True to Her Word: The Faithful Maiden Cult in Late Imperial China 9780804786782

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true to her word

True to Her Word The Faithful Maiden Cult in Late Imperial China

Weijing Lu

stanford university press stanford, california

Stanford University Press Stanford, California © 2008 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lu, Weijing. True to her word : the faithful maiden cult in late imperial China / Weijing Lu. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8047-5808-6 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Young women— China—History. 2. Young women— China—Social conditions. 3. Single women— China—History. 4. Single women— China— Social conditions. 5. China—Social life and customs. I. Title. HQ1767.L89 2008 306.81’530951— dc22 2007037545 Typeset by Bruce Lundquist in 10/12.5 Palatino

To the memory of my father and grandmother, and to my mother

Contents

List of Illustrations  ix Acknowledgments  xi Chronology   xv Introduction  1

Part One. History  19 1. Moral Heroism and Craving for Extremes: The Ming Period (1368 –1644)   21 2. Putting Young Heroines in the Spotlight: The Seventeenth Century  49 3. The State and the Social Webs of Exaltation: The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries  68

Part Two. Choices  101 4. Dissuading the Resolute: The Families of Faithful Maidens  103 5. Dying for an Ideal: The Choice of Suicide  129 6. A Young Life, a Long Journey: Living as a Faithful Maiden  167

viii   Contents

Part Three. Ideology  211 7. Old Rituals and New Questions: The Faithful Maiden Debate  213 Conclusion  247 Appendix: Faithful Maidens Reported in Qinding da Qing yitong zhi (Siku quanshu edition)  257 Character List  261 Notes  269 References  315 Index  335

Illustrations

figures 1.1  Zhenjiang, the consort of King Zhao of Chu  23 1.2  Lady Weixuan   25 1.3 Faithful maidens honored with jingbiao during the Ming period  33 2.1  Wang Xiuwen swallows a gold earring  57 3.1  A memorial arch in honor of the chaste widow Sun  75 3.2  A group of memorial arches  75 3.3  Faithful maidens honored during first six reigns of the Qing  76 3.4  Shrine of the Chaste and Filial   78 3.5  Shrine of the Chaste and Filial (detail)  79 3.6 Layout of a Qing county school with a shrine dedicated to chaste widows  79 5.1  Xun Cai prepares for her suicide  143 5.2 A local government petition to Emperor Qianlong requesting jingbiao   165 6.1  Holding the tablet to marry  171 6.2  Song Jingwei composes a poem  174 6.3  Two-story building from the Ming period  181

    Illustrations 6.4  The building of chaste mother [Wang]   183 6.5  Chaste widow Gao Xing  186 6.6  Chaste widow Fang cuts off her ear  187 6.7  The daughter of Ling destroys her appearance  188 6.8  Faithful maiden Zhi clears up a false charge and establishes   an heir   203 6.9  Faithful maiden Fan cuts her forehead to remove smear   205 maps 1  Eighteenth-century Qing dynasty China xvi 2  China’s macroregions xvii tables 3.1  Number and year-average of faithful maidens honored with jingbiao awards, 1644 –1850, by reign period  76 3.2  Faithful maidens reported in Qinding da Qing yitong zhi   (Siku quanshu edition), by province  97 A.1  Jiangsu province  257 A.2  Anhui province  258 A.3  Zhejiang province  258 A.4  Guangdong province  259

Acknowledgments

over the years of study and work on this project, many teachers, friends, and colleagues lent me their kind support at various moments and in various ways. It is with profound gratitude that I thank them for their guidance, help, and encouragement. The many meetings with my mentor, Susan Mann, in her University of California, Davis office and elsewhere remain the most enjoyable memories of all. The book bears her influence and labor in ways that are impossible to enumerate. “Bathed in the spring breeze,” the ancient metaphor for the nourishing spirit a teacher brings to a student, is perhaps appropriate to describe my feelings then and now about Susan’s affectionate and inspiring guidance. I also owe deep appreciation to Beverly Bossler, Don C. Price, and G. William Skinner, who guided me as my dissertation committee members, and to Cynthia Brokaw and Bryna Goodman for their mentoring in my early years of graduate study in the United States. Gathering materials for this project has been a long process. At UC Davis, Phyllis Wang of the East Asian Collection (now retired) offered me generous help while I was a graduate student. During a research trip in 2002, I received kind assistance from Hsi-chu Bolick at the University of North Carolina on late Qing sources. In Shanghai, Wu Ge accommodated my needs during my visit to Fudan University Library. At UC San Diego, Jim Cheng, head of the East Asian Library, benefited me tremendously with his expertise. I am also thankful for Jim’s vision * The metaphor alludes to a conversation between Confucius and his disciples that took place by a riverbank in spring. See Confucius, Analects.

xii   Acknowledgments in developing the East Asian Library, which has already resulted in an impressive expansion of collections since his arrival at UCSD. I am immensely indebted to my colleagues and friends who graciously put aside their own work to read and comment on the manuscript, in part or in its entirety, at various stages of the revision: Joseph Esherick, Joan Judge, Beverly Bossler, Suzanne Cahill, Sarah Schneewind, Wai-yee Li, Ye Wa, and Yu-Yin Cheng. I wish to offer special thanks to the reviewers from Stanford University Press, Joan Judge and Hu Ying, for their wonderful insights. Revisions I have made based on their comments and suggestions contributed greatly to the quality of the work; I alone, of course, am responsible for any remaining mistakes. I also wish to extend my gratitude to Muriel Bell and her wonderful colleagues at Stanford University Press for their professional support with the publication of this book. My very warm thanks are also due to my friends Ann Kelleher, Yao Ping, Zhao Xiaojian, Mary Jacob, Xue Zhaohui, and Zhang Cong, who shared my frustration and joy (some of whom hosted me during my research trips). I am indebted to Ann in particular, who has answered my many calls for help in a way that one could expect only from a most generous and genuine friend. While at UC Davis, I enjoyed a warm, stimulating, intellectual environment with Steven Beck, Jake Whittaker, and John Kennedy. To my great sadness, Steve, who loved Chinese history, lost his fight with illness two years ago. I know he would have been happy to see me finish this book. The following professional conferences and institutions provided me with opportunities to present parts of this work: the Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association, the International Convention of Asia Scholars, the Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies on the Pacific Coast, the Center for Chinese Studies at UCLA, and the East Asia Center, University of Virginia. I wish to thank the organizers of the conference/panel and the colleagues who shared with me their insights on my papers. Funds for research and writing of this project were provided by a number of organizations. The dissertation stage of the work was funded by fellowships from the Mabelle McLeod Lewis Memorial Fund and UC Davis. A 2002 summer grant from Mary Washington College enabled the initiation of the revisions of the dissertation into a book manuscript. The subsequent revisions and research trips were made possible by a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship, a Small Grant from the Association for Asian Studies, a Hellman Fellowship, and re-

Acknowledgments   xiii

search and course relief grants from the UC San Diego Academic Senate, the Center for the Humanities, and the Faculty Career Development Program. I am deeply grateful for this support. Finally, I thank my husband, Ye Baomin; our son, Wenlie; and our extended families. I would not have been able to pursue my study and career in the United States without their understanding and unfailing support. With profound love and sadness I dedicate this book to my grandmother, who told me while I was little girl that I could one day go to college, and to my father, who nurtured my passion for literature and history. They saw me leave for the United States to study but did not live to see me finish. Their spirit will be with me forever.

Chronology

ming reign periods

qing reign periods

Hongwu

1368 –1398

Shunzhi

1644 –1661

Jianwen

1399 –1402

Kangxi

1662 –1722

Yongle

1403 –1424

Yongzheng 1723 –1735

Hongxi

1425

Qianlong

1736 –1795

Xuande

1426 –1435

Jiaqing

1796 –1820

Zhengtong

1436 –1449

Daoguang

1821–1850

Jingtai

1450 –1456

Xianfeng

1851–1861

Tianshun

1457–1464

Tongzhi

1862 –1874

Chenghua

1465 –1487

Guangxu

1875 –1908

Hongzhi

1488 –1505

Xuantong

1909 –1911

Zhengde

1506 –1521

Jiajing

1522 –1566

Longqing

1567–1572

Wanli

1573 –1619

Taichang

1620

Tianqi

1621–1627

Chongzhen 1628 –1644

map 1  Eighteenth-century Qing dynasty China.

map 2  China’s macroregions. s o u r c e : Adapted from William G. Skinner, “Presidential Address: The Structure of Chinese ­ ­History,” Journal of Asian Studies (1985) 44.2. Courtesy of Cambridge University Press.

Introduction

The martyred girl Wu Shuji was from She, Anhui. Daughter of Wu Han, she was betrothed to Huang Shi. Before they were married, Huang Shi left home to study in Chuzhong and died. When Shuji heard the tragic news, she stopped eating and did not want to live. Her parents consoled her: “It is better to live to preserve fidelity than to die for it.” Thereupon, she slowly resumed eating. When Huang Shi’s coffin was brought back, Shuji went to the Huang family and wept profoundly. Her father urged her to return home. She said: “I am the daughter-in-law of the Huang family; to what place am I supposed to return?” He had no choice but to let her [stay]. Huang Shi’s coffin was to be buried after a few days. The girl hanged herself the night [before the burial]. She was seventeen years old.1 Xu Qiu (1636–1708), “Biography of Martyred Girl Wu”2

over the long course of chinese history, stories of a woman loyal to her betrothed surfaced from time to time, yet what became known as the “faithful maiden” ideal never captured the imagination of young women as it did in late imperial times (1368 –1911). Nor did it attract the public’s attention in the same way. During this period, thousands of young women defied parental authority and pledged lifelong fidelity to their first betrothed, whether alive or dead.3 Called “faithful maidens” (zhennü) at the time, many lived out their lives as widows; others took their own lives to follow a fiancé in death.4 Their choices to become faithful maidens provoked enormous tension in their homes and beyond. Viewed dichotomously as moral exemplars who

   Introduction possessed “­extraordinary virtue”—and were thus singled out for state honor— or as “elopers” who violated Confucian rituals, they sparked one of the most polarized and lasting ideological debates on ritual and female virtue in Chinese history. In no other historical time were young, unmarried women placed under such a spotlight for such a long time to be so passionately extolled, criticized, ridiculed, and defended. This book chronicles the faithful maiden cult and the society and culture that gave it meaning and that were, in turn, shaped by it. In contextualizing the cult’s formation, the course of its development, and the state and societal reactions to it, the book aims to give a broad understanding of the interactions between the cult and the political, cultural, and intellectual shifts of the late imperial period. In examining the tensions and conflicts surrounding the cult, the book attempts to retrieve ideas and practices that reveal young women’s relationships with their families and with the larger society. Primarily, the book explores the emotions, aspirations, and life journeys of faithful maidens, and in so doing, it seeks to explain what shaped the gender identity of young women living in this period and how they perceived and expressed honor, duty, and love. For the past two decades, a wealth of new research has fundamentally changed our perspectives on the history of women and gender relations in imperial China, problematizing the received wisdom about the victimization of women and women’s insignificance with regard to historical changes. The faithful maiden story offers perhaps some of the most compelling evidence challenging such assertions. That young women resisted parental will, held fast to their beliefs, and prevailed in the end (as in the majority of cases) in the pursuit of a life of their own choosing is a powerful antidote to the common belief about the passivity of Chinese women, popularly believed to have had no voice at all over their marriage or other aspects of their lives. More important, their actions take us deep into the complex inner world of the young women and give us a rare glimpse of their emotions and self-­understanding of their roles, their identities, and the meaning of their lives. The faithful maiden cult’s implications for the cultural, social, political, and ideological realms of the late imperial period testify to anything but the marginality of women in the making of the history of this time. The cult was an integral part of processes of historical change in this period, and young women left profound imprints in that process. In this sense, the faithful maiden cult also presents a refreshing opportunity for a women-centered narrative of late imperial history.

Introduction  

Background and Central Issues The faithful maiden cult was a distinctive late imperial phenomenon. Briefly stated, the phenomenon surfaced in the thirteenth century, escalated into a cult in the second half of the Ming dynasty (1368 –1644), and spread widely in the Qing (1644 –1911)—the period from which this book draws the majority of its cases. It cut across geographical regions but was centered in the South, with the Lower Yangzi, the heartland of the empire, its primary locus. Covering the last five and half centuries of Chinese imperial history, the late imperial period began when Ming forces drove the Mongol conquerors back outside the Great Wall, and it ended with the fall of another alien dynasty, the Qing. Despite the political disruptions, China in this period grew to an enormous size, far exceeding any domain that existed before, territorially and demographically, with a population rising from 65 million to 80 million in the fourteenth century to 400 million in 1850. A commercialized economy, urban development, and regional integration also reached an apex of sophistication, as market towns proliferated to dot the vast land and new frontiers were opened by migrants. Late imperial cultural and intellectual prosperity thrived steadily from the sixteenth century onward, and the level of literacy among the general population continued to rise, due in part to the development of the printing industry, which made books more accessible to an audience beyond the educated classes.5 Vernacular literature and popular theater flourished, meeting the appetite of the general public for entertainment. Among educated men, competition in the civil service examinations became an increasingly strenuous endeavor, but many of the empire’s most brilliant minds found passion outside the examination curriculum in evidential scholarship and other schools of thought. For their sisters, who were not allowed to compete in the examinations, reading and writing became a primary means of intellectual gratification and social interaction. Female writers in the Ming, and in particular the Qing, produced voluminous poetry anthologies and other literary works, all displaying the sophistication of women’s education in elite households.6 This period also witnessed greater attempts by the state and the Confucian elite to mold people’s behavior along moral lines. The neo-Confucian creed—that an orderly realm begins with the cultivation of virtue by the individual and extends from there to the regulation of the family—was embraced as the guiding principle for political ­leadership. ­Government

   Introduction campaigns to disseminate moral values in the towns and villages, through such institutions as imperial testimonials (jingbiao) honoring moral ­exemplars across the empire, became increasingly sophisticated.7 Orthodox gender values propagated in state laws, household instructions, lineage rules, and didactic and even vernacular literature shaped the behavior of ordinary as well as elite men and women.8 Against this background, over the course of the Ming, the number of women choosing widowhood over remarriage grew rapidly. Chaste widowhood was no longer merely a moral ideal, in striking contrast to earlier times when even elite wives remarried without being stigmatized.9 Moreover, the performance of virtue became highly dramatized for both men and women, when committing suicide as the ultimate demonstration of one’s moral character in the event of the fall of a dynasty (the Ming), imminent threat of sexual assault (for girls), and the death of a husband became a moral vogue. The Ming and Qing courts honored hundreds of thousands of moral exemplars, predominantly women, in the categories of the “faithful” (jie) and “martyred” (lie), and many more were singled out for eulogy by local governments and the Confucian literati.10 But no act was more extraordinary, in contemporary eyes, than that of the young girls who vowed lifelong celibacy or committed suicide for a deceased fiancé. This was a diverse body of young women, ­ranging in age at the time of their decision from the early teens to early twenties. Whereas scores were born into educated but not exceptionally established families, some belonged to the very top political and intellectual elite of the empire. For example, several of the grand secretaries of the Qing reared a daughter or granddaughter who became a faithful maiden.11 Of the leading intellectuals of the Ming-Qing times, Gu Yanwu (1613 – 82) was adopted and raised by a faithful maiden mother, and Yuan Mei (1716 –97) grew up with a faithful maiden sister. At the opposite end of the social spectrum, ordinary households, including those of peasants or petty merchants, also supplied an impressive number of faithful maidens. Despite their wide difference in social status, however, parents of faithful maidens virtually unanimously opposed their daughters’ choice. Their futile attempts at dissuasion and their continual frustration were fixtures in faithful maiden records. Throughout the Ming and Qing, stories about faithful maidens were widely publicized by the state and literati. Except for a few decades in the early Qing, the state regularly conferred upon them the court honor of jingbiao, whereby they were privileged to be commemorated with government-financed memorial shrines and arches. From 1644 through

Introduction  

1850, for example, the Qing court recognized close to five thousand faithful maidens who remained celibate and one thousand who had committed suicide.12 The Confucian literati’s fascination with faithful maidens was shown in the strikingly disproportionate representation of these girls in their writings about chaste women. That is to say, compared with the hundreds of thousands of chaste widows at the time, the number of faithful maidens was small. Yet faithful maidens figured just as prominently as chaste widows in the biographies and poems the literati composed in women’s honor.13 There is no question that the faithful maiden cult and the chaste widow cult were intimately related, and together they manifest the staggering female fidelity practice that swept across late imperial China. However, even though both were placed at the time in the general category of “fidelity,” the distinction between a chaste widow and a faithful maiden was never blurred in the minds of their contemporaries: whereas fidelity was a time-honored virtue expected of any respectful wife, Confucian teaching did not discriminate against a second betrothal for an unmarried woman. Marveling at the young girls’ resolve, scholars pointed out that for a widow not to remarry was understandable, because her relationship with her late husband was already established, ritually, emotionally, and economically, but the same could not be said of a faithful maiden. This key difference accounts for the flamboyant glorification of faithful maidens by supporters of the cult and for the powerful moral symbol projected onto these young women, for the supporters argue that, when young girls took on a grave obligation that was expected only from mature women and real widows, they stood for the ultimate virtue. This key difference also lies at the center of the heated controversy over the ideological legitimacy of the faithful maiden practice. Confucian literati—in their role as the moral arbiters of the society—were widely divided in their views. As soon as the cult was formed, in the second half of the Ming, critics pronounced that the young women’s actions were extreme and did not conform to ritual propriety. During the Qing, the passionate adulation of supporters was met with stunning denouncements from their colleagues, who derided the faithful maiden model as a kind of “corpse elopement” or as “adultery masquerading as fidelity” that sullied Confucian teaching.14 Whether a faithful maiden act was in accord with the Confucian ritual and whether it should be encouraged and the faithful maiden be honored constitute the questions that the educated elite were most concerned with regarding female

   Introduction behavior in the late imperial period, and the debate supplied a public platform for men of local distinction as well as those of empirewide standing. In stark contrast to the immense attention the faithful maidens drew in their own day, however, in our time their stories have largely been forgotten. In the limited scholarly work where they appear, they are typically lumped together with chaste widows in passing, so that a faithful maiden and a chaste widow seem hardly to differ.15 The historical complexity of their stories, furthermore, has been reduced to yet another example of gender oppression. While the cult is thus portrayed in light of women’s victimization to illustrate the plight of women under the repressive Confucian gender system, the Ming-Qing scholars criticizing the practice are lauded as pioneers of the women’s liberation movement. Some have called the faithful maiden act an example of “perverse sexuality,” suggesting that faithful maidens were simply too irrational to be comprehended.16 All of these views are closely aligned with the stereotypical characterization of women’s lives in traditional Chinese society. In a repressive society founded on the hierarchical principles of gender and generational seniority, the argument goes, young women were the most passive and insignificant members. But how passive or insignificant were they really? The faithful maiden cult is also distinctively positioned for historical inquiry because of the wide array of tensions it provoked. The young women’s unconventional actions upset the marriage system, and they disturbed the normative practice of the family. Their actions forced the state and scholars to articulate and debate the meaning of female virtue, raised fundamental questions of the applicability of Confucian rituals, and challenged the Confucian male elite to examine their own moral character and responsibilities. The tensions transcended both gender and inner-outer distinctions, bringing to the surface in a spectacular way the complex interplay among family interests, literati concerns, state agendas, and human emotions.

The Faithful Maiden Cult in the Larger Context In part, the issues considered in this book are framed by the scholarship on the chaste widow cult. They seek to explore some of the key historical questions concerning the late imperial female chastity phenomenon, of which the faithful maiden cult was arguably the most dramatic expression.17 For example, how can we make sense of its origins, rapid rise,

Introduction  

and persistent existence in this particular period? Historians have proposed hypotheses that emphasize variously ideology, economics, state policy, or male scholars’ roles to locate the historical factors contributing to the escalation of the chastity phenomenon.18 These discussions suggest that the chastity phenomenon did not come into existence in isolation and that it cannot be comprehended as a product of the working of any single historical force. Further research remains to be done before we can identify thoroughly the complex and nuanced intrinsic connections between the chastity phenomenon and the larger historical changes of the late imperial period. In tracing the history of the faithful maiden cult over several centuries, this study makes the following main observations concerning the faithful maiden cult’s interactions with cultural, political, and intellectual histories of the late imperial period. A primary finding of this study is a broad correlation between the faithful maiden cult’s escalation and the national and political crises, cultural fascination with extreme acts, and intensification of Confucian moral discourse on the cultivation of loyalty. Evidence suggests that the thirteenth century saw the first sign of the rise of faithful maiden cases, all from elite families. From the late fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries, the faithful maiden cult claimed wide attention, while ­taking on radical features such as suicide in the event of a fiancé’s death; the dramatized performance peaked in the seventeenth century, during which the saga of the martyred faithful maiden was exploited to the fullest by Confucian literati for its rich symbolism. Two of these three periods—the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries—were associated with a Han empire in distress and with eventual dynastic collapse at the hands of alien conquerors (the Mongols and the Manchus); the other period—the second half of the Ming—was an age of Confucian moral heroism and political disarray marked by eunuch power and struggles between the “evil” and “righteous” officials at court. This suggests that national and political crises were instrumental in providing fertile soil in which the cult could grow. On the one hand, prescribing an extreme form of female virtue represented a way for women with strong moral convictions to respond to changes in the public realm. Pursuing faithful maidenhood at a time of alien conquest and “barbaric” cultural contamination could, for example, be an elite daughter’s way of defining what it meant to be Chinese and of defending the supremacy of her native culture and family learning. Likewise, at times of fierce political struggle between the perceived “loyal” and “evil” factions of the government, faithful maidenhood demonstrated

   Introduction the comparable moral caliber of the Confucian women. Female chastity practice developed in a strikingly intensified ideological climate that emphasized personal moral cultivation. Cases such as that of Gu ­Yanwu’s mother, who became a faithful maiden at seventeen and a political martyr for the fallen Ming at the age of sixty, suggest that for women of strong principle, wifely fidelity and political loyalty represented two sides of one moral conviction. On the other hand, the intensive use of the faithful maiden image by Confucian literati for political and moral critique in times of crisis ­elevated the social stature of the faithful maiden while bringing more stories of faithful maidens to the public spotlight, thereby energizing the cult and perpetuating its spread into the general population. A crucial element in our understanding of the enduring enthusiasm of the state and the Confucian literati for the faithful maiden cult was its metaphorical power: the faithful maiden not only stood for wifely fidelity but also personified in a dramatic fashion the public and domestic virtues espoused by the governing class. For example, during the Ming-Qing dynastic transition, the glowing image of the fragile young girl who held steadfast in her moral resolve or even killed herself for her ideal overshadowed all other female moral icons, providing a unique venue through which the traumatized Confucian elite vented their sentiment, desperation, and political resolve. These feelings of the literati receded after the early Qing, and so did the dramatic features of the faithful maiden cult. It is evident that the formation of the cult and its taking on dramatic features, beginning in the second half of the Ming, also highlighted a culture that craved novelty and extremes in human behavior. During this period, the performance of virtue was increasingly dramatized and even violent, for men as well as for women. In the realms of the family and the polity, suicide, physical suffering, and endurance of hardship became defining characteristics of true virtue. The rise of this culture of dramatic, performative virtue had deep roots in the neo-Confucian call for moral cultivation and moral integrity (qijie), achieved by the suppression of natural human desires; it also corresponded directly with the political upheaval and moral heroism of the second half of the Ming. In examining the roles and reactions of the literati class, this book departs from current scholarship in that it focuses on the disjunction, rather than unity, in the Ming-Qing elite discourse on female chastity, and it stresses the intertwining of men’s intellectual endeavors and emotional complexity with young women’s social actions. The debate

Introduction  

over the legitimacy of the faithful maiden cult and its impact on Qing evidential scholarship serve as excellent examples of how a phenomenon created by young women shaped the intellectual agenda of their time, disclosing a passionate and divided world of the male Confucian scholars torn between academic principles, moral convictions, and personal feelings. In late imperial China, the definition of Confucian female virtue was not monolithic, and the Confucian elite were not a unified entity. Literati positions were conditioned as much by individual men’s academic principles as by their different understandings of morality and their personal emotions. In a continuously changing society, social practices generated new tensions that compelled the ruling elite to rethink what it meant to be “virtuous.” The faithful maiden was the embodiment of ideological tensions and struggles confronted by the late imperial elite. To examine the cult’s origin and escalation in the broad context of late imperial cultural, political, and intellectual history, I attempt not only to show the complexity of the historical conditions that contributed to the rise of the faithful maiden cult but also to situate women at the center of historical changes. Deemphasizing the conceptual separation of the “inner quarters” and public space, I argue that the practices of female fidelity and male loyalty were not mutually exclusive; they constructed each other and thus defined the meaning of virtue in that era. Women were not simply acted upon by historical forces. They were themselves actors in constructing late imperial culture and history.

In the Nexus of Qing Family Structure One of the greatest ironies of the faithful maiden cult is that whereas in public a faithful maiden was extolled by her supporters as a moral exemplar, within the family she was the source of frustration and strife, creating complications on all fronts. A faithful maiden achieved her aims at the cost of disobeying her parents’ wishes that she marry another man. The filial piety due her parents was in her case overridden by fidelity to her fiancé, which, in her parents’ view, was excessive and not obligatory. In her marital family (that is, her deceased fiancé’s family), a faithful maiden’s presence was unconventional and awkward. Frequently, her request to adopt a male child to continue her fiancé’s line was met with reluctance or resistance from his family and lineage; and she faced fierce property disputes, as she was viewed as a threat to the existing economic interests of other members of the family or of

10   Introduction the lineage. For all these reasons, the faithful maiden cult casts unique light on women’s dynamic relations to the family, the constraints they experienced, and the influence they exercised in it. Faithful maiden stories demonstrate that the unique moral capital that the young woman acquired was transferred into influence or even power that defied the normal gender and seniority hierarchy principles, allowing her greater control over her own life. Despite their unwillingness to accept her into their family, for instance, her deceased fiancé’s parents often had little choice but to give in to her wishes. Her request to establish a male heir to continue her deceased fiancé’s line, even though it often placed her within fierce family disputes, underlined the privilege bestowed upon her by the state, an exclusive privilege reserved, among unmarried women, solely for faithful maidens. In taking on the responsibility of raising a male heir, such young women were seen by the state and supporters as defenders of the patrilineal interests of their fiancés, fulfilling the ritual and familial functions in the place of these men. In light of the conventional wisdom about parent-daughter relations in imperial China, the tensions and conflicts that evolved around the faithful maidens’ decisions raise as many questions as they answer. For example, the popular depiction of a daughter was that she was a piece of property to be disposed of by her parents. She was subject to infanticide as a newborn or could be sold into a brothel when growing up to save her family in times of hardship, or her well-being might be sacrificed for that of her brother. But the faithful maiden stories depict profound anguish, worries, and caring on the part of the parents, who were dragged into a difficult situation by a determined daughter and exhausted themselves trying to find a solution for the impasse. To cite another popular belief: A daughter is assumed to have had no voice in her marital decisions. Parents made judgments at their sole discretion and pursued their own choices on her behalf; as a consequence she suffered from the arrangements. In the May Fourth discourse, the misery of arranged marriage was the focal point of the denunciation of the Confucian family system, and the image of a young woman killing herself to escape such a marriage became a heroic sacrifice in the face of women’s victimization. However, we would expect that, if a young girl had misgivings about her betrothal, she would be happy to dissolve a marriage arrangement on the death of her fiancé. Instead, faithful maidens desperately fought their parents to defend arrangements that the parents made in the first place. The contrast between these two

Introduction   11

i­ mages cannot be more striking: the May Fourth image of a woman killing herself to escape a marriage arranged by her parents; and the faithful maiden taking her own life to honor that marriage. Needless to say, neither type of depiction was false; both were the products of their time. But in our own time, the former—the victimized daughter who suffered from her arranged marriage—has been taken as the symbol for all women who lived in China’s past, whereas the latter—the faithful maiden who fought to honor that marriage and prevailed and whose voice was so loud and clear in late imperial records—has been silenced. It is easier to point out the bias and problems in the modern construction of historical women’s lives than it is to delineate in tangible terms the complex workings of the family system with regard to young women. The faithful maiden offers a rich story about parent-daughter confrontation, negotiation, and bonding in the face of a daughter’s life crisis. On one level, such conflict underscores the fundamental cultural norms that parents should care for their daughter and find her a suitable match. Therefore, for parents to give a daughter in marriage to a groom who was deceased or (in less common cases) sick, financially depleted, or deplorable in character was unconscionable. At the same time, the often graphically detailed descriptions of parental exhaustion occasioned by the continual vigilance needed to prevent a daughter from committing suicide illustrate parental responsibility and affection for their daughter as well as the daughter’s determination. Biographies portray the ultimate choice made by a daughter who suppressed her love for her parents in order to fulfill her devotion to her fiancé and his family—a powerful statement of the daughter’s self-identity—as emotionally devastating for both parents and daughter. Emotional ties figured prominently in the conflict, and many daughters appealed successfully to emotion to realize their choices. A daughter had a range of behaviors at her disposal to deliver her appeal: weeping, refusing to eat, threatening suicide, or even cutting her hair—an effective method of making herself unfit for another betrothal as well as a cultural gesture of making a pledge. It is also noteworthy that these initial conflicts never severed a faithful maiden’s daughterly connection and duty to her natal family. In the long years of her “widowed” life, a poverty-stricken faithful maiden would regularly turn to her natal family for support, sometimes living alternately in the homes of in-laws and parents. The patriarchal system did not prevent a daughter from preserving a close tie with her natal

12   Introduction home even under the situation in which a daughter was married against parental wishes.19 The fact that many faithful maidens did override parental authority, and that the tension with parents was resolved by the acquiescence of parents (or parents-in-law), suggests that state-sponsored endowments and the glorification of the cult led to varying degrees of empowerment of daughters. It confirms the observation that other historians have made that women in the same period were able to use the chaste widow ideal to defend their own wishes and interests in court.20 However, it is equally important to note that the faithful maiden stories of conflict and bonding reveal sustained cultural ideas and practices that, while rendering authority to parents, also gave daughters negotiation power when conflict arose. Fully realizing the fluid nature of these ideas and practices, many faithful maidens succeeded in pursuing a way of life of their own choosing.

The Question of “Why?” Ultimately, this study is about young women and their ways of dealing with a life crisis that loomed unusually large under the circumstance of late imperial society. There is little doubt that the faithful maidens were exceptional in that they did something not required by social norms. These same women might otherwise have led unremarkable lives had they not been stricken by misfortune. The life of a faithful maiden was not a result of premeditation. However, when misfortune struck, faithful maidenhood was a conscious choice, even in the face of daunting odds. The key question, then, is, what drove them to make such choices, typically against the wishes of both their own parents and the parents of their deceased fiancés? Critics of the faithful maiden cult hinted at self-serving interests. Some young women, they argued, might have married into their dead fiancés’ homes with an eye on the men’s property; some might have seen it as a way to acquire fame; some were coerced into suicide by their parents out of the latter’s desire for imperial awards. All this could be part of the faithful maiden story. The cases of Tanyangzi and Linji Chan Master Qiyuan Xinggang (1597–1654), two faithful maidens who later became charismatic religious leaders, suggest that some young women took advantage of the death of a fiancé to realize their spiritual goals.21 However, some basic facts call self-­interest into question. For example, many young women married into the homes of their dead fiancés when there was little hope for eco-

Introduction   13

nomic elevation, and the court jingbiao was never assured, especially for lower-class women. It is tempting for the modern reader of the faithful maiden story to construe faithful maidenhood as a form of resistance or female rebellion against the institution of marriage, particularly given the familiar representation of the miserable Chinese daughter-in-law in scholarly literature and the media. For those holding such a perspective, it would appear that faithful maidenhood presented an opportunity of escape. These women may have never wanted to marry, and the faithful maiden ideal handed them a legitimate reason to avoid marriage. Such speculations, however, run the risk of reading into the sources our own cultural assumptions, and they fall apart when considered logically. If these girls had perceived faithful maidenhood as a safe haven for escaping marriage and abuse at the hands of a mother-in-law, it would make no sense for them to insist upon marrying into the in-laws’ household. A more prevalent argument among contemporary historians who attempt to make sense of female chastity behavior is that it represents the intoxication of women by Confucian ideology. Holding the Confucian gender ideas of jie and lie responsible, they point out that the female chastity ideal “became a religion” in late imperial times.22 This argument assumes that young women were passive subjects of ideological control and were not capable of reasoning or rational actions. As the following chapters will show, however, this was far from the case. Faithful maidens were, of course, capable of evaluating the pros and cons of their decisions, and they arrived at their decisions believing they had made the best choices possible. But the premises upon which they made their life choices must be understood in the cultural and socioeconomic context of their own time. That context includes the Confucian honors accorded to moral behaviors, the symbolic environment of praising chaste widows, the cultural glorification of extraordinary deeds, the beliefs in an afterlife and destiny rooted in Buddhism and popular religion, the patrilineal family system, the didactic female education, and the institution of child betrothal. This last point was perhaps the crucial one in forging faithful maidens’ own understanding of their choices. The early betrothal gave rise to unique emotional and psychological conditions for their action. That is to say, betrothed at a very young age, they had internalized their future identity as a wife long before the wedding. This self-identity, acquired through the many betrothal rituals performed over the years, interacted in their sensitive minds with their views of honor and disgrace informed by the dominant cultural,

14   Introduction social, and religious values and made it impossible for them to pursue any other course of action than faithful maidenhood. This is not to suggest that circumstances in which the faithful maidens arrived at their decisions were identical, nor does this imply that each perceived her choice in the same way. In fact, sources reveal a spectrum of conceptions, with some young women proclaiming that their acts would advance social morality and others seeing their decisions as a matter of personal responsibility or even destiny. However, I argue that regardless of class and education, faithful maidens subscribed to a set of core values that weighed heavily in their choices. They associated a second engagement with degradation in moral character and viewed it as a violation of their sense of belonging. They identified, to varying degrees, their interests with those of their deceased fiancés, and taking on the roles of mother and wife (in which case they married their deceased fiancés) while serving their fiancés’ families gave them a sense of purpose in life. Although it is clear that female chastity and patrilineal values crucially influenced the ways in which faithful maidens positioned themselves, Confucian gender norms were not the sole constructs of their youthful mind-sets. The orthodox values were intertwined with ideas of yi (honor-bound duty) and qing (romantic love, feeling)—profusely celebrated in literature and popular theater—in informing their choices, whether to die or to live. To tackle the questions of the motivation, subjectivity, and self­perception of these young women, I attempt in what follows to expand the discussion of the female fidelity cult into an area that no one has yet fully probed. Much has been written about the late imperial female fidelity phenomenon as a moral discourse and as a social practice from the viewpoints of the polity and society. However, the central question of how young women themselves thought about their actions has largely evaded the attention deserved, so a major gap exists in our discussion of the late imperial female fidelity cult. This book takes the tensions and dramatic actions of the faithful maiden cult as primary loci where we can attempt to answer such questions. It examines the rituals of suicide and the spirit weddings of faithful maidens, their codes of conduct, and their actions of self-mutilation and self-denial to comprehend how they formed and expressed their self-identity. Looking into these questions, I hope, will also shed light on the emotional and spiritual world of late imperial young women in general: their concerns and beliefs, their views of their place in the family and society, their aspirations, and their sense of failure or fulfillment.

Introduction   15

Sources A wide array of materials that survive from the centuries during which the faithful maiden cult flourished makes it possible to discuss the many important yet complicated questions and issues outlined previously. A major breakthrough in the past decades in the historical research on late imperial women is the rediscovery of women’s own writings, principally poetry, thanks to the spread of literary education of daughters among the well-to-do during this period. “Poetry gives words to what the mind is intent upon [shi yan zhi].”23 Writing poetry gave educated young women an infinitely valuable voice of their own, and the “precious records” they left behind have enabled historians to address the types of questions and to reconstruct a type of history that was impossible to address in the past.24 In this study, poems by faithful maidens form part of the core source for discussing questions of subjectivity, emotions, and their understanding of the meanings of their actions. Written at critical junctures in their lives—some immediately before committing suicide—the poems allow us to contextualize the women’s actions, recorded predominantly by male scholars, from the perspective of the young women themselves. Their voices confirm one of the major findings of this study: Faithful maidens were not simply “moral exemplars,” nor were they victims of Confucian ideology. Rather, they were passionate young women whose lives were complicated by duty, love, aspiration, and fatalism. Other women, including friends and sisters of the faithful maidens, also wrote on or for faithful maidens, and their writings (again, mostly poems) offset the otherwise male-­dominated records and give us an intimate look at women’s reactions to the faithful maiden cult. Still, the majority of the sources about faithful maidens were produced by men. They fall into the following main categories or genres: central government jingbiao records, local gazetteer entries reporting exemplary women, poems and biographies composed in memory of faithful maidens, anecdotes that men jotted down about faithful maiden gossip, drama and fiction portraying faithful maiden stories for popular entertainment, and essays and commentaries to Confucian ritual texts through which scholars debated the cult. Each type of source employed its own style and voice and was produced with a distinctive function and purpose. Their differences and sometimes even contradictory natures notwithstanding, collectively these sources yield rich and nuanced information from a variety of viewpoints. Of course, written

16   Introduction records are not the only sources that inform us. Silences in the sources can be just as informative as what is explicitly stated. To track the state’s position concerning female fidelity practice in general and the faithful maiden cult in particular, I have relied chiefly on the “veritable records” (Shilu) of the Ming and Qing courts. Both dynasties left behind copious and continuous Shilu records in the form of chronicles organized by reign period and compiled by court historians shortly after the death of the reigning monarch. Theoretically, the Shilu present the most comprehensive record of the major activities undertaken by the monarch in question. For our purposes, the Shilu prove useful for two reasons. First, they record all jingbiao awardees, including faithful maiden awardees, for the entire Ming-Qing period along with the precise date on which an award was conferred. Hence, they yield both a near-complete set of data on faithful maidens honored and serve as the most direct indicator of temporal changes in the state approach for the entire late imperial period. Second, that information— when and to what extent the jingbiao awarded to faithful maidens were expanded, halted, or decreased, and when Manchu women were first given ­jingbiao awards, for example—allows us to further define state policy and to examine the state’s concerns and the impact of its actions in relation to political and social changes of the time. But the Shilu omit the details of the cases altogether. These details— from a girl’s age and social background to her spirit wedding (or suicide) and her life as an unwed widow—surface in abundance in the various types of faithful maiden biographies and accounts (loosely termed zhuan) by Confucian literati. As with any type of historical sources, biographical narrative in Chinese history has innate biases because of its moral orientation and formulaic presentation. A formal biography is often a eulogy, as authors chose to emphasize the normative moral behavior of their protagonists and present them in the best possible light. This has led scholars to draw a parallel between biographical writing in imperial China and hagiography in the West. However, we must note that China has long-standing and well-developed traditions of true ­hagiography in two major religious traditions, Buddhism and Daoism,25 and Chinese readers and writers maintained a distinction between hagiography and other forms of biography. Moreover, there was a diverse range of biographical accounts, and they did not conform to one style.26 At one end of the spectrum stand the highly formulated, tersely written texts, such as the biographies of virtuous women in the official histories; on the opposite end are heartfelt, richly detailed ­accounts concerning a young

Introduction   17

woman whom an author knew personally. Of course, a talented writer would have no trouble manipulating even the most stylized form to tell a real human story and to convey his feelings, especially when the subject was someone he loved or someone related to him.27 A great number of faithful maiden biographies from which this study draws the bulk of its information were composed by men who knew their subjects directly or through some familial or social connection.28 To offset the gender bias in the male-authored sources, I have under­ taken two approaches: reading such sources in conjunction with the women’s own writings and reading them from a perspective other than that of the author. Read from different angles, between the lines and words, and in conjunction with faithful maidens’ own surviving works, biographical writings can be remarkably revealing about the inner world of these young women. For example, male authors typically stress the faithful maiden’s self-denial and self-imposed isolation as marks of moral integrity. I argue, however, that such acts gave away her intense struggles in coping with a profoundly challenging life and that they served as practical strategies for shielding herself from public scrutiny. A conventional male genre such as the biography can be just as useful as young women’s own writings in helping us probe the minds and emotions of the faithful maidens. The seven chapters that follow are grouped into three parts, with perspectives shifting from historical and social settings to the families and faithful maidens themselves and finally to intellectuals critiquing the cult. Part One examines the cult’s origin and escalation in the political, cultural, and social context of late imperial history. Part Two reconstructs the tensions, emotions, and lives experienced by the faithful maidens and their families. Part Three treats the scholars’ debate over the faithful maiden cult. This book does not focus on the biological condition of the faithful maidens but delineates how historical and cultural factors molded their minds and behavior. Although it was a distinct cultural product of late imperial Chinese society, the faithful maiden cult can be illuminating for comparative studies of adolescent girls in other cultures where life crises, body, sexuality, and suicide emerge as strikingly common themes.

part one History

the three chapters in this section investigate the cultural, political, and social contexts in which the faithful maiden cult emerged, thrived, and was given meaning by its supporters over the late imperial period. Beginning with a trace of early discourses on faithful maidens, Chapter 1 focuses on the key historical moments at which the discourse shifted and the cult took shape. Evidence shows that only from the thirteenth century was the faithful maiden act uniformly framed in Confucian moral terms and singled out for praise by the state. The faithful maiden phenomenon’s gradual growth thereafter led to the formation of the cult during the second half of the Ming, when the practice took on dramatic features, such as suicide. The discussion points to a number of mutually constructive historical forces that interacted with the cult’s surge: the intense moral discourse on loyalty and chastity, political heroism at court, and fanatic societal obsession with dramatic and extreme human behavior epitomized in loyal suicides in the larger society. The faithful maiden cult encapsulates the spirit of the age; young women were not marginal but active actors in shaping the history and culture of their time. Dynastic crisis of the seventeenth century forms the background for the discussion in Chapter 2, which details how the fall of the Ming in 1644 and the subsequent Manchu conquest transformed the ways in which the elite interpreted the faithful maiden act and constructed a special relationship between Confucian literati and the faithful maiden cult. The metaphorical meaning of the faithful maiden was exploited fiercely during this period, and the young women were

20   History turned into a pivotal symbol of political loyalty, comparable to a loyal subject who had not served a lord yet nevertheless dedicated his life to the lord. The faithful maiden image gave expression to various emotions and convictions of the profoundly traumatized elite in a most powerful way. The faithful maiden cult entered a phase of steady growth after the seventeenth century. Chapter 3 presents a wide range of political and social mechanisms that supported the cult and details the motives of those involved. The first part of the chapter concentrates on state policies honoring faithful maidens and chaste widows. Drawing on a complete set of court testimonials (jingbiao), it outlines the changing approaches over a number of reign periods of the Qing monarchs, exploring the connections between the changes made to the policies, such as those on chaste suicide in the early Qing, and the larger agendas of the government and the monarchs. The second half of the chapter includes a broad examination of various activities undertaken by agencies at the local level that promoted the cult. Under discussion here are the actions of local government officials, elite of both high and lower status, and the lineage organizations, with a particular focus on commemorative writings and collaborative memorial architecture projects. The chapter ends on a comparative note, showing South China as having far exceeded the North in the distribution of faithful maiden cases, and offers a hypothesis for the possible cause of this regional variation. The faithful maiden cult was a distinctive late imperial phenomenon. It surfaced and developed in close connection with large historical events, cultural shifts, and political and social institutions of the late imperial period. The enthusiasm and energy with which the social elite promoted the cult in an immensely publicized manner open new ways to reexamine familiar characterizations, such as the “inner” and “outer” separation. The tremendous attention the cult claimed throughout the centuries demonstrates that young women were not marginal to late imperial society; rather, they had a deep impact on the culture and history of their time.

chapter

Moral Heroism and Craving for Extremes

1

The Ming Period (1368 –1644)

in his essay denouncing the faithful maiden practice, Mao Qiling (1623 –1716), a leading scholar of his day, charged that the practice was never recorded in the Six Confucian Classics, the twenty-one histories, or any other writings that were worth mentioning by cultivated men, so it bore no authority in history.1 Many of Mao’s contemporaries did not share his position, but even the eminent scholars who spoke highly of faithful maidens agreed with his observation about the scarcity of early records on the subject.2 Faithful maidenhood was a new phenomenon, they claimed, one that separated their own time from that of the ancients, and one that had suddenly surged forward out of obscurity. Indeed. Even though scattered precedents found their way into historical records, faithful maidenhood did not appear to have offered young girls much appeal before the thirteenth century, nor had it attracted attention from the state and the literati. Significant signs of change marked the thirteenth century as a turning point in the discourse on the faithful maiden practice, paving the way for the faithful maiden cult to grow. However, the faithful maiden phenomenon would not have grown into an empirewide cult had it not been for the special conditions of the Ming era. During the Ming, the practice both evolved into a cult amid a cultural fascination with extraordinary behavior in the name of morality and corresponded closely with the Confucian elite’s anxiety over moral deficiency and the surge of moral heroism in the political realm. The rise of the faithful maiden cult thereby underscores a close correlation between the changes in the so-called women’s quarters and in the political and cultural realms, illuminating young women as actors who shaped the culture of their time.

22   History

Zhen and Zhennü: The Linguistic Origin “Zhennü” (literally, “a zhen woman”), translated in the context of this study as “faithful maiden,” was not a late imperial concept. It predated the Ming by more than two thousand years, originally with a wider application. The key character, zhen, as it first appeared in oracle bone inscriptions from the Shang dynasty (sixteenth– eleventh centuries BCE) and in the Book of Changes, means “to divine.” In most Zhou (eleventh century–771 BCE) through Former Han (266 – 8 BCE) texts its usage had been expanded to encompass the moral attributes of a human being: upright, appropriate, unbending, and consistent. A gender-neutral attribute, zhen was applied as much to men as to women.3 But how zhen was manifested in action was gender specific. In the Mao Commentary on the Book of Songs, the oldest existing authority on this Confucian classic (dated to the third century BCE), a zhennü is described as a woman who would not marry someone who did not suit her or who would not submit to a vicious man.4 The classic textbook of women’s moral education in imperial China, Biographies of Exemplary Women (Lienü zhuan) by Liu Xiang (77?– 6 BCE), provides us with another venue to analyze the gendered meanings of zhen and zhennü in its time. In this text, exemplars praised for their zhen disposition include widows who rejected remarriage and wives who refused to leave husbands who were ill with a terminal disease or who neglected them. However, the attribute of zhen was also associated with actions taken under other circumstances. Lady Zhenjiang, the consort of King Zhao of Chu, for example, declined to leave her terrace though threatened by floods, as she had agreed with the king that she would answer only to a summons that came with the king’s identification tally. “A principle for a zhennü is not to breach an agreement, and the brave should not fear death,” she declared. When the messenger came back with the king’s tally, the terrace had already collapsed and she had been carried away by the currents and drowned (see Figure 1.1).5 In another example, a woman known for her zhenyi (uprightness and constancy) attribute refused to carry out her wedding because her fiancé’s family had not completed the appropriate rituals for the marriage. The frustrated family sued her, and she ended up in jail. But she still would not change her mind.6 It is the way of a zhennü that she “prefers to die rather than agree to a marriage that fails to complete even just one of the rituals” (yi li bu bei, sui si bu cong).7 The essence of zhen is thus to uphold moral principles or to fulfill

Moral Heroism and Craving Extremes   23

promises made according to these principles, firmly, single-mindedly, and consistently, or to use Liu Xiang’s words, to be “concentrated and steadfast” (yi zhuanyi wei zhen). A zhennü was a woman of profound moral rectitude who put her principles before her own life, refusing to bow to intimidation or threat. A fifth-century case in which the state of the Northern Wei (386 –556) bestowed the honorific title of zhennü on a young woman confirms that this quality remained at the core of its definition. A daughter from a Sixian family was engaged to a man by the name of Peng, and before their marriage Peng made sexual advances. She reprimanded him, saying that, although they were engaged, they had not received the instruction from their parents to marry, and therefore she would rather die than violate the ritual. Outraged, Peng killed her. Peng was put to death by the imperial court, and the Sixian daughter was honored with the title of zhennü “to make known her virtue.”8 A comparison between Sixian and a typical late imperial zhennü reveals how much the meaning of the term had changed. In both situations,

figure 1.1  Zhenjiang, the consort of King Zhao of Chu. s o u r c e : Liu 1966: 109 –10.

24   History tensions rose from a young woman’s relationship with her fiancé. However, Sixian placed her allegiance with her parents’ instructions, but a late imperial zhennü disobeyed her parents and saw her fiancé as the ultimate object of loyalty. From Sixian to the late imperial faithful maidens, history saw the reduction of the applicability of zhen to one realm.9 Zhennü in the late imperial period became a category reserved largely for unmarried women who pledged loyalty to their first betrothed. As the virtue of zhen for women increasingly came to be concentrated on marital fidelity, its other applications were marginalized. The shifting meaning of zhen attests to a changed emphasis in the late imperial definition of ­female virtue.10

The Early Tales Prior to the thirteenth century, accounts of a bereaved fiancée who refused to marry another man appeared only sporadically.11 They diverge considerably in the ways they portray the protagonists, with some extolled for their fidelity and others for their religious efficacy or deeds of generosity. Perhaps significantly, the two earliest cases were recorded in the didactic literature of exemplary women. But even there, the moral messages were not uniform. The first story, recorded in Liu Xiang’s ­Biographies of Exemplary Women, is said to have taken place in the Spring and Autumn period (770 – 476 BCE): Lady [Weixuan], daughter of the duke of Qi, was on her way to the Wei to marry [the duke of Wei]. When she arrived at the city gate [of Wei], the duke of Wei died. Her nursemaid said: “You may return home.” She did not listen. She thereupon entered the city, observing a three-year mourning for him.12 When the mourning period was over, his younger brother succeeded as the duke of Wei. He proposed to her: “Wei is a small state, and it cannot afford two kitchens. Please let us share one kitchen.” She did not agree [to marry him]. The duke of Wei sent an envoy to Qi to tell her brothers about it. Her brothers all wanted her to marry the duke, and they told Lady Weixuan their opinion through a messenger. She did not listen to them either. Thereupon, she wrote a stanza: “My heart is not like a stone, / and it will not turn. / My heart is not like a mat, / and it will not roll.”13

The cited stanza is contained in “Cypress Boat” (Bozhou) in the “Airs of Bei” (Beifeng) section of the Book of Songs,14 but the credibility of Liu’s account is nowhere verified.15 According to the Mao Commentary, the poem was written by a frustrated gentleman whose muddle-headed ruler failed to recognize his virtue. Zhu Xi (1130 –1200), the Song dynasty philosopher and a Book of Songs expert, suspected that it was written by an estranged wife who had lost her husband’s favor because

Moral Heroism and Craving Extremes   25

of his attraction to his concubines.16 The question of historical authenticity notwithstanding, the account in Biographies of Exemplary Women shows that the faithful maiden ideal had an early champion. Placing the story in the section “Steadfast and Deferential,” Liu Xiang framed Lady Weixuan’s decision in terms of the moral principle of “uprightness and constancy,” praising her for her adamant adherence to the relationship with her fiancé.17 Lady Weixuan was to become an inspirational model for many late imperial girls whose basic education included the Biographies of Exemplary Women (see Figure 1.2). The term “cypress boat vow” would come to stand for young women’s resolve to neither remarry nor be betrothed a second time.18

figure 1.2  Lady Weixuan. s o u r c e : Liu 1966: 95 –96.

26   History A second faithful maiden, as reported by Huangfu Mi (215 – 82) in his Biographies of Exemplary Women, made her vow of celibacy under entirely differently circumstances.19 When Luo Jing suffered the death of her father (possibly in an epidemic), her fiancé, Zhu Kuang, took risks to manage the situation for her family and consequently became ill and died. “Out of her gratitude for him, Luo Jing vowed not to marry.” She resisted a man who had taken her siblings hostage as a means to force her into marrying him. “The reason that I give myself to the deceased and vowed not to be betrothed again,” she told him, “is that I am deeply grateful to Zhu Kuang, who died for my father. I have suffered a great deal, and I hope you will sympathize and let me go. If you do not, I will die to preserve my will.”20 Unlike Lady Weixuan’s, Luo Jing’s choice not to marry was grounded on her personal feelings rather than on the abstract idea of moral propriety. Her act was comprehensible and rational, as the critics of the faithful maiden cult in the late imperial period would see it. In the late imperial controversy, the critics praised Luo Jing as the correct model, in contrast to the young women of their own time who, as they saw it, vowed fidelity for a deceased fiancé for no good reason.21 Outside the elite “exemplary women” genre, other scattered sources give away ordinary people’s fascination with faithful maidens, but in these stories folk flavor overwhelmed the didactic message. In the Zhenyuan reign (785 – 804) during the Tang (618 –906), according to one story, a man from Sihui, Guangdong province, was killed by a tiger while collecting firewood. His fiancée, surnamed Wen, “hurried to his funeral, put on mourning garments for three years, and waited upon her parents-in-law diligently and carefully served them delicacies.” Afterward, she felt deeply sad and withdrew to the mountains, cutting off her connections with people. Years later, a mysterious cloud suddenly rose to the sky. A woman appeared in the cloud, surrounded by flags and musicians playing instruments. “[The crowd viewing the scene] burst into cheers, saying that the Wen woman had gone to become a deity.” An Altar of Ascending to Heaven and a Daoist shrine were erected dedicated to Wen. Chen Gongfeng, the twelfth-century narrator of this story, tells us: “For many years morning incense and evening lamps have never gone out in the shrine. At times of drought and flood, the shrine never fails to answer the wishes of the supplicants.”22 A miracle then unfolded in front of Chen’s own eyes. In the spring of 1133, drought visited the area again. Chen and others, led by the magistrate, appealed to the goddess. The next day a heavy rain fell.

Moral Heroism and Craving Extremes   27

In his amazement, Chen commented that the magic power was derived from Wen’s immortal spirit, which corresponded with Heaven.23 Chen praises Wen for her “pure and upright behavior” and hints that her ascent to divinity was made possible by the merit of her moral deeds. Wen was the first in a string of deified faithful maidens yet to come in the late imperial period, whose virtue lent them mysterious power that turned them into objects of worship. The theme of supernatural power gave the Wen story a lingering attraction; the enshrinement kept it alive over time. There were less mysterious tales, in which women who remained celibate after their fiancés’ deaths were remembered for donating their wealth for public welfare.24 In these (originally oral) stories, the faithful maidens did not appear primarily as moral icons of fidelity. They were worshipped, appreciated, or even romanticized for their mystic powers or for their charitable deeds. They lived in local legends instead of empirewide glory; the villagers saw them as exceptional individuals who had done great service to their communities, and it was for this that they were commemorated.

Changing Discourse: The Song and Yuan Periods If we call these early incidents the prelude, then the thirteenth century opened the first chapter of the official faithful maiden discourse that portrayed these maidens solely as moral objects. Henceforth, myth and religious piety receded, while moral rhetoric pushed its way to the center of the narrative, thanks to the collective efforts of the state and the Confucian literati. The thirteenth century recorded more faithful maidens than any previous periods, and for the first time in history, the Southern Song (1127–1279) court conferred on them the imperial award of jingbiao. A time-honored practice that dated back to the Han dynasty, jingbiao was one of the central Confucian concepts of governance. It was a measure of ordering society through “educating and transforming [the common people]” (jiaohua), as well as a gesture of imperial benevolence, one principal criterion for a Confucian ruler.25 The Southern Song court placed faithful maidens among the ranks of virtuous women, applauding explicitly with moral rhetoric their decisions to remain celibate and emphasizing their service to their deceased fiancés and their families. The court, for example, granted a certain Cheng daughter, who was engaged to a descendant of the Song statesman Sima Guang (1019 – 86),

28   History the title of chaste widow ( jiefu).26 It praised another young woman, Ye Nütong in lavish moral terms: “You had been engaged but had not performed the marital ritual when you made a ‘cypress boat’ vow and went to raise his orphan [meaning ‘adopting a son to raise as his heir’]. Years and months have gone by, but your character is like ice and frost, which becomes firmer as time goes by. You have the virtue of the ancient righteous women.”27 The court conferred on her the title of ruren and decreed that she be rewarded with cloth and wine monthly and her neighborhood honored with the title “neighborhood of the upright woman” (lienü fang).28 State recognition of the faithful maiden emerged at the local level as well, carried out by magistrates and by editors of local gazetteers. In the 1250s, for instance, the magistrate of Yuqian county, Zhejiang province, honored the residence of a young woman, Liu, who had been engaged to a jinshi degree holder, with the inscription “lienü fang.” Records of Lin’an (Lin’an zhi, compiled during 1265 –74) portrays her as a determined heroine who fought her parents when they tried to dissuade her and threatened them with her suicide. When her frightened parents acquiesced, “she put on coarse mourning garments, and went to her fiancé’s family. She threw herself on his coffin, weeping until she could weep no more.”29 Possibly the earliest instance of a local government honoring a faithful maiden, the case is especially noteworthy for the ways in which the story was presented: it was told exclusively in light of wifely fidelity, and the narrative is built entirely around the dramatic moments of Liu’s acting out her resolve. The moralistic portrayal bears a striking resemblance to those that we will see in late imperial times. Beyond the government apparatus, literati also geared up to aggrandize the virtue of the faithful maiden.30 Ye and Liu were made the subjects of a biography and a poem, respectively, by contemporary male scholars, and the poem was inscribed on a stone erected on the roadside for public display.31 But the earliest extant faithful maiden eulogies by individual authors date from the Yuan period (1279 –1368), of which the poems by Xiao Ju (1241–1318) and Yang Weizhen (1296 –1370) are worth special attention.32 Xiao’s poem, entitled “A Faithful Maiden from ­Yingchuan,” hints at a possible suicide following her fiancé’s death. The suicide of a faithful maiden after the death of a fiancé was unprecedented before the Yuan, but change seems to have been under way. In a separate case, a petition was brought to the Yuan court to honor a faithful maiden who also took her own life. The government was cautious, however. Yu Que (1301–58), the chief councilor, blocked the request,

Moral Heroism and Craving Extremes   29

saying that the young woman’s act exceeded the Confucian principle of mean (zhongyong) and should not be singled out for praise.33 Profound emotion pervades Yang Weizhen’s poetic account of his paternal cousin, Yang Xue, allowing us a glance of the faithful maiden’s upbringing as well as his perspective on her action. Yang Xue was reared in the eminent Yang family of Kuaiji (present Shaoxing) in Zhejiang province and was educated in literature and art. When her fiancé passed away, Xue “preserved her conviction” (shouzhi) by declining a marriage proposal from a high-ranking official. She later made a “virgin’s grave” for herself and died of hunger during the chaos that brought down the Yuan empire. Written in the “music bureau” (yuefu) style, a good part of Yang Weizhen’s poem elaborates on Xue’s refined upbringing and artistic talents and the extravagant betrothal gifts presented by her suitor—mimicking the famous “Peacock Flies Southeast”34—but Yang Xue was determined: The virgin girl vowed to her mother: “I prefer to die than descend from this hall!”35 Alas, the virgin of the Yang family! To maintain fidelity was especially difficult for her. Having served her mother to her death, She carried earth to build her mother’s grave. At fifty her hair turned white, But at fifty she was still a virgin. She vowed to make a grave for herself, In the south mountain in front of the grave was erected an ornamental column. The war raided the devastated town, For three months, she did not open her door. A lonely woman, as long as she lived, How could she be like the one from the town who marries over and over!36

Yang Weizhen’s poetic narrative was at once sympathetic and admiring, blending a touch of sadness with pride: his cousin showed the moral integrity that matched her refined rearing, distinguishing her from those who disgraced themselves with remarriage. It is worth noting that the Yang family claimed another chaste daughter, Yang Yi, a cousin to both Weizhen and Xue. Yi’s husband died the day after their wedding, so it very well could be that the marriage was not consummated. When her mother pressed her to marry a powerful official, she locked herself up in her room and took her own life.37 These accounts offer some clues to the origins of the faithful maiden

30   History cult. Clearly, the thirteenth century indicated a very different attitude toward the faithful maiden act. This change is not surprising. It was in line with a growing emphasis in the public discourse on morality and wifely fidelity. There was, as Patricia Ebrey describes, a “widespread support” for widow fidelity in Song society,38 and the Song state frequently enshrined chaste widows through the institution of jingbiao. The Southern Song, in particular, saw the emergence of a more rigid neo-Confucian redefinition of female chastity—some scholars at the time went so far as to declare that remarriage was “a crime that deserves more than death.”39 Historians have been cautious in their evaluation of the impact of this ideology on Song social practice, pointing to such facts as frequent remarriage of widows and widows’ having more property and inheritance rights. These faithful maiden cases indicate, however, that the thirteenth century not only witnessed the rise of extreme rhetoric about female chastity but also saw the rise of a radical approach by the state and elite: championing an extreme form of chastity. We may also note that the faithful maiden ideal began to appeal to daughters of elite families. All the known cases took place among the elite class. We may construe this shift from a broader historical context. That is to say, the shift did not merely signify a kind of reconceptualization about female chastity. In her recent work, Beverly Bossler has argued explicitly that the growing concern with female fidelity in the late Song was tied to growing concern with male political loyalty.40 The unprecedented emphasis on wifely fidelity developed in tandem with an equally unprecedented focus on political loyalty for men in moral discourse, which appears to have been shaped by a national crisis—the threat of foreign invasion that the Song dynasty faced. Although long held as a cardinal Confucian virtue, loyalty had been taken most seriously as a defining criterion in the evaluation of a man’s moral character since the Song. As Richard Davis has documented, serving another ruler was never perceived as negatively as it came to be in the minds of Song intellectuals. Heroic resistance and suicide were common scenes during the Mongol conquest of South China, and women often joined men in mass suicides.41 Recent studies have suggested a connection between the rise of the chaste widow practice and both the Yuan court’s temporary imposition of the levirate marriage and the Yuan changes of law limiting a widow’s property rights.42 According to this line of analysis, widowhood is seen as a way for women to avoid the “barbaric” levirate marriage, in which a man inherited the widow of an elder male relative, and to maintain

Moral Heroism and Craving Extremes   31

control of her dowry, which the Yuan law stripped from a widow upon remarriage.43 This analysis, however, has its limits when it comes to understanding the actions of faithful maidens like Yang Xue. A faithful maiden was not actually married, so she did not face the same threats as would a real widow. For an upper-class household like the Yangs from South China, where resistance to Mongol rule was more intense than in the North, the impact of the Mongol invasion can be seen in a different light. Lamenting the cultural contamination brought about by the Mongol invasion, Wang Zhi (1379 –1462) noted that its damage to the relationship between a husband and wife was especially profound: “The Yuan occupied the country for nearly a hundred years. It changed the Middle Kingdom’s customs with its barbaric practices, and in particular the husband-wife relationship decayed. . . . At the time only scholarly families, which had studied the Poetry and History for generations, stood firm and were not changed by it. Yet there were not a lot of them.”44 To be sure, faithful maidenhood was already applauded by the state and literati before the Mongol invasion, but the sense of cultural crisis invoked by “degraded” customs supported by the Mongols could inspire elite men and women to prescribe higher moral codes of conduct. Evidently, Yang Weizhen saw his cousins as defenders of moral integrity in Confucian cultural terms. By adhering to the codes of the cultural elite and resisting a second betrothal and remarriage, young women like Yang Xue and Yang Yi not only defended what Confucians referred to as “this culture of ours” but also helped push forward a more rigid moral standard for elite women.45

The Ming State Policies Several institutional changes signaled the acceleration of the state recognition of faithful maidenhood in the early Ming, setting the stage for the cult’s full formation later in the dynasty. Immediately after the founding of the Ming in 1368, the court sponsored the Yuan History (Yuanshi) project. Three faithful maidens are included in its exemplary women (lienü) section, making the Yuan History the first dynastic history to single out faithful maidens for official recognition.46 In its much expanded jingbiao institution, the Ming government further deviated from the practice of its predecessors to make faithful maidens regular recipients of the award. In 1398, the founding emperor Zhu Yuanzhang (1328 –98) issued the first jingbiao to a faithful maiden.47 Thereafter, as

32   History with chaste widows, a faithful maiden was eligible for jingbiao if she was “widowed” before age thirty and remained widowed until age fifty. The awards for jingbiao recipients were impressive. “When the Ming came to power,” composers of the Ming History (Mingshi) state, “it issued a regulation that the governor and provincial education commissioner should report any case [of a virtuous woman] to the court annually. The grandest [jingbiao] award was [the privilege of] building a shrine, and the lesser award was building an arch, in her honor.”48 The recipient’s family was also exempt from corvée labor.49 The most radical move of the early Ming was the court’s conferral of awards on faithful maidens who had committed suicide, a practice from which Yuan officials had refrained. In 1430, the court approved the first of many such cases.50 In the edicts issued in the early years of the Ming, a faithful maiden was commonly listed among the “chaste widows” ( jiefu) or “martyred widows” (liefu). Over the course of the sixteenth century, however, the court increasingly used “zhennü” for faithful maidens who remained alive, while placing those who killed themselves under the category “martyred maidens” (lienü) alongside other unmarried women who died resisting rape. In time zhennü also became a generic term for both types of faithful maidens, deceased and alive, as seen in literati writings on faithful maidens.51 Corresponding to this shift, various colloquial names for faithful maidens that carried no moral denotation, such as “virgin” (chunü), “old virgin” (laonü), “black-haired lady” (heitou gu), and “white-haired lady” (baitou nü),”52 were eliminated, partly as a result of local officials’ advocacy.53 While old, “vulgar” terms were driven out of fashion, new terms—wangmen gua (fiancé widowhood, literarily meaning “doorgazing widowhood”), weihunqi (wife who is not yet married), and pinqi (betrothed wife)—were gradually added to colloquialisms.54 The new terms signaled a fundamental perceptual change: A betrothed woman was by definition not merely a betrothed daughter of her father but a “wife” to her fiancé. A woman who lost her betrothed was no longer viewed as unwed. Instead, she was a “widow” who had not passed the doorstep of her husband’s home. The Jiajing reign (1522 – 66) saw the first dramatic increase in the jingbiao awards issued to faithful maidens, in particular those who had committed suicide. From 1528 to 1560, within a period of 33 years, 28 faithful maidens received jingbiao.55 The figure is nearly double that of all those honored from 1368 to 1521, a total of 154 years. Seven of the 15 women who received awards before 1522 committed suicide. By

Moral Heroism and Craving Extremes   33

contrast, of the 28 who received awards during the Jiajing reign alone, 20 committed suicide. Local gazetteers report a similar change. The 1502 gazetteer of Huizhou prefecture, Anhui province, for example, recorded 152 chaste widows since the early Ming, none of whom was a faithful maiden. In the 1566 edition of the same gazetteer, 168 more chaste widows were added, including 4 faithful maidens.56 It is not clear whether all 4 cases had occurred between 1502 and 1566; regardless, the increase in number strongly indicates a new interest in reporting faithful maiden cases. These trends persisted through the remainder of the Ming. From the Jiajing reign onward, state awards for faithful maidens became more regular and frequent, and in the selection of the jingbiao recipients, precedence was given to those who had committed suicide. In the entire Ming period (except from 1633 to 1644), a total of 156 faithful maidens received awards.57 Of these, 112 committed suicide. From 1528 (that is, the seventh year of the Jiajing reign) to 1632, in a period of 105 years, 141 faithful maidens, 105 of whom killed themselves, received awards (see Figure 1.3; “Zhennü” refers to the faithful maidens who stayed alive, and “Lienü” represents those who committed suicide). The actual number of faithful maiden cases is surely higher than the number of jingbiao awards given. Data gathered from the early Qing encyclopedia, the Completed Collection of Graphs and Writings of Ancient and Modern Times (Gujin tushu jicheng), which was based on local gazetteer sources that sometimes include those who did not receive awards as well as 50 40 30 20 10 0 1369 Ð 1389 Ð 1409 Ð 1429 Ð 1449 Ð 1469 Ð 1489 Ð 1509 Ð 1529 Ð 1549 Ð 1569 Ð 1589 Ð 1609 Ð 1388 1408 1428 1448 1468 1488 1498 1528 1548 1568 1588 1608 1632 ZhennŸ

LienŸ

f i g u r e 1 . 3   Faithful maidens honored with jingbiao during the Ming period. s o u r c e : Li and Yang 1995.

34   History those who did, show a sharp increase in faithful maiden cases in the Ming. The encyclopedia reported 291 faithful maiden cases for the Ming period. By comparison, the number of cases for the Yuan was a mere 17.58 Even if we take into consideration that the Ming had a larger population, lasted longer than the Yuan, and was closer in time to that of the encyclopedia’s compilers so that more records might have survived, the increase is still startling.59 Characteristic behaviors of the faithful maiden cult were taking shape over the course of the Ming. Whereas pre-Ming cases often involved a situation in which the fiancé died while the bride was arriving at his family’s home for the wedding, such circumstances became insignificant in Ming cases. Moreover, before the Ming, living with one’s own parents was fairly common. For instance, of the 12 Yuan cases in the Completed Collection of Graphs and Writings where a faithful maiden’s residence was indicated,60 only 3 women moved to live with their deceased fiancés’ parents. Of the 291 Ming faithful maidens, however, 146 maintained residence with their own parents, and 145 left for their in-laws’: the numbers are evenly divided. In Shaoxing prefecture, all 4 faithful maidens from the Tang, Song, and Yuan periods stayed with their own parents; all 3 from the Ming lived with their parents-inlaw.61 The change was slower in some areas. For example, in Wuxian, ­Changzhou, and Yuanhe, all located in southern Jiangsu, of 17 Ming zhennü, 12 remained with their own parents, 2 committed suicide, and only 3 went to live with their fiancés’ parents (one of them did so only when her own mother died).62 But in time, residing with in-laws would dominate in this area as well. For example, by the early nineteenth century, according to one record, of some 200 faithful maidens reported in this area, “most of them preserved chastity for their deceased fiancé’s families. Only the Hou daughter of Shangyuan, the Tan daughter of Jiangning, and the Zhang daughter of Jurong lived all their lives in their parents’ homes, serving their parents and raising their younger brothers and nephews.”63 A faithful maiden’s taking up residence with her deceased fiancé’s family became a dominant transregional practice. In the meantime, adopting and raising an heir for the deceased fiancé was becoming a standard practice, highlighted in the faithful maiden biographies as another testimony to the young women’s self-imposed duties as wives. For example, when hearing of her fiancé’s death, Ye Liugu smashed a piece of pottery on the floor and made a vow: “I will be like this pot if I do not maintain my chastity or fail to raise an heir for Fang [her fiancé]!”64 In another case, the young woman Wu was said to

Moral Heroism and Craving Extremes   35

have panicked when her fiancé became sick. Since she could not wait upon him personally, she sent over her maid, who was impregnated by her fiancé. When Wu found out, she “felt very happy in secret.” Her fiancé soon died, at which time she went to live with his parents and raised the boy born to the maid as her own child.65 By Qing times, providing an heir for the faithful maiden to raise was widely perceived as an obligation that the deceased fiancé’s family had to meet. The more striking change in the faithful maiden behavior was the dramatic or even violent acts, including self-mutilation, that some young girls inflicted upon themselves. Previously such behaviors appeared only in didactic literature. In defending her will not to marry, for example, a faithful maiden would act out her resolve in ways that horrified her parents: cutting off her hair or fingers, clipping off her ear, pricking her eyes, or tattooing her pledge on her own face. Other reported acts were less sensational but equally extreme. They included cloistering herself in a room or building, permitting attendance only by very young or very old female servants, or receiving no visitors, including her own relatives.66 The high visibility of such accounts, no doubt, also attests to an intense interest in such stories on the part of authors and audiences alike. Dramatic actions, however, paled in comparison to the heroic suicides, reported in growing numbers, of the faithful maidens. Suicide was viewed as the ultimate testimony of loyalty to a deceased fiancé. Never before had dying for one’s fiancé been such an appealing and glorious idea. Some killed themselves when their parents rejected their requests to attend their fiancés’ funerals or to serve their deceased fiancés’ parents; others pleaded with their parents to let them die immediately upon their fiancés’ deaths. The faithful maiden who killed herself now came to represent the most thrilling status that chaste women could achieve. For example, the 1573 gazetteer of Zhangzhou prefecture, in Fujian province, recorded nine chaste women for Haicheng county, including a faithful maiden, Guo Siniang, who had committed suicide. The nine women were placed in hierarchical order in terms of the level of virtue they displayed. The editor explains: “Guo Siniang died to preserve chastity before she was married. This kind of virtue is rare for women; therefore, she is listed first.”67 In 1515, a shrine was built in Xiangfu county, He’nan, to honor six women who committed chaste suicide. Chen, the only woman of the six who killed herself following her fiancé’s death, was again placed at the top of the list of honors.68 About a half century later, Xiangfu built another shrine in memory of

36   History virtuous women in history. The shrines honored 216 women, and again, they were led by 15 women who “followed their husbands into death before marriage.”69 By all accounts, the faithful maiden cult did not take a firm hold until the second half of the Ming (roughly the turn of the sixteenth century). In addition to the sharp increase in the state jingbiao awards starting with the Jiajing reign, most existing Ming faithful maiden biographies date from the sixteenth century and after. Moreover, the first known public debate about the legitimacy of the faithful maiden act erupted in the early sixteenth century (see Chapter 7), a telling sign of the rising profile of the practice. That the faithful maiden cult came into being during this period goes along with the observations others have made about the chaste widow cult. For example, T’ien Ju-k’ang concluded, based on local gazetteer records, that the chaste widow cult “came into prominence as late as the middle of the Ming dynasty.”70 Katherine ­Carlitz shows that beginning in the late fifteenth century, widows who had committed chaste suicide were honored with public shrines as Confucian exemplars, and from “the sixteenth century on, monuments to the heroines of fidelity were to be found in every county.”71 In a sense, the dramatic upsurge of the faithful maiden cult is perhaps indicated not so strongly in the increasing number of faithful maiden cases as in the ways young women acted out their convictions and the ways the public responded to their acts. In other words, the dramatized performance or the radicalness of the performance—the bodily selfdestruction and suicide for a deceased husband or even fiancé— defines the cult during this period. The other side of the surge was the elite’s fascination with dramatic deeds. The elite clearly took great interest in publicizing and glorifying these stories. In her analysis, Carlitz links the local elite effort of shrine building for martyred virtuous women to a large project of promoting orthodox values and Confucianizing the self-image of a locality by the local bureaucracy and elite.72 Viewed from a different angle, such effort by the elite could be just another powerful sign of the cultural fascination with extreme acts. This cultural fascination, I argue, constitutes the key condition under which the female chastity cult thrived.

The Culture of Craving for Novelty and Extremity The Ming was the first dynasty to regain native Chinese control of the empire from the ruins of the warfare that ended the Mongols’ rule.

Moral Heroism and Craving Extremes   37

The Mongol conquest raised the level of sensitivity about Han Chinese cultural values. In the early Ming, under the despotic emperor Zhu ­Yuanzhang, efforts were undertaken from the central government on down to the village level to revive a Confucian moral order and to “purify” the contamination of the Mongol influence.73 Moral education and control were high on the government agenda, and measures such as jingbiao were put into effective use for such purposes. The dominance of the lixue ideology, or neo-Confucianism, grew greater in the new dynasty.74 Fundamentally a philosophy about ethics and social relations, lixue places great emphasis on the moral perfection of the individual. It calls for self-cultivation and stresses the importance of action. It argues that the li (“pattern” or “principle”) of human beings is innately good, and it is up to each individual to strive to nurture his or her “good seed” to fruition. Throughout the dynasty, lixue curriculum had to be mastered by all who took civil service examinations, who provided an exclusive pool of candidates for government leadership positions; it was the main subject of learning in academies scattered across the empire. However, moral perfection was not a social privilege monopolized by the educated. From the sixteenth century on, a new school of thought represented by Wang Yangming (1472 –1529) challenged the idea that li could only be sought in the outside world and in the Confucian classics. Rather, Wang advocated that “innate knowledge of the good” (liangzhi) could be tapped in each individual’s mind, regardless of the person’s social standing. Therefore, both the learned and the illiterate could reach moral perfection and attain the status of sage with day-to-day moral practice. Wang’s radical idea was developed and taken to a wide audience of commoners by his disciple Wang Gen (1483 –1541) and his Taizhou school by way of popular lectures (jiangxue).75 The linkage between the Ming intellectual shifts and the female chastity practice has yet to be determined, except to assume that the Taizhou school’s approach to moral cultivation would have helped cardinal moral values penetrate the lower strata of the social hierarchy. The dominance of lixue thought and the popularity of the ideal of moral cultivation in the Ming certainly did not engender a more ethical society. But they would affect the behavior, as well as the moral perceptions, of the people. This drive for moral cultivation contributed to the creation of an age of moral heroism in the Ming. Reflecting on Ming culture, early Qing scholars noted: “Human feeling in recent centuries has neglected ordinary deeds while admiring strange and extraordinary behavior. What

38   History state regulations honor, what histories record, what neighborhoods praise, and what ordinary people find shocking are all behaviors that are most unusual and suffering. [These behaviors] are regarded as difficult to achieve and [thus they are valued].”76 Many dramatic behaviors— carried out by both men and women, in public or at home—were conceived of or popularly aggrandized as forms of moral display only during the Ming: the chaste suicide of women, suicides performed on public platforms, self-disfigurement of various sorts, and the act of filial piety in which one cut a piece of one’s own flesh or liver to make medicine for ailing parents or parents-in-law (gegu or gegan).77 In the arena of official service, the Ming outnumbered any other dynasty in its claims of heroic ministers, whose political courage was put into spectacular display through their relentless criticism of the government policies they believed to be wrong and through their endurance of terrifying physical torture as a result.78 In his recent study on the Ming elite, Zhao Yuan calls this culture of the Confucian scholars “extreme moralism.” He demonstrates with abundant evidence the striking and permeating “cruel” attitude with which Confucian scholars encouraged, appreciated, and practiced extreme acts, including self-abusive acts and denial of material comfort in extreme forms.79 Ming moral heroism played out against the backdrop of Ming autocracy—the government’s use of physical punishments against officials exceeded that of any other court, and in particular stood in striking contrast with the Song—the Chinese dynasty preceding the Mongol invasion known for its leniency toward officials.80 Placing the stories of the faithful maidens in this context, we can draw this conclusion: the faithful maidens were an embodiment of the extremity, strangeness, and novelty with which Ming society had become fascinated. The faithful maiden cult was not an isolated phenomenon. It was deeply rooted in and powerfully reflective of a culture that was consumed by extremism in the performance of social and political virtues. In the background against which the faithful maiden cult thrived stood also the perceived “decadence” and moral decline of society in the eyes of Confucian scholars. In the second part of the Ming, economic and commercial growth engendered great anxiety about social disorder. Although Confucian writers of all ages tended to see their own day as a time of moral decadence, those who lived in the second half of the Ming were especially bitter about the “disorder” in the family: A wife treated her husband with no respect. Worse yet, remarriage for women

Moral Heroism and Craving Extremes   39

was common and carried out speedily. Ye Chunji (1532 –95) remarked while serving as the magistrate of Huian county, Fujian: “Today, before the body of her deceased husband is cool, the foolish woman has already become someone else’s wife. In the morning she wears the mourning hairstyle; in the evening her new husband draws eyebrows for her [a metaphor for conjugal intimacy]. Cruel! Cruel!”81 Huang Zuo (1490 –1566) spoke in a similarly poignant tone that some women “see their husbands as servants, their homes as post houses [meaning temporary stopping places]. They wear mourning dress [for their dead husbands] in the morning and enjoy intimacy with their new husbands in the evening.”82 Greatly dismayed, he compared them with his heroine, faithful maiden Shao, a twenty-two-year-old who had committed suicide, exclaiming “[W]hat shame they bring!”83 This was precisely the reason Zhan Ruoshui (1466 –1560) wrote about faithful maiden Wu. He commented: “In today’s world, there are women who fight with their husbands when their husbands are alive; they lose their husbands in the morning and become wives of other men in the evening. Why should I be concerned if faithful maidens overstep the middle path!”84 These astonishingly similar and equally bitter remarks betray a common anxiety of the Confucian elite of the age. Their anxiety was twofold: it reveals that the attitude against remarriage had further intensified and popularized; and their complaint about “today’s world” provides a telling sign of a troubled social reality. This anxiety of the elite blends right in with what Timothy Brook describes as the moral erosion caused by the “confusions of pleasure,” and it also forms part of the context within which morality texts examining ledgers of merit and demerit suddenly became popular—a subject that Cynthia ­Brokaw analyzes.85 Tremendous material growth and monetization of the economy over the course of the Ming damaged the moral fabric of society so that the goal of maintaining “proper” social order was much harder to accomplish. A vivid illustration of Zhan Ruoshui’s and others’ complaints is found in many popular dramas and works of vernacular literature in which romantic episodes and illicit sexual relations were celebrated as expressions of love (qing) or legitimized as natural needs, openly threatening the Confucian notions of moral propriety. For Confucian moralists, the lure of material comfort and sexual pleasure was leading women astray. The perceived “decadence” mobilized the Confucian scholars to wave their brushes against the social behaviors they disapproved of, and the faithful maiden was a poignant ideological weapon in their

40   History fight to bring the world to order. The same “decadence,” on the other hand, could mobilize women as well, driving some of them toward extreme acts. In other words, “decadence” could help construct “extreme virtue.” Women were not just passive receivers of men’s moral preaching. As I will discuss further, elite young women found inspiration in female moral exemplars, and they acted upon the Confucian moral ideal. Doing what they believed to be right, they upheld the “right” values and set themselves apart from corruption and decay.

Political Disarray and Moral Heroism The faithful maiden cult came to fruition in the Ming amid political upheaval and troubled leadership at court. The situation can be characterized briefly: From the mid-fifteenth century on, the relation between the Ming monarchs and ministers was distant; emperors reigning during this time often showed little interest or ability in performing their duties; bureaucratic functions were frequently hijacked by palace eunuchs; and fights between the eunuchs and the bureaucracy and among the officials themselves were fierce. All this turned the Ming into an age of tremendous dynamism and action, leaving to history a string of names, both evil and heroic. Just as the chaste women and the “virago” polarized the women’s quarters, the “corrupt” and the “righteous” men stood in sharp contrast at the Ming court. At the turn of the sixteenth century, the main rival of the bureaucrats was the notorious eunuch Liu Jin (d. 1510). Using a secret police force and the imperial prison to terrify his opponents, Liu Jin took all power into his own hands and virtually disabled official government agencies. The political crisis put court officials’ characters to the test. Many acquiesced, or submitted to Liu. Only a handful stood up to him, and those who did ended up being removed from their posts, put in prison, tortured, or murdered. Li Mengyang (1473 –1530), one of the dynasty’s celebrated writers, adamantly opposed Liu Jin. Imprisoned and almost put to death, he was saved by his good friend Kang Hai (1475 –1540).86 Li Mengyang could not help feeling deeply sad when he wrote about chaste women who had followed their husbands and fiancés in death, contrasting them with those government officials who disgraced themselves by collaborating with Liu. He wrote: Liu Deju, a Confucian student [rusheng], came to tell me of six martyred women. Upon hearing this, I shed tears. Liu asked: “Sir, why are you so sad?” I said: “Because I am disheartened about those officials who do not live up to their duty.”

