate couplet evokes the first one in a well-known

———

112 Tu Shih Yin-te 90/4/27-28, CTS 218.2294, K.10634. There is another poem by Tu, “Another Message to Prefect Tou” 又呈竇使君 , which, as quoted in DKJ 6.17487.248, includes a couplet reading “I look at you, a sojourner of ten thousand leagues; / We are like single floating duckweeds” 相看萬里客、同是一浮萍. This looks as though it might be a source that Ho is filling out in the opening lines of his poem, but ‘sojourner’ 客 is replaced by ‘separation’ 別 in the Tu Shih Yin-te (376/23/7-8), and by ‘beyond’ 外 in CTS (234.2584, K.11920), where it is the second poem included under the title “A Message to Prefect Tou While Watching the River Rise at the Post Station Pavilion at Pa-hsi” 巴西驛亭觀江漲呈竇使君. The poem is also lacking from some collections of Tu’s verse, so Ho may not have known it, and the two may only be similar because of conventional imagery. 113 Lu Ch’in-li, p.390-91; Ts’ao P’i Chi Chiao-chu (Chengchow: Chung-chou Kuchi, 1992), p.25. 114 WH 27.2b (370); Lu Ch’in-li, p.1233. 115 WH 31.10a (433); Lu Ch’in-li, p.1571; Chiang Wen-t’ung Chi 4.5b (29). 116 YTHY 5.23a (88); Lu Ch’in-li, p.1683; Ho Hsün Chi Chu 何遜集注 (Collected Works of Ho Hsün Annotated), compiled by Liu Ch’ang 劉暢 (Tientsin: Tientsin Kuchi, 1988) p.29. 117 Tu Shih Yin-te 168/5/16, CTS 221.2338, K.10779. For another reference to this poem, see above, chapter five, “Viewing the Moon on the Thirteenth Night of the Month.”

THE LIFE OF THE MIND

261

“Miscellaneous Poem” 雜詩 on the sorrows of travel by Ts’ao P’i, “In the northwest there are drifting clouds; lofty, lofty, like carriage awnings” 西北有浮雲、亭亭如車蓋. 118

Commentaries to the “Lament on Separation” explain that the cuckoo sings in the spring when plants are flowering and again at the beginning of autumn before they fade. 119 The cicada too is known for its raucous contribution to summer, which disappears as the weather turns cold. There may also be an ironic twist here to the well-known tag from the Chuang-tzu, “the cicada does not know of spring and autumn, because its life is too short.” 120 ‘Light linen’ 絺綌 is specified as the gentleman’s summer dress in the Analects. 121 ‘Round Ghost’ 圓魄 is a common form of reference to the full moon. The ‘white silk’ 紈素 of the next line recalls a famous poem attributed to the Han dynasty imperial consort Pan Chieh-yü, in whose “Resentful Poem” 怨歌行 the silk is made into a fan, which the persona fears will be put away once the hot weather is over, forgotten like the woman who made it. 122 Geese crying in the clouds are a common image for the lonely traveller, but see above, chapter four, for the story of Su Wu who supposedly tied a message home to the leg of a goose while he was a captive among the Hsiung-nu. 123 This poem doesn’t so much imitate an old poem as answer one, in this case a poem with the same title variously attributed to Ts’ao P’i and to his Empress Chen 甄皇后. 124 Although there are few explicit citations of this old poem in Ho’s, he was clearly aware of it, since his poem echoes its opening line, “Reeds grow in my pond” 蒲生我池中. The original poem is a ballad written in the persona of a woman separated from her husband or lover. Ho’s is evidently an answer from the man’s side. Since separation is one of the pervading themes of Chinese poetry, he has a large tradition to draw upon, and his lines sparkle with textual reminiscences both of early yüeh-fu in general and of celebrated separation stories, such as those of the celestial Herd

——— 118

WH 29.14a (403); Lu Ch’in-li, p.401; Ts’ao P’i Chi Chiao-chu, p.19. Ch’u Tz’u Pu-chu 1.30b (64). The characters are 鶗鴃 in Ho Ching-ming, but 鹈鴃 in the “Lament on Separation.” It is clear nonetheless that the same bird is meant. 120 Chuang-tzu Yin-te 1/1/11, see Graham p.44, Watson p.30. 121 Lun-yü Yin-te 18/10/5; see Waley p.147, Lau p.102. 122 WH 27.17a (378); Lu Ch’in-li, p.116. 123 Han Shu (Peking: Chung-hua, 1962) 54.2466. 124 Lu Ch’in-li, p.406, attributed to Empress Chen. 119

262

CHAPTER SIX

Boy and Weaving Maid and the all too terrestrial Su Wu, held captive by northern barbarians, in particular. His readers would have noted echoes to other poems by Ts’ao P’i, as well as the ever present Tu Fu. That one line of the poem is identical to a line in another of Ho’s imitations (see above), one quite possibly written at about the same time, suggests just how automatic reference to the past could be, while the different ways the line is used in the two poems shows that we are no more seeing clichés than is the visitor to a Western museum who encounters in its rooms more than one “Descent from the Cross.” 俠客行朝入主人門、暮入主人門。思殺主仇謝主恩。主人張燈夜間宴、千金為壽百金餞。秋堂露下月出高、起視廄中有駿馬、匣中有寶刀。拔刀躍馬門前路、投主黃金去不顧。 The Cavalier 125 In the morning I enter my lord’s gate; In the evening I enter my lord’s gate; I think of killing my lord’s foes, accepting my lord’s bounty. My lord sets out lamps and holds a banquet at night; A thousand coins for a toast to long life, a hundred coins for the feast. An autumn hall beneath the dew, the moon emerging high; I get up and see in the stable a noble steed, And in its case a precious blade. I draw the blade and spur the horse, on the road beyond the gate, Throw away my lord’s bright gold and ride off without a backward glance. The most familiar contrast of dawn and evening in the two lines of a couplet is probably that in the “Rhapsody on the Kao-t’ang Shrine” 高唐賦 attributed to the third century B.C.E. writer Sung Yü, which David Knechtges translates: 旦為朝雲、暮為行雨。 Mornings I am Dawn Cloud, Evenings I am Pouring Rain. 126 A closer early parallel to Ho’s poem is found in the opening couplet of the fourth of Wang Ts’an’s “With the Army” 從軍詩 poems:

——— 125

HTFC 6.1a (57; 樂:041). WH 19.2a (250), Knechtges, 3:327; Sung Yü Chi (Changsha: Yüeh-lu Shu-she, 2001), p.50. 126

THE LIFE OF THE MIND

263

朝發鄴都橋、暮濟白馬津。 In the morning I set out from the bridge at the metropolis of Yeh; In the evening, cross over at White Horse Ford. 127 I am not aware of an early poem in which the two lines of such a couplet differ, as Ho’s do, in only one other word. For the exchange of toasts offering gold and wishing long life that lies behind Ho’s poem, see Ts’ao Chih’s “Lute Song.” Ho may be echoing the language of a poem by Li Po, though their occasions differ too much for Li to have provided an allusion in the narrow sense. Li writes of his host setting out lamps for a night banquet in autumn in his “Sailing on an Autumn Evening to an Banquet at the Happiness Pavilion Pool with Liu of Tang-shan” 秋夜與劉碭山泛宴喜亭池. 128

The 俠客 ‘Cavalier, ‘knight errant’, ‘retainer’, or ‘martial hero’ is of course a stock figure in Chinese culture, not least in poetry. 129 Most poems in which he appears go by some other title. The earliest extant example with this one is evidently that by the Tsin poet Chang Hua 張華, which ends on a note very different from Ho’s: 美哉遊俠士、何以尚四卿。我則異於是、好古師老彭。 Magnificent, the roaming knight! How could one esteem the Four Counsellors instead? I, though, differ from this; Fond of antiquity, I take Old P’eng as my teacher. 130

Although Ho also turns his theme aside in closing, in his case the persona does not reject a martial role in order to seek the immortality of P’eng Tsu 彭祖, the Chinese Methuselah, but rather rejects the role of hired sword. He will slay his lord’s enemies for the sheer rectitude of it, and we know that he means it because the closing phrase ‘leaves without a backward glance’ 去不顧 comes straight from Ssu-ma

——— 127

WH 27.12b (375); Lu Ch’in-li, p.362; Wang Ts’an Chi Chu, p.25. Ri Haku Kashi Sakuin 0645; CTS 167.1824; K. 08505; An Ch’i, p.684. 129 See James J.Y. Liu, The Chinese Knight-errant (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967). 130 Lu Ch’in-li, p.611. Hsüeh Hui 薛蕙 (for whom, see below, chapter eight), among many other poets, wrote a poem with a similar title, evoking Ching K’o; see K’ao-kung Chi 考功集 (Evaluation Bureau Collection) (SKCS) 1.12b (9), Hsüeh Hsiyüan Chi 薛西原集 (Collected Works of Hsüeh of the Western Plain) (1535 edition) 1.31a. So too did Wang T’ing-hsiang; see Wang Shih Chia-ts’ang Chi (Chia-ching edition; repr. Taipei: Wei-wen, 1976) 6.10b (222), Wang T’ing-hsiang Chi (Peking: Chung-hua, 1989) 6.83; Cheng Shan-fu, Shao-ku Chi 2.12b, 6.25b (28, 101), Cheng Shih 8.17b, 12.9a; and Chang Chih-tao, Chang T’ai-wei Shih-chi 張太微詩集 (Collected Poems of Chang T’ai-wei) (Chia-ching edition) hou-chi 1.35a. 128

264

CHAPTER SIX

Ch’ien’s biography of Ching K’o (see above). This final yüeh-fu ballad is entirely undatable, but could come from the Chia-chi period. Like the others, it is filled with echoes from the tradition: 戰城南戰城南、戰不息。朝戰城南、暮哭城北。積尸纍纍、肉腐鳥不食。放馬澤中、雪沒馬騑。沙寒草枯、不得馬肥。北風夜吹、敵兵四圍。我欲上馬、馬瘦不馳。我欲射箭、弓硬不開。但語城中親、汝出收我骸。戰城南、君莫悲。猛虎囓人、翔於山垂。欲食虎肉、不避虎威。男兒立功、橫行四垂。生當封公侯、死當白骨歸。 Fighting South of the Walls 131 Fighting south of the walls, Fighting without cease; In the morning, we fight south of the walls, In evening, weep to the north. Corpses pile up in heavy heaps; Their flesh decays, and birds refuse to eat it. We graze our horses in the meadow; Snow reaches to the horses’ knees. The desert is cold; the grass is withered, We cannot fatten our horses. The north wind blows at night; Enemy soldiers surround us. I want to ride my horse; But the horse is thin and cannot run. I want to fire an arrow, But my bow is stiff and cannot be drawn. I can only say to my parents inside the walls, Come outside to collect my bones. Fighting south of the walls, Do not grieve. A fierce tiger gnaws men’s bones, High in a fold in the hills; If you want to eat the tiger’s flesh, You cannot shun the tiger’s power. For a man to make his mark, He boldly strides the frontiers. If he lives he is honoured as a duke or marquis;

——— 131

HTFC 5.3a (45; 樂:001).

THE LIFE OF THE MIND

265

If he dies, he comes home as white bones.

In addition to the yüeh-fu ballad and the ‘imitation of antiquity’, Ho also cultivated other examples of the many recognised genres of the Chinese literary tradition, such as this ‘boudoir lament’ (閨情 kuich’ing), written about the time of the 1507 Moon Festival poems: 擣衣凉飈吹閨闥、夕露凄錦衾。言念無衣客、歲暮芳寒侵。皓腕約長袖、雅步飾鳴金。寒機裂霜素、繁杵叩清砧。哀音緣雲發、斷響隨風沉。顧影昔流月、仰盼悲橫參。路長魂屢徂、夜久力不任。君子萬里身、賤妾萬里心。燈前擇妙匹、運思一何深。裁以金剪刀、縫以素絲鍼。願為合歡帶、得傍君衣襟。 Fulling Clothing 132 Cool gusts blow in the boudoir door; Evening dew chills the brocade coverlet. I think of a traveller, lacking robes, At year’s end, the onslaught of fragrant cold . . . Gleaming wrists are clasped in trailing sleeves; Elegant steps adorned with ringing gold. A wintry loom displays the frosty silk; Busy mallets rap clear on fulling blocks. Grieving tones are drawn out by the clouds; Broken notes submerged into the wind. I gaze at my image and regret the gliding moon; Look up sadly and grieve for the sweeping stars. The road is long—my soul is often blocked; The night is endless—my strength cannot be trusted. My lord’s ten-thousand league person, Your servant’s ten-thousand league heart . . . Beside a lamp I select a perfect length; How very profoundly it moves my thoughts. I cut it out with a pair of golden scissors, Sew it up with a needle and plain silk. I would like it to be a shared-joys sash, To run along the lapel of your robe. The first line of Ho’s poem synthesises, as it were, lines from two early poems found only one page apart in the Wen Hsüan. The “cool gusts” blow in the well-known “Song of Resentment” 怨歌 by the Han dynasty Consort Pan Chieh-yü, “I constantly fear the arrival of the autumn season, / Its cool gusts snatching away the torrid heat” 常恐秋

——— 132

HTFC 8.5a (89; 251:034).

266

CHAPTER SIX

節至、涼飆奪炎熱. 133 “Blowing in the boudoir door” can be found in an anonymous Yüeh-fu ballad, “A Song of Injury” 傷歌行, “A gentle breeze blows in the boudoir door, / Gauze curtains seem to flutter of their own accord” 微風吹閨闥、羅帷自飄颺. 134 Brocade covers are associated in poetry with an absent lover. Ho would have known such examples as those in the Songs, “The horn pillow is beautiful, the brocade coverlet bright” 角枕燦兮、錦衾瀾兮, 135 and in the “Nineteen Old Poems,” “The brocade coverlet was left at an inlet on the Lo, / The sharer of my blanket is estranged from me” 錦衾遺洛浦、同枹與我違 . 136 Ho’s third line is almost identical to one in Ts’ao Chih’s “Presented to Ting Yi” 贈丁儀, “Who thinks of the traveller lacking robes?” 焉念無衣客. 137 The cold is fragrant because it is suffused with the scent of fruit trees, which begin to blossom around the turn of the Chinese year. The next line surely shows the influence of a couplet from another poem by Ts’ao Chih, his “Beautiful Woman” 美女篇, “She tucks up her sleeves, reveals white arms, / White wrists clasped by golden bands” 攘袖見素手、皓腕約金環 . 138 Ho’s eighth line is reminiscent of a passage in the poem by Ts’ao P’i mentioned above, “Slender hands fold light silks; / Ringing mallets rap resonant fulling stones. / A pure wind wafts the busy rhythm . . .” 纖手疊輕素、朗杵叩鳴砧。清風流繁節. 139 The early poet whose “strength could not be trusted” was Hsieh Ling-yün, who said, in his “Climbing the Pavilion above the Pond” 登池上樓, “As for retiring and ploughing, my strength cannot be trusted” 退耕力不任. 140 The eighth couplet is reminiscent of one in a yüeh-fu ballad by Lu Chi, “A Song of Yen” 燕歌行, “Why do you keep far away, for long not returning? My poor adoring heart never falters” 君何緬然久不歸、賤妾悠悠心無違. 141 Ho’s eighteenth line

——— 133

WH 27.17a (378); Lu Ch’in-li, p.116, and see above, chapter four. WH 27.16b (377); also YTHY 2.10a (40), where it is attributed to Ts’ao Jui 曹叡 (Emperor Ming of Wei); Lu Ch’in-li, p.418; translation in Birrell, p.71. 135 Mao Shih Yin-te 25/124/3; cf. Karlgren, p.80; Waley, p.109. 136 WH 29.7a (400); YTHY 1.2a (16); Lu Ch’in-li, p.333; cf. translation in Birrell, p.30. 137 WH 24.3b (327); Lu Ch’in-li, p.451; Ts’ao Tzu-chien Chi 5.6b (21). 138 WH 27.21a (380); YTHY 2.6b (38) ; Lu Ch’in-li, p.432; Ts’ao Tzu-chien Chi 6.5a (28); translation from Birrell, p.68. 139 YTHY 3.16a (57) ; Lu Ch’in-li, p.889; Birrell, p.101. 140 WH 22.10a (300); Lu Ch’in-li, p.1161; Hsieh Ling-yün Chi Chiao-chu (Taipei: Li-jen, 2004), p.95; cf. the translation by J.D. Frodsham in The Murmuring Stream: The Life and Works of the Chinese Nature Poet Hsieh Ling-yün (385-433), Duke of K’ang-lo (Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press, 1967) 1:121. 141 YTHY 9.18b (153); Lu Ch’in-li, p.666; Lu Shih-heng Chi 7.2a (26); I quote the translation in Birrell, p.244. There is an old crane in the first of Tu Fu’s “Dispelling Sadness” 遣興 that has a ‘ten thousand li heart’ 萬里心, but I tend to doubt that Ho Ching-ming had this poem in mind. See Tu Shih Yin-te 80/12A/2; CTS 218.2290; K.11602. 134

THE LIFE OF THE MIND

267

differs in only one character from each of two different lines also by Lu Chi. One of these is in Lu’s “Travelling to Lo[-yang]”赴洛, “Moved by things, I yearn for my hall and chamber;/ How very profound my thoughts of separation” 感物戀堂室、離思一何深. 142 The other is found in Lu’s “How Sad!” 悲哉行 , “Oh, in pain! The gentleman sojourner; / How very profound his mournful thoughts” 傷哉遊客士、憂思一何深. 143 The use of white (i.e. plain, undyed) silk for decoration is mentioned in poetry as far back as the Songs. 144 The last two couplets again evoke the poem by Pan Chieh-yü already mentioned, in particular her line “Cut out and made into a shared-joys fan” 裁為合歡扇. 145

The sound of the mallets on fulling stones was characteristic of autumn, like the last crickets’ songs, and occurs frequently in poetry. This is especially so in the case of women lamenting the absence of their husbands on military service. The occasion leads them to think of sending new clothes to their menfolk or to worry about their not having adequate clothing for the cold northern winter. So sex-specific was the phrase “fulling clothes” 擣衣 that it does not occur in the Wen Hsüan, but is found several times in the Yü-t’ai Hsin-yung, for example in what is probably the earliest poem to include the phrase in its title, the Tsin poet Ts’ao P’i’s 曹毗 “Poem on Hearing Clothing Being Fulled in Autumn” 秋聽擣衣詩. 146 The ‘poems on objects’ (詠物 yung-wu) tradition also attracted Ho’s attention. Among other works of this kind, Ho composed a set of ten poems in the pentasyllabic quatrain form, one that did not play a very important role within his oeuvre as a whole. These poems too were probably written around the time of Meng Yang’s visit: 白雪曲暗逐梁塵起、潛隨燭影流。似憐歌舞處、故故入高樓。 White Snow Song (third of ten poems) 147 Secretly rising, pursuing the rafter dust,

——— 142

WH 26.19a (363); Lu Ch’in-li, p.684; Lu Shih-heng Chi 5.3a (16). Note that Lu Ch’in-li includes the poem under an alternative title “Going [to Take up the Position of] Librarian to the Heir Apparent” 赴太子洗馬. 143 WH 28.10b (386); Lu Ch’in-li, p.663; Lu Shih-heng Chi 6.10a (25). 144 See poems 18 (羔羊 kao yang) and 53 (干旄 kan mao), translated by Karlgren (pp.10, 34) and Waley (pp.23, 189). 145 WH 27.17a (378); Lu Ch’in-li, p.116. 146 YTHY 3.15b (56); Lu Ch’in-li p.889; translation in Birrell, p.101. 147 HTFC 28.4b (496; 254:028).

268

CHAPTER SIX

Covertly gliding after the candle’s gleam Seeming so fond of places for song and dancing, As over and over it enters the tall pavilions . . . The third line echoes the penultimate line of the sixth of Tu Fu’s “Eight Autumn Inspirations” 秋興八首, “I look back with fondness toward the land of song and dancing” 回首可憐歌舞地. 148

Beautiful music was thought to be capable of raising the dust on the rafters of the hall in which it was being played. See, for example, Lu Chi’s “How High the Western Wall” 擬東城一何高, “Sings once and ten thousand gentlemen sigh; / Sings twice and the dust on the rafters flies” 一唱萬夫歎、再唱梁塵飛. 149 The setting, already introduced earlier in the group, is a building inhabited by a beautiful woman. For the first time in the set, the snow is not explicitly named and is the subject of all the verbs. Even more than the others, then, this poem fits into the old yung-wu tradition of the late Six Dynasties and Early T’ang (sixth and seventh centuries). The absence of explicit reference and the attribution of purpose to the snow constitute a claim for tact and the pathetic that is at the heart of the poem. The latter is particularly evident in the adverbial modifiers, which stress the furtiveness of the snow’s movements and the tentative interpretation of its motive, only to insist on its persistence in the reduplicative ku-ku (“over and over”) of the final line. Although Ho did not devote as much attention to the ‘historical poem’ (詠史 yung shih) as did some of his contemporaries, he did produce a number of them during his stay at home, including both a regulated verse on a ‘national’ theme and a quatrain on a local site: 淮陰侯大將登臺貴、三軍拔幟豪。力能分楚漢、功本冠蕭曹。故壘風雲偃、空山虎豹號。獨憐飛鳥嘆、不及范生高。 The Marquis of Huai-yin 150

——— 148

Tu Shih Yin-te 468/32F/7, CTS 230.2510, K.11553. WH 30.26a (424); Lu Ch’in-li, p.688; Lu Shih-heng Chi 6.3a (21). The expression ‘rafter dust’ (梁塵 liang ch’en, Japanese Ryōjin) is part of the title of the early Japanese anthology of Chinese verse by Japanese writers, the Ryōjin Hishō 梁塵秘抄. See Yung–hee Kim, Songs to Make the Dust Dance: The Ryōjin Hishō of Twelfth Century Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). 150 HTFC 18.6a (291; 252:602;),YK A.13b. There are two variant readings of note in the YK text. The first is in the title, which the YK gives as “Visiting the Shrine to the Marquis of Huai-yin” 過淮陰侯祠. The other occurs at the end of the fifth line, 149

THE LIFE OF THE MIND

269

A mighty general, prized on mounting the terrace; With three armies bold in plucking the banner. His power sufficed to sunder Ch’u from Han; His deeds excelled even those of Hsiao and Ts’ao. The ancient forts subside in wind and clouds; In the empty hills, tigers and leopards roar. I only pity his sigh for the flying birds, Which did not match the height of Master Fan.

The Marquis of Huai-yin is Han Hsin 韓信, a major military figure active during the collapse of the Ch’in dynasty and the rise of the Han (late third century B.C.). 151 He was born into a family in very humble circumstances and as a young man had to beg for food and endure humiliations visited upon him by local toughs. He eventually entered the service of Hsiang Yü 項羽, who was fighting the Ch’in in the name of the old Kingdom of Ch’u. Having distinguished himself in Hsiang Yü’s service, Han Hsin went over to the side of Liu Pang 劉邦, Hsiang great rival and eventually the victorious founder of the Han. Liu Pang was slow to recognise Han’s worth, a point that Han himself was not slow to recognise, but was eventually persuaded not only to make him a senior general but to do so in a famous ceremony atop a terrace especially built for the occasion, the ‘Altar Where a General was Honoured’ at Han-chung 漢中 in southern Shensi. (Ho would visit the site of the terrace, years later; see below, chapter eleven). One of Han Hsin’s successful battles involved a ruse by which the banner of the besieged city of Chao 趙 was seized by his army. Han was eventually beheaded for his involvement in a plot against Liu Pang. On an earlier occasion, when he was arrested in connection with another plot, Han Hsin sighed and said, among other things, that when the flying birds have all been shot, the bow is hung up. The names of Hsiao Ho 蕭何 and Ts’ao Shen 曹參 are often mentioned together, the two of them having been eminent Chief Ministers to Liu Pang after the founding of the Han. Master Fan perhaps refers to Fan Tseng 范增, who left for home in disgust when his advice was not taken by Hsiang Yü. 152 吾郡古要害地也閒居興懷追詠古跡作詩

———

where YK reads 掩 ‘cover’ rather than the homonymous 偃 ‘subside’ . 151 For Han Hsin’s biography, see Shih Chi 92.2609. 152 Han Shu 31.1813.

270

CHAPTER SIX

寂寂孤城申伯臺、廢園遺沼盡堪哀。繁華惟見東流去、歌舞空傳此地來。 Our District has been a Strategic Point Since Antiquity—Living at Leisure, I have been Inspired to Write Poems on its Historic Sites (second of eight poems) 153 Lonely, still, deserted walls, the terrace of Shen’s Earl; Abandoned gardens, remnant ponds all worthy of lament. Their splendid glory is only seen to flow away to the east; For songs and dancing this land is known to no avail.

Finally, there are a limited number of other works in the Chia-chi for which no date whatever can be assigned. These include some rhapsodies and ballads, but also a some in the ‘regular’ forms. A few refer to specific incidents, but ones for which we have no additional evidence: 過杜家庄山老頻邀客、茅茨隔暮烟。聞雞度絕嶠、立馬看飛泉。種柳非無地、栽麻亦有田。謀生今已定、不用卜居篇。 Visiting Tu Family Manor 154 The old hill-dweller often invites a guest, His thatched cottage cut off by day’s end haze. Hearing chickens, I cross the precipitous ridge, Halting my horse, behold a leaping torrent. For planting willows—he does not lack the land; For sowing hemp, he surely has a field. His plans for life are now already fixed; No need for poems on divining for a site.

Others are seasonal in nature, but could have been written in any year. 梅野水無人地、寒梅獨自開。花疎間翠篠、樹古積蒼苔。嶺雪春潛至、林風香暗來。一枝猶可折、橫笛暮休哀。 Plum Blossoms 155

——— 153

HTFC 28.17b (512; 274:037). HTFC 18.2b (286; 252:584). The Ch’u Tz’u includes a poem titled “Divination” 卜居 Although the phrase pu-chü literally refers to ‘divining for location of a residence’ (and is used in this sense by Ho elsewhere, in referring to Li Meng-yang’s project of settling in Hsiang-yang), in the cases of the Ch’u Tz’u and Mr. Tu, it has the broader sense of deciding on a course of action. 154

THE LIFE OF THE MIND

271

A wasteland stream, a place with noone here, Winter plum trees blossom all alone. The flowers are sparse, between kingfisher shoots; The trees are ancient, draped in hoary moss. From snowy peaks springtide’s approach is hidden; On a forest breeze their fragrance comes in secret. If I could just break off a single bough, My transverse flute might cease its twilight grieving.

MASTER HO It should not be surprising that Ho Ching-ming shows no sign of the kind of creative philosophical interests that we find in his near contemporary Wang Yang-ming. Not only was Wang a highly original figure, he only began to formulate his ideas after he and Ho were no longer in contact. For Ho Ching-ming, the issue was not the Sage and the Universe, but rather the Confucian official and the right governance of All Under Heaven. Modest disclaimers aside, the Preface to his “Telling of my Return” (see above, chapter five) implies an almost grandiose claim to literary and ethical judgement. It also suggests that Ho had been spending some time putting his thoughts down on paper. We have taken note of the two prefaces to poetry collections written during his first year or so at home. Though of considerable interest, they hardly seem to justify the claim, made in the body of the fu, that after reading the works of the ‘hundred schools’, he composed something of his own: “I raised the fragrant ardour of my plain pen and worked my shallow words [into an essay].” The only datable work from this period that attempts to consider ‘philosophical’ questions at length is the “Seven Narrations” 七述, in which Ho, referring to himself as ‘Master T’aitsan’ (胎簪 ‘Womb Pin’, a variant name for Mt. Pai-p’o 白坡), says that he is writing after giving up his post as Drafter and coming home sick. The “Seven Narrations” takes up quite explicitly the old literary tradition of ‘Sevens’, which went back at least to the Han dynasty. 156

——— 155

HTFC 18.4a (288; 252:591). HTFC 3.5a (30; 賦:027). This work seems most plausibly assigned to the summer of 1507, on the basis of what Ho says of the conditions under which he wrote 156

272

CHAPTER SIX

The structure is simply an extended version of the old ‘third suitor wins the beautiful princess’ principle. A visitor arrives, but Ho turns him away, pleading illness. After repeated pleas, the visitor is finally admitted. A glance suffices to tell him that Ho’s illness is not physical, but all in his head, as we should say. Ho is depressed, and what he needs is not rest and quiet, which will only make him rapidly worse, but rather stimulation, which the visitor undertakes to provide. The first six stimuli are rejected one after another, as ideology, no less than literary convention, requires: magnificent architecture (“I prefer a grass shack in the fields,” Ho responds), luxurious food, dress, and transport (“I am a scholar who dresses in plain cloth and lives on plain food”), beautiful teen-aged singing girls (“blinding and deafening”), the excitement of hunting (“dissipates the will”), the beauties of landscape and the world of nature (“I love the sublime, but my health isn’t up to it”), and Taoist transcendence of the mortal condition (“nice, but rather intangible; I haven’t time for it”). The winning prescription is of course the seventh, the life of the mind, which Ho likes so well that he invites his visitor to stay to dinner. The other important work to which Ho might be referring is the “Master Ho” (何子 Ho-tzu) or “New Theses of Ta-fu” (大復新論 Tafu Hsin-lun), a collection of twelve essays on topics related to ethics and politics. 157 The essays are unrelentingly abstract discussions of concerns that were current throughout Ho’s life and so supply no

———

it. Ho’s work is quite dissimilar to Wang T’ing-hsiang’s “Nine Narrations” 九述, Wang Shih Chia-ts’ang Chi 3.1a (95), Wang T’ing-hsiang Chi 3.33), an extended evocation of Ch’ü Yüan. Ho says that his work is done in the tradition of the early poets Mei Sheng, Ts’ao Chih, and Chang Hsieh, the three writers whose “sevens” appear in the Wen Hsüan. 157 These essays were included in the Ta-fu Yi-kao under the “New Theses” title, with a preface dated fifth day of the fifth month of the kui-ssu 癸巳 year of Chiaching (May 28, 1533), by Hsü Tsung-lu (1490-1559), a native of Shensi. In the Standard recension of Ho’s complete works, the Ho-tzu heads the prose works, occupying chüan 30; none of the other recensions include it. The (Chia-ch’ing) Juning Fu Chih 汝寧府志 (Gazetteer of Ju-ning Prefecture), 19.19a, lists the Ho-tzu as a work in twelve chüan 卷, but this must be an error for twelve p’ien 篇. An important early Ming work of the same type was Liu Chi’s 劉基 Yü-li-tzu 郁離子. The genre had become a fairly popular one in Ho’s day. Li Meng-yang (whose K’ung-t’ung-tzu was completed in 1527), Ho T’ang, Ku Lin, Cheng Shan-fu, Wang Ch’ung-ch’ing, Hu Shih 胡侍, and Ch’iao Shih-ning all left works of this sort, many of which were reprinted, or printed for the first time, in the collectaneum Pai-ling Hsüeh-shan 百陵學山, which appeared in parts through the mid-sixteenth century. For Hsü Tsung-lu, see HY 3.52, TL 486, KHL 62.57a (2653—Ch’iao Shih-ning).

THE LIFE OF THE MIND

273

topical references by which they might be dated. Their length and complexity argues for a date when Ho had a great deal of free time, and the mourning period seems the most obvious such period in Ho’s life, so we take them up here, but it is quite possible that they were written at some other time. 158 The titles of the twelve essays are as follows: 1. Strict Government (嚴治 yen chih) 2. The Activity of the Superior (上作 shang tso) 3. The Operations of the Law (法行 fa hsing) 4. The Appointment of Generals (任將 jen chiang) 5. The Accomplishment of Inherent Trends (勢成 shih ch’eng) 6. Merit and Accomplishment (功實 kung shih) 7. Employing the Forthright (用直 yung chih) 8. The Enemy’s Targets (敵中 ti chung) 9. Firm Authority (固權 ku ch’üan) 10. Placement and Conferral (處與 ch’u yü) 11. Stratagems and Arts (策術 ts’e shu) 12. The Mind and Visible Traces (心迹 hsin chi)

The first essay (translated below) makes a strong argument for strict government as better for the people in the long run than laxness. The second insists on the importance of policy being set by those in superior positions. The third argues that strict and impartial enforcement is essential and the fourth that military commanders, once appointed, should be given broad authority to achieve their objectives as they see fit. The fifth essay is among the more abstract, being concerned with the correct understanding of inherent trends, developments that cannot be caused or directed, but can be taken advantage of. The sixth essay stresses the need to discriminate between effort and results; the seventh, the importance of employing officials who are forthright and fearless. The eighth essay points out the importance to success of understanding one’s own weaknesses and the ninth that of establishing unquestioned authority. The tenth essay

———

158 Hsü Tsung-lu passed the chin-shih in 1517, and so may have met Ho Chingming in Peking or Sian after or just before Ho was assigned to serve in Hsü’s native Shensi. He is not, however, referred to in Ho’s works and does not tell us how he came to write the preface. Most of his preface is given over to a digest of the twelve essays in the Hsin-lun, but Hsü does say that Ho was moved to write them because of his concern over the decline in government. As he makes no reference to Ho’s retirement to Hsin-yang during the period of Liu Chin’s ascendency, it is thus possible that the essays were written in Peking, either before 1507 or during the years 1511-18.

274

CHAPTER SIX

reviews the necessity to judge carefully before conferring appointments and rewards. The eleventh sounds a stern (and quite unConfucian) warning that virtue alone is insufficient; sound strategy is also essential. The final essay (also translated below) discusses the importance of perceiving the essence of a situation rather than being misled by incidental details. As this summary suggests, Ho was no civil libertarian. All the same, it is important to see his doctrines as a response to concrete problems of his day, which included the unbridled abuse of power by eunuchs and imperial favourites, interference in military affairs by the young Emperor, and widespread peasant unrest. We should be inclined to regard the first of these as a crime, the second as a folly, and the third as a symptom, but Ho saw them all as signs of an underlying weakness in the exercise of authority. His remedies amounted to an general ‘tightening up’ of political functions, in the broadest sense, a regime that would enforce order, delegate authority, exercise judgement, and reward merit. If Ho is a Confucian in his belief in the transforming influence of virtue manifested by those above, he is also a Legalist in his insistence that correct policies once adopted must be pursued unswervingly and without regard to personal attachments. 159 Essay One: On Strict Government 160

———

159 Jen Fang-ch’iu, who sees Confucianism as the chief influence on Ho’s thinking, with Taoism and Legalism secondary, stresses the Legalist elements in the “Ho-tzu.” See his “Ho Ching-ming Chien-lun,” Hsin-yang Shih-fan Hsüeh-yüan Hsüeh-pao 1986.1: 27-35. Note that the Ta-fu Lun was included as a Legalist work in Shen Chin’s 沈津 Ming dynasty compendium, the Pai-chia Lei-tsuan 百家類纂 (see LHH 2.34a). 160 HTFC 30.1a (527; 何子 :001). For additional comments advocating strict government, see ‘Preface for Saying Farewell to Censor Chang, Who is Going as Commissioner to Huai-yang” 送張侍御黯淮揚序 found in the Nei-p’ien, or ““Inner Chapters,” HTFC 31.5b (550; 內:007). The “Inner Chapters” is a collection of prose passages that are either extracts or complete texts of various sorts. For the nature of the collection, see Appendix Two. Jen Fang-ch’iu suggests two early sources for Ho’s doctrine of severity. One of these is the dying injunction of the statesman Kung-sun Ch’iao 公孫僑 to his successor, “It is only the virtuous who can dominate the people by leniency; for lesser men, nothing compares with severity,” Ch’un-ch’iu Chingchuan Yin-te 403/Chao 28/fu 7; cf. Legge, p.684. The other is the comment of Hsimen Pao 西門豹 when the common people complained of the labour he had imposed upon them for the sake of creating an irrigation system for the state of Yeh, “As for the common people, one can rejoice in the completion with them, but one cannot take thought with them at the beginning,” Shih Chi 126.3213. See Jen Fang-ch’iu, “Chienlun,” p.28. Wong Yuk (王煜) refers to this essay in his “The Confucian, Legalist,

THE LIFE OF THE MIND

275

In governing the people, nothing is better than strictness, for strictness is that whereby liberality is accomplished. If the people’s minds are not united they will be loose; if the people’s affections are not controlled they will be disorderly. Law is the instrument whereby their looseness is regulated and restrained and their disorder corrected and adjusted. Strictness is that whereby regulation and restraint are established and whereby correction and adjustment are carried out. Thus, with strictness the law is established, and when the law is established the people will have few faults. With liberality the law is relaxed, and when the law is relaxed the people will have many failings. Thus if you govern them strictly the people will be tense at first but in the long run they will be at ease. If you govern them with liberality the people will be at ease at first but in the long run they will be tense. If the are people are tense, they will be dissatisfied; if they are at ease they will be happy. Happiness at the outset is not equal to satisfaction in the long run. Thus the people are difficult to join with in making a start, but possible to join with in accomplishing the end. Now, the robe and cap of office adorn the person; when people see them they feel respect. Mounts and carriages sound their rapid motion; people see them from afar and get out of the way. If one throws away the cap and leaves the hair streaming down like a criminal, then no one will yield a mat to sit on. If one has a run-down carriage and travels alone, people won’t get out of the way. 161 The sources of strictness and the lack of it are very far apart. Thus what is strict is that whereby one adorns power and right and shows care for regulation and measure, causing people to behold them. When sun and moon show their images below, people dare not ignore them; when mountains and rivers display their dangers, people dare not cross them. Thus when the law is established and people do not trespass against it, and when the penalties are set out and people do not fall into them, it is strictness that has done this. This is why, in the regulations of the former kings, stairs and halls

———

Taoist, and Buddhist Vestiges of Ho Ching-ming,” Chinese Culture 33.1 (1992):61-68, pp.62-63. Wong brings together a considerable range of citations from Ho’s works, but sometimes fails to distinguish between reference and advocacy. 161 Ho may have had in mind an incident that he included in his epitaph for Yüan Hsün (see above). Yüan was once walking by himself in the countryside when a man carrying a load of wood shoved him aside so that he fell off a bridge and got his clothing wet. Ho goes on to record that when the man learned whom he had shoved, he came to kneel at Yüan’s gate, shaking with fear. The latter, though urged to treat him harshly, had him served food and wine instead, saying, “I knew it was just that you didn’ t recognise me. Why should I be angry?”; see HTFC 36.24b (635; 銘:504). Neither here nor elsewhere is it pointed out that a substantial economy in the matter of food and wine stood to be realised by even the most forgiving of solitary strollers who did not happen to enjoy the (apparently very considerable) local heft of a retired militia general.

276

CHAPTER SIX

[of various kinds] were used to differentiate classes, pennant fringes and hatstring tassels were used to multiply decorations, and official titles and noble ranks were used to distinguish grades. When classes are differentiated, the honoured and the base are separated; when decorations are multiplied the superior and inferior are marked off; and when grades are distinguished the great and the humble are fixed in place. This is why in the times of the former kings the honoured and the base were not confused, the superior and inferior did not trespass against one another, and the great and humble did not go beyond their respective bounds. By varying their decorated objects, their distinctions were made evident; by restraining and regulating their affections and desires, their muscles and bones were bound and hindered. Eyes and ears had constant values and the difference between compliance and violation was entirely certain. Usurpation and rebellion did not arise, and treachery and dishonesty did not appear. Thus the forms of the script were simplified and punishments and penalties reduced. The people’s life was set free and government affairs purified. This is how the former kings were able to govern and regulate the universe, employ the masses, and bring all the world into unity. In later ages, habits of idle carelessness took hold and the sense of dignity and reserve was lost. Superior and inferior began to accomodate one another, so that their institutions and principles declined and their bounds and restrictions broke down. With this, the bold and violent usurped control, the rich and powerful acted in any way they pleased, clans and factions formed alliances, and the status of the inside and the out was subverted. Then [the law] was promoted and adjusted, its obscurities and secrets were brought into the open and its fine points and niceties were decided until for every law established, a hundred counterfeits appeared. Decisions and precedents multiplied daily and still were not enough; officials and interpretations varied more every day and still no resolution was reached. Among the officials, none corrected his faults, and among the common people, none took his orders as binding. Thus the law grew more intricate while violations continued to multiply; punishments proliferated while crime continued to increase. And why? If the headwaters are not controlled, there will be floods downstream. If one grabs while bundling kindling, no stick will be left unbroken; if one rushes while plaiting rope, no strand will be left unbroken. Thus government cannot be hasty, for if it is, nothing will be left undisturbed. Thus, the law is something that arises from strictness. Thus, if the stays are not stretched tight, the mast will be awry; if the outline is not put in order the headings will be confused, and if government is not strict then the law will decay. Now, strictness is different from severity. Strictness means establishing the law in order to prevent what has not yet happened; severity is to investigate crimes and regulate what has already happened.

THE LIFE OF THE MIND

277

This is why, when the laws of Ch’in were as numerous as autumn herbs and as dense as congealed fat, the people did not know what to avoid. When the officers of Han pounced like fierce tigers and attacked like cruel hawks, the people did not know what to stand in awe of. Thus, to pursue peoples’ crimes without having made [the law] known is simply severity and not the way to correct the people. Hence a strict father does not have spoiled children and a strict prince does not have spoiled subjects. This is why the people of the age of the Three Kings [of antiquity] felt no resentment in being put to death. If they met with the consequences of their crime without having been falsely accused, the crime belonged with them and they did not blame their superiors. How could they feel resentment? Essay Twelve: The Mind and Visible Traces 162 It is within the mind that the significance of the affairs of this world is understood. If one does not force them according to their visible traces, their spiritual perspicuity will respond and their evolving transformations will come together. If their evolving transformations come together, then inception and decline will be evident. Inception and decline are the gaps and linkages of the evolving transformations. The Changes says, “All things have a common goal but a hundred thoughts, the same destination but different paths.” 163 Thus one hundred join in one and the differing come together in the common. Now, inception and decline are the beginning and end of the evolving transformations. To follow and comprehend them in order to bring together their evolving transformations and to restrain and reduce them in order to see their inceptions and declines is the activity of sages and wise men. Now, circumscribed study does not go beyond cords and rulers; shallow vision does not reach below robe and sash. If one practises something without thinking about it or follows without investigating, one is like a bow-maker unable to do arrows or a metal worker unable to do carpentry. Thus, one can neither discuss broad questions on the basis of circumscribed studies nor point to great distances with shallow vision. Why is this? Because the mind is not understanding the

———

162 HTFC 30.26b (544; 何子:012). Jen Fang-ch’iu traces the concerns of this essay back to a passage in the Chuang-tzu in which Confucius confesses his difficulties to Lao-tzu, who explains that they arise from his concern with ‘footprints’ (chi 迹 , Ho’s ‘visible traces’) rather than with the shoes that made them; see Jen Fang-ch’iu, “Chien-lun,” p.29, and Chuang-tzu Yin-te 39/14/74; Watson, p.165; Graham, p.133). 163 天下一致而百慮、同歸而殊塗. The quotation is not exact, as Ho has reversed the phrases. See Chou Yi Yin-te 46/hsi-hsia/3 for the original: 天下同歸而殊塗一致而百慮, Lynn, p.81, “As all in the world ultimately comes to the same end, though the roads to it are different, so there is an ultimate congruence in thought though there might be hundreds of ways to think about it.” Cf. Wilhelm/Baynes, p.338. This passage is also referred to in Ho’s letter to Li Meng-yang, see below, chapter nine.

278

CHAPTER SIX

significance of things, but is only forcing them according to their visible traces. The Three Sages did not have the same tao but the term ‘Sage’ is applied without distinction; the Five Emperors did not have the same virtue, but the term ‘Emperor’ is applied without distinction; the Three Kings did not rule in the same way, but they are all called ‘King;’ and the Five Overlords were not equal in their accomplishment, but they are all called ‘Earl.’ These are cases in which the visible traces differ but the mind is the same. How could they not be treated as the same? Yao’s 堯 yielding of the throne to Yü has been praised by later generations, while Tzu-k’uai’s 子噲 abdication from the throne of Yen led to his losing his kingdom and the world laughing at him. Po Yi 伯夷 and Shu Ch’i 叔齊 yielded to one another as elder and younger brother, and Confucius praised them for it, while Duke Hsüan 宣 of Sung set up his younger brother and was ridiculed in the “Annals” for it. Wu Wang 武王 made war on Chou 紂 and hung his head from a white pennon, but the world did not despise his orders or his reputation on this account, while T’ien Ch’ang 田常 assassinated Duke Chien 簡公 and could not avoid the odium of having assassinated his prince. The Duke of Chou 周公 made war on Kuan 管 and Ts’ai 蔡, but is not taken to have despoiled his brothers, while Emperor T’ai-tsung of T’ang 唐太宗 slew Chien-ch’eng 建成 and has been faulted by later ages. 164 In all these cases, although the visible traces are not dissimilar, they cannot be treated as the same, because to do so would be to seek things from their visible traces and not in the mind. Hence people who knit their brows only increase their ugliness and those who emulate a walk only forget what they used to know. 165 This is because if one seeks visible traces,

———

164 The foregoing list of historical exempla would have been familiar to anyone likely to have come in contact with Ho’s essays in his own day. For various lists of the “Three Sages” 三皇 and “Five Emperors” 五帝, see DKJ 12.369 and 257.848. The Three Kings 三王 are usually reckoned to have been Yü 禹 (of the Hsia), T’ang 湯 (of the Shang), and Wen 文 (of the Chou). Lists of the Five Overlords 五霸 vary somewhat. An influential one found in a note to the Mencius names Dukes Huan of Ch’i 齊桓公, Wen of Chin 晉文公, Mu of Ch’in 秦穆公, Hsiang of Sung 宋襄公, and Chuang of Ch’u 楚莊公; see DKJ 257.910. For standard accounts of the abdications of Yao and Tzu-k’uai, see the Shih Chi 1.30 and 34.1556-57. Confucius’s praise of Po-yi and Shu-ch’i may be found in the Analects; see Lun-yü Yin-te 34/16/12, 38/18/8; Lau, pp.141, 151; Waley, pp.207, 221. Duke Hsüan is ridiculed in the Kung-yang Commentary to the Annals, Ch’un-ch’iu Ching-chuan Yin-te 9/Yin 3/7 Kung. For Wuwang’s attack on Chou, see Shih Chi 4.120-24. For T’ien Ch’ang (also known as Ch’en Heng 陳恒) and his assassination of Duke Chien, see the Analects, Lun-yü Yinte 28/14/21; Lau, p.127; Waley, p.186, and Annals, Ch’un-ch’iu Ching-chuan Yin-te 488/Ai 14/3. The Duke of Chou’s war on his brothers Kuan and Ts’ai is found in Shih Chi 4.132; T’ai-tsung’s fratricide, in the Chiu T’ang Shu 舊唐書 (Older History of the T’ang, compiled by Liu Hsü 劉昫 et al. (Peking: Chung-hua, 1975) 2.29. 165 This sentence alludes to two famous examples of what we now call ‘wannabes’.

THE LIFE OF THE MIND

279

taking them to be a way of drawing close, one will end up even farther away. Now, as times change, circumstances alter; when situations alter, then affairs change. Had the Five Emperors copied one another and the Three Kings imitated one another then there would have been no question of differences or similarities in rites and music and no additional increase or loss to culture or substance. Similarities in visible traces cannot be used in discussing the mind. Visible traces are dispersed manifestations of the evolving transformations. If one could treat them as equivalent on the basis of their similarities, then T’ien Ch’ang would have been doing what Wu Wang did and Chien-ch’eng’s execution would be that of Kuan and Ts’ai. Thus, so far as visible traces are concerned, although one’s resemblance might be as close as that of Yu-tzu 有子, one would still not be Confucius; and so far as minds go, although one might be as different as Tseng-tzu 曾子 , one could emulate Liu-hsia Hui 柳下惠 . 166 Thus the chariot maker does not measure the chariot and the sandal maker does not look at the foot, since they comprehend their significance. Thus Master Chuang understood the nourishing of life from watching the cutting up of beeves and Chang Hsü 張旭 understood cursive calligraphy from watching a sword-dance. 167 Now, cutting up beeves has no connection with nourishing life and the sword-dance is the farthest thing from cursive calligraphy. But all the same they looked upon them as the same arts. If their significance is truly comprehended, then visible traces will not suffice to obscure it. This is why diagrams can be used to array troops in formation and books can be used to teach charioteering. Even

———

The ugly Tung Shih 東施, noticing that her neighbour, the preeminent beauty Hsi Shih 西施, was especially admired when she knitted her brows, went about knitting her own, which made her so much less fetching that the rich retreated behind bolted doors and the poor snatched up their wives and children and absconded. For the kernal of this story, see Chuang-tzu Yin-te 38/14/42; Graham, p. 193; Watson, p.160. In other versions, her frown was so little charming that fish dove to the bottom of their streams and turtles burrowed into the mud in order to avoid the sight of her. A young man from Shou-ling 壽陵 who wished to ‘walk the walk’ of fashionable Han-tan 邯鄲 went there to learn it, but in the end he not only failed to master the ‘Han-tan Strut’, but even forgot how to walk in his normal way and had to crawl home on all fours; see Chuang-tzu Yin-te 45/17/79; Graham, p.155; Watson, p.187. 166 Yu-tzu (Yu-jo 有若) and Tseng-tzu were followers of Confucius. Yu-tzu so resembled Confucius that after the latter died, some of his leading disciples proposed to make Yu-tzu their teacher in Confucius’s place; see the Mencius, Meng-tzu Yin-te 21/3A/4, Lau, p.103. Tseng-tzu, who refused to join them, was known for his conscientious adherence to what was right. Liu-hsia Hui was not a follower of Confucius, but rather a somewhat earlier official known for his probity. 167 For Chuang-tzu’s Taoist butcher, see Chuang-tzu Yin-te 7/3/3; Graham, p.63; Watson, p.50; for Chang Hsü’s terpsichorean inspiration, the Hsin T’ang Shu 新唐書 (New History of the T’ang), compiled by Ou-yang Hsiu 歐陽修, Sung Ch’i 宋祁, et al. (Peking: Chung-hua, 1975) 202.5764.

280

CHAPTER SIX

so, one who uses diagrams to array them will not master the Tao of arms and one who uses a book in charioteering will not master the nature of horses. For what is sought through its visible traces is limited by them. Now, what is within the alterations and changes is called the evolving transformations, and the completion of the evolving transformations is called coming together and commonality. From observing their coming together and commonality it is possible to see their inceptions and declines. Thus, so far as things are concerned, one must seek them from their inceptions and declines. If the inceptions and declines are seen then one will be able to unify the ten thousand things. This is how one can know all the stars and constellations without going outside one’s door and all the hills and rivers without descending from one’s inner hall. The images of heaven are infinitely high above, and the images of earth are infinitely far away. If one had to reach them in person and behold them with one’s own eyes, heaven could not be experienced and earth could not be comprehended. Now, one who adds inch by inch is bound to be off when he reaches a foot, and one who adds grain by grain is bound to be off when he reaches a tael. Therefore, in order to embrace all the things in the world one must seek their inceptions and declines; when the inceptions and declines are sought, then one will behold the gaps and linkages of the world. Gaps are that whence things are born; linkages are that wherein things meet. If the gaps and linkages are grasped then the mind will be clear. The mind is the most spiritual thing in the world, and thus it is able to circulate throughout the world. Now, the one is what the ten thousand follow and emerge from. Thus, to speak of the one and not get to the ten thousand still leaves a surplus, while to speak of the ten thousand and not get to the one is insufficient. The Tao of the Sage is the one and nothing more. Thus, it is without insufficiencies. Hence it is said that the perfect Tao is restrained and thus easy to grasp, perspicuous and thus easy to understand. This is why the Sage is competent without studying it and the fool incompetent even after studying. It is simply that what they follow are different paths.

The modern reader is likely to be struck by the unashamed authoritarianism of the first essay and the abstraction of the second, but both reactions are misleading. Authoritarian rule was the only existing political tradition in Ho Ching-ming’s China. The point of “Strict Government” in his day was to argue for a use of that authority in ways that would tend to eliminate the arbitrary injustice that he saw not only as a wrong in itself but also as a long-term threat to the stability on which rested effective government of any kind. Indeed, the ideology of these essays has an interesting and surprising antecedant, the writings of Chu Yüan-chang and the senior intellectual advisors

THE LIFE OF THE MIND

281

who served at his court (see above, chapter two). The emphasis on tight control of society for its own sake had been used by Chu himself in justifying the very purges that set the seal on the despotism under which Ho and his friends suffered. In the second essay, although the style of argument may seem obscure at first, the point is actually a plea for intellectual synthesis based on accurate understanding. The underlying argument of much of the Ho-tzu is in fact that clarity and definition are fundamental to intellectual activity and government administration alike. If this seems obvious, it may explain why Ho’s place in history is as a poet rather than as a thinker. But the argument is worth noting for its congruence with stylistic features in Ho’s writing. If Ho’s terminology sometimes seems abstruse and his historical allusions hard to follow, the structure of his sentences is generally very clear, in part because of his fondness for parallel constructions. Particularly in the Ho-tzu essays, the most characteristic gestures are the definition of terms by assertion, the use of ‘chain’ arguments, and parallelism. All three are antipathetic to us because their common function is to preempt judgement. Within the tradition of Chinese prose, however, they were perfectly legitimate and time-honoured modes of argument, which Ho would have imbibed from his earliest studies of such texts as the “Great Learning” 大學. Indeed, the significance of Ho’s use of them lies perhaps as much in their ‘classical’ associations as in their structural functions.

CHAPTER SEVEN

PEKING DOWNFALL The really remarkable thing about all the poems that are even possibly from the autumn or winter of 1510 is the entire absence of reference in them to the fall of Liu Chin. Ho rarely refers explicitly to particular political events in his verse, especially that written at home, but he does at least hint at the import for himself of developments in the capital, such as his discharge from the civil service rolls. One would thus expect to find some mention of Liu’s downfall, at least some oblique reference to good news or the recall to office of some of his purged friends. In the event, however, no such reference can be detected. Liu’s fall came with the same suddenness as his coup in 1506. 1 Early in the summer of 1510, an imperial prince, Chu Chih-fan 朱寘鐇, Prince of An-hua 安化王, rose in rebellion from his fief in Shensi. The prince was a very minor personage abetted only by a small band of hangers-on, and his ‘uprising’ was over in less than three weeks. A local cavalry general took to his bed, feigning illness, then succeeded in having most of the prince’s forces decoyed into the field by false reports of an imminent attack by a government army. When the prince sent his second-in-command to call on the ‘invalid’, wishing him a speedy recovery and seeking his aid, the latter, who lay groaning on his cot in a fit of bogus affliction, had his visitor jumped and beheaded. The sight of their erstwhile commander’s head being waved in the air

——— 1

The account given here follows closely that in MTC 43.1614-27, which is in turn based chiefly on the Wu-tsung Shih-lu. There are many additional details, especially concerning Liu Chin’s interrogation and execution, in Chang Wen-lin’s 張文麟 autobiographical chronology, later published as Tuan-yen Kung Nien-p’u 端巖公年譜 (Chronological Register of Sir Tuan-yen), 1808 ed.; rpt. Hsin-pien Chung-kuo Mingjen Nien-p’u Chi-ch’eng, Taipei: Shang-wu, 1978, pp.17a-22b (33-44). Chang was a Secretary in the Ministry of Justice at the time and appears to have seen many of the events unfold in person.

PEKING

283

quickly helped the troops to see things in their proper light. On galloping back to the prince’s residence, they found the unhappy rebel fit to be tied, and he soon was. If the rebellion itself had partaken not a little of the comic opera, it had created real dangers for Liu Chin all the same. Chu Chih-fan’s announced purpose had been to drive Liu from power, and the local soldiery, serving on frontier military farms and much oppressed both by Liu’s administrative innovations and by the harsh treatment they received at the hands of Liu’s agents, had responded readily to Chu’s appeal. Chu had published a detailed denunciation of Liu’s misdeeds at the outset of his rebellion, and while Liu had managed to suppress the first copy of this transmitted to the capital, the thorough investigation that the rebellion of a prince necessarily entailed was bound to bring Chu’s manifesto to light, with unpredictable results. Moreover, the very fact that an attempt so unlikely to succeed had met with so ready a reponse among the military rank and file was bound to be troubling, for control of the military was crucial to eunuch power. This danger to Liu’s regime was naturally reflected in the steps taken in Peking once news of Chu Chih-fan’s uprising arrived there. Command of the campaign was assigned to Yang Yi-ch’ing, who had extensive and successful experience on the Shensi frontier but had been cashiered by Liu Chin only the preceding year, over the protests of Wang Ao and Yang’s mentor, Li Tung-yang. Less than a week after Yang’s appointment, the position of eunuch supervisor for the campaign went to Chang Yung 張永, one of the seven eunuchs who had joined Liu Chin in pleading for Wu-tsung’s protection in the course of Liu’s coup against the civil officials in 1506. Even after Chu Chih-fan’s capture had been reported, Yang and Chang were ordered to proceed to the frontier anyway, in order to see that the region was secure and to bring Chu and his associates back to the capital for trial. The role of Liu Chin emerges in Yang Yi-ch’ing’s journal of his mission to Shensi, the Hsi-cheng Jih-lu 西征日錄 (“Diary of the Western Campaign”). Yang had previously served with distinction in the region, which was no doubt an important reason for his selection for this mission. In addition, Liu Chin may have calculated that someone whom he had driven from office might, if given a second chance, be anxious to make a good impression by arranging things so that Liu escaped blame. When Yang questioned one of the prisoners, a former subordinate, and asked why he had not reported the abuses to

284

CHAPTER SEVEN

the Court, the man replied, “They said what they were doing was on Liu Chin’s account. If we had reported, it wouldn’t have done any good; we would just have found ourselves in trouble right away.” At this, Yang comments, “Chang [Yung] just smiled . . . and I didn’t dare say anything.” 2 By the time they reached the Shensi frontier, Yang Yi-ch’ing and Chang Yung had got to be on quite good terms. One day, in a moment of leisure, Yang took Chang by the wrist and said, “Thanks to you, this rebellion has been put down. But this one was easy. What are we going to do about the danger that threatens the Empire from within?” Whereupon he leaned close and drew Liu Chin’s name on his palm with a fingertip. When Chang said the thing was impossible, Yang persisted in an impassioned tone, “You are a trusted subject. To whom will the credit for putting down these rebels go if not to you? You can imagine how highly His Majesty will think of you. Why not take the opportunity of reporting this victory to ask for a chance to discuss military matters with him? Then you can reveal Chin’s treachery and explain all the pain and injustice the people have suffered and the dangers this poses for security. His Majesty admires military prowess; he is bound to believe you and execute Chin. Once Chin is dead, your power will be the greater; you can get rid of abuses in government and bring peace of mind to the Empire!” Yang went on to assure Chang of an exalted place in history, but Chang hesitated, “What if I can’t convince him?” Yang replied, “If it is you talking, it is sure to convince him. And if by some chance he doesn’t believe you, you throw yourself to the ground, burst out in sobs, and beg to die on the spot, so that your heart can be plucked out to prove your sincerity. He is bound to be moved. If you should be allowed to deal with the situation, you must not delay for a moment.” At this Chang straightened up and said, “Old slave that I am, how could I begrudge serving my ruler with whatever years remain to me?” And so they agreed to act. 3 In the event, their plan came off as Yang intended. On their return to Peking, a celebration was held to mark their delivery of the

——— 2

Hsi-cheng Jih-lu (Chi-lu Hui-pien; repr. PP 16/3), p.10a. It should be noted that Yang Yi-ch’ing himself is the overwhelmingly likely source for the received account of this incident. This conversation is not, however, recorded in the Hsi-cheng Jih-lu. 3

PEKING

285

captured rebels, including Chu Chih-fan himself. Although Wu-tsung was already quite drunk by the end of the evening, once Liu Chin had withdrawn, Chang Yung made his case to the Emperor and, with the support of others among the leading eunuchs, succeeded in getting an order for Liu’s immediate arrest. Wu-tsung was initially inclined simply to relegate Liu to a provincial sinecure, but a search and confiscation of his residence and its contents, carried out within days of his arrest, shifted the tide of Imperial favour decisively against him when it revealed not only hoarded wealth in amounts that Wu-tsung (and later historians) found almost unbelievable, but also weapons, armour, and, hidden inside fans that Liu had often carried in the Emperor’s presence, two daggers. 4 Liu’s behaviour, even as reported in the universally hostile historical sources, is remarkable for its display of sang-froid. There would be no shrieking for clemency at the Emperor’s feet for him. Informed that among the flood of denunciations submitted after his arrest was one by a Supervising Secretary named Li Hsien 李憲, whom all the world knew Liu to have bought and paid for, the eunuch simply laughed and said, “So, even Hsien is denouncing me!” 5 On the day of Liu’s interrogation by the assembled court officials, the Minister of Justice was so abashed that he could not say a word. Liu, who had been prepared for the event by a savage beating that had left his skin in tatters, issued an open challenge, “Most of you gentlemen owe your positions to me. Who among you dares to interrogate me?” At this, all present shrank. Finally, an imperial sonin-law named Ts’ai Chen蔡震 spoke up. “I am a member of the Imperial family by marriage. I can interrogate you.” Having an

———

4 It was alleged that Liu Chin was on the verge of staging a coup intended to bring about the death of Wu-tsung and his replacement on the throne by a relative of Liu’s. The tendentious nature of the sources makes it impossible to come to a conclusive verdict now. See James Geiss, “The Cheng-te Reign, 1506-1521,” in The Cambridge History of China, volume 7, the Ming Dynasty 12368-1644, Part 1, edited by Frederic W. Mote and Denis Twitchett, pp.403-39 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp.410-12. 5 For Li Hsien (t. Liang-tu 良度), a native of Shensi who passed the chin-shih in 1499, see HY 2/232, TL 223, MS 306.7842. Since he was serving as a Drafter in 1508 when he was promoted to Supervising Secretary, he and Ho may well have been acquainted. In spite of his belated return to virtue he was cashiered and his name struck from the list of those eligible for appointment. See Matthew Fryslie, “Inside Out: The Rhetoric of Derision in the Mingshi ‘Yandang Zhuan’,” Ming Studies 51-52 (2005): 94-122. This anecdote is discussed on pp.94-95.

286

CHAPTER SEVEN

attendant slap Liu’s cheeks, he demanded, “These gentlemen are all employed by the court. What do you mean they owe their positions to you? I insist that you tell us why you were hiding armour!” “In order to protect His Majesty,” replied Liu. “In that case, why hide it in your residence?” pursued Ts’ai. Liu had no reply to this and the case was deemed complete. On the twenty-fifth day of the month, just two weeks after his denunciation and arrest, Liu Chin was put to death by the ‘thousand cuts’ 凌遲 (ling ch’ih), considered the most severe form of execution both because of the extreme and prolonged pain involved (although it frequently happened, sometimes because the executioners had been bribed, that one of the earlier cuts was made through the heart) and because it resulted in elaborate disfigurement of the body, a source of great shame. 6 Liu actually endured the process longer than any other recorded case, managing to consume two bowls of congee at the end of the first day, but expiring on the morning of the second day of what was supposed to be three day event after only about four hundred of the mandated 3,357 cuts had been made. His dismembered corpse was publicly displayed for three days and we are told that after the process of execution itself throngs of people with old grievances against him fought for the opportunity to buy pieces of his flesh, which they chewed raw or presented on their family altars by way of revenge. Fifteen of his male relatives and immediate aides were beheaded and their womenfolk consigned to the Palace Laundry Bureau. CHANGING PLACES Less gruesome forms of revenge were also in the works. Many of those who had lost their posts because of opposition to Liu Chin were recalled. 7 Yang Yi-ch’ing was of course rewarded for his role. Several

———

6 For a full account of this form of execution, both as it was practised and as imperfect knowledge of it shaped Western ideas about China, see Timothy Brook, Jérôme Bourgon, and Gregory Blue Death by a Thousand Cuts, Cambridge (Harvard University Press), 2008. Liu Chin’s execution, including some details drawn from Chang Wen-lin, appears on pp.11, 120, 272. 7 A list of fifty-three men driven from office by Liu Chin and deemed worthy of rehabilitation, dated October 22, 1510, is given in the Wu-tsung Shih-lu (Taipei: Chung-yang Yen-chiu-yüan, Li-shih Yü-yen-hsüeh Yen-chiu-so, 1964) 67.10b (1486).

PEKING

287

times promoted, he would become a Grand Secretary in 1515. Lin Han and Liu Ta-hsia were both restored to favour and allowed to retire with honour. Lesser figures, including many of Ho’s friends, were summoned to Peking to be given responsible posts. Wang T’inghsiang had already been summoned to Peking earlier to enter the Censorate (January 7, 1510). Ho Ching-ming, of course, was in the midst of the required twenty-seven month period of mourning for his parents, so there could be no thought of his immediate return to Peking, although he was widely praised after the fall of Liu Chin for his prompt withdrawal from the government soon after Liu assumed power. While the fall of Liu Chin restored to office many who had opposed him, it also led to the disgrace of those who had prospered during his rule. Some of these men were driven from office for good, notably Wang Chiu-ssu and K’ang Hai, who would to spend the rest of their lives at home in Shensi. 8 The turning of the political tide thus sometimes swept old friends in opposite directions. The conservative tao-hsüeh thinker Lü Nan, having rebuffed the advances of Liu Chin and fled home all but a fugitive, was now among the heroes summoned back to Peking. He left Shensi in such a rush that he had no chance to say farewell to his fellow provincial K’ang Hai, who, having prospered under Liu Chin, was now in disgrace. Once settled in the capital, Lü hastened to write an apologetic note, trying at the same time to reassure K’ang that his character remained widely respected. 9 Lü’s letter cannot have

———

Ho is listed, as are Ho T’ang, the philosopher Lo Ch’in-shun, and Li Tung-yang’s followers Shao Pao and Ma Chung-hsi. It is instructive to contrast this account of the effects of Liu Chin’s regime and its end on Ho and his friends with James Parsons’s comments on the apparent resistence of the civil service system to ‘packing’ by temporarily powerful factions. See Parsons, “The Ming Dynasty Bureaucracy— Aspects of Background Forces,” in Charles O. Hucker, ed., Chinese Government in Ming Times: Seven Studies (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), pp. 175231, esp. pp.226-227. 8 K’ang and Wang were disgraced a week after Liu Chin’s execution (September 20, 1510), which suggests that their cases were thought serious; see MTC 43.1625. Wang was initially assigned to a provincial post, but soon struck from the official rolls and sent home. K’ang Hai was still at home in mourning. Li Han and Chang Tzu-lin, the former Honan officials to whom Ho addressed poems in 1507, were both denounced as adherents of Liu Chin, but both managed to weather the criticisms with their careers intact, won additional promotions, and eventually died at very ripe old ages. 9 Lü Nan, “Letter to Academician K’ang Te-han” 與康太史德涵書, Ching-yeh Hsien-sheng Wen-chi (1555; repr. TM 4:60-61, Tainan: Chuang-yen Wen-hua, 1997)

288

CHAPTER SEVEN

provided much solace, since by assuring K’ang that many people understood that he had been moved by the best of motives rather than simply by ambition or greed, Lü could not help reminding him implicitly of the many others for whom greed and ambitious opportunism seemed more than adequately explanatory. Neither could K’ang have been greatly consoled by Lü’s admonition that he invite Ma Li (1474-1556) over to stay for a few months—“It would be very good for you!” 10 It has sometimes been wondered why Li Meng-yang did not come forward to speak on behalf of K’ang Hai and Wang Chiu-ssu. His silence is especially noticeable in the case of K’ang Hai, to whom he owed his life. It was suggested later that K’ang wrote a play on the theme of the ungrateful “Wolf of Chung-shan” 中山狼 that was in fact directed at Li, out of bitterness over his erstwhile beneficiary’s lack of loyalty. 11 But this interpretation does not emerge from the play itself

———

20.3b (225). 10 For Ma Li (1474-1556; t. Po-hsün 伯循, h. Hsi-t’ien 谿田), see HY 2/140, TL 414, MS 282.7249, KHL 71.42a (3088—Hsüeh Ying-ch’i 薛應旂 ), TK 196. Although a man whose learning was known even in Korea and Vietnam, Ma failed the chin-shih examination several times before finally passing in 1514. His first attempt was in 1499, the year Ho Ching-ming failed, and the two men may have met then. Ma studied in the National University for some time, along with Ho’s friends Lü Nan, Ts’ui Hsien, and Chang Shih-lung (see above, chapter one), but the only evidence we have for contacts between Ho and Ma comes in 1520 (see below, chapter twelve). 11 There is an extensive bibliography on the “Chung-shan Wolf” / Li Meng-yang issue, both modern and premodern. Much of it reviewed in the most recent major contribution, Tian Yuan Tan’s (陳靝沅) “The Wolf of Zhongshan and Ingrates: Problematic Literary Contexts in Sixteenth-Century China,” Asia Major Third Series, 20.1 (2007):105-31. Tan’s interest is in moving beyond preoccupation with identifying the particular ingrate being criticised in the various Ming versions of the story, so as to concentrate on the more significant literary issue of mid-Ming blurring of generic distinctions between tsa-chü and yüan-pen. There is also a thorough recent study by the Li Meng-yang scholar Wang Kung-wang, “Lun ‘Chung-shan Lang Chuan’ ho ‘Chung-shan Lang’ Tsa-chü Ping Fei Feng-tz’u Li Meng-yang” 論中山狼傳和中山狼雜劇並非諷刺李夢陽 (The Story of the Chung-shan Wolf and the play The Wolf of Chung-shan definitely do not satirize Li Meng-yang), Kansu She-hui K’o-hsüeh 2004.1:33-36. A much earlier study, still worth consujlting, is that by Yagisawa Hajime八木沢元, in his collected papers on Ming dramatists, Mindai Geki Sakka Kenkyū 明代劇作家研究 (Studies of Ming Dynasty Playwrights) (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1959), pp.166-70. There is a Chinese translation by Lo Chin-t’ang 羅錦堂, Ming-tai Chü Tso-chia Yen-chiu 明代劇作家研究 (Hong Kong: Lung-men, 1966), pp.140-144; it is also summarised in DMB, p. 694. For poems by K’ang Hai referring to Li Meng-yang, see “Longing for Li Hsien-chi [Meng-yang]” 懷李獻吉, Tui-shan Chi 12.4b (178); “Longing for Li Hsien-chi [Meng-yang]” 懷李獻吉, ibid. 13.10a (188); “Saying Farewell to Li Hsien-chi [Meng-yang], Who is Returning to the Hills”

PEKING

289

(the attribution of which to K’ang is open to doubt), and no hint of resentment appears in any of the other writings of either Wang Chiussu or K’ang Hai at any time after 1510. Indeed, it is their laudatory account of Li and his literary circle, including the list of men who came to be known as the ‘Seven Masters’ that has become orthodox in later times, and this contains no hint of dissatisfaction with Li’s conduct. Consideration of the events following the disgrace of K’ang and Wang readily suggests why they did not feel Li to have done less than he might. He was, after all, not restored to favour himself until after they had been sent home, and was only in Peking long enough to receive a provincial assignment (see below). Within a few years he would be reduced to commoner status and beyond being able to offer any help to anyone. If anyone were to be resented by K’ang Hai, it would be Li Tung-yang, his former admirer, still in high office after surviving the rule of Liu Chin, and able to recommend officials with some effectiveness, as he did in the case of Ho Ching-ming, who continued to associate with him after his eventual return to Peking. The fall of Liu Chin did not set the world right of itself. The ill effects of the eunuch’s regime were not to be undone overnight and, in any case, the character of the young Emperor was unchanged and would continue to be a source of trouble, as events would show. Banditry had broken out in Szechwan as early as 1508 and would continue until 1514. Early in the winter, groups of armed men began to rampage through Hopeh, in the vicinity of the capital. Their various leaders and bands soon swelled into a very serious threat usually referred to as the Rebellion of Liu the Sixth and Liu the Seventh. This lasted for several years and soon spread into central and northeastern China, including Ho’s native province, Honan. 12

———

送李獻吉還山, ibid. 16.1a (205); “Presented to Li Hsien-chi [Meng-yang]” 贈李獻吉, ibid. 17.6a (215); and “Sent to Li Hsien-chi [Meng-yang]” 寄李獻吉, ibid. 7.10a (344), 18.2b (218). None of these is explicitly dated, but one at least must come from after 1510, and its tone is one of sympathy for Li’s troubles. All the same, it must be noted that all five poems were omitted from the earliest edition of K’ang’s works 12 There is a convenient chronological summary of the “Hopeh” bandits, their spread into other provinces, and their eventual suppression in Ku Ying-t’ai, Ming Shih Chi-shih Pen-mo (TSCC; rpt. Taipei: San-min, 1969), chüan 45 (vol. 7, pp.1-13). Meng Yang, who was in Peking at the time, refers to their having crossed the Yellow River in the 10th lunar month (early winter) in the first of a pair of poems on the bandits; see “Hearing of Banditry in Honan” 聞河南寇 Meng Yu-ya Chi (1538 edition) 10.8a. Note that Ch’oe Pu had commented on the prevalence of bandits in the north

290

CHAPTER SEVEN

In the autumn of 1510 the provincial examinations were held, and several of Ho’s Hsin-yang friends were among the candidates in Honan. By early spring, Ho was beginning to think about a return to Peking himself. With Liu Chin dead and the end of his mourning period in sight, Ho evidently contacted Li Tung-yang (a poem addressed to Li at this time is extant) and began to consider his return to public life. 13 Some of his ambivalence of mood emerges in this poem, which seems plausibly assigned to this period: 懷西山不到西峰久、那堪病後情。雲思丹壑臥、花夢碧巖行。城郭邀來往、朝廷問姓名。人間自多事、嘆息此浮生。 Longing for the Western Hills 14 It has been long since I went to the western hills; How can I bear this feeling after illness? The clouds—I think of lying in cinnabar glens, Flowers—dream of strolling by emerald cliffs. City and suburb invite my coming and going; Court and council enquire about my name. The world of men brings with it many things; I heave a sigh for this drifting life of mine.

———

during his visit two decades previously; see John Meskill, Ch’oe Pu’s Diary: a Record of Drifting Across the Sea (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1965), pp.15-16. There is a full analysis of the rebellion’s origins in David Robinson, Bandits, Eunuchs, and the Son of Heaven: Rebellion and the Economy of Violence in Mid-Ming China (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2001), especially chapter six. Robinson’s concern is the presence and influence of large numbers of ‘men of force’ in the area around the capital, as opposed to the vision, found in the work of James W. Tong and others, of a largely peaceful metropolitan region contrasted with a violent periphery. Taking the ‘Hopeh bandits’ as his central example, Robinson not only provides a great amount of detail on the rebels and their activities, but also demonstrates their extensive, if on-again off-again, relationships both with local elites and officials and with the highest levels of the court, including influential eunuchs such as Liu Chin. James Tong’s Disorder Under Heaven: Collective Violence in the Ming Dynasty (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991) is a more broadly theoretical work. It leaves Kweichow out because of data problems and concludes that Honan was in general one of the least violent provinces in the Empire. 13 “Missing Master Hsi-ya” 懷西涯先生, HTFC 25.5b (441; 272:510), YK A.25a. 14 HTFC 18.1b (284; 252:578), YK A.10a. This poem cannot be positively dated. Nonetheless, there is some reason to assign it to the spring of 1511. The reference to Ho’s name being mentioned at court would be consistent with the recommendation of Li Tung-yang, after the fall of Liu Chin, that Ho be recalled to office. The mention of flowers suggests the spring season. Two variant readings are found in the YK text, but neither affects the sense.

PEKING

291

In the meanwhile, there was a brief crisis at the end of the third month, when Hsin-yang itself was besieged by bandits. 15 Ho’s works provide surprisingly little testimony concerning this event. Poems written around this time occasionally refer to the rampages of the bandits in general terms, but only one mentions the siege, and even in that one it seems to be mainly an occasion for Ho to be within the city walls, joining Chang Yün in retreating to a friend’s study: 同季升過李生書舍避寇孤城裏、君家數倒尊。柳邊開草閣、花下覓柴門。臺古如山郭、塘幽似水村。南鄰張給事、常與坐黃昏。 Visiting Master Li’s Study with Chi-sheng [Chang Yün] 16 Avoiding marauders within the lonely walls, At your house we have emptied many a cup. Beside the willows, you open a thatch-roof hall; Beneath the blossoms, I seek out a rough wood gate. The terrace antique as the mountain walls; The pond as remote as a river village. Your southern neighbour, Secretary Chang, Often joins us to sit in the yellow dusk.

Once the siege was raised, life seems to have returned to normal quickly, at least insofar as we can judge from Ho’s works. Li Mengyang had been recalled to office in the second month of 1511 and soon assigned to Kiangsi, which had also begun reporting outbreaks of banditry. 17 He passed through Hsin-yang in the summer, on his way south, and the two friends had their first meeting in four years. Ho’s works do not include anything written on this occasion, but we do have three poems by Li. This one was written shortly before the two men parted: 申州贈何子翩翩雙黃鵠、凌風各將去。哀鳴岐路側、一步一回顧。何異同心子、失散在中路。別君倏五載、我髮忽已素。今逢不須臾、趨駕一何遽。臨分但踟躕、道語不及故。山川何悠悠、白日奄欲暮。

———

15 The attack on Hsin-yang is reported in the MTC 44.1641. There is a fuller account in (Min-kuo) Hsin-yang Hsien Chih 18.7b-8a (746-47). 16 HTFC 17.15b (282; 252:569), YK A.18a. The Ta-fu Yi-kao gives Chang Yün’s name as Shen-t’ai 申臺 (‘Terrace of [the ancient state of] Shen’), evidently his hao, not elsewhere attested. 17 For Li’s recall, see MTC 44.1639, Wu-tsung Shih-lu 72.1b (1580).

292

CHAPTER SEVEN

努力愛玉體、慰我長思慕。 Li Meng-yang: Presented to Master Ho in Shen-chou 18 Swiftly flying, a pair of tawny swans, Mounting the wind, each to go its way— With grieving cries beside the parting way, Each step we take brings on a backward look. How do they differ from us—men of like mind, Lost and parted midway on our road? Since our last farewell, five years have swept by; And now my hair is suddenly turning grey. Our present meeting is hardly but a moment, How urgently my hastening carriage calls! About to part, we can only linger on; The words we speak not touching our real concern. How great and distant the mountains and the rivers, The bright sun veiled and now about to set. Exert yourself, look after your precious person, Thus to console my enduring admiration.

Ho’s mourning period expired in the early fall of 1511. It was apparently sometime this fall that he met, while visiting a temple, not only Chiao Huang-chung, but also Huang-chung’s father, Chiao Fang, who by this time had fallen from power (see above, chapter five). 19 The time for Ho’s return to Peking finally came early in the winter of 1511, Li Tung-yang having recommended his reinstatement as a Drafter on the expiration of the mourning period. 20 The last Hsin-yang

———

18 K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi (1530; repr. Taipei: Wei-wen, 1976), 9.7a (189); TK 389. See “Encountering Rain at Bright Harbour: Sent to Master Ho” 阻雨明港寄何子 ibid., 24.8b (598), TK 390, for two poems by Li written just before he reached Hsin-yang (cited in LHH 4.3b). Other poems possibly written during this visit include those composed at Hsien-yin 賢隱 Temple in Hsin-yang: “Presented to a Gathering at Hsien-yin Temple” 賢隱寺集贈, K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi 24.8b (598), “Hsienyin Temple” 賢隱寺, ibid. 30.5b (796). 19 “An Outing to Green Peak Zen Temple with Academician Chiao” 同焦太史游青峰禪寺, HTFC 24.13b (432; 272:545). 20 For Li’s role in Ho’s recall, see Ch’ien Chen-min, Li Tung-yang Nien-p’u (Shanghai: Fu-tan University, 1995), p.245. Wang T’ing-hsiang refers to Li Tungyang’s role in a poem written for someone else, see “A Banquet at the Magpie Lake Pavilion: Presented to Circuit Chief Chang T’ien-yi and Inquiring After Palace Writers Ho Ts’ui-fu [T’ang] and Ho Chung-mo [Ching-ming]” 鵲湖亭宴集贈張天益道長兼訊何粹夫何仲默二內翰, Wang Shih Chia-ts’ang Chi (Chia-ching edition; repr. Taipei: Wei-wen, 1976) 13.14b (500), Wang T’ing-hsiang Chi (Peking: Chunghua, 1989) 13.197, TK 397. Note that lines 5-8 of this poem are mispunctuated in TK. They should comprise four lines of five syllables each, not two of seven syllables and

PEKING

293

poems are two in which Ho bids farewell to his students as he sets out for the capital, including this one: 新色寺與諸生留別落日鄉山客淚邊、離懷相對各凄然。秋原臺殿臨寒景、長路風塵入暮天。去國已違丹壑志、望鄉空賦白雲篇。五年師友兼恩義、未卜相逢是幾年。 Taking Leave of my Students at Hsin-seh Temple 21 The setting sun and homeland hills, insight of a sojourner’s tears, In the sorrow of parting we face each other, each forlorn at heart. Terrace and halls on the autumn plain, look out on a chilly scene; A lengthy road through wind and dust leads into the evening sky. In leaving my land, I go against my wish for the cinnabar glens; Gazing homeward, write a White Cloud song to no avail. Teacher and friends for five years now, joined in kindness and right; There is no telling how many years before we meet again.

We do not know much about the trip north, except that he stopped for a while in Kaifeng, where a single quatrain records his meeting with a merchant named Pao Pi 鮑弼, a friend of Li Meng-yang. 22 He was joined in Kaifeng by Pien Kung and Wang T’ing-hsiang, and by Ku Lin, who was Prefect of Kaifeng. 23 Wang was in transit to Shensi to

———

two of three. 21 HTFC 25.13b (449; 272:538), YK A.28a. There is a variant reading in the penultimate line. I follow the Ta-fu Yi-kao and the Yüan recension in reading 五年 ‘five years’; the Standard recension has 平生 ‘all my life’. The other departure poem is “On the Road: Sent to Those Who Feasted Me on my Farewell” 途中寄別餞送諸生, HTFC 18.7b (294; 252:531), YK A.14a. 22 “Drinking with Pao Yi-chung” 飲鮑以忠, HTFC 28.8a (502; 354:008). Pao Pi was a successful merchant from She-hsien 歙縣 in Hui-chou 徽州 Prefecture, where the Pao clan was well established in the salt trade. He settled in Kaifeng and became acquainted with Li Meng-yang. After his death in 1522, Li wrote his epitaph “Epitaph for Master Plum Hill” 梅山先生墓志銘, K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi 43.15b (1246) and a sacrificial text for him, “Sacrificial Text for Master Pao” 祭鮑子文, ibid. 63.8b (1802). The former is our only source for Pao’s biography. For Pao (t. Yi-chung 以忠, h. Mei-shan 梅山), see TK 199. 23 Although poems by Ho addressed to Pien Kung (see below) and Wang T’inghsiang can be assigned to this period by reference to the published sequence, it is an authorial note to a pair of poems by Wang, written the next year, that shows all four men to have met in Kaifeng at this time. See “Sent to Ku Hua-yü [Lin] of Kaifeng” 寄顧開封華玉, Wang Shih Chia-ts’ang Chi 18.8a (761), Wang T’ing-hsiang Chi 18.315. For Ho’s poem for Wang T’ing-hsiang, “Parting from Censor Wang Ping-heng [T’ing-hsiang]” 別王秉衡御史, see HTFC 26.1a (454; 372:009); for a later poem sent to Wang in Shensi, “Sent for Presentation to Censor Wang Tzu-heng [T’ing-hsiang], Currently Inspecting in Kuan-chung” 寄贈王子衡御史時按關中, HTFC 23.9b (413;

294

CHAPTER SEVEN

take up a new assignment, while Pien was on his way home to go into mourning for his father. 24 Among the few surviving poems from this period in Ho’s works is a set of four written for Pien Kung, of which this is the third: 贈邊子戎馬暗中原、嗟此遠行子。遙遙赴城闕、戚戚望桑梓。路阻難可通、河清詎能俟。俛仰君父間、出處良在此。 Presented to Master Pien (third of four poems) 25 Cavalry horses darken the Central Plains; Alas for this gentleman on his distant journey. Far, far away, he hastens to wall and tower; Ever so lonely, his gaze at catalpa and mulberry. The roads are blocked; it is hard to open a way; For the River to run clear—how can he wait for that! Above and below, between his ruler and father, To emerge or retire, the best is found in this.

Pien would be away from the capital in mourning or holding provincial office for the next decade, so it is quite possible that he and Ho never met again. The bandit menace may well have delayed Ho’s progress north, as this poem hints. Another poem, not positively dated but probably from this trip, also refers to the troubled times: 望雪中原日見黃塵生、上國空懸白雪情。當晝風雲垂忽散、久晴江海

———

353:006). In the following year, Wang wrote a set of eighteen poems on friends whom he missed. The one on Ho is in Wang Shih Chia-ts’ang Chi, 14.11a (539), Wang T’ing-hsiang Chi 14.212, quoted in LHH 4.16a, TK 397. For a poem addressed to Ho by Ku Lin at this time, see Ku Lin, “Replying to Drafter Ho Chung-mo [Chingming]” 答何舍人仲默, Hsi-yüan Ts’un-kao Shih 息園存稿詩 (Poems from the Preserved Manuscripts of the Garden of Rest), Ku Hua-yü Chi 顧華玉集 (Collected Works of Ku Hua-yü) (SKCS) 11.6a (421), TK 393. There is also a poem that Ho sent to K’ang Hai, “Sent to Master K’ang” 寄康子, HTFC 27.10b (483; 372:506), which refers to a friendship of ten years and, self-mockingly, to his own ‘emergence’. This seems the most likely time for this poem to have been written, with delivery by Wang T’ing-hsiang in view. For K’ang’s reply, “Replying to a Missive from Ho Chung-mo [Ching-ming]” 答何仲默見寄, which matches the rhymes of Ho’s poem, see Tuishan Chi 16.3a (206), LHH 4.6a, YC 258, TK 394. 24 For Pien’s return home, see Chi Jui-li, “Pien Kung Nien-p’u Chien-pien, Liaoch’eng Shih-fan Hsüeh-yüan Hsüeh-pao 2001.1:88-99, 39, especially p.94. TK, p.44, assumes that Pien was on his way to take up a post in Shansi, but in fact Pien went into mourning before he could take up this appointment. 25 HTFC 9.14b (119; 351:033).

PEKING

295

凍難成。農人隔歲猶須慮、寇賊今冬尚未平。安得時和人更樂、普天無盜勸春耕。 Watching Snow 26 On the Central Plain I daily see the yellow dust arise; Up to the capital, haunted for nothing by love of pure white snowflakes. As day breaks, wind and storm clouds loom but quickly vanish; A long clear spell, but river and lakes are scarcely frozen hard. Peasants and farmers still must make their plans for the coming year; Marauders and thieves have not yet been suppressed this winter. How can timely peace be found, the people be happy again, And all the world, the bandits gone, assist in springtime ploughing?

THE LEOPARD QUARTER Though Liu Chin was gone and his opponents rehabilitated, the future remained uncertain. Tai Kuan had warned Ho of this in a letter from Peking apparently written early in 1511. The letter’s chief message was one of encouragement, “You should start packing as soon as your period of mourning is over, in order to meet the expectations of the world. There is no call for further hesitation. Those who were previously dismissed for their criticism have all been recalled, such as Hsien-chi, Po-an 伯安, and Yen-chih 衍之. In addition, we will be able to see each other night and day. How wonderful it will be!” 27 At the same time, Tai was at pains to keep Ho’s hopes from rising too high, “One of the old influential officials has been dismissed and removed, but we cannot rejoice yet. In all directions thieves and bandits run loose, Szechwan being particularly serious. All those in

——— 26

HTFC 27.9b (482; 372:503). Tai Shih Chi (1548; repr. TM 4:63. Tainan: Chuang-yen Wen-hua, 1997) 12.18b (92); cited in LHH 3.30b. Although assigned in TK (p.43) to the autumn of 1511, this letter is best placed early in the year, since Tai says that he is in the capital and that the New Year has recently begun. “Hsien-chi,” of course, is Li Meng-yang; “Po-an” is none other than the philosopher Wang Yang-ming, who was promoted in 1511; “Yenchih” is unidentified. I take the letter to be a reply to an inquiry from Ho about conditions in Peking. The letter is also important as the only evidence so far discovered linking Ho with his greatest contemporary, Wang Yang-ming. Indeed, perhaps the friendship involved only Tai and Wang. Note that according to the biography of Tai in the (Wan-li) Ju-nan Chih 汝南志 (Gazetteer of Ju-nan) (19.23a; quoted in LHH 2.32a), he wrote poetry with Wang, Li Meng-yang, the philosopher Chan Jo-shui, Ma Lu, Meng Yang, and Fan P’eng. 27

296

CHAPTER SEVEN

power are only looking out for themselves. What good fortune is there in this?” After Liu’s fall, the person closest to the throne was Ch’ien Ning 錢寧, an officer of the ‘Embroidered Uniform Guard’ 錦衣衛, the Emperor’s personal bodyguard, who had been adopted into the family of a eunuch. With the encouragement and Ch’ien and his allies, Wutsung expanded a special compound called the ‘Leopard Quarter’ 豹房, originally built on the palace grounds in 1507 for use as a pleasure resort. It is hard to judge the degree of truth in the extant reports by Confucian historians of his scandalous activities there, since these are naturally tendentious and do not make especially improving reading. It is quite possible that Ho and his contemporaries had no more reliable information than we, but pervasive rumours, coupled with the obvious fact of Wu-tsung’s neglect of his duties and impatience with highminded advisors, surely gave much cause for concern. 28 Outside the capital, the situation remained serious. Banditry would be suppressed in the lower Yangtse region by the fall of 1512, but would continue in Szechwan and the middle Yangtse provinces. Although there were capable generals and loyal officials in the provinces, their efforts on the government’s behalf were hampered both by direct interference from the throne and by the presence in their districts of princes of the imperial house, as well as powerful eunuchs and relatives or agents of imperial favourites, whose rapacity was often part of the cause of the provincial unrest to begin with.

———

28 For the “Leopard Quarter,” see James Geiss, “The Leopard Quarter During the Cheng-te Reign,” Ming Studies 24 (1987): 1-38. This article has also appeared in Chinese, Ko Chieh-min 蓋杰民, “Ming Wu-tsung yü Pao-fang” 明武宗與豹房 (Ming Wu-tsung and the Leopard Quarter), Ku-kung Po-wu-yüan Yüan-k’an 1988.3 (41):1219. Geiss argues that Wu-tsung’s move to the Leopard Quarter was intended both to establish a separate personal headquarters out of the reach of the civil officials and to provide a base for a renewal of the Empire’s military establishment. That Wu-tsung wished for less contact with the civil officials responsible for administering his realm is beyond doubt. Equally clear, however, is his lack of any interest in the sort of thoroughgoing administrative and fiscal reform needed to support a serious attempt at military renewal. For a skeptical Chinese response to Geiss’s thesis see Wei Tsu-hui 韋祖輝, “Pao-fang yü Ming Wu-tsung: Chien yü Ko Chieh-min, Yeh Tsu-fu Hsiensheng Shang-ch’üeh” 豹房與明武宗 : 兼與蓋杰民葉祖孚先生商榷 (The Leopard Quarter and Wu-tsung of the Ming, plus a Debate with Ko Chieh-min and Yeh Tsufu), Ku-kung Po-wu-yüan Yüan-k’an 1992.1:29-33. For additional discussion and references, see David Robinson, Bandits, Eunuchs and the Son of Heaven: Rebellion and the Economy of Violence in Mid-Ming China (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2001), pp.220-21.

PEKING

297

The effect of this situation was somewhat different from that of the ascendancy of Liu Chin. Although some officials, such as Tu Mu and Li Tung-yang, eventually resigned their posts and withdrew from government, there were no wholesale purges as there had been between 1506 and 1508. 29 In fact, in spite of several concerted attempts on the part of the officials to at least curb the powers of the favourites, notably in 1514 and 1518, it was possible for a civil servant opposed to the latter, such as Ho Ching-ming, to stay in office for the better part of the decade—though it was increasingly noticeable, not least to Ho himself, that he was not promoted for most of this period. Nonetheless, there were repeated instances of individual officials suffering because of their opposition. Ho Ching-ming does seem to have reached Peking before the end of winter, though the first work with a firm date does not come until the Lantern Festival, in the middle of the first lunar month of 1512 (see below). Along with Ho’s first year and a half back in Hsin-yang in 1507-08, the years of his residence in Peking from 1511 to 1518 are the most fully recorded in his extant works. In addition, and unlike the Hsin-yang years, we also have the writings of many of his associates and historical sources for the period to rely on as well. The chronology of Ho’s pentasyllabic regulated verse for the first year and a half back in the capital is somewhat disordered, and the years 15161518 are less well covered than 1512-1515, but we are still able, in general, to reconstruct a much more detailed chronology of his life during these years than can be presented here. 30 By the time that Ho arrived in Peking, many of his once-purged

——— 29

Li Tung-yang ed early in 1513, disgusted by the irregular measures taken by the Emperor to increase the power of his favourites. There is a poem addressed to Tu Mu by Ho Ching-ming that may have been written not long before Tu’s retirement in 1512, “A Note to Tu Hsüan-ching [Mu]” 簡都玄敬, HTFC 19.15a (328; 352:179). The final couplet reads, “I hear you speak of the hills and streams; I too honour the southern regions” 聞君話山水、吾亦慕南方. Tu Mu’s friends were both impressed and concerned by his decision to retire even though he had no money put aside and no property to speak of. He was, in fact, taking what was at this time still an unusual step, one that the economic development of his native Kiangnan had made possible; abandoning the civil career that his chin-shih degree had opened for him, he set out to earn his living as a professional man of letters (文人 wen-jen) and seems to have survived comfortably until being recalled to office in his sixties, just three years before he died. 30 See TK 45-89 for a detailed chronology of Ho’s activities, and 304-13 for the chronology of the pentasyllabic regulated verse.

298

CHAPTER SEVEN

friends, including Ho T’ang and Liu Yün, were already back in office in the capital. Like Ho himself, Liu had gone home ‘ill’, been discharged by Liu Chin, and recalled on the recommendation of Li Tung-yang. Ts’ui Hsien was back in Peking as well, and greeted Ho with, “It’s been a long time since I’ve heard words of yours!” Ho obliged with a “Ballad of Master Ts’ui” 崔生行. 31 Wang Shangchiung also welcomed Ho back. 32 A new acquaintance was Liu Tso 劉佐 (1483-1515), a new chin-shih from Shensi who would be among Ho’s closest friends during the next few years. 33 Liu’s father had at one time been Prefect of Chang-te, with his office in An-yang, Ts’ui Hsien’s hometown. Ts’ui and Liu were thus old friends, and this no doubt led to Ho and Liu’s coming into contact. Liu was a man of exceptional courage. Earlier, in his fifteenth year, he was travelling with his mother and younger brothers to Peking, where they were to join his father. A windstorm blew up as the family was crossing the Yangtse and soon threatened their boat. Tso cried out a prayer to die in place of his mother and brothers. When the wind only increased, he made to jump into the river but was held back by a boatman, whereupon the wind ceased. Later, after Liu had passed the Shensi provincial examination in 1507, someone called the man who had come first in the test, one Shao Sheng 邵昇, to the attention of Liu Chin. 34 Chin, who was particularly interested in drawing into his orbit

———

31 HTFC 13.3b (178; 371:013). Ts’ui is quoted in Ho’s very brief preface to the poem. 32 See Wang Shang-chiung’s poem “Chung-mo has Just Arrived” 仲默初至 , Ts’ang-ku Ch’üan Chi (1758; repr. Ssu-k’u Wei-shou Shu Chi-k’an 5:18, Peking: Peking Ch’u-pan-she, 1997) 3.10a (315), quoted in LHH 4.10b, TK 395. This poem refers to a separation of three years, which is problematical, since the latest previous meeting that can be supported by the extant evidence took place in the spring of 1508. I do not see any other time when this poem could have been written, however, since Wang went into retirement in the following year and did not return to Peking until 1518. Two poems by Ho that cannot be dated by reference to the published sequence but are probably from this period refer to Wang Shang-chiung. One was written during a party at Wang’s and refers to the military emergency, “An Evening Gathering at Chin-fu’s: Limiting Rhymes with Pen-chen” 夜集錦夫同本貞限韻, HTFC 21.8b (369; 352:616); Pen-chen is not identified. The other poem, “Matching Wang of the Bureau of Honours” 和王司封 matches a poem by Wang, though not the rhymes of any extant poem by Wang addressed to Ho, HTFC 27.11a (483; 372:508). 33 For Liu Tso (t. Yi-tao 以道; h. Pei-yüan 北原), see TL 832, HY 3/248, KHL 30.71a (1269, a memorial text written by Ts’ui Hsien, who says that he and Ho were the chief mourners), TK 118. 34 For Shao Sheng, see TL 286. The only biographical account is the epitaph by K’ang Hai, “Epitaph for the Ming Poet Shao Chin-fu” 有明詩人邵晉夫墓志銘, Tui-

PEKING

299

talented men from his native province, forced Shao to marry one of his grand-nieces, though Shao resisted and then refused, after the marriage had taken place, to take part of any of Liu’s activities. When Liu Chin fell from power in 1510, all those associated with him, even innocently, became targets, as we have seen. Pursued by the authorities, Shao went to Liu, who successfully concealed him first at his own residence and later elsewhere. When someone urged Tso to consider where his interests lay and abandon Shao, Liu replied, “When Shao confided himself to me it was because he thought that I could save his life. I know for a fact that he was not involved in Chin’s doings. How could anyone with a sense of humanity simply turn his back on a friend without considering the rights and wrongs of the matter?” Other friends, new and old, who were in Peking at this time or arrived soon after included Meng Yang, Chang Shih-lung, who now took up a post as a Censor, and Lü Ching 呂經 (1476-1544), a 1508 chin-shih serving as a Supervising Secretary. 35 One friendship that was probably formed at this time was with Cheng Shan-fu 鄭善夫 (1485-1524). 36 ‘Probably’ is a necessary word

———

shan Chi 8.5a (369), 19.1a (496), 44.7b (479). K’ang professes himself so at a loss at the contrast between Shao’s merits and his fate—shorn of his status as an examination graduate, he returned home to live in obscurity until his early death—that he questions the judgement of Heaven. 35 For Lü Ching (t. Tao-fu 道夫; h. Chiu-ch’uan 九川), see TL 261, HY 2/299, MS 203.5368, TK 123. Ho’s “Ballad of Nine Rivers” 九川行, written for Lü, probably dates from this period, HTFC 13.8b (183; 371:022). 36 For Cheng Shan-fu (t. Chi-chih 繼之; h. Shao-ku Shan-jen 少谷山人), see DMB 211 (W. Pachow), TL 789, HY 3/278, TK 186. There is an introduction to Cheng’s life and works in Tuan Hsüeh-hung’s 段學紅 “Chih-ching ch’i Wen, Shuai-chen ch’i Jen: Ming-tai Tso-chia Cheng Shan-fu Yen-chiu” 質勁其文率真其人明代作家鄭善夫研究 (The Writings Robust, the Man Straightforward: a Study of the Ming Writer Cheng Shan-fu), Shih-chia-chuang Chih-yeh Chi-shu Hsüeh-yüan Hsüeh-pao 13.1 (2001), pp.29-31. The Min-hsien gazetteer notice of Cheng cited by Liu Hai-han (LHH 2.30a) says that when literary styles changed in the Hung-chih period, Li Meng-yang, Ho Ching-ming, Hsü Chen-ch’ing, “and our Cheng Shan-fu” were the most noted writers. This sounds like local pride rather than history. Cheng was given to protesting that his own poetry was vastly inferior to Ho’s. See the two essays, one written in 1513, reprinted by Liu Hai-han (LHH 3.37b-38b; for the full texts, see “Colophon for a Scroll of Ink Bamboo by Yü-k’o [Wen T’ung]” 與可墨竹卷跋, Shao-ku Chi (SKCS), 16.10a (202), “Responding to Director Tseng Tung-shih [Yü]” 答曾東石正郎, ibid. 17.18a (213); the second of these is also in Cheng Wen 鄭文 (Cheng’s Prose) (Chia-ching edition) 8.16b. Interestingly, Cheng praises Ho as “following Pao [Chao] and Hsieh [T’iao, or possibly Ling-yün] in his elegant tone,” thus invoking models remote from those to which Ho himself referred in his written

300

CHAPTER SEVEN

in this case because the evidence for their friendship chiefly documents farewells and absences. The two men may have met in 1505, when Cheng passed the chin-shih examination, but Ho left soon after for Yunnan, while Cheng was soon gone, first to a post in the provinces, then returned to his native Fukien to observe mourning for his parents. He returned to office in Peking late in 1511, so he and Ho may have become acquainted then. Nonetheless, the first attested contact comes only in 1513, when Cheng resigned from office and went home (see below). The exuberance and length of Ho’s farewell poem written then suggests they had become good friends already. Most of the extant poems they addressed to each other are messages. The mood of much of Ho’s work at this time is understandably festive. There are, for example, two moon-viewing poems, recording parties at the residences of his friend Chang Chi-meng 張繼孟 and the former prodigy Liu Yün. One of these poems will perhaps suffice: 張子純宅對月長安今夜月、留客此堂開。影落清樽裏、光從玉殿來。苑花添悵望、鄰笛助悲哀。幸接仙郎飲、高歌愧爾才。 Moon-Viewing at the Residence of Chang Tzu-ch’un [Chi-meng] 37 In Ch’ang-an city, in this evening’s moonlight, For the hosting of guests this hall is opened up. Reflections fall within our limpid flagons; Their brightness coming down from a palace of jade. Garden blossoms add to our sorrowful gaze; Neighbouring flutes assist our grieving lament. Happy to join a transcendent gentleman drinking;

———

works. 37 HTFC 20.14a (351; 352:196). See also “Awaiting the Moon at the Residence of Ju-chung [Liu Yün] With Wang-chih [Meng Yang]” 汝忠宅待月同望之, HTFC 25.17b (453; 372:008). For Chang Chi-meng (t. Tzu-ch’un 子醇, the second character sometimes appearing as 純 or 淳), see TL 559, KHL 95.46 (4165—anonymous), TK 140. Chang turns up frequently in Ho’s works, but biographical information about him is relatively sparse. He left official life before he was fifty and lived at home in strict retirement, dying in his eightieth year. During this period he was conspicuous for his detachment from worldly affairs and rejection of advances from the vulgar. Something of this attitude even while he was still an official may have made him a congenial friend for Ho. Li Tung-yang once came to visit Chang with a younger official. Chang served them plain rice with some vegetables and fruit, along with a few cups of wine. Afterward, they said, “Eating rice at Chang’s is far better than a sumptuous banquet at other people’s!”

PEKING

301

For lofty songs, we envy this genius of yours.

The source of the grief referred to in the poems written at both parties was in all likelihood the continuing military crisis, which is often alluded to in poems written over the next few months. Only a week before this poem was written, bandits had attacked Pa-chou 霸州, less than one hundred miles south of the capital. During the intervening days, the annual spring sacrifices at the suburban temple south of the city had to be carried out under conditions of extreme apprehension, the rites being followed by an immediate return to the safety of the palace. 38 In addition to passing references, there are a number of poems from the spring and summer of 1512 that take the campaign as their subject, for example: 防寇萬國猶防寇、三年未罷師。天清聞鼓角、野曠見旌旗。岸雪晴含照、山雲晚趁姿。孤臣北上日、想望太平時。 Bandit Defence 39 The myriad districts are still fending off the bandits, For three years, the armies not yet dismissed. The sky is clear; we hear the drums and bugles; The fields are vast; we see the banners and pennants. Snow on the hillsides glows in sunny weather; Mountain clouds at evening adapt their forms. On the day this orphaned subject came up north, He hoped to see a time of lasting peace.

Almost as worrying were Li Tung-yang’s repeated requests to retire. Li had been the active force behind Ho’s recall to office and was also the most able and responsible of the Grand Secretaries. It was most probably after the request that Li submitted on February 25 that Ho

——— 38

See the MTC 44.1657-58, Wu-tsung Shih-lu 83.2a-3b (1795-98). HTFC 21.14b (377; 352:201). The Yung recension offers two variant readings in this poem. In the first line, it reads 古 ‘ages’ in place of 國 ‘districts’, and in the third, 晴 ‘clear [weather]’ in place of 清 ‘clear/pure’. In both cases, the reading of the other recensions is to be preferred. In the second case, it is the very specificity of the Yung recension reading that tells against it, though the distinction disappears in translation. See also “Hearing of Bandits in Honan” 聞河南寇, HTFC 25.17a (453; 372:006); “Watching Soldiers” 觀兵 , HTFC 21.14a (377; 352:198-199); “Generals” 諸將 , HTFC 21.14b (377; 352:200); “Bandits Appear” 盜起, HTFC 21.14b (378; 252:202); and “A Hundred Battles” 百戰, HTFC 21.13b (376; 352:193). 39

302

CHAPTER SEVEN

wrote him a letter, urging him to stay on in view of the emergency. 40 Just as during the siege of Hsin-yang, however, Ho had time and attention for outings and social gatherings. He visited the Hsüan-ming Shrine 玄明宮 , which Liu Chin had had constructed in his own honour, commenting on how quickly Liu’s works had faded. 41 He also sent a poem back to Chang Yün in Hsin-yang, reminiscing about the garden they had visited together during the Hsin-yang siege almost a year before: 懷李生園柬季升李生北園內、亭榭近如何。草徑猶紅藥、柴扉自碧蘿。江湖歸客少、天地戰場多。空憶張夫子、清尊夜夜過。 Missing Master Li’s Garden: A Note to Chi-sheng [Chang Yün] 42 Within the northern garden of Master Li, How have the halls and pavilions fared of late? The grassy paths retain their scarlet herbs; The rough wood gate cloaked in dark green vines. Over river and lakes the homeward roads are few; Between heaven and earth the battlefields are many. To no avail I remember Master Chang, With limpid flagon visiting night after night.

Another visit was to the residence of a Taoist, Ch’en the Perfected 陳真人, to enjoy peonies in the company of Meng Yang and Han Pangching 韓邦靖 (1488-1523). 43 Ch’en was having a birthday, and Ho

———

40 HTFC 32.9a (567; 書:503). The letter is also found in the Ta-fu Yi-kao, chüan chung, but I have not examined that text in detail. For Li’s request to retire, one of many he submitted at various times, see Wu-tsung Shih-lu 84.2b (1810). This letter is taken by Liu Hai-han to be an intervention on behalf of Li Meng-yang. There is, however, no reference to Meng-yang in the letter, which is rather an attempt to dissuade Li Tung-yang from resigning from office. The letter mentions that Ho had heard that Li was ill and thinking of retirement and had tried unsuccessfully to visit him. He urges that Li stay on in order to suppress the bandits active in Honan and to eliminate the injustice and corruption prevalent at court. Since the Honan bandits were suppressed in 1512, the letter can be no later than that. 41 For this visit, see the “Ballad of the Palace of Darkness and Light” 玄明宮行, HTFC 14.17b (212; 371:012). 42 HTFC 19.13a (326; 352:611), YK A.14a. The Ta-fu Yi-kao supplies a name for Master Li, Po-k’o 伯可, but he remains unidentified. In the fourth line, I follow the Yüan and Standard recensions, reading pi 碧 (‘green stone’) rather than the homonym 蔽, meaning ‘creeping vines’, found in the Ta-fu Yi-kao, though the latter is certainly a plausible alternative. 43 For Han Pang-ching (t. Ju-ch’ing 汝慶; h. Wu-ch’üan 五泉), see TL 894, HY 3/136, MS 201.5319, TK 193, Chiao Wen-pin 焦文彬, “Han Pang-ching Chien-lun”

PEKING

303

composed a celebratory essay on the occasion. His poem titled simply “Peonies” 芍藥 probably comes from this visit as well. 44 Around the Ch’ing-ming holiday, Ho fell briefly ill, a mischance mentioned in two poems. 45 All the same, he had the energy for a visit to Tzu-en Temple, which was probably close to his residence: 慈恩寺海子橋西寺、高樓御苑花。中流自日月、平地有烟霞。客至開金殿、宸遊想翠華。十年復到此、朋輩各天涯。 Tzu-en Temple 46 A temple west of the bridge over Hai-tzu Lake— Lofty pavilions and palace garden flowers. In midstream, we have the sun and moon; Over the level precinct, mist and cloudwrack. Guests arrive and they open the golden hall; Of a sovereign’s visit I imagine the kingfisher splendour. After ten years, I return here once again, But all my friends are scattered across the world.

Although the bandit threat had shifted from the capital, fighting continued into mid-summer. Ho refers to it less often now in his occasional poems, but a number of pieces, mostly longer ones, are

———

韓邦靖簡論 (Short Discussion of Han Pang-ching), Shensi Shih-ta Hsüeh-pao 1987.1:59-65. Han had passed the chih-shih in 1508, along with his brother Pang-ch’i (for whom, see below). He had a reputation for extraordinary courage and inflexibility in dealing with eunuchs and others attempting to exercise illegitimate power. Dismissed by Wu-tsung, he was recalled by Shih-tsung and given a provincial post. He recommended the issuance of relief to alleviate the effects of a famine and, when this was not approved, submitted his resignation and went back home without waiting for it to be accepted. 44 For Ho’s essay, see “Birthday Wishes for the Perfected Ch’en” 壽陳貞人序, HTFC 31.18a (559; 內 :022); for his poem, “Peonies” 芍藥 , HTFC 22.6a (388; 352:205). The Honan edition omits the last 77 characters of the essay text. Note that the attempt in TK to detach this essay from Ch’en’s birthday and link it to Ho’s own is quite mistaken (TK 147). For poems on this occasion by Meng Yang and Han Pang-ching, see “Peonies in Mountain Dweller Ch’en’s Garden in the Fourth Month” 四月陳山人院內牡丹, Meng Yu-ya Chi 5.13a and “Peonies in the Perfected Ch’en’s Courtyard: Apportioning Rhymes with Ho Chung-mo and Meng Wang-chih” 陳真人院牡丹同何仲默孟望之分韻, Wu-ch’üan Han Ju-ch’ing Shih-chi 五泉韓汝慶詩集 (Collected Poems of Han Ju-ch’ing of Five Streams) (1537; repr. TM 4:62, Tainan: Chuang-yen Wen-hua, 1997) 4.3a (158), TK 403. 45 “Supervising Secretary T’ien Comes to Visit in the Evening While I am at Home Ill” 病居田給事中夜過, HTFC 20.14b (351; 352:206); “Feelings While Ill During the Grave-Sweeping Holiday” 清明日病懷, HTFC 22.4a (385; 352:208). 46 HTFC 21.10b (372; 352:207).

304

CHAPTER SEVEN

directly concerned with the conflict, including one on a general named Feng Chen 馮禎, who had fallen in battle, 47 and, at last, a celebratory extended regulated verse poem recording the receipt in the capital of news that the bandits had been decisively defeated. 48 GRACIOUS LIVING In the meanwhile, Ho’s life in Peking continued without incident. As the weather begins to turn hot, we find him spending time with his former students Sun Chi-fang and Tai Kuan, along with a new follower, one Chang Shih 張詩 (1487-1535): 與孫戴張三子納涼薄暮攜三子、追涼步短宵。水邊低出月、樓上忽橫簫。久露花沾濕、微風竹動搖。醉歌聊永夕、坐待紫宸朝。 Enjoying the Cool with Masters Sun, Tai, and Chang 49 In the pale dusk, I lead you by the hand, In search of cool, we stroll the shortened night. Along the water--how low the emerging moon; Atop a pavilion--how sudden the sound of a flute. With long-gathering dew the blossoms are damp; In a gentle breeze, the bamboo stalks are swaying. With drunken songs, we would prolong the night; Just awaiting dawn in the Purple Hall.

Chang Shih was to have a very unconventional ‘career’, which would not include any service in the ‘Purple Hall’, a term referring to the

———

47 “A Song of Commander Feng” 馮都督歌, HTFC 13.21b (195; 371:011). Feng Chen’s death is recorded in MTC 44.1660. For Feng, see TL 625, HY 3/26, KHL 108.39a (4845—from the shih-lu), TK 197. 48 “Hearing of the Victory in Honan: Presented to the Gentlemen of the Secretariat” 聞河南捷呈閣內諸公, HTFC 23.11a (414; 353:003). 49 HTFC 20.13a (350; 352:177). See also “Visiting Cultivated Talent Chang with Sun Shih-ch’i [Chi-fang]” 與孫世其過張秀才, HTFC 20.13a (349; 352:176). For Chang Shih (t. Tzu-yen 子言; h. K’un-lun Shan-jen 崑崙山人), see TL 542; HY 3/81, TK 138. Chang never succeeded in the official examinations (see below). Because of this, he had no career, and so his life is not very well documented. The fullest accounts are by Lü Nan, Ching-yeh Hsien-sheng Wen-chi 13.19a (83); and the biography by Li K’ai-hsien, Li K’ai-hsien Ch’üan-chi 10.745-48, also in KHL 115.61 (5090). See also Ch’ien Ch’ien-yi, Lieh-ch’ao Shih-chi Hsiao-chuan (Peking: Chunghua, 1959), p.335.

PEKING

305

Imperial Palace. He prepared for the examinations by studying with Lü Nan and Ho. But at a preliminary test before the Peking chü-jen competition, probably either in 1513 or in 1516, he refused to carry his own table and bench into the examination room and left in a huff, saying, “I am seeking employment for the sake of purity; I cannot do this even if I should score in the top three places in the test thereby!” 50 At a later stage in their acquaintance, apparently after his withdrawal from the chü-jen examination, Ho presented Chang with this admiring poem: 贈子言張生神駿骨、一蹶在衢路。雖有萬里才、未蒙千金顧。腰佩白玉環、手擲金聲賦。堂堂烈士身、勿為名所誤。 Presented to Tzu-yen [Chang Shih] 51 Master Chang’s physique is of godlike excellence; In a single stride he is off on the branching roads. Although his talents are good for ten thousand leagues, He has yet to attract a notice worth a thousand coins. There hangs at his waist a ring of snow-white jade, He lets fall a rhapsody on the sound of chimes. Brave and handsome, the form of an ardent man; Do not be misled by fame and reputation! The final words of this poem are probably a reminiscence of Tu Fu’s “Thirty Rhymes Sent to Mountain Dweller Chang Piao,” 寄張十二山人彪三十韻, “Loose and lazy, led astray by fame, / Hustling and dashing, I have lost my integrity” 疎懶為名誤、驅馳喪我真. 52

The few remaining works from the summer are chiefly comments on the unpleasant weather. 53 One exception is a birthday poem presented

———

50 Li K’ai-hsien is the source for this story. Benjamin Elman provides an illuminating account of the indignities suffered by candidates writing the examinations in A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000), esp. pp.181-87. 51 HTFC 10.10a (132; 351:068). Chang’s surname appears in the title only in the Yung recension. In this case, as in a parallel one (see chapter ten), the tzu supplied in the other recensions is sufficient for identification. 52 Tu Shih Yin-te 338/43/25-26; CTS 225.2429; K.11099. 53 “Suffering From the Heat” 苦熱, HTFC 25.16b (452; 372:004); “Avoiding Summer Heat in the Quarters of Abbot Ts’un” 避暑存上人方丈, HTFC 20.13b (350; 352:178). For the unpleasant climate of Peking as experienced in Ming times, see James Peter Geiss, “Peking Under the Ming (1368-1644)” (Ph.D. Dissertation, Princeton University, 1979), pp.44-49.

306

CHAPTER SEVEN

to Li Tung-yang. 54 Early in the autumn, Ho either moved to a new residence or renovated the one he had. In any event, one poem records that ‘Ts’ui, Kuo, and T’ien’ came to the opening of his ‘small study’. 55 The approaching autumn would be productive of poetry. There was certainly no lack of occasions. As usual, many of the poems are works written in farewell or addressed to absent friends: 送雷長史彤管先朝隨帝子、白頭今日奉王孫。漢庭亦羨相如美、楚客重看賈傅尊。花下圖書開王殿、日高琴瑟在朱門。十年亭閣淮西宴、腸斷梁王雪夜樽。 Saying Farewell to Administrator Lei 56 With a crimson pen in a former court you followed an Emperor’s child; White of head in present times you uphold a prince’s scion. In the court of Han they certainly envied the beauty of Hsiang-ju; The guests in Ch’u took a second look with respect at Tutor Chia. Charts and books beneath the blossoms, open in a palace of jade; The sun is high over lute and zithern there in a crimson gate. For ten years in pavilions and halls, banquets in Huai-hsi; A broken heart for the Prince of Liang—flagons on snowy evenings . . . The first couplet is clearly related to the corresponding couplet in a poem titled “Offered in Response to my Cousin Hsi-shu” 奉答內兄希叔詩 by the Six Dynasties poet Lu Chüeh 陸厥, “In excellent favour you took up an emperor’s child; / Hurrying into your shoes, received a

———

54 “Birthday Greetings for Minister Hsi-ya” 壽西涯相公 , HTFC 26.3a (456; 372:017). It is clear from the chronological sequence of the Shen recension that this poem was presented in July of 1512, Li Tung-yang’s first birthday to be celebrated after Ho’s return to Peking. The poem refers to the ten years that had elapsed since the death of Hsiao-tsung. Ch’ien Chen-min assigns it to 1516, without adducing any argument for that date, Li Tung-yang Nien-p’u, pp.281-82 . 55 “On the First Opening of my Small Studio, Masters Ts’ui, Kuo, and T’ian Arrive” 小齋初開崔郭田三君子至, HTFC 26.3a (456; 372:018). The reference is to Ts’ui Hsien, Kuo Wei-fan 郭維藩 (1475-1537, see TK 185), and T’ien Ju-tzu (see below). Kuo had passed the Honan provincial examination with Ho in 1498. He did not succeed at the chin-shih until 1511, but from then on his career was unusually smooth and successful. A poem by Meng Yang that refers to Ho’s actual move probably comes from the spring, “Matching Master Ho’s ‘Moving House’” 和何子移居, Meng Yu-ya Chi 10.10a. 56 HTFC 26.3b (457; 372:019). Administrator Lei is unidentified. In the fourth line, the Yung recension reads 國 ‘kingdom’ in place of 客 ‘guests’, a reading that is possibly authorial. In the following line, the SKCS edition of the Standard recension has 王 ‘royal’ in place of 玉 ‘jade’, an error due to confusion of similar characters.

PEKING

307

prince’s scion” 嘉惠承帝子、躧履奉王孫. 57

Not knowing who Administrator Lei was detracts somewhat from the effect of the poem, at least some of whose allusions seem to have been intended to be taken topically. 58 The poem suggests that he had been appointed to the staff of two princes and was now leaving the capital, either for retirement or following the second of the two to his fief. The second couplet alludes to Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju and Chia Yi, both of whom served princes of Liang during the Han dynasty. Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju was known for his good looks. Chia Yi, who lived a little earlier, was once sent into exile in Hunan (Ch’u), but later recalled. His first interview with the Emperor on his return lasted far into the night, as he expounded various texts, chiefly concerned with the supernatural. He was subsequently appointed tutor to a Prince of Liang. The final line may refer to both, since it was Chia Yi who died of chagrin after the Prince of Liang to whom he was tutor was killed in a fall from a horse, but Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju who is depicted, in the “Rhapsody on Snow” 雪賦 by Hsieh Hui-lien 謝惠連, as an honoured participant in a poetry writing party hosted by an entirely different Prince of Liang several decades later. 59 When Chao Hui, the Hsin-yang friend who had declined to venture out in the rain for the sake of a visit (see above, chapter five), was appointed to a post in Yunnan, Ho not only bade him farewell with a poem, but also added one as a message to Mu K’un, his host in 1505, and two more in farewell to one Ts’ao Hu 曹琥 (1478-1517), who was being relegated to a remote provincial post in northeast Yunnan on the insistence of Ch’ien Ning: 送曹瑞卿謫尋甸逐客滇南郡、雲天此路長。高秋行萬里、落日淚千行。作賦投湘水、題書寄夜郎。殊方氣候異、去矣慎風霜。

——— 57

WH 26.10b (358); Lu Ch’in-li, p.1466. The appointments of officials to serve on the staff of imperial princes in the provinces are rarely recorded in the kinds of sources that provide information about other official apointments, and hence we have no independent source that would tell us who Lei was, what prince he served (though residence in Honan is implied by the allusions), or the dates of his appointment, retirement or reassignment 59 See WH 13.8a (178), translation in Knechtges, 3:20-29. Note that Ho’s farewell poem to Wang T’ing-hsiang as Ho left for Yunnan (see above, chapter three) also linked Chia Yi and Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju. 58

308

CHAPTER SEVEN

Saying Farewell to Ts’ao Jui-ch’ing [Hu], Who is Exiled to Hsün-tien (first of two poems) 60 A sojourner banished to a district south of Tien; Under cloudy skies along this distant road. At the height of autumn, a journey of ten thousand leagues; In a setting sun, a thousand streams of tears. To cast in the River Hsiang, you compose a rhapsody, Indite a letter to send to Yeh-lang land. In a different quarter, the climate and seasons are strange; Once you are gone, be wary of wind and frost! “A thousand streams of tears” had become a cliché long before Ho’s day. An early example is in a farewell poem written by the Six Dynasties poet Fan Yün 范雲 in the persona of a woman, “Before we have finished the wine in the cups before us, / My tears have formed a thousand streams” 未盡樽前酒、妾淚已千行. 61

Over a century after Ch’ü Yüan drowned himself in the Mi-lo River, the Chia Yi cast a letter mourning him into the nearby Hsiang while passing by. 62 Yeh-lang was the name of a kingdom in the area of Hsün-tien during Han times. Ts’ao’s exile was ordered on September 21, 1512, after he protested the influence of an Imperial favourite and spoke out in favour of Chou Kuang 周廣, a censor who had submitted a memorial critical of the Emperor’s favourite Ch’ien Ning and been sentenced to exile in Kwangtung himself. 63 The farewell must have taken place soon after, under conditions of some urgency and apprehension—Chou Kuang barely escaped murder at the hands of

———

60 HTFC 18.16a (305; 352:163). For Ts’ao Hu (t. Jui-ch’ing 瑞卿, h. Hsiu-shan 秀山), who passed the chin-shih in 1505, see TL 509, HY 2/276, KHL 94.122 (4128— Fei Hung 費宏), TK 145. For the poems addressed to Chao Hui and Mu K’un, see “Saying Farewell to Chao Yüan-tse, Who is Going to Sung-ming Sub-prefecture” 送趙元澤之嵩明州, HTFC 26.4a (457; 372:021) and “Sent to the Duke of Ch’ien” 寄黔國公, HTFC 26.3b (457; 372:020). Lü Nan supplied a farewell essay for Chao, “Preface on Saying Farewell to Chao of Sung-meng” 送趙嵩盟序, Ching-yeh Hsiensheng Wen-chi 2.16a (515); and Tai Kuan wrote a farewell poem “Saying Farewell to Master Chao, Who is Going to Take Office in Sung-meng” 送趙先生之任嵩盟, Tai Shih Chi 8.18a (57). The variant place name in the works of Lü and Tai refers to an ancient name for the place, derived from a treaty (盟) that Chu-ko Liang concluded with its inhabitants. 61 YTHY 5.30a (91); Lu Ch’in-li, p.1549. 62 Shih Chi (Peking: Chung-hua, 1959) 84.2491. 63 Wu-tsung Shih-lu 91.4b (1942). For a discussion of the many different ways in which people might find themselves relegated to Yunnan, see Ku Yung-chi 古永繼, “Ming-tai Yunnan te Che-liu chih Jen” 明代雲南的謫流之人 (People Banished to Yunnan During the Ming), Ssu-hsiang Chan-hsien 1992.1:84-89.

PEKING

309

agents of imperial favourites on his way into exile, but Ts’ao is said to have accepted his sentence cheerfully. He held a series of provincial posts after this and earned a reputation for being much loved by the people of the districts he governed. For those who remained behind in Peking, good fellowship was the only solace. On the Moon Festival, Lü Ching held a party attended by Ho and Han Pang-ching, at least. Ho not only wrote one poem about the party, but also matched a poem of Han’s. 64 In addition, and probably at the same party, Ho added a poem congratulating Lü on a recent promotion. 65 The next night, there was an eclipse of the moon, which Ho recorded in a poem. 66 About this time, Ho Meng-ch’un, whom we have encountered as a follower of Li Tung-yang and member of Li Meng-yang’s circle, went south to take up a new post, and Ho Ching-ming wrote a long “Ballad of Past and Present: Saying Farewell to Ho Yen-ch’üan [Meng-ch’un]” 今昔行送何燕泉 to present to him by way of farewell. 67 One good friend and frequent

———

64 “A Gathering at the residence of Supervising Secretary Lü on the Night of MidAutumn” 中秋夜集呂給事宅, HTFC 20.12b (348; 352:166); “To Go With Han Juch’ing’s [Pang-ching] ‘On my Return to Ch’ang-an, Gazing at the Moon’” 與韓汝慶行歸長安望月, HTFC 20.12b (349; 352:167). Two other poems probably written at the same time are “Mid-Autumn” 中秋, HTFC 22.4a (385; 352:165) and “Hearing Singing” 聞歌, HTFC 29.6b (518; 374:006). For Han’s poem, “Moon-viewing at Mid-Autumn with Ho Ta-fu” 中秋同何仲默望月, see Wu-ch’üan Han Ju-ch’ing Shih-chi 3.1a (151), TK 403. 65 “Presented to Lü Tao-fu on His Promotion to Senior Supervising Secretary” 贈呂道夫轉右給事, HTFC 19.9a (319; 352:168). 66 “Eclipse” 月食, HTFC 22.1b (382; 352:169). The poem places this eclipse on a ‘mid-autumn night’ (中秋夜 chung-ch’iu yeh). The only such lunar eclipse visible in Peking during the years Ho Ching-ming spent there was Oppolzer 4201, on September 25, 1512 (Cheng-te 7/8, ting-ssu). See Theodore Ritter von Oppolzer, transl. Owen Gingerich, Canon of Eclipses (Canon der Finsternisse) (repr. New York: Dover, 1962), p.367. The other autumn eclipses during these years are ruled out as follows: Oppolzer 4190 (August 14, 1505), first month in autumn; Oppolzer 4199 (October 6, 1511), third month in autumn; Oppolzer 4203 (September 15, 1513), not visible in China. 67 HTFC 13.10a (185; 371:031). The poem refers to Ho Meng-ch’un being ‘forty’, which by Chinese reckoning would give a date around 1513. The poem identifies Meng-ch’un’s destination as Honan, where we know he was appointed Administration Vice-Commissioner on September 15, 1512. A reference to battlefields on the banks of the Yellow River suggests the period during or just after the outbreaks of banditry there in 1511-1512. Ho reminisces over Meng-ch’un’s friendliness ten years before, when he was already a Secretary and Ching-ming only a new chin-shih. For Ho Meng-ch’un (t. Tzu-yüan 子元; h. Yen-ch’üan 燕泉), see TL 271, HY 3/260, KHL 26.23a [1087—Ku Lin], 53.18a [2246—Lo Ch’in-shun], TK 113. He was a chin-shih of 1493 and by this time recognised as a highly promising young official.

310

CHAPTER SEVEN

companion during this period was T’ien Ju-tzu, who has already been mentioned several times in passing. 68 He had passed the chü-jen in 1498 along with Ho and Ts’ui Hsien and the chin-shih in 1505 along with Ts’ui. He went home in mourning soon after, but returned to office in Peking as a Supervising Secretary while Ho was at home in Hsin-yang and remained until late in 1513. Ts’ui recalls, in his epitaph for T’ien, how whenever Ho came to visit, he and T’ien would play drinking games and chant poetry. In the following poem, Ho combines a sense of merriment with a compliment to T’ien’s writing: 晚過田水南有贈田郎閉門著書今幾卷、我欲與子數相見。謔浪雖稱青璅賢、經過罕識黃門面。長安雨積鞍馬稀、堂下苔生集秋燕。四買何人問草玄、一經徒使桓潭羨。 An Evening Visit to T’ien Shui-nan [Ju-tzu], Replying to his Poem 69 Master T’ien has shut the gate to write his book, how many chapters now? I have wanted to come and see you many times indeed. Although as a joke I call you a worthy from Green-chain Gate, In all my life I’ve rarely seen the face of the Yellow Portal. In Ch’ang-an the rains go on and saddled horses are rare; Below the hall the moss is growing and gathering autumn swallows. Who within the four seas asks about the drafted Mystery? A single classic enough to excite the envy of Huan T’an! Ho’s third line is reminiscent of a line in Li Po’s “Song of the Jade Pot” 玉壺吟, “Mocking the wise men of Crimson Walk and Green Chain” 謔浪赤墀青瑣賢. 70

A Han dynasty palace gate was carved with an interlocking chain pattern, painted green, and became known as the ‘Green Chain’ Gate. Another Han palace gate was painted yellow and became known by its colour. Both gates were used by officials in the Chancellery, to which in pre-Ming times Supervising Secretaries belonged. In fact, in some periods, the Chancellery was officially referred to as the ‘Yellow Gate

——— 68

For T’ien Ju-tzu (1478-1533; t. Ch’in-fu 勤甫, h. Shui-nan 水南), who held office in both Peking and the provinces, and retired in 1519, see TL 107, HY 2/143, KHL 88.82 (3822—Ts’ui Hsien), TK 169. 69 HTFC 13.12a (187; 371:038). 70 Ri Haku Kashi Sakuin 211/08; CTS 166.1716; K.08076; An Ch’i, p.559. ‘Crimson Walk’ refers to the red paint on the steps to the throne room; Li’s line refers to the story of the jester Tung-fang Shuo 東方朔 making fun of the senior officials.

PEKING

311

Office’. Both of the gates mentioned in Ho’s second couplet are thus elaborate references to Ts’ui’s official position. Huan T’an, author of the Hsin Shu 新書, was a philosopher of the late Han dynasty. His contemporary Yang Hsiung wrote the T’ai-hsüan Ching 太玄經 (“Classic of the Supreme Mystery”). 71 Another poem records a visit to Wang Hsi-meng (1475-1515) on the day before the Double Nine Festival. 72 Wang was a large, swarthy, imposing man who was a close friend of Ts’ui Hsien, a fellow provincial with whom he had passed both the chü-jen and chin-shih examinations. Promoted to the post of Secretary in the Ministry of Justice after meritorious service as Magistrate in two counties, he had played a distinguished role in the final prosecution of Liu Chin. Ts’ai Chen, the imperial son-in-law who had interrogated Liu in court was, according to Ts’ui Hsien, a slovenly military man of no parts who had become an overnight sensation because of his initial denunciation of Liu. For a proper trial, however, more was required, and Wang was chosen to present the case, which he did so impressively that the Minister of Civil Office, Yang Yi-ch’ing, saw to it that he was promoted to Vice Minister of the Court of State Ceremonial. Ho apparently celebrated the Festival itself at Han Pang-ching’s, joined by Ts’ui Hsien and presumably others. 73 While at Han’s on this occasion, he wrote a preface for a work on the traditional system of musical pitches by Pang-ching’s elder brother, Han Pang-ch’i 韓邦奇 (1479-1556). 74

———

71 See the translation by Michael Nylan, The Canon of Supreme Mystery (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993). 72 “Viewing Chrysanthemums on the Eighth Day at the Residence of Wang Tsungche [Hsi-meng]” 八日王宗哲宅見菊, HTFC 25.16a (452; 372:002). For Wang Hsimeng (t. 宗哲Tsung-che; h. Ch’i-tung 淇東), see TL 34, HY 2/52, KHL 76.9 (3234— Ts’ui Hsien), TK 162. It was Ts’ui and Ho who arranged for Wang’s funeral. 73 “Snow on the Ninth Day: Responding to Academician Ts’ui” 九日雪答崔太史, HTFC 25.16a (452; 372:003); “Red Chrysanthemums at the Residence of Ju-ch’ing [Han Pang-ching]” 汝慶宅紅菊, HTFC 22.5a (386; 352:182-183). 74 “Preface to Master Han’s ‘Simple Explanation of Musical Pitches’” 韓子律呂直解序, HTFC 31.21a (561; 內:026). For Han Pang-ch’i (t. Ju-chieh 汝節, h. Yüan-lo 苑洛), see TL 893, HY 3/136, DMB 488 (Chaoying Fang and Julia Ching), TK 192. Han Pang-ch’i had been relegated to a minor provincial post the year before, shortly after Ho arrived back in Peking. Although no farewell poem by Ho is extant, we know from a poem by Pang-ching that Ho and Meng Yang were both present on the occasion, see “Saying Farewell to my Second Brother, Who is Going to P’ing-yang: At the Banquet, Dividing Rhymes with Ho Chung-mo [Ching-ming], Meng Wangchih [Yang], and Liu Tzu-ching” 送二兄赴平陽席上同何仲默孟望之劉子靜分韻,

312

CHAPTER SEVEN

Toward the end of autumn, Ho took a trip out to the Western Hills, a few miles northwest of Peking. Poems record his visits to the Temple of Greatly Meritorious Virtue 大功德寺, Jade Spring 玉泉, and the Lake-Viewing Pavilion. 望湖亭獨上湖亭望、霜空萬里明。檻疑天上立、槎是斗邊行。雲霧開山殿、芙蓉暗水城。先朝四百寺、秋日徧題名。 The Lake-Viewing Pavilion 75 Alone I climb the Lake Pavilion for a view; The frosty void is clear for ten thousand leagues. The railing seems to stand above the heavens;

———

Wu-ch’üan Han Ju-ch’ing Shih-chi 3.3b (152), TK 403According to the Ssu-k’u Ch’üan-shu Tsung-mu T’i-yao, p.3660, quoted in MSCS ting-16.1403, Pang-ch’i was not known as an Archaist, but he did associate with Ho Ching-ming and Wang T’inghsiang, at least, both of whom took an interest in Han’s work on classical music theory. Wang, whose own work on the subject, the “Discussion of Musical Pitches” (律呂論 Lü-lü Lun), is included in his collected works, Wang Shih Chia-ts’ang Chi, chüan 40; Wang T’ing-hsiang Chi 40.702-13, disagreed with Han and wrote a letter to him with his comments, “Letter to Han Ju-chieh [Pang-ch’i]” 與韓汝節書, Wang Shih Chia-ts’ang Chi 29.21a (1309), Wang T’ing-hsiang Chi 29.535. For their disagreement and its context, see Chang Woei Ong, “The Principles are Many: Wang Tingxiang and Intellectual Transition in Mid-Ming China,” HJAS 66 (2006): 461-93, esp. p.487. For an excellent introduction to music in the Ming dynasty, see Joseph S. C. Lam, “Ming Music and Music History,” Ming Studies 38 (1997):21-62. For an account of Han’s philosophy chiefly concerned with his place in the li-hsüeh tradition, see Ko Jung-chin 葛榮晉, “Han Pang-ch’i Che-hsüeh Ssu-hsiang Ch’u-t’an” 韓邦奇哲學思想初探 (A Preliminary Inquiry into the Philosophical Thought of Han Pangch’i), K’ung-tzu Yen-chiu 1988.1:113-20. Ko characterises Han as a ‘materialist’ (i.e. one of the good guys). 75 HTFC 21.10b (372: 352:189). The final line of this poem can be understood in a variety of ways, depending on how the word 徧 is interpreted. I take it as equivalent to 辯, a reading recorded as early as the Documents. Other possibilities include, “The autumn sunlight catches all their inscriptions,” “On an autumn day, I tour all their inscriptions,” and even “On an autumn day, people are making inscriptions everywhere.” It should be borne in mind that, in a society in which literacy was not universal and spray paint guns unknown, decoration of buildings and natural features with graffiti was considered an elegant activity rather than a misdemeanor. Li Mengyang and Hsüeh Hui also wrote poems at this pavilion, all with the same title as Ho’s; see “Lake-Viewing Pavilion,” K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi 14.6a (303) and 35.16b (986); Hsüeh Hsi-yüan Chi (1535 edition) 1.40b, K’ao-kung Chi (SKCS) 5.5b (59). For the other poems by Ho from this trip, see “An Excursion to the Temple of Meritorious Virtue” 出遊功德寺, HTFC 20.13b (350; 352:185); “The Temple of Greatly Meritorious Virtue” 大功德寺 , HTFC 21.10a (371; 352:186); “Staying Overnight in the Chamber of Sir Ch’i” 宿淇公方丈, HTFC 20.13b (350; 352:187); and “Jade Spring” 玉泉, HTFC 21.10a (371; 352:188).

PEKING

313

The raft indeed is leaving for the Dipper. Clouds and fog open up on a mountain palace; Lotus blossoms darken the lakeside walls. Four hundred temples left from bygone dynasties: In autumn sunlight I make out all their inscriptions. The second line is reminiscent of the corresponding line in the first of Tu Fu’s “Morning” 朝 poems, “The frosty void enclosed in ten thousand ranges” 霜空萬嶺含. 76

The fourth line alludes to the legend of a man who boarded a raft and sailed out to sea. Returning after a long voyage, he learned that a star had been seen to navigate the Milky Way in a way analogous to his voyage. 77 Every line of this poem is visual, and the progression of images is a smooth one, from the heavens down across the hills to the river and the temples, with their names inscribed in gold or scarlet over the entrances. Only the sixth line is at all ‘ingenious’, with its conceit of the blossoms ‘darkening’ the city wall—which they do either by ‘outshining’ it, or by obscuring its reflection in the lake where they grow. The simplicity of the poem makes its sweep down to the glowing inscriptions all the more effective. By this time the campaigns against the bandits who had ravaged eastern China for almost two years were drawing to an end. In a poem written at about this time, Ho records the receipt of letters from Liu Chieh and Yüan Jung. Its reference to the rebellion being over presumably applies to the banditry in the vicinity of his home: 得朝信惟學書稍喜豺狼息、仍悲鴻鴈音。故人雙尺素、遙比萬黃金。水上春花樹、城邊秋竹林。天涯暮風雨、腸斷北山吟。 On Receiving Letters from Ch’ao-hsin [Liu Chieh] and Wei-hsüeh [Yüan Jung] 78 Somewhat solaced that panthers and wolves are gone, I grieve nonetheless at the sound of passing geese. This pair of lengths of silk from old friends Is worth far more than thousands of golden coins.

——— 76

Tu Shih Yin-te 505/10A/2, CTS 230.2534, K.11685. Po-wu Chih Chiao-cheng 博物志校證, compiled by Fan Ning 范寧 (Peking: Chung-hua, 1980), 10.111, item 321 (tsa-shuo, hsia). 78 HTFC 20.4a (336; 352:190). The Yung recension omits 信 ‘-hsin’ in the title. 77

314

CHAPTER SEVEN

The trees in spring bloom above the river, The groves of autumn bamboo along the walls . . . At the ends of the earth, windy rain at evening, A broken-hearted lament from the northern hills.

As usual, the actual end of the uprising had something of the sordid about it on both sides. The bandits, having reached the Yangtse River, had seized boats and begun marauding their way downstream. By the time they reached Nanking, their numbers were greatly reduced, and the Imperial armies had succeeded in heading them off, so that they could not continue on to the rich districts of the delta. Surrounded on top of a hill, the last few dozen bandits made a desperate charge down the slope, hoping to seize a boat and get away, but the few who reached the bottom under a rain of arrows were forced into the river, where they drowned. 79 Official celebrations were held in the winter to mark the final suppression of the bandits. When the victors reached Peking, Wutsung was much impressed with some of the commanders, who were taken into his entourage as personal favourites and even granted the Imperial surname. Chief among these was one Chiang Pin 江彬, an army officer of imposing physique and a veteran of fighting on the northern frontiers. He was introduced to Wu-tsung by Ch’ien Ning, but before long he had begun to supplant Ch’ien, and by the latter years of Wu-tsung’s reign he had become the most powerful figure in the Emperor’s entourage. Ho Ching-ming wrote a set of twelve quatrains to celebrate the bandits’ defeat, titled “The Generals Come to Court” 諸將入朝歌, but if the poems contain any criticism it is entirely implicit. 80 For one of the best of the civilian generals, P’eng Tse 彭澤, a large man with flashing eyes and a reputation for rigorous probity, success brought the usual reward of a harder job. He was put in charge of the suppression of a separate outbreak of banditry still raging in Szechwan. 81 After some time spent simultaneously protesting his

——— 79

For the bandits’ last stand, see MTC 44.1669. HTFC 29.6b (518; 374:007-018). One of the poems gives 1512 as the date. They honour the military men for their suppression of the rebellion, refer without evident censure to rewards being distributed at the ‘Leopard Quarter’, and touch only lightly on the hardships brought on by warfare. 81 A poem addressed to Chang Shih-lung, written on the first full moon of the year 1513, refers to warfare in Szechwan and the middle Yangtse and to the ‘banquets of 80

PEKING

315

incompetence for the job and organising his campaign, he left for Szechwan in the winter, and Ho presented him with a pair of farewell poems. 送彭總制之西川蜀道青天上、岷山赤日西。九重連授鉞、萬里動征鼙。開府松沙靜、懸軍玉壘低。知公安蜀計、諸葛大名齊。 Saying Farewell to Marshal P’eng, Who is Going to Hsi-ch’uan (second of two poems) 82 The road to Shu lies above the azure sky; The mountains of Min to the west of the crimson sun. In the Ninefold Within, repeated Conferrals of the Axe; Ten thousand leagues resound to your campaign drums.

———

the former Emperor’, “Moon-viewing at Chung-hsiu’s Residence During the Lantern Festival” 元夜仲修宅對月, HTFC 26.1a (454; 372:010). For P’eng Tse (t. Chi-wu 濟物, h. Hsing-an 幸庵), see TL 646; HY 3/130; MS 198.5235, TK 140, Hsüeh Yangching 薛仰敬, “P’eng Tse Nien-p’u” 彭澤年譜, Hsi-pei Shih-ti 1996.3:1-17. A chinshih of 1490, P’eng had established his reputation in a series of posts in the capital and provinces and was assigned to take over operations in Szechwan on October 26, 1512. See the MTC, 44.1670, and the Wu-tsung Shih-lu 92.3b (1962). 82 HTFC 19.2b (309; 352:192). Meng Yang, Lü Nan, Sun Ch’eng-en 孫承恩, and Yang Yi-ch’ing also wrote poems or essays of farewell to P’eng; see “Saying Farewell to Supreme Commander P’eng on His Western Campaign” 送彭總制西征, Meng Yu-ya Chi 8.3b; “Words Presented for the Western Expedition” 西征贈言序, Ching-yeh Hsien-sheng Wen-chi 2.8b (511); “Saying Farewell to Supreme Commander P’eng, Who is Going to Suppress Banditry in Shu” 送彭總制討蜀寇序, Wen-chien Chi 文簡集 (Collected Works of the Literate and Plain) (SKCS) 27.1a; and “Saying Farewell to Chief Censor and Supreme Commander P’eng Chi-wu [Tse], Who is Leading the Army to Shu” 送彭濟物都憲總制軍務征蜀, Shih-tsung Shih-kao 石淙詩稿 (Poetry Manuscripts from Stony Rill) (Chia-ching edition; repr. TM 4:40, Tainan: Chuang-yen Wen-hua, 1997) 11.17a (484). For Wang T’ing-hsiang’s farewell poem written when P’eng passed through Shensi, where Wang was in office, see “Saying Farewell to Vice Censor in Chief P’eng, Commander for Szechwan and Shensi, Twenty-six Rhymes” 送彭中丞總制川陜二十六韻, Wang Shih Chia-ts’ang Chi 16.22a (663), Wang T’ing-hsiang Chi 16.278. There is a variant reading in the fifth line of this poem; 沙 ‘sand’ (sha) is the reading of the Yung and Shen recensions, the two that derive most directly from Ho’s manuscripts. The Yüan and Standard recensions read 杉 ‘cypress’ (shan), a more conventional choice. In some cases, variations that divide the recensions in this way seem to be a matter of distracting but readily correctible error in the older recensions having been corrected in the Yüan text, the correction being adopted in the Standard recension. In others, an erroneous reading introduced in the Yüan recension was not corrected in the Standard recension (which often follows the Yung recension against the Shen and Yüan) (see TK, pp.26465). In the present case, since both readings make good sense, the appropriate thing is to follow the reading of the older texts, while recognising that either variant could be authorial.

316

CHAPTER SEVEN

You open your headquarters—cypress and sand are calm; Advance your army—Jade Rampart Mountain is low. I know your plan for pacifying Shu Will equal the great renown of Chu-ko Liang! The tradition of poems on the subject of frontier warfare goes back to Pao Chao and Ts’en Shen, but the earliest extant poem on the subject of a particular commander’s campaign may be by Pao’s contemporary Yü Hsi, his “Poem Singing of General Huo’s Northern Campaign” 詠霍將軍北伐詩. 83 Ho’s first line is of course a ‘riff’ on the opening, and occasional refrain, of Li Po’s famous “The Road to Shu is Hard” 蜀道難, “The difficulty of the road to Shu, it’s more difficult than climbing to the azure sky” 蜀道之難難於上青天. 84 The penultimate line recalls the equivalent line of an appropriate poem by Ts’en Shen, “On Climbing the Northern Pavilion at Pei-t’ing: Presented to the Gentlemen at Headquarters” 登北庭北樓呈幕中諸公, “Long ago I understood your plan for pacifying the frontier” 早知安邊計. 85 Ho’s final line conflates two lines by Tu Fu. One of these is the first line in the last of Tu’s five “Singing of my Longings on Historical Sites” 詠懷古跡, “The great reknown of Chu-ko Liang overhangs the world” 諸葛大名垂宇宙. 86 The other is in “Twenty Rhymes Presented to Chief Minister of the Court of Imperial Sacrifices Chang Chün” 奉贈太常張卿均二十韻, “In the learned arts, your great renown is equal” 儒術大名齊. 87

Hsi-ch’uan is the modern province of Szechwan, whose old name was Shu. Early accounts of the Min Mountains vary in details, but all place them in the western part of Szechwan and most say they are the source of the Yangtse River. The Ninefold Within is the Imperial Palace; the Conferral of the Axe was a ceremony marking the assignment of executive authority in the provinces. Jade Rampart Mountain is about 70 miles northwest of Chengtu. Chu-ko Liang 諸葛亮 was a famous strategist of the Three Kingdoms period who successfully defended Shu.

——— 83

Lu Ch’in-li, p.1607. Ri Haku Kashi Sakuin 062; CTS 162.1680; K.07926; An Ch’i, p.175. 85 Ts’en Chia-chou Shih 1.22a (20); CTS 198.2024; K.09490; Liu K’ai-yang 劉開揚, comp., Ts’en Shen Shih-chi Pien-nien Chien-chu (Chengtu: Pa-Shu, 1995), p.328. 86 Tu Shih Yin-te 473/35E/1, CTS 230.2511, K.11560. The entire poem is translated below (chapter twelve). 87 Tu Shih Yin-te 264/6/8, CTS 224.2389, K.10902. 84

PEKING

317

INTERESTING TIMES At about this time—the troubles in Szechwan are mentioned—Ho also presented a farewell poem to one Liang Yü 梁迂 , matching the rhymes of a poem by Meng Yang. 88 Ho and Meng both evidently took advantage of Liang’s route through Shensi to send poems to Wang T’ing-hsiang. 89 Meng, who had been appointed to the Censorate the preceding summer, was still a free man in the third month of 1513, when he joined Ho Ching-ming and others in saying farewell to a man named Hsieh Chung 謝忠, who was going south to Hukwang to take up office. 90 Within days, however, Meng was thrown into prison on account of a memorial he had submitted criticising the two Grand

———

88 “Saying Farewell to Liang of the Court of State Ceremonial, Who is Going to Shih-fang: Matching the Rhymes of Wang-chih [Meng Yang]” 送梁鴻臚之什放次孟望之韻, HTFC 23.9b (412; 353:005). Liang Yü’s name may have been Liang Ch’ien 迁 , as in the name Ssu-ma Ch’ien, but written with the form now used as the ‘simplified’ version. However, Yü is the form found in the oldest extant sources, see TK, pp.158-59. For Meng Yang’s poem, see “Saying Farewell to Magistrate Liang” 送梁明府, Meng Yu-ya Chi 2.12a. 89 “Sent for Presentation to Censor Wang Tzu-heng [T’ing-hsiang], Currently Inspecting in Kuan-chung” 寄贈王子衡御史時按關中, HTFC 23.9b (413; 353:006); “Sent to Wang Tzu-heng [T’ing-hsiang]” 寄王子衡, Meng Yu-ya Chi 8.1a. Meng’s poem has a note attached to the title reading, “At the Time Regional Inspector in Shensi” 時巡按陜西. 90 Ho’s poem on the occasion refers to the third month; the preface to it gives the year as Ho’s second after returning to Peking, see “Remembering Old Companions” 憶昔行, HTFC 13.4b (179; 371:015). The promulgation of Hsieh’s appointment is recorded in the Wu-tsung Shih-lu under a date in the first month corresponding to March 1, 96.4b (2030). For Meng’s farewell poem, see “Saying Farewell to Assistant Commissioner Hsieh Ju-cheng [Chung], Who is Going to Hunan” 送謝汝正少參之湖南, Meng Yu-ya Chi 10.13a. Meng Yang had been promoted from Messenger to Examining Censor on June 1, 1512; see Wu-tsung Shih-lu, 87.6b (1868). According to the Lan-t’ai Fa-chien Lu 蘭臺法鑑錄 (Record of Mirrored Norms of the Orchid Terrace), compiled by Ho Ch’u-kuang 何出光, however, Meng’s first appointment as a Censor came in 1505 (Late Ming edition) 3.63a. Other farewell poems still extant from this occasion include those by Tai Kuan, “Saying Farewell to Hsieh Ju-cheng, Who is Going to Hunan as Assistant Commissioner” 送謝汝正赴湖南少參, Tai Shih Chi 5.7a (33), and Han Pang-ching, “Saying Farewell to Hsieh of the State Farms Bureau, Who is Going to Hukwang” 送謝屯部之湖廣, Wu-ch’üan Han Ju-ch’ing Shih-chi 3.2b (152); there is also Tung Chi’s 董玘 “Preface for the Farewell to Assistant Commissioner Hsieh, Who is Going to Hukwang” 送少參謝君之湖廣序, Tung Chung-feng Hsien-sheng Wen-hsüan 董中峰先生文選 (Selected Literary Works by Master Tung of the Central Peak) (1561 edition) 4.20a. For Hsieh Chung (t. Jucheng 汝正), see TK 182.

318

CHAPTER SEVEN

Secretaries who had stayed on in office after Li Tung-yang resigned to protest the granting of the Imperial surname to some of Wu-tsung’s favourite army officers. We do not know just when Meng submitted his memorial. The entry in the Wu-tsung Shih-lu that reports his arrest appears under a date corresponding to April 13, 1513, but it also includes reference to his relegation to Kweilin 桂林 , which was presumably not announced on the same day. 91 Less than two weeks later, a senior Han-lin official, Ch’in Kui 勤貴 (1464-1520), offered to resign and thereby to annul Meng Yang’s crime. Wu-tsung replied that Ch’in should stay at his post, adding, “Do not speak further on [Meng] Yang’s behalf. The court has made its own disposition of his case.” 92 Ho’s friend Ku Lin had already been disgraced. Ku had remained in office in Kaifeng, where he probably had been seeing a good deal of Li Meng-yang and certainly had been a thorn in the side of the local Grand Defender, a notoriously avaricious eunuch named Liao T’ang 廖鏜. Liao T’ang belonged to a family that exemplified the sort of corrupt network that Wu-tsung’s patronage of eunuchs and military men fostered. He was one of a system of ‘Grand Defenders’, trusted eunuchs who occupied supervisory positions of great power in the provinces. 93 T’ang’s nephew (or perhaps younger brother; accounts differ) Liao P’eng 鵬 secured an appointment as an officer in the Embroidered Uniform Guard and prospered under T’ang’s wing in Honan. Among his less vicious escapades was the entry of his son in

——— 91

Wu-tsung Shih-lu 98.2a (2051). The entry on Meng’s collected works in the Ssuk’u Ch’üan-shu Tsung-mu T’i-yao (p.3826, quoted in LHH 3.37a) says that he was banished to Kweilin because of his opposition to Chang Ts’ung 張璁 and Kui O 桂萼, but this is an anachronism. 92 Wu-tsung Shih-lu 98.3a (2053). Another intervention on Meng’s behalf was rejected on May 8. See Wu-tsung Shih-lu 99.1b-2a (2060-61). For Ch’in Kui (t. Yüntao 允道, h. Chieh-an 戒菴), see HY 3/141, TL 721, KHL 15.66a (518—Wang Ao), TK 192. His intervention did not prevent his promotion to Grand Secretary the following year. Sometime after this, perhaps when he retired in 1517, Ho Ching-ming wrote an essay for his retreat, the “Record of the Careful Studio” 戒菴記at least part of which was included in the ““Inner Chapters,” HTFC 31.20a (560; 內:025). Ho does not describe the study, but rather meditates on the virtue of “carefulness.” 93 For a study of the Grand Defenders, see Fang Chih-yüan 方志遠, “Ming-tai te Chen-shou Chung-kuan Chih-tu” 明代的鎮守中官制度 (The Institution of Eunuch Grand Defenders in the Ming Period), Wen Shih 40 (1994):131-45. As Fang shows, the Cheng-te period marked the climax of this system, which was brought under control and largely eliminated during the reign of Wu-tsung’s successor.

PEKING

319

the Honan provincial examination (which the son passed), although the Liaos, like many families that supplied eunuchs to the throne, were natives of Fukien. When this was denounced by a vigilant official, the son was stripped of his success. P’eng was only able to avoid the consequences of this or some other abuse by sending his favourite concubine on a private visit to Ch’ien Ning in Peking. We will briefly encounter P’eng’s younger brother Liao Luan 鸞, another eunuch, below. After Ku Lin had lodged repeated accusations against Liao, he was imprisoned in the dungeons of the Embroidered Uniform Guard and then exiled to Ch’üan-chou 全州, a remote prefecture in Kwangsi not far from Kweilin. Ho and Meng said farewell to Ku at the house of T’ien Ju-tzu. 94 Some time later, when Meng had an opportunity to add a colophon to the collection of farewell works written on this occasion, he recalled ironically that during the farewell party he had remarked that Ch’üan-chou had the most beautiful scenery of any far-away

——— 94

For Ho’s farewell poem for Ku, see “Saying Farewell to Ku Hua-yü [Lin], Relegated to Ch’üan-chou” 送顧華玉謫全州, HTFC 19.1b (308; 352:217). See below, chapter eight, for a poem that Ho wrote on receiving a letter from Ku and Meng a year after their departure, in which he says they left together. Ho mentions Meng’s exile to Kweilin in the second of a set of four poems written about this time; see “Presented to Wang-chih [MengYang]” 贈望之, HTFC 10.1a (221; 351:036; the fourth poem in the set is translated below). One person who had come to Ku Lin’s defense when he was dismissed from his post in Kaifeng was Chu Ying-teng. See Yin Shou-heng 尹守衡, Ming Shih Ch’ieh 明史竊 (A Private History of the Ming) (Taipei: Hua-shih, 1978) 45.10b (2174) and Chu’s two poems written on hearing of Ku’s assignment to Ch’üan-chou, Ling-hsi Hsien-sheng Chi (Chia-ching edition; repr. TM 4:51, Tainan: Chuang-yen Wen-hua, 1997) 8.9b (429). Li Meng-yang sent a pair of poems to Ku Lin in Ch’üan-chou and one to Meng Yang in Kweilin, see “Presented to Master Ku, Who is Relegated to Ch’üan-chou” 顧子謫全州贈, K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi 24.10a (601); “Sent to Meng Wang-chih [Yang], Who is Relegated to Instructor in Kweilin” 寄孟洋謫桂林教授, op.cit. 31.11b (838). Ch’en Yi wrote a fu, dated 1513, as a farewell to Ku, Shih-t’ing Wen-chi 石亭文集 (Collected Literary Works from the Stone Pavilion) (edition with 1565 preface in the Sonkeikaku Bunko) 1.6a, and also apparently two poems of consolation, to which Ku replied a year later, on hearing that Ch’en had been sent out to the provinces himself, “Last Year, When I Was Relegated to the Hsiang and Yüan, Vice-Commissioner Chu Sheng-chih Sent Me Two Poems as Consolation; Now I Hear that Sheng-chih has been Relegated to Oversee Tian-nan and Sadly Offer This Response” 去年予謫湘源朱升之副使以二詩寄慰茲聞升之謫按滇南凄然奉答, Fu-hsiang Kao 浮湘藁, Ku Hua-yü Chi (SKCS) 2.12b (149). We do not have exact dates for Meng Yang’s sojourn in Kweilin, but he did write one dated poem there in the early spring of 1515, “A Song of the River Hsiang” 湘水歌, Meng Yu-ya Chi 3.13b (the date is given in the preface to the poem), and we know that he was recalled not too long after this (see below, chapter eight).

