Rice Papers

The
Rice
Papers
The Rice Papers

A Student Journal of Asian Studies
Volume 1
Brigham Young University

Provo, Utah
The Rice Papers

A Student Journal of Asian Studies
Volume 1
Editor
Lance Crisler
Associate Editor
Ryan Robbins
Faculty Advisor
Dr. Steven L. Riep
Faculty Reviewers
Dr. J. Scott Miller
Dr. Michael Murdock
Dr. J. Michael Farmer
Dr. Jesse S. Crisler
Dr. Jeffrey F. Ringer
Dr. J. Paul Warnick
Dr. Mark Peterson
Linda Hunter Adams
Submission Guidelines
The Rice Papers welcomes academic submissions that engage Asia on virtually any topic. Submitters should send both a hard and electronic copy. Submissions should conform to MLA or Chicago
style guidelines in format, quotation, and citation of sources.
Contact Information
Submissions or inquiries may be directed to Dr. Steven Riep, 3063 JFSB, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT 84602, or [email protected].
Table of Contents
Preface ...................................................................................................... 6
What Makes Them That Way?: Hongyong Lees Experiences
in Still Life With Rice
Nicholas Gentile ...................................................................................... 9
Nostalgia in the Haikus of Lafcadio Hearn
Loren Crisler .......................................................................................... 23
Gender Influenced Depictions of Children in Early
Twentieth-Century Chinese Fiction
Jeremy Lau ............................................................................................. 37
Twilight in Chang-an
Dallas Petersen........................................................................................ 47
Qu Yuan: Chinas Poetic Archetype
Lance Crisler........................................................................................... 55
Hiking on the Green Mountains
Three Poems in Classical Chinese
Dr. David B. Honey, professor of Chinese............................................... 65
Preface
The Rice Papers is a student-operated undergraduate journal focusing on
Asian Studies. The concept for an Asian Studies journal grew out of conversations with Dr. Steven Riep and Linda Hunter Adams, both of whom felt the
need to provide an academic outlet to showcase the achievements of students
studying Asian culture. The goal of the journal is twofold. First, The Rice Papers
seeks to develop a quality venue where students of this discipline may publish
scholarly work. The journal is the first of its kind at Brigham Young University
and anxiously anticipates contributing a new literary dynamic for students to
add their insights to the rich and complex world of Asian Studies. Second, as
the spearhead effort to publish work specifically dealing with Asian Studies, The
Rice Papers hopes to unify and focus the talents of Brigham Young Universitys
students and produce a suitable setting for outstanding academic work in this
field. Furthermore, though the current issue represents the cultures of China,
Japan, and Korea, the journal hopes in the future to incorporate as many areas
of Asian culture as possible. While this aim is ambitious our vision is that the
study of many Asian countries at BYU will eventually flourish to the point where
several cultures will inevitably require their own respective literary publication.
Therefore, The Rice Papers represents a starting point for students to engage
seriously Asian Studies through academic publication.
The publication of the journal is possible only because of a generous contribution from BYUs David M. Kennedy Center for International Studies. We are very
grateful for this donation and are indeed fortunate to have such an indispensable
institution here at BYU. We hope that the publication of this and future issues
will spark the interests of more students to study Asian cultures through scholarly
research, as well as through hands-on experience in BYUs study abroad programs
to Asia. Additionally, special thanks are due to Dr. Steven Riep of the Department
of Asian and Near Eastern Languages without whom the journal would probably
never have gained momentum. His intellectual and creative inspiration helped
guide this issue to fruition, and he liberally gave much of his time to ensure the
journals quality.
This issue contains four research essays, one short story, and a series of original poems. The first essay introduces to the reader one of the paramount topics
that Western students of Asia must inescapably undertake: the tension between
6
traditional Confucian values and American-influenced thought. Perhaps asking the

question what makes them that way? is appropriate to begin a general discussion of Asian culture. The second essay uniquely contrasts with this idea in that
the work of the eclectic American writer Lafcadio Hearn explores poetry from the
point of view of a Japanese-influenced American. The journals third essay orients

the general readership to modern Chinese literature as it ambitiously surveys the
work of many of the most important writers of modern Chinese fiction. The next
two pieces in the journal are alike in that they both handle topics dealing with classical ages of China, but different as Twilight in Changan is the journals only
work of fiction and the fifth piece is a traditional research paper on one of Chinas
most influential poets. Finally, we are particularly fortunate to include in this first
issue the original Classical Chinese poetry of Dr. David Honey. Dr. Honey is a
highly respected scholar of Classical Chinese language and literature, and he is

exceptionally talented in his ability to produce poetry using Classical Chinese.
We hope readers enjoy this journal, and we anticipate its continued annual pub-
lication. We appreciate your continued support of Asian Studies at BYU and look
forward to producing more of the exceptional work done by BYUs students in
this rapidly expanding field. We also invite you to send any feedback to Dr. Steven
Riep at [email protected].
The staff of The Rice Papers.
What Makes Them That Way?:

Hongyong Lees Experiences with Gender in
Still Life With Rice
Nicholas Gentile
elie Lee grew frustrated with the female college students to whom
she taught English in Seoul, South Korea. Raised in California and
proud to be an American, she had gone to Korea for an extended vacation
to escape her nagging mother Dukwah and grandmother Hongyong, who
called her rotten fruit because she had not yet married. In the first few
weeks following her arrival in the Land of the Morning Calm, she had enjoyed learning about her Korean heritage. Now, however, the women in her
English class had started that same old nonsense about a womans duty to
get married that sent chills down her thoroughly American, independent-
woman spine. They tried to persuade her with the exact rhetoric she had
heard from her mother and grandmother: Our first responsibility must be to
the family and not to the individual. It is our duty as women to raise future
generations. Korean women consider our positions as mothers and nurturers
to be the most important job. After pondering their old-fashioned argument, Lee lamented, Im surrounded, ambushed, by mirror images of my
mother and grandmother and then asks the probing question, What makes
them this way?1
The rest of Still Life With Rice (1996), Lees narrative of her mothers
familys history from 1912 to the early 1990s, indirectly deals with the is9
The rice papers

sue of gender roles in traditional Korean society. Lee specifically focuses on
womens roles through the lens of her grandmothers life. Hongyong lived
through the oppressive days of Japanese occupation from her birth in 1912
until the defeat of Japan in World War II in 1945, entered into marriage
through a family arrangement, smuggled opium in China, raised three boys
and two girls, fled from Pyongyang to Pusan with her family during the
Korean War, and lost her husband and her eldest son to the conflict. Beyond
selling books, Lees life is the archetypal depiction of the traditional Korean
woman. In Still Life With Rice, episodes from Hongyongs birth through her
early married life shed light on the Confucian philosophies that dictated a
womans role in traditional Korean society, answering Helie Lees question,

What makes them this way?
Confucian influences cemented during the Choson period from 1392 to
1910 dictated a womans place in the structure of traditional Korean society.

Mark Peterson fleshes out a few of the main Confucian concepts that af-
fected women in Korea in his book Korean Adoption and Inheritance: Case
Studies in the Creation of a Classic Confucian Society:
Once a woman is married, she becomes the chulga oein, the one who
left the house and became an outsider.. . . The overall perception is nam-
jon, yobi: men are exalted but women are lowly. The samjong denotes the
three men to whom a woman is obedient: first, her father, then, her husband, and third, her son. . . . Yi Mi (the son-in-law of Choe Chu) argued
that the primary role of a wife is to provide an heir for the ancestors.2
Peterson describes the episode of Hongyongs birth to Paek Hogin and
his wife Hwaksi as illustrating the Confucian principle of male domination

and female subservience. Hwaksi feels a burden to give birth to sons: a
womans supreme duty. She pleads for a son, saying, I shall clothe him in
fine garments and give him precious stones to play with. After Hongyong
is born, she laments, If this daughter of mine had only come out a son,
he would have been a very powerful man, and, as Lee narrates, Disappointed, Hwaksi laid the infant on the bare floor, clothed only in a diaper
with nothing but her fingers to play with. Shortly after her birth, Hongyong
10
Nicholas Gentile
receives her name from her father, who, as Lee writes, some thought . . .
foolish for spending so much energy on such a task, for many families did
not even bother to name their daughters.3 This scene exemplifies the tradi-
tional Confucian ideology of namjon, yobi. Sociologist Mijeong Lee further
explains the reason for Hwaksis disappointment by stating, In [the Korean family] system, sons are considered permanent members of the family
while daughters are considered transient. Once they get married, daughters
contact with natal family becomes infrequent and they focus their concerns
on their husbands family matters.4 In a society based on the Confucian
concept of filial piety, a sons permanency in the family equates to his abil-
ity to care for his elderly parents in their twilight years. The transient
status of daughters in the lives of their natal family makes them ineligible
to care for their own elderly parents. Thus, from the Confucian perspective
of parental self-interest, the elevated societal status of males makes sense,
especially for first sons, who hold the prime responsibility for their aged
parents welfare.
Lessons from Hongyongs childhood training for womanhood also help
the reader understand a womans role in Koreas Confucian society. Upon

reaching her ninth birthday, she receives instruction from her mother on the
responsibilities and role of a virtuous woman. Hongyong mopes, It was
my punishment for being born a girl rat. . . . Daily [mother] drilled me on

the virtues of being a woman, which involved everything from the tone of
ones voice to making tea properly. All this was in preparation for my wifely
duties someday. The young girl does not fully understand the gender-role
indoctrination of her mothers lessons, which are grounded in Confucian

ideology. She wonders why she must stop playing with boys and start living
a segregated life of subservience to men as her mothers helper. Lee writes,

The lessons always centered on obedience and chastity, the two most im-
portant virtues according to mother. Obedience denoted blind obedience.

[Hongyong] was instructed to always say, yes to her parents, and her fu-
ture husband and in-laws. She becomes an apprentice of sewing, washing,

cooking, and cleaning to her mother, and when she makes mistakes, the firm
11
The rice papers

reminder of Who would want to marry such a worthless girl? motivates
Hongyong to learn her place in society.5 As Chungnim C. Han explains in
her study of family life in the province of Hamyong in North Korea:
A mother may feel pleased with her young daughters achievement but
every so often sharply corrects her mistakes in hopes of improving her still
further. In the meantime, the daughter realizes the daily routine of hard
work demanded by her mother is part of training. . . . The mother becomes
more and more anxious to have her daughter, as she approaches marriage-
able age, accomplished in the performance of household duties. . . .
The mother sees to it that female visitors to the house notice her charming
daughter so that her reputation may reach far and wide. In the meantime,
she begins to inquire about a prospective son-in-law.6
These restraints and requirements thrust upon nascent Korean young
women by their mothers take root in the Confucian ideology of female subordination to males. Confuciuss definitions of gender roles came to Korea
from China through Sol Chong, son of Wonhyo, and later An Hyang, who
spread the new philosophical strain of Neo-Confucianism. Both forms of
Confucian thought promoted the samjong (three submissions) regarding a

womans duty to serve the three categories of males (father, husband, and
son) as well as follow the puhaengpyon of myongsimpogam (the codes for
women). These codes required that women should keep their chastity and
be obedient, should not expect anything other than their assigned role,
should not go outside their own houses for social activities after reach-
ing adulthood, should have pleasure only in cooking food and making
wine and clothes for men, and should not become interested in political
or social affairs, but only in family activities inside the house.7 By keeping
womens lives centered on the nucleus of home and family responsibilities,
these codes encouraged the psychological development of Confucian gender roles from a young age. Jack Balswick addresses this issue, arguing that
the nurturing care for children in Korea is done by women rather than men.
This has a significant impact on both males and females, who emerge into
adulthood with distinctly different personalities and needs.8 This tendency
12
Nicholas Gentile
of a Confucian patriarchal society creates males who tend to define their
masculinity in negative terms, as that which is not feminine.9 Understand-
ing their societal role as being the opposite of the role of the nurturing and
subservient homemaking mother, Korean males downplay the importance

of women and feminine activity and attempt to portray themselves as self-
confident and superior.10 For these reasons, womanly virtue in traditional
Korean society is associated with maintaining an outward appearance of

inferiority and practicing submissiveness through servitude to males.
Incidents from the weeks prior to Hongyongs arranged marriage illus-
trate this Confucian concept of a womans duty to serve males. An unex-
pected invitation to her fathers quarters brings her the shocking news of her
own upcoming marriage. Hongyong character tells the tale, saying, One
day as I was mending socks. . . . I was formally summoned to appear before
Father. Not since I was a young girl did father request my company.11 Han
explains this phenomenon, which seems so foreign to the Western world:
As a daughter grows up, her relationship with her father becomes increasingly restrained and formal. . . . The father is always conscious of the fact
that the daughter is not a permanent member of his family. . . . Seldom

does the father speak to her; nor does she speak to him unless directly
questioned. . . . The daughter goes to her fathers room only when she
is called. The father neither inquires directly into his daughters welfare
nor does he personally reprimand or praise her.12
Paek Hogin announces to Hongyong that Your mother and I have ar-
ranged your napchae. . . . (kidnapping) He is from the family of Lee. His

given name is Lee Dukpil. His age is nineteen, and he is the first and only
son, like his father and grandfather before him. The news enrages Hongyong, who states, Suddenly it all seems so unfair. My parents never once
asked me what I desired. . . . I was unsure if I should drop to my knees
and bow deeply in gratitude orthreaten to throw myself into a well.13