Moral Heroism and Craving Extremes   41 Alas, matters of life and death are so weighty! When Liu Jin brought chaos to the court, I was home mourning a parent. At that time, most people bribed him. When asked why, they would say it was to “save lives.” They also said: “It is not worth one’s life [to oppose Liu Jin].” Alas, matters of life and death are weighty! Looking at these women—they behaved so heroically! Since the saying that it was worthless to die fighting Liu Jin had arisen, the people who bribed him talked about it publicly at court, discussed it on the street, and consulted each other on the road. It went so far that the degree of punishment depended on the amount of the bribe. Thereupon, minor officials all over the country would say: “Beat them! Torture them!” Everyone bribed them to get out of the situation. Those at the bottom collected money illegally, and those at the top did the same. In public they made a record of the money they got from bribes, and in public people sent them bribes, saying: “This is just for saving life for the time being.” Is this how a subject is supposed to behave? If people did not bribe Liu Jin, would he kill everyone? Alas, the moment of choosing between life and death is difficult! Looking at these women—they behaved so heroically! I am disheartened!87

The first of the six martyred women was an eighteen-year-old faithful maiden. Her story appears in several Ming and Qing sources: She was engaged to Chen Xuan during the Tianshun reign [1457– 64]. Xuan died early. She wept bitterly and wanted to go to his family to die. Her parents refused. She asked to go to mourn him. They denied her again. She cut her hair in secret and gave it to the matchmaker, telling her to put it in her fiancé’s sleeve. As she hoped, Xuan’s mother wrapped her hair with the engagement card and placed it on her fiancé’s chest. Before long, her parents pressed her to marry another man. She refused and hanged herself.88

From the outset, female chastity was politicized in the moral philosophy of Confucianism. Fidelity (a female virtue) and loyalty (a male virtue) were interlocked, as noted in this famous first-century saying: “A loyal minister does not serve two rulers; a righteous woman does not marry two husbands.” 89 Li Mengyang’s disheartened words help us put this conventional analogy of “faithful wife–loyal official” in the mid-Ming context. He was justifiably appalled and saddened, given the Confucian perceptions of gender hierarchy that he believed in. That women, the weak, passive gender, exhibited such moral caliber put men to shame.90 What was disheartening for Li was perhaps not so much the moral accomplishment of women as the collapse of moral integrity of men. Wu Daozhi (jinshi, 1549) put the contrast in similar emotional terms when writing about the martyred women who put moral principles before their lives: “So heroic were these women! They were born and grew up in curtained rooms and did not read classics and histories. Yet, in the end they glorified their mothers’ instructions and did not bring shame

42   History to their parents.”91 In drawing such analogies, Wu Daozhi—and others who made similar sentimental arguments—might have deliberately overstated the women’s lack of education to emphasize a point. Some of these women did read, and in fact, reading the classics contributed greatly to their mental and ideological development. Here the stress on women’s lack of education and their being female was to underscore the same point: the “weak,” the “ignorant,” put the “strong” and the “educated” to shame. If a chaste widow had always been a moral symbol, then the timehonored idea found its most powerful expression in the image of the faithful maiden. This became a prominent theme in men’s writings on faithful maidens across this age. Gu Xiancheng (1550 –1612) and Gao Panlong (1562 –1626), leaders of the Donglin society, the stronghold of the anti-eunuch movement, struck a similar chord while writing about faithful maiden Zou. Merely twelve years old, Zou put her deceased fiancé’s spirit tablet in her bedroom and began her life of a faithful maiden. The two men contrasted their protagonist with those who had power and fame yet failed to uphold moral principles. These spineless people were like “a halting foal in the shafts” and “autumn grass blown about by the wind,” Gao wrote. Again, he stressed that “in the boundless universe a woman is just like minute dust”; nevertheless “one correct thought” earned her an eternal place among the greatest in history.92 Gu Xiancheng employed two famous men from history who had served two dynasties to make his point: “Someone as virtuous as Ziyun, yet he ‘married’ the Xin dynasty; someone as virtuous as Pingzhong, yet he ‘married’ the Yuan dynasty.93 Some people try to excuse them [for their shift of loyalty]. I was half convinced and half doubtful, thinking that it might be one way of doing things. Now I look at faithful maiden Zou’s story, and I feel dejected as if I have made a mistake!”94 Gu Xiancheng’s use of the word marry carried particular subtlety. It was a pun upon the analogy that a loyal minister would not serve two lords and a faithful wife would not marry twice. By using marry, Gu Xiangcheng put the two men in the same low rank as those wives who married a second husband. Where the twelve-year-old girl lived up to the principle, the two giant men failed. But perhaps Li Mengyang and Gu Xiancheng need not have been so saddened, because the Ming was not at all a mediocre age in terms of the Confucian moral achievements of its ministers. It left behind more paragons of political loyalty than any other dynasty, and the stunning performance of loyalty by certain officials is without rival in history.

Moral Heroism and Craving Extremes   43

The path of the Ming Confucian moral integrity was set by Fang Xiaoru (1357–1402), who chose death over life by resisting offering service to the “illegitimate” Yongle emperor at the beginning of the dynasty.95 For the rest of the Ming, the weak and violent court provided the best platform for its officials to display their loyalty in the most remarkable manner. At one level, two institutional changes set the stage for the violent political culture to blossom. The first was corporal punishment for officials, “beating with a cane at the court” (tingzhang). The Confucian canon forbids physical punishment of officials. To exempt the ruling elite from physical humiliation was said to be a means of cultivating their sense of shame. The system of tingzhang was first introduced by the Mongols during the Yuan, and ironically, the Ming founding emperor Zhu Yuanzhang, who took it as his mission to cleanse Mongol cultural contamination, carried on with the practice. Throughout the dynasty, especially when the eunuchs were in power, countless numbers of court officials got a taste of it, and many did not survive the bloody torture. The Ming was also notorious for its imperial secret police and its imperial prison. They were independent of the official administration organ, the Board of Justice. Established initially to enhance the emperors’ personal control, they in practice became machines of terror used by those in power to crush their political enemies. This setting of unprecedented violence gave rise to the most dramatic performance of political virtue by the Ming officials, challenging them to put their lives on the line. The will of the truly loyal would not be thwarted by torture or death. Anticipating the worst, for example, Liu Kui and Hai Rui (1514 – 85) prepared coffins for themselves before they left home to deliver their memorials at court.96 The Jiajing court, which produced the dynasty’s most corrupt grand secretary, Yan Song (1480 –1567), also created the dynasty’s moral icon of courage and integrity, Yang Jisheng (1516 –55). Outspoken and forceful, Yang wrote repeated memorials protesting government policies and criticizing the corruption of top officials, and consequently, he was thrown in jail, tortured, and demoted. Knowing that he had little hope of pulling down the powerful Yan Song, but believing it was his moral obligation to continue the fight, he delivered another memorial. He was ordered to be beaten a hundred strokes (the most severe punishment) and was finally executed.97 Early Qing historians commented: Why were there so many upright ministers in the reign of Emperor Shizong [­Jiajing]? [Those who received the most severe punishment] were executed in public; [those who received lesser punishment] were put in long-term prison. . . .

44   History Yet their morale did not recede. One after another they touched dragon’s scales [a metaphor for offending the emperor], smashed their heads [in order to realize their loyalty]. Nothing could stop them. At the time of their execution, they maintained such a manner of composure that even the stupid and the cowardly would be moved to stand up. This was the result of moral nurturing for more than a hundred years.98

For these historians, the Ming was a time that cultivated the great moral strength of the real Confucian, and the Jiajing was the court during which this moral strength was in fantastic exhibition. In fact, as the fierce political struggle continued, the dynasty produced other loyal officials such as Yang Lian (1572 –1625) and Zuo Guangdou (1575 –1625), who met their heroic deaths fighting Wei Zhongxian (1568 –1627), the dynasty’s last powerful eunuch. It is important to keep in mind that these political events did not occur in isolation in the political centers of the empire. They were widely publicized, and they powerfully shaped the popular opinions of justice and morality. Stories of upright ministers circulated rapidly across the land. One story about Yang Jisheng states that before he was taken to the tingzhang torture, someone offered him a snake’s gall bladder (presumably a medicine that could help heal his wounds). Yang refused, saying: “I myself have a gall bladder [a symbol of bravery and courage]!” His wounds deteriorated in his prison cell. He broke a bowl into pieces and used the shards as knives to cut off his rotten flesh until his bones were exposed; he tore the dangling tendon with his own hands. “The jailer [was so frightened] that the lamp almost fell off his hand. But Yang Jisheng remained composed.”99 When Yang Lian was taken to Beijing by the imperial secret police, “tens of thousands of people, gentry and commoners, lined up on the road, grabbed the police and shouted at them, trying to stop them from taking him away. All along the way, cities and villages burned incense and held sacrifices to pray for Yang Lian’s safe return.” Yang Lian, however, was tortured to such an extent that his whole body was inflicted with wounds. He was later beaten to death.100 For many these heroic ministers embodied the Confucian male virtue of political integrity (qijie).

Female Virtue and Male Loyalty Reading these accounts in conjunction with faithful maiden stories, we can hardly fail to notice the connection between the two. The key characteristics of both types of stories is the astounding degree of heroism,

Moral Heroism and Craving Extremes   45

which, for loyal officials, was displayed through sustaining extreme physical torture, and for faithful maidens was through actions of enduring lifelong celibacy, self-disfigurement, or suicide. Truly great men and women were tested by extraordinary bodily ordeals, and the worse the ordeal, the greater their virtue was seen to be. As the historian Meng Sen (1868 –1937) pointed out: “Although the tingzhang beating was extremely cruel, when a righteous official was beaten, the whole world considered it the highest honor, and the person would be admired his whole life.”101 As martyred girls, chaste widows, filial daughters, and faithful maidens, women were active participants in this culture. This is not to suggest that each individual perceived her action in the same way. Although it was inconceivable that women of different social backgrounds would have the same level of understanding of the meanings of their actions, it was evident that their actions revolved around a set of core values that defined honor and disgrace, nobility and shame, which they helped reproduce and distribute through their actions. In the elite households, political struggles implicated both men and women. When an upright man suffered political downfall, his mother, wife, and other female relatives were expected to act out the same courage and strength. Confucian gentlemen helped produce Confucian women in their families, whereas Confucian women provided inspiration for Confucian men. In this context, fidelity was not merely a wifely virtue. It could also be a political virtue and a political statement by women. Among the elite class, wives of strong moral conviction stood firm by their men or even shared their fate. Zhang Zhen, Yang Jisheng’s wife, was a case in point. As Yang shows in his “yearly records”(nianpu), Zhang Zhen was well informed on the politics of the day, and Yang relied on her help to fulfill his public duties.102 Two pieces of writing allegedly by Zhang Zhen are extant today. One was a memorial to Emperor Shizong, “A Petition to Die in Exchange for the Life of My Husband,” composed when Yang was sentenced to death.103 It was at once a testimony to Yang’s loyalty and a plea for imperial mercy. Zhang asked the emperor to take pity on her feelings and to reduce Yang’s sentence. If that could not be granted, she wrote: “I am willing to have my head chopped off in the market in exchange for my husband’s life.”104 The second piece of Zhang Zhen’s writing is an elegy dedicated to Yang Jisheng. In stark contrast to conventional elegies, it has little to do with her personal emotion of grief. Rather, it is a public vindication of the political virtue that had led to Yang’s demise. It eulogizes Yang’s courage and self-sacrifice, calling him a “hero of eternity” who would

46   History make traitors “hold their hands” (not dare to commit evil acts) and spirits weep (out of great respect). It compares Yang with the ancient paragons of political loyalty and asserts that death would not diminish Yang’s loyalty to his ruler: his lonely soul would wander around the capital by his ruler’s side.105 According to some reports, Zhang committed suicide promptly after Yang’s execution.106 Some Ming faithful maidens were born to elite families that were also implicated in the political struggle. For example, the faithful maiden Xu Zhen’e was the great-granddaughter of Xu Wenbiao, and the man she was engaged to was the great-grandson of Ge Hao (1461–1552). Both Xu Wenbiao and Ge Hao “upheld great integrity” when Liu Jin controlled the court. Chen Younian (1531–58), who wrote a biography of the faithful maiden, commented: “Zhen’e did not bring shame to them!”107 As Zhen’e herself did not leave any written material, we have no way to tell to what degree her loyal ancestors inspired her decision. However, it is reasonable to surmise that elite daughters could very well have seen themselves as upholders of Confucian principles at a time of “moral decline,” as suggested in the following cases. One of the Ming dynasty’s faithful maiden stories celebrated the mother of Zhang Lun, another courageous loyal minister. When her fiancé was terminally ill, her parents suggested that she could be engaged to someone else. She refused and asked that she be allowed to go see him. He died as soon as she arrived at his deathbed. His concubine had been pregnant with Zhang Lun at the time, and after his birth, the faithful maiden married into his family and took it as her responsibility to bring up the child. Zhang Lun did not fail his faithful maiden mother. He earned his jinshi degree in 1439 and became an outspoken official at court. At one point he wanted to write a critical memorial but was reluctant because he foresaw the action would bring disaster to his mother. She told him: “What have I taught you to do? If you die doing a good job offering your opinion to the emperor, I would have no regret even if I were made a government slave!”108 Zhang Lun submitted the memorial and was instantly thrown in the imperial jail. He would have died by the tingzhang beating if it had not been for a sandstorm that turned the sky dark and thus stopped the torture. He survived another one hundred strokes.109 In the end Zhang Lun’s faithful maiden mother did not suffer the disgrace that she was willing to take. Instead, her story found its way into both didactic literature and popular theater.110 It became the archetype of the famous drama Story of Shang Lu Earning

Moral Heroism and Craving Extremes   47

Triple First Place [in the Examinations] (Shang Lu sanyuan ji), which appeared on the stage not long after the event.111 The best symbol of the mutual influence of wifely virtue and political loyalty was perhaps Gu Yanwu’s (1613 – 82) faithful maiden mother. A daughter of a scholarly family, she was said to have set her heart on practicing the virtues of the ancients while still a young girl.112 At the untimely death of her fiancé, she was seventeen. She starved herself for several days before her parents agreed to let her go mourn him. After the mourning ritual was performed, she did not return home. Eleven years later, Gu Yanwu was born to her late fiancé’s paternal cousin. She adopted the infant boy to raise as heir to her late fiancé.113 Exceedingly filial, she once secretly chopped off a finger to make medicine for her mother-in-law. For all her virtuous deeds, she was honored by the Ming court with the title of “the faithful and filial” (zhenxiao). She loved reading, Gu recalled. “During the day she spun and wove; at night she read until well past midnight. She got up in the early morning, washed herself and paid her respect to her in-laws as usual. She especially loved reading Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji), A Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Government (Zizhi Tongjian), and books about the government and politics of the [Ming] dynasty. From the time I was ten years old, she taught me using the stories about Liu Wencheng [Liu Ji, 1311–75], Fang Zhonglie [Fang Xiaoru], Yu Zhongsu [Yu Qian, 1398 –1457)], and others.”114 These three were among the dynasty’s most respected and most loyal ministers, two of whom, Fang and Yu, died horrific deaths. To die as a loyal subject would be the way she chose to end her own life. In 1645, when the Qing army marched south toward Changshu, where the family dwelt at the time, she stopped taking food and after fifteen days starved to death at the age of sixty. Her last words were instructions to Gu Yanwu that he must not serve the new ruler: “Although I am a woman, I have been granted imperial favor. It is the principle of honor-bound duty [yi] that I die with my country. You must not serve in the new dynasty, must not be ungrateful for generational favors our family received, and must not forget our ancestors’ instructions. Only then can I close my eyes in the underworld.”115 Gu Yanwu had this to say about his mother: The fidelity of the “cypress boat” was recorded in the Book of Songs; the humanity of Shouyang was documented in the Commentaries to the Spring and ­Autumn Annals.116 Has there been any case in which the two virtues are

48   History combined in one person? I have not heard of any since ancient times, but my mother practiced both.117

These cases demonstrate that elite women were not cut off from political affairs. Instead, they took upon themselves moral responsibility, but they fashioned it in their own ways. The Ming political climate and the culture brought out extreme actions in both men and women, and such actions eventually shaped the faithful maiden practice into an empirewide cult.

chapter

Putting Young Heroines in the Spotlight

2

The Seventeenth Century

few historical events in late imperial China signaled more profound psychological and emotional impact on the Chinese ruling elite than those that occurred in the middle of the seventeenth century: the fall of the Ming, the suicide of its last monarch in the wake of the collapse of the capital, and the conquest by the Manchus. These events fundamentally influenced the elite’s own political actions and colored the lens through which they viewed and critiqued other events. “A loyal minister does not serve two rulers; a righteous woman does not marry two husbands.” For men and women of high moral principles, this maxim was a call to action. But it was the faithful maiden who died for her fiancé, not any other chaste woman, who came to represent the ultimate moral spirit of the era. This chapter details how writing about and commemorating faithful maidens constituted an essential part of the experience of the Confucian elite in the Ming-Qing transition. If the faithful maiden had been a significant configuration of Confucian moral discourse, it was during this era that the Confucian elite found the unique ideological and emotional connections with these heroic young women. Faithful maidens taking their own lives to fulfill a moral commitment rendered them the most powerful symbolic objects in which the elite found expression for their own sentiment or through which they reaffirmed their moral convictions and political choices. In no other historical moments were faithful maiden symbols so fiercely explored and faithful maiden acts so passionately applauded. The Confucian elite’s intense activities promoting and glorifying the cult created a key condition for the cult’s

50   History splendid display during a time of rapid political change and laid a vital foundation for its steady growth throughout the rest of the dynasty.

Glorifying Chaste Suicide By all indications, the conditions of the seventeenth century brought the Ming cultural obsession with extreme actions, described earlier, to its greatest height. In striking contrast to the periods before and after it, much of the seventeenth century was plagued by rebellion, invasion, and a war of pacification. The Ming collapsed in 1644 when peasant rebels rampaged throughout the capital, Beijing. The subsequent Manchu conquest ushered in China’s last imperial dynasty, the Qing, but stability and peace did not return until the four-decade-long Qing military campaign finally eliminated the last remnants of the Ming loyalists. Death and destruction formed the dominant themes of many personal accounts by contemporaries.1 But this was also an age of sacrifice and martyrdom, as numerous Confucian men and women met heroic death in the turmoil in defending their political or personal dignity. The turbulence of the age injected further ingredients into the late Ming ­societal fascination with extreme behavior, raising people’s expectations and appetites for ultra-heroic actions to an even higher level. Few human deeds captured more enduring excitement at the time than loyal suicide. The act of killing oneself to follow someone in death surged rapidly, among men and women alike. According to Chen Que (1604 –77), suicides committed by sons following their fathers in death, by wives following their husbands in death, by friends following friends in death were numerous, and the most extreme of the suicides were committed by unmarried women for their deceased fiancés and by men for those who were not even their friends.2 Mao Qiling also observed that committing chaste suicide had become common during his own lifetime. Mao was justifiably puzzled, given the fact that in his home prefecture, Shaoxing, none of the six faithful maidens from the preceding Ming dynasty had committed suicide.3 In the early Qing, unmarried young women taking their own lives for their dead fiancés created one spectacle after another. In 1692, a story about a young woman by the surname of Kang spread through Beijing, causing “gentlemen to shed tears and streets to fill with sorrow.” A daughter of a petty merchant family, Kang committed suicide after her father and brother chided her for her plea to marry her deceased fiancé. Her story was said to have been “incorporated into paintings and songs,

Young Heroines in the Spotlight   51

which aroused great excitement among children and women.” Fang Bao (1668 –1749), who reported the incident, went on to say that he had heard about two other faithful maidens from the Jinling (Nanjing) area, where he had earlier resided. He was amazed, for how could the time period in which he lived boast so many “extraordinary women” (qi nüzi), given the fact that in the entire Six Confucian Classics, only two women were recorded for their virtue of lifelong fidelity?4 While Fang Bao was pondering women’s moral achievements in his day, similar stories were making headline news in Pengcheng to the south of Beijing. Traveling through Pengcheng in 1693, Zhang Zhen (1637–1712) commented on the sensation that was sweeping the area over the suicide of another Zhang girl: “It has been only a little more than one hundred days since the martyred girl’s death. The local people vie with each other in telling me her story in great detail. They also say: ‘Earlier, the daughters of Ding Zhang, Wang Sanhuai, and Yin Bo all followed their fiancés in death.’ ”5 Biographies of chaste young women often overflowed with dramatic details about suicide, feeding the readers’ appetite for novelty and excitement. In Mao Qiling’s words, the faithful women were portrayed very much like what one read in fiction. “Sensational stories come out one after another. Moreover, they become more and more strange, and there seems to be no end to it.”6 Mao gave two examples, both widely known at the time. One was the daughter of Mao Jike (1633 –1708), a well-known scholar. The young widow tried to kill herself three times: by hanging, by jumping off a building—in both cases she was rescued—and by starving herself, in which she finally succeeded. In the other case, the daughter from a Dai family went through similar ordeals: attempting to hang herself, swallowing gold, and starving. After she eventually took her own life by swallowing bits of glass mixed with pieces of a broken golden hairpin, her relatives built a shrine in her honor by her grave.7 Dai Mingshi (1653 –1713), the author of her biography, sighed admiringly: “How painful was the way she died! But if she had not suffered like this, we would have had no way to know how special she was.”8 Dramatic details were common in writings about faithful maidens, and they did not necessarily concentrate on the ordeal of suicide, as seen in the following excerpt by Wang Yuan (1648 –1710): Peng Tingli of Fuping said that in his hometown there was a girl from the Wang family who had been betrothed to a man of the Li family. When she was eighteen, the Lis were hit by a great misfortune, and the father and the son were sentenced to death by beheading. Upon hearing about it, the girl wept and ­refused

52   History to take food. On the day of the execution, she wanted to offer sacrifice to her fiancé while he was still alive. Her father did not allow her to do so, but she was moved to threaten suicide. Her father had no alternative but to go along with her plea. She went, carrying wine and food. That day, several people were scheduled for execution, two or three by dismemberment. The executioners carried swords and arranged themselves in two lines, face to face, as solid as walls. The spectators numbered in the thousands. The girl went straight through the crowds of thousands, found her fiancé, cried, knelt, and kowtowed to him. He wept, and tears covered his face. She pushed his hair back, washed his face, and fed him. Presently, the executioner shouted: “The execution begins!” He ordered her to leave, but she would not listen. She was dragged out and fell on the ground. She got up quickly but fell again. She crawled back, and by then her fiancé’s head had already fallen to the ground. His body lay on the ground, and blood poured forth like a flowing stream. She held his head, but the executioner grabbed it away. She then went to embrace his body. The executioner was holding on to the head. She rushed forward and seized the head. She then placed it on the body, connected the head to the body with a needle and thread, and put it into the coffin with her own hands. Only then did she leave the scene. With blood dripping all over her, she reluctantly followed her father home. All of the spectators wept. Arriving home, she told her father: “I have done all I wished. You don’t have to worry about my future. I can either stay unmarried or marry someone else.” Her father felt somewhat relieved. That night, she closed her door and hanged herself.9

Wang Yuan did not witness this event himself, but his depiction was as vivid as if he had been among the audience. We can imagine how the two men—Wang Yuan and his friend Peng Tingli, from whom Wang learned of the story— chatted about the bloody details he later put into the biography. Wang was a serious thinker of the Yan-Li school,10 but even he could not escape the temptation to portray a moral story in a fictional fashion.11 A young woman’s suicide following a fiancé’s or husband’s death was portrayed by some writers with a radical new twist. They were no longer satisfied with simply praising the woman’s act. Rather, they openly encouraged it. The difference between praising and encouraging suicides was that the former would extol such a woman, but would nevertheless convey empathy or even discomfort if her life could not in fact be saved. Ye Chunji, the Ming scholar, for example, was greatly disturbed when he learned that the parents and relatives of the chaste widows Wu and Yao watched the two women hang themselves. He commented emotionally: “As parents, if they see that their child’s foot is stung by an insect, they would rush to protect the foot; if the child’s hand is stung, they would rush to protect the hand. How could they

Young Heroines in the Spotlight   53

surround the women, watching them commit suicide! It is fine that Wu and Yao did it themselves. But it is not appropriate that their parents and relatives watched them die.”12 An episode described by Huang Zongxi (1610 –95) reveals that scholars like himself were very careful not to make a move that might incite a woman to kill herself. Huang once went with colleagues from his academy to pay his respects to a young widow who had tried many times to commit suicide. After the visit, the young woman tried again to jump into a pond, only to be rescued again. Huang was worried that their visit might have spurred her suicide attempt. Greatly concerned, he sent a message to her fatherin-law, which he hoped would be forwarded to the woman: “To live to preserve fidelity is no less virtuous than to die.”13 However, when the seventeen-year-old faithful maiden Song Dian committed suicide in 1665, Fa Ruozhen (1613 –96) commented: “Ah, what a heroic girl! Her parents watched as she died calmly. They, too, are virtuous!”14 Whereas parents who let their daughters kill themselves were viewed as virtuous, parents who tried to save their daughters’ lives were criticized. Wang Yuan was disappointed at the incident of the young widow Niu, whose husband, in the military, met a heroic death when fighting the rebels. Niu wept bitterly and fasted for seven days trying to kill herself. Yet when her parents knelt down in front of her deathbed and begged her to take food, her resolution fell apart. Wang Yuan subtly criticized her parents for not being “virtuous.” If they had let her fulfill her will to die, Wang commented, “both loyalty [referring to her husband] and fidelity would have been complete.”15 The bluntest support for suicide by young unmarried women came from Qu Dajun (1630 –96), who unequivocally argued that for a bereaved fiancée, death was morally a more appropriate choice than life: Being a married woman is different from being an unmarried woman. A married woman does not have to die—she can preserve chastity to complete [her duty] toward her husband’s family; an unmarried woman does not have to live—she can commit a heroic death to end her life. . . . For a martyred woman [who follows a fiancé in death], death is a permanent virtue, and to die is more virtuous than remaining alive.16

Qu Dajun suggested that a woman lived for the sole purpose of serving the patrilineal interests of her husband’s family. As a bereaved fiancée did not have such responsibilities to fulfill, death was her ultimate virtuous choice. This straightforward call for the suicide of faithful maidens indicates just how deep was some Confucian elites’ obsession with loyal suicide.

54   History

The Early Qing Literati Promotion of the Faithful Maidens The glorification of suicide went hand in hand with greatly intensified literati championing of the faithful maidens. Writings on faithful maidens increased sharply in volume, in particular in the early Qing. Whereas only a few Ming writers wrote more than once on the subject, many early Qing literati included in their works several pieces on this topic.17 Many wrote not only in response to solicitation from relatives of faithful maidens but also voluntarily; the solicitations, moreover, were conducted no longer only by relatives; eminent men who had no kinship relationship to a faithful maiden sometimes acted as solicitors on her behalf. Finally, special volumes of commemorative poetry compiled as a result often contained cross-regional or empirewide contributions, a scale rarely seen in the past.18 The public funerals for faithful maidens who had committed suicide became occasions that mobilized all the wealthy, influential, and power­ ful people in a locality. Wealth was transformed into moral capital as they pulled money together for the event. In 1664, for example, all local gentry (shidafu) in Linbi county in Anhui, together with the magistrate, made donations for the burial of faithful maiden Yang Cheng. One leader of the gentry bought the land for the grave site and supervised the construction of the grave, and another revered member wrote the tomb inscription.19 In a ceremony for the co-burial of Wu Shuji and her fiancé in 1687—Wu’s short biography appears in the opening paragraph of the introduction of this book—gentry and commoners who attended all dressed in white, and funeral flags were so numerous that they covered the whole road. Elegies, numbering in the hundreds or thousands, arrived from all over the empire.20 To be sure, casting funerals as commemorative events for chaste widows occurred in the Ming. But in the early Qing, the faithful maidens who committed (or attempted to commit) suicide took center stage, as we see in the three following cases that took place in the 1650s and 1660s in three different areas.

The Snow-White Chinese Flowering Apple Incident The first case occurred in Mancheng, Baoding prefecture of Hebei in North China. When faithful maiden Fan’s fiancé died, she wanted to mourn him, but her mother did not permit it. Fan took poison secretly and said: “When alive, I was engaged to the son of the Tian family;

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when dead, I should be a ghost in the Tians’ graveyard.” She spat blood for two days before she was carried to the Tians, where she asked her mother-in-law to let her stay and be buried with her fiancé.21 With these words, she died, dressed in bridal garments.22 It was said that on the night of her death, the Chinese flowering apple (haitang, or Malus ­spectabilis), which normally did not blossom in the cold North China spring, suddenly came into bloom in her family courtyard, and all the flowers were snow-white, the color associated with grieving.23 This occurred during the late years of the Shunzhi reign (1644 – 61). Hu Cangheng, the prefect of Baoding, was a major promoter of the case. Both Fan’s paternal uncle and her fiancé’s father were also involved in soliciting poems and essays in her honor. The response was remarkable. Among those who answered the call were the most eminent scholars in the North: Sun Qifeng (1584 –1675), Wei Xiangshu (1617– 87), Wei Yi’ao (?–1692), Diao Bao (1603 – 69), Ding Yaokang (1599 –1669), and Shen Hanguang (1619 –77).24 Sun Qifeng, a leading neo-Confucian scholar, composed an epitaph for the woman. The solicited writings were soon compiled into a volume called The Snow-White Chinese Flowering Apple Collection (Xue tang ji), which was printed twice and went into wide circulation immediately after it was published.25 Yan Yuan (1635 –1704), the founder of the Yan-Li school, later commented with much regret that he had then been too young to be part of this “grand activity.” He said that only years later was he able to contribute a eulogy.26 But Yan recalled that even as a young boy, he memorized poems from the volume, one of which was by a certain jinshi from Shangdong province that contains these lines: “It has been long since I heard pure words, / What brought a great Confucian from the women’s quarter?”27

The Song Dian Incident A few years later, in 1665, another faithful maiden incident came to light in a village in Weizhou, Shanxi province, again in North China. Song Dian, a seventeen-year-old peasant, hanged herself with a silk handkerchief—a betrothal gift from her fiancé—soon after she heard about her fiancé’s death. The story spread quickly, but we would not have known about her had it not happened that Wei Xiangshu, a lixue scholar and a former high-ranking official of the court, hailed from the same prefecture. Perhaps inspired by the “grand activity” surrounding the faithful maiden Fan a few years earlier—to which Wei had contributed a

56   History poem—Wei Xiangshu gathered local gentry to petition the government to honor the young woman.28 In 1666, the Kangxi emperor awarded the faithful maiden with the words “faithful and heroic” (zhenlie) written in his own calligraphy and ordered that her family be given thirty taels of silver to build an arch in her memory.29 Upon approval of the petition, Wei Xiangshu organized in the following year a public memorial ceremony ( gongji or gongdian) for Song Dian, in which her body was exhumed and reburied next to that of her fiancé. Wei composed two essays for the event: an elegiac verse ( jiwen), which was delivered at the ceremony; and an epitaph, which was inscribed on the stone tablet by Li Yunhua, his wife’s elder brother, who was also a wealthy public figure in the local community.30 In the meantime, Wei Xiangshu contacted scholars far and near to solicit poems and prose to honor Song Dian. He himself had written two poems, but to bring her—and indeed himself— empirewide admiration, contributions from famous literati were critical.31 In the case of the faithful maiden Fan, the contributors had been mainly from the North; however, Wei Xiangshu’s efforts broke this regional barrier. His reputation as an upright official and the high post he once held in the court might have helped his solicitation. Among the prominent scholars who responded to Wei’s request were Zhu Yizun (1629 –1709) and Wang Wan (1624 –90), both from the Lower Yangzi region in South China. Wang Wan contributed a biography, and Zhu Yizun wrote a long poem, which soon appeared in a text compiled by Qu Dajun.32 Wei published the contributions in a collection entitled Collected Writings on Two Heroines (Shuang lie ji).33

The Wang Xiuwen Saga In 1666, while the excitement stirred up by Song Dian’s suicide was still capturing people’s imagination in the North, the story of another faithful maiden, Wang Xiuwen, was said to have moved everyone to tears in Jiading, Jiangsu, in the Lower Yangzi region. This case was of a different type in that Wang attempted a number of suicides not to follow in death but to protest her mother’s scheme to terminate an earlier betrothal. Wang Xiuwen had been raised by her paternal uncle, who held a ­jinshi degree. She was engaged to Xiang Zhun when she was eight years old and Xiang was nine. When the Xiang family fortunes declined, Xiuwen’s mother tried to break off the engagement and marry her to a man from a wealthy family. In desperation, Xiuwen swallowed a gold ear-

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ring (jin huan) to kill herself, but she was saved after an eleven-day ordeal (see Figure 2.1). With the help of her uncle’s son, she eventually married into the destitute Xiang household to endure hardship with her husband. According to You Tong (1618 –1704), this story, too, drew many laudatory poems and essays from the literati in the area, including the renowned playwright Hong Sheng (1645 –1704).34 Hong’s poem was so well received that one writer later commented that it was greater than Hong’s famous play The Palace of Eternal Youth (Changsheng dian).35 You Tong himself in addition wrote a poem to Xiang Zhun praising

figure 2.1  Wang Xiuwen swallows a gold earring. s o u r c e : Tuhua xinwen (Pictorial news). In Qingdai baokan tuhua jicheng 2001: 7:144.

58   History Xiuwen’s “extraordinary virtue” while encouraging him to study hard to establish a name for himself.36

Dynastic Crisis and the Faithful Maiden Symbols How do we decipher the tremendous enthusiasm that the literati put into the activities commemorating faithful maidens? To be sure, promoting moral exemplars, faithful maidens included, had been established as a way of life for men of this class, and some men in fact continued to write along conventional rhetoric.37 However, the early Qing literati were not simply fulfilling a designated moral responsibility of honoring the virtuous. The immense intensity of their efforts and voices bespeaks very different emotions and understandings of the moral symbols of the faithful maidens. This intensity, as will be demonstrated, had every­ thing to do with the crisis of dynastic change and the literati’s experiences in it. The representations of faithful maidens during the early Qing were essentially determined by the literati’s varying positions in the “national trauma” of the dynastic transition, and their voices were far from uniform.38 The Manchu conquest forced Confucian literati to face the most difficult political and moral choices imaginable, and many did not hesitate to honor their moral commitment with their lives. For example, Liu Zongzhou (1578 –1645), a renowned thinker and the mentor of Huang Zongxi and Chen Que, killed himself when the Southern Ming fell in 1645, not long after his composition of a biographical essay on two women, a chaste widow who had committed suicide and a faithful maiden. In that essay, he condemned those men who “have no sense of shame”: “They are willing to do such low things as ‘creep through holes and climb over walls’ [to benefit themselves] without a second thought. They should be mortally ashamed when they look at the faithful maiden!”39 Liu Zongzhou answered the call of his moral philosophy with martyrdom, and the two young women he had praised could have provided inspiration for his action. Suicides of loyal Confucian men such as Liu Zongzhou dramatically changed the face of the intellectual community, and the catastrophe of the era permanently traumatized a generation of intellectuals. Many did not choose suicide but chose to respond to the dynastic change in different ways. Among them, some participated in the cause of restoring the fallen Ming, others abandoned their political careers altogether to avoid serving in the Qing, and still others sought a new career in the

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Manchu government. Whatever position they took, their choices left profound marks on how they interpreted the faithful maiden act, and honoring these young women became a part of their political and spiritual experience.

The Disengaged Writings of many prominent early Qing scholars suggest that as a political symbol, the faithful maiden was redefined in this era of national crisis. A young woman who died for her fiancé no longer represented just a kind of extraordinary female virtue that put unrighteous men to shame (as so ardently hailed by the Ming writers); she embodied the ultimate political virtue of loyalty, a moral spirit that seventeenth-century Confucian men admired most. The new symbol of the faithful maiden built on the old chaste wife / loyal minister analogy: if a faithful wife was like a loyal minister to the ruler, then a faithful maiden resembled a man who had not been the ruler’s minister yet dedicated his life to the ruler. The extraordinary nature of her act thus lent the image of the faithful maiden the most glamorous aura so that she overshadowed all other chaste women. In faithful maiden Fan’s biography, for example, Sun Qifeng (1584 –1675) remarked: The relationships that bind a ruler to his country, a minister to his ruler, a son to his father, and a wife to her husband are designated by Heaven and rooted in human feeling. To die to fulfill the responsibilities attached to one’s relationships is obligatory in terms of li [universal principle], which cannot be confused, and in terms of yi [honor-bound duty], which one should not avoid. For a woman who never saw her fiancé, dying for him is comparable to the deed of a man who dies for his ruler without ever having served him. This is most heroic!40

Sun Qifeng was one of the “three great Confucians” of his time and a leading lixue scholar who advocated the importance of self-­cultivation through daily practice.41 Praising faithful maiden Fan by tying her suicide to the political virtue of loyalty gives Sun a subtle yet powerful voice about his own moral resolution. Sun did not kill himself, but he did maintain his political integrity. Despite repeated invitations and even pressure, he refused to serve the Manchu government. His attitude was representative of that of many others who shared his philosophical ideas and political stance. Sun’s two friends Diao Bao and Shen Hanguang, who both contributed poems for the faithful maiden Song Dian, also declined to seek political careers in the new government.42

60   History Writing about faithful maidens was also Sun’s way to pay his tribute to the last Ming emperor, Chongzhen. There is a noticeable alteration in Sun’s application of the conventional idiom about social relationships in Confucian tenets. Relationships binding “a minister to his ruler, a son to his father, and a wife to her husband” were part of the standard expression, but Sun added to it another relationship, that of “bind[ing] a ruler to his country.” When Sun wrote this essay, it had been only a decade since the fall of the Ming dynasty, and the suicide of the late Ming emperor Chongzhen on the eve of the dynasty’s downfall was still a fresh memory. In comparing the faithful maiden with a man who has not served the ruler, yet dies for him, Sun also implicitly made his tribute to this type of exceedingly loyal martyr. When the Ming fell, numerous men of this sort chose to end their lives with the dynasty. For example, Cheng Ji, who had not been a Ming official, decided to sacrifice his life for the Southern Ming. “This is just like [loyal suicide by] a woman who is engaged but not yet married! Ah! I encounter Cheng’s heart in the Ye girl!” proclaimed Chen Yi (1670 –1742) in a biography he wrote for faithful maiden Ye.43 Similar sentiment permeates the work of Wang Yuan, who wrote four faithful maiden biographies. He was born into a family of hereditary generals of the Ming. When the capital, Beijing, collapsed, his father’s young wife “led women and other family members, nineteen in total, to drown themselves in the well in the family garden.”44 His father, a commander of the Imperial Bodyguard ( jinyiwei zhihui), donned Buddhist robes and went to lead a wandering life. As observed by others, writing provided the only channel for Wang Yuan to let out his intense feelings over the tragic fall of the Ming and the consequent destruction of his family.45 He greatly respected people of extraordinary character but had no appetite for service in the Qing court. He once sat for the examinations, earning a juren degree, simply to demonstrate that he had what it took.46 Wang Yuan’s favorite subjects were individuals with noble characters and independent minds (gaojie duxing).47 A great majority of his biographies were of men and women who had committed suicide during the downfall of the Ming or who had led secluded lives after the Ming collapsed. His often graphic narratives betray his deep obsession with martyrdom. In one biography, Wang vividly narrated how the widow Chao led her whole family—her four sons, one very young daughter, three daughters-in-law (one a bride of one month, and another late in her pregnancy), and a maid—to a collective suicide when the rebels entered Beijing.48

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Wang Yuan took it as his mission to tell the stories of these women who had met a heroic death. The other side of his glorification of heroic women was his deep disdain for cowardly and shameless men. In the biography of the faithful maiden Zhou, Wang asked why, in recent years, so many women had preserved fidelity or even died for their husbands or fiancés: “Was it because integrity of character and the sense of shame were lost, and men were shameless and no longer knew about honor and integrity, and, just as a thing reaching its extremity will reverse its course, [Heaven] now concentrates great virtue in women to such an extent that their virtue surpassed those of any women from previous dynasties?” Wang Yuan’s question reminds us of the awkward early Qing predicament of “men complied and women did not” (nan cong nü bu cong): when the new government issued the orders that Han men adopt the Manchu hairstyle of wearing a queue and that Han women stop binding their feet, women resisted but men obeyed. But who precisely in Wang’s mind were these shameless men? On one occasion, Wang describes an episode that occurred only ten years after the “martyred emperor killed himself for the country.” A certain man of fame and power hosted an extravagant banquet on a lake and invited guests from ten prefectures who composed many poems for the event.49 Whereas educated men compromised their principles to save their own skins, young unmarried women committed their lives for their conviction. For many Han intellectuals of the early Qing, the Manchu conquest of the Ming was not merely a dynastic transition but an imposition of “barbarian” rule over a civilized people. Their lament over the loss of the Ming, moreover, was fueled by many discriminatory or humiliating Qing policies, epitomized in the edict forcing Chinese men to adopt the Manchu hairstyle. As demonstrated by Kai-wing Chow, the Manchu conquest provoked a sense of “Chineseness,” and Confucian intellectuals expressed their Chinese identity through practicing the core ethics of Confucian tradition.50 The early Qing literati zeal for promoting the image of the faithful maiden corresponded closely to such a development. These young women, as emblems of utmost loyalty, helped the literati lay claim to Chinese moral superiority.

The Ming Loyalist in Action Qu Dajun (1630 –96), a Ming loyalist from Guangdong, represented Han intellectuals in action. He was fifteen years old when the Ming capital fell. He made a pledge to the ill-fated Southern Ming. He spent most of

62   History his lifetime fighting for the lost cause of restoring the Ming house and participated in Zheng Chenggong’s (1624 – 62) attempt to recover the Ming’s southern capital, Nanjing, and in Wu Sangui’s rebellion. Before he died, he instructed his son to inscribe on his gravestone four characters, which read: “A resister loyal to the Ming dynasty” (Ming zhi yimin).51 Because of his anti-Qing position, his writings were banned by the Qing court.52 Qu was a strong advocate for Ming restoration, and his advocacy for the virtues of faithful maidenhood was distinctly linked to his political activism. After he gave up his hope of overthrowing the Qing, Qu focused on writing. Among the books he composed was a volume entitled Record of the Martyred Men during the Four Reigns (Sichao chengren lu), which was dedicated to recording loyal men who had died for the four Southern Ming reigns. He then collected faithful maiden stories from throughout the empire (one of which was that of Song Dian) from the same period and recorded them in an essay entitled “Biographies of Martyred Women Who Followed Their Fiancés in Death before Marriage.” At the conclusion of the essay, he wrote: Ah, I wrote Record of the Martyred Men during the Four Reigns, [which shows that] since [the death of] the martyred emperor [Chongzhen], there have been so many gentlemen in commoner clothing [weibu zhi shi] who had not served the emperor but died nevertheless for him! As for heroic women, from Song Dian to Wu there are eleven, and I took them as model women. Compared to the women who, when captured, resisted humiliation and consequently died under the blade of the sword, the way these women died was even more difficult. Ever since the time when a woman thought to herself that she was not yet married, and therefore she did not need to take her deceased husband as her husband, and a man thought to himself that he had not served the lord, and therefore he did not have to take his dead lord as his lord, there have been women and men in this world [whose behaviors are so despicable] about whom I do not know what to say!53

His biographies of the eleven faithful maidens were used in tandem with the Record of the Martyred Men during the Four Reigns. For Qu, as a Ming loyalist who saw no hope of carrying out his cause, writing about loyalists became a way to discharge his unfulfilled duty. In addition to compiling the biographies of the eleven martyred faithful maidens, Qu wrote individual biographies and essays about four other faithful maidens, two of whom were from his own lineage.54 For Xiangu, the daughter of his cousin in the lineage, he composed an essay entitled “On the Cypress Boat” (Bozhou shuo), in which a faithful

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maiden was once more compared with a gentleman who had not served a ruler yet died for him.55 This essay indicates further that the gentleman was, in Qu’s mind, the kind of man who would not serve a new ruler when his own state collapsed. The two examples he gives are Boyi and Wang Zhu. Boyi died of starvation because he refused to eat crops growing on Zhou land after the Shang dynasty was overthrown by the Zhou; Wang Zhu, an upright gentleman from the state of Qi, hanged himself to show that he would not cooperate with the conqueror of his state. Clearly, Qu Dajun regarded himself as such a man, although, interestingly, he did not commit suicide as the men and women whom he praised had done. Qu Dajun’s use of the faithful maiden to advance a loyalist agenda came up in other contexts. After the fall of the Ming, some men who refused to serve the Qing entered the monastic order. Qu Dajun himself was in and out of Buddhist monasteries several times, but his comment on the faithful maiden Wang reveals his discomfort about the choice. It was said that after the death of Wang’s fiancé, people suggested that she become a Buddhist nun. But Wang said that if she became a nun, she would no longer be a daughter-in-law to her parents-in-law, and no longer be a wife to her dead fiancé. Therefore, she would not follow that advice. Qu commented: “Ah, a faithful wife and a loyal subject share the same principle. A faithful wife should not be a nun, just as a loyal subject should not be a monk. However, if, like Xue’an, a man is a monk on the surface and a Confucian in his heart, he is fine.56 If he wants to be a real monk, then a ruler would not regard him as a subject. How could he still be loyal!”57 Qu was probably dissatisfied with the “monks” who thereby escaped their loyal duty. As for himself, he was, of course, a Confucian even when he put on Buddhist robes. Yet Qu’s final return to the secular world might bespeak his ambivalence or even lack of steadfastness in his resolve. To live the life of a monk was, after all, not an easy thing to do, and to commit suicide was even harder. But faithful maidens defied worldly pleasure and committed their lives for their beliefs with no hesitation or retreat. Was it in this sense of guilt over his own failure to carry through moral martyrdom that Qu Dajun found them so awe inspiring? Men like Qu Dajun expressed their emotions in other ways besides writing faithful maiden biographies and essays. Some used other literary genres to create the image of the faithful maiden for similar purposes. According to Xu Shuofang and Wai-Yee Li, the drama Story of Chastity and Literary Talents: Zhang Yuniang, the Three Purities of the Inner

64   History Chamber, and the Parrot’s Grave (Zhang Yuniang guifang sanqing yingwu mu zhenwen ji) by Meng Chengshun (1599 –1684) embodies the author’s deep sentiment over the fall of the Ming dynasty.58 The prototype of the story is said to have taken place in the Song: Zhang Yuniang, a talented young woman from Songyang, Zhejiang, was engaged to her cousin. When her fiancé died, she refused to marry another man and shortly after also died.59 Meng purposely set the story in the Song-Yuan transition, the counterpart of the Ming-Qing transition, in which “barbaric” aliens overran a civilized empire. He also created the character General Wang, who commits a heroic suicide after fighting with Yuan officials and soldiers. In the play, after she learns of the general’s death, Yuniang declares: “A man expects himself to be loyal and brave; a woman expects herself to be chaste and loyal. I do not dare to follow the ancients, and I will be satisfied to follow the example of General Wang.”60 Meng Chengshun came from a gentry family in Kuaiji (prefectural seat of Shaoxing), one of the late Ming cultural centers in the Lower Yangzi region. An active figure in local literati circles, he was a member of the reformist Restoration Society (Fushe) and Maple Society (Fengshe), and a friend of Qi Biaojia (1602 –1644), a leading figure of the late Ming literati community who drowned himself when the Manchus entered Kuaiji. Although Meng did not choose similar political paths to those of Qu Dajun or Qi Biaojia, he found expression of his emotion in creating a faithful maiden tale in which political loyalty and wifely fidelity interwove. The play was a special medium for him to express his loyalist sentiment.

The Qing Collaborator The tragic fall of the Ming dynasty did not leave everyone distressed and lamenting. Wei Xiangshu’s (1617– 87) experience shows that drastic changes, which posed a critical political dilemma for many literati, did not hinder the ambition for political careers for others. Trained in lixue, Wei Xiangshu was highly motivated to undertake governmental service. He passed the provincial examination in 1642, the last examination held by the Ming. Four years later, when the Manchu government held its first civil service examinations, the twenty-nine-year-old Wei sat for them and gained a jinshi degree. He was made a Hanlin bachelor (shujishi) and promoted to the post of supervising secretary. His career suffered a setback toward the last years of Emperor Shunzhi’s reign as a result of his involvement with the impeached Chen Mingxia (1601–54).61

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But he later regained the trust of the succeeding emperor Kangxi and served consecutively as censor, governor of Shuntian prefecture, and vice minister of the Board of Revenue. When Wei retired at the age of sixty-eight, Kangxi bestowed on him a poem and a plaque inscribed with the emperor’s own calligraphy in appreciation for his outstanding service.62 Wei was indeed the sort of Han Chinese bureaucrat on whom the Manchu government depended to get its work done. An enthusiastic official, Wei took his job seriously and was remembered especially for his outspokenness.63 The author of the Draft History of the Qing Dynasty (Qingshi gao) remarked that Wei “was upright and loyal. He was able to advise high officials in power, and in particular he would speak out about things that others did not dare to.”64 His collected works provide fine support for this comment: they contain more than eighty memorials, many of which expose problems in the government or suggest policies for the new regime. Wei’s devotion could not be explained solely by his political zeal, however. He had, after all, his neo-Confucian perception of an orderly society. From early on Wei “regarded it as his duty to put society in order in accord with Confucian rituals and teachings,” and he acted earnestly on his vision.65 Li Gong (1659 –1733), the stern Yan-Li school moralist, commended Wei as the most influential official who advocated and promoted some of the best-known lixue scholars to government service in the first decades of the Qing.66 Like other lixue thinkers, Wei hoped to purify contaminated social behavior through the moral examples of virtuous maidens. In his elegiac address for Song Dian, he wrote: “As a minister, one dies for loyalty. As a son, one dies for filiality. As a wife, one dies for fidelity. . . . As for [individuals] like the Song daughter, she was a delicate young girl, not married, and still at the age of accepting betrothal gifts, yet she followed the principle set for a wife. This is most extraordinary, and rare in ancient times and in the present day.”67 To more fully appreciate Wei Xiangshu’s endeavor, we should further place it in the context of early Qing political history. When Song Dian’s case was in the making, only two decades had passed since the founding of the Qing, and the new government was still struggling to bring the whole empire under its control. Anti-Manchu sentiment was strong, and unrest was prevalent. Furthermore, the political turmoil had destroyed or damaged the local political structure. Wei Xiangshu and his peers were under great pressure to restore law and order in their communities. Promoting a moral paragon such as Song Dian would

66   History not only help to set a moral example for local people but would also reunite the community under the new government. Events such as public memorial services and the composition of eulogistic verses or poems defined the local elite’s leadership status in the community. In the case of Wei Xiangshu, the pressure to assume a leadership role might have been intense. When Wei was organizing the event dedicated to Song Dian, which took him about two years to complete, he was at a low point in his career: he had been out of court, and his future was not clear.68 This would have been particularly difficult for a politically engaged person like Wei. To play a leading role in the local morality campaign would not only reaffirm his status in the local community but would also demonstrate his unchanging loyalty to the new regime and the newly enthroned emperor. It was an ideal time for Wei Xiangshu to promote himself through involvement in a faithful maiden case. In the fifth month of 1666, that is, the year after Song Dian’s suicide, the Kangxi emperor issued his first edict to honor a faithful maiden, Hu Jiazhi from Anhui. Kangxi made a special note to acknowledge her moral accomplishment: “Hu was not yet married. However, upon hearing of her fiancé’s death, she repeatedly wanted to kill herself. . . . She is different from a married woman who dies for fidelity. Therefore, I order that local officials build an arch in memory of her.”69 During the Qing, edicts and news about jingbiao were published promptly in the government newspapers (dichao or dibao).70 It was therefore possible that Wei Xiangshu saw the edict. At any rate, six months later, the petition to honor Song Dian, drafted by Wei Xiangshu, was brought to the Kangxi emperor, who promptly approved it. Song Dian was the second faithful maiden to receive an imperial testimonial in the Kangxi reign. The irony is, however, that Wei’s enthusiasm was also a possible source of embarrassment for him. In his elegy, Wei praised Song Dian with the same kind of language used by others of his time: Song represented the virtue of loyalty in its highest form. But the loyalty of the faithful maiden stood in stark contrast to Wei’s own questionable choice. Unlike Song Dian, who had died for the principle of loyalty to her fiancé, Wei, who received his juren degree from the fallen Ming, had switched his loyalty to the alien ruler. By acting as an ardent sponsor of public morality, it appears, Wei attempted to turn the faithful maiden case to his advantage: he could use it to gloss over his own disgrace and project on himself the image of a moral guardian. Wei was hardly alone in serving the new dynasty and achieving a successful career. Indeed,

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many officials of Wei’s time, both in local government and at court, had served the last Ming emperor. Presiding in the post of prefect or magistrate, these people made up the main body of the local administration during the early Qing. The immense interest of the early Qing literati in promoting faithful maidens, therefore, was deeply embedded in intense emotions over the political crisis of the Ming-Qing transition. The impact of their activities is clear as our story continues to unfold: it reinvigorated a practice that might otherwise have been discouraged, and it established a moral standard by which Qing society could evaluate the faithful maiden practice. Although the faithful maiden cult developed thereafter in a very different political and cultural climate, many of the men discussed in this chapter enjoyed enduring fame through the remainder of the dynasty, and their works constituted an important segment of cultural heritage that shaped the thinking of later generations.

chapter

The State and the Social Webs of Exaltation

3

The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

perhaps ironical is that even though the faithful maiden was intensely celebrated during the Ming-Qing transition as a political embodiment of loyalty in the wake of Manchu conquest, the cult, after all, spread steadily across the empire under the Manchu Qing dynasty, due in part to the support of the court. During the Qing, the number of faithful maiden cases increased steadily. Many areas that had not previously reported faithful maidens began to include cases in their gazetteers. By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the faithful maiden practice was so common in some localities that their gazetteers treated it as a “local custom.”1 Important to note is that the same period also witnessed an elevated controversy over the ideological legitimacy of the practice (this subject will be treated in Chapter 7), but the harsh criticism did not hinder the development of the cult. The cult’s growth under the Qing would have been impossible had it not been for the active political and social mechanisms in place throughout this period. The first part of this chapter demonstrates that the Qing court policies on the faithful maiden cult were developed in the general context of an enlarged state program of jingbiao (and thus part of an active state agenda regulating social behavior and gender relations in response to new circumstances in a rapidly expanding empire); but they were also shaped by the dynasty’s uneasy position as conquerors and aliens.2 This position contributed to the inconsistencies in the court’s approach to the faithful maiden cult, and ultimately it facilitated the cult’s growth. The second part of the chapter explores the vast social webs working in conjunction with the central government to bring faithful maidens out to the attention of the public. Building on

The State and Social Webs of Exaltation   69

a wide range of social and personal connections, and joined by local officials, local elites, lineages, and families with an array of purposes and emotions, the activities of solicitation and writing about faithful maidens and the construction of shrines, tombs, and arches created an enormous local mechanism promoting the cult. Understandably, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the aura of the faithful maiden as the ultimate symbol of political loyalty waned, and she was presented increasingly in personal terms and in a sympathetic light. As the spread of the cult increasingly brought men of letters to face faithful maiden cases in their own families or among ­povertystricken neighbors whose faithful maidens were often overlooked by the government jingbiao system because of their lack of wealth and influence, making known these faithful maidens took on new meanings of urgency and responsibility.

Jingbiao and Manchu Ethnicity Although the Manchus were perceived by native Han Chinese as uncivilized or “barbarian,” the courts of the High Qing proved themselves to be immensely vigorous in the prosecution of Confucian governance.3 The state intervened “directly in the moral and material lives of ordinary people,” contributing to the rise of the discourse that Susan Mann has termed “familistic moralism.”4 The expansion of the Han jingbiao institution did not take place until the court consolidated its power toward the turn of the eighteenth century, but as early as its inauguration in 1644, the court was keenly aware of its usefulness. Shortly after the Manchus entered Beijing that year, the court followed the example of the Ming and issued edicts ordering officials to report the loyal, the chaste, and the filial men and women to the court to be honored.5 Six years later, the first awards were announced, which were followed by a second set of awards in 1653 that included seven faithful maidens. Over the course of the dynasty, the Shilu records indicate that the jingbiao system would be elevated to a grand scale in the number of people honored. From 1644 through 1850, approximately 217,336 people received awards from the court for their exemplary moral behavior.6 The gender imbalance among the recipients of jingbiao awards remained sharp. Of all the awardees, 2,552 were men and 214,784 were women, who were honored overwhelmingly in the categories of “fidelity” ( jie) and “­martyrdom” (lie).7 Why did the Manchu court take such an interest in honoring chaste women? Historians point to Manchu ethnicity as one key factor in the

70   History a­ nswer. For example, Susan Mann argues that jingbiao represented a means of legitimizing the imperial mandate of the Qing. By “codify[ing] and enforc[ing] norms in traditional Chinese culture,” the Manchus “could claim to represent, and indeed to restore, an indigenous moral and social system.”8 A study of Manchu widows by Mark Elliott sheds further light on the relationships between the court policy and Manchu ethnicity from yet another angle. Elliott shows that honoring their own widows might be a way for the Qing to establish “ethnic parity and equality between Manchu and Han, promoting the idea of the Manchu emperor as a universal ruler.” Moreover, widow suicide among Manchus was “part of a wholly separate Altaic tradition” from Chinese chaste suicide, and Elliott argues that the court’s interest in reinterpreting the practice in Confucian terms revealed its desire to “cover up” its “barbarian past.”9 Ethnic concern lies right at the heart of Qing jingbiao policymaking. The court struggled for a balance between maintaining ethnic identity and acquiring higher cultural status (by Confucian standards), and projecting the image of universal benevolent rule. Throughout the dynasty, the jingbiao regulations separated the Manchus and their associates (Mongols and Han Chinese in the Eight Banners) from the rest of the Han Chinese people.10 In early years, cases petitioning for jingbiao for the Eight Banners were routinely processed at the end of the year, in contrast to those for the Han Chinese, which were processed on a case-by-case basis during the year. This procedural difference was brought to a close in 1696 when Kangxi ordered that jingbiao for the Han Chinese be processed at the end of the year as well, but the two remained separate.11 If we break down the number of the jingbiao recipients along ethnic lines, the biggest winners were the Manchu women. During the reigns of Shunzhi and Kangxi, for example, the court issued jingbiao awards to 5,287 faithful widows (jiefu). Of them, 2,417 were Manchus (46 percent), 1,862 were Han women (35 percent), and 1,008 were women of Mongol and Han Martial backgrounds (19 percent).12 Given the fact that the population ratio between the Han Chinese and the Eight Banners (including Manchus, Mongols, and the Han Martial) was nearly a hundred to one, and that Manchus constituted only about one-third of the Eight Banner population, it is not difficult to see that the court jingbiao greatly favored the Manchus.13 Evidently, the court was eager to demonstrate that despite a non-Han (interpreted within China as “barbarian”) origin, their women led women from all other ethnic groups in their moral standing.14 Jingbiao served as a convenient method at the court’s disposal for embellishing its image.

The State and Social Webs of Exaltation   71

Prohibition of Suicide and Its Compromise Qing jingbiao policy on following a husband or fiancé in death by suicide (xun) reveals once more the importance of ethnicity in the court’s position. During the reigns of Kangxi and Yongzheng, the court repeatedly issued edicts to forbid or restrict awards for women who committed xun. The law seemed to have turned the tide against chaste suicide. Early Qing statistics gleaned from gazetteers indicate a general decline in chaste suicide in several provinces.15 However, the policy was inconsistent, as the imperial ban on conferring awards to such women was frequently dismissed by the emperors themselves. It was virtually overturned during the Qianlong reign, and throughout the rest of the dynasty the court continually honored women who committed xun. The following discussion shows that the Qing anti-xun campaign failed in part because of the court’s reluctance to deny awards to faithful maidens, especially when they were Manchus. The Shilu records indicate that prior to the twenty-seventh year of Kangxi’s reign (1688), the court had already issued several edicts to discourage chaste suicide.16 The first such edict to survive is dated 1688. In it Emperor Kangxi states: The life of a human being is the most weighty thing, and death is mournful. As for whether one will live a long life or a short one, one should let nature take its course. Why do people take their own lives? Moreover, taking life lightly and following someone in death are abnormal. If the court rewards such people and thereby acknowledges them as extraordinary, death will increase. What is the benefit of doing that! From now on, the court should stop rewarding those who follow their husbands in death. From princes down to commoners, the practice of a woman following her husband in death should be prohibited strictly and permanently [yongyong yan jin zhi]!17

Kangxi goes on to say that if a woman is determined to die, she should report her intention to local officials, who should further transmit it to the Board of Rites, and finally to Emperor Kangxi himself. Then her case should be discussed and decided at a conference attended by all of the high officials of the court. This long, complicated procedure to obtain a court’s permit for chaste suicide could simply be a tactic to discourage such suicides, but the effectiveness was doubtful.18 The court, however, lived up to its promise for a short period not to honor those who committed chaste suicide. During the two decades following the initiation of the policy, the court did not reward a single woman who committed chaste suicide.

72   History This policy might have served as a political strategy: during the early Qing, suicide was glorified by many Han scholars to express their Ming or anti-Qing sentiment. The court’s discouragement of suicide hence could work to break down that sentiment. At the personal level, Kangxi’s distaste for suicide is amply documented (and this might have helped generate the image of Kangxi as a “benevolent” Confucian ruler). He repeatedly forbade the Manchu custom of human sacrifice.19 During a tour of Taishan in 1684, he rejected an invitation to view a cliff named “Abandoning-Oneself Cliff” (Sheshen ya), from which filial sons leaped to fulfill the promises they made to the god of Taishan that they would exchange their own lives for those of their dying parents.20 He decreed that this sort of behavior was not filial and that people should be taught not to observe such a bad custom.21 The policy of excluding women who committed chaste suicide from jingbiao was later relaxed. From 1712 to his death in 1722, Kangxi awarded jingbiao to nineteen women who had taken their own lives. Thirteen of these were faithful maidens; two of the thirteen were Manchus.22 If we arrange all of the nineteen cases that breached the 1688 edict in chronological order, a pattern emerges. The first woman honored in 1712 was a faithful maiden and of Manchu background. Faithful maiden Tian, it is said, went to her fiancé’s family to hold fast to her vows when her fiancé died of an illness. She observed three years of mourning for him while taking care of his mother and hanged herself at the end of the mourning period.23 The following year, the court also recognized with an award a Han faithful maiden who had committed suicide.24 Not until after six faithful maidens had been honored did the court begin to honor widows who had followed their husbands in death. Significantly, again, the first of the six widows awarded, Guaerjia, was a Manchu.25 In short, in both types of cases—faithful maiden suicide and chaste widow suicide—Manchu women were honored earlier than Han women. The Manchu faithful maiden Tian was probably the first Manchu who received jingbiao for committing suicide for a fiancé. My hypo­ thesis is that, at a time when such “virtuous deeds” were rare among the Manchus, the court was willing to sacrifice its policy so that the extraordinary virtue of their women could be honored publicly. Once a precedent was set, the pressure to honor Han women meeting the same criteria rose, thus causing the court to relax its ban on xun. This reversed course in the policy toward chaste suicide was followed by the rest of the Qing courts. During Emperor Yongzheng’s

The State and Social Webs of Exaltation   73

reign, although two edicts were issued to restate his father’s official policy banning chaste suicide, he regularly honored women who had committed xun. Before his first edict banning xun, he had already rewarded fifty such women, twenty-one of whom were faithful maidens. That is to say, the number of suicidal faithful maidens honored by Yongzheng in six years nearly equaled the total number honored by Kangxi in his sixty-one-year reign. Yongzheng’s lack of commitment in banning xun left a note of ambiguity in both of his edicts. The first one, issued in the third month of the sixth year of his reign (1728), ends with an order that local government should teach people to follow the right way to be filial sons and faithful widows. “If there are people who still do not care about their lives,” Yongzheng wrote, “I would not give awards to all of them.”26 Only one month later, he honored two widows who had hanged themselves upon their husbands’ deaths.27 In his second edict, issued in 1735, Yongzheng criticized local officials who had failed to transmit his first edict to the common people, a failure that he viewed as a direct cause of the increase in xun cases. He reemphasized the court position that “not every woman who committed xun should be honored.”28 Both edicts failed to pronounce unequivocally that the court would stop honoring chaste suicides altogether. In fact, from the time the first edict was issued to his death in 1735, Yongzheng conferred ninety-five awards on women who had committed xun, including thirty-six faithful maidens.29 The court’s effort to forbid jingbiao awards for xun ultimately failed when Emperor Qianlong succeeded to the throne. During Qianlong’s reign, “committing suicide after a husband’s death” ( fuwang xunjie) was made a regular category of jingbiao routinely processed at the end of each year.30 That is, the court no longer treated a woman’s loyal suicide as a special case, which by regulation had been processed on a caseby-case basis during the year. Furthermore, a faithful maiden who had committed suicide was in general no longer honored separately from a widow who had committed xun. Instead, she was honored in the same category of “fuwang xunjie,” indicating that for the court it was not necessary to distinguish the two.31 Under the Qianlong emperor, a total of 884 widows and faithful maidens who committed loyal suicide were honored, of whom 43 were Manchus.32 Emperor Qianlong’s successors continued the practice, and the number of women honored for their loyal suicide grew steadily. For example, under the emperors Jiaqing and Daoguang (1796 –1850), the court rewarded 2,379 women who took their own lives after a husband’s or fiancé’s death.33

74   History

The Jingbiao of Faithful Maidens For a period during the Kangxi and Yongzheng courts, the jingbiao policy toward faithful maidens who did not commit suicide was also inconsistent. Evidence points to edict(s) issued during both reign periods to exclude faithful maidens from receiving the honor; however, the Shilu data indicate that awards were conferred on faithful maidens nevertheless, as would occur during the rest of the reign periods in the dynasty.34 The faithful maidens received awards most often in one of these categories: “martyred maiden” (lienü), “committing suicide before marriage” (weihun xunjie), “faithful maiden” (zhennü), and “preserving resolve before marriage” (weihun shouzhi). The criteria were similar to those in chaste widow cases: a faithful maiden became eligible for a jingbiao award should she remain unmarried until the age of fifty, and if the award was conferred, thirty taels of silver would be given by the court for her family to build an honorary stone arch on her behalf (see Figures 3.1 and 3.2). The rules were not strictly followed. In the Qianlong reign, for example, faithful maidens who died before they met the age and year standards were made eligible for jingbiao. Similar exceptions were granted by Emperor Jiaqing.35 From 1644 through 1850, the court honored more than 4,493 faithful maidens who preserved celibacy their whole lives, and the number of faithful maidens honored for suicides was approximately 948.36 Even if we exclude those who were honored for suicides, the faithful maidens who received jingbiao during the Qing still outnumber by twenty-nine times those so honored in the Ming (see Figure 3.3 and Table 3.1). This enormous growth, however, came only after the Kangxi reign. The Shilu data in Table 3.1 include the total number and annual average of faithful maidens honored (excluding those who committed suicide), year-average, and percentages by reign period of the jingbiao awarded during each of the six emperors’ reigns. They show that the numbers of faithful maidens honored during the Shunzhi and Kangxi reigns—a total of seventy-nine years—remained low and stable. The Yongzheng reign saw the first significant increase. The rapid pace of growth continued through the Qianlong and Jiaqing reigns, and the most dramatic increase occurred during the Daoguang era. If we compare the year-average of faithful maidens honored during the last century of the Ming with that in the Shunzhi and Kangxi reigns, the two numbers are in fact very close.37 Two explanations seem to be in order regarding the lower numbers for the Shunzhi and Kangxi reigns. First, during the Shunzhi and the first two decades of the Kangxi

figure 3.1  A memorial arch in honor of the chaste widow Sun (Shexian, Anhui).

figure 3.2  A group of memorial arches (Tangyue village, Shexian, Anhui).

80

60

40

20

0

Shun

Kang

Yong

Qian

Jia

Dao

figure 3.3  Faithful maidens honored during first six reigns of the Qing, 1644 –1850. s o u r c e : Shilu (Shunzhi through Daoguang reigns).

ta b l e 3 . 1 Number and year-average of faithful maidens honored with jingbiao awards, 1644 –1850, by reign period Shunzhi

Kangxi

Number of faithful maidens honored

14

64

215

Year of reign

17

61

0.82

1.05

Year­average honored

Yongzheng Qianlong

Jiaqing

Daoguang

Total

1,487

710

2,003

4,493

13

60

25

30

206

16.54

24.78

28.40

66.77

21.81

The State and Social Webs of Exaltation   77

reigns, the Qing court involved itself heavily in military campaigns and pacification efforts. This political circumstance could have led the court to relegate jingbiao to a secondary matter. Second, the numbers may indicate strong continuity from the Ming practice, suggesting that the early Qing court followed closely the Ming precedent in the scale of the awards. Emperors Shunzhi and Kangxi appeared very careful regarding the recommendation procedure. Both decreed repeatedly that the cases brought to the court for awards should “be reinvestigated strictly and discussed thoroughly” and “awards be issued only after the second investigation confirms their authenticity.”38 Whereas Kangxi worried that cases for awards might have been overreported, Yongzheng was concerned that cases were being overlooked. Shortly after his succession to the throne, Yongzheng issued an edict in which he angrily accused the provincial officials who took the court’s “great statute” (ju dian) of jingbiao as empty words. He instructed the officials at various levels to “search carefully” for filial sons and faithful wives so that even the very poor could “receive imperial favor” and the virtuous deeds hidden even in “remote mountains and deep valleys” would be “made known to the whole world.”39 Yongzheng further lowered the bar for jingbiao, making eligible for awards women who had preserved fidelity for more than fifteen years after becoming a widow and who had died over the age of forty.40 Shortly afterward, noting that very few women from military families were recommended, he instructed that jingbiao should also cover that sector of the population.41 Manchu faithful maidens were now making more regular appearances among the honored, and Yongzheng was personally involved when a report brought to his attention a faithful maiden from the household of Prince Yi, Emperor Kangxi’s thirteenth son and his own younger brother. Prince Yi’s third son was engaged to a daughter from the Fucai family. When the son met an untimely death, the Fucai daughter “wept and cut her hair” and wanted to preserve mourning for him. She knelt by the door of Prince Yi’s mansion for a day and night, but Prince Yi did not send anyone to say a word to her. Two years later, in the eighth year of the Yongzheng reign, Prince Yi himself died. The Fucai daughter, who had been observing mourning for her fiancé in her parents’ home, pleaded to let her mourn him as a daughter-in-law. Yongzheng was then informed of the matter, and he granted her request immediately. In the edict, Yongzheng praises her: “She is a young girl, yet she understands the great principle. She has made a ‘cypress boat’ vow. Her feeling deserves sympathy, and her resolve is praiseworthy.” He instructed that

78   History the title of beile be bestowed on her fiancé and that a boy from among his nephews be selected for adoption by the faithful maiden.42 The greatest institutional endeavor under the Yongzheng emperor was perhaps the construction of Shrines of the Faithful and Filial (jiexiao ci or jiexiao funü zhi ci) (see Figures 3.4, 3.5, and 3.6). Concerned that some awardees’ families failed to build the arches for which the thirty taels of silver were allocated, and that arches could collapse eventually so that nothing was left for “the commoner to gaze upon for inspiration,” Yongzheng ordered that collective shrines be built at selected locations at the seats of all levels of local government: province, prefecture, and county. The names of the awardees would be inscribed on a grand memorial arch in front of the shrine; the tablets of those who had already died would be housed inside the shrine.43 The edict was initially misunderstood by officials as a money-saving measure, who proposed that since the awardees would be honored collectively in public shrines, the government could stop giving away the thirty taels to the awardees’ families. The emperor, saying that money was not a concern, rejected the proposal.44 This change in court orientation toward jingbiao resulted in an instant boost in the number of faithful maidens honored. During Kangxi’s reign,

figure 3.4  Shrine of the Chaste and Filial (Shexian, Anhui).

figure 3.5  Shrine of the Chaste and Filial (detail) (Shexian, Anhui).

figure 3.6  Layout of a Qing county school with a shrine dedicated to chaste widows (left). s o u r c e : Nakagawa 1983.

80   History the number (excluding the cases honored for suicide) averaged 1.05 per year. By contrast, in Yongzheng’s reign, the average was 16.54 per year, that is, about sixteen times that in Kangxi’s reign. This trend in expansion of court awards was carried forward by succeeding Qing rulers. There can be little doubt that Emperor Yongzheng made these changes not so much to please the souls of virtuous women as to serve his political objectives. Inheriting the throne at the age of forty-five, the zealous emperor set out immediately to reform the bureaucracy,45 and the jingbiao and the building of the public shrines could be seen as effective measures to shape the social and political order from the bottom up.46 In addition, he seemed to have also deliberately used jingbiao to define his own ruling style. Emperor Kangxi had tended to treat his officials with tolerance; Yongzheng’s aggressive promotion of jingbiao sent the message that the new ruler would not simply follow in his father’s footsteps. Similarly, when Qianlong ascended the throne, for example, he quickly abandoned Yongzheng’s policy that women who committed xun were honored only as an exceptional imperial favor. Immediately after his succession, Qianlong made such women regular recipients of court awards. At the transition of power, it seems, changing jingbiao regulations conveniently and safely dramatized the distinctive approach that the new monarch would bring to the court. During the Qianlong reign, while faithful maidens who committed xun came to be routinely honored, the number of awards granted to faithful maidens who did not kill themselves also increased, due in part to the new regulation that made a faithful maiden who died before the age of fifty a regular subject of jingbiao.47 The average number of faithful maidens rewarded, excluding those who were honored for committing xun, was 24.78 per year, a 50 percent increase from that of the ­Yongzheng reign.48 Presiding over a land that was truly spectacular in terms of territorial size, ethnic variety, population, and prosperity, the High Qing monarchs might have felt great satisfaction in showing off their imperial generosity and benevolence. In addition, the growing leniency in offering awards could be interpreted as an attempt to court favor with the Han gentry elite, the sponsors of the majority of these jingbiao requests. Furthermore, the generous imperial awards might have seemed a useful tool for sustaining social order in the face of increasing social tension and unrest, which became obvious toward the end of the Qianlong reign.49 Affirming the moral behavior of exemplars to encourage the positive behavior of the people was, after all, was the essential purpose of jingbiao.

The State and Social Webs of Exaltation   81

For Qianlong, there was a personal dimension as well. When he was a crown prince, Emperor Yongzheng appointed Zhu Shi (1664 –1736) as one of his four mentors. Zhu became his most admired teacher and would remain one of the most influential people in his life.50 During the time when Zhu Shi was a mentor, his faithful maiden daughter died. Cai Shiyuan (1682 –1733), a close friend of Zhu Shi and also a mentor to the crown prince, wrote a biography in her honor.51 Qianlong, then in his teens, read it and was moved to write a long poem dedicated to her.52 After ascending the throne, Qianlong gave an increasing number of awards to faithful maidens and changed the policy so that such awards would be given on a regular basis to faithful maidens who killed themselves; he also participated in the fierce literati debate over the faithful maiden practice. The imperial version of the annotations on the Book of Rites, approved by Qianlong, argues that the faithful maidens did not violate Confucian rituals.53 But the change of court policy (along with demographic expansion) during the Yongzheng and Qianlong reigns created a problem due to the steady increase in petitions for awards. In 1749, officials in Jiangsu alone submitted over two hundred petitions. Ironically, Qianlong was not entirely pleased with this development. He accused local officials of being bureaucratic: they reported cases because these cases met the broad jingbiao requirements, but they did not check carefully whether or not these women actually accomplished extraordinary deeds, such as exemplary filiality to their parents-in-law, education of their sons, or steadfast conviction in the face of hardships. Rewarding everyone who met the “age and year” requirements and enshrining their tablets, the emperor pointed out, would devalue the significance of the jingbiao awards.54 Under Qianlong’s instruction, the form of awards was revised. The new regulation stipulated that only those women “who are both filial and loyal and have endured poverty” be honored with arches and their tablets enshrined. Those who met only the “age and year” requirements and who had not displayed special virtuous deeds were no longer eligible for “building arches.” Instead, they would be rewarded only with honorable tablets while alive and with the privilege of having their names inscribed on the Shrines of the Faithful and Filial after death.55 Although the revised policy limited the pool of women eligible for receiving the conventional honor of building arches, the age and year criteria remained, leaving the door of jingbiao open to every woman who met these basic qualifications. This led to further revision of jingbiao regulations during Daoguang’s reign. To deal with the pressure of

82   History the continual growth in the number of women who qualified for jingbiao, on many occasions the court ordered that these women should be honored with collective arches (zongfang).56

Local Government Awards Bestowed upon his subjects by the ruler of the realm, the jingbiao award represented the most prestigious honor a commoner could expect, but it was only the jewel at the pinnacle of a system of awards that stretched across the bureaucracy and beyond. A variety of other forms of recognition existed at the local level. Given the tremendous population and vast territory of the Qing empire, local government honors and awards, which were not subject to specific regulations or terms, were vital in projecting the state recognition of the virtue of faithful maidens. As prescribed by the rule, any petition for a jingbiao award had to originate from local offices. The county or prefectural schools (xianxue or fuxue) were often in charge of gathering information on a case and reporting it to the governor’s office, which forwarded it to the central government to be approved by the Board of Rites.57 Before or along with the procedure for a petition for jingbiao, local officials commonly delivered their own recognition in various forms.58 A magistrate, prefect, governor, educational inspector, or other official could use various resources at his disposal to promote a case. An enthusiastic magistrate would pay personal tribute to a faithful maiden’s family. A less zealous magistrate would order that the woman’s name be recorded in local gazetteers. Writing a tablet honoring her with his own calligraphy served the same purpose. When the artistic Jiang Gui was preserving fidelity for her dead fiancé, Governor Yin Jishan (1695 –1771) rewarded her with a tablet containing a four-character phrase, “The Tradition of Loyalty Remains” (zhongjie yufeng), because she was the descendant of a loyal official.59 Local authorities exercised more flexibility than the central government in handling ambivalent cases, such as suicide. In a suicide incident from 1702, for example, the magistrate petitioned higher authorities for an award. Because of Emperor Kangxi’s ban on suicide at the time, the petition was turned down. But the magistrate was nevertheless instructed to offer a sacrifice on behalf of the government and, in addition, to present a tablet of honor to her family.60 In a separate case in 1689, the magistrate ordered that the faithful maiden be buried with her fiancé and that her deed be recorded in the local history, as he “could not bear

The State and Social Webs of Exaltation   83

to let her story go unknown.”61 These cases reveal the dilemma in the central government’s campaign to stop honoring suicides. The court’s position was not popular with those who were in ardent support of the faithful maidens. It ran the risk of violating popular sentiment about the virtuous suicides. In walking a fine line between curbing the fad of suicide and not alienating itself from those who supported the cult, the local officials had a subtle yet important part to play. Local government awards also served as remedy or compensation when a deserving case was neglected in the jingbiao process. Here gazetteers compiled by the local government constitute common instruments of recognition. An entry or simply a name listed in county, prefectural, or provincial gazetteers weighed heavily as a form of honor, because it ensured the passing on of the name in history. During the Yongzheng reign, Lan Dingyuan (1680 –1733) took the post of magistrate of Chao­ yang in Guangdong. Seven years had passed since the chaste suicide of faithful maiden Chen in the county, but local gentry did not bring the case to his attention, and he was preoccupied by famine relief efforts and countless lawsuits in his jurisdiction; consequently, we are told, he did not go out to search for chaste women cases himself. As a result, the county missed the opportunity to recommend Chen for a jingbiao. When the county began to prepare a gazetteer for the prefectural gazetteer project, a certain juren degree holder informed him of the case. Lan felt deeply guilty for his negligence. He instructed that her story be included in both county and prefectural gazetteers.62 The fact was, as Lan Dingyuan’s experience suggests, even serious local administrators and gazetteer editors could not guarantee the inclusion of every individual who deserved a place in local history. Provincial Gazetteer of Zhejiang (Zhejiang tongzhi), compiled in the mid-1730s, was one of the finest provincial gazetteers. However, even in this work cases were left out in great numbers. In the 1770s, Wang Huizu (1731–1807), from Xiaoshan county and one of the Qing dynasty’s most capable local administrators, began a “revealing-the-obscured” (biao wei) campaign that resulted in the discovery of hundreds of chaste widows and faithful maidens in Xiaoshan and the adjacent areas. Wang’s legal mother and his biological mother—a concubine—both received jingbiao for their chaste widowhood after Wang gained his jinshi degree. When the honorary arch was erected, his legal mother (his biological mother had died) told Wang that she felt sad because this moment of great honor brought to mind memories of the many other women in the neighborhood who had suffered just as much as she had but had been forgotten.