320

CHAPTER SEVEN

place, little knowing that he himself would be arrested the next day and eventually sent to nearby Kweilin. 95 One of Ho’s set of four poems presented to Meng on his departure follows: 贈望之絕裾不為忍、叱馭寧顧危。念子奉明君、結義良在茲。雖懷垂堂戒、委質我所知。白日豈不察、浮雲蔽於斯。孤葵慕太陽、傾心量不移。勿謂長棄損、中當有返期。 Presented to Wang-chih [Meng Yang] (fourth of four poems) 96 A parting by force is what I cannot bear; I scold the driver and urge him to be careful. I think of your service to our enlightened ruler; My brother-in-law’s excellence lies in this. Though you mind the warnings of sitting under eaves, Your Conferral of Person is what I understand. How could the bright sun not see into this? Drifting clouds have covered it from view. A solitary sunflower honours the sunlight; Inclining its heart, its measure does not move. Do not speak of a permanent rejection; In the end there will be a date for your return.

The number of works that can be assigned to the spring of 1513 is unusually small, and even the ones most likely to be from this season are not entirely certain. Among the few poems that can plausibly be assigned to this time, this one honours a retreat whose inhabitant we can barely identify: 一舫齋乾坤聊一舫、高臥此齋深。竹散琴書色、窗開島嶼陰。乘桴浮海意、擊楫渡江心。無限風波裏、何人嘆陸沉。

———

95 See “Colophon to ‘A Scroll Presented from Afar’” 跋贈遠卷, Meng Yu-ya Chi, 16.23b. This essay was written two years later by Meng Yang, while he was visiting Ku in Ch’üan-chou,. 96 HTFC 10.2a (122; 351:038). At two points in this poem, the Shen recension has variant readings not found in the others. In the second line it reads 此 ‘this’ for 叱’scold’; in the antepenultimate line, 亮 ‘bright’ for the homophonous 量 ‘measure’. As usual in such cases, the Shen recension readings are erroneous (see TK, pp.24959). “Conferral of Person” refers to an archaic custom in which a man, on first accepting office, gave his ruler a tablet with his name on it, expressing his intention to serve to the death.

PEKING

321

Single Skiff Studio 97 For heaven and earth, to rely on a single skiff; For resting at ease, this studio is profound. Bamboo disperses the charm of zithern and books; The windows open on shade of isle and bar. Riding a raft—the meaning of drifting the seas; Striking an oar—a mind set on crossing the river. Here among the limitless winds and waves, Who would sigh for “submerging on dry land”?

The latter half of this poem includes several allusions. In a moment of frustration, Confucius once considered boarding a raft and drifting the seas. We encountered a reference to ‘striking the oars while crossing a river’ above, in Ho’s poem on crossing the Hu-t’o. To ‘submerge on dry land’ is to be a recluse in spirit, even while living in the world. 98 Here we introduce here two other works that come from Ho’s longer stay in Peking but cannot be more narrowly dated, the first this simple evocation of an earlier style: 河水曲河水何濺濺、暮采河邊蘭。君隨河水去、我獨立河干。 A Song of River Waters 99 How the river waters splash and spray! In evening, I pick epidendra along the river.

——— 97

HTFC 21.10b (372; 352:214). In the sixth line, the Shen recension reads 繫 ‘tying up’, which makes little sense, in place of 擊 ‘striking’. “Single Skiff” was the name of a man named Wang, like Li Meng-yang’s friend Pao Pi (see above) a native of She-hsien, in Hui-chou Prefecture in what is now Anhwei. There are two other references to his ‘studio’ in extant sources, one in a colophon by Ho’s friend Lü Nan, “Colophon to the ‘Single Skiff Studio’,” Ching-yeh Hsien-sheng Wen-chi 36.28a, and one in a colophon to Wang’s poetic works by a contemporary, Hsia Liang-sheng 夏良勝, “Colophon to the Collected Poems from Single Skiff Studio” 一舫齋詩集後跋 Tung-chou Ch’u-kao 東洲初稿 (Initial Drafts from the Eastern Isle) (SKCS) 1.23a (724). From these we learn not only Wang’s surname and native place, but also his informal name, Yen-hsi 岩溪 (we can tell from its meaning, ‘Cliff Creek’, that it is unlikely to be a 名 ‘legal’ name) and the name of his son, T’ien-hsi 天錫 . Unfortunately, it appears impossible to find out anything further. Hui-chou was of course famous for its successful merchants, such as Pao Pi. These men often aspired to ‘pass for gentry’, and Wang may well have been among them. See TK 164 for Wang ‘Yen-hsi’, and Timothy Brook, Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China (Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1998), esp. pp.142-43, for Hui-chou merchants and their social aspirations. 98 Chuang-tzu Yin-te 71/25/35; Graham, p.109; Watson, p.286. 99 HTFC 6.1b (57; 樂:042).

322

CHAPTER SEVEN

You have gone away, following the river; I stand alone, here at the river’s edge.

Similarly undatable is this poem, presented to a man we cannot identify at all: 贈商三去冬雪雨留薊門、開筵謔浪倒金罇。今春燈火到長安、過門不肯迴銀鞍。燕山花隔平山柳、馬上東風幾回首。 Presented to Shang San 100 In the Gate of Chi, the rain and snowdrifts from last winter linger; Holding a banquet, we chaff unfettered, emptying golden flagons. This spring, the lamps reach all the way to Ch’ang-an; Once past the gate, you will not agree to turn back your silver saddle. The blossoms on the hills of Yen are cut off from the willows of Yingshan; On horseback in the east wind, you look back several times.

We have no evidence that would clearly account for the scarcity of works demonstrably from this season, but one possible explanation is that Ho was so taken up with Meng Yang’s case that he had little or no time for writing. Once the sentences had taken effect, life settled back into a more normal pattern of administrative work, evening gatherings, and outings to scenic places. The works of the rest of 1513 are dense with references to Ho’s Peking friends, not all of whom have appeared in our narrative so far, including Ts’ui Hsien, Chang Shih-lung, Chang Chi-meng, Wang Hsi-meng, Sun Chi-fang, Lü Nan, Lü Ching, Ma Lu, T’ien Ju-tzu, T’ao Chi 陶驥, Hsü Tsin 徐縉, Hou Yi-cheng 侯宜正, and Liu Wen-huan 劉文煥. 101 References to the

———

100 HTFC 12.19a (174; 371:513). In the first line, I follow the Yung recension; the Yüan and Standard recensions reverse the order of 雨雪 ‘rain and snow’. (The poem is lacking from the Shen recension.) In the second line, the Yüan recension alone reads 言 ‘words’ in place of the homophonous 筵 ‘banquet’. 101 See “Drinking at the Pavilion of Vice-Commander Chou with Academician Ts’ui and Censor Chang” 同崔太史張侍御飲周都閫亭子, HTFC 20.15b (353; 352:218); “A Note to Vice-Director Chang While in the Secretariat” 閣內簡張員外, HTFC 19.15b (329; 352:219); “Visiting Sun Shih-ch’i [Chi-fang] During a Military Alert” 過孫世其時有警報, HTFC 20.16a (354; 352:221); “Visiting the Residence of Lü Ching-yeh [Nan] with Lü Tao-fu [Ching] and Ma Chün-ch’ing [Lu]” 過呂涇野宅同呂道夫馬君卿, HTFC 10.2b (123; 351:041); “Leaving the Secretariat to Visit Ch’in-fu [T’ien Ju-tzu] in the Ministry” 出閣過勤甫省中 , HTFC 20.16a (354; 352:225); “A Visit from Academicians Lü and Ching and Supervising Secretaries Lü and T’ien on the Establishing Autumn Day” 立秋日呂景二內翰呂田二黃門見訪,

PEKING

323

absence of Meng Yang break through at moments, all the same. In a poem of temporary farewell addressed to Wang Hsi-meng, who was going to Shensi to celebrate a princely marriage, Ho interrupts a passage referring to Wang’s anticipated homesickness to exclaim, “How much more for me, cut off from my flesh and blood” 況我離骨肉! 102 Shortly after this, Ho expressed his loss even while at a social gathering: 子純宅夜集懷望之花月同遊客、江湘萬里遙。燕閒如我輩、盃酒又今宵。轉覺花愁思、翻教月寂寥。無論去與住、俱是斷篷飄。 Missing Wang-chih [Meng Yang] at an Evening Gathering at Tzu-ch’un’s [Chang Chi-meng] 103 In the flowery months, a sojourner who roamed with me, By Yangtse and Hsiang, ten thousand li away. At leisure in Yen, just like the rest of us; With a cup of wine, this night has come again. But now I feel a sense of the blossoms’ sorrow; Even make the moon feel loneliness. No matter whether we go or stay in one place; Either is but the drifting of tumbleweeds.

Actually, this summer yielded a considerably larger than average amount of poetry, even if much of it is quite occasional in nature. There are poems recording visits to and from various friends, a few

———

HTFC 20.16b (354; 352:226); “Meeting Academicians Ts’ui, Lü and Sun at Master Hsü’s Star-Gazing Tower” 同崔呂孫三內翰集徐子瞻辰樓, HTFC 14.19b (214; 371:019); “A Gathering on a Rainy Evening at Shih-ch’i’s [Sun Chi-fang] Hall” 雨夕集世其館, HTFC 26.4b (458; 372:023); “A Gift of Chrysanthemums from Ch’in-fu [T’ien Ju-tzu] on the Eighth Day” 八日勤甫惠菊, HTFC 26.4b (458; 372:024); “Visiting the Residence of Tung Wen-yü [Chi] with Ts’ui Tzu-chung [Hsien]” 同崔子鍾過董文玉宅, HTFC 21.1b (358; 352:240); “An Evening Gathering at Liu Techeng’s [Wen-huan]” 夜集劉德徵 , HTFC 26.6a (459; 372:030); “An Evening Gathering at Shih-ch’i’s [Sun Chi-fang]: Matching Master Tai’s Rhymes” 夜集世其次戴子韻, HTFC 21.2a (358; 352:243); “Presented to Lü Chung-mu [Nan] at an Evening Gathering” 夜集贈呂仲木, HTFC 19.11a (322; 352:244); “A Present on Liu Te-cheng’s [Wen-huan] Return from the Imperial Tombs” 劉德徵上陵還有贈, HTFC 26.6b (460; 372:032); “Climbing Ch’in-fu’s [T’ien Ju-tzu] Tower” 登勤甫樓, HTFC 26.7a (460; 372:033). See also below. 102 “Saying Farewell to Vice-Minister Wang Tsung-che [Hsi-meng]” 送王宗哲少卿, HTFC 10.2a (122; 351:039). 103 HTFC 19.12b (325; 352:222). The penultimate line of this poem provides another case of a variant reading in the Shen recension that is to be rejected as an error, 往 ‘go’ for 住 ‘stay’.

324

CHAPTER SEVEN

farewells, and a few messages, including one to T’ao Chi evoking the discomforts of a heat wave. 104 Ma Lu arrived in Peking, having been promoted to the Censorate, and Chang Shih left the capital for Chekiang. 105 Ho spent the Seventh Night in T’ao Chi’s company too, 106 but even on this festive occasion he remarks, in another poem written on the same day, “Within the seas, though elder and younger brothers, a dream of wind and rain” 海內弟兄風雨夢, perhaps having Meng Yang in mind. 107 The latter part of 1513 was quieter, with time for outings to gardens: 再遊郭氏園亭仲夏一到此、主人開水亭。園林再駐馬、臺榭已流螢。細竹搖風牖、孤雲度石屏。停杯更暮雨、何限北崖青。 On a Second Visit to the Kuo Family Garden Pavilion (first of two poems) 108 In the middle of summer, as soon as I arrived, My host opened up a pavilion on the water. By garden and grove I tether my horse again;

——— 104

“Suffering from the Heat: A Note Asking After T’ao Liang-po [Chi]” 苦熱行簡問陶良伯, HTFC 14.18b (213; 371:017). For T’ao Chi (t. Liang-po 良伯, Te-liang 德良), see (Chia-ch’ing) Sung-chiang Fu Chih 松江府志 (Gazetteer of Sung-chiang Prefecture) (1817; repr. Taipei: Ch’eng-wen, 1970) 45.71b (984), TK 191. Biographical sources for T’ao Chi are exiguous, but the entry in TK attempts to reconstruct the chronology of his friendship with Ho Ching-ming 105 It is possible in this case too that Chang Shih’s departure at this time followed the incident of his refusal to carry his own bench into the examination chambers. The evidence for the date of Ma Lu’s promotion is conflicting. It was evidently announced in the sixth month of 1514; see Wu-tsung Shih-lu 113.4b (4302). Biographies of Ma, however, are unanimous in assigning his promotion to 1513. The latter date appears to be correct, for Ho wrote a poem on visiting Lü Nan in the summer in the company of Ma and Lü Ching, “Visiting Lü Ching-yeh’s [Nan] Residence with Lü Tao-fu [Ching] and Ma Chün-ch’ing [Lu]” 過呂涇野宅同呂道夫馬君卿, see below, HTFC 10.2b (123; 351:041), and it is clear that Lü Nan left Peking in the spring of 1514. The likeliest explanation is that Ma’s appointment was either probationary or that the shihlu announcement confirmed a generally expected event. For Ho’s farewell poem for Chang Shih, see “Saying Farewell to Master Chang, Who is Going to Chekiang” 送張子之浙江, HTFC 26.2a (455; 372:014). 106 “Presented to Liang-po [T’ao Chi]” 贈良伯, HTFC 23.10a (413; 353:007). 107 “Seventh Night” 七夕, HTFC 26.4a (457; 372:022). 108 HTFC 20.16b (355; 352:227). The title of this poem is found in three different versions. The one translated here is found in the Standard recension. The Yung recension lacks the word 園 ‘garden’, and the Shen and Yüan recensions read simply 再過郭氏 “On a Second Visit to the Kuos.” Ho’s first visit to this garden in the fifth month produced two poems; see “A Pavilion in the Kuo Garden” 郭氏園亭, HTFC 20.15b (353; 352:220) and “Visiting the Kuo Garden” 遊郭氏園, HTFC 26.1b (455; 372:012).

PEKING

325

The outlooks and arbours already adrift in fireflies. Delicate bamboo sways on breezy shutters; A single cloud traverses the screening stones. I put down my cup with the turn to evening rain; There is no end to the green of the northern shore . . .

Either during or just after this second visit paid to the Kuo Garden in Peking, he wrote a poem expressing his homesickness for Hsin-yang: 懷劉園諸友亭榭劉園麗、攜遊汝輩頻。竹高停翠袖、花密隱朱唇。橋是經行地、城餘戰鬪塵。京華又二載、腸斷楚鄉春。 Missing my Friends from the Liu Garden 109 In pavilions and arbours, the beauty of Liu Garden, Where hand in hand I often roamed with you. Bamboo so tall they halted kingfisher sleeves; Blossoms so dense they shaded scarlet lips. The bridge was where we used to take our way; By the wall remains the dust of martial struggle. In the capital’s glory two more years have passed, My heart is keen for spring in the land of Ch’u.

There was also time for the fabrication of imitation antiques: 鳴蟬菀菀庭中柳、蟬鳴在高柯。上有西飛燕、下有東流河。美人堂上坐、忘却門前道。舉頭見鳴蟬、低頭惜芳草。 A Buzzing Cicada 110 Tender and supple, the willows in the courtyard; A cicada hums from up on a lofty bough. Above, there is a westward flying swallow, Below, there is an eastward flowing stream. A beautiful woman is seated up in the hall; Completely forgotten, the road outside the gate. Raising her head, she sees the buzzing cicada;

——— 109

HTFC 19.13a (325; 352:229). HTFC 10.3a (123; 351:042). In the sixth line, the Yung recension reads 志卻 “[her] intent, however, [is on]” in place of 忘卻 “completely forgotten.” This is possible, but it shifts the significance of the poem from one about a woman consumed by her sorrows to one still hoping for her absent one’s return. The majority of recensions is followed here, but the alternative reading is an interesting one. 110

326

CHAPTER SEVEN

Lowering her head, feels pity for fragrant herbs. “Tender and supple” 菀菀 was used to decribe willows by the High T’ang poet Ch’ang Chien 常建 in the opening line of the first of his “Spring Songs” 春詞, “Tender and supple, the yellow willow silk” 菀菀黃柳絲. 111 The entire first couplet varies an image found in a couplet from a poem imitating the last of the “Nineteen Old Poems,” written by Lu Chi, “A cold cicada sings in the tall willows” 寒蟬鳴高柳. 112 Cicadas are frequently mentioned in verse, but do not become part of the title until the appearance of “poems on objects” in the later Six Dynasties. The earliest example appears to be Shen Yüeh’s “Hearing a Singing Cicada: a Poem Writtten in Response to a Command” 聽鳴蟬應詔詩 . 113 Couplets contrasting an “above there is” line with one beginning “below there is” are less evident than one might expect in early poetry. The earliest seems to be at the end of the ballad “Watering Horses at a Hole in the Great Wall” 飲馬長城窟 attributed to Ts’ai Yung (see above, chapter three), in which the image is not one of the natural world, but rather of a letter received from an absent husband, “Above it has, ‘Try to eat!’ / Below it has, ‘I’ll always love you’” 上有加餐食、下有長相思. 114 Given the theme of Ho’s poem, it is likely that the “westward flying swallow” is that matched to an “eastward flying shrike” 東飛伯勞 in an old ballad sometimes attributed to Hsiao Yen, Emperor Wu of the Liang. In this poem the line with the two birds is matched by one referring to the Herd Boy and Weaving Maid, giving the theme as separated lovers. 115 It would, of course, be more certain that Ho had this in mind had he referred to the shrike as well, as the T’ang poet Ts’en Shen does at the end of his “A Song of Green Gate: Saying Farewell to Administrative Assistant Chang of East Terrace” 青門歌送東臺張判官, “I ask only when you will come back here once again, / Do not play ‘eastward flies the shrike; westward flies the swallow’!” 借問使乎何時來、莫作東飛伯勞西飛燕. 116

Here the structure is so fragmented as to make the poem almost a medley of disconnected parts. The opening couplet tells us what we already know from the title, that the setting is autumn, the repetition

——— 111

CTS 144.1456; K.06866. WH 30.25a (424); Lu Ch’in-li, p.687. There is a similar, but less specific, image in a “Miscellaneous Poem” by Fu Hsüan that may be slightly earlier; see WH 29.18a (405); Lu Ch’in-li, p.570. 113 Lu Ch’in-li, p.1655. 114 WH 27.16b (377); YTHY 1.24b (27); Lu Ch’in-li, p.192; Ts’ai Chung-lang Wen-chi (SPTK) wei-chüan p.7a (64). I quote the translation in Birrell, p.48. YTHY has a variant reading, 飧for 餐. 115 YTHY 9.1a (144); Lu Ch’in-li, p.1521; see the translation in Birrell, p.230. 116 CTS 199.2052; K.09597; Liu K’ai-yang, Ts’en Shen Shih-chi Pien-nien Chienchu, p.231. 112

PEKING

327

and exact parallelism—without new-style tonal antithesis—of the second that the poem is a real ‘imitation of antiquity’. The beautiful woman in her hall is of course a stock figure of such poetry and so is her reflection on the ‘fragrant herbs’, an allusion to a couplet from the “Summons to a Recluse” in the Ch’u Tz’u: 王孫游兮不歸、芳草生兮萋萋。 The young nobleman has gone aroaming, has not returned; Fragrant herbs grow, grow thick and rank. 117

If there is a ‘modern’ (i.e. T’ang) touch to the poem, it is the doublet “Raising . . . Lowering . . .” in the final couplet, since this gesture is also found in the final couplet of one of the best known of all T’ang poems, Li Po’s “Thoughts on a Quiet Night” 靜夜思. 舉頭望山月、低頭思故鄉。 Raising my head I gaze at the mountain moon; Lowering my head I think of home. 118

Of course, Li’s poem was an ‘old-style’ verse, and so the use of it is doubly and authentically old, much like that in the second couplet of Ho’s poem. In fact, one could read Ho’s almost brazen use of it as an attempt to write an old poem as though even Li Po did not exist, not even as a distracting allusion. The motive of praise is also present in the following poem, one of many on paintings written in the capital. Heptasyllabic songs on paintings go back to Tu Fu, several of whose best known longer poems belong to the tradition. Ho’s poem includes many of the conventions associated with such poems, the collector’s hospitality, how the painting casts into the shade not only other paintings, but

——— 117

As misquoted in the P’ei-wen Yün-fu 佩文韻府 (Rhymed Storehouse for the Adornment of Letters) (1937; repr. Taipei: Shang-wu, 1970), p.2000.2. The original reads 春草 ‘spring herbs’; cf. WH 33.21a (466); Ch’u Tz’u Pu-chu, 12.2a (393); trans. Hawkes, first edition, p.119; Penguin ed., p.244. How old the alternate reading is I do not know, but the P’ei-wen Yün-fu (loc. cit.) also quotes a line from Li Shang-yin, “When I see the fragrant herbs, I regret the young nobleman’s not having returned” 見芳草則怨王孫之不歸, which suggests that it was an old one. For the original, in Li’s “Letter Conveying Regrets to Sir Ho-tung”上河東公謝辟啟, see Ch’üan T’ang Wen 全唐文 (Complete T’ang Prose) (repr. Taipei: Wen-yu, 1972), 778.9b (10253). 118 Ri Haku Kashi Sakuin 188/03-04; CTS 165.1709; K.08051; An Ch’i, p.95. A very commonly encountered variant, unlikely to be authorial, is 明月 “bright moon” in place of “mountain moon” 山月.

328

CHAPTER SEVEN

even nature itself, description of the scene depicted, regret for the passing of the painter, evocation of his working style, and a closing exhortation to the owner of the painting to treasure it. The generic conventions are met within a characteristically symmetrical framework, the overall structural pattern consisting of setting, description, and response: 畫菊歌楊郎畫菊只三本、千花萬草無顏色。夏卿墨竹差可比、陶生桂樹何須得。徐君向我誇所有、閣中攜此更攜酒。翠幔披雲出院遲、金杯映日凭闌久。深黃穠紫雜烟皋、想見五色臨揮毫。叢篁瑣碎白晝靜、錦石爛漫霜天高。楚江茅堂若在眼、鳳闥彤闈對秋晚。白葛飄零處士稀、朱絃寂寞佳人遠。寒香晚節真可憐、惜哉楊郎不在前。開窗為我拂絹素、落筆點綴黃金錢。徐君徐君珍重此、君不見天寒歲暮百草死、綺羅無地看桃李。 A Song of Painted Chrysanthemums 119 Master Yang has painted chrysanthemums numbering only three, But a thousand blossoms, ten thousand herbs, have lost the look of life! The ink bamboo of Officer Hsia can hardly be compared; The cassia trees of Master T’ao—who has need of them? Master Hsü has boasted to me of what is in his collection; In his pavilion he brings this out and brings some wine as well. Halcyon curtains breach the clouds as we leave the courtyard slowly; Golden cups reflect the sun as we linger, leaning on a railing. Deepest brown and richest lavender mix on a misty meadow; I seem to see the fivefold colours appear on a waving brush tip. The thickets of bamboo are fine and precise, quiet in broad daylight; Brocaded stones in brilliant profusion under a high frosty sky. A thatch-roofed hall by a river in Ch’u appears before my eyes; Phoenix portals and crimson gateways face the autumn evening. Pallid tendrils wither and fall; the recluse is rarely met; Scarlet strings are silent and sad; fair ones are far away. Wintry Fragrance and Late Season, truly things to cherish; Alas! Alas! for Master Yang no longer here among us. Opening a window he would spread out some plain new silk for me; Lowering his brush, would dot and gather yellow Golden Coins.

——— 119

HTFC 14.8a (204; 371:023).

PEKING

329

Hsü! Hsü! treasure this ever so highly! Don’t you see, the heavens turn cold at the end of the year and all the verdure dies? Brocade and gossamer have no place for viewing peach and plum trees . . . As with horsemen and chariots (see above, chapter five, “A Song of Taliang”), so with blossoms and herbs, a thousand of one and ten thousand of another is a literary formula. One example that may have inspired Ho’s second line is a line in Tu Fu’s “Song of White Silk” 白絲行, “Ten thousand herbs, a thousand blossoms move the congealed jade” 萬草千花動凝碧. 120 For the “look of life,” see above, chapter five, “On Listening to Someone Play the Lute.” “Deep brown and richest lavender” may be conventional diction too. I have not found an early example, but Ho may have known this line from a song lyric to the melody “Blossoms in the Rain: Adagio” 雨中花慢, written on the topic of peonies by the Southern Sung poet Hsin Ch’i-chi 辛棄疾, “Richest lavender and deep brown, a painted depiction” 濃紫深黃一畫圖. 121 Considering the reference to Ch’u, it is possible that the first line of the third stanza includes a reminiscence of a well-known couplet by Hsieh Ling-yün, in his “By Way of Chin-chu Stream, I Cross the Ridge and Follow the River” 從斤竹澗越嶺溪行, “I Seem to see someone in the fold of the hill, / Fig leaves and rabbit-floss appear before my eyes” 想見山阿人、薜蘿若在眼. 122 Hsieh’s line in turn clearly alludes to the opening of the “Mountain Goddess” 山鬼in the Ch’u Tz’u, “There seems to be someone, in the fold of the hill; / A coat of fig-leaves, and sash of rabbit-floss” 若有人兮山之阿、被薜荔兮帶女羅. 123 The close of the fifth line from the end echoes a famous poem on painting, the “Song of Cinnabar and Green” 丹青引 that Tu Fu presented to General Ts’ao Pa 曹霸, “By Imperial Command, the General spread out plain silk” 詔謂將軍彿絹素. 124 The penultimate line also echoes a famous Tu Fu poem, in this case Tu’s “Five Hundred Characters Singing of my Feelings on a Trip from the Capital to Feng-hsien County” 自京赴奉先縣詠懷五百字, “At the end of the year all the verdure withers” 歲暮百

———

120 Tu Shih Yin-te 12/15/4, CTS 216.2255, K.10507. Tu’s line evokes the movement of a coverlet embroidered with floral motifs. 121 Ch’üan Sung Tz’u 全宋詞 (Complete Sung Song Lyrics), compiled by T’ang Kui-chang 唐圭章, (Peking: Chung-hua, 1965), p.1924. 122 WH 22.15a (303); Lu Ch’in-li, p.1166; Hsieh Ling-yun Chi Chiao-chu (Taipei: Li-jen, 2004) p.178; cf. the translation by J.D. Frodsham in The Murmuring Stream: The Life and Works of the Chinese Nature Poet Hsieh Ling-yün (385-433), Duke of K’ang-lo (Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press, 1967), vol.1, p.147. 123 Ch’u Tz’u Pu-chu 2.19b (132); cf. Hawkes, first edition, p.43, Penguin edition, p. 115. 124 Tu Shih Yin-te 121/12/21, CTS 220.2322, K.10729.

330

CHAPTER SEVEN

草零. 125

Neither the collector, Hsü, nor the painters mentioned can be identified with certainty. Hsü is probably Hsü Tsin, and Officer Hsia is probably the artist Hsia Ch’ang 夏昶 (1388-1470), who specialised in bamboo painting. 126 Wintry Fragrance and Late Season were fancy names for plum blossoms and chrysanthemums respectively. Golden Coins was the name of a variety of chrysanthemum. On the Ghost Festival, a delegation of officials was sent, as usual, to the Imperial tombs to carry out rites. 127 Among those sent in 1513 were Ho’s friends Lü Nan and Hsü Tsin. Ho wrote farewell poems for both, although the trip was a short one. 128 He may also have written his yüeh-fu “Returning from the Tombs” 下陵曲 at this time. 129 A little later, Ho said goodbye to Cheng Shan-fu with a “Ballad of Shaoku-tzu” 少谷子行. 130 Disgusted by political life in Peking, Cheng was

——— 125

Tu Shih Yin-te 38/16/33, CTS 216.2265, K.10534. Cf. the translation of the entire poem in Susan Cherniack, “Three Great Poems by Dù Fŭ: ‘Five Hundred Words: A Song of my Thoughts on Travelling from the Capital to Fèngxiān,’ ‘Journey North,’ and ‘One Hundred Rhymes: A Song of my Thoughts on an Autumn Day in Kuífŭ, Respectfully Sent to Director Zhèng and Advisor to the Heir Apparent Lĭ’,” (Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1988), pp.103-06. 126 For Hsia Ch’ang, see DMB 525 (L. Carrington Goodrich and Lee Hwa-chou) and two articles by Takahata Tsunenobu 高畑常信: “Mindai no Bokuchiku Gaka Ka Chō no Shōgai” 明代の墨竹画家夏昶の生涯 (The Life of the Ming Bamboo Painter Hsia Ch’ang), Tokyo Gakugei Daigaku Kiyō 49 (1998), pp.115-41, and “Mindai no Gaka Ka Chō no Bokuchiku” 明代の画家夏昶の墨竹 (The Bamboo of the Ming Painter Hsia Ch’ang), ibid. 48 (1997) pp.259-81. 127 See Wu-tsung Shih-lu 102.3b (2110). 128 “Saying Farewell to Academician Lü, Who is Going to the Imperial Tombs” 送呂內翰上陵, HTFC 19.3a (310; 352:230); “Saying Farewell to Academician Hsü, Who is Going to the Imperial Tombs” 送徐內翰上陵, HTFC 19.3a (310; 352:231). For Hsü Tsin (1479-1545; t. Tzu-jung 子容; h. Yen-hsi 崦西), see TL 471, HY 3/127, TK 141 (for the transcription of his name, see Preface). He was a son-in-law of Wang Ao, the reluctant Grand Secretary under Liu Chin. He had passed the chin-shih in 1505 and then served in the Han-lin Academy and the Ministry of Civil Office. His fellow chin-shih of 1505 and native of Wu-hsien, Hsü Chen-ch’ing, chose him to handle his posthumous affairs; see the account of Hsü Chen-ch’ing in Wen Chenmeng’s 文震孟 Ku-su Ming-hsien Hsiao-chi 姑蘇名賢小記 (Brief Records of Noted Worthies from Old Soochow) (Hsin-chü Chai Ts’ung-shu) hsia-8b. In fact, Li Mengyang’s preface to Hsü Chen-ch’ing’s works records that he received them from Hsü Tsin. See “Preface to the Works of the Gentleman for Meritorious Achievement Hsü” 徐迪功集序, K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi 51.2b (1458). 129 HTFC 6.2a (58; 樂:048). 130 HTFC 13.7b (182; 371:020). The poem refers to Cheng’s having retired, which we know he did in the autumn of 1513. Cheng refers to the date of his departure both in a poem written in Tientsin on his way home, Cheng Shih 3.15a, Shao-ku Chi 3.4b

PEKING

331

going back to his native Fukien. He would return just in time for Ho’s departure in 1518. The Moon Festival brought at least two parties, one at T’ao Chi’s on the fourteenth of the month and one at Hou Yi-cheng’s on the sixteenth. Ho’s poem written at the latter, although an occasional piece, is of considerable interest, both on account of its own beauty, and because it sheds light on the complexity of the relationship between Ho’s poetry and the tradition behind it: 十六夜月集侯汝立秋月尚不减、客堂清宴闌。把杯看玉兔、駐馬簇金鞍。漸覺歲時暮、况驚關塞寒。霜笳中夜發、葉落滿長安。 Gathering at Hou Ju-li’s [Yi-cheng] for the Moon on the Sixteenth Night 131 The glow of the autumn moon still not diminished, In a sojourner’s hall, a fine banquet is ending. Cup in hand, I gaze toward the Rabbit of Jade, Tethering my horse, crowd in past golden saddles. I slowly awake to the evening of year and season, The more so, surprised by winter at frontier barriers. Frosty shawms perform in the dead of night— And leaves are falling, filling Ch’ang-an town. The fourth line adopts the latter part of a line by Tu Fu, in his “Sir Yen Takes the Trouble to Visit my Thatched Hall in Mid-Summer, and Brings Wine As Well for a Party: I Draw the [Rhyme] Word ‘Winter’” 嚴公仲夏枉駕草堂兼攜酒饌得寒字, “At blossoms’ edge I halt my horse, crowding in among golden saddles” 花邊立馬簇金鞍. 132 The final line duplicates almost exactly a line in “Remembering Recluse Wu of Chiang-shang” 憶江上吳處士 by the Mid-T’ang poet Chia Tao,

———

(40) and in a memorial written years later, “Requesting to Go Home” 乞歸疏, Cheng Wen 1.7a, Shao-ku Chi 14.8a (187). In the Cheng Shih, the poem has a short title, “Watching Archery” 觀射篇, with a headnote that reads, “In the Mid-Autumn Month of the k’ui-yu year (1513), I was travelling south and reached Tientsin, where I joined Mssrs. Wang and Liu in an archery competition at the West Encampment and then wrote a long poem.” In the Shao-ku Chi, the last part of the headnote, from “Tientsin” on, is the title. 131 HTFC 21.1a (357; 352:237). The Yung recension has the word 宅 ‘residence’ after Hou’s name. For Hou Yi-cheng (b.1481; t. Ju-li 汝立), see TK 115. For Ho’s poem written at T’ao Chi’s, “A Moon-viewing Gathering at T’ao Liang-po’s [Chi] on the Fourteenth Night” 十四夜對月集陶良伯, see HTFC 21.1a (357; 352:236). 132 Tu Shih Yin-te 374/15/2, CTS 227.2456, K.11252. Ho’s poem also includes ‘winter’ among its rhyme words.

332

CHAPTER SEVEN

“Falling leaves are filling Ch’ang-an Town” 落葉滿長安. 133 Chia’s line was quoted verbatim in a tz’u titled “Accelerando: Blossoms Filling the Roads” 促拍滿路花 attributed to the Sung poet Huang T’ing-chien 黃庭堅. 134

A jade hare was believed to live in the moon, where it ground the elixir of immortality in a mortar. Not only is the occasion for this poem a conventional one, but the form of the poem is ‘classic’. The traditional four-part ch’i-ch’eng-chuan-ho [or chieh] (起承轉合/結 ‘raise’, ‘take up’, ‘revolve’, ‘conclude’) formal pattern fits this poem better than it does some of Ho’s works. But in place of the sort of final couplet associated with Early and High T’ang occasional verse, rhetorical question and answer, Ho closes with two contrasted lines of perception whose relationship is created chiefly by the formal expectation that they must be related because of their position in the poem. That is, the first six lines have followed the conventional pattern so closely that one is forced to accept the final couplet as though it were “and what do I realise when I hear the frosty shawms? That autumn leaves are falling and filling up the long faded old capital of T’ang, at Ch’ang-an (used here, as usual, in place of Peking).” Ho’s ability to use the pattern afresh testifies to the vitality of the form and hence to the efficacy of the Archaist programme of mastery of the old T’ang structures. There is the additional point that the final line duplicates almost exactly the one written first by Chia Tao and later quoted, perhaps by Huang T’ing-chien, thus creating a new poem of his own that in a sense is nonetheless a T’ang poem in form and diction both. 135

——— 133

CTS 572.6647; K.31619. See Ch’üan Sung Tz’u, pp.417, 3858. According to T’ang Kui-chang, the poem is first found in the T’ien-tz’u T’u-p’u 填詞圖譜, where it is attributed to the late T’ang Taoist immortal Lü Tung-pin 呂洞賓. It was later attributed to Huang in the Yü-chang Hsien-sheng Yi-wen預章先生遺文, and is found in the Shan-ku Tz’u 山谷詞. 135 Other than analogous references to the moon—Chia mentions the toad supposed to inhabit it, in place of the Jade Hare—the poems have little else in common. The line itself was apparently well known. It was not, however, universally admired. Li Tung-yang comments that it is not as good as the line “Falling leaves are filling the empty hills” 落葉滿空山 by Wei Ying-wu; see [Huai-]lu T’ang Shih-hua, Yi-wen ed. p.17a; Chung-hua ed. p.1392; Ming Shih-hua Ch’üan-pien 2:1644; Li Tung-yang Chi 2:554. All of the earlier lines read 落葉 “falling leaves,” rather than 葉落 “leaves are falling” as in Ho’s poem. For Wei’s poem, “Sent to Taoist Ch’üan in the Pepper Hills” 寄全椒山中道士, see Wei Ying-wu Chi Chiao-chu (Shanghai: Shanghai Ku134

PEKING

333

Shortly after this, there was a party at T’ien Ju-tzu’s to celebrate the arrival of Wang T’ing-hsiang, back in Peking after his mission on censorial duties to Shensi. 136 By the Double Nine Festival, Wang Hsimeng too had returned to the capital from his mission to Shensi. 137 At least some of Ho’s friends were participants, as he was, in a project to write poems matching one titled “White Hair” 白髮 by Chang Chimeng. 138 A visit to T’ao Chi on the fourth day of the tenth month is recorded in one poem written at about this time, but T’ao himself was summoned home immediately after by the arrival of word that his father had died a few weeks before. 139 Ho and T’ao said their farewells at a temple near their Peking residences: 慈仁寺送良伯入寺松陰散鶴群、出城冬旭裊烟氛。叢篁僻地猶風葉、獨鴈荒臺倍朔雲。不奈旅魂江北斷、更看仙侶日邊分。燕山樓閣晴無數、朝暮鍾聲送客聞。 Saying Farewell to Liang-po [T’ao Chi] at Tzu-jen Temple 140 Entering the shade of temple pines, we scatter a flock of herons; Leaving the walls in a winter dawn, a haze of coiling smoke. Scrub bamboo in secluded spots shows the breeze is blowing still; A single goose over weed-grown outlooks increases the boreal clouds. There is no help for a travelling spirit, cut off north of the River;

———

chi, 1998) 3.173; CTS 188.1921; K.09003. 136 “An Evening Gathering at the Residence of Ch’in-fu [T’ien Ju-tzu]: At This Time, Ping-heng [Wang T’ing-hsiang] Arrived” 夜集勤甫宅時秉衡至, HTFC 21.1b (357; 352:238). 137 “On Tsung-che’s [Wang Hsi-meng] Arrival: An Evening Gathering” 宗哲初至夜集, HTFC 26.5a (458; 372:025). 138 “Matching ‘White Hair’, by Chang Tzu-ch’un [Chi-meng]” 和張子純白髮, HTFC 26.5b (459; 372:027). Ts’ui Hsien’s preface to the poems written to match Chang’s poem—written when Chang discovered to his dismay that his hair was turning white—says they were written by the ‘talented gentlemen of the capital’, Huan Tz’u (SKCS) 1.48b (394), not in the Ts’ui Shih Huan Tz’u. Chang’s own poem doesn’t appear to be extant, but one by Ho Meng-ch’un, titled “White Hair: Matching the Rhymes of Director Chang Tzu-ch’un” 白髮次張子醇正郎韻, has the same rhyme words as Ho Ching-ming’s; see Ho Wen-chien Kung Wen-chi 何文簡公文集 (Collected Literary Works of Ho the Literate and Plain Gentleman) (1574 edition) 6.21b. A colophon to the poems by Tung Chi also survives, “Written After the ‘White Hair’ Poems by Chang Tzu-ch’un of the Ministry of Rites,” Tung Chung-feng Hsiensheng Wen-hsüan (1561 edition) 9.7b. 139 “Visiting Liang-po [T’ao Chi] on the Fourth Day of the Tenth Month” 十月四日過良伯, HTFC 21.1b (358; 352:241). 140 HTFC 26.6b (460; 372:031).

334

CHAPTER SEVEN

Again I see an immortal fellow—parted at horizon’s edge. The pavilions and halls in the hills of Yen are countless in clear weather; At dawn and dusk their bells are heard, bidding sojourners farewell.

The dangers of public life were being brought home to Ho afresh. Not long after T’ao Chi’s departure, word came from Kiangsi that Li Meng-yang had been arrested. Li appears to have interpreted his mandate so liberally that he was soon in conflict with local officials. The charges against him were so serious that in 1513 he was imprisoned to await trial. 141 When Ho learned of this, he wrote a long letter on Li’s behalf to Yang Yi-ch’ing, the successful plotter against Liu Chin. Yang served as Minister of Personnel from January 1511 to 1515, and may in fact have been formally responsible both for Li’s appointment and for Ho’s 142 . Letter to Yang Sui-an [Yi-ch’ing] 上楊邃菴書 143 I have heard that enlightened men and wise gentlemen can select the

——— 141

It is hard to date these events precisely. According to the DMB entry on Li, based on the nien-piao, Li’s difficulties stemmed from a conflict between students and officials that broke out in 1514. But the entry later refers to Li’s arriving late for his trial in February of that year, which doesn’t seem to allow sufficient time for the intervening events. On the other hand, Liu Hai-han, followed by Chin Jung-ch’üan, in “Ho Ching-ming Nien-p’u Hsin-pien,” (Hsin-yang Shih-fan Hsüeh-yüan Hsüeh-pao 1995.1:98-102), p.100, dates Ho’s letter to Yang Yi-ch’ing (see below) in 1512, which is clearly too early. T’an Ch’ien’s Kuo-ch’üeh dates Li’s assignment to Kiangsi March 1, 1511 (Peking: Ku-chi, 1958) 48.2993, the despatch of the Chief Minister of the Court of Judicial Review Yen Chung 燕忠 to look into the case against him November 27, 1513 (49.3053), and the final judgement June 3, 1514 (49.3064). The doyen of Li Meng-yang scholars, Wang Kung-wang 王公望, sorts out the conflicting testimony of the early sources concerning the timing and occasion of Li’s troubles in his “Li Meng-yang Sheng-p’ing Jo-kan Shih-shih te K’ao-so Pien-wu” 李夢陽生平若干史實的考索辨誤 (An Investigation and Correction of Several Historical Facts Concerning Li Meng-yang’s Life), She-k’o Tsung-heng 1996.3:35-37, 41, especially pp.37, 41; and “Li Meng-yang Sheng-p’ing K’ao-pien Erh-t’i” 李夢陽生平考辨二題 (Two Critical Comments on Li Meng-yang’s Biography), Lan-chou Chiao-yü Hsüehyüan Hsüeh-pao 1997.2:22-26. 142 For Li Meng-yang and Yang Yi-ch’ing, see Wang Kung-wang, “Li Meng-yang K’ung-t’ung Chi Jen-ming Chien-cheng. (chih san), Kansu She-hui K’o-hsüeh 1995.5:67-70, p.67. 143 HTFC 32.6a (565; 書:502). Fu Wei-lin’s Ming Shu 明書 (History of the Ming) (Chi-fu Ts’ung-shu; repr. PP 94/36-41) 146.19a and Liu Ch’ing-chih’s 劉青芝 Ni Ming-tai Jen-wu Chih 擬明代人物志 (Draft Account of Ming Dynasty Personages) (1752; repr. Peking: Ch’üan-kuo T’u-shu-kuan Wen-hsien So-wei Fu-chih Chunghsin, 2004) p.87a (285), quoted in LHH 3.19a, give the addressee as Yang P’u 溥, but this is impossible, since P’u died years before Ho was born.

PEKING

335

good people amid a host of the evil and that perspicacious rulers and eminent ministers can recognise the virtuous even among swarms of the reprobate. When all conform with those like themselves, he who walks alone is left out. Indeed, when one takes what many mouths say to be the truth, the incorruptible and the self-controlled are dismissed. Why is this? It is because one who walks alone is reviled by conformists and one who is incorruptible and self-controlled is dismissed by the many. In ancient times, K’uang Chang 匡章 was rejected by the whole state, but was able to associate with Mencius, 144 Chi-mo 即墨 was slandered by the courtiers but received a fief from King Wei. 145 Confucius understood that Kung-yeh 公冶 was not at fault, 146 and Yen Ying 晏嬰 freed “Stone Father” 石父 from his bonds. 147 The reason for this is that the enlightened and wise will certainly investigate evil reports, and the perspicacious and eminent cannot be misled by a collection of slanders. Now, when there is someone like Li Meng-yang, who makes the effort to walk alone and is firmly incorruptible and self-controlled, who attacks the host of the evil and the swarms of the reprobate, how can one so wise as Your Honour not look a little more fully into the case and come to his assistance? It is not that I dare to suppose that he is without faults. He thinks highly of himself and will not defer to others; he is too impulsive and lacking in tact; he is very excitable and has little capacity for cooperation or accomodation; he is blind to the advice on gentleness and ignores counsel on the necessity of bending. 148 These are his faults. But there is much in him to admire: he is fond of

——— 144

This refers to a passage in the Mencius; see Meng-tzu Yin-te 33/4B/30, Lau, p.135. K’uang Chang was widely regarded as unfilial, but Mencius, asked why he treated him with courtesy, argued that in fact his conduct could not be called unfilial, but was rather highly moral. 145 In granting the officer of Chi-mo a fief of ten thousand households, King Wei of Ch’i told him that he had been hearing bad reports of his administration daily, but that when he sent someone to investigate it turned out that he had been doing an excellent job. It was only that he had not been cultivating the King’s entourage. The King also summoned an officer about whom he had had glowing reports, informing him that investigation showed him entirely incompetent and the reports the product of heavy bribery. He then had the latter officer boiled, his claque being boiled along with him. See Shih Chi 46.1888. 146 Confucius married his daughter to one Kung-yeh Chang 長, remarking that although Kung-yeh had been jailed, he was guilty of no crime; see Lun-yü Yin-te 7/5/1; Waley, p.107; Lau, p.76. 147 Yen Ying, the famous Chief Minister of Ch’i, redeemed one Yüeh 越 Shih-fu (‘Stone Father’) from prison on account of his wisdom, though Shih-fu later had to shame him into showing due courtesy; see Shih Chi 62.2135. 148 The first of these two phrases alludes to the Tao-te Ching. See Lao-tzu Chu-tzu So-yin 10A/3/18; Lau, p.66, “In concentrating your breath can you become as supple as a babe?” The second of the two perhaps alludes to the “Jen-chien” 人間 chapter of the Huai-nan-tzu, “When a sword bends, there must be damage”; Huai-nan-tzu Chishih (Peking: Chung-hua, 1998), p.1285.

336

CHAPTER SEVEN

improving his accomplishments; he relies on doing what is right, for the sake of his reputation; he is sure to choose what is good and to attack what is evil; he does not attach himself to the powerful, nor does he hurry down the path to advantage. Placed far away, he feels the shame of going unsummoned; placed close at hand, he maintains the courage not to strike his colours. 149 In private life he has the martial virtues [celebrated in the] Rabbit Snare 兔罝 [Ode]. 150 In public affairs, he displays the directness of undyed silk. 151 He has set his sights on virtuous conduct, to which he devotes his mind and in which he displays his strength. When he came into conflict with the Censor [in Kiangsi], their adherents exchanged attacks. He relied on his innocence and did not take the letter of the law into account. That this has dragged on endlessly is entirely his own doing. Now the respected and successful have finally become displeased, while the best people snicker derisively at him. The Speaking Officials [i.e. the Censors and Supervising Secretaries] race to denounce him at court, while the minions of the law push their investigations in prison. Their only concern is lest they fail to utterly destroy and humiliate him. Alas! This has gone too far!

Ho then goes on explain that Li’s troubles were due simply to his having taken his official responsibilities seriously and gone about his duties vigorously, with the result that he offended people comfortable with the status quo. Yang has a responsibility of his own, Ho reminds him. As the official in charge of the civil service, he should be actively supporting the honest and suppressing the corrupt, all the more in this case, since Li was a follower of Yang’s and known to him personally. The charges against him were simply slanders that had begun to acquire credibility by virtue of nothing but repetition. One had only to listen to the students and ordinary people of Kiangsi to learn the truth. The officials in the capital had no independent information about the situation; they were simply repeating rumours lest they seem out of step with their peers. If Yang would heed good testimony rather than bad, bearing Li’s genius in mind as well, he would intervene in the case and bring about a result that would be “not only fortunate for Li, but also for the dynasty and our civilization (國家斯文 kuo chia ssu wen) as well.”

———

149 I have here availed myself of a plausible English idiom to render an expression of whose exact meaning I am uncertain: 莫麾 mo hui (‘do-not’/ ‘banner’). 150 This is a reference to the seventh poem in the Songs; see Mao Shih Yin-te 2/7/1. 151 ‘Undyed silk’ ( 素絲 su ssu) is frequently employed in similes. I have not identified an antecedant for Ho’s use of it here, though the sense seems clear.

PEKING

337

We do not know if Ho’s letter itself was influential, but a senior official was eventually sent south to conduct Li’s trial. Li was found innocent of the specific charges against him but discharged from the ranks of those eligible for appointment to office in the future. At about this time, Wang T’ing-hsiang was also thrown into prison, having, like Ku Lin, fallen afoul of Liao T’ang. Ho’s response was a long and almost hysterical poem written on receiving a letter written by Wang in his cell: 子衡在獄感懷二十韻朋儔日乖蹇、念汝涕如濆。賈誼生非晚、鄒陽志不群。書從梁獄上、哭向漢庭聞。天地虞羅密、江湖釣餌芬。路豺那可問、屋鼠竟難熏。已懼蒼蠅點、真成貝錦文。神龍在污淖、鷙鳥失青雲。日月盆還覆、薰蕕器不分。斗間誰辨劍、野外枉懷芹。談虎嗟何及、亡猿禍已云。高才元脫略、眾口但紛紜。木直防先伐、蘭芳忌自焚。晝臺幽白日、冬井下霜雰。曉榻明星皙、陰墻白草曛。連驂虛繾綣、尺牘阻慇懃。石父遭齊相、鍾儀滯楚軍。受書賢不死、演易聖猶勤。縲絏終非罪、文章固有勳。燕臣霜霰烈、庶女震雷殷。佇見天王聖、金雞早赦君。 I am Moved by the Imprisonment of Tzu-heng [Wang T’ing-hsiang] 152 My friends and associates are daily, perversely lamed; Thinking of you, my tears are like a fountain. Chia Yi’s birth did not come late; Tsou Yang’s goals did not follow the herd. Your letter came up from the prison of Liang; Your wails were heard in the courtyards of Han. The nets of the bailiff of heaven and earth are fine; The bait on the hooks of river and lakes is sweet. How can jackels on the road be charged?

———

152 HTFC 23.11b (415; 353:010). There are a number of textual variations in this poem, including minor ones in the title and a misprint in the Honan edition (‘right conduct’ 義 for the homophonous ‘Changes’ 易 in the seventh line). The two requiring comment are: 1) In the first line, where the Yung and Standard recensions have 乖 ‘perversely’, the Shen and Yüan recensions read 幸 ‘fortunate’. Where the Shen and Yung recensions vary from one another, the Yüan recension almost invariably agrees with Shen. The Standard recension, in contrast, may agree with either. When it agrees with the Shen reading, that in the Yung recension is generally manifestly poor. When it agrees with the Yung text against the Shen and Yüan, the Yung reading is generally plausible and often preferable to the Shen, as here. 2) In the fourteenth line from the end, the Yüan and Standard recensions read 榻 ‘couch’ in place of the homophonous 闥 ‘gate’. The latter, after all the reading of both of the earlier recensions, makes a better parallel. The error probably appeared and survived because of the homophony.

338

CHAPTER SEVEN

Rats in a house are hard indeed to smoke. Now I fear that dirty flyspecks Have truly turned to shell brocade. The numinous dragon lies in filth and mud; All the raptors have lost their white clouds. The basin of sun and moon is still overturned; The vessels for orchid and stinkweed are not distinguished. Who makes out the sword among the dippers? For a man in the wilds, foolish to cherish cress. The mention of tigers—alas, how can that come in time? Extermination of gibbons—disaster is already here. Lofty talent completely escapes restraints; A host of mouths can only blather and babble. A tree’s straightness wards off the prior felling; An orchid’s fragrance resists its immolation. The daytime terrace is quiet in the bright sunlight; The winter well draws down a frosty vapour. By the morning gate, the gleaming stars are bright; By the shady wall, the pallid herbs are dark. For nothing the troika team is closely hitched; The briefest message hinders earnest labours. Stone Father encountered the minister of Ch’i; Chung Yi lingered in the army of Ch’u. Having accepted the writings, a wise man did not die; In elaborating the Changes, the Sage was still industrious. To be bound and tied is not in the end a crime; Literate essays will surely have their reward. The subject of Yen was ardent as frost or sleet; The commoner’s daughter so earnest she shook out thunder. We look to behold the wisdom of Heaven’s king; The golden cockerel will bring your pardon soon.

We do not know just when Wang was arrested. He had returned to Peking a free man during the autumn (see above). According to the Ming T’ung-chien, Yang Yi-ch’ing, who had already tried to stand up for Meng Yang, made a plea early in the twelfth month for Wang and another Censor imprisoned for denouncing Liao T’ang, Liu T’ien-ho 劉天和 (1479-1545). 153 Ho’s poem includes a number of historical references that require explication, in addition to a good deal of extravagant metaphor, some

———

153 MTC 45.1687. For Liu (t. Yang-ho 養和, h. Sung-shih 松石), see MS 200.5292, HY 3/228, TL 824, TK 117. Liu’s career recovered from this setback, though slowly at first, and he eventually rose to the post of Minister of War.

PEKING

339

of which derives from earlier literature. For Chia Yi, see above. Tsou Yang 鄒陽, also a man of the Han dynasty, was known for his fearless remonstration. Although imprisoned on the basis of slander, he was freed and eventually rose to high office. 154 The ninth line alludes to a passage in the biography of Chang Kang 張鋼 (yet another Han figure). Though young and only a Censor (like Wang T’ing-hsiang), Chang buried his carriage wheels outside the gates of Loyang (indicating that he would not back down) and submitted a memorial criticizing corruption among the powerful, saying, “When jackals and wolves hold the road (i.e. power), why charge foxes?” (i.e. why bother denouncing small criminals when there are evil-doers in high places). 155 ‘Shell brocade’ is used as a simile for the productions of slanderers in the Songs. 156 Confucius’s student Yen Hui 顏回 is recorded as declaring that orchids and stinkweed could not be kept in the same vessel, meaning that good men and bad were incompatible. 157 The rustic who thought watercress such a treat that he wanted to present some to the Emperor is referred to in Hsi K’ang’s “Letter Breaking Off Relations with Shan Chü-yüan [T’ao].” 158 The preceding line is surely built on an allusion as well, but my most assiduous search has failed to turn up a source. The next line may draw on the proverbial distinction between true (i.e. experiential) understanding and mere knowledge at second hand. That is, when tigers were mentioned in a certain gathering, the only man to turn pale was the one who had actually been mauled by a tiger. 159 If this is in fact what Ho had in mind, its significance is that by the time the dangers Wang had been warning of have arrived it will be too late for first-hand knowledge of them to do any good. Of the significance of the following line I am even less certain. If it too draws on an old saying, in this case, “to kill one monkey to scare a hundred,” then it

———

154 See Tsou’s biography in the Shih Chi, 83.2468-78, almost all of which is taken up with his eloquent petition in his own defense; the Han Shu biography provides an account of his subsequent career (Peking: Chung-hua, 1962) 51.2338-58. 155 See Hou Han Shu (Peking: Chung-hua, 1965) 56.1817. 156 Mao Shih Yin-te 47/200/1. 157 K’ung-tzu Chia-yü Chu-tzu So-yin (Taipei: Taiwan Shang-wu, 1992) 8.1 (10/26); transl. R.P. Kramers, K’ung-tzu Chia-yü: The School Sayings of Confucius (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1950), pp.231, 323. 158 WH 43.1b (592). 159 Told in Ch’eng Hao 程顥 and Ch’eng Yi 程頤, Erh Ch’eng Chi 二程集 (Collected Works of the Two Ch’eng) (Peking: Chung-hua, 1981), p.16.

340

CHAPTER SEVEN

may buttress the preceding line, having the sense, “by the time all the messengers have been shot, disaster will already be upon us.” In a passage in the Chuang-tzu, a wise man reminds Confucius that the straightest tree is the first to be felled. 160 Ho is apparently rejecting this advocacy of quiescence rather than action, at least in the case of a lofty talent like Wang’s, and likewise the notion lying behind the second line in this couplet, that it is the orchid’s fragrance that gets it made into incense and burned. For ‘Stone Father’, see above. Chung Yi was taken captive when a Ch’u invasion of Cheng was turned back by the forces of a group of allied states. Cheng presented Chung Yi to the ruler of Tsin, one of the allies. This ruler was so impressed with Chung Yi’s conduct during an interview that he returned him to Ch’u, and this became the basis for better relations between the two states. 161 Stone Father and Chung Yi were both men whose excellent qualities went unrecognised until after they had been imprisoned (or held captive). Ho is presumably encouraging Wang T’ing-hsiang to believe that he—like both of them—will eventually be seen for the loyal and high-principled official he is. The wise man who did not die—at least not when he was supposed to—was Ssu-ma Ch’ien, author of the “Records of the Grand Historian” (Shih Chi). The great history had been begun by his father, who, on his deathbed, tearfully passed the manuscript on to his son with the injunction that he complete the work. When Ch’ien was subsequently sentenced to castration (a sentence to which the expected response was suicide), he underwent the punishment in order to complete the history. When King Wen, founder of the Chou dynasty, was imprisoned by the evil last King of the Shang, he used the time to construct the 64 hexagrams of the Changes and write a commentary on them. I do not know who is meant by the ‘subject of Yen’; there seems to be no reference to Ching K’o, whose assassination attempt on the First Emperor was undertaken on behalf of the King of Yen (see above, chapter six). The ‘commoner’s daughter’, on being wrongfully convicted of murdering her mother-in-law, cried out to heaven against the injustice, whereupon heaven responded with a deafening clap of thunder and a lightning bolt that struck the Duke’s terrace and injured the Duke

——— 160 161

Chuang-tzu Yin-te 52/20/32; Watson, p.213, not in Graham. Ch’un-ch’iu Ching-chuan Yin-te 224/Ch’eng 7/8 ff.; Legge pp.363-72.

PEKING

341

himself. 162 A golden image of a chicken, mounted at the end of a pole, was traditionally displayed on the occasion of the promulgation of an amnesty. Although this poem ends with a reassuring prediction, a truer reflection of Ho’s view of Wu-tsung may be concealed in the earlier reference to “the numinous dragon lying in filth and mud.” The comings and goings of Ho’s friends continued to be registered in poetry throughout the winter, even as the political atmosphere grew tense. There was another ritual delegation sent to the Imperial tombs on the occasion of the winter solstice, and Ho welcomed back to Peking a friend who had been among the party: 劉德徵上陵還有贈仙郎昨自五陵歸、駿馬朝回獨掩扉。已向西山瞻帝寢、更從北極眺王畿。霜鍾澗壑流清漢、玉殿松杉眇翠微。先帝侍臣零落盡、泰園宮草日霏霏。 On Being Given a Poem by Liu Te-cheng [Wen-huan], Who Has Returned from the Imperial Tombs 163 A Transcendent Gentleman just returned from the Five Imperial Tumuli, On his noble steed come home from court, he shuts his gate alone. He has been away to visit Emperor’s Rest in the Western Hills; And then below the Northern Pole he looked toward the Royal Precincts. A frosty bell in canyons and glens, adrift on the Limpid River; A jeweled mansion’s pines and cypress stretch to the Purple Heights. The attendent subjects of former emperors now all lost and forgotten, In the Ultimate Garden the palace weeds grow thicker by the day. ‘Shutting one’s gate alone’ is a phrase found more than once in the tradition. Sometimes it appears in contexts quite remote in atmosphere from Ho’s poem, is in “Distant Meeting Song” 遠期篇 by the late Six Dynasties poet Yü Ch’eng-shih 庾成師, which depicts a lonely woman missing her absent lover, “All this only makes my pink cheeks fade; / Alone I shut the gate of my blue tower” 坐使紅顏歇、獨掩青樓扉. 164

——— 162

See Huai-nan Tzu Chi-shih p.443. HTFC 26.6b (460; 372:032). For Liu Wen-huan 劉文煥 (1482-1528) (t. Techeng 德徵, Tzu-wei 子緯, h. Lan-ts’un 蘭村), see TL 823, TK 117. The chief source for biographical information about him is the epitaph by Han Pang-ch’i, Yüan-lo Chi (1552 edition) 5.14b. There is a somewhat complex textual variation in the final line. I follow the Yung, Yüan, and Standard recensions in reading ‘Ultimate Garden’ (T’ai yüan). The Shen recension has 秦園 ‘Ch’in Garden’, a plausible alternative. The Standard recension, in one of its occasional notes of readings found in other sources (not identified) records another alternative, 園花 ‘garden flowers’. 164 YTHY 8.31b (141); Lu Ch’in-li, p.2136. 163

342

CHAPTER SEVEN

In other cases it is closer, as in Wei Ying-wu’s “The Courtyard of Master Numinous Stillness” 神靜師院 , “The sound of sutras deep among the bamboo; / In a lofty retreat he shuts the gate alone” 經聲在深竹、高齋獨掩扉. 165

‘Transcendant gentleman’ was an elegant term applied during the T’ang dynasty to men serving as Directors or Vice-Directors. ‘Five Tumuli’ referred to the territory north of Ch’ang-an, where there were five prominent imperial tombs of Han date. Shang-ling refers to the tombs of the Ming emperors. ‘Emperor’s Rest’and the ‘Ultimate Garden’, were evidently places in the same area. The first three couplets of this poem could have been written at any time, for they are a fine example of the ‘High T’ang’ heptasyllabic poem on a formal occasion, especially the inner couplets, which sweep grandly around the horizon and into the heavens—the ‘canyons and glens’ of the fifth line, like the ‘purple heights’ of the sixth, refer to the mountains south of the old capital. It is this grand sweep that makes the final couplet surprising. By virtue of continuing the high-toned language of the rest of the poem, its reference to the uneasy present—Li Meng-yang and Wang T’ing-hsiang having been among the ‘attendant subjects’ of the late Emperor Hsiao-tsung—lends an urgent pathos to the final image of the neglected tombs of earlier, and better, sovereigns.

——— 165

Wei Ying-wu Chi Chiao-chu 7.465.

CHAPTER EIGHT

LIFE AT THE CENTRE OF THINGS ONE HELLUVA FIRE Li Meng-yang’s case was not finally resolved until the early summer of 1514. In the meanwhile, another of Ho’s friends, T’ien Ju-tzu, was assigned to Kiangsi. Sometime after the assignment became known, Ho presented him with a poem about a painting in his collection. The painting was by Wu Wei 吳偉, generally considered one of the better painters of the Che school: 吳偉飛泉畫圖歌長安獨過田子舍、留我一玩飛泉畫。絕壁如聞風雨來、晴天安得蛟龍掛。吳生跌宕得畫理、潦草落筆皆可喜。飛泉却出沓嶂間、山即真山水真水。客堂六月生晝寒、耳中髣髴高江灘。源潭窈窕不可測、波浪洶湧多奇觀。泉邊二老顏色異、偶坐似是莊與惠。萬里誰論到海心、百年詎識臨淵意。偉哉田子今儒宗、文標南指匡廬峰。不須對此更惆悵、會觀瀑布青天上。杉風松日隔縹緲、雲瀧雪灨何雄壯、我常夢往神空向、豈無吳生好手筆、為我寫寄廬山障。 A Song on Wu Wei’s Painting, “The Waterfall” 1 While in Ch’ang-an I go alone to visit Master T’ien; He keeps me on to enjoy a painting of a waterfall.

———

1 HTFC 14.10a (206; 371:027). For Wu Wei (1459-1509) (t. Tz’u-weng 次翁, h. Hsiao-hsien 小仙, Mu-ying 木英, Lu-t’ien 魯天), see TL 247, HY 2/102, KHL 115.44 (5082—Li Lien), TK 124, James Cahill, Parting at the Shore: Chinese Painting of the Early and Middle Ming Dynasty 1368-1580 (New York: Weatherhill, 1978), pp.98-106. For a poem by Li Meng-yang on a Wu Wei painting, see “A Song of Wu Wei’s Painting ‘Reading the “Changes” in a Pine Tree Window’” 吳偉畫松窗讀易圖歌 , K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi (1530; repr. Taipei: Wei-wen, 1976) 20.4b (464). The Yung recension has four variant readings in this poem that are found in no other version of the text. Two of them are clearly errors, variously due to confusion of similar shapes or similar sounds, 鐵岩 ‘iron cliff’ for 跌宕 ‘fancy free’ in line 5 and 三 ‘three’ for 二 ‘two’ in line 13. One amounts to little change in meaning, 濤 for 浪 in line 12, both words meaning ‘wave’. The last, 灘 ‘rapids’ for 潭 ‘pool’ in line 11, again based on similarity of sound, is possible, but would upset the contrast between the quiet and active parts of the stream in the two lines of the couplet.

344

CHAPTER EIGHT

Precipitous cliffs—I seem to hear the wind and rain approach; Sunny weather—how could kraken or dragons soar up there? Master Wu, with fancy free, had caught the secrets of painting; When heedless and easy he let fall his brush it was always a thing of joy. His cascade emerges behind a gap between the crags; The mountains are real mountains, the river a real river! In a visitor’s hall in the sixth month, a chill is born in daylight; I seem to hear inside my ears a lofty river’s shallows. Its source and pools remote and quiet, never to be fathomed; Its waves and ripples surge and splash in many marvellous views. Beside the stream are two old men whose looks are passing strange; Sitting together they seem none other than Chuang-tzu and Hui Shih. Over ten thousand leagues, with whom to discuss the meaning of reaching the sea? For a hundred years, who knows what it means to view the abyss ? Magnificent! Master T’ien is now the leader of scholars! A cultural beacon points to the south, to the summit of Mt. K’uang-lu! There is no need with this in view to be more sad and sorrowful; I chance to behold this soaring cascade atop the azure sky. A cypress wind and pine tree sun set off remote and vast; The cloudy Lung and snowy Kan—how virile and strong they are! I have often dreamed of going away toward the mystic void. How could I lack the practised hand and brush of Master Wu To draw and send to me the peaks of Mt. Lu-shan. The third line of Ho’s third stanza may recall a poem by Shen Yüeh, “On a Morning Journey I Hear the Geese at Dawn” 晨征聽曉鴻, “The mountains of Ch’u are high, to hard to cross; / The rivers of Yüeh are deep, never to be fathomed” 楚山高兮杳難度、越水深兮不可測. 2 The second line of the fourth stanza is clearly reminiscent of a line in Tu Fu’s “Song Inscribed on the Screen of Pine Trees by Master Li” 題李尊師松樹障子歌, “Beneath the pine trees, the old men in similar caps and sandals, / Sitting together they seem none other than the old men of Mt. Shang” 松下丈人巾屨同、偶坐似是商山翁. 3 There is a parallel between the last line of this stanza and the penultimate line of “Crossing the Hu-t’o” (see above, chapter four); although it is obscured by context in translation; both lines refer to ‘understanding the meaning of viewing’ 識臨意. In the third line of the final stanza, Ho may be

———

2 YTHY 9.42b (165); Lu Ch’in-li, p.1667. There are texual differences between the two; I have followed the readings of the Yü-t’ai Hsin-yung. 3 Tu Shih Yin-te 108/9/13-14, CTS 219.2305, K.10672. The old men of Mt. Sung were recluses who retired there because they heard that the King of Chou took good care of the elderly.

LIFE AT THE CENTRE OF THINGS

345

recalling a passage in Pao Chao’s “Rhapsody on the Dancing Cranes” 舞鶴賦, “Looking up toward the lofty distance of their heavenly home, / All the more are they stricken sad and sorrowful” 仰天居之崇絕、更惆悵以驚思. 4

In view of the close association between poetry and painting in later times, it is striking that virtually the earliest extant poems written about paintings are the set of twenty-five “Songs of Painted Screens” 詠畫屏風 by the late Six Dynasties poet Yü Hsin 庾信. 5 Chuang-tzu, the Taoist philosopher, often made his friend, the logician Hui-tzu, the straight man for his exuberant lectures. The following couplet alludes to two passages in the Chuang-tzu. In one, the River God is abashed when he reaches the ocean in full spate and discovers his own insignificance. In the other, a confident archer is reduced to a nervous wreck when challenged to shoot while standing on the edge of a chasm. 6 Both of these allusions suggest the point, central to much of the Chuang-tzu, that what we know and how we feel about it depends on who and where we are. This makes it likely that the ‘abyss’ reference is to be interpreted in this way, rather than as an indication of simple fear (as in the Analects, see below, chapter eleven, “To Sanch’a from the Chiang-tzu Range”) or according to the old saying, “Rather than just gazing into the depths and wanting a fish, it’s better to go home and weave a net.” 7 The opening couplet of the last stanza refers to T’ien’s new appointment as Education Intendant in Kiangsi, where his duties supervising students would bring him into the vicinity of Mt. K’uang-lu (more commonly referred to as Lu-shan). One of the famous sights of Lu-shan was a very high waterfall. The Lung and Kan rivers lie to the south of Mt. Lu, the Kan in Kiangsi and the Lung in Kwangtung. Ho wrote a number of other poems for T’ien Ju-tzu during the late winter and early spring, culminating in one written at a farewell party held on the evening of the Lantern Festival:

———

4 WH 14.10a (192); Pao Shih Chi (SPTK) 1.2a (2); also translated in Knechtges, 3:81. 5 Lu Ch’in-li, pp.2395-98; Yü Tzu-shan Chi Chu 庾子山集注 (Collected Works of Yü Tzu-shan, Annotated) (Peking: Chung-hua, 1980) 4.353. 6 See Chuang-tzu Yin-te 42/17/1-10, 56/21/57-57/21/61; Graham pp. 144-45 (second anecdote only); Watson, pp.45-46, 230-31. 7 Cited in the biography of Tung Chung-shu, Han Shu (Peking: Chung-hua, 1962) 56.2505.

346

CHAPTER EIGHT

元夜孫世其席上餞勤甫京國上元夜、相逢魂黯然。張燈非舊俗、滿月是離筵。楚塞干戈外、春城鼓角邊。同遊重分手、海內各風烟。 At Sun Shih-ch’i’s [Chi-fang] Farewell Banquet for Ch’in-fu [T’ien Ju-tzu] on the Lantern Festival 8 In the capital city the night of the Lantern Fair, We meet, our hearts are overcome with sadness. Displaying lanterns is not the ancient custom, The moon shines full on this, our farewell feast. The passes of Ch’u are beyond the clash of battle; The wall in springtime, lined with bugles and drums. Fellow roamers, again we must part hands; Within the seas, we all are mist in the wind.

This poem’s reference to lanterns ‘not in the ancient custom’ was probably intended to reflect not on the display of lanterns per se, a very old custom indeed, but rather on the particularly extravagant display mounted, in an unorthodox fashion, in the palace for Wutsung’s entertainment. All three men may well have seen at least part of this display at a great banquet held for officials, foreign envoys, and the like the day before the Lantern Festival itself. 9 Wu-tsung had been lavishing considerable sums on elaborate lantern displays for the Festival ever since his accession. This year, an Imperial prince whose fief was in Kiangsi, Prince Ning 寧王 (Chu Ch’en-hao 朱宸濠), having heard of the Emperor’s hobby and having also his own purposes (much to be considered in light of later events), had sent a present of especially elaborate lanterns to the palace, along with men to set them up inside. 10

———

8 HTFC 18.8b (295; 352:017). T’ien Ju-tzu’s assignment had been announced in the eleventh month; see Wu-tsung Shih-lu (Taipei: Chung-yang Yen-chiu-yüan, 1964) 106.8a (2181). Other poems composed in conjunction with T’ien’s imminent departure include “A Ballad of Master T’ien” 田子行, HTFC 13.5b (180; 371:016); “A Farewell Banquet at Master T’ien’s Residence” 田子宅宴別, HTFC 19.4a (312; 352:247); and “A Moonlit Evening at the Residence of Wang Tsung-che [Hsi-meng]: Presented to Kiangsi Education Intendant T’ien Ch’in-fu [Ju-tzu]” 月夜王宗哲宅贈田勤甫 , HTFC 26.7a (461; 372:034). Tai Kuan’s farewell poem is also extant, “Saying Farewell to T’ien of T’ai-hang, Who is Going to Kiangsi” 送田太行使江西, Tai Shih Chi (1548; repr. TM 4:63, Tainan: Chuang-yen Wen-hua, 1997) 9.21b (69). 9 See the Wu-tsung Shih-lu 108.2b (2202). The occasion for the banquet was the completion of the annual sacrifices at the altars to heaven and earth. 10 For the lanterns and the ensuing fire, see MTC 45.1689 and the much fuller account in the Wu-tsung Shih-lu 108.3b (2204).

LIFE AT THE CENTRE OF THINGS

347

Whether or not Ning had intended an ‘accident’ to take place, an accident there was. Fireworks had been stored under the eaves of one of the palace buildings, partitioned off behind a screen of rugs. By some mischance, the gunpowder was ignited by a lantern, and soon the entire main palace building was in flames. Between the highly combustible nature of the materials and the limited means available for fighting the fire, the conflagration blazed on all night, lighting up the sky far and wide. Wu-tsung, on his way to the Leopard Quarter to watch a performance, looked back at the inferno and commented to his attendants, “Now, that’s what I call one helluva fire!” (是一棚大烟火也). Under ordinary circumstances, only certain officials were allowed to submit unsolicited memorials critical of the court or government policy: Censors, Supervising Secretaries, and Grand Secretaries. Now, however, comment was invited from all who would, in what was a traditional reaction to something taken to be a bad omen, and responses to the invitation were not lacking. Official after official denounced the power wielded by ‘petty people close to the throne’. Among Ho’s acquaintances alone, memorials are recorded as having been submitted by Lü Ching, Hsiung Chi 熊紀, Lü Nan, Yang Yich’ing, Shih Ju 施儒, Lei Wen 雷雯, and Chang Shih-lung. 11 The common theme was the need for Wu-tsung to rid himself of unworthy hangers-on and take seriously his responsibilities as Son of Heaven, but many memorialists also raised particular instances of injustice done to officials who had dared to voice criticism, including Meng

———

11 The MTC 45.1690-92 gives substantial extracts from the more important memorials. Fuller texts are supplied from a larger number of memorials in the Wutsung Shih-lu, which enters them according to the date of their submission (108.4b [2206] ff.). For Hsiung Chi (t. Shih-chen 時振, T’ing-chen 廷振), see HY 2/280, TL 770, TK 160. He was a native of Honan and passed the chin-shih with Ho in 1502. For Shih Ju (1478-1539; t. P’in-chih 聘之, h. Hsi-t’ing 西亭), see TL 341, HY 3/32, KHL 99.105a (4424—Chang Yüan), TK 144. He was a southerner who had passed the chü-jen in 1507 but did not take the Palace examination, the final stage of the chin-shih process, in order to avoid association with Liu Chin. In 1511, the chin-shih was conferred on him, and he became a Censor. He was a friend of Tu Mu and of such well-known southern artists and writers as Wen Cheng-ming and Chu Yün-ming. For Lei Wen (t. Huan-chang 煥章), see TL 693, HY 2/290, TK 192. A native of Honan, he had passed the chin-shih in 1508 and become an official in Peking. As it happened, his father had come to stay with him in the capital the preceding year. When there was no response to his memorial, he requested leave to escort his father home. He died there, but we do not know when.

348

CHAPTER EIGHT

Yang, Wang Ch’ung-ch’ing (see below), and Ts’ao Hu. Ho Ching-ming’s memorial was not unusual in any way, except in coming from someone who had had little opportunity in the past to voice his criticism directly to the throne. He thus serves as an apt representative of the manifold dissatisfactions of the civil officials with their ruler. In Response to Imperial Command: A Disquisition on Governance for Stability 應詔陳言治安疏 12 Your subject, Ho Ching-ming, Drafter in the Central Drafting Office, respectfully offers a proposal in response to Your command for formal discussion of administrative security. Recently, the Imperial residence was burned; Your Majesty was alarmed, and issued an edict to all your officials, seeking frank discussion from your inferiors. All your officials, high and low, looked up and saw the worry on the Sagely Countenance; they humbly obeyed the Imperial decree and did so with a pang; none was not moved to tears, for they said, the Sagely Mind has been awakened, and things are going to change. Sorrow and joy came by turns, and they felt consoled and excited both. And yet, since the promulgation of Your edict, more than a week has passed, and You have yet to come to court. Your senior ministers and speaking officials have submitted proposals concerning such issues as frontier soldiers, foreign monks, and adopted sons, but not a single word has been accepted and not a single action has been taken. In my opinion, the appearance of disasters and prodigies shows that the way of Heaven is close at hand. If Your Majesty is to turn back the wrath of Heaven above and calm the minds of the people below, matters such as the above-mentioned should be considered and reformed quickly. But now you are leaving them be as they are and not dealing with even one or two of them. Surely, now that Your Majesty’s awareness has been awakened, the chance for change will not be blocked again! Your officials and people will all be disappointed, and within and without will truly be sorry. When catastrophe is close at hand, regrets and urgencies grow deep, but when things have built up and come to a head it is too late for reform or rescue! I have sought the origins of Heaven’s meaning above

———

12 應詔陳言治安疏, HTFC 32.1a (562; 雜:501), YK B.14a. The Wu-tsung Shih-lu includes the memorial along with those of Sun Chi-fang and others, 108.10ab (221718). Ho Ching-ming’s remonstrance is recorded under a date corresponding to February 17, 1514, the eighth day after the fire, 108.10a (2217). It is surprising that it had not been already included in the Shen recension. Perhaps it was felt to be too ‘hot’ politically even after Wu-tsung’s death, but before the completion of the Veritable Records for his reign, which included it. I have collated only a small part of the Yi-kao text.

LIFE AT THE CENTRE OF THINGS

349

and investigated the minds of the people below; I have considered human affairs close at hand and examined antiquity at a distance. The cusp between order and disorder, between survival and loss, is in fact before us today. Your Majesty must plan and organise a transformation, change your strings and alter your course, for if this is not done now, there will be no doing it later. Of the administration of the world, I have heard that if it is intense there will be order; if it is slack there will be disorder; with clear vision there will be order, in darkness, disorder. Order, disorder, survival, and loss—their principles are certainly like this. At present, superiors and inferiors rely on their contacts, while the distant and the close are blocked; there are defects in laws and regulations, ritual and right are not made clear, the substance of merit is not investigated, and ranks and duties are indiscriminately assigned. Practices of fraud and secrecy are gaining ground, while habits of irresponsibility and sloth have taken hold. In addition, the people’s livelihood is now straitened, and banditry has not yet ceased; the armies are ill-prepared and both materiel and strength are exhausted. Externally things are barely being sustained, and within they are actually collapsing. When things are in this state and the ways of bringing them under control are as I have stated them, why does Your Majesty not exercise prudence in your person and attack the roots of the problem instead of letting your will run free and waiting for disaster to be complete? I have heard that the firm adherence of the within and without is the tao of permanence. At present, Your Sagely Person stands alone; no successor has been established, so within you lack family members on whom your limbs could rest, and without you lack relations to whom you could entrust your most vital interests. Your empress and consorts do not enjoy your attention, nor do the most senior officials get to communicate with you. Instead, you go about with frontier soldiers and spend your days and nights with foreign monks and adopted sons. These things are unprecedented, never heard of in previous courts. Why does Your Majesty not do all that your advisors have said and show soon that you have heard and judged? Moreover, a field with soldiers and horses rushing about on it cannot compare with a vast hall spread with fine mats, 13 nor can the perverse and sordid doctrines of barbarians compare with the presence of cultivated gentlemen discussing and criticising. I have never heard of anyone preferring the former or wearying of the latter. As for adopted sons, they are simply subjects who are imperial favourites. From ancient times on, imperial favourites have rarely been able to come to a good end. When we see the origins from which they came, they are a heap of iniquities. Your Majesty ought to remove and repress them, the

——— 13

This was an ancient phrase descriptive of a ruler’s palace.

350

CHAPTER EIGHT

sooner the better, clearly demonstrating what spheres and status are, so that superiors can preserve their prosperity and their inferiors can preserve their heads and necks. When right has not been lost sight of, favour will surely have its proper objects. Would this not be a fine thing to do? Now, the administration and reporting of state affairs really lies with the senior officials. If the senior officials are efficient and good, things will be quiet. I believe that when the senior officials make proposals about something, they should make possible a quick decision between right and wrong, clearly laying out the advantages and disadvantages and making the standards and regulations clear, so that the principles for handling it are right. Inappropriate proposals and suggestions couched in ambiguous terms should be dealt with in accordance with the Emperor’s decision. Then control will not be subverted, merit and facts will not be misrepresented, and designations and functions can be rectified. As for the promotion and dismissal of senior officials, they should be decided on the basis of right. Those who offer bribes to secure their advancement or who compromise shamelessly should all be dismissed and discharged from service. If you then reward and promote the unassuming and seek out worthy elders, reputation and integrity will be obvious and officials will not treat them carelessly. Afterward oversee the officials conscientiously in order to bring about wise governance and generously tend the common people in order to nurture the basis of prosperity. Such is the general outline of governing and security. If one asks its great fundamental, it lies in Your Sagely person. If speech is sincere, why fear its giving offense? If Your Majesty finds written proposals too complicated and petty, if they confuse Your Sagely perception, the best thing would be to go to an informal palace, inviting the senior officials and summoning your attendants. Let those who do not observe the rituals that distinguish the honoured from the base be strictly excluded. The situation of superior and inferior may thus be entirely accomplished. They will certainly be able to set out their explanations of advantage and loss, open up the tao of disaster and prosperity, and comment critically on current affairs, doing so with sincere speech in order to enlighten Your Majesty. I have heard that in the cases of working before relaxing and relaxing before working the distances between the first activity and the second are very different. Hence after caution there will certainly come abundant happiness, while after neglect and idleness there will certainly come abundant troubles. If Your Majesty would embody the kindly love of the heavenly mind, ponder the words of your ancestors and predecessors, firmly take on power yourself, and constantly increase your prudence, making it your duty to promote solid policies without troubling about empty frills, you could establish the government of Great Peace. You could tread forever the security of the Ninefold Palace and permanently enjoy the pleasures of ruling a great state. Your

LIFE AT THE CENTRE OF THINGS

351

troubles would last merely a brief while, but your ease would be endless. What difficulty stands in the way of Your Majesty’s doing this? In antiquity, King Ch’eng was moved by the transformation of wind and thunder, and Kao-tsung was moved by the strangeness of the pheasant’s cry; these attained the effect of excellent peace. If Your Majesty were only deeply moved to understanding and instituted a small change, the world would follow you as the grass follows the wind, the barbarians would surely look up to the trend and be transformed, and the accomplishments attained and preserved by the Shang and Chou dynasties would surely be thought no greater. I am a rustic of no substance, who chanced to be discovered and nurtured in the previous reign; Your Majesty received and raised me from among the dismissed and disgraced, an act of the highest kindness and virtue. I have always wished to repay you with proposals and advice, but I feared to offend by acting beyond my station. All the same, I have long cherished sincerity and gathered up my reflections, so that now, encountering in my own person Your Sagely intelligence in opening up a path for rewarding those who speak out, how could I bear to let pass in silence such an opportunity as comes once in a thousand years? On this account, I have ignored the prospect of death and presented my argument. I humbly await Your Majesty’s illumination of my stupidity; if you should be so unnecessarily kind as to deign to adopt it, I would be overwhelmed by my good fortune.

One probable consequence of the palace fire and the flood of remonstrations that ensued was the speedy resolution of Wang T’inghsiang’s case and that of Liu T’ien-ho. Their relegation to minor posts in the provinces was announced on February 18, and Ho’s farewell poems addressed to each were written soon after. 14 Wang was sent to a post in Kan-yü 贛榆, an out-of-the-way district on the coast of northern Kiangsu. He and Ho were evidently in correspondance during his stay in Kan-yü, which lasted until 1516. 15 The season is notable for its preponderance of farewell poems. Some of these were written for people such as Wang T’ing-hsiang and

——— 14

“Saying Farewell to Censor Liu Yang-ho [T’ien-ho], Who is Relegated to Chint’an” 送劉養和侍御謫金壇, HTFC 26.7b (461; 372:035); “Saying Farewell to Wang Ping-heng [T’ing-hsiang], Who is Relegated to Kan-yü” 送王秉衡謫贛榆, HTFC 26.7b (461; 372:036). Sun Chi-fang submitted a memorial on the same day, criticising the treatment of Liu and Wang; see the Wu-tsung Shih-lu 108.11a (2219). 15 Li Meng-yang wrote a poem to ‘Wang of Kan-yü’, in which he refers to a separation of ‘ten full years’. Presumably this counts from 1507, when Li was sent away from Peking, to 1516, when Wang was still in Kan-yü. See “Sent to Wang of Kan-yü” 寄王贛榆, K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi 24.15a (611).

352

CHAPTER EIGHT

Liu T’ien-ho, expelled from Peking as punishment for their forthright criticism, but many were simply addressed to officials who had come up for new appointments in the provinces. 16 A third case is represented by Lü Nan, who resigned from office and returned home in frustration after his memorial on the palace fire, like Ho’s, received

———

16 For examples, see “Saying Farewell to (Hsü T’ing-mei [Tsan], Who is Going to Chekiang” 送許庭美之浙江, HTFC 26.8a (462; 372:037); “Saying Farewell to Hsieh Pang-yung [T’ing-chu], Going to Hunan” 送謝邦用之湖南 , HTFC 18.9a (295; 352:018); “Saying Farewell to Ku Yü-ch’eng [K’o-hsüeh], Who is Going to Chekiang as Assistant Administration Commissioner” 送顧與成赴浙江參議, HTFC 18.9a (296; 352:020); “Saying Farewell to Hsiung T’ing-chen [Chi], Who is Going to the Ch’u Fief” 送熊廷振之楚藩, HTFC 12.14a (170; 371:703); “Saying Farewell to Instructor Han, Who is Going to Ho-yang” 送邯師之郃陽 , HTFC 26.8a (462; 372:038); and “Saying Farewell to Yin Chin-fu [Yün-hsiao], Who is Going to Ch’ingt’ien” 送殷近夫之青田, HTFC 26.8b (462; 372:039). Hsieh T’ing-chu 謝廷柱 was the grandfather of Hsieh Chao-che 謝肇[浙], the author of a famous collection of miscellaneous notes, the Wu Tsa-tsu 五雜俎. The poem refers to Hsieh leaving for Hunan. Hsieh’s appointment to Hukwang was announced on March 10, 1514; see the Wu-tsung Shih-lu, 109.7a (2239). For Hsieh (t. Pang-yung 邦用 h. Shuang-hu 雙湖), a 1499 chin-shih, see also TL 884, HY 3/46, MST 27-hsia.19b, MSCS ting-8.4b (1269), TK 181. Ku K’o-hsüeh 顧可學 (d. 1560; t. Yü-ch’eng 與成) went to Chekiang early in 1514, his appointment having been announced on February 27 of that year; see the Wu-tsung Shih-lu, 109.1ab (2227-28). For Ku, see HY 3/41, TL 950, KHL 34.22a (1393—anon.), TK 194. He proved to be a somewhat unsavoury character within a year of taking up his provincial appointment, at which time he was discharged for theft of public funds; see the Wu-tsung Shih-lu 131.6ab (2609-10). After living at home for twenty years, he managed to secure the favour of a credulous Shih-tsung (Wu-tsung’s successor, regn. 1521-1567) by claiming knowledge of life-prolonging elixirs compounded of such fool-proof ingredients as the urine of young boys and girls. He paid the usual stiff price for his misdeeds, living long and prospering after this, and finally dying old, rich, and loaded with honours. After Shih-tsung’s death (hastened by the effects of less benign elixirs), K’o-hsüeh’s titles were posthumously stripped from him, and his surviving biographical records are brief and denunciatory. The poet Yin Yün-hsiao 殷雲霄 (1480-1516) passed the chin-shih in 1505. Another poem addressed to Yin by Ho, a “Song of Shih-ch’uan-tzu” 石川子歌, HTFC 13.14b (189; 371:048), refers to the seven years Yin spent studying and writing at home. He went home after his chin-shih pass and didn’t return to Peking until 1511, when he was assigned to Ching-chiang 靖江, in Kiangsu. For discussion of an anthology of farewell poems and essays attached to one edition of Yin’s works, see Daniel Bryant, “Saying Farewell to Yin Yün-hsiao,” paper presented at the 1998 meeting of the American Oriental Society, Western Branch. The poems and essays were mostly addressed to Yin on one of two occasions, his post-chin-shih departure for home in 1505, and his departure for Ching-chiang in 1511. Ho Ching-ming was not in Peking for either of these occasions. The inclusion of his ‘Ch’ing-t’ien farewell’ poem (with the destination dropped from the title) is an anachronism perhaps originating with Li Meng-yang, who edited the collection posthumously. For Yin (t. Chin-fu 近夫; h. Shih-ch’uan 石川), see TL 448, HY 3/106, KHL 80.126a (3432—Ts’ui Hsien), TK 156.

LIFE AT THE CENTRE OF THINGS

353

no acknowledgement or response at all, as Ho points out in his farewell poem: 送呂子京洛三年客、雲霄萬里違。上書俱不報、解珮獨先歸。北極臨燕甸、南山繞漢畿。相將未可料、岐路斷蓬飛。 Saying Farewell to Master Lü 17 In Ching and Lo, a sojourner for three years, From cloudy heavens ten thousand li removed. Submitted briefs have all gone unacknowledged; Detaching your badge, the first to return home. The Northern Pole looks down on the fields of Yen; The southern hills surround the precincts of Han. Our next meeting cannot be foretold; Where the road forks, tumbleweeds fly away.

THE YOUNGER GENERATION As the commotion resulting from the palace fire was beginning to die down, the triennial chin-shih examinations were held. Ho wrote one poem at a gathering in Chang Chi-meng’s office while the final stage of the examinations was in progress. 18 Among those who passed were

——— 17

HTFC 18.9a (296; 352:019). Although Ho seems to attribute Lü Nan’s departure solely to the lack of response to his memorial on the palace fire, other sources suggest a more complex picture, though not a surprising one. Wang Ch’ung-ch’ing’s farewell poem refers even more explicitly to Lü’s protest memorial, but its title says that Lü is going home on sick leave, “Saying Farewell to Lü Ching-yeh [Nan], Who is Going Home on Sick Leave” 送呂涇野養病, Tuan-hsi Hsien-sheng Chi (1552 edition) 8.ch’i-lü.2a. A letter that Lü wrote to Ho T’ang in the second month of 1514 reports that he had been suffering from pains in his legs so severe that by the tenth month of 1513 he could not walk. In the following month he received a letter from his family at home informing him that his mother was too ill to leave her bed. At this, he says, he decided to go home as soon as possible, but it was the second day of the second month of 1514 (about three weeks after the palace fire) before approval was granted; see “Letter to Ho Ts’ui-fu [T’ang] of K’ai-chou” 與何開州翠夫書, Ching-yeh Hsiensheng Wen-chi (1555; repr. TM 4:60-61, Tainan: Chuang-yen Wen-hua, 1997) 20.15a (231). The Ming Shih says that he went home in the ninth month of 1514 because his father was ill, 282.7243. I know of no basis for this latter account. 18 “While Staying Overnight in the Office of Chang Tzu-ch’un [Chi-meng] at the Ministry of Rites During the Palace Examination: Offered to Match Ma and Chang of the Court of Imperial Entertainments, as well as Ch’iao, Who is on Duty in the Hall” 殿試宿禮部張子淳郎中署奉和馬張二光錄喬直閣諸公 , HTFC 20.3b (336;

354

CHAPTER EIGHT

a number of men who would become good friends of Ho’s in the years to come. Indeed, although almost all of the men who had been his companions while in the capital during the preceding dozen years were now in the provinces, either as officials or disgraced and living in retirement, Ho had become a respected figure among the more talented and highly principled officials, and we are told that ‘horses and carriages blocked his gateway’. The most poetically talented of the new graduates was probably Hsüeh Hui 薛蕙 (1489-1541), who had come up from his native Pochou 亳州 in Honan to take the 1514 chin-shih examination. Hsüeh had been ‘discovered’ while still a student, and by none other than Wang T’ing-hsiang, while the latter was serving in Po-chou. 19 As early as 1508, Wang had predicted greatness for him, saying that he would continue the accomplishments of his fellow northerners Li Meng-yang and Ho Ching-ming. 20 In fact, Hsüeh became one of the two or three leading poets of his generation, but he avoided association with Archaism as a literary doctrine, even though he and Ho became close friends soon after his arrival in Peking before the examination, late in 1513. 21 Ho presented him with a pair of quatrains

———

352:021). 19 For Hsüeh Hui (t. Chün-ts’ai 君采; h. Hsi-yüan 西原), see TL 903, HY 2/201, KHL 26.83a (1117—T’ang Shun-chih), TK 177. 20 See the curriculum of Hsüeh Hui by Wang T’ing 王廷 (in the fu-lu to Hsüeh’s K’ao-kung Chi (SKCS), p.2a.). Ch’ien Ch’ien-yi refers to this event, but gives Hsüeh’s age as 12 sui; see Lieh-ch’ao Shih-chi Hsiao-chuan (Peking: Chung-hua, 1959), p.324; Chu Yi-tsun does likewise, without naming his source, MST 35.12b. Ch’ien and Chu clearly have the date wrong, for at twelve sui, in 1500, Hsüeh could hardly have been noticed by Wang T’ing-hsiang, who had not yet passed the chin-shih himself and may not even have met Li or Ho. But in 1508, when Hsüeh was 20 sui, Wang had been relegated to Po-chou, Hsüeh’s native district. Wang T’ing’s account makes it clear that this is when the two men first met. He does not give Hsüeh’s age at the time, but places it after his chü-jen failure at 18 sui (1507). Where the figure twelve comes from is thus uncertain. It could be a simple textual corruption (十二 shih-erh for 二十 erh-shih), or perhaps it derives from a botched condensation of Wang’s account, which refers, in an earlier passage, to Hsüeh’s already recognised poetic ability at the age of twelve. Wang did write a letter consoling Hsüeh sometime after the latter failed the provincial examination; see Wang Shih Chia-ts’ang Chi (Chia-ching edition; repr. Taipei: Wei-wen, 1976) 29.18b (1304), Wang T’ing-hsiang Chi (Peking: Chung-hua, 1989) 29.533. Wang apologises for not having made Hsüeh’s acquaintance earlier in his stay in Po-chou. 21 Even though not classed as an Archaist, Hsüeh did produce ‘imitations’ of old poems in the same way as his contemporaries. See, in particular, his twenty poems written in imitation of early poets from Pan Chieh-yü to Pao Chao, K’ao-kung Chi 2.7a ff. Those of the twenty included in the Hsüeh Hsi-yüan Chi (1535 edition) are

LIFE AT THE CENTRE OF THINGS

355

soon after they first met, sometime during the winter of 1513. 22 In all likelihood, an extended regulated verse poem on a picture of the Han courtier Tung-fang Shuo 東方朔, written about this time, also refers to Hsüeh, likened to Tung-fang in one of the quatrains. 23 Another 1514 chin-shih was Li Lien 李濂 (1489-1566+?), whose talents had already been recognised by Li Meng-yang himself, both men being residents of Kaifeng. 24 Li Lien had been living the life of the young bravo, filling his days with drinking, riding, and hunting, when Meng-yang’s brother-in-law Tso Kuo-chi 左國璣 showed one of his fu to Meng-yang. Meng-yang was greatly impressed by it and went to call on Lien, after which they became friends. 25 Li went home to Kaifeng after his chin-shih pass and did not return until the next year, the delay being due to his marriage into a princely family. A poem addressed to Li by Ho on his departure from Peking to return

———

entered under the year 1515 (1.1b-4a). 22 “Presented to Hsüeh Chün-ts’ai [Hui]” 贈薛君采, HTFC 29.9a (520; 374:023024). 23 “A Picture of [Tung-]fang Shuo” 方朔圖, HTFC 23.13a (416; 353:009). 24 For Li Lien (t. Ch’uan-fu 川甫, 川父; h. Sung-chu 嵩渚), see TL 223, HY 2/242, MS 286.7360, TK 150. Since Ho’s poems addressed to him were all written while both men were in Peking, Li not being addressed by any official title in any of them, it seems most likely that all were written sometime between 1514 and late in 1516, when Li took up the first of a number of provincial appointments that he would hold until 1526. Li Lien’s first official appointment was to Mien-yang 沔陽, in southern Hupeh. According to the entry on him in the P’en-ch’ao Fen-sheng Jen-wu K’ao (1622; repr. Ming-tai Chuan-chi Ts’ung-k’an, vols.129-40, Taipei: Ming-wen, 1991) 87.21b (826), Li Lien went to Mien-yang in 1516. Moreover, he wrote a poem on the first day of 1518, in which he refers to having been in office for three years, see MSCS wu-6.1524. This figure, if arrived at by inclusive reckoning, would confirm his arrival in Mien-yang in 1516. 25 For Li Meng-yang and Li Lien, see Wang Kung-wang, “Li Meng-yang K’ungt’ung Chi Jen-ming Chien-cheng. (chih erh)” 李夢陽空同集人名箋證之二 (Notes on Personal Names in Li Meng-yang’s Collected works of K’ung-t’ung, Pt. 2), Kansu She-hui K’o-hsüeh 1994.5:83-86, 75, pp.84-85. Poems addressed to Li Lien or referring to him are quite common in Li Meng-yang’s works. See “A Ballad of Knotting Friendship: Presented to Li of Mien-yang” 結交行贈李沔陽, K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi 19.7a (429); “A Song of the Picture of Chang Kuo Painted by Ch’ien Hsüan” 錢選畫張果圖歌 , op. cit. 20.10a (475; the headnote says that the painting was in Li’s collection); “Taking Leave of Li Mien-yang at a Summer Party in the Suburban Garden” 郊園夏集別李沔陽, op.cit. 32.5b (858); “After Drinking with Li of Mien-yang, T’ien and Cheng Both Came to My Manor; Seeing How the River Level had Suddenly Fallen, We Were All Very Surprised” 李沔陽飲後田鄭二子復集於斯庄望見陂水驟落眾颇訝之, op.cit. 32.6a (859); “Living in the Country: A Mocking Reply to Li of Mien-yang” 田居嘲答李沔陽, op.cit. 32.6b (860); and “Presented to Li of Mien-yang” 贈李沔陽, op.cit. 34.10a (935).

356

CHAPTER EIGHT

home to Kaifeng comes from this occasion, “A Chant of Ta-liang: Saying Farewell to Presented Scholar Li” 大梁吟送李進士. 26 Others in the 1514 cohort with whom Ho Ching-ming was particularly close included Chang Chih-tao, Tai Ch’in 戴欽 (d.1526), and Liu Ch’u-hsiu 劉儲秀. 27 The most striking contrast among these men, so far as their relationships with Li Meng-yang and Ho Ching-ming are concerned, is that between Hsüeh Hui and Li Lien. Hsüeh Hui may never have met Meng-yang; for him the only master was Ho. He expressed lavish praise for Ho, notably in a poem sent while he was at home ill, from the end of 1514 to 1516, in which he places Ho on the same level as the Songs and the “Lament on Separation,” and above Li Po and Tu Fu. 28 He once compared Ho and Li in a well-known and often quoted couplet from a “Playful Quatrain” 戲成: 俊逸終憐何大復、粗豪不解李空同。 For his nobility and freedom, I am truly fond of Ho Ta-fu; In his roughness and bravado, I cannot make sense of Li K’ung-t’ung. 29

Li Lien, on the other hand, discovered and fostered by Li Meng-yang in Kaifeng before he moved to Peking, probably owed to Li his

——— 26

HTFC 12.19a (174; 371:517). For Chang Chih-tao, see above, chapter five. For Tai Ch’in (t. Shih-liang 時亮, h. Lu-yüan 鹿原), see HY 2/105, TL 917, and TK 143; for Liu Ch’u-hsiu (t. Shih-ch’i 士奇, h. Hsi-p’o 西陂), a native of Shensi known as a poet in Peking around 1514, see HY 3/247, TL 859, and TK 121. A table in TK, pp.223-39, lists all of Ho’s known associates classified by place of origin and year of highest examination success. 28 “Sent to Drafter Ho” 寄何中舍, Hsüeh Hsi-yüan Chi 1.6a, K’ao-kung Chi 6.4b (72), TK 406. 29 K’ao-kung Chi 8.14b (91), TK 408; fourth poem in a set of five. This poem is not included in the Hsüeh Hsi-yüan Chi, so its exact date is unknown. Hsüeh’s lines are quoted and vigorously disagreed with by the Ch’ing anthologist Shen Te-ch’ien 沈德潛, in his Ming Shih Pieh-tsai Chi (Shanghai: Ku-chi, 1979), 5.112, quoted in LHH 2.14a. Ch’ien Ch’ien-yi quotes remarks that Hsüeh addressed to Yang Shen 楊慎, in which he derides contemporary poets who “dismantle Shao-ling [Tu Fu] and swallow Tzu-mei [Su Shih] raw” 拆洗少陵生吞子美. Ch’ien is evidently quoting from a letter no longer extant and of unknown date. He adds that Hsüeh couldn’t have sided with Ho, much less with Li. Note that the typeset edition of the Lieh-ch’ao Shih-chi Hsiaochuan mispunctuates this passage, extending the quotation marks surrounding Hsüeh’s words to include words that are clearly Ch’ien’s. See Lieh-ch’ao Shih-chi Hsiao-chuan, ping.324; Lieh-ch’ao Shih-chi (Shih-ko Tsung-chi Ts’ung-k’an, Shanghai: San-lien, 1989) ping.2.362A. Hsüeh’s remarks, quoted from the Lieh-ch’ao Shih-chi but without Ch’ien’s interpretation, are also found in Ming Shih-hua Ch’üanpien 3:2920. 27

LIFE AT THE CENTRE OF THINGS

357

introduction to Ho and his work. 30 That he, Hsüeh, and Ho are said to have ‘formed a society’ (結社 chieh-she) no doubt reflects something of Ho’s growing influence in Peking literary circles. Word of this may have served as a sign to Li Meng-yang of his own fading standing in literary circles in the capital. This, in turn, may well have increased his sense of the need to intervene when Ho appeared to be drifting away from Li’s leadership. Other acquaintances included the two younger brothers of the courageous Liu Tso, Liu K’an 侃 and Liu Jen 仁. 31 We do not know how or when they first met, but we find Ho visiting them ‘again’ at this time, in the company of Chang Shih-lung. 32 The two younger Liu brothers had passed the Shensi provincial examination in 1513, and Liu K’an, at least, was among the unsuccessful candidates for the chin-shih in 1514. Liu K’an returned to Shensi after the examination, seen off by Ho and Ts’ui Hsien, 33 while Liu Jen, who was still in his teens, stayed on in Peking with his eldest brother, Liu Tso. The two brothers would remain among Ho’s closest acquaintances until the end of the following year, when Liu Tso died. COMINGS AND GOINGS In the midst of the celebrations and disappointments, the banquets and farewells, attendant on the examinations, Ho received a letter from one of the exiles: 得顧華玉全州書兼知望之消息地北一為別、天南真可哀。同時萬里去、隔歲一書來。水濶蛟龍

———

30 Li Lien, after arriving in Peking, matched a poem, in an odd metre, that Ho had written years before, at a time when he was sending poems north from Hsin-yang. For Ho’s poem, “In the Five-Level, Five-Oblique Form” 五平五仄體, see HTFC 7.9b (78; 251:004); for Li’s poem, “On an Autumn Day in the Capital: Matching Drafter Ho’s ‘Five-Level Five-Oblique Poem’” 京師秋日和舍人五平五仄體, see Sung-chu Wenchi 嵩渚文集 (Collected Literary Works from an Islet in Sung) (Chia-ching edition; repr. Peking T’u-shu-kuan Ku-chi Chen-pen Ts’ung-k’an, vol.101, Peking: Shu-mu Wen-hsien, 1988) 11.1b (275), TK 408. 31 For Liu K’an (t. Yi-cheng 以正) and Liu Jen (t. Yi-hsing 以行), see TK 118, 117. 32 “Visiting Master Liu Again with Chang Chung-hsiu [Shih-lung]” 同張仲修再過劉子, HTFC 20.15a (352; 352:614). 33 “With Master Ts’ui, Saying Farewell to Liu Yi-cheng [K’an], Who is Returning to Kuan-chung” 同崔子送劉以正還關中, HTFC 13.11a (185; 371:032).

358

CHAPTER EIGHT

出。山深杜若開。相思有辭賦、愁絕並登臺。 Receiving a Letter from Ku Hua-yü [Lin] in Ch’üan-chou, I Learn News of Wang-chih [Meng Yang] 34 In a land to the north, as soon as you took leave, South of heaven, truly to be bewailed. You left together, over ten thousand li; After a year, a single letter arrives. Where rivers are broad, the dragons and kraken emerge; Where mountains are deep, the fragrant pollia blossoms. Thinking of you, although I have your poems, I grieve for the end of our climbing the outlooks together.

Shortly after this, Ho received a letter from Li Meng-yang, who had been set free but stripped of his official status. 35 Li would go first to Hsiang-yang, on the Hsiang (or Han) River in northern Hupeh, apparently with the intention of settling there, and may have considered Yang-hsien 陽羨 , a fertile district in Kiangsu, as an alternative. But shortly afterwards he returned to his home in Kaifeng, where he spent the rest of his life in retirement. Ho’s poem on receiving Li’s letter follows: 得獻吉江西書近得潯陽江上書、遙思李白更愁予。天邊魑魅窺人過、日暮黿鼉傍客居。鼓柁襄江應未得、買田陽羨定何如。他年淮水能相訪、桐柏山中共結廬。 On Receiving a Letter from Hsien-chi [Li Meng-yang] in Kiangsi 36 Now I have a letter sent from the river at Hsün-yang; I think of Li Po far away, and it saddens me all the more.

———

34 HTFC 20.4a (336; 352:022). The Yung recension omits Ku’s surname in the title. In the first line, I follow the Yung, Shen and Yüan recensions in reading 一 ‘as soon as’; the Standard recension has 憐 ‘sorry’. Meng Yang later wrote a poem matching the rhymes of Ho’s poem, see “Matching Rhymes: On Receiving a Poem from Ho Chung-mo” 次韻何仲默見寄, Meng Yu-ya Chi (1538 edition) 5.16b, TK 401. 35 In this letter, Li says that Ho, Ch’ien Jung, and K’ang Hai had been the only friends to come to his aid, which suggests that he believed Ho to have been materially effective; see “Letter to Master Ho” 與何子書, K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi 62.9a (1779). K’ang Hai, Li’s rescuer in 1508, could not, of course, have come to Li’s aid in this instance, since he was at home in disgrace. The reference must bring together several of Li’s scrapes with authority. Ch’ien Jung retired from office soon after Wutsung came to the throne, so his assistance was probably rendered in 1505, when Li was briefly in trouble (see above, chapter two). 36 HTFC 26.9a (463; 372:042).

LIFE AT THE CENTRE OF THINGS

359

At the ends the earth, the forest ogres peer at human failings; As day turns to evening, deep-sea tortoises skirt a sojourner’s lodge. To work an oar on the River Hsiang—this you have not managed; To buy a farm in Yang-hsien District—now what would you say to that? Some other year, on the River Huai we will be able to visit, To build our huts together deep in the Phoenix and Cypress Hills. The phrase ‘saddens me’ in the second line recalls the opening of the “Lady of the Hsiang” 湘夫人 in the “Nine Songs” section of the Songs of the South, “The sovereign’s child descends, down to the northern bank; / Her eyes so fair, they sadden me” 帝子降兮北渚、目眇眇兮愁予. 37 The mention of Li Po, as symbol for Meng-yang, is taken up in the next line, which draws on Tu Fu’s well-known “Longing for Li Po at the Heavens’ End” 天末懷李白, “Forest ogres rejoice at human failings” 魑魅喜人過. 38 Ho’s fifth line recalls a line in Wei Ying-wu’s “While Serving in a Minor Office in Loyang, I Respond to an Inquiry from Former County Defender T’ien of Ch’ang-an” 任洛楊丞答前長安田少府問, “To announce your retirement—you still have not managed that” 告歸應未得. 39 The final couplet revives a T’ang convention, and even a good deal of T’ang language. Compare Li Po’s “Presented to my Cousin Lieh” 贈從弟冽, “If you come to visit me some other year, / Know that I will be at P’an-hsi” 他年爾相訪、知我在磻溪, 40 or Ts’en Shen’s “On First Arriving at the Southern Pool of the Government Offices in Hsi-kuo: Informing All my Old Friends in the Left and Right Ministries and the Southern Palace” 初至西虢官舍南池呈左右省及南宮諸故人, “You will be able to visit me some other day, / In my old thatched hall south of Mt. Sung” 他日能相訪、嵩南舊草堂. 41

The Huai is of course the river into which Hsin-yang’s River Shih flows. For the Phoenix and Cypress Hills, see chapter five, also in a poem addressed to Li Meng-yang. Another separation, albeit a temporary one, was looming. Although the assignment would not be announced until June 17, Hsü Tsin was already known to be among the emissaries bound for the provinces to

———

37 Ch’u Tz’u Pu-chu 2.9a (28); my translation, while it aspires to be more literal, can scarcely be as memorable as that by David Hawkes, “The Child of God, descending the northern bank, / Turns on me her eyes that are dark with longing,” Songs of the South, first ed., p.38, Penguin ed., p.108. 38 Tu Shih Yin-te 328/25/6, CTS 225.2424, K.11079. 39 Wei Ying-wu Chi Chiao-chu (Shanghai: Shanghai Ku-chi, 1998) 5.287. 40 Ri Haku Kashi Sakuin 402/27-28; CTS 171.1762; K.08266; An Ch’i, p.386. P’an-hsi is where King Wen of the Chou found his future advisor Lü Shang 呂尚 fishing in the stream. Ho later wrote a poem there (see below, chapter eleven). 41 CTS 198.2023; K.09488; Liu Kaiyang, comp. Ts’en Shen Shih-chi Pien-nien Chiao-chu (Chengtu: Pa-Shu, 1995), p.431.

360

CHAPTER EIGHT

take part in a round of princely investitures. 42 In one of the farewell poems he addressed to Hsü, Ho asks him to look for Li Meng-yang while in the south. 43 This poem, titled “A Drunken Song Presented to Tzu-jung [Hsü Tsin], Who is Going to Hunan, Visiting his Parents on the Way; Also Inquiring After Hsien-chi [Li Meng-yang]” 醉歌贈子容使湖南便道歸省兼訊獻吉, was evidently written as Hsü prepared to leave on a trip that would take him home to Kiangsu after the official part of his trip was over. 44 The final lines of the poem, which refer to the same two possible destinations that figured in Ho’s response to Li’s letter (see above), read: 眼中何人最知己、十年之交吾與李。李生近買陽羨田、又欲鼓柁襄江船。風塵落日倘相遇、為我問訊江湖前。 In my eyes, who is the person who most truly understands me? A friendship of ten years between Li and myself. Master Li has recently bought fields in Yang-hsien, And also wants to ply his oar on a River Hsiang boat. If you should meet him amid wind and dust at the end of day, Ask news of him for me, there by river and lakes.

As usual, the hottest part of the year is relatively lacking in literary work. The one event that did touch Ho personally was the disgrace of Han Pang-ching, who returned home to Shensi after being dismissed and made a commoner. Ho wrote a set of poems in the archaic Songs

——— 42

For an instance of ‘inside knowledge’ of an impending appointment before its formal announcement, see Gail King, “The Family Letters of Xu Kuangqi” Ming Studies 31 (1991): 1-41 43 For Li Meng-yang and Hsü Tsin, see Wang Kung-wang, “Li Meng-yang K’ungt’ung Chi Jen-ming Chien-cheng. (chih erh)” 李夢陽空同集人名箋證之二 (Notes on Personal Names in Li Meng-yang’s Collected works of K’ung-t’ung, Pt. 2), Kansu She-hui K’o-hsüeh 1994.5:83-86, 75, pp.86, 75. 44 HTFC 13.11b (186; 371:035). The Yung recension supplies the surnames Hsü 徐 and Li 李 in the title. Other poems associated with Hsü’s departure are “A Farewell Banquet for Tzu-jung [Hsü Tsin] at the Residence of Li of Nan-yang” 李南陽宅餞子容, HTFC 18.9b (296; 352:024); “A Visit from Hsü Tzu-jung [Tsin]” 徐子容見過, HTFC 20.6a (339; 352:023); “On the Tuan-yang Day, Visiting Tzu-jung [Hsü Tsin] and Climbing the Star-gazing Tower” 端陽日過子容登瞻辰樓, HTFC 20.6b (340; 352:029); and “A Farewell Feast for Tzu-jung [Hsü Tsin]” 餞子容, HTFC 18.10a (297; 352:026). For a discussion of Hsü Tsin’s poems addressed to Ho at this time, see TK pp.61-63. Some of the poems come from a visit that Hsü paid to Ho on April 24 and others from Ho’s visit to Hsü on May 28. Most of them refer to Hsü’s impending departure, although this had not yet been formally announced. See Wutsung Shih-lu 112.7a (2289) for the list of officials, including Hsü Tsin, despatched at this time.

LIFE AT THE CENTRE OF THINGS

361

metre by way of farewell and also a pair of quatrains, including this one. 45 送韓汝慶還關中華岳雲臺萬里情、高秋落日眺秦城。黃河一線通滄海、身在仙人掌上行。 Saying Farewell to Han Ju-ch’ing [Pang-ching], who is Returning to Kuanchung (second of two poems) 46 To Mt. Hua and Cloudy Terrace, ten thousand leagues of longing; At height of autumn in setting sunlight, we gaze toward the walls of Ch’in. The Yellow River, a single strand, in touch with the deep blue sea, You shall journey high atop the crest of Immortal’s Palm.

Mt. Hua 華岳 stands near the entrance to Shensi (‘Kuan-chung’, ‘Ch’in’) as one approaches from the east. Yün-t’ai 雲臺 (‘Cloudy Terrace’) was the name of both a Han dynasty palace site and a temple on the slopes of Mt. Hua. One of the peaks of Mt. Hua is called ‘Immortal’s Palm’. 47 Ho passed the Seventh Night festival at Liu Wen-huan’s with Ma Lu. 48 The Moon Festival is not mentioned in his works this year, but he was moon-viewing at the house of someone named Liu on the sixteenth night, and Liu Wen-huan is probably the

———

45 For Han’s case, see Wu-tsung Shih-lu 113.4a (2301), MTC 45.1699. Wu-tsung was so angry at Han’s memorial that he had him thrown in prison. Only after a number of officials pleaded for him was he simply reduced to commoner status and sent home to Shensi. Han is known for his devotion to his more famous elder brother Pang-ch’i (see above, chapter seven), who would suffer a similar fate in 1516. For the archaic poems, “There are Thorn Trees on the Plain” 原有楚, see HTFC 4.3b (41; 古:002). 46 HTFC 29.9a (520; 374:026). The first poem of the set gives the date as the sixth month. There is a French translation of this poem in Paul Demiéville, ed., Anthologie de la poésie chinoise classique (Paris: Gallimard, 1962), pp.478. 47 It is, incidentally, to be distinguished from the sweet-dew gathering basin once held aloft by a statue of an immortal set up by imperial command. Reference to the mountain is common in poems referring to Hua-shan or the area around it. See, for example, “Passing by Hua-yin on a Journey” 行經華陰, by the T’ang poet Ts’ui Hao 崔顥, “Atop the crest of Immortal’s Palm the rain begins to clear” 仙人掌上雨初晴, CTS 130.1329; K.06245; or Ts’en Shen’s “Sent to Li Kang, The Mountain Man of the Western Peak” 寄西岳山人李岡, “Atop the crest of Immortal’s Palm, you expound the Cinnabar Classic” 仙人掌上演丹經, CTS 197.2059; K.09624; Liu K’ai-yang comp., Ts’en Shen Shih-chi Pien-nien Chien-chu, p.776. 48 “On the Seventh Night, At the Residence of Liu Tzu-wei [Wen-huan]: Matching Chün-ch’ing’s [Ma Lu] Rhymes” 七夕劉子緯宅次君卿韻 , HTFC 10.4b (125; 351:047).

362

CHAPTER EIGHT

most likely candidate. 49 Ho’s Hsin-yang friend Yüan Jung had evidently come up to take the chin-shih examination, failed, and stayed though the summer. Although he is not mentioned elsewhere in the Ching-chi, there is a farewell poem, apparently written at about this time. 50 There was an official banquet at the Hsien-ling Palace on Double Nine, recorded in what was no doubt an obligatory pair of poems. 51 A number of informal poems—chrysanthemums much on the mind—also come from this season, along with one on another seasonal subject, migrating geese. 52 The conventional turn this poem takes in its final couplet suggests that it too may have been written at a party: 聞鴈見汝今南下、憐予一望家。亂聲求侶急、高影背人斜。月靜林無葉、雲寒菊有花。萬行關塞淚、秋日墮悲笳。 Hearing Geese 53 Seeing you on your southward way today, Makes me sad for every look toward home. With tangled cries, anxious in seeking your mates; Lofty shapes veer off, away from men. The moon is still; the groves have no more leaves; The clouds are cold, chrysanthemums in bloom. Ten thousand streams of tears at frontier passes Fall on nomad shawms this autumn day.

———

49 “On the Sixteenth Night: Viewing the Moon at Master Liu’s and Matching Rhymes” 十六夜劉子宅對月次韻 , HTFC 26.10a (464; 372:046). For a set of quatrains probably from the same occasion, see “Songs of Yen-ching on the Sixteenth Night” 燕京十六夜曲, HTFC 29.9b (520; 374:027-030). 50 “Saying Farewell to Wei-hsüeh [Yüan Jung], Who is Going Back South” 送惟學南還, HTFC 25.15a (451; 372:501). Ho says that he himself has been back in Peking for three years, which suggests a date of 1513 or 1514. Yüan, who had passed the provincial examination with Ho in 1498, may have come up for the chin-shih examination in 1514, or just possibly 1517. 51 “A Banquet at the Hsien-ling Hall on the Ninth Day” 九日顯靈宮宴集, HTFC 20.6b (340; 352:030); “Climbing the Lavender Extremity Hall” 登紫極閣, HTFC 20.7a (340; 352:031). 52 “Viewing Chrysanthemums with Director Hou and Secretary Liu, Who are Visiting” 侯郎中劉主事見過對菊, HTFC 20.7a (340; 352:032); “Matching the Rhymes of Director Chang’s ‘No Chrysanthemums on the Ninth Day’” 次韻張郎中九日無菊, HTFC20.4b (337; 352:033); and “Thanking Academician Ts’ui for a Gift of Chrysanthemums” 謝崔太史惠菊, HTFC 22.4b (386; 352:034). 53 HTFC 22.6b (389; 352:035).

LIFE AT THE CENTRE OF THINGS

363

One friend whose loss was acknowledged around this time was Fan Yüan 范淵, a 1496 chin-shih who had served in Peking until 1509, when his opposition to Liu Chin led to his arrest and relegation to the provinces. He eventually died while in office in Yunnan after several promotions. 54 A poem sent to Fan while Ho was on his way to Yunnan in 1505 shows that they had been associates during Ho’s first years in Peking, but the remaining three references to Fan in Ho’s works are all in the third person, as it were. 55 Ho mentions him twice in poems addressed to younger relatives, Fan Lu 范輅(1474-1536) and Fan Yung-luan 范永鑾. 56 We know from a poem by Li Meng-yang that Yung-luan was showing Fan Yüan’s deathbed poem around sometime between after his chin-shih pass in 1514 but before his first provincial appointment in 1517. 57 Ho Ching-ming is likely to have seen it earlier in this period rather than later, when he composed his own poem mourning Fan Yüan’s death and matching that last poem. 輓范君山和其絕筆詩老去詩篇興未休、吏情終日問滄洲。寒江夢落烟波斷、南嶽魂來霧嶂收。一別人間真異世、十年天上可同遊。魚寵寂寞瀟湘冷、誰采蘋花薦晚秋。 Mourning Fan Chün-shan [Yüan] and Matching His Final Poem 58 In old age, his poems were still of undiminished interest;

——— 54

For Fan Yüan (t. Ching-chih 靜之, h. Chün-shan 君山), see TK 174. “Sent to Chün-shan [Fan Yüan]” 寄君山, HTFC 24.2b (420; 172:008). Fan Yüan is mentioned as a Vice-Director in the Ministry of Justice in an entry in the Wutsung Shih-lu (8.15a [263]) dated in accordance with January 21, 1506. 56 “Saying Farewell to Fan Yi-tsai [Lu], Who is Going to Nanking” 送范以載之南京, HTFC 19.4b (313; 352:259); “Presented to Mr. Fan” 贈范君, HTFC 13.17a (191; 371:056). For Fan Yung-luan (t. Ju-ho 汝和), see HY 2/194, TL 361, TK 174. 57 “Mourning my Late Friend Vice-Commissioner Fan Yüan: I Have Received his Death-bed Poem, Sent by his Grand-nephew the Advanced Scholar Yung-luan” 哭亡友范副使淵其族孫進士永鑾寄其絕筆詩到, K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi 32.16a (879). There are also extant responses to Fan Yüan’s last poem by Li Lien, “Posthumously Matching the Rhymes of Fan Chün-shan’s [Yüan] Last Poem,” Sungchu Wen-chi 29.7b (403) and by Pien Kung, “Matching the Rhymes of the Last Poem by my Fellow Graduate Fan Chün-shan [Yüan]” 次韻同年范君山絕筆之作, Pien Hua-ch’üan Chi (Chia-ching ed.; repr. Taipei: Wei-wen, 1976) 6.46b (356); and “Weeping for my Fellow Graduate Vice-Commissioner Fan Yüan and Mourning My Late Friend, Erudite Hsü Chen-ching: To Go With K’ung-t’ung’s work” 哭同年范副使淵兼悼亡友徐博士禎卿同空同李子作, op.cit. 6.46a (355). 58 HTFC 27.12a (485; 372:514). One late edition of the Standard recension reads 寵 ‘favour’ in place of 龍 ‘dragon’ in the penultimate line, an obvious error. 55

364

CHAPTER EIGHT

A bureaucrat’s heart at the end of day asks after Ts’ang-chou Isle. On a winter river a dream descends—the misty waves are cleft; To southern peaks a soul arrives—the foggy crags receive it. Once departed the world of men, in truly a different realm; For ten years, above the heavens, we could have roamed together. Fish and dragons are still and lonely; the Hsiao and Hsiang are cold; Who is gathering duckweed blossoms to offer in late autumn?

The most important farewell, however, was that of Hsüeh Hui, who returned home late in 1514 rather than seeking an early appointment to office. The two men had quickly become fast friends. As Ho says in the second of a set of four farewell poems (the fourth is translated just below), 平生寡所諧、與子中邂逅。 All my life I have lacked for kindred spirits; But with you I hit it off at once.

References to Hsüeh’s imminent departure are found in a number of poems written during the autumn, but a poem written in winter finds Hsüeh still in Peking. 59 One of the autumn poems differs from the rest in picturing Hsüeh’s arrival at home: 贈君采效何遜作歲晏客來歸、車馬一何亂。新粧下機笑、白髮倚門看。未俟春林敷、且玩冬花燦。閑居有徽音、倘付雲中翰。 Written in Imitation of Ho Hsün: Presented to Chün-ts’ai [Hsüeh Hui] (fourth of four poems) 60 At year’s end, a sojourner comes back home; See how busy the carts and horses are! Newly adorned and come from her loom with a smile— White-haired, standing by the door to watch—

———

59 See “A Ballad of Master Hsüeh” 薛生行 , HTFC 13.12a (186; 371:036); “Visiting Chün-ts’ai [Hsüeh Hui] and Matching Rhymes” 過君采次韻, HTFC 20.7b (341; 352:038-039); “Visiting Chün-ts’ai [Hsüeh Hui] in the Evening and Matching Rhymes” 晚過君采次韻, HTFC 26.9a (463; 372:041); and below. The winter poem is “Visiting Chün-ts’ai [Hsüeh Hui] in the Evening” 夜過君采, HTFC 26.10b (465; 372:047). 60 HTFC 10.5b (127; 351:053). For Ho Hsün, see above, chapter six. The second couplet’s images are of the arriving traveller’s wife and mother. The last line plays again on the trope of the letter borne by a migrating goose. In the sixth line, the Yung recension reads 東 ‘east’ in place of 冬 ‘winter’, a homonym and the reading of the other recensions. That ‘winter’ is the lectio facilior does not disqualify it in this case.

LIFE AT THE CENTRE OF THINGS

365

Without waiting for springtide groves’ display, Enjoy the light of winter blossoms now. While living at leisure, should there be a letter, Just give it to the feathers in the clouds.

There are more messages and deputations to various absent friends as well. A man named Tsou 鄒 went south to Chekiang to ‘bring back’ Chang Shih, Ho expressed his longing for the presence of Cheng Shan-fu in a poem of farewell to a man named Yeh 葉, who was going to Fukien, and there was also a poem sent to Li Meng-yang in Hsiangyang. 61 T’ao Chi, who had evidently returned temporarily to Peking after his father’s death, now left for home again, and Ho presented him with a poem. 62 T’ao was discharged from office for ‘lack of seriousness’ 不謹 in the fourth month of the following year. 63 Another Hsin-yang native visiting Peking this fall was Ho’s nephew Ho Shih. One poem records a drinking party with him and Sun Chi-fang’s brother-in-law Hsiao Yi-chung 蕭一中, both of whom had possibly come up for the chin-shih examinations in the spring and then stayed on after not passing. 64 Ho Shih stayed in Peking until the autumn of 1515, but Hsiao Yi-chung and Sun Chi-fang went back to Hua-jung during the winter of 1514, after farewell parties held at Hou Yi-cheng’s and Liu Tso’s. 65 Sun cited illness as his reason for leaving

———

61 “Saying Farewell to Master Tsou, Who is Going to Che-chung to Visit and Welcome Master Chang” 送鄒子之浙中訪迎張子, HTFC 18.10a (297; 352:040); “Saying Farewell to Master Yeh, Who is Returning to Min-chung, Also Missing Cheng Chi-chih [Shan-fu]” 送葉生還閩中兼懷鄭繼之, HTFC 13.9b (184; 371:025); “Sent to Master K’ung-t’ung, Who is Selecting a Residence in Hsiang-yang” 寄空同子卜居襄陽, HTFC 19.14a (327; 352:048). Li Meng-yang had written a fu shortly after arriving in Hsiang-yang, in which he expressed a desire to settle there. See “Rhapsody on My Next Residence” 緒寓賦, K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi 1.9b (18). According to Li’s epitaph for his wife—incidentally a useful source for information about his own life—they arrived in Hsiang-yang in 1514, but heavy rains and flooding in the fall of that year moved his wife to suggest that they return to Kaifeng, a suggestion that Li accepted. She died in the summer of the following year. See “Epitaph for my Late Wife Madame Tso, Lady of Suitability” 封宜人亡妻左氏墓志銘, K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi 43.6a (1227) ff., especially 43.7b (1230). 62 “Saying Farewell to Liang-po [T’ao Chi]” 送良伯, HTFC 26.11a (466; 372:050). 63 Wu-tsung Shih-lu 123.1b (2464). 64 “Drinking on an Autumn Evening with Hsiao Chih-fu [Yi-chung] and my Nephew [Ho] Shih” 秋夜同蕭執夫舍姪士飲, HTFC 20.8a (342; 352:050). For Hsiao Yi-chung (t. Chih-fu 執夫), see HY 2/216, TK 178. He would pass the chin-shih in 1517 and have a chequered career, being demoted later for coming to the defence of Ho’s friend Ma Lu. 65 “At Ju-li’s [Hou Yi-cheng] Banquet, Saying Farewell to Shih-ch’i [Sun Chi-

366

CHAPTER EIGHT

the capital, but it is probable that he left because there had been no reponse to his “palace fire” memorial of the preceding spring. This departure may very well have been the occasion for the following poem, not otherwise datable, on the subject of the Sun family’s country retreat. 石磯石磯無伴滿蒼苔、秋杜春蘭晚自開。江日烟波雙鳥去、楚天風雨一舟來。釣鰲獨有滄溟興、夢鶴誰知赤壁才。芳草歸人不愁思、水雲山郭見章臺。 Stony Chute 66 Stony Chute has no companion, covered with dark moss; Autumn pollia, spring epidendra bloom with no one there. River sunlight, misty waves, a pair of birds takes off: Under skies of Ch’u in stormy rains a single boat arrives. Angling for turtles, alone you know the joy of the vast blue sea; Dreaming of cranes, who understands the genius of Red Cliff? Of fragrant herbs on your homeward way, do not have sad thoughts, By river clouds and mountain towns beholding the Chang-hua Terrace.

Red Cliff, on the middle Yangtse near Hua-jung, was the site of a great battle during the Three Kingdoms period. Su Shih later wrote two famous rhapsodies about it. In the second of these, he records how a crane flew over the boat in which he was visiting the place with friends. When he fell asleep a little later, a Taoist appeared to him in a dream, and he realised that this was the crane he had seen. 67 For the Chang-hua Terrace, see above, chapter three. Toward the end of 1514, Ho wrote a poem of congratulation for his friend Lü Ching, who earlier in the year had been promoted from Junior to Senior Supervising Secretary. The poem manages to combine several different readings of a Supervising Secretary’s lot in life:

———

fang]” 汝立席上送世其, HTFC 11.8a (299; 352:055-056); “At Yi-tao’s [Liu Tso] Banquet, Saying Farewell to Shih-ch’i [Sun Chi-fang] and his Brother-in-law Hsiao Chih-fu [Yi-chung], Who are Travelling Together” 以道席上送世其與其妹丈蕭執夫同行, 26.11b (466; 372:051). 66 HTFC 27.11b (484; 372:512). 67 See San Su Ch’üan-shu 三蘇全書 (Complete Writings of the Three Su), compiled by Tseng Tsao-chuang 曾棗莊 and Shu Ta-kang 舒大剛 (Peking: Yü-wen, 2001) 11.86. For a translation, see Burton Watson, Su Tung-p’o: Selections from a Sung Dynasty Poet (NewYork: Columbia University Press, 1965), pp.91-93.

LIFE AT THE CENTRE OF THINGS

367

贈呂子遷左給事中月明鳷鵲觀、日麗鳳凰城。自昔飛騰入、今看草奏行。銜沙填海志、鍊石補天情。無限乾坤事、非因萬古名。 Presented to Master Lü on his Promotion to Senior Supervising Secretary 68 The moon illumines Jaybird Outlook; The sun casts beauty on Phoenix Walls. Since long ago when you came swooping in, Now we see you busy at drafting policy. With a mouthful of sand—intent on filling the sea; Smelting stones—your wish to patch the heavens. Of limitless number the matters of heaven and earth, Not for the sake of a name to outlast the ages.

The ‘Jaybird Outlook’ (鳷鵲望 chih-ch’üeh-wang) was a building in the Han dynasty Imperial Park, mentioned in Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju’s “Rhapsody on the Imperial Park” 上林賦. 69 The third couplet alludes to a pair of legends. In the first, an Emperor’s daughter was drowned in the sea. Her spirit was transformed into a bird called the ching-wei 精衛, which flies back and forth gathering bits of wood and soil and dropping them into the sea in the hope of filling it up. 70 The notion is one of untiring perseverence in an endless task. The second legend is the perhaps more familiar one of Nü-wa 女媧 and her labours to patch up the holes in the heavens by smelting five-coloured sand into stones. 71 As he had done in the fall of 1512, Ho next took a break for an excursion to the Western Hills, where he visited the Ch’ang-hua (昌化 ‘Splendid Transformation’) and Yüan-t’ung (圓通 ‘Full Attainment’) temples, writing several poems while there, including this one.

———

68 HTFC 19.9b (320; 352:057). Lü’s promotion from Junior to Senior Supervising Secretary was announced on March 31, 1514, see the Wu-tsung Shih-lu 110.2a (2249). 69 WH 8.11a [111]); Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju Chi Chiao-chu (Chengtu: Pa-Shu Shu-she, 2000), p.17. I take my rendering from the standard translation in Knechtges, 2:103. In the title, the Yung recension gives Lü’s tzu 道夫 Tao-fu in place of 呂子 ‘Master Lü’. 70 See the Shan-hai Ching Chiao-yi 山海經校譯 (The Classic of Mountains and Seas, Collated and Interpreted), compiled by Yüan K’o 袁珂 (Shanghai: Shanghai Ku-chi, 1985) ; see also Knechtges, 1:416. 71 See the “Basic Annals of the Three Sovereigns” 三皇本紀 by Ssu-ma Chen 司馬貞, included in some texts of the Shih Chi, e.g. Takigawa Kametarō 瀧川龜太郎. Shiki Kaichū Kōshō 史記會注考證 (Records of the Historian with Assembled Annotations and Evidential Examination). 1932-34; repr. Shih Chi Hui-chu K’aocheng fu chiao-pu 史記會注考證附校補 (Shanghai: Shanghai Ku-chi, 1986), p.3 (4).

368

CHAPTER EIGHT

夜歸昌化寺日落歸山剎、松風處處聲。幽深不易到、昏黑更多驚。壑斷尋溪入、峰迴截嶺行。茲遊藉朋好、奇絕冠平生。 Returning to Ch’ang-hua Temple in the Evening 72 At sunset I return to the mountain cloister; A breeze in the pines resounds on every side. Such remote seclusion is not easily reached; The murky blackness alarms me more and more. Where the canyon is sheer I look for a stream to follow; Where peaks curve around I cut across a ridge. I owe this sojourn to my friends and companions; Its unmatched marvels cap my entire life. Ho’s fifth line, indeed the entire third couplet, is reminiscent of a couplet from Li Po’s “Saying Farewell to Cultivated Talent Chi, Who is Travelling to Yüeh” 送紀秀才遊越, “To the Grotto of Yü, you seek a stream for entry; / Cloudy Gate is remote, across a range” 禹穴尋溪入、雲門隔嶺深. 73 The final couplet is nothing less than an expansion of the final line of Su Shih’s “On the Twentieth Day of the Sixth Month, Crossing the Sea at Night” 六月二十日夜渡海 , “This sojourn’s unmatched marvels cap my entire life” 茲游奇絕冠平生, another sign that Ho was not entirely blind to Su’s work. 74

Ho’s trip was perhaps inspired by Liu Jen, whom he had welcomed back to the capital with a poem after a ten day visit to the Western Hills early in the winter. 75 By the time of Ho’s own excursion, winter was almost over. A poem written earlier in the season already refers to snow: 將雪有懷長安十萬戶、騎馬欲何之。已動尋梅興、空成采葛詩。雪心知霰集、雲意怯風吹。今夜西堂燭、蕭然有所思。

——— 72

HTFC 21.9a (370; 352:059). For other poems from this excursion, see “P’ingp’o” 平坡, HTFC 21.9a (370; 352:058); “Yüan-t’ung Temple” 圓通寺, HTFC 21.9a (370; 352:060); and “Presented to the Monk Ch’üan, Who Came to Pay a Call While I was Visiting Ch’ang-hua Temple: Matching Rhymes” 贈權僧過昌化寺見訪次韻, HTFC 19.9a (319; 352:061). 73 Ri Haku Kashi Sakuin 0553/09-10; CTS 176.1801; K.08416; An Ch’i, p.1689. 74 Su Shih Shih-chi (Peking: Chung-hua, 1982) 43.2366. 75 “Yi-hsing [Liu Jen] Comes to Visit on His Return from the Western Hills” 以行自西山還相訪, HTFC 21.8a (369; 352:045).

LIFE AT THE CENTRE OF THINGS

369

Feelings Just Before Snow 76 A hundred thousand households live in Ch’ang-an, Astride my horse, where am I going now? Already moved to look for blossoming plums, To no avail, my poems on picking kudzu. With snow in my heart, I know when sleet is gathering; Thinking of clouds, I fear the wind will blow. This evening, a candle in my western hall; Sadly, there is someone of whom I think.

The fourth line refers to a poem in the Songs traditionally taken to express fear lest slander mislead a ruler. 77 Liu Jen left Peking again just before the end of the year, to stay with his wife’s family. Ho saw him off with a poem and then spent New Year’s Eve with Liu Tso, where one of his two poems matched one by Tso missing his two brothers (K’an was still at home in Shensi). 78 On the first day of the new year, Ho was of course present at the court ceremonies, though his poem on the occasion suggests that all the pomp did not affect his judgement: 元日元日王正月、傅呼晚嚴班。千官齊鵠立、萬國候龍顏。辨色旌旗入、衡星劔珮還。聖躬無乃倦、幾欲問當關。 The First Day of the Year 79 The First of the Year, the sovereign’s inceptive month, A sound of shouting late in the palace ranks. A thousand officials line up as stiff as herons; Ten thousand states attend the Dragon Countenance. In distinguished colours, the flags and pennons enter; Facing the stars, the swords and belt hangings return. The Imperial Person has no care for weariness; I am almost about to ask who is minding the frontiers.

——— 76

HTFC 21.15b (379; 352:052). Mao Shih Yin-te 15/72; Karlgren, p.49; Waley, p.48. 78 “Saying Farewell to Yi-hsing [Liu Jen], Who is Going to P’ing-shan to Look After his Parents-in-law: Matching Rhymes” 送以行往平山省外父母次韻, HTFC 18.11b (299; 352:064); “On the Last Night of the Year, at the Residence of Liu of the Minister of Finance” 除夕劉戶部宅, HTFC 20.8a (342; 352:062); “On the Last Night of the Year, Matching Yi-tao’s [Liu Tso] Poem on Missing his Younger Brother” 除夕和以道懷弟之作, HTFC 20.5a (337; 352:063). 79 HTFC 22.2b (383; 352:248). 77

370

CHAPTER EIGHT

More works are extant from 1515 than from any other year of Ho’s life. Though not without its trials, including the deaths of two close friends and the exile of a third, as well as Wu-tsung’s ever more frivolous attitude toward his responsibilities, the year was reasonably calm. A few days into the new year, Ho and Chang Chi-meng paid a call on Liu Yün, and soon after, other friends came to call on Ho. 80 Ho’s poems written at Liu Yün’s match the rhymes of a poem by Liu. In fact, there was a good deal in the way of rhyme-matching poetry games during these first weeks of the year. One extensive chain of such poems, still extant, apparently began with a poem written by a Censor named Lu Yung 盧雍 (1474-1521) while visiting Ho, which Ho answered. The rhyme words, not always evident in translation, were 冥 ‘dark’, 亭 ‘pavilion’, 星 ‘star’, 青 ‘blue-green, dark’, and 停 ‘halt’. 訪何仲默花霧晝冥冥、春雲覆草亭。人間此仙吏、天上一文星。思極頭將白、情深眼獨青。門多問奇客、時見小車停。 Lu Yung: Visiting Ho Chung-mo [Ching-ming] 81 Blossom mists in daylight dark and dim, Springtide clouds shroud a thatched pavilion. In the world of men, this immortal clerk; In heaven above, a single star of letters. His thought attains the limits as his head turns white; When attachments are deep, only then are his pupils shown. As the gates are many, I inquire for the exceptional sojourner; Where small carts are often seen to halt.

——— 80

“On the Fourth Day of the First Month, Visiting Liu Ju-chung [Yün] with Tzuch’un [Chang Chi-meng]” 正月四日同子純過劉汝忠次韻 , HTFC 21.2a (359; 352:249-250); “On a Visit from Ku Yü-hsing [Ku K’o-shih] and Others: Matching Rhymes” 顧與行諸客見訪次韻, HTFC 21.2b (359; 352:251). For Ku K’o-shih 可適 (t. Yü-hsing), see TK 194. He was evidently a brother or cousin of the rascal Ku K’ohsüeh (see above). He passed the chin-shih in 1508 and served as a Drafter. 81 Lu Yung, Ku-yüan Chi 古園集 (Old Garden Collection) (1633 edition) 2.3a; TK 405. For Lu Yung (t. Shih-shao 師邵, h. Ku-yüan 古園), see TL 869, HY 2/283, TK 171. The chief source for his biography is the epitaph by Li T’ing-hsiang 李廷相 included in the Ku-yüan Chi (12.3a). Lu was from Soochow, passed the chin-shih in 1511, and was appointed a Censor. He wore out his constitution through overwork after being sent on assignment to Szechwan in 1517. After recuperating at home, he reported back for work in 1520. He was soon given an appointment as Education Intendant in Szechwan, but collapsed suddenly and died at home the following year before taking up the appointment.

LIFE AT THE CENTRE OF THINGS

371

酬盧侍御見訪有作用韻柱史事沉冥、行驄到我亭。數章天北極、隻字斗南星。坐久鶯初喚、吟餘草更青。朱絃山水調、凄切為君停。 Ho Ching-ming: Responding to Censor Lu’s Work during his Visit, Using His Rhymes 82 A pillar scribe devoted to deep and dark, His travelling team arrives at my pavilion. In several verses—the north pole of heaven Every word a star in the Southern Dipper. With long sitting, warblers begin to sing; In surplus of chanting, the grass is greener still. Crimson strings are tuned to landscape modes, Keen and clear, they halt on account of you.

Lu’s poem refers to Juan Chi, who demonstrated his disdain for worldly visitors by showing them only the whites of his eyes. Only to those he respected did he reveal his dark pupils. 83 The rhyme-matching continued when Ho went to visit Wang Ch’ung-ch’ing 王崇慶 (1484-1565) during the three days fast in preparation for the spring sacrifices. Wang was an official who had been sent out to provincial disgrace in 1511 and was probably just visiting Peking briefly in connection with his partial rehabilitation, which took the form of a much less undesirable provincial appointment. 84 He had perhaps visited Ho for the first time just previously; in any case, he wrote three poems on being moved by Ho’s visit, and Ho responded with another poem, in which he used the same rhymes as in the exchange with Lu Yung: 人日齋居過王德徵齋居春晝冥、獨過子雲亭。雨雪逢人日、江湖問客星。望來花漸發、愁劇柳還青。更話東歸棹、遙遙海思停。

——— 82

HTFC 20.15a (352; 352:613). Tsin Shu 49.1361. For Wang Ch’ung-ch’ing (t. Te-cheng 德徵, h.Tuan-hsi 端溪), see HY 2/49, TL 53, Kuo-ch’ao Lieh-ch’ing Chi 國朝列卿記 (Records of the Arrayed Officials of Our Dynasty), compiled by Lei Li 雷禮 (repr. Taipei: Ch’eng-wen, 1970) 133.17b (7018), TK 166. Wang’s posting in 1511 had been as a post-station superintendant in remote Kwangtung, in fact a form of internal exile. Sometime between 1511 and 1519, when he became a Vice-Prefect in Shantung, he was made an Assistant Magistrate in Shansi, a post still ranked lower than his former position in Peking, but marking at least a return to something suitable for a holder of the chin-shih. He was a significant writer (his works are still extant) and ended his career as Nanking Minister of Works. 83 84

372

CHAPTER EIGHT

On the Day of Man, Visiting Wang Te-cheng [Ch’ung-ch’ing] While Fasting 85 Residing in abstinence, springtide days grow dark; Alone I visit the lodging of Yang Tzu-yün. In rain and snow we encounter the Day of Man, On rivers and lakes inquire of the Sojourner Star. Since the full moon, flowers have begun to blossom; Sorrow quickens as willows turn green again. Again we talk of your eastward homing oar; Far, far away, our thoughts of the sea come to rest.

Yang Tzu-yün is Yang Hsiung (see above, chapter four). Wu-tsung’s conduct in connection with the actual sacrifices, which he regarded as at once a welcome opportunity to leave the palace for some hunting and a tiresome obstacle to his recreations once outside, scandalised the court. Ho commented on the events in his response to the work of a fearlessly outspoken Censor named P’an Hsi-tseng 潘希曾 (1476-1534), doing so while extending again the chain of rhymematching poems begun with Lu Yung and Wang Ch’ung-ch’ing. P’an had used the rhymes in a poem sent to Ho during the pre-sacrificial period of abstinence: 大興隆寺齋居次韻簡何中舍仲默古寺來春夕、溶溶月滿亭。忽聞歌百雪、獨坐歎晨星。蠟炬生花

——— 85

HTFC 21.2b (360; 352:252). For Wang’s poems, see “Moved by a Visit From Ho Chung-mo” 感何仲默過訪 Tuan-hsi Hsien-sheng Chi 7.wu-ku.1a, TK 402; Another poem by Wang, one of a pair of quatrains written while drinking at Ho’s, refers to Ho’s treating him as a friend on first acquaintance “Drinking at the Ta-fu Hall” 飲大復館, Tuan-hsi Hsien-sheng Chi 7.ch’i-chüeh.9b, TK 403. This suggests the possibility that Wang may have been among the unnamed visitors to whom Ho refers in his poem on the visit of Ku K’o-shih ‘and others’ (see above). Ho’s early return of the visit would explain Wang’s being particularly ‘moved’. There are two variants in the title of Ho’s poem. The first is the presence of the word 舍 she (‘shed’, i.e. residence) in the Yung recension. While possibly authorial, this reading has little effect on the sense of the title; it simply tells us that Ho was visiting Wang at home rather than at his office, but the latter would not have been possible in any case since Wang was not in office in Peking at the time. The other variant consists in giving Wang’s informal name as Te-hsüan 德宣 rather than Te-cheng. Although this is found in both the Yung and Shen recensions, the two closest to the authorial manuscripts, it is almost certainly an error, since no one with the informal name Wang Te-hsüan is attested for the Ming dynasty and it is, moreover, clear that Ho and Wang Ch’ungch’ing were in contact at this time. That the Yüan and Standard recensions both give Wang’s correct informal name is no doubt the result of successful emendation by conjecture at an early stage in the tradition.

LIFE AT THE CENTRE OF THINGS

373

赤、沉烟作縷青。故人妨促席、腸斷暮雲停。 P’an Hsi-tseng: A Note for Drafter Ho Chung-mo [Ching-ming], Written While Fasting at Ta-hsing Temple and Using his Rhymes 86 To an ancient temple I come on a springtime evening; In flowing tides, the moonlight fills my pavilion. Suddenly hearing a song of a hundred snows, I sit alone and sigh at the dawning stars. A candle of wax gives off the crimson of flowers; Heavy mist makes the darkness of its wisps. My old friend is keeping our mats at a distance; Heart-broken, the clouds of day’s end come to rest.

Ho’s poem uses the same rhyme words once again, though the topic is not the same as that of P’an’s extant poem: 答潘都諫郊壇見遺之作羽衛天行路、龍帷御宿亭。璧壇流霽月、銀闕動春星。諫獵心空赤、逢時鬢尚青。極知陪從地、瞻切五雲停。 Ho Ching-ming: Responding to Chief Supervising Secretary P’an’s Work on the Neglect of the Suburban Altars, on the Former Rhymes 87 Feathered guards—the highway travelled by Heaven; Dragon curtains—the lodging for Imperial Sleep. Jeweled altars aflow with clear moonlight; Silver towers amove with the stars of spring. Protesting the hunt, your heart is crimson to no avail; Encountering the times, your temples are still dark.

———

86 Chu-chien Chi 竹澗集 (The Bamboo Creek Collection) (SKCS) 2.22b (670), TK 398. P’an does not match the rhyming first line of the series in his poem, and Ho refrains from showing him up, omitting it in his response. For P’an Hsi-tseng (t. Chung-lu 仲魯), see HY 3/2, TL 776, KHL 40.40a (1662—Ch’eng Wen-te), TK 159. He passed the chin-shih with Ho in 1502. His official career was generally successful in spite of his repeated stinging criticisms of abuses, although he had been flogged almost to death and cashiered at one point on account of his opposition to Liu Chin. 87 HTFC 20.3b (335; 352:254). The only variant reading is in the title. The Shen recension, whose text is followed here, reads 前韻 ‘[on] former rhymes’, while the Yung recension has 用韻 ‘using [borrowed] rhymes’. The Yüan and Standard recensions drop the entire phrase, reminding us of the likely existence, in the corpus of Ming poetry, of many more unmarked works that likewise partook of this practice of borrowed rhymes. The language of the final couplet of this poem contrasts sharply with the ease of what precedes. To paraphrase, Ho compliments P’an on his wisdom, which supports the proper reverence due the Earth shown in the ceremonies at the suburban altars by criticising lapses in their performance, and his perspicacity, which is so intense that the clouds of five colours, an ancient subject of divinatory interpretation, come to a halt, their import clearly foreseen.

374

CHAPTER EIGHT

Utmost wisdom supports accordance with Earth; At your gaze’s urging, the five-coloured clouds come to rest.

The rhyme-matching games continued with Lu Yung, who matched a poem written while visiting Liu Tso during the Lantern Festival. 88 When Ho failed to keep a date to view plum blossoms, Lu wrote a poem about the sight, and Ho answered with a poem matching Lu’s rhymes. 89 At about this time, Ho said farewell to Liu Chieh, his old Hsinyang friend and fellow provincial graduate of 1498. We don’t know what Liu had been doing since leaving Hsin-yang. Quite possibly he had been a minor provincial education official. In any event, he was appointed Magistrate of Chiang-shan 江山 in the hill country of western Chekiang at this time, and Ho presented him with a poem on his departure from Peking. Ho praises the natural beauty of the place, notes that narrow ways led from it to Fukien and the central Yangtse valley, predicts happy leisure days, and concludes, 同學共知少年志、豈將書劒負行歲。 As fellow students, we share a knowledge of youthful ambitions; With books and sword, you would never turn your back on Practice and Reserve. 90

The final line refers to study and swordsmanship, the concerns of students in early times, and also alludes to a passage in the Analects, “When he is employed, he puts it into practice; when let go, he holds it in reserve.” (the reference is to the Gentleman’s possession of the Way). 91 Ho’s happy predictions, obligatory on such an occasion in any case, were not fulfilled. Liu died in some unspecified but

———

88 For Ho’s poem, “With Su and Kuan at Yi-tao’s Residence on the First Night of the Year” 元夕以道宅同蘇管二君子, see HTFC 27.12a (485; 372:513). This poem cannot be dated on the basis of Ho’s works, but the poem by Lu Yung that matches it comes from this time or very shortly after. See his “Matching the Rhymes of Chungmo’s [Ho Ching-ming] ‘A Party at Liu of the Ministry of Revenue’s on the First Night of the Year’” 次韻何仲默元夕同燕劉戶部, Ku-yüan Chi 3.21a, TK 405. 89 “Enjoying Plum Blossoms at Fan’s Grotto: Ho Chung-mo [Ching-ming] had Said He Would be Here, But He Has Not Come” 樊氏洞中觀梅何仲默有約不赴, Ku-yüan Chi 3.22a, TK 405; “Responding to Censor Lu’s Poem Missing Me While Enjoying Plum Blossoms at the Fan Grotto” 答盧侍御樊氏洞中觀梅見懷之作次韻, HTFC 26.13a (468; 372:057). 90 “Saying Farewell to Liu Ch’ao-hsin [Chieh], Who is Going to Chiang-shan” 送劉朝信之江山, HTFC 26.12a (467; 372:054). See TK 66, 121 for this event. 91 Lun-yü Yin-te 12/7/11; Waley, p.124; Lau, p.87.

LIFE AT THE CENTRE OF THINGS

375

unfortunate way during his third year in Chiang-shan. 92 In the meanwhile, the efforts of Mr.Tsou had proved effective (see above), and Ho now had Chang Shih back in Peking: 寺中張子言自浙來話石閣晴雲抱、花宮夕漏催。我遊天姥夢、爾向海門迴。日月雙龍劒、乾坤一酒盃。山中問百草、早晚折春雷。 At a Temple: Chang Tzu-yen [Shih] has Come Back from Che and We Chat 93 In a stony hall wrapped up in clouds and sunlight, In a flowery palace, urged on by evening waterclocks, I roam in dreams the Heavenly Mother Mountain; You turned back, returned from the ocean gate. Day and night, a pair of dragon swords, Heaven and earth in a single flagon of wine. Amid the hills, you enquire of the hundred herbs; Morning and evening, break the springtime thunder.

Shortly after this, Fan Lu, a fearless official related to Ho’s recently deceased friend Fan Yüan (see above), left to take up a post in Nanking. 送范以載之南京不見君山面、看君意獨哀。曾陪竹林醉、今識仲容才。駿馬登臺

——— 92

The (T’ien-ch’i) Chiang-shan Hsien Chih 江山縣志 (Gazetteer of Chiang-shan County) (5.5b) includes a very brief account of Liu’s term in office. It notes his gift for administration and the absence of thieves and bandits, and concludes, “he died unfortunately (fei ming, referring to violent or accidental death), and people of all stations wept for him” 死于非命上下哭之. 93 HTFC 21.3a (360; 352:258). Heavenly Mother Mountain is a peak near T’ient’ai in Chekiang. This poem has the same rhyme words as another poem by Ho written at this time, “In a Temple, Saying Farewell to Master Tuan, Who is Returning to P’u-chou” 寺中送段子還蒲州, HTFC 19.4b (312; 352:257), but I have found no poems by other writers that match its rhymes. There are several textual variations in this poem. In the title, the Shen recension adds the words 前韻 ‘on the previous rhymes’, presumably referring to the ‘Master Tuan’ poem just discussed. The Yung recension has a rather different form of the entire title, 寺中同子言作時子言自浙迴 “Written in a Temple with Tzu-yen: At the Time Tzu-yen Had returned from Che.” In the seventh line, the Yung recension reads 山河 ‘hills and rivers’ in place of 山中 ‘amid the hills’. In the last line, the Shen recension reads 拆 ‘break open’ in place of 折 ‘break’; the SKCS edition of the Standard recension agrees, an error that apparently arose independently (this variation is not recorded in TK). In the same line, the Yi-yang family alone of the Shen recension reads 雪 ‘snow’ in place of 雷 ‘thunder’.

376

CHAPTER EIGHT

去、蒼生攬轡來。春江暮雲樹、愁望北帆開。 Saying Farewell to Fan Yi-tsai [Lu], Who is Going to Nanking 94 I do not see the face of Fan Chün-shan; Beholding you, my sense is only grief. Once a companion drunk in the bamboo grove, Now I recognise talent like Juan Hsien’s. A bold steed and off to mount the terrace, For the common folk you come to tug on your reins. On a springtime river, clouds and trees at day’s end, You will sorrow to gaze at northward sails being set.

Fan Chün-shan is Fan Yüan. The best known of the “Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove” was Juan Chi (see above). Juan Hsien 阮咸, referred to by his tzu Chung-jung in the poem, was another of the ‘Seven’ as well as being Chi’s nephew. The allusion, along with Fan Yüan and Fan Lu having the same native place, suggests that perhaps Yüan was Lu’s uncle. ‘Mounting the Terrace’ refers to Lu’s new post in the Censorate at Nanking. ‘Tugging on the reins and purifying the world’ is an expression referring to determination to devote one’s official career to the public interest. It is unlikely to be a coincidence that it was first used with reference to a man named Fan P’ang 范滂, who ‘mounted his chariot’ to go to a troubled province. 95 Another friend going to Nanking at this time was Shih Ju, a Censor who had sent in a memorial at the time of the palace fire (see above) and who was now being sent on a tour of inspection. Ho wrote two poems of farewell to Shih, who was ‘stopping to celebrate his mother’s birthday on the way’ according to the second poem. 96 His

——— 94

HTFC 19.4b (313; 352:259). For Fan Lu (1474-1536; t. Yi-tsai 以載, h. Chih-an 質菴) see TL 364, HY 2/195, KHL 90.18a (3909—Lü Nan), TK 175. He was one of the officials who came to the defense of Han Pang-ching after the latter’s Palace Fire Memorial incensed Wu-tsung. Li Lien also wrote a farewell poem for Fan, “A Song of Chin-ling: Saying Farewell to Censor Fan Yi-tsai [Lu]” 金陵歌送范御史以載, Sung-chu Wen-chi 13.9a (291). In the second line of Ho’s poem, the Yüan recension reverses the order of the words 意獨, a reading unlikely to be authorial and in any event resulting in scarcely any difference in translation. 95 Hou Han Shu (Peking: Chung-hua, 1965) 67.2203. 96 “Saying Farewell to Censor Shih P’in-chih [Ju]” 送施聘之侍御, HTFC 26.13b (468; 372:060), “Saying Farewell to Censor Shih, Who is Visiting his Mother on her Birthday en Route, Matching Rhymes” 送施御史便道壽母次韻, HTFC 19.8b (318; 352:609). Ts’ui Hsien and Lu Yung presented Shih with an essay and a poem respectively on this occasion, “Presented to Censor Shih” 贈施御史序 Huan Tz’u (SKCS) 2.9b (401), not in Ts’ui Shih Huan Tz’u; “Saying Farewell to P’in-chih [Shih

LIFE AT THE CENTRE OF THINGS

377

home was in northern Chekiang, not too far away from Nanking, The two men said farewell again only a year and a half later, when Shih’s outspokenness had finally led to his dismissal. 97 By this time, Liu Jen had returned from his visit to his in-laws: 夜過劉以道兄弟風燈懸岸舘、竹色靜春沙。山水停湘瑟、池塘到謝家。雪融花尚細、烟裊柳初斜。對酌情親夜、能無戀物華。 In the Evening, I Visit Liu Yi-tao [Tso] and His Brother 98 Wind-blown lamps are hung in the shoreside hall; The beauty of bamboo stills the springtide sand. Mountains and rivers halt a Hsiang River zithern; By pond and basin we reach a house of Hsieh. Snow is melting, but blossoms are still slender; Smoke coils upward as willows begin to sway. Drinking together with fondest brothers this evening, How could we lack a love for the splendour of things?