In harmony with the Confucian samjong, Hongyong respects her fathers
arrangement and concedes to marry. Now, she faces the transition to the sec-
ond relationship in which she must show complete deference: marriage. Her
13
The rice papers

mother gives her last-minute counsel regarding the new role that awaits
her as a servant to her husband: You carry the hope of ten generations
of women. . . . Do not dishonor us. He is your husband now. This con-
cept of becoming a chulga oein, the one who left the house and became
an outsider, weighs heavily on Hongyongs mind: Now I would belong to
another mans family. . . . My memory would be forever erased in the record

books, as was done for all other generations of Paek daughters, who were
sent from their fathers homes. . . . Lee Dukpils wife would be my new
title.14 Peterson succinctly explains why a daughter becomes estranged

from her natal familys home and genealogy upon marriage:
Korean society has been characterized as a classical patriarchal, patrilineal, patrilocal society. That is to say that political authority is in the
hands of the males, that property is inherited through males, and that
residence after marriage is in the males homes. The Korean patrilin-
eage can be described as men related to men through men. Women are
incidental. . . . Women appear in genealogy only in reluctant recognition of the fact that men cannot bear children by themselves. . . . When
contemporary genealogies are published, it is only the men whose lines
continue down through time.15
Upon marriage to Dukpil, Hongyong comes to better understand the
patriarchal, patrilineal, and patrilocal customs of the Confucian-influenced
society in which she lives. She must play the role of subservient wife to
a dominant patriarch, she feels pressure to provide a son to continue the
patrilineal line of her husband, and she moves away from her parents and
siblings to live with her husbands family according to patrilocal tradition.
The episode of her wedding night illustrates how Hongyong handles the
transition to her Confucian role as a submissive wife to the new patriarch

in her life. Following a traditional wedding ceremony, her mother positions
her decoratively in her new hanbok (Korean clothes) on some bedding in the
middle of a room. She is told to wait for her husband who will come in to
have his wife after he finishes a rowdy round of drinks with the wedding guests. Akin to an ornament on display, Hongyong receives only the
14
Nicholas Gentile
stern warning to keep your eyes shut from her mother before she leaves
the room. Objectified as a prize for the patriarch whom she is to serve, she
wants to scream for help but reminds herself that: tradition commands me
to remain submissive. Her groom finally arrives, drunk, and must attend to
his duties as the head of the household: It was his duty to do the undress-
ing. He was expected to remove the headdress, undo the breast string, and
take off only one sock. When Dukpils nineteen year-old courage falters
after seeing the terror in his brides eyes, Hongyong remembers the role she
had been taught to play all her life and says, I could not let this happen.
I had to quickly restore his confidence so he could perform his duty.16 This
wedding night scene tells much about the Confucian roles and realities of the
traditional Korean marital relationship. As Han explains, The relationship
between husband and wife begins suddenly, at the time of the wedding cer-
emony, without any psychological preparation.17 Though Dukpil and Hon-
gyong had had no experience in a relationship with each other before mar-
riage, they both know their respective roles immediately after being brought
together. Dukpil, though not yet twenty, tries to play the part of a dominant
male by taking charge and putting his wife in a position of submission. Hongyong, though terrified, plays the role of an obedient, subservient female by
allowing Dukpil, a complete emotional stranger, to undress her and, later, to

have her body strictly because of his position as her husband.
When her husbands faade of machismo starts to topple and expose
his inner insecurities, Hongyongs encouragement of Dukpils required

patriarchal dominance also tells much about the realities of gender roles
in traditional Korea. Though males are supposed to appear publicly dominant, Hongyongs actions reflect a womans inner strength that must not
be forgotten in a discussion of traditional gender roles. Even though the
three submissions (to father, to husband, and to son) outwardly dictated
the role of women in Confucian Korea, women like Hongyong provided

tremendous emotional strength and support to their husbands. Donald N.
Clark speaks of the paradox of prescribed Confucian roles versus reality in
traditional Korea:
15
The rice papers

In traditional times, Korean women had to practice the three submissions. . . . Well-bred Korean women were supposed to live in seclusion
in the inner rooms of the house, never to be seen (and certainly never
to be touched) by men outside the family. Even their relations with adult
men in the family were supposed to be formal. In the inner rooms, how-
ever, women had considerable power. They dominated domestic life, ran
the household, and were the dominant influences on the children. The
image of the Korean woman as nameless and oppressed, therefore, has

to be modified to reflect the fact that within their own sphere, women
wielded considerable power even in traditional times. [This is] the paradox of public submission versus domestic power.18
The brief wedding night role reversal is just one instance demonstrating
Hongyongs inner strength and domestic dominance. Lees narrative tells of
countless acts of courage and fortitude. For example, Hongyong holds the
family together while raising five children without much help from profligate
Dukpil. She sells opium and operates a home restaurant to support the family
in China. In the greatest example of her inner strength, Hongyong leads her
starving children to safety in South Korea over hundreds of miles of battle-
fields during the Korean War. She also performs chiryo (treatment/therapy) to
provide for the needs of her family during a period of abject poverty endured
on the Korean peninsula following the wars devastation. Balswick makes

the interesting point that in reality, the male is frail. . . . He was taught to
think of himself as superior to his sisters, that they had a right to education
only after him, and that it was his parents lucky day when he was born.19
The traditional Confucian Korean male perceives his own dominance over
females and feeds his ego with notions of his own self-importance. Balswick
comments on the disparity that sometimes occurs between self-perception
and reality: The pampered boy grows up dependent upon females yielding
to his wishes and serving him. A girl, on the other hand, is not given a status
of honor at birth, but has to achieve her status.20
Hongyong gradually achieves status in her wifely role by following the
Confucian counsel her mother gave prior to her move to Dukpils familys
16
Nicholas Gentile
home. Moving according to patrilocal tradition forces Hongyong to part
from her family, and she laments, My in-laws had sent the wedding sedan
chair to fetch me to my new home. . . . As I stood in the womens quarters

one last time, a deep sadness grew inside me. . . . I hated [Dukpil]; it was all
his fault I was torn away from my parents and sisters.21 Hongyongs resent-
ment is mixed with apprehension and determination as she faces her new
responsibilities. In order to win the respect of her husband and new family,
Hongyong, soon to be known by her natal family as the chulga oein, is determined to bargain for . . . affection through hard work and obedience.22
Her desire to work hard and be obedient reflects training in the Confucian
wifely virtues that she had received from her mother as a young girl. Before
she leaves to become a stranger to her family and servant to her husband,
her mother once again bestows Confucian wisdom upon her daughter as a
parting gift, counseling:
Marriage is the relation between . . . sovereign and subject. And it be-
gins from the distinction of the two. The distinction should be kept between man and woman, as it is proper and will lead to the stability of the
world. . . . Your supreme duty as a married woman . . . is to give birth to

male heirs for the continuation of the Lee line. . . . Do not be adulterous.
Refrain from jealousy and pretend not to notice his indulgence. . . . Do
not disobey your in-laws. Treat them as your first parents.23
As Hongyong embarks on her journey into the world of wifely duty, this
advice provides her roadmap for conjugal harmony in a society dominated

by Confucian thought. She starts down this path around 1935, a time when
her mothers counsel regarding her role as subject to a sovereign flies in the
face of the womens emancipation movements of the Western world dur-
ing that time. During the Japanese Occupation from 1910 to 1945, Korea
still clung to the Confucian ideologies adopted during the previous Choson
period, Comparing Korean views on gender roles to Western views on the

subject is akin to finding similarities between kimchi and cotton candy.
After leaving her parents and commencing her new life with Dukpil,
Hongyong struggles to learn her proper place and role in the context of
17
The rice papers

a traditional Confucian marital relationship. Serving the perfect stranger
otherwise known as her husband occupies every waking hour of Hongyongs
life. Her comments made in the first few weeks subsequent to separation
from her family speak volumes: I feel nothing toward him. There is no affection, no emotion, nothing. Her mother-in-law, who had taken the place
of her mother as the mother-figure in her life, constantly harps at Hongyong
to serve her son more satisfactorily. For example, she orders, You must
learn to cook specifically for my sons palate. He dislikes his food bland.
The exact mixture of spices can make a simple meal mouthwatering. Hon-
gyong works feverishly to bring honor to her family and status to herself by
learning every preference and quirk of her new husband in order to prove
herself virtuous by her exact obedience. I slaved from five oclock in the
morning till the last member of the family retired, she recounts. She refuels
the oven to heat the floor, prepares every meal according to Dukpils lik-
ing, mends his socks, irons his jacket, cleans the floors, washes the dishes,
hauls water in from the well, and does a variety of other household chores
to please her husband and his family. In the Confucian world in which she
labors, these tasks become her lifes singular work, and performing them
well, as she notes, is my insurance that I would be able to eat, sleep, and
have some peace.24 In her marital relationship, Hongyong becomes completely dependent on her husband for the necessities of life. She can only secure these necessities by satisfactorily serving him. Unsatisfactory service
translates into a violation of the samjong and a loss of virtue. Han describes
the traditional Korean marital relationship:
The husband loves or likes his wife, and the wife respects her hus-
band in the same sense as a mother loves her child and the child respects its mother. The use of these words undoubtedly indicates a cer-
tain degree of superior feeling of the husband towards his wife who is
submissive and subordinate to and dependent upon her husband, at least
for the first few years of married life. . . . The husband is expected to be
aloof, as a sign of dignity, until the first child is born. A wife also must be
ever so careful not to show her partiality to her husband. A wise husband
18
Nicholas Gentile
pretends to ignore her; such an attitude is more conducive to his wifes
welfare and the harmony of the family.25
Hongyong placates the outward emotional separation from her husband
of which Han speaks by intensifying her interest in the physical bond of
marriage created by sexual intimacy. She explains, Husbands touch was
magical. The mere thought of spending the coming night wrapped in his
arms sustained me through the days hardship. . . . Cautiously, I bottled up
these feelings . . . fearing he might think he had married a foolish woman.26

This physical bond brings Hongyong and Dukpil together as a springboard
to the increase in status she achieve after she gives birth to their first child,
a coveted son.
Providing an heir to Dukpil and thus fulfilling the paramount duty of a
wife in Confucian Korea become Hongyongs greatest desire. The importance placed on women providing sons to continue family lines can hardly
be overstated. This concept takes root in the previously mentioned Confu-
cian expression namjon, yobi, meaning men are exalted, but women are
lowly. Korean society thus placed power in the hands of males through
genealogical records, philosophical precedence, inheritance rights, ancestor worship ceremonies, domestic domination, and marital rights. Is it any
wonder that a womans most important function in Confucian society would

be to produce sons? Seungsook Moon remarks that the male-dominated society of Korea reduced women to mere breeders to continue the agnatic
family lines.27 Moons view encapsulates the position of women in Confu-
cian society. The depiction of Hongyong reflects Moons attitudes. After
pondering her lifes path as a married woman expected to produce sons,

Hongyong exclaims, I must secure power, and the only way to accomplish
it is to bear children, sons. With sons come position, prestige, and authority.
I wish for the day I, too, would be Grandmothers age, enjoying my sons
and grandsons fruits.28 By bearing sons, she would not only create pride,
power, and prestige for Dukpil through perpetuating his family line, but
she would bring stability to her own position in her home and society. Her
male fruit would ensure her position in her husbands family by protect19
The rice papers

ing her from being expelled from the house for not providing a male heir.
Peterson comments on the predicament of sonless women by explaining,
The sonless woman . . . was in a perilous situation. She was liable to be
divorced and sent back to her own family and village (perhaps the most
shameful thing for a young woman).29 The threat of divorce and expulsion
thus hovers over Hongyongs head like a menacing specter. In fact, as Peterson observes, among the list of seven offenses which could lead to divorce
as enumerated in Confucian texts, listed either first or second in most texts

is the offense of not bearing a son.30
Hongyong escapes the fate of a sonless woman in Confucian society
by giving birth to Yongwoon. During her labor, Dukpil comments, It is
a noble thing you do, to bear me a child.31 This statement reflects the
prevailing attitudes regarding male domination and a womans duty to

provide a son for her husband. Rather than thinking of the child as belong-
ing equally to his father and mother, Dukpil inserts the Confucian roles
of master and servant into the equation of childbearing. In this equation,

Hongyong produces the desired necessity (a son to carry on the family
line) for Dukpil (the master), much like a chicken produces an egg that a
farmer takes and uses for his own benefit. Jae-Ho Cha, Bom-Mo Chung,
and Sung-Jin Lee remark on a womans perceived responsibility to provide male eggs for their husbands:
In the purely physical sense it is the womans function to bear the child. It
is from her body that a son or daughter is finally born. Although the husband is biologically responsible for the sex of the conceived child, his part
in the reproductive process is temporally so far removed from the physi-
cal event of the birth of the child that it is cognitively more difficult to
hold him responsible for the childs sex. Reminded that it is the man who
provides the chromosome for a girl as well as for a boy, a young husband
responded, Yes, but its the womans job to catch the right one.32
Hongyong virtuously serves Dukpil by providing the ultimate Confucian
gift of a son: successor to the family lineage, performer of family ancestor
rites, provider of old age support for his parents, source of financial assis20
Nicholas Gentile
tance, and object of family pride in the eyes of others.33 She revels in her
accomplishment by exclaiming, I had fulfilled my most important wifely duty.