84   History Wang Huizu thus began to collect the women’s stories with an initial recovery of 23 cases. The cases were reported to the local county magistrate’s office, and honorary tablets were granted to these women’s families. In 1776, Wang expanded his efforts to include other counties in the area—Shanyin, Kuaiji, Yuyao, Xiaoshan, Zhuji, and Shen­ xian—and enlisted influential scholars from each of these counties to assist him. Four years later, 305 cases had been gathered. Thereupon, Wang petitioned the governor that the cases be filed with respective county offices as future local gazetteer sources, and their families be presented honorary tablets. Because Xiaoshan county had already built an “additional room” attached to the Shrine of the Faithful and Filial, he asked that those from Xiaoshan be enshrined there. All these petitions were granted. Wang Huizu continued his search. In the next six years, he and local gentry members located about 60 cases for Shangyu and Xinchang counties, and approximately 20 more cases for the other above-mentioned counties. A similar petition was sent to the provincial educational commissioner and was approved. Wang Huizu meanwhile published a book entitled Records of Revealing the Obscured Zhejiang Women (Yue nü biao wei lu) with prefaces contributed by eminent scholars across the empire.63 This was an extraordinary endeavor. Overall, 400 neglected chaste women were rediscovered and honored. In this process, local officials were overshadowed by the motivated local elite, even though the honors were conveyed through various government authorities. Wang Huizu was, without question, exceptional: his zeal, persistence, and extensive local influence were all behind this effective campaign. The event also testifies to the fact that the degree to which local government wanted to put effort into such matters was largely their own decision. How much a local official would invest in honoring the chaste and faithful depended in part on his own moral values, his personal interest, and his position in the faithful maiden debate. Someone who had reservations about the faithful maiden cult would respond less enthusiastically to a faithful maiden case. By the same token, a bureaucrat who did not regard morality as a top priority would also set such cases aside. But the High Qing proved to be the time when many field administrators put enormous ardor into their jobs and promoted Confucian female morality.64 Men like Chen Hongmou, Yin Jishan, and Lan Dingyuan felt a strong sense of responsibility in promoting orthodox values concerning women and the family. Both Lan and Chen composed instructive texts specifically on women and took it as their mission to champion

The State and Social Webs of Exaltation   85

virtuous women.65 Lan Dingyuan, for example, included biographies of seventeen women in his collected works, of whom eleven were chaste widows and five were faithful maidens. His earnestness was evident in the stories he describes so compassionately.66 Still, not every local official was as serious or interested. Dai Mingshi mentions a certain official who was busy collecting taxes and bribes with which to please his superiors. When it was suggested he petition the court to honor two virtuous women who had recently committed suicide—a faithful maiden and a chaste widow—he responded angrily: “How could I do such an impractical thing!” Ironically, “before long, he was summoned to the capital as a virtuous gentleman [xianliang] and soon thereafter made a high official.”67 This example notwithstanding, there was a risk for a bureaucrat who neglected such an “impractical” thing, for he could face punishment if either his failure to report an important case or his falsification of the merits of a case were discovered. In 1722, a case involving a woman who died resisting rape was brought up to the court, but not through the regular local bureaucratic channels. As a result, the magistrate, prefect, surveillance commissioner, and governor all forfeited their salaries.68 In an edict issued in 1843, Emperor Daoguang stressed that once a false case or bribery by yamen clerks was discovered, the officials of the jurisdiction (difangguan) would be handed over to the court to be punished.69 Although the Qing court set up strict rules to prevent unlawful practices in the jingbiao process, bureaucratic corruption was a main factor that prevented faithful maidens from being acknowledged. Qing writers often complained that eligible candidates were denied the honor simply because of economic constraints or their families’ lack of local influence. This was already the situation in the Ming and early Qing, as Pan Chengzhang (1626 – 63) noted: “The jingbiao award was normally obtained by the powerful.”70 Bribery was commonly understood to be part of the jingbiao process at the local level, with payment demanded by government officials as well as yamen runners.71 In Nancheng, Jiangxi, a Confucian instructor (jiaoyu; literally, to “educate and instruct”), whose very duty was to supervise the moral growth of his jurisdiction, refused to report an eligible faithful maiden case to higher offices because the bribery he had received did not meet his expectation. This incident caused Li Fu (1675 –1750) to cry out: “What is he to teach and to instruct!”72 Playwright Jiang Shiquan (1725 – 85) learned that faithful maiden Jinggu, who was seventy years old and supported

86   History herself by weaving and spinning, had not been recommended for an imperial award. He tried to convince her brother, with whom she lived, to submit a petition, but the brother refused because he was afraid that yamen runners and clerks would demand a bribe.73 Not only the poor and the illiterate were affected. For example, although both her father and father-in-law held the xiucai degree, faithful maiden Wang Yuan was refused recommendation for a court award from her county because her family failed to bribe yamen clerks.74

Literati Writing and Solicitation Unlike the government’s limited, inconsistent, and sometimes corrupt system of awards, literati activities honoring faithful maidens outside the bureaucracy were characteristically immediate, spontaneous, personal, and far reaching. Established men of education were compelled to record faithful maiden cases out of a sense of obligation. The concerns behind many of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century writings differed from those of the early Qing. After the successful pacification of the Manchu regime and the dying off of “resisters loyal to the Ming,” the faithful maiden as a political symbol and sentimental object faded away. With the decrease of political symbolism, the poignant tone popular in early Qing writings vanished. Literati instead wrote to fulfill personal or social responsibility toward kinswomen, friends, lineage, community, and their jurisdiction (if they served in government posts), and/or to defend faithful maidens criticized by opponents of the cult. It must be noted that not all the writers of faithful maiden eulogies were ardent supporters of the cult, a point to be discussed in Chapter 7. Literati took interest in recording and publicizing faithful maiden cases for various reasons, but there seems to be a common sentiment among the writers of this period, especially those who themselves had seen the bitter lives of chaste women, that their effort would remedy the deficiency of the government award system that failed to honor deserving women.75 Zhang Huiyan (1761–1802), son of a chaste widow who suffered miserably when he and his siblings were young, lamented that many women like his mother were overlooked by the government jingbiao: “After several decades, these women’s names and their deeds are all forgotten. The government cannot do much about it. Virtuous gentlemen and educated men should not forget them.”76 Zhang’s sentiment was widely echoed. As the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries continued to produce record numbers of chaste women—many from

The State and Social Webs of Exaltation   87

non-elite backgrounds—scholars felt a keen sense of urgency about recording their stories. Wu Shaozeng, for example, composed a biography for the impoverished faithful maiden Yuan, explaining that he was afraid her name would pass into oblivion and hoping historians someday would find his essay and record Yuan’s story in history.77 Jingbiao assured that the name of a virtuous woman would be passed on. But even if she were neglected by the court or local government, a piece of writing by a scholar might secure her a place in history. As in earlier centuries, Qing writers employed a range of genres, including biographies, poems, encomia (zan), reflective notes, “afterwords”— composed after reading a biography by another author and usually published in the writer’s own collected works—and prefaces. Nearly all of these forms predated the Ming and had been in use for extolling exemplary individuals. Each of the genres had its own style of presentation; poems, for example, tended to employ dense allusions and play on the sentiment of qing (emotion). Biographies, on the other hand, allowed more details. The many richly detailed faithful maiden biographies cited in this study undermine the assertion that biographical writings in Chinese history were too formulaic to reveal the real lives of the biographees. Literati commemorative writing about faithful maidens operated according to a structure different from that of government awards. It entailed kinship, social, and political networks that stretched across the empire, and writers themselves took the initiative. When faithful maiden Cao committed suicide, Huang Tingjian (1762 –?) went to visit Cao’s neighbors to confirm the story and afterward wrote a biography in which he expressed his hope that literati in the area would contribute prose and verse to honor her and comfort her soul.78 A sense of local pride figured prominently in their participation. For a locality, it was an honor to claim a chaste widow; but it was an even higher honor to claim a faithful maiden or a chaste widow who was widowed at a young age. When Zhou Gongchen was helping to edit a prefectural gazetteer, he took the opportunity to collect cases of eleven women—six faithful maidens and five widows of a “very young age,” all from his hometown—and composed a biographical encomium in their honor.79 Yao Nai (1731–1815), from nearby Tongcheng, composed a collective biography in memory of four faithful maidens, all of them from Tongcheng.80 Lineage made up another key node in this social network publicizing faithful maidens. It is perhaps not accidental that South China, which

88   History developed stronger lineage organizations, produced many more faithful maidens than did the North. In some areas in Fujian, critics charged, lineages would go so far as to take pleasure in the suicides of faithful maidens for the sake of their own reputation.81 Such cases might be rare, but clearly it was a moment of pride when a lineage claimed faithful maiden daughters or daughters-in-law. When Qu Dajun was compiling local gazetteers, he noted that all of the eminent lineages in Guangzhou’s seventeen prefectures and counties produced faithful maidens and chaste widows. To his own great satisfaction, the Qus also produced two faithful maidens, who “brought glory to the grand Qu lineage.” 82 The genealogies of the Yang lineage of Doushan made a special note to stress that it claimed women who were “engaged yet preserved chastity for their dead fiancés.”83 Some lineages also compiled exclusive biographies for their virtuous women. For example, the Cao lineage of Yanzhen in She county, Anhui, recorded forty-five “chaste and martyred” women who married into the lineage and thirteen young women who were born to the lineage and who “were engaged but preserved fidelity, or led a celibate life, and who died for honor-bound duty [yi] at times of chaos.”84 A chaste woman could bring glory not only to her fiancé’s lineage but to her natal lineage as well. A scholar personally connected to a faithful maiden was obliged to ensure the transmission of her story with his own brush.85 Many families, including those of noted scholars, spared no effort to have their faithful maidens recorded by renowned writers. The solicitation was forged on kinship and bureaucratic connections, teacher-disciple relationships, literati friendship, or even surname connections.86 Consequently, it was dominated by the establishment and the educated. As in Yuan and Ming times, male relatives traveled in person to seek a tribute from a famous writer.87 In faithful maiden He’s case, for example, her brother, who was a government student, went from his hometown in Shanxi to Beijing to solicit writings. He must have had connections, for he acquired a biography from Cai Shiyuan and an “afterword” from Zhu Shi, who had just lost his faithful maiden daughter.88 Solicitation was a continual process that was carried out whenever a solicitor chanced to meet established scholars.89 In an exceptional case, it was possible for a solicitor to obtain hundreds of commemorative poems. Most people did not fare so well, but a painstaking effort could still harvest numerous contributions. Another popular form of solicitation was “writing on an album” (ti ce—writing a poem or calligraphy or drawing a painting on an

The State and Social Webs of Exaltation   89

album [ce] as part of a special collection), an artistic convention used to commemorate special personal occasions such as a mother’s birthday, a wife’s or concubine’s death, or the acquisition of an antique object. By the early Qing, taking a ce to request a piece of writing for a faithful maiden was already a common practice. Mao Qiling was twice approached for a contribution on ce for faithful maidens.90 In some sense, the ubiquitous correspondence surrounding solicitations was the most dynamic facet of the faithful maiden cult. It brought men from different regions into contact and thus served to confirm and (re)create social connections among the literati. The process was mutually beneficial for the solicitors and the solicited. To be included in the list of people solicited by a man of status was itself a confirmation of one’s own status in literati circles, and therefore, few men would fail to seize such an opportunity. Of course, requests made by less influential men might not get the same kind of enthusiastic response as those made by influential men.91

Building Shrines Travelers of the late empire would have frequently encountered unique architecture honoring moral exemplars, among them faithful maidens. Three types of such architecture in honor of faithful maidens dotted the vast land, making a distinct visual representation of the moral values the late empire espoused: the arch, the tomb, and the shrine. The arch represented imperial favor. It was a privilege only jingbiao awardees enjoyed, built with the allocated silver from the state upon receiving the jingbiao. There was little restriction on building a tomb as a form of commemoration, and many such tombs involved a suicide case in which a faithful maiden was buried with her fiancé following a funeral fanfare orchestrated by the local government and local elite. Construction of shrines involved even more complicated endeavors. The visibility of these memorial structures is illustrated in a report about the Wuxian area, including the counties of Wuxian, Changzhou, and Yuanhe, located in southern Jiangsu in the Lower Yangzi region. Fifty shrines were built and dedicated to virtuous women alone, scattered in the villages and towns, along the streets, by the bridges, and in the mountains. Some were built with arches, exhibiting double glory, that bestowed by the court and that by the local people.92 Compared with writings, these constructions had a distinct function. Whereas biographies, poems, and memorial essays circulated only within educated

90   History or semiliterate circles, arches, tombs, and shrines told these women’s stories to every spectator indiscriminately. In the local community, the solemn-looking structures served as a reminder of the glory that these women brought to their families, their lineages, and the locality and made a public statement of the moral achievement of the community. The shrine as a form of commemoration for people of extraordinary virtue and influence had existed throughout history, but the enshrinement of the chaste women did not become common until the late ­fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.93 Faithful maidens, the ultimate symbol of Confucian female virtue, sparked many instances of shrine building in Ming times. Meng Yun of Zhuji county, Zhejiang, was among the earliest faithful maiden awardees to be honored with a shrine. At the age of sixty, she was conferred a jingbiao by the Hongxi emperor in 1425.94 The shrine, known as Shrine of the Faithful Maiden Meng (Meng zhennü ci), was built next to the Shrine of Mencius. The state financed the maintenance of the shrine through school taxes (xue zu). Each year a ceremony was held on the day of “great cold” (Dahan),95 in which the Confucian instructor of the county personally offered a sacrifice.96 Not all the shrines were associated with jingbiao, but a project initiated by an individual had to secure a permit from the local authority, as seen in this case in Shaoxing, the county neighboring the location of the Meng Yun shrine. It was for the joint memory of a faithful maiden and a chaste widow, built on the proposal of a local scholar in 1623. The government provided the land, the site of a deserted textile and dye shop (zhiran ju). The locals made sacrifices to it on important lunar festivals. Located on an out-of-the-way lane, the two-room shrine looked rather modest. Liu Zongzhou, who contributed an inscription, lamented that it was a pity that the shrine “does not attract as many solemn eyes and ears as it would have, if it had been located in a metropolitan town.” But “the spirits of the heroines would count on it to be remembered perpetually.”97 In the Qing, as described earlier, under the Yongzheng emperor, the state financed the construction of Shrines of the Faithful and the Filial for virtuous women at chosen public places in every provincial, prefectural, and county seat (their counterpart, Shrines of the Loyal, Righteous, Filial, and Brotherly, were built inside the government schools in dedication to exemplary men). Officials were required to offer sacrifice in the shrines twice a year, in spring and autumn, respectively, and to renovate them regularly.98 Although Shrines of the Faithful and the Filial became a standard feature in the local landscape from the Yong-

The State and Social Webs of Exaltation   91

zheng era onward, the majority of Qing shrines dedicated to women exemplars were not sponsored by the imperial court, but collectively by local government, local community, lineage, and family or “people of the locality” (yi renshi). Whereas most of these shrines were in memory of Qing women, female exemplars from earlier dynasties who had just been recovered were also honored.99 Local shrines assumed various titles to indicate their special features. In general, shrines built to honor virtuous women collectively took the title “jiexiao ci.” When built to honor a small group of women, a shrine might assume such names as shrine of the three faithful women (san jie ci) or shrine of the seven martyred women (qi lie ci). The characters fu (married women) and nü (maiden) indicated the marital status of the enshrined, and the characters jie (faithful) and lie (martyred) indicated the nature of her deed (whether or not she had committed suicide).100 Frequently, the titles also contained the family name of the enshrined. A shrine called Chen liefu ci, thus, indicates that the enshrined woman was a daughter-in-law of the Chen family. In faithful maiden cases, her natal family sometimes got to claim the honor. For instance, the Zhao zhenlie ci, built six years after her suicide, was dedicated to the faithful maiden Zhao Shuying.101 A shrine honoring a woman could be located right next to the lineage shrine of her natal family. The need to enshrine a faithful maiden (or any exceptionally virtuous individual) lay in the ancient belief that an exceptional individual had to be commemorated and his or her soul consoled. For the government and Confucian elite, shrines served the dual role of comforting the soul of the dead and evoking the innate moral goodness of the people. Scholars who frequented these sites were said to have been spiritually refreshed. One evening, for example, Han Mengzhou (1729 – 98) paid a visit to faithful maiden Bao’s shrine located to the south of the Shanyang county (in Jiangsu) seat. The shrine was made up of three rooms, and the faithful maiden’s grave, which was covered by a pavilion, lay right below it. Four old pine trees, one planted on each corner, surrounded the pavilion. “One of the pines leans halfway over,” he wrote. “The north wind [that is, the winter wind] happens to be blowing, making a roaring sound. Needles of the pines are blown by the wind, and the leaning pine stands obstinately and will not yield to it.” The heroic spirit of the faithful maiden, as Han’s description implies, lived on in these pines, symbols of strength and noble character. Han lingered by the shrine and contemplated, and did not return home until night fell.102

92   History For the commoners, often myth and supernatural rumors filled their imagination and gripped their attention. The undercurrent of folk beliefs, a legacy of early faithful maiden narratives, was never cut off from the normative discourse of the Ming and the Qing. Faithful maidens were described to have been harassed by evil spirits, but their supreme virtue in the end overpowered the spirits. One story from the early Qing tells of a spirit that appeared in the home of a certain faithful maiden and moved items around or ignited things; it would hide itself only when the faithful maiden began to recite Buddhist scripts. Since she considered it inappropriate to have a male exorcist come to her room, she decided to starve herself to death. At that point the spirit assumed a human’s voice, apologized, and left.103 Supernatural rumors could powerfully reconfigure a faithful maiden into some kind of goddesslike figure even before she was dead. In the following account, faithful maiden Si from Yucheng, Shandong, was taken as a living deity by the locals: In the year of guihai [1743], a severe famine broke out in the area. “Big-eyed” ghosts—about two feet long—gathered together, shouting and roaring among the families of the sick. One night a man heard the “big-eyed” ghosts warning one another: “A lady from the Palace of the Emerald Clouds [bixia gong] is coming late tomorrow afternoon.104 Let’s disband and stop harming people.” [In the afternoon of the following day] his family sent someone to wait for the goddess. When the time came, he saw a woman holding the hand of a little boy [faithful maiden Si and her adopted son] standing under the eave of the door. When asked [who she was, she said] she was the faithful maiden on her way to visit her parents and she stopped there for shelter from the rain. [After she left,] the sick person from his family recovered. A few days later, when the faithful maiden returned home by the way of the same village, men and women of the village carrying wine and food filled up the road and invited the “Lady of the Palace of the Emerald Clouds” to their homes to expel the “big-eyed” ghosts. The faithful maiden said: “Am I a wife of a ghost so that the ghosts are afraid of me? What nonsense!” She walked away without taking a look at them.105

The faithful maiden’s angry response reveals a powerful belief in villagers’ conceptualization of the faithful maiden. The source of her efficacy was not so much that she was faithful and virtuous but that she had married a dead man. That union transformed her from an ordinary woman into a person who could manifest the power of the realm of transcendence. For commoners and even for some elites, the spirit marriage of the faithful maiden was plainly a marriage to a “ghost.” This perception of efficacy was partly of the Confucian literati’s own making. Men of letters were attracted to similar stories and circulated them through their writings, thus reinforcing the perception. Yuan Mei,

The State and Social Webs of Exaltation   93

for instance, noted: “The things that are close to immortals and deities are efficacious; so are those who are close to chastity and martyrdom.”106 Descriptions such as the following are typical components of biographies of virtuous women: A neighboring fire would stop spreading before reaching her home, or a huge wave would capsize every boat except hers. Her face looked alive days after her suicide; fragrance permeated the room where her body lay.107 A shrine dedicated to chaste women was by design a form of commemoration of a heroic soul, but the boundary between commemoration and worship was tenuous at best. In southern Jiangsu, “men and women gathered like clouds” at the Shrine of Faithful Maiden Shan. The shrine was said to be as efficacious as “sound echo” in answering prayers. It stood next to several dozen peach trees. A sculpture of the faithful maiden, possibly life-size, was housed inside a tent. Wind lifted the curtain of the tent and moved her garment, making the image look as if she had come back to life. When old age finally took its toll and the shrine was about to collapse, local people proposed to have it remodeled.108 In nearby Jiangyin, Jiangsu, Li Zhaoluo (1769 –1841) recorded the Shrine of the Two Faithful and One Martyred, built in honor of He Binggu, who committed suicide seven days after her fiancé’s premature death, and two other women also from the He lineage who preserved their loyalty to their fiancés.109 The shrine was initially constructed during the Yongzheng reign. About one hundred years later, when the shrine was being demolished, a huge snake emerged, “raising its head high and looking at them [workers] angrily.” The demolition project was thus abandoned. Around the same time, on separate occurrences, two men from different areas came to offer a sacrifice, saying that the martyred woman He Binggu had became a deity and had sent them messages in talismanic writing ( fuji) telling them where she had lived.110 “This kind of thing is preposterous and inappropriate to talk about,” Li Zhaoluo, who narrated the story, commented. He nevertheless acknowledged, “After all, the spirit of the martyred woman is efficacious.”111 The ambivalent attitude of Li Zhaoluo was typical for Confucian literati. Even though they felt uneasy talking about superstitious things, they took it to heart that there was some sort of mystical power at work between the afterworld and the human realm. Every faithful maiden might deserve to be enshrined, but only a small number of them had the good fortune to be honored this way. For instance, though the Wuxian area reported 216 faithful maidens

94   History for the Qing period (excluding the last sixty years), only about a dozen were enshrined. As illustrated in the following two cases, building a local shrine required vast amounts of human and material resources, and maintaining it over time was similarly a challenging undertaking. Both tasks involved extensive cooperation between the local elite and local officials. Originally built in 1521 in Xiangfu, Henan, the Shrine of Six Martyred Women was dedicated to six chaste young women who had taken their lives, including one faithful maiden. A local scholar by the name of Liu Deju initiated the project with government support. The shrine was erected to the west of the county seat of the area in which the six women had lived, and Li Mengyang composed a collective biography for the six women.112 Little is known about the fate of the shrine until the mid-seventeenth century in the early Qing, when a flood devastated the county and buried both the shrine and the inscription. Thirty years later, the villagers discovered the inscription and sold it to a local temple. It came to the attention of a scholar, who told Sun Qifeng, the famous lixue scholar, about it. Consequently, the inscription was restored and was re-erected next to the Shrine of the Lord of Xinling.113 After two more years had passed, another scholar noticed the inscription. His suggestion of rebuilding the shrine was forwarded to the educational commissioner. At that time, a certain faithful maiden Wang committed suicide. The new plan was that the shrine would be dedicated to her as well as to the six women from the Ming. Yet this plan produced no immediate result, as they were waiting for a state jingbiao award to be conferred on faithful maiden Wang. One year later, the third son of Sun Qifeng brought the plan to a river commissioner. A site next to the Shrine of the Lord of Xinling was chosen for the new shrine. Soon the river commissioner had to leave for another post, and he entrusted the matter to a lieutenant governor, who finally finished the project of rebuilding the shrine. Pleased to see that “the spirits of the seven heroic women now gather in one hall, and Confucian morality flourishes and inspires eternally,” Sun Qifeng composed an account of the event.114 The story did not end there. Several decades later, when Yin Huiyi (1691–1748) took office as governor of Henan, the shrine had already been deserted. Yin undertook its reconstruction as a component of his agenda of honoring the cultural heritage of his jurisdiction. After he made a grand offering to forty-four neo-Confucians at Daliang Academy, he had a conversation with the president of the academy, a tongnian

The State and Social Webs of Exaltation   95

(member of the “same year” or “same class” of men who passed the civil service examinations with juren or jinshi degrees) from whom he learned of the deserted shrine.115 He immediately formed a plan to rebuild it. The second year after the reconstruction project had been completed, the shrine became the home of the spirits of eight virtuous women, at which time faithful maiden Zhang Xuejie’s tablet was placed in the shrine. ­Xuejie, a peasant girl, had committed suicide and had been honored with a jingbiao by Emperor Yongzheng. However, after her mother’s death, Xuejie’s tablet was neglected. Appearing in a magistrate’s dream, she told him that she was “a person of the winter” and pleaded with him to “cleanse” her. The magistrate figured out the puzzle (“xuejie” meaning “snow girl”) and was able to recover her tablet from under piles of sorghum stalks in a deserted room. Upon learning of the story, Yin Huiyi moved her tablet into the collective shrine for the martyred women.116 In contrast to the above case, which originated in the Ming, the Shrine of the Five Martyred Women was a recent construction in the Qing. It was located in Ganquan county, Jiangsu. Two of the five women honored were faithful maidens. One of them, Chi, killed herself when her late fiancé’s father attempted to marry her to his younger son. She was buried in the hill to the west of Pingshantang.117 Later, when another faithful maiden committed suicide to follow her fiancé in death, she was buried to the right of Chi’s grave. The two tombs were called Two Martyred Women (Shuanglie).118 Before long, the hill became the graveyard of three other women who had also committed chaste suicide. In 1732, Gong Jian was appointed magistrate of Ganquan. He visited the hill and concluded that “to commend the neglected and honor the virtuous would encourage [good customs].”119 Gong consulted with local leaders, one of whom volunteered and led the construction workers, accountants, and artisans in designing and building a shrine. Three months later the work was completed. The new shrine consisted of a central hall with small rooms on either side.120 Gong wrote a commemoration for the shrine, ending with an expression of hope that future generations would undertake the task of remodeling it to keep it in good shape. Gong was surely farsighted. Eighty years later, the shrine was facing a serious maintenance problem. Because it had not been repaired for many years, its walls had begun to collapse, and the sculptures of the five martyred women had begun to deteriorate. Apparently government funds were not available, and donations from the local community were needed to carry out the repair work. Jiao Xun (1763 –1820),

96   History the evidential school scholar and a passionate supporter of the faithful maiden cult, wrote an essay calling for the local gentry to make contributions for the project.121 Sources do not indicate the aftermath of the request, but it appears that the shrine continued to function as a local landmark honoring female virtue. In 1846, a seventeen-year-old girl who had died resisting a rape was honored by having her tablet received in the Shrine of the Five Martyred Women.122 The vicissitudes of the two shrines just detailed suggest that, for a given locality, faithful maidens were made more visible than they otherwise would have been when officials and literati were proactive, which in turn would inject new energy into the cult. Conversely, if the local officials and literati saw the honoring of the faithful maidens as an “impractical” thing, a faithful maiden shrine was bound to deteriorate, and so was the local energy promoting the cult.

Regional Discrepancies By the High Qing, the faithful maiden cult had spread across the empire, but regional gaps existed. There are two sets of statistics available: the court jingbiao records and local gazetteer reports. Technically, the latter make a better source for regional comparison because they were more comprehensive (they often include both those who received jingbiao and those who did not). Yet as shown in Wang Huizu’s “revealing-the-obscured” campaign, even a gazetteer of high quality did not always do justice to the women who ought to be included, let alone those gazetteers compiled with less rigor. Different compilation dates of the gazetteers also pose a problem for comparison. The sets of figures shown in Table 3.2, drawn from the Qianlong era Imperial Endorsed Gazetteer of the Unified Grand Qing (Qinding da Qing yitong zhi), offer a relatively level platform for comparison. Completed in 1784 under government sponsorship, the gazetteer was compiled based upon the information submitted by local governments and on central government records. The faithful maidens recorded were all jingbiao recipients. The data are broken down by province and show the distribution of the faithful maidens honored by the court. Several characteristics emerge from the data. On a Ming-Qing comparative note, the uneven provincial distribution of faithful maidens honored became enormous only during the Qing. A geographical shift is also striking: a number of leading provinces for the Ming period— Fujian, Henan, Jiangxi—failed to maintain their leading position in the

The State and Social Webs of Exaltation   97 ta b l e 3 . 2 Faithful maidens reported in Qinding da Qing yitong zhi (Siku quanshu edition), by province Province

Pre-Yuan (pre-1279)

Yuan (1279 –1368)

Ming (1368 –1644)

Qing (1644 –1784)

Total

Jiangsu

1

—

10

329

339

Anhui

1

1

17

223

241

Zhejiang

—

—

26

211

237

Guangdong

1

—

14

153

167

Fujian

1

1

45

117

163

Hubei

—

—

24

105

129

Jiangxi

—

2

24

38

64

Henan

—

—

26

35

61

Shandong

—

2

6

37

45

Shaanxi

—

—

19

19

38

Zheli

1

1

4

32

37

Yunnan

—

—

21

13

34

Sichuan

—

—

12

22

34

Hunan

—

—

9

23

32

Shanxi

—

—

6

12

18

Guizhou

—

—

7

10

17

Guangxi

—

—

1

10

11

Gansu

1

—

2

7

9

Shengjing

—

—

1

6

7

Qing, while Jiangsu and Guangdong, which lag behind in the Ming, charged ahead. For the Qing period, the most salient feature is the dominance of the South. All five provinces that claimed the highest numbers—Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Guangdong, and Fujian—were located in the South. The core of the geographical dominance was the Lower Yangzi region. Of the five aforementioned, the top three, Jiangsu, Anhui, and Zhejiang, fell roughly into the macroregion of the Lower Yangzi, the heartland of the empire. Jiangsu, in particular, led the rest of the provinces by

98   History an immense margin. The province garnered close to one-fourth of the total honored. In sharp contrast, at the other end of the spectrum stood Shengjing, the home base of the Manchus that had just been integrated into China proper, followed by Gansu, Guangxi, Guizhou, and Shanxi, generally scattered along the border. Acknowledging that these data have their limitations, we can still come to some general conclusions assuming that the numbers of jingbiao recipients were relatively proportional to the actual cases for a given locality. The faithful maiden cult was more prevalent in the regions that enjoyed higher economic and cultural standing. In the late imperial period, South China in general overshadowed the North in these developments. The Lower Yangzi, in particular, stood as the most advanced region in commercialization and urban growth.123 The sophistication of its educational and cultural life was attested to by its enormous success in producing civil service examination candidates, despite a notorious level of competition because of the density of its population. The Lingnan region, in which Guangdong province lies, was also one of the commercial and urban centers of the empire. This parallel between the economic and cultural centers and the centers of the faithful maiden cult was confirmed roughly by the distribution of faithful maidens by prefecture. In a given region, the prefectures claiming the highest number of faithful maidens were often located around its core. (See the Appendix, which shows the distribution of faithful maidens by prefecture in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, and Guangdong.) A number of factors might be at work in this correlation: the more economically developed areas were also the more densely inhabited, which would contribute to the higher number of faithful maiden cases; the higher concentration of elite presence and dominance would mean more sophisticated and well-connected social networks publicizing faithful maiden cases, which in turn would help spread the cult among the general population.124 But linkages are to be sought elsewhere, too. The cultural sophistication of the Lower Yangzi did not find its expression only in men’s social and literary achievement. As demonstrated by recent scholarship, in the Ming, and particularly the Qing, the Lower Yangzi presented the greatest number of female writers—poets, anthologists, and playwrights— of the empire, and the concentration was especially high in prefectures that made up its regional core. As writers, readers, compilers, and commentators, elite women in the Lower Yangzi formed their own circles of socialization and friendship, and the value placed on literary training could even relax the rigid norms of

The State and Social Webs of Exaltation   99

gender separation. For example, in the eighteenth century, taking an old male scholar as a tutor did not seem to have been much of a problem for women from educated households.125 This more relaxed attitude might also have helped ease the restrictions placed on women who wanted to pursue ideals such as faithful maidenhood. As the chapters that follow will show, a good number of faithful maidens were literate or eloquent writers in their own right, and ideas about qing and yi, frequent themes of the literature they read, constituted major sources of inspiration for their actions. This kind of sociocultural atmosphere also nurtured the growth of the cult because of the strong support, moral and emotional, from women themselves, who, we could assume, would appreciate faithful maidens’ actions in ways that men would not. While men were writing about or soliciting writings for faithful maidens, the courageous, heroic young women also provoked emotional responses from female poets, who expressed their admiration, support, and sympathy for women they heard about or personally knew.126 Not all the numbers in the tables are readily explicable, however. If we compare data for the prefectures in Jiangsu, Anhui, and Zhejiang provinces (Tables A.1, A.2, and A.3 in the Appendix), we will see that a few prefectures that had weaker reputations in cultural and economic terms in effect outranked their counterparts with stronger numbers. For example, four prefectures of Anhui province — Chizhou, Ningguo, Fengyang, and Luzhou — all fared better than Songjiang in Jiangsu, and the first three of them also ranked higher than Jiangning in Jiangsu and Huzhou in Zhejiang province. The three prefectures from Jiangsu and Zhejiang were far more urbanized and commercialized, in addition to being successful in producing female writers in the Qing period.127 The discrepancy suggests that although there was a strong link between economic and cultural sophistication and the faithful maiden phenomenon in most localities, in some places other factors might have worked just as well in stimulating the cult. The other discrepancy concerns Guangzhou in Guangdong province, which took first place in the empire, surpassing even the top prefectures of the Lower Yangzi by a substantial margin in claiming the greatest number of faithful maidens. Located in the Canton Delta, Guangzhou was the core of the Lingnan macroregion, another highly commercial and urban center of the late empire. This conforms well with the correlation discussed earlier; nevertheless, the high concentration seems somewhat unusual. The dramatic figure looks even more out of place when we consider that none of the other prefectures in the region came

100   History close to it. Two factors may offer additional clues. First, the area was well known for its strong lineage organizations. We may recall that the Ming loyalist Qu Dajun, a native of Panyu in Guangzhou prefecture, took great pride in his lineage’s claim of two faithful maidens. His voice hinted at a certain competition among the lineages. Second, Guangzhou prefecture was also known for women’s marriage resistance practice and for being the home of some unconventional marriage patterns, in particular, delayed transfer marriage.128 What is most interesting to note is that Shunde county, the core of the delayed transfer marriage practice, exceeded all other counties in Guangdong with an amazing total of forty-one cases, which made it one of the top counties in the entire empire in the number of faithful maidens claimed. We could perhaps argue that a generally more relaxed structure in marriage practice made it easier for women to pursue faithful maidenhood, called ­shouqing (literally, “preserving purity”) by the locals.129 While noting the regional differences, it is important to bear in mind that by the late part of the Qing, the faithful maiden cult had found its way into some of the most remote localities, thanks to a well-placed system of publicizing and honoring these young women. Without the vigorous efforts that involved the court, local government, and the literati, the faithful maiden cult would not have been sustained through time. All this constituted only one dimension of the cult, however. Behind the public glorification and beneath the moral or religious discourses, there were human tales of tension and negotiation, aspiration and despair, and fulfillment and struggle. What took place within the family interacted intimately with what occurred in the political and social domains, but fundamentally the cult was grounded in the late imperial systems of the family and gender. In the chapters that follow, I will direct the focus of the discussion to this “inner” aspect of the cult, first to the families (both natal and marital), then to the faithful maidens themselves.

part two Choices

shifting focus from outer settings to the homes where the faithful maiden incidents physically took place, the following three chapters look at the faithful maiden cult dynamics at home and the subjectivity of the young women. Chapter 4 examines conflicts and negotiations surrounding a daughter’s (or “daughter-in-law’s”) request to become a faithful maiden and (if she moved in with her in-laws’ family) to adopt an heir. It explores from both her natal and marital families’ perspectives the cultural, social, and economic premises and concerns under which they opposed and yielded to her requests. In detailing the inter­play among economic interests, moral values, and human emotions that shaped the positions of those involved, the discussion attempts to shed light on the parent-daughter relations and the daughter’s place in the family. Chapter 5 analyzes faithful maiden suicides as a way to explore their emotion, beliefs, and psychology. The circumstances under which the young women took their own lives varied considerably, but it was common for faithful maidens to take painstaking steps to prepare for their suicides, putting on bridal or mourning dress that carried symbolic meaning. Rich details from surviving sources bring to life the young women’s sentiments and self-identity. The chapter then examines the cultural and social environment and the institutions that nurtured their sensibility, influencing them in ways that made the faithful maiden ideal appealing. The core female virtue of wifely fidelity was just one of the constructs shaping young women’s consciousness of gender roles; the patrilineal family system, the

102   Choices childhood betrothal, the celebrated cultural idea of yi (honor-bound duty) and qing (love), and the increase in female literacy and spread of popular theater all influenced young women’s sense of honor and disgrace, and fulfillment and failure. Chapter 6 is an account of the life stories of the faithful maidens who lived on. Beginning their unconventional life journey with the emotionally charged and often highly publicized spirit wedding, young women found not only fulfillment or even empowerment but also hardships, emotional and material, they might not have expected. Their code of conduct was anchored in physical isolation and selfdenial, which, I argue, reflected both objective and subjective assessments of their vulnerability as sexual beings. These analyses aim to convey that it is far too simplistic to frame faithful maiden choice in Confucian moral terms, regarding it either as an ultimate expression of Confucian morality or conversely, as a result of victimization (arguing that young women were too intoxicated by Confucian ideology to make any other choice). These views do not withstand careful scrutiny given the rich evidence preserved and presented here, which shows that young women were capable of making choices despite tremendous constraints, and that they made decisions based on a rich array of ideas and beliefs informed by the familial, cultural, economic, and religious institutions of the late empire.

chapter

Dissuading the Resolute

4

The Families of Faithful Maidens

during his 1780 visit to rehe, the summer capital of the Qing, the Korean scholar Pak Chi-wo˘ n (1737–1805) had a conversation with a Chinese court official who told Pak that the faithful maiden practice had become an “incurable problem.” Farsighted parents, hoping to reduce the risk of becoming involved in a faithful maiden dilemma, would wait until their daughters reached fifteen years of age to make marital arrangements.1 About the same time, the lixue scholar Luo Yougao (1735 –79) was writing about the “Biographies of Four Faithful Maidens” that his friend Peng Shaosheng (1740 –96) had just completed. Luo concluded his essay with a critical remark about the parents, who in his view understood little of a faithful maiden’s aspirations and “seldom loved their daughters with virtue so that the daughters could fulfill their wishes following their correct feelings.”2 A few decades later, Yu Zhengxie (1775 –1840) reported with utter disgust that some parents in the Fujian area pressed their young daughters to commit suicide for the benefit of fame. These vastly different perspectives remind us how deeply families of the faithful maidens were implicated in the cult. While the state, literati, and local community amplified the faithful maiden story with great fanfare, their families, natal and marital, were dealing with a situation of an entirely different nature. Any faithful maiden story was essentially a family saga of anxiety and struggle. The girl’s decision to remain celibate or kill herself not only threw her parents and in-laws into the public spotlight but also created a dilemma they otherwise would not have needed to confront. These intense moments, however, provide us

104   Choices with unique opportunities to examine family dynamics in relation to daughters in late imperial society. This chapter reconstructs the interactions, concerns, emotions, tensions, and negotiations involving faithful maidens’ natal and marital families when coming to terms with the growing appeal of faithful maidenhood among young women. The tensions, conflicts, and negotiations illustrate the complex interplay among state policy, moral values, human emotions, and the socioeconomic concerns of the family, and they reveal in their unique ways the late imperial social and cultural perceptions of a young woman’s place in the family, parent-daughter relations, and the constraints and influence she had in the family.

Becoming a Faithful Maiden—the Only Way Out? The premature death of betrothed men happened in every historical era, but such an event claimed public attention only during the late imperial period, thanks to the rise of the faithful maiden practice. Demographic statistics do not suggest an increase in the mortality rates for betrothed men, although their deaths appeared to have often been associated with the particular social institutions of the Ming and Qing. Overwork in preparation for the civil service examinations and depression resulting from examination failure, for example, accounted frequently for causes of death among young men from elite families. Was becoming a faithful maiden the only respectable choice for a bereaved fiancée? Hardly. A second betrothal had been a conventional alternative earlier, and it was still common during the late imperial period. Across regions, local customs offered various remedies for the tragic loss of a fiancé. In Jiaxing, Zhejiang, the local gazetteer reports: “When a young man dies before he has taken a wife, his family goes to report his death to his fiancée’s family. Her family will make a feast to treat his family. Some women’s families return the betrothal gifts to the men’s families; some do not.”3 A banquet, thus, ended the betrothal relationship between the two families. A slightly different custom existed in the Suzhou area, Jiangsu province: “If the woman was not married and her fiancé dies, this is called ‘fiancé widowhood’ [wangmen gua]. The woman’s family returns the betrothal money to the man’s family, gets back the betrothal card, and makes a new betrothal arrangement. . . . Those who vow not to marry another man are called faithful maidens.”4 A ghost marriage could also function to close the tragedy. For instance, in Shanxi province, “if a man or woman dies

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after the ritual of ‘accepting the betrothal gifts,’ a ghost match [mingpei] will be carried out. If the woman dies, her corpse will be carried to her fiancé’s grave site to be buried. If the man dies, and his fiancée becomes engaged to another man, his family will look for a deceased girl with whom to arrange a ghost marriage for him.”5 A second betrothal was not only acceptable in local custom but was also in line with Confucian rituals. One chapter in the Book of Rites (Liji) offers instructions to people who run into the situation of the untimely death of their betrothed: if a man or woman dies after a wedding date has been set, the fiancée/fiancé should put on mourning garments to mourn the deceased and, after the burial, take off the garments (implying that the relationship is now over).6 As we will see in Chapter 7, the ritual validity of the faithful maiden practice was a subject of intense debate among Ming and Qing scholars. However, despite sharply divided opinions, most of them agreed that the Confucian tenet did not forbid a betrothed woman who had lost a fiancé to marry another man. The argument lay, rather, in the question of whether the classics implicitly endorsed faithful maidenhood as a more honorable choice. In fact, even writers of faithful maiden biographies were often ambivalent in their opinions. Although admiring a young woman for actions heroic enough to influence what they called “the decadent society” of the time, they acknowledged that these actions were not prescribed in Confucian teaching.7 We may reasonably suspect that the prospect of getting another “good match” would vary with each individual, in which the girl’s age, her looks and talents, and her family’s social and economic status could all influence her chances for the second betrothal. No evidence suggests that losing a betrothed inevitably impaired a girl’s chances for a “proper” marriage. A key factor seems to have been that, unlike a widow, a faithful maiden had never married and she was still young and virginal. In fact, in some cases, the reputation as a faithful maiden was said to have only increased her standing in the marriage market. In 1471, the eighteen-year-old Zhao married her dead fiancé, the son of a high-ranking official in the capital. She enjoyed such a good reputation that elite families in the capital competed with one another to propose marriage.8 The account may be embellished, yet the marriageability of the faithful maiden is not in question. It was common, not long after the death of a fiancé and while the bereaved maiden was still in mourning, for matchmakers to begin to appear on the family’s doorstep. The secret planning of parents, in-laws,

106   Choices and matchmakers to have the girl engaged again, as we will see in the next chapter, was a major trigger for faithful maiden suicide. Very few stories of those who did marry another man survive, but they do occasionally appear even in faithful maiden biographies. When Sun Xidan (1736 – 84), a scholar whose expertise was Confucian rituals, failed to convince his sixteen-year-old daughter by the “sages’ teaching,” his wife took a different approach (although to no avail). She told the daughter about a woman whose fiancé had also died but who nevertheless became engaged again: “Now she has already given birth to a son, and her husband is wealthy and holding a high position.”9 If even in faithful maiden biographies cases of second betrothal were not presented in a negative light, then it is not surprising that outside this genre, a woman who was engaged a second time could even be an object of celebration. In the Qing short story entitled “Reviving the Family with Marvelous Wisdom,” the clever and industrious Yunniang, who had lost her first betrothed and married someone else, was applauded as the heroine who saved the declining household of her husband.10

Class and Education During the initial phase of the development of the faithful maiden practice, as discussed earlier, faithful maiden cases were chiefly associated with daughters of the elite class. By the Qing, the cult’s appeal had spread to the lower social classes. The following numbers, based on Collections of Epitaphs and Biographies (Bei zhuan ji), compiled by Qian Yiji (1783 –1850), give a small sample of the social makeup of the faithful maidens. The collection contains biographies of sixty-one Qing faithful maidens, and among them are forty whose family background can be roughly determined. Among these forty, twenty-four were born to official or scholarly families, of whom two had fathers who were grand secretaries, and sixteen came from ordinary backgrounds, mostly peasant and petty merchant families.11 These data are by no means representative,12 but given that the written records tend to favor the elite rather than the lower classes, they are strongly indicative of the diversity in the class composition of faithful maidens. During the Qing, humble as well as powerful families could rear a daughter who might become a faithful maiden. Faithful maidens from lower social strata who were mostly illiterate and “lacked instructions in Poetry and Ritual” (a synonym for a Confucian classical education) amazed biographers with their “under-

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standing of the great principles.”13 On the other hand, educated girls supplied a great proportion of faithful maidens, a reflection of the late imperial women’s literacy boom among the elite. Grand Secretary Zhu Shi’s daughter, for example, was among the most well versed. She “understood thoroughly the Four Books, philological texts, the Book of Changes, the Mao commentary on the Book of Songs, and the Book of Rituals. In addition, she also read the Records of the Historian, the Han History, and the works of the eight great writers [from the Tang and Song dynasties].”14 Faithful maiden Peng— daughter of another grand secretary, Peng ­ Yuanrui—“mastered all the Confucian classics, and she memorized all the commentaries as well.”15 Many educated faithful maidens also received training in poetry, the favored genre of women’s writing in late imperial times. Writing poems served as the most intimate form of self-expression in their extraordinary lives. In Correct Beginnings: Women’s Poetry of Our August Dynasty (Guochao guixiu zhengshiji), compiled by the female anthologist Wanyan Yun Zhu in the eighteenth century, poems by faithful maidens highlighted the moral excellence of the intellectual women of the era. Although literacy and education did not dictate faithful maidens’ life choices, they informed their decisions. Taught by her grandfather, faithful maiden Yan was “especially good” in the ritual texts, which she cited extensively to defend her decision to marry her deceased fiancé.16 When confronting the life crisis of a fiancé’s death, a young woman fashioned her decision in the context of her social and economic standing. Class and education influenced the ways she positioned herself and the ways with which she coped with the tragedy. Stratification in social and economic terms notwithstanding, young women embraced a set of core social and cultural values on which they based their choices, a subject to be treated more closely in Chapter 5. The fact that the faithful maiden ideal appealed to young women from a wide range of class backgrounds appears to testify to the level of ideological and cultural integration of the late empire.

Parent-Daughter Conflict Differences in social and economic circumstances notwithstanding, parents were virtually united in their goal: to dissuade the girl from her action. The parents’ rejection of their daughter’s choice featured prominently in the faithful maiden odyssey. A variety of concerns— economic, sentimental, and cultural—underlay parental opposition.

108   Choices In biographical narratives, authors’ emphasis on the parent-daughter conflict seems to serve two purposes. First, it was to show the young woman’s determination. In a society where obeying parents was a paramount value, how much a daughter might have suffered when she disobeyed their wishes needed no explanation. Thus, the details about her emotional suffering served as a manifestation of a young woman’s courage and self-sacrifice. That is to say, she sacrificed personal feelings for her parents for the sake of a higher moral ideal. Second, the parents’ opposition is portrayed as an expression of parental love. In the thinking of the day, the parent-child bond was a relationship of tianhe (united by Heaven), in contrast with other relationships connected by marriage, defined as renhe (united by people). Parental love was inherent in the parent-child relationship, so it was only natural for the parents to try to prevent their daughters from pursuing a path that was, in their eyes, abnormal and the cause of suffering in her future life. Faithful maiden biographies typically begin with the daughter’s emotional appeal to be permitted to mourn her fiancé or to live with her parents-in-law as a widow, and end with her suicide attempt. When Wang Yuan’s fiancé died, her father concealed the news from her. She only learned about it accidentally when her fiancé’s funeral procession passed through her village. Despite her plea, her father would not let her marry into her deceased fiancé’s family. “Retiring [to her own room], Yuan wanted to kill herself. Her mother, who loved her dearly, took precautions day and night. Yet [Yuan] still almost succeeded in committing suicide several times.”17 Authors tended to construct ­parent-daughter interactions along the cultural perceptions of the “stern father” and the “caring mother.” The father was authoritative, and the mother, gentle hearted; the father provided a daughter with intellectual guidance, and the mother, emotional support. With few exceptions, it was the mother who foresaw the daughter’s suicide attempt and prevented it from taking place. The mother in these narratives is understanding, sensitive, and sympathetic, steadfastly standing by the emotionally distraught daughter even though the mother did not approve of her daughter’s choice. In contrast, reactions from an insensitive father could be confrontational and overpowering. When his daughter wanted to be a faithful maiden, Wu Yifei, the minister of the Board of Justice in the Kangxi reign, shouted at her: “How shameful!”18 Similar rage was observable among men with much or little education alike.19 Eventually, of course, even a stern father would yield to a determined daughter. For instance, when his daughter tried to kill herself by various means—starving

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herself, trying to jump into the well, and swallowing a golden ring (a betrothal gift from her dead fiancé’s family)—Wu Yifei felt “regret and took pity on her,” promising that he would allow her stay home to preserve fidelity. In the end, however, he broke that promise, thus instigating the despairing daughter’s suicide.20 The initial confrontation is followed by the second part of a typical faithful maiden saga, in which much of the parent-daughter interaction comes to focus on the parents’ efforts to prevent the daughter from committing suicide. Relatives and friends were all called on for help, and sometimes the girl would be taken to stay with a close relative for a short period of time. Detailed accounts, such as the one following, dramatize the frustration and exhaustion that the family underwent. In 1755, Wu Gu, the daughter of a petty merchant from Jiaxing, ­ Zhejiang, tried a number of suicide methods, which nearly devastated her family: No one in the Wu family now could sleep soundly. The house was by the market, with a busy street in the front and a drugstore next to it. Right by its backyard was a creek called Xiehui. The family had three buildings. To the west of the buildings was the family kitchen, with a well in its courtyard. Thereupon, the family locked doors, filled up the well, forbade maids to go to the market, and hid such things as knives and cloth from her reach. Every possible preventive measure was taken. Sometimes doors had to be broken to enter the house, and walls had to be torn down as a precaution.21

Despite all these measures, Wu Gu eventually hanged herself when the precautions were relaxed. The anxiety and frustration of the parents were profound. For a desperate mother the last resort was to appeal to the daughter’s emotional attachment to her. These moments of emotional exchange are often described in detail in biographies. “You have always been obedient and helpful,” said Wu Gu’s mother. “I get sick easily, and I am depending on you to stay alive. If you die, I cannot live on alone!” Wu Gu, it is said, did resume taking food temporarily.22 In her state of hopelessness, a mother’s appeal could take a harsh tone. When all means were exhausted in dissuading her daughter from killing herself, Xue Kun’s mother said to her: “All of your life you never did a thing against our will. Therefore, you are like a pearl in our palm. Now you want to follow your own biased idea to hurt our hearts. Clearly, you do not care about us and our love for you! If you do not love us, why should we love you? If you die, we will throw your body in the field and will not bury you!” Still, the seventeen-year-old hanged herself.23 When it was proven that their daughter was beyond reasoning or threat, some parents turned as a last

110   Choices resort to spirits for advice. During the three years that Jiang Gui, an artist, stayed with her parents, relatives all thought her parents should not let her remain unmarried. In the end, the father “took a ritual bath and prayed” to the gods (shen). “The gods showed an auspicious omen; he therefore gave in to her wishes.”24

Competing Responsibilities: Fidelity and Filial Piety All these accounts touch on an uneasy theme in the faithful maiden narrative: the tension in her competing moral responsibility between filial duty to her parents and her commitment to her fiancé. Seeing a daughter who placed her ultimate loyalty so adamantly with her fiancé rather than with her own parents was emotionally disturbing. When Wu Manyu repeatedly tried to take her own life, her father said to her: “You cannot bear to forget your fiancé whom you have never served, yet you can bear to forget your parents who have raised you for over ten years. What do you think of us?”25 A deep sense of guilt on the daughters’ part permeates the records. Writing their final words, daughters cried out for their parents’ forgiveness for not being able to repay their love. In her suicide poem “Forgive Me, Mother,” for example, faithful maiden Ye wrote: “Giving up my life violates Mother’s wish; / my heart, too, is full of sorrow.”26 Some sought solace in the hope that their unfulfilled filial duty would be taken over by their brothers.27 Profound distress on the part of the daughters—particularly in the case of suicide—is highlighted again and again in biographical accounts, revealing the popular appeal of emotion in the public imagination of faithful maiden suicide. Daughters were seen as in profound pain as they secretly prepared to take their own lives, and they struggled to conceal their emotion in order to carry out their plan. After quietly completing preparations for suicide, faithful maiden Xia bade farewell to her mother: “She lifted up the net of the bed on which her mother was sleeping. Her mother asked her: ‘Why haven’t you gone to bed?’ She said: ‘I just want to take a look at you, mother.’ “ Returning to her own room, she hanged herself. No one in the family noticed that she was about to kill herself.28 Another case involved seventeen-year-old Xu upon hearing of the death of her fiancé: She returned to her bedroom, took out all of the things that she used for embroidery, bit them, and tore them into pieces. Her sister-in-law was surprised and asked her why she was doing so. She told her that she would use them no more and that she did not want her mother to learn about what she had done.

Dissuading the Resolute   111 She then changed her clothing and shoes and went to pick vegetables—melons, eggplants, and the like—and presented them to her mother. Her mother did not taste them, so she gave her mother a pepper. Amused, her mother said to her: “Can you eat it?” She did, with tears running down her face like rain. Sobbing, she left. Her mother told her sister-in-law: “She is just too upset to control herself. Leave her alone for a while and call her when the meal is ready.” By the time they called her, she had already hanged herself from the door beam.29

Her suicide occurred the same day as her fiancé’s death: he died in the morning, she in the evening. It is difficult to decipher the precise meanings of her behavior, yet her emotional despair emerges from these details quite vividly. Were these actions a daughter’s last act of filial piety? The daughterly virtue of filial piety and the wifely virtue of fidelity were the guiding gender values, which the state promoted through its jingbiao system (a filial act was a category of jingbiao as well). Women were expected to play both roles during their lifetimes, and upon marriage, young women were expected to redirect their filial responsibility from their parents to their in-laws. As this ancient idiom summarizes, a new bride should “regard her marital home as her own and her parents’ as someone else’s.”30 This wisdom, which calls for the repression of the most basic and natural bond, that of parent and child, was reinforced through didactic writings for daughters in the late imperial period, as daughters were taught to devote themselves fully to the service of the patrilineal interests of their husbands’ families.31 Ironically, there were conflicting notes in the moral texts. For example, filial daughters who declined marriage in order to stay home to serve their parents were also praised. The conflicting messages underscored the tension built into the Confucian ideological system that put fidelity of a wife in direct conflict with filial piety of a daughter, but the faithful maidens brought the tension to the surface. At the core of the tension was the faithful maiden’s ambiguous identity, which was perceived differently by her parents and herself. As an unmarried daughter, as her parents saw it, her obedience as well as filial duty was owed to her parents. Yet, as a self-described wife and daughter-in-law, the faithful maiden believed otherwise. Thus, an act of disobedience for the parents was an act of fidelity for the daughter. What is noteworthy is the state’s position in this ideological conflict. By singing the praises of the faithful maiden, the state threw its support behind the daughter. In backing her action, it chose to undermine parental authority and de facto placed fidelity above filiality. We might be able to draw a parallel between this tension and the one

112   Choices encapsulated in the popular proverb “Loyalty and filial piety cannot be fulfilled simultaneously.” The saying refers to the dilemma encountered by a classical hero, such as the famous Southern Song patriotic general Yue Fei as he is portrayed in Ming-Qing popular theater: at a time of state crisis, he has to choose between his loyal duty toward his country or ruler and the filial duty that he owes his parents. The hero’s conflict ends with his answering the call of the ruler or the country at the persuasion of his parent—usually his mother, which attests to the virtue of both the son and the mother. Loyalty comes first; filial duty, second. This solution seems to be grounded on the notion that loyalty to one’s ruler was a public and greater mission, whereas serving one’s parents was a private matter and a personal responsibility. It is in a similar sense that the faithful maiden’s choice was revered and her disobedience to parents forgiven: she suppressed her personal feelings to uphold a moral ideal devoid of personal bonds. What made fidelity more “virtuous” than filiality in this context was that she severed personal attachment for a relationship that was artificially constructed. This differentiation again suggests extremity in the performance of virtue in late imperial society: suppression or denial of natural feeling was an essential characteristic of any ultravirtuous deed. This also suggests that the Ming-Qing morality campaign educating young women to transfer their loyalty to their husbands’ families had made its impact. Despite the emotional ordeal, for faithful maidens the choice was unambiguous. In yet another sense, the emphasis that the state and the moralists placed on fidelity at the cost of filiality had consequences they perhaps had not intended: it enabled the young daughters to disobey parents to negotiate a life course of their own choosing.

Confronting the “Disobedient” Daughter What, precisely, concerned the parents when they tried by various means to dissuade the daughter from pursuing faithful maidenhood? Although the faithful maiden narratives place great emphasis on the ordeal of the parent-daughter conflict, few specify the reasons. This absence of elaboration was perhaps a result of the fact that, for the authors’ contemporaries, the reasons were too obvious to be explained. Indeed, if we move beyond the narratives themselves, we can garner the missing pieces crucial to our understanding not only of the faithful maiden practice but of the parent-daughter conflict as well. Cultural perception about the importance of marriage for women

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was an overarching idea in the late imperial parental concern for a young daughter’s well-being. A woman was considered to be born to be married: “When a daughter is born, it is the wishes of her parents that they would find her a marital home.”32 The idiom, drawn from the Mencius, represented a time-honored principle, cited frequently to emphasize the importance of timely marriage for a daughter. A woman’s real home was her marital home, and her life was fulfilled only when she had served the roles of wife, daughter-in-law, and mother. The death of a young woman before she married was a great tragedy, as the seventeenth-century writer Sun Zhiwei (1620 – 87) wrote so emotionally in his elegy for his younger sister, who died of illness at the age of seventeen: Alas! You grew up in a family that produced scholars for three generations. In the deep inner chamber, you were taught appropriate demeanor. Although our family was not wealthy, men all wished to marry you. . . . Why did you die before you were even betrothed? I just cannot understand! Alas! The orchid grows in the remote valley, but its fragrance reaches far and wide; how could a fine girl not marry! Oh, my sister, what crime could you possibly have committed that your fate was even worse than a piece of coarse twig’s? . . . What crime could you possibly have committed that you would be a virgin forever!33

To die before marriage was the worst fate that could befall a woman. The brother’s bitterness and sorrow express his sense that for a woman, life was not complete without marriage. Indeed, in contrast to such an ill-fated woman, the happiest woman was the old grandmother whose “offspring fill the ancestral hall.” During the Qing, celibacy was a choice available to very few women: those who entered the Buddhist or Daoist orders, and those who stayed home to care for their aging parents and help bring up their younger siblings. To become a nun was less respectable than it had been in some earlier periods when Buddhism was at its peak of influence. As suggested in Ming-Qing literature, nuns were often viewed by the Confucian elite with suspicion as women who ought to be kept out of the family for fear of their bad influence. The daughter who refused to marry for the sake of her parents, on the other hand, still claimed high respect. Called a “filial daughter” (xiaonü), she was the subject of state awards. Although morally respected, such a filial daughter was nonetheless a subject of sympathy. Without marriage, a woman’s life was incomplete. However, widowhood was perceived as one of the greatest misfortunes a married woman could encounter. Even though Confucian ideology attached great moral

114   Choices value to chaste widowhood, it was widely acknowledged that chaste widowhood took hardship and endurance to achieve. Kushou or kujie (“bitter widowhood” or “bitter fidelity”), the two terms commonly used for the life of a widow, succinctly conveyed that public perception. The respect given to chaste widows derived, in fact, to a large degree from such an understanding.34 A faithful maiden, who was at once “unwed” and “widowed,” imposed on herself both misfortunes. If widowhood was a most miserable state of existence, for a young girl who had never married to endure widowhood was that much more difficult. The difference was that, as the Qing writers concluded, an actual widow was able to endure hardships because of the many ties that she had developed over the years of marriage with her late husband, his family and, especially, her child; the faithful maiden, however, could find no solace or support in such ties.35 Moreover, she would have no one to care for her in her old age (if his family did not adopt an heir for her). These were precisely the concerns raised by the relatives of faithful maiden Qi, who, trying to get her parents to agree to let her marry into her late fiancé’s home, attempted in various ways to disfigure or kill herself. In her talk with the girl, her uncle’s wife cited three reasons to discourage her: the poverty of her inlaws, their difficult personalities, and the prospect of having no one to depend on in her old age. The girl, however, was not intimidated.36 Qi was seventeen years old. Most girls were in their teens or early twenties when misfortune struck, and their young age was a major concern in their parents’ response to their demands. It was emotionally devastating to let a young daughter, who had yet to blossom in marriage, endure what was considered to be the most unfortunate life possible for a woman. In one case, when his twelve-year-old daughter pleaded with him to let her be a faithful maiden, the father could feel only greatly distressed and told her that “bitter chaste widowhood [kujie] does not apply to a child.”37 And in another case, discouraging a bereaved eighteen-year-old from marrying into her home, the motherin-law said to the girl: “You are young. Much happiness awaits you if you change your mind. Why bring suffering upon yourself?”38 In dramatic contrast to “bitter fidelity,” “much happiness” implied the ideal life, including conjugal intimacy, that society envisioned for a young woman. At a deeper level, “bitter fidelity” implies the sexual abstinence a faithful maiden must bear, one of the most fascinating yet least openly discussed aspects of the cult for contemporaries. As we will see in Chapter 6, even literati poems in honor of faithful maidens

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often indulged in suggestive descriptions of the young women being deprived of sexual pleasure; the issue of controlling sexual desire fascinated not only the poet but also the general public, and it was juicy material for gossip. Understandably, such gossip was the last thing that parents wanted. Welfare concerns, sentimental reasons, and concerns for gossip aside, some parents simply found the faithful maiden ideal distasteful or even repulsive. Despite the state and literati glorification of faithful maidenhood, they remained convinced that what their daughter chose to do was against social norms or ritual propriety because “a man and a woman become husband and wife only when they live together and ‘share one bed.’ ”39 Calling herself the wife of a man to whom she had not been married was simply “shameful” and would be laughed at by neighbors.40 In this regard, the most pained parent might be a scholarfather such as Sun Xidan, whose faithful maiden daughter died after preserving fidelity for her deceased fiancé for seven years. We will return to this subject later in Chapter 7. Even parents who did not share this stance had another compelling reason to betroth a bereaved daughter for a second time. The death of a prospective son-in-law could be a convenient opportunity to get out of an undesirable betrothal relationship.41 But more generally speaking, a second betrothal could be advantageous from the economic perspective: it would bring in a second set of betrothal gifts (in areas where custom permitted the retaining of the betrothal gifts after a fiancé’s death) as well as additional social connections. In fact, greed was a primary motivation of some parents who forced their daughters into a second engagement that led to their suicide. In an edict on a jingbiao petition for a girl named Kaijie, the Qianlong emperor chastised her covetous parents, pointing out that Kaijie originally wanted to preserve fidelity, and that she would not have died if her parents had not been avaricious about betrothal gifts. “When their daughter hanged herself, they came back to petition for a jingbiao, hoping to receive the money for building the memorial arch. The amount of money they would receive is more than what they could use for the burial service for their daughter. Moreover, I am not sure if they would use the money to build the arch. This is using the state jingbiao statute to feed the greedy appetite of parents of no virtue.”42 Qianlong decreed that an inscribed tablet be given to hang on the door of the family to comfort the soul of the girl, but that her parents would receive no awards or money. He gave further instructions that his edict should apply to similar cases throughout

116   Choices the ­empire. Cases like this were probably not unusual, but Qianlong’s pointed criticism might not do justice to all the parents whose daughters killed themselves to escape another marriage. Over the course of the Qianlong reign, the dramatic increase in awards requested for faithful women was becoming a headache for the emperor. His edict might even have represented a financial strategy to reduce the state’s expenditures on awards.

A Question of Parental Coercion We have reason to suspect that some parents did consider a faithful maiden daughter a means to their own gain. In this regard, parents often did not force their daughters into a second betrothal but coerced them into becoming faithful maidens or even committing suicide. This criticism was voiced by opponents of the faithful maiden cult such as Li Shenchuan (1833 – 82). It challenges the moralist construction of faithful maiden tales and brings to light a dark facet of parent-daughter relations.43 The sharpest criticism was raised by Yu Zhengxie. In his pointed essay “On the Faithful Maiden,” he argues that the faithful maiden practice was excessive and not grounded in the marital rituals. He calls it “a mistake made by the virtuous who fail to think carefully,” an opinion shared by many other critics of his time. Yu then cites a stunning poem that describes a custom in Fujian: In the Min custom half of the baby girls are not raised, Those who grow up are expected to become lienü [martyred girl]. When the son-in-law dies and, for no reason, the girl dies, too, Poison wine is in the glass, and rope is on the roof beam. The girl wants to live, but what can she do when she is coerced? Heartbroken resentment fills her chest. The whole lineage cheers, but the girl is dead, An award is petitioned so that the name of the family will live on. In the morning, a three-zhang-tall ornamental column is erected in front of the door,44 At night, a new ghost pleads to regain her life.45

Beginning with a hint at the widespread local practice of infanticide of baby girls, the poem depicts a chilly scene of the forced suicide of a daughter at the hands of her parents and lineage. One of the dynasty’s most independent-minded scholars, Yu Zhengxie had written to criticize the chaste widow practice and had defended jealous wives; he showed unique sensitivity toward the plight women faced in a society of profound gender inequality and championed a more egalitarian con-

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jugal relationship.46 It is no surprise, therefore, that Yu Zhengxie was the one who raised such a strong concern. The following descriptions of scenes of public suicide from the nineteenth century provide footnotes to the poem Yu cited: The old customs of Fuzhou regarded claiming a faithful maiden or chaste widow as glorious. Among the foolish, therefore, there was such a thing as “setting up a platform to perform suicide for chastity.” If a betrothed daughter unfortunately encountered the death of her fiancé, her parents and brothers would all coerce her into suicide. The previous day they would build a high stage at a place where people gathered, on which a white silk strip was suspended. A temporary sacrificial ceremony was prepared. The girl was helped to ascend the stage, and everyone except her parents kowtowed to her under the stage. After she hanged herself, her corpse was carried home accompanied by drums and trumpets.47 There was a custom in Fujian that a widow with no child often chose an empty space of several hundred square feet to set up a tall platform. A red rope hung down from the beam, and rice and wheat were spread around it. Her relatives, old and young, kowtowed to her in order and then assisted her to hang herself. Sounds of admiration arose from the spectators, who thought it glorious.48

The practice, called datai sijie (setting up a platform to perform suicide for chastity), is well documented.49 Dating back to the Ming but with unclear origins, it occurred nearly exclusively in Fujian province, especially in Fuzhou prefecture. Beginning in the Qing, local authorities considered it a “wicked custom” that misrepresented the virtue of a chaste widow. They attempted repeatedly to outlaw it through setting up strict regulations and promised severe punishment for those who instigated the incident.50 The datai sijie cases typically involved widows, who, local officials believed, were pushed into the situation by their greedy relatives who wanted to cash in on the death, materially and otherwise. But it could also represent protest or revenge by the desperate widow.51 Incidents of datai sijie were rarely reported in biographies and were only hinted at sporadically in local gazetteers, for the obvious reason that these genres were not for exposing the “wicked” but for presenting the virtuous. It could also be that the disclosure of the evil parents might cast a negative light on the woman, for it would call into question her own moral resolve. Therefore, it is difficult to infer the scale or frequency of such incidents. However, one other type of suicide did survive in records, and biographers and the authors of gazetteers did not seem to have been troubled by it. Sometimes called benxun (hastening to mourn a fiancé and follow him in death; to be discussed in detail

118   Choices in the next chapter), it was exclusively performed by faithful maidens in a private setting in the home, in areas where datai sijie was reported. As in datai sijie cases, throughout the appalling process, no one seems to have taken serious measures to interfere with the girl’s decision and action to commit suicide. All this strongly suggests that local custom endorsed the practice. This must be part of the backdrop to the poem that Yu Zhengxie quoted. The fanfare and glory, let alone the jingbiao award that might follow, could stir up the greedy hearts of the parents and lineage and turn them into coercers. The force driving the repulsive practice, in Yu’s view, was fame (ming): parents who were thirsty for fame would consider it worthwhile to trade their daughter’s life for it, and lineages obsessed with glory would have no regard for the life of a woman. Fujian was known for its lineage strength. The incidents of datai sijie and benxun suggest how local social structure could shape female chastity practice and the representation of it in a given area. The contrast between these Fujian incidents and the many stories cited here— of parental frustration over their daughters’ decision to pursue the faithful maiden ideal and to kill themselves for it—is indeed striking. Although no statistics are available, we can still be reasonably certain that coercive parents were far from common, even in Fujian. Other records in Fujian gazetteers and biographical accounts show patterns of faithful maiden behavior and parental emotional trauma similar to those we have observed elsewhere. Indeed, even for calculating parents, the benefit of having a daughter married far exceeded the gain they could obtain by forcing her to commit suicide. Beyond the various concerns about and benefits from a second betrothal discussed previously, fame, which assumed great importance for some parents, meant little to others. Tao Shu (1778 –1839), the Liangjiang governor-general, reported a case of “parents of no virtue” from his hometown in Hunan, revealing vividly polarized attitudes of parents. Wanxiang, a young girl, set up a memorial niche at home to mourn her fiancé after her parents refused to let her go to his home to mourn him. Her action, however, infuriated her parents, who thought it not “auspicious.” Wanxiang could not stand their harsh scolding and hanged herself. Tao Shu’s father was greatly saddened when he heard of the incident, and he told the county magistrate about it. “The magistrate sent his subordinate to her family to investigate. The parents became even more furious. They threw the man out of the door, shouting: ‘She is a hanging ghost! She died before marriage. What is the use of honoring her with jie and lie!’ ”52

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The story is told that Tao Shu’s father wrote a petition for an imperial award based on the report of her fiancé’s family. However, because the family did not have money, the petition ran into a dead end at the hands of the yamen clerks and runners. Not until Tao Shu intervened through his official network did Wanxiang finally win a jingbiao recognition from the throne.

Dealing with the Unconventional “Daughter-in-Law” In principle it was no less respectable for a faithful maiden to stay at her parents’ home the rest of her life than to live with the family of her deceased fiancé. Yet over the course of the Ming, taking up residence with the deceased fiancé’s family increased in appeal. By the eighteenth century, a majority of faithful maidens married into their deceased fiancés’ homes through a spirit wedding, that is, if they had not killed themselves promptly upon learning of their fiancés’ deaths. The social perception had also evolved that once the bereaved girl declared her intention to preserve chastity, an obligation fell on the family of her deceased fiancé to accept her into the family if she so desired. Some families of the deceased fiancés indeed responded to a faithful maiden’s request with measurable enthusiasm, acting upon their sense of responsibility and social expectation. A faithful maiden was, in the end, the “glory of our family,” claimed the Bos in Changshu, southern Jiangsu. The Bos lost their son, but when they were informed of his fiancée’s intention to live with them, they immediately sent people off to bring her to their home.53 Still, the choice was not entirely the faithful maiden’s, and the family of the deceased fiancé might refuse to take her in. When the mediation to have her transferred to his family failed, tragedy might result. Faithful maiden Dongqingnü, it is said, wanted to see her fiancé while he was dying, but his brother declined; she asked again to see him after his death and was rejected again. Right before her fiancé’s burial, she made her request a third time, and once again it was turned down. Not until after the burial, when she made her demand even more firmly, did the fiancé’s brother accede. The very next day after she arrived at her fiancé’s home, Dongqingnü hanged herself (possibly out of despair or as an act of protest or revenge). Her fiancé’s brother saw her death as “a pollution and disaster” for his home. He hurriedly performed a ritual of exorcism and sent the young woman’s corpse back to her parents.54

120   Choices This appears to be among the extreme incidents, but distress or reluctance to take the girl in marked the initial reactions in a majority of the existing cases. In 1707, a young woman who had been engaged to a son from a certain Lian family cried bitterly and disfigured herself in her desire to go to her deceased fiancé’s household to live as his widow. Her parents had no alternative but to inform the Lians of the situation. “The Lians were greatly shocked,” the biographer tells us. “Her prospective parents-in-law sighed and wept for quite a while, but they did not agree with her either. The relatives of the two families heard of this, and they all praised her and regarded her request as something exceptionally virtuous, but all of them said: ‘This should not be done.’ ”55 Claiming a faithful maiden as a daughter-in-law would enhance the family’s reputation, but at what price? The fundamental problem was that the faithful maiden did not fit into the family structure, or, rather, she posed an unconventional problem for the family. In a normal household, a son and his wife constituted a conjugal unit living within the joint family structure or separately from it. The son was the reason for the family to take in a bride; conversely, without a son, a bride designated for him would be out of place. To be sure, some families sought a ghost marriage for a son who died before marriage, or they arranged an adoption to continue the line of a deceased son who had no surviving heir. In neither case, however, would the family actually bring a young woman into their home. The awkwardness of her presence in the home had multiple implications for family relationships, the economic interest, and the emotional welfare of the rest of the family. In biographies of faithful maidens, a common excuse cited by a reluctant fiancé’s family was that they could not bear to see the young woman endure bitter widowhood for the rest of her life. Some families apologized, feeling guilt over the misery their son’s premature death brought to her, and they spared no effort trying to convince her not to take such an extreme step.56 Biographical narratives played on readers’ emotions to dramatize these highly sentimental moments of pleading (by the faithful maiden) and dissuasion (by her fiancé’s family). In the following case, faithful maiden Huang came by herself to her deceased fiancé’s home in tears, begging them to let her stay. [Her fiancé’s] grandmother wiped her own tears and consoled her: “You are truly a virtuous girl! I lost my grandson, but having a granddaughter like you would make me feel that I still had my grandson! But there are many days ahead of you, and to live the life of a widow is very difficult. We ap-

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preciate that you have such a heart. You should listen to me and go home with your parents.”57 We need not be overly suspicious about the sincerity of the marital family’s concerns over the young women’s wellbeing. But along with it there were many unspoken reasons. The suffering foreseen by the fiancé’s family for the young faithful maiden was double-sided: it referred to both her emotional needs and her material well-being. Families in poverty saw no point in the young woman coming to share in or even exacerbate their struggle. At a deeper level there appeared to be skepticism as well, which stemmed precisely from her unconventional and ambivalent status. In practical terms, without a husband to play mediator in her relationship with his family, how well would she be incorporated into the family? What if discord arose between her, her in-laws, and other family members? One faithful maiden was said to have “a strong character” and was “not living peacefully.” In the end, she had to move back to her parents’ house.58 The pain of having a difficult and emotionally unstable faithful maiden live in the same household was also felt keenly by the Zhang family of Changzhou, as Susan Mann detailed in The Talented Women of the Zhang Family. Faithful maiden Fa was the bereaved fiancée of the eldest son of Zhang Huiyan’s brother, Zhang Qi (1764 –1833). She was said to have often flown into “uncontrollable rages” (she was probably mentally ill, as suggested by one source), causing misery in particular to the wife of the younger brother of her deceased fiancé because of her junior status in the ritual hierarchy.59 Similar scenarios would certainly discourage any family from accepting a faithful maiden into their home. But even if there were no conflict of this sort, the fiancé’s family might be legitimately worried that the faithful maiden, young and idealistic, might not follow through on her resolve in the years to come. The concern was not far-fetched because stories about faithful maidens who “began with commitment and ended with regret” did occur.60 Even in cases where the two families involved had close ties, this skepticism could still prevent the fiancé’s family from receiving the girl. Song Shi­ ying (1621–1705) and Ji Dong (1625 –76) were eminent figures in early Qing literati society. Both were from Wuxian, present-day Suzhou in the core of the Lower Yangzi. Ji used to bring his son along when he visited Song. Impressed by the boy’s talent and manner, Song had his daughter engaged to him. Ji’s son died when he was fifteen years old. Ji Dong was hesitant to take in the Song daughter because “he was worried that she was too young”;61 at the time she was only thirteen. Over the next ten years, the Song girl remained on a vegetarian diet and rejected

122   Choices makeup and fine clothing as if she were a widow, while the two fathers struggled to come up with a solution to the situation. They discussed from time to time Song’s suggestion to transfer his daughter to the Ji household to live and to set up an heir as she wished, but Ji Dong could not make up his mind until it was too late—she starved herself to death when someone proposed a marriage. Only then was Ji convinced of her determination. Deeply regretful, he wept and sighed: “You are truly my daughter-in-law. I disappointed you!” He came to the Song family in person, took her coffin home, and buried it in his son’s grave.62 While taking pity on the misfortune of the young woman, some fiancés’ families could also find her request emotionally distressing. The tragedy of losing a son in his prime was difficult enough to bear, and the faithful maiden’s presence in the family could only remind the parents of their horrific loss, thus hindering the process of healing. Mao Qiling mentions an episode concerning the father-in-law of Li Zong, a faithful maiden from Hangzhou. Li’s father-in-law was away at the time his son died. When he returned home and saw Li Zong dressed up as a widow, “he wailed and stamped his feet, and said: ‘My son has died. I cannot bear to see this!’ Wailing, he fled to Wuchang and never returned.”63 What could cause even more agony for a fiancé’s family was the presence of the young woman in excessive grief. The Jin family of Changzhou county reluctantly agreed to have faithful maiden Long move in with them. But Long cried every day, and her father-in-law could not bear it. He said to her: “Your idea is too lofty. You insisted on coming to our home, but now you submerge yourself in tears. My dead son will not revive. What is there to console me!”64 Life had to move on in the face of tragedy. But there was something of a conflict of interest on this point between the faithful maiden and her fiancé’s family. Both were grieving, and for her, grief could also be a way of showing her virtue as a “widow,” yet for his family, too much of it could be psychologically overwhelming. This disagreement seems to have directly caused the tragic nervous breakdown of faithful maiden Wu, the daughter of Cheng Jingfang’s (1718 – 84) cousin in the lineage (zujie). When her fiancé, son of a certain Xiong family, died, the young woman wanted to go to live with the Xiongs, and she even tried to hang herself when her mother rejected that idea. But the Xiongs had no interest in having her. Not until seven years later, through Cheng Jingfang’s negotiation, did the Xiongs agree to take her in. The date had been set for her to join the Xiongs. She wanted to wear mourning garments when going to the Xiongs, but the Xiongs did not approve. She became deeply

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depressed and afflicted with a disease that caused her to lose control over her speech and movements.65 In some areas, adding to all these considerations was the local lore that discouraged the family from receiving a faithful maiden. According to Fang Zongcheng (1818 – 88), people in Dongxiang of Tongcheng, Anhui, believed that a fiancée going to mourn her deceased betrothed would bring “bad luck” to his family.66 The superstition quite powerfully influenced local people’s attitudes, and as a result counteracted the state’s and many local gentry’s efforts to promote the faithful maiden cult.

Adopting an Heir In the end, what perhaps weighed even more heavily in the concerns of the fiancé’s family were economic interests. If a faithful maiden moved to live with her deceased fiancé’s family, she was customarily and legally entitled to adopt an heir from his lineage, selected from among his brothers’ or cousins’ sons, to continue his line. In regulating the exceptional circumstances under which adoption is permitted for a deceased man, Qing law stipulated that a deceased man who had not yet married but whose fiancée had determined to preserve her fidelity should be granted the right to adopt an heir.67 Even though the adoption was rationalized on the grounds of the patrilineal interest of her fiancé, the faithful maiden was the beneficiary of this legal clause. In essence, the adoption was an exclusive privilege granted by the imperial court to the young woman, an imperial reward for her exceptional moral action. Similarly, literati supporters viewed her request for adoption through a moral lens: the young woman fulfilled a grave responsibility in the role of a dutiful wife. But for many families of deceased fiancés, it was not the ritual function but the economic implications of the adoption that concerned them most. The implication was profound: the adopted boy would have the right to a share of or the entire family property, and as his legal mother, the faithful maiden would have the right to control that property. Whether or not to welcome a faithful maiden into their families would thus directly affect the economic interests of the family members. In faithful maiden biographies, families that readily granted adoptions to faithful maidens were applauded. Their actions were seen not as passive responses to the imperial regulation but as gestures of Confucian brotherly love and exhibitions of the family’s respect and care for

124   Choices the faithful maiden. Li E (1692 –1752) tells of the father of Ma ­Yueguan (1688 –1755) and Ma Yuelu (1695 –?), two bibliophiles and poets of ­eighteenth-century Yangzhou, who convinced his wife to give up one of their own sons for adoption: His eldest brother, named Hen, died early, and Wang, his sister-in-law who had been engaged to his brother, married into the family to endure widowhood. At that time, his eldest son was very young, and his second son, Chu, was only a few months old. Distressed, he said: “We need to establish an heir [for her].” Some relatives and nursemaids said that it would be better to wait for some time. He persuaded his wife with the principle of yi (honor-bound duty): “Why should we be stingy about a boy who could continue the sacrifices to my elder brother and please our sister-in-law? Should not we have him comfort the dead and console the living [that is, the sister-in-law]?” His wife complied with his decision.68

In this case, the objections to adoption were portrayed in sentimental terms. There was a good reason for his wife and relatives to be worried: he and his wife had only two sons, and giving one of them away for adoption might reduce the prospects of their own line, or even jeopardize it. Given the high child mortality rate at the time, the concern could be considered well founded. However, there was potential economic benefit by acting out the generosity. That is, if the family property were divided between Ma’s father and his brothers, his two sons would get only one share between them. By adopting a son to serve as heir to his elder brother, each son could get a full share. In the end, whether or not a faithful maiden was welcomed by her fiancé’s family was often a function of the existing structure of that family. That is to say, a family with no surviving son might take her in with appreciation, but in a family that had several sons, brothers of the deceased man might view her as a potential rival claimant on the family property.69 Under some circumstances, brothers and kinsmen of her deceased fiancé might be happy to give up a son for adoption, because it would provide them later with an opportunity to extend their control over property titled to the adopted boy. If, on the other hand, they foresaw that a faithful maiden was a threat to their economic interests, their discouraging her from coming to live with them was only natural. Qi Xuebiao (1742 –1825) tells of a case of an “evil man” in his native place, Taiping county in Zhejiang province. When the brother of this man died, he “secretly congratulated” himself, because, according to the law, a man who died before marriage was not entitled to an heir. He was both surprised and furious when he saw his brother’s fiancé weeping, coming to his door in mourning dress. He forced the faithful

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maiden to return to her own family, and not until his neighbors stood out criticizing him did he back down. Still, he did not want to take in the faithful maiden. Instead, he offered to supply rice every year to support her if she remained living with her own brother.70 In this case, both imperial law, which granted the faithful maiden the right of adoption, and local opinion failed to prevail. In fact, even wellestablished families could bluntly object to a faithful maiden’s request, taking no heed of what others would say or what the law stipulated. When faithful maiden Wang, the daughter of a juren degree holder, starved herself to death, her fiancé’s brothers refused to take in her coffin, for fear that once she entered the family— even dead—“an heir might be established and the family property be split.” Her corpse had lain unburied for twenty years by the time Peng Shaosheng recorded the case.71 Delay in carrying out the promise of adoption of an heir for a faithful maiden could be intentionally deployed to exhaust the young woman’s patience and cause her to become desperate and commit suicide.72 Qian Taiji (1791–1863) commented on another tragedy, that of a faithful maiden who had been engaged to a son of the Ma family: “She might not have died if the elders in the Ma lineage had planned earlier on an adoption for Lian [her fiancé] and had taken her in to raise the boy. . . . If [the lineage] had followed her wish to adopt an heir, her death might have been delayed.”73 Qian’s comments indicate that some adoption arrangements did not depend solely on the family. The lineage, too, had influence or could even be the decisive force. This was especially true in cases in which the fiancé’s family did not have a surviving son. Kinsmen who were hoping to get a share of the family wealth would make every effort to prevent adoption from taking place. Consider the example of faithful maiden He. The fifteen-year-old married into the family of her deceased fiancé, an only son. Two months into the marriage, “the discussion about adoption began. The Hao family [her deceased fiancé’s family] did not have a boy in the generation [that was proper for adoption], and the people in the lineage who coveted the family’s property blocked the matter. The adoption plan failed.” To further destroy He’s hope for adoption, the same people spread a rumor that her real intention was to control the Hao family property. The rumor soon drove the young girl to hang herself to protest the conspiracy and to demonstrate her innocence.74 A young woman like He was certainly no match for a family or lineage that laid their eyes on the family assets of her late fiancé. Moreover, even if an adoption were arranged, things could still turn sour.

126   Choices Faithful maiden Cai Zhenxian was indeed given an heir—she had tried repeatedly to kill herself, and only then did she give up on her suicide attempts. Her deceased fiancé was the only son of a well-to-do family. After his death, “the close relatives’ hopes grew of getting [the family property], and they loathed the fact that the faithful maiden came to preserve fidelity and to establish an heir. Therefore, they poured their resentment out on her.” The in-laws, on the other hand, had no sincere intention of proceeding with adoption, as they were not too old to give birth to another son. The adoption was only “a lure”—a false promise—to discourage the faithful maiden from killing herself. Zhenxian convinced her mother-in-law to take a concubine for her father-in-law in the hope that the concubine would give birth to a son (this indeed resulted in the birth of a boy by the concubine). That act was said to have initially won her much favor from her mother-in-law, who even entrusted the management of the household to her. But the subsequent jealous remarks and gossip from other family members forced her to resign from that duty. In an effort to mollify her adversaries, she gave all her dowry to her mother-in-law, which only led to further scandal with accusations of her having “other thoughts” (that is, remarriage). Despite her various efforts to repair her relationship with the family, she lost her in-laws’ favor and killed herself in her seventh year of spirit marriage. The author remarked that she was devoured by slander. Nobody would have understood her heart if she had not killed herself.75 Despite their initial reluctance, and after abortive efforts to dissuade the faithful maidens, most fiancés’ families did end up admitting them to their homes, bowing to fear that the girls might kill themselves out of despair or social pressure. In public opinion, a faithful maiden was a member of her fiancé’s family, even though she might continue to live with her own parents. To have a “daughter-in-law” estranged from her ultimate home did not reflect well on the fiancé’s family.76 Meanwhile, as the faithful maiden practice was recognized by many as a form of virtue, the family of the deceased fiancé faced considerable pressure to respond appropriately, and their image was damaged if their reluctance to receive a determined faithful maiden eventually caused her to commit suicide. This might have been a factor in faithful maiden Chen’s parents-in-law’s decision to take her in: Chen had been forced to live separately by her abusive stepmother, and when the stepmother pressed her to marry another man, she vowed that she would drown herself in the river. When word of this reached her fiancé’s home, she was accepted into the family.77

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Changing Strategies In the late eighteenth century, a young woman named Zhu Shigu from Xinyang county (in southern Jiangsu) died after she deliberately exposed her body to the freezing midnight winter wind and, as a result, developed lung disease. The bereaved Shigu had been engaged again by her mother, a wealthy widow. Being a docile child, she could not bring herself to commit suicide outright, as she was afraid of hurting her mother, who was said to have adored her dearly. Moreover, as the mother watched her every minute day and night and had her sleep in the inner room that connected to her own bedroom, Shigu could find no other way to end her life. The only person who caught sight of the girl’s ordeal was an old woman living next door, but Shigu pleaded with her not to tell her mother. After Shigu’s death, the old woman broke her ­silence: Shigu would not have died if she had been allowed to marry into her late fiancé’s family or to stay home to preserve chastity. “A mother can make a daughter live or die!” sighs Lü Xinyuan (1753 –1821), the author of Shigu’s biography.78 Tragedy such as this could have a deep effect on concerned parents. Suicides caused by parental mishandling might have made many think twice before they exercised their authority to reject their daughters’ decisions. It appears that as parents increasingly realized the “incurable” nature of the faithful maiden cult, new strategies were adopted to deal with it. For example, as Korean scholar Pak Chi-wõn reported in the late eighteenth century, “farsighted” parents would not have their daughters engaged until their coming of age. We have yet to determine whether the faithful maiden practice indeed helped undermine the custom of childhood betrothal, but one thing is certain: by the nineteenth century, intellectuals were offering wisdom to parents on how to handle a faithful maiden crisis. Because many— especially opponents of the cult—believed that faithful maidens acted on impulse as a result of their naïveté and idealism, one piece of advice was to keep the daughter home for a period of time before sending her to live with her in-laws. Li Shenchuan, for example, suggested that the family should have the daughter wait ten years before letting her fulfill her wishes. During this “test” ­ period, the girl would have a clear understanding of her action as she matured mentally and physically. If she changed her mind, she could still marry someone else without causing embarrassment to herself and to both families. Sources indicate that in some cases, faithful maidens did not

128   Choices immediately move to their in-laws’ homes, and the strategy of the “delayed transfer” might have been practiced in those cases. Li Yun, whose fiancé died when she was seventeen, was only taken in by his family nine years later, when her parents-in-law were convinced of her sincerity.79 In another case, when faithful maiden Sun’s late fiancé’s family held a belated marital ceremony to welcome her into their home, ten years had passed since her late fiancé’s death and she was then twenty-nine years old. On the other hand, Zhang Yun’ao (1747–1829, from Zhejiang province) suggested that the perfect solution was to have the faithful maiden stay home permanently to “preserve her resolve,” which would allow her to fulfill her wish not to marry another man while still performing her filial duty to her parents.80 Zhang was clearly addressing a problem that many young women had: they insisted on living with their in-laws against all odds, only to find out life was much more complicated than they had imagined. Whether or not parents took heed of these suggestions, there appears to have been some change in the attitudes of both the natal and marital families over the course of the Qing. Dramas of parental coercion and daughters’ suicides became less common as the dynasty proceeded, and more parents seemed to have come to terms with the conflict, employing more realistic approaches. Although marrying into the deceased fiancé’s home gained increasing acceptance as a marriage form, the “delayed transfer” offered another, safer strategy for the parents and in-laws.

chapter

Dying for an Ideal

5

The Choice of Suicide

the motives and reasoning behind young women’s pledge of devotion to their deceased fiancés have been variously interpreted from their own day to the present. For example, critics in the Ming and Qing eras charged that the faithful maidens’ actions resulted from misconstrual of ritual; contemporary historians, on the other hand, have blamed Confucian gender ideology: the girls were simply intoxicated by it and fell victims to it. This chapter discusses the suicide of faithful maidens, the most dramatic and intriguing aspect of the faithful maiden cult, aiming for some understanding of the question of how the young women came to their choices. The rich contemporary accounts reveal that faithful maiden suicide was not a single, monolithic act. It occurred under a range of circumstances in response to differing situations. Some suicides were spontaneous and others premeditated well before the event; some were carried out in the context of disputes, for example, over adoption, and others involved no agitation of any sort. These circumstances bring to the surface the many layers of ideological, social, and economic forces at work in conjunction with the emotional conditions of the young women that determined their actions. As suggested in the rich records that will be described, young women evaluated their circumstances within various constraints. Idealistic and sensitive, they were caught up in the crisis of their fiancés’ deaths but determined to find a solution that they believed would not compromise their character and sense of responsibility. They made their choices based on their understanding of honor, duty, and love, ideas that were deeply rooted in the late imperial social, cultural, and religious institutions in which they were raised.