Shortly after this, on another visit to Liu’s, Ho recorded his delight that Liu K’an too had returned to Peking.99 Another visitor at this time was Wang Chiu-feng 王九峰 (1479-1526), younger brother of Wang Chiu-ssu. They wrote poetry together, Ho’s poem expressing his regret at the years that had passed since he had last seen Chiu-ssu. 100 He also wrote a poem titled “To Send to the Three Gentlemen” 寄三子詩, praising three friends all living in retirement at home in Shensi, Wang Chiu-ssu, K’ang Hai, and Lü Nan. 101

———

Ju]: I am Alloted the Rhyme ‘Appaloosa’” 分得驄馬送聘之, Ku-yüan Chi 3.22b. 97 For Ho’s poem on this occasion, “Saying Farewell to Censor Shih P’in-chih [Ju], Who is Returning South” 送施聘御史之南還, see HTFC 18.12a (300; 352:074). 98 HTFC 21.3a (361; 352:260). There is a good deal of textual variation in the title. The Yung recension reads 夜過以道宅 “In the Evening, I Visit Yi-tao’s Residence.” The Shen and Yüan recensions read ‘Master Liu’ 劉子 in place of ‘Yi-tao’. 99 “Visiting Yi-tao [Liu Tso] and Happy that his Younger Brother Yi-cheng [K’an] has Arrived: On Assigned Rhymes, I have Drawn ‘Robe’” 過以道喜其弟以正至限韻得衣字, HTFC 21.3b (361; 352:263). 100 “Wang Shou-fu [Chiu-feng] Visits and We Each Take a Rhyme: Mine is ‘My’” 王壽夫過分韻得吾字, HTFC 21.4a (362; 352:265). For Wang Chiu-feng (t. Shou-fu 壽夫, h. Pai-ko Shan-jen 白閣山人), see HY 2/40, TL 20, KHL 97.77a (4268—Wang Chiu-ssu), TK 161. Since he had passed the chü-jen examination in 1501, he was probably an unsuccessful candidate in the 1502 chin-shih test, when Ho passed. Wang did pass in 1508. At the time of his visit to Ho, he had just returned to Peking after the expiration of the mourning period for his father. 101 HTFC 19.16b (330; 352:266).

378

CHAPTER EIGHT

Ho wrote three poems while on visits to the Ch’eng-nan (‘South of the City Walls’) Temple during this season, of which this is the first: 過城南寺出城春漸近、到寺日猶高。野望增樓閣、沙行散竹桃。吏情雙白鳥、世故一青袍。苦被微名繫、乾坤無地逃。 Visiting the Ch’eng-nan Temple 102 I leave the city as spring draws slowly near, Arrive at a temple while the sun is still high. The view from the fields increases in towers and halls; A walk on the sand disperses bamboo and peach trees. A bureaucrat’s heart—a pair of snow white birds; Worldly concerns—a single blue gown. Bitterly tethered in toil to fragile fame— Between Heaven and Earth there is no place for escape. Ho’s fourth line is reminiscent of one by Hsieh Ling-yün, in “Poem Written to Imperial Command as I Accompanied the Emperor on an Excursion to Pei-ku Hill at Ching-k’ou” 從游京口北固應詔詩 , “Village and garden disperse pink peach blossoms” 墟囿散紅桃. 103

The diction here is more consistently contrived than in many of Ho’s poems. In the very first line it is the realistic, but poetic, notion of spring approaching as one goes out into the country and sees more abundant signs of it. In the second couplet, the verbs create an image that rewards reflection, as we realise that the architecture of the temple would after all become more evident as one approached it and that a walk along the sandy banks or bed of a stream would seem to scatter the plants, growing there less thickly than in a grove or orchard. The third couplet is syntactically paratactic; in each line we have to supply a connective phrase—’are nothing other than’ or the like—between the topic and comment. A ‘white bird’ refers to egrets and cranes. Blue was the colour of gowns worn by students and officials. It is, of course a good deal more than that. While it is possible to

———

102 HTFC 21.3b (361; 352:261). In the Shen recension, the title includes the words 二首 “two poems,” but in fact only one occurs under this title. For the second poem, “An Excursion to the Ch’eng-nan Temple” 出遊城南寺, see HTFC 21.4a (362; 352:264). 103 WH 22.9a (300); Lu Ch’in-li, p.1158; Hsieh Ling-yun Chi Chiao-chu 謝靈雲集校注 (Taipei: Li-jen, 2004), p.234; cf. the translation by J. D. Frodsham, Murmuring Stream: The Life and Works of the Chinese Nature Poet Hsieh Ling-yün (385-433), Duke of K’ang-lo (Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press, 1967) 1:171.

LIFE AT THE CENTRE OF THINGS

379

take the final couplet as little more than the conventional close of a temple visit poem, “The religious life is a wonderful thing, and I should like to remain here permanently in the company of its practitioners, but I really must get back to the office now,” there is a serious undercurrent as well. Although Ho refers to the 乾 ch’ien and 坤 k’un trigrams, two of the eight that form the sixty-four hexagrams of the Changes, rather than literally to 天 Heaven and 地 Earth, which they represent, his final line is in essence a compressed and versified quote from the Chuang-tzu, which in two different places refers to forces from which there is no escape between Heaven and Earth (無所逃於天地之間). In the Chuang-tzu, these are in the first case one’s role as son and subject and in the second the yin and yang forces that govern the workings of the universe. 104 Ho’s third recorded visit to the temple was made During the GraveSweeping Festival. 清明日二張王劉諸友同出城南寺風晝人遊少、沙郊馬並行。穿花尋野寺、冒雨出春城。骨肉新傷淚、賓朋遠至情。天邊有芳草、故向客愁生。 On Ch’ing-ming Day, an Excursion to Ch’eng-nan Temple with the two Changs, Wang, and Liu 105 On a windy day, few people go on outings; In the sandy suburbs we ride our horses abreast. Threading the flowers, we visit a country temple; Braving the rain, emerge from springtime walls. Newly wounded, with tears for my flesh and blood; I am touched that friends have come from far away. On the far horizon there are fragrant herbs, That grow on purpose for a sojourner’s sorrow.

It was perhaps at this time that Ho wrote a quatrain whose title is longer than the poem itself: “Master Chang, Having Recently Learned a Taoist Practitioner’s Art of Drinking Deer Blood, Wanted to Test It,

———

104 Chuang-tzu Yin-te 10/4/41, 63/23/52; Watson, pp.60, 256; Graham translates the first passage (p.70), but not the second. 105 HTFC 21.4a (362; 352:268). In the title of this poem, I follow the text of the Shen and Yüan recensions. The Yung and Standard recensions simply read 清明日同諸友遊城南寺 “An Outing to Ch’eng-nan Temple on Ch’ing-ming Day with my Friends” (the Yung recension lacks the word 日 ‘day’). Ho had lost an infant daughter the preceding year. He also wrote a pair of quatrains on this occasion, see “Ch’ingming” 清明, HTFC 28.8b (503; 354:013-014).

380

CHAPTER EIGHT

But had been Unable to Do So. I Have a Deer at my House and We were Planning to Take its Blood to Drink, But as Master Chang was Approaching the Kitchen, Gave a Cry of Sorrow, Unable to Bear Seeing it Die. I have Written this Poem about it to Give to Master Chang.” 106 We cannot be certain of the date, but Chang Shih had just returned to Peking, and Ho had written a poem about a deer just before Chang’s return, so this seems a likely time for the quatrain. 107 The Master Hu to whom Ho addressed the following poem at this time is not positively identified, but it seems likely that he was related to the Liu brothers, who also came from Shensi and whose mother had the same, quite unusual, surname: 送忽生還關中次韻望爾西行路、春風萬柳條。囀憐黃鳥近、去恨白駒遙。彈劒歌今日、張燈宴往宵。秦川待歸客、花色醉中饒。 Saying Farewell to Mr. Hu, Who is Returning to Kuan-chung: Matching Rhymes 108 I gaze along the route of your westward progress; A spring breeze blows in the boughs of ten thousand willows. Warbling their fondness, yellow birds draw near; Putting heartache aside, a white colt is far away. Stroking your sword you sing this present day; Setting out lamps we feast the passing night. The River of Ch’in awaits a returning traveller; The charm of blossoms surrounds our drunkenness. Ho’s third line is almost identical to the opening line of the first of Tu Fu’s “Impromptu” 遺意 quatrains, “Warbling in the branches, the yellow birds draw near” 囀枝黃鳥近. 109 Both lines of the third couplet recall poems by Li Po. The first is reminiscent of a line near the end of Li’s long “Presented to my Uncle Yang-ping, Magistrate of Tang-t’u” 獻從叔當塗宰陽冰, “Rapping my sword, I sing ‘Bitter Cold’” 彈劍歌苦寒. 110 “Bitter Cold” was a yüeh-fu ballad of complaint. The other line

——— 106

張子近得道士飲鹿血術欲試未得吾家有一鹿吾欲取血飲張子臨庖哀呼不忍見死乃作詩遺張子焉, HTFC 29.13a (524; 374:051). Wong Yuk (王煜) translates this poem in his “The Confucian, Legalist, Taoist, and Buddhist Vestiges of Ho Ching-ming,” Chinese Culture 33.1 (1992):61-68, pp.63-64. 107 “Deer” 麞, HTFC 22.7b (390; 352:256). 108 HTFC 19.5a (313; 352:269). The Yung recension omits “Matching Rhymes” from the title. 109 Tu Shih Yin-te 355/47A/1, CTS 226.2438, K.11140. 110 Ri Haku Kashi Sakuin 0412/51; CTS 171.1765; K.08275; An Ch’i, p.1648.

LIFE AT THE CENTRE OF THINGS

381

in Ho’s couplet may derive from Li’s “On an Autumn Evening, A Floating Banquet on Happy Pavilion Pond with Liu of Tang-shan” 秋夜與劉碭山泛宴喜亭池, “We set out lamps to feast on this beautiful pond” 張燈宴華池. 111

‘Yellow Birds’ and ‘White Colt’ are two poems in the Songs. 112 The story of the man who rapped on his sword and sang of his career dissatisfactions in a song whose refrain began “Long sword, shall we go home?” comes from the Chan-kuo Ts’e. 113 The import of these references here is of course that Hu is returning home, though his worth is such that his remaining would be of general benefit. Hang Huai, one of the friends who had said farewell to Wang Pien (see Preface), was appointed to office in Tientsin at this time, and Ho wrote a farewell poem on his departure, having visited him with Chang Chi-meng. 114 Later in the spring came the good news that Meng Yang was being transferred from Kweilin to Wen-shang 汶上 in Shantung, and Ho celebrated with a poem. 115

——— 111

Ri Haku Kashi Sakuin 0645/02; CTS 179.1824; K.08505; An Ch’i, p. 684. See Mao Shih Yin-te 41/186, 187; Karlgren, pp.128-29; Waley, pp.95, 194. 113 Chan-kuo Ts’e Chu-tzu So-yin 戰國策逐字索引 (Single Word Concordance to the Strategems of the Warring States) (Taipei: Taiwan Shang-wu, 1992): 133/64/2427; translation in James I. Crump, Jr., Chan-Kuo Ts’e (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1970), pp.189-92. 114 “Saying Farewell to Military Defense Circuit Vice Commissioner for Tientsin Hang” 送杭憲副兵備天津, HTFC 26.15a (470; 372:065); “Tzu-ch’un [Chang Chimeng] Invites Me on a Visit to Tung-ch’ing [Hang Huai]” 子純邀過東卿, HTFC 21.4b (363; 352:270). For Hang Huai (t. Tung-ch’ing 東卿, h. Shuang-hsi 雙溪), see HY 3/142, TL 299, TK 152. Available biographical materials for Hang do not mention his having held a position in Tientsin, but they are rather sparse in any case. The [Kuang-hsü Ch’ung-hsiu] Tientsin Fu Chih 天津府志 (Gazetteer of Tientsin Prefecture) does list him, without giving any dates but as the sixth of fourteen during the Cheng-te reign (11.18b). Since it was from Tientsin that he was transferred to Yunnan in 1515, after Ho’s friend from Hsin-yang Ma Lu reported him incompetent, and since he was in Chekiang until 1515, the Tientsin posting must have been brief and an event of 1515. 115 “Happy that Wang-chih [Meng Yang] Has Been Transferred: Also to be Sent” 喜望之量移兼寄, HTFC 19.16a (330; 352:271). Meng’s own reference to his transfer, in the same essay in which he referred to his remarks on the eve of his arrest (see above), says that he was transferred in the summer, but this would refer to when news reached him in Kweilin, Meng Yu-ya Chi 16.23b. Ku Lin and Li Meng-yang both wrote poems on Meng’s transfer; see “On first Hearing that Wang-chih [Meng Yang] is being transferred to Wen-shang” 初聞望之量移汶上, “Going by River to Meet Wang-chih [Meng Yang], my Boat is Held Up by a Headwind” 江上迎望之逆風舟不得見, “Moved by Autumn on the River: Sent to Wang-chih [Meng Yang]” 江上感秋呈望之, “Drifting Together on the Eastern Pool: A Farewell Banquet for Wang-chih [Meng Yang]” 共泛東潭餞望之, and “Presented on Parting from Wang-chih [Meng 112

382

CHAPTER EIGHT

The news of Meng’s return was tempered by the arrest of Ho’s townsmen and former student Tai Kuan and his eventual relegation to the office of post-station master in a place in Kwangtung, in the far south. 116 Tai, a man of few words but vociferous and tenacious when it came to affairs of state, had been serving as a Secretary in the Ministry of Revenue, in which capacity he became greatly concerned at the resources being squandered on supporting the Emperor’s favourites in a time of reduced revenues because of natural disasters. Finally, he submitted a memorial that infuriated Wu-tsung by the bluntness of its attack. “How can Your Majesty bear,” Tai asked, “to squeeze the blood from babies in order to nourish these vermin?” He went on to criticise the Emperor for wasting money on his military companions. “I cannot understand how Your Majesty can so enjoy the frontier troops and yet take so little thought for the security of the frontier!” Finally, he reminded Wu-tsung that all the wealth that had been confiscated from Liu Chin had been taken off to the Leopard Quarter and placed in a newly constructed treasury rather than being returned to the state treasury. “For the support of your material needs, there are Directorates and Bureaux within and Ministries and Offices

———

Yang], and Sent to All Our Friends” 贈別望之兼寄諸相知, Fu-hsiang Kao 浮湘藁 (Manuscripts from Drifting on the River Hsiang), Ku Hua-yü Chi (SKCS) 3.11b-12b (158); and “Presented to Magistrate Meng on His Promotion from Kweilin to Wenshang” 贈孟明府自桂林量移汶上, K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi 24.15b (612). For Meng Yang and Li Meng-yang, see Wang Kung-wang, “Li Meng-yang K’ung-t’ung Chi Jen-ming Chien-cheng. (chih san),” Kansu She-hui K’o-hsüeh 1995.5:67-70, p.68. 116 The timing of these events can only be inferred on the basis of partial evidence. The MTC assigns Tai’s relegation to Kwangtung to a date corresponding to April 9, 1515 (twenty-sixth day of the third month), adding an abridged version of his memorial (see below) as explanatory matter to the entry (46.1713, see also Wu-tsung Shih-lu 122.7b [2458]). The entire text is given in Tai’s collected works, Tai Shih Chi 1.1a (11), but this does not refer to a date of submission. Tai’s own poem celebrating his release from prison gives the date of that event as the twenty-sixth day of the sixth month, or August 5 (there was an intercalary fourth month in 1515). See “On my Release from Custody on the Twenty-sixth Day of the Sixth Month, I Sadly Recall that On This Day Last Year I was on my Way to Pien” 六月二十六日出獄忽憶去年今日赴汴, Tai Shih Chi 9.21b (69). The April date probably refers to Tai’s arrest. The MTC, as often, enters the entire story, including the eventual disposition of Tai’s case, under a single significant date. Alternatively the parallel ‘twenty-six days’ may be an indication of textual corruption in one source. Shao Pao, Li Tung-yang’s associate and the epitaph writer of our preface, wrote a poem saying farewell to Tai on his departure, “Saying Farewell to Tai Chung-ho, Who is Relegated to Ling-nan: Matching Magistrate Hou,” Jung-ch’un T’ang Hou-chi (SKCS) 12.16b, cited in Lieh-ch’ao Shih-chi, ping-5.22b (303), as did Hsü Tsan, Sung-kao Chi (1543 edition) 12.7b. See TK 71 for more poems written by Tai and addressed to him on his journey south.

LIFE AT THE CENTRE OF THINGS

383

without. What was the use of this treasury?” Tai paid heavily for his righteous anger. After four summer months in prison—a season when even hardened criminals were often released en masse because of the intolerable conditions in the cells— he was sent to Kwangtung, where he lived on vegetables he grew himself. 117 There were dangers other than privation associated with life in Kwangtung. Fan P’eng’s biography of Tai mentions a narrow escape that Tai had while he was on a trip to Canton. The boat he was riding was attacked by pirates, and Tai fell into the water. A boatman seized him by the hair and pulled him up just as one of the pirates swung his sword at them. Fortunately, Tai’s hair was very long, and so the pirate’s blade only shortened it, rather than Tai himself, who made off downstream and eventually escaped, although three pirates were in hot pursuit. 118 Restored to office by Wu-tsung’s successor, he held a succession of provincial posts, in one of which he prepared the Shen recension of Ho’s works. He left office to observe mourning for his father and then, after the expiration of his mourning period, was himself taken by an illness that proved fatal. Early in the summer, Liu Tso left Peking for temporary duty in the provinces as part of his work in the Ministry of Revenue, and Ho saw him off with a farewell poem. Since Ho’s poem matched the rhymes of one by Ma Lu, we can infer that Ma was in Peking at this time and may have been present at Liu’s send-off. 119 Not long after Liu Tso’s departure, Ho went on an outing that resulted in a poem, but not in any record of who his companions may have been. 城東泛舟水郭移尊宴、沙原列騎停。岸開平放舸、林轉曲通亭。雨意雲垂白、風情柳送青。衣冠夕臨泛、東望極滄溟。

——— 117

Ho’s set of five “Ancient Poems of Lament” 古怨詩 may mark this departure, HTFC 10.7b (128; 351:057-061). Although the addressee of these poems is nowhere named, both the intensity of emotion and the poems’ placement in chronological sequence suggest that it was Tai Kuan. 118 I draw on the more detailed account of this incident recorded in the (Chiach’ing) Ju-ning Fu Chih 19.22b 119 “Saying Farewell to Yi-tao [Liu Tso]: Matching Chün-ch’ing’s [Ma Lu] Rhymes” 送以道次君卿韻, HTFC 19.5a (314; 352:273). Ma Lu’s works, including the one Ho was matching, are no longer extant. He spent some time while a Censor on assignment in the provinces—it was a memorial from him alleging that Hang Huai was not up to his job in Tientsin that led to Hang’s reassignment to Yunnan (see above).

384

CHAPTER EIGHT

Boating East of the City 120 To the watered suburb we move our flagon banquet; On a sandy plain we serried horsemen halt. The bank opens up, a beach for launching boats; The grove swings ‘round, a bend leads to a pavilion. It looks like rain—the clouds overhang us in white; A breeze in the air—willows send off their green. Caps and robes look out on the current at evening; Gazing east toward the end of the deep blue sea.

In the fifth month, the retired Grand Secretary Li Tung-yang held a party at his residence in Peking. A planned visit to the gardens had to be cancelled because of rain. Ho wrote at least three, probably four, poems on this occasion, a friendly tribute to his former patron who, as it happened, would die in the following year. 121 A poem on bream clearly written at about this time treats the fish as a banquet delicacy and probably comes from Li’s party: 鰣魚五月鰣魚已至燕、荔枝盧橘未應先。賜鮮徧及中璫第、薦熟誰開寢廟筵。白日風塵馳驛騎、炎天冰雪護江船。銀鱗細骨堪憐汝、玉筯金盤敢望傳。 Bream 122 Here it is the fifth month, and bream have already come to Yen;

——— 120

HTFC 21.4b (363; 352:274). “A Gathering at the ‘Missing the Mountain Slope Hall’: We Were About to Visit the Eastern Garden but Gave it Up Because of a Storm” 懷麓堂集將遊東園以風雨遂止, HTFC 21.5a (364; 352:277-278); “Looking at Bamboo” 觀竹, HTFC 22.6a (388; 352:279). For Li Tung-yang’s poem written on this occasion, “After Broth Cakes, Vice-Director Ch’iao Tsung and Drafter Ho Ching-ming Visit Together, and I Write Another Poem While Drinking” 湯餅後喬員外宗何中書景明同過酒間再賦, is found in Li Tung-yang Hsü-chi 李東陽續集 (Continuation of Collected Works of Li Tung-yang), edited by Ch’ien Chen-min 錢振民 (Changsha: Yüeh-lu Shu-she, 1997), p.93, which appeared too late for the poem to be included in TK. The incident is recorded, without reference to Ho’s poems, in Ch’ien Chen-min, Li Tung-yang Nien-p’u (Shanghai: Fu-tan University, 1995), p.275. None of Ho’s poems on this occasion matches Li’s rhymes, but the second couplet of the second of them responds to the imagery and vocabulary of Li’s second couplet. There was a celebration under way when Ch’iao and Ho arrived; Li’s son-in-law had come to announce the birth of a son, an occasion to be marked by a dish of ‘broth-cakes’ (湯餅 t’ang-ping). 122 HTFC 26.16b (471; 372:071). The Yeh-chu 野竹 edition of the Shen recension lacks the ‘grass’ radical in 薦 ‘offering’ in the fourth line.The resulting rare character, which refers to an unidentified bovine animal with a single horn, possibly a rhinoceros, can hardly be authorial. 121

LIFE AT THE CENTRE OF THINGS

385

Even lychees and loquats do not arrive any sooner than they. The conferral of dainties extends to all the Palace Eunuch Mansions; Offering the ripened, who will hold a feast in the ancestral shrine? Wind and dust in glaring sunlight—rushed by post-house horsemen; Ice and frost on a torrid day—preserved on a River boat. Silver scales and delicate bones—how truly I adore you! Jade chopsticks, golden platters—may I dare to wish them passed? The fourth line alludes to a passage in the “Annals for the Third Month” 三月紀 section of the Lü Shih Ch’un-ch’iu 呂氏春秋, “The Son of Heaven now first boards the boat and offers tunny at the ancestral shrine, this in order to pray for the grain, that it ripen” 天子焉始乘舟、薦鮪于寢廟、乃為麥祈實. 123 The fifth line recalls the story of how Yang Kui-fei’s 楊貴妃 taste for fresh lychees led to their being rushed from the south by post horses, but it does not echo the language of any particular source. The sixth line, in contrast, borrows half its language from the first line of Tu Fu’s “The New Tower of the Military Commissioner of Chiang-ling, the Prince of Yang-ch’eng, has been Completed, and the Prince Invites Censor Yen and His Aides to Compose Heptasyllabic Lines in Concert” 江陵節度陽城王新樓成王請嚴侍御判官賦七字句同作, “Up in a tower on a torrid day, ice and snow are produced” 樓上炎天冰雪生. 124 Ho’s final line echoes another Tu Fu line, from his “A Countryman Makes me a Gift of Red Cherries” 野人送朱櫻, “Of jade chopsticks and golden platters I have no news” 金盤玉筯無消息. 125

This essentially frivolous poem is oddly compounded, perhaps because, if the surmise that it was written for Li Tung-yang is correct, it needed to refer to numerous and serious texts in recognition that its recipient was the doyen of letters in his day. Although the sense of the poem is playful, the combination of hints of unseemly extravagance in its references to eunuchs and Yang Kui-fei with lines written by a wistfully grateful Tu Fu living in insecure penury give it an undertone of what must be taken as juvenile exuberance if it is not to be found offensively critical of his host. As usual, the unpleasant summer weather does not go unnoticed in Ho’s poetry from 1515. He entertained Li Lien, Tai Ch’in, and Liu K’an, then spent some time in a temple, apparently in the Western Hills, seeking relief from the heat. He was joined by Li Lien, who

——— 123

Lü Shih Ch’un-ch’iu Chu-tzu So-yin (Taipei: Taiwan Shang-wu, 1996) 3.1/11/25. 124 Tu Shih Yin-te 531/9/1, CTS 232.2561, K.11822. 125 Tu Shih Yin-te 365/36/7, CTS 226.2447, K.11187.

386

CHAPTER EIGHT

went with him and one Tsou ‘Tzu-chia’ 鄒子家 to visit Chang Shih. A set of ten quatrains was probably composed, or at least finished, during this visit. 126 Toward the end of summer, Ho’s friend Hou Yi-cheng left to become prefect of Tung-ch’ang, where Ho Ching-shao had been serving when he died. Hou had tried first to decline the appointment; then, if to the provinces he must go, to get it converted to a position as Education Intendant, but to no avail. The whole story is told in Ho’s farewell essay, in which Ho urges Hou to accept the post as Prefect, citing the cases of Li Meng-yang, Ho T’ang, and Lü Nan, who had willingly accepted poverty and obscurity after they gave offence by their forthright criticism. 127 Ho T’ang would be Hou Yi-cheng’s immediate subordinate at Tung-ch’ang and turned out to be an unhappy choice as an example, since he submitted two reports requesting leave to give up his own post at about this time. This called forth a letter of admonition from Ching-ming, who in this case cites the examples of Lü Nan, Li Mengyang, K’ang Hai, and Wang T’ing-hsiang, all of whom had been forced from high office because of their loyalty to the welfare of the

——— 126

“Li Ch’uan-fu [Lien] and Tai Shih-liang [Ch’in] Come to Visit” 李川甫戴時亮過訪, HTFC 21.5b (364; 352:280); “Liu Yi-cheng [K’an] Visits for a Drink on a Rainy Evening” 暮雨劉以正過飲, HTFC 21.5b (364; 352:281); “Visiting Elder Brother Ta-ho in the Chamber of Abbot Chien and Drinking” 鑑上人房訪大和兄飲, HTFC 21.5b (365; 352:282); “Avoiding the Heat in a Temple with Ch’uan-fu [Li Lien]” 同川甫寺中避暑, HTFC 21.6a (365; 352:283); “Visiting the Cottage of Chang Tzu-yen [Shih] with Li Ch’uan-fu [Lien] and Tsou Tzu-chia” 同李川甫鄒子家過張子言舍, HTFC 21.6a (365; 352:284); “Songs of Suffering from the Heat” 苦熱行, HTFC 29.10a (520; 374:031-040). For poems by Li Lien and Tai Ch’in written at this time, see “Visiting Chung-mo [Ho Ching-ming] with Shih-liang [Tai Ch’in] and Playing the Lute” 同時亮過仲默鼓琴, “Presented to Masters Ts’ui and Ho” 贈崔何二子, “Visiting the Quarters of Abbot Ts’un with Chung-mo [Ho Ching-ming]”, 同仲默過存上人方丈, “Visiting Yen-ch’üan [Ho Meng-ch’un] with Master Ta-fu [Ho Ching-ming]” 過燕泉同大復子, “On a Winter Evening, Visiting Tai Shih-liang [Ch’in] with Master Ta-fu [Ho Ching-ming]” 冬夜過戴時亮同大復子, Sung-chu Wen-chi 18.2b-3b (323-24), TK 408-09; “An Evening Party with Li Ch’uan-fu [Lien] at Ho Chung-mo’s [Ching-ming]” 與李川甫夜燕何仲默, Lu-yüan Chi 鹿原集 (Deer Plain Collection) (1633; repr. Peking T’u-shu-kuan Ku-chi Chen-pen, vol.109, Peking: Shu-mu Wen-hsien, 1988) p.37a (306A), TK 412. Tsou Tzu-chia is unidentified. He may have been the Mr. Tsou earlier sent to Chekiang to fetch Chang Shih back to Peking. 127 “Farewell Preface to Hou Ju-li [Yi-cheng], Who is to be Prefect of Tungch’ang” 送侯汝立守東昌序 HTFC 31.3b (549; 內:005).

LIFE AT THE CENTRE OF THINGS

387

Empire. 128 They had not, in other words, simply walked away from provincial posts because they were tired of serving. 129 Hou Yi-cheng probably left for Tung-ch’ang around the Establishing Autumn day; at least that is the date of poems sent to Ho T’ang, presumably to be carried by Hou, a farewell poem to whom follows immediately. 130 In the event, both Hou and Ho left their posts in Tung-ch’ang. Hou stayed there longer and died while at home in mourning, while Ho T’ang left fairly soon after Hou’s appointment and stayed in retirement for eight years.

——— 128

It is interesting that Ho included K’ang Hai in this list of loyal officials, implicitly rejecting the accusation of collusion with Liu Chin. 129 “Letter to Ho Ts’ui-fu [T’ang]” 與何粹夫書, HTFC 32.17b (574; 書:004). This letter is not referred to in most biographies of Ho Ching-ming, but it is cited at length in the entry on him in Teng Yüan-hsi’s 鄧元錫Huang Ming Shu 皇明書 (History of the Imperial Ming) (Wan-li edition; repr. TM 2:29; Tainan: Chuang-yen Wen-hua, 1996) 38.43a-45b. For Ho T’ang’s requests, see “The Vice-Prefect of Tung-ch’ang Requests to Retire” 東昌同知乞致仕狀, “A Second Request to Retire from Tungch’ang” 東昌再乞致仕狀, Po-chai Chi (SKCS) 1.24b, 26a (478-79). 130 “Sent to Ts’ui-fu [Ho T’ang] on the Establishing Autumn Day” 立秋日寄粹夫, HTFC 19.16a (330; 352:286); “Saying Farewell to Hou Ju-li [Yi-cheng], Who is Going to Tung-ch’ang” 送侯汝立之東昌, HTFC 19.5b (314; 352:287).

CHAPTER NINE

ARCHAISM ANCESTORS Ho’s penchant for giving his friends high-minded advice was soon to reach even greater heights. Within a few months of Hou Yi-cheng’s departure for Tung-ch’ang came an exchange of letters between Li Meng-yang and Ho Ching-ming that has become one of the best known incidents in either man’s life. 1 In order to understand the letters

———

1 An explanation of the dating of these letters is in order, since most other writers have placed them several years earlier. Chu An-hsien’s nien-piao of Li Meng-yang (p.9b) dates the letters 1510, followed by LHH (1.8b) and the entry in DMB (p.512). Yokota Terutoshi chooses 1511; see “Ka Keimei no Bungaku,” Hiroshima Daigaku Bungakubu Kiyō 25 (1965), p.256, and “Mindai Bungakuron no Tenkai” 明代文学論の展開 (Development of Ming Literary Theory), Pt.1, Hiroshima Daigaku Bungakubu Kiyō 37-tokushūgo (1977), p.68. Chien Chin-sung was the first to show that the letters must be later. He cited a reference in one of Li’s letters to a poem on an eclipse by Ho, “Watching a Lunar Eclipse in the Sixth Month” 六月望月食, HTFC 22.2a (382; 352:285), identified the eclipse as one that occurred on July 25, 1515, and concluded that 1516 was the most plausible date for the letters; see “Li-Ho Shih-lun Yen-chiu” (M.A. thesis, National Taiwan Unversity, 1980), pp.33-35. The eclipse is Oppolzer 4206; see Theodore Ritter von Oppolzer, Canon of Eclipses [Canon der Finsternisse], translated by Owen Gingerich (repr. New York: Dover, 1962), p.367. The only other lunar eclipse to take place during the sixth lunar month of the years Ho was in Peking was Oppolzer 4208 (July 13, 1516), which was not visible in China; see Oppolzer, loc. cit. This discovery can now be elaborated by further examination of Li’s letters, which cite several phrases as evidence of a deterioration in the quality of Ho’s work. Yokota Terutoshi took the phrases to be titles of lost works by Ho, but in fact they are passages taken from the texts of two of his extant poems. One of the poems, “Avoiding the Heat in a Temple with Ch’uan-fu” 同川甫寺中避暑, HTFC 21.6a (365; 352:283), was written in the summer with Li Lien. The other poem is one of a pair of welcome poems addressed to Hsü Tsin. The first of the pair, translated below, is the one cited by Li Meng-yang; the second gives the season as late summer, just at the approach of fall. Since the poems come from about the same time as the eclipse, it appears that the fall or winter of 1515 is the likeliest date for Ho’s letter, with Li’s replies coming not much later, see TK 71-72. Scholars in China remained unaware of Chien’s decisive resolution of the question for some time and continued to debate the issue. In 1985, Fu Ying 付瑛 proposed that the letters were written in 1518 or later, on the basis of a phrase echoing the Tso Commentary, found near the end of Li’s first letter, that he took to refer to Ho’s promotion in 1518; see below for discussion of the phrase, and see Fu’s “Li Meng-yang yü Ho Ching-ming Lun-cheng

ARCHAISM

389

and the significance they came to take on, we need to step out of the biographical stream to consider the Archaist ideal in Chinese literature as the context within which the letters take their place. The notion that an ideal society had existed in the remote past and that the reestablishment of such a society would solve the problems of the present was pervasive in China until modern times, and it is not surprising that this broad tendency of thought included within it a literary analogue. To give a full account of the history of Archaist ideas about literature in the Chinese tradition would require a larger volume than this one, but it is important to realise that Li Meng-yang and Ho Ching-ming were drawing on a long history of discussion of the problem of the relationship between the past and the present in

———

Shih-chien Ch’u-t’an” 李夢陽與何景明論爭時間初探 (A First Investigation of the Date of the Controversy Between Li Meng-yang and Ho Ching-ming), Hsin-yang Shih-yüan Hsüeh-pao 1985.2), pp.51-54, for his argument. While it cannot be proven that the letters are not so late, it seems unlikely that letters written in 1518 or later would refer only to poems written in 1515. The Tso Commentary phrase in question occurs under the fifth year of Duke Ting and refers to the inadmissibility of continuing to be adorned, even in the coffin, by the jade ornament appropriate to a particular office when one has left it. See Ch’un-ch’iu Ching-chuan Yin-te 446/Ting 5/4, Legge, p.760Chin Jung-ch’üan pointed out in 1995 that Liu Hai-han’s 1510 dating was impossible since Ho refers in his letters to Li’s work after he went to Kiangsi in 1512. Chin noted that Ho says that he and Li have known each other for “over ten years” 十餘年來. Since the two men met around 1503, Chin argued, 1513, eleven years later, should be about the right date for the letters; see Chin’s “Ho Ching-ming Nien-p’u Hsin-pien,” Hsin-yang Shih-fan Hsüeh-yüan Hsüeh-pao 1995.1: 98-102; p.101. In the absence of better evidence, this would be a plausible suggestion, but it scarcely rules out 1515. Chin also noted that Li accuses of Ho of being too impressed by his own reputation, which he argues refers to such events as Ho’s opposition to Liu Chin and rescue of Li himself. This too could refer as well to any time in Ho’s residence in Peking. In any event, 1513 had already been ruled out by the work of Chien Chinsung. As late as 2001, Wang Kung-wang, an expert on Li Meng-yang, argued for a date after 1518, in part because of the Tso Commentary allusion noted by Fu Ying and in part because of a letter written by Li Meng-yang early in the Chia-ching period, in which he paraphrases and criticises with a good deal of vehemence some of Ho’s arguments. Wang takes this to be evidence that the dispute was a recent one. This reasoning ignores the capacity of intellectual arguments to go on for years or decades. Moreover, Wang’s article is marred by several glaring anachronisms in his treatment of Ho’s works (see above, chapter five, for an example). See his “Li Meng-yang yü Ho Ching-ming,” She-k’o Tsung-heng 2001.5:47-49. More recently, Feng Hsiao-lu 馮小祿 has taken note of the conclusions reached by Chien and in TK, although he does not cite the evidence offered in either; see his Ming-tai Shih-wen Lun-cheng Yen-chiu 明代詩文論爭研究 (Study of Literary Controversies in Ming Literature) (Kunming: Yunnan Jen-min, 2006), p.202. I am indebted to my student Cheryl Xi-ru Wang 王希儒 for drawing my attention to several points made in this note.

390

CHAPTER NINE

literature. 2 The crucial figure was a Sung critic, Yen Yü 嚴羽 (fl. ca. 1200), whose Ts’ang-lang Shih-hua 滄浪詩話 (Comments on Poetry from the Ts’ang-lang River) was probably the most influential single work of traditional literary criticism in China after the T’ang dynasty. Like most works in its tradition, it is exceedingly elusive in the expression of its theoretical principles, being laconic and suggestive, rather than precise and expository. Nonetheless, it was the fountainhead of literary Archaism, and a look at the ideas underlying Yen Yü’s work will clarify our view of the essential core of the Archaist programme. 3 One

———

2 For the background of Ming Archaism, See the pioneering but still valuable works of Suzuki Torao, Shina Shironshi (1927; repr. Tokyo: Kōbundō, 1954); Kuo Shao-yü 郭紹虞, “Shen-yün yü Ko-tiao” 神韻與格調 (Spirit Resonance and Metrical Form), Yen-ching Hsüeh-pao 22 (1937), reprinted in Kuo’s collected papers, Chao-yü Shih Ku-tien Wen-hsüeh Lun-chi 照隅室古典文學論集 (Collected Articles on Classical Literature from the Illuminated Corner Chamber) (Shanghai: Ku-chi, 1983) 1:344-412; also Chung-kuo Wen-hsüeh P’i-p’ing Shih 中國文學批評史 (History of Chineee Literary Criticism) (1944; repr. Taipei: n.p., n.d.; second ed., Hong Kong: n.p., n.d.); and Aoki Masaru 靑木正兒, Shina Bungaku Shisōshi 支那文學思想史 (A History of Chinese Literary Thought), Aoki Masaru Zenshū 全集 1: 1-253 (Tokyo: Shunshūsha, 1969). Kung Hsien-tsung’s article “Ming-tai Ch’i-tzu-p’ai Shih-lun chih Yen-chiu” 明代七子派詩論之研究 (Study of the Poetics of the Seven Masters School of the Ming), T’ai-nan Shih-chuan Hsüeh-pao 8 (1975), pp.41-65; 9 (1976), pp.169187 and the later dissertation on which the article draws, “Ming Ch’i-tzu Shih-wen chi ch’i Lun-p’ing chih Yen-chiu,” (Chung-kuo Wen-hua Hsüeh-yüan, 1979), provide an excellent analytic study of the Ming Archaists and their antecedants. Yokota Terutoshi’s magisterial “Mindai Bungakuron no Tenkai,” Hiroshima Daigaku Bungakubu Kiyō Pt.I, 37-tokushūgo-3 (1975); Pt.II, 38 (1978), pp.75-135 treats the Archaists at length as part of a detailed study of Ming literary theory. Richard John Lynn has dealt extensively and perceptively with Archaism in two excellent articles, “Orthodoxy and Enlightenment: Wang Shih-chen’s Theory of Poetry and Its Antecedants,” The Unfolding of Neo-Confucianism, ed. Wm. Theodore de Bary, pp.217-269 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979), and “Alternate Routes to Self-Realization in Ming Theories of Poetry,” Theories of the Arts in China, ed. Susan Bush and Christian Murck, pp.317-40 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983). More recently, Liao K’o-pin 廖可斌 has given a full account of Ming literary Archaism in two books based on his Hangchow University dissertation. See Fu-kup’ai yü Ming-tai Wen-hsüeh Ssu-ch’ao 復古派與明代文學思潮 (The Archaist School and Currents of Thought in Ming Literature), 2 vols. (Taipei: Wen-chin, 1994), and Ming-tai Wen-hsüeh Fu-ku Yün-tung Yen-chiu 明代文學復古運動研究 (Study of the Archaist Movement in Ming Literature) (Shanghai: Shanghai Ku-chi, 1994). The former is the more complete. There is a good, brief account in a more recent article; see Lin Ch’i-chu 林啟柱, “Lun Ming-tai Fu-ku Wen-hsüeh te Chi-ko Wen-t’i” 論明代復古文學的幾個問題 (On Some Questions Concerning Ming Literary Archaism), Chungking Kung-shang Ta-hsüeh Hsüeh-pao 20.1 (2003), pp.97-101. 3 There is a German translation of the Ts’ang-lang Shih-hua: Gunther Debon, trans., Ts’ang-lang’s Gespräche über die Dichtung: Ein Beitrag zur chinesischen Poetik

ARCHAISM

391

might group Yen’s multifarious statements around three central themes: an explicitly evaluative interpretation of the poetic tradition as it existed down to his own day, an account of what constituted excellence in poetry, and, by implication, a prescriptive programme for poets of his own and subsequent ages. Actually, the second of these would logically seem to come before the first, but we would be wise to begin our discussion of Yen’s ideas with their most concrete aspect, especially since he himself does not put his various pronouncements into any sort of axiom-corollary pattern. Yen’s approach to poetic history stresses the superiority of T’ang poetry over that of the Sung dynasty in which he lived. More particularly, he divides the T’ang dynasty into several sub-periods, and reserves his full admiration only for the ‘High T’ang’ (ca.720-770), the period of such masters as Li Po, Tu Fu, Wang Wei, and Meng Hao-jan. He sees a decline in the quality of poetry after this, leading to a deplorable state in the Sung. His discussion is centred chiefly on new-style (近體 chin-t’i) verse, rather than old-style ( 古體ku-t’i). In the latter form, he acknowledges the superiority of a much earlier period, the Han and Wei dynasties (ca. 150-250). 4 The grounds for these judgements are much harder to disentangle from Yen’s coy formulations than the judgements themselves. It is necessary to reconcile two apparently inconsistent ideals in doing so. On the one hand, High T’ang poetry is praised as the perfect

———

(Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1962); cf. the review by Paul Demiéville, TP 49 (1961-62), pp.463-71. The clearest and most sophisticated analysis of Yen’s ideas is in Lynn, “Alternate Routes,” pp.317-20. See also his “Orthodoxy and Enlightenment,” pp.219229. A complete English translation by Lynn has long been in preparation. An alternative analysis, valuable for its point by point comparison with Ming Archaist writers, is Kung Hsien-tsung, “Ming-tai Ch’i-tzu-p’ai,” pp.48-52. Yen Yü’s stature as a thinker about literature has recently received a sharp and long overdue deflation at the hands of Alice W. Cheang, in “Poetry and Transformation: Su Shih’s Mirage,” HJAS 58.1 (1998):147-82, esp. pp.172-75. There is a good succinct discussion of the influence of Yen Yü on the Archaists in Pai Han-k’un 白漢坤, “Ts’ung Ming Ch’i-tzu P’ai K’an Ts’ang-lang Shih-hua” 從明七子派看《滄浪詩話》(The ‘Poetic remarks from the Ts’ang-lang’ Seen From the Ming Seven Masters School), Kwangsi She-hui K’o-hsüeh 86 (2002.2), pp.196-98. Yen Yü’s work, which had recently been printed (see the preface to Li Tung-yang’s shih-hua) was influential even among writers contemporary with Ho Ching-ming who were not allied to Archaism. See the comments on An P’an‘s 安磐 Yi-shan Shih-hua 頤山詩話 in the Ssu-k’u Ch’üan-shu Tsung-mu T’i-yao (Taipei: Shang-wu, 1971), p.4383, quoted in MSCS, ting-10.1301). 4 Compare this with Ho Ching-ming’s preference for the Four Talents of the Early T’ang over Tu Fu in heptasyllabic songs.

392

CHAPTER NINE

realization of the fa (法 ‘norm’, ‘law’, ‘method’, ‘way’, ‘Dharma’) of poetry. 5 On the other, it seems clear that the ideal poetry is one that results from a completely spontaneous kind of poetic ‘enlightenment’. That is, at the moment of creation, one should be unaware of any formal restraints at all. The tension inherent in this belief in a simultaneous confluenceof spontaneity and ‘norms’ was to become the source both of much fruitful speculation by later Archaists and of contradictions among them. Our understanding of Yen’s views here is only temporarily advanced by his fondness for using Ch’an (Zen) Buddhism as a metaphor. That is, the metaphor suggests that he views poetic ‘enlightenment’ as a spontaneous and intuitive realization of the underlying nature of experience and, in this case, expression, a nature that was always present and whose laws are immanent, and thus in theory accessible to all. Yen Yü is much less concerned with prescription than he is with evaluation and his theory of poetics. But any theory of poetry at least implies a method of writing, and this implication is seconded in Yen’s case by at least a few prescriptive directions. Here, though, the tension between spontaneity and the implied standard according to which the spontaneously created poem is to be judged, High T’ang new-style verse, becomes crucial. It is a tension that Yen nowhere squarely faces—since he is not giving explicit instructions for composition he can avoid this—and we have to infer the resolution, as did the poets and critics who continued his tradition. What emerges is another analogue to Ch’an Buddhist practice. The laws of poetry must be spontaneously realised as pure experience. One may study them, taking a respected master as guide, but at the moment of creation (enlightenment) one’s work will be a spontaneous expression that, if it is ‘true poetry’, will be found to accord with them. Fortunately, one of the first entries in the Ts’ang-lang Shih-hua specifies five elements of the law of poetry: structural integrity (體製 t’i-chih), formal energy (格力 ko-li), spirit and imagery (氣象 ch’i-

——— 5

Fa is one of many central terms in Chinese critical writing for which an ideal English equivalent is difficult to find. ‘Norm’ or ‘normative structure’ is perhaps closest to the central sense. In later Archaist practice the meaning most commonly understood was ‘law’ or ‘method’. However, in the context of Yen’s extensive use of Buddhism as a metaphor for poetry (see below), the translation dharma is worth bearing in mind as well.

ARCHAISM

393

hsiang), elevation and quickening (興趣 hsing-ch’ü), and tone and rhythm (音節 yin-chieh). 6 It is these aspects of poetry that are to be found in balanced perfection in the work of the great High T’ang poets, above all in Tu Fu. And these it is that will be found, sometimes expressed in different words, to be at the heart of most subsequent Archaist critical writing. Li Tung-yang also needs to be considered here, since his ideas about literature clearly influenced the earlier stages, at least, of Li Meng-yang’s career. 7 The most important poet and the most influential literary critic to appear during the long hiatus between the early Ming generation that included Kao Ch’i and Liu Chi and that of Li Meng-yang and Ho Ching-ming, Li Tung-yang believed that Yen Yü was the only good critic of poetry in the Sung dynasty, but his own approach differed considerably from Yen’s. 8 Where Yen had been historically minded and had identified excellence in poetry with specific periods more explicitly than with specific techniques, Li was not biased in favour of any particular period. His interest was in the natural expression of personal emotions, but at the same time he saw technical incompetence as the most important obstacle to this. His critical remarks emphasise the importance of rhythm and euphony, the qualities that, as he felt, distinguished poetry from prose. He thus

——— 6

Yen Yü, Ts’ang-lang Shih-hua Chiao-shih 滄浪詩話校釋 (Remarks on Poetry from the Ts’ang-lang, Collated and Explained), ed. Kuo Shao-yü (Peking: Jen-min, 1961), p.5. 7 Note that the anthologist Kao Ping 高棅 will not be considered here. His collection of T’ang poetry, the T’ang Shih P’in-hui 唐詩品彙 (Graded Assemblage of T’ang Poetry) was completed early in the fifteenth century and eventually came to be enormously influential, but neither Li nor Ho mentions him or adopts any of his terminology. Indeed, it appears that his work only became widely available a little later, during the Chia-ching period. See Ch’en Kuo-ch’iu 陳國球, T’ang Shih te Ch’uan-ch’eng: Ming-tai Fu-ku Shih-lun Yen-chiu 唐詩的傳承明代復古詩論研究 (The Adoption of T’ang Poetry: Studies in Ming Archaist Poetics) (Taipei: Taiwan Hsüeh-sheng, 1990), p.238. Ch’en cites a preface dated 1524 by Hu Tsuan-tsung 胡纘宗, who in the very same year played a role in the publication of Ho’s works (see below, Appendix Two). Hu comments that the T’ang Shih P’in-hui was rarely seen. 8 For biographical sources for Li, see above, chapter two. Li Tung-yang is an important and interesting figure in Chinese literary history, and one who requires and would reward an extensive monographic study in English. In addition to Lien Wenp’ing 連文萍, “Ming-tai Ch’a-ling-p’ai Shih-lun Yen-chiu” (M.A. thesis, Tung-wu University 1989), there is a concise account of his literary ideas in relation to the Archaist tradition in Kuo Shao-yü, “Shen-yün yü Ko-tiao,” pp.367-375. Another excellent introductory discussion is included in Yokota Terutoshi, “Mindai Bungakuron no Tenkai,” pt.1, pp.57-62.

394

CHAPTER NINE

stood in opposition to the idea, held by such earlier Ming writers as Liu Chi and Sung Lien 宋濂, that, ‘prose and verse have the same origin’. On the other hand, he appears to have shared the assumption of Sung Lien and Sung’s student Fang Hsiao-ju, among many others, that literature and ethical character were directly linked. 9 Among Li Tung-yang’s best known works is his set of 101 imitation yüeh-fu ballads 10 . In his preface to these, Li admires the simple beauty of Han and Wei dynasty poetry (meaning the earliest yüeh-fu poems, which were written then). He stops short of explicitly recommending imitation of such early poems, but the praise is, after all, attached to a set with ‘imitation’ in its title. Moreover, the Preface is dated 1504, which means that, even if the poems had been collecting for some time, they were made public late in his career, just at the moment that younger writers were taking up Archaism and simultaneously tending to declare their independence of Li. 11 Li Tungyang’s insistence on technical mastery, even as a step toward the goal of effective expression rather than as an end in itself, naturally led some of his followers to establish specific and explicit standards for such mastery and then to imitate them. Li himself was opposed to imitation, which he saw as the antithesis of the goal of natural expression, and this sets him off from the Archaists, most notably Li Meng-yang. 12 Archaism is also a theme of great importance in the history of

——— 9

On this point, see Kuo Shao-yü, “Shen-yün yü Ko-tiao,” pp.369. For an introduction to Li’s poems, see Chou Yin-pin 周寅賓, “Lun Li Tungyang te ‘Ni-ku Yüeh-fu’” 論李東陽的《擬古樂府》 (On Li Tung-yang’s ‘Imitation Ancient Yüeh-fu’), Ch’uan-shan Hsüeh-pao 10 (1988.1):110-16. The titles of all 101 poems are listed in Ssu-ma Chou 司馬周, “Jo wu Hsin Pien, Pu-neng Tai Hsiung: Lun Li Tung-yang ‘Ni-ku Yüeh-fu’ Shih te Yi-shu Ch’uang-hsin” 若無新變不能代雄論李東陽《擬古樂府》詩的藝述創新 (Without Fresh Change, Unable to Succeed the Heroes: On the Creative Art of Li Tung-yang’s ‘Imitation Ancient Yüeh-fu’ Poems), Soochow Ta-hsüeh Hsüeh-pao 200.4:65-70. 11 For the preface and poems, see Li Tung-yang Chi (Changsha: Yüeh-lu Shu-she, 1983-85) 1:1-116. The poems were later annotated both by Li’s follower Ho Mengch’un and by Ch’en Chien 陳建, the latter edition being published in the 1530’s (see DMB, p.150). 12 Chien Chin-sung, the single most astute writer on the poetry and poetics of this period, quotes from an essay by Li Tung-yang opposing imitation, pointing out that it is dated 1488, and thus predates by almost twenty years the appearance of Li Mengyang and Ho Ching-ming on the literary scene, so that it cannot represent, as is sometimes suggested, a reaction against their ideas; see “Li Ho Shih-lun Yen-chiu,” p.121. 10

ARCHAISM

395

Chinese painting, and we should digress further to note that it has a very different history there than it does in literature. In painting, Archaism goes back at least to the early Yüan period, to Ch’ien Hsüan 錢選 and Chao Meng-fu 趙孟頫, leading to the Four Masters of the Yüan (Huang Kung-wang 黃公望, Kao K’o-kung 高克恭, Wang Meng 王蒙, and Ni Ts’an 倪瓚). It is above all a literati interest and, as a doctrine, it is thus associated with the ‘Wu’ 吳 school of Soochow painters. James Cahill says of Wang Fu 王紱 (1362-1410), a precursor of Shen Chou, that he was the first to use imitation in a new way, drawing on a variety of earlier masters in different works. This is, one should note, more like the eclectic mastery of Kao Ch’i than the Archaism of Li Meng-yang. Cahill adds, “More often, however, these early Ming masters combine elements of style from different masters, often suppressing those stylistic features of their models that we now find most distinctive and stimulating, eliminating tensions and dissonances, reducing individual modes to more manageable stylistic systems.” 13 This is in some ways analogous to the Secretariat Style and very different from the Archaism found in Ming literature, and in two ways. First of all, and more obviously, it takes place in a different milieu, in the south starting in the second half of the fifteenth century, while literary Archaism is northern in origin, does not appear until the very end of the century, and dominates the field almost to the end of the sixteenth. More fundamentally, there are differences in both content and context. In painting, Archaism was chiefly a matter of style, and it was elaborated at a time when part of the significance of painting was that it was something that predominantly Southern literati could do but the occupying Mongols could not. 14 The attitude was in some degree sentimental; unable to actually live in a pre-Mongol world, painters evoked that world in its most refined form, adopting characteristic visual elements or compositional patterns from earlier artists, but keeping one’s personal ‘hand’. For such Archaist poets as Li Meng-yang, however, the matter was

———

13 James Cahill, Parting at the Shore: Chinese Painting of the Early and Middle Ming Dynasty 1368-1580 (New York: Weatherhill, 1978), p. 57. 14 See Chu-tsing Li, The Autumn Colors on the Ch’iao and Hua Mountains: A Landscape by Chao Meng-fu. Artibus Asiae Supplementum 21 (Ascona: Artibus Asiae, 1965.

396

CHAPTER NINE

more important than style. Li—and we shall discuss his poetics in greater detail in due course—saw Archaism as a matter of universally applicable structural patterns first embodied in the works of the great poets of the past. The purpose of imitating their works was not simply a matter of commentary or in-group communication, as had often been the case in painting, but rather an ethical quest, for by internalising the fundamental principles of perception and expression drawn from the works of the ancients, one would also internalise their moral values and qualities of spirit. For the literary Archaists, of course, the contextual issue was no longer one of exclusion from access to power by uncultured barbarians, but rather the possibilities and responsibilities that came with the independence of poetry from the demands of a confining examination curriculum. Of course some of the Archaist painters were also poets, but not Archaist poets. Shen Chou, for example, although he made the most profoundly creative use of elements from earlier painting, wrote poetry very unlike that of Li Meng-yang and Ho Ching-ming, as for example this poem, inscribed on a painting: 二月八日過靈雲殿祥公房理舟指南郊、迢迢及側景。中塗止溪寺、陶煙接村暝。門前見新月、步步踏松影。虛寮寂無風、已有孤燭耿。衲子供爐香、其意似有請。草草成數行、狂書亂斜整。復作挂猨枝、墨瀋帶雲冷。但記此經過、流傳我何省。 Shen Chou: A Visit to Master Hsiang’s Chamber at the Numinous Hall on the Eighth Day of the Second Month 15 I rig my boat, set off for the southern suburbs; On and on, into the lowering sunlight. Halfway there, I halt at a valley temple; Where smoke from a potter’s joins the village twilight. Outside the gate I see the moon new risen; Pace after pace I tred on pinetree shadows. The vacant lodge is still, without a breeze; Already there is a single candle burning. A monk in cassock tends the censer and incense; His manner seems to harbour a request. Swiftly, swiftly, the lines are adding up,

———

15 MST 26.2b. Ch’en Cheng-hung 陳正宏 , Shen Chou Nien-p’u 沈周年譜 (Chronological Biography of Shen Chou) (Shanghai: Fu-tan University, 1993) does not assign a date to this poem.

ARCHAISM

397

In crazy script confusing slant and upright. Then I make a branch with a dangling gibbon, The inky fluid bearing the cold of clouds. I record it now, and just the way it happened; Why should I care if it’s handed on?

There is a quality here, shown in the way Shen begins a poem about his trip to the temple and somehow ends one that has become part of the work whose creation it describes (Marcel waiting at the de Guermantes’, writ very small), that is perhaps allied at the level of creative psychology to the Archaists’ self-conscious play within tradition, but very far removed from their concept of normative structures whose power is ethical as well as literary. The explicit refusal to take an interest in his work’s future survival is also characteristic of the ‘Sung’ poetic traditions abhorred by the literary Archaists. The Archaists’ reform programme is generally seen as primarily formalistic in interest. 16 This view is not wrong, but it is incomplete. Indeed, as Stephen Owen has pointed out, the remote antecedants of Archaism, the exponents of an ‘Opposition Poetics’ of the late sixth and early seventh centuries, had seen their aims as primarily ethical, and this emphasis remained important for the fu-ku movement of the middle T’ang led by Han Yü 韓愈 (768-824). 17 But during the Sung dynasty, Han Yü’s legacy was divided in two. On the one hand, his ideal of the active Confucian statesman and writer was realised in various ways by such giants of the Northern Sung as Ou-yang Hsiu, Su Shih, and Wang An-shih 王安石. On the other, his insistence on the unique role of the Confucian thinker and teacher as moral guide was developed by the great constellation of Northern Sung thinkers including Shao Yung 邵雍, Chou Tun-yi 周敦頤, Chang Tsai 張載, and the Ch’eng brothers (for whom see above, chapter one). After the Northern Sung collapse, Chu Hsi built on the ideas of this latter group to create a synthesis that was, among much else, deeply hostile to the interest in literary practice exemplified above all by Su Shih.

——— 16

For a thorough discussion of the formalist aspects of Li and Ho’s literary ideas, see Chien Chin-sung, op. cit., pp.102-149. Chien sees two essential parts to their formalism, the proper discrimination between different forms and the selection of “ancestors” within each. 17 See Stephen Owen, The Poetry of the Early T’ang (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), pp. 14-19.

398

CHAPTER NINE

When the Archaists reacted against the low opinion of poetry held by the tao-hsüeh school represented by Chu Hsi, however, they were also taking advantage of an opening that the opinion had created. 18 The earlier emphasis on poetic composition in the civil examinations, characteristic of Chu’s own day, was reduced under the Mongols and eliminated in the Ming, with the curriculum being based instead on the Ch’eng-Chu interpretations of the Classics. 19 This reform had two effects. First, it ‘defused’ tao-hsüeh objections to poetry as not only a frivolous pastime that led students away from proper studies, but also a frivolous way of selecting candidates for official employment. At the same time, by making Chu’s interpretations the only ones acceptable for examination purposes, and thus something to be mastered by every aspiring candidate, the change in requirements ‘trivialised’ the Classics and actually tended to lessen the prestige of Ch’eng-Chu philosophy in some circles, certainly as an authority on the value of poetry. The literary ideals of the Ming Archaists point up the great changes wrought in the fu-ku ideal as it evolved, for their approach represented a fundamental reinterpretation of the slogan of Chou Tun-yi, “letters as a conveyance for the Way” (文以載道 wen yi tsai tao). 20 It was in any case hardly possible for ‘literature to convey the Tao’ under Chu Yüan-chang, for there was now only one judge of the Way, and he was both changeable in his opinions and implacable in his opposition to dissidence of any kind. Even under his successors, between the orthodox doctrines enshrined in the examination curriculum on one side and the emerging ‘Learning of the Heart and Mind’ (心學 hsinhsüeh) school represented by Ch’en Hsien-chang 陳獻章 (1428-1500,

——— 18

Hsüeh Hsüan, for example, who considered himself a completely orthodox follower of Chu Hsi, burned his poetry when he decided to devote himself to philosophy. See DMB, p. 618. 19 On this shift in the examination curriculum, see Benjamin Elman, A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000), pp.37-38, 44-45. 20 The slogan, which originated in Chou’s commentary on the Changes, was very much current. Ho Ching-ming’s friend Wang Shang-chiung wrote an epitaph for a man with the formal name Wen (‘literature’) and the informal name Tsai-tao (‘convey-Way’). See Wang’s Ts’ang-ku Ch’üan-chi (1758; repr. Ssu-k’u Wei-shou Shu Chi-k’an 5:18. Peking: Peking Ch’u-pan-she, 1997) 11.6a (420). A variant turns up in Ho’s “Preface to the Records of Han” 漢紀序, HTFC 34.7a (597; 序:009), probably written in 1520 (see below, chapter twelve), “The Classics convey the Tao; histories convey events” 經以載道史以載事.

ARCHAISM

399

see below) and Wang Yang-ming on the other there was little middle ground, and hardly any that invited literature to become its vehicle. If there were constant rules that governed literature, they would have to be literary rules, not a non-literary Way that might be pre-empted by an anti-intellectual and authoritarian political and social orthodoxy, and the independence of literature from the examination curriculum made it possible to consider freely what those rules might be. 21 But the Archaist programme was more than simply prescriptive formalism. It contained within it a strong element of intuitive and personal expressive interest, perhaps not so clearly evident in Li Meng-yang as it had been in Yen Yü or would become in the work of later writers, but nonetheless unmistakable. 22 When Ho Ching-ming bases his poetics, both explicitly in his prefaces and implicitly in his poetry, on the expression of personal emotion, he is not simply making polite gestures toward a conventional sentiment, but touching on the reason for the existence of poetry. The quest for formal perfection was intimately linked to poetic composition, but the perfection itself was a means rather than an end. The end was a perfect mastery of expression in verse, a mastery whose internalised formal constraints had become part of the personality whose emotions the poetry expressed. In the course of the following decade, Ho’s views would evolve, until Li Meng-yang felt compelled to intervene. As we shall see, by that time, the gap between teacher and pupil had grown quite wide. Their differences, moreover, suggest parallels with contemporary developments in philosophy.

———

21 We shall consider briefly below, in discussing the contrast between Li Mengyang’s ideas about poetry and those of Ho Ching-ming, the relationship between Archaism and the ‘School of Mind-and-Heart’. 22 It is possible to see a culmination of the Archaist tradition in the Ch’ing dynasty poet and critic Wang Shih-chen, who combined youthful training in the Archaist tradition with early recognition and encouragement by Ch’ien Ch’ien-yi. Wang matured into a poet of unusual versatility and creative powers even for the Chinese tradition, and a critic of equally unusual breadth of view. His intellectual debts as a critic were above all to the critics of the Archaist tradition: Yen Yü, Hsieh Chen 謝榛, Hu Ying-lin 胡應麟; and his own critical criterion, shen-yün (神韻 ‘spirit resonance’), which has been explained as a combination of intuitive apprehension of reality with intuitive control of expression, derived from their ideas. See the studies of Wang by Richard John Lynn, “Tradition and Synthesis: Wang Shih-chen as Poet and Critic” (Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, 1971) and, superceding the former in some respects, “Orthodoxy and Enlightenment.”

400

CHAPTER NINE

COMPASS AND SQUARE We return now to the moment, not long after Hou Yi-cheng’s departure for Tung-ch’ang, when Hsü Tsin returned from his mission to the south, having been away for about a year. Ho welcomed him back with two poems, including this one: 訪子容自荊州使回使節荊門返、文章楚郡傳。綵雲神女賦、斑竹帝妃篇。弔古南遊日、憂時北上年。停盃問世事、轉眼幾回遷。 Visiting Tzu-jung [Hsü Tsin] After His Return from an Embassy to Chingchou (first of two poems) 23 Your mission tally returned from the gate of Ching, Your compositions have spread to the districts of Ch’u. In coloured clouds, a Numinous Lady Rhapsody— With streaked bamboo, a poem of imperial consorts. Lamenting the ancients—days of southern roaming, Concerned for the times—the year of your northern progress. You put down your cup and ask how the world is going; In the blink of an eye it has shifted now many times.

It seems likely that Hsü Tsin had indeed seen Li Meng-yang in the course of his embassy, probably in Kaifeng on his way back, but perhaps also in Hsiang-yang on his way south. The two men would of course have talked of Ho Ching-ming and of his many new friends among the recent arrivals in the capital. Hsü quite possibly had some of Ho’s recent work to show his former mentor. By this time, it had been almost five years since Ho had seen Li even briefly. Indeed, he was virtually alone among the members of Li’s former literary circle in still being in Peking. The tone of the literary scene was much less ‘ideological’ than it had been in the preceding decade and Ho’s work was evidently affected by this. Hsüeh Hui’s approach to poetry, for example, was opposed to the imitation of old models, and it is just possible that he may have begun to influence Ho. In any event, Ho seems to have begun to evolve in an independent

———

23 HTFC 21.6a (366; 352:288). The Yung recension has a different version of the title, “Visiting Tzu-jung [Hsü Tsin]: At the Time, Tzu-jung had Returned from Chingchou” 訪子容時子容自荊州回.

ARCHAISM

401

direction as a poet and to have become less willing to be simply a follower of Li. Their celebrated epistolary debate began with a letter from Li, now lost, but probably brought north to Peking by Hsü Tsin. Shortly after this, Ho had occasion to say farewell to his nephew Ho Shih, who would pass through Kaifeng on his way to Ch’ao-hsien in northern Anhwei to stay with his father, Ching-ming’s brother Ching-yang, who was in office there. 24 Ching-ming probably took advantage of the occasion to send a reply to Li Meng-yang, along with some of his recent poetry. 25 It was this letter that prompted Li’s two extant replies, in which he singles out for criticism three of Ho’s recent works, including one of the two welcoming poems for Hsü Tsin, a poem addressed to Li Lien, and the slightly earlier poem written on the occasion of the lunar eclipse of July 25, 1515. Although Li’s first letter has been lost, we can infer some of its content from Ho’s reply. A Letter to Master Li K’ung-t’ung [Meng-yang] on the Subject of Poetry 26 I have respectfully received your excellent missive and have carefully perused it for days on end. At first I felt dazed by it and confused, but now I am overflowing with a sense of having been set free. In resolving my perplexities and piercing through what was obscure, your kind help and stimulating encouragement have been of great help and use to me. I think of how, since we were separated, I have been left by myself with no one of my own kind, cut off from people and far from the virtuous; my standards have lacked reference to the elemental tortoise, and I have left the Way and failed to reach my mark. 27 For this reason, in creating

——— 24

“Saying Farewell to My Nephew Shih, Who is Returning to Stay with His Parents in Ch’ao-hsien” 送士姪歸省巢縣, HTFC 19.5b (314; 352:291). 25 Note that Ho Shih had previously been the bearer of literary tidings from Li to Ho (see above, chapter five). 26 與李空同論詩書 HTFC 32.19a (575; 書:005). The letter is included with notes and commentary in Chung-kuo Li-tai Wen-lun Hsüan 中國歷代文論選 (Selection of Chinese Literary Theories Through the Ages), compiled by Kuo Shao-yü et al. (Shanghai: Shanghai Ku-chi, 1980) 3:37ff. Yokota translates and discusses part of the text in “Ka Keimei” (pp.257-58) and almost all of it in “Mindai Bungakuron” (pp.6871). There is also a good discussion in Iriya Yoshitaka 入矢義高, Mindai Shibun 明代詩文 (Poetry and Prose of the Ming Dynasty), Chūgoku Shibun Sen 23 (Tokyo: Chikuma, 1978), pp.54 ff. The Yüan and Standard recensions lack the word 先生 ‘master’ in the title. The Yung recension, which contains only poetry, of course does not include this letter. 27 “Elemental tortoise” (元龜 yüan-kui) refers to a large tortoise whose plastron was used in ancient times for divination. The expression comes from the Documents, Shang Shu T’ung-chien 190026; Karlgren, p.26. The expression translated here as “cut

402

CHAPTER NINE

and transmitting I have lacked a model and in advancing and withdrawing I may have stumbled. You say, “You must have frank criticism.” But how could you be more frankly [critical] than I? 28 Under the circumstances, how could I not put to the proof that on which I have set my heart? As for the pursuit of antiquity in composing poetry, you pare your ideas (yi) down to the ancient standards; in forging and shaping you stick to your mold and preserve only the feet and inches of its exact measurements. As for me, I wish for abundance in the gathering of materials and for an enlightened comprehension of spirit and emotion; looking out on the scene I build and join without copying shapes or visible traces. The Songs says: And because he has it, He can make its likeness. 29 That I should be seeking a likeness by having it is my foolish way. In recent times, the poetry of High T’ang has been taken as most respected. The Sung poets appear to be hoary and old, but are really just rough and careless; the Yüan poets appear to be lofty and outstanding, but are really just shallow and vulgar. My recent poems do not manage to avoid the Yüan habits, but your recent works tend somewhat toward the Sung. Now I am, to be sure, clumsy, inept, thin, and inferior; I could hardly dare set myself beside the ancients. You have cast a bold look over many ages and have established works that shake antiquity. How is it that even you have come to this? In all things there are those that do not come up to the mark, those that do and fall back, and those that exceed it. 30 All are said to be imperfect. If one applies this to the writing of poetry, then it can be said that I have not come up to the mark, while you have perhaps sought and exceeded it. Now, when idea and image correspond, we call them congruent (合 ho); when idea and image conflict, we call them disparate (離 li). This is why the trigrams ch’ien and k’un “embody the numbers of Heaven and

———

off from people” (格人 ko-jen) comes from the same passage in the Documents, translated by Karlgren in that context as “paragon.” 28 The Shen recension lacks the word 諤諤 ‘frankly’ here, giving a sentence that would have to be construed as “What more do you have then I?” In general, the seven textual variations in which the Shen recension differs from the Yüan and Standard appear to be cases in which the compiler of the text ancestral to the latter consulted a better text, probably Ho’s own manuscript. See also below. 29 Mao Shih Yin-te 53/214/4; cf. Karlgren, p.168; Waley, p.196. My rendering differs from theirs in an attempt to reflect Ho’s reading of the lines. Ho alludes to the same lines in an essay written earlier, commemorating the bestowal of an informal name on his student Fan P’eng, “An Explanation of the Informal Name of Fan Shaonan” 樊少南字說, HTFC 33.13a (590; 雜:004). 30 In the Shen recension, the characters 焉者 are reversed.

ARCHAISM

403

Earth,” all ideas and images being exhausted in them. 31 The poems that you wrote around the year ping-yin (1506-1507) were congruent; 32 those from after you went to Kiangsi are disparate. I shall take music as a metaphor. When all the timbres meet in concert, all their principles are in line; if one tone plays alone, it is hard for them to form a finished composition. Thus tones of silk and bamboo are soft and gentle, and the sounds of wood and hides percussive and harsh. If one were to use only the harsh and percussive sounds and reject the soft and gentle ones entirely, how could one reach the very limits of perfection and stir the affections by the adornment of sound? When one takes your ping-yin works and tries rapping them, their tones are still among those of metal and stone. But in your post-Kiangsi works, the ones whose words are tough actually have accessible ideas, and those whose ideas are bitter actually use ordinary words. Their colours are pale and dim, and the principles within them are broken and loose. Reading them is like ringing a bell with a knife sheath. 33 You have disparaged lucid strength (清俊 ch’ing-chün) and resonant clarity (響亮 hsiang-liang), while illuminating the principles of gentle unassertiveness (柔澹 jou-tan), serious expression (沉著 ch’en-chu), suggestive restraint (含蓄 han-hsü), and classical gravity (典厚 tienhou). These are the essential guidelines and major forms for poets. But the writers who bring them to perfection marshal their ideas and display their words, doing so by combining all the principles, not by making any one complete in itself. If one were to regard idle slackness (閒緩 hsien-huan) and quiet withdrawal (寂寞 chi-mo) as gentle unassertiveness, heavy turbidity (重濁 chung-cho) and abrasive sharpness (剜切 wan-ch’ieh) as serious expression, tough severity (艱結 chien-chieh) and obscure difficulty (晦塞 hui-seh) as suggestive restraint, and rustic plainness (野俚 yeh-li) and crude singlemindedness (輳積 ts’ou-chi) as classical gravity, what a distortion of the principles of poetry this would be! Instead, their combined strength of language and clarity of rhythm would be completely lost. How remote is high antiquity! Since the invention of writing, human civilization has gradually grown more radiant. Confucius was thus a sage without parallel, but each of the remaining philosophers established the sayings of his own school. Their embodiments were variously composed, and their sayings and essays are each different. A gentleman does not take them in order and treat them as equivalent, but adopts the best from among them. Thus, from Ts’ao Chih, Liu Chen 劉楨, Juan

———

31 This alludes to a phrase from the Changes; see Chou Yi Yin-te 47/hsi-hsia/5; cf. Lynn, p.86; Wilhelm/Baynes, p.344. 32 In the Shen recension, the character 間 is omitted. 33 My translation embodies an emendation of the text based on Li Meng-yang’s reply, namely the addition of the word ‘ring’ (擊 chi) (see below).

404

CHAPTER NINE

Chi, and Lu Chi down to Li Po and Tu Fu, all wrote in different modes, but with equivalent skill; each was able to stir his own age, and all are praised as able writers. How is this? It is because there are lofty compositions and lesser ones, but we are able to “examine and discuss them in order to perfect their evolutions and transformations (變化 pienhua).” 34 If one were to require that their equivalent modes be taken in order and only afterward select them, then Ts’ao, Liu, Juan, and Lu having been taken as masters, Li and Tu would never be able to rise any higher in the world of poetry. How could they ever have come to be called walkers alone for a thousand ages? I have said that poetry and prose have their fixed and unchangeable rules (fa). 35 These are that words should be decisive and ideas coherent, and that one should “link categories and set things side by side (聯類而比物 lien-lei erh pi wu).” 36 Above, one examines the words established by the sages of antiquity; at the middle level, one investigates the theories set out in Ch’in and Han; and below, one chooses the tones and poems of Wei and Chin. In none of these is there any change. Now, prose was exhausted during the Sui dynasty, but Han Yü energetically reanimated it, and thus the rules (fa) of ancient prose were lost with Han. Poetry grew weak in T’ao Ch’ien, 37 but Hsieh Ling-yün energetically reanimated it, and thus the rules of ancient poetry were also lost with Hsieh. 38 As for your once having referred to Lu [Chi] and Hsieh [Lingyün] together, I have examined their works carefully. 39 In Lu’s poems

———

34 This too is a phrase from the Changes, Chou Yi Yin-te 41/hsi-shang/6; cf. Lynn, p.57; Wilhelm/Baynes, p.304. In these letters, as in the Ho-tzu essays, I translate 變 pien as ‘evolution’ rather than ‘transformation’. The latter word I use, as here, to render 化 hua. The temptation to think of ‘evolution’ as necessarily positive (since it resulted in Chinese poets, among other things) should be tempered by recognition that the majority of evolved fauna, whether counted as species or as individuals, are parasites. Pien is similarly ambivalent. For a characteristically acute discussion of the term, see Alice W. Cheang, “Poetry and Transformation,” esp. pp.175-78. 35 The Shen recension reads 又 in place of 文. This would give the meaning, “I have said that poetry further has its . . .” 36 The expression in quotation marks is also found in Ho’s preface to his “Telling of my Return;” see above, chapter five. It comes from the “Difficult Words” 難言 chapter of the Han-fei-tzu; see Han-fei-tzu Chi-chieh (Peking: Chung-hua, 1998), p.20. Not everyone thought it as useful as Ho Ching-ming. Ho Meng-ch’un remarked that it was indeed one of the formal procedures found in the Book of Songs, but that it had been carried to extremes in later times, Yü-tung Hsü-lu (1528; repr. TM 3:101-02, Tainan: Chuang-yen Wen-hua, 1995) jun 1.2b (174). 37 The Shen recension reads 溺 ‘sink’ in place of 弱 ‘weak’. 38 The Shen recension lacks the word 然 ‘thus’. 39 Ho presumably refers to Li Meng-yang’s “Preface on the Engraving of Lu and Hsieh’s Poetry” 刻陸謝詩序, an essay inspired by the carving of a stele with 86 of Lu’s poems and 64 of Hsieh’s, at the instigation of a man named Hsü Kuan 徐冠, Magistrate of Tu-ch’ang 都昌, where Hsieh had once lived. See K’ung-t’ung Hsiensheng Chi (1530; repr. Taipei: Wei-wen, 1976) 49.6b (1424). Li remarks in this essay

ARCHAISM

405

the words are parallel but the form is not. In the case of Hsieh, the form and the words are both parallel. One ought not to classify them together simply because their use of words is similar. Thus the rules may be the same, but the words need not be the same. In my opinion, the writings of Yao, Shun 舜, the Duke of Chou, Confucius, [K’ung] Tzu-ssu 子思 , and Mencius all elaborated and illuminated one another, rather than simply copying and agreeing. Thus is virtue daily renewed and the Way broadened. This is truly the spirit in which each sage transmitted and conferred. The idea of vulgar scholars of later times, who keep solely to their own glosses and annotations, holding to one explanation for their entire lives and passing it on without understanding it, is the reverse of this. Those who write poetry today do not push the categories aside and carry their evolutions to the limit, opening up what has not been expressed before and obliterating the traces of their plans and theories in order to complete the achievement of the spirits and sages. They merely repeat what they have already done and dress it up to make their text. Should it differ in the slightest from its old source, they tremble with unease. They are like babies that are only able to walk by leaning on things and collapse in a heap if they run by themselves. Though in this way one may be like Ts’ao and Liu, like Juan and Lu, or like Li and Tu, what does it do to increase the cultivation of the Way? The Buddhists have their parable of the raft. When one abandons the raft, then the shore is reached; when one reaches the shore, the raft is abandoned. In our day, your genius is sufficient to rule the age and your will could break metal or stone in two. Moreover, you have perceptions that surpass our generation and go far beyond the vulgar. It has been ten years and more since I became your follower and have been collecting and examining your works. The highest among them cannot be placed outside those of the ancients; the lesser have at least trampled over recent ages. You have created for yourself separate halls and chambers, opened up your own doors and portals, and established the doctrines of your own school. 40 Who among us will see his work passed on uncorrupted if not you? The “Great Summary” in the Changes says, “[making the world] numinous and illuminate depends on virtuous conduct” 41 and, “perfected nature is sustained and endures; it [change] is the gateway of the Way and of fitness.” 42 It is for this reason that one can master the old

———

that Hsieh’s poetry was the best in the Six Dynasties, but that it had its origin in Lu’s. 40 The Shen recension lacks the phrase 成一家之言 “established the doctrines of your own school.” 41 Chou Yi Yin-te 44/hsi-shang/12; Lynn, p.68; Wilhelm/Baynes, p.324. Ho has abridged the passage, altering the meaning. 42 Chou Yi Yin-te 41/hsi-shang/5; Lynn, p.56; Wilhelm/Baynes, p.303.

406

CHAPTER NINE

and the new, 43 gather a host of wonders, and rise above the cosmos. It is for this reason that ‘different roads’ and ‘hundreds of thoughts’ ‘are all brought’ to the ‘same end’. 44 Now, tones are born from holes and physical beauty derives its appeal from substance. If one empties the holes, the tones will not be falsified, and if one fills up the substance, beauty will not be falsified. But, if one should fill the holes and empty the substance, and then seek them, even the least parts of sound and beauty would finally be lacking. I send this off by the North Wind. If you should oppose and overturn my humble theory, that would be my great good fortune.

We cannot know exactly what was in Li Meng-yang’s first letter, since it has not been preserved, but the later letters are agreed in suggesting that Li wrote to admonish Ho not to concentrate on ‘strength of language and clarity of form (or rhythm)’ at the expense of ‘gentle unassertiveness, serious expression, suggestive restraint, and classical gravity’. Quite possibly there was little more to the substance of the first letter than this. But it seems to have triggered a response from Ho that was more far-ranging in its arguments. Part of the reason may have been personal. It is clear from Li’s two extant replies that he still thought of himself as the master and of Ho as the disciple, albeit a mature and accomplished one. This assumption was probably equally clear in his original letter, and may have led Ho to make his ‘declaration of independence’ in some detail. 45 If indeed

———

43 The Shen and Yüan recensions, as well as the uncorrected print of the ‘carvers names’ family of the Standard recension, all leave two blank spaces, which in the other editions of the Standard recension are filled with 古今 ‘the old and the new’. We have no way of telling whether this was a case of correction based on consultation of a better manuscript or simply emendation by conjecture. 44 The phrases in quotation marks are also from the Changes. See Chou-yi Yin-te 46/hsi-hsia/3; Lynn, p.81: “As all in the world ultimately come to the same end, though the roads to it are different, there is an ultimate congruence in thought, though there might be hundreds of ways to deliberate about it” (cf. Wilhelm/Baynes, p.338) The significance of the allusions, in fact of the whole passage and the one following, is not entirely perspicuous. I take it to be a plea for tolerance of differing doctrines. Ho alludes to the same Changes passage in his preface to a tao-hsüeh commentary, “Preface to the Assembled Manuscripts on the Cheng Meng” 正蒙會稿序, HTFC 34.10b (600; 序:505). See below, chapter twelve, for this work. 45 There are several good discussions of the controversy in addition to Chien Chinsung. See Yokota Terutoshi, “Mindai Bungakuron no Tenkai;” Iriya Yoshitaka, Mindai Shibun, pp.48-67; and Ma Mao-yüan 馬茂元, “Lüeh-t’an Ming Ch’i-tzu ti Wen-hsüeh Ssu-hsiang yü Li, Ho ti Lun-cheng” 略談明七子的文學思想與李、何的論爭 (A Brief Discussion of the Literary Ideas of the Seven Masters of the Ming and the Controversy Between Li and Ho), Chiang-hai Hsüeh-k’an 1962.1:26-29; repr. Ma Mao-yüan, Wan-chao Lou Lun-wen Chi 晚照樓論文集 (Collected Articles from the

ARCHAISM

407

the discussion of ‘strength of language’ vs. ‘gentle unassertiveness’ and the rest was the point of the first letter, that in itself would have underlined the master-disciple assumption, the master laying down broad guidelines for his best student to follow. In any event, although Ho does respond to this argument in the course of his letter, he does so only incidentally, and dismisses it almost casually in between the insistence on his equality as a partner in the debate with which he begins and his argument for an evolutionary view of literary history. He rounds off his argument with a pair of metaphors intended to illustrate the implications of his evolutionary view for the practice of poetry and for imitation in particular, the toddler and the raft, and then concludes with polite, and presumably sincere, praise for Li’s work and a plea for pluralism. The argument for the evolutionary view takes up most of the letter, including an episode in the middle of it (the paragraph beginning, “I have said . . .”) that has proven troubling to more than one commentator. 46 The relationship of this passage to the rest of the argument

———

Tower of Evening Illumination) (Shanghai: Shanghai Ku-chi, 1981), pp.190-99. Many more recent studies published in China simply go over the same ground without adding much that is new, but that by Liao K’o-pin, in his Fu-ku P’ai, pp.218-26, is perceptive, nuanced and clear-headed. 46 This interpretation of Ho’s comments as reflecting an ‘evolutionary’ view of literary history is found among contemporary Chinese scholars. See, for example, Li Shu-yi 李叔毅, “Ho Ching-ming Wen-t’i Ch’u-t’an” 何景明問題初探(Preliminary Discussion of Questions Concerning Ho Ching-ming), Hsin-yang Shih-fan Hsüehyüan Hsüeh-pao 1984.1: 80-89, and Liao K’o-pin, Fu-ku P’ai, pp.212-15. Whether or not this reading of the passage accurately reflects Ho’s intention in writing it, the passage itself has been controversial ever since it was written. Although thought to be ‘wise words’ by some, according to Yüan Chih, Huang Ming Hsien-shih (repr. Taipei: Wen-hai, 1970) 40.771, followed by Li Chih李贄, Hsü Ts’ang-shu 續藏書 (Continuation of a Book to be Hidden) (Peking: Chung-hua, 1959), p.507, the references to “poetry growing weak in T’ao Ch’ien,” etc. were attacked by Huang Hsing-tseng 黃省曾 (for whom, see below, chapter twelve), in a letter to Li Mengyang written in 1528, and it has offended such later writers as Wang Yün-chuang 汪允莊 (quoted in LHH, 2.6ab), Ch’ien Ch’ien-yi, Chang Hsüeh-ch’eng 章學誠 (quoted in Chung-kuo Li-tai Wen-lun Hsüan, p.44), and the modern critic Chu Tung-jun 朱東潤, “Ho Ching-ming P’i-p’ing-lun Shu-p’ing” 何景明批評論述評 (Account of Ho Ching-ming’s Critical Theory), Wu-han Ta-hsüeh Wen-che Chi-k’an 1 (1930): 599610; repr. in Chu, Chung-kuo Wen-hsüeh P’i-p’ing Lun-chi 中國文學批評論集 (Collected Articles on Chinese Literary Criticism) (1941; repr. Hong Kong: T’ai-p’ing, 1952), pp.65-75. P’eng Yün-chang 彭蘊章 (in a colophon to the HTFC reprinted in LHH, 3.32b) agrees with Ho about poetry, but takes issue with his interpretation of the history of prose. Chien Chin-sung takes this passage as evidence that Ho did not like T’ao Ch’ien, Hsieh Ling-yün, or Lu Chi, though Li did; see “Li Ho Shih-lun Yen-

408

CHAPTER NINE

is not immediately apparent, although it does lead back eventually to a criticism of Li’s judgement. There are two problems in it. First, Ho begins to talk about ‘fixed and unchangable rules’ in the midst of his argument against fixed historical standards. And then he refers to the ‘rules of ancient poetry and prose being lost with Hsieh and Han’. I think that the best sense one can make of the passage as a whole depends on understanding the ‘poetry and prose’ of the first sentence as ‘ancient poetry and prose’. The point is then that the rules are fixed only in the sense that if they are not followed, then the result, good or bad, is no longer ‘ancient’. When the old rules began to break down, the reformers who revived poetry and prose did so by discarding or evolving beyond the ‘fixed’ ancient rules. Thus the references to T’ao and Hsieh, for example, are historical rather than evaluative (replacing the names with Mahler and Schönberg, say, or Palestrina and Monteverdi suggests the point). This established, Ho uses it to point to a concrete consequence of Li’s failure to make the historical distinction, Lu Chi being an ‘ancient’ poet. For all the conventional humilities of Ho’s opening and closing sections, it must have come as a shock to Li Meng-yang to be lectured to on the principles of literature by his erstwhile disciple. In reply he sent not one, but two, letters back to Ho, and these have been preserved. A Rebuttal of Ho’s Letter Discussing Literature 47 I bow twice to Master Ta-fu. Previously, after repeated perusals of your works, I felt strongly that they were at variance with past rules. And so I wrote a letter, daring, with a double bow, to send it to you in the hope that you would change your excellent way. But you have not changed your excellent way, and in fact have called attention to defects in my writings by way of reply to me. The words were disputatious and contentious, the tone arrogant and bold, and the theses soared high aloft. When I began to read it I said to myself, “you are making fun of me!” But when I had finished and reflected on it, “you are trying to correct me, as I corrected you.” Now, correcting others is not a matter of

———

chiu,” p.138. In view of the later controversy, it is interesting that this passage did not attract Li Meng-yang’s attention in his responses. 47 K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi, 61.6a (1735). See also Chung-kuo Li-tai Wen-lun Hsüan 3:46-54. Both letters are translated, in large part, and discussed in Yokota, “Mindai Bungakuron,” pp.72-76. ‘Master Ta-fu’ and ‘Chung-mo’ are polite names for Ho Ching-ming.

ARCHAISM

409

referring to their weaknesses. Peoples’ opinions are sometimes alike and sometimes different. That my talent is no greater than yours is something that all the world has heard. It is only that one day, without really reflecting, I considered you to be at variance with past rules. I had no other point than this. In criticising my writings, you say, “Your excellent points are really a reflection of the ancients. The lesser ones have fallen into the tone of recent ages.” You also say, “I do not see that you have built yourself a hall and inner chamber or briskly opened up a door and window, and yet what worry need you have concerning their imperishability.” 48 These are not Chung-mo’s words, but those of one who would belittle me and flatter Chung-mo. One who was belittling me would certainly say, “How can this Li be considered an excellent writer? He can only preserve antiquity and follow it foot by foot and inch by inch. One must be like Chung-mo and come and go on one’s own; then one can abandon the raft and reach the shore.” Those who say such things are bringing disaster upon you! The halls built by such ancient artisans as Ch’ui 倕 and Pan 班 were not entirely similar, nor were their doors the same. 49 But when it came to their making square corners and rounded curves, they could not do without compasses and squares. 50 Why was this? Compass and square are fixed rules. My ‘feet and inches’ are surely a matter of fixed rules as well. If I were to pilfer the ideas of the ancients and steal their forms, and then put my writings together out of bits and pieces of their phraseology, it would certainly be appropriate to call me their reflection. But when I take my own feelings and tell of matters of the present day, my following the feet and inches of the ancients without infringing upon their words is like Pan taking Ch’ui’s circle as his own or Ch’ui taking Pan’s square as his own. So long as Ch’ui’s wood is not Pan’s wood, what could be wrong with that? Now, the raft and I are two different things. It is like the rabbit snare or the fish bait. They can be done without. 51 Compass and square are the very nature of round and angled, so how could they be done without even should one want to do so? Could you set compass and square aside and still be able to try building a hall or framing a door? The only way

———

48 Note that here, and elsewhere, Li paraphrases Ho’s words, often badly distorting or even completely reversing his meaning. 49 Ch’ui and Pan were legendary artisans of antiquity. See Shang-shu T’ung-chien, 420351, Karlgren, p.71; and Meng-tzu Yin-te 26/4A/1, Lau, pp.117, 273, where Pan is referred to as Kung-shu Tzu 公輸子. 50 Li no doubt had in mind the passage in the Mencius cited above, “Even if you had the keen eyes of Li Lou and the skill of Kung-shu-tzu, you could not draw squares or circles without a carpenter’s square or a pair of compasses” (Lau). 51 An allusion to the well-known passage in the Chuang-tzu, see Chuang-tzu Yin-te 75/26/48; Graham, p.190; Watson, p.302.

410

CHAPTER NINE

you could set compass and square aside and still be able to do it would be to combine round and angled in yourself and then give them up. In that case, what would come from the rules and what from compass and square? This is why those who say these things are bringing disaster upon you, and a disaster for you is a disaster for the tao of letters. Not realising that these words are a disaster both for you and for the tao of letters and, on the contrary, taking them as a compass with which to correct the rules and attack them, you could surely be said to have ‘entered my room brandishing my own halberd!’ 52 You also say that Confucius, Tseng-tzu, Tzu-ssu, and Mencius used different words but came to the same conclusions, and that if this were really the same as following the exact feet and inches of the ancients, then Ts’ao, Liu, Juan, and Lu would suffice as masters for poetry, and Li and Tu would not have been able to ascend to the poetic stage. The Songs say: People know the one; They do not know the other. 53 What I take to be the same is rules. The tao of Yao and Shun, had it not included humane government, would have been powerless to pacify and rule the world. You take my ‘feet and inches’ to be a matter of diction. But when one peruses your works, where in them is there any neglect of rules? No wonder there are misunderstandings that have not yet been cleared up. The huge size of O-p’ang 阿房, the enduring grandeur of Ling-kuang 靈光, the extravagant beauty of Lin-ch’un 臨春 and Chieh-ch’i 結綺, 54 or the seclusion, the quiet of Yang Hsiung’s pavilion or Chu-ko Liang’s hut, these did not have to be the work of a Ch’ui or a Pan. But when they were built, whether large or small, there was little in them that did not fall within square and circle. Why? Because there are things that must be the same. If one attains that which must be the same, then quiet is possible, seclusion is possible, extravagance in beauty is possible, enduring grandeur is possible, and huge size is possible. If one preserves these unchanged and develops them over a long period of time, taking one’s materials into account and adjusting to circumstances, they will become fused and incorporated without one’s being aware of it. At this point, could one not be a Ts’ao, a Liu, a Juan, a Lu, a Li, a Tu, or

———

52 This phrase alludes to an episode late in the Han dynasty. After Ho Hsiu 何休, the local governor, published works on the three standard commentaries on the Annals, the great Han scholar Cheng Hsüan 鄭玄 published his own versions, whose titles explicitly referred to the rebuttals of Ho contained in them. Ho sighed, “Has he come into my room and brandished my own halberd to attack me?” See Hou Han Shu (Peking: Chung-hua, 1965) 35.1208. 53 Mao Shih Yin-te, 45/195/6; cf. Karlgren, p.143. 54 These are famous palace buildings of the Ch’in, Han, and Ch’en dynasties.

ARCHAISM

411

even, in our day, a Ho Ta-fu? This is the crux of evolutionary change. Thus one can always follow the rules without being a stickler for them and without seeking innovation still have diction vary from person to person. When the Changes refers to ‘the same source’, ‘different roads to the same end’, and ‘a hundred thoughts’, this is what is meant. It is not a matter of building one’s own hall and inner chamber and opening one’s own doors and windows, and afterward making them the tao. Thus I have said that writing is like the practice of calligraphy. The calligraphy of Ou, Yü, Yen, and Liu is not the same, though they used the same strokes. 55 Had they not used the same strokes it would not have been calligraphy. And wherein lay the difference? In the thickness or thinness of the strokes, in their being long or short, and in the openness or density of their texture. These six are effects (勢 shih); they comprise the style (體 t’i) of the characters, not the essence of the strokes. And what is this essence? It is that which responds to the mind and has its root in the rules. If one has not investigated the essence, one is inadequately prepared to practise calligraphy, and still less does literature lie within one’s capability. And if the practice of literature is beyond one’s capability, still less is one capable of practising the tao. You say that the writing of literature has its unvarying rules, that the words must be decisive and the ideas coherent, that things must be linked and categories set side by side. If you take these to be the rules, no wonder there are misunderstandings that are difficult to clear up, and so flatterers have had an easy time of it. Suppose you were to order me to write something straight through on the spot, and I made the words incoherent and the ideas indecisive, and yet things were still linked and categories set side by side. But if in it the emotions and thoughts were rough and crabbed, the language abrupt and tough, the sounds raw and the rhythm awry, and the substance direct and crude, so shallow that its bones stuck out, and both frenzied and dry at the same time, would you still accept it? That words are decisive and ideas coherent is style; it is the effect of literature. The linking and setting side by side are a matter of content (事 shih). Thought (思 ssu) is what is gentle and unassertive; the ideas (意 yi), what are suggestive but restrained; meaning (義 yi), what is classical and grave; form (格 ke), what is lofty and archaic; tone (調 tiao), what is graceful and perspicuous. Serious expression and bold beauty, limpid nobility and leisured dignity—these are categories of material, expressed in words. The exuberance of the diction is expression, of which the highest sort is balanced and harmonious. If this is then adorned with surface texture, prolonged with flavour, and made

——— 55

This is a reference to four famous calligraphers of the T’ang dynasty, Ou-yang Hsün 歐陽詢, Yü Shih-nan 虞世南, Yen Chen-ch’ing 顏真卿, and Liu Kung-ch’üan 柳公權. The form of reference used here, literally ‘Ou-Yü-Yen-Liu’, is a common formula.

412

CHAPTER NINE

to brim with fragrance, it becomes the writing of antiquity, which gathers all excellences to itself in a single flourish. Even so, if one measures by feet and inches its opening and closing, its rising and falling, these will never be found not to have their rules, what are called the round compass and the square angle. Thus the writing of a gentleman is like the pulse-taking of a physician. The pulse’s smoothness or weakness, tension or speed, and slowness or slackness may seem similar but actually are not the same. Previously I advanced the principles of gentle unassertiveness, serious expression, suggestive restraint, and classical gravity as correctives to you in order to save you from an overemphasis on strength and clarity. But then you said, “this must be treating idle silence as though it were gentle unassertiveness, turbid sharpness as though it were serious expression, tough obscurity as though it were suggestive restraint, and plain crudeness as though it were classical gravity—what a distortion of the principles of poetry! This would mean a complete loss of strength of language and clarity of rhythm.” Here you have gone too far! Do you think that smoothness can taken for weakness, tension for speed, and slowness for slackness? If smoothness, weakness, tension, speed, slowness, and slackness cannot be taken for one another, then can idle silence be taken as gentle unassertiveness, turbid sharpness as serious expression, tough obscurity as suggestive restraint, or plain crudeness as classical gravity? Alas, you have gone too far! By discussing literature in such terms, you are weakening literature itself. You have simply taken my correction of you as excessive and unconsidered, and then indulged in high-sounding remarks. You have picked out my errors in order to attack me, without realising that I had no further idea in mind. How could I claim superiority for my writings, with their innumerable blemishes and shortcomings, over yours? You truly make me seem to foolishly take idle silence, turbid sharpness, tough obscurity, and plain crudeness as gentle unassertiveness, serious expression, suggestive restraint, and classical gravity and then say it as though I were as benighted as someone trying to ring a bell with a knife sheath! Why are you content with strength of language and clarity of rhythm, without truly trying to create gentle unassertiveness, deep seriousness, suggestive restraint, and classical gravity? This is an even more extreme misunderstanding! My intelligence and insight have faded. I continually think of the world-shaking genius that is yours, while I just ramble along as though I were talking to a member of my own household. On this occasion I tried making up a standard and taking it to an extreme, and then developed my discussion to an even more extreme point in the hope of eliciting a rebuttal. Truly I was not trying to make myself out to be superior to you. The Commentary says, “as the jade is altered, so is the pace.” You truly

ARCHAISM

413

have a grasp of ‘hardness and whiteness’ inferior to none. 56 I hope you will write again in reply. Second Letter to Mr. Ho 57 My previous letter to you discussing literature is finished. But it still seems to me that I did not demonstrate all the points, and so my empty words were not conclusive, and if not conclusive, they will not be believed. Now, wherein do your recent works go astray from past rules? As for the poems, reading them is like rolling balls of sand or playing with mud; they fall apart rather than taking a polish. The coarse among them have not been refined. The line in your poem “The Eclipse,” “The ghostly veil travels by a crimson road” is an example. 58 Now, that which is broad and large is seldom under control; neither is it held together, as by needle and thread. In the works of the ancients, although their rules have many points, in general that which is open at the beginning must be dense at the end. If half is broad, then half must be slender. Where one part is concrete, one must be imaginary. If a scene is repeated, there must be two different ideas. These are what I call “rules,” the round compass and square angle. Moreover, as Shen Yüeh says, “if there are drifting sounds first, there must be incisive echoes after. Within a single passage, initials and finals should all be different; within two lines, unvoiced and voiced should all contrast.” 59 It is like the human person, in which the mortal soul conveys the transcendental soul. Since living things have these physical characteristics, then there are these rules. The Songs says, “There is the

——— 56

Li’s use of the Tso Commentry text is not noticeably more precise than Ho’s of the Changes, although his point is equally clear. For the passage in question, see Ch’un-ch’iu Ching-chuan Yin-te, 446/Ting 5/4 Tso; Legge, p.760. I don’t believe that it refers to the phrase 玉趨 yü-ch’ü used at the beginning of Li’s letter, where I translate it as ‘your excellent way’. “Hardness and Whiteness” is the title of a treatise by the pre-Ch’in logician Kung-sun Lung-tzu. Fu Ying took Li’s use of the phrase from the Tso Commentary, where it refers to the appropriateness of altering one’s ‘accessories’ when one’s station in life changes, as an allusion to Ho’s promotion to Shensi in 1518, leading him to date the letters 1518 or later (see above). This, in the context of Li’s letter, seems very unlikely. If anything, it is part of the conventionally polite self-abasement of the letter’s conclusion and refers to Li’s downward mobility after Kiangsi, contrasted with Ho’s undimished capacity for analytic precision on a level with that of Kung-sun Lung-tzu. See Fu, “Shih-chien Ch’u-t’an,” p.53. 57 K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi, 61.9a (1741). 58 “Watching an Eclipse in the Sixth Month” 六月望月食, HTFC 22.2a (382; 352:285). For the use of this citation in dating the exchange of letters, see above. 59 Shen Yüeh 沈約 (441-513) was a historian, a poet, and an important theorist, responsible for prescriptions that led the way toward regulated verse. This passage comes from his evaluative comment at the end of the biography of Hsieh Ling-yün in the Sung Shu 宋書 (History of the Sung) (Peking: Chung-hua, 1974) 67.1779.

414

CHAPTER NINE

thing and there is the regulation.” 60 Thus, Ts’ao, Liu, Juan, Lu, Li, and Tu could make use of them and could not differ, and they could differ from them and yet could not but be similar. People of today only see their differences and not their similarities. This is why they call those who preserve the rules ‘reflections’, while those who are confused and have lost the truth use ‘abandoning the raft on reaching the shore’ in order to excuse themselves. It is the same thing in both literature and calligraphy. People of today copy and trace old specimens and if the resemblance is extreme not only is there no objection, but instead they are said to be able calligraphers. Why then is it only in literature that they want to ‘open up their own gates’? Is not ‘opening up one’s own gate’ like a potter’s not being a metal-worker or a metal-worker’s not being a carpenter, or else perhaps like Confucius not being Mo-tzu 墨子and Mo-tzu not being Yang Chu 楊朱? This is surely the appropriate analogy! Now, you write in four successive lines, “. . . Rhapsody on the Goddess,” “. . . Poem on the Imperial Consort,” “. . . days wandering in the south,” and “. . . years going north.” Is this a rule that existed in antiquity? And in “lotus plants by the river pavilion,” and “clinging vines by a breezy hall,” are the ideas not the same? 61 Now, in your poems you only understand the place where spirit and affections converge, considering it a lofty thing to finish a piece as soon as you put brush to paper. But you do not understand that the effect of what is lofty without the rules is like wrestling a giant serpent or riding a wind-borne dragon; even if the technique is marvellous it cannot serve as an instructive example. In your poems the closing phrases are too hasty and simple. Your heptasyllabic regulated verse and quatrains, etc., in particular are not finished poems, and they are also weak in rhythm. Why use repetitiously “a hundred years” and “ten thousand leagues?” If in the heptasyllabic metre the first two words can be snipped off, why bother to have seven? 62 I am not someone who knows about poetry. I have just idly expressed my own biased views in the hope that you will work on them. You must carefully read the poems of [Ch’en] Tzu-ang and Pi-chien 必簡 [Tu Shen-yen 杜審言]; you will find recovery close at hand and you will certainly understand that my words are not flattery. Otherwise you will be in “wild fox heterodoxy” all your life. 63 In senseless opposition

——— 60

Mao Shih Yin-te, 71/260/1; Karlgren, p.228; Waley, p.141. These are the phrases cited from the poems addressed to Hsü Tsin and Li Lien, referred to above. 62 These phrases are not found in the same couplet in any of Ho’s extant heptasyllabic poems. 63 This is a phrase used by Yen Yü in Ts’ang-lang Shih-hua; see Ts’ang-lang Shihhua Chiao-shih, p.11. In his notes (p.15), Kuo traces the expression to the Ch’uanteng Lu. For an English translation of the passage by Yen Yü, see Richard John Lynn, 61

ARCHAISM

415

without realising it, you will come to this continually. Beware, beware!

THEORY Attention is generally focussed on the issues of Archaist theory in these letters, and rightly so. Nonetheless, it is important to recognise as well that, however important the ideas they contain, what led to the letters actually being written and sent was a matter of human emotions, especially on Li’s part. 64 Ho’s letter had been, if not compliant, certainly polite, often even deferential. Li’s replies are more painful documents to read, as they no doubt were to write. 65 In essence Li received two messages from Ho’s letter, and he responds to the first one at once and with indignation. We need to bear Li’s situation in mind while reading his letter. He had been driven from the capital, where he had been the centre of a flourishing literary movement, repeatedly harassed, arrested, and finally expelled from membership in the official class. It is not surprising that he fell back on his literary leadership as a crucial surviving part of his self-image and that Ho’s rejection of his attempt to reassert himself in the role of teacher called forth an angry reaction, the more so as Ho had clearly supplanted him as a leading poet in Peking and now had followers of his own, some of them, especially Li Lien, former associates of Meng-yang himself. He is quite nettled to find his follower questioning his judgement and suggesting deficiencies in his work. Indeed, he pays much more attention to this aspect of the exchange than Ho, both in the opening and closing sections of the first letter, in which he sounds sincerely hurt, and in his more specific comments on individual faults in the second, in which he is once more the demanding teacher pointing out his student’s mistakes and insisting on time-honoured prescriptions for

———

“Orthodoxy and Enlightenment: Wang Shih-chen’s Theory of Poetry and its Antecedants,” in Wm. Theodore de Bary, ed., The Unfolding of Neo-Confucianism, p.221. 64 For a classic study of the role of human personality and conflict in the history of ideas see Arthur Koestler The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man’s Changing Vision of the Universe (1959; repr. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1989). 65 Chu Yi-tsun characterised the entire dispute as being “rather like applying acupuncture needles but missing the proper node, so that the only result is howls of pain”; see MST 30.2b.

416

CHAPTER NINE

improvement. Fortunately, Ho does not seem to have taken offense, and Li too came perhaps to regret his anger. In any event, they exchanged fu lamenting the death of Li’s wife in 1516, 66 and in 1518, when Ho, after several personally uneventful years in Peking, passed through Kaifeng on the way to his post in Shensi, he was entertained there by Li. 67 The other message in Ho’s letter was what we should think of as the substantive one, Ho’s argument against imitation and in favour of a historical view of the literary tradition. Li responds to this in a number of ways. 68 In the injured tone used elsewhere he complains of Ho’s failure to understand his meaning in discussing the importance of ‘gentle unassertiveness’, etc. He also defends the practice of imitation by comparing it to the practice of copying in calligraphy. But these are only details compared to the essential difference between the two men, a difference that Li grasps very clearly and handles with subtlety and sophistication in spite of his hurt feelings. The question at issue was the nature of the relationship between a poet’s personality, his work, and his models. Although Li and Ho were both Archaists in their insistence on discovering standards of poetic excellence in the past, and though they were in general agreement on the particular standards to be adopted, their differences on this issue foreshadowed debates, controversies, and eventually denunciations that would preoccupy literary circles for centuries to come. Ho Ching-ming’s position in particular represented a fundamental shift away from important aspects of the Archaist ideal, a shift that would prove increasingly significant with the passage of time. At the heart of the issue was one central problem, which might be

———

66 For the fu on Li Meng-yang’s wife, “Rhapsody on Heartbreak” 結腸賦, see HTFC 1.21b (15; 賦:701). Only the Standard recension includes this work. Although it is grouped with the fu from the Chia-chi, it is clear from the work’s preface that it must have been written in 1516 and hence that its placement is the result of there having been sufficient room for it on the last leaf of chüan 1 but not within the pages alloted for the Ching-chi (see TK, pp. 78, 285). For Li’s own set of three “Heartbreak” 喋腸篇 poems lamenting his wife’s death, see K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi 19.12b (440). 67 See below, chapter ten, for a discussion of this event and Chien Chin-sung’s interpretation of it, with which I disagree. 68 Iriya Yoshitaka, Mindai Shibun, remarks on his enjoyment of Li’s agility, sometimes born of desperation, in debate. Chien Chin-sung also comments on the power of analysis shown by Li in his letters; see “Li-Ho Shih-lun Yen-chiu,” p.161.

ARCHAISM

417

most simply put as ‘why Archaism?’ That is, why base one’s own verse on old poetry, excellent as the latter might have been for its own day? Ho Ching-ming’s answer to this is the one more in line with our own prejudices, and indeed, it carries within it ideas that would emerge as explicitly opposed to Archaism almost a century later: by careful study of excellent poems of the past, one learns how to express one’s own emotions and visions, perhaps in forms quite unlike those of antiquity. 69 What remains from such a study is a standard of excellence to be emulated by a poet writing in his own personal style. Ho’s claim is thus reminiscent of the young American Archaist poet Ezra Pound, [k]now you that I would Make my poem, as I would make myself, From all the best things, of all good men And great men that go before me. Yet above all be myself.” 70

Li Meng-yang’s answer, by contrast, is closer to ‘pure’ Archaism—in which he is, after all, a central figure—and is also more consistent with the underlying intellectual and political concerns that Archaism evolved to meet. ‘Imitation of antiquity’ as a literary pastime has, of course, a very remote origin in China. From the Six Dynasties on we find poets writing ni-ku (‘in imitation of antique poems’), as indeed Li Mengyang and Ho Ching-ming did as well. But Li’s Archaist ideal is more far-reaching than simple stylistic imitation. More important than the words of the ancients are their forms, because form embodies the fundamental experience of perception and expression, while words, specific content, only tell what has been perceived and expressed in a particular instance. For Li, the point in studying the masters of antiquity and writing in their forms lies in the consonance between the forms and the fundamental principles underlying human experience. He sees the regulated verse of the High T’ang poets, for example, not

——— 69

The dean of historians of Chinese literary criticism, Kuo Shao-yü, has made the pertinent comment that later criticism of Li Meng-yang and his form of Archaism really has its origin in Ho’s letter, Chung-kuo Wen-hsüeh P’i-p’ing Shih, part 2, p.188 (1944; rpt. Taipei, 1972). 70 “Capilupus Sends Greeting to Grotus,” in Collected Early Poems of Ezra Pound, edited by Michael King (New York: New Directions, 1976), p.267.

418

CHAPTER NINE

simply as a usefully defined form that had been brought to perfection at a particular time, but as one that expresses in its very structure the manner in which men perceive and express their apprehension of reality. Thus one could no more deviate successfully from their forms than one could construct a building with doors and windows that were not squarely framed. Li sees as beside the point Ho’s concern with individual expression rather than imitation. The question is not one of expressing the thoughts of the ancients in one’s poetry; the point is that their forms are the best ones—indeed the only proper ones—for expressing one’s individual vision in the present, because the forms represent unchanging nature, not individual personality. 71 In making this point, Li makes adroit use of an image—quite a conventional one—that Ho had invoked. Perhaps in the hope of softening the effect of his dissent, Ho had praised Li for having ‘opened up his own hall and founded his own school’. His point was that Li had in fact accomplished a personal success due to his own qualities rather than to his reliance on models from antiquity. But Li turns this back on him, saying that in ‘building his own hall’, every poet would have to use the same sorts of ‘squares and compasses’. The measurements might differ according to personal style or taste, but the use of the basic forms of square and circle could hardly be abandoned. 72 To do so, insisting on one’s own angles and curves, to

———

71 Irene Bloom refers to an analogous approach to the “orthodox” tao-hsüeh tradition in Lo Ch’in-shun, “For Lo, ‘orthodoxy’ did not require the acceptance of specific doctrines of Chu Hsi’s about li or ch’i, the Supreme Ultimate, or human nature . . . Rather, orthodoxy involved a particular sense of discipline and of tradition—a characteristically intellectual perspective, a conscious focussing on intellectual continuities, and a developed appreciation for the relevance of the cumulative experience of the past for the efforts and concerns of the present,” “On the ‘Abstraction’ of Ming Thought: Some Concrete Evidence from the Philosophy of Lo Ch’in-shun,” in Principle and Practicality: Essays in Neo-Confucianism and Practical Learning, ed. Wm. Theodore de Bary and Irene Bloom, pp.108-09. The issue here, as Chien Chin-sung observes, is that Ho takes fa to be simply a matter of externals such as ‘diction’, rather than one of structure; see “Li-Ho Shih-lun Yen-chiu,” p.162. 72 The compass and square analogy was evidently a favourite of Li’s. Ho Liangchün mentions attending a banquet given by Ku Lin, who quoted Li on the necessity of emulating Tu Fu and on the existence of ‘compasses and squares’ in poetry. Ho Liang chün disagrees, arguing that Tu Fu’s work naturally is governed by ‘compass and square’, but that to emulate him is just to copy a particular artisan. He also criticises Ho Ching-ming’s figure of ‘abandoning the raft’; see Ssu-yu Chai Ts’ungshuo (Peking: Chung-hua, 1959) 26.3b (234). Li Tung-yang had put the metaphor of compass and square to work in his own way, stressing their limitations. A master craftsman, Li points out, can give his compass and square to someone, but not his skill,

ARCHAISM

419

write poetry in forms unique to oneself, that is, would be a minor triumph at best, a curiosity, like a specialist artisan who knows how to do only one thing. 73 This concept of individuality as inherently inferior because incomplete and ‘special’, rather than general and compre-hensive, is essential to pure Archaism, and Li’s formulation of it, properly understood, is a fundamental document in the definition of the Archaist ideal. 74 There are a number of issues related to Archaism and these letters that call for comment before we return to Ho Ching-ming and his life in Peking. One of these, the relation to Ho’s actual practice as a poet, will require a section of its own. First, there is the social background of the Ming Archaist movement, which has been discussed by several Japanese scholars, particularly Yoshikawa Kōjirō. They point out that, with few exceptions, the Archaists were northerners and that Li Meng-yang and Ho Ching-ming, at least, came from relatively humble backgrounds. 75 This meant that they were in two important ways outsiders. Southern China, particularly the area around the lower Yangtse, had been the centre of literati culture since the fall of northern China to the Chin in 1126, as well as during an analogous period of division, the Northern

———

[Huai-]lu T’ang Shih-hua, Yi-wen ed. p.7b, Chung-hua ed. p.1379; Ming Shih-hua Ch’üan-pien 2.1632; Li Tung-yang Chi 2.539. 73 Ma Mao-yüan reacts to this argument as most modern readers would, noting that Li ignores the individuality that made the buildings great in the first place (“Lüeht’an”). 74 Wang T’ing-hsiang agreed with Li on this point, and praised both his insight and his poetry in the preface he wrote for Li’s works. See Chang Woei Ong, “The Principles are Many: Wang Tingxiang and Intellectual Transition in Mid-Ming China,” HJAS 66 (2006): 461-93, esp. pp.483-86. 75 See Yoshikawa Kōjirō 吉川幸次郎, “Ri Bōyō no Ichi Sokumen: ‘Kobunji’ no Shominsei” 李夢陽の一側面:「古文辞」の庶民性 (One Side of Li Meng-yang: The Common Citizan Nature of Archaism), Ritsumeikan Bungaku 180 (1960): pp.190208; repr. Yoshikawa Kōjirō Zenshū 15: .614-33 (Tokyo: Chikuma, 1969); Yoshikawa Kōjirō, Gen Min Shi Gaisetsu (Tokyo, 1963), pp.171-83; transl. John Timothy Wixted, Five Hundred Years of Chinese Poetry, 1150-1650 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), pp.140-49; and Iriya Yoshitaka, Mindai Shibun, pp.48-49. The interesting suggestion of Maeno Naoaki 前野直彬 that the emphasis on formal rules drawn from the works of a limited body of ‘approved’ writers might be related to ‘pedagogy,’ the instruction of ‘citizen poets,’ may be relevant to Li Meng-yang’s late years or to the later success of Archaism in the South in the middle of the century, but does not seem to have played a role in the emergence of the group around Li and Ho. See his “Mindai Kobunjiha no Bungakuron” 明代古文辭派の文學論 (The Literary Ideas of the Ming Archaists), NCG 16 (1964), pp.157-65.

420

CHAPTER NINE

and Southern Dynasties, from 317 to 589. The analogy, in fact, is suggestive and may even have been so to the reformers themselves. For, although China had been reunified by the Mongol conquest of the South late in the thirteenth century and restored to Chinese rule by the founding of the Ming in the fourteenth, the cultural dominance of the South remained essentially unchallenged, just as had been the case in the period after 589, during the Sui and early T’ang. Although there is some danger in taking the parallel too far, one can see the rise of a more serious Confucian reformism in philosophy and of an Archaist movement in literature as analogous to the activities of such T’ang figures as Wang T’ung 王通 and Ch’en Tzu-ang. 76 Li Meng-yang, at least, saw contemporary literary trends in the South as contrary to his ideals, and warned one of the few southerners among his followers, the young Hsü Chen-ch’ing, against them (Hsü had in fact emerged to early prominence in the most important literary and artistic circle in the South, that associated with Wen Cheng-ming 文徵明). 77 Another important issue is the relationship between Ming Archaism and developments in contemporary tao-hsüeh. 78 Yoshikawa Kōjirō has suggested that Li Meng-yang’s literary ideas might be related to the philosophy of Wang Yang-ming. 79 Richard John Lynn too has investigated the relationship between the Archaist movement in literature and the Ming hsin-hsüeh concern with self-discovery and

———

76 One obvious problem with the analogy is that the great Ming Confucian reformers, such as Ch’en Hsien-chang and Wang Yang-ming, were from the South. 77 Chien Chin-sung discusses the ‘Soochow Garden of Letters’ 蘇州文苑, the contrasts between it and the northern Archaists, the ways in which southerners changed or resisted change in response to Archaism in Ming-tai Wen-hsüeh P’i-p’ing Yen-chiu (Taipei: Hsüeh-sheng, 1989), pp.85-183. For notes on Li Meng-yang and Hsü Chen-ch’ing, see Wang Kung-wang, “Li Meng-yang K’ung-t’ung Chi Jen-ming Chien-cheng. (chih erh)” 李夢陽空同集人名箋證之二 (Notes on Personal Names in Li Meng-yang’s Collected works of K’ung-t’ung, Pt. 2), Kansu She-hui K’o-hsüeh 1994.5:83-86, 75, p.83. 78 Chinese scholarship is generally concerned above all with distinguishing Wang Yang-ming’s philosophy from the purely literary interests of the Archaists, which Wang rejected. The ‘T’ang-Sung School’ of prose writing, represented by Wang Shen-chung 王慎中 and T’ang Shun-chih 唐順之, is then taken to be an analogous literary reaction against the Archaists. For a representative example of this approach, see Ma Mei-hsin 馬美信, “Yang-ming Hsin-hsüeh yü Wen-hsüeh Fu-ku Yün-tung” 陽明心學與文學復古運動 (Yang-ming’s School of Mind and the Literary Archaist Movement), Fu-tan Hsüeh-pao 1993.6:97-102, 12. Chien Chin-sung’s discussion, in Ming-tai, pp.275-359, is characteristically full and nuanced. 79 Yoshikawa Kōjirō, Gen Min Shi Gaisetsu, p.183; trans. Wixted, p.148; Iriya, Mindai, p.50.

ARCHAISM

421

self-realization in a series of excellent studies. 80 There is, however, perhaps some danger of overemphasizing the links between Li Mengyang and Wang Yang-ming. Li was apparently not much in contact with Wang after they both were driven out of Peking by Liu Chin in 1507, and Wang’s philosophy was not yet fully developed at that time. 81 What is important to consider is the extent to which literary Archaism was conditioned by assumptions current among contemporary thinkers or represented a reaction to them. One crucial figure is Ch’en Hsien-chang, unmentioned by Wang Yang-ming, who probably never met him, but of great importance both because he anticipated crucial aspects of Wang’s philosophy and also because (and this is our reason for mentioning him here) he exemplifies a number of attitudes to be found among serious intellectuals during the period when the Archaist movement in literature was taking shape. Two in particular are noteworthy. On the one hand, he devalued literature per se, stating in one of his own philosophical poems, “The Way and virtue are like rich fat, while literature is merely chaff and husks.” 82 This is in the Ch’eng-Chu tradition and is of course the antithesis of the ideas of the Archaists, but it calls attention to the problems the latter faced, the need for an autonomous justification for literature capable of convincing serious intellectuals that it had a real place in civilised life. 83 As Thomas Metzger has remarked, “It was

———

80 Particularly “Orthodoxy and Enlightenment” and “Alternate Routes.” Both are important for arguing that the Archaists’ intellectual links were to tao-hsüeh rather than to Zen Buddhism, as the vocabulary borrowed by Yen Yü had led some scholars to suppose. 81 See above, chapter four, for this incident. There is one poem that Li addressed to Wang much later, in the autumn of 1524, see “Sent to Master Yang-ming at MidAutumn of the Chia-shen Year” 甲申中秋寄陽明子, K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi 16.5b (350). This is quite a conventional piece, and gives no hint that Li saw Wang as an important philosopher. Wang wrote the epitaph for Hsü Chen-ch’ing after his death in 1511. He takes note of Hsü’s association with Li Meng-yang and Ho Ching-ming, but turns immediately to his subsequent interest in Taoism, as though Hsü’s literary activities were of little account. Interestingly, the only textual evidence of friendship between Wang and Ho Ching-ming is the brief reference in Tai Kuan’s letter (see above, chapter seven). 82 Jen Yu-wen, “Ch’en Hsien-chang’s Philosophy of the Natural,” in Wm. Theodore de Bary, ed., Self and Society in Ming Thought, p.59 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970). 83 Elsewhere, Ch’en stated, “Skill in poetry is the decline of poetry,” Pai-sha-tzu 白沙子 (Master White Sands) (SPTK), p.1.5b; quoted in Ming-tai Wen-hsüeh P’i-p’ing

422

CHAPTER NINE

especially this downgrading of explicitly creative activities along with the emphasis on spiritual nurture which distinguished the NeoConfucian tradition of education and moral training.” 84 Secondly, Ch’en Hsien-chang’s concept of one of the central elements in tao-hsüeh thought, 理 (li ‘principle’), differed strongly from that of Chu Hsi in a way that both anticipated Wang Yang-ming and furnishes an analogue to an idea about literary form that is important for many Archaist writers. For Chu Hsi, li had been above all moral principle, to be discovered in the material world and in human affairs by tireless reading and reflection. For Ch’en Hsienchang, li was physical law as well, and its importance lay not so much in its existence as in its realisation in the mind. As Jen Yu-wen puts it, “Principle, then, became the personally acquired truth, fully assimilated by the mind as one’s own conviction.” 85

———

Tzu-liao Hui-pien, Chung-kuo Wen-hsüeh P’i-p’ing Tzu-liao Hui-pien, Pt. 7, p.234 (Taipei: Ch’eng-wen, 1979). “Although a poet may be skilled, that is not enough to fully realise poetry, still less to fully realise humanity” (ibid.) and, “Have you been writing poetry lately? It is not necessary to do so, nor is it necessary not to do so.” (Pai-sha-tzu, 2.59b-60a; Hui-pien, p.237). A representative statement from the Sung dynasty tao-hsüeh tradition is this one by Ch’eng Hao, a forerunner of Chu Hsi, in a dialogue: Q: Is the composition of literature harmful to the Tao? A: It is harmful indeed. If one does not play close attention in writing, the result is not skilful. If one does, then one’s will is limited by it. Then how could one make his greatness that of Heaven and Earth? The Documents says, “by toying with things one is bereft of one’s will.” The composition of literary works is surely a matter of ‘toying with things’. Ch’eng Hao 程顥 and Ch’eng Yi 程頤. Erh-Ch’eng Chi (Peking: Chung-hua, 1981) , p.1239; cited in Chu Jung-chih 朱榮智, Yüan-tai Wen-hsüeh P’i-p’ing chih Yen-chiu 元代文學批評之研究 (Study of Yüan Dynasty Literary Criticism) (Taipei: Lien-ching, 1962), p.356. Chu Hsi had been more moderate. He wrote poetry himself and saw no harm in it so long as one simply did it naturally without striving to excel in a purely literary way. Early followers of Chu all agreed that good writing was a consequence of moral excellence and was not to be sought as a goal in itself. See Kuo Shao-yü, “Chu-tzu chih Wen-hsüeh P’i-p’ing” 朱子之文學批評 (Literary Criticism of Master Chu [Hsi]), Wen-hsüeh Nien-pao 4 (1938); rpt. Chao-yü Shih Ku-tien Wen-hsüeh Lun-chi, Vol. I, pp.413-440, and Li Ch’i, “Chu Hsi, the Poet,” TP 58 (1972): 55-119. Li (pp.56-73) gives a helpful brief account of the varied attitudes toward poetry adopted by the Sung tao-hsüeh thinkers. 84 Thomas A. Metzger, Escape from Predicament: Neo-Confucianism and China’s Evolving Political Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), p.123. 85 Jen, op. cit., p.73. Such ideas were not entirely new with Ch’en. Over a century earlier, in the 1330’s, a man named Huang Tse 黃澤 had “stressed self-enlightenment

ARCHAISM

423

This resembles the conception of literary form held by Li Mengyang. For Li, ideal literary forms had a natural validity independent of the writer who used them. They were to be learned by study and imitation of the works of the great poets of the past in which they were perfectly realised, but the final goal was their internalisation, so that one might write without conscious reference to the forms, but also without ever violating them. Underlying this idea were shared assumptions about what we would now call the psychology of perception and expression. The thinkers of the tao-hsüeh tradition had among their implicit assumptions a remarkably subtle and developed set of ideas about the steps involved in the processes of cognition and expression. The Archaists do not describe these or refer to them explicitly, but such ideas provide a basis for understanding their ideas about literary creation. In particular, they surely underlie Li Meng-yang’s insistence on unchanging laws of poetry, for the laws could only be unchanging if the workings of the human mind were universal as well. 86 But there was also an important difference between Ch’en Hsienchang’s understanding of li and Wang Yang-ming’s. As Youngmin Kim has pointed out in a recent article, for Ch’en, li was still something external to the human mind, to be discovered by it, while for Wang, li was to be found in the mind itself. 87 This distinction calls attention to the point at which the Archaists’ fa, unchanging laws, differed from li as Wang Yang-ming eventually came to understand it. For Li Meng-yang and Ho Ching-ming alike, fa was something initially external to the poet, a system of normative structures that one had to labour to make part of oneself. In this, Li and Ho resembled Ch’en Hsien-chang rather than Wang Yang-ming and his followers. There is of course also a tempting parallel between the Archaists’ rejection of the poetry of the relatively recent past and Peter Ditmanson’s finding that intellectual lineages in the tao-hsüeh

———

through a process of cumulative meditation” (DMB, p.126). 86 See Metzger, Escape from Predicament, pp.85-127, especially the discussion of the “phases of the mind.” The most sophisticated attempt to discover the psychological assumptions behind the ideas of an Archaist critic is in Richard John Lynn’s studies of Wang Shih-chen, which can be read with profit in conjunction with Metzger 87 Youngmin Kim, “Rethinking the Self in Relation to the World in the mid-Ming: The Responses of Chen Xianzhang, Hu Juren, Wang Yangming and Zhan Ruoshui to Cheng-Zhu Learning,” Ming Studies 44 (2000): 13-47.

424

CHAPTER NINE

tradition fade out during the reign of the Yung-lo emperor, later thinkers tending to define their positions by reference directly to the founders of tao-hsüeh, above all Chu Hsi. 88 At the same time, there is an issue that divides Li Meng-yang and Wang Yang-ming, on the one hand, from Ho Ching-ming and such later followers of Wang’s as Wang Ken 王艮 (1483-1541) and Li Chih 李贄 on the other; this is the value of individuality. Wang Yangming’s ideas rested on the idea of a common and unchanging basis of human experience. In the words of de Bary, For the most part his understanding of innate knowledge [liang-chih] was based on the assumption of a common moral nature in all mankind. Indeed, its common character was almost Wang’s fundamental article of faith; individual differences were for him of secondary importance, and the value of the individual in his uniqueness is not something Wang dwells on. 89

This, of course, suggests the ideas about individual creative activity in literature that we have found Li Meng-yang and Ho Ching-ming disagreeing over so vigorously. Seen from this perspective, at least, Li’s interest in models and relative lack of interest in the unique individual voice is consistent both with the ideas of Wang Yang-ming and with the tao-hsüeh tradition as a whole. The common focus, then, was not on personal creation, but on personal acquisition of the common heritage. Tu Wei-ming comments: Yang-ming taught that the true meaning of learning was not merely to acquire something externally but to transform one’s way of life from within. Learning in this context was described as ‘the study of body and mind’ (身心之學). Its central concern was how to engage in selfcultivation by internalising the words of the ancient sages, which was basically a process of creative adaptation rather than an act of passive submission. It involved a conscious effort to bring oneself in line with the instructions of the sages through a series of inner decisions. 90

In contrast to this, Ho Ching-ming’s insistence on ‘opening up one’s

———

88 Peter Ditmanson, “The Yongle Reign and the Transformation of Daoxue,” Ming Studies 39 (1998): 7-31. 89 Wm. Theodore de Bary, “Individualism and Humanism in Late Ming Thought,” in de Bary, et al., eds., Self and Society in Ming Thought, p.151 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970). 90 Tu Wei-ming, Neo-Confucian Thought in Action: Wang Yang-ming’s Youth (1472-1509) (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976), pp.8889.

ARCHAISM

425

own hall’ is an important early manifestation of the cultivation of individuality that was to become much more important in both philosophy and literature in the course of the remaining years of the Ming dynasty. It is suggestive both of the attitudes Wang Ken and Li Chih and of the emphasis on individual experience and emotions that characterise literature in the seventeenth century. An additional condition, aside from questions of social and intellectual background, that surely influenced the development of poetry during the Ming was the changed status of the art relative to the system of civil examinations. That is, unlike the case in the T’ang and Sung dynasties, when verse composition was a required element in the examinations, poetry was not included in the curriculum during the Ming (see above, chapter two). It is surprising that this has not been more insistently remarked upon. T’ang and Sung aspirants to public life had to master verse composition of necessity, and however much poetry, along with calligraphy, became recognised as a natural attribute of the educated man from the T’ang onward, the requirements of the examination system were there to reinforce its claim to the attention of all from the earliest stages of the educational process. Even during the Yüan, once the examinations were revived, poetic composition was included, though its importance was reduced. Poetry had been, moreover, one of the ways in which Chinese literati might keep their identity alive during the Mongol period. But once it had been cut loose from the route to public office in the early Ming, its status was open to reinterpretation. That there is no dramatic change in the early Ming is not surprising. Poetry remained a highly regarded art. Moreover, the role of examination success underwent a gradual evolution during the first half of the Ming. In the earlier decades of the dynasty, many offices were filled by recommendation, and the later emergence of the chin-shih as a necessary condition for a successful official career was a slow process. 91 Ho’s brother Ching-shao rose to the office of Assistant Prefect on the strength of a provincial degree earned in 1486, something that would be almost unthinkable a hundred years later. Mastery of poetic composition, if no longer a requirement for a

———

91 See Benjamin A. Elman, A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China (Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 2000), pp.142-57.

426

CHAPTER NINE

distinguished career in civil office, was by no means inconsistent with such success, as the writers in the Secretariat Style tradition showed. Their success, however, emphasised breadth of learning and reading rather than the discrimination of excellence. Moreover, once verse composition was primarily a social asset, like the ability to play golf or the guitar with us, the standard for success was likely to be social as well. It was no accident that those writers, such as Yang Shih-ch’i, who exemplified the pinnacle of poetry in the decades before Li Tungyang rose to prominence also exemplified political success. It seems that a reversal of circumstances had taken place. Instead of an at least modest ability to write verse being a necessary condition for a career, a really successful career now allowed someone with only modest abilities of a purely literary kind to be recognised as a preeminent poet among his contemporaries, provided that his breadth of learning was consistent with his position. 92 Li Tung-yang’s role was thus pivotal. A man whose success in office almost required that his verse be taken seriously began to take poetry seriously as an art. He was not an Archaist himself, but his urging that poetry be written with careful attention to form naturally suggested the question of standards. And once Li Meng-yang and his circle adopted Tung-yang’s serious stance and began to think about what those standards might be, it was virtually inevitable that they would embrace antiquity. It was after all in the nature of the case in China that nothing could compete with the authority of the ancients and in the nature of young and ambitious men that once they found their standard they would apply it vigorously and publicly, as we see in Li Meng-yang’s insistence on Han, Wei, and High T’ang as the sole acceptable models and in Ho Ching-ming’s discrimination, in his Preface to “The Bright Moon,” of different poets as standards of excellence in different poetic forms. Ming Archaism was, in short, far from being a lazy and irresponsible reliance on imitation in place of creation, as has so often been assumed during the past century, but was rather a principled and energetic search for the sources of the highest good in literature, one that might lead to moral excellence as well as literary, as Li suggests

———

92 One is reminded of Arthur Waley’s response, when asked what he thought of Mao Tse-tung’s poems, that they were better than Hitler’s paintings, but not as good as Churchill’s.

ARCHAISM

427

at a crucial point in his argument, when he declares, in his first letter, that “if the practice of literature is beyond one’s capability, still less is one capable of practising the tao.” Archaism was, therefore, and even in its earlier stages, to some extent a personal and moral quest, beyond the purely literary art of ni-ku that it might seem to resemble. 93 The desirability of such a quest was perhaps more evident under Wu-tsung and subsequent Ming emperors than it had been in the days of Hsiao-tsung, when Li Meng-yang and his friends began it. But the suitability of poetry as the vehicle of the quest lay in the very separation of verse writing from the examination curriculum that Chu Yüan-chang had decreed early in the dynasty. As we shall see, Ho Ching-ming was much exercised by the growing divorce between the principles of the ancient thinkers and the role of their writings within an education system driven by increasingly competitive and careeroriented interests. By its irrelevance to examination success, while demanding the highest powers of perception and mastery of language, poetry was the ideal sphere within which to cultivate a sense of ideal purpose, and the intensity of the debates, both among the Archaists and between them and their critics, that took place through the rest of the Ming and into the Early Ch’ing testifies to the urgency with which such cultivation was invested. Archaism is in just this sense parallel to the extraordinary flowering of the tao-hsüeh tradition that takes place at the same time in response above all to Wang Yang-ming. For this reason, if for no other, its further exploration is highly desirable. We shall not be able to understand China in the Ming dynasty without taking the Archaists and their ideas seriously. PRACTICE The exchange between Li and Ho takes place at a very high level of abstraction, as indeed did most discussion of literature above the level of handbooks intended for non-literati neophytes among the lower orders such as Li Meng-yang’s friend Pao Pi or ‘Master Single Skiff’. One might be forgiven for feeling that the ideas expressed in much

———

93 Iriya’s discussion of this aspect of Ming Archaism is particularly good; see Mindai Shibun, pp.53-54. See also Kuo Shao-yü’s account of Li Meng-yang in his Chung-kuo Wen-hsüeh P’i-p’ing Shih (second ed., rpt. Hong Kong, n.d.), pp.297-304.

428

CHAPTER NINE

traditional Chinese literary criticism are about as useful to someone actually trying to write a poem or to understand how one has been written as the ideas in traditional Chinese medical texts would be to someone attempting to cope with an epidemic of Dengue Fever. It may therefore be worthwhile to look at the concrete ways in which Ho Ching-ming uses the past in his work. There are several dimensions to this question: form, allusion, and reference, at the very least. Ho’s interest in form is evident in his preface to his edition of Wang Wei poems, which he carefully divided into groups depending upon their metre and whether or not they observed the rules of NewStyle verse. Although his Wang Wei edition appears not to have survived, his preoccupation with formal distinctions in editing it is typical of the Archaists, and from our standpoint doubly unfortunate. In the first place, it gives misleading results when applied to poetry from the T’ang, when the Old-Style/New-Style contrast was real, but not always rigidly observed. Just as with the recurring question of identifying the point at which New-Style verse reached its fullydeveloped form, such a concentration on formal distinctions risks deforming the shape of the actual literary history of the T’ang and earlier periods by leaving out of consideration many works that did not conform to what we now know would be the ‘successful’ trend. 94 Secondly, it complicates the work of reconstructing the chronology of poets’ oeuvres. The point is not that chronology is more important than form in some absolute sense, but rather that information is lost when an existing sequence is disturbed. For the rest, I have made a temporary and ad hoc distinction in this book between ‘allusion’, by which I mean references to other texts, mostly not literary, that make the one in which they occur more intelligible when they are understood, and ‘reference’, by which I mean textual reminiscences whose identification is unnecessary to understanding. The latter are the reminiscences and recalls marshalled immediately after many of the translations here. It is important to bear in mind that both notions, as well as the distinction between them,

——— 94

For an account of a number of interesting late Six Dynasties works that have been paid little attention simply because they were not in what turned out to be the ‘main stream’ of literary history, see Allen Haaheim, “Seas of Generic Change: The Rhapsody in the Late Six Dynasties,” M.A thesis, University of Victoria, 2005.

ARCHAISM

429

speak to the experience of modern readers more than to that of Ho’s contemporaries, who shared a common corpus of knowledge derived from participation in a shared educational curriculum and literary corpus. For them, a reference to events in the Han dynasty was not so very different in nature from one to a sunset or a jug of wine. Allusion and reference themselves are therefore not essential to Archaism, and neither Li nor Ho has much to say about them in their letters. In Ho Ching-ming’s practice as a writer, allusion in a narrow sense is more often deployed as a rhetorical device rather than as a poetic one. For this reason, it is more common in prose works, such as the ‘Master Ho’ essays, than in poems, though in a strongly hortatory poem, such as the one Ho addressed to Wang T’ing-hsiang when the latter was imprisoned, allusions may be deployed in almost every line. In a significant number of examples, Ho uses what might be called an ‘anti-allusion’, a kind of refusal to acknowledge explicit reference just when it seems most to be required. His set of three early poems on the death of his wife and the “Singing of my Feelings” poems written after the failure of the coup against Liu Chin would seem to cry out for something beyond titles shared with the work of P’an Yüeh and Juan Chi, but Ho does nothing to underline a link to the past that becomes all the stronger for having been so tenuously expressed. In other cases, Ho refers unmistakably to a famous earlier poem only to reject the sort of connection one would expect, whether it is in the apparently ironic use of Tu Fu in the poem written on his way to Yunnan or the ‘innocent’ reference to a famous couplet by Li Po. But the overwhelmingly common case is the type found in the sort of references whose very incomplete inventories are attached to many of the translations in this book. One can make some general observations about these, for example that they are found much more densely when he is writing in the ‘antique’ manner of the Yüeh-fu ballad or Old-Style poem than when he is writing Regulated Verse. He seems to treat New-Style poetry as a contemporary form in which reference to the past is common but optional, but Old-Style as requiring a verbal texture that is densely evocative of ancient poetry. This points up the nature of the distinction between Old-Style and New, which is based on the presence or absence of fixed structural patterns of parallelism and contrast. Thus, any poem that observes the stringent requirements of Regulated Verse is sufficiently defined by that observance, while an Old Style poem must not only lack New

430

CHAPTER NINE

Style tonal patterning, but must also echo the ambience of older poems in order to confirm its identity. What is ‘Archaist’ about this is the need for the poems to have a particular formal identity, to belong clearly to one or the other of the two types. Ho’s practice is also consistent with the Archaist preference for T’ang poetry over Sung. Very broadly speaking, poems in a ‘T’ang’ style, whenever written, are generally more likely to draw on experience with texts than ‘Sung’ poems, in which the preoccupation tends to be with experiences that are immediate and personal, rather than literary. But the amount of literary reference in many of the poems does call to mind the common twentieth century criticism of Archaist poets, that their work is simply made up of plagiarised patches stolen from the ancients. Li Meng-yang seems to anticipate this possibility in one of his letters, when he writes: If I were to pilfer the ideas of the ancients and steal their forms, and then put my writings together out of bits and pieces of their phraseology, it would certainly be appropriate to call me their reflection.

The ‘bits and pieces’ are there to be found in most of Ho’s poems, but it is clear that they are not the result of kleptopoesis, a purposeful ransacking of the corpus in search of serviceable loot, but rather that they are drawn from the huge reservoir of language that the Archaist poets had acquired in the course of their reading and which for them simply constituted poetry as a field. Establishing a chronology for so many of the works incidentally shows how they are tied to personal relationships with identifiable people at particular moments; at the same time, the density of their links to the past suggests that Ho’s poems are not only individual, autonomous literary works linked to particular times and situations, they are also nodes on a vast, shimmering, and ever-expanding timeless web of shared literary experience to which modern readers, Chinese or not, no longer have his instinctive access.

CHAPTER TEN

A CAREER IN GOVERNMENT LOSSES AND GAINS A topic of rather frequent incidental reference in works going back as far as the complaints of summer heat had been the current troubles on the frontiers. 1 Shortly after the farewell to Ho Shih, Ho Ching-ming actually devoted a poem to the subject of one of the nomad leaders, whose name in Chinese was Hua-tang 花當. 2 Ho’s tone is the one usual in Chinese comment on unruly barbarians: shock and disappointment that someone so fortunate as to be living on the fringes, at least, of civilization, and who had been so well-behaved (for a barbarian) in the past, should so suddenly have gone bad. At about the same time, Ho received a letter from Wang T’inghsiang. The letter is not extant, nor does Ho tell us what it said, but he did write a poem recording his feelings on receiving it: 得王子衡贛榆書萬里一書劄、逾年傳帝都。竄身天地遠、垂淚海雲孤。柳送燕臺駿、花留漢殿鳧。赤霄終道路、白髮且江湖。 On Receiving a Letter from Wang Tzu-heng [T’ing-hsiang] in Kan-yü 3 Come ten thousand leagues, a single letter, After a year, brought to the Imperial capital.

———

1 See “Song of Suffering from the Heat” 苦熱行 (tenth of ten poems), HTFC 29.10a (521; 374:040); “Watching an Eclipse in the Sixth Month” 六月望月食, HTFC 22.2a (382; 352:285, see above, chapter nine); “Visiting Ho of the Court of the Imperial Stud During Rain” 雨過何太僕, HTFC 27.1a (472; 372:072); “Liu Ju-chung [Yün] Visits During Rain: We Play Chess, Read Poetry, and Talk About the Frontier Situation” 雨中劉汝忠過對棋觀詩談邊事作, HTFC 21.6b (366; 352:290). 2 “Hua-tang” 花當, HTFC 21.15a (378; 352:292). For Hua-tang, who later came to an understanding with the Ming, see TK 174. 3 HTFC 20.4b (337; 352:293). The Yung recension omits Wang’s surname. For a poem by Wang T’ing-hsiang written on receiving a letter from Ho that probably dates from his time in Kan-yü, see “Receiving a Letter from Chung-mo” 得仲默書, Wang Shih Chia-ts’ang Chi (Chia-ching edition; repr. Taipei: Wei-wen, 1976) 17.21a (723), Wang T’ing-hsiang Chi (Peking: Chung-hua, 1989) 17.302.

432

CHAPTER TEN

You live in retirement, distant as heaven and earth; Tears are brimming, alone by ocean clouds. Sent off by willows, a steed from the Terrace of Yen; Kept on by blossoms, a duck from the Palace of Han. Scarlet clouds at the end of a travelled road, White haired now, but still on the rivers and lakes . . . The ‘single letter’, usually written with the character 札 rather than 劄, is a common poetic tag that goes back to the seventeenth of the “Nineteen Old Poems,” “A visitor came from far away, / Bringing me a single letter” 客從遠方來、遺我一書札. 4

No source is evident for the steed and duck of Ho’s third couplet, probably referring to Wang and Ho respectively. The Terrace of Yen is likely to be a reference to the ‘Golden Terrace’ 黃金臺 built on the orders of the King of Yen with the purpose of attracting worthy advisors. 5 One seeks in vain in poems from the early autumn of 1515 for a reference to the death of Ho’s friend Wang Hsi-meng, the prosecutor of Liu Chin, which occurred on September 1. 6 Ts’ui Hsien tells us that he and Ho had been tending Wang daily before he died, but his condition was evidently not conducive to poetry. As it is, one waits until the middle of the eighth lunar month for a poem on visiting Wang’s former home, and this poem only comes after a series of poems celebrating jolly gatherings on each of the evenings leading up to and down from the Moon Festival itself: at Hsü Tsin’s on the thirteenth (September 20), Li Lien’s on the fourteenth, Liu Wenhuan’s on the fifteenth, and a Drafter named Yin Chi-tsu’s 尹繼祖 on the sixteenth, with Liu Yün. 7 This farewell poem, for example, was

——— 4

WH 39.7b (400); YTHY 1.3a (17); Lu Ch’in-li, p.333; cf. the translation in Birrell, p.31. 5 See Chang Ting-ssu 張鼎思, Lang-yeh Tai-tsui Pien (1597; repr. TM 3:129-30, Tainan: Chuang-yen Wen-hua, 1995) 20.21a (157). 6 The date is given in the epitaph by Ts’ui Hsien, Ts’ui Shih Huan Tz’u (1554; repr. TM 4:56, Tainan, Chuang-yen Wen-hua, 1997) 12.32a (439), Huan Tz’u (SKCS) 6.16a (506). 7 “At Tzu-jung’s [Hsü Tsin] Tower on the Thirteenth Day of Mid-Autumn” 中秋十三日子容樓, HTFC 21.7a (367; 352:297); “At Li Ch’uan-fu’s [Lien] Residence on the Night of the Fourteenth” 十四夜李川甫宅 , HTFC 21.7a (367; 352:298); “Viewing the Moon at Liu Tzu-wei’s [Wen-huan] Residence on the Evening of the Fifteenth: Tzu-ching has Just Arrived” 十五夜其子緯宅子靜初至對月, HTFC 21.7a (367; 352:299); “On the Evening of the Sixteenth, at the Residence of Drafter Yin: Matching Liu Ju-cheng’s [Yün] Rhymes” 十六夜尹舍人宅次劉汝忠韻, HTFC 27.2b (474; 372:079). Tzu-ching is not positively identified, but may be Liu Teng-fu 劉澄甫,

A CAREER IN GOVERNMENT

433

written at about the same time, perhaps at one of these parties: 送衛進士推武昌少年佐郡楚城居、十郡風流盡不如。此去且隨彭蠡鴈、何須不食武昌魚。仙人樓閣春雲裏、賈客帆檣晚照餘。大別山前江漢水、畫簾終日對清虗。 Saying Farewell to Metropolitan Graduate Wei [Tao], Who has been Assigned to Wu-ch’ang 8 While still a youth, to assist in a district and live in the city of Ch’u, There will be none in a dozen counties to match your romantic elegance.

———

who was a Censor at this time; see TK 120. For Yin Chi-tsu, a Drafter appointed by privilege, see TK 131. Ho may have been writing linked verse with Liu Yün and Lu Yung during this Moon Festival. Ho Meng-ch’un wrote a poem in which he replied to a linked verse by the three of them, “Two Days After Mid-Autumn: Dashed Off in Response to Censor Lu’s Linked Verse” 中秋後二日答盧御史聯句原韻走筆, Ho Wen-chien Kung Wen-chi (1574 edition) 5.14a. The date of this poem is uncertain. Ho Ching-ming was in Peking for six Moon Festivals, 1512-1517. Ho Meng-ch’un for four, 1515-1518. Lu Yung was in Peking from 1511 until sometime in 1517. Liu Yün was in Peking throughout Ho’s time there, and in the office that Ho Meng-ch’un mentions in his note. In other words, the poems could have come from the period 1515-1517. We don’t know what Ho was doing on this day in 1517. In 1516 he wrote a poem saying that there was no moon to be seen. This year, as we have seen, he was socially and poetically active. The matter ‘awaits investigation’, as Chinese scholars say of such a case. 8 HTFC 27.2a (473; 372:077). There are a number of variant readings in this poem. The Yung and Shen recensions both differ from the Yüan and Standard in the title, though all convey the same information. In the fifth line, the Yeh-chu edition of the Shen recension reads 人 ‘man’ in place of 裏 ‘within’, and this is further corrupted in one of its descendants to 入 ‘enter’. In the final line, the Yung recension’s reading, 晝 ‘daytime’ in place of 畫 ‘painted’, is unlikely to be authorial. The [Wan-li] Hukwang Tsung-chih 湖廣總志 (Comprehensive Gazetteer of Hukwang), 20.1b, lists two Judges (推官 t’ui-kuan) with the surname Wei, but only one of them, Wei Tao 衛道, a native of Honan, can be found in the lists of chin-shih degree holders. The Tsung-chih gives his native place as Hua-hsien 華縣, but this is apparently an error for Yeh-hsien 葉縣 (the characters being similar in form). The Tsung-chih also fails to give dates for his period in office. The short biography given in the Kuo-ch’ao Lieh-ch’ing Chi (repr. Taipei: Ch’eng-wen, 1970) 133.15b (7014), gives a judgeship as his first official post (as Ho’s title implies), but leaves blank both the year and the place. However, since it leaves only enough space for one character as a year in the Cheng-te period to which the appointment can be assigned, and since 1514, the year of Wei Tao’s chin-shih success, was the ninth of Cheng-te, we may infer that the date is probably 1514 or 1515 (numbers greater than eleven require two characters). For Wei Tao (t. Cheng-fu 正夫), see TL 873, HY 3/116, TK 178. Li Lien also wrote a poem for Wei, “A Drunken Song on Saying Farewell to Judge Wei Cheng-fu, Who is Going to Wuch’ang,” Sung-chu Wen-chi (Chia-ching edition; repr. Peking: Shu-mu Wen-hsien, 1988) 13.10a (291), so perhaps Ho’s poem was written at Li’s residence on the fourteenth.

434

CHAPTER TEN

On this trip, you have only to follow the geese to Lake P’eng-li; On what account will you not eat the fish of Wu-ch’ang Town? Towers and halls of transcendent immortals within the clouds of spring; Masts and sails of merchant travellers under the last glow of evening. Lying below the Ta-pieh Range, the Rivers Yangtse and Han— All day long your painted blinds will face the limpid void. The sixth line is reminiscent of two different passages by T’ang poets. One is in Tu Fu’s “Old Farmer” 野老, “The boats of merchant travellers come following the sunset glow” 賈客船隨返照來, 9 and the other is the Late T’ang poet Li Ying’s 李郢 “A Clearing Sky Over a River Pavilion in Spring” 江亭春霽, “Mast and sails of travellers from Shu leave returning swallows behind” 蜀客帆檣背歸燕. 10

Geese are associated with Lake P’eng-li as early as the description of the sage king Yü’s labours in draining the floods. 11 During the Three Kingdoms period, when it became necessary to move the capital from Wu-ch’ang to Chien-yeh 建業 (Nanking), even the common people rejoiced, saying, “better to drink water in Chien-yeh than eat fish in Wu-ch’ang!” 12 The Ta-pieh Range forms the boundary between the Huai watershed, in which Ho’s native district was located, and the Yangtse Valley (see above, chapter one). The following poem on visiting Wang Hsi-meng’s former residence was probably written on the seventeenth, along with a poem on “thinking in the moonlight.” 13 The tradition of poems written on visiting the home of a deceased friend begins, among extant works, with Ho Hsün’s 何遜 “Poem on Passing by the Former Home of ViceDirector Fan” 行經范僕射故宅詩. 14 過宗哲故宅過門猶宿昔、駐馬復誰留。雨院殘春竹、風庭折晚榴。還家無二頃、歸櫬有孤舟。日暮鄰人笛、凄然涕淚流。

——— 9

Tu Shih Yin-te 346/17/4, CTS 226.2434, K.11117. CTS 6849; K.32650. Shih Chi (Peking: Chung-hua, 1959) 2.58. The text refers to ‘solar birds’ 陽鳥; it is K’ung An-kuo’s 孔安國 commentary that identifies these with geese (鴻鴈之屬). 12 San-kuo Chih 三國志 (History of the Three Kingdoms) (Peking: Chung-hua, 1959) 61.1401. 13 十七夜月思HTFC 21.16a (380; 352:301). Another moonlit poem, simply titled “Poem of Emotion” 情詩, seems to refer to separation from the living. It possibly comes from this time and may have been written with such absent friends as Meng Yang, Wang T’ing-hsiang, and Tai Kuan in mind; see HTFC 10.8b (129; 351:062). 14 Lu Ch’in-li, p.1707; Ho Hsün Chi Chu (Tientsin: Tientsin Ku-chi, 1988), p.116. 10 11

A CAREER IN GOVERNMENT

435

On Visiting the Former Home of Tsung-che [Wang Hsi-meng] 15 Passing this gate, it seems like long ago; I tether my horse, no one to keep me on. In the rainy courtyard, tattered spring bamboo, In the gusty garden, evening pomegranates broken off . . . Going back home to a less than modest holding, A coffin returns by a solitary boat. As daylight fades, the sound of a neighbor’s flute: Keen and chill my tears come flowing down. Ho’s sixth line recalls the corresponding line of Tu Fu’s famous “Climbing the Tower at Yüeh-yang” 登岳陽樓, whose third couplet is “From relatives and friends, not a single word; / Old and ill, I have but my solitary boat” 親朋無一字、老病有孤舟. 16 The reminiscence of Tu’s poem is the stronger for the common image in the two poems’ final lines of their poets’ collapse in tears. The entire final couplet compresses into two lines of verse a passage in the preface to Hsiang Hsiu’s 向休 “Rhapsody on Recalling Old Friends” 思舊賦, in which he remembers Hsi K’ang and Lü An 呂安, “At this time the sun had reached the Gulf of Yü, and the cold was icy and bitter. One of the neighbours was playing a flute, the sound of which was loud and shrill, and this made me remember the pleasures of the outings and banquets I used to have with Hsi and Lü. Moved by the sound of the flute, I began to sigh. Thus I have composed this rhapsody.” 17

The autumn social round continued after the Moon Festival. Late in the eighth lunar month, Hsü Tsin called on Ho to see his chrysanthemums, 18 and on the first of the ninth, Ho was visiting the Liu brothers on the same purpose. 19 The poem promises a return on the Double Nine day itself, and two poems written on that day refer to a visit to Liu K’an and to a farewell while there to Liu Ch’u-hsiu, who was going out on a prison inspection tour. Earlier in the day, Ho had

——— 15

HTFC 21.7b (367; 352:300). The Yung recension supplies Wang’s surname in the title. In the sixth line where, for 櫬 ‘coffin’, the Yung and Shen recensions have a homophonous (and visually similar) word 襯 ‘shirt’. This seems to be a clear example of successful emendation in the common ancestor of the Yüan and Standard recensions. 16 Tu Shih Yin-te 542/4/5-6, CTS 233.2566, K.11844. 17 WH 16.12b (214); I quote the translation in Knechtges, 3:167; he points out in a note (p.406) that the “Gulf of Yü” is where the sun sets. 18 “Tzu-jung [Hsü Tsin] Visits to Look at Chrysanthemums on the Twentieth of the Eighth Month 八月二十八日子容過對菊, HTFC 21.7b (368; 352:302). 19 “Visiting the Liu Brothers on the First Day of the Ninth Month to Look at Chrysanthemums” 九月一日過劉氏昆弟對菊, HTFC 21.7b (368; 352:303).

436

CHAPTER TEN

been drinking by himself and sent a note to Ho Meng-ch’un. 20 The lack of company earlier in the day is referred to in one of the poems written at Liu K’an’s: 九日夜過劉以正別士奇重陽愁獨酌、深夜喜相過。萬里惟秦客、三杯亦楚歌。霜笳沉海月、風鴈起滹河。醉別黃花去、能忘白玉珂。 On the Evening of Double Nine I Visit the residence of Liu Yi-cheng [K’an] to Say Farewell to Shi-ch’i [Liu Ch’u-hsiu] 21 On Double Nine I was sorry to drink alone, In the depths of night rejoice to pay a call. Over ten thousand leagues, a visitor from Ch’in; Just three cups, and now the songs of Ch’u. To frosty shawms the moon sinks into the lake; Geese on the wind take flight from the River Hu. Take your drunken leave of yellow blossoms, How could you neglect your bridle of white jade? Ho’s first line no doubt reflects the opening line of the first of Tu Fu’s five “Ninth Day” 九日 poems, “On Double Nine, drinking the wine in my cup alone” 重陽獨酌杯中酒. 22 The third line recalls the opening couplet of Ts’ao Chih’s “Ballad of the Ten Thousand League Visitor at my Gate” 門有萬里客行, “At my Gate there is a visitor come from ten thousand leagues away; / I ask you, where is your native land?” 門有萬里客、問君何鄉人. 23 Ho’s final line perhaps alludes to the ending of Tu Fu’s “Sent as Offering for the Farewell of Ma of Pa-chou” 奉寄馬巴州, “Your interest is in a black horse with its white jade bridle” 興在

——— 20

“A Note to Ho of the Imperial Stud While Drinking Alone on the Ninth Day” 九日獨酌簡何太僕, HTFC 27.3a (474; 372:080). Ho Ching-ming refers in his poem to ten years having passed since he was in Kui-yang, southern Hunan (Meng-ch’un’s native district), through which he passed on his trip to Yunnan. Ho Meng-ch’un responded with a poem, “Matching the Rhymes of Drafter Ho Chung-mo’s ‘Longings on the Ninth Day’” 次何仲默中舍九日見懷韻, Ho Wen-chien Kung Wen-chi 6.4b, TK 392. 21 HTFC 19.1b (307; 352:016). For the Hu, or Hu-t’o, River, see above, chapter four. The Ssu-k’u Ch’üan-shu text even emends 滹河 “River Hu” to “Hu-t’o” 滹沱. There are also minor differences in the title as found in the Yung recension as compared to the others. The translation here conflates the two forms. For the other poem written at Liu K’an’s, see “Saying Farewell to Liu of the Minister of Justice, Who is Going to Review Cases in the Capital Region” 送劉西曹決獄畿內, HTFC 19.6a (315; 352:304). Similar sentiments are expressed in a poem, “Winter Evening” 冬夜, written later this year, HTFC 10.10b (132; 351:069). 22 Tu Shih Yin-te 484/50A/1, CTS 231.2536, K.11696. 23 Lu Ch’in-li, p.426. Ts’ao Tzu-chien Chi (SPTK) 6.11b (31).

A CAREER IN GOVERNMENT

437

驪駒白玉珂 . 24 A ‘black horse at the gate’ suggested a departing traveller.

On the other hand, sometimes drinking at home proved the more attractive pursuit, as in the following poem written at about this time, one that manages to turn the stock figure of the hard-drinking bravo into a family man: 飲酒平生多意氣、四海盛交遊。列筵亙長夜、談辯雄名流。杯酒一言合、遽將肝膽投。入門顧兒女、忸怩但懷羞。齒年逮今茲、世故多所由。興言念親戚、骨肉嬰我憂。寒宵寡歡悰、濁酤聊自謀。明燈耀室內、盤蔬代庖羞。豈必朋與賓、妻子前勸酬。語笑率真性、無嫌亦何尤。人生貴止足、吾志卑公侯。數觴已復醉、頹然萬情休。寄言馳騖子、從今任去留。 Drinking 25 All my life, abundant will and energy, The world is filled with friends and companions of mine. On lined-up mats we pass long nights together; In our talk and debate, heroic names are current. Over cups of wine, we agree with a single word; Harried generals, we set all on our courage . . . Coming home, I see my sons and daughters; Deeply embarrassed, I only feel ashamed. Now my years have reached this point; The world and its workings have brought me here. With ardent words I think of family and kin; Flesh and bones bound up with my concerns. On a wintry night, there are few joys and delights; With turbid brew I can look out for myself.