Joy rushed into me as [Yongwoon] was placed between my breasts. . . . Hus-
band hurried back home to tell Grandmother the wonderful news.34 By fulfill-
ing this duty, Hongyong secures her place in Dukpils home and ensures
that she will have shelter, food, and status for the remainder of her days.
She basks in the newfound position of domestic prominence and stability

that is evidenced in proud Dukpils new title for her: mother of my son.
Hongyongs achievement marks a great coming-of-age for her as a woman

of virtue in Confucian society, and she remarks, For the first time in my life
I am pleased to be a woman, a mother.35
Hongyongs pleasure in attaining such honorable status caps the episodes
of her life from her birth through her early married years that illustrate the
Confucian philosophies that dictated a womans role in traditional Korean

society. Exploring and analyzing these situations from Still Life With Rice
helps the reader answer Lees profound question regarding traditional Ko-
rean women, What makes them this way? The Confucianization of Ko-
rea during the Choson period firmly established the ideologies of namjon,
yobi; chulga oein, and samjong as the foundational concepts for creating
womens roles in traditional Korea. This paradigm places women below
men in society and dictates that women can only lead virtuous lives by
rendering service and practicing submissiveness to males. The disappointment of Hongyongs mother at her birth illustrates the view that women
are simply inferior and subservient to men. Compared to the permanence
and importance of a sons role in continuing family lines, performing rites
of ancestor worship, caring for his elderly parents, obtaining inheritance

rights, and playing the prominent role in financial and political matters in a
male-dominated, Confucian society, the transience of a daughter in her natal

family greatly diminishes her value.
NOTES
1. Lee, Helie. Still Life With Rice: A Young American Woman Discovers the Life and Legacy
of Her Korean Grandmother, New York, Scribner, 1996, pp. 1718.
2. Peterson, Mark A. Korean Adoption and Inheritance: Case Studies in the Creation of a
21
Classic Confucian Society, Cornell East Asia Series, Ithaca, NY, Cornell East Asia Series
Press, 1996, pp. 6567.
3. Lee, Still Life With Rice, pp. 2627.
4. Lee, Mijeong. Womens Education, Work, and Marriage in Korea: Womens Lives Under
Institutional Conflicts, Seoul, Seoul National University Press, 1998, p. 37.
6. Han, Chungnim C. Reciprocal Behavior Patterns, Transactions of the Royal Asiatic
Society, Korea Branch 62, 1987, pp. 7374.
7. Chung, Sei-Wha ed. Challenges for Women: Womens Studies in Korea, Seoul, Ewha
Womans University Press, 1986, p. 233.
8. Balswick, Jack. Strong Men and Virtuous Women: Changing Male and Female Gender
Roles in Korea, Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society, Korea Branch 56, 1981, p. 29.
9. Ibid., p. 29.
10. Ibid., p. 29.
11. Lee, Still Life With Rice, p. 58.
12. Han, p. 73.
14. Ibid., pp. 6365.
15. Peterson, Korean Adoption, pp. 34.
17. Han, p. 68.
18. Clark, Donald N. Culture and Customs of Korea, Westport, CT, Greenwood Press, 2000,
p. 162.
19. Balswick, p. 31.
20. Ibid., p. 29.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid., p. 69.
25. Han, p. 69.
27. Moon, Seungsook. Begetting the Nation, Dangerous Women: Gender and Korean
Nationalism, ed. Elaine H. Kim and Chungmoo Choi, New York, Routledge, 1998, p. 53.
29. Peterson, Korean Adoption, pp. 6567.
30. Peterson, Mark A. Women Without Sons, Korean Women: View from the Inner Room,
ed. Laurel Kendall and Mark A. Peterson, Cushing, ME, East Rock Press, 1983, pp.
3344.
32. Cha, Jae-Ho, Bom-Mo Chung, and Sung-Jin Lee, Boy Preference Reflected in Korean
Folklore, Virtues in Conflict:Tradition and the Korean Woman Today, ed. Sandra Mattielli, Seoul, Samhwa Publishing Co., 1977, p. 113.
33. Ibid., p. 113.
35. Ibid., p. 89.
Nostalgia in the Haikus of Lafcadio Hearn

Loren Crisler
n 1889, Lafcadio Hearn decided to go to Japan. Previously, Hearn
had established himself as writer of novels and newspaper articles in
the United States and his interest in Japan was part of a general Western
interest in oriental things. Much of Hearns work on Japan offers a
unique perspective on culture and literary translation, and represents an

eclectic assembly of insights into the subtle and discreet civilization that
characterizes the nation at the turn of the twentieth century. In an essay

on Japanese mosquitoes, which had plagued Hearn throughout the spring
and summer months, after discussing a possible means to rid Japan of the
cursed beasts and dismissing the method as unthinkable because it would

require the destruction of the countless ponds, pools and flower receptacles in the countrys venerable cemeteries, he observes:
Besides, I should like, when my time comes, to be laid away in some

Buddhist graveyard of the ancient kind,so that my ghostly company
should be ancient, caring nothing for the fashions and the changes and
the disintegrations of Meiji. . . . Everything there is beautiful with a
beauty of exceeding and startling queerness; each tree and stone shaped
by some old, old ideal which no longer exists in any living brain; even
23
The rice papers

the shadows are not quite the same, but of a world forgotten, that never
knew steam or electricity or magnetism orkerosene oil!1
Although much about this passage is interesting, what is most significant

is that it echoes a theme that pervades many of Hearns texts: that of a
poignant nostalgia for a bygone golden age before industrialism and its
culturally diluting effects. In much of his writing and especially in his Ja-
pan texts, Hearn continually returns to this theme; indeed, it permeates his
extensive body of wildly varied work to a greater degree than almost any
other element, excepting the overall eclectic nature of his subject matter as
a whole.
Hearn was not a romantic, though the theme of time reflects a romantic
idea and much of his work reflects a markedly gothic mood, he was a realist.
However, realism for Hearn creates a problem of perceptionnot the kind
of average perception espoused by Dean Howells, but that of a receptive,
above average perceiver.2 For this reason Hearns work reflects an intense
sensitivity for the aesthetic sense of a scene or moment, because as Kreyling
notes, for Hearn the true realist was concerned with the forms and process
of perception; he ought to have no time for preconceived notions of experi-
ence.3 What Hearn therefore asks with his work is somewhat paradoxical.
He wants his reader to be sensitive enough to perceive, in its pure aesthetic

form, what is no longer, and in many cases never was, there at all. Hearns
work is in many ways thus an effort to present an unpresentable moment

and reclaim what time and progress have replaced, namely Hearns golden
age of the idealhis Buddhist graveyard, as it were.
At the heart of Hearns nostalgia lies a deep sense of alienation and
abandonment. Of course, this tension in his texts is not the result of some
kind of spontaneous generation; such things rarely are. It developed as the
natural product of his less than idyllic personal experiences, beginning with
his childhood and continuing for much of his adult life. An openly psychological inspection of a writers life and its influence on his later work
is often dubious in nature as many potential conclusions are untenable at

best; however, tracing specific instances of abandonment and rejection in
24
LOREN CRISLER
Hearns life helps establish the origins of his paramount theme. Hearns the-
matic nostalgia hints of something lost (or something he never really had),
and an investigation into the nature of it and Hearns employment of it in
his later texts must first begin with an examination of what initially created
that sense of loss. An area of Hearns life that is particularly vulnerable to

psychological investigation is his continual experience with change.
By 1884 Hearn knew he needed a change. Change was the one constant
in his life, so, in this sense, he was perhaps feeling the inevitable.
He was born on the Greek island of Leukas in 1850, the son of an Irish
surgeon in the British Navy and, by all accounts, a strikingly beautiful Grecian woman. When his mother became pregnant, Hearns father left him
and his mother with his Irish relatives to take another navy post. Although
this occurred before his birth, it represents Hearns first encounter with
abandonment. It would not be his last, for Hearns life comprises a series
of abandonment and alienation episodes. After his birth his mother, feeling rightfully broken-hearted and cast aside, pining for her beloved Greece,
took Hearns older brother and returned to the islands of her home. The
infant Hearn was never to see her again. Abruptly motherless, Hearn be-
came the unwanted charge of an apathetic great-aunt, who displaced him
even further by sending him to various boarding schools in England and

France. Although Hearn was a gifted student, skilled in languages and letters, he felt repressed and stifled by his Jesuit teachers, leading to further
feelings of alienation and a deep suspicion of Christianity and other Western

institutions.4 His major difficulty in school was his shyness, the result of
an unfortunate accident that left him blind in one eye, and made him feel
acutely isolated.
Finally, the Hearns great-aunt had had enough of her parentless ward
and sought to rid herself of him. Her solution was to give him a little money
and ship him off to a relative in Cincinnati as an apprentice, so he was
told. The relative was wholly ignorant of the plan and with Hearns arrival
suddenly found himself in the undesirable and unprepared for position of
guardian to a dirty, half-blind waif.5 He too soon turned the young Hearn
25
The rice papers

out. As Christopher Benny comments, at the age of nineteen, Lafcadio
Hearn found himself homeless, jobless, and penniless in the beer-swilling,
largely German speaking city on the banks of the Ohio River.6
Eventually, Hearn found work (in exchange for food and a straw pile
to sleep on) with Henry Watkin, a local printer. Luckily for Hearn, Wat-
kin appreciated his new charges intelligence and quickly the two became
friends. Both men had a fascination with the strange and bizarre and would
stay up late, trading tales and rumors and reading Poe. During this time
Hearn began writing his own gruesome stories, no doubt modeled after
Poes, that he was able to have printed in local newspapers and literary
journals. They reflect an escapist and rather sinister alter-reality for Hearn,
perhaps the product of his hitherto traumatic childhood. He soon gained his
first position as a reporter and relied on his storytelling skills as he covered

the crime beat along the river, quickly becoming one of Cincinnatis more
popular journalists.
However, Hearns success as a reporter could not protect him from his
next bout with abandonment. In 1871 Hearn, a regular of the slums and
black quarters of the city, met and fell in love with Alethea Foley, the fair
daughter of a slaveholder and one of his slaves. She had come north after
the Civil War and was working as a boarding-house cook and sometimes
prostitute. Because laws then barred miscegenation, the two were secretly
wed by a black minister with Alethea pretending to be white. When the editor for the Cincinnati Enquirer, the paper for which Hearn worked, discov-
ered the facts surrounding his marriage in August of 1875, he immediately

fired him. Though a competing paper quickly hired him, Hearn was furious
and deeply disillusioned. Moreover, despite Hearns staunch loyalty to his
wife, their marriage was not an easy one, as Alethea would occasionally
drift back to her former life on the street. When she went to Indianapolis
in 1877, Hearn took an offer from his paper to cover events of the Com-
promise of 1877,7 leaving Cincinnati forever. Hearn was heart-broken and
guilt-wracked over losing Alethea whom he called her Mattie, writing in a

letter to a friend in Memphis:
26
LOREN CRISLER
I feel all the time as if I saw Mattie looking at me or following me and
the thought comes to me of the present she made me and a woolly lock
of hair she sent me, and her despairing efforts just to speak to me once
more, and my only answer being to have her arrested and locked up all
night in the police station.8
In light of his tortured emotional state, Hearns first impressions of Louisi-
ana, where he next would reside, are filled with an obvious romantic longing for a bygone era as he made notes on what he saw from the riverboat.
Hearn writes, There were splendid houses crumbling to decay and whole
towns of tenantless cabins; estates of immense extent were lying almost un-
tilled, or with only a few acres under cultivation.9 At this time the theme of
nostalgic longing first becomes apparent in Hearns writing, though it does

not fully develop until his sojourn in Japan.
Hearns sense of dissatisfaction only increased as he began work in New
Orleans. He failed to write a single piece about the political upheaval fol-
lowing Rutherford B. Hayes election as President and the resulting lifting

of the policies of Reconstruction. Instead, he sought material better suited
to his tastes, forwarding to the Commercial, his Cincinnati paper, a series
of Letters from New Orleans, in which he described bastions of Creole

tradition that lingered despite the upheaval of the Civil War and the ensuing rush of industrialism. Hearn moved immediately to the French Quarter
and began collecting Creole folktales and lore, the kind of stories that had
made his work in the print shop bearable years before. His collecting, which
included ghost and monster stories, dragonfly studies, and Samurai folklore
became quite eclectic, an adjective that suitably describes his work even
today. But what seemed to drive his work was a passion for the obscure and
hidden, a search for the original New Orleans that even then was fading in
the face of increasing industrialism. Hearn wanted to find what was left of
Creole culture on the fringe of society. This search can obviously be read
in an overtly and overly simplified Freudian manner: Hearns search was
an attempt to compensate for the loss of his childhood sense of belonging.

Though his motivation was presumably more complex than such a simplis27
The rice papers

tic psychoanalytical reading might posit, that it may account in part for his
efforts to recover Creole culture is a valid point. Even so, Hearn himself
remained unaware of this tension and saw himself as a sort of cultural ex-
plorer on the fringes of society. In a letter he discussed his work: I think a
man must devote himself to one thing in order to succeed, so I have pledged
me to the worship of the Odd, the Queer, the Strange, the Exotic, the Monstrous.10 He was to follow this mantra for the rest of his career.
His cataloging of the unusual ranged from recipes to rituals, what Hearn
called survivals. Working with his newly acquired friend George Wash-
ington Cable, Hearn sought songs, spells, and stories, all of which appealed
to and broadened his exotic and otherworldly sensibilities. But as Hearn
discovered the Creole world, he also became acutely aware of its steady
erosion by the tide of ever-increasing industrial development. Thus, Hearns
attempts to find his lost golden time in the remnants of the Creole world
were frustrated by the steady encroachment of the steam, electricity, magne-
tism, and kerosene Hearn would try to find escape from in Japan. However,
in spite of his disillusionment with his Creole experience, as Hitomi Naban
suggests, Hearn owes much of the success he realized with his Japanese
work to the stylistic maturity he developed in New Orleans.11
At the Japanese Exhibit at the New Orleans World Industrial and Cotton
Centennial Exposition in 1877, Hearn began to become infatuated, as was

much of the Western World, with all things Oriental. Hearn ignored the dis-
plays announcing the young nations new industrial and educational prowess, proceeding instead to the exhibits on the antique art of Japan:
The antiquated porcelains have none of that conventional frankness of
composition in design nor the flaring color which distinguishes many
of the best new pieces; they are sober-tinted; they affect no pattern;
their figures are strangely puzzling to the eye at first glance, but when
the puzzle is read, what marvellous movement!12
Hearn was describing what the Japanese call wabisabi, the Zen principle
of the quiet elegance of refinement in harmony with nature. Hearn instinctively appreciated what most Westerners had missed about Japan and its cul28
LOREN CRISLER
turewabisabi. Such an idea, though probably not completely and explic-
itly realized by Hearn until much later, would have strongly appealed to him
because here was the form of nature in aesthetic abstractprecisely what
Hearns realism demanded: the presentation of the unpresentable and the

sense of an ideal past in a relic of an exotic antiquity for the suitably sensitive
perceiver. For Hearn the antique, the forgotten, and the obscure are imminent
in both art and literature because they offer a means of perceiving an idyllic
past, a nostalgia for a golden age, phantasmal as it may be. His affinity for
such intrinsic intricacies of Japanese culture as wabisabi would be invaluable,
because a few years after the publication in 1884 of his collection of Chinese
ghost stories, the manifestation of his burgeoning interest in the quaint, Hearn
soon decided to leave the factories of New Orleans and journey to Japan, in
the hope of resuming his search for the strange and bizarre.
To Harpers he proposed that he write a travel book, noting that he would
surely not be able to discover anything remarkably new about a country
so well trodden and documented; he only hoped to find the real Japan.
Thus, with a meager advance and a tenuous contract, Hearn embarked for
Yokohama, still searching for material. He expected to escape the industrial

scourge that was devouring the Creole world he had come to love, but when
he finally arrived in 1890, he found Yokohama a major industrial hub and

port, not the quiet place he expected. Faced yet again with what he saw as
the destroyer of the Creole world, Hearn began his search for the real Japan.
In his efforts to present Japan as he found it, he ultimately created a significant volume of work in which his theme of nostalgia for a pre-industrial
golden era, the result of a deep-seated sense of personal abandonment and
alienation, is most apparent and pervasive.
Hearn wrote to fellow journalist Elizabeth Bisland before he left New
Orleans that he was trying to find the Orient at home, as if there were a
natural, static Oriental-ness awaiting his discovery. Yokohama disappointed