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Choosing Death Biographical accounts hint at the mental breakdown of young girls upon discovering their fiancés’ deaths. Some became hysterical or confused, or fainted. The eighteen-year-old Chen Baoniang was said to have fallen from the loom where she was working; another girl, who was feeding the stove with firewood, burned her fingers without knowing it.1 Considering the circumstances, such reactions were only natural. In most cases, news of the fiancé’s death came suddenly. Even if parents were aware of a future son-in-law’s serious illness, they were likely to have hidden the information from their daughter for fear that it might be too upsetting, so she was unprepared for tragedy.2 Worse, the long marital rituals might just be reaching their final stage: an auspicious date for the wedding had been selected, and the bride was prepared for a new phase in her life. The death of her fiancé brought her hopes and dreams to a sudden end. Generally, faithful maiden suicides fall into three types in terms of the timing and circumstances. In the first type, the suicide followed the young woman’s parents’ rejection of a request to mourn her deceased fiancé. In the second type, it took place after her request had been met and she had lived as a “widow” for some time, ranging from a few days to a number of years. In the third pattern, she committed suicide immediately upon her fiancé’s death. In the first situation, the young woman did not originally intend to kill herself. She would have remained alive had her wishes been granted. There appears to be a pattern in which the parents’ failure to accede to their daughter’s wishes eventually led to her suicide. The daughter first made her request verbally; when it was denied, she went on to starve herself—a powerful gesture of daughterly protest. If that failed, she attempted suicide. By the time she decided to take her own life, she had exhausted all the resources at a daughter’s command to achieve her goals. Throughout these trials, her hope rested on her parents’ sympathy and affection— caring parents could not bear to see a daughter suffer or die. Indeed, most parents did give in to such daughterly protest and threat, thus ending the ordeal. But some parents did not take a daughter’s protest as seriously as she wished; they could even be infuriated by it. Parents might hope that she would eventually give up if they refused to give their consent. For a daughter, on the other hand, this could be read as a sign of lack of care or concern. Under these circumstances, a daughter’s torment became

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both physical and emotional, increasing her inclination to commit suicide. The following is excerpted from the biography of a twenty-yearold daughter of a fisherman. It describes her reaction when she heard about her fiancé’s death: She wept, pleading with her parents to allow her go to mourn him and to take care of his grandmother and his brother. Her parents rejected this, which heightened her grief. She stopped drinking and eating for four days and tried to hang herself at night. Her suicide attempt was discovered, and she was rescued. The following day, taking advantage of her parents’ absence, she threw herself in the river.3

In this case, grief, disappointment, anger, and resentment resulting from futile negotiations with her parents all seem to have contributed to the tragedy. Suicide was a final solution when she saw no possibility of negotiating to achieve her hopes. Even if other parents handled similar situations more tactfully, so long as they were not truly attentive to their daughters’ wishes, suicide might still occur, as seen in the Lin Fengniang story. When she attempted to hang herself at midnight after her father rejected her request to attend her fiancé’s funeral, her mother “consoled her in hundreds of ways and promised not to have her betrothed again.” Fengniang hoped that her late fiancé’s family would establish an heir for him so that she could move to live with them, but a long period passed and she heard nothing about adoption. Eventually, her parents contacted a matchmaker. Disillusioned, “she silently retired to her own room, put on the betrothal garments from her fiancé’s family, and jumped into a well.”4 The second type of suicide occurred under vastly different circumstances. Here, as her request to be a faithful maiden had actually been met, it would have made no sense for the girl to kill herself in protest or despair. However, as discussed earlier, even if a young woman had gone to live with her late fiancé’s family, conflict over adoption of an heir or over property might later cause her to commit suicide. Abusive parents-in-law or misfortune might also crush her will to live.5 Living in her natal home, she might have seen herself as a burden to her brother or other relatives after the death of her parents. Women who committed suicide upon the death of a remaining parent—an act unanimously praised in biographies as a demonstration of filiality and fidelity—seem to have been motivated by such a concern. Still, in a good number of the cases, the suicide was not agitated and appears to have been consciously planned.

132   Choices Consider faithful maidens Shen and Ye. Shen moved in with her late fiancé’s family and later adopted a boy. She killed herself, however, as soon as she completed the three-year mourning ritual.6 Ye performed the ritual of chengfu at her late fiancé’s grave and afterward lived with her own family, accompanied by his tablet.7 When the three-year mourning period was over, she, too, stopped taking food and died in seven days.8 In both cases, the date for committing suicide was deliberately chosen. The “three years of mourning” was the highest degree of mourning for a woman, who performed it only in the case of the death of a parent or a husband. The timing shows how much ritual propriety weighed in these faithful maidens’ concerns. By choosing to die immediately after the completion of the mourning ritual, the two young women asserted their self-adopted identity as loyal and responsible wives. Performance of the mourning rites aside, other goals could also keep a faithful maiden from killing herself more quickly. Zhang Shunniang from Haifeng, Guangdong, pleaded with her in-laws and adopted an heir for her fiancé on the hundredth day after his death. Afterward she returned to her natal home to take care of her ailing father. About a year later, her father’s health improved. She convinced her in-laws to look for a burial site for her late fiancé. When that request was met, she said: “Now that my husband has an heir and his burial site has been found, my wishes are fulfilled,” and she hanged herself.9 To see to it that a deceased husband was buried properly and that his line was carried on were important wifely obligations, and regardless of social class, faithful maidens took such grave responsibilities to heart.10 Their perceived obligations, on the other hand, were sometimes used as an excuse by their families to stop them from committing suicide (presumably with the hope that they would give up their desire to die with the passing of time).11 Of all the suicide cases, the third type, in which the young maiden killed herself promptly upon the death of a fiancé without making a request to mourn him or to live as his widow, offers the fewest immediate clues as to what led to the action. For example, Gao Cun, a peasant daughter known in the neighborhood for her intelligence and industry, was making dough for steamed buns when her father hurriedly came home with a piece of pork in hand, telling her that her fiancé had died and that she should cook the pork immediately for him to take to the fiancé’s home for the ritual sacrifice. With tears in her eyes, she prepared the pork. After her father left, she sent her brother away and hanged

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herself. Some little pieces of dough were still in her hands.12 Little is known about what might have gone through her mind in the few hours between her receiving the news and the suicide. Judging by the speediness of the action, she might not have even thought about living as an option. Faithful maiden Wang killed herself in a similarly hasty fashion. The details given by her biographer hint at unusual calmness as she approached her own death. She was engaged to Wang Rongguang at the age of nine, and twelve years later Rongguang died. When the news arrived, she was with her stepmother visiting her grandmother in another courtyard. She sat silently, but her facial expression changed. After a short while, she made an excuse to go home and brought her younger sister along. [When she got home,] she sent a servant back to wait for her stepmother; then she made tea and sat down drinking it with her sister. She talked about her own life, about how to be a good woman, and about ways to serve parents. . . . Afterward, she told her sister: “I am very tired. I want to take a short rest.” She went to her room and locked the door immediately. Her sister asked why she had locked the door, and she said: “I am just afraid of being disturbed.”

When her stepmother came home, she had already hanged herself.13 Why did young women at these tender ages kill themselves with such determination when they could in fact have lived like many other faithful maidens? Critics called them “stupid” for dying a worthless death or criticized them for qingsheng (treating one’s own life lightly). But for these girls, it was a choice not only driven by tremendous emotion but also grounded on thorough reasoning. Biographical accounts reveal that many faithful maidens did in fact give thought to other options, and suicide came only after they saw overwhelming odds against the possibility of living on with the dignity to which they aspired. If she wished to go to her in-laws as a widow, would her own parents reject the idea? Would her fiancé’s parents and other family members refuse her? How could she manage to live in her in-laws’ family? Would she be able to adopt an heir? How would her staying home affect her siblings and other family members? Was there someone who would look after her when her parents died? Every negative answer to these practical concerns would make the option to keep living less attractive. Perceived social and family constraints appeared as insurmountable barriers. Consider the case of Yang Ying from Kunming, Yunnan, as an example. When her fiancé, Duan, died, Yang tried to throw herself into a well. Her mother suggested that she could either go live with the Duans or stay home. Yang Ying replied that she could

134   Choices not live with the Duans because her mother-in-law had died and her fiancé’s brothers were not yet married. However, “a woman who depends on her dowry for a living is often laughed at by the neighbors. I see that in my grand-aunt and aunt’s examples. In addition, if my brother and sister have complaints, it would hurt our sibling relationship. How can I let that happen!”14 It would certainly be awkward and cause gossip if she lived in her late fiancé’s household with no other women around. Yet she would be a source of conflict in her parents’ house if she stayed home. In the late imperial family system in which virilocal marriage was most common, daughters moved out at marriage to join their husbands’ families, and their inheritance of their fathers’ property did not go beyond the contents of their dowries.15 A woman who stayed at home was often seen as a burden to the family by her brothers and sisters-in-law, and even by herself. Such tension may have been behind those cases in which a faithful maiden killed herself upon the death of her remaining parent. The tension could have been self-generated, as there were brothers who sincerely cared about them and wanted to look after their well-being. In Yang Ying’s case, no details were given as to what happened to her grand-aunt and aunt—neither was married—but social bias against a woman living on her dowry was apparently strong in this locality.16 A young woman who was highly sensitive about her reputation and who cared a great deal about sibling harmony would probably hesitate to take the option of staying home. Her fear of an uncertain future also had another component: the possibility that her parents would not honor a promise to allow her to remain celibate—a concern that some Qing scholars underscored.17 Xun Kun, for example, said to her sister before she killed herself: “Our parents want me to stay home, but will they allow me to stay home for the rest of my life?”18 Hoping that time would soften their daughter’s resolve, parents often agreed to her demands as a tactic to end her suicide attempts. The potential threat of being forced to marry someone else could come from their fiancé’s parents as well. Yan’s fiancé left home to study, and his family later lost track of his whereabouts; there was even a rumor that he had died. Some time had passed after Yan’s reaching the age for marriage. Her fiancé’s family repeatedly urged her family to marry her off to another man. Only when Yan furiously scolded the matchmaker they sent did they give up their efforts.19 Parental promises not to betroth a faithful maiden were not reassuring enough. A faithful maiden might also have worried that the difficult life of a widow would cause her own determination to crumble.

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Death, after all, was a resolution once and for all. A chaste widow’s psychological state was commonly described in a metaphorical phrase, “a dried-out well that makes no waves” (ku jing wu lan). That is to say, she was thought to have abandoned all the normal desires a young woman would have, and consequently her heart could no longer be disturbed. But the other side of this common wisdom was the understanding of the enormous self-control it took to maintain such a state. The ­seventeen-year-old Ling Cunxun hanged herself after leaving this poem on the table: Unable to repay the love of my parents, I leave so many hopes unfulfilled. I choose to join my fiancé in our shared tomb, I will not allow the dry well to make a wave.20

The last sentence implies that, for Ling, death would leave no room for any possibilities of violating her character and reputation.21 We learn from another account that Ling took her own life only when a relative had brought up a marriage proposal, which her father was considering. Like some other faithful maidens, Ling had turned to Buddhism since her fiancé’s death; she observed a vegetarian diet and dressed in plain clothing.22 A Buddhist way of living would safeguard her desire to maintain her mind-set of a “dried-out well,” but the matchmaker’s arrival shattered the emotion-free life she sought to live.

Dying in Style: The Benxun Suicide Faithful maidens used a number of forms of suicide, including hanging, fasting, throwing themselves into a well or river, jumping off a building, and drinking poison. Setting fire to or stabbing themselves was also reported. Hanging was a speedier method than starving to death, with the advantage that a young woman ran less risk of losing her determination partway through the process when facing intense dissuasion by parents and other loved ones. Some chose starvation over other forms of suicide as a manifestation of their filiality, declaring that they should not harm the bodies that they had received from their parents.23 The most dramatic suicides were those pre-announced and performed in the presence of an audience, in the fashion of benxun (hastening to mourn a fiancé and follow him in death) and datai sijie (setting up a platform to perform suicide for chastity). As discussed in Chapter 4, both took place exclusively in Fujian.24 It appears that, for faithful maiden suicide, benxun was more common than datai sijie.25

136   Choices This following gazetteer excerpt details the incident about a young woman named Lin Jiesong, who was twenty-two years old: When she heard of the news [of her fiancé’s death], she cried in great sorrow. She wanted to hasten to his home to mourn him and to kill herself there. Her mother rejected this. She said to her mother: “My heart has already been dead for three months [presumably from the time she learned of his illness].” Her mother knew that she was determined, so she instructed her to go to the Chens’ by sedan chair. [Lin Jiesong] put on auspicious clothing and performed kowtow in the [Chen family] ancestral hall and to her parents-in-law. She then changed to mourning garments before entering the room in which her fiancé’s corpse lay. She unfastened his clothing, passed her hand over his body and looked at it closely, and mourned his death loudly again and again. [Afterward] she went to his bedroom, removed a rope from her sleeve, and hanged herself.26

In another case, the faithful maiden wrote with the blood taken from her own finger a statement more than seven hundred words long addressing Heaven, in which she announced the date of her suicide. On the morning of the predetermined date, “she took a bath, changed her clothing and shoes, kowtowed to Heaven, and read the announcement” before hanging herself inside the house.27 Publicly announced but privately performed, a benxun-style suicide was preceded by a set of rituals. Once a young woman made up her mind, her parents notified her fiancé’s family, which arranged to receive her. Before taking off for her in-laws’, she bade farewell to her relatives and thanked her parents for raising her. At times the whole lineage gathered for her departure.28 Upon arriving at her fiancé’s home, she performed rites to the ancestors and her in-laws and was offered ritual sacrifice. The hanging appears to have commonly taken place in her fiancé’s bedroom. Some faithful maidens made a last request before the hanging. Kunsong, for example, asked for cooked rice after tying the rope to the beam. She “forced herself to take three bites, saying: ‘I lived as a Lin [her fiancé’s surname] wife; I die a Lin ghost. Now I have eaten the Lin food.’ ” She then hanged herself.29 Were these suicides coerced by parents or the lineage? As discussed earlier, some must have been. But sources suggest that benxun could also be a preferred form of suicide demanded by faithful maidens themselves. The following case, which took place in 1686, shows a faithful maiden’s determination to die in this particular fashion. Wu Shifeng was nineteen when she went to bid farewell to her fiancé’s corpse (whose eyes allegedly remained open until Shifeng spoke the words “I

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am coming”). She wanted to follow him in death, but her mother and mother-in-law stopped her. She did not eat for more than ten days. She had great hunger, but her disposition did not appear to suffer. People tried to persuade her to eat, but she told them: “I will eat if you allow me to die.” They agreed but only as a way to lure her into eating. She resumed taking food, but afterward she again wanted to die. People knew her resolve could not be broken, so they consented. The girl solemnly kowtowed to her fiancé’s coffin, then to her mother and her mother-inlaw. The families offered a “living sacrifice” to her, which she accepted calmly.30 After performing a kowtow in return, she hanged herself on the door beam with a strip of white silk.31

Shifeng could simply have gone on to starve herself to death (after ten days of fasting, she must have been very close to just that), yet she resumed eating, only to demand to be allowed to die in the fashion of benxun. Evidently, that particular form of committing suicide was her overriding desire. In an area that glorified public suicide of chaste women, it appears, benxun commanded higher admiration than other forms of suicide. Once a young girl received the family’s consent to commit benxun, her death was carried out with ritual, style, and considerable publicity. If other forms of suicide would earn a young girl praise and honor after her death, benxun delivered that praise and honor in her own presence, in the rituals of farewell and sacrifice with which she was revered and even worshipped.

Suicide for Fame? Incidents like these might have given rise to the criticism that young girls wanted to become faithful maidens because it would bring them “fame.” This accusation surfaced from time to time in contemporary records, indicating that it was not at all an uncommon opinion, in particular among those who were critical of the cult. At times, even family members had doubts. For example, when trying to dissuade her from committing suicide, Xun Kun’s sister pleaded with her not to follow “the behavior of those who craved fame in an age of decline.”32 The supporters of faithful maidens, understandably, disagreed and tried hard to fight off the accusation.33 For them, such an accusation was an insult to the young women’s moral integrity. The sensation that faithful maiden suicide caused was well documented. It could instantly turn an average girl into a household name, gaining her praise from famous people in the area and possibly awards

138   Choices from the government. We might suspect that, in cases in which a faithful maiden insisted on committing suicide in a certain fashion, such as benxun, fame could have played a part. Here, not the death itself but the form of death figured prominently in the young woman’s consideration. In a different vein, the following anecdote illuminates a faithful maiden’s subconscious thoughts of fame. After Jiang Gui attempted to hang herself, in delirium she heard a voice calling her: “You are destined to enjoy a great name. Why do you do this?” She awoke to note that the rope had been untied from her neck.34 She later went on to be a renowned artist, which added extra luster to her name as a faithful maiden. Zhang Duanxiu, another faithful maiden, left this suicide poem: Since ancient times, people have sacrificed their lives for a good name, I have transcended worldly feelings; within me is an unchangeable heart. Looking back is difficult, because I have not yet repaid my parents’ love. For twenty years, they loved me as if holding a pearl in their palms.35

While lamenting the pain that her death would bring to her parents, Zhang Duanxiu found gratification in her action, knowing that her name would be placed among martyrs whom she admired. She might have taken comfort in the thought that exchanging her otherwise ordinary life for eternal glory was a way to honor her parents. By reminding her parents of the good name she would leave behind, she might also have hoped her parents would find the pain of losing a daughter more bearable. The other side of this aspiration for a good name was the consciousness that ran deep in some young women that their good reputation must not be sullied at any cost. In 1861, faithful maiden Liu hanged herself in the wake of the Taiping conquest of her native place. In the two suicide poems she left behind she stated that one’s name and character were “as weighty as a mountain” and that she had preserved chastity for more than ten years, but now she had an additional reason to give up her “insignificant body.”36 The reason was simple: the threat by the rebels to her reputation and moral character. It is worth noting that even though faithful maiden supporters— women as well as men— disagreed about whether their heroines committed suicide for the sake of fame, leaving a name in history was the common compliment they lavished on faithful maidens. Fan Huzhen wrote in her “Poem for Faithful Maiden Yang”: “The white silk strip that hangs from her throat is like a flying white rainbow; / it carries the young woman up to the records of history.”37 Praising her faith-

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ful maiden niece, another poet concludes her piece on a similar note: “Someday [her story] will be recorded in history and her silent virtue will come into sight in the neighborhood [that is, with an archway or calligraphy tablet].”38 We can assume that such rhetoric would feed into some young women’s choices. In late imperial China, women of a young age would otherwise have little hope of being noticed by historians, yet as moral icons who performed extraordinary deeds, they received the attention that few could have hoped for. However, although it was evident that all faithful maidens were highly sensitive about safeguarding their reputation, it would be misguided to look for each young woman’s motives for suicide, or her attraction to the faithful maiden ideal, as a craving for fame. Circumstances in which faithful maidens committed suicide varied widely, and their choices can be understood only in the large ­social, cultural, and psychological contexts of the time and in the faithful maidens’ perceptions of the meaning of life. Here, accounts about their suicides provide one essential avenue for accessing these issues.

Rituals of Suicide Of the various details preserved in accounts about faithful maiden suicides, two are worthy of special note: one deals with their dowries and cherished personal belongings, the other with their bodies. Before they killed themselves, young women often took pains to make final arrangements about their dowries. Some wrote notes instructing their families to which friend or relative various items should be given;39 ­others simply destroyed their dowry property. Faithful maiden Kang, for example, burned all the handkerchiefs and ribbons that she had made, after which she put on white clothing and black shoes and hanged herself.40 Tang Fengluan cut the shoes, socks, and dresses that she had made into pieces and threw them down from her upstairs bedroom before jumping out the window.41 The act of dissolving a trousseau powerfully signaled the resolve to die. A dowry was, first of all, the only property that a woman controlled by herself. But perhaps more significantly, a dowry was enriched with cultural symbols of marriage for women. In late imperial China, preparation of a dowry took tremendous labor, much of which was done by young women’s own hands. Nearly all girls began to work on accumulating dowry items while young, learning to do embroidery and to make cloth, bedding, clothes, and shoes. Needlework would be displayed at

140   Choices the wedding, and each piece, delicately made, exhibited the skill and diligence that society valued in young women. The patterns used in the girl’s embroidery and the appearance of the cloth she made symbolized the affection and harmony of the bride and groom—bright in color, with beautiful patterns of flowers and paired auspicious birds, butterflies, and mandarin ducks. During the Ming and Qing, as dowry pressure increased—it was one of the main causes for infanticide of baby girls42—getting a dowry ready was the single most important task for a girl coming of age. Woven through her dowry were a young woman’s hopes and dreams. When she decided to end her life, the dowry had to go as well. The destruction of other cherished personal items before committing suicide was done in a similar mood of anguish, lost hope, and determination. While starving herself to death, for example, Chen Baoniang “took out of the bamboo chest all her writings, curios, and other things and burned all of them.”43 Cai Zhenxian “took out the books she had read, the calligraphy she had done, and the poems she had written. With tears streaming down, she set them on fire.”44 This reminds us of the scene of Lin Daiyu burning her poems before her death in the renowned eighteenth-century novel Story of the Stone.45 Women also burned their own handwritten scripts under other circumstances, such as when they decided that for women, writing poems transgressed proper gender roles. For young girls resolved to die, the act conveyed a different meaning: it signified the severance of their attachment to the past and to the living world. In their final moments of life, young girls put particular effort into making their bodily images presentable in a way they wanted. Meticulous care was given to clothing and appearance. Zhou, a diligent and beautiful peasant petty merchant daughter, hanged herself in her bedroom in 1676. Before she killed herself, “she dressed herself up, arranging her hair and putting on ornaments twice as carefully as she usually did.”46 She also changed her clothing. Everything was new and tidy. The image she left behind spoke of her hopes for how she wanted her image to be remembered, but more significantly, it spoke of her hopes for how she wanted her death to be understood. The body was a special site where she inscribed her beliefs and feelings. In this case, Zhou seemed to be signaling that she did not see death as the end of her life but the beginning of a new journey. But there was perhaps something else. Two kinds of clothing carried the greatest symbolic power in faithful maiden suicides: white garments and bridal dresses.47 White garments

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(suyi) were normally worn for funeral services or during the mourning period for a family member. Therefore, by putting on mourning garments for her dead fiancé, the faithful maiden implicitly claimed the status of a widow, which she would have hoped to acquire if she had lived. Her conscious choice of dressing up as a mourning wife at her death bespeaks a deep conflict between ritual propriety and personal feeling. As a young woman who was only betrothed, she could not mourn her fiancé as a widow would a husband, but she already deemed him to be her husband, thus aggravating her sadness. To die in white garments gave her the final freedom to express her suppressed grief. Dressing up as a bride to die, on the other hand, delivered a message with a different undertone. Death was the final chapter of the betrothal, which was completed in union with the deceased fiancé in the other world. It was perhaps in this sense that faithful maiden Zhou put on her beautiful clothing and jewels with great care. Some young women carried with them betrothal items from their fiancés’ families. For example, a betrothal letter (pintie) was found in faithful maiden Xia’s garments when her body was to be put into the coffin.48 The night before Cai Zhenxian—whose relationship with her parents-in-law had gone sour, we may recall—killed herself, she took out a hairpin and a bracelet and in tears fondled them repeatedly. Each item was half of a pair, and she had given the other half of each pair to her fiancé before his burial: she had clipped the hairpin to his hair and put the bracelet on his wrist. Now that she had decided to join him, she tied the hairpin to her hair and secured it with a white string. Wearing the bracelet, she told her maid: “Do not let people take it off my wrist if I die.” With the two intimate items that she and her fiancé shared, she was ready for her journey to meet him.49 Betrothal items, which a faithful maiden had received from her fiancé’s family, were often used in carrying out the suicide. In an aforementioned case, when her father, Wu Yifei, broke his promise not to marry her to another man, the faithful maiden hanged herself with a strip of silk, leaving two gold hairpins on the table—both the silk strip and the hairpins were betrothal gifts from her deceased fiancé’s family. On the strip of silk she wrote that the hairpins should be used to barter for her coffin, and her body should be carried to her fiancé’s family to be buried.50 We may also recall the three early Qing cases detailed in Chapter 2: faithful maiden Fan killed herself in her bridal dress; Song Dian hanged herself with a silk strip, a betrothal item; Wang Xiuwen

142   Choices swallowed golden rings, also betrothal gifts.51 Wang Xiuwen survived the ordeal, although her health was permanently compromised, but Yuan Shuxiu, who also swallowed a golden betrothal ring, did not. Yuan was a sixteen-year-old from Anshun, Guizhou. She left behind this poem: [I die] in order to keep the promise of the golden ring, How sad is my feeling toward the jade mirror! Not ashamed, facing the ring and the mirror, I only feel my body is light.52

The jade mirror must also have been a betrothal gift from her fiancé. Leaving a jueming ci (verse on ending life) or a suicide note on a strip of clothing had become a part of the suicide ritual for educated women by Qing times.53 Jueming ci, as a literary genre, long predated the faithful maiden cult, but its adoption by young women highlighted the surging power of literacy in leveling the gender ground in the area of self-­expression. It gave young women a powerful means to make a final statement about self-perceived identity. Suicide notes, often reading “Return my corpse to the family of [my fiancé],” also illustrate the power of literacy in shaping young women’s suicide behavior. What we see here are Qing allusions to two ancient tales featuring marital loyalty. One story, recorded in History of the Later Han Dynasty (Houhan shu), tells of Xun Cai, the wife of Yin Yu. When Yin Yu died, Xun Cai’s father betrothed her to a young man from the Guo family. Cai was called home by her father, but she vowed not to remarry. She was nevertheless put in a carriage and taken to the Guos’. Seeing that resistance was hopeless, she hanged herself after writing a three-character note on the wall: “Return my corpse to the Yin family [shi gui Yin]” (see Figure 5.1).54 Another tale, first appearing in the Eastern Jin period (137-420),55 tells of Han Peng’s wife, He. Desirous of her beauty, the king of Song seized her from Han Peng and made Han a prisoner. Han soon committed suicide. After leaving a note on a strip of her clothing, in which she asked the king to allow her corpse to be buried with Han, He killed herself by jumping from a terrace.56 In the late imperial period, both tales resurfaced in didactic writings for women and other popular writings, providing young women with ideas about how to fashion their own suicides. In imitating these celebrated heroines, the faithful maiden must have found spiritual gratification as well. A young woman’s keen concern over her body was also reflected in the act whereby she sewed her top and bottom garments together before she took her own life.57 Faithful maiden Chen Da’e went even further by

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figure 5.1  Xun Cai prepares for her suicide. s o u r c e : Lü 1998: 3/34a.

wrapping her neck with a ribbon and covering her head with a piece of silk that was sewn to the ribbon under her chin.58 Historically, a woman did this out of fear that her body might be exposed, damaged, or sexually assaulted. But in most faithful maiden suicides, which took place at home, these practices appear to have been not precautionary but emblems of chastity. A woman’s body was a measure of female virtue, and in Ming and Qing times, the idea that her flesh should not be seen—let alone touched—by a man other than her husband was taken to such an extreme that some women refused to see a doctor even if they were seriously ill. In one famous tale passing down from the Song, a chaste widow cut off her own hand because a man had grabbed it.59 In popular

144   Choices literature, the idea that only a husband could see his wife’s naked body was interpreted in another way. In many local versions of the popular story of Meng Jiangnü, she married her husband, Wan Qiliang, simply because he saw her body and she had decided that “whoever sees my white flesh will be my husband.”60 The logic here should be read in the opposite way: only her husband could see her flesh. In the way that some faithful maidens prepared their bodies before suicide, we see the same understanding in a different context.

Yi: Honor-Bound Duty Pondering the question of what drove young girls to act in such an extreme manner, Ming and Qing scholars noted qing (or en, love, affection) and yi (honor-bound duty) as two central areas for answers, but they were at the same time puzzled as they compared faithful maidens with real widows. “When the husband-wife relation is established, a mutual feeling follows; when there is a mutual feeling between them, ritual and duty arise.”61 The faithful maiden, unlike the chaste widow, had not actually been married. Then on what would her feelings of qing and yi have rested? Contrasting a chaste widow with a faithful maiden, the Qing scholar Li Bo (1630 –1700) commented that a widow preserved her fidelity out of love for her husband, out of care for her children, or out of desire for property. But a faithful maiden had nothing to do with any of these.62 In the biography of the faithful maiden Zen, composed for a maternal aunt, the early Qing scholar Zhou Hongqi expressed similar perplexity: When the bride leaves for her fiancé’s home, the groom goes in person to receive her with proper ceremony. They ascend the wagons, and the groom hands the bride a rope [sui]. The bride’s mother ties a bridal sash to her garment, and the groom and bride exchange bows. They share the same piece of meat and drink out of nuptial wine cups made of a single gourd.63 They are bound together by tender love; their affection is concentrated, and their feelings are deep. Therefore, if the husband dies, it is appropriate for the wife to kill herself to preserve her fidelity. . . . As for [a woman] who has not yet performed the ritual of miaojian [a rite of offering sacrifice to a deceased parent-in-law at the family shrine, performed three months into a woman’s marriage] and is not yet wed, she [and her fiancé] are just two strangers. What makes the faithful maiden so aroused as to look upon death as going home?64

Analyzing the difference between a widow’s commitment and a faithful maiden’s choice, Zhou wrote: “A faithful widow follows her qing and acts according to the principle of yi; a faithful maiden admires the prin-

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ciple of yi and suppresses her qing.”65 Another writer, Qin Ying (1743 – 1821), had a slightly different view. He believed that the faithful maiden act “is excessive in terms of qing, but it is in accordance with the principle of yi.” 66 In other words, there was a shared element between a faithful widow and a faithful maiden: they both followed the principle of yi. For a widow, the act grew out of her love for her husband, and it was therefore an expression of qing. For a faithful maiden, however, the act was a result of rejecting qing or carrying it to an extreme, because in her case, feelings of love, as with a widow, could not possibly be relevant. Critics of the faithful maiden practice regarded the act as an indulgence of feeling or desire: the faithful maiden followed her emotions and failed to restrain herself through principle.67 It was emotion that misled the young woman. The Qing scholars’ intense interest in qing as a key to understanding faithful maidens’ actions reminds us of the lingering legacy of the cult of qing that captured the literati world of the late Ming.68 Contemporary male perspectives provide valuable analytical insight into the spiritual and emotional world of the faithful maiden, but to disclose particular meanings of yi and qing in the context of the faithful maiden cult, we must move beyond male perspectives to examine what young women themselves had to say. Yi was, in fact, the predominant justification that faithful maidens made for their actions. It was a matter of yi, they declared, that they must maintain fidelity to their deceased fiancés or even die for them. Liu Xiban, a fifteen-year-old who starved herself to death, left the following poem to console her mother: Great yi is weighty, and lasts forever, While this floating life is light, just like dust. To keep my chastity and integrity, It is better that I die than live.69

In a similar case, Zhang Oujie left behind a suicide note, part of which reads, “It is a matter of yi that I must die.”70 Another young woman wrote to her father asking his permission to marry her deceased fiancé. She explained that she did not kill herself when her fiancé died because she was afraid of hurting her mother’s feelings and because she wanted to follow her father’s instruction (not to die). “If you understand my sincere sorrow and approve my request, for the Wang family I will be a daughter who follows her father’s teachings and for the Shen family a daughter-in-law who preserves the virtue of yi. I will be able to realize both my objectives.”71 What does yi mean, and why is it so weighty? Yi is an ancient moral concept dating back to the days of Confucius. Traditionally the term

146   Choices is translated as “righteousness”: together with li (propriety), lian (integrity), and chi (the sense of shame), it is one of the four Confucian ethical foundations (siwei); together with ren (humanity), li (propriety), zhi (knowledge), and xin (reliability), it is one of the five constant virtues of a human being (wuchang). The specific meaning of yi has to be interpreted in a given context, but by late imperial times yi primarily referred to the honor-bound duty that one person held to another or to the role that he or she assumed. Different from such virtues as loyalty and filiality, which primarily existed in a hierarchical or kinship structure, yi deemphasized the structural constraints on human relations, enhancing human bonds with less consideration of social status. Perhaps because of its broad applicability, yi represented the most appealing moral value governing personal relations in late imperial China, among both the elite and commoners. Fiction and drama that played on the theme of yi, such as Romance of the Three Kingdoms, The Water Margin, and other vernacular literature, enjoyed great popularity. Yi was the great trait that Ming-Qing writers adopted to judge an individual’s moral character. In fact, yi was held to define the decency of both human beings and animals. Late imperial tales abound with portraits of animals that allegedly protected or died for their owners, glorifying this moral trait in a bizarre way.72 The essence of yi is to commit oneself to a role or a relationship and to fulfill the duty or obligation attached to that role or relationship, even though the fulfillment of such duty might come at the cost of one’s life. Following one’s duty was more important than power, wealth, career, or life. Consequently, self-sacrifice and heroism constituted two characteristics of yi. The content of yi as honor-bound duty varied depending on the role or relationship in question. In the context of marriage, yi was identified through marital loyalty. In late imperial times, a widower who did not take another wife was called yifu.73 For a woman, yi was captured in the term congyi or congyi er zhong (following one husband to the end of her life).74 Here the virtues of yi (duty) and jie (fidelity) overlap, but it was yi that gave the rationale for jie: once a woman established her marital relationship with her husband, she had an honor-bound duty to be fully committed to that relationship. In this sense, yi was an important component of neo-Confucian gender values. It laid the foundation for an orderly society. Indeed, some faithful maidens from elite families saw themselves as fulfilling a grave mission. They proudly declared that their decision to become faithful maidens would help to uphold the morality of society. In her suicide

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poem, “Forgive Me, Mother,” Ye consoled her mother, elaborating on the fundamental ideal of “following one husband”: Although your daughter’s body is weak, She is endowed by nature with the strength of iron. She does not read much, But she sees principles with clarity and discernment. Before a woman is betrothed, She is as pure as snow. After she is betrothed, Her prescribed relationship with her husband cannot be smeared. If she is lucky, she shares bed with him until old age, She understands the principle of the husband-wife difference. If she is unfortunate to lose her husband in the middle of their life, She should vow to maintain her chastity forever. Even more unfortunate is the one who never meets her husband, How sad it is! The fate of her husband is like a waning moon. I am called a woman “who has not yet died”; I should have been buried in the same tomb with my husband. I did not die heroically [when he died], Because I waited to complete the three years of mourning. Having finished the mourning, I stop taking food, I feel great passion [knowing that] ritual will not be destroyed. Giving up my life violates Mother’s wish. My heart, too, is full of sorrow. Following my husband to the Yellow Spring, I hope human principles [gangwei] will not be sundered.75

In a separate account, we are told that Ye was raised and educated by her widowed mother. But her mother suspected that her decision to pursue faithful maidenhood was justified by neither ritual nor yi. Ye formulated her reasoning on a set of Confucian concepts and told her mother that ritual depended on one’s social role ( fen) and that the role was attached to the title (ming). Since she was betrothed to her deceased fiancé, and hence she had acquired the title and assumed the role of fiancé, how could she not preserve chastity?76 Ye saw her action beyond the narrow light of fulfilling a personal obligation. Regarding herself as a Confucian woman who shouldered the responsibility of bringing morality to society, Ye was spiritually empowered when starving herself to death. The same strong moral devotion was expressed by Song Jingwei. Engaged to Cheng Shu at the age of twelve, she married into the Cheng family before Cheng’s burial at twenty.77 It happened that soon after Song’s spirit wedding, Chen Yuan, a faithful maiden from the same

148   Choices area, committed suicide to resist a second betrothal. Song wrote an exceptionally long poem in honor of Chen Yuan, praising her as a descendant of a famous Confucian scholar, who carried on her “family’s fame” ( jiasheng).78 The poem, which was heavily coded in Confucian language, is more than just a memorial piece for someone with whom Song had much in common; it is her own statement about the faithful maiden ideal that she embraced. It starts in this way: When the four ethical foundations—propriety, honor-bound duty, i­ntegrity, and a sense of shame—are established, Human bonds and moral principles stand forever. Do not disgrace yourself by your words; do not disgrace yourself with your body. More important, never disgrace yourself with your body. A remarried woman is known to have polluted her body, As to how to [judge] a faithful maiden, people are often confused. [But consider this]: How could one body hold two hearts? And who can say that a failing of the heart is not also a failing of the body? .  .  . [It must be noted that] her act follows the principle of yi, and it is not an indulgence of qing. Her body is pure, her heart is settled, and moral principles are upheld. Growing up, she obeyed her parents’ original instruction.79 Following their original instruction, she guarded against her own ­feelings. “Not violating [parents’ wishes]” means not breaching moral ­principles,80 The words of her betrothal came from her parents. Bringing no blemish to her body and no disgrace to her parents, The key to upholding her will is determination. She would die if her will was taken away; if it prevailed, she would live. Because her will could not be taken away, she took her life.81

Like Chen Yuan, Song was well-versed in Confucian classics and was a descendant of a loyal Confucian official: her great-great-grandfather had fought the Manchus and had sacrificed his life for the Ming dynasty. Understanding this background, we see more clearly why a young woman like Song Jingwei envisioned her choice in terms of a broad Confucian moral agenda. Jingwei took great pride in the moral tradition of her family, and like Chen Yuan in her interpretation, she, too, strove to carry on that family glory. A personal decision to be a virtuous maiden was in her view a way of fulfilling the grave moral mission of upholding Confucian principles.

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Both Ye’s and Song’s poems elucidate the power of Confucian values in molding young women’s mind-sets. However, it would be an oversimplification to characterize faithful maiden actions as universally driven by Confucian moral teaching. Although some, such as Song and Ye, asserted that their actions defended the integrity of Confucian morality, others, including some who were educated with similar sophistication, viewed their choices primarily as personal obligations. Xu Wenlin was engaged to the son of Xu Can (1628?– 81?), the acclaimed female poet, and Chen Zhilin (1605 – 66), a Ming collaborator and powerful official in the early Qing court. However, Chen’s political career ended with exile to Shenyang with his family, where Xu Wenlin’s fiancé consequently died. Xu Wenlin declined to be engaged again and said: “To promise to marry [a man] when [his family] is wealthy and powerful but to betray that promise when [his family] is in misfortune—I will not do this.”82 For Xu Wenlin, yi meant a lifelong, unconditioned commitment not affected by any change of circumstance. Breaking a pledge would, to Xu Wenlin, be an act of betrayal. Honoring a promise was not in this case conceived to be a gendered virtue. It was not an obligation set only for betrothed or married women but a fundamental moral trait defining respectability in social relationships for men and women. Some faithful maidens indeed expected their fiancés to be similarly committed to their engagement. When Chen Sanshu’s mother planned to marry her to a wealthy man, falsely telling her that her fiancé had already married another woman, Chen cut off her hair to show her resolve not to marry and became ill. As she was on her deathbed, her fiancé was called in to console her. The heartbroken woman asked: “How could you marry someone else after you had already made a promise?”83 Breaking a promise, even if the other party had already died, was seen as an act of betrayal. Adherence to yi, furthermore, meant for the bereaved fiancée not only maintaining her identity as her dead betrothed’s widow but also fulfilling the responsibilities attached to that role. Faithful maidens often rose to action with a sense of self-sacrifice and heroism, declaring that they wanted to live with their late fiancés’ families because they considered it their obligation to offer sacrifice to their fiancés or to support their fiancés’ impoverished households. To fulfill that obligation, they were willing to suffer hardship. Seventeen-year-old faithful maiden Tang refused to return home after her fiancé’s funeral: Weeping, she said: “The reason that I came to stay is that I can offer wheat-meal [maifan] to the dead.84 Otherwise, wouldn’t I be able to live in my mother’s home

150   Choices until I die?” Her parents-in-law still took pity on her because of her young age and asked her own parents to dissuade her. Angrily, she said to her parents: “You have engaged me to him. How can you betray him because he has died? How can you let him be a ghost with no heir? If you force me [to return home], I will kill myself!”85

In her heroic declaration, we can sense both her idealistic, naïve commitment and her spiritual satisfaction: all of a sudden, the young woman found that she had much to offer in her life. However, it must be noted that even though yi was a much-celebrated cultural value, the idea would not have appealed so powerfully to these young women if it had had little relevance to their emotional sensibilities. There were profound psychological conditions under which young women answered the call of yi. The key to locating the source of these conditions lies in various marriage practices, especially the custom of child betrothal that was common in late imperial times.

The Psychological Impact of Child Betrothal The classical marriage rituals involved a series of exchanges between two families. During the late imperial period, many parts of the ancient rituals were simplified or ignored. The most significant change, however, was not the reduction in the complexity of the marital rituals but the prolonged time required to complete them. As some Qing scholars pointed out, in ancient times, the interval between betrothal and wedding was short. The engagement took place when the man and woman came of age, and the wedding followed shortly afterward. By comparison, engagement during the Qing ordinarily occurred when the couple was very young, often in their infancy. Therefore, the wedding could be many years after the engagement.86 What difference did this make? In one respect, the prolonged marital rituals deepened a young girl’s consciousness of her identity as a member of her prospective husband’s family. From the first step of the engagement ritual, the young girl’s identity was redefined. In other words, the transition of her identity from a daughter to a wife and daughter-in-law started from the very moment of the engagement. Long before the wedding, a girl knew to which family she belonged and whom she would marry, even though the real meaning of marriage was likely to be beyond her comprehension. Consider this revealing episode told by the Ming writer Xia Liangsheng of his daughter. When she was three—she was already engaged—her prospective mother-in-law

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died. The little girl hid herself and cried. She sighed from time to time that Dian—her fiancé—“had no one to depend on.”87 At such a young age, she already sensed that that particular family was special to her. This sense of connection and belonging was the work of gradual shaping of a young girl’s very receptive mind, sometimes through teasing and joking about her engagement. In 1772, a nineteen-year-old woman committed suicide when her fiancé died from overwork in studying for the examinations. She had told her sister, who tried to dissuade her: “When I was five or six years old, our parents had me engaged to the Chen family. The Chens used to own a winery. Neighbors and relatives teased me and called me the ‘thin wine of the Chen’s.’ I have grown used to it since I was little. Chen is my family. How can I change the surname of Chen!”88 Over the years between the engagement and the wedding, a young girl might have met someone from her future parents-in-law’s family, and might have already heard a great deal about that household and her fiancé. The Ming writer Qian Fu (1461–1504) touched on this aspect of the marital process quite thoughtfully. In his view, what differentiated the engagement process of his time from that of the ancients was that, unlike in ancient times, engagement rituals were not hidden from the young woman and man involved: “In the man’s household, the fiancé joins in the feast entertaining the guest [from the woman’s family]; in the woman’s household, outside talk travels into [the inner quarters]. The nursemaid jokes with her, calling her ‘daughter-in-law of so-and-so’s family’ and ‘so-and-so’s wife.’ And it did not stop there. Her parents would tell her how her father-in-law, her mother-in-law, and her fiancé were.”89 Qian Fu’s view about the ancient practice—with the young couple cut off from engagement rituals—might be idealized, but his note reveals the lively interaction, ceremonial and otherwise, between the two families in his day. This was especially true in betrothals between relatives or friends. Faithful maiden Liu was engaged to her cousin (her father’s sister’s son) when she was a few years old. Because of this personal relationship, her prospective mother-in-law treated her with extra favor. “At seasonal holidays, she gave her clothing, jewelry, ornaments, kerchiefs, silk shoes—there was nothing that she did not give.” Liu would put on the gifts she just received and bow to her mother-in-law to say thanks.90 Of course, not every young woman enjoyed such a close relationship with her fiancé’s family. Still, connections between families with a betrothal relationship were regularly maintained for most families, and the girl’s family was promptly

152   Choices informed of her fiancé’s every achievement.91 Each visit between the two families would remind the young girl of her special status. Cases like this show that the abstract idea of yi carried concrete meaning for a betrothed girl. During the years after her engagement, a young girl never ceased her preparations for taking on the status of wife and daughter-in-law in her fiancé’s family, which she would finally assume through the wedding ceremony. It was not merely difficult for her to wipe out all of her memories, her imagination, and her psychological linkage with that family upon the sudden death of her fiancé; it was, in her view, against yi that she should disregard all these connections.

Qing: Love in Arranged Betrothal A young woman’s sense of yi, moreover, was intertwined with the tender feeling of qing (love or affection).92 The social interactions that fostered her sense of yi could at the same time subtly facilitate the growth of the feeling of qing.93 In the intellectual discourse on faithful maidens, qing and yi were often conceived of as discrete. As mentioned earlier, men like Zhou Hongqi saw the faithful maiden’s decision as an act of yi, not qing, citing that there was no intimate conjugal tie between her and her fiancé. But some scholars did sense a kind of emotional attachment between the two. For example, Qian Fu remarked that the joking and casual talk about her fiancé and his family was like opening up the mind of the innocent girl, awakening in her the feeling of qing.94 Xiong Baotai (1742 –?) stressed in his “Biography of Liu Xiaojie” that Liu had been engaged at the age of fourteen and had grown used to being called the daughter-in-law of the Liu family. “Her mind had already gone to the Lius, and once her mind was there, she did not change. This is the utmost expression of qing.”95 Zhu Yizun argues along the same line. [Although a man and a woman lived separately,] through the words of the matchmaker they become related, and under the instructions of their parents they are committed to their relationship. “Sending the bird” and “presenting the pure silk”96—is a process like connecting the energies of the mountains and the water. Their mutual feeling is already deep. Therefore, it is said that “a man and a woman are separate but their thoughts are connected.”97

Although cast in Confucian ritual terms, these viewpoints sensitively touch on an important aspect of the psychological development of a young girl resulting from the long and elaborate betrothal process. The rituals could play an important role in nurturing mutual feelings for both groom and bride. For a young girl, whose life revolved to a large

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degree around the assembly of a dowry in preparation for marriage— embroidering and making shoes, wedding dresses, and the like—the betrothal rituals, as well as the work itself, helped build an emotional attachment to her future husband. In the days and years that she embroidered butterflies, mandarin ducks, magpies—all in pairs—she must have pictured many times her future life with her fiancé. Only when we understand this psychological complexity can we appreciate more fully the details about the impact of the death of her fiancé on a young woman described in a biography. Faithful maiden Chen was engaged to the younger brother of a friend of the author, Wang Xiaocheng, a nineteenth-century scholar. It was said that since she had lost her mother at a young age, her grandmother loved her exceedingly. Her fiancé died when she was seventeen, and the grandmother told the family to keep it from her, while having her engaged to another man. Her family hoped to reveal the tragedy to her gradually, but the scheme was spoiled accidentally by the matchmaker. After the girl heard what had happened, “her eyes stared straight ahead, her body trembled, and she sat numb and could not stand up.” Her health deteriorated as she ate and slept less and less every day, which eventually led to her demise. Wang Xiaocheng remarked: “As the Book of Changes says, ‘A man and a woman are separate, but their thoughts are connected.’ This is the natural disposition of human beings. Although one is dead and the other is alive, in her heart she has long thought of him as the man she would marry.”98 A betrothed woman’s passion for her late fiancé was surely not the same as that of a widow for her late husband, but it could be no less intense. In her poem, Song Jingwei defended the faithful maiden act, stressing that physical intimacy was not the precondition that enabled a young woman to develop the kind of feeling necessary for her to pursue fidelity: “Why should affection have anything to do with sharing one bed?” What counted was “pure, mutual responsive feeling.”99 Given the popularity of cousin marriage, marriage between the children of other relatives or friends, little daughter-in-law marriage (in which a young girl was sent to live with her future husband’s family for a number of years before marriage), and other marital arrangements (marrying a daughter to one’s own student, for example), the modernist view that arranged marriage deprived the betrothed couple of any chance to meet each other until their wedding is a sheer overstatement. In all of these forms of marriage, a young woman could have seen her fiancé at family visits or other occasions, or they might even have

154   Choices grown up together.100 Mutual attraction grown out of actual interaction was entirely possible, despite rigid Confucian norms of gender separation. In 1792, the twenty-year-old Chen Da’e hanged herself in her bedroom only one day after her fiancé’s death. Her biography describes her engagement: The Tang family and the Chen family had had a close relationship for generations, and the Tang mother was a daughter of the Chens. When [Chen Da’e] was still a baby, the two mothers were good friends, so the Chen mother [Da’e’s mother] engaged her to the Tangs’ son. Holding the babies, they went to the ancestral hall to notify the ancestors. . . . The Tangs’ son came to visit often when he was young, and the two innocent children played together. Later they did not see each other. When it happened that the Tangs’ son was about to die of sickness, the Chen daughter [Chen Da’e] prayed to heaven morning and night. One day in his confusion, the Tangs’ son said: “The fourth younger sister [Da’e] has come,” and he was able to point out the ways she sat and acted. Everyone in the room was baffled.101

We might recall Wang Xiuwen’s story in Chapter 2, in which two young mothers on good terms engaged their children. Chen Da’e’s engagement, in other words, was nothing out of the ordinary. Playful and innocent childhood days could nurture the mutual feelings of the young engaged couple. We may envision what happened as her fiancé was dying in this case: the young man’s vision of her must have been on the lips of the relatives. For Chen Da’e, the eerie incident could only have toughened her determination to follow him in death. In fact, she had been preparing to commit suicide since her fiancé’s illness became aggravated. On the night of her death, she asked her little brother to tell their father the next morning that she was leaving to “sleep in Tang’s land.”102 In another case, the faithful maiden Zhu was engaged to Wang Qiao at age seven and went to live with the Wang family at thirteen as a “little daughter-in-law.” It was said that her parents-in-law loved her dearly. Wang Qiao was preparing for the civil service examinations in his study, and the young girl “followed her mother-in-law around and did not see his face. When she occasionally saw him, she would flush red and run to avoid him, causing her mother-in-law much laughter.”103 Wang Qiao died when Zhu was sixteen. She stopped taking food, and three days later she killed herself.104 Under these circumstances, we may surmise, yi and qing were inseparable in inspiring the two young women to follow their fiancés in death.105 Faithful maiden biographies seldom touch on the issue of attraction, but the stories themselves give clues for speculation. Some poems by

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young women were similarly subtly revealing, suggesting a kind of romantic admiration toward a fiancé of literary talent. For instance, gazing in tears at her late fiancé’s portrait, faithful maiden Xue wrote: “I did not get to witness your passion for poetry when you lived / Only after your death did I hear about your addiction to books.”106 It was unlikely that Xue knew little of her fiancé’s love for learning; the poem was rather to stress how much they could have shared intellectually. Other faithful maidens recalled in their poems in a sentimental voice their “bygone dreams” (jiumeng), with profound sadness for a flourishing life that they had imagined but that had vanished forever with the deaths of their fiancés.107 The larger context of this particular sentiment was what Dorothy Ko has identified as the rise of the idea of companionate marriage in the late Ming, in which a couple’s intellectual compatibility, measured to a large extent by literary talents and learning, stood as a cornerstone for an ideal conjugal relationship.108 Revisiting other biographies in this light, we can argue that even among girls brought up by strict Confucian teaching, the sentiments of qing could have crept into their sensitive minds. At the age of seven, Zhou Hui was already studying Instructions for Women (Nüxun). She was engaged by her father to his favorite student. The engagement was full of promise, only to end with the sudden death of her fiancé. “Following the ritual she did not go to mourn him, but sobbed in deep grief and would neither eat nor drink. Yingwen [her father] was very worried, and he gathered relatives to reason with her. Yet she would not change her mind. Twelve days later she hanged herself in the family hall.”109 This incident took place in the sixteenth century during the Ming, when going to mourn a fiancé was not as standardized a practice as it became in the Qing, and Zhou Hui was more restrained in expressing her emotion than many other faithful maidens. A Confucian education no doubt would have had an impact on how she reacted to the tragedy, but given the very auspicious nature of their engagement, the devastation to her feelings must have been tremendous, and it would be too simplistic to see her suicide as merely an act of moral obligation. Indeed, even Song Jingwei, who set her heart firmly on Confucian moral principles, might have been vulnerable to emotional attachment to her fiancé, to whom she was engaged at the age of ten. He was her paternal cousin (the son of her father’s sister) and became a government student (zhusheng) at the age of thirteen. The two families, moreover, had been next-door neighbors.110 Both were highly intelligent and pursued a classical education. These conditions could have allowed feelings of attraction to sprout. In biographies and other writings, the frequent mention of a spiritual

156   Choices encounter with their fiancés also betrays some sort of emotional connection. For example, in a dream the thirteen-year-old Ye Zhaoxian saw her fiancé enter her room in a white robe on a white horse, and the two held hands. Only a few days later, the tragic news of his death arrived.111 In the summer of 1793, right before her fiancé accidentally drowned, faithful maiden Tang dreamed of him talking to her and looking sad.112 Faithful maiden Cao, whose parents concealed the news of her fiancé’s death, met his spirit in her family courtyard.113 On the night of her fiancé’s death, faithful maiden Huang felt as if someone were peeking through her bed curtain and heard a sigh.114 Faithful maiden Shi had never met her fiancé, whose right leg was crippled; she discovered his impairment in a dream.115 In still another case, when Hong Rujing was starving herself to death, a bird called on the roof at midnight. She said: “It must be the spirit of my fiancé inviting me to go.” She wrote a poem about this before she drew her last breath.116 These dreams and illusions lend insight into the psychological state of these young women, and they resonate well with Zhu Yizun’s viewpoint that, although the young couple lived separately, their minds were already connected.

Belief in the Afterlife This type of anecdotal account hints at still another element in a faithful maiden’s mental world: belief in the existence of another world and an afterlife. Death, after all, did not seem to be a cause for fear, if a young woman (faithful maiden or chaste widow) clung to the thought that her spirit would live on and that in the afterworld she and her betrothed could unite. This faith in the afterlife was, as discussed earlier, suggested in the ways in which faithful maidens deliberately dressed in bridal garments or wore betrothal jewels for their suicides. But there is more explicit evidence. Hours before faithful maiden Xie hanged herself in her bedroom, she expressed her worry to her little sister that, since she had not seen her fiancé, their spirits might not recognize each other even if they met face-to-face.117 When Chen Qiongshi performed the rites for her benxun suicide, she did not shed tears or seem to be sorrowful. She explained: “I will be in the other world in a moment, and I am afraid I would not be able to meet him if I spoil my appearance.” Lin Xiuzhu paced the front and back yards of her fiancé’s house with his younger sister moments before she hanged herself, also in bengxun fashion, saying that she wanted to be sure to recognize the roads so that after death it would be easier for her to “come and go.”118 In her suicide

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poem, the chaste widow Zeng Rulan asked people not to view her suicide as an act of martyrdom or heroism (lie). “I am just returning to my home,” she wrote. “Under the pine trees and cypress groves in the West Hill, I will be wandering with my husband.”119 Spirits and myths occupied an important place in people’s imagination and vision of the unknown world; stories about them appeared regularly in public discourse on faithful women. Inexplicable and amazing phenomena were often associated with a bereaved girl’s death. For example, faithful maiden Chen hanged herself under a trellis in a vegetable garden in a thunderstorm, but her corpse did not get wet.120 Faithful maiden Huang hanged herself during a hot summer, but even a day later she looked alive, and fragrance permeated the room where her corpse lay.121 When Jia hanged herself, she looked as though she were still alive. No spittle was seen dripping from her mouth, and no bruises were left on her neck from the hanging. She appeared in her parents’ dream requesting to be buried with her late fiancé, and the following day, a noise came from her coffin, ceasing only after her parents promised her spirit that they would fulfill her wish.122 In still another case, a faithful maiden who had just killed herself was seen walking with her late fiancé, side by side.123 Elite and commoners alike repeated these stories with amazement and awe, interpreting them as heaven’s response to extraordinary deeds. Confucian scholars normally disparaged ideas or acts they considered superstitious, but they were convinced that these extraordinary phenomena manifested heaven’s will. “The spirit of a virtuous and ­heroic woman lasts long and will not disappear,” they acknowledged.124 Forces in that unknown world would enable faithful maidens to unite with their fiancés or even to ascend into heaven. Qian Yiji mentioned a suicide note written by a young girl from Kunming, Yunnan. The note was originally in the possession of Qian’s nephew, the magistrate of the county where the girl lived, and it came to Qian’s attention when his nephew died before he could fulfill his plan to write a biography for the girl. It was written on a piece of silk in the girl’s own blood and contained ninety-four characters. Because the girl had only a primary education and wrote in her local dialect, Qian could decode just its general meaning. The note opens with the request that it be presented to the emperor. It then talks about the ideas of loyalty, filiality, chastity, and heroic death; calls for the deities to protect her fiancé’s family; and expresses her wish to establish an heir for her fiancé. The note ends with the announcement that she will be “ascending to heaven” (shengtian) on the ninth day of the second month, presumably the date she committed suicide.125

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Acquiring the “Beautiful Idea” Some late imperial scholars noted that the faithful maiden phenomenon had a great deal to do with the age of these women. Most of them were in their teens, and, the scholars argued, they did not yet have much experience of life. Li Shenchuan, for example, wrote that because of their innocence, “when they come across the beautiful idea [of being a faithful maiden], how could they not want to be one!”126 They made up their minds quickly without full comprehension of the consequences. This action, after all, “is taken by young girls out of momentary passion.”127 Wang Xiaocheng remarked that the girls made the decision in a rush following the popular practice of the day. They followed “their young pure hearts” and did not “think about it carefully.”128 These observations emphasize the naïve impulses of young girls, giving little recognition to the fact that their choices were fundamentally informed by the social, economic, and cultural institutions of their times. These remarks, however, do raise a crucial historical question: how did the young women acquire the “beautiful idea” of faithful maidenhood? In other words, how was the idea of faithful maidenhood transmitted to women and impressed on their receptive hearts? A range of historical forces could have molded the impressionable minds of the young women. For example, a cultural fascination with moral heroism; the lixue teaching stressing moral cultivation, the government and literati efforts glorifying female chastity— displayed publicly in the shrines, arches, tombs, and tablets honoring chaste women—all constructed an ideological, physical, and symbolic environment that could powerfully influence young girls’ ways of perceiving the world and gender roles. We must consider other circumstances in which the faithful maiden ideal was popularized as well. If it is true that the family was a main source through which young girls in a premodern society absorbed social values and behavior norms, it was especially so in late imperial China, for its gender system discriminated strictly against women engaging in activities outside the home. In elite families, this gender norm was upheld rigidly, thus allowing the family to exercise even more influence on young girls’ mental development. Family moral heritage, as seen in Song Jingwei’s case, had a very important role to play in shaping young girls’ worldviews and moral values. Faithful maidens took great pride in upholding the family tradition. To give another example: faithful maiden Yan, a seventieth-generation descendant of Ziyou, the famous disciple of Confucius, proudly called herself an “offspring of the Master of Ritual” (that is, Ziyou).129 Some of

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the faithful maidens could have been directly inspired by recent events of martyrdom in their families. For example, faithful maiden Song (the daughter of Song Shiying) hailed from a family known as “chaste and filial.” In 1645, when the Manchus marched toward her hometown, her grandmother led her two sons, a daughter, and a daughter-in-law (Song’s mother) to jump into a well, which claimed the lives of herself and one of her sons.130 For faithful maiden Wu Manyu, the story of her aunt, Wu Shuji, described at the beginning of this book, must have been a familiar one. Wu Shuji killed herself the night before her fiancé’s burial.131 Literary education constituted a key venue through which girls were exposed to the gendered value of chastity and the faithful maiden ideal. During the late imperial period, the continuous expansion of commercial printing improved public access to books, which in turn facilitated the spread of literacy among the populace; this particularly nourished the growth of female readers and writers.132 Didactic texts for female education were published in increasing numbers and were supplemented with visually appealing illustrations.133 Biographical entries of faithful maidens bespeak the same trend of broadening readership among young women. Authors of these biographies frequently describe faithful maidens having studied Confucian classics or didactic texts, including Classic of Filial Piety (Xiaojing), Rules of the Inner Quarters (Neize), Biographies of Exemplary Women (Lienü zhuan), Classic of Filial Piety for Women (Nü xiaojing), Instructions for Women (Nüjie), and Maxims for Women (Nüzhen), among other works. The influence of the Biographies of Exemplary Women was a repeated note in biographies. Li Lingshou (1833 –90) recalled that when he and his brothers were attending school, “a book merchant brought us a copy of the illustrated Biographies of Exemplary Women, and we took it to show our sister. She liked it, so we bought it. At leisure she would talk about ancient history with us. When we came to stories of loyalty, filial piety, fidelity, and righteousness, her facial expressions changed.”134 The seeds of admiration for these ancient heroines would eventually come to fruition when this young woman chose to become a faithful maiden. Ancient heroines were said to have touched other young girls. Faithful maiden Chen, it is said, told her parents, pointing at the stories of the ancient virtuous women, that she wanted to be like them.135 It is noteworthy that Chen was from a commoner background. In the suicide poem written by another faithful maiden, Shen, we read: When young I leafed through chapters on martyred women, But I do not dare compare my conviction with theirs. “To follow one to the end” is the principle that I know; I will trace my husband to the Nine Springs.136

160   Choices Stories of faithful maidens putting their didactic knowledge into practice were quickly seized on by men like Lan Dingyuan to point out the importance of education for women. Commenting on faithful maiden Lin, Lan stressed that, although her disposition was by nature good, the Nüjie also had a great influence on her. “Common people often say that ‘when educating a daughter, do not teach her to read.’ How absurd!”137 On a different note, Yuan Mei lamented that education contributed to his sister Yuan Ji’s tragedy, because she might not have valued fidelity so highly had she not been educated in the Confucian classics.138 Children from families who had access to at least some rudimentary education could be exposed to the moral or cultural ideas of yi, loyalty, fidelity, and purity from an early age. In the large body of elementary texts (mengxue), young boys and girls learned adages and stories with strong moral connotations. For example, in a widely read elementary textbook, The Thousand Character Classic (Qian zi wen), we see lines such as “Girls should admire the pure and chaste.”139 Another popular text exhorts, “A woman should not mourn two husbands,” and a virtuous girl “would not marry two husbands. Once she is married, she should not change for her whole life.”140 These ideas were often conveyed through historical tales or literary images.141 It is important to keep in mind that young women’s learning was not limited to a sort of rudimentary didactic education. Girls of scholarly family backgrounds studied a great variety of subjects, extending from history and literature to philosophy and religion. Broader learning allowed them to nurture intellectual interests beyond the Confucian curriculum, and many women in the Ming-Qing era were indeed poets, writers, or even scholars in their own right. During the late Ming, when the cult of qing consumed literary circles of both men and women, reading fiction or dramas that celebrated emotion and romantic love shaped young women’s ideas of love in a powerful way.142 In the Qing, what constituted appropriate subjects for women’s learning was debated, and some male scholars claimed that poetry was incompatible with women’s moral education.143 Poetry expressed human emotions, and indeed the “unrestrained” feelings or desires that female poets released in their works were seen as profoundly threatening to the Confucian family and social order.144 But faithful maiden poets demonstrated that poetry posed no obstacle to their Confucian moral growth: the two complemented each other, molding young women’s characters and thoughts to be at once morally orthodox and emotionally appropriate. Faithful

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maidens channeled their poetic sensitivity properly along the lines of the Confucian moral system, configuring jie (wifely fidelity), qing, and yi together in their perception of the meaning of life. Many recent studies debunk the conventional view of women as a cloistered segment of society, showing that gender relations in late imperial China were highly variable.145 Women’s culture flourished, in particular in Jiangnan, the cultural center of the realm.146 Women’s networks facilitated the transmission of the faithful maiden ideal at various junctures. In the circles of arts and writing, faithful maidens found emotional support through friends’ visits and the exchange of poems and paintings.147 Widows saw faithful maidens’ admirable yet difficult lives mirroring their own emotional trauma and conviction.148 Unlike men, the women did not appear to have been writing in response to solicitation. They were bound to one another by mutual understanding and similar life experience, which often gave their poems a unique sheen of closeness and ease lacking in men’s writings. The closely connected networks of group support among faithful maidens themselves are vividly illustrated by cases such as that of Song Jingwei. We have already learned that soon after Jingwei’s spirit marriage, Chen Yuan, from the same area, committed suicide. Song wrote a long poem dedicated to her. While Song was advocating for their shared cause, she herself was becoming a much-admired moral icon for other faithful maidens. Jiang Gui, for example, sent a special gift to Jingwei—a painting titled Cypress Boat with a poem on it. Both were done by Jiang herself. According to Wanyan Yun Zhu, who was also a painter, Jiang Gui’s refined painting was patterned after the Yuan style and was much sought after at the time.149 Jiang Gui made the unique gift to show her “appreciation of Jingwei’s resolve.”150 At home, under Jingwei’s influence, a young woman from a very different class joined Jingwei’s pursuit of faithful maidenhood. Weixi was Jingwei’s maid. After the death of her fiancé, Weixi decided to follow her mistress’s example and live a life of celibacy; she stayed with ­Jingwei her whole life. Another of Jingwei’s maids, Chen Shou, who lost her husband in her early twenties, also lived with Jingwei and never remarried.151 Song Jingwei, the learned Confucian woman, stood for her time as the moral backbone of the women’s fidelity cult. Such influence did not always go in one direction from mistresses to maids. When the fifteen-year-old He wanted to marry her deceased fiancé, her parents did not agree. At one point, her home was crowded with neighbors, relatives, and people from the lineage, who all voiced

162   Choices their opinions “in vulgar language” trying to dissuade her. An, He’s seventeen-year-old maid, rose to tell her mistress: “If Wugu [a faithful maiden in the area] can do it, who cannot? I am willing to be your company if you go. It is not worth listening to all these arguments.” The crowd all became “solemn” and “could not say a word.” Thus the case was settled, and the two young girls moved in with He’s parentsin-law.152 We might well suspect that, judging by this episode, An had a great deal of behind-the-scenes influence on her mistress. Later on, when He’s request for adoption was rejected by her fiancé’s lineage, the two girls hanged themselves side by side. The night they committed suicide, they took baths, changed their clothing, and marked every item to be given away. An was honored by the court as a “righteous maid” (yibi).153 This case is illustrative in two more respects. By Qing times, the faithful maiden practice had become commonplace, and examples could stimulate other local women to follow in their footsteps. In the early Jiaqing reign (1796 –1820), when the story of Yang Ying’s suicide “was spreading throughout the neighborhood and among the relatives,” Xu Ergu lost her fiancé. She wept, stopped taking food, and wanted to be a faithful maiden as well. Her family watched her closely, for fear that she would “follow [Yang Ying’s] example [that is, kill herself],” and they finally gave their permission for her to be a faithful maiden.154 The maid An’s important role in the He case, moreover, reminds us again of how much social values such as yi and jie had permeated the mindset of women of all classes. Girls of lower social standing often quoted common sayings such as “One horse cannot bear two saddles, and one woman cannot have two husbands” and “A woman should not drink tea from two families”155 to justify their decisions. By the Ming and Qing, the abstract ideas of yi and jie had found vivid expression in many common sayings, implanting social values in a subtle way into the minds of girls who had little access to a classical education. The growth of popular entertainment, especially theater, in the late imperial period constituted another vehicle through which the faithful maiden ideal spread. This was a time when various local dramas and storytelling flourished. In market towns and cities, in the homes of the rich and in the drying yards by villages, at seasonal holidays and religious festivals, performances of various sorts satisfied the general public’s appetite for entertainment. Plots featured in dramas and storytelling were widely diversified, to the point that they often disturbed local officials with their unorthodox content. But those about zhong

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(loyalty), xiao (filial piety), jie (fidelity), yi, and qing, which were always popular, effectively spread these core social values and cultural ideas among the general population. In areas with strong mercantile presence, such as Huizhou, performance of ritual operas featuring chaste women conveyed the gendered value of chastity to the local residents.156 Of the most popular dramas, one featured a faithful maiden, Qin Xuemei.157 The earliest version of the drama is Story of Shang Lu Earning Triple First Place [in the Examinations] (Shang Lu sanyuan ji), written during the Chenghua reign (1465 – 87).158 The story tells of a rich and cultured merchant by the name of Shang Lin, who was engaged to Qin Xuemei. When he accidentally saw Xuemei, he was stunned by her beauty and consequently died of lovesickness. After his death, his concubine (who, in some later versions of local operas, had been sent to serve him by Xuemei), gave birth to a son, Shang Lu. Xuemei then bade farewell to her parents and moved to live with the Shang family to preserve fidelity and to raise the child as her own. Under Xuemei’s strict education, Shang Lu grew to be a brilliant young man. He passed all three levels of civil service examinations with the highest rank, and Xuemei was honored by the court with a Five-Phoenix Arch (wu feng paifang). The main character, Shang Lu, was a historical figure who distinguished himself in Ming history with the attainment of “triple first place” in the civil examinations and a successful political career as a well-respected grand secretary at the imperial court.159 The rest of the story from which the play was drawn had little to do with Shang Lu but concerned his colleague, Zhang Lun, the courageous official who was raised by a faithful maiden mother (see Chapter 1).160 It is unclear how this drama of mixed origins came into being and why the playwright substituted Shang Lu for Zhang Lun. A possible explanation is that Shang Lu, the only man in the entire Ming to win the “triple first place” in the civil examinations, would give the drama a more melodramatic flavor. At any rate, from the sixteenth to the early twentieth centuries, the touching story of faithful maiden Qin Xuemei was adopted into many local theaters under various names. Areas that have existing scripts of the play include Anhui, Guangxi, Henan, Shaanxi, Shandong, and Hebei.161 Plot details changed from one local play to another, but some scenes were highly popular across regions, especially “Offering Sacrifice at the Grave” (Shangfen), “Consoling [with her Parents-in-Law upon her Fiancé’s] Death” (Diaoxiao), and “Instructing the Son” (Jiao zi), all focusing on the moments that dramatically displayed Xuemei’s

164   Choices qing and yi toward her late fiancé. Two other familiar scenes that took place before her fiancé’s death were “Looking at Paintings” (Guan hua) and “Looking at Writings” (Guan wen); their popularity reflects another facet of the audience’s taste. Xuemei took advantage of her fiancé’s absence and went to his study to inspect his writing (or to look at the paintings, as depicted in “Guan hua”). She was very disappointed when she saw his earlier poorly written essays but was overjoyed upon seeing the improvement he had made. As she recited her favorite lines excitedly, he returned home and wanted to make love to her. She rejected him and ran home.162 Xuemei, as she is portrayed, is learned, chaste, and also sexually attractive. During the Qing, in the Qianlong reign, another case inspired a number of plays. The story is sketched in a court jingbiao document: Cheng Yunyuan, a government student from Shanyang county, Huai’an prefecture, Jiangsu, was engaged at the age of two to the daughter of Liu Dengyong from Pinggu, Zhili. Afterward, Cheng Yunyuan returned South, and Dengyong died. Dengyong’s family had sojourned in Tianjin, and his daughter lost all her relatives and had no one to depend on. More than fifty years passed, and Cheng and Liu’s daughter had no communication, but both adhered to their earlier contract and vowed not to change their minds. Later on, Cheng Yunyuan found a teaching job on a ship that transported grain. With the ship he traveled northward and arrived in Tianjin. He heard from the local people that a faithful maiden, Liu, was living a cloistered life in a Buddhist convent. After a careful investigation, he realized that she was his fiancée. The magistrate of the county summoned Liu to his court, and after much persuasion, Liu [agreed to marry Cheng and] was instructed by the magistrate to perform the wedding ceremony immediately at court. The couple then returned to Huai’an with the ship (see Figure 5.2).163

The story appears in a variety of other contemporary records with outlandish details.164 For example, it is said that when Liu endured hardship to honor her betrothal agreement, “famous families” in the area that admired her name and wanted to betroth their sons to her numbered up to several dozen, and ordinary families came to propose marriage one after another.165 After they returned to Cheng Yunyuan’s home in Huai’an, Liu gave birth successively to two sons (or three sons in another account), although she was in her sixties and had already passed her reproductive years.166 This story celebrates yi in a dramatic and joyful fashion. A story of fidelity in Qing times was usually about hardship and a suffering woman. Here both the woman and the man lived up to their honorbound duty, and the otherwise tragic story unexpectedly turns into a

figure 5.2  A local government petition to Emperor Qianlong requesting jingbiao awards for Cheng Yunyuan and faithful maiden Liu with Qianlong’s instruction that the Board of Ritual discuss the case. s o u r c e : Beijing, The First Historical Archive.

166   Choices happy one. In fact, the case held fascination for others besides the common people. In 1777, right after the reunion of the couple, Emperor Qianlong commanded that they be awarded silver to build an arch and be given an honorary tablet with this inscription: “Household of the Faithful and Dutiful” (Zhen yi zhi men).167 “Because of this,” it is reported, “to the south and north of the rivers of Jiang [Yangzi] and Huai, literati competed to compose poems, songs, and essays to describe their exceptional virtue. Peasants and merchants, women and children, and travelers by boat all know the story of the man of yi, Cheng, and the faithful maiden Liu.”168 Poems and plays followed in the aftermath of the event.169 Wu Hengxuan, who resided in Huai’an when the story unfolded, wrote the drama Story of the Dutiful and Faithful (Yi zhen ji) in 1778, one year after the joyful reunion. Following Wu’s work, two other plays were performed in the theater: Li Tiangen’s Wedding Flowers and Wedding Candles for a White-Haired Couple (Baitou huazhu) and Xu E’s White-Haired Newlyweds (Baitou xin).170 The plays have different story lines but converged on one critical point: a potential tragedy was blessed with a fantastic ending. A virtuous deed was rewarded with great joy. In the end, however, the story was not about reward but about the marvelous virtue of yi, which took two common people a lifetime to fulfill.

chapter

A Young Life, a Long Journey

6

Living as a Faithful Maiden

The two daughters of the Xia family were from Shouzhou [in Anhui]. The elder sister was engaged to Fang Zisheng, and the younger sister to Liu Xuan. Both of their fiancés died before they were married. The younger sister invited the elder sister to commit suicide with her. The elder sister said: “Our parents are old. Let me do what is easier, and you do what is difficult.” She hanged herself. Following her sister’s instruction, the younger sister took care of their parents and preserved chastity for over sixty years.1

this brie f and dramatized account from the Qianlong edition of the Imperially Endorsed Gazetteer of the Unified Grand Qing (Qinding da Qing yitong zhi) evokes the legendary heroes from the “Orphan of the Zhao,” a classical story celebrating loyalty and heroic sacrifice.2 In alluding to the ancient heroes, it enshrines both young women in the historical altar of the ancient empire. The provocative ingredient in the story is its paradoxical view about taking one’s own life, ordinarily considered the more difficult proposition. Hence, by presenting death as an easier task, the story glorifies the act of the elder sister for her fidelity while underscoring the immense challenge the younger sister overcame in fulfilling her obligations. The life journey of a faithful maiden who lived on, although conditioned by socioeconomic and other variables of her natal and marital families, was primarily defined by her unconventional status. The moral authority conferred upon her translated to varying degrees of influence, protection, or even power normally beyond the reach of a

168   Choices young woman, but the very status that brought her honor was also a source of vulnerability, creating a unique set of economic, social, and emotional problems. Whether eulogized or pitied, a faithful maiden was perceived as a tragic heroine who sacrificed her youth and happiness for a noble ideal. Fulfilling their family and social obligations, natal families and educated elite provided the faithful maidens involved in disputes or combating hardships much-needed support. In the end, faithful maiden stories are remarkable tales of struggle, determination, self-control, and endurance. Their unique experience put young women’s willpower on spectacular display. Faithful maidens were highly conscious of their special status. Perhaps as a strategy to shield themselves from suspicious gazes, they adhered to a shared code of behavior, observing both gender norms common to their time and an unusually ritualistic way of life distinctively theirs. With tremendous fortitude, they fulfilled a promise made in their youth and remained true to their word all their lives.

The Wedding Marriage was a major rite of passage, and the wedding was a moment of “great happiness.” In the spirit wedding of the faithful maiden, however, that jubilant tone was replaced by sorrow that climaxed with the weeping bride’s kowtowing to her dead fiancé’s coffin or portrait. It was a moment charged with intense emotion. Brides were said to have fainted, and ailing family members to have died during the ceremony. For instance, in the winter of 1635, the bereaved fiancée of Ye Shicheng, brother of the gifted female poet Ye Xiaoluan (1616 – 32), married into the Ye family. Ye Shicheng was his grandmother’s most adored grandson, and at the wedding, the old lady holding the bride’s hands wept in such grief that she fainted and died as soon as she was carried back to her bedroom.3 As with an ordinary wedding, the spirit wedding transformed the young woman into a daughter-in-law. But there were major differences. If a regular wedding gave her natal and marital families an opportunity to display their wealth and status, a spirit wedding conferred moral capital on which both families could cash in. Still, the centerpiece of the shining stage — albeit with a mournful tone —was the bride, whose virtue was publicized through the fanfare of the wedding. It was at once a private and public event, attracting not only neighbors but also people of influence from afar, especially if the fami-

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lies enjoyed high social rank, as illustrated in a 1715 case in Dezhou, Shandong. Faithful maiden Li was a daughter of Li Tao, vice secretary of the Board of Justice, and her late fiancé came from the prestigious Kong family of Qufu, descendants of Confucius. On the day she left for her wedding, “the officials and local gentry, riding in their curtained carriages, filled the alleys; the common people of the city clung to one another’s clothing, helping the aged along or leading the young by the hand, cramming the streets. Sighing and with tears, they saw off the faithful maiden at the city gate.” When she reached the outskirts of Qufu, she received a similar ovation.4 The description was no doubt embellished, but it nevertheless conveys quite vividly the exceedingly flamboyant nature of the wedding, a reflection of the influence of both families. But even a wedding taking place between ordinary families could still produce a local show.5 The marital ritual held a preeminent place in Confucian ritual, and the classics known as the Book of Rites (Liji) and the Book of Etiquette and Decorum (Yili) defined principles and procedures for a proper wedding. However, ritual texts prescribed no regulations for the spirit wedding of a faithful maiden. This lack proves to have given educated maidens some control over their wedding rites. For example, after Zhu Shi reluctantly consented to his daughter’s appeal to marry into the Li household, she asked Zhu, whose expertise included classical rituals, for advice on what to wear. Upset with her decision, Zhu told her to figure it out herself, because “Confucian ritual texts had nothing to say about it.”6 She left for the Li family wearing normal clothing and changed into white mourning garments after boarding a boat, presumably when near her destination. The Lis also dressed in white and wailed upon receiving her.7 For a learned woman, the spirit wedding could be an opportunity to display her mastery of the ancient rituals, and how she did so attracted scholars’ curious eyes. The wedding of Song Jingwei was detailed in her biography by Peng Shaosheng. Mao Qiling describes a wedding that took place in 1677. Faithful maiden Wang Ziyao was from Wujiang, southern Jiangsu, and had been engaged to the son of the Su family: The Su family came to receive the bride in accordance with the regular marriage ritual. Ziyao thereupon arranged her hair and bade farewell to her parents. The Sus had already sent their daughter [in the place of the dead groom] to receive her. [When she arrived at her fiancé’s home,] Ziyao requested that the colorful decorations be removed and the music stopped. Only then did she enter the house. It was snowing that day, and all the spectators were moved to tears. After

170   Choices ascending to the main hall, sobbing, Ziyao knelt down in front of her fiancé’s portrait and kowtowed.8

Despite the lack of established rules, over the course of the Qing the spirit weddings of faithful maidens became more or less standardized, with local variations. Alterations were made to the normal wedding ceremonies, and the celebratory elements were removed, though not all the rites of a traditional wedding were discarded. In some cases, a faithful maiden bride wore traditional bridal headgear and gown and rode in a bridal sedan chair.9 But innovations were necessary to mark the absence of a living groom. Elements of mourning rituals were appropriated for the spirit wedding. In some areas in southern Jiangsu, for instance, an effigy (hunbo; literally, “spirit silk”) was set up at the wedding. Normally displayed only during a funeral ritual, a hunbo was made by tying a bolt of white silk into a human-shaped statue with a head, ears, and legs. On its legs were written the deceased’s birth and death dates.10 With this eerie-looking effigy the bride performed the wedding rites.11 The most widely adopted representation of the deceased groom was the spirit tablet, which gave rise to the common name for the spirit wedding of a faithful maiden, “holding the tablet to marry” (feng muzhu chenghun or bao zhu chenghun) (see Figure 6.1).12 As the phrase indicates, the bride carried the tablet of her dead fiancé while performing the wedding rites that in a normal situation would be performed with the bride and groom side by side. The rite appears to have originated in the mid-Ming, and to have gained increased acceptance over time.13 One such scene from the 1880s was captured by the artist Wu Youru. Some grooms’ families also altered traditional rites to show their appreciation of faithful maiden brides, for example, as Wang Ziyao’s father-in-law did after she kowtowed to her fiancé’s portrait: “Her father-in-law, who appreciated Ziyao’s virtuous deeds, instructed her not to present herself as a bride immediately. With tears streaming, he kowtowed four times toward the west. In reply, Ziyao kowtowed four times toward the north. She then performed the ceremony of chengfu.”14 This report resembles an 1806 case, in which the bride was asked to sit facing south—the most honorable and authoritative position—to receive kowtows from her parents-in-law.15 The gesture of paying respect to the bride by her parents-in-law marked an elevated position for the bride, in sharp contrast with the more humble position a bride occupied in a normal wedding. Not every faithful maiden had a spirit wedding. Economic and other

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circumstances conditioned the ways through which the faithful maiden made the symbolic transition to a wife and daughter-in-law. Seeing no hope of getting their parents to agree, some took the issue into their own hands. Xiaojie was a peasant daughter from Henan. Her fiancé wandered away from home in 1786, a year of severe famine. Six years later, when Xiaojie was twenty-four, her parents wanted to marry her to someone else. She “seized a fleeting chance” and went to her fiancé’s village to look for his mother, whom she had never met. Xiaojie showed her the betrothal gift that she had received years ago and persuaded her mother-in-law to let her stay. Realizing “the sincerity of her conviction,” her own parents acquiesced, too.16 In some cases in which the faithful maiden rushed to her fiancé’s home and vowed not to return, the spirit wedding was reduced to the single rite of chengfu promptly arranged by her fiancé’s family.17 Village girls, as these cases show, took their fates into their own hands and did not let convention interfere with the pursuit of their goals.

figure 6.1  Holding the tablet to marry (drawn by Wu Youru). s o u r c e : Sun 1996.

172   Choices Whether or not an elaborate spirit wedding took place, the life transition was dramatic. In a single day, the young girl went from bride to widow. Her status as a bride was gained and lost in a flash as she symbolically took off her wedding clothing and put on plain mourning garments. Lying ahead was an unusual life journey.