——— 24

Tu Shih Yin-te 395/9/8, CTS 228.2473, K.11340. HTFC 10.8b (130; 351:064). There are four variants in this poem, only two of them of real significance. In line 4, 辨 ‘class’ for the homonym 辯 ‘discriminate’ in the Shen recension is a substitution that simply returns to the root meaning of the word. In line 16, the presence, in the Yung recension, or absence, in the others, of the ‘food’ radical is a common variant 羞/饈; the meaning is clear because the radical-less form, meaning ‘shame’, has already been used as a rhyme word earlier in the poem. In line 22, the Shen and Yüan recensions read 無 ‘without’ for the homophonous 吾 ‘my’ of the Yung and Standard recensions, which I follow. The variant would give a line meaning, “Lacking ambition, I look down on dukes and lords,” quite possible in the context. And in line 25, the word 慕 (mu) ‘think highly of’ replaces 騖 (wu) ‘run’ in the Yung recension. This reading is scarcely intelligible and is likely an error arising through phonetic confusion—this wu historically had an m initial that persists even today in some forms of Chinese. 25

438

CHAPTER TEN

A brilliant lamp shines inside the room; Plates of greens take the place of dainty dishes. Why do I have to bring in friends and guests? Wife and children are here to propose the toasts. Talk and laughter bring out our true natures; What can be wrong with a lack of cautious reserve? In human life the best is to stop at enough; It is my aim to look down on dukes and lords. A few more flagons, and I am drunk again; All my concerns collapse into a heap. I send this word to those on galloping horses: From now on you may go or stay as you wish.

The sequence of some of the poems written later in the year and the very beginning of the next is uncertain (as is, in some cases, their assignment to this period). 26 It may, for example, have been at this time that Ho addressed a poem to his old Hsin-yang friend Jen Yung, who was about to come up to Peking. 27 Heptasyllabic poems on the winter solstice and on the departure for Honan of Hang Huai’s brother Hang Chi 杭濟 (1452-1534) are reliably assigned to the period, as are a quatrain sent to T’ao Chi on the solstice and another solstice poem sent to Meng Yang in Wen-shang, 28 but others, including poems recording visits paid to Li Lien and Tai Ch’in and a meeting with a Censor named Ts’ao Fang 曹倣 at Li Tung-yang’s on the twenty-fifth day of the ninth month, are only plausibly so. 29 The poem recording

——— 26

The especially problematic cases are 352:001-016, which have to be dealt with one by one (the evidence is collected in TK, p.304). Those that can be dated come mostly from this period. The farewell to Liu Ch’u-hsiu at Liu K’an’s, for example, must be from 1515 because this is the only Double Nine after Liu’s 1514 chin-shih pass that found Liu K’an in Peking. On the other hand, one poem, “Saying Farewell to Liu of the Court of Judicial review, Who is Going Out to Serve as Prefect of Ch’üchou” 送劉大理守衢州府, HTFC 18.18a (294; 352:004), must be from 1518. See TK 87. 27 “Sent to Assistant Instructor Jen” 寄任思訓, HTFC 19.13b (326; 352:008). 28 “Winter Solstice” 冬至, HTFC 27.3a (474; 372:081); “Saying Farewell to ViceCommissioner Hang, Who is Going to Honan” 送杭大參之河南, HTFC 27.3b (475; 372:082); “Replying to Liang-po [T’ao Chi] on the Solstice” 至日答良伯, HTFC 28.9b (504; 354:018); “Sent to Wang-chih [Meng Yang] in Wen-shang on the Solstice” 至日寄望之汶上, HTFC 19.14a (326; 352:012). For Hang Chi (t. Shihch’ing 世卿, h. Tse-hsi 澤西), see HY 3/142, TL 300, KHL 90.7a (3904—Chan Joshui), TK 152. 29 For the poem to Li Lien, “Visiting Ch’uan-fu in the Evening” 夜過川甫, see HTFC 20.5b (338; 352:001). For the poem for Ts’ao Fang, “On the Twenty-fifth of the Ninth Month, I Meet Censor Ts’ao Ju-hsüeh at the Mountain Slope Hall and Visit His Residence on my Way Home in the Evening” 九月二十五日會曹汝學侍御于麓

A CAREER IN GOVERNMENT

439

the visit to Tai Ch’in follows: 冬夜過飲戴時亮進士琴酒楊雲宅、談玄靜夜真。庭無旋馬地、室有聚螢人。霜霧生陰井、風燈動夕鄰。喧喧萬車馬、日出自紅塵。 On a Winter Night I Stop in for a Drink with Tai Shih-liang [Ch’in] 30 With lutes and wine in the home of Yang Tzu-yün, Discussing the Mystery—a perfect quiet evening. In the courtyard, no room for a horse to turn around; Here in the room, a man who gathers fireflies. Frost and fog are born from the shady well; Wind-blown lamps disturb the twilight precincts. To boisterous noise—ten thousand horses and carts, The sun emerges, up from the scarlet dust.

Yang Tzu-yün is Yang Hsiung, author of the Classic of the Supreme Mystery (see above, chapter seven). Tai Ch’in was seriously interested in Taoism (see below), so this was an apt allusion by which to refer to him. The second couplet of this poem contains a pair of historical allusions. Li Hang 李沆, a wise official of the early Northern Sung, built a residence so compact that a horse could barely turn around in the courtyard, thus setting an example of self-restraint. 31 Ch’e Yin 車胤 (fourth century) was so poor, as a young man, that he was often without lamp oil, so he continued his studies at night by hanging up a bag of fireflies. 32 Ho’s penultimate line is a joking reminder of how far he and Tai are from the ideal of T’ao Ch’ien, who opened the fifth of his “Drinking Wine” 飲酒 poems with the couplet “I built my hut within the human realm, / And yet there is no noise from horses and carts” 結廬在人境、而無車馬喧. 33 The ‘scarlet dust’ of the final line is a ubiquitous phrase referring to both the literal sun-lit dust and the metaphoric vulgar racket of settled places.

———

堂夜歸遂過侍御宅, see HTFC 20.5b (339; 352:003). For Ts’ao (t. Ju-hsüeh 汝學), see HY 2/276, TK 145. There is no record of this visit in Li Tung-yang’s works. 30 HTFC 20.6a (339; 352:010). Users of the Ssu-k’u Ch’üan-shu edition of the Standard recension are warned of a variant in the fourth line. In place of 室有 ‘here in the room’, the reading of all other texts, the Ssu-k’u reads 空有 ‘in vain there is’. 31 See Li’s biography, Sung Shih 宋史 (History of the Sung Dynasty), compiled by T’o-t’o 脫脫 et al. (Peking: Chung-hua), 1977) 282.9541. 32 See Ch’e’s biography, Tsin Shu (Peking: Chung-hua, 1974) 83.2177. 33 WH 30.3a (413); Lu Ch’in-li, p.998; cf. the translation by Robert Hightower, The Poetry of T’ao Ch’ien (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), p.130.

440

CHAPTER TEN

About one unhappy event, and hence the works associated with it, there is no doubt. This is the death of Liu Tso in the eleventh month. 34 Liu Tso suffered from diabetes, and his condition was sufficiently serious for Ho to refer explicitly to his ailment in one poem probably written not long before Liu’s death: 簡以道久病文園客、風流漢長卿。苦吟生白髮、消渴望金莖。雪盛黃精草、雲深赤石英。早尋方外士、服食使身輕。 A Note to Yi-tao [Liu Tso] 35 Long ill, a sojourner in the garden of letters, For style in living, a Hsiang-ju of the Han— With bitter chants, your hair is turning white, To slake your thirst, you gaze toward the Golden Stalk. Snow piles up on yellow-essence grass; Clouds are deep over cinnabar blossoms. Soon you will visit an adept in unworldly skills, And adopting his diet make your body light.

The Golden Stalk was a bronze pillar erected in the palace of a Han emperor. It was fitted with a basin to collect dew for use in concocting elixirs for long life. ‘Yellow-essence grass’ (sealwort) and cinnabar were also associated with the search for longevity, the latter of course in fact likely to produce just the opposite effect. This poem was followed by a poem mourning Liu Tso and by two more written on saying farewell to Liu K’an, who was escorting the coffin back to Shensi: 送以正歸其兄櫬還關中賢兄客死在燕山、令弟將歸陜路難。哭向北雲扶旅櫬、望窮西日見鄉關。原鴒雪羽飛偏急、屋樹春花發自斑。岐路斷腸生死別。暮天迴首淚潺潺。

——— 34

His death is recorded and dated by Ts’ui Hsien in his “Epitaph for Liu Yi-tao [Tso]” 劉以道墓誌銘, Ts’ui Shih Huan Tz’u 15.27a (457), Huan Tz’u 2.26a (410). 35 HTFC 19.14a (327; 352:013). For Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju, see above, chapter four. There is a variant reading in this poem that has gone unrecorded in both TK and the apparatus of the Honan edition. In the first line, for 病 ‘ill’, the ‘no block-carvers names’ editions of the Standard recension reads 雨 ‘rains’. This is followed by the Ssu-k’u Ch’üan-shu and presumably by the other Ch’ing dynasty editions from which the Honan edition takes its copy text. This variant, which has no chance of being authorial, was not recorded inTK, where it should appear on p.276

A CAREER IN GOVERNMENT

441

Saying Farewell to Yi-cheng [Liu K’an],Who is Escorting his Elder Brother’s Coffin Back to Shensi (first of two poems) 36 A wise elder died in the hills of Yen, away from home; For his younger brother, about to return, the road to Shensi is hard. Wailing, we face the northern clouds and stroke the moving coffin; At the limits of sight, in the westering sun, his native hills appear. Meadow wagtails’ snowy wings in flight are ever so swift; The springtime flowers of trees by the hut are blooming, flecked of course. A fork in the road, and our hearts are broken—this parting of living from dead, At the end of day I turn back to look, my teardrops flowing down.

Liu Jen stayed on in Peking, perhaps in order to make another attempt at the chin-shih in 1517. In any event, his last appearances in Ho’s works come in the spring of 1517. Another friend whose departure was approaching was Li Lien. He took up office as Prefect of Mienyang 沔陽 in the Yangtse basin in 1516, but it appears that he actually left Peking around the end of 1515. 37

———

36 HTFC 27.4a (476; 372:085); see also “Weeping for Yi-tao” 哭以道, HTFC 27.4a (475; 372:084). There are two textual variations to note in this poem. The first, at the end of the second line, has little effect on the English translation, as both 艱 (chien), in the Shen recension, and 難 (nan), in the Yüan and Standard recensions, mean ‘difficult’ (the Yung recension does not include this poem). To read nan, however, invokes a great tradition of Chinese poems whose culmination is probably Li Po’s “Hard are the Roads to Shu” (see above, chapter three). Either reading could be authorial. Tact would suggest reading chien, so as to avoid the boisterous associations of the Li Po poem in this work of condolence, but tact is not always the best predicter of Ho’s choices. The other variation comes at the end of the sixth line, where I follow what is probably successful emendation by conjecture in the Standard recension, reading 斑 ‘flecked’ in place of the homophonous and visually very similar 班 ‘class’ of the Shen and Yüan recensions. 37 We have no farewell poem for Li by Ho, but there are extant poems by Hsü Tsin, “Saying Farewell to Presented Scholar Li Ch’uan-fu [Lien], Who is Going Out to Govern Mien-yang” 送李進士川甫出守沔陽, Hsü Wen-min Kung Chi 徐文敏公集 (Collected Literary Works of Mr. Hsü the Literate and Clever Gentleman) (1568 edition) 2.12b; and Ho Meng-ch’un, “Saying Farewell to Master Li Ch’uan-fu [Lien], Who is Going Out as Magistrate of Mien-yang” 送李生川甫知沔陽, Ho Wen-chien Kung Wen-chi 5.10b. Li Lien passed through Hsin-yang on his way south and visited Ho’s family. He was taken on an outing by Ho Shih, who had passed the chü-jen examination with him in 1513. See his “On Passing Through Hsin-yang, I Visit Ho’s Mountain Estate; Master Ta-fu is at Court Now, But his Nephew, My Fellow Graduate, Comes on an Excursion with Me to the Southern Grotto” 過信陽訪何氏山莊時大復子在朝其姪同年君出遊南洞, Sung-chu Wen-chi 23.3a (357), TK 410. Ho Shih had returned from Ch’ao-hsien (see above, chapter nine), perhaps while awaiting his father Ching-yang’s promotion to An-ch’ing 安慶 in Anhwei (see below).

442

CHAPTER TEN

After the abundance of works from the year 1515, the relatively smaller numbers extant from each of Ho’s three remaining years in Peking and real dearth from the last three years of his life, spent in Shensi, is quite striking. This is all the more the case because there is no apparent change in Ho’s generic or stylistic interests from one period to another. It may be, of course, that he ‘pruned’ the works of these later years more severely than his earlier works, but there is no direct evidence that this was the case. It is, however, clear that the pentasyllabic regulated verse from 1516-1518 originally comprised a distinct manuscript separate from those coming severally from 15121513, 1514, and 1515. Many of the people he had written poetry with in earlier years were no longer in Peking, but some remained, including Ts’ui Hsien, Hsü Tsin, and Liu Wen-huan, and of course Ho had acquired his own ‘circle’ of younger poets, including Li Lien, Tai Ch’in, Kuan Chi 管楫 (see below, chapter twelve), Cheng Shan-fu, and Hsüeh Hui, although the latter two were at home in the south in 1515 (Hsüeh returned to Peking in 1516, Cheng not until 1518). Ho commented on his situation in “The Ballad of Master Li” (see above, chapter one) presented to Li Lien some time in the latter part of 1515, from which the following extracts come: 憶年二十當弱冠、結交四海皆豪彥。文章天上借吹噓、杯酒人中迴顧盼。十年流落失邊李、詞場寂寞希篇翰。自從去歲得李薛、令我唱嘆增顏色。 I remember back when I was twenty, barely more than a boy; Making friends from all the world, and every one a genius. By crafted works from Heaven above we sought favouring words; With cups of wine toward the world of men we turned around to look. Now ten years have slipped away; I have lost Pien [Kung] and Li [Meng-yang]; The field of verse grown lonely and still, few works or brushes left. But ever since last year, my making friends with Li [Lien] and Hsüeh [Hui] Has made me to sing and sigh, increased my colour and verve. 安陽崔史文絕倫、意氣頗與二子親。蘇臺徐卿愛才者、曲巷往往停車輪。斯文在天未墮地、我輩努力追前人。 Compiler Ts’ui [Hsien] of An-yang’s writing breaks all bounds; His ideas and spirit are very close to those two gentlemen. Master Hsü [Tsin] of Su-t’ai is a man who loves talent; In crooked lanes, time and time again he brings his carriage to a halt. Our civilisation rests with heaven, it has not fallen to earth;

A CAREER IN GOVERNMENT

443

It is we, exerting our strength, who gain on the men of old. 38

These do not read like the words of a man about to throw down his writing brush in despair or exhaustion (unless, of course, they are those of a man writing to rekindle his own flagging enthusiasm). The role of his exchange of letters with Li Meng-yang is also uncertain. The force and independence with which Ho defended his work suggests neither a diminished interest in writing nor a susceptibility to wilt in the face of Li’s criticism. At the same time, he clearly continues to regard his early association with Li as the high point of his literary experience. SCANDAL Nor is the political situation likely to have played a role, though it was certainly deteriorating. Wu-tsung’s lack of interest in administration had evolved into an attitude of complete indifference toward any participation in even the essential ritual observances required by custom. Now, in what was among the most scandalous affairs of a highly scandalous reign, he took into his harem a commoner’s pregnant wife. It is not clear just how this story came to be known outside the palace, but it became a matter for official comment when the woman’s elder brother was made a Junior Commissioner-in-Chief. According to the version preserved by historians, the brother, one Ma Ang 馬昂 , had been an officer on the Shensi frontier but was cashiered for misconduct, ‘treacherous, greedy, swaggering, and unruly’ ( 奸貪驕橫 ). His sister, a talented singer able to practise archery while riding horseback, was married to another officer and expecting a child, but Ma Ang, at the suggestion of Wu-tsung’s military favourite Chiang Pin, snatched her back and presented her to the Emperor. Wu-tsung was greatly smitten with her and promoted not only Ma Ang but also two other brothers, referring to all three as his ‘uncles’. 39

———

38 HTFC 13.18b (193; 371:058). This poem is correctly dated in TK 76; the 151617 date at TK 318 is a slip. Master Li is said to be leaving for Mien. The first couplet above was also cited in chapter one. The Yung recension lacks Li’s surname in the title. 39 For this incident and the memorials it aroused, see MTC 46.1729-30. Fuller texts

444

CHAPTER TEN

The outrage of the civil officials knew no bounds. The fundamental reason for the institution of eunuchs was, as we have remarked, to ensure that the paternity of any child born to a woman in the palace was open to no doubt. When Ma Ang’s appointment first became known, Ho’s friend Lü Ching submitted a critical memorial: The ruler of men is the Son of Heaven and the father and mother of all under Heaven. He must take thought in everything he does. Looking above, he accepts the intentions of Heaven; looking below, he accords with the feelings of the people. Only after he has done so can he be blameless. Lately, we have heard that a suspended official, Ma Ang, has been favoured on account of his having presented to you his pregnant younger sister. At first, we took this for an unfounded slander. Now that Ang has been made a Junior Commissioner-in-Chief, however, we are fearful and at a loss for what to do. 40

“If Your Majesty indeed intends an heir to the throne,” Lü raged, “then you should select consorts from good families for your purpose. Why must you disgrace yourself by wallowing in this cheap filth!” Wu-tsung’s taste for the low life was, of course, not only unbecoming, it was also dangerous, both for himself and, more gravely, for the state. “We also hear,” Lü went on, “that Ma Ang and his boys go in and out of the palace just as they please and are building up a faction to support themselves. It is in the nature of small people to be insatiable. If this error is not corrected now, no regrets later will be sufficient! We humbly hope that you will make an example of Ma Ang by putting him to death and that you will dismiss the pregnant woman in order to put an end to talk.” Similar memorials came from other officials, but all went unanswered. 41

———

of the memorials are found in the Wu-tsung Shih-lu (Taipei: Chung-yang Yen-chiuyüan, 1964) 135.1a-2a, 5ab (2669-71, 77-78). Passing references to other memorials can be found in the biographies of their writers, e.g. MS 188.4990 (Hsü Wen-p’u 徐文溥), 188.4997 (Fan Lu), 191.5072 (Hsü Wen-hua 徐文華), 201.5319 (Chou Chin 周金), 206.5434 (Ch’eng Ch’i-ch’ung 程啟充), and 286.7357 (Yin Yün-hsiao). 40 Wu-tsung Shih-lu 135.1a (2669). The additional quotations from Lü’s memorial come from the same source. 41 As it happens, there is a datable poem by Ho Ching-ming written just two days after Lü’s memorial was received. Titled “Third Day of the Third Month” 三月三日, HTFC 22.2b (383; 352:067), it is a simple evocation of the season, some of whose delights Ho was missing on account of an eye ailment, and defeats even the most energetic attempts to find in it satiric or remonstrative purpose. Another poem written at this time records that Ho’s ailing eyes prevented his keeping an agreement to go flower viewing at Ch’eng-nan Temple with an academician named Ku Ting-ch’en 顧

A CAREER IN GOVERNMENT

445

Because Ma Ang and his family were not respectable people, their doings are only sketchily recorded in historical sources. We infer that Ms. Ma was taken into the palace late in 1515 because it was early in the next year that Ma Ang was promoted and the civil officials began launching their denunciations. It is much less clear when and how she left. Chiang Pin was always on the lookout for interesting women to put before his sovereign, and we are told that Ms. Ma’s star gradually faded as Wu-tsung’s attention was captured by some of these later playmates, especially the celebrated ‘Mama Liu’ 劉娘娘, originally a musician and entertainer. 42 At the same time, Ma Ang lost some of Wu-tsung’s favour when he declined, on grounds of her ill health, to hand over a concubine of his own when asked. All the same, Ang and his brothers were not finally dismissed and banished until after Wutsung’s death and the accession of Shih-tsung in 1521, when they were denounced as adherents of Chiang Pin. The sources are silent on the subject of their sister’s fate, not to mention that of her child. Moreover, she is presented not as what we would call an ‘agent’, but rather as an object interesting only insofar as she tickled the Emperor’s fancy and in consequence allowed him and his favourites to display their depravity and the memorialising officials their rectitude, all this for the edification of history-reading posterity. As a result, we have no idea what she thought about the small part of her life that remains visible to us. Did she really suppose that she was on her way to becoming the matriarch of the Ming for ages to come? Was she excited? Ambitious? Embarrassed? Proud? Frightened? Did she miss her husband? Did he, for that matter, miss her? One would like to think that as her confinement approached and her skills in equitation etc. declined, she was sent back to her family, as supernumerary palace women very occasionally were, to bear her child and live in obscurity. Indeed, one can picture her growing old as

———

鼎臣 (1473-1540). See “I Agreed to View Flowers at the Ch’eng-nan Temple with Academician Ku, But I Have an Eye Ailment and Do Not Go” 顧九和內翰約看花城南寺病目不赴, HTFC 20.8b (342; 352:066). For Ku Ting-ch’en (t. Chiu-ho 九和, h. Wei-chai 未齋 ), who had placed first in the 1505 chin-shih examination and eventually became a Grand Secretary, see MS 193.5115, TL 956, HY 3/40, TK 195. 42 James Geiss makes a reasonable case for this characterization. The Shih-lu says that she was a musician’s wife. See Geiss, “The Leopard Quarter During the Cheng-te Reign,” Ming Studies 24 (1987), pp.1-38, esp. pp.16-17. ‘Mama’ is what she would have been called by people hoping for her help in influencing Wu-tsung.

446

CHAPTER TEN

the hostess of a provincial inn, a kind of Chinese Mistress Quickly, regaling her customers with tales of life long ago in the ‘Great Within’. Realism, however, requires us to recognise the probability of a less happy end, that she found herself eventually relegated to the Palace Laundry Service, which was staffed by ‘overaged and expelled palace women’, as well as the womenfolk of executed traitors and the like. 43 This could be a harsh fate, as we learn from the following brief entry from the Veritable Records of early spring, 1520: The Ministry of Works reported that the number of young girls assigned to the Palace Laundry Service was very large. The annual consumption of firewood and charcoal amounted to 160,000 chin. An increase was recommended, and this was approved. At this time, Imperial favourites had been presenting large numbers of young girls. Moreover, the women selected from among the commons and sent in during the various Imperial Progresses of Inspection over the years all remained in the Palace Laundry Bureau until it could no longer hold them all. They sometimes went without morning and evening meals for days on end, and some had died. Nor had the Emperor inquired after them. 44

In the meanwhile Wu-tsung’s military hobbies were developing with increasing openness toward a scheme for him to go out to the frontier and do battle himself. Less than ten days after Lü Ching’s memorial on Ma Ang and his sister, a Censor expressed alarm that rumours among the common people held that Wu-tsung was planning to have a military camp built for himself at Hsüan-fu 宣府, about ninety miles northwest of Peking and beyond the Great Wall. 45 Not only was the place unsuitable, with a harsh climate and subject to nomad attacks, but the costs of construction and maintenance would also impose terrible burdens on the people, the Censor pointed out. Chiang Pin was apparently encouraging Wu-tsung in such a plan by telling him that there were many beautifiul women among the entertainers at Hsüan-fu and that he would have a chance there to see some frontier fighting.

——— 43

Charles Hucker, A Dictionary of Official Titles in Imperial China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985), p.261. 44 Wu-tsung Shih-lu 182.1a (3521). At least some supernumerary women were released to their fmilies from the Laundry Service on the accession of Shih-tsung in 1521. For a thorough account of women serving in the Palace, including the Laundry Service, which was located outside the Palace proper, see Bao Hua Hsieh, “From Charwoman to Empresss Dowager: Serving Women in the Ming Palace,” Ming Studies 42 (1999):26-80. 45 MTC 46.1730, Wu-tsung Shih-lu 135.3a (2673).

A CAREER IN GOVERNMENT

447

The Censor’s memorial got no response. Indeed, later in the year, a Supervising Secretary in Nanking would complain that Wu-tsung virtually never responded to critical memorials: We have repeatedly submitted comments and proposals, but all have remained in the palace without a response. We do not know if they actually passed under your sagely gaze, but you found them to be matters of no urgency that might be put aside for the moment, or if perhaps your attendants are monopolising power and suppressing such submissions, so that they did not reach you. As of the present, they have all been retained in the palace without a choice being made between approval and rejection . . . It was by their perspicacious vision and pervasive acuity of hearing that Yao and Shun accomplished their sagely rule; it was by heeding only one-sided advice and placing their trust in one person that the Ch’in and Sui dynasties brought ruin upon themselves. We dare to hope that you will take Yao and Shun as your standards and regard the Ch’in and Sui as a warning. 46

To this memorial too there was no response. Ho’s office made him an observer at close hand of these developments but did not entitle him to comment. Those of his friends who did remonstrate, however, including Han Pang-ch’i and Lü Ching (see below), sooner or later found themselves transferred to minor provincial posts or expelled from office altogether. As time passed, a number of them, including Ts’ui Hsien, simply resigned from office and went home in disgust. BECALMED Most of the rest of the poems from the spring of 1516 do not mention anyone whom we can identify. They either refer to people otherwise unknown or simply evoke outings or the world of nature, as in the following: 送劉子遊西山寺我憶湖西寺、春山爾獨行。乍暄饒柳意、空谷自鸎聲。人減同遊伴、花含往歲情。片雲回首暮、天遣別愁生。

———

46 MTC 46.1735, Wu-tsung Shih-lu 138.4ab (2725-26), both under a date corresponding to July 17, 1516.

448

CHAPTER TEN

Saying Farewell to Master Liu, Who is Going to Visit a Temple in the Western Hills 47 I call to mind a temple west of the lake, The springtime hills where you will walk alone. A brief mild spell to encourage a sense of willows; A vacant valley, the place for warblers’ songs. Should someone lack a companion to join his rambles, The blossoms harbour affections of bygone years. A slip of cloud on looking back at dusk— Heaven dispels the sorrow of separation. 入朝遇雨躍馬天街霽、趨朝冷色催。好風先北起、微雨自東來。柳拂重城鎻、花籠複道回。萬方憂旱日、沾灑望蓬萊。 I Encounter Rain on my Way to Court 48 As I mount my horse, it is clear over heavenly roads; I hurry to court, urged on by the chilly sight. The good breezes first arose in the north; Gentle showers then come in from the east. Willows brush the locks of doubled walls; Blossoms cage the curves of twisting roads. Ten thousand places dread the days of drought, In damp and drip, I gaze toward P’eng-lai Isle.

An exception is a farewell poem presented to the righteous Liu Jui (see above, chapter five), who, having survived Liu Chin’s regime, received a provincial posting at this time, as Education Intendant in Chekiang. 49 One event that surprisingly goes entirely unremarked in

———

47 HTFC 18.11b (299; 352:070). There is no way of telling which of Ho’s several friends surnamed Liu was the recipient of this poem. There are two variant readings in this poem. In the first line, the ‘block carvers’ names’ family of the Standard recension reads 湖山 “lakes and hills” in place of 湖西 “west of the lake.” This reading apparently arose by influence from the title and in spite of the repetition of 山 in the next line, but was then corrected in the later ‘no names’ family. In the third line, the Yung recension reads 喧 “noisy” in place of 暄 “mild,” evidently a matter of confusing similar characters. Although “noisy” might be thought a clever anticipation of the warblers in the next line, it seems better to follow the majority of the recensions here. 48 HTFC 21.15a (378; 352:072). 49 “A Song of Saying Farewell to Master Five Clarities, Who is Going to Chekiang as Education Intendant” 送五清先生赴浙江提學歌, HTFC 13.16a (190; 371:055). Liu’s appointment was announced in the twelfth month of ‘1515’ (corresponding to January 19, 1516 in the Western calendar). See Wu-tsung Shih-lu 132.6b (2628). Ts’ui Hsien wrote a farewell essay, “Presented to Master Liu Te-fu [Jui]” 贈劉子德符序,

A CAREER IN GOVERNMENT

449

Ho’s extant works is the return of Sun Chi-fang to Peking early in the year. 50 The only important work by Ho that can be reliably assigned to the summer is the rhapsody entitled “Heartbreak” 結腸賦, written at Li Meng-yang’s request to commemorate the death of his wife (see above, chapter nine). 51 The gesture appears to show that, contrary to later speculation about a permanent rift between the two men after their exchange of letters on poetics, they remained on good terms personally. Memorial texts of a more formal sort are, in fact, and in contrast to poetry, more numerous than usual in 1516, there being seven from this year, as compared to three in 1515 and none in 1517. 52 Lü Nan’s father died, and Ho evidently wrote to Nan. His letter is not extant, but Lü’s reply thanks him for his concern and acknowledges receipt of some poems, going on to deprecate literary pursuits in general. 53 In contrast to previous years, there is relatively little poetry from the various autumn festivals in 1516. Seventh Night goes unrecorded in the extant works, while the only poem from the Moon Festival is one noting that the moon was not visible that night.

———

Ts’ui Shih Huan Tz’u 3.3a (378), Huan Tz’u 2.19a (406), and Hsü Tsin a poem, “Saying Farewell to Vice-Commissioner Liu Te-fu [Jui], in Charge of Education in Chekiang” 送劉德夫憲副董學浙江, Hsü Wen-min Kung Chi 1.17b. 50 According to the extensive curriculum prepared by Chi-fang’s son Sun Yi 孫宜, Sun Chi-fang stayed home for two years and then returned to office in 1516; see Tung-t’ing Yü-jen Chi 洞庭漁人文集 (Collected Works of the Fisherman on Lake Tung-t’ing) (manuscript edition) 48.1a. (This is a more detailed account than the ‘biography’ 傳 found in the Tung-t’ing Yü-jen Hsü-chi 續集, 12.10a.) A poem by Hsüeh Hui, “Visiting Sun Shih-ch’i [Chi-fang] and Drinking” 訪孫世其敘飲, which can be assigned to late 1516 by reference to the Hsüeh Hsi-yüan Chi confirms the year and narrows the date of Sun’s return to early in the year; see Hsüeh Hsi-yüan Chi (1535 edition) 1.24a, K’ao-kung Chi (SKCS) 7.1a (77). Sometime after this, Sun was sent out to the far West, before retiring for good in 1519 in opposition to Wu-tsung’s ‘Southern Progress’ (see below, chapter eleven). 51 Hsü Tsin wrote a poem on the same occasion, “Heartbreak: Written for K’ungt’ung [Li Meng-yang], Who is Mourning his Wife” 結腸篇為空同悼內作, Hsü Wenmin Kung Chi 1.16b. 52 For memorial texts dated in 1516, see TK 77-78. 53 Lü Nan’s father’s death is recorded in an epitaph by K’ang Hai, “Epitaph for Sir Lü, Honorary Gentleman-Confucian and Han-lin Academy Senior Compiler” 封儒林郎翰林修撰呂公墓碑, Tui-shan Chi 6.6a (283), 16.13b (463), 35.13b (394). Lü Nan’s “Reply to a Letter from Ho Chung-mo” 答何仲默書 is in Ching-yeh Hsiensheng Wen-chi (1555 edition; repr. TM, Tainan: Chuang-yen Wen-hua, 1997), 20.33a (240).

450

CHAPTER TEN

中秋無月月賞今年罷、高樓獨客愁。關山中夜笛、江漢故鄉舟。暗雨捎簷入、秋螢度檻流。應知雲霧上、天柱有人遊。 A Moonless Night in Midautumn 54 My joy in the moon concluded for this year, In a tall pavilion, only a sojourner’s sorrow. Among high mountains, the sound of a flute at midnight; On Yangtse and Han, boats on their way back home. Unseen rain comes in along the eaves; Autumn fireflies glide across the fence. And yet I am sure that above the clouds and fog Someone is roaming beside the Pillars of Heaven. Ho’s second line is reminiscent of the second line in Li Shang-yin’s quatrain “Held up by Rain” 滯雨, “As the lamp burns out, there is only a sojourner’s sorrow” 殘燈獨客愁. 55

On Double Nine, however, Ho did go on an outing to Fa-tsang 法藏 (‘Dharma Treasury’) Temple together with Chang Chi-meng and Liu Yün, a trip planned and agreed on in another poem written four days earlier In the same poem, Ho reports that Ts’ui [Hsien] was included in the plan and that Liu was chided for having dropped out of a previous excursion after saying he would join. 56 A poem addressed to Tai Ch’in at about this time is consistent with his usual lack of interest in Taoism and also shows a mocking spirit that appears occasionally in his verse: 贈時亮戴子有仙癖、時荷金門遇。辟穀遊人間、嗜酒尚玄素。白日指五岳、笑我不能去。爾未生羽翼、何時向烟霧。

——— 54

HTFC 22.2a (382; 352:078). CTS 541.6221; K.29569. “An Outing to Dharma Treasury Temple on the Ninth Day, with Chang of the Catering Office and Liu of the Seals Office” 九日同張膳部劉符臺遊法藏寺, HTFC 27.5a (477; 372:089); “On the Fifth Day of the Ninth Month, I Agreed with Chang, Liu, and Ts’ui that We Would Go on an Outing to the Pagoda at Dharma Treasury Temple; Liu had Previously Agreed on an Excursion to the Western Hills But Later Backed Out—Hence This Poem” 九月五日與張劉崔三子約九日遊法藏寺塔劉嘗約遊西山竟寒盟故云 , HTFC 20.9a (344; 352:082). For a pair of “Climbing the Pagoda” 登塔 poems, see HTFC 20.9b (344; 352:083-084). For the identification of Ho’s fellow holiday makers, see TK 79. 55 56

A CAREER IN GOVERNMENT

451

Presented to Shih-liang [Tai Ch’in] 57 Master Tai is addicted to immortal sylphdom, And sometimes enjoys a meeting at Golden Gate . . . Abstaining from grains, he roams the world of men; Fond of wine, he honours the dark and the pale. In broad daylight he points toward the Five Sacred Peaks, Laughing at me because I cannot go. You haven’t sprouted your own wings and feathers yet; When are you taking off into the mist and fog? Ho’s third line may evoke the opening couplet of a poem written by Ts’en Shen, “Seeking Mountain Dweller Chang of Mt. Shao-shih, I Hear that He has Gone to the Capital with Magistrate Chou of Yenshih” 尋少室張山人聞與偃師周明府同入都 , “A gold-refining sojourner from the middle peaks, / Yesterday came to roam the world of men”中峰鍊金客、昨日遊人間. 58 In the sixth of his “In Place of ‘Autumn Barbarians’ Songs” 代秋胡歌詩, Hsi K’ang writes of the legendary transcendant Wang [-tzu] Ch’iao 王子喬, “Going beyond the Five Sacred Peaks, / Suddenly travelling a million ways. / He confers on me a spirit medicine, / And so I grow feathered wings” 淩厲五嶽、忽行萬億。授我神藥、自生羽翼. 59 In a poem in imitation of Pan Chieh-yü, Chiang Yen writes of a fan, “With a picture of the daughter of the King of Ch’in, / Mounting a phoenix and taking off into the wind and fog” 畫作秦王女、乘鸞向煙霧. 60

The similarly celebratory poem addressed to Chang Shih (see above, chapter seven) is apparently one of a pair with this one for Tai Ch’in. The ‘Golden Gate’ (or ‘metal gate’) usually refers to an Imperial palace gate, sometimes specifically to the ‘Metal Horse Gate’ 金馬門 of the Han, adjacent to the government offices. The Han courtier and jester Tung-fang Shuo once sang a song in which he claimed that one could avoid the vulgar world at the Golden Horse Gate as well as in a hut deep in the mountains. 61 Ho may also be alluding to a Taoist who

———

57 HTFC 10.10a (132; 351:067). As in the case of the similar, but earlier, poem addressed to Chang Shih (see above, chapter seven), only the Yung recension supplies the recipient’s surname in the title. I follow the Yung, Yüan, and Standard recensions in reading 人間 ‘world of men’ in line three. The 人門 ‘gates of men’ of the Shen recension is clearly a typographical error. 58 CTS 200.2087; K.09761; Ts’en Shen Shih-chi Pien-nien Chien-chu (Chengtu: Pa-Shu, 1995), p.6. 59 Lu Ch’in-li, p.480; Hsi Chung-san Chi (SPTK) 1.8b (6). 60 WH 31.9a (433); YTHY 5.1b (77); Lu Ch’in-li, p.1570; Chiang Wen-t’ung Chi (SPTK) 4.5a (29); cf. the translation in Birrell, p.145. 61 Shih Chi 126.3205.

452

CHAPTER TEN

was given the title ‘Winged Visitor of the Golden Gate’ 金門羽客 during the Southern T’ang. 62 Abstaining from grains was thought by some Taoist practitioners to purify the body and greatly prolong life. An early reference to this is found in the Shih Chi biography of Chang Liang 張良, who adopted this practice and a form of breath control because of his ill health. He was eventually persuaded to give up by the Empress Lü 呂后, who argued that human life was too short to spoil it by voluntary suffering. 63 The Wen-hsüan commentary to P’an Yüeh’s “Rhapsody on the Western Expedition” 西征賦 explains that dark (hsüan) and pale (su) are the colours of water from different rivers. 64 The Five Sacred Mountains 五岳 or 嶽 are variously identified in different early sources. The crucial point is that there was one for each of the four cardinal directions plus one at the centre. There is no certain reference in Ho’s datable works to the frontier raids that threatened Peking during the year, climaxing in the early autumn, when P’eng Tse, the victor of Honan and Szechwan, was put in charge of the capital’s defences. 65 Nor are the ongoing political storms much in evidence, though Ho did present two poems to Han Pang-ch’i as Han left for his home in Shensi after having been held in prison for months and finally discharged from official service on account of his criticisms. 66 The departure of Lü Ching, relegated to a provincial post after his repeated memorials of remonstration, is marked, not by a farewell poem sensu strictu, but by a poem on a bamboo painting of Lü’s. 67 The image of bamboo, tall and graceful,

———

62 See Lu Yu, Nan-T’ang Shu 南唐書 (History of the Southern T’ang) (SPPY) 17.2b. 63 Shih Chi 55.2044, 2048; translation in Watson, Records of the Grand Historian (New York: Columbia Press, 1961) 1:145, 150. See above, chapter six, for Ho’s poem on Chang Liang. 64 WH 10.14a (136); cf. the translation in Knechtges, 2:205, where 玄 is rendered as ‘ebon’. 65 One heptasyllabic old-style poem, “Song of Enrolling Soldiers” 點兵行, HTFC 14.11b (208; 371:503), evokes a nomad threat and the raising of an army to defend the capital, but the reference is too generalised to be a basis for a firm date. 66 “Saying Farewell to the Middle Han Brother and Also Asking After his Younger Brother” 送韓仲子並訊其弟季子, HTFC 18.12b (301; 352:087-088). Han Pang-ch’i had been serving as Assistant Surveillance Commissioner for Chekiang, in which capacity he had criticised the activities of a eunuch. Imprisoned for this, he was struck from the register of those eligible for official service on November 20, 1516; see Wutsung Shih-lu 142.11a (2805). Recalled to office, he held a succession of posts before retiring to Shensi, where he died in the great earthquake of 1557. 67 “A Song of the Bamboo Painted by Supervising Secretary Lü” 呂黃門畫竹歌,

A CAREER IN GOVERNMENT

453

swaying with the storms but not breaking, was of course apt and traditional for the upright scholar-official. Ho’s social circle had been shrinking steadily, as one friend after another left Peking. He was no doubt delighted, therefore, at the return of Hsüeh Hui late in 1516. Hsüeh had left Peking late in 1514, soon after the celebration of his chin-shih success (see above, chapter eight). 68 There are several poems from this period by Ho and Hsüeh that commemorate their renewed association. 69 It is just possible that the following poem was addressed to Hsüeh, whose hometown Po-chou was not far from the historic region of the ancient state of Cheng. More probably, however, it refers to a man named Cheng Tso 鄭佐, to whom Ho presented another poem shortly after this. In the latter case, and even more explicitly in a poem by Lu Shen that matches its rhymes, Cheng is characterised as an associate of Li Meng-yang, suggesting that Ho’s relations with Li were still on a friendly footing. 70 Yen refers to Peking, Liang to Kaifeng and Li

———

HTFC 14.3a (200; 371:507). Lü held a series of significant provincial posts after the accession of Shih-tsung in 1521, but was eventually banished to serve as a frontier guard in the mountains of Szechwan after the court held him responsible for a mutiny that broke out in opposition to reforms he initiated while governing Liaotung. He died an embittered man. 68 There is a poem by Hsüeh Hui that tells us the exact date of his departure from home, November 22, 1516; see “On the Twenty-eighth Day of the Tenth Month of the ping-tzu Year, I Set Out from my Home district: A Work Telling of My Journey” 丙子十月二十八日初發鄉邑述征有作, Hsüeh Hsi-yüan Chi 1.23a, K’ao-kung Chi 3.6b (29). 69 Hsüeh’s poem “Responding to Ho Ta-fu [Ching-ming]” 答何大復, Hsüeh Hsiyüan Chi 1.24b, K’ao-kung Chi 3.11a (31), TK 407, is clearly a reply to Ho’s “A Note to Chün-ts’ai [Hsüeh Hui]” 簡君采, HTFC 10.11a (132; 351:071). Two other poems, written slightly later, also refer to Ho: “Watching Snow: A Note to Ts’ui Yüan-yeh [Ts’ui Hsien] and Ho Ta-fu [Ching-ming]” 對雪簡崔洹野何大復, Hsüeh Hsi-yüan Chi 1.26a, K’ao-kung Chi 3.10b (31) and “An Evening Gathering at Drafter Ho’s” 何中翰夜集, Hsüeh Hsi-yüan Chi 1.26b, K’ao-kung Chi 3.12a (32), both in TK 407. The gathering may well have been the occasion for Ho’s own “Watching Snow” 對雪, HTFC 27.6a (478; 372:091), written in any case at about this time, and a poem by Chou T’ing-yung, “Drinking at the Residence of Master Ho Ta-fu [Ching-ming] on a Snowy Evening” 雪夜飲何大復先生宅, Pa-ya Chi (1531 edition) 6.2b, TK 406. he suggestion, made in TK, p.125, that Chou’s poem might have been written in 1511 or 1512 remains a plausible alternative. 70 For the poem addressed to Cheng, see “Presented to Cheng Tso” 贈鄭佐, HTFC 19.9b (320; 352:092). For Lu’s poem, “Matching Rhymes with Ho Chung-mo’s [Ho Ching-ming] ‘Parting from Cheng the Mountain Dweller’, Also a Note to Li Hsienchi [Meng-yang]” 次韻何仲默別鄭山人兼柬李獻吉, see Yen-shan Hsü-chi (SKCS) 3.7a (671), TK 399. That Ho’s title uses what appears to be Cheng’s personal name, while Lu calls him “mountain dweller” (山人 shan-jen), suggests that Cheng may

454

CHAPTER TEN

Meng-yang, and Ch’u to Ho Ching-ming himself. 雪簡鄭客燕雪未成花、蕭蕭覆淺沙。誤聽梁苑竹、擬放楚江槎。集霰含風色、流雲轉日華。城中百萬戶、歌舞醉誰家。 Snow: Note to Sojourner Cheng 71 The snow in Yen has not yet turned to blossoms; Rustling and murmuring it covers the shallow sandbanks. Thinking I hear bamboo in the Garden of Liang, I plan to launch a raft on the rivers of Ch’u. Gathered sleet contains the look of the wind; Gliding cloudbanks whirl in the glory of sunlight. Inside the city, a hundred thousand households— Singing and dancing, in whose house are you drunk? The central work in the Chinese tradition of writing about snow is the “Rhapsody on Snow” by Hsieh Hui-lien. 72 Poems, as opposed to rhapsodies, appeared at about the same time or a little earlier, the earliest now extant being a brief ‘linked verse’ by three of Hsieh’s relatives, Hsieh An and a nephew and niece. 73 The earliest extant complete pentasyllabic poem on snow is apparently Pao Chao’s “Poem Singing of White Snow” 詠白雪詩. 74 Evocation of a great city by reference to its population was a common trope. Examples that Ho would have known include the second of Li Po’s “Chin-ling” 金陵 poems, “In those days, a million households, / Narrow lanes from which scarlet towers rose” 當時百萬戶、夾道起朱樓, 75 the first of Tu Fu’s “Dispelling Sadness by the River Railing” 水檻遣興 poems, “Inside the city, one hundred thousand households, / And here, two or three families” 城中十萬戶、此地兩三家, 76 and Ts’en Shen’s “Hearing a Flute on an Autumn Night” 秋夜聞笛, “Inside the city of Ch’ang-an a

———

have been one of Li’s commoner poetry clients. “Mountain Dweller” is a common element in the noms de plume (號 hao) of Ming and Ch’ing writers. While suggesting a fashionable unworldliness, it no more requires actual residence in alpine terrain than ‘Beefeater’ implies an aversion to Lobster Newburg. See Suzuki Tadashi 鈴木正, “Mindai Sanjin Kō” 明代山人考 (A Study of Ming Period ‘Mountain Dwellers’), [Shimizu (Taiji) Hakase Tsuitō Kinen]] Mindaishi Ronsō (Tokyo:Daian, 1962), pp.357-88. 71 HTFC 19.14b (327; 352:086). There is another poem written at about this time on paying a call on a ‘sojourner’ (客 k’o) at a temple, “Visiting a Sojourner in the Chamber of Abbot Chien” 訪客鑑公房, HTFC 20.10a (344; 352:089). 72 WH 13.8a (178); translation in Knechtges 3:20-31. 73 Lu Ch’in-li, p.913. 74 Lu Ch’in-li, p.1306; Pao Shih Chi (SPTK) 8.15a (39). 75 Ri Haku Kashi Sakuin 767/03-04; CTS 181.1847; K.08624; An Ch’i, p.793. 76 Tu Shih Yin-te 372/9A/7-8, CTS 227.2455, K.11243.

A CAREER IN GOVERNMENT

455

million families, / I wonder who it is playing a flute at night” 長安城中百萬家、不知何人夜吹笛. 77

Ho’s two elder brothers had evidently been visiting him for some while, but they become ‘visible’ only as he says goodbye to them, probably before after the beginning of the new year. 78 Ho Ching-yang would be taking up office in An-ch’ing, on the Yangtse in what is now Anhwei, where he would distinguish himself by his loyalty during the uprising of Prince Ning in 1519. The major court event of the season was the annual New Year’s sacrifice. The following poem comes from a three-day fast in preparation for the sacrifices: 齋宿大興隆寺疊雪霾雲磴、陰霞絢石房。沉冥通別理、宴息對焚香。暖色含初篠、遲烟散遠楊。齋心臨暮景、屬意向春陽。 While Observing the Fast at Ta-hsing-lung Temple 79 Layers of snow obscure the cloudy ledges; Shading cloudwrack patterns the rocky cells. Deep in the abstruse, versed in the meaning of absence; Resting calmly I face the burning incense. A look of warmth contains the sprouting bamboo; Lingering mist disperses distant willows. Cleansing my heart, I look out on the evening scene, Which leads my thoughts on to the warmth of spring. Ho’s third line differs in only one character from one in Hsieh Lingyün’s “On Climbing to the Highest Peak of Stone Gate” 登石門最高頂, “Deep in meditation, how can I depart from Principle?” 沉冥豈別理. 80

——— 77 78

091).

CTS 201.2107; K.09884; Ts’en Shen Shih-chi Pien-nien Chien-chu, p.822. “Saying Farewell to my Elder Brother[s]” 送兄, HTFC 18.13a (301; 352:090-

79 HTFC 20.10a (345; 352:093). In the second line, the Shen recension reads “boot ornament” 綏 in place of 絢 “patterns”. The Shen reading, which is unintelligible in the context, is the result of graphic confusion. Note that the fifth line of this poem shares two words with the fifth line of the one translated just above, 色 ‘look’ and 含 ‘contains’. Meng Yang also wrote a poem while observing a fast at this temple, probably in 1513, “Fasting at Hsing-lung Temple” 興隆寺齋居, Meng Yu-ya Chi (1538 edition) 10.13a. 80 WH 22.13b (302); Lu Ch’in-li, p.1166; Hsieh Ling-yün Chi Chiao-chu (Taipei: Li-jen, 2004), p.262; cf. the translation by J. D. Frodsham in Murmuring Stream: The Life and Works of the Chinese Nature Poet Hsieh Ling-yün (385-433), Duke of K’anglo (Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press, 1967) 1:144.

456

CHAPTER TEN

Ho was in attendance during the ritual itself, on February 3, 1517, and also during the much disapproved-of hunt that followed, in commemoration of all which he wrote a series of five poems, and probably also his longer “Song of Hunting” 遊獵篇. 81 Ho limited his own criticism to the final line of a poem written on the occasion of Wu-tsung’s ritual inspection of the animals to be sacrificed in the spring rites, “In the great ritual, it is necessary that it be accomplished in a timely way” 大禮須時成. 82 The other major political event of the spring was the External Audit (外察 wai-ch’a), a general review of provincial officials carried out every three years by the Ministry of Personnel. 83 A number of poems written by Ho at this time testify to the presence in Peking of men holding ongoing appointments elsewhere. 84 It was during the review of provincial officials that Ho wrote one of his longest poems, a “Song of Old Friends” 昔遊篇 on the occasion of a party with Hsüeh Hui, Li Lien, and Meng Yang, the latter two in the capital for the review. 85

———

81 “Setting Forth” 駕出, “The Great Rite” 大祀, “The Progress to Nan-hai-tzu” 駕幸南海子, “The Carriage Returns” 駕入, “The Feast on Successful Completion” 慶成宴, HTFC 20.1a-1b (332-33; 352:094-098); “Hunting” 遊獵篇, HTFC 14.12b (209; 371:514). Tai Ch’in also wrote poems on these events, “The Progress Leaves the Southern Suburbs” 駕出南郊, “The Progress to Hsi-hai-tzu” 駕幸西海子, “The Progress Returns” 駕還, “The Feast on Successful Completion” 慶成燕, Lu-yüan Chi (Ming manuscript edition; repr. Peking T’u-shu-kuan Ku-chi Chen-pen Ts’ung-k’an, vol.109, Peking: Shu-mu Wen-hsien, 1988) 35ab (305a); the argument in TK, p.81, that Tai’s poems could be from 1518 as well as 1517, is mistaken. Hsüeh Hui did write a poem on the 1518 hunt, see “The Progress to Nan-hai-tzu” 駕幸南海子, Hsüeh Hsi-yüan Chi 1.35a, K’ao-kung Chi 5.3a (58). 82 “A Progress to Inspect the Sacrifices on the First Day of the Twelfth Month” 十二月朔日大駕觀牲, HTFC 10.10b (132; 351:070). 83 For the system of regular evaluations of officials, see, among others, Wang Hsing-ya 王興亞, “Ming-tai Kuan-li K’ao-ho Chih-tu Lun-lüeh” 明代官吏考核制度論略 (A Sketch of the System for Evaluating Officials During the Ming), Huang-Huai Hsüeh-k’an 11.2 (1995), pp.73-81. At the time of previous Audits, Ho was no doubt preoccupied with his chin-shih examinations in 1499 and 1502 and at home in Hsinyang in 1508 and 1511. We don’t have enough works from 1505 to associate any with the Audit that year, and in 1514, all else was overshadowed by the palace fire and the flood of memorials,, including Ho’s own, that resulted. 84 One incident that probably took place at this time is not recorded in Ho’s works, but in those of Yang Shen, who appends an explanatory note to an “Untitled Poem” 無題 saying that it was written in 1517 in the company of Ho, Chang Han 張含, and Ho’s friend T’ao Chi, Sheng-an Chi 升菴集 (Ascendant Studio Collection) (SKCS) 30.9a (221). Perhaps T’ao had returned to Peking hoping for reinstatement to office. For Chang Han, see below, Appendix Three. 85 HTFC 12.17a (172; 371:505). A poem by Hu Tsuan-tsung, who would play a role in the posthumous publication of Ho’s works (see Appendix Two), was written to

A CAREER IN GOVERNMENT

457

Meng and Hsüeh were meeting for the first time. 86 Ho’s poem serves as a kind of introduction, reviewing his own friendship with Meng and the happiness that Li and Hsüeh had brought him in recent years, in spite of disappointments and advancing age. The group of friends, old and new, spent a great deal of time together while their brief opportunity lasted. A poem by Li Lien commemorates a party on the “Day of Man” 人日 (seventh day of the first month) at the home of one Liu ‘Tzu-shen’ 劉子深 (unidentified), at which Ho Ching-ming, Ch’en Yi, and Hsüeh Hui were present. 87 A

———

match works by just these four men (Ho, Hsüeh, Li, and Meng). See “To Match ‘Snow in the Palace’ by Censor Meng Wang-chih [Yang], Ho Chung-mo [Chingming] of the Secretariat, Secretary Hsüeh Chün-ts’ai [Hui], and Magistrate Li Ch’uanfu [Lien]” 和孟御史洋望之何中書景明仲默薛主事蕙君采李刺使濂川甫禁中春雪, Niao-shu Shan-jen Hsiao-chi 鳥鼠山人小集 (Small Collection of the Mountain Dweller of Niao-shu) (Chia-ching edition; repr. TM, Tainan: Chuang-yen Wen-hua, 1997) 4.5b (215), TK 405. A note to the title says that Hu’s poem was written in K’un-shan, part of Soochow Prefecture, of which Hu was Prefect from 1524 to 1527. No such linked verse poem survives. For Ho’s farewell poems for Meng as he returned to his post, see “Saying Farewell to Wang-chih [Meng Yang], Who is Going to Wen-shang” 送望之赴汶上, HTFC 19.7a (316; 352:602-603). 86 We know this from two titles in Hsüeh Hui’s works that refer to Meng Yang. One of these, “Missing Meng Wang-chih [Yang] During Spring Snow” 春雪懷孟望之, K’ao-kung Chi 7.2a (77), does not appear in the Hsüeh Hsi-yüan Chi and thus cannot be dated directly, but the datable poems before and after it in the K’ao-kung Chi are from 1517 and 1518 in the Hsüeh Hsi-yüan Chi (1.28a, 1.36b), and this suggests that it may come from about the same period. The poem itself laments Meng’s absence and recalls a poem on the subject of snow in springtime that Meng had written in the past. The snow poem by Meng Yang to which Hsüeh refers—he includes a half-line quotation from it as well—is Meng’s “Spring Snow in the Imperial Palace” 禁中春雪, which ends with a reference to Wu-tsung’s hunting trip in the first month of 1517, Meng Yu-ya Chi 10.22b. The other title by Hsüeh, “Presented to Meng Wang-chih [Yang]” 贈孟望之, does appear in the Hsüeh Hsi-yüan Chi, located among the earlier poems from the year 1517 (1.28a). Here comprising three poems, it is a ‘presentation on farewell’ set. In the K’ao-kung Chi, these three poems are joined by a fourth, all still under the same title (3.2a [27]). This additional poem makes it clear that Meng and Hsüeh had not met before, though Hsüeh says that they were now already friends. See also a poem written by Meng Yang in late 1518 or 1519, i.e., after Ho Ching-ming had gone to Shensi, but before Hsüeh Hui resigned from office in connection with his opposition to Wu-tsung’s southern expedition, “Master Li Sends me a Poem from Mien-yang, Along with his Old Work ‘The Cape of Green Vines’: I Respond in Long Lines, Wanting to Express my Deepest Feelings and Reminiscing About Bygone Days” 李子自沔陽貽詩及古製青羅巾以長句酬之聊暢中情永懷疇昔, Meng Yu-ya Chi 3.8b. Meng recalls that when he was in Kweilin, Ho Ching-ming sent him a letter in which he praised Li Lien and Hsüeh. Later, while Meng was in the capital for the wai-ch’a, Li arrived from Mien-yang, and Hsüeh also sought Meng out. 87 Li Lien, “On the Day of Man, Gathering with Ho Chung-mo [Ching-ming],

458

CHAPTER TEN

poem by Meng Yang written on the same day specifies a farewell party for one Wang Yang 王暘 (see below, chapter eleven), who was in Peking, as Meng was, for the Audit. Meng lists those present as ‘Ch’en, Ho, Li, Hsüeh, and Liu’, presumably including Ho Chingming and Hsüeh Hui. 88 In the spring, Hsüeh, who had evidently first settled at some distance from Ho’s residence, moved to the same neighbourhood, and thereafter he and Ho were together frequently. 89 Not long after Hsüeh’s move, Ho lost the society of another of his friends among the chin-shih of 1514, Tai Ch’in. Tai was leaving Peking in order to pursue his studies of Taoism, an interest that the sceptical Ho mocks gently even in his farewell poem: 送戴進士時亮戴生長嘯出燕州、知爾尋仙不可留。相望有時攀玉樹、此行何地訪丹丘。乘風逝鼓洪濤柁、觀日回登滄海樓。白晝果然生羽翼、青雲奚羨帝鄉遊。

———

Ch’en Lu-nan [Yi], and Hsüeh Chün-ts’ai [Hui] at the Hall of Liu Tzu-shen” 人日同何仲默陳魯南薛君采集子深館, Sung-chu Wen-chi 20.2a (335), TK 409. 88 Meng Yang, “Taking Leave of Magistrate Wang on the Day of Man, with Ch’en, Ho, Li, Hsüeh, and Liu” 人日別王明府同陳何李劉五子, Meng Yu-ya Chi 10.23a. Hsüeh Hui wrote a poem at this time at a party held at Wang’s, but perhaps not on the same occasion as the others, “An Evening Gathering at my Fellow Graduate Wang Ming-shu’s [Yang]” 王明叔同年夜集, Hsüeh Hsi-yüan Chi 1.28a, K’ao-kung Chi 7.1b (77). Ho Ching-ming’s farewell poem for Wang Yang does not specify the date or social occasion for which it was written. See “Saying Farewell to Magistrate Wang of K’un-shan, on His Return” 送崑山王令還, HTFC 27.6b (478; 372:096). Wang Yang, whose tzu was Ming-shu, served as Magistrate of K’un-shan after passing the chin-shih examination in 1514. He is listed in both the (Chia-ching) K’un-shan Hsien Chih 崑山縣志 (Gazetteer of K’un-shan County), 5.9b, and the (Wan-li) K’un-shan Hsien Chih, (1576; repr. Taipei: Ch’eng-wen, 1987), 3.7b (182); but no dates are given. The list of K’un-shan officials in the (K’ang-hsi) Soochow Fu Chih 蘇州府志 (Gazetteer of Soochow Prefecture) does not supply a date for Wang’s term in office either, but does give the dates of appointment of his predecessor (1513) and successor (1517) (17.26b), and we know that Wang took office as Magistrate of Chou-chih (see below, chapter eleven) in 1518. For other poems written during the wai-ch’a festivities, see Li Lien, “The Brown Swan: Presented to Meng Wang-chih [Yang] of Wen-shang,” Sung-chu Wen-chi 13.2b (287) and the poems by Meng Yang and Hsüeh Hui cited above. The third of Hsüeh’s poems opens, “Long ago, you and I / Not yet having met, our minds understood one another,” while the first opens with a reference to an eastward flowing river. 89 “Chün-ts’ai [Hsüeh Hui] Moves House” 君采遷居, HTFC 19.9b (320; 352:100); “A Note to Chün-ts’ai [Hsüeh Hui]” 簡君采, HTFC 10.11a (133; 351:071); “Liu and Hsüeh Visit on a Spring Day” 春日劉薛二子過, HTFC 20.10a (345; 352:101).

A CAREER IN GOVERNMENT

459

Saying Farewell to Metropolitan Graduate Tai Shih-liang [Ch’in] 90 With a drawn-out whistle, Master Tai is taking leave of Yen-chou; I know you cannot be held back from your quest for the transcendant state. The time will come for me to see you climbing the tree of jade; On this journey, in what land will you visit the Cinnabar Knoll? Riding the wind, you are off to drum on an oar in the surging waves; To observe the sun, turn back and climb a tower by the deep blue sea. If in daylight you really succeed in sprouting feathered wings, From up in the clouds you will scarcely envy your friend in the imperial district!

This farewell is Tai Ch’in’s last appearance in Ho’s works. For his part, Tai later wrote two poems complaining that Ho had not written, one while he was still at home and another after returning to Peking to accept a new appointment (by this time Ho had gone to Shensi to take up office as Education Intendant). 91 Tai’s Taoist interests proved to be his undoing. His early death came not as the result of the beating administered to him (and other officials) who protested against Emperor Shih-tsung’s policies in the early 1520’s, but rather from elixir poisoning (perhaps including the cinnabar to which Ho had referred), which caused, in the unusually forthright words of the provincial gazetteer, his skin to split open. Another farewell was said to Hsü Kao 許誥, one of Hsü Chin’s sons, who also left Peking to return home during the windy season this year: 亟谷草堂贈許廷綸萬里河山一草萊、百年松檜此堂開。晴瞻華岳青天上、晝望仙人紫氣來。避世且耕歸馬地、乘時須起臥龍才。長安送別風塵暮、落日嵩雲首重回。

———

90 HTFC 27.13a (486; 372:095). Yen-chou refers to Peking. The jade tree and cinnabar knoll were images associated with Taoist longevity. Another poem presented to Tai at this time, “Presented to Shih-liang [Tai Ch’in]” 贈時亮, is to be found in HTFC 19.10a (320; 352:104). There is also a farewell poem by Li Lien, “Saying Farewell to Tai Shih-liang [Ch’in], Who is Returning to the Hills,” Sung-chu Wen-chi 26.3b (378). 91 See Tai Ch’in, “On a Spring Day, I Miss Ho Chung-mo [Ching-ming]” 春日懷何仲默, Lu-yüan Chi 65a (320a), TK 412; “Saying Farewell to Chang Pai-ch’uan, Who is Returning to the West: With Word for Ho Ta-fu [Ching-ming]” 送張白川西歸兼柬何大復, Lu-yüan Chi 62b (318b), TK 412.

460

CHAPTER TEN

The Han-ku Cottage: Presented to Hsü T’ing-lun [Kao] 92 Over thousands of miles of rivers and streams, a single tuft of grass; On hundred year-old pine and cypress trees this hall is opened. In clear weather one can see Mt. Hua against the blue sky; In daylight behold a transcendant borne down on a purple aura. Avoiding the world you plough the land to which the horses returned; When the time is right, you will arise, a crouching dragon talent. In Ch’ang-an we say farewell, an evening of wind and dust; To the setting sun on Mt. Sung’s clouds, I turn back once again.

Han-ku is the name of a strategic pass in Ling-pao 靈寶, Hsü’s home town. The original ‘crouching dragon’ was Chu-ko Liang. The fifth line alludes to a passage in the “Successful Completion of the War” 武成 a chapter in the ‘Old Text’ of the Documents, “[The King] sent his horses back to the south side of Mt. Hua” 歸馬于華山之陽. 93 Mts. Hua and Sung are both in northwestern Honan, near Ling-pao. It may be that Ho Ching-ming’s early death deprived us of the opportunity to see his literary ideas elaborated in a treatise on literature. All the same, it should be remembered that he did write remarkably little about literature for a man so active in literary circles during his life, and it is quite possible that had he lived twice as long he still would not have left us a treatise on poetics or a ‘Ta-fu Shihhua’. His letter to Li Meng-yang is his only really original contribution, but he did write a little in addition to this while in Peking. The only other substantial piece is his Preface to the Han-Wei Shih-chi 漢魏詩集 (Collected Poems of the Han and Wei [Dynasties]), an anthology compiled by one Liu Ch’eng-te 劉成德 and published in 1517, but apparently prepared earlier, before Ho’s return to Hsin-yang in 1507 (see above, chapter six). Ho’s preface, however, was not written until long after he came back to Peking, just a few days after the fast and sacrifices.

———

92 HTFC 27.10a (483; 372:505). There is an interesting textual variant in the final line. I follow the Yung recension in reading 落日 ‘setting sun’. The reading of the Yüan and Standard recensions, 洛日 ‘sun of Lo[yang]’, which makes a parallel phrase with “clouds of Mt. Sung,” is too clever by half, especially for a final line. Ho also contributed an undated preface to Hsü’s “Discussions of the Great Ultimate” 凾谷子太極圖論引, HTFC 34.11b (601; 序:506). There is a letter by Wang T’ing-hsiang, responding to one he had received from Ho, in which he refers to Hsü’s work, “Replying to Ho Chung-mo [Ching-ming]” 答何仲默, Wang Shih Chia-ts’ang Chi 27.20b (1180), Wang T’ing-hsiang Chi 27.491. 93 Shang-shu T’ung-chien 230043; Legge, p. 308.

A CAREER IN GOVERNMENT

461

Preface to the Han-Wei Shih-chi 94 Late in the Chou dynasty, prose attained great heights, but “the Kingly Way was extinguished and poetry was lost.” This was something that Confucius and Mencius greatly lamented. In the greatest days of the Han dynasty, prose was not honoured, but poetry had an air of antiquity. Surely this was because there were men whose style and form were still plain and vast! The writers who continued the Han in Wei were many in number, but their style was weak. The writers of Chin and then the Six Dynasties were more numerous still, but their style even more weak. Their will was uncertain, their government unstable, their customs undisciplined, and they were so extravagant and dissolute that they could not put a stop to it. T’ang poets took care over their diction, and Sung poets chatted about philosophical principles; although each age had its writers, the style of Han and Wei was all but lost. At the beginning of our Dynasty, poets respectfully continued the customs of Yüan times. With the passage of one reign after another, they gradually matured and improved. In the Hung-chih and Cheng-te periods, they have flourished. One or two scholars might perhaps mention the poetry of Han and Wei, but it was not something that they really understood, and so their ideas could not but include doubts and differences. For this reason, few among those with a true fondness for it came up to it. Censor Liu is a man who has studied widely in the field of poetry and is tirelessly fond of antiquity. So, he has collected the works of Han and Wei, seeking out and classifying lost and fugitive pieces and gathering them all into this compilation. Now, when letters flourish in a great age, it is those above who commend them; when they flourish in an age of decline, it is those below. When they are commended by those above, then unity is honoured and the Way practised. When they are commended by those below, those who agree are honoured and those who express doubt are frustrated, and in the end none are capable of equalling them. Thus whatever may be the inclination of the will, the effect of trends, or the tendency of the age, an evolving transformation will respond to their action like an echo. How wonderful are its workings! Ah! This compilation of the Censor’s will not be alone. Those who chant and comment on it will see the virtue in his labour, and how farsighted were his ideas.

This piece is interesting chiefly for its claim that a link exists between poetry and governmental integrity and for its support of the Archaist

———

94 HTFC 34.1a (593; 序:501). Ho’s preface is not dated in his own works, but is in extant copies of the anthology itself. For Liu Ch’eng-te, see TK 118. The quotation near the opening alludes to the Mencius; see Meng-tzu Yin-te 31/4B/21; Lau, p.131.

462

CHAPTER TEN

claim for the preeminence of Han and Wei dynasty poetry, a view also expressed, with a personal twist, in Ho’s letter to Li Meng-yang, but quite different from that of the preface to “The Bright Moon.” A somewhat different claim for the importance of poetry appears in an unflinchingly abstract passage in the “Inner Chapters” taken from, if not the same as, the preface to a collection of poetry by an Assistant Surveillance Commissioner Liu, who just may be Liu Ch’eng-te 95 : Ah! Poetry is difficult to speak of! It embodies objects and arrays distinctions, forms intent and restrains affections, takes care over fundamentals and illuminates norms. For this reason, it unites methods and applies categories, and the altered and anomalous are displayed; it takes the measure of ideas and follows up thoughts, and the obscure and subtle are distinguished; it penetrates to the distant and so takes the place of the hidden, uses the regulated and ancient forms to correct the rustic, and so guidelines and standards are made evident. Because onesided words and isolated relationships offer nothing with which to investigate the recondite; directions that are numerous and not unified offer nothing with which to bring methods together; and taking advantage of what is close at hand and neglecting the rules offers nothing with which to purify forms, so the breadth whereby to make choices is found in study; the discrimination whereby to reject is found in the mind; and the wisdom whereby to make distinctions is found in knowledge. As for the difficulty of speaking of poetry, is it that the speaking is difficult? Or is it that those who understand the speakers are few? 96

Assistant Commissioner Liu was no doubt as delighted as we to have these difficult issues cleared up. The chin-shih examinations were held again in 1517. Ho’s student Fan P’eng, who had passed the chü-jen examination in the preceding year, was presumably among the candidates, but he would not pass until 1526. 97 Few of those who passed in 1517 seem to have been

———

95 For the “Inner Chapters” 內篇, a collection of short essays or essay fragments, see above, chapter six. 96 HTFC 31.19b (560; 內 :024). Liu Ch’eng-te was promoted from Censor to Assistant Surveillance Commissioner in Szechwan in 1517, months after Ho’s preface for the anthology of Han and Wei poetry. The possibility that he might be the recipient of this essay was not considered in TK. 97 See (Ch’ien-lung) Hsin-yang Chou Chih (1925; repr.Taipei: Ch’eng-wen, 1976) 7.4b (234) for Fan P’eng’s chü-jen success. For four congratulatory quatrains by Tai Kuan, “Happy to Hear that Fan Shao-nan [P’eng] has Won Provincial Selection: I Hear It Reported While Ill” 喜樊少南得薦病中聞報; see Tai Shih Chi (1548; repr. TM 4:63. Tainan: Chuang-yen Wen-hua, 1997) 7.8b (39).

A CAREER IN GOVERNMENT

463

close to Ho. An exception was Ts’ao Hung, to whom Ho may have presented some poems over ten years before (see above, chapter four). Toward the end of spring, Ho said farewell to his old friend from Hsin-yang days Chia Ts’e, who was going out to Shensi to take up a new teaching position. 98 The following poem was written at about this time: 晚出左掖洞門餘積雪、御院覆高霞。吏散層霄上、城行五鳳斜。青回初霽柳、紅動峭寒花。立馬清沙外、空林集暮鴉。 On Leaving the Left Block in the Evening 99 In the cavernous gate there remains a drift of snow; The Imperial courts are roofed by lofty cloudwrack. Clerks disperse as the layered heavens rise; I follow the walls as the Five Phoenixes tilt. A clearing sky, and green returns to willows; In bitter cold, the scarlet stirs on blossoms. I rein in my horse beyond the spotless sands; A vacant grove is gathering twilight ravens. Ho’s first line recalls the opening couplet of a poem by Tu Fu on a

———

98 HTFC 18.14a (303; 352:110). For the identification of the Chia Ts’e of this farewell with Ho’s Hsin-yang friend, see TK 183. 99 HTFC 20.2b (334; 352:113). There are several significant textual variations in this poem. In the second and final lines, the Yung recension differs from the Shen, Yüan, and Standard recensions. I follow the Yung recension in line 2, where the other texts read 苑 ‘garden’ for the homophonous 院 ‘courtyard’, which makes a somewhat closer parallel to ‘gate’. In the final line, the Yung recension reads 宮 ‘palace’ in place of 空 ‘vacant’; the Standard recension records this reading in a note, though without citing a source. As both readings are both plausible and possibly authorial, there are no formal grounds for choice between them, but ‘vacant’ makes better poetry. In addition, in the second line, the Yung and Shen recensions read 復 ‘repeat’ in place of the homophonous 覆 ‘cover, roof’ found in the Yüan and Standard recensions. ‘Cover’ has ‘repeat’ as the phonetic element in its character, and the latter is sometimes used in its place (see DKJ 10183.I.5. It appears that by their emendation the Yüan and Standard recensions have simply written out an ‘abbreviation’. The theme was a well-established one, going back at least as far as the High T’ang poets Tu Fu and Ts’en Shen. Among Ho’s contemporaries, Wang Chiu-ssu wrote a poem titled “Withdrawing by the Left Gate as the Sky Clears after Rain” 雨霽辭左掖; see Mei-p’o Chi (Chia-ching edition; repr. Taipei: Wei-wen, 1976) 5.3a (169). This is in the heptasyllabic regulated form and combines the stiffly imposing imagery common in poems written near the Palace with a self deprecatory tone (“with an easy-going laugh at myself I retire home for a meal”). Wang T’ing-hsiang also wrote a less distinguished example with the same title as Ho’s; see Wang Shih Chia-ts’ang Chi 14.12b (542), Wang T’ing-hsiang Chi 14.214.

464

CHAPTER TEN

similar theme, “Inscribed on the Courtyard Wall of the Ministry” 題省中院壁, “Along the bamboo parapet of the Wing wall, a few dozen phoenix trees, / The cavernous gate facing snow is forever dark and shady” 掖垣竹埤梧十尋、洞門對雪常陰陰. 100

The Left Block of the palace compound was associated with officials whose duties included remonstrance with the Emperor. The ‘Five Phoenixes’ appears to be the name of a constellation or other heavenly phenomenon, but I have not discovered a reference to this. This poem is similar to some of the preceding in being a ‘pure’ description without literary allusions or historical reference. It also resembles some of those examined earlier in its use of a parallel opening couplet. It succeeds in capturing a particular mood, one of a kind of bleak and limited beauty, characteristic of winter. Again, it is the handling of verbs and spatial relationships that accomplishes much of this. The verbs in the first couplet work backwards, as it were. The second of them functions passively; the first line might be rendered more literally, “the gate is left with drifted snow.” In both cases two objects are involved, but in neither is there any directed action or movement. The lines of the second couplet are each compound sentences, so there are plenty of verbs, and they are ones that portray movement, but in each case the movement is of a kind that subverts conclusive action. The higher the heavens, the more distant from the poet—the same applies to the dispersing clerks. The city (or palace) walls formed an enclosure, so walking along them promises only an eventual return to the starting point, and the same is true of the tilting of the stars, due to the rotation of the earth. The colours in the third couplet too have their movements inhibited by time or temperature (the sort of horizontal light cast on the willows by a clearing sky at sunset can last for only minutes). The final couplet brings all movement and colour to a close, as poet and nature end in darkness and rest. The images in this final couplet balance the opening: white snow collected in dark gateway, against black crows in bare tree; poet’s place beyond the sands, as against repeated images earlier of boundaries or limits. Unlike many poems on natural images that must rely on some sort of shift to a new sensation or mode of presentation in order to come to an end, this one proceeds to a genuine ending in images that were inherent in the

——— 100

Tu Shih Yin-te 310/38/1-2, CTS 225.2411, K.11005.

A CAREER IN GOVERNMENT

465

opening. One old friend whose absence was felt about this time was Pien Kung. 101 懷寄邊子汝從元歲侍今皇、誰念先朝老奉常。一出雲霄空悵望、十年岐路各蒼茫。春天縹緲金莖露、晝日氤氳紫殿香。獨有揚雄尚陪從、白頭抽筆賦長楊。 Sent with Affection to Master Pien 102 You have served the present Emperor since the first years of his rule; Who remembers a Sacrifice Minister from a bygone reign? Once you were gone beyond the clouds, I sadly gazed for nothing; Ten years from the fork in our road, each vague and uncertain to view. The springtide sky is hazy and vast; there is dew on the Golden Stalk; The daytime sun is misty and vague in scent from the Purple Palace. And yet there remains a single Yang Hsiung, still an attendant follower; White-headed, he takes out a brush to write a Rhapsody on Tall Poplars.

Pien had once served in the Court of Imperial Sacrifices. See above for the Golden Stalk. A Han emperor built the Purple Palace, and the Han poet Yang Hsiung wrote, while at court, a Rhapsody in praise of the Tall Poplars Palace. 103 At this time comes the only evidence we have of contact between Ho and a man named Yen Sung 嚴嵩 (1480-1565), later to be one of the most influential (and most notorious) Grand Secretaries of the Ming. Yen had passed the chin-shih in 1505, the same year as Meng Yang, whose epitaph he would write. Appointed to office in the Hanlin Academy, he went home on sick leave in 1507 and stayed there for ten years, studying. He returned to his post in 1516 or ‘17 and from then on rose steadily, especially after siding with Shih-tsung in his battle with the civil officials over the ‘Great Ritual’. Ho wrote one poem as an inscription for a fan presented to Yen on the summer tuanyang 端陽 festival and a set of three poems to match those that Yen

———

101 Pien had visited Peking sometime in 1516, when he had at least one poetry meeting with Ho and Liu Yün, to which he referred in a pair of poems written later, in 1520, “Responding to Hsi-ch’iao and Ta-fu.” See Pien Hua-ch’üan Chi (Chia-ching edition; repr. Taipei: Wei-wen, 1976) 4.28b (222); quoted in LHH 4.6a. He was serving as Education Intendant in Honan at the time, the post to which he had been appointed on the expiration of his mourning period. 102 HTFC 27.6b (479; 372:097). 103 WH 9.1b (119); translation in Knechtges, 2:136-51.

466

CHAPTER TEN

had written while visiting the tomb of Hsiao-tsung, presumably as one of the party of officials sent there for ritual purposes on the chungyüan 中元 day (fifteenth of the seventh month). The first of the poems opens with a backward glance to Hsiao-tsung’s reign, which had ended just as Yen Sung was beginning his career in 1505: 奉和嚴太史謁泰陵敬皇十八載、四海一何安。鼎成棄萬國、弓墮哭千官。白日園陵閟、秋雲松柏寒。龍遊萬歲後、寂寞葬衣冠。 Offered to Match Academician Yen’s “Pilgrimage to T’ai-ling” (first of three poems) 104 The Sovereign Revered, a reign of eighteen years, When all the world was in a time of peace. The tripod complete, he left the myriad states; His bow fell to earth and grieved a thousand officers. In bright sunlight the garden and tomb are closed; Under autumn clouds the pines and cypress are cold. For ten thousand years, from the dragon’s roaming, Still and lone, the interment robes and caps.

For those who remembered the days of Hsiao-tsung, whose posthumous title was ‘Revered Sovereign’, the present could only have been a bitter disappointment, and this took a toll on the whole apparatus of government. Early in the summer, one of Ho’s oldest friends in the capital, Ts’ui Hsien, was granted permission to return

———

104 HTFC 20.2b (334; 352:114). For the other poem, see “Inscribed on a Fan Given by Academician Yen” 題嚴內翰賜扇, HTFC 27.7a (479; 372:098). There are a number of variants in this poem. The Yung recension has a different version of the title, one that includes Yen Sung’s informal name, Wei-chung 惟中, rather than his official title: “To Match Yen Wei-chung’s ‘Pilgrimage to the Tombs’” 和嚴惟中謁陵. In the fourth line, the Yung recension reads 淚 ‘brings tears to’ rather than 哭 ‘grieves’ (literally ‘[causes to] sob’). In the seventh line, the Shen recension reads 遊龍 ‘roaming dragon’ rather than 龍遊 ‘dragon roams’. Yen Sung’s set of three poems, “Visiting T’ai-ling,” is found in Ch’ien-shan T’ang Chi 鈐山堂集 (Mt. Ch’ien Hall Collection) (Chia-ching edition) 4.1b. For Yen Sung (t. Wei-chung, Wei-yi 惟一; h. Ch’ien-shan 鈐山). see DMB 1586 (Kwan-wai So), HY 2/304, TL 947, TK 127. Note that Yen also wrote memorial texts for Lu Shen and Lo Ch’in-shun. Ho Liang-chün reports that one Nieh Pao 聶豹 honoured Yen as his teacher, having been directed to him as a young man by Li Meng-yang, who told him that Yen was the best writer in the Han-lin Academy; see Ssu-yu-chai Ts’ung-shuo (Peking: Chung-hua, 1959) 26.12ab (239). Li had visited Yen at home during his term as Kiangsi Education Intendant. For Li Meng-yang and Yen Sung, see Wang Kung-wang, “Li Meng-yang K’ung-t’ung Chi Jen-ming Chien-cheng. (chih san),” Kansu She-hui K’o-hsüeh 1995.5:67-70, p.70.

A CAREER IN GOVERNMENT

467

home, one of a number of officials whose requests to leave office were granted during this period. 105 Although their stated reasons varied, it seems clear that they were leaving in disgust over Wutsung’s behaviour. Ho may have been expressing a more than conventional disillusionment with public life in the closing lines of the third of a set of four farewell poems presented to Ts’ui: 終焉從子逝、富貴非我營。 At last, I will follow you away; Wealth and prestige are not my concern. 106

Works from summer and autumn of 1517 are few. We do not even find the usual complaints about the heat, or poems written at the time of the Moon Festival. We do have three temple excursion poems of which one, at least, and probably all three, date from Double Nine, but Ho does not name his companion, whom we know from a poem by Hsüeh Hui to have been Hsüeh himself. 107

———

105 Ts’ui’s request for sick leave is in the Ts’ui Shih Huan Tz’u 11.15a (431), Huan Tz’u 2.39b (416). It is recorded as granted in the Wu-tsung Shih-lu 148.1b (2884). 106 “Saying Farewell to Mr. Ts’ui” 送崔氏, HTFC 10.11b (133; 351:074). I follow the Yung and Standard recensions here. Shen and Yüan have a different ending for this poem that involves two additional lines and a reordering of the two translated: 貧賤豈不安、福貴非我營。終焉從子逝、無為世所嬰。 Why should I be unsettled in poverty and humble station? Good fortune and prestige are not my concern. At last, I will follow you away, Without being disturbed by the world. Ho commemorated Ts’ui’s return home with a highly artificial set of poems in the old “Book of Songs” metre as well, “Jujubes in the Grove” 中林之棘, HTFC 4.2a (40; 古:001). Hsüeh Hui also presented Ts’ui with a set of eight poems in the archaic metre, “The Heavens: Presented to Master Ts’ui” 昊天贈崔子, Hsüeh Hsi-yüan Chi 1.29b, K’ao-kung Chi 1.3a (4). As it happens, we know that on the day Ts’ui’s release was announced, Ho was at the home of a man named Wu, where he added an inscription to a painting by, or at least attributed to, the great Northern Sung landscapist Kuo Hsi, “Colophon to a Painting by Kuo Hsi” 跋郭熙畫; see LHH 2.37b, TK 387, not in HTFC (雜:803). There is no reason to suppose that the owner of the painting, one Wu Tung-po 吳東伯 (unidentified), was not the Mr. Wu at whose hall Ho attended a party at about this time; see “A Gathering at Mr. Wu’s Hall in the Temple” 集吳子寺館, HTFC 10.13b (136; 351:080). 107 “Climbing the Hill Behind Jen-shou Temple on the Ninth Day” 九日登仁壽寺後山, HTFC 20.10b (346; 352:120). Poems on the same temple and on T’ien-ning Temple that may come from the same day include “Jen-shou Temple” 仁壽寺, HTFC 21.9b (370; 352:119) and “A Song of the Pagoda at T’ien-ning Temple” 詠天寧寺塔, HTFC 20.9b (371; 352:121). Hsüeh’s poem refers to a trip into the suburbs, but names no temples, “Out to the Suburbs with Ho Chung-mo [Ching-ming] on the Ninth Day”

468

CHAPTER TEN

Another backward glance comes in the following poem on the subject of a ‘palace’, a shrine originally built, at great expense and hardship, on the initiative of Liu Chin in 1509. It was located near the palace offices and became a frequent topic for poetry in subsequent years: 108 再過玄明宮朔海風雲變、玄宮日月移。登臨逼九日、搖落倍前時。翠竹寒虛寢、荒藤蔓曲池。重看石槨地、徒有雍門悲。 On Visiting the Palace of Darkness and Light a Second Time 109 On the Boreal Sea, the wind and clouds are shifting; At the Palace of Darkness, the days and months move on. I climb for the view, hard on Double Nine, Its decline increased compared to my last time here. Glistening bamboo chills the empty chamber; Tangled vines overspread the meandering ponds. I look again at the stone sarcophagus grounds, Feel to no end the grief of Yung-men Chou.

Yung-men Chou 雍門周 was a lutenist of the Chou dynasty who is said to have reduced Meng Ch’ang-chün 孟嘗君 to tears by the

———

九日同何仲默出郊, Hsüeh Hsi-yüan Chi 1.34b, K’ao-kung Chi 5.3a (58), TK 407. Hsüeh’s poem mentions rain, Ho’s only wind and cloud. 108 For a ballad on the site, written in a critical tone, by Li Meng-yang, see “A Ballad of the Palace of Darkness and Light” 玄明宮行, K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi (1530; repr. Taipei: Wei-wen, 1976) 19.16a (447). Hsüeh Hui’s poem written there, probably in the 1520s, “The Stone Hill in the Rear Garden of the Palace of Darkness and Light” 玄明宮後圃石山, is neutral, treating the place just as a site for an outing; not in Hsüeh Hsi-yüan Chi, see K’ao-kung Chi 5.18a (66). Cheng Shan-fu’s poem, written in 1518, “A Ballad of the Palace of Darkness and Light” 玄明宮行, likewise avoids any clear reference to the origins of the shrine; see Cheng Shih (Chia-ching edition) 8.15b, Shao-ku Chi (SKCS) 3.15b (45). Wang T’ing-hsiang’s poem, on the other hand, is quite tart, referring to ‘Mr. Castrato’ (奄氏 yen shih) and ‘Ol’-what’shis-name’ (阿誰 ah-shei), and ending with the lines, “In yellow cap a humble Taoist welcomes visitors to worship; / But when questions touch on the past he becomes quite ignorant” 黃冠小道迎人拜、問着當年總不知; see “The Palace of Darkness and Light” 玄明宮, Wang Shih Chia-ts’ang Chi 18.22a (789), Wang T’ing-hsiang Chi 18.329. Han Pang-ching’s poem on the site is a long one in ballad form, sharply critical, “Ballad of the Palace of Darkness and Light” 玄明宮行, Wu-ch’üan Han Juch’ing Shih (Chia-ching edition) 1.4b, (1537 edition; repr. TM 4:62, Tainan: Chuangyen Wen-hua, 1997) 1.5a (144). Another noncommittal poem is Ku Ying-hsiang’s, Ch’ung-ya T’ang Ch’üan-chi 崇雅堂全集 (Complete works from the Hall of Honouring the Elegant) (1610 edition) 3.1b. 109 HTFC 20.10b (345; 352:118). The Shen recension lacks the word 明 “light” in the title.

A CAREER IN GOVERNMENT

469

intense grief expressed in his playing, especially after he depicted how with the passage of time it was inevitable that “lofty terraces would collapse, meandering ponds would slowly disappear, and tombs and graves would sink” 高臺既以壞、曲池既以漸、墳墓既以下. 110 By 1517, it had been fourteen years since Ho’s initial appointment as a Drafter. Even if we subtract the time he had spent at home and on his trip to Yunnan in the meanwhile, he had still been at the same post for nine years, an unusually long time. Appointments were normally made for three years, at the end of which an official’s performance would be evaluated and he would be promoted, dismissed, or retained in office. One might continue for as many as three three-year terms in the same post, but most of Ho’s acquaintances were promoted or transferred even before their three-year terms were over. Low-ranking provincial officers who held no more than the chü-jen degree quite often remained at one post for the full nine years, but this was rare for a chin-shih, especially one serving in the capital, and that Ho had done so did not escape his notice or that of his friends. 111 The reason presumably had to do with his attitude toward those in power. We have no record of any further official protest on his part after his fruitless remonstrance of early 1514, but several anecdotes record his hostility toward the imperial favourites.112 On one occasion, Ch’ien Ning came to Ho’s residence with an old painting and a

———

110 Shuo-yüan Chu-tzu So-yin 說苑逐字索引 (Single Word Concordance to the Garden of Sayings) (Hong Kong: Shang-wu, 1992) 11.14/90/10. 111 Liu Hai-han (LHH 1.11a) and Fu K’ai-p’ei (FKP ) cite Ho’s long poem “Entering the Capital” 入京篇, HTFC 12.13b (169; 271:018) as evidence of his dissatisfaction. It is clear, however, that this poem was written much earlier, in 1508 (see above, chapter five). 112 There is an anecdote recorded by Ho Liang-chün, who heard it from Ku Lin, that is puzzling when set beside the large body of convivial social verse linking Ho and his many friends, but which may in fact refer specifically to his attitude toward imperial favourites and their hangers-on. Ku reported that Ho was very proud when he was in the capital, so much so that he would sit at a banquet with his eyes closed, refusing to speak to those seated around him. On one occasion, he had his clerk bring in a close-stool, on which he sat, a book in hand, until all the other guests had left, after which he took his own leisurely departure. It seems reasonable to suppose that such a demonstration would only be necessary in the case either of an event to which he could not refuse an invitation or of one whose host found himself with uninvited guests whom he could not refuse to admit. See Ho Liang-chün’s Ssu-yu Chai Ts’ungshuo 15.5a (126). John Meskill tells the story, based on Ho Liang-chün, in his Gentlemanly Interests and Wealth in the Yangtse Delta, Association for Asian Studies Monograph and Occasional Paper Series 49, )Ann Arbor: Association for Asian Studies, 1994), pp.72-73.

470

CHAPTER TEN

request that Ho inscribe something on it. Ho replied that a good painting ought not to be soiled by an inscription by him. Although he kept the painting for a whole year, he did not write a word on it. Clearly, “this,” remarks the teller of this tale, “was at a time when Ch’ien was favoured and prominent, and had been given the Imperial surname. Though he held the reins of power, Ho looked on him as a slave and kept him at a distance.” 113 Another such incident came later, in 1518, when a Censor named Shih Ts’un-chih 師存智, who had come to the defense of Han Pangching in 1514, died while on a visit to the capital. Liao P’eng, an ally of Ch’ien Ning, offered to contribute a coffin for his burial, hoping (we are told) thus to ingratiate himself with the scholar-officials. Ho’s response was to say, “While my friend was alive, he did not accept anything thoughtlessly; is he now to accept such filth when he is beneath the earth?” Ho and some friends then agreed to contribute the needed money themselves. Thus they were able to reject the coffin. 114

———

113 Fan P’eng, Meng Yang, and Ch’iao Shih-ning all tell this story, but none gives a date for it. Meng Yang places it before Ho’s Palace Fire Memorial of 1514 in his narrative. Fan and Ch’iao tell the story after their accounts of the memorial. The MS biography refers to the incident and continues, “shortly after, he was appointed to Shensi,” which suggests a date around 1517-1518. Liu Hai-han assigns both this incident and the next to 1516, without citing any evidence for doing so. Chin Jungch’üan chooses 1515 and 1516 for them, also without citing evidence; see “Ho Chingming Nien-p’u Hsin-pien” Hsin-yang Shih-fan Hsüeh-yüan Hsüeh-pao 1995.1: 98102; p.101. Considering the vehemence with which Ho denounced people like Ch’ien in his memorial, it seems unlikely that he would have been seen as a potential ally afterwards; see TK 45. For Ch’ien Ning, see DMB 309, TL 880, HY 3/270, MS 307.7890. Ch’ien Ning and Liao T’ang (see above, chapter seven) were also denounced by Ho’s friend Chang Shih-lung, who had proven every bit as fearless as a Censor as he had been strict as a provincial official. His zeal in impreaching the incompetent and ferreting out injustice were no doubt part of the reason that Ho Ching-ming associated with him so frequently. The burly, honest General, and later Censor, P’eng Tse (see above, chapter seven), narrowly escaped punishment after calling Ch’ien Ning a ‘flunky’ (奴才) while in his cups. All the same, Ho did inscribe a painting belonging to Wang Ch’iung 王瓊 (1459-1532), the Minister of War and an ally of Ch’ien Ning, at whose invitation P’eng Tse had been drinking when he made his impolitic comment. See P’eng’s biography, KHL 39.3a (1575), and Ho’s “Inscribed on a Picture of Ten Oxen Belonging to the Minister of War, Master Wang P’u-hsi” 題大司馬王普溪先生十牛圖, HTFC 14.11a (207; 371:519). 114 This incident is referred to in most of the traditional biographies of Ho, starting with those by Fan P’eng, Meng Yang, and Ch’iao Shih-ning, but all simply refer to Ho’s friend as “Censor Shih” and none dates the event. For Shih Ts’un-chih (t. K’oming 克明, An-yü 安愚; h. Ch’ang-pai Shan-jen 長白山人), see HY 3/115, TK 132. He can be identified by reference to his biography in the (Ch’ien-lung) T’ai-k’ang Hsien Chih 太康縣志 (Gazetteer of T’ai-k’ang County) (1761 edition), 5.6b. Fu Ying

A CAREER IN GOVERNMENT

471

Sometime in 1517, Ho was finally appointed Vice-Director of the Bureau of Honours in the Ministry of Personnel. This was a definite promotion (from grade 7b to 5b), but it was at least as conspicuous for its being so late in coming. Wang T’ing-hsiang was also promoted in 1517. He was sent to Szechwan as Education Intendant, having briefly held two other posts in the provinces after leaving Kan-yü in 1516. Ho sent a set of poems to Wang at about this time. 115 THE YOUNGEST GENERAL We do not know when in 1517 Ho’s promotion came, but it would be interesting if we did, for there was a notable event in August of that year that might have affected such things in a number of ways. Wutsung’s post-ritual hunting trip in the spring had been only the next in a series of private excursions. He declined to preside over the palace examination of 1517 and was on a little trip outside the city a few days later when the degrees were conferred on the successful candidates. In the fifth month, he spent several days in the Western Hills and within ten days was off to Nan-hai-tzu again to hunt. Finally, early in the fall, encouraged by his hangers-on to think of himself as a man of military talents, Wu-tsung decided to make a personal visit to the northern frontier, where there had been some outbreaks of trouble with the nomads, in order to take charge of things himself. He would make a progress to Hsüan-fu in order to inspect the Great Wall gate at Chü-yung 居庸 Pass on the way. The prospect naturally alarmed and outraged the civil officials. Not only would it remove the young monarch even further from contact with them, but it was strongly reminiscent of an earlier debacle, the battle of T’u-mu in

———

has independently identified Shih, though he does not date the incident. See his “Kuan-yü Ho Ching-ming te Liang-p’ien Yi-wen” 關于何景明的兩篇遺文 (On Two Uncollected Works by Ho Ching-ming), Chung-chou Hsüeh-k’an, 1997 supple., pp.94-96. Since Shih Ts’un-chih is mentioned in the Wu-tsung Shih-lu as presenting a memorial on a date corresponding to March 2, 1518, he must have died sometime after this, but before Ho left for Shensi later in the same year; see Wu-tsung Shih-lu 158.12a (3041), TK 88. There is an earlier poem by Ho addressed to Shih as he left for Chekiang in 1513, “On the Ninth Day, Saying Farewell to Censor Shih, Who is Going to Che-chung” 九日送師御史之浙中, HTFC 26.51 (458; 372:026). 115 “Sent for Presentation to Wang Tzu-heng” 寄贈王子衡, HTFC 10.12b (135; 351:076-079).

472

CHAPTER TEN

1449, when a reigning emperor had been captured while leading a similar ‘expedition’. A Censor named Chang Ch’in 張欽, who was in charge of frontier patrols, submitted two memorials detailing why such an expedition was unwise and indeed impossible to permit. Whether Ho Ching-ming protested Wu-tsung’s expedition is unclear. The strenuous remonstrations of the officials all went unheeded. Less than two weeks later, on the first day of the eighth month, Wu-tsung made his first attempt to reach Hsüan-fu, leaving Peking in disguise and refusing to return when called upon to do so by the Grand Secretaries. 116 Chang Ch’in, however, had the gates locked at Chü-yung and hid the keys, threatening to behead anyone who tried to open the gate without an order bearing the seals not only of the Emperor, but also of the two Empresses Dowager as well, and declaring himself prepared to die for disobeying the Emperor’s command rather than endanger the Empire by opening the gates and letting Wu-tsung through. After a standoff lasting almost two weeks, Wu-tsung returned to Peking, but at the end of the month, taking advantage of Chang Ch’in’s temporary absence from Chü-yung, he made a break for it. Successful this time, he proceeded to Hsüan-fu, where he set up his headquarters and began living the life of a ‘general’, ignoring all pleas from the court to return. The winter of 1517 is not much represented in Ho’s extant works. There is a poem on moon-viewing with ‘Hsüeh and Liu,’ surely Hsüeh Hui and probably either Liu Wen-huan or Liu Ch’u-hsiu, on the full moon of the tenth month. 117 On the winter solstice, he wrote a “Record of the Thatched Hall at Dragon Cove” 龍灣草堂記 for Hsü Chin’s son Hsü Kao (see above), who had gone home to Ling-pao, Honan, to live in retirement just a few months after a promotion earlier in the year. 118 About this time, he also sent a poem to Cheng Shan-fu as an inscription for his garden at home in Fukien. 119 Wu-tsung, having survived an encounter with Mongols in October, did not return to Peking until just before the spring sacrifices, after

——— 116

For Wu-tsung’s ‘escape’ to Hsüan-fu, see MTC 47.1751-53 and Wu-tsung Shihlu 152, passim. 117 “A Full Moon in the Tenth Month: Liu and Hsüeh Visit for Moon-viewing” 十月望夜劉薛二子過對月, HTFC 20.10b (346; 352:122). 118 HTFC 33.2b (581; 記:501). The date is given only in the Yüan recension. 119 “Sent as an Inscription for Cheng’s Garden” 寄題鄭園, HTFC 27.7a (479; 372:099).

A CAREER IN GOVERNMENT

473

which he once again went hunting. 120 He left for Hsüan-fu again shortly after, but had to return on the death of his grandmother, Empress Dowager Wang. Ho’s most explicit reference to the situation is in this poem, written on the occasion of Wu-tsung’s return just after the turn of the year: 關門虎衛關門迥、龍沙塞曲深。風雲時有氣、熱月晝長陰。中使西來訊、千官北望心。天寒漢宮闕、翠盖憶春臨。 The Barrier Gate 121 Tiger guards at the barrier gate are distant, Dragon Sands remote from the twisting frontier— Wind and clouds are stormy all the time; Sun and moon are dark through much of the day. An Imperial messenger comes to the west with orders— A thousand officials look to the north in their hearts. The heavens turn cold over palace towers of Han; Kingfisher awnings remember springtide outlooks. Ho’s sixth line recalls the corresponding line in Tu Fu’s “Journey South” 南征, “Old and ill, the days of my southern journey; / For my ruler’s favour I look to the north in my heart” 老病南征日、君恩北望心. 122

This poem quite fails to do justice to the actual event. 123 Hundreds of officials greeted Wu-tsung on their knees, dressed in their court robes, after waiting for hours in a sleet storm. He arrived in his frontier costume, complete with felt jacket, sword, and quiver, riding a bay horse. As the officials kowtowed in the mud, Wu-tsung dismounted and took his seat in a ceremonial tent, where Yang T’ing-ho 楊廷和 (1459-1529) and the other Grand Secretaries served him fruit and nuts

———

120 Ho apparently did not ‘write up’ the excursion in 1518, but Hsüeh Hui did; see above. 121 HTFC 21.11a (373; 352:501). 122 Tu Shih Yin-te 395/12/5-6, CTS 228.2473, K.11344. 123 For Wu-tsung’s welcome home, see MTC 47.1759-60; Wu-tsung Shih-lu 158.6a (3029) ff. Yen Sung also wrote a poem on the occasion, see “On the Seventh Day of the First Month of the wu-yin year of Cheng-te, the Carriage Returned from Hsüan-fu; Colourful Garments had been Conferred on the Courtiers in Advance, and the Officials Offered Welcome Outside the Te-sheng Gate; it Being a Day of Heavy Snowfall, the Chief Officials Offered Cups of Wine and their Congratulations: Recording the Event,” Ch’ien-shan T’ang Chi 4.3b.

474

CHAPTER TEN

with wine. 124 He asked them, “I guess you must have heard how I beheaded one of the enemy at Yü-ho, eh?” Yang and the others kowtowed and praised his sagely valour, after which Wu-tsung remounted and galloped off to the Leopard Quarter. In the confusion—all this was going on by torchlight in the middle of a winter night—there were mishaps with the horses, and runaways dragged several people through the mud to their deaths. ‘Springtide outlook’ at the end of the poem may well be a veiled allusion to the ‘Outlook on Spring’ Pavilion constructed by the last sovereign of the Ch’en dynasty before his state was extinguished. 125 Ho had referred to Wu-tsung’s absence a few weeks before, in a poem written on the ‘Establishing Spring’ 立春 day. 126 He makes passing allusions to the state of affairs in other works of the period. One non-occasional piece written in the spring expresses some of his feelings at this time: 入直賦豈文園客、名慚騎省郎。聞鷄趨建禮、駐馬望宮墻。風晝楊花色、烟春蕙草香。露盤天漢上、消渴意何長。 Going on Duty 127 In writing, scarcely a Garden of Letters sojourner, My reputation shamed by the Cavalry Attendant’s. On hearing cockcrow, I hurry to Establish Rites; Tethering my horse, I gaze at the palace walls. On a breezy day, the willows show their charm; In hazy spring, the orchids spread their fragrance. The dew-gathering pan is beyond the Heavenly River, How they persist, my thoughts of ‘slaking my thirst’!

The first couplet and final line of this poem allude once again to the Han rhapsodist Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju, first through offices he held, and at the end through ‘slake thirst’, or diabetes, the illness from which he suffered. Establish Rites was a traditional name for one of the gates of

——— 124

Yang was the father of Yang Shen and had become the leading Grand Secretary of the period after Li Tung-yang. It was he who managed the difficult and dangerous transition after Wu-tsung died without issue in 1521. 125 Ch’en Shu 陳書 (History of the Ch’en), compiled by Yao Ssu-lien 姚思廉, (Peking: Chung-hua, 1972) 7.131. 126 HTFC 27.7b (480; 372:100). 127 HTFC 20.2b (334; 352:506).

A CAREER IN GOVERNMENT

475

the imperial palace. The ‘dew-gathering pan’ is again the one attached to the Golden Stalk (see above). If having Wu-tsung back in Peking eased some worries, it gave occasion for others. A number of outspoken Censors were relegated to the provinces in the second month, 128 and it was around this time that the incident of Shih Ts’un-shih’s coffin took place (see above). A number of events in this period have no explicit response in Ho’s extant works. Even a visit to Hsüeh Hui while the latter was ill is recorded only in Hsüeh’s works. 129 Finally, sometime in the fifth month, Ho’s appointment to the position of Education Intendant for Shensi was announced. 130 This

———

128 One of the relegated Censors was a good friend, Chang Shih-lung (see above). His appointment to a Magistracy in rural Hopeh was announced on the fourteenth day of the month; see Wu-tsung Shih-lu 159.6a (3057). Several of Ho Ching-ming’s friends and acquaintances wrote farewell poems for him or poems missing him after he left; see Hsüeh Hui, “Presented to Chang Chung-hsiu [Shih-lung]” 贈張仲修, Hsüeh Hsi-yüan Chi 1.41b, K’ao-kung Chi 3.3a (27); Meng Yang, “Missing Chang Chung-hsiu [Shih-lung]” 懷張仲修, Meng Yu-ya Chi 6.4b; Yen Sung, “Censor Chang is Relegated to Chin-chou Assistant Prefect” 張侍御謫判晉州, Ch’ien-shan T’ang Chi 4.9b. Ho did write a farewell poem for another Censor being sent to the provinces, Wang Hsiang 王相; see “Saying Farewell to Wang Meng-pi [Hsiang], Who is Going to Kao-yu” 送王夢弼之高郵, HTFC 19.6b (316; 352:505) for the poem; TK 87, 16566 for a variety of textual puzzles surrounding the poem, its addressee, and the occasion. For Wang himself (t. Meng-pi 夢弼, h. Chüeh-hsüan 覺軒), see HY 2/68, TL 42, KHL 65.56a (2845—Wang Ch’ung-ch’ing) and 83.70a (3520—Chu Muchieh), TK 165. Wang had distinguished himself as a Magistrate after his chin-shih pass in 1508. Promoted to Censor, he criticised imperial favourites and defended the interests of commoners. 129 For Hsüeh’s poem, which refers to a visit from Ho Ching-ming and the poet Chiang Shan-ch’ing 蔣山卿, see “Ho Chung-mo [Ching-ming] and Chiang Tzu-yün [Shan-ch’ing] Come to Visit While I am Ill” 病中何仲默蔣子雲過訪, Hsüeh Hsiyüan Chi 1.38b, K’ao-kung Chi 5.4b (59), TK 407. 130 As pointed out in PC, pp.70-71, but overlooked in TK, p.88-89, two sources assign the appointment to a particular day in the fifth month, but the days are different. The Huang Ming Shih-kai 皇明史概 (Historical Judgement of the Imperial Ming), compiled by Chu Kuo-chen 朱國禎, gives the ting-ssu 丁巳 day, the sixteenth in the month (June 26) (Ch’ung-chen edition; repr. Hsü-hsiu SKCS, vols.428-31, Shanghai: Shanghai Ku-chi, 1997) 24.13a (205); while T’an Ch’ien’s Kuo-ch’üeh (National Assessment) gives the jen-hsü 壬戌 day, the twenty-fourth (July 1); see Kuo-ch’üeh (Peking: Ku-chi, 1958) 50.3150. There is no record in the Wu-tsung Shih-lu, although this was a type of appointment normally reported there. On this point and others, see Yao Hsüeh-hsien 姚學賢 and Hsü Yang-shang 徐揚尚, “Kuan-yü Ho Ching-ming Tu-hsüeh Shensi te Pu-cheng” 關於何景明督學陜西的補正 (Corrigenda to Ho Ching-ming’s Education Intendancy in Shensi), Yin-tu Hsüeh-k’an 1992.4:30-36. Like the article that Yao wrote with Ts’ao-mu on Ho’s trip to Yunnan, this one is explicitly intended to correct misunderstandings in the work of Liu Hai-han and Fu K’ai-p’ei.

476

CHAPTER TEN

was another promotion, to grade 4a, but it also brought a new kind of prestige, especially among the more earnestly intellectual officials. As Charles Hucker describes them, Education Intendants were “assigned for three years to approve the subsidised admission of students to state-supported local schools, test them regularly, evaluate their teachers, and select students to undertake triennial Provincial Examinations in the civil service recruitment examination sequence.” 131 In addition, Shensi had a special significance for Chinese literature and history, having been the centre of early Chinese civilisation, the site of the capitals of the Han and T’ang dynasties, and the centre of activity of many of their greatest poets. We can infer something of Ho’s interest in serving there from the enthusiastic opening couplet of a poem that he wrote several years earlier as a farewell for someone going to take up a very minor post not far from the provincial capital, 少陵詩卷名山水、王氏丹青老歲華。 The famous mountains and rivers in the poetry of Tu Fu, The old yearly splendours in the paintings of Wang Wei!” 132

Ho evidently left Peking late in the summer or at the very beginning of autumn, 1518, since Hsüeh Hui’s presentation poem on their farewell immediately precedes one on the Seventh Night Festival. Ho’s poem for Hsüeh sounds a note of relief on leaving the capital at last: 贈君采蕭散綜琴書、疲疾謝回亂。清雲汎闌暑、白水激文瀾。於心懷我友、翩翩振詞翰。比室諧言晤、撫景悅流翫。孔公讚龍蠖、莊生明吹萬。理感由神詣、情賞非虛嘆。鄙哉辨雌霓、安知覩河漢。願投忘形契、去適無窮岸。

———

131 Hucker, Dictionary of Official Titles, p.498, entry 6486; for the rank, see p.103, entry 10. 132 “On Saying Farewell to Instructor Tu, Who is Going to Lan-t’ien” 送杜司訓之藍田, HTFC 26.2a (455; 372:013). The poem was written in 1513 for one Tu Hsüan 杜璿, of whom virtually nothing is known except that he was a native of T’ang-hsien in Honan, the native district of Ho’s second wife. See TK 151. The Yung recension gives an alternate version of the title that has no effect on the meaning, reading 訓導往 in place of 司訓之. Note that Shensi was a province to which natives of Honan were particularly likely to be assigned. See Otto Berkelbach van der Sprenkel, “The Geographical Background of the Ming Civil Service,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 4 (1961), pp.302-36, especially pp.330-32.

A CAREER IN GOVERNMENT

477

Presented to Chün-ts’ai [Hsüeh Hui] 133 In idle ease I gather up zithern and books, Weary and ill, take leave of all this tumult. Blue-edged clouds drift the waning summer heat; White water stirs up waves in the sea of letters. Within my heart, I cherish you, my friend, The whirring wings of your brush at stirring words. In chambers side by side we matched our words; Moved by the scene, enjoyed the flow of amusement. Confucius praised the dragon and the inchworm; Chuang-tzu made clear the puffing out of myriads. Our ideals and feelings came from a harmony of spirit; Our affections and admiration not just empty sighs. How base the precision over a woman-rainbow! How could they fathom viewing the Milky Way? I wish to lodge in agreement beyond mere forms; Depart and make my way to a boundless shore.

Hsüeh’s poem on this occasion is three times longer and a good deal less restrained. 134 In it, Hsüeh looks back over his early years, recalling both the encouragement he received from Wang T’inghsiang and three years of constant association with Ho, whom he compares to Pan Ku, Ssu-ma Ch’ien, Ch’ü Yüan, and Sung Yü. The two poems share the expression ‘whirring [wings]’ with reference to Hsüeh’s writing. The ninth line probably refers to a passage in the Changes, traditionally attributed to Confucius, “The contraction of the inchworm is done for the sake of stretching; the hibernation of dragons and snakes is done for the sake of self-preservation.” 135 For

———

133 HTFC 10.14a (137; 351:082). In the third line, the collation notes in the Standard recension list a variant not found in any extant text, 蘭渚 ‘orchid islet’ in place of 闌暑 ‘waning summer heat’, a lectio facilior if ever there was one. Cheng Shan-fu, who had just come out of retirement, presented Ho with a set of six farewell poems on this occasion, “Saying Farewell to Ho Chung-mo [Ching-ming], Who is Travelling to Kuan-chung” 送何仲默遊關中, Cheng Shih 8.6a, Shao-ku Chi 2.6b (25), TK 400. Other farewell poems are extant by Wang Ch’ung-ch’ing, “Buying Wine and River Fish: Farewell to Ho Chung-mo” 市酒江魚送何仲默, Tuan-hsi Hsien-sheng Chi (1552 edition) 7.ch’i-chüeh.9a; TK 403, and Chiang Shan-ch’ing, “At the Courtyard of the Manifestly Numinous: A Farewell Party Offered to Ho Chung-mo [Ching-ming], Who is Going to Kuan-hsi” 顯靈道院奉餞何仲默之關西, Chiang Nan-ling Chi 蔣南泠集 (Collected Works of Chiang of Nan-ling) (Chia-ching edition) 9.1a; TK 412. 134 See “Presented to Ho Ta-fu [Ching-ming]” 贈何大復, Hsüeh Hsi-yüan Chi 1.42a, K’ao-kung Chi 3.1a (26), TK 407. 135 Chou Yi Yin-te 46/hsi-hsia/3; cf. Lynn, p.81, Wilhelm/Baynes, p.338.

478

CHAPTER TEN

the “puffing out of myriads” by the pipes of Heaven, see the Chuangtzu. 136 The penultimate couplet hangs on a somewhat obscure allusion. Shen Yüeh once wrote a rhapsody on “Living in the Outskirts.” It included the expression ‘woman-rainbow (found in poems in the Ch’u-tzu), in which the character for ‘rainbow’ had two possible pronunciations. When the poet Wang Yün 王筠 read the rhapsody aloud to Shen, he did so with the correct pronunciation, at which point Shen rubbed his hands and confessed that he had been worried lest the pronunciation should come out wrong. 137 Ho’s point is of course to score off pedants incapable of grander things. Ho must have made a number of stops along the way south to Hsinyang, since he was still in Kaifeng in the eighth lunar month. One of his first stops was Pao-ting 保定, not very far from Peking, where he presented a complimentary essay to a local official named Chao Shihch’i 趙士器. 138 Chao had passed the Honan Provincial examination in 1501 and may have taken the chin-shih test unsuccessfully along with Ho in 1502. The next stop was Ting-chou 定州, where an old friend from the capital, Liu Wen-huan, was living at home, having retired in disgust not long before: 同許補之劉子緯登定州塔塔閣盤空上、笙簫遶洞行。懸梯出萬井、飛盖俯孤城。燕岱風雲色、滹沱鴈鶩聲。登高並回首、直北是神京。 Climbing the Pagoda at Ting-chou with Hsü Pu-chih [Wan] and Liu Tzu-wei [Wen-huan] 139 The pagoda ascends, in coils about the void; With pipes and flutes, we walk around the grotto. Overhanging walkways emerge from ten thousand wells; Flying awnings look down on the lonely walls. In Yen and Tai, the charm of wind and clouds; Over the Hu-t’o the sound of geese and ducks. We climb up high and then turn back to look— Directly north—there is our sacred metropolis!

——— 136

Chuang-tzu Yin-te 3/2/9; Graham, p.49, Watson, p.37. Nan Shih (Peking: Chung-hua, 1975) 22.609. For Chao Shih-ch’i and this essay, see TK 89, 183. 139 HTFC 21.8a (369; 352:615). For Hsü Wan 許完 (t. Pu-chih 補之), see HY 3/52, TK 180. Hsü had been a Censor. He had been relegated to the provinces early in the year, at the same time as Ho’s friend Chang Shih-lung. 137 138

A CAREER IN GOVERNMENT

479

With one possible exception, a farewell to a man named Liu P’ang 劉滂, it appears that we do not have any more poems from the trip home. 140 During his stop in Kaifeng, Li Meng-yang held a farewell banquet for him. 141 News of the serious illness of his old friend Kao Chien reached Ho just as he was leaving Kaifeng, and he arrived in Hsin-yang the very day after Kao’s death. 142 In addition to composing an epitaph and a sacrificial text for Kao, Ho wrote several other essays while in Hsin-yang, including ones that record the completion of defensive walls around both Hsin-yang and the nearby county town of Ch’üeh-shan 確山 . 143 An unexpected

———

140 HTFC 16.16b (261; 252:606). For Liu P’ang (t. Po-yü 伯雨), see HY 3/239, TL 847, TK 119. He was on his way to take up a post in Nanking, but died suddenly while visiting his home in Chekiang en route. See Appendix Two for the placement of this poem, not found in the Yung or Shen recensions, in the Chia-chi. This is only one unusual thing about the poem. The date, given in a note to the Yüan recension text, is “wu-yin year 戊寅 [1518], seventh month,” but Liu’s appointment had been announced in the first month. See Wu-tsung Shih-lu 158.1a (3019). A farewell essay by one Ku Ch’ing 顧清 also specifies that Liu’s appointment came in the first month, “Saying Farewell to Liu of the Seals Office, Who is Going to the Southern Capital” 送劉尚寶之南京序 , Tung-chiang Chia-ts’ang Chi 東江家藏集 (East River Collection Stored at Home) (SKCS) 20.22b (583). While it is possible that the date given in the Yüan recension is mistaken, it seems simplest to take the poem as evidence that Liu was taking his time and that Ho encountered him somewhere between Peking and Kaifeng. 141 For poems by Li from this farewell, see “An Autumn Farewell Party for Master Ho at the Fan Terrace” 繁臺秋餞何子 and “A Further Farewell Party for Master Ho” 再餞何子, K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi, 25.7a (627), TK 390-91; also cited in LHH 4.3b-4a. Note that Chien Chin-sung maintains that Ho did not visit Li’s estate during this trip; see “Li-Ho Shih-lun Yen-chiu,” p.44. He was instead entertained in town by Li, at which time the three poems (and another one) were written. Chien takes the lack of answering poems in Ho’s works to be evidence that relations between the two men had cooled, but his interpretation seems unlikely. It is clear that Ho’s writings after he left Peking in 1518 are only haphazardly preserved, so the argument from silence is not compelling on its own. Quite the contrary, in fact, since the preservation of Li’s four poems testifies to a lengthy and convivial meeting—we are surely not to imagine Li presenting Ho with one poem after another, giving up only after all four had been met with silence on Ho’s part. 142 “Epitaph for the Late Ming Prefect of K’ui-chou, Mr. Kao T’ieh-hsi” 明故夔州府知府鐵溪先生高公墓誌銘, HTFC 36.16a (629; 銘:008); “Sacrificial Text for Mr. Kao T’ieh-hsi” 祭高鐵溪先生文, HTFC 38.6b (657; 祭:501; YK B.32b). We know from the epitaph for Kao Chien that Ho arrived back in Hsin-yang on the fifteenth day of the eighth month. 143 “A Record of the Repair of the Walls of Hsin-yang” 信迎脩城記, HTFC 33.4a (582; 記:002); “A Record of the Repair of the Walls of Ch’üeh-shan County” 確山縣脩城記, 33.5b (583; 記:502). Ch’üeh-shan had been raided by bandits in 1512. Ho mentions by name a number of officials who had been involved in the projects, including two Assistant Surveillance Commissioners for Military Defense of the

480

CHAPTER TEN

incident during excavations for the walls inspired Ho to write a rhapsody: Rhapsody on an Ancient Tomb 144 When the wall builders were excavating they came across a large tomb. On measurement, the vault and precinct were found to be quite impressively large. Aside from some decayed bones, nothing was found stored within. Stele and epitaph had disappeared, and there was no way of determining its age. I was moved by this and wrote a Rhapsody to express my grief. Alas, how far, how remote this precinct, oh! Begun and built so broad yet so crooked. Down through human ages—how many, oh! And no way of knowing who dwelt within. The dark hall has now been opened; The side gates cleared as well. An ancient site is bent to make a wall, oh! The fine tunnels trod and made to roads. We discover the sacred articles have not survived, oh! Observe no trace of the numinous robes. Alas! How remote, oh! How vast, how wide! The soul is transformed and departs, oh! The spirit disolved and vanished.

———

Hsin-yang region. One of these was Ning Ho 甯和, who had been the recipient of a letter from Ho in 1514 on the subject of remedying the hardships of the local inhabitants, “Letter to Military Defense [Commissioner] Ning” 與甯兵備書, HTFC 32.15b (572; 書:003). For Ning Ho, see TK 130. The Hsin-yang Chou Chih (6.4b [204]) tells how he tricked four much feared and hated local bandit chiefs into contributing to the city wall project while he learned all about their gangs and hideouts, after which he had them seized and beaten to death. The other was Yen Ch’in 閰欽 (1480-1529), who served from 1515 to 1520; see KHL 98.68a (4007—Wang Chiussu), TL 866, HY 2/121, TK 189. While at home, Ho also wrote a congratulatory essay and two poems for Yen’s birthday, which fell on the seventeenth day of the tenth month (November 19, 1518; see TK 189). For the essay, “Birthday Congratulations for Military Defense Commissioner Yen Ting-feng” 壽閻定峰兵備序 , see HTFC 35.18a (601; 序 :519, text in Yi-kao not examined). The poems, “Birthday Congratulations for Yen Ting-feng [Ch’in]” 壽閻定峰 and “Birthday Congratulations for Military Defense [Commissioner] Ting-feng [Ch’in]” 壽閻定峰兵備 are found only in the Yi-kao (A.3a, 271:901; A.20b, 272:901). Their presence incidentally shows that not all of the works gathered in YK are early. There is also a yüeh-fu poem that cannot be confidently dated, but whose theme, the walling of a city for protection against bandits, may refer to Yen Ch’in’s walling of Hsin-yang in 1518, “A Ballad of High Walls” 高城行, HTFC 6.11b (68; 樂:512; YK A.5a). 144 古塚賦, HTFC 2.3b (18; 賦:018).

A CAREER IN GOVERNMENT

481

The withered skeleton incomplete, oh! Strewn about in all directions. Bedding and robes are plain dust, oh! Covered by dark frost. Vines and grass tangle and entwine, oh! Weeds and moss appear. A thousand autumns, ten thousand years, oh! Who is hidden here? After the utmost pleasures of life, oh! Dispersed with the floating dust of the Great Clod. The quadriga never to be driven again; Jade delicacies, how could they be served anew? All the bewitching beauties who filled the chambers, oh! Far away in lonely darkness, with no one to love. Cassia eaves and orchid pavilions spread over the hills and dales, oh! Now where to display axe-figured hangings and silk-faced mats? On what account will dancing sleeves and hairbands appear, oh! The singing zittern is lost and nowhere heard. I grieve for not having looked into the suspended carriage of retirement, oh! Resent the long night that has no dawn. I regret that glory and fame are so distant and vast, oh! Ache for these bare bones covered with green brush. Alas, that all that lives must be transformed, oh! Why the long labours of these employments? Devoted to hustle and bustle, the better to rush into the world, oh! On a par with buzzing flies and swarms of mosquitoes. How suddenly the sun and moon move from their places, oh! How much the more do bright faces have their spirits extinguished. The departed can no longer appear in a mirror, oh! And how could they know that wealth and honour are like floating clouds!

Meng Yang, who had been promoted to Assistant Surveillance Commissioner in Hukwang, was apparently still visiting Hsin-yang when Ho arrived. Ho wrote a set of four poems on Meng’s departure and another one later, while missing him on Double Nine. 145

——— 145

“Presented on Taking Leave of Meng Wang-chih [Yang]” 贈別孟望之, HTFC 9.2b (106; 251:514-517), YK A.1a; “On the Morning of the Ninth Day, Missing Wang-chih [Meng Yang] at Thunder Hill” 九日震雷山懷望之, HTFC 17.9b (273; 252:539), YK A.12b. I argued in TK, p.43, that these poems were written in 1511, not long before Ho returned to Peking. The arguments presented there sufficed to show that the poems could not have come from the years 1507-10. They ignored, however, the possibility of 1518, when we know Meng went to take up office in Hukwang, in

482

CHAPTER TEN

Sometime during the winter, after spending at least two months at home, Ho set out for Shensi. 別相餞諸友雙井山邊送客時、滿林風雪倍相思。西行萬里遙回首、太華終南落日遲。 Taking Leave of my Friends after a Farewell Party 146 Now as we say goodbye here at the foot of Double Well Hill, The wind-blown snow that fills the woods redoubles our affection. Heading west over ten thousand leagues, I look back from a distance; The setting sunlight lingers on T’ai-hua and the Chung-nan Hills. The T’ai-hua and Chung-nan mountains have been literary signs for the region of Ch’ang-an at least since Pan Ku’s “Rhapsody on the Western Capital” 西都賦, “Taking the mountains of T’ai-hua and Chung-nan as its bounds” 表以太華終南之山. 147

Along the way, Ho visited his old friend Wang Shang-chiung in Chiahsien 郟縣 . 148 Appointed Administration Vice-Commissioner of Shansi in 1512, Wang had declined and returned home to tend his aging mother and grandmother and his own claimed ill-health. A summons back to office sent him in 1518 was returned with the seal unbroken. He roamed the hills on mule-back, sometimes not returning home for days. According to his biography, He opened a ‘Thirst for Sleep Grotto’ to cleanse his spirit of impurities, constructed a ‘Horse and Ox Pavilion’ to get rid of worldly considerations, and built a Study Terrace to cultivate his companionship with the men of bygone days. He roamed beyond the confines of

———

favour, implicitly, of an otherwise unattested trip to Wu-ch’ang undertaken as part of Meng’s duties as a Messenger. Meng’s Hukwang appointment was announced in the second month of 1518, Wu-tsung Shih-lu 159.9a (3063), but considering the time required to vacate his office in Kashing, travel north to Peking to receive his new appointment and then make his way south, it is likely that he was still in Hsin-yang in the eighth month when Ho arrived. 146 HTFC, 29.1a (513; 274:501). “Double Well Hill” is probably related to the Double Well listed in the Hsin-yang Chou Chih, 1.9b (50) as being about seven miles north of Hsin-yang. Meng Yang wrote a pair of poems on saying farewell to Ma Lu here; see “At Double Well, Taking Leave of Chün-ch’ing [Ma Lu]” 雙井留別君卿, Meng Yu-ya Chi 13.12b. 147 WH 1.4b (2); cf. the translation in Knechtges, 1:99. 148 “A Banquet on a Snowy Evening with Ts’ang-ku [Wang Shang-chiung] in the Garden of Mr. ‘Nine Plum Trees’” 雪夜九梅翁園同蒼谷宴集 , HTFC 22.8a (391; 352:617-618).

A CAREER IN GOVERNMENT

483

Heaven, Earth, and the Myriad Things, contending with none of them.” 149

After seventeen years at home and over twenty recommendations, he was at last induced to take up office again, but died within a few years. In the meanwhile, as autumn approached, the young Emperor began to prepare for another season of excitement on the frontier, while his senior officials protested and pleaded. This time their sovereign had something new up his sagely sleeve. Wu-tsung was, without doubt, a nasty, profoundly irresponsible monarch, upon whose shoulders much of the blame for all that was wrong in the Empire by the time of his death can justly be laid, but there is something almost endearing about his response to the argument that he had generals to do his bidding and keep peace on the frontiers, that he should leave the job to them while he stayed in the palace and paid more attention to his duties as Emperor. Just as all children invent imaginary playmates and alter egos, like-minded souls who can be counted on to abet their games and deflect responsibility for their lapses, Wu-tsung simply commissioned a previously unheard-of general named Chu Shou 朱壽 (shou meaning “longevity” and Chu being the imperial surname), upon whom he laid the heavy responsibility for personal supervision of all aspects of frontier defense and to whose requirements all officials were commanded to defer. Armed with this legal fiction, the little monster betook himself to the front at once, while his officials stamped their feet in frustration in Peking. 150

——— 149

KHL 84.12b (3554). For the ‘commissioning’ of Chu Shou, see MTC 47.1771-72; Wu-tsung Shih-lu 164.1a (3151). 150

CHAPTER ELEVEN

SHENSI PROJECTS Once Ho arrives in Sian, the sources for his life dwindle to the extent that there is relatively little we can say in detail with confidence about his activities or works there, especially during the year 1519. There are only seventy-five poems attributable to the entire Shensi period, and so we are thrown more onto external testimony for details about his life than is the case for his years in Peking. His reduced output may also reflect the relatively underdeveloped social and literary activity of Shensi—then as now an economically backward region, or it may be an accidental consequence of textual loss and survival. It is interesting to note that most of the identifiable people to whom he addressed poems during his years there were ones whom he had originally met in Peking. Ho does not seem to have been in contact with Li Meng-yang after his arrival in Shensi, although he did send poems to other Peking friends, such as Ho T’ang, then in Honan, and Ho Meng-ch’un, who was in Yunnan from 1519 to 1521, having protested against the ‘Northern Expedition’. 1 Ho also corresponded with Meng Yang and Hsüeh Hui. Meng

——— 1

“Sent to Ts’ui-fu [Ho T’ang]” 寄粹夫 , HTFC 10.15b (138; 451:004-007), “Poems on the Four Pictures: Presented to Ho Yen-chüan [Meng-ch’üan]” 四圖詩贈何燕泉, HTFC 29.15a (525; 474:005-008). The latter were written to go with a set of four paintings presented to Meng-ch’un on his departure for Yunnan; see Ho’s preface “Preface to ‘Poems on the Four Pictures’” 四圖詩序, HTFC 34.4b (595; 序:008). Ho Meng-ch’un acknowledged Ching-ming’s work in a letter, “Sent to ViceCommissioner Ho Chung-mo [Ching-ming]” 寄何仲默副使書, Ho Wen-chien Kung Chi (1574 edition) 17.54a. Li Meng-yang, Hsüeh Hui, Ts’ui Hsien, and others contributed essays and poems to go with the paintings, which depicted Ho Mengch’un at four stages of his official career. His responses to some of these offerings are extant. See TK 91-92. For Ho Meng-ch’un and Li Meng-yang, who passed the chinshih together in 1493, see Wang Kung-wang, “Li Meng-yang K’ung-t’ung Chi Jenming Chien-cheng. (chih erh)” 李夢陽空同集人名箋證之二 (Notes on Personal Names in Li Meng-yang’s Collected works of K’ung-t’ung, Pt. 2), Kansu She-hui K’o-hsüeh 1994.5:83-86, 75, p.84.

SHENSI

485

Yang wrote from Hsin-yang in the second month of 1519 to explain why he had abandoned his office and returned home, pleading illness. He was apprehensive lest Ho should disapprove of what he had done. Meng had been promoted twice after going to Wen-shang, most recently to a position in the Surveillance Commission in Hukwang. His return was sudden, and occurred only a few months after he took up his new post. “On the twenty-first day of the first month,” he wrote Ho, “I chanced to be moved by something that happened and decided to come home. I crossed the Yangtse that very night without anyone realising I had left. Only the next day, after I had moored at Han-yang 漢陽, did I send a message to my superior. Officials were sent after me on the road, and letters; even my fellow officials personally tried to hold me back, but they could not stop me.” 2 Meng does not say in the letter what it was that ‘chanced to move’ him, but he is clearly anxious for Ho, whose disapproval of those who abandoned provincial office we have seen before in the cases of Hou Yi-cheng and Ho T’ang, to accept the urgency of his need to resign. He lists three reasons that made it impossible for him to return and nine that made it impossible for him to hold office. We know that Ho wrote to Hsüeh Hui in the autumn, although his letter is not extant, because we have a poem that Hsüeh wrote on receiving it. 3 More than anything else, the demands of his post reduced Ho’s time for literature. His posting to Shensi was his first provincial appointment, but it counted as a promotion and promised him much greater scope for initiative than service in the capital. Moreover, the post itself provided a no-doubt welcome challenge to make some of his ideas about education work in practice. Education Intendants were usually men with some considerable standing as intellectuals. 4 Their

——— 2

For Meng’s letter, see “Letter to Ho Chung-mo [Ching-ming]” 與何仲默書, Meng Yu-ya Chi (1538 edition) 16.9b. Li Lien, who was still in office in Hukwang himself, sent Meng a poem missing him, also complaining that he had not had a letter from Ho Ching-ming and hoping for Tai Kuan’s early return from Kwangtung, “Sent to Meng Wang-chih [Yang],” Sung-chu Wen-chi (Chia-ching edition; repr. Peking T’u-shu-kuan Ku-chi Chen-pen Ts’ung-k’an, vol.101. Peking: Shu-mu Wen-hsien, 1988) 13.1b (287). 3 Hsüeh Hui, “Sent to Ho Chung-mo [Ching-ming]” 寄何仲默, Hsüeh Hsi-yüan Chi (1535 edition) 2.7a, K’ao-kung Chi (SKCS) 5.10b (62), TK 408. 4 This phrase, and much of the rest of the paragraph, draws on the excellent article by Tilemann Grimm, “Ming Education Intendants,” in Charles O. Hucker, ed., Chinese Government in Ming Times: Seven Studies, pp.129-47 (New York: Columbia

486

CHAPTER ELEVEN

duties were wide-ranging and their responsibilities considerable. In addition to evaluating the progress of students, they toured their provinces regularly, establishing curricula and regulations. Their activities not infrequently brought them into conflict with local authorities or with the students for whom they were responsible, for the former sometimes resented the Intendants’ independence and the latter their regulatory power. Ho Ching-ming was to take a characteristically assertive and self-confident attitude in carrying out his duties, and it appears that he did accomplish a good deal in his almost three years in Shensi. According to one account, the gentlemen of the province at first found his strictness a little hard to take, but after a while Ho was able to reconcile them to his ways. 5 In one incident, Ho supported a student who had come to the aid of his father, a convicted criminal. Ho’s reasoning (of a sort traceable to Confucius himself) was that a society in which sons did not help their fathers was worse than one in which people occasionally committed criminal acts. 6 He admonished a Prefect who was impatient of restraints placed on his behaviour, “How is a gentleman who does not take his actions seriously any better than a common stooge?” We are fortunate, when we come to consider Ho Ching-ming’s period as Education Intendant, in having an essay by him that sets out his ideas on the subject in some detail. 7 It is a very idealistic document, as one might expect, but at the same time surprisingly, even confusingly, ‘realistic’. It is not dated, so we do not know if it is an early work embodying Ho’s ideas in the abstract, or if it comes from his years in Shensi and reflects his experiences there, but this

———

University Press, 1969). See also Kuo P’ei-kui 郭培貴, “Shih-lun Ming-tai T’i-hsüeh Chih-tu te Fa-chan” 試論明代提學制度的發展 (Tentative Account of the Development of the Education Intendant System in the Ming), Wen-hsien 1997.4:6278. 5 Meng Yang’s epitaph is the source for this comment on the gentlemens’ response. K’ang Hai gives an account of Ho’s approach to his job in the essay he wrote when Ho left Shensi in 1521 (see below, chapter twelve). 6 See the Shensi gazetteer biography included in HTFC, fu-lu, p.24a. This biography is discussed below, Appendix Two. 7 Other sources do remark briefly on Ho’s teaching style and goals. See, for example, the Shensi gazetteer biography. Ho considered instruction, in the broadest sense (教 chiao), to be fundamental to government. See his comments in “Saying Farewell to Master Li, Judge in Hsiang-yang” 送李子判襄陽序, in the ““Inner Chapters,” HTFC 31.15a (557; 內:019). Ho had commented on the role of private schools in the account that he wrote of Hsü Kao’s cottage (see above, chapter ten).

SHENSI

487

seems the appropriate place to introduce it. The essay is cast in the form of a dialogue between Ho and an unnamed questioner. An Inquiry into Teaching 8 Someone asked Master Ho, “Wherein do the teachers of today resemble those of antiquity?” Master Ho replied, “In antiquity there were teachers; today, there are none.” Q: In that case, what would you say of those who are called teachers in the present day?” A: What is called a teacher now is not what was called a teacher in antiquity. The name exists but the reality is gone. This is why I say there are no teachers. Q: May I hear about the teachers of antiquity? A: The standards by which people were taught in antiquity were character and human relationships. Character means to humanity, justice, propriety, wisdom, and good faith; as for human relationships, they are those of ruler and subject, father and son, elder and younger brother, senior and junior, and friendship. With respect to all these, to study them in order to follow them is called the Way (Tao); to study them in order to master them is called virtue. To apply them and be found worthy of advancement in the Empire is called accomplishment. Thus the teachers of antiquity set out to perfect character and make human relationships clear; they made their tao and virtue a standard and nurtured their accomplishment. This was what I mean by a teacher in antiquity. Q: And what do you say of the teachers of today? A: The teachers of today are teachers of ‘career capital’. They clutch the Classics and give instruction in great books, dividing up paragraphs and cutting off sentences, linking topics and setting categories side by side; 9 they collect and select, abridge and abbreviate, steal and sneak, and impose patterns and forms. Passing things on from mouth to ear, how can they investigate heart and mind? They rebel against wisdom and reject antiquity in order to come to an understanding with those in authority. Thus the teaching of today is an art of quick progress and shaky attainment, a scheme for seeking glory and getting advantage. Q: Are there only these two kinds of teachers? A: Not at all. In the Han dynasty there were teachers of the Classics, who prepared glosses and commentaries in order to pass on the accomplishment of a single school; some gentlemen hold them in esteem. Since the T’ang and Sung dynasties there have been teachers of

——— 8 9

師問, HTFC 33.9a (587; 雜:001). Note that this phrase occurred in Ho’s letter to Li Meng-yang.

488

CHAPTER ELEVEN

literary composition, who discriminate between forms, create and regulate structural patterns, take care over sounds and their harmony, explain diction and produce elegant compositions. They compare and discuss what is well done and what inferior, chewing things over and being charmed and delighted with eyes and ears. But a grown man is still ashamed to praise them. Thus the teachers of the Way and virtue are the highest; next come teachers of the classics, then teachers of literary composition, and then teachers of ‘career capital.’ But when teaching comes to ‘career capital,’ nothing could be worse than its shameful meanness. Q: Then can ‘career capital’ be done away with? A: How can it be done away with? This is the present system for selecting men for official service. It is a stage in promotion for employment. Q: Well, if this cannot be done away with, why do you call it mean and shameful? A: What I call mean and shameful is not the system that causes it to be so; it is the inferiority of those who teach ‘career capital.’ The teaching of the teachers of antiquity was the establishment of selfcontrol through honesty and shame and the preservation of equanimity through propriety and justice; it was not to value wealth and position or to be ashamed of poverty or humble station; not to cringe before authority or military force or to lose one’s purpose because of setbacks or hardships. Thus superiors were happy to find such men and employ them. Now it is such people that they do not want to find for employment! Since it leads to difficulties to seek people on the basis of personal appearance, one examines them on the basis of their words. Since one is evaluating them on the basis of their words, there is the examination system. 10 Is it likely that they will go contrary to their teachers’ doctrines? Students’ learning is thus taken to be the gateway to advantage. I have seen how in the present day people who seek a teacher for their sons and younger brothers, and the sons and younger brothers who wish to study, make inquiries and listen for news. If someone tells them, “He is a high official; previously he passed with a high mark, so his career capital must be excellent. Make him your teacher!” Then, although the teacher may be a thousand leagues away, they will follow him. But if the report is, “He has not held high office; nor has he yet

———

10 For Ho’s additional reflections on the shortcomings of the Ming examination system, this time contrasted with the old Han dynasty system of selecting officials on the basis of their personal virtue, see “Presented to Chang Te-ch’ung” 贈張德充, included in the ““Inner Chapters,” HTFC 31.17a (558; 內 :021). Ho’s idealistic characterisation of the ancient system seems not much troubled by its encouragement of nepotism and favouritism in practice. Chang Te-ch’ung is unidentified.

SHENSI

489

passed with a high mark, but in his tao and virtue he is worthy to be a teacher,” then, although he may live next door, they will not follow him. Now, mediums, doctors, musicians, craftsmen, and all the various sorts of artisans take teachers, for it is the method whereby they learn the skills with which they are to make a living. How could a gentleman choose a teacher in order to make a living? This is what I mean by their being mean and shameful. Q: If such is the case, what ought to be done? A: What is studied now as ‘career capital’ is in fact the words of the sages of antiquity. Let them follow these words and seek their tao and cultivate it within themselves without desiring anything beyond it. If they are successful, they will put it into practice; if they encounter difficulties they may at least preserve it. Were this teaching to flourish, who knows but what the teachers of today might not be the teachers of antiquity? The questioner then moved respectfully off of his mat and said, “Today I have received an explanation whereby to improve myself by taking a teacher!”

It is interesting that Ho does not refer specifically to the ‘eight-legged essay,’ which had become the standard format for the examinations by his day. But his insistence on study being undertaken for moral ends rather than professional or literary ones is typically Confucian, often encountered. 11 He faces the practical problem squarely, but with an interesting twist. Rather than reject the ‘worldly mechanism’ that the examinations represent, he accepts its underlying curriculum, the Classics, but urges that it be studied for its own sake, much as a modern opponent of nuclear power plants and high-energy technology might still encourage the study of nuclear physics as a way to a better understanding of physical reality. The appointment to Shensi represented an excellent opportunity to act on his convictions about education, and it appears that he undertook to do so vigorously. He drew up a series of detailed curricula and selected teaching materials with care. Ho also compiled

———

11 Among Ho’s contemporaries, his friend Ho T’ang, who served as a Education Intendant in Chekiang during the 1520’s, similarly urged his students to devote themselves to serious study, rather than merely seeking career shortcuts (see DMB, p.518). Wang T’ing-hsiang expressed views similar to Ho’s in the second of his “Replies to Inquiries” 策問, in which he deplores the current situation and insists that good conduct and knowledge of the Classics should be stressed, rather than literary composition; see Wang Shih Chia-ts’ang Chi (Chia-ching edition; repr. Taipei: Weiwen, 1976) 30.1b (1314), Wang T’ing-hsiang Chi (Peking: Chung-hua, 1989) 30.537.

490

CHAPTER ELEVEN

an anthology of old yüeh-fu poetry for the use of his students, as well as other materials that have not been preserved. 12 His course on ‘old prose’ is still extant, and forms an interesting commentary on the ideals expressed in the essay and on his experience in Shensi. Preface to the “Ancient Prose for the Curriculum” 13 When I first arrived in Kuan-chung, I prepared a curriculum and showed it to the students. Those who were already Cultivated Talents ( 秀才 hsiu-ts’ai) were to read in the Classics, philosophers, and historians as they pleased and not in any particular order, with neither a fixed sequence nor any limits. For those who were not yet Cultivated Talents, I ordered the school officials to supply them as necessary so as to teach and drill them. Things went on like this for two years, during which it was my constant hope that the students would profit by it. And yet it was uncommon for them to the understand the sequence of advance and withdrawal, and in paying visits some of them lost their way. They were as men wandering in distress only to return covered in sweat. Was this not my fault? Now I have laid everything out as a curriculum. It is to begin in the spring of the sixteenth year [of Cheng-te, 1521], with examinations each season. The Classics are to be read through each year. The

——— 12

Ku Yüeh-fu 古樂府 (copies in the libraries of Szechwan and Columbia Universities). For Ho’s statement of editorial principles for the collection (敘例 hsüli), see HTFC 34.12b (602; 序:508; text in YK not examined). Ho says that he compiled this work because he felt that an earlier anthology with the same title by one Tso [K’o-ming] 左克明 of the Yüan dynasty was insuffiently selective. Tso’s work is still extant and was included in the Ssu-k’u Ch’üan-shu, having been popular and frequently reprinted during the Ming dynasty. Wang Shang-chiung refers to Ho’s selection in a poem probably written in the fall of 1519 after receiving a letter from him (“Responding to Something Said in a Letter from Ta-fu” 答大復書中語, Ts’angku Ch’üan-chi (1758; repr. Ssu-k’u Wei-shou Shu Chi-k’an 5:18. Peking: Peking Ch’u-pan-she, 1997) 6.6b (349), TK 396. 13 學約古文序, HTFC 34.8b (599; 序:503). The table of contents is found in the Ta-fu Hsien-sheng Hsüeh-yüeh Ts’un-mu 大復先生學約存目, reprinted in the Lungt’an Ching-she Ts’ung-k’o on the basis of a copy of a Chia-ching edition (presumably the original) found in Japan. The Ho Ta-fu Hsien-sheng Hsüeh-yüeh Ku-wen 何大復先生學約古文 is extant in a variety of Ming editions, some of which contain only the essays not included in the Confucian Classics or other large and readily available collections. Others are of a recension prepared by one Yüeh Lun 岳倫. According to Yüeh’s preface, he printed the work, based on Ho’s curriculum but with some material added, in 1530 or 1531, after being inundated with requests from his students. His preface is reprinted by Liu Hai-han, together with two others and a colophon, all dated 1530-31, LHH 3.10b-13b. For a stimulating discussion of Sung dynasty analogues to Ho’s project, see Hilde de Weerdt, “Canon Formation and Examination Culture: The Construction of Guwen and Daoxue Traditions,” Journal of Sung and Yüan Studies 29 (1999): 91-133.

SHENSI

491

Philosophy, History, and other readings are to be read in succession, year after year. They are to complete their training in three years. Beyond their proper recitations, they are also to read some literary works by famous writers, the emphasis being on their getting a sense of the general significance without necessarily reading complete works. If they apply their minds to this, they will perceive the meaning and sequence of the ancients and both the nature of the warp and weft of this culture of ours and its evolution will be evident. The fundamental principles of things are without shape and conceal secrets; if speech is written down it travels far. From the admonitions of sages and wise men down to the works of all the other writers, these are all speech. They may have differing ways and distinct doctrines, but when their conclusions are gathered together around the primal pillar, they can be drawn on inexhaustibly. But when words are expressed as fundamental principles, these principles will be preserved in the mind; substance and application will show their subtleties to have the same origin and no discrepencies. Thus if one seeks within and acts as oneself, then one will be integral and accomplish something. If one gallops abroad and acts as others do, then one will be dispersed and all the more confused. Such are the distinction between public and private, the distinction between the sense of right and selfishness, and the tendencies of gentlemen and petty men. Now that I have put the texts in order, may the students henceforth chant the words with ther mouths, acquire the principles in their minds, and embody the content in their selves, selecting the good in them and putting it into practice. When their inner understanding is complete, they can seek to come to rest, unlikely to turn aside from the “broadening culture and restraining principles” teaching of the Confucians, 14 while they will surely seek the tradition of Mencius’s “going into detail so as to return to the essential.” 15 If by chance they acquire these by mouth and ear, but reject them in their persons and minds, they will multiply twigs and leaves while stripping the truck and root; not only failing to succeed but even being lost for certain in the end. Surely this will not be the fault of a student!

It is difficult to know how effective Ho’s attempts at reform actually were. Ch’iao Shih-ning, a disciple of his Shensi years, tells us that Ho’s efforts permanently transformed the attitudes of the Shensi elite, but this is recorded in a eulogistic work. More valuable is Ch’iao’s report of Ho’s own teaching, which differed at points from the traditional commentaries and stressed the need for critical comparison

——— 14 15

Lun-yü Yin-te 11/6/27, repeated at 23/12/15; Waley, p.121; Lau, pp.85, 115. Meng-tzu Yin-te 31/4B/15; Lau, p.130.

492

CHAPTER ELEVEN

and evaluation of old interpretations. Ch’iao reports also that Ho intended to prepare his own critical digest of all the existing commentaries, but this had not been done before he died. 16 Ho was also interested in studies that were not strictly classical. His students praised the detail with which he would explicate texts on astronomy, yin-yang theory, and calendar calculation. Among his skills was medicine. Ts’ui Hsien once presented an essay to a doctor named Kao who had successfully treated Chang Shih-lung on the recommendation of Ho and Meng Yang. 17 Ts’ui comments that Ho understood diagnosis by taking the pulse, and that T’ien Ju-tzu too was accomplished in prescribing medication. Unlike such contemporaries as Hsü Chen-ch’ing, Hsüeh Hui, and Wang Yangming, not to mention his unhappy friend Tai Ch’in, Ho seems not to have been interested in Taoism. Now that he was a provincial official, he began to take an interest in the compilation of local gazetteers. One of the few dated works from 1519 comes from the end of the year, and it is not a poem but rather a preface that Ho contributed to the gazetteer of Wu-kung 武功 that his old friend K’ang Hai had compiled, from which he evidently drew some pointed conclusions of his own: I see from Master K’ang’s book that the area [of Wu-kung] has gone from constricted to extensive, the population from sparse to numerous, taxes and corvée income from modest to remarkable, and wealth and expenditures from restrained to wasteful, this while property and production have gone from wealth to penury, agricultural productivity from plentiful to reduced, the character of the populace from strong to weak, public morality from reliable to flimsy, local administration from honest to corrupt, individual talent from solid to empty, and civic

———

16 We do not know much in detail about Ho’s classical scholarship. A late source, the Hsiang-tsu Pi-chi of the Ch’ing writer Wang Shih-chen (Taipei: Hsin-hsing, 1958) 4.77, cited in LHH 2.43b, quotes the prolific scholar and poet Yang Shen (1488-1559) to the effect that Ho had said that Sung dynasty men couldn’t even understand T’ang poetry, let alone the Book of Songs, for which it was better to rely on the Han scholars Mao [Ch’ang 毛萇] and Cheng [Hsüan 鄭玄]. This opinion anticipates the trend of classical scholarship in the centuries to come, but it was not entirely original with Ho. Wang Ao, the unhappy Grand Secretary of Liu Chin’s time and likely creator of the ‘eight-legged essay’, had also preferred Han commentaries to those of Sung; see DMB, p.1345. 17 “Preface Presented to Master Kao” 贈高生序, Ts’ui Shih Huan-tz’u (1554; repr. TM 4:56; Tainan, Chuang-yen Wen-hua, 1997) 2.33a (375); Huan-tz’u (SKCS) 1.18b (379).

SHENSI

493

instruction from active to inert. None of this is but a matter of abandoning the trunk and drifting to the branches, of turning away from the correct and rushing to the inferior. Alas, it is not just one county in this state! One can take this as an example applicable to the four quarters! 18

Ho’s comments in this preface on the value of such works suggest that he was thinking seriously about the uses of local history, and this in turn suggests that he either had already embarked on his project to compile a gazetteer for the whole of Shensi or was inspired to do so by K’ang’s example. In any event, he set his students and staff to work on a comprehensive gazetteer of Shensi, the Yung Ta-chi 雍大記 (Great Record of Yung). This was almost finished when he died, the sectional headings having been written by him. 19 THE SOUTHERN EXPEDITION As Chien Chin-sung has pointed out, Ho’s activities in Shensi were along different lines from those of Li Meng-yang in Kiangsi a few years earlier. Whereas Li had sought out places associated with such noted earlier residents of the region as T’ao Ch’ien and Chu Hsi,

———

18 “Preface to the Gazetteer of Wu-kung County” 武功縣志序, HTFC 34.9b (599; 序:701). The date, found in the gazetteer text but not in Ho’s works, was the fifth day of the twelfth month (December 26, 1519). Lü Nan also wrote a preface to the work; see Ching-yeh Hsien-sheng Wen-chi (1555; repr. TM 4:60-61, Tainan: Chuang-yen Wen-hua, 1997) 2.51b (533). For a study of K’ang Hai’s ethical approach to local history, see Mu Chia-ti 穆甲地 and Chang Shih-min 張世民, “Ts’ung Wu-kung Hsien Chih te Pien-tsuan Yi-lih T’an-chiu K’ang Hai te Fang-chih-hsüeh Ssu-hsiang” 從武功縣志的編纂義例探究康海的方志學思想 (Discovering K’ang Hai’s Ideas about Local Histories from the Editorial Principles of the Gazetteer of Wu-kung), Jen-wen Tsa-chih 1984.6:92-94, 91. For more examples of gazetteer compilers lamenting a decline in moral economy over the course of the Ming, see Timothy Brook, The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998), pp.139-52. 19 The headings from the Yung Ta-chi are included in LHH, 2.38a, and the preface, by Tuan Chiung (see below), is also reprinted in the same collection, LHH 3.9a-10b. The whole work was printed in 1522,the year after Ho died. There is a modern reprint in TM 2:184. Ma Li and others later compiled a new Comprehensive Gazetteer of Shensi, published in 1542. Note that Ho’s friend Han Pang-ching compiled a Chao-yi Hsien Chih 朝邑縣志 in 1519, and his disciple Ch’iao Shih-ning compiled a gazetteer of his native Yao-chou, the Yao-chou Chih 耀州志, many years later, in 1557. A gazetteer of Hu-hsien by Wang Chiu-ssu is apparently no longer extant. See K’ang Hai’s preface to it, Tui-shan Chi 3.5a (127), 10.16b (463), 34.4a (382).

494

CHAPTER ELEVEN

concerned himself with the founding of private academies, and allowed himself time to enjoy the scenery of the area, Ho Ching-ming threw himself into an energetic campaign to raise the cultural level of an entire province by supervising the renewal of ritual occasions, inspecting schools, preparing curricula, and examining students, to the extent that he can be said to have worked himself to death. 20 He made at least two trips south across the Ch’in-ling mountain range to the upper valley of the Han River, and we are told that he did not avoid— as had his predecessor in the post—travelling northwest to districts that were on the fringe of the nomad-inhabited steppes. 21 The first, in the spring of 1519, is sparsely documented indeed, and appears to have taken Ho first to the northwest, through Kao-ling 高陵 to Ch’ing-yang 慶陽, then west and south through Hui-chou 徽州 to Lüeh-yang 略陽. This trip is, however, suggested by only two sources, neither of which has anything to say about how Ho might have gone from Ch’ing-yang to Hui-chou or what he might have done along the way. 22 We have, for that matter, only the scantiest records of his

———

20 Chien Chin-sung, “Li-Ho Shih-lun Yen-chiu” (M.A. thesis, National Taiwan Unversity, 1980), pp.44-45. For a series of fu written by Li Meng-yang while he was visiting various natural sites in Kiangsi, see K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi (1530; repr. Taipei: Wei-wen, 1976) 2.5b-10a (36-45). 21 For Ho’s devotion to duty and his willingness to go to backward frontier areas in particular, see Fan P’eng, who quotes him as saying, on hearing that his predecessors had not visited the outlying districts, “But that is simply to abandon them!” These tours of inspection and examination are the more remarkable considering that the chances of students from outlying districts attaining great success in the civil service were extremely low. See Otto Berkelbach van der Sprenkel, “The Geographical Background of the Ming Civil Service,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 4 (1961), pp.302-36, especially 320-24. 22 K’ang Hai begins a poem, “Delighted by the Arrival of Ho Chung-mo [Chingming]” 喜仲默至, “In the second month in Kao-ling county / I encounter you setting out for Ch’ing-yang” 二月高陵縣、逢君發慶陽, Tui-shan Chi 10.14b (486), 4.11b (311), 10.3a (164), TK 394. Yao Hsüeh-hsien and Hsü Yang-shang are evidently unaware of the essay by Wang Chiu-ssu that narrates Ho’s excursions with Wang and K’ang in 1520 (see below), and so attempt to link the Kao-ling meeting to Ho’s trip in 1520. See their “Kuan-yü Ho Ching-ming Tu-hsüeh Shensi te Pu-cheng,” Yin-tu Hsüeh-k’an 1992.4:30-36, especially pp.31-32. Yao and Hsü also take the absence of any reference to Li Meng-yang during this visit to Ch’ing-yang as evidence that the two men remained estranged following their exchange of letters on poetics, which, following Fu Ying (see above, chapter nine), they assign to Ho’s years in Shensi, op. cit., pp.35-36. Ch’ing-yang was Li’s ancestral place, but he lived there only for a period in the 1490s when he was in mourning, and so there would have been no reason for Ho to mention him at the time of this visit. For the trip to Lüeh-yang via Hui-chou, see “A Record of the Moving and Building of the Shrine School at Lüeh-

SHENSI

495

literary, social, and political life in Sian during this year. This silence stands in almost welcome contrast to the commotion recorded elsewhere in the Empire. No sooner did Wu-tsung arrive back in the capital again from the frontier in the second month of 1519 than he began making plans for a ‘Southern Expedition’ to the Yangtse basin. His court officials outdid their previous efforts in attempting to dissuade him, to the extent that he eventually had no fewer than 107 of them bastinadoed so severely that eleven died of their wounds. 23 One of the surviving protesters was Ho’s friend Hsüeh Hui, who did not return home until the following year. Recalled to office not long after, he was finally dismissed for his participation in the Great Ritual Controversy. He returned home to live in retirement and pursue Taoist studies until his death eighteen years later. 24 On the eve of his departure, Wu-tsung came by an additional excuse for his trip, the need to conduct personally the campaign against a rebellious prince in Kiangsi. Prince Ning, the donor of the incendiary lanterns of 1513, had evidently been preparing to rebel for some years, having suborned several powerful people in the capital, including Lu Wan 陸完 , the Minister of War, who had served meritoriously in the suppression of the Liu bandits, and Ch’ien Ning, one of the most powerful imperial favourites of the period after the fall of Liu Chin (see above, chapter seven). Officials serving in Kiangsi had for years been warning of Prince Ning’s ambitions, but most of their reports had been either suppressed or smoothed over by the Prince’s agents in Peking. There is some reason to suppose that Wu-tsung had been encouraged to visit the south so that Ning could arrange his death away from the court and with Ning’s power base

———

yang County” 略陽縣遷建廟學記, HTFC 33.6b (584; 記:003). This essay was written later, in the summer of 1520. 23 Beating of officials at court was practised in other periods as well, but the Ming was notorious for the practice and the reigns of Wu-tsung and his successor Shihtsung especially so. See Ts’ao Kuo-ch’ing 曹國慶, “Ming-tai te T’ing-chang” 明代的廷杖 (Beating at Court in the Ming Dynasty), Shih-hsüeh Chi-k’an 1990.3:34-40. 24 Among the others beaten were Ho’s former student Tai Kuan and his friend Cheng Shan-fu. Cheng had only returned to office the preceding year. Although he asked to return home again, his request was granted only after a long delay. Cheng would be recalled to office early in the reign of the new Emperor, Shih-tsung, but died in 1523, while on his way to take up his new post. His works were published in the following year. It was only after Cheng’s death that Wang T’ing-hsiang, for whose poetry Cheng had expressed his admiration, learned of him. Evidently they had not met in 1505, the only time that both men were in the same place

496

CHAPTER ELEVEN

close at hand. In any event, an investigation of the Prince’s doings had finally been undertaken, and this had turned up enough incriminating material to back the issuing of a command summoning him to court. This forced Ning’s hand, and Kiangsi was soon in a state of civil war. Several local officials joined his uprising, whether motivated by ambition or by resentment of Wu-tsung’s misrule, or simply under duress. Others resisted, and several died, martyred for their loyalty to a most unlikely inspiration to such devotion. For all the years that had gone into its preparation, Ning’s rebellion lasted less than six weeks, the Prince himself being captured in the aftermath of a surprise dawn attack on his headquarters by forces organised by none other than the philosopher Wang Yang-ming. One of the heroes of the resistance to Prince Ning was Ho Chingming’s elder brother Ching-yang. He and the other civil officials of An-ch’ing, a crucial point on the Yangtse that Ning had to pass in order to reach Nanking, organised resistance to Ning’s army, prepared to withstand a seige, and battled day and night against the insurrection. Ning is supposed to have said, “If we cannot overcome An-ch’ing, what hope have we of taking Nanking!” 25 Although the occasion would seem to have passed, Wu-tsung was now more determined than ever to see the south and set out for Nanking late in the eighth month, ignoring the protests of numerous civil officials opposed to the trip. The ‘Southern Inspection’ proved to be the final and most elaborate example of the Wu-tsung mode, a mixture of futile muddle and bloodchilling rapacity. In the best style—presumably picked up from a dramatic adaptation of the “Song of Everlasting Sorrow,” Po Chü-yi’s famous narrative poem on the doomed passion of Hsüan-tsung, the Brilliant Emperor of T’ang, and his favourite, the Precious Consort Yang—Wu-tsung had agreed with ‘Mama Liu’ on a secret token by which she would know a genuine summons from him. Once on the road, however, he managed to mislay the token and so, when she refused to respond to his repeated summonses in its absence, he had to rush, with a small retinue, back to Peking himself to fetch her, this a full month after his setting forth. He then of course caught up with his ‘expedition’, which had not got that far from Peking anyway, and the whole circus resumed its stately

——— 25

Wu-tsung Shih-lu (Taipei: Chung-yang Yen-chiu-yüan, 1964) 176.7a (4319).