Hearn because it failed to match his expectations of what Japan should be.
The Yokohama of the late Meiji was Japans most industrial port and left
Hearn bewildered at the decidedly Western character of much of the city. He

29
The rice papers

lodged in a sailors house on the waterfront but tried to avoid the company
of other Westerners. He immediately began the continuation of the work he

had done among Creoles, searching for and recording survivals. However, in his essay My First Day in the Orient his frustration over finding
Yokohama already polluted by Occidental modernity is clear. Hearn writes

that he found a shop of American sewing-machines next to the shop of a
maker of Buddhist images; the establishment of a photographer beside the
establishment of a manufacturer of straw sandals.13 In spite of the infection

of the west, Hearn felt a deep sense of a Japan unique in character and sublime in meaning that awaited his discovery yet just eluded his grasp. Hearn
knew that he needed to rid himself of his preconceived notions of what

Japan was in order to glean something of Japans true nature, but found this
terribly difficult to do in Yokohama. He pondered whether I shall ever be

able to discover that which I seekoutside of myself! That is outside of my
own imagination.
He would not find what he sought in the bustling streets and factories
of Yokohama. He would, however, find it soon in Matsue. Hearn accepted

a high school teaching position in that small city in the Tottori prefecture
on the coast of the Sea of Japan. This move could not have been more fortuitous and had greater influence for him. Matsue sits between two larger,
more important cities in the most sparsely populated area of western Hon-
shu. Even today, the area is picturesque and retains customs and language
inflections not found in any major Japanese city. At the time Hearn lived
there, the area was largely the same as it had been before the Meiji Restoration, reflecting more a sense of the Edo period (16031867).
Moreover, Matsue sits next to the city of Izumo in Shimane prefec-
ture, the site of one of the holiest Shinto shrines, the Izumo Taisha. The
religious influence of Izumo on the surrounding area vividly impressed
Hearn, whose experiences with Japanese religion had been limited to the
dark, tiny shrines of Yokohama. Izumos prominence was so great that
Hearns writings in Matsue exhibit a markedly religious shift.14 There he
was able to experience religious aspects of Japanese culture that had been
30
LOREN CRISLER
missing in Yokohama. Hearn found hope that a more traditional Japan
had not been totally extinguished by Western influence, noting, nearly
all phases of modern life, yield evidence that the disintegration of the old
society has been superficial rather than fundamental.15 While, Hearns
writing in Matsue still shows a tendency toward the nostalgic, its tone
is less forlorn and lamenting than both his earlier and later texts on Japan, perhaps because Hearn had found there his golden age. As well, with
his marriage to Setsuko Koizumi and his adoption into her ancient samurai family, Hearn realized a Japan that perhaps no Westerner ever had or
would. He was, for one perfect year in Mastue, Japanese.
Unfortunately, this perfect time was not to last. The winter in Shimane
and Tottori prefectures is especially biting, and Hearn was forced to move
to a more temperate climate, accepting another teaching position in the city

of Kumamoto on Kyushu, where he found all his forgotten fears about the
adverse effects of Western industrialism renewed. Because of its position

on the trade routes between China, Korea, and the West, Kumamoto was
quickly becoming a modern industrial city. Hearn saw this as the beginning
of the end for the old Japan he had come to know and love in Matsue. He
also bemoaned the cultural void of Kumamoto. The city had no poetry
no courtesyno mythsno traditionsno superstitions, he lamented;

they had been replaced with mercantile buildingsimmense by comparison with the low light Japanese shops[which] seem to utter the menace
of financial power.16 As a result, he stopped his search for survivals and

produced a more psychological work. Hearn wanted to study what made
Japan Japan and the Japanese Japanese. He wanted to understand Kokoro,
the heart of things, and the book he wrote from his time in Kumamoto bears
this title.
Kokoro ranks among Hearns best literary work; in it he returns to
his theme of nostalgia for a golden age, though this age for Hearn has a
much more concrete quality to it as he had first-hand emotional exposure
to the more discreet and sensitive culture he found in Matsue. Once again
this theme of the loss of the old and better to the new and inferior per31
The rice papers

meates his work. Hearns mode of presenting this theme is essentially an
organically aesthetic one. Hearn simply presents a moment, poem, scene,
and relies on his readers perceptions to give meaning to his rendering. He

employs painterly effects in his depictions, leaving his subjects displayed
but not explicitly detailed. Above all, Hearn seems concerned not with telling his reader what something was like but, rather, with how something felt.
Anne Rowe notes that he uses an impressionistic style that placed content
above thesis in importance paralleled by an intensity of sensual perception

and an absence of moral commentary.17 Moreover, underlying much of his
impressionism is the nostalgia of Hearns perfect past.
His haiku (Hearn called them by their antique name, haku) translations
afford several vivid examples of his particular aesthetic of nostalgic per-
ception. In a study of dragonflies, Hearn selected for his essay a number

of haiku that take dragonflies for a subject. The poems he chose for his
discussion, though doubtless reflective of the broader scope of all Japa-
nese dragonfly haiku, also echo Hearns anti-industrial theme of nostalgia.

The aesthetic approach Hearn employs in his translations deserves close
examination because within the context of this aesthetic mode, Hearn delivers his allusions to a prior, lost golden age, the object of his nostalgic
tone. Skillfully Hearn delivers only impressions of a poems scene, al-
lowing the reader to make the connections necessary in order to perceive
both the sense of the poetic moment and the nostalgic tension that moment
presents. Here is an example:
Tombo no
Eda ni tsuitari
Wasure guwa
(Translation: See the dragon-fly resting on the handle of the forgotten mattock. A Japanese
Miscellany)18
This is a translation of a typical dragonfly haiku, but that Hearn included
it in his essay is no surprise, as it is fairly representative of the poems he

chose to include in the essay. This haiku functions well within his nostalgic
aesthetic in a number of ways. Primarily, the poem focuses jointly on a
32
LOREN CRISLER
resting dragonfly and a forgotten mattock. Forgotten is a direct trans-
lation of the original Japanese, but Hearns description of the dragonfly as
resting is his interpretation, effectively conveying a sense of temporal

suspension in the poem. This sense of frozen time is important in Hearns
translation because it gives an antique air to the scene, highlighting a nostal-
gia for the forgotten age represented by the mattock. Hearns rendering of
the subject is interesting because he lends an organic nature to the primitive

farm implement by joining the dragonfly and the tools handle in a moment
of natural harmony. Moreover, the paralleling of the mattock and dragonfly
reinforces this organic sense in the Japanese, but Hearn refrains from mak-
ing this relationship overt, relying instead on impressionistic hints to allow

his readers perceptions to discover that connection.
In another example, Hearn established a similar tone:

Tombo no
Kaide yukikeri
Sute waraji
(Translation: Dragonflies have gone to sniff at a pair of cast-off sandals.)19
As in the first haiku, the notion of forgotten is present here. Hearn again allies
the dragonflies with a forgotten, or in this case, cast-off cultural element.
Additionally, he again espouses natural imagery with artificial human influence,

a literary technique that implies a lament for the uncorrupted, which for Hearn
is the natural world of dragonflies. Ultimately, Hearn uses the haiku he selects
for his essay to establish his anti-industrial thesis. He notes that the haiku:
Help us to understand something of the soul of the elder Japan. The people who could find delight, century after century, in watching the ways
of insects, and in making such verses about them, must have compre-
hended, better than we, the simple pleasure of existence.20
Hearn openly privileges the past over the present, and this is fundamental to
the nostalgic tension in his texts. That his writing tends to reject the modern
is not surprising, and it echoes devastation of the Creole culture at the hand
of Southern industrialism Hearn witnessed in New Orleans.
33
The rice papers

Having experienced the golden age of Japan for himself, Hearn longs
for a rejection of the industrial encroachment on Japan and its culture in
his Japanese work. What makes Hearns longing so particularly poignant

is that his search for that golden, idyllic era is in many ways driven by his
the lack of anything resembling such a time in his own life. From his early
childhood to his failed first marriage, continual episodes of abandonment

and alienation beset him. These psychological influences affected Hearn in
myriad ways but particularly in his choice of subject matter and themes.
As a result, Hearns work becomes a collection of loosely related folklore gleanings and cultural essays that have a noticeable leaning to the
strange and exotic. Moreover, given Hearns history of abandonment, he
was sensitive to the alienating and disruptive effects of the industrial world
and adopted a markedly nostalgic tone in his texts. The Creole world he
encountered was already fragmented and disappearing in the New Orleans

industrial movement. Hearn sought to escape that world by traveling to
Japan, only to find there the same cultural pressures at work. Only in Mat-
sue did Hearn locate a world where he could glimpse the Japan of the past,
and this became his perfect age. However, his subsequent displacement to
Kumamoto rent this ideal from him, re-calling his theme of nostalgia for
Japans golden age.
Cleary, Hearns nostalgia is key to his works aesthetics. He vaguely
describes a time that no longer exists, and in many ways never did, and
instead relies on a perceptive reader to discover the sense of his text and the
moment it portrays. This moment no longer exists, its time is passed, and
the reader, like Hearn, feels its distressing loss. In this way Hearns work
can be looked at as little more than a desperate attempt to recover a time he
never fully experienced; but such a reading denies the fact that though nos-
talgia does account for much of Hearns choice of theme and subject matter,
it is not the sole defining element of his workonly one element of many,
albeit a large one. Nostalgia is important to his texts because it illuminates

some of what Hearn was trying to accomplish, and his texts may be bet-
ter understood with some realization of the emotional tensions at work in

34
LOREN CRISLER
them. Hearn tries to expose the cultural sensitivities by abandoning Western
aesthetic conventions about art and literature. The objects of perception are
what was important, as are the manner of textual delivery. That is, the subtle
way in which Hearn allowed his readers to discover the culturally sensitive
side of Japan. In trying to relate the sense of how a moment feels, Hearn attempts to recreate the moment for his reader, presenting through impression
rather than detail what is effectively unpresentable.
NOTES
1. Hearn, Lafcadio. Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things, New York, ICG Muse,
Inc., 2001, p. 156.
2. Kreyling, Michael. Lafcadio Hearn, DLB, Vol. 12, p. 248.
3. Ibid.
4. Murray, Paul. A Fantastic Journey: The Life and Literature of Lafcadio Hearn, Ann
Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1997, p. 15.
5. Ibid., p. 78.
6. Ibid., p. 217.
7. The Compromise of 1877 was a pact that both Democrat and Republican leaders created
to resolve election disputes. Motivations behind the compromise included Rutherford B.
Hayes elected President of the United States and increased industrialization in southern
states. Former slaves considered the compromise a Great Betrayal, as civil rights for
blacks were totally abandoned.
8. Keys, Mary. Lafcadio Hearn and Alethea (Mattie) Foley, Lafcadio Hearn Journal,
Spring 1993, p. 8.
9. Ibid.
10. Bisland, Elizabeth. The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn, 2 vols., Boston, Houghton
Mifflin, Vol.1, 1906, p. 328
11. Naban, Hitomi. The Aesthetics of the Ghostly: Art and Life in the Work of Lafcadio
Hearn, DAI 61.9, March 2001, DA9986163, p. 3570.
12. Hearn, Lafcadio. Occidental Gleanings, New York, Dodd, Mead, 1925, pp. 22728).
13. Hearn, Lafcadio. My First Day in the Orient, Writings From Japan, New York, Penguin
Books, 1984, p. 20.
14. Hearn had quite a bit of tutelage in eastern religion and philosophy while in boarding
school. His teacher was Herbert Spencer. Though Hearn rejected Christianity, he was
sympathetic to both Shintoism and Japanese Buddhism. However, his writing displays a
certain level of misunderstanding about the relationship between the two religions, and he
often confuses them and their various cultural and social manifestations.
15. Hearn, My First Day in the Orient, p. 335.
16. Hearn, Lafcadio. Korkoro: Hints and Echoes of Japanese Inner Life, New York, ICG
Muse, Inc., 2001, p. 105.
17. Ibid., p. 89.
18. Hearn, Lafcadio. A Japanese Miscellany: Strange Stories, Folklore Gleanings, Studies Here and There, New York, ICG Muse, Inc., 2001, p. 81. Note: Hearn used a fairly
complicated system for his Romanization of phonetic Japanese. The Jesuit system he
employed is no longer in common use, though it lends an appropriately dated tone to
those who read his transcriptions. I have substituted a more current system of Romanization for the sake of simplicity.
19. Ibid., p. 81.
20. Ibid., p. 97.
35
The rice papers