A Special Daughter-in-Law This quote from an elegiac essay by Wei Chengchu ( juren, 1837) summarizes the roles and contributions of a faithful maiden living in her marital home: “[She] was not yet a wife, but she disfigured herself to preserve fidelity. She served her parents-in-law, reared an adopted heir, and fulfilled the duties that the deceased could not complete.”18 In moral discourse, the faithful maiden continued to shine brightly as a pivotal moral icon. Faithful maiden biographies concentrated on the exemplary performance of her virtue, in particular, her role as daughter-in-law. The repertoire of virtuous acts performed by faithful maiden daughters-inlaw included performing manual labor to support the family, taking over cooking duties from her mother-in-law, preparing medicine for a sick in-law, cutting a piece of her own flesh to make medicinal soup for her or him, washing her mother-in-law’s underwear, putting up with an in-law’s (mostly the mother-in-law’s) abuse, and arranging proper burials for deceased family members. Managerial skills and thoughtful planning that led to prosperity of the family were also greatly appreciated, including working to accumulate wealth or using one’s dowry and jingbiao award money for the needs of the family; or, if a family did not have a surviving son, convincing her mother-in-law to find a concubine for her father-in-law in the hopes of getting an heir for the family. Although formulated principally to extol the moral character of the maiden, biographical narratives often include illuminating details that show how morality intersected with the family hierarchy and affected the young women’s experience in the family. How a bride was positioned in her marital home was a function not only of social structure and norms but also a host of variables, including the social and economic standings of the bride’s natal family. Faithful maiden stories suggest further that moral reputation could be a tremendously important source of social capital for a faithful maiden bride to have at her disposal, and that some young women used it well. As we sense from the spirit wedding of Wang Ziyao, her status as a faithful maiden granted her a special place unlike that of an ordinary

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bride. A faithful maiden could even inspire feelings of awe among her fiancé’s relatives. More than occasionally, biographers used the term jingdan (respect and fear) to describe the feelings of her fiancé’s relatives for her.19 Even in her own home, a faithful maiden could be seen as a person to be reckoned with. Faithful maiden Qi’s grandmother was said to have had a lover living with the family, who was “cunning and atrocious.” But when he heard of Qi’s coming, he became nervous and wanted to leave. In the biographer’s opinion, this showed the moral power of the faithful maiden.20 Education doubtlessly lent faithful maidens additional authority. Some of the learned faithful maidens became teachers of the “inner chamber” for their female kin, taking it as their responsibility to instill proper values in the young women of their families. For example, faithful maiden Wang set up an “inner school” to teach the daughters of her marital relatives. “With incense burning and tables cleaned,” young girls sat with her, holding the Confucian classics. She was compared with Madam Xuanwen, a female scholar of the third century, by the local literati.21 Song Jingwei, concerned about the “decline of women’s teaching,” composed a long poem (128 lines) to illustrate the fundamental principles of self-cultivation and human relations embodied in the texts of ancient sages. All the young women in her family were taught to chant it.22 When Wanyan Yun Zhu came across the poem in 1831, she remarked that it was “the most magnificent poem that I have ever read” and decided to conclude her anthology, Guochao guixiu zhengshiji, with it along with another poem by Jingwei (see Figure 6.2).23 But not all educated faithful maidens took such grave duties upon themselves. Reading in her segregated room, a practical means of passing lonely days, could enhance a faithful maiden’s moral reputation as well.24 Many continued their intellectual hobby of writing poems. Even though some Qing scholars deemed such an activity inappropriate for women, the public appreciation of poems written by faithful maidens was evident. Their poems, collected and published in contemporary anthologies compiled by men and women alike, were chosen for their artistic excellence as well as their moral content. The acquisition of authority by a faithful maiden did not stem entirely from her moral achievements or education. The absence of a husband, for whom she was supposed to be an assistant or helper, tilted the power balance in her favor. If her marital family had no male adult or senior female, she was often entrusted with the management of the household. Wang Xiaojie, for example, was in full charge of a family

figure 6.2  Song Jingwei composes a poem to teach young ­female relatives. s o u r c e : Tuhua xinwen (Pictorial news). In Qingdai baokan tuhua jicheng 2001: 7:228.

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consisting of her mother-in-law and her late fiancé’s two younger brothers. Diligent and capable, she spun and wove during the day and ground wheat to make cakes at night, which she had her brothers-in-law sell in the market the next morning. Her industry was rewarded in the end: within fourteen years, the family had remodeled their old house and were able to take in a wife for one of her brothers-in-law who later gave birth to a boy. In addition, the family was able to use the money saved to buy five mu of land.25 But the absence of the husband was a double-edged sword. Although it could expand a young woman’s autonomy, she now, sometimes alone, shouldered the heavy burden of providing for the family. In poor peasant families, she had to carry out a strenuous routine of hard work. Many faithful maidens were engaged in work that went beyond the category of “womanly work” (nügong), such as working in the vegetable garden or making shoes, food, or other products to sell in the market.26 Some even hired themselves out to earn money. Ji Ergu, a faithful maiden from Renhe, Zhejiang, was said to have made silk threads and tinfoil money every day as a hired laborer and used the income to support her parents-in-law.27 Even though the moral luster attached to faithful maidens was a source of influence or power for many, it did not yield the same result for all. The moral esteem a faithful maiden gained did not work itself into the family system in a structured way, and like any ordinary young bride, a faithful maiden could fall prey to abusive parents-in-law. A crucial factor affecting her experience in the family was whether her inlaws were sincerely appreciative of her, and this, in turn, depended to a large extent on the family structure of her in-laws’ household. Incidents of mistreatment were often associated with in-laws who had no interest in having her in the first place; in these cases, being a faithful maiden would not necessarily save her from ordeals common to brides. We will turn to such cases later in the chapter.

“Virgin Mothers” The most emotionally gratifying role for many faithful maidens was that of a mother. Many envisioned rearing a boy as part of their future when they made the pledge to be faithful maidens.28 That failure to adopt was a major cause for suicide testifies to the tremendous importance placed on adoption.29 The desire to be a mother was certainly not limited to faithful maidens, but for these young women, taking on this

176   Choices cherished role held unique meanings. It was a way through which their self-identity was manifested, their sense of responsibility fulfilled, and their emotional needs satisfied. In a regular marriage, producing a son was the crucial step in elevating a bride’s place in the family and securing her well-being in old age and into the afterlife: in China’s patriarchal family system, a son carried out the sacrifices for the family. The spirit wedding eliminated a faithful maiden bride’s opportunity to produce a biological son, but it did not deprive her of the right to be a mother. As discussed in Chapter 4, although a faithful maiden’s request for adoption was often ignored or rejected, it was, by Qing times, viewed as a moral action on the part of the faithful maiden and a moral obligation of her marital family. The court gave ultimate legitimacy to faithful maiden adoption by formally including a clause that supported her adoption rights in the imperial statutes. The faithful maiden’s exceptional virtue won her the privilege of being a “virgin mother.” Even though the adoption had everything to do with the faithful maiden, in principle the rationale for adoption rested not with her needs but with those of her deceased fiancé, and it was first and foremost grounded in patrilineal principles. Producing a male heir ensured the continuation of a man’s line and his family name, as well as the fulfillment of his filial duty toward his ancestors; failing to do so put these fundamental functions of the family in jeopardy. During the Ming and Qing, the importance of the line of descent was no longer a pure Confucian concept. The native Chinese belief of ancestor worship had been further fortified by the popular view in Chinese Buddhism that an individual was destined to suffer as a “hungry ghost” in the underworld if no heir offered him or her sacrifices. Literati writers like Pan Deyu (1785 –1839) appreciated the faithful maiden precisely because her adoption of a son ensured the continuation of the fiancé’s line. If a man died before taking a wife, his family was not required to establish an heir for him. “However, if [the family] takes in a faithful maiden as a daughter-in-law, it must establish an heir for him. By doing this, a faithful maiden is able to ‘revive’ her deceased husband [si er bu si, meaning his line would be continued]. Indeed, the contribution of the faithful maiden doubles that of chaste and heroic widows.”30 The deceased man was not “dead” so long as his line was perpetuated. By adopting an heir, a faithful maiden fulfilled a grave patrilineal function for her fiancé and ensured his well-being in the underworld. The act of adoption thus manifested her unfailing loyalty to her deceased fiancé.

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What an adoption meant for the faithful maiden can be inferred from the following account of faithful maiden Li, who, after her fiancé’s funeral, had repeatedly tried to kill herself. She was said to have stopped her attempts only when her father and brother reasoned with her concerning her responsibilities to her late fiancé’s family and for rearing and teaching a son to carry on the name of her deceased fiancé. Before long, her fiancé’s younger brother married, and his wife gave birth to a boy. The father-in-law decided that the boy should be given to the faithful maiden as her son. “She was both happy and sad and informed the spirit of Jiyao [her fiancé] about it and made a vow. She took a knife, chopped off one of her fingers, placed it on the sacrifice table, and said: ‘If I do not use all of my heart and energy to raise this boy, and if I do not fulfill my earlier commitment, I will be like this finger!’ The people on the scene were all stunned and wept.”31 We should not be surprised that faithful maidens took to heart these patrilineal values. In a society in which a woman’s success was measured by her service to her inlaws, her assistance to her husband, and her rearing of her children, her life would have had little meaning apart from fulfilling these roles. Furthermore, in securing an heir for her late fiancé, a faithful maiden also secured her own place in the family as wife and mother. A married woman’s ritual identity was inseparable from those of her husband and son, as was her well-being in the afterlife. Although adoption appears to have been largely driven by patrilineal values, young women also saw it in practical terms. In talking her mother-in-law into getting a concubine for her father-in-law, faithful maiden Yang said: “What I depend on to preserve widowhood is a son. Yet few boys are available for adoption in our lineage. Why don’t you find a concubine for my father-in-law? If she is fortunate to give birth to a little uncle [meaning a brother of her late fiancé], who gives birth to a son when he grows up, I would eventually have a son.” Her mother-inlaw died shortly after this conversation; the faithful maiden “generously sold what she had” to gather money and got a wife for her father-in-law, who was approaching his seventieth year. A boy was indeed born.32 Studies have demonstrated the great significance of the emotional bonding between mothers and sons and the role of the mother in Chinese society.33 For faithful maidens, the role of mother took on distinct meanings. Being a mother remedied an emotionally lonely and ritually incomplete life. Sons held the moral responsibility for taking care of aging parents, and the lack of a male child meant, theoretically, no source of support. What sons could provide for a mother was, of course,

178   Choices more than just filial service in a material sense. A mother’s greatest hope was to raise a successful son who would establish fame, wealth, and status for the family as well as bring honor to her personally.34 In the case of the faithful maiden, having a son would also fill the emotional hole in her life. Without a husband, the adopted son was all she could have to form a nuclear—and uterine—family in her parents-in-law’s home.35 In addition, since the boy was typically adopted from among the sons of her deceased fiancé’s brothers or paternal cousins, he could serve as the tie between a faithful maiden and her fiancé’s family. If in a regular marriage a son secured his mother’s position within the family, then in the spirit marriage of a faithful maiden he provided that same link, emotional and physical, between her and her fiancé’s family. Because a faithful maiden did not have a husband to function as a bridge between herself and her in-laws, her adopted son provided her with emotional comfort as well as a sense of attachment and security. The reward for raising an adopted son to be a success was remarkable. In the popular play Story of Shang Lu Earning Triple First Place [in the Examinations], the faithful maiden mother painstakingly reared a son who graced the family and herself with spectacular glory. Such tales are not mere fiction. In the eighteenth century, faithful maiden Wang and her son, Zhu Jian (1769 –1850), turned every faithful maiden mother’s dream into reality. This real-life Qing version of the successful virgin mother story took place in Jingxian, Anhui. At the age of sixteen, Wang lost her fiancé and moved in with the Zhu family.36 Before long, her deceased fiancé’s elder brother also died. On his deathbed, he instructed his wife to give their second son to Wang for adoption. Zhu Jian, the boy who was given away for adoption, was then three months old. He recalled later in his life: My mother, Wang, preserved fidelity before marriage. I often got sick when I was young. She looked after me tenderly, but her hope for my success was ardent. She instructed me to study under the lamp even on the eve of the New Year. On normal days, she prepared food that was as refined as possible for my teacher. When I waited upon her during meal times, she especially encouraged me with the importance of cultivating moral character.37

The Zhus were an elite family, and they were financially well off, which made it possible for Wang to give her adopted son a good education. Her wholehearted care was well repaid in the end. By 1802, the thirty-three-year-old Zhu Jian earned the highest degree, jinshi. In the next two decades, Zhu served the court in a number of government posts. His most important achievement, however, was in poetry and

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classics. After his early retirement from office, he served as president of the prestigious Zhongshan, Zhenyi, and Ziyang academies. Together with Yao Nai (1731–1815) and Li Zhaoluo (1769 –1841), he was one of the three most highly respected scholars of his time.38 Zhu Jian’s decision not to continue his government career says something about his attachment to his two mothers. When he returned home from Beijing in 1822, his faithful maiden mother had just died, leaving him with the deep regret that he had not been able to wait upon her in her final moments of life. His biological mother died the following year. After the mourning period, he told his friends, who all encouraged him to leave retirement and take a government post again: “If one earns an enormously high salary but he is unable to use it to support his mother, what is the use of it?” Still, his faithful maiden mother must have died with gratification. She had received jingbiao, and a memorial arch in her honor was built under Zhu Jian’s supervision.39 In addition, she was granted the honorary title of yiren, a privilege granted only to the mother or wife of an official of the fifth rank. Her wish to carry on her husband’s line was also fulfilled: Zhu Jian had five sons, and by the time Zhu himself died, he was survived by eleven grandsons and seven great-grandsons.40 The close mother-son tie was reflected in Zhu Jian’s many poems. As scholar sons often did at the time, Zhu Jian solicited poems from famous literati and officials in the empire to honor his mother. He compiled them in a volume called Illuminating Chastity (Chan zhen ji). He also had an artist friend make a painting entitled A Portrait of Supervising Studies in the Frosty Curtained Room (Shuangwei kedu tu); having such a painting commissioned was a popular form of honoring one’s widowed mother.41

Codes of Conduct In biographies, a faithful maiden’s subdued, ascetic behavior was the signature mark of her extraordinary character and moral achievement. Authors delineated it with lustrous vocabulary, fixating on her diet, dress, living quarters, and modes of interaction with people. But these records convey more than what the authors intended to show. They reveal a deep self-consciousness among faithful maidens about their special social position. By following a set code of conduct, they defined their status and distinguished themselves from all other women. Part of the code for faithful maiden behavior drew on the conventional rituals observed by a widow in mourning. From the moment they

180   Choices heard of their fiancés’ deaths, faithful maidens removed colorful dress, jewels, and ornaments; wore only plain clothing made of cotton and no makeup; and changed to a vegetarian diet. In biographies these deeds are described in standardized phrases such as “dressing in mourning and eating vegetarian food” (yi ma ru su), “changing her dress, eating vegetarian food consistently” (bian fu chang zhai), and “disregarding her appearance and wearing plain clothes” (hui zhuang su fu). Not surprisingly, parents found their daughters’ actions excessive and were not pleased.42 To avoid conflict, some young women observed their mourning secretly; for example, they bound their hair with white silk and then covered it with colored thread, or they put on normal dress over plain clothing.43 As a “person who has not yet died,” a widow was expected to retreat from worldly pleasures. But a faithful maiden was not just an ordinary widow. This perception seems to have been justification for even harsher self-mortification, pushing some to the extremes in denouncing material comfort. As soon as she married into her dead fiancé’s family, the daughter of Grand Secretary Zhang Yunsui “lived in retirement in a small room, gathered bricks for chairs and a bed, and was only accompanied by an old maid.”44 Similar living conditions were described for faithful maiden Sun, who lost her fiancé at the age of twelve and later was allowed to live with her in-laws after an abortive suicide attempt: “Winter or summer, she had a bed made of grasses for a mat and a block of wood for a pillow. She neglected her appearance and wore short hair. All her life when she spoke to people her teeth were never shown.”45 In keeping with her requisite coarse food, plain dress, and neglected appearance, a faithful maiden’s bearing was composed. Talking or laughing in a loud voice was considered inappropriate for any woman, but a faithful maiden would rarely open her mouth even to smile. Her living space was another mark of her virtue. As Francesca Bray points out, one function of the Chinese house was “the spatial making of distinctions within the family.”46 The allocation of rooms expressed the social and gender hierarchy of the people occupying the house. Sources suggest that a faithful maiden typically took a small, cloistered room. In an affluent household, she often lived in a separate structure; preferably she lived upstairs in a two-story building (lou), or she might share a room with her widowed mother-in-law or another widow in the family (see Figure 6.3).47 Confining herself to that physical space, she avoided social gatherings and kept her connections with people to

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a bare minimum. Maintaining a distance from the normal world was a virtue of chaste widowhood but an even more pronounced rule for a faithful maiden. Whatever her living conditions, no man, sometimes not even her own brother, could enter her room.48 The most bizarre stories of self-imposed seclusion were recorded by Ming writers.49 Some young Ming women were said to dwell in a “hidden room” or in a tightly locked room with high walls where even her closest family members, including her own parents, could rarely see her.50 One was said to have “lived in a small building. Her food and drink were sent to her window by means of a rope and basket. Her facial hair was more than one cun long.”51

figure 6.3  Two-story building from the Ming period.

182   Choices Records from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries appear to be less dramatic, but the sense of propriety maintained through physical self-isolation crossed the social boundaries. Like their elite counterparts, peasant women had an idea of the behavior proper to their role. Zhang, a little daughter-in-law, never set foot outside the door after her fiancé’s death. She would not visit her relatives even if they came to fetch her.52 The same was said of another peasant daughter: “After she married into the Huang family to preserve fidelity, she conducted herself in accordance with the rituals. No one ever saw her.”53 Sixteenyear-old faithful maiden Liu, her biographer says, “lived by herself in a room, and even relatives in the same lineage or women who came to visit could hardly see her. She only exchanged greetings with them through her window.”54 The duration of a faithful maiden’s seclusion lasted until her late fifties, if the following cases are any indication. The seventeenth-­century scholar Mao Jike said of his great-uncle’s fiancée, Zhang, that she “sat and slept in a small building for forty years.”55 Faithful maiden Cheng married into the Wang family at the age of fifteen, after which she “dwelled in an upstairs room for forty-two years and never once descended” (see Figure 6.4). Her story came to the attention of Zuo Zongtang (1812 – 85). After verifying it, he presented the family with a piece of his own calligraphy that reads “This building, thousand years” (ci lou qian zhai, meaning that the building would be acclaimed for eternity).56 Apparently, the length of faithful maidens’ seclusion was proportional to the respect they would receive. But for faithful maidens who were required to work to survive, secluding themselves in such a manner was a luxury they could hardly afford. Even for the well-to-do this might be impractical. Faithful maiden Long, who lost her fiancé at seventeen and subsequently lived with her in-laws, “came downstairs to work together [with the rest of the family] arduously” after her adopted son turned seven and began to study with a tutor. She had dwelled upstairs for sixteen years.57 A prominent motif in biographical writings is that the faithful maiden was endowed with womanly virtue even at a young age. She was by nature quiet, did not speak or laugh casually, disliked colorful clothing or ornaments, and seldom played with her peers. The following was said of faithful maiden Zhu (Zhu Shi’s daughter): “The faithful maiden disliked colored clothing when she was a baby, and if she was put in colorful dress, she would cry in fear. When she was a little older, if red thread was used to tie her hair, she would grab it and throw it

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figure 6.4  The building of chaste mother [Wang]. s o u r c e : Tuhua ribao (Global daily pictorial). In Huanqiushe bianjibu 1999: 1:207.

to the floor.”58 Chen Juniang was a peasant daughter from Chaoyang, Guangdong, and she inherited a similar disposition: She was sober when still young, and not casual in laughter or speech. She regarded diligent work at spinning and weaving as her task. In the countryside, customs were simple and entertainments few. Only at the winter and spring festivals did troupes come to perform songs and dances. Women went in groups to watch and have a good time. She sat all day quietly in her room and did not step out. People repeatedly tried to make her go, but she would not. Everyone said that the Chen daughter did not enjoy outings.59

It is perhaps helpful to contextualize these types of stories rather than treat them as mere rhetoric. No doubt they served to amplify or even mystify the moral character of these young girls, but such an

184   Choices emphasis reveals implicitly that the renunciation of material comfort and the strict abiding by rules of gender separation were rare assets in those days. In rural and urban areas alike, trips to burn incense in Buddhist monasteries, attend other religious festivities, or watch ­local operas were common, as suggested in the repeated imperial edicts and local government regulations that aimed to curb the phenomena through the Kangxi-Yongzheng-Qianlong eras.60 Even talented ladies (guixiu)— daughters of educated households—longed to venture out of their domestic confinement, and physical beauty was a celebrated attribute of womanhood.61 In highly commercialized and wealthy regions such as the Lower Yangzi—the center of the faithful maiden cult—tremendous self­discipline was required to resist the temptation of new fashions and festivities. The local calendar of social and religious activities recorded in texts such as Record of Trivial Matters from Wuxi and Jinkui [in Jiangsu] (Xi Jin zhixiao lu) gives us a glimpse of the kinds of things available for women to enjoy outside their homes throughout the year: the lantern festival, the “three-bridge crossing,” the “gods receiving festival,” pilgrimages to sacred mountains and temples, spring sightseeing, gods’ or goddesses’ birthday celebrations, and other religious festivals. In most of these festivities, men and women mingled in tightly packed settings. “Every year incidents of childbirth and bride abduction occurred in the festival,” an author described of one of these events.62 Such situations certainly worried Confucian moralists. “Women watched opera in front of the stage; their sedan chairs mingled with the male crowd. What a hideous custom! The entertainers would say anything [to amuse their audience]. Is it appropriate for unmarried girls to hear and to see this?” as noted by the seventeenth-century lixue scholar Shen Hanguang.63 But most faithful maiden biographies were not criticizing those who ignored Confucian teachings; rather, they were presenting a noble image of faithful maidens who withstood the lure of excitement and disciplined themselves with high moral standards. They stood in striking contrast to the average person in upholding the values considered appropriate at that time. The most awe-inspiring display of virtue was self-mutilation. It occurred often when the young woman was pressed by her parents to be engaged again. Acts of self-mutilation demonstrated a faithful maiden’s resolve, and in most cases were shocking enough for the parents to back down. One faithful maiden from Xuancheng, Anhui, for example, “gouged out both her eyes with hemp thread”;64 another from

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Shangyu, Zhejiang, did the same to her eyes, but with a hairpin.65 In still another case, a girl “cut off her left ear and handed it to her brother when he went to mourn her fiancé.”66 Faithful maiden Huang was from Yingshan, Hubei. When a matchmaker was talking to her father, she “raised a knife and cut off her fingers. Several fingers dropped at once. Stunned, the matchmaker ran out. Because of this incident, everyone knew her resolve could not be changed.”67 Although all this was more or less in imitation of earlier heroines celebrated in didactic texts, new forms of expressing wifely fidelity, such as facial tattooing, were also invented. With a needle, faithful maiden Shi tattooed four characters on her face that read “my heart will not change” (zhongxin bu gai).68 In ancient times the art of tattooing was associated with uncivilized people. But these headstrong women were not degrading themselves to the ranks of the uncivilized. On the contrary, their innovative use of tattooing made a powerful statement of their will while forcing their parents or in-laws to retreat—with such a strong statement written on their faces, no man would want to marry them anyway. If we compare Ming reports with those of the Qing, it appears that the intensity of self-mutilation among faithful maidens diminished over the course of the Qing. The focus of moral performance shifted from self-destruction to self-denial. It seems valid to argue that as the Ming violent political culture and the craving for “strange and extraordinary behavior” faded away, the performance of female virtue, in turn, changed its form: it emphasized endurance more than heroism. There were far fewer reports on severe forms of self-mutilation— cutting off ears or a nose or gouging out eyes—but a more moderate form— cutting off one’s hair—remained relatively common. The following incident was recorded by the Qing writer Wu Ding of his aunt Wu Manyu. The Wu family had already produced a faithful maiden, Wu Shuji, who committed suicide by her fiancé’s coffin in the early Qing (her biography appears in the “Introduction” in this book). Manyu did not follow her aunt’s example in killing herself (although she did once make an attempt), but that she would not accept a second engagement was clear: A long period had passed [since the death of her fiancé], when someone from the same town appeared again to propose marriage. My aunt heard of it, and she was silent. The next morning the sound of weeping came from upstairs. My grandmother hurriedly went up to look, and she saw my aunt kneeling in front of the ancestral altar, with her head lowered to the ground; she was in deep grief. She said: “I am not filial, and I am ashamed to see my parents.” When [my grandmother] went closer, she saw that [Manyu] had cut off her hair. At that point, the mother and daughter held each other and both wept. The rest of the

186   Choices family came afterward, and all wept. From that time on, no matchmaker dared to bring a marriage proposal to my family.69

Even though cutting off one’s hair did not bring harm to the body in the same way as more dramatic forms did, it was no less powerful a gesture of determination. In late imperial China, all these acts of disfigurement were culturally codified, drawing their symbols from Confucian didactic and religious traditions. Since early history, cutting off ears, fingers, and hair had been associated with making a pledge. Of them, hair cutting was the most common, performed by both sexes.70 There was a gender dimension to these acts, however. When performed by a woman, self-inflicted violence was also seen as a means of protecting her chastity. For example, when she learned that a man wanted to marry her because of her beauty, Gao Xing cut off her own nose to destroy her allure; the sixteen-year-old widow Fang cut off her left ear so that her parents would not push her into remarriage (see Figures 6.5 and 6.6).71 In another famous lienü story, the daughter of Xiahou Ling cut off her

figure 6.5  Chaste widow Gao Xing. s o u r c e : Liu 1966: 117–18.

figure 6.6  Chaste widow Fang cuts off her ear. s o u r c e : Lü 1998: 3/56b.

188   Choices hair “as her testimony not to remarry.” When she was pressed again by her father to remarry, she cut off her ears and nose (see Figure 6.7).72 As the early Ming writer Song Lian (1310 – 81) remarked, these acts were to show that she did “not want to be like a normal human being.”73 The ­focus of self-disfigurement was the face, where a young woman’s physical attraction was located. Hair was a stirring component of the feminine body, the focus of male fantasies of female beauty. To destroy it, hence, was to destroy sexual attraction. By the same token, wearing only plain or coarse clothing and keeping her hair unkempt were similarly intended to safeguard a woman’s

figure 6.7  The daughter of Ling destroys her ­appearance. s o u r c e : Lü 1998: 3/53b.

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chastity. This idea originated in much earlier didactic literature. A Tang dynasty (618 –906) story tells of the young widow Li. She lost her husband when she was eighteen years old; from then on she made sacrifices to her husband every day, “dressing in cotton and eating vegetables.” But six or seven years later, a handsome man appeared to her in a dream asking Li to marry him. She refused, but the demon came back to her in dreams every night, and even charms and spells would not stop him. She finally figured out that it must be because her appearance had not withered; therefore, she “took a knife to cut her hair, stopped washing her hemp [mourning] garments, left her hair uncombed, and dusted her face and body.” The demon apologized and never bothered her again.74 Physical attractiveness was a great danger to young widows. This story from the mid-imperial period, and many others that depicted self-mutilation or self-denial by young women, circulated widely in late imperial China as a result of the proliferation of didactic texts on female moral education. There can be little question that they informed the behavior of faithful maidens. Indeed, what distinguished late imperial women from those of earlier times was that they not only read stories of legendary heroines but also turned legendary exemplars into objects of literary imitation. In practice as well as in rhetoric, female virtue found its best representation in young women who inflicted violence on their own bodies. In no other period of Chinese history did stories of female self-mutilation stir so many young women’s hearts as in Ming-Qing times. The religious culture of the late empire also informed faithful maidens’ self-denying behavior. Dissolving human desire and rejecting material pleasure were fundamental concepts in the Buddhist theory of salvation. In Buddhist practice, cutting off hair was a sign of a vow of chastity, performed when nuns were ordained. Daoist legends tell of female saints who mutilated their faces to destroy their beauty. For example, the Song Daoist Sun Buer threw hot oil in her face after her master told her that her beauty was an obstacle to her practice.75 Clearly, some faithful maidens framed their manner of self-denial more closely on religious teachings than did others. They turned themselves into lay Buddhists, devoted to chanting the sutras or painting portraits of the Buddha and Bodhisattvas.76 Becoming a faithful maiden at the age of fourteen, Huang died at her in-laws’ home eleven years later. “Sitting straight in the Buddhist niche, no pain in her appearance; / [she was] transformed into a white lotus, / which would not be reduced to dirt even in a thousand years,” Zhu Jian praised her in a poem.77 Normally,

190   Choices women were unlikely to pursue their spiritual life in Buddhism until they were older and had completed familial duties or handed over their duties to the younger generation.78 But a faithful maiden was subject to less constraint: she had no childbirth to go through, no husband to serve, and at most only one child to raise. More important, of course, a faithful maiden sorely needed spiritual consolation. All of this might have had deep roots in practical concerns as well. When a faithful maiden confined her living space to an isolated room, refused to see even her relatives, disfigured her appearance, or turned herself into a lay Buddhist, sex was the unspoken yet pervasive issue. Her youth and virginity, while lending her glory, hid the potential danger of moral breach. She was the potential target of seduction. In an episode about faithful maiden Fa of the Zhang Qi family, we see that even a deep chamber was not a safe haven for the young woman. In her case, a clerk in her father-in-law’s staff “took some interest” in her and attempted to approach her through a maid, who managed, through the help of other servants, to deliver a note to Fa, which caused her great hysteria.79 This incident cast light on the danger that faithful maidens faced, and it helps make sense of their seeming extreme behaviors from a practical standpoint. Still, through reducing physical contact with the world and making their physical appearances undesirable, faithful maidens could keep a relatively safe distance from potential sexual seduction and accordingly shielded themselves and their reputations from the suspicious eyes of the public and preying gaze of devious men. A faithful maiden was sexually vulnerable. However, the source of vulnerability came from both the outside world and her inner world.

Wave in a “Dried-Out Well” Late imperial writings metaphorically described a chaste widow’s emotional and sexual state as “a dried-out well that makes no wave.” Leaving no room for emotional and sexual desire was also the self-­expectation of the faithful maidens. For example, faithful maiden Chen, who lived with her parents, named a pavilion in her family garden “Becalmed” (wu bo; literally, “no wave”) and took it as her literary name.80 But is it really possible that the “dried-out well” hid no emotional turbulence under its lifeless surface? Many of the faithful maidens’ unsettling feelings are revealed in their poems. “Sorrow” (chou) is a conventional motif in Chinese classical poetry, but in faithful maidens’ writings, the feeling of sadness is more

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than rhetorical. Xu Qibao, the talented poet from Shexian, Anhui, wrote in one of her poems entitled “Lyrics of Sorrow” (Shangxin ying): Alone and drunk, I have not tuned the zither [qin], Who would compose for me the beautiful phoenix courtship song? My boudoir is deserted in the reflections of the blue mirror, On the terrace, at evening, I chant the “Song of White Hair [Baitou ying].” My fate is as thin as the moon eclipse, My bygone dreams like clouds that nowhere can be traced. Turning around, I see the slanting rays penetrate the pine trees that surround my room, Leaving only shades of myriad verdant peaks.81

Xu had been engaged to Cao Bang, who died when wedding preparations were under way. Xu herself died not long after she composed this lyric. The poem was written on a melancholy evening, when she was seized by grief. The literary tropes suggest her sentimental imagination of conjugal joy—qin, the instrument paired with se, and feng, the auspicious bird accompanied by huang, are conventional references for a harmonious marital life. The “Song of White Hair” alludes to a Han dynasty poem attributed to a woman who is abandoned by a lover that features these two lines: “I wish to have a single-hearted man; / grow old together and do not part.” The allusion speaks not so much of Xu Qibao’s resolute loyalty to her deceased fiancé as of her sadness that her dream of having such a companion was forever shattered. This feeling of sorrow and loss is again portrayed in the image “bygone dreams”: the ideal life she hoped to live has evaded her forever. Another poem, by Xiong Lian, carries a slightly different sentiment. Despite his family’s request to end the betrothal, Xiong had insisted on marrying her fiancé who was permanently disabled. After the marriage, Xiong Lian returned to her natal family because of the poverty of her husband’s family. Xiong’s most highly acclaimed works were the “Poem of Sorrow” and the “Poem of Sadness.” The success of these works doubtless had much to do with her literary gift and skill, but her unhappy life formed the background of her writing, as seen in this poem, entitled “Thinking of Bygone Days”: Alas, my floating life goes on beyond my will; Before I became accustomed to a pampered life, I learned the taste of sorrow. Although young, I have already awakened from the dream of a flourishing life; Because of my ill fate, my brother shares my misfortune. My dear mother is aging and falls sick easily;

192   Choices Our family’s indigence is often heightened by a poor fall harvest. Before my eyes, sorrow is everywhere; Many times, in the wind, I shed tears.82

The poem was written presumably after Xiong Lian moved back in with her mother and brother, and it reveals a profound sense of despondency. Like Xu Qibao, Xiong Lian had pictured a very different life. Her sweet “dream” might have come true if only she had had a better fate. The overtone of predestination in Xiong’s poem is echoed in a poem by Gu Jifan. Called “Ill Destiny,” the piece was the twenty-one-year-old’s last poem before she hanged herself in the bedroom while her deceased fiancé’s father was visiting her family.83 These poems help us peer into the complicated emotional world of faithful maidens enduring difficult lives, an issue rarely exposed in other sources. These young women had much to overcome in an effort to sustain a mind that “makes no wave.” Behind their reserved appearance lay profound emotional struggle. In fact, if we read faithful maiden biographical accounts from this viewpoint, what is portrayed as virtuous conduct reflects a weak desire for life for some young women. The loss of her betrothed was itself a sign of ill fortune, but material and other hardships could contribute further to her lack of interest in life. The following was said of faithful maiden Zhu, the daughter of Zhu Shi: [After she moved in with her in-laws,] her own family would from time to time send people over to see her. She said to them: “Please go back and tell my parents that I am not suffering. One hundred years pass in a blink. I am a woman who should have died, and I am just waiting for my life to end.” . . . On the first day of the year of jiachen [1724] a neighboring house caught fire through negligence. Fire spread and burned several hundred households, and the intensity of the fire was fierce. Everyone in the family was in panic and ran for their lives. The faithful maiden sat up straight in her room and said: “Death is my fate. Am I someone who would run for my life in such a chaotic and hurried manner?” People were horrified and did not know what to do about her. When Madam Xiong [her mother-in-law] broke down the door and carried her out, the fire was suddenly extinguished. That summer, her father heard the news of his youngest brother’s death. He was in great grief and would not stop spitting blood. The faithful maiden returned to visit him and cried all night. Because of this, she caught a cold. But she hid it from her father and parents-in-law and did not want to see a doctor. She said: “I am a woman. How could I let a doctor see my hand!” When her father advised her to see a doctor, she comforted him by replying that she was fine. Her brothers Bijie, a vice director of the Board of Revenue, and Ji, a juren, wept and begged her [to see a doctor]. She said with a smile: “Am I afraid of death? I prefer death to life under the hands of a doctor.”84

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Soon she died, at the age of thirty-four. An overwhelming theme in this biographical narrative was her disregard of her life, all presented in the light of virtue: she had no desire to outlive her late fiancé for much longer. It was a convention for a chaste widow to call herself “a person who has not yet died” (or “who should have died”), underscoring the extreme notion of chastity: a woman’s existence revolved solely around her husband, and there was no reason for a widow to cling to her life. But faithful maiden Zhu was not taking the idea merely as moral rhetoric. Refusing to see a doctor or to escape from a disaster was a familiar story in chaste women narratives. Like Zhu, Wang Yuan refused to flee from an approaching flood, saying: “I am a woman who should have died. If I step out of this building, how can I face people of either family? I must die here!” She sat up straight in the small two-story building, and yet mysteriously, all the houses in the neighborhood collapsed but hers.85 Without exception, these stories were told to illustrate a faithful maiden’s virtue: her moral principles were never compromised, even if it meant that she would have to pay with her life. The young woman, in the end, was mysteriously saved from death, manifesting Heaven’s protection over her. Consider also this story about faithful maiden Li—who, it will be recalled, cut off her finger. Li had a widowed sister-in-law, whose two mu of fertile land were seized by her late husband’s two brothers. During her visit home, the sister-in-law complained about this and cried. Li told her that since her parents-in-law had died and she had no children, she was living a “useless life” and needed no land. “It is easy to die and difficult not to die.” She continued, “If you don’t believe me, I will show you an example.” That evening, she hanged herself under a plum tree.86 The irony here is that Li herself did not live up to the principles she proclaimed. Although she had no parents-in-law to serve, she did have an adopted son to raise (or possibly he had grown up). The narrative does not give any clue to the meaning of her statement that it was “difficult not to die,” but one thing seems clear: life did not hold much attraction for her. Were there reasons that death seemed attractive to these women? Some nineteenth-century scholars were already alert to the problem of the lack of emotional nurturing for faithful maidens in their marital homes. In his essay entitled “A Discussion of Faithful Maidens,” Wang Xiaocheng writes: A human body that practices yi [meaning a faithful maiden] is bound to live a short life. When she goes to her in-laws’ house wearing mourning garments, relatives and friends are appalled and suspicious; when she makes a mistake in

194   Choices her behavior, criticism and slander follow; her emotional tie to her parents-inlaw and the wives of her deceased fiancé’s brothers is weak because of the lack of introduction and mediation [of a husband]; [at night,] accompanied by white curtain and candlelight, she is alone and sees only her own shadow. To whom can she talk about her sadness? She can only swallow tears all night long.87

Wang further notes that very few faithful maidens he heard about or witnessed in his locality did not die an untimely death. With little emotional comfort and no conjugal joy, the young woman had too much to overcome to have a normal life span. Although other sources seem to suggest that Wang’s observation about faithful maidens’ life spans was a bit exaggerated—some faithful maidens in the existing data died in their twenties or thirties, but others lived to old age—the difficult situations he points to might not be far-fetched. In the worst case, reality could be so unbearable that a naïve young woman saw no way out but to kill herself, as in Cai Zhenxian’s case described in Chapter 4. Before she committed suicide, Zhenxian allegedly talked to her uncle, who asked whether her in-laws were treating her unfairly. She declined to answer, asking in reply whether the ancients would complain about their parents-in-law. Tolerating mistreatment by parents-in-law was a virtue for a woman, and Cai wanted to live up to this principle. But even if she could complain to her natal family, would there be any solution to her anguish?88 There were, of course, caring parents-in-law who sincerely hoped the girl would live well in their home. In 1737, three years after Zhenxian tragically ended her life, faithful maiden Long from an adjacent county married her dead fiancé. The seventeen-year-old “lived by herself upstairs and did not come down except on the first and the fifteenth of each month to pay her respects to her in-laws. She sat straight all day and occasionally mended clothing for the maids.” Taking pity on her, the family offered her comedy and popular storytelling books to pass the time and games for amusing herself. She declined and explained years later that she did not touch books earlier because she was afraid that the unorthodox gossip they contained would disturb her heart.89 The family must have been quite worried, considering that a girl of such a young age was learning to endure alone. But there was only so much they could do to ease her struggles. A few cases from the Qing period indicated mental breakdown of faithful maidens, although the circumstances under which the illnesses occurred appear to have been varied. When faithful maiden Zeng’s fiancé became fatally ill, someone suggested that the two should marry—a practice based on the belief that the wedding could cure the groom’s illness. Zeng’s fiancé, however, rejected the idea, saying that

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he did not want her to suffer (meaning to make her a widow). After his death, the sentimental Zeng wanted to weep at his coffin and to dwell in a hut beside his grave (lumu, an ancient mourning ritual normally practiced by a son for his parents), but both requests were turned down. She began to dream of him and to behave increasingly strangely. Living alone (possibly after her illness had developed), she would look up to the sky and mutter, as if she were explaining something. All the words were her memories about her fiancé.90 In the case of faithful maiden Fa of the Zhang household, what triggered her illness was unclear, but her mental problem created constant disturbance to the family. Lady Bao, wife of her late fiancé’s younger brother, was said to treat her “carefully and humbly and answered her every need quickly. If Fa got angry, she would swallow her tears and blame herself for Fa’s unhappiness.”91 Both the Fa and Zhang families were well known for their expertise in medicine, but apparently neither was able to cure her illness. The obstacles and hardships that might help explain some faithful maidens’ low interest in life varied from case to case: they could be economic, personal, emotional, or a combination of a number of factors. However, there was one problem that all of these young women had to face: sex.

The Question of Sex Sex is a taboo subject in faithful maiden biographies, but public obsession with it made its mark nonetheless. The male interest in the faithful maidens’ suppressed sexuality even penetrated into poems they composed for these bereaved young women. Although moral eulogies by ­design, the poems about faithful maidens frequently played on the ­pathos of their unfulfilled sexual needs. Writing about faithful maiden Cai, for example, Ji Yun (1724 –1805) portrayed the young woman against the background of the long, lonely night and her “empty bed”: Cold moonlight, cold frost, and an empty fragrant bed, The peach blossom never met the spring wind. Her sorrow is deeper than the bride seeing her husband off after the wedding night, A red candle flickers lonely all night.92

In his poem for faithful maiden Wu Bozhou, Chen Wenshu imagined a scene that captured a life with no conjugal pleasure: “Alone, leaning on the red railings, she plays with the gull, not the dazzling mandarin ducks.”93 Even Jiao Xun, whose earnestness and great respect for

196   Choices faithful maidens motivated him to write a number of serious essays in their defense, failed to keep his attention from the imagined “empty curtain” and the “dangling fringe” of the faithful maiden’s bed.94 The poetic image of the faithful maiden was a young lady who, unfortunately, was deprived of conjugal intimacy and sexual pleasure. The public fascination with a faithful maiden’s sexual life is vividly reflected in an anecdote of the early nineteenth century. Faithful maiden Zhen was the daughter of a servant, but she “knew self-respect” from an early age. Her master, Li, once summoned her to “serve” him. She refused, even though her parents “beat her bloody.” Zhen’s fiancé died when she was twenty-five, and she secretly ran to her mother-in-law’s house at night and pledged herself to be her daughter-in-law. Because her husband’s family had no relatives from whom she could adopt a boy, Li gave her his eight-year-old servant boy to be her son. She served her mother-in-law filially until she died, with help from wealthy families in the area who admired her virtue. Unfortunately, her adopted son was involved with bad people and ran away from home. She felt sorry for her own ill fortune, and her vision was damaged as a result of crying. At this time, her old master, Li, had already died. His wife received [Zhen] to live with her and treated her as a distinguished guest. Everyone in the house, men, women, old and young, all respected her. When she was forty-nine years old, she took a bath, expressed her gratitude to her mistress, closed her eyes, and died. Just before she died, fragrance permeated her room. When her body was put into the coffin, someone who changed her underwear found that she was still a virgin. Her mistress and other women surrounded her coffin, all [moved to] weep.95

This was probably the most ironic part of the story: while Zhen was eulogized as a model woman and treated by her mistress as a “distinguished guest,” her character was in fact under constant suspicion and her moves under close inspection. No one genuinely believed that she had lived up to her reputation, and their fascination and skepticism even led them to take their only—indeed last— opportunity to inspect her corpse to determine whether or not she was really a virgin. Of course, the story betrays not only the obsession of the general public but also that of the author himself. Some writers contemplated the question of sex in a more scholarly manner. Li Shenchuan, for example, argued that the celibacy imposed on young women had grave consequences. The key problem was, in his view, the young age at which girls became faithful maidens. They experienced intense pain when they heard of their fiancés’ deaths. Young and

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innocent, they were attracted to the “beautiful idea” of faithful maidenhood or were talked into doing it by their family members, but did not anticipate what lay ahead of them. “They are not yet sex-­conscious, and they do not understand the ways of the world.” However, “with days and months passing, their blood and energy gradually grow strong [xueqi jian sheng].” As their bodies developed and their sexual instincts awakened, their emotional pain gradually attenuated, and they found that they owed their fiancés’ families no gratitude or obligation. Here Li indicates that, unlike widows, who were closely absorbed into their husbands’ families, faithful maidens could find no inner emotional strength to help them fight sexual urges. The consequences were dire. “Those who are of ill breeding will do things that I cannot talk about here; the ordinary ones will become depressed and harbor their unhappiness. This is against the principle of the Heaven and the Earth, and it damages the energies of yin and yang.”96 Li Shenchuan’s hint at the suspected sexual misconduct of some faithful maidens reminds us that the skepticism we have sensed in faithful maiden Zhen’s story might not be without reason. He was careful not to cast skepticism over all faithful maidens, however. In distinguishing the two types of situations, he stresses that for those faithful maidens who struggled to combat sexual impulses, the dearest cost was their health and longevity: I have observed faithful maidens. Those who pledge celibacy out of their purest feelings and the principle of yi mostly live a long life. They have nothing to long for, and they completely cut off their human desire. Their spirit is fully preserved, and their dispositions are settled. Therefore, they live a long life. Those who do it with reluctance mostly die young or linger away their lives in sickness. Why is this so? It is because their feelings have been devastated and their desire has been cut down. Their hearts are not settled, and their energies are not harmonious.97

A young woman’s sexual desire was the manifestation of heavenly principle and yin-yang harmony. It grew following the natural cycle of her body’s development, and it was a natural need that ought to be met. Like any man or woman, a young woman whose fiancé has died should be entitled to sexual satisfaction. A moderate critic of the faithful maiden cult, Li placed the responsibility of dissuading daughters from pursuing faithful maidenhood on the shoulders of the parents. He advised that “if there is nothing more they can do to change her mind, they should still have her wait for ten years, until her blood and energy are settled and she understands the principle of yi clearly.”98

198   Choices This view of Li Shenchuan was not his alone. Elsewhere we read similar comments, although in different contexts. Wang Youguang, for ex­ample, offered this opinion when talking about the importance of timely marriage for young people. He believed that marriage had to be arranged at the age of twenty (and expedited if those involved were already twenty-one or twenty-two), because “great sexual desire is the same as desire for drinking and eating. If a person is hungry but is not offered food, or thirsty but not given drink, the strong ones will rob and the weak ones steal. Some [will do things that] disregard ritual and violate rules; others will cut short their lives [because of the suppression of sexual desire]. . . . When a young woman begins to think of love, even a change of place is enough to cause her parents to worry. If things [that disregard rituals and violate rules] were to happen, the parents’ regret would be too late.”99 In the same text, Wang also explains that for a widow to remarry was like yin looking for yang: it is the way of nature.100 The suppression of this natural desire could lead to psychological depression or, in worse cases, an embarrassing breach of the moral code of fidelity. These discussions inform us that, behind the general silence, the question of sex was at the center of the Confucian scholars’ minds. It also reminds us of the importance of taking a critical look at the faithful maidens’ ascetic conduct. Seen in this light, a faithful maiden’s rejection of material comfort or her retreat from social life—gestures or statements of fidelity— could in fact be means of self-control or self-discipline. An ascetic lifestyle could help her protect herself from the worldly temptations so closely associated with material pleasures, while directing her “growing blood and energy” into spiritual channels. Here, Buddhist codes of living—vegetarian diet, chanting sutras, and so forth— effectively served a Confucian goal of perfecting virtue. One method for self-control of sexual energy, among chaste widows and faithful maidens alike, was especially dramatized by the Qing writers. It was said that during the day the women would try to keep themselves occupied with household chores; through long nights, they would spread coins on the floor of their bedrooms, then pick them up in the darkness and count them until they were exhausted. In the following account, recorded in the early nineteenth century, a widow was said to have lost her husband at a young age, and ever since, she carried out this routine: Every night, when she went to bed and after she closed [her bedroom] door, people heard her spread coins on the floor. The next morning after she opened the door, [they saw] not a single coin on the floor. She lived until an old age.

Young Life, Long Journey   199 When she became sick and was dying, she took out from under her pillow a hundred coins, all of which looked like bright shining mirrors, and showed them to her daughters-in-law. She said: “These things have helped me to preserve my fidelity. After I lost my husband, I slept alone. I tossed about in bed and could not go to sleep. I then recalled the words of Jingjiang of the Lu: ‘When busy working, a person becomes good; when in leisure, a person becomes dissolute.’101 I thereupon turned off the lights late at night, scattered a hundred coins on the floor, and stooped down to pick them up. I would not go to bed until I picked up every single coin. By the time I picked all of them up, I was exhausted. I then went to sleep feeling relaxed. It has been over sixty years. I have nothing to feel ashamed about, and therefore, I tell you about it.”102

Similar accounts survived in oral history until the early twentieth century. Historian Cai Shangsi mentioned that he had heard stories about chaste widows who would spread, pick up, and count the coins repeatedly ­until daybreak. “They only dozed briefly when they were exhausted.”103 Some faithful maidens were said to have adopted a similar method in combating what Li Shenchuan called “devastating passion and desire,” counting an item especially linked with women through their work: the embroidery needle. In a poem entitled “Scattering Embroidery Needles,” Zhu Jian recorded this virtuous act of faithful maiden Hu from his lineage. In the preface, Zhu explains: “ ‘Scattering Embroidery Needles” illuminates the virtue of fidelity. The honorable Benyu’s fiancée, Hu, lived on the top floor of a two-story house to preserve her resolve. At night, she often spread needles on the floor, and then picked up every single one of them. She did this for forty years.”104 If Hu became a faithful maiden in her late teens, the time at which she stopped “spreading needles” would have been well past the end of her reproductive age. We may wonder how this sort of act, allegedly conducted quietly in the privacy of a bedroom with no other soul present, was brought to light. Such acts seem to speak more accurately of public fascination than of actual acts. It is unclear if there were any symbolic meanings associated with copper coins. But in the case of needles, we can conjecture. Needles were tiny sharp objects and, compared with coins, required more patience and concentration to gather from the floor in the darkness. The higher level of difficulty in completing this daily (or nightly) exercise underscores the idea that faithful maidens were not just ordinary widows and that their higher status as an icon of chastity demanded extra and extreme acts in exhibiting their virtue. Moreover, the word zhen (needle) was a homophone for the word for “integrity” or “fidelity” (in the context of marriage), which, when combined with nü (women, or more often, unmarried women), came to mean “faithful

200   Choices maidens.” Therefore, we may assume that each time the young woman picked up the needles from her bedroom floor, she was reminded of her status and her obligation and acquired the spiritual strength she needed to carry on.

Fighting for Justice Fending off public scrutiny, combating her bodily desires, and enduring loneliness represented only some of the harsh realities with which a faithful maiden had to learn to live. The hardships disclosed in faithful maiden biographies encompassed a range of social and economic factors, illustrating the fact that state recognition and social respectability had their limits in converting themselves into influence or protection. It did not take long for an idealistic girl to realize that her action might not be appreciated by the bereaved family members of her late fiancé; worse yet, she could find herself right in the middle of a severe dispute over adoption and property, precisely because of her unconventional presence in their home. Although the Qing state lavished honor on faithful maidens, it rarely intervened when one suffered domestic abuse. Only when abuses and property disputes were aggravated was local government brought in, with lawsuits ended when the state reaffirmed the rights of faithful maidens and praised them for their moral integrity. By contrast, the educated local elite assumed a more active role as moral guardians and protectors of the economic interests of faithful maidens. What is most noteworthy is that, in some cases, determined young women took the initiative in fighting injustice done to their deceased fiancés, taking on the responsibility of defending the patrilineal interest of his family. Their moral status might well have emboldened them and encouraged them to take action. A generally silenced subject, mistreatment at the hands of parentsin-law, was only hinted at from time to time in faithful maiden biographies. Faithful maiden Xiao moved in with her in-laws at the age of twenty-two. She took over the responsibility of cooking and laundry from her mother-in-law and waited upon her in-laws dutifully. However, her biographer, Qian Baofu (1771–1827), described her situation: Her mother-in-law was a virago by nature, and her father-in-law was always fearful of her. She did not want Xiao to live with them in the first place; moreover, she saw that Xiao’s family was poor. She chided Xiao day and night, but the faithful maiden never said a word about it. Her neighbors could not stand

Young Life, Long Journey   201 it and criticized the couple with principle. The father-in-law gradually showed some understanding, but the mother-in-law now cursed [not only her daughter-in-law but also] her husband and the neighbors. The neighbors were at their wits’ end. They were very worried about the faithful maiden, so they talked to Qi, a government student and a friend of Qian Baofu: “Why don’t you call up your city friends to take a look? Let the mother-in-law know that this thing has spread throughout the area and that not only her neighbors feel it is unjust.”105

Thereupon, Qian Baofu gathered his friends and went to the village. As expected, the city gentry intimidated the mother-in-law. When she saw that “the gentlemen sitting there were all scholars, and in front of the house there were about ten people standing, she did not dare to chide them. She turned around and said to her husband: ‘I do not want to live in the same house with her. She should not eat my meal.’ Everyone then knew that the virago could never be reformed.” Qian and his city friends lectured her husband: “The faithful maiden brings glory to your family, and you should take good care of her!” But when the family did not fulfill its obligations, the responsibility fell on the shoulders of the local community and the literati. A consensus was reached that a small building be constructed at the back of the house where the faithful maiden could live. Money would be collected to help the faithful maiden with her daily living. Qian Baofu’s friend Qi and her neighbors were entrusted with the matter.106 Abuses involving property were typically more violent. The following extraordinary case shows that even if an heir had been established, a faithful maiden could still be vulnerable to vicious property disputes. Being a virtuous icon, however, in the end helped her fight for survival and justice. The episode took place in the “crafty and unruly” village of Yangjian in Changshu, southern Jiangsu. Faithful maiden Zhi’s deceased fiancé was the only son of a well-off family in the Zhu lineage. Soon after Zhi’s spirit marriage into his family, the lineage chose a son of Wenyao, her fiancé’s cousin, to be his heir. Seven years later, her mother-in-law (the only surviving member of her marital family) died, followed by the adopted boy. The lineage proposed a second adoption, but ­Wenyao opposed it because it would remove his deceased son’s claim to the property, and by extension would deprive him of his chances to control it. He plotted with a man in the lineage by the name of Chairen, who came up with a scheme: if they could get rid of the faithful maiden, the adoption arrangement would naturally be dropped. They bribed a female matchmaker to press faithful maiden Zhi to remarry and told her [Zhi]: “If you do not, someone will have hooligans rape you.” She did

202   Choices not respond. Wenyao plotted with Chairen again, and they used a variety of means to insult her. She wept in front of her fiancé’s coffin every day. The lineage had a juren degree holder named Rulin. When he heard of this, he gathered the lineage and wrote a report to the provincial education commissioner, who instructed government school officials to investigate the matter. The investigation confirmed the report, and the commissioner awarded the faithful maiden an honorary tablet inscribed with his own calligraphy. Wenyao was desperate, but Chairen raised a finger and told Wenyao: “Dang.” Dang in the village’s local dialect meant “to beat.” Thereafter, Wenyao repeatedly gathered his people to attack the faithful maiden. Weeping, the faithful maiden went to a deep pond. When she was about to jump into it [to kill herself], she saw her brother Zhi Xichang and told him what had happened. She said: “You are afraid of the ferocious Zhus, so you don’t even dare to pass by Yangjian, and sit looking at me about to die! I will tell all of this to heaven when I die!” Xichang said: “Our county has a magistrate. Why don’t you bring it up while you are alive rather than wait until after you die?” Thereupon he escorted the faithful maiden to Jinkui, the county seat, and filed a suit with the magistrate.

At this point, the two vicious men had already spread a scandal accusing the faithful maiden of having an illicit relation with a man who used to work for her parents. The two and Wenyao’s whole family broke into her room and tried to take her by force to marry that man, but her neighbors rescued her in time. The narrative continues at the magistrate’s court: The faithful maiden was not good at speaking. She brought the lawsuit to the magistrate but could not state the case clearly. The magistrate ordered Wenyao’s arrest, and after several arrest attempts, Wenyao was finally brought to the court. After he confessed, those who were involved in the case all knelt on the ground beneath the stairs and cursed Chairen as “inhuman.” Several thousand spectators surrounding the court were all furious and wanted to spit in Wen­ yao’s face.The magistrate ordered Chairen and Wenyao to be beaten with a big cane and then chose the son of Wenxi in the lineage to be adopted by the faithful maiden in accordance with the [order] in the Zhu lineage genealogy. 107

The case, however, was not closed here. Through his connections in the government, Wenyao had an official in the prefecture intervene in his favor. He also filed his own lawsuit with the provincial education commissioner. Fortunately, the prefect was not deceived and concluded that Chairen and Wenyao should be exiled. Yet their punishments were reduced because of an imperial amnesty. The two men were pilloried and put in the thoroughfare on display, and their followers were all ordered whipped (see Figure 6.8).108 This dramatic case takes us deep into the villages of the High Qing, where economic confrontation easily disturbed social order, thus put-

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figure 6.8  Faithful maiden Zhi clears up a false charge and establishes an heir. s o u r c e : Tuhua xinwen (Pictorial news). In Qingdai baokan tuhua jicheng 2001: 7:382.

ting considerable pressure on local government. In a “crafty and unruly” setting, a faithful maiden could fall prey to strongmen in the lineage, and even her brother, who was socially expected to protect her from wrongdoing by her marital family and lineage, would not dare give her a hand (although her complaint seems to have aroused his conscience in the end). Educated gentry in the local community are portrayed as a force of justice, yet, as seen in this case, they could not always overpower the local strongmen. In the end, of course, the author shows that justice did prevail: even though the local government did little to protect Zhi in the beginning, under an “upright official,” the county yamen finally

204   Choices backed her up and enforced the law. The following two cases further illustrate some of these observations, but in both incidents, the faithful maidens acted more as heroines than as victims. The first case dates to the Kangxi reign. Fan Ermei was engaged at the age of five to a Fang family. When her fiancé’s father died, his mother remarried uxorilocally a man named Xiao Shen. Greedy and cruel, Xiao squandered all the property of the Fang family. Before long, her fiancé and his two siblings died. The fifteen-year-old Fan Ermei insisted on marrying into the Fang household only to discover that her fiancé died a suspicious death [at Xiao Shen’s hands]. “The faithful maiden wanted to go to the government to clear up her fiancé’s injustice. However, because there was no witness or evidence and because she still had not discovered the truth about what happened, she could only cry now and then and gnash her teeth in hatred.” Xiao Shen in the meantime tried to force her into marrying his nephew. Fan Ermei refused and angrily cursed Xiao (see Figure 6.9). In anger, Xiao Shen pushed her forehead, and she fell to the ground. Furious, she shouted at him: “Bastard! You have tarnished my head!” She cut off with a knife the part touched by his hand, and her face was all covered with blood. Everyone who saw the scene felt pity for her. The Fangs originally had nine rooms. Xiao Shen had sold six of them and wanted to sell the rest. He also schemed with evil people to spy on the faithful maiden day and night [hoping to find a chance] to smear her reputation. The faithful maiden threatened to kill herself in resistance; therefore, they were not able to attack her. Ke, the faithful maiden’s brother, filed a suit with the government. Gao Youhuang, the magistrate of Jianshui [in Yunnan], was an upright official. He punished Xiao Shen and ordered that the rooms be given to the faithful maiden for her to set up a shrine to offer sacrifice to the Fang ancestors. His decision was praised by scholars.109

As in the earlier case, faithful maiden Fan Ermei’s natal family and the local government intervened on her behalf. The magistrate’s ruling on the family property might have taken into account her stepfather-inlaw’s problematic status—a uxorilocally married man—and her status as a faithful maiden.110 But this case was not primarily about an abused faithful maiden. The young woman represented not so much a victim as a formidable fighter seeking revenge and justice. Her courage and high spirit suggest again that her moral identity as a faithful maiden might have emboldened her. In the second case, a faithful maiden again fought successfully for justice on behalf of her late fiancé’s family with her natal family standing by her. Zhang Mingzhen was engaged to Zhou Shiyin, the only son

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figure 6.9  Faithful maiden Fan cuts her forehead to remove smear. s o u r c e : Tuhua xinwen (Pictorial news). In Qingdai ­baokan tuhua jicheng 2001: 7:372.

of a wealthy family, when she was seven years old. Her prospective parents-in-law died, and before long, Wenwang, Shiyin’s uncle (his father’s brother), murdered Shiyin and seized his property. Although the neighbors knew all about the crimes, they did not dare do anything for fear of Wenwang’s brutality. Mingzhen was then nineteen. She had wanted to die to follow her fiancé in death. But then, she reconsidered: “If I die, my enemy will never be brought to justice. Can I bear to let the dead suffer a grievous wrong in the netherworld?” She then shaved her head and became a Buddhist nun. She disfigured her appearance, put on shabby clothing and shoes, and took her complaint to various offices

206   Choices every day accompanied by her maternal uncle. In the end, justice was served. Wenwang was punished in accordance with imperial law.111 Mingzhen thought her task was still unfinished. As any dutiful daughter-in-law would do, she saw to it that the deceased family members of the Zhous’, including the grandparents-in-law, the parents-in-law, and her fiancé, were all properly buried. By then, the family fortune was severely depleted: part of it had already been embezzled by Wenwang, and the rest had been used for the lawsuit and the burials. Mingzhen turned the rest of the house into a shrine. She offered sacrifices to the Zhous’ deceased and chanted Buddhist sutras to pray for their wellbeing in the Western Paradise. In this extraordinary case of revenge, the faithful maiden saw herself as the only survivor of her fiancé’s family and was determined to seek justice on his behalf. Her actions in the end won the support of the government. It is noteworthy that Mingzhen had not yet performed the spirit wedding and the ritual of becoming a daughter-in-law, but this did not seem to have been a problem. In the eyes of the authorities, a faithful maiden was legally permitted to represent her fiancé’s family, a notion reaffirmed by the fact that she was granted the right to take control of her fiancé’s family property.

The Local Elite and the Natal Family Sister, my sister, vowed to follow one [husband] to the end, Remaining home, still a virgin unwed. With green lamp and red tear—fifty years of her life, Her only honor, the memorial arch, shining in the bright sun. Teaching her adopted son diligently, Someday, she will meet her fiancé in the afterworld, with no regret in her heart.112

Lady Shi wrote this poem on her seventieth birthday as she thought of her sister, who became a faithful maiden at the age of nineteen and had since lived off some land given to her by their mother. Later in her life she adopted a son, and the two “relied on each other for life.” Genuinely sentimental, as we see in some other works by female poets on their faithful maiden sisters, the poem weaves love, sympathy, sadness, and respect in one simple verse, reflecting in a sister’s eyes a faithful maiden’s extraordinary life.113 If a faithful maiden daughter stayed home, her parents and brother held the primary responsibility for providing for her. If she married into her late fiancé’s home, that responsibility shifted primarily to his

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family, but in no case did the relationship between a daughter and her natal family end. It was common for a faithful maiden to move back to live with her own parents or brothers when her marital family could no longer support her, or when her parents-in-law died.114 Faithful maiden daughters also viewed it as their responsibility to take care of their natal families. According to Yao Nai, faithful maiden Zhang married her husband despite that fact that he was terminally ill. A year later, her husband and parents-in-law all died. Afterward, she asked her father and brother to come live with her, and she looked after them. When her father died, she saw to the funeral with proper ritual.115 However, circumstances often limited the aid or assistance a natal family could provide for their faithful maiden daughter. In most cases involving abuse, the natal family did not intervene until the situation became dreadful. The reason could be that a daughter concealed the abuse from her parents or brothers, which was a highly regarded virtue. Their lack of intervention could also suggest that, once the daughter was under the roof of her in-laws, it would be deemed inappropriate for her natal family to interfere too strongly.116 Late imperial China was a highly mobile society, and a family’s fortunes could change swiftly. It was not unusual for the fortunes of the faithful maiden’s natal and marital families to both decline in a short period. Fang Bao tells us of the daughter of the younger brother of his mentor. She married her deceased fiancé at the age of twenty-two. Her parents-in-law had already died. The family consisted of her fiancé’s grandmother, his uncle, the uncle’s wife, and their children and, in addition, her father-in-law’s concubine. As the uncle was the only breadwinner for this extended family, it was difficult for the family to make ends meet. The situation in her natal home was also deteriorating. Since the death of the faithful maiden’s elder uncle (Fang Bao’s mentor), the family had declined. Then her father and the young uncle also died. The only man in the family, the son of her younger uncle, left home on a sojourn. Consequently, “she had no one to depend on in her father’s family.” During a cold winter, Fang Bao visited the faithful maiden and was deeply disturbed when he saw that “she wore worn-out clothing, had a vegetable-colored complexion,” and could not afford a winter coat. He therefore wrote a special essay and sent it to his own friends and the friends and relatives of his mentor, asking them for donations. He suggested that the donation fund be placed in the charge of a reliable scholar in the neighborhood to earn interest, which would be used to provide for the faithful maiden’s clothing and for her burial expenses when she died.117

208   Choices At one level, this was an act of personal responsibility—Fang Bao was her uncle’s student and an old friend of her family. When she was a little girl, Fang had thought that, judging by her demeanor and appearance, she would have a happy life. Therefore, it was especially sorrowful for Fang to see her suffer and to realize that she would have to endure hardship the rest of her life. But Fang Bao’s sense of responsibility might also have had another dimension: as a Confucian scholar, he was obligated to look after a virtuous woman and not let her suffer from her virtuous deeds. The call of moral responsibility led many to act in assisting a needy faithful maiden. After Wang Xiuwen, whose story was introduced in Chapter 2, succeeded in marrying her poor fiancé, the fortunes of his family continued to decline. Her suicide attempts had left her body with severe injuries, which prevented her from performing physical work. In the meantime, after repeated setbacks in the examinations, her husband abandoned scholarly pursuits to try his luck in business. Nothing worked out, however. At this point, a well-known scholar in the local community took her family in and personally taught her husband for a while. Before long, misfortune hit her family again. Her husband could barely earn enough to feed himself, so he left to take a teaching job elsewhere, leaving Xiuwen and her two brothers-in-law with nothing to live on. To make things worse, a severe famine plagued the area. You Tong, a famous writer in the area, and his friend Lu Zhixi were deeply sympathetic. You wrote an essay with a tract called “Methods of Help,” detailed by Lu, attached to it, calling for the literati in the local community to give Xiuwen a hand. Many of them had written eulogistic poems when Xiuwen’s heroic story came out, but now it was time for action. You Tong wrote: “You gentlemen composed poems extolling her to the utmost degree. But if you do nothing but sit and watch the faithful maiden die of cold and hunger, what is the use of your exaltation even if your words look as marvelous as gold and precious stone or a piece of fabulous embroidery!”118 It is not clear how literati in this case responded to the call of You Tong and his friend. In a similar case, however, the appeal by an established scholar did attract substantial donations. In 1823, a juren degree holder surnamed Yang from Fuping, Shaanxi, visited Zhang Shu (1781–1847) and told Zhang the story of sixteen-year-old faithful maiden Wang from his county. Wang was a peasant daughter. When her fiancé had died three years earlier and her parents began to arrange a second betrothal, she ran to her deceased fiancé’s home in secret and threatened to jump

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into a well when her father tried to take her home. As a result she was allowed to stay. Her in-laws had died a long time ago, and only her fiancé’s grandparents, both in their seventies, were still alive. The family was destitute, and despite her hard labor at needlework, she could not make enough to earn a living. Upon hearing about the case, Zhang Shu immediately wrote a long essay for Yang to take with him. The essay describes Wang’s virtuous deeds and ends with the following appeal: It is truly difficult for such a young woman to present a daily meal to her grandparents. Are there no benevolent gentlemen in our society? If they could generously contribute some money, which could be used to buy some land for her, she would be able to support her aging grandparents-in-law until their death. Moreover, she herself would be able to rest and be exempt from worrying about starvation. Isn’t this a great deed to support the virtuous and help to maintain moral principles for our society! I am waiting to see!119

Yang was then serving on the private staff of the prefect of Xi’an. He took Zhang Shu’s essay to the prefect, who in turn showed it to other prefects and to his subordinates. In the end, Yang collected more than one thousand taels of silver in donations. Yang further distributed the essay among the wealthy local gentry and collected more than eight hundred additional taels. Thereupon he purchased some land and a house for the family and used the rest of the money for loans to earn interest for the family’s daily expenses.120 In a similar case, Wu Shenqin (1730 –1803) initiated a drive for donations for faithful maiden Wang Lanying, who married into her in-laws’ family at the age of fifteen and now lived alone after her mother-inlaw’s death. Donors in this case included the prefect, the magistrate, the education instructor of the county, and the county students. The money was entrusted to the magistrate to buy some charitable land (yitian), which would allow the faithful maiden to make a living on its rent.121 In an account written in memory of the event, Wu extolled the moral accomplishment of the faithful maiden. He also adds a personal note to it, saying that two female relatives, a sister of his uncle’s wife and a sister of his own wife, were also faithful maidens. Supporting a needy faithful maiden, a public gesture promoting a moral agenda, had a personal meaning as well. Although many literati members personally took part in activities aiding poverty-stricken faithful maidens, by the nineteenth century, philanthropic institutions that were created specifically to assist chaste women rose quite rapidly across much of the empire. According to ­Angela Leung, the development of so-called widow homes (qingjie tang

210   Choices or xuli hui) represented the elite class’s response to the increasingly hostile social realities that threatened the chaste widow ideal: the lack of economic means for the widows to support themselves and their families, as well as the growing social violence against young widows as targets of forced remarriage. The widow home “was an instrument used by the local elite to uphold the cult of chastity despite unfavorable material conditions.”122 It is noteworthy that, of the eligible relief recipients, faithful maidens were given priority in admission to a widow home, followed by those who were widowed before thirty, those between thirty and forty, and those over forty.123 The privilege underscored both the faithful maiden’s pivotal status as a symbol of female virtue and a practical concern: faithful maidens were more vulnerable than other young widows because of their weaker ties to their marital families and because their virginity made them a more desirable target for forced remarriage.

part three Ideology

People in the whole world do not understand the meaning of the classics, Calling [the faithful maiden practice] extreme; If the meaning of the classics is not made clear, The Confucian Way will be extinguished. —Song Jingwei: “Rectifying Customs: A Song in Honor of Chen Yuan”*

when the f aithful maiden cult rose to prominence in the early sixteenth century, it immediately raised critics’ eyebrows. The initial suspicion that the faithful maiden behavior was too extreme grew into a widespread and heated debate in the Qing period. It centered on the question of ritual propriety but had wider implications. Does Confucian ritual approve of an unmarried woman preserving fidelity for her deceased fiancé or following him in death? The strikingly polarized answers to this question created a range of other questions. For example, at what point in the betrothal process is a marriage finalized? Was the ancient ritual—the core canon of Confucian teaching—still applicable in a changed world? What were the social consequences of such acts, that is, did they damage or buttress social customs? Seemingly academic in nature and concerned exclusively with the faithful maidens, these unsettling questions were tremendously revealing about the ideological ambiguity and divide among the *GGZJ: Buyi/31a.

212   Ideology late imperial educated elite. The debate opens a window into the male-dominant scholarly world in which, contrary to common belief, academic principles were compromised by personal moral perceptions and emotions, as we will see in the ways the evidential scholars participated in the debate. In the meantime, the unprecedented scale, intensity, and long duration of the debate highlights again the centrality of the cult in the lives of men and women of the time, illuminating from yet another angle the power of young women to have a hand in shaping large historical events, in this case, the intellectual agenda of their time.

chapter

Old Rituals and New Questions

7

The Faithful Maiden Debate

the f aithful maiden phenomenon surged in close relation with the chaste widow cult, but the connection between them ends abruptly in regard to the literati’s views of them. In the entire history of late imperial China, only a few men questioned the chaste widow cult, pointing out that it was unreasonable to ask women to endure widowhood while allowing sexual indulgence for men.1 However, disapproval of the faithful maiden cult persistently divided the Confucian elite throughout the late imperial period. The debate over the ideological legitimacy of the faithful maiden cult was embedded in part in the essential importance of Confucian rituals. Ritual had long been a subject of scholarly learning and guidance for Confucian ethical life. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it commanded an even more important role when ritual practice was stressed as “the most effective method for cultivating Confucian virtues and a reliable way to exclude heterodox practices.”2 This contention was further fueled by the rise in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries of evidential scholarship, a revolutionary reorientation of academic research and an intellectual quest that set out to reexamine all accepted knowledge by using the method of empirical study in order to rediscover the true and original meanings of the classics.3 When Confucian rituals were put at the forefront of academic inquiry, the faithful maiden practice came under renewed scrutiny. Essentially, of course, the debate was spurred by the actions of faithful maidens. These young women’s unconventional acts forced male scholars to reexamine the canonical foundations and social implications

214   Ideology of the faithful maiden practice. Perhaps ironically, the search for truth in the classics was not always undertaken to seek guidance for contemporary practice. Rather, scholars, many of whom had personal connections with faithful maidens, combed the classics for evidence to support a moral ideal to which they were already committed or to buttress a stand they felt obligated to take. Consequently, they reinterpreted or even twisted the classics to find grounds upon which textual evidence, moral commitment, and personal emotions could be reconciled. The debate thus opened a unique window into the tensions and negotiations among the Ming-Qing intellectuals, whose lives were deeply entrenched in the unsettling world where young women played a vital role.

Gui Youguang and the Zhennü Controversy during the Ming In the early sixteenth century, a controversy broke out in Songjiang prefecture at the core of the Lower Yangzi region. A number of contemporaries reported the incident, among them Lu Shen: The younger son of the eminent Zhang Zhuangyi [Zhang Ying] died at a young age. He had been engaged to a woman from the Zhao family. When she heard of his death, she rode in a sedan chair to the Zhang family to observe mourning for him [as a widow], and she served his parents as a daughter-in-law. During the Hongzhi reign [1488 –1505], she was over fifty years of age, when Liu Houde [literary name Ziwan] of Yichun, as prefect of Songjiang, reported the case to the court for a jingbiao award. He called her “the daughter of the Zhao family and the chaste widow of the Zhang family.” Gu Shilian, a reader-in-waiting [shidu],4 thought that if she was to be called a daughter-in-law, there was nothing to which the title could be attached [meaning she was not married]; if she was to be called a daughter, she had already left her natal family. [His criticism] implied that it was not appropriate to honor her. Qian Yuqian [Qian Fu], a senior compiler [xiuzhuan],5 raised his arms and rose to argue against it. He cited the stories of Zhang Liang and Tao Qian as examples and wrote more than a thousand words, and still would not stop writing. The debate roused the whole prefecture. At the time I had just returned from the Southern National Academy, and I thought Shilian was right.6

The controversy erupted at a significant historical juncture: the Ming court was about to expand its jingbiao award to include a larger number of faithful maidens than it had before. The incident not only reflects the increased visibility of faithful maidens but also underscores the absence of elite solidarity concerning the court’s position. The men

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involved in this dispute, Qian Fu, Gu Qing (Shilian), and Lu Shen, were all top literati from this culturally sophisticated locality, holding jinshi degrees and government posts (Qian Fu passed the jinshi examination with first-place ranking in 1490). Seemingly, the point at issue was the young woman’s title, but the real concern, as Lu Shen pointed out, was whether the state should recognize faithful maidens.7 This event stood as preface to a long chapter of debate on the faithful maiden practice that persisted well into the early twentieth century. In his lengthy and emotionally charged essay, Qian Fu commends faithful maidens’ steadfastness in their resolution and hails the prefect’s decision as an important step in promoting good social customs. Referring to the conventional analogy of male political loyalty and female fidelity, he compares faithful maidens with righteous commoners who died for their lords or their states. Qian admits that Confucian ritual would not grant a bride the status of a wife if she died before the rite of miaojian (performed three months into a woman’s marriage). However, he adds, the Zhao daughter had been treated by her in-laws as their son’s wife, and she considered herself as such. Therefore, it would be only appropriate that she be called a “chaste widow.”8 Qian’s essay remained in circulation long after the event and into the Qing, a testimony to its influence.9 As we will see, some of the issues and arguments Qian raised would be continuously debated for centuries to come. At a deeper level, what divided the literati was not even so much the state’s position as the ideological soundness of the act. Some were skeptical: “[A woman] who has not yet married is committed to her relationship with her fiancé and makes a vow not to marry [after he dies]. She considers someone who is not her husband to be her husband. Isn’t this taking things too far?”10 Zhan Ruoshui, the philosopher, disputed the assertion: “In today’s world, there are women who treat their husbands like enemies while their husbands are alive, and they lose their husbands in the morning and become someone else’s wife in the evening. Why should I be concerned if faithful maidens overstep the middle path!”11 But other opinions were more ambivalent. For example, the editor of Hangzhou fuzhi commented on Wu Zhenniang, who committed suicide after her fiancé’s death: “People think it extreme for a woman to preserve fidelity before she is married. Isn’t it unseemly to die for one’s fiancé! Whenever I think about what Wu Zhenniang has done, I am deeply moved. [I am moved] not because what she did was in accord with the doctrine of the mean [zhongyong] but because I sympathize with her resolve.”12

216   Ideology A few decades after Qian Fu wrote his defense, Gui Youguang (1507– 71), the famous prose writer and scholar, stepped out onto the platform of the debate. Both men came from the same general area. Although we have no way of knowing if Gui had Qian’s essay in mind, some of his arguments seem to respond quite pointedly to Qian’s defense. Gui Youguang tackled the issue primarily from the viewpoint of Confucian ritual, concluding that for a betrothed girl to die or to remain celibate for her dead fiancé violated the rituals prescribed in the classics. He argued his position on three levels. First, according to the classical marriage rites, a woman could not go to her fiancé’s home without first completing every step of the marriage rites and receiving instruction from her parents. Otherwise, it would be called an “elopement.” When a woman is not yet married, it is only her parents who could have her engaged, and she herself is not involved. This is purely the way for unmarried woman. When the six rites are complete, her fiancé drives a wagon to receive her in person and hands the rope to her;13 her mother sees her off at the gate; and she and her fiancé share the same piece of meat and drink using nuptial wine cups [jin].14 They then become husband and wife. Even if only one of the rites is not complete, her fiancé would not go to receive her in person; without instruction from her parents, a woman would not go [to her fiancé’s home] herself. If she does, it is called elopement.15

Whereas preserving fidelity for a dead fiancé violates the marital ritual for a betrothed woman, her marrying another man is in accordance with the ritual. Gui Youguang cites the chapter “Inquiries from Zengzi” (Zengzi Wen) in Book of Rites (Liji): Zengzi asks [Confucius]: “In the marital ritual, if a man’s father or mother dies after betrothal gifts have been presented and an auspicious day for his wedding has been chosen, what should he do?” Confucius says: “After he buries his father or mother, [his father’s eldest brother] should send someone over to the family of the woman to whom his nephew is engaged and say:16 ‘The son of so-and-so has lost his parent; therefore we cannot hold the wedding [literally, “become relatives”]. I am sent to deliver this message.’ The woman’s family agrees, but they do not marry her to someone else. [The fact that] they agree and do not marry her to someone else means that they [could disagree and] marry her to someone. When the man’s mourning period is over, the woman’s parents send someone over to ask [him to marry their daughter]. If the man does not marry her, her parents then marry her to someone else. This is what the ritual prescribes.”

Following this piece of evidence, Gui Youguang cites another passage to show that, in fact, even if a woman has completed all of the marriage rites except the miaojian, the ritual that confirms her status as a

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daughter-in-law, she is still not considered a member of her husband’s family. Zengzi asks: “If a woman dies before she has performed the ritual of miaojian, what should be done?” Confucius says: “Her coffin should not be placed in the ancestral temple. Her tablet should not be positioned next to that of her mother-in-law [to receive sacrifice]. [At the funeral,] her husband should not hold a cane, nor wear shoes of straw, nor should he dwell in a [special] place [for mourning]. She should be returned to her own family to be buried. This is to show that she has not yet become a wife.” If she has not yet become a wife, she is not tied to her husband.

According to ritual, the date for miaojian is set at three months after the wedding. If the bride dies before miaojian is performed, she is not eligible for the ritualistic rights prescribed for a wife and daughter-inlaw. She does not have a place in the ancestral hall and is not offered the sacrifice entitled to a daughter-in-law; furthermore, her husband does not wear mourning dress or dwell “at a [special] place” at her funeral, which are rituals for mourning a wife. That she should be buried at the graveyard of her own family puts a final stamp on her status as an outsider. Gui concluded: Betrothal is a matter of which her parents are in charge. A woman does not know to whom she belongs. This is to guard against shameful behaviors. If we speak from this perspective, for a betrothed woman not to marry a different man or to die for her fiancé is meaningless. Some people say: “It can encourage morality in our society.” Are the rituals established by our early kings not enough to encourage morality in our society, and is this the only way to encourage it?17

Moreover, Gui suggests, for a young woman to remain celibate for a dead man violates the social rituals that govern human society and runs counter to the law of the cosmos. Yin-yang harmony, manifested in the union between sexes, is essential to human beings; therefore, it is harmful if the natural yin-yang balance is blocked. Gui’s essay, entitled “On Faithful Maidens,” set the cornerstone for the faithful maiden debate for the remainder of imperial history. The approaches Gui took to the debate defined the principles under which the debate would be conducted. That is to say, Confucian rituals, more than anything else, held the ultimate authority in judging the legitimacy of the faithful maiden practice. The ritual texts that laid the foundation for Gui’s position would be repeatedly reinterpreted; his yin-yang analysis would also set a framework of argument for the future debate. Gui Youguang’s most important legacy was perhaps that he himself would

218   Ideology evolve into a defining symbol: a debater’s own position was defined vis-à-vis the position of Gui Youguang. But Gui Youguang’s stance in the debate was not clear-cut. In his old age, likely in response to a request, Gui wrote a biography of a certain faithful maiden Zhang. In it, Gui reiterates that the faithful maiden practice is not in accordance with Confucian rituals. However, he states that “the rituals are to guide the ordinary people of a society. Some people possess outstanding character that rises beyond the normal human condition. [What they accomplish] is called the excessive deed performed by the virtuous and the wise, which sages would not forbid.” Thus, “although the unusual behavior [of the virtuous and the wise] is not in accordance with the rituals, wouldn’t a gentleman still love to tell about it!”18 When faced with the touching story of the young woman’s sacrifice, we may imagine, Gui Youguang softened his critical tone. His compromise betrayed the profound ambivalence on the subject intrinsic to Ming-Qing literati. At a rational level, he was compelled to defend the principles of the sages’ teachings; yet emotionally, it was against his conscience not to acknowledge the sacrifices these young women made. However, his revised position was rarely recognized. The growing intensity of the debate in the late Ming left its traces in the writings of Han Qia, Lü Kun, and Ma Zhide.19 Ma’s argument is particularly noteworthy, for it bore a clear mark of the late Ming endorsement of human desire and human emotion, or qing. He emphasized that what faithful maidens did was not only against the rituals but also against natural human feelings and sexual needs: “Between men and women there exists a great desire [da yu]. The things that qing cannot control, even sages would not forbid. . . . Therefore, can we ask every ordinary woman to live up to the ideal of chaste widowhood?” Those who “call themselves widows even when their betrothal processes have just started, or go to weep for their fiancés before the ritual of qinying [in which a groom goes to his bride’s home to receive her in person] is performed, or rush to mourn strangers against their parents’ instructions, or kill themselves to follow the dead” do not act on true human feelings.20 Here, in his view, is where the difference between a chaste widow and a faithful maiden lies: pure conjugal affection ties a widow to her deceased husband; the absence of this affection makes the faithful maiden’s act unnatural. Widows’ celibacy is commendable, because “publicly they do not forget yi, and privately they do not forget en (the affection between a wife and a husband).”21 But with no conjugal love

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to speak of, the faithful maiden act is affected. This point of view was to be raised again by Qing critics.22 By the sixteenth century, the faithful maiden phenomenon had brought to the surface an array of issues that the educated elite were forced to confront and articulate. What was the intended function of the ancient rituals? What were the relationships among human feelings, ritual, and morality? What was the foundation upon which women should preserve fidelity? Where did the line between appropriateness and extremity lie? These questions would continue to excite the scholarly community of the Qing.