SHENSI

497

progress down the Grand Canal, hunting, fishing, drinking, and, above all, raping and ‘requisitioning’ its way, on the largest of scales, until it reached Nanking just at the end of the year, after four months of travel. Busy with his duties in a backward province, Ho was cut off from events at court and no longer had occasion for remonstrance or protest about them. 26 But he did add a final chapter to one old conflict from his Peking days. Liao Luan 廖鸞, younger brother of the Liao P’eng with whom Ho had clashed before, occupied a powerful position in Shensi. Members of his retinue was accustomed to take advantage of their master’s influence by refusing to dismount, as a customary sign of respect, when they encountered senior officials of the civil bureaucracy. For their part, the officials pretended not to notice, hoping to avoid trouble with Liao P’eng. Ho, however, with characteristic directness and self-righteousness, had the offenders seized and then beat them with his own whip, after which they are said to have become more circumspect. 27 AN EXCURSION IN THE HILLS Toward the end of the spring of 1520, Ho set off on another trip, this one much more fully documented in our sources. From these we can reconstruct in fair detail a tour of inspection and instruction that took Ho up the valley of the Wei as far as Pao-chi 寶雞, then south via Feng-hsien 鳳縣 to Han-chung, whence he descended the valley of the Han almost to the provincial border before turning northward and crossing the Ch’in-ling 秦嶺 Range back to Sian. His first stop was only a relatively short distance to the west, in Huhsien 鄠縣, where he visited his old friend Wang Chiu-ssu, as well as tending to official business. K’ang Hai and Wang Chiu-ssu were Ho’s two oldest friends in the area, and the ones with whom he had been closely associated earlier in Peking. They did not actually live in Sian, but in Wu-kung and Hu-hsien, about sixty and thirty miles to the west.

———

26 While there is no record of Ho’s having protested against the Emperor’s expedition himself, he does show that he was aware of the trip in one poem; see “Climbing the Tower: Written at Feng-hsien” 登樓鳳縣作, HTFC 22.12a (397; 452:015). 27 Ch’iao Shih-ning is the source for this.

498

CHAPTER ELEVEN

When Ho first arrived in Shensi in the spring of 1519, K’ang had come to meet him in Kao-ling, a county a dozen or so miles northeast of Sian. By this time, as K’ang remarks, they had been separated for ten years. 28 K’ang and Wang had, of course, been dismissed from the civil service in disgrace, and neither was ever to be employed by the government again. Living at home in retirement, they cultivated reputations for unconventionality and unworldliness, snubbing official visitors and spending much of their time composing lyric poetry and plays. There is, for example, the story (characteristically told by Li K’aihsien) of a visit paid K’ang by Yang T’ing-yi 楊廷儀, brother of Grand Secretary Yang T’ing-ho and thus an uncle of Yang Shen. The two men began drinking together, K’ang playing the p’i-pa and singing a newly composed song. When Yang offered to convey a request for reinstatement to his brother, K’ang became furious and came at him swinging his p’i-pa (an instrument much more solidly built than a Western guitar), shouting, “Do you take me for another Wang Wei, playing the musician and angling for a job with my p’ipa?” This ended the visit. 29 Since they are reported to have been so outspoken on the subject of the folly of official service, it is interesting to speculate on how they got on with their younger former colleague, still an earnestly serious academic and administrator with a possibly promising career in front of him. No strain is evident in the surviving evidence. 30 Quite the contrary, in fact. K’ang Hai in particular is, from our vantage point at least, almost the last person to see Ho alive and the first editor of his works. K’ang’s preface to the collection praises Ho’s ability as an

———

28 The date of Ho’s arrival in Shensi is given in his essay commemorating the rebuilding of a school in Lüeh-yang (see above). The date is also mentioned in K’ang’s welcoming poem (see above). 29 Li K’ai-hsien Ch’üan-chi (Peking: Wen-hua Yi-shu, 2004) 10.761, also Yin Shou-heng, Ming Shih Ch’ieh (Taipei: Hua-shih, 1978) 95.1a (2155). For Yang T’ingyi, (t. Cheng-fu 正夫), see MS 190.5039, HY 3/156, TL 702, TK 154. K’ang wrote a vehement letter breaking off relations with another man named Yang, Yang Pingchung 楊秉中, a fellow native of Wu-kung who had passed the chin-shih along with K’ang’s younger brother Hao 浩 in 1511, Tui-shan Chi 24.9a (276). He ends the letter by insisting that he not hear the sound of Yang’s footsteps again so long as he lives. 30 K’ang Hai had commented briefly on his view of his fate in the poem he sent in response to Ho, “Responding to a Missive from Ho Chung-mo [Ching-ming]” 答何仲默見寄, Tui-shan Chi 16.3a (206), TK 394; see above, chapter seven. He portrays himself as happily retired and well rid of the trials of public life.

SHENSI

499

official as well as his literary greatness. We are particularly fortunate to have a long essay by Wang Chiussu describing two excursions that Ho enjoyed at the beginning of his 1520 tour. Wang’s essay recounts the course of this outing and supplies a context for Ho’s poems written during it. Wang Chiu-ssu — Record of Touring the Hills 31 On the kui-ssu 癸巳 day of the third month, in the spring of the kengch’en 庚辰 year of the Cheng-te reign [March 23, 1520], Master Ho Chung-mo, the Mountain Dweller of Ta-fu, came to Hu[-hsien] to examine the scholars. 32 He arranged to join me in his leisure time on a tour of all the scenic places in the southern hills. On the ping-shen 丙申 day [March 26], we travelled twenty li south and arrived at Golden Peak Temple 金峰寺. There are hills behind the temple, and a spring emerges below them. It flows underground from the Buddha seat to the walled compound, where a brick shaft forms a well. From there it continues to flow underground until it reaches level ground outside the gate, where it forms a stream. At times, in order to water the flowers and trees inside the compound, the water is blocked off above the north opening of the well. The water is so transparent it reflects like a mirror. From the west side of the stream, we climbed the hill to the south until we reached an open wood part way up where we could set out our tables and mats. We sat down there and drank several goblets. Coming down out of the temple, we travelled perhaps half a li to the east and reached Hua-yang Shrine 化羊宮. To the east of it there is a creek. The Taoists have made a branch to flow to their kitchen. When they work, they take advantage of this to get water in their cauldrons. From the rear of the shrine, we went south across a little stream and climbed a hill. The top was flat and open, covering about an acre, with many junipers. It overlooked the stream on the east, a refreshing place.

———

31 See Wang Chiu-ssu, “Record of Touring the Hills” 遊山記, Mei-p’o Chi (repr. Taipei: Wei-wen, 1976) 10.7b (340). The occasions recorded took place in the late spring of 1520 and resulted in various poems, which the instigator of the tour, Chouchih Magistrate Wang Yang (see note below), subsequently had printed. Lü Nan wrote a preface to go with the poems, “Preface to the ‘Five Gentlemen Roaming the Hills’ Collection” 五子遊山集序, Ching-yeh Hsien-sheng Wen-chi 3.9b (539). An essay written by Chang Chih-tao about a similar excursion in 1523 harks back to Ho’s rambles in the mountains with his Sian friends; see Chang T’ai-wei Shih-chi, hou-chi (Chia-ching edition) 3.40a. 32 Ho’s poem “On Arriving in Hu I Send a Note to Wang Ching-fu [Chiu-ssu]” 至鄠簡王敬夫 records the occasion, mentioning that they had not met since the previous year; see HTFC 22.8b (391; 452:002). See above, chapter ten, for the expression ‘Mountain Dweller’.

500

CHAPTER ELEVEN

We sat down to drink and enjoyed ourselves greatly for a couple of hours. Ho wrote a poem. 33 Coming out of the shrine gate and looking to the north, we could just barely see Mt. Ts’o-o 嵯峨 and Mt. Chiu-tsung 九嵕 in the distance, as though linked by eyeliner. 34 We went about three li to the east and reached Ch’ung-yün 重雲寺 Temple, where we sat down facing south, with Kui-feng 圭峰 in front of us looking as though it were bowing with folded arms raised. We went seven li farther to the east and reached Ch’i-ch’an Temple 棲禪寺, the one known as ‘Thatched Hall’ 草堂. 35 In the days of the Later-Ch’in kingdom [384-417], Kumarajiva came from India before there was a temple here. He set up a thatched hall and translated sutras in it. Afterwards, the temple was established and present name chosen, but it is still commonly called ‘Thatched Hall Temple’. The temple’s foundation is broad and unwalled. The wall paintings in the front hall are very old, and in the southwest corner is the burial pagoda of Kumarajiva with a pavilion built over it. A great number of poems from earlier dynasties have been carved deeply into the wall. Chao Hsienhsien’s [Ping-wen] 趙秉文 is most esteemed by commentators on songs. 36 And Master Ming-tao’s [Ch’eng Hao] note to his poem refers to it. 37 The temple was in the middle of a bamboo grove that covered

———

33 Ho’s poem was his “Visiting Hua-yang Valley with Wang Ching-fu [Chiu-ssu], I Hear a Wonderful Song” 同敬夫遊至華陽谷聞歌妙曲, HTFC 22.8b (392; 452:003). By ignoring the context provided by Wang Chiu-ssu’s essay, Yao Hsüeh-hsien and Hsü Yang-shang confuse the background of this poem and some others written during the execursion. See Yao Hsüeh-hsien and Hsü Yang-shang, “Kuan-yü Ho Ching-ming Tu-hsüeh Shensi te Pu-cheng.” There is a variant in the name Hua-yang. In the Yung and Standard recensions. the text reads 華陽 ‘flowery solar-principle’; in the Shen recension, the reading is 化羊 ‘transformed goat’, a near homophone (the tone differs in the first syllable). Both names are attested in the area of Hu-hsien, a ‘flowery’ glen due south of the county town, (Ch’ien-lung) Sian Fu Chih 西安府志 (Gazetteer of Sian Prefecture) (1779; repr. Taipei: Ch’eng-wen, 1970), map, reprint pp.126-27, and a pond associated with a ‘goat’ village (Hua-yang li t’an 化羊里潭), ibid. 6.15b (332). The latter form is the one found in Wang Chiu-ssu’s essay. The (Min-kuo) Hu-hsien Chih 鄠縣志 (Gazetteer of Hu County) provides a history of the name, arguing that is it a corruption of an earlier form (1933; repr. Taipei: Taiwan Hsüeh-sheng, 1967) 1.15a (79). 34 These peaks lie across the Wei River about fifty miles from Hu-hsien. Ts’o-o (‘Jagged’) would have been to the left and Chiu-feng (‘Nine Peaks’) to the right. 35 For this temple, see Hu-hsien Chih 2.42a (175). It is still in existence and a pleasant place to visit, though its buildings are of fairly recent date and in 1993 were undergoing renovations (which visitors were unambiguously encouraged to help finance). 36 For Chao’s poem, “Thatched Hall” 草堂 , see Chao Ping-wen, Hsien-hsien Laojen Fu-shui Wen-chi 閑閑老人滏水文集 (Collected Works of the Idle Old Man of the River Fu) (SPTK) 9.117. 37 For Ch’eng Hao’s poem “Thatched Hall” 草堂, one of a set of twelve poems titles “Roaming the Hills of Hu-hsien” 遊鄠縣山, see Erh-Ch’eng Chi (Peking:

SHENSI

501

over two hundred acres, but the plants are all gone now. All that remains are four gingko trees behind the temple. They reach up to screen the sky and must be over one hundred years old. As dusk fell, Master Ho finished a poem and insisted that I match it. 38 But I am lazy and didn’t want to, so I finally just said, “You’d better write another one yourself!” and we had a good laugh. We went out the gate, beyond which the mountain tops were dark blue as though in a painting. In a dense grove to the southeast is the funerary pagoda of the T’ang Zen master Kui-feng 圭峰 . To the southwest, a few li up the canyon, is Tzu-ko Peak 紫閣峰, where there is a waterfall and a temple. It is an extraordinary sight. Master Ho had to go back to the county offices on official business before the drum sounded for the second night watch. The next day, tingyu 丁酉 [March 27], Master Ho travelled west to Chou-chih 盩厔 . . .

The following poem was written while Ho was in Chou-chih, a town several dozen miles west of Sian: 盩厔清明日客裏遙逢令節、城中不見繁華。南山漠漠烟遠、清渭迢迢日斜。獨樹桃花自發、高樓燕子誰家。可惜年年春色、催人白髮天涯。 At Chou-chih on the Grave-sweeping Festival Day 39 Journeying far from home, I meet the determined day; Within the town, no thriving beauty to be seen. The southern hills stretch off into the distant mist; The limpid Wei sweeps on and on in slanting sunlight. On a single tree, peach blossoms flower for themselves; To a tall pavilion, swallows come from someone’s house . . . How sad it is—year after year, the beauty of spring Hastening me on to a white head at the ends of the earth. Ho’s third couplet recalls the corresponding couplet in the second of Tu fu’s “Remembering my Younger Brother” 憶弟 poems, “In our old garden the blossoms flower for themselves; / On a spring day the birds

———

Chung-hua, 1981), p.474. A note to the poem says that the temple was located in the midst of a bamboo grove. 38 “Thatched Hall Temple” 草堂寺, HTFC 22.13b (399; 452:004). 39 HTFC 28.10a (505; 464:001-002). The word 日 ‘day’ is lacking from the title in the Yung recension. I follow the Standard recension in treating this poem as a single piece. The Yung, Shen, and Yüan recensions all have it divided into two quatrains. We know this is a mistake because we have a poem written a few days later by K’ang Hai in which he explicitly matches Ho’s rhymes in a single poem (the two ‘quatrains’ rhyme with each other). See “The View from P’u-yüan Hall: Matching Chung-mo [Ho Ching-ming]” 普緣冠眺次仲默, Tui-shan Chi 5.24b (329), 15.1b (197).

502

CHAPTER ELEVEN

are flying still” 故園花自發、春日鳥還飛. 40 The penultimate line is reminiscent of the last line of Ts’en Shen’s “On Climbing the Old Wall of Yeh” 登古鄴城, “Year after year, the beauty of spring—for whom does it come?” 年年春色為誰來. 41 That the coming of spring and a new year forces men to grow old is a common poetic trope. An example close to Ho’s comes in the final line of Tu Fu’s “Matching P’ei Ti’s ‘On Climbing the Eastern Pavilion at Shu-chou for a Farewell, I Encounter Early Plum Blossoms and Remember Someone Who Wrote to Me’” 和裴迪登蜀州東亭送客逢早梅相憶見寄 , “Morning and evening hastening me on as my head turns white” 朝夕催人自白頭. 42

Once Ho had completed his business, he, Wang, and four other men spent three days touring the sights of Chou-chih. Wang Chiu-ssu’s account continues: Four days later, Magistrate Wang Ming-shu [Yang] 王明叔 sent me a note inviting me to go on an outing to Lou-kuan 樓觀. 43 I declined, but ordered my carriage hitched after the fifth messenger arrived. This was on the jen-yin 壬寅 day [April 1], the full moon. When I arrived, the others were all there before me, having just come down from the Purple Cloud Pavilion 紫雲樓 . They welcomed me, candles in hand, and laughed, “Master Wang is too lackadaisical!” Master Chang Yung-chao [Ch’ien] 張用昭 had come from Hua-chou 華州, Master Tuan Tekuang [Chiung] 段德光 from Ch’ang-an 長安, and Master K’ang Tehan [Hai] 康德涵 from Wu-kung, while I, who lived nearby, was the last to arrive. 44 Most ridiculous! Master Ho and the rest accordingly

——— 40

Tu Shih Yin-te 306/25B/5-6, CTS 225.2416, K.11034. Ts’en Chia-chou Shih 2.19b; CTS 199.2061; K.09632; Ts’en Shen Shih-chi Pien-nien Chien-chu, p.40. 42 Tu Shih Yin-te 352/36/8, CTS 226.2437, K.11133. 43 For Wang Yang, of whom very little is known, see TK 167. Wang had been in Peking for the 1517 Audit, and Ho had met him then (see above, chapter ten). Loukuan is a very old site at the base of the Ch’in-ling Range. Tradition holds that when Lao-tzu was leaving China to visit the Western barbarians, he stopped at Lou-kuan, where he wrote out the Tao-te Ching at the request of the officer in charge of the frontier crossing. It is now an active Taoist temple as well as a pleasant tourist destination adjacent to a wildlife sanctuary. 44 Chang Ch’ien (1472-1526; t. Yung-chao 用昭, h. Tung-ku 東谷) was a poet and official. As a child and young man, his talents had been recognised by Li Tung-yang and Yang Yi-ch’ing; see KHL 95.23a (4154—Wang Chiu-ssu), TL 549, HY 3/80, TK 138. See above, chapter five, for Li K’ai-hsien’s claim that Chang was among those who wrote to K’ang Hai in 1508, urging him to come to the aid of Li Meng-yang. For Tuan Chiung (t. Te-kuang 德光 , h. Ho-pin 河濱 ), who had written one of the memorial texts for Li Meng-yang’s father, see TK 156. Tuan had been, like Wang Chiu-ssu and K’ang Hai, disgraced after the fall of Liu Chin. His reputed misdeeds included ingratiating himself with Liu Chin by denouncing Chiao Fang once Chiao was no longer useful to Liu. Note that while it is clear that Tuan 段 is the proper 41

SHENSI

503

raised their cups and made me drink forfeits until I was quite drunk. Master Wang Ming-shu invited us into the abbot’s quarters for a meal. When we had finished eating, we went hand in hand to the Hall of Laotzu, spread out mats on the terrace, and sat drinking in the moonlight. When we were done, we got up again and went into the abbot’s quarters and sat in a ring. Master Ho lay down on a couch. Then Master K’ang strummed his phoenix guitar and sang a song I had written on a Yüeh tune, very expressive. The others beat time and sighed in admiration. When he had finished, we went on drinking where we were sitting. Master Ho said, “We must have some poems,” and so he wrote one first. The others all matched it, but I alone was unable to, so I wrote a poem on my own. K’ang and Chang each presented me with a poem. When the poems were done, it was the fourth watch, so we went to sleep. The next day, kui-mao 癸卯 [April 2], Wang Ming-shu climbed the Purple Cloud Pavilion with me. The pavilion is two stories high and upstairs there is an image of the Jade Emperor with a plain grey wall behind him to the north. On the south side there are landscape and figure paintings. They are all outstanding works, not by contemporary artists. Leaning on the railing, one can see a thousand li in a glance. Ho and Tuan both wrote poems . . .

The following is one of Ho’s poems on this site: 登樓觀閣時王令明叔邀張用昭叚德光王敬夫康德涵四子同遊峻閣含風落照孤、憑高千里視平蕪。鳳笙錦曲春縹渺、瑤草金光晝有無。採藥幾時尋碧海、種桃無復問玄都。五陵冠劍豪遊地、猶是長安舊酒徒。 On Climbing the Lou-kuan Pavilion—Magistrate Wang Ming-shu [Yang] had Invited Chang Yung-chao [Ch’ien], Tuan Te-kuang [Chiung], Wang Ching-fu [Chiu-ssu], and K’ang Te-han [Hai] to Accompany Us (second of two poems) 45 A towering pavilion harbours the wind, alone in the glow of sunset; On account of its height, for a thousand leagues we gaze over level herbiage. Phoenix pipes and songs in brocade, faint and distant in springtime; Precious plants in golden gleams, here and there in daylight. Gathering herbs, for just a moment we visit the Sea of Jade, Planting peach trees, do not inquire again after Mystic Metropolis. Wu-ling is a land of roaming bravos wearing caps and swords; And still they are my former drinking companions in Ch’ang-an.

———

surname here, editions of Ho’s works generally write it as ‘Chia’ 叚. 45 HTFC 27.13b (486; 472:002).

504

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The final line recalls the last couplet in Wei Ying-wu’s “Ballad of the Wine Shop” 酒肆行, “The drinking companions of Ch’ang-an riot and rampage for nothing; / Those going by on the roadside never notice” 長安酒徒空擾擾、路旁過去那得知. 46

K’ang Hai wrote poems matching the rhymes of both of Ho’s. 47 The ‘song in brocade’ that Ho has in mind is probably the palindrome that Su Hui wove in brocade to send to her absent husband, who had taken a new wife (see above, chapter four). 48 Liu Yü-hsi 劉禹錫 refers to the incident of a Taoist planting peach trees at the Mystic Metropolis Temple in Ch’ang-an. 49 Wu-ling (‘Five Tombs’) was an old name for the region around Sian. Wang Chiu-ssu continues: After we came back down, we joined the others in viewing the cedar tree where Lao-tzu tethered his ox. Underneath the tree there lies a stone ox. We then travelled four or five li to the south and arrived at the Explicating the Classic Terrace 說經臺. 50 We climbed up, winding around. There is a hall at the very top. Between three pillars are statues of Lao-tzu and Yin Hsi 尹喜. 51 On the four walls are painted rulers, officials, and recluses of former dynasties who had praised the Tao-te Ching. Inside the gate there is an old cedar. Legend has it that it died, but then came back to life after Tan [Lao-tzu] treated it by acupuncture, but this is foolish and unbelievable. Master Ho wrote the names and native places of us all and the date of our visit on the stele in front of the hall. We then sat down to drink on the veranda of the inner hall, and everyone wrote a poem. 52 Wang Ming-shu then suggested that we go on west to Transcendant Roaming Temple 仙遊寺. At this, we came down from the terrace, turned, and proceded to the west. When we had gone a few li, we saw a solid pagoda towering on the mountainside. On inquiring, we learned

——— 46

Wei Ying-wu Chi Chiao-chu (Shanghai: Shanghai Ku-chi, 1998) 9.548. Lou-kuan” 樓觀, Tui-shan Chi 10.24a (505), 6.10b (334), 15.9a (201). See the commentary to Chiang Yen’s “Rhapsody on Parting” 別賦, WH 16.30a (223) and Knechtges’s translation, 3:206. 49 CTS 365.4116; K.19269; Liu Yü-hsi Shih Pien-nien Chiao-chu (Harbin: Heilungkiang Jen-min, 2005) 4.449. 50 The name refers to a terrace where Lao-tzu was supposed to have expounded the Tao-te Ching before leaving China for the western regions. The name is sometimes given as “Conferring the Classic” (授經 shou ching). It was located at “Lou-kuan; see (Wan-li) Shensi T’ung-chih 陜西通志 (Comprehensive Gazetteer of Shensi) 19.13b; Sian Fu Chih 61.4a (3047). 51 Yin Hsi was the officer to whom Lao-tzu gave the Tao-te Ching (see above). 52 For Ho’s poem, “The Terrace for Explaining the Classic” 說經臺, see HTFC 22.13b (399; 452:005). 47 48

SHENSI

505

that it was the funerary pagoda of the T’ang dynasty monk Yi-hsing 一行. After a few more li, we visited Master K’ang’s P’eng-lu 彭麓 Villa, and Master Ho wrote a poem. 53 We continued westward several li and then turned south. The road was very steep, with the mountain face on the east and the Black River 黑水 on the west; to look down was enough to make your hair stand on end. After we had gone a li or so, the weather turned quite dark, and I lost track of the others. The trail got steeper and steeper, until it was impassable for a sedan chair. I went on, carried between two servants. 54 After several li, we turned west again and crossed a stream over a very precarious bridge. After another li or so, we reached the temple. The sign board reads “P’u-yüan” 普緣. It is said that long ago there were wandering immortals here, and so the name is commonly applied to the temple. There are mountains on all four sides of the temple, with the Black River flowing past the gate. This is the inner precinct. By this time, Master Ho had arrived first, and before too long the others arrived one by one. We then had a round of drinks to commiserate one another for our toil. We then walked around the temple in the moonlight. At midnight, we went to sleep. The next day, chia-ch’en 甲辰 [April 3], we climbed to P’i-lu Hall 毗盧閣 and after that went to see the stone pagoda in front of the hall. In a space beneath the pagoda there was a carving of an ailing Buddha lying on his side and dying, with arhats and physicians weeping and wailing and praying, most expressive. Master K’ang joked, “So even the Buddha is at risk!” and we all laughed. We then left through the gate. To the west of the gate there are two stone pagodas close to the water. On it is cut a Wu Tao-tzu 吳道子 drawing of various Buddhas, with a title inscribed by Su Tung-p’o [Shih]. From the hill on the north bank, a stream falls down to the Black River, making a noise as it does so. There is a stone grotto beside it where Ma Jung 馬融 (79-166) lived during the Later Han dynasty. Master Ho wanted to have an archery match and set up a target. He scored three hits in three shots, whereupon I and the others declined to compete. After this, we went into the monks’ quarters and sat down to a meal. Each of us wrote a poem. 55

———

53 For Ho’s poem, “Visiting the P’eng-lu Country Estate of K’ang Te-han [Hai]” 過康子德涵彭麓別業, see HTFC 22.8b (392; 452:006). K’ang Hai wrote a poem here too, see “A Poem of P’eng-lu, to Match Those by Intendant Pai-p’o [Ho Chingming] and the Other Gentlemen Who Came to Visit” 彭麓詩和白坡提學與諸公見過之作, Tui-shan Chi 10.14b (486), 4.12a (312), 10.3b (164), TK 394. 54 Let those who imagine unworldly Chinese poets rambling amid mountain peaks in solitude take note! 55 Ho wrote two extant poems at “P’u-yüan, “At P’u-yüan Temple: the Study Grotto of Ma Jung” 普緣寺有馬融讀書洞, HTFC 22.11b (397; 452:007), and “The P’u-yüan Pagoda” 普緣塔, HTFC 22.14a (400; 452:008). The poem that K’ang Hai wrote here is the one that matches the rhymes (and metre) of Ho’s Chou-chih poem

506

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Then Master Ho said, “What a shame! Beautiful places do not remain; fine occasions are easily missed; good friends are hard to get together; and pleasant events are rarely encountered. On this excursion we have had all four at once. Hasn’t it been perfect? All the same, to the east we visited Thatched Hall, and I disparaged Kumarajiva’s promotion of Buddhism; to the west we climbed to the Explicating the Classic Terrace, and I was displeased by Lao-tzu’s nurturing of his Tao. The two of them, as patriarchs of their two schools, were offenders against Confucius. Their bones have decayed and changed to ashes and dust, blown away by a whirlwind. Is this not a moving thing? We must have a record of this. Master Mei-p’o [Wang Chiu-ssu] is eldest and should do it within the day.” I bowed to the others and said, “Well, maybe we should be getting back now.” They all laughed, “Master Wang is getting lackadaisical again!” We then took our leave of one another and departed. Ming-shu has now sent someone for the preface, which he is going to have cut on printing blocks along with the poems. Winter, ting-wei 丁未 day of the tenth month [December 2], recorded by Wang Chiu-ssu, the Mountain Dweller of Mei-p’o.

It is clear, though only implicit, that Ho Ching-ming was the guest of honour in this excursion. It is he who initiates most of the activities and calls for the recording of the outing. This reflects recognition not so much of his talents as of his official position. Wang Chiu-ssu’s endearing willingness to portray himself as the buffoon may have some of the truth about it, but he is, after all, the one entrusted to tell the tale, and by Ho himself. THE ARCHERY RITE After the excursion with his friends, Ho continued his tour of southern Shensi. It is clear from an essay written en route that his trip was official in nature. As Education Intendant, he was inspecting conditions in local schools. At the same time, however, he was clearly intending to miss nothing of scenic beauty or historical significance that lay along the way. Ho’s route took him westward first, along the south side of the Wei River valley, within sight of Mt. T’ai-pai 太白, 56 then up onto the

———

(see above). 56 “A Song of Mt. T’ai-pai” 太白山歌, HTFC 14.21b (216; 471:001). Mt. T’ai-pai

SHENSI

507

Five Yard Plateau 五丈原, where he visited a shrine dedicated to Chuko Liang. 57 At P’an-hsi 磻溪, a little farther to the west, where King Wen 文王 was supposed to have discovered his chief advisor Lü Shang 呂尚 while the latter was fishing, Ho commented in a poem written there: 獨令千載下、懷古意無窮。 All this makes me, a thousand years on, Feel how inexhaustible is the meaning of cherishing antiquity. 58

P’an-hsi lies not far from the town of Pao-chi, to whose evocation Ho spared a mere quatrain. 寶鷄縣鷄鳴山下古陳倉、板屋千家清渭傍。曲岸迢遙凌秀麥、流渠宛轉入垂楊。 Pao-chi County 59 A cock crows at the base of the hills: old Ch’en-ts’ang town, The planked roofs of a thousand houses beside the limpid Wei. Curving banks far in the distance across the ripening grain, A flowing canal meanders its way into the weeping willows . . .

Ch’en-ts’ang was an old city slightly to the east of Pao-chi, whence Ho continued on his way up into the mountains that separate Shensi and Szechwan. The details of Ho’s route are not entirely clear, but it

———

is the highest peak in the Ch’in-ling range, located to the southeast of Mei-hsien 郿縣, which in turn lies between Chou-chih and Pao-chi; see (Wan-li) Shensi T’ung-chih 6.7a; (Ch’ien-lung) Feng-hsiang Fu Chih 鳳翔府志 (Gazetteer of Feng-hsiang Prefecture) (1766; repr. Taipei: Ch’eng-wen, 1970) 1.25b (39). Ho’s poem does not suggest that he climbed the mountain; it is simply an evocation of the peak’s reputation and appearance. The latter was quite striking, as the mountain had a permanent snow cap and was often wreathed in clouds, which residents of the region likened to a waterfall. 57 “Climbing Up to Five Yard Plateau and Paying a Call at the Shrine to the Martial Marquis” 登五丈原謁武侯廟, HTFC 22.11b (396; 452:009). After the death of Liu Pei (see below, chapter twelve), Chu-ko Liang spent the last years of his life in an unsuccessful attempt to preserve the kingdom that Liu had founded. Starting in 228, he launched continual campaigns against the Wei valley from his base in Han-chung. The last of these ended with his death from natural causes while at his camp at Five Yard Plain. For an account of Chu-ko Liang, with particular reference to his final years, see John Killigrew, “Zhuge Liang [Chu-ko Liang] and the Northern Campaign of 228-234,” Early Medieval China 5 (1999): 55-91. 58 “P’an-hsi” 磻溪, HTFC 22.14a (400; 452:010). 59 HTFC 29.14a (524; 474:001).

508

CHAPTER ELEVEN

appears that he continued on the Szechwan road as far as Feng-hsien and then crossed the divide to Han-chung from there, by way of Wukuan 武關. 60 A good deal of this route lay through spectacular but difficult country, a mountain district whose routes would be described even in gazetteers compiled centuries later as very dangerous in summer and autumn, when the water was high, or as narrow tracks suited only for foot travel. 61 At one point, still fairly early in his trip, he ends a poem by exclaiming, 平生四方志、回首欲求安。 All my life I have intended to roam the four quarters; Looking back, I wish I had sought for security. 62

All the same, Ho made a point of celebrating what he found in these wild tracts: 姜子嶺至三岔出嶺上雲霓、入谿下烟嵐。高高不可極、杳杳遽能探。朱崖秀夏木、石壁映寒潭。千林覽葱蒨、百丈窺澄涵。崩奔谷響赴、隱曜川光含。登陟力不辭、險阻情已諳。潛淵羨垂綸、越巘思停驂。振策岷峨西、揚帆江漢南。臨深匪忘懼、履坦但懷慙。

——— 60

For poems written along the way, see “Yi-men” 益門, HTFC 22.14b (401; 452:012); “At East River on the Last Day of the Third Month” 東河三月晦日, HTFC 22.12b (398; 452:013); “Clearing in the Morning at the Green Peaks Hall” 青峰閣曉霽, HTFC 22.12b (398; 452:014); “Feng-hsien” 鳳縣, HTFC 28.9b (505; 454:001); “On Climbing the Tower at Feng-hsien” 登樓鳳縣作, HTFC 22.12a (397; 452:015); “At Thatch Inn: Travelling in the Rain” 草店雨行, HTFC 22.12b (398; 452:016), “Kao-ch’iao” 高橋, HTFC 10.14a (137; 451:001); “Ch’ai-kuan” 柴關, HTFC 22.14b (401; 452:018); “Hsin-k’ai Range” 新開嶺, HTFC 22.14b (401; 452:017); “Wu-kuan” 武關, HTFC 22.15a (402; 452:019); “Songs of Han-chung” 漢中歌, HTFC 22.14b (525; 474:002-003). Some of these are cited below. There is a case to be made for reading these poems in the reverse order, from Han-chung to Pao-chi, or even for dividing them among outward and return trips along the same route. The poem written at Wu-kuan, in particular, is subject to more than one interpretation so far as the direction of Ho’s travel is concerned (see below). Moreover, although it is clear that Ho visited Chin-chou after his tour of Hu-hsien and Chou-chih sites with Wang Chiussu and his friends, there are no works that clearly refer to any route across the mountains other than the one through Feng-hsien to and from Han-chung. I assume a trip north back across the Ch’in-ling to Sian, perhaps by way of Chan-an 鎮安, but the matter is by no means settled. 61 The northern slope of the Chin-ling Range is particularly precipitous. The modern rail line avoids it entirely by following a cork-screw shaped tunnel inside the mountain face, while the road snakes its way by switchbacks up through landscape worthy of Ansel Adams. 62 “At East River on the Last Day of the Third Month” 東河三月晦日, HTFC 22.12b (398; 452:013).

SHENSI

509

From the Chiang-tzu Range I Reach San-ch’a 63 Beyond the ranges, I climb up clouds and rainbows, Into the canyons, descend through mist and fog. Higher and higher, their end unattainable, So deep and dark that none could ever explore them. Crimson banks abloom with summer trees, Stony cliffs reflected in frigid pools . . . A thousand groves I behold lush and green, For a hundred yards peer into limpid depths. Rumbling and rushing, the valley echoes roll; Screened from daylight, the river’s glow is dimmed. From climbing and crossing, my strength does not give out; In danger and hardship, my heart is already versed. By a hidden pool I envy a dangling line, Beneath a precipice, long to halt my mount. I have brandished my staff to the west of the Min and the O, Hoisted my sail to the south of Yangtse and Han. At the brink of the gulf I do not forget my fear, But treading the level, I only feel ashamed. The opening of Ho’s poem, especially the second couplet, has much in common with one of Ts’ao Chih’s “Miscellaneous Poems,” also on the theme of a perilous journey over high country. Note in particular this passage toward the middle of Ts’ao’s poem, “Why is it that a whirlwind arises, / Blowing me into the midst of the clouds? / Higher and higher, up without a limit, / How can the roads of heaven be exhausted?” 何意

———

63 HTFC 10.14b (138; 451:002). The place names in this poem present some difficulties. The Chiang-tzu Range could be Chiang Wei Ridge 姜維嶺, named after one of Chu-ko Liang’s generals. The name San-ch’a, which means a place where two streams join to form one, is naturally a common one, rather like ‘clearwater’ in the North American West. There is one San-ch’a in southeastern Kansu and another in southeastern Shensi, both within the area for which Ho was officially responsible and the latter along the route from Chin-chou to Chen-an. A trip by bus from Han-chung to Pao-chi in December, 1993, along a route close to that followed by Ho, passed a road sign indicating that a ‘San-ch’a’ lies just east of this road north of Wu-kuan Pass (see next poem). This is presumably the place to which Ho’s poem refers. Fu K’aip’ei chose the San-ch’a in southeastern Shensi, but this is implausible given the rest of Ho’s route as I reconstruct it. In the tenth line, I follow the Shen, Yüan, and Standard recensions in reading 含 ‘dimmed’ (more literally ‘contained’, restrained’) rather than 寒 ‘cold, wintry’ as in the Yung recension.The Yung reading, though making easier sense (and rhyming with the other rhyme words according to contemporary pronunciation) does not rhyme according to the standard followed in the rest of the poem. I also reject the reading of the Yung recension in the penultimate line, where it has “grieve at fear and fright” 悲恐懼 in place of “it is not forgetting fear” 匪忘懼. The two versions could readily be confused reading from a handwritten text.

510

CHAPTER ELEVEN

迴飆舉、吹我入雲中。高高上無極、天路安可窮. 64 Ho’s third couplet is reminiscent of one in one of Chiang Yen’s thirty poems imitating earlier poets, in this case one on “Roaming the Hills” 遊山in the style of Hsieh Ling-yün, “Grottoes and groves are wrapped in morning cloudwrack; / Stony cliffs reflect the early light”洞林帶晨霞、石壁映初晢. 65 The Yangtze and Han Rivers were regarded as the southern extremes of civilization in ancient times. See the Songs, “Amply flowing are the Chiang and Han; They are the leading threads of the southern states”滔滔江漢、南國之紀. 66 Ho’s final couplet has its origins in two of the oldest of the Classics. The first of its lines draws on the “Hsiao Min” 小旻 poem in the Songs, “In fear and trembling, / With caution and care, / As though on the brink of a chasm, / As though treading thin ice”戰戰競競、如臨深淵、如履薄冰, 67 the second on the interpretation of the tenth hexagram in the Changes, “The path to tread on is level and smooth”履道坦坦. 68 Ho was not the first writer to evoke the passage from the Songs. P’an Yüeh writes, in his “Rhapsody on a Westward Journey,” “I trembled with fear, quaked with dread, / As if on the brink of an abyss, as if treading thin ice”心戰懼以競悚、如臨深而履薄. 69

The Min and O are rivers in Szechwan. The penultimate couplet evidently refers both to Ho’s tour of what is now southeastern Kansu in the preceding year and his early trip to Yunnan. Above and to the south of San-ch’a lies Wu-kuan 武關 , the ‘Martial Barrier’, the pass that divides the area around Feng-hsien from the valley leading down through Liu-pa 留壩 to Han-chung and the valleyof the Han River. 武關北轉趨劉垻、西盤出武關。微茫一線路、迴合萬重山。天地幾龍戰、風雲惟鳥還。關門鏁溪水、日夜送潺湲。

——— 64

WH 26.15b (404); Lu Ch’in-li, p.456; Ts’ao Tzu-chien Chi (SPTK) 5.3b (20). WH 31.24a (440); Lu Ch’in-li, p.1577; Chiang Wen-t’ung Chi 4.11a (32). On the basis of Lu’s apparatus, I adopt the reading ‘grotto’ 洞 from Chiang’s collected works in place of ‘Pawlonia’ 桐, found in the Wen Hsüan. 66 Mao Shih Yin-te 49/204/6; Karlgren, p.156; Waley, p.138. I give Karlgren’s translation, slightly modified. 67 Mao Shih Yin-te 45/195/6; Karlgren, p.143; not translated in Waley. This passage is quoted in the Analects, Lun-yü Yin-te 14/8/3; Waley, p.133; Lau, p.92. I quote Waley’s translation. 68 Chou Yi Yin-te 8/10/ 二 ; I adopt the translation by Lynn, p.201; cf. Wilhelm/Baynes, p.46, “Treading a smooth, level course.” 69 WH 10.3a (131); I quote the translation in Knechtges 2:185. 65

SHENSI

511

Wu-kuan Barrier 70 Turning north in haste to the Ramparts of Liu, Wheeling west, emerging through Wu-kuan Barrier. Faint and uncertain, a single thread-like road, Circling and merging with ten thousand tiers of hills. Between heaven and earth—how many dragon battles; Through wind and clouds—only the birds return. The barrier gate locks in a valley stream; Day and night it sees off the rushing and pouring. The sixth line recalls one in Hsieh T’iao’s “Sent Temporarily to Hsia-tu, I Set Out at Night from Hsin-lin and Reach the Capital: Sent to my Collegues in the Western Office” 暫使下都夜發新林至京邑贈西府同

———

70 HTFC 22.15a (402; 452:019). There is a well known pass named Wu-kuan lying between Shang-nan 商南 (see below, chapter twelve) and Shang-chou 商州, a county on the south side of the Ch’in-ling Range along the route leading southeast from Lant’ien to Honan; see (Ch’ien-lung Chih-li) Shang-chou Chih 商州志 (Gazetteer of Shang Sub-Prefecture) 5.1a. The pass, the site of a battle fought by Liu Pang, was fortified in response to the attacks of bandits from Szechwan in 1510; see the account by Nan T’ang, the Administration Commissioner of Honan to whom Ho had appealed in 1508, included in the (Min-kuo) Shang-nan Hsien Chih 商南縣志 (Gazetteer of Shang-nan County) (1919; repr. Taipei: Ch’eng-wen, 1976) 11.6b (510). If this identification of Wu-kuan were adopted, this poem would have to come later in the tour, as Ho was returning to Sian. The Shang-chou gazetteer does include Ho’s poem in its collection of poetry written about the county, Shang-chou Chih 13.40a. There is, however, another possibility, a less well-known Wu-kuan Pass that lay on the route between Han-chung and Feng-hsien, on the other side of Liu-pa from Ch’aikuan, but not far from Hsin-k’ai-ling. Ho wrote poems on both these places, and both Wu-kuan and Ch’ai-kuan are listed in the (Chia-ch’ing) Han-chung Fu Chih 漢中府志 (Gazetteer of Han-chung Prefecture) 1.39b, which also includes a poem on Wukuan, though without mentioning Ho. A guard post was located at this Wu-kuan, though perhaps not until after Ho’s day; see the Han-chung Fu Chi 10.28b (538); (Tao-kuang) Liu-pa T’ing Chih 留壩廰志 (Gazetteer of Liu-pa Sub-Prefecture) (1842; repr. Taipei: Ch’eng-wen, 1969) 1.6b-7a (26-27). The gazetteers of Han-chung Prefecture, 29.5ab (1859-60) and Liu-pa Sub-Prefecture, Liu-pa T’ing Chih, Tsucheng 2.1a (357) also include this poem by Ho, but with an intriguing variant reading. In place of the surname Liu 劉 (the imperial surname of the Han dynasty, which Chuko Liang had been trying to restore), the gazetteers have a homophone 留 ‘to retain’, which turns ‘the ramparts of Liu’ into ‘retaining ramparts’. Since the latter was clearly the name of the place in the late Ch’ing, the nature of the variation is unclear. The first couplet of Ho’s poem fits this location very well, since the road in question led north at first, and only swung to the west beyond Wu-kuan, although the couplet suggests the return route more than that toward Han-chung. The ‘retain’ variant does not occur in any recension of Ho’s works, but there are two other significant variants, both of them dividing the Yung recension from the others. In the second line, the Yung recension reads 行 ‘travel’ in place of 盤 ‘wheel’; in line six, the variant is 江山 ‘rivers and mountains’ in place of 風雲 ‘wind and clouds’. Both readings are quite possible, and may indeed be authorial, but I follow the majority of recensions here.

512

CHAPTER ELEVEN

僚, “Through wind and clouds there is a road for birds” 風雲有鳥路. 71 Ho’s entire final couplet is a reworking of a latter half of a quatrain by the T’ang poet Li She 李涉, “Staying Overnight Again at Wu-kuan” 再宿武關, “The barrier gate does not lock in the waters of the wintry stream, / All night long its rushing and pouring sees of a sojourner’s sorrow” 關門不鎖寒溪水、一夜潺湲送客愁. 72

Like the poem on the shrine to Liu Pei 劉備, to be discussed in the next chapter, this is a ‘historical poem’ in the Tu Fu manner. Thus it is not a poem about historical process, but rather a meditation on the significance of a historic site. Most of the poem is simply but vigorously descriptive, with an energy that belies the conventional reflection implied by the final couplet—the heroes associated with the site are long dead, but the stream still flows. From Han-chung, Ho proceeded down the Han River to Chin-chou 金州, where his enthusiasm for the renewal of old values showed itself in yet another form. He describes the event himself: In examining schools in Han-chung, I reached Chin-chou, where I assembled the teachers and students of four counties, including Han-yin 漢陰, P’ing-li 平利, and Tzu-yang 紫陽, in order to practise archery there. 73 When I asked them about the ritual, they did not know about it. I then had the school officials quickly prepare the ceremonial texts, which I explicated slightly, discarding some and reviving others, assembling those that could actually be practised in present circumstances. I had previously assigned Judge Fan Shen 范紳 to supervise practice in the fields east of the city walls, 74 and I then went with Vice-Commissioner Lü K’o-chung 呂克中 [Ho] 和 to watch. 75 He

——— 71

WH 26.9b (358); Lu Ch’in-li, p.1426; Hsieh Hsüan-ch’eng Shih-chi (SPTK) 3.1b (16). 72 CTS 477.5434; K.25423. Note that this poem refers explicitly to Shang-chou. 73 These three counties were adjacent to Chin-chou. 74 Very little is known of Fan Shen. A native of Hsü-yi 盱眙 in Anhwei, he had passed the chin-shih in 1517 and been appointed a Judge in Han-chung earlier in 1520. See TK 175. The four counties referred to all pertained to Han-chung. It is likely that Fan was accompanying Ho on his tour of inspection. Although ‘Judge’ describes Fan’s responsibilities, the position was actually of low rank and not an unusual one for a first provincial appointment. 75 For Lü Ho (1459-1526; t. K’o-chung 克中, h. Chieh-chai 介齋), see TL 259, TK 122. He passed the chin-shih in 1499, the year Ho failed. He served in various posts both in Peking and in the provinces. He was, like Ho Ching-ming, a Vice-Commissioner, but his responsibility was regional, for the Han-chung area, rather than specialised, as Ho’s. He made a name for himself while in Han-chung for his efforts to repair city walls and set up schools, so Ho Ching-ming would have found him a kindred spirit. A few years later, the new Emperor recalled Ho’s friend Chang Shih-

SHENSI

513

said, “Since I have been in Han-chung, I have had the utensils repaired, but I haven’t studied the ritual.” He said to Fan Shen, “Display them all here.” I said, “The Speeches says, ‘When a rite has been lost, seek it in the countryside.’ 76 There are more ancient rites that have been lost and cannot be found than one can say! But some schools still practise the rite of the communal archery meeting. I have checked for it in the schools from Hu and Mei to Feng and Han, and not only has it not been heard of anywhere, the officials have even forgot the utensils. 77 If supervisory commissioners were to revive it and put it into practice wherever they went, there would be elderly men with streaked hair who would look on in astonishment from their shanties. Alas! The accomodation shown by the ancients in their hesitation in bowing and sitting, if this could be revived in communities and never missed for a day it would become something heard of the world over. How far indeed are contemporary customs from antiquity!” 78

This is the longest single passage in Ho’s account, amounting to about one quarter of the whole. The rest of the text consists of brief notes and quotations, in which one glimpses the peculiar piety with which ritual was invested. 79 One of these suggests the rationale behind the archery rite: Bow and arrow are implements of opposition. If the wise man uses them with bowing and yielding, how can there be further contention under heaven? As for archery, by forbidding excess and controling impatience, by keeping the steps in sequence and the tread harmonious, it is what unites a host of minds and lends continuity to affairs. If this were done throughout the world, administration would be set in order and acquiescence produced.

———

lung, and he was assigned to the same office that Lü Ho had held. Chang once again distinguished himself by putting down local bandits, before dying in office in 1525. 76 This quote is attributed to Confucius in the monograph on bibliography in Pan Ku’s Han Shu (Peking: Chung-hua, 1962) 30.1746. 77 That is, Hu-hsien, Mei-hsien, Feng-hsien, and Han-chung. 78 This is from the “Concise Preface and Procedures of the Communal Archery Rite” 鄉射禮直節序例, HTFC 34.13b (602; 序:509); it is also found as a separate work, titled Hsiang She Chih-chieh 鄉射直節, in Shuo-fu Hsü 說郛續 (Assemblage of Accounts, Continued), (repr. in Shuo-fu San-chung 說郛三種; Shanghai: Shanghai Ku-chi, 1988), pp.1691-93. Wang T’ing-hsiang also wrote on the subject of the Village Archery Ritual; see his “Preface to the Diagrams and Notes on the Village Archery Rite” 鄉射禮圖注序, Wang Shih Chia-ts’ang Chi 21.13a (931), Wang T’inghsiang Chi 21.402. 79 Yao Hsüeh-hsien and Hsü Yang-shang call attention to Ho’s promotion of the archery rite as a way of recovering old values as opposed to the ‘career capital’ mentality that he opposed. See their “Kuan-yü Ho Ching-ming Tu-hsüeh,” pp.33-34.

514

CHAPTER ELEVEN

These are large claims to have made at the very moment when Wutsung was pursuing his follies in Nanking. But if Ho, though a former prodigy and now a veteran of almost a decade in the Peking bureaucracy, could not forbid the Emperor’s excesses or bring his tread to harmony, he might still act on the Confucian’s Quixotic and ever-disappointed faith in the power of the transformative influence of virtue manifested wherever the opportunity to do so arose. Pausing in his solitary course through these mountain tracts, a trip not really required of him—he might have stayed back in Sian as had his predecessors, shuffling papers and plotting a return to office in Peking—he would gather the students of the region, one that had sent virtually no one to the central bureaucracy in living memory, and lead them through the proper stages of a rite whose origin lay, even then, two millenia in the past, a contest whose goal was not preeminence but self-mastery and communal harmony. 80 From Chin-chou, Ho turned north and crossed the Ch’in-ling Range, working his way up the south side to join the road running between Sian and Hukwang. 81 He then returned to the provincial capital, stopping at a temple said to have been the site of Wang Wei’s villa during the T’ang. 82 Two incidents from this return trip show Ho in contrasting relationships with the supernatural world. In one he is reported to have responded to a serious drought in Lan-t’ian 藍田 , near Sian, by composing a sacrificial text and casting it into a spring high in the mountains nearby, with the result that plentiful rain soon fell in the area. In the other, he destroyed a shrine dedicated to “Wang Mu” (presumably “Hsi Wang Mu 西王母,” the “Queen Mother of the West” supposed to live in the K’un-lun Mountains) that he found

——— 80

According to the lists in the (Ch’ien-lung) Shensi T’ung-chih (SKCS), ch.30-31, no one at all from the four counties passed the chin-shih examination during the thirty-four years of the Hung-chih and Cheng-te periods. The most recent success in the provincial-level examination was a man from Hua-yin who passed in 1513 but is not recorded to have held any office. Fang Hsiao-ju (see above, chapter two) had also spent a considerable period as an Education Commissioner in southern Shensi and commented on the harsh conditions and cultural backwardness he found there in his time. See his letter to Lou Hsi-jen 樓希仁, Hsün-chih Chai Chi (SPTK) 11.270-71, cited in DMB, p.428. 81 “It Clears After a Sudden Thunderstorm on the Road” 馬道驟雷雨復霽, HTFC 22.13a (398; 452:020). 82 “Deer Garden Temple” 鹿苑寺, HTFC 22.15b (402; 452:022).

SHENSI

515

adjacent to the official school in Shang-chou 商州. 83 It might appear that his attitude in these two cases was inconsistent, but in fact this is not so. In the first case he was playing a legitimate role as the proper representative of the human order in officially communicating with the supernatural realm. In the second he was acting in the same capacity to suppress an illegitimate—because private—effort so to communicate. 84

——— 83

Fan P’eng records both incidents. The sacrificial text is not to be found in HTFC. Ho’s action was of a sort quite common at the time. See Sarah Schneewind, “Competing Institutions: Community Schools and ‘Improper Shrines’ in Sixteenth Century China,” Late Imperial China 20.1 (1999): 85-106; and Katherine Carlitz, “Shrines, Governing-Class Identity, and the Cult of Widow Fidelity in Mid-Ming Jiangnan,” JAS 56.3 (1997): 612-40. 84

CHAPTER TWELVE

LAST THINGS TU FU In spite of Ho’s reduced literary production during these last years in Shensi, in one poem at least he met the greatest of the T’ang poets, Tu Fu, on his own ground in a poem probably written on his way back over the mountains to Sian: 昭烈廟漂泊依劉計、間關入蜀身。中原無社稷、亂世有君臣。峽路元通楚、岷江不向秦。空山一祠宇、寂寞翠華春。 The Shrine to Radiant Ardour 1 Afloat and adrift, with his schemes for the house of Liu, Blocked and hindered, a man on his way to Shu. On the central plain, no altars to soil and grain; In a troubled world, a true prince and his subject. The way through the gorges leads indeed to Ch’u; The River Min has never flowed toward Ch’in. In the empty hills a shrine of a single chamber, Quiet and lorn in a springtime of kingfisher pennons. In addition to the other poems by Tu Fu discussed below, Ho’s third couplet also draws on the corresponding couplet of Tu’s “Presented on Taking Leave of Ho Yung” 贈別何邕, “Brocade Valley indeed leads to the Han; / The River T’o does not flow toward Ch’in” 錦谷元通漢、沱江不向秦. 2 The final line recalls the third of Tu’s “I am Moved” 有感 poems, written during the depths of the An Lu-shan Rebellion and its aftermath, “Daily I hear of red millet rotting; / In Winter await the

———

1 HTFC 22.15a (402; 452:021). In the title, for 祠 ‘shrine [for sacrifice]’, all but the Yung recension read 廟 ‘[lineage] temple’. The Yung recension reading is more likely to reflect local knowledge, though that does not necessarily make it authorial. During the Ch’ing dynasty, Ho’s descendants suppressed the third line of this poem when they reprinted his works, evidently fearful of its being found seditious. 2 Tu Shih Yin-te 367/46/5-6, CTS 226.2449, K.11201.

LAST THINGS

517

springtime of kingfisher pennons” 日聞紅粟腐、寒待翠華春. 3

The Shrine to Radiant Ardour was devoted toLiu Pei, who founded the Shu Han kingdom in Szechwan at the end of the Han dynasty with the help of Chu-ko Liang, a scholar and strategist famous in history and legend alike. Liang’s loyalty to Liu Pei, and by extension to the Han dynasty, which Liu claimed to be restoring in opposition to the usurper Ts’ao Ts’ao, who controlled the ‘central plain’, made him a favourite figure with loyalists of other times, and Tu Fu in particular referred to him often. 4 There are three Tu Fu poems that are closely related to Ho’s “Shrine of Radiant Ardour.” We might characterise one of them as a source and the other two as analogues. The ‘source’ poem is cast in a quite different form, an extended regulated-verse: 謁先主廟慘澹風雲會、乘時各有人。力侔分社稷、志屈偃經綸。復漢留長策、中原仗老臣。雜耕心未已、歐血事酸辛。霸氣西南歇、雄圖歷數屯。錦江元過楚、劔閣復通秦。舊俗存祠廟、空山泣鬼神。虛簷交鳥道、枯木半龍鱗。竹送清溪月、苔移玉座春。閭閻兒女換、歌舞歲時新。絕域歸舟遠、荒城繫馬頻。如何對搖落、況乃久風塵。孰與關張並、功臨耿鄧親。應天才不小、得士契無鄰。遲暮堪帷幄、飄零且釣緡。向來憂國淚、寂寞灑衣巾。 Tu Fu: Visiting the Shrine of the First Lord 5 Grim and gloomy, the storm clouds gathered To mount the times, each had his men.

——— 3

Tu Shih Yin-te 509/20C/3-4, CTS 227.2466, K.11305. In addition to those translated below, there are five poems chiefly concerned with Chu-ko Liang, mostly centred on his shrine at K’ui-chou, where Tu Fu lived for a while near the end of his life, Tu Shih Yin-te 108/10, CTS 221.2334, K.10768; 432/17, CTS 229.2506, K.11531; 456/27, CTS 229.2508, K.11546; 487/6, CTS 229.2504, K.11518; and 517/44I, CTS 229.2508, K.11544; a half-dozen allusions to him in other poems, ibid. 80/12A, CTS 218.2290, K.10602; 194/24, CTS 222.2364, K.10836; 197/34, CTS 221.2345, K.10800; 205/1C, CTS 222.2350, K.10809; 234/19, CTS 223.2380, K.10888; and 418/18A, CTS 229.2492, K.11446; and other references only implicit, such as in the poem on the “Eight Formations” (Tu Shih Yin-te 487/7, CTS 229.2504, K.11519). For Ho’s poem on the shrine to Chu-ko Liang at Five Yard Plain, see above, chapter eleven. 5 Tu Shih Yin-te 488/9, CTS 229.2504, K.11520 (I am indebted to Yeh Chia-ying for this reference). Wang T’ing-hsiang’s poem on the site is much less interesting than Ho’s, though it has the same title; see Wang Shih Chia-ts’ang Chi (Chia-ching edition; repr. Taipei: Wei-wen, 1976) 18.4a (754); Wang T’ing-hsiang Chi (Peking: Chunghua, 1989) 18.312. 4

518

CHAPTER TWELVE

Equal in strength, they divided the altars to soil and grain; Ambitions foiled, they halted orderly government. To restore the Han he retained a long-range plan; For the Central Plain, he relied on a long-time advisor. His farming outposts not yet brought to completion, That he spat out blood was a bitter thing indeed. The air of hegemony faded in the southwest; His mighty plan for appointed succession was stalled. The Brocade River does indeed come to Ch’u; And Sword-gate Summit leads to Ch’in as well. Old customs preserve this sacrificial shrine; Empty hills establish ghosts and spirits. Vacant eaves are crossed by the paths of birds; Withered trees are half in dragons’ scales. Bamboo by a limpid stream bids farewell to the moon; Moss moves springtime on a seat of jade. At village gates the lads and girls have changed, With song and dance the years and seasons renewed. In a cut-off region my boat is far from home; By abandoned walls I have tethered my horse many times. What can I do amid this faded shedding, The more after so long a time in wind and dust? Who else could be set beside Kuan and Chang? His achievement was close to those of Keng and Teng. In responding to Heaven, his talent was not small; In recruiting officials, his fitness had no peers. Late in the year, he could plan within tents and curtains; In fading and chill, could fish with hook and line. Ever after, my worried tears for the State, Quiet and lorn have sprinkled my robe and cap.

The topic is the same, as is the rhyme category (all four of Ho’s rhyme words occur as rhymes in Tu’s poem), and Tu’s sixth couplet is clearly the source of Ho’s third, while the last lines of both begin with the same phrase, “Quiet and lorn” (寂寞 chi-mo). Ho’s first six lines are a kind of summary and commentary on Tu’s first twelve, ending with an observation that runs counter to Tu Fu’s. Tu Fu’s poem was written in Chengtu 成都, once Liu Pei’s capital, while Ho wrote his poem in southern Shensi, where Liu had never managed to establish a foothold. This is why, while Tu Fu is concerned with Szechwan’s access to the regions held by Liu’s rivals, Ho points out that its important river did not after all flow into Shensi. For Tu the accessibility of the domains of both of Liu Pei’s rivals is the point of interest; Ho counters that ‘all roads led toward Ch’u’ (see below). The

LAST THINGS

519

latter parts of both poems shift their focus toward the shrine, but here Ho draws more on the ‘analogue’ poems, to which we shall shortly turn. Since we are now concerned with stylistic comparison rather than the derivation of material, we shall not analyse this long poem by Tu Fu here, but the fact of Ho’s use of it is of course relevant to the question of style, and it is significant that in this case Ho’s irony is subordinated to a serious purpose. Ho’s poem is a response to Tu’s, a recognition and appreciation of the way Tu returned to the figures of Liu Pei and Chu-ko Liang repeatedly in his own work, as in the ‘analogue’ poems, the last two in a set of five on historic sites in the Yangtse gorges: 詠懷古跡 Tu Fu: Singing of my Feelings at Ancient Sites (two of five poems) 6 IV 蜀主窺吳幸三峽、崩年亦在永安宮。翠華想像空山裏、玉殿虗無野寺中。古廟杉松巢水鶴、歲時伏臘走村翁。武侯祠屋長鄰近、一體君臣祭祀同。 The lord of Shu, to spy out Wu, made a progress to the Three Gorges; In the year of his demise he was still here, in the Yung-an Palace. His kingfisher pennons can still be imagined there in the empty hills; His jade halls are vacant, gone, within the country temple. The ancient temple’s pines and cedars are roosts for river cranes; The summer and winter seasonal festivals, walks for village elders. The Martial Marquis’s shrine abode is forever its neighbour nearby; In a single person, ruler and subject share a common worship. V 諸葛大名垂宇宙、宗臣遺像肅清高。三分割據紆籌策、萬古雲霄一羽毛。伯仲之間見伊呂、指揮若定失蕭曹。福移漢祚難恢復、志决身殲軍務勞。

———

6 Tu Shih Yin-te, 473/35DE, CTS 230.2511, K.11559-60. There are several translations and discussions of one or both of these poems in English, including A. R. Davis, Tu Fu (Boston Twayne, 1971), pp.114-15, and David Hawkes, A Little Primer of Tu Fu (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), pp.178-80. The opening of poem four refers to Liu Pei and Chu-ko Liang’s campaigns against the third of the Three Kingdoms, Wu; the penultimate couplet of poem five, to Yi Yin 伊尹 and Lü Shang, two wise assistants to legendary dynastic founders of high antiquity, and to Hsiao Ho and Ts’ao Shen, two chief ministers who served Liu Pang (see above, chapter six). For another reference to poem five, see above, chapter seven, “Saying Farewell to Marshal P’eng, Who is Going to Hsi-ch’uan.”

520

CHAPTER TWELVE

The enormous fame of Chu-ko Liang overhangs the world; A revered official’s surviving portrait lofty, severe and pure. The third of the world he held as base hindered his schemes and plans; For ten thousand ages above the heavens, a single floating feather— Among his elders, he would appear an Yi [Yin] or Lü [Shang], If confirmed to direct and decide, have vanquished Hsiao and Ts’ao. But fortune turned, the power of Han then proved too hard to rekindle; His ambition was foiled, his life was lost, and his martial labours in vain.

And, before comparing these poems, we might add one more example on the same topic by another T’ang poet, Liu Yü-hsi (772-842): 蜀先主廟天地英雄氣、千秋尚凜然。勢分三足鼎、業復五銖錢。得相能開國、生兒不象賢。淒涼蜀故妓、來舞魏宮前。 The Temple of the First Lord Of Shu 7 The noble air of this hero of all the empire Still is awesome after a thousand autumns. His power, one leg of the Imperial tripod; His mission, restore the old-time five-ounce coinage. He found a Councillor able to establish his state, Bore a son no likeness of his own wisdom. And cold and forsaken, the former ladies of Shu Came to dance before the palaces of Wei.

Now, the one obvious formal difference among the poems is that Liu and Ho wrote in the pentasyllabic metre, Tu Fu in the heptasyllabic; but this is a difference of relatively little significance for us here. We shall be more interested in each poet’s management of the reader, how changes in time, visual attention, mood, and the like are handled. In comparing Ho’s poem with Liu’s, Yokota Terutoshi has pointed out that Ho Ching-ming shifts his attention from Liu Pei to the present scene halfway through the poem, while Liu Yü-hsi moves from Liu Pei to the future of his state between the halves of his. Yokota also notes that Ho’s poem attempts to engage the sympathies of its reader, while Liu’s is more ‘objective’. 8 This is an interesting insight and one

———

7 CTS 357.4016, K.18760; Liu Yü-hsi Shih Pien-nien Chiao-chu (Harbin: Heilungkiang Jen-min, 2005), p.322. Liu’s poem looks beyond the death of Liu Pei to the fall of the Shu state under the reign of Pei’s inept son, to Wei, founded by the son of Ts’ao Ts’ao. Liu’s poem and Ho’s are compared by Yokota Terutoshi in his “Ka Keimei no Bungaku,” (Hiroshima Daigaku Bungakubu Kiyō 25 (1965) pp.246-61. 8 Yokota, “Ka Keimei,” pp.246-48.

LAST THINGS

521

worth pursuing. The greater immediacy of Ho’s poem might be seen as the result not so much of the transition to the poet’s present vision in the second half as of the way in which Liu Pei is presented, anonymous and vulnerable, in the first. Ho takes us with Liu Pei into the uncertain world in which he lived, only ending this half with the image with which a more conventional poet would have begun, the famous team of wise prince and loyal minister. But this hallowed historic bond is no sooner invoked than it is confronted with the geographical irony, the gorges of the Yangtse (called the Min in its upper reaches) lead not to Ch’in, the area of the old imperial capital, but down toward Ch’u, were Liu died while on campaign. It is really only the final couplet that is placed purely in the present, giving the essentially conventional close common to so many poems on historic sites, there is only a relic here, surrounded by the beauty of recurrent nature. Liu’s poem is objective perhaps, but a better word might be disinterested. By presenting Liu Pei ‘straight’ in the opening couplet, taking him at his historical face value, Liu Yü-hsi does indeed keep the reader at a greater distance. The inner couplets too, by their insistence on both formal perfection and orthodoxy in historical judgement, reinforce this distance between reader and both poet and theme. But Liu Yü-hsi has done this with a purpose, to leave us all the more susceptible to the haunting image of his final couplet. His poem is perhaps contrived, but it is masterfully so, and the release felt on arrival at the final couplet is as emotionally effective in its way as the also quite original handling by Ho Ching-ming. And what of Tu Fu’s poems? They are part of a set often linked to the “Autumn Meditations,” but universally agreed to be simpler and more straightforward, both as a set and as individual poems. They stand out in comparison to Ho and Liu—as Tu Fu poems often do—by their relative discontinuity. But it is discontinuity, not incoherence. 9 The first couplet of the fourth poem emphasises words that insist on the imperial dignity of Liu Pei—’progress’ (幸 hsing), ‘demise’ (崩 peng), ‘palace’ (宮 kung), while at the same time including one with a decidedly sinister or illicit tone about it, ‘peer’ (窺 k’ui). The second

———

9 For a perceptive account of disjunctiveness in Tu Fu’s style, see Eva Shan Chou, Reconsidering Tu Fu: Literary Greatness and Cultural Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

522

CHAPTER TWELVE

couplet, switching abruptly to the deserted shrine of the poetic present, remains in touch with the first through the imaged relics of the past superimposed on the present—note the phrase ‘kingfisher pennons’ (翠華 ts’ui hua), picked up by Ho Ching-ming in his final line. Tu Fu uses the second half of his poem to bring into harmony the disparate elements of the first half, though he goes about this in a way that only becomes clear when the end is reached. Beginning by bringing together the shrine’s contemporary setting and the bird and human life it enhances, Tu takes the last of these and uses it to lead back to the eternal companionship of the two heroes and its celebration by men of later days, this couplet resuming something of the imperial dignity of the first. The poem is thus a virtuoso performance both in its overall structure and in a myriad details—the unearthly double visions of the second couplet and the clever transitive use (muffled in translation) of the normally intransitive verbs ‘roost’ (巢 ch’ao) and ‘walk’ (走 tsou) in the third—and it is intellectually moving, but its complexity does miss the sure response of the simpler works by Liu and Ho. The fifth poem in the set, the second of the two cited here, is even less like the poems of Liu and Ho. Most obviously it differs from them in its almost complete lack of visual images of the site being evoked. Aside from the portrait, a significant exception, everything in the poem is either abstract or imaginary, and the links between the lines have to be supplied by the reader. At the same time, and this is a feature that is dimmed in translation, the abstract relationships of which the poem is made are themselves embodied in concrete vocabulary, in words with precise physical images imbedded in them, even if the images are not presented as visible: ‘overhang’ (垂 ch’ui), ‘lofty’ (高 kao), ‘[third] part’ (分 fen), ‘held as base’ (割據 ko chü), ‘hindered’ (紆 hsü), ‘the heavens’ (雲霄 yün hsiao), ‘a single floating feather’ (一羽毛 yi yü mao), ‘among his elders’ (伯仲之間 po chung chih chien), ‘direct’ (指揮 chih hui, literally ‘pointing and waving’), and so forth. In other words, the poem is bursting with the energy of unattached but implied visual and physical imagery and movement, movement all the more effective for not being explicitly focussed. This is a quality peculiar to Tu Fu, and one of the things that makes even his most intellectualised poems immediate and moving. It is also a quality not to be found in Ho Ching-ming. What Ho does show in much of his poetry, on the other hand, is a sensitive grasp of the power of visual imagery and of the subtle links between imagery and mood,

LAST THINGS

523

along with a deep sense of his work in its relation to the traditions within which he writes. It is these resources that allow him, in “The Shrine to Radiant Ardour,” to face the challenge presented by Tu Fu head-on and meet it with a work that displays the integrity of his own vision. One more historical poem, on which we offer no additional comment, is this one, on a memorial to the T’ang dynasty reformer Han Yü. The date of Ho’s visit is not specified, but the mention of snow implies winter or spring, and the account of his approach suggests that Ho visited the site, at the border between Lan-t’ien and Shang-chou, on a separate occasion from his return from Han-chung. 秦嶺謁韓祠捫蘿登峻嶺、級石上荒祠。雪阻南遷路、雲停北望時。文衰真有作、道喪已前知。千載經行地、高山空爾思。 In the Ch’in-ling Mountains I Visit the Shrine to Han [Yü] 10 Tugging at vines I climb the towering peaks, By terraced stones ascend to the overgrown shrine. Snowdrifts block the road to southward progress; Clouds call a halt to my northward tending gaze. Though culture declined, his accomplishment was real; That the Way would be lost he understood in advance. For a thousand years this place of onward passage, In these lofty mountains I think of you alone. The first line is reminiscent of a line in Sung Chih-wen’s 宋之問 “Lingyin Temple” 靈隱寺, “Tugging at vines, I climb the distance to the pagoda” 捫蘿登塔遠. 11

The rest of 1520 is not quite so well documented. In the summer, Ho wrote the commemorative essay on the rebuilding of the school at Lüeh-yang, which refers to his visit the previous year (see above, chapter eleven) but does not suggest that he returned in 1520. 12 Early

——— 10

HTFC 22.11b (396; 452:027). For the site, see (Ch’ien-lung Chih-li) Shang-chou Chih 4.13a. 11 CTS 53.653; K.03343. 12 “A Record of the Moving and Building of the Shrine School at Lüeh-yang County” (see above, chapter eleven). This essay provides a circumstantial account of the history of the school. It had first been established during the Yüan dynasty and had been damaged or destroyed by floods several times. When Ho got to Lüeh-yang in 1519, he found that the school had been destroyed by landslides and floods. By the following year, materials had been assembled for its reconstruction, and the work was

524

CHAPTER TWELVE

in the autumn, he contributed a prefatory essay to a volume of collected commentaries to the Cheng-meng 正蒙, a work by the Sung tao-hsüeh thinker Chang Tsai, which public-spirited citizens were having printed as an encouragement to education. 13 Double Nine found him at a party held by one Ch’en ’Feng-ku’ 陳鳳谷, who is unidentified. 14 Some poems probably from this year suggest a trip east along the Wei valley in the late fall and early winter. 15 The most important event during the fall was the triennial provincial examination, for which many of Ho’s activities during his term had been a preparation. When the Administration Commissioner, the senior civil official in the province, proposed to save money by cutting back on the established quota for candidates, Ho responded, “When the State seeks wise men, this is not the sort of goal it has; this is a clerk’s approach!” The proposal was not pursued. 16 TWO DEATHS It may be that Ho’s health was already failing. There is a sequence of poems that can be plausibly assigned to the winter of 1520, and the very first of these, addressed to three old friends from Peking days,

———

soon completed. It seems likely that this essay was written shortly after his return to Sian, since the latest date referred to in it is the fifth month of 1520. Ho attributed this success in large part to Lü Ho, whom he praises generously at the conclusion of the essay. 13 “Preface to the Assembled Drafts on the ‘Cheng-meng’” 正蒙會稿序, HTFC 34.10b (600; 序:505); text in the Ta-fu Yi-kao not examined. Han Pang-ch’i and Wang Ch’ung-ch’ing also wrote prefaces to this work, see Yüan-Lo Chi 苑洛集 (Garden on the Lo Collection) (1552 edition) 1.24a, Tuan-hsi Hsien-sheng Chi (1552 edition) 2.10b. For the “Cheng Meng” itself, see Chang Tsai Chi 張載集 (Collected Works of Chang Tsai), edited by Chang Hsi-ch’en 章錫琛 (Peking: Chung-hua, 1978), pp.1-68. 14 “Coming Upstairs for a Banquet on the Ninth Day with Censor Ch’en Feng-ku” 九日同陳侍御鳳谷登宴, HTFC 22.9a (393; 452:026). 15 The one poem clearly located beyond the outskirts of Sian is one sent to Sang P’u 桑溥 in Hua-chou, “Written at Hua-chou: A Message to Sang Ju-kung [P’u]” 華州作柬桑汝公, HTFC 27.14a (487; 472:004). Others that could come from short excursions of a day or two out of the capital are “Wang-ch’uan” 輞川, HTFC 24.14a (487; 472:003), and “Visiting Hua-ch’ing Palace” 過華清宮, HTFC 22.15b (403; 452:023). For Sang P’u (t. Ju-kung 汝公), see Pen-ch’ao Fen-sheng Jen-wu K’ao (1622; repr. Ming-tai Chuan-chi Ts’ung-k’an, vols.129-40, Taipei: Ming-wen,1991) 96.24a (677), TK 153. 16 (Ch’ien-lung) Shensi T’ung-chih 陜西通志 (Comprehensive Gazetteer of Shensi), (SKCS) 52.34b (212).

LAST THINGS

525

refers to Ho’s poor health: 臥病簡汝濟士奇時濟妄病常遲起、焚香獨燕居。聊因謝簿領、暫得弄琴書。嶽色盈虛牖、泉流遶暗渠。雖然官府內、不異在林廬。 Lying Ill: A Note to Ju-chi [Kuan Chi], Shih-ch’i [Liu Ch’u-hsiu], and Shih-chi [Chang Chih-tao] (first of two poems) 17 Lying ill, I often get up slowly; Burning incense, I simply lie at ease. I would like therefore to withdraw from records and orders, And briefly get to toy with zithern and books. The charm of the mountains is filling my empty window; A stream flows around by way of the shaded ditch. Even though I am here in the office compound, I might as well be in a woodland hut.

In spite of his illness, it appears that Ho did take at least one additional short trip this winter, over to the north side of the Wei River to visit his old friend Lü Nan, as well as Ma Li, both of whom were living in

———

17 HTFC 22.9b (393; 452:029). There are two variant readings in the title. The Shen recension lacks the words 病中 ‘lying ill’; the Yung recension gives an alternative word for ‘note’, 柬, a homophone. For Kuan Chi 管楫 (t. Ju-chi 汝濟), see HY 2/280, TK 172. For Liu Ch’u-hsiu and Chang Chih-tao, see above, chapter eight, and MST 35.2a, 24b, and MSCS wu-12. For Chang Chih-tao’s poems matching the rhymes of both of Ho’s, see “Responding to Ho Ta-fu’s Poems Sent While Lying Ill: Matching Rhymes” 次韻答何大復臥病見寄, Chang T’ai-wei Shih-chi (Chia-ching edition) 6.11a, TK 411. Chang’s poems confirm the reading of the Yung and Shen recensions for the final word in the second poem, against that of the Yüan and Standard texts. Kuan, Liu and Chang were local men whom Ho had known earlier in Peking. Kuan was a 1511 chin-shih who held office in the capital until he went home in disgust in the spring of 1519 (see Hsüeh Hui’s farewell poem, “A Ballad of the Yellow River: Presented to Kuan Ju-chi, Who is Going Home Ill” 黃河行贈管汝濟病歸, Hsüeh Hsi-yüan Chi (1535 edition) 2.3b, K’ao-kung Chi (SKCS) 4.6a (49). Kuan figures in a number of Ho Ching-ming’s poems from the years 1514-17. Liu and Chang, along with Hu Shih and Hsüeh Hui, had formed a poetry club known as the ‘Four Han-lin Scholars’. Liu and Chang had passed the chin-shih with Hsüeh in 1514, Hu in 1517, and it is likely that they had made Ho’s acquaintance then. Chang’s works are still extant, but seem to have been unavailable to Liu Hai-han, who does not include any of the items in them addressed to Ho. See TK 410-12 or Chang T’ai-wei Shih-chi 4.6b (a morning-after account of a jolly drinking party at Ho’s residence in Sian), 5.7b, 5.11b, 6.11a, 6.11b, 6.14b, 6.19b, 7.11b, and 8.4a. Chang refers to the poetry club in Peking in a very long title (really more of a preface) to a poem of reminiscences written in 1532. He gives the date as 1518 and mentions several other men in addition to Hsüeh Hui, Liu Ch’u-hsiu, and Hu Shih; see Chang T’ai-wei Shihchi, hou-chi 1.45b.

526

CHAPTER TWELVE

retirement and teaching. 18 It was presumably during this trip that Ho contributed a preface to the Han Chi (漢紀 “Records of Han”), an old history for whose publication Lü Nan was arranging, using a copy supplied by Hsü Tsin. 19 Later in the winter, Ho wrote a poem on a famous historic site in Han-chung that he had visited during his tour the preceding year. The immediate inspiration for his poem was probably an essay by K’ang Hai commemorating the renovation of the site by Lü Ho (see above, chapter eleven). 20 The date of K’ang’s essay corresponds to December 19, 1520 in the Western calendar. 拜將壇漢主西封日、淮陰拜將時。壇場如往昔、朝代幾遷移。王氣風雲歇、雄圖日月垂。江山弔故國、誰復見旌旗。 The Altar Where the General was Honoured 21 The day the ruler of Han was enfeoffed in the west, The time when the Marquis of Huai-yin was honoured as general— The altar plaza is just as in ancient times; Courts and reigns have shifted many times. The kingly aura has vanished from wind and clouds,

——— 18

“Visiting the Village Home of Ma Hsi-t’ien [Li]” 過馬谿田村居, HTFC 22.10a (394; 452:031); and “Visiting Chung-mu [Lü Nan] on a Winter Evening” 冬夜過仲木, HTFC 22.10a (394; 452:033). Ma Li was the man whose company Lü Nan had recommended to K’ang Hai after the latter’s disgrace (see above, chapter seven). 19 “Preface to the ‘Annals of the Han’” 漢紀序, HTFC 34.7a (597; 序:009). The preface records that Ho had obtained the book from Hsü Tsin, who told him that it had been hoarded in the South so that there was no printed edition. After reaching Shensi, Ho asked Lü Nan to collate the text; a local Magistrate, Chai Ch’ing 翟清 (for whom, see TK 172), was seeing to the printing. 20 For K’ang’s essay, see “An Account of the Altar for Honouring a General” 拜將壇記, Tui-shan Chi 5.2b (234), 14.20b (447), 25.3b (281). 21 HTFC 22.11a (396; 452:036). The terrace was located just south of Han-chung, at the place where Liu Pang was supposed to have conferred the title of general on Han Hsin during the wars that preceded the founding of the Han dynasty; see (Chiach’ing) Han-chung Fu Chih 6.1b; (Ch’ien-lung) Nan-cheng Hsien Chih 南鄭縣志 (Gazetteer of Nan-cheng County) (1794; repr. Taipei: Hsüeh-sheng, 1968) 10.3a (337). The site is now a modest-sized park, whose terrace is plainly a production of much later date than the Han dynasty. The text of Ho’s poem is inscribed on one of its pillars. There is a textual variation in this poem. I follow the Yung and Shen recensions in the third line, reading 昔 (‘ancient times’) rather than 日 (‘days’) with the Yüan and Standard recensions, followed by the Ch’ing dynasty editions. It appears that part of the character was lost, since the lower part of hsi is jih. The latter reading is found in the inscription on the contemporary terrace. Chang Chih-tao wrote a poem matching Ho’s; see “Responding to Ho Ta-fu’s ‘Terrace for Honouring a General’: Using His Rhymes” 答何大復拜將臺用韻, Chang T’ai-wei Shih-chi 6.14b, TK 411.

LAST THINGS

527

His heroic plans approached the sun and moon. River and mountains mourn the bygone state; Who will see those banners and pennons again?

Wu-tsung, in the meanwhile, had decided that he had sufficiently inspected the south. In the middle of the intercalary eighth month, he and his retinue set off for the north along the Grand Canal. 22 The unhappy Prince Ning was transported in a boat that was towed immediately behind the Emperor’s, perhaps kept close at hand lest he be misplaced like the lovers’ token of the previous year. After about a month, the travelling court and lock-up reached the crossing of the Yellow River, which, at this period, flowed into the sea south of the Shantung peninsula. While Wu-tsung was out fishing on a pond, the boat he was in overturned, and he was thrown into the water. Although his attendants leapt into the water in a frenzy to fish him out, Wu-tsung’s health was evidently seriously affected. The progress had reached the outskirts of Peking by the end of the tenth month, but Wutsung halted outside the city in order to conduct there the trials of Prince Ning and his collaborators. By this time, the crowd of prisoners apprehended in Kiangsi had been swelled by the addition of members of Ning’s erstwhile fifth column in Peking, including the Minister of War, Lu Wan, and the favourites Ch’ien Ning and Liao P’eng. Wang Yang-ming had had the presence of mind to have most of Prince Ning’s papers destroyed as soon as his headquarters was captured. He was presumably appalled by the breadth of acquaintance they revealed and had the foresight to appreciate the possibility of a snowballing witch-hunt should every chance reference in them be followed up and the trials turn into a massive purge driven by the sort of guilt by association that had doomed thousands in the time of Chu Yüan-chang. Indeed, there continued for several years to be denunciations of this figure or that as linked to Ning. One of them even touched on Li Meng-yang, imprisoned once more on this account, in 1522, though soon released. 23 Some incriminating material had survived, however, and a

———

22 For a concise account of Wu-tsung’s return trip, the trial of Prince Ning, and the Emperor’s final illness and death, see MTC 49.1822-30. 23 See Wang Kung-wang, “Li Meng-yang Sheng-p’ing K’ao-pien Erh-t’i” (Two Critical Comments on Li Meng-yang’s Biography), Lan-chou Chiao-yü Hsüeh-yüan Hsüeh-pao 1997.2:22-26

528

CHAPTER TWELVE

desperate struggle went on for months in Peking as Chiang Pin, in particular, set about implicating as many of his rivals as possible. As Wu-tsung’s reputed bedmate, he evidently had not been thought by Prince Ning to be a likely ally and so was not implicated in the cases himself. His rivals, for their part, sought either to disprove the cases against them or, seemingly the more promising method, to buy off Chiang Pin. The latter approach apparently worked in some cases, but in general Chiang seems to have appreciated that Wu-tsung could not have his fish-fry without a respectable supply of fish and that the bigger ones would, by and large, have to be on the spits. Lu Wan and the others were accordingly seized and delivered to the Emperor’s camp. Wu-tsung, not a man normally to be thought of as a finicky moralist, was particularly shocked by the disloyalty of Lu Wan and ordered him treated with special severity. Lu was forced not only to march in Wu-tsung’s triumph, in the company of ordinary prisoners, but to do so stripped naked, with his hands tied behind his back, and bearing a sign on which his name had been crossed out. The trial of Prince Ning was conducted in the presence of the assembled officials and military aristocracy. Wu-tsung ordered his death sentence to be carried out in an oddly inconsistent way. On the one hand, Ning was granted the privilege of ending his own life. This normally meant strangulation with a soft cord, the order for tightening being given by the prisoner. Although a slower death than decapitation, it was both quicker and less painful than the even more severe possibilities of being cut in two at the waist, as had happened to the poet Kao Ch’i early in the Ming, or undergoing the three-day vivisection visited upon Liu Chin. It was, moreover, much to be preferred to any of these on grounds of propriety, because it left the body intact and little disfigured, suitable garb, that is, in which to present oneself to ancestors awaiting one’s arrival in the nether world. While granting this boon, however, Wu-tsung negated its long-term benefits, so to speak, by his stipulation that Ning’s corpse be burnt and scattered. 24 The other prisoners, consisting, along with their families, of several thousand people, formed Wu-tsung’s triumph, lined up for review

———

24 Lu Wan succeeded in having his sentence commuted to penal service as a guardsman in Fukien, where he died a few years later. See MS 187.4956-57.

LAST THINGS

529

along the route followed by his carriage as he entered the palace, the living with their names displayed on white banners, the heads of the dead hanging from poles with pieces of white cloth similarly adorned. The display extended unbroken for well over a mile. On horseback and dressed in his nomad rig, Wu-tsung halted at the gate and admired his handiwork for a long time before going in. The prisoners were then marched across the palace grounds, appearing like a vast sea of white—in China the colour of death and mourning—that struck observers as eerily ill-omened. 25 Three days later, Wu-tsung appeared at the Southern Suburban Temple to carry out the essential and much-delayed sacrifices to Heaven and Earth. At the first offering, when he was to bow, he collapsed and vomited blood. Unable to finish the ritual, he withdrew to the fasting hall, spent the night there, and then returned to the palace. The assembled officials carried out the ‘Rite of Felicitation on the Completion’ all the same but, by Imperial order, the customary banquet was cancelled. There is not much reference in Ho’s Shensi works to Wu-tsung’s adventures, but by the end of 1520 he seems to have felt that there was some occasion for relief. Wu-tsung’s return from his ‘Southern Expedition’ late in the year is referred to in two poems. 26 Ho himself was evidently back at work. There is a poem, assignable to late 1520, on the presentation at the provincial offices of the official calendar for the coming year. The annual calendar was normally presented to the Emperor on the first day of the eleventh lunar month. After receiving his ceremonial approval, it was then promulgated throughout the Empire. 27 Early in the new year comes the preface to Ho’s curriculum

———

25 Wang T’ing-hsiang wrote ten “Victorious Return Songs on the Emperor’s Pacification of the South” 皇上平南凱還歌 on Wu-tsung’s return to Peking; see Wang Shih Chia-ts’ang Chi 20.1a (847), Wang T’ing-hsiang Chi 20.356. Cheng Shanfu wrote a set of four quatrains titled simply “Four Poems on the Fourteenth Year of the Cheng-te Reign” 正德十四年 (i.e., 1519). They are concerned with Wu-tsung’s expedition, but not critical of it. See Cheng Shih (Chia-ching edition) 9.19b, Shao-ku Chi (SKCS) 8.13a (131). 26 “A Song of Tzu-ang’s [Chao Meng-fu] Horse Painting” 子昂畫馬歌, HTFC 14.22a (216; 471:002); and “Lantern Festival Day” 元日 , HTFC 29.15b (526; 474:501). 27 “Presentation of the Calendar at the Headquarters in Ch’in” 秦府進曆, HTFC 22.11a (396; 452:035). No such presentation is recorded in 1519 or 1520, as Wutsung was away from the capital, but the calendar was evidently distributed nonetheless. The first day of the eleventh lunar month in 1520 corresponded to

530

CHAPTER TWELVE

of readings in Classical prose drawn up for use in the Shensi schools (see above, chapter eleven). Scarcely a month after writing the preface to the prose curriculum, Ho was ill again and spat blood: 清明病臥聞三司諸公出城遊宴伏枕花辰過、閉門樽酒空。賓朋林水上、供帳出城中。柳色龍池雨、鶯歌杏苑風。秦川多勝事、遊賞未能同。 Lying Ill at Grave-sweeping, I Hear that the Officials from the Three Commissions have Left the City on an Outing 28 Collapsed on my pillow, the blossomed morning gone, I close the gate; my cup of wine is empty. Guests and friends are looking over the river; Offering curtains emerge from within the city. The look of willows in rain by the dragon pond— Warbler songs on the breeze in the apricot orchard— The rivers of Ch’in have many surpassing sites; In roaming and pleasure, I am unable to join.

Less than two weeks later, on the third day of the third month, Ho presented a similar poem to Chang Chih-tao and other friends who were going on another outing to the suburbs. 29 Apparently not yet seriously worried about his health, he wrote to Wang T’ing-hsiang about this time. 30 Wang was also serving as an Education Intendant,

———

December 10 in the Western calendar. 28 HTFC 22.11a (395; 452:039). Like the poem written on the third day of the third month (see below), this one cannot come from 1519, when Ho was on the tour that took him to Ch’ing-yang and Lüeh-yang. Nor can it come from 1520, since we know that Ho was in Chou-chih on Ch’ing-ming in that year. The reference to illness supports the implication of the published sequence that it was a work of 1521, not long before Ho left Shensi. Ch’ing-ming fell on the twentieth day of the second lunar month in 1521. The corresponding date in the Western calendar is March 28. The Yung recension varies from the others at two points. In the title, it lacks the word 日 ‘day’ after 清明 ‘grave-sweeping’ (i.e. Ch’ing-ming) and includes the words 遊宴 ‘on an outing’ at the end. Then, in the last line, it gives 邀 ‘invited’ as the first word, while the other recensions read 遊 ‘roaming’ instead. In this case, I follow the majority. 29 “Presented to Chang Shih-chi [Chih-tao], Ch’en Po-hsing, Hu Ch’eng-chih [Shih], and Chou Shao-an as They Leave the City for an Excursion and Banquet on the Third Day of the Third Month” 贈張時濟陳伯行胡承之周少安三月三日出城遊宴, HTFC 22.10b (395; 452:040). Ch’en Po-hsing and chou Shan-an are unidentified. 30 This letter is not extant, but it is referred to in Wang’s Preface to Ho’s works. For another letter by Wang in response to one from Ho, see the one concerned with Hsü Kao’s work mentioned above.

LAST THINGS

531

being assigned to the neighbouring province of Szechwan. Ho wrote to suggest that they meet somewhere along the common border of their jurisdictions to spend a few months studying the interpretation of the Classics, which Ho had been working on as a part of his educational role. This proposal was not followed up, perhaps because of Ho’s failing health, which had become so serious that he was forced to abandon his post in the sixth month and set out for home. By this time, Wu-tsung was dead. Just as at the death of Hsiaotsung, officials were sent out to the provinces with the official proclamation. Ho’s penultimate poem was a farewell to one Chang Lai 張賚, who was carrying the word to Shensi and Szechwan just as Ho had done to Kweichow and Yunnan in 1505. 31 That journey undertaken at the outset of what then promised to be a long and successful career was still on Ho’s mind shortly after, as he left Shensi for Hsin-yang, desperately ill and taking the direct route over the mountains: 兩河口東下商南路、西辭蜀北門。青山兩河口、古戍百家村。曲棧盤林杪、危湍噴石根。經過回白首、蹤跡半乾坤。 Twin River Outlet 32 To the east, I descend the road that leads through Shang-nan;

———

31 “Saying Farewell to Messenger Chang Lai, Who is Promulgating the Emperor’s Final Decree to Ch’in and Shu” 送張行人賚大行皇帝遺詔使秦蜀, HTFC 22.10b (395; 452:041). Nothing is known of Chang. 32 HTFC 22.16a (404; 452:501). This poem is problematic. “Two River Mouth” is another quite common place name. There are several candidates in Han-chung Prefecture alone, and another in Liu-pa, not far from Wu-kuan Pass; see (Tao-kuang) Liu-pa T’ing Chih (1842; repr. Taipei: Ch’eng-wen, 1969) 1.7a (27), and yet another in Hsien-ning, in the hills south of Sian, upstream from ‘Deer Park Temple’; see (Chia-ch’ing) Hsien-ning Hsien Chih 咸寧縣志 (Gazetteer of Hsien-ning County) (1819; repr. Taipei: Ch’eng-wen, 1969) 2.27a (177), 28b-29a (180-81); and (Kuanghsü) Lan-t’ien Hsien Chih 藍田縣志 (Gazetteer of Lan-t’ien County) (1875; repr. Taipei: Ch’eng-wen, 1969) 6.8b (348). With so many contenders, it is not surprising that the place where Ho wrote his poem has not yet been identified. The poem speaks of Ho as descending the Shang-nan road to the east and leaving behind the ways of northern Shu (Szechwan). Shang-nan county was just on the border of Honan, and it is unlikely that Ho would have ever travelled in this direction along it except perhaps in his final trip home to die in 1521. This poem is missing from the Shen recension and tacked on at the very end of the pentasyllabic regulated verse from Shensi in the Yung, Yüan, and Standard recensions. The chances are that Ho wrote it as he was leaving Shensi and gave it to a friend there, perhaps K’ang Hai, who wrote the farewell preface, without taking a copy with him. Hence it would have been available to the compilers of the Yung recension but not to those of the Shen.

532

CHAPTER TWELVE

In the west, take leave of the northern gate to Shu. Here in the green hills lies Twin River Outlet, An ancient outpost, a village of one hundred households— The winding galleried roadway circles the tree tops; Plunging cataracts spurt from rocky roots. I look back over the ways that I have travelled; My footprints have covered half of heaven and earth.

This was his last work. The essay that K’ang Hai wrote in farewell, at the urgent request of Ho’s students, mentions his illness, but expresses no real concern. 33 A poem written shortly after Ho’s departure by Chang Chih-tao is much more openly anxious. 34 At court, Ho’s request to retire because of ill health had been received while he was on his way home. In view of his abilities, retirement was refused, but he was granted sick leave until such time as the appropriate authorities might report him restored to health. 35 The strain of travel in excessive summer heat aggravated Ho’s condition and he arrived home barely alive, dying only six days later, on the fifth day of the eighth month. Shortly before his death, his wife asked him in tears, “Your office is low in rank and the children are still young. If the unspeakable should actually happen, what should we do?” Ho replied, “Do not take it too hard. It will be enough if you simply do not ignore the principles of Heaven.” Fan P’eng, Chang Shih, and Ho Shih, Ho’s fraternal nephew, also went in to see him, holding his hands and weeping. His voice still clear, Ho said, “Life and death are constant principles, insufficient reasons for grief. I have only caused you gentlemen too much trouble.” After he had died and been placed in his coffin, his wife walked around it crying, “I want to die!” She refused all nourishment and died without illness less than three weeks later. 36 They were buried together beside the grave of his

——— 33

For K’ang’s essay, see “Saying Farewell to Master Ta-fu, Who is Returning to Hsin-yang” 送何大復先生還信陽序, Tui-shan Chi 3.20b (158), 11.30a (408), 33.9a (374). 34 “On Hearing that Master Ta-fu Has Gone Out the Pass” 聞大復先生出關, Chang T’ai-wei Shih-chi 6.19b, TK 411. 35 Shih-tsung Shih-lu 世宗實錄 (Veritable Records of the Inheriting Ancestor) (Taipei: Chung-yang Yen-chiu Yüan, 1965) 4.15a (183). 36 These accounts of Ho’s last days come from Fan P’eng and Meng Yang. It is Fan P’eng who says that Ho’s wife died without illness. Meng Yang in contrast says that she suffered from an ‘internal fever’ or inflamation and cried out uncontrolledly before collapsing and dying. His account is unfortunately unclear as to whether her ailment was of long standing (this is the simpler interpretation) or developed as a

LAST THINGS

533

grandfather Ho Chien, the geomancer. The site, vandalised during the Cultural Revolution, is now marked by a stele that identifies it as the grave of Ho Ching-ming, the calligraphy being by Yao Hsüeh-hsien, his modern biographer. 37 Wu-tsung, the Emperor whose failings had so disappointed the hopes of Ho and his contemporaries and whose decisions and antics had so contributed to their troubles, had no sons and had not designated an heir. He was succeeded instead by a cousin, known posthumously as Shih-tsung (regn.1521-1567), who took the reign title Chia-ching. During this era, many of the conflicts, intellectual as well as political, that had affected Ho’s own life and thought became

———

reaction to Ho’s death. The behaviour of women whose husbands died prematurely could be a point of considerable interest in the Ming dynasty, at least in some regions and periods. Cases of widow suicide were often glorified as examples of both public virtue and private pathos. Ho’s wife’s conduct, if not clearly suicidal, was possibly self-destructive, but so far as I can discover, she was not celebrated as a ‘virtuous woman’ (lieh-nü) nor was a shrine erected in her honour, as one would expect to have happened, given Ching-ming’s celebrity, had her behaviour been perceived as that of a conspicuous moral exemplar. Ho’s mother too had died immediately after her husband, but there is no record of notable behaviour in her case (Ho’s parents were, after all, both well on in years when they died). Ho’s rhapsody in praise of his widowed sister-in-law (see above, chapter four) stresses the pathos of her situation and ignores the issue of ‘virtue’. For further discussion of this issue, with additional references, see Katherine Carlitz, “Shrines, Governing-Class Identity, and the Cult of Widow Fidelity in Mid-Ming Jiangnan,” JAS 56 (1997): 612-40. 37 For the events of Ho’s last days, see LHH 1.12b-13b. Fan P’eng tells of a fierce storm with thunder and lightning and clouds so thick that daylight was obscured at the time of Ho’s death. Liu Hai-han suspects this of being an exaggeration. The Ch’ing writer Wang Shih-chen quotes two quasi-supernatural stories connected with Ho’s death from a text unknown to me, the Yüeh-shan Ts’ung-t’an 月山叢談, only to discount them as fiction. See Chü-yi Lu 居易錄 (Records of Residing in Change) (SKCS) 15.12a (490), quoted in LHH 2.43a. In view of the later careers of Ho’s orphaned descendants, Grandfather Chien the geomancer might be supposed to have chosen his own gravesite well. Ching-ming’s second son Ho Li 何立 passed the provincial examination in 1543, and in 1561 Ho’s grandson Ho Lo-wen placed first in the province in the same examination, even better than Ching-ming had done in 1498. Lo-wen passed the chin-shih in 1565, followed by another grandson, Lo-shu 洛書, in 1577. For Ho Lo-wen (t. Ch’i-t’u 啟圖), see HY 3/262, Pen-ch’ao Fen-sheng Jen-wu K’ao 93.23a (399), TK 113. Liu Hai-han reprints an essay written in 1917 by one Chou Chün-ch’i 周焌圻, recording a visit to the Ho family tombs west of Hsin-yang (LHH 3.42a-43a). But note that, according to the (Chia-ch’ing) Ju-ning Fu Chih 12.3a, Ho’s grave was north of Hsin-yang, at ‘Fishing Terrace’. The actual location is more west than north, but is consistent with both descriptions. The (Ch’ien-lung) Hsin-yang Chou Chih (1925; repr.Taipei: Ch’eng-wen, 1976) reprints an essay by a Ming writer named Yüan Sui 袁隨 recording a visit to the shrine of Ho Ching-ming in the winter of 1565/66 (or perhaps 1625/26; only the cyclical date, yi-ch’ou 乙丑, is given) (1925; repr. Taipei: Ch’eng-wen, 1976) 10.27a (399).

534

CHAPTER TWELVE

much more intense and public. One private conflict began to emerge as soon as Ho was dead. Several of his students and associates were on hand, including his brother-in-law Meng Yang; his loyal student Fan P’eng, who had been looking forward to his return to Hsin-yang; Tai Kuan, who had just returned home the Hsin-yang from his relegation to Kwangtung, 38 and the unaccomodating examination candidate, Chang Shih, whose rambles about China had recently brought him to Hsin-yang, perhaps after a visit with Li Meng-yang in Kaifeng. 39 To these men fell the responsibility for preparing the memorial texts. Sometime before his death, Ho had expressed insistence that his epitaph be written by Li

——— 38

Tai wrote a poem lamenting his life in exile, “Climbing a Tower on the First Day of the Fifth Month of the Hsin-ssu year [June 5, 1521]” 辛巳五月一日登樓, Tai Shih Chi (1548; repr. TM 4:63. Tainan: Chuang-yen Wen-hua, 1997) 8.3a (49); this poem is also found in Ch’ien Ch’ien-yi, Lieh-ch’ao Shih-chi (Shanghai: San-lien, 1989), ping-12.33b (366B), where the date is given as “seventh month.” In his essay mourning Ho’s death, “Weeping for Master Ta-fu” 哭何大復先生, Tai records that he learned of it as he was returning from Ling-nan, Tai Shih Chi 12.16a (91). The essay is a remarkable expression of personal grief: “What did I come back for?” he asks, and repeats the question for emphasis. 39 The sequence of Chang’s visits to Kaifeng and Hsin-yang is not certain. His coming to Hsin-yang immediately follows the reference to his stay in Kaifeng in an unattributed biography quoted in LHH (2.32b-33a). On the other hand, the biography by Li K’ai-hsien gives reason for believing that the visit with Li followed Ho’s death ; see Li K’ai-hsien Ch’üan-chi (Peking: Wen-hua Yi-shu, 2004) 10.476. The phrase (前此 ch’ien tz’u) that permits this interpretation may have dropped out of later versions of Chang’s biography. Chang probably stayed over the winter in Hsin-yang, since there are farewell poems written by Fan P’eng and Meng Yang as Chang left for ‘Ch’ang-an’ (i.e., Peking) during a season of ‘falling blossoms’. See “At Hsien-yin Temple: A Farewell Party for Chang Tzu-yen [Shih]—Rhyme Words Specified” 賢隱寺宴別張子言限字, Fan Shih Chi (Chia-ching edition), 1.25b; Fan Nan-ming Chi (Sheng Ming Pai-chia-shih; repr. TM, Tainan: Chuang-yen Wen-hua, 1997) 1.4b (716); also in Huang Ming Shih-hsüan (repr. Shanghai: Hua-tung Shih-fan University, 1991), 11.5b (734), and Lieh-ch’ao Shih-chi, ping-12.34a (366B); and “A Farewell Banquet for Master Chang at Hsien-yin Temple, to Set Rhymes” 賢隱寺限韻宴別張子, Meng Yu-ya Chi (1538 edition) 11.11b; “A Mid-Autumn Banquet on the West Wall Tower: Taking Leave of Chang Tzu-yen [Shih]” 中秋宴城西樓別張子言, Meng Yu-ya Chi 13.14b. Fan P’eng wrote a poem of farewell to Tai Kuan a month later, see “A Snowy Outing to Hsien-yin Temple for a Farewell Party for Master Tai Chung-ho: Last Month We Said Farewell to Chang K’un-lun Here” 雪遊賢隱寺宴別戴子仲前月別張昆侖于此, Fan Shih Chi, 1.21b; not in Fan Nan-ming Chi. For a poem by Li Meng-yang on the occasion of a visit from Chang, see K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi (1530; repr. Taipei: Wei-wen, 1976) 18.16a (415). The title of this ballad is longer than many poems and describes an incident during a merry drinking party. Neither the title nor the poem makes any mention of Ho Ching-ming’s death or any other occasion for sorrow. This may mean that Chang visited Li before going on to Hsinyang, or the poem may simply have been written on some other occasion.

LAST THINGS

535

Meng-yang. But when the end came, they decided not to invite Li to contribute, presumably for fear that his response might reflect disappointment or lingering resentment over the still fairly recent exchange of letters. The curriculum was composed by Fan P’eng, and Meng Yang wrote the epitaph. 40 Tai Kuan wrote the text for a memorial service. Not surprisingly, these memorial texts do not refer to the disagreement between Ho and Li, although some of them do mention the two men’s friendship and one of them, the curriculum by Fan P’eng, even quotes from Ho’s letter to Li. 41 There are several possible explanations for this early reticence about the literary debate between the two. The early memorial texts had as their first aim, of course, eulogy of their subject, in which reference to his close association with Li would be appropriate, but airing of old disputes between the two men would not. Moreover, the evidence available clearly suggests, as we have seen, that the dispute itself did not greatly damage their personal relationship. So, for men more concerned with commemorating their friend and master, too early dead, than with issues in literary history, there would have seemed little reason to record it. And for them the fundamental literary issue in any case was Ho’s greatness as a poet and person. THE FUTURE OF THE PAST Whatever their differences, both men, and Li Tung-yang before them,

———

40 Li K’ai-hsien gives an account of this decision, characteristically complete with dialogue, in his biography of Ho, Li K’ai-hsien Ch’üan-chi 10.773, and the story is repeated by the Ming critic Wang Shih-chen, in his Yi-yüan Chih-yen 藝苑巵言 (Timely Words from the Garden of Arts), Yen-chou Shan-jen Ssu-pu-kao, 149.10a (6811); Hsü Li-tai Shih-hua, Yi-wen ed. 6.6a, Chung-hua ed. 6.1046; Ming Shih-hua Ch’üan-pien 4:4280. Wang makes it clear that he thinks Meng Yang’s epitaph a very poor piece of work, an opinion adopted by the writers of the entry on Meng’s works in the Ssu-k’u Ch’üan-shu Tsung-mu T’i-yao (Taipei: Shang-wu, 1971), p.3826, quoted in LHH 3.37a. It is possible that Chang Shih, if he had just come from visiting Li Meng-yang in Kaifeng, had some basis for supposing that Li would be unwilling. 41 Nor, for that matter, does the stele inscription eventually written for Li Mengyang by their friend Ts’ui Hsien mention any disagreement, though it praises Li and Ho together. See his “Epitaph for Mr. Li K’ung-t’ung, Vice-Commissioner in the Kiangsi Surveillance Commission” 江西按察司副使空同李君墓志銘, Ts’ui Shih Huan Tz’u (1554; repr. TM 4:56, Tainan: Chuang-yen Wen-hua, 1997) 14.12b (450), Huan Tz’u (SKCS) 6.34a (515).

536

CHAPTER TWELVE

mark a watershed in the development of Ming poetry. To be sure, poets of the decades immediately after their time were not all under their influence. Indeed, the leading poets of the 1530’s and 1540’s, men such as Yang Shen, Hsüeh Hui, Huang Hsing-tseng 黃省曾, and Huang-fu Fang 皇甫汸 and his brothers, were not all Archaists. They were also mostly from the South, as had been most of the poets of the fifteenth century. But this was Southern poetry of a different sort. Hsü Chen-ch’ing’s ‘conversion’ to Archaism was only the most immediate and visible evidence of a changing attitude, one not brought about entirely by Li Meng-yang and his group, but which their ideas throw into sharper relief. The sixteenth century was the age in which the Chinese book collecting and publishing mania began. Pien Kung was a noted bibliophile, said to have died of chagrin not long after his extensive library was destroyed in a fire. Men of the next generation, such as Yang Shen, a prodigiously productive scholar during his decades of exile in Yunnan, and Li K’ai-hsien, who not only wrote plays, but also collected and edited Yüan dynasty tsa-chü, reflect a new interest in the personal preservation and publishing of the existing literary heritage. This was even more noticeable in the South, which was the centre of wealth and culture, and indeed the movement had begun to develop there independently of Li Meng-yang and the northern Archaists. A representative figure is Huang Hsing-tseng (1490-1540). 42 On the one hand, he had been impressed as a young man by Li Mengyang and Wang Yang-ming, and influenced by them (although he did not follow Li’s style as a poet). On the other, he was associated with such typically Southern figures as the Huang-fu brothers. As a publisher he reprinted numerous old works and his scholarly writings were broad in range and large in number. He even advised Tai Kuan on the editing of Ho Ching-ming’s works (see Appendix Two). By about 1550 this Southern environment had given rise to a new literary movement, the ‘Later Seven Masters,’ led first by Hsieh Chen 謝榛(1495-1575), who may have come under the influence of Li Meng-yang as a young man, and later by Li P’an-lung 李攀龍 (15141570) and Wang Shih-chen (1526-1590). These men were much more

———

42 For Huang Hsing-tseng (t. Mien-chih 勉之, h. Wu-yüeh Shan-jen 五嶽山人), see DMB 661 (Hok-lam Chan), TL 655, HY 2/265, TK 200.

LAST THINGS

537

of a self-conscious group than Li Meng-yang and his followers; indeed, it is quite likely that they discovered the ‘Earlier Seven’ with a view to defining the tradition within which they belonged. In doing so, they were naturally interested in seeing the earlier group as a cohesive force. They were not insensitive to the stylistic differences between Li and Ho, and sometimes preferred one poet to the other, but they seem to have ignored, their exchange of letters. One of the most important critics among the later group was Wang Shih-chen, who followed a passage of glowing praise for Li Meng-yang with this less enthusiastic appraisal of Ho: Chung-mo’s [Ho Ching-ming] talent was more outstanding than that of Li, but he was unable to be as great. Moreover, the principle he chose was to take his heart as teacher and the success he hoped for was to be able to ‘abandon the raft’. For this reason, his tone was weak, but not his lines. The structures of his poetry move swiftly and always keep in parallel formation. Ku Lin praises him for coughing out pearls and for his excellence in handling human relationships. His sao and fu are open and active, and his poems in imitation of Six Dynasties styles very beautiful. But his other writings are constrained and thin, and it seems the praise is not entirely warranted. 43

A follower of Wang’s, P’eng Lu 彭輅, reversed Wang’s preference: Chung-mo [Ho Ching-ming] had glowing sounds and bright rhythm; it is a pity that his life did not extend its excellence and reach to the present. That Hsien-chi [Li Meng-yang], who chose crude bravado, weighed on him from above—who in the world believes that! 44

And T’u Lung 屠隆 (1542-1605), also a follower of Wang Shih-chen, saw Li and Ho as distinct, but not opposing, poetic voices: Although K’ung-t’ung [Li Meng-yang] exerted all his strength to imitate antiquity, his genius was still so lofty that he could not obliterate his valiant spirit. Although Ta-fu [Ho Ching-ming] did not entirely imitate the formal laws of antiquity, he still did not fall into the habit of delicacy or lushness while in the capital. This is how the two of them

——— 43

Yi-yüan Chih-yen, Ssu-pu Kao, 149.8b (6809); Yi-wen ed. 6.5a, Chung-hua ed. 6.1045; Ming Shih-hua Ch’üan-pien 4:4279. The quotation of Ku Lin is not quite literal, but close. It is from the entry on Ho in Ku’s Kuo-pao Hsin-pien (Chi-lu Huipien; repr. PP16/5), p.7a, and refers to Ho’s ideas as expressed in his letter to Li, but does not mention Li’s explicit disapproval. 44 Quoted in MST 30.2a. The original source is unknown. For P’eng Lu, see MST 48.30b and MSCS (rpt. Taipei, 1971), chi-9.2028.

538

CHAPTER TWELVE

came to be transmitted as equals. 45

With the passage of time, the disagreement between Li and Ho takes on a different significance. Toward the end of the sixteenth century, the rise of the ‘Kung-an school’ 公安派, men such as Yüan Hung-tao 袁宏道 (1568-1610) and his brothers, who shared a relatively individualistic approach to literature, reacted against the orthodoxy of their day, one that could be traced back to the ideas of Li Meng-yang through such writers as Li P’an-lung and Wang Shih-chen. Although their affinity to twentieth century Chinese attitudes to literature has been much exaggerated in our day, both their actual practice as writers and their poetics resemble those of Ho Ching-ming rather than Li Meng-yang. 46 That they saw Wang Shih-chen as an antagonist is somewhat ironic, for even as Wang grew into the dominant literary figure of his age, he was growing away from the Archaist ideas of his youth. And yet, when in his turn he came under criticism from members of the younger generation, it was excessive adherence to antiquity with which he was charged. It is interesting to see how Ho Ching-ming fared in this change of literary taste. Chiang Ying-k’o 江盈科, for whose works Yüan Hungtao wrote the preface, accused Ho of imitating the poets of antiquity rule by rule, but went on to comment that Ho came close to equalling them. 47 By the middle of the following century, a survivor of this

——— 45

T’u Lung, Hung-pao 鴻苞 (Great Packets) (1610; repr. TM 3:88-90, Tainan: Chuang-yen Wen-hua, 1995) 17.47b (249 , quoted in MST, 30.2a. For T’u Lung, see DMB pp.1324-27. 46 Jen Fang-ch’iu notes the similarity between Ho’s ideas and those of Yüan Hungtao; see “Ho Ching-ming Chien-lun,” Hsin-yang Shih-fan Hsüeh-yüan Hsüeh-pao 1986.1:27-35; p.31. For Yüan Hung-tao, see DMB, p.1635, and Chou Chih-p’ing, Kung-an P’ai te Wen-hsüeh P’i-p’ing chi ch’i Fa-chan: Chien Lun Yüan Hung-tao te Sheng-p’ing chi ch’i Feng-ko 公安派的文學批評及其發展兼論袁宏道的生平及其風格 (The Literary Criticism of the Kung-an School and Its Development: With an Additional Discussion of the Life and Style of Yüan Hung-tao) (Taipei: Taiwan Shang-wu, 1986) and Yüan Hung-tao and the Kung-an School (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). Although the two books cover some of the same ground, each has much to offer in the way of careful analysis and reconsideration of the Yüan brothers and their associates. Of particular interest is his demonstration of differences among the Yüan brothers and the evolution of some of their attitudes over time, resulting in a much more nuanced presentation than that offered by most writers (including some who appear to cite Chou’s work without having read it). 47 Quoted in Chu Yi-tsun, MST 30.2b; cited in turn in LHH 2.3b. I have not identified Chu’s source, although Chiang does refer to Ho favourably in his Hsüeht’ao Shih-p’ing 雪濤詩評 (Snowy Wave Comments on Poetry), Shuo-fu Hsü, in Shuo-

LAST THINGS

539

‘individualist’ school, Ch’ien Ch’ien-yi, had come to dominate his age as Wang Shih-chen had his own. Ch’ien ranged himself squarely against Archaism and devoted much of the long note on Ho in his mammoth critical anthology of Ming poetry, the Lieh-ch’ao Shih-chi, to a spirited attack on Ho’s view of literary history, as found in his letter to Li Meng-yang, but then included in the anthology proper no fewer than 102 of Ho’s poems, more than by most other poets of the Ming dynasty. 48 It was also Ch’ien who formulated the influential interpretation of the debate between Li and Ho as a matter of two erstwhile collaborators having a falling out after they had become successful. 49 Although Ch’ien was posthumously disgraced and his writings banned under the Ch’ing dynasty, his interpretation remained enshrined in the Ming Shih and continues to be repeated down to the present day. 50 Ho was, in other words, a troublesome figure for the opponents of Archaism, and study of his writings suggests some of the reasons why. However wholeheartedly he accepted the values of antiquity and sought to restore them, as a poet he was an individual voice. He could not be disassociated from Archaism, but he had openly disagreed with Li Meng-yang, and on grounds remarkably similar to those later adopted by the opponents of Archaism. In a sense, Ho’s reputation has succeeded in having it both ways. Writers sympathetic to the Archaists have approved of him as one of the founders of their school; those opposed have been inclined to accept him as a fellow spirit because of his opposition to Li Meng-yang. Reform movements rarely, if ever, accomplish just what they set

———

fu San-chung (Shanghai: Shanghai Ku-chi, 1988), p.1633. 48 See Ch’ien Ch’ien-yi, Lieh-ch’ao Shih-chi Hsiao-chuan (Peking: Chung-hua, 1959), pp.322-323. Also the Lieh-ch’ao Shih-chi itself, ping.12 (359). Ch’ien’s comments are also included in LHH 2.26b-27b. But note that the Ch’ing anthologist Shen Te-ch’ien charged angrily that Ch’ien had purposely included the weakest of Li and Ho’s poems, and left out the best, just to confuse the record. See Shen’s Preface to his Ming Shih Pieh-tsai Chi (Shanghai: Ku-chi, 1979), p.1; quoted in LHH 2.14a). 49 Ch’ien, loc.cit. His interpretation was adopted and developed by Chu Yi-tsun (1629-1709) in the introduction to the selection of Ho’s poems in MST 30.2b. 50 For an account of the Ch’ing dynasty suppression of Ch’ien’s literary works, together with an extensive annotated listing both of Ch’ien’s own banned works and of others that were censored to remove reference to him, see Liu Tso-mei 柳作梅, “Ch’ing-tai chih Chin Shu yü Mu-chai Chu-tso” 清代之禁書與牧齋著作 (Banned Books in the Ch’ing Dynasty and the Writing of Mu-chai), T’u-shu-k’an Hsüeh-pao 4 (1962): 155-208.

540

CHAPTER TWELVE

out to do. Whether or not they succeed in achieving their immediate goals, they lead to reactions and new directions unforeseen, and often unwished for, by the reformers. The Archaist movement typified by Li Meng-yang and Ho Ching-ming is no exception. Even their critics are willing to credit them with successful opposition to the Secretariat Style, but in fact it appears that it was Li Tung-yang who created the conditions for change before Li Meng-yang emerged into prominence. Their actual achievement was more complex and qualified. 51 Above all, the Archaists established the importance of poetry in an age that had tended to take it for granted before their time. The nature of their standards aside, their insistence that universally valid standards did exist was extremely influential, even if its longer-term effects were frequently controversial. 52 The belief in the independent value of poetry that went with their insistence on standards was also important. Indeed, it can be seen as creating a climate of opinion that persists to the present day in China. Not, of course, in the sense that their particular values remain dominant, but rather in that poetry remained a subject of intense interest and controversy continuously after their time, in a way that it had not been during the preceding century. Moreover, this aspect of their doctrine had the beneficial indirect effect of stimulating interest in older literature, perhaps related to the appearance of many new anthologies and reeditions of earlier poetry and prose of all sorts in the ensuing century and a half. That such a vision of the possibilities of poetry should go with a conviction that poetry was one of the inherently valuable activities of civilised men is not surprising. But later ages have taken up an aspect of this conviction that was, if clearly part of Li Meng-yang’s approach to poetry, neither the most important nor the most constructive part. From the time of Li Meng-yang on, it is rare for a poet or critic in

———

51 There is a summary of the accomplishments and shortcomings of the Ming Archaist movement in Yoshikawa Kōjirō, Gen Min Shi Gaisetsu (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1963), pp.213-19, transl. in John Timothy Wixted, Five Hundred Years of Chinese Poetry, 1150-1650, the Chin, Yüan, and Ming Dynasties, by Yoshikawa Kōjirō (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), pp.169-76. 52 Hsü Lin-t’ang 徐鄰唐 credited Ho and Li with having made T’ang, rather than Sung and Yüan, the standard in poetry, but he also held them reponsible for three hundred years of formless prose (quoted in LHH 2.24b). As Chien Chin-sung points out, the importance that the Archaists, especially Li Meng-yang, attached to a universal standard probably derives from both Yen Yü and Chu Hsi; see “Li-Ho Shihlun Yen-chiu” (M.A. thesis, National Taiwan Unversity, 1980), pp.3-4.

LAST THINGS

541

China not to identify himself in some way as either a ‘T’ang’ or a ‘Sung’ poet. Thus the progress of the Ming Wang Shih-chen away from ‘strict’ Archaism is measured by his increasing tolerance for such ‘Sung’ (in a literary sense) poets as Po Chü-yi and Su Shih, both anathema to Li Meng-yang. In fact, this latter example suggests how shaky the nomenclature is, since Po Chü-yi was of course a T’ang poet in strictly chronological terms. 53 The real issue in such controversies is an opposition between, on the one hand, an Archaiststyle interest in a limited corpus of poetry, characteristically High T’ang or earlier, believed to be superior to that of other periods, normally in ways that are at least superficially formal in definition, and, on the other, a belief that poetic styles vary naturally from poet to poet and from period to period. The latter often takes the form of a preference for Sung poetry, but can also simply be reflected in an ahistorical concentration on the verse of one’s contemporaries, as in the Ch’ing poet Yüan Mei 袁枚. In any event, the ‘Sung’ view sees natural expression of a unique personality as the source of value in poetry. The ‘T’ang’ poet is more likely to see the creation of poetry as an activity of intense personal importance, but also as one in which the writer grows or learns, rather than simply recording. For the Archaists, then, the writing of poetry can be a form of self-cultivation analogous to that of the Ming tao-hsüeh thinkers’ goal in philosophy. As Richard John Lynn has pointed out, later Archaists were much more clearly interested in self-realization than was the generation of Li and Ho. 54 This reflects changes in Ming intellectual life following the time of Wang Yang-ming. Indeed, we might say that in later times what distinguishes the Archaists from their opponents is not their interest in self-realization per se, but rather their expectation that this would be a process whose results would be in conformity with the orthodox tradition, while their opponents saw self-realization as

———

53 The sort of distinction between T’ang and Sung that I outline here is not new. Ch’ien Chung-shu, although he characterises T’ang and Sung in different stylistic terms than I do, makes a similar distinction in the opening passage of his T’an-yi Lu 談藝錄 (Record of Remarks on the Arts), revised edition (Peking: Chung-hua, 1984), pp. 1-5, stressing the independence of the literary contrast from dynastic chronology. For a good exploration of the distinctions between the two periods, see T’ao Hsin-min 陶新民, “Shih Fen T’ang-Sung Shih-lun” 詩分唐宋試論 (Tentative Discussion of the Distinction Between T’ang and Sung in Poetry), Chiang-Huai Lun-t’an 1998.3:100106. 54 Lynn, “Alternate Routes,” pp.325-29.

542

CHAPTER TWELVE

leading to a uniquely personal insight and expression. The latter ideal was influenced by the philosophy of Wang Yang-ming and his followers, but Wang’s ideas were not fully developed in the first decades of the century and their full impact would be felt only after the time of Li and Ho. All the same, contacts between Wang and Li and other Archaists were important during the period when they were together in Peking, and at least by the end of this time Wang had come to his commitment to the role of Confucian teacher. What does seem likely is that similarities between his developing philosophy and the literary ideals of the Archaists are matters not so much of influence, in either direction, but rather of analogous responses to the circumstances of the times. One of these is the assumption, common to both Wang and the Archaists, that there is ideally a unity between thought and action. On the side of the Archaists this takes the form of an argument that by acquiring an intuitive and unforced mastery of the poetic forms of the great poets of antiquity one would acquire their personal qualities as well. For Li, at least, this was so because the greatness of the ancients lay in their having spontaneously and intuitively realised in their works the fundamental principles of human experience, based on sensation and apprehension. The principles behind their forms being fundamental, they were universally valid and could be treated as ‘compass and square.’ The ideal result of mastering their forms would thus be that spontaneous self-confidence born of certainty that one is acting in harmony with the principles of the universe that was also the goal of Wang Yang-ming. But if the Archaists shared with Wang Yang-ming their seriousness about their callings and the belief that these would bring them into a state of unity with fundamental principles of the universe and human understanding of it, wherein were they different from the Sung writers and philosophers with whom they were in frequent disagreement? After all, such Sung poets as Mei Yao-ch’en 梅堯臣, Su Shih, and Yang Wan-li 楊萬里, to mention only three otherwise rather different figures, seem to have seen self-discovery as an important goal of poetry. Here the point seems to have been a feeling that the Sung poets were at once too self-conscious and not sufficiently ‘poetic.’ 55

——— 55

Ho comments to this effect in one of the ten miscellaneous sayings (雜言 tsa-yen)

LAST THINGS

543

Their observations might have some value in themselves, but because they were simply stated in language that was either self-consciously prosaic or self-consciously and awkwardly ‘poetic’ in a bad sense, they could not be regarded as making worthwhile poems. The approach of the Archaists, which does, after all, reflect a deeper insight into how works of art act on their audiences, sought poetry that reflected fundamental principles in its formal workings, rather than simply by talking about them. There is an additional irony in the relationship of the Archaists to the Sung. It was after all in the Sung that the Ch’eng-Chu tao-hsüeh thinkers began the opposition to the role of verse in the examinations that finally succeeded at the beginning of the Ming in excluding verse composition from the examination curriculum. But it was this exclusion that made possible the emergence of a ‘disinterested’ role for poetry in which writers might strive for an excellence whose standards were essentially technical and hence untainted by association with the ‘career capital’ that Ho Ching-ming so detested. One goal of this book has been to look beyond the interpretations

———

found at the very end of his collected works, HTFC 38.15b (666; 雜 :028) and reprinted separately in the Pai-ling Hsüeh-shan (repr. PP 8/8). He sketches a very concise theory of the succession of literary forms by dynasty, concluding “ . . . there are no fu in T’ang and no shih (poems) in Sung.” A similar theory of the “natural succession of poetic forms” is found in Ch’en Yi’s collected comments on poetry, the Chü-hsü Shih-t’an (Ssu-ming Ts’ung-shu, Ssu-chi), p.1a. See Lynn, Alternate Routes,” pp.318-19, 323-25, for the Archaists’ objections to Sung and Middle and Late T’ang poetry. An early, brief, but acute discussion is Suzuki Torao, Shina Shironshi (1927; rpt. Tokyo: Kōbundō, 1954) , pp.155-156. A skeptical Ch’ing critic, Yeh Hsieh 葉燮, cites the low opinion of Sung poetry expressed by Li Meng-yang and adds that his poetry, however, rather resembles Sung in style. “He must have been peeking!” he surmises, taking the case as an illustration of the way in which lofty theorisers turn out to be charlatans. See his Yüan Shih 原詩 (Fundamentals of Poetry) (Chao-tai Ts’ung-shu; repr. TSCC Hsü-pien, Shanghai: Shanghai Shu-tien, 1994), 68a-69a (150-51), cited in LHH 2.28a. It is at least true that Ho had read Su Shih, since he wrote a poem matching the rhymes of one by Su (see above, chapter five) and another on a bamboo painting by Wen T’ung with colophons by Su and Huang T’ing-chien, HTFC 14.8b (205; 371:024). He refers as well to Su (and Han Yü) in his poem on the “Stone Drums” 觀石鼓歌 , HTFC 14.20a (215; 371:021). Ho also commented briefly on a collection of Huang T’ing-chien’s poems, the Ching-hua Lu, “On Reading the Record of Perfect Blossoms” 讀精華錄, HTFC 38.11b (661; 雜:009). Ho didn’t care for the selection, but he says so in a way that suggests he might have approved some other poems of Huang or of his contemporary Ch’en Shih-tao. Ch’ien Chung-shu quotes Ho’s remarks on Huang T’ing-chien, T’an-yi Lu, p.147, and argues elsewhere that the influence of Tu Fu comes down to the ‘Ming Seven’ through such ‘Sung’ poets as Yang Wan-li and Yüan Hao-wen, T’an-yi Lu, pp. 172-75.

544

CHAPTER TWELVE

of Archaism current in recent times to see its real role at the turn of the sixteenth, when Li Meng-yang began gathering around him young writers of talent and launching his campaign to reestablish the vocation of poetry. When the modern image of a determined but narrow-visioned clique of civil servants bent on keeping poetry within outmoded formal patterns within which mindlessly to reuse bits of antique phraseology has been replaced by one of a group of diverse talents intimately involved with the urgent intellectual, political, and ethical problems of their age, each insisting on the inherent value of poetry both as a guide and as an expression of their understanding, a group in which Ho Ching-ming was perhaps the most gifted member of all, we shall be closer to a adequate appreciation of his importance in the history of literature.

EPILOGUE: WHY HO CHING-MING? Sometime late in 1515 or early in 1516, about the time of his letter to Li Meng-yang on poetics, Ho wrote a farewell poem for a man named Ku Ying-hsiang 顧應祥 (1483-1565), who was going south to Kwangtung as an Assistant Surveillance Commissioner. 1 This is the only recorded contact between the two men. It may be that Ho was invited to Ku’s farewell party by some mutual friend and simply joined in the presentation of poems. Ku is now known chiefly for his mathematical writings, but he was in interesting figure in several respects. Although he had studied with Wang Yang-ming, his biographer tells us that he had no time for abstract chatter, to which he greatly preferred concrete action. The better part of his career was spent in provincial posts, often ones that required him to deal with military emergencies. In fact, his next appointment after Kwangtung was to Kiangsi, to help deal with the aftermath of the rebellion of Prince Ning. Ku spent several years in Kwangtung. Assistant Commissioners frequently had specific responsibilities, and his was the supervision of maritime trade. Thus it happened that in 1517 he was the official responsible for dealing with some of the very first Europeans to arrive on the Chinese coast, a Portuguese party led by Fernão Peres de Andrade and with Tomé Pires as ambassador. 2 Ku’s brief account of these visitors, the earliest such record extant, is chiefly concerned with the cannons with which the Portuguese sailors had cheerfully fired off a salute in Canton harbour, an action that required a flurry of

——— 1

“Saying Farewell to Ku of the Embroidered Uniform Guard, Who is Going to Kwangtung as Assistant Commissioner” 送顧錦衣赴廣東僉憲, HTFC 12.15a (170; 371:502). For Ku (t. 惟賢, h. 箬溪), see KHL 48.80a (2040—Hsü Chung-hsing), HY 3/42. TL 958, DMB 749 (L. Carrington Goodrich), TK 196. 2 Portuguese ships had reached China in 1514 and 1516, but Peres de Andrade’s was the first to be attested in a Chinese source. See Chang Wei-hua 張維華, “P’ut’ao-ya Ti-yi-ts’u Lai Hua Shih-ch’en Shih-chi K’ao” 葡萄牙第一次來華使臣事蹟考 (Study of the Emissaries in Portugal’s First Visit to China), Shih-hsüeh Nien-pao 1.5 (1933): 103-12; T’ien-tse Chang, Sino-Portuguese Trade from 1514 to 1644 (1933; reprint Leyden, E.J. Brill, 1969); Paul Pelliot, “Un ouvrage sur les premieres temps de Macao” TP 31 (1935): 58-94, a review of T’ien-tse Chang; and Pelliot, “Le Hōĵa et le Sayyid Husain de l’Histoire des Ming,” TP 38 (1948): 81-292; and DMB 1123-25.

546

EPILOGUE

‘exchanges of explanations’ to resolve. 3 Ku begins: Fo-lang-chi 佛郎機 is the name of a state, not of the cannon. In the ting-ch’ou 丁丑 year of Cheng-te (1517), I was an Assistant Surveillance Commissioner for Kwangtung in charge of maritime affairs. Two large sea-going ships suddenly appeared and proceeded directly to the Huai-yüan 懷遠 post station of Canton. They claimed to be presenting tribute from the country of Fo-lang-chi. The man in charge of their ships is named Chia-pi-tan 加必丹 (Capitan), and his men all have high noses and deep-set eyes. They wrap their heads in white cloth like the costume of Moslems. 4

Ku goes on to give a brief account of how the ambassador and his party, having been properly instructed in diplomatic decorum, were sent to the capital. Their case could not be immediately disposed of because the Emperor, who had expressed interest in meeting them, was away on his southern expedition. Wu-tsung’s patronage of ‘foreign monks’, it will be recalled, had been among the abuses criticised by Ho Ching-ming and other officials in their memorials at the time of the palace fire. On the accession of Shih-tsung in 1521, the survivors among the Portuguese party were sent back to Canton and expelled from the country as part of the general posthumous clean-up of Wu-tsung’s personal collection of riffraff. This event would have appeared to Ku Ying-hsiang and his contemporaries as a curious but emphemeral stir. As usual, we know better. Peres de Andrade’s party was only the beginning of a slow but inexorable building of pressure on China from a Europe driven by commercial, religious, and imperial ambitions. It would be many decades before Westerners gained a foothold in China, and centuries before they began to affect Chinese life decisively, but a historical process had now been set in motion that Ho Ching-ming and his friends would have found not only appalling, but literally unthinkable.

———

3 Ku’s short essay on the Portuguese cannon was included in the Ch’ou-hai T’upien 籌海圖編 (Compilation of Charts for Maritime Defense) compiled in the early 1560s by Cheng Jo-tseng 鄭若曾 (ca. 1505-80), not by Hu Tsung-hsien 胡宗憲 (1511-65), as the Ssu-k’u editors believed, see DMB, p.207; and in the Wu-pei Chih 武備志 (Treatise on Military Preparedness), preface dated 1621, compiled by Mao Yüan-yi 茅元儀 (1594-ca.1641), grandson of Mao K’un 坤 (1512-1601), who had written a preface to the Ch’ou-hai T’u-pien. 4 Ch’ou-hai T’u-pien (SKCS) 13.37b (422); Wu-pei Chih (T’ien-ch’i edition; repr. Ssu-k’u Chin-hui Shu Ts’ung-k’an 3:23-26 (Peking: Peking Ch’u-pan-she, 1998) 122.7b (644).

WHY HO CHING-MING

547

It was this very unthinkability that lay at the heart of what would become the culminating dilemma for traditional Chinese civilization. What the West brought to China was a challenge not simply to its economic or military supremacy but to its centrality, its position as the ‘middle kingdom’. If this challenge initially took the form of an implausible claim to universal religious truth, it had become, by the time things came to a head in the nineteenth century, an implicit claim for the truth of a cultural superiority enforced by the fruits of a universal science in whose history China had played no role. 5 As Joseph Levenson argued years ago, the reduction of Chinese cultural values from a universal standard to a merely national characteristic would not only doom the legitimacy of the Manchu regime but also call into question the entire intellectual apparatus on which those literary and ethical values were based. 6 China’s situation contrasted with that of Japan, whose cultural claim was to purity and uniqueness, but not to centrality. So long as there was a place reserved for such strictly Japanese institutions as Shinto and the Imperial line, the allowable degree of adaptation to things Western or ‘modern’ was negotiable. For China, though, a choice had to be made. If the future required physics and the recognition of multiple sovereign states, then the entire Chinese legacy was potentially invalid, from Confucian social values to Classical literary standards. Many of China’s agonies over the past two centuries have grown out the difficulty of this choice. 7 Even today, with an increasingly prosperous China participating actively and often constructively in a multinational world, its relations with others continue to be subject to disconcertingly atavistic fits of

———

5 This is not of course to say that China lacked discoveries about the natural world, still less that it was technologically backward. Indeed, in the days of Peres de Andrade and Ho Ching-ming, China was still, as it had been since antiquity, the most technologically advanced civilization on earth. What was not present in China and, at the time, only slowly beginning to be worked out in the West was Science, rooted in mathematics and the systematic testing of explicit hypotheses by transparent and replicable experiment. The crucial difference, for this and much else, was the subtly foundational presence in the West of Euclid. 6 See Joseph R. Levenson, Confucian China and its Modern Fate, Volume 1, The Problem of Intellectual Continuity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1958), especially pp.95-108. 7 Parallels with the dilemmas of traditional Islamic societies today are evident, and the Chinese case does not inspire optimism about their early resolution.

548

EPILOGUE

‘Middle Kingdomist’ irrationality over issues ranging from relations with the Vatican to the existence of an independent Taiwan. Against such a backdrop, what role might consideration of a sixteenth century Archaist poet play? What sort of reflections emerge when we juxtapose the traditional Chinese then with the modern academic and cultural now? The first, which should come as no surprise, is that detailed study of a single figure tends to alter our view of the context, not only of the figure but also of the study. In the case of the Ming dynasty, there are balances to be regained. With some interesting exceptions, the focus of historians’ interest has long been on the first and last few decades of the dynasty. Moreover, interest, especially in literature and the arts, has generally been concentrated on the south, especially the Kiangnan region of the Yangtse delta, where painting and other arts of genteel living were most highly developed, in some cases by men whose values seem closer to our own than those characteristic of China in other times and places. 8 One potential contribution of this book could be to extend our view into the north and into a period that might be called ‘China on the eve of China on the eve of’. That is, China not only before the advent of the West, but also before the expansion of the individuality-based literature of the Southern drama and the seventeenth century essayists, along with the southern economic efflorescence that supported them. 9 The relative poverty of Ho Ching-ming’s world stands in striking contrast to the affluent commercial society of the southern wen-jen and their patrons, and we find in his work less influence of the notion of ch’ing 情 (‘affections, sentiments’) so pervasive in the southern literature of the late Ming and often spoken of as though it were the dominant literary theme of the entire dynasty. There should also be little surprise in the persistence of cultural structures and habits in China from Ho Ching-ming’s day to our own.

——— 8

See, for example, John Meskill, Gentlemanly Interests and Wealth in the Yangtse Delta, Association for Asian Studies Monograph and Occasional Paper Series 49 (Ann Arbor: Association for Asian Studies, 1994). 9 For a concise overview of some aspects of the later period, see Evelyn S. Rawski, “Economic and Social Foundations of Late Imperial Culture,” in Popular Culture in Late Imperial China, edited by David Johnson, Andrew J.Nathan, and Evelyn S. Rawski (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), pp.3-33.

WHY HO CHING-MING

549

However much the superficial aspect of things may have changed, continuities at more fundamental levels remain. One of these is the habit of assuming that there must be a single source for authority, whether in the administration of the state or in the judgement of poetry. Beyond this, there is the exercise of this authority by the invocation of abstractions, whether “Poetry embodies objects and arrays distinctions, forms intent and restrains affections, takes care over fundamentals and illuminates norms” or “Down with the Four Olds.” 10 If these habits have been an impediment to the formation of a true civil society in modern China, they strengthened the hand of the Archaists in their own day, for, as Frederick Mote has pointed out, “the past (ku) was proper (cheng) because something had to be, and nothing else could acquire competitive validity.” 11 If continuities are to be found at all levels within the Chinese tradition, it is also instructive to consider the ways in which Ho Ching-ming and his contemporaries differed fundamentally from us. The Archaist ideal is a difficult one for moderns, subjected as we are to seductive, if frequently factitious, visions of the ultimate, the personal, and the innovative. It is important to recognise that these are contingent values that grow out of the particular history of the recent past and, at least in the West, more remotely from the peculiar goal of individual religious salvation. Thus, when Li Meng-yang argues that the poet who expresses the merely personal or individual is inferior to one who masters the modes of the masters of the past, we may find this a useful corrective to what may be an excessive devotion to the new and the individual in the present. If such a suggestion is unlikely to be widely taken up, there is another, much more limited, implication that is more urgent and returns us to the context of the study. This is that if we are fully to understand the history of shih poetry, the most widely, continuously, and intensively practised form of literary expression in China from the second century to the twentieth (and perhaps even the twenty-first), we must take the Archaists seriously and on their own terms, rather

———

10 This comes from Ho Ching-ming’s Preface to the poetry of Assistant Commissioner Liu, see above, chapter ten. 11 Frederick Mote, “The Arts and the ‘Theorizing Mode’ of the Civilization,” in Artists and Traditions: Uses of the Past in Chinese Culture, Edited by Christian F. Murck (Princeton: The Art Museum, Princeton University, 1976), p.7.

550

EPILOGUE

than forging a defective account by stringing together a series of userfriendly writers who remind us of ourselves. 12 To do so requires that we set aside our assumed teleologies of literary history, whether Chinese or Western, in favour of something more like Leonard B. Meyer’s ‘fluctuating stasis’, within which a range of continuously available styles and emphases alternate with one another rather than progressing in a more or less constant direction. 13 At the same time, we must consider, and at some length, the highly teleological shape that our Chinese colleagues find in their own literary history and that we have tended to adopt from them. Where did it come from, why does it look the way it does, and what must we do to make it go away? One way to approach these questions is to juxtapose the ‘mission statements’ of two publishers, one Western and one Chinese. The first introduces a noteworthy series of anthologies, the ‘Viking Portable Library’: Each Portable Library volume is made up of representative works of a favourite modern or classic author, or is a comprehensive anthology on a special subject. The format is designed for compactness and for pleasurable reading. The books average about 700 pages in length. Each is intended to fill a need not hitherto met by any single book. Each is edited by an authority distinguished in his field, who adds a thoroughgoing introductory essay and other helpful material. Most ‘Portables’ are available both in durable cloth and in stiff paper covers.

The second statement comes from the Library of Classical Chinese Literature ( 中國古典文學叢書 Chung-kuo Ku-tien Wen-hsüeh Ts’ung-shu) published by the Shanghai Classical Literature Press: Our great fatherland has a long history and a resplendent culture, which have passed down to the present day ancient classics as vast as the misty seas. To critically pass on this precious heritage is something that

———

12 For the persistence of shih poetry through and after the Literary Revolution, see Jon Eugene von Kowallis, The Subtle Revolution: Poets of the ‘Old Schools’ During Late Qing and Early Republican China (Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, 2006). On the world of ‘modern classical’ poetry that flourishes in contemporary China, mostly under the radar of established literary elites both Chinese and foreign, see Stephen Owen, “Stepping Forward and Back: Issues and Possibilities for ‘World’ Poetry,” Modern Philology 11.4 (2003): 532-48, esp. pp.542-48. 13 See Leonard B. Meyer, Music, the Arts, and Ideas: Patterns and Predictions in Twentieth Century Culture (1967; repr. ‘with a new postlude’ Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.

WHY HO CHING-MING

551

cannot be omitted in the development of our people’s new culture and the raising of our people’s self-confidence. Our editing and publication of this Library of Classical Chinese Literature is intended to supply research workers, instructors in universities and high schools, and workers in cultural fields with a comparatively systematic collection of basic Chinese classical literary materials both to assist readers in their analytic research and to serve as a guide and reference in the development of a flourishing new socialist culture.

Now, we find at work in these two statements strikingly different notions about the use of literature and the qualities desirable in its presentation. The Viking Press assures us of the quality and convenience of its books, promising us our favourite quality fare in substantial quantities, durably bound and easy to use. The Shanghai Classical Literature Press, in contrast, reminds us of the serious work we have to do in developing a new socialist culture and in providing for the needs of ‘workers’ of various sorts. The Shanghai editors seem as innocent of the idea that we might be reading for the sheer fun of it as the blurbwrights at Viking are of any urgent need to restore our self-confidence in the length and resplendence of our culture. It is the contrast in the Shanghai text with this last point that strikes the telling note and returns us to China’s difficult choice. Even before the end of the Ch’ing dynasty, it had become clear that one crucial element of the old order would have to go. This was the traditional system of education that Ho Ching-ming had known, one that had been available to a limited number of young men who undertook an excruciatingly difficult process of mastering classical texts for the sake of competing in a series of civil service examinations that most of them had no hope of passing. An essential requirement for the new China was thus the reform of education in order to produce the great numbers of technically educated people that modernisation would require, as well as the bureaucrats and businessmen who would manage their work. 14 At the same time, there was increasing interest in providing young women with education as well. The new education would necessarily be based on the spoken language rather than the classical, and this institutional reform

——— 14

For a refreshingly non-triumphalist account of the end of the traditional education and examination system, see Benjamin A. Elman, A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000), pp.585-625.

552

EPILOGUE

coincided with a campaign by younger writers for a literature written in this same spoken language. This educational reform was thus an integral part of a much broader initiative, political in essence, to create a modern country, the ‘May Fourth Movement’ of the teens and twenties of the last century. Within this effort, modernity in itself was not the goal, but was rather a necessary condition if China were to reassert a claim to its proper place in the world. The literary part of this movement was carried out with particular rapidity and resulted in one of the first decisive victories for the putative future. This was realised in the swift success of the ‘Vernacular Literature Movement’, which began with scattered Chinese students overseas struggling to express themselves poetically in the spoken language rather than in that of the canonical Classical corpus and resulted after less than a decade in the creation of a burgeoning, if economically and aesthetically challenged, swarm of poets and novelists filling the bookstalls and newspaper supplements with work reminiscent of Keats and Teasdale rather than of Tu Fu or Han Yü. 15 But the success of the new required a reevaluation of the old, and this reevaluation, because its primary motive was support for the ‘literary revolution’, led to significant distortions of literary history. The goals being fundamentally instrumental, the methods were naturally sometimes crude. The promotion of the previously marginal traditions of vernacular fiction and drama over Classical poetry and prose, which had consistently been the chief preoccupation of the literate for almost two thousand years, was one aspect of this. Another, with which we are chiefly concerned here, was a matter of reshaping the history of the Classical tradition itself. The prestige of the first millenium of Classical literature was both a necessary part of the claim to continuing greatness for Chinese civilization and something that lay safely in the distant past, as the Shanghai Classical Literature Press understands. Later eras, especially the Ming and Ch’ing, were

———

15 See Cyril Birch, “English and Chinese Metres in Hsü Chih-mo,” Asia Major n.s.8 (1961): 258-93; and Michelle Loi, Roseaux sur le mur: Les poetes Occidentalistes chinois (1919-1949) (Paris: Gallimard, 1971), p.56. Loi’s work is an excellent study of both the early history of pai-hua poetry and the thematic and technical concerns of its creators.

WHY HO CHING-MING

553

more open to reinterpretation. The results of this process can be seen in one of the most influential products of the new literary historiography, Cheng Chen-to’s 鄭振鐸 “History of Chinese Literature” (中國文學史 Chung-kuo Wen-hsüeh Shih). In his preface to this book, dated 1931, Cheng makes his stance quite clear. His history will be different from all those before it, in that it will be the first to give a really complete and true history of the subject. By this he means that it will include a full account of the premodern tradition of vernacular literature in all its forms. This approach he contrasts with that of his predecessors, who had at most given token space to this tradition, preferring to devote their attention to, as he puts it, “such things as the ‘Elders of the Ho and Fen’ 河汾諸老, the ‘Earlier and Later Seven Masters’ 前後七子, or the ‘T’ungch’eng’ 桐城 and ‘Yang-hu’ 陽湖 [Schools].” 16 He asks rhetorically: “Is the garden of Chinese literary history really to be occupied forever by the slavish ‘if it please your gracious majesty’ literati? Are a few soulless and casually written poems and essays to go on being smeared over so many dozens of pages of literary history while scarcely a dozen lines can be found for truly great works that have moved uncounted numbers of ordinary people to tears and laughter?” 17 Cheng’s history is consistent with this attitude, but that hardly insures that it is ‘really complete and true’. ‘Complete’ it can hardly be, given his bias. Its real contrast with earlier works is not that they failed to be complete while it succeeds, but rather that it is incomplete in a very new and different way. As promised, Cheng gives us a quite full account of the vernacular tradition. At the same time, he has relatively little to say about the much larger corpus of poetry and prose that was produced during the Yüan, Ming, and Ch’ing dynasties by the literate governing class, whose failure entirely to master the arts of ‘slavishness’ cost so many of Ho Ching-ming’s associates so dearly, even though this corpus was overwhelmingly regarded by its creators

———

16 Cheng Chen-to, [Ch’a-t’u-pen] Chung-kuo Wen-hsüeh Shih 插圖本中國文學史 (History of Chinese Literature, Illustrated Edition) (1931; repr. Hong Kong: [Shangwu], 1961), preface, pp.1-2. The ‘Elders of Ho and Fen’ refers to eight minor poets of the Chin dynasty whose poetry was gathered into an anthology during the Yüan. The T’ung-ch’eng and Yang-hu Schools were literary factions during the Ch’ing dynasty 17 Cheng Chen-to, Preface, p.2.

554

EPILOGUE

and readers alike as the literary tradition. Moreover, what Cheng does have to say about this latter corpus is unfortunate in at least two ways. ‘The first of these is his parti-pris, already evident in his preface. In contrast to his enthusiastic descriptions of vernacular fiction and drama, when he comes to discuss developments within the later wen-yen traditions, his critical vocabulary takes a nasty turn. For example, he says of Wang Yangming that although he was acquainted with Ho Ching-ming’s friend and mentor Li Meng-yang, he was not ‘polluted’ (污然 wu-jan) by this contact. 18 Cheng’s account of the effect of Li Meng-yang’s ideas on his contemporaries is likewise couched in highly prejudicial language, “When the literati of the day encountered him, they all collapsed at his feet like soft grass bowing before a violent wind, and thus a fake Archaist literary movement was formally born. Although this was hardly a great movement, the literary scene had been so dull since the founding of the Ming that it was given a shock by this stimulus.” 19 Cheng then quotes a passage from the T’an-yi Lu 談藝錄 (Record of Remarks on the Arts), the critical work by Li Meng-yang’s young follower Hsü Chen-ch’ing. Citing Hsü’s claim for the superiority of Han dynasty poetry over that of Wei and Tsin, Cheng comments, “That’s how infatuated with antiquity they were! In a word, the older the better. But the result of this Archaism was that they turned out a lot of poems and essays that just had a rude and antique look to them. Sometimes they were simply intentionally artificial. ‘Like imitation antiques, they seem real from a distance, but when you take a close look at them you can tell they are counterfeit goods. And the influence of this enveloped an entire century!” 20 What is lacking from Cheng’s account is any corroborating

——— 18

Cheng Chen-to, p.826. Cheng Chen-to, p.815. Cheng Chen-to, p.816. An earlier, if minor, example of this attitude is the article by Hsia Ch’ung-p’u 夏崇璞, “Ming-tai Fu-ku-p’ai yü T’ang-Sung Wen-p’ai chih Ch’ao-liu” 明代復古派與唐宋文派之潮流 (Development of the Archaist and T’angSung Prose Schools of the Ming Dynasty), Hsüeh-heng 9 (1922): 1-10. Hsia describes Li Meng-yang as violent and a partisan of the rebellious Prince Ning, K’ang Hai and Wang Chiu-ssu as libertines attached to Liu Chin, and Pien Kung as a poor administrator and an alcoholic. “Therefore their writings are vulgar and perverse, completely like their characters!” In a note, Hsia admits that Ho Ching-ming was amiable and self-controlled by nature, “so his bad habits were relatively few.” 19 20

WHY HO CHING-MING

555

evidence in the form of a close analysis of even one work by the writers upon whom he casts such opprobrium. When he comes to discuss the works of Ho Ching-ming and his fellow Archaists, Cheng’s reluctance to ‘get his hands dirty’ with the poetry by doing something more than just citing a few extracts is conspicuous. Instead, his comments are generally limited to bouts of polemical hand wringing over their failure as literature, presumably because they have not “moved uncounted numbers of ordinary people to tears and laughter.” Cheng would, no doubt, have preferred Stephen King to William Gaddis. Cheng’s dismissive attitude and neglect of close reading is matched, in its failure to give an adequate account of Ho Ching-ming and his contemporaries, by the confusing and misleading organization of his narrative. Within the larger structure of his book, the chapter in which their works are discussed is a kind of coda to the long middle section (chapters 13-55), whose coverage extends from the Eastern Tsin to the middle of the Ming. It is immediately preceded by the chapter on Archaism in the Ming just quoted. The chapter in which Ho is mentioned is a very sloppy piece of work, repeatedly confusing chronology and misinterpreting relationships among the writers discussed. After introducing Li Mengyang’s work, Cheng turns to Ho Ching-ming, from whom he cites one poem and bits of two others, all three of them written no later than 1508, that is, during the first third of Ho’s brief career. 21 Cheng concludes by quoting the couplet by Hsüeh Hui that compares Li and Ho, to Ho’s advantage, referring this to the debate over poetics that Li and Ho had conducted in their exchange of letters. Had Cheng investigated the letters, he would have found both that the critical attitudes of the two men were a good deal more sophisticated than he presents them as being (in particular that Ho’s views were similar in many ways to those of Yüan Hung-tao), and that the letters themselves were written much later than any of the poems that he cites, except the couplet by Hsüeh Hui comparing Li and Ho (see above, chapter eight). Had he fully investigated the works of Li and Ho, Cheng would have

——— 21

Cheng Chen-to, p.821. The poems cited are the second of the four “Presented to Wang Wen-hsi,” HTFC 9.6b (111; 351:002), written in 1505; “Missing Master Shen,” HTFC 16.4b (243; 252:073), from 1507; and “Fourteenth Night,” HTFC 16.6b (246; 252:082), from 1508. All are translated above.

556

EPILOGUE

found that they remained on good terms even after their epistolary debate. Had Cheng investigated the biographies of the Archaists and the history of the relationships among them, he would have found that Hsüeh Hui had little to do with Li Meng-yang but was one of several young poets who was closely associated with Ho Ching-ming during the years 1514-18, after Li had left Peking for good. Moreover, had Cheng investigated the chronology of Hsüeh Hui’s works, he would have found that the poem from which he cites the couplet probably comes from the period after 1523, at least two years after Ho’s death. Thus the poem itself is chiefly a eulogy for Hsüeh’s departed mentor, and only secondarily a comment on Li and Ho as a contrasted pair. ‘In the second section of this chapter, Cheng discusses a number of writers from the south, including Chu Yün-ming 祝允明, Wen Chengming and T’ang Yin 唐寅, whose sincerely personal works (as he characterises them) he likens to an oasis in the middle of the desert, not too good, but at least free from the influence of the ‘phony Archaist Movement’. What his presentation does not make clear is that all the writers he discusses in this section either predated Li and Ho or were only briefly present in Peking, if at all, during the years when Li or Ho were there and so could hardly have had the occasion either to have been influenced by them or to have resisted their influence. The brief third section introduces more writers who were not allied to Li and Ho, but they too, except for Wang Yang-ming, were older men whose stand apart says nothing about their independence of mind, not to speak of being evidence that they had rejected the ideas that Li and Ho would later advance. Wang was in Peking during the few years (1502-1507) when Li and Ho were together there. That he was not an Archaist poet seems to have been chiefly a matter of his not having been that much of a poet of any sort. Politically, however, he was clearly and closely associated with Li Meng-yang, and indeed the two men left Peking together after they were disgraced by Liu Chin in 1507 (see above, chapter four). Cheng’s chapter is, in short, not only tendentious, it is a farrago of poorly selected materials misleadingly arranged and interpreted. Cheng’s book can be excused to some extent on several grounds. For one thing, it was, after all, the work of a very young man; he was only thirty-three when he wrote the preface quoted above. He was, moreover, a specialist in the vernacular tradition, in which field he rendered great service not only by his published scholarship, but also

WHY HO CHING-MING

557

by his strenuous efforts to collect and preserve rare examples of early fiction and drama during the perilous days of the war. Finally, many of his errors and omissions concern matters for which even today there is inadequate coverage in the secondary literature. What can no longer be excused is our accepting his history and the assumptions that underlie it as the basis for our own work almost a century later. Cheng’s failure to produce a balanced and factually accurate account has had a very serious effect on Chinese literary scholarship for the rest of the century. 22 Although Liu Ta-chieh 劉大杰, for example. is much more moderate in his language than Cheng, he is similarly biased in favour of the vernacular tradition in his equally influential Chung-kuo Wen-hsüeh Fa-chan Shih (中國文學發展史 ), and these two men’s work has set the pattern for most treatments down until quite recent times. This sort of distortion of the past to serve transient present goals has long been part of the Chinese tradition. We should, therefore, in attempting to interpret the literary history of the Ming dynasty, exercise caution in taking the interpretations of Chinese scholars, whether pre-modern or modern, as definitive of our ‘base-lines’. Intellectual history furnishes some instructive analogues. Jie Zhao has documented, for example, the way in which Huang Tsung-hsi 黃宗羲 (1610-95), in his Ming-ju Hsüeh-an 明儒學案 (Records of the Ming Confucians), retroactively constructed ‘schools’ of Ming thinkers in such a way as to deflect criticism away from Wang Yang-ming. He did so at the cost of misrepresenting the intellectual positions and affiliations of some of the thinkers he discussed, especially those he assigned to the so-called ‘T’ai-chou 泰州 School’. 23 More examples, this time involving interpretations of Han dynasty intellectual life, are found in recent and brilliant articles by Michael Nylan and Hans van

———

22 Milena Doleželová-Velingerová examines the range of Chinese literary histories written during the first decades of the Republic in “Literary Historiography in Early Twentieth-Century China (1904-1928): Constructions of Cultural Memory,” in The Appropriation of Cultural Capital: China’s May Fourth Project, edited by Doleželová-Velingerová and Oldřich Král, with Graham Sanders, Assistant Editor (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2001), pp.123-66. What emerges is that the interpretation of the past remained fluid during this period, only later hardening into the now canonical ‘shape’, in which the vernacular tradition is represented as superceding older forms from the Yüan dynasty on. 23 Jie Zhao, “Reassessing the Place of Chou Ju-teng (1547-1629) in Late Ming Thought,” Ming Studies 33 (1994): 1-11.

558

EPILOGUE

Ess. 24 What Nylan and van Ess show is that the received picture of a highly partisan battle that pitted self-conscious ‘schools’ against one another for the prize of orthodoxy is largely an invention of late Ch’ing intellectuals engaged in their own struggles over the role of ‘Confucianism’ in China’s future, an invention taken over and developed by twentieth century Chinese academic historians such as Feng Yu-lan 馮友蘭 for reasons that were fundamentally political rather than intellectual. It is to be taken as a corollary of the present study of Ho Chingming that something similar has happened in the case of Ming dynasty poetry. No one reads Ming poetry any more, and small wonder it is, too, thanks to Cheng Chen-to and his generation. 25 Almost without exception, the first question I have been asked about this project by colleagues, at least among those who have heard of Ho Ching-ming, is, “Why Ho Ching-ming?” It has become hard to imagine that there might be anything to be learned, still less any enjoyment to be had, by reading Ming dynasty poetry. It was not always so, of course. Until 1920 or so, many Ming poets were held in high esteem, and Ho Ching-ming was among the

——— 24

Michael Nylan, “The Chin wen/Ku wen Controversy in Han Times,” TP 80 (1994): 83-145; and Hans van Ess, “The Old Text / New Text Controversy: Has the Twentieth Century Got It Wrong?” TP 80 (1994): 146-70. 25 An interesting exception was Mao Tse-tung 毛澤東, who was clearly familiar with at least the chief anthologies of Ming poetry. He expressed admiration for the poetry of Li P’an-lung, one of the ‘Later Seven Masters’, and a preference for Shen Te-ch’ien’s Ming-shih Pieh-tsai Chi over Chu Yi-tsun’s Ming Shih Tsung. See Yen Ch’uan-shu 鄢傳恕, “Mao Tse-tung Lun Ming Shih” 毛澤東論明詩 (Mao Tse-tung on Ming Poetry), Chiang-Han Lun-t’an 1995.5:63. Mao’s preference for Shen’s anthology may have played a role in its appearance in a new edition in 1979, among the first publications of any significance after the Cultural Revolution. More recently, Yang Ch’un-ch’iu 羊春秋 has published an argument, a polemic in fact, that claims Ming poetry to be superior to that of the Sung, Yüan, and Ch’ing dynasties. See his “Ch’ung-ku Ming-tai Shih–ko te Chia-chih” 重估明代詩歌的價值 (Reconsider the Value of Ming Poetry), Chung-kuo Yün-wen Hsüeh-k’an 1994.1:1-6; repr. Chung-kuo Ku-tai, Chin-tai Wen-hsüeh Yen-chiu 1995.6:196-201. In a recent thoughtful and wide-ranging discussion, three Chinese literary scholars consider a series of issues concerning scholarship on Ming and Ch’ing literature in the Classical language. One of the first things to emerge in this is the necessity of moving beyond the flawed and misleading interpretations bequeathed by the May Fourth generation of writers. See Wu Ch’eng-hsüeh 吳承學, Ts’ao Hung 曹虹, and Chiang Yin 蔣寅, “Yi-ko Ch’i-tai Kuan-chu te Hsüeh-shu Ling-yü: Ming-Ch’ing Shih-wen Yen-chiu San-jen-t’an” 一個期待關注的學述領域:明清詩文研究三人談 (A Scholarly Domain Awaiting Attention: A Three-way Discussion of Research on Ming and Ch’ing Poetry and Prose), Wen-hsüeh Yi-ch’an 1999.4:1-16.

