Late Ming Xizi Lake: the courtesan world in the landscape culture of the West Lake

ABSTRACT

The present article has the aim of examining the relationship between the landscape culture of Hangzhou’s West Lake and the world of Late Ming courtesans. This will analyse how the landscape culture was ambiguous toward the world of courtesans. On one hand it reinforced the values of that world, providing a network of spaces and activities for their implementation; on the other it offered ways in which such values could be questioned or even used by the courtesans themselves to progress in the world of culture, abandoning their status for a more socially acceptable one.

Keywords:

• West Lake
• Courtesans
• Landscape
• Late Ming

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I want to express my gratitude to the following persons and institutions; to Professor Alison Hardie, who’s comments have been very useful and enlightening, to Professor Yolaine Escande, to Professor Craig Clunas, to the Bodleian Library of Oxford University, and to the College du France Library especially to its director Delphine Spicq and all the staff. Also, thanks to Professor Wang Shuo, to Professor Zhou Shoujing, to Professor Gabriel García Noblejas and to Olivia Nigrisoli for her English translation.

Notes

1 In 1127 the Jurchen (the later Manchus) took the Song capital Kaifeng by surprise making the majority of the imperial family prisoner. One of the emperor’s sons, the future Gao Zong (1107–1187), fled and founded a new capital in Hangzhou. One of the reasons why he selected Hangzhou as capital was the amazing scenery of the West Lake, along with other more important military defensive requirements. A twenty-year war started that finished with a peace treaty between the Jurchen and Southern Song. However, there were many members among the literati that didn’t want to sign the treaty and wanted to recover the North and the former capital. The West Lake was already compared with the famous courtesan Xishi by the famous poet Su Shi (1037–1101). Thus, this comparison was used by those in favour of recovering the North (and later on when the Southern Song was conquered by the Mongols) to accuse the Song emperors and his court of being of feminine character, indulging themselves in the pleasures of the West Lake (many imperial parks and court members villas were constructed at its shores) instead of trying to recover the lost part of the empire.

Xishi, whose real name was Yiguang 夷光, was a courtesan of the late Spring and Autumn period who, according to legend, played a major role in the defeat of the state of Wu 吴 against the state of Yue 越. Xishi was trained in the arts of seduction by Fan Li 范蠡 (536–448 b.c.), the prime minister of Yue, so that King Goujian 勾踐 (496–465 b.c.) could enact his revenge against King Fu Chai. Xishi was sent to the kingdom of Wu where she entered the service of King Fuchai 夫差 (495–473 b.c.) seducing him and causing him to lose interest in state affairs and thus weaken it. To compare the lake with Xishi it was then compared it with one of the most deeply rooted archetypes of the fatal woman in the history of China.

2 The landscape culture in dynastic China encompasses many aspects that pertain to different humanistic disciplines; mountain settlements, garden design, poetry and prose works, landscape painting, and Buddhist and Taoist religious monasteries.

3 Wang Ruqian, a key figure in the cultural development of the West Lake in Late Ming, was a merchant who lived in Hangzhou and gave his financial support to many famous eccentric scholars, as well as many famous courtesans. His pleasure boat ‘gardens’ and the poetry parties he celebrates there were famous among the literati circles of Jiangnan.

4 Tian Rucheng 田汝成(c. 1500–1563), Jinshi 1526, was a governor of Hangzhou who write two of the major historical accounts of the West Lake prior to late Ming, Xihuyoulanzhi 西湖游覽志 and Xihuyoulanzhi yu 西湖游覽志餘.

5 Tian Rucheng 田汝成, Xihuyoulanzhi 西湖游覽志, (Beijing: 2012), p. 3. See Wang Ruqian 汪汝謙, Xizihu shicui yutan西子湖拾翠餘談 in Xihu wenxian jicheng di sance西湖文獻集成第三冊Mingdai zhi, Xihuxwenxian jicheng 明代志西湖文獻集成, ed. Wang, Guoping 王國平 (Hanghzhou: 2004), 1158–89. Bian Weyús painting and calligraphy album has been published in Hangzhou Xihu bowuguan 杭州西湖博物館, ed. Lidai xihu shuhua歴代西湖書畫集 (Hangzhou 2013, pp. 54–61).