REFERENCES
Benfey, Christopher. The Great Wave: Gilded Age Misfits, Japanese Eccentrics, and the
Opening of Old Japan, New York, Random House, 2003.
Rowe, Anne. Lafcadio Hearns Southern Paradise, The Enchanted Country: Northern Writers in the South 18651910, Baton Rouge, Louisiana State UP, 1978.
Stevenson, Elizabeth. Lafcadio Hearn, New York, Macmillan, 1961.
36
Gender Influenced Depictions of Children in

Twentieth Century Chinese Fiction
Jeremy Lau
ften considered the father of modern Chinese literature, Lu Xun stands

as one of Chinas most influential twentieth-century writers, and his
work continues to inform contemporary Chinese authors. Through fiction Lu

regularly engaged broad social issues, as he believed literature could help
solve many of the cultural problems China faced during its general transition
from a monarchical system under the emperor to a republican state. Save the
children, Lus closing crescendo to his first masterpiece, Diary of a Mad-
man, reflects his vision of hope for the next generation.1 He believed that
children were Chinas opportunity to build a brighter future.
Numerous writers of his era shared this same conviction, and during the
early part of the twentieth century, many Chinese intellectuals rushed to the
world of fiction to undertake such noble ideals as curing social ills, cultural
maladies, and political malevolence. With the lack of extensive education
among its citizens, short stories, instead of novels, became easily available
and widely read among the higher social classes in China. This attempt to
push forth their opinions stemmed from the introduction of Western ideology and technology into China, infusing many Chinese with democratic
ideas. Throughout the first half of the century, the entire nation desperately
37
The rice papers

sought a new direction in a world that no longer revolved around the Chinese empire. Prominent fiction writers looked back at Chinas history and
closely examined contemporary culture; they pointed out the backwardness

and weaknesses of China, showed the sufferings of the powerless common
people at the bottom of society, and encouraged the need for change.
Many of the short stories of this volatile period in Chinese history look to
children as the hope for change. Author after author portrayed the children
in their stories in several ways to convey various meanings. Concomitant-
ly, a strong relationship between the genders of writers and the manner in
which their stories depict children is noticeable. Many stories exhibited differences in how male and female writers developed their child characters. In
some stories, much about the childs background and interests is conveyed
to the reader, while in other stories, virtually nothing of substance is mentioned of him or her. Male and female writers agree that children provided
hope for the future, but they dispute how this was to be done. Three prominent male writers: Lu Xun, Lao She, and Xu Dishan, and three equally well
known female writers: Ling Shuhua, Ding Ling, and Xiao Hong, provide
evidence of how an authors gender shaped their treatment of children in
the work produced.
The difference in how the male writers and female writers depict child-re-
lated concepts arises from their very different backgrounds. The three female
authors had experience in rearing children. They were familiar with common
types of child behavior and understood how children would normally behave
toward their parents. Conversely, male writers often traveled and spent signif-
icant time away from their families. However, though both male and female
writers agreed that children would play a significant role in the direction of
Chinas future, their perceptions of children were quite different.
Furthermore, gender roles and expectations inherited from traditional
China inevitably created different understanding among the sexes on how
children were to be treated. Despite the trend to economically and technologically modernize China during the Republican revolution, social issues
with regard to a womans role in the family remained largely unchanged.
38
Jeremy Lau
The male writers often portrayed children exhibiting adult qualities and
placed them in mature roles, blurring distinctions between adults and children. Frequently, they placed children and adults in formal settings that
would typically be recognized by society as adult relationships, such as

employee-boss or customer-shopkeeper. There is little or no direct interac-
tion between children and their parents, and the children in these stories
by male writers are forced, like younger versions of adults, to take care of
themselves. For instance, nothing is mentioned regarding the child narrators
parents in Lus Kong Yiji. His interactions with adults are exclusively
with his boss and the customers he encounters at work. His parental guid-
ance comes from his experiences at the tavern. He states, I would stand all
day behind the counter, taking care of my work. . . . The owner always put
on a fierce-looking face, and the customers were not polite either when they
talked, making it hard for me to be happy.2 The narrator is not protected
in the family context, and his situation in life is akin a normal adults. He
gains wisdom through personal experience and exposure rather than from
mentors and loved ones.
Lu describes a similar situation about his own life in A Call to Arms, in
which he discussed in some detail his daily visits as a child with the pawnbroker and pharmacist to raise money and then to buy medicine for his sick
father. He gave few specifics of his parents, except for when his mother is
displeased that he decides to study at a foreign school; however, by this time,
Lu is already nearing adulthood. Like the narrator from Kong Yiji, Lu lived
a very independent life as a young boy, thus, his background makes the narra-
tor in Kong Yiji seem somewhat autobiographical. Through this character
Lu metaphorically showed how the youth of China possessed the ability to

care for and improve the country as a whole. This character also reflected his
self-appointed mission to cure Chinas ills through writing fiction.
The Chinese playwright and author of humorous satiric novels, Lao She,
went even further in his depiction of children who exhibited adult characteristics. In By the Temple of Great Compassion, the narrator, a middleschool student, views Mr. Huang, his student supervisor, as innocent and
39
The rice papers

nave.3 Thus, Lao portrayed the child as the adult, presenting the adult Mr.
Huang like a child. When the narrator tells Huang of the students plan to
attack him, Huang becomes sad and inquisitive, and the narrator comments,
He nearly made me cry. His questions were so innocent and childlike; he
seemed to believe that you could never go wrong if you just treated people
kindly.4 Lao does not mention the narrators parents, and this narrator also
acts extraordinarily independent for a young man. Fatherless from a very

young age, Lao worked his way through adolescence and early adulthood.
In this sense, Laos omission of the narrators parents is reminiscent of
his own life, thus, like Lu, Laos experience as a child influenced how he
depicted his fictional children. Perhaps the reason these two male writers
frequently portrayed children possessing mature qualities was that they saw
in these children younger versions of themselves, as is seemingly the case in

Lus Kong Yiji. In fact, in most cases, the children were boys who played
main roles in short stories written by these male authors.
The three female writers distinguished more clearly between adults and
children. Usually, their young characters are very dependent on their parents, conceivably the consequence of the writers experiences as mothers
and sisters who helped raise siblings. Their stories contain a wealth of
parent-child interaction, as, for example, seen in Xiao Hongs character,
Wang Yaming, who is extremely close to her father in her most famous
short story Hands.
Xiao was born Chang Naiying to a landlord family in Hunan county, in
the northeastern part of China (Heilongjiang). She spent an unhappy childhood under a domineering father, and her fiction often recalls the frustration
that Chinese youth encountered. Xiao, who was influenced by Lu, shows a
similar theme of hope for the younger generation of Chinese in Hands.
Yamings father affectionately refers to her as Mingzi and encourages her
studies, saying You study hard now, and even though you wont become a
sage after three years, still youll probably be able to understand the ideas
of great men.5 Much of Yamings expectations of what constitutes proper
behavior in the city, such as paying money to sit in the reception room, are
40
Jeremy Lau
shaped by her fathers opinions. As opposed to the very independent children portrayed by male authors, Yaming is extremely reliant on her father.
He acts as a support and anchor for her both physically and emotionally.
This idea becomes paramount near the end of the story, when, kept from
succeeding by the schools headmaster, Yaming eventually returns home

with her father to resume her duties in the country.
In traditional China, it is usually the responsibility of women and moth-
ers to discipline the children of a household. Sometimes female authors
cast parents as disciplinarians, as is seen in Ling Shuhuas Embroidered

Pillows. Xiao Niu walks into the room while Missy is stitching a beautiful
pair of cushions. Zhang Ma fulfills the role of a traditionally strict woman

of the house in a telling exchange of mother-daughter relationship, she instructs her daughter, Xiao Niu, Just look at the sweat on your nose. Go and
wipe your face. Theres water in my room. Dont let your foul sweat annoy
Missy on a day like this. Such a role is entirely absent in the stories written
by male authors, who do not show parents correcting their children, who
indeed seem to be self-correcting. In addition, Ling was raised in a wealthy

family that attempted to retain much of traditional Chinese culture. She had
a classical education and, early on in life, disagreed with the literary shift
from classical Chinese to modern vernacular. Later, her attitude changed
and allowed her writing to incorporate new trends that made her work representative of the tension that many aristocratic families felt throughout this
transitory period in Chinas history.
Ding Lings work also represents social transition in China. Ding grew up
fatherless and, at times, very poor. Her character Xiao Han from New Year
can thus be seen as an ironic representation of the mother-daughter relationship in that she contrasts so dramatically with Dings own experience as a
daughter, who relied on her mother but was virtually independent at a very
young age, educating herself and often living hand to mouth. Xiao is not only
dependent on her mother, but she exhibits what could be considered infantile
traits. She relies on her mother to the extent that when her mother leaves for
a few months, she compares her situation to her cousin Xiumeis thinking,
41
The rice papers

[Xiumei] was so much more fortunate. She never had to leave her mother.
Her mother loved her dearly, pampered her and cared for her. Her mother
played with her during the day and held her close at night. The more she
whined, the more her mother seemed to love her.6 When Xiaos mother re-
turns, she encourages Xiao to be more independent, saying Xiao Han, listen
to me. Youre a year older. There are many things your mother can no longer
take care of for you. You must start being sensible, for my sake.7 However,
by the end of the story, as her mother prepares to leave again, she tells Xiao,
Listen to me, Xiao Han. Ah, dont cry. If you cry any more youll make me
cry too. This made Xiao stop, and she pressed her face against her mothers
breast. . . . While Ma patted her she slowly drifted off to sleep.8
Similar to how male writers perhaps viewed children in their stories as
younger versions of themselves, possibly female writers also saw in the

children of their stories younger versions of themselves; in most cases, pro-
tagonists in their stories are female. These women writers may also view
children in their stories as their own offspring, in need of nurturing. Thus,

they vicariously nurture their children in their writing.
The three male writers do little in terms of developing their child char-
acters in their short stories, sharing only minimal description about their
backgrounds or personalities. In Lus Medicine, Old Chuans son is ill.

Besides this point, little is mentioned of the boy. The reader does not know
his age, hobbies, or even his personality. There is virtually no character development with respect to his role in the story. The same is true for the boy
in Lus Kong Yiji. Despite being the narrator, he reports nothing about
his interests or his life outside of the tavern. The only glimpses concerning
his character comes in his response to Kongs lecture about how to write
aniseed, which causes the narrator to become indignant, feel insulted, and
appear self-conscious.9 Granted, this incident reveals more than Lu does

about the boy in Medicine, but, overall, the narrator in Kong Yiji lacks
strong development.
By comparison, the three female writers extensively develop their child
characters. An obvious example is Wang Yaming in Xiaos Hands. Xiao

42
Jeremy Lau
tells a great deal about Wangs character, such as her upbringing in the
countryside, the fact that she is a middle-school student, her fathers profes-
sion, the familys financial situation, and her interactions with friends and
teachers. And she provides many monologues from Yaming in which she
describes herself as dumb and less intelligent than her peers, signifying her
lack of confidence.10 Numerous characters speak extensively concerning
Yamings character, and the reader develops a stronger emotional attachment to her.
In Embroidered Pillows Ling also reports much about Xiao Niu, who
evolves both physically and behaviorally over a two-year span; initially,
she is sweaty and unkempt when she walks in on Missy sewing the pillows,
but two years later she is tidy and now as big and tall as her mother.11
The reader also learns Xiao and her mother are housekeepers, and Ling
describes the nature of their relationship to Missy in great detail. She portrays Xiao as having a very curious personality, initially something of a nuisance, but by the end of the story, mature and confident. She evolves from a
girl into a woman worthy to posses the embroidered pillow, and the reader
identifies with her progress. However, by the end of the story the potential
suitors family trashes the pillow. In this sense, Ling deflates much of what
Xiao ostensibly inherits from the female influences in her life. The pillow
can thus represent the state of modern China, and the responsibility of the
younger generation to rectify social problems. Like Lu, Ling seems to look
to the youth in her fiction as the hope for Chinas future.
In New Year Ding Ling describes Xiao Han in great detail. Ding dis-
cusses Xiao Hans longing for her mother when she is away, her fear of
mice, and her dislike for her aunt. These aspects reveal that Ding was con-
cerned with the psychology of the children in her fiction. She too realized
the importance of the younger generation and their potential role in shaping
the social future of China. Ding described Xiao as a solemn child who
could sometimes be very nervy.12 Furthermore, Ding noted that some-
times others view Xiao as a bit stupid as she interacts with the maid, her
relatives, and her mother. Unlike Xiao Niu from Embroidered Pillows,
43
The rice papers

however, she remains stagnantly childish, exhibiting infantile characteristics both at the beginning and the end of the story.
In contrast to these three female writers, perhaps the reason the male
writers avoid much character development for their child characters results
from a lack of experience with children or an attempt to make the children
in their stories represent all children in China. In general, the young char-
acters in the male authors stories lack the extensive character development
extant in the works of the female authors. This point may represent the
difference in male and female writers, particularly the inherent attitude of
female writers to nurture their characters as they would have their own children. Therefore, while the children in the works of male authors appear to
lack considerable character development, this signifies a masculine attitude