WHY HO CHING-MING

559

favourites. During the Ch’ing dynasty, Shen Te-ch’ien 沈德潛 included 49 of Ho’s poems in his Ming Shih Pieh-tsai-chi, more than by any other poet. Earlier in the dynasty, Ch’ien Ch’ien-yi, whose tastes were quite different from Shen’s, had included over 100 of Ho’s poems in his Lieh-ch’ao Shih-chi. And Ho was even popular enough less than a century ago for a new edition of his works to have been published as a commercial venture as late as 1909, on the eve of the final collapse of the Imperial regime. In fact, the current attitude can be traced back less than a hundred years, to the histories of Chinese literature by Cheng Chen-to and Liu Ta-chieh that enshrined the ‘pattern of the Chinese literary past’, to adapt Mark Elvin’s phrase, that most of us were educated into and that formed the framework into which we have tended to fit our reading and research and scholarship. It is this framework, as a sort of cultural icon, that urgently requires reconsideration. The exhilaration felt by the May Fourth reformers at ‘putting up on their desks what before they could only read beneath them’ is hard to resist, but it came at a cost, and this cost was a ‘radical deformation of the shape of Chinese literary history. The promotion of the vernacular plays, stories, and novels of the Yüan, Ming, and Ch’ing dynasties entailed the simultaneous demotion of the poetry and essays written during the same periods. The motive for this lay neither in a critical and comparative reading of the two bodies of literature nor in an examination of the extent to which the two traditions had occupied the attention and earned the esteem of educated taste in their own time and later. It lay instead in a combination of urgent practical necessity with the application of a poorly digested bit of foreign learning in the form of vulgar Darwinism. It was the latter, the notion that different literary forms not only might, but ineluctably did, replace one another in a process of succession like those of trilobites, dinosaurs, and mammals, that supplied the rationale for a move seen as essential to China’s non-literary future. The resulting history of Chinese literature consists of a series of successive, overlapping periods of predominance by different literary forms. Thus the Han is the age of the fu (‘rhapsody’), the Six Dynasties and T’ang that of shih poetry, the Sung that of the tz’u song lyric, the Mongol Yüan that of the first dramatic forms and of the sanch’ü aria, and the Ming and Ch’ing that of the vernacular drama and of short stories and novels, to be followed, of course, by all the

560

EPILOGUE

masterworks the literary reformers themselves would inevitably produce. 26 If the masterworks have proven to be remarkably few, the results of the May Fourth perspective have all the same been remarkably durable. In part this has been because the ‘truth declared from the top down’ habit of Chinese political culture has required continual evidence of progress away from a bad old China on which all the ills of the present day might be blamed, and in part it is simply a matter of the reformers who brought about the Literary Revolution having been young men who rose quickly to the top of the new academic institutions and then continued to exert their influence down to the present day, in a way analogous to the creators of the Secretariat Style in the Ming. Cheng Chen-to, for example, not only held teaching positions at a number of prestigious Chinese universities but eventually served as Vice-Minister of Culture during the middle fifties. In any event, this interpretation of the shape of China’s literary history has been ubiquitous in literary scholarship since the 1920’s and even today is only occasionally questioned, and then only in relatively specialised works, as opposed to textbooks or other publications intended for the general reading public. In the meanwhile, the language of classical literature has not really become inaccessible to the majority of citizens (for it was always that), but it has come to be seen as a tradition to which there is a preferable alternative in the form of the vernacular. Ordinary readers who require access to the Classical tradition are increasingly getting it at second hand through translations into the vernacular language, and this is turn has tended to preserve the Literary Revolutionists’ disingenuous interpretation of Chinese literature’s historical shape. It should be clear by now that the May Fourth interpretation has to be taken less seriously than it was for most of the last century. Fortunately, there is evidence that this is happening. Where once the eminent scholar and writer Ch’ien Chung-shu was almost alone in

———

26 Stephen Owen provides a series of telling examples of how literary history was distorted for programmatic ends in “The End of the Past: Rewriting Chinese Literary History in the Early Republic,” in The Appropriation of Cultural Capital: China’s May Fourth Project, edited by Doleželová-Velingerová and Oldřich Král, with Graham Sanders, Assistant Editor (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2001), pp.167-92.

WHY HO CHING-MING

561

pointing out that the dominant forms of writing in Chinese, right down to the beginning of the twentieth century, were poetry and prose in the Classical language, there are now increasing signs of support for this view, at least in academic circles, even in China. They are among the last to do so. Japan, of course, had no national investment in the May Fourth legacy, so scholars such as Aoki Masaru 靑木正兒 , Yoshikawa Kōjirō, Iriya Yoshitaka入矢義高, and Yokota Terutoshi were free to explore the Archaist legacy and did so to good effect. In Taiwan, during the long period of martial law under the Kuomintang, the May Fourth Movement itself was accepted as an important step toward a modern China, but many of the figures who guided it were non-persons because of their later association with the Communist regime. 27 Already in the 1970s, however, a publishing company in Taiwan reprinted the works of the ‘Earlier and Later Seven Masters’, though in the case of Ho Ching-ming the works of a different Ming writer with the surname Ho were substituted by mistake. At the same time, scholars in Taiwan, most notably Wu Hung-yi 吳宏一, have opened up the study of Ch’ing poetry, and a number of younger scholars have contributed more recently to the exploration of Ming poetry. In one important case, Chou Chih-p’ing 周質平 has argued that Yüan Hung-tao, who has been represented for much of this century as a man who advocated taking the vernacular tradition seriously, in fact thought very little of such works as literature. His interest was in them as sources for moral lessons. 28 On the Chinese side, the recent appearance of the “History of Chinese Poetry in Recent Times” (中國近代詩歌史 Chung-kuo Chintai Shih-ko Shih), written in China by Ma Ya-chung 馬亞中 but published in Taiwan, is a very hopeful sign. Ma’s book is chiefly devoted to the last decades of the Ch’ing dynasty, but he begins it with a clear statement of his view of the tradition as a whole. In this, he

———

27 During the Martial Law period in Taiwan, in the early eighties, Professor Kung Hsien-tsung waited until the ambient noise level around a conversation in a busy restaurant was particularly high before leaning over to whisper that Wen Yi-to 聞一多 had been [hand gesture of a pistol shot] by the KMT, a matter of common knowledge outside Taiwan. He had been relieved to find that his own first published discussions of Wen and other banned writers had not called forth any consequences. 28 See Chih-p’ing Chou, Yüan Hung-tao and the Kung-an School (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp.54-60.

562

EPILOGUE

emphasises the very fact that the May Fourth historians suppressed, that for the actual participants in creating the tradition, poetry and the essay were always the central forms, with vernacular fiction and drama as adjuncts where they were cultivated at all. 29 In the West, we have had little excuse other than sloth and ignorance for our failure to have explored the Archaist tradition earlier and more fully. 30 The time is long overdue for us to put aside the noisy confusions and ignorance of the May Fourth generation and to examine in all its richness of the central Chinese literary tradition, shih poetry, as it developed over the the centuries of the Yüan, Ming, and Ch’ing dynasties. There are large challenges to be met, the voluminousness of the extant material and relative lack of modern editions not least among them, but if this book even begins to suggest the rewards to be gained, it will be well worth the effort put into it.

——— 29

Ma Ya-chung, Chung-kuo Chin-tai Shih-ko Shih (Taipei: Hsüeh-sheng, 1992). Another promising work, written in China and now available in slightly differing Chinese and Taiwan editions, is Liao K’o-pin’s on the Ming Archaists, a detailed account that likewise testifies to a new independence of outlook among younger Chinese scholars; see above, chapter nine. Bringing Ming poetry back to the attention of literary historians was also the goal of Ch’en Shu-lu’s Ming-tai Ch’ien-hou Ch’itzu Yen-chiu. All three works were derived from their authors’ dissertations. It remains to be seen how influential this new view will become, but that it has appeared at all is a good sign. 30 The notable exception is the work of Richard John Lynn, cited above. Other pioneers in the field of post-Sung shih poetry include Timothy Wixted, Jerry D. Schmidt, Jonathan Chaves, and Jon Kowallis.

APPENDIX ONE

EARLY BIOGRAPHIES OF HO CHING-MING The most important source for this book has been the corpus of Ho Ching-ming’s works, together with those of his contemporaries. All the same, frequent use has been made of biographical narratives as well, for they often contain accounts of events that go unnoticed in literary works. Broadly speaking, these biographies fall into three classes. First, there are independent accounts composed from scratch, as it were. Although they draw on a variety of sources, some of them identifiable but many now inaccessible, including personal memories, things heard from other people, and written documents no longer extant, they clearly represent fresh attempts to present Ho’s life and its significance. Then, there are numerous accounts found in biographical compendia of various sorts that typically draw on one earlier account, or in some cases two or three. These the compilers cut, pad, combine, and rephrase according to their own priorities. Works that fall into this class generally do so quite obviously, deriving both their arrangement of materials and most of their phraseology from a single pre-existing source. Finally, there are sources that eschew any attempt at a full account, offering instead one or more short biographical or critical essays as part of works consisting of similar materials about a wide range of people. Although the last class of material has been drawn upon in this book, no attempt is made to give a full account of it here. The other types are inventoried and discussed one by one, but our primary concern is to give an account of the independent biographies, from the first two, prepared immediately after Ho died, down to the one that has served as summative for traditional scholarship, that included in the Ming Shih. Such a review is worth undertaking for several reasons. First, it allows us to consider in one place various characteristics of particular biographers, such as Li K’ai-hsien’s penchant for dramatic presentation or the clouded relationship with Li Meng-yang that emerges from examination of Meng Yang’s version of Ho’s life. More

564

APPENDIX ONE

broadly, in the case of the larger compendia that include biographies of many Ming figures, it may suggest some priorities and cautions to those at work on Ming personalities and facing a long list of potential sources. Second, a chronological presentation of the biographies shows how Ho’s historical image shifted over time and according to the interests of later generations of biographers. This is not to suggest sinister or programatically manipulative motives on the part of the biographers so much as to call attention to the varying sorts of significance they attached to Ho’s life and works and hence to allow us to draw on their narratives while keeping their interests in mind. A particular secondary goal is to show in some detail how the biography found in the Ming Shih was assembled and to suggest why certain sources were relied upon and certain elements either included or omitted. In general, these accounts contain two different sorts of material, which we might variously characterise as narrative and interpretive, chronological and impressionistic, or just as matters of fact and significance. That is, they all provide a certain amount of potentially falsifiable information such as dates, offices held, actions taken, and the like. In addition, they all attempt to record or assign significance to their information, whether explicitly in editorial comments or the recording of views held by other people, including Ho himself, or implicitly by the way in which information is included, omitted, or juxtaposed. Although all the biographies share common characteristics conditioned both by the traditions of Chinese biographical writing and by broader cultural presuppositions, they vary in a number of respects. Perhaps the most obvious is their differing treatments of Ho’s relationship with Li Meng-yang. Another, less contentious, variation involves the balance between Ho’s public career and ‘moral’ actions, on the one hand, and his literary interests and practice, on the other. Yet another is a matter of organisation. Speaking broadly again, the earlier biographies tend to take chronology as their primary compositional principle, making interpretive comments along the way and reserving a section at the end for a synthetic account of Ho’s character and personality. Later writers are more likely to take their understanding of Ho’s historical, literary, and ethical significance as their basis and to subordinate chronology to this, where they do not abandon it altogether.

EARLY BIOGRAPHIES

565

The very earliest account is of course the Curriculum by Fan P’eng: Curriculum Vitae of Master Ho Ta-fu, Grand Master of Palace Accord and Education Vice-Commissioner of Shensi Master Ho’s formal name was Ching-ming; his informal name was Chung-mo, and his sobriquet was Ta-fu Shan-jen. His ancestors were natives of Lo-t’ien in Hukwang. [Ho] T’ai-shan, his ancestor in the fourth generation, fled to Hsin-yang at the time of the Red Turban uprising, and so subsequent generations of the family were natives of Hsin-yang. T’ai-shan had four sons, Lung-yi, Lung-erh, Lung-san, and Lung-ssu. Lung-erh, also known as [Ho] Hai, was the Master’s greatgrandfather. His grandfather Chien was the local Master Geomancer, known in his district and village for self-effacing benevolence. Chien bore Hsin, who served as Post-station Master and was later made Honourary Secretariat Drafter. He was a man of broad learning and a capable poet, with the sobriquet Sir Plum Glen. He had four sons. By his first wife Madame Lu he had two sons. The elder, Ching-shao, passed the Honan provincial examination in the ping-tzu 丙子 year of the Ch’eng-hua reign. 1 He served in successive offices, reaching Assistant Prefect of Tung-ch’ang before his decease. The younger, Ching-yang, passed the Honan provincial examination along with the Master in the wu-wu 戊午 year of the Hung-chih reign [1498] and is presently in office as Assistant Prefect of An-ch’ing. [Ho Hsin] subsequently married Madame Li, by whom he had two sons. The elder, Ching-hui, did not seek office; the younger was the Master. In his sixth year, the Master was able to make parallel couplets and produce unusual characters, memorising several hundred words a day. He understood paying respect to his elder brothers, not daring to talk back even if struck. When he saw gangs of children at their games, he did not join them. In his eighth year he could write essays. In his thirteenth year, he went with his father, who was taking up office in the post station of Hui-ning in Shensi. Sir Li [Chi], who was Prefect of Lin-t’ao at the time, heard of his unusual qualities and ordered him placed in his own establishment, where he showed him great fondness and favour. [Li] had provided a teacher to give instruction in the Annals. The teacher going out for a while, the other older boys all gave themselves up to pranks and jokes, tramping on the teacher’s mat. Only the Master remained calmly in his place, reciting the Annals. Sir Li saw this and sighed, “This lad Ho is a kylin, a phoenix!” On one occasion, [Li] was summoned to attendance dressed in his cap, robe, and gold cords. He said to his wife, “I suppose you think me a success? Someday that lad may well be more successful than

———

1 There was no such year; since Ching-shao died in 1507 in his forty-sixth year, a plausible correct date would be the ping-wu 丙午 year, 1486.

566

APPENDIX ONE

I!” After three year, [Ho’s] father retired, but was too poor to return home. Sir Li give him a horse and cart and summoned the other officials to a farewell in the suburban pavilion, at which he toasted the Master with the words, “My young friend.” When [Ho] had returned home, he switched to the study of the Documents. After he had studied this text for only nine months, Censor Li Han of Ch’in-shui, who was in charge of the Ju-ning area at the time, came to put the students of Hsin-yang through their paces. The Master went with his elder brother to sit the examination. When the Censor read his essay, he said, “An unusual talent, an unusual talent! I have never known the hills and streams so rich as to produce such a person.” He then returned to Hsin-yang to see him. Later, when [Ho] took first place in the provincial examination, someone came to announce the result, and Ho received him lying down. When asked “Why are you not celebrating?” [Ho] said, “I was quite sure of myself; why should I rejoice?” At this time he was only in his fifteenth year, and still a child in appearance and attire. The nobility and noteables contended for a sight of him in such numbers and confusion that he took refuge in the prefectural offices and would not come out. Wherever he rested or travelled, the crowds were such that he could not make his way through. He turned out hundreds of sheets of cursive calligraphy a day in response to requests and was universally deemed a child prodigy. At the spring [i.e. chin-shih] examination the following year, his paper was rejected on reexamination on account of its numerous unusual characters. Having failed to place, he entered the National University. When he returned home after one full month there, Libationer Lin [Han] presented him with a poem. It was unprecedented for a Libationer to present a poem to a student. Not yet having come of age, he achieved the chin-shih in the jen-hsü 壬戌 year of the Hungchih reign [1502] and was appointed a Secretariat Drafter. He bore the Announcement of Mourning for the Respectful Sovereign [the Hung-chih Emperor, d.1505] to the southern regions, where the nobility and senior officials of those distant parts all offered him precious pieces of rhinoceros tusk, ivory and jewelry. A eunuch named Hsiung made particularly rich offerings, but the Master would not even look at them. This had a profound effect on the eunuch, who said, “If this young man is capable of such a thing, I should be ashamed of myself!” Whereupon he resigned his post. When [Ho] returned the following year, he had no more than a single chest of books and clothing. Later, when the disloyal [eunuch Liu] Chin took power, [Ho] realised that as a minor official he could not resist, while most of the senior officials were looking out for themselves, so he excused himself on grounds of illness and returned home. After some time had passed, Sir Plum Glen and Madame Li both died at the same time. The Master

EARLY BIOGRAPHIES

567

grieved so intensely that his bones were visible. He neither drank nor played his lute until after the rites were performed at the end of the mourning period. The mourning period expired and the disloyal Chin fell. At this time many prominent and principled men had been contaminated by association with Chin, and those who had not joined him had suffered greatly. Only the Master had risen far above it all. Everyone [now] said, “How lofty was Master Ho, to have acted with such foresight!” Later, he was restored to the Secretariat on the recommendation of the Grand Secretary Sir Li [Tung-yang], assigned to the Grand Secretariat Proclamation Office and made a participant in the Classics Colloquium. When his friend Li Hsien-chi [i.e. Li Meng-yang] was subject to false accusations in Kiangsi and everyone was making much of his shortcomings, with none willing to come to his defence, the Master alone submitted a letter contesting the charges, taking the case to the Minister of Personnel Yang [Yi-ch’ing], so that the matter was properly dealt with. At the time of the fire in the Ch’ien-ch’ing Palace, he submitted a memorial discussing contemporary policy issues, saying, “If human affairs are not set in order, we shall see a change in heaven once again.” In a blunt denunciation, he said that such-and-such an adopted son should not be supported and that such-and-such a eunuch should not be favoured. Hence [his memorial] was retained in the palace without response, and people were terrified for him. At this time, Ch’ien Ning was in full sway, pulling all the strings among the civil service. One day he came to the Master’s door with an old painting, for which he sought an inscription. The Master said, “Such a fine painting should not be sullied by my inscription.” He kept it for a year without adding a single character to it. When Censor Shih [Ts’un-chih] died in an inn while visiting the capital, the imperial favourite Liao [P’eng] presented a coffin [for his funeral]. The Master rejected it with contempt, saying, “My friend accepted nothing improperly while he was alive; how can he be sullied now that he is dead!” He then contributed money on his own to help pay for the funeral. Such was his courage in doing what was right. Up to this time, it was unknown for an official in the capital who had not been charged with any offense to serve a full nine years in one post without change. Things were made exceptionally difficult for the Master because of his high principles, and only after being held back in the Secretariat for over ten years was he finally transferred to ViceDirector in the Ministry of Personnel, and then promoted to Education Intendant for Shensi. The frontiers of Shensi run through barbarian territory, and the routes to a number of the districts along the frontier go out among the barbarians. In former times, the Education Intendants had regarded this as a hardship and had only marked examinations for the students of

568

APPENDIX ONE

those districts. The Master said, “To do so is to abandon them.” He actually went to carry out the examinations as in other districts. There was a severe drought in Lan-t’ien, where there was a spring in the mountains. When the Master got there, he climbed into the mountains and cast a sacrificial text into the spring, whereupon a downpour fell at once. The campus of the state school in Shang-chou was cramped, but beside it was an altar to the “Queen Mother” and the family shrine of a high official, which the people of the district believed sacred. The Master therefore asked the Magistrate, “What shrines are these? Have them all destroyed at once.” Even the official’s family did not dare complain. When he had tested the students of all the areas pertaining to Shensi, he took the exceptional ones into the Cheng-hsüeh Academy, where he supervised their instruction himself, sometimes contributing money from his own salary when funds were insufficient. Kuan-chung then prospered in its recruitment. In the fourth month of this year, he finally contracted a heart ailment on account of his labours in the administration of education. He announced his departure in the sixth month, taking very little in the way of baggage, and died six days after reaching home. Now our glorious Ming is established, but the Master could not long remain in it. Surely this was Fate! The Master was of preternatural intelligence by nature, and his virtue was pure, his ambitions great, and his conduct firm. His learning was of the highest and his vision great. He was well and broadly informed about all things and careful in his handling of them. On examining all his works, we can say that his integrity was perfect. At home he was even-tempered; among friends, affable. In giving and accepting, advancing and withdrawing, he was decisive. Since I began my attendance on him, I never saw him look either joyful or angry. He did not so much as mention wealth or fame nor in all his life did he take even a single coin. In studying, it was his practice to continue until midnight, nor did he ever weary of discussion. He was at peace with poverty and took pleasure in the Way, giving no thought to enriching his household. In office, he devoted himself to his work and maintained himself on his official salary, never accepting the slightest improper gift. Even so, he was generous; after his death, when his purse was examined, there were only thirty or so coins in it. He was surely one to be considered a pure gentleman! Our dynasty is far removed from antiquity, and poetry and prose writing had by the years of the Hung-chih reign [1487-1505] become extremely so. The Master first joined with Master Li of Pei-ti [Li Mengyang] to effect a complete change and move to antiquity. Among everything from the Three Ages down, in prose they chose the Tso [Commentary] and [Ssu-]ma [Ch’ien]; in poetry they approved of Ts’ao [Chih], and Liu [Chen]; in lament they appreciated Ch’ü [Yüan] and Sung [Yü]; and in calligraphy they praised Yen [Chen-ch’ing] and Liu [Kung-ch’üan]. All in the Empire flocked to follow them. It was

EARLY BIOGRAPHIES

569

magnificent, such a time as occurs only once in a thousand years! He once said, “Poetry and prose have immutable patterns, the words should be decisive and arguments coherent, one must link categories and compare things.” And, “Different roads and a hundred ideas, and yet they all arrive at the same destination.” And, “Prose grew weak in the Sui, but Han [Yü] energetically animated it, and ancient prose disappeared with Han; poetry grew weak with T’ao [Ch’ien]; but Hsieh [Ling-yün] energetically animated it, and ancient poetry disappeared with Hsieh.” Regarded from this standpoint, all that the Master wrote and transmitted is evident. The Master was well versed in the Five Classics, but was especially fond of the Changes and Songs; he had mastered the subtleties of yin-yang, medical diagnosis, astronomy, geography, musical theory, and calendrical calculation. His writings include the “Mr. Ho’s Collected Works” (Ho Shih Chi 何氏集 [i.e. the Shen recension]) and the “Twelve Discourses” 十二論. He compiled the “Selection of Ancient Ballads” 古樂府選, the “Poems of the Han and Wei” 漢魏詩, and the “Gazetteer of the Three Ch’in [regions]” 三秦志, all of them published to the world. 2 The Master was born on the sixth day of the eighth month of the nineteenth year of the Ch’eng-hua reign [September 7, 1483] and died on the fifth day of the eighth month of the sixteenth year of Cheng-te [August 5, 1521], in his thirty-ninth year. He first married Madame Chang, who predeceased him with the honorary title of Child Nurturess. His second wife was Madame Wang, honorary title Child Nurturess, who died sixteen days after the Master. The Nurturess accompanied the Master wherever he went and loved him dearly, being capable of respect as well. It was always she who served him food and drink, there being nothing that she did not taste with pleasure. At night, she did not go to bed before the Master. When the Master died, she wailed unceasingly day and night, pacing around his coffin saying, “I want to die!” She would not touch food or drink and finally died without illness. Alas! Husband and wife departed together; the Nurturess’s will to loyalty was extraordinary. The Nurturess was two years younger than the Master and bore three sons. The eldest, Fu 夫, is studying and can write essays; he is betrothed to a girl of the Wang clan of Chia-hsien, a daughter of the Administration Vice Commissioner [Wang Shangchiung]. The second son is [Ho] Li 立, and the third [Ho] Teng 登. The eldest daughter is betrothed to a son of the Yüan clan, the second to a son of the Feng clan, and the third to a son of the Chang clan. All are still young. On the seventh day of the tenth month of this year [November 5,

———

2 The anthology of Han and Wei poetry is presumably the one compiled not by Ho himself but by Liu Ch’eng-te, to which Ho contributed a preface (see above, chapters six and ten). The “Gazetteer of the Three Ch’in” is presumably the Yung Ta Chi.

570

APPENDIX ONE

1521], they are to be buried together on the hill north of the Fishing Terrace. [Ching-ming’s] elder brother Ching-hui told me, “My late brother was very fond of you; do write his curriculum.” I have lived in the same neighbourhood as the Master since I was young and studied with him as I was growing up. The Master once said to Sir Plum Glen, “This young man is very capable; in him I have hope.” After this, the Master was in office in the capital for six years, and since then it has been over five years. Since I have been devoting myself to writing in verse and prose, I was looking forward to the Master’s return so that we could have discussions on the subject, but when he did return he was at his end. How painful! When the Master’s illness became very serious, his nephew [Ho] Shih, his disciple Chang Shih, and I went in and held his hand, weeping. The Master said, “Death and life and constant principles; there is nothing in them to lament. I have only caused you gentlemen a great deal of trouble.” His voice was still clear and strong. I heard from my parents that when Madame Li was about to give birth, she dreamed that a great red sun descended into her bosom, and then the Master was born. This year there was a drought from the sixth month to the eighth. On the day he died, just as he had been dressed for burial, there was a great thunderstorm, turning the world dark as night during daytime. Thus there were great anomalies at his birth and death; surely his relation to heaven and earth was not superficial! Curriculum respectfully presented by the disciple Fan P’eng on the twenty-fifth day of the eighth month of the sixteenth year of the Chengte reign [August 25, 1521]. 3

Fan’s text is not only the earliest, but also the longest, if the extensive quotations in a few of the later biographies are not taken into account. Toward the end of the curriculum, he explains that although he had studied with Ho during the latter’s years of retirement in Hsin-yang, they had been separated for ten years while Ho was in Peking and Shensi. Fan’s text is divided rather evenly between a chronological account of Ho’s life and a summary of his character and position in literature, with notes on his works, children, and funeral. Fan gives the fullest account anywhere of Ho’s ancestors and early life. His treatment of Ho’s years in Peking consists of four incidents, which he gives in chronological order but without dating them. They are his intervention with Yang Yi-ch’ing when Li Meng-yang was arrested in Kiangsi (late 1513), his memorial submitted at the time of the palace

———

3 This is not included in Fan’s works, the Fan Shih Chi, which contains only poetry. It is included in the fu-lu 附錄 (Appendix) of the Standard recension, which gathers a variety of biographical materials. See, for example, the Honan edition, p.678.

EARLY BIOGRAPHIES

571

fire (early 1514), his refusal to add an inscription to a painting in the possession of Ch’ien Ning (undated, but probably 1515-17), and his rebuff of Liao P’eng’s attempt to contribute to the purchase of a coffin for Shih Ts’un-chih (early 1518; Fan doesn’t mention Liao’s personal name, the same as his own). Fan’s account of Ho’s years in Shensi includes several incidents not attested elsewhere, including his destruction of a heterodox altar and family shrine in order to expand the official school in Shang-chou, but does not mention his conflict with Liao Luan. Other omissions include the occurence of both of Ho’s marriages; all details of his retirement in 1507, including his letter to Hsü Chin and eventual dismissal; and his letter urging Li Tung-yang not to retire. Perhaps because he is following chronology, Fan omits all dates except those of Ho’s birth, death, and chin-shih pass. Fan records Ho’s association with Li Meng-yang and their promotion of Archaism as part of his summation, between the account of Ho’s character and that of his learning, works, and family. He makes no mention of Ho’s disagreement with Li, though he quotes more passages from his letter to Li on poetics than any other biographer, introducing them as obiter dicta without context. Meng Yang’s epitaph is one of only two biographies to have an introductory passage. 4 In this he laments Ho’s early death and says that the day after he wept for Ho, the latter’s ‘orphans’ (ku) visited with Fan’s curriculum to ask for an epitaph. This raises the question, to which we shall return later in discussing the biography by Li K’aihsien, of where Meng was at the time of Ho’s death. In general, Meng follows Fan’s text fairly closely, though rarely using the same words. He omits some details, including Ho Hsin’s two wives, much of the material concerning Li Chi’s early favour and Li Han’s recommendation, Ho’s chü-jen success except for its date, his scrupulousness during his trip to Yunnan, the content of the Palace Fire Memorial, the long delay before his promotion, his actions in Shensi, all the quotations from his letter to Li Meng-yang, specific references to his works, and the deathbed scene. At the same time, Meng does add some new material and disagrees with Fan P’eng in places. For example, on the early trip to Kansu with his father, Fan

———

4 Meng Yu-ya Chi (1538 edition) 17.1a, also in the Standard recension, Honan ed. p.681.

572

APPENDIX ONE

P’eng gives Ho’s age as thirteen and their destination as Hui-ning; Meng says twelve and Wei-yüan. Meng Yang supplies dates where Fan does not and specifies that it was his elder brother Ching-shao with whom he studied the Documents. Meng tells us when Ho married his wives and a good deal more about Ho’s efforts against Liu Chin and subsequent retreat to Hsin-yang. On the subject of Ho’s last illness and death, Meng differs from Fan in several respects. He says that Ho fell ill in the second month, not the fourth as Fan has it, and that he spat blood, rather than suffering from a heart ailment, as in Fan. He records Ho’s last advice to his wife and tells us a little about her. One intriguing difference is that while Fan says that Mme. Wang starved herself after Ho died, Meng tells us that she was already ill. The most striking thing about Meng’s epitaph, however, is its treatment of Li Meng-yang. He inserts his account of their early meeting and common interest in Archaism right after Ho’s chin-shih success, which is chronologically appropriate. But when he comes to the episode of Ho’s assistance to Li when the latter was in trouble in Kiangsi, he not only shifts it, along with Censor Shih’s coffin, to a brief transition between Ho’s death and his character, but also drops Li’s name entirely, referring simply to a ‘friend’ (友 yu). Since he had Fan’s curriculum to hand, this cannot have been an oversight. Even had he neglected to include the incident earlier in his text and so inserted it at a later point, the omission of Li’s name can only have been intentional. This suggests tensions to which we shall return. Many of the early biographies of Ho Ching-ming can be dated only approximately. This is the case with the Huang Ming Hsien-shih 皇明獻實 (Presented Actualities of the Imperial Ming) compiled by one Yüan Chih (1502-47), a native of Soochow who served as an official but eventually retired and died rather young. 5 His book, though extant and occasionally cited, is discussed by neither the Ssu-k’u editors nor by Franke. It is listed in the Bibliographical Monograph of the Ming Shih as a work in twenty chüan, but the extant editions vary. 6

——— 5

Huang Ming Hsien-shih, Ming-jen Wen-chi Ts’ung-k’an, vol. 17 (Taipei: Wenhai, 1970) 40.[3a] (769). 6 MS 97.2387. Note that the work is classified here as a ‘miscellaneous history’ (雜史 tsa-shih) recording Ming period events, not as a collection of biographies. The five copies now extent in China and Taiwan are all described as Ming period manuscripts. Each has a different format, and one of those in the Peking Library is described as having been supplemented in the Ch’ing. See Chung-kuo Ku-chi Shan-pen Shu-mu,

EARLY BIOGRAPHIES

573

Although the book is not dated, it is reasonable to suppose that Yüan completed it during his final period of retirement. Of course this supposition may be wrong altogether, or perhaps Yüan drafted his biography of Ho Ching-ming at an early stage of work The biographies of Li Meng-yang, Ho Ching-ming, and Hsü Chen-ch’ing come at the end of the forty chüan manuscript copy reprinted in Taiwan, but the ordering reflects the chronology of the subjects’ lives, not necessarily the order of composition. In any event, the Hsien-shih biography, which is not among those appended to the Standard recension, represents a very early, if not the earliest ‘independent’ account of Ho Ching-ming. It is a much shorter text than those of Fan P’eng and Meng Yang, consisting of about 540 characters, as against about 1750 for Fan and 1200 for Meng. Like most later accounts, it omits all material concerning the early history of Ho’s family, does not mention his wives or descendants, and considerably shortens or omits altogether the account of Ho’s early life. Many other elements of the biography are also abbreviated to some extent. The exceptions, parts of the biography that Yüan presents as fully, or almost as fully, as did Fan and Meng, include Ho’s experiences in Peking at the time of his first attempt at the chinshih, his return there after the death of Liu Chin, and the ‘four stories’ (the defence of Li Meng-yang, the Palace Fire Memorial, Ch’ien Ning’s painting, and the coffin for Censor Shih). There is, however, some new information provided, that Ho ranked third in the chü-jen examination; the date of his trip to Yunnan (though this could be inferred); that people approved of Ho’s comments about T’ao, Hsieh, Sui prose, and Han; that Ho was grouped with Li Meng-yang, Pien Kung, and Hsü Chen-ch’ing as one of the ‘Four Worthies’ (四傑 ssuchieh); and the opinion that Ho’s prose was inferior to his poetry, the “Twelve Discourses” in particular being disparaged as not very good. Where the Hsien-shih presents information already available in Fan or Meng, it sometimes draws on the phraseology of one or the other and

———

Shih-pu 中國古籍善本書目史部 (Union List of Rare Old Chinese Texts, History Section) (Shanghai: Shanghai Ku-chi, 1993) 1:430; Taiwan Kung-tsang Shan-pen Shu-mu, Shu-ming So-yin 臺灣公藏善本書目書名索引 (Union List of Rare Books in Taiwan Public Collections, Title Index) (Taipei: National Central Library, 1971) 1:890. It would require a separate study to sort out the recoverable textual history of this title. Reference here is to the copy reproduced in Taiwan.

574

APPENDIX ONE

sometimes recasts the material in new words. It seems clear that Yüan Chih had both texts at hand but that he took neither as his sole, or even his preferred, source. Collation of Yüan’s account against that in the Huang Ming Mingch’en Yen-hsing Lu 皇明名臣言行錄 (Record of Words and Deeds by Notable Subjects of the Imperial Ming) shows that the two are almost identical, with four sorts of differences. 7 The first of these consists of five single character variations of a very trivial sort. The first of these is typical: after the statement that Ho was a native of Hsin-yang, Yüan Chih has the particle 也 yeh; the Yen-hsing Lu does not. Then, there are three single character variations in each of which the copy of Yüan Chih’s account available for collation has manifestly inferior readings, while the Yen-hsing Lu has an obviously better text. The examples are (Hsien-shih first in each case): 比歸 (‘compare return’) vs. 北歸 (‘north return’), referring to travel between Peking and Hsin-yang; 其詩 (‘the poem’) vs. 其時 (‘the time’) introducing the place of Pien Kung and Hsü Chen-ch’ing in literature when Ho was associating with Li Meng-yang; 才各 (‘talent each’) vs. 才名各 (‘talent reputation each’, 名 and 各 being characters very similar in appearance) in a statement that each of the ‘Four Worthies’ had his own (各) point of superiority. Third, the two texts differ slightly in their accounts of the end of Ho’s life. According to the Hsien-shih, “He was ill, spat blood, abandoned his office, returned and died at home” (病嘔血棄官帰卒于家); in the Yen-hsing Lu, this passage reads, “He abandoned his office and returned, dying at home” (棄官歸以疾卒于家). The spitting (or vomiting) of blood is a symptom mentioned by Meng Yang—recall that Fan P’eng said only that Ho suffered from a heart ailment. It seems more plausible to suppose that the Yen-hsing Lu suppressed an unseemly image (nothing else in either account even hints that Ho had any bodily functions at all) than that Yüan Chih added one to pep up his story, but there is no decisive evidence either way. There are three possibilities for the differences betrween the two

———

7 Huang Ming Ming-ch’en Yen-hsing Lu 34.3a; included in the fu-lu of the Standard recension; Honan ed., p.674. Wolfgang Franke lists several works with this or a similar title in An Introduction to the Sources of Ming History (Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press, 1968), pp.82-83. The one cited here is the ‘newly compiled’ (新編 hsin-pien) work by Shen Ying-k’ui 沈應魁; see HY 3/262.

EARLY BIOGRAPHIES

575

texts. One is that some or all of the errors arose when the handwritten copy of the Hsien-shih was being made from an original that had the better readings. Since the handwritten text has the appearance of a fair transcription rather than a working draft, just the sort of copy likely to be made in order to transmit a rare book, this explanation seems the more likely. Alternatively, the poor readings might have been present in the Hsien-shih from the outset, but silently emended by conjecture by the compiler of the Yen-hsing Lu. Then, of course, it is always possible that the Hsien-shih is not what it is claimed to be, but rather a later work that took over the Yen-hsing Lu account, introducing a few errors in the process. I am inclined, however, to accept the authenticity and prioirity of the Hsien-shih.For one thing, the concluding discussion as found in the Yen-hsing Lu lacks the introductory words, “Yüan Chih says” and the two final passages, one being that Pien Kung was not in the same class as the others and the other the disparaging remarks about Ho’s prose, referred to above. These grow naturally out of what precedes them, but could easily be dropped in a Yen-hsing Lu entry concerned only with Ho (in the Hsien-shih, the comment on Pien explains why the next biography is of Hsü Chen-ch’ing, there being no entry on Pien even though all four ‘worthies’ have just been mentioned together). Last, it should be noted that while the date of the Hsien-shih is not known, it cannot be later than Yüan Chih’s death in 1547, while the Yen-hsing Lu was published in 1553. A very similar text, the biography included in the Chin-hsien Pei-yi 今獻備遺 (Complete Gathering of Modern Contributors), compiled by Hsiang Tu-shou 項篤壽, appeared somewhat later, in 1583. 8 This account also follows the Hsien-shih or Yen-hsing Lu very closely. Where these two differ, it sometimes agrees with the Yen-hsing Lu, as in the case of the conclusion and most of the minor variants, and sometimes with the Hsien-shih, as in the description of Ho’s final illness and in reading pi kui rather than pei kui (see above). Its only innovation is to drop the sections on Ho’s trip to Yunnan and the coffin for Censor Shih. The next biography to be considered is the brief one in the (Chiaching) Shensi T’ung-chih of 1542 陜西通志 , compiled by Ho’s

——— 8

Chin-hsien Pei-yi (SKCS) 42.3a (719).

576

APPENDIX ONE

friends Ma Li and Lü Nan. 9 It is less than 275 characters in length and understandably concentrates on Ho’s time in Shensi. It appears to have been compiled without reference to earlier accounts. Even where it contains the same information as they do, the phraseology is quite different. Unfortunately, it seems to have been ignored by later writers in their turn and hence is the unique source for several incidents, notably the ones describing Ho’s remarks to a Prefect who was impatient of his restraints; his judgement, on appeal, in the case of the man in Chou-chih who protested the penalty declared against his father; and his disagreement with an Administrative Commissioner who wished to cut costs by cutting the established numbers of candidates for the provincial examination. Among the other unique characteristics of the T’ung-chih biography is that its list of Ho’s works refers to the Ho Chung-mo Chi (i.e. the Yung recension) rather than the Ho Shih Chi (Shen), though the latter had already been published. This presumably reflects the availability of the Yung text in the locality where it was compiled. We come next to the last account of Ho to have been compiled by someone who had actually known him. This is the biography by Ho’s Shensi student Ch’iao Shih-ning. 10 We do not know when it was written. In its present form, it cannot be earlier than 1543, since it mentions that Ho’s son Li had passed the chü-jen examination in that year. We do not know when Ch’iao died, but he lived at least until 1550, so the biography could be that late. Finally, we do not know the occasion for its compilation. Its earliest appearance is in exemplars of the Standard recension that include Wang Shih-chen’s 1558 preface and in some cases the preface by Chou Tzu-yi 周子義, dated 1577 (see below, Appendix Two). For that matter, many versions of this recension include the inscription by Wang Tao-k’un, which is dated 1591 and refers to Ch’iao’s biography, so we cannot use the presence of Ch’iao’s biography in the Standard recension to date it. Wang Taok’un says that after Ho’s death, several decades passed before Ch’iao wrote his biography and that several more passed before Ho’s grandson Ho Lo-wen asked Wang to write his inscription. All this information taken together suggests that Ch’iao may have written his

——— 9

(Chia-ching) Shensi T’ung-chih 19.43b. Included in the fu-lu of the Standard recension; Honan ed., p.667.

10

EARLY BIOGRAPHIES

577

biography in the 1550s in conjunction with the preparation of the Standard recension, though perhaps well before its publication. It may be significant that it is placed first among the collection of biographical materials in the fu-lu (appendix) of this recension. Ch’iao’s is one of the longer accounts, about the same length as Meng Yang’s epitaph. In addition to personal reminiscences and comments scattered through his text, Ch’iao adds a variety of new items of information, the most important being the episodes of Li Tung-yang’s attempt to retire and Ho’s conflict with Liao Luan, along with its having been to Hsü Chin that Ho’s letter was addressed. 11 Ch’iao also adds his fellow Shensi natives K’ang Hai and Wang Chiussu to the list of those who associated with Ho, Li Meng-yang, and Pien Kung at the time of Ho’s chin-shih success. Like Meng Yang, he takes up the Archaist tone of their literary circle as part of this account of Ho’s early career, but his version is rather fuller. Abandoning chronology, Ch’iao follows his somewhat abbreviated version of the early years with an account of Ho’s character, which serves to introduce the stories of Ch’ien Ning’s painting, the Palace Fire Memorial, Censor Shih’s coffin, and Liao Luan. Then, in an explicit ‘flashback’, Ch’iao looks back to Ho’s letter to Hsü Chin, followed by the letters to Yang Yi-ch’ing in defense of Li Meng-yang and to Li Tung-yang urging him not to retire. Praising Ho’s courage in writing these three letters, Ch’iao adds that it was his willingness to offend the powerful and his dislike of flattery that kept him from being promoted for so long. This leads to the assignment to Shensi, Ch’iao’s account of which consists of a description of Ho’s teaching methods and learning, and thence to a lament on his early death and a few additional examples of his exemplary behaviour, viz. his strict observance of mourning for his parents and his indifference to money, including the thirty coins left in his bag when he died. Ch’iao’s conclusion stresses that Ho, unlike some of the great men from Honan in earlier ages, such as Pan Ku and Wang Po, combined literary talent with the highest standards of personal behaviour. Mentioning Ho’s works, his son Ho Li and grandson Ho Lo-wen briefly, Ch’iao ends by remarking that the reasons for Ho’s lasting

———

11 Ch’iao does not give Hsü’s personal name, but refers to him by surname and office, which suffice to identify him (cf. ‘Secretary Kissinger’ or ‘Premier Chou’).

578

APPENDIX ONE

fame can be found in his “Master Ho” essays. Ch’iao Shih-ning’s biography calls attention to the difference between the Chinese term and its conventional Western-language translation. By cutting out most of the detail in his account of Ho’s early years, including most of his experiences in Kansu, his trip to Yunnan, and his retirement and recall, and presenting all material on his later life topically rather than chronologically, Ch’iao’s work exemplifies the tradition of the chuan ( 傳 ‘transmission’, i.e. of significant information about a human subject) rather than the ‘biography’ (depiction of a life) that the English term promises. Whatever the original occasion for Ch’iao’s biography, it proved to be an influential work and one often borrowed from. Many of the later accounts adopt his phraseology or base whole sections on his biography. Two extreme examples are Kuo T’ing-hsün’s 過廷訓 Pench’ao Fen-sheng Jen-wu K’ao 本朝分省人物考 (Study of Men of Note in the Present Dynasty, Divided by Province), published in 1622, and a Ch’ing dynasty work, Fu Wei-lin’s 傅維鱗 Ming Shu 明書 (History of the Ming), dated 1670. These are both large works with ambitions to comprehensiveness, so it is perhaps not surprising that their compilers took over an existing account with only minor modifications. The Pen-ch’ao Fen-sheng Jen-wu-k’ao biography follows Ch’iao very closely, but is very much shortened (about 680 characters, as against about 1200). 12 Kuo T’ing-hsün’s approach is, in general, to cut phrases rather than sections, though some sections are cut more severely than others, expecially in the latter parts of the text. He does omit references to Ho’s study with his elder brother Ching-shao and to Ho’s teaching while in Shensi. These cuts contrast with KHL, a roughly contemporaneous work of comparable scope. The latter presents Ch’iao’s biography in its entirety and as Ch’iao’s work. 13 Fu Wei-lin’s entry for Ho is simply a somewhat less shortened copy of Ch’iao (about 800 characters) with minor stylistic changes (e.g. Ch’iao’s 先生 hsien-sheng [‘Master’, ‘the gentleman in question’]

——— 12

Pen-ch’ao Fen-sheng Jen-wu K’ao (1622; repr. Taipei: Ming-wen, 1991) 92.15a (327). The title of this work often begins with Ming 明, rather than Pen-ch’ao, as in the Bibliography. 13 KHL 96.61a (4097).

EARLY BIOGRAPHIES

579

becomes ‘Ching-ming’ throughout). 14 The omissions include most of the information on Ho’s early life and references to Ch’iao’s personal experiences. The only ones of significance are the dropping of Hsü Chin’s surname and the retitling of Ho’s collected works as Ta-fu Chi, the latter being an ‘update’ reflecting the publication of the Standard recension under this title. In supplying the name of the addressee of Ho’s letter defending Li Meng-yang, Fu gives the wrong name, Yang P’u, instead of Yang Yi-ch’ing (see text, chapter seven). The next biography to be considered is that compiled by the dramatist Li K’ai-hsien (1502-68). 15 It is one of a group of six biographies of men of letters that Li wrote, the other subjects being Wang Chiu-ssu, K’ang Hai, Lü Nan, Ma Li, and Li Meng-yang. The biographies are not dated, but Li says elsewhere that he sent the six to ‘Vice-Commissioner’ ( 大參 ta-ts’an) Feng Wei-no 馮惟訥 in response to the latter’s request for his latest works. 16 Feng was appointed Administration Vice-Commissioner for the first time in 1563, so the biographies must be among Li’s very late works. Li’s biography is clearly an independent production and, at almost 1600 characters, one of the longer accounts. He draws on Fan P’eng, with reference in a few places to information found only in Meng Yang or the Hsien-shih or Yen-hsing Lu. He appears unaware of Ch’iao Shih-ning’s account, which may be a later work or may simply not have been known to him. The bulk of his text follows the pattern of chronology followed by notes on character, works, etc. It begins, however, in a most unusual way. Li first explains the ‘educational’ value of biographies of his six subjects. He then acknowledges that Ho is the one among them with whom he had never had any personal contact. He begins the biography proper with a ‘flash forward’ to the scene at Ho’s deathbed. He omits the presence of Fan P’eng, but adds Meng Yang to the list of those present and then tells the story, quoted in later collections of anecdotes such as the Hsi-yüan Wen-chien Lu 西園聞見錄 (Things Seen and Heard in the Western Garden) by Chang Hsüan 張萱 but not in any of the other biographies, of how the decision was made to have Meng Yang write Ho’s epitaph instead of entrusting the task to Li Meng-yang, as had been Ho’s wish. Li K’ai-

——— 14 15 16

Ming Shu (Chi-fu Ts’ung-shu; repr. PP 94/36-41) 146.18a. Li K’ai-hsien Ch’üan-chi (Peking: Wen-hua Yi-shu, 2004) 10.773-75.. Li K’ai-hsien Ch’üan-chi 10.776.

580

APPENDIX ONE

hsien’s regret that this was done was one more reason, he tells us, for undertaking his own biography. This is, of course, a very striking addition to the biographical tradition, a stroke worthy of a practised dramatist. Similarly ‘dramatic’ is Li’s penchant throughout his account for adding to its liveliness by inserting into it details previously unrecorded, especially quoted speech. These late additions to the story naturally inspire skepticism, so it is worthwhile to ask if there is any possibility that they might be reliable. The evidence suggests that whether or not Li’s additions are reliable, he did not have to make them up out of whole cloth. A native of Shantung, Li had the good fortune to meet K’ang Hai and Wang Chiu-ssu while on a trip to the west as a young man. Their lasting friendship was no doubt important in stimulating his interest in drama and dramatic poetry, but it also served as an important link between generations—Li was their junior by about thirty years. When Li came to write his six biographies, including Ho’s, he may very well have drawn on things they had told him, but it is in the nature of the case that their contributions would have been partial and not subject to testing. One indirect indication of their influence may be that Li emphasises Ho’s role as a man of letters. At the same time, he omits a number of things that one might have expected from his Shensi connections, in particular a good deal of Shensi-related material. The confrontation with Liao Luan is not even mentioned, while the unfulfilled plan to meet Wang T’ing-hsiang where their jurisdictions joined and discuss the Classics is taken into the tradition for first time, presumably on the basis of Wang’s preface to Ho’s works. Another source was no doubt Ho’s unconventional student Chang Shih. Li wrote a biography of Chang, in which he says that he associated with (交遊 chiao-yu) Chang for six or seven years. 17 Chang was, of course, present at the deathbed scene, as Fan P’eng tells us and Li K’ai-hsien confirms. Curiously, in Li K’ai-hsien’s version, Meng Yang replaces Fan P’eng as the third person present, along with Chang Shih and Ho’s nephew Ho Li. This could mean either that the story is reliable, because based on an eye-witness account, or that it is unreliable, because Chang Shih was an interested party—he was also

——— 17

Li K’ai-hsien Ch’üan-chi 10.747; KHL 115.6a (5090).

EARLY BIOGRAPHIES

581

a friend of Li Meng-yang. Meng Yang’s own account tells against it, since Meng tells us that he was given the Curriculum the day after he wept for Ho, while we know from the Curriculum itself that it was not finished until twenty days after Ho died. This suggests that Meng was away from Hsin-yang when Ho died and only returned later. An additional connection may have been Jen Liang-kan, Magistrate of Hsin-yang, compiler of the Ta-fu Yi-kao, and publisher of an edition of the Shen recension (see Appendix Two). Jen’s appointment to Hsin-yang was at least in part a form of recognition for a meritorious act he had performed in his previous position as a local education official. A penniless ex-official who had been returning home along with his young sons under the protection of another official was abandoned by the latter as they passed through Jen’s district. Reduced to begging along the roadside, the man and his sons were taken in and supported by Jen. When the father died of illness soon after, Jen took the boys into his family and had them educated alongside his own sons. He was eventually able to contact a relative of the dead man who was an official in Hopeh, and the latter arranged for the boys to be reunited with their mother at home in Shensi. The Hopeh official was a son of Wang Chiu-ssu. We have no reason to suppose that Jen and Li K’ai-hsien ever met, but Li was certainly aware of Jen—his biography is the only one to mention the existence of the Yi-kao, whose compilation he attributed to ‘Magistrate Jen’, so some account of Hsin-yang events was available to him and may have been the source of some of his additions. All the same, recognition that stories grow in the telling requires us to treat Li’s account with caution. The epitaph story is the most important addition that Li makes, but his account has a number of other points of interest. He is the only one after Fan and Meng to mention Ho’s brothers or how the family’s ancestor had come to Hsin-yang. He agrees with Meng Yang that Ho went to Kansu with his father in his twelfth year (Fan P’eng says thirteenth) but with Fan that their distination was Hui-ning (Meng says Wei-yüan, which is correct). He also includes much more detail about Ho’s time in Kansu and his first trip to Peking than anyone after Fan and Meng. Uniquely, he attributes Ho’s failure to attain a promising early post to a dislike in high places of poets. Like Meng Yang and a number of others, he gives his account of Ho’s association with Li Meng-yang and others immediately following his chin-shih success.

582

APPENDIX ONE

Li’s account, however, is remarkable for a number of additions. He is the only biographer to say that Ho changed his hao from Pai-p’o to Ta-fu, and he inserts a long passage comparing Ho’s relationship with Li Meng-yang to that of T’ang Shun-chih 唐順之 with his mentor Wang Shen-chung 王慎中. He omits mention of Li, Ho, Pien Kung, and Hsü Chen-ch’ing being known as the ‘Four Worthies’, but adds three new groupings, including an early mention of the ‘Seven Masters of the Hung[-chih and Cheng-]te periods’. Although he omits all references to Ho’s letter to Hsü Chin and return home ‘sick’, he adds that when Ho was dismissed, he had no regrets. Li is the only biographer to suggest that Ho was involved in K’ang Hai’s rescue of Li in 1508, indeed that he ‘energetically sought ( 力求 li ch’iu) K’ang’s intervention. Li also quotes from Ho’s letter to Yang Yich’ing and adds, as no other biographer does, that Ho persisted in his efforts to defend Li in Kiangsi even though his doing so offended some of his friends. His accounts of Ho’s time in Shensi and his death are less full than those of Fan and Meng. In short, even if some of Li K’ai-hsien’s material is doubtful, his account is valuable as a fresh and independent attempt to portray Ho Ching-ming and his life. It was not, however, as influential in shaping the tradition as Ch’iao Shih-ning’s biography. The account of the Palace Fire Memorial given by Ch’ien Ch’ien-yi (see below) seems to be derived from Li K’ai-hsien, but, in the limited number of other cases in which Li was the first to add an element to the biographical corpus that occurs in later accounts as well, there are no textual parallels, and the later version appears to be independent. The only exceptions are in collections of anecdotes such as the inclusion in the Hsi-yüan Wen-chien Lu of Li’s account of the decision to have Meng Yang write Ho’s epitaph. 18 We turn next to the brief (a little over 100 characters) biography in the (Chia-ching) Honan T’ung-chih 河南通志 (Comprehensive Gazetteer of Honan) (1555). 19 This identifies Ho, mentions his chinshih, first appointment, and devotion to antiquity, with the shift in literary styles that this brought about. The account of his career is limited to brief references to his retirement under Liu Chin,

———

18 Hsi-yüan Wen-chien Lu, compiled by Chang Hsüan 張萱, (1940; repr. Ming-tai Chuan-chi Ts’ung-k’an, vols.116-24, Taipei: Ming-wen, 1991) 6.23a (489). 19 (Chia-ching) Honan T’ung-chih 30.29b.

EARLY BIOGRAPHIES

583

subsequent reinstatement, memorial after the palace fire, promotion to Shensi, and death at 39. His works are listed as the Yung Ta-chi and Ho Shih Chi. Except for one phrase apparently lifted from Ch’iao Shih-ning, the text appears to be independent, but then there are only a few passages in it that are not the baldest possible summaries of information already in the public domain, as it were, and nothing in the way of content is new. The next biography is that included in the Huang-ch’ao Chungchou Jen-wu Chih 皇朝中州人物志 (Account of Personages from the Central Region During the Imperial Dynasty), compiled by Chu Muchieh and completed in 1568. 20 This is a text of moderate length, about 650 characters. Almost the only new elements in this account are the provision of dates (not all correct) for a number of incidents that earlier versions had left without explicit date, later information about the careers of Ho Li and Ho Lo-wen, and a concluding comment to the effect that Ho compensated for his failure to realise his political goals by writing the “Twelve Discourses.” The Chung-chou Jen-wu Chih entry is thus not an original attempt at biography such as those by Ch’iao Shih-ning and Li K’ai-hsien, but neither is it a simple reediting of a single earlier text such as we have seen in the cases of the Fen-sheng Jen-wu K’ao and the Ming Shu of Fu Wei-lin. It is rather a scissors and paste work. Chu Mu-chieh echoes the phraseology of Ch’iao Shih-ning quite frequently and includes material that first appeared in Ch’iao’s biography, such as the letter to Li Tung-yang, but he arranges his material chronologically in the main and also takes some material from other early versions, Meng Yang’s epitaph in particular. The opening section, as far as Ho’s chin-shih success and association with Li Meng-yang in the influential Archaist movement, is taken from Ch’iao Shih-ning, with some cuts and minor rearrangements. But when Chu comes to the next event in chronological terms, Ho’s trip to Yunnan, which Ch’iao scarcely mentions, Chu draws on the Hsien-shih or the Yen-hsing Lu, altering the text in places and adding a reference to Ho’s writing poetry with ‘the prince and eunuchs’ before his sources’ report that Ho declined their precious gifts. Chu’s account of Ho’s letter to Hsü Chin and

———

20 Huang-ch’ao Chung-chou Jen-wu Chih (1737; repr. Ming-tai Shih-chi Hui-k’an 18. Taipei: Hsüeh-sheng, 1970) 13.5a (379).

584

APPENDIX ONE

subsequent return home and dismissal perhaps draws the mention of Hsü by name from Ch’iao Shih-ning, although Ch’iao only gives his surname and title, and a phrase from Meng Yang, but for the most part appears newly composed. The same is true of some of his version of Ho’s defense of Li Meng-yang, though he borrows a passage that originated with Fan P’eng and was taken over by the Hsien-shih and Yen-hsing Lu. Chu’s synthetic approach leads him astray here. Having given, erroneously, the year 1509 as the date of Liu Chin’s fall from power, he follows Ch’iao Shih-ning in placing his version of Ho’s letter to Yang Yich’ing in defense of Li Meng-yang just before Ho’s letter to Li Tungyang urging him not to retire, to which he assigns the date 1510. Although Ch’iao’s sequence is thematic rather than chronological, by following it here, Chu implies that the Li Meng-yang incident took place in 1509 rather than 1514. Chu’s account of the Li Tung-yang letter is taken from Ch’iao Shih-ning, as is the summary comment about what the three letters revealed about Ho’s public spirit. In other words, by trying to combine Ch’iao’s point about the letters with his own chronological treatment, Chu seriously subverts his chronology. Chu borrows from Fan P’eng in his account of the Palace Fire Memorial and from Meng Yang in that of Ch’ien Ning’s painting. The same sort of shifting among available sources appears in his treatment of the incident of Censor Shih, of which Chu’s version is similar to those of Fan P’eng and the Hsien-shih, and Ho’s promotions, in which he again follows Meng Yang. Chu has little to say of Ho’s time in Shensi, adopting neither the series of anecdotes provided by Fan P’eng nor Ch’iao Shih-ning’s account of the conflict with Liao Luan’s adherents, but rather providing a brief summary of Ho’s goals and success that draws either on Meng Yang or on the accounts in the Hsien-shih and Yen-hsing Lu, which follow Meng. The story of Ho’s death takes a very brief form that Chu might have abstracted from any of his likely sources. The list given of Ho’s works comes directly from Ch’iao Shih-ning. The next biography to be considered is that contained in the Huang Ming Shu 皇明書 (History of the Imperial Ming) compiled in the latter part of the sixteenth century by Teng Yüan-hsi 鄧元錫 (1529-

EARLY BIOGRAPHIES

585

93). 21 The apparently considerable length of Teng’s account (over 1000 characters) is misleading. A good deal of the text is occupied by extended extracts from Ho’s letter to Ho T’ang and an account of Ho and Li Meng-yang by Wang Wei-chen 王維楨; the biography proper amounts to less than 300 characters and comes from the Hsien-shih or Yen-hsing Lu with only minor changes in language and a few omissions, including Li Tung-yang’s recommendation and Ho’s final illess. Teng makes cuts in Ho’s letter to Ho T’ang amounting to about a quarter of the original, adding a very brief comment that the letter shows Ho’s high standards. Teng introduces Wang Wei-chen’s text by explaining that Ho and Li had worked together to transform literature but that afterward differences between them had emerged. Wang praises Li Meng-yang to the skies, saying that if he had been born earlier than Li Po or Tu Fu, he might have ‘done’ either. Although Ho’s letter and Wang’s essay are not marked off typographically in Teng’s text, it is clear that the first is an appendix to the biography of Ho Ching-ming, while the latter plays the role of commentary on two biographies (that of Li Meng-yang immediately precedes Ho’s). We turn next to the biography included in ‘s Hsü Ts’ang Shu 續藏書 (Continuation of a Book to be Hidden), a book left incomplete when Li died in prison in 1602. 22 The biography is rather short, about 430 characters, and nothing of Li’s reputed iconoclastic attitude is to be found in it. In fact, Li Chih simply copies the Hsien-shih or Yen-hsing Lu biography, as he does the biography of Li Meng-yang that precedes it in both texts, dropping Ho’s trip to Yunnan, the phrase ‘people were fearful on his behalf’ after the Palace Fire Memorial was kept in the palace without comment, the story of Censor Shih, and the date of his illness and death. As did the Yen-hsing Lu, Li Chih takes over Yüan Chih’s closing comments, dropping all reference to Yüan, but he does alter the ending slightly. Like the Yen-hsing Lu, he drops the comment that Ho’s prose, including the “Twelve Discourses,” was not as good as his poetry, and simply closes by affirming Pien Kung’s quality as a writer. 23

——— 21

Huang Ming Shu (Wan-li edition; repr. TM 3:79) 38.43a (508). Hsü Ts’ang Shu (Peking: Chung-hua, 1959) 36.506. 23 But note, as Chien Chin-sung does in “Li-Ho Shih-lun Yen-chiu” (M.A. thesis, National Taiwan Unversity, 1980), pp.241-44, that Li Chih showed real respect for Li 22

586

APPENDIX ONE

We turn next to the biography included in the Sheng-ch’ao Mingshih K’ao 聖朝名世考 (Examination of Eminent Nobles of our Sagely Dynasty) compiled by Liu Meng-lei 劉孟雷 with a preface dated 1611. 24 One point of interest in this work is that the entries on Li Meng-yang and Hsü Chen-ch’ing are appended to that on Ho. The usual case is for Li’s biography to be treated as primary. The opening section on Ho is a short text, a little over 350 characters. It is another in the series based on the Hsien-shih or Yen-hsing Lu. In this case, everything between the opening identification and Ho’s chin-shih pass is cut. Otherwise, the text is very close to the others, but a few small details suggest that the immediate source was the Yen-hsing Lu. The next account to be considered is that in the Ming-ch’en Shih-yi 名臣諡議 “Discussion of Posthumous Names of Noted Officials,” a section of the Kung-huai Chi 公槐集 (Ducal Poplar Collection) by Yao Hsi-meng 姚希孟. 25 Yao’s dates are not exactly known, but he passed the chin-shih in 1619. His account of Ho is fairly short at about 350 characters. Although it might be taken for an original account on a superficial view, it is in fact based entirely on Ch’iao Shih-ning’s biography. Yao shortens and alters Ch’iao’s text, rearranging phrases and sometimes sections and adding a few comments of his own at the end concerning Ho and Li Meng-yang. Yao’s text was copied almost verbatim—one short passage is omitted and there is one variant reading—into the Huang Ming Wen-hai 皇明文海 (Sea of Letters of the Imperial Ming) compiled by Ku Ssu-li 顧嗣立 (preface dated 1693). 26 Our next biography has a much greater claim to excellence, and even originality. This is the account found in the Ming Shan Ts’ang 名山藏 (Treasury of Noted Mountains) compiled by Ho Ch’iao-yüan 何喬遠, who died in 1632. 27 Although he does not add any completely new material, his contribution is based on a critical return to original sources, chiefly Fan P’eng and Meng Yang, but also including Ho

———

Meng-yang in other writings, in spite of the important differences between them 24 Sheng-ch’ao Ming-shih K’ao, (1611; repr. Ming-tai Chuan-chi Ts’ung-k’an, vol.41, Taipei: Ming-wen, 1991) 10.21a (847). 25 Kung-huai Chi (Ch’ung-chen edition; repr. Ssu-k’u Chin-hui Shu Ts’ung-k’an 4:178-79, Peking: Peking Ch’u-pan-she, 2000) 5.21b (378). 26 Huang Ming Wen-hai (ms. edition) han 20, t’ao 5. 27 Ming Shan Ts’ang (1640 edition; repr. Peking: Peking University Press, 1993), p.5267.

EARLY BIOGRAPHIES

587

Ching-ming’s works. The result is a much longer text than most, about 1350 characters, in part because he includes extensive passages from Ho’s letters to Hsü Chin and Yang Yi-ch’ing. The treatment of Ho’s early trip to Kansu with his father shows Ho Ch’iao-yüan’s approach. He takes the location of Ho Hsin’s post from Meng Yang, but the story of the favour shown the young Ho by Li Chi chiefly from Fan P’eng, though some phrases in the heavily rewritten account may have been drawn from Li K’ai-hsien. Ho Ch’iao-yüan then appends passages on Li Chi and Ho Hsin’s personalities drawn from Ching-ming’s epitaphs for them. The account of Ho’s chü-jen success is based on Fan P’eng, but his having ranked third is added from another source, probably the Hsien-shih or Yen-hsing Lu or one of their descendants but perhaps from Li K’ai-hsien or even other documents of the examination no longer extant. Ho Ch’iao-yüan’s selection of just two incidents from Ho’s early life—Li Chi’s patronage and his provincial examination triumph—is also unique. His is the only account to specify that Ching-ming’s initial appointment as Drafter came two years after his chin-shih success. We cannot tell if Ho Ch’iao-yüan had a now lost documentary source at his disposal or simply inferred the fact from the date given by Meng Yang. His brief comment on Ho’s literary association with Li Mengyang and Pien Kung appears to come chiefly from Meng Yang. His reference to Ho’s letter to Hsü Chin is also brief and not based on any particular earlier source. That he mentions Hsü by name does not show derivation from the Hsien-shih or its descendants but rather from Ho’s works, from which he quotes, abridges, rearranges, and paraphrases to create a version of Ho’s letter to Hsü that is about half as long as the original, but makes many of its points. The brief account of Ho’s retirement and recall takes one significant phrase concerning Liu Chin’s purge of his opponents from Meng Yang, but the rest is paraphrased by Ho Ch’iao-yüan. As in the case of the letter to Hsü Chin, Ho Ch’iao-yüan gives his own very brief introduction to the letter to Yang Yi-ch’ing and then quotes over half of the letter (the only other biography to quote from the letter, Li K’ai-hsien’s, uses only two phrases). Ho Ch’iao-yüan rearranges and paraphrases less in this case than in that of the letter to Hsü Chin. In contrast to the extensive treatment of these two letters, Ho Ch’iao-yüan makes only the briefest mention of Ho’s Palace Fire Memorial, passing on quickly via his promotions to his final illness

588

APPENDIX ONE

and request to retire. At this point, Ho Ch’iao-yüan inserts a summary, found nowhere else, of the discussions at court that led to Ho’s being granted only sick leave until he should recover sufficiently to return to office. The brief account of Ho’s death is followed by a few general remarks on his character that share one phrase with Meng Yang and another with Li K’ai-hsien but otherwise appear to be original with Ho Ch’iao-yüan. These remarks are prefatory to a series of examples from Ching-ming’s life: his reluctence to accept gifts while in Yunnan (retold from Fan P’eng, including the repentant eunuch), Ch’ien Ning’s painting, and the coffin for Censor Shih. The biography ends with a short statement that Ho and Li Meng-yang initially got on well, but broke off relations after their disagreement over poetics. The only work of Ho’s mentioned by title is the “Twelve Discourses.” Ho Ch’iao-yüan follows his biographical essay with an explicitly personal comment (郎曰 lang yüeh) sketching the state of Ming letters before Li and Ho and discussing their styles and influence. As part of this, he refers to some of the arguments found in their exchange of letters. The earlier claim that the two men broke off relations after the exchange of letters has only one antecedant, in Li K’ai-hsien’s dramatised account of the deliberations that followed Ho’s death. Since it is almost certain that Ho Ch’iao-yüan had access to Li K’aihsien’s biography, it would appear that this was his source. The last important biography of Ho Ching-ming before the Ming Shih is the ‘brief biography’ (小傳 hsiao-chuan) in Ch’ien Ch’ien-yi’s Lieh-ch’ao Shih-chi, from 1652. 28 Although, at about 600 characters, it is not one of the longer accounts, it has been very influential. Ch’ien’s biographical account proper occupies less than half the text, giving only the briefest mention of most events and omitting many altogether, including Ho’s rescue of Li Meng-yang and Censor Shih’s coffin. Most elements are treated so briefly as to provide little evidence for Ch’ien’s immediate sources, but the evocation of Ho’s appearance at the time of his chü-jen success echoes Fan P’eng and the account of his early association with Li Meng-yang draws on Ch’iao Shih-ning. After referring to the disagreement between Ho and Li and its continuation by their partisans, Ch’ien uses the latter half of his entry to criticise Ho’s comment on “old poetry growing weak with

——— 28

Lieh-ch’ao Shih-chi Hsiao-chuan (Peking: Chung-hua, 1959), p.322.

EARLY BIOGRAPHIES

589

T’ao Ch’ien,” holding Ho’s ideas responsible for what he sees as the confusion of later generations. In quoting the offending passage from Ho’s letter to Li Meng-yang, Ch’ien silently reverses the order of the phrases, as though Ho had begun with poetry, T’ao, and Hsieh and then turned afterward to prose. Presumably Ch’ien did so because poetry was his main concern, but his version was the one taken into the Ming Shih and hence remains the more familiar. At the same time, Ch’ien restores an important word, 法 fa, that Fan P’eng had omitted. This brings us to the Ming Shih account: Ho Ching-ming, whose informal name was Chung-mo, was a native of Hsin-yang. In his eighth year, he could write poems and old-style essays. In the eleventh year of the Hung-chih reign [1498] he passed the provincial examination while only in his fifteenth year. The nobility and elite contended in chasing after him for a look, until the crowds of onlookers were like a dam. In the fifteenth year [1502] he placed in the chin-shih and was appointed a Secretariat Drafter. He joined with Li Meng-yang and others in promoting poetry and ancient prose. Mengyang was the most bold and outstanding; Ching-ming emerged a little later and was his match. With the inception of the Cheng-te reign, Liu Chin seized power. [Ching-ming] sent a letter to Hsü Chin, the Minister of Personnel, urging him in the strongest terms to maintain his control on policy without giving way, and consequently excused himself on grounds of illness and went home. After a year had passed, [Liu] Chin cashiered all those officials who had denounced him, and Ching-ming was dismissed. After Chin was executed, [Ching-ming] was restored to office on the recommendation of Li Tung-yang and assigned to the Secretariat Proclamation Office. When Li Meng-yang was jailed, no one dared to speak out, but Ching-ming submitted a letter to Yang Yi-ch’ing, the Minister of Personnel, and came to Li’s defense. In the ninth year [of Cheng-te, 1514], on the occasion of the fire at the Ch’ien-ch’ing Palace, his memorial spoke of adopted sons who should not be supported, frontier commanders who should not be kept on, foreign monks who should not be favoured, and eunuchs who should not be employed, but it was retained in the palace. After some time had passed, he was promoted to Vice-Director in the Ministry of Personnel, while still attached to the Proclamation Office. Ch’ien Ning wished to make friends with him and sought an inscription for an old painting, but Ching-ming said, “This is a famous work, not to be sullied by human hands.” He kept it for one year before rejecting and returning it. He was soon after selected as Education Intendant for Shensi. Liao P’eng’s younger brother, the eunuch [Liao] Luan, was in charge of Kuan-chung. He was very powerful, and his agents did not dismount

590

APPENDIX ONE

when they encountered officials of the Three Commissions. Ching-ming seized and whipped them. In teaching students, he limited his scope to Classics as a basis for governance. He selected the best students for the Cheng-hsüeh Academy where he lectured on the Classics himself. He did not rely on the glosses and annotations of the various commentaries, so that the scholars understood for the first time what the study of the Classics really meant. At the beginning of the Chia-ching era [1521] he went home, citing illness, and died soon after in his thirty-ninth year. Ching-ming set the highest standards for himself, honouring selfcontrol and the sense of right and despising wealth and advantage; like Li Meng-yang, he had the stature of a national figure. As writers, the two of them got on extremely well at first, but after their reputations were established, they began to attack one another. Meng-yang emphasised imitation while Ching-ming emphasised creation. Each planted his barricades and would not back down, and as a result their friends also took sides. His partisans said that Ching-ming’s talents were actually inferior to those of Meng-yang, but that his poems were outstanding and accomplished, so that in comparison to Meng-yang he was actually the better. All the same, everyone who discusses poetry and prose mentions them together as Ho and Li. They are also linked with Pien Kung and Hsü Chen-ch’ing as the Four Talents. According to his poetics, poetry became weak with T’ao, and Hsieh energetically animated it, so the norms [fa] of ancient poetry disappeared with Hsieh; prose became weak in the Sui, and Han energetically animated it, so the norms of ancient prose disappeared with Han. In compiling his Poems of Successive Reigns (Lieh-ch’ao Shih-chi), Ch’ien Ch’ien-yi forcefully denounced this. 29

At 468 characters, this is not a very long text, but as the ‘official’ version of Ho’s life, it has greatly influenced discussion of him from the time of its publication in 1736 to the present day. Perhaps the first thing about it that needs to be recorded is that it was taken, like much of the Ming Shih, almost verbatim from a pre-existing source, the Ming Shih Kao 明史稿 (Draft History of the Ming) compiled by Wang Hung-hsü 王鴻緒 and others. 30 This, in turn, was based on the Ming Shih 明史 (History of the Ming) compiled by Wan Ssu-t’ung 萬斯同, who died in 1702. 31 The stages of this process were not at all equivalent. While the

——— 29

MS 286.7349. Wang Hung-hsü, Ming Shih Kao (repr. Taipei: Wen-hai, 1962) 267.15a (vol.6, p.190). 31 Wan Ssu-t’ung, Ming Shih (Ch’ing manuscript edition; repr. Hsü-hsiu SKCS, vols. 324-331, Shanghai: Shanghai Ku-chi, 1997) 388.168. 30

EARLY BIOGRAPHIES

591

Ming Shih Kao biography was taken over almost unchanged by the Ming Shih, significant cuts were made when it was derived from Wan Ssu-t’ung’s draft. Wan’s draft originally included the story of Ho’s first chin-shih failure, his stay in the National University, and Lin Han’s poem, as well as the story of Shih Ts’un-chih and his coffin. Two brief but interesting phrases that were cut report that in Shensi Ho’s teaching “did not esteem literature” and in its treatment of the Classics “went beyond the examination curriculum.” Wan’s draft, while it draws on a variety of earlier sources for its content and much of its phraseology, is a newly composed account, over half of whose words do not occur in their analogous contexts in any of the other biographies. For the rest, it seems clear that Wan Ssut’ung had access to the Standard recension of Ho’s works, including both the prefaces and memorial texts found therein. The wording of Fan P’eng and Ch’iao Shih-ning is frequently echoed, and there are turns of phrase that were probably taken, consciously or not, from the prefaces by Wang T’ing-hsiang and Wang Shih-chen and the inscription by Wang Tao-k’un. There are also significant parallels with the Ming Shan Ts’ang and, to a lesser extent, the Hsien-shih or Yen-hsing Lu as well. Some material is quite new, including a reported prediction that Ho Ching-ming would be appointed to a good office after his chin-shih pass, and brief concluding accounts of Ho Chingshao and Ching-yang. The single source that appears to have contributed the most to Wan’s account, however, is the entry in Ch’ien Ch’ien-yi’s Lieh-ch’ao Shih-chi, well over a hundred of whose 600 or so characters turn up in it, comprising about a quarter of the whole. Much of this material is also found in texts earlier than both, but it is Ch’ien’s version of Ho’s mot on the decline and rejuvenation of poetry and prose that Wan reproduces, complete with restored words and reversed phrases. In contrast to the substantial cuts made to Wan’s draft by Wang Hunghsü and his colleagues, it is interesting that the only substantive change introduced by the compilers of the Ming Shih was to replace the Ming Shih Kao’s compilers’ concluding evaluation of Ho’s opinion, that it was much ridiculed, with a statement that Ch’ien Ch’ien-yi strongly criticised it in his Lieh-ch’ao Shih-chi. It may be that Ch’ien Ch’ien-yi had a more crucial influence that is only implicit. This is reflected in the location of Ho’s biography in the Ming Shih. It appears not among the worthy or courageous officials,

592

APPENDIX ONE

but rather in the ‘Garden of Letters’ chapters. This completed and rendered canonical a process under way since Ho’s death. If the early writers, close associates such as Fan P’eng, told a life story complete with notable incidents, later writers soon lost control over the chronology of Ho’s life, which could only happen when they lost interest in it as well. From then on, aside from accounts that simply cut and revise an antecedant text, the interest in Ho moves increasingly toward an account of the very aspect of his life that he seemed to be moving away from in the last years of his life, poetry and poetics. Reflection on the evolution of Ho’s biography, as opposed to his life, suggests the importance of looking beyond the dynastic history of the Ming. Only by considering all the available sources, with their relative chronology and the interests of their compilers in mind, can we attempt to approximate an understanding of what they can tell us. Moreover, the miniscule size of even the longest of these accounts, compared to that to which this appendix is attached, calls attention to how much remains to be done before we can begin to understand the complexity of the Ming and of the lives of the men who lived during it.

APPENDIX TWO THE TEXT OF HO CHING-MING’S WORKS Although Ho Ching-ming did not prepare an edition of his work before his death, he had evidently been assembling and preserving his writings since about the time of his chin-shih pass. Had he lived longer, he would probably have collected and arranged his works in a definitive form himself. Instead, his premature death left his literary heritage in a state of disarray. The received text represents the final stage of a process that began almost immediately after his death, as friends and family members began piecing together the corpus. A standard recension in 38 chüan has been in existence since the middle of the sixteenth century. It is so Standard, in fact, that I capitalise it here. It was, however, preceded by a number of ‘pre-standard’ compilations, and an account of the nature of these texts and of their relations to one another, taking into account its history, both external (people, places, times) and internal (editions, textual genealogy), is a necessary first step both to the study of Ho’s life and to the reading of his works. This appendix is intended to provide an introduction to this material; a presentation of all the evidence in full, not to say stupifying, detail is found in TK, pp.231-334. The first 29 chüan of the 38 that comprise the Standard recension consist of fu and shih poetry and the remainder of prose. 1 The 200-odd prose works are simply classified by type, only a few of them being

———

1 The Ho Wen-su Kung Wen-chi 何文肅公文集 (Collected Writings of Mr. Ho the Literate and Serious Gentleman) published in 1976 by the Wei-wen publishing company in Taipei as the complete works of Ho Ching-ming are in fact the works of a different writer, Ho Ch’iao-hsin 何喬新. For rather unreliable bibliographical notes (the basis of those in DMB) on early editions of Ho’s works, see LHH 2.41b-42b. Fu Ying 傅瑛discusses the Shen, Yüan, and Standard recensions in his “Kuan-yü ‘Ta-fu Chi’ te Pan-pen” 關于大復集的版本 (On the Printed Editions of the Ta-fu Chi) Yintu Hsüeh-k’an 2004.1: 78-81. The short biography of Ho by Wang Yüan-fan 汪元范 included in the Liang-yüan Feng-ya 梁園風雅 (Airs and Odes from the Garden of Liang), compiled by Chao Yen-fu 趙彥復, refers to an edition of his works in 40 chüan, but no such edition is recorded elsewhere, so the reference is probably simply an error. See Liang yüan Feng-ya (1704; repr. TM 4:334, Tainan: Chuang-yen Wenhua, 1997), chüeh-li.2a (497), cited in LHH 3.14ab.

594

APPENDIX TWO

dated either explicitly or implicitly. The poems and fu are divided first by formal type (e.g. pentasyllabic old-style verse) and then subdivided into four ‘collections’ (集 chi). This double division, by formal type and biographical period, is found in some form in almost all the versions of the text to be discussed. The period divisions may reflect collections that Ho himself prepared at various stages of his life, something commonly done by Chinese poets. The first collection, the Shih-chi 使集 (‘On Assignment’), contains poems from the years 1505-1506, when Ho was sent to carry news of the death of Emperor Hsiao-tsung to the people of Yunnan. The second group is the Chiachi 家集 (‘At Home’), containing poems written during the years 1507-1511, which he spent out of office. The third collection, Chingchi 京集 (‘In the Capital’), is the most complicated, for, as we shall see, it contains poems not only from the years 1511-1518, after Ho had been recalled to office in Peking, but also from earlier years in the capital, before 1507. The last collection, Ch’in-chi 秦集 (‘In Shensi’), is made up of poems from his last years, 1518-21. The Chia-chi and Ching-chi each include a handful of works written as Ho was travelling toward Hsin-yang and Peking respectively. The following table shows the distribution of Ho’s poetry by form and period. The numbers refer to the number of pieces of each type. Works found only in YK are distributed among the period collections according to the evidence for dating they provide, with the Chia-chi as the default; those whose formal or temporal classification varies among the recensions follow the Standard recension here except where the available evidence warrants doing otherwise: Form pentasyllabic old 218 heptasyllabic old 143 pentasyllabic regulated pentasyllabic extended heptasyllabic regulated heptasyllabic extended pentasyllabic quatrain hexasyllabic regulated hexasyllabic quatrain heptasyllabic quatrain tz’u-fu

Shih

35 -25 1 2 --6 3

Chia

Ching Ch’in

other

total

29

99

83

7

--

10

51

80

2

--

264 10 99 1 51 1 2 102 14

334 15 125 -19 -4 56 12

--------3

676 26 257 2 73 2 6 180 32

43 1 8 -1 1 -16 --

595

THE TEXT

Form

Shih

Chia

Ching Ch’in

other

total

ku-shih yüeh-fu tz’u lien-chü total

1 ---113

----723

4 ---740

1 83 3 1 56

6 83 3 1 1711

----79

Most of what follows is concerned with the process by which Ho’s works took the form in which we now find them, but because the dates of individual works, or range of possible dates, are frequently an important element in the discussion, we begin with a brief account of the nature of the evidence for dating, the ways in which this evidence can be applied, and some of the implications of the results. It turns out that there are at least five different levels of evidence. First, there are works, few in number, and almost exclusively found among memorial texts, that are explicitly dated by Ho in the text itself. Second, there are works that can be dated by their reference to some independently recorded event. The potential members of this class are quite numerous, but in each case our ability to assign a date depends on locating the evidence that will confirm the date. Works that mention an eclipse are an obvious case, but there are few of these. The most common examples are works written for someone holding a specific office in the central government or in the provinces. Independent biographical materials sometimes provide dates for the succession of official posts held by their subjects. In the case of provincial posts, if a gazetteer can be found that lists officials and gives the dates of their tenures in office, it is often possible to date fairly precisely a poem or essay. A variant of this situation is the work written by Ho while travelling and referring to an identifiable place, through which we know he passed only at a certain time or times. In practice, such dates fall into a number of classes. In a very few cases, the composition of a poem is recorded on a particular date in a particular year. More frequently, a particular date is explicitly given, but the year, if it can be established at all, comes from less direct evidence. A second large class of poems refers to events whose dates are known, sometimes quite precisely, but the poems themselves come from a time somewhat earlier or later than the event. The most frequent occasion for poems of this class is a farewell to someone appointed to a provincial office. There are three subclasses to be considered. In the first two, the exact date of the appointment’s

596

APPENDIX TWO

announcement is known; in the third, the date is much less precisely recorded. For poems associated with an exactly dated appointment, it is important to know the conditions under which the appointment was made. In a minority of cases, the appointment was a case of relegation, in fact a kind of internal exile, and here it appears that departure from Peking took place almost at once, certainly within a matter of days. In most cases, however, the appointee might delay departure for weeks, even months, enjoying in the meanwhile a series of farewell celebrations. Poems written at these celebrations can only be assigned to the period of time following announcement of the appointment. Moreover, as in any bureaucratic system, the official announcement of an appointment was often preceded by a considerable period during which the appointment was known informally, at least within a limited circle, to be either possible or certain, and this situation may be reflected in Ho’s text as well. The third subclass consists of poems with imprecise dates, most commonly expressed only as a year of appointment. Years of appointment generally come from two different types of sources, which we might characterise as ‘metropolitan’ and ‘provincial’ and which need to be handled differently. ‘Metropolitan’ sources include individual biographies and essays, as well as centrally compiled historical sources. The dates found here reflect the date on which an appointment was announced, seeing it as an element either in the history of the state or in the life of the individual appointed. ‘Provincial’ sources, on the other hand, treat the appointment as an event in local administration and often reflect the date on which an official actually entered on his duties. Owing both to the delays in departure from the capital mentioned above and to the time required to for travel—which not infrequently included stopovers at the appointee’s home or at scenic spots along the way—these provincial dates often correspond to the year after the appointment was made. Finally, there are poems that refer to an official position that the subject or recipient already held at the time the poem was written. Such poems can only be dated within a range of time, even if one or both ends of the range can be more precisely determined. Third, most of Ho’s poetry can be assigned a range of dates on the basis of the four collections into which his poetry is divided (see above). For the poems written in Shensi and on his trip to Yunnan, this is helpful, but the other two collections cover too much time to be very useful as a guide to the dating of individual pieces. This is

THE TEXT

597

especially true of the Ching-chi, which includes works from all four periods that Ho spent in Peking between 1502 and 1518. Fourth, many works supply a seasonal reference, either explicitly by naming one of the four seasons or implicitly by mentioning the annual cycles of weather, flora, and fauna. This is generally not enough to date the particular work, but a series of such references can be useful in conjunction with the published sequence of the poems (see below). Finally, there are works for which there is no evidence at all with regard to the date of their composition. Perhaps the most important case is the majority of Ho’s yüeh-fu poems. Of course it is not only Ho Ching-ming’s own works that we have to consider. For example, one very useful tool in establishing dates is a rare collection of poetry written during the years 1515 to 1523 by Ho’s friend Hsüeh Hui, the Hsüeh Hsi-yüan Chi, in 2 chüan. Unlike Ho’s works and the standard collection of Hsüeh’s poetry and prose, the K’ao-kung Chi, the Hsüeh Hsi-yüan Chi combines in one sequence poems in all formal types, arranged in chronological order and with explicit notes dividing off works by their years of composition. In addition to supplying dates for the poems it includes (most of the poems duplicate the contents of the poetry sections of the K’ao-kung Chi, but each collection contains some work not found in the other), the Hsüeh Hsi-yüan Chi shows that the K’ao-kung Chi too is roughly chronological in its arrangement within each formal type, even though there is no explicit reference to this. Because Hsüeh and Ho had many acquaintances in common, reference to the Hsüeh Hsi-yüan Chi supplies information that can help narrow the range of possible dates for some of Ho’s works. Also useful, though to a lesser extent, are other literary collections that are broadly chronological in their arrangement. though this remains implicit, including the works of Hsü Tsin (Hsü Wen-min Kung Chi), Lü Nan (Ching-yeh Hsien-sheng Wenchi), Cheng Shan-fu (Cheng Shih and Cheng Wen), and Li Lien (Sungchu Wen-chi), as well as the 12 chüan edition of Ts’ui Hsien’s prose (Huan-tz’u). Once the evidence has been assembled, the next step is to test the various recensions to see if they preserve chronological elements in

598

APPENDIX TWO

the published sequence of works. 2 To find such elements is of course of great significance, for it means that we can extrapolate dates for otherwise undatable works on the basis of their position in the sequence. The full range of evidence is set out and analysed in the fourth section of TK (pp.287-334). The conclusion is that while none of the recensions was designedly chronological, the Shen and Yung recensions were based on manuscript sources that were chronological in nature. The Shen recension, in particular, seems generally to have preserved the sequence of its sources. For all forms of Ho’s poetry except yüeh-fu ballads and heptasyllabic old-style verse, we can establish on this basis a chronology of most of the works, and this, combined of course with other sources, allows us to reconstitute many aspects of Ho’s biography in considerable detail. The ‘thickness’ of the detail and the reliability of its elements naturally varies. Specific cases are examined as they come up, but the following overview may provide a useful guide to the larger picture. Ho’s works written prior to his departure for Yunnan in the spring of 1505 are only sparsely preserved and their chronology is doubtful at many points. The poems from the Yunnan trip that survive in the Shih-chi are quite easy to date from geographical references, but only cover some parts of the trip, chiefly the outward journey through Hunan and Kweichow. It may be that poems from other parts of the trip were lost when Ho was robbed on the return leg, but this is only a surmise. That some works from after the robbery are also extant may be seen as tending to confirm it. Poems from the months that Ho spent in Peking between his return from Yunnan in the summer of 1506 and his return home to Hsin-yang

———

2 For a clear and useful discussion of techniques to be used in dating and arranging in chronological order the works of a Chinese writer, see the section on ‘how to carry out the establishment of a chronological edition’ (如何進行編年) in Chu Tung-jun’s 朱東潤 introduction to his edition of Mei Yao-ch’en’s works, Mei Yao-ch’en Chi Pien-nien Chiao-chu 梅堯臣集編年校注 (Collected Works of Mei Yao-ch’en, Chronologically Arranged, Collated and Annotated) (Shanghai: Shanghai Ku-chi, 1980), pp.31-46. The process followed here is generally similar, although the problems are not entirely the same. The condition common to both cases is that it proves possible to discover chronological ‘threads’ running through considerable blocks of work. These can be used to extrapolate dates for the works within each block. While the these ‘threads’ are much more easily discerned in Mei’s works than in Ho’s, the range and amount of supporting evidence is in general much more extensive for Ho’s period than for Mei’s.

THE TEXT

599

in the spring of 1507 are somewhat more ‘dense’ and securely datable than the pre-Yunnan poems. The first year back in Hsin-yang is very fully and securely documented, but 1508 is much less so. The first half of the year in particular is conjectural in many respects. The Shen recension does not contain poems from the rest of Ho’s stay in Hsinyang, 1509-11. For these years, aside from individually datable poems in the other recensions, we can in general only distinguish between poems written during his period of mourning for his parents and those written before or after it, and this chiefly on the assumption that his biographers were telling the truth when they reported that he abstained from drinking while in mourning. That so many poems can be dealt with on this basis calls attention to the ubiquity of alcohol in Chinese poetic life. The years spent in Peking after his recall to office, from late in 1511 to mid-1518 are in general well and securely documented. The pentasyllabic regulated verse from 1512-13 require some degree of rearrangement, and doubts remain about individual pieces, but the years 1514 and, especially, 1515 are well covered and present few problems. There are fewer poems from 1516 and 1517, but the chronology of those we have is generally clear. The year 1518, when Ho left Peking and went to his new post in Shensi by way of Hsin-yang, is represented only by a small number of works in the Ching-chi and Chia-chi that can be dated on the basis of internal evidence (works written while travelling are found with those written at his destination). The next year, 1519, is an almost complete blank in the surviving works, but 1520 and 1521 are somewhat better covered, especially Ho’s tour of inspection through southern Shensi and the visits with K’ang Hai and Wang Chiu-ssu that preceded it. We cannot know whether Ho actually wrote less poetry after arriving in Shensi or simply failed to preserve more of what he did write. It is clear that Ho’s contemporaries understood the value of his work and the importance of collecting and publishing it after his death. To produce a collected edition was seen as a matter of great importance. As Lü Nan pointed out in a letter to Meng Yang, “To compile and set in order the manuscripts he left behind, thus seeing to it that they do not perish, is our chief hope. So many of his acquaintances have written dirges and mourning poems to bewail his suffering, but they

600

APPENDIX TWO

have not been able to accomplish this. It should not be put off past the present year.” 3 The compiling and setting in order went on for several decades before the appearance of the Standard recension. The account given here follows the chronology of the process, but it will be useful at the outset to identify the main stages, which consist of four different recensions, including the Standard, and one supplemental collection, as follows: 4 1) The Yung recension 雍本, Ho Chung-mo Chi 何仲默集, 10 chüan, poems only, extant in two copies, one in the library of Hangchow University and one in the collection of the Palace Museum in Taipei, also available on microform. 2) The Shen recension 申本, Ho Shih Chi 何氏集, 26 chüan, extant in at least four editions in two families, two of which are available on microform. 3) The Ta-fu Yi-kao 大復遺稿 (“Remnant Manuscripts of Ta-fu”), 3 chüan, extant in a single copy in the Fukien Provincial Library. 4) The Yüan recension 袁本 , Ta-fu Chi 大復集 , 37 chüan, complete copies in several libraries in China and at the Sonkeikaku library in Tokyo. There is a partial copy, lacking chüan 4-7 in the Palace Museum in Taipei and available on microform. The copy in the Gest Library of Princeton University lacks chüan 4-7 and 20-22 of the original. The missing parts have been supplied in a manuscript transcription prepared by copying texts from an edition of the Standard recension, but in the order of the Yüan recension’s table of contents. 5 5) The Standard 足本 recension, Ho Ta-fu Chi 何大復集, 38 chüan,

———

3 “Responding to a Letter from Meng Wang-chih [Yang]” 復孟望之書, Ching-yeh Hsien-sheng Wen-chi (1555 edition) 20.9a (228). 4 Inspired by the careful definitions in Harold Roth’s magisterial The Textual History of the Huai-nan Tzu (Ann Arbor: Association for Asian Studies, 1992), pp.361, n.1; 376, n.74; 386, n.4, I refer to three levels of distinctiveness among texts of the Ho Ching-ming corpus. By ‘recension’ I refer to a particular ‘gross’ form of the text, having a certain number of chüan and the contents in a given order. A recension may be represented by multiple ‘editions’, all of which preserve the same organization of the contents but which differ in other respects, including page format and variant readings. Editions may sometimes be usefully grouped in ‘families’, the members of which were printed from the same set of blocks but differ in details such as recarved pages, additional works found in otherwise blank spaces, marginalia, etc. 5 I am grateful to my student Michael Reeve for checking several details about the nature of the Princeton copy.

THE TEXT

601

extant in at least four different editions, in two families, from the Ming dynasty, and at least five editions in several different page formats from the Ch’ing dynasty, including the Ssu-k’u Ch’üan-shu. The only modern typeset edition is based on this recension. There were in addition at least two collections of Ho’s poetry alone published during the Wan-li reign period (1573-1619), but these were derived directly from the Shen recension and had no descendants, so we shall not discuss them here. See TK 233-34, 262-63. THE YUNG RECENSION At the time of Ho’s death, there were several collections of his manuscripts in existence, and it was from these that his friends and family produced the earliest printed editions. The first of these collections to be used in preparing a printed edition consisted of manuscripts left behind in Shensi on Ho’s return home in 1521. There were apparently two sets of these, one in the possession of K’ang Hai and another with Chang Chih-tao. Each man gives an account of the editing process. Chang’s, which appears as a colophon appended to the table of contents, is the fuller of the two: Chang Chih-tao says: When Master Ho left Kuan-chung, he deposited his manuscripts with me. On inspection, I found that they contained a total of 305 old-style poems and a total of 847 regulated verse. In our leisure days Master K’ang Tui-shan [Hai] and I made a selection from them and arranged it according to categories (擇而類焉). We dropped 73 old-style poems, retaining 232; of the regulated verse, we dropped 307 pieces and retained 540.

K’ang Hai, in a preface dated April 2, 1524, says that he put the works in order and that just as he was doing so he was visited by Chang Chih-tao, “whose views were very much the same as mine,” or perhaps, “who had seen very much the same as I had” (所見與予甚同). They then completed the editing together. A second preface, by T’ang Lung 唐龍 (1477-1546) and dated a few weeks later than K’ang’s (April 19), says that after Ho’s death Chang took his ‘random manuscripts’ and went to visit K’ang at his country home, where they put them in order together. Neither preface tells us how many chüan made up the edition prepared by K’ang and Chang. T’ang was, so far as we can tell, neither an acquaintance of

602

APPENDIX TWO

Ho’s nor a participant in the compilation process. He was, rather, Ho’s successor as Education Intendant for Shensi, and thus a reasonable choice as a person to contribute an ‘outsider’s’ preface. 6 The text that contains these three reports today is the Yung recension. While we cannot say for certain when the extant exemplars were printed, it is clearly the recension that corresponds most closely to the description of the text prepared by K’ang and Chang, and it seems reasonable to suppose that it was produced in Shensi not long after the composition of their prefaces. 7 Although K’ang Hai’s Preface refers to rhapsodies (fu), poems, and prose, the Yung recension contains only poetry. The contents are divided by formal type, beginning with quadrasyllabic ancient-style poetry and ending with heptasyllabic quatrains. Within each formal type, the poems are grouped according to three of the four period subcollections, Chia-chi, Ching-chi, and Kuan-chung-chi 關中集 , (Ch’in-chi). The subcollections normally appear in this order, but in chüan 8-9 the pentasyllabic and heptasyllabic regulated verse appear with the Ching-chi preceding the Chia-chi, and there is a block of oldstyle poems with a note reading “old style verse mistakenly recorded.” There are only twenty yüeh-fu ballads included, all assigned to the Chia-chi. The Shih-chi poems are not included. We have no sure way now of explaining the discrepency between the number of poems given in Chang’s colophon and that found in the extant Yung recension. Chang tells us that they began with 305 + 847 (1152) poems and reduced this to 232 + 540 (772). Neither figure matches any extant text, but the former is not too much smaller than the 1278 poems in the Shen recension (1176 if the Yunnan poems are

———

6 For T’ang Lung (t. Yü-tso 虞佐, h. Yü-shih 漁石), see MS 202.5327, HY 2/317, TL 399, TK 126. He had served chiefly in the provinces after his 1508 chin-shih. Readers of David Robinson’s Bandits, Eunuchs, and the Son of Heaven (Honolulu, University of Hawai’i Press, 2001) will recall T’ang Lung as the Magistrate of T’anch’eng who was promoted on the ground of a successful defense against bandits that was chiefly the work of his subordinate K’ang Yu-hui (Robinson’s pinyin spellings are Tang Long, Tancheng, and Kang Youhui). See Robinson, pp.125-26. 7 Note, however, that neither this recension nor any other extant text matches the numbers of poems (pre- or post-selection) specified in Chang Chih-tao’s colophon (see below). Li K’ai-hsien later wrote a preface to a collection of Ho’s work in the sao and fu forms, in which he laments the loss of Chang’s manuscript after his death. Since Chang died in 1556 and Li in 1568, the manuscript must have disappeared between these years; see Li K’ai-hsien Ch’üan-chi (Peking: Wen-hua Yi-shu, 2004) 6.515.

THE TEXT

603

omitted) and the latter somewhat closer to the 807 of the Yung recension in which Chang’s note is found. THE SHEN RECENSION The other collection of manuscripts was that left in Hsin-yang after Ho died. These may have consisted of material that he had deposited at home before going to Shensi, manuscripts that he brought back with him, or both. This was presumably the material that Ho’s student and friend Tai Kuan set out to have carved on printing blocks once he took office in Soochow in 1523. We are fortunate to have a series of letters that Tai wrote in the process, as these illuminate many of the stages of his work. His first move was apparently to ask Ho’s old friend Tu Mu (see text, preface and chapter four) about the principles to be followed in editing the collection. Evidently unconvinced by Tu’s reply, he then wrote to a much younger man, Huang Hsing-tseng, who was already recognised as one of the most promising young intellectuals of Soochow (see text, chapter twelve). Tai’s letter to Huang is not included in his own works, but is appended to Huang’s reply in Huang’s. 8 Tai’s concern was that Ho had revised and added to his works so much that there was no ‘final’ version to go by. Tu Mu’s suggestions had involved radical changes from what Ho had left, such as shortening titles and cutting prefaces to individual pieces. Since the work of carving the printing blocks was about to be undertaken, even though material from Shensi had not yet been seen, Tai asked Huang for his advice. Huang’s reply is long and detailed, discussing the proper generic identification of various of Ho’s works. The two important points implicit in it are that the Shensi works were not yet included and that, with this exception, Huang’s recommendations are embodied in the Shen recension.

———

8 Huang Hsing-tseng, Wu-yüeh Shan-jen Chi 五嶽山人集 (Collected Works of the Mountain Dweller of the Five Sacred Peaks) (Chia-ching edition; repr. TM 4:94, Tainan: Chuang-yen Wen-hua, 1997) 30.9b (785). Huang had already, in 1518, published an edition of the Ch’u Tz’u. See Li Chih-chung 李致忠, “Ming-tai K’o-shu Shu-lüeh” 明代刻書述略 (Brief Account of Ming Printing), Wen Shih 23 (1984), pp.127-58, p.148.

604

APPENDIX TWO

The next year, 1524, Tai Kuan was reassigned to Shantung. He entrusted the publication project to his successor Hu Tsuan-tsung 胡纘宗 (1480-1560), Huang Hsing-tseng, and a man named Kuo Po 郭波, a 1517 chin-shih then serving as Magistrate of Ch’ang-chou 長洲, a county that formed part of Soochow prefecture and had its offices in the city. 9 After some time had passed without any word from Soochow, Tai sent anxious letters to all three men, including with his letter to Kuo Po a copy of K’ang and Chang’s Shensi edition in four volumes (ts’e; this is the format of the extant Yung recension), which he asked Kuo to use in editing. 10 Once Tai learned that the work was finished, he sent off grateful letters to Hu and Huang. Kuo Po was demoted at about this time, after coming in conflict with an influential eunuch, which may explain why there is no such letter addressed to him. 11 Tai also wrote to Ho Ching-yang and Wang Shang-chiung to let them know that the carved blocks had been received at his home and were ready for printing. 12 The one thing missing was a preface, he added, in writing to Ching-yang. Hu Tsuan-tsung had been approached but had declined. In the event, the preface would not be written until 1531, by Ho’s old friend Wang T’ing-hsiang. Wang’s description of the layout of the text fits the Shen recension exactly: three chüan of tz’u-fu 辭賦, one of quadrasyllabic ancient-style poetry, two of yüeh-fu, two for the Shih-chi five for the Chia-chi, seven for the Ching-chi, one for the Ch’in-chi, one for the “Nei-p’ien (‘Inner Chapters’), and four for the Wai-p’ien 外篇 (‘Outer Chapters’, i.e. prose works in various forms),

———

9 For Hu Tsuan-tsung (t. Hsiao-ssu 孝思, 世甫, h. K’o-ch’üan 可泉), see MS 202.5333, KHL 61.95a (2618—anon.), TL 355, HY 3/177, TK 173. Hu Tsuan-tsung’s career had got off to an odd start. He was a quite possibly innocent beneficiary of Liu Chin’s manipulation of the initial assignments for new chin-shih of 1508, a manipulation designed to make Chiao Fang’s son Huang-chung a Compiler. After the fall of Liu Chin, all those appointed in this way were dismissed. Sent out to an obscure post in the provinces in 1510, Hu was, by the time of his arrival in Soochow, already well on his way to reestablishing his career. Although he held only minor metropolitan offices, he rose to the highest levels of provincial administration before retiring to enjoy life until his death in his eighty-first year. In addition to a modest collection of literary works, he edited several local gazetteers. For Kuo Po (t. Ch’engch’ing 澄卿), see HY 3/35, TK 185. 10 For the letters, see Tai Kuan, Tai Shih Chi (1548; repr. TM 4:63. Tainan: Chuang-yen Wen-hua, 1997) 12.21a (93), 22a, 23a (94). 11 Tai Shih Chi 12.21b (93), 22b (94). 12 Tai Shih Chi 12.31a (98).

THE TEXT

605

for a total of 26 chüan, some ‘separate essays’ (別論) in several (若干) chüan having been printed in Lu-chou 潞州 (modern Ch’ang-chih, in south-east Shansi). Blocks for the collection, he adds, had been carved some time previously, but no one had been entrusted with the writing of a preface to it, whereupon a nephew of Ho’s, Wang Ch’ao-liang 王朝良, had requested Wang T’ing-hsiang to provide one. 13 THE YUNG AND SHEN RECENSIONS Comparison of the Yung and Shen recensions reveals broad similarities, along with some interesting discrepencies, not all of which can be explained by the existing evidence. 14 One crucial question to which we have no answer is this: which of the manuscript collections used in compiling the Yung and Shen recensions did Ho himself consider to be the ‘definitive’ text? That is, were the manuscripts left in Hsin-yang his last say on the works written before 1518, or were they simply old copies that he left behind while he continued to revise and polish in Shensi? If the latter, was the copy left with Chang Chih-tao the final version, or did he take a better copy, perhaps the best of all, back to Hsin-yang with him? 15 We cannot know, and so we can only evaluate the Shen and Yung recensions as we have them. Given all this, the first point to make is that the two recensions are generally consistent with one another. Most of the poems in the Yung recension’s selection are found in the Shen recension, for the most part in the same order but often with significant variant readings. This suggests that the compilers of both recensions were working with manuscript sources that at least shared many common characteristics. At the same time, some of the differences between the two may

——— 13

References to Wang T’ing-hsiang’s preface having been written in 1537 rather than 1531 reflect a misprint that first appeared in Ch’ing dynasty editions. For Wang Ch’ao-liang, see TK 167. He had passed the provincial examination in 1528. 14 The statements and hypotheses found in the next few paragraphs are based on materials summarised in the finding lists in TK, pp.335-82. The Shen and Yung orderings of the poems are not discussed there, so the discussion here is relatively detailed. 15 That Tai did not have the Shensi works suggests that Ho did not bring a copy of his works home with him, which in turn suggests the haste and desperation of the trip.

606

APPENDIX TWO

shed light on the compilation process. That a significant number of poems found in Yung are not included in Shen suggests that Kuo Po did not receive the copy of the ‘Kuan-chung’ edition sent to Tai Kuan, that he received it too late to make full use of it, perhaps only adding the Ch’in-chi, or that it was not the same as the extant Yung recension. The second of these three seems the likeliest explanation, but we cannot be sure. We shall further discuss these poems below. We have already noted the absence from the Yung recension of the Shih-chi, works from the Yunnan trip (1505-06). In addition, once the poems have been dated, we find that no works from the Ching-chi and demonstrably written before Ho’s return to Hsin-yang in 1507 are included either. Although it is possible that this is due to chance, the more likely explanation is that Ho did not take copies of his pre-1507 works with him when he took up office in Shensi, perhaps because he regarded them as juvenilia or otherwise less important than his later work. Since most of the time Ho had spent with K’ang Hai was in the years 1502-07, it is odd that K’ang did not add works from this period on the basis of copies he had retained. Although the two recensions share many sequences in which the poems follow one another in the same order for pages on end, allowing for the omission of poems by K’ang Hai and Chang Chih-tao in their selection process, there are numerous exceptions of greater or lesser extent. The most striking of these involves the pentasyllabic regulated verse in the Ching-chi, the largest single subdivision of Ho’s works. Poems 1-123 in the Shen sequence correspond to poems 136250 in the Yung recension. Poems 124-162 in Shen are not found in Yung; they include in fact the pre-1507 poems just referred to. Poems 163-306 in Shen correspond to 1-135 in Yung. 16 Here it seems likely that there were two different physical units, perhaps manuscript pages stitched together, that the compilers simply took up in different orders. The Yung order is the one that better reflects the chronology of the poems, but it is clear from various other anomalies that none of the recensions involved any attempt to impose chronology on the corpus

———

16 Poems 251-256 in Yung, probably all from late 1517 and early 1518, are not included in Shen. Shen in fact appears not to include any poems from 1518, the year in which Ho travelled from Peking to Shensi, by way of Hsin-yang. Perhaps because this was a ‘year in progress’, he seems to have carried his only copy of these recent works to Sian, so that it was not available to the Shen recension compilers.

THE TEXT

607

beyond the division into the three or four period sub-collections, no doubt a feature of their sources. Quite the contrary, in fact. What the reversal of these two blocks of poems in Yung and Shen shows is that both groups of compilers worked with pre-existing sequences with whose internal ordering they tampered very little, and in no case with chronology in view. Other differences between the two recensions are more difficult to account for. Some of them may derive from decisions made by K’ang Hai and Chang Chih-tao as they prepared their selection based on two separate collections. This process is quite opaque, and we cannot see through it to the nature of their sources. One sort of difference is a matter of the two recensions disagreeing on the formal genre of a poem and thus locating it in quite different sections of the corpus. The largest number of such cases are a matter of poems that the Shen recension classifies as yüeh-fu ballads, while in the Yung recension they are found among poems in a number of different forms. Since the Yung recension’s collection of yüeh-fu, so labelled, is quite small and explicitly assigned to the Chia-chi, it may be that the Shen recension has removed the disputed poems from their original sequence in the interest of generic ‘purification’. In some cases, the occurrence of these poems in the Yung recension in the midst of a sequence that Yung and Shen share allows us to date them. More common are cases in which poems form such shared sequences in the Yung and Shen recensions, but with some poems ‘out of order’. The anomalous poems amount to more than ninety titles altogether. The yüeh-fu ballads do not supply any evidence for dating, and there are too few such poems in the Chia-chi to support any significant conclusions. The regulated and extended regulated verse in the Ching-chi and Ch’in-chi, however, call for comment here, even if some of the comments are a good deal more tentative than others. While two of the Ching-chi pentasyllabic regulated verse in question (352:123, :305) are isolated ‘transplants’ and supply no evidence for dating in any case, all the others occur in a block, and a very interesting block it is, too. As can be seen from the table below, Yung recension poems 78-90 and 91-108 (352:262-275, :244-261) are reversed relative to the Shen recension order. 17 Seasonal references

——— 17

The evidence for this table is set out in TK 303-13.

608

APPENDIX TWO

make it clear that the Shen recension is chronological in this case, but the presence of the disjunct year break in both recensions shows that both were prepared from manuscripts in which this break already existed. 18 Why the annual blocks have the order they do is unknown, but in all likelihood the order itself was the work of Ho Ching-ming himself. It may be significant that it is at the beginning of each of the larger blocks (352:001-016, :163-209) that we find chronological uncertainties. Shen order (352:nnn ) 001-016 017-064 065-122 124-162 163-209 210-247 248-306

Yung order

Date

136-143 144-190 191-250 ---001-046 047-077, 091-094 095-108, 078-090, 109-135

Mixed, mostly late 1515 1514 1516-17 1504?-1507 1512 (seasons out of order) 1513 1515

The pentasyllabic extended regulated verse in the Ching-chi present a very different case. There are relatively few of these poems, and their order in the two recensions is very different (353:nnn, zeroes omitted): Shen order Yung order

1 7

2 8

3 4

4 5 6 7 5 501 9 13

8 6

9 3

10 10

11 11

12

13

It is clear from the datable poems that the Shen order is consistent with chronology, while the Yung order is not. 19 Poem 353:003 was written in the fifth month of 1512; :005 and :006 in the winter of that year; and :010, the long poem on Wang T’ing-hsiang’s arrest (see text, chapter seven), late in 1513 or early in 1514. Why the poems in Yung are in the order they are is one of those questions whose answer, if

——— 18

In fact, 352:247 is the last poem definitely from late in 1513, and 352:252 the first that must be from 1515 (:252 and :254 are part of the rhyme matching group that includes poems by Wang Ch’ung-ch’ing, P’an Hsi-tseng, and Lu Yung; we know from the arrangement of Lu’s works that 1515 is the date; see text, chapter eight). Poem 252:248 refers explicitly to the first day of the year and :250 to the fourth day of the first month. Since the annual collections in general break at the change of year, it is reasonable to assign these poems and 352:251 to 1515. 19 Poems 353:001 and :002 are not found in the Yung recension, while the fifth poem in Yung (353:501) is not found in Shen. The latter and 353:001 are not datable, but 353:002 is the congratulatory birthday poem Ho presented to Hsü Chin in 1506, which suggests that in this case too the Yung recension omits Ching-chi poems earlier than 1511. Poem 353:012 is treated as a pair of regulated verse in the Yung recension.

609

THE TEXT

unknowable, is happily also not urgent. The heptasyllabic regulated verse in the Ching-chi show yet a different pattern. In this case there are two discrete blocks of poems in Yung that are made up of poems found one by one and widely separated in Shen. Moreover, the blocks come at the very beginning (12 poems) and the very end (7 poems) of the collection of poems in this form in Yung. The poems in these blocks seem to have no common features. Quite a few of them are farewell poems, but some are not; a few are addressed to controversial figures, but most are not. The order of the first ten poems in the initial block of twelve in Yung is not inconsistent with natural chronology, but the eleventh poem is earlier than any of the others can be shown to be (the last poem provides no evidence for dating). In the same way, the second and fifth poems in the final block of seven are from 1517, but the sixth was written in 1515 and the seventh in 1514. One possibility is that these two blocks of poems were among those originally dropped by K’ang Hai and Chang Chih-tao, but that they were restored in two convenient places as the Yung recension was prepared for publication. This, however, does not explain their haphazard arrangement: 20 Yung: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Shen: 20 42 51 14 54 52 23 77 95

10 97

11 18

12 19

Yung: 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 Shen: 92 96 [504] 88 100 [505] 35

The poems written in Shensi, the Ch’in-chi, raise other sorts of problems. To begin with, the extant poems are remarkably few in number, 76 poems from one and half years (there are almost no poems assignable to 1518 or 1519, see above, chapter eleven), as compared to approximately 575 from the seven years Ho spent in Peking from 1511 to 1518. It is striking that the corpus of poems from this period is so uniform between Yung and Shen; there are only three poems in Yung that are not found in Shen, only four in Shen but not in Yung. And yet, the order of the poems is radically different between the two recensions in every major form of verse. 21

——— 20

The numbers refer to the sequence of the two recensions. That is, the first poem in the Yung recension is the twentieth in the Shen, etc. Poems 372:504 and :505 are not found in the Shen recension. 21 For a full discussion of the evidence for dating the poems in the Ch’in-chi, see

610

APPENDIX TWO

Just over half of the Ch’in-chi poems are in a single form, pentasyllabic regulated verse, and a little more than half of these come from Ho’s tour of southern Shensi in the spring of 1520. The chronological sequence of the tour poems is readily established on the basis of their geographical references and is the same in the Shen and Yung recensions, except that Yung locates the poems written at Loukuan and vicinity, including one on a visit to K’ang Hai’s villa, at the end of the series. There is another block of poems, 452:029-037 (Yung 31-39), that are in the same order in both recensions except that the last two poems are reversed. All of the poems that supply evidence for dating show the poems to come from the winter, and some of them were written during Ho’s winter excursion to visit Lü Nan and Ma Li (see text, chapter twelve). The penultimate poem in the series must be later than December 19, 1520. These two blocks are separated in Yung by one poem (452:028) that must be later than the spring of 1520 and one undatable set of four that are treated as old-style verse in the Shen recension (451:004-007). For the rest, only one poem can be narrowly dated, while a fair number of the others have seasonal references. The sequence of poems in the Shen recension is, with one exception, consistent with natural chronology; that in Yung is not, in several respects. Once again, as in the heptasyllabic regulated verse in the Ching-chi, the Yung recension has two blocks of poems, three at the very beginning and six at the end, that are made up of poems found scattered throughout the Shen recension sequence: Yung

Shen

Evidence for dating

1 2 3 40 41 42 43

40 24 25 26 27 -23

third day of third month autumn autumn ninth day of ninth month winter, at shrine to Han Yü no internal evidence, Ho’s last work? (see text) winter, at Hua-ch’ing Palace, east of Sian 22

———

TK 91-104. 22 All four recensions agree in reading 冬 (‘winter’) as the first word of this poem, but the Standard recension has a note saying that ‘one version reads’ (一作 yi-tso) 偶 (‘happen to’). The reference to autumn in the next line is in the phrase ‘A thousand autumns’, which is commonly equivalent to ‘a thousand years’. Since the third couplet refers to snow and to the return of spring blossoms, the poem is probably a winter work. This means that it is out of chronological sequence in the Shen recension.

THE TEXT

44 45

39 41

611

Ch’ing-ming holiday (late spring), Ho ill after death of Wu-tsung in spring, 1521

One might propose that the first three poems in Yung are lone survivors from 1519, but the final block in Yung requires most of a year, ending well into 1521, although it follows the poem that must be later than late 1520, so once again it appears that chronology is most closely followed in the Shen recension. The mystery is why the two recensions differ in the first place and why, since Shen is the one presumably not prepared from original manuscripts, it is the one that is chronologically plausible. This leaves only the heptasyllabic regulated verse, only eight poems, including one that is found only in the Shen recension and one only in the Yung. The Shen sequence is consistent with natural chronology, but the Yung is not. The latter has two poems from the excursion to Lou-kuan in the spring of 1520 followed by one (the one found only in Yung) that must come from the autumn of 1519. We now turn back to consider the eighty poems in various forms and from different periods that are found in the Yung recension but not in Shen. We have already noted that among the pentasyllabic regulated verse from the Ching-chi the ‘extra’ poems in Yung appear to come from the year 1518, while no such poems are found in Shen. In what follows, a more thorough-going analysis of this sub-corpus is presented. Of the twenty yüeh-fu ballads in the Yung recension, four are not found in Shen. One of these (YF:503) is sixth among the poems in Yung; the other three come at the very end of the Yung sequence. None of these poems supplies any evidence for dating, so we have no direct method of assigning dates to them or explaining why they are found in Yung but not in Shen. In considering the poems from the Chia-chi, we must first take note of the remarkable characteristic of the Chia-chi poems in the Shen recension, mentioned above, that all of them that can be dated come from the years 1507-08 and none from the years 1509-1511, most of which Ho spent in mourning for his parents. Among the poems that come from 1508, all but a few are from the autumn or winter of that year. Why this should be so remains a mystery. The other recensions, including Yung, include poems that must come from these ‘missing’ years, so we know that Ho was writing during this period. Apparently these poems were not available to Tai Kuan and Kuo Po, but at least

612

APPENDIX TWO

some of them were among the manuscripts that K’ang Hai and Chang Chih-tao had in Shensi. We shall discuss them one form at a time. The Chia-chi poems were not discussed in conjunction with problems of differing sequences between Yung and Shen. Such questions will be taken up here as they arise, along with those of the poems not found in Shen. Two features stand out in the case of the pentasyllabic old-style poems in the Chia-chi. The first is that a large number of the poems are part of sets of more than one poem under a single title. Taking all four Recensions into account, there are 98 poems, but only 40 titles. The second feature is that the Shen recension, which in most forms presents clear annual sequences, in this case opens with three poems that evoke places between Peking and Hsin-yang, one of them referring to spring. These are followed by three poems that cannot be assigned to a particular year, though they present a seasonal sequence: autumn, tenth month, winter. Then, from the seventh poem on, Shen provides what it commonly does, a consistently chronological sequence that begins with Ho’s departure from Peking and continues to the last evening of 1507 (36 poems), followed by two sets of poems, eight and eighteen in number, on conventional themes, two poems on historical figures, and one ‘personal’ poem that lacks evidence for dating. The Yung sequence opens with a selection (poems 1-22) from the main chronological sequence found also in Shen, omitting the set of poems on the ‘Six Gentlemen’ (see text, chapter four). This is followed by a selection from the set of eighteen poems (23-33), a poem (not found in Shen and treated as two in the Yüan and Standard recensions) evoking a ramble in the hills in autumn or winter, the very last poem in the Shen sequence, a poem on the ‘Establishing Spring’ day (January 27 in the Western calendar of the day), a spring poem on tree planting (these two poems are not in Shen), the ‘Six Gentlemen’ poems (38-43), the third of the initial sequence in Shen (44), a poem treated as a yüeh-fu ballad in all other recensions (45), the set of eight poems also in Shen (46-53), the first and sixth (winter) poems from the Shen sequence (54-55), and, finally, one poem and a set of two (expanded to five in the Yüan recension and four in the Standard) both of which are almost certainly from the end of 1509—they refer to Ho’s mourning as a relatively recent thing—and neither of which is included in Shen.

THE TEXT

613

Taken as whole, the Yung sequence is, in this one case, more plausibly chronological than the Shen, extending from Ho’s departure from Peking in the spring of 1507 to the end of 1509, though with a long gap, from the early spring of 1508 to the winter of 1509, filled only with poems lacking evidence for chronology (Yung poems 3854), assuming that the first and third Shen poems (Yung 44, 54) are literary exercises without biographical significance (the second poem, not included in Yung, could not be treated in this way). The Shen sequence falls into three sections, of which only the second is clearly chronological. The undatable poems in the third section are at least not inconsistent with chronology, though they may be simply a mini-anthology of what are for the most part poems on conventional topics written at various times. But the initial group of six poems resists chronological interpretation. The second poem (the one not in Yung) seems clearly to have been written at the place evoked, and the fourth through sixth poems’ seasonal settings are entirely at odds with the preceding and following poems. One might refer these six poems to the years 1498 or 1502, in both of which Ho returned south to Hsin-yang in the spring, but the lack of a parallel sequence in any of the other forms tends to discourage this. In the case of the pentasyllabic regulated verse in the Chia-chi, there are only two poems among those found in both the Shen and Yung recensions that are not in the same sequence in both, and they are only slightly so. Poems found in Yung but not in Shen, on the other hand, are quite numerous, amounting to twenty-six pieces under twenty-three titles. In Yung, they are all found in a single group, following all the poems found also in Shen. So far as the problem of the ‘missing years’ in the Shen recension’s Chia-chi is concerned, two things become quite clear once the poems have been dated. The first is that the poems found only in Yung include a good number that must be from 1509 or 1510 and several that might well be from 1508 or 1511, or even 1507, as well. The second conclusion to emerge is that the sequence of these poems in Yung is not consistent with natural chronology. This means that while all but five of these poems offer some evidence for dating, we cannot use their published sequence to refine their dates or to infer dates for the poems that lack such evidence. There is no way of knowing why these poems were available to K’ang Hai and Chang Chih-tao but not to Tai Kuan and Kuo Po or why their sequence lacks the chronological character of the

614

APPENDIX TWO

other sources from which both recensions were prepared. The Yung and Shen recensions include between them ten extended regulated verse in their Chia-chi collections, five in Shen and nine in Yung. Once again, the sequence in Shen is consistent with natural chronology. The first three poems, including the one on the death of Ho’s horse, are from the first half of 1507, and the other two from the latter half of a year, presumably also 1507. Yung lacks the last of these and has the other four out of chronological order, preceded by a poem from the spring of 1507 (the one addressed to Administrative Commissioner Li Han) and followed by four more, three of which are clearly from the years 1509-11. The Yung recension lacks more than half of the heptasyllabic oldstyle poems found in Shen, does include three additional poems, and places two of the poems shared with Shen at the very end of its sequence. One of the additional poems is certainly from late in 1509 or early in 1510, consistent with the pattern seen above. The same pattern is found in the heptasyllabic regulated verse: a few additional poems in Yung that can be shown to be from 1510 (addressed to Ma Ying-hsiang) and a few whose placement in Yung is less consistent with chronology than their treatment in Shen. The Ching-chi poems can be dealt with much more briefly. There are no pentasyllabic old-style poems in Yung that are not found in Shen as well. The only such pentasyllabic regulated verse are the six poems already mentioned, all assignable to 1518 with varying degrees of plausibility or conclusiveness. The one pentasyllabic extended regulated verse in Yung but not in Shen provides no evidence that could be used to date it. In the case of heptasyllabic old-style verse, there are no fewer than nineteen poems found in Yung but not in Shen. The Yung sequence of those that supply evidence for dating is not consistent with natural chronology. The most that can be said is that none of the poems can be shown to be earlier than 1514. This is also the one major form in which the sequence in the Shen recension is not chronological. Since these poems are generally quite long, it is likely that they were copied on individual sheets rather than being gathered into a chronological collection. To sum up, while the great majority of poems found in either the Yung recension or Shen are also found in the other, each serves as the unique early source for a significant number of poems. In particular,

THE TEXT

615

only Shen contains poems earlier than 1507, only Yung supplies poems from the years 1509-11 and 1518. THE TA-FU YI-KAO The next stage in the transmission of Ho’s works is associated with one Jen Liang-kan, who was Magistrate of Hsin-yang during the years 1535-42 (see above, Appendix One). 23 Jen’s name appears on two different collections of Ho’s works. One of these was a simple reprint of the Shen recension, on which his name appears at the head of each volume as collator. 24 The other was a much smaller collection, the “Remaining Manuscripts of Ta-fu [Ho Ching-ming]” (Ta-fu Yi-kao), which survives today only in an apparently unique copy. 25 The Ta-fu Yi-kao comprises three chüan. The first two chüan consist of poems

———

23 For Jen Liang-kan (t. Chih-fu 直夫, h. Nan-chiao 南嶠), see HY 3/254, TL 153, KHL 93.33a (4046—Fan P’eng), TK 111. Note that the gazetteers of Hsin-yang do not include an account of his administration, as they do for such lauded local officials as Ning Ho, Chang Kung, and Sun Jung. 24 There are actually four editions of the Shen recension. Two of these, which have ‘Yi-yang Academy’ 義陽書院 printed on the lower end of the outer (folded) edge of each page (下口 hsia-k’ou), are apparently identical except that one has Jen Liangkan’s name as collator on it and the other does not. Then there is an edition in exactly the same format, but printed with different blocks at the Yeh-chu Chai 野竹齋 of one Shen Yü-wen 沈與文, a Ming dynasty book collector and printer from Soochow (date unknown). Finally, there is a ‘recut’ version of the Yeh-chu Chai text (references in Ch’ing and recent bibliographies to a ‘Ya-chu Chai’ 雅竹齋 text are the result of a typographical error). It is clear from internal evidence that the Yi-yang version is ancestral to the Yeh-chu Chai; see TK 260-261. For the rest, the following seems the simplest plausible account consistent with the evidence: the ‘lacking-Jen’s-name’ copies were printed from the original blocks prepared by Kuo Po. Jen’s name was added when he had additional copies printed. The Yeh-chu Chai edition was ‘pirated’ from the original edition, and the ‘re-cut’ copies were printed, perhaps much later, on the basis of these. 25 There is a description of the Ta-fu Yi-kao in Yang Hai-ch’ing 陽海清, “Ho Ching-ming Chu-shu Pan-k’o Shu-lüeh” 何景明著述版刻述略 (Summary Account of Printed Editions of Ho Ching-ming’s Writings), YC 160-170; p.167. It is also listed in the Ming-tai Pan-k’o Tsung-lu 明代版刻綜錄 (Union List of Ming Printed Books), compiled by Tu Hsin-fu 杜信孚, et al. (Yangchow: Yangchow Ku-chi, 1983), 2.17b, but the source given there is the Rare Books catalogue of Fukien University, a nonexistent institution. There is a fuller account of the Ta-fu Yi-kao in Daniel Bryant, “The Ta-fu Yi-kao: A New Source for the Life and Works of Ho Ching-ming,” unpublished paper presented at the 2002 meeting of the American Oriental Society, Western Branch. An appendix to this paper provides an annotated listing of the contents of the Yi-kao.

616

APPENDIX TWO

and miscellaneous essays (mostly prefaces and sacrificial texts), including one linked verse and three tz’u poems. There are 160 poems and fifteen prose works in all, of which no fewer than fifty works (forty-three shih poems, three tz’u, and four essays) were never subsequently reprinted. Since the purpose of the Yi-kao was to gather previously unpublished material, it is not surprising that its contents duplicate those of the Yung and Shen recensions in only three cases. The final chüan comprises the twelve essays here titled Ta-fu Hsin-lun (大復新論 ‘New Discussions of Ta-fu’) but which appear in the Standard recension as the Ho-tzu 何子 (‘Master Ho’). To these are appended Fan Peng’s curriculum and Meng Yang’s epitaph, along with an otherwise unknown poem written after Ho’s death by an admirer. The other contributions by writers other than Ho himself are the two prefaces to the whole book and a separate one for the Hsin-lun. The first of the prefaces to the Yi-kao was written by one Li T’ao 李燾 and is dated the sixth month of Chia-ching chi-hai 己亥 (1539). Li praises the importance of Ho’s works and Jen Liang-kan’s initiative in seeing that the yi-kao were collected and published. The second preface, by Chao Wen-han 趙文翰, is a good deal more informative. 26 Chao refers to the two existing editions of Ho’s works, the ‘Kuanchung’ and the ‘Wu-hsia’ 吳下 editions (i.e. the Yung and Shen recensions). Chao then quotes Jen Liang-kan as saying, “In the nest of a phoenix, there must be feathers left behind; in the grotto of a dragon, there must be scales left behind; and in the district of a worthy man there must be words left behind!” Although it seemed likely that Ho’s disciples would have collected everything, Jen sought for additional manuscripts from Ho’s family, for ‘presented words’ from his relatives and friends, and for inscriptions from the hills and temples he had visited. According to Chao, most of what he collected was work from Ho’s early years, but Jen considered that even the early works of a great writer would display the quality of his genius. Although he had initially intended to attach the works he had collected to the existing collection, in the end he decided to publish them as a separate work, modelling his effort on the compilation of such materials, assumed to

———

26 Chao Wen-han had passed the provincial examination in 1537. See (Ch’ien-lung) Hsin-yang Chou Chih (1925; repr.Taipei: Ch’eng-wen, 1976) 7.5b (236).

THE TEXT

617

reflect the teaching of Confucius but not found in the Analects, as the Great Learning 大學, Doctrine of the Mean 中庸, the Sayings of the Confucian School 孔子家語, and the Canon of Filial Piety 孝經. The role of Jen Liang-kan is more clear in the case of the Ta-fu Yikao than in that of the edition of the Shen recension to which his name is attached. Li T’ao’s preface to the Yi-kao begins by saying that Jen had Chao Wen-han put the collection in order and than asked Li to provide the preface. The heading of each chüan of the Yi-kao credits Jen with ‘collecting and printing’ (集刊 chi k’an) the book. In the case of the Shen recension, the line, which is otherwise identical, says that Jen ‘collated’ ( 校 chiao) it. Wang T’ing-hsiang’s 1531 preface, attached to the Shen recension, and Hsü Tsung-lu’s 許宗魯 preface to the Hsin-lun, which is dated 1533, offer no evidence, for the simple reason that both prefaces were written before Jen became Magistrate of Hsin-yang in 1535. Li T’ao’s preface to the Yi-kao is dated 1539, and Jen’s tenure in Hsin-yang ended in 1542. The works in the Yi-kao are divided by form, but not into the four period collections found in the four recensions. It is not surprising that all but a handful of the poems found in both the Yi-kao and the later recensions are assigned to the Chia-chi by the latter, since it was in Hsin-yang that Jen Liang-kan did all or most of his collecting. It should be remembered, though, that the assignment of these poems to a particular period collection took place, with only three exceptions, only when they were incorporated into the common ancestor of the Yüan and Standard recensions (see below). The exceptions are of some interest. All three are found in the Yung recension and one of them in Shen as well. The latter is in fact assigned to the Ching-chi in all four recensions. It is an unobtrusive quatrain whose presence in the Shen and Yung recensions Jen Liangkan probably overlooked because the title is different: “Gazing at the Western Hills in the Rain” (雨望西山 yü wang hsi shan) in Yung and Shen, but “Mountain Temple” (山寺 shan ssu) in the Yi-kao and hence presumably also in the manuscript source seen by Jen. 27 The reference in the poem to a ‘thousand foot pagoda’ suggests that the subject is the Western Hills near Peking, so the poem is probably rightly placed in the Ching-chi in the four recensions. Of more intrinsic interest is a

——— 27

HTFC 29.12a (522; 374:044), YK B.8b.

618

APPENDIX TWO

pentasyllabic extended regulated verse that had appeared in the Yung recension, with the significant difference of being addressed to Hsü Chen-ch’ing rather than, as in the Yi-kao, to Ho’s friend, fellow townsman, and brother-in-law Meng Yang. 28 The poem lacks any of the sort of references to these relationships that are frequent in other poems addressed to Meng and all the more likely to occur in one so long and formal in nature. The poem does refer to the addressee’s having been demoted, which, assuming that Hsü Chen-ch’ing is the person actually addressed, allows us to assign the poem to the years 1509-11. 29 The difference in names, perhaps along with a textual difference of one and a half verses, may account for the inclusion of the poem in the Yi-kao. The third of these poems is a pentasylabic regulated verse that probably dates from Ho’s mourning period, since it includes the phrase 不能醉 ‘cannot get drunk’. 30 The title, “Leaving the Temple, I Visit the Residence of Elder Brother Hu” 出寺過胡兄家 is the same in both the Yi-kao and the Yung recension, which makes it puzzling that Jen Liang-kan included it. In the Yüan and Standard recensions, ‘elder brother’ is replaced by 山人 ‘mountain dweller’. All the rest of the works in the Ta-fu Yi-kao were published for the first time there. Many of them provide no evidence for dating, but those that do range from as early as 1502 to as late as 1518, and it is very clear that there is nothing chronological about their sequence in the Yi-kao. Jen was probably right in believing most of them to be early works, but in many individual cases this cannot be positively confirmed. Speaking generally, the works in the Yi-kao are not the most interesting in Ho’s corpus, but there are some exceptions. The Yi-kao includes the first publication in Ho’s works of the ‘Palace Fire’ memorial and letter to Li Tung-yang and the only extant examples of his work in the tz’u and lien-chü forms (see text, chapter two). Beyond that, individual works often offer rewards that have nothing to do with their usefulness to the biographer.

——— 28

“Twenty-two Rhymes Sent to Erudite Hsü” 寄徐博士二十二韻, HTFC 23.2b (406; 253:502), YK A.19a. 29 See TK 141, pace TK 299, which is wrong on this point. 30 HTFC 17.13a (279; 252:552), YK A.10b.

THE TEXT

619

THE YÜAN AND STANDARD RECENSIONS We cannot be sure of the exact relationship between the Yüan recension and the various editions of the Standard recension. 31 Neither is descended directly from the other. Evidently a manuscript draft for an expanded edition was prepared, perhaps by Yüan Ts’an, and then used independently as the basis for both. The Yüan recension, whose readings generally follow those of Shen, offers an expanded and rearranged text, incorporating material from the Ta-fu Yi-kao. The arrangement of the contents of the Yüan and Standard recensions is the same in general, but some works included in the latter are not found in the former, and a smaller number found in Yüan are not in the Standard recension. The most striking difference lies in the untitled material gathered in chüan 31 of the Standard recension under the collective title “Nei-p’ien (‘Inner Chapters’). In the Yüan recension, these twenty-five pieces are found as separate essays— farewell essays and the like—addressed to particular people. Since in every case the material in the Yüan recension’s titles for these essays can be found in the body of the essays themselves, it is quite likely that this arrangement is not authorial. 32 The Standard recension appears to be an ‘improved’ version of essentially the same material, incorporating explicit and implicit collation against the Yung recension and other material of unknown nature. 33 Like the Shen recension, it occurs in two families of Ming editions. In one of these the names of the block carvers appear in the hsia-k’ou. One of these ‘carvers’ names’ editions, the one usually encountered, includes several pages printed from blocks recarved to eliminate errors in the originals. In the pair without the block carvers’ names, one edition includes several additional works added in available space at the end of several chüan. In the Ch’ing dynasty, the Standard recension was reissued in a

——— 31

For a full account of the variant readings, see TK 233-235, 264-83. Fu Ying provides a handy table comparing the treatment of the nei-p’ien material in the two recensions; see “Kuan-yü ‘Ta-fu Chi’ te Pan-pen,” p.80. 33 The implicit collation emerges on examination of the variant readings (see below). In addition, there are 66 interlinear textual notes in the Standard recension, one of which is also found in Yüan. See TK 275-76 for these variants and their relationship to readings found in the other recensions. 32

620

APPENDIX TWO

new format (nine lines per half page rather than the ten of the Ming editions) sometime during the K’ang-hsi period (1662-1723). The preface to this edition by Shih Jun-chang 施閏章 (1619-83) attributes its preparation to an as yet unidentified friend named Chin, who had held office in the Hsin-yang region. In 1750, distant descendants of Ho’s in Hsin-yang produced an edition of the Standard recension with a text somewhat Bowdlerized to avoid potential trouble with the Manchu authorities. This was reprinted in 1852 with a new title page. A less timorously edited version had been copied into the Ssu-k’u Ch’üan-shu between 1773 and 1782. The last traditional edition appeared in 1909. 34 There are three sixteenth century accounts of editions of Ho’s works that are variously associated with the Yüan and Standard recensions. The first is found in a colophon by a native of Ku-su (Soochow) named Tsou Ch’a 鄒察, who served as Magistrate of Hsinyang during the years 1553-57. 35 Tsou’s colophon, found only in the Yüan recension, is dated in the first lunar month of the yi-mao 乙卯 year of Chia-ching (January 24, 1555). The opening passage reads: The collected works of Master Ho Ta-fu have been printed and in circulation throughout the Empire for a long time now, but not all the remnant manuscripts ( 遺稿 yi-kao) were included. Readers have regretted not seeing the entire collection. In the spring of the year chiayin 甲寅 (1554), the Assistant [Surveillance Commissioner] Master Wei Chi-chai 魏及齋 [良貴 Liang-kui] passed through Hsin-yang and paid his first visit to the Master’s son [Ho] Li. 36 He obtained a number of shih and fu and ordered me to have them printed as an addition. When this had been done, the Master’s son-in-law Yüan Ts’an joined Li in collating the various ballads (歌行) and works in mixed forms (雜體), which they combined with the remaining works in manuscript (yi-kao), arranging the whole by categories and having it carved on blocks for

———

34 Fu Ying discusses the 1759 and 1852 editions, but not the one from the K’anghsi period or the 1909 edition. 35 For Tsou Ch’a (t. Ming-ch’ing 明卿), see TK 186. He had just passed the chinshih in 1553. For his term of office in Hsin-yang, see Hsin-yang Chou Chih 5.12a (183). This source gives Tsou’s native place as Ch’ang-shu. Wang Chung-min 王重民 was the first bibliographer to call attention to Tsou’s colophon; see Chung-kuo Shanpen Shu Ti-yao 中國善本書提要 (Notes on Chinese Rare Books) (Shanghai: Ku-chi, 1983), p.585. 36 For Wei Liang-kui (t. Shih-meng 師孟, h. Chi-chai 及齋), see HY 3/108, TL 926, TK 199. He had studied with Wang Yang-ming.

THE TEXT

621

printing. 37 When the carving was done, I drafted this colophon to go at the end.

The next preface to Ho’s collected works was written by no less a figure than Wang Shih-chen, apparently for a new edition. Wang is lavish in his praise of Ho’s writings and mentions K’ang Hai in passing among the friends who were touched by Ho’s death before his work was complete, but he tells us nothing about the edition to which his own preface would be attached. He does say that he was asked to write it by Yüan Ts’an, but it is not included in the Yüan recension and it is dated three years later than Tsou Cha’s colophon (the wu-wu 午戊 year, 1558). Wang’s preface is, however, found in most editions of the Standard recension. 38 The last Ming dynasty preface was written by a man named Chou Tzu-yi 周子義 (1529-86) and dated the ting-ch’ou 丁丑 year of Wanli (1577/78). 39 After commenting briefly on Ho’s lofty place in literary history, Chou adds that several printed editions were in circulation, but that none was complete. Ho Lo-wen, the eldest of Ho’s grandsons, gathered and set in order the complete collection and showed it to a censor named Ch’en T’ang 陳堂, who, along with a colleague named Hu Ping-hsing 胡秉性 , a native of Hsin-yang himself, saw to its printing in Nanking. 40 It is not possible to identify with certainty a particular extant text with the edition published by Ch’en T’ang and Hu Ping-hsing. Chou Tzu-yi’s preface is not found in extant Ming editions of the Standard recension, though it is found in Ch’ing editions, starting with that published in the K’ang-hsi period. When we come to consider the relationships between these three prefaces and the extant editions, we find as many questions as answers.

———

37 For Yüan Ts’an, see TK 179. He was a son of Ho’s friend Yüan K’ai. The ‘Yüan’ recension is so called (by me) because he is named at the beginning of each bound volume (冊 ts’e) as the publisher. He identifies himself as a ‘commander’ (都指揮 tu-chih-hui, the title he would have inherited from his father) and a son-in-law (婿 hsü). It is not clear whether the mention of ‘remaining works in manuscript’ is meant generally or is a specific reference to the Yi-kao. 38 Fu Ying notes this and suggests that Wang’s preface was not completed in time for the printing of the Yüan recension but was subsequently added to the Standard. See “Kuan-yü ‘Ta-fu Chi’ te Pan-pen,” p.79. 39 For Chou Tzu-yi (t. Yi-fang 以方, h. Ching-an 儆菴), see HY 2/122, TL 314, KHL 18.47b (748—Wang Shih-chen), TK 125. 40 For Ch’en T’ang and Hu Ping-hsing, see TK 190, 173. Hu had passed the provincial examination with Ho Lo-wen in 1561.

622

APPENDIX TWO

The one thing that seems clear is that Tsou Ch’a’s colophon describes the Yüan recension in which it is found. The first question concerns Wang Shih-chen’s preface. Since it was requested by Yüan Ts’an and written only three years after Tsou Ch’a’s colophon, why is it associated with the Standard recension, but not found in the Yüan? 41 It is possible that by some accident it simply missed being attached to the Yüan recension and was later added to the Standard. Or perhaps Yüan Ts’an was responsible for both the Yüan and Standard recensions and requested the preface especially for his newer text. There are reasons to doubt both of these explanations. Wang’s preface is unlikely simply to have been lifted from his works and affixed to the Standard recension, since only the latter form includes the date (unless of course the date was added by an unscrupulous publisher). On the other hand, since Yüan Ts’an’s editing of the Yüan recension is not only noted by Ts’ou Ch’a, but also declared proudly throughout the text, one would think that if he had been involved in the significant additional editorial work required to produce the Standard recension (see below), this would have been noted by Wang Shih-chen and recorded elsewhere in the text. 42 One is naturally tempted to suppose that Chou Tzu-yi’s preface was written for the Standard recension and that it was Ho’s grandson who was responsible for the new text. But this of course raises the question: why then is Chou’s preface not found in what otherwise appear to be Ming editions of the Standard recension? The question is the more puzzling in that these editions typically include an appendix consisting

———

41 Wang Chung-min (loc. cit.) expressed doubt as to the authenticity of Wang Shihchen’s preface, saying that he would like to check Wang’s collected works for it. It is indeed to be found there, Yen-chou Shan-jen Ssu-pu-kao 弇州山人四部稿 (Manuscripts from the Four [Bibliographical] Divisions by the Mountain Dweller of Yen-chou) (Wan-li edition; repr. Taipei: Wei-wen, 1976) 64.14b-15b (3032-34). I have not collated all copies of the text in detail, but a partial check turns up only slight variations between the Ssu-pu-kao text and those found in Ho’s works, the most significant (though not surprising) being that the Ssu-pu-kao text is undated. Wang Shih-chen makes mistakes with both Yüan Ts’an’s name (燦 rather than 璨) and relationship to Ho (甥 ‘nephew’ rather than 館甥 ‘son-in-law’). 42 It may be that Yüan Ts’an died before the Standard recension was ready to be printed. We do not know just when he died. The note on his widow, Ho’s daughter, in the Hsin-yang Chou Chih, 9.1b (318), tells us that when Yüan died, her three sons were still young, but that she managed by hard work to see them all to Student status. They were in fact the children of concubines that she had chosen for Ts’an after she remained childless after several years of marriage.

THE TEXT

623

of prefaces and biographical accounts at least one of which, the inscription for Ho’s grave by Wang Tao-k’un, is as late as 1591. An even stronger temptation is to blame the confusion on unscrupulous publishers mixing and matching front and back matter with unrelated texts in the hope of beguiling the unwary collector. While there may be something to this, it fails to explain why the real virtues of the Standard recension in particular are not more prominently, not to say blatantly, advertised in its prefatory and appended materials. In the end, we can only recognise the old truth that texts and their ancillary matter have distinct histories and that the latter really are secondary to the internally demonstrable histories of the former, to which we now turn. There are 261 poems and 58 pieces of prose (including the twelve essays in the “New Discussions” or “Master Ho”) found in at least one of the editions of the Standard recension or in the Yüan but not in Yung or Shen. The overwhelming majority of these are found in all editions of the later recensions. Of these works, 109 poems and 27 pieces of prose (again including the twelve essays), or roughly half, had been previously included in the Ta-fu Yi-kao. At least three questions arise concerning these additional works. First, where did they come from? Second, how reliably are they attributed to Ho Ching-ming? Third, and this will call for more extensive discussion, what can they tell us about the compilation of the Yüan and Standard recensions? Finally, we will consider the significance of textual differences among all the recensions, with a view to discovering what materials need to be taken into account as possibly authorial. To the second of these three questions there is, of course, no conclusive answer. In general, the later a work is added to a creator’s corpus the more dubious we are likely to feel about its authenticity, whether the attribution is to Li Po, Ho Ching-ming, or Johannes Brahms. Not only are we more skeptical about individual works so added, we are less likely to extend our full trust to additional works in a particular new source even after one or more found in it prove authentic. I might as well, therefore, anticipate my conclusion by saying here that I am prepared to accept as more likely genuine than not all the additional works in the Yüan and Standard recensions, though with less confidence in the case of a very few works that appear for the first time in the later editions of the Standard recension. Some positive reasons for doing so appear in what follows. A

624

APPENDIX TWO

‘negative’ reason is my failure to find any of these works attributed to anyone else, even after repeated searches of a large and varied body of potential alternative sources. The prose works in this group are in general the easier to date, and their existence is sometimes independently attested. Some examples discussed in the text include Ho’s letters to Hsü Chin and Yang Yich’ing, his notes on the Archery Rite in Shensi, his curriculum for his father, and prefaces to a number of works, including K’ang Hai’s gazetteer of Wu-kung and Liu Ch’eng-te’s anthology of Han and Wei dynasty poetry. Although only the latter two are found verbatim in independent sources, many of the others fit into more or less narrowly defined periods of time that only the sort of detailed reconstruction undertaken in TK could reveal, even by the 1550’s. This means that they are unlikely to be forgeries. In some cases we can offer plausible hypotheses to account for the works being withheld from publication earlier. Ho’s heirs might well, for example, have had reservations about publishing the letters while Yang Yi-ch’ing (d.1530) and the sons of Hsü Chin (Hsü Tsan d. 1548) were still alive. Something similar might explain the omission of Ho’s fu on the death of Li Meng-yang’s wife from all but the Standard recension. Indeed, its misplacement in the Chia-chi (see text, chapter nine) suggests that it was a last-minute addition even there. Among the poems found only in the Yüan and Standard recensions, relatively few furnish evidence for a narrowly defined date. Among the most persuasive are poems that are part of ‘borrowed rhyme’ sequences or those whose rhymess are otherwise matched either in works found in the Shen or Yung recensions or in works by other writers, Lu Yung in particular. Other poems, like the prose works mentioned above, fit neatly into chronological slots. In both cases, works from 1518—missing from Shen and sparsely covered in Yung—are notably present. A special case consists of the numerous poems, mostly in the Chiachi, addressed to Ho’s Hsin-yang friends Yüan Jung, Yüan K’ai, Jen Yung, Liu Chieh, Ma Lu, and Chia Ts’e. The poems addressed to Jen and Ma can be tested against other evidence, with which they are consistent. Although such external verification is rarely possible in the cases of Liu Chieh and Chia Ts’e, it is striking that these poems, taken together with those previously published, contribute to consistent biographies for both men. Yüan Jung and Yüan K’ai, as uncle and

THE TEXT

625

father of Yüan Ts’an, present a special case of a different kind. That such poems are relatively numerous probably reflects Yüan Ts’an’s special access. That Yüan had a particular interest in documenting his family’s connection with Ho is more likely to have led to an extra careful search of the attic than to attempts at forgery. One potential counter example, however, is of interest. This is a poem that in the Shen and Yung recensions is titled “A Banquet at the Residence of Commander Li During Snow” 雪中宴李揮使宅. 43 In the Yüan and Standard recensions, the name ‘Commander Li’ is replaced by ‘Commander Yüan Wei-wu [K’ai]’ 袁揮使惟武. Since it is not likely that Ho memorialised two different banquets with the same poem, we have to consider two other possibilities, either that Yüan Ts’an was inflating his father’s importance at the expense of Commander Li, who is otherwise unknown, or that he was reading an original manuscript more accurately than Tai Kuan, K’ang Hai, and Chang Chih-tao. The poem, provided it is to be associated with Yüan K’ai, records Ho’s attendance at a Yüan family social function. Although Yüan K’ai alone is mentioned in the title, the poem refers to ‘father and sons’ and ‘elder and younger brothers’. Ho depicts himself as favoured by a sudden letter from ‘the commander’ while he was ‘moaning in the cold in a western field’. Overjoyed, he dashes off as soon as he has read through the letter, not dismounting until inside their gate. Commander Li is a pretty insubstantial figure, and such glimpses of him as the sources yield turn out to have much of the mirage about them. No personal name is given in the title of this poem, nor is there any other mention in Ho’s works of someone who might be the same person. On checking the lists of military officials in the Hsin-yang Hsien Chih, one finds no Commanders surnamed Li, but (not surprisingly), considering that Li is a common surname, several lesser officers, including one for whom the attached note says Ho Chingming wrote this very poem. 44 His name is lost, the note tells us, but in addition to being the recipient of Ho’s poem, he was also a maternal grandfather of Chang Yün. This is confirmed by the epitaph that Ho wrote for Chang’s mother in 1510, at least to the extent that Ho tells

——— 43

HTFC 12.1b (158; 271:022). (Min-kuo) Hsin-yang Hsien Chih (1936; repr. Taipei: Ch’eng-wen, 1976) 21.9.2a (851). 44

626

APPENDIX TWO

us that her father was a certain Assistant Commander Li in the Hsinyang guards. Two things emerge here. The first is that an Assistant (僉使 ch’ien-shih) is not the same as a Commander (hui-shih). The second is that this would make Mr. Li impossibly old by the time of the party celebrated in this poem—his daughter was in her seventyeighth year when she died in 1510, and the Hsin-yang gazetteer shows him in office during the T’ien-shun period (1457-64). The poem itself suggests the presence of no centenarians. The invitation comes from the Commander himself, and the gathering is clearly a spirited, even a lavish affair. It refers to a ‘longevity wish’, to be sure, but this simply means that it was the Commander’s birthday. Ho’s epitaph for Yüan Hsün, K’ai’s father and predecessor in the post of Commander, does not include a birthdate, so there is no confirming that his birthday fell in the winter (in which season the poem is set). The reference to elder and younger brothers tallies with what we know of Yüan’s family. Even the attachment of the title ‘Commander’ to Yüan K’ai in the poem’s title is accounted for by K’ai’s having succeeded to the office on his father’s retirement rather than at his death. In short, the evidence in favour of taking this poem as written for Yüan K’ai, rather than ‘Commander Li’ is considerable, and on balance to be followed. This leaves us, however, with two substantial questions. The first of these, the source and reliability of the gazetteer entry on ‘Commander Li’, is by far the easier one to deal with. The gazetteer shows the results of a very commendable, but occasionally overdone, effort at thoroughness, one case being the tables of local officials and degree holders, both of which were evidently supplemented and annotated by reference to information found in literary collections and extant inscriptions. While this effort made accessible information that would otherwise have been scattered or lost, it was sometimes taken too far, and the entry on ‘Commander Li’ is an instance. It is clear that the only source for the entry was the very poem by Ho Ching-ming that is in question. This is why the personal name is ‘lost’—Ho did not mention it. It would have been responsible scholarship to restore Assistant Li to the record on the basis of Ho’s epitaph for his daughter, but to give him a promotion to Commander just so as to link him to this poem was, in the Chinese phrase, to ‘draw a snake and then add legs’. The other question is the more substantial by far—how are we to

THE TEXT

627

account for the agreement of the Yung and Shen recensions in naming Commander Li as the host on the occasion of this party? It is, after all, a generally applicable principle of textual editing that if the early editions of a work, prepared independently, but on the basis of authorial holographs or immediate descendants thereof, agree against a reading that first appears only in later editions prepared decades after the author’s death and on the basis of those early editions, the early reading is to be regarded as authorial. This is all the more the case when the effect of the reading that appears later is to reflect glory on a publisher of the later editions. All the same, the ‘real’ evidence is so consistent with what we know of the Yüans and Ho’s relations with them that it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the emendation was conditioned by inside knowledge rather than a desire to gratify family pride. This does not help us explain why Yung and Shen agree in reading Li instead of Yüan and in lacking K’ai’s informal name. The latter is probably part of the emendation, Yüan Ts’an adding the informal name to distinguish his father from his grandfather. As for the differing surname, one can only point out the possibility of graphic confusion of the two characters Li 李 and Yüan 袁, both of which are formed of upper and lower parts that might be confused in an unclear copy. The Shen recension, in particular, contains fairly numerous apparently erroneous readings, and this might be one of them, but the same is not true of Yung. See below for a case that shows that the later recensions embody the results of independent reference to sources other than the previously published recensions and the Ta-fu Yi-kao. There is one other point worth considering, the virtual absence of reference to the Yüans in the Yung and Shen recensions. While there is a striking case in the Chia-chi of someone who appears only in works found in Shen and Yung, Shen Ang, the explanation in that case is quite straightforward. He evidently spent only a matter of months in Hsin-yang, and this was in 1507. The Yüans, on the other hand, and Liu Chieh as well (the other notable case of noticeably greater presence outside the works in Yung and Shen than within them), were natives of the place, and we might expect reference to them at any time. Liu Chieh may have been away, perhaps even in office, until the spring of 1508—his presence by the autumn is attested in heptasyllabic regulated verse in the Shen recension. It is clear from reading the poems—which for the most part concern the possessions and parties of the Yüan family—that the Yüans lived within the walls

628

APPENDIX TWO

of Hsin-yang and may even have been among the ‘wealthy and prominent townsmen’ on whom Ho occasionally looks down his nose. With the single exception of Liu Chieh in two cases, there appears to be no overlap between Ho’s acquaintance with the Yüans and his more lofty gatherings with his literary friends and neighbours in the western suburbs, such as Jen Yung, Chia Ts’e, and Shen Ang. Liu is of course a likely person to be such an exception, since he passed the provincial examination in the same year as Yüan Jung and Ho. He also appears as an intermediary in the process of inviting Ho to select an informal name for one of Jung and K’ai’s younger brothers, as recorded in an essay by Ho. And there can hardly be a question of enmity, since Ho betrothed his daughter to Yüan K’ai’s son, the very Yüan Ts’an whose labours were so important to the publication of the later recensions of Ho’s works. 45 The more likely explanation is actually a combination of several. First, Ho was, after all, very much under a cloud when he first returned to Hsin-yang, living in seclusion west of the city. Although by autumn he was clearly socialising widely, the Yüans, as wealthy people but without the protection of high office or national reputation (or so little office or reputation as to be of no interest to outsiders), may have been a little cautious in their contacts with him at first. Second, it appears likely that Jen Yung and his other literary friends lived in the countryside west of the city, as he did, so that he would have seen more of them ‘at home’ as a matter of course. Finally, as we have seen, many of his literary friends at home left Hsin-yang in the course of his retirement, with the result that he may have become more likely, as time passed, to look farther afield for congenial society. To return to the literal sense of our first question, it is likely that the additional works came from a variety of sources, including Yüan Ts’an’s ‘attic’. Jen Liang-kan’s search was limited to Hsin-yang and to a limited period of time, and a reading of the Yi-kao sometimes evokes the sound of the proverbial barrel’s bottom being just a little too assiduously scraped. Unlike the works first published by Jen in the Ta-fu Yi-kao, all but a few of which the Yüan and Standard recensions

——— 45

In fact, both Ho’s brother Ching-yang and his grandson Ho Lo-shu were married to women surnamed Yüan and hence probably related to the same Yüan family. The wives of Ho’s son Ho Li and grandson Ho Lo-wen were both Tais, and presumably related to Tai Yi and Tai Kuan. See Hsin-yang Hsien Chih 4.18ab (161-62).