Debate in the Early Qing As previously noted, dynastic change and the alien conquest of a native Chinese empire in the mid-seventeenth century gave new symbolic meanings to the faithful maiden. The voices praising faithful maidens had never been louder, but the controversy continued. Lixue scholar Tian Lanfang (1628 –1701) noted, “Ever since unmarried women began to commit suicide following their fiancés in death, there have arisen widely divided discussions about it. No conclusion has been reached to this date.”23 Peng Dingqiu’s (1645 –1719) remarks reflected the increasing influence of Gui Youguang in the debate: “Today people who make arguments frequently cite Zhenchuan’s [Gui Youguang’s] viewpoint, saying that it is impartial and correct.”24 Both men disagreed with Gui, however. Peng, who took first place in the palace jinshi examination under Emperor Kangxi, thought that Gui’s argument was “far-fetched, hardly hit moral principles, and was not what should be used to teach people.”25 It is noteworthy that Gui Zhuang (1613 –73), Gui Youguang’s greatgrandson, did not stand by his ancestor unwaveringly. From the same hometown as Gu Yanwu, he was also a Ming loyalist and a close friend of Gu, whose faithful maiden mother, as we may recall, starved herself to death following the fall of the Ming. Gui Zhuang at one point states that committing suicide to follow a fiancé in death “exceeded the ways of human beings [renqing], was not the correct path of the rituals, and should not be made an example for people to follow.”26 In a later essay, however, while asserting that his great-grandfather’s argument was “written with clarity and argued with precision,” he tried to explain what made it outmoded: Gui Youguang lived at a time of moral prosperity; thus, his view could be used to curb excessive deeds. But in his own day, ritual boundaries had collapsed. Therefore, great moral exemplars

220   Ideology such as faithful maidens were needed to save the “broken principles.”27 In short, a different era called for different actions. The essay was completed in 1663, two decades into the Manchu conquest. As a Ming loyalist, Gui Zhuang had every reason to see the Ming as an age of moral growth and the reign of the Manchus as a time of moral decay. Wherever learned men gathered—at private meetings as well as in public work spaces— controversy broke out. One of these places was the Office of Ming History (Mingshi guan), where the most respected scholars of the era, who had just passed the distinguished 1679 special examination called boxue hongci (broad learning and magnificent words), were appointed by Emperor Kangxi to compile the official history of the Ming dynasty.28 The debate was particularly intense there for one important reason: these men held the responsibility of selecting exemplary women to be recorded in the Ming History (Gu Yanwu, for example, wrote a letter to his friends in Mingshi guan asking to have his faithful maiden mother’s biography included in it). Was it appropriate to honor faithful maidens in this official history? Zhang Lie (jinshi, 1670), a lixue scholar, insisted that the Ming History should not include their biographies because what they did was “wrong.” Mao Qiling, then a supporter of faithful maidens, responded immediately that Zhang Lie just “does not like to help other people fulfill their convictions.”29 The controversy was also shaping the ways in which scholars composed faithful maiden biographies. Biographical writing was frequently turned into a forum of debate. Unlike their Ming counterparts, Qing writers directly took up the issue in their opening or concluding remarks, using a good portion of the essay to state their positions in the controversy. Some adopted a question-and-answer format to organize their argument, virtually transforming the supposedly eulogistic biographies into analytical essays of rebuttal. Two of Mao’s other Mingshi guan colleagues, Zhu Yizun and Wang Wan, were passionate defenders of faithful maidens, using biography as their weapon. Wang Wan’s position in the controversy was made clear when he wrote a biography in the 1660s in response to Wei Xiangshu’s solicitation for a eulogy for the faithful maiden Song Dian. It begins with the familiar metaphor of the parallel relationships between husband and wife and between ruler and minister, equating the faithful maiden with a commoner who had not served a ruler but was nevertheless commended by Confucius for his loyalty to the ruler. Wang then proceeds: The ritual says: “Without a matchmaker, a man and a woman do not know each other; without the ritual of accepting betrothal gifts, they do not develop a

Old Rituals and New Questions   221 relationship and do not come into contact.” Then, when a matchmaker is working, the two sides know each other. When betrothal gifts are presented, their relationship and contact are defined. Zengzi asks: “An auspicious day has been selected for marrying a woman, but the woman dies. What should people do?” Confucius says: “Her fiancé should put on zicui [second-degree mourning garments] to mourn her. After the burial, he takes it off. If a fiancé dies, the woman should do the same.” This means that for a fiancé’s death, a woman should wear zhancui [first-degree mourning garments] to mourn him. When the fiancé is alive, they have defined their relationships and contacts; when he dies, she puts on zhancui to mourn him. As such, what is extreme about a woman following her fiancé in death?30

Here Wang presents the cornerstone of his argument: the betrothal marks the establishment of the faithful maiden’s ritual obligations toward her fiancé. Even when the rituals are not yet complete, she already knows to whom she belongs. That established relationship is further cemented in the mourning ritual specified for her in the case of her fiancé’s death. Therefore, it is wrong to accuse a faithful maiden of overstepping the bounds of propriety. Wang’s arguments resonated with the views of many others, including Peng Dingqiu.31 Broad learning in the ritual classics enabled Wang to dig up implicit yet authoritative materials. But he still fell short of dismissing Gui Youguang’s evidence that a woman is not regarded as a wife before the ritual of miaojian. A few years later, Wang had a chance to confront that issue. In an epitaph for another faithful maiden to whom he was personally connected, the daughter of Song Shiying and daughter-in-law of Ji Dong—both men were friends of his—he argues: The ritual has regularities and variations. After an auspicious day for marriage has been selected, the fiancé dies. The woman wears zhancui to mourn for him. After the burial, she takes it off. This is normal. If the woman preserves her loyalty and does not marry someone else, this is a variation. What Jiting’s [Song Shiying’s] daughter did for Ruzi [her fiancé] varies even further from this variation: at the beginning, she did not put on makeup and did not drink wine or eat meat; later on, she fasted and died from it, not minding her own death. She was already a daughter-in-law of the Ji family. How could we judge her with the ritual requirements for an unmarried woman?32

Wang seems to suggest that if a woman conducts herself as a daughter-in-law, she is a daughter-in-law. He managed to dismiss the main piece of Gui’s evidence through a “normality-variation” scheme. Wang suggests that rituals are intended for normal circumstances, and they should not be used as a measure against exceptional individuals such as faithful maidens.

222   Ideology At approximately the same time that Wang Wan composed this essay, Zhu Yizun, whose highly acclaimed Jing yi kao (A textual study of the classics) earned him a special place in Confucian classical studies, joined his friend in the debate. Zhu had been an ardent supporter of the faithful maiden cult all along; when Wei Xiangshu solicited writings for faithful maiden Song Dian, Zhu wrote a long commemorative poem in reply (he was one of the best-known poets of the seventeenth century). He articulated his view mainly in two essays, both organized in question-and-answer format. Tackling the question of whether “a faithful maiden is justified in acting like a chaste widow,” Zhu first elaborated on the emotional link between a betrothed couple fostered through many ritual exchanges in the process of betrothal.33 Directed at people like Ma Zhide, who saw the faithful maidens’ acts as affected, Zhu stressed that from the time the betrothal process begins, mutual affection is in the making. This feeling is the foundation of the husband-wife relationship; hence, even if a young woman has not yet married, she is justified in preserving her chastity for her fiancé. He further pointed out that, according to ritual, a girl who has been betrothed, has performed the rite of hair pinning (ji),34 and has been given a literary name (zi) would wear a colored ribbon (ying) that would be taken off personally by her husband when she marries. “All these show that she is tied to her husband, and the rituals are used to cultivate her chastity. This indicates her duty to follow one husband.”35 After demonstrating that there is nothing inappropriate about a betrothed girl preserving chastity for her dead fiancé, Zhu refutes the argument used by the critics, drawn on the Confucian mourning ritual, that a bereaved fiancée attends her fiancé’s funeral as a guest rather than a hostess (meaning the wife of the deceased). He writes: It is written in the Book of Rites that, if a woman loses her fiancé before she is married, she should go to mourn him. [Generally,] mourners take off their mourning clothing immediately after the funeral. However, she wears the mourning dress of zhancui, which is worn by a wife for her husband, and she does not take it off until the burial is over. [This indicates that] she is not like an ordinary mourner. Furthermore, according to the Han dynasty system, a woman should not wear zhancui twice in her life. She has already worn it to mourn her fiancé, and if she marries [someone else], she would wear it again [when her husband dies]. This is wearing zhancui twice. A virtuous maiden would not do it because of her sense of yi.36

The evidence, although indirect, seems to point to some ritual grounds in favor of Zhu’s position. If “a woman should not wear zhancui twice in her life,” then a faithful maiden, who has worn it once to mourn her fi-

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ancé, is certainly not justified in marrying another man. However, Zhu’s interpretation was subject to debate. According to Mao Qiling, Zhu did not get it right. Mao Qiling was known to his contemporaries as erudite, sharp, arrogant, and, above all, argumentative. The combination of his personality and his broad learning earned him the reputation of a “formidable man” (haojie zhi shi) who could make the most learned scholars “change their countenance and stumble” (bianse shibu).37 Naturally, such a man would not sit quietly by when such an unsettling issue aroused the literati community. However, Mao Qiling’s stance changed over the course of his life. For many years, he stood by faithful maidens, constantly answering solicitations with biographies and poems.38 But it seems that Mao became increasingly doubtful of his position as he grew older.39 He began to turn down requests for faithful maiden eulogies when he was in his seventies, saying: “I have heard a lot about faithful maiden stories, but I do not dare record them. I have concluded that, although this type of thing is difficult to accomplish, it actually is not in accord with rituals.”40 His change of attitude must have surprised his own students. Tian Deming ( jinshi, 1685), one of his disciples, brought up the question during their discussion of the rituals. Mao explained that earlier he praised faithful maidens because he was afraid their “extraordinary acts and unusual virtue would not be known to the world, and [people would] claim mediocre and despicable behaviors as deeds of propriety.” But now he feared that “those who are not clear about the ritual [concerning betrothed women] are so stupid as to disregard their lives to follow their fiancés in death, believing what they do is in line with the orthodox rituals.” Therefore, he felt he must act to distinguish true principles from false understanding.41 Not long after this conversation, in 1711, someone asked the eightynine-year-old Mao for a contribution for a faithful maiden who had committed suicide. He declined, and the incident prompted him to write the longest and most impassioned essay in the debate, “Prohibit Unmarried Women from Enduring Widowhood and Dying for Their Fiancés.” Calling himself “no good,” he admitted that his defense of the faithful maiden practice in the past had been mistaken, and that he was deeply disturbed by the fictionalized presentations of female fidelity of his day, which often emphasized dramatic details of women’s qing and repeated suicide attempts. In Mao’s view, this all violated Confucian ritual and moral propriety. Mao Qiling’s search for textual evidence reached both within and beyond ritual texts. After pointing out that faithful maiden behavior

224   Ideology had no precedent in history, he went on to demonstrate how far faithful maidens had deviated from the prescribed rituals. To this end, Mao presents a minute explanation of the rituals, showing that not until she had finished every strictly prescribed step was a woman considered a wife. Moreover, only the woman whose wedding date has been set should mourn a dead fiancé. That is to say, other betrothed women are not expected to do so. In addition, the prescription that a woman should wear zhancui to mourn her fiancé appears in a commentary on the Book of Rites, not in the book itself. Even in the commentary, it is never stated that she should wear mourning garb for three years [as should a wife]. Rather, she should remove it after the burial. At length, Mao Qiling confronts the one piece of hard evidence Zhu Yizun has presented: “a woman should not wear zhancui twice in her life.” This was a sheer distortion of the classics, declares Mao Qiling. What it meant was that a woman “does not honor two [men at the same time].” More specifically, “when she is home, she obeys her father and honors only her father. Therefore, an unmarried woman wears zhancui for her father for three years. After she is married, she follows her husband and honors him. She therefore wears zhancui for her husband and lowers the degree of mourning to wear zicui for her father.”42 Angrily, Mao accuses his opponents of changing the classics. “Think how few classics the sages left us. What will survive all these changes!”43 The essay climaxes with Mao’s passionate denunciation of following a fiancé in death. The highly praised heroic deed is in Mao’s view an utter transgression of the sages’ teachings. There is absolutely no support for it either in history or in the classics. In ancient times, there were people who died for their country, but no people died to follow someone in death. Moreover, there was no such a thing as a wife or a husband following a spouse in death. . . . The people one reveres most in human society are the ruler and parents; whom he or she devotes utmost loyalty to and loves most are also the ruler and parents. If it were appropriate to die to follow one’s ruler or parent in death, then, who does not have a ruler or two parents? With a ruler and two parents for everybody [to die for], there would be no one left in this world. Even a person with three lives would still have no life left over for committing suicide for a spouse.44

Mao closes his long, passionate essay with a call to forbid unmarried girls from enduring widowhood or killing themselves for their deceased fiancés. He explains his intention in writing the essay: it is his mission to “restore the Confucian teaching that has been distorted and to sustain the rituals that have become despised,” and he wants “to pro-

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tect the lives of simpleminded men and women for thousands of years and millions of generations to come.”45 Mao’s opposition to the faithful maiden practice has a distinct Confucian humanitarian component that was lacking from most of his contemporaries’ discussions.

Leading Qian-Jia Scholars in the Debate When Mao Qiling died in 1716, a new generation of scholars was on its way to creating one of the most influential bodies of scholarship in Chinese history—the evidential school, or the “Qian-Jia school,” which drew its name from the two reign periods (Qianlong, 1736 –95, and Jiaqin, 1796 –1820) under which it proliferated. Pioneered by seventeenth-century scholars, Mao Qiling and Zhu Yizun among them, the new academic discourse was a reaction to the so-far dominant lixue intellectual tradition, which studied Confucian texts from a metaphysical perspective for the purpose of moral perfection, while deemphasizing the empirical basis of the classics from which ideas were established. The evidential scholars, in contrast, took as their fundamental goal the restoration of the true meaning of the classics—many of which, according to them, had been misinterpreted by the lixue scholars—and the authentic history of the past. Their principal methodology was “verifying with textual evidence” with an impartial mind, as spelled out by Dai Zhen (1723 –77): “In whatever I say about a matter, I do not allow the opinions of others to mislead me, nor do I permit my own opinions to betray me.”46 Centered on the Lower Yangzi region, this transition from “philosophy to philology” fundamentally changed the direction of intellectual inquiry.47 Of all the leading evidential scholars of this era, Wang Zhong (1745 – 94) was the most adamant critic of the faithful maiden cult. Although by his day ritual texts had been repeatedly scrutinized by both sides, he was able to break new ground with his penetrating reading of the classics. He pronounces that faithful maidens “violate the rituals” on a number of grounds. First, their action was against the rituals regulating marriage and husband-wife relations. Wang Zhong divides the marital ritual into two parts. The first five steps, including nacai (presenting a gift [goose] to the woman’s family), wenmin (asking the name of the woman [to be used for divination]), naji (informing her family of the auspicious result of the divination), nazheng (presenting betrothal gifts to her family), and qinqi (asking her family for a wedding date), are how “a marriage is carried out” but are not what “puts the marriage to

226   Ideology completion.” A marriage is not finalized until the rest of the ceremonies, qinying (receiving the bride in person [by the groom]), tonglao ([groom and bride] sharing one piece of meat), and jian jiugu (introducing the bride to her parents-in-law), are performed.48 In addition, according to the mourning ritual, a woman puts on mourning dress as a daughter-inlaw only after the sixth step, qinying, is complete. Therefore, a betrothed woman can marry another man even after the wedding date is set. The faithful maiden act is wrong because it puts husband-wife relationships—the foundation of all other human relations—in jeopardy, for only when a husband takes a woman as his wife can a son take her as his mother and her parents-in-law take her as their daughter-in-law. However, “nowadays,” a saddened Wang Zhong notes, “a woman has not shared a room with her fiancé while alive, but she shares the grave with him after death. She is called a faithful maiden when alive but is addressed as ‘my late mother’ after death [by her adopted son]; nothing is more in violation of ritual than this!”49 Moreover, says Wang Zhong, the faithful maiden also violates the ritual rules that regulate a daughter-parent relationship. Here, the principle that “a woman should not wear zhancui twice in her life” is again at the center of the contention, but Wang Zhong has a different take on it. What this ritual prescribes, he stresses (as does Mao Qiling), is that after the marriage a woman wears zhancui garments for her husband and wears a zicui garment for her parents. In the case of the faithful maiden, however, “she has not married, yet she mourns her fiancé excessively at a higher grade than she would mourn her own parents. Thus, she lowers the status of her parents. For her fiancé, this makes no sense; for her parents, this is unfilial.” Like Mao Qiling, Wang Zhong was also deeply disturbed by the suicide of the faithful maidens. The difference between the two men’s arguments seems to be that Mao emphasized a Confucian spirit of humanity, whereas Wang focused on the inviolability of ritual. Ancient sages do not permit people to die out of grief or commit suicide to follow someone in death. Still, he argues, if someone dies as a result of failing to overcome sadness over the death of a father, lord, or husband, he or she might gain sympathy. However, “if a recluse who has never served a lord wails, shouts, and kills himself, he cannot be called a loyal official. A faithful maiden is no different from such a man.” As the faithful maiden practice is a violation of Confucian rituals, everyone is obligated to put a stop to it: “If the woman wants to do it, her parents and her fiancé’s parents have the duty to stop her; if her parents or her

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fiancé’s parents want her to do it, the officials of the state and the gentlemen in their communities have the duty to stop them.”50 Some of the most distinguished Qian-Jia scholars hailed Wang’s essay as a classic piece of evidential scholarship. In his preface to An Account of Learning (Shuxue, a collection of Wang Zhong’s works published posthumously by his son), Wang Niansun (1744 –1832) pointed out this essay along with several others as Wang Zhong’s most accomplished research, believing that it would “help future scholars of the Confucian classics clarify their confusion and understand the meanings of the classics thoroughly.”51 Sun Xinyan (1753 –1818) was particularly convinced by Wang’s argument that the faithful maiden practice breached the rituals because a woman mourned her fiancé at a higher grade than she would her own parents, asserting that this work “is beneficial to the studies of the Confucian classics and is helpful to maintain social order.”52 Such high regard, of course, was not universal. In fact, Wang provoked serious counterattacks. Hu Chenggong (1776 –1832), whose study of the Book of Songs represented a high achievement in that field, rebutted, arguing that marriage was in fact finalized with the rite of nazheng. If, as Wang Zhong argued, a husband-wife relation was established after the rite of jian jiugu, which was held the day following the wedding, then why, as the ritual prescribes, would a bride be taken back to her natal home for burial in the event of her death before the ritual of miaojian, which is held three months after the wedding? In Hu’s opinion (and he cites Ying Yuanli, a ritual scholar, to back it up), this demonstrates that miaojian, the rite of “becoming a daughter-in-law,” is more important than the rites of “becoming a wife,” such as the bride and groom eating the same piece of meat and sleeping in the same bed. Therefore, one should not regard a faithful maiden as “shameless” just because she has not lived with her husband.53 Wang Zhong’s fiercest foe was Zhang Xuecheng (1738 –1801). In a long essay written after Wang’s death, Zhang disputes virtually all of Wang’s points. The faithful maiden should not be accused of “marrying someone of her own will,” he argues, because she has been engaged to her fiancé following her parents’ instruction. The five steps before the ceremony of qinying, moreover, were parts of the marital ritual. Zhang’s most radical view was to be found in his assessment of the applicability of the rituals. He emphasized that social institutions differed in his day from those in ancient times; therefore, “some of the rituals that earlier kings made should not be changed, yet others must not be carried

228   Ideology on.” For example, the ancient institution of the ancestral shrine had been abandoned, so the ceremony of miaojian, which according to ritual marked the bride’s final step into her new status as a daughter-in-law, was no longer performed.54 Here the applicability of the ancient rituals rose to the core of the debate. Critics like Wang Zhong emphasized that “although the affairs of the world undergo numerous changes, the propriety of the ancient rituals cannot be changed.” Supporters simply dismissed the point as “pedantic.”55 Li Wenzao, another evidential scholar, frankly admitted that “there are many rituals prescribed in the Book of Rites that are not applicable today.”56 The marriage behavior has been changed, points out Jiao Xun (1763 –1820): “In ancient times, marriage was confirmed by the ritual of qinying. Therefore, it is appropriate to marry a woman to someone else if her fiancé has died. Today, a marriage is fixed at nacai. Therefore, if her fiancé has died, it is not appropriate to marry her to someone else.”57 The authority of ancient rituals, created by the earlier kings to provide fundamental guidance for human beings and society, are implicitly discredited. While stressing the limited applicability of the ancient rituals, Jiao Xun found new sources of legitimacy to support the faithful maiden cult. Eighteen years Wang’s junior and also from Yangzhou, Jiao Xun held high admiration for Wang Zhong’s scholarship and enjoyed Wang’s friendship.58 But the two men could not have been more polarized in their views on the faithful maiden cult. Jiao wrote four essays purported to “clarify the confusions of those who believe in Gui Youguang’s view” (two of which were said to have “circulated fairly widely in society and brought agreement among gentlemen of the current time”).59 After criticizing his opponents’ readings as “too limited,”60 he continued, citing the imperial regulations: According to imperial law, if someone has had his daughter betrothed, and he has received the marriage letter, or has a private agreement, yet he overturns the engagement, he will be punished with whipping [chi] fifty times. Even though there is no marriage letter, if he has accepted a betrothal gift, he shall receive the same punishment. As soon as the marriage letter is received and the betrothal gift is accepted, they can be used to settle [marriage] lawsuits by officials and to determine marital relations between people. It is not necessary to wait until the ritual of qinying is performed to finalize the husband-wife relationship.61

Jiao Xun was clearly shifting the central ground of the debate. It was no longer about whether ancient rituals sanctioned the faithful maiden practice. Instead, ritual was only one source of authority, the other being the

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current government law. The argument was apparently not Jiao’s alone. Yao Nai, the leading writer of the Tongcheng literary school, also had recourse to that law in his defense of faithful maidens.62 Dismissing the authority of ritual and appealing to imperial law, one may argue, betrayed some kind of the desperation of the critics in their search for evidence. The debates became increasingly emotional, even personal. For instance, Zhang Xuecheng repeatedly mentioned Wang Zhong’s name, and at one point even derided him as having “lost his mind.”63 Jiao Xun predicted that those who criticized faithful maidens would “meet with disaster.”64 Understandably, he would not openly make Wang Zhong his target. He fixed his criticism on Gui Youguang instead and invites his readers to imagine what Gui Youguang might do if he were to face the same tragic circumstance: “If Xifu [Gui Youguang] [died and his] fiancée abandoned him to marry someone else, would he willingly accept it? . . . Pedants read books but do not think about them deeply. They make arguments with insufficient reasoning, and they often cannot practice what they argue!”65 “Pedant” was a powerful term in the arsenal of faithful maiden supporters. For example, Li ­Ciming (1830 – 95) also deployed it in his attack on the critics.66 Implying that the critics were superficial readers of the classics, the phrase was meant to dismiss the textual edge the critics clearly enjoyed. Jiao Xun admits that he “deeply dislikes” Gui’s “paradoxical” view. His obsession with the issue compelled him to fight anyone who sided with Gui. Zhang Liangyu was a jinshi-degree holder from Jiao Xun’s native town and about a generation older. He happened to be a great admirer of Gui Youguang and a critic of the faithful maiden cult. Zhang argues in plain language and with common sense: “Only when a man and a woman live in one room is their husband-wife relationship established. When there is no husband-wife relationship, there is no reason that a woman should preserve fidelity until she dies.”67 Jiao Xun calls Zhang’s opinion most “absurd” and writes: “Those who argue [against the faithful maiden practice] stick to what is written in ‘Inquiries from Zengzi.’ However, they do not realize that what ‘Inquiries from Zengzi’ says is not that a woman can marry someone else when her fiancé dies; what it says is that she can marry someone else if her fiancé encounters the death of his parent.”68 In making this distinction, Jiao found another way to discredit his opponents’ argument, disregarding the fact that the passage in question plainly showed that marriage ritual permitted a betrothed woman to marry someone else. Intentionally or not, Jiao ignores this obvious reasoning and thus dismisses the evidence.

230   Ideology Liu Baonan (1791–1855), well known for his commentary on the Analects of Confucius, also wrestled with the evidence from the Book of Rites. Liu wanted to demonstrate that permitting a betrothed woman to marry a different man was only “the exterior meaning of the ritual,” whereas forbidding her to marry was the real message. One of the major pieces of evidence, that “a woman should not wear zhancui twice in her life,” had been disputed by Mao Qiling and Wang Zhong, yet Liu seems to have ignored their opinions.69 It is somewhat surprising that highly acclaimed evidential scholars such as Jiao Xun and Liu Baonan did not value “evidence” in this case. Their struggle with textual evidence reveals both their determination and their frustration. Scholarship in the Qing was predominantly a male enterprise. Women, including learned faithful maidens such as Song Jingwei, followed the debate closely. Song did her own textual research. In “Rectifying Customs: A Song in Honor of Chen Yuan,” she devoted nearly the entire poem to defending the legitimacy of faithful maidenhood, citing extensively from ancient ritual and other classics and contemporary male scholars’ essays.70 But only one woman ventured directly into the male domain of evidential scholarship, taking an opposite position from that of Song Jingwei. She was Wang Zhaoyuan (1763 –1851), one of the Qing dynasty’s most erudite female writers and the wife of Hao Yixing (1755 –1823), an accomplished evidential scholar.71 In the early nineteenth century, Wang Zhaoyuan and her husband resided in the capital, Beijing, enjoying a circle of scholarly friends, while Wang Zhaoyuan worked on her Supplemental Commentary to the ­Biographies of Exemplary Women (Lienü zhuan buzhu). Commenting on the chapter on Lady Weixuan, the earliest faithful maiden on record, Wang Zhaoyuan delivers a sharp criticism. She calls Weixuan’s actions excessive and squarely outside the bounds of propriety. As did many other opponents since Gui Youguang, she believed that what “Inquiries from Zengzi” prescribes should be considered the guidance for the situation; that is, Lady Weixuan should wear zhancui mourning garments to her dead fiancé’s funeral and take off the garments when the burial is complete. “When a woman is married, she follows her husband. If she is not married, whom is she supposed to follow? How could a woman put on the zhancui garments and observe three years of mourning for someone to whom she is not married?”72 Upon Wang Zhaoyuan’s completion of the book, her husband passed it on to Zang Yong (1767–1811), also a reputed scholar in the classics, for a review. Zang singled out her comments on Lady Weixuan for special extolment, noting that it was a

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good example of Wang Zhaoyuan’s ability to get to the original meaning of the ritual.73

Beyond Evidential Circles Wang Zhaoyuan was forthright in delivering her verdict. In contrast to other learned women, including Wanyan Yun Zhu, who passionately sang the praises of faithful maidens’ virtue, Wang Zhaoyuan was eager to set Confucian rituals right, and she saw the significance of the story of Lady Weixuan in the debate. Over the course of the Qing, indeed, the Lady Weixuan story played an increasing part in the controversy. For example, Zhuang Cunyu (1719 – 89) confessed that, although he was troubled by the critics’ views, he did not know how to argue against them. Not until he read the Lady Weixuan story did he realize that she represented the higher virtue that the sages intended for society. Taking off the mourning garments after the fiancé’s burial was the ritual set for people deemed less than exceptional.74 Zhuang was the founder of the Changzhou “New Text” school that would come to prominence in the nineteenth century.75 The debate over the faithful maiden cult was not the exclusive domain of evidential scholars. In fact, throughout the Qing, it drew scholars whose intellectual passion lay outside the evidential discipline. For example, both Luo Yougao and Peng Shaosheng took primary interest in lixue and Buddhism. Peng, like his grandfather Peng Dingqiu, was an ardent supporter and expressed his great admiration in composing the “Biographies of Four Faithful Maidens” (one of whom was Song Jingwei). The work was said to have become quite influential, but some scholars of ritual questioned it. Luo Yougao, his friend, wrote a long essay to “clarify the remaining confusions of contemporary people.” In Luo’s view, the real meaning of zhongyong—the doctrine of the mean— had not been understood since ancient times, and the concept had long been misused by people to disguise their mediocre behavior and hide their shortcomings. If the deeds of the four outstanding women are seen as not in accordance with zhongyong, how could one consider the behaviors of “those stupid women who follow the custom, drifting along and having no control of themselves” a manifestation of zhongyong?76 The key passages from “Inquiries from Zengzi” from the Book of Rites were again featured at the center of the discussion. Zhuang Cunyu, for example, weighed in with his innovative reading of the passage that concerns the situation in which a person dies before marriage. The

232   Ideology i­ nstruction given by Confucius is that if a fiancé dies, the woman should wear the zhancui garment to mourn him and take it off after the burial. According to the Han commentator Zheng Xuan, the reason is that the couple does not have conjugal bonds. Zhuang Cunyu disagreed. He argues that zhancui is not a mourning garment worn only for the funeral rites, and contrary to what “Inquiries from Zengzi” instructs, a woman would not take it off after her fiancé’s burial. Zhuang builds this conclusion on one of the two key words the passage uses to refer to a fiancé. In the first reference, the word used is xu (strictly meaning “a fiancé”), but in the second reference, fu (strictly meaning “a husband”) is used. Zhuang concludes that the word fu hints that a marital relation has been established for the woman. Therefore, she (as with the case of a wife) would not take off her zhancui garment after the burial.77 Liu ­ Fenglu (1776 –1829), Zhuang’s grandson and a leading New Text scholar, regarded this as the most credible interpretation of the excerpt, citing it as a major piece of evidence in his argument defending the faithful maiden cult.78

Disputes in Commentaries to Confucian Classics Throughout the Ming and Qing periods, commentaries on Confucian classics, produced by individual scholars and with government sponsorship (sometimes bearing the authorship of emperors), were also turned into arenas in which sharply different opinions contested with each other. Some of the disagreement concentrated, again, on the crucial passages from the Book of Rites discussed earlier. The following discussion will show that, in the tradition of Confucian commentaries, few disputes arose over these passages until the faithful maiden cult came to command a major influence in society. The reinterpretations of these passages corresponded precisely with the rise of the faithful maiden cult, testifying from yet another angle to the cult’s impact on the intellectual agenda of the era. As will be recalled, one passage from “Inquiries from Zengzi” concerns the situation in which a fiancé’s parent dies when the wedding has been planned, and the instruction given is that the groom’s family should inform the woman’s parents that they would not be able to proceed with the marriage (as the mourning ritual forbids wedding during the period of mourning for a parent). The woman’s parents agree, and in the meantime they do not marry their daughter to someone else. The passage gives these instructions to be followed after the

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fiancé has completed the mourning for his parent: “The woman’s family sends a messenger to ask the groom [to marry their daughter]. If he does not marry her, they can marry her off. This is in accordance with the ritual. The fiancée’s family should do the same if her parents die.” But to whom would the woman be married if her fiancé does not take her? The traditional view—a major piece of evidence for critics such as Gui Youguang—holds that she may marry someone else. Zheng Xuan, the Han authority on Confucian classics, explains that the reason the fiancé’s family notifies the woman’s family is that they do not want the man’s years spent observing the mourning ritual to cause the woman to pass her prime age for marriage. Kong Yingda, the Tang master on the classics, provides a more explicit note: when a girl finishes mourning a parent, if her family rejects her fiancé’s request for marriage, the fiancé may marry a different woman (bie qu).79 The Yuan scholar Chen Hao (1261–1341) elaborates on Zhen’s and Kong’s annotations: After the fiancé completes his mourning period, the woman’s family sends someone to ask him to marry her. If he insists on keeping his earlier word and still does not marry her, then the woman may marry into a different family [jia yu ta zu]. This is what ritual prescribes. [If a woman’s parent dies and when] she is out of the mourning period, her fiancé’s parents send someone to ask her to marry him. If her family refuses, then he may marry someone else.80

This line of interpretation was never questioned until the turn of the sixteenth century, when the faithful maiden cult escalated; it had been, in effect, the official interpretation for centuries. Both Zheng Xuan’s and Kong Yingda’s readings were long held as orthodox annotations; Chen Hao’s Commentary on the Book of Rites (Liji jishuo), of which the above passage was a part, was included in the Ming dynasty’s official body of commentaries to the Five Classics, the Complete Collection of the Five Classics (Wujing daquan), to be mastered by men studying for the civil service examinations.81 The Ming scholar Luo Qinshun (1465 –1547) was the first to challenge this interpretation. He argues that Chen Hao’s comments “make no sense either in terms of moral principles or the ways of human beings” and are outrageously “absurd.” He writes: “How, after a marriage has been agreed upon and only because of three years [of delay] caused by the death [of a parent], could the girl marry someone else and the man take a different woman?” He explains that what the ritual text means is that because the man or the woman has just come out of mourning, he or she cannot bear to comply hurriedly with the request for a happy event [a wedding]. Therefore the wedding request is turned down. “These

234   Ideology are ‘terms of etiquette [lici].’ There must be back-and-forth exchanges afterward; then the wedding will proceed.”82 It was inconceivable for Luo that the ancient sages would have instructed people to break a marriage agreement. His trouble with the traditional interpretation could well result from his reading contemporary perceptions into an old text. For him (and for many of his contemporaries), a marriage was conceived of as being established upon the marriage agreement, not at the wedding. Two centuries earlier, Chen Hao had no trouble with early commentators. But the sixteenth century was a different era. Luo Qinshun’s innovative rereading of the text did not satisfy everyone, and it remained a point of controversy. For example, some scholars characterized it as “purely arbitrary” that should not be “followed.”83 But many threw their support behind Luo, acknowledging that his view was more convincing. From Deng Yuanxi (1529 –93) and Xu Shizeng (1517– 80) of the Ming to Xu Qianxue (1631–94) and Fang Bao of the Qing, many echoed Luo’s reinterpretation.84 Qing imperial authority also signaled its support. Emperor Kangxi remarked in his commentary to the Book of Rites that Luo’s explanation made better sense.85 The Imperial Endorsed Annotations of the Book of Rites (Qinding Liji yishu), on which the Qianlong emperor put his personal signature, gives its verdict: “From the process of ‘discussing the marriage’ to the performance of the rite of ‘inquiring about the wedding date,’ the husband-wife relation is established. It violates yi for the fiancé who has completed mourning to marry a different woman, and it is unfaithful for the woman to marry someone else.”86 Whereas Luo’s view gained the backing of the state, Chen Hao’s was condemned as doing “utmost damage” to moral principles.87 Beyond the ritual texts, controversy also found its way into the commentary on the Book of Songs. Here a traditional annotation was challenged for the first time during the Ming by supporters of faithful maidens who looked for evidence that would lend legitimacy to their position. The disputed poem “Cypress Boat” had long been a metaphor for wifely fidelity:88 Floating is the boat in the middle of the river, That man whose two locks looped over his brow, Is my mate. Until my death I bear no second thoughts. O Mother, O Heaven! You do not understand me!

Old Rituals and New Questions   235 Floating is that boat in the middle of the river, That man whose two locks looped over his brow, Is my mate. Until my death I will not change my heart. O Mother, O Heaven! You do not understand me!

According to the Mao Commentary, the poem was the vow of a chaste widow from the Spring and Autumn period: “The crown prince of the Wei died early. His wife [Gongjiang] preserved yi [not to remarry], but her parents wanted to marry her off against her will. She vowed she would not allow it, and she wrote a poem to stop her parents.”89 The boat made of cypress is said to be a metaphor for wifely chastity: floating in the middle of the river, the boat is like a woman living in her husband’s home—this is where she should be (therefore, she would not remarry). The late sixteenth-century reinterpretation came about when some commentators took particular notice of the young man’s hairstyle depicted in the poem. The Mao Commentary and Zhu Xi explained that “two locks looped over his brow” refers to the style worn by “sons serving their parents” before their parents’ death. Some scholars believed it resembled the hairstyle of a young boy.90 Pointing to this later explanation, Hao Jing ( jinshi, 1589) concluded that since the prince of Wei died wearing a young boy’s hairstyle, Gongjiang would not have been married. The “Cypress Boat,” hence, was a faithful maiden’s vow, not that of a widow.91

The Problem of Co-burial In the seventeenth century, burying a faithful maiden by her fiancé’s side in the same grave, whether she died of suicide or of natural causes, was becoming a standard practice. Under normal circumstances, co-burial was reserved only for a married couple. To join a fiancé posthumously was often a young woman’s personal wish, but frequently, the local elite became involved and orchestrated the ceremony. The co-burial was presented as an act of commemoration honoring the woman’s virtue as well as a final ritual step in confirming her status as a wife, but for the critics, it represented another breach of ancient ritual. The critics charged that there was no ritual ground for such a practice, citing a passage from the Book of Rites, which prohibits the customs of qianzang and jiashang. According to the commentaries, qianzang (transfer of burial) refers to the situation in which a man and woman

236   Ideology who were not yet married were buried together after the corpses were removed from their original graves. (Some later scholars believed that it referred to the co-burial of the husband and wife.) Jiashang (marrying a person who died prematurely) describes co-burial of two persons who died younger than nineteen years of age.92 What was under scrutiny was not the co-burial practice per se but the faithful maiden cult in general. Qin Huitian (1702 – 64), a renowned ritual scholar, frowned on the co-burial practice and quickly took the opportunity to voice his strong disapproval of faithful maidens and their supporters: “There are women not yet married who killed themselves following their fiancés’ deaths, yet people do not regard their actions as violations of ritual, and they honor them as exemplars of the chaste and heroic. All this happens because people indulge in their desires and ignore moral principles.”93 Shen Yao (1798 –1840) was also vocal about the lack of adherence to the advice of the ancient sages. He found the practice of co-burial and the faithful maiden cult repulsive primarily because they transgressed the fundamental demarcation between the living and the dead. The faithful maiden act was plainly a marriage between a live person and a ghost. “One is alive and the other is dead, yet the two, violating ritual, are made a couple. They profane and confuse the order of yin and yang and defy the difference between people and ghosts.” This was prohibited in antiquity, “but nowadays these practices have even become customs.”94 The ancient ban on co-burial for an unmarried person was unambiguous, yet few people took heed of it now. Accepted customs notwithstanding, suspicion about the ritual propriety of faithful maiden co-burial lingered. At times, even proponents of the cult, such as Zhu Yizun, would feel discomfort with it.95 In the wake of the suicide of faithful maiden Chen Yuan (for whom Song Jingwei wrote an elaborate poem), someone raised the question when her coffin was about to be buried in her fiancé’s tomb. Chen Zufan (1675 – 1753), a local scholar, came to the defense of the co-burial decision. He argued that the faithful maiden was not a stranger to her fiancé because the two did have mutual feelings nurtured through the various rites of engagement.96 Therefore, it was only proper that she be buried with her fiancé. What ritual prohibits, in his view, is co-burial of those shameless young men and women who “fall in love secretly but are unable to fulfill their desire” yet wish to be buried in the same grave.97 In another case, however, opponents prevailed. In 1679, when faithful maiden Xu hanged herself the same day that her fiancé died, the county magistrate

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ordered that the two be buried in the same tomb. His instruction was ignored, however. The local people built two tombs side by side, separated by the distance of a few steps.98

A Middle Way—Balancing Moral Consciousness and Ritual Propriety Profound ambiguity marked the position of many other scholars who stood between adamant supporters and sharp critics. There was a diverse spectrum of opinions and feelings. Some believed that faithful maidenhood, although not in the ancient ritual, was nevertheless admirable; others disapproved of the cult yet felt uncomfortable in taking an outright position and criticizing it. Their varied and sometimes indecisive voices illustrated that the debate was not simply about ritual evidence; it was also a moment scholars took to reflect on their social roles and, in particular, their own moral accomplishments vis-à-vis those of faithful maidens. One of their common sentiments rests on an uneasy recognition that what these young women did was beyond even the ability of educated men to accomplish. Faithful maidens demonstrated the moral character that Confucian teaching called for but few men of their own stature were able to follow. Acknowledging that the faithful maiden practice was indeed not part of traditional ritual, Qian Daxin, arguably the greatest historian of the Qing, nevertheless believed that it was a noble deed, and men like himself “do not necessarily disapprove of it because they understand the ultimate resolve of these women.”99 He comments, comparing men of social standing to the young women: Gentlemen love to talk about jie and yi, yet they never forget about leaving a name behind. But these village women are determined to follow one husband to the end, and they look upon death as going home. Are they doing this for recognition or reward? It is precisely because they do it without seeking anything in return that their stories are especially worthy of passing on.100

These were mixed feelings of awe, admiration, sympathy, and even guilt. When asked to contribute a poem for a portrait of two faithful maidens, Ye Tingguan (1791–1868) sighs at how difficult it is to sacrifice oneself for loyalty. “It is exceptional even for a man to obtain such a virtue, let alone for fragile women to die to fulfill their commitment.”101 At times when “social customs are in decline and social relationships are in disarray,” virtuous deeds such as those performed by faithful maidens make a great moral example, even though they

238   Ideology may “go beyond” normal rules. Liu Dakui (1698 –1780), a founder of the Tongcheng school, ended his “Biography of Faithful Maiden Wu” with a paragraph of comments. He acknowledges that Gui Youguang certainly made a fine argument that the faithful maiden ideal was indeed against the ritual prescribed by the ancient kings. However, he stresses that “time changes, and people possess different dispositions,” and what faithful maiden Wu chose to do was truly touching.102 Therefore, it was a Confucian responsibility to publicize such stories. “A gentleman will not force people to accomplish the things that are difficult for them, but if they do accomplish a difficult thing, he still loves to tell about it,” noted Qian Daxin.103 For those who criticized faithful maidens, they just “love to argue and take no interest in helping others achieve their aspirations.”104 Perhaps because of similarly mixed feelings, other Qian-Jia scholars remained silent or equivocal in the debate. As mentioned earlier, Wang Niansun spoke highly of Wang Zhong’s essay refuting the faithful maiden act. Yet unlike Wang, he did not write directly on the topic. Liu Taigong (1751–1805), a good friend of Wang Zhong and paternal uncle of Liu Baonan, also believed that Gui Youguang made his point “gently yet persuasively,”105 and like Wang Niansun—also his friend— he thought Wang Zhong’s essay was beneficial to classical studies and social custom.106 One day, however, he received a letter from a friend telling him about a Yangzi River storm that capsized all the boats except the one that carried faithful maiden Hu, who was on her way to marry her deceased fiancé. He wrote an essay about the story, in which he also praised two other faithful maidens who had come to his attention.107 Other scholars mediated their position based on one critical principle. They agreed with Gui Youguang that an unmarried woman should follow her father’s instructions.108 Therefore, it is illegitimate for a woman to marry her dead fiancé against her father’s will. However, her action would be appropriate if her father had died before she chose to become a faithful maiden. For instance, Sun Yuanxiang (1760 –1829) wrote: “A woman’s engagement is arranged by her parents. If her parents have already died when her fiancé dies, it is fine if she does not marry someone else. If her parents are alive and she promised herself to someone [that is, against her parents’ will to marry into her dead fiancé’s home], then Gui’s argument cannot be changed.”109 In the same vein, Zhang Huiyan praised a young woman who did not beg to marry her dead fiancé until her father died and her brother planned to have her engaged to another man. She told her brother that she was following their late father’s in-

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struction (that is, her father had engaged her to her late fiancé). Zhang comments: An unmarried woman follows her father. If her father does not instruct her to marry her fiancé and yet she takes him as her husband, she is called a good daughter-in-law but not a good daughter. How appropriate that the faithful maiden responded that she was following her father’s instruction! . . . She knew that her father considered [the faithful maiden practice] against ritual. If her appeal was not granted and she insisted upon it [during her father’s lifetime], she would have to violate her father’s will to realize her own conviction. Therefore, she held back her sorrow and her appeal and did not show them [until after his death]. Isn’t she filial! Isn’t she wise!”110

Lu Wenchao, another famed evidential scholar, shared Zhang’s view. Lu notes in “On Faithful Maiden Zhang” that Zhang’s father had engaged her to her fiancé, and once her father had died, she could follow nobody’s instruction except that of her late father.111 Lu implies here that it goes beyond the ritual prescriptions for a woman to marry her dead fiancé without the consent of her father. However, he changed his position later in the same essay when mentioning another faithful maiden who killed herself, praising faithful maidens for their “conviction that cannot be forced to change.”112 His inconsistency was another example manifesting the deep-seated ambivalence in the tension between moral responsibility and scholarly conviction.

Scholarly Fathers and Brothers Scholars on both sides of the controversy believed that social morality was at stake if they did not straighten up the public confusion surrounding the faithful maiden practice. They felt obligated to rectify the controversy for the sake of defending the true meanings of Confucian rituals and defining the true behaviors of morality. The debate was also personal: many of those who were involved were fathers, sons, or brothers of faithful maidens, and their lives were directly complicated by the decisions the young women made. That is to say, they were brought into the debate not simply out of their urgent sense of social obligation. The sentiment for young women they knew personally was a tremendous force that mediated their positioning in the debate. When criticizing those who “take no interest in helping others achieve their aspirations,” Qian Daxin was probably thinking about a faithful maiden from his own family. She was engaged to the brother of his grandfather and hanged herself upon her fiancé’s death.113 In chastising Gui Youguang’s

240   Ideology view as “absurd,” Zhu Jian emphasized that he himself was “the son of a faithful maiden.”114 Personal relationships could also complicate a scholar’s position in a different way. Fang Bao, for instance, held a high opinion of faithful maidens. It happened that the daughter of a friend of his wanted to be a faithful maiden. When her horrified father asked Fang Bao to explain to the girl that what she had decided to do was against ritual, Fang Bao accepted the request without hesitation.115 The episode reveals the uncomfortable tension between a scholar’s ideological conviction and his sense of personal responsibility. Fang supported the faithful maiden practice because of his moralist agenda, yet as a father figure to the young woman, he felt obligated to dissuade her from pursuing a life that he foresaw would bring her suffering. The contrast was indeed sharp: in the public debate, supporters gleaned evidence from classics, history, and imperial law—anything they could find—to prove that faithful maidenhood was in fact praiseworthy. Yet few Ming and Qing sources documented a father who actually encouraged his daughter to pursue it. On the other hand, to stop a daughter from becoming a faithful maiden, even a dead father would make an effort. One night, Zhang Huiyan’s father-in-law saw a deceased old friend in his dream who told him that his sixteen-year-old daughter wanted to marry into her dead fiancé’s home. The friend urged Zhang’s father-in-law to bring her to her senses and tell her that her choice violated the rituals.116 Personal relations to faithful maidens shaped scholars’ positions in the debate but did not inevitably turn scholars into advocates of the faithful maiden cause. We may consider the case of Sun Xidan, who specialized in classical rituals and considered it a violation of ritual for a young woman to preserve fidelity for her deceased fiancé. He tried to arrange a second betrothal for his daughter but had to give it up when she stopped eating and threatened to kill herself.117 Ostensibly because she was worried that her parents would eventually want her to marry, her health steadily deteriorated. On her deathbed, she asked Sun to send her to her parents-in-law’s house. In deep grief, Sun asked his fried Qian Shixi (1733 –95) to write a biography of her.118 Qian tells us: “[The special area of] Jingxuan’s [Sun Xidan’s] study is ritual, and he understands the ancient rituals especially well. He said: ‘If a fiancé dies before the marriage, [the woman] takes off her mourning garments and marries someone else. This is the regulation of the ancient kings and conduct in accordance with the Mean.’ Although he loved his daughter very much, he considered her action too extreme.”119

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Sun’s sadness might have been twofold. He was, of course, sad about losing his daughter, who died at a tender age. Somewhere deep in his heart, he might also have felt disturbed by the fact that, as a believer in ancient ritual, he could not bend his own position to praise her action despite his love for her. Writing anything on a daughter’s death must be painful, especially when the ideals for which the daughter sacrificed her life are in conflict with one’s own. Sun’s case reveals the profound pain experienced by a scholar-father whose own ideology and that of his daughter collided. Such feelings of sadness were again seen in Zhu Shi’s experience, but in his case, his daughter’s moral sacrifice would eventually move him to change his view. According to Zhu, as he was about to arrange another marriage for her a year after her fiancé’s death, she wept and asked me to let her marry into his family. I said to her: “Have you read the chapter ‘Inquiries from Zengzi’? It says if a woman dies before she performs the ritual of becoming a daughter-in-law, her body should be returned to her own family to be buried. Can a woman who has not yet married live in her fiancé’s home? [The chapter also says]: ‘If his fiancée has died, a man should put on mourning dress and go mourn her. After the burial, he should remove the mourning garments. A woman should do the same if her fiancé has died.’ I have not heard of a ritual that permits an unwed girl to endure widowhood for her fiancé.” My daughter did not say a word. However, her will could not be forced to change. I thereupon agreed to let her do as she wished.120

Lan Dingyuan’s and Cai Shiyuan’s biographies of faithful maiden Zhu fill us in on one important detail about the aftermath of this conversation. Although the faithful maiden did not say anything, she went into three days of fasting. Only then did Zhu Shi compromise and give her permission to go to live as a widow. Zhu Shi’s attitude changed, however. His daughter died after enduring thirteen years of widowhood. Two years later, he came across the story of faithful maiden He, who hanged herself along with her maid, An. In his long essay in honor of the incident, Zhu wrote: I feel sorrow for the death of the two girls and, in the meantime, remember my own daughter, who died preserving fidelity just as He did. Therefore, I write this essay. In human experience there is nothing more painful than for a betrothed girl to remain faithful to her deceased fiancé and then to die for her conviction. She treats bitterness as if tasting sweets and does not falter despite myriad hardships. The state policy says that if a woman becomes widowed before thirty and endures widowhood until she is fifty, she should be honored. However, only the woman who loses her fiancé and preserves her fidelity and the woman who kills herself to follow her fiancé cannot be honored.121 Therefore, some people

242   Ideology say that what these girls did was perverse and a violation of ritual. They even compare it with heterodox beliefs and say that it is harmful to social customs. How absurd this view is!

Zhu Shi then begins his long rebuttal. He first reexamines the Confucian classics and argues that what faithful maidens do is not contradictory to ritual. Rather, the misunderstanding comes from the people “who stick to the words [of the classics] and do not seek to understand their meanings in a coherent context.”122 Zhu Shi goes on to search for faithful maiden precedents in the classics, before returning to the question of state policy. Apparently hesitant to criticize the government stance, he explains that the policy does not aim to deprive faithful maidens of awards; it rather tries to discourage people who look to take advantage of the practice for gain. It allows people of moral conviction to make the choice on their own. Young women like his daughter and He expect no awards. They acted upon their pure feeling and their moral will. Zhu Shi was writing not as a scholar but as a father. His personal feelings blended into his arguments and, to a certain degree, prevented him from arguing objectively. His emotional analysis of the rigid ritual texts reveals that old classics had a personal dimension for scholarly fathers of faithful maidens. Indeed, the lofty Confucian ideals were no longer abstract; they sprang to life in the actions of these daughters. On some level, Zhu Shi’s essay is less a public discussion of the faithful maiden practice than a personal defense of his daughter and the ideas that she stood for. It might also be a personal apology from a father who had opposed her choice. Zhu did not say what made him shift his position. Could it be that his daughter’s unfailing commitment in the end touched his heart, or was it the emotional distress his daughter’s suffering brought about that he found hard to live with? One thing seems clear: the thought that his daughter never enjoyed normal marital life and died at a young age was profoundly painful. Zhu Shi’s grief illustrates again the irony that young women chose to be faithful maidens with the thought that, by pursuing a lofty ideal, they brought honor to their parents. Yet it was not the honor but the pain that parents felt most keenly. Like Sun Xidan’s and Zhu Shi’s, Yuan Mei’s otherwise pleasant life was overshadowed by the misfortune of one of his younger sisters, Yuan Ji, a faithful maiden. Yuan Ji had been engaged before her fiancé was born. According to Yuan Mei, their father used to work for a magistrate, Gao Qing, who was accused of financial wrongdoing after death. As a result, his wife and children were all held in prison. Their father trav-

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eled all the way from Jiangsu to Hunan to settle the case and rescued the family from the brink of insolvency. At the farewell, Gao Qing’s brother, Gao Ba, said to their father, sharing tears: “I have nothing to repay you. I heard that your third daughter is not betrothed. My wife is pregnant. If I am fortunate enough to have a boy, I hope that he could be your son-in-law.”123 Her father accepted the proposal. Yuan Ji was then three years old.124 After their father’s return, the two families gradually lost contact. But the betrothal gift, a golden necklace, which the Yuan family received shortly after the birth of the Gao boy, was always on Yuan Ji’s neck. Yuan Mei recalled that because he was four years older than his sister, he helped her put on the necklace for several years when they were little. By 1742, Yuan Ji had already grown into an intelligent and beautiful young woman.125 It was nearing time to complete the marriage. Gao Ba, her fiancé’s father, sent the Yuan family a message, saying that his son had been sick and could not marry and that he would like to call off the betrothal. Yuan Ji, holding the golden necklace, wept by her father’s side and would not eat. Realizing that his daughter was determined, her father informed the Gao family of Yuan Ji’s resolution. Gao Ba soon died, and his nephew visited the Yuan family and told them what had really happened with regard to the earlier message: the Gaos’ son was not sick, but “he behaved like an animal.” His uncle once beat him to the point of death, but he survived. Deeply worried that the marriage could hurt his prospective daughter-in-law, he had made an excuse to dissolve the marriage. In the end, the Gao nephew said to Yuan Ji: “Please do not impose suffering on yourself.” Yuan Ji looked as if she had heard nothing, and she went ahead and married into the Gao family.126 The Gao’s son was described as “small, hunchbacked, and squinteyed.” Worse yet was his character. Yuan Mei thus describes the abuses his sister endured: He got angry when he saw books, so since the marriage my sister had stopped writing poems. He got angry again when he saw womanly work, so since the marriage my sister had no longer held needle and thread. He asked for money from her dowry to pay for his visits to prostitutes, and when she refused, he would pinch her, kick her, and inflict upon her all manner of abuse, including burning. My sister’s mother-in-law came to rescue her, but he struck his mother and broke her teeth. He was going to sell my sister to pay off his gambling debts.127

Only then did Yuan Ji go to their father. Outraged, their father filed a lawsuit and ended the marriage. She was brought back to live with her parents. From then until her death, she “adopted a vegetarian diet, did

244   Ideology not wear colored clothing, did not have her hair cut, did not listen to music, and did not see a doctor when she was sick.” She died at the age of forty, a year after her ex-husband’s death.128 The biography, eulogy, and poem in memory of Yuan Ji are among Yuan Mei’s most touching works. He recalls childhood times they played together catching crickets, and the poems they recited side by side, to the amusement of his teacher. He recalls that she tenderly took care of their aging mother, and that she read widely, often exceeding his own efforts. It must have been very difficult for Yuan Mei to comprehend the tragedy without feeling somehow responsible. While sighing for her ill fate, he wrote: Isn’t it my fault that you suffered to such an extent! I was taught the classics when I was very young. You sat by my side and loved to listen to the ancient stories of loyalty and integrity. Once you grew up, you put them into practice personally. Alas, if you had not been able to read the Book of Songs and the Book of History, you might not be suffering from fidelity like this!129

In the personal chest that she left behind, Yuan Mei noted, there were three volumes of Lienü zhuan that she personally compiled, along with a number of poems.130 This was a brother’s desperate cry. Yuan Mei, mentor of many women poets, probably would not have done anything different if he and his sister could have returned to their childhood, but he could not have imagined that education would take his sister’s life. The sentiment was also seen in Yuan Shu, their cousin, who had this to say in his poem in mourning for Yuan Ji: “From a very early age, you observed the idea of the ‘three followings’ too seriously; / reading cost you your young life!”131 Yuan Ji’s story soon spread. However, to Yuan Mei’s dismay, reactions to his sister’s tragedy were not always favorable. While he and his family were immersed in grief, even in his own lineage people were laughing at his sister for being “silly.”132 The most curt remark came from Wang Zhong. In the postscript to his influential essay on faithful maidens, Wang made a reference to Yuan Ji and another faithful maiden, a maid from the scholar Zhen Huwen’s (1714 – 84) family, and called both women “stupid” and “pitiable” because “they did not understand rituals, yet they thought they were observing rituals, which eventually cost them their lives.”133 At approximately the time Wang Zhong made these unsympathetic notes at his home in Yangzhou, a high-profile faithful maiden story broke out in the capital. Peng Yuanrui (1733 –1803), the minister of the Board of the Military, had engaged his fourth daughter to the son of his

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colleague Cao Xiuxian, the minister of the Board of Rituals, when she was a few years old. The boy soon died. Although Peng’s daughter was still very young, from that point on she never wore colored clothing except on holidays. When her parents began to arrange another marriage for her, she told them that she had been observing the dress code of a widow and convinced them to allow her to stay celibate.134 Because of the status of both families, this case caused a sensation in the capital. When Cao Xiuxian died, the seventeen-year-old faithful maiden Peng performed mourning rituals as a daughter-in-law that moved the mourners, who numbered up to about a thousand, to tears. Even the Qianlong emperor was said to have been touched, sighing repeatedly: “How pitiful!” Every time he summoned Peng Yuanrui, the emperor would ask about his faithful maiden daughter.135 This occurred around the time of the Korean scholar Pak Chi-wõn’s visit to the court (see Chapter 4). He recorded a casual conversation he had with two Chinese officials, one of whom was Wang Minhao. After Pak told the two men that in his country chaste widowhood had already been established as a custom, Wang responded: In China, this custom has also given rise to a deep-rooted malpractice. There are women who have accepted betrothal gifts but have not married, or who have performed the ritual of hejin [meaning married] but have not lived in one bedroom, and yet, when misfortune befalls their fiancés, they would preserve fidelity their whole lives. Worse yet, some families that have had deep relationships for generations will make prenatal betrothals for their children or have their children betrothed when they are a few years old. Because the marriages are decided by their parents, the daughters would do such unfortunate things as drink poison or hang themselves so that they could follow their fiancés in death or be buried in the same tomb with them. Nothing is more seriously in violation of ritual!136

Compared with Wang Zhong, Wang Minhao was less harsh in his criticism toward faithful maidens. But others in the capital were bluntly calling the faithful maiden action “corpse elopement” (shiben) and “adultery masquerading as fidelity” (jieyin). The poignant terms hinted at a deeply divided elite at court. It is unclear how Peng Yuanrui viewed the debate. However, one anecdote by Ji Yun suggests that, after he came to the realization that nothing could hold his daughter back, he was very concerned about her spiritual well-being. He once saw a delicate piece of embroidery by a certain Lady Huang, who was widowed at the age of sixteen. The content of the ­embroidery was a narrative verse (fu), “Traveling Eastward,” by Ban Zhao, the famous female historian and the author of the classic Instructions for Women (Nüjie).137 Lady Huang once told someone: “A human

246   Ideology heart needs to have something to focus on. Only then will no inappropriate thoughts occur.” The embroidery was a fabulous work of art, according to Ji Yun, and “every line and dot were exquisite, and it left no needle traces.” It was the spiritual product of Lady Huang’s practice of that ideal. Peng brought it home, wrote a complimentary verse on it, and had his daughter embroider the verse. She followed her father’s instruction, and her embroidery perfectly matched that of Lady Huang. They were like “an upright cypress and righteous pine facing each other.”138 This might be what was in Peng’s mind: understanding the hardships his young daughter had to put up with in her long journey toward pursuing faithful maidenhood, he wanted to provide her with some spiritual support. He might have seen Lady Huang’s motto as practical advice for his daughter as well: keep yourself busy and your heart occupied, and days and nights would go by more easily. A father’s caring and encouragement took other forms as well. Qian Qi, a senior compiler (xiuzhuan) of the Qianlong reign from Wuxian, Jiangsu, obtained his fame as a “triple first place” in the provincial, capital, and palace examinations (only two men in the entire Qing dynasty earned such distinction). His daughter, Qian Shu, married her deceased fiancé far from home in Taiyuan, Shanxi, at the age of eighteen. Shu was not only remarkably chaste but also exceedingly filial, and she once cut a piece of flesh from her own thigh to make medicine for her sick father-in-law. She was said to have managed the household alone (possibly after the deaths of her parents-in-law) by using her own dowry. She took care of the burials and made marriage arrangements, which exhausted her mind and body. The hardship reached its height when, in her early fifties, she was harassed and humiliated by a Western merchant who subjected her to usury. In a desperate move to defend her integrity, she tried to hang herself, but was rescued.139 Trained in poetry and art, Qian Shu continued her intellectual pursuits while coping with hardships. She once composed a poem containing two lines: “A night of wind and snow, / listening to the cold sound of bamboo.” Qian Qi thought the poem was marvelous. He produced a painting entitled Listening to Bamboo on that poetic image and wrote an inscription for the painting.140 Like pine and cypress, bamboo symbolizes integrity. Bamboo standing on a cold nightfall against wind and snow is a rich and long-standing metaphor for a faithful woman.141

Conclusion

the story of the f aithful maiden has many facets; taken as a whole, it constitutes a rich case for historical inquiry into young women’s lives and subjectivity, and the history and culture that their actions shaped. The faithful maiden cult is distinctively positioned for such a study primarily because of the wide array of tensions and conflicts it created. Since its formation in the latter half of the Ming, at no time did the cult evade controversy. Remarkably, it continued to grow nevertheless, yielding neither to the impassioned denunciations of the literati critics nor to the frustrated opposition of the young women’s parents. Placing the faithful maiden cult in multiple contexts of political, cultural, intellectual, local, and familial histories, previous chapters delineate how the cult’s evolution was intertwined with the larger historical processes of change and how its impact reached widely and deeply into the public and private realms of society. Demystifying the perception of the voiceless and obedient young woman constructed by various discourses of the twentieth century, this book aims to demonstrate that young women instead were agents of historical change and that the faithful maiden cult was not marginal to but one of the centerpieces of late imperial history. This was not a story about resistance to arranged marriage, as readers today might expect. On the contrary, faithful maidens fought their parents to honor an engagement the parents had made in the first place. How faithful maidens came to embrace the faithful maiden ideal and choose their course of action cast new light on young women’s perceived identity, their emotions, and their relationship with their families and

248   Conclusion larger society. There is little question that faithful maidens held the idea of female fidelity close to their heart and that their articulations of their actions were often coded in Confucian moral terms of chastity. However, the book disputes the assertion that faithful maidens were simply intoxicated by Confucian gender ideology. It shows that the young women’s beliefs and emotions were deeply anchored in a much wider range of the cultural and socioeconomic systems in which they were reared, and the ideas of honor-bound duty, tender feelings of love, and religious faith all figured in varying degrees in their choices to become faithful maidens. Young girls in late imperial China were exposed to an array of social and cultural forces that shaped their impressionable hearts and minds: childhood betrothal and the long betrothal practices, the patrilineal family system, social extolment of extreme moral behavior, widespread elite activities of championing for female chastity, government intervention in the behaviors of the family and individuals through a device such as the jingbiao system, increased accessibility to books, and the thriving popular theater that celebrated qing, yi, and religious messages. It is perhaps worthwhile to note the diversity in the social makeup of faithful maidens as a group. Faithful maidens did not fit into a single social category, and they did not speak with a uniform language; some framed their choices in terms of the grave responsibility of upholding social morality (such as Song Jingwei), and others, in personal terms of honor-bound duty. Social standing and literacy no doubt affected their understanding of their actions, but it is amply clear that even faithful maidens from the lower end of the social scale subscribed to a set of core values and conducted themselves according to a set of behavioral codes commonly understood by faithful maidens across social classes, testifying to a high level of cultural integration in the late imperial period. Dramatic parent-daughter conflicts and eventual compromise are at the center of virtually all faithful maiden stories. They take us deep into the families of Ming and Qing times in which a young daughter’s unconventional choice instantly threw the whole family (sometimes the whole lineage) into chaos. The parent-daughter confrontation put the family hierarchal boundaries to the test. The desperate efforts of the parents to dissuade the daughter and the compromise reached (as in the majority of cases) highlight the cultural values stressing parent-daughter bonds and daughters’ negotiating power within the constraints of their time and place. The incidents allow us to observe from a daughter-centered view the workings of the Chinese family in relation to daughters. They

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suggest that the moral canon and patrilineal values that relegated a daughter to inferior status in relation to a son did not preclude parental affection for the daughter or parental responsibility for her well-being. Furthermore, patrilineal values were only part of the social constructs shaping women’s experiences in the family. In parent-daughter interactions, cultural norms, family structure, economic interests of the family, and personal emotions all played a part in conditioning the ways in which the conflict was mediated and resolved. Obviously, the backing of the state and of many literati elites was crucial for the “disobedient” daughter; it gave her vital support and made it possible for her to pursue an unconventional “marriage.” Here we may take a moment to contemplate the familiar arguments about the neglected Chinese daughter, the misery of arranged marriage, and the decline of women’s status since the Song. Late imperial society did leave room for some young women to pursue lives of their own choosing after all. Young women did not lose fiancés or become betrothed a second time only in late imperial China, but only in the late imperial period did it become a highly charged issue claiming empirewide attention. That the faithful maiden cult evolved in the late imperial era is itself a telling indication of some of the distinctive features that this period took on at various points: for example, the rigid moral discourse on loyalty and chastity, or the culture that glorified extraordinary moral behavior and loyal suicide. The formation of the faithful maiden cult in the second half of the Ming was closely connected to an upsurge of moral heroism in the political realm and embodied a cultural vogue celebrating extraordinary behavior in the performance of morality for men and women alike. Acts of ultraheroic virtue found their way to the women’s quarters as well as to the men’s sphere. It is important to point out that young women were not merely responding to ideological and cultural shifts of their time. By virtue of their own behavior, they contributed to the reproduction and definition of that ideology and culture. The faithful maiden cult was a social phenomenon created and driven primarily by young women, but it was by no means of young women’s sole making. Without government awards and the social elite’s advocacy (and passionate debate), the cult would not have made such a public show for such a long period. The support of the state (except for a short period in the early Qing) and the educated elite (except the critics) was spectacular. For centuries, the imperial jingbiao award placed the faithful maiden at the top rank of state-selected role models, and a wellentrenched mechanism of local awards disseminated their stories across

250   Conclusion the empire. These awards and honors constituted a powerful way for late imperial orthodox values to be inculcated in the general population, and in no small measure they helped the cult grow and penetrate throughout society. Court data show that the Ming and Qing governments steadily expanded the jingbiao program. But the jingbiao was not just a tool for propagating state-sanctioned moral values and disseminating state power through the general population. The policies on the faithful maiden cult were formulated in the cultural and political context of a given time, and they were used to serve other goals of the government and the monarch as well. For example, in the early sixteenth century, the first major policy shift on the matter, that of making faithful maidens who had committed suicide primary recipients of jingbiao, directly corresponded to a cultural celebration of moral heroism, suggesting the court’s endorsement of extreme behavior, which was sure to have further stimulated that behavior. The fluctuation of the policy on chaste suicide during the early Qing, on the other hand, brought to the surface the dilemmas and conflicting political interests of the Manchu court. The Kangxi court’s initial ban on chaste suicide served to present an image of a benevolent ruler of the newly conquered empire while quelling the pro-Ming sentiment linked symbolically to the heroic chaste suicide. But the ban was brought to an end upon the chaste suicide of a Manchu faithful maiden, who was subsequently enshrined as the first martyred faithful maiden in the court’s history. Clearly, establishing a moral reputation for the Manchus was the court’s overriding desire at the time. A point to be noted about the Qing jingbiao system is that an overwhelming number of awards went to women, not to men. The disproportional gender composition seems to echo a recurrent note of lament among the educated elite that in their day, women had taken the lead in moral achievements. Many writers seemed to have been genuinely humbled by the heroic actions of these “fragile” young women. But of course the court’s favoring women over men tells us little about reality (which was probably impossible to measure), and it reveals only the perception of virtue constructed by the government. The drastically unbalanced numbers suggest that women in late imperial times occupied a position at the forefront of the state’s envisioning and constructing of moral order. This is particularly ironic given the official ideology that regarded women as the inferior gender and relegated them to the “inner” place. Although the official ideology was to keep women in the domestic realm, the institution of jingbiao de facto transgressed that rule

Conclusion   251

by publicizing virtuous women’s stories with magnificent awards, thus granting them hugely visible public roles as moral leaders. The relationship between the faithful maiden cult and the literati constitutes another key to the question of why the cult persisted for so long; it also sheds light on the lives of the literati from a distinctive perspective. Writing to commemorate virtuous women can be traced back to early times. In other words, the Ming-Qing literati supporters of the faithful maiden cult acted within this tradition. But the circumstances under which they championed the faithful maidens were rather different. This study shows that at times of political crisis, putting faithful maidens in the national spotlight constituted an important political experience for the literati. The dynastic crisis of the seventeenth century, for example, fundamentally reshaped the literati’s metaphorical use of the faithful maiden, transforming her into an ultimate symbol of political loyalty. The symbols literati projected onto faithful maidens made statements about their own political stances and moral character, and writing about faithful maiden martyrs was a powerful emotional outlet for them. This relationship changed, however, after the seventeenth century. The metaphorical presentation of faithful maidens dissipated afterward as biographical accounts of faithful maidens took on a more personal note. In the meantime, as the spread of the faithful maiden cult brought many writers to face faithful maidens from their own families or lineage or in their local communities or social networks, making known the sacrifice and suffering of the women they knew took on a personal significance. The most intriguing aspect of the literati reacting to the faithful maiden cult was the prolonged and heated debate about the ritual validity of the cult. It is somewhat astonishing that Confucian scholars could be so divided and uncompromising on a single issue involving merely a group of young women, but it is precisely in the scope and intensity of the debate that we see how women’s social practices profoundly affected the intellectual agenda of the literati. The debate illustrates the tenuous nature of the “inner-outer” divide. It is a rich mine for exploring Confucian scholars’ ideological disagreements, inner contradictions, and emotions. It reveals fundamentally different understandings of the meanings and applicability of Confucian ritual as well as the definition of female chastity and marriage among the educated elite. The debate opens up a new way to look at the influential “evidential scholarship” from a perspective in which women took center stage, showing that “evidential” research was not simply about classics and histories, and

252   Conclusion that its academic discipline was not free from the influence of personal feelings and individuals’ different understanding of morality. By the late nineteenth century, the faithful maiden cult had been part of Chinese society for four centuries, yet there was no immediate sign of its fading into the annals of history. In the 1880s, the famous painter Wu Youru (?–1893) captured a spirit wedding in a drawing. The story has a similar pattern to those we have read in the previous chapters: a ­seventeen-year-old girl from Cidong, Zhejiang, was engaged to Chen Qiuhang with a wedding planned for the following year. Chen put all his effort into his studies for the civil service examinations only to discover that he failed to pass at the prefectural level. He became ill and died. The girl pleaded with her father to let her go to “preserve her fidelity.” “With the spirit tablet of her fiancé in her hands, the Gui daughter performed the wedding rites.” The illustration continues: On the day of the burial, she wept so hard that she fainted several times. Everyone present felt pain in their hearts and shed tears. Even the deceased groom’s “closed eyes were opened with tears coming out of them” (see Figure 6.1). Faithful maiden stories and images generated a high degree of excitement in late Qing society. Faithful maidens were regularly turned into objects of visual representation. A number of cases that had captured public attention in the previous centuries made their way into pictorials (see Figures 2.1, 6.2., 6.8, and 6.9). The pictorial was a new medium that became popular during this time. Artists drew stories from old records and added new incidents for their pictures. The exact tone of this type of drawing is difficult to determine, but it seems that such drawings were no longer created simply to extol Confucian female virtue or to commemorate someone whom the artist loved or with whom the artist deeply sympathized. In Wu’s portrayal of the previous story, a subtle touch of amusement (in such descriptions as the dead groom shedding tears) seems to be in place. The late Qing, in any case, was a very different time. This study ends at the turn of the twentieth century, when China was undergoing perhaps the most profound transformation in its history. The faithful maiden cult, a distinctive product of the late empire, did not dissolve swiftly. Young women remained attracted to faithful maidenhood; many of the Ming-Qing conventions of reporting and ­acclaiming faithful maidens persisted well into the twentieth century. The tradition of the state honoring faithful maidens was carried into the early Republican period, and intellectual debate over the cult continued. However, this all took place in a new cultural context.1

Conclusion   253

The government of the newly founded Republic of China continued to honor faithful maidens. In 1914, Yuan Shikai, the president, issued a decree honoring exemplary individuals, including chaste women and faithful wives.2 The decree, titled baoyang tiaoli (regulations of honoring [the exemplars]), represents only a slight departure from the late imperial practice of conveying jingbiao. Three years later, the decree was amended, adding “detailed regulations” that specified the terms of the government awards. The revised document states that the criteria for honoring a faithful maiden should follow those for a chaste widow— that is, the criteria were adopted directly from the Qing jingbiao policy.3 Possibly the only difference that hints at the awards’ association with the modern era was the means by which the awards were given. In addition to the tablet of honor from the president—formerly bestowed by the emperor—the honored woman would be given a gold or silver badge. The color of the ribbon was designated as yellow (changed to white in 1917).4 The response from local society was also reminiscent of that of late imperial times, though the organizations that mobilized in support of the cult included native-place associations in their emerging nationalistic guise.5 For example, in 1918 the magistrate of Shanghai county filed a petition with the central government to reward a local woman, the seventeen-year-old faithful maiden Chen Wanzhen, who had committed suicide for her late fiancé.6 Chen Wanzhen’s family had moved to Shanghai from Shaoxing three generations earlier but still considered Shaoxing their native place. After her death, the Shaoxing Native-Place Association reacted quickly and wrote an essay to solicit writings in her honor. The late Qing reformer Zhang Jian, who to a certain extent had been transformed by the dramatic changes of his time, extolled the practice of faithful maidenhood.7 As late as 1922 and 1923, in fact, Zhang composed biographies for two faithful maidens, one from his native place, Nantong, and the other the fiancée of a friend’s son.8 To be sure, in one of the biographies, the emphasis of his praise seems to have expanded slightly. Besides praising the woman for “keeping her promise and not marrying,” Zhang commends her for her donations to a women’s school. If the old rhetoric of the cult persisted into the twentieth century, it was often infused with new nationalistic concerns. For some, this period represented a time of decadence (renxin rixia) when examples of “faithful and heroic” women could help rescue the morally declining nation.9 But faithful maidens were beginning to lose their traditional

254   Conclusion symbolic appeal. For one reason, even in the rhetoric of those who continued to defend the Confucian tradition, heroic faithful maidens were no longer associated with political loyalty. Furthermore, the centuriesold question of whether the faithful maiden practice was legitimate in terms of Confucian ritual had lost its significance for intellectuals. The faithful maiden practice continued to cause intense disputes, but they were of a different nature. For the new generation of intellectuals, the faithful maiden practice was nothing but a symbol of Confucian gender repression and a product of despotism. At a time when gender equality was emerging as a new value, faithful maidens’ commitments were the “most unreasonable thing.” For radical reformers of the New Culture movement, the faithful maiden cult had to be abolished. While the Yuan Shikai government put forward its baoyang business, Hu Shi, Lu Xun, and others turned the journal New Youth into a mouthpiece for their position.10 I have not been able to study the aftermath of this debate, but it appears that not long after the New Culture movement began, the faithful maiden cult came to its final end. Today a faithful maiden’s conviction is recalled only in such popular movies as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.11 The faithful maiden cult flourished in a particular social and cultural environment. With the disappearance of this environment, the cult lost the foundation of its existence. But on a deeper level, something that we discover in the faithful maiden cult seems to still live on. In the new age of the twentieth century, idealism, morality, and emotion were all given new meanings, and many young women devoted their lives to reform or to revolutionary causes. In their courage, devotion, and determination, we can sense something similar to the faithful maiden’s pursuit. In their common affirmation of self-denial and moral conviction, in their single-minded pursuit of their goals despite the advice of parents and the lure of comfort and security, lies a connection between the past and the present.