toward the child rearing. In addition, these underdeveloped characters are
impersonal enough to represent all children rather than specific individuals,
which indicates the writers role of affecting Chinas society in its entirety
rather than on a personal scale.
Finally, the three male writers often use children as symbols of hope for
Chinese society. Lu, who viewed children as uncorrupted by modern society, frequently uses them to represent hope for a better future. In Diary of
a Madman, the madmans final journal entry states, Perhaps there are still
children who havent yet eaten men? Save the children.13 Lu had given up
hope for the adults of society and saw children as the only possibility for
rectifying Chinas problems.
In contrast, the three female writers often use children as symbols of
hope in terms of the social status they bring. Old Mistress from Dings
The Lucky One is considered distinguished by her peers for her abundant
posterity. Ding writes that everyone who knew Old Mistress Zhang said
without hesitation, Madame Zhang is Number One! Each of her four sons
were married and the eldest had a son already turned nineteen. . . . In fact,
the Matriarch already had eight grandsons.14 Despite being uneducated
and illiterate, Old Mistress is well respected in society for her posterity.
Dings New Year, in which the aunts character is rather similar to Old
44
Jeremy Lau
Mistresss provides another example. Her many children, combined with
her good looks, draws respect and praise from her peers. Having a successful family now implies that there will be success and joy in the future.15
All these writers share a profound desire for China to change in the future.
All believe change can only occur through the effort of children. Clearly
both male and female writers valued children quite profoundly, even though
they portray them in such different styles. Such diverse views provided dif-
ferent media of encouragement to the young readers who reformed China
during the twentieth century. Thus, the writers were accurate in their prediction that the younger generation would play a major role in changing twentieth-century China. These inspired writers of the early part of the
century provided the vision and cultural energy that allowed their hopes to
come true. Both the female and the male writers treated young characters in
their respective stories much differently, yet, in general terms, all of these
writers looked to children as the primary hope of Chinas future.
NOTES
1. Hsun, Lu. Selected Stories of Lu Hsun, Peking Foreign Language Press, 1960, p. 16.
2. Fang Zhihua. Chinese Short Stories of the Twentieth Century: An Anthology in English,
New York, Garland Publishing, Inc., 1995, p. 50.
3. Lao She. Crescent Moon: And Other Stories, Beijing, Panda Books, 1985, p. 46.
4. Ibid., p. 46.
5. Anderson, Jennifer. Chinese Women Writers, Hong Kong, Joint Publishing Co., 1985, p. 99.
6. Ibid., p. 29.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Fang, p. 52.
10. Anderson, p. 96.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid., p. 18.
13. Fang, p. 16.
14. Ibid., p. 62.
15. Anderson, p. 18.
REFERENCE
Xiong, Deni. Lao She: Heavensent, Hong Kong, JPC Publication, 1986.
45
Twilight in Changan
Dallas Petersen
I
The pounding drums match the throbbing in my head. It must be noon,
when the midday drums signal the opening of the Western Market. It is the
thirteenth year of the Tianbao era, AD 755 to the Nestorians. The summer
heat bakes my room at the Dou Family Tavern. I have fallen asleep in my
clothing again. As I rise to wash my face, I stumble over one of the empty
wine flasks strewn about the floor. Next to the wash basin sits a jade comb.
She must have left it. I dont remember her name, or her face for that matter,
but Im sure her comb will pay for lunch.
The market is already full. A dozen different languages float through the
crowd, like the dust that rises from their feet. I pass by the myriad bazaars
and hear the shouts of merchants selling their wares. The scent of fresh vegetables and fish mixes with the perspiration of the crowd as I push through
the torrent mass of bodies on my way to the jewelers bazaar.
The comb isnt particularly ornate but can be redeemed for enough
cash to fill my belly for the evening. As I make my way out of the West-
ern Market, I hear screams behind me and quickly turn around. A quarter
guard brushes my arm as he rushes past me. In front of the druggists bazaar
47
The rice papers

is a group of quarter guards stripping the clothes off the man making all
the noise. A frantic woman is sobbing and pulling on the arm of one of
the guards. After the mans clothes are off, two guards hold him down
and another begins striking him with a thick bamboo pole. All the people
in the area stop what they are doing to watch the grisly scene. I do the
same. It doesnt take long for the pole to break the mans skin. The guard
coats the bamboo in crimson before he is finished. The man crumples

unconsciously. The crowd begins to disperse, and I continue toward the
east gate of the market. I overhear some merchants saying that the man
was punished because his donkey got out of control and damaged several
hundred cash worth of meat from the butchers bazaar.
I exit the Western Market and continue east. I smell the flat cakes being
steamed by a street vendor and stop to purchase a few, along with some
soymilk. As I finish off the last of my sesame seed-sprinkled flat cakes, I
notice a child staring at me. He stares because I have red hair. I bow to the
young child standing with his mother and continue east.
Its been twenty-five years since I first came to the glorious city of
Changan. I was just a boy then, and the city filled me with wonder. We
came from Samarkand, my father and I, to sell gold, silver, and jade in the
Western Market. My red hair and green eyes attracted the gaze of many on
that first trip into China. The stares dont happen as much anymore, or I
perhaps just dont notice them.
The gutters on either side of Chunming Street are flowing with water. Just
beyond the gutters the elm trees shudder under the summer breeze. A stocky
man carrying a heaping basket of rice rushes past me. As I reach an intersec-
tion, I see a great carriage made of fine wood thunder north toward the Imperial Palace. A walk from the Western Market to the Eastern Market used to
take me less than an hour in days past. Now, I cant walk through one section
of the city without my knees and feet aching. I must be getting old.
I see a crowd of people rushing toward the palace. I ask a man what the
commotion is about. Havent you heard? The forces of An Lushan have

overrun Ho-pei in the north. The palace guards have opened up the palace
48
dallas petersen
treasury and are offering bolts of silk to any who will join the army and go
fight the barbarian upstart. I had heard that An Lushan had risen in rebellion.
Some say he means to march on Changan and replace the Tang government,
but that would be impossible.
As I near the Eastern Market, the houses become finer and the style of
dress more extravagant. A little way up the street I see a man sitting atop a
great beast of a horse, presumably from the western nation of Fergana, where
the most prized horses are bred. I stop and sit in a little pavilion next to a canal
and watch as supply barges creep lazily toward the palace. The sun dominates
a cloudless sky, and the tip of Mt. Taihua can just be seen in the distance to
the east. A group of examination students strolls past me, heading toward the
Eastern Market. I can hear them arguing over which one of them spent last
night with the most beautiful courtesan.
With the sun at my back, I enter the Eastern Market. I easily make my
way north to Zhangs Place, as the Eastern Market is ultimately less crowded
and more refined than the Western Market. Zhangs Place serves Indian
food and makes the finest sanlejiang, Indian wine. As I enter, I hear the
soft tinkling of bells and the harsh plucking of a lyre. A man wearing the
costume of Sogdiana performs a dance on a rug in the middle of the res-
taurant. My order of wine and rice arrives just as two women have joined
in the performance.
Although I have lived these past seventeen years in Changan, I have
always worn the clothing of my people. My appearance catches the glances

of many of the finely dressed Chinese men, who look upon me with consternation. After consuming my bowl of Indian style rice and three glasses of
wine, I exit the Eastern Market and head north to the Ward of Peace, where
I will spend the night.
The setting sun is vanquished by oncoming night, leaving a pink residue
on the western horizon and flooding my mind with thoughts of my Delicate.

As I savor the image of my rose of Changan, who resides in the Ward of
Peace, my joints stop aching and my heart quickens. The drums of the Eastern Market begin to palpitate in time with my heart. The markets are closing
49
The rice papers

up for the night. Soon, the Imperial Drum will sound, and each of the quarters of Changan will be closed for the night along with the outside gates.
The house where my Delicate Chen lives and works is run by Imminent
Chao. Chao has the best girls and always conducts the most raucous parties.
With the last of my jade comb cash, I purchase a flask of Grannys Clear, a
very strong wine. Imminent Chaos great salon is draped in all manner of
colors and lit by a network of brilliant orange lanterns. The air, thick with
the intoxicating vapor of perfume and mingled with the best Chinese spirits,
creates an atmosphere that enlivens my soul and clouds judgment.
I search the room for Delicate Chen, but she is not amongst the pleasure
throng. She is waiting for me elsewhere. I make my way through the quivering party into a room adjoining the salon. The room is shrouded in silk and
lit by red lanterns, bathing all in a blood-red light. In the middle of the room,
perched on a bed and surrounded by silk, sits my Delicate. She is kneeling

on the bed with her back to me. I set down the wine and part the silk sheets
that surround the bed. She turns her head and looks at me, offering the
subtlest of smiles. I sit next to her on the bed and we embrace. We take an
extra moment just to remember what it feels like to hold each other. Then
she says, Would you like to hear poetry?
Not tonight, I tenderly reply.
II
The emperor has fled the city. It is the fourteenth year of the Tian bao era,
18 July 756. Although I was baptized a Christian, I have not prayed to God
since my first journey across the Silk Roads. I may begin praying again.
Today, the streets are full of people trying to evacuate the city. Many of
the noble families and government officials have already left. The absence
of order has caused many to begin looting the houses of the wealthy residents who have fled.
For the past two years I have been extremely frugal in order to have
enough money to spend one night a month with my Delicate. The rest of
50
dallas petersen
the month is spent in anguish trying to wash away my sorrow with wine
and women of much lower stock. It has been a month since my last meeting
with Delicate Chen, and at that time I promised I would take her away on
our next tryst. Delicate has been working under Imminent Chao longer than
I have lived in Changan. This month, I will purchase Delicate and make
her my wife.
I descend to the Western Market, which has grown relatively quiet over
the last couple of weeks. The people have been leaving the city. The sun is already deep into the western sky. The market will be closing soon. I purchase
a peach from a vendor. The price of produce has been rising lately, but the
quality is still unmatched. As I devour the yellow flesh, its juices run down
my mouth and drip onto the peacock print of my shirt. The peach stands no
chance against me, and I spend the next five minutes sucking on the pit.
The sun has now set, and multicolored lanterns illuminate the evening sky.
The evening drums, signaling the closing of the markets, have not sounded.
This is the first time in eighteen years that I have not heard the market drums
at dusk. Over the northern horizon I see a red glow in the sky. It is not the
glow from lanterns. The palace is burning! The rebels of An Lushan have
entered the city. I can see armed soldiers rushing through the streets. These
are not government soldiers, for the city has been left unprotected. I begin to
panic. People dart in every direction throughout the market. Cries of fear fill
the air ever closer to my ears. They overrun the market. Citizens of Changan
and rebels alike rush through the bazaars taking anything they can. Merchants
either fall to swords or to the stampeding crowd.
I find myself a reluctant participant in the melee. I rush toward the jewel-
ers bazaar and find much of it destroyed. I forage the ground for anything I
can grab while fighting off people around me. We are like a pack of hungry
beasts all fighting together for some small scrap of food. I stumble upon a
small jade box, grab it, and make my way out of the market.
As I emerge onto Chunming Street, I notice the whole sky to the north
washed in the red glow of destruction. All around me are wails of terror. I
pass by a Daoist temple being torched by rebels and citizens. As I wander

51
The rice papers

through the hysteria, I suddenly fall and hit my face in the dirt, dropping
my little jade box. I have tripped over the prostrate body of a man. I crawl
back to see if he is hurt and realize that he is not moving. His belly has been
slashed, and his innards are lying in a heap on the dirt. I pick up my little
jade treasure and begin running. Nearby is a canal that has severely receded.
I jump into the cesspool of filth and crouch under a bridge, looking out with
horror at my beautiful city.
I had never thought it was possible. My city is burning. At first I had sup-
ported the rebellionLushan is part Sogdianbut this is too much. Not

the city. I mumble pathetically. I look up and see the Big and Little Dippers
looking down on me with uncaring eyes. I stare into the sky until the smoke
shrouds the stars from my sight. I am frozen with fear. Pausing, I vomit onto
my feet. Then, collapsing to the ground, I cower in fear.
The sun is high above me before I find the strength to move from my
position. I stumble out of my muddy hospice and run to the east. I had fallen
asleep during the night, but that had offered no relief or comfort. Everything
hurts, and I feel like I am going to break into a thousands pieces. Many of
the buildings still burn, and as I enter the Ward of Peace, I am overcome
by the wailing. The soldiers knew where they could relieve their savage
excitement, and the Ward of Peace has been ravaged. Many soldiers stand
in the streets drinking and telling stories. Down an alley a woman is scream-
ing. Two soldiers watch the scene and laugh, and I can do nothing except
pretend I havent seen it.
In front of Imminents house, a girl is sitting against the wall. As I ap-
proach, I realize her throat has been cut. The girl was no more than fifteen.
Inside, there are no soldiers, but death is everywhere. I look at the once lavish
salon of Imminent Chao that now stands stripped and scorched. Two mangled
bodies lie haphazardly on top of each other in a corner. One of them is my
Delicate Chen. My aging, aching frame suddenly goes numb. The only sound
I hear is the beating of a distant heart.
I stumble out of the house and swiftly exit the Ward of Peace. Never
again will I venture there. I float back toward the Western Market. I sud52
dallas petersen
denly realize the jade box is still in my left hand, and slowly I open it up.
It contains a pearl, a diamond, and an emerald. With these I could have
purchased my Delicate and bought land in the southwest section of the city.
The jewels mean nothing to me now. I toss them into the canal that had been
my bed the previous night.
III
The rebels of An Lushan occupied the city for a year. The Tang imperial
loyalists finally took back Changan in the summer of 757. It is now the sum-
mer of 762. Most of the buildings have been rebuilt, and the city looks much
as it did before the rebellion. But the joy of the city did not return with the im-
perial court. The city is awash in sadness. The Western Market is now far less
crowded with much of the business moving to the East. An edict issued by
the emperor now forbids commoners to drink unless it is a holiday. I havent
been back to Zhangs Place in six years. Many of the loyalist troops who took
back the city were mercenary Uighurs, many of whom chose to stay. A new
drink has become quite popular. It is called tea. I find I cant go through the
day without at least three or four cups; it is the only joy in my life.
Delicate is little more than a memory now. The happiness I felt with her
comes only through blurred imagesthe way her hair rose above her head,
revealing the curve of her neck, the way she smelled in the still of the summer air, and the way she would pronounce Stephen, my Christian name.
Although she is gone, her glory and splendor will forever be mine. Ill never
forget that summer night long ago when she looked at me for the first time
and a gentle smile parted her lips.
A woman of Shang-Yang,
A woman of Shang-Yang,
I, myself, slowly aging,
Seeing my hair turn white.