THE TEXT

629

assigned—no doubt rightly—to the Chia-chi, a significant number of the works first collected in the later two recensions come from Ho’s years in Peking. The additional works in the Yüan and Standard recensions include a larger percentage that belong in the Ching-chi and from periods (the year 1518 in particular) not well represented in the earlier recensions or the Yi-kao. Although we have no surviving documents for this process, as we do for the preparation of the Shen recension, it is likely that a series of letters was sent off to Ho’s old friends and their descendants seeking additional works, and that some of what is new in the Yüan and Standard recensions is the result. It is worth noting, for example, that several poems addressed to Wang Shang-chiung, another in-law, first appear in the later recensions. In considering the reliability of these works, it is useful to ask who, in the second half of the sixteenth century, might have been interested in padding Ho’s works with doubtful attributions or outright forgeries and what the resulting collection would look like. There are two possibilities. One is Yüan Ts’an, whose interest would have been in increasing the prestige of his family and whose additions would have been of works addressed to them or otherwise reflecting credit on them. The Yüan and Standard recensions do indeed do this. In fact, the Shen recension includes only one poem that refers to Yüan Jung, and it is in the Ching-chi; the only reference to Yüan K’ai is in a list of officials involved in the walling of Hsin-yang. The Yung recension adds two poems and the Yi-kao one more. The common ancestor of the Yüan and Standard recensions adds eight poems, plus the shift of the snowfall banquet venue to the Yüans’ residence from that of ‘Commander Li’. The Yüan and Standard recensions each add one more poem associated with Yüan K’ai (the one in the Yüan recension appears in the Standard as well, but there it is associated with someone else). To put these numbers in perspective, we can compare them with those for two other Hsin-yang friends, Liu Chieh and Chia Ts’e. Liu is referred to in seven works in the Shen recension; the Yung recension has two more, and the Yi-kao three. This corpus is almost doubled by ten additional poems in the Yüan and Standard recensions. In the case of Chia Ts’e, there are thirteen works in the Shen recension, three more in Yung, and only two more each in the Yi-kao and the common ancestor. In short, it seems that Yüan Ts’an took advantage of his opportunity to include more works related to his family, but this does not necessarily call the authenticity of the works themselves into

630

APPENDIX TWO

question. The other possibility is that a publisher might have inflated Ho’s corpus in the hope of increasing sales of a new edition, but there is no positive evidence of this having happened. What we would expect a dishonest publisher to have done, after 1550 or so, and especially with a preface by Wang Shih-chen to hand, would be to have multiplied the number of works associating Ho with the other ‘Seven Masters’, with whom he was by that time becoming joined in literary memory. In fact, there are no additional works in the Yüan or Standard recensions that are associated with Pien Kung, K’ang Hai, Wang Chiu-ssu, Wang T’ing-hsiang, or Hsü Chen-ch’ing. In the case of Li Meng-yang, there are nineteen works in the Shen recension, one more in Yung, three more in the Yi-kao, and three in the common ancestor of the Yüan and Standard recensions, plus the fu on the death of Li’s wife, found only in the Standard recension. In short, if Yüan Ts’an understandably took advantage of every opportunity to associate his family with Ho’s literary activities, the record does not appear to have been greatly deformed by his efforts and scarcely at all by those of subsequent publishers. It is surprising, considering that assembling the additional works for the Yüan and Standard recensions must have required a sustained effort, that they omit fifty works already published in the Ta-fu Yi-kao, and this leads us to our third question. What can we learn about the editing of the later recensions? 46 The substantial numbers of variant readings unique to either the Yüan or Standard recensions make it clear that neither is directly ancestral to the other. We have thus to consider three separate processes, the compilation of their common ancestor and those of each of the later recensions. The evidence of a good deal of explicit and implicit collation in the Standard revision suggests that in general the Yüan is closer to the common ancestor. Broadly speaking, that ancestor seems to have been compiled by taking the Shen recension as a basis and then supplementing it with additional works from the Yung recension, the Ta-fu Yi-kao, and further gleanings. Where the Yüan and Standard recensions intervene

———

46 We shall return to the relationship between the Yi-kao and the Yüan and Standard recensions; see below.

THE TEXT

631

in the arrangement of the works from Shen they include, it is generally a matter of classifying works—shifting from one form, collection, or thematic genre to another. In one case, the ‘block-carvers’ family of the Standard recension shifts a heptasyllabic old-style verse, “Entering the Capital” 入京篇, from the midst of the Chia-chi to the beginning of the Ching-chi, interpolating after it an additional poem not found in the other recensions. “Entering the Capital” was probably written late in 1507 for Sun Chi-fang or Tai Kuan, who had just passed the provincial examinations and were going up to Peking to take the chinshih (see text, chapter five). The family of editions without the blockcarvers’ names reclassifies both poems as Chia-chi works. (Since they come at the join between Chia-chi and Ching-chi, their location in the text remains the same; it is only the note reading, “from here on, Ching-chi,” that is moved.) That the shift out of the Shen sequence is found in both families shows that the ‘block-carvers’ family is ancestral to the other. The fu were significantly rearranged in the common ancestor, although the basis for the rearrangement is made explicit only in the Standard recension. The fu are divided among the Shih-chi, Chia-chi, and Ching-chi, followed by the ten works newly classified separately, in both recensions, as tz’u 辭. The explicit period assignments were probably in the common ancestor but dropped from the Yüan recension. One work was added at the end of the fu section. There are only six works in the tetrasyllabic “Ancient Poem” (kushih) form. The five included in the Shen recension are not in chronological order. Indeed, the last of them comes from Ho’s trip to Yunnan and hence is not found in Yung, which assigns the other four to the Ching-chi. The common ancestor of the Yüan and Standard recensions evidently moved the Yunnan poem to the head of the series, added a new work after it, and then the four poems found in both Shen and Yung, reversing the order of the last two for an unknown reason. It will be recalled that the Shen and Yung recensions presented the yüeh-fu ballads in entirely different formats, Shen including 68 poems in no discernable order, Yung having only twenty, all assigned to the Chia-chi. The common ancestor took over the sequence found in Shen largely intact, but shifted three poems to the beginning and added to them one of the three yüeh-fu found in the Yi-kao. The reason for this move is not recoverable, as none of the poems offers any evidence for dating. One additional new poem is interpolated in the midst of the

632

APPENDIX TWO

Shen sequence, and another dozen at the end. The first four of these are the four found in Yung but not in Shen; they are added in the same order as in Yung. The remaining eight poems include the two other new poems from the Yi-kao interspersed among the others. The poems in the Shih-chi appear almost entirely in the same order as in Shen. One poem, in mixed metre, is shifted from pentasyllabic to heptasyllabic old-style verse, and one poem is added at the end of the pentasyllabic regulated verse. The heptasyllabic quatrains are not included in the Yüan recension. We cannot tell whether they were present in the common ancestor but dropped, perhaps inadvertently, from Yüan or were missing in the ancestor and restored in the Standard recension. Three editorial principles appear in the Chia-chi works. The first, consistent with what has been encountered already, is to take the Shen recension as a basis. The second, most evident in the forms with the most poems, is to classify the poems not inherited from Shen according to thematic genres. The third, which is not always evident, is to keep poems first published in the Yung recension or the Yi-kao together. This is more often the case with poems from the Yung recension than with those first published in the Yi-kao. The poems from Yung also appear more more frequently in the order of the Yung sequence, while poems from the Yi-kao occur in an order that seems to have been little affected by the sequence of works in the Yi-kao. The pentasyllabic regulated verse form the largest subdivision of the Chia-chi and will serve to illustrate these principles at work. There are 155 of these poems in the Shen recension, 259 in the Yüan, and 255 in the Standard. They comprise chüan 15-17 and the first part of 18 in the latter two. The Yüan and Standard recensions begin with the poems found in Shen, which they present in the same order with three exceptions, two of which may be related. The isolated instance is the shift of a poem near the end of the Shen sequence to a point near the end of the Yüan/Standard. The poem is a genre piece titled simply “Snow” 雪. 47 It may have been omitted, either inadvertently or on purpose, from the Shen sequence in the first place and then, when it was to be restored, placed where it is now found, at the beginning of a sequence of newly added poems on weather phenomena.

——— 47

HTFC 18.4b (289; 252:149).

THE TEXT

633

The two changes from the Shen sequence that may be related are the shift of the set of six poems on poor Mr. Ch’ai’s ailing horse (see text, chapter five) from a position near the end of the Shen sequence to the very end of the Chia-chi pentasyllabic regulated verse in the Yüan and Standard recensions and their replacement by the farewell poem for Liu P’ang written in 1518 as Ho was on his way south from Peking (see text, chapter ten). Both of these changes were conditioned by a single circumstance, that the process of blocking the poems out in chüan of more or less equal length encountered a break at this point, at the end of chüan 16. To have included the set of six poems here would have made chüan 16 noticeably longer than the others, so they were set aside. This did leave space for a single additional poem to be added (see TK 89). The poems not found in Shen are arranged in a sequence that is almost exactly the same in the Yüan and Standard recensions. A handful of poems appear in different places, and the Standard recension omits five poems that Yüan includes. Three of these were first published in the Yi-kao. In contrast to Shen and Yung, which appear to have followed the sequence of works in their manuscript sources and thus preserved evidence for chronology, the Yüan and Standard recensions in some cases have implicit ‘thematic’ categories to which poems from all sources except Shen were assigned. The first thirty-three poems following the Shen sequence (252:501-533) all mention people by name, but the poems are not further grouped according to occasion, such as farewell poems, poems sent as messages, etc. Among these poems, the first six had appeared in Yung, and poems 10-11, 17-21, 23-25, 27, and 30-33 were included in the Ta-fu Yi-kao. 48 The next eighteen poems (252:534-551) all refer to a season or day. The first six poems refer to other people, only some of whom are named. Of these six poems, the first, third, and fourth appeared in Yung and the last in the Yi-kao. Of the remaining twelve seasonal poems, poems 8-10 and 12 were in Yung and 2-3 and 11 in the Yi-kao. The next eighteen poems refer to places and people (252:552-569). Of these poems, the first two and the fourth are found in Yung and the first, ninth, fifteenth, and eighteenth in the Yi-kao (the

———

48 The sequence of poems differs between the Yüan and Standard recensions in this section. I give the Yüan sequence here.

634

APPENDIX TWO

first poem is one of the three found in both). The next fifteen poems refer to places, but not to people (252:570-584). Of these, poems 1-2, 4-8, and 15 appeared in Yung; 9-13 in the Yi-kao. The next two poems (252:585-586), found only in the Yüan and Standard recensions, are a pair of meditative pieces, “Sitting Alone” and “Standing Alone.” Then follow nine poems on plants (252:587-595), of which the sixth appeared in Yung and poems 2-4 and 8-9 in the Yi-kao. The last identifiable category consists of five poems on weather phenomena (252:149, 596-599). The first of these appeared in Shen (the poem on “Snow”, see above); the others were published for the first time in the Yüan and Standard recensions. The Chia-chi pentasyllabic regulated verse conclude with six miscellaneous poems (252:600-605; the second omitted in the Standard recension, the third found in the Yi-kao, and the fifth in Yung) and the set on Mr Ch’ai’s horse. Although this sequence shows signs of organization, it remains haphazard in many respects. 49 This is by far the largest corpus of ‘new’ work (i.e. not included in Shen) and the amount of material seems to have inspired the effort to do something more than simply transcribe the sources. The next largest body of such work in the Chia-chi, the heptasyllabic regulated verse, is not divided into thematic groups. The few poems that were included in Yung appear first, and the majority of poems found also in the Yi-kao are grouped in two clusters, one of six poems and one of eleven, but that seems to be all that we can say about the compilers’ treatment of their sources. 50 Similar tendencies are found in the Chia-chi collections of poems in other forms. The number of poems in the Ching-chi that were not included in the Shen recension is quite small, so there was relatively less temptation for editorial intervention in preparing them for inclusion in the common ancestor. As a result, in most forms, the Yüan and Standard recensions simply take over the Shen sequence unchanged, with the newly added poems at the end. The exception, however, is very striking. In the case of the

———

49 The attempt in TK 295-99 to establish some chronology for these poems was made without reference to the Ta-fu Yi-kao and is no longer valid. 50 One poem that had not been previously published was inserted in the midst of the Shen recension sequence. It is the poem written to go with one by the disgraced son of Chiao Fang, Chiao Huang-chung (see text, chapter five).

THE TEXT

635

pentasyllabic regulated verse, the entire corpus, over 330 poems, including those from Shen, was rearranged in thematic categories. First come 84 poems of farewell (送 sung, 別 pieh, 餞 chien), the first 74 taken in the order they appear in the Shen recension and the rest added at the end. Then come sixteen presentation poems (贈 tseng), again in the Shen sequence. These are followed by nine poems on thinking of absent friends ( 懷 huai); and eighteen poems sent as messages (寄 chi, 簡 chien). The end of this group coincides with the end of chüan 19. Next come thirteen poems written during official occasions or while on duty in the palace, followed by eleven poems of response to letters or poems received from other people; 104 poems written on social occasions, including visits to temples (集 chi, 飲 yin, 過 kuo, 見訪 chien fang, 遊 yu, etc.); fifteen poems refering to places, such as the one on Wu-tsung’s return from his barbarian ‘campaign’ (see text, chapter ten); two poems on objects; three travel poems; two birthday poems, one for himself; seven mourning poems in a sequence that differs from Shen; seven poems on military matters; fourteen poems on natural phenomena (weather, astronomy) not in the Shen sequence; ten poems on times and dates; eleven poems on plants, in two ‘sweeps’ through the Shen sequence; six poems on birds and animals, with one poem out of the Shen sequence; and single poems on a painting and a song. The poems in the Ch’in-chi are handled in the same way. The Shen recension is followed in all forms but the pentasyllabic regulated verse. Here there appears to have been some attempt to resort the poems in categories, but only roughly. The first thirteen poems mention people by name; the last sixteen are on places. Wiithin each group the order of the poems follows the Shen sequence. The remaining eleven poems occasionally cluster in groups and sometimes appear to reverse the Shen sequence as though the transcriber was working back from the end, but little more can be said. Indeed, some readers may feel that more than enough has been said already. In the prose works too, in all but the the most numerous genre, the ‘prefaces’ (序 hsü), the Shen recension sequence is taken as basis. While there were few poems added to the Ching-chi from the Ta-fu Yi-kao, and none to the Ch’in-chi, quite a few prose works appeared first in the Yi-kao. That earlier publication appears to have had no influence on the sequence as found in the Yüan and Standard recensions. The latter in most cases simply add the new works as a

636

APPENDIX TWO

group either before or after the block of works in Shen. In the case of the Prefaces, the new works outnumber those found already in Shen by more than two to one, and all are classified according to thematic genre. The works in found in Shen in most cases heading up their generic categories as in the Ching-chi pentasyllabic regulated verse. The categories themselves begin with three prefaces to books of poetry, the ‘new’ work in this case at the head, presumably because the contents of the book, Han and Wei poetry, are earlier than the others. Two hsü on pictures follow, then, in the Yüan recension only, one on a scroll of poems rejoicing in rain after a drought in Hsin-yang (see text, chapter five), and then prefaces to prose works, presentation hsü, farewells, a birthday, and finally an essay in honour of a local man chosen as elder. In the Yüan recension, the contents of the Neip’ien, all but one of which are hsü, are distributed according to these same categories, the Nei-p’ien pieces coming in every category after the other works, both those found in Shen and the others, and in the same order as in the Nei-p’ien. Reference to the Nei-p’ien brings us to the question of differences between the Yüan and Standard recension, so we will consider these briefly before turning to the long-postponed third question of variant readings. The issue to be considered is this: when the Yüan and Standard recensions differ, which, if either, reflects more closely their common ancestor? The differences between the two are of several kinds. The distribution of the Nei-p’ien pieces in the Yüan recension is the most striking. In addition, the Standard recension includes the “New Discussions”, under the title “Master Ho,” while the Yüan does not; each recension includes a few works not found in the other; and the Standard recension includes a small but significant number (66) of interlinear collation notes giving variant readings. Only one of those notes appears in the Yüan recension. Collation of the entire texts of the recensions shows that these notes are only the tip of the textual iceberg, as it were. What collation reveals in particular is that, in poems found in the Shen recension, the Yüan recension almost always follows Shen, while the Standard recension very frequently agrees with Yung instead. This finding, even more than the presence of the collation notes in the Standard recension, supports the conclusion that the Yüan recension is the one that more closely resembles their common

THE TEXT

637

ancestor. The handling of the Nei-p’ien material, on the other hand, would have been readily reversible. If it was introduced in the Yüan recension, the Standard recension simply follows the common ancestor. If it was a feature of the ancestor, it would have been simple for the compiler of the Standard recension to revert to the text as found in the Shen recension. The works omitted in one or the other of the two were probably in the common ancestor, since they are found scattered throughout the text rather than being grouped together or found at the end of their thematic groups as one would expect later additions to be. 51 The “Master Ho” was probably added to the Standard recension rather than being dropped from the Yüan. That the compiler of the Yüan recension omitted Ho’s letter to Hsü Chin but left exactly the needed number of blank lines in the place where the letter appears in the Standard recension does place it strongly suggests that the copy text was a manuscript common ancestor that included the text of the letter, which had not been included in the Ta-fu Yi-kao. It is the variant readings, however, that are conclusive. There are over 100 cases in which the Shen and Yüan recensions agree against the Yung and Standard, but only one in which Yung and Yüan agree against Shen and Standard. 52 The latter case, moreover, consists of a single character that the Shen and Standard recensions both omit in the title of a poem, while many of the former are matters of substantive variants either of which might be authorial. There are also numerous cases in which Shen and Yüan differ because Shen has a unique variant. In the great majority of such cases, the Shen reading is so improbable as to have called for emendation, either by conjecture or by conflation from another source, such as the Yung recension. ‘Such as’ is an important qualification here. It is clear from the textual notes in the Standard recension that sources other than the Shen and Yung recensions were consulted. Of the 66 such notes, only one of which specifies the source of the variant reading (the ‘Ch’in edition’ 秦本, i.e. the Yung recension), twenty cite variant readings found in none of the other three recensions, only one of them found

———

51 The works found only in the editions of the Standard recension that lack the block carvers’ names are all placed at the end of formal groups, which means that they are implicitly assigned to the Ch’in-chi. Most of them cannot be dated, but the one that can is an early work; see TK 9. 52 See TK 265-69.

638

APPENDIX TWO

elsewhere in the textual tradition. This has, of course, important ramifications for the larger question of establishing the relative authority of the later recensions as compared to that of the earlier, the Yung and Shen. The same issue arises in the case of works that were first published in the Ta-fu Yi-kao. In collating the readings of the Yi-kao against those in other versions of the corpus, one is repeatedly struck by the evident inferiority of many of the Yi-kao readings. At the same time, the Yi-kao does sometimes contribute, especially by the variants occurring in titles, to the resolution of quandaries arising in the other texts. Moreover, it is of course always wise to remain cautious when faced with the sometimes treacherous appeal of the lectio facilior. In most cases, one can only cite the better sense given by the readings in the later editions as a reason for preferring them, while adopting the Yi-kao text where it supplies additional information. There is, however, one clearly directional case that shows that the later editions must have been based not on the Yi-kao alone, even if emended by conjecture (and very occasionally marred by error), but also, or perhaps even instead, on more reliable sources, presumably original manuscripts still in the possession of Ho’s family. This exceptional case is an eye-skip found at the very end of an essay presented to a family friend named Hu Tsan 胡瓚. 53 What it shows is that the Yi-kao text is not directly ancestral to those of the Yüan and Standard recensions. Moreover, because the Yi-kao text is sufficiently intelligible on its own not to have triggered an editorial need to emend,

———

53 The work in question is “Presented to Mr. Hu Tsung-ch’i” 贈胡君宗器序, HTFC 35.10a (611; 序:515), YK B.28a. For Hu Tsan, see TK 173. The six characters not in the Yi-kao text are 也廉以修其身 yeh lien yi hsiu ch’i shen. It is sometimes argued that in all cases a longer version of a text is to be rejected as non-authorial. But it seems clear that, at least in some cases, an eyeskip can produce a shorter descendant reading. The crucial criterion to apply is whether the shorter version appears sufficiently defective to move an editor to expand the text by conjecture or conflation with another source. In this case, this is not so, and so it seems unlikely that the shorter version is authorial. Even in the case of very early texts, it is clear that the longer version is in some cases the better. See, for example, Yumiko F. Blandford, “Discovery of Lost Eloquence: New Insight from the Mawangdui ‘Zhanguo zonghengjia shu’,” JAOS 114.1 (1994): 77-82, which discusses an archaeologically recovered version of a Chan-kuo Ts’e anecdote that is much fuller than the received later version. For a later and less conclusive example, see Daniel Bryant, “The ‘Hsien Hsin En’ Fragments by Li Yü and his Lyric to the Melody ‘Lin Chiang Hsien’,” Chinese Literature, Essays, Articles and Reviews 7 (1985): 37-66.

THE TEXT

639

it is reasonable to conclude that the later recensions derive their readings from independent consultation of the sources, just as the interlinear collation notes in the Standard recension imply. Indeed, the treatment of variant readings, the lack of influence of the sequence of works as found in the Yi-kao on the Yüan/Standard sequence, and the absence from the latter of fifty works published in the Yi-kao all lead to the conclusion that the published Ta-fu Yi-kao was largely ignored by the compilers of the common ancestor. The extreme form of this explanation, that they did not consult it at all, is worth considering. To begin with, we know that it was in existence at this time because Li K’ai-hsien referred to it (see above, Appendix One). All the same, it may be possible that they were entered not from the Yi-kao itself, but from a remnant of the collection of manuscripts from which the Yi-kao was prepared, that the Yi-kao was compiled in Hsin-yang but printed elsewhere, and that no copy was available to Yüan Ts’an or others in preparing the common ancestor of the Yüan and Standard recensions. This hypothesis is supported by the form in which we find the Yi-kao text. Unlike the edition of the Shen recension that bear’s Jen Liang-kan’s name as collator, the ‘running head’ in the hsia-k’ou reads not 義陽書院 ‘Yiyang Academy’, referring to an institution in Hsin-yang, but rather 南嶠書院 ‘Nan-chiao Academy’. Nan-chiao was the hao of Jen Liangkan, as we know from his only extant biography, written by Fan P’eng. Fan’s account is chiefly concerned with the story of Jen’s good deed (see above, Appendix One). It says nothing about what Jen did after his term in Hsin-yang, nor does it tell us when or where he died—it is a ‘biography’, not a curriculum or epitaph. We may therefore surmise that he took his manuscript copy of the Yi-kao with him when he left Hsin-yang and had it printed at home in his native Kweilin, in Kwangsi. All the above of course also has implications for the many cases in which the later recensions differ from Yung and Shen, for it means that the compilers of the later texts may not simply have transcribed those earlier versions, occasionally introducing errors, but may have gone back to original manuscripts and hence may have preserved in their work authorial readings that the compilers of the Shen recension in particular had misprinted. Since the Yung recension was compiled on the basis of manuscripts in the possession of K’ang Hai and Chang Chih-tao, manuscripts that presumably remained in Shensi and hence

640

APPENDIX TWO

were not available to the compilers of the later recensions, we may infer that when the latter agree with the Yung text against the Shen they may have done so on the basis of manuscripts still held in Hsinyang, not simply because they favoured the Yung reading over the Shen on impressionistic grounds. We may conclude then that all four recensions, along with the Tafu Yi-kao, need to be consulted in establishing a text of Ho Chingming’s works, for any of them may include possibly authorial readings not in the others. In the case of the Shen recension, the ancestral edition is the one published by Tai Kuan and his colleagues; for the Standard recension, the ‘block-carver’ family, in both editions. In addition, the family without the block-carvers’ names is to be consulted for the additional works it includes. 54

———

54 All known works attributed to Ho Ching-ming but not included in the Ta-fu Yikao or the ‘block-carvers’ family of the Standard recension are gathered in an appendix to TK, pp.383-88. Fu Ying has found two additional uncollected works. One of these is a memorial text for one An Chi 安吉 . See “Kuan-yü Ho Ching-ming te Liang-p’ien Yi-wen” 關于何景明的兩篇遺文 (On Two Uncollected Works by Ho Ching-ming), Chung-chou Hsüeh-k’an, 1997 supple., pp.94-96. The other ‘new’ work discussed in this article is a piece of prose that is to be found in the ““Inner Chapters” (內:010). Fu has also discovered a previously unknown poem by Ho on the Sung ‘martyr’ Yüeh Fei; see his “T’an Ho Ching-ming te Yi-shou Yi-wen” 談何景明的一首遺文, Yin-tu Hsüeh-k’an 1998.1: 65-66. This poem was found in the Yen-ch’eng Hsien Chih, along with the already known “Ballad of Ts’ai-chou” 蔡州行 (271:002); see (Chia-ching) Yen-ch’eng Hsien Chih 郾城縣志 (Gazetteer of Yen-ch’eng County) (Repr. Ming-tai Fang-chih Hsüan-k’an Hsü-pien, vol.59, Shanghai: Shanghai Shu-tien, 1990.

APPENDIX THREE

THE SEVEN MASTERS OF THE MING Like another Ming phenomenon, the ‘sprouts of capitalism’, the ‘[Earlier] Seven Masters of the Ming’ (明前七子 Ming [ch’ien] ch’i tzu), a group comprising Li Meng-yang, Ho Ching-ming, Pien Kung, Hsü Chen-ch’ing, K’ang Hai, Wang Chiu-ssu, and Wang T’ing-hsiang, is primarily an event in the intellectual history of a later period. 1 Nonetheless, insofar as ‘every schoolboy’ knows anything about Ho Ching-ming (and he is as likely as not a schoolgirl and a graduate student in Chinese literature at that), what he knows is that Ho belonged to a group called the Seven Masters, that the leader of this group was Li Meng-yang, and that its slogan was, “prose must be Ch’in or Han; poetry must be High T’ang.” Like much common knowledge, this description is not so much wrong as it is misleadingly oversimplified. The ‘Seven Masters’, in particular, is one of those convenient phantoms so beloved of cultural publicists, like ‘Les Six’ or China’s own ‘Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove’, that crumble into untidy reality when subjected to careful study. In what follows, we shall review briefly Ho’s actual literary associations and the emergence in later writings of the ‘Seven Masters’. According to Yokota Terutoshi, the name ‘Seven Masters’ was probably first applied to the ‘Later Seven’, the group of Archaist writers active around the middle of the sixteenth century. 2 In the

———

1 The label is ubiquitous in the secondary literature and, however misleading it may be as a label, has served as a starting point for useful scholarship, including the work of Kung Hsien-tsung and Ch’en Shu-lu’s Ming-tai Ch’ien-hou Ch’i-tzu Yen-chiu 明代前後七子研究 (Study of the Former and Later Seven Masters of the Ming) (Nanch’ang: Kiangsi Jen-ming, 1994). Both the latter and Ch’en’s Ming-tai Shih-wen Yenbian Shih are original, ambitious and often suggestive contributions to the study of the Ming Archaists, but the Ch’ien-hou ch’i-tzu is hampered by its treatment of the ‘Sevens’ as a delimited topic for analysis and both books by their acceptance of Ho Ch’iao-hsin’s Ho Wen-su Kung Wen-chi as the work of Ho Ching-ming (see above, Appendix Two). 2 Yokota Terutoshi, “Mindai Bunjin Kessha no Kenkyū,” Hiroshima Daigaku Bungakubu Kiyō 35-tokushūgo-3 (1975), p.10. Yokota also disagrees (p.11) with Yoshikawa Kōjirō’s suggestion, made in his Gen Min Shi Gaisetsu (Tokyo: Iwanami,

642

APPENDIX THREE

writings of the ‘Earlier Seven’ themselves, as well as of their contemporaries and first followers and biographers, it is not found, and in fact various other groupings occur instead. The Huang Ming Hsien-shih and Huang Ming Ming-ch’en Yen-hsing Lu biography of Ho Ching-ming lists Ho, Li Meng-yang, Pien Kung, and Hsü Chench’ing as the ‘Four Worthies’ (see above, Appendix One). Later references to the same four are to be found in Ho Liang-chün’s Ssu-yu Chai Ts’ung-shuo, which says that the others joined Li in stirring up the world of letters (1573), 3 and in the Kuo-ch’ao Ming-shih Lei-yüan and Li Chih’s Hsü Ts’ang Shu, both of which are simply copying the Huang Ming Hsien-shih. 4 The Ming Shih biography of Li Meng-yang, perhaps drawing on Ho Ch’iao-yüan’s Ming Shan Ts’ang, does list an alternative group of ‘ten talents’ consisting of the seven minus Wang T’ing-hsiang, plus Ku Lin, Cheng Shan-fu, Ch’en Yi, and Chu Yingteng. 5 Yokota calls attention to several groupings that appear in the works of the Seven during the period 1507-1511, their importance lying in the inclusion of only one or two of the Seven in most of them. 6 Ho Ching-ming’s set of poems on the ‘Six Masters’ includes poems to Li Meng-yang, Pien Kung, K’ang Hai, and Wang Chiu-ssu, along with Ho T’ang and Wang Shang-chiung. 7 This is closest to the traditional roster, but it omits both his good friend Wang T’ing-hsiang and Hsü Chen-ch’ing, with whom he apparently had relatively little contact. Li Meng-yang’s set of poems to his ‘Nine Masters’ includes Meng Yang and Tai Kuan, among figures associated with Archaism, but none of the Seven. 8 Li’s poems are, in any event, written for the men

———

1963), p.170, that the Seven took the name in imitation of the ‘Seven Masters of the Chien-an Period’. Other discussions of Ming dynasty literary societies likewise fail to record any evidence of the ‘Earlier Seven’ having formed such a group. See, for example, Kuo Shao-yü, “Ming-tai Wen-jen Chieh-she Nien-piao” 明代文人結社年表 (Chronology of Ming Literary Societies), Chao-yü Shih Ku-tien Wen-hsüeh Lun-chi 1:498-512 (Shanghai: Ku-chi, 1983); originally published in Tung-nan Jih-pao, Wenshih 55, 56 (1947). 3 Ssu-yu Chai Ts’ung-shuo (Peking: Chung-hua, 1959) 26.2a. 4 Kuo-ch’ao Ming-shih Lei-yüan (1575; repr. TM 3:240-41, Tainan: Chuang-yen Wenhua, 1995) 7.16a (576), Hsü Ts’ang Shu (Peking: Chung-hua, 1959), p.507. 5 MS 286.7348. 6 Yokota, “Kessha,” p.11. 7 HTFC 8.1a (85; 251:022-027). 8 K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi (1530; repr. Taipei: Wei-wen, 1976) 12.2b-3b

THE SEVEN MASTERS OF THE MING

643

chiefly as friends, not as literary figures. Wang T’ing-hsiang wrote a set of poems on his ‘Four Friends’, Li Meng-yang, Ho Ching-ming, Ho T’ang, and Sheng Tuan-ming 盛端明 (1470-1550), and another on the ‘Eighteen Masters’, including Meng Yang, Ho T’ang, Ts’ui Hsien, Wang Hsi-meng, Wang Shangchiung, T’ien Ju-tzu, and others, but only Ho Ching-ming among the Seven. 9 A search of the collected works of the Seven reveals no exchanges between Hsü Chen-ch’ing and K’ang Hai or Wang T’ing-hsiang, or between Pien Kung and K’ang Hai. On the occasion of Hsü Chen-ch’ing’s departure from Peking in 1506, Li Meng-yang wrote a long poem summing up the literary scene of the day. He refers to Ho Ching-ming in it, both as one of the best younger poets of the day and as someone whom Hsü had not met. 10 He does bracket Ho with Pien Kung in this case. Hsü Tsin, who probably knew all three men well, praises Ho and Hsü Chen-ch’ing together, and says that they ‘soared’ with Li Meng-yang. 11 The Ssu-k’u Ch’üan-shu Tsung-mu T’i-yao says that Ch’u Ch’üan, a writer usually associated with Li Tung-yang, wrote poems in company with Li Meng-yang, Ho Ching-ming, and Hsü Chench’ing. 12 Apart from its late date, this remark is unclear as to whether he did so with them separately or as a group. The first collective reference to the members of the ‘Seven’ is found in the preface that one of them, K’ang Hai, wrote for the works of another, Wang Chiu-ssu, “No period in our Ming dynasty has exceeded Hung-chih (1488-1505) in the glory of literary composition. There were six men who were transforming the current decadence by a return to bygone antiquity then, Li Meng-yang, Ho Ching-ming, Wang Chiu-ssu, Wang T’ing-hsiang, Hsü Chen-ch’ing, and Pien Kung, . . .

———

(246-248). 9 Wang Shih Chia-ts’ang Chi (Chia-ching edition; repr. Taipei: Wei-wen, 1976) 8.8a (283), 14.8b (534); Wang T’ing-hsiang Chi (Peking: Chung-hua, 1989) 8.111, 14.210. Sheng Tuan-ming was expelled from office, but after ten years at home, returned with the help of Yen Sung and on the strength of his claims to have discovered an elixir for long life. See MS 307.7903, where he is grouped with Ku K’o-hsüeh (see text, chapter eight). 10 K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi 19.18a (513); cited in LHH, 1.5b. 11 Quoted in MST, 30.1a. 12 Ssu-k’u Ch’üan-shu Tsung-mu t’i-yao (Taipei: Shang-wu, 1971), p.3807.

644

APPENDIX THREE

and I had the unmerited good fortune to be included among them.” 13 There are two reservations to be entered concerning this passage. The first one, more general and more important, is that the preface was written in 1532, three decades after the period to which it refers. 14 This suggests that while it is important, it may not be entirely accurate in its details, whether simply because of the tricks that memory often plays or because of a desire to view the past in a particular light suggested by the present. The second reservation is a symptom of the first. The period cited, the Hung-chih reign, is only approximately accurate as a description of the time when the seven writers were active. Hsü Chen-ch’ing did not pass the chin-shih examination until 1505, the last year of Hung-chih, and all sources agree that it was only after this success that he came under the influence of Li Meng-yang. 15 A colophon to Wang’s works added by his student Wang Hsien 王獻 and dated 1533 lists the other six as outstanding writers of the day. 16 A preface that K’ang Hai wrote sometime between 1521 and his death in 1540 for the poems of his friend Chang Chih-tao praises Chang for continuing the return to Han and T’ang literature begun in

——— 13

Tui-shan Chi, 3.3a (123), 10.11a (384), 28.11a (315). Note that in one of the very few errors in his excellent study, Chien Chin-sung misdates this Preface 1516, reading eleventh year of Cheng-te for eleventh year of Chia-ching), which naturally affects his interpretation of its significance; see “Li-Ho Shih-lun Yen-chiu” (M.A. thesis, National Taiwan Unversity, 1980), p.79. The preface does not represent an understanding of literary history that was necessarily worked out and expressed before Ho’s arrival in Shensi, but rather a much later one. 15 As often happens, the earliest source is the least explicit. Cheng Shan-fu’s colophon to Hsü’s works says that Hsü wearied of the Wu style in his twenties and shifted completely to Han, Wei, and High T’ang; see Cheng Wen (Chia-ching ed.) 6.71a, Shao-ku Chi (SKCS), 16.2a (198). Liu Feng’s 劉鳳 Hsü Wu Hsien-hsien Tsan, possibly drawing on an earlier source that I have not seen, is the first to say that Hsü changed his style after encountering the works of Li Meng-yang and Ho Ching-ming; see Hsü Wu Hsien-hsien Tsan 續吳先賢讚 (Sequel to the Eulogies of the Former Worthies of Wu) (Wan-li edition; repr. TM 2:95, Tainan: Chuang-yen Wen-hua, 1996) 11.2a (202), quoted in MSCS, ting 2.1178. In his Yi-yüan Chih-yen, whose very first phrase refers to Hsü’s T’an-yi Lu, Wang Shih-chen adds that this was after his chinshih pass in 1505 and that Hsü was henceforth ashamed of his earlier works; see Yiyüan Chih-yen, Ssu-pu Kao ed., 149.9a (6809); Yi-wen ed. 6.5a, Chung-hua ed. 6.1045; Ming Shih-hua Ch’üan-pien 4:4279. Ch’ien Ch’ien-yi, who rarely agreed with Wang Shih-chen about anything, says virtually the same thing; see Lieh-ch’ao Shihchi Hsiao-chuan (Peking: Chung-hua, 1959), p. 301. The point about his shame over his early works is repeated early in the Ch’ing by Shen Chin 沈進 in a passage quoted by Chu Yi-tsun; see MST 31.2b—Chu’s source is unidentified. 16 “Colophon to the Collected works of Master Mei-p’o” 跋渼陂先生集, Mei-p’o Chi (Chia-ching edition; repr. Taipei: Wei-wen, 1976), p.1. 14

THE SEVEN MASTERS OF THE MING

645

Hung-chih by ‘five or six gentlemen’, Li, Ho, Wang, Pien, and also Hsü. 17 Chang Chih-tao returned the favour by composing the Curriculum for K’ang shortly after the latter’s death. 18 This refers to Li, Ho, Hsü, K’ang, and Wang Chiu-ssu having formed a ‘literary society’ (文社 wen-she). Still later, Ch’iao Shih-ning, who was also from Shensi, links Ho with Li Meng-yang, K’ang Hai, Wang Chiu-ssu, and Pien Kung in his biography of Ho, and says that they were agreed in their fondness for old literature and in their literary theories. Other evidence is to be found from about the same period in a series of prefaces and memorial inscriptions for various writers associated with Archaism, but it does not corroborate K’ang and Chang. The spirit way inscription for Pien Kung, composed after his death in 1532 by Li T’ing-hsiang 李廷相, links Pien with Li Mengyang and Ho Ching-ming. 19 The epitaph for Meng Yang by the much maligned Grand Secretary Yen Sung—written in 1534, long before Yen’s rise to power—refers to a group of ten writers known at the time as the “ten talents,” but only six are named: Li Meng-yang, Ho Ching-ming, Wang T’ing-hsiang, Ts’ui Hsien, T’ien Ju-tzu, and Meng himself. 20 Yen’s list is inconsistent with the ‘Ten Talents’ list in the Ming Shan Ts’ang, which it predates (see above). The preface to Meng’s works by Tu Nan 杜柟, dated 1535, lists the Seven, except for K’ang Hai, plus Sun Yi-yüan 孫一元 (1484-1520), Cheng Shan-fu, and Meng as the great stars of the day in literature, but it does not suggest that they necessarily shared the same literary ideals. Sometime before his death in 1568, Li K’ai-hsien, who had come under the influence of K’ang Hai and Wang Chiu-ssu in 1531, while still a young man, wrote in his biography of Ho Ching-ming that Ho was grouped sometimes with Li Meng-yang and Pien Kung, sometimes with Ts’ui Hsien, and sometimes with the ‘gentlemen from Kuan-chung and Wu-hsia’ as the Seven Masters of Hung[-chih and

———

17 “Preface to the Collected Poems of Chang Meng-tu, the Mountain Dweller of T’ai-wei” 太微山人張孟獨詩集序, Tui-shan Chi, 4.23b (216), 33.15b (377), not in the 19 chüan edition. ‘Wang’ presumably refers to Wang Chiu-ssu rather than Wang T’ing-hsiang. 18 KHL 21.43a (861). 19 KHL 31.71a (1314). 20 KHL 69.14a (3015). The same passage is also found in the Huang Ming Tz’u-lin Jen-wu K’ao 皇明詞林人物考 (Study of Personages in the Grove of Lyrics of the Imperial Ming), comp. Wang Chao-yün 王兆雲 (Wan-li edition; repr. TM 2:111-12, Tainan: Chuang-yen Wen-hua, 1996), 5.32a (17).

646

APPENDIX THREE

Cheng]-te. 21 Li’s biography of Wang Chiu-ssu quotes Wang as listing Ho Ching-ming, Wang T’ing-hsiang, Hsü Chen-ch’ing, and Pien Kung as those whose works, along with his own, were corrected by Li Meng-yang and K’ang Hai. 22 This listing, of course, includes the Seven, although it does not say that they were all associated with one another. In short, while K’ang’s preface is important and suggestive, what is needed is a more detailed account of the relationships, personal and literary, among not only the Seven, but also the various other writers—as many as eighteen, by one count—who made up the middle Ming Archaist movement. 23 The first of these men to arrive in Peking was, appropriately enough, Li Meng-yang, who passed the chin-shih in 1493, but went home soon after to go into mourning and did not return until 1498. Four more men who would be associated with Archaism, Wang Chiu-ssu, Hsiung Cho, Ku Lin, and Pien Kung passed the chin-shih in 1496. Only Wang had scored as high as the middle of the year’s graduates, and the other three had all been quite near the bottom. Soon after the examinations, Ku certainly and Hsiung probably were appointed to serve as magistrates in the provinces and so were gone from the capital by the time Li returned two years later. 24 But Wang and Pien remained in Peking and presumably came in contact with Li around this time. Li’s talent had been recognised in 1491 by Yang Yi-ch’ing, who was then in office in Peking and a member of the literary circle headed by Li Tung-yang, who had been the Chief Examiner in 1496. Li Meng-yang had studied with another member of Tung-yang’s circle, the epitaph writer Shao Pao, even before his first attempt to pass the chü-jen. 25 It was probably through these connections that the three men became acquainted.

——— 21

Li K’ai-hsien Ch’üan-chi (Peking: Wen-hua Yi-shu, 2004) 10.774. Li K’ai-hsien Ch’üan-chi, 10.764-65. See also above, chapter two. 23 See Kung Hsien-tsung, “Ming Ch’i-tzu Shih-wen Chi Ch’i Lun-p’ing chih Yenchiu” (Ph.D. dissertation, Chung-kuo Wen-hua Hsüeh-yüan, 1979), pp.22-50. Kung’s work is the fullest and most thorough and analytic study of the Ming Archaists as a whole. 24 But note that, in a poem written at Hsiung’s grave, Li Meng-yang wrote, “I grieve for the past, when you and I were companions, companions together in the midst of the Capital’s splendour . . .” See “Telling of my Grief at the Grave of Censor Hsiung Cho” 熊御史卓墓感述, K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi, 12.9a (259). 25 Shao Pao, it will be recalled, was the man who wrote the epitaph for Wang Pien’s mother (see Preface). 22

THE SEVEN MASTERS OF THE MING

647

The only one of the 1499 graduates to be associated with the Archaists was Chu Ying-teng, and it may have been through him that Li Meng-yang came into contact with other young southern literati. According to Chu’s epitaph, which was written by Li Meng-yang, he was appointed to a position in Nanking some time after his chin-shih pass. 26 Although we do not have a large number of poems exchanged between him and other members of the group, he was apparently in Peking until 1505, when he left for the appointment in Nanking. Li Meng-yang, Pien Kung, and Liu Lin 劉麟 (1474-1561) held a farewell party for him, and on this occasion Li wrote a preface for their farewell poems, in which he urged Chu to rise above Six Dynasties styles in poetry. 27 Of course by this time six years had passed, the very years during which reality came closest to approximating the traditional account. Ho Ching-ming, Wang T’ing-hsiang, and K’ang Hai had all passed the chin-shih in 1502. Ho Ching-ming’s close association with Li Mengyang clearly dates from this period, but Wang T’ing-hsiang’s affiliation is less certain. 28 He was close to Ho, refers to Li Meng-yang several times in his writings, and wrote prefaces to both men’s collected works, but there is no mention of him in Li’s works. K’ang Hai’s position seems clearer. We are told that he rejected Li Tung-yang and ‘joined Wang Chiu-ssu, Li Meng-yang, Ho Chingming, and Hsü Chen-ch’ing in a literary society’. 29 Again, it is difficult to tell when this happened. K’ang Hai went home to Shensi in 1503 and did not return to Peking until the summer of 1505, so his association with Ho Ching-ming, who went home after his chin-shih success in 1502, returned only in 1503, and left for Yunnan in the spring of 1505, must have been brief. 30

——— 26

“Epitaph for Master Ling-hsi” 凌溪先生墓志銘, K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi, 45.1b (1280). 27 “Preface to the Poems from a Farewell Gathering in the Chang Garden” 章園餞會詩引, K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi 55.10b (1582). This essay is dated 1505 by Chien Chin-sung; see “Li-Ho Shih-lun Yen-chiu,” p.258. 28 Chu Yi-tsun remarks on this in some detail, MST 31.19b. 29 KHL 21.46a (863); this is in Chang Chih-tao’s Curriculum for K’ang Hai. 30 See MST 31.16b, quoting Chang Chih 張治, “At this time, Ho Ching-ming, Li Meng-yang, and Wang Chiu-ssu were called “the Three Geniuses of the World,” but he [K’ang] still walked alone.” But ‘walked alone’ can also imply that, whatever his associations, K’ang stood ‘head and shoulders’ above the rest in ability. See also Li T’ing-hsiang’s spirit way inscription for Pien Kung (KHL 31.71a [1314]), cited above.

648

APPENDIX THREE

The inclusion of Ho and Hsü in the same group suggests anachronism, but Hsü’s whereabouts are uncertain during this period. He is generally said to have come into contact with Li Meng-yang for the first time in 1505. However, since was we know that Hsü had passed the chü-jen examination in 1501, it is possible that he was in Peking to take the chin-shih in 1502 but failed. In a poem presented to him by Li Meng-yang that is most plausibly assigned to 1502, Hsü is addressed by his name only, suggesting that he had not yet held any official post, and apparently he was on the verge of leaving the capital for the central Yangtse region (江湘 chiang-hsiang), which we have no reason to suppose that he did after his success in 1505. 31 Moreover, the tone of the poem strongly suggests that Hsü had suffered a reverse of some kind, and an examination failure seems the most likely explanation. It is thus possible that he spent a period of time before and after the 1502 examination in Peking and that he associated with Li, Ho, and the others at least briefly then. Hsü Chen-ch’ing is also a special case because he was from the South, from Soochow at that, the recognised centre of southern literary and artistic culture. 32 He was, moreoever, already established as a literary figure in his own right. He had been recognised for his extraordinary talent while still a very young man and came to Peking already an intimate of such young leaders of Soochow culture as Wen Cheng-ming and T’ang Yin. He had already written an extensive work of literary criticism, still extant, his T’an-yi Lu. 33 And yet, once in

———

In any event, it is clear that Li and K’ang were acquainted by this time. Note, incidentally, that the name Chang Chih is not necessarily an error for Chang Chih-tao here, although Chih-tao both wrote K’ang’s Curriculum and collected his works, while Chang Chih, a native of Li Tung-yang’s home district Ch’a-ling, seems an unlikely person to single K’ang out for comment. MST refers to him by his tzu, Wenpang 文邦, so the issue is not simply one of a dropped character in the text of the MST. The question might repay additional study. 31 “Presented to Hsü Chen-ch’ing” 贈徐禎卿, K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi, 9.4b5a (184). 32 Li Tung-yang, among others, noted this predominance of Southerners in Ming poetry, in spite of the capital’s having been in the North for more than a century. He also noted what he saw as a more pervasive distinction between North and South in literature; see [Huai-]lu T’ang Shih-hua, Yi-wen ed., p.6b; Chung-hua ed. p.1317; Li Tung-yang Chi 2:537-38, Ming Shih-hua Ch’üan-pien 2:1630. 33 Insofar as Li Meng-yang can be seen as narrow in his poetic tastes, Hsü may have found him a congenial mentor, as he had already in the T’an-yi Lu declined to consider seriously any poetry later than the Chin dynasty, which ended in 420 AD; see T’an-yi Lu (Yi-men Kuang-tu; repr. PP 13/1), p.53b; quoted in the biographical notices

THE SEVEN MASTERS OF THE MING

649

Peking, he soon came under the influence of Li Meng-yang, perhaps through Chu Ying-teng and Ku Lin. He first wrote to Li, proposing that they write poems together, as P’i Jih-hsiu 皮日休 and Lu Kuimeng 陸龜蒙 had done in the late T’ang.34 Li responded urging higher goals and succeeded in shifting Hsü’s literary orientation away from the Six Dynasties, popular in the South, to Han, Wei, and High T’ang. Such a shift was not easy. Li chided him for what he saw as remnants of the old style still evident in his new works. Moreover, such a stylistic reorientation led to difficulties in the collection of an edition of his poems. 35 But its importance can hardly be underestimated. Although Hsü remained in Peking for most of the rest of his short life, and although his erstwhile associates back in Soochow derided his conversion to northern austerity, that he had been converted at all could not but have an effect in the South. 36 Along with those of Ku

———

on Hsü in the Huang Ming Tz’u-lin Jen-wu K’ao, 5.26ab (14) and Huang Ming Hsienshih 40.4b (772). The most conclusive argument known to me for Hsü’s having written the T’an-yi Lu before meeting Li Meng-yang is in Li Shuang-hua 李雙華, “Hsü Chen-ch’ing T’an-yi Lu Hsieh-tso Shih-chien K’ao” 徐禎卿談藝錄寫作時間考 (An Examination of Dating of Hsü Chen-ch’ing’s ‘Record of Comments on the Arts’), Soochow Ta-hsüeh Hsüeh-pao 2003.3:67-68, 71. 34 This letter, which is not extant, is usually assigned to 1505 and treated as the first contact between the two men. 35 The formation of the corpus of Hsü’s works was much discussed during Ming times and remains controversial. See Ch’en Hung 陳紅, “Hsü Chen-ch’ing te Chuanshu chi ch’i Pan-pen T’an” 徐禎卿的撰述及其版本談 (Remarks on the Works of Hsü Chen-ch’ing and their Published Editions), Szechwan Shih-fan Ta-hsüeh Hsüehpao (1991.1): 42-47; repr. Fu-yin Pao-k’an Tzu-liao: Chung-kuo Ku-tai, Chin-tai Wen-hsüeh Yen-chiu (1991.6): 190-95. Cheng Shan-fu, in his colophon to Hsü’s works, noted that the edition of Hsü’s poems current in Loyang in his day had been selected by Li Meng-yang, and did not reflect Hsü’s own choice or merits; see Shaoku Chi (SKCS) 16.2b. Huang-fu Fang 皇甫汸 noted Cheng’s interpretation in his own preface to an edition of Hsü Chen-ch’ing’s works; see Huang-fu Ssu-hsün Chi 皇甫司勳集 (Collected Works of Huang-fu [of the Bureau of] Merit Titles) (SKCS) 36.13a. He adds that he too felt that the selection had been too strict and that Hsü’s best work was not included. Huang-fu compiled an ‘outer collection’ ( 外集 wai-chi) and someone named Yüan a ‘separate collection’, (別集 pieh-chi) as supplements. Huangfu said of his collection that it was made up of half of the over one hundred poems that he had obtained from Hsü’s family. The presently extant wai-chi is apparently the one said in a preface dated 1584 to consist of nine tenths of Huang-fu’s supplement plus a selection from Yüan’s. Wang Shih-chen approved of Hsü’s own selection, the Ti-kung Chi, and said that the editions published by Huang-fu and Yüan were made up of juvenilia; see Yi-yüan Chih-yen, quoted in MSCS, ting-2.1177-78. 36 One reflection of his old southern friends’ reaction to his later career is found in a couplet from a poem by Chu Yün-ming that records a dream he had of Hsü and T’ang Yin, “Unsettled and unsure, [you] visit Wei and Han; / In your northern studies,

650

APPENDIX THREE

Lin and Huang Hsing-tseng, to be discussed shortly, his influence is seen in the next generation of southern writers, and leads to Wang Shih-chen and the Later Seven Masters—all southerners—at mid century. 37 In any event, the years 1502-1505 saw the other six writers in Peking, but they were certainly not all there continuously. Li Mengyang was despatched on brief missions to the provinces occasionally; Ho Ching-ming returned home to Hsin-yang for the better part of a year after his chin-shih pass; and K’ang Hai was at home for much of this period. In 1505 they were joined by a new batch of chin-shih graduates, including not only Hsü Chen-ch’ing, but also Yin Yünhsiao, Meng Yang, Cheng Shan-fu, T’ien Ju-tzu, and Ts’ui Hsien. T’ien and Ts’ui are not linked to Archaism by their writings, but as we have noted, they were closely associated with some of the Archaists personally. Ts’ui Hsien in particular we have found to be an important chronicler of the group, in that he wrote memorial texts for a number of his contemporaries. Yin Yün-hsiao and Cheng Shan-fu both left Peking within a year or so of their examination success. Cheng left in 1505 to go into mourning, and Yin retired to study and write the following year. Neither had much contact with the others later, but Yin was apparently strongly influenced by Li Meng-yang’s ideas, which he held to later, and Cheng became a close friend and admirer of Ho Ching-ming. 38 The year 1505 marks the climax of the Archaist circle in Peking, for almost as soon as the traditional circle was complete, it began to break up. 39 Within weeks of the chin-shih examinations in the spring

———

apart from the group” 遑遑訪魏漢、北學中離群, Huai-hsing T’ang Chi 懷星堂集 (Cherishing the Stars Hall Collection) (SKCS) 4.13b (419); quoted in Lieh-ch’ao Shih-chi, ping-9.10b (336). 37 See MST 31.2b, quoting Chou Yün 周篔. 38 The epitaph for Yin written by Ts’ui Hsien does not mention any literary associates, but describes Yin’s literary standards in terms very reminiscent of those attributed to Li Meng-yang and his circle, “In prose he studied nothing but the language of Ch’in and Han writers. As for poetry, his taste favoured the expression of emotion and the manifestation of ideals as in the poets of the ‘Airs’. He discriminated the prosody of all the poets from Han and Wei to T’ang and imitated them.” See Ts’ui Shih Huan Tz’u (1554; repr. TM 4:56, Tainan, Chuang-yen Wen-hua, 1997) 15.30b (459), Huan Tz’u (SKCS) 3.10b (425), KHL 80.126a (3432). 39 This being so, it is hard to avoid skepticism at the report that poems by the young Ch’ang Lun 常倫 (1492-1525) were sent to Li Meng-yang and Ho Ching-ming and received their approval in the years leading up to 1510; see DMB, p.113. By this time,

THE SEVEN MASTERS OF THE MING

651

of this year, Emperor Hsiao-tsung, whose eighteen year reign had been among the more civilized of the Ming dynasty, died unexpectedly, to be succeeded by his wastrel son Wu-tsung. One incidental consequence of this death was Ho Ching-ming’s mission to Yunnan, which took him away from the capital for almost a year. By the end of 1506, Liu Chin was in power and the atmosphere in Peking transformed. Wang Yang-ming had been beaten and sent into exile, and one by one most of the young literati around Li Meng-yang resigned or were demoted or disgraced. Both Ho Ching-ming and Meng Yang were gone from Peking by the middle of 1507, Ho home ‘recuperating’ and Meng Yang to office in the provinces. Li Mengyang had already been discharged and had gone to Kaifeng—and worse was to befall him shortly. Wang T’ing-hsiang was sent out in 1508 to Po-chou, where he met the young Hsüeh Hui, whose talent so impressed him that he predicted Hsüeh would one day inherit the mantle of Li Meng-yang and Ho Ching-ming. Pien Kung went out to the provinces in 1509, 40 leaving only K’ang Hai and Wang Chiu-ssu, who were discharged and sent home after the fall of Liu Chin in 1510, and Hsü Chen-ch’ing, who died in April of 1511, still in his early thirties.. As a result, when Ho returned to Peking late in 1511, he was one of the few Archaists to be found in the capital and the only one of the ‘Seven’. Wang T’ing-hsiang returned to the capital from Shensi before long, but remained only until 1514, when he was sent out in disgrace to Kan-yü. He and Ho seem to have been very close at this time, and remained in touch after Wang’s departure, but their shared concerns do not seem to have included poetics. For the most part, Ho’s associations in Peking now were with people who were not active participants in Archaism as a literary movement, Ts’ui Hsien, Lu Shen, Ho T’ang, Lü Nan, and others. Wang T’ing-hsiang’s place was taken by Hsüeh Hui, the young poet whose talents Wang had recognised while he was serving in Po-chou. Hsüeh passed the chin-shih in 1514,

———

Li and Ho were both living in provincial obscurity. It is possible that there is something behind the story, but it may be an account written much later and without care for possible anachronism. 40 Pien was appointed Prefect of Wei-hui 衛輝 in 1509 and transferred to Chingchou 荊州 the next year. See Chi Jui-li 紀銳利, “Pien Kung Nien-p’u Chien-pien” 邊貢年譜簡編 , Liao-ch’eng Shih-fan Hsüeh-yüan Hsüeh-pao 2001.1:88-99, 39, especially p.93.

652

APPENDIX THREE

but we know that he was already with Ho in Peking late in the preceding year. He left the capital after his chin-shih success, returned in 1516, and remained in the capital until 1519, when he, along with many others, including Ho’s former student Sun Chi-fang, was beaten and discharged for opposing Wu-tsung’s plan to visit the South. He was thus able to spend a good deal of time with Ho Ching-ming, but it is possible that he never met Li Meng-yang personally, and so his preference for Ho’s poetry over Li’s is understandable. We have no way of knowing what Ho and Hsüeh talked about, but their extant writings do not suggest that Archaism was a primary concern. And in fact, one can say that the third phase of the history of Ming Archaism begins at about this time. Following the heady days of late Hung-chih and the troubles of Wu-tsung’s reign, the 1520’s bring a kind of autumnal air to the history of the movement. It is a time of memorial texts, prefaces to collected works, young writers making pilgrimages to Li Meng-yang in Kaifeng or writing respectful letters to the patriarch of their literary sect—he had turned 50 sui with the year 1521. Hsü Chen-ch’ing’s works were published in 1520, with a preface by Wang Yang-ming. Yin Yün-hsiao had died in 1516, though we don’t have a preface to his works until 1549. The preface to the works of Chang Han 張含, who had visited Li Meng-yang in 1518 and is sometimes linked to the Archaists, was written in 1520 by Ch’en Yi. 41 Another southerner, Chou Tso 周祚, wrote to Li around 1522, expressing his admiration for Li’s work and agreement with his poetics. Li’s response included a bitter denunciation of the ideas advanced by Ho Ching-ming in their exchange, paraphrasing Ho’s

——— 41

Chang Han studied poetry with Li Meng-yang, but in fact he seems to have been closer to Yang Shen, who edited his works, as Chu Yi-tsun remarks; see MST 37.16a. The three poems that Li Meng-yang addressed to Chang are found together in his works, K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi 12.4b-5a (250-251). Their placement suggests that Chang may have visited Li in the summer of 1513, before Li’s return to Kaifeng via Hsiang-yang. Chang wrote two poems, one of them quite long, on his literary friendships, with extensive notes on the friends mentioned in them appended; see Chang Yü-kuang Shih-wen-hsüan 張愈光詩文選 (Selected Poetry and Prose of Chang Yü-kuang) (Yunnan Ts’ung-shu; repr. TSCC hsü-pien, vol.115, Shanghai: Shanghai Shu-tien, 1994), 1.14b-22b, 14.16b-19b. These included Li Meng-yang and Ho Chingming, as well as many other figures of the day. Here, and in his two prefaces to selections of their works (one of Li and Ho, and one, compiled by Yang Shen, only of Li; see Chang Yü-kuang Shih-wen-hsüan, 7.7a, 8.7b), Chang refers to Li as ‘my teacher’ but to Ho as ‘my friend’.

THE SEVEN MASTERS OF THE MING

653

language but not mentioning him by name. 42 And of course the Yung and Shen recensions of Ho Ching-ming’s works were compiled in the 1520s. This period ends with the death of Li Meng-yang in 1530. He had been living in retirement in Kaifeng for fifteen years, writing poetry and receiving the occasional homage of young writers such as Chou Tso and Huang Hsing-tseng. Another important aspect of his life in Kaifeng after his final retirement was his extensive association with a group of wealthy merchants from Hui-chou 徽州 (in Anhwei) resident in Kaifeng. He served as their ‘consultant’ in literary matters and made important additions to the corpus of his literary theory in his prefaces to the works of some of them. 43 It is sometimes said that his literary opinions altered during this period. In his own preface to his collected works, written in 1524, he expresses dissatisfaction with his poetry, as being ‘not genuine’. 44 The suggestion is evidently that it is folk poetry that represents genuine poetry, Li’s own works being too self-consciously literary. But in fact the Preface, though written later, is recording conversations that Li had had many years previously. What it substantiates is not a new attitude characteristic of Li’s last decade, but rather the consistency of his belief in the importance of ch’ing (‘emotions’) in literature. Several modern Chinese critics have gone somewhat astray in their interpretation of Li’s literary ideals by neglecting the date of the conversations. 45

———

42 “Replying to Master Chou” 答周子書, K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi, 61.11b (1746). Chou’s letter is appended to Li’s. I accept the date assigned to this exchange by Chien Chin-sung, in “Li-Ho Shih-lun Yen-chiu,” p.50, although the vehemence of Li’s rebuttal suggests that he may have replied to Chou not long after answering Ho. Chou did not pass the chin-shih until 1520, after which time he disappears from view. A poem that Li presented to Chou, who was apparently departing for the southern coast, cannot be dated; see K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi 16.7b (354). Li Meng-yang did not get letters supporting his position only. A man named Wu Chin 吾謹, who had passed the chin-shih in 1517, wrote to Li expressing his agreement with Ho’s ideas rather than Li’s. He also wrote to Cheng Shan-fu along the same lines. For Wu and his letters, see Chien Chin-sung, “Li-Ho Shih-lun Yen-chiu,” pp.173-74. 43 Chien Chin-sung discusses this aspect of Li’s life in Kaifeng in some detail; see “Li-Ho Shih-lun Yen-chiu,” pp. 90-95. 44 K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi, 50.2b (1436). 45 See, for example, Ma Mao-yüan, “Lüeh-t’an Ming Ch’i-tzu te wen-hsüeh Ssuhsiang yü Li, Ho te Lun-cheng,” Chiang-hai Hsüeh-k’an (1962.1): 26-29; repr. Wanchao Lou Lun-wen Chi (Shanghai Ku-chi, 1981), pp.190-99. Iriya Yoshitaka also comments on what he takes to be Li’s later views, Mindai Shibun (Tokyo: Chikuma, 1978), pp.59-60. See Chien Chin-sung, “Li-Ho Shih-lun Yen-chiu,” pp.193-95, 197-

654

APPENDIX THREE

In fact, even if Li Meng-yang had despaired of Archaism in his last years, he need not have done so. Although its best poets, Hsü Chench’ing, Ho Ching-ming, and Li himself, were all dead by 1530—and Pien Kung died in 1532—their works were all in print. 46 Moreover, survivors and followers remained to keep his literary ideals alive. Two southerners should be mentioned in particular, Ku Lin and Huang Hsing-tseng. Ku Lin, who had passed the chin-shih in 1496 along with Hsiung Cho, Pien Kung, and Wang Chiu-ssu, spent most of his career in Nanking, but he had been prefect of Kaifeng from 1510 to 1513, and in 1511 had come up to Peking, where he joined Li Meng-yang and others in writing poetry. Li Meng-yang’s colophon to their poems reminisces about the writers with whom he had associated in Peking in the years before 1507 (see text, chapter two). He tends to stress the importance of the southern writers, including Ku Lin, among them. 47 After Kaifeng, Ku had been sent to Ch’üan-chou, where he stayed until 1516, spending his time in close association with Ho Chingming’s brother-in-law Meng Yang. 48 Back in Nanking, Ku Lin became a well-known figure in literary circles. When he compiled his Kuo-pao Hsin-pien in 1536, he included appreciations of Li and Ho, as well as Hsü Chen-ching, Cheng Shan-fu, and Chu Ying-teng. Ku’s presence in Nanking for many years with Pien Kung no doubt helped keep the old associations alive, just as their interest in Archaism was transmitted to a new generation of southern poets. A typical figure among the latter was Huang Hsing-tseng, who was in Nanking during some of these years, and studying with Wang

———

200, for the more reliable interpretation. 46 Meng Yang also died in 1534. The preface to his works by Tu Nan, dated 1535, says that they were collected by Wang T’ing-hsiang. For apparently late expressions of Wang T’ing-hsiang’s esteem for Li, see the poems—in a four-syllable metre and imitative of the “Songs 詩經 (Book of)”—that he presented to him, “Swift Flying Magpies” and “The Great Man,” Wang Shih Chia-ts’ang Chi, 1.9b (50), 2.1a (61), Wang T’ing-hsiang Chi 1.14, 2.17. In the former he refers to Li as his teacher. 47 “Colophon to the Matching Poems at Court in the First Month” 朝正倡和詩跋, K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi, 58.15a (1671). Chien Chin-sung’s discussion of this colophon is part of his treatment of Ku Lin’s role in the formation of the history of Archaism; see “Li-Ho Shih-lun Yen-chiu,” pp.67-78. He cites this essay as an example of Ku Lin’s influence, and of Li’s conscious attempt to establish his influence in the South, “Li-Ho,” pp.69-70. 48 The anonymous biography of Ku in KHL (48.76a [2038] gives the dates for his appointment to Kaifeng and says that he was appointed to T’ai-chou in 1516.

THE SEVEN MASTERS OF THE MING

655

Yang-ming later. He advised Tai Kuan about the editing of Ho’s works (see above, Appendix Two), but was also an admirer of Li Meng-yang, to whom he wrote in 1528, expressing agreement with Li against Ho Ching-ming. 49 He also helped to edit Li’s works. Huang was not a great poet himself, but he was an enthusiastic publisher and litterateur. He also seems to have had a flair for discipleship. He studied with Wang Yang-ming from 1523 to 1526, and with Chan Joshui for a while after that. His publishing activities were moreover consistent with the interest in the preservation and revival of antiquity that Archaism represented. Among other items, he published a number of manuals on poetic form attributed to T’ang and Sung writers, which, even if they are in a few cases of doubtful authenticity, testify both to Huang’s interest in ‘method-oriented’ criticism and to the existence of an interested public. And finally, Huang was a respected member of southern literary circles, so that his espousal of Li Meng-yang’s poetry and poetics began to exert greater influence there. 50 And, finally, there remained K’ang Hai and Wang Chiu-ssu in Shensi, keeping alive their memories of the days long past when they had taken part in the literary life of the capital. In fact, Chien Chinsung has argued persuasively that K’ang Hai and Wang Chiu-ssu articulated their view of the Seven with the conscious intention of resisting the tendency of Ku Lin and others to locate the centre of Archaist poetics in south China. 51 We have already seen that the idea of a group of seven arose with them, and as we turn to the other common bit of knowledge about middle Ming Archaism we find that it too is first recorded in Shensi. I refer of course to the slogan “in prose it must be Ch’in or Han, in poetry, High T’ang.” 52 This is nowhere to be found in the writings of

——— 49

See K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi 61.16a (1755) and 61.15a (1753) for Huang’s letter and Li’s reply. For this exchange of letters, see Chien Chin-sung, “Li-Ho Shihlun Yen-chiu,” p.51. The date is given here as 1512 (Cheng-te 7), but this this is clearly an inadvertent slip, as both Chien’s discussion on p.61 and his chronology on p.265 treat the exchange as happening in 1528 (Chia-ching 7). 50 For a concise account of Huang’s literary activities, see the entry on him by Hoklam Chan in DMB, pp.661-65. 51 “Li Ho Shih-lun Yen-chiu,” pp.79-86. 52 Liao K’o-pin, Fu-ku P’ai p’ai yü Ming-tai Wen-hsüeh Ssu-ch’ao (Taipei: Wenchin, 1994), pp.210-11, has a good brief discussion. For an extended discussion of the first part of the slogan, see Ch’en Shu-lu, Ming-tai Ch’ien-hou Ch’i-tzu Yen-chiu (Nan-ch’ang: Kiangsi Jen-ming, 1994), pp.15-38.

656

APPENDIX THREE

either Li Meng-yang or Ho Ching-ming, though it is clear that the taste is theirs, and perhaps the vehemence as well. 53 The earliest occurrence of this rigid formulation is found in the works of Wang Chiu-ssu, in his preface to the works of Chang Chih-tao, “Alas! Is literature really such an easy thing? A recent critic has said of prose that it must be pre-Ch’in or Han, of poetry that it must be Han, Wei, or High T’ang, and this is truly the case. All the same, if one’s effort at learning is deficient, the imitation too extreme, and one unable to establish one’s own voice, then surely one should not adopt this approach!” 54 Now, Li Meng-yang is not named in the passage, but he seems the most likely person to have been the “recent critic” cited. 55 Similar things are said of him by other Ming writers. Yüan Chih, in his Huang Ming Hsien-shih, quoted Li as saying that in prose nothing equalled (mo-ju) pre-Ch’in and Western Han; in old-style poetry, Han

———

53 The vehemence does reflect a contemporary phenomenon. Li Tung-yang grumbles, in his “Preface to the Collected Poems of Master Ching-ch’üan” 鏡川先生詩集序, about people who say “it must be T’ang,” or “it must be Sung!” and this is in a preface to the works of a man who died in 1489. See Li Tung-yang Chi 2:115, quoted in Ming-tai Wen-hsüeh P’i-p’ing Tzu-liao Hui-pien, p.257 and Ming Shih-hua Ch’üan-pien 2:1664. The preface is not dated, but it comes from Li’s ‘earlier manuscripts’ 前稿, which means that it is no later than 1499. Kuo Shao-yü notes that Li Meng-yang does not use the slogan himself, although he (and Ho Ching-ming) at times said that there was “no poetry in Sung;” see “Shen-yün yü Ko-tiao,” p.376 and also below. Wang T’ing-hsiang reflected similar criteria in a letter written to Meng Yang, “As for regulated lines, this is a T’ang form . . . Su and Huang had eminent abilities and far-reaching minds, but they fell short when it came to formal niceties and a sense of style. Yüan poets did nothing but make a show of gaudy attractions. How could they have taken up the restrained meaningfulness of the ancient Odes!” He goes on to say that two or three recent poets have attained the quality of High T’ang, but that this is something he dares not speak of; see “Sent to Meng Wang-chih [Yang]” 寄孟望之, Wang Shih Chia-ts’ang Chi 27.42a (1139), Wang T’ing-hsiang Chi 27.474. 54 Mei-p’o Hsü-chi, hsia.11b, Mei-p’o Chi, p.938. 55 In his epitaph for Li Meng-yang, Ts’ui Hsien writes that Li turned to Archaism during the Hung-chih period and had no teachers later than T’ang; see Ts’ui Shih Huan Tz’u 14.12b (450), Huan Tz’u 6.34a (515). Ts’ui is quoted elsewhere as saying that Li and Ho maintained “there was no sao in Han, no fu in T’ang, and no poetry (shih) in Sung;” see MSCS ting-13.1367. A collection of short statements by Ho Ching-ming, the “Ho-tzu Tsa-yen” 何子雜言, includes the following: “When the classics (ching) were lost, the sao appeared; when the sao were lost, the fu appeared; when the fu were lost, poetry (shih) appeared. There were no classics in Ch’in, no sao in Han, no fu in T’ang, and no poetry in Sung,” HTFC 38.15b (666; 雜:028). Li Meng-yang comments in his essay, “A Record of the Mountain Dweller ‘Hidden Dragon’” 潛虬山人記, “The Sung was without poetry,” K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi 47.10a (1371), quoted in Kung Hsien-tsung, “Ming Ch’i-tzu Shih-wen,” p.143.

THE SEVEN MASTERS OF THE MING

657

and Wei; and in new-style poetry, High T’ang. 56 Li K’ai-hsien, in a biography of Wang Chiu-ssu, no less, refers to Wang’s independence of Li Tung-yang after his chin-shih pass in 1496 and adds that he joined Li Meng-yang and K’ang Hai in discussing literature, their slogan being, “in prose, if it is not Ch’in or Han, we do not look at it; in poetry, if it is not Han or Wei, we do not speak of it, though T’ang poetry we also imitate. There is nothing worth considering in prose later than T’ang.” 57 Since Li K’ai-hsien had met Wang, we may suppose that this account could have originated with Wang himself. One contemporary of Li Chih, Wang Chih-teng 王稺登 (1535-1612), attributed the slogan in a stronger form to Li Meng-yang, “In old-style, if it is not Han or Wei it is not old-style; in new-style, if it is not High T’ang, it is not new-style!” 58 This is the first time, so far as I can determine, that this form of the slogan is directly attributed to Li Meng-yang, but Wang’s comment is so condensed as to suggest that it was well known to his anticipated audience. 59 Wang Chih-teng was a friend of Wang Shih-chen, and thus must have been well informed about Archaist principles as Shih-chen understood them. This survey of the ‘Seven’ and their associates suggests that they were neither so well defined nor so uniform a group as they are often taken to have been. The common view of them is a distorted picture that has its origin in a few passages in the writings of K’ang Hai and

———

56 Huang Ming Hsien-shih 40.2b (768). As in the case of the biography of Ho Ching-ming (for which, see Appendix One), this biography, including the comment (lun) explicitly attributed to Yüan Chih in the Hsien-shih, was appropriated without acknowledgement by the ‘iconoclast’ Li Chih. See Hsü Ts’ang Shu 26.505-06. 57 Li K’ai-hsien Ch’üan-chi 10.764. Also in KHL 22.25a (913). 58 Wang Chih-teng, Chin-ling Chi 晉陵集 (Chin-ling Collection), in Wang Pai-ku Chi 王百穀集 (Collected Works of Wang Pai-ku) (Ming edition; repr. Ssu-k’u Chinhui Shu Ts’ung-k’an 4:175, Peking: Peking Ch’u-pan-she, 2000) hsia.13b (20); a somewhat different version is quoted in MST 29.3a. 59 The slogan was cited later by Yüan Chung-tao 袁中道 (1570-1624) in the preface to his own collected works, though without specific attribution, “In prose take Ch’in and Han as model (fa); in old-style verse take Han and Wei as law; in new-style verse take High T’ang as law; these are the three yardsticks of writers;” see K’o-hsüeh Chai Chi 珂雪齋集 (Spangle Snow Studio Collection) (Shanghai: Shanghai Ku-chi, 1989), p.19, cited by Sung P’ei-wei, p.159. Yüan goes on, playing on a famous passage in the Mencius, “I greatly respected this, but in the end I did not emulate (hsüeh) it. It wasn’t that I did not emulate, it was that I was unable to” 予敬佩焉、而終不學之、非不學也、不能學也. The original Mencius passage is “Your Majesty’s not [fulfilling the role of a true] king is a matter of not doing it, not a matter of being unable” 王之不王、不為也、非不能也 ; see Meng-tzu Yin-te 3/1A/7; cf. the translation in Lau, p.56.

658

APPENDIX THREE

Wang Chiu-ssu, passages written years after they had ceased to be active in the literary and political circles in which Archaism had flourished. That this view became common is the result of its having been taken up by later generations of critics, men who generally had axes of their own to grind. At the same time, it should be recognised that the view itself is not really so much wrong as unbalanced, and thus not true to the complexities of the situation it pretends to describe.

賦:013 賦:018 賦:029 古:005 樂:001 樂:015 樂:041 樂:042 樂:050 樂:062 樂:067 151:008 151:013 151:018 151:025 151:027 151:031 152:027 152:029 171:002 171:003 171:004 172:002 172:004 172:005 172:006 172:009 251:008

述歸賦古塚賦進舟賦皇告戰城南塘上行俠客行河水曲秋江詞種麻篇易水行自武陵至沅陵自武陵至沅陵清平令羅女曲城南婦行泊雲陽江頭玩月江門峽中古松行津市打魚歌偏橋行武昌聞邊報雲溪驛岳陽岳陽城中聞笛華容弔楚宮發京邑

Telling of my Return Rhapsody on an Ancient Tomb Rhapsody on Propelling the Boat The Imperial Proclamation (III) Fighting South of the Walls On the Pond The Cavalier A Song of River Waters Autumn River Song Planting Hemp The River Yi The Road from Wu-ling to Yüan-ling (III) The Road from Wu-ling to Yüan-ling (VIII) The Magistrate of Ch’ing-p’ing Song of the Lo Girl Ballad of the Woman South of the Wall Enjoying the Moonlight while Moored at the Yün-yang River Chiang-men In the Gorges Ballad of the Old Pines A Fishing Song of Market Ford A Ballad of Leaning Bridge At Wu-ch’ang I Hear a Report from the Frontier Yün-hsi Post Station Yüeh-yang Hearing a Flute Within the Walls of Yüeh-yang At Hua-jung: Mourning the Palaces of Ch’u Setting Out from the Capital City (II)

2.1a 2.11a 3.14b 4.3b 5.1a 5.5a 5.11a 5.11b 6.1a 6.4b 6.6a 7.2a 7.3a 7.4a 7.5b 7.6b 7.7b 8.5b 8.6a 7.8b 7.9b 7.10a 8.6b 8.7a 8.7a 8.7b 8.8a 9.3a 1.4a

1.6b 2.22a 1.4a 4.1a 5.6a 5.10a 6.17a 6.17a 6.19a 6.22b 6.23b 7.29b 7.30b 7.32a 7.33b 7.34a 7.35a 15.26a 15.26b 11.1b 11.2b 11.3a 24.14a 24.14b 24.15a 24.15a 24.16a 7.37b

1.6a 2.3a 1.3b 4.1a 5.2b 5.6a 6.1a 6.1a 6.2b 6.6a 6.7a 7.2a 7.3a 7.4a 5.1a 7.5b 7.6b 15.5a 15.5a 11.1a 11.2b 11.2b 24.1a 24.1b 24.1b 24.2a 24.2b 7.8b

p.193 p.480 p.90 p.82 p.263 p.258 p.261 p.320 p.255 p.251 p.253 p.74 p.78 p.78 p.81 p.82 p.95 p.93 p.96 p.68 p.71 p.80 p.67 p.68 p.69 p.70 p.71 p.130

Both complete and partial translations are included. Note that some titles have been shortened in both Chinese and English. The successive columns of page numbers refer to the Shen, Yung, Yüan, and Standard recensions, followed by page numbers in this book

APPENDIX FOUR: FINDING LIST FOR TRANSLATED WORKS BY HO CHING-MING

251:013 251:014 251:028 251:029 251:031 251:033 251:034 251:035 251:063 251:511 251:520 252:001 252:004 252:014 252:022 252:029 252:032 252:062 252:065 252:073 252:077 252:082 252:086 252:093 252:106 252:114 252:118 252:134 252:135 252:136 252:143 252:150

還至別業還至別業十三夜對月十四夜對月十六夜月十七月夜擣衣悼往擬古詩除夕述哀元日言志滹沱河上寄陰舍人東昌公哀辭夢何粹夫雨夜次清溪雨中和清溪除架寒懷沈子酬葛時秀十四夜登堅山寺懷李獻吉送柴先生之霍邱訪賈西谷西郊秋興登釣臺送柴先生送柴先生答望之得五清先生消息

Arriving Back at my Villa (I) Arriving Back at my Villa (II) Viewing the Moon on the Thirteenth Night of the Month Viewing the Moon on the Fourteenth Night The Moon on the Sixteenth Night The Moon on the Seventeenth Night (II) Fulling Clothing Mourning my Late Wife In Imitation of Old Poems (XIII) Telling of my Grief on the Last Night of the Year (III) Expressing my Intention on the First Day On the Hu-t’o River Sent to Drafter Yin Laments for Sir Tung-ch’ang (I) Dreaming of Ho Ts’ui-fu A Rainy Evening, Matching “Clear Creek” (I) In the Rain: to Match a Poem by “Clear Creek” Clearing the Trellises Winter Missing Master Shen Responding to Ko Shih-hsiu The Fourteenth Night Climbing up to Chien-shan Temple Missing Li Hsien-chi Saying Farewell to Mr. Ch’ai, Who is Going to Huo-ch’iu Visiting Chia Hsi-ku Autumn Inspiration in the Western Suburbs (IV) Climbing the Fishing Terrace (IV) Saying Farewell to Mr. Ch’ai (I) Saying Farewell to Mr. Ch’ai (II) Replying to Wang-chih (I) Moved by News of Master Wu-ch’ing (I)

APPENDIX FOUR

11.1a 11.1b 11.3b 11.5a 11.6b 11.7a 11.12b 11.13a 11.15a 11.15b 11.16b 11.17b 11.19a 12.1b 12.3a 12.3b 12.6a 12.6b 12.6b 12.7b 12.9a

9.4b 9.5a 9.8b 9.9a 9.9b 9.10a 9.10b 9.11a 9.16a

5.12a 5.12a 5.12a 5.12b 5.13a

5.1b 5.2b 5.3a 5.3b 5.6b 5.7a 5.7b 5.8b

1.4b 1.5a 1.6b 1.6b 1.7b 1.8a

7.39a 7.39b 8.2b 8.3a 8.3b 8.4a 8.4b 8.5a 8.11b 9.18a 9.20a 15.27a 15.27b 15.29b 15.31a 15.32b 15.33a 16.40b 16.41a 16.42b 16.43b 16.44b 16.45b 16.46b 16.49b 16.51a 16.51b 16.54b 16.54b 16.55a 17.1a 17.2a

7.10a 7.10b 8.2b 8.3a 8.3b 8.4a 8.4b 8.4b 8.11a 9.2a 9.33b 15.5b 15.6a 15.7b 15.9a 15.10a 15.10b 16.2a 16.2b 16.4a 16.4b 16.5a 16.6a 16.7a 16.9a 16.10a 16.10b 16.13a 16.13a 16.13b 17.1a 17.2a

p.147 p.148 p.166 p.168 p.175 p.177 p.264 p.179 p.242 p.228 p.220 p.133 p.151 p.130 p.156 p.162 p.163 p.180 p.181 p.183 p.198 p.199 p.200 p.197 p.215 p.206 p.207 p.210 p.215 p.215 p.213 p.216

660

252:154 252:505 252:506 252:507 252:526 252:536 252:541 252:546 252:547 252:569 252:570 252:574 252:578 252:584 252:585 252:591 252:597 252:602 253:003 253:505 254:004 254:028 254:703 271:001 271:007 271:008 271:016 271:030 271:031 271:502 271:901 272:002

得五清先生消息喜劉朝信過飲喜劉朝信過飲喜劉朝信過飲送別劉朝信袁惟學邀南園元日哭先人墓寒食清明過李生書舍登西巖寺訪堅山寺僧不遇懷西山過杜家庄獨坐梅曉起見雪淮陰侯悼馬詩雨後溪園即事雨後白雪曲邀劉文直不至大梁行聽琴篇觀打魚用東坡韻寄李空同冬雨嘆冬雨嘆醉歌行贈柴逸士別友悲秋歌還家口號

Moved by News of Master Wu-ch’ing (V) Happy That Liu Ch’ao-hsin has Dropped in for a Drink (I) Happy That Liu Ch’ao-hsin has Dropped in for a Drink (II) Happy That Liu Ch’ao-hsin has Dropped in for a Drink (III) Saying Farewell to Liu Ch’ao-hsin Yüan Wei-hsüeh has Invited me to his Southern Garden Weeping at the Graves of my Ancestors (I) Cold Food Grave-sweeping Day Visiting Master Li’s Study with Chi-sheng Climbing to the Temple on the West Face (I) Visiting Chien-shan Temple, I do not Find the Monk There Longing for the Western Hills Visiting Tu Family Manor Sitting Alone Plum Blossoms On Seeing Snow as I Get Up at Dawn The Marquis of Huai-yin Mourning my Horse Written in the Glen Garden after Rain After Rain (III) White Snow Song (III) I Invite Liu Wen-chih, But He Does not Come A Song of Ta-liang On Listening to Someone Play the Lute Watching the Fishermen: On Su Shih’s Rhymes Sent to Li K’ung-t’ung Sighing Over Winter Rains (II) Sighing Over Winter Rains (III) A Drunken Song: Presented to the Untrammeled Ch’ai Song: Taking Leave of a Friend and Grieving at Autumn Extemporised on Returning Home

FINDING LIST

8.24b 8.27b

5.17b

5.16a 5.16b

5.13b

5.14a

5.13a 5.15b 15.5b

17.3a 17.4a 17.4b 17.4b 17.8b 17.10b 17.11b 17.12b 17.12b 17.17a 17.17a 18.18a 18.19a 18.20a 18.20b 18.21b 18.23a 18.24a 23.5b 23.4b 28.34b 28.37b

17.2b 17.3b 17.3b 17.3b 17.6a 17.7a 17.8a 17.8b 17.8b 17.12b 17.12b 17.13a 18.1a 18.2a 18.2a 18.3a 18.4a 18.5a 23.5a 23.4a 28.1b 28.3b 28.6a 11.6a 11.9a 11.10a 11.13b 12.5b 12.5b 12.7a 10.1a 11.6b 10.4a 3.1b 11.10a 10.4b 3.2a 11.10b 10.8b 3.9b 11.14b 10.16b 12.23a 10.16b 12.23a 3.4a 12.24b (only in YK A.4a) 12.10b 9.43a 24.20b 24.6a

13.3a 13.6a

13.1b

12.9b

p.217 p.225 p.225 p.225 p.234 p.233 p.229 p.232 p.188 p.290 p.224 p.228 p.289 p.269 p.227 p.269 p.234 p.267 p.156 p.223 p.165 p.266 p.222 p.138 p.171 p.181 p.184 p.212 p.212 p.214 p.15 p.146

661

272:033 272:039 272:519 272:523 272:528 272:533 272:538 272:702 274:037 274:501 274:515 274:516 274:525 351:002 351:004 351:008 351:020 351:033 351:038 351:042 351:051 351:053 351:064 351:067 351:068 351:074 351:082 352:010 352:013 352:016 352:017 352:019

夜坐溪上春興登謝臺對雪懷劉朝信題葉邦重山水畫新色寺與諸生別暮春興懷追詠古跡別相餞諸友任宏器草亭任宏器草亭元夕懷都下之遊贈王文熙贈王文熙悼亡詠懷贈邊子贈望之鳴蟬贈君采效何遜作贈君采效何遜作飲酒贈時亮贈子言送崔氏贈君采冬夜過飲戴時亮簡以道九日夜過劉以正元夜孫世其席上送呂子

Sitting up at Night Beside the Creek Spring Meditation Climbing the Hsieh Terrace Looking at the Snow and Missing Liu Ch’ao-hsin Inscribed on a Landscape by Yeh Pang-chung Taking Leave of my Students at Hsin-seh Temple Late Spring Living at Leisure, I Write Poems on Historic Sites (II) Taking Leave of my Friends after a Farewell Party The Thatched Pavilion of Jen Hung-ch’i (III) The Thatched Pavilion of Jen Hung-ch’i (IV) Thinking of my Friends in the Capital (V) Presented to Wang Wen-hsi (II) Presented to Wang Wen-hsi (IV) Mourning the Death of My Wife (II) Singing of my Longings (I) Presented to Master Pien (III) Presented to Wang-chih (IV) A Buzzing Cicada Written in Imitation of Ho Hsün: Presented to Chün-ts’ai (II) Written in Imitation of Ho Hsün: Presented to Chün-ts’ai (IV) Drinking Presented to Shih-liang Presented to Tzu-yen Saying Farewell to Mr. Ts’ui (III) Presented to Chün-ts’ai On a Winter Night I Stop in for a Drink with Tai Shih-liang A Note to Yi-tao On the Evening of Double Nine I Visit Liu Yi-cheng At Sun Shih-ch’i’s Farewell Banquet for Ch’in-fu Saying Farewell to Master Lü

APPENDIX FOUR 24.28b 24.30a 25.37a 25.38a 25.39b 25.40b 25.42a

28.47b 29.49a 29.50b 29.50b 29.51b 14.1a 9.22b 14.1b 9.23a 14.2a 9.23b 14.4b 9.26b 14.7a 2.18a 9.29b 14.8a 2.19a 10.31b 14.9a 10.53b 10.33a 14.11b 2.21a 10.35b 14.12a 2.21a 10.36a 14.14a 2.23a 10.38a 14.15b 2.24b 10.39b 14.15b 2.24b 10.39b 14.17a 2.26a 10.41b 14.19a 2.27a 10.43b 16.2b 20.6a 16.3b 19.48b 16.4a 6.41b 19.35b 16.4a 6.42a 18.26b 16.4b 6.42a 18.27a

13.11b

12.17b 12.19a

24.13a 25.1a 25.6b 25.7a 25.8a 25.9b 25.10b 25.7b 28.14b 29.1a 29.2b 29.2b 29.3b 9.5b 9.5b 9.6b 9.9a 9.11b 10.1b 10.2b 10.5a 10.5a 10.7a 10.8a 10.8a 10.10a 10.11b 20.5a 19.11b 19.1a 18.7a 18.7b

p.201 p.207 p.191 p.231 p.235 p.187 p.292 p.192 p.269 p.482 p.203 p.203 p.183 p.61 p.61 p.25 p.125 p.293 p.319 p.324 p.363 p.363 p.437 p.451 p.304 p.467 p.477 p.439 p.440 p.436 p.345 p.352

662

352:022 352:035 352:052 352:057 352:059 352:070 352:072 352:078 352:086 352:093 352:113 352:114 352:118 352:124 352:134 352:156 352:158 352:160 352:163 352:177 352:189 352:190 352:192 352:196 352:201 352:207 352:214 352:222 352:227 352:229 352:237 352:248

得顧華玉全州書聞鴈將雪有懷呂子遷左給事中夜歸昌化寺送劉子遊西山寺入朝遇雨中秋無月雪簡鄭客齋宿大興隆寺晚出左掖和嚴太史謁泰陵再過玄明宮贈董侍御銅雀臺十月一日冬月歲晏送曹瑞卿謫尋甸與孫戴張納涼望湖亭得朝信惟學書送彭總制之西川張子純宅對月防寇慈恩寺一舫齋子純宅懷望之再遊郭氏園亭懷劉園諸友十六夜集侯汝立元日

Receiving a Letter from Ku Hua-yü in Ch’üan-chou 16.5a Hearing Geese 16.8a Feelings Just Before Snow 16.11a To Master Lü on his Promotion to Senior Supervising Secretary 16.12a Returning to Ch’ang-hua Temple in the Evening 16.12b Saying Farewell to Master Liu, Who is Going to Visit a Temple 16.14b I Encounter Rain on my Way to Court 16.15a A Moonless Night in Midautumn 16.16a Snow: Note to Sojourner Cheng 16.18a While Observing the Fast at Ta-hsing-lung Temple 16.19a On Leaving the Left Block in the Evening 16.23a To Match Academician Yen’s “Pilgrimage to T’ai-ling” (I) 16.23a On Visiting the Palace of Darkness and Light a Second Time 16.24a Presented to Censor Tung 17.1b Bronze Sparrow Terrace 17.3a First Day of the Tenth Month (I) 17.7b A Winter Moon 17.8a End of the Year 17.8a Saying Farewell to Ts’ao Jui-ch’ing, Exiled to Hsün-tien (I) 17.9a Enjoying the Cool with Masters Sun, Tai, and Chang 17.11b The Lake-Viewing Pavilion 17.14a On Receiving Letters from Ch’ao-hsin and Wei-hsüeh 17.14a Saying Farewell to Marshal P’eng, Going to Hsi-ch’uan (II) 17.14b Moon-Viewing at the Residence of Chang Tzu-ch’un 17.15a Bandit Defence 17.16a Tzu-en Temple 17.17b Single Skiff Studio 18.1a Missing Wang-chih at an Evening Gathering at Tzu-ch’un’s 18.2b On a Second Visit to the Kuo Family Garden Pavilion (I) 18.3b Missing my Friends from the Liu Garden 18.4a Gathering at Hou Ju-li’s for the Moon on the Sixteenth Night 18.5b The First Day of the Year 18.7b

FINDING LIST

6.30a 6.34a

5.17b 5.19b 5.21b 5.21b 5.22a 5.22b 5.23b 5.24b 6.26b 6.27b 6.28b

6.42b 6.44b 6.47b 6.48b 6.48b 7.1a 7.1b 7.2b 7.3b 7.5a 7.8a 7.8b 7.9a

20.4a 22.41b 21.34b 19.43b 20.8b 18.30a 21.34b 22.37a 19.49a 20.10b 20.2b 20.2b 20.11a 19.44b 21.31a 22.38b 22.36b 22.38b 18.34b 20.14a 21.29a 20.4a 19.36b 20.15a 21.33b 21.29b 21.29b 19.47a 20.17b 19.47b 21.19a 22.l37b

20.3b 22.5b 21.12b 19.9a 21.7a 18.9b 21.12b 22.1b 19.12a 20.8b 20.2a 20.2b 20.8b 19.8b 21.10a 22.3a 22.1a 22.3a 18.13a 20.11a 21.8b 20.3b 19.2a 20.11b 21.12a 21.8b 21.9a 19.10b 20.13b 19.10b 21.1a 22.2a

p.357 p.361 p.368 p.366 p.367 p.448 p.448 p.450 p.454 p.455 p.463 p.466 p.468 p.54 p.98 p.120 p.128 p.128 p.307 p.303 p.311 p.312 p.314 p.299 p.300 p.302 p.320 p.322 p.323 p.322 p.330 p.368

663

352:252 352:254 352:258 352:259 352:260 352:261 352:268 352:269 352:274 352:288 352:293 352:300 352:501 352:506 352:611 352:613 352:615 353:001 353:010 354:003 364:001 371:007 371:008 371:009 371:023 371:027 371:035 371:038 371:058 371:513 372:013 372:019

人日齋居答潘都諫郊壇張子言自浙來送范以載之南京夜過劉以道兄弟過城南寺清明日出城南寺送忽生還關中城東泛舟訪子容自荊州回得王子衡贛榆書過宗哲故宅關門入直懷李生園柬季升酬盧侍御見訪登定州塔友竹子衡在獄感懷雙梧草堂江南思寄曹毅之憶昔行柳絮歌明月篇畫菊歌吳偉飛泉畫圖歌醉歌贈子容晚過田水南有贈李大夫行贈商三送杜司訓之藍田送雷長史

On the Day of Man, Visiting Wang Te-cheng While Fasting 18.8b Responding to Chief Supervising Secretary P’an’s Work 18.9a At a Temple: Chang Tzu-yen has Come Back from Che 18.9b Saying Farewell to Fan Yi-tsai, Who is Going to Nanking 18.10a In the Evening, I Visit Liu Yi-tao and His Brother 18.10a Visiting the Ch’eng-nan Temple 18.10a On Ch’ing-ming Day, an Excursion to Ch’eng-nan Temple 18.11b Saying Farewell to Mr. Hu, Who is Returning to Kuan-chung 18.12a Boating East of the City 18.13a Visiting Tzu-jung After His Return from Ching-chou 18.15b On Receiving a Letter from Wang Tzu-heng in Kan-yü 18.16b On Visiting the Former Home of Tsung-che 18.18a The Barrier Gate Going on Duty Missing Master Li’s Garden: A Note to Chi-sheng Responding to Censor Lu’s Work during his Visit Climbing the Pagoda at Ting-chou Befriending Bamboo 20.1a I am Moved by the Imprisonment of Tzu-heng 20.5a At Double Phoenix-tree Cottage 20.7b Thoughts of the South: Sent to Ts’ao Yi-chih 20.10a Ballad of Bygone Days 14.22b Song of Willow Catkins 14.23a The Bright Moon 14.23b A Song of Painted Chrysanthemums 15.9b A Song on Wu Wei’s Painting, “The Waterfall” 15.11b A Drunken Song Presented to Tzu-jung, Going to Hunan 15.15a An Evening Visit to T’ien Shui-nan, Replying to his Poem 15.16a The Ballad of Master Li 15.25b Presented to Shang San On Saying Farewell to Instructor Tu, Who is Going to Lan-t’ien 19.4a Saying Farewell to Administrator Lei 19.5b

APPENDIX FOUR

3.18b 3.20a 3.23b 4.25b 4.36a 4.44a 9.34a 9.31b

8.22a

6.34b 6.35a 6.35b 6.35b 6.36a 6.36a 6.32a 6.32a 6.33a 6.38a 6.38b 6.39b 7.10a 7.10b

21.20b 20.3b 21.21a 21.21b 21.21b 21.21b 21.22b 19.39a 21.23a 21.24b 20.4b 21.25b 21.30a 20.2b 19.47b 20.16a 21.26b 23.12b 23.11a 28.40a 28.43a 13.36b 14.12b 14.12b 14.7b 14.9a 13.44b 13.45b 13.51a 12.33a 26.2a 26.3b

21.2a 20.3a 21.2b 21.2b 21.2b 21.3a 21.3b 19.4b 21.4a 21.5a 20.4a 21.6a 21.9a 20.2a 19.11a 20.12b 21.6b 23.11a 23.9b 28.6a 28.8b 13.2b 14.11b 14.12a 14.6b 14.8a 13.9b 13.10b 13.15a 12.15b 26.1b 26.3a

p.371 p.372 p.374 p.375 p.376 p.377 p.378 p.379 p.383 p.400 p.431 p.435 p.473 p.474 p.301 p.367 p.478 p.23 p.336 p.55 p.104 p.11 p.56 p.105 p.327 p.342 p.359 p.309 pp.19, 442 p.321 p.476 p.305

664

372:031 372:032 372:042 372:054 372:071 372:077 372:085 372:095 372:097 372:101 372:503 372:505 372:512 372:514 374:004 374:005 374:026 451:002 452:010 452:013 452:019 452:021 452:027 452:029 452:036 452:039 452:501 464:001 464:002 472:002 474:001

慈仁寺送良伯劉德徵上陵還得獻吉江西書送劉朝信之江山鰣魚送衛進士推武昌送以正歸其兄櫬送戴進士時亮懷寄邊子送陸舍人使吳下望雪亟谷贈許廷綸石磯輓范君山寫情送鄉人還送韓汝慶還關中姜子嶺至三岔磻溪東河三月晦日武關昭烈廟秦嶺謁韓祠簡汝濟士奇時濟拜將壇清明病臥兩河口盩厔清明日盩厔清明日登樓觀閣寶鷄縣

Saying Farewell to Liang-po at Tzu-jen Temple 19.8b Given a Poem by Liu Te-cheng, Returned from the Tombs 19.8b On Receiving a Letter from Hsien-chi in Kiangsi 19.11a Saying Farewell to Liu Ch’ao-hsin, Going to Chiang-shan 19.14a Bream 19.18b Saying Farewell to Graduate Wei, to Wu-ch’ang 19.20a Saying Farewell to Yi-cheng,Escorting his Brother’s Coffin 19.22a Saying Farewell to Metropolitan Graduate Tai Shih-liang 19.24b Sent with Affection to Master Pien 19.25a Saying Farewell to Drafter Lu 19.26a Watching Snow The Han-ku Cottage: Presented to Hsü T’ing-lun Stony Chute Mourning Fan Chün-shan and Matching His Final Poem Emotions 20.11a Saying Farewell to Someone from my District 20.11a Saying Farewell to Han Ju-ch’ing, Returning to Kuan-chung (II)20.13b From the Chiang-tzu Range I Reach San-ch’a 21.1b P’an-hsi 21.5b At East River on the Last Day of the Third Month 21.6a Wu-kuan Barrier 21.7b The Shrine to Radiant Ardour 21.8a In the Ch’in-ling Mountains I Visit the Shrine to Han 21.9a Lying Ill: A Note to Ju-chi, Shih-ch’i, and Shih-chi 21.9b The Altar Where the General was Honoured 21.10b Lying Ill at Grave-sweeping, I Hear Officials are on an Outing 21.11b Twin River Outlet At Chou-chih on the Grave-sweeping Festival Day (I) 21.14a At Chou-chih on the Grave-sweeping Festival Day (II) 21.14a On Climbing the Lou-kuan Pavilion (II) 21.12b Pao-chi County 21.14b

FINDING LIST

10.57a 2.27b 7.12b 7.13a 7.14a 7.14a 7.17b 7.16a 7.17a 7.18a 7.17b 10.53b 10.54a 9.49a 10.61b

9.42a

9.30b 9.31a

9.36a 9.36a 9.29a 9.30a 9.40a 9.30b

26.6b 26.6b 26.9a 26.12a 26.16b 27.18a 27.20a 27.29a 27.22b 27.23b 27.25b 27.26a 27.27b 27.28a 29.52b 29.52b 29.55a 10.44a 22.49b 22.47b 22.50b 22.50b 22.46b 22.44b 22.51b 22.46a 22.51b 28.43a 28.43b 27.30a 29.59b

26.5b 26.5b 26.7b 26.10a 26.13b 27.2a 27.3b 27.10b 27.5b 27.6a 27.7b 27.8a 27.9b 27.9b 29.5a 29.5a 29.7b 10.12a 22.11b 22.10b 22.12b 22.12b 22.9b 22.8a 22.9b 22.9 22.13b 28.8a 28.8a 27.11a 29.11b

p.332 p.340 p.357 p.373 p.383 p.433 p.441 p.459 p.465 p.27 p.294 p.460 p.365 p.362 p.56 p.57 p.360 p.509 p.507 p.508 p.511 p.516 p.523 p.525 p.526 p.530 p.531 p.501 p.501 p.503 p.507

665

內:024 書:001 書:005 書:501 書:502 序:001 序:004 序:007 序:501 序:503 序:509 序:701 銘:101 銘:102 雜:001 雜:005 雜:501 何:001 何:012

劉子詩序與侯都閫書與李空同論詩書上冢宰許公書上楊邃菴書王右丞詩集序贈清溪子序海叟集序漢魏詩集序學約古文序鄉射禮直節序例武功縣志序姪渭女壙磚銘姪岳州壙誌銘師問嗤盜文應詔陳言治安疏嚴治心迹

Preface to the Poems of Master Liu 22.18a Letter to Commissioner Hou 23.1a A Letter to Master Li K’ung-t’ung on the Subject of Poetry 23.8a Letter to Sir Hsü, Minister of Personnel Letter to Yang Sui-an Preface to the Collected Poems of Vice Minister Wang 23.14b Essay Presented to Master Clear Creek 23.18a Preface to the Hai-sou Collection 23.21b Preface to the Han-Wei Shih-chi Preface to the “Ancient Prose for the Curriculum” Concise Preface and Procedures of the Communal Archery Rite Preface to the Gazetteer of Wu-kung County Inscription for the Tomb Marker of my Niece Wei-nü 25.8b Inscription for the Tomb Marker of my Nephew Yüeh-chou 25.9a An Inquiry into Teaching 23.12b Laughing at the Thief 26.4a A Disquisition on Governance for Stability On Strict Government The Mind and Visible Traces

APPENDIX FOUR 32.40a 31.16b p.462 30.10a 32.9b p.89 30.17b 32.16a p.401 32.3b p.126 30.5b 32.5a p.333 32.37b 34.1b p.236 33.55b 35.2b p.160 32.38b 34.2b p.237 32.37a 34.1a p.461 32.45a 34.7a p.490 32.50a 34.11b p.512 34.8a p.492 35.44a 36.25a p.154 35.44b 36.25b p.155 31.30b 33.7b p.487 37.69b 38.6b p.87 30.1a 32.1a p.347 30.1a p.273 30.22b p.276

666

BIBLIOGRAPHY See also “Abbreviations, Short Titles, and Other Citation Conventions,” appended to the Preface. Note that historical works, compendia, and anthologies are in most cases alphabetised by title rather than by the names of their compilers. Aoki Masaru 靑木正兒. Shina Bungaku Shisōshi 支那文學思想史 (A History of Chinese Literary Thought). In Aoki Masaru Zenshū 全集 (Complete Works of Aoki Masaru) 1:1-253. Tokyo: Shunshūsha, 1969. Birch, Cyril, ed. Anthology of Chinese Literature: from Early Times to the Fourteenth Century. New York: Grove Press, 1965. ——. “English and Chinese Metres in Hsü Chih-mo.” Asia Major new series, 8 (1961): 258-93. Birrell, Anne. New Songs from a Jade Terrace. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986. John L. Bishop, ed. Studies of Governmental Institutions in Chinese History. HarvardYenching Institute Studies Series 23. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968. Blandford, Yumiko F. “Discovery of Lost Eloquence: New Insight from the Mawangdui ‘Zhanguo zonghengjia shu’.” JAOS 114.1 (1994): 77-82. Bloom, Irene. “On the ‘Abstraction’ of Ming Thought: Some Concrete Evidence from the Philosophy of Lo Ch’in-shun.” In Principle and Practicality: Essays in NeoConfucianism and Practical Learning, edited by Wm. Theodore de Bary and Irene Bloom, pp.69-125. New York: Columbia University Press, 1979. Brook, Timothy. Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998. ——, Jérôme Bourgon, and Gregory Blue. Death by a Thousand Cuts. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008. Bryant, Daniel. “Chinese Poetry and Poetics During the Low Ming (1390-1480).” Abstract in Proceedings of the Thirty-first International Congress of Human Sciences in Asia and North Africa, pp.521-22. Tokyo: The Tōhō Gakkai, 1984. ——. “Saying Farewell to Yin Yün-hsiao.” Paper presented at the 1998 meeting of the American Oriental Society, Western Branch. ——. “The High T’ang Poet Meng Hao-jan: Studies in Biography and Textual History.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of British Columbia, 1977. ——. “The ‘Hsieh Hsin En’ Fragments by Li Yü and his Lyric to the Melody ‘Lin Chiang Hsien.’” CLEAR 7 (1985): 37-66. ——. “The Ta-fu Yi-kao: A New Source for the Life and Works of Ho Ching-ming.” Paper presented at the 2002 meeting of the American Oriental Society, Western Branch. ——. “The Use of Pinyin.” JAS 40 (1980): 90-93. ——. “The Why and Why Not of Pinyin—A Response to DeFrancis.” Journal of the Chinese Language Teachers’ Association 27 (1992): 111-14. ——. See also under Pai Jun-te. Bush, Susan, and Christian Murck, eds. Theories of the Arts in China. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983. Cahill, James. Parting at the Shore: Chinese Painting of the Early and Middle Ming Dynasty 1368-1580. New York: Weatherhill, 1978. The Cambridge History of China. Edited by Denis Twitchett and John K. Fairbank. Vols.7-8, The Ming Dynasty, 1368-1644, parts 1-2, edited by Denis Twitchett and

668

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Frederick W. Mote. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988, 1998. Carlitz, Katherine. “Shrines, Governing Class Identity, and the Cult of Widow Fidelity in Mid-Ming Jiangnan.” JAS 56 (1997): 612-40. Chan, David. The Usurpation of the Prince of Yen 1398-1492, San Franciso: Chinese Materials Center, 1975. Chan-kuo Ts’e Chu-tzu So-yin 戰國策逐字索引 (Single Word Concordance to the Strategems of the Warring States). Taipei: Taiwan Shang-wu, 1992. Chang Chang-fa 張長法. “Wang Shang-chiung chi ch’i Wen-hsüeh Ch’uang-tso” 王尚絅及其文學創作 (Wang Shang-chiung and his Literary Creation). Chengchow Ta-hsüeh Hsüeh-pao 1986.4:65-71. Chang Chih-tao 張治道. Chang T’ai-wei Shih-chi 張太微詩集 (Collected Poems of Chang T’ai-wei). Chia-ching edition. Chang Han 張含. Chang Yü-kuang Shih-wen Hsüan 張愈光詩文選 (Selected Poetry and Prose of Chang Yü-kuang). Yunnan Ts’ung-shu; repr. TSCC hsü-pien, vol.115. Shanghai:Shanghai Shu-tien, 1994. Chang Heng Shih-wen Chi Chiao-chu 張衡詩文集校注 (Poetry and Prose of Chang Heng, Collated and Annotated). Compiled by Chang Chen-tse 張震澤. Shanghai: Shanghai Ku-chi, 1986. Chang Hsiang 張相 . Shih Tz’u Ch’ü Yü-tz’u Hui-shih 詩詞曲語辭匯釋 (Compendium of Explanations of Poetic Vocabulary). Peking: Chung-hua, 1953. Chang, T’ien-tse. Sino-Portuguese Trade from 1514 to 1644. 1933; reprint Leyden, E.J. Brill, 1969. Chang Ting-ssu 張鼎思. Lang-yeh Tai-tsui Pien 琅邪代醉編 (A Compilation from Lang-yeh to Take the Place of Drunkenness). 1597; repr. TM 3:129-30. Tainan: Chuang-yen Wen-hua, 1995. Chang Tsai Chi 張載集 (Collected Works of Chang Tsai). Edited by Chang Hsi-ch’en 章錫琛. Peking: Chung-hua, 1978. Chang Wei-hua 張維華. “P’u-t’ao-ya Ti-yi-ts’u Lai Hua Shih-ch’en Shih-chi K’ao” 葡萄牙第一次來華使臣事蹟考 (Study of the Emissaries in Portugal’s First Visit to China). Shih-hsüeh Nien-pao 1.5 (1933): 103-12. Chang Wen-lin 張文麟 . Tuan-yen Kung Nien-p’u 端巖公年譜 (Chronological Register of Sir Tuan-yen). 1808 ed.; rpt. Hsin-pien Chung-kuo Ming-jen Nien-p’u Chi-ch’eng, Taipei: Shang-wu, 1978. Chao Chung-nan 趙中男. “Liu Chin Luan-cheng Shih-ch’i te Li Tung-yang” 劉瑾亂政時期的李東陽 (Li Tung-yang During the Period of Liu Chin’s Misrule). Shihhsüeh Chi-k’an 1989.4:26-30. Chao, Florence C. Y. Yeh (see Yeh Chia-ying) Chao Ping-wen 趙秉文. Hsien-hsien Lao-jen Fu-shui Wen-chi 閑閑老人滏水文集 (Collected Works of the Idle Old Man of the River Fu). SPTK. [Chia-ching] Ch’ao-chou Fu Chih 潮州府志 (Gazetteer of Ch’ao-chou Prefecture). Cheang, Alice W. “Poetry and Transformation: Su Shih’s Mirage.” HJAS 58.1 (1998): 147-82. Ch’en Cheng-hung 陳正宏. Shen Chou Nien-p’u 沈周年譜 (Chronological Biography of Shen Chou). Shanghai: Fu-tan University Press, 1993. Ch’en Hsien-chang 陳獻章. Pai-sha-tzu 白沙子 (Master White Sands). SPTK. Ch’en Hsüeh-lin [Chan Hok-lam] 陳學霖. “Hsü Yi-k’ui Hsing-ssu Pien-wu chien Lun Ming-ch’u Wen-tzu-yü Shih-liao” 徐一夔刑死辨誣兼論明初文字獄史料 (Correcting Errors Concerning the Execution of Hsü Yi-k’ui and Discussing the Sources for the Literary Persecutions of the Early Ming). Journal of Oriental Studies 15 (1978): 77-84; English abstract, pp. 46-47. Ch’en Hung 陳紅. “Hsü Chen-ch’ing te Chuan-shu chi ch’i Pan-pen T’an” 徐禎卿的

BIBLIOGRAPHY

669

撰述及其版本談 (Remarks on the Works of Hsü Chen-ch’ing and their Published Editions). Szechwan Shih-fan Ta-hsüeh Hsüeh-pao 1991.1: 42-47; repr. Fu-yin Pao-k’an Tzu-liao: Chung-kuo Ku-tai, Chin-tai Wen-hsüeh Yen-chiu 1991.6: 190-95. Ch’en Kuo-ch’iu 陳國球. “Chien-lun T’ang Shih Hsüan-pen yü Ming-tai Fu-ku Shihshuo” 簡論唐詩選本與明代復古詩說 (Brief Discussion of Anthologies of T’ang Poetry and Ming Archaist Poetics). Wen-hsüeh P’ing-lun 1993.2:111-121. ——. T’ang Shih te Ch’uan-ch’eng: Ming-tai Fu-ku Shih-lun Yen-chiu 唐詩的傳承明代復古詩論研究 (The Adoption of T’ang Poetry: Studies in Ming Archaist Poetics). Taipei: Taiwan Hsüeh-sheng, 1990. Ch’en Shu 陳書 (History of the Ch’en). Compiled by Yao Ssu-lien 姚思廉. Peking: Chung-hua, 1972. Ch’en Shu-lu 陳書錄. Ming-tai Ch’ien-hou Ch’i-tzu Yen-chiu 明代前後七子研究 (Study of the Former and Later Seven Masters of the Ming). Nan-ch’ang: Kiangsi Jen-ming, 1994. ——. Ming-tai Shih-wen Yen-pien Shih 明代詩文演變史 (Evolution of Ming Dynasty Poetry and Prose). Nanking: Kiangsu Chiao-yü, 1996. ——. “Shih Ku Hui Hsin, Pieh Ch’u Hsin Yi: Ho Ching-ming ‘Ch’iu Chiang Tz’u’ Shang-hsi” 師古會心別出新意:何景明《秋江詞》賞析 (Learning from the Ancients by Sympathetic Intuition, Producing One’s Own New Ideas: An Appreciation of Ho Ching-ming’s ‘Autumn River Song’). Ku-tien Wen-hsüeh Chih-shih 1995.6:21-24. Ch’en Te-yün 陳德芸. “Pa-ku-wen Hsüeh” 八股文學 (Study of the Eight-legged Essay). Ling-nan Hsüeh-pao 6.4 (1941): 17-49. Ch’en Yi 陳沂. Chü-hsü Chi 拘虛集 (Chü-hsü Collection). Chia-ching edition; repr. Peking T’u-shu-kuan Ku-chi Shan-pen Ts’ung-k’an, vol.102. Peking: Shu-mu Wen-hsien, 1988. ——. Chü-hsü Shih-t’an 拘虛詩談 (Chü-hsü’s Remarks on Poetry). Chia-ching edition; repr. Peking T’u-shu-kuan Shan-pen Ts’ung-k’an, vol.102, Peking: Shumu Wen-hsien, 1988. Also in Ssu-ming Ts’ung-shu, ssu-chi. ——. Shih-t’ing Wen-chi 石亭文集 (Collected Literary Works from the Stone Pavilion). Edition with 1565 preface in the Sonkeikaku Bunko. Cheng Chen-to 鄭振鐸. [Ch’a-t’u-pen] Chung-kuo Wen-hsüeh Shih 插圖本中國文學史 (History of Chinese Literature, Illustrated Edition). 1931; repr. Hong Kong: Shang-wu, 1961. Cheng Pang-chen 鄭邦鎮. “Ming-tai Ch’ien-ch’i Pa-ku-wen Hsing-kou Yen-chiu” 明代前期八股文形構研究 (Study of the Structure of Eight-legged Essays in the Early Ming). Ph.D. dissertation, Taiwan National University, 1987. Cheng Shan-fu 鄭善夫. Cheng Shih 鄭詩 (Cheng’s Poetry). Chia-ching edition. ——. Cheng Wen 鄭文 (Cheng’s Prose). Chia-ching edition. ——. Shao-ku Chi 少谷集 (Collected Works from Shao-ku). SKCS. Ch’eng Hao 程顥 and Ch’eng Yi 程頤. Erh Ch’eng Chi 二程集 (Collected Works of the Two Ch’eng). Peking: Chung-hua, 1981. Cherniack, Susan. “Three Great Poems by Dù Fù: ‘Five Hundred Words: A Song of my Thoughts on Traveling from the Capital to Fèngxiān,’ ‘Journey North,’ and ‘One Hundred Rhymes: A Song of my Thoughts on an Autumn Day in Kuífŭ, Respectfully Sent to Director Zhèng and Adviser to the Heir Apparent Lĭ’.” Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1988. Chi Jui-li 紀銳利 . “Pien Kung Nien-p’u Chien-pien” 邊貢年譜簡編 (Concise Chronology of Pien Kung). Liao-ch’eng Shih-fan Hsüeh-yüan Hsüeh-pao 2001.1:88-99, 39.

670

BIBLIOGRAPHY

——. “Pien Kung te Shih-hsüeh Li-lun yü Ch’uang-tso” 邊貢的詩學理論與創作 (Pien Kung’s Poetics and Creation). Tung-yüeh Lun-ts’ung 22.5 (2001), pp.11417. Chiang Shan-ch’ing 蔣山卿. Chiang Nan-ling Chi 蔣南泠集 (Collected Works of Chiang of Nan-ling). Chia-ching edition. [T’ien-ch’i] Chiang-shan Hsien Chih 江山縣志 (Gazetteer of Chiang-shan County). Chiang Yen 江淹. Chiang Wen-t’ung Chi 江文通集 (Collected Works of Chiang Wen-t’ung). SPTK. Chiang Ying-k’o 江盈科. Hsüeh-t’ao Shih-p’ing 雪濤詩評 (Snowy Wave Comments on Poetry). Shuo-fu Hsü 說郛續. Shuo-fu San-chung 說郛三種, 1988, pp.162833. Shanghai: Shanghai Ku-chi. Chiao Wen-pin 焦文彬. “Han Pang-ching Chien-lun” 韓邦靖簡論 (Short Discussion of Han Pang-ching). Shensi Shih-ta Hsüeh-pao 1987.1:59-65. Chien Chin-sung 簡錦松. “Li Ho Shih-lun Yen-chiu” 李何詩論研究 (Study of the Poetics of Li Meng-yang and Ho Ching-ming). M.A. thesis, National Taiwan Unversity, 1980. ——. Ming-tai Wen-hsüeh P’i-p’ing Yen-chiu 明代文學批評研究 (A Study of Ming Dynasty Literary Criticism). Taipei: Hsüeh-sheng, 1989. Ch’ien Chen-min 錢振民 . Li Tung-yang Nien-p’u 李東陽年譜 (Chronological Biography of Li Tung-yang). Shanghai: Fu-tan University, 1995. Ch’ien Chung-shu 錢鍾書. T’an-yi Lu 談藝錄 (Record of Remarks on the Arts). Revised edition. Peking: Chung-hua, 1984. Ch’ien Ch’ien-yi 錢謙益. Lieh-ch’ao Shih-chi 列朝詩集 (Collected Poems from Successive Reigns). Shih-ko Tsung-chi Ts’ung-k’an, Ming Shih Chüan. Shanghai: San-lien, 1989. ——. Lieh-ch’ao Shih-chi Hsiao-chuan 小傳 (Short Biographies from the Collected Poems from Successive Reigns). Peking: Chung-hua, 1959. Ch’ien Ming 錢明. “Wang Yang-ming yü Ming-tai Wen-jen te Chiao-yi” 王陽明與明代文人的交誼 (Wang Yang-ming’s Friendships with Ming Dynasty Literati). Chung-hua Wen-hua Lun-t’an 2004.1:88-94. Chin-hsien Pei-yi 今獻備遺 (Complete Gathering of Modern Contributors). Compiled by Hsiang Tu-shou 項篤壽. SKCS. Chin Jung-ch’üan 金榮權. “Chien-kuo Yi-lai Ho Ching-ming Yen-chiu Shu-p’ing” 建國以來何景明研究述評 (Critical Account of Research on Ho Ching-ming Since 1949). Yin-tu Hsüeh-k’an 1999.4: 77-80. ——. “Ho Ching-ming Nien-p’u Hsin-pien” 何景明年譜新編 (Newly Compiled Chronological Biography of Ho Ching-ming). Hsin-yang Shih-fan Hsüeh-yüan Hsüeh-pao 1995.1: 98-102. Chiu T’ang Shu 舊唐書 (Older History of the T’ang). Compiled by Liu Hsü 劉昫 et al. Peking: Chung-hua, 1975. Ch’oe Pu (see under Meskill, John) Chou Chih-p’ing 周質平. Kung-an P’ai te Wen-hsüeh P’i-p’ing chi ch’i Fa-chan: Chien Lun Yüan Hung-tao te Sheng-p’ing chi ch’i Feng-ko 公安派的文學批評及其發展兼論袁宏道的生平及其風格 (The Literary Criticism of the Kung-an School and Its Development: With an Additional Discussion of the Life and Style of Yüan Hung-tao). Taipei: Taiwan Shang-wu, 1986. ——. Yüan Hung-tao and the Kung-an School. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Chou, Eva Shan. Reconsidering Tu Fu: Literary Greatness and Cultural Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Chou T’ing-yung 周廷用. Pa-ya Chi 八厓集 (Eight Banks Collection). 1531 edition.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

671

Chou Yi Yin-te 周易引得 (Index to the Changes of Chou). Harvard-Yenching Institute Sinological Index Series, Supplement No. 10. Repr. Taipei: Chinese Materials and Research Aids Service Center, 1966. Chou Yin-pin 周寅賓. “Lun Li Tung-yang te ‘Ni-ku Yüeh-fu’” 論李東陽的《擬古樂府》 (On Li Tung-yang’s ‘Imitation Ancient Yüeh-fu’). Ch’uan-shan Hsüeh-pao 10 (1988.1):110-16. Ch’ou-hai T’u-pien 籌海圖編 (Compilation of Charts for Maritime Defense). Compiled by Cheng Jo-tseng 鄭若曾. SKCS. Chu An-hsien 朱安形. “Li K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Nien-piao” 李空同先生年表 (Chronological Table of Master Li K’ung-t’ung). K’ung-t’ung-tzu Chi 空同子集 (Collected Works of Master K’ung-t’ung), edited by Teng Yün-hsiao 鄧雲霄, edition in 66 chüan. Chu Hsi 朱熹. Ssu-shu Huo-wen 四書或問 (Questions on the Four Books). Shanghai: Shanghai Ku-chi, 2001. Chu Jung-chih 朱榮智. Yüan-tai Wen-hsüeh P’i-p’ing chih Yen-chiu 元代文學批評之研究 (Study of Yüan Dynasty Literary Criticism). Taipei: Lien-ching, 1982. Chu Tung-jun 朱東潤. “Ho Ching-ming P’i-p’ing-lun Shu-p’ing” 何景明批評論述評 (Account of Ho Ching-ming’s Critical Theory). Wu-han Ta-hsüeh Wen-che Chik’an 1 (1930): 599-610; repr. in Chu Tung-jun, Chung-kuo Wen-hsüeh P’i-p’ing Lun-chi 中國文學批評論集 (Collected Articles on Chinese Literary Criticism), pp. 65-75. 1941; repr. Hong Kong: T’ai-p’ing, 1952. ——. See also under Mei Yao-ch’en. Chu Tzu-ts’ui (Tchou Tse Tsoei) 朱滋萃. “Pa-ku-wen Yen-chiu” 八股文研究 (Study of the Eight-legged Essay). Chung-Fa Ta-hsüeh Yüeh-k’an 7.1 (1935): 1-35. Chu Ying-teng 朱應登. Ling-hsi Hsien-sheng Chi 凌谿先生集 (Collected works of Master Ling-hsi). Chia-ching edition; repr. TM 4:51. Tainan: Chuang-yen Wenhua, 1997. Chu Yün-ming 祝允明. Huai-hsing T’ang Chi 懷星堂集 (Cherishing the Stars Hall Collection). SKCS. Ch’u Tz’u Pu-chu 楚辭補注. Compiled by Hung Hsing-tsu 洪興祖. SPPY; repr. Soji Sakuin 楚辭索引. Edited by Takeji Sadao 竹治貞夫. Kyoto: Chūbun, 1972. Chuang-tzu Yin-te 莊子引得 (Index to the Chuang-tzu), Harvard-Yenching Institute Sinological Index Series, Supplement No. 20. 1947; repr. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1956. Chung-kuo Ku-chi Shan-pen Shu-mu, Shih-pu 中國古籍善本書目史部 (Union List of Rare Old Chinese Texts, History Section). Shanghai: Shanghai Ku-chi, 1993. Chung-kuo Li-tai Wen-lun Hsüan 中國歷代文論選 (Selection of Chinese Literary Theories Through the Ages). Compiled by Kuo Shao-yü 郭紹虞 et al. Shanghai: Shanghai Ku-chi, 1980. Ch’üan Ming Tz’u 全明詞 (Complete Ming Song Lyrics). Compiled by Jao Tsung-yi 饒宗頤 and Chang Chang 張璋. Peking: Chung-hua, 2004. Ch’üan Sung Tz’u 全宋詞 (Complete Sung Song Lyrics). Compiled by T’ang Kuichang 唐圭章. Peking: Chung-hua, 1965. Ch’üan T’ang Shih 全唐詩 (Complete T’ang Poems). Peking: Chung-hua, 1960. Ch’üan T’ang Wen 全唐文 (Complete T’ang Prose). Repr. Taipei: Wen-yu, 1972. Ch’un-ch’iu Ching-chuan Yin-te 春秋經傳引得 (Index to the Spring and Autumn Annals Classic and Commentaries), Harvard Yenching Institute Sinological Index Series, Supplement No. 11. rpt Taipei: Chinese Materials and Research Aids Service Center, 1966. Crump, James I., Jr. Chan-Kuo Ts’e. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970. Dardess, John W. Confucianism and Autocracy: Professional Elites in the Founding

672

BIBLIOGRAPHY

of the Ming Dynasty. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983. ——. Conquerors and Confucians: Aspects of Political Change in Late Yüan China. New York: Columbia University Press, 1973. Davis, A. R. Tu Fu. Boston: Twayne, 1971. De Bary, Wm. Theodore. “Individualism and Humanism in Late Ming Thought.” In Wm. Theodore de Bary, ed., Self and Society in Ming Thought; pp.145-247. New York: Columbia University Press, 1970. ——. Neo-Confucian Orthodoxy and the Learning of the Mind-and-Heart. New York: Columbia University Press, 1981. ——, et al., eds. Self and Society in Ming Thought. New York: Columbia University Press, 1970. ——, ed. The Unfolding of Neo-Confucianism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1975. —— and Irene Bloom, eds. Principle and Practicality: Essays in Neo-Confucianism and Practical Learning. New York: Columbia University Press, 1979. Debon, Gunther, trans. Ts’ang-lang’s Gespräche über die Dichtung: Ein Beitrag zur chinesishen Poetik. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1962. Demiéville, Paul, ed. Anthologie de la poésie chinoise classique. Paris: Gallimard, 1962. ——, “[review of] Gunther Debon, Ts’ang-lang’s Gespräche über die Dichtung.” TP 49 (1961-62): 463-71. Dictionary of Ming Biography. L. C. Goodrich and Chaoying Fang, eds. New York: Columbia University Press, 1976 Ditmanson, Peter. “The Yongle Reign and the Transformation of Daoxue.” Ming Studies 39 (1998): 7-31. Doleželová-Velingerová, Milena. “Literary Historiography in Early TwentiethCentury China (1904-1928): Constructions of Cultural Memory.” In The Appropriation of Cultural Capital: China’s May Fourth Project. Edited by Milena Doleželová-Velingerová and Oldřich Král, with Graham Sanders, Assistant Editor. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2001, pp.123-66. —— and Oldřich Král, with Graham Sanders, Assistant Editor. The Appropriation of Cultural Capital: China’s May Fourth Project. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2001. Dreyer, Edward L. Early Ming China 1355-1435. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1982. ——. “[Review of] Gavin Menzies, 1421: The Year China Discovered America. Ming Studies 50 (2004): 131-38. Duyvendak, J.J.L. “The True Dates of the Chinese Maritime Expeditions in the Early Fifteenth Century.” TP Ser.2, Vol.34 (1938), pp.341-412. Elman, Benjamin A. A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000. Endicott-West, Elizabeth. “[Review of] Dardess, Conquerors and Confucians.” Ming Studies 9 (1979): 37-40. Fan P’eng 樊鵬. Fan Nan-ming Chi 樊南溟集 (Collected Works of Fan Nan-ming). Sheng-Ming Pai-chia Shih; repr. TM 4:305. Tainan: Chuang-yen Wen-hua, 1997. ——. Fan Shih Chi 樊氏集 (Collected Works of Mr. Fan). Chia-ching edition. Fang Chih-yüan 方志遠. “Ming-tai te Chen-shou Chung-kuan Chih-tu” 明代的鎮守中官制度 (The Institution of Eunuch Grand Defenders in the Ming Period). Wen Shih 40 (1994):131-45. Fang Hao 方豪. T’ang-ling Wen-chi 棠陵文集 (Collected Literary Works of T’angling). Chia-ching edition

BIBLIOGRAPHY

673

Fang Hsiao-ju 方孝孺 . Hsün-chih Chai Chi 遜志齋集 (Modest Intent Studio Collection). SPTK. Farmer, Edward L. Zhu Yuanzhang and Early Ming Legislation: The Reordering of Chinese Society Following the Era of Mongol Rule. Sinica Leidensia 34. Leiden: E.J.Brill, 1995. [Ch’ien-lung] Feng-hsiang Fu Chih 鳳翔府志 (Gazetteer of Feng-hsiang Prefecture). 1766; repr. Taipei: Ch’eng-wen, 1970. Feng Hsiao-lu 馮小祿. Ming-tai Shih-wen Lun-cheng Yen-chiu 明代詩文論爭研究 (Study of Literary Controversies in Ming Literature). Kunming: Yunnan Jen-min, 2006. Franke, Wolfgang. An Introduction to the Sources of Ming History. Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press, 1968. Frankel, Hans. The Flowering Plum and the Palace Lady. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976. Frodsham, J. D. An Anthology of Chinese Verse: Han Wei Chin and the Northern and Southern Dynasties. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967. ——. The Murmuring Stream: The Life and Works of the Chinese Nature Poet Hsieh Ling-yün (385-433), Duke of K’ang-lo. Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press, 1967. ——. The Poems of Li Ho. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970. Fryslie, Matthew. “Inside Out: The Rhetoric of Derision in the Mingshi ‘Yandang zhuan.’” Ming Studies 51-52 (2005): 94-122. Fu K’ai-p’ei 付開沛. “Ho Ta-fu Nien-p’u” 何大復年譜 (Chronological Biography of Ho Ta-fu). Hsin-yang Shih-fan Hsüeh-yüan Hsüeh-pao 1982.2: 115-118, 1982.3: 34-57. Fu T’ung-ch’in 傅同欽 and K’o Ch’eng 克晟. “Ming-tai Ta T’ai-chien Liu Chin” 明代大太監劉瑾 (The Great Ming Eunuch Liu Chin). Ku-kung Po-wu-yüan Yüank’an 1980:2.25-28, 71. Fu Ying 付瑛. “Kuan-yü Ho Ching-ming te Liang-p’ien Yi-wen” 關于何景明的兩篇遺文 (On Two Uncollected Works by Ho Ching-ming). Chung-chou Hsüeh-k’an 1997 suppl., pp.94-96. ——. “Kuan-yü ‘Ta-fu Chi’ te Pan-pen” 關于大復集的版本 (On the Printed Editions of the Ta-fu Chi) Yin-tu Hsüeh-k’an 2004.1: 78-81. ——. “Li Meng-yang yü Ho Ching-ming Lun-cheng Shih-chien Ch’u-t’an” 李夢陽與何景明論爭時間初探 (A First Investigation of the Date of the Controversy Between Li Meng-yang and Ho Ching-ming). Hsin-yang Shih-yüan Hsüeh-pao 1985.2:.51-54. ——. “T’an Ho Ching-ming te Yi-shou Yi-wen” 談何景明的一首遺文. Yin-tu Hsüeh-k’an 1998.1: 65-66 Fukumoto Masakazu 福本雅一. “Hakuen Shi Kō” 白燕詩考 (A Study of White Swallows Poems). Tezukayama Gakuen Tanki Daigaku Kenkyū Nempō 28 (1980):54-82. Geiss, James. “Peking Under the Ming (1368-1644).” Ph.D. Dissertation, Princeton University, 1979. ——. “The Cheng-te Reign, 1506-1521.” In The Cambridge History of China, volume 7, the Ming Dynasty 1368-1644, Part 1. Edited by Frederic W. Mote and Denis Twitchett, pp.403-39. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. ——. “The Leopard Quarter During the Cheng-te Reign.” Ming Studies 24 (1987):138. Chinese translation as Ko Chieh-min 蓋杰民. “Ming Wu-tsung yü Pao-fang” 明武宗與豹房 (Ming Wu-tsung and the Leopard Quarter). Ku-kung Po-wu-yüan Yüan-k’an 1988.3 (41): 12-19.

674

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Graham, A. C. The Book of Lieh-tzu. London: John Murray, 1960. ——. Chuang-tzu: The Inner Chapters. London: Unwin, 1981. ——. Poems of the Late T’ang. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965. Grimm, Tilemann. “Ming Education Intendants.” In Charles O. Hucker, ed., Chinese Government in Ming Times, pp.129-47. New York: Columbia University Press, 1969. Guisso, R. W. L. Wu Tse-t’ien and the Politics of Legitimation in T’ang China, Western Washington University Program in East Asian Studies Occasional Papers 11. Bellingham: Western Washington University, 1978. Haaheim, Allen. “Seas of Generic Change: The Rhapsody in the Late Six Dynasties.” M.A thesis, University of Victoria, 2005. [Chia-ch’ing] Han-chung Fu Chih 漢中府志 (Gazetteer of Han-chung Prefecture). Han-fei-tzu Chi-chieh 韓非子集解 (Collected Explications of the Han-fei-tzu). Compiled by Wang Hsien-shen 王先慎. Peking: Chung-hua, 1998. Han Pang-ch’i 韓邦奇. Yüan Lo Chi 苑洛集 (Garden on the Lo Collection). 1552 edition. ——. Yüan Lo Chi. SKCS. Han Pang-ching 韓邦靖 . Wu-ch’üan Han Ju-ch’ing Shih-chi 五泉韓汝慶詩集 (Collected Poems of Han Ju-ch’ing of Five Streams). 1537; repr. TM 4:62. Tainan: Chuang-yen Wen-hua, 1997. Han Shih Wai-chuan 韓詩外傳 (Outer Commentary on the Han Songs). SKCS. Han Shih Wai-chuan. SPTK. Han Shu 漢書 (History of the Han). Pan Ku 班固. Peking: Chung-hua, 1962. Han Wu Ku-shih 漢武故事 (Stories of The Martial [Emperor of] Han). attrib. Pan Ku 班固. SKCS. Han Wu-ti Nei-chuan 漢武帝內傳 (Inside Biography of Emperor Wu of the Han). attrib. Pan Ku. SKCS. Hang Huai 杭淮. Shuang-hsi Chi 雙溪集 (The Paired Stream Collection). SKCS. Hawkes, David. A Little Primer of Tu Fu. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967. ——. Songs of the South. London: Oxford University Press, 1959. ——. Songs of the South. Second Edition. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985. Herman, John E. “Empire in the Southwest: Early Qing Reforms to the Native Chieftain System.” JAS 65 (1997): 47-74. Hightower, J.R. “Allusion in the Poetry of T’ao Ch’ien.” HJAS 31 (1971): 5-27; repr. J.R. Hightower and Florence Chia-ying Yeh. Studies in Chinese Poetry, pp.37-55. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998. ——. Han Shih Wai Chuan: Han Ying’s Illustrations of the Didactic Application of the Classic of Songs. Harvard-Yenching Monograph Series, vol.11. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1952. ——. The Poetry of T’ao Ch’ien. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970. —— and Florence Chia-ying Yeh. Studies in Chinese Poetry. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998 [Ho Ch’iao-hsin] 何喬新 . Ho Wen-su Kung Wen-chi 何文肅公文集 (Collected Writings of Mr. Ho the Literate and Serious Gentleman). 1694; repr. Taipei: Weiwen, 1976. [author’s name given incorrectly as Ho Ching-ming in the reprint] Ho Hsün 何遜 . Ho Hsün Chi Chu 何遜集注 (Collected Works of Ho Hsün Annotated). Compiled by Liu Ch’ang 劉暢. Tientsin: Tientsin Ku-chi, 1988. Ho Liang-chün 何良俊. Ssu-yu Chai Ts’ung-shuo 四友齋叢說 (Collected Remarks from the Four Friends Studio). Peking: Chung-hua, 1959. Ho Meng-ch’un 何孟春. Ho Wen-chien Kung Wen-chi 何文簡公文集 (Collected Literary Works of Ho the Literate and Plain Gentleman). 1574 edition.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

675

——. Yü-tung Hsü-lu 餘冬序錄 (Ordered Records from the Remnant of Winter). 1528; repr. TM 3:101-02. Tainan: Chuang-yen Wen-hua, 1995. [Chia-ching] Honan T’ung-chih 河南通志 (Comprehensive Gazetteer of Honan). Honan T’ung-chih. 1731 edition. Ho, Ping-ti. The Ladder of Success in Imperial China: Aspects of Social Mobility, 1368-1911. New York: Columbia University Press, 1962. Ho T’ang 何瑭. Po-chai Chi 柏齋集 (Cypress Studio Collection). SKCS. Holzman, Donald. Poetry and Politics: The Life and Works of Juan Chi A.D. 210-263. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976. Hou Han Shu 後漢書 (History of the Later Han). Fan Ye 范曄. Peking: Chung-hua, 1965. Hsi K’ang 嵇康. Hsi Chung-san Chi 嵇中散集 (Collected Works of Courtier Hsi). SPTK. Hsi-yüan Wen-chien Lu 西園聞見錄 (A Record of Things Seen and Heard in the Western Garden). Compiled by Chang Hsüan 張萱. 1940; repr. Ming-tai Chuanchi Ts’ung-k’an, vols.116-24. Taipei: Ming-wen, 1991. Hsia Ch’ung-p’u 夏崇璞. “Ming-tai Fu-ku-p’ai yü T’ang-Sung Wen-p’ai chih Ch’aoliu” 明代復古派與唐宋文派之潮流 (Development of the Archaist and T’angSung Prose Schools of the Ming Dynasty). Hsüeh-heng 9 (1922): 1-10. Hsia Liang-sheng 夏良勝. Tung-chou Ch’u-kao 東洲初稿 (Initial Drafts from the Eastern Isle). SKCS. Hsiao-tsung Shih-lu 孝宗實錄 (Veritable records of the Filial Ancestor). Taipei: Chung-yang Yen-chiu Yüan, 1964. Hsieh, Bao Hua. “From Charwoman to Empresss Dowager: Serving Women in the Ming Palace.” Ming Studies 42 (1999):26-80. Hsieh Chen 謝榛. Ssu-ming Shih-hua 四溟詩話 (Remarks on Poetry from the Four Seas). Hsü Li-tai Shih-hua. Taipei: Yi-wen, 1971; Li-tai Shih-hua Hsü-pien 2:1133-1230. Peking: Chung-hua, 1983; Ming Shih-hua Ch’üan-pien 3:31173219. Hsieh Ling-yun Chi Chiao-chu 謝靈運集校注 (Collected and Annotated Works of Hsieh Ling-yün). Edited by Ku Shao-po 顧紹柏. Taipei: Li-jen, 2004. Hsieh T’iao 謝朓. Hsieh Hsüan-ch’eng Shih Chi 謝宣城詩集 (Collected Poems of Hsieh of Hsüan-ch’eng). SPTK. [Chia-ch’ing] Hsien-ning Hsien Chih 咸寧縣志 (Gazetteer of Hsien-ning County). 1819; repr. Taipei: Ch’eng-wen, 1969. Hsin Hsü Chu-tzu So-yin 新序逐字索引 (Single Word Concordance to the New Accounts). Taipei: Shang-wu, 1992. Hsin T’ang Shu 新唐書 (New History of the T’ang). Compiled by Ou-yang Hsiu 歐陽修, Sung Ch’i 宋祁, et al. Peking: Chung-hua, 1975. [Ch’ien-lung] Hsin-yang Chou Chih 信陽州志 (Gazetteer of Hsin-yang SubPrefecture). Compiled by Wan Hou 萬侯 et al., edited by Chang Yüeh 張鉞 et al. 1925; repr.Taipei: Ch’eng-wen, 1976. Hsin-yang Ch’u Mu 信陽楚墓 (A Ch’u Tomb in Hsin-yang). Honan Provincial Archaological Research Institute. Peking: Wen-wu, 1986. [Min-kuo] Hsin-yang Hsien Chih 信陽縣志 (Gazetteer of Hsin-yang County). 1936; repr. Taipei: Ch’eng-wen, 1976. Hsü Chen-ch’ing 徐禎卿. Hsü Ti-kung Shih-chi, Wai-chi 徐迪功詩集外集 (Collected Poems of Hsü, [the Gentleman for] Meritorious Achievement, with Outer Collection). Hung-Cheng Ssu-chieh Shih-chi. ——. T’an-yi Lu 談藝錄 (Record of Remarks on the Arts). Yi-men Kuang-tu; repr. PP 13/1.

676

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hsü Li-tai Shih-hua 續歷代詩話 (Continued Remarks on Poetry Through the Ages). Taipei: Yi-wen, 1971. Hsü T’ai 徐泰. Shih-t’an 詩談 (Chats on Poetry). Pai-ling Hsüeh-shan; repr. PP 8/5. Hsü Tsan 許讚. Sung-kao Chi 松皋集 (Pine Marsh Collection). Edition with 1543 preface in Naikaku Bunko. Hsü Tsin 徐縉. Hsü Wen-min Kung Chi 徐文敏公集 (Collected Literary Works of Mr. Hsü the Literate and Clever Gentleman). 1568 edition. Hsü Wu Hsien-hsien Tsan 續吳先賢讚 (Sequel to the Eulogies of the Former Worthies of Wu). Compiled by Liu Feng 劉鳳. Wan-li edition; repr. TM 2:95. Tainan: Chuang-yen Wen-hua, 1996. Hsüeh Cheng-ch’ang 薛正昌. Li Meng-yang Ch’üan-chuan 李夢陽全傳 (Complete Biography of Li Meng-yang). Changchun: Changchun Ch’u-pan-she, 1999. Hsüeh Hui 薛蕙. Hsüeh Hsi-yüan Chi 薛西原集 (Collected Works of Hsüeh of the Western Plain). 1535 edition. ——. K’ao-kung Chi 考功集 (Evaluation Bureau Collection). SKCS. Hsüeh Yang-ching 薛仰敬. “P’eng Tse Nien-p’u” 彭澤年譜, Hsi-pei Shih-ti 1996.3: 1-17 [Min-kuo] Hu-hsien Chih 鄠縣志 (Gazetteer of Hu County). 1933; repr. Taipei: Hsüeh-sheng, 1967. Hu Tsuan-tsung 胡纘宗 . Niao-shu Shan-jen Hsiao-chi 鳥鼠山人小集 (Small Collection of the Mountain Dweller of Niao-shu). Chia-ching edition; repr. TM 4:62. Tainan: Chuang-yen Wen-hua, 1997. Hu Ying-lin 胡應麟. Shih-sou 詩藪 (Meadowland of Poetry). Repr. Taipei: Kuangwen Shu-chü, 1973; also Shanghai: Ku-chi, 1979; and see below, under Yokota Terutoshi, Shisō, for a partial Japanese translation. [Kuang-hsü] Hua-jung Hsien Chih 華容縣志 (Gazetteer of Hua-jung County). 1882; repr. Taipei: Ch’eng-wen, 1975. Huai-nan-tzu Chi-shih 淮南子集釋 (Collected Interpretations of Huai-nan-tzu). Compiled by Ho Ning 何寧. Peking: Chung-hua, 1998. Huang-ch’ao Chung-chou Jen-wu Chih 皇朝中州人物志 (Account of Personages from the Central Region During the Imperial Dynasty). Compiled by Chu Muchieh 朱睦榴. 1737; repr. Taipei: Hsüeh-sheng, 1970. Huang Cho-yüeh 黃卓越. “Ch’ien Ch’i-tzu Yüeh-fu Shih Chih-tso yü Ming Chungch’i te Min-chien-hua Yün-tung” 前七子樂府詩制作與明中期的民間化運動 (The Making of the Yüeh-fu Ballads of the Former Seven Masters and the MidMing Popularist Movement). Chung-kuo Wen-hua Yen-chiu, Autumn, 2003, pp.30-44. Huang-fu Fang 皇甫汸. Huang-fu Ssu-hsün Chi 皇甫司勳集 (Collected Works of Huang-fu [of the Bureau of] Merit Titles). SKCS. Huang Hsing-tseng 黃省曾. Wu-yüeh Shan-jen Chi 五嶽山人集 (Collected Works of the Mountain Dweller of the Five Sacred Peaks). Chia-ching edition; repr. TM 4:94. Tainan: Chuang-yen Wen-hua, 1997. Huang Ming Hsien Shih 皇明獻實 (Presented Actualities of the Imperial Ming). Compiled by Yüan Chih 袁袠. Ming-jen Wen-chi Ts’ung-k’an 17. Taipei: Wenhai, 1970. Huang Ming Ming-ch’en Yen-hsing-lu Hsin-pien 皇明名臣言行錄新編 (Newly Compiled Record of Words and Deeds by Notable Subjects of the Imperial Ming). Compiled by Shen Ying-k’ui 沈應魁. 1553 edition. There is a reprint, which I have not seen, in the Ku-kung Chen-pen Ts’ung-k’an series. Huang Ming Shih-hsüan 皇明詩選 (Selected Poems of the Imperial Ming). Compiled by Ch’en Tzu-lung 陳子龍 et al. 1637; repr. Shanghai: Hua-tung Shih-fan Ta-

BIBLIOGRAPHY

677

hsüeh, 1991. Huang Ming Shih-kai 皇明史概 (Historical Judgement of the Imperial Ming). Compiled by Chu Kuo-chen 朱國禎. Ch’ung-chen edition; repr. Hsü-hsiu SKCS, vols.428-31. Shanghai: Shanghai Ku-chi, 1997 Huang Ming Shu 皇明書 (History of the Imperial Ming). Compiled by Teng Yüan-hsi 鄧元錫. Wan-li edition; repr. TM 2:29. Tainan: Chuang-yen Wen-hua, 1996. Huang Ming Tz’u-lin Jen-wu K’ao 皇明詞林人物考 (Study of Personages in the Grove of Lyrics of the Imperial Ming). Compiled by Wang Chao-yün 王兆雲. Wan-li edition; repr. TM 2:111-12. Tainan: Chuang-yen Wen-hua, 1996. Huang Ming Wen-hai 皇明文海 (Sea of Letters of the Imperial Ming). Compiled by Ku Ssu-li 顧嗣立. Manuscript edition. Huang, Ray. 1587: A Year of No Significance. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1981. ——. Taxation and Governmental Finance in Sixteenth Century Ming China. London: Cambridge University Press, 1974. Hucker, Charles O. A Dictionary of Official Titles in Imperial China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985. ——, ed. Chinese Government in Ming Times: Seven Studies. Studies in Oriental Cultures 2. New York: Columbia University Press, 1969. ——. “Governmental Organization of the Ming Dynasty.” HJAS 21 (1958): 1-66; index in ibid. 23 (1960-61): 127-51; both reprinted in Studies of Governmental Institutions in Chinese History. Edited by John L. Bishop. Harvard-Yenching Institute Studies Series 23, pp. 57-151. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968. ——. The Censorial System of Ming China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1966. ——. The Ming Dynasty: Its Origins and Evolving Institutions. Michigan Papers in Chinese Studies 34. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies, 1978. [Wan-li] Hukwang Tsung-chih 湖廣總志 (Comprehensive Gazetteer of Hukwang). Hung, William. Tu Fu: China’s Greatest Poet. 1952; repr. New York: Russell and Russell, 1969. Huters, Theodore. Qian Zhongshu. Boston: Twayne, 1982. Idema, Wilt. The Dramatic Oeuvre of Chu Yu-tun (1379-1439). Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1985. ——. “The Wen-ching Yüan-yang Hui and the Chia-men of Yüan-Ming Ch’uan-ch’i.” TP 67 (1981): 91-106. Iriya Yoshitaka 入矢義高. Mindai Shibun 明代詩文 (Poetry and Prose of the Ming Dynasty). Chūgoku Shibun Sen 23. Tokyo: Chikuma, 1978. Jen Fang-ch’iu 任訪秋 . “Ho Ching-ming Chien-lun” 何景明簡論 (Brief discussion of Ho Ching-ming). Hsin-yang Shih-fan Hsüeh-yüan Hsüeh-pao 1986.1: 27-35. [Wan-li] Ju-nan Chih 汝南志 (Gazetteer of Ju-nan). [Chia-ch’ing] Ju-ning Fu Chih 汝寧府志 (Gazetteer of Ju-ning Prefecture). K’ang Hai 康海. Tui-shan Wen-chi 對山文集 (Collected Literary Works of Tui-shan). Chia-ching edition; repr. Taipei: Wei-wen, 1976. ——. Tui-shan Chi 對山集 (Tui-shan Collection). 1545; repr. TM 4:52. Tainan: Chuang-yen Wen-hua, 1997. See “Abbreviations, Short titles, and Other Citation Conventions” for the format of references to this title. ——. K’ang Tui-shan Hsien-sheng Chi 康對山先生集 (Collected Works of Mr. K’ang Tui-shan). 1582; repr. Hsü-hsiu SKCS, vol.1335. Shanghai: Shanghai Kuchi, 1995. Kao Yu-kung and Mei Tsu-lin. “Tu Fu’s ‘Autumn Meditations:’ an Exercise in

678

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Linguistic Criticism.” HJAS 28 (1968): 44-80. Karlgren, Bernhard. The Book of Documents. Stockholm, Museum of Far East Antiquities, 1950. ——. The Book of Odes. Stockholm: Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, 1950. Kent, George. Worlds of Dust and Jade. New York: Philosophical Library, 1969. Kerman, Joseph. The Beethoven Quartets. New York: W.W. Norton, 1966. Killigrew, John. “Zhuge Liang and the Northern Campaign of 228-234.” Early Medieval China 5 (1999): 55-91. Kim, Youngmin. “Rethinking the Self’s Relation to the World in the mid-Ming: The Responses of Chen Xianzhang, Hu Juren, Wang Yangming and Zhan Ruoshui to Cheng-Zhu Learning.” Ming Studies 44 (2000): 13-47. King, Gail. “The Family Letters of Xu Kuangqi.” Ming Studies 31 (1991): 1-41. Knechtges, David. Wen Xuan or Selections of Refined Literature, vol.1-. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982-. Ko Chieh-min 蓋杰民. See under James Geiss. Ko Jung-chin 葛榮晉. “Han Pang-ch’i Che-hsüeh Ssu-hsiang Ch’u-t’an” 韓邦奇哲學思想初探 (Preliminary Inquiry into the Philosophical Thought of Han Pang-ch’i). K’ung-tzu Yen-chiu 1988.1:113-20. Koestler, Arthur. The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man’s Changing Vision of the Universe. 1959; repr. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1989. Kowallis, Jon Eugene von. The Subtle Revolution: Poets of the ‘Old Schools’ During Late Qing and Early Republican China. Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, 2006. Kramers, R.P. K’ung-tzu Chia-yü: The School Sayings of Confucius. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1950. [Chia-ching] Ku-an Hsien Chih 固安縣志 (Gazetteer of Ku-an County). Ku-chin Tz’u-t’ung 古今詞統 (Compendium of Song Lyrics Ancient and Modern). Compiled by Cho Jen-yüeh 卓人月 and Hsü Shih-chün 徐士俊. Ch’ung-chen edition; repr. Hsü-hsiu SKCS, vols. 1728-29. Shanghai: Shanghai Ku-chi, 1995. Ku Ch’ing 顧清. Tung-chiang Chia-ts’ang Chi 東江家藏集 (East River Collection Stored at Home). SKCS. Ku Lin 顧璘. Fu-hsiang Kao 浮湘藳 (Manuscripts from Floating on the Hsiang). Ku Hua-yü Chi 顧華玉集 (Collected Works of Ku Hua-yü). SKCS. ——. Hsi-yüan Ts’un-kao Shih 息園存稿詩 (Poems from the Preserved Manuscripts of the Garden of Rest). Ku Hua-yü Chi. SKCS. ——. Kuo-pao Hsin-pien 國寶新編 (New Compilation of Treasures of the State). Chi-lu Hui-pien; repr. PP 16/5. Ku Lieh-nü Chuan Chu-tzu So-yin 古烈女傳逐字索引 (Single Word Concordance to the Ancient Biographies of Ardent Women). Hong Kong: Shang-wu, 1993. Ku-su Ming-hsien Hsiao-chi 姑蘇名賢小記 (Brief Records of Noted Worthies from Old Soochow). Compiled by Wen Chen-meng 文震孟. Hsin-chü Chai Ts’ungshu. Ku Ying-hsiang 顧應祥. Ch’ung-ya T’ang Ch’üan-chi 崇雅堂全集 (Complete works from the Hall of Honouring the Elegant). 1610 edition in the collection of the Naikaku Bunko. Ku Yung-chi 古永繼, “Ming-tai Yunnan te Che-liu chih Jen” 明代雲南的謫流之人 (People Banished to Yunnan During the Ming), Ssu-hsiang Chan-hsien 1992.1:84-89. [Chia-ching] K’un-shan Hsien Chih 崑山縣志 (Gazetteer of K’un-shan County). [Wan-li] K’un-shan Hsien Chih. 1576; repr. Taipei: Ch’eng-wen, 1987. Kung Hsien-tsung 龔顯宗. “Ming Ch’i-tzu Shih-wen chi ch’i Lun-p’ing chih Yen-

BIBLIOGRAPHY

679

chiu” 明七子詩文及其論評之研究 (A Study of the Seven Masters of the Ming and Their Criticism). Ph.D. dissertation, Chung-kuo Wen-hua Hsüeh-yüan, 1979. ——. “Ming-tai Ch’i-tzu-p’ai Shih-lun chih Yen-chiu” 明代七子派詩論之研究 (Study of the Poetics of the Seven Masters School of the Ming). T’ai-nan Shihchuan Hsüeh-pao 8 (1975): 41-65; 9 (1976): 169-187. K’ung-tzu Chia-yü Chu-tzu So-yin 孔子家語逐字索引 (Single Word Concordance to the Family Sayings of Confucius). Taipei: Taiwan Shang-wu, 1992. For a partial translation, see under Kramers. Kuo-ch’ao Hsien-cheng Lu 國朝獻徵錄 (Records of the Offered Testimony of Our Dynasty). Compiled by Chiao Hung 焦竑. 1616; repr. Taipei: Hsüeh-sheng, 1965. Kuo-ch’ao Lieh-ch’ing Chi 國朝列卿記 (Records of the Arrayed Officials of Our Dynasty). Compiled by Lei Li 雷禮. Repr. Taipei: Ch’eng-wen, 1970. Kuo-ch’ao Ming-shih Lei-yüan 國朝名世類苑 (Classified Garden of Noted Nobles of Our Dynasty). Compiled by Ling Ti-chih 凌迪知. 1575; repr. TM 3:240-41. Tainan: Chuang-yen Wenhua, 1995. Kuo-ch’üeh 國榷 (National Assessment). Compiled by T’an Ch’ien 談遷. Peking: Ku-chi, 1958. Kuo P’ei-kui 郭培貴. “Shih-lun Ming-tai T’i-hsüeh Chih-tu te Fa-chan” 試論明代提學制度的發展 (Tentative Account of the Development of the Education Intendant System in the Ming). Wen-hsien 1997.4:62-78. Kuo Shao-yü 郭紹虞 . “Chu-tzu chih Wen-hsüeh P’i-p’ing” 朱子之文學批評 (Literary Criticism of Master Chu [Hsi]). Wen-hsüeh Nien-pao 4 (1938); repr. Kuo Shao-yü. Chao-yü Shih Ku-tien Wen-hsüeh Lun-chi 照隅室古典文學論集 (Collected Articles on Classical Literature from the Illuminated Corner Chamber) 1:413-40. Shanghai: Ku-chi, 1983. ——. Chung-kuo Wen-hsüeh P’i-p’ing Shih 中國文學批評史 (History of Chinese Literary Criticism). 1944; repr. Taipei, 1972; also second edition; repr. Hong Kong: n.p., n.d. ——, “Ming-tai Wen-jen Chieh-she Nien-piao” 明代文人結社年表 (Chronology of Ming Literary Societies). Chao-yü Shih Ku-tien Wen-hsüeh Lun-chi 1:498-512. Shanghai: Ku-chi, 1983. Originally published in Tung-nan Jih-pao, Wen-shih 55, 56 (1947). ——. “Shen-yün yü Ko-tiao” 神韻與格調 (Spirit Resonance and Metrical Form). Yen-ching Hsüeh-pao 22 (1937); repr. Kuo Shao-yü. Chao-yü Shih Ku-tien Wenhsüeh Lun-chi, 1:344-412. Shanghai: Ku-chi, 1983. Lan-t’ai Fa-chien Lu 蘭臺法鑑錄 (Record of Mirrored Norms of the Orchid Terrace). Compiled by Ho Ch’u-kuang 何出光. Late Ming edition. Lan Tung-hsing 藍東興. “Ming Wu-tsung Shih-ch’i te Li Tung-yang Shu-p’ing” 明武宗時期的李東陽述評 (A Critical Account of Li Tung-yang During the Period of Wu-tsung of the Ming). Kweichow Ta-hsüeh Hsüeh-pao 1996.3:70-74. [Kuang-hsü] Lan-t’ien Hsien Chih 藍田縣志 (Gazetteer of Lan-t’ien County). 1875; repr. Taipei: Ch’eng-wen, 1969. Lao-tzu Chu-tzu So-yin 老子逐字索引 (Single Word Concordance to the Lao-tzu). Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1996. Lau, D. C. (trans.). Lao-tzu: Tao Te Ching. Harmondsworth: Penguin: 1963. ——. (trans.). Mencius. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970. ——. (trans.). The Analects. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979. Legge, James, trans. The Ch’un Ts’ew with the Tso Chuen. Repr. Taipei: Wen-shihche, 1971. ——, trans. The Shoo King. Repr. Taipei: Wen-shih-che, 1971. Levathes, Louise. When China Ruled the Seas: The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon

680

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Throne 1405-1433. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994. Levenson, Joseph R. Confucian China and its Modern Fate, Volume 1, The Problem of Intellectual Continuity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1958. Li Ch’i. “Chu Hsi the Poet.” TP 58 (1972): 55-119. Li Chih 李贄. Hsü Ts’ang Shu 續藏書 (Continuation of a Book to be Hidden). Peking: Chung-hua, 1959. Li Chih-chung 李致忠. “Ming-tai K’o-shu Shu-lüeh” 明代刻書述略 (Brief Account of Ming Printing). Wen Shih 23 (1984): 127-58. Li, Chu-tsing. The Autumn Colors on the Ch’iao and Hua Mountains: A Landscape by Chao Meng-fu. Artibus Asiae Supplementum 21. Ascona: Artibus Asiae, 1965. Li Ho 李賀. San-chia P’ing-chu Li Ch’ang-chi Ko-shih 三家評註李長吉歌詩 (Songs and Poems of Li Ch’ang-chi with Three Commentators’ Annotations). Compiled by Wang Ch’i 王琦. Peking: Chung-hua, 1959. Li K’ai-hsien Ch’üan-chi 李開先全集 (Complete Works of Li K’ai-hsien). Compiled by Pu Chien 卜鍵. Peking: Wen-hua Yi-shu, 2004. Li Lien 李濂. Sung-chu Wen-chi 嵩渚文集 (Collected Literary Works from an Islet in Sung). Chia-ching edition; repr. Peking T’u-shu-kuan Ku-chi Chen-pen Ts’ungk’an, vol.101. Peking: Shu-mu Wen-hsien, 1988. Li Meng-yang 李夢陽. K’ung-t’ung Hsien-sheng Chi 空同先生集 (Collected Works of Master K’ung-t’ung). 1530; repr. Taipei: Wei-wen, 1976. Li Po Ch’üan-chi Pien-nien Chu-shih 李白全集編年注釋 (Complete Works of Li Po Chronologically Arranged with Commentary). Compiled by An Ch’i 安旗 et al. Chengtu: Pa-Shu Shu-she, 1990. Li Shu-yi 李叔毅 . “Ho Ching-ming Wen-t’i Ch’u-t’an” 何景明問題初探 (Preliminary Discussion of Questions Concerning Ho Ching-ming). Hsin-yang Shih-fan Hsüeh-yüan Hsüeh-pao 1984.1: 80-89. Li Shu-yi, P’eng Hsüeh-min 彭學敏, and Liu Wen-chin 劉文金, comps. Ho Chingming Yen-chiu 何景明研究 (Studies of Ho Ching-ming). Chengchow: Chungchou Ku-chi, 1992. Li Shuang-hua 李雙華. “Hsü Chen-ch’ing T’an-yi Lu Hsieh-tso Shih-chien K’ao” 徐禎卿談藝錄寫作時間考 (An Examination of Dating of Hsü Chen-ch’ing’s ‘Record of Comments on the Arts’). Soochow Ta-hsüeh Hsüeh-pao 2003.3:67-68, 71. Li-tai Shih-hua Hsü-pien 歷代詩話續編 (Remarks on Poetry Through the Ages, Continued Compilation). Peking: Chung-hua, 1983. Li Tung-yang 李東陽. [Huai-]lu T’ang Shih-hua 懷麓堂詩話 (Remarks on Poetry from the Longing for the Hills Hall). Hsü Li-tai Shih-hua. Taipei: Yi-wen, 1971; Li-tai Shih-hua Hsü-pien 3:1367-1400. Peking: Chung-hua Shu-chü, 1983; Ming Shih-hua Ch’üan-pien 2:1622-74; Li Tung-yang Chi 2:528-63. ——. Li Tung-yang Chi 李東陽集 (Collected Works of Li Tung-yang), 3 vols., Edited by Chou Yin-pin 周寅賓. Changsha: Yüeh-lu Shu-she, 1983-85. ——. Li Tung-yang Hsü-chi 續集 (Continuation of Collected Works of Li Tungyang). Edited by Ch’ien Chen-min 錢振民. Changsha: Yüeh-lu Shu-she, 1997. Li Yüeh-kang 李曰剛. Chung-kuo Wen-hsüeh Liu-pien Shih, Shih-ko Pien 中國文學流變史、詩歌編 (History of the Evolution of Chinese Literature, Poetry). Taipei: Lien-kuan, 1976. Liang Chang-chü 梁章鉅. Chih-yi Ts’ung-hua 制藝叢話 (Gathered Comments on the Crafted Art [of the Examination Essay]). Shanghai: Shanghai Shu-tien, 2001. Liang Lin-ch’uan 梁臨川. “Li Meng-yang te Liang-p’ien Yi-wen” 李夢陽的兩篇佚文 (Two Uncollected Works by Li Meng-yang). Wen-hsien 53 (1992.3): 286-87. Liang-yüan Feng-ya 梁園風雅 (Airs and Odes from the Garden of Liang). Compiled

BIBLIOGRAPHY

681

by Chao Yen-fu 趙彥復. 1704; repr. TM 4:334. Tainan: Chuang-yen Wen-hua, 1997. Liao Chung-an 廖仲安. “Tu Ho Ching-ming “Ming-yüeh P’ien” 讀何景明明月篇 (On Reading Ho Ching-ming’s ‘The Bright Moon’). Hsin-yang Shih-fan Hsüehyüan Hsüeh-pao 1985.4: 34-40. Liao K’o-pin 廖可斌. Fu-ku-p’ai yü Ming-tai Wen-hsüeh Ssu-ch’ao 復古派與明代文學思潮 (The Archaist School and Currents of Thought in Ming Literature), 2 vols. Taipei: Wen-chin, 1994. ——. Ming-tai Wen-hsüeh Fu-ku Yün-tung Yen-chiu 明代文學復古運動研究 (Study of the Archaist Movement in Ming Literature). Shanghai: Shanghai Ku-chi, 1994. Lieh-tzu Chi-shih 列子集釋 (Collected Explications of the Lieh-tzu). Compiled by Yang Po-chün 楊伯峻. Peking: Chung-hua, 1979. Lieh-tzu Chu-tzu So-yin 列子逐字索引 (Single Word Concordance to the Lieh-tzu). Hong Kong: Shang-wu, 1996. Lien Wen-p’ing 連文萍. “Ming-tai Ch’a-ling-p’ai Shih-lun Yen-chiu” 明代茶陵派詩論研究 (Study of the Poetics of the Ch’a-ling School in the Ming). M.A. thesis, Tung-wu University, 1989. Lighte, Peter Rupert. “The Mongols and Mu Ying in Yunnan—At the Empire’s Edge.” Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1981 Lin Ch’i-chu 林啟柱. “Lun Ming-tai Fu-ku Wen-hsüeh te Chi-ko Wen-t’i” 論明代復古文學的幾個問題 (On Some Questions Concerning Ming Literary Archaism). Chungking Kung-shang Ta-hsüeh Hsüeh-pao 20.1 (2003), pp.97-101. Lin Han 林瀚. Lin Wen-an Kung Shih-chi 林文安公詩集 (Collected Poems of Mr, Lin the Literate and Calm Gentleman). 1537 edition. Liu Chang-ch’ing Chi Pien-nien Chiao-chu 劉長卿集編年校注 (Annotated Chronological Edition of the Collected Works of Liu Chang-ch’ing). Compiled by Yang Shih-ming 楊世明. Peking: Jen-min, 1999. Liu Hai-han 劉海涵 . Ho Ta-fu Hsien-sheng Nien-p’u 何大復先生年譜 (Chronological Biography of Master Ho Ta-fu). Lung-t’an Ching-she Ts’ung-k’o, [Hsin-yang?], 1923. Also partial repr. YC, pp.303-12. Liu Hua-ping 劉化兵. “Hsü Chen-ch’ing Nien-p’u K’uang-pu chi Chih-yi” 徐禎卿年譜匡補及質疑 (Addenda, Corrigenda, and Queries Concerning the Chronological Register of Hsü Chen-ch’ing). Shantung She-hui K’o-hsüeh 2001.5:67-68. Liu, James J.Y. The Chinese Knight-errant. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967. Liu Ming-chin 劉明今. “Ts’ung Ming-jen tui Tu Fu te P’ing-chia K’an Ming-tai Shihhsüeh te Feng-shang” 從明人對杜甫的評價看明代詩學的風尚 (Ming Dynasty Poetic Taste as Seen in Ming Evaluations of Tu Fu). Wen-hsüeh Yi-ch’an 1987.6:100-108. [Tao-kuang] Liu-pa T’ing Chih 留壩廰志 (Gazetteer of Liu-pa Sub-Prefecture). 1842; repr. Taipei: Ch’eng-wen, 1969. Liu Tso-mei 柳作梅. “Ch’ing-tai chih Chin-shu yü Mu-chai Chu-tso” 清代之禁書與牧齋著作 (Banned Books in the Ch’ing Dynasty and the Writing of Mu-chai). T’u-shu-kuan Hsüeh-pao 4 (1962): 155-208. Liu Tsung-yüan 柳宗元. Liu Ho-tung Chi 柳河東集 (Collected Works of Liu of Hotung). Hong Kong: Chung-hua, 1972. Liu Yi-ch’ing 劉義慶. Shih-shuo Hsin-yü 世說新語 (Worldly Sayings and New Comments). Hong-kong: Chung-hua, 1973. Liu Yü-hsi Shih Pien-nien Chiao-chu 劉禹錫詩編年校注 (Poetry of Liu Yü-hsi, Annotated and Chronologically Arranged). Compiled by Kao Chih-chung 高志忠. Harbin: Heilungkiang Jen-min, 2005.

