Appropriation and Representation by Shuhui Yang

Author:Shuhui Yang
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kenneth G. Lieberthal and Richard H. Rogel Center for Chinese Studies
Published: 2020-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

We find perfect correspondences except for the third lexical unit in the second title.47 Po can be used both as an adjective meaning “broken,” “worn,” or “ragged,” and as a verb meaning “to break,” or “to cut.” For the second title to match the first syntactically, it should be taken as a verb. But since the worn felt hat, which triggers recognition in the reunion scene of the story, is already “broken” with no one trying to “break” it further, the object of the verb po must be something else. Reasonably, it could be the couplet’s first line, which, as the first story’s title, represents the story itself. More specifically, po may be directed at its counterpart in the first title, song (escort), which happens to be a homophone with “Song” of the dynastic title. All of this may imply that the second story is designed to “break” (po) or belittle the significance of the Song founder’s escorting the maiden home. I hold that this is one of many instances of significant wordplay in the Sanyan, and I will discuss others in chapter 4 below.

Two alterations made in the plot line of the second story also contribute to this intertextual subversion. In the source tale, Song Jin is described as intending to buy a concubine for himself once he has money and his health has returned. It is only by accident that he sees his father-in-law’s boat and finds his wife in it. But in the Sanyan version, Song Jin has no other woman in mind but his wife, and he makes a special trip to their hometown to look for her. When the neighbors tell him that Liu has sailed to another place, he follows his trail. Clearly, the author is trying to elevate Song Jin by describing him as a youqing ren, a man of both passion and constancy, a man who knows the importance of love between man and woman in life.48

Feng Menglong has also added an episode. Early in the story, Song Jin is lucky enough to be hired by an official but is soon thrown out into the street and reduced to poverty because of the conspiracy of jealous colleagues. This example of the fickleness of fortune highlights the significance of Song Jin’s blissful reunion with his wife after many vicissitudes at the end of the story. The implication is that only qing (love) can bring meaning to life as it brings the couple together.

Qing, variously translated into English as “feeling,” “emotion,” “passion,” “affinity” or “love,” is a ruling value in Feng Menglong’s writings. In his preface to Folk Songs he makes it clear that the genuine qing between a man and a woman is what he will use to expose the “phony medicine” of Confucianism (jie nannü zhi zhenqing, fa mingjiao zhi weiyao).49 In his preface to another collection, Anatomy of Lave (Qingshi leilüe), he admits that he has a reputation for being qing-crazy, and glorifies qing as binding the myriad things in the

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