An empty room enclosed my whole life there!
How long were the autumn nights I spent,
53
The rice papers

Sleeplessly awaiting the interminable dawn.
My sole companion was a lone candle,
Reflecting my shadow along the wall;
Rain beat desolately against my window pane,
The days lengthened with the coming of spring,

And I waited for nights delayed arrival in vain.
REFERENCES
Birch, Cyril. Anthology of Chinese Literature, New York, Grove Weidenfeld, 1972.
Kroll, Paul W. The Flight From the Capital and the Death of Precious Consort Yang, Tang
Studies, No. 3, 1985, pp. 2553.
Levy, Howard S, trans. Biography of An Lu-shan, Berkeley, University of CaliforniaPasadena, 1960.
. Record of the Gay Quarters Orient/West, Tokyo, Orient/West, Inc., Vol. 8 no. 5, September 1963, pp. 12129.
. Tang Courtesans, Ladies, and Concubines, Orient/West, Tokyo, Orient/West, Inc., Vol.
7 no. 3, March 1962, pp. 4969.
. The Gay Quarters of Chang-an, Orient/West, Tokyo, Orient/West, Inc., Vol. 7 no. 9,
Sept. 1962, pp. 93109.
Pulleyblank, Edwin G. The An Lu-shan Rebellion and the Origins of Chronic Militarism in
Late Tang China, Essays on Tang Society, Leiden, E.J. Brill, 1976, pp. 3261.
Schafer, Edward, H. The Golden Peaches of Samarkand, Los Angeles, University of
CaliforniaPasadena, 1963.
Schafer, Edward, H. The Last Years of Chang-an, Oriens Extremus X, 1963, pp. 133179.
Twitchett, Denis, and John K. Fairbank, eds. The Cambridge History of China, Vol. III,
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1979.
Xiong, Victor Cunrui. Sui-Tang Chang-an: a Study in the Urban History of Medieval
China, Ann Arbor, MI, Center for Chinese Studies, 2000.
54
Qu Yuan: Chinas Poetic Archetype

Lance Crisler
u Yuans role in Chinese literary history constitutes a major paradigm
delineating the classic archetype of a loyal, yet dissenting royal min-
ister. During his lifetime and service as a statesman, Qu experienced the
unfortunate succession of the thoughtless King Huai to the throne of the
Chu kingdom. As a result of King Huais incompetence, Qu endured profound alienation from the monarchy and ruling house, a depressing fact
considering his devotion to and love for the kingdom. His poetry, his pri-
mary outlet for expression, reflects the struggle and grief of a man with
extreme distress for the government of his beloved country. In his verse, he
demonstrates a keen awareness of and appreciation for the plight of both
the common folk and the elite in China. Furthermore, his fierce loyalty and
passionate patriotism toward the nation contribute to his poetrys overall

success as well as cement his place as a literary archetype from whom later
generations can learn. His two most famous works, the Li Sao and The
Nine Songs, or Elegies of the Chu,1 in connection with other aspects of
his life, ultimately substantiate Qus virtual deification in Chinese history.
These two poems exhibit essential archetypal and allegorical elements that
metaphorically outline his disaffection for the ruling house. Such literary
55
The rice papers

elements add to the poems overwhelming popularity and mythic quality
among later generations of Chinese readers. In addition, the poems pro-
vide literary evidence that support his own status as a literary exemplar in
Chinese folklore. In his life, Qu exemplified aspects of a traditional, yet
flawed epic hero, a paragon of classical Confucian ethics, and a model
of a politically dissenting poet-martyr. His life and career stand as con-
crete examples of the traditionally lethal dichotomy between the Chinese

monarchy and the artistic elite. However, his subsequent emergence as a
cultural icon, as promoted through his mythic station, triumphs over oppression and confirms the enduring capacity and influence of archetypal
motifs in Chinese literature.
The importance of allegory and archetype in Qus writings is evident in
his life even before he initially began composition of his major poetry. His
historical relationship with the declining monarchy methodically prepared

his psyche for the emotionally turbulent experience of writing the Li Sao.
Lim Boon Keng observed that Friendless and in despair, [Qu Yuan] was
driven from the court to find consolation in nature and poetry. Qu Yuan resorted to put in writing the grand passions he experienced and succeeded in
[the writing of] . . . the Li Sao.2 Qus grand passions undoubtedly sug-
gest the stark alienation he felt as a result of the corrupted monarch Huais
rise to power.
Finding little virtue in the contemporary monarchy, he looked to past
kings and sages, as well as supernatural figures for examples of virtue and
holiness, and, consequently, allusions to these mythical exemplars pepper
the Li Sao. Qu looked to virtuous kings of the past with nostalgic longing
and the translated title Encountering Sorrow, poignantly reminds readers
of the loyalty that Qu Yuan maintained for the true Mandate of Heaven.3 In
the poems opening stanzas, while still laying the mythic framework for the
poem, Qu identified this aspect as a major theme in the piece: The three
Kings of old were pure and unblemished, / all things sweet scented indeed
were theirs.4 His comparison of the present king of Chu with the three
Kings of old indicates his obvious disdain for the current government. He
56
Lance Crisler
extends the comparison in the next stanza as well, writing, But sloven and
scruffy were kings Jie and Zhou; / they walked at hazard on twisted trails. /
Those men of faction had ill-gotten pleasures, / their paths went in shadow,
narrow, unsafe.5 Through this poetic technique, Qu persuades his readers
to reevaluate their political affiliations. By alluding to ancient examples of
hallowed kings, Qu effectively manipulates his reader into identifying with
his own feelings of contention with the current inadequacies of the state. In
essence, his poem distances the poet from the current corrupted state of
Chu, aligning himself with respectable images and icons of past generations. This social dissent encourages the adaptation of Qu Yuan as advocate
of virtue and undying loyalist to the true emperor, an idea that later genera-
tions of poets and common Chinese look to for support in the face of cor-
rupted government. This promotes his reputation as a cultural and literary
archetype, one who demonstrates qualities to which both literati and the
masses can relate.
Another instance of his allusion to previous eras in Chinese history is
the recurrent surfacing of Yu the Mighty. In the Li Sao, Qu reveres this

founder of the Xia dynasty in a classically archetypal light: Yu the Mighty
was stern, respectful and godly; . . . They raised men of worth, rewarded the
able, / they kept the straight line, they did not veer.6 He relates Yus reign,
representing that of all good rulers, to a set of morals and values. Later, in
attributing still more virtue to Yu, he delves more deeply into the vault that
is Chinese history by reporting a tale of Yus valor, querying in summary,
If ones nature within loves what is fair, / what need to make use of match-
maker or envoy?7 Here, Qu equates his own disregard for monarchical

conventions with Yus morality in that he resigns to a love affair of fairness
through his poetry, thus promulgating the appropriateness of his otherwise
condemnatory action of leaving public office. He justifiably rejects the ruling house of Chu citing its loss of virtue as the primary offense. Therefore,
he has no need to search for virtue in the present generation, as he confines

himself to poetical expressions of the true Mandate of Heaven. Indeed, Qus
poetical assertion that his nature is to love what is fair further distances
57
The rice papers

himself and his reader from the Huai monarchy. In this way, he emphasizes
Yus mythic quality while enlisting the respect and sympathy of his readers,
in effect, justifying his departure from court service as well as his eventual
suicide as acts in line with those of the great sage kings of the past.
But this poetic device of alluding to historical mythology serves another
purpose as well by allowing his readers to experience a dialogue with the

past. This creates a literary connection that espouses Qus own poetry with
virtues of the past and projects an admirable light onto future generation if
they will maintain the morality of traditional examples of propriety. In this
light, archetypal imagery permeates the entire text of Li Sao. In addition
to alluding to historical mythology, his repetitive use of floral, herbal, and

sartorial imagery, implied an important facet of the poems archetypal influ-
ence: floral elements physically betray the virtue of the ruler and his ability
to appropriately govern. As is evident in his reference to the three Kings of
old: Shens pepper was there, together with cassia, / white angelica, sweet
clover were not strung alone8the images of flowers and herbs signify
the immediate presence of a moral ruler. He correlates these herbs with the
virtue and purity of Shang dynastys King Shen and later uses this same
image to distinguish the existence of virtue with regard to anyone or anyplace thereafter.
Beginning in line fifty-two, for example, in a distinct effort to maintain
a sense of virtue in his own fallen and depressed state, he applied the analogy to himself: I watered my orchids in all their nine tracts, / and planted
sweet clover in one hundred rods; / I made plots for peonies and for the
wintergreen, / mixed with asarum and sweet angelica.9 Lines eighty-one to
eighty-three connect similar images to his clothing: Yes, I was undone for
sash hung with sweet clover, / then I added to it the angelica and orchid. /
Still my heart will find goodness in these.10
A deeper analysis of this extensive nexus of images reveals that they
constitute a more complex archetypal implication than fragrant herbs and
clothing normally do. Carl Jung illustrated this idea more clearly. In his
famous article, On the Relation of Analytic Psychology to Poetry, he
58
lance crisler
explained that images give form to countless typical experiences of our
ancestors. They are, so to speak, the psychic residua of innumerable experiences of the same type.11 Jungs ideas imply that Qus collective uncon-
scious has produced these images and symbols as part of a sphere of un-
conscious mythology.12 In other words, Qus references to a mythological

past, fragrant herbs, exotic flowers, and clothing represent part of a system
of morality that existed among mankinds primordial ancestors. In this respect, his archetypes are universal in their meaning because they reflected
aspects of an eternal pattern to which all Chinese humanity can relate. This
concept is particularly true of Li Sao, since its common themes surfaced
throughout succeeding texts and exhibited a powerful cultural significance
through centuries of Chinese literature.
C.S. Lewiss explanation of Jungs ideas is also applicable to Li Sao.
According to Lewis, Jungs theories are emotionally powerful not because
they actually put us in contact with universal and primordial realities, but
because they represent the idea of being in contact with such realities.13
In fine, the attraction and appeal of Li Sao is due to Qus keen ability to
unveil layers of storied history through his use of mythological and arche-
typal imagery. This works to further solidify his poem as an extension of the
storied morality that penetrates generations of Chinese humanity. As a poet
employing archetypes, Qu is thus successfully able to transform imagery
into a physical application and extension of myth itself.
An integral step on Qus own ascent to mythological deification is his use
of allegory. While this literary device is instrumental in Qus final escape in

Li Sao, the The Nine Songs offers a clearer representation of allegory.
Essentially, The Nine Songs are metaphorical elegies that subtly illustrate
his frustration with the Chu kingdom. He employs the classic dilemma of
the shamanistic pursuit of a goddess as his metaphysical muse. In doing so,
Qu yet again grounds his poetry in a traditional archetype. David Hawkes
observed this relationship in connection to The Princess of the Hsiang:

this with the other poems of [The Nine Songs] contains time-honoured
formulae, the use of which was dictated more by ritual appropriateness than
59
The rice papers

by logical necessity.14 These ritual formulae are illustrations of the uni-
versal patterns to which Jung referred. Such an assertion, however, leads to

a question: what exactly are the formulae? Hawkes maintained that the use
of magic and a supernatural journey in The Nine Songs connote the po-
ems religious, and therefore, mythological significance: the theme of the

magic-making journey, a sort of royal progress through the sky . . . proved
a far more productive influence in the Chinese literary imagination.15 The

point here is that poets employed alternate methods of communication in or-
der to accurately reflect, allegorically speaking, moral progress, particularly
in the ruling court. This point is evident in The Lord Amid the Clouds,
however, Hawkes explained that the gender of the shaman, or voice of the
poem, traditionally dictates the gender of the god or goddess, which, in turn,
allegorically established the romantic theme of the metaphor. In describing

a similar scenario of a magic journey, the song elucidates this concept:
The Spirit in great majesty came down;
Now he soars swiftly amid the clouds.
He looks down on the province of Chi and far beyond;

He traverses to the Four Seas; endless his flight.
Longing for that Lord I heave a deep sigh;
My heart is greatly troubled; I am very sad.16