682

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Lo, Jung-pang, “Policy Formulation and Decision-Making on Issues Respecting Peace and War.” In Charles O. Hucker, ed., Chinese Government in Ming Times, pp.4172. New York: Columbia University Press, 1969. Lo Pin-wang 駱賓王. Lo Lin-hai Chi Chien-chu 駱臨海集箋注 (Annotated Works of Lo Lin-hai). Hong Kong: Chung-hua, 1972. Loi, Michelle. Roseaux sur le mur: Les poetes Occidentalistes chinois (1919-1949). Paris: Gallimard, 1971. [Wan-li] Lu-an Fu Chih 潞安府志 (Gazetteer of Lu-an Prefecture). Lu Chi 陸機. Lu Shih-heng Chi 陸士衡集 (Collected Works of Lu Shih-heng). SPTK. Lu Ch’in-li 逯欽立, comp. Hsien-Ch’in Han Wei Tsin Nan-pei-ch’ao Shih 先秦漢魏晉南北朝詩 (Poetry of the Pre-Ch’in, Han, Wei, Tsin, and Northern and Southern Dynasties). Peking: Chung-hua, 1983. Lu Shen 陸深. Yen-shan Chi 儼山集 (Mt. Yen Collection). SKCS. ——. Yen-shan Wai-chi 儼山外集 (Mt. Yen Outer Collection). SKCS. Lu Yu 陸游. Nan-T’ang Shu 南唐書 (History of the Southern T’ang). SPPY. Lu Yung 盧雍. Ku-yüan Chi 古園集 (Old Garden Collection). 1633 edition. Lun-yü Yin-te 論語引得 (A Concordance to the Analects of Confucius). HarvardYenching Institute Sinological Index Series, Supplement No. 16. 1940; repr. Taipei: Chinese Materials and Research Aids Service Center, 1972. Lü Nan 呂柟. Ching-yeh Hsien-sheng Wen-chi 涇野先生文集 (Literary Works of Master Ching-yeh). 1555; repr. TM 4:60-61. Tainan: Chuang-yen Wen-hua, 1997. Lü Shih Ch’un-ch’iu Chu-tzu So-yin 呂氏春秋逐字索引 (Single Word Concordance to the Spring and Autumn Annals of Mr. Lü). Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1994. Lynn, Richard John. “Alternative Routes to Self-Realization in Ming Theories of Poetry.” In Theories of the Arts in China. Edited by Susan Bush and Christian Murck, pp.317-40. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983. ——. “Orthodoxy and Enlightenment: Wang Shih-chen’s Theory of Poetry and Its Antecedants.” In The Unfolding of Neo-Confucianism. Edited by Wm. Theodore de Bary, pp.217-69. New York: Columbia University Press, 1975. ——. The Classic of Changes: A New Translation of the I Ching as Interpreted by Wang Bi. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. ——. The Classic of the Way and Virtue: A New Translation of the Tao-te Ching of Laozi as Interpreted by Wang Bi. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. ——. “Tradition and Synthesis: Wang Shih-chen as Poet and Critic.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Stanford University, 1971. Ma Mao-yüan 馬茂元. “Lüeh-t’an Ming Ch’i-tzu ti Wen-hsüeh Ssu-hsiang yü Li, Ho ti Lun-cheng” 略談明七子的文學思想與李、何的論爭 (A Brief Discussion of the Literary Ideas of the Seven Masters of the Ming and the Controversy Between Li and Ho). Chiang-hai Hsüeh-k’an 1962.1: 26-29; repr. Ma Mao-yüan. Wanchao Lou Lun-wen Chi 晚照樓論文集 (Collected Articles from the Tower of Evening Illumination), pp.190-99. Shanghai Ku-chi, 1981. Ma Mei-hsin 馬美信. “Yang-ming Hsin-hsüeh yü Wen-hsüeh Fu-ku Yün-tung” 陽明心學與文學復古運動 (Yang-ming’s School of Mind and the Literary Archaist Movement). Fu-tan Hsüeh-pao 1993.6:97-102, 12. Ma Ya-chung 馬亞中. Chung-kuo Chin-tai Shih-ko Shih 中國近代詩歌史 (History of Chinese Poetry in Recent Times). Taipei: Hsüeh-sheng, 1992. Maeno Naoaki 前野直彬. “Mindai Kobunjiha no Bungakuron” 明代古文辭派の文學論 (The Literary Ideas of the Ming Archaists). NCG 16 (1964): 157-65. Mao Shih Yin-te 毛詩引得 (Index to the Mao Songs). Harvard-Yenching Institute Sinological Index Series, Supplement No. 9. 1934; repr. Tokyo: Japan Council

BIBLIOGRAPHY

683

for East Asian Studies, 1962. Mather, Richard, trans. Shih-shuo Hsin-yü. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1976. Mei Yao-ch’en 梅堯臣. Mei Yao-ch’en Chi Pien-nien Chiao-chu 梅堯臣集編年校注 (Literary Works of Mei Yao-ch’en, Chronologically Arranged, Collated, and Annotated). Compiled by Chu Tung-jun 朱東潤. Shanghai: Shanghai Ku-chi, 1980. Meng Hao-jan Shih-chi Chiao-chu 孟浩然詩集校注 (Collected Poems of Meng Haojan, Collated and Annotated). Compiled by Li Ching-pai 李景白. [Chengtu]: PaShu Shu-she, 1988. Meng-tzu Yin-te 孟子引得 (A Concordance to Meng Tzu). Harvard-Yenching Institute Sinological Index Series, Supplement no. 17. 1941; repr. Taipei: Chinese Materials and Research Aids Service Center, 1966. Meng Yang 孟洋. Meng Yu-ya Chi 孟有涯集 (Collected Works of Meng Yu-ya). 1538 edition. Meskill, John. Ch’oe Pu’s Diary: a Record of Drifting Across the Sea. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1965. ——. Gentlemanly Interests and Wealth in the Yangtse Delta. Association for Asian Studies Monograph and Occasional Paper Series 49. Ann Arbor: Association for Asian Studies, 1994. Metzger, Thomas A. Escape from Predicament: Neo-Confucianism and China’s Evolving Political Culture. New York: Columbia University Press, 1977. Meyer, Leonard B. Music, the Arts, and Ideas: Patterns and Predictions in Twentieth Century Culture. 1967; repr. “with a new postlude” Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. Ming Fen-sheng Jen-wu K’ao 明分省人物考 (Study of Ming Men of Note, Divided by Province). Compiled by Kuo T’ing-hsün 過廷訓. 1622; repr. Ming-tai Chuanchi Ts’ung-k’an 明代傳記叢刊, vols.129-40. Taipei: Ming-wen,1991. Ming-jen Chuan-chi Tzu-liao So-yin 明人傳記資料索引 (Index to Ming Biographical Materials). Compiled by Ch’ang P’i-te 昌彼德 et al. 1965; repr. Taipei: Chungyang T’u-shu-kuan, 1978. Ming Shan Ts’ang 名山藏 (Treasury of Noted Mountains). Compiled by Ho Ch’iaoyüan 何喬遠. 1640; repr. Peking Ta-hsüeh, 1993. Ming Shih 明史 (History of the Ming Dynasty). Compiled by Chang T’ing-yü 張廷玉 et al. Peking: Chung-hua, 1974. Ming Shih 明史. Compiled by Wan Ssu-t’ung 萬斯同. Ch’ing manuscript edition; repr. Hsü-hsiu SKCS, vols. 324-331. Shanghai: Shanghai Ku-chi, 1997. Ming Shih Chi-shih 明詩紀事 (Records of Events in Ming Poetry). Compiled by Ch’en T’ien 陳田. Repr. Taipei: Ting-wen, 1971. Ming Shih Chi-shih Pen-mo 明史紀事本末 (Recorded Events in Ming History from Start to Finish). Compiled by Ku Ying-t’ai 谷應泰. TSCC; repr. Taipei: San-min, 1969. Ming Shih Ch’ieh 明史竊 (A Private History of the Ming). Compiled by Yin Shouheng 尹守衡. Taipei: Hua-shih, 1978. Ming Shih-hua Ch’üan-pien 明詩話全編 (Comprehensive Collection of Ming Remarks on Poetry). Compiled by Wu Wen-chih 吳文治 et al. Nanking: Kiangsu Ku-chi, 1997. Ming Shih Kao 明史稿 (Draft History of the Ming). Compiled by Wang Hung-hsü 王鴻緒 et al. Repr. Taipei: Wen-hai, 1962. Ming Shih Tsung 明詩綜 (Compendium of Ming Poetry). Compiled by Chu Yi-tsun 朱彝尊. Repr. Taipei: Shih-chieh, 1970.

684

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ming Shu 明書 (History of the Ming). Compiled by Fu Wei-lin 傅維鱗. Chi-fu Ts’ung-shu; repr. PP 94/36-41. Ming-tai Pan-k’o Tsung-lu 明代版刻綜錄 (Union List of Ming Printed Books). Compiled by Tu Hsin-fu 杜信孚, et al. Yangchow: Yangchow Ku-chi, 1983. Ming-tai Wen-hsüeh P’i-p’ing Tzu-liao Hui-pien 明代文學批評資料彙編 (Compendium of Materials on Ming Literary Criticism). Chung-kuo Wen-hsüeh P’i-p’ing Tzu-liao Hui-pien, Pt. 7. Compiled by Yeh Ch’ing-ping 葉慶炳 and Shao Hung 邵紅. Taipei: Ch’eng-wen, 1979. Ming T’ung-chien 明通鑑 (Comprehensive Mirror of the Ming). Compiled by Hsia Hsieh 夏燮. Peking: Chung-hua, 1959. Morohashi Tetsuji 諸橋轍次 et al., comp. Dai Kan-Wa Jiten 大漢和辭典 (Great Sino-Japanese Dictionary). Tokyo: Taishūkan, 1974. Mote, Frederick. W. “The Arts and the ‘Theorizing Mode’ of the Civilization,” in Artists and Traditions: Uses of the Past in Chinese Culture. Edited by Christian F. Murck. Princeton: The Art Museum, Princeton University, 1976, pp.3-8. ——. The Poet Kao Ch’i, 1336-1374. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962. Mu Chia-ti 穆甲地 and Chang Shih-min 張世民. “Ts’ung Wu-kung Hsien Chih te Pien-tsuan Yi-lih T’an-chiu K’ang Hai te Fang-chih-hsüeh Ssu-hsiang” 從武功縣志的編纂義例探究康海的方志學思想 (Discovering K’ang Hai’s Ideas about Local Histories from the Editorial Principles of the Gazetteer of Wu-kung). Jenwen Tsa-chih 1984.6:92-94, 91 [Chia-ch’ing] Na-hsi Hsien Chih 納溪縣志 (Gazetteer of Na-hsi County). [Ch’ien-lung] Nan-cheng Hsien Chih 南鄭縣志 (Gazetteer of Nan-cheng County). 1794; repr. Taipei: Hsüeh-sheng, 1968. Nan Shih 南史 (History of the South). Compiled by Li Yen-shou 李延壽. Peking: Chung-hua, 1975. Needham, Joseph, with the collaboration of Wang Ling and Lu Gwei-djen. Science and Civilization in China, Volume 4, Physics and Physical Technology, Part III, Civil Engineering and Nautics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971. Ness, John Philip. “The Southwestern Frontier During the Ming Dynasty.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1998. Ni Ming-tai Jen-wu Chih 擬明代人物志 (Draft Account of Ming Dynasty Personages). Compiled by Liu Ch’ing-chih 劉青芝. 1752; repr. Peking: Ch’üankuo T’u-shu-kuan Wen-hsien So-wei Fu-chih Chung-hsin, 2004. Nylan, Michael. The Canon of Supreme Mystery. Albany: SUNY Press, 1993. ——. “The Chin wen/Ku wen Controversy in Han Times.” TP 80 (1994): 83-145. Ong, Chang Woei. “The Principles are Many: Wang Tingxiang and Intellectual Transition in Mid-Ming China.” HJAS 66 (2006): 461-93. Oppolzer, Theodore Ritter von. Translated by Owen Gingerich. Canon of Eclipses (Canon der Finsternisse). Repr. New York: Dover, 1962. Ou T’an-sheng 歐潭生. “Hsin-yang Ch’u Wang Ch’eng shih Ch’u Ch’ing-hsiang Wang te Lin-shih Kuo-tu” 信陽楚王城是楚頃襄王的臨時國都 (The Wall of the King of Ch’u in Hsin-yang was the Temporary Capital of King Ch’ing-hsiang of Ch’u). Chung-yüan Wen-wu, T’e-k’an (1983): 52-54. Ou-yang Hsiu 歐陽修. Ou-yang Hsiu Ch’üan-chi 歐陽修全集 (Complete Works of Ou-yang Hsiu). Compiled by Li Yi-an 李逸安. Peking: Chung-hua, 2001. Owen, Stephen. An Anthology of Chinese Literature: Beginnings to 1911. New York and London: W.W. Norton, 1996. ——. The Great Age of Chinese Poetry: The High T’ang. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981. ——. “The End of the Past: Rewriting Chinese Literary History in the Early

BIBLIOGRAPHY

685

Republic.” In The Appropriation of Cultural Capital: China’s May Fourth Project. Edited by Milena Doleželová-Velingerová and Oldřich Král, with Graham Sanders, Assistant Editor. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2001, pp.167-92. ——. The Poetry of the Early T’ang. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977. ——. “Stepping Forward and Back: Issues and Possibilities for ‘World’ Poetry.” Modern Philology 11 (2003), pp.532-48. Pa-shih-chiu-chung Ming-tai Chuan-chi Tsung-ho Yin-te 八十九種明代傳記綜合引得 (Combined Indices to Eighty-nine Collections of Ming Dynasty Biographies). Harvard-Yenching Institute Sinological Index Series, No.24. Repr. Taipei: Chinese Materials and Research Aids Service Center, 1966. Pai Han-k’un 白漢坤. “Ts’ung Ming Ch’i-tzu P’ai K’an Ts’ang-lang Shih-hua” 從明七子派看《滄浪詩話》(The ‘Poetic remarks from the Ts’ang-lang’ Seen From the Ming Seven Masters School). Kwangsi She-hui K’o-hsüeh 86 (2002.2), pp.196-98. Pai Jun-te 白潤德 [Daniel Bryant]. Ho Ching-ming Ts’ung-k’ao 何景明叢考 (Collected Studies of Ho Ching-ming). Taipei: Hsüeh-sheng, 1997. P’an Hsi-tseng 潘希曾. Chu-chien Chi 竹澗集 (The Bamboo Creek Collection). SKCS. Pao Chao 鮑昭. Pao Shih Chi 鮑氏集 (Collected Works of Mr. Pao). SPTK. Parsons, James. “The Ming Dynasty Bureaucracy—Aspects of Background Forces.” In Charles O. Hucker, ed. Chinese Government in Ming Times: Seven Studies. Studies in Oriental Cultures 2, pp. 175-231. New York: Columbia University Press, 1969. P’ei-wen Yün-fu 佩文韻府 (Rhymed Storehouse for the Adornment of Letters). 1937; repr. Taipei: Shang-wu, 1970. Pelliot, Paul. “Le Hōĵa et le Sayyid Husain de l’Histoire des Ming.” TP 38 (1948): 81292. ——. “Un ouvrage sur les premieres temps de Macao.” TP 31 (1935):.58-94 [Tao-kuang] Pi-yang Hsien Chih 泌陽縣志 (Gazetteer of Pi-yang County). 1824; repr. Taipei: Ch’eng-wen, 1976. Pien Kung 邊貢. Pien Hua-ch’üan Chi 邊華泉集 (Collected Works of Pien Huach’üan). Chia-ching edition; repr. Taipei: Wei-wen, 1976. Plaks, Andrew. “Shui-hu Chuan and the Sixteenth Century Novel Form: an Interpretive Reappraisal.” CLEAR 2 (1980): 3-53. Po Chü-yi Chi 白居易集 (Collected Works of Po Chü-yi). Compiled by Ku Hsüehchieh 顧學頡. Peking: Chung-hua, 1979. Po-wu Chih Chiao-cheng 博物志校證. Compiled by Fan Ning 范寧. Peking: Chunghua, 1980. Pound, Ezra. Collected Early Poems. Edited by Michael King. New York: New Directions, 1976. Pulleyblank, Edwin G. Background of the Rebellion of An Lu-shan. London: Oxford University Press, 1955. Rawski, Evelyn S. “Economic and Social Foundations of Late Imperial Culture.” In Popular Culture in Late Imperial China. Edited by David Johnson, Andrew J.Nathan, and Evelyn S. Rawski, pp.3-33. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. Rihaku Kashi Sakuin 李白歌詩索引 (Concordance to the Poetry of Li Po). Compiled by Hanabusa Hideki 花房英樹 . Tōdai Kenkyū no Shiori 8. Kyoto: Kyōto Daigaku Jimbun Kagaku Kenkyūjo, 1957. Robinson, David. Bandits, Eunuchs, and the Son of Heaven: Rebellion and the

686

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Economy of Violence in Mid-Ming China. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2001. —— . “Notes on Eunuchs in Hebei During the Mid-Ming Period.” Ming Studies 34 (1995.): 1-16. Rosen, Charles. The Romantic Generation. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995. Roth, Harold. The Textual History of the Huai-nan-tzu. Ann Arbor: Association for Asian Studies, 1992. Sakakura Atsuhide 阪倉篤秀. “Busōchō ni okeru Hakko Datō Keikaku ni Tsuite” 武宗朝における八虎打倒計画について (On the Plot to Overthrow the Eight Tigers During the Reign of Wu-tsung), in Ono Kazuko 小野和子, ed., Min-Shin Jidai no Seiji to Shakai 明淸時代の政治と社會, pp.43-62. Kyoto: Kyoto Daigaku Jimbun Kagaki Kenkyūjo, 1983. San-kuo Chih 三國志 (History of the Three Kingdoms). Peking: Chung-hua, 1959. San Su Ch’üan-shu 三蘇全書 (Complete Writings of the Three Su). Compiled by Tseng Tsao-chuang 曾棗莊 and Shu Ta-kang 舒大剛. Peking: Yü-wen, 2001. Schneewind, Sarah. “Competing Institutions: Community Schools and ‘Improper Shrines’ in Sixteenth century China.” Late Imperial China 20.1 (1999): 85-106. Shan-hai Ching Chiao-yi 山海經校譯 (The Classic of Mountains and Seas, Collated and Interpreted). Compiled by Yüan K’o 袁珂. Shanghai: Shanghai Ku-chi, 1985. [Ch’ien-lung Chih-li] Shang-chou Chih 商州志 (Gazetteer of Shang Sub-Prefecture). [Min-kuo] Shang-nan Hsien Chih 商南縣志 (Gazetteer of Shang-nan County). 1919; repr. Taipei: Ch’eng-wen, 1976. Shang Shu T’ung-chien 尚書通鑑 (Concordance to the Shang Shu). Compiled by Ku Chieh-kang 顧頡剛, et al. Peking: Harvard-Yenching Institute, 1936. Shao Pao 紹寶. Jung-ch’un T’ang Ch’ien-hou-chi 容春堂前後集 (Earlier and Later Collections from the Hall for Accomodating Spring). SKCS. Shen Te-ch’ien 沈德潛. Ming Shih Pieh-tsai Chi 明詩別裁集 (Separate Collection of Ming Poetry). Shanghai: Ku-chi, 1979. Sheng-ch’ao Ming-shih K’ao 聖朝名世考 (Examination of Eminent Nobles of our Sagely Dynasty). Compiled by Liu Meng-lei 劉孟雷 . 1611; repr. Ming-tai Chuan-chi Ts’ung-k’an, vol.41. Taipei: Ming-wen, 1991. [Ch’ien-lung] Shensi T’ung-chih 陜西通志 (Comprehensive Gazetteer of Shensi). SKCS. [Wan-li] Shensi T’ung-chih. Shih-tsung Shih-lu 世宗實錄 (Veritable Records of the Inheriting Ancestor). Taipei: Chung-yang Yen-chiu Yüan, 1965. Shinmen Eiko 新免恵子, comp. Shin Shin Kashi Sakuin 岑參歌詩索引 (Concordance to the Poetry of Ts’en Shen). Hiroshima: Chūgoku Chūshi Bungaku Kenkyūkai, 1978. Shuo-fu Hsü 說郛續 (Assemblage of Accounts, Continued). Shuo-fu San-chung 說郛三種. Shanghai: Shanghai Ku-chi, 1988. Shuo-yüan Chu-tzu So-yin 說苑逐字索引 (Single Word Concordance to the Garden of Sayings). Hong Kong: Shang-wu, 1992. [Ch’ien-lung] Sian Fu Chih 西安府志 (Gazetteer of Sian Prefecture). 1779; repr. Taipei: Ch’eng-wen, 1970. Smith, Barbara Herrnstein. Poetic Closure: A Study of How Poems End. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968. Soji Sakuin 楚辭索引 (Concordance to the Ch’u Tz’u). Compiled by Takeji Sadao 竹治貞夫. Kyoto: Chūbun, 1972. [K’ang-hsi] Soochow Fu Chih 蘇州府志 (Gazetteer of Soochow Prefecture).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

687

Ssu-k’u Ch’üan-shu Tsung-mu T’i-yao 四庫全書綜目提要 (Summary of the General Catalogue of the Complete Writings of the Four Storehouses). Compiled by Chi Yün 紀昀, et al. Taipei: Shang-wu, 1971. Ssu-ma Ch’ien 司馬遷. Shih Chi 史記 (Records of the Historian). Peking: Chung-hua, 1959. See also under Takigawa. Ssu-ma Chou 司馬周. “Jo wu Hsin Pien, Pu-neng Tai Hsiung: Lun Li Tung-yang ‘Niku Yüeh-fu’ Shih te Yi-shu Ch’uang-hsin” 若無新變不能代雄論李東陽《擬古樂府》詩的藝述創新 (Without Fresh Change, Unable to Succeed the Heroes: On the Creative Art of Li Tung-yang’s ‘Imitation Ancient Yüeh-fu’ Poems). Soochow Ta-hsüeh Hsüeh-pao 200.4:65-70. Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju Chi Chiao-chu 司馬相如集校注 (Collected Works of Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju Collated and Annotated). Compiled by Li Hsiao-chung 李孝中 . Chengtu: Pa-Shu Shu-she, 2000. Su Shih 蘇軾. Su Shih Shih-chi 蘇軾詩集 (Collected Poems of Su Shih). Edited by Wang Wen-kao 王文誥 and K’ung Fan-li 孔凡禮. Peking: Chung-hua, 1982. Sun Ch’eng-en 孫承恩. Wen-chien Chi 文簡集 (Collected Works of the Literate and Plain). SKCS. Sun Chi-fang 孫繼芳. Shih-chi Chi 石磯集 (Stony Chute Collection). Chia-ching edition. Sun Wei-kuo 孫衛國 . “Shih-shuo Ming-tai te Hsing-jen” 試說明代的行人 (A Provisional Account of Messengers in the Ming Period). Shih-hsüeh Ts’ung-k’an 1994.1:11-16. Sun Yi 孫宜. Tung-t’ing Yü-jen Wen-chi 洞庭漁人文集 (Collected Works of the Fisherman on Lake Tung-t’ing). Manuscript edition in 53 chüan. [Chia-ch’ing] Sung-chiang Fu Chih 松江府志 (Gazetteer of Sung-chiang Prefecture). 1817; repr. Taipei: Ch’eng-wen, 1970. Sung P’ei-wei 宋佩韋. Ming Wen-hsüeh Shih 明文學史 (History of Ming Literature). Shanghai: Shang-wu, 1934. Sung Shih 宋史 (History of the Sung Dynasty). Compiled by T’o-t’o 脫脫 et al. Peking: Chung-hua, 1977. Sung Shu 宋書 (History of the Sung). Compiled by Shen Yüeh 沈約. Peking: Chunghua, 1974. Sung Yü Chi 宋玉集 (Collected Works of Sung Yü). Compiled by Wu Kuang-p’ing 吳廣平. Changsha: Yüeh-lu Shu-she, 2001. Suzuki Tadashi 鈴木正, “Mindai Sanjin Kō” 明代山人考 (A Study of Ming Period ‘Mountain Dwellers’), [Shimizu (Taiji) Hakase Tsuitō Kinen] Mindaishi Ronsō 明代史論叢 (Tokyo:Daian, 1962), pp.357-88 Suzuki Torao 鈴木虎雄. “Ri Bōyō Nempuryaku” 李夢陽年譜略 (Brief Chronology of Li Meng-yang). Geibun 20 (1929): 1-18. ——. Shina Shironshi 支那詩論史 (History of Chinese Poetics). 1927; repr. Tokyo: Kōbundō, 1954. Tacitus. Agricola. trans. Maurice Hutton, rev. R.M. Ogilvie. Loeb edition. Tai Ch’in 戴欽. Lu-yüan Chi 鹿原集 (Deer Plain Collection). Ming manuscript edition; repr. Peking T’u-shu-kuan Ku-chi Chen-pen Ts’ung-k’an, vol.109. Peking: Shu-mu Wen-hsien, 1988. Tai Kuan 戴冠. Tai Shih Chi 戴氏集 (Collected Works of Mr. Tai). 1548; repr. TM 4:63. Tainan: Chuang-yen Wen-hua, 1997. Taiwan Kung-tsang Shan-pen Shu-mu, Shu-ming So-yin 臺灣公藏善本書目書名索引 (Union List of Rare Books in Taiwan Public Collections, Title Index). Taipei: National Central Library, 1971. [Ch’ien-lung] T’ai-k’ang Hsien Chih 太康縣志 (Gazetteer of T’ai-k’ang County).

688

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1761 edition. Takahata Tsunenobu 高畑常信. “Mindai no Bokuchiku Gaka Ka Chō no Shōgai” 明代の墨竹画家夏昶の生涯 (The Life of the Ming Bamboo Painter Hsia Ch’ang). Tokyo Gakugei Daigaku Kiyō 49 (1998), pp.115-41. ——. “Mindai no Gaka Ka Chō no Bokuchiku” 明代の画家夏昶の墨竹 (The Bamboo of the Ming Painter Hsia Ch’ang). Tokyo Gakugei Daigaku Kiyō 48 (1997) pp.259-8 Takigawa Kametarō 瀧川龜太郎. Shiki Kaichū Kōshō 史記會注考證 (Records of the Historian with Assembled Annotations and Evidential Examination). 1932-34; repr. Shih Chi Hui-chu K’ao-cheng fu chiao-pu 史記會注考證附校補 (Shanghai: Shanghai Ku-chi, 1986 Tan, Tian Yuan ( 陳靝沅 ). “The Wolf of Zhongshan and Ingrates: Problematic Literary Contexts in Sixteenth-Century China.” Asia Major Third Series, 20.1 (2007):105-31. T’ao Hsin-min 陶新民. “Shih Fen T’ang-Sung Shih-lun” 詩分唐宋試論 (Tentative Discussion of the Distinction Between T’ang and Sung in Poetry). Chiang-Huai Lun-t’an 1998.3:100-106 T’ao Yüan-ming Chüan 陶淵明卷 (T’ao Yüan-ming Volume). Ku-tien Wen-hsüeh Yen-chiu Tzu-liao Hui-pien. Peking: Chung-hua, 1961. T’ao Yüan-ming Shih Chien-cheng Kao 陶淵明詩箋證稿 (Draft Annotations of T’ao Yüan-ming’s Poetry). Compiled by Wang Shu-min 王叔岷. Taipei: Yi-wen, 1975. [Kuang-hsü Ch’ung-hsiu] Tientsin Fu Chih 天津府志 (Gazetteer of Tientsin Prefecture). Ting San-hsing 丁三省. “Ho Ching-ming yü Ming Hung-Cheng Hsin-yang Tso-chia Ch’ün” 何景明與明宏正信陽作家群 (Ho Ching-ming and the Group of Writers in Hsin-yang During the Hung[-chih] and Cheng[-te] Periods of the Ming). Hsinyang Shih-fan Hsüeh-yüan Hsüeh-pao 1991.3: 50-56. Tōdai no Shihen 唐代の詩篇 (T’ang Poems). Compiled by Hiraoka Takeo 平岡武夫, et al. Tōdai Kenkyū no Shiori 11-12. Kyoto: Kyōto Daigaku Jimbun Kagaku Kenkyūjo, 1965. Tong, James W. Disorder Under Heaven: Collective Violence in the Ming Dynasty. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991. Toyoda Jō 豐田穰. “Ō Yōmei no Shi ni Tsuite” 王陽明の詩に就いて (On the Poetry of Wang Yang-ming) Shibun 21.8 (1939): 37-47. Ts’ai Shih-shan Henry. The Eunuchs in the Ming Dynasty. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996. Ts’ai Yung 蔡邕. Ts’ai Chung-lang Wen-chi 蔡中郎文集 (Collected Literary Works of Inner Gentleman Ts’ai). SPTK. Ts’ao Chih 曹植. Ts’ao Tzu-chien Chi 曹子建集 (Collected Works of Ts’ao Tzuchien). SPTK. Ts’ao Kuo-ch’ing 曹國慶. “Ming-tai te T’ing-chang” 明代的廷杖 (Beating at Court in the Ming Dynasty). Shih-hsüeh Chi-k’an 1990.3:34-40. Ts’ao-mu 草木. “Kuan-yü ‘Ho Ta-fu Nien-p’u’ Jo-kan Wen-t’i ti K’ao-cheng” 關於何大復年譜若干問題的考證 (Examination of Several Problems With Respect to the ‘Chronological Biography of Ho Ta-fu’). Hsin-yang Shih-fan Hsüeh-yüan Hsüeh-pao 1991.3: 58-61. Ts’ao P’i 曹丕. Ts’ao P’i Chi Chiao-chu 曹丕集校注 (Collected works of Ts’ao P’i, Collated and Annotated). Compiled by Hsia Ch’uan-ts’ai 夏傳才 and T’ang Shao-chung 唐紹忠. Chengchow: Chung-chou Ku-chi, 1992. Ts’ao Ts’ao 曹操. Ts’ao Ts’ao Chi Yi-chu 曹操集譯注 (Collected Works of Ts’ao Ts’ao Interpreted and Annotated). Peking: Chung-hua, 1979.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

689

Ts’en Shen Shih Chi Pien-nien Chien-chu 岑參詩集編年箋註 (Collected Poems of Ts’en Shen, Chronologically Arranged and Annotated). Compiled by Liu K’aiyang 劉開揚. Chengtu: Pa-Shu Shu-she, 1995. Tsin Shu 晉書 (History of the Tsin). Compiled by Fang Hsüan-ling 房玄齡. Peking: Chung-hua, 1974. Ts’ui Hsien 崔銑. Huan Tz’u 洹詞 (Words from the Huan). SCKS. ——. Ts’ui Shih Huan Tz’u 崔氏洹詞 (Mr. Ts’ui’s Words from the Huan). 1554; repr. TM 4:56. Tainan, Chuang-yen Wen-hua, 1997. Tu Mu 杜牧. Fan-ch’uan Shih-chi Chu 樊川詩集注 (Collected Poems of Fan-ch’uan, Annotated). Annotated by Feng Chi-wu 馮集梧. Shanghai: Ku-chi, 1978. Tu Mu 都穆. Nan-hao Chü-shih Wen-pa 南濠居士文跋 (Essays and Colophons by the Retired Gentleman of the Southern Moat). Ming edition; repr. Hsü-hsiu SKCS, vol.922. Shanghai: Shanghai Ku-chi, 1997. Tu Shih Yin-te 杜詩引得 (Index to the Poems of Tu [Fu]). Compiled by Hung Yeh 洪業, et al. Harvard-Yenching Institute Sinological Index Series, Supplement No.14. Repr. Taipei: Chinese Materials and Research Aids Service Center, 1966. Tu Wei-ming. Neo-Confucian Thought in Action: Wang Yang-ming’s Youth (14721509). Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976. T’u Lung 屠隆. Hung-pao 鴻苞 (Great Packets). 1610; repr. TM 3:88-90. Tainan: Chuang-yen Wen-hua, 1995. Tuan Hsüeh-hung 段學紅. “Chih-ching ch’i Wen, Shuai-chen ch’i Jen: Ming-tai Tsochia Cheng Shan-fu Yen-chiu” 質勁其文率真其人明代作家鄭善夫研究 (The Writings Robust, the Man Straightforward: a Study of the Ming Writer Cheng Shan-fu). Shih-chia-chuang Chih-yeh Chi-shu Hsüeh-yüan Hsüeh-pao 13.1 (2001), pp.29-31. Tung Chi 董纪 . Tung Chung-feng Hsien-sheng Wen-hsüan 董中峰先生文選 (Selected Literary Works by Master Tung of the Central Peak). 1561 edition. Van der Sprenkel, Otto Berkelbach. “The Geographical Background of the Ming Civil Service.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 4 (1961), pp.302-36. Van Ess, Hans. “The Old Text / New Text Controversy: Has the Twentieth Century Got It Wrong?” TP 80 (1994): 146-70. Waley, Arthur. The Analects of Confucius. 1938; repr. New York: Vintage, n.d. ——. The Book of Songs. 1937; repr. New York: Grove Press, 1960. ——.Chinese Poems. 1946; repr. London: Unwin, 1961. ——. The Way and its Power: A Study of the Tao Te Ching and its Place in Chinese Thought. New York: Grove Press, 1958. Wan-li Yeh-huo Pien 萬曆野獲編 (Country Harvest Collection of the Wan-li Era). Compiled by Shen Te-fu 沈德符. Li-tai Pi-chi Hsiao-shuo Chi-ch’eng, vols.39-40. Repr. Shih-chia-chuang: Hopeh Chiao-yü, 1995. Wang Chih-teng 王稺登. Chin-ling Chi 晉陵集 (Chin-ling Collection). Wang Pai-ku Chi 王百穀集 (Collected Works of Wang Pai-ku). Ming edition; repr. Ssu-k’u Chin-hui Shu Ts’ung-k’an 4:175. Peking: Peking Ch’u-pan-she, 2000. Wang Chiu-ssu 王九思. Mei-p’o Chi 渼陂集 (Mei Slope Collection). Chia-ching edition; repr. Taipei: Wei-wen, 1976. Wang Chung-min 王重民. Chung-kuo Shan-pen Shu T’i-yao 中國善本書提要 (Notes on Chinese Rare Books). Shanghai: Ku-chi, 1983. Wang Ch’ung-ch’ing 王崇慶. Tuan-hsi Hsien-sheng Chi 端溪先生集 (Collected Works of the Master of Tuan Stream). 1552 edition. Wang Hsing-ya 王興亞. “Ming-tai Kuan-li K’ao-ho Chih-tu Lun-lüeh” 明代官吏考核制度論略 (A Sketch of the System for Evaluating Officials During the Ming).

690

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Huang-Huai Hsüeh-k’an 11.2 (1995), pp.73-81. Wang Kung-wang 王公望. “Li Meng-yang K’ung-t’ung Chi Jen-ming Chien-cheng. (chih erh)” 李夢陽空同集人名箋證之二 (Notes on Personal Names in Li Mengyang’s Collected works of K’ung-t’ung, Pt. 2). Kansu She-hui K’o-hsüeh 1994.5:83-86, 75. ——. “Li Meng-yang K’ung-t’ung Chi Jen-ming Chien-cheng. (chih san)” 李夢陽空同集人名箋證之三 (Notes on Personal Names in Li Meng-yang’s Collected works of K’ung-t’ung, Pt. 3). Kansu She-hui K’o-hsüeh 1995.5:67-70. ——. “Li Meng-yang Sheng-p’ing Jo-kan Shih-shih te K’ao-so Pien-wu” 李夢陽生平若干史實的考索辨誤 (An Investigation and Correction of Several Historical Facts Concerning Li Meng-yang’s Life). She-k’o Tsung-heng 1996.3:35-37, 41. ——. “Li Meng-yang Sheng-p’ing K’ao-pien Erh-t’i” 李夢陽生平考辨二題 (Two Critical Comments on Li Meng-yang’s Biography). Lan-chou Chiao-yü Hsüehyüan Hsüeh-pao 1997.2:22-26. ——. “Li Meng-yang yü Ho Ching-ming” 李夢陽與何景明 (Li Meng-yang and Ho Ching-ming). She-k’o Tsung-heng 2001.5:47-49. ——. “Lun ‘Chung-shan Lang Chuan’ ho ‘Chung-shan Lang’ Tsa-chü Ping Fei Fengtz’u Li Meng-yang” 論中山狼傳和中山狼雜劇並非諷刺李夢陽 (The Story of the Chung-shan Wolf and the play The Wolf of Chung-shan Definitely do not Satirise Li Meng-yang). Kansu She-hui K’o-hsüeh 2004.1:33-36. Wang, Ping. “Maple Leaf—A Poetic Image Worth A Thousand Pieces of Gold.” Unpublished paper presented at the 2006 meeting of the American Oriental Society, Western Branch. Wang Shang-chiung 王尚絅. Ts’ang-ku Ch’üan-chi 蒼谷全集 (Collected Works from the Deep Green Valley). 1758; repr. Ssu-k’u Wei-shou Shu Chi-k’an 5:18. Peking: Peking Ch’u-pan-she, 1997. Wang Shih-chen 王世貞 . Yen-chou Shan-jen Ssu-pu-kao 弇州山人四部稿 (Manuscripts from the Four [Bibliographical] Divisions by the Mountain Dweller of Yen-chou). Wan-li edition; repr. Taipei: Wei-wen, 1976. ——. Yen-shan T’ang Pieh-chi 弇山堂別集 (Separate Collection from the Mt. Yen Hall). Peking: Chung-hua, 1985. ——. Yi-yüan Chih-yen 藝苑巵言 (Timely Words from the Garden of Arts). Yenchou Shan-jen Ssu-pu-kao, chüan 144-55 (pp.6581-7094); also Hsü Li-tai Shihhua. Taipei: Yi-wen, 1971; Li-tai Shih-hua Hsü-pien. Peking: Chung-hua, 1983; Ming Shih-hua Ch’üan-pien 4:4188-4610. Wang Shih-chen 王士禎. Chü-yi Lu 居易錄 (Records of Residing in Change). SKCS. ——. Hsiang-tsu Pi-chi 香祖筆記 (Arethusa Brush Records). Taipei: Hsin-hsing, 1988. ——. Yü-yang Shan-jen Ching-hua-lu Hsün-tsuan 漁洋山人精華錄訓纂 (Assembled Glosses on the Record of Essential Blossoms by the Mountain Dweller of Yüyang). SPPY. Wang T’ing-hsiang 王廷相. Wang Shih Chia-ts’ang Chi 王氏家藏集 (Mr. Wang’s Collected Works Stored at Home). Chia-ching edition; repr. Taipei: Wei-wen, 1976. ——. Wang T’ing-hsiang Chi 王廷相集 (Collected Works of Wang T’ing-hsiang). Peking: Chung-hua, 1989. Wang Ts’an Chi Chu 王粲集注 (Collected Works of Wang Ts’an, Annotated). Compiled by Wu Yün 吳雲 and T’ang Shao-chung 唐紹忠. Hsin-yang: Chungchou Shu-hua, 1984. Wang Wei 王維. Wang Yu-ch’eng Chi Chien-chu 王右丞集箋注 (Collected Works of Junior Assistant Director Wang, Annotated). Annotated by Chao Tien-ch’eng 趙

BIBLIOGRAPHY

691

殿成. Hong Kong: Chung-hua, 1972. Wang Yi 王乙 and Ch’en Hung 陳紅. “Hsü Chen-ch’ing Nien-p’u Chien-pien” 徐禎卿年譜簡編 (Brief Chronological Biography of Hsü Chen-ch’ing). Yunnan Chiao-yü Hsüeh-yüan Hsüeh-pao 11.4 (1995): 41-46. Watson, Burton. Chinese Lyricism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1971. ——. Records of the Grand Historian of China. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961. ——. Su Tung-p’o: Selections from a Sung Dynasty Poet. New York: Columbia University Press, 1965. ——. The Complete Works of Chuang-tzu. New York: Columbia University Press, 1968. Weerdt, Hilda de. “Canon Formation and Examination Culture: The Construction of Guwen and Daoxue Traditions.” Journal of Sung and Yüan Studies 29 (1999): 91133. Wei Tsu-hui 韋祖輝. “Pao-fang yü Ming Wu-tsung: Chien yü Ko Chieh-min, Yeh Tsu-fu Hsien-sheng Shang-ch’üeh” 豹房與明武宗 : 兼與蓋杰民葉祖孚先生商榷 (The Leopard Quarter and Wu-tsung of the Ming, and a Debate with Ko Chieh-min and Yeh Tsu-fu). Ku-kung Po-wu-yüan Yüan-k’an 1992.1:29-33. Wei Ying-wu Chi Chiao-chu 韋應物集校注 (Collected Works of Wei Ying-wu, Collated and Annotated). Compiled by T’ao Min 陶敏 and Wang Yu-sheng 王友勝. Shanghai: Shanghai Ku-chi, 1998. Wen Hsüan 文選 (Selections of Literature). Compiled by Hsiao T’ung 蕭統. Ch’ing reproduction of Sung edition; repr. Taipei: Cheng-chung, 1971. Wen-tzu Chu-tzu So-yin 文子逐字索引 (Single Word Concordance to the Wen-tzu). Taipei: Shang-wu, 1990. Wilhelm, Richard. The I Ching or Book of Changes: The Richard Wilhelm Translation Rendered into English by Cary F. Baynes. Bollingen Series 19, third edition. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967. Wixted, John Timothy, trans. Five Hundred Years of Chinese Poetry, 1150-1650, the Chin, Yüan, and Ming Dynasties, by Yoshikawa Kōjirō. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989. Wong Yuk (王煜). “The Confucian, Legalist, Taoist, and Buddhist Vestiges of Ho Ching-ming.” Chinese Culture 33.1 (1992):61-68. Wu Ch’eng-hsüeh 吳承學, Ts’ao Hung 曹虹, and Chiang Yin 蔣寅. “Yi-ko Ch’i-tai Kuan-chu te Hsüeh-shu Ling-yü: Ming-Ch’ing Shih-wen Yen-chiu San-jen-t’an” 一個期待關注的學述領域 : 明清詩文研究三人談 (A Scholarly Domain Awaiting Attention: A Three-way Discussion of Research on Ming and Ch’ing Poetry and Prose). Wen-hsüeh Yi-ch’an 1999.4:1-16. Wu-pei Chih 武備志 (Treatise on Military Preparedness). Compiled by Mao Yüan-yi 茅元儀. T’ien-ch’i edition; repr. Ssu-k’u Chin-hui Shu Ts’ung-k’an 3:23-26. Peking: Peking Ch’u-pan-she, 2000. Wu-tsung Shih-lu 武宗實錄 (Veritable Records of the Martial Ancestor). Taipei: Chung-yang Yen-chiu-yüan, 1964. Yagisawa Hajime 八木澤元. Mindai Geki Sakka Kenkyū 明代劇作家研究 (Studies of Ming Dynasty Playwrights). Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1959. Trans. Lo Chin-t’ang 羅錦堂. Ming-tai Chü Tso-chia Yen-chiu. Hong Kong: Lung-men, 1966. Yang Ch’un-ch’iu 羊春秋. “Ch’ung-ku Ming-tai Shih–ko te Chia-chih” 重估明代詩歌的價值 (Reconsider the Value of Ming Poetry). Chung-kuo Yün-wen Hsüehk’an 1994.1:1-6; repr. Chung-kuo Ku-tai, Chin-tai Wen-hsüeh Yen-chiu 1995.6:196-201. Yang Hai-ch’ing 陽海清. “Ho Ching-ming Chu-shu Pan-k’o Shu-lüeh” 何景明著述

692

BIBLIOGRAPHY

版刻述略 (Summary Account of Printed Editions of Ho Ching-ming’s Writings). YC 160-170. Yang Lien-sheng. “Ming Local Administration.” in Charles O. Hucker, ed., Chinese Government in Ming Times: Seven Studies, pp.1-21. New York: Columbia University Press, 1969. Yang Shen 楊慎. Sheng-an Chi 升菴集 (Ascendant Studio Collection). SKCS. Yang Shih-ch’i 楊士奇 . Tung-li Shih-chi 東里詩集 (Collected Poems from the Eastern Ward). SKCS. Yang Yi-ch’ing 楊一清 . Hsi-cheng Jih-lu 西征日錄 (Journal of the Western Campaign). Chi-lu Hui-pien; repr. PP 16/3. ——. Shih-tsung Shih-ch’ao 石淙詩鈔 (Poetry Selections from Stony Rill). Yün-nan Ts’ung-shu. ——. Shih-tsung Shih-kao 石淙詩稿 (Poetry Manuscripts from Stony Rill). Chiaching edition; repr. TM 4:40. Tainan: Chuang-yen Wen-hua, 1997. Yao Hsi-meng 姚希孟. Kung-huai Chi 公槐集 (Ducal Poplar Collection). Ch’ungchen edition; repr. Ssu-k’u Chin-hui Shu Ts’ung-k’an 4:178-79. Peking: Peking Ch’u-pan-she, 2000. Yao Hsüeh-hsien 姚學賢, Huo Chao-an 霍朝安, and Chin Jung-ch’üan 金榮權. Ho Ching-ming P’ing-chuan 何景明評傳 (Critical Biography of Ho Ching-ming). Kaifeng: Honan Ta-hsüeh, 1993. —— and Lung Li 龍麗. “Ho Ching-ming Yi-chi K’ao” 何景明遺跡考 (Examination of Sites Associated with Ho Ching-ming). Hsin-yang Shih-fan Hsüeh-yüan Hsüeh-pao 15.4 (1995): 75-78. —— and Hsü Yang-shang 徐揚尚. “Kuan-yü Ho Ching-ming Tu-hsüeh Shensi te Pucheng” 關於何景明督學陜西的補正 (Corrigenda to Ho Ching-ming’s Education Intendancy in Shensi). Yin-tu Hsüeh-k’an 1992.4:30-36. —— and Ts’ao-mu 草木. “Ho Ching-ming Ch’u-shih Yunnan Tsa-k’ao” 何景明出使雲南雜考 (Miscellaneous Studies of Ho Ching-ming’s Mission to Yunnan). Honan Shih-fan Ta-hsüeh Hsüeh-pao 20.4 (1993): 48-51. Yeh Chia-ying (Florence Chia-ying Yeh Chao) 葉嘉瑩. “The Ch’ang-chou School of Tz’u Criticism.” HJAS 35 (1975): 101-32. Repr. J.R. Hightower and Florence Chia-ying Yeh. Studies in Chinese Poetry, pp.439-61. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998. ——. Tu Fu ‘Ch’iu-hsing Pa-shou’ Chi-shuo 杜甫秋興八首集說 (Collected Commentaries on Tu Fu’s Eight Autumn Inspirations). Taipei: Chung-hua Ts’ung-shu, 1966. Yeh Hsieh 葉燮. Yüan Shih 原詩 (Fundamentals of Poetry). Chao-tai Ts’ung-shu; repr. TSCC Hsü-pien, vol.1698. Shanghai: Shanghai Shu-tien, 1994. Yen-ch’eng Hsien Chih 郾城縣志 (Gazetteer of Yen-ch’eng County). Repr. .Ming-tai Fang-chih Hsüan-k’an Hsü-pien, vol.59. Shanghai: Shanghai Shu-tien, 1990. Yen Ch’uan-shu 鄢傳恕, “Mao Tse-tung Lun Ming Shih” 毛澤東論明詩 (Mao Tsetung on Ming Poetry), Chiang-Han Lun-t’an 1995.5:63. Yen Kuang-wen 顏廣文. “Ming-tai Chung-shu She-jen Chih-tu K’ao-lüeh” 明代中書舍人制度考略 (A Brief Study of the Institution of Secretariat Drafters in the Ming Dynasty). Hua-nan Shih-fan Ta-hsüeh Hsüeh-pao 1999.6: 107-13. Yen Sung 嚴嵩. Ch’ien-shan T’ang Chi 鈐山堂集 (Mt. Ch’ien Hall Collection). Chia-ching edition. Yen Yü 嚴羽. Ts’ang-lang Shih-hua Chiao-shih 滄浪詩話校釋 (Remarks on Poetry from the Ts’ang-lang, Collated and Explained). Edited by Kuo Shao-yü. Peking: Jen-min Wen-hsüeh, 1961. Yokota Terutoshi 橫田輝俊 . “Ka Keimei no Bungaku” 何景明の文學 (The

BIBLIOGRAPHY

693

Literature of Ho Ching-ming). Hiroshima Daigaku Bungakubu Kiyō 25 (1965): 246-61. ——. “Mindai Bungakuron no Tenkai” 明代文学論の展開 (Development of Ming Literary Theory). Pt.1 Hiroshima Daigaku Bungakubu Kiyō 37-tokushūgo-3 (1977); Pt.2. Hiroshima Daigaku Bungakubu Kiyō 38 (1978): 75-135. ——. “Mindai Bunjin Kessha no Kenkyū” 明代結社の研究 (Studies of the Formation of Societies by Ming Dynasty Literati). Hiroshima Daigaku Bungakubu Kiyō 35-tokushūgo-3 (1975). ——, trans. Shisō 詩藪 (Meadowland of Poetry). Tokyo: Meitoku Shuppansha, 1975. Yoshikawa Kōjirō 吉川幸次郎. Gen Min Shi Gaisetsu 元明詩概說 (Introduction to Yüan and Ming Poetry). Chūgoku Shijin Senshū, second series 2. Tokyo: Iwanami, 1963. For translation, see under John Timothy Wixted. ——. “Ri Bōyō no Ichi Sokumen: ‘Kobunji’ no Shominsei” 李夢陽の一側面:「古文辞」の庶民性 (One Side of Li Meng-yang: The Common Citizan Nature of Archaism). Ritsumeikan Bungaku 180 (1960): 190-208; repr. Yoshikawa Kōjirō Zenshū 15: 614-33. Tokyo: Chikuma, 1969. Yü Hsin 庾信. Yü Tzu-shan Chi Chu 庾子山集注 (Collected Works of Yü Tzu-shan, Annotated). Peking: Chung-hua, 1980. Yü Meng-lin 余孟麟 . Yü Hsüeh-shih Chi 余學士集 (Collected Works of Academician Yü). 1600 edition. Yü-t’ai Hsin-yung 玉臺新詠 (New Songs From a Jade Terrace). Compiled by Hsü Ling 徐陵. 1774 edition of the Yü-t’ai Hsin-yung Chien-chu 箋註, repr. Gyokudai Shin’ei Sakuin 玉臺新詠索引. Compiled by Obi Kōichi 小尾郊一 and Takashi Tadao 高志真人. Tokyo: Yamamoto, 1976. Yüan Chung-tao 袁中道. K’o-hsüeh Chai Chi 珂雪齋集 (Spangle Snow Studio Collection). Edited by Ch’ien Po-ch’eng 錢伯城. Shanghai: Shanghai Ku-chi, 1989. [Lung-ch’ing] Yüeh-chou Fu Chih 岳州府志 (Gazetteer of Yüeh-chou Prefecture). [Chia-ching] Yün-yang Hsien Chih 雲陽縣志 (Gazetteer of Yün-yang County). Zhao, Jie. “Reassessing the Place of Chou Ju-teng (1547-1629) in Late Ming Thought.” Ming Studies 33 (1994): 1-11.

INDEX Ah-pao 阿保, 85-86 An Ch’i 安旗, 111 An P’an 安磐, 391 Analects 論語, 11, 168, 261, 278, 345, 374, 510, 617 as examination topic, 18 An-ch’ing 安慶, 441, 455, 496, 565 An-min 安民, 86 Annals 春秋 (Spring and Autumn), 12, 194, 278, 410, 565 An-nan 安南, 86 Aoki Masaru 靑木正兒, 390, 561 Archaism, xvii, xviii, 42, 55, 541, 549, 572, 577, 583 and ‘Seven Masters’, 641-58 and Chinese painting, 394-97 and ethical concerns, 397 and evaluation, xviii and examinations, 425, 543 and formalism, xviii, 397, 399, 417-18, 428, 430 and individuality, 418-19, 424-25, 549 and its opponents, 77, 539, 554-56 and Li Meng-yang, 396, 417 and Li Meng-yang circle, 53, 118, 241 and pre-T’ang, 391, 461 and T’ang models, 129, 146, 332 and tao-hsüeh, 398-99, 420-25, 541-42 antipathy to Sung, 397-98, 542-43 as northern, 419-20 before Li Meng-yang, 388, 390, 392-94, 417, 426 comparative, 77-8 in Ming, 426-27 recent study of, 561-62 resistence to, 354, 536 social background, 419 T’ang precursors, 420 Arntzen, Sonja, xxiii Austen, Jane, xiv Bach, Johann Sebastian, 78

Bacon, Francis, 78 Beethoven, Ludwig van, xiii Berio, Luciano, 78 Birrell, Anne, 25, 55, 114, 140, 149, 170, 246, 258, 266, 326 Black River 黑水, 505 Bloom, Irene, 418 Blue, Gregory, xxiv, 286 Bourgon, Jérôme, 286 Brahms, Johannes, 133, 623 Brook, Timothy, 190, 286, 321, 493 Buñuel, Luis, 78 Cahill, James, 41, 395 Canon of Filial Piety 孝經, 617 Carlitz, Katherine, 515, 533 Caswell, James, xxiii Center for Chinese Studies, Taipei 漢學研究中心, xv Chai Ch’ing 翟清, 526 Ch’ai 柴, Mr., 215-17 Chan Jo-shui 湛若水, 21, 295, 438, 655 Chan-kuo Ts’e 戰國策, 254, 381, 638 Chan, Wing-tsit, 37 Chan-yi 霑益, 86 Chang Chi 張繼, 56 Chang Ch’ien 張潛, 198, 502-03 Chang Ch’in 張欽, 472 Chang Chih 張治, 647 Chang Chih-tao 張治道, 197, 263, 499 and Archaism, 644, 656 and Ho Ching-ming, 356, 525-26, 530, 532 and Yung recension, 601-07, 609, 612-13, 625, 639 K’ang Hai curriculum, 197, 204, 647 Chang Chi-meng 張繼孟, 300, 32223, 333, 353, 370, 381, 450 Chang Chiu-ling 張九齡, 199 Chang, Empress 張后, 65 Chang Han 張含, 456, 652

INDEX Chang Heng 張衡, 129, 141, 152, 248, 253 Chang Hsiang 張相, 75 Chang Hsieh 張協, 244, 271 Chang Hsü 張旭, 279 Chang Hsüan 張萱, 579 Chang Hsüeh-ch’eng 章學誠, 407 Chang Hua 張華, 263 Chang-hua 章華 (terrace), 70, 72, 366 Chang Jo-hsü 張若虛, 105 Chang Kang 張鋼, 339 Chang Kung 張拱, 28, 54, 615 Chang Lai 張賚, 531 Chang Liang 張良, 243, 452 Chang Pi 張璧, 13 Chang Shih 張詩, 304-05, 324, 365, 375, 380, 386, 451, 532, 534, 570, 580 Chang Shih-lung 張士隆, 60, 288, 299, 314, 322, 347, 357, 470, 475, 478, 492, 512 Chang Shuai 張率, 140 Chang Ting-ssu 張鼎思, 74 Chang Tsai 張載, 397, 524 Chang Ts’ai 張綵, 204, 219 Chang Ts’ung 張璁, 318 Chang Tzu-lin 張子麟, 153, 287 Chang Wen-lin 張文麟, 282, 286 Chang Yün 張雲, 203, 234, 291, 302, 625 Chang Yung 張永, 283-85 Ch’ang Chien 常建, 326 Ch’ang-hsin 長信 (palace), 109, 115, 173 Ch’ang-hua 昌化 (temple), 367 Ch’ang Lun 常倫, 650 Ch’ang-o 姮娥, 116 Changes 易經 (Book of), 93, 132, 253, 277, 338, 340, 343, 379, 398, 403, 404-06, 411, 413, 477, 510, 569 Chao-chou 趙州, 187 Chao Chung-nan 趙中男, 190 Chao Fei-yen 趙飛燕, 115, 140-41 Chao Ho 趙鶴, 51 Chao Hui 趙惠, 159, 162, 167, 171, 179, 183, 307 Chao Meng-fu 趙孟頫, 395 Chao Mo 趙謨, 160 Chao Ping-wen 趙秉文, 500 Chao Shih-ch’i 趙士器, 478 Chao Wen-han 趙文翰, 616-17 Chao Yen-fu 趙彥復, 593 Chaves, Jonathan, 562

695 Ch’e Yin 車胤, 439 Cheang, Alice W., 391, 404 Chen Kaige, 254 Chen-yüan 鎮遠, 81 Ch’en Chien 陳建, 394 Ch’en Feng-ku 陳鳳谷, 524 Ch’en Hsien-chang 陳獻章, 398, 42023 Ch’en Hsüan 陳選, 6 Ch’en Hsüeh-lin [Chan Hok-lam] 陳學霖, 40 Ch’en Jo-shui 陳弱水, xxiv Ch’en Kuo-ch’iu 陳國球, 238, 393 Ch’en P’ing 陳平, 164 Ch’en Shih-tao 陳師道, 182, 543 Ch’en Shu-lu 陳書錄, 43, 256, 25758 Ch’en Shun-cheng 陳舜政, xxiii Ch’en T’ang 陳堂, 621 Ch’en, the Perfected (Taoist) 陳真人, 302 Ch’en-ts’ang 陳倉, 507 Ch’en Tzu-ang 陳子昂, 239, 414, 420 Ch’en Tzu-lung 陳子龍, 252 Ch’en Yi 陳沂, 241, 319, 457, 543, 642, 652 Ch’en Yi-shan 陳逸山, 61 Cheng Chen-to 鄭振鐸, 553-60 Cheng Ho 鄭和, 35, 190 Cheng Hsüan 鄭玄, 410, 492 Cheng Pang-chen 鄭邦鎮, 37 Cheng Shan-fu 鄭善夫, 134, 159, 243, 263, 272, 468, 529, 645, 650 and Archaism, 653 and Ch’en Yi, 241 and Ho Ching-ming, 299, 330, 365, 442, 472, 477, 650 and Hsü Chen-ch’ing, 644, 649 and Ku Lin, 654 and Ten Talents, 642 beaten in court, 495 collected works, 597 Cheng Tso 鄭佐, 453 Chengtu 成都, 518 Ch’eng Ch’i-ch’ung 程啟充, 444 Ch’eng Hao 程顥, 19, 31, 339, 397, 422, 500 Ch’eng Min-cheng 程敏政, 49, 56 Ch’eng-nan 城南寺 (temple), 377, 379 Ch’eng Yi 程頤, 20, 31, 339, 397 Cherniack, Susan, 80, 245, 330 Chi-mo 即墨, 335 Ch’i-ch’an 棲禪 (temple), 500

696 Chia-hsien 郟縣, 482, 569 Chia Tao 賈島, 208, 331, 332 Chia Ts’e 賈策, 61, 160, 206, 207, 221, 231, 233, 463, 624, 628, 629 Chia Yi 賈誼, 66, 140, 194, 307-08, 337-38 Chiang-men 江門, 94 Chiang Pin 江彬, 314, 443, 445-46, 528 Chiang-shan 江山, 374-75 Chiang Shan-ch’ing 蔣山卿, 475, 477 Chiang-tzu 姜子嶺 (range), 509 Chiang Yen 江淹, 55, 132, 228, 232, 246-47, 260, 451, 504, 510 Chiang Yin 蔣寅, 558 Chiang Ying-k'o 江盈科, 538 Chiao Fang 焦芳, 123-28, 203-04, 219, 292, 502, 604, 634 Chiao Huang-chung 焦黃中, 202-05, 292, 604, 634 Ch’iao Shih-ning 喬世寧, 2, 197, 272, 493 Ho Ching-ming biography, 1, 10, 128, 470, 491, 497, 576-79, 582-84, 586, 588, 591, 645 Ch’iao Tsung 喬宗, 384 Ch’iao Yü 喬宇, 51 Chien Chin-sung 簡錦松, xxiv, 42-43, 49, 51, 53, 71, 108, 196, 237, 240, 388-89, 394, 397, 406-07, 416, 418, 420, 479, 493, 540, 585, 644, 647, 653-55 Chien-shan 堅山寺 (temple), 201, 225, 229 Chien-yeh 建業, 434 Ch’ien Ch’ien-yi 錢謙益, 44, 49, 354, 356, 399, 407, 559, 582, 588, 59091, 644 and Ho Ching-ming, 539 Ch’ien Chung-shu 錢鍾書, 36, 541, 543, 560 Ch’ien Hsüan 錢選, 355, 395 Ch’ien Jung 錢榮, 51, 56, 198, 358 Ch’ien Ning 錢寧, 296, 307, 308, 314, 319, 469, 470, 495, 527, 567, 571, 573, 577, 584, 588-89 Chin-chou 金州, 512 Chin, Gail, xxiii Chin-hsien Pei-yi 今獻備遺, 575 Chin Jung-ch’üan 金榮權, 2, 14, 98, 184, 334, 389, 470 Chin-shih 津市, 72, 74 Chin Yu-tzu 金幼孜, 43 Ch’in Chin 秦金, 51

INDEX Ch’in Kui 勤貴, 318 Ch’in Wu-yang 秦舞陽, 255 Ching K’o 荊軻, 133, 253, 255-56, 263, 340 ching-wei 精衛 (legendary bird), 367 Ch’ing-p’ing 清平, 79-80 Ch’ing-yang 慶陽, 47, 494, 530 Chiu-tsung 九嵕 (mountain), 500 Cho Wen-chün 卓文君, 116, 118 Ch’oe Pu, 10, 65, 289 Chou-chih 盩厔, 458, 499, 501-02, 505, 507, 530, 576 Chou Chih-p’ing 周質平, 538, 561 Chou Chin 周金, 444 Chou Chün-ch’i 周焌圻, 533 Chou, Eva Shan, 77, 521 Chou Kuang 周廣, 308 Chou Shu 周述, 43 Chou T’ing-yung 周廷用, 134, 228, 259, 453 Chou Tso 周祚, 652-53 Chou Tun-yi 周敦頤, 397-98 Chou Tzu-liang 周子良, xxv Chou Tzu-yi 周子義, 576, 621-22 Chou Yen-wen 周彥文, xxiv Chou Yin-pin 周寅賓, 394 Chu An-hsien 朱安形, 17, 21, 166, 209, 388 Chu Ch’en-hao 朱宸濠. See Ning, Prince Chu Chih-fan 朱寘鐇, 282-83, 285 Chu Hai 朱亥, 141 Chu Hsi 朱熹, 20, 31, 37, 195, 397, 398, 418, 422, 424, 493, 540 Chu-ko Liang 諸葛亮, 308, 316, 410, 460, 507, 509, 511, 517, 519-20 Chu Kuo-chen 朱國禎, 475 Chu Mu-chieh 朱睦禁, 16-17, 20, 60, 159, 475, 583, 584 unreliable chronology, 584 Chu Piao 朱標, 34 Chu Shou 朱壽, 483 Chu Shu-chen 朱淑真, 61 Chu Ti 朱棣, 35-38, 40, 43, 134-35, 137 Chu T’iao-yüan 朱調元, 216 Chu Tung-jun 朱東潤, 407, 598 Chu Ying-teng 朱應登, 48, 52, 259, 319, 642, 647, 649, 654 Chu Yi-tsun 朱彝尊, 251, 354, 415, 538-39, 644, 647, 652 Chu Yu-tun 朱有燉, 41

INDEX Chu Yüan-chang 朱元璋, 4, 17, 3234, 36, 40-43, 137, 280, 398, 427, 527 Chu Yün-ming 祝允明, 347, 556, 649 Chu Yün-wen 朱允炆, 34-35, 43, 134 Chu, Yung-deh Richard, 100, 123 Ch’u Ch’üan 儲巏, 49, 51, 643 Ch’u Kuang-hsi 儲光羲, 164 Ch’u Tz’u 楚辭, 132, 210 Distant Roaming, 177 Divination, 270 Lament on Separation, 208, 253, 261, 356 Mountain Goddess, 329 Nine Arguments, 113 Nine Songs, 97, 150, 210-11, 217, 359 Summons to a Recluse, 327 The Fisherman, 136, 209, 211 Thinking of Antiquity, 75 Chü-yung 居庸 (pass), 68, 471-72 Ch’ü Yüan 屈原, 194, 208, 211, 308, 477, 568 Chuang-tzu 莊子, 80, 94, 163, 261, 277, 279, 340, 344-45, 379, 409, 477-78 Ch’üeh-shan 確山, 479 Ch’ui 倕 (artisan), 409-10 Ch’un-shen, Lord 春申君, 141 Chung Chün 終軍, 68 Chung Tzu-ch’i 鍾子期, 172, 175 Chung Yi 鍾儀, 338, 340 Ch’ung-yün 重雲 (temple), 500 Churchill, Winston, 426 Confucius 孔子, 11, 18, 28, 90, 94, 128, 135, 137, 150, 168, 194, 277, 278-79, 321, 335, 339-40, 403, 405, 410, 414, 461, 477, 486, 506, 513, 617 Dardess, John W., 31, 33 Davis, A.R., 76, 519 De Bary, Theodore, 36, 424 De Weerdt, Hilda, 490 Denton, Joanne, xxiv Ditmanson, Peter, 423 Doctrine of the Mean 中庸, 617 Documents 尚書 (Book of), 12, 147, 312, 401, 460, 566, 572 Doleželová-Velingerová, Milena, 557 Double Nine 重陽, 55, 87, 179, 199, 205, 234, 257, 311, 333, 362, 435, 438, 450, 467, 468, 481, 524

697 Drafter, Secretariat 中書舍人, ix, x, xii, 26, 27, 48, 67, 99, 127, 138, 152, 214, 271, 285, 292, 348, 370, 373, 432, 469, 566, 587, 589 Dreyer, Edward L., 35 Duke of Chou 周公, 278, 405 Duyvendak, J. J. L., 190 East China Normal University 華東師範大學, xxv Education Intendants, 6-7, 231, 345, 370, 386, 448, 465, 471, 475-76, 485-86, 489, 494, 506, 530, 567, 602 Elders of the Ho and Fen 河汾諸老, 553 Elman, Benjamin A., 12, 31-32, 3435, 37, 50, 305, 398, 551 Elvin, Mark, 559 Embroidered Uniform Guard 錦衣衛, 196, 296, 318-19, 545 emperor, role of, 102-04 Endicott-West, Elizabeth, 31 eunuchs abuse of civil officials, 7, 129, 452, 604 abuse of power, 274, 289, 303 adherents, 219, 285 and bandits, 290 and favourites, 296 and Hsiao-tsung, 65 and military, 283 and Wu-tsung, 123 at court, 123, 128, 385 from Fukien, 319 Ho Ching-ming on, 127, 567, 589 in fall of Liu Chin, 285 in provinces, 6, 88, 296, 318, 566, 583, 588-89 structural functions of, 100-02, 444 examination system, xvii, 12, 46, 239, 299, 357, 488, 576 abolition of, 551 abuse of, 203, 319, 604 and civil office, 15-16, 21-22, 26, 30, 43, 50, 203, 222, 224, 371, 425, 433, 469, 591 and pa-ku-wen, 36, 489 and tao-hsüeh, 31-32, 37, 398, 490 chin-shih of 1371, 34 chin-shih of 1463, 45 chin-shih of 1478, 159 chin-shih of 1484, ix

698 chin-shih of 1490, 315 chin-shih of 1493, 47, 309, 484, 646 chin-shih of 1496, 47, 49, 56, 191, 231, 363, 646, 654, 657 chin-shih of 1499, 48, 120, 152, 285, 288, 352, 512, 566, 647 chin-shih of 1505, 20, 58-60, 240, 300, 308, 310, 330, 352, 445, 465, 644, 650 chin-shih of 1508, 21, 159, 183-84, 186-87, 189, 199, 203, 299, 303, 347, 370, 377, 475, 602, 604, 631 chin-shih of 1511, 160, 298, 306, 347, 370, 498, 525 chin-shih of 1514, 288, 353-57, 362-63, 365, 433, 438, 458, 525, 651 chin-shih of 1517, 105, 241, 273, 362, 365, 441, 462-63, 471, 512, 525, 604, 653 chin-shih of 1520, 653 chin-shih of 1553, 620 chin-shih of 1565, 533 chin-shih of 1577, 533 chin-shih scandal of 1499, 49, 56 chü-jen of 1483, 28 chü-jen of 1486, Honan, 8, 565 chü-jen of 1492, 47 chü-jen of 1498, 48 chü-jen of 1501, 377, 648 chü-jen of 1501, Honan, 159, 478 chü-jen of 1507, 160, 347 chü-jen of 1507, Honan, 166, 179, 354, 631 chü-jen of 1507, Hukwang, 134 chü-jen of 1507, Shensi, 298 chü-jen of 1510, Honan, 166, 233, 290 chü-jen of 1513, 305 chü-jen of 1513, Honan, 13, 166, 441 chü-jen of 1513, Shensi, 357, 514 chü-jen of 1516, 105, 305 chü-jen of 1516, Honan, 161, 462 chü-jen of 1520, Shensi, 524 chü-jen of 1528, Honan, 605 chü-jen of 1537, 616 chü-jen of 1543, Honan, 20, 533, 576 chü-jen of 1561, Honan, 621 cohort groups, 14, 19-20, 28, 5960, 159=60, 203, 205, 222, 288,

INDEX 310-11, 354-56, 373, 441, 458, 465, 484, 498, 525, 621, 628, 650 curriculum, 11-12, 31, 36, 396, 398, 425, 427, 543, 591 examiners, 15, 18, 34, 46, 49, 51, 138, 646 in Ming, 33-37 in T’ang and Sung, 30-31 local students, 28, 514 quotas in, 31 rejection of, 12, 37, 120, 297, 305, 347 stages of, 13 under Mongol rule, 31-32, 425 unsuccessful candidates, 6, 13, 1517, 20, 37, 47-48, 58-60, 179, 186, 240-41, 288, 304, 354, 357, 362, 377, 478, 512, 534, 551, 566, 591, 646, 648 Explicating the Classic 說經臺 (terrace), 504, 506 Fan Liang 樊亮, 7-8, 161 Fan Lu 范輅, 363, 375-76, 444 and Han Pang-ching, 376 Fan P’ang 范滂, 376 Fan P’eng 樊鵬, 2, 7, 59, 135, 139, 144, 161, 179, 295, 383, 402, 462, 532, 534, 579, 615, 639 and Chang Shih, 534 and Tai Kuan, 534 Ho Ching-ming curriculum, 1, 911, 13, 88, 120, 128, 470, 494, 515, 532-33, 535, 565-74, 57981, 584, 586-92 Fan Shen 范紳, 512-13 Fan Tseng 范增, 269 Fan Yüan 范淵, 363, 375-76 Fan Yü-ch’i 樊於期, 255-56 Fan Yün 范雲, 308 Fan Yung-luan 范永鑾, 363 Fang Chih-yüan 方志遠, 318 Fang Hao 方豪, 228 Fang Hsiao-ju 方孝孺, 35, 394, 514 Farmer, Edward L., 34 Fa-tsang 法藏 (temple), 450 Fei Ch’ang 費昶, 244 Fellini, Federico, 102 Feng Chen 馮禎, 304 Feng Hsiao-lu 馮小祿, 389 Feng-hsien 鳳縣, 497, 507, 511, 513 Feng Wei-no 馮惟訥, 579 Feng Yu-lan 馮友蘭, 558

INDEX Feng Yung 馮顒, 55 Five Yard Plateau 五丈原, 506 Four Talents of the Early T’ang 初唐四傑, 107, 112, 144, 146, 391 Frankel, Hans, 144 Frodsham, J.D., 73, 113, 255 Fryslie, Matthew, 204, 219, 285 Fu Hsüan 傅玄, 110, 246-47, 326 Fu K’ai-p’ei 付開沛, 1, 12, 14, 469, 475, 509 Fu Wei-lin 傅維鱗, 334, 578, 583 Fu Ying 付瑛, 388, 413, 470, 593, 619-21, 640 Fukumoto Masakazu 福本雅一, 241 Gaddis, William, 555 Gama, Vasco da, 35 Geiss, James, 285, 296, 305 Genghis Khan, 32 Golden Peak 金峰寺 (temple), 499 Graham, A. C., 58, 70-71, 80, 207 Great Learning 大學, 617 Grimm, Tilemann, 20, 47, 485 Guisso, R.W.L., 30 Haaheim, Allen, 428 Han-chung 漢中, 269, 497, 507-09, 511-13, 523, 526, 531 Han Fu 韓福, 218, 220 Han Hsin 韓信, 269, 526 Han-lin 翰林 Academy, 17, 21, 26-27, 42, 50-51, 191, 203, 217, 240, 318, 330, 465-66, 525 Han Pang-ch’i 韓邦奇, 243, 303, 311-12, 341, 361, 447, 452, 524 Han Pang-ching 韓邦靖, 302-03, 309, 311, 317, 360-61, 376, 468, 470, 493 Han-shan 寒山, xiv Han-tan 邯鄲, 139, 141-42, 279 Han Wen 韓文, 121-24, 126, 190 Han-yang 漢陽, 485 Han-yin 漢陰, 512 Han Yü 韓愈, 397, 404, 523, 543, 552 Händel, Georg Frideric, 133 Hang Chi 杭濟, 51, 438 Hang Huai 杭淮, xi, xii, 51, 62, 381, 383, 438 Hawkes, David, 24, 97, 113, 136, 253, 359, 519 Heavenly Mother 天姥 (mountain), 375

699 Hightower, James Robert, 151, 246, 250 Hitler, Adolf, 426 Ho Ch’iao-hsin 何喬新, 593, 641 Ho Ch’iao-yüan 何喬遠, 586-88, 642 Ho Chien 何鑑, 5, 533 Ho Ching-hui 何景暉, 5, 10, 98, 121, 151, 565, 570 Ho Ching-ming 何景明 ancestors of, 4-5 Ancient Ballads (anthology), 251 and Archaism, 389, 416, 423, 426, 568, 571, 577, 583 and archery, 505, 512-13 and Chang Chi-meng, 300-01, 323, 333, 353, 370, 381, 450 and Chang Ch’ien, 503 and Chang Chih-tao, 356, 524, 530 and Chang Shih, 304-05, 324, 375, 379-80, 386, 451, 580 and Chang Shih-lung, 60, 299, 357 and Chang Tzu-lin, 153-54 and Chang Yün, 203, 234, 291, 302 and Chao Hui, 167, 171, 179, 183, 307 and Ch’en Yi, 457-58 and Cheng Chen-to, 555-56 and Cheng Shan-fu, 299-300, 330, 365, 442, 472 and Chia Ts’e, 206-07, 221, 231, 463 and Chiao Huang-chung, 202-05, 292 and Ch’ien Ning, 470, 567, 571, 573, 577, 584, 588-89 and Ch’in Kui, 318 and Fan Lu, 363, 376 and Fan P’eng, 161, 179, 402 and Fan Yüan, 363, 364 and Fan Yung-luan, 363 and Four Worthies, 642 and Han Pang-ch’i, 311, 452 and Han Pang-ching, 302, 309, 311, 360 and Han Yü, 543 and Hang Chi, 438 and Hang Huai, 381, 438 and Ho Meng-ch’un, 309, 436, 484 and Ho Shih, 365 and Ho T’ang, 19, 157, 387, 48485, 585, 651

700 and Hou Yi-cheng, 331, 365, 386, 485 and Hsiao Hu, 22 and Hsiao Yi-chung, 365 and Hsieh Chung, 317 and Hsieh T’ing-chu, 352 and Hsin-yang society, 159, 16162, 183-84, 205-06, 208, 221, 290 and Hsiung Chi, 352 and Hsiung Cho, 192 and Hsü Chen-ch’ing, 573, 590, 618, 630, 643, 648 and Hsü Chin, 127-28, 194, 577, 582-83, 587, 589, 624 and Hsü Kao, 459-60, 472 and Hsü Tsan, 352 and Hsü Tsin, 330, 360, 388, 400, 432, 435, 442 and Hsüeh Hui, 354, 364-65, 442, 453, 456-58, 472, 475-76, 48485, 651 and Huang T’ing-chien, 543 and Jen Yung, 179, 206, 224, 438 and Juan Chi, 125-26 and K’ang Hai, 20, 118, 126, 157, 294, 377, 497, 503, 526, 532, 599, 624, 630, 646, 647 and Kao Chien, 53, 156, 167, 171, 205, 479 and Ko Lan, 199 and Ku K’o-hsüeh, 352 and Ku Lin, 120, 293, 319, 357 and Ku Ying-hsiang, 545 and Kuan Chi, 442, 524 and Kung-an School, 538 and Kuo Wei-fan, 306 and Li Chi, 11, 587 and Li Han, 153 and Li Hsien, 285 and Li Lien, 355, 385, 388, 432, 438, 442, 456, 457-58 and Li Meng-yang, 52, 53, 66, 157, 166, 185, 197-98, 203, 209-11, 291, 334, 358-59, 365, 400-01, 416, 442, 449, 453, 479, 484, 535, 539, 555, 564, 567, 573, 577, 579, 581, 584, 587-88, 589, 590, 630, 643, 645, 647, 652 and Li Tung-yang, 290, 292, 301, 305, 384, 571, 577, 583, 589, 618 and Liao Luan, 497, 571, 577, 580,

INDEX 584, 589 and Liao P’eng, 571 and Lin Han, 591 and Liu Ch’eng-te, 460 and Liu Chieh, 14, 205, 221, 226, 231, 235-36, 313, 374 and Liu Chin, 572, 582 and Liu Ch’u-hsiu, 356, 435, 524 and Liu Jen, 357, 368-69, 377, 441 and Liu Jui, 217, 448 and Liu K’an, 357, 377, 385, 435, 440-41 and Liu P’ang, 479, 633 and Liu T’ien-ho, 351-52 and Liu Ta-hsia, 191 and Liu Tso, 298, 365, 369, 383, 440 and Liu Wen-huan, 341, 361, 432, 442, 478 and Liu Yün, 300, 370, 431-32, 450 and Lu Shen, 651 and Lu Yung, 370, 433 and Lü Ching, 299, 309, 324, 36667, 452 and Lü Nan, 20, 324, 330, 353, 377, 449, 525, 610, 651 and Ma Li, 525, 610 and Ma Lu, 167, 171, 179, 199, 203, 324, 361, 383 and Meng Yang, 60, 120, 183, 186, 203, 213, 299, 302, 317, 320, 322-23, 324, 358, 381, 438, 456-57, 481, 484, 618 and Mr. Ch’ai, 215-17 and Mu K’un, 307 and music, 172-73, 175-76, 239, 311, 403, 569 and P’an Hsi-tseng, 372, 374 and Pao Pi, 293 and P’eng Tse, 315 and Pien Kung, 52, 157, 293-94, 442, 465, 573, 587, 590, 630, 643, 645 and Seven Masters, 643, 645, 647 and Shen Ang, 161-62, 164, 167, 169, 171, 183-84 and Shensi gazetteers, 492-93 and Shih Ju, 376 and Shih Ts’un-chih, 470, 567, 571-73, 577, 584-85, 588, 591 and students, 1, 9, 14, 28, 59, 61, 139, 157, 160-61, 211, 225, 229, 243, 251, 293, 304, 382,

INDEX 462, 486, 490, 492-95, 512, 514, 532, 534, 567, 576, 590, 603, 652 and Su Shih, 543 and Sun Chi-fang, 160, 184, 186, 199, 240, 304, 346, 365-66 and Sun Jung, 28, 153, 198, 240 and supernatural, 514-15, 568 and Tai Ch’in, 356, 385, 438-39, 442, 450, 458-59 and Tai Kuan, 14, 59, 120, 128, 160, 184, 189, 203, 304 and Tai Yi, 14 and T’ao Chi, 324, 331, 333, 365, 438 and Ten Talents, 642 and T’ien Ju-tzu, 14, 306, 310, 333, 343, 345 and Ts’ao Hu, 307 and Ts’ui Hsien, 14, 60, 298, 306, 311, 442, 450, 467, 645, 651 and Tu Fu, 76-77, 118, 165, 429, 516-23 and Tu Mu, xi, 120, 297 and Tuan Chiung, 503 and Wang Chiu-feng, 377 and Wang Chiu-ssu, 157, 377, 497, 503, 599, 630 and Wang Ch’ung-ch’ing, 371 and Wang Hsi-meng, 14, 311, 323, 333, 346, 432, 434-35 and Wang Hsiang, 475 and Wang Pien, x-xi, 62, 120 and Wang Shang-chiung, 20, 157, 298, 482 and Wang T’ing-hsiang, 19, 66, 293, 307, 317, 333, 337-38, 351, 431, 460, 471, 530, 580, 630 and Wang Yang, 503 and Yang Yi-ch’ing, 334, 577, 582, 584, 587, 589, 624 and Yeh Pang-chung, 221 and Yen Sung, 465-66 and Yin Ying, 151 and Yin Yün-hsiao, 352 and Yüan Jung, 14, 221, 234, 313, 362 and Yüan K’ai, 221 appointed Drafter, 26, 27, 566 as man of Ch’u, 3 biographical sources, 1-2 change of hao, 52, 582 character, 9, 89, 159, 497, 564,

701 568, 570-72, 577, 588, 590 characteristics of biographies, 564 Chien-shan study pavilion, 201 childhood, 9 chin-shih degree, 18, 566 chin-shih failure, 15, 566 chronology, xiv-xvii chronology of Hsin-yang poems, 187 chronology of Peking poems, 297 chü-jen, 13, 566, 587-88 collected works, xiv-xvi conflict with Liao Luan, 497 contentious memorial texts, 53435, 579 critical writings, 237-42 date of debate with Li Meng-yang, 388-89 death of first wife, 25 death of Ho Ching-shao, 130-31 deaths of nephew and niece, 15455 delay in first appointment, 21-22, 587 early works, 14-15, 17, 22-23, 2528, 53-59, 598 edition of Wang Wei, 153 education, 9, 11-13, 17, 565-66 family of, 5-6, 8, 565 fellow 1498 Honan chü-jen, 10, 13-14, 59, 151, 160, 205, 222, 306, 310, 362, 565, 566, 573, 589, 628 fellow 1502 chin-shih, 12, 18-21, 51, 203, 240, 347, 373, 377, 478, 566, 589, 647 first marriage, 22 first wife, Miss Chang 張氏, 22, 25-26, 180-81, 569 friends in Peking, 14, 19-20, 47-49, 51-52, 60, 202, 215, 322, 35657, 442, 651 genre verse, 264-70 imitative poetry, 242, 244-50 in mourning, 227, 229-30, 233, 287, 292, 566, 611-12, 618 in National University, 16-17, 566 in Pa-ling, 17 Inner Chapters 內篇, 274, 318, 462, 486, 488, 604, 619, 640 lack of treatise on poetry, 460 last illness and death, 525, 530-32, 568, 572, 605 letter to Hsü Chin, 571

702 letter to Li Meng-yang, 195-96, 388, 401-08, 415, 417-18, 424, 427, 443, 460, 462, 487, 589 letter to Yang Yi-ch’ing, 334-36, 567, 570 life in retirement, 152-54 linked verse, 433 Miscellaneous Sayings (雜言 tsa yen), 656 nostalgia for Hsin-yang, 325 nostalgia for Peking, 186, 290 on ‘T’ao, Hsieh, Sui, and Han’, 404, 407-08, 569, 573, 589-91 on education, 486-92, 529 palace fire memorial, 348-51, 546, 567, 570, 573, 577, 584-85, 587, 589, 618 poem on deer blood, 379 poems on paintings, 343-44 policies in Shensi, 486, 512, 524, 567 posthumous reputation, 537-40, 544, 558-59, 641 promotion to Education Intendant, 475, 567, 589 promotion to Vice-Director, 471, 567 return from Yunnan, 98-99 return home in 1507, 126, 129-31, 133, 138, 147, 566 return to Peking in 1503, 25 return to Peking in 1511, 292, 297, 567 rhyme-matching, 370-74, 383 robbery in Yung-ning, 88-91, 598 second marriage, 98 second wife, Miss Wang 王氏, 98, 569 series of moon poems, 166-71, 176-79 Shensi tour of 1519, 494 Shensi tour of 1520, 497, 499-501, 503-14 trip to Yunnan, 66-69, 71, 74, 78, 80, 87-88, 91, 94-95, 566, 583, 588 tz’u poetry, 61-62 works from 1516-18, 442 works from Yunnan trip, 67-72, 74-75, 78-79, 81-83, 87-96, 98, 598 yüeh-fu ballads, 250-251, 253, 255-64 Yung Ta-chi, 493

INDEX Ho Ching-ming Ts’ung-k’ao 何景明叢考, xvi shortcomings noted, xxviii, 12, 60, 138, 166, 203, 292, 294, 295, 303, 375, 384, 440, 456, 462, 475, 481, 605, 618, 634 Ho Ching-shao 何景韶, 5, 8, 12-14, 17, 55, 67, 69, 130, 155, 386, 425, 565, 572, 578, 591 Ho Ching-wang 何景旺, 192 Ho Ching-yang 何景暘, 5, 8, 12-13, 28, 59, 151, 166, 205, 401, 441, 455, 496, 565, 591, 604, 628 Ho Fu 何夫, 569 Ho Hai 何海, 5 Ho Hsin 何信, 5-10, 12, 161, 565, 571, 587 Ho Hsiu 何休, 410 Ho Hsün 何遜, 260, 364, 434 Ho Li 何立, 20, 533, 569, 576-77, 580, 583, 628 Ho Liang-chün 何良俊, 418, 466, 469, 642 Ho Lo-shu 何洛書, 533, 628 Ho Lo-wen 何洛文, 1, 533, 576-77, 583, 621, 628 Ho Lung-erh 何隆二, 5, 565 Ho Meng-ch’un 何孟春, 309, 404 and Chang Chi-meng, 333 and Ho Ching-ming, 309, 433, 436, 484 and Li Lien, 386, 441 and Li Meng-yang, 51 and Li Tung-yang, 54, 394 and Liu Ta-hsia, 191 Ho, Ping-ti, 8, 16 Ho Shih 何士, 59, 166, 365, 401, 431, 441, 532, 570 Ho T’ai-shan 何太山, 4-5, 565 Ho T’ang 何瑭, 27, 272, 298, 386-87, 489, 585 and Ho Ching-ming, 19, 157, 48485, 651 and K’ang Hai, 197 and Li Meng-yang, 197 and Liu Chin, 157, 287 and Lü Nan, 353 and Seven Masters, 642 and Wang T’ing-hsiang, 222, 292, 643 Ho Teng 何登, 569 Ho Wei-nü 何渭女, 154-55 Ho Yüeh-chou 何岳州, 155 Hoffstädt, Alfred, xxiv

INDEX Holzman, Donald, 125, 245 Honan T’ung-chih 河南通志 Ho Ching-ming biography, 582-83 Hou 侯, Commissioner, 89-90 Hou Yi-cheng 侯宜正, 322, 331, 365, 386-88, 400, 485 Hou Ying 侯嬴, 141 Hsi K’ang 嵇康, 174, 252, 339, 435, 451 Hsi-men Pao 西門豹, 274 Hsi Shih 西施, 278 Hsi Wang Mu 西王母, 514 Hsi-yüan Wen-chien Lu 西園聞見錄, 579, 582 Hsia Ch’ang 夏昶, 330 Hsia Ch’ung-p’u 夏崇璞, 554 Hsia Hsieh 夏燮, 121 Hsia Liang-sheng 夏良勝, 321 Hsiang Hsiu 向休, 435 Hsiang Tu-shou 項篤壽, 575 Hsiang-yang 襄陽, 135, 358, 400, 486, 652 Li Meng-yang in, 365 Hsiang Yü 項羽, 269 Hsiao Ho 蕭何, 269, 519 Hsiao Hu 蕭琥, 22 Hsiao Kang 蕭綱, 105 Hsiao Shih 簫史, 114 Hsiao-tsung 孝宗, xxviii, 59, 64-66, 306, 342, 427, 466, 531, 594, 651 Hsiao Yen 蕭衍, 25, 113, 326 Hsiao Yi 蕭繹, 113, 173 Hsiao Yi-chung 蕭一中, 365 Hsieh An 謝安, 147-48, 454 Hsieh Chen 謝榛, 21, 52, 399, 536 Hsieh Ch’ien 謝遷, 121-22, 124, 204 Hsieh Chung 謝忠, 317 Hsieh Hui-lien 謝惠連, 307, 454 Hsieh Ling-yün 謝靈運, 23, 76, 98, 113, 223, 266, 299, 329, 378, 404, 407, 413, 455, 510, 569 Hsieh T’iao 謝朓, 133, 156, 163, 257, 511 Hsieh T’ing-chu 謝廷柱, 352 Hsien-tsung 憲宗, 48 Hsien-yin 賢隱 (temple), 160, 199, 231, 235, 292, 534 Hsin-ch’eng 新城, 224 Hsin Ch’i-chi 辛棄疾, 329 Hsin Hsü 新序, 90 Hsin-ling, Lord 信陵君, 141 Hsin-yang 信陽, 58, 639 bandits in, 291, 302 defensive walls, 479, 629

703 famine in, 212 geography, 1, 3-4, 13, 185, 199, 201, 211, 225, 237, 359 Ho family in, 4, 565 literati in, 14, 159-60, 235, 290, 621, 624 local officials, 14, 27-28, 153, 160, 581, 615, 617, 620, 625-26, 639 natural disasters, 213, 636 Hsin-yang Normal College 信陽師範學院, xxv Hsing-li Ta-ch’üan 性理大全, 36 Hsing Shao 邢劭, 173 Hsiung Chi 熊紀, 347, 352 Hsiung Cho 熊卓, 191, 646, 654 Hsiung 熊 (Yunnan eunuch), 88, 566 Hsü Chen-ch’ing 徐禎卿, 650 and Archaism, 536, 654 and Chu Ying-teng, 649 and Four Worthies, 642 and Ho Ching-ming, 590, 618, 648 and Hsü Tsin, 330 and K’ang Hai, 643, 646 and Ku Lin, 649 and Li Meng-yang, 52, 119, 299, 420, 646, 648-49 and Seven Masters, 641-52 and Taoism, 492 and Wang T’ing-hsiang, 643 and Wang Yang-ming, 421 biography of, 573-75, 582, 586 T’an-yi Lu, 554, 644, 648 Hsü Chin 許進, xxi, 123, 127-28, 459, 472, 571, 577, 579, 582-83, 587, 589, 624, 637 Hsü Kao 許誥, 127, 459, 472, 486, 530 Hsü Kuan 徐冠, 404 Hsü Lien 徐聯, 3 Hsü T’ai 徐泰, 46 Hsü Tsan 許讚, 127, 167, 259, 352, 382, 624 Hsü Tsin 徐縉, xxi, 359, 414, 526 and Ho Ching-ming, 322, 330, 360, 388, 400-01, 432, 435, 442, 526, 643 and Hsü Chen-ch’ing, 330, 643 and Li Lien, 441 and Li Meng-yang, 360, 400, 449, 643 and Liu Jui, 449 collected works, 597

704 Hsü Tsung-lu 許宗魯, 134, 272-73, 617 Hsü Wan 許完, 478 Hsü Wen-hua 徐文華, 444 Hsü Wen-p’u 徐文溥, 444 Hsüan-fu 宣府, 446, 471-73 Hsüan-tsung 玄宗 (T’ang Emperor), 175, 199, 496 Hsüeh Cheng-ch’ang 薛正昌, 18 Hsüeh Hsüan 薛瑄, 38, 398 Hsüeh Hui 薛蕙, 263, 312, 442, 453, 456, 468 and Archaism, 536 and Chang Shih-lung, 475 and Ho Ching-ming, 356, 364, 400, 442, 453, 456-58, 467, 472-73, 475-77, 484-85, 556, 651-52 and Ho Meng-ch’un, 484 and Kuan Chi, 525 and Li Meng-yang, 556 and Meng Yang, 457 and Sun Chi-fang, 449 and Taoism, 492 and Ts’ui Hsien, 467 and Wang T’ing-hsiang, 354, 651 beaten in court, 495 chin-shih, 354 collected works, 597 Playful Quatrain, 356, 555-556 Hsün Ch’ing 荀卿, 195 Hu Ping-hsing 胡秉性, 621 Hu Shih 胡侍, 272, 525 Hu Tsan 胡瓚, 28, 638 Hu Tsuan-tsung 胡纘宗, 393, 456, 604 Hu Ying-lin 胡應麟, 399 Hua Ch’ang 華昶, 56 Hua-hsien 華縣, 433 Hua-jung 華容, 28, 70-71, 198-99, 365 Hua-tang 花當, 431 Hua-yang 化羊宮 (shrine), 499-500 Huai-nan-tzu 淮南子, 247, 335 Huan T’an 桓潭, 311 Huang-ch’ao Chung-chou Jen-wu Chih 皇朝中州人物志, 16, 128, 583-84 Huang-fu Fang 皇甫汸, 536, 649 Huang Hsing-tseng 黃省曾, 407, 536, 650, 653 and Li Meng-yang, 655 and Seven Masters, 654 and Shen recension, 603-04 Huang Huai 黃淮, 43

INDEX Huang Kung-wang 黃公望, 395 Huang Ming Hsien-shih 皇明獻實, 1, 407, 572-75, 579, 583-87, 591, 642, 656 differences from Yen-hsing Lu, 574-75 Huang Ming Ming-ch’en Yen-hsing Lu 皇明名臣言行錄, 574-75, 579, 583-87, 591, 642 Huang Ming Shih-kai 皇明史概, 475 Huang Ming Shu 皇明書, 387, 584 Huang Ming Wen-hai 皇明文海, 586 Huang, Ray, 6, 103, 190 Huang T’ing-chien 黃庭堅, 182, 332, 543, 656 Huang Tse 黃澤, 422 Huang Tsung-hsi 黃宗羲, 557 Hu-hsien 鄠縣, 493, 497, 500, 513 Hucker, Charles O., xxii, 4-5, 16, 30, 34, 65, 124, 203, 476 Hui-chou 徽州 (Anhwei), 293, 321, 653 Hui-chou 徽州 (Kansu), 494 Hui-ning 會寧, 10, 565, 572, 581 Hui-tzu 惠子, 345 Hung, William (Hung Yeh 洪業), 77 Hung-wu Cheng-yün 洪武正韻, 36 Hu-t’o River 滹沱河, 134, 137, 165, 321, 344, 436, 478 Idema, Wilt, xxiv, 41 individual crises beatings, 120, 459, 495, 651, 652 demotion, 604 dismissal from office, 124, 158, 191, 452 execution, 35, 40, 102, 122-23, 196, 204, 279, 286, 446, 528, 589 forced retirement, 124 imprisonment, 49, 56, 65-66, 125, 190, 196, 198, 203-05, 220, 224, 283, 317, 319, 334-38, 340, 343, 361, 382-83, 452, 527-28, 585, 589 loss of official status, 125, 194, 204, 285, 287, 289, 337, 358, 360-61, 452 mourning, x, xi, 4, 10, 20, 47, 6062, 118, 151-52, 157, 161, 166, 192, 217, 227, 234, 237, 243, 272, 287, 290, 292, 294-95, 300, 310, 377, 383, 387, 465, 494, 567, 577, 599, 646, 650

INDEX murder, 124-25 relegation, 122, 124, 152, 190, 220, 285, 307-08, 311, 317-19, 351, 354, 363, 382-83, 446, 452, 475, 478, 485, 534, 536, 596, 651 resignation in protest, 124, 154, 190, 243, 297, 300, 303, 318, 347, 352, 447, 467, 478, 651 suicide, 56, 81, 254, 256, 340, 533 Iriya Yoshitaka 入矢義高, 401, 406, 416, 427, 561, 653 Jen Fang-ch’iu 任訪秋, 77, 274, 277, 538 Jen Liang-kan 任良榦, 61, 581, 61518, 628, 639 Jen, Yu-wen, 422 Jen Yung 任鏞, 160, 179, 206, 224, 438, 624, 628 Jonson, Ben, xviii Ju-ning 汝寧, 13, 566 Juan Chi 阮籍, 125-26, 244, 371, 376, 403, 405, 410, 414, 429 Juan Hsien 阮咸, 376 Juan Shih-lung 阮世隆, 23 Kaifeng 開封, 141, 293, 401 Chang Shih in, 534 Ho Ching-ming in, 138, 153, 293, 416, 478, 479 Ho Shih in, 166 Hui-chou merchants in, 293, 653 Ku Lin in, 318-19, 654 Li Lien in, 355-56 Li Meng-yang in, 47, 130, 138, 185, 196, 198, 209, 231, 358, 365, 400, 453, 534, 651-53 site of provincial examinations, 13-14, 179, 233 Kan-yü 贛榆, 351, 431, 471, 651 K’ang Hai 康海, 20-21, 48, 119, 298, 386, 493, 502-03, 505, 554, 579, 610, 621 and Han Fu, 218-20 and Ho Ching-ming, 9, 20, 126, 157, 294, 377, 486, 494, 49798, 501, 504-05, 526, 532, 577, 599 and Hsü Chen-ch’ing, 643 and Ku Lin, 655 and Li K’ai-hsien, 190, 580, 645 and Li Meng-yang, 288 and Li Tung-yang, 50-51, 289,

705 647 and Liu Chin, 197 and Lü Nan, 449 and Pien Kung, 643 and Seven Masters, 641-47, 65051, 655, 657 and Wang Chiu-ssu, 52 and Yung recension, 197, 531, 601-02, 606-07, 609, 612-13, 625, 639 disgrace of, 189, 287-88, 498, 502, 526 gazetteer of Wu-kung, 492, 624 in Peking, 47, 118, 204 in retirement, 498 rescue of Li Meng-yang, 196-98, 358, 502, 582 under Liu Chin, 125 K’ang Hao 康浩, 498 Kao Ch’i 高啟, 39, 240, 393, 395, 528 Kao Chien 高鑑, 53, 135, 156, 159, 160, 162, 167, 171, 205, 479 Kao Chien-li 高漸離, 254-55 Kao K’o-kung 高克恭, 395 Kao-ling 高陵, 494, 498 Kao Ping 高棅, 393 Kao, Yu-kung, 71 Karlgren, Bernhard, 170, 174, 402, 510 Keats, John, 552 Kerman, Joseph, 241 Killigrew, John, 507 Kim, Youngmin, 423 King, Gail, 360 King Ling of Ch’u 楚靈王, 70, 72 King, Stephen, 555 Klassen, Mel, xxiv Knechtges, David, 63-64, 116, 140, 150, 218, 228, 253, 262, 367, 435, 452, 504, 510 Ko Lan 葛蘭, 199 Kowallis, Jon Eugene von, 550, 562 Kroll, Paul, xiv Ku Ch’i-yüan 顧起原, 190 Ku Ch’ing 顧清, 479 Ku K’o-hsüeh 顧可學, 352, 643 Ku K’o-shih 顧可適, 370, 372 Ku K’uang 顧况, 56 Ku Lin 顧璘, 3, 19, 272 and Archaism, 646, 649, 654-55 and Ch’en Yi, 241 and Cheng Shan-fu, 654 and Chu Ying-teng, 654

706 and Ho Ching-ming, 120, 293, 358, 537 and Ho Liang-chün, 469 and Ho Meng-ch’un, 309 and Hsü Chen-ch’ing, 649 and Li Meng-yang, 52, 418 and Meng Yang, 381 and Pien Kung, 654 and Ten Talents, 642 Kuo-pao Hsin-pien, 49, 654 relegation to Ch’üan-chou, 318-19, 337 Ku Ssu-li 顧嗣立, 586 Ku Ting-ch’en 顧鼎臣, 444 Ku Ying-hsiang 顧應祥, 196, 468, 545-46 Ku Ying-t’ai 谷應泰, 100, 197, 289 Kuan Chi 管楫, 442, 525 K’uang Chang 匡章, 335 Kui-feng 圭峰, 500-01 Kui O 桂萼, 318 K’ui-chou 夔州, 159, 517 Kumarajiva, 500, 506 Kung-an School 公安派, 538 Kung Hsien-tsung 龔顯宗, xxiv, 6, 390, 561, 646 Kung-sun Ch’iao 公孫僑, 274 Kung-yeh Chang 公冶長, 335 K’ung An-kuo 孔安國, 434 Kunming 昆明, 70, 87-88, 90, 94 Kuo-ch’üeh 國榷, 18, 334, 475 Kuo Hsi 郭熙, 467 Kuo Po 郭波, 604, 606, 611, 613, 615 Kuo Shao-yü 郭紹虞, 390, 393-94, 417, 427, 656 Kuo T’ing-hsün 過廷訓, 578 Kuo Wei-fan 郭維藩, 306 Kweichow 貴州, 79-83, 87-88, 213, 290, 531, 598 bandits, 83-84 local government, 79-80, 85 non-Han peoples, 81-83, 85-86 Kweilin 桂林, 318-20, 381, 457, 639 Kweiyang 貴陽, 82 Kyoto University 京都大學, xxv Lan-t’ien 藍田, 514, 523 Lan Tung-hsing 藍東興, 190 Landor, Walter Savage, xviii Lantern Festival, 98, 297, 315, 345-46, 374, 529 Lao-tzu 老子, 277, 502-04, 506 Leavis, F. R., xvii Lee, Alice, xxiv

INDEX Lee Su-chuan 李素娟, xxiv Lei Wen 雷雯, 347 Leopard Quarter 豹房, 296, 314, 347, 382, 474 Levathes, Louise, 191 Levenson, Joseph, xxiii, 547 Li Chi 李紀, 10-12, 17, 196, 565-66, 571, 587 Li Ch’i 李祁, xxiii, 422 Li Ch’i 李頎, 163 Li Chiao 李嶠, 144-46 Li Chih 李贄, 407, 424-25, 585, 642, 657 Li Chin-yün 李今芸, xxiv Li Ch’ing-chao 李清照, 61 Li, Chu-tsing, 395 Li Chung-liang 李仲良, 212 Li, ‘Commander’ 李揮使, 625-27, 629 Li Han 李瀚, 13, 138, 153, 287, 566, 571, 614 Li Hang 李沆, 439 Li Ho 李賀, 73, 255 Li Hsien 李憲, 285 Li Ju-tso 李汝佐, 11-12 Li Jung 李榮, 123-24 Li K’ai-hsien 李開先, 536 and Ho Ching-ming, 602 and K’ang Hai, 198, 498, 580, 645 and Li Tung-yang, 190 and LiuYün, 48, 154 and Wang Chiu-ssu, 580, 645, 657 Chang Shih biography, 304-05, 534 Ho Ching-ming biography, 1, 11, 13, 21, 52, 535, 563, 571, 57983, 587-88, 639, 645 Li Meng-yang biography, 198, 502 reliability of anecdotes, 580-81 Wang Chiu-ssu biography, 51-52, 657 Li Kuang 李廣, 142 Li Lien 李濂, 414, 441 and Fan Lu, 376 and Fan Yüan, 363 and Ho Ching-ming, 19, 356-57, 385, 388, 401, 432, 438, 442, 456-57, 485 and Ho Meng-ch’un, 386 and Hsüeh Hui, 356 and Li Meng-yang, 355-56, 415 and Meng Yang, 457-58, 485 and Tai Ch’in, 386, 459

INDEX and Wei Tao, 433 and Wu Wei, 343 collected works, 597 in Hsin-yang, 441 Li Lin-fu 李林甫, 199 Li Ling 李陵, 63, 168, 170, 247 Li, Madame 李氏 (mother of Ho Ching-ming), 5, 533, 565-66, 570 Li Meng-yang 李夢陽, xxiv, 6, 21, 52, 67, 127, 134, 167, 194, 199, 259, 272, 295, 302, 312, 342-43, 354, 386, 416, 468, 573, 579, 585, 624 and Archaism, 241, 395, 399, 407, 419-20, 423, 426-27, 536-41, 549, 554, 652-57 and Chang Han, 652 and Chang Shih, 534, 581 and Fan Yung-luan, 363 and Four Worthies, 642 and Ho Ching-ming, 5, 17, 48, 5254, 66-67, 99, 138, 156-57, 166, 180, 185, 195-96, 203, 209-11, 243, 277, 291, 358-60, 365, 389, 396, 399, 442, 449, 453, 462, 479, 484, 487, 534-35, 555, 563-64, 567-68, 571, 57374, 577, 579, 581-90 and Ho Meng-ch’un, 484 and Hsiung Cho, 191 and Hsü Chen-ch’ing, 330, 420, 648-49 and Hsü Tsin, 360, 400, 449 and K’ang Hai, 51, 288, 502 and Ku Lin, 319 and Li Chih, 585 and Li Lien, 355, 356, 415 and Li Tung-yang, 47, 49-50, 53, 393-94, 426 and Liu Ta-hsia, 191 and Ma Ying-hsiang, 231 and Meng Yang, 381 and natives of Hui-chou, 293, 321 and Shao Pao, 646 and Sung poetry, 543 and Wang Chiu-ssu, 52, 200 and Wang Pien, x, xi, xii, 62 and Wang T’ing-hsiang, 351, 647 and Wang Yang-ming, 50-51, 420-21, 424, 554, 556 and Yang Yi-ch’ing, 334, 646 and Yen Sung, 466 and Yin Yün-hsiao, 352, 650 Autumn Inspiration on the River, 209

707 chin-shih success, 47, 646 commentary on Meng Hao-jan, 237 commoner poetry clients, 251, 427, 454, 653 criticised by Cheng Chen-to, 55556 imprisonment by Liu Chin, 196, 198, 205, 224 imprisonment in 1505, 56, 65, 190 imprisonment in 1522, 527 imprisonment in Kiangsi, 198, 334-35, 343, 570, 572, 589 in Hsiang-yang, 270, 365 in Kaifeng, 138, 141, 185, 318, 534, 653 in Kiangsi, 493 in Meng Yang’s epitaph, 572, 579 in plot against Liu Chin, 121-22, 124, 126, 130, 190 letters to Ho Ching-ming, 388, 401, 406, 408-18, 426-27, 430, 443 literary circle in Peking, 20, 47-48, 51, 53, 119, 237, 299, 309, 536, 544, 554, 641-54 Presented to Drafter Ho, 138 Presented to Drafter Ho, Who is Conveying the Proclamation, 66 Presented to Master Ho in Shenchou, 291-92 rescue by K’ang Hai, 196-97 Yüan K’ai preface, 240 Li P’an-lung 李攀龍, 15, 536, 538, 558 Li Po 李白, 21, 239, 356, 359, 391, 404-05, 410, 414, 429, 585, 623 Thoughts on a Quiet Night, 327 works cited, 25, 53, 78, 81, 110, 112, 118, 140, 149-50, 163, 173, 176-77, 214, 263, 310, 316, 359, 368, 380, 441, 454 Li Shan 李善, 115, 132 Li Shang-yin 李商隱, 46, 71, 327, 450 Li She 李涉, 512 Li Shu-yi 李叔毅, xxv, 407 Li Shuang-hua 李雙華, 649 Li T’ao 李燾, 616,-17 Li T’ing-hsiang 李廷相, 370, 645 Li Tung 李洞, 212 Li Tung-yang 李東陽, 21, 142, 195, 332, 502, 648 and Archaism, 391, 393-94, 418,

708 535, 643, 656 and Chang Chi-meng, 300 and Ho Ching-ming, 198, 289-90, 292, 306, 384-85, 438, 567, 571, 577, 583-85, 589, 618 and Ho Meng-ch’un, 54 and K’ang Hai, 51, 289, 647 and Li Meng-yang, 49-50, 53 and Liu Chin, 189-90, 287 and Liu Ta-hsia, 191 and Liu Yün, 298 and Lu Shen, 240 and Secretariat Style, 45-46, 426, 540 and Shao Pao, ix, 382 and Wang Chiu-ssu, 51, 657 and Yang Yi-ch’ing, 47, 283 and Yen Yü, 393 as examiner, 15, 51, 646 in failed coup of 1506, 122-24, 128 literary circle, 47-50, 309 retirement, 297, 301, 318 Li Yi 李益, 111 Li Ying 李郢, 434 Li Yüan 李遠, 232 Li Yüeh-kang 李曰剛, 42 Liang Ch’ien 梁迁, 317 Liang Hung 梁鴻, 133 Liang Yü 梁迂, 317 Liang-yüan Feng-ya 梁園風雅, 593 Liao K’o-pin 廖可斌, 390, 407, 562, 655 Liao Luan 廖鸞, 319, 497, 571, 577, 580, 584 Liao P’eng 廖鵬, 318, 470, 497, 527, 571, 589 Liao T’ang 廖鏜, 318, 337-38, 470 Library of Classical Chinese Literature 中國古典文學叢書, 550 Lieh-nü Chuan 烈女傳, 223 Lieh-tzu 列子, 135, 164, 175 Lien Tzu-ning 練子寧, 35 Lien Wen-p’ing 連文萍, 46, 393 Lin Ch’i-chu 林啟柱, 390 Lin Chün 林俊, 191 Lin Han 林瀚, 17, 191, 287, 566, 591 Lin-t’ao 臨洮, 10-11, 196, 565 Lin T’ing-mo 林廷模, 17 Lin Yung-hsiang 林永祥, xxv Ling-pao 靈寶, 460, 472 literature, decline in early years of dynasties, 38-39 Liu Chang-ch’ing 劉長卿, 95

INDEX Liu Chen 劉楨, 403, 405, 410, 414, 568 Liu Ch’eng-te 劉成德, 460-62, 569, 624 Liu Chi 劉基, 40, 272, 393, 394 Liu Chieh 劉節, 14, 28, 160, 205, 221-22, 226, 231, 235-36, 313, 37475, 624, 627-29 Liu Chien 劉健, 21, 51, 121-24 Liu Chin 劉瑾, ix, 119, 126, 194, 273, 290, 297, 330, 382, 389, 429, 492, 495, 528, 554, 556, 572-73, 582, 584, 587, 589, 651 adherents of, 157, 219-20, 287 administration, 604 and Chiao Fang, 203-05 and Hsüan-ming Shrine, 302, 468 and K’ang Hai, 197, 220, 502, 651 and Li Tung-yang, 190, 289 background, 99-102 downfall, 282-87, 289-90, 295, 311, 334, 432 opposition to, 56, 100, 119, 12123, 125, 127, 134, 137, 154, 157, 166, 191, 194, 196, 217, 231, 286-87, 298-99, 347, 363, 421 treatment of opponents, 17, 56, 124, 152-53, 189, 191-92, 203, 286, 373 victory in 1506, 124 Liu Ch’u-hsiu 劉儲秀, 356, 435-36, 438, 472, 525 Liu Feng 劉鳳, 644 Liu Hai-han 劉海涵, 1, 6, 23, 166, 198, 299, 302, 334, 389, 469, 475, 490, 525, 533 Liu Hsi-yi 劉希夷, 112 Liu-hsia Hui 柳下惠, 279 Liu Hsiang 劉向, 75 Liu, James J.Y., 53 Liu Jen 劉仁, 357, 368-69, 377, 441 Liu Jui 劉瑞, 217-18, 230, 448 Liu K’ai-yang 劉開揚, 174 Liu K’an 劉侃, 357, 369, 377, 385, 435-36, 438, 440-41 Liu K’un 劉琨, 232 Liu Kung-ch’üan 柳公權, 411, 568 Liu Lin 劉麟, 647 Liu Ling 劉伶, 222 Liu, ‘Mama’ 劉娘娘, 445, 496 Liu Meng-lei 劉孟雷, 586 Liu Ming-chin 劉明今, 118

INDEX Liu Pang 劉邦, 133, 164, 269, 511, 519, 526 Liu P’ang 劉滂, 479, 633 Liu Pei 劉備, 507, 512, 517-21 Liu Ta-chieh 劉大杰, 557, 559 Liu Ta-hsia 劉大夏, 191, 287 and Li Meng-yang, 190 and loss of Cheng Ho charts, 19091 Liu Teng-fu 劉澄甫, 432 Liu T’ien-ho 劉天和, 338, 351-52 Liu Tso 劉佐, 298-99, 357, 365, 369, 374, 383, 440 Liu Tsung-yüan 柳宗元, 252 Liu Tzu-shen 劉子深, 457 Liu Wen-chih 劉文直, 222 Liu Wen-huan 劉文煥, 322, 341, 361, 432, 442, 472, 478 Liu Yü-hsi 劉禹錫, 173, 504 The Temple of the First Lord of Shu, 520-21 Liu Yün 劉鈗, 48, 154, 298, 300, 370, 431, 432-33, 450, 465 Liu Yung 柳永, 257 Lo Ch’in-shun 羅欽順, 240, 287, 309, 418, 466 Lo, Jung-pang, 190 Lo Pin-wang 駱賓王, 107, 111 Loi, Michelle, 552 Lou Hsi-jen 樓希仁, 514 Lou-kuan 樓觀, 502-04, 610-11 Lou-lan 樓蘭, 68 Low Ming poetry histories of, 42 Lu Chao-lin 盧照鄰, 107-08, 144 Lu Chi 陸機, 27, 140, 150, 209, 245, 266-68, 326, 404-05, 407-08, 410, 414 Lu Chüeh 陸厥, 306 Lu Kui-meng 陸龜蒙, 649 Lu, Madame 盧氏 (first wife of Ho Hsin), 5, 565 Lu-shan (mtn.) 廬山, 344-45 Lu Shen 陸深, 21, 42, 58, 240, 453 and Ho Ching-ming, 130, 651 and Li Meng-yang, 125, 130 and Wang Yang-ming, 125 and Yen Sung, 466 Lu Tzu-yin 陸子引, 27 Lu Wan 陸完, 495, 527-28 Lu Yu 陸游, xx Lu Yung 盧雍, 370-72, 374, 433, 608, 624 and Shih Ju, 376

709 Visiting Ho Chung-mo, 370 Lü An 呂安, 435 Lü Ching 呂經, 299, 309, 322, 324, 347, 366, 447, 452 memorial on Ma Ang, 444, 446 Lü, Empress 呂后 (Han), 452 Lü Ho 呂和, 512, 524, 526 Lü-liang 呂梁, 94 Lü Nan 呂柟, 4, 47, 347, 386, 499, 576, 579, 651 and Chang Shih, 304-05 and Chao Hui, 308 and Fan Lu, 376 and Ho Ching-ming, 20, 322, 324, 330, 352, 377, 449, 525-26, 610 and Ho Ching-yang, 151 and Ho T’ang, 353 and K’ang Hai, 493 and Liu Chin, 287 and Ma Li, 288 and Meng Yang, 599 and P’eng Tse, 315 and Wang Yen-hsi, 321 collected works, 597 Lü Shang 呂尚, 359, 507, 519 Lü Shih Ch’un-ch’iu 呂氏春秋, 93, 385 Lü Tung-pin 呂洞賓, 332 Lüeh-yang 略陽, 80, 494, 498, 523, 530 Lynn, Richard John, xxiii, 132, 150, 253, 277, 390, 391, 399, 406, 414, 420, 423, 510, 541, 543, 562 Ma Ang 馬昂, 443-45 sister of, 443, 445-46 Ma Chih 馬陟, 99 Ma Chung-hsi 馬中錫, 51, 287 Ma Jung 馬融, 505 Ma Li 馬理, 53, 60, 288, 493, 525, 576, 579, 610 Ma Lu 馬錄, 160, 224, 324, 365, 624 and Hang Huai, 381 and Ho Ching-ming, 159, 167, 171, 179, 203, 322, 324, 361, 383 and Meng Yang, 224, 482 and Tai Kuan, 295 chin-shih, 183, 199 chü-jen, 28 Ma Mao-yüan 馬茂元, 406, 419, 653 Ma Mei-hsin 馬美信, 420 Ma Ya-chung 馬亞中, 561-62 Ma Ying-hsiang 馬應祥, 230, 614

710 Maeno Naoaki 前野直彬, 419 Mahler, Gustav, 78, 133, 408 Mao Ch’ang 毛萇, 492 Mao Tse-tung 毛澤東, 39, 426, 558 Marlowe, Christopher, xviii Marx, Karl, 39 May Fourth Movement 五四運動, 552, 559-62 distortion of literary history, 55260 Mei-hsien 郿縣, 507, 513 Mei Sheng 枚乘, 173, 271 Mei, Tsu-lin, 71 Mei Yao-ch’en 梅堯臣, 542, 598 Mencius 孟子, 150, 278-79, 335, 405, 409-10, 461, 491, 657 and Chu Yüan-chang, 33 as examination topic, 11, 13, 18 Meng Ch’ang-chün 孟嘗君, 468 Meng Chia 孟嘉, 258 Meng Hao-jan 孟浩然, xiv, 96, 147, 188, 201, 214, 391 Meng Yang 孟洋, 2, 176, 217, 256, 267, 289, 299-300, 303, 338, 347, 455, 458, 645, 650-51 abandonment of office, 484-85 and Chang Shih, 534 and Chang Shih-lung, 475 and Han Pang-ch’i, 311 and Ho Ching-ming, 6, 60, 120, 157, 159, 183, 186, 189, 203, 213, 243, 299, 302, 306, 317, 320, 322-24, 358, 382, 434, 438, 456, 458, 481, 484-85, 618 and Hsieh Chung, 317 and Hsüeh Hui, 457 and Ku Lin, 49, 654 and Li Lien, 457 and Li Meng-yang, 642 and Lü Nan, 599 and Ma Lu, 224, 482 and Ma Ying-hsiang, 231 and memorial texts, 534, 579-82 and P’eng Tse, 315 and Seven Masters, 654 and Tai Kuan, 295 and Tai Yi, 14 and Ts’ui Hsien, 492 and Wang T’ing-hsiang, 19, 317, 643, 656 and Yen Sung, 465, 645 chü-jen, 28 Ho Ching-ming epitaph, 1, 6, 10-

INDEX 11, 21, 26, 128, 130, 470, 486, 532, 535, 563, 57-74, 577, 579, 581, 583-84, 586-88, 616 relegation to Kweilin, 318-19 Setting Out from Chao-chou, 187 transfer to Wen-shang, 381 Menzies, Gavin, 35 Merritt, Jean, xxiv Meskill, John, 51 Metal Horse Gate 金馬門, 451 Metzger, Thomas A., 421, 423 Meyer, Leonard B., xviii, 550 Mi-lu 米魯 Rebellion, 83-86 Miao Hsi 繆襲, 246 Mien-yang 沔陽, 355, 441, 457 Milner, Martin, xxiv Ming-ch’en Shih-yi 名臣諡議, 586 Ming-ju Hsüeh-an 明儒學案, 557 Ming Shan Ts’ang 名山藏, 586, 591, 642 Ming Shih Kao 明史稿, 590-91 Ming Shu 明書, 334, 578, 583 Mo-tzu 墨子, 247, 414 Monteverdi, Claudio, 408 Moon Festival, 55, 114, 119, 167, 171, 199-200, 265, 309, 331, 361, 43233, 435, 449, 467 Mote, Frederick W., 40, 549 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 249 Mt. Hua 華岳, 361, 460 Mu K’un 木崑, 87, 307 Mu Ying 沐英, 87 Nan T’ang 南鏜, 212, 511 Nanking 南京, 5, 314, 376, 496, 621 as capital, 32, 35, 41, 434 Chu Ying-teng in, 48 Fan Lu in, 363, 375-76 Fan P’eng in, 161 Huang Hsing-tseng in, 654 Ku Lin in, 49, 654 Lu Shen in, 240 officials, ix, 28, 37, 56, 86, 122, 124, 447, 479, 647 Wang Ch’ung-ch’ing in, 371 Wu-tsung in, 496-97, 514 National University (t’ai-hsüeh 太學), 20, 60, 160, 240, 288, 566, 591 and examinations, 16 opportunities provided, 16 Needham, Joseph, 191 Ni Tsan 倪瓚, 395 Nieh Pao 聶豹, 466

INDEX Nineteen Old Poems 古詩十九首, 111, 113, 131, 149, 173, 177, 245, 247, 249, 266, 326, 432 Ning Ho 甯和, 480, 615 Ning, Prince 寧王, ix, 346, 455, 49596, 527-28, 545 Nung-yü 弄玉, 114 Nü-wa 女媧, 367 Nylan, Michael, 311, 557 omens, 119-20, 122 Oppolzer, Theodore Ritter von, 309, 388 Ou T’an-sheng 歐潭生, 2 Ou-yang Hsiu 歐陽修, 207, 397 Ou-yang Hsün 歐陽詢, 411 Owen, Stephen, 144, 149, 397, 550, 560 Pa-ch’iu 巴邱, 69-70 Pa-ling 巴陵, 17, 67- 69, 130, 155, 202 Pai Han-k’un 白漢坤, 391 Palestrina, Giovanni Pierluigi da, 408 Pan 班 (artisan), 409-10 Pan Chieh-yü 班倢伃, 115, 261, 265, 267, 354, 451 Pan Ku 班固, 111, 115, 141, 168, 477, 482, 577 P’an-chiang 盤江, 83, 85, 88 P’an-hsi 磻溪, 507 P’an Hsi-tseng 潘希曾, 372, 608 A Note for Drafter Ho Chung-mo, 373 P’an Yüeh 潘岳, 23, 25, 141, 147-48, 218, 232, 429, 452, 510 Pao Chao 鮑照, 63, 76, 77, 110, 299, 316, 345, 354, 454 Pao-chi 寶雞, 497, 507, 509 Pao Pi 鮑弼, 293, 321, 427 Pao-ting 保定, 478 Parsons, James, 18, 287 P’ei Ti 裴迪, 238, 502 Peking 北京, x absence from, 156, 236, 290 as site of chin-shih examination, 13, 15, 18, 48, 59, 183, 354, 365, 441, 631, 648 defences of, 68, 452 departure from, x, 28, 67, 131, 138, 153, 192, 198, 216, 231, 324, 330, 333, 352, 355, 369, 374, 383, 421, 453, 458, 476, 556, 596, 650, 651

711 environs, 100, 120, 133-34, 312, 446, 478, 617 literary activities, 14, 38, 47, 52, 118, 237, 241, 309, 356-57, 371, 384, 400, 415, 458, 497, 525, 542, 556, 643, 646-52, 654 metropolitan officials, 16, 46-47, 153, 157, 190, 217, 297, 299, 300, 310, 363, 514, 646 return to, 21, 118, 127, 199, 205, 219-20, 287, 289, 292, 297, 324, 333, 338, 341, 365, 375, 377, 442, 527 travel to, 60, 98, 160, 224, 235, 298 unpleasant climate, 305, 324, 360, 383, 385, 431, 467 Peking Library 北京圖書館, xxv Pen-ch’ao Fen-sheng Jen-wu K’ao 本朝分省人物考, 159, 355, 578, 583 P’eng Lu 彭輅, 537 P’eng Tse 彭澤, 314, 452, 470 P’eng Tsu 彭祖, 263 P’eng Yün-chang 彭蘊章, 407 Peres de Andrade, Fernão, 545-47 Phoenix and Cypress Hills 桐柏山, 185, 359 P’i Jih-hsiu 皮日休, 649 P’i-lu 毗盧閣 (hall), 505 Pien-ch’iao 偏橋, 81 Pien Ho 卞和, 253 Pien Kung 邊貢, 27, 50, 52, 66, 536, 554, 575, 582, 585, 643, 647 and Archaism, 646 and Chu Ying-teng, 647 and Fan Yüan, 363 and Four Worthies, 642 and Ho Ching-ming, 52, 157, 293, 442, 465, 573-74, 577, 587, 590 and K’ang Hai, 643, 646 and Ku Lin, 654 and Li Meng-yang, 52, 646 and Liu Ta-hsia, 191 and Liu Yün, 465 and Ma Ying-hsiang, 231 and Seven Masters, 641, 645, 651, 654 and Wang Pien, x-xii, 62 in Peking, 47 P’ing-li 平利, 512 P’ing-yi 平夷, 85 P’ing-yüan, Lord 平原君, 141

712 Plaks, Andrew, 41 Po Chü-yi 白居易, 45-46, 114, 116, 118, 141, 179, 258, 496, 541 Po Ya 伯牙, 175 Po Yi 伯夷, 133, 278 Poe, Edgar Allen, xviii poetry allusion, xix, 75-77, 112, 133, 332, 428-30 formal commentaries, 24-25, 59, 64, 74-78, 95-96, 117-18, 13637, 142-47, 165, 170-71, 17576, 188, 200-01, 209-11, 233, 248-50, 255-59, 261-63, 268, 313, 326-28, 332, 342, 378-79, 397, 464-65, 517-23 kui-ch’ing 閨情 (boudoir lament), 265 sources and models, 144-47, 242, 428, 430, 517-18 yung shih 詠史 (historical poems), 268, 512, 523 yung-wu 詠物 (poems on objects), 267 Pound, Ezra, 417 Proctor, Laura, xxiv P’u-an 普安, 85-86 P’u-ch’i 蒲圻, 69 P’u-yüan 普緣 (temple), 505 Pulleyblank, Edwin G., xxiii Radder, Patricia, xxiv Red Cliff 赤壁, 366 Red Turban Rebellion, 4, 32, 565 Reeve, Michael, 600 Rites 禮記 (Book of), 11 Robinson, David, 100, 103, 290, 602 Rosen, Charles, xiii, xix Roth, Harold, 600 San-ch’a 三岔, 509 Sang P’u 桑溥, 524 Sayings of the Confucian School 孔子家語, 617 Schmidt, Jerry D., 562 Schneewind, Sarah, 515 Schönberg, Arnold, 106, 408 Schultz, William, xiv, xxiii Secretariat Style 臺閣體, 42-46, 50, 71, 395, 426, 540, 560 Seven Masters of the Ming 明七子, xiii, 125, 289, 553, 561, 582, 630, 641-55

INDEX Seventh Night 七夕, 116, 156, 324, 361, 449, 476 Shang-chou 商州, 511, 515, 523 Shang-nan 商南, 511 Shao Pao 邵寶, ix-x, xii, 47, 49, 56, 287, 646 and Tai Kuan, 382 Shao P’ing 召平, 193 Shao Sheng 邵昇, 298-99 Shao Yung 邵雍, 397 She 葉, Mister, 90 Shen Ang 沈昂, 159, 161-62, 164-65, 167, 171, 175, 183-84, 627, 628 Shen Chin 沈進, 644 Shen Chou 沈周, 41, 120, 395, 396 A Visit to Master Hsiang’s Chamber, 396-97 Shen Te-ch’ien 沈德潛, 356, 539, 559 Shen Yü-wen 沈與文, 615 Shen Yüeh 沈約, 112, 202, 326, 344, 413, 478 Sheng-ch’ao Ming-shih K’ao 聖朝名世考, 586 Sheng Tuan-ming 盛端明, 643 Shensi T’ung-chih 陜西通志 Ho Ching-ming biography, 575 Shih Chi 史記, 113, 116, 133, 135, 142, 241, 254, 269, 274, 278, 335, 339-40, 367, 452 Shih Ch’ung 石崇, 228 Shih Ju 施儒, 347, 376 Shih Jun-chang 施閏章, 620 Shih Ts’un-chih 師存智, 470-71, 567, 571, 591 Shih-tsung 世宗, 65, 159, 220, 303, 352, 445-46, 453, 459, 465, 495, 533, 546 Shimizu Shigeru 清水茂, xxiii Shu-ch’i 叔齊, 278 Shun 舜 (sage king), 66, 209, 405, 410, 447 Smith, Barbara Herrnstein, 59 social conditions banditry, 212, 289, 291, 294, 296, 301, 313-14 famine, 186, 212, 214, 219, 303 granaries, 212-13 pirates, 383 Songs 詩經 (Book of), 11, 26, 55, 63, 76-77, 107, 111, 149, 168, 170, 174, 200, 208, 210, 246, 248, 258, 266, 267, 336, 339, 356, 369, 381, 402, 404, 410, 413, 510, 569

INDEX Sonkeikaku Bunko 尊經閣文庫, xxv Ssu-ma Ch’ien 司馬遷, 81, 132, 142, 195-96, 255, 263, 317, 340, 477, 568 Ssu-ma Chou 司馬周, 394 Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju 司馬相如, 66, 116, 118, 140, 307, 367, 474 Styron, William, 78 Su Hui 蘇蕙, 115, 504 Su Shih 蘇軾, 182, 241, 356, 366, 368, 397, 505, 541, 542, 656 Su Wu 蘇武, 63, 115, 168, 170, 246, 261 Sun Chi-fang 孫繼芳, 59, 134, 151, 186, 198, 200, 323, 348, 351, 365, 449, 631, 652 and Ho Ching-ming, 160, 240, 304, 322, 346, 365 chin-shih, 183, 199 chü-jen, 179 Sun Ch’eng-en 孫承恩, 315 Sun Jung 孫榮, 28, 54, 59, 153, 160, 191, 198, 240-41, 615 Sun Wei-kuo 孫衛國, 186 Sun Yi 孫宜, 134, 449 Sun Yi-yüan 孫一元, 645 Sung Chih-wen 宋之問, 523 Sung Lien 宋濂, 40, 394 Sung P’ei-wei 宋佩韋, 51, 239 Sung Yü 宋玉, 63, 116, 262, 477, 568 Suzuki Torao 鈴木虎雄, 18, 118, 390, 543 Ta-fu Yi-kao 大復遺槁, xxv, 14, 22, 61, 171, 231, 272, 291, 293, 302, 348, 480, 524, 581, 600, 615-19, 621, 623, 627-40 Ta-Ming Lü 大明律, 36 Ta-pieh 大別 (range), 1, 4, 434 Tai Chin 戴進, 41-42 Tai Ch’in 戴欽, 439, 451, 456, 459, 492 and Ho Ching-ming, 356, 385, 438, 442, 450, 458 and Li Lien, 386 Tai Kuan 戴冠, 59, 179, 295, 628, 631 and Chao Hui, 308 and Fan P’eng, 462, 534 and Ho Ching-ming, 14, 62, 120, 128, 160, 203, 304, 383, 434, 534-35 and Hsieh Chung, 317 and Li Meng-yang, 642

713 and Shen recension, 536, 603-04, 606, 611, 613, 625, 640, 655 and T’ien Ju-tzu, 346 and tz’u poetry, 60-61 beaten in court, 495 chin-shih, 183, 189 chü-jen, 160, 179 letter to Ho Ching-ming, 295, 421 protest memorial, 382 relegation to Kwangtung, 382-83, 485, 534 Tai K’ui 戴逵, 207 Tai Yi 戴誼, 14, 28, 59, 120, 628 T’ai-chou 泰州 School, 557 T’ai-pai 太白 (mountain), 506 Tan 丹, Crown Prince, 255 Tan, Tian Yuan 陳靝沅, 288 T’an Ch’ien 談遷, 18, 334, 475 Tang, Karen (Pu K’ai-ying) 卜暟瑩, xxiv T’ang-hsien 唐縣, 98, 476 T’ang Lung 唐龍, 601-02 T’ang poetry as distinct from Sung, 430 T’ang Shih P’in-hui 唐詩品彙, 393 T’ang Shun-chih 唐順之, 354, 420, 582 T’ang Yao-k’o 唐堯客, 139 T’ang Yin 唐寅, 49, 556, 648-49 Taoism, 20, 135, 215-16, 272, 274, 279, 302, 332, 345, 366, 379, 421, 439, 451, 458-59, 492, 495, 499, 502, 504 Tao-te Ching, 150, 335, 502, 504 T’ao Ch’ien 陶潛, 75, 151, 207, 244, 246-47, 404, 407, 439, 493, 589 T’ao Chi 陶驥, 322, 324, 331, 333-34, 365, 438, 456 T’ao Hsin-min 陶新民, 541 Tchaikovsky, Piotr Il’yich, 249 Teasdale, Sara, 552 Teng Yüan-hsi 鄧元錫, 387, 584-85 Thatched Hall 草堂 (temple), 500 T’ien Chang 田常, 278-79 T’ien Ju-tzu 田汝耔, 14, 20, 205, 306, 310, 319, 322, 333, 343, 345-46, 492, 643, 645, 650 T’ien Kuang 田光, 255-56 Ting-chou 定州, 478 Ting San-hsing 丁三省, 3 Toghto (T’o-t’o) 脫脫, 32 Tong, James W., 290 Transcendant Roaming 仙遊寺 (temple), 504

714 Ts’ai Chen 蔡震, 285, 311 Ts’ai, Shih-shan Henry, 100 Ts’ai Yung 蔡邕, 74, 170, 326 Ts’ang-lang Shih-hua 滄浪詩話, 390, 392, 414 Ts’ao Chih 曹植, 63, 132-33, 170, 245-47, 252, 257, 260, 263, 266, 271, 403, 405, 410, 414, 436, 509, 568 Ts’ao Fang 曹倣, 438 Ts’ao Hu 曹琥, 307, 348 Ts’ao Hung 曹弘, 105, 463 Ts’ao Hung 曹虹, 558 Ts’ao Jui 曹叡, 252, 266 Ts’ao-mu 草木, 1, 12 Ts’ao P’i 曹丕, 173, 260-61, 266 Ts’ao P’i 曹毗, 267 Ts’ao Shen 曹參, 269, 519 Ts’ao Shu 曹攄, 247 Ts’ao Ts’ao 曹操, 98, 113, 179, 245, 248, 517, 520 Ts’ao Tuan 曹端, 38 Tse Yim 謝琰, xxiii Ts’en Shen 岑參, 111, 157, 164, 174, 179, 316, 326, 359, 361, 451, 454, 463, 502 Tseng-tzu 曾子, 279 Tso Ch’iu-ming 左邱明, 194 Tso Commentary 左傳, 12, 388-89, 413, 568 Tso K’o-ming 左克明, 490 Tso Kuo-chi 左國璣, 197-98, 355 Tso Ssu 左思, 168, 232 Ts’o-o 嵯峨 (mountain), 500 Tsou Ch’a 鄒察, 620, 622 Tsou Tzu-chia 鄒子家, 386 Tsou Yang 鄒陽, 337-38 Tsu T’i 祖逖, 135, 137 Ts’ui Hao 崔顥, 361 Ts’ui Hsien 崔銑, 60, 151, 311, 447, 466, 650 and Chang Chi-meng, 333 and Han Pang-ching, 311 and Ho Ching-ming, 20, 60, 298, 306, 322, 357, 442, 492, 645, 651 and Ho Meng-ch’un, 484 and Hsüeh Hui, 453 and Li Meng-yang, 535, 656 and Li Tung-yang, 190 and Liu Jui, 448 and Liu K’an, 357 and Liu Tso, 298, 440 and Ma Li, 288

INDEX and Seven Masters, 645, 650 and Shih Ju, 376 and T’ien Ju-tzu, 310 and Wang Hsi-meng, 311, 432 and Wang T’ing-hsiang, 643 and Yin Yün-hsiao, 352, 650 chin-shih, 14 chü-jen, 205 collected works, 597 Ts’ui Yen-hui 崔燕慧, xxiv Tu Fu 杜甫, 21, 45, 76, 81, 97, 142, 174, 181, 239, 243, 262, 356, 410, 414, 418, 429, 463, 476, 512, 517, 543, 552, 585 as High T’ang poet, 391, 393 heptasyllabic regulated verse, 70 Ho Ching-ming comments on, 106, 107, 110, 118, 144, 241, 391, 404-05 poems on paintings, 327 Singing of my Feelings at Ancient Sites, 519-22 Song of my Thatched Hut Damaged by the Autumn Winds, 76-77 Song of Watching the Fishing, 7374 Visiting the Shrine of the first Lord, 517-19 works cited, 23-24, 56-57, 63, 68, 70, 80, 84, 97-98, 112-14, 13132, 141, 150, 163-64, 166, 168, 174, 177-78, 183, 185, 209-11, 214-15, 218, 228, 230, 232, 235-36, 239, 245, 257, 260, 266, 268, 305, 313, 316, 32931, 344, 359, 380, 385, 434-37, 454, 463, 473, 501-02, 516 Tu Hsüan 杜璿, 476 Tu Mu 杜牧, 58, 71 Tu Mu 都穆, xi, xii, 52, 120, 297, 347, 603 Tu Nan 杜柟, 645, 654 Tu Shen-yen 杜審言, 414 Tu Wei-ming, xiii, 50-51, 424 T’u Lung 屠隆, 537 T’u-mu 土木 (battle), 43, 471 Tuan Chiung 段炅, 51, 493, 502-03 Tu-ch’ang 都昌, 404 Tung Ch’i-ch’ang 董其昌, 42 Tung Chi 董玘, 317, 333 Tung Chung-shu 董仲舒, 194-95 Tung-ch’ang 東昌, 130, 155, 386-87, 400, 565

INDEX Tung-fang Shuo 東方朔, 310, 355, 451 T’ung-ch’eng 桐城 School, 553 Turnage, Mark Anthony, 78 Tzu-en (Temple) 慈恩寺, 303 Tzu-k’uai 子噲, 278 Tzu-ko 紫閣峰 (peak), 501 Tzu-ssu 子思, 405 Tzu-yang 紫陽, 512 van Ess, Hans, 557 Velazquez, Diego, 78 Vernacular Literature Movement, 552 Viking Portable Library, 550 Waley, Arthur, 426 Walls, Jan, xxiii Wan Ssu-t’ung 萬斯同, 590-91 Wang An-shih 王安石, 397 Wang Ao 王鏊, 37, 123-24, 217, 283, 318, 330, 492 Wang Ch’ao-liang 王朝良, 605 Wang, Cheryl Xi-ru 王希儒, xxiv, 389 Wang Chieh 王節, ix-x Wang Chih 汪直, 6-7 Wang Chih 王直, 43-44 Drinking in the Moonlight, 45 Wang Chih-teng 王稺登, 657 Wang Chiu-feng 王九峰, 49, 377 Wang Chiu-ssu 王九思, 48, 200, 377, 463, 480, 493, 502-03, 554, 579, 581, 645 and Archaism, 646, 656 and Chang Chih-tao, 656 and Ho Ching-ming, 53, 157, 377, 497, 577, 599, 647 and K’ang Hai, 51, 657 and Ku Lin, 654-55 and Li K’ai-hsien, 190, 580, 64546 and Li Meng-yang, 52, 288, 647, 657 and Li Tung-yang, 50-51, 657 and Ma Ying-hsiang, 231 and Seven Masters, 641-45, 647, 651, 655, 658 disgrace of, 189, 287 in Peking, 47 Record of Touring the Hills, 499506 retirement in Shensi, 498 under Liu Chin, 125 Wang Ch’iung 王瓊, 470

715 Wang Chung-min 王重民, 620, 622 Wang Ch’ung-ch’ing 王崇慶, 272, 348, 524 and Ho Ching-ming, 371-72, 477, 608 and Lü Nan, 353 and Ma Lu, 224 and Wang Hsiang, 475 Wang Fu 王紱, 395 Wang Hsi-meng 王希孟, 14, 311, 322-23, 333, 346, 432, 434-35, 643 Wang Hsiang 王相, 475 Wang Hsien 王獻, 644 Wang Hui-chih 王徽之, 24, 207, 236 Wang Hung-hsü 王鴻緒, 590-91 Wang Ken 王艮, 424-25 Wang Kung-wang 王公望, 166, 334, 389 Wang Meng 王蒙, 395 Wang Pien 王昪, ix-xiii, xvi, 26, 62, 63, 120, 381 Wang, Ping, 56 Wang Po 王勃, 107, 156, 577 Wang Shang-chiung 王尚絅, 21, 48, 228, 398, 483, 604, 629 and Ho Ching-ming, 20, 157, 243, 298, 482, 490, 569 and Ma Li, 53 and Seven Masters, 642 and Wang T’ing-hsiang, 643 Wang Shen-chung 王慎中, 420, 582 Wang Shih-chen 王世貞, 190, 218-19, 220, 535, 537, 539, 621-22, 644, 649 and Seven Masters, 650 as Archaist, 42, 536-38, 541, 657 preface to Ho Ching-ming, 222, 576, 591, 621-22, 630 Wang Shih-chen 王士禎, 107, 240, 399, 492, 533 Wang Tao-k’un 汪道昆, 1, 5, 12, 576, 591, 623 Wang T’ien-hsi 王天錫, 321 Wang T’ing 王廷, 354 Wang T’ing-hsiang 王廷相, 106-07, 117, 194, 263, 271, 342, 386, 463, 468, 489, 513, 517, 529, 608, 645 and Cheng Shan-fu, 495 and Han Pang-ch’i, 312 and Ho Ching-ming, 19-20, 54, 157, 292-93, 307, 317, 337, 340, 351, 429, 431, 434, 460, 530, 580 and Ho T’ang, 222

716 and Hsü Chen-ch’ing, 643 and Hsüeh Hui, 354, 477, 651 and K’ang Hai, 646 and Li Meng-yang, 52, 419, 64647 and Meng Yang, 654, 656 and P’eng Tse, 315 and Seven Masters, 641-43, 645, 647, 651 and Ten Talents, 642 as Archaist, 656 career, 21, 26, 190, 287, 333, 471 imprisonment, 337, 339 preface to Ho Ching-ming, 14, 591, 604-05, 617 relegation to Kan-yü, 351 Wang Ts’an 王粲, 63, 112, 150, 202, 245-46, 262 Wang T’ung 王通, 420 Wang Wei 王維, 59, 153, 237, 238, 241, 391, 428, 476, 498, 514 Wang Wei-chen 王維楨, 585 Wang Ya 王涯, 257 Wang Yang 王暘, 458, 499, 502-04, 506 Wang Yang-ming 王陽明 and Archaism, 420, 422-24, 427, 541-42, 554, 556 and Ho Ching-ming, 295 and Hsü Chen-ch’ing, 421, 652 and Huang Hsing-tseng, 536, 65455 and Ku Ying-hsiang, 545 and Li Meng-yang, 18, 52, 125, 421 and literature, 50 and Liu Chin, 651 and Lü Nan, 21 and Taoism, 492 and Tu Mu, 120 and Wei Liang-kui, 620 as philosopher, xiii, 38, 271, 399, 421, 557 chin-shih, 48 in Prince Ning rebellion, 496, 527 Wang Yen 王綖, 243 Wang Yen-hsi 王岩溪, 321, 427 Wang Yi 王沂, ix-x, xii Wang Yü 王終, ix, xi-xii Wang Yü-ch’eng 王禹偁, 39 Wang Yüan-fan 汪元范, 593 Wang Yüeh 王岳, 123-25 Wang Yün 王筠, 478 Wang Yün-chuang 汪允莊, 407

INDEX Watson, Burton, xx Wei Liang-kui 魏良貴, 620 Wei Tao 衛道, 433-34 Wei Ying-wu 韋應物, 24, 69, 141, 228, 246-47, 332, 341, 359, 504 Wei-yüan 渭源, 10, 12, 154, 572, 581 Wen Chen-meng 文震孟, 330 Wen Cheng-ming 文徵明, 347, 420, 556, 648 Wen-shang 汶上, 381, 438, 457, 485 Wen T’ung 文同, 299, 543 Wen-tzu 文子, 135 Wen Wang 文王 (King of Chou), 340, 359, 507 Wen Yi-to 聞一多, 561 Wixted, John Timothy, 106, 562 Wolf of Chung-shan 中山狼, 288 women as beauties, 116-17 as concubines, ix as daughters, 114, 116 as daughters-in-law, ix, 116 as empresses, 30, 65, 115, 261, 349, 452, 472-73 as grandmothers, ix, 48 as mothers-in-law, 8 as sisters, 141 as widows, x, 131, 155, 532, 569 as wives, ix, 5, 22, 25, 115-16 palace women, 115, 443, 445-46 Wong Yuk 王煜, 274 Wu-ch’ang 武昌, 68, 70, 433-34, 482 Wu Ch’eng-hsüeh 吳承學, 558 Wu Chieh 吳節, 6 Wu Chin 吾謹, 653 Wu-chin 武進, ix Wu-ching Ssu-shu Ta-ch’üan 五經四書大全, 36 Wu Hung-yi 吳宏一, 561 Wu-k’o 無可, 208 Wu-kuan 武關, 508, 511 Wu K’uan 吳寬, 18 Wu-kung 武功, 492-93, 497-98, 502 Wu-ling 武陵, 75 Wu Mai-yüan 吳邁遠, 149 Wu Tao-tzu 吳道子, 505 Wu-tsung 武宗, xxviii, 105, 126, 154, 156, 341, 427, 456, 474-75, 611, 651-52 accession of, 66 and Chiang Pin, 314, 318, 528 and failed coup against Liu Chin, 122, 124, 283 and Leopard Quarter, 296

INDEX and Liao T’ang, 318 and Liu Chin, 99, 102, 122-23, 285 and Ma Ang, 445 and palace fire, 346-47 and Prince Ning, 496, 528 as grotesque, 102 as poor ruler, 65 death of, 531, 533 disreputable consorts, 443-45, 496 favourites, 546 indifference to remonstration, 119, 382, 443, 447 irresponsibility of, xvii, 65, 100, 104, 122, 137, 296, 370, 372, 471, 483 military adventures, 446, 472-73, 483, 495, 635 posthumous reputation, 103 punishment of critics, 361 resignation of officials, 297, 457 southern expedition, 495-96, 514, 527, 529, 652 Wu Tung-po 吳東伯, 467 Wu Wang 武王 (King of Chou), 27879 Wu Wei 吳偉, 343 Wu Wei-yeh 吳偉業, 20 Wu Yü-pi 吳與弼, 37 Wuhan 武漢, 2, 68 Yagisawa Hajime 八木沢元, 288 Yang Chiung 楊炯, 107 Yang Chu 楊朱, 414 Yang Ch’un-ch’iu 羊春秋, 558 Yang Hai-ch'ing 陽海清, 615 Yang-hsien 陽羨, 358-60 Yang Hsiung 揚雄, 141, 145, 311, 372, 410, 439, 465 Yang Hu 羊祜, 135-36 Yang-hu 陽湖 School, 553 Yang Jung 楊榮, 44 Yang Kui-fei 楊貴妃, 385, 496 Yang Pao 楊保, 163, 214, 258 Yang Ping-chung 楊秉中, 498 Yang P’u 楊溥, 44, 334, 579 Yang Shen 楊慎, 356, 474, 492, 498, 536, 652 and Ho Ching-ming, 456 Yang Shih-ch’i 楊士奇, 44-45, 426 Drifting at Night, 44 Yang T’ing-ho 楊廷和, 473, 498 Yang T’ing-yi 楊廷儀, 498 Yang Tzu-chün 楊子濬, 58

717 Yang Wan-li 楊萬里, 542-43 Yang Yi-ch’ing 楊一清, 196, 579 and fall of Liu Chin, 283-84, 286 and Ho Ching-ming, 198, 334, 567, 570, 577, 582, 584, 587, 589, 624 and Li Meng-yang, 334, 646 and Liu Ta-hsia, 191 and Liu Yün, 48 and P’eng Tse, 315 and Shao Pao, ix and Wang Hsi-meng, 311 and Wang T’ing-hsiang, 338 and Wang Yang-ming, 50 as discoverer of talent, 20, 47, 502, 646 palace fire memorial, 347 Yang Yüan 楊源, 119 Yao 堯 (sage king), 66, 278, 405, 410, 447 Yao Hsi-meng 姚希孟, 586 Yao Hsüeh-hsien 姚學賢, xxv, 126, 147, 202, 475, 513, 533 Yeh Chia-ying 葉嘉瑩, xxiii, 107, 517 Yeh Hsieh 葉燮, 543 Yeh-hsien 葉縣, 433 Yeh Pang-chung 葉邦重, 188, 201, 221 Yeh Po-chü 葉伯巨, 40 Yen Chen-ch’ing 顏真卿, 411, 568 Yen Ch’in 閰欽, 480 Yen Chung 燕忠, 334 Yen Hui 顏回, 339 Yen Sung 嚴嵩, 2, 153, 465-66, 473, 475, 643, 645 Yen Yen-chih 顏延之, 131, 260 Yen Ying 晏嬰, 335 Yen Yü 嚴羽, 390, 392-93, 399, 414, 421, 540 Yi-hsing 一行, 505 Yi Yin 伊尹, 519 Yin Chi-tsu 尹繼祖, 432 Yin Hsi 尹喜, 504 Yin Ying 陰盈, 151, 192 Yin Yün-hsiao 殷雲霄, 352, 444, 650, 652 Yokota Terutoshi 橫田輝俊, 165, 209, 388, 390, 393, 401, 406, 520, 561, 641-42 Yoshikawa Kōjirō 吉川幸次郎, 106, 419-20, 540, 561, 641 Young, Ray and Pat, xxiii Yu-tzu 有子, 279

718 Yü Cheng-shih 庾成師, 341 Yü Chien-wu 庾肩吾, 173 Yü Hsi 虞羲, 68, 316 Yü Hsin 庾信, 345 Yü Meng-lin 余孟麟, 15 Yü Shih-nan 虞世南, 177, 411 Yüan Chih 袁袠, 1, 407, 572, 574-75, 585, 656-57 Yüan Chung-tao 袁中道, 657 Yüan Hsün 袁勛, 222, 229, 275, 626 Yüan Hung-tao 袁宏道, 538, 555, 561 Yüan Jung 袁鎔, 14, 28, 205, 221-22, 229, 233-34, 313, 362, 624, 628-29 Yüan K’ai 袁凱, 40, 237-40 Yüan K’ai 袁鎧, 221, 229, 621, 62429 Yüan Mei 袁枚, 541

INDEX Yüan Sui 袁隨, 533 Yüan Ts’an 袁璨, 222, 619-22, 625, 627-30, 639 Yüan-t’ung 圓通 (temple), 367 Yüeh Lun 岳倫, 490 Yüeh Shih-fu 越石父, 335, 338, 340 Yüeh-yang 岳陽, 17, 69-71 Yün-hsi 雲溪, 69 Yün-t’ai 雲臺, 361 Yün-yang 雲陽, 96 Yung-lo Ta-tien 永樂大典, 36 Yung-men Chou 雍門周, 468 Yung-ning 永寧, 88- 91, 94 Yunnan 雲南, 87, 531 Zhang Endi 張恩迪, xxv Zhang, Yixi 張亦熙, xxiii-xxiv Zhao, Jie, 557