6 The Late Ming (1560–1644) is a period that present a profound social instability and questioning of traditional values. Deep social and economic changes gave way to a number of conditions favouring an increase in the rights and freedoms of women. Within the traditional Confucian roles, a woman was destined to remain at home and to blindly serve her husband. The figure of the courtesan, on the other hand, belonged to the lower social and ethical layers. This outlook was nonetheless seriously questioned by the thought of Wang Yangming 王陽明 (1472– 1529) and his later followers, who advocated for the innate knowledge of human beings, allowing the social classes traditionally excluded from the spheres of culture and knowledge to gain access to them. Within this context rose a number of innovations in the fields of thought and aesthetic, such as the exaltation of the free expression of feelings and love qing 情 as dominant cultural value in the realm of creation. The female figure would be one of the central trunks of this new aesthetic, both as archetype character in literature and as main actor within the realm of literary and pictorial creation. As a result, a new interest in art works and writings by women would bloom — since they were not involved in the fierce struggles for power, fame and wealth, it was considered that they held a purity unstained by the necessities of social competition. Many women would receive a classic education, both in the high-class families and in the households of the courtesans. Furthermore, courtesans would receive a different education from previous times — now poetry and painting would be emphatically looked upon as their main abilities. The figure of the courtesan would become a kind of cultural ideal, because such people were the perfect example of how, through fighting against a destiny prefixed by certain social values, such values could be questioned and even surpassed.

7 Zhang Dai is one of the most important literary figures of the Ming- Qing transition on the seventeenth century. Although he passed the imperial examinations, he instead chooses to live a retired aesthetic life on the shores of the West Lake where his aristocratic family possessed a villa. During the turmoil and chaos of the dynastic transition all the gardens he possessed were destroyed, so he wrote the important nostalgic work about the history of the West Lake Xihumengxun 西湖夢尋.

8 Zhang Dai, Xihumengxun in XHWXMDZH, 843, translation in Campbell, ‘Searching for the Ming, part one’, in China Heritage Project, No. 28, December 2011; http://www.chinaheritagequarterly.org/ features.php?searchterm=028_one.inc&issue=028 [accessed 5.1.2021. I have modified the translation in the final part.

9 Jia Sidao was the prime Minister during the war with the Mongols which ended in the surrender of the Southern Song to them. Notwithstanding his efforts and land reform policies to finance the war, he was blamed for the Song army failures in the battles against the Mongols and eventually killed by instigation of his court enemies. Later on, the Confucian historiography make him responsible for all the faults they saw in the Southern Song, and eventually his character became one of the villains of dramas and literature fiction about this period.

10 ‘Hushang,’ in Yun Zhu 惲珠 (1771–1833), Guo chao gui xiu zheng shi ji 國朝閨秀正始集 (1831), 1.17b in Grace Fong, Ming Qing Women’s Writings Database 明清婦女著; http://digital.library.mcgill. ca/mingqing/ [accessed 15.6. 2019].

11 For more information about the Ten Views of the West Lake see, Duan, Xiaolin, ‘Ten views of the West Lake’ in Ebrey, Patricia, Shih-shan, Susan Huang, Visual and Material Culture in the Middle Period China, (Leiden, 2017), pp. 151–93.

12 ‘After the capital moved to the south, the causeway became a market, with crowds of singers and dancers, galloping horses and roaming boats, never ceasing throughout the night’ 南渡后，提成市，歌舞叢之, 走馬游船，達旦不息XHYLZH, p. 20. The text has its visual counterpart in the painting Scenic Attractions of West Lake’ 西湖清趣圖 in the Freer Gallery. In the section 25 we can clearly distinguish a courtesan house.

13 XHMX, p. 901. This story resembles one quoted by Tian Rucheng about the parties celebrated the by Jia Sidao and praised by Lizong 理宗 (1205–1264), Jia Sidao, unlike Liu Mengqian, instead of being demoted, was promoted. Tian Rucheng 田汝成, Xihu youlanzhiyu 西湖游覽志餘, (Shanghai: 1998), p. 70.

14 Though these were the sites found on a visual level, houses of courtesans and brothels were spread throughout the lake area (XHYLZH, p. 110).

15 According to Confucian traditional values, women could not be seen in public, as they belong to the inner space of the house, on the other hand, courtesans did not belong to that family inner space, so the fact that they could participate in the outer spaces with men was a transgression that the orthodox Confucians could not always tolerated. However, these strict rules concerning women in many periods were not fully respected, and even Confucians find themselves in contradictions about how to behave towards these transgressions. Also, even though participation in activities with courtesans and entertainers was also consider a transgression of moral values from the strict Confucian point of view, the fact is that in many periods the relationship of scholars with courtesan was widely accepted.

16 Wang Ruqian, 西子湖拾翠餘談, 虎林西山諸勝 in XHWXMDZH, juanzhong, p. 1167. Fenghuangling is located near the old Longjing temple 龍井寺.