Qus metaphorical quest for the goddess, in this case through the priestesss
longing for that Lord, and subsequent failure to obtain such a person demonstrate the necessity of a moral leader to maintain virtue in the kingdom.
As in Li Sao, Qu Yuans passionate pursuit of virtue here throws into
sharp relief his disparity and ultimate disappointment.
In The Princess of the Hsiang, his desperation is clear as he once again
cannot attain the elusive goddess: Reluctant her handmaids follow her;
for my sake heave great sighs. / And my own tears flow aslant in an end-
less stream; / I long bitterly for my Lady and am in deep distress.17 This
time Qu uses the failed quest of the shaman for love as his metaphorical
conceit to show allegorically the lack of affection between himself and the
king, thereby making his verse accessible to even the repulsive King Huai.
60
lance crisler
His subtle metaphor allows historically sensitive readers to consciously ap-
preciate his politically charged verse, while allying himself with traditional
Chinese religious archetypes. This is significant in that Qu effectively ap-
propriates historical narratives for use in his contemporary arena. His acti-
vation of classical allusion centralizes his work and adds another layer to
the already complex history of China. The influence and scope of allegory
and archetype in Qus poetry is thus intrinsically tied to his reputation as
the physical incarnation of an archetype itself. That is to say, his use of the
allegorical flight of the shaman and his/her magic-making journey implies

that his own life represents a comparable flight to search for morality in not
only the other lands but also previous generations and histories.
Throughout his life and career Qu displayed the characteristics of an
ethical, yet flawed Confucian hero. Additionally, his suicide and consequen-
tial martyrdom seal his fate as an eternal and paramount representative of
piety toward the state. By the early Han dynasty, his prestige had become
central to Chinese mythology. Lim observed that The figure of Qu Yuan
in all its austere and ascetic purity stands out as a beacon in the darkness of
political corruption.18 Indeed, mythological and archetypal allusion in Li
Sao and The Nine Songs serves as the backdrop to Qu Yuans legacy, as
well as to what Laurence Schneider has coined Qu Yuan lore.19 However,
Schneider claims that the crux of Qu Yuans archetypal endurance is not
only his frustrated relationship with the king, but rather his passion and
exile: Admiration for Qu Yuan became a function of the consistency, per-
severance, and the completeness of his commitment.20 Qus unwavering
spirit and intellectual stubbornness during the tumultuous Warring States

period spearheaded the literary construction of the mythological figure that
he has become. In turn, his tragic suicide further buttressed his archetypal
status and he continues to weather the political tempest of the later part
of the Zhou dynasty through his poetry. By the end of Li Sao the loss of
virtue among the people of the kingdom is painfully obvious: Each person
wears mugwort, stuffed in their waists, / they declare that the orchid may
never be strung.21
61
The rice papers

His last recourse is to make a final mystical journey to seek refuge among
others who love what is fair. The last stanza thus seems a veritable suicide note disclosing his depression and sorrow: no man knows me, / why
should I care . . . no one can join me.22 Qus conflict and righteous indig-
nation with the government ostensibly deteriorated into a desperate plea
for help which adds to later generations lauding his name as the epitome
of Confucian sacrifice. At the same time, his tragic death exemplifies the
archetypal sadness of the inevitable doom of poets and others who oppose
the imperial monarchy.
Qus poetry, then, established the mythic ideal of the politically dissent-
ing heroic archetype. Through his verse in Li Sao and The Nine Songs,
he lays the foundation for the appropriate quality of Chinas ruler as well as
his worthiness for canonization in traditional Chinese mythology. Finally,
the literal representation of myth throughout his own life also contributed to
his reputation as an archetypal hero of Chinese literature.
NOTES
1. These works come from a tradition of literature that flourished during the late Zhou
dynasty in the Chu region of China referred to as Chuci or Lyrics of Chu. It is not
definitively known whether Qu Yuan in fact authored all of the works in the Chuci and
there is still significant debate about this issue.
2. Lim, Boon Keng. The Li Sao: An Elegy on Encountering Sorrows, Shanghai: The Commercial Press, 1935, p. 22.
3. The Mandate of Heaven is a concept that Chinese traditionally refer to as the title of the
one who rightfully ruled the country. If rulers demonstrated virtue in their governing
practices then they could legitimate claim the mandate had descended upon them.
4. Qu, Yuan. Li Sao, An Anthology of Chinese Literature, edited and translated by Stephen Owen, New York, Norton, 1996, p. 162, ll. 256.
5. Ibid., ll. 314.
6. Ibid., ll. 16164.
7. Ibid., ll. 28990.
8. Ibid., ll. 278.
9. Ibid., ll. 526.
10. Ibid., ll. 813.
11. Young, Bruce. Mythic and Archetypal Criticism, The Critical Experience, edited by
David Cowles, Provo, The Grandview Press, 1992, pp. 5579.
12. Ibid., p. 59.
13. Ibid., p. 64.
14. Hawkes, David. In Quest of the Goddess, Asia Major 13, 1967, p. 77.
15. Ibid., p. 82
16. Qu, Yuan. The Nine Songs, The Nine Songs, edited and translated by Arthur Waley,
London, George Allen Ltd., 1955, ll. 914.
17. Ibid., ll. 1618.
18. Lim, p. 31.
62
lance crisler
19. Schneider, Laurence A. A Madman of Chu: The Chinese Myth of Loyalty and Dissent,
Los Angeles, University of CaliforniaBerkeley Press, 1980, p. 5.
20. Ibid., p. 85.
21. Qu, Yuan. Li Sao, ll. 27475.
22. Ibid., ll. 37072.
REFERENCES
Waley, Arthur. The Nine Songs: A study of Shamanism in Ancient China, London, George
Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1955.
You, Zheng Li. The Structure of the Chinese Ethical Archetype, New York, Die Deutsche
Bibliothek, 1997.
63
Hiking in the Green Mountains

Three Poems in Classical Chinese
Dr. David B. Honey
ne of my hobbies is poetry, both English and Chinese. I do not appreciate modern verse, however, so I do not normally traverse beyond
the mystical, agonized effusions of Gerard Manly Hopkins in England, the

spare pastoral verses of Seamus Heaney in Ireland, or the folksy musings of
Robert Frost here in the colonies. I enjoy engaging with great minds of the
past as revealed in poetry and in unraveling the linguistic complexities of

finely crafted poems. I also enjoy the challenge of composing poetry; given
my antiquarian mindset, it is not strange that I much prefer writing in classical Chinese to modern Mandarin; even less do I employ English for my po-
etic offerings, for even though I passively enjoy the art of the scop and the
gleeman at a distance, I rarely feel inclined to jump into the fray as an active
participant. Perhaps my aversion to personal poetic composition in English
is due to a defensive psychological impulse: the mediocrity of my verses is

more readily hidden in the thicket of classical Chinese than in English!
In my poetic oeuvre, occasional poems are among the most numer-
ous; occasional poems are inspired by a specific occasion. As a faculty
member of the Chinese summer school at Middlebury College in Vermont

over the last eight years, I have found the environment of an intensive lan65
The rice papers

guage program particularly inspiring and have tried to take advantage of
an opportunity to improve my Chinese, and composing poetry in Chinese
is a good means to learn more of it. Besides, many interesting occasions

arise in the beautiful natural surroundings of the Green Mountains that
seem literally to cry out for a poem.
I composed the following poems in August 2004 late one evening at
Middlebury due to the happy occasion of my being the leader of the
weekly hikes for both students and faculty alike. The first poem is rather
simple and transparent, but the second poem increases in complexity, culminating in the last, more opaque one. The last poem is also interesting because we did not hike this particular peak that year, so the poem was based
on memories of past hikes and my imagination, not current experience. For

each poem, I offer an English introduction, provide the Romanized text and
a glossary, and present my own translation in English. I hope that the oc-
casion of reading these poems will at least introduce a few new words in
classical Chinese poetic vocabulary and perhaps even provide a moment of
insight or a modicum of delight.
I. Climbing Snake Mountain
A short but steep climb of forty-five minutes up this winding mountain
leads to a spectacular view of Lake Champlain and the intensely green riparian woods and swamps that stretch as far as the eye can see along the shore.
The Adirondack Mountains in New York appear in the blue distance across
the broad expanse of the lake:
Dng Sh Shn
jir dng b shshn lng,
lxin yz shng xinjng.
66
david b. honey
sh shng xingf zhng yu fng,
xinzu tioyun shng shngjng.

light, quick steps
moss
peak
gaze into the distance

Translation:
Climbing Snake Mountain
On a fine day we hike the ridges of Snake Mountain;
Though the way is steep, we ascend the mossy track with light steps.
Teachers and students help each other; at length we traverse the top
Sitting in leisure, we gaze off into the distance, enjoying the surpassing vista.
II. Mount Independence
Enjoying Mount Independence requires a roundabout tramp along a
broad, low-lying hill directly across the lake from Ft. Ticonderoga. Ft.
Ticonderoga was the site of much contention between England and France
during the French and Indian War and later between England and the
newly declared independent United States. The view of the restored Ft.
Ticonderoga is one of the highlights of hiking Mount Independence. And

ruins of a Revolutionary War fort, hospital, barracks, lookout posts, etc.,
may still be seen in the form of piles of scattered stones littered across
the mount or sunken holes in the ground, but most of these ruins are now
overgrown with dense undergrowth that thrives in the muggy atmosphere.
The day we visited, a reenactment was taking place, something that we
seem to catch each year; it displayed both English and Continental forces,
plus female camp followers and their broods. It was interesting to see life
relived on the mount at the time of its heyday:
67
The rice papers
Dlshn
bihu wiru q ynyn,
gj shnqi shngxi xn.
gngsho kngdng dush x,

xsh zhnyng jn cn yn.
yng fa zhngxing yod wn.
chngxn bnyn xn jngzhn.
ling gu jn wi chnch mng,

j do ynshng y chnghun
grasses in general, vegetation

luxuriant and lush
thick and heavy (of smoke, etc.)

sentry post
to vie for supremacy

truly, surely
exquisite and profound
a league between states as closely tied as lips and teeth

interrogative used rhetorically
casualties of war who died too young

Translation:
Mount Independence
All varieties of herbage are luxuriant and lushthe air lies low
and muggy,
Up and down the hill we seek out storied traces.
The outpost is empty, vacanta pile of jumbled stones;

68
david B. Honey
The camp of former times now is merely tattered clouds.
England and France vied for supremacy over this strategic bay;
Now this replayed re-enactment is truly exquisite.
Today both nations are alliesas close as teeth and lips
But who can claim that it is so easy to make it up to the battle casualties?
III. Mount Abraham
Paramount among the peaks in that part of Vermont, Mount Abraham
(4,006 ft.) is situated along the Long Trail, which perforates Vermont
from north to south, running from the Canadian border to Massachusetts.

It takes a serious effort of two and a half hours to surmount, but the view
encompasses the White Mountains of New Hampshire to the west, and New
Yorks Adirondacks to the east. Mt Abrahams secluded glens and hollows,
steep granite paths, and Arctic-Alpine ecosystem on the summit offer stimulation to the spirit as well as the body:
Yblhn shn
shy wi qng q mnglng,
qngshn mngyu yo pndng.
zhndo xinyo zhngzh sho,

swng xnxing bo cchng.
sh nng ji c k shn?
wi ji lij jinx pn.
xyng yxi guy png,
69
The rice papers

bop zhzh xn pnhun.
nurturing rains
hazy
main mountain in a range
plank road along a cliff

soar
craggy
stream that runs through a gorge

linger
Translation:
Mount Abraham
Nurturing rains have not yet cleared upthe air is hot and heavy;
This marchmount amid the Green Mountains beckons me to climb.

The cliff-side path is dangerous and distanttravelers are few:
But gazing out on four sides my heart soars, repaying me for the trip.
Who can understand this craggy and rugged mountain?
Only they who leave traces amid its runnels and sikes.
With the sun about to set in the west my notion to return is stilled
Those in the know who embrace Taoist simplicity want to linger
and loiter.
70

Rice Papers

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Rice Papers

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Rice Papers

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

What is the purpose of The Rice Papers journal?

What is the purpose of The Rice Papers journal?

What locations are described in the poems on pages 67-68?

What locations are described in the poems on pages 67-68?

The

The Rice Papers

Brigham Young University

The Rice Papers

traditional Confucian values and American-influenced thought. Perhaps asking the

point of view of a Japanese-influenced American. The journals third essay orients

highly respected scholar of Classical Chinese language and literature, and he is

The staff of The Rice Papers.

What Makes Them That Way?:

proud to be an American, she had gone to Korea for an extended vacation

to escape her nagging mother Dukwah and grandmother Hongyong, who

The rice papers

womans role in traditional Korean society, answering Helie Lees question,

Confucian influences cemented during the Choson period from 1392 to

1910 dictated a womans place in the structure of traditional Korean society.

Peterson describes the episode of Hongyongs birth to Paek Hogin and

his wife Hwaksi as illustrating the Confucian principle of male domination

tional Confucian ideology of namjon, yobi. Sociologist Mijeong Lee further

on their husbands family matters.4 In a society based on the Confucian

Lessons from Hongyongs childhood training for womanhood also help

the reader understand a womans role in Koreas Confucian society. Upon

my punishment for being born a girl rat. . . . Daily [mother] drilled me on

indoctrination of her mothers lessons, which are grounded in Confucian

a segregated life of subservience to men as her mothers helper. Lee writes,

portant virtues according to mother. Obedience denoted blind obedience.

ture husband and in-laws. She becomes an apprentice of sewing, washing,

The rice papers

her study of family life in the province of Hamyong in North Korea:

able age, accomplished in the performance of household duties. . . .

These restraints and requirements thrust upon nascent Korean young

Confucian thought promoted the samjong (three submissions) regarding a

son) as well as follow the puhaengpyon of myongsimpogam (the codes for

womens lives centered on the nucleus of home and family responsibilities,

subservient homemaking mother, Korean males downplay the importance

confident and superior.10 For these reasons, womanly virtue in traditional

Korean society is associated with maintaining an outward appearance of

Incidents from the weeks prior to Hongyongs arranged marriage illus-

trate this Confucian concept of a womans duty to serve males. An unex-

explains this phenomenon, which seems so foreign to the Western world:

that the daughter is not a permanent member of his family. . . . Seldom

ranged your napchae. . . . (kidnapping) He is from the family of Lee. His

and bow deeply in gratitude orthreaten to throw myself into a well.13

The rice papers

another mans family. . . . My memory would be forever erased in the record

title.14 Peterson succinctly explains why a daughter becomes estranged

Upon marriage to Dukpil, Hongyong comes to better understand the

patriarchal, patrilineal, and patrilocal customs of the Confucian-influenced

transition to her Confucian role as a submissive wife to the new patriarch

emony, without any psychological preparation.17 Though Dukpil and Hon-

allowing Dukpil, a complete emotional stranger, to undress her and, later, to

When her husbands faade of machismo starts to topple and expose

his inner insecurities, Hongyongs encouragement of Dukpils required

three submissions (to father, to husband, and to son) outwardly dictated

the role of women in Confucian Korea, women like Hongyong provided

The rice papers