Reference Matter

Appendix Faithful Maidens Reported in Qinding da Qing yitong zhi (Siku quanshu edition), by Prefecture

ta b l e a . 1 Jiangsu province Prefecture

Pre-Ming

Ming

Qing

Suzhou

1

3

93

Changzhou

—

1

74

Taichang

—

—

39

Yangzhou

—

—

36

Jiangning

—

1

22

Songjiang

—

—

20

Xuzhou

—

—

17

Huaian

—

1

13

Zhenjiang

—

3

12

Tongzhou

—

—

2

Haizhou

—

1

1

Haiman (tin)

—

0

0

258   Appendix ta b l e a . 2 Anhui province Prefecture

Pre-Ming

Ming

Qing

Huizhou

1

1

36

Chizhou

—

2

33

Ningguo

—

—

30

Anqing

1

2

28

Fengyang

—

3

28

Luzhou

—

—

21

Yingzhou

—

5

10

Chuzhou

—

—

9

Taiping

—

1

8

Hezhou

—

1

7

Liuan

—

—

5

Sizhou

—

2

5

Guangde

—

—

3

ta b l e a . 3 Zhejiang province Prefecture

Pre-Ming

Ming

Qing

Hangzhou

—

1

64

Jiaxing

—

4

43

Shaoxing

—

2

37

Huzhou

—

3

21

Jinhua

—

5

16

Taizhou

—

2

13

Yanzhou

—

3

7

Wenzhou

—

1

5

Ningbo

—

3

2

Chuzhou

—

—

2

Quzhou

—

2

1

Appendix   259 ta b l e a . 4 Guangdong province Prefecture

Pre-Ming

Ming

Qing

Guangzhou

—

2

122

Zhaoqing

1

4

17

Chaozhou

—

—

6

Lianzhou

—

2

2

Laizhou

—

1

2

Shaozhou

—

—

1

Huizhou

—

1

1

Gaozhou

—

—

1

Qiongzhou

—

2

1

Nanxiong

—

—

0

Luoding

—

—

0

Lianzhou

—

1

0

Jiaying

—

1

0

Character List

Baitou huazhu  白頭花燭

Chan zhen ji  闡貞集

baitou nü  白頭女

Changsheng dian  長生殿

Baitou xin 白頭新

Changshu  常熟

“Baitou ying”  白頭吟

Changzhou  長洲

bao pai chenghun  抱牌成婚

Chaoyang  潮陽

bao pai zuoqin  抱牌做親

Chen Hongmou  陳弘謀

bao zhu chenghun  抱主成婚

Chen liefu ci  陳烈婦祠

Baoding  保定

Chen Mingxia  陳名夏

Beifeng  邶風

Chen Younian  陳有年

benxun  奔殉

Chen Zhilin  陳之遴

bian fu chang zhai  變服常齊

Chen Zufan  陳祖範

bianse shibu  變色失步

Chengfu  成服

bianxiu  編修

Chenliu  陳留

biao wei  表微

chi (sense of shame)  恥

bie qu  別娶 bixia gong  碧霞宮

chi (whipping [a form of punishment])  笞

bixia yuanjun  碧霞元君

Chizhou  池州

boxue hongci  博學鴻詞

chou  愁

Boyi  伯夷

chunü  處女

bozhou  柏舟

chunü fen  處女墳

“Bozhou shuo”  柏舟说

ci lou qian zai  此樓千載

Cao Xiuxian  曹秀先

congyi  從一

262   Character List congyi er zhong  從一而終

Ge Hao  葛浩

cun  寸

gegan  割肝

da yu  大欲

gegu  割股

Dahan  大寒

Gong Jian  龔鑑

Dai Zhen  戴震

gongdian  公奠

Daliang  大梁

gongji  公祭

datai sijie  搭台死節

Gongjiang  共姜

Deng Yuanxi  鄧元錫

“Guan hua”  觀畵

Dezhou  徳州

“Guan wen”  觀文

Diao Bao  刁包

guijie   閨節

diaoxiao  吊孝

guixiu  閨秀

dibao   邸报

Hai Rui  海瑞

dichao  邸抄

Haicheng  海澄

difangguan  地方官

Haifeng  海豐

Donglin  東林

Haitang  海棠

en  恩

Han Mengzhou  韓夢周

Fa Ruozhen  法若真

Han Qia  韓洽

fen  分

Hanjun  漢軍

feng  鳳

Hanlin  翰林

feng muzhu chenghun  奉木主成婚

Hao Yixing  郝懿行

Fengshe  楓社

haojie zhi shi  豪傑之士

Fengyang  鳳陽

heitou gu  黑頭姑

fennei zhi shi  分内之事

hejin  合巹

fu (husband)  夫

hu  斛

fu (literary genre)  賦

Hu Cangheng  胡蒼恒

fu (wife)  婦

Hu Sheng  胡升

fu wang xunjie  夫亡殉節

Huai  淮

fuji  扶乩

Huaian  淮安

Fuping  富平

huang  凰

Fushe  复社

Huang Zuo  黃佐

fuxue  府學

Huangfu Mi  皇甫謐

Fuzhou  福州

hui zhuang su fu  毀妝素服

gangwei  綱维

Huian  惠安

Ganquan  甘泉

Huizhou  徽州

gaojie duxing  高節獨行

hunbo  魂帛

Character List   263 Huzhou  湖州

jiwen   祭文

ji  笄

ju dian  距典

jia yu ta zu  嫁于他族

jueming ci  絕命詞

Jiading  嘉定

juren  舉人

jian jiugu  見舅姑

Jurong  句容

Jiang  江

Kang Hai  康海

Jiang Gui  姜桂

Kong Yingda  孔穎達

Jiangning  江寧

“Kongque dongnan fei”  孔雀東南飛

jiangxue  講學

ku jing wu lan  枯井無瀾

Jiangyin  江陰

Kuaiji  會稽

Jianshui  建水

kujie  苦節

jiao zi  教子

Kunming  昆明

jiaohua  教化

kushou  苦守

jiaoyu  教諭

laonü  老女

jiashang  嫁殤

li (principle)  理

jiasheng  家聲

li (ritual, rite, propriety)  禮

Jiaxing  嘉興

Li Bo  李柏

jie  節

Li Lingshou  李齡壽

jiefu  節婦

Li Tao  李濤

jiefu ci  節婦祠

Li Tianfu  李天馥

Jiexiao ci  節孝祠

Li Tiangen  李天根

jiexiao funü zhi ci  節孝婦女之祠

Li Yong  李顒

jieyin  節淫

lian  廉

jin  巹

Liangjiang  兩江

jin huan  金環

liangzhi  良知

Jing yi kao  經義攷

lici  禮辭

jingbiao  旌表

lie  烈

jingdan  敬憚

liefu  烈婦

Jingjiang  敬姜

liefu ci  烈婦祠

Jingxian  涇縣

lienü  烈女

Jinkui  金匱

lienü ci  烈女祠

Jinling  金陵

Lienü fang  烈 女 坊

jinshi  進士

Liji  禮記

jinyiwei zhihui  錦衣衛指揮

Lin’an zhi  臨安志

jiumeng  舊夢

Linbi  霛璧

264   Character List Lingnan  嶺南

nazheng  納徵

Linji  臨濟

Neize  內則

Liu Deju  劉德舉

nianpu  年譜

Liu Houde (Ziwan)  劉侯德（資琬）

Ningguo  寧國

Liu Jin  劉瑾

nü  女

Liu Kui  劉魁

Nü xiaojing  女孝經

Liu Wencheng (Liu Ji)  劉文成 (劉基)

nügong  女紅

lixue  理學

Nüxun  女訓

lou  樓

Nüzhen  女箴

Lu Yinpu  盧蔭溥

Pan Chengzhang  潘檉章

Lü Xinyuan  呂星垣

Panyu  番禺

lumu  廬墓

Peng Dingqiu  彭定求

Lushi  魯詩

Peng Shaosheng  彭紹升

Luzhou  瀘州

Peng Yuanrui  彭元瑞

Ma Yueguan  馬曰琯

Pengcheng  彭城

Ma Yuelu  馬曰璐

Pingshantang  平山堂

Ma Zhide  馬之德

Pingzhong  平仲

maifan  麥飯

pinqi  聘妻

Mancheng  满城

pintie  聘帖

Mao Jike  毛際可

Qi Biaojia  祁彪佳

Meng Jiangnü  孟姜女

qi lie ci  七烈祠

Meng Sen  孟森

qi nüzi  奇女子

Meng zhennü ci  孟貞女祠

Qian Baofu  錢寳甫

mengxue  蒙學

Qian Fu (Yuqian)  錢福(與謙）

miaojian  廟見

Qian Qi  錢棨

ming  名

Qian Shixi  錢世錫

Ming zhi yimin  明之遺民

Qian zi wen  千字文

mingpei  冥配

Qian-Jia  乾嘉

Mingshi guan  明史館

qianzang  遷葬

mu  畝

qijie  奇節

nacai  納采

qin  琴

naji  納吉

Qin Xuemei  秦雪梅

nan cong nü bu cong  男從女不從

Qin Ying  秦瀛

Nancheng  南城

qing  情

Nüjie  女誡

Character List   265 qingjie tang  清節堂

shidafu  士大夫

qingsheng  輕生

shidu  侍讀

qingqi  請期

shouqing  守清

qinying  親迎

Shouyang  首陽

Qiyuan Xinggang  祇園行剛

shouzhi  守志

Qufu  曲阜

Shouzhou  壽州

Rehe  熱河

Shuang lie ji  雙烈集

ren  仁

“Shuang wei ke du tu”  霜帷課讀圖

Renhe (county)  仁和

Shuanglie ci  雙烈祠

renhe (“united by people”)  人合

shujishi  庶吉士

renqing  人情

Shunde  順德

ruren  孺人

Shuntian  順天

rusheng  儒生

Shuqi  叔齊

San jie ci  三節祠

si er bu si  死而不死

se  瑟

Sichao chengren lu  四朝成仁錄

Shang Rong  尚鎔

Sihui  四會

“Shangfen”  上墳

Sima Guang  司馬光

Shangyu  上虞

siwei  四維

Shangyuan  上元

Song Jingwei  宋景衛

“Shangxin ying”  傷 心 吟

Song Shiying (Jiting)  宋實穎(既庭)

Shanyang  山陽

Songjiang  松江

Shanyin  山陰

sui (age)  歲

Shaoxing  紹興

sui (rope)  綏

Shehong  射洪

Sun Xidan (Jingxuan)  孫希旦(敬軒)

shen  神

suyi  素衣

Shen Shouxian  沈受先

Suzhou  蘇州

Shengxian  嵊縣

Taiping  太平

Shengjing  盛京

Taishan  泰山

shengtian  升天

taiyiren  太宜人

Shenyang  瀋陽

Taiyuan  太原

Sheshen ya  舍身崖

Taizhou  泰州

Shexian  歙縣

Tanyangzi (Tan-Yang-tzu)  曇陽子

shi gui yin  尸歸陰

ti ce  題冊

shi yan zhi  詩言志

Tian Deming  田得名

shiben  尸奔

Tian Lanfang  田蘭芳

266   Character List tianhe   天合

Wuxian  吳縣

Tianjin  天津

Xia Liangsheng  夏良勝

tingzhang  廷杖

Xiahou Ling  夏侯令

Tongcheng  桐城

xianliang  賢良

tonglao  同牢

xianxue  縣學

tongnian  同年

xiao  孝

Wang Gen  王艮

Xiaojing  孝經

Wang Niansun  王念孫

xiaonü  孝女

Wang Yangming  王陽明

Xiaoshan  蕭山

Wang Zhi  王直

Xiaoyi  孝義

Wang Zhu  王躅

xin  信

wangmen gua  望門寡

Xin’an wenxian zhi  新安文獻志

Wei Chengchu  魏承拀

Xinchang  新昌

weihunqi  未婚妻

Xinling  信陵

wei hun shouzhi  未婚守志

Xinyang  新陽

wei hun xunjie  未婚殉節

Xiong Baotai  熊寶泰

Wei Yiao  魏一鳌

xiucai  秀才

Wei Zhongxian  魏忠賢

xiuzhuan  修撰

weibu zhi shi   韦布之士

xu  婿

Weizhou  蔚州

Xu Can  徐燦

wenji  文集

Xu E  徐鄂

wenmin  問名

Xu Qiu  徐 釚

Wu Daozhi  吳道直

Xu Shizeng  徐師曾

wu feng paifang  五鳳牌坊

Xu Wenbiao  徐文彪

Wu Hengxuan  吳恆宣

Xuancheng  宣城

wu bo  無波

Xue tang ji  雪棠紀

Wu Shaozeng  吳紹曾

xue zu  學租

Wu Shenqin  吳省欽

Xue’an  雪庵

Wu Yifei  吳一蜚

xueqi jian sheng   血气漸盛

Wu Youru  吳友如

xuli hui  恤嫠會

Wuchang (city)  武昌

xun  殉

wuchang (“five constant virtues”)  五常

Xun Cai  荀采

Wujiang  吳江

Yan Song  嚴嵩

Wujing daquan  五經大全

Yang Lian  楊漣

xun’an yushi  巡按御史

Character List   267 Yangzhou  揚州

Zhan Ruoshui  湛若水

Yan-li  顏李

zhancui  斬衰

Ye Xiaoluan  葉小鸞

zhang  丈

yi  義

Zhang Lie  張烈

yi li bu bei, sui si bu cong  一禮不備雖死不從

Zhang Lun  章綸

yi ma ru su  衣麻茹素

Zhang Shiyuan  張士元

yi renshi  邑人士

Zhang Ying (zhuangyi)  張鎣(莊懿)

Yi zhen ji  義貞記

Zhang Yunsui  张允随

yi zhuanyi wei zhen  以專一為貞

Zhang Zhen  張貞

yibi  義婢

Zhangzhuo  漳州

Yichun  宜春

Zhao zhenlie ci  趙貞烈祠

yifu  義夫

zhen (faithful, uprightness)  貞

Yili  儀禮

zhen (needle)  針

Yin Bo  殷柏

zhen yi zhi men  貞義之門

Yin Jishan  尹繼善

Zheng Chenggong  鄭成功

ying  纓

Zheng Huwen  鄭虎文

Ying Yuanli  應元禮

Zheng Xuan  鄭玄

Yingshan  應山

zhenlie  貞烈

yitian  義田

zhenlie ci  貞烈祠

yongyong yan jin zhi  永永嚴禁之

zhennü  貞女

Yu Que  余闕

zhennü ci  貞女祠

Yu Zhongsu (Yu Qian)  于忠肅 (于 謙)

zhenshi  貞士

Yuan Ji  袁機 Yuanhe  元和

Zhang Qi  張琦

zhenxiao  貞孝 Zhenyi (name of an academy)  正誼

yuanyang  鴛鴦

zhenyi (“uprightness and constant”)  貞一

Yucheng  禹城

zhi  智

Yue Fei  岳飛

zhili gesheng  直隸各省

yuefu  樂府

zhiran ju  織染局

Yuqian  于潛

zhong  忠

Yuyao  餘姚

zhongjie yufeng  忠節餘風

zan  贊

Zhongshan  鍾山

Zang Yong  臧庸

zhongxin bu gai  中心不改

Zengzi wen  曾子問

zhongyong  中庸

268   Character List zhongzheng  中正

zicui  齊衰

Zhou Gongchen  周拱辰

Ziyang  紫陽

Zhou Hongqi  周宏起

Ziyou  子游

zhuan  傳

Ziyun (Yang Xiong)  子雲 (楊雄)

Zhuang Cunyu  莊存與

zongfang  总坊

zi  字

Zuo Guangdou  左光斗

Zi zhi tongjian  資治通鋻

Zuo Zongtang  左宗棠

Notes

introduction 1.  Throughout the book, I have translated the Chinese expression of a person’s age, sui, as “years old.” A person is one sui at birth and gains another sui at every Chinese new year. In this case, faithful maiden Wu was about sixteen years old in Western calculation. 2.  BZJ: 7097. 3.  In addition to a fiancé’s death, there were other situations under which a young woman might refuse to accept a second betrothal: for example, if a fiancé were afflicted with a terminal illness and both families wanted to call off the marriage agreement; or if a fiancé married another woman, became a Buddhist monk, or disappeared. Several situations commonly accounted for a fiancé’s disappearance: he wandered away from home when his village was hit by natural disaster; he was drafted to serve in the military; or he went to visit a town or city and never came home. 4.  Even though some faithful maidens ended up marrying their first betrothed, they were still regarded as and called a faithful maiden for the rest of their lives. 5.  The printing industry entered a new phase of growth from the sixteenth century onward, enlarging a reading public that began to include even women of commoner status. See Brokaw and Chow 2005: 23 –25, 152 – 83. During the late sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, as Dorothy Ko observes, elite women in urban Jiangnan were a vital new force in both book consumption and book production. Ko 1994: 30 – 67. 6.  Recent scholarship on Chinese women writers includes women’s anthologies as well as monographic studies. For major works on the topic in English language, see Ko 1994; Mann 1997, 2007; Widmer and Chang 1997; Chang and Saussy 1999; Idema and Grant 2004. 7.  The institution of jingbiao was established much earlier in Chinese history,

270   Notes to Introduction but the system became more regulated and important during the late imperial period. See Elvin 1984. 8.  See, for example, Furth 1990 on household instruction, Mann 1991 on midQing elite discourse on marriage and women’s education, and McLaren 2005 on vernacular narratives, which argues that they were edited and published to assist the imparting of Confucian moral wisdom among the commoners. During the reigns of the Qing emperors Yongzheng (1723 – 35) and Qianlong (1736 –95), the state’s concern over and efforts toward regulating social behavior and gender relations climaxed. Susan Mann shows that the period saw the rise of a “familistic moralism” largely as a result of vigorous state and local government efforts. Mann 1997. Greater government action to reinforce a social and gender order has also been detailed in Sommer’s and Theiss’s studies of the state laws regulating status and sexuality, and the judicial process dealing with criminal cases of a sexual nature. Sommer 1996, 2000; Theiss 2001, 2004. 9.  Remarriage among upper-class widows occurred frequently from the Han through Song periods. See Dong 1988; Zhang 1993. Also see Ebrey 1993: 204 –12. 10.  See Chapter 3. Also see Mann 1993; Fei 1998. 11.  They included grand secretaries Li Tianfu (1635 –99), Zhu Shi (1664 – 1736), Zhang Yunsui, Peng Yuanrui (1733 –1803), and Lu Yinpu (1760 –1839) of the Kangxi (1662 –1722), Yongzheng, and Qianlong reigns. 12.  The statistics are based on Qing court records, “veritable records” (­Shilu). See Chapter 3. 13.  For instance, of the ten juan devoted exclusively to exemplary women in the noted Collection of Epitaphs and Biographies (Bei zhuan ji) compiled by Qian Yiji (1783 –1850), two are of faithful maidens, or one-fifth the total, the same proportion as the chaste widow biographies. BZJ: juan 151– 60. 14.  Pak 1997: 131. 15.  See, for example, T’ien 1988. 16.  See, for example, Dong 1936: 1; Guo 2000: 426 –28. 17.  A great deal has been written on the chaste widow practice. For the Song and Yuan periods, see Holmgren 1985; Birge 1995, 2002; Bossler 2002, 2003; for relationship with the literati and state in the Ming and Qing, see T’ien 1988; Carlitz 1997; Fei 1998; Theiss 2004; for its implications for familial, social, and economic life and legal codes, see Mann 1987; Bernhardt 1999; Sommer 1996, 2000. 18.  Since the generation of the May Fourth scholars, many have held neoConfucian (lixue) ideology—the orthodox teaching of the Yuan, Ming, and Qing—responsible for advocating rigid norms about female chastity. The li­ xue’s position against remarriage was encapsulated in the notorious declaration of Cheng Yi (1033 –1107) about starving widows (they lacked the economic support of a husband): “It is a small matter to starve to death; it is a greater matter to lose fidelity.” The standard-bearer of the twentieth-century argument that neo-Confucianism was responsible for the downturn of Chinese women’s lives was Chen Dongyuan, who wrote in the 1920s that, since the emergence of

Notes to Introduction   271 lixue, Chinese women’s lives were forever changed. Chen 1970: 129 – 40. However, this argument has recently been challenged. See Patricia Ebrey’s foreword to The Sage and the Second Sex: Confucianism, Ethics, and Gender, in Li 2000. In her own research, Ebrey has also questioned the validity of the charge that neoConfucianism was responsible for women’s oppression since the Song. Ebrey 2003: 10 –14. In search of explanations elsewhere, especially an explanation for the socioeconomic conditions of the cult’s emergence, other historians note that the Yuan state’s imposition of levirate marriage on the Han people and its policies of limiting a widow’s property rights facilitated the growth of the chaste widow cult. See Holmgren 1985, 1986; Birge 1995, 2002. Taking note of the energy scholars put into writing about chaste women in the late imperial period, Tien Ju-K’ang holds that educated men who were marginalized by the examination system were responsible for the promotion of the cult. T’ien 1988. 19.  For discussions on enduring relationship between a married woman and her natal family, see Judd 1989; Bossler 2000. 20.  Matthew Sommer shows that in the lawsuits, ordinary people were able to “invoke” the moral values of female chastity to secure their power and property. Sommer 1996, 2000: 168. In her study of Qing women’s inheritance rights, Kathryn Bernhardt demonstrates that in the legal battle over a widow’s choice of an heir, judges typically granted her wishes even against the regulation of mandatory nephew succession “in reward for their virtue.” Bernhardt 1999: 48, 62 –72. 21.  Daughter of Wang Xijue, a high official of the Ming court, Tanyangzi was said to have had religious aspirations while still a child. After her fiancé’s death, her spiritual pursuit became more intense. She had repeated visions and fasted for five years. In the end she was believed to have attained immortality. A cult developed in her hometown area, but those who were attracted to her teaching enjoyed empirewide reputations, including Wang Shizhen, a leader of the literati circle of his time, and her own father and brother. See Waltner 1987. Qiyuan Xinggang was also born into a scholarly family in the Lower Yangzi. After the death of her betrothed, she went to live with his family. Although her in-laws loved her dearly, she felt distraught over her suppressed desire to become a nun. She was eventually allowed to study with Chan masters and entered the religious life. She later became a charismatic Buddhist teacher and attracted great numbers of followers, lay and monastic, women and men, illiterate and educated. Grant 1996. 22.  The concept of “becoming a religion” (zongjiaohua) first appeared in the early twentieth century intellectual critique of women’s history in China. See Chen 1970: 241; Liu 1934. More recently, Zhou Wanyao has written an article detailing the dramatic acts performed by women of the Tongcheng area, which she also characterizes as “zongjiaohua.” Zhou 1993. 23.  Sun 1986: 70. 24.  Poetry was the main genre of writing for educated women throughout Chinese history. Many of the original poems have been published and analyzed as primary sources for studying women’s and gender history. The two monographs that make the most extensive use of women’s writings are Dorothy Ko’s

272   Notes to Chapter 1 Teachers of the Inner Chambers (1994) and Susan Mann’s Precious Records (1997). Also see Widmer and Chang 1997; Zhang 2002; Cahill 2003. Letters constituted another form of writing for women. See Widmer 1989; and essays by Dorothy Ko, Kathryn Lowry, and Yu-Yin Cheng in Under Confucian Eyes: Writings on Gender in Chinese History. Mann and Cheng 2001. 25.  A number of influential Buddhist and Daoist hagiographies have been translated and studied in recent years. See, for example, Tsai 1994; Cahill 2006. 26.  In his study of historical biographical sources, historian Feng Erkang identifies about three dozen genres under the general category “zhuan,” divided by their functions, author types (e.g., private or official), styles, and so forth. Feng 2000: 31– 36. 27.  This could be said of biographies, including tomb inscriptions, produced in other periods as well. Ebrey has used them very effectively in her book on Song women and marriage, commenting that “biographies are not all artifice. When authors knew their subjects, especially when they wrote about their own mothers, wives, and sisters, their feelings come through clearly.” Ebrey 1993: 14. 28.  Most faithful maiden biographies are preserved in “collected works,” or wenji, of male scholars, frequently compiled posthumously by a family member or disciple or by scholars themselves in their old age. In late imperial times, leaving behind a wenji, a scholar’s presentation of the best works of his lifetime, constituted one of the greatest desires of men of literary or scholarly achievements. Voluminous wenji by men of varied literary reputation were published during the Ming and Qing. chapter 1 1.  Mao 1968: 1589. 2.  See, for example, Wang Yuan’s comments in 1985: 502, and Shang Rong’s in BZJ: 7243. 3.  For instance, in Hanfeizi, a righteous man is called a zhenshi (“a zhen man”). Han 1986: 66, 150. 4.  Maoshi zhu shu 1983: 69:203; Shixu 1983: 69:8. 5.  Liu 1966: 109 –10. 6.  Ibid.: 93 –94. 7.  Ibid.: 178. 8.  Wei 1974: 1981. 9.  A similar change appeared to have happened to the term jie. In early Song it was still applied to men, but as the jiefu became a major cultural icon in the Yuan, the term came to be associated exclusively with women. See Bossler 2004. In some medieval texts, zhennü was rather loosely defined. Compiled in 977 under imperial sponsorship, for example, the Song encyclopedia Taiping Yulan includes three sections with the heading “zhennü,” which includes a wide variety of stories of virtuous women. 10.  In early Chinese history, as suggested in Liu Xiang’s Lienü zhuan, female virtue included a broader range of attributes. In the late imperial period, how-

Notes to Chapter 1   273 ever, it was principally defined by chastity and a woman’s filial obligation toward her husband’s family. See Du and Mann 2003. Also see Raphals 1998: esp. chap. 5. Raphals demonstrates that from the original Lienü zhuan to the Ming editions of it, the range of virtue for women shrank and the emphasis shifted; for example, the “intellectual virtue stories” in the original Lienü zhuan were deemphasized. 11.  Ming and Qing local gazetteers sometimes include faithful maiden cases from early periods, but the credibility of such accounts is difficult to determine. 12.  The “three-year mourning” was the highest degree of mourning preserved for a ruler by his minister, for a father by his son, or a husband by his wife. In practice, however, it was customarily observed for twenty-seven months. See Gu Yanwu’s discussion in Huang 2002: 1144:35 – 39. 13.  Liu 1966: 97. 14.  There are two poems in the Book of Songs entitled “Cypress Boat.” The other poem, in the section “Airs of Yong” (Yongfeng), was believed to be written by a chaste widow or a faithful maiden (see discussions in Chapter 7). The complete poem reads as follows: Floating, that cypress boat in the middle of the river. Restless I couldn’t sleep; my worry is deep. Not that I have no wine— Drinking and entertaining give me no comfort. My heart is not a mirror; how can it bear [contain] everything! Brothers I have, but they are not dependable. Reluctantly I go to tell my distress, Only to see them lose temper at me. My heart is not a rock; it will not turn. My heart is not a mat; it will not roll. Good manners and upbringing, I have them, boundlessly. Sad is my heart, The petty men are angry with me. Displeasures I have suffered many; insults I have received not few. At silent night I reflect, Awake, I punch my chest. O Sun, O Moon, Why do you dim, one after the other? My worrying heart is like an unwashed dress. At silent night I ponder, Longing to fly away like a bird.

274   Notes to Chapter 1 15.  Liu Xiang’s account, it appears, draws on the Lu Commentary on the Book of Songs (Lushi, dated to the third century BCE). 16.  Zhu 1983: 72:759. For the account’s connection with the Lu Commentary, see Wang Zhaoyuan 2002: 697. Qing scholars tried to identify Lady Weixuan in historical records, but with no conclusion. See Chen Zizhan 1983: 79 – 80. 17.  Liu 1966: 97. 18.  Note that the symbol of the “cypress boat” drew on both poems bearing the same title from the Book of Songs. 19.  The original text of Huangfu’s Lienü zhuan had been lost at some point in history, but fragments were scattered in encyclopedias from the Tang period (618 –906), such as Ouyang Xun’s Yiwen leiju. 20.  Ouyang 1982: 335 – 36. 21.  Yu 1965: 494 –95. 22.  Guangdong tongzhi: 59/704 –5. 23.  Ibid.: 59/705. 24.  For example, Yao Wenyu (tenth century) was said to have “vowed not to marry” after the death of her betrothed. She inherited an equal share of her father’s property with her brothers, and in a year of drought, she donated a large sum of rice for famine relief. When she was old, she donated her villa and all her land to build a Buddhist temple. Shaoxing fuzhi 1792: 1530. In another story, the fiancé of Miaojing (mid-twelfth century) was said to have accidentally drowned on his way to fetch her for their wedding. Miaojing vowed to remain celibate. She used her family’s wealth to construct a stone bridge over the river that took her fiancé’s life. The villagers called it the “Bridge of the Old Virgin” and later built two temples on either side of the bridge, one for men and one for women, which “looked just like the Cowherd and the Weaving Maid looking at each other.” Wu 1973: 191. The story was told in retrospect by the Ming thinker Zhan Ruoshui (1466 –1560). Even though Zhan wrote it to promote a moralist agenda, remnants of the folk flavor still come through strongly in his recounting. 25.  Elvin 1984. 26.  Tuotuo et al. 1983: 13309. No date was available for this incident, but judging from the fact that the adopted heir Sima Mengqui gained his jinshi degree in 1262, Cheng should have received the state honor some time in the first half of the thirteenth century. 27.  Huizhou fuzhi 1502: 315 –16. 28.  Ruren was a title of honor normally given to the mothers or wives of government officials. It was the seventh highest of nine such titles. For the quotation, see Huizhou fuzhi 1502: 315 –16. 29.  Qian 1990: 68/8. 30.  Writing about moral exemplars had a long history, but as Beverly Bossler observes, during the Song, literati increasingly began to write about virtuous men and women— often recipients of government jingbiao awards—from their own time. This tendency developed further in the Yuan. Bossler 2002. 31.  Huizhou fuzhi 1502: 316; ibid. 1566: 399; Qian 1990: 68/8. The 1502 gazetteer Huizhou fuzhi states that the biography of Ye was written by Zhang Ruyu, but the editor of the 1566 version of the gazetteer made a correction note, saying

Notes to Chapter 1   275 that the biography was actually by Hu Sheng. The dates and native place of Hu Sheng are unknown. Some of his writings, preserved in Xin’an wenxian zhi, suggest that he lived in the second half of the thirteenth century. 32.  Xiao 1983: 1218:707; Yang 1994: 315 –16. The other text is a biography by Zhang Yanghao (1270 –1329). Zhang 1983: 1192:533. The case was also included in Yuanshi; see Song 1976: 4500. 33.  GTJ: 48754. 34.  “Kongque dongnan fei” in Chinese, this is a masterpiece of a folk-style poem from the later Han period (25 –220) that celebrates a love tragedy. 35.  An allusion to the famous story of Boji from Liu Xiang’s Lienü zhuan. Lady Boji, an aristocratic woman, refused to escape from her room when it caught fire because she believed that a woman ought not descend the hall at night without the accompaniment of her nursemaid and tutor. In the end she was engulfed by flames. Liu 1966: 95 –96. 36.  Yang 1994: 315 –16. 37.  Ibid.: 397; Wang Feng 1983: 1218:707. 38.  Ebrey 1993: 194 –95, 198. 39.  Li and Huang 1983: 71:141. For the strengthening of this neo-Confucian thought in the Southern Song, see Birge 2002. 40.  Bossler 2003, 2004. 41.  Davis 1996. 42.  Holmgren 1985, 1986; Birge 1995, 2002. Birge argues that during the Yuan, the complex interplay between the Mongol conquest and the neo-­Confucian call for female chastity and devotion created the perfect conditions under which women lost the property rights that they had previously enjoyed under the law, thus providing incentives for women to pursue chaste widowhood. 43.  It is important to keep in mind that the men who would take advantage of the state law of levirate marriage were most likely from lower social strata. The impact of such a law—in effect for a very short period— on the elite population might have been limited. 44.  Gao 1958: 388. Note that the first three sentences cited here, in which the Yuan is called “barbaric,” were deleted in the Qing-government-approved Siku quanshu edition of the essay. 45.  It should be noted that even though the Mongol customs were perceived as “barbarian,” the Yuan regime was regarded by many Chinese intellectuals and elite, including Yang Weizhen and the Ming founder Zhu Yuanzhang, as legitimate. Yang Weizhen declined to serve the Ming court after the fall of the Yuan. 46.  Song 1976: 4491, 4500. 47.  Ming Taizu Shilu: 3707. 48.  Zhang 1974: 7689. 49.  Cai 1990: 44 – 45. 50.  Ming Xuanzong Shilu: 1529. 51.  For example, in Gui Youguang’s essay “On Zhennü,” zhennü referred to “women who have not married but who die for their fiancés or refuse to marry someone else for the rest of their lives.” Gui 1929: 3/4a.

276   Notes to Chapter 1 52.  The term chunü was even used by the court. According to a Songjiang prefectural gazetteer, after the two daughters of a certain Gu family died—both of them stayed celibate after the deaths of their fiancés—the Yuan court honored their tombs with the title of “tombs of virgin women” (chunü fen). GTJ: 48797; for laonü, see Wu 1973: 191. Meng Yun was called “black-haired lady” (heitou gu) because she did not have a single white hair when she died at the age of ninety-three. Zhuji xianzhi 1773: 32/9b; for “baitou nü,” see GTJ: 48804. 53.  For instance, when education supervisor Cai launched a campaign to honor the Song faithful maiden Wu, he was not pleased with the way the locals referred to her—“the old virgin.” He called her a zhennü and inscribed it on her tomb. Wu 1973: 191. 54.  The term wangmen gua began to appear in Yuan faithful maiden biographies, and in the Ming it was readily used in vernacular writings, which portrayed wangmen gua as a bad situation of which no family wanted to be a part. For example, in the famous Romance of the Three Kingdoms episode in which Zhou Yu plotted to kill Liu Bei by luring him to Wu under the guise that Liu would be given the Wu princess in marriage, Zhou Yu’s otherwise marvelous plan was spoiled by the princess’s mother, who was furious that the plan would turn her daughter into a “door-gazing widow” by reputation. See Zhang Yanghao’s “Biography of the Chaste Widow Liu.” Zhang 1983: 1192:533. Luo 1995: 608. In addition to the Three Kingdoms example, also see Jin ping mei cihua, Lanling Xiaoxiaosheng 1993: 764; Erke pai an jing qi, Ling 1985: 150. For examples of weihunqi, see Li and Yang 1995: 378 – 80; for pinqi, see Li and Yang 1995: 405. 55.  No jingbiao were issued to faithful maidens from 1522 to 1527 and 1561 to 1566. 56.  See Huizhou fuzhi 1502: juan 10; ibid. 1566: juan 20. 57.  This figure draws on Ming court records, Ming Shilu (statistics on the number of women who received jingbiao after this year are not available in Ming Shilu). The number reported in Da Qing yitong zhi, compiled during the Qianlong reign, is higher (see Figure 3.1). There could be two reasons for the discrepancy. First, the Da Qing yitong zhi also includes the Ming women honored by the Qing court. Second, there are no data on women honored with jingbiao in the last years of the Ming, from 1633 to 1644, in Ming Shilu. 58.  Some overlaps result primarily from the same case being reported in different levels of local gazetteers. For example, the case of faithful maiden Shi appeared in Jiangning fuzhi (GTJ: 49196) and Yixing xianzhi (GTJ: 49583); the case of Meng Yun appeared in Zhejiang tongzhi (GTJ: 48889) and Zhuji xianzhi (GTJ: 49622). 59.  The Chinese population decreased greatly during the Mongol conquest. The registered population in 1290 was 60 million, about half that in the preceding Southern Song. The number remained nearly the same when the Ming took over in 1368. By the end of the Ming (1644), the population had recovered to between 150 million and 200 million. 60.  These data exclude five whose situations did not strictly apply. They include two in which the young women refused to sever their engagements and as a result stayed with their parents, one in which the young woman insisted on

Notes to Chapter 1   277 marrying despite her fiancé’s serious illness, and two in which the groom died when the brides were on their way to their weddings. 61.  Shaoxing fuzhi 1975: 1530 – 42. 62.  Wu 1970: 1520 –22, 1539. 63.  The observation was made by Zhu Jian (1769 –1850) when he served as the president of the Zhongshan Academy in Nanjing. Li 1990: 351. 64.  GTJ: 49632. 65.  Ibid.: 49627. 66.  See Chapter 6 for a detailed discussion of these acts. 67.  Zhangzhou fuzhi 1573: 657. 68.  Xiangfu xianzhi 1739: 12/48a–b. 69.  Ibid.: 12/46b – 47a. 70.  T’ien 1988: 13. 71.  Carlitz 1997: 612. 72.  Ibid. 73.  Farmer 1990, 1995. Also see Sarah Schneewind’s study on Ming community schools, a system established by Zhu Yuanzhang as a way of organizing an orderly society. Schneewind 2006. 74.  Lixue, “the school of li,” founded by Song philosophers Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi, is commonly translated as “neo-Confucianism.” It had been the state teaching since the Yuan. 75.  For a discussion of Wang Yangming’s philosophy, see Tu 1976. For the Taizhou school, see Cheng 1996. 76.  Zhang 1974: 7689. 77.  The gegu as an act of filial piety was reported in earlier times (Tang and Song periods, for example). However, the rate of occurrence among young women seems to have increased over time, and by the late imperial period it was one of the commonly mentioned virtues in women’s biographies. 78.  One such case, the Great Ritual Controversy (da li yi), is described by Ann Waltner. See Waltner 1990: 1– 3. 79.  Zhao 1999: 5 –14. 80.  Zhao Yuan believes that the rise of the extreme moralism was the precise product of the tyranny of the Ming government. Ibid. 81.  Ye 1983: 1286:495. 82.  Wu 1973: 423. 83.  Ibid. 84.  Ibid.: 192. 85.  Brook 1998; Brokaw 1991. 86.  Zhang 1974: 7347. For a discussion of Kang Hai in relation to female suicide, see Carlitz 2001. 87.  Li Mengyang 1983: 1262:529. Gu Qing (1460 –1528), who also fought Liu Jin, expressed a similar sentiment. In his piece on a certain faithful maiden Dong, Gu ridiculed those who “served ten rulers and changed surnames four times,” yet many viewed them as “protecting the people” and following the “mean” (whereas faithful maidens were criticized as “surpassing the mean”). Gu Qing 1983: 1261:323.

278   Notes to Chapter 1 88.  Cha 1985: 28/4a. 89.  Sima 1959: 2457. 90.  Note that the intensive use of chaste women as a symbol of loyalty began much earlier. Bossler has demonstrated that during the late Southern Song and the last decades of the Yuan, elite writings greatly emphasized “women’s loyalty to their husbands as a model for male political loyalty.” Bossler 2002: 548. 91.  Xiangfu xianzhi 1739: 12/47b – 48a. 92.  Gao Panlong 1983: 1292:705 – 6. 93.  Ziyun was Yang Xiong, the famous Han writer who later served the Xin, established by the usurper Wang Mang; Pingzhong was the neo-Confucian thinker Xue Heng, who went on to serve the Yuan after the Mongols conquered the Song. 94.  Gu Xiancheng 1983: 1292:163. 95.  See his biography in Mingshi. Zhang 1974: 4017–20. 96.  Ibid.: 5530, 5930. 97.  See Beverly Bossler’s introduction to “Final Instructions by Yang Ji­ sheng,” in Mann and Cheng 2001: 119 –21. 98.  Zhang 1974: 5545. 99.  Ibid.: 5542. 100.  Ibid.: 6328 –29. 101.  Meng 1981: 78. 102.  For example, when Yang was demoted to Didao county, Shaanxi, a result of his first memorial, Zhang Zhen used her dowry to help Yang purchase two thousand mu of land to support the livelihood of the county students (one mu equals 733.5 square yards). Yang also described Zhang as a crucial influence in his decision to draft the second memorial to impeach Yan Song, even though Zhang Zhen did not think it was wise to serve in a corrupt court. She suggested that a gentleman should withdraw when society was in disorder. See Yang 1983: 1278:670, 671. 103.  This petition, included in Yang’s collected works Yang Zhongmin ji, was believed by some to have been actually written for her by Wang Shizhen, a friend of Yang Jisheng. Whether or not that was the case, it does not reduce the significance of Zhang Zhen’s action. At any rate, it was her act—asking to exchange her own life for her husband’s—not the document per se, that aroused Confucian scholars’ great admiration. In his preface to Yang’s collected works, for example, Mao Qiling twice commented on Zhang Zhen’s heroism. He remarked: “Reading Lady Zhang’s petition to substitute her life for that of her husband, we then know what kind of husband and wife they were!” See Yang 1983: 1278:615. It is worth noting that in the petition, published as an appendix to Yang’s essays, Zhang calls herself a “chen” (subject or minister). The term was conventionally used by men, in particular those in government service, when they addressed their sovereign; thus, it evokes a strong, gendered, subject-ruler relationship. By calling herself a chen outright, Zhang Zhen is taking on the role of a male subject. Yang 1983: 1278:629. 104.  Ibid.: 629. 105.  Ibid.: 651.

Notes to Chapter 1   279 106.  See Beverly Bossler’s introduction to Yang Jisheng’s “Final Instructions by Yang Jisheng,” in Mann and Cheng 2001: 119 –21. Whether or not Zhang Zhen actually killed herself is under discussion. I have been informed by Kenneth Hammond that contemporary records give no indication of her committing suicide, so it is likely that she did not do so. What we do know is that Yang Jisheng was worried that she might commit suicide upon his execution, so he wrote specifically in his final letter that she must not kill herself, and he listed a number of reasons to persuade her. 107.  Huang Zongxi 1983: 1457:752. 108.  Xu 2000: 168. For a similar account, see Fu 1983: 719:450. This was a typical practice in imperial China: if an official committed severe crimes, his family property would be confiscated and family members made government slaves. 109.  Zhang 1974: 4411. 110.  The story of Zhang Lun’s faithful maiden mother is recorded in Wenzhou fuzhi, Qingshi, and Mingshan cang. Guo 1997: 95 –96. Another entry appears in Yuding neize yanyi (Fu 1983: 719: 450), in which a poem containing the following lines was attributed to her: “Who says that I did not have a husband? / I was able to see him when he was just dead. / Who says that I do not have a son? / The son born to the concubine looks just like my husband.” According to the Siku quanshu editors, however, the poem was a fabrication, an altered version of a work by the early Ming writer Gao Qi in honor of another woman, a certain chaste widow. See Xu 2000: 168; Qinding siku quanshu zongmu: 3:1025. Gao’s original poem was entitled “A Poem on Chaste Widow Zhang,” in Gao Qi 1983: 1230:136. 111.  The earliest version of the play was written during the Chenghua reign (1465 – 87). Guo 1997: 95. 112.  According to a contemporary account cited by Gu Yanwu, when the dowry was being accumulated, she asked her father to remove luxurious items, saying that she “admired Shaojun and Mengguan.” Gu 1976: 171. Shaojun and Mengguan were two virtuous wives who appeared regularly in Ming-Qing literary and didactic works that celebrate conjugal harmony and wifely virtue. Both women married frugal scholars. When their newlywed husbands expressed disapproval of their ornate dresses, they promptly changed to coarse clothes fit for manual labor. 113.  Gu 1976: 172. Gu’s biological and adopted fathers were first-generation cousins on their fathers’ side. For a full account of the genealogical relationship between the two, see Quan 2000: 1:236. 114.  Gu 1976: 172. 115.  Ibid. She reportedly left behind a letter to Gu Yanwu. See Xiangyan cong­ shu 1991: 6:99 –100. 116.  Shouyang was the mountain (in present Shanxi province) where Boyi and Shuqi were believed to have starved themselves to death. Here Gu Yanwu is using it to refer to the two men, symbols of the highest moral integrity in Chinese history. Boyi and Shuqi were brothers. When King Wu of Zhou rebelled against the ruling Shang dynasty and led his army to take over the Shang capital,

280   Notes to Chapter 2 the brothers tried to stop him. When the Zhou overthrew the Shang, Boyi and Shuqi took refuge in Shouyang, where they gathered weeds for food, as they refused to eat grain that grew out of the land of the new Zhou dynasty, a gesture of protest against the Zhou’s rebellion. They finally died of starvation. See Sima 1959: 2121–29. 117.  Gu 1976: 170. chapter 2 1.  See, for example, Yiyou biji by Zeng Yuwang and Li nian ji by Yao Tingling, in Qingdai riji huichao 1982: 3 –168. Both men lived in the present Shanghai area during the Ming-Qing transition. 2.  Chen 1979: 154. 3.  Shaoxing fuzhi 1792: 1538 – 42. 4.  Fang 1968: wenwaiji/196. The compiler of the Bei zhuan ji attributes this piece of writing to Guo Xiu. BZJ: 7085. 5.  BZJ: 7089 –90. 6.  Mao 1968: 1589 –91. 7.  A number of other contemporary scholars, including Huang Zongxi, also wrote commemorative biographies for the two women. See BZJ: 7075, 7078 – 80; Dai 1986: 237– 38. 8.  Dai 1986: 237– 38. 9.  Wang Yuan 1985: 502. 10.  Founded by Yan Yuan (1635 –1704) and his disciple Li Gong (1659 –1733), Yan-Li school of thought was known for its sober emphasis on action or practice over book learning, and meditation in the cultivation of moral virtue of individuals and in bringing changes to the world. 11.  Dramatization of moral stories can be traced to earlier periods. See Bossler 2003. According to Katherine Carlitz, dramatization of moral stories for entertainment was seen in late Ming editions of Lienü zhuan, in which the book’s illustrations commonly concentrate on dramatic scenes such as self-mutilation by young women. Carlitz 1991: 127–28. 12.  Wu 1973: 254 –55. Both cases took place in Fujian, where suicide committed by chaste widows and faithful maidens in public on a pre-announced date followed by rituals of sacrifice was a “custom.” See discussions in Chapters 4 and 5. 13.  Huang 1968: 135. 14.  Wei 1996: 576. However, nowhere else is this attitude of Song Dian’s parents suggested. All of the other accounts, such as those by Wei Xiangshu, Wang Wan, and Zhu Yizun, indicate that her parents were deeply distressed. Fa Ruozhen might have exaggerated the fact in order to make his point. 15.  Wang Yuan 1985: 500. 16.  Qu 1996: Wengshan wenchao/366. 17.  This observation is primarily based on my survey of the Ming and early Qing collected works (wenji) contained in the Wenyuange edition of Siku quanshu. Of the early Qing writers, the most prolific was perhaps Mao Qiling,

Notes to Chapter 2   281 who wrote nine entries on the topic. Both Zhu Yizun and Wang Yuan wrote four pieces. 18.  The practice of compilation of a special volume in memory of a chaste widow who received state jingbiao was reported as early as the Yuan and also in the Ming. See Bossler 2002; Fei 1998: 147. 19.  Wu 1985: 19:271. 20.  QWH: 2016. 21.  Sun 1985: 559. 22.  This is indicated in Shen Hanguang’s poem. See Shen n.d.a.: 1/7a. 23.  Sun 1985: 559. Details of the story are recounted slightly differently in Chibei ou tan by Wang Shizhen (1634 –1711) and in Langui bao lu compiled by Wanyan Yun Zhu. According to Wang, Fan hanged herself in the courtyard immediately upon hearing the tragic news. The Haitang flowers, which were colorfully blooming, all suddenly turned white. Wang 1982: 571–72. In Yun Zhu’s account, Fan’s mother had died earlier, and Fan was brought up by her aunt, who denied Fan’s plea to mourn her fiancé. Before Fan took poison, she wrote a poem to express her resolve. Wanyan 1831: 4/43b – 44a. 24.  Sun 1985: 559; Xu 1985: 2775. For Ding’s poem, see Ding 1999: 160 – 61. 25.  Yan 1987: 409 –10, 485. 26.  Ibid.: 410. 27.  Ibid.: 485. 28.  Wei 1996: 698. 29.  Ibid.: 575; Wang 1929: 35/13a. 30.  Wei 1996: 549, 575. Li Yunhua’s affluence is seen in the fact that after Wei Xiangshu was reemployed by the court, Li provided three hundred taels of silver each year to Wei to help him with the expenses of living in the capital. Ibid.: 700. 31.  Ibid.: 249. 32.  Wang 1929: 35/13a–14a; Zhu 1929: 6/14a–b; Qu 1996: Wengshan wenchao/362 – 63. 33.  The volume contains commemorative writings for Song Dian and a suicidal widow Zhang, also from Wei prefecture. Zhang committed suicide a few months after Song Dian’s death. Wei 1996: 582, 698. The volume is also called Two Martyred Heroines from Wei and Luo (Weiluo shuanglie ji). Ibid.: 698. 34.  BZJ: 6969; Hong 1992: 212. 35.  Yu 1983: 5/9b –10a. 36.  You 2002: 603. 37.  For example, using faithful maidens to critique social decadence continued during this period. Lu Longqi (1630 –92), the lixue scholar, eulogized faithful maidens chiefly in terms of Confucian ethical principles regarding human relations (gangchang). He saw in the young women’s actions the hope of preserving social values essential for a Confucian order. Lu Longqi 1983: 1325:277. Zhu Yizun, on the other hand, echoed the conventional theme of appreciating faithful maidens as moral paragons of “following one husband.” Zhu 1929: 53/10a–12a, 58/9b –11a. 38.  In her essay “Heroic Transformations: Women and National Trauma in

282   Notes to Chapter 2 Early Qing Literature,” Wai-yee Li shows how “literary representation of heroic women encompasses the author’s apology, nostalgia, regrets, self-definition, and historical judgment, inseparable from their memory of and reflections on the traumatic dynastic transition.” Li 1999: 364. 39.  Liu 1983: 1294:496. 40.  Sun 1985: 559. A similar point was also made by Wang Wan and Chen Yi. Wang 1929: 35/13a; Chen 1985: 38. 41.  The other two “great Confucians” were Huang Zongxi and Li Yong (1627–1705). See Xie 1982: 16. 42.  For discussion on Diao Bao’s resistance position, see Xie 1982: 16. For Shen Hanguang, see Shen n.d.a: 66a–74b. 43.  Chen 1985: 38. 44.  Wang Yuan had not yet been born at the time. After his wife’s heroic suicide (she was his second wife), Wang Yuan’s father married again to his third wife, Wang Yuan’s mother. Wang Yuan 1985: 553. 45.  Ibid.: 475. 46.  See Fang Bao’s biography of Wang Yuan. Fang 1968: 174 –75. 47.  Wang Yuan 1985: 502. 48.  Ibid.: 500. 49.  Ibid.: 497. 50.  Chow 1994: 44 –70. 51.  Qu 1996: preface/4. 52.  See preface to Qu Dajun quanji. Ibid.: preface/10 –12. 53.  Ibid.: Wengshan wenchao/366. 54.  Ibid.: Wengshan wenwai/128, 145, 224 –25, and Wengshan wenchao/ 362. 55.  Ibid.: Wengshan wenwai/128. 56.  Xue’an was a friend of Qu Dajun. 57.  Qu 1996: Wengshan wenchao/362. 58.  Li 1999: 424 –28. 59.  According to Meng and the preface to the 1926 edition of the county gazetteer, Songyang xianzhi, the earliest record about the story appears in the Longqin (1567–72) edition of the gazetteer. Songyang xianzhi 1654: 8/142; ­Songyang xianzhi 1926: 163. For a full account of the Zhang Yuniang story and some of Zhang’s poems, see Idema and Grant 2004: 257– 69. 60.  Meng: 2/4. According to the preface, Meng wrote the play in 1643, that is, the year right before the fall of the Ming. Xu Shuofang, however, has convincingly shown that the play was actually written in 1656 or later. Because of its suggestive portrayal of the pain and sorrow over the loss of a Chinese empire, Meng deliberately changed the dates so that the play would not attract the suspicion of the Qing government. 61.  For additional reference, see “The Shunzhi Court,” in Wakeman 1985: 894 –987. 62.  Wei 1996: 723. 63.  See Wen Rushi and Gong Gao’s preface. Ibid.: 3, 5. 64.  Zhao 1960: 1072.

Notes to Chapter 3   283 65.  Wei 1996: 5. 66.  Li Gong 2002: 7. 67.  Wei 1996: 549. 68.  After his political setback resulting from Chen Mingxia’s case, Wei Xiangshu retired to his home in 1656, taking care of his ailing mother. He was recommended for and took a post in Beijing in 1672, five years after his organizing the public ceremony for faithful maiden Song. 69.  Shilu (Kangxi): 275. 70.  For example, faithful maiden Song Dian received jingbiao in the eleventh month, and the news appeared in the following month’s government newspaper. Wang 1929: 35/13b –14a. chapter 3 1.  Most of these accounts appear in the “Rituals and Customs” section of local gazetteers. Names for the practice varied, but baopai zuoqin, baopai chenghun, and wangmen gua appear to have been adopted cross-regionally. See, for example, Luodianzhen zhi (1889), Chongming xianzhi (1930), and Zhuji xianzhi (1910), in Ding and Zhao 1995: 75, 84, 829 – 30; Zhou 1989: 22. 2.  A number of studies explore the Qing state policies regulating social and gender behavior. See Mann 1997; Sommer 2000; Theiss 2001, 2004. 3.  Historians generally consider 1683 the beginning of the High Qing—“the prosperous age of the Qing”—when the government put down the rebellion of the Three Feudatories. The period lasted through the end of Emperor Qianlong’s reign (1795) according to some scholars, or to 1839, the year the Opium War broke out, according to others. See Ho 1967; Wakeman 1970; Mann 1997: 20. 4.  Mann 1997: 19 – 31. In comparison with the late Ming, the Qing state took a conservative turn with regard to social issues. Ideological control was tightened and sexuality regulated; the cult of qing of the late Ming, which celebrated human emotions and love, was suppressed, as was its courtesan culture. Women’s religious activities, such as making pilgrimages or visiting temples, were seen as improper and to be controlled. 5.  Shilu (Shunzhi): 65 – 66, 109. 6.  The figure does not include the people who were honored for longevity and households that were honored for cohabitation for five or more generations. 7.  A very small number of them were awarded for their filial deeds or ­actions of yi. 8.  Mann 1987: 49. 9.  Elliott 1999: 38 –54. 10.  The Qing court classified its population into two general categories: those of Zhili and the provinces (zhili gesheng, that is, basically Han Chinese), and those of the Eight Banners (baqi), which included three ethnic groups: the Manchus (Manzhou), the Mongols (Menggu), and the Han Martial (Hanjun). 11.  Shilu (Kangxi): 2302.

284   Notes to Chapter 3 12.  These data draw on Shilu of the Shunzhi and Kangxi reigns. The statistics from Baqi tongzhi and Qinding Baqi tongzhi for the Sunzhi through the Qianlong reigns affirm this observation. There, Manchu widows consistently dominated jingbiao awards by a wide margin. Elliott 1999: 42 – 43. 13.  The population ratio is based on data from the Qianlong period. See Ding 1999: 137, note 2. According to Elliott, Manchus composed about onethird of the total Eight Banners population, and the Han Martial represented about one-half. Elliott 1999: 45. Given this ratio, the extremely high number of awards given to Manchu women could in no way be read as an indication of a higher ratio of actual widows among Manchus. In fact, a large number of Han women who were qualified for jingbiao did not receive it. For example, in the early ­Daoguang reign, in the Wujing-Yanghu area (in southern Jiangsu) alone, local elite and local officials recovered 3,018 cases from earlier periods in which qualified women had been left out of the jingbiao awards. Tao 1998: 339 – 41. 14.  Elliott made a similar point. Elliott 1999: 39. The court also made an effort to find Confucian exemplars among men of the Eight Banners, especially among the Manchus. It appears that the court was very concerned about the lack of “filial sons” among the Eight Banners. Kangxi once told his closest ministers that whereas “faithful women should be honored, filial sons should especially be rewarded. How can there be no filial sons among the Eight Banners!” QDQHS: 10413. Also see Shilu (Kangxi): 2570, 3309. The futile effort of looking for filial sons among the Eight Banners, in particular among the Manchus, came to a stop when Emperor Qianlong issued an edict stating that “the old custom of the Manchus are simple and unadorned, and filiality and righteousness [xiaoyi] are our due tasks [fennei zhishi]. From now on the search should stop.” QDQHS: 10421. 15.  Mann 1993. The areas Mann surveyed include the provinces of Jiangnan, Zhejiang, Guangdong, and Fujian. Mann finds that the edicts banning widow suicides were most effective in Jiangnan and Zhejiang, followed by Guangdong, and were least successful in Fujian. 16.  Shilu (Kangxi): 1820. 17.  Ibid. 18.  Ibid.: 1820 –21. As the contemporary Liu Zhen pointed out, a woman who was motivated by her sense of honor-bound duty (yi) to commit suicide would not “step into the court to declare her intention” and wait for the government officials to go through a long process to gain permission. In other words, she would go ahead with her suicide. See Liu Zhen’s biography of faithful maiden Xu. BZJ: 7206 –7. 19.  See his edict in Shilu (Kangxi): 1450. 20.  One legend about this cliff tells of a ten-year-old boy who made a vow to the god of Taishan that he would like to exchange his own life for that of his sick mother’s. When his mother recovered from illness, he went to the cliff to fulfill his promise. Mysteriously, clouds supported him and he landed safely. Yu 1983: 6/16a. 21.  Shilu (Kangxi): 1564.

Notes to Chapter 3   285 22.  Ibid.: 3350, 3411, 3457, 3470, 3481, 3544, 3545, 3635, 3664, 3783, 3853, 3858, 3947, 3948, 3964, 3966. 23.  Ibid.: 3350. Also see Baqi tongzhi 1968: 14191. 24.  Shilu (Kangxi): 3411. 25.  It was said that she was determined to die after her husband’s death. When her relatives tried to dissuade her, she made up an excuse and went to hang herself by the privy. Shilu (Kangxi): 3635. 26.  Shilu (Yongzheng): 1043 – 45. 27.  Ibid.: 1060. 28.  Ibid.: 2125. 29.  The number is based on cases reported in Yongzheng era Shilu. 30.  For example, see Shilu (Qianlong): 683, 1019, 1360, 1661, 2006, 2341. 31.  The categorization was not consistent, however. Occasionally, the phrase “weihun xunjie” was also used in jingbiao in which faithful maidens who had committed suicide were awarded. In general, however, the category of “fu wang xunjie” applied to both widows and faithful maidens. See, for example, Shilu (Qianlong): 3051, 5703, 21763; Shilu (Jiaqing): 19; Shilu (Daoguang): 4952, 5468. 32.  My statistics are based on the Shilu records for the reign of the Qianlong emperor, and Daoguang. In his study of Manchu widows, Mark Elliott argues that the number of court awards given to Eight Banners women who committed xun declined dramatically from the Kangxi to the Yongzheng reign, and that under the emperor Qianlong, no single award was issued to such a woman. Elliott draws data from the lienü sections of A General History of the Eight Banners (Baqi tongzhi) and Imperial-Endorsed Edition of the General History of the Eight Banners (Qinding Baqi tongzhi). Elliott 1999: 41, Tale 2.1. But there is a critical lacuna in that data. Baqi tongzhi covers only the periods before the Qianlong reign. ­Qinding Baqi tongzhi, which provides the statistics for the Qianlong period, does not have short biographies for each woman; neither does it separate women who had committed xun from those who had not. Therefore, it gives no information on whether the Qianlong court honored women who had committed xun. See Baqi tongzhi 1968: juan 239 –50; Qinding Baqi tongzhi 1968: juan 241– 69. 33.  For examples, see Shilu (Jiaqing): 133, 263, 362, 1488, 1748, 1977; Shilu (Daoguang): 1155, 1417, 1685, 2069, 7866, 8032. 34.  It is not clear when the policy was issued, as I have not yet located the original edict or other court documents. Zhu Shi’s essay indicates that the policy was in effect during the Zhongzheng reign. See Zhu 1871: 2/31a, 33b. But it could have been in place earlier, in the Kangxi period. According to Wanyan Yun Zhu, when He Zhixuan, a poet, declared her intention to preserve chastity for her dead fiancé, her brother tried to discourage her, saying that her virtue would not be recognized because the court did not honor faithful maidens. GGZJ: 4/13b. The account does not give a date for the conversation, but a similar entry included in Jiangnan tongzhi, compiled in the first year of the Qianlong reign, reports that He Zhixuan died at the age of twenty-eight. This would place the date of the event no later than the late Kangxi period. Jiangnan tongzhi 1983: 512: 463. 35.  QDQHS: 10420, 10421. In 1812, the forty-six-year-old faithful maiden Peng was initially denied an award by the Board of Rites on the grounds that

286   Notes to Chapter 3 she was not yet fifty years of age. Emperor Jiaqing approved the case, citing that she had preserved fidelity for over thirty years and that both her father and her father-in-law were important officials of the court. Da Qing shi chao sheng xun 1965: 1732. This policy was carried on in the Daoguang reign. QDQHS: 10429. 36.  This is an estimate. From the Shunzhi through Yongzheng reigns, the court honored 538 women who committed xun, of whom 132 were faithful maidens, approximately 25 percent of the total. Starting from the Qianlong reign through the Daoguang reign, faithful maidens who committed xun were generally honored together with widows who committed xun, so no separate data are available for faithful maidens who committed suicide. However, if we apply the 25 percent ratio to the period from the Qianlong through Daoguang reigns, during which 3,263 women were honored in the category of “fu wang xunjie,” the number of faithful maidens committing xun is estimated to be 816. Adding this number to the 132 faithful maiden xun cases that were honored by the Shunzhi through the Yongzheng courts brings the total to 948. 37.  From 1528 to 1632, awards were given to 141 faithful maidens, a little more than 1.34 per year. This number includes both those who committed suicide and those who did not. The Qing data in Table 3.1 do not include those who committed suicide. 38.  Shilu (Kangxi): 360. Also see Shilu (Shunzhi): 478, 1291, 1554; QDQHS: 10413. 39.  Shilu (Yongzheng): 75; QDQHS: 10414. 40.  QDQHS: 10414. 41.  Ibid.: 10414 –15. 42.  Yunlu 1983a: 415:473 –74; Yunlu 1983b: 413:260 – 61. Beile was a title of imperial nobility, third highest of twelve such titles. 43.  QDQHS: 10414. 44.  Shilu (Yongzheng): 199. 45.  For example, a significant part of Yongzheng’s early work focuses on restructuring the court system. See Bartlett 1991: 17– 64. For Yongzheng’s effort in fiscal reform, see Zelin 1984. 46.  Taking a state-centered approach, Janet Theiss characterizes the changes made regarding the state awards for chaste women under Emperor Yongzheng as state “bureaucratization of the chastity cult,” which was intended not only to promote a set of state-sanctioned moral values but also to forge a new type of relationship between ruler and subject and between imperial state and society. Theiss 2005: 25 – 38. 47.  QDQHS: 10420 –21. 48.  During the Qianlong reign the court awarded the faithful maidens who committed suicide in the same category as faithful widows who committed suicide, so we are unable to obtain the number for this group of faithful maidens. 49.  In the last two decades of the Qianlong reign, the majestic High Qing prosperity was overshadowed by the White Lotus and Miao rebellions. The social instability also began to appear in the wealthiest regions of the empire, as suggested in the sorcery scare of 1768 in the Lower Yangzi. Kuhn 1990. 50.  Li 1966: 13/2426, 13/2433. Also see Guo and Cheng 1994: 66 – 67.

Notes to Chapter 3   287 51.  See Guo and Cheng 1994: 66 – 67. 52.  The poem, entitled “On the Biography of Faithful Maiden Zhu,” is included in Emperor Qianlong’s collected works. Yuzhi leshantang quanji dingben 1983: 1300:467– 68. 53.  Qinding Liji yishu 1983: 124:734. Also see Chapter 7. 54.  QDQHS: 10418 –19. 55.  Ibid. The policy was reinforced during the Daoguang reign. See ibid.: 10431. 56.  Ibid.: 10430 – 31; Shilu (Daoguang): 3295, 3618, 3660, 6498. In some cases, the recommended women were from early periods but were rediscovered in the local campaigns searching for virtuous women in their histories. In Wujin and Yanghu counties in southern Jiangsu, for example, local officials and elites recommended 3,018 women for awards, and a collective shrine, zongfang, was built in their memory as a result. For details about this case, see Tao 1998: 339 – 41. 57.  This is indicated in a Yongzheng edict. QDQHS: 10414. A Fujian provincial document from the Jiaqing period deals with the question of which office should have the responsibility of collecting and reporting chaste widow cases, the office of the County School (xianxue) or that of the Prefectual School (fuxue). The governor’s office concluded that the central government did not specify; however, to standardize the procedure, xianxue should be the one in charge, as was done routinely in many counties in Fujian. Fujian shengli 1964: 1210. 58.  This was already in practice in the Ming. See Fei 1998: 117–26. For instance, before she received a jingbiao award at the age of fifty-one, Gu Yanwu’s mother was distinguished by several local honors, including a visit in person to the family by the magistrate and an honorific tablet by Qi Biaojia, then a Xun’an yushi, exhibited at the family entrance. Gu 1976: 172. 59.  Wu 1970: 1523. 60.  BZJ: 7101. 61.  Ibid.: 7206 –7. 62.  Lan 1983: 1327:718 –19. 63.  Wang 2000: 3 –11. 64.  Mann 1997: 28 –29. 65.  On Chen Hongmou, see Rowe 1992, 2001: 291– 325 (esp. 309 –22), 426 –29. Lan Dingyuan’s Women’s Learning (Nü xue) was published in 1712; Chen Honmou’s Sourcebook on Female Education (Jiao nü yi gui) was published in 1742. 66.  Lan 1983: 1327:705 –21. 67.  Dai 1986: 234 – 35. Dai’s point here is that such officials never bother themselves with moral issues. 68.  Shilu (Kangxi): 3959. 69.  QDQHS: 10431. 70.  QWH: 60. Also see Fei 1998: 49. 71.  Yamen runners were men employed by local officials to carry out clerical tasks for the local government. They were of very low status and were often perceived as corrupt. For more information, see Reed 2000: 122 –59. 72.  Li Fu 2002: 661. 73.  Jiang 1993: 2140. What is interesting in this case is that Jiang Shiquan

288   Notes to Chapter 3 did not criticize local government corruption. Rather, he accused the faithful maiden’s brother of losing his conscience. 74.  BZJ: 7225. Also see Dai Mingshi for a similar case about chaste widow Zhang, who committed suicide following the death of her husband. She came from a wealthy family. “The officials and yamen runners all demanded bribes from the family, and the Zhangs would not comply. Therefore, she was not honored with jingbiao.” Dai 1986: 218 –19. 75.  As Susan Mann has demonstrated, the emotional mother-son bonds informed significantly how male writers viewed the meaning of widow chastity. Mann 1987: 45 – 48. 76.  Zhang 1929: (Waibian) xia/3b. 77.  BZJ: 7224. Also see Zhang Shiyuan’s (1755 –1824) comments in BZJ: 7233. 78.  Huang 1985: 205. 79.  QWH: 292. 80.  Yao Nai 1965: 10/4b – 6a. 81.  See Chapter 4. 82.  Qu 1996: Wengshan wenwai/225. 83.  See Shi Runzhang’s (1618 – 83) preface to the Genealogy of the Yang Lineage from Doushan. Shi 1992: 40. 84.  Fang 1968: 82. 85.  However, some fathers did not write biographies for their faithful maiden daughters. For example, the biography of Sun Xidan’s (1736 – 84) daughter was written by Qian Shixi, Sun’s friend, at Sun’s request. See BZJ: 7234 – 35. Zhu Shi’s daughter had two existing biographies, written by Cai Shiyuan and Lan Ding­ yuan. The fathers may not have written the biographies because they both had strong reservations about their daughters’ choices, or they may have thought it more appropriate for a third party to tell a daughter’s story. 86.  Qin Ying (1743 –1821), who was from Wuxi, Jiangsu, once wrote a biography for a faithful maiden surnamed Qin, from Shehong, Sichuan province. When the cousin of the faithful maiden approached him about writing a biography, Qin Ying agreed, saying that they were both the descendants of the famous Song poet Qin Guan. BZJ: 7239. 87.  Beverly Bossler observes that during the Yuan, a female jingbiao recipient’s descendants or friends of her family already commonly solicited poems and prefaces in her honor. Bossler 2002: 529. 88.  Zhu 1871: 2/31. 89.  On one occasion a friend visited Shang Rong (1785 –?) of Nanchang, ­Jiangxi, as he and a junior compiler (bianxiu) were on their way to Guiling to serve as civil service examiners. Through his friend, the junior compiler brought a letter of solicitation for his late uncle’s fiancée, a faithful maiden. In reply Shang wrote an encomium (zan). BZJ: 7243. But a solicitor did not have to travel to find a famous scholar. For example, when Wang Yuan was traveling in Nanhai, Guangdong, the magistrate of Panyu, an adjacent county, took the opportunity to request a tomb inscription for his deceased uncle’s fiancée, a faithful maiden. Wang Yuan 1985: 551.

Notes to Chapter 3   289 90.  Mao 1968: 1330, 2902. 91.  Mao Qiling mentioned such a case. Ibid.: 1589. 92.  Wu 1970: 513 –53. 93.  For example, during the Song period, counties across the empire were involved in building Confucian shrines to honor local worthies and eminent officials who had served that area. See Neskar 2001. On building shrines for chaste women in the Ming, see Carlitz 1997. 94.  There is a discrepancy in the sources about the date of Meng Yun’s award. According to the Ming court records, the award was issued in the ­Hongxi reign (1425). But the date given by the local gazetteer and by Mao Qiling was the ­Xuande reign (1426 – 35). Li and Yang 1995: 312 –13; Zhuji xianzhi 1773: 13/18b – 19a; Mao 1968: 1589 –90. 95.  Dahan is one of the twenty-four seasons in the lunar calendar. It normally falls on January 20 or 21. 96.  Zhuji xianzhi 1773: 13/18b –19a. 97.  Liu 1983: 1294:495. 98.  QDQHS: 10414. 99.  For instance, faithful maiden Bao’s shrine in Shanyang county was built early in the Qianlong reign. Bao, it was said, burned herself to death at her fiancé’s tomb in the fourth year of the Wanli reign, but her heroic deed was not honored until the Qianlong reign. At that time a shrine in her memory was erected by the side of her grave. QWH: 1796. Faithful maiden Li, from the Ming, was also enshrined during the reign of Qianlong. QWH: 1265 – 66. 100.  For example, a faithful maiden who committed suicide was honored in a shrine of the faithful and martyred maiden (zhenlie ci) or shrine of the martyred maiden (lienü ci), and her counterpart—a married woman who committed suicide—in a shrine of the martyred woman (liefu ci). A faithful maiden who remained celibate was honored in a shrine of the faithful maiden (zhennü ci) or shrine of the faithful (zhenjie ci), and her counterpart—a chaste widow— in a shrine of the chaste woman (jiefu ci). 101.  Gu 1986: 338; Wu 1970: 517. 102.  QWH: 1796. 103.  Huang Yin 1983: 516 –17. 104.  The folk belief described here is apparently related to the cult of Bixia Yuanjun, or the goddess of Taishan, the most popularly worshipped female deity in North China in Ming-Qing times. See Pomeranz 1997. 105.  QWH: 1642. 106.  Yuan 1993: 8:141. 107.  These descriptions reflect the age-old belief in supernatural retribution, a key element in Chinese religious thought. See Brokaw 1991: 28 – 32. 108.  Zhang 1962: 17:38a–b. 109.  Li 1878: 15/12b. 110.  Ibid. Fuji was a kind of divination practice in which an invoked spirit is supposed to write a message on a sand table. 111.  Ibid. 112.  Li Mengyang 1983: 1262:529 – 31.

290   Notes to Chapter 3 113.  The Lord of Xinling was a prince from the loyal house of the state of Wei in the Warring States period. One of the four famous princes of that period, he was said to have attracted three thousand retainers to his household, who included people of various talents. For details, see his biography by Sima Qian in Records of the Grand Historian. 114.  Sun 1985: 565. 115.  Literally meaning “the same year,” tongnian established an important social relationship in imperial China. 116.  Yin 1985: 238 – 39. 117.  Pingshantang is a renowned historical structure first built by Ouyang Xiu in the Song. It is one of the major buildings Tobie Meyer-Fong writes about in Building Culture in Early Qing Yangzhou. Meyer-Fong 2003: 128. 118.  Yangzhou fuzhi 1810: 1663. 119.  Ibid.: 1662. 120.  Ibid.: 1665. 121.  Jiao 1985: 129. 122.  Min 1974: 3337. 123.  According to G. William Skinner, in 1843, the Lower Yangzi has an estimated urbanization rate of 7.9 percent, ranking at the top of all ten macroregions; the urbanization rate for the Lingnan region is 7 percent. See Skinner 1977: 213, 235. 124.  In linking scholars to female suicides, T’ien Ju-kang comments that the increase in chaste widow and faithful maiden suicide was closely connected with the anxiety of the scholars from highly competitive areas who failed in the civil service examinations. T’ien writes: “By praising the suffering and tribulations of females who did faithfully submit to the prevailing code of values, males considered themselves as sharing in their fulfillment of moral duty, and in fact regarded this transfer of virtue of themselves as equally moral. Such a mechanism thus enabled them to enjoy the satisfaction of identifying with a traditional ethical value system while at the same time being free both from the obligation to strictly adhere to its more difficult demands and from any frustration or anxiety caused by social and moral pressure to conform.” T’ien 1988: xiii. This connection is at best speculative, and the logic between the two unclear. The fact was that a great number of the male authors writing about chaste women were among the most successful under the civil examination system. How the men’s writing would result in female suicide is not substantiated in the book. 125.  On women’s culture, see Ko 1994. A well-known example of men of letters taking on female students was that of the famous poet Yuan Mei, a great patron of young female poets. See Mann 1997: 92 –93; also see Hamilton 1997. Besides Yuan, Chen Wenshu, the Hanzhou poet, was also known to teach female students. 126.  Many were preserved in Wanyan Yun Zhu compiled Guochao guixiu zhengshi ji (GGZJ) and Wanyan Miaolianbao compiled Guochao guixiu zhengshi xuji. 127.  See Mann 1997: 231, table A-2.

Notes to Chapter 4   291 128.  In this form of marriage, the bride lived with her own parents for a few years before settling in with her husband’s family; ideally during the period of separation she became pregnant by visiting his home on festivals. The center of the delayed transfer marriage lay in Shunde county, spreading also into Nahai, Panyu, Zhongshan, Sanshui, Heshan, and Gongguang counties, mostly in Guangzhou prefecture. Stockard 1989. Note that the histories of these practices are unclear. Stockard’s anthropological study concentrates on the late nineteenth through the early twentieth centuries. It is perhaps not far-fetched to assume that these patterns had been in practice for some time before that. 129.  According to Stockard’s interviews, conducted in the early 1980s, informants told her that “because of the many restrictions involved in this kind of spirit marriage, including immediate virilocal residence, brides usually did not want to marry their deceased fiancés.” Stockard 1989: 91. The statement does not seem go well with what the Qing data suggest. chapter 4 1.  Pak 1997: 131. 2.  Luo 2002: 330. 3.  Ding and Zhao 1995: 700. The gazetteer was published in 1917. Following his description of the local custom, the editor commented, “It’s not practiced anymore.” 4.  Zhou 1989: 22. For financial remedies with respect to the death of a betrothed man or woman in other regions, also see Liang 1996: 73. 5.  Sun 1873: 6/106. 6.  Ruan 1965: Liji, 5:366. 7.  For example, in the biography of faithful maiden He—a fisherman’s daughter who committed suicide when her fiancé died—Wu Ding commented that if He had been born into a family of learning and had had the opportunity to hear about the Confucian rituals, she would have followed more closely the “middle and appropriate [zhongzheng] way” upheld by ancient sages. Wu 1887: 9/18b. Wu’s standing in the faithful maiden debate was ambivalent. From a family that produced two faithful maidens— one of them committed suicide—Wu was for the most part a crusader for the faithful maiden practice. Yet he argued that if a young woman lost her fiancé before the rite of “receiving betrothal gifts” (nazheng), she should listen to her parents and be engaged again. Ibid.: 2/29a– 31a. 8.  Gu Qing 1983: 1261:624. Also see Chen 1995: 64 – 65. 9.  BZJ: 7234. 10.  Tingfengtang Zhuren 1994: 635. 11.  BZJ: juan 152 – 60. 12.  This collection contains mainly biographical essays written in the preJiaqing reign (1796 –1820). See Feng 2000: 119. 13.  QWH: 2231. Note that “lack[ing] instruction in Poetry and Ritual,” yet having an “understanding of the great principles” is a common trope that literati employed to praise chaste women from lower social strata.

292   Notes to Chapter 4 14.  BZJ: 7209. 15.  Tuanshazhuolao 1994: Shang/79. 16.  QWH: 561. 17.  BZJ: 7224 –25. 18.  Wang Yuan 1985: 501; Wu 1970: 1539. Wang Yuan did not disclose Wu Yifei’s name in the biography he wrote for Wu’s daughter, probably out of concern that it would cause embarrassment for Wu. 19.  For example, faithful maiden Kang was from a petty rice merchant family. When she asked her parents to let her go to mourn her deceased fiancé, her father and brother flew into a fury, cursing her for being “out of her mind.” BZJ: 7085. 20.  Wang Yuan 1985: 501. According to her biography in Jiangnan tongzhi (juan 177), she was honored with jingbiao in the sixth year of the Yongzheng reign (1728). 21.  BZJ: 7140. 22.  Ibid. 23.  Ibid.: 7087. 24.  QWH: 1367. 25.  Wu 1887:11/12a. 26.  Wanyan 1836: 3/6a. See also GGZJ: 10/3b, 13/13a, 17/14a; Xu 1996: 3104. 27.  Wanyan 1836: 3/4b. 28.  Qian 1997: 9:689. 29.  BZJ: 7206. 30.  Ban 1983: 1961. 31.  Du and Mann 2003. 32.  Jiao 1986: 251. 33.  Sun 1979: 5/1187– 88. 34.  The image of a suffering widowed mother took center stage in female biographies and memoirs by men. Although such narratives were partly dictated by the genre—motherly virtue was best captured by a woman’s physical dedication and the hardships she endured—they do, as Ping-Chen Hsiung’s study shows, reflect the reality of the time, and a widow’s suffering contributed significantly to a strong mother-son bond. Hsiung 2005: 136 – 45. 35.  BZJ: 7288 – 89; QWH: 427. 36.  QWH: 1569. 37.  Zhu 1829: 12/4b. Zhu Jian mentioned this twelve-year-old faithful maiden Wei again in a different poem; see 15/6b. 38.  QWH: 2225. 39.  This view was common at the time, among intellectuals as well as the non-elite. See, for example, Gong 1840: 4/10a; BZJ: 7233; QWH: 2329. 40.  BZJ: 7167. 41.  For an example, see Zhang 1837: 22/3b – 4a. Poverty of the fiancé’s family was a common cause for the girl’s parents to want to get out of the marriage agreement even if the fiancé was alive, as in Wang Xiuwen’s case in Chapter 2. 42.  Xi 1969: 7358.

Notes to Chapter 4   293 43.  Li 1884: 1/43a– 44b. 44.  Zhang is a unit of linear measurement slightly longer than ten feet. The “ornamental column” implies that an award is conferred by the state. 45.  Yu 1965: 495. 46.  See Ropp 1976; Mann 1991: 210 –12. 47.  Shi 1891: 9:122b. 48.  Changle xianzhi 1869: 20/24b. 49.  See T’ien 1988: 48 –56. 50.  Zhao Guolin, a lieutenant governor during the Yongzheng reign, launched a campaign to eradicate the practice. For his memorial to Yongzheng, see Shizong xianhuangdi zhupi yuzhi 1983: 424:547. The complete text of Zhao’s proclamation banning public suicide by chaste widows is preserved in Fujian tongzhi 1737: 530:639 – 40. In the Qianlong period, another official issued an even harsher policy. He called those who did nothing to comfort the widow but pushed her and hastened her death as “cruel” and “crazy” and promised that they would be punished by death. Fujian shengli 1964: 1198 –99. In Emperor Xianfeng’s reign, the magistrate of Changle county also took action, which was said to have “completely” wiped out the custom. Changle xianzhi 1869: 20/24b –25a. 51.  In one of the incidents reported during the Yongzheng reign, a woman’s newlywed husband, who had been abused by his stepmother, threw himself in a river and drowned. After the husband’s death, the stepmother wanted to have the woman marry her own son, but the woman refused. The stepmother then plotted to sell her somewhere far away. In the end the woman committed public suicide on a platform. The incident was investigated by local authorities and led to the punishment of the stepmother’s son. Because of her seniority in relation to the woman, the stepmother was pardoned. See Shizong xianhaungdi zhupi yuzhi: 424:547. In another case, a poor widow wanted to have her inlaws’ tablets placed in the lineage ancestral shrine, but she could not obtain the money required by the lineage regulation to do so. She therefore announced that she would kill herself on a platform. When the magistrate learned about it, he ordered her lineage relatives to set up a donation for her and to stop her from carrying out the suicide. If they failed to stop her from killing herself, he threatened, they would be charged according to the law with “seeing someone near death yet doing nothing to save the person.” Changle xianzhi 1869: 20/24b –25a. 52.  BZJ: 7327. 53.  QWH: 1866. 54.  Ibid.: 1067. 55.  Wang Yuan 1985: 502. 56.  See, for example, BZJ: 7225. 57.  Yao Chun 1965: 4104 –5. 58.  Wang Yuan 1985: 502. 59.  Mann 2007: 170 –73, also see 29 – 33, 90 –92; Zhao 1931: 5/12a. 60.  Ye Tingguan 1998: 44. 61.  Wang 1929: 19/3a. In the epitaph that Ji himself wrote for the girl, he

294   Notes to Chapter 5 stated another reason: he did not consent to her request because he was worried that his mother and ailing wife could not withstand the intense grief caused by the event of her arrival. Ji Dong 1997: 228:723. 62.  Ji Dong 1997: 228:723; Wang 1929: 19/3a. 63.  Mao 1968: 1331. 64.  Shen 2002: 234. To give another example, Li Zhaoluo reported that after faithful maiden Huang married into her deceased fiancé’s family, “she got up early every morning, swept the courtyard, and inquired after the in-laws. Then she went to the kitchen to fill up a bowl of rice soup, put it in front of her fiancé’s tablet, and began to weep. Her fiancé’s grandfather said to her: ‘I am now seventy, and I had only this grandson. When I hear you crying, my heart is broken.’ Thereupon, she stopped weeping.” Li 1878: 15/8b. 65.  BZJ: 7230. 66.  Fang 1971: qianbian/5b. 67.  Da Qing lü li huitong xin zuan 1964: 880 – 81. 68.  Li 1965: 7/21b –22a. 69.  This situation was similar to what Kathryn Bernhardt describes about the succession in chaste widow cases. Bernhardt 1999: 49 –50. 70.  QWH: 2103. 71.  BZJ: 7322. 72.  Ibid.: 7103. 73.  Qian 1974: 144 – 45. 74.  Cai 1983: 1325:731. 75.  Wu 1985: 19: 216 –17. Also see QWH: 1535. 76.  For example, at the age of fifty-eight, faithful maiden Zhu was finally taken in by her fiancé’s lineage, which acknowledged that they would not set a moral example if they let her continue to live in her old age with her brother, who treated her badly. Li 1990: 159. 77.  Ibid.: 179. 78.  Gao 1960: 1529. 79.  Fei and Xue 1918: 10/16b. In another case, faithful maiden Lu, the daughter of Grand Secretary Lu Yinpu, did not move to live with her fiancé’s family until she was more than fifty years old. BZJ: 7243. 80.  Li 1990: 172; Zhang Yun’ao 2002: 232 – 33. chapter 5 1.  BZJ: 7122, 7166 – 67, 7176; Lan 1983: 1327:717. 2.  BZJ: 7100. 3.  Wu 1887: 9/18a. 4.  Lan 1983: 1327:709 –10. 5.  Hong Liangji detailed a case of suicide caused by misfortune. After she lost her mother-in-law, Zhu lived alone and saved every penny for the burial expenses of her late fiancé and mother-in-law. However, all her savings were stolen. She became ill, and the money that she had managed to save after the theft was exhausted by medical bills. Seeing no hope that she would ever be able

Notes to Chapter 5   295 to bury the dead, and when her illness worsened, Zhu stopped taking food for eight days and finally ended her own life by hanging. QWH: 2160. 6.  GGZJ: buyi/12a. 7.  Chengfu was part of the mourning ritual. After the corpse was put into the coffin, relatives of the dead put on different grades of mourning garments in accordance with their relationship to the dead. In the context of the faithful maiden practice, the ritual of chengfu signifies her new status as the wife of the dead groom. 8.  Wanyan 1836: 3/5b – 6a. 9.  Li 1990: 255. 10.  For example, faithful maiden Mao’s fiancé died while working as a hired laborer away from home. When his coffin was brought home, she wailed and escorted the coffin on foot all the way to his home, where she spun and wove for eight years and was able to obtain a grave site for her fiancé. Thereupon she starved herself to death. Li 1990: 258. 11.  For example, faithful maiden Gao, who lived with her uncle, wanted to kill herself upon her fiancé’s death. She was not “permitted” to do so because, she was told, her parents were far away, so she could not receive their permission. Four years later, when her parents returned, she married into her in-laws’ home. She again wanted to die at her fiancé’s grave. Her in-laws dissuaded her, saying that an heir had not been established for her fiancé. She eventually killed herself three years later on the anniversary of her fiancé’s death after an heir had been adopted. Zhou 1975: 104. 12.  Li 1990: 238. 13.  BZJ: 7149. 14.  Ibid.: 7176. 15.  Dowry was the only form of property inheritance for daughters in the late imperial period. Kathryn Bernhardt and Bettine Birge have demonstrated that prior to the Yuan, both married and unmarried women could inherit all or part of the family property under various circumstances. The majority of women inherited in the form of a dowry, which they controlled and took with them in the case of a second marriage. However, over the course of the Yuan, the state changed its laws, which considerably weakened or eliminated women’s inheritance rights. Women could not inherit other than receiving their dowries. In addition, they were required to leave their dowries in their deceased husbands’ homes when they remarried. Bernhardt 1999; Birge 2002. 16.  This bias against a woman staying home to preserve fidelity might be a regional one, because there appears to have been no problem for faithful maidens from other areas who chose to live with their parents. 17.  See Shu Dong’s comments on faithful maiden Cheng Da’e. Li 1990: 305. 18.  BZJ: 7087– 88. 19.  Qian Lucan, “Yan zhennü zhuan,” in QWH: 561. Also see the Shao case. Shao became a faithful maiden at the age of thirteen and moved to live with her in-laws. Her biography says that her “parents-in-law loved her dearly.” However, taking pity on her because of her young age, they wanted her to marry. They abandoned the idea only when Shao firmly opposed it. Wu 1883: 7/6a.

296   Notes to Chapter 5 20.  GGZJ: 10/3b. 21.  Ling Cunxun’s suicide poem appeared in Qing bai lei chao (compiled in the early twentieth century) with a different author and with the third stanza altered. Xu 1996: 3088. 22.  Wu 1985: 19 –178. 23.  See Li 1990: 325. 24.  Only one case was reported from outside Fujian. See Henan tongzhi 1660: 30/8b. 25.  Existing datai sijie cases were commonly associated with widows. For example, all three cases discussed in Chapter 4 in which the government tried to eradicate the practice involved widows, not faithful maidens. See Fujian tongzhi 1737: 530:639 – 40; Fujian shengli 1964: 1198 –99; Changle xianzhi 1869: 20/24b – 25a. I have not been able to verify the few cases of faithful maidens committing datai sijie cited by T’ien Ju-Kang in his Male Anxiety and Female Chastity. 26.  Fujian tongzhi 1737: 530:42. 27.  Ibid. 28.  See the case of Xue Jinjie, in ibid.: 72. 29.  Ibid.: 46; also see the case of Lin Xiuzhu in ibid. 30.  Normally, sacrifice was offered only to deceased people. Here, a faithful maiden was offered sacrifice while she was still alive. 31.  Cai 1983: 1325:730. 32.  BZJ: 7087. 33.  Pan Deyu 2002: 89. 34.  QWH: 1367. 35.  GGZJ: 17/14a. 36.  Wu 1970: 1527. 37.  GGZJ: 1/16a. Also see 16/21b. 38.  Fei and Xue 1918: 3/3a. Also see “A Poem on Faithful Maiden Zhou,” in Pan Yantong 2002: 218. 39.  Li 1990: 305. 40.  BZJ: 7085. 41.  Li 1990: 273. Li Zhaoluo reported a similar case, in Li 1878: 15/9a. 42.  See Waltner 1995; Guo 2000: 127– 37. 43.  Lan 1983: 1327:717. Also see BZJ: 7085, 7089. 44.  QWH: 1535. 45.  Cao and Gao 1979: 1264 – 65. 46.  BZJ: 7070 –71. 47.  An early example of dressing up in white garments before committing suicide was described in a poem by the Ming painter Shen Zhou (1427–1509). See Shen Zhou 1983: 1249:633. Also see Huang 1996: 123:754. 48.  Qian 1977: 9:689. Also see Gong 1840: 4/10a. 49.  QWH: 1535. 50.  Wang Yuan 1985: 501. 51.  For additional examples, see Henan tongzhi 1660: 30/16a; Wu 1985: 19 – 250. 52.  GGZJ: 5/3a. In addition to the following two cases, see BZJ: 7322.

Notes to Chapter 5   297 53.  Grace Fong analyzes three cases of jueming ci from the Qing period, written by a widow and by two girls taken captive by bandits. She argues the act of self-inscription represents a kind of female agency in that “through this textual production, the women reproduce a peculiarly Chinese sense of embodiment in inscription, and as self-recorders, they write themselves into history.” Fong 2001: 106. Although jueming ci by faithful maidens were compiled under very different circumstances, they were no doubt produced in the same cultural tradition. 54.  Fan 1973: 2798 –99. 55.  It was written by Gan Bao from the Eastern Jin dynasty, but the story was said to have taken place during the Warring States period. 56.  Gan 1999: 366. 57.  Qian 1997: 9:689. Also see BZJ: 7165. 58.  Li 1990: 305. 59.  For details about this story first written by Song historian and writer Ouyang Xiu in his New History of the Five Dynasties, see Bossler 2003: 751–52. 60.  The plot in which Wan Xiliang (Qiliang) happened to see Meng Jiangnü’s flesh has various local versions. In one version, Meng “takes off her clothing” on a hot summer day and “goes into a pond in her family garden” to cool herself off, unaware that Wan is hiding in a tree by the pond. In another version, she falls into the pond and is rescued by Wan. Because Meng has made a wish that “whoever sees my white flesh will be my husband,” she tells Wan that she wants to become his wife. According to historian Gu Jiegang, this plot was already in circulation as early as in the Tang period. Gu 1984: 277–79; also see ibid.: 24 –73, esp. 51– 63. 61.  Pan Deyu 2002: 89. 62.  BZJ: 7288 – 89. 63.  This wedding rite was called hejin. Made of half of a gourd, jin was the special wine cup for the wedding event. The groom and bride each took a jin made of the same gourd to drink to signify their mutual devotion. 64.  QWH: 427. 65.  BZJ: 7242. 66.  Ibid.: 7166. 67.  See, for example, the ritual specialist Qin Huitian’s comments. Qin 1983: 138:653. 68.  On the late Ming cult of qing and its impact on gender relations, see Ko 1994: 68 –112; Chang 1991: 9 –18; Cass 1999: 15 –17. 69.  GGZJ: 13/13a. 70.  Zhu 1985: 344. 71.  QWH: 2203. 72.  For example, the early Qing writer Feng Jing, who also wrote biographies of faithful maidens, gathered ten yi stories that featured only animals. This is the story “A Dutiful Donkey”: Fu Youren from Tongan county of Quanzhou prefecture, Fujian province, owned a big white donkey that could carry great weight and was good at running. Youren rode it to a remote mountain, where they encountered a tiger that chased them. Because the donkey ran as

298   Notes to Chapter 5 if flying, the tiger couldn’t catch them. Therefore, Youren was saved. A vicious man in the county, whose father, surnamed Xue, was the general of Xiangyang, sent for the donkey. Youren said: “I owe the donkey a great debt of gratitude. How could I give it away? I will not do it even for a thousand pieces of gold!” The vicious man was outraged and had bandits rob Youren’s home and kill him. After the donkey was brought to him, not a single day went by that the donkey did not shed tears. One day the vicious man rode the donkey to the capital of the prefecture. When he reached Wan’an Bridge, the donkey roared and jumped into the river. Both the donkey and the man drowned. Ke 1997: 1251–54. 73.  See Yi 2005. In the famous story of Cheng Yunyuan and faithful maiden Liu, to be discussed later in this chapter, Cheng, who did not marry after losing contact with his fiancée, Liu, was also called a yifu. As suggested in these cases, under some circumstances, fidelity was presented as a virtue for a widower as well, but a man was not expected socially or ideologically to refrain from remarriage. 74.  The yi in congyi means “one” as in “follow one husband”; it is written with a different character. 75.  Wanyan 1836: 3/6a. The Yellow Spring is a metaphor for the underworld. Here the poet is telling us that she understands her moral choices. Faced with a conflict between filial piety and fidelity, she chose fidelity. 76.  Wu 1985: 19:220. 77.  BZJ: 7316 –21. A letter attributed to Song Jingwei, entitled “To Father,” was reprinted in Lidai mingyuan shujian. Wang 1941: 147. It was written to convince her father to let her follow her wishes to marry Cheng Shu. But the authenticity of the letter was questionable, for it was not mentioned in earlier records. 78.  Chen Ji (1369 –1433), Chen Yuan’s ancestor, was an esteemed neo-Confucian scholar of his day. In the poem, Jingwei addresses him as “Scholar of the Five Classics.” 79.  “Original instruction” refers to the original betrothal Chen Yuan’s parents arranged for her. It was called that to contrast with the second betrothal they imposed on her, which caused her death. Here Song Jingwei stressed that Chen Yuan did not disobey her parents, because the betrothal to which she committed herself—the first one—was also made by her parents. 80.  Here Song Jingwei is referring to the criticism that faithful maidens were unfilial because they disobeyed their parents’ wishes. 81.  BZJ: 7317. 82.  Wanyan 1836: 1/16b. Xu Can was a leading member of the famed female poetry club Banana Garden Five. For more discussion on Xu Can, see Huang 2002. 83.  Feng 1985: 751. 84.  That is, she is offering sacrifice for her deceased fiancé. 85.  Tao 1998: 38. 86.  See, for example, Tian Lanfang and Li Wenzao’s comments. BZJ: 7088; Li 1985: 357. 87.  Xia 1983: 1269:796 –97.

Notes to Chapter 5   299 88.  Zhu 1985: 320. 89.  Huang Zongxi 1983: 1453:708. 90.  BZJ: 7199. 91.  For example, the “name paper” showing her fiancé’s enrollment in the county school was on display on the pillar of her family hall. QWH: 2203. 92.  The term qing has many translations. Depending on the context in which it is used or its combination with other characters, it could be translated, for example, as “passion,” “human emotion,” “reciprocal obligation,” “romantic attachment,” “common sense,” or “public opinion.” See Rowe 2001: 103 – 8. In the context of the Qing literati writings about faithful maidens, qing most typically refers to emotional attachment or the feeling of love between a man and a woman. Therefore, I have chosen “love” to be the English translation of the concept. However, what qing means, I wish to stress, is not strictly equivalent to our notion of romantic love today. 93.  Of course, qing did not have to evolve from yi but could exist in the absence of yi, as indicated in the Ming-Qing vernacular literary representation of love and loyalty. In the Ming-Qing vernacular fictions and dramas, for example, a stereotypical motif involves a young beauty who falls in love with a man at first sight. Their love encounter, however, is followed by unexpected obstacles and hardships, and the story unfolds around how the girl (sometimes the man as well) surmounts great difficulties to remain loyal to that relationship. Hong 1997: 239 – 49. 94.  Huang Zongxi 1983: 1453:708. Also see Tian Lanfang and Li Wenzao’s discussions. BZJ: 7088; Li Wenzao 1985: 357. 95.  BZJ: 7186. 96.  These were part of the ancient betrothal rites. Both the bird (usually a goose) and pure silk were presented from the groom’s to the bride’s family. 97.  Zhu 1929: 58/12a. 98.  Wang 1855: 3/14a–b. 99.  BZJ: 7318. 100.  Six Records of a Floating Life (Fusheng liuji) by Shen Fu has vivid descriptions of the mutual attraction between the author and his fiancée, a cousin, during his family visits. Shen Fu 1983: 26 –27. Also see Hong Liangji’s memoir about his mother’s family, Waijia jiwen, in which he tells of a joyful childhood spent with his many cousins, male and female, at his maternal grandmother’s home. One of the cousins was his fiancée, to whom he had been engaged since he was a few years old. Hong 1969. 101.  Li 1990: 305. 102.  Ibid. 103.  BZJ: 7167. 104.  Ibid.: 7168. 105.  Anthropological studies on little daughter-in-law marriage in China stress the lack of sexual attraction between the young couple. See, for example, Wolf and Huang 1980. But examples such as this show that the reality was much more complex. 106.  Ruan 2002: 1684:488.