17 Pu Fangliang, 浦祊(倞): You mingshenghu riji 游明聖 湖日記 in XHWXMDZH. 1135.

18 Yang Shen, Sheng’an shihua 昇庵诗話, juan 4 entry 120; https://ctext.org/wiki. pl?if=en&res= 286898&searchu=%E5%90%B3%E4%BA%8C%E5%A8%98 [accessed 15.12.2021].

19 See note 4.

20 Feng Menglong introduces a poem in which he compares Yaoqin’s beauty with that of Xishi which, as we have seen, was a common allusion in Late Ming and which converts Yaoqin into the incarnation of the West Lake and into a sort of avatar of Xishi: 常把西湖比西子，就是西子比他，也还不 如。The West Lake is often compared to Xishi But even Xishi was no way her equal. See Feng Menglong, 馮夢龍, Jingu qiguan今古 奇观, Maiyou lang duzhan huakui 賣油郎獨占 花魁, juan 30, entry 32; https://ctext.org/wiki.pl?if=en&res=223561&remap=gb. The translation is from Yang, Yang, ‘Stories’, 43.

21 According to the legends of the Ming Dynasty Su Xiaoxiao 蘇小小 was a courtesan of the Jin Dynasty who lived at the West Lake, she fell in love with a scholar and lend him money to pay for the examination’s travel expenses to the capital. After waiting for a long time, she killed herself out of love to the scholar who never came back to her. Feng Xiaoqing 馮小青, is a semilegendary avatar of Su Xiaoxiao. She was a concubine of a scholar who lived in Hangzhou at the end of the sixteenth century. Due to the principal wife complains about her, she was banished from the main house to a small residence at the West Lake, and she died there by an illness caused for her grieve of being separated from her lover.

22 Liu Rushi 柳如是 Hushang cao湖上草 (hereafter HSHC) in Qingdai shiwenji huibian ce 4 清代詩文 集彙編册4, (Shanghai: 2010). 290: a,b.

23 HSHC, 291: a.

24 She refers to the rock composition present in one of the spaces of the garden Qingyan ju 青巖居: 啟北 扉則巖石亂松青翠溢目. ‘When opening the north door, the scenery is filled with a cave of rocks merged with fresh, green pines’. In Feng Mengzhen馮夢禎 Jielu gushanji “結盧孤山記” in Liu Yuanyuan 劉 源源, ‘Suishen de leyuan: Wanming wenren Feng Mengzhen de yuanlin shijie 隨身的樂園：晚明 文人馮夢禎的園林世界’, Fengjing yuanlin lishi (2015): p. 91. Wang Wei also wrote a poem in this garden which she dedicates to Wang Furen who, as Xu Sunfeng notes, was probably Feng Mengjiang’s spouse. We also know that Huang Yuanjie dedicated a painting to Feng Furen as well. Xu, ‘Lotus’, pp. 226–9.

25 Zhang Zhongyu was a famous hermit poet of the Jin dynasty who dedicated himself to philosophy and divination.

26 The jiejjing concept is a key term in Chinese garden design, and its mean to incorporate views that are outside the garden walls into the garden.

27 Brasenia Schreberi, it was the fruit of the lotus plant which were collected for human consumption.

28 Tian Rucheng田汝成, Xihu youlan zhi yu 西湖游覽志 餘, juan 24 reprinted in Qinding Sikuquanshu 欽定四 庫全書 (1792); we have relied on the online version of the Chinese Text Project, juan 48, entry 47; https://ctext.org/wiki.pl?if=gb&chapter=595638&remap=gb#p48

29 HSHC, 291: b.

30 Xian Lanzhen was woman poet of the beginning of the seventeeth century, she was from Jiaxin in Zhejiang province and was married to Huang Maoxi also poet and literati of the gentry class of Jiaxin.

31 Wang Wei, Hushang qu xu湖上曲序, in Jiang Yuanzuo 江元祚, comp., Xu Yutai wenyuan續玉薹文苑 (1632), reprinted in Siku quanshu cunmu congshu jibu 四庫全 書存目叢書集部, vol. 375, p. 476. In the second part of the text, from the ellipsis we have used Xu Sufeng’s translation slightly modified. Xu, ‘Lotus flowers’, p, 224.

32 Wang Wei 王微, Hushang ci yunda Huangfuren湖 上次韻答黃夫人, in Yun Zhu惲珠 comp., Guo chao gui xiu zheng shi ji 國朝閨秀正始集 (1831), 16: a,b, in Grace Fong, Ming Qing Women’s Writings Database明清婦女著作; http://digital.library.mcgill.ca/mingqing/.