300   Notes to Chapter 5 107.  See, for example, Xu Qibao and Xiong Lian’s poems. GGZJ: 9/15b –16a, 13/6a. 108.  See Ko 1994: 86 – 89, 183 –90. 109.  Huang Zongxi 1983: 1457:742. 110.  QWH: 1174. 111.  Li Xian 1983: 473:31. 112.  BZJ: 7326. 113.  Chen 1967: 2675. 114.  Yao Chun 1965: 4104. 115.  BZJ: 7169. 116.  Ibid.: 7230. 117.  Wu 1985: 19 –247. 118.  Fujian tongzhi 1737: 530:42, 46. 119.  GGZJ: 5/3a–b. 120.  BZJ: 7101. 121.  Li 1878: 15/9b. 122.  BZJ: 7123. 123.  Ibid.: 7231– 32. 124.  Yin 1985: 239. 125.  Qian 1834: 9/18a. 126.  Li 1884: 1/43b. 127.  Zhu 1910: 10/9b. 128.  Wang 1855: 1/11a. 129.  QWH: 561. 130.  Li Ji 1985: 13:530. According to Qingshi liezhuan, her mother and another uncle also died in that incident. Qing guoshiguang 1985: 104:744. 131.  See the biographies Wu Ding wrote for both women, in Wu 1887: 11/5a– 6a, 11/12a–13a. Both came from Wu Ding’s own family. 132.  Ko 1994: 1– 67. 133.  Carlitz 1991. 134.  QWH: 2929. 135.  BZJ: 7137. Also see ibid.: 7100, 7169. 136.  Ruan 2002: 505. “The Nine Springs” is a metaphor for the underworld. 137.  Lan 1983: 1327:710. This attitude of Lan Dingyuan toward women’s education was shared by other local government officials such as Chen Hongmou (1696 –1771). See Rowe 2001: 426 –29. 138.  Yuan 1993: 7:229. See discussion of this case in Chapter 7. 139.  Han 1993: 8. 140.  Ibid.: 256. 141.  See, for example, Chun zheng meng qiu, Youxue qiu yuan, Long wen bian ying, in Han 1993. 142.  The best case in point is the three young women’s reading and commenting on The Peony Pavilion, discussed in Ko’s book. Ko 1994: 68 –112. Also see Chang 1990: 9 –15. 143.  Mann 1994: 28 – 32, 1997: 83 –94. 144.  An extreme case is that of the late Ming female poet Weng Ru’an. Born

Notes to Chapter 5   301 into an elite family of Changzhou, in the Jiangnan region, the brilliant poet was accused of writing and behaving like a courtesan. She was allegedly murdered by her own brother to protect the family reputation. See Xie 1999: 19 –26. 145.  For the major monographs on the subject, see Ko 1994; Mann 1997; Cass 1999. 146.  Ko’s pioneering study of women’s culture centered in seventeenth­century Jiangnan (see Ko 1994), and it seems, in many respects, that the same culture persisted throughout much of the rest of the Qing dynasty. 147.  GGZJ: 16/21b –22a, 18/22a, 8/7b – 8a. 148.  Ibid.: 10/7b – 8b. 149.  Ibid.: 8/7a–b. 150.  BZJ: 7322. 151.  Ibid.: 7321–22. 152.  Zhu 1871: 2/33b – 34a; Cai 1983: 1325:731. 153.  Cai 1983: 1325:731. 154.  BZJ: 7241. 155.  Ibid.: 7123; Huang 1985: 205. Tea was a common betrothal present in late imperial China. 156.  Guo 2005: 151–77. 157.  According to T’ien Ju-kang, the first faithful maiden play was Zhao Zhenji shen hou tuanyuan meng. Written in the 1430s by Zhu Youdun (1379 –1439), it is about a young woman’s chaste suicide following the death of her fiancé and based on a real incident that occurred seven years before, in 1426, relating to the Ming imperial family. However, the summary of the play given by Guang Yifu in his Gudian xiqu cunmu huikao does not indicate clearly that this was a faithful maiden story (Zhu Youdun’s script of the play is not extant). Zhuang 1986: 415; T’ien 1988: 61; Guo 2005: 159 – 60. 158.  The authorship of the play is unclear. Some attribute it to the Ming playwright Shen Shouxian (see Wang: 1997: 645), but Guo Yingde believes it was by an anonymous playwright. The earliest extant text dates from the Wanli reign (1573 –1620). Guo 1997: 95. 159.  For a complete biography of Shang Lu, see Mingshi. Zhang 1974: 4687– 91. 160.  Zhang Lun’s story is recorded in a number of texts, including Prefectual Gazetteer of Wenzhou (Wenzhou fuzhi). Guo 1997: 95 –96. 161.  See Wang 1997: 36, 505, 507, 508, 606. T’ien Ju-k’ang notes, “Sixty years later, I can still recall the lasting impression that the uncontrollable sobbing of the female audience made when I saw the opera as a small boy.” T’ien 1988: 62. 162.  Wang 1997: 508. 163.  QDQHS: 10422. 164.  There are two biographies in BZJ. The story also appears in Mengan zazhu by Yu Jiao (Yu 1994: 191–93), Qiudeng conghua by Wang Xian, Tianyue shanguan wenchao by Li Ciqing, and some other works. See Guo 1997: 1057. 165.  BZJ: 7027. 166.  Yu 1994: 193. For an account of three sons, see Guo 1997: 1057. 167.  QDQHS: 10422.

302   Notes to Chapter 6 168.  BZJ: 7028. 169.  One poem, “Zhen yi xing,” was recorded by Wang Qishu. Wang 1998: 165 – 66. 170.  Guo 1997: 1057. chapter 6 1.  Qinding da Qing yitong zhi: 475: 757. 2.  The “Orphan of the Zhao” featured two men from the Warring States period. Cheng Yin was a friend of Zhao Shuo, the powerful aristocrat of the Jin, and Gongsun Chujiu was Shuo’s vassal. In 597 BCE Zhao Shuo fell victim to a power struggle at court, which led not only to his own demise but also to his rival’s killing his entire family except his infant son. The baby survived the massacre but was still being pursued. Gongsun Chujiu asked Cheng Yin which was more difficult, to raise the boy or to die. When Cheng replied that the former was more difficult, Gongsun Chujiu said he would do the easier thing. They found another baby boy, and carrying the boy, Gongsun went out to claim that he had been hiding the Zhao orphan. Both Chujiu and the boy were killed. Cheng Yin raised the real Zhao orphan in secret, and when grown, the younger Zhao avenged his father’s death. Upon fulfilling his promise, Cheng Yin committed suicide. Sima 1959: 1783 – 84. In the late imperial period, the story became well known due to its wide adaptation into popular theater. For the English translation of the play, see Liu: 1972. 3.  Ye Shaoyuan 1998: 2:850 –51. 4.  QWH: 1569. 5.  For example, twenty years later, in 1735, Dezhou witnessed another such event—this time the wedding of faithful maiden Qi, a commoner’s daughter. “The people of the prefecture, whether they knew the families or not, all gathered at her door, talking to one another. The sound of sighing filled the street.” QWH: 1569. 6.  Zhu Shi’s comments on Confucian ritual texts were frequently cited by Mao Qiling, also a ritual expert, in his voluminous Liji xiyi. During his tenure as Zhejiang governor, Zhu Shi took measures to reform the marriage customs in his jurisdiction, which he thought to be too extravagant, and published ritual texts to facilitate the effort. Qinding da Qing yitong zhi 1983: 478:772. 7.  BZJ: 7210. 8.  Mao 1968: 3110. 9.  QWH: 3105. 10.  Wu 2002: 164 – 65. 11.  Shen 2002: 231. 12.  See Ding and Zhao 1995: 829. 13.  The entry on Yi Meizhen in Ming yitong zhi is among the earliest records about this practice. Li Xian 1983: 473:32. 14.  Mao 1968: 3110. The specific meaning of the kowtow in these gestures is not clear. 15.  Yao Chun 1965: 4073.

Notes to Chapter 6   303 16.  BZJ: 7185. 17.  For example, Pan went to her fiancé’s house with her younger brother in secret. The fiancé’s family arranged to have her perform the rites of chengfu, affirming her new status as their daughter-in-law. Realizing that she was determined, her mother sent her dowry to her. BZJ: 7197. See also the account of faithful maiden Gao, in ibid.: 7202. 18.  QWH: 2580. 19.  See, for example, ibid.: 7185, 7209, 7225. 20.  QWH: 1569. 21.  QWH: 2203. Madam Xuanwen (283 –?) was born into a scholarly family that specialized in the study of the Zhouli (Zhou rituals). She was once asked by the king of the former Qin to teach 120 students, which saved the study of that classic from extinction. A Qing account of Madam Xuanwen was given in Lan gui bao lu by Wanyan Yun Zhu. Wanyan 1831: 6/5b – 6a. 22.  BZJ: 7319. 23.  GGZJ: Buyi/29a. 24.  For example, faithful maiden Wang lived in an upstairs room decorated solely in white. Every morning she came downstairs to pay her respects to her in-laws and then returned to her own room. With incense burning and a cup of tea nearby, she read the whole day and would not see even neighboring girls or girlfriends. “Her virtuous reputation soared,” which brought her honorary calligraphy tablets from government officials of various levels. Yang 1996: (Shi 126) 62. 25.  BZJ: 7185. 26.  Francesca Bray translates nügong in two ways: as “womanly work” when the term was used by the “moralists and officials,” who saw female work as “a moral activity linked to a gendered identity and embodied in weaving”; and as “women’s work,” in which “nügong could mean any kind of work women performed that produced recognizable commodities.” Bray 1997: 256. The distinction is very useful in thinking about gender implications in the term. However, nügong in traditional texts referred only to certain types of work performed by women, namely, spinning and weaving, making clothes, and embroidering, all work having something to do, as Susan Mann points out, with the “needle, spindle, and loom.” Mann 1997: 166. Also see Lu 2004. 27.  Mao 1968: 1590. Tinfoil money was used for occasions of ritual sacrifices or funerals. 28.  See, for example, BZJ: 7167. 29.  Ibid.: 7103. In a similar case, the faithful maiden drowned herself after living with her dead fiancé’s family for a while. One of the causes listed for her death was “no heir.” Ibid.: 7137. 30.  Pan Deyu 2002: 2:90. 31.  BZJ: 7129. 32.  What Yang meant was that if her late husband’s brother—if he were born—gave birth to sons, she would be able to adopt one of them to carry on her husband’s line. Note the tone of Yang’s conversation with her mother-inlaw: it sounded as if Yang were in charge. And it could well be the case. Yang

304   Notes to Chapter 6 was engaged to Li Jiaxun, who was the son of her father’s tenant. Taken by the nine-year-old boy’s demeanor, her father sent him to school. When a few years later Li attained first place in the countywide test, Yang’s father disregarded the opposition from his wife and sons and engaged his daughter to Li. He moved Li into the family to study with his sons, hoping that the young man would gain a juren degree speedily. Everything was prepared for the wedding when Li gained his degree. However, Li failed to obtain it quickly, and by then the whole family had been treating Li coldly. One night Li came back home only to discover that no one in the family would answer his call for lighting the lamp. Yang said to him from behind the curtain: A man should know how to live a respectful life. Why someone would depend on other people and take insults! Awakened by her admonition, Li instantly took off and did not return. In 1750, when Li was twenty-six, he finally earned his juren degree, and the Yang family were happy to go ahead with the wedding. But Li rejected this, saying that he would not marry until he gained office. He died, however, four years later in the capital. Yang moved in with Li’s parents. Although a daughter-in-law, she apparently held sway in the Li family, which saw the Yangs as their benefactors. QWH: 1722. 33.  Wolf 1972; Ebrey 1993: 172 – 87; Mann 1997: 62 – 69, 94 –117; Hsiung 2005. 34.  When a man attained a high position in the government, the court conferred upon his mother and wife honorary titles that matched his rank. In contrast to the honor gained through jingbiao, the title gained through a successful son was a status marker of wealth, power, and good fortune. 35.  The term “uterine family,” first used by Margery Wolf in her study of women and the family in rural Taiwan, refers to an informal unit within a Chinese family that was based not on property rights, production, or consumption but on personal ties. It consisted of a mother and her children and was centered especially on a mother-son bond. Through the uterine family the mother—the vulnerable “outsider”—found emotional satisfaction and exercised her influence. Wolf 1972. 36.  Tao 1998: 324 –25. 37.  Zhu 1829: 16/19a. 38.  Miao 1973: 18/6a; Li 1966: 5337– 38. 39.  One of Zhu’s poems mentions that he had to postpone the construction of the arch because of the poor harvest that year. Zhu 1829: 17/15a. 40.  Li 1966: 120/5337– 38. 41.  Zhu 1829: 16/19a. Shuang, meaning “frost,” was a conventional metaphor for a widow’s chastity. One of the poems Zhu solicited for her mother was by Tao Shu, the Liangjiang governor-general, who had gained the jinshi degree the same year as Zhu did. Tao 1998: 324. 42.  For example, her parents were upset when the fifteen-year-old Yan took off her colorful embroidered silk garments and tied her hair with “white rope.” Later, her father pushed her hard for a second betrothal, which led Yan to starve herself to death. Mao 1968: 1289. 43.  QWH: 1215, Li 1990: 163.

Notes to Chapter 6   305 44.  Lu 1985: 212. This story must have been fairly widely known at the time, for a similar description appears in Wang Qishu’s Shui cao qing xia lu. See Wang 1998: 36 – 37. Zhang Yunsui was a Han Martial and was best known for his service as a governor-general of Yunnan and Guizhou. See Li 1966: 2560 – 64. 45.  Cutting off hair was a gesture of making a pledge of chastity. Here, wearing short hair might have been her way to show her preservation of her pledge. That her teeth were never seen suggests her proper manner: she probably never laughed, and she talked only with a low voice. Xu 1985: 201:562. 46.  Bray 1997: 53. 47.  Upstairs rooms were more secluded and better protected because of their location. They were often taken as daughters’ bedrooms, with “small windows covered with blinds to protect the young ladies from intruding glances.” Bray 1997: 133. 48.  For example, Fang 1971: Xubian/13/8a. 49.  See GTJ: 49042, 49183, 49193, 49205, 49275, 49576 –77, 49631, 49695. Some of them would not take off their clothing even to sleep. See ibid: 49228. 50.  Ibid.: 49612, 48955. 51.  Ibid.: 49275. Cun is a measure of length equal to about one-tenth foot. It is unclear why this faithful maiden grew long facial hair. It may have been due to disease or malnutrition. The author’s point was to stress the degree of her negligence of her appearance. 52.  BZJ: 7227. 53.  Lü 1985: 148. 54.  Fang 1971: Cibian/8/6a. 55.  Li 1990: 222. 56.  Huanqiushe bianjibu 1999: 1:207. 57.  Shen 2002: 234. 58.  BJZ: 7209. 59.  Lan 1983: 1327:718. 60.  See He 2003. 61.  In the eighteenth century, cases of women going out disguised in male clothing revealed in a dramatic way women’s desire for outdoor activities. See, for example, Shen Fu’s Six Records of a Floating Life. Shen 1983: 44 – 45. For discussion of beauty as a female attribute in the seventeenth century, see Ko 1994: 160 – 63. 62.  Huang Yin 1983: 85. 63.  Shen Hanguang n.d.b: 19b. 64.  GTJ: 49205. 65.  Ibid.: 48872. 66.  Ibid.: 49569. 67.  QWH: 236. 68.  Guifan, cited in Fei 1998: 4. It seems that the story circulated widely after the event. It is also recorded in Nü fan jie lu (in GTJ: 47562) and some early Qing accounts, including Zui wei lu by Cha Jizuo. See Cha 1985: 28/5; also see BZJ: 7170. 69.  Wu 1887: 11/12b.

306   Notes to Chapter 6 70.  For an example of male hair cutting as a gesture of making a vow, see Xue 1976: 477. 71.  Liu 1966: 117–18; Lü 1998: 3 –57a. 72.  Lü 1998: 3 –54a; Han 1993: 298. 73.  Song 1983: 1223:587. 74.  Zhang 1979: 58. 75.  Despeux and Kohn 2003. 76.  See, for example, Tao Shu’s poem describing a faithful maiden’s devotion to Buddhism. Tao 1998: 437. 77.  Zhu 1829: 15/7a. 78.  Mann 1997: 66 – 69. 79.  Mann 2007: 90. After this incident, the family beat and dismissed the maid, but it did not bring charges against the clerk, who denied involvement, for other concerns. 80.  GGZJ: 4/11a. 81.  Ibid.: 9/15b –16a. 82.  Ibid.: 13/6a. 83.  Wu 1985: 19 –250. For other examples in which a faithful maiden sighed on her ill fate, see Xu Yuan’s poem in Ruan 2002: 489; also see Cai 1983: 1325:731. 84.  BZJ: 7211. 85.  Ibid.: 7225. 86.  Ibid.: 7130. 87.  Wang 1855: 1/11a. 88.  QWH: 1535. 89.  Shen 2002: 234. 90.  QWH: 427. 91.  Zhao 1931: 5/12a. Also see Mann 2007: 90 –92, 170 –73. 92.  Ji Yun 1997: 371. 93.  Chen 1967: 2658. 94.  Jiao 1985: 59. 95.  Yongne jushi 1999: 178. 96.  Li 1884: 1/43b – 44a. 97.  Ibid.: 1/44a. 98.  Ibid. 99.  Wang 2002: 69 –70. 100.  Ibid.: 68. 101.  The story of Jingjiang as an exemplary wise mother is recorded in Liu Xiang’s Lienü zhuan. Liu 1966: 15 –18. 102.  Qingchengzi 1999: 185. 103.  Cai 1991: 115. 104.  Zhu 1829: 12/8a. 105.  QWH: 2231. 106.  Ibid.: 2231. But not all the tyrannical mothers were unchangeable. It was said that faithful maiden Jiang’s “mother-in-law treated her harshly” but

Notes to Chapter 7   307 began to appreciate her when she got accustomed to having Jiang around. QWH: 1821. 107.  BZJ: 7228. 108.  Ibid.: 7229. 109.  Ibid.: 7207– 8. 110.  Note that uxorilocal marriage was not uniformly perceived as a less than respectable form of marriage associated exclusively with people of lower social status. It occurred frequently among Qing literati and was an important strategy for social mobility. See Lu 1998. 111.  BZJ: 7200 –1. 112.  GGZJ: 10/1a. 113.  For example, see Ma Shiban’s poem on her sister, who committed suicide for her fiancé. GGZJ: 18/23a–b. 114.  See Mao 1968: 2174; BZJ: 7231, 7322. 115.  Yao Nai 1965: (wen) 10/5a–b. 116.  This thinking was clearly at work in the tragic story of Yingcun— one of the four Jia daughters— depicted in the eighteenth-century novel Story of the Stone. 117.  Fang 1968: 17/420. 118.  BZJ: 6969 –72. 119.  Zhang 1837: 22/5b. 120.  Ibid.: 22/5b – 6a. 121.  QWH: 1910. 122.  Leung 1993: 6. 123.  Ibid.: 4. chapter 7 1.  Among the few critics were Lü Kun and Yu Zhengxie. The author of a number of didactic books for women, Lü was less conservative in some of his views on gender than his contemporaries. See Handlin 1975, 1983: 143 – 60. In his Shengying yu, Lü Kun remarks that the partiality of Confucian rituals allowed men, including those of lower social status, to have concubines and maids while requiring women to comply with the idea of chastity. Lü 2000: 323. Lü Kun also questioned two of the seven rationales, infertility and terminal illness, on which the divorce of a wife could be initiated. Lü 1998: 1/72a–b. For Yu Zhengxie’s well-known argument against the widow chastity practice, see his essay “On Chaste Women.” Yu 1965: 493 –94. Several other Qing scholars, including Zang Yong and Wu Jingzhi, were also critical of the chaste widow cult. See Ropp 1976. For a general discussion on Qing scholars supporting the practice of female chastity, see Chow 1994: 209 –11. 2.  Chow 1994: 8. 3.  Elman 2001. 4.  Shidu was a court attendant skilled in reciting classical texts and a member of the Hanlin Academy.

308   Notes to Chapter 7 5.  Xiuzhuan was a member of the Hanlin Academy responsible for historical compilation. 6.  Lu Shen 1983: 885:51. A separate account by Chen Hongmo (1474 –1531) filled in some details about the fiancé, who was said to have died as a result of visiting brothels. Chen 1995: 64 – 65. Also see GTJ: 48754. 7.  Gu Shilian’s (Gu Qing) collected works include a eulogistic biography he wrote for this faithful maiden. In it he calls her the “chaste widow of the Zhang family.” For unknown reasons, his essay gives no indication about his position in the debate described by Lu Shen. Gu Qing 1983: 1261:624. 8.  Huang Zongxi 1983: 1453:707–9. 9.  Li Wenzao 1985: 357. 10.  Wu 1973: 192. 11.  Ibid. 12.  Hangzhou fuzhi 1579: 1202. 13.  This is part of the wedding ritual, in which the bride holds a rope to climb into the wagon that takes her to the groom’s family. 14.  A jin is made of a gourd split in two. 15.  Gui 1929: 3/4b. 16.  The bracketed material is added based on the original text in “Inquiries from Zengzi.” Ruan 1965: 5:365. 17.  Ibid.: 3/5a–5b. 18.  Ibid.: 16/15b –16a. 19.  The dates for Ma Zhide are unknown. His essay appeared at the end of the guijie section (juan 327) of Gujin tushu jicheng, compiled by Chen Menglei during the early Qing. As the book was primarily organized chronologically, I place Ma roughly in the late Ming period. Han Qia was a poet from Changzhou. Unlike others of his time, he wrote poems not to sing the praises of faithful maidens but to criticize them. Echoing the view of Gui Youguang, he called it wrong for a young woman to remain chaste for a fiancé, and to die for him was an act in “violation of the classics and defilement of the rituals.” Ye Tingguan 1998: 43. Lü Kun’s attitude was more nuanced. He abhorred faithful maiden suicide (and he was against chaste suicide in general). “For those women who are engaged but not yet married to go to their fiancés’ homes to weep and to kill themselves is an indulgence of qing and transgresses the rituals. They should not be made examples for the people.” However, if a woman has entered her fiancé’s family but the groom dies before the wedding is complete, it is all right that she ‘preserves her will all her life.’ ” Lü 1998: 3/63a–b. Also see ibid.: 2/2a–b. 20.  GTJ: 50808 –9. 21.  Ibid.: 50809. 22.  That faithful maidens did not act upon their natural feelings was a recurrent argument of the critics, and the most unsympathetic words were delivered two centuries later by Zhang Yun’ao: “Ordinarily, [a young girl] takes residence in her deep inner chamber, and she will not see a person casually and will not say a word carelessly. If she hears a conversation about her fiancé’s family, she turns around to avoid listening to it. Now, for no reason she considers herself to be the wife [of her fiancé]; for no reason she considers herself to be the mother

Notes to Chapter 7   309 [of her adopted son]; for no reason she does housework [for his family]. Is this what a shy young woman would dare to do? Isn’t it too far from natural feelings of human beings?” Zhang Yun’ao 2002: 233. 23.  BJZ: 7088. 24.  QWH: 807. 25.  Ibid. 26.  Gui 1984: 301. 27.  Ibid.: 422 –23. The date for Gui’s first essay cited here is unknown; the second essay cited, “Tianchang Yuan Zhenxiao zhuan,” is dated 1663, ten years before his death, according to Gui’s yearly records (nianpu) compiled by Zhao Jingda. Ibid.: 563. It is most likely that this second essay was written later than the first. 28.  The Office of Ming History was first set up in 1645 and reopened in 1679 to incorporate the scholars who had passed the most honored palace examination, boxue hongci, earlier in the year. The examination was called by the Kangxi emperor to recruit men of outstanding learning and moral character to serve the new dynasty, a measure that “ended the social withdrawal of many Jiangnan literati.” Elman 2001: 137. All the candidates for this special exam had to be recommended from officials, and altogether fifty scholars passed the examination. 29.  Mao 1968: 1290. 30.  Wang 1929: 35/13a–b. 31.  Peng made a similar point in his criticism of Gui Youguang’s influential essay. QWH: 807. 32.  Wang 1929: 19/2b – 3b. 33.  Zhu 1929: 58/12a. 34.  The hair pinning is a major rite of passage in a woman’s life. It was held when a girl reached the age of fifteen. The rite “marked her entry into puberty and signaled her readiness to marry.” See Mann 1997: 59. 35.  Zhu 1929: 58/12b. 36.  Ibid.: 53/13b. 37.  Mao Qiling 1983: 191:8. 38.  Mao wrote nine biographies and poems for faithful maidens. 39.  It appears that Mao Qiling shifted his position at roughly the same time that the Kangxi emperor announced that the court would stop honoring women who died of chaste suicide (see Chapter 3). It is possible that the policy change of the court affected Mao’s change of position. 40.  Mao 1968: 1329. 41.  Mao Qiling 1983: 191:193 –94. 42.  Mao 1968: 1593. 43.  Ibid. 44.  Ibid.: 1590 –91. 45.  Ibid.: 1594. 46.  Cited in Elman 2001: 92. 47.  See ibid. Note that as the study of philology gained much popularity among evidential scholars, the tradition of lixue continued to hold its authority because of state patronage.

310   Notes to Chapter 7 48.  The first of these three rites were performed at the wedding, and the last, jian jiugu, was held the morning after the wedding. 49.  Wang Zhong 1985: 525. 50.  Ibid. 51.  Ibid.: 518. 52.  Sun 1985: 714. 53.  Hu Chenggong 2002: 227. 54.  Zhang 1973: 128. 55.  Cited in Ye Tingguan 1998: 44. 56.  Li Wenzao 1985: 357. 57.  Jiao 1985: 85. 58.  For example, Jiao Xun wrote a series of thirty-two poems, one for each scholarly work from the Qing period that he admired. Wang Zhong’s Shuxue was among them. See Jiao 1985: 77–79. Elsewhere, Jiao recalled a gathering he and a friend had in Wang Zhong’s study on a snowy day. The three of them had such a good time that they drank and talked all night. Now the two “had passed away one after another. Alas, how sad!” Ibid.: 143. 59.  Ibid.: 132. 60.  Ibid.: 85. 61.  Ibid. 62.  Yao 1965: 127. 63.  Zhang 1973: 128. 64.  Jiao 1985: 85. 65.  Ibid.: 122. 66.  Li 1975: 305. 67.  BZJ: 7233. The essay from which this excerpt is quoted is also attributed to Jiao Tinfu, Jiao Xun’s son (see Congshu jicheng xinbian, vol. 78). Reading it in conjunction with another of Jiao Xun’s essays, “Chao Yi Gui Cao xu,” I conclude that this piece was by Jiao Xun. 68.  BZJ: 7233. 69.  Liu 1975: 339 – 41. 70.  GGZJ: Buyi/29a– 32a. 71.  For Wang Zhaoyuan, see Zurndorfer 1992. 72.  Wang Zhaoyuan 2002: 697. 73.  Ibid.: 662. 74.  Yao Chun 1965: 3401–2. To give another example, He Qiutao cited the Lady Weixuan story to argue that the faithful maiden act was in fact eulogized by the ancients and was therefore praiseworthy. Gao 1960: 248. 75.  See Elman’s 1990 book on the Changzhou school. The New Text scholarship, centered in Changzhou in the Lower Yangzi, took the Gongyang Commentary on Confucius’s Spring and Autumn Annals as its subject of study. It renewed a claim about Confucius: unlike the Old Text scholars of the Han period, who argued that Confucius was a teacher who had transmitted the wisdom of the sage kings, the New Text scholars argued that Confucius was a “visionary and institutional reformer” who “had enunciated sacred social and moral principles in his Spring and Autumn Annals.” Elman 2001: 23.

Notes to Chapter 7   311 76.  Luo 2002: 329. 77.  Liu Fenglu 2002: 186. 78.  Ibid. 79.  Ruan 1965: 5:365. 80.  Chen Hao 1983: 121:782. 81.  Qinding siku quanshu zongmu 1983: 1:436 – 37. 82.  Luo 1983: 714:301. 83.  One such criticism was from the editor of Siku quanshu in his comment on Mao Qiling’s Zenzi wen jianglu. See Qinding Siku quanshu zongmu: 24/22b – 23b. Luo’s explanation was also unsatisfactory for Jiang Yong (1681–1762), who at the same time thought the traditional explanation was equally flawed. In his reading, for the man’s family to send someone to inform the woman’s family is not done because they want to end the marriage. Rather, it is a subtle way to ask the woman’s family to keep her at home until the man completes mourning. Under normal circumstances, the marriage would be carried out when the man comes out of mourning. However, if for some reason he does not marry her, the girl’s family may then marry her to someone else. Jiang 1983: 4/3b –5b. 84.  See Qinding Liji yishu 1983: 124:730 – 31; Xu 1983: 114:432; Fang 1983: 128:72. 85.  Yuzhi rijiang Liji jieyi 1983: 123:249 –50. 86.  Qinding Liji yishu 1983: 124:730. 87.  For some examples, see Fang 1983: 128:72; Weng 2002: 442; Qi 2002: 425. The imperial backing of Luo Qinshun’s argument did not end the controversy. Scholars who frowned upon the faithful maiden practice continued to embrace the traditional view and use it to their advantage. For example, after citing Chen Hao’s comments, Li Guangpo went on to quote another hotly disputed excerpt from the Book of Rites to make his point. He called it “most humane” that the ancient ritual required a man or woman to put on mourning garments for his or her betrothed for only a short period of time and take them off after the burial: “The reason is that their feeling [for the betrothed] is not yet deep, and ritual has its closure. From this we know that following a fiancé in death is an overindulgence of qing.” Li Guangpo 1983: 127:492. 88.  In “Airs of Yong” section of the Book of Songs. The Book of Songs contains another poem with the same title, in the chapter “Airs of Bei,” cited in Chapter 1. Arthur Waley’s interpretation of this poem is different from mine. Waley 1996: 38. 89.  Ruan 1965: 2:109. 90.  Ibid.; Zhu 1983. 91.  Hao 2002: 283. Zhang Cizhong ( juren, 1621) cemented this innovative rereading of the poem with his reinterpretation of the “river” and the “boat” in the first stanza: the river (Yellow River) separates the Wei state from the Qi state, where Gongjiang lived. When Gongjiang made her vow, she must have performed the rite of “weeping by the coffin.” Therefore, she must have crossed the river when hastening to the prince’s funeral. This explains why the poem begins with the allegorical tropes of the “river” and the “boat.” Zhang Cizhong 1983: 82:80.

312   Notes to Chapter 7 92.  Ruan 1965: 3:219. 93.  Qin 1983: 138:653. Wuli tongkao was one of the highly regarded studies on ritual. Zeng Guofang, for example, praised it as “extensive in scope and penetrating in thought.” Cited in Qian 1989: 586. 94.  Shen 1985: 125. 95.  In his essay “On the Meanings of Zhen,” Zhu Yizun agreed that co-burial was an act of jiashang that violated ritual. But in another essay, “On the Faithful Maiden Dai,” which he wrote at a later date, he endorsed co-burial, saying that although it was seemingly a violation of ritual, scholars should recognize the special circumstances in faithful maiden Dai’s case: she was regarded by her in-laws as a daughter-in-law, and an heir had been established. Zhu 1929: 58/12b, 53/14a. 96.  QWH: 1304. 97.  Ibid. 98.  BZJ: 7207. 99.  Qian 1997: 9:347. 100.  Ibid.: 348. 101.  Ye Tingguan 1998: 44. 102.  Liu Dakui 2002: 464. 103.  Qian 1997: 9:689. 104.  Ibid.: 348. 105.  Wang Zhong 1985: 525. 106.  Liu 1970: 8/17a. 107.  Ibid.: 8/14b –15b. 108.  Lu 1985: 212. 109.  Sun 1800: 50/6b –7a. 110.  Zhang 1929: Sibian/13a. 111.  Lu 1985: 212. 112.  Ibid. 113.  Qian 1997: 9:348. 114.  Li 1990: 351. 115.  Fang 1968: 420. 116.  Zhang 1929: Sibian/12b –13a. 117.  BZJ: 7234. 118.  Ibid.: 7235. 119.  Ibid.: 7236. 120.  Zhu 1871: Nianpu/12b –13a. 121.  As shown in Chapter 3, the policy was not strictly followed in the Kangxi and Yongzheng reigns and was abandoned in the Qianlong reign. 122.  Zhu 1871: 2/31b. 123.  Yuan 1993: 7:132. 124.  According to the biography Yuan Mei wrote for Yuan Ji, the event occurred in 1723, when Yuan Ji was “not yet one year old.” But other sources suggest that Ji was four years younger than Yuan Mei, which would make her three years of age at the time of the engagement.

Notes to Conclusion   313 125.  In her biography, Yuan Mei tells us that Yuan Ji was the prettiest of his sisters and a cousin.. 126.  Yuan 1993: 7:133. 127.  Ibid. 128.  Ibid. 129.  Ibid.: 229. Here the Book of Songs and the Book of History, two of the Five Confucian Classics, is a metaphor for a classic education. 130.  Ibid.: 133. 131.  Ibid.: 83. 132.  Ibid.: 291. 133.  Wang Zhong 1985: 525. 134.  Liu 1970: 8/15b. 135.  Ibid. 136.  Pak 1997: 131. 137.  The verse was composed by Ban Zhao while traveling with her son, Ku, from the capital, Louyang, to his post in Chenliu. For the details of this work, see Swann 1968: 113 – 30. 138.  Ji 1997: 189. 139.  Wanyan Miaolianbao 1836: Buyi/ 79a– 80a. 140.  Wu 1970: 1542. 141.  I have not found the complete poem that contains these lines, but another poem by Qian Shu, entitled “Self-Inscription on the Plum Blossom Painting,” appears in Wanyan Miaolianbao 1836: Buyi/28a. conclusion 1.  See Judge, 2008. 2.  Zhengfu gongbao 1988: 24/332. 3.  Ibid.: 118/815. 4.  Ibid.: 24/334, 118/524. 5.  For discussions of the roles and functions of native-place associations in the late Qing period and early twentieth century, see Goodman 1995. 6.  Hu 1998: 505 – 6. 7.  Zhang Jian (1853 –1926) received a first-place jinshi degree and later became a pioneer industrialist. 8.  Zhang 1994: 440, 443. 9.  Lu 1981: 117. 10.  See Lu Xun, “Wo zhi jielie guang,” in Lu 1981: 116 –28; Hu Shi, “Zhencao wenti,” in Hu 1998: 503 –17. 11.  One of the main female characters in the film lost her fiancé and remained unmarried.

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Index

An Account of Learning (Shuxue; Wang Zhong), 227 adoption of heir, 34 – 35, 78, 101, 114, 123 –26, 175 –79, 301n32; disputes over, 9 –10, 200; in faithful maiden debate, 226; laws on, 123, 125, 176; and marital family, 120, 172, 176; and seclusion, 182; and suicides, 125 –26, 129, 131– 32, 157, 162, 175, 193, 293n11, 301n29 afterlife, 13, 156 –57, 176 –77, 206 Analects of Confucius (Lunyu), 230 ancestor worship, 176 awards, 32 – 33, 82 – 86, 249 –50. See also jingbiao Ban Zhao, 245, 311n137 banner system, 70, 281n10, 282n13 benxun (mourning a fiancé and following him in death), 117–18, 135 – 38, 156 betrothal: breaking of, 56 –58, 149, 233 – 34; childhood, 101, 127, 150 –52, 243, 245, 248; in faithful maiden debate, 211, 217, 221, 224, 229 – 30; gifts for, 141– 42; laws on, 228 –29; second, 104 – 6, 115, 118, 208, 240, 249, 267n3; and spiritual connection, 155 –56 Biographies of Exemplary Women (Huangfu Mi), 26 Biographies of Exemplary Women (Lienü zhuan; Liu Xiang), 22 –25, 159, 230, 244, 270n10, 273n35, 278n11 Book of Changes (Yijing), 22, 107, 153

Book of Etiquette and Decorum (Yili), 169 Book of History (Shangshu), 244, 311n129 Book of Rites (Liji), 81, 105, 107, 169, 309n87; on co-burial, 235 – 36; in faithful maiden debate, 216, 222, 224, 228, 230 – 32, 234 Book of Songs (Shijing), 227, 244, 309n88, 311n129; “Cypress Boat” poem in, 24, 47, 234 – 35, 271n14, 272n18; Mao Commentary to, 22, 24, 107, 235 Bossler, Beverly, 30, 286n87 Bray, Francesca, 180, 301n26 Brokaw, Cynthia, 39 Brook, Timothy, 39 Buddhism, 16, 60, 92, 184, 231, 269n21, 272n24, 304n76; and adoption of heir, 176; and celibacy, 113, 135, 198; influence of, 13; and justice, 205 – 6; and loyalty, 63; and self-denial, 189 –90 Cai Shangsi, 199 Cai Shiyuan, 81, 88, 241, 286n85 Cai Zhenxian, 126, 140, 141, 194 Cao Xiuxian, 245 Carlitz, Katherine, 36, 278n11 celibacy, 4 –5, 27, 45; and Buddhism, 113, 135, 198; in faithful maiden debate, 217–18; and sex , 195 –200 chastity, 6 – 8, 14, 19, 193, 271n10; and bureaucracy, 284n46; in Confucianism, 13, 41, 248; cult of, 210, 284n46; in faithful maiden debate, 222, 251, 305n1; ideal

336   Index of, 158 –59; in literature, 163, 235; and loyalty, 59 – 61, 249, 276n90; in Ming, 37, 41; and neo-Confucianism, 30, 268n18, 273n42; and self-mutilation, 186 –90; in Southern Song, 30; and women’s bodies, 143 – 44. See also widows, chaste Chen Baoniang, 130, 140 Chen Da’e, 142 – 43, 154 Chen Dongyuan, 268n18 Chen Gongfeng, 26 –27 Chen Hao, 233 – 34, 309n87 Chen Hongmo, 306n6 Chen Hongmou, 84, 298n137 Chen Ji, 296n78 Chen Juniang, 183 Chen Menglei, 306n19 Chen Mingxia, 64, 281n68 Chen Qiongshi, 156 Chen Que, 50, 58 Chen Sanshu, 149 Chen Wanzhen, 253 Chen Wenshu, 195, 288n125 Chen Yi, 60 Chen Younian, 46 Chen Yuan, 147– 48, 161, 211, 236, 296n78 Chen Zhilin, 149 Chen Zufan, 236 Cheng Ji, 60 Cheng Jingfang, 122 Cheng Yi, 268n18, 275n74 Cheng Yunyuan, 164 – 66, 296n73 China, Republic of, 253 Chongzhen, Emperor, 49, 60 – 62 Chow, Kai-wing, 61 Classic of Filial Piety for Women (Nü xiaojing), 159 Classic of Filial Piety (Xiaojing), 159 clothing, 156, 170, 180; mourning, 141, 172, 221–22, 224, 226, 230 – 32; and selfdenial, 188 – 89; and suicide, 140 – 43 co-burial, 235 – 37, 310n95 Collected Writings on Two Heroines (Shuang lie ji), 56 Collections of Epitaphs and Biographies (Bei zhuan ji; Qian Yiji), 106 Commentary on the Book of Rites (Liji jishuo), 233 Complete Collection of the Five Classics (Wujing daquan), 233

Completed Collection of Graphs and Writings of Ancient and Modern Times (Gujin tushu jicheng), 33 – 34 A Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Government (Zizhi tongjian), 47 concubines, 25, 46, 83, 89, 126, 163, 207, 277n110, 305n1; and adoption of heir, 172, 177 Confucian classics, 21, 37, 51, 107, 148, 173; in education, 160, 233, 244, 311n129; and evidential scholarship, 213 –14, 225; in faithful maiden debate, 222, 224 –25, 227, 230, 232 – 35, 240, 242; vs. law, 228 –29; and women, 41– 42, 159, 244. See also Book of Changes; Book of Rites; Book of Songs Confucianism: and adoption of heir, 176; and female chastity/fidelity, 5 – 6, 13 –14, 41, 45, 248; and faithful maiden debate, 2, 81, 211, 213 – 46, 254, 289n7, 305n1; faithful maidens as victims of, 6, 10, 15, 102, 129, 248; and Manchus, 69 –70; in Ming dynasty, 36 – 40; and poetry, 160 – 61; relationships in, 59 – 60, 279n37; and second betrothals, 105; in Song period, 30; and the state, 3 – 4, 19, 232; and yi, 146 – 49. See also literati; neoConfucianism Confucius, 217, 220 –21, 232, 308n75 Correct Beginnings: Women’s Poetry of Our August Dynasty (Guochao guixiu zhengshi ji; Wanyan Yun Zhu), 107, 173 court testimonials. See jingbiao Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (film), 254 “Cypress Boat” (Bozhou; poem; Book of Songs), 24, 47, 234 – 35, 271n14, 272n18 Dai Mingshi, 51, 85, 286n74 Dai Zhen, 225 Daoguang, Emperor, 85 Daoism, 16, 26, 113, 189 datai sijie (public suicide), 117–18, 135, 291n51 daughters-in-law, 13, 53, 113; abuse of, 175, 200, 207; in child betrothals, 150 – 52; in faithful maiden debate, 216 –17, 221, 226 –28; faithful maidens as, 63, 81, 91, 101, 119 –23, 172 –75; filial piety of, 47, 111; little, 153 –54, 182

Index   337 daughter-parent relations, see parents Davis, Richard, 30 deities (shen), 110, 287n104; faithful maidens as, 26 –27, 92 –93, 269n21 delayed transfer marriage, 100, 289n128 delayed transfer strategy, 127–28 Deng Yuanxi, 234 Diao Bao, 55, 59 Ding Yaokang, 55 Donglin society, 42 Dongqingnü, 119 dowries, 31, 153, 243, 276n102, 277n112, 293n15; and faithful maiden daughtersin-law, 126, 172, 246, 301n17; and suicide, 134, 139 – 40 Draft History of the Qing Dynasty (Qingshi gao), 65 Drama, 3, 15, 299nn157,161; faithful maidens in, 163 – 66; and fall of Ming, 63 – 64; as influence, 160, 162 – 66; loyalty in, 163; and moral heroism, 46 – 47; qing in, 39, 163 – 64, 297n93; yi in, 146, 163 – 64, 166. See also popular theater Ebrey, Patricia, 30, 269n18 economic factors: and adoption, 123 –24; and charity for faithful maidens, 206 – 10; commercialization, 38 – 39, 98 –99; and parent-daughter relation, 249; and living faithful maidens, 172, 175, 200; and move to marital family, 120 –21; in second betrothals, 115; in suicides, 131, 134. See also property education: of sons, 178; and intellectual compatibility, 155; and Confucian classics, 160, 233, 244, 311n129; as influence, 13 –14, 107, 159 – 61, 189, 244; and status, 173; of women, 3, 13, 15, 41– 42, 47, 98 –99, 244 Eight Banners (baqi), 70, 281n10, 282n13 elites, 4, 7– 8, 19 –20; and belief in afterlife, 157; and faithful maiden debate, 212 – 46; and fall of Ming, 49; female, 45, 267n5; and gender roles, 9, 158, 250; Han, 80; Ming, 36, 39, 43, 46; Qing, 65 – 66, 69; Song-Yuan, 30; support of faithful maidens by, 26, 91, 98, 168, 248 – 49. See also literati elites, local: and co-burial, 235; and justice

for faithful maidens, 200 –206; Ming, 36; and shrines, 89, 94, 96; support of faithful maidens by, 84, 123, 206 –10 Elliott, Mark, 70 eunuchs, 7, 40, 42 – 43 evidential scholarship (Qian-Jia school), 3, 9, 212 –13, 225 – 31, 238, 251 examinations, civil service, 3, 60, 163, 208, 233, 246; and female suicide, 288n124; and men’s deaths, 104, 151, 252; and neo-Confucianism, 37; Qing, 64, 307n28 extremism, moral, 21, 36 – 40, 50 –53, 112, 248 – 49 Fa Ruozhen, 53, 278n14 faithful maiden biographies: on adoption, 123 –26; ambivalence in, 105; in faithful maiden debate, 218, 220 –21, 231; as sources 15 –17; glorifying suicide, 51–53 in early Qing discourse, 58 – 63 faithful maidens (zhennü), 1; adaptation to cult of, 127–28; alternatives for, 104 – 6; ambivalence about, 237– 39; background of cult of, 3 – 6; belief in the afterlife, 156 – 67, behavior of, 179 –90, 248; class and educational background of, 106 –7, 158 – 61, and child betrothal, 150 –52, critics of, 12, 21, 29, 68, 86, 103, 116, 127, 145, 197, 211, 225 –27, 230 – 31, 247, 305n1, 306n19; debate on, 15, 17, 36, 81, 84, 105, 211– 46, 249, 251–54, 289n7; deification of, 26 –27, 92 –93, 269n21; doubts about resolve of, 121; early stories of, 24 –27; emotional lives of, 155, 190 –95; fighting for justice, 200 – 06, funerals for, 54, 66; history of, 19 –100; homes for (qingjie tang, xuli hui), 209 –10; influence of, 2, 6, 9 –10, 172, 247, 249, 295n53; influences on, 14, 107, 158 – 66, 189, 244; life as, 167–210; marriageability of, 105; and metaphors, 246, 251; in Ming, 34 – 36, 40 – 41; in Ming-Qing transition, 50 –53; as mothers, 175 –79; as daughters-inlaw, 172 –75, motivations of, 12 –14, 129; in Qing, 68 –100; and qing 152 –56, and yi 144 –50, and regional variation, 20, 96 –100; in Republican period, 252 –54; seclusion of, 180 – 84, 198; self-control

338   Index methods of, 198 –200; superstitions about, 123; terms for, 22 –24, 32, 270n9; as victims, 2, 6, 10 –11, 15, 102, 129, 204; visual representations of, 252; youth of, 114, 158, 196 –97 family, 6, 9 –12, 84, 100 –101, 103 –28; and morality, 3 – 4, 8, 38; mothers and sons within, 177–79, 286n75, 290n34, 302n35 family, marital, 13, 101, 104, 113; and adoption of heir, 120, 172, 176; emotional connection to, 150 –52; faithful maidens as daughters-in-law in, 119 –23, 172 –75; grief of, 122; move to, 120 –21, 128, 149 –50; vs. natal, 9, 111, 128, 206 –7; and public opinion, 125 –26; and spirit weddings, 168 –72; and suicides, 136 – 37, 142, 193 –94 family, natal, 11–12, 101, 104, 168; attitudes of, 239 – 46; daughter’s position in, 248 – 49; and faithful maiden debate, 217; influence of, 158 –59, 172; vs. marital, 9, 111, 128, 206 –7; strategies of, 127–28; and suicides, 131– 32, 134, 194; support of faithful maidens by, 202 – 4, 206 –7 Fan Ermei, 204 Fan Huzhen, 138 Fang Bao, 51, 207– 8, 234, 240 Fang Xiaoru (Fang Zhonglie), 43, 47 Fang Zongcheng, 123 Feng Jing, 295n72 festivals, 184 fidelity, female (jie), 4, 13 –14, 69, 91, 248; Confucianism on, 5 – 6, 45; in drama, 163; in faithful maiden debate, 215, 219, 223, 229; vs. filial piety, 9, 65, 110 –12, 296n75; and loyalty, 9, 41, 44 – 48, 59 – 61, 64 – 65; metaphors for, 234 – 35; and neo-Confucianism, 268n18; vs. ritual, 216; and the state, 16; and suicide, 101; terms for, 199; in women’s education, 159 – 62, 244 filial piety (xiao), 146, 159, 271n10, 275n77; and adoption of heir, 176; and celibacy, 113; of daughters-in-law by gegu, 47, 246; in drama, 163; in faithful maiden debate, 226, 238 – 39; vs. fidelity, 9, 65, 110 –12, 296n75; and moral heroism, 38, 45; vs. move to marital family, 128; and

the state, 111–12, 282n14; and suicides, 72 –73, 131, 135; towards mothers, 177–79 folk tales, 26 –27, 92 –93 footbinding, 61 Fujian province, 117–18, 135 Gan Bao, 295n55 Gao Ba, 243 Gao Cun, 132 – 33 Gao Panlong, 42 Gao Qi, 277n110 Gao Qing, 242 – 43 Gao Xing, 186 gazetteers, local, 15, 28, 36, 68, 88; in Ming, 33; recognition of faithful maidens in, 82 – 84; as sources, 96; on suicides, 71, 117, 136 Ge Hao, 46 gender roles, 4, 6, 10, 248; and Confucianism, 14, 254; and elites, 9, 158, 250; and filial piety, 111; and identity, 2, 11, 301n26; influence of, 14, 158; and living faithful maidens, 168; and moral heroism, 41– 42; and physical separation, 180, 184; and poetry, 140, 161; in Republican period, 254; and self-mutilation, 186; and the state, 68, 268n8 Gong Jian, 95 government, local, 20, 77, 100; awards from, 28, 82 – 86; and justice for faithful maidens, 200 –206; and shrines, 78, 89, 91, 94, 96; and suicide, 73, 82 – 83. See also the state Gu Jiegang, 295n60 Gu Jifan, 192 Gu Qing (Gu Shilian), 214 –15, 275n87, 306n7 Gu Xiancheng, 42 Gu Yanwu, 4, 8, 47, 219 –20, 277n112, 285n58 Guang Yifu, 299n157 Guangzhou, 99 –100 Gui Youguang, 214, 216 –19, 221, 228 – 30, 233, 238 – 39, 273n51, 306n19 Gui Zhuang, 219 –20 Guo Siniang, 35 Guo Yingde, 299n158

Index   339 Hai Rui, 43 Han Chinese, 80; vs. Manchus, 69 –70; in Eight Banners (Han Martial), 281n10, 282n13 Han History (Hanshu), 107 Han Mengzhou, 91 Han Peng, 142 Han Qia, 218, 306n19 Hao Jing, 235 Hao Yixing, 230 He Binggu, 93 He Qiutao, 308n74 He Zhixuan, 283n34 heroism, moral, 21, 36 – 40, 158, 185, 249; in drama, 46 – 47; and filial piety, 38, 45; and gender roles, 41– 42; of Ming officials, 38, 44 – 45; and Ming political conditions, 40 – 44; and suicide, 38, 45 – 46 History of the Later Han Dynasty (Houhan shu), 142 Hong Liangji, 292n5 Hong Rujing, 156 Hong Sheng, 57 Hu Cangheng, 55 Hu Chenggong, 227 Hu Jiazhi, 66 Hu Sheng, 273n31 Hu Shi, 254 Huang, Lady, 245 – 46 Huang Tingjian, 87 Huang Zongxi, 53, 58, 278n7 Huang Zuo, 39 Huangfu Mi, 26 human sacrifice, 72 identity, 13 –14, 247; and adoption of heir, 176; and child betrothal, 150; and filial piety, 111; gendered, 2, 11, 301n26; and suicide, 101, 132; and suicide poems, 142 Illuminating Chastity (Chan zhen ji), 179 imperial testimonials. See jingbiao Imperially Endorsed Annotations of the Book of Rites (Qinding Liji yishu), 234 Imperially Endorsed Gazetteer of the Unified Grand Qing (Qinding da Qing yitong zhi), 96 –97, 167, 255 –57 infanticide, 10, 116, 140

“Inquiries from Zengzi” (Zengzi wen), 216 –17, 221, 229, 231– 32, 241 Instructions for Women (Nüjie; Ban Zhao), 245 Instructions for Women (Nüxun), 155, 159 – 60 Ji Dong, 121–22, 221 Ji Ergu, 175 Ji Yun, 195, 245 – 46 Jiang Gui, 82, 110, 138, 161 Jiang Shiquan, 85 Jiang Yong, 309n83 Jiao Tinfu, 308n67 Jiao Xun, 95 –96, 195 –96, 228 – 30, 308n58 Jiaqing, Emperor, 284n35 jingbiao (imperial testimonials), 4, 13, 20, 248, 267n7; categories of, 74; and corruption, 85 – 86; costs of, 116; and drama, 164 – 66; and faithful maiden debate, 214; and filial piety, 111; and growth of faithful maiden cult, 249 –50; for Han women, 282n13; increasing numbers of, 81– 82; for living faithful maidens, 172, 179; for Manchu women, 77, 250; in Ming, 31– 33, 36, 77, 250; and Ming restoration, 37; vs. other types of recognition, 83, 87; parental greed for, 115, 118; in Qing, 66, 68 –70, 74 – 82, 165 – 66, 250; and regional differences, 96, 98; and Republican awards, 253; and shrines, 89 –90, 94 –95; and social status, 85 – 86, 119; as sources, 15 –16; in Southern Song, 27; and suicide, 71–74, 80; for women, 250 –51 jueming ci (suicide poems), 138, 142, 145, 146 –147, 159, 294n21, 295n53 Kang Hai, 40 Kangxi, Emperor, 220, 234, 282n14, 307n28; and jingbiao, 77, 80; on suicide, 71–72, 307n39 Ko, Dorothy, 155 Kong Yingda, 233 Lan Dingyuan, 83 – 85, 160, 241, 286n85, 298n137 law, Qing: on adoption, 123, 125, 176; on betrothal, 228 –29; and chastity, 269n20;

340   Index and divorce, 243; and faithful maiden debate, 240; and injustice, 200 –206 legitimacy: and adoption of heir, 176; and classics, 234; of faithful maiden practice, 5, 9, 36, 68, 213, 217, 228, 230; and filial piety, 238 – 39; of Manchus, 70; of pleasure, 39; of Yuan dynasty, 273n45 Leung, Angela, 209 Li, Wai-Yee, 63 Li Bo, 144 Li Ciming, 229 Li E, 124 Li Fu, 85 Li Gong, 65, 278n10 Li Guangpo, 309n87 Li Lingshou, 159 Li Mengyang, 40 – 42, 94 Li Shenchuan, 116, 127, 158, 198; on sexuality, 196 –97, 199 Li Tao, 169 Li Tianfu, 268n11 Li Tiangen, 166 Li Wenzao, 228 Li Yun, 128 Li Yunhua, 56, 279n30 Li Zhaoluo, 93, 179, 292n64 Li Zong, 122 Lin Fengniang, 131 Lin Jiesong, 136 Lin Xiuzhi, 156 lineage organizations, 20, 87– 88, 248; and adoption, 125; and benxun suicide, 136; coercion from, 116, 118; in Guangzhou, 100; rules for, 4 Ling Cunxun, 135, 294n21 literacy, 3, 102, 107, 142, 159, 248, 267n5 literati, 4 – 8, 19, 100, 251–52; and adoption, 123; ambivalence of, 218, 223, 237– 39; and belief in afterlife, 157; and chaste widows, 87, 213; criticism by, 12, 21, 29, 68, 86, 103, 116, 127, 145, 197, 211, 225 –27, 230 – 31, 247, 305n1, 306n19; and faithful maiden debate, 81, 212 – 46; and fall of Ming, 58 – 67; and female virtue, 4, 9; as influence, 98, 158; and justice for faithful maidens, 201; personal feelings of, 86 – 87, 239 – 46; promotion of faithful maidens by,

54 –58, 103, 115; and Qing state, 59 – 61; and shrines, 96; social networks of, 87, 89, 98, 251; in Song period, 28; in Song-Yuan period, 27, 31; as sources, 16 –17; support of faithful maidens by, 203, 206 –10, 249; writings on faithful maidens by, 86 – 89. See also biographies and elites literature, 3; chastity in, 163, 235; commemorative, 54 –58, 69, 86 – 89, 223; ideals in, 14, 146, 297n93; as influence, 160; as source, 15; vernacular, 4, 39; by women, 3, 98 –99, 107, 140, 159 – 60. See also drama; poetry Liu Baonan, 230, 238 Liu Dakui, 238 Liu Deju, 94 Liu Fenglu, 232 Liu Houde (Liu Ziwan), 214 Liu Jin, 40 – 41, 46 Liu Kui, 43 Liu Taigong, 238 Liu Wencheng (Liu Ji), 47 Liu Xiang, 22 –25 Liu Xiban, 145 Liu Zhen, 282n18 Liu Zongzhou, 58, 90 love. See qing loyalty (zhong), 7– 8, 19, 69, 146, 251; and chastity, 59 – 61, 249, 276n90; in drama, 112, 163; in faithful maiden debate, 215, 220, 237; and female fidelity, 9, 41, 44 – 48, 59 – 61, 64 – 65; vs. filial piety, 112; to Ming, 8, 50, 61– 64, 68, 72, 86, 219 –20, 250; of Ming officials, 42 – 44; political, 19 –20, 30, 35, 50, 72, 249, 254; of Qing officials, 66 – 67; and suicide, 19, 35, 50, 72, 249; in women’s education, 159 – 60, 244 Lü Kun, 218, 305n1, 306n19 Lu Longqi, 279n37 Lu Shen, 214 –15 Lu Wenchao, 239 Lü Xinyuan, 127 Lu Xun, 254 Lu Yinpu, 268n11, 292n79 Lu Zhixi, 208 Luo Jing, 26 Luo Qinshun, 233 – 34, 309n87

Index   341 Luo Yougao, 103, 231 Ma Shiban, 305n113 Ma Yueguan, 124 Ma Yuelu, 124 Ma Zhide, 218, 222, 306n19 Manchus, 7, 49, 159; as chaste widows, 70, 282n12, 283n32; conquest by, 68, 219 –20; ethnic image of, 69 –70; as faithful maidens, 72, 77, 250; and fall of Ming, 58 – 67, 148; and jingbiao of, 16, 70, 72 –73, 77, 250, 282nn12,13, 283n32; under Qing, 281n10, 282n13; and queue, 61; and suicide, 71–73. See also Qing dynasty Mann, Susan, 69 –70, 121, 268n8, 286n75, 301n26 Mao Jike, 51, 182 Mao Qiling, 50 –51, 89, 122, 169, 276n103, 278n17, 300n6, 307n39; in faithful maiden debate, 21, 220, 223 –26, 230 Maple Society (Fengshe), 64 marriage, 6; abuse in, 243; age at, 198; arranged, 10 –11, 152 –56, 249; and betrothal, 211, 234; and co-burial, 236; companionate, 155; cousin, 153; delayed-transfer, 100, 289n128; in faithful maiden debate, 211, 225, 228, 251; in Guangzhou, 100; importance of, 112 –13; levirate, 30 – 31, 269n18, 273n43; little daughter-in-law, 153 –54; in Ming, 22 –23; and moral decadence, 38 – 39; and mourning, 232 – 33; resistance to, 13, 100, 247; rituals of, 150, 152 –53, 216, 225 –28; spirit, 92, 102, 104 –5, 119 –20, 147, 168 –72, 178, 252, 289n129; uxorilocal, 204, 305n110; yi in, 146. See also dowries; remarriage Maxims for Women (Nüzhen), 159 May Fourth Movement, 10 –11, 268n18 the mean (zhongyong), 29, 215, 231, 240, 275n87 memorial shrines, 4 –5, 89 –96, 287n100; as influence, 158; in Ming, 32, 35 – 36, 90; in Qing, 51, 69, 78, 90 –91; titles of, 91. See also Shrines of the Faithful and Filial memorial arches, 4, in Ming, 32, in Qing, 56, 66; 69, 74, 78, 81– 3, 89, 166, for faithful maiden mother, 179; in poem,

206; collective, 82, and greedy parents, 115, Five-Phoenix (wu feng paifang), 163. See also jingbiao Mencius, 113 Meng Chengshun, 63 – 64 Meng Jiangnü, 144, 295n60 Meng Sen, 45 Meng Yun, 90 mental illness, 194 –95 miaojian ritual, 215 –17, 221, 227–28 Ming dynasty, 21– 48; chastity in, 37, 41; Confucianism in, 36 – 40; elites in, 36, 39, 43, 46; faithful maiden debate in, 214 –19; fall of, 4, 19, 49, 58 – 67, 219 –20, 280n60; founder of, 31, 37, 43, 273n45; jingbiao in, 31– 33, 36, 77, 250; last emperor of, 49, 60 – 62; loyalty to, 8, 50, 61– 64, 68, 72, 86, 219 –20, 250; and Manchus, 148; and Mongols, 36 – 37; moral heroism in, 40 – 45, 249; numbers of faithful maidens in, 96 –98; officials in, 38, 40 – 45; public suicides in, 117; qing in, 145; restoration of, 62; selfmutilation in, 185 Ming History (Mingshi), 32, 220 Ming-Qing transition, 49 – 68; moral extremism in, 50 –53 Mongols, 7, 36 – 37, 43, 273n45; conquest by, 30 – 31, 273n42, 274n59; under Qing, 70, 281n10. See also Yuan dynasty moral exemplars, 58, 89, 204, 272n30; awards for, 249 –50; and co-burial, 236; faithful (jie) and martyred (lie), 4, 13, 69, 91; in faithful maiden debate, 219 –20, 237– 38; faithful maidens as, 9, 15, 36, 139, 172, 189; and Manchus, 69 –70; in Ming, 31– 32, 36, 40; in Qing, 65 – 66, 80; women as, 4, 199, 250 –51 moralism, extreme, 21, 36 – 40, 50 –53, 112, 248 – 49 moralism, familistic, 69, 268n8 morality: and adoption, 123; and awards to faithful maidens, 84 – 85; decline of, 38 – 39, 46; and evidential scholarship, 214; in faithful maiden debate, 217, 219, 237, 239; and family, 3 – 4, 8, 38, 104; and filial piety, 112; as influence, 14, 158; in neo-Confucianism, 3 – 4, 37, 225; and personal feelings, 104, 252; and political

342   Index crisis, 7– 8; and power, 167, 172 –73; in Republican period, 254; in SongYuan period, 27, 30 – 31; and the state, 3 – 4, 36 – 37, 250, 268n8; and support of faithful maidens, 208 –9; texts on, 39, 189; and yi, 146 – 47. See also heroism, moral mortality rates, 104, 124 mourning: clothing for, 141, 172, 221–22, 224, 226, 230 – 32; in faithful maiden debate, 217, 221–22, 224, 227, 230 – 32, 234, 241, 245; and faithful maidens’ conduct, 179 – 80; for parents, 224, 227, 232 – 33; rituals of, 195, 222, 226 –27, 230, 232 – 33, 241, 245, 271n12, 293n7; and spirit weddings, 170; and suicides, 117–18, 130, 132, 135 – 38, 156 nationalism, 253 native-place associations, 253 neo-Confucianism (lixue), 8, 65, 231, 275n74, 307n47; and chastity, 30, 268n18, 273n42; and faithful maiden debate, 225; as influence, 158; on morality, 3 – 4, 37, 225; and women, 268n18; yi in, 146 New Culture movement, 254 New Text school, 231– 32, 308n75 New Youth (journal), 254 Office of Ming History (Mingshi guan), 220, 307n28 officials, 7; corruption of, 85 – 86; and jingbiao, 77, 80; local, 77, 82, 84 – 85, 94, 96; Ming, 38, 40 – 45; moral heroism of, 38, 44 – 45; Qing, 64 – 67, 69; and shrines, 90 –91, 94, 96; Song, 38; Yuan, 43 opera, 163, 184 oracle bone inscriptions, 22 “Orphan of the Zhao,” 167, 300n2 Ouyang Xiu, 288n117, 295n59 Pak Chi-w_n, 103, 127, 245 The Palace of Eternal Youth (Changsheng dian; Hong Sheng), 57 Pan Chengzhang, 85 Pan Deyu, 176 parents, 1, 4, 9 –12, 278n14; attitudes of, 239 – 46; coercion by, 116 –19; conflict with, 112 –16, 247– 49; daughters’

relations with, 9 –12, 101, 104, 107–119; defiance of, 24, 28, 41; in faithful maiden debate, 226 –27, 238 – 39; filial piety towards, 110 –12; greedy, 115, 118; living with, 293n16; mothers and sons, 177–79, 286n75, 290n34, 302n35; motives of, 112 –16; mourning for, 224, 227, 232 – 33; obedience to, 108; and second betrothals, 105; and selfmutilation, 35; and suicides, 11, 52 –53, 108 –9, 127, 130 – 31, 134, 138. See also family, natal parents-in-law, 271n10; abuse by, 200 –201, 207; vs. filial piety, 111; residence with, 34 – 35, 149 –50; and second betrothals, 105; and gegu for, 47, 246; and suicides, 131, 134, 193 –94. See also family, marital patrilineal system, 14, 53, 101, 111, 248 – 49; and adoption of heir, 123, 176 –77; faithful maidens’ support of, 10, 13, 200 peasant faithful maidens, 4, 106, 171; conduct of, 182 – 83; economic hardships of, 175, 208 –9; suicides by, 95, 132. See also Song Dian Peng Dingqiu, 219, 221, 231 Peng Shaosheng, 103, 125, 169, 231 Peng Yuanrui, 107, 244 – 46, 268n11 pictorials, 252 poetry, 87, 173, 178, 269n24; and qing, 154 –56; and belief in afterlife, 156 –57; criticism in, 306n19; in faithful maiden debate, 230, 237; by faithful maidens, 15, 138, 190 –92, 246; for faithful maidens, 54, 57, 66, 161, 206, 222; and burning of, 140; music bureau (yuefu), 29; on sexuality, 195 –96; on suicide, 138, 142, 145 – 47, 159, 294n21, 295n53; by women, 3, 15, 99, 107, 140, 160 – 61, 191–92; debate over , 160 – 61; Yuan, 28 –29 political conditions, 6 –9, 86, 251; and female virtue, 44 – 48; and loyalty, 19 –20, 30, 35, 50, 72, 249, 254; and moral heroism, 40 – 44. See also Ming dynasty popular theater, 3, 14, 46, 102, 112, 248, 300 A Portrait of Supervising Studies in the Frosty Curtained Room (Shuangwei kedu tu; painting), 179

Index   343 printing, 3, 159, 267n5 property, 9, 12, 272n24; and adoption, 123 –126, and lawsuits, 200 –206; and widow remarriage, 30 – 31; women’s rights to, 269nn18,20, 273n42, 293n15 Provincial Gazetteer of Zhejiang (Zhejiang tongzhi), 83 Qi Biaojia, 64, 285n58 Qi Xuebiao, 124 Qian Baofu, 200 –201 Qian Daxin, 237– 39 Qian Fu (Qian Yuqian), 151–52, 214 –16 Qian-Jia school. See evidential scholarship Qian Qi, 246 Qian Shixi, 240, 286n85 Qian Shu, 246, 311n141 Qian Taiji, 125 Qian Yiji, 106, 157 Qianlong, Emperor, 73, 115 –16, 234, 245, 282n14; and jingbiao, 80 – 81, 165 – 66 Qin Guan, 286n86 Qin Huitian, 236 Qin Ying, 145, 286n86 Qing dynasty, 281n3; collaborators with, 64 – 67; elites in, 65 – 66, 69; expansion of faithful maiden cult in, 97–100, 106; faithful maiden debate in, 219 –25; jingbiao in, 66, 68 –70, 74 – 82, 165 – 66, 250; laws of, 123, 125, 176, 200 –206, 228 –29, 240, 243, 269n20; legitimacy of, 70; opposition to, 65; self-mutilation in, 185 qing (romantic love), 14, 129, 161, 248, 281n4, 297n92; in arranged marriages, 152 –56; in drama, 39, 163 – 64, 297n93; in faithful maiden debate, 218 –19, 223; overindulgence of, 145, 148, 306n19, 309n87; in poetry, 87; and yi, 99, 102, 144 – 45, 148, 297n93 Qiyuan Xinggang, 12, 269n21 Qu Dajun, 53, 56, 61– 64, 88, 100 rape, 4, 85, 96 rebellions, 138, 281n3, 284n49 Record of the Martyred Men during the Four Reigns (Sichao chengren lu; Qu Dajun), 62 Record of Trivial Matters from Wuxi and Jinkui (Xi Jin zhi xiao lu), 184

Records of Lin’an (Lin’an zhi), 28 Records of Revealing the Obscured Zhejiang Women (Yue nü biao wei lu; Wang Huizu), 84 Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji), 47, 107 remarriage, 4, 22, 126, 198, 268n18, 296n73; and abuse, 204, 210; in faithful maiden debate, 216; and moral decadence, 38 – 39; and property, 30 – 31 Republican period, 252 –54 Restoration Society (Fushe), 64 ritual, 2, 300n6; and adoption, 177; ambivalence about, 237– 39; of benxun suicide, 136 – 37; and co-burial, 235 – 36; in faithful maiden debate, 211, 213, 216 –25, 228, 231, 240 – 42, 244, 251, 289n7, 305n1; vs. law, 228 –29; and living faithful maidens, 168; marriage, 150, 152 – 53, 216, 225 –28; miaojian, 215 –17, 221, 227–28; in Ming, 22 –23; mourning, 195, 222, 226 –27, 230, 232 – 33, 241, 245, 271n12, 293n7; in Republican period, 254; and second betrothals, 105; and spirit weddings, 169; and suicide, 14, 129, 132, 136 – 37, 139 – 44 Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Sanguo yanyi), 146, 274n54 Rules of the Inner Quarters (Neize), 159 self-cultivation, 8, 37, 59, 173 self-mutilation, 14, 35, 47, 120, 184 –90, 278n11; and chastity, 186 –90; by cutting hair, 185 – 86, 188 – 89; vs. filial piety, 246; and moral heroism, 38, 45 sexuality, 39, 114 –15, 190, 195 –200, 218, 281n4 Shang dynasty, 22, 277n116 Shang Lu, 46 – 47, 163 – 64 Shang Rong, 286n89 Shen Fu, 297n100 Shen Hanguang, 55, 59, 184 Shen Yao, 236 Shen Zhou, 294n47 Shen Shouxian, 299n158 shrines. See memorial shrines Shrines of the Faithful and Filial (jiexiao ci, jiexiao funü zhi ci), 78 –79, 81, 84, 90

344   Index Sima Guang, 27 Six Records of a Floating Life (Fusheng liuji; Shen Fu), 297n100 The Snow-White Chinese Flowering Apple Collection (Xue tang ji), 55 social status: and commemorative writings, 87; commoner, 157, 159; of faithful maidens, 4, 8, 14, 69, 106 –7, 248, 289nn7,13; and influences, 161– 62; and jingbiao, 85 – 86; and levirate marriage, 273n43; and neo-Confucianism, 37; peasant, 4, 55 –56, 95, 106, 132, 171, 175, 182 – 83, 208 –9; and shrines to faithful maidens, 89 –90, 92 –93; and suicide, 132; and yi, 146 Song Dian, 62, 278n14, 281n70; literati eulogies for, 55 –56, 59, 65 – 66, 220, 222, 279n33; suicide of, 53, 55, 141 Song dynasty, 27– 31 Song Jingwei, 147– 49, 153, 155, 158, 173 – 74, 248, 296n77; on Chen Yuan, 147– 48, 161, 211, 236; in faithful maiden debate, 230 – 31; spirit wedding of, 169 Song Lian, 188 Song Shiying, 121, 159, 221 Song-Yuan period, 27– 31 South China, 20, 87– 88, 97–98 Southern Song dynasty, 27– 31 spirit tablets, 170 –71 spirit weddings. See weddings Spring and Autumn Annals, 47; Gongyang Commentary to, 308n75 the state, 2, 6, 8, 104; and Confucianism, 3 – 4, 19, 232; and faithful maiden debate, 215, 241– 42; and filial piety, 111–12, 282n14; and gender roles, 68, 268n8; and justice for faithful maidens, 200 –206; and literati, 59 – 61; and local government, 82; Ming, 38; and morality, 3 – 4, 268n8; and neo-Confucianism, 307n47; pre-Ming, 21; promotion of faithful maidens by, 4 –5, 10, 12, 19 –20, 103, 115, 123, 158; Qing, 68 –100, 281n4, 307n39; in Republican period, 252 –54; Song-Yuan, 27, 30 – 31; and suicide, 71–73; support of faithful maidens by, 248 – 49; and widowhood, 241; and women, 16, 281n4, 293n15. See also Ming dynasty; Qing dynasty

Story of Chastity and Literary Talents: Zhang Yuniang, the Three Purities of the Inner Chamber, and the Parrot’s Grave (Zhang Yuniang guifang sanqing yingwu mu zhenwen ji; Meng Chengshun), 63 – 64 Story of Shang Lu Earning Triple First Place (Shang Lu sanyuan ji), 46 – 47, 163 – 64, 178 Story of the Dutiful and Faithful (Yi zhen ji; Wu Hengxuan), 166 Story of the Stone, 140, 305n116 suicide, 1, 7– 8, 16, 129 – 66; and adoption of heir, 125 –26, 129, 131– 32, 157, 162, 175, 193, 293n11, 301n29; and arranged marriage, 154; ban on, 71–73, 250; and belief in afterlife, 156 –57; benxun (publicly announced), 117–18, 135 – 38, 156; with betrothal gifts, 141– 42; and child betrothal, 151; choice of, 129 – 35; and civil service examinations, 288n124; clothing for, 140 – 43; and co-burial, 235 – 36; coerced, 12, 116 –18, 136; and Confucianism, 29, 129; criticism of, 103, 129, 133, 137; decline in, 128; and dowries, 134, 139 – 40; in faithful maiden debate, 215, 219, 223 –24, 226 –27, 239 – 40; and fall of Ming, 4, 58, 60, 63; for fame, 137– 39; vs. filial piety, 72 –73, 110, 131, 135; glorification of, 5, 32 – 33, 50 –54, 137; in history of faithful maiden cult, 19 –20; and identity, 101, 132, 142; immediate, 130, 132 – 35; jingbiao for, 71–74, 80, 307n39; lack of alternatives to, 133 – 35; of last Ming emperor, 49, 60 – 61; vs. life as faithful maiden, 167; and local government, 73, 82 – 83; Manchu policy on, 71–73; methods of, 135; in Ming, 32 – 35; in Ming-Qing transition, 50 –53; and moral heroism, 38, 45 – 46; and mourning, 117–18, 130, 132, 135 – 38, 156; and parents, 11, 52 –53, 108 –9, 116, 127, 130 – 31, 134, 138; poetry on, 15, 138, 142, 145, 146 –147, 159, 192, 294n21, 295n53; and political loyalty, 19, 30, 35, 50, 72, 249, 300n2; public (datai sijie), 117–18, 135, 291n51; in Republican period, 253; rituals of, 14, 139 – 44; and second betrothals, 106; vs. self-denial,

Index   345 185; and shrines, 89, 91, 95; in SongYuan period, 28 –29; by widows, 70, 72 –73, 117–18, 130, 134 – 35 Sun Buer, 189 Sun Qifeng, 55, 59 – 60, 94 Sun Xidan, 106, 115, 240 – 42, 286n85 Sun Xinyan, 227 Sun Yuanxiang, 238 Sun Zhiwei, 113 Taiping Rebellion, 138 Taizhou school, 37 The Talented Women of the Zhang Family (Mann), 121 Tang Fengluan, 139 Tanyangzi, 12 Tao Qian, 214 Tao Shu, 118 –19, 302n41, 304n76 tattooing, 185 Thousand Character Classic (Qian zi wen), 160 Tian Deming, 223 Tian Lanfang, 219 T’ien Ju-k’ang, 36, 288n124, 299nn157,161 Tongcheng school, 229, 238 virtue, female, 2, 6 –9; definitions of, 24, 271n10; and male loyalty, 44 – 48. See also fidelity, female Wan Qiliang (Wan Xiliang), 144, 295n60 Wang Gen, 37 Wang Huizu, 83 – 84, 96 Wang Lanying, 209 Wang Minhao, 245 Wang Niansun, 227, 238 Wang Qiao, 154 Wang Shizhen, 269n21, 276n103, 279n23 Wang Wan, 56, 220 –22, 278n14 Wang Xiaocheng, 153, 158, 193 –94 Wang Xijue, 269n21 Wang Xiuwen, 56 –58, 141– 42, 154, 208, 290n41 Wang Yangming, 37 Wang Youguang, 198 Wang Yuan, 51–53, 60 – 61, 86, 108, 193, 279n17, 286n89, 290n18 Wang Zhaoyuan, 230 – 31 Wang Zhi, 31

Wang Zhong, 225 – 30, 238, 244 – 45, 308n58 Wang Zhu, 63 Wang Ziyao, 169 –70, 172 Wanyan Yun Zhu, 107, 161, 173, 231, 279n23, 283n34, 301n21 Water Margin (Shuihu zhuan), 146 Wedding Flowers and Wedding Candles for a White-Haired Couple (Baitou huazhu; Li Tiangen), 166 weddings, spirit, 14, 16, 168 –72, 176, 206, 252 Wei Chengchu, 172 Wei Xiangshu, 55 –56, 64 – 67, 220, 222, 278n14, 279n30, 281n68 Wei Yi’ao, 55 Wei Zhongxian, 44 Weixuan, Lady, 24 –25, 230 – 31, 308n74 Weng Ru’an, 298n144 White-Haired Newlyweds (Baitou xin; Xu E), 166 widows: remarriage of, 22, 30 – 31, 198; responsibilities of, 53, 149 widows, chaste (jiefu), 4, 6, 12, 28, 42, 45; bodies of, 143; coercion of, 116 –18; commemorative writings on, 86 – 87; emotional lives of, 190 –95; in faithful maiden debate, 215, 218, 222; vs. faithful maidens, 5, 144 – 45, 153, 176, 197, 241, 245; faithful maidens as, 1, 16, 104, 120, 141, 172, 179 – 80; funerals for, 54; homes for (qingjie tang, xuli hui), 209 –10; incentives for, 13, 20, 273n42; and literati, 87, 213; Manchu, 70, 282n12, 283n32; in Ming, 32 – 33, 36; and motherson bond, 286n75; and poetry, 161, 235; in Republican period, 253; seclusion of, 180; self-control methods of, 198 –200; and self-denial, 189; self-mutilation by, 186 – 87; suffering of, 113 –14, 290n34; suicides by, 70, 72 –73, 117–18, 130, 134 – 35 women: in faithful maiden debate, 230 – 31; and festivals, 184; honorary titles for, 302n34; poetry by, 3, 15, 99, 107, 140, 160 – 61, 191–92; and political loyalty, 21, 45 – 48; work of (nügong), 301n26; as writers, 3, 98 –99, 107, 140, 159 – 60 “writing on an album” (ti ce), 88 – 89

346   Index Wu, king of Zhou, 277n116 Wu Bozhou, 195 Wu Daozhi, 41– 42 Wu Ding, 185, 289n7, 298n131 Wu Gu, 109 Wu Hengxuan, 166 Wu Jingzhi, 305n1 Wu Manyu, 110, 159, 185 Wu Sangui, 62 Wu Shaozeng, 87 Wu Shenqin, 209 Wu Shifeng, 136 Wu Shuji, 54, 159, 185 Wu Yifei, 108 –9, 141, 290n18 Wu Youru, 170, 252 Wu Zhenniang, 215 Xia Liangsheng, 150 Xiahou Ling, 186 Xiang Zhun, 56 –57 Xiao Ju, 28 Xiong Baotai, 152 Xiong Lian, 191–92 Xu Can, 149, 296n82 Xu E, 166 Xu Ergu, 162 Xu Qianxue, 234 Xu Qibao, 191–92 Xu Qiu, 1 Xu Shizeng, 234 Xu Shuofang, 63, 280n60 Xu Wenbiao, 46 Xu Wenlin, 149 Xu Zhen’e, 46 Xuanwen, Madam, 301n21 Xue Heng, 276n93 Xue Kun, 109, 134, 137 Xun Cai, 143 Yan-Li school, 52, 55, 65 Yan Song, 43, 276n102 Yan Yuan, 55, 278n10 Yang Cheng, 54 Yang Jisheng, 43 – 46, 277n106 Yang Lian, 44 Yang Weizhen, 28 –29, 31, 273n45 Yang Xiong, 276n93 Yang Xue, 29, 31 Yang Yi, 29, 31

Yang Ying, 133 – 34, 162 Yao Nai, 87, 179, 207, 229 Yao Tingling, 278n1 Yao Wenyu, 272n24 Ye Chunji, 39, 52 Ye Nütong, 28 Ye Shicheng, 168 Ye Tingguan, 237, 306n19 Ye Xiaoluan, 168 Ye Zhaoxian, 156 Yi, Prince, 77 yi (honor-bound duty), 14, 102, 144 –50, 248, 282n18; and adoption, 124; and child betrothal, 152; and Confucianism, 146 – 49; in drama, 146, 163 – 64, 166; in faithful maiden debate, 218, 222, 234 – 35; as influence, 160 – 62; and qing, 99, 102, 144 – 45, 148, 297n93; and sexuality, 197; and suicide, 129 Yin Huiyi, 94 –95 Yin Jishan, 82, 84 yin-yang principle, 197, 217, 236 Ying Yuanli, 227 Yongzheng, Emperor, 72 –73, 77–78, 80 – 81 You Tong, 57, 208 Yu Que, 28 Yu Zhengxie, 103, 116 –18, 305n1 Yu Zhongsu (Yu Qian), 47 Yuan dynasty, 27– 31, 43, 273n45, 274n59, 293n15; faithful maidens in, 27– 32, 34; levirate marriage in, 30 – 31, 269n18; poetry from, 28 –29. See also Mongols Yuan History (Yuanshi), 31 Yuan Ji, 160, 242 – 44, 310n124 Yuan Mei, 4, 92, 160, 242 – 44, 288n125, 310n124 Yuan Shikai, 253 –54 Yuan Shu, 244 Yuan Shuxiu, 142 Yue Fei, 112 Zang Yong, 230, 305n1 Zeng Guofang, 310n93 Zeng Yuwang, 278n1 Zengzi, 216 –17, 221, 229, 231– 32, 241 Zhan Ruoshui, 39, 215, 272n24 Zhang Cizhong, 309n91 Zhang Duanxiu, 138

Index   347 Zhang Huiyan, 86, 238 – 40 Zhang Jian, 253, 311n7 Zhang Liang, 214 Zhang Liangyu, 229 Zhang Lie, 220 Zhang Lun, 46 – 47, 163 Zhang Mingzhen, 204 – 6 Zhang Oujie, 145 Zhang Ruyu, 272n31 Zhang Shu, 208 –9 Zhang Shunniang, 132 Zhang Xuecheng, 227, 229 Zhang Xuejie, 95 Zhang Yun’ao, 128, 306n22 Zhang Yuniang, 64 Zhang Yunsui, 180, 268n11 Zhang Zhen, 45 – 46, 51, 276nn102,103, 277n106 Zhang Zhuangyi (Zhang Ying), 214 Zhao, King of Chu, 22 –23 Zhao Guolin, 291n50 Zhao Shuying, 91 Zhao Yuan, 38 Zheng Huwen, 244 zhen (integrity, fidelity; needle), 199

Zheng Chenggong, 62 Zheng Xuan, 232 – 33 Zhenjiang, Lady, 22 –23 Zhou dynasty, 277n116 Zhou Gongchen, 87 Zhou Hongqi, 144, 152 Zhou Hui, 155 Zhouli (Zhou rituals), 301n21 Zhu Jian, 178 –79, 189, 240 Zhu Shi, 268n11, 283n34, 286n85, 300n6; daughter of, 81, 88, 107, 169, 182, 192; in faithful maiden debate, 241– 42 Zhu Shigu, 127 Zhu Wenyao, 201–2 Zhu Xi, 24, 235, 275n74 Zhu Yizun, 152, 156; in faithful maiden debate, 220, 222 –25, 236, 279nn17,37, 310n95; on Song Dian, 56, 222, 278n14 Zhu Youdun, 299n157 Zhu Yuanzhang (Ming Taizu), 31, 37, 43, 273n45 Zhuang Cunyu, 231– 32 Ziyou, 158 Zuo Guangdou, 44 Zuo Zongtang, 182